Creation vs. Evolution

[6days]

Actually he (Geneticist John Sanford) IS *an authority.

But is his first name Steve?

No..... But because he is not afraid of going against the establishment, he has a nickname of Galilei

 

[6days]

There are numerous articles you can google from Christian geologists if you really want to learn how the evidence in the real world best fits the creation / flood model.

I agree with you, 6days. Let’s see what google gives us. The first responses to Googling “Christian Geologists” were:


1st google response was titled:.....

You are slipping my friend. Your posts are usually a B+ or an A. However you missed the mark with this one,but I will still giive you a C+. *


I had asked Greg to google ARTICLES from christian geologists. He has a habit of making silly arguements against what he thinks someones position is, but totally misrepresenting his opponents position (strawmam /strawman arguments). *


Davis..... kudos to you though in that you generally have a good understanding of your opponents position. And, you are willing to acknowlege good points, even when you disagree.*

 

[Yorzhik]

when Shannon methods assume noise is 'bad', that does not prove that all noise is bad. It just means that a Shannon entropy method might not be sufficient to fully analyse a problem.

You're the one not reading carefully.

Shannon assumes all noise is bad. But now that you've brought it up, tell us what problem you are referring to. "a problem" is pretty vague, and you have a tendency to get off topic.

 

[Tyrathca]

Shannon assumes all noise is bad.

Well I'm glad you've finally come around and accepted that noise being bad is an assumption in Shannon information theory and not representative of anything "proven".

 

[gcthomas]

You're the one not reading carefully.

Shannon assumes all noise is bad. But now that you've brought it up, tell us what problem you are referring to. "a problem" is pretty vague, and you have a tendency to get off topic.

To be more precise, Shannon assumed that for telecoms and data transfer systems noise is undesirable, but he did not assume that all mutations are bad for DNA transcriptions. But you'd like to imply that he did, wouldn't you?

As you must know, Shannon's information theories say nothing at all about the desirability of noise, so noise is simply treated as new information, as is supremely clear from the equations and his publications.

And about going off topic: you have still not made it clear why you think that treating mutations as noise rules out evolution theory, aside from the fact that you have an explicit a priori assumption that mutations cannot be beneficial. All this Shannon stuff is a side show, since all that is under debate here is whether mutations are all bad or not. And Shannon cannot help us with that question.

 

[Jose Fly]

Actually he IS *an authority.*

And a great illustration of the utility of evolution versus the emptiness of creationism.

True... He says "‘I was totally sold on evolution. It was my religion; it defined how I saw everything, it was my value system and my reason for being."

And that's when he did all his productive work. Once he became a creationist, his contributions to science stopped.

* 80 peer reviewed articles

* 32 scientific patents

* Founded 2 biotech companies

All done as an "evolutionist". Since becoming a creationist....nada.

Rather than your spin... his words...

Um....not my spin, just the facts. Again, THIS is the article you posted, where Sanford describes how once he became a creationist, he stopped doing science and at the time of the interview, was preparing to try and start again. ("I feel I have now grown to the point where I can re-enter institutional academia").

"An axiomatic statement often repeated by biologists is: “Nothing makes sense in biology, except in the light of evolution”. However, nothing could be further from the truth! I believe that apart from ideology, the truth is exactly the opposite: “Nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of design”.

That's a meaningless statement of his creationist beliefs, which his own history shows are scientifically useless.

‘We cannot really explain how any biological system might have “evolved”

He's either lying or totally ignorant of all the evolutionary histories for....well....all sorts of things that have been published. As before, I refer you to the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, where a search from just the last 20 years turns up over 700 published articles on the evolution of various things. That's just in one journal!

So the question is, is Sanford ignorant of these articles, or is he lying?

but we can all see that virtually everything we look at has extraordinary underlying design.

Again, meaningless statement of his beliefs.

‘I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory.

Once again, is Sanford lying or just ignorant? Has he never heard of genetic algorithms? Is he unaware of the entire field of comparative genomics, which is completely based on evolutionary theory and is how we figure out the different functions of genetic sequences?

Or is he lying?

