Creation vs. Evolution

[DavisBJ]

Give me hard evidence of the supernatural.

Yup, give me hard evidence of the supernatural. "Supernatural" – “beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature”. I have repeatedly asked theists who claim various supernatural things to allow me to test it. I consistently get rebuffed. You willing to subject some clearly supernatural claim to scientific testing?

 

[Hedshaker]

I did not mention Him. I argued that there must be a cause.

And this cause has nothing to do with your God or supernatural magic? So why not ditch him altogether, since he's redundant for you.

Now you are arguing that "something" may have existed throughout eternity?

"Eternity" is a man made term with religious connotations. What does it mean exactly? Always and forever? Forever hasn't arrived yet and always is beyond our knowing. I don't believe there has ever been your "nothing" and many top cosmologists, including Roger Penrose agree.. If you want to call existence (in some form or another) "something" then be my guest.

But out of curiosity, what do you suppose this God or cause (I'm assuming you mean an intelligent cause?) was doing for eternity past? It couldn't be thinking or doing anything cause that would require time.

 

[DavisBJ]

Of course not. The conclusion is that dates can be shifted by billions of years to accomodate(sic) the belief system

When the time scales are measured in billions of years, errors of only a few percent can mean adjustments of billions of years. What you carefully are not saying is that to fit the time scale you want, the errors would have to be of the order of 99.9999%.

 

[Jose Fly]

Here is another suggestion..."Anisotropic Synchrony Convention"
https://answersingenesis.org/astron...nchrony-convention-distant-starlight-problem/

Why are you citing a source that by your own criterion is anti-science?

 

[Jose Fly]

How do scientists know how much daughter elements existed in the beginning?

Did you forget? Isochron dating is a test of that, as your own source explained.

How do scientists know if there was ever conditions which caused accelerated decay rates?

And we're back to more questions you refuse to answer.

What mechanism do you propose accelerates decay to the point where 6,000 year old rocks appear to be billions of years old? And shouldn't you be sharing this with the world, since it will solve humanity's energy problems?

Also, what mechanism affects isotopes that decay via beta decay in exactly the same way it affects isotopes that decay via electron capture?

How do scientists know if parent / daughter elements were ever added or removed? (leeching)

As your own source explained, by looking at the resulting plot.

 

[Yorzhik]

Good, so future I can also ignore any cries of incredulity from you about saying there is no communication? Since we can be agreed that we're not really saying no communication of any sort rather just no communication which fits the narrow definition used by Shannon. That seems fair.
You say that but in your next sentence you show how little you actually understand... Hmmmm no.... it seems you weren't paint attention at all. Let me repeat, in your example the DNA is not encoded, transmitted or decoded. I specifically pointed out that in your example the message would be encoded to mRNA (NOT DNA!) transmitted to the ribosome on the mRNA (NOT DNA!) and the mRNA is decoded (NOT DNA!). There is also a clear source and end for the transmission both with regards to space and time (unlike if we were talking about DNA transmitting). You said this example was easy to understand so what about this do you find so hard then?

So no I can not agree with this statement of yours since it does not logically follow from the previous example.

Then why then the shell game with the central question? You keep trying to get me to agree to something which will support your central premise when I have disagreed with that statement from the start and you have a long standing habit of claiming agreement falsely. You've done it again here in this reply to, just as I feared you would try to use what I said about mRNA and apply it to DNA mutations even though I explicitly said that the had nothing to do with them.

Either you're being deceitful or you don't actually understand what you're asking for.



Can we stop with the games and just talk about when, where and how is DNA encoded, transmitted and decoded specifically?

It seems your debate tactic for this conversation is to start by muddying the waters. Can we agree that DNA is encoded information without having to know the mechanism that encodes it? We know this because the protein that some portion of DNA encodes for is not DNA, but if that portion of the DNA is changed, that in turn will change the protein.

But if you want to say that DNA is not coded information, then do you also disagree with Nature? "DNA Is a Structure That Encodes Biological Information" or Wikipedia? "DNA digital data storage" or phys.org? "DNA used to encode a book and other digital information"

That last one is great. It is a test that DNA is actually encoded information.

So can we at least agree that DNA is encoded information?

 

[Jose Fly]

Can we agree that DNA is encoded information without having to know the mechanism that encodes it?

