[quote]Nicole wrote:
Secondly, when experiments are done are they not being guided by the intelligence of the scienctist. Is there not some one guiding the experiment?[/quote]
No. An experiment consists of creating an environment for whatever substances to interact. The scientists observe not guide. If they guided, they would know the outcome before the experiment.
[quote]Nicole wrote:
Secondly, when experiments are done are they not being guided by the intelligence of the scienctist. Is there not some one guiding the experiment?
[/quote]
I don’t understand this claim. You are making the assumption that nothing can be known because it is all guided by bias?
The bacterial resistance to antibiotics is definetly an example of natural selection and microevolution but is no way an observation of macroevolution. The resistance is because all the bacteria that can withstand the antibiotic survive and the weaker die.
Think about this for a moment you aren’t getting any new species or even gentic material. You are losing bacteria that don’t have the genes that allow them to survive the antibiotics.
Macroevolution and microevolution are very different.
I have yet to find an example of macroevolution that has been witnessed by anyone. Where do we see living transition types? This according to the theory is a slow process and would take multitudes to generations to test.
“These evolutinary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversable. It is as impossible to turn a land vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation. The applicability of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severly restricted.” Theoosious Dobazhansky Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Biology, Rockefellar University, 1957
“The extreme raity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest however is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.” Stephen J. Gould professor of Biology and Geology at Harvard
[quote]Nicole wrote:
Here are some specific arguements regarding gaps/hole in the theory on evolution:
In the primodail soup of amino acids(Miller/Urey experiment) the probablility of one rung on DNA forming is 10^87
one molecule of DNA 10^130
If the earth is 4.6 billions years old(10^18secs) and you tried random combinations of atoms 1 billion times a second it would be only 10^27 tries
The probability of forming 124 proteins (amount for the simplest cell) would be 10^210
These statistics just go to show how hard it is for something to develop by random chance. Without some sort of direction or informtion(i.e. Intelligent Design) What is understood as simple cells i.e. prokayotes are actually more complex than a metropolis. See Darwin’s Black Box by Michael j. Behe. (by the way he is one of many renowed molecular biochemists who are rejecting evolution when they see the complexity of life’s building blocks)
[/quote]
Well that’s true. But that’s not what abiogenesis says. The problem with ID supporter is that they claim that full-fledged, complex modern organism should have spontaneously formed in their known current form.
Abiogenesis theorizes the apparition of much simpler self-replicants from which more complex ones evolved.
Other fallacies put forth by ID is that random tries seemingly must occur sequentially, one after another when in reality you’ve got massive parallelism possible enabling you to try billions or trillions of possibilities simulaneously.
Ref: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
In other words, should they be prohibited from claiming or disclaiming divine influence, and just have to stick to the science?[/quote]
Ask yourself this question. Should they just stick to science when teaching medicine, aerodynamics, engineering? Why would any other field be different?
Why would anyone want dilettantes to teach anything of a value?
-Yustas
Ok, let’s say that it was a “freak” accident (or hundreds of accidents) that took us from a single cell organism to where we are today (man does that take some faith to believe) how come there is not one single example of science creating life in a petri dish from any combinations of atoms.
I mean if an “accident” or “mutation” created us shouldn’t the worlds most brilliant minds be able to put together cells and create life?
FatSensei
[quote]Nicole wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Nicole wrote:
If the earth is 4.6 billions years old(10^18secs) and you tried random combinations of atoms 1 billion times a second it would be only 10^27 tries
The probability of forming 124 proteins (amount for the simplest cell) would be 10^210
These statistics just go to show how hard it is for something to develop by random chance. Without some sort of direction or informtion(i.e. Intelligent Design) What is understood as simple cells i.e. prokayotes are actually more complex than a metropolis. See Darwin’s Black Box by Michael j. Behe. (by the way he is one of many renowed molecular biochemists who are rejecting evolution when they see the complexity of life’s building blocks)
I think your use of statistics here while valid are a bit misinformative to the layperson. First, you do not explain where you get the age of the earth and then you falsely make an assumption that proteins will try to form a mere billion times a second.
In the span of the universe your statistics are meaningless. All it takes is for it to happen one time and succed in reproducing. You falsly imply that the statistics, if correct, would need to be repeated. This is not so, otherwise it would be like saying we need to wait on average the same amount of time for an exact copy to be reproduced, i.e 10^210 sec. It would be like saying, I should not be able to win a lottery with a 1:100,000,000 just by buying one ticket because the statistics are improbable. Should I then assume that it must have happened by some intervention if I did? Do not get caught up in the statistics. They are merely a tool. Improbable does not mean impossible.
