If God created...

[Stuu]

Mitochondrial Eve
One workup of the necessary chain of DNA for today's population is as short as 6000 years. This is not by anyone in the creation science community, and comes with many disclaimers, but it is a published study. It is generally believed in these sciences that one female is, as the Biblical line in Gen 3 says, the mother of all living.

I recommend reading the Holy Wikipedia pages on Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosome Adam before you get too excited.

Stuart

 

[Lon]

I would defend christians too, but I would also do what Bill Maher does and expose christianity for the massive con that it has been. Just as muslims have been the main victims of islamism, so christians have been the main victims of christianity.

lain: Right, I'm a victim for being encouraged to love more. You are just caught up with prohibitions, you know, the ones that have you thinking of yourself instead of others. lain:

In my country christianity is dying at a high rate, and I think that is because people see it as a failed set of dogmas. The things they see as 'good' in christianity aren't unique to christianity, and the bad has been either really appalling or involved the assertion of claims of magic that are just ridiculous. Christianity is dying in the US as well, but much more slowly.

:nono: You will never see it happen. As soon as an persecution starts, you begin to see who is who. What I think you are seeing is more home-churches so a 'change' not shrinkage. The reason Christianity will never disappear is because God is real, and again, there is a wall between us. You assume too much. You can't win against God. Christianity will never disappear, not even in your country.

Perhaps we could agree on the Golden Rule, or a better form of it, as a success, but that existed much earlier than the writings of ancient Palestine. Which religion will spring up in the place of christianity, do you think? Maybe yet another totalitarian one that claims to have the unique path to Salvation™.

Stuart

A LOT of poor assumptions on your part with a good bit of untenable arrogance to boot. God is God whether I as a Christian exist or not and you'll wind up taking this conversation with Him later on. Ignorance, is nothing to be proud of. You've asserted yourself into writing checks your mouth can't make good on.

 

[Stripe]

Just as muslims have been the main victims of islamism, so christians have been the main victims of christianity.

:darwinsm:

Stuu, you say the stupidest things.

In my country christianity is dying at a high rate, and I think that is because people see it as a failed set of dogmas.

Which shows that you have no idea what the Bible teaches.

The things they see as 'good' in christianity aren't unique to christianity.

Salvation and liberty in Jesus Christ.

Sent from my SM-A520F using TOL mobile app

 

[6days]

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.

That is a silly statement Stuu. And, its' a claim other evolutionists in the past made, but science left them with egg on their face. (want examples?) Nature is full of beauty, design, purpose, function, sophisticated information etc. We both understand that mutations and entropy can degrade and corrupt.

And that is because the only test placed by natural selection is whether adaptations will allow you to survive and reproduce in that environment.

Unfortunately for your 'deity', it has no intelligence to test. The vast majority of deleterious mutations remain in genomes undected by selection. The accumulation leads to increasing disorders, disease and extinction.

So you get some fantastically complicated apparatus,

Like our DNA? Yes, things seem complicated when you don't understand it, and can be mind boggling even for those who do. Even with the many advancements in genetics, there is still layers of functional complexity being discovered.

because that is what is needed to get by, and you get some scrappy stuff that no entry-level engineer

Stuu..... You are hooked it seems, on Dawkins (and others) theology... Your beliefs aren't science, and in fact science keeps refuting those beliefs. Ex. Several years back, Francis Collins was discussing a particular psuedogene. He said God wouldn't insert a useless ( Scrappy stuff) in our genome - so this was evidence of common ancestry, he insisted. Science proved him wrong. The pseudogenes he was talking about has been discovered to have purpose and function. He was correct though in that God would not insert useless junk into our genome.

Sure. I'm not sure for what though. (your 'apology')

You apologized 'sort of' for being a bit of a dork. You accused me of fabricating ("a slur you called it) the word "surprised" into a article. But surprise surprise, the word was in the article a couple times.

Yes but you haven't explained how entropy is relevant...

Yes Stuu. It has been explained to you along with definitions of 'entropy'.

Do those who have had an appendectomy 'need' their appendices? No.....It's still vestigial.

You keep trying to make theological arguments. There are many functional things in our body, that we can live without... but, we are better off having them. I could toss many parts from my car away like ABS brakes... but its better to have it there in some situations. Re. being vestigial... it is a "Biological Remnant No More".
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...cedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820175901.htm

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.

That is a silly statement Stuu. And, its' a claim other evolutionists in the past made, but science left them with egg on their face. (want examples?) Nature is full of beauty, design, purpose, function, sophisticated information etc. We both understand that mutations and entropy can degrade and corrupt.

And that is because the only test placed by natural selection is whether adaptations will allow you to survive and reproduce in that environment.

Unfortunately for your 'deity', it has no intelligence to test. The vast majority of deleterious mutations remain in genomes undected by selection. The accumulation leads to increasing disorders, disease and extinction.

So you get some fantastically complicated apparatus,

Like our DNA? Yes, things seem complicated when you don't understand it, and can be mind boggling even for those who do. Even with the many advancements in genetics, there is still layers of functional complexity being discovered.

because that is what is needed to get by, and you get some scrappy stuff that no entry-level engineer

Stuu..... You are hooked it seems, on Dawkins (and others) theology... Your beliefs aren't science, and in fact science keeps refuting those beliefs. Ex. Several years back, Francis Collins was discussing a particular psuedogene. He said God wouldn't insert a useless ( Scrappy stuff) in our genome - so this was evidence of common ancestry, he insisted. Science proved him wrong. The pseudogenes he was talking about has been discovered to have purpose and function. He was correct though in that God would not insert useless junk into our genome.

Sure. I'm not sure for what though. (your 'apology')

You apologized 'sort of' for being a bit of a dork. You accused me of fabricating ("a slur you callex it) the word "surprised" into a article. But surprise surprise, the word was in the article a couple times.

Yes but you haven't explained how entropy is relevant...

Yes Stuu. It has been explained to you along with definitions of 'entropy'.

Do those who have had an appendectomy 'need' their appendices? No.....It's still vestigial.

