In this post Dr. Hunter shows us professor of English Terry Scambray completely destroying three Ph.D Darwinists on basic logic and reasoning.
Jeffrey Shallit takes to his website to rebut Professor Scambray’s arguments and falls flat on his face.
First Shallit takes Scambray to task for asserting that “Animals and plants appear in the fossil record fully formed and remain unchanged through millions of years.” Shallit dismisses the claim as “pure creationist babble.”
Eminent Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould wrote the following:
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
(1) Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
(2) Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’
Apparently the most famous Darwinist of the late 20th century was going around spouting “pure creationist babble.” Who knew?
Next, Shallit makes a classic literature bluff.
Scambray claims, “Over millions of generations of laboratory testing, fruit flies, as one example, when subjected to genetic changes have not changed into anything but mutated, crippled fruit flies.” Really? At my university, we have access to articles that say something different. Maybe at Bizarro College, they don’t.
Notice that Shallit does not actually say what the “something different” is that refutes Scambray’s assertion. Why not? Because Scambray’s assertion is correct. Every attempt to demonstrate evolution through irradiating fruit flies has been an abject failure. What is the “something different” to which Shallit alludes? We may never know, but we do know that he is bluffing.
Note carefully the common Darwinist tactic here:
Literature bluff: There are thousands of books and articles demonstrating Darwinist proposition X.
Calling the bluff: OK, show me exactly where in just one of those books or articles this proposition is established.
Inevitable Darwinist response: [crickets]
Next, Shallit goes after Scambray over those famous Galapagos finches.
Scambray writes:
So also much the same thing happened with the famous “Galapagos finches” whose average beak size became bigger when the conditions there made it harder to find food due to bad weather. Then when food became more plentiful, the beak size of those finches that survived returned to normal. Thus the finches changed a little, adapted, while remaining fundamentally unchanged.
Shallit’s rebuttal:
Mr. Scambray, if he has ever visited the Galapagos, must have visited a parallel Galapagos, because he claims, “Thus the [Galapagos] finches changed a little, adapted, while remaining fundamentally unchanged.” He doesn’t seem to understand that there are 15 different species of finches, all descended from a common ancestor that colonized the Galapagos millions of years ago. Things must be different in Bizarro World.
First, Shallit does not actually respond to the argument that Scambray made. Scambray points to evidence that is undisputed by all researchers, whether they toe the Darwinist line or not: With respect to a particular species of finch, environmental pressures caused a change in beak size and when those pressures eased the beak sizes reverted to normal.
Shallit completely ignores this evidence and responds to an assertion that Scambray did not even make. Shallit pretends that Scambray asserted that there are never any changes within a type [this is called “erecting a strawman”] and then demolishes the argument that Scambray did not make by noting there are 15 different types of finches on the Galapagos [This is called “knocking down a strawman”].
No, Mr. Shallit. Scambray never asserted that there are never any changes within a type. He asserted that the “finch beak evidence” that Darwinists commonly assert is knock down show stopping evidence for marcroevolution is in fact no such thing. It is unsurprising that your response is to try to change the subject and demolish an argument that Scambray never made.
I HAVE SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST.
Shallit implies that the fact that there are 15 different finch species that all descended from a common ancestor over millions of years is a clincher for Darwinist macroevolution.
Now let me get this straight. Millions of years ago there was a finch. Now there are 15 kinds of finches, but they are all basically the same kind of thing. (That’s why we call all of them “finches.”)
Shallit takes evidence of minor changes within a kind that even the most fervent young earth creationist would admit and claims those minor changes are indisputable evidence for how finches came to be in the first place. Astounding.
If I didn’t have the actual citation and link to Shallit’s post I would not blame you for accusing me of making it up. But you can see for yourself that I did not make it up. This is exactly what he wrote. And this leads me to the following conclusion: The best evidence against Darwinism is often what the Darwinists themselves write.
I will concede that Shallit knows Darwinism inside out. And if anyone would know of valid Darwinist arguments to rebut Scrambray, it would be him. Yet, Shallit’s facile and childish “rebuttal” does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
That sounds almost evolutionary, Barry! Almost as if you accept that environmental changes in the niche occupied by a population of finches can cause change in allele frequency and hence change in the phenotype over time. I do wonder what you mean by normal, however?
1- Shallit is one of many who think that anyone who argues against evolutionism, argues for the fixity of species- no change is allowed. IOW they argue against a known strawman and are proud of it.
2- And that means he also equivocates- any evidence for change is evidence for evolutionism
Alan Fox:
In what way?
That sounds like Dr Spetner’s “built-in responses to environmental cues”, Alan. Evolution BY DESIGN!
that ‘something different’ that Shallit places so much confidence in, is:
Thus it is not even clear whether reproductive isolation was achieved in the ‘something else’ paper.
Moreover rapid response to environment pressure is a very anti-Darwinian thing to observe since, according to neo-Darwinism, the random variation is ‘suppose’ to be independent of the need of the organism. To find time after time that the variations to the genome are ‘directed’ to meet a specific stress from the environment is certainly not something Darwinists should take comfort in!
If Shallit is so impressed with that, I’m surprised Shallit didn’t pull out the old Lizard cecal valve adaptation as an example of neo-Darwinism in action:
of note on finches:
Materialists/atheists never mention the fact that the variations found in nature (such as peppered moth color and finch beak size), which are often touted as solid proof of evolution, are always found to be cyclical in nature. This blatant distortion/omission of evidence led Phillip Johnson to comment in the Wall Street Journal:
Here is a more detailed look at the finches
So Barry’s wrong then, Phil?
Further notes on fruit flies:
Mr. Fox you ask
You tell me, Shallit claimed:
That ‘something different’, as far as I can tell, wasn’t even a mutation experiment done in a laboratory, furthermore the rapid epigenetic response in the fruit fly study he did cite, did not claim that anything appeared but fruit flies, and in fact the response was the result of ‘directed’ mutations. Thus it is not even an example of neo-Darwinism!,,, Mr. Arrington called it a literature bluff. I agree entirely. If you disagree, and you think Mr. Arrington was mistaken in calling it a literature bluff, please tell us exactly why Shallitt’s paper supports neo-Darwinism and does not support ID!!!
