Barry Arrington was astonished to find that Larry Moran agreed with him that it would be possible for some future biologist to detect design in a Venter-designed genome.
He was further astonished to find that REC, a commenter at UD, agreed with Larry Moran.
Barry expresses his epiphany in a UD post REC Becomes a Design Proponent.
Has Barry finally realised that those of us who oppose the ideas of Intelligent Design proponents do not dispute that it is possible, in principle, to make a reasonable inference of design? That rather our opposition is based on the evidence and argument advanced, not on some principled (or unprincipled!) objection to the entire project?
Sadly, it seems not. Because Barry then gives some examples of his continued lack of appreciation of this point. Here they are:
For example, consider this typical objection: “All scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism, and you violate the principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology.”
If that objection is valid (it is not, but set that aside for now), it is just as valid against REC’s and Dr. Moran’s design inferences as it is against any other design inference.
Yes, indeed, Barry. It is not a valid objection, and if it were, it would be as valid against REC’s and Dr. Moran’s as against ID. There is nothing wrong with making a design inference in principle. We do it all the time, as IDists like to point out. And there’s nothing wrong with making it in biology, at least in principle. There is certainly nothing that violates the “principle of methodological naturalism when you make a design inference in biology”. I wonder where Barry found that quotation?
The point sailed right over REC’s head. He responded that the objections were not valid as to his design inference, because his design inference (opposed to ID’s design inferences) was “valid and well evidenced.”
I doubt it sailed over REC’s head. I expect it was the very point he was making – that there is no reason in principle why one cannot make a valid design inference in biology, but whether the inference is valid or not would depend on the specifics of the evidence and argument.
But that is exactly what ID proponents have been saying for decades REC! We have been saying all along that the various “typical objections” are invalid if the evidence leads to a design inference.
REC, the only difference between you and us is that you are persuaded by the evidence in a particular case and not in our case. But you are missing the point. If what is important is the EVIDENCE, then th “typical objections” lose all force all the time.
Barry, consider the possibility that you have been misreading the “typical objections” the entire time. That the yards of text that are spilled daily at UD railing against Lewontin and us benighted “materialists” are entirely irrelevant. The objection to ID by people like me (and Moran, and REC, and any other ID opponent I’ve come across, including Richard Dawkins in fact) is not that it is impossible that terrestrial life was designed by an intelligent agent, nor that it would be necessarily impossible to discover that it was, nor even, I suggest, impossible to infer a designer even if we had no clue as to who the designer might be (although that might make it trickier). The objection is that the arguments advanced by ID proponents are fallacious. They don’t work. Some are circular, some are based on bad math, and some are based on a misunderstanding of biochemistry and biology. They are not bad because they are design inferences, they are bad because they are bad design inferences.
In other words, the objection “all scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism” is invalid in principle, not in application, if it is even possible to make a valid design inference based on the EVIDENCE.
And here is where Barry steps on the rake again. Of course all scientific claims must employ methodological naturalism. It’s the only methodology we have in science – it is another way of saying that scientific claims must be falsifiable. That doesn’t mean we can’t infer design. Design is a perfectly natural phenomenon. If Barry means that we can only infer natural, not supernatural, design, he is absolutely correct, but that is simply because a supernatural design hypothesis is unfalsifiable. The reason Lewontin was correct is not that science is terrified of letting the supernatural in the door of science lest we have to face our worst nightmares, but that if you accept the supernatural as a valid hypothesis, you throw falsifiability out of the window.
You agree with us that it is the EVIDENCE that is important, and objections thrown up for the purpose of ruling that evidence out of court before it is even considered are invalid.
Yes, it is the EVIDENCE that is important, But on the other side of the EVIDENCE coin are the predictions we derive from the theory that we are testing against that EVIDENCE. If there are no predictions – and a theory that can predict anything predicts nothing – then we have no way of evaluating whether our EVIDENCE supports our theory. In fact, the word EVIDENCE only makes sense in relation to a theory. I’m no lawyer (heh) but doesn’t there have to be a charge before there is a trial?
