Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin: Growing Majority of Americans Support Teaching Both Sides of Evolution Debate

[PEPCIS]

"PEPCIS:

This tidbit of information is frequently thrown out by evolutionists because of it’s LACK of information. By that, I mean the extreme lack of data which details WHAT PORTION OF THE DNA SEQUENCE is being compared.

I have been saying that one needs to look at missing information before giving a dogmatic interpretation of the evolution of humanity.
Would a description of the whole genome be the base for indicating what data is lacking?

If I understand your question correctly, I would answer “yes.” It’s like taking you and your spouse, and comparing only your eyes, and not comparing the rest of the morphology of the complete body. You both may have blueish-colored eyes, and so we might say that the color is 95% similar. Yet, if we considered the differences in height, weight, hair color, body mass, age, etc, etc, we would find incredible differences.

Evolutionary-minded scientists are the only ones who will get such rubbish printed, and then they declare “new evidence” for evolution. It’s laughable.

Yet, what is rarely noted in ANY scientific article on this specific subject is that ONLY A PORTION OF THE DNA SEQUENCES of the two species are compared, not the whole sequence.

If we couple that with the fact that these studies often fail to account for the DNA insertions and deletions, then we have a drop in the percentage of “similarites.”

granny:

As of now, I am not sure what is meant by DNA insertions and deletions.

Insertions and deletions are defined as extra base pairs that either get dropped, or somehow inserted in the chromosomal chain. There are “point insertions/deletions” as well as “sequence insertions/deletions.” However, point insertions are typically referred to simply as “mutations.”

granny:

Please, pretty please with sugar on it, would you give me some links to published papers which have the above comments spelled out?

Well, I can give you links, but you won’t find the information, because it is suppressed. You’ll have to read between the lines. I would highly recommend the article at the following website: Answers in Genesis

Here are some secular articles which dance around it.
broad.mit.edu/news/263
biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/10/56

One thing that is consistent in their approach is the circularity in their argument. The claim is made that both humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor. The DNA is then compared, and it shows +90% similarity. Voila!! It proves that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor!

Or did it? Why couldn’t that also be evidence of a common Creator?

 

[buffalo]

http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagethumb/Banana%20Same%20As%20Human%20(1940).jpg

 

[PEPCIS]

If you doubt the 94 - 98% similarity figure then both genomes and the tools needed to compare them are available to you.

Nobody doubts that there are vast similarities between the two genomes. But “vast” is so subjective, and simply misleads us to accept your bold proposition that macro-evolution is real.

It could (and is) just as easily stated that there are vast dissimilarities between the two genomes.

Here is a citation which shows that only 19.8 million bases were compared. This is a pittance compared to the complete human genome.

Fujiyama, A., Watanabe, H., Toyoda, A., Taylor, T.D., Itoh, T., Tsai, S.F., Park, H.S., Yaspo, M.L., Lehrach, H., Chen, Z., Fu, G., Saitou, N., Osoegawa, K., de Jong, P.J., Suto, Y., Hattori, M., and Sakaki, Y. 2002. ‘Construction and analysis of a Human-Chimpanzee Comparative Clone Map.’ Science 295:131-134.

Incredibly, if we were to consider the DIFFERENCES (as opposed to the similarities), and we calculated those differences at a “mere” 5% of the DNA, such a difference would indeed be VAST, amounting to an astounding150,000,000 DNA base pairs difference between human and chimpanzee genomes.

 

[Leela]

One thing that is consistent in their approach is the circularity in their argument. The claim is made that both humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor. The DNA is then compared, and it shows +90% similarity. Voila!! It proves that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor!

Or did it? Why couldn’t that also be evidence of a common Creator?

Design is always a possibility. For example, say I drop a large handful of coins, and they fall in some arrangement. This evidence would be consistent with the hypothesis that the universe had conspired through billions of years of history for just this arrangement to occur. In fact, no matter what happens, no matter how profound or insignificant, we can always say that this occurence is consistent with the universe being designed for exactly this purpose.

The reason why design is not a valid scientific theory is that there is no way to imagine the possibility of evidence that could ever be inconsistent with such a hypothesis. If it is impossible to image what it could mean for the hypthesis of design to be false, then it is equally as meaningless to say that this hypothesis is true.

The hypothesis of design is, then, not so much wrong but irrelevent to science. A difference has to make a difference. The hypothesis of design, even if we accept it, can give us no information about how we can proceed to organize our knowledge or find new truths about biological science.