I simply put the age commonly agreed on by most evolutionists and which is in most biology books including both of mine. (although personally I disagree)
1/1,000,000 is a drop in a bucket compared to 1/10^130(molecule of DNA)
six zeros as compared to 130!
Physcists generarlly conclude probabilities over 10^50 never occur.
I don’t think you grasp how much 10^130 is compared to 10^6
I am not saying that you would have to wait that exact amount of time for each copy to be produced that is not how statistics work. Each “try” is unaffected by the other. You could have had 10^130 combination attempts and there is no reason that the next one will work. The chance is the same each try.
[/quote]
I am a high energy physicist so I deal in this order of magnitude statistics everday–I try not to get caught up in them, however, for the same reasons stated above. While I also generally agree that anything over 1/10^50 is improbable it does not mean that is impossible. There are many events that have been observed that have improbable ratios of occuring (neutrino collisions, which is proportional to their cross sectioanl area and indirectly proportional the number of elements per unit of volume, etc.) Does this make them a divine occurance? Science seeks a way to explain such occurances.
[quote]ToShinDo wrote:
A weak scientific theory is always a better answer than “God did it.”[/quote]
Agreed, personally, I even prefer Lamarckism to I.D. Lysenko-Michurinism vs. I.D. is a toss up.
For those who don’t know:
Lamarckism-A theory of biological evolution holding that species evolve by the inheritance of traits acquired or modified through the use or disuse of body parts. (e.g. a giraffe uses its neck a lot, so it’s offspring will have long necks or I lift weights a lot so my kids will have really well developed muscles.)
Lysenkoism-A biological doctrine developed by Trofim Lysenko that maintains the possibility of inheriting environmentally acquired characteristics. (e.g. darker soil produces darker colored grain.)
[quote]pookie wrote:
Nicole wrote:
Here are some specific arguements regarding gaps/hole in the theory on evolution:
In the primodail soup of amino acids(Miller/Urey experiment) the probablility of one rung on DNA forming is 10^87
one molecule of DNA 10^130
If the earth is 4.6 billions years old(10^18secs) and you tried random combinations of atoms 1 billion times a second it would be only 10^27 tries
The probability of forming 124 proteins (amount for the simplest cell) would be 10^210
These statistics just go to show how hard it is for something to develop by random chance. Without some sort of direction or informtion(i.e. Intelligent Design) What is understood as simple cells i.e. prokayotes are actually more complex than a metropolis. See Darwin’s Black Box by Michael j. Behe. (by the way he is one of many renowed molecular biochemists who are rejecting evolution when they see the complexity of life’s building blocks)
Well that’s true. But that’s not what abiogenesis says. The problem with ID supporter is that they claim that full-fledged, complex modern organism should have spontaneously formed in their known current form.
Abiogenesis theorizes the apparition of much simpler self-replicants from which more complex ones evolved.
Other fallacies put forth by ID is that random tries seemingly must occur sequentially, one after another when in reality you’ve got massive parallelism possible enabling you to try billions or trillions of possibilities simulaneously.
Ref: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html[/quote]
On when you said ID supporters assume complex organisms should have spontaneously formed:
Those stats are based on the simplest known prokaryote, and things as simple as just one gene.
When you observe cells or just about any living thing especially when you get in to it’s biochemistry you will see that it is “irreducibly complex” That organism would not function if it was made simpler it needs everything that it has to work. A common analogy is a mousetrap…it you remove any one piece it ceases to work properly. Take siclke cell, that is just one gene that is different and it affects the whole body. Stuff like that so the precision nessecary for life and it points to a designer.
[quote]lucasa wrote:
Agreed, personally, I even prefer Lamarckism to I.D. Lysenko-Michurinism vs. I.D. is a toss up.
[/quote]
Just don’t cut of your arm thinking your children will be born with only one as well!
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
In other words, should they be prohibited from claiming or disclaiming divine influence, and just have to stick to the science?
yustas wrote:
Ask yourself this question. Should they just stick to science when teaching medicine, aerodynamics, engineering? Why would any other field be different?
Why would anyone want dilettantes to teach anything of a value?
-Yustas[/quote]
I agree that yes, they should just stick to the science when teaching science – especially when the dichotomy is: or they teach religion or against religion. And though a lot of people would probably consider it an open question (because there’s no specific ruling that actually says this - it’s an application of principles in rulings to this specific fact pattern), I think current 1st Amendment jurisprudence demands that they stick to teaching the science. But that’s another topic altogether.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I am a high energy physicist so I deal in this order of magnitude statistics everday–I try not to get caught up in them, however, for the same reasons stated above. While I also generally agree that anything over 1/10^50 is improbable it does not mean that is impossible. There are many events that have been observed that have improbable ratios of occuring (neutrino collisions, which is proportional to their cross sectioanl area and indirectly proportional the number of elements per unit of volume, etc.) Does this make them a divine occurance? Science seeks a way to explain such occurances.[/quote]
Precisely. Also, the probabilities that Nicole is throwing out are far from being proven as accurate, and there are many other theories out there that show much higher probabilities.
