Eric, I know I said I would stay out of this, but I've heard a theory about Noah's Flood that would blow your frigging mind. It explains the fossil record, it explains the Biblical accounts, even explains why we have earthquakes and volcanoes. If you're interested, let me know. Too tired right now though.
Eric - Please, please don't tell me you actually believe that HIV is not a virus, but rather a symptom of self-destructive behavior. I dearly hope I'm reading your post incorrectly.
Scott, could I get your e-mail address please, not about the current thing, but you've said something interesting that I want to ask more about earlier in this discussion and I don't want to derail it any further then it is already. Mine is denolaj@gmail.com
Wodium,
Here's what I know....
1. AIDS has gotten massively politicized. Politics is bad for science.
2. Duesberg is the possible discover of the retrovirus, and a man likely to receive the Nobel Prize in biology.
3. Duesberg suggests that our whole approach is mistaken. He gets kicked out of the Establishment and can't get a grant.
4. We spend billions of dollars in AIDS research with little to show for it. Its seems reasonable to spend a couple hundred thousand checking out this wild idea.
5. AIDS is not a ridiculous as Dark Matter, but I have heard talk about latencies reaching twenty years. I'm wondering if this is more of the same DM garbage.
6. The logic seems clear. Stay stoned, share needles so that you pick up lots of diseases, take antibiotics casually and not how the doctor ordered, sleep outside, have sex with lots of different people...its not surprising your immune system collapses. We worry about walking in the cold winter rain and how it might suppress our immune system.
I do not know. I do know that if Stephen Hawking came forward and said "Our approach to fusion is fundamentally flawed, and I need three hundred thousand bucks to prove it." I'd support giving him the money.
I do know that you sound politically offended by my theses, and that politics and science should not mix. The truth has no politics.
John,
Sure, I'd like to hear it.
Eric, OK, the theory on Noah's Flood goes as follows.
First question, where did the floodwaters come from?
We know from the Bible that a few things were very different about the world prior to the flood. First, there was no rain. Secondly, no rainbows, and third, people lived much, much longer. Into the 900 year range. What would cause this? The theory is that the entire planet was enveloped by a huge water cloud. A cloud cover so dense and so thick that sunlight could not penetrate it. This would cause the earth's climate to be extremely humid, eliminating the need for rain. Since sunlight couldn't penetrate, there would be no rainbows, and people would live much longer, as they would not be affected by the sun's harmful radiation.
When God flooded the earth, he poured that cloud cover down on the earth. As stated earlier, the floodgates of the deep opened. This is the theorized reason for tectonic plate activity. Prior to these floodgates opening, the earth's crust would have been a single tectonic plate, therefore, no volcanoes or earthquakes. When these floodgates of the deep opened, the tectonic plates slid apart at an alarming speed. This is why Africa and South America seem to fit together.
Last question, where did the water go?
When the plates were together, the Atlantic ocean wouldn't have been there.
Two Posts
Sorry, almost forgot. What about the fossils? Well, fossils require a quick burial in mud, sand, or likewise to become fossils at all. Exactly the conditions present during a cataclysmic, worldwide flood. The reason why dinosaur fossils are always found at lower levels than mammal fossils records not when the animals lived, but how they died. Plants are at the bottom, because they can't run very fast. As you go up, you have lesser advanced animals on the bottom, more advanced animals on the top. This records how long the animals were able to survive in the flood. The reason dinosaurs are at the bottom is because it is a proven fact that mammals are far more buoyant in water than reptiles. The reptiles went down first because they can't swim very well. Stronger reptiles lived longer, thus are higher up. Mammals higher still, because they are capable of floating longer. Birds of course could fly above the water for extended periods before they drowned. People would be smart enough to head for higher ground, and are one of the most buoyant of all the land animals. That's why the fossil record is as it is. It records not when the animals lived, but how long they lasted in the flood.
Eric, it's not political offense, it's moral offense. HIV can be and has been transferred via blood transfusions, later resulting in AIDS. There is no lifestyle associated with blood transfusions. To suggest that AIDS is the product of a dissolute lifestyle rather than the consequence of a fliud-borne virus is to dismiss the deaths of those innocents who contracted the syndrome from their hospital's blood bank.
I'm not responding to most of this because I really don't want to be mired in this sort of discussion on a gaming board on the internet, but I just couldn't let this slide. Nothing political about it.
