Ed

All your quote shows is that he is an evolutionist, it does not invalidate his evidence or arguments presented in his book. Most of the time evolutionary scientists are the ones that find the flaws in the theory itself.

Quetzal

Agreed. However, in the post to which I was responding you used Michael Denton as a scientist that was opposed to evolution, because of a book he had written in the 1980's. I merely wished to point out that the book you were using in your "argument from authority" had been superceded by the author - who, after examining the evidence, has come full circle to supporting the major tenets of the theory he lambasted in his earlier work. Of course, if it makes you feel better, he still believes in a designer who created an ideal world for life in the first place. He's only an associate member of the Vast Evilutionist Conspiracy thus far.

Quetzal

Yeah, dessication would be a major danger to the forest itself - I've seen it happen elsewhere. We didn't note any significant degree (except in the really isolated fragments), with some of the older disturbed areas dating back 5-10 years.

My partner's main argument rested on mosaic effects, not dessication. Do you have any good rebuttals? I confess that I'm really only familiar with tropical forests. I've seen a fair selection of empty forest. Are there any examples from other areas where the sanctuary effect didn't lead to loss of biota that you know of (or maybe have worked in)?

lpetrich

Noah's Flood could equally well have been a local flood written from the point of view of someone with little knowledge of geography. Ed, why don't you consider that possibility?

A book that is supposedly full of fulfilled prophecies and miraculous cures might also mention such tiny troublemakers and how to fight them -- that would be an additional indication of superior knowledge.

However, the Biblical God is described as a miracle-worker, and there is no explicit concept of regular natural laws in the Bible.

Early modern scientists were heavily inspired by classical Greek and Roman authors, some of whom certainly qualify as early scientists. What does one call Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Aristarchus, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, etc.?

And should we consider converting to Hellenic paganism on account of them?

Seems to me that Ed does not like having a favorite creationist tactic turned against him: quotes from his favorite people that support the "other side".

And how might MD's earlier book support a 6000-year-old Universe?

Oolon Colluphid

Bit of a cock-up on the old omniscience front, that. Doesn’t this mean that your god either foresaw this, and so wanted things to be uncomfortable for man (even really good people get sick -- this is harm to all mankind, not to the allegedly free-willed individuals), or he didn’t realise that his perfection would malfunction, in which case he’s not omniscient?

So you agree that a benign creator created phorid flies, ichneumon wasps, beeflies, bacteriophages and the bone-crushing bite of hyaenas? He takes delight in the disembowelling of a gazelle, the slow strangulation of a wildebeest in a lion’s jaws, the eating of a male mantis by the female, and the neurotoxin paralysis of funnelweb venom? When a herd of zebra run from a lion attack, that huhowa-huhowa-huhowa noise they make is as near as they can manage to “halleluiah-halleluiah!”, yeah?

Funny how it became imperfect in ways that let in things that specifically affect other primates, such as SIV --> HIV...

Evolution to the rescue!

1. These things are wonderfully adapted to their lifestyles.

2. According to creation, wonderful adaptations are the result of divine design. If a designer is responsible for the design complexity of the mammalian eye and the fibrinogen clot, he must be responsible for the occlusion of carnassial teeth and the convoluted ways that parasites avoid immune systems.

3. Instead, you say that all the amazing and intricate adaptations of parasites are due to evolution. You say there has been enough time for this because, though we don’t know when the flood was, it may have been 80 million years ago (before the break-up of Gondwanaland). If you throw out literal biblical timescales, then the geological ones give plenty of time for lots and lots of ‘microevolution’.

4. Why, then, do we need a creator to explain any other adaptation? If evolution can explain the coat protein of Plasmodium or how the genome of Rickettsia makes it able to live in human cells, it can explain the rest too.

In other words, all the nasty diseases date from (started to evolve after) the fall. So they were on the ark (and inside and on Team Noah) too. When was the world created Ed? How long between creation and the flood? Long enough for all these symbionts to become pathogenic?

Take your hog elsewhere. It won’t wash here. Else please provide evidence for this ‘Tree of Life’.

Ed, go home. Your village is missing you.

TTFN, Oolon

MrDarwin

Ed, you have completely missed (or willfully ignored) the point I made. You hypothesized,

I was commenting on the survival of their host organisms, not on the survival of plants or the microorganisms themselves. The problem is still a problem.

Oolon Colluphid

Apologies if this is a repeat request, but this thread's so damn long now...

