Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America'

reply to post by Welfhard


You did not answer the question, are you a senator?
32 proteins, not 1, 32. Should I repeat the question? The simple fact is that it is unanswerable, but you have intellectual snobbery and actually tried to explain it away.

reply to post by Stylez

You think evolution has empiracal evidence when they suggest something that happened well millions of years before the "Bronze age" ??
No way my friend if that is what you think then you better get a dictionary and find out what empircal evidence is.

So you don't believe in anything that can't be directly observed? You don't accept anything that has been deduced as evidence? Well I would say that you'd make a terrible detective. I presume you don't believe in atoms either? Or Blackholes? The non-observable universe that we can indirectly detect?

Trouble is that even then evolution occurs in the observable world. New species have emerged in bacteria and insects in the last century because of their significantly shorter lifespans. There was a bacteria discovered in a Japanese dumpster that eats nylon. I wonder where that came from if it didn't evolve? Was there much nylon in the Garden of Eden? A new species of mosquito found in the London underground so genetically distinct from the above ground species which it used to be able to reproduce with that it could no longer do such thing.

Where do these new species come from? And where does life come from that replaces extinct species? Why hasn't life vanished in the billions of years that it's been here?

No, Darwin noticed variation and pondered the possibility that maybe they had common ancestors and had changed over time. It wasn't a new idea, evolutionary ideas had existed for thousands of years to trying and explain the diversity and even the origin of life. Science went on to show how overtime small changes could be made by selective breading and that the fossil record seemed to record this change, but no one knew how it happened. THEN we discovered DNA and genetic write errors and suddenly the mechanics behind the idea became obvious. Most mutations do nothing, some do bad things and still a few make more sense than the instructions that they mutated from. New beneficial mutations (from heightened senses to near unbreakable bones and immunity to disease show this). The theory predicted that (even before the discovery of DNA) that selectively breeding animals would change their form as the selector so desired - a practise that humans have been doing for thousands of years in every domesticated animal, especially with dogs and farm animals.

Now we can even witness the slow occurrence of speciation even. It's an all together sublime system.

Originally posted by Welfhard


Ahh the flagellum. I remember it was a classic creationist argument back in the day.
Every organism that exists is riddled with redundant and vestigial structures and behaviours, a great deal of which eventually get utilised for other functions in later evolutionary development. The human tail bone and appendix are prime examples of this. My understanding of the evolution of the flagellum is that is would be just another cumulative adaptation of vestigial pieces, keeping in mind that the average amoeba replicates every 20 minutes, some structures will come and go while others will be so advantageous that get honed into just the perfect singular pieces as if they were designed that way. Like everything else, it's earlier forms would have been less functional and have more superfluous parts.

uh uh uhh sorry this is just not true and you are using some pretty dated ideas that are impossible to have happened

There are structures replete through biology that need every constituent part to exist at the time, but that doesn't mean that the constituent parts had to evolve at the same time for that one function.

Really? how many do you know that work like that? and saying "doesn't mean that it can't , doesn't mean that it does. So what are you trying to say?

Perhaps it's the reverse of the whales leg? Now it's totally contained inside the body of the whale and is used as an anchor for muscles in that region of the body, whereas when the whales ancestors walked on land, it actually used that bit of it's anatomy for moving.

Uswe your scientific method and prove it . Ill bet ya trip hard over the logical fallacy for assuming the consequent.

Go ahead ILL HELP YOU

In my quest against ignorance, I have some excess questions. My first:

What evidence do you have against creation?

I haven't found an answer. If you have any, please tell me. Now, I don't mean evidence against a creator. I mean the idea of it being created. I am already aware of arguments against a creator. The former, however, I have never heard.
Secondly:

Where did the first cell membrane come from?

There are something like 257 genes necessary for life. Apparently it is possible for researchers to create a genome, with highly specialised equipment. But they still have to inject that genome into a cell with its nucleus removed. We can create a genome, but not the membrane? Where did that thing come from?!

So I must be very ignorant so far. Indeed, I have not your years. I have merely a mind which like to inquire... and a total disregard for what "everybody knows".

reply to post by pyramid head

You did not answer the question, are you a senator?
32 proteins, not 1, 32. Should I repeat the question? The simple fact is that it is unanswerable, but you have intellectual snobbery and actually tried to explain it away.