To be honest, i'm not much for getting mired in this sort of discussion on the internet either, which is a big part of why i have not done so before.
As I understand it, the Chihuahua and the Great Dane are still both members of the same species which can be cross-bred to produce viable fertile offspring; the slugs are not, but have distinctly different genomes which make them incompatible with each other.The snail example is similar to Chihuahua and Great Dane I would think. Its either the proof of extensive variability within a Kind, or of Degenerative Evolution.
That, though, is third-hand information. I do know that the study is being taught in college biology departments right now as proof of speciation (which domestic animal breeding has never produced). If indeed these slugs have so developed such that each block in the city has its own distinct incompatible species of slugs, it is at least strong evidence of evolutionary speciation.
Since it does not matter to me, I have not taken the time to pursue it; however, anyone who believes that there is no evidence of speciation by evolution needs to account for this study specifically.
--M. J. Young
John,
Thank you. I was using the Canopy Theory in the first version of Worldwalker the novel. I couldn't decide if I wanted to keep it or not.
Wodium,
I do think that Duesberg probably addresses that point in his book as I'm going from memory on a discussion about it. It is an obvious point and so I suspect he dealt with it, and I seem to recall that he did.
What I find sad is the immediate jump to 'Tad's a horrible person' for supporting research suggested by a Nobel Prize worthy scientist in his own field.
Darwin was a racist and a sexist, and his doctrine led to the concentration camps. Does this change the truth or untruth of what he said? Or is truth independent of motivation?
What if you're wrong? Does that mean you're a nasty person who wanted to see gays suffer? Or does it mean you made a mistake in evaluating information?
I suspect you're fighting a strawman in your head, instead of me. You're a smart guy, be better.
MJ,
Have we admitted that 'best investigators' aren't? Considering a long history of fraud and ineptitude in the field I wouldn't place much faith in the lot of them.
Have you investigated the polonium halos which prove that the primordial granites were created in less than three minutes?
Do you have an explanation for the Cambrian Explosion?
Why is it that Gould, one of the leaders of the Evos, said that the fossil record looked like Arrival, Stasis, and Stage Left which is not at all Evo.
Why is it that paleontologists were Darwin's fiercest foes (not churchmen)?
What is irreducible complexity?
If the likelihood of something is less than 1 in 10 to the 1086 (the number of elemental particles in the universe) can we just admit that it didn't happen?
What if the likelihood is much, much more improbable?
Have we discovered even one mutation that added information?
If there were one mutation that did add, and a thousand that did not, and nine hundred were culled....how long would it take you to lose one trillion dollars betting at those odds in a casino? Would you expect to somehow rise from one trillion to a hundred trillion dollars betting at those odds? Isn't time actually your enemy in this Genetic Casino?
What is the prerequisite to information?
Why does pretty much every civilization on Earth have legends of dragons which sound remarkably like dinosaurs?
What is specified complexity? Is it a signature of mind? Does DNA have it?
What is the best way to understand a computer, from its molecular structure, or from its operating system? Should one study the Universe from top-down (mind) or from bottom up (matter)?
Were you aware that most of the Icons of Evolution are fraudulent or useless? Were you aware that those peppered moths pictured were dead, and stuck to the tree? Were you aware that natural variability would explain the result (if there had been one) better? Would you call this Icon of Evolution a simple fraud?
Were you aware that Ernst Haeckel's drawings of embryos were deliberately fraudulent and that this was discovered shortly after he produced them? Were you aware that they were taught as an Icon for over a century, but that evos supported stopping this because it was giving creationists ammo?
Did you know that Richard Dawkins, the most famous evo currently, admitted that intelligent design could be true? Did you know he said that aliens might have designed us, but that the aliens would have been evolved?
Were you aware that people have been fired for holding Creationist ideas? Does this seem at all similar to the Galileo Myth?
And thats just off the top of my head....
Its likely that the various types of foxes, wolves, coyotes and dogs are all the same Kind which is the Biblical division instead of species which is grossly inadequate. Not all of them can mate with each other, although I think that largely....A can mate with B, but not C, however B can mate with C...and so on.
Again, which is more believable? In a few hundred years at most in a city, massive evolutionary changes took place in snails. OR. There is natural variability of a larger than commonly understood extent in Kinds and such allows for non-mating ability at certain extremes.
