Posted on 01/30/2006 10:27:35 PM PST by Sweetjustusnow
Love your tagline.
longshadow gave it to me. Some posters were sometimes confusing me with some other ml**** (creationist) posters.
Particularly since the scientists who contributed to it (Behe, Dembski, Meyer) have indicated in the last few years that they understand and accept the overwhelming evidence supporting common descent and a 4 billion year-old earth. Maybe they didn't accept common descent in 1993 of course; a lot of crushing molecular evidence has come in since then, like the ERV evidence that put the final nail into the coffin of scientific resistance to common descent. Another DI'er, Denton, appears to have changed his position to supporting common descent after the molecular evidence came in, but I'm not sure what Behe, Dembski, and Meyer thought in 1993. Behe admitted the truth of common descent on the stand at Dover, and Meyer did the same thing in a recent Daily Telegraph newspaper article in Britain.
They are all pseudonyms for Slim Shady, who is a longtime poster in FR Crevo debates. He writes most of Ichneumon's material too, and has published several papers on ERV insertions. That video where he is digging a grave for his mother in the rain; it is really one of Coyotemans archaeological sites. "Stan" is about the frustration of an FR evo who cannot get sensible responses from creationists.
So in other words, you don't know either. Thanks.
In what way to you consider me a "disruptive troll"?
Flagrant misinterpretation noted. You are in the position of someone demanding to know the exact value of Pi, and giving a superior smirk and claiming that you've scored some kind of point when you cannot be given an exact value for Pi.
I knew that you're married to your ignorance, but hopefully the lurkers will take the points that I made.
In a new study, Evan Eichler and colleagues scanned finished chimpanzee genome sequence for endogenous retroviral elements, and found one (called PTERV1) that does not occur in humans. Searching the genomes of a subset of apes and monkeys revealed that the retrovirus had integrated into the germline of African great apes and Old World monkeys—but did not infect humans and Asian apes (orangutan, siamang, and gibbon). This undermines the notion that an ancient infection invaded an ancestral primate lineage, since great apes (including humans) share a common ancestor with Old World monkeys.
Eichler and colleagues found over 100 copies of PTERV1 in each African ape (chimp and gorilla) and Old World monkey (baboon and macaque) species. The authors compared the sites of viral integration in each of these primates and found that few if any of these insertion sites were shared among the primates. It appears therefore that the sequences have not been conserved from a common ancestor, but are specific to each lineage.
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0030126
"It appears therefore that the sequences have not been conserved from a common ancestor, but are specific to each lineage."
What would the specific lineage be?
All I am seeking is the definition of a human. Do you really think that is too much to ask of scientists?
to=do
Eichler and colleagues found over 100 copies of PTERV1 in each African ape (chimp and gorilla) and Old World monkey (baboon and macaque) species. The authors compared the sites of viral integration in each of these primates and found that few if any of these insertion sites were shared among the primates. It appears therefore that the sequences have not been conserved from a common ancestor, but are specific to each lineage.
The ERVs that are the smoking gun of common descent do have identical insertion points in the genomes of different species. That is their significance. Further, those ERV's have become slowly corrupted by copying errors since their original insertion. Such copying errors occur at a known rate (approximately, being random), so by reckoning backwards we can identify the point at which each species-split occurred. The ERVs being talked about in your cited article aren't of the same type. Ichneumon probably knows a lot more about this, so I'm pinging him in in case he wants to add any more detail.
That is a perfectly acceptable opinion. God is outside of the process not part of it.
ID is the same as saying God holds airplanes up in place of physics. It is intellectually lazy and flies in the face of evidence.
"since their original insertion"
How would the time of original insertion be determined? Do you see the same thing in all living organisms? Is that how common descent was determined?
Here's why ID is inherently supernatural, and thus, not science.
1. Everyone knows that this "intelligent designer" is supposed to be Jehovah. Cut this "we don't identify the designer" crap. Sell that to some sucker who might fall for it. It was designed by Christian radicals (notably, the lawyer, Johnson) with a strategy to wedge primitive biblical literalism into school curricula under the guise of science, as a way of violating the Constitution without paying the penalty for doing so. Now, it's been framed in such a way that some believers in Yahweh and Allah have been suckered in, but that's because they, too, favor violating the Constitution in this manner.
2. But even if we ignore that, by it's very definition, it says that certain unnamed and never identified (and thus, conveniently untestable) "features" of the universe are unexplainable by natural causes. Thus, by definition, these features are explainable by non-natural causes. "Supernatural" means not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws. As such, in its definition, intelligent design incorporates the definition of the supernatural.
3. Even if you go with a "weak" ID theory, and merely posits that the "intelligent designer" is "one possible explanation" or is "the better explanation" than natural causes, you are still posting a cause that is external to the natural world, and is, therefore, untestable and therefore "supernatural." And once you open the table to untestable claims, not only are you ceasing to do science, but you are ceasing to be able to make qualitative judgments like, "better explanation," scientifically speaking. Without being able to test, there is no scientific "better."
4. Even if you consider the even more weak definition of intelligent design, which encompasses panspermia and similar extraterrestrial origins for these unnamed and unidentified "features," the inclusion of them merely masks the problem and puts it off by one step. First, some of these sub-theories could conceivably be scientific, but that does not make ID as a whole scientific, anymore than putting a drop of ink in a glass of milk turns the milk into ink. Realistically, however, no one who is into ID does it because he is a panspermia theorist. They do it because they are god-folk. Finally, the inclusion of an alien "intelligent designer" only puts the problem off one step. ID speaks to the ultimate origins of these unidentified features. Saying that they were created by space aliens only dealys the problem, because it begs the question of the the origins of those aliens.
That is why ID is inherently supernatural and thus unscientific.
So in every case where we find organized matter performing specific functions, "everyone knows" it is a supernatural occurrence?
How is it that intelligent design cannot take place by means of natural laws? The only thing "untestable" about it is that one perhaps may not directly observe the intelligent designer. Science makes inferences all the time, without directly observing this or that force of nature.
It is plainly apparent that you would rather discard the evidence than entertain the possibility that it points to an intelligent designer. Your dismissal of the evidence is not due to scientific veracity, but your own preconceived bias.
If such a definition invokes terms such as "intelligence" or "design," you can bet your turtle soup materialistic science will avoid such a discussion like the plague. It runs away from those terms out of fear for where the evidence leads, and it hides that fear by constraining science to its subjective philosophy and arbitrary definition of "natural" vs. "supernatural" (a distinction which in and of itself is wholly untestable), as if science were mere data and theories; as if it can divorce itself from subjectivity and shaping principles; as if science is not a human endeavor.
Don't expect materialistic science to entertain any discussion as to what constitutes a definition of human.
imo it is futile to debate this topic.
Ya, a lot of us notice that as well...but we still like to get our hands dirty.
See you in another (evo) thread...
There's actually nothing silly about it. The common ancestor was an ape. There's a list of traits that distinguish apes from monkeys. Apes evolved from monkeys, spread out, and diversified. Humans are still apes, yes. That should be OK. Trying to keep track of the tree of life, what arose from what, is more informative than trying to lose track of same.
Which is simpler: Pieces of a watch, an assembled watch, or an assembled watch that self-replicates? A devout materialist would consider all three to be of equal simplicity, or complexity. No intelligent design involved in any case, but simply a product of nature. And that is what a watch in any form ultimately is. Right?
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