You keep trying to make theological arguments. There are many functional things in our body, that we can live without... but, we are better off having them. I could toss many parts from my car away like ABS brakes... but its better to have it there in some situations. Re. being vestigial... it is a "Biological Remnant No More".
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...cedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820175901.htm


.

 

[6days]

Vestigial' has got a pretty clear 'scientific' definition.

Actually, the word is even more loosey goosey than the word ‘species’ is. Oxford Dictionary defines it "Biology : (of an organ or part of the body) degenerate, rudimentary, or atrophied, having become functionless in the course of evolution.".

Vestigial arguments are the fallacy of begging the question. Evolutionists start with the conclusion and then try to make an explanation that fits the data. As many of their " useless" arguments are proven wrong by science, their arguments shrink into the gaps..."evolution did it, no matter the science". It is a belief the organ has stasis in one creature and degrades in another.

So would the 10% of people who haven't missed their non-existent plantaris muscles have some envy of those who do?

Again.... you argue from theology. So will I... the plantaris muscle has function and purpose. It would seem that similar to other genetic problems, that the plantaris muscle may have diminished function over the past 6,000 years since creation.

I admit that good design is evidence of an intelligent creator.

Great! However I don't believe you, unless you have now personified and deified natural selection? You insist on interpreting evidence through your worldview, religion, theology. Let's test this... what can you point to in nature or in the universe that is a good design?

Evolution by natural selection produces adaptations that are optimal.

Ok... So natural selection "gives the illusion of design"...even though it "stumbles upon Solutions unable to backtrack", resulting in "poor engineering" and "bad design"; sometimes its "shoddy", or "makeshift solution" and sometimes "OPTIMAL?". You are an apologist for your non falsifiable belief system. Your explanations are like a fog that can cover any landscape.

It is an optimising process.

Oh... so now natural selection can create systems that are even better than we are capable of utilizing? So, natural selection creates things for future use?
I hope you realize your arguments are not logical...and not scientific.

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.

Hmmm.... Seems like you are sticking with evolutionary arguments proven false by science years ago. The 'wiring' of the vertebrate eye is far superior to the simpler verted design.

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,

Haha... oh my.

I’m not sure who IRC is, although maybe it’s a site I quoted from? In any case, yes our Creator is perfect.

* 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

I think you have a blind spot Stuu. The inverted retina is wired correctly. The PLoS article explains one of the reasons the inverted design is superior.

Eyes have evolved many tens of times independently over the past 500 million years, in particular.

Your belief system has not kept up with ‘science’. Evolutionists believe sophisticated vision systems, perhaps better than our own existed over 500 million years ago. They admit there is no progression, although they arrange pictures of various eye types in patterns ti fit their beliefs… That is not science.

..cepahlopod eyes began as indentations in the body surface.

That’s the standard evolutionary claim, but not backed by science. The’simple’ eye spot is actually quite complex. Did it magically assemble itself?
.

And the (mutation) elimination does happen quite often (more than our worried friend Dr. Crow imagines),

Funny and sad… Stuu, you keep thinking your beliefs are superior to the research of ophthalmologists and geneticists. It isn’t just “our worried friend” who is concerned about genetic load. All geneticists understand mutations accumulate at a rate that is ‘worrying’, in your words.

…. 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.

Your denial of Christ, as our omnipotent Holy God, blinds you into accepting pseudoscience. You would rather believe disproven evolutionary arguments from the past, than follow evidence which just might lead you to our Creator.

 

[6days]

Mitochondrial Eve
One workup of the necessary chain of DNA for today's population is as short as 6000 years. This is not by anyone in the creation science community, and comes with many disclaimers, but it is a published study. It is generally believed in these sciences that one female is, as the Biblical line in Gen 3 says, the mother of all living.

Who would claim that all humans came from a common ancestor 5000 years ago?

The claim comes from Steve Jones, a geneticist at the University of London. Jones is ANYTHING BUT a creationist. He is a ardent (and arrogant) evolutionist. His claim can be read in the BBC link.
"To get to the universal ancestors (when everyone was the forefather of everybody alive today, or of nobody) we need go back only 5,000 years. Had you entered any village on Earth, the first person you met would, if he or she had heirs, trace their descent straight to you and your partner."

The creationist view on this is that humans did all come from a common ancestor about 6000 years ago. In breeding (brother /sister) at that time was not morally wrong. It was only later under levitical law that God forbade the practice. (And since that time incest is now considered repugnant). The BBC link discusses gentic problems that arise from inbreeding. The creationist viewpoint is that there would have been no genetic, or birth defects in the beginning. Defects and abnormalities were something that afflicted the human race only later as the years passed.. The more years that pass, the more prone we are to mutations and defects. The human race is continually becoming more susceptible to genetic disorders. There are now several thousand genetic disorders and the number is growing.

As often happens (as in this story) evolutionists come up with scenarios that are strikingly similar, and in some ways support the Biblical record. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/steve-jones/3685402/View-from-the-lab-Incest.html

 

[meshak]

Assumptions are like that and we are back to square one. What was the point? :think:

this reply make sense

 

[Stuu]

Actually, the word is even more loosey goosey than the word ‘species’ is. Oxford Dictionary defines it "Biology : (of an organ or part of the body) degenerate, rudimentary, or atrophied, having become functionless in the course of evolution.".

I'm normally a devotee of the Oxford Concise, and I agree that is the definition given, but I think it is not specific enough to be useful biologically.

My New Penguin dictionary of Science (not so esteemed a provenance, but maybe more likely) has "Any structure within an organism which has become reduced in both size and function during evolutionary time." It gives the example of the vestigial pelvic girdle in boas and other snakes, where legs used to be attached in an ancestral species.

In the context of evolution you would never say that a vestigial structure would have no function. The human appendix has definitely lost its role as a container for materials used to digest cellulose, but it remains with lesser, marginal functions. The plantaris muscle is so pathetic a structure that you wouldn't know whether you have one or not, but if you do have one then it exerts a small force. On the other hand kiwi have vestigial wings, but they do appear from observed behaviour not to be used for anything.

