Posted on 01/10/2002 8:12:15 AM PST by Exnihilo
171??? I can't remember anything about 171 that was the least bit questionable, let alone objectionable! I wasn't even sure if Crabtree was taking a stand on either side. They seemed rather agnostic about the whole thing.
grumbmbmgughgddm authority figures gmmmgmbr rmmgrrgm always puttin' the little man down grrggmgmmm...
Grassy knoll, illuminatti, masons, international bankers, trilateralists, pointy-headed liberals, democrats, commies, IRS ... mumble, mumble, mumble ...
But the Stanley Steamers did have two failings. The first was range. While the Gentleman’s Speedy Roadster could travel at 75 mph, it couldn’t travel more than 50 miles or so on a filling of water. Odd as it may seem, some say the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic that occurred in the New England area in 1914 was one of the keys to the Stanley Steamer’s eventual demise, since it hastened the removal of many of the roadside horse troughs that steamer drivers relied on for water. The other failing was start-up time. Often it would take a Stanley Steamer 10 to 15 minutes to build up its steam level before it could be driven, and once the self-starter was designed for the gasoline car, that inconvenience became too much.
Your 1000-mile claim struck me and others as fantastic because steam engines are after all boiling water into vapor and using the large increase in volume to do work. That's going to chew you through a lot of water, no matter how you're heating it.
I hope it's just a phase we're goin' through, but if it ain't, I'm right behind ya.
Three tetrapods from Greenland have been described to date: Ichthyostega, Acanthostega, and Ichthyostegopsis……It seems clear that at least one of the earliest tetrapods was a swimming predator capable of pursuing fish and other large prey, using its legs as paddles and its fish-like tail for sculling through the water…
…Acanthostega also had internal gills for breathing water in a very fish-like manner.
The text then goes on to describe the immediate ancestors of the tetrapods (literally "four feet"), the lobe-finned fishes such as Eusthenopteron.
Also reference The New Findings (or, "Fishes With Legs")
So what? ID theory doesn't "invoke God", ID theory invokes mathematics and implies God. I think the real problem people have with ID is that it can imply God. People seem terrified of the prospect that they may have a higher authority to which they are subject.
ID theory does invoke "God" (the ultimate designer must not have, himself, been designed). I can use mathematics to invoke and imply the existence of UFOs, too, but that does not make UFOs any more real.
The tablet usually does not consist of random words or sentence fragments interspersed among random letters.
Your problem is that you've assumed a priori that genetic sequences are random! Do living things appear to be the result of random genetic sequences? How would you define 'random'? I think this is at the heart of the matter.
The discovery of DNA revealed that at the core of life is a molecular message that contains a staggering quantity of information. A single cell of the human body contains as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica-all thirty volumes of it-three or four times over. As a result, the question of the origin of life must now be recast as the origin of biological information.
DNA also contains an incredible amount of junk, including sections that obviously began existence as parts of viruses and bacteria. There are whole sections no longer used (human DNA contains coding for both gills and tails.
Please explain specifically how it is that you have determined genetic information to be 'random'.
Maybe random would not be a good word. How about "garbage?"
Says who?
Says every information theorist and mathematician alive. Specified complexity is a well understood concept. I would suggest that you visit your local college library and pick up a book on advanced mathematics in information theory.
Gee, we have a number of mathematicians, information theorists and just regular scientists on these threads, and many of them disagree with your conclusions. Therefore only a fraction of mathematicians and information theorists say so.
Copernicus, Galileo, et al did their research in spite of, not because of, church doctrine.
Are you aware that this is the 21st Century? Again, you need to address my points and stop reciting history. Specifically tell me what in ID theory will stifle scientific inquiry. Please explain specifically why we would want any less to know how biology operates simply because we believe that genetic information has its origin in intelligence.
Yes I am aware this is the 21st century. I am also aware that history is a record of human nature and human nature does not seem to change all that much. If anything threatens the status quo there is usually an attempt to suppress it (cf. the current attempt to remove the teaching of evolution from public schools). Plus ca change …
I don't believe there is zero energy conversion in the inanimate world. Heat and light are constantly causing chemical reactions naturally -- a form of energy conversion. Hell, entire ecosystems rely upon external energy conversions to exist, cf. hydrothermal vents.
Once more, there is evidence the information preceded the organism, so to speak. One of the current theories is that of the "RNA world" which postulates the existence of self-replicating molecules as the predecessor of life. With the discovery of a primitive form of self-assembling cell walls in interstellar dust clouds researchers discovered they had found a possible way the early self-replicating molecules had protected their operations from outside influence. As for the increase in the genetic code, as has been pointed out before viral and bacterial genes get incorporated into "higher" organisms DNA regularly, thereby icreasing the amount of information to work with. Additionally, DNA is often subject to transcription errors and gene "doubling." Both of these latter add additional information with which to work.
I can do far better than the Intelligent Design crowd. Anyone can claim to prove ID (or UFOs). But I shall now invoke math to prove that I am Marilyn Monroe:
1. All humans are divided into two classes, Marilyn and all others.Ain't math wonderful? I must warn you, however, that in another currently-running thread about cosmology, I am also "Captain Crunch."
2. The number of members of the class of Marilyn is ONE.
3. The number of members of the class of PatrickHenry is ONE.
4. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other.
5. One equals one.
6. Ergo ... I am Marilyn Monroe!
#1 “Evolution calls for the development of life itself and subsequent life forms from a purely natural process. Life does not function without the strictly controlled conversion of raw solar energy into useable energy. What are the specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes that led from zero such conversion capability in raw matter to the multiple and varied mechanisms and processes that are inherent in every living organism as we know them?”
actually earliest life almost certainly did not use sunlight as its energy source. best current research points rather to life originating at hot mineral vents at the bottom of the ocean. The original energy source was energy rich compounds coming from the vents in solution.
#2 “Evolution calls for the development of ever more volume and ever greater variety and complexity of data in the genetic code of living organisms as they allegedly first emerged, then progressed from, simplest forms to the present broad spectrum of variety. What specific, empirically evident original mechanism/process and pathway of specific, empirically evident mechanisms/processes have led from zero genetic data in raw matter to the vast array of voluminous genetic data inherent in living organisms as we know them?”while not proof there is much very interesting material in the field of evolutionary computing, especially Genetic Algoriths, that demonstrates how geneticed encoded information is created and concentrated thru processes of natural selection. An excellent introduction can be found in John Holland's Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems .
The Beginnings of Life on Earth by DeDuve.
The illustrations on the above page are hyperlinks to their large versions. It's one of many articles from your Ultimate Creation vs Evolution Resource.
Acanthostega, with its four limbs, pelvic girdle and assorted other features, was clearly a tetrapod, but its lineage probably never left the water.
I also don't see where it indicates Acanthostega ever left the water. It seems to imply the opposite:
Together with Michael Coates, Clack realized that this animal was clearly a tetrapod, but that it was a poor excuse for a land animal. Its legs were ill-suited to support its weight and the wrists were absent.
Also, I couldn't find where they talked about Eusthenopteron at the site, but it seems irrelevant, since they don't say Acanthostega evolved into a land tetrapod anyway. I was looking for 3 different species: A purely aquatic one with legs and lungs, which Acanthostega perhaps is, one that lived in water and also sometimes came out of the water, and finally the one who descended from it into a full time land animal.
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