Canadians divided over creation and evolution

[WIP]

Yes, open mind! As a scientist should! And I agree whole-heartedly! THAT'S in fact the point of my argument!

Quite the contrary to what Dawkins is busily engaged in.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Richard Dawkins cannot impose his will on the biological sciences community as is the case in religion, where the leader (pope, denomination leader or televangelist) can use his position of authority to remove conflicting ideas and the people who hold them. If you actually read anything besides your religious propaganda sites, you would discover that, as I said before, Dawkins does have his detractors who think he's pushed too hard on his gene-centered mechanism for evolution; but, those who advocate species and group level evolution have not yet made an adequate case to add their ideas to evolutionary theory.

Some alternative ideas like Symbiogenesis have been partially accepted -- in this case, it's proponents have been able to convince the scientific community that the mitochondria power plants of one celled organisms actually started out as a separate independent life form, but joined together in primitive eukaryote cells for mutual advantage. However, the symbiosis advocates have not been able to prove their larger claim that cooperation is the main catalyst for evolution, rather than competition.

And that's the difference between science and religion. Religious truth is whatever the leaders feel like making up at the time, and unless a powerplay within the religious hierarchy knocks them off, or they get caught with a gay prostitute like Ted Haggard, they can spout whatever nonsense they want and the flock will have to accept it. But science doesn't work that way. Even the most highly accredited and renowned leaders in the field have to answer challenges based on new evidence. Religion can ignore empirical evidence and pretend the world is 6000 years old -- but science cannot!

[betsy]

You have no idea what you're talking about. Richard Dawkins cannot impose his will on the biological sciences community as is the case in religion,

I hate to think that you're taking this out of context....so I'd give it the benefit of the doubt that you misunderstood. That quote:

Yes, open mind! As a scientist should! And I agree whole-heartedly! THAT'S in fact the point of my argument!

Quite the contrary to what Dawkins is busily engaged in.

... was an answer to your statement.

Your "evidence" only proves that Darwin engaged in the study of nature as a scientist should - with an open mind.

And yes, he's no longer open-minded - as a scientist should.

Dawkins' focus is in his faith - Atheism, and in his vicious attack on Faith in God!

"In the roiling debate between science and religion, it would be hard to exaggerate the enormous influence of Richard Dawkins. The British scientist is religion’s chief prosecutor -- “Darwin’s rottweiler,” as one magazine called him – and quite likely the world’s most famous atheist. Speaking to the American Humanist Association, Dawkins once said, “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

Not surprisingly, these kinds of comments have made Dawkins a lightning rod in the debate over evolution. While he’s a hero to those who can’t stomach superstition or irrationality, his efforts to link Darwinism to atheism have upset the scientists and philosophers who are trying to bridge the gap between science and religion."

http://www.wpr.org/book/dawkins.html

His fundamentalist Atheistic belief had turned him into a.....loose cannon.

Edited May 11, 2009 by betsy

[benny]

Speaking to the American Humanist Association, Dawkins once said, “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

Here Dawkins, in two ways, is proving himself more of a creationist than an evolutionist:

- By not being able to express himself without using religious word like "evil".

- By not being able to imagine evolution eradicating faith without an intentional effort.

[WIP]

So you saw that Moore podcast two years ago. It's being R E F U T E D!

The creationist article you pasted as a refutation of ERV insertions being proof of common origins, did not even deal with that subject! The articles in your link are from a creationist who uses the different scales of genetic similarity between chimpanzees and humans, as somehow being proof that they are unrelated!!!

If you didn't get the question, here's a transcript of Zachary Moore's episode on endogenous retroviruses, the source where I first learned about how the human genome can also serve as a record of where we came from and our relatedness with other animals.

Now, find me a creationist link that refutes the creationist's dilemma of trying to explain away why humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and other primates, which show genomic evidence of infections from the same virus. There seem to be only two options:

1. God or some "intelligent designer" inserts viral DNA into human and other animal's genomes (8% of the entire human genome is from endogenous retroviruses), and inserted the same viral code into different animals such as humans and other primates.....or....

2. Humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and other related primates had a distant ancestor who was infected by a virus during the fertilization stage -- managed to survive the infection early in its life -- and as its descendents diverged down different evolutionary pathways through the process of mutation and natural selection, the non-coding DNA code of that virus was left behind in the permanent record of all of its future offspring.

So which scenario is the more likely one? And are there any creationists who even attempt to answer the question?