Beneficial mutations in Drosophila
One or two article in there must be worth a glance, or am I bluffing?!
Interesting story developing on Larry Moran’s Blog.
I challenged him to explain two issues:
Self-assembly of proteins overcoming entropy barrier and Patten Baldness from evolutionary prospective:
“1. Self-assembly of proteins: while I appreciate your offer to explain how proteins fold, I was looking more for the explanation as to what makes proteins self-assemble in the face of entropy barrier. To make this subject interesting to a larger audience, (I hope you appreciate that since your blog has been asleep, especially lately…) I was going to use the famous example of the bacterial flagellum motor. Most people know that it self-assembles in a perfect way within about 20 minutes. However, there are some problems there that I have issue with, such as:
The number of ways that the proteins can fold to assemble the motor, which is wrong is enormous…? It is definitely greater than the number of ways that the proteins can fold together that is right…
How can this happen in real time within 20 minutes?
There is more to this issue, but I’m not going to bother as I would like you boring blog to revitalize a bit… I have more in store soon…Trust me Larry…
2. Regarding Pattern Baldness Larry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful just because you have this “evolutionary side-effect”… To be more specific, I was looking for a logical explanation as to how, from evolutionary point of view, you can explain this phenomenon. Not necessarily why it happens (Venter often says that we are just hairless monkeys, so what is the problem….?) While I can buy this explanation to a degree, my question earlier specifically targeted the extent of pattern baldness from evolutionary prospective, or for that matter, any prospective… Just to emphasize; If pattern baldness is part of evolutionary process, why do you, Venter and others lose hair in the hairline, top of the scalp and crown, but never, ever on the side behind the ears and the lower part of the scalp the upper neck? (There is an exception to the small part of the neck, just in case my father ever reads this…He would kill me if I omitted this ….).
It does not make any sense. Just to fill you in, many of my patients complain that while they lose the hair on the scalp, they grow more and more hair everywhere else—ears, eyebrows, back and ass. This is not a joke. Why on earth would evolution eliminate the hair that is “no longer necessary” and grow the hair that is even less needed?”
Larry chose two referees for this contest; Michel Behe and Michael Denton. I just need to get in touch with them to agree to this contest.
Can someone help me out to contact them?
This may turn out to be an interesting event and pretty high profile too…
http://sandwalk.blogspot.ca/20.....6461622950
50 million year old Fruit Fly fossil compared to modern Fruit Fly:
http://en.harunyahya.net/fruit.....on-museum/
Mr. Fox @8, your bluffing and here’s why:
Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) – October 2010
Drosophila melanogaster is a model organism for the study of genetics and some laboratory populations have been bred for different life-history traits over the course of 30 years. Professor Michael Rose, of UC Irvine, began breeding flies with accelerated development in 1991 (600 generations ago). Doctoral student Molly Burke compared the experimental flies with a control group on a genome-wide basis. This is significant because it is the first time such a study of a sexually reproducing species has been done. Burke examined specific genes and also obtained “whole-genome resequencing data from Drosophila populations that have undergone 600 generations of laboratory selection for accelerated development.” The results are noteworthy on several counts:
“For decades, most researchers have assumed that sexual species evolve the same way single-cell bacteria do: A genetic mutation sweeps through a population and quickly becomes “fixated” on a particular portion of DNA. But the UCI work shows that when sex is involved, it’s far more complicated. “This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve,” said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator.
The researchers were looking for the fixation of positive mutations within the genome and within the whole population. This is referred to using the term “selection sweep”. When it occurs, the new mutation at a base pair (a novel single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP) not only experiences replication to be transmitted to the descendants of the organism, but the gene pool of variation is effectively swept clean as the new mutation becomes dominant in the whole population. However, such sweeping was conspicuous by its absence.
“Recent research on evolutionary genetics has focused on classic selective sweeps, which are evolutionary processes involving the fixation of newly arising beneficialmutations. In a recombining region, a selected sweep is expected to reduce heterozygosity at SNPs flanking the selected site. [. . .] Notably, we observe no location in the genome where heterozygosity is reduced to anywhere near zero, and this lack of evidence for a classic sweep is a feature of the data regardless of window size.”
The paper considers a range of possible explanations for the evidence obtained. First: “Classic sweeps may be occurring, but have had insufficient time to reach fixation.” Second: “selection in these lines may generally act on standing variation, and not new mutations.” Third, “selection coefficients associated with newly arising mutations are not static but in fact decrease over time.” No conclusion is reached regarding these various options.
“Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles. This is notable because in wild populations we expect the strength of natural selection to be less intense and the environment unlikely to remain constant for ~600 generations. Consequently, the probability of fixation in wild populations should be even lower than its likelihood in these experiments. This suggests that selection does not readily expunge genetic variation in sexual populations, a finding which in turn should motivate efforts to discover why this is seemingly the case.”
This empirical work is worth noting on two counts. First, we are here considering a mechanism that is central to Darwinian evolution. Positive natural selection of hereditable variation is the key (we are informed) to understanding how descent with modification occurs. However, the first set of empirical data relating to a sexually reproducing species does not confirm that modification works this way. This is why Long’s comment is worth repeating: “This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve”. Many scientists have long suspected that the Darwinian mechanisms are inadequate to account for large-scale transformation – these research findings provide empirical support for such doubts.
The other reason for taking an interest in this research is that the Darwinian paradigm has been widely used in the development of drugs for medical use. Whereas the classical view is that genes have specific functions, the new research supports the growing body of evidence that the norm is for genes to have pleiotropic effects. A novel SNP can then be expected to have not one, but many, effects. This has been underplayed by researchers of a darwinian persuasion.
“Based on that flawed paradigm, Rose noted, drugs have been developed to treat diabetes, heart disease and other maladies, some with serious side effects. He said those side effects probably occur because researchers were targeting single genes, rather than the hundreds of possible gene groups like those Burke found in the flies. Most people don’t think of flies as close relatives, but the UCI team said previous research had established that humans and other mammals share 70 percent of the same genes as the tiny, banana-eating insect known as Drosophila melanogaster.”
Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila
Molly K. Burke, Joseph P. Dunham, Parvin Shahrestani, Kevin R. Thornton, Michael R. Rose and Anthony D. Long.