Maybe they are actually vestigial paddles that were originally needed for the long sections of swimming needed to get from the Middle East to New Zealand after the alleged flood.

And, I remember that the usual creationist claim (was it AiG?) about vestigial girdle on a snake is that it still has a function, that as a connection point for tendons. But why didn't they just say it was left over from when the snake was punished and forced to crawl on its belly after that whole Eve + Granny Smith incident?

I think, somehow, they want to be taken seriously. But they know they can't...

It is a belief the organ has stasis in one creature and degrades in another.

Well which do you believe? Is there evidence that the genome is degrading due to sin, or not? Does this only affect some organs? Can you predict which organs it will affect?

the plantaris muscle has function and purpose. It would seem that similar to other genetic problems, that the plantaris muscle may have diminished function over the past 6,000 years since creation.

I think you've lost on that one. There is no logic in your claim, and the evidence is against you on 'purpose', 'genetic problems' (it is not a genetic problem to dispense with vestigial structures, it is an advantage to do so), '6,000 years (more like at least 4 million years of bipedalism with ardipithecus), and 'creation' (not established by a single unambigious fact ever).

Stuu: I admit that good design is evidence of an intelligent creator.

Great! However I don't believe you, unless you have now personified and deified natural selection? You insist on interpreting evidence through your worldview, religion, theology. Let's test this... what can you point to in nature or in the universe that is a good design?

My wristwatch is quite a good design, I'd say, and I've no reason to doubt that the Olympus watch company has a good reputation for engineering, with intelligent watch creators on their payroll. You can even call my watch an extended phenotype if you need an evolutionary term for it.

Ok... So natural selection "gives the illusion of design"...even though it "stumbles upon Solutions unable to backtrack", resulting in "poor engineering" and "bad design"; sometimes its "shoddy", or "makeshift solution" and sometimes "OPTIMAL?". You are an apologist for your non falsifiable belief system. Your explanations are like a fog that can cover any landscape.

Consider it carefully, though. Remember that natural selection does not make things the same way a really top engineer would, because it can't. So it gets stuck with less than ideal situations that were cobbled together at the time they were needed, and because it can't redesign from scratch, over the many millennia it adds little fixes here and there to give slight improvements. So the word optimal isn't really right. But that process still optimises.

Also, the only test is survival to reproduce. So some things will look shabbier than others, because the minimum test gets applied. The human brain is one of the most complicated machines we know, possibly the most complicated in the universe. That contains the most phenomenal illusion of design, even though it has arisen by the same process that gave men a prostate gland, which frankly is a joke of an idea, engineering-wise. Why not make the urethra go along the outside, and not directly through the gland?

Although, actually, that's a bit unfair on natural selection, because like many things the prostate tends to go wrong after normal reproductive age so the reproductive test is not applied very strongly to it, and hence it looks a bit poor.

So, natural selection creates things for future use?

No, indeed it doesn't. It only uses what is already there, including the genome, so anything that can be made by a new mutation, or any change that happens by chance to the proteins in an existing structure.

Hmmm.... Seems like you are sticking with evolutionary arguments proven false by science years ago. The 'wiring' of the vertebrate eye is far superior to the simpler verted design.

'Verted' isn't in the Oxford Concise. Unless you mean that it has been painted green, as in heraldry.

I’m not sure who IRC is, although maybe it’s a site I quoted from? In any case, yes our Creator is perfect.

Tee hee. They appear to be avoiding saying that themselves!

Your belief system has not kept up with ‘science’. Evolutionists believe sophisticated vision systems, perhaps better than our own existed over 500 million years ago. They admit there is no progression, although they arrange pictures of various eye types in patterns ti fit their beliefs… That is not science.

I agree it's not science, it's a strawman argument, although you have even failed to shoot down your own strawman.

Stuu: ..cepahlopod eyes began as indentations in the body surface.

That’s the standard evolutionary claim, but not backed by science. The’simple’ eye spot is actually quite complex. Did it magically assemble itself?

I'd ask a creationist about magic. Did it magically assemble itself? if not, how did it happen?

Meantime, back to reality. Because eyes have evolved so many times over, you just have to look around the animal kingdom to see all of the intermediate stages, present in animals alive today.

Planarian:
The blunt, triangular head has two ocelli ([cupped] eyespots), pigmented areas that are sensitive to light.

Nautilus:
Unlike many other cephalopods, nautiluses do not have what many consider to be good vision; their eye structure is highly developed but lacks a solid lens. Whereas a sealed lens allows for the formation of highly focused and clear, detailed surrounding imagery, nautiluses have a simple pinhole eye open to the environment which only allows for the creation of correspondingly simple imagery.

Your denial of Christ, as our omnipotent Holy God,

Let's not turn this into another thread on the supposed trinity!

blinds you into accepting pseudoscience.

Would you say that walking on the surface of water, and walking again after being successfully executed, and being born of just one parent is science? It's not even pseudoscience.

You would rather believe disproven evolutionary arguments

No, I would rather have wrong beliefs identified and corrected. But you haven't been convincing in your attempts because you just don't know enough about it. You don't know the arguments against your position, and rather startlingly you didn't know that IRC is one of the creationist websites you quote from quite often, so you don't know your own position properly either.

from the past, than follow evidence which just might lead you to our Creator.

Yes, I recommend being a bit careful about that. The 'evidence' you cite is completely ambiguous, and it may well lead to some other creator, one that you wouldn't be allowed to acknowledge.

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

Yes, I recommend being a bit careful about that. The 'evidence' you cite is completely ambiguous, and it may well lead to some other creator, one that you wouldn't be allowed to acknowledge.

It's called science. We follow the evidence, even at the risk of being shown wrong. You have eliminated ideas without evidence, which is at best anti-science and at worst complete bigotry.

Sent from my SM-A520F using TOL mobile app

 

[Stuu]

Right, I'm a victim for being encouraged to love more.