Of course, by the same token, nobody can claim that ID is false – it may well be true that life was designed by a supernatural designer, whether at the origin-of-life stage as some claim, or at key stages, such as the Cambrian “Explosion” (scare quotes deliberate), as others claim; or for certain features too hard to leave to evolution such as the E.coli flagellae that enhance their ability to maim and kill our children. Or even to design a universe so fine-tuned that it contains the laws and materials necessary for life to emerge without further interference. Science cannot falsify any of that – nor, for that matter the theory that it was all created ex nihilo Last Thursday.
That’s why nothing in evolutionary biology is a threat to belief in God or gods, and why the paranoia surrounding “methodological naturalism” is so completely misplaced.
What is a threat to us all, though, I suggest, is bad science masquerading as science, and that is my objection to ID. Not the “broader” project itself as stated in the UD FAQ:
In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences that seek to explain the cause of events such as a death or fire, cryptanalysis and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). An inference that certain biological information may be the product of an intelligent cause can be tested or evaluated in the same manner as scientists daily test for design in other sciences.
but its fallacious (in my view) conclusion that:
…that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
Fallacious not because I assume that the “intelligent cause” is supernatural, but because the math and biochemistry simply do not support that inference. Even if it’s true.
No, it says exactly the same in other words, that is, either something can evolve through natural selection, or natural selection is unable to select given step, and the system is therefore irreducible complex. You can’t have it both ways. A irreducible complex system cannot evolve BY DEFINITION.
Again. Neutral or disadvantageous will not get you the big changes over deep time from a bateria to man. For that to happen, you need not only huge increase of genetic information, but also different information for gene expression and regulation and epi-genetic information. Genetic information alone is not enough.
What evidence would convince you a designer had his hand on it ?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2062-proteins-how-they-provide-striking-evidence-of-design?highlight=proteins
How do proteins evolve?
Contrary to early notions that protein sequences were extremely flexible, science is now telling us the opposite. This indication that viable protein sequences occupy a tiny sliver of sequence space suggests that they are difficult to evolve.
If you ask a proponent of evolution how a protein evolved, you will likely hear the standard answer: via gene duplication and subsequent divergence. In other words, the protein arose from a different type of protein that was pre existing. The gene for that protein duplicated, and then mutated until landing on a new protein that was helpful. And of course this story must have repeated itself thousands of times to create the many different proteins in biology.
It is an unlikely, just-so, story, for viable protein sequences are hard to find. If the different types of proteins each have their own tiny slivers of sequence space as science is suggesting, then gene duplication and divergence, alone, doesn’t stand a chance.
What would be needed are long trails of intermediate, functional, proteins connecting the different types of proteins. These proteins would not only need to be functional, their particular function would have to be useful at the time.
And why would the known proteins just happen to be fortuitously connected by these trails? Science gives us no reason to think such a lucky circumstance is built into the protein world. So either there are no such trails, which means evolution has a problem, or there are such trails which means someone has monkeyed with the fundamentals of protein chemistry.
And we have not yet even addressed the problem of how the first proteins evolved. Remember the proponents of evolutions standard explanation for how proteins evolved is by gene duplication and subsequent divergence. But that requires the pre existence of other types of proteins. In other words, the question of how proteins evolve in the first place has been swept under the rug.
The problem of how evolution could create a new type of protein from an existing protein, via gene duplication and subsequent divergence, as difficult as it is, pales in comparison to how evolution was supposed to have created new proteins from scratch. Proponents of evolution speak of an initial world where RNA molecules do the work of proteins. But even this heroic story doesn’t magically make the problem of protein evolution go away. Whether there were RNA precursors or not, there is a substantial difficulty in explaining how the first proteins could have evolved.
Who is deceitful, are the scientists and philosophers of science and proponents of evolution, which feed you with bad science, and you swallow it witouth mastigation.
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1455-tree-of-life-a-failed-hypothesis?highlight=tree
Strange Findings on Comb Jellies Uproot Animal Family Tree
With a genome of a “sea gooseberry” or comb jelly (ctenophore) in hand, evolutionists are stunned. Could it be this graceful creature evolved a nervous system independently of other animals? Nature News puzzles over this mystery; National Geographic calls it “strange findings” that “uproot the animal family tree.” One biologist calls the creatures “aliens who have come to earth.”