You are spinning things and creating things Jose.

No, you're desperately trying to cling to one of your favorite creationist heroes.

What year did Sanford become a Christian? I think it was about '85. He did make a journey from about 1985 as an atheiest...to theistic evolution...then old earth creation...to being a Biblicsl creationist. *He semi retired in 98 but continued on as an associate professor at Cornell, and may still hold that position. He totally rejected Darwinian evolution and common ancestry beliefs in the year 2000.

Again, read the interview article with Sanford above (shoot, you posted it!) It was written in 2008, and at that time he described how only then he felt he was ready to re-enter science. And what has he done in the ensuing 8 years? Nothing.

So again, years as an evolutionist = published articles, patents, and real contributions. Years as a creationist = nothing.

His words....
"Late in my career, I did something that would seem unthinkable for a Cornell professor. I began to question the primary axiom (common ancestry beliefs). I did this with great fear and trepidation. I knew I would be at odds with the most "sacred cow" with in modern academia. Among other things it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.... it would mean stepping out of the safety of my own little niche.... to my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly great and unassailable fortress which has been built up around (common ancestry beliefs) is really a house of cards"

Yep, and at that point his contributions to science came to a complete halt.

Since you say that you love when i cite Sanford...." I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory".*

See above. He's either incredibly ignorant or he's lying.

And.....
"Even as we can not create life, we cannot defeat death. Yes I have heard there is One who did create life and who designed the genome. I do not know how I did it, but somehow surely he made the hardware and he surely must have written the original software. He is called the author of life... I believe that apart from Jesus there is no hope. He gave us life in the first place, so he can give us new life today.

And once he adopted this framework, his contributions to science came to a complete halt.

Evolutionist = productive scientist

Creationist = nothing

That's why I love it when you cite John Sanford.

 

[Jose Fly]

6days,

Also, if short repetitive sequences that don't code for anything don't contain information, how is it that they're used to identify suspects in forensics and to establish relatedness in paternity tests?

And if copies don't add information, why are polyploids oftentimes more robust than their parents?

 

[DavisBJ]

Geological Cherry-picking

You are slipping my friend. Your posts are usually a B+ or an A. However you missed the mark with this one, but I will still give you a C+. *

I pay little heed to any grade given by a creationist whose understanding of geology is based on a fanatical reading of an ancient creation story passed down from a scientifically ignorant nomadic tribe.

I had asked Greg to google ARTICLES from Christian geologists.

That is what I started out to do – find articles from Christian geologists. I perused the links from several pages of google results, and found that YEC geology has been repeatedly rejected based on the evidence. If I spent enough time, I probably could eventually find more links to pro-YEC geology sites. Just like I can find links to sites espousing bigfoot and a flat-earth.

The google research I did presented a number of YEC geology arguments, and why they are fallacious. What you are asking is for us to do is disregard the mass of mainstream geology articles and cherry-pick only the ones favorable to YEC views. Sorry, but that is a pretty lousy way to do any science.

Now, if this isn’t just bluster on your part:

There are numerous articles you can google from Christian geologists if you really want to learn how the evidence in the real world best fits the creation / flood model.

The Affiliation of Christian Geologists claims a membership of about 400 Christian Geologists. And as I showed in my prior post, they specifically reject the pseudo-science that YEC geologists rely on.

Now if you think you have a defensible position on YEC geology being correct, then present it.

 

[Greg Jennings]

I had asked Greg to google ARTICLES from christian geologists. He has a habit of making silly arguements against what he thinks someones position is, but totally misrepresenting his opponents position (strawmam /strawman arguments). *

I look forward to your answering of my questions. I know that you'll answer me soon, and not dodge

 

[6days]

I pay little heed to any grade given by a creationist

:rotfl:

an ancient creation story passed down from a scientifically ignorant nomadic tribe.

Yet relevant thousands of years later to kings.....scientists....Rich and poor...... and an account that science continues to confirm as truth.

 

[Greg Jennings]

:rotfl:

Yet relevant thousands of years later to kings.....scientists....Rich and poor...... and an account that science continues to confirm as truth.