Evolution’s DNA Game: Anywhere from 98 to 70%

March 8, 2009 in Evolution | Tags: Charles Darwin, Creation, Darwin, DNA, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Science

"From time to time, there’s a new statistic that comes out which compares the DNA of humans to that of chimps. Due to the similarity in the genetics, these statistics are accompanied by news reports in the media and scientific publications as “proof” that Darwin was right about the descent of man from ape-like creatures. The most commonly cited statistic that I know of says that humans and chimps differ by about 1.5% genetically.

From this, it would seem that such an apparent major similarity between chimps and humans in their DNA seems to show that Creationists are fighting a losing battle in the Evolution-Creation debate. But the question then becomes: “Does similarity necessarily prove common descent?”

A comparison of different analysis’ of the genetic comparisons between chimps and humans seem to show that this is not so clear-cut. They show that different researchers come to different conclusions as to how related we are to chimps. — A certain study from the National Academy of Sciences reveals that,

The conclusion is the old saw that we share 98.5% of our DNA sequence with chimpanzee is probably in error. For this sample, a better estimate would be that 95% of the base pairs are exactly shared between chimpanzee and human DNA.

The difference between this statistic and the earlier one is that the figure of 95% includes the indels while the earlier one doesn’t. Also, yet another study shows that the similarity may be even less, at only 86.7% meaning that the divergence is 13.3%. This also includes the indels. So, with differing results it seems that there is no consensus to the exact similarity between humans and chimps.

I am going to pull the plug here, since the 2nd, so called scientist he quotes from is a shill for the Discovery Institute, and he admits that the 70% similarity that he quotes is mere speculation on his part.

Now, the creationist who pulled out the genome study arguing for a greater degree of differentiation, is based on using different categories of genes for comparison. The 98% number, like the 96% numbers that are often quoted, are based on protein-coding genes in the genomes -- the ones that do the actual work to design the organism. The mainly Japanese research group that called for a larger divergence, were arguing that the insertion and deletion patterns of "mobile" genes called introns (one of a large group of mobile genes that can literally change their positions within the genome).

The research referenced by the creationist has nothing to do with determining human/chimpanzee relatedness -- they are trying to determine a connection between intron insertions and susceptibility to viral diseases. As they say in the report - by studying the degrees of similarity of junkDNA, a better scale of relatedness can be made, since the closely related protein-coding genes of humans and chimps don't explain why the two species have developed so differently, after they diverged from a common ancestor about six million years ago.

Now, the first red flag that goes up when I read your creationist source, is that once again he claims to be making a creationist argument based on his scientific knowledge (in his case, he reveals in a back forth with a critic who posted several comments that he is "studying" physical anthropology, not genetics or molecular biology, which would provide him some grounds to present an expert opinion on the evidence -- although I do give him credit for posting negative comments; most creationists and ID advocates delete tough questions that don't fit in with their plans. At the end of that creationist article he says:

So my conclusion is that even though at first the 98.5% similarity between chimps and humans appears to vindicate Darwin’s theory, it seems to me that to assume that this is proof of common descent is just an over-simplification made by people that want Darwin’s theory to be true.

in other words, even if there was 98% similarity of junkDNA also, he would still not accept it as evidence for common morphology! And yet he thinks he is making a case for humans and chimps being separate creations:

But why should there be genetic similarity at all if we and other species are not from a single common ancestor? — There’s really no problem for either Creationism or Intelligent Design here. The truth is that similarity is actually a necessity to survive. Biochemically, even to have food we need to have the food available we have to be genetically similar to other animal groups, or we couldn’t live. (Click here) So similarity is not proof of evolution, but rather it is proof that we, like other species and organisms, are living beings with certain necessitie

Is that supposed to prove something? Maybe god just decided to use the same building blocks! If he was really trying to advance a scientific theory, he would explore it further (which he does not) and do an analysis of what some other similarities say about design or evolution.