Ed, you think that 'kinds' are immutable. Please state clearly your definition of 'kind'.

Sorry if you already have; if so, indulge me.

Thanks, Oolon

Ed

Most ordinary people are not ultra skeptical like atheists. So there is no real reason to go overboard on genealogies. Genealogies are not that important.

Quote:

Ed: If there is a personal creator as I demonstrated on the other thread then supernatural events are quite plausible. lp: Which leads to the question of what would *not* be an example of such an event.

Any event that can reasonably be explained by natural laws or human design and activities. As shown in the scriptures 99.9% of events are not supernatural.

Quote:

Ed: About 15-20 years ago superheated underwater fountains were found in the deep sea. So apparently there is water in those areas under the seabottom. LP: Water flowing through cracks that go near magma Ed: Maybe the cracks were larger in the past. lp: However, that does not indicate the existence of big caverns full of water that would one day flood the Earth.

Yes, but not all the water came from them.

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Ed: A recent article in Natural History magazine (10/01) states that pseudogenes may be the result of viral insertion. Some viruses can cross species and have identical impacts. This may be the case with junk DNA and pseudogenes. lp: Retrovirus genes, certainly, but ALL pseudogenes? Many of them had clearly originated in place, as copies of existing genes that got disabled by some mutation. And their locations and disabling mutations are all consistent, just like real genes.

No, I dont mean all pseudogenes, as I stated earlier some are probably formerly functional genes that at present no longer are.

Quote:

lp: Check out "29 Evidences for Macroevolution", at <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org</a> for more.

Again, I dont debate websites. Why dont you present a few?

Quote:

Ed: Well a god that was not invented by men is not going to do things that we think he ought to do. lp: An ingenious, all-purpose excuse.

Nevertheless, a logical conclusion.

Quote:

lp: Have you ever tasted Urey-Miller primordial soup? Ed: Nah, I don't engage in cannibalism. lp: It's no worse than eating plant or fungus or animal flesh. Ed: Which one? Cannibalism or the primordial soup? lp: I'm saying that if eating Urey-Miller primordial soup is cannibalism, then eating the flesh of animals (beef, pork, chicken, fish, shrimp, clams), plants (bread, cereals, vegetables, fruits), fungi (mushrooms), and protists (seaweed) is even worse cannibalism.

It was a joke! I was saying the guys Urey and Miller were in the soup and therefore I would be eating them if I ate the soup! Lighten up!

Quote:

lp: Xenophanes was right: people create gods in their likeness. Ed: 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. lp: That's baloney. Simply check out the moral codes of different societies, especially societies whose members had never heard of the Bible. Ed: Name one. lp: Read the Negative Confession in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. When one is judged in the next world, one is supposed to assert that one has not committed any of a long list of sins. And the god Osiris will check if you are telling the truth. Sins which include Adultery Homosexual acts Theft Violence Blocking of water supplies Disrespect for the Gods Malicious sorcery Anger Talking too much

Egyptian religion does not treat women as well as Christianity does.

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lp: ... Read what Jesus Christ says about body parts that cause one to sin -- they ought to be removed. Ed: He didnt mean that literally, his teaching is what is called rabbinic hyperbole. ... LP: 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: No, by studying 1st century Judaism. lp: Whatever one is supposed to find by doing so.

Huh? Most 1st century judaic scholars are not christian.

Quote:

(LP: dog chasing a cat or dog chasing a squirrel) Ed: ... genes can be represented by words or sentences. Your example shows how mutations cancel out the information. Which one is the dog chasing? He cant chase both so they cancel each other out as a contradiction. lp: However, the same dog can chase a cat and then a squirrel, or there can be two dogs, one who chases a cat and one who chases a squirrel. Gene duplications correspond to the two-dog case, where one dog can continue chasing cats, and the duplicate dog can start chasing squirrels.

No, your genes are not specific enough they dont carry enough information. You have to specify that there are two dogs or that there was a sequence in time. Then the cat then the squirrel etc.

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("specified complexity" -- what's the specification?) Ed: Specification in this context is the complex languagelike code of DNA. Another example is what archaeologists do everyday, differentiating an arrowhead shaped rock from an arrowhead. lp: How is DNA supposed to have a "languagelike" code?

The genetic code is composed of letters (nucleotides), words (codons or triplets), sentences(genes), paragraphs(operons), chapters(chromosomes), and books(living organisms).