Rotfl indeed to that last bit.

I'm sorry 6days, but no matter how many times you say it, science has never and won't ever confirm Genesis "as truth." As we've discussed before, the entire field of professional geology started out with a common belief in a Genesis creation and a great flood that laid down all of the rock on Earth. Just ask A. B. Werner.
Then over the decades data was gathered that suggested the Biblical creation and flood stories weren't accurate in terms of Earth's geology, and that Earth was obviously far older than 6000 years.

If YEC is correct as a "theory" of creation and if the flood actually happened, then why did every single person in geology used to believe just as you do, but as a result of evidence being gathered the entire field has since abandoned YEC beliefs? Why did they all just suddenly abandon the correct theory (according to you :chuckle?

 

[DavisBJ]

Score - YEC = 14, Non-YEC = 400

Score - YEC = 14, Non-YEC = 400

:rotfl:

Yet relevant thousands of years later to kings.....scientists....Rich and poor...... and an account that science continues to confirm as truth.

Not the science that is taught in the “great universities” you often mention. Not the science that is routinely used in furthering our understanding of the world. The science you allude to is but a sad form of intellectual prostitution used to protect your religiously motivated fanaticism.

As regards “Christian geologists”, I suspect you are poorly qualified to show that geology actually supports YEC ideas. So far the numerical score is 400 Christian Geologists in an organization that formally opposes your views, and the 14 that Steve Austin alluded to on your side.

If you choose to actually move beyond unsupported assertions and deal with the specific geological evidence, let me know.

 

[Interplanner]

Rotfl indeed to that last bit.

I'm sorry 6days, but no matter how many times you say it, science has never and won't ever confirm Genesis "as truth." As we've discussed before, the entire field of professional geology started out with a common belief in a Genesis creation and a great flood that laid down all of the rock on Earth. Just ask A. B. Werner.
Then over the decades data was gathered that suggested the Biblical creation and flood stories weren't accurate in terms of Earth's geology, and that Earth was obviously far older than 6000 years.

If YEC is correct as a "theory" of creation and if the flood actually happened, then why did every single person in geology used to believe just as you do, but as a result of evidence being gathered the entire field has since abandoned YEC beliefs? Why did they all just suddenly abandon the correct theory (according to you :chuckle?

I don't know where you get the idea that such ideas started with the Biblical account. Lyell was on a mission and like an apostle he wrote anything he could think of to unmake the Biblical account.

A person simply has to start looking at some of the huge anomalies around the world (for ex., 6000 ft of New England sediment in the Grand Canyon) and start tinkering with the idea of a completely convulsed mantle during the flood, as the admittedly dark Biblical passages say, along with about 500 legends from around the world, and you soon realize that there is no other explanation for the array of geologic anomalies.

Meanwhile PBS pours taxpayer money into BUILDING NORTH AMERICA which pretends that all the layers we see around us settled over millions of years, oh, except that there's a layer of metal oxide all over the place from one big impact, but other wise the place has been completely asleep and as interesting as watching water evaporate. Yeah right.

And then there is the cluster of human and geologic phenomenon in such places as Naszca or offshore Japan, which the London Observer writer Graham Hancock calls the total upstage of modern science. The civilization that existed then was much more advanced technically and more degenerate and giant than anyone wants to talk about.

Please see the thread 'Science at its worst' about titanosaurus; it's really lousy work.

 

[Greg Jennings]

I don't know where you get the idea that such ideas started with the Biblical account. Lyell was on a mission and like an apostle he wrote anything he could think of to unmake the Biblical account.

A person simply has to start looking at some of the huge anomalies around the world (for ex., 6000 ft of New England sediment in the Grand Canyon) and start tinkering with the idea of a completely convulsed mantle during the flood, as the admittedly dark Biblical passages say, along with about 500 legends from around the world, and you soon realize that there is no other explanation for the array of geologic anomalies.

Meanwhile PBS pours taxpayer money into BUILDING NORTH AMERICA which pretends that all the layers we see around us settled over millions of years, oh, except that there's a layer of metal oxide all over the place from one big impact, but other wise the place has been completely asleep and as interesting as watching water evaporate. Yeah right.

