Why Your Brain Has Gray Matter, and Why You Should Use It (Darwinian Evolution's Foolishness)

Creation-Evolution Headlines ^ | 1/13/2006 | Creation-Evolution Headlines Staff

[RegulatorCountry]

"Speak for *yourself*, please."

Your reply does beg the question: what percentage of your reality do you know and understand, Ichneumon?

[microgood]

That one link you have on 29 evidences of macroevolution has been completely debunked here:

Critique of 29 Evidences of Macroevolution

[bondserv]

You know, if you had spent as much time actually reading science journals as you do desperately searching creatonist blogs looking for something to reinforce what you'd like to believe, you'd have qualified for an advanced degree by now.

I will refer you to a credentialed scientist who did the science.

A..E. Wilder-Smith studied natural sciences at Oxford, England. He received his first doctorate in Physical Organic Chemistry at Reading University, England, 1941. During World War II, he joined the Research department of ICI in England. After the war, he became Countess of Lisburne Memorial Fellow at the University of London. Subsequently, Dr. Wilder-Smith was appointed Director of Research for a Swiss pharmaceutical company. Later he was elected to teach Chemotherapy and Pharmacology at the Medical School of the University of Geneva for which position he received his "habitation" (the senior examination required for professorial appointments to European continental universities). At Geneva, he earned his second doctorate, followed by a third doctorate from the ETH (a senior university in Switzerland) in Zurich.

In 1957-1958 Wilder-Smith was Visiting Assistant Professor at the Medical Centre of the University of Illinois, 1959-1961 Visting Full Professor of Pharmacology of the University of Bergen Medical School in Norway. After a further two years at the University of Geneva, he was appointed Full Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Illinois Medical Centre. Here he received in three succeeding years - three ``Golden Apple Awards" for the best course of lectures, together with four senior lecturer awards for the best series of year lectures.

[Ichneumon]

[The study in question was about what is being optimized by the gray-white cortex-stem arrangement. There is no real question that variation and selection produce optimization, except when creationists forget that they supposedly accept that much.]

I thought you evos were always talking about how poorly designed we are as proof of evolution. Now you say we are optimized. Which is it?

It's both. Optimization search methods like evolution are apt to get stuck in what's known to mathematicians as "local maxima". In layman's terms, they often make the best of a less-than perfect solution.

An example is how bird's wings are beautifully optimized, but are inferior to how well birds could fly if they instead had jet engines. Flapping stubby feathered-cover appendages aren't the *best* solution for flight (it's kind of goofy when you think about it), but evolution optimizes the hell out of it (since all it had to work with was *arms* on theropod dinosaurs long ago), and produces stunningly optimized arm-flappers. But no bird-mounted jet engines.

The same goes for a lot more obviously ridiculous structures that no "intelligent designer" would have ever used in his right mind, like a flounder's twisted skull so it can lay flat on the ocean floor. An actual designer would have just designed the flounder as a fish flattened on its vertical axis if it needed to hug the sea floor. Evolution, however, had no "choice" but to start with a teleost fish body plan that was already developmentally "committed" to being flat on a side-side axis. The best evolution could manage was to make the flounder lie on its side, and then twist its skull like a corkscrew so that both eyes were on top.

Etc. etc.

[facedown]

...1⁷²⁰ to 1.

oops

[Ichneumon]

That one link you have on 29 evidences of macroevolution has been completely debunked here:

Critique of 29 Evidences of Macroevolution

No, it hasn't. Camp is either totally incompetent or a liar (probably both), as you would have realized if you had bothered to actually read his "debunking" and compared it to the material he's claiming to "debunk", instead of just desperately flinging a link at me you haven't even bothered to read because you don't like the evidence presented in the t.o. link.

Can't you guys ever THINK FOR YOURSELVES for once?

Here's a very detailed point-by-point critique of Camp's "critique" and all the many errors it contains (neatly placed into 17 different categories of error)

If you feel that there remains any portion of Camp's critique which has not yet been shredded, or if you find a flaw in any part of the rebuttal to Mr. Camp, feel free to specifically state it and make your case. Until then, why don't you stop repeatedly posting this bit of creationist hand-waving and fluff?

And if that's not enough, here's my own review of Camp's "critique":

which has been thoroughly debunked in A Critique of 29 Evidences for Macroevolution as well as on several threads right here on FreeRepublic.

