Posted on 08/26/2005 8:57:58 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
My mother says she is a Darwinist. I’m not sure of all the things that could or should imply. I take it to mean the she does not believe that the Cosmos and all that it contains is the result of the will of a Supreme Being. Nature just exists and that is all there is to it. Asking what is the purpose of human existence is a nonsense question. It has no meaning. As we have no conscious origin, we have no conscious destination. Hence no purpose.
This idea is quite troubling to many humans as we are quite reluctant to attach no meaning to the thoughts and desires coursing through the synapses of our brains. And so, for most of human existence, the idea that there was no God was a heresy to be condemned, punished, reviled, tortured and even burned at the stake.
When our social institutions evolved to the point where asking such a question wasn’t as quite as painful or harmful to one’s health, science, in the sense that we use today, began to blossom. And it bloomed because of its explanatory power, its predictive power. If you combine A, B, and C – bingo! – you get D. And no one had ever seen, heard or thought of D before!
One of the best and most widely known examples of this is Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc^2. Exactly what this means is not, for the purposes of this discussion, important. What is important is that this conclusion results from a very simple postulate. Namely, that the speed of light is constant relative to an observer – hence the term “relativity” theory. The other postulate is that we are only dealing with non-accelerated frames of reference. That means constant velocities and no gravitational fields. Hence the term “special” relativity. General relativity, dealing with accelerated frames of reference, is, both conceptually and mathematically, a great deal more abstract and difficult. And, unfortunately, I’m not one of those privy to its secrets.
We still believe, given compliance with the postulates, that the mass-energy equivalence equation is an accurate description of physical reality. For someone with an undergraduate’s knowledge of physics and fair skill with the calculus, it isn’t even very difficult to derive. But that is not the reason for its endurance. Our “faith” in this equation is borne out by innumerable observations, experiments and even a couple of unfortunate events in Japan that took place just about sixty years ago. Though the details of specific processes may, to some extent, still elude us, we have an explanation for the enormous energy levels and extreme duration of the power generated by stars. It was this question that stumped some of the greatest scientific minds of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Einstein’s answer still has no competing theory and it does not leave unanswered questions as to its validity lying about unaddressed.
The same cannot be said of evolutionary theory. There are unanswered questions. Evidence that does not fit. “Facts” that have proven illusive or false. Fabricated evidence. Explanations that are logically incomplete. Jerry-rigged computer models – oops! – sorry, that’s global warming. Result? A competing theory, Intelligent Design or ID, has been proposed as an alternative to Darwin’s rumination. Is this “unscientific” as many wail and gnash in their haste to keep “God” out of science? No. It’s an alternative hypothesis. A competing theory. Not religion. Not superstition. Not a conspiracy by those pesky right-wing, Christian fundamentalist – fundamentalist Christians, if you prefer. A proposed theory. This is how science advances. If one never questions, there are no answers to be had.
If you would like to bone-up on the fundamentals of ID, I suggest that you read Dan Peterson’s piece in the American Spectator, “The Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism.” He gives a rundown of the main players in the ID debate along with their academic backgrounds and achievements as well as the main arguments supporting their positions. For an opposing view by a man of science in the field of evolutionary theory, read Jerry Coyne’s offering in the New Republic Online, “The Case Against Intelligent Design.” This was at one time linkable without a subscription as I have a copy saved. But alas, one now seems mandatory.
Based on my brief acquaintance with the subject, there seems to be two fundamental lines of argument used by ID theorists. The first is that which asserts the probability of the complex molecules that form our DNA occurring by chance is infinitesimally small and therefore unlikely to have ever happened by chance. This is the argument put forth by the mathematician and physicist William Dembski.
Michael Behe, who popularized the flagellar motor found in e. coli and other bacterium as an example of intelligent design, is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. His arguments are based on the concept of irreducibly complex processes or structures as opposed to those that are cumulatively complex. Those that are irreducibly complex do not lend themselves without great difficulty to explanation by a theory of evolution. For Darwin himself stated that if one could show that a blind, incremental process could not explain a natural phenomenon, his theory would fall apart.
Darwin’s theories are being questioned, but here we are not talking about religious zealots making the inquiry. We’re talking about real, live, grown-up scientists, who, because of our advancing knowledge of the molecular basis of life, and not just bible stories, are asking legitimate and profound questions that are undermining the basis of Darwinism. And they’re not doing so with the desire nor intention of substituting scripture for textbooks. God, as the Jews or Christians or even Muslims perceive Him, is not being offered in place of Darwin.
What is? Good question. I’ll ask my mom. She always had the answers.
I remember reading about people that believed the sun was much smaller than the earth and the sun and moon were about the same size and NO WAY were they larger than a few feet since there was no force known that could keep that large an object up in the sky ...
Or also from Thomas Jefferson upon the subject of Jesus...
"it is not to be understood that I am with Him in all His doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require counterpoise of good works to redeem it"
Now, when will the atheist/darwinists prove a single protein arose unaided.
"Böhler, C., P. E. Nielsen, and L. E. Orgel. 1995. Template switching between PNA and RNA oligonucleotides. Nature 376: 578-581. See also: Piccirilli, J. A., 1995. RNA seeks its maker. Nature 376: 548-549.
Jeffares, D. C., A. M. Poole and D. Penny. 1998. Relics from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 18-36.
Leipe, D. D., L. Aravind, and E. V. Koonin. 1999. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Research 27: 3389-3401.
Levy, Matthew and Andrew D. Ellington. 2003. Exponential growth by cross-catalytic cleavage of deoxyribozymogens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 100(11): 6416-6421.