What do you mean we don't know what "encodes" it? We see it happen all the time. It's just chemistry.

 

[Yorzhik]

When the time scales are measured in billions of years, errors of only a few percent can mean adjustments of billions of years. What you carefully are not saying is that to fit the time scale you want, the errors would have to be of the order of 99.9999%.

Whoa there hoss. Where do you get the idea we need to show it fits a time scale we want?

 

[DavisBJ]

Of course not. The conclusion is that dates can be shifted by billions of years to accomodate the belief system

Is that really all you got out of that article? Wow, talk about cherry picking just what you want to see. Here are a few gems from that article that apparently you preferred not to acknowledge:

Our solar system is four and a half billion years old …
Radiocarbon dating … can date artifacts back to prehistoric times …
Events … within a few hundred million years, are dated…
The main result of the work of the international scientists …is a new determination of the half-life of 146Sm, previously adopted as 103 million years, to a much shorter value of 68 million years…
The new time scale … is now consistent with a recent and precise dating made on a lunar rock and is in better agreement with the dating obtained with other chronometers….​

You should be embarrassed to try to pull a stunt like that.

 

[DavisBJ]

Whoa there hoss. Where do you get the idea we need to show it fits a time scale we want?

I assumed that you guys can't buy into ages of more than 7 thousand years or so. Was I wrong? (And my distant progenitor was not equine. Much more similar to a small rodent. Maybe "Whoa there, rat-kid.")

 

[DavisBJ]

I posted this a couple years ago...( 'Faster-ticking clock' indicates early solar system may have evolved faster than we think')
Can all dating be wrong by 30%? by more than 99%?
How do scientists know how much daughter elements existed in the beginning?
How do scientists know if there was ever conditions which caused accelerated decay rates?
How do scientists know if parent / daughter elements were ever added or removed? (leeching)
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-faster-ticking-clock-early-solar-evolved.html

Once again, you rely on a combination of elementary questions that dating labs deal with every day, and on what sounds like some mysterious unknown factor that is going to falsify a century’s worth of dating measurements. But the sum total of the evidence you offer is an article which adjusts one half-life (and it is still in the tens of millions of years), and the article affirms several ages that are massively incommensurate with young-earth dates. Getting really desperate????

 

[TheDuke]

1. Do you agree that everything which begins to exist has a cause?
2. Do you agree that there was a beginning to everything?

I find it interesting that theists are more and more relying on uncertainties still found in the farthest extremes of cosmology to try to find a gap they can keep their God safe in.

Hey, it's mean to take away their Kalam argument.
What else are WLC impersonators supposed to hold on to???

 

[TheDuke]

The membrane was similar but very different to the real cell membrane in a cell which is a phospholipid membrane and requires energy to pass substances selectively through it. The video membrane required no energy. Likewise their "RNA".

You shouldn't expect the earliest protocell to have the sophisticated modern mechanisms. The various active transportation, ion exchange, ion pumps and all the other systems are synthesized by the cell itself as a genetic expression, right?

So the question you have to ask is: was the model protocell viable or not? If you have any objections, do let me know since I'm curious whether perhaps you could spot something that the author missed.

That is a possibility since most Cambrian organisms do not exist today. There are however fossils of cyanobacteria from the Precambrian.

exactly, if I'm not mistaken, these cyanobacteria were the first organisms to pump out O2 into the atmosphere...

Are we going to focus on how life diversifies then?

We are leaving behind origins and "irreducible complexity"?

Yes, this is the topic of this thread. I have nothing against the topic of abiogenesis, but I think we should focus on the basics here. We leave behind the origin question but not the irreducible complexity, since that is part of evolutionary theory.

If you wish to get into real genetics, with a real mutation discussion, I would be most interested.

Are you suggesting we focus on genetics?
I am open to suggestions.

One huge problem is that the sophistication of an organism seems to bear no resemblance to the size and complexity of its DNA. For instance Amoeba proteus has 100 times more DNA than humans, and nematode worms have huge amounts of DNA etc.

Of course. I welcome such discussions, however I'm not sure I can share with you something you don't know already. IMO the complexity of DNA isn't proportional to the complexity of the organism in question because of "junk-DNA".

