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Evidence Disproving Evolution
myself | 10/11/02 | gore3000

Posted on 10/11/2002 9:02:01 PM PDT by gore3000

Evidence Disproving Evolution

The basis of a valid scientific theory is that it be able to explain all the scientific data in the field it is concerned with and that no evidence contradicting the theory be true. This is a harsh test, but one which all legitimate scientific theories must pass. This is a test which the theory of evolution has failed in spades as the following abundantly shows.

Religion and Science:
Access Research Network
Discovery Institute -- Origins -- Creation Science -- Creation/Evolution Sites -- Creation & Evolution Links from the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club -- True Origins -- Answers in Genesis -- Faith Facts -- Center for Renewal of Science and Culture -- Center for Scientific Creation -- Creation Research Society -- Biblical Creation Society -- Christian Apologetics -- Institute for Creation Research

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse;. a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows evolution."
From: Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"

Intelligent Design:

Darwin's Mistake by Stu Pullen -- Rebuttals of Criticisms of Darwin's Black Box -- Dembski - Another Way to Detect Design -- Behe, Michael J. - ARN Authors Page -- Leadership U. Designer Universe: Intelligent Design Theory of Origins -- Flagellar Structure and regulated transcription of flagellar genes -- Dr. Lee Spetner's continued exchange with Dr. Edward E. Max -- Intelligent Design Research Community -- Intelligent Design Theory Resources -- Intelligent Design. The bridge between science and theology. (William Dembski). -- Evolution vs Creation (Intelligent Design) WorldView -- Detailed defense of "Icons" by Wells -- Dembski on Intelligent Design -- Dembski: No Free Lunch -- Behe's Book -- A True Acid Test:Response to Ken Miller : Behe, Michael -- Intelligent Design Articles -- Phillip Johnson's Page -- Ohio Science Standards - IDN

A Moment in History...

That a maker is required for anything that is made is a lesson Sir Isaac Newton was able to teach forcefully to an atheist-scientist friend of his. Sir Isaac had an accomplished artisan fashion for him a small scale model of our solar system which was to be put in a room in Newton?s home when completed. The assignment was finished and installed on a large table. The workman had done a very commendable job, simulating not only the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities, but also so constructing the model that everything rotated and orbited when a crank was turned. It was an interesting, even fascinating work, as you can image, particularly to anyone schooled in the sciences.

Newton's atheist-scientist friend came by for a visit. Seeing the model, he was naturally intrigued, and proceeded to examine it with undisguised admiration for the high quality of the workmanship. "My! What an exquisite thing this is!? he exclaimed. "Who made it?? Paying little attention to him, Sir Isaac answered, "Nobody."

Stopping his inspection, the visitor turned and said: "Evidently you did not understand my question. I asked who made this. Newton, enjoying himself immensely no doubt, replied in a still more serious tone. "Nobody. What you see just happened to assume the form it now has." "You must think I am a fool!? the visitor retorted heatedly, "Of course somebody made it, and he is a genius, and I would like to know who he is."

Newton then spoke to his friend in a polite yet firm way: "This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?"

From: Sir Isaac Newton Solar System Story, "The Truth: God or evolution?" by Marshall and Sandra Hall

