Posted on 06/13/2008 8:50:06 PM PDT by Coleus
It is "self-evident" in that animals are known to choose their mates and thus affect "certain features" in their offspring.
Also "certain features" is a subset of "all features" and thus the hypothesis does not replace evolution theory.
In my view, the intelligent design hypothesis is so non specific it could have been called a "conjecture" and so self-evident, it could even have been called an "observation."
That isn't the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is inherited changes, it says nothing about how successful those changes will be. Some will be successful and some won't be. But for arguments sake using your human example, how many of your billions of sperm that you produce survive? A couple? A dozen if they are lucky?
Where is the evidence that inherited changes don't exist?
Wimmer's experiment caused a lot of concern over bioterrorism because he proved that a person could obtain an information sequence even from the internet, order the DNA, synthesize and replicate a deadly virus, a bio weapon:
Researchers announced on July 11 that infectious viruses can now be created in the test tube of any modern laboratory. In fact, it has been done most recently at Stony Brook University (SBU), where biochemist Eckard Wimmer’s team has generated active polio virus particles that are capable of infecting living host cells.
According to Wimmer, the viruses were made based on "sequence" information pulled from scientific literature. The word "sequence" refers to the arrangement of chemical base-pairs, which is the chemical spelling of a gene. By getting the "spelling" of each gene in a tiny virus, it is possible to string the genes together in the correct order so they exhibit emergent properties and are fully functional.
Experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus. At a time when the word "bio-terrorism" is a reality, the consequences of this development are both alarming and encouraging, he added. It means that scientists probably can create and prepare vaccines faster and more precisely to fend off biological attacks.
However, this also means anyone could manufacture viruses, or even alter them, potentially making them more dangerous.
According to Wimmer, ready-made chunks of DNA were purchased from commercial sources, and the researchers took the instructions for piecing them together from literature available on the Internet.
"If someone publishes the sequence of any old virus, you can chemically put together a DNA copy of that, and then create the virus," he said. "So with enough money, knowledge, and equipment, you can make any virus for which you can determine the sequence."
The chemical instructions, including the DNA sequence information of many disease organisms, are available on the Internet for scientific use, and more are being added as researchers pursue their work against disease.
In the experiments at SBU, Wimmer and co-workers Jeronimo Cello and Aniko Paul ordered small chunks of viral DNA, called oligonucleotides, and strung the chunks together.
"The most important part of this work is the proof of principle," Wimmer said. "This says that you can generate a virus from the written sequence, and that has consequences."
James LeDuc, at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told the journal Science that "it is a little sobering to see that folks in the chemistry lab can basically create a virus from scratch."
Given the potential for bio-terrorism, Wimmer said government agencies could monitor what chunks of DNA are being ordered from commercial sources. This would allow the appropriate state authorities to keep track of those who are doing research on dangerous organisms capable of being used for bio-terrorism.
Indeed, they are simply liars on this point. Examine, for example, chapter 1 of Paul Ehrlich's The Process of Evolution (1963).
All of us baby boomers and earlier remember the textbooks with the primordial soup/protein sea/lightning strike stories about the origin of life. Deny as much as they want, I KNOW that darwinianism taught darwinian abiogenesis.
Sure. Remember Molecules to Man? There were many textbooks just like that one. This is a pattern of behavior with evolutionists. They fabricate their own history. They blot out parts of it that they don't want you to know (or are embarrassing to them) and make up fairytales about other parts. They don't really want you to know about their active role in eugenics (see my FR page). They say that Darwin didn't believe in inheritance of acquired characteristics, and that Lamarck believed in inheritance of mutilations, and they teach these lies in textbooks, whereas the truth is that Darwin believed both. This pattern of historical revisionism began with Darwin himself--Samuel Butler exposed it in Evolution Old and New and Luck or Cunning?.
It takes an intelligent researcher with prior knowledge of the information sequence to put this together.
Not to mention, coming up with the "chunks" in the first place.
Thanks for the education, sister.
Also, "natural selection" can be an intelligent process. That simply highlights that we've yet to define intelligence, and more importantly, we have yet to define life.
Given the potential for bio-terrorism, Wimmer said government agencies could monitor what chunks of DNA are being ordered from commercial sources.”
LOL
Ah but until the development of modern medical practice human life was like that to. The rate of survival to reproduction was very low for humans as well, leading to very very large families up into this century. This patern continues to prevail in many "subsistence level" societies.
Two questions:
1. What is the undeniable evidence of intelligent design? What is the proof, other than observation (which is the same level of proof used by believers of the theory of evolution)?
2. Why does the presence of an intelligent designer mean that evolution is wrong?
The attempts to escape from Darwinism's dilemma all fall into one or other of three types. These can be usefully labelled "the Cave Man way out," "the Hard Man," and "the Soft Man." All three types are hardy perennials, and have been with us, in one version or another, ever since Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859.What I call the Cave Man way out is this: you admit that human life is not now what it would be if Darwin's theory were true, but also insist that it used to be like that.