Best,
Leela

 

[Sideline]

One thing that is consistent in their approach is the circularity in their argument. The claim is made that both humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor. The DNA is then compared, and it shows +90% similarity. Voila!! It proves that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor!

Or did it? Why couldn’t that also be evidence of a common Creator?

Tell me, what would constitute evidence for common descent?

If endogenous retrovirus placement, similar DNA, similar malfunctioning gene sequences, and fossils records are “circular”, what could possibly constitute proof?

Here’s another question, can you prove to me that all human beings are related? I’ve never once seen an Australian aboriginal couple give birth to an Asian looking child. What evidence could you possibly provide that I couldn’t just respond, “God decided to make them that way.”

 

[PEPCIS]

"PEPCIS:

Why couldn’t that also be evidence of a common Creator?

Design is always a possibility. For example, say I drop a large handful of coins, and they fall in some arrangement. This evidence would be consistent with the hypothesis that the universe had conspired through billions of years of history for just this arrangement to occur. In fact, no matter what happens, no matter how profound or insignificant, we can always say that this occurence is consistent with the universe being designed for exactly this purpose.

This is quite far from what science has established. Spiraling galaxies are exactly OPPOSITE of what one could come to expect in a random evolution of the universe.

Leela:

The reason why design is not a valid scientific theory is that there is no way to imagine the possibility of evidence that could ever be inconsistent with such a hypothesis. If it is impossible to image what it could mean for the hypthesis of design to be false, then it is equally as meaningless to say that this hypothesis is true.

Science claims that the Sun is 15 million Kelvin at its center. Just because you can’t imagine a credible falsification doesn’t mean that the Sun is not 15 million Kelvin at it’s core. That’s like saying that it is impossible to imagine the hypothesis that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin at its center. Who would imagine that???

 

[PEPCIS]

"PEPCIS:

One thing that is consistent in their approach is the circularity in their argument. The claim is made that both humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor. The DNA is then compared, and it shows +90% similarity. Voila!! It proves that humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor!

Or did it? Why couldn’t that also be evidence of a common Creator?

Tell me, what would constitute evidence for common descent?

Well, since we are talking STRICTLY science (afterall, evolution does not deal in religion, right?), then I would say we would have to observe a macro-evolutive event. That would be pretty convincing, don’t you think?

Sideline:

If endogenous retrovirus placement, similar DNA, similar malfunctioning gene sequences, and fossils records are “circular”, what could possibly constitute proof?

Non-circular reasoning would suffice.

Sideline:

Here’s another question, can you prove to me that all human beings are related?

I’m staying in your realm of science only to answer this: the answer could be “no.” Outside of the Bible (or non-scientific a priori assumptions) there is no objective evidence that all humans are related unless we couple that with some basic assumptions. Outside of those assumptions, there is no solid, objective evidence.

However, forensicly speaking, we do have our experiences which establish for us that we have never before witnessed a human give birth to anything other than another human. Collectively we all conclude (reasonably) that this is sufficient to establish that we are all related.

Of course, if you want to argue that aborigines are more or less genetically superior to other races, you are free to do so. But, I tend to accept the Bible’s declaration that we are all founded in the same lineage as Adam.

 

[Sideline]

Science claims that the Sun is 15 million Kelvin at its center. Just because you can’t imagine a credible falsification doesn’t mean that the Sun is not 15 million Kelvin at it’s core. That’s like saying that it is impossible to imagine the hypothesis that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin at its center. Who would imagine that???

Actually, it is impossible to imagine that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin. 0 Kelvin is absolute zero,so in other words, no movement or thermal activity. I don’t know how you could imagine that the centre of the Sun has less than no heat.

That’s trying to imagine that there is something nothingier than nothing.

But, just for the sake of argument why couldn’t we assume that the centre of the Sun is say… 20 Kelvin.

Oh… because we would expect to see something different if the Sun is cooler at it’s core. We would see that the idea of a very cool centre of the Sun is… false.

Wait, if we would expect to see something different if the Sun is a very different temperature, doesn’t that mean that the idea that the Sun is 15 million Kelvin is falsifiable?

 

[Sideline]

Well, since we are talking STRICTLY science (afterall, evolution does not deal in religion, right?), then I would say we would have to observe a macro-evolutive event. That would be pretty convincing, don’t you think?