I will search the internet and see if there is some other line of research which might suggest itself as a possible profitable proof for genetic variation/evolution/diversification and the limits to it. And all suggestions on your part are welcome.

My brother in law recently wrote an anti-evolutionary booklet in which he mentioned the persistence of species from the past as a proof against evolution. I got the impression the argument went something like this... "if everything evolved from cyanobacteria, why are cyanobacteria still around, unchanged, today?". Have you heard this argument? Does it have a name?

Good luck. I'd say as a good intro: same place
Well yes, the argument is very common, unfortunately I don't know what it's called. The resolution is quite simple: 'common ancestry'.
It may be valuable to notice the word 'unchanged' in the question. As a matter of fact, if indeed an organism today has the exact same fixated DNA as its ancestor millions years ago had, then this might pose a serious conundrum for the theory.

 

[alwight]

I assumed that you guys can't buy into ages of more than 7 thousand years or so. Was I wrong? (And my distant progenitor was not equine. Much more similar to a small rodent. Maybe "Whoa there, rat-kid.")

Yorzhik is a bit harder than YECs to pin down. I have concluded that he isn't a YEC nor an OAC, but a MAC (Middle Age Creationist). lain:

 

[6days]

We know life does not come from non life.

Hogwash, we know no such thing.

Ha.... Come on Davis

I'm laughing. Evolutionists insist they know so many things later proven wrong by science. Yet when its a simple thing like the law of biogenesis, *they claim they don't know.*

 

[6days]

1. Do you agree that everything which begins to exist has a cause?
2. Do you agree that there was a beginning to everything?
If your answer to #2 is yes, then the cause must have pre-existed throughout eternity.
If your answer to #2 is no, then again you must believe that domething uncaused has existed throughout eternity.

I find it interesting that theists are more and more relying on uncertainties still found in the farthest extremes of cosmology to try to find a gap they can keep their God safe in.

Hey, it's mean to take away their Kalam argument.
What else are WLC impersonators supposed to hold on to???

I find it interesting that evolutionists avoid answering simple logical questions when the answer...and the evidence might lead to our Creator.*

 

[DavisBJ]

Ha.... Come on Davis

I'm laughing. Evolutionists insist they know so many things later proven wrong by science. Yet when its a simple thing like the law of biogenesis, they claim they don't know.

Laughter is often encountered from those who have no better response. Can you refer me to where the premier universities in the field of biology teach that life could not have come about naturally?

 

[Jonahdog]

Laughter is often encountered from those who have no better response. Can you refer me to where the premier universities in the field of biology teach that life could not have come about naturally?

Ah, you want something from a "premier" university. That is only one of your problems. Getting information from experts.

 

[DavisBJ]

I find it interesting that evolutionists avoid answering simple logical questions when the answer...and the evidence might lead to our Creator.*

I see that once again you have succumbed to your addiction of using the word “evolutionist” as a pejorative to be applied to those you disagree with. It is probably a vain hope that you will ever actually exemplify accuracy and honesty in your terminology.

Back just a couple dozen posts you quoted from a BBC program on the subject of how the universe came to be. The program drew on views expressed by some of the most highly recognized scientists in the field. There, as here you chose to label them as evolutionists, yet nowhere in the extensive quotes you included is there any reference to evolution. Who are these scientists that actually look in depth at these questions in cosmology and what are there qualifications? According to you, “Dr Andrei Linde, Professor of Physics at Stanford University … Dr Singh, Theoretical Physics … Dr Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physics … Prof. Smolin, researcher … Dr Neil Turok, Executive Director of the Perimeter Institute … Sir Roger Penrose, Mathematics prof at Oxford,” - these are “evolutionists” who can’t see the obvious answer to what to 6 terms a “simple logical question.” Notice how trivially 6days ridicules world-leading scientists.

 

[Yorzhik]

I assumed that you guys can't buy into ages of more than 7 thousand years or so. Was I wrong? (And my distant progenitor was not equine. Much more similar to a small rodent. Maybe "Whoa there, rat-kid.")

No. When it comes to radiometric dating we are interested in the process giving us the correct age. What you find is that you cannot calibrate the system. You can also not get consistent answers from samples that should be the same age. We also find that scientists that get the grant money to work on radiometric dating never question their assumptions when anomalies appear. And as just mentioned, the anomalies are plentiful.