To use an example from physics, as you know, until very recently a very large percentage of scientists – including some very famous ones – would swear on their own life that black holes were either impossible or extremely rare.
Today, we know that not only they do exist, they’re ubiquitous. Same thing can be true for life. We might think it’s improbable now, but we may be as wrong about that as we were about Black Holes.
[quote]Nicole wrote:
I have yet to find an example of macroevolution that has been witnessed by anyone. Where do we see living transition types? This according to the theory is a slow process and would take multitudes to generations to test.
[/quote]
You’re arguing about the fossil records. There are examples of the evolution from simple fishes to boney and a change of the species when they could no longer breed together. New species of fruit flies have been created in the laboratory.
What hasn’t been observed is one animal abruptly changing into a radically different one, such as a frog changing into a cow. This is not a problem for evolution because evolution doesn’t propose occurrences even remotely like that. In fact, if we ever observed a frog turn into a cow, it would be very strong evidence against evolution.
[quote]hspder wrote:
the probabilities that Nicole is throwing out are far from being proven as accurate, and there are many other theories out there that show much higher probabilities.
[/quote]
They are just theoretical probabilities. There have been no experimental measurements made to back these claims up. Precicesly why I do not pay attention to theoretically derived statistics.
Lies, damned lies, and …
You know the rest.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
…And though a lot of people would probably consider it an open question (because there’s no specific ruling that actually says this…[/quote]
A lot of people would ask for a refund if they knew that popular ID writers are predominantly amateurs or loose canons at best. They are qualified to speak on a subject no more then Clinton could be considered to be an expert on Chaos Theory and its application.
-Yustas
[quote]Nicole wrote:
One on the problems with the controversy of Itelligent Design and Evolution is that neither are “testable.”
A scientific theory by definition must be testtable, repeatable and falsifiable.
Neither Creation or Evolution fit this they are both belief systems or explanatory scientific models.
It is incorrect to assume either is scientific fact.
[/quote]
Evolution is falsifiable. Find some fossils of modern humans in Precambrian rocks. Tada!
Testable - take some polar bears and put them in the Pacific Northwest. Watch for several million years.
Creationism is someone taking a religious text and trying to use it as a science book. Sounds sacreligious to me!
And hey, there are even evolutionary computer simulations that show complexity arising from random encounters.
The only reason Behe is reknowned is because he supports ID, that’s it. And “many” is a stretch.
[quote]
When you observe cells or just about any living thing especially when you get in to it’s biochemistry you will see that it is “irreducibly complex” That organism would not function if it was made simpler it needs everything that it has to work. A common analogy is a mousetrap…it you remove any one piece it ceases to work properly. Take siclke cell, that is just one gene that is different and it affects the whole body. Stuff like that so the precision nessecary for life and it points to a designer. [/quote]
Well sickle cell actually has evolutionary advantages. It helps prevent malaria, a nasty disease prevalent in Africa and Asia. Hmmm, if this designer was so intelligent, maybe he should have given everyone a resistence to that parasite? Or made the “fix” less damaging in other respects.
As for irreducibly complex, that says to me that there’s an incomplete understanding going on. It’s like saying that if you take a leg off of a chair, it won’t work, so therefore there should be no three-legged stools! I assume with the irreducibly complex comment you are referring to blood clotting proteins? That has been shown to be false, it can be reduced.
Take 6 dice. Throw them 200 times and record the results each time. Now, look at the list of numbers that you have. The odds of the specific result occuring are 6^200, whoch is way bigger than 10^130. But yet (gasp!) that very result happened, even though it should have been “impossible.”
There’s no need for it all to have happened at once, several intermediate steps that produce stable molecule are likely.
[quote]
I have yet to find an example of macroevolution that has been witnessed by anyone. Where do we see living transition types? This according to the theory is a slow process and would take multitudes to generations to test. [/quote]
Okeedokee. Here ya go:
Besides, you believe in “microevolution”? So let’s take a dog and make a billion tiny changes to it’s DNA. Microevolution again and again and again, et.al. Is it still a dog?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Hmmm. I suppose I could phrase this differently and see what the responses are:
Should teachers be prohibited from teaching atheism in conjunction with evolution and any other subjects related to the origin of life and the universe in science classes?
