The Big Bang Theory......

[!! Shawn]

Under normal circumstances, I like arraamis. But the last few pages of this thread have made me question not only his intellect and (apparently nonexistant) understanding of evolution, but his sanity, as well.

I was highly disappointed to see him willingly misrepresent the basic argument of evolution in order to prop up his own creationist argument, but even more disappointed by the fact that he's apparently decided to pretend it never happened in the first place.

Piggy is absolutely obliterating him right now.

You are just realizing this? He has been a tool and an idiot for ages. Pretty much since he was born.

[ßringer]

You are just realizing this? He has been a tool and an idiot for ages. Pretty much since he was born.

This is the first debate regarding a serious subject matter in which I've actively observed each of his posts.

Needless to say it'll be the last.

[deliveryman]

This is the first debate regarding a serious subject matter in which I've actively observed each of his posts.

Needless to say it'll be the last.

The guy doesn't even understand what a scientific theory is, evidenced by his repeated "it's just a theory" posts.

Even though a 'theory' in science is the highest possible accolade for any hypothesis.

[arraamis]

The "Most Productive and Influential Microbiologist in France" Is a Furious Darwin Doubter

Is evolution important to science?

I asked John what he thought of the necessity of evolution for doing biological research.

‘Institutional science has systematically “evolutionized” every aspect of human thought. Contrary to popular thinking, this is not because evolution is central to all human understanding, but rather has arisen due to a primarily political and ideological process. Consequently, in the present intellectual climate, to reject evolutionary theory has the appearance of rejecting science itself. This is totally upside down.

‘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”.

‘We cannot really explain how any biological system might have “evolved”, but we can all see that virtually everything we look at has extraordinary underlying design. ‘I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory. But after the fact, real advances in science are systematically given an evolutionary spin. This reflects the pervasive politicization of science.’

Darwinian evolution impossible?

John explained how mutations, which supposedly provide the new genetic information to make evolution possible don’t do the job:

‘Mutations are word-processing errors in the cell’s instruction manual. Mutations systematically destroy genetic information—even as word processing errors destroy written information. While there are some rare beneficial mutations (even as there are rare beneficial misspellings),1 bad mutations outnumber them—perhaps by a million to one. So even allowing for beneficial mutations, the net effect of mutation is overwhelmingly deleterious. The more the mutations, the less the information. This is fundamental to the mutation process.’

Does natural selection help?

Dr Sanford: ‘Selection does help. Selection gets rid of the worst mutations. This slows mutational degeneration.

‘Additionally, very rarely a beneficial mutation arises that has enough effect to be selected for—resulting in some adaptive variation, or some degree of fine-tuning. This also helps slow degeneration. But selection only eliminates a very small fraction of the bad mutations. The overwhelming majority of bad mutations accumulate relentlessly, being much too subtle—of too small an effect—to significantly affect their persistence. On the flip side, almost all beneficials (to the extent they occur) are immune to the selective process—because they invariably cause only tiny increases in biological functionality.

‘So most beneficials drift out of the population and are lost—even in the presence of intense selection. This raises the question—since most information-bearing nucleotides [DNA ‘letters’] make an infinitesimally small contribution to the genome—how did they get there, and how do they stay there through “deep time”?

Dr Sanford has written a book: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.

Selection slows mutational degeneration, but does not even begin to actually stop it. So even with intense selection, evolution is going the wrong way—toward extinction!

‘My recent book resulted from many years of intense study. This involved a complete re-evaluation of everything I thought I knew about evolutionary genetic theory. It systematically examines the problems underlying classic neo-Darwinian theory. The bottom line is that Darwinian theory fails on every level. It fails because: 1) mutations arise faster than selection can eliminate them; 2) mutations are overwhelmingly too subtle to be “selectable”; 3) “biological noise” and “survival of the luckiest” overwhelm selection; 4) bad mutations are physically linked to good mutations,2 so that they cannot be separated in inheritance (to get rid of the bad and keep the good). The result is that all higher genomes must clearly degenerate.

http://creation.com/geneticist-evolution-impossible

[arraamis]

The significance of the issue (and perhaps the heat behind its argumentation) is presented well in "The Facts on Creation vs. Evolution".

The issue of creation/evolution is important because, in the end, the subject of origins tells us who we are. Are we the product of the impersonal forces of matter, chance, and time - with all that implies? Or the result of special creation by an infinite, personal God - with all that implies? Because of the larger implications in areas such as science, religion, society, and morality as well as its personal implications for individual identity and meaning in life, no one can deny the relevance of the subject. (John Ankerberg & John Weldon, 1993, pp. 5.)
In pursuit of the truth on this subject I will be covering several subjects.

