| padib said: If you were honest, you would at least admit there was a chance you were wrong. Is it pride that stops you? Fear? |
I readily admit that there is a chance that I might be wrong. Maybe Q'uq'umatz and Tepeu really did create humanity; maybe lightning is cast by Zeus and maybe Jesus was both god and the son of god. But it goes both ways:
If you were honest, you would at least admit there was a chance you were wrong. Is it pride that stops you? Fear in your god?
| padib said: People use God's name for evil, does it make God evil? Does a butterknife become a universally evil tool if used by someone to stab an innocent victim? |
Did the murdered commit the crime because of the butterknife or did he use the butterknife as the tool for his evil deed? In the latter the butterknife/religion was just a justification and is not the cause, in the former, the butterknife/religion is the cause of the evil (like suicide bombers or abortion clinic bombers).
I would not say that it means that religion is a universally evil tool though. It can and often has been used for and been the cause of evil but unless a religion states that its aim is the spread of evil then I would say that it is not necessarily itself evil (though a particular incarnation might be, like christianity during the inquisition).
I would also apply it to atheism. Stalin did a lot of evil in the name of atheism. It does not mean that atheism in general is evil, but evil can be cause in its name.
I would generalise that as saying that ideologies (whether religious or not) can easily lead to evil if you do not temper them with a healthy dose of tolerance for other ideologies (though there are limits as WWII would have been much less bloody if there had been less tolerance of nazism in Europe in the 30's).
For example, we clearly have many people with very different idologies here. But while we disagree and argue, I think most here are tolerant of others and do not wish to see harm come to them because of their belief (they may believe that their religion says harm will come to them, e.g. hell, but not wish it).
| padib said: Little question: has genetic evolution been proven, in that you can add information to the genetic pool that adds complexity to the organism? Have any of you heard of information theory? http://creation.com/information-science-and-biology See section: "The five levels of information". To duplicate genetic code does not increase complexity. |
Emergent behaviour. We know that genes can be copied and pasted in different parts of the genome. We know that genetic code can be altered by errors in copies or external influence (UV light for example) . The latter is best known as one of the causes of skin cancer. And we know that most life forms have sequences of DNA that are not expressed (junk DNA).
The former two alone make information creation possible and the latter makes it easier.
Former two:
If you alter an expressed gene, the likelihood is the alteration will be detrimental (cause cancer, sickle cell anemia, color blindness...) and is likely to be bred out by (or at least not to contribute positively to) natural selection. However, even that alone is enough to provethat information can be added as the new expression of the gene, even though likely detrimental in most cases, is still different information than the former expression of the gene; that is it is information that wasn't present before and was added. Whether an alteration is positive or negative is determined by natural selection as a change in a given environment might be a positive change but the same change in a different environment might be neutral or negative (that change also need to happen in the gonads to be inherited in sexually reproducing species).
If you simply copy a gene then you do not have more information directly but you have redundant information. However, the duplication allows both genes to evolve differently as while the original gene might be resistant to change over time due to natural selection (for the same reason as the preceding paragraph, because most such change will be negative and bred out) the second would not be as resistant as its function is fulfilled by the preceding gene and thus can accumulate a number of changes that might not be expressed for a long time. You would argue that such changes, as they are not expressed, are not information, but if a cumulation of changes ends up in a slighly different gene being expressed in a new positive way then while each individual step is not information adding, the whole process is.
For example. A lot of animals are dichromats. They have cones that perceive short wavelengths of light (s-cones) and cones that perceive at medium wavelength of light (m-cones). If the gene coding the m-cones was to be duplicated you might have two identical types of cones (m-cones) coming from two different gene and thus no new information. But if one of those two genes then had a slight mutation changing the wavelength of light it perceives then you would have three types of cones perceiving three different wavelength. You would have new information due to both transposition and mutation and you would have a new characteristic: trichromacy.
Incidentally the reason I chose this example is that it is basically how our eyes work. We have three types of cones: s-cones, m-cones and l-cones.
The genes coding m-cones and l-cones are both found on the x chromosome, close to each other. And they are very similar on a genetic level though slightly different.
I also said the latter makes it easier. That is because if you have unexpressed DNA ("junk DNA") you can have many mutations in there that do not cause havoc. If after many such mutations there happen to be a gene that gets copied in such a way that it is expressed and is a positive change for that organism then they got all the potentially harmful change done in a place where it doesn't matter (due to not being expressed) and only got the upside final change, thus making gene modification and creation easier.
From another post:
| padib said:
How many of you have heard of entropy? Imagine a person is working with play-doh, and they are making different forms of different colors: faces, hills, castles, streets. Entropy is like a person on the other end melting the structural complexity of the work, and mixing the playdoh in one area of the canvas. You lose all form and colors blend into an ugly pizza brown. Problem is, as observed in nature one is faster than the other: entropy. |
Your argument seems to be taht evolution is impossible because of the second law of thermodynamics. The problem with that argument is that it applies to a closed system. The Earth is not a closed system, it is receiving energy from that big ball of nuclear fire we orbit. This means that while natural phenomena on earth that result in more order (less entropy) like life, evolution and snowflakes seem to contradict the second law it is because you are forgetting the energy input coming from the sun and the corresponding increase in entropy in it.
| padib said:
Extinction. If evolution were true, and it took millions of millions of years to form new species, how could it contend against the rate of extinction? We have yet to observe the evolution of a species, yet hundreds of species are going extinct every year. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020109074801.htm |
It would be more correct to say that species took millions of years to get to their present forms but a new species can happen in a short time.
