[quote]ephrem wrote:
a creationist is expected to tow the party line, isn’t he? In your religious-socialist world, you have to comply to the manifesto, or else. So what if that creationist biologist makes an actual discovery, and that discovery does not point at God, will he surpress his findings?
[/quote]
Impossible. If one expects to find God wherever he looks, he will invariably find Him.
Just as someone who is convinced he will never find God invariably won’t.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sneaky weasel wrote:
That is, to me, the single biggest difference between I.D. and scientific methodology. I.D. says “God must have done it, nothing more to see here;” biology says “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”
And creationist biology says, “God must have done it; but let’s find out more.”[/quote]
Sorry, but using God as an answer to “how” and not “why” is intrinsically limiting to further understanding–the moment you bring God into the picture as a causal mechanism for how something happens, you can’t really go any further.
“How do planes stay aloft?” If you choose to believe God’s will keeps them up in the sky, you never need learn about Bernoulli’s principle, lift, drag, etc. It’s also unlikely that you will ever advance that technology past its current point, if you are able to replicate it at all.
[quote]Sneaky weasel wrote:
Sorry, but using God as an answer to “how” and not “why” is intrinsically limiting to further understanding–the moment you bring God into the picture as a causal mechanism for how something happens, you can’t really go any further.
“How do planes stay aloft?” If you choose to believe God’s will keeps them up in the sky, you never need learn about Bernoulli’s principle, lift, drag, etc. It’s also unlikely that you will ever advance that technology past its current point, if you are able to replicate it at all.[/quote]
Just a quick side note…I worked at US Air Force Research Labs for 8 years, and at the very least, 95% of my fellow scientists were religious. They were doing a pretty bang up job of advancing technology and they knew the principles of lift and drag down to minutiae that would make your assumptive mind spin. And, they all believed in Intelligent Design. Shock and awe.
[quote]DrSkeptix wrote:
Speaking of stirred pots, I knew, toward the end of his life, Stan Miller, who decades ago sparked in a pot methane, oxygen and water and cyanide, and “spontaneously” produced amino acids, and peptides.
Perhaps Dr Yockey’s calculation presumes falsely something not contended, that cytochrome c coalesced from its individual atoms. That is not possible. But this is only another example of “irreducible complexity.”
There is a reconstructed history–paleobiology, if you will–specifically for cytochrome c. It is not inconceivable that the leap from Archae to prokaryotes occurred with just a few single step mutations.
[/quote]
Just to clear something up:
Yockey started with the basic compounds (whole amino acids, etc), not the individual atoms, to make the computation more favorable to evolution, as well as realistic.
Also, he was addressing the probability of spontaneous generation of life from prebiotic compounds using cyt c as an example, not an evolution from 1 already living form to another (archae to prokaryotes), which I am almost certain he agrees with. And yes, it might be quite possible that a couple step mutations could have done that.
[quote]borrek wrote:
Sneaky weasel wrote:
Sorry, but using God as an answer to “how” and not “why” is intrinsically limiting to further understanding–the moment you bring God into the picture as a causal mechanism for how something happens, you can’t really go any further.
“How do planes stay aloft?” If you choose to believe God’s will keeps them up in the sky, you never need learn about Bernoulli’s principle, lift, drag, etc. It’s also unlikely that you will ever advance that technology past its current point, if you are able to replicate it at all.
Just a quick side note…I worked at US Air Force Research Labs for 8 years, and at the very least, 95% of my fellow scientists were religious. They were doing a pretty bang up job of advancing technology and they knew the principles of lift and drag down to minutiae that would make your assumptive mind spin. And, they all believed in Intelligent Design. Shock and awe.
[/quote]
knowing the principles of lift and drag and the principles of biology are two different things.
Also, in the CATHOLIC university that I attend as a bio major, i take not intelligent design as a class but evolutionary analysis, and bio classes aside in my religion class, my religion professor in a catholic university discussed how idiotic intelligent design is. so to sit here and name scientists who believe in intelligent design is a waste of time since there are plenty of religious people who dont believe in intelligent design, and in fact believe in evolution.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sneaky weasel wrote:
pushharder wrote:
Sneaky weasel wrote:
That is, to me, the single biggest difference between I.D. and scientific methodology. I.D. says “God must have done it, nothing more to see here;” biology says “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”
And creationist biology says, “God must have done it; but let’s find out more.”
Sorry, but using God as an answer to “how” and not “why” is intrinsically limiting to further understanding–the moment you bring God into the picture as a causal mechanism for how something happens, you can’t really go any further.
“How do planes stay aloft?” If you choose to believe God’s will keeps them up in the sky, you never need learn about Bernoulli’s principle, lift, drag, etc. It’s also unlikely that you will ever advance that technology past its current point, if you are able to replicate it at all.