Biology Disproving Evolution

Alternative Splicing -- Scientists snap first 3-D pictures of the "heart" of the transcription machine -- Molecular Biology Book -- Cell Interactions in Development -- Oldest Living Plant -- Fruit Flies Speak Up -- The Nature of Nurture: How the environment shapes our genes -- Nanobes (Nanobacteria) are crystals -- Regulation of the Cell Cycle 2001 Nobel Prize -- Amniota - Problems with the Philogeny of -- Basic Principles of Genetics Mendel's Genetics -- Photosynthesis -- Population Variability and Evolutionary Genetics -- Fossil Hominids mitochondrial DNA -- Genetics Glossary AB -- Genomics and Its Impact on Medicine and Society 2001 Primer -- The molecular clock -- Cell Signaling: The Inside Story on MAP Kinases -- Protein Synthesis -- Watching genes at work -- Cell snapshot spots cancer -- Development protein atracts and then repels muscle tissue -- Evolution of the Genomes of Mammals and Birds -- Gene Silencing - Study shows plants inherit traits from more than gene sequence alone -- Gene silencing - Environmental Stress reactions -- Bio-Tech Info - Gene Silencing Articles -- Advances In "Micro" RNA Exploring Process Of Life -- Monkeys and Men - gene expression -- Chimps, Humans and Retroviruses -- Gene activity in human brain sets us apart from chimps -- Pros and Cons of Inbreeding -- Inbreeding and desth of species -No Need to Isolate Genetics -- How Organisms Protect Themselves Against Transposons -- Uses of transposons -- Cell Suicide -- Protein Transforms Sedentary Muscles Into Exercised Muscles, Researchers Report -- Gene insertion in Transgenic Animals -- "50,000 Genes, and We Know Them All (Almost)"

While evolution continues to tell us that species transform themselves in a simple almost magical manner, modern biology shows this not to be the case. Organisms are so complex that for them to transform themselves into different ones would require a theory of COevolution. The random processes assumed by evolutionary theory deny such a possibility.

Genes are just information encoded along a long string of the chemical DNA; they cannot do anything themselves.
David Baltimore, Nobel Prize Winner

DNAProteing
Synthesis

Mutations:

A Scientific Defense of a Creationist Position on Evolution -- Evolutionist View of Evolutionary Biology -- Creation, Selection, And Variation -- Population Genetics, Haldane's Dilemma and the Neutral Theory of Evolution -- Haldane Rebuttal -- Point_Mutations -- Inbreeding and Population Genetics -- Introduction to Evolutionary Biology -- Neutral Mutations -- Computational Geneticists Revisit A Mystery In Evolution -- Mutations - organisms fixes them itself -- Mutations

Funny thing about mutations, it is almost impossible for them to spread throughout a species. In addition, mutations which either transform a species into another or which add any kind of greater complexity have not been seen in spite of the daily experimentation going on in thousands of research labs daily.

Junk DNA:

The Human Genome Project -- Junk DNA in man and mouse -- Junk DNA - Over 95 percent of DNA has largely unknown function -- JUNK dna and transpositions -- Junk DNA Tips Off Tumor Comeback -- Transgenics, Junk DNA, Evolution and Risks: Reading Through Rows

Evolutionists are always making assumptions. They assumed that the tonsils and the appendix were remnants of previous species from which humans had evolved and were totally useless. They were wrong about that. When the human genome was sequenced and it was found that only 5% of it was used in genes they immediately assumed that the 95% not in genes was 'junk'. They were wrong again of course. The now called 'non-coding' DNA is the source of what makes humans tick and a marvel of creation in itself.

Abiogenesis:

RNA World: A Critique -- Evolution and the Origin of Life -- Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life - Part II -- The Mystery of Life's Origin -- Message Theory/Remine -- Bruce Lipton, Insight Into Cellular Consciousness

There is a tremendous amount of proof against abiogenesis. First of all is Pasteur's proof that life does not come from inert matter (and this was of course at one time the prediction of materialists). Then came the discovery of DNA and the chemical basis of organisms. This poses a totally insurmountable problem to abiogenesis. The smallest living cells has a DNA string of some one million base pairs long and some 600 genes, even cutting this number by a quarter as the smallest possible living cell would give us a string of some 250,000 base pairs of DNA. It is important to note here that DNA can be arranged in any of the four basic codes equally well, there is no chemical or other necessity to the sequence. The chances of such an arrangement arising are therefore 4^250,000. Now the number of atoms in the universe is said to be about 4^250. I would therefore call 4^250,000 an almost infinitely impossible chance (note that the supposition advanced that perhaps it was RNA that produced the first life has this same problem).

