Another win for evolution
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I guess I don't quite follow your line of logic. You are comparing my views to the Catholic Church's dogmatic insistence of a geo-centric solar system. Yet, I'm the one arguing for observation over dogma, which puts me much closer to Galileo. You respond that, "observation is often flawed or incomplete", which is something you can easily imagine the Catholic Church saying to Galileo. I'm actually quite surprised by the role reversal you've done here. Shog9 wrote: Why build your beliefs on such an unsteady foundation? Unsteady foundation? I'm not sure what you mean. Perhaps you should read this article[^]. I've had it sitting around on my computer for months. I finally got around to publishing it. Sorry if there are broken links or mistakes. I'm not sure if everything is exactly right. Shog9 wrote: Many have believed in a Creator prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding DNA, and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful. Not useful? I shouldn't change my views based on new information? For some reason your words sound an awful lot like, "Many have believed in a [geocentric solar system] prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding [apparent motions of the planets], and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful." ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
Brit wrote: I guess I don't quite follow your line of logic. No worries. In long threads, i don't always bother to read previous posts before replying, so things get disjointed after a bit. The point i've been trying to make (and probably only came close to with my initial post) is simply this: History has shown that, at a certain time, a certain person may be unable to find a purpose for X. This does not mean that a purpose will never be found, but such a hypothesis can prove useful (optimizing research into a system) provided it is not taken as absolute Truth (preventing further study). I feel it likely that you agree with me on this. So, moving on to what seemed to be the focus of your original post... I answered my door a few weeks ago to a group of evangelizing Mormons. We spoke for a short while, after which they gave me a small book and left. Being bored at the time, i sat and skimmed through the book... I would like to say something good about it, but honestly cannot - it was terrible. And the reason was the sort of argument argued against at the beginning of this thread - that proof of a Creator lies in the existence... or non-existence... of Something Specific. Think about it: if i believe that the universe and everything in it was created by God, there should be just as much "evidence" of this for me in opening my eyes each morning as there is in calculating that the position of the earth IRT the sun is optimal for life. But, the flip side of this is also true: if i believe that the universe and everything in it came into being as a result of essentially random occurrences, there should be just as much evidence of this in the flip of a coin as in the evidence of junk DNA. Understand? The Church would have had no worries IRT the heliocentric system, if they hadn't tried to rely on something beyond faith for their beliefs. But foolishly they did, and thus looked like fools as understanding changed.
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K(arl) wrote: You seem to connect the evolutionnary theory with the belief in God. I don't see where there's a relation in between. It is possible to believe in both God and evolution, but that means not taking the Bible literally. Many Christians believe in taking the Bible literally and hence, for them, belief in God and evolution are incompatible (as I am sure you are aware). Once belief in the literal truth of the Bible is abandoned, the question arises as to what in the Bible you can believe and why. K(arl) wrote: As for your point #2, I don't understand what it has to do with the theory of evolution. I don't understand what you don't understand. Both points bear on the question of the relative merits of alternative hypotheses: naturalistic processes versus divinely directed processes. K(arl) wrote: Also, the concept of "apparent rationale" seems very disputable to me, it's like saying there's only one way to make a program to do a task. IMHO, according to the point of view, there may be many ways to program something fulfilling the task asked. I think you are being deliberately obtuse. Of course there may be different ways of accomplishing the same thing, but some of those ways will typically seem very inefficient or ineffective. Do you write programs with vast amounts of code that do nothing? If you did, wouldn't any observer say that all this code had no apparent rationale? The junk DNA thing is just one example. Biologists can give other examples of "design flaws". The more fundamental point is this. Either you are prepared to specify what the world should look like if created by God or you are not. Those that have been prepared to specify what the world should look like typically say that the world should look "designed" and claim to be able to see design in the world. For logical consistency, they should face up to cases where features seem contrary to good design. If they are not prepared to do this, then the whole claim to see evidence for the existence of God in the facts of the world is a fraud. You apparently don't make that claim, but many others do. K(arl) wrote: Belief?? Evolutionnism isn't a religion, right? As you say, it's a scientific theory, so it isn't a matter of believing in it or not. You seem to be using "belief" in a strange way. I believe that Washington is the capital of the United States. That doesn't make it religion. John Carson
John Carson wrote: It is possible to believe in both God and evolution, but that means not taking the Bible literally. Absolutely. That's what I said at first[^] :) John Carson wrote: I don't understand what you don't understand Hihi. We should try in French then ;P IMO, there's no relation with this theory and the belief in God. John Carson wrote: I think you are being deliberately obtuse Nice. John Carson wrote: Biologists can give other examples of "design flaws". What I say there is that it is being very pretentious to claim these examples are "design flaws", because it would be considering the current state of evolution as the final one. About the junk DNA, who can say if a mutation on these currently unused genes won't lead to a new species in the future, more adapted? This DNA may be junk for now, but you can't say more. Also, these junk DNA may have had a use before, without it at first would be mice mice? John Carson wrote: Do you write programs with vast amounts of code that do nothing? Don't you write sometimes "useless" code because of criteria like maintainability? Or compatibility? John Carson wrote: I believe that Washington is the capital of the United States I know that Washington DC is the capital of the United States. For me, "believe" is "To accept something as true, or possibly true without firm evidence", there's a part of irrationality in it. I make a difference between knowledge and belief.