Sure, just stick around a million years.

I’m staying in your realm of science only to answer this: the answer could be “no.” Outside of the Bible (or non-scientific a priori assumptions) there is no objective evidence that all humans are related unless we couple that with some basic assumptions. Outside of those assumptions, there is no solid, objective evidence.

Wow, so according you you, we know almost nothing scientifically speaking. Any test that would prove my brother is in fact related to me would be void unless you actually observed my parents having sex twice and kept my mother in isolation in between.

Genetics would be out, because we have to assume that the genetic similarity would be because of common ancestry. Looking alike would be out, because we are assuming that people who are related look alike. Any test that we did would only be confirming our bias and based on circular reasoning.

However, forensicly speaking, we do have our experiences which establish for us that we have never before witnessed a human give birth to anything other than another human. Collectively we all conclude (reasonably) that this is sufficient to establish that we are all related.

No it isn’t. Have you ever seen an Chinese woman give birth to red-haired, green-eyed children? I haven’t. I think I would have to see you breed red-haired, green-eyed children from only Chinese people to think that they could be related.

Of course, if you want to argue that aborigines are more or less genetically superior to other races, you are free to do so. But, I tend to accept the Bible’s declaration that we are all founded in the same lineage as Adam.

Wow… calling me a racist because you can’t win your argument. That’s pretty low.

 

[reggieM]

Please, pretty please with sugar on it, would you give me some links to published papers which have the above comments spelled out

This is an interesting report from a creationist perspective:

Astonishing DNA complexity demolishes
neo-Darwinism

Actually, it is claimed that creationists only produce religious opinions but this paper in question is enough to refute that notion.

 

[Cpl_Ferro]

This is an interesting report from a creationist perspective:

Astonishing DNA complexity demolishes
neo-Darwinism

Actually, it is claimed that creationists only produce religious opinions but this paper in question is enough to refute that notion.

The one question put to Creationists that Creationists are guaranteed to ignore, is the question, “How did God create life?”. Not Who, but How. How is all Evolutionary Theory addresses, the Who is immaterial, fine say it’s God, whatever, but How did this stuff happen? The Creationists walk away from the question, won’t even address it. How is that science, then?

Creationism’s be-all-end-all is to simply get everyone to admit “God did it, huyucks!” and then ignore the question of How forever. It is anti-science in principle, because it produces no results.

 

[Leela]

This is quite far from what science has established. Spiraling galaxies are exactly OPPOSITE of what one could come to expect in a random evolution of the universe.

PEPCIS, the point is that no matter what we observe about the universe, our observations would always be consistent with the hypothesis that the universe was designed to be that way.

Science claims that the Sun is 15 million Kelvin at its center. Just because you can’t imagine a credible falsification doesn’t mean that the Sun is not 15 million Kelvin at it’s core. That’s like saying that it is impossible to imagine the hypothesis that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin at its center. Who would imagine that???

I have no idea how you came up with that number, but if we assume that this is a scientific claim, then we can assume it is based on some evidence, and if that evidence were different, the claim would be different.

My point is that the design hypothesis is unfalsifiable. It isn’t based on any evidence since it is impossible to imagine evidence that could contradict it. Therefor, it just doesn’t mean anything to say it is true.

In other words, if we ever discover the remains of a 5,000 year old kangaroo buried in Texas, evolution will be proven wrong. What sort of evidence could ever be considered inconsistent with design? What could we ever predict about future discoveries based on assuming that the design hypothesis is true?

Best,
Leela

 

[grannymh]

I’m staying in your realm of science only to answer this: the answer could be “no.” Outside of the Bible (or non-scientific a priori assumptions) there is no objective evidence that all humans are related unless we couple that with some basic assumptions. Outside of those assumptions, there is no solid, objective evidence.

However, forensicly speaking, we do have our experiences which establish for us that we have never before witnessed a human give birth to anything other than another human. Collectively we all conclude (reasonably) that this is sufficient to establish that we are all related.

Of course, if you want to argue that aborigines are more or less genetically superior to other races, you are free to do so. But, I tend to accept the Bible’s declaration that we are all founded in the same lineage as Adam.

Dear Pepcis,

The actual percentage figure at the bottom in your post 336 is the kind of info I’m looking for. Thank you.