The problem though is even worse than that. Not only do you need two (2) strings of DNA perfectly matched to have life, but you also need a cell so that the DNA code can get the material to sustain that life. It is therefore a chicken and egg problem, you cannot have life without DNA (or RNA if one wants to be generous) but one also has to have the cell itself to provide the nutrients for the sustenance of the first life. Add to this problem that for the first life to have been the progenitor of all life on earth, it necessarily needs to have been pretty much the same as all life now on earth is, otherwise it could not have been the source of the life we know. Given all these considerations, yes, abiogenesis is impossible.

Darwin and His Theory:

Charles Darwin - The Truth -- Darwin's Racism -- Darwi n's Family -- Malthus and evolutionists -- Darwin's Environment -- Darwin, Racism, Evil -- Ascent of Racism -- Talk.Origins and the Darwin/Hitler Test -- Darwin's finches Evolution in real time -- Effects of the 1998 El Niño on Darwins finches on Daphne -- Punctuated Equilibrium at Twenty -- Homology A Concept in Crisis. Origins & Design 182. Wells, Jonathan -- Darwin's Creation Myth -- David Berlinsky 'The Deniable Darwin

Evolutionists try to paint Darwin as a quiet scientist working hard on writing his theory. However, this is a totally false statement. Yes, he was a recluse. However, he was neither a scintist not a very nice person as the following quote shows:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

From: Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", Chapter V.

Evolutionist Censorship:

Scientists Censored for Publicly Exposing Flaws in Evolution - Suite101.com -- Science and Fairness -- Duane Gish Responds to Joyce Arthur's Critique -- Do Creationists Publish in Notable Refereed Journals? -- Censorship of Information on Origins -- Professor Rigid on Evolution (must "believe" to get med school rec)

Evolutionists almost since the start have tried to silence opponents. While they constantly claim to be scientists, it seems that instead of following the principles of science - questioning, discussion, and challenging of existing theories, they follow the principles of ideology - silencing and destroying opponents.

Species Disproving Evolution:
Morphology of the Archaea -- Humans Are Three Percent Puffer Fish -- JGI Fugu v2.0 Home -- Cyanobacteria not changed in 4 billion years -- Platypus -- Platypus Web Sites -- Eosimias ankle bone proves human descent! -- euglena -- Textbook Fraud: Hyracotherium dawn horse eohippus, mesohippus, meryhippus -- - On the Alleged Dinosaurian Ancestry of Birds - -- Fruit Flies Disprove Darwin -- Hymenopimecis Wasp: Parasite's web of death -- Haploid False Spider Mites -- Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang -- Cambrian Explosion: Origin of the Phyla -- Kangaroo and platypus not related Top: Euglena, Hymenopimesis Wasp, Butterfly, Platypus
Bottom: Bat, Fugu, Cambrian species

Various Topics:

A Critique of '29 Evidences for Macroevolution' -- Blind Atheist -- Freeper Views on Origins -- Freeper Views on Origins - Patriarchs -- Creation/Evolution Debate -- Homology -- 15 Answers to John Rennie and SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN's Nonsense (by Bert Thompson and Brad Harrub> -- Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification," 1963 -- Pope John Paul II: Truth Cannot Contradict Truth (Statement on Evolution - 1996) -- Evolution Shams -- A Critique of PBS's Evolution -- Evolution of a Creationist -- Evolution, Creation, and Thermodynamics -- God, Humanity and the Cosmos Book Section Evolutionary Biology and Theology -- The Revolution Against Evolution -- Sexual Reproduction A Continuing Mystery to Evolutionists -- Splifford FAQ (How talk.origins and sci.bio.evolution really work -- Mathematics vs Evolution -- Evolution vs Logic -- Natural Selection an Agency of Stasis, not Change -- Evolution as Anti-Science -- Critique of Gould -- Radiocarbon dating things which should not radiocarbon date... -- Evolution or Christianity -- Funding for Evolution -- Scientists find biological reality behind religious experience [Free Republic] -- Doctors increasingly find introducing prayer helps calm patients and speeds recovery -- The healing power of prayer. -- There is power in prayer [Free Republic] -- Micro vs Macroevolution -- Science Design Kit -- 50 Reasons to Leave Evolutionism -- The Evolution of Truth -- Fossils and dating -- - Talk.Origins: Deception by Omission -- Talk Origins - FAQ or Fiction? -- McCluskey, E. S. --- Which Vertebrates Make Vitamin C? -- Vitamin c Pseudogene -- Snapshots of God -- Critics of Evolution - Book Reviews