“It’s a paradox,” said Leonid Moroz, a neurobiologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville and lead author of a paper in today’s Nature about the biology of the comb jelly nervous system. “These are animals with a complex nervous system, but they basically use a completely different chemical language” from every other animal. “You have to explain it one way or another.”
“When arguing for common descent, evolutionary scientists typically assert that the degree of genetic (or anatomical) similarity between two species indicates how closely they are related. But there are numerous cases where this assumption fails, and anatomical or molecular data yield evolutionary trees (called ‘phylogenies’) that conflict with conventional views of organismal relationships. The basic problem is that evolutionary trees based on one gene commonly differ strikingly from a phylogeny based on a different gene.”
http://www.biologydirect.com/content/6/1/36
There is more to evolution than will fit on any tree. For understanding major transitions in early evolution, we might not need a tree of life at all.
Michael Denton stated:
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1693-transitional-fossils
“It is still, as it was in Darwin’s day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today
First you say it says the same thing, then you reaffirm that it doesn’t. Here’s why: Michael Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity does NOT say that an irreducibly complex system cannot BY DEFINITION evolve. But yours does. That is the key difference. In Behe’s definition, it is argued that without natural selection a system requiring multiple unselected steps is DIFFICULT to evolve (due, obviously, to the absense of selection), it does NOT say it CANNOT HAPPEN.
Buddy, you’re in too deep, stop digging.
keiths,
I don’t think he’s saying we assume such entities don’t exist. I read him as saying that we cannot model such unconstrained beings as causal agents. We must, of necessity, ignore them.
Pedant,
That doesn’t seem to be a distinguishing feature of Christians in this forum.
otangelo,
You’re new here, so I suggest you read the rules before commenting further. There aren’t many, but one is to address the comment, not the commenter.
There is also the presumption that others are commenting in good faith. In order to maintain that presumption, you should post in good faith as well. Part of that involves directly and clearly answering questions about your claims. I urge you to do so.
otangelo,
And again you miss the point. It is not necessary for every step to be advantageous, contrary to your claim that it is, on the evolutionary paradigm. It is irrelevant how big a particular step is for the point I made. Babbling about ‘bacteria-to-man’ is completely beside the point.
In fact the relevant question is “How were proteins designed”?
Sure, there are plenty of unknowns with the origins of proteins, but you already know they can’t evolve. So, how did they come about? How did the designer know what protein would fold in the right way to do a specific thing?
Oh, what’s that, you don’t know nor have the first idea? Then I think I’ll stick with what we have, patchy as it may be, rather then throwing the whole thing out and replacing it with diddly squat, diddly squat being your ‘explanation’.
otangelo,
I do not swallow science ‘without mastigation’. I have some knowledge of the subject. Science contradicts Genesis on pretty much every issue. So your only recourse is to pretend that Genesis is right and scientists are liars. Not just that, but there must be a global conspiracy on the matter.
There is plenty one can examine with one’s own eyes. BLAST databases, for example. Unless you think the data and the programs are rigged too. Which is bloody elaborate, I must say.
Ah! First you need an entailed hypothesis. Then any evidence supporting it would be convincing. Do you know of an entailed ID hypothesis? As far as I am aware, nobody has proposed one. But should one exist – and it
iswere supported by evidence (such as the predictions of the hypothesis can be tested by experiment that produces corroborating data) – then that would be interesting.ETA subjunctive mood to indicate hypothetical.
Comb jellies mean the tree of life doesn’t exist! FFS!
Can we have some rule relating to the amount of a post that can consist of quote mines? I am sick to death of seeing the same points, not just here, with some ‘refute this!’ sneer, from a poster who cannot argue in their own words.
Sure,
The theological claim that God is consistent and unchanging has been put to the test as we observed the universe and look to see if the laws of nature are universal or if they evolve over time and vary from place to place. So far the hypothesis has not been falsified
and
The theological claim the all humans are sinful has been repeatedly put to the test as we discovered different people groups and continues to be put to the test every time a child is born and grows up. So far the hypothesis has not been falsified
Hope that helps
Peace
examples please.