1. Reveal the generally unknown facts of the fossil record that thoroughly contradict the hypothesis of Darwin.

2. Demonstrate that this issue of Darwinism is one of the strongest proofs of the correctness of Theosophy.

3. The above quote, useful as it is, has yet a flaw. It presents two dichotomous choices - chance or God. After concluding this lengthy newsletter I will lead into next month's newsletter that will show Theosophy - the ancient wisdom - as the third choice.

PROBLEMS WITH THE FOSSIL RECORD
_________________________________

There are three major problems with the fossil record.

1. The first is that the fossil record shows species originating abruptly. This contradicts the predictions of Darwin's hypothesis. His hypothesis calls for very many intermediate forms gradually grading from one species to another. But instead the record shows the opposite - species arise abruptly.

2. Secondly, the geologic record shows that species do not change significantly through time. For millions of years they remain constant - with only minor and random change. This also contradicts the predictions of the hypothesis of Darwin.

3. The "Cambrian explosion" represents a period in which most of the current phyla [broad groups of life forms] all appeared in a very short geological span of time. This also seriously contradicts the hypothesis of Darwin.

The problems with the fossil record are more extreme that it might seem. The evidence of the fossils is in stunning contradiction to Darwin's theory. Generally this contradiction is not well known and so I have attempted in this newsletter to bring out the details.

SPECIES DON'T SIGNICANTLY CHANGE
_________________________________

http://www.blavatsky.net/newsletters/fossil_record.htm

[deliveryman]

Darwinian evolution impossible?

John explained how mutations, which supposedly provide the new genetic information to make evolution possible don’t do the job:

‘Mutations are word-processing errors in the cell’s instruction manual. Mutations systematically destroy genetic information—even as word processing errors destroy written information. While there are some rare beneficial mutations (even as there are rare beneficial misspellings),1 bad mutations outnumber them—perhaps by a million to one. So even allowing for beneficial mutations, the net effect of mutation is overwhelmingly deleterious. The more the mutations, the less the information. This is fundamental to the mutation process.’

http://creation.com/geneticist-evolution-impossible

These are common creationist claims that have been refuted time and time again.

In fact there is an entire index of creationist claims at talkorigins refuting this stuff.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

Claim CB102:

Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.


It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve. We have observed the evolution of

increased genetic variety in a population (Lenski 1995; Lenski et al. 1991)
increased genetic material (Alves et al. 2001; Brown et al. 1998; Hughes and Friedman 2003; Lynch and Conery 2000; Ohta 2003)
novel genetic material (Knox et al. 1996; Park et al. 1996)
novel genetically-regulated abilities (Prijambada et al. 1995)

If these do not qualify as information, then nothing about information is relevant to evolution in the first place.

A mechanism that is likely to be particularly common for adding information is gene duplication, in which a long stretch of DNA is copied, followed by point mutations that change one or both of the copies. Genetic sequencing has revealed several instances in which this is likely the origin of some proteins. For example:
Two enzymes in the histidine biosynthesis pathway that are barrel-shaped, structural and sequence evidence suggests, were formed via gene duplication and fusion of two half-barrel ancestors (Lang et al. 2000).
RNASE1, a gene for a pancreatic enzyme, was duplicated, and in langur monkeys one of the copies mutated into RNASE1B, which works better in the more acidic small intestine of the langur. (Zhang et al. 2002)
Yeast was put in a medium with very little sugar. After 450 generations, hexose transport genes had duplicated several times, and some of the duplicated versions had mutated further. (Brown et al. 1998)
The biological literature is full of additional examples. A PubMed search (at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) on "gene duplication" gives more than 3000 references.

According to Shannon-Weaver information theory, random noise maximizes information. This is not just playing word games. The random variation that mutations add to populations is the variation on which selection acts. Mutation alone will not cause adaptive evolution, but by eliminating nonadaptive variation, natural selection communicates information about the environment to the organism so that the organism becomes better adapted to it. Natural selection is the process by which information about the environment is transferred to an organism's genome and thus to the organism (Adami et al. 2000).

The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000; Schneider 2000)

On a side note, I find it rather humorous that you demanded that we present evidence for evolution and then some gets posted, you ignore it completely.

[deliveryman]

Oh boy, he's now on to the Cambrian explosion

[D-MiZe]

Arra, creationists are a laughing stock, honestly.

It's not like their ideas are even plausible, they've been proven wrong time and time again. There is a nerve (I think) in the Giraffes head which goes all the way down the neck and loops back up, if there was some intelligent design it could just gone from A to B in a few inches. Instead it takes an 8ft detour.

