>> ^Velocity5:

@BicycleRepairMan
Science isn't 100% or nothing. Creating someone who is 95% neanderthal would still be scientifically useful.


Well, thats not really how genes, genomes and sequencing works. You can sequence a genome 100% , but the accuracy might not be perfect, then you can sequence bits and peices to determine familiarity etc and that might be close to 100% in accuracy. The point is that just because someone says "we have sequenced the Neanderthal genome" that doesnt have to mean that that sequencing is even remotely useable as a cloning template or whatever.

And you cant just make a "95% neanderthal" and expect it to be "almost neanderthal".

The devil, or neanderthal in this case, is in the details, and what we have to work with, regardless of future technology is degraded bits of DNA thats tens of thousands of years old. Again, think about it like a video in recorded in low quality, its not going to be HD just because you have a fancy computer.

I googled this stuff to see if my skepticism was warranted: Here is a quote from one of the people who actually did the sequencing (taken from Wikipedia):

In February 2009, the Max Planck Institute's team, led by geneticist Svante Pääbo, announced that they had completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome[3] An early analysis of the data suggested in "the genome of Neanderthals, a human species driven to extinction" "no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in modern humans".[17] New results suggested that some adult Neanderthals were lactose intolerant.[14] On the question of potentially cloning a Neanderthal, Pääbo commented, "Starting from the DNA extracted from a fossil, it is and will remain impossible."

So there you have it. Naku is, once again, talking shit, and should stick to his own field of study.

I have a bit of an issue with Dr.Naku and his musings about biology, especially after seeing him butcher and mangle the theory of evolution and say that humans have "by-and-large" stopped evolving. Which is bullshit. (http://bigthink.com/ideas/26647)

I'm sure Dr.Naku is an excellent theoretical physicist, but he has shown that he doesnt really master biology all that well. I have a feeling he does the same thing here. There are all sorts of problems that might not be solvable here. Animals are more, biologically speaking, than a DNA "recipe" that you can simply "put into an egg", there are all sorts of evo-devo that comes in to complicate this tremendously. It is not at all clear that simply sequencing a genome (assumming its a complete and 100% accurate sequencing, which I'm pretty sure it isnt for the neanderthal and mammoth) that comes into play here. In other words, the limitation might not be our technology. Its a bit like the zoom-in-and-enhance-it problem you have in Hollywood movies. it doesnt matter if you have a billion-dollar computer from the year 4350 if the original recording is an old VHS tape of a CCTV recording.

that lamp genome generator looked cool.

It doesn't follow, though. The evidence that proves micro-evolution does not prove universal common descent. The evidence for micro-evolution would be evidence for macro-evolution if it could also prove UCD. It is one thing to say species change, or even that they can change into other species. It is quite a different thing to say that all species evolved from a common ancestor. That goes far beyond what you can prove scientifically.

This also is not about drawing an imaginary line about how much change can occur; it has to do with the amount of information in the genome. For bacteria to man evolution, a significant amount of information has to be added to the genome. The information in the bacteria genome, no matter how you shuffle it around, will never produce anything more significantly complex than itself. So then the question is, how does this information get added to the genome? Many people at this point will say "mutations!", but the problem with that is, we have never seen a mutation give rise to an increase in functional complexity. If they do, they are so compartively rare as to completely invalidate evolution as a theory. There simply wouldn't be enough time to account for the millions of changes required.


As the main mechanism for adding information into the genome, you would think that there would be clear evidence to support its actually happening..but you would be wrong:



So these are a few reasons why I do not buy into the evolutionary paradigm. The way it is presented to the public is as a proven fact, but when you start analysing the data and not just listening to the conclusions, you find a giant mess with no clear answers. You also find a chorus of true believers who just know its true and interpret all of the data through the conclusion. They see everything through those glasses and thus that is the way everything looks to them.
In reply to this comment by GenjiKilpatrick:
How do you reconcile accepting the science that substantiates micro-evolution.. but disregarding the SAME SCIENCE that substantiates macro-evolution.

It's sorta like if I said: "I accept the evidence for the divinity of Jesus. But I refuse to accept that Yahweh exists"

If it follows that: Divinty of Jesus = Divinity of Yahweh.

Then it must follow that: Evidence of Micro-evolution = Evidence of Macro-evolution.

How do you reconcile this without talking in circles?

I don't have time to waste on your ignorance any more, but just a few quick rebuttals should be sufficient to discredit your credibility.