Be specific and provide chapter and verse references along with relevant commentary discussing what the passages mean in context. Also explain how we can know that your interpretation of the text is the correct one.
Peace
fifthmonarchyman,
It confirms my point that the scientific method is unable to resolve unfalsifiable claims. When Christians stick to unfalsifiable beliefs (an afterlife etc) there’s no issue, scientifically speaking.
fifthmonarchyman,
So if we found variation in physical laws that would falsify that hypothesis? What then?
What would falsify that claim? Have you really checked everyone?
fifthmonarchyman,
examples please.
Don’t be silly. You aren’t even remotely interested.
fifthmonarchyman,
Revelation.
Now is your chance to set the example as to how things should be done. You made a bold “refute this” claim about science and Genesis. Can you intelligently back it up in your own words.
Remember provide chapter and verse with an explanation of why your interpretation is the correct one.
peace
If we found evolution in the laws themselves and not just our understanding of them. Then Christianity would be falsified and science would be rendered worthless because it relies on the principle of induction
A normal Human child who lived an entire natural life and never once sinned.
No I have not checked everyone, science is an ongoing process you can never prove anything scientifically you can only falsify scientific hypothesis and tentatively accept them if/until you do.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
No, I made an assertion. It was not a quote by someone else, and I did not challenge anyone to refute it.
You demand higher standards of me than you display yourself. You can quote chapter and verse like a good’un, but there is no reason for anyone to take your opinion on the text or the meta as the correct one. And your presuppositionalism gets in the way of rational consideration of counter-arguments made.
When the going gets tough, you simply make up crap about what God ‘enjoys’ doing. I find that tedious. It’s like playing chess with someone who suddenly decides that their King can move anywhere. Hell with it, my board is covered in Kings!
This is a lengthy way of saying ‘I can’t be bothered’! My purpose in writing is mainly enjoyment. As you well know, discussion about science and Genesis has occupied millions of words over the years, I don’t know what you hope to get out of a few dozen from me.
It might count as spam, perhaps.
From other proteins, or some times de novo as ORFan genes from junk or noncoding DNA.
False. A more accurate statement would be that it depends.
Some protein sequences are highly flexible and can mutate alot while retaining function, others are extremely sensitive to change. You cannot derive a universal statement about all of protein sequence space in the way you are trying to do.
That doesn’t even follow. Even if the premise is true the conclusion doesn’t follow. Outright non-sequitur fallacy.
Besides, how difficult is “difficult to evolve”? What a vague and useless statement.
The Szostak lab found functional proteins (four different ones) in a pool of about 10^11 random sequence proteins (sequences that were 80 amino acids in length). And they only tested for one function (bind ATP), they could have tested for thousands of additional functions, such as chemical catalysts and binding to countless other molcules. They also only tested at one temperarure. Who’s to say what else could be found in that pool of random sequence proteins if they had tested at other temperatures, at different ion/salt concentrations or tested for binding to other molecules or even for the presence of weak chemical catalysts?
It is trivial and easy to find functiona proteins in random sequence space. The Szostak lab proved this experimentally back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s and showed it to be true both for proteins and RNA’s:
szostakweb/Keefe_Szostak_Nature_01.pdf
Functional proteins from a random-sequence library
Anthony D. Keefe & Jack W. Szostak
“Functional primordial proteins presumably originated from random sequences, but it is not known how frequently functional, or even folded, proteins occur in collections of random sequences. Here we have used in vitro selection of messenger RNA displayed proteins, in which each protein is covalently linked through its carboxy terminus to the 39 end of its encoding mRNA1 , to sample a large number of distinct random sequences. Starting from a library of 6 x 10^12 proteins each containing 80 contiguous random amino acids, we selected functional proteins by enriching for those that bind to ATP. This selection yielded four new ATPbinding proteins that appear to be unrelated to each other or to anything found in the current databases of biological proteins. The frequency of occurrence of functional proteins in random sequence libraries appears to be similar to that observed for equivalent RNA libraries2,3.”