You’re not bright enough to debate me if you use stupid examples and make stupid assumptions like you have.
[/quote]
But Friend Push, he makes a valid point.
If in 1952 Watson and Crick, conceding irreducible complexity, had published a paper, “DNA: Because God Made It That Way,” I doubt our world would be the same.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
relentless2120 wrote:
borrek wrote:
Sneaky weasel wrote:
Sorry, but using God as an answer to “how” and not “why” is intrinsically limiting to further understanding–the moment you bring God into the picture as a causal mechanism for how something happens, you can’t really go any further.
“How do planes stay aloft?” If you choose to believe God’s will keeps them up in the sky, you never need learn about Bernoulli’s principle, lift, drag, etc. It’s also unlikely that you will ever advance that technology past its current point, if you are able to replicate it at all.
Just a quick side note…I worked at US Air Force Research Labs for 8 years, and at the very least, 95% of my fellow scientists were religious. They were doing a pretty bang up job of advancing technology and they knew the principles of lift and drag down to minutiae that would make your assumptive mind spin. And, they all believed in Intelligent Design. Shock and awe.
knowing the principles of lift and drag and the principles of biology are two different things.
Whoa dude. Borrek isn’t the one that brought up air foils. He addressed it AFTER it was mentioned by an evolutionist.
Also, in the CATHOLIC university that I attend as a bio major, i take not intelligent design as a class but evolutionary analysis, and bio classes aside in my religion class, my religion professor in a catholic university discussed how idiotic intelligent design is. so to sit here and name scientists who believe in intelligent design is a waste of time since there are plenty of religious people who dont believe in intelligent design, and in fact believe in evolution.
You are correct that many religious folks believe in evolution. But it is not “a waste of time” to name scientists who believe in ID precisely because evolutionists devoutly spread the myth that hardly any scientists, especially REAL scientists, believe in ID.
It is a calculated lie, deliberate misinformation, to say that all scientists or at the very least all respected scientists believe in evolution.
This is not the infamous “appeal to authority” fallacy that is all too often trumpeted like the mating call of the African elephant but rather an attempt to counter The Lie that intelligent people are incapable of believing in a Creator.
BTW, if your “religion professor in a Catholic university discussed how idiotic intelligent design is,” then HE is the idiot. Don’t worry, buddy, there are idiots everywhere on this planet even in Catholic universities.
Also BTW, you need to capitalize “Catholic”, you numbskull.[/quote]
My point was that there is a lot more then understanding lift and drag to fully understanding the principles of biology. My point was not that lift and drag had nothing to do with biology.
And trust me; I know Catholic universities have their fare share of idiots. I was simply showing that while yes there are scientists that believe in ID, there are also people of religion that believe in evolution, so why bother pointing all of them out.
Also BTW, I didn’t capitalize “I” or put a ’ in “dont”
Thanks for your effort in proofreading my T-Nation post though.
[quote]relentless2120 wrote:
My point was that there is a lot more then understanding lift and drag to fully understanding the principles of biology. My point was not that lift and drag had nothing to do with biology.
[/quote]
You’re wasting your breath on this one. If you notice, I specifically said “Just as a quick side note,” meaning “as an aside,” meaning “not pertaining to the conversation at hand but I want to take a timeout to point out a stupid statement”
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
I haven’t bothered to read the whole thread. I’m not going to, unless I’m really, reaaaally bored like I was when I started reading this thing. Just wanted to throw something random out, that I’ve known about for a while:
Dr. Hubert Yockey is one of the most pre-eminent information theorists and physicists in existence today–he worked under Robert Oppenheimer with the Manhattan Project, is almost solely responsible for evolution of the widely popular modern field of bioinformatics, first published a book in 1958, and has published works going back earlier than that. He publishes largely in the well-refereed and highly respected Journal of Theoretical Biology and has since 1974.
He is not an I.D. proponent.
He posited in a 1981 study that the probability of a single protein of ~100 amino acids long (cytochrome c) evolving spontaneously is 2x10^-94th, a number about 1 billion times greater than the amount of atoms in the currently visible universe. He uses this protein because it is widely conserved and also highly resilient (lots of mutations can be made while maintaining biological function–increasing the chance of success).
The impossibility threshold is approximately 1x10^-50th, as posited by Borel (French statistician and not an I.D. proponent). Anything with worse odds than that can be regarded as impossible while anything with better odds than that can be considered to happen at least once in the age of the universe. Yockey draws probable concentrations of starting materials and environmental conditions from the scientific literature. It assumes that 39 amino acids are available and that both D and L stereo-isomers of the 20 modern amino acids will provide a biologically active protein (modern proteins exclusively use the L isomer. The D form is biologically inactive). It also assumes the pre-existence of a 3 letter template code and the machinery for translating that code into a protein (ie–a DNA or RNA string at least 300 bases long as well as separate translation molecules).