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"
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John Carson wrote: It is possible to believe in both God and evolution, but that means not taking the Bible literally. Absolutely. That's what I said at first[^] :) John Carson wrote: I don't understand what you don't understand Hihi. We should try in French then ;P IMO, there's no relation with this theory and the belief in God. John Carson wrote: I think you are being deliberately obtuse Nice. John Carson wrote: Biologists can give other examples of "design flaws". What I say there is that it is being very pretentious to claim these examples are "design flaws", because it would be considering the current state of evolution as the final one. About the junk DNA, who can say if a mutation on these currently unused genes won't lead to a new species in the future, more adapted? This DNA may be junk for now, but you can't say more. Also, these junk DNA may have had a use before, without it at first would be mice mice? John Carson wrote: Do you write programs with vast amounts of code that do nothing? Don't you write sometimes "useless" code because of criteria like maintainability? Or compatibility? John Carson wrote: I believe that Washington is the capital of the United States I know that Washington DC is the capital of the United States. For me, "believe" is "To accept something as true, or possibly true without firm evidence", there's a part of irrationality in it. I make a difference between knowledge and belief.
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"
K(arl) wrote: What I say there is that it is being very pretentious to claim these examples are "design flaws", because it would be considering the current state of evolution as the final one. About the junk DNA, who can say if a mutation on these currently unused genes won't lead to a new species in the future, more adapted? This DNA may be junk for now, but you can't say more. Also, these junk DNA may have had a use before, without it at first would be mice mice? Whether something is a design flaw must be assessed on the basis of available evidence and, as with all science, conclusions may be revised in light of new evidence or new understandings of existing evidence. That doesn't mean we can't tentatively draw reasonable conclusions where the available evidence seems to support them. Junk DNA may have a future use --- or may not. I would hazard a guess that many species that went extinct in the last 100 years had junk DNA that found no future use. As for having a past use, this seems to me to be a straight concession to the evolutionary viewpoint that existing organisms display non-functional legacies of their evolutionary history. K(arl) wrote: Don't you write sometimes "useless" code because of criteria like maintainability? Or compatibility? I don't know about "useless" code. I may write code that is less efficient than it would have been without those other considerations. However, I don't think that is relevant since I am not God and hence am subject to limitations and constraints that God (as commonly understood) is not subject to. John Carson
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I haven't read all of the messages in this thread yet so you may have covered this already. Think "code reuse." When you reuse a class, you don't delete the unneeded methods and variables, you just don't use them.
"Live long and prosper." - Spock
Jason Henderson
blogJason Henderson wrote: Think "code reuse." When you reuse a class, you don't delete the unneeded methods and variables, you just don't use them. A good optimising compiler will not include unused methods in its binary output. I would hope that God was at least as efficient as Microsoft. Rather more efficient in fact. Of course, as I have remarked elsewhere in this thread, if you adopt the view that, whatever the facts reveal, "God chose to make it that way", then no fact can dent your position. On the other hand, no fact can support it either since your position is simply independent of the facts. John Carson
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I love it when people use shifting views in science as evidence that science is flawed, whereas in reality it is proof that science works. Religious views (such as creationism) are seen as immutable, and therefore people try to change the facts to support the conclusion. Scientific theories change in the face of new evidence; in other words, the conclusions change based on known facts. I will take the latter, thank you.
I love it when people misinterpret what i write so that they can make smug comments... no, wait, i hate that.