While evolution claims to explain the descent of one species from another, it has never been able to do so. The original explanation for how evolution transforms species, natural selection, has things backwards. Natural selection kills, it does not create anything. For evolution to be true it needed to propose a creative force which would have been able to add new traits, new functions to the simplest creatures and gradually transform them into more complex ones. The original proposal by Darwin, the melding of features from the parents, did not answer this problem, nor does the more modern version of the exchange of genetic information that occurs in procreation. Such methods do not add any information either, they just reshuffle the information which already exists in the species. Clearly this cannot be the source of increased complexity either.

With the re-discovery of genetics in the 20th Century, the Darwinists finally accepted the incorrectness of the melding theory and proposed mutations as the agent of creation of new information. They ran into the problem that with individuals receiving half their genes from each parent and half the genes of each parent being passed on to the progeny, the chances of a new mutation, even one which might be favorable, had not only a very small chance of surviving more than a few generations, but also had an almost impossible chance of spreading throughout a species. They therefore proposed that most mutations were neutral ones and by gradual accumulation they would change the species. This explanation did not even solve the problem of how difficult it was for any mutation to survive, let alone spread throughout a species.

The discovery of DNA made the above possibility, already quite unlikely and totally unproven, just about totally impossible. The high complexity of a gene and more importantly experiments showing that changing even one of the thousand DNA bases of a gene are likely to destroy functioning completely and are extremely unlikely to enhance it, presented another serious problem for evolution. This was 'solved' by proposing that gene duplication would create new functions without destroying necessary functioning. Of course, as before, this was only theory and no experimental proof of it was found to support it. The same problem of it being hard to change a gene favorably applied to such genes, the only explanatory gain was that incorrect mutations would not be deadly. Even then, this was insufficient explanation for the transformation of species. Similar genes, which are fairly common, only accomplish similar functions. The vast changes required for complete species transformation, are unexplainable without the creation of totally new genes.

With the discovery that genes themselves are just factories and are controlled by other DNA in the organism, and that a single gene often produces many proteins, this explanation was rendered inadequate. Now a new function, which was already known to most likely require more than a single new gene, would require a whole complex of DNA outside the gene to make it work when and if needed. This makes the evolutionary explanation of random, non-directed species change totally untenable and indeed biologists are beginning to call the developmental process of an organism a program. Like all programs, those for life are not made at random.



TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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To: DWPittelli
But you refuse to say that eohippus never grew and became more horse-like (because the fossil record clearly shows that it did),

This is, of course, the same fossil record that (unmistakably) shows the mesonychus morphing into Shamu.

641 posted on 10/16/2002 2:18:17 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: Gumlegs
Betcha he never uses those sources again...
642 posted on 10/16/2002 4:02:25 PM PDT by Junior
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To: Junior
I believe you may be underestimating the ever resourceful Blue Pope.
643 posted on 10/16/2002 6:27:18 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: Junior
How's excommunication been treating you, by the way?
644 posted on 10/16/2002 6:28:17 PM PDT by Gumlegs
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To: PatrickHenry
Placemarker.
645 posted on 10/16/2002 6:33:07 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: AndrewC
I wrote: But you refuse to say that eohippus never grew and became more horse-like (because the fossil record clearly shows that it did)

Then you wrote: This is, of course, the same fossil record that (unmistakably) shows the mesonychus morphing into Shamu.