First off, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by this abstract:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

Quote: "Morphologists achieved much during that time, and none of their well supported phylogenies is overthrown by molecular data. So far, molecular sequences have contributed most significantly in areas where morphological data are inconclusive, deficient, nonexistent or poorly analyzed."

If anything it supports my point, but there are better sources out there. Which is why I chose to limit my literature sources to those that were at least after the year 2000. Why, you ask? Because the first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995, about two years after that article. We've learned a lot since then, though, according to that abstract, even then they understood that molecular systematics were capable of elucidating many areas of the fossil record we didn't understand. Just read to the end of it.

I knew you would jump on the whole part where I conceded that it is not absolute agreement. Look, I took 30 seconds to write a sarcastic response on an internet forum. So what that I didn't bother to delve into the nuances of consensus trees and whatnot. Argue with the damn articles, not me.

You also just ignore it when I say that the fact that junk DNA has a function has nothing to do with it's evolutionary relevance and continue to claim otherwise without giving a reason. It is the relative mutation rates, not the functionality - maybe you didn't catch that the first time around.

Yada yada yada, I've got better things to do. Anyone who reads this little exchange can see your evident dishonesty and unwarranted extrapolation and that's all that matters. Because if someone is willing to plug their ears and yell loudly whenever something contradicts absolutely held beliefs like you are clearly willing to do, then there will be no convincing. This exchange is for those who are on the fence, and you're little display of anti-intellectualism speaks for itself even without all the scientific proof.

And trust me, I was a Christian. I was deriding salvation by grace as an arbitrary thing, doesn't mean I don't understand what you guys think.

"Ok, you need to understand two different concepts........the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality.....supposedly bring down evolution."

Minor disagreements? I'm having a hard time believing that you've seriously investigated this subject if you are now claiming (scaled back from your prior claim of perfect agreement between "scores" of them) that molecular and morphological phylogonies typically have a high level of agreement. They don't. Agreement is the exception, not the rule. Even worse, molecular phylogonies don't agree with eachother either:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology. . . .

Partly because of morphology’s long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published (e.g. 132, 152, 170), structure or resolution tends to evaporate

Congruence Between Molecular and Morphological Phylogenies

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

"If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference"

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution""

Your charge of quote mining is false. Quote mining is the logical fallacy of quoting something out of context, distorting its intended meaning. The quote I provided was very much in context, and showed support for the assertion that molecular and morphological phylogenies do not have "perfect" agreement, and now I have further supported that assertion (and disproven your scaled back claim of very statistically significant agreement) that their agreement is actually very superficial. It is far more significant how little agreement there actually is.

The very reason there is a contention about which is the "best" method is precisely because there is so little agreement. In any case, molecular homology appears to be winning the battle, perhaps because the evolutionists are getting tired of never finding any evolution in the fossil record.

Which brings us to the many issues with molecular homologies, specifically, their lack of falsifiability:

"We believe that it is possible to draw up a list of basic rules that underlie existing molecular evolutionary models:

All theories are monophyletic, meaning that they all start with the Urgene and the Urzelle which have given rise to all proteins and all species, respectively.

Complexity evolves mainly through duplications and mutations in structural and control genes.

Genes can mutate or remain stable, migrate laterally from species to species, spread through a population by mechanisms whose operation is not fully understood, evolve coordinately, splice, stay silent, and exist as pseudogenes.

Ad hoc arguments can be invented (such as insect vectors or viruses) that can transport a gene into places where no monophyletic logic could otherwise explain its presence.

This liberal spread of rules, each of which can be observed in use by scientists, does not just sound facetious but also, in our opinion, robs monophyletic evolution of its vulnerability to disproof, and thereby its entitlement to the status of a scientific theory.

The absolute, explicit and implicit, adherence to all the monophyletic principle and consequently the decision to interpret all observations in the light of this principle is the major cause of incongruities as well as for the invention of all the genetic sidestepping rules cited above."

A Polyphyletic View of Evolution

Schwabe and Warr

This is why Schwabe, a biochemist, wrote:

Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many, in fact, that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message

It's a shell game where virtually any kind of data can be accomodated, and at no point is the theory questioned. Ad hoc explanations can be invented for any kind of discrepency.

""There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.""

A mountain of weak, circumstantial evidence (much of which contradicts itself) does not prove macro evolution. "We're working on it" does not somehow validate that evidence. We know the holocaust happened; there is no proof for macro evolution.

