Creationists Gather...Dinosaurs Subject of Discussion

UNION — As children create models of dinosaurs, their parents can search for Biblical references to the giant creatures at a weekend conference hosted by a pro-Creationist ministry that vows to “defend scripture from the very first verse.”

The site of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Boone County is being graded. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM | Organizers of the program running today and Sunday at Big Bone Baptist Church in Union say the Answers in Genesis family conference is expected to draw between 500 and 600 people within a day's drive of the Tristate. They say it is part of an ongoing series of family conferences that the 8-year-old nonprofit ministry — now building a 50,000-square-foot museum in Hebron — has offered throughout the country to “give (believers) arguments to help debunk evolution.”

Answers in Genesis followers believe the Earth's creatures were created by God and were not the result of an evolutionary process as espoused by scientists such as Charles Darwin.

“Our purpose is to equip Christians to be able to defend Christianity against the evolutionary ideas (or) secular ideas that challenge the Bible,” said Ken Ham, executive director of Answers in Genesis and the conference's keynote speaker. He said organizers will present what they believe is the factual account of the history of the world as presented in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.

Like those who promote Intelligent Design, Answers in Genesis followers believe that all life was the result of a creator. However, they carry that theory further, in that they maintain the creator “is the God of the Bible and you can trust the God of the Bible,” Mr. Ham said.

With the help of the writings of “Scriptural Geologists,” Terry Mortenson, a full-time lecturer with Answers in Genesis who has degrees in theology and geology, will attempt to show that dinosaurs walked the Earth with man.

Arnold Miller, a professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, challenged participants to “go out and examine the evidence themselves,” rather than allow others to interpret the evidence for them.

“I'm all for Answers in Genesis having every opportunity to say what they want,” Mr. Miller said. “But I would challenge anyone who goes to this conference to demand direct positive evidence that the creation of life took place over six days in 4004 B.C. or whatever they say. People should ask, "What's the evidence? Let's hear it.'

“It's one thing to provide misleading characterizations in scientific debates. It's another to say that the answers (to issues such as how life began) really are in Genesis.”

What that means is that the protein for the transcription has to be specifically targeted to the specific gene which one wants to produce a protein or enzyme.

Binding elements within the promoter is responsible for recruiting the machinery. The same binding elements are found in many different genes. There is generally plenty of “protein for the transcription” to go around. This is experimentally verified everytime someone transfects cells in culture or makes a transgenic mouse. Gore3000 is the only one on the planet that has a problem with this.

The following explains how this occurs, and it is due to incorrect gene expression, not amplification:

Gene amplification is a well established mechanism for tumorigenesis (Over 4000 hits on medline). From the same book:

Conversion, or activation, of a proto-oncogene into an oncogene generally involves a gain-of-function mutation. At least three mechanisms can produce oncogenes from the corresponding proto-oncogenes:

1.Point mutations in a proto-oncogene that result in a constitutively acting protein product

2.Localized reduplication (gene amplification) of a DNA segment that includes a proto-oncogene, leading to overexpression of the encoded protein

3.Chromosomal translocation that brings a growth-regulatory gene under the control of a different promoter and that causes inappropriate expression of the gene

But the authors (David Baltimore for one) don't know what they are talking anout right Gore3000? Maybe they should consult you before they publish anything from now on.

Further since 95% of the genome is non-coding you would have to copy tons of stuff which are not directly involved in protein production.

Not “tons” of stuff, just the discreet piece of DNA encompassing the gene and regulatory elements. A tiny stretch in a sea of millions and millions of base pairs.

In addition to which, how does this magical 'duplication' know where to start and end the duplication - right between adjacent genes, right in the middle, at the end of the previous gene, at the beginning of the next gene, at some magical point where it determines the code necessary is located? You are positing such absurdity from a random event?

I can’t believe you wrote this.

It only seems magical to you since you do not understand anything about genetics.

Unequal crossing over of chromosomes is a well understood genetic event and occurs often during meiosis and mitosis. This can lead to tandem duplications in some instances. Sesame Street genetics for Gore3000

The DNA is transcribed into RNA and then the parts needed for the protein are spliced together to make the protein.

Yes and these are independent sequential processes.

The transcriptional machinery (Pol II etc) is responsible for actually making RNA (with exons AND introns) from the DNA template.

