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Evolution debate persists because it's not science
The Sun News ^ | February 23, 2009 | By Raymond H. Kocot

Posted on 02/22/2009 10:58:04 PM PST by GodGunsGuts

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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl; CottShop; hosepipe; metmom; xzins; Does so
My comparison is valid because a submarine must WORK in order to make it into the museum of Naval Warfare History. Can't make history if you don't work

My point is the submarine is designed to work. That is, it's not the end-product of a virtually endless chain of prior random events that somehow ended up by (serendipitously!) getting it "just right" to do what submarines do.

Surely you can discriminate the difference between "design" and a "crap shoot" that somehow gets things right by accident.

541 posted on 02/27/2009 1:47:18 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Not critical to the analogy. The analogy was that you don't make history unless you work and had an impact. You don't make the fossil record unless you were successful enough as a species prolific and wide spread enough to get some members of your species fossilized.

Natural selection is not random either. It is a trial and error process that keeps designs that work and discards designs that do not work.

Check out “directed evolution” as an example of how novel enzymes are made for industrial purposes by random variation and selecting for the necessary traits.

It is a MUCH more powerful system for designing enzymes, right now, then attempting to design an enzyme with the necessary traits on paper and then making it in the lab.

542 posted on 02/27/2009 1:54:02 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: acliffhang3r; GodGunsGuts
Yes, let me see if I can simplify this AMAZING revelation.

If there is debate, then it is not Science. However, what is not debatable is Science. Genesis is not debatable. Genesis is Science.

I respectfully think not.

This sounds like standard fair from the cult of evolution.

You can tell that evolution is neither theory or science because anytime it's criticized, like a swarm of army ants the cultists attack any and all criticisms, including so-called peer review as "religion" or "attacks on science".

What's equally fascinating is the cultists don't seem to understand this is a floundering and failing tactic and harming the theory, or what's left of it, more than any actual peer review ever could.

543 posted on 02/27/2009 2:11:47 PM PST by tpanther (The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing---Edmund Burke)
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To: allmendream
Directed evolution allows us to explore enzyme functions never required in the natural environment and for which the molecular basis is poorly understood. This bottom-up design approach contrasts with the more conventional, top-down one in which proteins are tamed `rationally’ using computers and site-directed mutagenesis. I will describe how molecular evolution can be directed in the test tube in order to produce useful biocatalysts

http://www.che.caltech.edu/groups/fha/Enzyme/directed.html

544 posted on 02/27/2009 2:13:34 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: xzins; allmendream; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; metmom; Does so
Obsolete submarines are recorded by the droves....even the Merrimac & Monitor.

Yes — and Merrimac & Monitor would be "fossils" of the species "submarines."

But this does nothing to detract from the fact that every member of the class "submarines" is a purpose-built machine, constructed by an intelligent, creative agent.

A typhoon blowing through a junk yard cannot construct a Boeing 737 no matter how much time is "available" for this process. Especially because there's nothing to "tell" the process how it could ever know whether it had achieved its purpose (construction of a Boeing 737); i.e., whether the process was successful or not.

No purpose can be invoked by a "random" process. Indeed, the specification of "randomness" is usually made when the idea of "purpose" in nature enters the public debate/discussion. The advocates of randomness purport to show the unshowable: that an ordered system can emerge without prior reference to a functional purpose. They think they can dispense with purpose in nature altogether.

allmendream didn't specifically answer my question as to whether "random mutation" has been morphed into "genetic variation" as the proper language to use nowadays. Yet he clearly deemphasizes the use of the word, random, in descriptions of biology. Though that's the very language that Darwin used.

And moreover, is the language still used by some of the most eminent biologists of recent times. For instance, the Nobel prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod, who insists that everything we see all around us in nature, biological and otherwise, is the product of "sheer, blind chance."

I dunno, xzins. Seems to me if a claim like that were true, it would refer to a process nothing short of the miraculous. For a chain of accidents is to be credited with the order of the natural world. On this principle, order rises, spontaneously you see, from disorder.

But jeepers, when exactly did Darwinists start believing in miracles like this?

545 posted on 02/27/2009 2:34:19 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
So where did the “information” on how to digest nylon come from?

I did answer your question. You asked about genetic variation and random mutation. I told you that genetic variation is produced by mutations in a random manner.

Are you suggesting that God has no control over random processes? That “random” is synonymous for “out of God's control”?

Prov 16:33 The dice are cast into the lap but every result is from the Lord.

As to your ‘miraculous’ ideas of how evolution works, do you feel a “miracle” is needed for random variation and selection to produce novel molecular machines?

Did you not read what I posted to you about “directed evolution”?

Do you suppose that miraculous intervention is needed for this process to derive novel and useful proteins for industrial purposes?

546 posted on 02/27/2009 2:40:12 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: betty boop; allmendream; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; metmom; Does so
I dunno, xzins. Seems to me if a claim like that were true, it would refer to a process nothing short of the miraculous. For a chain of accidents is to be credited with the order of the natural world. On this principle, order rises, spontaneously you see, from disorder.

As forerunners of ships with a low profile, the M&M are likewise forerunners of those with a below the surface profile. They are obsolete because they died.

