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Round Two: God vs. Darwin


Fishteacher73

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The traditional explanation of evolution is survival of the fittest mutation, so that one is selected and the others vanish.

 

That actually is not what is currently the position in evolution at all. The traditional is not always the correct. One example, still not violating the species idea, is something people at NASA on their own science shows mentioned a bit back. The odds are the first human baby born in space will not be able to return to earth. The reason is the genetic changes that environment would produce in a human child(ie lack of gravity, etc). Now the child thus born is still human and why it could be argued that he or she may or may not be more fitter for one environment over another the environment will have changed the child. Now, what would happen long term(many generations down the line) from that birth? There would certainly be two different environments in which the human species lives. But nothing says that either sub-species in and of itself is more fit. They are only fit for the environment they exist in.

 

Another aspect coming to light a bit recently is that Lucy and all the varients may not be the oldest of the human line at all. In fact, if one based such upon bipedalism there is a recently discovered line that goes back way before the advent of any of the thought of human ancestors. This is mentioned in a short article in January 26 edition of Discovery. That means that a lot of the possible ancestors to man where existing nearly at the same time. Lucy for example has many of our traits and evidently existed at the same time of other apelike offshoots. So its not always a case of the fit survive while the others die off. I might also mention that humans and another humanlike species co-existed a bit later on closer to the end of the ice age. The other species was by bone and muscle terms more fit than us. Yet, we survived even though in a physical sence we were weaker. So the older classical idea of survival of the fittess is not always the case.

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The same book (Protein Evolution) I quoted from above shows other evidence of sequence differences for hemoglobin, even within a sigle human. It points out that humans have three different types of hemoglobin throughout their life: embryonic, fetal, and adult forms - each one adapted to the particular needs of its particular developmental stage.

 

More variation in hemoglobin? Sure. The book also points out:

 

" Mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and bony fish all have distinct [alpha] and [beta] subunits, whereas the most primitive vertebrates, the Agnatha (jawless fish), contain only one type of haemoglobin subunit." (p101)

 

So don't let anyone fool you into believing that hemoglobin MUST have both alpha and beta subunits to function.

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paultrr: The odds are the first human baby born in space will not be able to return to earth. The reason is the genetic changes that environment would produce in a human child(ie lack of gravity, etc).

 

That's wrong. Genetic changes would not be produced in the first child born in space by the new environment. The environment selects the most fit individuals, it does not directly create them (i.e., the new environment is not going to directly produce mutations in a human that make that huam more fit for the new environment). For the baby to be genetically different, one or more its parents would have to be genetically different. I think you misinterpreted what the NASA scientists said.

 

 

paultrr: There would certainly be two different environments in which the human species lives. But nothing says that either sub-species in and of itself is more fit. They are only fit for the environment they exist in.

 

Which doesn't contradict what lindagarette said at all. It's quite consistent with what she said.

 

paultrr: That means that a lot of the possible ancestors to man where existing nearly at the same time. Lucy for example has many of our traits and evidently existed at the same time of other apelike offshoots. So its not always a case of the fit survive while the others die off.

 

You're confusing species existing at the same time with species being in direct competition with one another. Both black bears and grizzly bears exist today; both lions and cheetahs exist today.

 

paultrr: I might also mention that humans and another humanlike species co-existed a bit later on closer to the end of the ice age. The other species was by bone and muscle terms more fit than us. Yet, we survived even though in a physical sence we were weaker. So the older classical idea of survival of the fittess is not always the case.

 

Now you're confusing a species being bonier or more muscled its being with more fit ... as well as again the notion of species having to be in direct competition. Grizzly bears are bonier and more muscled than black bears, but both exist today at the same time. Lions are bonier and more muscled than cheetah's, but both exist today at the same time in the same habitat. And it's all perfectly consistent with survival of the fittest.

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Has the evidence been streached to fit evolutionary theory, and if it has in what manner is it being done?

 

I have read this entire thread, and scanned a lot of the other relevant threads, and I would like to offer a point. I would also like to apologize in advance if this post is too long, but I can't think of a way around it.

 

Getting back to FT73's original question, there are indeed a number of examples (several of which he cited) where reseachers that appear overzealous stretched their data to support their proffered theories (or hypotheses). We all know this goes on all of the time, and that is the fundamental reason we have peer-reviewed studies, or even double-blinded trials in clinical studies. Ergo, the existence of several (or even thousands) of examples of folks misrepresenting their data to support their views is not surprising.

 

The peppered moth example is perhaps more interesting in that it was found to be fradulent in the early 1900s (by successful peer review, as I recall), and yet is still often referenced as a proof case. However, I don't think this category of error this is the core problem.

