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Not to me; but in this context, to some people it might. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of any well-known expositors of evolutionary theory whom I'd describe as particularly vitriolic. Richard Dawkins? Maybe. But I suspect that many people who'd consider him vitriolic might be mistaking vocality for vitriol.
Since you ask the question who, I'll bite.If a Christian believe God made all, virgin birth, Jesus was God in the flesh, died and rose from the dead, etc... then why would it matter to a Christian to take a stand on whether the 6 days is literal or not? If God can create, who judges how realistic the timing is, unless they are also judging God and elevating themselves to His level? God created an old earth, new earth, whatever.... who cares really. If God made it, why not just accept it?
If you believe it is literal, you must deny evolution. If you do not believe it is literal, then what is the point of it?
If theistic evolution doesn't conflict with evolutionary biology (and I agree it doesn't), then why do you feel that science teachers are forcing students to choose between science and religion if they are teaching their students about evolutionary biology alone? And how does this gateway of theistic evolution you're advocating work? Does the teacher simply preface his evolutionary biology teaching by saying something to the extent of "Evolution deals with the origin of life, not the origin of the universe, so it doesn't necessarily disprove the existence of a god?"
I agree there is change over time. But the change does not follow any evolutionary pattern. In Cambrian we find a burst of complex life where almost all phyla originated. Before Cambrians we had simple multicelled organisms. In other words life exploded on the scene. Then we see contradictory patterns of abrupt appearance of many formsand diversity explosions followed by a tailing off of diversity in the fossilrecord. We see bursts of new specieswhich then die off over time looking more like the inverse of the tree of life. At the molecular level, DNA and protein sequences are notwhat we expected and evolutionists have to construct all manner of ad hocadjustments to make sense of the data. We also see convergent evolution every where.. We see it in unrelated species from distant part of the evolutionary tree what should be evolutionary similarities but are not. (Tasmanian wolf , north american wolf) . But when we look under the hood we see profound convergence of highly detail, specific designs in distance species (sonar in bats and dolphins for example) With DNA sequencing we see that convergent evolution isn't rare but ubiquitous.'Time Kibitzer said:
Sorry to be confused, but not really sure what you are asking or qualifying here. Isn't that how the snake got Eve, confusion? Ironic your post is #666.
If I understand your question correctly, you are asking about the point of Genesis 1 and 2? Imho, it's purpose is to teach the new Israelites (and by extension all man) their relationship to their Creator, a stark contrast to the various forms of religion being widely practiced in Egypt from whence they came, religion being practiced in the land they would be occupying in Canaan; as well as that practiced by the rest of the peoples from whom they were being called out as a new nation. It teaches them about God and his authority over man and creation, and his desired relationship with man. It also teaches about man's place in and over nature, as well as his relationship with God.
In theory, if science and religion don't really seek the same thing, how can the two be in agreement in teaching origins?
You are describing what evolutionary theory is right here... with your own words. We do not know how some of this stuff happens but we know how a lot of it does. Nobody will ever know why or how we got here. Nobody. I also think it is pretty remarkable that you throw words around like "retro viruses", new "rRNA", epigenetics, DNA sequencing, "convergent evolution", NDT, TOE, Evo Devo, Tree of Life, and whatever else. You and others have all of this "evidence" that evolutionary theory is wrong. You fight constantly to prove (the legal form of "proof" here) your point(s) or sway people. You link up videos that claim this and that. You have mountains of "evidence" in the attempt to disprove evolutionary theory. Yet, you don't have one test, one result, one hypothesis that can be tested by third parties or anything of that sort.
For the first point, I was going off your statement of "wouldn't it be prudent to pursue an avenue that wouldn't force someone to choose between science and religion when such a choice isn't necessary?" I don't see how simply educating students about evolutionary biology forces such a choice. In regard to the second point, so you think bringing up theistic evolution explicitly should be done? So I suppose you disagree with the notion that theism, or other faith based beliefs, have no place in science classrooms?