""As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.""

There are numerous sources showing that junk dna is not junk:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/28/1103894108.full.pdf+html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025112059.htm

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/transposons-or-jumping-genes-not-junk-dna-1211

Based on your earlier argument, "we're working on it", you should realize that what some scientists consider to be junk dna stems entirely from ignorance. The idea that it got in there by "viral dna insertions" and the like is simply another ad hoc explanation among many.

""And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on""

I have already demonstrated that the consensus is very weak. What you need to provide is data backing up your claims regarding cytochrome c. I am awaiting the "scores" of phylogonies that will match that data.

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:

Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

@shinyblurry - No, yours is and here's why:


Ok, you need to understand two different concepts. The first, is the notion that science is constantly refining itself. It is never 100% correct, and there is near constant debate about what is the best method of determining something to be factual. In this case, we're talking about whether molecular systematics or morphological characteristics are the most accurate means of determining phylogeny. The second is the notion of statistical significance. Now I'll admit that in saying that they "coincide perfectly," I failed to adhere to a more accurate and rigorous description of what is actually happening, so I'll rectify that now. The correlation between the different trees constructed by different fields within biology have an extremely statistically significant amount of correlation. This means that while we can expect disagreement and there will be debate about the best method to refine the results, the odds of getting so much similarity by accident is exceedingly small.

So in light of this reality where science is never 100% correct and there is a constant debate over the relative effectiveness of varying methods of phylogenetic determination, there will be a huge excess of material for you to quote mine in an effort to distort the significance of the minor disagreements that are common in science to a scale that can supposedly bring down evolution.

If only you were a bit better at it. Even the quotes you chose to mine serve to undermine your point. I think my point can be summarized by the following quote from your reference:

“On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the BEST way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history.”

The relevant part here is the word “best.” These people are clearly just trying to decide what the most accurate method of phylogenetic determination is and this article represents nothing more than a discussion of one of the many battles that go on in the constant refinement of science. And this disagreement does nothing at all to disprove evolution.

There are analogous debates going on in nearly all branches of academic study. Taking an example with fewer existential implications for religion, look towards the Holocaust. There is an ongoing effort by Yad Va Shem, a jewish organization, to catalogue all those who died under the Nazi regime as well as those who aided jews in various ways (http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/hall_of_names.asp). Now at the moment they have verified only three million names and something like 24000 people who helped, and details on each vary. But wait, oh no! We all know that there were roughly six million victims! And we don’t even have complete information about the paltry three million we’ve catalogued. Does this mean that the Holocaust did not happen? Of course it doesn’t. You need to take the internal debate in context and realize that the total sum of evidence is overwhelming. Creationists, however, can not be so objective with such a threatening theory as evolution.

As for your junk DNA article, you similarly blow the relevance way out of proportion. Here’s the last sentence from the text that summarizes the relevance of the article:

“The present study suggests that some selfish DNA transposons can instead confer an important role to their hosts, thereby establishing themselves as long-term residents of the genome.”

Here it states simply that some of the junk DNA, not all of it, can become useful to the cell. This sentence proves you wrong in two ways. First, it admits that they have only found a few instances of utility for this junk DNA, which is a far cry from the evidence that would be necessary for the slow death you speak of. Second, the acknowledges that this as an instance of Junk DNA incorporating itself into the genome and taking on novel and useful roles. In other words, evolution!

The genome is huge and nowhere in biology does it say that all of the DNA we have designated as junk is most certainly junk. Again, this is just another example of incrementally refining our understanding about how things work, but it is not revolutionary and it still demonstrates a clear framework.

And regardless or whether or not your article shows that a lot of Junk DNA has function (which is common knowledge, by the way), it does not at all disprove the fact that junk DNA shows typically exhibits much higher rates of mutation because its specific sequence is less rigidly constrained than coding DNA (http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v12/n11/full/nrg3098.html?WT.ec_id=NRG-201111). It is not a complete lack of function that demonstrates evolution, but simply a higher rate of mutation that results in sequences that will be more varied the more distantly related two species are.