If one utilizes only L isomers, the chance of a 100 amino long protein evolving is roughly 2x10^-188th.
If one takes into account the chances of co-evolving translation machinery, as well as the chances of a 300 base pair long DNA/RNA chain evolving, the number drops to a practically incalculable level.
In addition, if one considers the environment, and the lack of time for highly efficient translation machinery to be refined through evolution, the accompanying machinery, if it exists, is going to be highly inefficient and slow compared to modern machinery, decreasing the chances of success.
This scenario also assumes that only 1 protein is needed for life to succeed, which is likely a drastic underestimation.
Just stirring the pot, just stiiiiiiiirrrrrring the pot… (as if it needed stirring) :D[/quote]
I like this post. But you have to realize that if we truly have billions of years (the oldest mineral examined on the earth is approximated to be 4.04 billion years old) seemingly impossible things (statistically) are going to happen. For them NOT to happen in that amount of time is a statistical anomaly.
[quote]BSrunner wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
I haven’t bothered to read the whole thread. I’m not going to, unless I’m really, reaaaally bored like I was when I started reading this thing. Just wanted to throw something random out, that I’ve known about for a while:
Dr. Hubert Yockey is one of the most pre-eminent information theorists and physicists in existence today–he worked under Robert Oppenheimer with the Manhattan Project, is almost solely responsible for evolution of the widely popular modern field of bioinformatics, first published a book in 1958, and has published works going back earlier than that. He publishes largely in the well-refereed and highly respected Journal of Theoretical Biology and has since 1974.
He is not an I.D. proponent.
He posited in a 1981 study that the probability of a single protein of ~100 amino acids long (cytochrome c) evolving spontaneously is 2x10^-94th, a number about 1 billion times greater than the amount of atoms in the currently visible universe. He uses this protein because it is widely conserved and also highly resilient (lots of mutations can be made while maintaining biological function–increasing the chance of success).
The impossibility threshold is approximately 1x10^-50th, as posited by Borel (French statistician and not an I.D. proponent). Anything with worse odds than that can be regarded as impossible while anything with better odds than that can be considered to happen at least once in the age of the universe. Yockey draws probable concentrations of starting materials and environmental conditions from the scientific literature. It assumes that 39 amino acids are available and that both D and L stereo-isomers of the 20 modern amino acids will provide a biologically active protein (modern proteins exclusively use the L isomer. The D form is biologically inactive). It also assumes the pre-existence of a 3 letter template code and the machinery for translating that code into a protein (ie–a DNA or RNA string at least 300 bases long as well as separate translation molecules).
If one utilizes only L isomers, the chance of a 100 amino long protein evolving is roughly 2x10^-188th.
If one takes into account the chances of co-evolving translation machinery, as well as the chances of a 300 base pair long DNA/RNA chain evolving, the number drops to a practically incalculable level.
In addition, if one considers the environment, and the lack of time for highly efficient translation machinery to be refined through evolution, the accompanying machinery, if it exists, is going to be highly inefficient and slow compared to modern machinery, decreasing the chances of success.
This scenario also assumes that only 1 protein is needed for life to succeed, which is likely a drastic underestimation.
Just stirring the pot, just stiiiiiiiirrrrrring the pot… (as if it needed stirring) 
I like this post. But you have to realize that if we truly have billions of years (the oldest mineral examined on the earth is approximated to be 4.04 billion years old) seemingly impossible things (statistically) are going to happen. For them NOT to happen in that amount of time is a statistical anomaly.
[/quote]
Aragorn has accesss to the Yockey paper and I do not. But there is nevertheless an error somewhere; perhaps it is in the presumption of entropy–disorder.
Cytochrome c would not have coalesced from a handful of amino acids. But it could evolve from a series of ordered steps made possible by reduced energy states: e.g. in a reduced atmosphere ferric ions outnumber ferrous ions. They complex with carbonyls, which react with hydrocyanic acid. And from these pyroles, the porphyrin nucleus forms. A few random protein mutations chelate it and presto! cytochrome c.
It might take 2 billion years, but it is plausible. It might even be wrong.
But if the Intelligent Designer “made it that way” 6 or 10 thousand years ago, and It made it so that all cytochrome c’s would covary with other evolved proteins, then further inquiry is not only unnecessary, but in error.