80 random amino acids strung together into a protein. Generate 6×10^12 different, random copies, test them all for a single (and extremely biologically important) function: Bind ATP.
Among that starting pool of random proteins 80 amino acids in length, there were four (4) different, unrelated proteins found that could do it. That gives about 1 in every 10^11 proteins capable of binding ATP. Which strongly indicates that as an absolute minimum there is at least one biologically relevant function in every 10^11 80-amino-acid long proteins. (I could stop here already, this is enough to render all of creationism bunk).
Notice how only a single function was tested for for that pool of random proteins. They could have tested millions of different functions (bind other biologically important molecules, tested for catalysis of thousands of different chemical reaction, stabilize phospholipid membranes etc. etc.) – but they only tested for one and found it already to begin with.
The simple fact is that Sean Pitman, the creationist liar for doctrine from which you probably copy-pasted this religiously motivated drivel, is talking out of his religiously biased ass, based on a couple of studies where he wildly extrapolates the results into areas the data don’t support. For example, the Discovery Institute paid their liar propaganda laboratory to mutate a functional protein until it stopped working (at what it was doing), then they tried to derive a general rule for the rarity of function in protein sequence space on this stupid experiment. It’s true, it only required relatively few mutations to destroy the function of the protein in question, and as a result they computed that functional proteins are supposed to exist at a rate of approximately 1 in every 10^77 proteins. Which if true, would entail that functional proteins were, as you go on to copy-paste, exceptionally rare. But does their experiment really warrant that kind of conclusion? They mutated a protein until it stopped working (again, at what it was doing). Even then, that is still not any guarantee that the protein in question is entirely nonfunctional. It is entirely possible that you can mutate a specific protein fold that, say, catalyzes some chemical reaction until it stops catalyzing that chemical reaction. But who’s to say that protein can’t do something else now? It might be able to catalyze a different but related chemical reaction now. You actually have to test for that, you can’t just declare it nonfunctional and then extrapolate from a test of your single fold into every function for every protein in every environment ever. Obviously.
And it did. We have phylogenetic evidence that it did.
No, it is an evidentially derived conclusion. A provable fact forced the researchers to draw that conclusion(see above), it was not some stupid story anyone just made up.
How hard is “hard to find”? The szostak lab found four functional ATP binding proteins in a pool of random ones. Turns out however hard you imagine “hard” to be really isn’t that hard after all.
Actually no, that does not follow. Non-sequitur fallacy. It is entirely possible that there are proteins that evolved de novo from non coding sequences, or passed through periods of nonfunctionality or just lower fitness.
To ask “why” presumes without reason that there must BE a reason, a why, a purpose, as if that is a requirement. It isn’t, you’re asking meaningless questions.
You’re arguing against yourself now by trying to have your cake and eat it too. First you argue that proteins are rare in sequence space and functionally and/or sequentially disconnected from each other, and that this is evidence of design (because then life could not have evolved you argue). Now you’re arguing the opposite, that if the circumstances of the ability of evolution to happen at all are such that it can, then that is ALSO evidence for design, because then the entire world must have been designed to allow evolution to happen.
Ask yourself, how could one ever falsify your view? All options, even diametrically opposite ones, you interpret to be evidence of design. There’s a colossal and gaping wound in your philosophy, it is all conclusion first and rationalizations 2nd.
And there we have it, all the basic fallacies of godbelief shoved into the same sentence.
False dichotomy, non-sequitur and question-begging all in one. It does not follow that because evolution is possible and happens that the laws of physics must have been set up to allow evolution to be possible and happen.
It is a useless philosophy you have if it does not even allow for the possibility that you might be wrong. It means you have set it up such that even if you are wrong, you have rendered yourself unable to discover if this is in fact the case, because all facts about the world you might discover are taken and refitted post-hoc into some rationalization for how it must have been the result of design.
Nobody is sweeping anything under any rugs. Rather traditionally the answer has been: We don’t know.
