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Teachers 'fear evolution lessons'
BBC ^ | Thursday, 4 October 2007

Posted on 10/05/2007 6:26:08 AM PDT by SubGeniusX

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To: Southack
So in other words you have nothing but some unknown function for the majority of DNA that somehow does something, but you know it isn’t involved in coding for or facilitating protein production?

And for this you say we are abandoning old ideas of DNA data storage? One idea doesn’t even slightly follow from the other. If you are revising your remarks to ‘abandoning ideas of how the data in DNA got there’ then I drop my objection. Otherwise you couldn’t possibly be more incorrect.

261 posted on 10/08/2007 8:49:46 AM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal. (Hunter08))
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To: allmendream

You definitely appear confused.

I gave you a link to show you that old ideas about DNA are limited to a mere 1.5% of our genetic code, yet still you cling to that small 1.5% of the picture.

The larger 98.5% view will offer more rational explanations for DNA data storage, data processing, code re-use, generational and species code skipping, code/data duplication/replication, et al.

That fact should be neither surprising nor confusing.


262 posted on 10/08/2007 8:58:40 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
How many genetic diseases have mapped to non-coding regions of DNA? How important can it be if the majority of mutations of those sections do not lead to any changes in the organism? What function has EVER been described for DNA other than in making functional RNA or in coding for Protein?

Please explain what data storage is in the majority of DNA that doesn’t code for protein? What data is stored? What information is present?

Obviously we are more complex than simple organisms that have very ‘streamlined’ genomes (i.e. the majority of DNA actually does code for Protein). Perhaps this extra DNA with unknown function allows for this complexity. However if it IS involved it is involved in facilitating RNA and Protein function.

How is this new data going to fundamentally alter our view of life, when simple life doesn’t even have it? It might alter our view of how complexity is accomplished, but the fundamentals of how DNA makes life possible (it makes functional RNA’s and codes for Protein) are not being abandoned, or even changed fundamentally.

263 posted on 10/08/2007 9:27:36 AM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal. (Hunter08))
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To: allmendream

The article that I linked above suggested that RNA controls DNA, rather than just being the messenger for DNA as thought for the past 50 years...that RNA is the knig maker.

If validated, that would be a radical rethink.


264 posted on 10/08/2007 10:31:36 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: All

Ha!

“knig” should be “king.”


265 posted on 10/08/2007 10:32:25 AM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: SubGeniusX
This could leave pupils with gaps in their scientific knowledge, he says.

As if this isn't already happening???

Last year my kid's middle school science teacher junked the textbooks and went with an "experiential" approach. The class essentially lost an entire year of science education. Nobody could help their kids because there were no texts and we never knew what he was trying to teach.

Fortunately, he was removed. At back to school night, the new teacher was so pleased to find textbooks in pristine condition in the cabinets. We parents exchanged knowing smiles.

It just never seems to end. Whole language instead of phonics. My daughter suffered through fuzzy math last year. This year her world history text has been cut back so they can pack in more about Muslim countries. Sheesh.

266 posted on 10/08/2007 10:38:27 AM PDT by colorado tanker (I'm unmoderated - just ask Bill O'Reilly)
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To: Southack
If RNA is the king maker that means DNA is still king. Long live the king.

Not a radical rethink at all, just yet another level of control, if validated.

Old view: DNA contains the code for Amino Acid sequence and serves as a template for functional RNA’s. Proteins and RNA’s control the replication, repair, and transcription of DNA.

New view: DNA contains the code for Amino Acid sequence and serves as a template for functional RNA’s. Proteins and RNA’s; POSSIBLY MANY DIFFERENT RNA’s WITH UNKNOWN FUNCTION, control the replication, repair and transcription of DNA.

You can characterize that as a radical rethink if you want. But it is a far cry from anything being abandoned.

Keep pulling back your rhetoric a few more paces post by post and it just might approximate reality as known to the Biological Sciences.

267 posted on 10/08/2007 3:27:02 PM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal. (Hunter08))
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To: js1138; Southack
You are asserting that something called ID can be falsified by the absence of something else called "bias."

No, actually Southack is trying to hide the lack of an intelligent argument by repeating a mantra.

Thank you for the comment on Dembski's explanatory filter. It brought some needed rationality in. That said, I don't know how one can necessarily say whether something that appeared to be by design absolutely wasn't random chance.

Someone explaining Dembski's filter gave the example of a tossed coin turning up heads 500 times - that it was obviously by design.

While I agree that's extremely likely, it is not impossible to get 500 heads in a row by chance.

Or did Dembski put it another way ?

