Boobala, these posters are neither *neutral* nor *truth seekers. Discuss!
Posted on 02/13/2006 4:31:16 PM PST by MRMEAN
Biologists are beginning to solve the riddles on which intelligent-design advocates have relied
To advocates of intelligent design, the human sperm's tiny tail bears potent evidence that Charles Darwin was wrong--it is, they say, a molecular machine so complex that only God could have produced it.
But biologists now are starting to piece together how such intricate bits of biochemistry evolved. Although the basic research was not meant as a response to intelligent design, it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.
In contrast, intelligent design advocates admit they still lack any way of using hard evidence to test their theories, which many biologists find revealing.
The new insights on evolution at its smallest scale were a major yet little-noticed reason why a federal judge late last year struck down a plan in Dover, Pa., that would have put intelligent design in public school classrooms. The findings the judge cited will provide the ultimate test of ideas about the origins of life, more lasting than court rulings or the politics of the moment.
Most scientists have long rejected intelligent design, or ID, on the grounds that it is a religious proposal not grounded in observation. ID adherents say biochemistry actually supports their view. They argue that many tiny mechanisms--the tails of sperm and bacteria, the immune system, blood clotting--are so elaborate they must have been purposely designed.
Yet biologists have made major strides on each of those phenomena since the first ID books were published in the mid-1990s.
Working without the benefit of fossils, experts are using new genome data to study how fish evolved the crucial ability to clot blood. A wave of new research on the evolution of the immune system seemed to stump ID witnesses in the Dover case. And even ...
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I am in the middle of reading "Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated", by Steve Jones, 2000. It compares Darwin's writings, adding in the many exciting finds with current molecular biology and the unraveling of the genome of many species including man, and our recently acquired knowledge of RNA and DNA. Here are some quotes to ponder:
"A crucial hint of how wide the confederacy of life might spread comes from bacteria themselves. E. coli, common in our own guts, has had its entire complement of bases laid out. Great segments of its DNA speak a language different from the rest, give evidence of a deep split in the bacterial family tree. A fifth of that creature's genes come from elsewhere among the bugs."
"The emerging insights into molecular anatomy of life show that, 300,000,000 years ago, gene exchange was universal." [Could this have been because most life was in the water?] "In some senses, species themselves were late arrivals on the evolutionary scene for, in thos distant days, free trade ruled, with genes leaping from one form of life to another. All genomes of all higher cretures are a patchwork of parts that started in different places and retain traces of a bastard ancestry from the earliest times. Th structure of a thousand genes is known from a wide enough range of beings, from baceria to yeast and worms, to trace the remote past. They group not--as simple descent with modification would predict--by those who bear them, but by what they do. One set--whether it finds itself in plants, animals or bacteria--organizes, operates and edits the information kept in DNA. The other does household tasks such as repair, food preparation, waste disposal and moving around. The information branch resembles the genes of simple bacteria that pump out methane,while the rest of the genetic material has been assembled from many places. The housekeeping genes have, it seems, been hopping about almost since life began, while the data processors are less mobile (perhaps because they have to communicate with others)....
"Life is much more fluid than it once seemed....Trees of genes look much the same. They show that not only is the cell a coalition, but the genes themselves descend from separate founders and and have shuffled around in a way unimagined before the advent of molecular biology."
"The structure of DNA raises problems so grave for the theory of evolution that is hard to reflect on them without being staggered. Genetics shows how Darwinism can explain what seems at first inexplicable. It is also a useful reminder that a science without difficulties is not a science at all."
The author also points out how Einstein's work altered Newton's early work. We should no more belittle Darwin because of modern molecular biology, than we would look down on Newton because of Einstein's discoveries.
We're all waiting.
No it isn't. Let me post the usual form this dialogue takes when I have it with a creationist, since you claim you aren't one.
You've been spouting creationist BS on these threads for some time now. All creationists who come back dumb as a stump on thread after thread despite repeated rebuttals are dishonest. Some just add an extra layer of attempted deception in trying to be the shill in the crowd.But wasn't the evidence valid when it was supposedly missing?
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
Why wouldn't EVERYONE at least lean toward intelligent design? I mean, you do understand entropy, yes?
Causality?
I think I made myself clear, apparently you can't read. I don't lean toward ID or creationism. I do lean toward the truth, which hasn't been displayed yet, either by IDers or evos. If you can't handle the fact that I find the lying, cheating, and faking of fossils by evos disgusting, I am sorry. I also find that they lying, cheating and conjecture that mark Christian theories disgusting. That doesn't mean I "lean" toward any theory, because they are all theories(and not in the scientific sense) and all are full of sh**. Thanks and have a good day:)
Ohh OK... You're a jackass.
Sorry for my last post I misread what you had wrote. I do not, however, lean toward any theory, am simply looking of the truth, which hasn't been found. Both sides lie, I will say this however, the evos lie the most and try to cover it up constantly. That said, I still feel that there is another theory, one that fits the facts and data and not one that has been manipulated so facts will fit the theory, but a real one, one that explains the truth. Have a great day:)
Back to my questions about entropy and causality...
Boobala, these posters are neither *neutral* nor *truth seekers. Discuss!
Ah yes, all those evo lies. How about this:
Intentionally and falsely trying to pass off Pandas as a science book is a far bigger and far more outrageous fraud, and will do more to destroy the ID charlatans at the Discovery Institute, than a whole army of Piltdown Men.
As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards [Edwards v. Aguillard], which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge:Source: Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al..(1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID;This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content, which directly refutes FTE's [FTE = the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, the publisher of Pandas] argument that by merely disregarding the words "creation" and "creationism," FTE expressly rejected creationism in Pandas. In early pre-Edwards drafts of Pandas, the term "creation" was defined as "various forms of life that began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features intact -- fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc," the very same way in which ID is defined in the subsequent published versions.(2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and
(3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards.
From now on -- thanks to the geniuses at DI, the discredited fools on the Dover school board, and their dedicated lawyers -- when the creationists raise the phony issue of Piltdown Man, or Nebraska Man, or Peppered Moths, or Haeckel's Embryos, none of which amounts to anything anyway, the rational side of the argument has been given the all-time slam-dunk response -- Pandas!
But for you: No to ID, NO to Creationism and No to Evolution.
It would appear that the truth to you is your own, special version of reality which is unavailable to the rest of us mortals.
The thing that really brings down evolution is the beginning of life. If you question them about it they say that the start of life has nothing to do with darwinism, but I beg to differ. If life didn't start by accident(an accident, by the way, which is mathematically impossible)then evolution is just so much hot air.
If they can prove how life started, then they can prove the series of accidental mutations that somehow led to the evolution of modern species. If they can't, then ID has a good foothold but, unfortunately, no proof.
Let's just say, for now, I am still sceptical of both theories and do not like being pressured to embrace either one:) Thanks, and thank you for accepting my apology:)
At least with creationists you know where you stand, they will tell you that you have to have faith and they do not fake fossils and other evidence to prove their point, which means I at least respect them and have nothing but contempt for most evos, since they have no qualms about faking evidence and lying, AND their worst fault, ignoring facts.
Ahh! Now I understand why you're having difficulty. You really do not have a sufficient grasp of the theory of evolution to discuss it properly.
Ooookay.
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