Yes.Usually he, at least tacitly, acknowledges that evolution is a theory that is testable, but either fabricates situations where it "fails" or misrepresents research to suggest that the entire field has been "thrown out" or something similar.If someone isn't willing to admit that evolution is a testable scientific theory, there's no point in going any further.The irony of this point is that intelligent design is repackaged creationism which of course no one mistakes for a scientific theory. Even its most spirited exponents like Michael Behe have nothing to say about how intelligent design can be tested or falsified. They appear to use the term "intelligent design" to be some strange catch-all for "doubt about evolution." Since golddigger is little more than a parrot of creationist web sites, he suffers the same pitfall. If someone really did have testable theory about how life evolved, it would be interesting to study something like that. No one promoting ID even attempts to promote it as such. It all boils down to "God did it" usually because "there is uncertainty in the current theory of evolution." golddigger doesn't seem to understand what passes for a scientific theory and what doesn't. It's just a little strange to see him actually going backwards on this topic because I was certain he at least agreed with the stipulation of evolution as a scientific theory.'Maurile Tremblay said:
For someone like yourself who clearly puts a lot of effort into learning about and discussing science and who is more than willing to ignore certain theories due to not enough evidence, I don't understand how you're then willing to associate yourself with something like creationism/intelligent design for which there is no evidence at all. Scientists don't rule out the existence of God in their assumptions, science is entirely driven by evidence as you know, and since there is no evidence for God, that is why he is "ruled out".
That right there....right freaking there is why you are a joke. You have no idea what science is.
That approach is a literalist approach, as well. It is not all or nothing. It is very easy to find immense value in both the Old and New Testament without reading them literally like a history book, which no one with any sense should ever do. Saying they have no point because they are not read literally is moronic.
We would not stop studying nature without evolution. There will also be facts about nature generated by observation and testing. Both ID and evolution use the same logic. What theory best describes the facts that are available. The debate does not stifle science in any way.
All of these examples boil down to "gee, this seems complicated. God did it." Evolution is sufficient to explain patterns, structures, and information content of the genome. This isn't even your best effort. Of course, all you did was post a link, so you're only partially at fault.
Link Is a law, in essence, something which has no detractors --> a unifying 'concept' for which scientists (at the present time) are in accordance with? Is a law a single idea by which all scientists, regardless of discipline, conform?"
Please explain this
What theory of evolution are we talking about ? NDT, Modern Evolution theories... then use whatever theory you choose and prove what you just stated as fact.You can't . Evolution has no freaking idea how information is added toe the genome. The best they do is gene duplication followed by a mutation (Modern Evolutionary Theory)
What debate is this?
If you take it on whole acccepting that it is not literal, where do you draw the line?At some point you have to pick and choose what you take literally. In every one of these threads you can find someone willing to accept creationism, a talking bush, Eve literaly coming from a rib, Job, Noah... what have you, as untrue or non-literal. But then follow these apparently reasonable statements with an adament persistance that a man was resurrected when an angel removed the stone from his grave 3 days posthumous.
Yeah, we've done the "pick and choose" thing a million times before. It's not difficult. Read Job. Then read Luke. You should have no problem understanding why one should be taken as (purported) history while the other is literature.
At least for me personally, I find Dawkins to be obnoxious, which I guess qualifies as "vitriolic." Sam Dawkins is similar although to a lesser extent. If you put yourself in the position of a non-fundamentalist theist and read their stuff, it's sort of hard not to be put off by both their tone and their choice of targets (Pat Robertson? Really?). I posted a long time ago that I liked Breaking the Spell though. That was a challenging read.
Leaving aside that you're not worried about whether a) evolution is a scientific theory and b) ID is not a scientific theory, don't think I haven't noticed that your favorite distracting hat-hanging statement is that information cannot be increased in a genome. Short answer: of course it can.Not only can information be added to the genome by mutation (a term you may have heard of), but the amount of genetic material can also increase. Gene duplication is a well known mechanism for this to occur, and certainly you have some exposure to this. Not all mutations are useful, but natural selection dictates which genetic mutations are retained and passed on to progeny.One of the interesting aspects of evolution (effectively mutation of the genome and natural selection) is that you can simulate the process using a computer to test whether these mechanisms (which are understood) actually add information to the system as a whole. Strictly speaking, an increase in information isn't required in evolution, be we know that in many cases it is, especially if we consider the totality of how organisms of changed over a billion year time scale. Even using simplified models of mutation and natural selection, computer simulations clearly demonstrate that information can be added to the genome over time. I'm not sure when or where this misconception arose from, but my guess is that this question isn't one that most people are familiar with, so it probably induces a lot of blank stares. You'll have no such luck here.