A good place to start would be Protein Functional Redundancy:

Cytochrome C is a ubiquitous gene that is found in all organisms, including animals, plants, and bacteria. It’s an essential gene for cellular metabolism, and helps to provide energy for all life processes. Cytochrome C fulfills the prediction of ubiquitous proteins- that is, it is extremely functionally redundant. Many different amino acid sequences have been shown to fold up into the basic structure required for Cytochrome C function, and in fact among bacterial strains, completely different amino acid sequences are redundantly functional. Experiments in yeast show that if you remove the yeast’s own Cytochrome C protein, you can replace it with Cytochrome C from humans, rats, pigeons, or even fruit flies, and it works fine. A study was published that shows there are, in fact, over 10^93 different possible amino acid sequences for Cytochrome C. That’s more possible sequences then there are atoms in the Universe. So, Cytochrome C is very functionally redundant, and it would be possible for every single different organism to have a completely different amino acid sequence, if evolution is not true.

So, this essential gene that all living organism on earth use for cellular metabolism could have 10 to the 93rd power possible protein formulations -- enough for the "designer" to give every plant, animal, bacteria etc. on earth their own unique cytochrome C protein, and as the article points out, experiments have shown that any Cytochrome C can be used for metabolic function by any plant and animal. In other words, God could have given everything a unique combination, or used one single version for every living thing; so what did he do?

So what do the sequence comparisons show? Let’s compare humans and chimpanzees. If evolution is true, then chimpanzees are our closest relative, but if evolution is not true, we’re no more related to chimps then we are to crickets. But if you compare the amino acid sequence of humans and chimpanzees, you see that they are exactly the same. Exactly the same. And when you compare human Cytochrome C to that of other mammals, you find that there is only about 10 amino acids difference between them. The chance of this happening without shared heredity is about 1 in 10^29. If you compare human Cytochrome C with the organism the least related to us, outside of bacteria, you find that there’s only about 51 amino acids difference between us. The chance of this happening without shared heredity is about 1 in 10^25.

Well, for some crazy reason he decided to follow relatedness patterns that would occur if plants and animals have a common morphology! So, why does God leave evidence of evolution, instead of leaving evidence that he designed and created all life separately?

[WIP]

And yes, he's no longer open-minded - as a scientist should.

NO, scientists shouldn't be open-minded! That would result in any stupid idea coming in and distracting them from the theories they are trying to advance. A scientist should follow where the evidence leads, and if he has strong opinions about his theories and the rival theories of others, he should give it up if the evidence goes against him.

But scientific progress doesn't depend on the open-mindedness of a scientist! Scientists who refuse to change their theories when an avalanche of new evidence falls on them, end up being marginalized as the majority of their colleagues leave them and their outmoded ideas behind, no matter how highly renowned or what great discoveries they had made previously. Do a search for Fred Hoyle, for example! Hoyle advanced the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, which explained the percentage makeup of elements in the Universe. But, on the downside, Hoyle refused to accept the Big Bang theory, and kept promoting his own Steady State Theory as an alternative. At first, he had some followers, but evidence like the cosmic microwave background radiation sealed the deal for most cosmologists -- except for Hoyle! Like the dogged creationists, he kept concocting excuses for how a static universe could give the appearance of expansion, rather than really be expanding -- and unlike your creationist sources, he ended up in the end as the lone advocate for his theory.

Dawkins' focus is in his faith - Atheism, and in his vicious attack on Faith in God!

And you are attacking Richard Dawkins's credentials as a biologist, and science in general, since you cannot take an honest look at the evidence for evolution. I can distinguish between Dawkins the biologist, and Dawkins the philosopher. He is passionate about all of his beliefs, but most atheists and humanists who have done much study of the existence of God or the merits of religious belief, prefer to go to other sources on these subjects. Richard Dawkins does not have the expertise or possibly even the temperament to be a good philosopher, and that's why the theists focus on him rather than atheists such as Richard Carrier, Michael Martin, Quentin Smith, Julian Baggini, Paul Kurtz and others, who have much lower public profiles, but do a better job than Dawkins at answering modern theistic claims of the likes of William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Ravi Zecharias, and the other stars of the God Squad.

[Molly]

And you are attacking Richard Dawkins's credentials as a biologist, and science in general, since you cannot take an honest look at the evidence for evolution. I can distinguish between Dawkins the biologist, and Dawkins the philosopher. He is passionate about all of his beliefs, but most atheists and humanists who have done much study of the existence of God or the merits of religious belief, prefer to go to other sources on these subjects. Richard Dawkins does not have the expertise or possibly even the temperament to be a good philosopher, and that's why the theists focus on him rather than atheists such as Richard Carrier, Michael Martin, Quentin Smith, Julian Baggini, Paul Kurtz and others, who have much lower public profiles, but do a better job than Dawkins at answering modern theistic claims of the likes of William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Ravi Zecharias, and the other stars of the God Squad.

