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The Hierarchy of Evolutionary Apologetics: Protein Evolution Case Study

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A common retort from evolution’s defenders is that all those scientists can’t be wrong. Is it conceivable that so many scientific papers and reports, with their conclusions about evolution, are making the same mistake? Before answering this we first must understand the hierarchy of the evolution apologetics literature. At the base of the pyramid are the scientific papers documenting new research findings. Next up are the review papers that organize and summarize the state of the research. And finally there is the popular literature, such as newspaper and magazine articles, and books. Across this hierarchy evolutionists make different types of claims that should not be blindly lumped together. Yes, there are problems across the spectrum, but they tend to be different kinds of problems.  Read more

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Couple Dr. Hunter's post here with Denyse O'Leary's recent post on the Top 10 Retracted Studies of 2010 and you have to wonder how much later retracted information at level one never gets corrected at level 2 and is quoted as "fact, fact fact" in level 3? I'm guessing, quite a lot!!DonaldM
January 19, 2011
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This is interesting from Fazale Rana via Rich Deem: Book Review: Creating Life in the Lab: How New discoveries in Synthetic Biology Make a Case for the Creator - Rich Deem Excerpt: Biological enzymes catalyze chemical reactions, often increasing the spontaneous reaction rate by a billion times or more. Scientists have set out to produce artificial enzymes that catalyze chemical reactions not used in biological organisms. Comparing the structure of biological enzymes, scientists used super-computers to calculate the sequences of amino acids in their enzymes that might catalyze the reaction they were interested in. After testing dozens of candidates,, the best ones were chosen and subjected to "in vitro evolution," which increased the reaction rate up to 200-fold. Despite all this "intelligent design," the artificial enzymes were 10,000 to 1,000,000,000 times less efficient than their biological counterparts. Dr. Rana asks the question, "is it reasonable to think that undirected evolutionary processes routinely accomplished this task?" http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/creating_life_in_the_lab.htmlbornagain77
January 18, 2011
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"All those scientists can't be wrong" is a classic argument from authority. The short answer is: yes, yes, they can.Barb
January 17, 2011
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Stephen Meyer – Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681/bornagain77
January 17, 2011
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Thanks Dr. Hunter for, as Paul Harvey would have said, 'The Rest Of The Story'. Not to long ago, I actually had a Darwinist try to sell me on the 'virus protein' you discussed as proof that Evolution could easily find functional proteins. But in my being a novice in these matters, I could only point to the fact that the 'fitness' of the virus, with the 'evolved' protein, was less than the original virus, thus staying within the overriding principle of Genetic Entropy, but I could not go much further than that in detail in my refutation of his assertion. Thanks once again for bringing clarity to 'protein NON-evolution' in what many Darwinists wish would remain murky so as to continue their severely misguided charades. of note: Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds: Doug Axe: Excerpt: Combined with the estimated prevalence of plausible hydropathic patterns (for any fold) and of relevant folds for particular functions, this implies the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723 http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681/bornagain77
January 17, 2011
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