Nature, 467, 587-590, (30 September 2010) | doi: 10.1038/nature09352 (preprint)
Experimental evolution systems allow the genomic study of adaptation, and so far this has been done primarily in asexual systems with small genomes, such as bacteria and yeast. Here we present whole-genome resequencing data from Drosophila melanogaster populations that have experienced over 600 generations of laboratory selection for accelerated development. Flies in these selected populations develop from egg to adult ~20% faster than flies of ancestral control populations, and have evolved a number of other correlated phenotypes. On the basis of 688,520 intermediate-frequency, high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms, we identify several dozen genomic regions that show strong allele frequency differentiation between a pooled sample of five replicate populations selected for accelerated development and pooled controls. On the basis of resequencing data from a single replicate population with accelerated development, as well as single nucleotide polymorphism data from individual flies from each replicate population, we infer little allele frequency differentiation between replicate populations within a selection treatment. Signatures of selection are qualitatively different than what has been observed in asexual species; in our sexual populations, adaptation is not associated with ‘classic’ sweeps whereby newly arising, unconditionally advantageous mutations become fixed. More parsimonious explanations include ‘incomplete’ sweep models, in which mutations have not had enough time to fix, and ‘soft’ sweep models, in which selection acts on pre-existing, common genetic variants. We conclude that, at least for life history characters such as development time, unconditionally advantageous alleles rarely arise, are associated with small net fitness gains or cannot fix because selection coefficients change over time.
See also:
Scientists Decode Genomes of Precocious Fruit Flies, ScienceDaily (September 19, 2010)
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.....ruit_flies
footnote: Genomes of similar species – Cornelius Hunter PhD.
Excerpt: Massive genetic differences were also found between different fruit fly species. The fruit fly is one of the most intensely researched organisms and in recent years a systematic study of the genomes of a dozen different species was undertaken. Evolutionists were surprised to find novel features in the genomes of each of these different fruit fly species. Thousands of genes showed up missing in many of the species, and some genes showed up in only a single species. [9] As one science writer put it, “an astonishing 12 per cent of recently evolved genes in fruit flies appear to have evolved from scratch.” [10] These so-called novel genes would have had to have evolved over a few million years—a time period previously considered to allow only for minor genetic changes. [11,12] ,,, etc.. etc…
http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_4.2_Genomes_of
Orphan Genes (And the peer reviewed ‘non-answer’ from Darwinists) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zz6vio_LhY
Genes from nowhere: Orphans with a surprising story – 16 January 2013 – Helen Pilcher
Excerpt: When biologists began sequencing genomes they discovered up to a third of genes in each species seemed to have no parents or family of any kind. Nevertheless, some of these “orphan genes” are high achievers (are just as essential as ‘old’ genes),,,
But where do they come from? With no obvious ancestry, it was as if these genes appeared out of nowhere, but that couldn’t be true. Everyone assumed that as we learned more, we would discover what had happened to their families. But we haven’t-quite the opposite, in fact.,,,
The upshot is that the chances of random mutations turning a bit of junk DNA into a new gene seem infinitesmally small. As the French biologist Francois Jacob wrote 35 years ago, “the probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero”.,,,
Orphan genes have since been found in every genome sequenced to date, from mosquito to man, roundworm to rat, and their numbers are still growing.
http://ccsb.dfci.harvard.edu/w.....n_2013.pdf
Claiming that the observation different species of finch is proof of Darwinian evolution is tantamount to saying that different species of dogs are the result of Darwinian evolution. Oh, the silliness. It’s painful to watch.
Darwinian evolution is a religion on the way to extinction. Then it will be forgotten. A hundred years from now, history books will just call it the era of collective stupidity, an aberration.
Alan @ 1: “[It’s almost] as if you accept that environmental changes in the niche occupied by a population of finches can cause change in allele frequency and hence change in the phenotype over time.”
Of course I accept that Alan. I don’t know anyone on either side of the Darwinism debate that disputes that. I assume there’s a point hiding in that statement somewhere, but I can’t figure out what it is.
“I do wonder what you mean by normal, however?”
I don’t mean anything by “normal.” You’ll need to ask the researchers who performed the study what they meant by “normal.” I assume they meant that average beak sizes reverted to the pre-famine mean.
Alan,
Which side are you on?
Just for kicks, I followed your link in post #8. I found 349,000 Google hits. All well and good. I found numerous hits that were irrelevant to the issue. I found that many of the top links lead to the same paper. On that account the 349,000 number is quite deceptive. In addition that often listed paper defined its “beneficial” mutation as a change that allowed subsequent generations to survive in an artificial environment of >4% NaCl in their food supply that their distant ancestors could not. Oh, the wonders of micro-evolution to bring about macro-differences is thus demonstrated.
I wonder if the salt tolerance would persist if the flies where returned to “normal” feeding conditions? Just as Scambray noted about other “beneficial” mutations.
But more than that, I found these two links:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sci.....23-05.html where I found:
“[A]rtificially…mimicked a beneficial mutation” What’s this. No real beneficial mutations?
And http://harunyahya.com/en/Evrim.....Drosophila
where this was to be found:
If appears that more of the “evidence” is contrary to your position.
Are you bluffing? Yes! If you know where the evidence is buried in your 349,000 hits, please point to it with specificity. My perusal indicates it is not so easy to find. I’m calling your bluff.
Stephen
They all knew. They just chose to ignore it, or cover it up, or accuse the “creationists” of quote mining.
Obviously Punk Eek ought not be taught in high school science classrooms.
Alan @ 8 and 9.
Alan, you are precious to us. Thank you so much for posting. See sterusjon at 16, where he beat me to the punch.
Mapou @14
Actually, believe it or not, Richard Dawkins did claim different dog breeds as proof of macro-evolution!
Barry:
Hmm. I realise you are a busy man but you have BA77 here posting unadulterated Creationism! And what about Joe? OK nobody takes Joe seriously but still…
Barry, we are going to have to start talking rates. 😉
Rapid increase in viability due to new beneficial mutations in Drosophila melanogaster.