Ah! There, WIP! Stated clearly.

Well done.

[benny]

Ah! There, WIP! Stated clearly.

Well done.

A series of family names cannot be qualified to be called a clear statement.

[benny]

Cytochrome C is a ubiquitous gene that is found in all organisms, including animals, plants, and bacteria. It’s an essential gene for cellular metabolism, and helps to provide energy for all life processes. Cytochrome C fulfills the prediction of ubiquitous proteins- that is, it is extremely functionally redundant. Many different amino acid sequences have been shown to fold up into the basic structure required for Cytochrome C function, and in fact among bacterial strains, completely different amino acid sequences are redundantly functional. Experiments in yeast show that if you remove the yeast’s own Cytochrome C protein, you can replace it with Cytochrome C from humans, rats, pigeons, or even fruit flies, and it works fine. A study was published that shows there are, in fact, over 10^93 different possible amino acid sequences for Cytochrome C. That’s more possible sequences then there are atoms in the Universe. So, Cytochrome C is very functionally redundant, and it would be possible for every single different organism to have a completely different amino acid sequence, if evolution is not true.

So, this essential gene that all living organism on earth use for cellular metabolism could have 10 to the 93rd power possible protein formulations -- enough for the "designer" to give every plant, animal, bacteria etc. on earth their own unique cytochrome C protein, and as the article points out, experiments have shown that any Cytochrome C can be used for metabolic function by any plant and animal. In other words, God could have given everything a unique combination, or used one single version for every living thing; so what did he do?

So what do the sequence comparisons show? Let’s compare humans and chimpanzees. If evolution is true, then chimpanzees are our closest relative, but if evolution is not true, we’re no more related to chimps then we are to crickets. But if you compare the amino acid sequence of humans and chimpanzees, you see that they are exactly the same. Exactly the same. And when you compare human Cytochrome C to that of other mammals, you find that there is only about 10 amino acids difference between them. The chance of this happening without shared heredity is about 1 in 10^29. If you compare human Cytochrome C with the organism the least related to us, outside of bacteria, you find that there’s only about 51 amino acids difference between us. The chance of this happening without shared heredity is about 1 in 10^25.

Actually, science is given accreditation to an evolutionist (bottom up) perspective on those redundant sequences. I see science moving in the direction of the inverse perspective though, an idealist (top down) perspective. To make the later perspective concrete, think of a giant creating a chain of mountains or a mountain with increasing amount of ridges just by letting grains of sand falling.

[WIP]

A series of family names cannot be qualified to be called a clear statement.

I don't think you've made a clear statement since you joined this forum. Just pointless nonsense like this:

Actually, science is given accreditation to an evolutionist (bottom up) perspective on those redundant sequences. I see science moving in the direction of the inverse perspective though, an idealist (top down) perspective. To make the later perspective concrete, think of a giant creating a chain of mountains or a mountain with increasing amount of ridges just by letting grains of sand falling.

[betsy]

NO, scientists shouldn't be open-minded! That would result in any stupid idea coming in and distracting them from the theories they are trying to advance.

How will he know an idea is "stupid" if he doesn't have the open-mindedness to at least take a look at it, listen to the arguments etc..,

Yes, it might cause distraction from the theories - "they are trying to advance" ( a good way of putting it to describe evolutionists) - but if the goal is for the honest pursuit of scientific truth, the true scientist will not just determinedly tunnel his research on one aimed conclusion in mind!

You're describing a fanatic. Not a true scientist.

A scientist should follow where the evidence leads, and if he has strong opinions about his theories and the rival theories of others, he should give it up if the evidence goes against him.

Boy does this sound so objective. See how you contradict yourself in one statement.

We know that he'll never consider the evidence that goes against him....he doesn't have an "open-mind."

[betsy]

WIP,

So you love to point out the "creationist" site that I gave. But what about the link on this podcast you pin your hope on??? EVOLUTION 101!

Not only is it an evolution site....but the argument of this "biologist" guy - at least that's what he claim he is - is so full of reference to TALKORIGIN!

I have one word for you:

E X T R A P O L A T I O N.

Check out the article on DARWIN: Teaching Darwin in School.

Click the link and read the whole article that explains about this. Btw, check the credentials of the author. Easily VERIFIABLE. He's not just someone who could quite easily claim to be a psychiatrist on his "profile".