I understand your confusion but you are applying a literalist mindset, too. There doesnt need to be a line drawn. The ancients did not write the way we do nor did they interpret and understand their narratives and literature and religious scripture the way we do. For example, the Torah has a whole genre of interpretive learning and teaching built up around it over millenia called the Talmud and midrash. It is only simplistic types with little foundation in history or real religious learning who adopt the literalist mindset when it comes to the Bible. Maybe a perfect god would provide his true and perfect message in a complex but beautiful series of symbolic teachings and narratives which require deeper introspection and study and constant growth and understanding?If you take it on whole acccepting that it is not literal, where do you draw the line?At some point you have to pick and choose what you take literally. In every one of these threads you can find someone willing to accept creationism, a talking bush, Eve literaly coming from a rib, Job, Noah... what have you, as untrue or non-literal. But then follow these apparently reasonable statements with an adament persistance that a man was resurrected when an angel removed the stone from his grave 3 days posthumous.
What allows you to discern the two sentences above? Is a talking bush somehow less logical than a zombie/ghost?
If a perfect god wrote the bible, there should not be this wild fluctuation in interpretation. If there were a true and perfect message, it would not be so impossible for people to agree on.
I was hoping for more butterflies.He can't prove God exists. He can only prove that evolution does not.
There are a number of ways to quantify informational content. By every measure I'm aware of, GATTACA has less information than GATTATACA. (That's my attempt at representing gene-duplication symbolically: the TA is duplicated in the latter instance.)Here's a real world example where gene duplication didn't simply increase informational content for the heck of it; it led to a novel function! Press release, journal article.
You would think that if Jude Law's genes were so perfect, he wouldn't be balding in the movie.
Do you believe that Adam was the first man? Or do you believe that story is myth meant as allegory? Does a theistic evolutionist believe that human beings evolved from earlier life forms?
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.
Gene duplication does not change or increase information it simply repeats existing information. It does not add anything new. For something to evolve it requires new information. Natural selection is not this all powerful selection mechanism you hold it out to be. Natural selection is an extremely inefficient method of spreading traits in populations unless a trait has an extremely high selection coefficient.
A longer sequence of DNA has more information than a shorter one. The interesting thing about this mechanism, clumsy as it is, is that the duplicated gene isn't subjected to similar selective pressures, so it can mutate in very interesting ways before it is selected and retained. You seem to think that "information" requires novelty. Not necessarily. Fortunately, the mechanism of mutation allows for these new genes to be modified in interesting ways even if the process is horrendously slow.
Of course it's slow and inefficient. How else would it work?
That's fine, don't worry about the simulations. I only brought it up because it's a very nice way to test evolutionary principles without having to wait so long for organisms to do something interesting, as in Lenski's work with E. coli (which is well over 50k generations now). Scientists use simulations all the time, and while the pitfalls of garbage-in garbage-out apply, a well constructed algorithm can lead to some striking insights. The principles of evolution are nicely modeled because they follow a fairly simple set of rules which in turn are easily implemented as algorithms within very fast computers.The topic of evolutionary algorithms is an interesting one. The idea of starting with something messy and letting random mutations take it into interesting directions, given a set of selection criteria, isn't just useful for life.. it's useful for a lot of other things too. It's tempting to believe that designing something is the best way to go, but often picking out the gems from randomized populations and doing it again is a great way to discover things that aren't obvious or expected. For example, aptamer design using the SELEX method is essentially an evolutionary process for picking out oligonucleotides that adhere to things.
http://evolutionfairytale.com/forum//index.php?showtopic=1520&st=20&p=16888entry16888Hey, Bruce.'MasterofOrion said:
This has been an interesting hypothesis for a long time but it isn't true. Duplicated genes degrade and do not store up new information to be used at another time.See this article about gene duplication.. It requires a subscription so I will quote and highlight important sections.
Why don't you include the numerous debunkings of Joseph Esfandiar Hannon Bozorgmehr's writings?
