Pheobe Debates The Theory of Evolution

Features, LOL, good one.

We are going to fundamentally disagree on these points, but that was a funny line.

Nope. See here.

There have been thousands of experiments that show life can evolve and adapt to changing environments. Are you familiar with chemostats and bacteria?

Excluding plants (which are pretty easy to evolve),

So TOE only applies to prokaryotes, other microorganisms and plants...but not animals? Has the Theory of Relativity experimentally verified every situation where it may be applicable, or is it inferred in some instances?

The reason is this - to change the genetic code, one single reading, you would need to AT THE VERY SAME TIME need to change the DNA bases of all the genes using that code or the organism will not function.

Not really - the few cases where the 'dialect' of the genetic code differs are bacteria, some of which also use amino acids no-one else does. If a particular codon codes for two different, but similar amino acids (eg, both small and hydrophilic), (this could come about via a mutation in the genes for the particular t-rna), the organism could very well survive with an *ambiguous* genetic code, since the proteins produced by either reading would be similar.

There's no reason such a code could not be 'frozen' at a later time. See Watson (or is it Crick - I don't have the book in front of me, and Amazon is down for maintainance) in Mark Ridley's book "Evolution" (very highly recommended; among other essays, it include the original research on sickle-cell, and also Dobzhanski's classic "Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of Evolution")

But then if not all descended, then there must have been a Creator at work eh?

How does this follow? It is possible there were at one time several kingdoms of bacteria with similar but not identical genetic codes that arose independently from the precursor chemical evolution. (If the chemicals are the same, but the code is different, they're still edible) No-one knows at the present time.

The base of the phylogenetic tree may not in fact be a tree, since prokaryotes share dna across 'species'. (Once you get to multicellulars, it does seem to be a tree)

AFAIK all animals, plants and fungi use the same code; I'm not sure about protoctista.

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

Ever hear of "Liberation Theology"? Plenty of devils, some in clerical vestments, quote Scripture.

Please, Don't feed the trolls.

Isn't it amazing how some people can get threads turned into a discussion of themselves?

Yes, but calling yourself a troll is one strange way to do it. You should stick to fibbing for darwood.

Electrical theory, as science, has not been particularly advanced by the QED

Electronics, as technology, sure has. Transistors rely on tunneling, 'holes', and other non-classical phenomena.

Hitler saw it as between races, and sought to evolve a "master race."

No he didn't. Hitler, and Nazi racial theorists, argued that the "aryan race" was primeval. They didn't want to evolve a new race but to recover an existing one by "purifying" it. They wanted to undo evolution ("race mixing"). They argued that mixing of races was a "sin" against the intent of the "Creator," who had meant the races to stay separate.

Hmmm...2 points to consider here, however. 1st of all, is your information that the reptile genome and the mammal genome are 50% different accurate?

It is hard to tell exactly since reptilian genomes have not been completely sequenced. The human genome has been and quite a few simple organisms but very few vertebrates, none of the apes has been completely sequenced although it should be done soon. However, there are vast differences between mammals and lizards. Even taking the number at 25% (which would be the absolute minimum of differences) still means that we should have observed lots of beneficial mutations in the last 150 years amongst the over one million species on earth. We are looking for them. There is a tremendous amount of biological research going on around the world the last 50 years at least and such would have been found.(BTW the 5% for the apes is the latest estimate by an evolutionist).

And what do you mean by 50% different?

In all cases I am speaking of differences in DNA bases. Of course that can get a bit subjective and since there are only 4 bases blind luck would mean at least one out of four times it would be right. It really is a silly way to measure differences, but that is what evolutionists use and when you are trying to disprove someone's theory it is best to agree to most of their assumptions and show that even then, they disprove their statements.

Related to that, the fossil record shows long periods with no changes, and then WHAMO, huge changes suddenly appear.

I am in complete agreement with the above. I was just discussing the point that there is enough time for evolution. I think I show there is not. Let's remember also that each animal, even if similar in features still is different from other species so you need a lot of mutations when you consider the whole range of living things.

Secondly, beneficial mutations are defined as providing selective advantage in either having more surviving offspring, or in having offspring that survive better. However this is something that is hard to see in the wild, since something as small as a slight change in color in a birds pin feathers might make it a more attractive mate. Who would notice in 150 only years?