268 posted on 10/08/2007 8:45:49 PM PDT by jimt
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To: MrB
As do most with your position. I expected no less.

Only an idiot (or an atheist) would say that life and the universe could not have been designed. Some of us are just arguing there's no scientific proof that it was.

269 posted on 10/08/2007 8:53:38 PM PDT by jimt
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To: jimt

There is no rational way to demonstrate the absence of design or intervention by an omnipotent being. One can only seek to demonstrate that things follow regular rules, and that such regular phenomena are sufficient.

It is also rather difficult to show that an unknown series of events in the past was improbable.

Going back to a previous post, regarding Dembski’s explanatory filter. Evolution is an algorithm that computes a number — the sequence of elements in a DNA strand.

Dembski argues that some specific numbers cannot be computed, namely those that result in complex structures. This is an odd kind of argument for a mathematician to make, and one rather bluntly denied by Hubert Yockey.


270 posted on 10/08/2007 9:48:21 PM PDT by js1138
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To: jimt
"Only an idiot (or an atheist) would say that life and the universe could not have been designed. Some of us are just arguing there's no scientific proof that it was."

That's a poor argument since we *know* that Intelligent Design is responsible for all modern transgenic animals. The proof is in the lab.

Evolution can't explain them.

271 posted on 10/08/2007 9:52:32 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: js1138
"There is no rational way to demonstrate the absence of design or intervention by an omnipotent being."

That's incorrect. Demonstrating the absence of bias accomplishes in one stroke that which you attempt to rule as impossible or irrational above.

272 posted on 10/08/2007 9:54:36 PM PDT by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
That's incorrect. Demonstrating the absence of bias accomplishes in one stroke that which you attempt to rule as impossible or irrational above.

But you have yet to provide an operational definition of "bias." What is it? How do you calculate it?

Nor have you provided examples of systems having bias and systems not having bias.

273 posted on 10/09/2007 6:04:26 AM PDT by js1138
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To: SubGeniusX
Prof Reiss says the rise of creationism is partly down to the large increase in Muslim pupils in UK schools.

Interesting company these creationists keep...

274 posted on 10/09/2007 8:24:11 PM PDT by curiosity
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To: Southack
That's a poor argument since we *know* that Intelligent Design is responsible for all modern transgenic animals. The proof is in the lab.

Evolution can't explain them.

Why should it?

275 posted on 10/09/2007 9:20:58 PM PDT by curiosity
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To: LiveBait
“Master Pangloss taught...”

Perhaps my favorite book of all time. Thanks for the reminder.

276 posted on 10/11/2007 9:26:25 AM PDT by stormer
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To: SubGeniusX; Squawk 8888
hitler said alot of things...I am pretty sure he was capable of lying..I will see your quotes and raise you the 2 US holocaust museum memorial and one Rutgers law citation. you may want to explore especially the PhD profiles link on deadly medicine.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities_02/

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/narrative/index.php?content=science

http://www.lawandreligion.com/nurinst1.shtml

277 posted on 10/16/2007 11:55:33 AM PDT by flevit
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To: SubGeniusX; Squawk 8888
hitler said alot of things...I am pretty sure he was capable of lying..I will see your quotes and raise you the 2 US holocaust museum memorial and one Rutgers law citation. you may want to explore especially the PhD profiles link on deadly medicine.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/disabilities_02/

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/narrative/index.php?content=science

http://www.lawandreligion.com/nurinst1.shtml

278 posted on 10/16/2007 11:55:51 AM PDT by flevit
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To: js1138
good questions...I guess its the difference between wisdom and intellect, intellect can deceive convincingly wisdom can discern even the cleverest lie.
the same type of question could be presented to scientist...why did they treat humans as just another animal, that could be selected for “desirable” or against “undesirable” traits.. Hitler hobnobbed and used them to legitimized eugenics as well as actively “researched” and categorized humans as “fit” and “unfit”.
279 posted on 10/16/2007 12:33:26 PM PDT by flevit
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To: flevit
the same type of question could be presented to scientist...why did they treat humans as just another animal, that could be selected for “desirable” or against “undesirable” traits..

The argument to apply animal breeding techniques to humans was first put forward by Plato, a couple of thousand years before modern science.

The knowledge of selective breeding is thousands of years old. Its application is a political issue, not a scientific one.

But let me ask if you favor or disfavor selective breeding: do you care whom your children marry?

If you do care, then the only remaining issue is whether you have the power to enforce your preference. And whether such preferences are enforced by the church or state.

I would say that such parental preferences have been the rule rather than the exception throughout history.

280 posted on 10/17/2007 12:20:51 PM PDT by js1138
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