I think you take my comments more than a little too personally.
And, wheher I accept the scientific proposals or not is not a reflection on the capabilities or dedication or intent of any scientist involved. I have lost faith iin one prominant Biologist because of what they have broadcast and the tone and implications therin.
You must also appreciate that all of the scientific stuff you promote or curate is non-theistic, almost by its very nature.
Questoning is part of science. The questions are not always understood or validated, or even registered (documented). From what I see Evolutionary theory has run riot. The only critcisms come from Bibical Creationists and are summararily dismissed even if there is any validity in their arguments. And anyone who criticises Evolution is declared a Biblical Creationist.
These discussions get too personal for my llking. I have proved more than once that it is not the argument but the person arguing that underpins the response.
How is that different than anything else in science?
From what I can see, you don’t seem to have a firm grasp of the evidence biologists are looking at. Just to be clear, you are in the same situation as the vast majority of people outside of the sciences so this isn’t a criticism. You first have to understand the science before you can question it. This means understanding concepts like a nested hierarchy and the genetic evidence. If you want to know why specific creationist arguments are not considered valid then please ask.
And because I reject it you think that I do not understand it?
Tell me, doe the reverse apply to you and theology?
I might also suggest it applies to scientists with analogies and hypathetics. They do not see the relevance and therefore do not attempt to understand them.
The fact that you think similarities between pyramids is a valid analogy demonstrates that you don’t. It isn’t mere similarities that evidences common ancestry and evolution.
I’m not critiquing your theology or claiming that Christian theology is wrong.
I am sorry, but you just proved my point. Clearly you do not see the relevance of the analogy.
My Christian theology claims God’s involvement in science…
The point is not whether you do, but how valid the critique would be? Is an outside view always invalid? Perhaps you can be too imersed in something to see the tree for the wood?
What do you think the relevance is? We are not saying that life evolved just because we can find similarities.
If I misrepresented your theology and then attacked that strawman, then my critique would not be valid. That happens to be what you are doing with evolution.
I have demonstrated why your strawman argument is not valid. If you disagree with my assessment, then please show me where I got it wrong.
In a previous post you wrote:
" The Egyptians and the Aztecs both built pyramids. They are different in design but there are obvious similarities in construction, materials and so on. No one in their right minds would claim any actual connection between the two cultures, Your comparisons of genetics are no more than comparing building blocks. They do not prove any connection other than that"
Biologists aren’t saying that life evolved just because there are similarities in construction. Biologists aren’t saying that life evolved because different species have some of the same materials. That’s not the evidence for evolution.
So please tell me why your argument applies when that is not what biologists are citing as evidence?
Then what on earth are you claiming by comparing DNA sequences? What are DNA sequences for? We have barely scratched the surface of understanding DNA.
Do you really understand the ramifications of the claims? Do you understand how the DNA affects the macro world? Do you really understand what the claims of evolution amount to in real terms? Do you understand how systems interact, what can and can’t survive unaided or without the support of other systems? Do you know the complexisites of ecology and the interdependancy of species both flora and fauna? Does Evolution account for what must be parrallel development in perfect harmony? Nothing in Nature works alone. DNA in one creature cannot change because another species requires it to.
By concentrating so much on one aspect of physiology you seem to ignore the rest.
It is one thing to break down a theory to explain it. But the simplicity of the explanation belies the complexity of the global subject.
Evolution cannot plan. Each step has to be self contained and preferably beneficial. Herd dynamics may absorb some inefficiencies, but for something to persist it has to be dominant otherwise it will be overturned or fail to reproduce. Biodiversity means that a single change has to be replicated to be established. The Royal blood line demonstrates the dangers of interbreeding without including external DNA support. One change, in one strand of DNA will not cause Evolution. And backtracking DNA structure does not prove that it is the history of the development unless you can trace precisely the sequence between the two. Can you? Or is it just mathematical patterns?
Richard
PS. I do not expect answers to all of this. It would take you too long. Suffce it to say that we barely scratch the surface of the complexities involved and to claim DNA did it is no better than God did it.
That there is a nested hierarchy which is a PATTERN of both similarities and differences. It is the PATTERN that matters, not simply similarities. Your analogy of comparing pyramids does not have this pattern.
We have more than scratched the surface. We know WAY more than you think. We know enough about DNA to predict what patterns of both similarities and differences we should see if life evolved from a common ancestor.
How is any of this an issue? All you are putting forward is your incredulity. Reality isn’t forced to conform to your credulity.
You haven’t shown that evolution has to plan.
That’s false. The vast majority of mutations that reach fixation in the human genome are neutral.
