Thanks, I was just going to post that link upon seeing this silly thread.Originally Posted by OrphanPip
To the OP: Darwin lived and worked some 150 years ago. He knew very little about evolution compared with what we know now. The Cambrian Explosion is not a problem for biology.
The Discovery Institute and the whole ID crowd are hucksters and frauds, and this is the latest in their line of books aimed at the gullible.
Why did the evolutionary chain of the development of species stop? The species evolved and the mutations stopped themselves at a defined point in time. This is ludicrous. A self-sustaining system not guided by a peripheral hand or a set of laws. CHANCE, CHANCE, CHANCE! If you are dumb enough to believe that life can evolve in a vacuum without cause or effect, then I think that you are delirious.
It takes much more faith to believe that matter came from nothing, and evolved into a complex form, than to believe an intelligent person designed it. Think about your experience in the material world that you live in. Does any complex construct come into being without a designer?
Orphan, your guru defends the fossil record, which is a spottily, constructed gap of evolutionary forms. He defends, but does not address the genetic anomalies. His rationale is no better than Meyer's thesis. Either you believe in the sloppily constructed fossil chronology or you don't. I think that many of the transitional forms are fakes or mistaken deformities. If you want to believe in the contrived fossil record more power to you. I do not accept it.
It didn't stop...
You display a great deal of ignorance about basic biology, let alone the complexity of evolution. Organisms continue to evolve continuously because mutations accumulate in the genome regardless, whether it is subject to selective pressure or if change just accumulates randomly through genetic drift. Saying evolution is guided by chance is a bit of misrepresentation, evolution involves an element of chance in what mutations occur and are preserved in the short term, however natural selection is not a random process. Exactly what you mean by a "lack of cause and effect" is unclear as well, since none of the popular hypotheses about abiogenesis involve ignoring causes or effects, and this is beside the fact that evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life but merely how life changes once it does exist.
Evolutionary theory has nothing to do with the origin of matter so I don't really care about addressing that issue at the moment (though quantum physics can account for matter coming from nothing). Snowflakes are complex structures which form without a conscious designer.
Which genetic anomalies and what aspects of the fossil record is spotty, I'm not in the habit of responding to such a high degree of vaguery. Frankly your incredulity, given your apparent complete lack of knowledge about basic biology, does not make for much of an impressive rebuttal.
I simply have a B.S. in microbiology and immunology, I am not an expert in evolutionary biology. However, I know enough about genetics and evolution to tell that Meyer is full of it and that you do not understand the science.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Some very good points, OrphanPip. A very good view on the actuality of evolution.
You choose to ignore the origination of matter. The evolutionary theory relies on a self-originating, self sustaining chain reaction of matter into more complex forms. If you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by Chance. I know that the evolutionary biologists believe that over a lengthy period of time (millions of years) that even unseemly, unlikely sharing of DNA information among species can result in steps forward in the evolution of species. I do not believe this. The idea that chance combinations that have an almost 0% chance of occurring in nature would happen if given enough time is preposterous to me. Evolution seeks to describe the origin of the species without establishing the originator.
One point: Although mutations play a role in evolution, the evolutionary "benefit" of sexual reproduction is that it creates genetic diversity even WITHOUT mutation. Darwinian evolutionary principles (genes spread based on descendant leaving success, along with a couple of other factors, given modern sociobiology) are relevant even without mutation.
That's not a problem. What do you think we have you for? We'll give you that job. Case solved and closed.
You are very confused. Lots of things produce complex forms without conscious input: snowflakes, lipid micelles, clay structures, and many chemical compounds under reducing conditions in a closed system with an external energy source.
The idea that "if you have no creator or designer, then you have a process fueled by chance" is just stupid.
Again, what you believe doesn't really matter because you don't seem to know much about anything when it comes to evolution, abiogenesis, or basic genetics. Evolution is an observable fact, new species arise over time and any attempt to deny this is delusional. Evolutionary theory addresses the mechanism of these changes, this does not require establishing any originator.
Last edited by OrphanPip; 06-24-2013 at 01:48 PM.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Once more, excellent points. The mechanisms seem to appear out of nothing. To be concerned with that is very stupid. We can only talk sensibly about them when they appear and in that context. Obviously it is not necessarily out of nothing. To seek confirmation on that is just as stupid as to presuppose what we have no way of knowing. Even without definite genome mutation, genome changes are seen, and it is absolutely impossible to determine whether it is adaptation the motivation or not. So, as a figure of speech we may say they are configured from nothing simply because we will never be able to see beyond. But we clearly see causes and effects even when causes may be effects and effects causes. This is not a belief. A belief is useless and totally credible in this context. This is incredible, like every truth we discover.
Your Canadian schizophrenia is causing megalomaniac galore in the ignorant virtuoso. LOL
You are talking apples and oranges. You compare the structural complexity of a snowflake to the extremely complex DNA Code. As Lee Stroble said, "The data at the core of life is not diaorganized, its not simply orderly like salt crystals, but it is complex and specific information that can accomplish a bewildering task--the building of biological machines that far outstrip human technological capabilities". In the complex language the mistake that gets caught turns out to be one error for every ten billion letters. The DNA Code is an orderly construct. It is not a highly transmutable, transformative network. The chance, transformational mutations would take a lot of chance, luck, and time. I think that the orderly, sequential DNA Code is a big problem for evolutionary biologists.
RNA molecules have been shown to be capable of forming spontaneously in reducing conditions, so it simply isn't true that nucleic acid codes are not analogous to other spontaneously forming ordered structures. The rest of your post is confused gibberish that doesn't really make any sense. "Transformational mutations," assuming you mean some sort of mutation that results in a phenotypic change, have been observed with relative frequency. Your statement about "mistakes that get caught" is just false, given that rates of mutation and repair vary radically between different organisms, with viruses having highly error prone replication, which is why viruses like HIV strains are able to evolve drug resistance relatively quickly to AZT. I don't know what you mean about DNA not being highly transmutable, the actual DNA molecule undergoes frequent chemical modification, depending on the organism the DNA can be snipped, silenced, up or down regulated, etc. The biochemistry of DNA is certainly complex but this has little to do with the fact that evolution is an observable phenomena.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Millions of years, perhaps?
Oh lord, here we go again...
In the red corner, representing the forces of scientific inquiry and the bleedin' obvious we have... OrphanPip!
In the blue corner, representing the Uri Geller Institute of Advanced Spoon Bending we have... some other people!
For the record, my money is on OrphanPip. That we still call it the 'theory' of evolution continues to amaze me, given that we have actually observed it. Arguing against it is no more realistic than continuing to insist that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe, or for that matter that it is flat.
"I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche
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