* Nothing can create everything
It depends what you mean by nothing. If we keep to what
you mean by nothing and everything, then everything appearing from nothing is now well known. It's the stuff you don't mean by those words that are the subjects of quite difficult investigation, especially the nature of dark matter and dark energy, a rapidly developing area.
But if you want to know how the atoms in your computer arose from 'nothing' then that is entirely explained. Ask if you need more detail.
* Life came from non life
You can predict, of course, that my answer here will also start with 'It depends what you mean by...'. So it will help if you can say what you think life actually is, but in the meantime we can still address the question of whether we know how life came from non-life, according to what I think life is. There is no scientific theory of abiogenesis, and if one ever emerges it will have to be circumstantial because the fossils that would link current observations about the conditions around sea floor vents with the biology of ancestral monocellular life forms have not been discovered, and are not very likely to be discovered.
There are a few really compelling versions of essentially the same narrative, but it's not clear-cut and I would recommend being skeptical (but not entirely closed-minded) to those descriptions.
I have to say it's a hypocritical accusation for any creationist to make, because there is no explanation whatever for how life came to be in Judeo-christian mythology. There are many platitudes on that topic but creationists never come up with the level of explanation they demand from real scientists.
* If evolution 'kisses' a frog, it will turn into a handsome prince
You are describing magic; I would put that question to a creationist, as they tend to deal in magic.
* Our eyes have the appearance of shoddy design
Have you been reading the thread? I've dealt with that in some depth.
* "there is a possibility that the multiverse is real."
Yes, and there is a possibility that you haven't bothered reading my replies to you.
It is a bit out of date in the sense that the problem is worse than Crow could have known 20 years ago.
You might need to cite some more papers to support that claim. You might recall that Crow's conclusion is only his opinion to begin with; it is a testable hypothesis so maybe there has been some testing of it in the meantime. I think it's pretty obviously wrong, but by all means change my mind with evidence.
If you thought it was out of date, perhaps you should have mentioned it yesterday before attempted to say he had solved the problem.
I hope you're not having a go at the logical fallacy of equivocation there. You should define what you mean by the use of the first 'it' in that sentence.
Stuu, you asked how exchange of genetic info is different between bacteria and humans (I gave 3 methods). If you don't understand the words / terms I provided, use a dictionary, or google. Eg... Is reproduction the same?
My question is, why did you mention different methods of genetic exchange? What does that explain regarding your original point? You might find it would help to use the 'Reply with quote' button, then it's easier to trace back to the original point. Otherwise we are all chimpanzees in a cage punishing one another over some rule that none of us understands. Or, we are Catholics and Protestants fighting a war started 400 years ago where none of us understands why.
I think you are a little confused. It was you that seemed to assert that speciation takes a long long long time and / or many many generations.. It was you that said bacteria speciate over tens of thousands of generations.
I don't think I used the word speciate in regards to bacteria at all, did I?
It was you that suggested it took 2 million years for the finches to speciation into 18 separate species. What I said was "adaptation and speciation can happen rapidly" and " speciation can and does happen rapidly (and gave example)"
The problem with speciation is that it is an arbitrary concept at the best of times. We can all give examples where we would agree that two species are different, but it becomes much more difficult when two species are very closely related in time or geographically. If an animal from each group can mate and produce a fertile offspring then we tend to lump them into the same species, but we call Homo neanderthalensis a different name to Homo sapiens although they produced fertile offspring together. Then, at what point in history did H. erectus become H.sapiens?
Although your standard creationist likes to make something of this, for example your frog to prince jibe, actually no species gives birth to a different species. I recommend reading about
ring species to understand this point better.
5. Diversification of European hair color
Yet β-globin variants clearly have selective value, as indicated by heterozygote advantage and the short time span (less than 5000 years) over which the β-globin polymorphism has evolved (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994, pp. 149–152)
http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1...lltext#Diversification of European hair color
I've tried to find the reference in the original work by Cavalli-Sforza but the original is in Italian and I can't find an English translation. Might have to appeal to the integrity of the Journal of the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society for the time being...
Here's some data on brain volume, which is a good measure of skull morphology:
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n12/mente/evolution/evolution04_i.html
Funny... so you think both good and bad design is evidence to support you? You likely also believe that functionality and non functionality support your beliefs. IOW... it isn't the evidence that matters but it is finding an explanation to fit your non falsifiable beliefs.
I don't think I believe anything that isn't falsifiable. If I do then I would be interested in having it pointed out to me. There are assumptions upon which everything is based that cannot be falsified, for example that I exist and that the universe isn't an illusion, but I don't claim those as firm beliefs, just working assumptions.
Bad design, which nature is full of, is only disproof of the creationist claim that there is or has been a perfect engineer at work in nature. But, if you want to make it about evolution by natural selection then Darwin's theory allows you to predict that you will find things that look like they have been designed only just well enough to get by.
