Posted on 10/10/2009 9:32:40 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Discovery of 4.4 Million-Year-Old Fossil Does Not Shake Creationists' Faith
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Oct. 7, 2009
Sometimes an ape is a 4.4 million-year-old fossil that sheds light on the evolutionary origins of human beings, and sometimes… an ape is just an ape.
In the case of "Ardi," the ape-like fossil recently discovered in Ethiopia and already being celebrated as the oldest found relative of modern human beings, the final determination depends on who is doing the talking.
In one camp are evolutionary scientists who last week published and hailed the discovery of an upright walking ape named Ardipithecus ramidus, or "Ardi" for short, who made Ethiopia her home nearly 5 million years ago.
But despite the excitement from the paleontology community, another group of researchers, many of them with advanced degrees in science, are unimpressed by Ardi, who they believe is just another ape...
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I'm a little confused by "accepting it as reality", while continuing to look for evidence that it might not be reality.
You're picking at words and don't seem really interested in dialog. Change “reality” to “the best and only explanation to date” if that makes it better.
What are you going to do with the information contained in DNA? Do you have a better explanation for how it got there other than intelligence? Have you seen information arise from any other source than intelligent agents? If so, what is it? If not, what are you going to do with that realization?
Over and out.
Hopefully, a lot more than sit there staring at it, pondering unverifiable speculation about how it got there.
“Hopefully, a lot more than sit there staring at it, pondering unverifiable speculation about how it got there.”
Then what?
How does that information manifest inself in the organism?
What does that information mean in the context of the rest of the information?
What is the significance of one organism having this piece of information that another organism doesn't have?
To start with.
“How does that information manifest inself in the organism?
What does that information mean in the context of the rest of the information?
What is the significance of one organism having this piece of information that another organism doesn’t have?
To start with. “
And that’s part of what I would do with the information. As I said in previous post - “Support studies and science that seeks to understand more about how such an intelligence could do such a thing - maybe we can too.” You turn that into ,”Hopefully, a lot more than sit there staring at it, pondering unverifiable speculation about how it got there. “
You can do all this with the information regardless of the origin.
The thing is all the creationists(at least the ones I see here) think that evolution is about the origin of life. It is not. It is how the first living organisms changed to populate the world with the millions of species alive today and in the past. Darwin’s Origin of the Species is how species arise from existing species(evolution).
There are some esters that can actually catalyze the formation of more molecules of the same compound. Maybe DNA arose that way. Maybe not. We don’t know.
“The thing is all the creationists(at least the ones I see here) think that evolution is about the origin of life. It is not. It is how the first living organisms changed to populate the world with the millions of species alive today and in the past. Darwin’s Origin of the Species is how species arise from existing species(evolution).
There are some esters that can actually catalyze the formation of more molecules of the same compound. Maybe DNA arose that way. Maybe not. We don’t know.”
I understand that evolution is not about the origin of life. I am discussing origins and not evolution. My only point is that the kind of information found in DNA, very complex and specific, has been observed to originate by intelligent agents and really by no other way. I have admitted that someday a naturalistic explanation may be found, but right now there is none.
With absolutely no idea what that origin was, how to recognize it if you found it, or whether it even still exists?
Well the thread was about evolution (at least when GGG spammed it-one of five on the same exact subject in 5 days last week).Problem is that even when the creationists start a thread on evolution, other creationists turn it to origins.
Life , or the building blocks of it could have even come from another planet or space. There is a lot more evidence for that hypothesis than ID. There are a lot of organic molecules floating around out there in space and lots of water (ice) too.
“With absolutely no idea what that origin was, how to recognize it if you found it, or whether it even still exists? “
In a word, yes.
We are doing things now with the information and we do not know where it came from, what is was, or even if it still exists. We have the blueprints. :)
Don’t you think we are making progress without this knowledge of origins?
Life , or the building blocks of it could have even come from another planet or space. There is a lot more evidence for that hypothesis than ID. There are a lot of organic molecules floating around out there in space and lots of water (ice) too.”
Well, sorry. My initial post was to someone (I don't think a creationist) who commented on computer code and DNA.
I would respectfully disagree on the best evidence of origins. Organic molecules and ice is long way from a self replicating, metabolic organism. I think if that is best evidence for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of information, I would say there is no credible naturalistic explanation.
Should I even bother explaining the science or did you already make up your mind?
That's like saying having a piece of program code gives you the blueprint of the programmer.
What we're doing right now is just learning to read to program code and finding out what the program does.
At this point taking what little we know now and saying we know enough from that to identify the programmer seems a tad out there.
“Where are those thousands or millions of fossils that show many different speicies evolving into other types?”
Fossils don’t evolve into anything. They are just ancient remains.
He set the foundations of the Earth, so that it should not be moved forever.
Our resident Geocentric Freepers say that if you accept that the Earth is in orbit around the Sun you are “putting the words of men above the word of God”.
Once you accept this particular “literal” interpretation as “the word of God”, by what mechanism would a creationist care to correct themselves?
Oh yes, creationists are not interested in correcting themselves, they are FAR more interested in saying someone is not ‘really’ a Christian or ‘pretending’ to be a Christian if they do not accept the creationists interpretation.
“evolution is a fact which enriches our understanding of life and being and such” Pope Benedict XVI
What we're doing right now is just learning to read to program code and finding out what the program does.
At this point taking what little we know now and saying we know enough from that to identify the programmer seems a tad out there.”
Well, we know some things and learning more everyday. We know DNA is rich with complex, specified information. Who said anything about identifying the programmer? I do not know who the programmer (of DNA) is, and have not said that I do. I have said that the programmer may well be an intelligent agent since such agents are the only cause we know to-date that can produce such information. Do you have a credible alternative explanation? You don't have to know the programmer to recognize a program.
o my gosh..are you serious?
If the program is the information, then the intelligent agent is the programmer. I'd think one of the first things you'd do in course of investigating an agent is to indentify it.
“If the program is the information, then the intelligent agent is the programmer. I’d think one of the first things you’d do in course of investigating an agent is to indentify it. “
That would be nice to know but not necessary to make good use of the program (information).
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