Darwinism in schools?

[rossum]

Evolution presupposes that life is simpler to complex.

False. Evolution mostly moves from simpler to more complex, but may move in the opposite direction. Evolutin moves a population in the direction of greatest advantage, which may often be towards increased complexity, but not always.

OOL research is flipping that arrow so it is moving from complex to degenerating.

Could you ether supply a reference here, or explain more clearly what you mean? Are you saying that non-living chemicals are more complex than a very primitive living cell?

rossum

 

[johnnyjones]

No one ever denied the statement. You should read more carefully. A statement by armstrong shows only that he made a statement. Statements are not evidence or proof of anything.

Well what do you call it when all YOU do is hoot and holler that you can’t find the statement and repeatedly say I’m being lied to. You might not call it a denial, but it’s sure tough not to see it that way. It’s not about “one man”, . The whole point was that thick moon dust was believed to be on the moon and concern arose. This was based on evolutionary science that the moon was billions of years old. An unmanned visit settled some concerns but lingering thoughts were still there.

Don’t forget about Rand McNally’s concise encyclopedia that supports this view. Can you admit that the science in regards to this was wrong?

 

[Farsight001]

Well what do you call it when all YOU do is hoot and holler that you can’t find the statement and repeatedly say I’m being lied to. You might not call it a denial, but it’s sure tough not to see it that way. It’s not about “one man”, . The whole point was that thick moon dust was believed to be on the moon and concern arose. This was based on evolutionary science that the moon was billions of years old. An unmanned visit settled some concerns but lingering thoughts were still there.

Don’t forget about Rand McNally’s concise encyclopedia that supports this view. Can you admit that the science in regards to this was wrong?

Like I said, go back and actually read what I wrote. You are completely misrepresenting me. Instead of skimming my words looking eagerly for the tiniest issue to pick out, read carefully and actually seek understanding.

 

[johnnyjones]

Like I said, go back and actually read what I wrote. You are completely misrepresenting me. Instead of skimming my words looking eagerly for the tiniest issue to pick out, read carefully and actually seek understanding.

I was seeking understanding with 235 where you said
“the claim that astronauts were worried about sinking is JUST PLAIN MADE UP”.
You went on to say, “the creationists just plain lied about it.” I was actually lenient when I said “YOU may not call it a denial”. You just plain denied that anything was ever said by an astronaut(s) about fear of moon dust. And now ,your saying something else.

The billion years old science theory was wrong, and not just based on an astronauts statement, but on the others that I posted as well as Rand McNally’s encyclopedia.

 

[buffalo]

False. Evolution mostly moves from simpler to more complex, but may move in the opposite direction. Evolutin moves a population in the direction of greatest advantage, which may often be towards increased complexity, but not always.

Could you ether supply a reference here, or explain more clearly what you mean? Are you saying that non-living chemicals are more complex than a very primitive living cell?

rossum

Huh? A single cell to humans? That is not from simpler to more complex? Which way does the arrow point?

OOL research is showing that the earliest life was complex. The machinery of the cell was complex and specified.

The Origin of Life - Professor John Walton demonstates the odds against a random start

Conclusions:

• Statistically, the chance of forming even one “useful” RNA sequence can be shown to be essentially zero in the lifetime of the earth.
• The complexity of the first self-replicating system, and the information needed to build it, imply intelligent design.
• Hope of beating the colossal odds against random formation of replicating RNA is based on ideology rather than science.
• As lab experiments on model replicators become more complex they
• demonstrate the need for (name removed by moderator)ut from intelligent mind(s).
• Acceptance of an early earth atmosphere free of oxygen atoms strains belief beyond breaking point!
• No chemically or geologically plausible routes to nucleotides or RNA strands have been developed.
• Geological field work shows no support for a “prebiotic soup.” It favors little change in the atmosphere over time. Living things have been present since the first crustal rocks.
• After over 50 years of sterile origin of life research it is time to give intelligent design a fair hearing.