The unmentionable process is death. Just where does that fit with rational, sentient beings who realize their own mortality? Who anguish over lost love, lost hopes, lost strength?

Evolution cannot account for the human spirit, and as you say, reassembling junk from a junk heap will not construct a single mili-liter of conscious, self-aware spirit.

There is one Wind (pneuma) blowing through existence, though, which can. "The wind blows where it wants to, but you can't tell where it comes from or where it's going. The same with everyone born of God's Pneuma."

547 posted on 02/27/2009 2:53:27 PM PST by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain, Pro Deo et Patria)
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To: xzins

All living things are mortal. From the dust they were formed and into dust they shall return. One thing alone is not mortal.


548 posted on 02/27/2009 2:57:56 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl; CottShop; hosepipe; metmom; xzins; Does so
Natural selection is not random either. It is a trial and error process that keeps designs that work and discards designs that do not work.

And so please tell what standard against which this process of trial and error — non-random! as you say (but it still looks pretty random to me, especially if we are to think of it as "goal-less" and "undirected") — is to be measured? What is the standard that decides what works and what doesn't work in Nature? Especially if Nature is said to have no purposes of her own?

If there are no purposes in Nature, then how can natural selection not be random ?

549 posted on 02/27/2009 3:07:37 PM PST by betty boop
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl; xzins; hosepipe; metmom; Does so
Are you suggesting that God has no control over random processes? That “random” is synonymous for “out of God's control”?

No. I am absolutely not saying that, allmendream. God uses what we view as "randomness" for achieving His creative purposes in Nature. Broadly speaking, "randomness" refers to the potentiality of newness arising in nature. And "newness" arises in biological beings literally with each and every time-step.

In short, God loves "random!" It's what keeps the universe from becoming perfectly static; of allowing for its development; in leaving room for, among other things, human free will.

But because the total system contains random elements (potentialities) does not mean that the total system is "unguided," let alone purposeless.

550 posted on 02/27/2009 3:15:35 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Purposeness and randomness are not opposites. My purpose in a card game is to win. The distribution of the cards is random.

As to what standard is used in this trial and error it is known in biology as “differential reproductive success”. A favored variation will have leave more offspring than a unfavorable variation.

This is what is observed in countless experiments on the ability of natural selection to shape experimental populations. If you turn up the heat on a population, those variations amenable to high heat have more offspring.

What “works” in nature is surviving and reproducing.

What “doesn't work” is dying before you reproduce, having sickly or few offspring, etc.

Detection of “purpose” is beyond the scope of science.

If I lose at cards then I see it as God's will.

An atheist may well see it as just random bad luck.

There is no scientific way to differentiate or discern between these two views.

551 posted on 02/27/2009 3:44:29 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: xzins; allmendream; Alamo-Girl; CottShop; hosepipe; metmom; Does so
Evolution cannot account for the human spirit, and as you say, reassembling junk from a junk heap will not construct a single mili-liter of conscious, self-aware spirit.... There is one Wind (pneuma) blowing through existence, though, which can. "The wind blows where it wants to, but you can't tell where it comes from or where it's going. The same with everyone born of God's Pneuma."

Amen!

Yes. Beautifully said dear brother in Christ!

Yet your beautiful insight is no help (nor consolation) to our Darwinist brethren, I feel pretty sure. For most of them, it seems, don't mind that their dear theory not only cannot account for the origin of life, but that it's also stupified by the problem of the origin of consciousness, not even to mention spirit (the existence of which many categorically deny in the first place). So one has to ask: As a fundamental theory of biology — of living, sentient life forms — what does it really have to offer?

To me, Darwin's theory is not without merit. The problem with it is it overreaches. My sense is it has solid insights in terms of dynamic intra-species response to environmental change. This is within the domain of microevolution. To extrapolate from the micro- to the macroevolution seems an unwarranted step. It uses the "part" to explain the "whole." Generally speaking, this is rarely if ever a fruitful procedure.

To my scientist friends, a message from George Gilder:

Throughout the history of human thought, it has been convenient and inspirational to designate the summit of the hierarchy as God. While it is not necessary for science to use this term, it is important for scientists to grasp the hierarchical reality it signifies. Transcending its materialist trap, science must look up from the ever dimmer reaches of its Darwinian pit and cast its imagination toward the word and its sources: idea and meaning, mind and mystery, the will and the way. It must eschew reductionism – except as a methodological tool – and adopt an aspirational imagination. Though this new aim may seem blinding at first, it is ultimately redemptive because it is the only way that science can ever hope to solve the grand challenge problems before it, such as gravity, entanglement, quantum computing, time, space, mass, and mind. Accepting hierarchy, the explorer embarks on an adventure that leads to an ever deeper understanding of life and consciousness, cosmos and creation. — "Evolution and Me," National Review, July 17, 2006

Thank you ever so much for your beautiful, insightful essay/post xzins!
552 posted on 02/27/2009 4:06:50 PM PST by betty boop
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To: betty boop
Do you believe all species were descended from what few “kinds” could fit within the given dimensions of Noah's Arc within the last few thousand years?