And that is because the only test placed by natural selection is whether adaptations will allow you to survive and reproduce in that environment. So you get some fantastically complicated apparatus, because that is what is needed to get by, and you get some scrappy stuff that no entry-level engineer would have thought to be a good solution, even though it kind of works, because that is the test: it works well enough to allow it to be passed on.
Sure. I'm not sure for what though. I didn't write Crow's paper.
We have a good genome that was subjected to entropy. The Bible says that all creation suffers from the result of man's sin. (we had already discussed this)
Yes but you haven't explained how entropy is relevant, and actually how the Second Law of Thermodynamics affects the situation of the ongoing state of a genome. You can maintain a perfectly ordered genome as long as you have an apparatus for maintaining it (there are several) and you have a way of disordering the universe overall so a specific system can become more ordered. That's how salt crystals grow, for example.
The salt solution is highly disordered, but a very highly ordered crystal can emerge as the water evaporates, because the evaporation of the water causes the disorder in the universe overall to increase. So, over to you, do you know what you mean by entropy when you use that word?
I particularly look forward to you showing how 'sin' (whatever that is) is related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Good luck.
'Science' discovered the appendix appears suddenly and doesn't fit with any of the evolutionary trees. So, their rescue device explanation is that it must have evolved independently at least 32 times... maybe 38. (Do i hear 50?) An evolutionary biologist says "I do find their argument for the positive correlation of appendix and cecum sizes to be a convincing refutation of Darwin's hypothesis." (He still believes that somehow there is an explanation to fit his beliefs. IOW... shoehorn)
Other exerts....
* "The appendix has a unique anatomical location that is out of the way," he says. "Bacteria can be kept safe there for repopulation as needed." (Nifty design feature, eh?... Oh... or as Dawkins would say ' its only the appearance of design).
and
* "One wonders why such a trait with such a function would not be universal," he says. That suggests it is possible we still haven't completely cracked the mystery of the appendix, he says." (I wonder if he would consider it a design feature, that not all creatures need?)
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/...-more-30-times
Do those who have had an appendectomy 'need' their appendices? No. Is there a population-based (stochastic) reason for the appendix being a retained structure? Very probably there is enough of a selection advantage in retaining it that overcomes the disadvantage of its tendency to kill its owner. But this started out as a discussion about vestigiality. It's still vestigial.
Vestigial arguments are not based in science, but are theological arguments
'Vestigial' has got a pretty clear 'scientific' definition. I agree there are theological arguments, but those happen between theologians.
that even some evolutionists now shy away from using. You can see the shifting 'theology' in the appendix article. Science has shown that the appendix is not a result of evolution from a single common ancestor but they (evolutionists) still adhere to the belief, saying that our appendix must have evolved from apes. That isn't science... research shows they were wrong by at least 32 times yet they still attempt to explain it within their belief system
I'm confused. Is this about vestigiality or not? Or are you now attacking different views of the evolution of the appendix? That doesn't change the definition of 'vestigial'. The precursors to the appendix were for holding bacteria and other materials for digesting cellulose, and the modern day human appendix isn't.
the plantaris muscle seems like a design feature... a muscle that has been subjected to several thousand years of mutations, as has all parts of our body. (there are many parts that we could do without, but we function better with them)
So would the 10% of people who haven't missed their non-existent plantaris muscles have some envy of those who do? Do those people not function so well?
(BTW...Since you seem to think bad design is evidence AGAINST and intelligent creator, then you should be logical and admit good design is evidence FOR an intelligent creator).
I admit that good design is evidence of an intelligent creator. Would you say there is anything at all that isn't designed?
I will mention a few ways the inverted design is better,,, But first of all, the word 'optimal' suggests something which can't be improved upon.
Research in recent years has revealed the design of the eye...
Researchers Amichai Labin and Erez Ribak, Physical Review Letters 104, 16 April 2010 wrote
* “The retina is revealed as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of images. … The fundamental features of the array of glial cells are revealed as an optimal structure designed for preserving the acuity of images in the human retina. It plays a crucial role in
... role in?
Evolution by natural selection produces adaptations that are optimal. It is an optimising process. The structures present in the eye that help to make up for the poorly organised wiring of the retina are exactly what natural selection does. But it's not the kind of optimisation a designer would do. An intelligent designer would go back to the drawing board and start all over again. Natural selection can't do that because it is working on living organisms that can't be shut down for a redesign. There has to be a continuous successfully reproducing line of organisms.
Natural selection blindly stumbles upon a solution, but gets stuck, unable to backtrack, so it stumbles upon over-complex fixes to the problems it's stuck with. That might look clever and complex, but it's not good engineering. So once again we are back to the point of identifying poor 'design' in nature.
