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15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense [THE FINAL DEBUNKING]
Scientific American ^ | 17 June 2002 | John Rennie

Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

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To: AndrewC
What a joke! That program proves or illustrates nothing but a foolish waste of time.

LOL, I finally got a chance to examine the code. I think you're right!

1,621 posted on 06/22/2002 4:22:01 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: PatrickHenry
self portrait...

howz your search ..."for the creator via evolution"---going?

1,622 posted on 06/22/2002 4:58:15 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: jennyp
LOL, I finally got a chance to examine the code. I think you're right!

One day is excusable but the eighteen or so years Shermer has had to examine the code speaks tellingly of his "skepticism". By the way, why would anyone need a magazine in order to be skeptical? Is it a crib sheet for new excuses for Darwinians?

1,623 posted on 06/22/2002 7:05:30 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
By the way, why would anyone need a magazine in order to be skeptical? Is it a crib sheet for new excuses for Darwinians?

As I understand it, it goes more into debunking mentalists, UFOs, Holocaust deniers... things like that.

1,624 posted on 06/22/2002 7:26:01 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: jennyp
As I understand it, it goes more into debunking mentalists, UFOs, Holocaust deniers... things like that.

I know just kidding. Those things aren't on my radar screen.

1,625 posted on 06/22/2002 7:31:42 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: jennyp
Your calculations are correct.
1,626 posted on 06/22/2002 8:39:39 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: AndrewC
Sorry for the late reply. I'm still paying the price for having a Compaq. The paper I was referring to is:

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/pub lications/wpabstract/199103016
1,627 posted on 06/22/2002 9:01:25 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: Heartlander
Arbitrary can be mechanistic but mechanistic cannot be truly arbitrary or random.

This doesn't agree with quantum mechanics experimentally (at least not so far.) The described concept of random seems only to apply to sentience whereas most physics would ascribe randomness only to inanimate things.

1,628 posted on 06/22/2002 9:05:54 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Your calculations are correct.

Of course I should've pinged you too to check my math, Dr. Stochastic!

1,629 posted on 06/22/2002 10:14:16 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Sorry for the late reply. I'm still paying the price for having a Compaq. The paper I was referring to is: http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/pub lications/wpabstract/199103016

Yes, that is nice, but if you notice the paper you are referring is dated 1991 and the one to which I refer is dated Mar 2002 as it is out of ADVANCES IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS Mar 2002 issue. The statements "Here, random texts and real texts are compared through (a) the so-called lexical spectrum and (b) the distribution of words having the same length. It is shown that real texts fill the lexical spectrum much more efficiently and regardless of the word length, suggesting that the meaningfulness of Zipf's law is high." appear to answer the contention in the 1991 paper, namely "The facts that the frequency of occurrence of a word is almost an inverse power-law function of its rank and the exponent of this inverse power law is very close to 1 are largely due to the transformation from the word's length to its rank, which stretches an exponential function to a power-law function".

1,630 posted on 06/22/2002 10:32:53 PM PDT by AndrewC
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To: jennyp
I think I tried to explain to you before why your #3 is all wrong. Let me quickly try again. (And godel or longshadow or some other mathematician will have to put some real math to my assertions here:)

No, you are absolutely wrong and if you look it up instead of looking for excuses for you phony evolution, you would stop repeating that nonsense. The chances are 50% because there are two alleles and by all scientific research either one is as likely to be chosen as the other. Since a new gene would have no allele it would only have a 50% of going on to the next generation. If it survived, it would only have a 50% chance of continuing to the next one and so on until such time as it had spread enough that sometimes both parents would have such a gene, so stop talking garbage and start facing the truth. You must remember this is a new gene - no one else has it. The chances of its spreading are very slim indeed. Because there is no selective advantage in a useless gene the chances of its spreading are always the same 50% at each reproduction. Such genes dissappear from the population for the same reason that any gene which which is detrimental (and that is the basis of your stupid evolution) dissappears if it goes around killing those who have it - because the rate of reproduction of that particular gene is less than that of the population at large. Even if you start with a population of one million with half having one gene (call it A) who reproduces at 100% and the other half which reproduces at 90% of the rate of the first gene (call it B), gene B will almost dissappear and be in less 1/1000th of the population in a mere 100 generations.

And no, 4, 5 and 6 do not magically dissappear as a problem to evolution no matter how much you would like them to. The one chance of finding a correct series of mutation at random (because again the gene is non functional) is astronomical. In addition to which, regardless of your nonsense about 'inefficiency is good' carrying extra baggage which does nothing is never beneficial, if you don't believe me, put ten pound weights on your clothes and start carrying them around for a while and let me know how much benefit you derived from it.

