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I think we need to make a distinction between the FACT that life HAS evolved on this planet (the fossil record shows a clear progression from very simple organisms to more and more complex ones over a vast time scale) and the THEORY that tries to explain HOW this happened。 The fossil record is all the evidence we need to show that the type of life on this planet has gotten more and more complex over a long time scale, while the THEORY of evolution exists to explain how and why this increasing complexity of life occurred. 

I don't think the theory of evolution is required to further the advance of science any more that say Newtonian Physics or Quantum Mechanics or any other scientific theory is required to further the advance of science. Perhaps in 100 years a scientist will make a revolutionary discovery that will overthrow the prevailing theories as to how the evolution of life occurred on this planet, just as Einstein's theory of relativity overthrew the Newtonian theory of gravity. That's just the nature of science.

glfredrick wrote:

That's the point -- ID (for practical or other) purposes is NOT religious in nature, a poorly decided court case aside.

You can't be serious. Really. This could be a dictionary definition for "intellectual dishonesty".

glfredrick wrote:

axe wrote:

glfredrick wrote:

That's the point -- ID (for practical or other) purposes is NOT religious in nature, a poorly decided court case aside.

You can't be serious. Really. This could be a dictionary definition for "intellectual dishonesty".

Not only am I serious, but you, in fact, are the one pushing the "religion" button on this issue -- not me.  By claiming a basis in religion, all ID debate, hypothesis, observation, falsification, et al, is tossed into the same bin as alchemy or magic, and that is not helping the cause of science, but hindering it.

We can easily leave religion completely out of the equation for ID and simply let the chips fall where they may.  IF the evidence leads to design, then perhaps we can re-think the entire issue, and perhaps religion enters the fray at that point, for if the inference is that there is a designer, then obviously, the search for that designer ought to begin in earnest.  Until that point, tossing out the religion card is akin to Obama playing the race card.  A bad call in both cases, and one that points to the bias of the one making that bad call in the first place.

There HAS to be a highly powerful, quasi-omnipotent being for ID to work. It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room that you (and other proponents of ID) keep trying to hide. The very theory of ID requires that being, and now you're telling us to ignore that, as if the "theory" could somehow stand up without it? That's absolute horseshit. You create an artificial construct to attribute our existence to a higher being, then tell us we can't argue about said being because we aren't helping the cause of science? Do you not understand that ID NEEDS a deity or an all-powerful being? It's the central point of your whole theory FFS.

glfredrick wrote:

Now, get back to the point I made, and stop with all the assumptions...

IS evolution needed to further the advances of science?  So far, I've seen NO evidence brought forth in this post to suggest that it IS needed -- only a bunch of rhetorical crap flung in my direction that supposedly proves that I have some religious agenda cooking.

It doesn't NEED to do anything. It serves no actual purpose -- we could just stop researching our origins and our day-to-day life wouldn't really be affected. We could also eliminate all budgets dedicated to space exploration, and raze historic buildings to replace them with safer, more energy-efficient new ones. We don't NEED a God either, maybe we can ban religion while we're at it. How do you like them apples?

You idiots....


Evolutionary Biology isn't a PHILOSOPHY, it's a vast body of facts that we have collected about how the universe functions; THAT NEVER TRIES TO ANSWER THE *WHY* OF THE FUNCTIONING.

It simply presents the data and says; "Here: This is what we have learned thus far."


Along come you idiots with your "Creation Science", a term that makes me gag every time I am forced to say it; and you insist that you have "The Answer".

You criticize Evolutionary Biology for not answering a question that it does not CLAIM it answers and then you provide an answer to that questions that has ZERO scientific basis and can ONLY be accepted on faith.


And you wonder why you get no respect and the scientific establishment is laughing at you.


I'M laughing at you and I actually BELIEVE this ID bullshit.

Except I'm not STUPID enough to think that it is ANYTHING more than a leap of faith. I'm not IGNORANT enough to think that it's equivalent to science.


But you nutters...?


Apparently you ARE both stupid and ignorant enough.

"As I said in the other thread, there is ONE major difference at the head of the ID/CS hypothesis -- ID works from an evidence forward position, while CS works from a Creator backward position. "

Not much of a difference, that - a little semantic nip and tuck.

The Chemist wrote:

I think we need to make a distinction between the FACT that life HAS evolved on this planet (the fossil record shows a clear progression from very simple organisms to more and more complex ones over a vast time scale) and the THEORY that tries to explain HOW this happened。 The fossil record is all the evidence we need to show that the type of life on this planet has gotten more and more complex over a long time scale, while the THEORY of evolution exists to explain how and why this increasing complexity of life occurred.