Note that you are again refusing to state or to deny the obvious truth that eohippus grew and became more horse-like. Although you no doubt know that eohippus is well documented with a number of intermediate steps in its growth.

646 posted on 10/16/2002 7:45:29 PM PDT by DWPittelli
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To: DWPittelli
Note that you are again refusing to state or to deny the obvious truth that eohippus grew and became more horse-like. Although you no doubt know that eohippus is well documented with a number of intermediate steps in its growth.

post #621

Your questions are ill-formed and my response to them remains, absolutely not. If you rephrase your original question into -- Is there an "unbent" ancestral chain linking the "eohippus" fossil with the modern horse?, I would answer, I doubt it, but I do not reject it.

Looks like English to me.

I answered absolutely not. I said "questions", note the plural, and "them", again note the plural.

Here are your questions.

Yes, I agree that "eohippus was dead long before there was a horse," for the trivial reason that once the animal grew to where it is called the horse it is no longer called eohippus. But the eohippus: 1) got much larger over time in a well-represented series of fossils; and 2)eventually evolved into the horse.

You obviously deny #2 above. Do you also deny #1? (That eohippus grew several-fold?) Or is it that the little eohippi were killed first by the flood?

Clearly, I answered your growth question. Now if you can show me eohippus, and only eohippus, fossils that in a systematic and time dependent manner increase in size, I might accept your assertion. Of course that means that any fossil named other than eohippus(Hyracotherium) is not to be included in this sequence.

647 posted on 10/16/2002 8:37:01 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
Perhaps I should make my question less ambiguous, avoiding terms like "unbent" "unbranched" "unbroken" and "series" which may be subject to different interpretations and definitions.

Do you believe that there were full-size horses (over, say 50 inches tall) 50 million years ago? If not, then didn't the horse "evolve"? And if so, then are there any 50 million year old full-size horse fossils? Why not? (Perhaps the Earth isn't 50 million years old?)

648 posted on 10/16/2002 9:00:29 PM PDT by DWPittelli
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To: DWPittelli
Do you believe that there were full-size horses (over, say 50 inches tall) 50 million years ago? If not, then didn't the horse "evolve"? And if so, then are there any 50 million year old full-size horse fossils? Why not? (Perhaps the Earth isn't 50 million years old?)

Why all these questions? I already answered you on evolution by virtue of my mention of llamas and camels. What I do not believe is the Darwinian explanation.

To end the discussion I will answer your last questions definitively

  1. No
  2. Yes
  3. See 1
  4. See 2

649 posted on 10/16/2002 9:49:18 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: Gumlegs
How's excommunication been treating you, by the way?

Well, I find saying the rosary takes my mind off it.

650 posted on 10/17/2002 2:07:17 AM PDT by Junior
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To: DWPittelli
Your position is that evolution is impossible.

Absolutely correct and for the reasons given in my post#563 which you did not copy:

So all that could take over a whole population is a largely beneficial mutation. Problem with that is for any new feature, for any new function, indeed for any new gene you would need a multiplicity of mutations. These are not all going to occur at once. Since neutral and slightly beneficial mutations will die off very quickly and only spread to very few individuals, this accumulation of mutations is impossible and therefore evolution is impossible.

One beneficial mutation is not impossible though highly unlikely as you yourself admit. However several beneficial mutations, all of them working towards the same goal, occurring at random is totally impossible. Just one would constitute a miracle. The millions of them that would have been necessary to account for all the diverse features of the millions of species alive right now as well as the progress from bacteria to human is utterly impossible that is why the only rational explanation is intelligent design.

651 posted on 10/17/2002 9:34:44 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: Condorman
Why don't you do something useful. Like offer an alternative theory for a change?