And finally, read these articles if you want a more complete understanding about how the comparisons between phylogenetic trees are indeed imperfect, but well supported and constantly refined:

http://cmgm.stanford.edu/phylip/consense.html
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/cplite/ch4.pdf
http://www.mathnet.or.kr/mathnet/paper_file/McGill/Bryant/03ConsensusAMS.pdf
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/10/423
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/12/1556.full

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these articles detailing what is essentially a whole, distinct area of study. Just search the term “consensus trees” and you’ll see what I mean.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=onhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=consensus+trees&hl=en
&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on

>> ^shveddy:
@HadouKen24 - All that you say is very dandy and very well may be true, but you'd be shocked at how widespread it is to cling to 19th century literalist beliefs. I'm not sure what country you're from, but here in the US it's remarkably common and even presidential candidates manage to think it despite pursuing the most powerful office in the world. I grew up in a particular Christian denomination, one of hundreds, and we had an official statement of faith that stated the absolute, literal, inerrant nature of the bible. This particular flavor of Christianity has about 3 million adherants, and again, this is only one of hundreds - many of which are even more conservative in their biblical interpretation.
When you say that it has been common for some time to regard sacred texts in a metaphorical sense I think that's definitely true, especially in the case of liberal theologians. However, when you take away the literal interpretations and leave interpretative metaphor all that remains is an interesting and influential piece of literature that has no specific authority. And I think this is a good thing. But the fact of the matter is that it lowers it to the same level as Moby Dick, Oedipus, Infinite Jest and Harry Potter - all of which are books that have interesting, moralistic metaphors just like the bible.
Let's face it, religion needs the teeth of absolute truth and the threat of moral superiority to have any privileged relevance over other interesting, moral works. I see neither in any of its texts.
@shinyblurry - Give me a non-macroevolutionary reason that junk mutations in Cytochrome C just happen follow a clear developing and branching pattern that just happens to coincide perfectly with those independently developed by scores of other disciplines (such as embryology, paleontology and so on) as well as those based on hundreds of other non-coding markers (such as viral DNA insertions and transposons, to name a few).
If you can give me an answer that can account for these coincidences, does so without macroevolution, and indicates that you actually took the time to understand the concepts I listed above, then I'll take the time to write a much more exhaustive response as to why you're wrong.


Hmm, your statement is littered with all sorts of inaccurate information.

Okay, first of all, this idea of "junk dna" is dying a slow death:

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/28/32C04/

Contrary to your assertion, so-called junk dna is functional. And the idea of viral DNA insertions is completely ruled out when this "random" DNA turns out not to be so random after all, and serving very specific purposes. The idea, created in ignorance, exists mainly as a fudge factor for the evolutionary paradigm. The problem for evolutionists is that natural selection cannot produce enough mutations to account for the millions it needs in the 300,000 generations it took for humans to evolve. It's a lot easier to come up those numbers when 95 percent of the genome is "junk".

Second, molecular and morphological phylogenies are often wildly divergent. This is from an Article in nature magazine subtitled:

"Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology. Can the two ever be reconciled, asks Trisha Gura"

"When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’, they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents. But the phrase could also be applied to a debate that is raging within systematics. On one side stand traditionalists who have built evolutionary trees from decades of work on species' morphological characteristics. On the other lie molecular systematists, who are convinced that comparisons of DNA and other biological molecules are the best way to unravel the secrets of evolutionary history. . . .

Battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life. Perhaps the most intense are in vertebrate systematics, where molecular biologists are challenging a tradition that relies on studies of fossil skeletons and the bones and soft tissue of living species. . . .

So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth. “Our method provides the final conclusion about phylogeny,” claims Okada. Shared ancestry means a genetic relationship, the molecular camp argues, so it must be better to analyse DNA and the proteins it encodes, rather than morphological characters that can end up looking similar as a result of convergent evolution in unrelated groups, rather than through common descent. But morphologists respond that convergence can also happen at the molecular level, and note there is a long history of systematists making large claims based on one new form of evidence, only to be proved wrong at a later date"

They are so divergent that two camps have emerged in systematics, each claiming their phylogenies are more accurate. So your claim that Cytochrome C matches "scores" of different phylogenies is patently false, since hardly any of them agree. If want to say that isn't true, please provide the evidence. Note that "scores" means at least 40.

Third, creation theory predicts a hierarchical pattern, so finding one isn't going to falsify creationism or prove common descent. Especially in the case of the phylogeny of Cytochrome C, which has no intermediates or transitionals to be found. You do also realize that a common design can be explained by a common designer? It could simply be the case that Cytochrome C was tailored for different groups according to individual specifications, which then diverged futher by mutations. If your response is that Cytochrome C functions the same way in all life, my response is that the differences could be for coding other proteins.

