Automaton

Here is a prime example of how creationists must invent insane fantasies for their "theories" to hold any water.
What on earth is a gene-specific mutagen? No such thing exists, except say highly specialized retrovirii that must be kept under laboratory conditions. Even if this magical "gene-specific mutagen" existed (and you can be sure if such a thing existed plentifully enough in the enivornment, the biotechnology/genetic engineering croud would have tapped into this resource long ago) it would have to contain a great deal of specific information (as a retrovirus genome does). Considering the mutagen would not be subject to evolution (and you IDers deny that evolution is even capable of generating specific information), it would have to be designed. Yes, preordained by your god, a miracle. And that puts us right back where we started, leaving you to explain why your god would go out of his way to trick and deceive us.

Ed

The essentials of Christianity such as the plan of salvation and moral laws are obvious, but some of the other teachings of the scriptures require expert knowledge of greek and hebrew plus knowledge of ancient history.

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(Louis Pasteur's non-observation of spotaneous generation in meat broth...) Ed: No, actually I had forgotten he used meat broth. But isnt that similar to the primordial soup, they taste similar to me lp: Have you ever tasted Urey-Miller primordial soup?

Nah, I don't engage in cannibalism.

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auto: If your God said that rape and murder were moral, would it not still be barbarous, immoral, or evil? Or would you follow His Command without batting an eyelid? Ed: It would depend on if we were made in his image or not. ... lp: So God looks human? Can he commit sins? And why isn't humanity all-male and miraculously reproducing? That would be because God is male, of course.

Huh? No, God is a spiritual being, he does not have a body and is neither male nor female. We are made in is image in that we are personal beings and he is a personal being.

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lp: Xenophanes was right: people create gods in their likeness.

It is unlikely that the Christian God is man made given his high moral standards. A man made god would let you have sex with whomever you want and let you lie whenever you want and etc.


[quote]
Ed on Noah's Flood:
He was demonstrating that death was the natural outcome of disobedience to the king of the universe. Sometimes for even animals.

lp: A "king" who physically allows something to happen then complains about it later. And don't give me any sauropod dung about free will -- if it leads to sin, it's bad, b-a-d, bad. Read what Jesus Christ says about body parts that cause one to sin -- they ought to be removed.[quote]

He didnt mean that literally, his teaching is what is called rabbinic hyperbole. What he meant was that you should avoid or keep under control something that may cause you to sin even if that thing is not sinful in itself but can be used in a sinful manner. And you are right this can apply to free will, ie it should not be used to sin.

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(on gene duplication) Ed: No, I said sometimes the amount of information remains the same. What I mean is the more specific the gene the more information it contains. In general the more specific a message the more information it contains. lp: That's not what is usually called "information"; there is a technical meaning, which is the bits needed to describe a message. And that increases when genes get duplicated.

No, duplication does not usually increase information. For example DNA is like a sentence. "The dog chased the cat." If one gene is duplicated "The The dog chased the cat." This may still be understandable but if another is duplicated "The the dog chased chased the cat." It starts losing its meaning or information.

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Ed: The recent discovery of specified complexity, the multiple problems associated with the early earth conditions, and etc. lp: What is "specified complexity", and how does it differ from what might be called "unspecified complexity"?

Complexity ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can readily explained by chance. Specification ensures that the object exhibits the type of pattern characteristic of intelligence.

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Ed: ... time travel is logically impossible. lp: You've provided nothing but an assertion of impossibility. Imagine that you make a track in space-time as you live. But if you do some time travel to the past, your track will reverse direction relative to your neighborhood's overall time.

As I stated above if go into the past before you were born then you would both be and not be which is a logical impossibility. Now if just go into the past of your own life, say when you were a child then that is not logically impossible.

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Ed: No, God generally does not speak audibly to people and there are far more people who have experienced God than a deceased Mrs. Roosevelt. lp: The same way that many people have experienced the deities of Mt. Olympus, the Virgin Mary and medieval saints, ghosts, and so forth?

Not exactly, there are certain characteristics and boundaries around that experience that are recognizable as God and also none of those beings are sufficient to have created the universe.


[b] Animal habitat requirements are much more complex than your examples. Even the amount of heavy metals in soil can determine whether a burrowing animal will burrow and etc. There are a multitude of environmental factors can impact an animal's choice of habitat.

[ March 24, 2002: Message edited by: Ed ]</p>

lpetrich

It is thus not the ideal instruction book, because the ideal instruction book ought not to need such background -- it ought to be as self-contained as possible.


It's no worse than eating plant or fungus or animal flesh.

However, the Bible is rather vague about that.

That's baloney. Simply check out the moral codes of different societies, especially societies whose members had never heard of the Bible.

How does one determine that? Is it with any criterion other than "If I like it, it's literal; if I don't like it, it's allegorical"?



Ed, you clearly don't know what you are talking about. Duplicating a gene would be like duplicating the whole sentence: "The dog chased the cat. The dog chased the cat." Now imagine a mutation: "The dog chased the cat. The dog chased the squirrel." You have both the original information, the dog chasing the cat, and some new information, the dog chasing the squirrel. And the new info does not destroy the old info.

What, exactly, is "specification" in this context?

That is absurd -- does that mean that if one tries to go before one's birth or one's conception, one will fail?

How so?

Which does not seem to have kept rabbits from spreading in Australia when they were introduced. Something also true of many other introduced species.

And how do amounts of heavy metals mean wombats in Australia and woodchucks and marmots in the northern continents?

Jack the Bodiless

As has already been pointed out, substituting "ancestor of" for "son of" doesn't help you, because the genealogies clearly state how old each person was when he "became the ancestor of" the next in the series.

Going back to your "Robert E. Lee" example: If you are descended from Lee, then Lee was your ancestor. It's that simple. If you point to a portrait of Lee and say "that's my ancestor", the statement is valid regardless of how old Lee was when the portrait is painted: you wouldn't check the date and say "Oops, he hadn't had kids by then, therefore he is not my ancestor".

According to your distictly odd interpretation, when Lee's son was ten years old, Lee was your ancestor but his son was not!

Please give evidence that ANY culture, anywhere on Earth at any time in history, has ever used such a bizarre definition of "ancestor". Please give evidence that the Hebrew word translated as "begat" refers to this practise. If I require "expert knowledge of greek and hebrew plus knowledge of ancient history", please quote an expert in Greek, Hebrew, or ancient history who has actually verified that this is true by any means except "I need to make this up because otherwise we're screwed".

Oolon Colluphid

And, uh, Ed... I assume my points above stand, since you have not replied...?

I'd still like to know why, by your definition, the Homo habilis OH24 is human, while STS 5 isn't....? If OH24 somehow isn't, you'll have to revise your "if it's Homo it's human" claim.

And please do tell us what sort of wildlife you're involved with. Just curious.

Oolon

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

GunnerJ

Which brings us right back to this discussion's original topic. Ed is just running you guys around in circles on a wild goose chase for nothing.

DNFTT.

BTW, I wonder why the self-proclaimed "wildlife biologist," Ed, has yet to reply to Morpho's querry?

Ed

See my post to lpetrich above.

Ed

An example of recognizing specified complexity is what archaeologists do everyday when they differentiate between an arrowhead and an arrowhead shaped rock. Or the SETI program where the staff claim they will be able to differentiate between background noise from space and some type of communication from space.

Ed

No, see above.

Ed

Not yet, but nevertheless it is a logical possibility.