The splicosome is responsible for splicing out the introns of the newly transcribed RNA. This step gives rise to the variation - mixing and matching different exons.

As far as I know, there is no crosstalk between these macromolecular complexes.

And guess what...the necessary signals for splicing out introns will be found in the duplicate gene as well.

What we are CORRECTLY saying is that not all Christians are antievolutionary or creation science type creationists, in fact only a minority are

Geez again you speak for a group YOU don't represent. How can you sit there and say what others you don't know believe?

Because I read, and try to expose myself to different sources, and try to understand what I read, and think about it. Because I talk to people, ask them questions, and listen to their answers. You know, the same things rational, curious beings normally do.

What the heck are you asking? You certainly have strong views, and state them publicly in a manner that suggests you want them heard and understood. It shouldn't surprise you that lots and lots of other people do this also. You know what? Sometimes they even write stuff down and publish it! Of course I can have knowledge, and in certain cases good and adequate knowledge, about what other people think and believe.

So anyway, were you going to deal with the fact that large numbers of credibly professed Christians hold to doctrines of creation that are not antievolutionary? And the consequence of this fact that the set of all Christian-antievolutionary-creationists is a subset of the larger set of all Christians? And that therefore satirical derision directed to antievolutionary creationists of the type exemplified by likely lecturers at the Answers In Genesis event discussed in the lead article of this thread (pause for breath) is NOT equivalent to an attack on Christians as such?

Man you critisize me as telling all christians what they believe and in the same breath you tell us all what christians believe.

Here's the difference. You’re saying all Christians gots'ta be biblical literalists (just like you) or they shouldn't call themselves Christians or be considered Christians. I'm saying that Christians really do believe these, in some cases, very different things because Christians themselves attest to holding all of these different views.

Have you got any hard number surveys on your point as to who believes in creation?

I'm sure there's polling stuff on this out there. I'm not going to bother digging it up. Percentage figures are not necessary to show that the set of all Christians contains many members that do not intersect with the set of all antievolutionary creationists.

First of all to be a christian means you have to believe God and his words of the bible. God said he "created man", not made him evolve from pond scum. He made us in his own immage, not turn monkeys into humans.

Maybe you think all Christians should embrace the exact same Doctrine of Creation, down to the finest detail, but that is not the way it is in fact.

Well next you will be saying that you can be christian and not believe in the bible. Your argument lacks any substance as christians do have exact things they have to believe to be christians.

Let's just blow by the cattle droppings here and cut to the chase. Your semantic gambit is clear enough. You defend your equation of Christians as such with (antievolutionary) creationists by expelling anyone who isn't an (antievolutionary) creationist from the set of Christians. Crude but... Well, no, it isn't really clever either.

More to the point it doesn't do you any good as to our debate. Even if you insist that Christians and (antievolutionary) creationists are co-equal sets, Patrick Henry (who's Stooge pic you declared an attack on Christians, and to whom you attributed the intent to attack Christians) does not accept any such hyper particularistic categorization. You know this. You're not so stupid as to believe that anyone beyond the strictest of the strict fundamentalists would expel Christians solely because they are not biblical literalists or innerrantists.

P.S.

next you will be saying that you can be christian and not believe in the bible.

Imagine a man in some distant and isolated culture, and who has never heard of the Bible or even of Christ. Imagine that someone comes to him and tells him the story of Christ: That Christ was an incarnation of the living God in human flesh, that he died and atoned for the sins of all men who will acknowledge him and follow him and accept his gift. Imagine there is no bible available, and the evangelist hasn’t memorized it, so he simply tells the story without mentioning anything about some book that also tells it. Suppose this man hears this story, believes it, and accepts Christ. You don’t think he’s not a Christian because no one immediately gave him a Bible, and quizzed him on his interpretation thereof, do you?

Now imagine that our convert eventually does acquire a Bible. He is delighted to have the story of Christ, but suppose he reads the early chapters of Genesis and thinks to himself, “that’s a wonderful story, and it helps me understand much about God, but I don’t for a minute believe that it is true in a literal sense,” does he suddenly cease to be a Christian?

