Pheobe Debates The Theory of Evolution

Original scene from the show... Friends. ^ | NA | NA

[gore3000]

"Reexamination of the fossil record led Steve Gould and Niles Eldridge to recognize that only a few examples of speciation by gradual change existed. In contrast, the fossil record documents long intervals of time during which species undergo little or no morphological change. These intervals are punctated by the sudden appearance of new species (and higher-order taxa) as a peripheral isolate.".-quote from Gould-

And Gould is right. We forget that organisms are very well designed. Take the example of the bat. It is a mammal so its descent according to evolution is from mammals. However, its way of life, of feeding requires flight and excellent sonar. How could it live without one or the other? Answer is it could not, not for a single generation and we know that the huge number of mutations necessary to accomplish both would have taken millions of years - as Neo Darwinists will admit. But that is not the end of the problem. For flight you need muscles, for flight you need wings, and for flight you need very light bones - none of these features is found in other mammals. Therefore the bat could not have arisen by chance since so many of the features we see in it were necessary for it to survive even for one generation if they were not developed all at the same time.

[dark_lord]

Is there any prediction from the ID camp that differs from the standard theory? (IE, one that could, in principle, disprove ID, making it more theory-like).

Sure. If a bunch of new code (not a copy/paste) suddenly "showed up", this would differentiate the ID theory from the TOE. So, for example, if there was a large change in morphological features in a short (geologically short) time period in the fossil record, this would tend to be predicted by ID over TOE. Even the PE version of the TOE doesn't handle well a big change, where many morphological differences at once show up. So, if such a situation occurred in the fossil record, it would be better predicted by ID than TOE.

[dark_lord]

This is the whole problem here. You have to make a real prediction as to what ID would tell us to look for.

See #2142.

[dark_lord]

Explain why it does better than TOE.

Well, for one thing it has been experimentally verified repeatedly. No "infering" required.

[Aric2000]

Now that is pretty cool, I followed your link, very fascinating.

It would be an excellent way for Genetics companies to protect their intellectual property.

You hide your license or whatever within the DNA sequences themselves, then if a competing company comes out with a similar genetic product, you would be able to tell if it was reverse engineered from your own product and therefore you would have a very tight case to take to court.

It is a great concept, but what was your point exactly?

That the Great ID'r in the sky has left his mark in the DNA sequence somewhere?

Well, seek and perhaps ye shall find and be the saviour of ID'rs everywhere.

You might even win a nobel prize.

Now, the question is, how do you decrypt the encyption that you believe is there, and where will it be in the genetic sequences?

Also the problem is that if indeed that sequence is in there, with the billions of sequences, you are going to be able to come up with just about anything, so you are going to have to refine your search, how will you refine your search?

You will try to go down to the simplest sequences, this is where evolution kicks in.

So where in the genetic sequences are the oldest? therefore the most likely place to find this imprint that you are looking for, I would go to the simplest lifeforms that are also the oldest lifeforms, most likely the sequence you are looking for, if it exists, will be there, and the easiest to find there.

That is where evolution would tell me to go to find such a sequence if it exists.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[Virginia-American]

The only thing that the TOE contributes to genetics is the concept that mutations happen

No, it also explains my examples at 2102. It also explains the existence of "junk" dna.

[RightWingNilla]

Well, for one thing it has been experimentally verified repeatedly.

So has Evolution.

[Aric2000]

I hope that I have dealt with it properly and am indeed in compliance with the aforementioned agreement.

Geez, that lawyer talk gets me all kinds of tongutied.

And your welcome.

Megahugs!!

[ALS]

You haven't, and she should have informed you of that.

I guess you'll just have to keep screwing up until you get it.

[jennyp]

charges? I think you just made one. We'll need some proof.

OK, let's review: You claimed evolution embraces Marxism. I asked for evidence. You posted a quote snippet from a Marxist author which asserts that Darwinism & Marxism "form one unit".

PatrickHenry also mentioned Jerry Bergman's ICR article that tries to link Darwinism with late 19th century laissez-faire capitalism, and remarked how creationists have tried to blame evolution for both capitalism AND communism AND Naziism, all at the same time. Your response was to claim we:

• were "deny[ing] history"
• were "somehow blam[ing] God for Marx and Hitler"
• had a "'blame God' reflux[sic]"
• had "become an apologist for Marx and Hitler"

My, my, all that from PH's 2029! (Or was that a generalized screed against my posts as well?)

Anyway, then I proceeded to analyze Pannehoek's full argument here and here, and found it a hopelessly muddled collection of plausible speculation and ad-hoc leaps joined by logical fallacies. In fact I concluded that his comparison of Darwinism and Marxism was "a cargo-cult justification for Marxism".

Your reaction was to characterize my contextual analysis of the quote you relied on as:

• "blaming capitalism and God for Marxism" (huh?)
• "defending Marxism" (ridiculous)
• "putting all [my] faith in a Marxist" (I'm the one putting their faith in Pannehoek???)
• "tak[ing] to heart" the rest of his article (IOW analyzing the quote in its context)
• "drool[ing] over their dogma, seeking to find something anti-conservative" (riduculous)

I'm calling you on this. I say it's intellectualy dishonest of you to characterize my analyses of your source Pannehoek's quotation and article as being anything that could be construed as supporting Marxism, being anti-God, or being anti-conservative.

You have practically charged me with being a Marxist. Prove it.

[dark_lord]

Plain old adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Again, see here for an interesting article. Or here for another paper on hiding encrypted messages in DNA.

Of course, the problem is, to break a code you have to understand the language that the cipher has encoded. And of course double or triple pass encoding makes it even tougher. The real question then, is this: is it possible to tell if there exists an encrypted message, or just random noise? That is, would it be possible to parse a "junk" DNA sequence and determine that yep, this here is a piece of bona fide encrypted code -- without knowing the key, and being able to determine it is something encrypted and not random junk?

[ALS]

au contraire!

I said you embrace the same dogma that Marx embraced. If that finds you with a guilt complex, that's your dragon to slay. As well you should.

Thanks for the fluff piece though. It kept you busy didn't it :)

[Aric2000]

Please see post 2118, 2125, and 2129.

We are in compliance.

[ALS]

far from it sparky

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! In my view, you are in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the agreement. Hugs!!!

[ALS]

LOL

no he isn't

[Doctor Stochastic]

Have the Communists ever used the Sermon on the Mount to support their theories?

It's called Liberation Theology. This is mostly associated with the Christian Marxists in South America.

[dark_lord]

So has Evolution.

Nope. See here.

Reading closely, you will see that "the literature contains many instances where a speciation event has been inferred". In fact, only by redefining "speciation" from "those critters that cannot interbreed" to "those critters that don't choose to interbreed, most of the time" have any experiments "proved" anything. In other words, the original definition of speciation was changed because the experimental evidence did not fit the desired result. As it now stands, all the different dog breeds can be considered separate species. Joy oh joy. When the results don't get you were you want to go, redefine the constraints.

Excluding plants (which are pretty easy to evolve), the experiments with animals have been pretty much restricted to flies. Almost all the experiments "infer" that eventually speciation (in terms of the original definition) would occur, but getting flies to the point where two subpopulations mainly choose not to mate is considered conclusive evidence by most biologists. The TOE balances upon experimental evidence such as this. One of the most telling statements is: "The fact of the matter is that the time, effort and money needed to delimit species using the BSC is, to say the least, prohibitive. "

[dark_lord]

No, it also explains my examples at 2102. It also explains the existence of "junk" dna

So does ID. IThey're called "bugs". Of course Microsoft would call them "features", but what the hey.