Oh, puh-leaze... "Frantically denounced" is not the same thing as "thoroughly debunked". Let's take a look at your link, shall we?

Ashby Camp attempts to "debunk" item "4.2 DNA Coding Redundancy", but he screws it up royally. First, he attempts to summarize the argument as:

The alleged prediction and fulfillment are:

1. If universal common ancestry is true, then ubiquitous genes will have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species.

2. Ubiquitous genes have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species.

This COMPLETELY misses the point of the DNA Coding Redundancy argument. In fact, it practically *reverses* the actual argument entirely. It's a downright laughable attempt at summarizing the actual argument, and grossly misrepresents the original point being made.

Ashby Camp can hardly "debunk" an argument if he doesn't even understand it to start with.

Instead, the actual argument which Camp is misrepresenting goes like this: If modern life arose through common descent, then the redundancy in the DNA coding (which allows *many* different DNA sequences to produce *identical* protein results) should result in very similar DNA sequences between recently-related species (for the same protein), less similar DNA sequences for less-recently-related species, and very less similar DNA sequences for distantly-related species. For *all* species relationships and *all* coding sequences.

That's *quite* a bit different than Camp's ridiculously oversimplified version, which grossly distorts the above into "some sequences will be found to be similar, somewhere". The *actual* prediction is *far* more specific, and *vastly* less likely to occur by chance or some other method which does not involve common descent. The actual prediction makes testable, narrow predictions about *every* ubiquitous gene sequence in *every* species. It's extremely specific, and leaves no wiggle-room for observations which might violate the prediction.

Camp then uses his own skewed version of the argument to say, "It is not a prediction of the hypothesis of universal common ancestry or the more specific hypothesis of Neo-Darwinism that ubiquitous genes will have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species." That's true enough for Camp's distorted version, but *NOT* for the original.

Camp further claims: "If the codon sequence in such a gene was not the same or “similar” in two or more species, evolutionists simply would vary the time of divergence and/or the mutation rate, which is claimed to vary for different genes, to account for the differences." No, absolutely not. What Camp is missing is that this line of evidence applies not to absolute amounts of differences, but *relative* amounts of differences. Yes, the neutral mutation rate for some genes is larger than others. But that's irrelevant to this line of evidence, because whatever the mutation rate for a given gene, what's being compared is larger differences versus smaller differences when examining multiple pairs of species. "Larger" is distinguishable from "smaller" no matter what the absolute sizes might be.

Camp reveals his further misunderstandings when he writes: "Once again, the real argument being made is theological, not scientific. The claim is that, since God could make a gene for a protein with many different codon sequences, he would not have used an identical or similar series of codons in the cytochrome c gene of separately created species." No, Camp blows it again. There is, in fact, absolutely no argument of any sort in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution about what God might or might not choose to do. That's Camp's own hallucination. What's worse, he obviously entirely misunderstands the *evidenciary* arguments being made in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. What makes this even more unforgiveable is that the points that Camp misses are spelled out explicitly in one of the "29+ Evidences" pages (this one).

What Camp entirely misses is that the 29+ lines of evidence for macroevolution are *not* given as "proofs". Nowhere is the argument made that there could be no other possible explanation for a particular type of observation, or that any given observation might not match the predictions of some other theory as well. That's *always* a "given" in science, because there's *always* some other theor(ies) which could likewise explain the evidence (if nothing else, some sort of unrecognized variation on the current theory, or even something radically different that no one's thought of).

What Camp misses entirely, because he's not a scientist (he's a lawyer) is that you don't "prove" a given theory by allegedly presenting something which can't be explained any *other* way (because this is almost always impossible to do even in principle), instead you *support* a theory by working out as many of its implications (i.e. predictions) as you can, and then check to see (via examination of known evidence, and experiment, and other methods) whether all observations you can manage to do actually "fit" the theory (and more importantly, whether any are found which *don't*).

The more evidence which falls into line to match the expectations of the theory, the more the theory is strengthened. Any evidence which appears to be a blatant violation of the expectations of the theory weighs *very* heavily against it. Furthermore, a theory is very much strengthened if the evidence which matches its predictions are from not just one type of prediction or line of argument, but from many. In the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution page, there are over *29* independent lines of evidence, all of which beautifully match the predictions of the theories of common descent and macroevolution. And each line of evidence is supported by *thousands*, and in some cases *millions*, of individual pieces of evidence.

