Posted on 10/23/2007 5:53:57 AM PDT by js1138
There's been some complaining on the original thread about hijacking, so I'm offering a chance for you guys to continue the debate without all the distracting comments. I'd suggest not pinging anyone until the debate is finished.
Here's a rcap of the debate so far. The first argument is in brown; the reply to part one of the first argument is in green.
==That is a shitfaced lie. None of the items on my list have beeen dealt with at all.
JS1138, how can it be a lie if I actually believe it?
==Start with item number one on my list and, in your own word, tell us how you deal with it. Then move on doen the list.
I don’t need to start with anything. You do not dictate my focus. If you wish to go down your list and provide the evidence for each one, be my guest...I will more than likely respond. In the meantime, I’m sticking with ERVs and common descent, as this area of the Creation/evolution debate is both new and exciting, and thus that is where I am devoting my energies for the time being.
PS I’m also looking into the notion of genetic degeneration, but I have a lot of issues to work out before I go after that one in detail.
Why not start with my point number one.
Show me the predictions, made from a creationist point of view, that anticipated Bactritids, Tiktaalik roseae, Osteolepis, Eusthenopteron, Panderichthys, Elginerpeton, Hynerpeton, Tulerpeton, Acanthostega, Ichthyostega, Proterogyrinus, Hylonomus, Protoclepsydrops, Clepsydrops, Dimetrodon, Procynosuchus, Thrinaxodon, Yanoconodon, Yixianosaurus, Pedopenna, Archaeopteryx, Changchengornis, Confuciusornis, Ichthyornis, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Kutchicetus, Dorudon, Basilosaurus, Eurhinodelphis, Mammalodon, Hyracotherium, Mesohippus, Parahippus, Merychippus, Pliohippus, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis.
Show me the creation science literature that anticipated any of these and guided paleontologists as to where to dig.
It's one thing, Dave to cite authority on politics or ethics; it's quite different to cite authority on matters that have been studied by thousands of scientists for hundreds, on which consensus has been reached.
No one who has the necessary skills in math and physics doubts the the universe is at least 14 billion years old and the earth at least four billion years old. I'm including here the qualified scientists who support intelligent design.
The same goes for common descent. You can argue about the how and why, but you have no basis for arguing about whether.
I shoot at GGG because he dropped about fifty scatter-shot theories on the original debate thread without even noticing that they were not consistent with each other.
You have lifetime subscriptions.
==I shoot at GGG because he dropped about fifty scatter-shot theories on the original debate thread without even noticing that they were not consistent with each other.
I must have missed that one. Which ones are not consistent with each other?
Lets start with your discussion of degeneration. You have provided no units for information or complexity with which to quantify increases or decreases in either. At one point you asserted that bacteria have all the functions of say, amphibians or mammals, and that evolution represented a loss of function.
Now as far as comments you find hostile. You are a very young/naive and apparently untested fellow to come across as appearing to believe that you own/champion certain topics.
And yes, are are fairly quick to jump into a victim mode, and try to use the fr (rather effectively I might add) as your own pwnd CNN moderator. Somehow dlr threads end up being about dlr rather than the debate topic. If I find it that tends to be disgusting, it has nothing to do with any side of a debate.
The cellular machinery of all living things is remarkably similar, regardless of gene count -- an often overlooked bit of evidence for common descent. One could almost say all living cells are parts of a single organism, with different cells having different parameters. However you look at it, genomes are functionally more like data than instructions. Cells can function for some time with the DNA removed.
One can disagree on stem cells for all kinds of reasons having nothing to do with science. One can also disagree of the politics of global warming.
However, if you disagree with established science of basic issues that have remain without serious challenge for over a hundred years, you are simply being silly. No creationist apologetic is going to overturn the age of the earth or common descent.
Issues like this get refined, and new details are sometimes surprising, but the large scale structure of the idea is better supported than it was ten years ago or fifty or a hundred.
And speaking of gene counting, the Evos wrongly predicted the number of protein coding genes in the human genome because they wrongly assumed a correlation between gene number and functional complexity. This same thinking is what led them to erroneously label non-protein coding genes as “junk DNA.” These blunders came as no surprise to Creationists/IDers as these kinds of mistakes are bound to happen to scientists who allow themselves to be straight-jacketed by Darwinian (reductionist) materialism.
“When analysis of the draft human genome sequence was published by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium on February 15, 2001, the paper estimated only about 30,000 to 40,000 protein-coding genes, much lower than previous estimates of around 100,000. **This lower estimate came as a shock to many scientists because counting genes was viewed as a way of quantifying genetic complexity.** With around 30,000, the human gene count would be only one-third greater than that of the simple roundworm C. elegans at about 20,000 genes (2)....Studies since the publication of the draft genome sequence have generated widely different estimates. An analysis by scientists at Ohio State University suggested between 65,000 and 75,000 human genes (3), and another study published in Cell in August 2001 predicted a total of 42,000 (4).”
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/genenumber.shtml
==The cellular machinery of all living things is remarkably similar, regardless of gene count — an often overlooked bit of evidence for common descent.
Similar cellular machinery suggest a common designer, not common descent through random mutation + natural selection.
Fifty years of reading on the subject (starting in 1956), including nine years of reading creationist arguments on FR threads. I can follow the math, and there simply aren't any coherent creationist response to the age of the earth. Nor are there any coherent responses to common descent.
All you have to do to see this is to follow the progression of evolution like Behe and Michael Denton. They seem genuinely embarrassed to have to agree with mainstream science, but they are too bright and too honest to lie about the way things are.
Actually, the cellular machinery doesn’t evolve or change much. It is more like the exact same stuff in all cells. You are caught up worrying about monkeys and mutations, which are trivial and pretty well understood.
Nearly all the interesting stuff happened before the Cambrian.
Oh, please. I've been at this for half a century longer than you have. You are destined, by the time you reach my age, to be a bitter old man, not quite sure how life passed you by. Nothing you hope for will come to pass. Nearly everything you fear will come to pass. Biology will be as far advance from its current state as the current state is from pre-DNA biology.
When I was in college, the equivalent creationist publications to AIG were saying mutation is impossible; replication is always perfect. Creationist talking points change from decade to decade, but they don't get any smarter.
I agree. Although I will be even more specific and add that all the really interesting stuff happened during Creation Week, and to a lesser extent, the biological degeneration that set in immediately after the fall.
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