Theory of Evolution Should have never been a part of this game!

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Lincoln
“How do microbes acquire drug resistance?”

They either manipulate existing information like a computer program does or they a acquire new information from an outside source.

or through simple chemistry. (entropy)

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Just religious back peddling to encompass current scientific limits. No basis in proof... or is this the 'gospel of player1' ?

In mathematics, even "truth" must be accepted on faith. Once the existence of truth has been postulated, many other wonderful results are evident. But without this postulate, then 2+2 is meaningless. In addition, no matter how complex your mathematics or science, the vast infinity of knowledge lies outside your philosophy (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem).

Scientists may tend to be somewhat smug, but most understand their limitations, unlike religious fundamentalists.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are
dreamt of in your philosophy.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Just religious back peddling to encompass current scientific limits. No basis in proof... or is this the 'gospel of player1' ?

I fail to see how this is 'religious back peddling'. If I were God (and I am not ), the big bang would seem like the perfect way to go about things. Why bother with all this clumsy business of making things in the traditional creationist manner - very inelegant. God is timeless (by virtue of being ominpotent), so he has no problem with the wait and knows exatly what is going to happen.

[MrBaggins]

Science is based on empirical evidence, for the most part.

You'd find it awfully hard convincing anyone that a number doesn't exist. Like 2... they are plain and inherent to us.

Also silly things like gravity... if you can see it... feel it. Repeat it. That makes it far easier to believe.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Lincoln
“How do microbes acquire drug resistance?”

They either manipulate existing information like a computer program does or they a acquire new information from an outside source.

In other words, the virus evolve.

Thanks for proving the Theory of Evolution is correct.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Lincoln
Hello again everyone,

There seems to be a few basic problems here that need to be addressed. First there is the “speciation” argument. Hawaiian Wallabies and Australian Wallabies are both birds.

Bad start you got off to. They are marsupials. Mammals not birds. They speciated in any case. They became TWO diffenent KINDS.

That was Drako’s point. He and other rational people are looking for proof of a real change from one distinct animal to another.

Driopithicene apes became Australopithecus which eventually became us. That is changeing from one distinct type to another.

His point is still valid. It is speculation that asserts that it is possible for a catfish to turn into a cat, not evidence.

It is creationist nonesense. No one but a creationist has even made such a ridiculous remark. Hundreds of millions of years ago a fish that was not much like a catfish gradually evolved into an amphibian and then to a reptile and thence to a mammal like reptile and thence through over two hundred million years one of the descendents that was almost a cat gave birth to something that was just barely a cat.

Also the dog thing proves with several hundred years of experimentation that a wolf or dog remains in the same family and does not turn into another creature over time.

Only it does change into another creature over time. Wolves had over 50% more brain capacity than a dog. And a hundred years is not exactly the same as a hundred million years.

What is proved is Variation within a particular kind of animal not evolution form one kind to another. Speculation is needed to prove otherwise.

Actually fossils prove it. Not speculation.

Experimental evidence shows that Drako was correct here.

No experimental evidence shows him wrong. You are merely mistating things.

Of course the evolutionist will say that it simply takes more time. But in the mean time the prima facie evidence supports the view of Drako and the evolutionist must rely on speculation and subjective interpretation of fossils.

The evidence does not in the least support Drako or the Bible.

I see that no one has attempted to overthrow the information laws that I posted yet.

They were garbage. Most of it was mere assertions and not laws.

No, I did not use the theory of Claude Shannon here because he does not address the true nature of information contained in a biological organism. That is not a refutation of Shannon’s work. Werner Gitt on the other hand address information not only on a statistical level as did Shannon but also on the true higher levels which define specified coded information which is in reality contained in DNA. So I must prove this here, I suppose so here goes:

Its coded allright, because we choose to call it that. Which does not imply a coder.

In a tiny seed there exists all of the information necessary to make, regulate, maintain and reproduce a fully functioning organism. This is simply fact. It is the information contained in coded form in DNA that supplies all of the information for this miracle of life to take place. So let’s look on all five levels of information and see if DNA fits the definition.

Yes lets.

1. Statistics.

Nice but no meaning to the discussion.

2. Syntax.

Same.

3. Semantics.

So far you have an understanding of DNA.

4. Pragmatics.

Practical value to the lifeform anyway.

It needs no other value.

5. Apobetics.

Wrong. You were doing quite well. The purpose is to reproduce. There is no need to produce a specific life only a life that can also reproduce.

There is no intention. Simply chemistry.

Now about the question of the watchmaker analogy. Everyone who has objected to that analogy has used a circular argument to support their view.

No. I haven't and don't. Watches don't grow. Life does. Life self assembles. Watches don't. There is no circularity there.

The watches purpose is that of the user and the maker. There is no purpose to life except to create more life. It need not be the same life.

The fact that a living organism is self replicating and is affected by environment and other factors does not prove the inappropriateness of the analogy unless it is already assumed that evolution is a fact and it operates even before life exists.

Nonsense. Evolution has nothing to do with pre-life. It only effects life.

Of course that is the question of this thread so you are answering a question with a belief in evolution.

Evolution is a fact. The only question is the details. So far you have done nothing to make a point.

Also, the entire purpose of the analogy is to show the absurdity of a machine arising from the earth spontaneously. The fact that a biological machine is even more complicated than the analogy only strengthens the case of the creationist.

Machine are assembled they don't grow. There is rather a large difference between a carefully designed watch that needs an outside assembler and a self-assembling life.

You are simply saying its complex so there is a god. You are assuming a creator not showing one.