Dr. John Sanford “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome”

** “a vastly superior operating system”**

** “a galaxy of design and complexity”**

** “over 90% of the genome is actively transcribed”**

** “the genome has multiple overlapping messages”**

** “data compression on the most sophisticated level”**

---

** “more and more the genome looks like a super super set of programs”**

---

** “more and more it looks like top down design”**

---

** “the reality is everybody is mutant”**

** “the selection process really has nothing to grab hold of”**

** “so it’s kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating”**

** “so in deep geological time we should have been extinct a long time ago”**

** “the human race is degenerating at 1-5% per generation”**

** “so personal and so immediate, because there is no circle of life where things where things stay the same, and it’s not an upward spiral of evolution, things keep getting better and better, it is a downward spiral exactly as described in Scripture”**

 

[Farsight001]

I was seeking understanding with 235 where you said
“the claim that astronauts were worried about sinking is JUST PLAIN MADE UP”.
You went on to say, “the creationists just plain lied about it.” I was actually lenient when I said “YOU may not call it a denial”. You just plain denied that anything was ever said by an astronaut(s) about fear of moon dust. And now ,your saying something else.

The billion years old science theory was wrong, and not just based on an astronauts statement, but on the others that I posted as well as Rand McNally’s encyclopedia.

sigh. Reread the whole thing. It’s not like I’m writing in Old English, Beowulf style. It’s not hard to understand.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Look under Antiquities, Greek - her is the link en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought#Antiquity

%between%

Finally, the right link!

 

[LeafByNiggle]

No - more like a genetic piano.

Imagine a piano player putting out different tunes everyday. He uses some of the 88 keys in different combinations to create beautiful music. Some pieces may use the same key combinations in different sequences and different places. Some will be altogether different.

Now imagine life. There are 500 or so conserved genes that all life has. From these all combinations can be built from provided instructions. (these 500 would be like the 88 keys on the piano.) So no a fish would not change into a walrus. The initial creature begins with the thought. Then the DNA language takes over to call upon the building blocks needed to make swimming creatures, walking creatures, flying creatures, etc…

So the information to program the DNA is primary. Once done the information necessary for the continuation of the creature is passed on through the mother.

So that’s what “Front-loaded - life had the necessary information (programming) and building blocks right at the beginning…” means? I’m afraid I still can’t follow what front-loading is in terms of science, not philosophical analogies. Can you tell me how someone might recognize front-loading if he saw it?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The complexity of the first self-replicating system, and the information needed to build it, imply intelligent design.

This is just a restating of your conclusion. It is not support for it. Can you state something convincing that actually supports this conclusion?

 

[buffalo]

So that’s what “Front-loaded - life had the necessary information (programming) and building blocks right at the beginning…” means? I’m afraid I still can’t follow what front-loading is in terms of science, not philosophical analogies. Can you tell me how someone might recognize front-loading if he saw it?

Designed for a specified purpose.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Designed for a specified purpose.

No, what I want is an operational definition, which is the kind of definition used in the scientific method. Please define “front-loaded life” operationally.

 

[rossum]

Huh? A single cell to humans? That is not from simpler to more complex? Which way does the arrow point?

A fish with eyes to a blind cave fish with no eyes is complex to simpler. Evolution can run in both directions.

OOL research is showing that the earliest life was complex.

How do you know? Do you, or your sources, have a detailed enough description of the earliest life to show that it was complex, and where are the relevant calculations. Or is it that your sources are just guessing?

The machinery of the cell was complex and specified.

You have not yet shown that it was complex. It met some specifications, but not others, so the “specified” part is not of any real relevance. It met the specification, “an arrangement of molecules”, it did not meet the specification, “a mammoth”. Please state the exact specification you are using, and show how that specification is prior to the item you are describing. A post-hoc specification is just painting the target round where the arrow landed.