Can someone explain to me why Lenski’s E.coli experiments produced the ability to metabolize citrate when subjected to environmental conditions and the fruit flies didn’t at all under any conditions? ID posits that organisms are intelligently designed to evolve to environmental cues. OK, why did the bacteria evolve to one condition and the fruit flies couldn’t evolve to multiple conditions? This seems like a case of random mutations.
Short answer: Lenski’s E.coli didn’t do that.
Long answer here.
In his new paper Lenski reports that, after 30,000 generations, one of his lines of cells has developed the ability to utilize citrate as a food source in the presence of oxygen. (E. coli in the wild can’t do that.) Now, wild E. coli already has a number of enzymes that normally use citrate and can digest it (it’s not some exotic chemical the bacterium has never seen before). However, the wild bacterium lacks an enzyme called a “citrate permease” which can transport citrate from outside the cell through the cell’s membrane into its interior. So all the bacterium needed to do to use citrate was to find a way to get it into the cell. The rest of the machinery for its metabolism was already there. As Lenski put it, “The only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to transport citrate under oxic conditions.” (1)
Alan @ 20: “Hmm. I realise you are a busy man but you have BA77 here posting unadulterated Creationism!”
Good for BA77. Again, I’m sure there’s a point in there, but I am not grasping it. Perhaps you could unpack it a little.
JLAFan2001: “ID posits that organisms are intelligently designed to evolve to environmental cues.” Nope. It does not posit this. Some ID proponents believe this. Others do not.
I guess Mike Behe would have a view on this as the experiment. You could also look at Lenski’s own version of the implications of his experiment.
Carl Zimmer on the Lenski experiment
Larry Moran on Lenski
Fair enough to have a strategy that avoids any coherent alternative to the current scientific theories of evolution but I thought you might have wanted to be a little more discreet!
Barry: Still not tracking with you Alan. That’s OK. I’ll drop it.
Mr. Fox decides to narrow his literature bluff down from 349,000 to one 🙂 yet when we look at it,,,
the citation does not, just as with Shallit’s citation, address Scambay’s claim:
This is a classic bait and switch on Shallit’s and Mr. Fox’s part. The claim is that, contrary to what neo-Darwinism posits, ‘RANDOM‘ changes to a genome will not result in anything but “mutated, crippled fruit flies”, despite millions of ‘random’ mutations subjected onto fruit flies. But do Mr. Fox or Shallit produce any evidence to the contrary. No, quite the opposite, they produce evidence that the sophisticated molecular machinery and programming of the cell, as well as sophisticated epigenetic feedback can ‘DIRECT‘ mutations, out of millions of base pairs, to the appropriate spots in the genome that will be of benefit of the organism.,,, Thus Mr. Fox and Shallit dishonestly try to use evidence of ‘intelligently directed’ mutations to imply that random neo-Darwinism had a hand in the variations occurring.
Of note:
Well, you said it!
Because they were hungry. But that’s a very non-Darwinian answer!
Mr. Fox, you make a couple of snide comments:
here:
and here:
As to the first snide comment, I found this quote on a article Dr. Hunter posted yesterday:
Frankly Mr. Fox, if believing that God created this universe and all life in it makes me a ‘crackpot’ in your book, I’ll gladly were that mark of shame. I give you something else to be ashamed of me about Mr. Fox, I believe Jesus Christ was/is God incarnate and died on our behalf on the cross to deliver us from sin and death!:
But Mr. Fox, what is really ironic in your saying “coherent alternative to evolution” is that coherency and rationality cannot be grounded in a neo-Darwinian view of reality. Even Darwinists have conceded this point:
The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
The ‘reason’ reasoning cannot be grounded in naturalism is quite simple actually. It is because reasoning presupposes a objective viewpoint of conscious observation which is completely separate from whatever material object is being observed:
Verse and Music:
As nullasalus suggested, the E.coli didn’t evolve the ability to metabolize citrate – they already had it – what developed was a way to import it through the cell membrane, which did not involve the evolution of a new permease (a membrane transport protein which imports a specific substance into the cell) but a modification in the expression of an existing one, citT. Apparently E.coli can already import citrate in anaerobic conditions:
What seems to have occurred is that an existing permease, one which imports citrate in anaerobic conditions, became able to be used to import citrate in aerobic conditions.
The cooperation of proteins for the import and metabolism of specific molecules can be seen in the following video, which shows that in E.coli, lactose acts as a trigger for the expression of the lac operon, which specifies a permease and a protein which breaks down lactose. Video: The Lac Operon. We can very well imagine a point mutation might knock out the repressor protein’s ability to be triggered by lactose, resulting in a strain that could no longer metabolize lactose, only glucose. If at a later time the point mutation were reversed, we would not be observing a case of E.coli evolving the ability to metabolize lactose, but rather the unlocking of a preexisting ability. Certainly the Lenski example isn’t exactly this same scenario, but not entirely different either.
So if my interpretation is correct, what we have is an experiment with interesting results: that existing hardware, the citT membrane transport protein, which was not subject to expression in aerobic conditions, became expressed in aerobic conditions, allowing the import and metabolism of citrate to an organism which already had the ability in anaerobic conditions.
Phil, I did not call you a crackpot. I said you posted unadulterated Creationism. Whilst I think believing that the Earth is 6,000 years old in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is “virtuoso believing” it is your prerogative. Wear you badge of shame proudly if you wish.
Alan,
I followed the link you provided in #22. I found the abstract for “Rapid increase in viability due to new beneficial mutations in Drosophila melanogaster.” I had aleady read the extract when I was out on your previous wild goose chase. To save everyone else the trouble here it is:
I have a few things to say about this. How do you know they demonstrated what they say they did? Did you pay the $54.95 fee that I was asked to pay or did you get a bargain? After ponying up, did you critically assess what they wrote or did you just take their word for it?
Even if you did all that, there is the issue of whether the paper actually addresses the issue. That being, Terry Scambray’s statements:
Alan. You have doubled down on your bluff. I did not spend my $54.95 on your wild goose chase. If you wish to put some substance to your claims you must do work of addressing the real claim of Mr. Scambray with actual quotation from repeatable, relevant research as reported by somebody. If you cannot readily produce same, then you are still bluffing.