Well, one thing we have learned for certain in the last 100 years is that the DNA of an organism determines what its features as well as how the organism functions. So any change in features is due to changes in the DNA of an organism. We do look very closely at many species to learn from them. Some of the simpler ones are used a lot because of speed and indeed simplicity which makes it easier to determine their overall functioning. Other more complex ones are studied because they are closer to us - such as rats (and not even PETA makes an argument about killing rats). So a wide spectrum of species is being studied and we should seen something by now.

I argue with the TOE proponents (who push the concept of long periods of gradual microevoluion) that the fossil record does not back that up, but -- those huge changes could cause the big differences you cite. Cause? Unknown.

I agree with that. When one thinks of how many different organs there are in a human being and that each one of them requires quite a lot of DNA coding in order to function at all, the idea of gradual evolution is totally ludicrous. However, Gould's idea that all the parts of a new organ could come together all of a sudden without design by mere chance, is equally silly.

by Harun Yahya

Nazism was born in the chaos of the Germany which emerged defeated from the First World War. The leader of the party was the angry and aggressive Adolf Hitler. Racism formed the basis of Hitler's world view. Hitler believed that the Aryan race, the fundamental element of the German nation, was superior to all the other races and had to rule them. He dreamed that the Aryan race would found a world empire that would last 1,000 years.

The scientific support Hitler found for these racist theories was Darwin's theory of evolution.

Hitler's most important idea-moulder, the racist German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, was strongly affected by Darwin's theory of evolution and based his racist views on Darwinism. He used to say, "Nations can only develop by violent competition like Darwin's survival of the fittest," He thought: "The yellow races have no understanding of artistic ability and political freedom. It is the destiny of the black races to serve the whites and to be the target of the whites' loathing for all eternity…" [1]

While Hitler was developing his theories he drew inspiration, like Treitschke, from Darwin and particularly Darwin's idea of the fight for survival. The title of his notorious book Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") was inspired by the idea of this fight for survival. Just like Darwin, Hitler gave non-European races the status of monkeys, and said, "Take away the Nordic Germans and nothing remains but the dance of apes." [2]

Hitler thought that human beings were highly developed animals and instead of allowing natural forces and chance, in a word coincidence, to control evolution, it was necessary to take the management of it into his own hands to develop the human race. And this was the ultimate aim of the Nazi movement. In order to realise this aim, the first step was to separate, to isolate, the inferior races from the Aryan race.

At this point the Nazis moved to the implementation of Darwinism, and took as their example the "theory of eugenics" which itself had its origins in Darwinism.

The theory of eugenics, which emerged in the first half of the 20th century, meant the weeding out of sick and handicapped people and the "improving" of the human race by increasing the number of healthy individuals. According to the theory of eugenics, in the same way that better kinds of animals can be produced by mating healthy animals with each other, so the human race could be improved in the same way.

As might be expected, those who put forward the eugenics programme were Darwinists. At the head of the eugenics wave in England came Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, and his son Leonard Darwin.

It was clear that the idea of eugenics was a natural result of Darwinism. In fact, this truth was awarded special importance in those publications which supported eugenics, "Eugenics is man's taking charge of his own evolution," it was said.

In Germany the first person to be influenced by and to spread eugenics was the famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel was a close friend and supporter of Darwin. He suggested that newly-born handicapped children should be killed forthwith and that this would speed up the evolution of society. He went even further, claiming that lepers and people with cancer and mental illnesses should be painlessly killed, or else these people would be a burden on society and would slow down evolution.

Haeckel died in 1919. But his ideas were inherited by the Nazis. Shortly after Hitler came to power an official eugenics programme was initiated. Hitler summed up the new policy in these sentences:

In the popular state, the education of the mind and the body will play an important role, but human selection is just as important. …The state has the responsibility of declaring as unfit for reproductive purposes anyone who is obviously ill or genetically unsound. … and must carry through with this responsibility ruthlessly without respect to understanding or lack of understanding on the part of anyone. …Stopping reproduction of the bodily degenerate or psychically ill for a period of only 600 years would lead …to an improvement in human health which can hardly be envisaged today. ……… [3]

As a necessity of this policy of Hitler's, the mentally ill, the disabled, the blind from birth, and those with genetic diseases in German society, were rounded up in special "sterilisation centres." These people were regarded as parasites harmful to the purity and evolutionary progress of the German race. A while later in fact, these people who were removed from society began to be killed by secret order of Hitler.