Every human is born with 50 to 100 mutations. If they have children then about half of those mutations are passed on to each child. About half of the mutations a parent inherited from their ancestors is also passed on. This doesn’t require inbreeding with close relatives. However, it is true that all humans are cousins. What differs is the distance.
That’s like asking someone to track the movement of every water molecule in order to conclude that a cloud forms through known natural processes. The differences we see between the genomes of living species is entirely consistent with known and observed natural processes. For example:
You’re making an error that is nicely pointed out by John Lennox: to ask “who” is not the same as to ask “how”. God is not “a part of any theory of creation” because theories of creation ask “how”, not “who” – and as my very first biology teacher in college put it, we are told that God is one Who hides Himself, so we are not going to find Him in biology so long as we are just doing science. He is not a bystander, but He does not make Himself evident in the processes He has decreed.
I don’t see where aquaticus is being uncivil. His questions are a bit sharp but they are objective responses to things you’ve stated.
Oh, BTW: weather is only cyclic on short time scales; climate is subject to change and the resulting changes in weather is a process.
The parenthetical assertion is fallacious and mere opinion. It wasn’t just my first biology professor who noted that God hides Himself so we shouldn’t expect to find Him showing up in biological processes.
Definitely, when you look at how weather has changed over the ages. Go far back enough when atmospheric pressure was double what it is today and weather is different; it has changed as a process as the atmospheric pressure has decreased.
It’s interesting, but you’re making a very simple mistake: it shows two-dimensional diagrams because so far we don’t have 3D images that will pop out from a printed page.
The internet is as reliable as a library – I know because I’ve done actual research using both. The only actual difference is that libraries only rarely carried the scream sheets that too many people consider to be journalism.
See, the first thing you do is go to where scientific journals can be found, the very same thing I did for term papers in geology and botany.
This is why most of my science professors insisted that we write summaries of our findings “in language that business majors can understand”, not just summaries that would be found in a standard scientific journal.
Any trace of ideology-driven thinking in both botany and geology courses were a great way to not even get a grade – the paper would go into the trash and the student would get a notice that the work was unacceptable and had to be done over . . . with the grade on the new version discounted one level.
Anyone who takes an oath to force all the evidence to fit a predetermined outcome is pretty much guaranteed to not have anything useful to say, so it’s not worth the effort – besides which, anyone who has taken such an oath is by definition not engaged in science.
Oh, so incorrect! I think every professor I had in biology published papers criticizing evolution, and none of them was “declared a Biblical Creationist” regardless of whether they were Christians (or Jew). My first botany professor published some very sharp papers slamming evolution on certain topics because people were drawing conclusions the evidence just did not support!
In this discussion that has been claimed but not shown.
What you complain about is what when I was in upper-level university classes and in grad school was just academic debate – sharp and pointed at times but still objective.
I commented on that analogy and why your point isn’t a point at all – it demonstrates a total failure to comprehend the science.
To be blunt, that’s YOUR Christian theology; it is not standard Christian theology. Your theological claims with respect to science are more about personal feelings than about systematic or even exegetical thinking.
Quite to the point.
Heh – true enough.
It doesn’t have to plan, it is constrained by fitness. In fact if it could plan it wouldn’t be the theory of evolution as we know it, it would be something completely different.
The trouble, though, is that many terms used in describing the processes can easily be interpreted as indicating some sort of planning is going on. “Adaptation” is easily misunderstood that way since in normal usage adaptation is something done by reasoning through a response to some change, e.g. a runner will adapt his stride in response to a change in the geography he’s running through (something I got good at in high school cross country because we didn’t always get a walk-through of the course first).
Even decent scientists can fall into this trap. I debated with one recently who insisted that it’s impossible for a mutation to happen before an environment change that makes the mutation beneficial. I pointed out that if the lack of a certain mutation means no survival, it’s a bit too late to wait for it to occur after the deleterious environmental change. Yet we see in cases of some new virus that some people are naturally immune – something that was due to a change in DNA that occurred before the virus came along . . . unless we want to posit that the virus triggered a mutation that neutralized it. He actually stated that adaptations in DNA can ** occur once there is a change in environment.
And unless I’m totally out of the loop, things don’t work that way.
The fact that you haveto ask just proves my point. Your DNA patterns may as well be a recipe for chicken soup,
If that were the case then there is no development. Neutral means no change at all.
And you have just said that most of them are neutral. Neutral means, of no effect.
And what is the “known” process of Evolution?
The water atom does not change between liquid and suspension. Youare comparing a very simple change to a ridiculously complex one.And using what process? Juggling DNA perhaps?
Neutral ones?
Science has measured simple, develpmental processes. It has not measured the sort of change needed for Evolution to do what it claims to.