Perhaps a fox can't mate with a wolf, but both can mate with a dog, or some other combination. Is this variability, degeneration, or the prelude to wolves developing wings? And how would you test for the difference between these hypotheses?
Variability is a better theory, and it has the advantage of being testable. We can rebreed the Kind of dogs (wolves, coyote, fox, etc.) back together, I suspect, and probably end up with something rather similar to what Adam petted in the Garden.
I'm not as smart as you, MJ, but I suspect I'm a lot more educated on this particular topic of Evo. You trust me when I say 'in SF books they do X' because I have the same advantage. Trust me on this one.
The battle between Evos and Creationists is the battle between the Civil War era Monitor and the battleship Missouri. Government cheese and judges' rulings and the passion of the elite are what is keeping the Monitor afloat, but its going to sink.
JTM,
Well, I did offer to turn aside from this arguement thrice. Shrug. I hope I've given you some facts to chew on.
Books:
I'll reccomend three books.
J.P. Hogan is not a Creationist. He wrote SF books supporting Evolution until as he said he picked up some Creationist books to laugh at them. He found some good arguements.
--Kicking the Sacred Cow is non-fiction, and very readable which is reasonable as its author won the Hugo Award for some of his SF.
Darwin on Trial by Behe? is one I'll reccomend for MJ. The author took a lawyer's approach to Darwin. He found a lot of really poor arguements. And I think MJ might specially enjoy this because of the shared field.
Bones of Contention (there are a number of books with this title) by Marvin Lubenow starts with the contention that the Fossil Record is the friend of Special Creation. He goes on to prove it with tables and descriptions of fossils. Its quite readable as are all the others in this short list.
Eric, glad I could help. Is that what it's called? The Canopy Theory? I learned about that theory at a Christian summer camp I attended. A book that I discovered there was called "The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible." It talks about several mentions of supposed dinosaurs in the Bible. The Great Og is another that I recall. Also, there are cave drawings all over the world of animals which bear a striking resemblance to dinosaurs.
Have you ever heard of (sp) Poluxi river basin, in Texas? Do a Google search for Dinosaur Footprints. There are footprints of human-like feet, and dinosaur feet in the same strata of rock. I've seen plaster casts of them. There's one, called the Mother and Child print. It's a T-Rex (I believe) footprint, with a human footprint right on top of it. How can the human footprint be in the same strata of rock if the dinosaurs existed millions of years before humans?
Oh yeah, and that theory about how the fossils were all formed in the Great Flood. That suggests that all of the fossilized animals were alive at the same time, and indeed, on the same day. They all died together. Their remains are as they are because of the before mentioned buoyancy of their bodies.
And the evidence fits a Great Flood better than Unformitarian processes. Some of its an absolute joke. You see vertical trees in coal beds which would have taken literally millions of years by uniformatarian processes which might, just might have been enough to rot a tree.
The answer to this is Local Floods which is already heading toward a departure from Uniformatarianism.
At which point, you can mention fossil beds which are thousands of feet thick and heavy with fossils.
Fossil beds that got there because the swirling flood waters of a global flood carried them until the bodies hit a rising mountain and were dumped out of the water current.
I've struggled a bit with a novel based on Paluxy River with the sound-looking allegation that certain evolutionist(s) deliberately wrecked evidence.
Let me spin you a theory about the Ice Age and the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon.
After the Global Flood, things were desperate for humans because the ecology was devastated. In many cases, the ecology would never wholly recover. Species were dying out daily. Mankind frequently chose the quickest and safest living abode in this new harsh earth--caves. Thus were born the 'cave men'.
They were men of civilization, but the stresses of life began to break this down.
The massive flood had left behind some effects. Over in America, a few generations later, the Mid-American Inland Sea broke loose and created the Grand Canyon in two weeks time. In the rest of the world, there was a great deal of water on the land in small pockets and thus plenty of clouds.
The conditions for an Ice Age are two-fold: 1)Warm winters. 2) Cool summers. You'd think Really Cold Winters are needed, but its not true. You need to have enough water in the air to snow, and the summers cool enough that the snow doesn't melt. It actually doesn't snow a lot in the absolutely frigid interior of the Antartic.