That’s not functionally equivalent to “sweeping it under the rug”. That’s just honesty. One should not claim to know when one doesn’t.
Regardless, the Szostak lab’s experiments runs a freight-train through this laughable assertion that there is some intrinsic difficulty with functional protein arising de novo instead of by duplication from already existing and functional structures.
In conclusion: Your entire case is based on failures in correct logical reasoning, claims contrary to demonstrable fact and a hefty dose of volitional ignorance. That last one because, manifestly, I’ve already explained all of this to you here.
fifthmonarchyman,
Science would not be rendered worthless. Induction does not depend on eternal constancy of physical laws (though it does depend upon a lack of caprice). I really don’t know why Christianity would give a damn about physical laws either. My bet is that there would not be so much as a murmur from Christians if such variation were found. “Look! It’s just what he would do! Mysterious Ways!”
No-one is checking. There is no analysis being done, no-one has defined ‘sin’ or provided a metric by which lives can be assessed. So to claim that as ‘scientific’ investigation of a theological claim is to stretch the words beyond usefulness.
I fully agree. This otangelo dude goes by various names, is known on many rationalist fora as a persistent copy-paste spammer, quoteminer, plagiarist and forum rule breaker.
Back on the rationalskepticism forums he was banned for plagiarism and quote-mining, then he came back with a fake nick and did it again and was banned for it a second time. Then he turned up with the same quote mines and copy-pasted plagiarism on theleagueofreason forums, but apparently got tired of posting there when the posters started returning the favor and just copy-pasted their previous answers to the same shit of his own, all over again.
Then he turned up over on sandwalk, still mindlessly copy-pasting stuff he at best half-way understands at most one quater of the time, constantly with the idiotic “haha you can’t refute this” crap attitude attached.
If you write a sufficiently long and detailed debunking in response and in your own words, he will respond with a single-sentence post saying something as laughable as “haha you believe that? Good one”
Or how about this golden response of his to a hefty post of debunking:
“voyage dans la mayonnaise much, Rumraket ??
your whole post is bunk…../”
That’s it, that was his response. Or how about this one:
“baseless assertion based on wishful thinking and blatant ignorance of the subject. Not even worth to refute……”
That’s how he responds if you actually bother to trawl through his ignorant wall of quotemines and explain in detail what is wrong with it.
Were I to go into detail, I would almost certainly find that fifthmonarchyman and otangelo differed on their interpretation of the text. otangelo is a YEC. That interpretation of Genesis is the one I consider science to have refuted to my satisfaction. If people believe they can interpret the words in a way that accommodates what science has discovered, clearly I cannot refute that position with that same science.
6 not-really days (despite having evenings and mornings), not-a-global-flood, sun-moon-and-stars after the earth if you squint hard enough, heavens-before-light, stars-after-sun … yes, it all fits by jingo!
There was some discussion above about that “notorious” Lewontin quote, about whether we can “allow a divine foot in the door”. It’s gone unremarked that in that quote Lewontin quotes his colleague Lewis White Beck, one of the great mid-20th century US scholars of Kant.
One of Kant’s big questions, in his response to Hume’s skepticism, is this: how do we know a priori that every event must have a cause? That is, how do we know a priori that the natural world is a well-ordered causal regularity? For if we did not know a priori that every event must have some cause, we would have no reason to think we’d ever be successful in discovering the causes of any particular event. (Or so Kant argues; we might disagree.)
The idea that “we can’t allow a divine foot in the door” simply means this: in order to construct models that explain the causal regularities in the natural world, we must assume that there is causal regularity. But we cannot assume that there is causal regularity if God could interfere in the world at any moment, in any way, and alter the results of any experiment or observation however He wished. This would be the God of the occasionalists like Malebranche and there are similar conceptions in Arabic philosophy.
The divine foot in the door is not, of course, the only conception of God on offer in Western theology. But it is one of the conceptions, and it is the one that Lewontin is concerned about in this passage.
Perhaps we can taunt him a second time with those then, rather than considering banning anyone.
