Gosh, it sure is amazing how almost every science-denying ranter here on FreeRepublic invariably has a friend/Uncle/dog who a) has "credentials you can only dream of" in exactly the field of science which the ranter currently finds himself at a disadvantage discussing, and b) after mastering that subject with a PhD (at the very least) with flying colors (or "on a full-ride scholarship"), etc., the friend/Uncle/goldfish just happens to have arrived at an expert opinion which flatly contradicts that of 99% of his scientific colleagues but just happens to fully vindicate everything the ranter has been trying to claim in his attacks on conventional science.
It's almost as amazing as the fact that these expert friends/Uncles/parakeets PhDs never manage to drop in for even a moment to grace us with their knowledge and demonstrate that they're not just a desperate bluff on the part of a science-denier who finds himself losing ground in an argument on a subject in which he's way out of his depth.
If I didn't know any better -- if it wasn't for the well known fact that anti-evolution folks never ever ever tell enormous whoppers without a hint of shame -- I might almost think that they were just making this stuff up.
Finally, if GGG was trying to impress anyone by using the phrase "full-ride scholarship", by making the implication that the alleged "friend" must have been some kind of genius to qualify for such a scholarship, I'd like to pass on what Paul Harvey calls, "the rest of the story..." The Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley has 260 full-time students enrolled, and last year 230 of them (i.e., most of them) had what GGG calls a "full-ride scholarship", which the university calls "full tuition reimbursements" -- but not because they were whiz kids. It's because they were paying for their tuition by working for the university as research assistants (150 of them) or teaching assistants (80 of them)...
But hey, if your alleged friend actually exists and isn't too busy still paying off his tuition by slaving away for the university, have him/her/it drop on in and explain what insights they've gained on "Darwinism" from having just finished school. Those of us who have been extending our education for 30+ years beyond our science degrees would be grateful if it turned out that against all odds your friend turned out to be the first anti-evolutionist we'd met yet who actually knew what in the hell he was talking about for a change, and actually had a valid objection to evolutionary biology instead of the usual hand-waving and gasped exclamations of, "golly, that sure seems complex to little old me!"
It would be a refreshing alternative to talking to you guys.
Hey, THAT WAS EASY! Maybe I will just try that next time. No muss no fuss, no facts needed, just an appeal to authority, and unlike others, my authority would actually be in the mainstream of thought within his field.
Reminds me of a limerick I heard somewhere:
I don't believe in "goo to you"
or in a primordial stew.
My sole science proctor:
My uncle, the "doctor"
Credentialed at Patriot U.
I think this particular phenomenon of ‘codes upon codes’ is an attempt to say that it is more complex than anyone understands or is capable of understanding and therefore the product of de-novo design (believe you me, we understand it is complex, and just because something is hard doesn’t mean it is impossible; quantum mechanics is complex also. And just because something is complex doesn’t mean it needed to be created from nothing; indeed the genome appears as if it was created from numerous and constant revision with all sorts of hitchhikers and crossed out sections) as well as a sort of appeal to some ‘great and secret show’ going on behind the scenes that poor ol’ Scientists just are not privy too , like some sort of hypothetical ‘Bible-code’ within the genome. Much like people who invent a ‘Bible-code’, it isn’t enough that the Bible provides a path to salvation, it also has to have hidden in it secret messages about the future? It isn’t enough for these people that we understand how Biology works and make it work for us, there has to be some secret message running the show behind the curtain.
It is like Biologists are a teenage kid with a car. He may not understand what half the parts do, but he gets the notion of internal combustion, adding gas, turning the wheel and pressing the brakes and gas pedal. Heck he may even know how the check fluids and change the oil. But every time he gets a tune up or buffs a dull spot out of the paint job some critic says “You don’t even HAVE a car! You don’t know how to drive!” and then maybe point out the obvious “Your no mechanic.” But the fact remains that the kid has a useful tool for getting where he is going, he is learning more and more about what is going on under the hood, and he might even pick up a hot chick this weekend.
Happy Holidays Everyone! Have a Merry Christmas, a cool Yule, and a Happy New Year!
Seeing how you both claim to be scientists, if I could get a Creation Scientist to come on and debate either one of you as to whether pseudogenes are evidence of common descent, would either of you be game?