And then there is the cluster of human and geologic phenomenon in such places as Naszca or offshore Japan, which the London Observer writer Graham Hancock calls the total upstage of modern science. The civilization that existed then was much more advanced technically and more degenerate and giant than anyone wants to talk about.

Please see the thread 'Science at its worst' about titanosaurus; it's really lousy work.

I get the idea from schooling and from extracurricular research as well. Lyell was one of the people involved with the seven (I think it was seven) main reasons why an old earth creation was abandoned by geologists. Of course, the seven points are from my professor's outline, and are in no way standard geology teaching. She just thought it would be nice to explain exactly why old earth theory was abandoned.


What do you mean by "New England sediment in the Grand Canyon"? Are you referring to the same rock layers from the same geologic period being found in both New England and the Grand Canyon? Because that is very normal and I can explain that to you if you like

 

[6days]

Not the science that is taught in the “great universities” you often mention.

Their science may be fine.... but their beliefs about the past are wrong.
Both evolutionists and Biblical creationists use the same scientific method..... and all have the same set of data to examine. It is two opposing beliefs about our history.

The explanation that best fits the science is that in the beginning, God created.

 

[6days]

A person simply has to start looking at some of the huge anomalies around the world (for ex., 6000 ft of New England sediment in the Grand Canyon) and start tinkering with the idea of a completely convulsed mantle during the flood, as the admittedly dark Biblical passages say, along with about 500 legends from around the world, and you soon realize that there is no other explanation for the array of geologic anomalies.

Yes..... The evidence favors catastrophism. Even many secular evolutionists have had to move away from gradualism. There simply are mountains of evidence.

 

[Yorzhik]

But Yorzhik the protein is transcribed directly from the information (DNA/RNA) by means of a direct mechanical/chemical transcription process. It is not about information being transferred/transmitted from one place to another with hopefully high fidelity, so trying to apply Shannon theory is imo nonsense. If the transcription system happened to be rubbish then the resulting protein would also be rubbish, so would it help to claim that Shannon could be applied to rubbish?
Iow, in practice the protein is constructed/transcribed accurately according to the associated information, but the protein and the information are nevertheless two very different things. On a transmission system however if the information at the distant end matched the original information then than we could call it the "same" and possibly Shannon theory may have had something to do with it.

With Shannon, it doesn't matter if the data is compressed or not as part of transmission. Shannon dictates that noise is bad and that the amount of information in the sent message cannot exceed the amount of information in the received message.

Why do you persist in this nonsense? The original information is used to physically transcribe protein, it isn't about transmitting data from A to B with high fidelity.

If you knew anything about Shannon, you'd know it doesn't matter.

No, errors can happen by chance during genetic transcription as with any mechanical process and are just that, errors, as indeed you have shown me can be corrected as a part of the transcription process, but in a transmission system errors can be induced by interference/noise from outside. Noise is an external factor, not something inherent during transcription.

If you knew anything about Shannon, you'd know it doesn't matter.

That is imo still errors caused by occasional specific, probably explainable, temporary reasons. Noise in a transmission system anyway is typically a constant induced background effect that has to be dealt with, say hello to Shannon. I at least wouldn't call it "noise" in a transcription system, but if you want to then that's up to you.

Shannon calls it noise, so it's not up to you.

I'm not, I'm saying that you can't meaningfully apply Shannon to genetic transcription.

Since Shannon applies to genetic transcription, it's up to you to show us how common descent overcomes Shannon theory.

Mistakes aren't noise, they're mistakes. Again we are not talking about transmitting messages we are concerned with transcription into protein. I know you desperately want to conflate to obfuscate but you really will have to demonstrate exactly how Shannon applies to genetic transcription.

Mistakes aren't noise? That's so wrong on so many levels. Mistakes are obviously noise by any information measure.

I call it what it is, while you would like to present it as a messaging system for some reason. :think:

I'll stick with science. It says there are a host of messages in a cell. You can stick with your blind faith.

OK then demonstrate how it usefully applies to genetic transcription.

