Oolon Colluphid

No I’m not. At least, I apologise if you’ve gained that impression -- I guess I wasn’t being clear. My actual position is that no gods were involved at all, and I was assuming the usual creationist position: that, like you say, goddidit and doesn’t micromanage.

Okay. It’s what I thought you believed anyway. So?

Erm, I missed the refutation in that. Could you run it by me again please?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your ‘degeneration’ argument is so-called microevolution by another name, but given a negative-only spin. Yes?

Course it can. Gods can do what they want.

I suppose it’s too much to ask, though, that you demonstrate that there are gods first, before we discuss what they can and cannot do?

Course it can. The question is, why?

Then why are there so many absent fail-safes? Where are the dolphin gills and detached retina repair mechanisms?

So pseudogenes are broken junk. I agree. They were -- you seem to be saying -- once operational in the original, perfect organism. Fine. The question is, what sort of bird had teeth? No modern bird. So they all contain the same mutation. Why might that be? You do realise that mutations are often heritable, yeah?

Tree roots and such?

I’m afraid it’s rather asinine of you to assume that I’ve jumped to anything quickly. Please expand on your exploration of other alternatives to your conclusion. Could you, say, define ‘evolution’ for me please? If, say, ‘kinds’ are separate and immutable, could you define the term please?

Yes. Given your above comment, the pot is calling the fridge ‘black’.

John 7:24, presumably? Which translation is that? Doesn’t quite square with Matthew 7:1 and Luke 6:37, but okay. I assume what you’re getting at is that these things may appear to be poor designs, but they’re not really. Okay. Please explain why they’re not really.

It doesn’t say a lot of things. Like who Cain married, for instance.

Okay, this is interesting. God designed things to deteriorate, yes? Hence including fail-safes. A good designer, having made his good design, doesn’t usually want it to deteriorate. But okay, if you say so.

Please explain this: spurges (family Euphorbiceae) have lost their petals to this deterioration -- they are there, but vestigial. Some, however, live a life in which petals would be an advantage, to attract pollinators. How, then, did the poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) come by its bright red upper leaves, which are clearly petal substitutes? The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, eh? Knowing that their eyes would deteriorate, god gave river dolphins echolocation? What are we to make of it when the fail-safe is better than the original?

Sorry, can’t find a reference for it.

It must be, since you’ve grasped it. Do you know what a long line of cumulatively-inherited mutations is called? So the vertebrate retina was inverted by mutation...?

Oh I see... you interpreted my call for clarification of a phrase in a particular context as ignorance of a straightforward word itself. Now, what was that John 7:24 quote again?

The most appropriate dictionary.com definition is their fifth one: “processed, stored, or transmitted data�?. So, it’s data stored and transmitted via DNA. So I repeat: what exactly is this data? Data about what? (Note: I’m checking we’re talking the same language, not admitting ignorance. )

So, losing genetic information is not a mistake on god’s part. Then neither, presumably, is gaining some. But we have examples of the latter.

Aw gosh, I’m being unclear again. I’m talking about things like satellite DNA. In Drosophila fruitflies, for example, there are three pieces of repeated DNA. They are just seven base pairs long, and would not code for anything even if they were expressed, which they’re not. And these three sequences are repeated. Not just once or twice, but eleven million, 3.6 and 3.6 million times. They constitute about 40% of the fly’s entire genome.

Hence, the fly contains vastly more genetic material than it needs to make its body. Q.E.D.

Nice.

Personally, or scientists in general? Myself, I use genetics textbooks, such as Brown’s Genomes and Lewin’s Genes VII. How about you?

Sorry. My communication skills really are fucked, aren’t they? I mean that satellite DNA, for instance, ‘means’ nothing in terms of protein synthesis; nor is it expressed anyway. Since it is not used in making a body, and does not apparently perform any other function either, the provisional conclusion is that it is ‘useless’. ‘Without use.’ (Perhaps you’d find that online dictionary helpful here.) Maybe you can suggest what it does do? I’m sure there’s plenty of (other?) geneticists who’d love to hear your ideas.

Nope. I work in local government. But I have (and read) several relevant textbooks, and journals. Since you think it is useful, please enlighten us. :notworthy

Sorry. I’m on 98 at home and something else not XP at work. And I know nothing about computer code. But that’s okay. It has nothing to do with genes, which I do know something about.

Nope. I’ll check the references in my books for the names, place and date of publication of those who have though, if you’d like.