In short, evolution has an enormous amount of evidence supporting it.

I strongly invite readers to ignore Gore3000's "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" attempt, and actually go *read* 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution for yourself (yes, all several pages). It'll take a couple hours, but it's well worth the time. After you read it, you'll understand why creationists are being hugely dishonest when they claim that there is "no" evidence supporting evolution, or that evolution is not a "scientific" or "predictive" theory. The pages at that link show in great detail how empty those claims are, even if you choose argue with a few particular points or disagree with its conclusion. There's an enormous amount of meticulous, well-researched evidence for evolution, and that page gives a large taste. Don't let anyone tell you there's not. And I trust any reader with an open mind will see for themselves how strong the evolutionary foundation truly is, contrary to hte "house of cards" declarations by its opponents. Again, even if you disagree with the conclusion, at least be honest enough to admit there's a lot of good evidence behind it -- if you take the time to look.

Camp blusters in several sections about how "well, maybe God chose to make things the way that the evidence indicates". Fine, maybe he did. Feel free to go off and develop a "scientific theory of creationism". But note that you can't just say (as Camp does), "maybe God wanted to do it in a way that only *appears* to match the expected results of evolution, we don't know why", because that's *not* a *scientific* prediction, because it doesn't let you predict *ahead* of your observations what you think you're going to find and why. As soon as you develop a "scientific theory of creationism" which *does* claim to grasp enough of God's processes and reasons to be able to predict (repeat: *predict*) enough of the details of His works that you'll be able to test your theory against the evidence (and also honestly deal with it if your predictions are falsified), *then* you'll have something that can truly be called "scientific". So far, no one has offered such a theory. "God could make it any way at all if he wanted to for His own mysterious reasons" does *not* qualify, because it is neither predictive nor falsifiable. It is, in fact, a declaration of *lack* of knowledge rather than a contribution to science (which is the *accumulation* of what we know and can confidently count on and predict about the world).

Camp even unwittingly admits this when he writes, "But even if there were no unknown design constraints on the gene for cytochrome c, how could one be sure that God would not conserve codon sequences when creating cytochrome c gene in separate species?" Yes, exactly. If one "can't be sure" -- if there's no way to test the unknowability of God's whims or predict what they will be in a given case -- then it's a philosophical issue, but it's not a scientific theory.

Camp's concluding paragraph for this section of his "debunking" only further reveals his misunderstandings:

Thus, the similarity of codon sequences in the cytochrome c gene of humans and chimps does not “make it look exactly like we are genealogically related.”

This quote appears nowhere in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. Camp is either summarizing, or was working off an older version of the web page. In any case, he misunderstands it. The meaning is that the gene similarities and differences between man/chimp are exactly the type we would expect to see if we were genealogically related, and closely so. It's not a claim that the gene sequences by themselves are some sort of irrefutable proof that we are.

That conclusion only follows if one ignores the possibility of unknown design constraints, insists that God introduce novelty for novelty’s sake, and denies that there could be other divine purposes, such as sending a biotic message, for the pattern of similarity.

See above. Camp repeatedly misunderstands the argument(s) which are actually being made in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, and thus his "debunking" misses the mark entirely.

Similar major flaws are present in the rest of his alleged "debunking" article. And you have "forgotten" to mention that talk.origins itself posts a lengthy rebuttal to Camp's sloppy 'critique'. In it, they describe his attempts to critique their material (and quite fairly, in my opinion), as:

Mr. Camp's critique is error-ridden in various ways, and is primarily characterized by:

1. Straw man arguments
2. Red herrings
3. Self-contradictions
4. Equivocation
5. Two wrongs make a right
6. Fallacies of accident and converse accident
7. Ignoratio elenchi
8. Naive theological assumptions
9. Insufficient knowledge of basic biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics
10. Misunderstanding of the scientific method
11. Forwarding of untestable competing "hypotheses"
12. Mischaracterization of evolutionary theory
13. Misleading mis-quotes
14. Fallacies of accent
15. Distortion of scientific controversies
16. Arguments from authority
17. False analogies

The repeated use of these errors and others in Camp's "Critique" will be abundantly clear in the following rebuttal.

...and then they go on to very thoroughly document those errors in Camp's critique.