And, apparently, to love with compulsion, for if you don't then you will be burned in sulfur for eternity, whatever that means. And, apparently to love this love-demander so much that you put the supposed needs of it ahead of the needs of your fellow humans, or put walls up, as you claim.

Not the kind of love I would be proud of sharing. Why does your god demand such nasty things of you?

What I think you are seeing is more home-churches so a 'change' not shrinkage.

Not here. The stats say it's atheism and agnosticism that people are declaring at increasing rates.

The reason Christianity will never disappear is because God is real

In what sense is it real? In the sense that you testify that you are sure?

and again, there is a wall between us.

Yes, built by you at the behest of that nasty meme that has settled in your otherwise excellent brain.

You assume too much. You can't win against God. Christianity will never disappear, not even in your country.

The only thing sustaining christianity in my country is immigration from less well-developed countries where there is much culturally-based brainwashing.

A LOT of poor assumptions on your part with a good bit of untenable arrogance to boot.

You would be disappointed with anything less. Don't forget about the sense of my own importance and unwarranted claims of superior intelligence. And the baby eating.

God is God whether I as a Christian exist or not and you'll wind up taking this conversation with Him later on.

Is that a threat on behalf of your invisible friend? Should I ask it not to smite me? I can't win though, can I, because it will tell me I have to love it or I will be incinerated in brimstone.

It can do what it likes. If I have to burn because of its anger then so be it. But it will have lost any claim to justice, because the whole proposition stinks of injustice. And if you can't at least appreciate that point of view, then once again I point out the nature of christianity and the way it victimises its believers.

Ignorance, is nothing to be proud of.

But neither is ignorance something to be ashamed of.

You've asserted yourself into writing checks your mouth can't make good on.

You mean like promises of paradise to people who haven't got two cents to rub together and are seeking the barest of existence? Humans have acute senses of justice and fairness, but of course life isn't fair at all, especially for those doing it hardest. So what a lie that is, to draw a cheque on the bank of delayed justice, a promise of a new body and permanent existence with the invisible one. But once you are in paradisum, what will you do next week? More deck coits? And next year? Lawn bowls? And next century? More singing praises? And next millennium?

And the seekers of this rubber cheque-load of eternal paradise promise often don't even know how to spend a wet Sunday afternoon. This is the lot of the victims of christianity.

Stuart

 

[Jonahdog]

It's called science. We follow the evidence, even at the risk of being shown wrong. You have eliminated ideas without evidence, which is at best anti-science and at worst complete bigotry.

Sent from my SM-A520F using TOL mobile app

Why do the Christians here get to lie all the time.

 

[Stuu]

Nature is full of beauty, design, purpose, function, sophisticated information etc.

Yep. But how did it come to be that way? Magic? Or a step-by-step process of incremental change?

We both understand that mutations and entropy can degrade and corrupt.

No, you don't understand entropy.

Unfortunately for your 'deity'

No deity here.

, it has no intelligence to test.

Which is why Richard Dawkins called his book The Blind Watchmaker. I guess missing vision is a metaphor for the lack of intelligence in the process. But there is no need for intelligence, and there is no sign of it either.

The vast majority of deleterious mutations remain in genomes undected by selection. The accumulation leads to increasing disorders, disease and extinction.

Yes to very small percentages of various disorders / diseases, or in some cases like male colour-blindness some relatively common conditions, but can you name a single species that has gone extinct because it mutated away from being fit in that environment?

Several years back, Francis Collins was discussing a particular psuedogene. He said God wouldn't insert a useless ( Scrappy stuff) in our genome - so this was evidence of common ancestry, he insisted. Science proved him wrong. The pseudogenes he was talking about has been discovered to have purpose and function. He was correct though in that God would not insert useless junk into our genome.

And here endeth the sermon. Meantime, a large proportion of the genome contains pseudogenes which are mutated copies of coding genes but that code for absolutely nothing, and appear to have no regulatory function at all. Happily, although not for you, they are a rich source of evidence for patterns of common ancestry.

You accused me of fabricating ("a slur you called it) the word "surprised" into a article. But surprise surprise, the word was in the article a couple times.

I've always wondered about how creationist writing particularly comes to have that style of mockery, and I think now there is a clue in the speaking circuit itineraries of the staffers at AiG, IRC, Creation, and the rest of that shower of liars.

If you look at their upcoming talks, they are all in church halls or large christian assemblies. Note that they never talk to university biology departments, because they know their arguments would be torn to shreds, so they only ever preach to the converted, the cowards.

Well, it would play well to those audiences to have a lot of 'Evolutionists are amazed' and 'Scientists were unable to explain' and 'Geologists are forced to admit' type statements, wouldn't it. If you have never been to a lecture by a real biologist then you would know that you don't hear creationism mentioned at all. Even if it was raised by an audience member, the biologist's rebuttal of creationism would not involve any commentary on the shock value for the creationist. Although I imagine Steve Jones probably insults creationists in his biology lectures...

Yes Stuu. It has been explained to you along with definitions of 'entropy'.

Once again, a definition is not an explanation. And, you made up your own definition anyway!

You know you have lost this one too, and that's because the creation or IRC website has set you up to fail. You don't actually know what entropy is, or how it works, and you certainly can't apply it to biochemistry. I've even explained to you how it works, and you're still getting it wrong.

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

Why do the Christians here get to lie all the time.

Feel free to leave. :up:

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[Lon]

And, apparently, to love with compulsion, for if you don't then you will be burned in sulfur for eternity, whatever that means. And, apparently to love this love-demander so much that you put the supposed needs of it ahead of the needs of your fellow humans, or put walls up, as you claim.

:doh: Cause and effect? Reap what we sow? Come on, you can think better than this :mmph:

Not the kind of love I would be proud of sharing. Why does your god demand such nasty things of you?

See the wall between us??? Its HUGE! Shall we go with your presuppositions or mine? How can the breach be spanned? You are in desperate need of an encounter with God. I can't bust down this wall. Mr. Gorbachev cannot tear down this wall...

Not here. The stats say it's atheism and agnosticism that people are declaring at increasing rates.