Like birds having the genes for making teeth? Like humans having the genes for making tails? Righty-ho.

Just about every geneticist. But what would they know, eh?

Explain the Drosophila sequences.

I’d say you haven’t got a prayer.

40% of a fly’s genome speaks volumes. And these aren’t even disused but identifiable genes (though they may have been, a very long time ago), they are meaningless junk.

Most of them don’t do anything. That’s the point. But many of them are very similar in sequence to functional genes. I can’t recommend a trip to your local library highly enough.

Since I’m not, it doesn’t. 40% of the fruitfly genome is junk for sure. About... oh, call it 80%, I’m sure it’s more actually... of your own DNA is not used either. Are you trying to tell me that the easy majority of our genomes are degenerate, yet we still seem to get by... by not using it? Okay. Back just after Adam had that costalectomy, when were perfect etc, what did all that DNA do? What did we look like? Our tail-making genes must have been operative for a start, yes?

What god? And why that one?

Irony so thick that it would blunt Andúril...

Ah, that’ll do for now. Anyone else?

TTFN, Oolon

Jet Black

heh, nice one Oolon I am looking forward to the next round of "Caps Loving Fundy" vs "[sic] man" I always thought you were a biology prof or something though.

Duvenoy

Excitable sorta feller, ain't he?

doov

Dr.Xu

Hey Oolon, congrats for the catch!
It will be very funny to watch this "conversation"... but in your next message to "Cap Fundy", please, pleeeease make him support this claim:
I would love to see the documents proving giants existed!

Plognark

Yeah, methinks someone should switch to decaf
I can just see the veins pulsing in his head with that ultra-caps posting.
Hehehe

Duvenoy

And I. Where are the sites of villages or encampments where these creatures lived?

Asssuming an oversized but otherwise normal, human skeleton with all of it's frailties (spine, knees, and so forth) and build, and metabolism, they must have been very heavy and eat a lot by our standards. Could that skeleton, have supported it? I'm asking -- I'm not sure one way or another.

To feed a population of these things would probably require some sort of argriculture, I would think. I don't see somethng that big, clumsey and pittifully armed as much of a hunter/gatherer, so where is the evidence of giant graineries, and so forth?

I would also like the see this creature's tool kit.

But of course, I never will...........

doov

JonF

Giant human skeleton found in Saudi Arabia

Before you react, also read Lying For a Good Cause..

Oolon Colluphid

Temporarily unused? So there might come a time when whales will need legs again, yes? Wouldn’t that be evolution though?

My thoughts exactly.

That is precisely what they are. The question is, why, if they were working, do they make things that the organisms do not have? But which, according to evolution, their ancestors had. So I’ll have to repeat: Why are there degenerate genes for making teeth in birds? Why (presumably for genetic reasons) do whale embryos have legs? This DNA corruption has helped turn creatures into things radically different from their original (created?) form. That’s evolution!

Define ‘information’. Not from a dictionary; what do you mean by information in this context? I ask because satellite DNA is the opposite of information.

And why concentrate on genetics? Because you saw a Discovery Channel programme on it once? If the corruption of a sinful world is the cause of my alleged poor designs, perhaps you can tell me how this corruption put the (demonstrably inferior) mammalian lung ventilation system in bats, cheetahs and wolves (and all other mammals including humans). We must have started off with the avian through-flow system, since that is much better, yes? Why no degeneration to the mammalian system among any birds?

What are you wittering about? (Perhaps, though, you might explain where the sky’s ‘firmament’ went? Wouldn’t it, like, get in the way of our space probes? Ah, that explains Beagle 2!) Asteroids and stars are not biological entities. Perhaps they are a waste of materials, I neither know nor care. Though I do wonder why, if the point of the Sun was to be a light to rule the day, to warm the Earth and what-have-you, god made it phenomenally hot and put it 93 million miles away, thus ensuring that the Earth receives only a miniscule fraction of its entire energy output. Now that does seem profligate.

No, stars are irrelevant. The claim of a designer god rests on form being fitted to function, often in remarkably intricate ways and complex forms. This must, say creationists, be due to intelligence. The claim is about quality of design of biological things. This means that if a body is supposedly well designed, it should not contain design flaws. It should not perform functions in excessively convoluted ways, it should not use excess materials. Form should fit function. If the creator showed intelligence in forming, say, eyes, then he showed stupidity in giving the mammalian lung system to bats.

So what exactly are nipples for? Decoration?