No I was suggesting that it was once more than 32 in a less effective or practical form and was honed into the most efficient model - that's what evolution does. It is better at it's function than the previous forms and that's why it is what it is. It's irreducible complexity has been reduced from something more messy and less functional into something more simple and far more functional. That is how it would have arose and that is what I gave an explanation for.

Creation and evolution are not at odds. It was created aged, with the appearance that it evolved. Works for me.

reply to post by Welfhard


Thats pure BS with absolutly no scientific evidence to back that up, you are arguing a point you have no answer to, just "ideas".

Originally posted by Welfhard
So you don't believe in anything that can't be directly observed?

Trouble is that even then evolution occurs in the observable world. New species have emerged in bacteria and insects in the last century because of their significantly shorter lifespans. There was a bacteria discovered in a Japanese dumpster that eats nylon. I wonder where that came from if it didn't evolve? Was there much nylon in the Garden of Eden?

The nylon eating bacteria? I dunno, did it? can you prove it evolved? what was its common ancestor? Can you prove it?

How do you know it is NEW?

Was their nylon in the garden of eden? I see that question asked a lot usually websites like "How to stump a creationists "

Well Nylon is made from corn and their was no popcorn in the garden of eden either yet we can still eat it. Margarine isn't that like one molecule away from being vinyl yet we eat that too and it wasn't in the garden of eden either. but what does that have to do with anything?


Those mosquitos you talk about, what did they evolve into again?

Thaaats right Mosquitos.


Mmmm Guess that proves ?



[edit on 23-9-2009 by Stylez]

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Stylez]

reply to post by pyramid head

To correct you on two points

Evoution arises from genetic mutaiton
Genetic mutation:a "randomly" derived change to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism. -that seems random?

It isn't, not really random anyway. mutations are circumstantial "mistakes" in DNA replication.

The universe is everything that "physically" exists. The universe cannot come before stardust because it is stardust.

The universe is also the voids between everything that "physically" exists, including time and the three spacial dimensions. Therefore the universe is also what the physical exists "on" or "in". It would be more correct to say that the universe is bigbang dust.

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Welfhard]

Click here for more information.

Originally posted by Welfhard
Evoution arises from genetic mutaiton

Quit regurgitating ideas Dawkins himself won't use as an alibi anymore CATCH UP Mutations dont cut it .

reply to post by Welfhard


If the genetic mistakes are not random then they are on purpose, one or the other. There is no middle ground. The fact is that they are random.

The bacterial flagellum is an example of irreducible complexity, the idea that when one removes one part of a structure that it fails and therefore couldn't evolve in separate non-functioning parts.

One does not have to do much research to come to grasps with the vestigial nature of irreducible complexity. The following are the first three paragraphs from the wikipedia page on IC.

Irreducible complexity (IC) is an argument made by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or "less complete" predecessors, through natural selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring chance mutations. It is one of two main arguments intended to support intelligent design, the other being specified complexity.[1] It is rejected by the scientific community,[2] and intelligent design has been referred to as pseudoscience.[3]

Biochemistry professor Michael Behe, the originator of the argument of irreducible complexity, defines an irreducibly complex system as one "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".[4] These examples are said to demonstrate that modern biological forms could not have evolved naturally. Evolutionary biologists have shown that such systems can in fact evolve [5], and Behe's examples are considered to constitute an argument from ignorance.[6]

In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."[7] Nonetheless, irreducible complexity continues to be cited as an important argument by creationists, particularly intelligent design proponents.

... And more specifically on the Flagellum.

The flagella of certain bacteria constitute a molecular motor requiring the interaction of about 40 complex protein parts. Behe asserts that the absence of any one of these proteins causes the flagella to fail to function, and that the flagellum "engine" is irreducibly complex as in his view if we try to reduce its complexity by positing an earlier and simpler stage of its evolutionary development, we get an organism which functions improperly.

