Originally posted by dj2beckerIt's been a while, but as I recall, I've corrected your literalist readings of the Bible, and your gross distortions and misunderstandings of science on several occasions.
Which errors are you referring to?
My beliefs?
Your continual effort to claim a distinction between microevolution, which you calim to accept, and so-called macroevolution, which you cannot define clearly, has been refuted thoroughly and clearly at least once every month since I joined this site. You have not offered a new idea, nor learned anything from prior refutations in well over a year, and I suspect much longer than that.
Originally posted by orfeoIf you're really interested on that topic, here's a paper about it. Like all scientific papers it's a pain to read and understand, but you're a lawyer; you're good at reading tough technical material.
To be honest, I have more of a problem with microevolution than macro. I don't have that much difficulty seeing that certain species are related to each other.
I'm a lot more interested in questions like how all the parts that make up a bacterium's flagellum came to work together instead of each one being a useless waste of energy.
Or am I not understanding the definitions?
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html
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Originally posted by WulebgrIt's been a while, but as I recall, I've corrected your literalist readings of the Bible, and your gross distortions and misunderstandings of science on several occasions.
It's been a while, but as I recall, I've corrected your literalist readings of the Bible, and your gross distortions and misunderstandings of science on several occasions.
Your continual effort to claim a distinction between microevolution, which you calim to accept, and so-called macroevolution, which you cannot define clearly, has been refuted thoroughl ...[text shortened]... rned anything from prior refutations in well over a year, and I suspect much longer than that.
By 'corrected' you mean that you disagreed with me, or did you go about proving what I said to be false?
Your continual effort to claim a distinction between microevolution, which you calim to accept, and so-called macroevolution, which you cannot define clearly, has been refuted thoroughly and clearly at least once every month since I joined this site.
Why would I claim a distinction that does not exist? If you don't know what macroevolution is, then I suggest the use of a dictionary at least.
Originally posted by dj2becker
By 'corrected' you mean that you disagreed with me, or did you go about proving what I said to be false?
You are impervious to evidence. I've asked you to support your claims with evidence, as have dozens of others, and all you offer are the same tired refrains that I myself expounded when I was a 22 y.o. fool; all these are refuted at http://www.talkorigins.org/.
Why would I claim a distinction that does not exist?
Because you are ignorant.
If you don't know what macroevolution is, then I suggest the use of a dictionary at least.
I have a stack of dictionaries three feet away, plus two on my hard drive, and seeral more bookmarked online; which one offers a definition that you are prepared to defend with scientific evidence, and that you will not abandon when your evidence is proven fictitious?
While were on the subject of dictionaries, do you affirm that everything that is defined therein indeed exists?
Originally posted by WulebgrYou know, Dj kind of reminds me of the religious dudes in Gallileo's time, he would tell them about the mountains on the moon or the moons of Jupiter, but they refused to even look into the telescope for fear of somehow being contaminated or something. Then there were people who, when he found a double star, actually looked at the image of the two stars side by side when if you looked with your eyes you could only see one, came to the conclusion his telescope was cracked and the therefore his evidence contaminated. The fact that ONLY the double star was showing as a double and not everything was ignored. Sound familiar, DJ?
Originally posted by dj2becker
[b]By 'corrected' you mean that you disagreed with me, or did you go about proving what I said to be false?
You are impervious to evidence. I've asked you to support your claims with evidence, as have dozens of others, and all you offer are the same tired refrains that I myself expounded when I was a 22 y.o. foo ...[text shortened]... ubject of dictionaries, do you affirm that everything that is defined therein indeed exists?[/b]
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Originally posted by WulebgrYou are impervious to evidence. I've asked you to support your claims with evidence, as have dozens of others, and all you offer are the same tired refrains that I myself expounded when I was a 22 y.o. fool; all these are refuted at http://www.talkorigins.org/.
Originally posted by dj2becker
By 'corrected' you mean that you disagreed with me, or did you go about proving what I said to be false?