In other words, should they be prohibited from claiming or disclaiming divine influence, and just have to stick to the science?[/quote]
Teachers can not teach that science is atheistic. A teacher can tell a class that they personally do not believe in a god. A teacher can tell a class that they believe in a god or even a Christian faith. A science teacher could even tell kids that they think the complexity of the universe requires a god, but they can’t tell them that it is part of science.
But all in all, its generally better for a teacher to teach objectively in the classroom. If you are Christian, have faith that given facts, kids will think straight. If you are an atheist, have faith that given the facts, kids will think straight. Show them a good example of how to live a dignified life, and teach them as objectively as you can.
I remember a quote from A.C. Clark that sometimes he looked up to the stars and imagined that there were millions of other worlds out there. Other times he looked up at the stars and imagined that we were completely alone in the universe, and that on either account he was left in awe.
[quote]Nicole wrote:
Stuff like that so the precision nessecary for life and it points to a designer. [/quote]
The precision can also come from a lot of trial and error; with the better designs being kept for further improvements (natural selection).
There are also enough “bad designs” to be found in Nature that any designer would’ve had to be drunk or incompetent to implement those designs. Those point to the lack of a plan or design and simple blind evolution.
I agree completely, all religions do this, for the unexplained and unanswered questions of human understanding, religion simply says it was the divine creator who we can’t and never will understand because his power is so much greater than we can imagine. It’s simply a cop out to an answer we don’t know yet. Evolution has holes because we haven’t found proof YET to fill those holes. There are still many, many areas we haven’t excavated and searched for fossils. Over the next 10-25 years, great strides in proving evolution might be found. Then what will the I.D. and religious people say? What if we proved without a doubt evolution is how we came to be where we are, would the religious people believe it? I mean, we’ve already proved evolution in animals and it humans from apelike to walking on two legs. And for those vegetarians, our brains grew because we began eating animal protein and fats, thus if we were a true vegetarian species we would probably still be apes because of the lack of animal protein for brain growth. I just don’t buy into the blind faith creationism theory. It should be taught in religious classes only.
[quote]Nicole wrote:
In the primodail soup of amino acids(Miller/Urey experiment) the probablility of one rung on DNA forming is 10^87
one molecule of DNA 10^130
If the earth is 4.6 billions years old(10^18secs) and you tried random combinations of atoms 1 billion times a second it would be only 10^27 tries
The probability of forming 124 proteins (amount for the simplest cell) would be 10^210
[/quote]
I just want to know how people come up with statistics like this. What do you mean that it is 1/10^87 of creating a rung of DNA. The nucleic acids themselves are produced in natural high energy reactions, and found in comets and asteriods, as well as all amino acids. Once you get DNA, the probability of making 124 proteins is almost 100%.
Tell me what you need to put together to make a rung of DNA please. Its not a bunch of atoms, its a few fair sized molecules that can all be accounted for by natural processes.
And how many molecular collisions take place in a cup of liquid material per second?
A cup of mid molecular weight organic sludge (200 g/mole) would contain almost exactly a mole of organic molecules of 6 x 10^23. Lets assume it would take an hour for a molecule to migrate on average from one end to another of the liquid, it would make about 10^8 collisions (about the cube root of the number of molecules present) in that hour. Each molecule would do the same, so you would get around 10^31 to 10^32 molecular collisions in this sludge per hour, or conservatively 10^28/second in a CUP FULL.
You are talking about making a billion collisions a second on the whole face of the earth!
Your talking about putting together a rung of DNA from atoms alone in one single collision when we know that there are already several steps along the way.
I wish people would stop fooling around with statistics like this.
Here is something though. An evolutionary molecular biologist that I met about 2 years ago told me that the current data from DNA hybridization and evolutionary modeling suggests that
There was only 1 instance on Prokaryote emergence on earth-at least that all life today came from. The suprise to me being that it only happened once!
There was only 1 instance of Eukaryote emergence on earth! This was an unexpected suprise. It means that all complex cells came from a single complex (Eukaryotic) cell.
If these things are part of the natural drive of evolution, why didn’t they happen hundreds or thousands of times?
Also, embreyos of genetically eyeless flyes were injected at an early cell stage with the mouse eye structure gene. The flyes produced normal flye eyes. Previously, the eyes of protostomates and deuterostomates were not considered to even be homologous structures (heck we know that our heads are not homologous to flye heads). Now showing the reverse of this experiment would be astounding. Imagine if all the info for human eyes existed in the eyespot gene of a flatworm. That is a gap in evolution, as are the prokaryotic and eukaryotic emergence. We don’t know how they happened.
I do know that the statistical argument makes people look stupid.
No offense to the author to whom this was originally a response.