[quote]BSrunner wrote:
Aragorn wrote:
I haven’t bothered to read the whole thread. I’m not going to, unless I’m really, reaaaally bored like I was when I started reading this thing. Just wanted to throw something random out, that I’ve known about for a while:
Dr. Hubert Yockey is one of the most pre-eminent information theorists and physicists in existence today–he worked under Robert Oppenheimer with the Manhattan Project, is almost solely responsible for evolution of the widely popular modern field of bioinformatics, first published a book in 1958, and has published works going back earlier than that. He publishes largely in the well-refereed and highly respected Journal of Theoretical Biology and has since 1974.
He is not an I.D. proponent.
He posited in a 1981 study that the probability of a single protein of ~100 amino acids long (cytochrome c) evolving spontaneously is 2x10^-94th, a number about 1 billion times greater than the amount of atoms in the currently visible universe. He uses this protein because it is widely conserved and also highly resilient (lots of mutations can be made while maintaining biological function–increasing the chance of success).
The impossibility threshold is approximately 1x10^-50th, as posited by Borel (French statistician and not an I.D. proponent). Anything with worse odds than that can be regarded as impossible while anything with better odds than that can be considered to happen at least once in the age of the universe. Yockey draws probable concentrations of starting materials and environmental conditions from the scientific literature. It assumes that 39 amino acids are available and that both D and L stereo-isomers of the 20 modern amino acids will provide a biologically active protein (modern proteins exclusively use the L isomer. The D form is biologically inactive). It also assumes the pre-existence of a 3 letter template code and the machinery for translating that code into a protein (ie–a DNA or RNA string at least 300 bases long as well as separate translation molecules).
If one utilizes only L isomers, the chance of a 100 amino long protein evolving is roughly 2x10^-188th.
If one takes into account the chances of co-evolving translation machinery, as well as the chances of a 300 base pair long DNA/RNA chain evolving, the number drops to a practically incalculable level.
In addition, if one considers the environment, and the lack of time for highly efficient translation machinery to be refined through evolution, the accompanying machinery, if it exists, is going to be highly inefficient and slow compared to modern machinery, decreasing the chances of success.
This scenario also assumes that only 1 protein is needed for life to succeed, which is likely a drastic underestimation.
Just stirring the pot, just stiiiiiiiirrrrrring the pot… (as if it needed stirring)
I like this post. But you have to realize that if we truly have billions of years (the oldest mineral examined on the earth is approximated to be 4.04 billion years old) seemingly impossible things (statistically) are going to happen. For them NOT to happen in that amount of time is a statistical anomaly.
[/quote]
I see where you’re coming from and I can relate personally to the sentiment you convey, but I’m not sure you appreciate just how minuscule the numbers that were presented really are. Borel’s impossibility threshold is a measure of the probability that some thing will happen in the entire age of the universe since the big bang. Anything with chances worse than 1x10^-50th can be considered to never have happened in the age of the universe. If the numbers posted in Yockey’s study and the premises he starts with to come to those numbers are even remotely correct then there is simply no probability of this thing happening. 2x10^-94th. That’s 2 followed by about 44 zeros orders of magnitude smaller (worse chances) than the impossibility threshold.
That’s the point-- Yockey’s statistics are really inviolate if the premises he holds are correct, or even in the correct ballpark. And to say that it “must have” happened because we are here assumes the conclusion all you people are arguing about–namely the “we are here now because” part. His argument is one that should be treated with respect. Again, he is not an I.D. proponent.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Aye, I think so. The stereotypical passionate, fiery Latina does indeed reside here. Be wary, my Anglo friend. She is from another world…
[center][photo]22373[/photo][/center][/quote]
Did she PM you that pic to try and further weaken your defenses? Fights dirty she does!
[quote]relentless2120 wrote:
Also, in the CATHOLIC university that I attend as a bio major, i take not intelligent design as a class but evolutionary analysis, and bio classes aside in my religion class, my religion professor in a catholic university discussed how idiotic intelligent design is. so to sit here and name scientists who believe in intelligent design is a waste of time since there are plenty of religious people who dont believe in intelligent design, and in fact believe in evolution.
Also BTW, you need to capitalize “Catholic”, you numbskull.
[/quote]
Well, I did mention a few pages ago how catholics tend to have a figurative interpretation of the bible, as opposed to a more literal one. Which is why this whole discussion simply amazes me. Growing up in a nun’s school, creation was for religion classes, and evolution for biology classes.
And yea, push has a problem with lack of capitols, keep doing it, he gets red-faced. 
[quote]pushharder wrote:
BetaBerry wrote:
Well, I did mention a few pages ago how catholics tend to have a figurative interpretation of the bible, as opposed to a more literal one. Which is why this whole discussion simply amazes me. Growing up in a nun’s school, creation was for religion classes, and evolution for biology classes.
So how do girls who grow up catholic in nun’s schools reconcile their religion and their biology?
[/quote]
School girl skirts in the bedroom, that’s how. Bam! Problem solved.