Poole, A. M., D. C. Jeffares, and D. Penny. 1998. The path from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17. "
You`re kidding right ? Using purified water/dumping in ampicillin/super heating to 80C/centrifuging/adding reagents/SEEDING/non-conclusive "potentials for sequentional evolution" ! ?
! ! ! LOL ! ! !
You really think going to talkorigins over and over and posting this junk is gonna intimdate anyone? you`re relegated yourself to a mere maoist waving his little red book.
Cassette mutagenesis experiments suggest that the probability of attaining (at random) the correct sequencing for a short protein 100 amino acids long is about 1 in 10 to the 65 power(Reidhaar-Olson & Sauer 1990)
Recent mutagenesis research has provided additional support for the conclusion that functional proteins are exceedingly rare among possible amino acid sequences. The probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10 to the 77 power.(Axe 2004)
It is unlikely that a new protein fold via a series of folded intermediates sequences (Blanco et al. 1999)
post-translation processes of modification in producing a functional protein make it impossible to predict a protein's final sequencing from its corresponding gene sequence alone (Sarkar 1996)
Cambrian explosion-mutation rates would not have been sufficient to generate the number of changes in the genome necessary to build the new proteins for more complex Cambrian animals. Even a mutation rate of 10-9 per base pair per year results in only a 1% change in the sequence of a given section of DNA in 10 million years. mutational divergence of preexisting genes cannot explain the origin of the Cambrian forms in that time (Ohno (1996)
Muller, G. B. & S. A. Newman. 2003. Origination of organismal form: the forgotten cause in evolutionary theory. G. B. Muller and S. A. Newman, eds., Origination of organismal form: beyond the gene in developmental and evolutionary biology. M.I.T.
Thomson, K. S. 1992. Macroevolution: The morphological problem
Miklos, G. L. G. 1993. Emergence of organizational complexities during metazoan evolution: perspectives from molecular biology, palaeontology and neo-Darwinism.
Webster & Goodwin 1996; Shubin & Marshall 2000; Erwin 2000; Conway Morris 2000, 2003b; Carroll 2000; Wagner 2001; Becker & Lonnig 2001; Stadler et al. 2001; Lonnig & Saedler 2002; Wagner & Stadler 2003; Valentine 2004)
Dawkins has noted that scientific theories (neo darwinism) can rely on only so much “luck” before they cease to be credible,
You`re outta luck
The universal conservation of some components of the DNA replication machinery and enzymes for DNA precursor biosynthesis but not the principal DNA polymerases suggests that the last common ancestor (LCA) of all modern cellular life forms possessed DNA but did not replicate it the way extant cells do. We propose that the LCA had a genetic system that contained both RNA and DNA, with the latter being produced by reverse transcription. Consequently, the modern-type system for double-stranded DNA replication likely evolved independently in the bacterial and archaeal/eukaryotic lineages.
From
Leipe, D. D., L. Aravind, and E. V. Koonin. 1999. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Research 27: 3389-3401.
The bottom line is it doesn't really matter what "Darwinism" is. As long as it leads one away from God, that's all that truly matters.
That list never shrinks
Denton has gone over to the dark side.
But like Patterson, Popper, (and Darwin) his name is engraved on the "Doubters of Evolution" list forvever,
YEC SPOTREP
“I do think its true that cosmologists are slightly more likely to be theists than biologists. In earlier times biology was the thing that provided the most powerful apparent evidence for the existence of a Creator – Darwin solved all that. I think, in a way, cosmology is waiting for its Darwin. However, I would add this, that biology is supremely complicated. Complexity is the really difficult thing that you might think you need a designer for – Darwin solved that. The universe actually, is not very complicated.”
-Dawkins
”We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity of living systems,” said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. But ‘’my expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention.”
Brights
A. Promote the civic understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, which is free of supernatural and mystical elements.
B. Gain public recognition that persons who hold such a worldview can bring principled actions to bear on matters of civic importance.
C. Educate society toward accepting the full and equitable civic participation of all such individuals.
Four posts in a row. Are you trying to say something?
So do you fall into the camp of the 20,000 year old earth creationists?
You've spent a lot of time saying what you're against, but I don't understand exactly what it is you support.
Just a question.
"The universal conservation of some components of the DNA replication machinery and enzymes for DNA precursor biosynthesis but not the principal DNA polymerases suggests that the last common ancestor (LCA) of all modern cellular life forms possessed DNA but did not replicate it the way extant cells do. We propose that the LCA had a genetic system that contained both RNA and DNA, with the latter being produced by reverse transcription. Consequently, the modern-type system for double-stranded DNA replication likely evolved independently in the bacterial and archaeal/eukaryotic lineages.
From
Leipe, D. D., L. Aravind, and E. V. Koonin. 1999. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Research 27: 3389-3401 "
The hypothesis of an independent evolution of DNA replication offers a parsimonious explanation ...We may never know the final answer
Detlef D. Leipe, L. Aravind1, Eugene V. Koonin*
National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Building 38A, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA and 1Department of Biology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 70843, USA
Received April 13, 1999; Revised and Accepted June 21, 1999
No... I'm just posting creation stories...
I thought you enjoyed them...
Oh! I get it now.
Well, you are ahead of the last person who tried to do this. You have nice indents on your stories (did you use blockquote?), and overall good formatting.
The stories are a little obscure (actually they're ephemeral!), but a very good try.
Nice to see someone with a sense of humor for a change.
You caught me headed for the rack. Any responses are post-caffeine AMers.
I have no idea
whatyou are
It’s all happenstance!
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