1,631 posted on 06/22/2002 11:52:42 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: jennyp
Your argument still depends on us not knowing the mind of the designer! Anyway, the only way your intuition

How much nonsense can you put in one post? Nothing depends on knowing the mind of the designer, nothing at all. We have a model in the DNA code which almost exactly replicates the way computer code has been written (only that the way the DNA code was done much better). It is also not an intuition, we have gone over this a long time and you have already agreed that this is indeed the way programming has been done, so cut the nonsense on that. And RWNilla has not given a single piece of evidence for his statements least of all the one you mention. In fact he said no such thing to me. Lastly, it does not matter what has been found up to now. Fact is that we keep finding new things going on in the non-coding DNA on a daily basis. Your statement that this much or that much is garbage is total nonsense. You are arguing from scientific ignorance and everyday that scientific ignorance is being pushed away. In addition to which it really does not matter for my argument if the code is in 1% or 150% of the DNA. What matters is that such a program is certainly in effect, that such actions have been shown by scientists to be going on in the genome, and that such actions explain quite well how things which we know do happen - such as how a cell comes to be such and such a kind of cell, how the body changes from conception to death, how the body reacts to the environment and internal conditions take place occurs. So no, you are just blowing smoke and you cannot refute a single statement I have made with any scientific evidence.

1,632 posted on 06/23/2002 12:08:24 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: Doctor Stochastic
Your calculations are correct.

You can make all the correct calculations you want, if your premises are wrong, the result is wrong. Evolutionists claim that a slight difference in reproduction of a trait can make a man out of a bacteria. Yet they at the same time claim that a 50% less reproduction of a trait is inconsequential? Are you guys mad? Or are you guys such utterly desperate that now you are going to tell us the theory of evolution changed again in the last 15 seconds????

1,633 posted on 06/23/2002 12:16:43 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: Doctor Stochastic
This doesn't agree with quantum mechanics experimentally (at least not so far.)

And the important part of your statement in the above is 'so far'. Everything that is little known looks random. Until recently we thought that weather was pretty random. But nowadays we can follow how weather changes pretty well and know why things happen. We know very little about quantum mechanics yet, evidence is very hard to get. In fact the randomness may be due to our ignorance - we may be following a wrong path or a wrong hypothesis and thus the observed effects look random. It is way too soon to tell that this is an example of randomness in nature.

1,634 posted on 06/23/2002 12:22:08 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
Blue-skipping placemarker.
1,635 posted on 06/23/2002 4:07:22 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: PatrickHenry
Blue-skipping placemarker.

You're missing some of the fun, Patrick. When somebody blows one of gore's assertions totally and hopelessly out of the water, you know he isn't going to just acknowledge the correction. Remember whales and hippos? "Wildly elliptical?" 1720? The Line of Death? (Ooops! That was somebody else!)

Jennyp's 1616, supposedly rebutted by gore's 1631.

We have here the full-blown Holy-Warrior Syndrome brazen. "I'm caught out but by God nobody's going to make me see it."

1,636 posted on 06/23/2002 6:52:03 AM PDT by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
Little boy blue, come blow your horn ...

[Dunno why, but everytime I read his posts, this is what pops into mind]

1,637 posted on 06/23/2002 6:56:06 AM PDT by Junior
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To: gore3000
Randomness in quantum mechanics is of a different nature than randomness in weather. Weather is a macroscopic phenomenon and is at worst chaotic (at least according to Richardson back in the 1920's.) Trajectories with close starting points may separate exponentially in time. In practice, difficulty in measurement and the effects of local terrain are the major problems (on a two to three week basis.)

Quantum mechanics seems to be indeterministic at a fundamental level. There are widely applicable proofs (von Neumann, 1934) that wide classes of hidden-variable theories cannot explain the experiments. Experiments are continually being performed to look for a lack of indeterminism (Aspect's is the most famous.), but the quantum mechanics just rolls on. Complete knowledge of the state of a system doesn't lead to a deterministic outcome.

In weather, one gets indeterminacy by lack of knowledge of initial conditions. In quantum mechanics, one gets indeterminacy even with knowing initial conditions.
1,638 posted on 06/23/2002 7:54:33 AM PDT by Doctor Stochastic
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To: VadeRetro
Yes, let's have all the evolutionists call Jennyp's nonsense true. Repeat the lie again and again in the hopes that it will be believed. The transfer of a new gene has only a 50% chance of occurring - at each and every reproduction. The chance of regular alleles - the rest of the genome has 100% chance of occurring. Because of this differential, a new duplicated gene will almost certainly, barring an almost miraculous occurrence, dissappear from the species in just a few reproductions because there is no other gene in other members of the species to help insure its remaining in the species. You know this, and you are being completely dishonest in denying it, but then, dishonesty is nothing new with you.

In fact, the whole theory of evolution is based on the higher reproductive ability of favorable genes. On the ability of some new genes to perhaps give an individual a slight reproductive advantage. Evolutionists contend that this slight reproductive advantage will insure that eventually the whole species will carry this favorable gene. Now they say this about slight advantages. The disadvantage at which a new mutated gene is at is a huge one. It has only a 50% chance of being reproduced. Clearly you and other evolutionists know darned well that this is an insurmountable problem for your theory. You and fellow evolutionists know that this is such a humongous contradiction to evolutionary theory that you must lie, cheat, insult, try to confuse the situation and do any despicable thing you can think of to deny it.

1,639 posted on 06/23/2002 8:14:25 AM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
Blue-skipping placemarker.

Yes, continue to blind yourself to the truth, it is the only way to continue to hold on to your faith in your materialistic/atheistic evolution theory.

1,640 posted on 06/23/2002 8:17:46 AM PDT by gore3000
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