There are supposed to be about a hundred unworkable theories of the Ice Age. Lets add the Post Noahic Flood theory. I do wish as I have a number of times in this discussion that I had a better memory of what I've read.
The PNF theory provides lots of water, cool summers (from the worldwide cloud cover), and warm winters (also clouds) if I'm remembering right.
So mankind finds his way even more enthusiastically into caves, at least some of him. He gets little sunlight in caves and bundled in fur. He develops Vitamin D deficiency and gets rickets.
The first major scientist to study Neanderthal Man thought 'rickets'. This guy was a 'father of' at least one scientific field, and unlike most modern scientist he was more likely to know what rickets looks like.
Cro-Magnon man, living on the coasts, and eating fish doesn't have the same problem.
Neanderthal Man with his huge physique is just another example of the variability inhernent in any Kind. And his strange deformities are more likely the result of a deficiency and social activities (there are Africans with elongated necks. This is not evolution. Its physical manipulation with metal rings. Occam's Razor. Choose the simplest explanation, the one that requires the fewest new factors. We know that Humans do strange things to their bodies.) Later, the cloud cover receded, and the ice started to as well.
And thats the story of Neanderthal Man found in the Neander Valley by a churchman on a walk.
And the evidence fits a Great Flood better than Unformitarian processes. Some of its an absolute joke. You see vertical trees in coal beds which would have taken literally millions of years by uniformatarian processes which might, just might have been enough to rot a tree.
Yeah, I've read about that. Some of the larger dinosaur skeletons do that too. By the uniformatarian theory, as you call it, the dinosaurs would have been standing upright and uncovered for thousands of years. I seriously doubt it would last that long.
Another CRSEF site is www.WorldByDesign.org. My mom used to work with them.
Can you just imagine the look on Noah's face when he stepped out of the Ark, if that canopy theory is correct? He would be seeing the sky and the sun for the first time in his life. Then people's lives started getting radically shorter. Not only would the cloud cover protect them from the sun's radiation, the atmosphere would be akin to the health benefits of living in a steam room. I imagine fires would have been difficult to make.
Two Posts
I'm watching a movie called Dragon Wars. They're in 1500's China, and the armies are using "Dragons" (dinosaurs) to carry cannons and rocket launchers. The Chinese invented gunpowder at about that time, and had developed crude rockets. I just thought it was an interesting note on the possibilities that would have existed.
Eric - speaking of straw men, I never said you were a horrible person. In fact, I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed you were arguing from ignorance, which (as you admit) appears to be the case.
I can see how you might have gotten that impression, though. To clarify, I find the argument morally offensive, not the person who makes it (unless it is made by someone who knows it to be false, as for example if the arguer is in full possession of the facts of the matter).
I suggest you track down Duesberg's refutation of the blood donor evidence before pursuing this argument further. At that point, we might have something to discuss.
Guys, calm your jets, you're as bad as me and Adam.
(Doing Therapy)
Regarding the addition of information by mutation:
Claim CB102:
Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.Response
1. 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.
2. 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.3. 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).
4. The process of mutation and selection is observed to increase information and complexity in simulations (Adami et al. 2000; Schneider 2000).
From http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html .
Cross posted with Scott. Scott, go up a post or two, I want you to see that.
And Adam, check your Myspace.
(Doing Therapy)
I saw it, John, assuming you mean the "cool your jets" post. I ignored it, because I'm not angry and I suspect Eric isn't either. My best guess is that, at worst, we're being mutually condescending (although I certainly hope I'm not actually being condescending).
Besides, at the very least we've been civil. And my latest offering is pure data, which is about as emotionally neutral as you get.
Sorry, you ever "Hear" someone's tone of voice when they're writing? I find that a lot of the time, what I "Hear" is very incorrect. I guess the best way to handle that would be to read it like Ben Stein. No offense intended anywhere.
(Doing Therapy)
No offense taken. The internet is notorious for fostering errors of that kind.
Cool!!!
(Doing Therapy)
Wodium,
I went http://www.duesberg.com/papers/ch2.html which clarified Duesberg's POV. He seems to blame AZT more for AIDS than dissolute lifestyle at least what I've seen so far, although one post on his site strongly suggested that Kaposi's Sarcoma is caused by 'poppers', a drug.
