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Author | Topic: Any practical use for Universal Common Ancestor? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: The original genome couldn’t produce them. So what makes those changes “within the genome” ?
quote: The first wouldn’t happen - evolutionary theory claims that it wouldn’t happen. And as far as I know the differences between a chimp’s fingernail and a human’s is as small as the changes that you say are “in the genome” - possibly smaller.
quote: But you have explicitly dismissed examples of something that the unchanged genome couldn’t and never would produce normally. So you are still being incredibly unclear.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9
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quote: But what makes it “within the genome” ? It isn’t that the unchanged genome could produce those traits. And what makes the differences between a chimp’s fingernails and a human’s “outside the genome”? You haven’t even said what those differences are. Unless and until you can explain your criterion there is nothing to discuss. We cannot be expected to produce examples meeting your condition unless we know what it means. And you either cannot or will not provide that explanation.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Faith, you were supposedly giving examples to illustrate your completely unclear criterion. Nobody else can do that because your criterion is incredibly unclear.
quote: You may be trying to make a general point, but you haven’t managed to adequately communicate it yet.
quote: Then how can you know that your claim is true ?
quote: The genetic comparisons are more focussed on the actual evolutionary claim that chimps and humans have a common ancestor. But to the best of my knowledge mutations could do the job. And - without getting into the specifics you want to avoid - how can you possibly show otherwise ?
quote: And so we come to the question of which changes are possible and which are not. It is clear that traits which are not currently chimpanzee characteristics could be added. Out of all the mutations that are possible at the genetic level, which are possible and which are not ? And why are these allegedly impossible mutations impossible ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: That is an empty tautology that doesn’t deal with the issues.
quote: Mutations change what the genome makes.
quote: That is obviously wrong, unless you are going to say that no matter how much the genome changes you are going to call a chimp descendant a “chimp”. Which would prove nothing. If you don’t want to waste time on that semantic game, the fact that the genome changes, producing phenotypic changes IS a reason. The fact that the differences between existing species can be explained by mutations is another. And they are good reasons. But you offer no reason at all to think that you are correct.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: That is your assertion. But unless you can back it up with numbers - and deal with the evidence already referred to it is not much of an argument. It is also a change of argument.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
It’s worth pointing out that most genetic diseases are rare recessive genes which are hard for selection to completely remove - but selection does keep them rare.
Some also have advantages that outweigh the problems e.g. being heterozygous for sickle-cell gives very little disadvantage, but helps resist malaria. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9
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quote: That really depends on what you mean by “Creationism”. As the idea is usually understood the evidence is very much against it. Creationism started by endorsing fixity of species - which was reasonable for a long time, before fossils were recognised as the remains of living creatures. Historical evidence did not show signs of change. Egyptian tomb art, for instance - and their animal mummies showed recognisable species. Artificial selection could modify form, but it did not create new species. Creationism carried on endorsing that for a long time, even after the fossil evidence was understood. But that changed in more recent decades. Granted the reason for that change was the realisation that there were too many species to fit on Noah’s Ark - but still it is significant that they endorsed evolution as the answer. Even now Faith is extremely uncomfortable with that and wished that creationists wouldn’t admit it. However, that raises a question. Granted that evolution works to the level of producing species and genera can it go even further ? The evidence does not reveal any convenient boundaries or limits that would restrict evolution to the Creationist “kinds”. The evidence for evolution does cross the assumed boundaries - the taxonomic “tree of life” is a single tree, not a collection of little shrubs. Even if we reject the “transitional fossil” label for the more descriptive “anatomical intermediate” we do have many such fossils and they do support the idea of evolutionary transitions. Genetic evidence, too, points to common ancestry beyond the level where creationists would be happy. It seems unreasonable, then, to treat that sort of creationism as a scientifically or even intellectually valid point of view. The “kind” concept lacks even any theological validation beyond “solving” the problem of room in the Ark. Why then, should anyone other than those apologists who find it necessary to answer the Ark problem consider it at all likely to be true ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Genetics isn’t studied for that purpose, no. But that isn’t a problem. Genetics is studied to understand genes and that understanding shows serious problems with your ideas. Mendelian genetics was a theoretical model which works well enough for breeding. But it has no understanding of actual genes or what they really do or how genes relate to traits. By making speculations based on Mendelian genetics and ignoring what real genes are and do you are just heading off into fantasyland.
quote: Which, of course is in line with evolutionary theory. But those changes are not changes in genes, they are changes to regulatory sequences. So instead of triggering the building of an antenna, a leg might be built instead. But genes code for proteins and proteins can have multiple uses. Genes can even code for more than one protein via Alternative Splicing. The idea that the gene does one thing and one thing only is known to be wrong. A protein may be a blood clotting agent and a venom, a structural element and an enzyme.