Stephen
Mr. Fox, and exactly where have I ever claimed the universe was/is only 6000 years old??? Perhaps you should check the person you are attacking position more carefully before you blurt out falsehood??? ,,, But to be fair to YEC’s, their position, due to advances in quantum mechanics and relativity, actually does now have more empirical clout than the classic materialistic position has/had (the classic materialistic position of space and time being invariant and infinite)
JLA, Lenski’s claim of demonstrating macro evolution is a disputed one, but for the sake of argument, let’s grant it.
To finally get one beneficial result to the organism, it took how long? 30,500 generations was it? Is that impressive to you? This change probably involved two mutations. Wow! Lightning speed eh?
When did humans and apes split apart according to evolutionists? 6-8 million years ago?
How many different mutations would have been necessary for the current differences to occur? I guess that depends on what number you pick to be the difference between ape and human genomes now.
I don’t think anyone thinks the difference is 98-99 anymore. Even a 5% difference translates into 150 MILLION base pair differences.
Do the math! At that snail’s pace, it is virtually impossible.
And even that “close” number was arrived at by only comparing the sections that were similar.
A more recent study posits a whopping 30% difference! That equals 900 million base pair differences! See answers research journal.
If this is beyond the edge of evolution as Behe would say, why believe in evolution at all? Speaking as a creationist, I don’t see why we need add God to the mix to save evolution.
At the very least this seriously challenges the credibility of the evolutionary doctrine of common descent.
Moreover Mr. Fox, contrary to materialistic thinking, it is now found that a non-local, beyond space and time, cause must be appealed to to explain the continued existence of photons within space-time:
i.e. Quantum Mechanics has now been extended to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it:
I have a non-local, beyond space and time, cause to appeal to, but what is your beyond space and time cause to explain the continued existence of the universe Mr. Fox and where is your evidence???
Besides several lines of empirical evidence from quantum mechanics, I even have eye witness testimony of this ‘Consciousness’ (with a capital “C”) Cause, Mr. Fox!
This following video interview of a Harvard Neurosurgeon, who had a Near Death Experience (NDE), is very interesting. His NDE was rather unique from typical NDEs in that he had completely lost brain wave function for 7 days while the rest of his body was on life support. As such he had what can be termed a ‘pure consciousness’ NDE that was dramatically different from the ‘typical’ Judeo-Christian NDEs of going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension, seeing departed relatives, and having a life review. His NDE featured his ‘consciousness’ going outside the confines of space/time, matter/energy to experience ‘non-locally’ what he termed ‘the Core’, i.e to experience God. It is also interesting to note that he retained a ‘finite sense of self-identity’, as Theism would hold, and did not blend into the infinite consciousness/omniscience of God, as pantheism would hold.
Verse and music:
Sorry. Misplaced blockquote in quote of Terry Scambray in post #35. Sorry for any confusion.
Stephen
sterusjon, here is a link to Alan’s paper (literature bluff) if you care to dissect it:
Rapid increase in viability due to new bene?cial mutations in Drosophila melanogaster Priti Azad · Mingchai Zhang · R. C. Woodruff – 2010
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4maSrBPNEmGNHkzZ2gtVFdkc28/edit?usp=sharing
Carl Zimmer sed:
LoL! There isn’t any evidence that the cell rewired its genome accidentally, Carl. That is nothing more than your wishful thinking and your personal refusal to accept that it happened by design.
Innovation or Renovation? By Ann Gauger – Sept. 24, 2012
Excerpt: But how significant was this innovation? In his paper in Quarterly Review of Biology, Dr. Michael Behe pointed out that E. coli was already capable of using citrate for anaerobic growth (when no oxygen was available). He postulated that a change in gene regulation could turn on citrate transport and permit growth on citrate under aerobic conditions.
After an enormous amount of work, having sequenced the genomes of many clones along the lineages that led to the ability to use citrate, as well as lineages that never did, and testing the phenotypes of identified mutations, Blount et al. have now reported that Behe was largely right. The key innovation was a shift in regulation of the citrate operon, caused by a rearrangement that brought it close to a new promoter.
Figure 2 from Blount et al.
The new trait additionally required one or two pre-adaptive steps that could not be definitively identified, perhaps because of variable or weak phenotypic effects, perhaps because of epistatic interactions. Once in place though, those mutations enabled the next step, a duplication of the citrate operon that moved it next to another promoter, enabling the aerobic transport of citrate and its metabolism.
The total number of mutations postulated for this adaptation is two or three, within the limits proposed for complex adaptations by Axe [2010] and Behe in Edge of Evolution. Because the enabling pre-adaptive mutations could not be identified, though, we don’t know whether this was one mutation, a simple step-wise series of adaptive mutations, or a complex adaptation requiring one or two pre-adaptations before the big event.
But does this adaptation constitute a genuine innovation? That depends on the definition of innovation you use. It certainly is an example of reusing existing information in a new context, thus producing a new niche for E coli in lab cultures. But if the definition of innovation is something genuinely new, such as a new transport molecule or a new enzyme, then no, this adaptation falls short as an innovation. And no one should be surprised.
http://www.biologicinstitute.o.....ation?og=1
Rose-Colored Glasses: Lenski, Citrate, and BioLogos – Michael Behe – November 13, 2012
Excerpt: Readers of my posts know that I’m a big fan of Professor Richard Lenski, a microbiologist at Michigan State University and member of the National Academy of Sciences. For the past few decades he has been conducting the largest laboratory evolution experiment ever attempted. Growing E. coli in flasks continuously, he has been following evolutionary changes in the bacterium for over 50,000 generations (which is equivalent to roughly a million years for large animals). Although Lenski is decidedly not an intelligent design proponent, his work enables us to see what evolution actually does when it has the resources of a large number of organisms over a substantial number of generations. Rather than speculate, Lenski and his coworkers have observed the workings of mutation and selection.,,,
In my own view, in retrospect, the most surprising aspect of the oxygen-tolerant citT mutation was that it proved so difficult to achieve. If, before Lenski’s work was done, someone had sketched for me a cartoon of the original duplication that produced the metabolic change, I would have assumed that would be sufficient — that a single step could achieve it. The fact that it was considerably more difficult than that goes to show that even skeptics like myself overestimate the power of the Darwinian mechanism.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....66361.html
Moreover,,
Mutations : when benefits level off – June 2011 – (Lenski’s e-coli after 50,000 generations)
Excerpt: After having identified the first five beneficial mutations combined successively and spontaneously in the bacterial population, the scientists generated, from the ancestral bacterial strain, 32 mutant strains exhibiting all of the possible combinations of each of these five mutations. They then noted that the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually.