It seems to me that some evolutionists are saying that the current variety of human genomes in the present population is possible either because there is more than one common ancestor or many common ancestors which trace back to a common one. The companion argument is that there is some kind of bottleneck because of the time it takes for mutations to occur and then become fixed. I probably messed up the above; however, their point is that it would be physically impossible for all the current people on earth to have descended from only two parents.

I am not out to win any argument, at least not at this point. What I am looking for is scientific possibilities that we all are descended from one couple. The possibility doesn’t have to be probable; it just has to exist in order to make me happy.

Somewhere above, I saw the idea of a macro evolutionary event.
Without knowing exactly what that means, here is how my imagination works. In nature, there are different possibilities for the same concept. Humans have a different generation length than a snail. There are different life spans from species to species. Intelligent capacities are different between a human and a chimp. Humans create a different kind of music than the night insects. I’m sure that someone has translated these observations into gnomes, DNA, whatever.

It seems to me that Darwinism tries to unite all the differences in concept applications with one cause, the evolutionary theory.
If I’m put in the same classification as a slug because we are without shells and our mobility is slow moving from place to place, maybe the one-size fits all theory might work.

The observable really is that the gap between humans and other creatures is greater than…I can’t begin to think of a comparison.
It seems to me that with such a gap, it would be possible to think of humans as being on a different evolutionary track. Would that be a macro evolutionary event?

It doesn’t matter to me if humans were created instantly or if they evolved from clay which evolved to…to the point where they were completely different from other creatures with that amazing gap in place. The point is that being so different from other creatures, the possibility exists that humans would not follow the same general development patterns of other living things.

Therefore, the possibility of Adam & Eve, being the parents of all humanity exists along side the possibility of dinosaurs becoming birds or reptiles etc.

Personally, I can live with the idea that people will choose a different possibility for the development of humanity than I do.
I can live with the idea that scientists will choose which possibility to explore. As long as I have the possibility for the existence of Adam and Eve, I won’t be quite as cranky as I am now.

Blessings,
granny

All humanity is a joy to behold.

 

[Cpl_Ferro]

In other words, if we ever discover the remains of a 5,000 year old kangaroo buried in Texas, evolution will be proven wrong. What sort of evidence could ever be considered inconsistent with design? What could we ever predict about future discoveries based on assuming that the design hypothesis is true?

“God’s designs are perfect–except when they aren’t, and that’s due to the Fall.”

?

 

[ricmat]

Creationism’s be-all-end-all is to simply get everyone to admit “God did it, huyucks!” and then ignore the question of How forever. It is anti-science in principle, because it produces no results.

Funny…the article that reggie posted (which he said was from a creationist site) nowhere said, “God did it, ignore the question of how.” It actually said a lot about “how.” Did you read the article?

 

[grannymh]

The one question put to Creationists that Creationists are guaranteed to ignore, is the question, “How did God create life?”. Not Who, but How. How is all Evolutionary Theory addresses, the Who is immaterial, fine say it’s God, whatever, but How did this stuff happen? The Creationists walk away from the question, won’t even address it. How is that science, then?

Creationism’s be-all-end-all is to simply get everyone to admit “God did it, huyucks!” and then ignore the question of How forever. It is anti-science in principle, because it produces no results.

Science studies the natural world… God by definition is supernatural.

There was an ancient traveler in Greece who wrote that it would be possible for the Greeks to conclude that a supernatural being existed. Ideas about the “how God did it” were developed centuries later by a student who studied the intelligent Greeks.
Writings of both the traveler and student can still be studied.

Blessings,
granny

Humanity has the wonderful gifts of intelligence and common sense.

 

[redneck22]

http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagethumb/Banana%20Same%20As%20Human%20(1940).jpg

Hang on second Buffalo! The scientists “know” bananas and humans share a common ancestor which was a rock.

View attachment 5245

So what is the genetic percentage that applies to the similarity with rocks?

 

[reggieM]

Focusing on Darwin and his theory doesn’t further scientific progress

February 23, 2009

Philip S. Skell, emeritus Evan Pugh professor of chemistry at Penn State University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Coyne seems to believe the major importance of biological science is its speculations about matters which cannot be observed, tested and verified, such as origin of life, speciation, the essences of our fossilized ancestors, the ultimate causes of their changes, etc.

Experimental biology has dramatically increased our understanding of the intricate workings within living organisms that account for their survival, showing how they continue to function despite the myriad assaults on them from their environments. These advances in knowledge are attributable to the development of new methodologies and instruments, unimaginable in the preceding centuries, applied to the investigation of living organisms. Crucial to all fruitful experiments in biology is their design, for which Darwin’s and Wallace’s principles apparently provide no guidance.