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K(arl) wrote: What I say there is that it is being very pretentious to claim these examples are "design flaws", because it would be considering the current state of evolution as the final one. About the junk DNA, who can say if a mutation on these currently unused genes won't lead to a new species in the future, more adapted? This DNA may be junk for now, but you can't say more. Also, these junk DNA may have had a use before, without it at first would be mice mice? Whether something is a design flaw must be assessed on the basis of available evidence and, as with all science, conclusions may be revised in light of new evidence or new understandings of existing evidence. That doesn't mean we can't tentatively draw reasonable conclusions where the available evidence seems to support them. Junk DNA may have a future use --- or may not. I would hazard a guess that many species that went extinct in the last 100 years had junk DNA that found no future use. As for having a past use, this seems to me to be a straight concession to the evolutionary viewpoint that existing organisms display non-functional legacies of their evolutionary history. K(arl) wrote: Don't you write sometimes "useless" code because of criteria like maintainability? Or compatibility? I don't know about "useless" code. I may write code that is less efficient than it would have been without those other considerations. However, I don't think that is relevant since I am not God and hence am subject to limitations and constraints that God (as commonly understood) is not subject to. John Carson
So to sum up, we globally agree :-D
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"
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Brit wrote: That the genome has mutated in the past few thousand years to the point that it can no longer do the job that it used to do thousands of years ago? Basically, yes. However, that is assuming that "junk DNA" really exists. The nature of mutations is to cause deterioration. Along with that, our limited knowledge of DNA shows us that DNA has mechanisms for repairing itself as well as handling unusual situations. If a mutation took place in a key location that effectively "turned off" several other areas, that one mutation could be responsible for a relatively large area of "junk DNA". At any rate, once more evidence is discovered, the whole concept of "junk DNA" could possibly be thrown out the window. We've been through a similar situation before, where evolutionists used "vestigial" organs as evidence. We know now that all of our human organs are actually useful. I suspect that the same will be true of these sections of DNA, but my beliefs are compatible with either finding. THIS is why your claim of a "win" is rather meaningless. When the other side can explain the same things, too. What have you won? John
"You said a whole sentence with no words in it, and I understood you!" -- my wife as she cries about slowly becoming a geek.John Fisher wrote: That the genome has mutated in the past few thousand years to the point that it can no longer do the job that it used to do thousands of years ago? Basically, yes. However, that is assuming that "junk DNA" really exists. The nature of mutations is to cause deterioration. Just as a quick comment: if mutations lead to their deterioration then we would expect to find working versions in some members of the species and nonworking versions in other members of the species. I base this on the fact that mutations happen in individuals and those mutations would not spread to the entire population within a few thousand years (there isn't enough generations and inbreeding for that). The result of this is that some working version would probably still be around - or at least - different people would have different varieties of brokenness. But, most people have the same versions of "junk DNA". That's not to say that there aren't variations, too. If most everyone has the same version of the "junk DNA" then either the mutation happened very early in creationist history, or the DNA looks pretty much the same as it did originally. In the end, I don't think there's a convincing argument that "junk DNA" has changed much since "creation". (Unfortunately, I have no concrete numbers to show you.) Getting back to an earlier comment about finding "proof" for evolution: I'm never quite sure what would constitute "proof" for evolution. "Proof" would mean that there are no alternative hypothesis that can explain what we see. But, the creationist hypothesis is "God". God is an all-powerful being who can do anything. So, for any phenomena I could ever find, can I say, "Evolution is the ONLY method by which this could have happened"? Well, no, because an all powerful God could do anything. Which means I always have to say, "Evolution would explain this phenomena quite well. Of course, an all-powerful God could also do it." To illustrate this point, I could say, "Abraham Lincoln existed." But, then I have to pause and say, "Of course, an all-powerful God could've created the earth in the year 1900 and given everyone existing memories - as if the 18th century actually existed. Under that hypothesis, Abraham Lincoln did not actually exist, but I was lead to believe that he did because an all-powerful God created the evidence on which I base my belief." God is an "explains everything" hypothesis. That's why evolution can never "prove" that God couldn't have done something.