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1867.htm?theme1=7
New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows “Overwhelmingly Negative” Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution – Casey Luskin June 8, 2011
Excerpt: In essence, these studies found that there is a fitness cost to becoming more fit. As mutations increase, bacteria faced barriers to the amount they could continue to evolve. If this kind of evidence doesn’t run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does?
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....47151.html
The preceding experiment was interesting, for they found, after 50,000 generations of e-coli which is equivalent to about 1,000,000 years of ‘supposed’ human evolution, only 5 ‘beneficial’ mutations. Moreover, these 5 ‘beneficial’ mutations were found to interfere with each other when they were combined in the ancestral population. Needless to say, this is far, far short of the functional complexity we find in life that neo-Darwinism is required to explain the origination of. Even more problematic for neo-Darwinism is when we realize that Michael Behe showed that the ‘beneficial’ mutations were actually loss or modification of function mutations. i.e. The individual ‘beneficial’ mutations were never shown to be in the process of building functional complexity at the molecular level in the first place!
Regarding the Galapagos Finches:
All you have to do to overturn the notion of even “microevolution” is read Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch.
Here’s what it tells us: in drought situations, the finches stop reproducing, and a larger beak size is seen due to a relative abundance of larger and harder thorn seeds. And when rain comes—and it comes in bunches—the island becomes verdant and UNEXPLICABLY (for those in Rio Lindo—they can’t explain it) finches that don’t normally mate, do mate, and form hybrids. The hybrids have an intermediate-sized beak, and immediately begin to flourish—i.e., they basically take over the population on a percentage basis, more than the ‘smaller’ and the ‘larger’ beak-sized finches. I guess this is called ‘regression to the mean.’
Alas. Given enough time, and enough variable environmental conditions, the population of finches returns to normal.
What a great evolutionary story this is? Right?
I wonder if they said “oops” when the realized what they had done?
PaV @43:
Well said.
Many, perhaps nearly all, of the examples of evolution of this type — finch beaks, peppered moths, bacteria resistance, dog breeds — teach loudly and clearly the following lesson (for those able to hear it):
Minor oscillations around a norm over time, without any real directional evolutionary change.
The creationist Scambray pulls the 50-year-old creationist bait-and-switch: the “fully formed” bait and switch.
The Bait: apparently citing Gould, who said that “species”, the lowest taxonomic unit, most of the time appear “fully formed” with gaps between CLOSELY RELATED species;
The Switch: therefore larger taxonomic units, which ARE NOT THE SAME “BIBLICAL KIND”, appear “fully formed” with no precursors.
The Bait is true; the Switch is a creationist lie floating around since the 1960’s at least.
This lie is 50 years old. 50 years of copying and pasting it does not make it true.
Stephen Jay Gould knew the difference between major taxa and minor taxa, and he repeated many times, that
1. There are examples of gradual transitions between closely related species, that is, MINOR TAXA, in the fossil record.
Here are some pictures of gradual transitions giving the lie to this 50-year-old creationist quote mine. The more complete the fossil record is, as with ocean-dwelling foraminifera, the more gradual the transitions appear. Here are some more pictures for foramen/plankton. Below, I give examples for larger animals.
2. There are examples of intermediates between structurally very different forms, that is, between MAJOR taxa, e.g. reptile to mammal, whales, seals, sirenians, bats, etc. and their precursors.
Gould was clear about the distinction which creationists have obfuscated for 50 years:
Are reptiles and mammals the same “Biblical kind”, “basically the same thing” as creationists say?
Gould said the above back in 1981, before we had the 1980’s-90’s suite of land animal-to-whale intermediates, and half-bats like Onychonycteris, and pezosiren, and Puijilia, and Little Foot, the Homo erectus of Dmanisi, Ardipithecus, etc. etc.
Real scientific there– “basically the same kind of thing”– OK, let me fix your quote:
Fixed!
Some more gradual transitions, this time in a large mammal:
Evidence like this existed in Darwin’s time as well, so even then, the fossil record put the lie to creationism.
Again, I must repeat my repairing of Arrington’s quote:
What creationist can argue with that? Is there evidence of any, any, ANY supernatural intelligent design going on in the ape-to-hominid transition? Arrington is right: “they are all basically the same kind of thing.”
Diogenes methinks thou beholdest faces in the clouds with your imagined fossil evidence for macro-evolution
The following is Diogenes’ first claimed proof for ‘evolution’:
But alas when ones looks at the image of their supposedly prime example for macro-evolution one (disappointingly?) finds what looks to me to be, for all intents and purposes, gradual deterioration (genetic entropy) of foramen/plankton from 64.5 million years to 58 million years before present – picture
http://web.archive.org/web/199.....oram06.jpg
One sees much the same pattern of genetic entropy in this other example on the page
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.....ia_big.gif
As well as in this example that was given:
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.....a_pic.html
This following example is interesting in that the genetic entropy is not nearly as ‘in your face’ as the preceding examples Diogenes gave, but the series of fossils are still easily recognizable as being in the same ‘kind’ of species.
A Pliocene Snail 10 mya to 3 mya
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.....nails.html
Diogenes, your problem is not to demonstrate the deterioration of form in the fossil record (we have that in abundance)
Quotes:
by the way ,,,your main problem is not the fossil record, Diogenes, as problematic as that is, your main problem is to demonstrate that purely material processes can generate functional information!
Stephen Meyer – Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681
Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,,
‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ –
Stephen Meyer – (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate – 2009)
corrected link for foramen/plankton from 64.5 million years to 58 million years before present – picture
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.....foram.html
BA77,
I’m not watching your YouTube videos nor clicking on your links to creationist sources.
Since you blather moronically about “genetic entropy” please provide me with an equation to compute the genetic entropy of a genome before and after a process. Any process.
For simplicity, consider a sequence:
CTACTAGGCTACTGGC
What is its genetic entropy?