quote: As we know regulatory changes can bring about significant variations. Add to this the fact that genes may be lost and gained - and the clear genetic similarities and we see that your claims are purely assumptions. It is entirely possible for your assumptions to be wrong - especially when we know that your ideas about what genes do ARE wrong.
quote: No, you’ll never recognise that you are wrong, although it has been shown again and again. All you have is a bad theoretical argument, which doesn’t even stand up on that level, let alone the evidence.
quote: Trilobites are OBVIOUSLY more diverse than the apes (including humans). There is no consistent standard by which you can say that trilobites are one species but humans are a different species from the other apes. We know, it has been argued in this forum. In reality trilobites are classed as an Order while the apes are classed as a superfamily - a lower taxonomic level. And that is because of the relative diversity (and quite likely biased in favour of the apes). This catalogue of errors is hardly a convincing argument. Edited by PaulK, : Changed title
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Let us note - again - that forensic evidence is often more reliable than witness evidence. We do have the evidence left by events, and that evidence shows that your Flood geology is nonsense. That’s why you keep trying to ignore it or explain it away. Sometimes making up ridiculous falsehoods.
quote: Since you can’t trace the stories we have back to Noah or anyone who knew him this amounts to classing myths and legends and folktales as witness evidence.
quote: On the contrary there is plenty of testing that can be done - and has been done. That’s just one more thing you want to cover up. Dating methods can be tested against items of known date. They can be tested against each other - cinsilience can be powerful evidence. We can see what observed processes produce - we can see which sediments are being deposited now, we can look at sand dunes, and rivers and examine the sand grains and pebbles. You’ve even pointed to Berthold’s flume experiments. This is how geology’s interpretation of the past has been and still is being refined.
quote: In fact it is very similar. Events are inferred from the traces they leave. Witnesses don’t change that. In fact all sensory evidence is the same - marvellous as the human senses are, they are limited, imperfect and indirect. A surprising amount of what you see is inferred by the brain.
quote: You can’t prove it because it isn’t true. I can’t believe that you don’t know that by now. You have to know that you are trying to suppress the evidence that proved you wrong. You have to know that your calls for honesty aren’t any such thing. Let us consider your argument that fossils are evidence for the Flood, You assert that the fossils are the remains of many dead things, the Flood was supposed to kill almost everything, therefore the fossils are evidence for the Flood. Obviously this is very weak evidence. And in fact this evidence is just as consistent with mainstream views, To get better evidence we’d have to look a little deeper at the evidence. But you refuse to do that because your argument falls apart. For instance, the Flood was supposed to kill land life (indeed, land animals - the account even suggests that some trees survived). Yet the fossil record is predominantly of aquatic life. (Which, curiously enough we should expect if the mainstream view were correct) There is a strong order to the fossil record. This can’t be explained by the Flood. I know you call it an illusion but that makes no sense at all. Do you really imagine that fossils only appear to be in the rock they are found in, and are really in completely different rock? Even the numbers of fossils are implausibly high for the Flood. There is more, but the claim that you have good evidence is clearly false. Your Flood geology is an obvious untruth. That is why you try to disparage the evidence - it’s just another attempt to get away from that truth.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: Which is not a difference, as I pointed out. Geologists observe processes in the present day, see the results and use those results to interpret the evidence.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17914 Joined: Member Rating: 6.9 |
quote: But it is not really about one-time events. Lakes and rivers and seas, earthquakes, continental drift, volcanic eruptions. These are things that exist today.
quote: And indeed the events are repeatable - in a general rather than exact sense - but that is good enough. Astronomy has it worse, yet that is still accepted as science.
quote: And that is why the Flood was rejected by geology. All the supposed evidence for it had more reasonable interpretations.
quote: Which only means that you want it to be wrong because it contradicts your beliefs. If you want to see real irrationality, your own arguments are full of it.
quote: And yet the methods are quite sound. Even if the rocks are not dated directly the relationships between them (remember the law of superposition?) provide adequate evidence to work out ages from the rocks that are directly dated.
quote: So you say, but you’ve never come up with any real problems.
quote: Of course the conditions are more common in sone environments than others - and unsurprisingly fossils are more frequently found in rocks formed where favourable conditions would have been more common. And the order is easily explained under the conventional view. It’s your Flood geology that can’t explain it.
quote: But Faith you don’t see any such thing. You just make up crazy nonsense. And you can’t call that anything but irrational.
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