We either face truth or hide from it. FOLLOW the evidence. It means get off your seat and move.

In what sense is it real? In the sense that you testify that you are sure?

6 Days does an awesome job of explaining this. You are well aware of truths. Again, get off your backside and FOLLOW the evidence if you have a mind. He is easily findable. If you DON'T find Him, it is because YOU didn't want to. You stayed in your house and looked in closets and called it good. One has to wonder why that's all the further you got.... Try starting with removing 'it' from your vocabulary lain:

Yes, built by you at the behest of that nasty meme that has settled in your otherwise excellent brain.

Does it EVER amaze you, that in yourself, is already an emotional reaction against the notion before you ever entertained the reality? IOW, do you NOT see in yourself that you are emoting first, thinking later? :think:

The only thing sustaining christianity in my country is immigration from less well-developed countries where there is much culturally-based brainwashing.

Sounds awkwardly Aryan... :think:

You would be disappointed with anything less. Don't forget about the sense of my own importance and unwarranted claims of superior intelligence. And the baby eating.

Again, writing checks your mouth can't cash. Why in the world would you build your life on what you cannot show to be true? To me? It has every bit the look of emoting over thinking. As I said, I'm either magic or God is real. Isn't that tenable, at least for me? Okay, you don't have that in your life, I understand BUT then you build of the 'lack' instead of the empirical. How is that substantiated tenable intelligence? :idunno: At LEAST you can look to the guy who has evidence if you have none. I realize that proving a negative is incredibly hard, but it would necessarily have to be the goal for it to hold up as something that so incredibly affects my life.

Is that a threat on behalf of your invisible friend? Should I ask it not to smite me? I can't win though, can I, because it will tell me I have to love it or I will be incinerated in brimstone.

Sort of, only in the sense that reality is a must, so yes, reality HAS to be met, eventually. I guess, for the surety of it, it comes as a threat. At least I have empirical data. You? You seem content to hide from it. Why would I lie? It is not at all my intent to do so. You at the very least, have a reason to stop, think, listen, then contemplate.

It can do what it likes. If I have to burn because of its anger then so be it. But it will have lost any claim to justice, because the whole proposition stinks of injustice. And if you can't at least appreciate that point of view, then once again I point out the nature of christianity and the way it victimises its believers.

Again, at the very least, you admit here that you are resigned to truth, however it may lay. That at least, is living according to possibility rather than emoting and 'it.'

But neither is ignorance something to be ashamed of.

If it is willful, it always is, as far as I've ever witnessed.

You mean like promises of paradise to people who haven't got two cents to rub together and are seeking the barest of existence? Humans have acute senses of justice and fairness, but of course life isn't fair at all, especially for those doing it hardest. So what a lie that is, to draw a cheque on the bank of delayed justice, a promise of a new body and permanent existence with the invisible one. But once you are in paradisum, what will you do next week? More deck coits? And next year? Lawn bowls? And next century? More singing praises? And next millennium?

Everything good and pure. Why would you prefer vice over that? :think: :idunno: Ephesians 3:20?

And the seekers of this rubber cheque-load of eternal paradise promise often don't even know how to spend a wet Sunday afternoon. This is the lot of the victims of christianity.

Stuart

I'm not asking you to join a church, but join a Being. Keep searching. He does say He (not it) will be found, if you seek. I think you'll have to get further than the closets in your house.

 

[6days]

But how did it (beauty, order, design in the universe and nature) come to be that way?

For in six days, God created the heavens, and the earth, and everything in them

No, you don't understand entropy.

Actually, my friend I understand it well. You also understand it. You also understand that words can have a variety of meanings but it is usually easy to understand by the context. However you choose to to be obtuse, and insist it means something other that what the context requires... and you seem to forget that I already provided the definition for the way in which I am using that word.
Oxford Dictionary: "2
Lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder" (It applies to various types of entropy - information entropy, biological entropy, statistical entropy, etc.)

And, you made up your own (entropy) definition anyway!

Uh... I don't have input on defiintions for dictionaries.

Which is why Richard Dawkins called his book The Blind Watchmaker.

Dawkins is a good author, but you need realize his books are based on his (erroneous) theology. He interprets evidence to fit his belief system.. He employs a number of logical fallacies, including ad homiems and strawmans, but his fave seems to be fallacy of equivocation.

Yes to very small percentages (6days had said that the vast amount of deleterious mutations remain in genomes undetected by selection)

No Stuu.... I don't think you understand the topic. We have about 150 new deleterious mutations added to our genome every generation. Some geneticist say more than that, and some say a bit less than that. Out of the hundred fifty new mutations geneticist would consider 147 of them to be slightly deleterious. About 3 out of the hundred fifty are actually considered harmful. Natural selection of course is incapable of detecting and removing hardly anything in a population with such a low birth rate as that of humans. We would not exist if selection was to remove all the harmful and slightly harmful mutations.. Yesterday I quoted from a 2016 journal on the topic and can quote other sources also. But it seems you are unwilling to consider anything that is not consistent with your belief system? BTW... Geneticists generally consider the VSDM's to be most harmful in the long term. (citations if you wish).

Meantime, a large proportion of the genome contains pseudogenes which are mutated copies of coding genes but that code for absolutely nothing, and appear to have no regulatory function at all.

That is your beliefs; it is not science. That belief system has hindered science. Fortunately there are scientists who continue to look for purpose, design and function in things that were considered pseudogenes in the past. In the science journal RNA, an article says: "Pseudogenes have long been labeled as "junk" DNA, failed copies of genes that arise during the evolution of genomes. However, recent results are challenging this moniker; indeed, some pseudogenes appear to harbor the potential to regulate their protein-coding cousins. Far from being silent relics, many pseudogenes are transcribed into RNA, some exhibiting a tissue-specific pattern of activation. Pseudogene transcripts can be processed into short interfering RNAs that regulate coding genes through the RNAi pathway. In another remarkable discovery, it has been shown that pseudogenes are capable of regulating tumor suppressors and oncogenes by acting as microRNA decoys. The finding that pseudogenes are often deregulated during cancer progression warrants further investigation into the true extent of pseudogene function. In this review, we describe the ways in which pseudogenes exert their effect on coding genes and explore the role of pseudogenes in the increasingly complex web of noncoding RNA that contributes to normal cellular regulation"

The article closes with warning similar to what creationists have been saying for years not to assume that pseudogenes are "nonfunctional relics"because that has caused them to be "overlooked in the quest to understand the biology of health and disease":
RNA, Vol. 17:792-798 (2011).