Don't forget there is only one point in this: if there is an engineer involved in creating the structures we see in nature, then it's not perfect because we can see much better solutions ourselves, ones that would require
starting again from scratch. So, if you don't believe the engineer is a perfect engineer, ie: that it wouldn't come up with the most efficient, cost effective and elegant solution, then there's no point to be made by this.
You can believe in a bumbling, blind, inefficient creator that tries many solution and takes many tries to get tiny gains, if you want. But then that is exactly what you would expect to see in nature if evolution by natural selection is the process.
When you read articles on IRC you might notice they seem to be quite careful not to call their creator 'perfect' when describing (the illusion of) design in nature. Well, I haven't come across any of their articles that would call the supposed prefect creator 'perfect'. Perhaps you have. But that would be them asking for trouble, because they know full well there's nothing perfect about it if you really want to say 'perfect engineer'.
* A problem we would have if our eyes were verted is that we would have lots more 'floaters' in our vision from macrophages. Inverted lens is the best design for all vertebrates.
Did you mean inverted
lens? The topic is the inverted wiring of the retina.
* Research on the vertebrate retina shows that the inverted design in vertebrates is superior to the verted design, even compared to the most advanced cephalopods. The research has discovered that our retina has a neurological feedback system improving contrast and sharpening edges without sacrificing shadow detail.
PLoS Biology May 2011 A positive feedback synapse from retinal horizontal cells to cone photoreceptors. (S.L.Jackman)
I don't think you have established how this is relevant to the wrong wiring in the retina, although I suspect it might be an example of a work-around necessitated by the bad wiring: there are focusing systems that help to increase the sharpness and contrast of an image of light that has had to travel through tissues that 'shouldn't' be there, if it was ideal engineering. I'm not an expert in this kind of anatomical biochemistry, you understand. Are you?
instead of being a great disadvantage, or a “curse” or being incorrectly constructed, the inverted retina is a tremendous advance in function and design compared with the simple and less complicated verted arrangement. One problem amongst many, for evolutionists, is to explain how this abrupt major retinal transformation from the verted type in invertebrates to the inverted vertebrate model came about as nothing in paleontology offers any support.
No problem. Eyes have evolved many tens of times independently over the past 500 million years, in particular. Our vertebrate eyes are extensions of the brain; cepahlopod eyes began as indentations in the body surface. That's why the wiring is different, but natural selection is stuck with it in each case, because once you have the advantage of eyesight you can't do without it for any length of time hoping for something fundamentally better, and so the only optimisation possible is finding work-around fixes. The eye still works well enough to get by, even if it's not the most elegant solution.
And you don't need paleontology, really, when the diversity of eyes in existence around the planet pretty much explains eye evolution by itself.
* Ophthamologist, Peter W.V. Gurney
..yet another creationist, but let's not ad hom him yet...
wrote "This article reviews the reasons for our having the inverted retina and why the opposite arrangement (the verted retina), in which the photoreceptors are innermost and the first layer to receive incident light, would be liable to fail in creatures who have inverted retinas. I suggest that the need for protection of the retina against the injurious effects of light, particularly with the shorter wavelengths, and of the heat generated by focused light necessitates the inverted configuration of the retina in creatures possessing it.
But doesn't necessitate it in animals without the inverted wiring? And what does he think the effect of the aqueous humour is, with all that water with its high heat capacity?
Ok..... You and me are selection. We go into the shed... now what? Selection eliminates. We have to throw stuff out of our shed. (As Haldane, Kimura, ReMine and others says... selection comes at a COST). Now what? Selection can't do anything except SOMETIMES eliminate. People can keep tossing stuff in our shed... sometimes we are lazy and don't notice junk piling up. haha... our shed analogy isn't very good.
The shed full of stuff stands for mutation, an endless source of either nothing at all, or bits of stuff that could be something. And you are quite right, our metaphorical sheds (our genomes) are full of old stuff that never got thrown away, and stuff has been chucked in by retroviruses, and copying stuff because the stuff thought it would be important. And the elimination does happen quite often (more than our worried friend Dr. Crow imagines), but indeed it is a very slow process if you want to see the kind of change you might actually call 'speciation' (to the point where the original version would not mate successfully with the later version, if it were ever possible for them to meet - but again see the Holy Wikipedia on ring species for that intriguing example).
One thing though about the 'how'..... Some evolutionists today rely on millions of hours of research trying to create building blocks of life. I think that indicates the 'HOW' requires intelligence far beyond our current level.
It's fair enough to plead ignorance. Of course you will appreciate the atheist position on this, that some christians seem to know in quite exquisite detail exactly how their god wants them and other people to behave, but suddenly they seem a bit ignorant on the details of how the whole system was set up in the first place. If christians could generally be as honest about their ignorance when it came to christ belief, then I don't think there would be any christians at all.
Still looking forward to a creationist coming up with a proposed mechanism for turning dirt into DNA. That sure sounds like life from non-life to me.
Stuart