[Ichneumon]

[You know, if you had spent as much time actually reading science journals as you do desperately searching creatonist blogs looking for something to reinforce what you'd like to believe, you'd have qualified for an advanced degree by now.]

I will refer you to a credentialed scientist who did the science.

That's nice. Now, are you going to actually deal with the material I posted, including my large number of citations which show that you're dead wrong when you say that evolution can't "add information", or are you going to post more irrelevant responses in a lame attempt to avoid dealing with the material?

Doesn't that sort of intellectual dishonesty every make you ashamed of yourself?

[Ichneumon]

[The virus has adapted to the environment of antibiotics... Will the ID supporters explain this advisory in their own language & perspective? I'd love to hear it.]

Science is entertaining and sometimes helpful!

Fails to answer the question.

Do you ever get callouses?

Fails to answer the question.

Why don't you have them all the time?

Fails to answer the question.

Are the genetics for callous production in the junk DNA regions?

Fails to answer the question.

Actually, it *does* answer the question about whether ID supporters will deal with the findings of countless such studies. The answer to that question is, "no, they won't, they'll keep dodging them, then come back againn tomorrow pretending they never saw them in the first place", repeating their tired old falsehoods of "no evidence for evolution".

[orionblamblam]

> I am beginning to realize that the evolutionists have more faith than any of us Christians.

I am beginning to realize that the backwards Biblical literalists have more fear than any of us evolutionists. They fear the facts. They fear the truth. They fear to understand the way things really are. In short... they fear to put away childish things.

[microgood]

No, it hasn't. Camp is either totally incompetent or a liar (probably both), as you would have realized if you had bothered to actually read his "debunking" and compared it to the material he's claiming to "debunk", instead of just desperately flinging a link at me you haven't even bothered to read because you don't like the evidence presented in the t.o. link.

Actually I did read Theobold's answer to this critique. It was not a lame as Miller's refutation of the flagellum, but it was close. My favorite part of Theobold's however, is when he states that there is just no other explanation in biology than common descent. The bottom line with Theobold is:

If things we already know are true are true, then comment descent is true or Because life is similar then common descent is true. Only he says it 29 times.

If what Theobold says is true, the common descent is not a theory because it cannot be falsified.

[microgood]

But no bird-mounted jet engines.

Probably a good thing. That would make evolution even harder to believe.

[csense]

An example is how bird's wings are beautifully optimized, but are inferior to how well birds could fly if they instead had jet engines. Flapping stubby feathered-cover appendages aren't the *best* solution for flight (it's kind of goofy when you think about it), but evolution optimizes the hell out of it (since all it had to work with was *arms* on theropod dinosaurs long ago), and produces stunningly optimized arm-flappers. But no bird-mounted jet engines.

Yup, you're right. I suppose that jet engine would be useful for a gentle landing, on small twig, at the tippy top of a swaying tree.

Nothing elegant in that I suppose.

[bondserv]

Speak for *yourself*, please.

The mature perspective of reality dictates:

Science is entertaining and sometimes helpful, but not something one should base their worldview upon. This is why knowledge - because we have attained such a minuscule percentage of it - is not worthy of worship.

Outside our percentage of knowledge lies our Creator, who took it upon Himself to personalize His relationship with us by becoming one of us. He demonstrated His superior knowledge and wisdom by sharing with us to the limit of our capacity. Further authenticating His Creatorship by resurrecting Himself from the dead and turning the world upside down.

Millions of brilliant people for the last 2000 years have rationally examined His claim and found it to be authentic, based on the documentary evidence.

The humility that comes from a recognition of personal perversion (repentance), leads a person to the point of surrender needed to accept faith in the Deity of Jesus Christ.The sufficiency of His death for all of mankind's perversion, opens the door to experiencing eternal life in the presence of our all knowing, all powerful and always perfect Creator.

Gen 22:8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering:

Jhn 1:29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

[MississippiMan]

Assumption is the mother of all myths.

And it's exactly how the absurd nonsense that is today's evolutionary dogma, became so widely embedded. It's always the beginning assumption; then they look for a way to make the pieces fit, no matter how tortured a path it requires.

To be certain, as someone who believes in creation, I too begin with an assumption that colors my beliefs regarding how we got here. The astounding difference is that the pieces of my puzzle glide into place. Like they were designed to fit together.