There is NO clear progression that isn't explained by a "just so story" (a narrative where one person simply makes the claim that this has progressed into that with no evidence to back up the claim).  What we DO have is evidence that all sorts of creatures lived in various epochs of the history of this planet.  That is ALL we actually have.  Even the progression is under fire in evolutionist camps, with various alternative explanations to deal with issues such as the Cambrian explosition, etc.

Further, there are NO MEANS that have so far been demonstrated to advance the genome, or the protien base that it is constructed of, in order to create from simple single-celled life to the complex life that is, say, human or higher mammal.

The Chemist wrote:

I don't think the theory of evolution is required to further the advance of science any more that say Newtonian Physics or Quantum Mechanics or any other scientific theory is required to further the advance of science. Perhaps in 100 years a scientist will make a revolutionary discovery that will overthrow the prevailing theories as to how the evolution of life occurred on this planet, just as Einstein's theory of relativity overthrew the Newtonian theory of gravity. That's just the nature of science.

I am counting on your premise here to be true, and from what I've read on the subject in the past 20 years, I would say that this revolution is well under way.

I really (REALLY) need to sit down and post a bunch of quotes from cutting edge evolutionary work -- it is self-refuting at every turn of one turns off the ideology that drives it. There are SO MANY "just so stories" and narratives at work in the process that NO OTHER branch of science would allow what passes as evidence to stand.

For instance, it is SO easy to use the word "change."  Yet, I'm still waiting to see how the sort of change that is so easily written come about.  Change from inorganic to ortganic material, change from basic organic acids to protiens, change from protiens to properly folded with the correct chilarity protiens that further instruct the RNA and DNA sequences in how to preserve and replicate life, etc.  MUCH of that is know -- NONE of it is explained in any fashion, save for saying "it must be so (somehow)."

MC Escher wrote:

glfredrick wrote:

I really (REALLY) need to sit down and post a bunch of quotes from cutting edge evolutionary work -- it is self-refuting at every turn of one turns off the ideology that drives it.

A) Evolutionary Biology is not an "Ideology", in spite of the fact that your personal paradigm sees the world in that way.

B) Your ability to post vast tracts of copied/pasted material is well known. Your ability to understand what you're posting is so far unproven.

I have actually copied very little AND THEN IN RESPONSE TO YOUR DIRECT REQUEST TO FURNISH SOME EVIDENCE.

Get it?  Thought not...

MC Escher wrote:

You just sound stupider and stupider.

1) You're perception of what constitutes....

I'm not really paying attention to this "discussion" anymore but I found this too funny to not comment.

The execution of this truism is always amusing.

Jesus Is My Pilot wrote:

MC Escher wrote:

You just sound stupider and stupider.

1) You're perception of what constitutes....

I'm not really paying attention to this "discussion" anymore but I found this too funny to not comment.

The execution of this truism is always amusing.

Damn! I hate when I screw up the "You're/Your" thing.

Qulity post Buho.

glfredrick wrote:

Further, there are NO MEANS that have so far been demonstrated to advance the genome, or the protien base that it is constructed of, in order to create from simple single-celled life to the complex life that is, say, human or higher mammal.

First off, the genome is not constructed of proteins. 

Why should there be?  The genome is equally adept at storing very little information or quite a lot.  The evolution of larger organisms is attributable more to the bacterial symbiosis between the predecessors of our cells and mitochondria, which provided them the energy required to form multicellular aggregations and later tissues, organs, and bodies.  The advent of chromosomes helped as well, but not a great deal.  There's not a lot of fundamental chemical difference between DNA of a bacterium and that of a human - the distinction is between content, organization, and size. 

Please don't take offense to this - I don't mean to offend.  But you seem to be arguing from the perspective of a layman who doesn't fully understand the science he's judging.  That's not a terribly productive place to argue from, and it leads to you - an otherwise bright chap, I perceive - to make statements like the above, which are confused to the point of meaninglessness.  Or perhaps I simply don't understand what you mean when you ask what "advances" the genome.

For instance, it is SO easy to use the word "change."  Yet, I'm still waiting to see how the sort of change that is so easily written come about.

Some of it is random.  Some of it is an emergent property of the laws of chemistry and physics that govern biochemical reactions.  Some of it is directly attributable to things like mineral catalysts and peculiarities of synthesis reactions.  It's very easy for simple rules to create complex systems from a given set of starting conditions.

Change from inorganic to ortganic material

What's the distinction?  Organic and inorganic are semantic human categorizations, nothing more.

change from basic organic acids to protiens

I've synthesized a protein in a test tube before.  It's a simple chemical reaction.

change from protiens to properly folded with the correct chilarity protiens that further instruct the RNA and DNA sequences in how to preserve and replicate life, etc.