Oh wait, I forgot. None of you creationists can compute ANYTHING, not specified complexity and not genetic entropy.
We have the fossils. We win.
Let’s see what ID proponents and creationists have to say about the fossil record.
Let’s see SOME MORE of what ID proponents and creationists have to say about the fossil record.
Let’s see EVEN MORE of what ID proponents and creationists have to say about the fossil record.
To reiterate:
I demanded that BA77 copy and paste an equation to compute genetic entropy.
He will not do so. Creationists are totally predictable. They insinuate they know science and math when they know none.
Copy and paste an equation to compute genetic entropy, or shut up.
Diogenes, Phillip Johnson made this astute observation:
Phillip Johnson – What I saw about the fossil record again,, was that Gould and Eldridge were experts in the area where the animal fossil record is most complete. That is marine invertebrates.,, And the reason for this is that when,, a bird, or a human, or an ape, or a wolf, or whatever, dies,, normally it does not get fossilized. It decays in the open, or is eaten by scavengers. Things get fossilized when they get covered over quickly with sediments so that they are protected from this natural destructive process. So if you want to be a fossil, the way to go about it is to live in the shallow seas, where you get covered over by sediments when you die,,. Most of the animal fossils are of that kind and it is in that area where the fossil record is most complete. That there is a consistent pattern.,, I mean there is evolution in the sense of variation, just like the peppered moth example. Things do vary, but they vary within the type. The new types appear suddenly, fully formed, without an evolutionary history and then they stay fundamentally stable with (cyclical) variation after their sudden appearance, and stasis (according) to the empirical observations made by Gould and Eldridge. Well now you see, I was aware of a number of examples of where evolutionary intermediates were cited. This was brought up as soon as people began to make the connection and question the (Darwinian) profession about their theory in light of the controversy. But the examples of claimed evolutionary transitionals, oddly enough, come from the area of the fossil record where fossilization is rarest. Where it is least likely to happen. Archaeopteryx would be the prime example. Its a bird so we expect it to rarely be fossilized. Yet it has been exhibit number one in the Darwinian case. There’s nothing else around it. Unlike those marine invertebrates. So you can tell a story of progressive evolution that might not work out at all if you saw through the whole body of things around it. Likewise with the ape-men. That is another area where fossilization is very rare. And where the bones of humans and apes are rather similar anyway. So (someone) can find a variant ape bone, its pretty easy to give it a story about how it is turning into a human being. If you tell the story well enough, and successfully, you get your picture on the cover of National Geographic and you become rich and famous. This could effect your judgement. One of the things that amused me is that there are so many fossil candidates for human ancestry, and so very, very, few that are candidates for ancestors of the great apes. There should be just as many (if not more) but why not? Well any economist can give you the answer to that. Human ancestors have a great American value so they are produced at a much greater rate. Now these were also grounds to be suspicious with what was going on. That there was obviously so much subjectivity. ,, The Standard explanation for why the fossil record is not more supportive of Darwinian expectations than it is, if you find that out at all (that the fossil record does not fit Darwinian expectation), is that there are so few fossils, (thus) most things aren’t fossilized. That is why (we are told by Darwinists) that the fossil record has so many gaps. Not that the theory has many gaps but that the fossil record has so many gaps. Yet that is odd if the problem is the greatest where the fossil record is most complete and if the confirming examples are found where fossils are rarest. that doesn’t sound like it could be the explanation. – Phillip Johnson – April 2012 – audio/video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....age#t=903s
“Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether”. Evolutionist Henry Gee, Editor of Nature – 2001
http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....131a0.html
And just as Phillip Johnson noted, I’ve found abundant evidence for extreme bias in the field of paleo-anthropology
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-448487
‘Lucy’ – The Powersaw Incident – a humorous video showing how biased evolutionists can be with the supposed evidence for human evolution
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4032597
Diogenes (being the unbiased party he is) ‘demands’:
Actually Diogenes, it is funny you would bring this up for I was just thinking about the failure of evolution to establish a mathematical basis yesterday:
,,,It interesting to note what Dr. Torley stated in his recent article exposing the ‘in thin air’ foundation that Darwinism rests upon:
The lack of a mathematical foundation was particularly surprising for me, because I had been assured by a evolutionary professor (whom Dr. Torley referenced in his article) here on UD, years ago, that Darwinism was ‘mathematical’ through and through. And yes one can say that Darwinism is ‘mathematical’ through and through, but what one cannot say is that Darwinism has a rigid mathematical basis from which one can make extensive predictions with) Well, after being subtly misled for years by that professor’s distortion of the facts, I finally, in my slow pace, started to piece together the fact that Darwinism has no rigid mathematical foundation at all,,
In fact, contrary to what the employers at Oxford would like to believe, the truth is that there is not some magical mystery equation out there waiting to be discovered to finally give Darwinism the foundation that it needs to be considered truly scientific. The fact is that Darwinists have refused to listen to what the equations of population genetics are thus far telling them. i.e. Darwinists refuse to accept the falsification of their theory from mathematics:
This is simply unheard of in science. Both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics subject themselves constantly to potential falsification, as well as refinement for accuracy, to see if their mathematical descriptions of reality accurately predict what is observed for reality.
In my unsolicited personal opinion, the main reason Darwinism cannot be formulated into any coherent mathematical model to give accurate, ‘daring’, predictions is because of its reliance on the ‘random variable postulate’ at the base of its formulation:
Moreover, as Alvin Plantiga has shown in his Evolutionary argument against naturalism, (i.e. a refinement of “The argument from reason” from CS Lewis), this ‘random variable postulate’ ends up driving neo-Darwinism into epistemological failure,,,
,,, the ‘unrestrained randomness’ at the base of Darwinism, if neo-Darwinism were actually true, results in the epistemological failure of science itself! But this really should not come as a surprise to anyone for how can a theory which denies the reality of mind in the first place be said to guarantee that our perceptions and reasoning of mind are trustworthy?