 

I think my visceral empathy with the ID folks is that there is a "dog that didn't bark" problem that looms large. A lot of strong data supports narrow instances of gradualism in higher life forms (i.e., multicellular organisms of either kingdom) but all of these occurrences require significant "information load" in the preexisting machinery to allow for selection or mutation. If I understand the core of the ID argument, it does raise some seductive questions.

 

(Note: I am going to insert *asterics* around a lot of my assumptions here. please feel free to attack any of these, or to note more false assumptions)

 

- It is *generally accepted* that a typical intracellular protein is between 100 and 300 amino acid residues.

- It is *generally accepted* that *most* proteins require *at least half* of their amino acid residues to be in exact sequence.

- Putting the two above assumptions together, we would expect that the odds of random association of amino acids into a single funtional protein are (1/20) to the 100th power, or approximately 1 in 10 to the 130th power.

- Assembling an enzyme in a *typical* enzyme sequence (*8*) and *assuming that we had to select the functional enzyme from over 1000 irrelevant enzymes in solution* would add a multiplier of 1/1000 to the 8th power, or approximately 1 in 10 to the 24th power.

- multiplying our last two dependencies together, we get a number smaller than 1 in 10 to the 150th power to get a simple enzyme system in place.

- the complexity in the above example existed at least *3.5 billion years ago* when it is *generally accepted* that prokaryotes dominated the life environment.

 

Back to the "dog that didn't bark" point: none of the above information is new, and yet the resolution of this unlikeihood is unaddressed. To impute that the odds were improved because there was machinery in place merely pushes the requirement for massive complexity further back in time. That is, all of this simple math presumes *a correct pH*,* previous settlement on essentially the same few amino acids*, *availability of DNA and DNA transcription*, *existence of reliable scavenger pathways to remove most irrelevent proteins from solution*, and *hundreds, if not thousands, of other equally unlikely enzyme systems* to work concurrently. So, I think the ID argument is "Why didn't someone notice this before and look into it?", since it appears to be an intuitive avenue for quantitive analysis.

 

*If indeed* the bulk of the research community refused to look into this topic becasue of the implications for the existence of a creator, that would be bias.

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Biochemist: The peppered moth example is perhaps more interesting in that it was found to be fradulent in the early 1900s …

 

That would be an interesting trick since Kettlewell didn’t publish his results until 1955.

 

Biochemist: … and yet is still often referenced as a proof case.

 

Uhm, here are a few interesting points that counter Wells.

 

Oh, and these are by someone who actually knows about the experiments performed and actually did research on the subject ... unlike Wells who has only read about them, and apparently not in the peer-reviewed literature.

 

2) The mark release and recapture experiments were completely independent of the predation experiments on tree trunks. This critically undermine's Dr Wells' rationale. Moths were released at dawn (before sunrise) and allowed to take up natural resting sites. Recaptures were by mercury vapour and pheromone traps. The reciprocal nature of the proportions of the forms that were recaptured in the polluted and unpolluted woods give, to my mind, the strongest evidence we have that there is differential selective elimination of the two forms in the different environments.

 

 

4) This is just wrong. Dr Wells' who gives the impression in his response that he has read my book, obviously has not. If he had, he would have seen that in Tables 6.1 and 6.2 I myself have recorded 168 peppered moths on tree trunks or at trunk/branch joins. If Dr Wells' wishes his views to be taken seriously, he should ensure that his research is thorough.

 

 

Evidence of selective predation in the peppered moth is not lacking. It is just not provided in the quick text book descriptions of the peppered moth. How can it be. I have read some 500 papers on melanism in the Lepidoptera. In total, these papersrobably amount to about 8000 pages, ad the story is condensed into a few paragraphs in most textbooks for schools. Even in my own book, I could only give a review of the case covering about 60 pages including illustrations.”

(http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199904/0103.html)

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Its not so much a bias against a Creator as most of the people who look into this subject tend to never fully read the articles they try to dispute and instead make claims that are not supported by the evidence itself. Such referencing of articles without fully reading the articles is something recent research has shown to hold across the board not only in the Creator versus Nature area, but, also in even scientific based publications in Peer review itself.

 

For example, I've seen a recent article on Lanl that does bring up a valid point about the Null results of the M&M experiment and a series of retests over the years. The actuall null result was not fully null. In fact, the results when added into the voyager data about a slowdown sunward yield about the same difference. Now the author, Cahill, suggests we should reinvoke the aether of Newton to account for those non-null M&M results. But he never took voyager into account. A real Newtonian drift would not be equal in all directions in relation to the sun. However, that data is suggestive that perhaps equality in all frames of reference is not equal or that some of our assumptions about the vacuum conducatnce are off. While I agree the study of the data is sound I would outright in the context of such reject that we need to through out relativity as Cahill suggests. The reason is the whole context of all the research to now.