Before I go any further, I would ask you to support your claims. Show me the specific data you're talking about so I can rebut it.

>> ^messenger:
Someone who believes in something despite evidence against it is not using sense, reason and intellect. The Bible contradicts itself internally (contradictory lists of the "begats" is the clearest example I can think of), so cannot be accurate. If you believe the Bible is infallible, that isn't a reasonable belief. Some people "believing in a personal god" doesn't equate to "believing in Yahweh", which is your contention, so it doesn't matter if they're true or not. There's nothing unscientific about spirituality, and identifying some aspect of your spiritual experience a personal god. There's plenty unscientific about declaring the Bible to be infallible. Again with not understanding science.


If you're referring to the geneology of Jesus, it is presenting one geneology through David's son Solomon, which is the royal line, and one geneology through David's son Nathan, which is the non royal line. The lineage in Matthew is Josephs line, and the lineage in Luke is Marys line. There is no actual contradiction there, or anywhere else in the bible. What skeptics call contradictions are usually things they simply do not understand.

In any case, it would not be unreasonable to believe the bible, even if there were contradictions. This is simply a fallacious argument.

>> ^messenger:
The absence of circumstantial evidence where you might expect to find it is circumstantial evidence of absence. If the Bible were true, we would should expect, for example, that miracles would continue to occur, because why not? They should be even more commonly documented because of our massively increased population and information technology. But they appear to happen less! This is absence of circumstantial evidence. Amazing discoveries in science aren't evidence for God. God is one theory that explains them, but it doesn't work the other way -- you can't start with an amazing fact, and declare that it suggests all other theories are wrong. No matter what the universe looks like, it will still conform with the theory of God creating it, so amazing discoveries are not evidence -- they're just things we can't explain yet, like retrograde motion was once considered "amazing" and attributed to gods.)


Your contention is false for a few reasons; first, that miracles do not occur, and second, that we should expect to find an abundance of miracles. Not only have I seen miracles occur, I have been a party to them. As far as the number of miracles, we shouldn't expect to know how many miracles occur. God isn't performing for the general public. Even the post-resurrection appearances were only for a limited number of people.

We do have circumstantial evidence for Gods existence, such as the information in DNA and the evidence of fine-tuning. The theory of God has explanatory power, and is a better explanation for these phenomena. We should never ignore a theory which better explains the evidence.

>> ^messenger:
This where I start picturing you with your hands over your ears going LALALALALALA! Nothing rules out God's agency. Nothing rules out God period. He cannot be ruled out because there's nothing verifiable about his existence whatsoever. Nobody ever makes this claim, ever, ever, ever. It's like you wish we were saying this, but we're not. Really, we're not. BUT, if someone claims that their god has a chariot that moves the sun across the sky, I call bullshit because we have actually seen with our eyes that the Earth is spherical and rotates on its axis, which causes the apparent motion of the sun. If someone says the Earth is only a few thousand years old, I say bullshit and refer you to archaeology and to every branch of science that demonstrates the Earth to be much older.


It is the persistant claim of atheists that science has sufficiently described the Universe and is regulating God to a smaller and smaller corner. It's called the "god of the gaps" and you hear this all the time. You hear it from eminient scientists like Dr Krauss. So I don't wish it is being said, it is being said all the time.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are more evidences for a young earth than an old one. Since you don't know much about macro evolution, you probably don't know much about the theory of deep time either. Paleontology and archaelogy are historical sciences. The age of the earth is assumed, and the evidence is interpreted through that assumption. The assumption itself is never challenged.

>> ^messenger:
This is the least scientific thing you have ever said.


Messenger, you seem like a thoughtful person, so step outside of your box for a moment and think about this. The statement that "If God exists, the entire Universe is evidence of His existence" is a scientific statement of absolute fact. If it isn't, explain why not.

>> ^messenger:
You and I agreed before, no solipsism.


I engaged in no solipsism, as you will see, and I also thought we weren't going to be doing cherry picking either. I noticed you avoided these questions:

The question I would put to you is, how would you tell the difference? How would you know you're looking at a Universe God didn't create? What would you expect that to look like?