Already done. You answered that DNA is not protein.

 

[Yorzhik]

You ask this question multiple times in different ways. Shannon assumes that the original message is perfect an all changes to it are undesirable is because his methods were for use in human communication systems.

No. Shannon applies to all messages where information is transmitted. Quite simply because if information could be transmitted that that could ignore Shannon, then we'd use that system instead.

[qutoe]In human communication systems the sender almost invariably wants their message sent as is and unedited and the recipient wants the same. That's simply how humans design and use their communication systems. Humans don't want any other information in the received message other than what was from the sender.[/quote]
That's not true. Any human would want more information received than what was sent. It would be free information. Every human would want that.

Since when is it appropriate to measure information over multiple transmissions? I've always thought that by transmission in inheritance you were meaning parent to offspring not great great great great grandparent to distant offspring multiple generations and millennia removed. But now that we are apparently measuring it over limitless generations and the measure of increase in information is by measuring against the earliest version.... Since increase of information between one generation (a "repairing" mutation if you will) doesn't count.

This is a tacit admission that you can't measure information with your method or compare information content of sequences..... ever! Since we don't know what the original sequences were and thus can never know if the genes we are looking at are filled with noise or not (we can't use function since noise can add or change function).

You are correct. I was wrong to get ahead of myself. You can count those times where a mutational error was *corrected* as evidence for your side that it happens normally with noise. Good catch.

your description of genetic algorithms sounds exactly like mutation and natural selection. Random is controlled within mutations (there are only a limited number of ways mutations change genetics) and these mutations never change how natural selection evaluates whether the mutation is good or bad. So isn't genetics another form of controlled random given your description?

It certainly could be! Please present your evidence that natural selection is the same as the evaluation function of a genetic algorithm and creates all the diversity of life we see on earth today.

That's a stupid question given we are debating whether mutations are noise and whether Shannon and Weaver's methods are appropriate to apply in this context. You're essentially asking me to assume you are right then argue how you are still wrong (which in a way I've done above for other points but ASKING me to do it is just dumb)

It's not a stupid question if Shannon actually applies to messages in a cell, in the same way it applies to messages in all the rest of reality. I'm not asking you to assume that I'm right, but that Shannon applies to all messages.

 

[Greg Jennings]

Yes..... The evidence favors catastrophism. Even many secular evolutionists have had to move away from gradualism. There simply are mountains of evidence.

The school of thought here for several decades now has been that the best explanation is gradualism with occasional catastrophic events, like an asteroid impact. However, outside of freak events like that, gradualism is the rule of thumb. And despite your whining about it, the evidence doesn't suggest that gradualism is incorrect.

 

[Yorzhik]

To be more precise, Shannon assumed that for telecoms and data transfer systems noise is undesirable, but he did not assume that all mutations are bad for DNA transcriptions. But you'd like to imply that he did, wouldn't you?

Of course not. Shannon applied it directly to all messages, and there are so many messages in a cell it boggles the mind.

As you must know, Shannon's information theories say nothing at all about the desirability of noise, so noise is simply treated as new information, as is supremely clear from the equations and his publications.

Sure, because:

Shannon, who taught at MIT from 1956 until his retirement in 1978, showed that any communications channel — a telephone line, a radio band, a fiber-optic cable — could be characterized by two factors: bandwidth and noise. Bandwidth is the range of electronic, optical or electromagnetic frequencies that can be used to transmit a signal; noise is anything that can disturb that signal.

But, yeah, maybe they don't understand Shannon at MIT.

And about going off topic: you have still not made it clear why you think that treating mutations as noise rules out evolution theory, aside from the fact that you have an explicit a priori assumption that mutations cannot be beneficial. All this Shannon stuff is a side show, since all that is under debate here is whether mutations are all bad or not. And Shannon cannot help us with that question.

I don't have an a priori assumption that mutations cannot be beneficial. That is the foundation that you make your claim on, and it is wrong, which makes your entire claim wrong.

Shannon shows that mutations, which is noise, is not beneficial in general. This means if you want to have a theory that is built on noise being good, you must provide the evidence first.