In the olden days (the story goes), human populations always did press relentlessly on their supply of food, and thereby brought about constant competition for survival among the too-numerous competitors, and hence natural selection of those organisms which were best fitted to succeed in the struggle for life. But our species (the story goes on) escaped long ago from the brutal regime of natural selection. We developed a thousand forms of attachment, loyalty, cooperation, and unforced subordination, every one of them quite incompatible with a constant and merciless competition to survive. We have now had for a very long time, at least locally, religions, moralities, laws or customs, respect for life and property, rules of inheritance, specialized social orders, distinctions of rank, and standing provisions for external defense, internal police, education, and health. Even at out lowest ebb we still have ties of blood, and ties of marriage: two things which are quite as incompatible with a universal competition to survive as are, for example, a medical profession, a priesthood, or a state.
But the Cave Man part of it is also utterly incredible in itself. It may be possible, for all I know, that a population of pines or cod should exist with no cooperative as distinct from competitive relations among its members. But no tribe of humans could possibly exist on those terms. Such a tribe could not even raise a second generation: the helplessness of the human young is too extreme and prolonged. So if you ever read a report (as one sometimes does) of the existence of an on-going tribe of just this kind, you should confidently conclude that the reporter is mistaken or lying or both.
Even if such a tribe could somehow continue in existence, it is extremely difficult to imagine how our species, as we now know it to be, could ever have graduated from so very hard a school. We need to remember how severe the rule of natural selection is, and what it means to say that a species is subject to it. It means, among other things, that of all the rabbits, flies, cod, pines, etc., that are born, the enormous majority must suffer early death; and it means no less of our species. How could we have escaped from this set up, supposing we once were in it? Please don't say that a god came down, and pointed out to Darwinian Cave Men a better way, or that the Cave Men themselves got together and adopted a Social Contract (with a Department of Family Planning). Either of those explanations is logically possible, of course, but they are just too improbably to be worth talking about. Yet some explanation, of the same order of improbability, seems to be required, if we once allow ourselves to believe that though we are not subject now to natural selection, we used to be.
The Cave Man way out, despite its absurdity, is easily the most popular of the three ways of trying to get out of Darwinism's dilemma. It has been progressively permeating popular thought for nearly one hundred and fifty years. By now it is enshrined in a thousand cartoons and comic-strips, and it is as immovable as Christmas. But we should not infer from this that it lacks high scientific authorities in its favor. Quite the contrary, Cave man has been all along, and still is, the preferred way out of Darwinism's dilemma among the learned, as well as among the vulgar.
- David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales.
It is illogical for anyone to claim a theory of abiogenesis without first defining life v. non-life/death in nature.
Outstanding personal page you’ve put together, Ethan.
Check out mine.
1. Group hunting by Harris hawks (I had a family of them on my property in Chile - beautiful animals). Predatory birds are solitary hunters, right? Not the Harris hawk - it hunts in packs, with some corraling the prey and others making the kill-dive. And the kill is then shared by all.
2. Lions. Unlike the other great cats, they hunt as a team, and share the spoils with the entire family. And it is the females that do the hunting. The males, on the other hand, provide protection for the pride, that is their role.
3. Orca (killer whales). They also hunt as packs, taking turns diving deep under herring balls, bundling the herring with their expelled air (a bubble curtain), and letting others take passes through the herring to eat. They will also all turn to defend calves, and even will stay with a dead calf to mourn.
How are any of these behaviors anything BUT cooperation and a form of societal structure? In each case, individuals will put the needs and desires of other individuals first - cooperation means that sometimes you give up what you want, and you wait your turn.
if behavior like that exists in animals, then why not in people?
Your whole incomprehensible screed is based on this fine bit of question begging. There is no so-called dilemma. Second, the "olden days" you cite, are not so old, since those same conditions can be observed in substantial parts of Africa, South America and the middle east.
And this fine bit of nonsense Even at out lowest ebb we still have ties of blood, and ties of marriage: two things which are quite as incompatible with a universal competition to survive
But the aetiology of many species includes just those sorts of social evolution that enhance the survival of the species. Your fallacious and unexamined underlying assumption is that the only kind of competition allowable under evolution is mano a mano fight to the death between individuals. But that is nowhere stated at all, and the evolution of social cooperation is an intimately connect, highly fruitful and important field of investigation.
One even sees this kind of cooperation in what is probably the most brutally competitive of mammals, lions. Male lions frequently band together (commonly in pairs and very rarely trios) to hold territory and maintain breeding rights.
typo: aetiology should read ethology.
Some day you need to try again to have a non-partisan thread devoted to defining “life vs non-life/death.”
Ping me when you do.
Bible babble
Darwiniswm is nothing biologists or social scientists even think about but is a construct of Creationists. It should disappear on its own.
Well obviously it exists in people and animals. The question is whether it is consistent with the picture painted by Darwinians of people and animals.
If we do it, we'll ping you!
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