Yes, that's nice. You linked a journal article by a non-scientist (who posts elsewhere as "Atheistoclast"
) regarding this topic who slams the concept because, gasp, most mutations aren't beneficial. Yeah, no kidding.I'm starting to think you're a bot, Bruce. You're a steady stream of links without any new insight or words of your own. Hell, that last bit you threw out was from a debate you had in 2007. Don't you ever tire of hitting your head against the wall? If only you had some kind of selective mechanism to weed out the nonsense.
That is what I'm getting. You, Ivan and others have chosen to believe it isn't literal. Others chose to believe it is how god created earth and man. There are many instances where this is the case.The notion that Genesis 1-3 should not be taken literally isn't a recent development, and it's not a "pick-and-choose" scenario brought forth by any discovery via the scientific method. Augustine rejected the literal six day creation story for theological reasons around 1500 years before Origin of Species was published.
In the end the only source for the belief in an invisible all powerful perfect being (for Christians) is the bible.At some point as a Christian you accept this. You have to take this literally... if you don't then I am quite confused. You can tell me 99% of it is non-literal, but not one Christian can say 100%.I understand your confusion but you are applying a literalist mindset, too. There doesnt need to be a line drawn. The ancients did not write the way we do nor did they interpret and understand their narratives and literature and religious scripture the way we do. For example, the Torah has a whole genre of interpretive learning and teaching built up around it over millenia called the Talmud and midrash. It is only simplistic types with little foundation in history or real religious learning who adopt the literalist mindset when it comes to the Bible. Maybe a perfect god would provide his true and perfect message in a complex but beautiful series of symbolic teachings and narratives which require deeper introspection and study and constant growth and understanding?If you take it on whole acccepting that it is not literal, where do you draw the line?At some point you have to pick and choose what you take literally. In every one of these threads you can find someone willing to accept creationism, a talking bush, Eve literaly coming from a rib, Job, Noah... what have you, as untrue or non-literal. But then follow these apparently reasonable statements with an adament persistance that a man was resurrected when an angel removed the stone from his grave 3 days posthumous.
What allows you to discern the two sentences above? Is a talking bush somehow less logical than a zombie/ghost?
If a perfect god wrote the bible, there should not be this wild fluctuation in interpretation. If there were a true and perfect message, it would not be so impossible for people to agree on.
That sounds perfect to me.
? Not trying to 'trap' you into anything. I'm genuinely curious about how you, as one who believes in theistic evolution, came to the conclusion that evolution is compatible with the teachings of the Bible. I can see how one can read Genesis as symbolic imagery, but I'm wondering if that kind of interpretation fits with Biblical teachings. I tend to believe that Genesis is meant as both symbolic and literal. Literal in the sense that God created man with a snap of his fingers. After all, miracles are a big part of the Bible and its teachings. If we can accept a virgin birth or raising of the dead, why can't we believe God created the first human being from nothing but dirt and a breath into his nostrils? I'm curious if theistic evolutionists believe this way because of the evidence that things evolved over a long period of time and subsequently altered understanding to allow this discovery to fit with Bible teachings. We can believe Mary was a virgin because there is no evidence that she wasn't a virgin. So we accept this as a miracle. If there were no evidence of evolution, perhaps there would be a lot more creationists Christians out there. But I wonder are there faith centered Biblical teachings that do not fit well with the theory of evolution. Honest question and I'd appreciate any type of discussion that might shed some further light on your belief that evolutionary biology is not in conflict with religious beliefs and teachings.
Oh my.
This is peer reviewed paper. Complexity has a review process , by scientist, for articles it publishes. It is not a I.D. publication. I don't know what his education he has but generally research like this isn't done by someone who knows what they are doing. Also similar articles have been published in PNAS. You stated that you have been published in PNAS. Do they have a review process? If you have been through this process of publishing something in a Tier I publication you would not be saying the things you just did.Now he proof is on you. Pull out one example where gene duplication increased information and produced something novel. Don't give me crap that it can be proven by a computer simulation. You are all about intimidation, ridicule, ad hominem attacks but what you are not about is substance.Yes, that's nice. You linked a journal article by a non-scientist (who posts elsewhere as "Atheistoclast"
Oh, and your internet formatting is about as accomplished as Hipple's. Not only is it horrible to look at, it's a dead giveaway that you're not typing up anything new.
Some great reading there. I can't decide if it is shtick or not.