MM

[Johnnyboy2000]

In what way does Darwin's theory of evolution contradict Genesis? Just because the Bible does not mention something does not mean it does not exist. Parts of the Bible are meant to document historical events, but a mojority of it is meant to teach universal principles. When people take the Bible too literally they can miss the point about what those stories are really trying to teach them. God gave human beings brains so we could think and question things, and so that we can do science and write things like the Bible. You can believe in science and God.

[Nathan Zachary]

Everything, bar nothing, about the theory of evolution is based on assumption. There is not one little scrap of science involved in that theory.

 

We have learned much through the scientific study of the creation, we have learned alot how the creation works, and in the process have learned that it is simply impossible that it happened by accident.  In fact, the more we learn the greater the improbability of accidental, spontaneous

development and 'evolution'  of the biological machines is.  We now know, through science, that the design (a word that suggests intelligent creation) of biological life can not be accidental or spontaneous, and that it even has adaptability build right into the design. Adaptability is not evolution however. As we unravel the complex library of information encoded

into these machines, the building blocks of all life, we will eventually learn how the creator

made things.

 

Let the evolutionists  stomp up and down, it seems to be a ritual of that religion to do so.

They should put their beliefs aside  once in a while however, and study the creation, or goo if they wish to call it that,  instead. It will tell us the answer eventually. One way or another.

 

I know one thing for sure. Evo's will never prove themselves right with  theories. 

 

 

[Nathan Zachary]

The bible waasn't meant to be a science manual. It's an operation manual. God comunicated in a way his creation could understand. He did give us the capacity to learn however. It will come to us when we are ready.

Imagine God trying to teach Noah the laws of physics in pictograms. I wonder how many would be needed to describe the DNA structure and information contained of one simple cell.

[Lauretij2]

It would be nice if this god would chime in and give us an update. How about some explanations if we're right or wrong, instead of vague platitudes and stories that don't particularly lend themselves to a lot of new directions anymor?

[Nathan Zachary]

"I am beginning to realize that the evolutionists have more faith than any of us Christians. It is a very misguided faith true. All the harping about stories and fables that the feeble minded Christians believe is nothing compared what they believe."

Isn't that the truth, LoL!

Things just don't create themselves. I can lay in bed all morning and wait for breakfast to make itself, but it hasn't happened yet.

:o)

[101st-Eagle]

For me it's the attitude that is troubling; the degree of Scientism (yes, it's a word, albiet new) seen on the threads is getting a little sickening as far as how it makes people view themselves. You're reminding me of Jimmy Swaggert!

Scientism is a belief that scientific knowledge is the foundation of all wisdom and that, consequently, scientific argument should always be weighted more heavily than other forms of wisdom, particularly those which are not yet well described or justified from within the rational framework, or whose description fails to present itself in the course of a debate against a scientific argument. When used in a critique of science, it is dismissed by some scientists who maintain that all fields of inquiry should be subject to (and can ultimately be understood by) standard scientific methods of investigation.

Just try and engage in a epistemologicial or ontological( not religious) discussion with some and you'll get flamed for obfuscation. The words "breakthrough in science" must apply to an hisorical event or it's not "important". What Ghandi did was shit. Don't bother me with Mozart! Philosophy is next on the hit list. In the public schools to come, there will be two disciplines-Science and gay studies. Look what Lewontin has to say:

The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of “educated” has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses is now in the possession of a specially educated elite a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

I find quantum mechanics fascinating and thank God for the health advances molecular biology will bring-but don't go building statues of your self up people. Is this the ultimate revenge of the nerds? IMO, I don't think Dover was a bad descision in itself; its the law of unintended consequences I worry about. The ACLU helped affect this huge case that was a big win for you. Just don't end up in a some Stockholm Syndrome-like apprectation because of it and give them a subconciuos quid pro quo.

Remember who they really are. They, along with the NEA and the usual suspects, are the ones who keep our kids performing sub-standardly against the rest of the industrialized world, The real vision of the ACLU reached some day if we embolden them to even new levels of power might well...Rememeber the jailing of the scientist move ments in the last century. Or Trofim Lyseno's destruction of s Soviet biology, declaring the genetic of Mendel's peas and Morgan's fruit flies was incoorect and a capitalist plot to destroy the working class.

I guess I'm saying be easier on those holding deep-seated beliefs given your Freepers. It doesn't become you.