There is such a theory and it has been discussed many times on this site, it is called intelligent design. It has been proven many times to be true and it at the same time proves evolution to be false. The bacterial flagellum is the most famous proof, however there are many more. The story in the article about Newton is one. In fact it has been proven through since then, that is why atheists are proposing an infinite amount of universes as the explanation for our universe. Another proof is the impossibility of abiogenesis which I show in the above article. Another proof is that biologists call the developmentat process whereby one cell multiplies into 100 trillion cells in exactly the correct place, of the exactly correct type during development a program. That is a trifecta against materialism and no one can refute it.

652 posted on 10/17/2002 9:41:58 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: Junior
As I pointed out before, your advent on these threads lowered the level of discourse considerably.

It is your insults and those of your evolutionist friends which lower the level of discourse on these threads. Long before I ever joined these threads people on FR considered the crevo threads despicable because of all the insults and slimes in it.

It is always the evos that start the ad-hominems and continue to indulge in them. It is very seldom that the evos get into an honest discussion and always when they lose - as you have now, start insulting those who proved them wrong.

There is plenty to discuss in the article above, there is plenty which evolutionists need to refute for their theory to be true. I do not see them even touching upon what is mentioned in the article.

653 posted on 10/17/2002 9:58:44 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: gore3000
Nice try, but no one really threw around insults until you started with your calling everyone "liars" and "slimers." Now you've graduated to "thugs."
654 posted on 10/17/2002 10:03:44 AM PDT by Junior
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To: gore3000
It has been proven many times to be true and it at the same time proves evolution to be false.

Then, my child, it isn't science, as science cannot "prove" anything. You also might want to reference the scientific journals that support the above contention.

655 posted on 10/17/2002 10:09:02 AM PDT by Junior
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To: Junior
The point is that paleontology is not a science, it is absolute garbage. -me-

And you draw this conclusion because you've studied paleontology and its methods?

I have seen enough lies from paleontologists to make the above quote. Nebraska man, a total 'ancestor of man' derived from a couple of pig's teeth. Piltdown man, a fake which was kept alive for 40 years till a better substitute for man's ancestry was found. A couple of teeth 10,000 miles away and 20,000,000 years called an ancestor species of a toothless species. Turkey DNA being mistaken for Dinosaur DNA - and the nonsense is still on the web. The first primate, a pair of ankle bones miraculously connected to a lower jaw found ten years before a thousand miles away. Lucy, a supposed human ancestor whose face is a jigsaw puzzle more than 50% plaster.

So yes, I have much evidence that paleontology is utter garbage and to a large extent a lie. But the larger problem with paleontology proving evolution is that it simply cannot prove anything. Paleontology is about dead animals, about partial remains, a bout a few bones here and there. It cannot prove evolution because of the many things it cannot tell us. It is a reductionist practice which allows just about anything to be connected to anything else. It is like a jigsaw puzzle with all square pieces - you can join the pieces any which way you wish.

To see why paleontology cannot prove evolution, look at the species in the article. Could paleontology tell us that euglena had an eye, chloroplasts and was an animal? No. Could paleontology tell us the mode of reproduction of the wasp above? No. Could paleontology tell us that the platypus had mammary glands? No. Could paleontology tell us that the butterfly was reborn? No.

Paleontology misses the most unique, interesting and important features of a species. It does not tell us how they lived, functione or even in most cases how they reproduced. All of these are very important, extremely important to determine descent of one species from another and paleontology cannot provide the evidence for it. Therefore paleontology, what evolutionists stake their whole theory on, cannot prove descent. It can only make false assumptions based on totally insufficient evidence.

656 posted on 10/17/2002 10:17:46 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: balrog666
Until you have enough dots, any section of the Tree of Life is subject to revision.

An interesting admission for an evolutionist! If all the dots are subject to revision, it seems to me that the dots prove nothing at all!

657 posted on 10/17/2002 10:21:44 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: gore3000
An interesting admission for an evolutionist!

Then you haven't been paying attention.

If all the dots are subject to revision, it seems to me that the dots prove nothing at all!

Wrong, idiot. The dots aren't subject to revision, the context is.