Note that (creationist scientists) never talk to university biology departments...

Many creationist scientists would love to speak to the biology department at universities and some do. Some are university professors in biology departments. Many universities though are theogically opposed to Darwinism being challenged. You likely also notice a trend at many universities that tries to shut down free speech. I wonder if headlines such as this send some evolutionsts to their safe spaces - 'Creationism conference at large U.S. research university stirs unease'

 

[6days]

In the context of evolution you would never say that a vestigial structure would have no function.

The definition has evolved, and people still use different definitions that include 'useless'.

The human appendix has definitely lost its role as a container for materials used to digest cellulose, but it remains with lesser, marginal functions.

We don't know what role the appendix had after creation. Emperical science can help us determine what purpose our appendix serves today.... in all likelyhood the same purpose of 'the original' but diminished by several thousand years of mutations. Evolutionists of the past used our "useless" appendix as evidence of common ancestry. To be consistent evolutionists should now be arguing that the useful appendix is evidence against common ancestry. Seems logical, doesn't it?

On the other hand kiwi have vestigial wings, but they do appear from observed behaviour not to be used for anything.

There are many examples of mutations, and selection destroying or eliminating complex, sophisticated systems. Creatures losing functionality is the common ancestry belief system in reverse.

And, I remember that the usual creationist claim (was it AiG?)

I can TRY comment on it if you provide a link.

Is there evidence that the genome is degrading due to sin, or not?

There is lots of info showing our genome is degrading due to mutations and selection. This is consistent with God's Word, that we live in a good creatiin, corrupted by sin

Does this only affect some organs?

Offhand, I can't think of any organ that has not had genetic problems.

My wristwatch is quite a good design,

Did I predict you would fail the simple test? The question was 'What can you say has a good design in the universe, or in nature?' Although, I guess your watch is in the universe...isn't it?

Remember that natural selection does not make things the same way a really top engineer would, because it can't.

Correct! In your analogy, natural selection sometimes throws something out of the 'shed'. It can never make anything.

So the word optimal isn't really right

Evolutionists don't like it that the researchers called the design optimal.

The human brain is one of the most complicated machines we know, possibly the most complicated in the universe.

Yes... the brain is pretty nifty, even with some self repair mechanisms. Is the brain evidence of good design...which you said is evidence of an intelligent designer? Or do you think you are qualified to rewire not just our eyes, but also our brains?

No, indeed it doesn't. (natural selection does not create things for future use)

And yet our eyes are able to detect the very smallest amount of light...It provides no evolutionary advantage. It simply is another example of optimal design... OPTIMAL.... can't be improved upon. "Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/02angier.html?_r=0

I agree it's not science, it's a strawman argument

Ha.... You make me smile. If 'my' claim wasn't science, you are correct. I was giving evolutionist claims in your response to you stating eyes evolved from a light sensitive indentation over the course of 500 million years.

I'd ask a creationist about magic. Did it magically assemble itself? if not, how did it happen?

Stuu, there are two choices.
1. Absolutely nothing created everything.
2. The cause of everything existed eternally.

..you just have to look around the animal kingdom to see all of the intermediate stages, present in animals alive today.

Awesome variety of eyes....eagle...dragonfly...nautilus...cat, etc.

[/quote]Would you say that walking on the surface of water, and walking again after being successfully executed, and being born of just one parent is science?[/quote]Nope.... Of course that isn't science. Jesus rising from the dead is a belief about the past, based on evidence. There is a short book providing the evidences, written by a former atheist who intended on proving stories about Jesus to be false. He became convinced by evidence.

Even if your intention is to arm yourself with more evidence against Christianity, try reading 'More than a Carpenter'. I think its about an hour read.

you didn't know that IRC is one of the creationist websites you quote from quite often

Stuu, I think I always provide a source when quoting. If not, let me know. I likely quote more from secular sources than Christian.

 

[Stuu]

Cause and effect? Reap what we sow? Come on, you can think better than this

Yes, I like to think that with the time I have occupied the planet thus far, I have managed to climb my way out of the infantile levels of Kohlberg's States of moral development. Reap what we sow is about Level 1, from memory.

I recommend another look at 1 Corinthians 13.

You are in desperate need of an encounter with God. I can't bust down this wall. Mr. Gorbachev cannot tear down this wall...

Lon, there's no god. It's all wishful thinking. Although why you would wish for that is a bit puzzling, still there you go, each to their own.

6 Days does an awesome job of explaining this.

I'm glad you think he is good at something. Because he isn't very good at science. Or creationism.

<Snipped vaguely drunken-looking attempt at prostyletising>

Does it EVER amaze you, that in yourself, is already an emotional reaction against the notion before you ever entertained the reality? IOW, do you NOT see in yourself that you are emoting first, thinking later?

Christianity makes me bloody angry. The thought of the social injustice of all that waste of human potential. I have met a few very bright and capable people who have devoted themselves to joke occupations like theology and creationism. Just think what they might have achieved for their fellow humans if they hadn't joined the crusade to read fiction aloud in public, or push for the right to lie to children in schools.

Again, writing checks your mouth can't cash.

I'm not quite sure I understand what that analogy is meant to mean.

Why in the world would you build your life on what you cannot show to be true?

I don't know, that's what I keep asking people here. It is quite interesting, but I don't feel I have quite got to the bottom of how a human could be misled by fiction that is as absurd as that invented for Jesus. I know there is the bizarre effect of the commitment that comes from the stories being so absurd that it's impossible to back out of them and save face.