There is no consention on this. Long term weather patterns are also cyclic. Temporary Global warming could be caused by our changing distance from the sun and its own variance. Besides, people are claiming human intervention rather than a purely Natural changeso you are arguing in favour of external influence not against it.
Is a sidetracking issue. Whehter we can measure the influence is not the point.
No, you are deliberately ignoring the obvious visual juxtapositioning. Just because the piece of a gill looks like a jaw bone does not mean t canactually become one.
To make a jaw you will need:
A solid bone (Gill is cartillage)
Muscles to move it (And sinews to connect it)
Nerves and a controlling system (to operate it)
A redundant section of Gill as a doner
Not to mention an attaching point complete with hinge!
And more important, why? Why should such a process happen? Why should part of a gill detactch itself and reattach several inches away to the skull? Because it is beneficial? That would be the planning poo pooed earlier.
It is not so obvious to separate the genuine from the false. Each is presented in the same way .
Joe Public has no way to decide who is genuine or not.
Is not the point. This is not about passing exams or the purity of scientific thought.
Which is what I claim!
Sorry, you are treading on my ground. Theology is all about God.
sigh
That is my line when talking to creationists!
You are talking only about how. Who does not need to know how.
Because God is not part of science. However scence does try and prove that who is not necessary. And this is where sceince comes into conflict with religion. Who should not be an issue, but by trying to exclude God science makes it so.
Evolution is driven by…
Thanks for that, as it makes neutral drift and genetic diversity more understandable to me. If not that that, you couldn’t have evolution as we know it. Of course, the environmental changes are what drive the population frequencies of a genetic trait, but your have to have the mutation first.
In Laymans terms it is a recipe. You want a leg? there is DNA sequece to make it. An Eye, A heart, Digestive juices? Each ne has a DNA sequence.
DNA has no history or proginy. It is what it is. If you compare DNA you are comparing features. Chimps look like us, they have almost identicle inner workings. The DNA will be almost identicle but
2% of 1,000,000 is 20,000. In terms of the number of sequenceis involved 2% is still massive.
DNA is not even the building blocks it is the means of putting blocks together. There will be one basic sequence for bones, another for the shape, another for the connections and so on. A vertebrate will have the same base sequencies. There is no earthly reason to have 2 different sequencies for the same structure. Similarities? They are obvious! Connections? Mathematics!
In Star Trek Voyager there was an episode called “Witness”. In it the same evidence was viewed according to political and social bias. Which one was correct? Well, the last one of course, but that is fiction for you. The point is that we view data from a bias. And we object strongly if someone else comes along with a different viewpoint. It applies to understanding Scripture and it applies to analysing scientific data.
Evolution has been demonstrated, but only in minuscule progressions. The whole premise of Evolution is to extrapolate the changes into changing a single cell to a human (et al) And that is what scientists are looking for, and finding… They see patterns and mathematical proofs regardless of whether there is evidence in the macro world that such connections can be achieved.
OKay there is some naivety in this summary but I challenge anyone here to tell me why DNA has to show heredity (nested or not)
The fact that you can’t answer the question proves my point.
All it means is that the mutations that drive changes in physiology and morphology are a minority of the mutations that reach fixation.
Yes, most of them. Not all of them.
To name a few: inheritance, reproduction, mutation, natural selection, and neutral drift.
Why do you think humans look different than other species? Do you agree that the reason is the differences in the DNA sequences between our genomes? If not, then what do you think drives embryonic development and the morphology of species?
All of them: neutral, detrimental, and beneficial.
It has measured that change. It is the measured difference in the genomes of species, and we know that these genomes were shaped by known and observed processes like mutation, neutral drift, and natural selection.
There is no eye or heart gene. All physical features are the result of many different genes interacting with each other. You can even find some of the same genes involved in developing both the eye and the heart.
Last I checked, we all have parents. I got my DNA from my parents. Every genome is a direct record of its history as it is shaped by mutations that are passed on from every individual ancestor. This is why we can find evidence of who our ancestors were.
It is entirely possible to create two nearly identical organisms with completely different DNA. In the same way, you can create nearly identical web browsers using entirely different software code.
Also, chimps share more DNA with humans than they do with any other ape.
That’s not how it works.
We aren’t extrapolating. We are interpolating, and the points we are interpolating between are the genomes of living species. We have the end products. We have the end points. This isn’t extrapolation.
It doesn’t have to show heredity, but it does show heredity.
If you think I am wrong, then please tell me what these genomes would actually look like if they shared common ancestry. If common ancestry would not produce a nested hierarchy, then please explain what pattern it should produce. Please explain why evolution should not produce more transitions than transversions when comparing the substitution mutations between the genomes of two species. We are claiming that the evidence we see is exactly what we would expect to see if common ancestry and evolution is true, so please explain why this is wrong.