Ed

Maybe they didn't occur at lower elevations at the time of the flood.

Ed

Yes, but within limits.

Quote:

Ed: (alleged underground water chambers that had held Noah's Flood...) That is their present function but it may have been different in the past. I know they would be unstable that is their purpose. lp: But they would have to last until it's time for a big flood. In any case, there is not a trace of their existence in present-day rocks.

The are still large areas of underground water in the oceans, ie deep sea vents.

Quote:

lp: Ed can cry us all a big river about how he has lots of time to post here but not much time to analyze Flood-Geology criticisms. Could it be that he does not want to see counterevidence? Ed: I prefer discussing with actual people not websites. lp: Pure evasion. Ed, your comments might be interpreted as conceding that Flood-Geology criticisms are unanswerable.

No, I just don't have the time to write huge rebuttals to websites. But also not being a geologist I am not really qualified to answer the critics of Flood geology.

Quote:

lp: 2. Where are Ed's demonstrations of the nonexistence of all other possible deities? Ed: I didnt demonstrate their non-existence but I did demonstrate how they are not likely to be the cause of the universe. lp: By their supposedly not claiming to have created the Universe from nothing? The Biblical God doesn't claim that either, so it's back to square one for you, Ed.

No, the scriptures plainly imply that the universe was created from nothing. But that is not the only evidence for them not being the creator.

Quote:

Ed: But one God's primary purposes for creating humans is for them to have free will. It would be like sabotaging the very purpose of one of your computer programs. lp: The Bible doesn't say that, but it strongly implies that if free will leads to sin, then it is best to get rid of it. Read Mt. 5:29-30, Mt. 18:8-9, Mk. 9:43-47 -- Jesus Christ states that parts of the body that lead one astray ought to be removed. Also, in Mt. 19:12, he states that one ought to be willing to consider neutering oneself, which is an application of that principle.

See my post about rabbinic hyperbole.

Quote:

Ed: While junk DNA may not have a purpose at present, it may have had a purpose in the past in another environment. lp: Ed, this may win you a Nobel Prize: find thos past functions, and convince the scientific community of that, and there could be a trip for Stockholm waiting for you. Do you want to be rich and famous? Here's your chance.

It would be very difficult to do since we would need an exhaustive knowledge of ancient environments.

Quote:

Ed: Since our body plans are similar to apes of course our blueprint, ie DNA, would be similar. Therefore if both apes and man encounter the same mutagenic sources then similar areas of DNA would be impacted by them. lp: There is, however, a poor correlation between outward similarity and genetic distance. The human-chimpanzee distance is about the same as that between some outwardly nearly identical strains of fruit flies, as Francesco Ayala and his colleagues have found. And one paper in Science in the mid-1980's compared human and chimpanzee skeletons using some measurements often used to compare frog skeletons; the h-c relative differences were higher than the highest known frog ones -- even though frogs had emerged and started to diversify in the Mesozoic! And it gets even worse. For a long time, the family tree of bacteria was little better than hand-waving, with classification being mainly done for the sake of identification. But along came Carl Woese and his sequencing of ribosomal RNA -- and while some traditional classifications turned out to be natural groups, many did not. Which indicates that bacteria have a poor correlation between outward appearance and relatedness.

I agree, just because apes and man have similar outward appearances does not necessarily mean they are closely related.

Quote:

Ed: (broken Vitamin-C-synthesis gene...) Apparently both apes and man encountered similar mutagenic agents that damaged the same gene as I stated above. lp: In the same place??? Ed, I suggest that you think about your statements before posting them.

Yes. Why not?

[b] Umm, I think it was automaton.

RufusAtticus

Yes, and one that has been shown to have not much merit.

-RvFvS

RufusAtticus

Angiosperm pollen is found everwhere in 6,000-10,000 year old geology. I understand that you are preforming mental gymnastics to justify your biblical faith. But maybe you should look into the scientific data for yourself before you make such statements as the one above. Do you not trust the scientific method to give you honest answers?

-RvFvS

theyeti

Ed, you must have missed my earlier posts on SC. What archaeologists do is absolutely not the recognition of SC. Archaeologists, like any other scientist, proceed with the assumption that they can only detect natural causes, since "detectability" is written into the definition of "natural"; the supernatural, by its own definition, can't be detected. SC is defined as something that is not able to come about by natural means. Therefore, if archaeologists were to discover SC, they would be discovering something that came about by supernatural means. When has this ever happened?