>> ^messenger:
You realize that you are using logic to prove that logic isn't real? "If-then" statements and implied questions come from logic. If logic doesn't stand on its own, then you can't use it to prove that it doesn't stand on its own. If you want to know where the rules of formal logic come from, you can look it up. If you don't accept them as valid, you've descended into solipsism, at which point I don't even accept that anything exists but my own mind. If you accept the definitions and rules of logic as valid on their face, then we don't require anything to explain where they came from. Logic is definitions, like equality. a=a. How do I know this? It's the definition of equality. If you disagree, then words have no definition, and thus no meaning, and we also agreed that "words have meaning".


I am not using logic to disprove logic, I am using logic to show you that you don't have a foundation for your own rationality. You live your life as if logic is a transcendent and absolute law, the same way as you do right and wrong, but you can't account for it in your worldview. It's a bit like sitting in Gods lap to slap His face. If logic doesn't have the same value independent of human belief, then you have no basis for your own rationality. Words do have meaning, which is why I am pointing out you have some intellectual sinkholes in your worldview that you just accept without thinking about it.

>> ^messenger:
Also, as your argument goes, if you assert that logic is a creation, and that God created logic, this entails that God exists outside of logic. Interesting prediction.


I didn't say God created logic, I said He is a rational being. Since we are made in His image, we are also rational beings.

>> ^messenger:
No, I wouldn't, necessarily. That's one field of science that I know very little about. If you've read a single book about it, you know more than me. That' doesn't mean you understand better than me how science works in general.


It doesn't mean that, no, but it does mean that you spoke authoritatively and condescendingly about something that I actually know more about than you do, jumping to conclusions based on your misunderstanding of what I said, that on a lack of knowledge about the theory itself. I would say this is positive evidence in my favor, and negative evidence against you.

>> ^messenger:
But since you bring it up, the theory of macro evolution may or may not be weak, I don't know, but outdated quotes from Darwin and about Darwin about the impossibility of macro evolution don't convince me any more than outdated quotes from Newton about the impossibility of the Solar System holding together. Do you know what Newton concluded? He concluded it must be God holding it together. Einstein figured out why it really doesn't fly apart, and it wasn't because of God.


They aren't outdated quotes, they are predictions that were made about what we should expect to find if the theory is true. Darwin made a great discovery, that changes can occur within a species. From there, he made an unjustified extrapolation that all species had a common ancestor. He expected to find evidence for this theory in the fossil record, but what he found was evidence against his theory. He blamed this on the relative poverty of the fossil record. 120 years later, we know it isn't the poverty of the fossil record; there simply is no fossil evidence to confirm macro evolution.

Do you know what a gluon is? It is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that binds quarks together. It has never been observed; it is simply a fudge factor, and without it, atoms would fly apart. Scripture says God is upholding them.

>> ^messenger:
Likewise, the problem of the lack of fossil records has been resolved since Darwin's time. The fossil evidence of intermediary links isn't a problem with the fossil evidence: it's a problem with Darwin's model. Darwin believed all evolution happened gradually, as he had observed. But there's no reason to believe it must all be slow. If one species had some tiny mutation that happened to give it a massive advantage over other species, its descendants would naturally spread into all sorts of new niches and tons of evolution would take place, both for it and other animals in its environment. Again, these changes were very rapid, so rapid, that they may not have left fossil evidence. Sometimes they did and other times they didn't, or we haven't found it yet. Check this video out: It's mostly a rebuttal to the "God is not a blind watchmaker" argument for Intelligent Design, but you can skip to 1:33 and still understand the premise. If you watch until 8:42, you'll see the reason why we wouldn't expect to find fossils of intermediary links, and why this isn't an argument against macro evolution anymore.


You're talking about the theory of punctuated equillibrium, or the modern "hopeful monster" theory. This is one of my favorite quotes:

In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had been previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.'

Gould & Eldredge
Paleobiology v.3 p.136


It's the theory to explain why there is no evidence for evolution. How convenient. Do you realize that this makes macro evolution unfalsifiable? It also makes macro evolution a metaphysical theory, like abiogenesis, which you must take on faith. The video you referenced is not an accurate demonstration of macro evolution, either, since nothing is being added to the genome. A reconfiguration of the same genetic material is not traversing above the species level and is therefore micro evolution.

Since you're never read a book on macro evolution, try this one and challenge yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890510628/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

>> ^Contagion21:

>> ^Payback:
Complaint about title, DAWs have to die to win. Merely coming close is just an Honorable Mention.