Worth mentioning that Lewontin was writing a book review, not a paper, and his opinion is in any case binding on no-one. He also allowed Marxism to guide his research, so he can hardly be said to speak for the entirety of science. It’s that old Authority thing again. If you follow a Prophet, so must everyone.
Still no answers, just another C&Ped spam-fest plagiarized from another YEC website.
You’re not doing too well here.
Laughable. And you probably don’t even know it.
Rumraket,
Chrome has a plugin that allows you to create a killfile for blog comments. I don’t know if it works on this site. Presumably Firefox has something similar.
It would be ideal to have one built in so that each person here could control their own reading experience, but I haven’t yet found one that works on WordPress.
The claim is all men are sinful, what is the hypothesis of the causation?
Fmm, could you answer a question on the open thread?
LOL… no digging. Just putting the right meaning of the terms on the table.
Since the publication of Darwin’s Black Box, Behe has refined the definition of irreducible complexity. In 1996 he wrote that “any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional.”(Behe, M, 1996b. Evidence for Intelligent Design from Biochemistry, a speech given at the Discovery Institute’s God & Culture Conference, August 10, 1996 Seattle, WA. http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_idfrombiochemistry.htm). By defining irreducible complexity in terms of “nonfunctionality,” Behe casts light on the fundamental problem with evolutionary theory: evolution cannot produce something where there would be a non-functional intermediate. Natural selection only preserves or “selects” those structures which are functional. If it is not functional, it cannot be naturally selected. Thus, Behe’s latest definition of irreducible complexity is as follows:“An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.” (A Response to Critics of Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe, PCID, Volume 1.1, January February March, 2002; iscid.org/)
More correctly, we have found the universe to be in a certain manner, and theology has claimed that this is due to God. Based on nothing worthwhile.
More correctly, theology has called human nature sinful, thus humans are labeled as sinful. The fact that this claim of “human nature is sinful” almost certainly derives from oneupmanship among theists is something that escapes those involved in such competition.
Or anyway, you hope that self-serving theological claims will be swallowed by people here. Just because you’re gullible doesn’t mean all are.
Glen Davidson
Nice evolution of the gap position, then. We don’t know yet, therefore evolution.
We infact have a alterantive explanation. Its in Genesis one. God used his power, and his word ( information ) to create the physical universe and all in it.
How exactly did God create things ? what process was involved ?
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1794-how-exactly-did-god-create-things-what-process-was-involved
Looking at the account of Genesis 1:1 for just a brief moment, the words in that first verse are quite remarkable. They are indicative of the incredible mind of God. God says in that first verse everything that could have been said about creation and He says it in such few terms. The statement is precise and concise almost beyond human composition.
A well-known scientist named Herbert Spencer died in 1903. He discovered that all reality, all reality, all that exists in the universe can be contained in five categories…time, force, action, space and matter. Herbert Spencer said everything that exists, exists in one of those categories…time, force, action, space and matter.
Now think about that. Time, force, action, space and matter. That is a logical sequence. And then with that in your mind, listen to Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning,” that’s time…”God,” that’s force, “created,” that’s action, “the heavens,” that’s space, “and the earth,” that’s matter. Everything that could be said about everything that exists is said in that first verse.
Now either you believe that or you don’t. You either believe that that verse is accurate and God is the force or you believe that God is not the force that created everything. And then you’re left with chance or randomness or coincidence.
In genesis it says God spoke and things came into existence. God is a potent cause with power ( energy ) and his spoken word indicates information. Because we do not understand and in a detailled manner how he created the physical universe, and life, does not mean God does not understand or can’t. Mystery to us is not mystery to God, but we do know that God is not limited to His spiritual realm, as he shown with his becoming of flesh in Jesus Christ.
That is a common misconception. Namely, that there is a dispute between science and religion. In my view, that is not the case. There is a dispute between philsophical naturalism, and creationism/intelligent design. Thats different.
In my view, science is a formidable ally to creationism, since it has revealed that the the universe had a beginning, a position held by the bible for thousands of years, and disputed by the scientific establishment until one hundred years ago. It has revealed to us that the universe and the earth are finely tuned to the extreme, that life can only come from life, and that macro change is not a feasible explanation of biodiversity. All this is far better explained through creationism/id.
ahm. thats no problem at all. See here:
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1659-confirmation-of-intelligent-design-predictions?highlight=predictions
Entailed predictions from the hypothesis
All of what you are trying to justify here falls down, when considering following.