 

Most of these guys who support IG or creationism read things out of context, quote where they feel like and in short violate interesting enough one of the basic premises of decent Bible study itself about keeping things in context taught in almost any Bible college or seminary out there. In short they violate principles of decent research to prove their own predetermined points.

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On that last point that tells you what they are proposing is not really scientific method based to begin with. If their God or Intelligent designer is not straight forward enough for the evidence itself to support the case then yes, we tend to reject it. Yes, that makes us biased towards real scientific methods not made up, paste as you wish garbage.

 

Interesting enough, the Bible Creationists love to quote as a majority says in the book of Romans, assumed written by the Apostle Paul, that even nature declairs God. If that is the case then nature ought to show clear evidence of such. Yet, the results from all the proper scientific research ever done to date says otherwise once you clearly understand the context and implication of such. Its that last part all of these guys from both the other camps tend to try and do an end run around. They do so because they presuppose that only their solution is the correct one which rather rejects a lot of scientific derived evidence.

 

As such we are biased against their methods and their conclusions.

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Yes, that makes us biased towards real scientific methods not made up, paste as you wish garbage. .......

 

As such we are biased against their methods and their conclusions.

 

Thoughtful reply, paulltrr. I concur that a majority of ID supporters and (perhaps) nearly all classic Creationists are not equipped to deal with a discussion mediated by the scientific method. Ergo, it is not reasonable to give those individuals credence in a discussion that requires demonstration of cause and effect. And they do indeed tend to avoid credible literature review. I still think it appears that we ridicule the message because of the weak nature of the messenger.

 

I remain intrigued by the apparent plausibility of the core ID argument, particularly for very early complexity as I mentioned earlier (post 72). I confess that I am impressed by later complexity as well (that can appear irreducible) but higher biological systems are a very tricky environment within which to establish a rigorous (or even credible) statisitical platform, as Behe suggested.

 

I think my main point is that it is reasonable to be suspect of any ID claim (as we should with any new assertion) but I do not think that the small, nascent body of legitimate scientific effort around ID is "laughable." It might be weak, but not laughable.

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I think my main point is that it is reasonable to be suspect of any ID claim (as we should with any new assertion) but I do not think that the small, nascent body of legitimate scientific effort around ID is "laughable." It might be weak, but not laughable.

 

No scientific effort is laughable, unless it has a political or religious agenda behind it which gives it an unfair bias. When the founder of the ID movement states that his aim is to "crush Darwinism" then that is bound to cast everyone who performs science within the realm of the ID movement in a bad light.

 

If they can shed that shroud and start presenting evidence which is based on the scientific method, and which can be tested and verified by any other scientist, then it becomes legitimate.

 

This is the same for all fields of science. I have read a lot of *horribly* biased documents, particularly within research on education systems and studies of the effect of music, and that is really, really laughable science. B)

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No scientific effort is laughable. However, by rights they are not prepared to do such following established scientific methods. Granted the establishment is hard to fight. One could call regular evolutionary theory and its teaching as the establishment they are out to fight against or at least present an alternative. But, starting on the wrong foot of saying the establishment is wrong without properly showing evidence why is just not the way to do things. Not only that they should be consistant in their methods employed. I would suggest if at least the ID crowd could make that leap then perhaps the discussion and debate between the two ought to be done.

 

Debate is not bad and alternatives are not bad in and of themselves. But everyone in a debate should at the very least follow the same methods of discovery and presentation. People always differ no matter what. There are differences of opinion when it comes to physics questions like is time travel possible. Some say yes, some say no. I would also suggest that inteligence of some type behind life getting started as long as the process used was evolutionary based is not actually ruled out. Problem is how does one prove a creator or even a designer on a slide rule or disprove such. By definition science studies what nature tells us. A designer by definition is outside of at least this universe and since we seem at the present to be limited to studying only things inside of this universe that leaves us with a problem. However, I'd still suggest that at the very least there would be solid scientifically discoverable evidence of such a designer. At that point we can attempt to do such with a slide rule then, so to speak.

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You're confusing species existing at the same time with species being in direct competition with one another. Both black bears and grizzly bears exist today; both lions and cheetahs exist today.

 

 

Quote:

paultrr: I might also mention that humans and another humanlike species co-existed a bit later on closer to the end of the ice age. The other species was by bone and muscle terms more fit than us. Yet, we survived even though in a physical sence we were weaker. So the older classical idea of survival of the fittess is not always the case.