Straw man. I never mentioned asteroids. For all I know or care, they may be the most point-ful things in the universe.

Now you’re just flailing wildly. What has this to do with the price of fish in Grimsby?

I have evidence to the contrary.

I have egrets to the contrary.

Ah, diseases. Thank you for mentioning them. You see, for instance, there’s an organism called Pediculus humanus. And another, Rickettsia prowazekii. The latter lives entirely inside the former, and another species. It is amazingly well adapted to (ie designed for) its lifestyle. P humanus, equally, lives only on this other species, and is similarly brilliantly adapted to live on it. The other species is Homo sapiens. Us. These two other species live nowhere else, and rely entirely on us for their own existence. The first is the human body louse, which feeds on our blood; the second one is the cause of epidemic typhus, which has killed more people than all wars combined.

They are marvellously adapted to their lifestyles, with protein coats to evade human immune systems, and hook legs to stay attached to our hair.

Don’t even get me started on Plasmodium and Anopheles.

So, whence these adaptations. Not from evolution, presumably. Yet they have all the incredible, intricate and complex features that are usually attributed to a creator’s design.

Therefore, god deliberately made lice, typhus, mosquitoes, malaria... and hookworms, schistosomes, trypanosomes, tuberculosis, Ebola, and a thousand others. Get a parasitology textbook. I insist. Look at the bestiary it contains, and read what they do, how they do it, how good they are at it.

Now explain it by degeneration.

On the contrary. That is exactly what they are.

Are you delusional? Okay, let’s see your evidence for these tall folks. RIGHT. NOW.
(Anyone here want to explain the physiological problems of scaling up a human body to 25ft high? Blood pressure for one, I’d guess.)

And please explain why satellite DNA is not junk.

Nah. Genes aren’t really my ‘thing’. I know a bit about evolution in general though, and creationism too. Am I wrong, then, in assuming that, according to creation, whales never had legs, humans never had tails, and birds never had teeth? If so, I apologise.

Nonsense. Look up Hox genes while you’re at the library. (Where’s that damned article and thread about arthropod body plans, Nature I think it was?)

I am saddened -- but not surprised -- to read this. Let me in on a secret: evolution says nothing whatever about the validity or otherwise of Christianity.

Please read this (don’t worry, it’s quite short): www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-god.html

I may be wrong, but I think there is a Nobel Prize for biology. If so, it keeps getting won. Either way, so what if we don’t know every last thing about it? Because we don’t know everything, everything we do know can be discarded?

Please explain how a loss of genetic information might cause a retina to be inverted... and still work so well that most creationists deny there’s even a problem!

Um, it -- degeneration -- was, unless I missed something, the only explanation you have offered for such things. So what else then?

Do you know what “Borel’s Law�? is? Well whether you do or not, here’s Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions.

Nope. Don’t care, either. If you’re going the probability route, you clearly do not understand evolution by natural selection... and are most probably abusing whatever Crick and Sagan have said, to boot.

Do I detect a hint of arrogance there?


As my colleagues in the Colonies might put it, you seem to have some ‘issues’.

Yup.

Correct. Apart from it not being a single mutation, of course, but rather a long string of them, spread out down a lineage.

Okay, how’s this. Our recurrent laryngeal nerve is a tremendous waste of materials. But in our fishy ancestors, it followed a direct path across the neck. That happened to take it under (what would become) the aorta, as the heart was positioned up in the ‘neck’ area. As the lineage evolved, the heart moved down into the thorax. The nerve, being under a major pipe from the heart, was dragged down with it, because it was simpler -- fewer major (ie potentially disastrous) mutations -- for the nerve to grow longer than to re-route it. Voila, 340 million or so years later, we have giraffes with fifteen foot long laryngeal nerves.

All my examples -- in fact, all of biology -- make perfect sense in light of evolution.

<sigh right, that does it > Please don’t assume everyone is as stupid as you are.

I’ll see your AiG, and raise you a http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/k...ed_retinae.htm

Ah, I’m getting bored with this. Can anyone more proficient with the search function dig up the thread where we chewed that AiG argument over?

Maybe more later.

And I agree about the decaf.

Oolon

budgie

Goodness. I read those articles substituting Christian for Islam, and God for Allah, and so forth. Someone is blind.

-jim

Dr.Xu

WOW

Unbelievable! Thanks for the excellent link, JonF. It was very instructive.
Was this the "documented fact" Caps-Loving Fundy was referring to, or are there other giant skeleton "evidences" around?