658 posted on 10/17/2002 10:28:35 AM PDT by balrog666
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To: Gumlegs
Seems that David Baltimore, while throwing that little bit about evolution at the end, realizes the utter complexity of DNA and not only compares it to a computer program, but thinks even that such a metaphor is way too reductionist to give it justice. As he admits, it is far too complex for us to understand it now or for many decades to come. Such complexity cannot arise by chance. Programs, even the simpler ones we use in our computers, do not arise by chance. More importantly, they cannot be modified by chance either which is what evolution requires. Here's the whole article which shows the interpretation that this is the work of evolution is totally wrong. Such a complex, decision making system, was clearly intelligently designed.

DNA is a reality beyond metaphor

David Baltimore

The drumbeats get louder as we approach the day when the first draft of the entire structure of the human genome is to be announced. Pundits appear on television shows, trying to tell the public what this means. Many are my good friends. But I must tell their dirty little secret.

They are not telling the whole story. They have all decided that the real meaning of this achievement is so wrapped up in technical detail that the only way to convey the truth is through metaphor. So they tell the world that the genome is like a book, with words, sentences and chapters. Or they say that it is the periodic table for biologists, assuming that laypeople will have heard of this key organizing principle of chemistry. But these and other metaphoric links miss the real story. The genome is like no other object that science has elucidated. No mere tool devised by humans has the complexity of representation found in the genome.

So let me try the harder, but richer and more honest, approach. Let me try to explain what the genome really is. To do that, I need to start at the chemical level and then take on the more complex notion of coding. Structurally, the genome is just a huge string of chemical units broken up quite arbitrarily into anywhere from 3 to a few hundred individual packages, the chromosomes. This one-dimensional string of linked chemical units is abbreviated, DNA, and we need not worry about its detailed architecture. We can also ignore the packaging and treat DNA as one long string of 3 billion units. When we say that the genome has been sequenced, we mean that we know the chemical composition of each of the units as they occur in the sequence. Actually, at each of the 3 billion positions along the string there can be only one of four chemical units, abbreviated as A, T, C and G. So the genome is a string of these four units in some particular sequence that goes on for 3 billion letters. The closest analogy is to a computer code which is a gigantic string with only 2 letters at each position.

Why not then be satisfied with this computer code metaphor? Mainly because the meaning of a computer code is not common knowledge so the metaphor conveys very little to many people. But also because the metaphor does not communicate the richness of coding systems buried in the seemingly monotonous string of letters.

Coding implies a method of transforming the coded information into some useful form. The computer in front of me now is doing this so effectively that I never see the code. Similarly, the cells of the body can decode DNA so effectively that until the 1950’s no one knew that there were codes controlling living systems. The remarkable thing about the DNA code is that it is decoded in multiple ways, all interdigitated with each other in the string of letters in DNA. The most discussed are coding regions that specify the sequence of proteins. Proteins are the actual machines that do the work of the body. The protein-coding regions are all that is captured by most metaphors for DNA. DNA as a book implies that all DNA has are letters that transform into words, the meaningful units of language, and that words are like proteins. But the regions of human DNA that encode proteins are only a few percent of the 3 billion-long string of letters. Most of it does other things. What are these other things?

The DNA code can specify the sites and nature of many different events. While we don’t know them all, there are easily 10’s of others aside from the sequence of proteins. For instance, DNA does not encode proteins directly, it uses an intermediary chemical string called RNA. Each RNA encodes one protein so an RNA is a form of packaging of the DNA string into meaningful, bite size pieces. But then the DNA must have a code for where to start an RNA, and where to end an RNA. The RNA is not used as a direct copy of DNA but rather is processed by destroying parts of it, modifying other parts and putting special structures at each end. There is code for each of these events.

What reads these codes for processing RNA? Protein machines do it–they interpret the coded sequence and follow its instructions. Each modifying machine carries its own decoders. In some cases they even carry very specific pieces of RNA because the code is most easily read by another RNA. There are from a few to many tens of processing codes associated with each gene in the genome.