I believe his response to your challenge would be along the line of 'of course, blood transfusion causes HIV transfer. But HIV does not cause AIDS.'
Response to your cut and paste...
1. Its a lot easier to undo something by shooting a cannon shell at it, than it is to make something. These are not remotely equivalent activities despite what your source is hinting at.According to Dembski, information is the actualization of one possibility to the exclusion of others. This definition seems to refute Talkorigins claim. And Dembski is probably the lead guy in info theory in ID so he's an authority.
The first three examples can be disposed of like so...a useless mutation occurs that makes a precise chemical lock (aka information) less precise. This is novel genetic material. Its not an increase in information.
As to the fourth, why don't you explain to me the novel genetically-regulated abilities referred too?
Copying of genes is not adding information. If I copy a dictionary, I have not added information to the sum total of human knowledge....with this lack of logic, one wonders why I should even bother with talkorigins. /cheerfully sneering. Granted, I'm occasionally guilty myself, but then I'm posting off the top of my head in a forum, and not writing an article for the presumably carefully edited premier evo website in existence. If little ol' me can trip up the 'smartest guys on the block' it might make one wonder just how smart are the evos? Cause I'm smart, but only moderately so.
Thomas Sowell gave ten rules for winning a debate. The last was 'try to be right'. It makes an arguement far easier to win when you're on the correct side.
There was a case of a bacteria or virus that typically lived in one sugar, and used a specific technique to live. However, place it in another sugar, and within a short time you'd have a mutation that allowed it to use that new sugar. This happened repeatedly.
Answer: Its not a mutation. Its a hidden ability.
I suspect likewise with RNASE.
Shannon-Weaver sounds like another name for standard Darwinism. I know, lets call our new theory the Bafflegab Theory which is identical to Darwinism, and the fact that BT supports Darwin is hailed as a great victory for Darwin. Hmmmm...
Simulations? Ach, you didn't go there. It es verboten. Does not mein herr know that simulations speaks whatever the author wants?
I think it was Dawkins who 'designed' a Fruit Machine. Every time it spins and comes up with a fruit, that is saved. And it doesn't take very long at all before all the machine's register is filled with fruit. And presto Evolution occcurs. Wow.
And it would be Evo except that there had to be an Intelligent Designer saving the fruits that came up. And no Natural Selection cannot substitute. It has to be a useful mutation for that to happen. And I hope you don't believe in 'hopeful monsters'. It takes many, many mutations for something to be useful.
Ya know, I just realized something. This is the stuff that Urban Legends are made of. I remember hearing an Urban Legend about the AIDS Patient Zero having sex with a monkey. That's how it got into the human population. The legend says that the guy was an airline steward. This gave him the ability to spread it unknowingly all over the world.
Don't know if it's true, don't really care.
That would be acts of defiance of God's will, exactly what Eric is talking about, and also a medical reason, which is Scott's POV. Anyone ever hear that Urban Legend besides me?
(Doing Therapy)
I scrolled down to read the refutation of Duesburg. Apparently, he's not only using outmoded criteria from the mid-1800's (that is, before the discovery of viruses), but virology has come a long way since 1988. He may have had valid points in his time, but the "huge and continuously growing body of scientific evidence" points to HIV causing AIDS.
1. If novel genetic material is not an increase in information, then what is an increase in information? You're telling me that if I invented a brand new genome and put it into a bacterium, I would be introducing no new information. How does that make any sense at all?
2. "Making a precise chemical lock less precise" is a mischaracterization of mutation. An alteration of gene sequencing means an alteration in the amino acid chain (usually). An alteration in the amino acid chain produces a different protein, and a different protein potentially does something different. It's not introduction of imprecision; it's alteration of function.
Copying of genes is not adding information. If I copy a dictionary, I have not added information to the sum total of human knowledge....with this lack of logic, one wonders why I should even bother with talkorigins. /cheerfully sneering.
Perhaps you missed the part where the copy then undergoes additional mutation, thus resulting in a genome with both the original code and additional, altered code, which contains novel information by any sane definition of the term. Please don't attack the logic while overlooking its content. Also, your choice of metaphors is poor; see ( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB180.html )genetic code is not language.
There was a case of a bacteria or virus that typically lived in one sugar, and used a specific technique to live. However, place it in another sugar, and within a short time you'd have a mutation that allowed it to use that new sugar. This happened repeatedly.