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lp: And as Michael Turton will tell you, archeologists don't work that way. They don't have some criterion for separating designed from non-designed objects; they instead try to consider if some object could reasonably have been made by human beings.

I don't see any difference. How do you tell if something has been made by humans? I.e. how do you tell the difference between an arrowhead shaped rock and an arrowhead?

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LP: And how do amounts of heavy metals mean wombats in Australia and woodchucks and marmots in the northern continents? Ed: Organisms may have been more ecosystem specific in the past. lp: I've yet to see any evidence for such supposed additional specificity.

Some fish are very sensitive to water hardness, so possibly in the past other organisms were more sensitive to their environment but later on they microevolved "toughness".

Quote:

Ed: Who said anything about a 6000-10,000 year old geology? We don't know when the flood was, it may have been a million years ago. lp: Ed, what brings you to that conclusion? It seems too much like you are evading critical questions. Real scientists don't evade like that; they accept that their hypotheses have gotten falsified.

I don't consider when the flood occurred a critical question. I consider whether the Christian God exists much more critical, then everything else will eventually fall in place. How come the theory of evolution is unfalsifiable?

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lp: And I wonder what evasions Ed will do next? Will he someday claim that he had never considered the Bible to be completely infallible?

It is not an evasion. I have not decided when the flood occurred, I am waiting for more biblical and scientific evidence. What is wrong with that?
Especially since I dont consider it a very important issue.

[b] [quote]
Ed:
Have you read any of Dembski? He uses the SETI program in his book "Intelligent Design" as an example of specified complexity. ...

Quote:

lp: However, that concept is never used by any mainstream SETI researcher. Can you explain why it seems to be useless to them?

Though they may not call it that, they nevertheless DO use the concept. Otherwise they would not be able to separate background noise from a message from ET.

Quote:

lp: 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. Ed: Not if their populations in the lower elevations were very low at the time. lp: In which case they could not have been able to get pollen to each other and reproduce.

Huh? Are you saying that just because a population is small it cannot reproduce? All organisms were at one time part of small populations. You are not making any sense.

Quote:

lp: Also, Ed, you have now reverted to your old implied claim that Noah's Flood had produced much of the Phanerozoic sediments. And if that is not your real view, then what excuse do you have for making statements that imply otherwise? Do you have a real view on the nature of Noah's Flood, or are you expecting to win arguments by being evasive?

I have not decided on which view of the flood is correct. And I don't consider it of extreme importance.

Quote:

Ed: Actually, Automaton, I think it was, posted an interesting article that talks about mutation saturation limits in specific organism's DNA. Those may the limits we see in lab. See above if you can find it. lp: Ed, can you show us that you know what mutation saturation is? I know what it is, and I know that it does not divide species into "natural kinds".

The genome reaches a point where mutations no longer are able to occur therefore evolution no longer occurs for the organism. This shows that there are limits to biological variation. Which is what creation predicts and these limits produce the "kinds".

Quote:

lp: 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? Ed: If you remember, I was transferred to this thread against my will lp: Ed, what difference does that make?

It means I am forced to discuss things I dont consider very important and things that I have not made up my mind about like Flood Geology.

Quote:

LP: (proving that all junk DNA had once been functional...) Ed: It would be very difficult to do since we would need an exhaustive knowledge of ancient environments. LP: I take it that you are wimping out, O Ed. Ed: No, just stating the facts. lp: Wimping out is wimping out, O Ed. Tell us why we ought to spend any time on that hypothesis when there are much better hypotheses for the origin of junk DNA.

As I stated above about viruses, there are multiple origins for junk DNA.

Quote:

Ed: ... just because apes and man have similar outward appearances does not necessarily mean they are closely related. lp: You've ignored evidence of molecular relatedness. Why don't you take up molecular biology some time and see for yourself? Ed: Read Michael Denton's "Evolution:A Theory in Crisis" for some of the problems in that area. lp: Which has some serious misunderstandings of molecular-evolution research.

Be specific.


[b] I have no problem with ancestral species. The family trees are highly speculative however.

Oolon Colluphid

To pick a few points while I wait for Ed's reply to my previous posts...

Care to hazard a proportion? If all the mountains were covered, that’s a hell of a lot of water. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the highest mountain at the time was a mere 2 miles (10,500 feet) high, so allowing for a decent amount of mountain-building since whenever the flood was. (Everest, for comparison, is 29,035 feet; Ararat is 16,854 feet.)