Chlorophyll biosynthesis is a complex pathway with 17 highly specific steps, of which eight last steps are used by specific enzymes uniquely in this pathway.
Even if we find in the sequence space the right steps to make the enzymes required to permit the synthesis of the products of these intermediate steps, so what ? the intermediate products would have no function, and no survival advantage of the organism would be provided. Natural selection could not operate to favour a system with anything less than all seventeen being present and functioning. What evolutionary process could possibly produce complex sophisticated enzymes that generate nothing useful until the whole process is complete? And even if everything were in place correctly, and chlorophyll were synthesized correctly, so what ? Unless chlorophyll AND all other proteins and protein complexes were fully in place, fully evolved and functional, correctly intelocked and working in a interdependent manner, photosynthesis would not happen. But even if photosynthesis would happen, so what ? Why would the organism chose such a extremely complex mechanism, if it was surviving just fine previously ? Furthermore, you do not just need the right enzymes. For the assembly of a biological system of multiple parts, following steps must be explained : the origin of the genome information to produce all subunits and assembly cofactors. Parts availability, synchronization, manufacturing and assembly coordination through genetic information, and interface compatibility. The individual parts must precisely fit together. All these steps are better explained through a super intelligent and powerful designer, rather than mindless natural processes by chance, or / and evolution, since we observe all the time minds capabilities producing machines and factories, producing machines and end products.
everything *has* to be in place at once or else an organism has no survival advantage. The thing is, there’s no driver for any of the pieces to evolve individually because single parts confer no advantage in and of themselves. The necessity for the parts of the system to be in place all at once is simply evidence of creation. Photosynthesis missing one piece (like chlorophylls) is like a car missing just one piece of the drive train (such as a differential); it’s not that it doesn’t function as well – it doesn’t function at all!
Feel free to explain how fossils can be millions of years old, faced the fact that many fossils have been found without permineralisation, collagen, proteins, and even blood….
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1767-carbon-14-dated-dinosaur-bones-and-non-permineralized-soft-tissue-evidences-fossils-are-young
feel also free to debunk the evidence for a global flood :
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t1635-evidence-of-noah-s-flood
otangelo,
You ok, but…..God is like so mean!
well, my threads and topics are still being debated at League of Reason, and i am still having fun debunking the pseudo-scientific crap of the deluded ones, of which rumraket is a proeminent participant .
http://theleagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12406&sid=c2ea621c041dde2c73ee1ccf163d3c91&start=180
Alan Fox,
Lizzie says theories don’t need to be falsifiable. Do you disagree with her?
Just for your information, reasonandscience is my personal library, i am the Admin, and poster there. I copy from my library, not from someone else.
I find that believers in a global flood believe it happened despite the evidence, not because of it. Hence it cannot be “debunked”.
Larry Moran has be of particular fun. Before i started refuting his nonsense crap at his blog, he showed up at my Facebook timeline where he thought that he could make his points with a attitude of superiority. When i debunked one argument of his after the other, and he were not able to convince me with his superficial drivel, he started with personal attacks, calling me a liar , amongst many other insults. When i asked him about how the Spliceosome evolved, he just posted a bunch of links, thinking that he made a point. When i confronted him with what his links actually said, namely that science has no idea how it evolved, he left the debate. Happened more than once. Particularly fun was when i mentioned Topoisomerase II enzymes. He came up with the escape that they were a recent novelty. When i showed him that they had to be there when replication began, he stopped answering me. In the end, i posted following prove that cell’s cannot be the result of natural mechanisms :
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2221-the-hardware-and-software-of-the-cell-evidence-of-design
he acused me of promoting my forum at his blog, and deleted the post. Thats when i decided to leave…..
say hello to Larry. I miss debunking his crap and superficial pseudo science.
Can we get a kids table for Phoodoo and Otangelo?