Statistically, the chance of forming even one “useful” RNA sequence can be shown to be essentially zero in the lifetime of the earth.

This is incorrect. For instance, useful RNA sequences have been found in random mixes in labs, see Selection of Functional Nucleic Acid SequencesIn Vitro:

As illustrated in Figure 1, in vitro selection experiments involve the synthesis of a large library of randomized sequences (RNA, ssDNA or dsDNA), the partitioning of functional from non-functional sequences, and amplification of the selected sequences to provide an enriched pool of nucleic acids for the next cycle of selection and amplification.

I have added the bold emphasis. Scientists are routinely finding useful RNA sequences among random RNA sequences in the lab, and have published papers explaining their techniques. Your Professor John Walton is in error. Given that his first point is mistaken, his further points also fail. It is obvious that his calculation of the probabilities is in error, since useful RNA appears at random in short term lab experiments.

rossum

 

[kama3]

Here’s a video explaining evolution of simple chemical systems into modern life: youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

 

[buffalo]

A fish with eyes to a blind cave fish with no eyes is complex to simpler. Evolution can run in both directions.

How do you know? Do you, or your sources, have a detailed enough description of the earliest life to show that it was complex, and where are the relevant calculations. Or is it that your sources are just guessing?

You have not yet shown that it was complex. It met some specifications, but not others, so the “specified” part is not of any real relevance. It met the specification, “an arrangement of molecules”, it did not meet the specification, “a mammoth”. Please state the exact specification you are using, and show how that specification is prior to the item you are describing. A post-hoc specification is just painting the target round where the arrow landed.

This is incorrect. For instance, useful RNA sequences have been found in random mixes in labs, see In Vitro Selection of Functional Nucleic Acid Sequences:
As illustrated in Figure 1, in vitro selection experiments involve the synthesis of a large library of randomized sequences (RNA, ssDNA or dsDNA), the partitioning of functional from non-functional sequences, and amplification of the selected sequences to provide an enriched pool of nucleic acids for the next cycle of selection and amplification.I have added the bold emphasis. Scientists are routinely finding useful RNA sequences among random RNA sequences in the lab, and have published papers explaining their techniques. Your Professor John Walton is in error. Given that his first point is mistaken, his further points also fail. It is obvious that his calculation of the probabilities is in error, since useful RNA appears at random in short term lab experiments.

rossum

A fish that has no eyes is a loss of function.

Are your sources guessing?

The machinery of cells is complex and fundamental. Early life had this same machinery.

Source?

 

[buffalo]

Here’s a video explaining evolution of simple chemical systems into modern life: youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg

**
**

Let’s say… We think… might have…How does he know he is even halfway?

The cell membrane, should we start there?

From Telomeres to the Origins of Life

What do you study now?

The origins of life. In my lab, we’re interested in the transition from chemistry to early biology on the early earth. Let’s go back to the early earth — let’s say probably some time within the first 500 million years. And let’s say the right chemistry that would make the building blocks of life has happened and you have the right molecules with which you can spark life. How did those chemicals get together and act something like a cell? You want something that can grow and divide and, most importantly, exhibit Darwinian evolution. The way that we study that is by trying to make it happen in the lab. We take simple chemicals and put them together in the right way. And we’re trying to build a very, very simple cell that might look like something that might have developed spontaneously on the early earth.

How far have you gotten?

Maybe I can say we’re halfway there.

We think that a primitive cell has to have two parts. First, it has to have a cell membrane that can be a boundary between itself and the rest of the earth. And then there has to be some genetic material, which has to perform some function that’s useful for the cell and get replicated to be inherited. The part we’ve come to understand reasonably well is the membrane part. **The genetic material is the harder problem; the chemistry is just more complicated. The puzzle has been understanding how a molecule like RNA can get replicated before there were enzymes and all this fancy biological stuff, protein machinery, that we have now in our cells.
**
--------------

Let’s take DNA - there is no chemical combination that is favored. Any one can bond to any other equally.