But that is only the beginning of the story. Another whole family of decoders determine which RNA is made in which cell of the body and at what amount. This is probably the most important code of all because it is what specifies the individual functions of the cells of the body. The red cells of our blood carry oxygen to our tissues because the gene for the oxygen carrier, hemoglobin, is copied into a huge amount of RNA in developing red cells. But it is copied in no other cell because no other cell needs that protein. Thus, there is machinery in a red blood cell and only there that can read the code surrounding the hemoglobin gene. There are some 50,000 genes in the genome and that story can be told for each one. Some make RNA in all the cells of the body because they are "housekeeping genes". Others are found in some types of cells but not others. The brain has probably hundreds of different cell types and each must differ from the others by the pattern of RNA’s found in the cell.

We call the code for determining which genes make which RNAs in which cells, the regulatory information in the DNA. There is lots of it but it is hard to recognize and it is a particular challenge to those trying to read the codes in DNA to decipher the regulatory information.

Then there are many other codes in our DNA. The number of cells in the body increases when we grow by one cell dividing into two. When such cell division occurs, it is crucial that each cell get a full complement of the DNA instructions. So the DNA needs code to specify its own partition among the daughter cells. Also, the DNA must duplicate itself. DNA is a double helix that separates into its two constituent parts when it duplicates. A big protein machine carries out that process and responds to coded information in the DNA itself.

Basically, DNA directs everything that happens in the cell and does it with a daunting variety of interdigitated coded information. The sequence of the genome lays bare all of that but only the continuing efforts of the thousands of scientists trying to decipher the individual codes will bring out the full richness of information hidden away in the string of units provided by the sequencers. And, to make it all much harder, the meaningful coded information is tucked away in a sea of parasitic DNA. Just as plants and animals are infested with parasites, so is DNA. The parasites are DNA themselves that can duplicate itself and insert throughout the DNA. They, and other forms of DNA that are thought to be accidental junk, form the vast majority of our genome. We would love to ignore it all but often it is hard to tell important DNA from junk and there is always the suspicion that we may have underestimated the importance of what we call junk.

Modern biology is a science of information. The sequencing of the genome is a landmark of progress in specifying the information, decoding it into its many coded meanings and learning how it goes wrong in disease. While it is a moment worthy of the attention of every human, we should not mistake progress for a solution. There is yet much hard work to be done–even the genome we have today is a first draft that needs elaboration. It will be the work of at least the next half-century to fully comprehend the magnificence of the DNA edifice build over 4 billion years of evolution and held in the nucleus of each cell of the body of each organism on earth.

659 posted on 10/17/2002 10:34:28 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: gore3000
[ID] has been proven many times to be true

Nope. "Proof" is not within the lexicon of science. Of course, in gore3000ese "evidence" = "absolute proof" so I'm not inclined to take your objections and claims all that seriously. Of course, if you stand by those definitions, then by virtue of the existence of evidence for evolution, it must have been proven absolutely. I also have evidence that you are a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite, meaning that those contentions are also absolutely proven. (Note to moderator: Previous sentence is statement of fact, not personal attack.)

The bacterial flagellum is the most famous proof, however there are many more.

And here I thought The Beak of the Finch was the most famous proof. I haven't read the book yet, but I have seen several fascinating reviews. Did you happen to glimpse them?

The story in the article about Newton is one.

Don't even bring up Newton. He's a charlatan, a fiend, and totally dishonest creature not fit to pick scabs from a diseased baboon. His theories of gravity have been thoroughly discredited, and no one bothers to use them anymore. There are more proofs against Newton than I can count. The wildly elliptical orbit of Mercury proves without a shadow of a doubt that Newton created his idiotic laws of motion to undermine the authority of the Catholic Church. All astronomical discoveries since 1827 have disproven Newtonianism.

Which reminds me, in your rush to insult you left this question unanswered.

660 posted on 10/17/2002 10:39:03 AM PDT by Condorman
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