There is no "correct" chirality.  As for the information content of nucleic acids, proteins are hardly necessary for that; ribozymes catalyze their own reproduction independently.  Check out the body of research on the "RNA World" if you're curious.

Last edited by Turbiodiesel! (07-11-2008 01:02 AM)

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

glfredrick wrote:

Further, there are NO MEANS that have so far been demonstrated to advance the genome, or the protein base that it is constructed of, in order to create from simple single-celled life to the complex life that is, say, human or higher mammal.

First off, the genome is not constructed of proteins.

Actually, though the "genome" is informationally based, that information is housed in complicated protein structures, so yes, I am technically correct.  Unless, of course, you are willing to concede the fact that information stands alone from material.  If you go down that route, you have already lost your battle, for in your scheme information depends on material -- cause and effect only.

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

Why should there be?  The genome is equally adept at storing very little information or quite a lot.  The evolution of larger organisms is attributable more to the bacterial symbiosis between the predecessors of our cells and mitochondria, which provided them the energy required to form multicellular aggregations and later tissues, organs, and bodies.  The advent of chromosomes helped as well, but not a great deal.  There's not a lot of fundamental chemical difference between DNA of a bacterium and that of a human - the distinction is between content, organization, and size.

Nice twist and what a great "just so story."  This is what I write about so often.  What exactly have you just written?  Though all scientific sounding, it says, really, nothing.  The genome can hold little or much information -- duh...  The evolution of large organisms is dependent on symbiosis -- that is a current working hypothesis, but in no way fact.  "Chromosomes helped..." -- Really?  It seems as if chromosomes are actually a required part of cell structure...  That there are similarities in structure between simple cells and complex cells -- again, duh...  Design would predict that.

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

Please don't take offense to this - I don't mean to offend.  But you seem to be arguing from the perspective of a layman who doesn't fully understand the science he's judging.  That's not a terribly productive place to argue from, and it leads to you - an otherwise bright chap, I perceive - to make statements like the above, which are confused to the point of meaninglessness.  Or perhaps I simply don't understand what you mean when you ask what "advances" the genome.

Part and parcel of the evolutionary scheme of live is that the genome "advanced" somehow from simple organic "soup" to fully replicating complex creatures.  Perhaps you do not like my semantics, but the fact that the instructional database carried within each cell needed, somehow, to grow more complex is a REQUIREMENT of EVERY evolutionary theory (and you are correct in pointing out that there are many...).  Dancing around this issue won't actually help your cause.

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

For instance, it is SO easy to use the word "change."  Yet, I'm still waiting to see how the sort of change that is so easily written come about.

Some of it is random.  Some of it is an emergent property of the laws of chemistry and physics that govern biochemical reactions.  Some of it is directly attributable to things like mineral catalysts and peculiarities of synthesis reactions.  It's very easy for simple rules to create complex systems from a given set of starting conditions.

Are you giving away the principle Darwinian method for change?  Is change directed?  Starting to sound like you are grasping or borrowing design terminology...

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

Change from inorganic to organic material

What's the distinction?  Organic and inorganic are semantic human categorizations, nothing more.

From which field of science?  Chemistry?  Biology?  If what you are saying is true, why then the distinction, and why experiments such as Miller, et al?

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

change from basic organic acids to proteins

I've synthesized a protein in a test tube before.  It's a simple chemical reaction.

By design of the experiment...  Do it in the wild under natural conditions. 

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

change from proteins to properly folded with the correct chilarity proteins that further instruct the RNA and DNA sequences in how to preserve and replicate life, etc.

There is no "correct" chirality.  As for the information content of nucleic acids, proteins are hardly necessary for that; ribozymes catalyze their own reproduction independently.  Check out the body of research on the "RNA World" if you're curious.

I could cite any number of articles on this aspect alone, but I get in trouble when I "cut and paste."  But, I want to deal more specifically with your second statement here...  What you have unwittingly done is fabricate another "just so story."  When you say (so easily) that "ribozomes catalyze their own reproduction independently..." you fail to deal with the complexity, the level of cellular machinery and interweaving of cell processes that MUST occur.  WAY easy to say -- not easy at all -- and some would say irreducibly complex -- to accomplish.  Without ALL the pieces in place in the cell, this, simply, cannot happen, narrative aside.

zukiphile wrote:

glfredrick wrote:

..."just so story."

In honor of the 100th time you've used what appears to be a term of art in your explanation, perhaps you could explain it.

Amen to that.  I've seen this used online by several fundies and I'm starting to feel left out.   I never got the memo from the brotherhood...