Given the way that Dembski has chosen to define SC, nothing that humans do, if we have evolved naturally, whether it's an arrow head or Mt. Rushmore, can count as SC. SC is then really nothing more than an exercise in question begging. Of course, you can't be blamed for not knowing that (though you could have read my other posts), since Dembski seems to have intentionally made it as obfuscatory as possible.


theyeti

lpetrich

And maybe Noah's Flood didn't happen. Ed, think long and hard about that possibility. The ecological-zonation hypothesis simply does not work. Lots of present-day flowering plants prefer lowlands; at least some of them would have become fossilized in the lower strata.

WHAT limits? Ed, if you can successfully identify those biochemical or molecular-biological limits, you'll win a Nobel Prize. Think about it. Wouldn't you enjoy discovering one day that there's a trip to Stockholm waiting for you?

Water seeping through cracks.

Ed, you have no trouble finding the time to post here. And if you don't consider yourself truly competent in geology, then why are you pushing Flood Geology?


I take it that you are wimping out, O Ed.

You've ignored evidence of molecular relatedness. Why don't you take up molecular biology some time and see for yourself?

That asks too much of coincidence, O Ed.

Ed

As I stated above, those presently unused regions may have been used in the past for adaptations to ancient environments and humans and apes prefer similar environments.

[b] Its called research, we need more of it. Though as I stated to lp it may be very difficult to discover such evidence given that we would probably need exhaustive knowledge of ancient environments and unless we have a time machine such a thing is nearly impossible.

Ed

Yes, but in doing so it becomes less specific thereby resulting in a loss of information. Just like a sentence, by making a sentence less specific it contains less info. For example, "The dog chased the cat." This is less specific than "Spot chased the cat." Now you know exactly which dog you are talking about so it contains more info.

Quote:

Genes Run out of Positive Mutations. The apparent saturation phenomenon in molecular evolution would be explained by four possibilities: (i) The effect of positive mutations is counteracted by the gradual accumulation of negative mutations; yeti: Unless you take into account....mmmm...selection. The authors don't explore this in detail so I'm not sure what their point is here. But they mention that (ii) is the one that conforms best to the data. (ii) the rate of the accumulation of positive mutations decreases as evolution proceeds, that is, the gene runs out of positive mutations; yeti: This is probably true. Genes will sooner or later reach a peak on an adaptive fitness landscape. This is what we expect from Darwinian evolution, and it's one reason why well adapted genes rarely have "beneficial" mutations. How does this support your case?

I have a hunch the reason that the gene runs out of positive mutations is because each mutation either results in a maintaining info or a loss of info and in fact a majority of mutations result in a loss of info so that is why they cease. And when the genes run out of positive mutations, evolution stops especially macroevolution.

Quote:

(iii) the contribution of each newly introduced positive mutation to the total effect decreases as mutations accumulate; yeti: Whether or not the increased benefits of the gene/protein get smaller as it reaches an adaptive peak depends on the shape of the fitness landscape. I don't know of any reason why it must form a smooth hump instead of a sharp peak. Regardless, it's hard to see how this helps your case.

How do you determine the shape of the fitness landscape? My statements above also apply here.

Quote:

(iv) some biological factor sets an upper limit to the activity regardless of the evolutionary capacity of the gene itself. In the fourth case, evolved genes should still have various combinations of positive mutations (have not yet been converged) when the activity approaches a saturation. yeti: There is actually a theoretical maximum to the catalytic ability of enzymes (I think it's the kcat/kmol value at some number^-8, but I can't remember). This is reached when every single collision with the substrate results in a reaction. There are only a tiny handful of enzymes that are known to approach this limit, and they tend to be, unsurprisingly, highly conserved; the rest are presumably stuck in local optima. There is nothing about this that is inconsistent with evolution -- indeed, evolution predicts that things will get stuck in local optima, whereas "design" could or should always result in global optima. Again, this does not help your case.

Yes, but if things get stuck in local optima then evolution stops. This confirms that there limits to variability. Design does not necessarily require a global optima especially if the designer desires diversity.

Ed

If you are referring to the tracks at the Paluxy River, those were carved by local pranksters not creation scientists.

Ed

Obviously modern birds DO have these characteristics in their DNA or none of these structures would have formed, they are just not presently expressed except some birds do have a tooth shortly during and after hatching. And also the hoatzin has claws on its wings for a period while young just like archeaopteryx. So all these characteristics are part of what makes a bird 100% bird.