 

[Baelor]

Designed for a specified purpose.

Is there any scientific proof that this occurred? i.e. that each animal has a specific purpose?

We know for a fact that species have changed, and some have gone extinct. Can purpose change? Do you believe that the diversity of life we see today was created at an instant, each thing with a specific, discernible purpose? How did this occur?

 

[buffalo]

Is there any scientific proof that this occurred? i.e. that each animal has a specific purpose?

We know for a fact that species have changed, and some have gone extinct. Can purpose change? Do you believe that the diversity of life we see today was created at an instant, each thing with a specific, discernible purpose? How did this occur?

The general purpose for creatures is for man. Some specifics can be for food, to keep the ecosystem going, to provide oxygen, etc… Not being the actual designer I do not know each and every one. We do know life is integral to the planet.

Yes, species have changed and gone extinct. Can purpose change? Generally? I don’t think so, specifically I do.

Yes, the breath of God fulfilled his desire.

This is the central portion of Pope Benedict XVI’s Easter Vigil Homily, given Saturday night, April 23.

“The central message of the creation account can be defined more precisely still. In the opening words of his Gospel, Saint John sums up the essential meaning of that account in this single statement: In the beginning was the Word. In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: And God said … The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason,” “sense,” “word.” It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom. Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer, with the creation account and with Saint John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person. It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason. And because it is Reason, it also created freedom; and because freedom can be abused, there also exist forces harmful to creation. Hence a thick black line, so to speak, has been drawn across the structure of the universe and across the nature of man. But despite this contradiction, creation itself remains good, life remains good, because at the beginning is good Reason, God’s creative love. Hence the world can be saved. Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life.”

AUGUSTINE AND EVOLUTION - A STUDY IN THE SAINT’S DE GENESI AD LITTERAM AND DE TRINITATE BY HENRY WOODS, S. J.

The chapter on Prime Matter helps explain.

 

[Baelor]

The general purpose for creatures is for man.

Which permits evolution, of course.

Yes, the breath of God fulfilled his desire.

It did not have to happen instantaneously. So, again, I ask, by what mechanism did this occur? Dinosaurs predate human beings, for example, and human beings predate other species. Please describe the mechanism by which life was created on Earth.
H.H.:

It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.

I think the Pope’s point is that viewing all of nature with a secular viewpoint is bad and inadequate because it negates the divine order of the universe. At no point does he simply reject evolution or even the “becoming” of humanity, but rather the idea that there was no direction in the process at any point.

Also, as much as I enjoy reading outside sources, I would appreciate your own responses, so I may enjoy a distilled response instead of having to search through entire chapters/books/etc. in order to glean the few relevant statements.

 

[kama3]

Let’s say… We think… might have…How does he know he is even halfway?

He is halfway there, i.e. he has half of the problem figured out. So he only has the other half to go.

In contrast you are nowhere, because you cop-out by introducing a designer. Your approach has no explanatory power at all. In fact, your approach is effectively hostile to investigation: since “God did it”, there is no need to research the problem, because research cannot produce anything.

Of course the fact that he is halfway there proves that you are wrong. Because if you were right, he wouldn’t be able to move from a starting point.

 

[buffalo]

He is halfway there, i.e. he has half of the problem figured out. So he only has the other half to go.

In contrast you are nowhere, because you cop-out by introducing a designer. Your approach has no explanatory power at all. In fact, your approach is effectively hostile to investigation: since “God did it”, there is no need to research the problem, because research cannot produce anything.

Of course the fact that he is halfway there proves that you are wrong. Because if you were right, he wouldn’t be able to move from a starting point.

Bogus - One only has to look at the statistical odds.

Do you accept the Universal Probability Bound?

He claims he is halfway there, but really doesn’t know the other half. It could be exponential so he could be 1% there. It will be fun to watch the designed programming of DNA to get it to work.