Posted on 11/19/2003 10:15:28 AM PST by yonif
Smallpox in Europe selected for genetic mutation that confers resistance to HIV infection
You're using a genetic mutation that has negative consequences as an example to bolster an argument of evolution? Evolution by natural selection requires BENEFICIAL mutations.
You might want to try actually reading the post you were responding to. It specifically mentions:
Folks with SSA live much longer with malaria than folks with normal hemoglobin, because the parasite infested red blood cells of SSA victims don't plug the capillaries up like normal ones do.If "living much longer with malaria" isn't a benefit, what *would* you call it?
Furthermore, you're wrong when you say, "Evolution by natural selection requires BENEFICIAL mutations." That's the most common method, sure, but it's not "required". For example, evolution can proceed via genetic drift of neutral mutations with natural selection merely weeding out the harmful mutations.
Nor is "natural selection" the only driving force in evolution.
Straw man much?
Regarding what? Medical schools, like high schools, quite properly try to teach what is currently recognized by scientists to be actual scientific knowledge. What we were discussing in the previous thread what how science is done. Science is not teaching; art is not accounting; astronomy is not needlepoint.
Issues that pertain to one part of the world do not necessarily make telling points about another part of the world. If you can demonstrate the scientific necessity for Intelligent Design, in a comprehendable manner, in a way that can be replicated by other scientists, rest assured of your place in the pages of "Nature" and "Science". Irregardless of whatever opinions medical schools, which are often a few years behind the research curve, and not entirely run on a scientific basis, may or may not have of your theory.
huh. What are recessives and dorments, then? Potted plants?
Cool! So the mutation prevents production of the CCR5 receptor in T-cells & macrophages. What is the CCR5 receptor normally used for? I.e. are there any harmful side effects to not having CCR5 receptors there?
What an odd locution. Science is not "against" anything. All these claims could be true, if enough evidence piles up to countervail current thinking on the subject, and science will never "shoot them down" as it's not equipped to do so. They will always remain a possibility. Any or all of them might even prove true, and the effect on science will be a great deal less dramatic than you are imagining.
But many phenomena explained by evolution (for example the eye) involve so many, small immediately detrimental mutations that only give a long-term beneficial effect.
You can only really make this case--if at all--for the micro-tools of evolution: ribosomes, tRNA, transcriptase & such. It is tiresome beyond belief that this argument continues to crop up in the face of myriad very primitive, poorly working examples of, for example, eyes--barely different from the skin or antenna sensors they evolved from, that still benefit their users enough to provide incremental survival advantages.
2 There is no fossil evidence to indicate transitional forms between, for example, fish and land animals or apes and humans.
Horse Manure. There are periods of drought in the fossil record, of no more particular interest than that there are transitional events implied by the Hartzsprung-Russell diagram for which no actual example stars have been observed. However, your statement is a vast over-reach of the feeble case that can be made.
3 Evolution assumes too many extremely improbably events occurring over too short a span of time.
You (and anyone else) have no way of knowing how probable, or improbable these events were, because you don't know how any of them happened with sufficient accuity to do the math.
You really need to respond to the person who made the original statement. Italics are significant.
Then should be no problem winning this point. OTOH, perhaps the theory as being taught in Denmark makes this claim. Or perhaps it's teacher is just articulating the theory poorly.
Or perhaps the teacher doesn't understand the latest version of theory, which has changed tremendously since it was taught to me -- wildly incorrectly as it turns out albeit perhaps not for the time -- in high school.
Whether a doctor believes in special creation or evolution is entirely irrelevant to whether they can deliver competent medical care to someone of their species this afternoon.
I disagree. Belief, and especially demands that "Special Creation" be placed on an equal footing with the scientific theory of Evolution tells me that the doctor or doctors in question have a problem with the scientific process. The very same scientific process on which modern medicine is based. It is inconsistent at minimum, and potentially dangerous at the high end. . . . .
The receptor binds chemokines, which are distant regulators of white blood cells. The immune system seems to function well without this particular receptor. There are many other chemokine receptors.
I think they ought to retire that pig and let something else carry the burden for a while.
I see. . .so the theory of evolution just jumps over to existence of a life form.
So are you saying that, for a doctor to treat you, he/she must believe that a single celled organism evolved into a multi-cellular organism with different DNA?
That still seems to be very strange criteria. I don't see a connection with believing that and the knowledge/skills required for a doctor. If you feel otherwise, please explain what impact you see.
So a medical school leaves no room for academic freedom and diversity of thought?
Before you answer, think about that for a moment. If no one ever went against the grain of 'established scientific knowledge,' there would be many discoveries that would never have occurred.
So is that why evolutionists are afraid to debate creationists?
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