Edited May 12, 2009 by betsy

[benny]

I don't think you've made a clear statement since you joined this forum.

You obviously have a problem to understand what a paradigm shift is.

[M.Dancer]

You obviously have a problem to understand what a paradigm shift is.

I don't think anyone here envisions the new model for the forum to be one of adolescent angst and idiotic babblings...please shift the paradigm into reverse...

[benny]

I don't think anyone here envisions the new model for the forum to be one of adolescent angst and idiotic babblings...please shift the paradigm into reverse...

vested interest

[M.Dancer]

vested interest

A paradigm shift doesn't exist when it's only one incoherent babbler doing the shifting....

[benny]

A paradigm shift doesn't exist when it's only one incoherent babbler doing the shifting....

There is a world out there.

[DogOnPorch]

Paradigm shift (in terms of science) also assumes that all views are ultimately valid simply by how one interprets the data. This, of course, might work well on paper, but in practice tribal witchdoctors didn't put man on the Moon. A slide rule did.

As mentioned earlier or in another thread, if you have to go in for open heart surgery (ever), make sure to tell the surgeons that you truely believe in this world view (paradigm shift) and wish said witchdoctor to operate in their place.

[benny]

Paradigm shift (in terms of science) also assumes that all views are ultimately valid simply by how one interprets the data. This, of course, might work well on paper, but in practice tribal witchdoctors didn't put man on the Moon. A slide rule did.

As mentioned earlier or in another thread, if you have to go in for open heart surgery (ever), make sure to tell the surgeons that you truely believe in this world view (paradigm shift) and wish said witchdoctor to operate in their place.

Science (surgeons) is the child of religion (witchdoctors) and I cannot imagine science sterile enough to leave no child.

[M.Dancer]

There is a world out there.

Yes, you should consider visiting it sometime. Better bring your mother's credit card though, otherwise you will be forced to actually earn your living...

[Oleg Bach]

Yes, you should consider visiting it sometime. Better bring your mother's credit card though, otherwise you will be forced to actually earn your living...

Remove the credit cards from every last person on earth and lets see who is capable of suriving the old fashioned way...though being able to be mutually co-operative with your fellows and treat all as friends...wealth now is artifical...you have idiots on top of the food chain who frown on those at the bottom - meanwhile those on top really do not create any wealth - just like bankers who sell "services" and "products" - they sell air.

[benny]

Yes, you should consider visiting it sometime. Better bring your mother's credit card though, otherwise you will be forced to actually earn your living...

Mother Earth is very well capitalized.

[GostHacked]

Science (surgeons) is the child of religion (witchdoctors) and I cannot imagine science sterile enough to leave no child.

You are simply not making sense. I know you are trying to be wise and Confucious-like. But it simply is not working. You have failed on every point you make. You are stagnating and derailing the thread.

I will take surgeons over witchdoctors any day.

[Oleg Bach]

You are simply not making sense. I know you are trying to be wise and Confucious-like. But it simply is not working. You have failed on every point you make. You are stagnating and derailing the thread.

I will take surgeons over witchdoctors any day.

You forget as it is almost impossible to find a family doctor - it is also getting more difficult to find skilled and talented surgeons - some surgeons are no better than witch doctors...spoke to a crying girl in the chapel of an east Toronto hospital - they punctured her bladder while attempting to remove a tatoo. Another doctor threatened to remove a section of bowel as punishment for not following his strick instructions - so we fired him and kept the bowel with no problems - Doctors are not what they once were - the quality has gone down...along with nurses - one in particular..confided in me - the young woman was holding a syringe of morphine - and looked me in the face and smiled - "this is what we use to get rid of old people" - so tell me who the witch doctors really are?

[WIP]

You obviously have a problem to understand what a paradigm shift is.

A real paradigm shift occurs when generally accepted scientific theories are found to be in error, or unable to explain new information. In the real world, existing theories are replaced with new ones that better explain the data. The old theory (like Newtonian physics) may still be used in some situations, but its weaknesses are recognized that it can no longer be used as a universal theory that works in all applications.

Another paradigm shift has occurred in the realm of cognitive sciences, as neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists are abandoning behaviourism and psychoanalytic theory as they use tools that can cross-reference brain activity with mental states.....and you seem to have missed this paradigm shift big time!

[Oleg Bach]

Good luck - see you in a million years- and I hope you have this God - atheism evolutionary creation thing worked out - but I doubt it...