Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
"Are you asking if there's any reason, beyond accidental, for the association of specific codes with particular amino acids? There are some speculative ideas floating around about this, but little experimental evidence."
Yes, that is precisely what I'm asking - do you happen to know what any of these speculations involve?
Post-event editing cannot be ruled out in any prophetic situation. You accept that did not happen in the Bible's case, though much of it predates its actually being written down (sometime during the Babylonian exile), giving the authors plenty of leeway at creative editing. Yet you do not accept it in similar situations with other religions.
This is part of what drives me mad about 'the debate'. Both sides consistenly obscure the distinction between the three meanings of 'evolution' I mentioned in my semi-defense of Behe. The first (allele and phenotype dynamics) is simply an observable fact; the second (common descent) is plainly a solid falsifiable (a single organism with a different system of codons would suffice) scientific theory and every observation to date supports it; the last (neo-Darwinism) is the one I'm not even sure manages to be a theory (though once one vacates 'random variation' the way the definition at http://evonet.sdsc.edu/evoscisociety/what_is_evolution.htm does) and leaves natural selection as a tautology (rather than 'so formulat[ing it] as to be far from tautological') which seems to be the tendancy, lest a falsification of a particular such formulation give aid and comfort to religious obscurantists, it's a 'fact' too (but not a very interesting one), provided one drops the insistence on its completeness and sufficiency as an explanation.
Bite me.
I see you have a grasp of this argument that nearly equals your grasp of Galileo's political acumen. The proponent I spoke of argued, as I said, that the 500, not the Apostles, were mysteriously put to death by a conspiracy of some sort.
So what about the previous claim that many of them were secretly tracked down and tortured then murdered by some mysterious cabal?
Examples?
Common descent is not what it used to be. It is no longer thought by the mainstream of biological science that a single organism gave rise to all life. Which, by the way, if so, casts a serious measure of doubt on the single-system-of-codon falsification notion.
I thought you were Marilyn Monroe?
Ultimately, one would like to see a path from organism A to organism B by mutation and natural selection, with every step in between a viable organism. I'm confident eventually we will be able to reconstruct such a pathway, though we simply don't have the experimental capability of doing it yet.
I always thought Pharaoh's dream falls into this category. The Egyptians never recorded seven years of feast followed by seven years of famine. Of course, if the whole thing were written down many centuries after the fact, no one would have to bother with such piddly little details.
"Freepers don't fear the Crevos... You know that trolling is a creationist game..."
"Don't be like they are... (don't fear the crevos...)"
(Help me out here Junior.)
ah, no. Too much Discovery Channel, not enough Cell and Molecular Biology.
Remember though, Dawkins isn't someone to take seriously on evolution.
Oh dear. You think Leviticus and the Gospel of St. Matthew are consistent?
(with apologies to Blue Oyster Cult)
Darwin's time has come
Evolution now is gone
Creos don't like the theory
We're certain it's just plain wrong.
They can be like we are
Come on creos ... It's just a theory
No need to listen ... It's just a theory
Darwin's on the outs ... It's just a theory
All his links are missin'...
S. J. Gould is done
P.E. now is gone
Behe, Miller, Hovind
Will now tell us how it's done
Behe, Miller, Hovind...
Americans believe the creos ... Behe, Miller, Hovind
Americans believe the creos ... Tell us how it's done
And more are joining us everyday ... You can be like we are
Come on creos ... It's just a theory
No need to listen ... It's just a theory
Darwin's on the outs ... It's just a theory
All his links are missin'...
Evolutionary biology
Was here but now it's gone
We'll replace it with ID
Regardless if it's really wrong
We regard it as a kind of tool
It's just a wedge to get God in school
To see how many we can fool
Saying, "join the creos..."
Come on creos ... And then they came
Flocked in droves ... We ain't no slime
Turned the clock backward in time
You'll become like we are
No need for research
You'll become like we are
Come on creos ... It's just a theory
...and so a tradition was born....
Why not?
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