Now, the waters came upon the earth in 40 days and nights, or 960 hours. That’s a rate of water rise of 11 feet an hour. You say that “not all the water came from [the fountains of the deep]”. Okay. Suppose they provided 60% of the water, the rest was rain. That means a rate of rainfall of 4.4 feet, or 53 inches, per hour. For comparison, the <a href="http://home.nycap.rr.com/teachertown/weathfac.html#Precipitation" target="_blank">world record</a> is 3 inches (73.62 inches in a day). The record for the heaviest rainfall in a single minute is nearer what’s required: 1.23 inches, or 73.8 per hour, but of course that was a one-minute burst, it didn’t keep at that rate constantly for days and days.

So, Ed, some questions arise:

1. Where did so much water come from in the atmosphere?

2. How did Noah and co float a heavily laden wooden ark in a constant ultra-world-record downpour? Bear in mind that even ordinary storms are hazardous to modern shipping.

3. What effect would adding at least two miles of extra depth to the seas have on life in it? For all but the deepest ocean trenches, you’re at least doubling the depth. Things to consider include the pressure and silt increase, and light decrease, on the delicate ecologies of coral reefs, and the dilution of the seas with so much fresh water.

4. If this water did not come from the fountains of the deep, where did it this at least 8/10ths of a mile -- 2000 feet -- of water go afterwards?

This isn’t a link for you to debate, as such; as lpetrich said, it is a link to lots of further information. But we already know you don’t like getting involved in details, since you say you’re here against your will The specific pages you need are <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html" target="_blank">The molecular sequence evidence</a>, though you would do well to look at the whole set of <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/" target="_blank">29 Evidences</a>. Read it if you care, or dare.

If they’re so sensitive, what effect would suddenly deepening the seas by two miles have, do you think?

Well you should. If you think there’s evidence for it, we need to know where to look. Also, when it was affects how plausible is all the ‘microevolution’ needed after the flood to repopulate the planet with the diversity we see today. Hence we also need you to define the ‘kinds’ that Noah took with him. If the flood was 3,500,000,000 years ago, well, no problem! If 4,000, then loads of problems.

That’s curious. I thought there was lots of stuff that falsified it.

See my post in <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000160" target="_blank">this thread</a> for lots of ways that evolution is falsifiable. Do not confuse ‘cannot be’ with ‘never has been despite trying’.

Have you included ‘it didn’t happen’ in your consideration?

If you want to try to match the literal bible to reality, you have to see that it is important. The flood is a massive and crucial claim. It either happened or it didn’t. If you don’t want to take the bible literally -- as you don’t with chronologies, Jesus’s “rabbinic hyperbole”, etc -- then why take Genesis as literally correct? Why, exactly, must it be true, rather than metaphor or myth?

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> No you weren’t. You can discuss the existence of god to your heart’s content in the appropriate forum. If you want to discuss evolution and arguments against it, then this is the place, not elsewhere. You don’t have to discuss anything. You are free to leave at any time.

You surely don’t mean Michael Denton, author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684845091/internetinfidelsA/" target="_blank">Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe</a>, who despite still being an IDist, there retracts just about all his anti-evolution claims, do you?

Tell that to the people who do this for a living. But I suggest you have a read through this online <a href="http://www.nhm.ukans.edu/cc.html" target="_blank">cladistics textbook</a> first.

TTFN, Oolon

Ed

I didnt say that ALL will be discovered to have once been functional, see my post above about viral insertion.

Quote:

OC: As for your 'it may have been different in the past' (flowering plants, junk DNA etc): all the evidence suggests not. ... Ed: Its called research, we need more of it. ... lp: Actually, there has been an abundance of paleoecological research; just consult the professional literature. Ed: We will need more than just an abundance. lp: And what, specifically, will we need?

Probably 100 years of intensive research.

Quote:

lp: And Ed, why don't you start doing research into your pet hypothesis? Ed: It is not my pet hypothesis, ... lp: But you are presenting it as if it was. Ed, take responsibility for your statements.

No, I have stated several times that I dont consider Flood geology of extreme importance.

Quote:

lp: What do you mean by being "specific"? Ed: The gene only codes for a certain protein. If it becomes less specific it can code for other proteins. lp: Only genes don't work that way -- each gene codes for one and only one protein, or more precisely, peptide sequence.

No, what I mean is a protein whose performance would be affected by a change in any one of its amino acids is very specific. If its performance would not be affected by a change in some of them, the protein would be less specific.


[b] Some (Gould and Leakey) think it was Teilhard de Chardin.