Supplemental notes:
In the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is falsified by the fact that present conscious choices effect past material states:
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (determinism) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,,
Here is another piece of evidence that solidly demarcates the randomness of the material particles of the universe from the randomness that would be necessarily inherent within ‘conscious’ creatures created by God with free will:
Since material particles are held to ‘randomly’ decay, why in blue blazes is conscious observation putting a freeze on ‘random’ entropic decay, unless consciousness was/is more foundational to reality than ‘random’ entropic decay is? This point is really driven home when we realize that the initial entropy of the universe was 1 in 10^10^123, which is, by far, the most finely tuned of initial conditions of the universe.
Music and verse:
So Diogenes I guess the ‘equation(s)’ that establish genetic entropy and falsify evolution (although Darwinists will not accept falsification from mathematics) are the equations of population genetics:
Mathematical Methods of Population Genetics
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MATHMPG.html
Kimura’s Quandary
Excerpt: Kimura realized that Haldane was correct,,, He developed his neutral theory in responce to this overwhelming evolutionary problem. Paradoxically, his theory led him to believe that most mutations are unselectable, and therefore,,, most ‘evolution’ must be independent of selection! Because he was totally committed to the primary axiom (neo-Darwinism), Kimura apparently never considered his cost arguments could most rationally be used to argue against the Axiom’s (neo-Darwinism’s) very validity.
John Sanford PhD. – “Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome” – pg. 161 – 162
Using Computer Simulation to Understand Mutation Accumulation Dynamics and Genetic Load:
Excerpt: We apply a biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program to study human mutation accumulation under a wide-range of circumstances.,, Our numerical simulations consistently show that deleterious mutations accumulate linearly across a large portion of the relevant parameter space.
http://bioinformatics.cau.edu......aproof.pdf
MENDEL’S ACCOUNTANT: J. SANFORD†, J. BAUMGARDNER‡, W. BREWER§, P. GIBSON¶, AND W. REMINE
http://mendelsaccount.sourceforge.net
Diogenes, to help easily visualize how the equations of population genetics establish genetic entropy and falsify neo-Darwinism, a graph featuring ‘Kimura’s Distribution’ is shown in the following video:
Darwinian Evolution Vs Genetic Entropy – Andy McIntosh – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028086
No. You cannot say “Genetic Entropy” exists if you can’t copy and paste an equation.
I asked you, for simplicity, consider a sequence:
CTACTAGGCTACTGGC
What is its genetic entropy?
But you could not compute its genetic entropy, and you don’t have the manhood to admit YOU CAN’T because YOU DON’T KNOW THE EQUATION.
So I will simplify it, and cut the sequence in half.
CTACTAGGC
What is its genetic entropy?
How simple a question do I have to ask before you either
1. answer it
or
2. Be a man and admit you can’t answer it!
BA77 won’t define “genetic entropy and can’t compute it because Intelligent Design is a fraud.
Great- we can’t say that macrevolution/ universal common ancestry exists because there isn’t any equations that support it.
Nice job, diogenes
Those two clauses are logically unrelated, so I can only assume you said that as a rhetorical strategy.
BA77 can’t compute genetic entropy because there really is no such thing as genetic entropy. Yet this in no way implies that ID is a “fraud.” If you must be emotional about this, at least make your clauses logically connected.
Diogenes, do you usually blatantly misrepresent what others say when you disagree with them? Unfortunately for you, anyone can check post 47 and see exactly what I claimed about that series of drawings you listed:
But hey, so be it that you don’t care to be exposed as so blatantly dishonest in the very thread you are commenting on, it makes my job much easier when you do as you just have done!
,,, here is another example of genetic entropy from the fossil record and genetics that hits much closer to home:
and:
I went to the mutation database website cited by John Avise and found:
I really question their use of the word ‘celebrating’. (Of note, apparently someone with a sense of decency has now removed the word ‘celebrating’)
This following video brings the point personally home to us about the effects of genetic entropy:
Verse and music:
Ge = 0
ok, so I just calculated genetic entropy. where’s my nobel prize?
Irradiated fruit flies are a textbook example of evolution in action. The less fit don’t survive.
This posting seems to have struck a chord. The darwinists are worked up in a frenzy throwing all kinds of mush at the wall hoping something will stick or serve as a distraction. Pretty entertaining reading the comments and watching any shred of an evolutionist argument effortlessly dismantled. Do these guys have anything of substance to put on the table anymore?
Alan – “I do wonder what you mean by normal, however?”
Barry – “I don’t mean anything by “normal.” You’ll need to ask the researchers who performed the study what they meant by “normal.” I assume they meant that average beak sizes reverted to the pre-famine mean.”
I think you are misunderstanding things from his world point of view. He views things from an Alternative Lifestyle perspective. For Alan this has never been about Science. It’s always been about accountability and morality. Of course you could Google all of this, but be warned, it will make you sick to your stomach.
Just sayin . .
Barry,
I hope you cover irrational extrapolation in your series on Darwinian debating devices.
Really? You think this assertion:
is correct?
Are you innumerate?
Roy
Roy, Are you contesting the total number of experiments done in labs trying to get some organism to evolve into ‘something different’? or are you contesting the fact that no one has ever found any evidence for an organism evolving into ‘something different’? In either case you would be wrong. Lenski’s long term evolution experiment by itself has over 58,000 generations behind it.,,, Add all the tests done by all the thousands of graduate students, research institutes, and genetic companies, then you easily pass ‘millions of generations of laboratory testing’,,,
As to fruit flies,,
Supplemental Quote:
I’m contesting that there have been millions of generations of fruit flies in laboratory testing. That would require about 30,000 years.
Do you think there have been millions of generations of humans since world war II?
Roy
Roy,
correction,, Roy,
That is not what he meant. He meant millions of generations in ‘laboratory testing’, which is absolutely correct.
Of course you know that is what he, a English professor who certainly knows how to construct sentences properly, meant.,,, You are not dumb, so why do you pretend as if we can’t see thru your purposely trying to twist the meaning of what he clearly wrote?
More to the point, why are you so concerned about proper English and are not concerned in the least that you, in fact, have no scientific evidence to substantiate your claims for Darwinism?? such as in the following recent large scale evolutionary experiment???
I don’t know what he meant, and nor do you. I only know what he said, which is absolutely incorrect. There have only been a few thousand generations in ‘laboratory testing’.
Do you think there have been millions of generations of humans since world war II?
Roy
P.S. File the rest of your post under #4