 

 

 

Now you're confusing a species being bonier or more muscled its being with more fit ... as well as again the notion of species having to be in direct competition. Grizzly bears are bonier and more muscled than black bears, but both exist today at the same time. Lions are bonier and more muscled than cheetah's, but both exist today at the same time in the same habitat. And it's all perfectly consistent with survival of the fittest.

 

Not at all, in the last mentioned case we existed in the same regions in direct contact by all the evidence we have. We did compete for resources. Genetically we were also different as studies have born out. By theory the assumption is our mind's development made the difference here.

 

The idea about a child born in space came from Biologists with NASA not me as far as origin. Simply put because of differences in environment such a child would not survive well on earth. But such a child might be more equiped for space exploration. The question might be how long down a line before the two sets of human population could not mate due to genetic changes. Granted the answer would be anyone's guess if ever.

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However, I'd still suggest that at the very least there would be solid scientifically discoverable evidence of such a designer. At that point we can attempt to do such with a slide rule then, so to speak.

 

Just curious- what form do you think this evidence might take? An imperfection? Something that requires outside influx of energy? I seriously doubt the scientific establishment will ever find scientific "evidence" that everyone is willing to accept, simply because the process is not set up to accept supernatural explanations, science doesn't have the vocabulary for it, so to speak.

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Interesting enough, the Bible Creationists love to quote as a majority says in the book of Romans, assumed written by the Apostle Paul, that even nature declairs God. If that is the case then nature ought to show clear evidence of such. Yet, the results from all the proper scientific research ever done to date says otherwise once you clearly understand the context and implication of such.

 

I think the idea in the Bible was more of a beauty, order and chaos, expansiveness, etc. as evidence, not physical evidence like a signature. Just as we see a beautiful painting as evidence of a painter, or perhaps a beautful photograph as evidence of an artistic mind is a better example. In that photograph you would see no image of the photographer, but you would notice the beauty of the composition, the choice of locals, etc etc. as evidence of some guy that likes nature (for example).

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The actual words there from the original implies even his very nature and Godhead. Its more than order in creation. In fact, let's play a second with some of the Gospel words out of John...In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God...All Things were created by him. In the Greek Logos rather implies an outward manifestation of something inward as in a thought or a mind as is the case here. Its God's nature and being that gets reflected in his creation. Such a reflection ought to be born out.

 

Now as to how one could detect such with the things suggested by the religious right from time to time I cannot see where any of the normal suggestions could be explored scientific wise. But in general here's one thought based upon our own attempts at creating things. Most author's tend to leave their signature somewhere like an artists does. Its their stamp to show who's work it is. I would suspect an outside Creator even if some guy in a lab would create something with a code of some sort there that rather demands an asnwer to the question of who ordered that, so to speak. It might boil down to some aspect being say impossible by natural means. Nothing to date fits that. But it could show up somewhere eventually.

 

Really on that issue if say we eventually solved the search for a GUT and yet, the GUT tells us that one constant had to be placed in by artifical means that would at the very least be suggestive of an ID modeling or nothing short of there already being information present when this cosmos was born(Where did the information come from would be the next question). Don't call any of that Gospel as far as Science goes. But if everyone came to the same conclusion based upon the evidence then you'd have solid grounds to consider the alternative.

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It might boil down to some aspect being say impossible by natural means. Nothing to date fits that.

 

I suspect that some folks would say the "signature" showed up and walked around Galilee a couple thousand years ago.

 

Historical evidence for His existence (and resurrection, for that matter) is pretty strong. That, however, does not demonstrate his involvement (via the scientific method) in the series of (or singularity of) creation events. Although your reference to John 1:1 certainly tied the two together.

 

By the way, what does "GUT" stand for? Sorry for my ignorance.

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But in general here's one thought based upon our own attempts at creating things. Most author's tend to leave their signature somewhere like an artists does. Its their stamp to show who's work it is. I would suspect an outside Creator even if some guy in a lab would create something with a code of some sort there that rather demands an asnwer to the question of who ordered that, so to speak. It might boil down to some aspect being say impossible by natural means. Nothing to date fits that. But it could show up somewhere eventually.

 

I think you are still projecting what you would do onto what God apparently would also do. Does God need the recognition of a signature? Why? If the evidence is the creation, then why make it incomplete (i.e. requiring some input).

 

As for God being reflected in creation- I don't understand your point. Were you agreeing with me? Sorry for my ignorance.

 

One probably has to look beyond scientific evidence and look at other forms of evidence that are out there. Is that non-scientific evidence useful in a scientific investigation- of course not. Hence... a long debate.

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