Answer: Its not a mutation. Its a hidden ability.
Please explain what you mean by "hidden ability," and why this ability does not manifest in the original organism, instead only showing itself after dozens or hundreds or thousands of generations of the bacteria.
Also, it's really not hard to look at the genome of a bacterium. I'm quite sure that the scientists actually looked at the bacterium's actual genes, and were probably able to identify the genetic change from the parent generation to the adapted daughter generation.
And I hope you don't believe in 'hopeful monsters'. It takes many, many mutations for something to be useful.
This is ( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB150.html )Claim CB150, and it is false.
Shannon-Weaver sounds like another name for standard Darwinism. I know, lets call our new theory the Bafflegab Theory which is identical to Darwinism, and the fact that BT supports Darwin is hailed as a great victory for Darwin. Hmmmm...
I understand that you find the name Shannon-Weaver somehow worthy of ridicule, but do you actually have a refutation for its content? I'll repeat it here for ease of reference:
"Random noise maximizes information . . . 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)."
If that is unclear, I'll be happy to paraphrase. Specific questions/criticisms will help me to ensure that my paraphrase is helpful.
Thomas Sowell gave ten rules for winning a debate. The last was 'try to be right'. It makes an arguement far easier to win when you're on the correct side.
You make this kind of statement frequently. I wonder why, because it rarely contributes anything to the actual debate.
Edited because external links apparently no longer work unless they're plain urls.
A more credible theory is that the virus was contracted by blood transfer which occurred when a hunter with an open wound handled a freshly killed bleeding animal. The virus is said to be found among monkeys, particularly in brains, and some cultures consider monkey brains a delicacy.
Eric and Scott--I am enjoying this debate, and learning much from it, I think. I do not as yet believe that either side has conclusive proof of its position, and although I am remarkably well informed for a layman, I have insufficient background in the biological sciences to be able to evaluate all the evidence effectively.
Thank you for your contributions.
--M. J. Young
Ya know, this made me think of a Sliders episode. Quinn and company land on a world where there is a disease very much like AIDS, but far more easily contracted. The cure turns out to be Penicillin, which had never been discovered on that world. (The professor whips some up, and shows people how to make it.)
That would be so strange if the cure for AIDS was something that simple, wouldn't it?
(Doing Therapy)
1. Novel genetic material is something different in genes. Thats all it means. I can cover a sheet of paper with random letters. They're new letters. They mean nothing. They are not information. Newness does not equal information.Now if you produce a brand-new genome that does something, then yeah, thats information. But Brand New Genome is a subset of the greater set of Novel Genetic Material which also includes the subset of Useless Trash. They're trying to equate a potential loss of information with new information, and I have to think that they probably know better, and that means they're lying. And if they don't know better...
2. I think that imprecision is frequently the exact way to describe things. I will have to study more the logic of 'alteration of functions and proteins'. So touche'. I doubt its a serious wound, but you did manage to get in one blow.
You can read down just a bit further where I discuss RNASE to answer your next question. I relooked over things, and made an addition to my post which you seem to have missed. And isn't it fair that I hold the TO guys to a higher standard than moi considering our relative positions? And while they did show a potential new information, the plain fact is they also showed lack of logic would you not agree?
Hidden. Masked. Not used in ordinary circumstances, but available in extraordinary circumstances.
So if a bacteria lives in fructose, but is placed in glucose, and it repeatedly mutates after a certain time span thats just it being really lucky. It couldn't be that there was some mechanism. I'm remembering odds like 1 in 10 to the 114th, but a simpler proverb seems in order. Once is coincidence. Twice is happenstance. Three times is enemy action.
As to why it waited? I'm not sure. But I think that a mechanism is a more believable answer for a repeated event than a mutation.And I don't think the scientists know that much about genetics as you seem to think they do. We're still fumbling in the dark mostly is my understanding. And bacteria, despite what Darwin might have said, are pretty complex.Shannon-Weaver is a fine name. The fact that this theory is completely identical to standard Darwinism (as I said), and its portrayed as something else that validates Darwinism is deserving of ridicule.If I say "Tad says A" and "Eric says A" and therefore A is validated, well, that would be silly. S-W Information Theory is silly. If you want to know what you should explain to me, explain to me why I should take it seriously. As to Sowell, I tried to be polite, but okay...I'm thumping the TO guys, and pretty hard too. They're probably smarter than me, but I have the advantage of being right which more than makes up for their greater brainpower. Its in part my way of claiming victory which I mostly earned. I think an impartial judge would have given me that round. As Barack Obama said "I won."