These murders were presented as perfectly reasonable and those who were accepted as genetically inferior were described as "unprofitable" and obstacle to the development of the nation. Hitler said. "It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on." [4]

The author of the book Darwin: Before and After, Robert Clarke, concluded, Adolf Hitler: "…was captivated by evolutionary teaching – probably since the time he was a boy. Hitler reasoned … that a higher race would always conquer a lower." [5] The political philosophy of Nazi Germany took shape under the influence of these ideas of Hitler's.

Hitler's Hatred of Religion

Another reason for the great importance Hitler attached to the theory of evolution was his seeing the theory as a weapon against religious belief. Hitler had a great hatred of divine religions. Moral virtues such as compassion, mercy, and humility, ordered by divine religions, represented a great obstacle to the ruthless and warrior Aryan type the Nazis wanted to create. For this reason, once the Nazis came to power in 1933 they tried to turn German society back to its old pagan beliefs. The swastika, a symbol from the old pagan cultures, was a sign of this return. The Nazi ceremonies held in every corner of Germany were a return to the ancient pagan rites. The idea of evolution, an inheritance from pagan cultures, fitted in exceedingly well with the ideology of Nazism for this reason.

Actually, the fundamental cause of the countless catastrophes visited upon the world in the 20th century was the character of such people as Hitler and the Nazis who had no religion. These people who denied the existence of God and believed that human beings had evolved to become developed animals, saw themselves as unchecked, with no responsibility to answer to anyone. Because they had no fear of God and the hereafter they knew no limit to their immorality and tyranny, and for that reason they mercilessly killed millions of people. The difficulties and pains there will be in a society without religion are clearly to be seen in the example of Hitler. And not just Hitler: as we shall see later Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Franco, Mussolini and the others who drowned the 20th century in blood were known for being completely devoid of religion. A lesson must of course be drawn from the nightmare which comes from lack of religion.

Whereas those who fear Allah and live by Qur'anic morality always bring peace, calm, security, plenty, and enlightened times to a society. People faithful to the religion of Allah never disturb the peace anywhere in the world, on the contrary they always encourage compassion, pity, friendship, faithfulness, and co-operation. (For further information on the subject, see "Disasters Darwinism Brought to Humanity" by Harun Yahya)

Notes:

[1] Alaeddin Þenel, Irk ve Irkçýlýk Düþüncesi (The Idea of Race and Racism), Ankara:Bilim ve Sanat Yayýnlarý, 1993, pp.62-6

[2] Carl Cohen, "Communism, Fascism and Democracy", Random House, New York, 1972

[3] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, München: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1993, p. 44, 447-448; cited by A.E. Wilder Smith, "Man's Origin, Man's Destiny: A Critical Survey of the Principles of Evolution and Christianity", The Word For Today Publishing 1993, p. 163, 164

[4] Theodore D. Hall, The Scientific Background of the Nazi "Race Purification" Program, http://www.trufax.org/avoid/nazi.html

[5] Robert Clark, "Darwin: Before and After", Grand Rapids International Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 1958. p.115

http://www.mediamonitors.net/harunyahya20.html

Left off the title:

The Bloody Alliance Between Darwin and Hitler

Marx was endeared to Darwin

No he wasn't. Darwin graduated, in his adulthood, from being a Christian to a theist, and in his middle age and on from being a theist to being a "free thinking" agnostic, but he never had any use for political radicalism. Darwin was a lifelong Whig (the ancestor to the Republican Party). He was a capitalist, a supporter of markets (like most other classical liberals of the time).

Any way you call it sickle cell anemia is not beneficial. It has not created anything which is beneficial in an organism.

For those unfamiliar with this issue, I present the following essay. You be the judge.

A Mutation Story:

A gene known as HbS was the center of a medical and evolutionary detective story that began in the middle 1940s in Africa. Doctors noticed that patients who had sickle cell anemia, a serious hereditary blood disease, were more likely to survive malaria, a disease which kills some 1.2 million people every year. What was puzzling was why sickle cell anemia was so prevalent in some African populations.

How could a "bad" gene -- the mutation that causes the sometimes lethal sickle cell disease -- also be beneficial? On the other hand, if it didn't provide some survival advantage, why had the sickle gene persisted in such a high frequency in the populations that had it?

