Dave Hawkins

Pappy Jack ... your objections (and others) at RD.net were very unconvincing. You did not even know about the concavity issue and your speculations about the "roller ruler" theory did not survive scrutiny. I do not know if you have even read Smyth or Petrie or Davidson. As I recall, you only gave me links to websites which lacked credibility. In contrast with this, it appears that Dean Anderson has studied some of the original works on the subject and is in a position to give my ideas a challenge. I will be analyzing his post thoroughly and will respond. If his challenges survive scrutiny, I am prepared to change my views. If they do not, I would assume he would likewise change his.

Amaleq13

I deleted your quote to make it more apparent you are claiming that Crow has pointed out and failed to state the same statement!! What you are adding to Crow that is inappropriate is the notion that our ancestors had somehow superior DNA. That is wholly unsubstantiated by anything he wrote.

This doesn't support your belief at all. It is simply a logical possibility given that our interference with natural selection has resulted in greater deleterious mutations being reproduced. It neither requires nor implies that our ancestors had superios DNA.

I think it is quite clear that you are not reading Crow "right".

He is saying that more of our ancestors with deleterious mutations died prior to the last few centuries because modern society has interfered with natural selection.

This offers absolutely no support for the notion that our ancestors had somehow superior DNA.

Wolfhound

Given Dave's habit of using AiG as his favorite source of "excellent creationist scholarship", is anybody else's irony meter burying its needle?

Occam's Aftershave

Oh wow, you mean that Dave might be *erp* quote-mining? Arguing over a few cherry picked sentences from Crow while totally ignoring the surrounding context that shows the author meant something completely different than what Dave is claiming?

Dave wouldn’t do that, now would he? (snicker) Wouldn’t that be intellectually dishonest? (mufled guffaw)

Welcome to life in AFDaveLand^(tm)

Dave Hawkins

I don't say "superior DNA." I just say they had a lower deleterious mutational load in their populations which seems like a reasonable and clear inference from Crow's "stone age ancestor" sentence. This is not an isolated statement, BTW. Dr. John Sanford, a Cornell geneticist, recently renounced his conventional evolutionary views precisely because of papers like this from leading geneticists such as Muller, Neel, Kondrashov, Nachman, Crowell, and Kimura which he fully discusses in his book Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome (or via: amazon.co.uk) (2005). To explore all those papers here seems off topic, but I would be happy to go through them on a separate thread at some point.

Occam's Aftershave

I learned to not even bring the Irony Meter to forums where AFDave is posting. Hypocrisy Meter either. Had too many of them melt into slag.

Dean Anderson

Do you have any evidence whatsoever for your assertions about the reason for Dr Sanford's change of beliefs?

All the biographical information that I have been able to find says that Sanford converted to both Born Again Christianity and Young Earth Creationism during the emotional turmoil of a messy divorce, and it had absolutely nothing to do with his reading of papers from leading geneticists.

Where did you get your information?

Wolfhound

So, it sounds like a classic case of somebody cracking under the emotional strain and losing their mind, as one would expect to have happened to a scientist embracing such things YEC and BAC. Perhaps he could have been saved if only he'd gotten on the appropriate meds at the critical time.

My guess for his source of information is the Discovery Institute or AiG, those delightful wellsprings of tard.

Toto

Bio for SanfordThe book is reviewed here (fairly charitably) and less charitable here

Hex

Nevermind ...