Its also a way of pointing out an explanation for victory. Its not my great skill, but the power of the truth which testifies to my position being the truth. If little ol' me can duel and win on a position, well then, that position is very likely correct.
It also hopefully has the advantage of admitting that while I am condescending, I'm not too full of myself not to laugh a bit at the whole situation which includes myself.
MJ,
I know some answers, and I just try to use logic to test those answers and fill in where I don't have an answer, and frequently in my arguements a kind of intellectual judo where I turn the opponent's statements back on himself.
One thing about this type of arguement is just how extremely vast the whole field is. Its like having a battle with the lines stretching for fifty miles in either direction. The result is that I used to get attacks on issues I didn't know about. It doesn't happen so much now.
Knowing one or two or three killer arguements just makes you a talented amateur perhaps. I'm pretty sure you could easily justify multiple doctorates in Creation Apologetics.
Knowing one or two or three killer arguements just makes you a talented amateur perhaps. I'm pretty sure you could easily justify multiple doctorates in Creation Apologetics.
I've heard it said that someone who is truly good in debate can argue any side of an issue, whether it's the side they agree with or not. The guy who told me that said it was how he got converted to Christianity. He was an Atheist and was challenged by a Christian to argue the Christian side, against the Christian, who took the Atheist side. In the course of the debate, the Atheist convinced himself.
OK, I'm not that good, not usually.
Y'know I felt the same thing in part of the arguing with a film critic or two about The Watchmen. I was down on it, and he/they was up. The reason I did so well as I did was my points had a lot of validity to them.
If the arguement had been flipped around, they would very possibly have trashed me pretty hard.
Abortion is an issue I can argue both sides of. (Please, no abortion debates) As much as I don't like it, I can clearly see the other side. If challenged, I will take the opposing stance.
Which also goes to gender discrimination. I had a girl say to me once "You'll never know what it's like to be a woman in that situation." I said back "Yeah, and you'll never know what it's like to be a baby that is about to be aborted."
Just thought I would add that.
(Doing Therapy)
1. Novel genetic material is something different in genes. Thats all it means. I can cover a sheet of paper with random letters. They're new letters. They mean nothing. They are not information. Newness does not equal information.Now if you produce a brand-new genome that does something, then yeah, thats information. But Brand New Genome is a subset of the greater set of Novel Genetic Material which also includes the subset of Useless Trash. They're trying to equate a potential loss of information with new information, and I have to think that they probably know better, and that means they're lying. And if they don't know better...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030508075843.htm
1. I'm not too enthused by naked url's. If YOU have an arguement, then make it yourself. I mean I could give you guys the urls for Michael Behe, Marvin Lubenow, J.P. Hogan, William Dembski, and Ben Stein. And then you could give the urls for Dawkins and Provine.
I wasn't that impressed with the first TalkOrigins site url either for this reason (well that, and how poorly it represented its case.) I didn't bother to check the second TO url.
It might be argued that I did likewise with an url for Duesberg, but I also wrote more than just a url.
I think its fairly clear at this point that I know more about this topic than my opponents do. To be clear, that does not mean, I'm right. But it does give my words the aura of authority, if its true.
2. Please pay attention to previous points. I thought I was fairly clear in saying that I did not have much respect for computer simulations. Let me explain a bit--you can make up rules that have evolution make sense or you can make up rules that have pink elephants make sense. We're worldbuilders here, the notion of adjusting the rules of the world to achieve a desired result should be obvious.
MJ, if you're really interested in this, ask David Marcoe. I think he can probably do a better job than I explaining why computer sims are garbage.
3. The article does not mention the words, but it hints at them. Irreducible complexity. I could take this as an excuse to open up another barrage of cannonfire to shatter some more redoubts....
4. Perhaps its just a pop-sci article, and so it was necessary, but you do see the "Just So Story" popular with evos. No science, just speculation. "Well, the birds hopped to catch low-flying insects, or they could have,and some of them probably opened their wings in their air, and had an extra bit of time to catch an insect, and thus they thrived, and that was the beginning of flying."