The sickle cell mutation is a like a typographical error in the DNA code of the gene that tells the body how to make a form of hemoglobin (Hb), the oxygen-carrying molecule in our blood. Every person has two copies of the hemoglobin gene. Usually, both genes make a normal hemoglobin protein. When someone inherits two mutant copies of the hemoglobin gene, the abnormal form of the hemoglobin protein causes the red blood cells to lose oxygen and warp into a sickle shape during periods of high activity. These sickled cells become stuck in small blood vessels, causing a "crisis" of pain, fever, swelling, and tissue damage that can lead to death. This is sickle cell anemia.

But it takes two copies of the mutant gene, one from each parent, to give someone the full-blown disease. Many people have just one copy, the other being normal. Those who carry the sickle cell trait do not suffer nearly as severely from the disease.

Researchers found that the sickle cell gene is especially prevalent in areas of Africa hard-hit by malaria. In some regions, as much as 40 percent of the population carries at least one HbS gene.

It turns out that, in these areas, HbS carriers have been naturally selected, because the trait confers some resistance to malaria. Their red blood cells, containing some abnormal hemoglobin, tend to sickle when they are infected by the malaria parasite. Those infected cells flow through the spleen, which culls them out because of their sickle shape -- and the parasite is eliminated along with them.

Scientists believe the sickle cell gene appeared and disappeared in the population several times, but became permanently established after a particularly vicious form of malaria jumped from animals to humans in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

In areas where the sickle cell gene is common, the immunity conferred has become a selective advantage. Unfortunately, it is also a disadvantage because the chances of being born with sickle cell anemia are relatively high.

For parents who each carry the sickle cell trait, the chance that their child will also have the trait -- and be immune to malaria -- is 50 percent. There is a 25 percent chance that the child will have neither sickle cell anemia nor the trait which enables immunity to malaria. Finally, the chances that their child will have two copies of the gene, and therefore sickle cell anemia, is also 25 percent. This situation is a stark example of genetic compromise, or an evolutionary "trade-off."

Please, Do Not Feed The Trolls.

Thank you

oh yeah he was.

Obviously you only read nutball screed. The case has been made while you were out twiddling your thumbs somewhere. Perhaps if you tried the FR scoll feature you would realize you missed some prior posts.

Knock off the name calling!

This is called Puncuated equilibria.

Gould and Eldredge came up with the theory to be a part of evolutionary theory, NOT separate from it, it is a minor piece as well, because it does help explain some of the sudden appearances of some species in the fossil record, and does not at all discredit phyletic gradualism.

Could you re-read what you posted above? You are saying that gradualism can be both sudden and gradual. It's like saying that black can be white. Evolutionists really need to make up their minds what the theory of evolution really is and stop saying that everything is evolution because we say so.

In actual fact though, Gould's saltationism is the biggest admission by someone who believes in evolution that evolution is false. Darwin had more than one reason to say that evolution was gradual. One of which was to distinguish it from creation. Another was because he knew that he could not justify sudden random changes of entire species. So actually Gould, while trying to save evolution destroyed it.

These were your words from your recent posts. You claimed I was:

"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)

You were obviously calling me a Marxist. Your response now is:

au contraire!
I said you embrace the same dogma that Marx embraced.

Either "the same dogma that Marx embraced" refers to Marxism, in which case you're denying the very words you said actually exist, or you're trying to spin this as meaning that I embrace evolution, a "dogma" which Marx also embraced. Either way it's painfully obvious that that's not what you said nor meant. You meant that I was embracing Marxism, pure and simple.

You have now abandoned even the appearance of intellectual honesty.

Me: [standard biological ToE] It also explains the existence of "junk" dna

You: So does ID.

I would have thought ID would predict the absence of junk dna. Maybe when it gets to the level of a coherent theory, we'll have some way of making ID predictions.

So far, all I've seen is an analogy to a coding shop. Basically, coders make bugs, there are bugs in dna, therefore...

So I guess you're ruling out God Himself as the Designer, eh? (There's gotta be a better way to deal with malaria). And why do apes get scurvy? Did a chimp and a gorilla also eat the forbidden fruit!? (seriously, I've seen arguments that scurvy is a side effect of the fall; but why would God punish apes for the sin of Adam and Eve? Nothing like that in my Bible!)

Like Mark Twain and the weather (paraphrasing) "Obviously, God Himself made everything in New England, with the exception of the weather, which He had an apprentice..."

Obviously you only read nutball screed.

Speaking of nutball screeds, are you sure you want to rely on a Muslim fundamentalist (Harun Yahya) to argue your case?