**Examining the major advances in biological knowledge, one fails to find any real connection between biological history and the experimental designs that have produced today’s cornucopia of knowledge of how the great variety of living organisms perform their functions. It is our knowledge of how these organisms actually operate, not speculations about how they may have arisen millions of years ago, that is essential to doctors, veterinarians, farmers and other practitioners of biological science. **

It is widely accepted that the growth of science and technology in the West, which accounts for the remarkable advances we enjoy today in medicine, agriculture, travel, communications, etc., coincided with the separation, several centuries ago, of the experimental sciences from the dominance of the other important fields of philosophy, metaphysics, theology and history.

But fossils fail to inform us of the nature of our ancient antecedents–because they have been transformed into stones that give us only a minuscule, often misleading impression of their former essences **and thus are largely irrelevant **to modern biology’s experimentations with living organisms.

For instance, we cannot rely upon ruminations about the fossil record to lead us to a prediction of the evolution of the ambient flu virus so that we can prepare the vaccine today for next year’s more virulent strain. That would be like depending upon our knowledge of ancient Hittite economics to understand 21st-century economics.

In 1942, Nobel Laureate Ernst Chain wrote that his discovery of penicillin (with Howard Florey and Alexander Fleming) and the development of bacterial resistance to that antibiotic owed nothing to Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s evolutionary theories.

Additionally, I have queried biologists working in areas where one might have thought the Darwinian paradigm could guide research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I learned that evolutionary theory provides no guidance when it comes to choosing the experimental designs. Rather, after the breakthrough discoveries, it is brought in as a narrative gloss.

The essence of the theory of evolution is the hypothesis that historical diversity is the consequence of natural selection acting on variations. Regardless of the verity it holds for explaining biohistory, it offers no help to the experimenter–who is concerned, for example, with the goal of finding or synthesizing a new antibiotic, or how it can disable a disease-producing organism, what dosages are required and which individuals will not tolerate it. Studying biohistory is, at best, an entertaining distraction from the goals of a working biologist.

It is noteworthy that Darwin’s and Wallace’s theories of evolution have been enormously aggrandized since the 1850s. Through the writings of neo-Darwinian biologists, they have subsumed many of the biological experimental discoveries of the 20th century. This is so despite the fact that those discoveries were neither predicted nor heuristically guided by evolutionary theory.

It is unseemly and scientifically unfruitful that a major focus in biology should have turned into a war–between those who hold that the history of those unique organisms is purely a matter of chance aggregation from the inorganic world and those who hold that the aggregation must have been designed for a purpose.

 

[reggieM]

Funny…the article that reggie posted (which he said was from a creationist site) nowhere said, “God did it, ignore the question of how.” It actually said a lot about “how.” Did you read the article?

Thank you – yes, I do hope critics will read the article before commenting.

 

[PEPCIS]

"Leela:

The reason why design is not a valid scientific theory is that there is no way to imagine the possibility of evidence that could ever be inconsistent with such a hypothesis. If it is impossible to image what it could mean for the hypthesis of design to be false, then it is equally as meaningless to say that this hypothesis is true

PEPCIS:

Science claims that the Sun is 15 million Kelvin at its center. Just because you can’t imagine a credible falsification doesn’t mean that the Sun is not 15 million Kelvin at it’s core. That’s like saying that it is impossible to imagine the hypothesis that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin at its center. Who would imagine that???

Actually, it is

impossible to imagine that the Sun is -8000 degrees Kelvin. 0 Kelvin is absolute zero,so in other words, no movement or thermal activity. I don’t know how you could imagine that the centre of the Sun has less than no heat.

That’s trying to imagine that there is something nothingier than nothing.

Exactly my point. Thanks.

Sideline:

But, just for the sake of argument why couldn’t we assume that the centre of the Sun is say… 20 Kelvin.

To quote someone else: “That’s trying to imagine that there is something nothingier than nothing.” Or as I said in my earlier post: “Who would imagine that???” It’s ridiculous to entertain notions that are…well…ridiculous.

The Bible teaches us that “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”

You (plural) say that there is no God, therefore there is no Creation. That’s not saying anything, and it doesn’t prove anything.

Falsification is highly overrated. What would you expect to find if the universe were designed?