If so then you believe that “microevolution” takes place with a strength and at a speed not proposed by anything observed in the scientific literature.

Meanwhile what we do observe is an elegant process whereby minor and random variations along with selection can accomplish amazing things; and at a observable rate consistent with what we observe in the fossil record corroborated by physics and radioatomic decay, and know about the age of the Earth and the movement of continents.

553 posted on 02/27/2009 4:22:46 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: betty boop
As well as being consistent with the observed phylogenetic relationships found in the nested hierarchies of similarity and divergence in endogenous retroviral sequences.

We can observe this same pattern cropping up in diverging populations, and this process is at a speed consistent with the observed rates of interspecies difference accumulation.

That is Science. (to take it back to the title of the thread)

You observe a process. Measure its rate. Explain natural phenomena with natural observed and measured causes. Determine if what you observe is consistent with current theory. Publish. Publish and get a Nobel if you get to change the theory in light of your new evidence.

This micro macro drivel is like saying that the “micro” erosion observed and measured currently is not sufficient to explain the “macro” erosion of valleys and canyons.

554 posted on 02/27/2009 4:27:35 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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To: betty boop
[ If Darwin's theory is true, then we should be seeing gadzillions of "failed body plans" in the fossil record. Where are they? ]

Maybe its not true...

555 posted on 02/27/2009 5:08:24 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: Does so
The article points out that the Yellowstone Park super-volcano could cause another "leap" in human evolution, decimating Humanity's DNA pool to a few thousand "fit-and-savvy-survivors" once again.

Another evolutionary bottleneck.

If groups as large as ones like the Amish are having difficulties because of (essentially) inbreeding, then how did all these evolutionary bottlenecks which allegedly reduced the population to a few thousand go on to produce healthy individuals?

556 posted on 02/27/2009 6:27:26 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: allmendream; betty boop
That is like asking why you don't see failed auto designs on the road. For an animal to be fossilized is a one in a million shot.

Are you telling us then that only the successful designs somehow were the only ones to get fossilized by some chance?

“Failed” body plans don't get to grow into the million population group, they die young if they are even born at all.

What ever happened to the changes being gradual? Evos constantly mock non-evos for their comments about one species giving birth to another significantly different progeny, but that is exactly what you are implying needs to happen. The gradual changes didn't make it. They would have had to be more dramatic to survive birth and reach age of reproduction.

Those gradual changes would be considered *failed* if they weren't enough to allow stunning success but not all those *failed* plans need be fatal, as in the case of limbs developing to flippers. A limb going to flipper is not a serious enough failure in change that the individual would not not make it to birth. That is not a fatal birth defect.

But what good would a partially formed limb that is transitioning from leg to flipper be? It would be a liability to a land creature, leaving it more susceptible to injury and death as the land creature could not use a hybrid leg/flipper for locomotion very easily, nor could it use a hybrid arm/flipper to gather food.

The hybrid limb/flipper would not be a great advantage in the water as it would not be as useful as a fully developed flipper to escape being preyed on by those creatures such as sharks which have fully functioning flippers.

An animal in process of going from land to water or water to land is not well suited to survive either on land nor in water in the transition stage.

So how did it manage to do that?

557 posted on 02/27/2009 6:43:09 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: betty boop
And so you admit that the fossil record is not, in principle, complete, "exhaustive?" That what is there is pretty much the result of a crap shoot? That it's sketchy at best?

Well jeepers, that's a fine admission from somebody who's committed to a theory that depends on the fossil record for its justification.

Details, details.....

Don't confuse them with the facts.

558 posted on 02/27/2009 6:44:38 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: allmendream; Alamo-Girl
Could it be that the fossil record, as incomplete as we all acknowledge it is, shows a story about what life forms inhabited the Earth at what times and in what sequence?

Could it be that it really doesn't? That it's just wishful thinking by people who want it to look that way so that they can eliminate God from the equation?

It seems the easiest explanation to me for why we only find rather small and mostly marsupial mammals in strata laid down during the age of the dinosaurs.

And that proves what, exactly? Besides the fact that it appears that marsupial type animals existed in proximity to dinosaurs?

559 posted on 02/27/2009 6:50:32 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
Does a flying squirrel need a working wing? Has it lost the use of its arm? Bats are pretty dexterous with the ‘thumbs’ on their wings as well. The change from a glider to a flier would be a gradual process if the flier experienced an advantage.

Similarly a river living mammal could easily develop a multipurpose leg that also had function as a flipper, like a seal. A seal has not lost function of its front legs, they are now better flippers than legs.

And I am not implying ‘hopeful monsters’, I am saying that any gradual deviation from a successful body plan will be weeded out by natural selection. Obviously what is “successful” will change as circumstances change, from needing to be streamlined, to being a tetra-pod, back to needing to be streamlined, as all evidence suggests marine mammals went through.

These gradual changes can be observed in short periods of time that make large changes over large periods of time no problem at all. And none of the fossil intermediates will be ‘monsters’ or some sort of half formed creature, they will be a fully formed species that was just gradually more marine than its predecessors.

560 posted on 02/27/2009 6:57:14 PM PST by allmendream ("Wealth is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?")
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