Heh. Heh. What tripe.
That is not science. Its dorm room yakking,and fairly low quality at that.
Worse it assumes that if something could have happened, that it did. Well, I could have won the lottery by having a ticket blow onto my front porch and it be the winning ticket. I think I'll buy a Porsche to park in sight of my porch tommorrow.
Now, the article talked about the eye instead of flight, but the Just So story was there.
So in your article you had the following:
1. Computer sim-Junk.
2. Cringing before the concept of Irreducible Complexity.
3. A Just So story.
4. Rah-rah boosterism.
I could counter that the Talk Origins people represented their points well and you have understood them poorly.
Talking does not imply knowledge any more than a link posting does; it implies time and inclination. You yourself pointed out the vastness of the field for this argument; if something has been written about before, it's quite tempting to simply link to it. Not necessarily convincing, as you also point out, but tempting. Don't be too hard on James.
1. Novel genetic material is something different in genes. Thats all it means. I can cover a sheet of paper with random letters. They're new letters. They mean nothing. They are not information.
This is another reason that language is a bad metaphor for genetic code. Not every sequence of letters means something - in fact, most don't mean anything. However, every sequence of nucleotides means something. It's how the system is set up - every codon is either a START codon, a STOP codon, or codes for an amino acid. This is why novel genetic material is novel information. If not, then the term "information" loses any relevant meaning.
[concerning bacterial adaptation] As to why it waited? I'm not sure. But I think that a mechanism is a more believable answer for a repeated event than a mutation.
I'll tell you why: because it takes time for an appropriately adaptive mutation to surface and be selected for, even in such rapidly reproducing and rapidly mutating organisms such as bacteria. Massive numbers of mutations happen at random across the population over time, and because random noise maximizes the available information over which selection can act, eventually the appropriate alteration crops up and is selected for, resulting in an adapted population.
My explanation accounts for the delay. Yours does not. Frankly, your "hidden capability" theory is much more bizarre in that it requires the bacteria to somehow know that hundreds of generations of its ancestors have already died due to the negative circumstance in question, and to activate its hidden talent for survival in light of this retrocognitive knowledge.
Also, the circumstances to which bacteria have been shown to adapt to by evolution are staggeringly varied. Which is more parsimonious - that each and every bacterium has hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of individual "hidden capabilities", one for each possible new food source or possible new hazardous environment? Or that all of their adaptive capabilities stem from the single mechanism of mutation and selection?
_
I am ill, and my final papers are starting up. My next post in this exchange may come much, much later, as other priorities may override my compulsive Someone Is Wrong On the Internet typing instincts.
Bad observation followed by incorrect theory for your first two paragraphs.
Lets play the game by the same rules. You admit four points that I made that damage the Darwinian side, and I'll get back to you on the rest of this post. I admitted when you made a point. Have you admitted once when I have done so multiple times?
You're Putting a Good Face on things and I'm more Telling It Like It Is. Its not dishonest, but it is less fair and less open.
JTM, I don't want to hurt your feelings. You're a smart guy under the influence of a Negative Intelligence Field, and I'm grouchy, impatient, and acidic. And I wasn't just busting your chops, but Wodium's too. I wish I were a better man.
Wodium,
As to being sick, take your time. I'm in no hurry, and perhaps some time will let me chill.
Since I can't come up with a nice one --insert Darwinian joke about being sick here--, and get well, my friend.
Ya know, I think drug resistant bacteria are the least of our concerns. I'm watching the new "The Day the earth Stood Still" and they were talking about one bacteria that lives in Sulfuric Acid, and another discovered breeding in drums of radioactive waste.
Oh yeah, and just a grammar question, I was told that the word "earth" is almost never capitalized, only if it starts a sentence, and it is NEVER capitalized after the word "the". Anyone else know anything about that?
(Doing Therapy)
My understanding is that it is capitalized in any context in which it is specifically the name of the planet--that is, just as Mars and Venus are capitalized. It is not capitalized when it refers to the dirt under our feet.
That gets complicated, because it's not really clear whether we live all over the entire Earth or all over the entire earth.
I can see why someone would say it was never capitalized after "the", because in that case it's less the name of the planet and more the identification of the ground; but I don't think that rule holds absolutely.
--M. J. Young