The techinical qualifications are a bit nebulous. Can you only remove yourself from the "[collective] human genome" by death? Or is it sufficient to steralize yourself and ensure you leave no progeny?
The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of
the human genome by honoring those who
accidentally remove themselves from it...
Though, in this case you're correct either way, I'm just being pedantic.


yes, actually. the qualifications of a DA are either death (which would render you unable to reproduce) or some catastrophe that left you unable to reproduce. they get pretty gruesome in the books, sometimes.

>> ^Contagion21:

>> ^Payback:
Complaint about title, DAWs have to die to win. Merely coming close is just an Honorable Mention.

The techinical qualifications are a bit nebulous. Can you only remove yourself from the "[collective] human genome" by death? Or is it sufficient to steralize yourself and ensure you leave no progeny?
The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of
the human genome by honoring those who
accidentally remove themselves from it...
Though, in this case you're correct either way, I'm just being pedantic.


You just couldn't see it, that's all. He rolled off camera, and out into the street where he was hit by a bus.

>> ^Payback:

Complaint about title, DAWs have to die to win. Merely coming close is just an Honorable Mention.


The techinical qualifications are a bit nebulous. Can you only remove yourself from the "[collective] human genome" by death? Or is it sufficient to steralize yourself and ensure you leave no progeny?

The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of
the human genome by honoring those who
accidentally remove themselves from it...

Though, in this case you're correct either way, I'm just being pedantic.

I must concede that there certainly is controversy on the definition of what "atheism" means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Definitions_and_distinctions

On, among other details, the negative/positive we're arguing for here. I suppose "Atheism" is too broad a word nowadays to be able to narrow down - this is a problem, because it causes confusion in both adversaries and proponents.
>> ^shinyblurry:

I'm sorry but the dictionary disagrees with you:
a·the·ist   /ˈeɪθiɪst/ Show Spelled[ey-thee-ist] Show IPA
noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

>> ^gwiz665:
False.
Atheism is a negative position, not a positive one. It makes no claims as to what is, it only says what is not. It is "no belief in X" not, "belief in no X".
>> ^shinyblurry:
atheism denies the existence of a deity. to say you lack belief is an autobiographical statement of your psychology and has nothing to do with the question of whether God exists. If you want to say you don't know, you are an agnostic.
>> ^HaricotVert:
Quote-mining a mischaracterization of atheism. How trite. Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity, not "I believe that no god exists." There is a subtle but important difference.
The concept or existence of a god is precisely not excluded from the realm of possibility. The arrogance of assuming that for some reason every atheist is a "gnostic atheist" who just "doesn't understand" or is "closeminded" to the idea of god is ridiculous. Provide us with scientific evidence, or the messiah appearing at the superbowl (per Maher's rant) and I would be more than happy to reevaluate my current logical position in light of new evidence. To do otherwise would be a violation of the very science and reason I already live by.
Here is a handy chart to clarify the distinction between gnosticism and theism.
>> ^shinyblurry:
of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.
francis collins human genome project

I'm sorry but the dictionary disagrees with you:

a·the·ist   /ˈeɪθiɪst/ Show Spelled[ey-thee-ist] Show IPA
noun

a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.


>> ^gwiz665:
False.
Atheism is a negative position, not a positive one. It makes no claims as to what is, it only says what is not. It is "no belief in X" not, "belief in no X".
>> ^shinyblurry:
atheism denies the existence of a deity. to say you lack belief is an autobiographical statement of your psychology and has nothing to do with the question of whether God exists. If you want to say you don't know, you are an agnostic.
>> ^HaricotVert:
Quote-mining a mischaracterization of atheism. How trite. Atheism is a lack of belief in a deity, not "I believe that no god exists." There is a subtle but important difference.
The concept or existence of a god is precisely not excluded from the realm of possibility. The arrogance of assuming that for some reason every atheist is a "gnostic atheist" who just "doesn't understand" or is "closeminded" to the idea of god is ridiculous. Provide us with scientific evidence, or the messiah appearing at the superbowl (per Maher's rant) and I would be more than happy to reevaluate my current logical position in light of new evidence. To do otherwise would be a violation of the very science and reason I already live by.
Here is a handy chart to clarify the distinction between gnosticism and theism.
>> ^shinyblurry:
of all choices, atheism requires the greatest faith, as it demands that ones limited store of human knowledge is sufficient to exclude the possibility of God.
francis collins human genome project