“How do microbes acquire drug resistance?”

They either manipulate existing information like a computer program does or they a acquire new information from an outside source.

Or they evolve it. By random changes in the DNA that occasionally make a change that improves their chances of survival. If you want to call that manipulation go ahead. Its close enough to what really happens to make a far better anology than the watch.

[Provost Harrison]

I don't want to have to go through this information argument again, I have discussed how data increases in organisms, something I have covered in explicit depths and means there is no foundation for your theory in rational thought Lincoln. There needs to be no meddling, simple base shifts to increase data, mutation and natural selection to do the rest of the work modifying existing genetic sequences.

The same thing with antibiotic resistance. Mutation is quite random. Most permutations are lethal. The very occasional one confers a significant benefit. That strain survives.

[mactbone]

You do realize that if you smahed up an airplane and put it all in a bag and shook it up an infinite amount of times, one of those time would produce a perfect replica of the original airplane. Probabilities always turn out true as long as you put a one in front of it. There is a one in an extemely large number, chance that I will get struck by lightning, which means that at some point in time, somewhere I will get struck by lightning.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Science is based on empirical evidence, for the most part.

You'd find it awfully hard convincing anyone that a number doesn't exist. Like 2... they are plain and inherent to us.

Also silly things like gravity... if you can see it... feel it. Repeat it. That makes it far easier to believe.

Gravity, as we know it, was "discovered" by Galileo and Newton. Before Galileo, everyone knew that heavy objects fell faster than lighter ones, and that the planets were held in orbit around the earth by God. Today, everyone accepts that the earth is round, but it wasn't always so.

Science has conclusively demonstrated that the Theory of Evolution is at least as true as the Theory of Gravity. There is a huge amount of empirical evidence of this fact, not to mention the predictive ability of the Theory (see my post above for examples).

Prediction is key to testing a Theory. Creationism does not make predictions. On the other hand, when Jack Horner went looking for dinosaur eggs, he referred to his paleogeology to find an ancient shoreline. He not only found dinosaur eggs, but baby dinosaurs, and entire nesting colonies.

(PS. Don't believe Creationists concerning the Bible either. They are generally as wrong about that subject as they are about biology.)

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Gravity, as we know it, was "discovered" by Galileo and Newton. Before Galileo, everyone knew that heavy objects fell faster than lighter ones, and that the planets were held in orbit around the earth by God. Today, everyone accepts that the earth is round, but it wasn't always so.

Now be careful, the gravitational force exerted on a body is proportional to it's mass, therefore the force per unit mass on a feather or a lead weight is the same, hence they fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Air resistance buggers that up though. There is more force between two massive objects than between two lighter objects.

Science has conclusively demonstrated that the Theory of Evolution is at least as true as the Theory of Gravity. There is a huge amount of empirical evidence of this fact, not to mention the predictive ability of the Theory (see my post above for examples).

Well it passes the major test when it is used as fact. Modern biological sciences use the underlying principles of evolution as fact, and it works to explain and answer problems.

Prediction is key to testing a Theory. Creationism does not make predictions. On the other hand, when Jack Horner went looking for dinosaur eggs, he referred to his paleogeology to find an ancient shoreline. He not only found dinosaur eggs, but baby dinosaurs, and entire nesting colonies.

(PS. Don't believe Creationists concerning the Bible either. They are generally as wrong about that subject as they are about biology.)

The principle of mutation, a fundamental key to Neodarwinian thinking, is used routinely. Altering DNA and thus a proteins expression or sequence is done routinely, sometimes using increased mutation rate through radiation and strong selection pressures, or in a more controlled manner, such as gene splicing and genetic engineering (insertion of novel DNA sequences, which may I add, is nothing that does not occur naturally)

[Caligastia]

Nothing exists. We all live in the Matrix.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Now be careful, the gravitational force exerted on a body is proportional to it's mass, therefore the force per unit mass on a feather or a lead weight is the same, hence they fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Air resistance buggers that up though. There is more force between two massive objects than between two lighter objects.

Seeing as you are agreeing with me, I will be careful from now on (when crossing the street?).

[Provost Harrison]

Sorry, be careful not to make errors. You know how pedantic these creationists are. You can write a beautiful defence of your stance, but you forgot to dot one i and cross one t and they will consider the whole theory to have collapsed and creationism to be the only truth

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lincoln
I see that no one has attempted to overthrow the information laws that I posted yet.

I see there is no need, Lincoln. You have yet to establish your model as something viable. Hardly established at all, let alone being laws.

Scientific models aren't established by rhetorics.

Originally posted by Lincoln
“How do microbes acquire drug resistance?”

They either manipulate existing information like a computer program does or they a acquire new information from an outside source.

Neither of these case works. There is no existing information in drug resistence in these microbes, or else they would have been drug resistant all along. Since there are zillion kinds of drugs and new ones are made every day designed to target certain microbes, there is little water in the "existing information" department.

As for an outside source. Again, the appearance of new drugs means there has to be an origin of this new information.

Also, Th0mas posted a very interesting account of documented speciation which seems to decisively destroy creationist mumblejumble.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Zachriel
Seeing as you are agreeing with me, I will be careful from now on (when crossing the street?).

He wasn't agreeing with you. You implied that the belief that heavy objects fall faster than light ones was incorrect (isn't this what you meant?). It isn't incorrect, as PH pointed out. Heavy objects do (generally) fall faster than light ones because they are less affected by the air that they are passing through.

I think this is a perfect example of High School physics buggering up people's view of the world. Have you ever tried discussing circular motion with anyone who did physics at school?