Scientists regard this argument as having been disproved in the light of research dating back to 1996 as well as more recent findings.[53] They point out that the basal body of the flagella has been found to be similar to the Type III secretion system (TTSS), a needle-like structure that pathogenic germs such as Salmonella and Yersinia pestis use to inject toxins into living eucaryote cells. The needle's base has ten elements in common with the flagellum, but it is missing forty of the proteins that make a flagellum work.[54] Thus, this system negates the claim that taking away any of the flagellum's parts would render it useless. On this basis, Kenneth Miller notes that, "The parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex system actually have functions of their own.

Wiki

I am not a microbiologist yet even I have a rudimentary understanding of how IC systems evolve and yet my layman explanation is refuted simply because I make analogies and don't have flowcharts.

reply to post by Welfhard



And I am supposed to take those clearly biasd sources that you took from wiki as end all fact. I can find many intelligent design scientists that "say" the contrary. Still not evidence, same BS, no facts, just another name. Those are still opinons.

reply to post by pyramid head

If the genetic mistakes are not random then they are on purpose, one or the other. There is no middle ground. The fact is that they are random.

Well that's more a discussion of semantics than anything else. If you define random as meaning not be the will of an undetermined entity, then yes you are right. The Oxford English Dictionary says "Having no definite aim or purpose; not sent or guided in a particular direction; made, done, occurring, etc., without method or conscious choice; haphazard."

However, I'm saying that since there is no random outcome in a deterministic interaction; there is no random. Mistakes happen frequently in DNA transcription but the cell has a sort of 'spell checker' that finds these mistakes. When the genetic sequence becomes mismatched (that is A isn't matched with T, and G with C) the spell checker protein has to change something to make it make, but it has no way of knowing which letter in the mismatch is the mistake and 50% of the time, the mutation isn't reverted. Which letter the spell checker chooses appears random (hence people saying "random mutation") but it's caused by something and if that something was understood at the time one observed the chemical interaction then one would not say that it was random as one would know exactly why what happened did happen.

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Welfhard]

reply to post by pyramid head

And I am supposed to take those clearly biasd sources that you took from wiki as end all fact. I can find many intelligent design scientists that "say" the contrary. Still not evidence, same BS, no facts, just another name. Those are still opinons.

The fact that the supposed "IC = design" idea never makes it through peer review should have been the key here, hence why intelligent design is not scientific because, once again, it starts with the conclusion. Perhaps if you wanted to honestly call science's refutation of IC as implying design then you would look into the actual science behind it instead of pandering, saying "clearly biased".

But here is the point. A structures that are of themselves irreducibly complex are common in biology. HOWEVER, the individual parts that make an IC system can be parts of present or vestigial systems elsewhere which had a different function. That is to say that bit's of the flagellum may not have always done what they do now in that specific structure - and because of this, the constituent parts of any IC system can evolve separately before being assembled.

That's simple reasoning from someone who's not an expert, who's actually done some research out of curiosity.

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Welfhard]

reply to post by Welfhard


I am quite familiar with how DNA works, IT IS random, get over it. DNA does not make mistakes on purpose. I understand how it works and it does not make it any less random.

reply to post by Welfhard


"It is rejected by the scientific community,[2] and intelligent design has been referred to as pseudoscience.[3] "

This is an example of bias. I was unaware of this body of scientists known as the scientific community. Is there some sort of panel they have where they have ideas they accept of reject?

reply to post by pyramid head

I am quite familiar with how DNA works, IT IS random, get over it. DNA does not make mistakes on purpose. I understand how it works and it does not make it any less random.

It is by your definition, yet it's no less causal at the same time. Circumstantial is a better, albeit pedantic term to use because it implies less.

When people say "random mutation" it seems to evoke the response "What? You mean it just happened as if by some magic occurrence somehow." No, we know how it happens and the direct cause of a mutation is always something circumstantial.

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Welfhard]

reply to post by pyramid head

"It is rejected by the scientific community,[2] and intelligent design has been referred to as pseudoscience.[3] "

This is an example of bias. I was unaware of this body of scientists known as the scientific community. Is there some sort of panel they have where they have ideas they accept of reject?

Yes, it's called peer review. ID is not scientific, that is to say that it doesn't follow the scientific method, and as such it fails peer review and the scientific community dubs it as pseudoscientific.

The scientific community is biased against the non-scientific, go figure.

[edit on 23-9-2009 by Welfhard]