But if he is indeed a true Christian, he will read ALL of the bible, and over time he will begin to understand the truth of God's word in a way that he never did before. If he continues and persists in his studies, he will be rewarded, and he will see that God does not lie, and that His word is all true, in ways unbelievers cannot know or even imagine.

The molecular clock is based on the observation that mutations rates in amino-acid sequences are the same over time, which allows them to extrapolate-back and make the post-dictions that they do--for example the common anscestor of man and fish was 50 million years ago, or whatever.

Pretty close, however what is done is use part of the genome, not the whole genome, usually a fairly big gene which has had quite a few differences in it. The problem with the molecular clock is that if evolution was true the changes would fit into the evolutionary 'tree', but they do not. So evolutionists use different genes, different methods to justify the accuracy of their tree.

What that means is that the protein for the transcription has to be specifically targeted to the specific gene which one wants to produce a protein or enzyme. -me-

More confusionism. The splicing is very specific, it has to be told exactly what DNA bases are to be included in the proteins to do the splicing properly. In fact, this is why the protein has to be spliced, the protein that transcribes the genetic information just transcribes everything in the gene, including the DNA bases that are not needed for the protein. This is why the additional job of splicing is required to make the protein.

2.Localized reduplication (gene amplification) of a DNA segment that includes a proto-oncogene, leading to overexpression of the encoded protein

It may say that, but the mechanism by which a gene becomes cancerous shows very well that the cell becomes cancerous as a result of a mutation which increases gene expression:
Recall that an oncogene is any gene that encodes a protein able to transform cells in culture or to induce cancer in animals. Of the many known oncogenes, all but a few are derived from normal cellular genes (i.e., proto-oncogenes) whose products participate in cellular growth-controlling pathways. For example, the ras gene discussed previously is a proto-oncogene that encodes an intracellular signal-transduction protein; the mutant rasD gene derived from ras is an oncogene, whose encoded oncoprotein provides an excessive or uncontrolled growth-promoting signal.

The destruction of the mechanism by which a cell controls its division is what makes cancer reproduce wildly. Further, the reason why gene amplification is blamed for over expression of a gene is not that the new gene gets its own expression mechanism, which is what this argument is about, but because:

Gene amplification or a chromosome translocation that places cyclin D1 under control of an inappropriate promoter leads to overexpression of this cyclin in many human cancers, indicating that it can function as an oncoprotein.
From here
In other words, the amplification messes up the genome and results in the program that controls the organism getting messed up and giving incorrect orders to the genes. This is a perfect example why gene duplication cannot be the agent of favorable evolutionary development. It shows that not just the gene, but the whole program running the life cycle of the organism has to be 'in sync'.

More confusionism. A protein does not 'know' what to splice. It is told what to splice. All DNA is the same, it does not have a label 'I am an intron', 'I am an exon'.

Poor, hapless, confused Mother Nature, she just won't listen to gore!

Sorry gore, but you're batting a thousand, managing to be dead wrong at least once in every one or your posts to RWN. The transcribed RNA actually does have sequences that are read by the machinery as instructions to "splice me here". Click back to the message from RWN and look at the pretty "splicosome" picture he linked for you.

Dispensing with this little bit of your message (more later).

As for blaming Jews, noone is a bigger supporter of the state of Israel and the Jewish people than me. I'll match my Zionist zeal with anybody's. If you automatically jumped to a conclusion about blaming Jews, that's your problem not mine.

Sheesh, I was making a JOKE, the purpose being to play up the absurd unworkability of your claim that modern evolutionists function as "Inquisitors guard[ing] the portals of schools from any opposing theory." My point was that it's not just the schools that would have to be "guarded". Any important (and heuristically appropriate) idea that becomes part of science inevitably will become part of curricula. Certainly any "creationistic" or "design" theory that did, in fact, manage to credibly challenge, supplement or supplant evolutionary theory would be massively important and would be included. Indeed it would be front-page news.

Therefore the "portals" represented by the thousands and thousands of science journals, where research is reported and theories are proposed and examined, would also have to be "guarded". I was humorously suggesting that this would be too big a job for the evolutionists alone (remember gore3000 informed us in message #244 that only two (!) scientists have been "actively promoting evolution the last 50 years") and that maybe they were getting help from the Jews!

Again, it was just a joke! Support for Israel, and defending Jews from hatred, is something you and I actually agree on, so let's not get distracted by that.

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