How? First a definition: "A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring" (from wikipedia)
So humans of any colors are part of the same species as we can interbreed and have fertile offspring (e.g. Barack Obama) but Horses and Donkeys are different species given that, while they can interbreed, their offspring are infertile (mule and hinny).
Things are a bit more complicated as, for example, wolves and dogs can interbreed but are considered different species (but the same genus, the level above species) but unless we want to go into taxonomy it will be good enough to make my point.
Now, let us consider ring species. A ring species is a species where a group A can interbreed with group B, group B can interbreed with group C, group C can interbreed with group D... but both end of the group (A and D here) cannot interbreed succesfully. Because there is a link between all the groups it is the same species, but if one of the ring was to die out so that the linkage is broken then you would have two species (note that of B dies out but A and C can interbreed you would not have a new species; if they cannot you would, so it might take more than one subspecies to die out to create a new species). And as your article points out, it is quite frequent for species (and subspecies) to die out.
| padib said:
Propaganda. So much in the evolutionary arena is based off of propaganda and mediatic control. If evolution were true, why employ such non-objective means to convey it? Why repress legitimate counter-arguments? Why shun evidence against it? |
So if you fail to convince scientists of the validity of your theories it means you are being repressed?
The problem is that a lot of religious people want science to give a stamp of approval to their belief and start from the conclusion they want to get and try to justify it. That is, at best, bad science as science should start from what we observe and try to explain it in the simplest way (of course as more facts get known, what is the simplest way to explain something gets more complicated). If religion wants to play in science's playground it needs to play by science's rules otherwise it is not science anymore.
It would be like if I went to an Gridiron Football match and insisted that we play by Association Football rules. Even if I was successfull it wouldn't be Gridiron Football anymore.
| padib said: Take as an example Recapitulation theory. It's long been discredited, but if you google "Recapitulation Theory Discredited", you'll barely find any of the scientific reasons as to why it has been. You'll rather find more about the fact that it wasn't disproven, and explaining it along with its false notions, but no mention of the legitimate reasons why those notions are false (See wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory). You have to google "Recapitulation theory discredited creation" to find the reasons. And then you find some cheap christian site like this explaining it. Why the bias? |
You seem to argue that google results or lack thereof are evidence of propaganda. Since when was it science's job (as a whole) to improve google's search results?
Besides, when I google "Recapitulation Theory Discredited" I get the wikipedia article you link, and when I read it, I see: "Since around the start of the twentieth century, Haeckel's "biogenetic law" has been refuted on many fronts.[7]" Which links to http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?id=219
So from the original google click I am 3 clicks away (1 to wikipedia, 1 to the footnote and 1 to the article) from an article explaining both the subjects and the reasons for its dicreditation.
| padib said:
That's the main thing that makes me believe it's not a science but a religion of its own. People hide the facts, hide the truth, and then claim that approach to be scientific. But it is in no way scientific, it is pure bigotry. |
We will have to disagree on this as I do not subscribe to your conspiracy theory about science as a whole* suppressing facts and truth. The very subject of this thread, the big bang, argues against it as it was initially viewed with suspicion by scientists that saw that theory positing a beginning to the universe and proposed by a catholic priest to be an attempt to foist religion on science. It was eventually accepted as the main group of theories about the universe because despite their initial qualms, the evidence showed that it was the most probable theories.
Intelligent design proponents utterly failed in the same task not because they were suppressed but because either they are wrong (high probability) or they utterly suck at demonstrating that their theories explain the universe better and in a simplier way than evolution.
* which doesn't mean that individual scientists might not do it as tehy are only human, but it would not be a rational approach.
From another post:
| padib said: Here's another one. Inter-breeding. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100202000826AAp6TgN When a new species emerges, how in the world will it evolve? When a new species emerges, especially for mamals, two members of the species are needed in order to evolve together through reproduction. It is a given that only two members of the same species can breed sustainably (cross-breeding usually leads to the inability to produce offspring). |
I think you mean inbreeding, not interbreeding.
You seem to be under the belief that species happen by having two new animals spreading out. That is actually the view of creationists. Evolution theory would be more like, you start with one species spread out geographically. If two parts of the species are cut off and cannot interbreed (or the amount is severly reduced) due to physical separation (i.e. Darwin's finches on different island) then they start to evolve independently, becoming two subspecies, until the point where they cannot interbreed not because of the physical separation but because such interbreeding is then either impossible or sterile. at that point you have two species instead of one (or possibly a ring species as talked about earlier).
So you are arguing that the problem of the story of genesis (only a pair of animals created per species, including humans, and thus a lot of inbreeding) is evidence against evolution. It seems rather strange to me.
| padib said: In the bible, inter-breeding is the start of humankind. Adam and Eve married, had kids who had kids together. The difference here is that you're starting from the mountain and going down from there. In evolution, you're starting from the bottom and trying to climb up via interbreeding. It's like trying to make a sandcastle only to be washed out constantly by the waves... |
Actually you bring a good point. In the bible there was only Adam and Eve; which makes 4 sets of chromosomes. So were did all the genetic diversity we have today come from? That cannot be starting from the top of the mountain because there are genes with more than 4 alleles so there must be a mechanism that add the extra alleles (extra information).
I suppose you must believe that god did not just create humanity (and other living things) at one point and then was done with it but he must have continuously changed humans to introduce all that new information in the genome that simply cannot be contained in 4 alleles per genes.
But that would not so much be a repudiation of evolution as an acceptance of most of it except that such a person would believe that mutations did not happen by cosmic rays, transposition and other mechanisms but by god.
"I do not suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it"