Even in us humans there are metres of wasted tubes/nerves that coil and wrap around other ones.

In fact, upon reading some of what you've posted they actually believe in evolution...

[squealpiggy]

Intelligent Design/Evolution Debate Series 10 videos






Dr. David Berlinski - On Evolution

Argument ad Youtubum.

1. Public debates are pointless
2. Nobody needs to sit through an hour of stupid videos

[squealpiggy]

The "Most Productive and Influential Microbiologist in France" Is a Furious Darwin Doubter

Is evolution important to science?

I asked John what he thought of the necessity of evolution for doing biological research.

‘Institutional science has systematically “evolutionized” every aspect of human thought. Contrary to popular thinking, this is not because evolution is central to all human understanding, but rather has arisen due to a primarily political and ideological process. Consequently, in the present intellectual climate, to reject evolutionary theory has the appearance of rejecting science itself. This is totally upside down.

‘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”.

‘We cannot really explain how any biological system might have “evolved”, but we can all see that virtually everything we look at has extraordinary underlying design. ‘I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory. But after the fact, real advances in science are systematically given an evolutionary spin. This reflects the pervasive politicization of science.’

Darwinian evolution impossible?

John explained how mutations, which supposedly provide the new genetic information to make evolution possible don’t do the job:

‘Mutations are word-processing errors in the cell’s instruction manual. Mutations systematically destroy genetic information—even as word processing errors destroy written information. While there are some rare beneficial mutations (even as there are rare beneficial misspellings),1 bad mutations outnumber them—perhaps by a million to one. So even allowing for beneficial mutations, the net effect of mutation is overwhelmingly deleterious. The more the mutations, the less the information. This is fundamental to the mutation process.’

Does natural selection help?

Dr Sanford: ‘Selection does help. Selection gets rid of the worst mutations. This slows mutational degeneration.

‘Additionally, very rarely a beneficial mutation arises that has enough effect to be selected for—resulting in some adaptive variation, or some degree of fine-tuning. This also helps slow degeneration. But selection only eliminates a very small fraction of the bad mutations. The overwhelming majority of bad mutations accumulate relentlessly, being much too subtle—of too small an effect—to significantly affect their persistence. On the flip side, almost all beneficials (to the extent they occur) are immune to the selective process—because they invariably cause only tiny increases in biological functionality.

‘So most beneficials drift out of the population and are lost—even in the presence of intense selection. This raises the question—since most information-bearing nucleotides [DNA ‘letters’] make an infinitesimally small contribution to the genome—how did they get there, and how do they stay there through “deep time”?

Dr Sanford has written a book: Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.

Selection slows mutational degeneration, but does not even begin to actually stop it. So even with intense selection, evolution is going the wrong way—toward extinction!

‘My recent book resulted from many years of intense study. This involved a complete re-evaluation of everything I thought I knew about evolutionary genetic theory. It systematically examines the problems underlying classic neo-Darwinian theory. The bottom line is that Darwinian theory fails on every level. It fails because: 1) mutations arise faster than selection can eliminate them; 2) mutations are overwhelmingly too subtle to be “selectable”; 3) “biological noise” and “survival of the luckiest” overwhelm selection; 4) bad mutations are physically linked to good mutations,2 so that they cannot be separated in inheritance (to get rid of the bad and keep the good). The result is that all higher genomes must clearly degenerate.

http://creation.com/geneticist-evolution-impossible

All he has to do is publish his scientific findings and he'd be a household name. He has about 70 publications to his name yet none of them successfully refute evolution. Scientists who overturn orthodoxy win Nobel prizes. So why hasn't he published?

By the way his argument against evolution is an argument from incredulity. He uses the tornado in a junkyard analogy, something which is approximately 150 years out of date!

Arra, creationists are a laughing stock, honestly.

It's not like their ideas are even plausible, they've been proven wrong time and time again. There is a nerve (I think) in the Giraffes head which goes all the way down the neck and loops back up, if there was some intelligent design it could just gone from A to B in a few inches. Instead it takes an 8ft detour.

You're thinking of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. The nerve connects the brain to the larynx. The same nerve exists in fish and connects to the gills. in fish the route is direct, from the brain to the gills behind the heart. In mammals the nerve still passes behind the heart but this means that it travels down the neck, bypassing its destination, loops around the heart and back up to the larynx (hence "recurrent"). This is the case for all mammals but naturally this is most pronounced in giraffes with their long necks.

Either it was the product of gradual evolution or the designer is incompetent!