I wonder if there is also a comparison to be made with Nigerian email scams. I understand that the emails you get (I presume you know the kind of thing) are intentionally badly written, with poor spelling and grammar so that it will put off people who can see through the scam, because they are a waste of the scammer's time. The scammer only wants to try and deal with people who fail to spot the obvious signs. Interesting, eh? Well, unfortunately I think that the fiction stories of christianity are so utterly absurd because it's going to be far more productive to encourage in those who don't have any skeptical resistance to the absurdities, and then grow on the basis of large numbers of people who lack those critical defenses. They will become footsoldiers for the cause much more willingly than your stroppy skeptics. I wish it wasn't so, but I think on the evidence of creationists posting here it is evidently true. And the really interesting part of it is that there are very large numbers of christians who are professional scientists, whose line of work demands the highest levels of critical thinking and skepticism.

One hypothesis is that such people are sucked in by various means, then manage somehow to compartmentalise their minds so the skeptical part never talks to the faith part. I have had conversations with religious believers who appear unfamiliar with the idea of applying their skeptical skills to the claims of their religion. A baffling thing, don't you agree?

To me? It has every bit the look of emoting over thinking. As I said, I'm either magic or God is real. Isn't that tenable, at least for me? Okay, you don't have that in your life, I understand BUT then you build of the 'lack' instead of the empirical. How is that substantiated tenable

I could invent a myriad of 'lacks' for you, just by inventing new stories and then feeling sorry for you that you don't believe in them. Poor you.

<Snipped obvious nonsense about empirical data>

Again, at the very least, you admit here that you are resigned to truth, however it may lay. That at least, is living according to possibility rather than emoting and 'it.'

No, obviously I am not resigned to the absurd fictions of the Judeo-christian mythology as an actual reality. What kind of complete imbecile do you think I am??

Rather, I was being sarcastic, obviously, to highlight the fake morality of the meme system that currently holds you captive as a victim.

Stuu: But once you are in paradisum, what will you do next week? ...

Everything good and pure. Why would you prefer vice over that? Ephesians 3:20?

I would prefer death. And, since for a christian there must be confusion over what I mean by death, I mean that my organs cease to function and I begin to decompose physically and that is the complete end of me in every aspect, notwithstanding the possibility that for a short time people I knew might remember who I was. That is infinitely better than living out a pair of platitudes as some kind of zombie.

I'm not asking you to join a church, but join a Being. Keep searching. He does say He (not it) will be found, if you seek. I think you'll have to get further than the closets in your house.

I will do that on the condition that you, in turn, seek out Jupiter. I think you should sit somewhere quite, and really focus, and just say in a calm clear voice,

'Jupiter, I revere you as king of the gods. I acknowledge that you are head of the pantheon. May I call you Zeus? I ask that you make sure your fellow gods look after us, that Vulcan maintains the blacksmith's fires but keeps those pesky volcanoes at bay; that Diana ensures safe childbirth for every pregnant woman; and that Athena grants the wisdom to be successful in commerce and trade'.

Let me know when you have completed this task.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Stuu: But how did it (beauty, order, design in the universe and nature) come to be that way?

For in six days, God created the heavens, and the earth, and everything in them

Ok, now tell me how beauty, order, design in the universe and nature came to be that way.

Actually, my friend I understand it well. You also understand it. You also understand that words can have a variety of meanings but it is usually easy to understand by the context. However you choose to to be obtuse, and insist it means something other that what the context requires... and you seem to forget that I already provided the definition for the way in which I am using that word.
Oxford Dictionary: "2
Lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder" (It applies to various types of entropy - information entropy, biological entropy, statistical entropy, etc.)

So, then. Back to the drawing board. Since you don't mean entropy in the scientific sense, or by the relationship ΔS>0, you will have to provide the explanation of how this disordering actually happens. What causes it?

Dawkins is a good author, but you need realize his books are based on his (erroneous) theology. He interprets evidence to fit his belief system.. He employs a number of logical fallacies, including ad homiems and strawmans, but his fave seems to be fallacy of equivocation.

Does he employ vague assertions that entirely fail to exemplify even a single point? Or is that the skill you are bringing to the discussion?

Can you name one book by Dawkins that you have read through, cover to cover?

No Stuu.... I don't think you understand the topic. We have about 150 new deleterious mutations added to our genome every generation.

That's not very many, from a genome that contains 3 billion base pairs. And slightly deleterious is really a nonsense concept on the scale of the phenotype. And you still have not acknowledged the mechanisms that remove mutations. The functional parts of DNA are highly conserved, and there is no problem evident at this stage. 'Worried' does not constitute an actual theory of genetics.

However, recent results are challenging this moniker; indeed, some pseudogenes appear to harbor the potential to regulate their protein-coding cousins.

Some, not all.

The article closes with warning similar to what creationists have been saying for years not to assume that pseudogenes are "nonfunctional relics"because that has caused them to be "overlooked in the quest to understand the biology of health and disease":

No, indeed, don't assume. But equally don't discount that there are vast tracts of DNA that should be called junk, because actually it cannot possibly code or regulate anything, in turn because its appearance in DNA has been recent and randomly copied there.

The reason why some of those pseudogenes take on a function is because of mutation and natural selection over time. There is very little DNA that can't become functional, but that doesn't mean it should necessarily be called functional now.

Many creationist scientists would love to speak to the biology department at universities and some do.

Like who, for example? And if it was at Liberty University, that obviously wouldn't count because it's not a real university.

Some are university professors in biology departments.

I can think of Michael Behe. And his department has a disclaimer (or used to have) that distances themselves from him mixing his disproved goddidit fantasies with real science. Can you name any others? The percentage is vanishingly small.

Many universities though are theogically opposed to Darwinism being challenged.

You mean like the Catholic ones?