You are impervious to evidence. I've asked you to support your claims with evidence, as have dozens of others, and all you offer are the same tired refrains that I myself expounded when I was a 22 y.o. foo with scientific evidence, and that you will not abandon when your evidence is proven fictitious?
Evidence for what?
Btw: All the 'talkorigins' stuff is refuted by the following website: http://www.trueorigins.org/
I have a stack of dictionaries three feet away, plus two on my hard drive, and seeral more bookmarked online; which one offers a definition that you are prepared to defend with scientific evidence, and that you will not abandon when your evidence is proven fictitious?
Since it is impossible to prove a negative, the burden of proof is yours.
While were on the subject of dictionaries, do you affirm that everything that is defined therein indeed exists?
The definitions therein a generally accepted.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungRecced for multiple reasons!
If you're really interested on that topic, here's a paper about it. Like all scientific papers it's a pain to read and understand, but you're a lawyer; you're good at reading tough technical material.
http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html
First up, thank you for taking me seriously. Secondly, thanks for not making the appalling mistake of describing a flagellum as 'simple'.
Thank you also for taking me to a serious scientific paper. I haven't read it word for word, but I've read enough for it to be clear that the author is proposing a model, recognises the places where he needs to make a bit of a leap, and even thinks it's worthwhile to discuss whether evolutionary models are worth the paper they're written on.
I should probably mention at this point that I have a Science degree, with a large helping of biochemistry and some molecular biology on the side. So, providing me with papers like this is ultimately more interesting than some glib webpage hellbent on attacking creationists.
Having said that... I'm wondering if anyone has a glib creationist webpage that attacks this article? 😉 Because it's sufficiently honest to acknowledge its own weaknesses, it probably won't worry them too much.
I now amend my previous comment: some people HAVE had a decent shot at explaining bacterial flagella... but there's still a lot they don't know and a lot of work to do.
This argument from creationists on the basis of what they term irreducible complexity is answered by incipient structures providing the means by which such exquisite biological structures originate in evolutionary design space through geological deep time (i.e. millions and billions of years).
The creationist Behe popularised this with his argument that an intelligent designer must have been behind something like a biomechanical wheel like a flagellum (the only place I know where the wheel evolved in nature but I am sure there are more) but crucially he fails to provide a testable hypothesis to support his "argument". This is a considerable problem for any scientific notion if it is untestable because of lack of imagination and/or technology but often spurs advance in new areas also. Many great and good people have stumbled into this murky untestable area and Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the double helix of B form DNA) once commented that the earth might have been seeded by aliens howwever in the absence of a good time machine it is difficult to comment and the idea is thus untestable at present if somewhat interesting.
Much of what we know about genetics and biochemistry is from reductionistic practices it is however fair to say and the understanding of emergent properties like consciousness in highly complex nervous systems is a very tricky problem to explain. To attempt to explain to undergrads what the business of these two fields (biochemistry and genetics) the story is often told of two men overlooking a car assembly plant and never having seen one before how do they go about finding what it's function actually is. The biochemist in order to understand what it is blows it up weighs everything and has a composition of what he is studying whereas geneticists (who are much more sophisticated) takes away workers bringing in wheels and finds the finished product drives into trees and then spends far too much time wondering why these steering wheels cause the structure to be attracted to trees before many years later realising their purpose is perhaps locomotion.
Anyway reductionism is implicit in the sciences in molecular biology for good and bad and great strides have been made but the one thing about biological systems is the level of redundancy in them. In the analogy above it was clean cut where the removal of one component produced a distinctive and testable effect but many times in biology functions have "back ups" that can partially compensate and the phenotype or apperance of the mutant organism is masked.
The creationist Behe is discredited and not taken seriously and cut a sorry figure leaving the courthouse I am sorry to say. The irreducible complexity argument also assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially over time. But something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary. For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the clotting cascade was later found to be absent in whales, demonstrating that it is not essential for a clotting system. That is to say an incipient structure.