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brianwelsch wrote: Perhaps this "junk DNA" is just FILLER inside a fixed length record. Not sure how seriously this was intended, but: If you remove the filler from computer memory (i.e., don't allocate memory for filler), then the program will malfunction. Thus, using your analogy, the removal of junk DNA should cause damage, precisely the opposite of what was found (I agree that we should be cautious before accepting the conclusion that the removal of the DNA had no effect; some bugs only manifest themselves in very specific contexts). John Carson
Good point, it was a poor analogy when you get down to it. But the point, as stated above is more that I was trying to think beyond "it's removal has no discernable effect and so it is likely useless". Tough crowd. :sigh: ;) BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
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John Fisher wrote: That the genome has mutated in the past few thousand years to the point that it can no longer do the job that it used to do thousands of years ago? Basically, yes. However, that is assuming that "junk DNA" really exists. The nature of mutations is to cause deterioration. Just as a quick comment: if mutations lead to their deterioration then we would expect to find working versions in some members of the species and nonworking versions in other members of the species. I base this on the fact that mutations happen in individuals and those mutations would not spread to the entire population within a few thousand years (there isn't enough generations and inbreeding for that). The result of this is that some working version would probably still be around - or at least - different people would have different varieties of brokenness. But, most people have the same versions of "junk DNA". That's not to say that there aren't variations, too. If most everyone has the same version of the "junk DNA" then either the mutation happened very early in creationist history, or the DNA looks pretty much the same as it did originally. In the end, I don't think there's a convincing argument that "junk DNA" has changed much since "creation". (Unfortunately, I have no concrete numbers to show you.) Getting back to an earlier comment about finding "proof" for evolution: I'm never quite sure what would constitute "proof" for evolution. "Proof" would mean that there are no alternative hypothesis that can explain what we see. But, the creationist hypothesis is "God". God is an all-powerful being who can do anything. So, for any phenomena I could ever find, can I say, "Evolution is the ONLY method by which this could have happened"? Well, no, because an all powerful God could do anything. Which means I always have to say, "Evolution would explain this phenomena quite well. Of course, an all-powerful God could also do it." To illustrate this point, I could say, "Abraham Lincoln existed." But, then I have to pause and say, "Of course, an all-powerful God could've created the earth in the year 1900 and given everyone existing memories - as if the 18th century actually existed. Under that hypothesis, Abraham Lincoln did not actually exist, but I was lead to believe that he did because an all-powerful God created the evidence on which I base my belief." God is an "explains everything" hypothesis. That's why evolution can never "prove" that God couldn't have done something.
Brit wrote: different people would have different varieties of brokenness. But, most people have the same versions of "junk DNA". The "junk DNA" argument is already somewhat shaky, but now you are extrapolating from possible junk DNA in mice (with high breeding rates) to assuming that there is also junk DNA in humans. It is a rather flimsy line of reasoning. Brit wrote: The one caveat in this is that evolution can show that things happened in a way that does not match how we would expect God to act. You came very close to the correct thinking behind creationism, but obviously don't believe that creationists follow any sort of reasonable thought processes. To understand a creationist viewpoint, you'll have to give up the idea that they can simply say "God did it" about anything they can't explain. In fact, a role-reversal would have you saying that evolutionists simply say something like "Time did it" whenever they come across something they are currently unable to explain. A proper creationist line of reasoning is, "God told us things about creating the world, and He told us some unusual things that He did later. God explains that He is orderly and created His world in an orderly fashion. A miracle is something unusual that we can't simply propose for lack of another explanation." In fact, this type of thinking is the foundation of modern science -- that the universe will behave in a consistent fashion, allowing repeatable experiments to provide empirical evidence. Without the belief in a stable physical system, we would not have modern scienctific study. Brit wrote: BTW, I just published a group of articles on evolution. You mentioned that you were working on this the last time we had a discussion. Have you addressed the R.A.T.E. group's article that I showed you, yet? It has evidence that shows decay rates and half-life elements existing in amounts that directly contradict evolutionist theories. When we last talked, you mentioned that you only read the first little bit, and it sounded like you discounted the information before reading it. John
"You said a whole sentence with no words in it, and I understood you!" -- my wife as she cries about slowly becoming a geek. -
In the creation-vs-evolution debate, the evolutionists have been saying that the large existence of "junk DNA" is evidence that our genomes were created through the process of mutation and selection rather than divine fiat. A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all. "Junk DNA" as it is called, refers to the large sections of DNA which exists between genes and doesn't code for proteins or play a role in promoting genes. It's estimated that something like 98% of human DNA is "junk". Creationists have retorted that maybe we just don't know what the "junk DNA" does - just because we don't know what role it plays doesn't mean it plays no role whatsoever - thus the evolutionists assignment of "junk" is speculative. Looks like someone cooked up an experiment which involved removing large portions of this junk DNA from mice. They removed a large section of the mouse's DNA and checked to see the removal of this "junk DNA" had any effect on the organism. The apparent answer is "no". Which makes it a win for evolutionists who say "junk DNA" really is junk DNA. Through molecular techniques, a total of 2.3 million letters of DNA code from the 2.7-billion-base-pair mouse genome were deleted. To do this, embryonic cells were genetically engineered to contain the newly compact mouse genome. Mice were subsequently generated from these stem cells. The research team then compared the resulting mice with the abridged genome to mice with the full-length version. A variety of features were analyzed, ranging from viability, growth, and longevity to numerous other biochemical and molecular features. Despite the researchers' efforts to detect differences in the mice with the abridged genome, none were found. "By and large, these deletions were tolerated and didn't result in any noticeable changes," said Nóbrega. ... The negligible impact of removing these sequences suggests that the mammalian genome may not be densely encoded. Similar-sized regions have previously been removed from the mouse genome, invariably resulting in mice that did not survive, because the missing sequences contained important genes and their deletion had severe consequences for the animal. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/dgi-mtd101504.php[^] [Edit] I'd also recommend