You likely also notice a trend at many universities that tries to shut down free speech. I wonder if headlines such as this send some evolutionsts to their safe spaces - 'Creationism conference at large U.S. research university stirs unease'

I agree that creationists should be allowed in to meetings with real research biologists so the creationists' fantasies can be torn to shreds in front of them. But real biologists do have real work to get on with, so it can't be allowed to happen too often.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

We don't know what role the appendix had after creation. Emperical science can help us determine what purpose our appendix serves today.... in all likelyhood the same purpose of 'the original' but diminished by several thousand years of mutations. Evolutionists of the past used our "useless" appendix as evidence of common ancestry. To be consistent evolutionists should now be arguing that the useful appendix is evidence against common ancestry. Seems logical, doesn't it?

This is the problem with all pseudoscience, whether it is creationism or homeopathy or moon landing conspiracies or flat earthers: the idea might explain one fact, but it fails to be consistent with every known fact. There is no fact that contradicts evolution by natural selection, the proper theory of descent with modification from a common ancestor.

But the claim that the appendix is somehow a mutated-down version of something that was grander in the past, due to mutations, is completely inconsistent with the fact that over the same time period other organs have become bigger and more functional than in the past, the most obvious example being the brain (which in turn, is consistent with the appearance of cave art, and rituals of burying the dead, and so forth).

I can't think of any facts that denial of common ancestry is consistent with. Is your creationism good enough to provide an example?

There are many examples of mutations, and selection destroying or eliminating complex, sophisticated systems. Creatures losing functionality is the common ancestry belief system in reverse.

But why would the kiwi have the structures at all? It has never flown as a kiwi.

The other point about the kiwi, and in fact most bird life in New Zealand is that prior to human settlement there were no land mammals, and so nothing to exploit the ecological niche normally occupied by searching for food on or in the ground, and there were no large native predators. So there has been convergent evolution.

The kiwi is still a bird, a descendant of theropod dinosaurs, but it has many of the habits and several adaptations akin to small land mammals like hedgehogs. It has a good sense of smell, whiskers like a cat, bone marrow instead of a bird's usual air sacs, a body temperature of 37 Celsius (same as ours) and its feathers have even adapted to give the appearance of hair. Kiwi dig burrows to roost and nest. Steven Jay Gould called the kiwi an honorary mammal.

Did I predict you would fail the simple test? The question was 'What can you say has a good design in the universe, or in nature?' Although, I guess your watch is in the universe...isn't it?

Good design is a sign of a good designer. But humans aren't designed.

Evolutionists don't like it that the researchers called the design optimal.

It's not a matter of liking anything. It's a matter of whether the word conveys the concept accurately. In one sense it is optimal, but that is tempered by the constraints placed on it. Still much better to say optimised given the limitations of not being able to go back to scratch.

Is the brain evidence of good design...which you said is evidence of an intelligent designer? Or do you think you are qualified to rewire not just our eyes, but also our brains?

I'm not qualified to rewire anything biological. All I am doing is critiquing the creationist claim that there is perfect design in nature. I can see it is not perfect design, but I can see that in things that really were designed, without necessarily having the ability to step in and do a better job myself.

However, I'm sure there are surgeons out there who could not only fix, but actually reorganise the plumbing that stupidly has been run straight through the prostate gland if they wanted. But I guess it is better to do a minimal fix only for patients who really need fixing.

Perhaps one day we will be able to genetically engineer a permanent fix to the problems of the prostate gland. Like natural selection, we will still be stuck with the usual processes of embryonic development, similar to case of the ridiculous recurrent laryngeal nerve.

Stuu: No, indeed it doesn't. (natural selection does not create things for future use)

And yet our eyes are able to detect the very smallest amount of light...It provides no evolutionary advantage. It simply is another example of optimal design... OPTIMAL.... can't be improved upon. "Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.

Not designed. Stumbled upon, stuck with, improved despite the constraints. Optimised but not optimum. An optimum design wouldn't leave a blind spot where the optic nerve ploughs through the retina to lead to the rest of the brain.

There has clearly been a massive amount of selection pressure on eyes, given the massive advantage they confer on their owner. On the other hand, there is big selection pressure against having eyes for cave dwellers. Eyes are a liability in constant complete darkness because they run the risk of becoming infected. Cave-dwelling animals often have vestigial eyes. Why would they have those unless they descended from an ancestor that had a use for eyes?

Stuu: I'd ask a creationist about magic. Did it magically assemble itself? if not, how did it happen?

Stuu, there are two choices.
1. Absolutely nothing created everything.
2. The cause of everything existed eternally.

I didn't ask about that. I asked about the magic of biological creation. I'm happy to go with the existence of the earth as a starting point. Take it from there. How does biological stuff like an eyespot magically get 'created' from non-living stuff?

[/quote] Jesus rising from the dead is a belief about the past, based on evidence. [/quote]
Evolution by natural selection is a belief about the past, and the present, and the future, based on unambiguous evidence.

There is a short book providing the evidences, written by a former atheist who intended on proving stories about Jesus to be false. He became convinced by evidence. Even if your intention is to arm yourself with more evidence against Christianity, try reading 'More than a Carpenter'. I think its about an hour read.

Does this author cite any eyewitness accounts of Jesus? Because there aren't any, so I'm not sure what 'evidence' there could possibly be. But let me look.

I likely quote more from secular sources than Christian.

Yes, I acknowledge that you do find proper papers as well as creationist rhetoric.

It looks to me like the creationist sites you use have been:

http://www.creation.org/
http://www.icr.org/
I can't remember exactly if you have used https://answersingenesis.org/.

Stuart

 

[Lon]

Lon, there's no god.

Stuart

I've tried looking at the world from your atheist perspective. The world literally stops making logical sense. I actually love my kids. That doesn't make sense. Stop. I'm saying 'love' makes no sense. Beauty makes no sense. From an atheist perspective, it CANNOT make sense. It is all random and no point to the universe or living. I KNOW, per fact, that there is meaning to my existence. I KNOW it. Why? Because it is the definition and evidence of itself. You just don't pay attention to daily qualifiers that ENSURE life 1) continues existence, 2) has purpose and meaning 3) and is enjoyable and worth living. You are the man living in denial. THINK for a change. YOUR worldview doesn't add up. It is beyond anti-intelligence.