To the creationists - the tough question

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
I've also got a question for the creationist, why would God dissaprove evolution and why would evolution dissaprove God?

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They aren't mutually exclusive. Only if you subscribe to a fundamentalist christian (probably any faith) ideal do they oppose. 6 day genesis, flood etc.If there was an intelligent designer that created the universe, & created life with the ability to evolve so he/she/it could just leave it to its own devices, would that be any less true/likely than any faith in the world today? Most people who don't particularly subcribe to any religion, nor are they active atheists, believe something like this. "there must be something", kind of argument.------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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Originally posted by Val:
Give me evidence there is no God

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That wasn't the question.I could just as easily ask, give me evidence there is no God that created God.------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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[This message has been edited by mark24, 01-01-2002]

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Originally posted by Val:
Mark
You said that was not the question.I am getting the feeling that this question in your mind had evolutionary boundries. I just cannot conceive that we got here by luck,and things changed by luck when everything is so balanced.

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The question was "What sort of evidence would you find convincing enough to sway you into believing that organic evolution was and is real?"------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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Originally posted by Val:
Mark
I am sorry you do not seem to understand the concept of my answer,so I will explain it.If there is a God then oganic evolution is not present,if there is no God then your assumption of organic evolution is correct.I am asking you to disprove God then I will agree with your assumption.Hope this explains my answer.
Val

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He asked "What sort of evidence would you find convincing enough to sway you into believing that organic evolution was and is real?"You have merely asked me/him to disprove something that you yourself don't know to exist.I therefore ask, without reference to God, prove evolution never happened. A bit shitty, don't you think?------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Fair enough, Moose?------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Define new information.

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Originally posted by Warren:
New information would be information that doesn't orginate through the reshuffling and/or tweaking of information already residing in the genome. The origination of eyes, wings and brains requires the input of massive amounts of new information, information that at one time never existed in any living thing on earth. Where did it come from? Darwinism must attribute information creation to "mutation," but this is to give the phenomenon a label rather than an explanation. (Additional terms like "variation" or "recombination" are even less informative.)

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So now define new information by telling me what it IS & not what it isn't.I've heard a LOT about what new information isn't.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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Originally posted by Warren:
Mark>> So now define new information by telling me what it IS & not what it isn't.

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I've heard a LOT about what new information isn't.<<

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How am I suppose to define "new information" without contrasting it with old information? I suspect what you really want is just a definition of information. Well, define it anyway you want and then explain how the Darwinian process creates it. I don't see your point unless it's your contention that complex specified information doesn't exist in living organisms. In his book Steps Towards Life, Manfred Eigen (1992, p. 12) summarizes the task of origins-of-life research as follows: "Our task is to find an algorithm, a natural law that leads to the origin of information."

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It is amazing to me that the Darwinists have been able for over a century to convince intelligent persons that organisms losing their ability to see or fly is proof of evolution! Regardless of how one wants to define information, the fact remains that you don't go from ants to anthropologists via a process that causes a loss of function. You can't prove that a process is capable of producing eyes and wings by giving examples of organisms losing eyes and wings. Surely if the Darwinists had more persuasive evidence for their theory they wouldn't resort to such lame explanations. This demonstrates how incredibly weak their theory actually is.

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Good grief, define new information or don't.It would go like this....."New information is defined as........"If you can't do this, then stop posting on a thread that asked for a definition of new information.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-08-2002]

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Originally posted by Warren:
Mark>> Good grief, define new information or don't.

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It would go like this.....

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New information is defined as........"<<

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Okay. New information is defined as information that has never existed before.

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In addition to Joz, message 54 http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm"My favorite example of a mutation producing new information involves a Japanese bacterium that suffered a frame shift mutation that just happened to allow it to metabolize nylon waste. The new enzymes are very inefficient (having only 2% of the efficiency of the regular enzymes), but do afford the bacteria a whole new ecological niche. They don't work at all on the bacterium's original food - carbohydrates. And this type of mutation has even happened more than once!"So, by, both Warrens & TC definitions, new information exists, as derived by genetic mutation.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Plasmids are the form that the bacterial DNA strand, & the nucleotide sequences, genes, reside on, as opposed to chromosomes in eukaryotes.The mutation was a nucleotide insertion, not deletion ( my mistake, but both cause frameshifting), & a frameshift, that resulted in a new, functional protein ( In actual fact this amounts to the same amount of amino acids, given it takes a codon of 3 nuleotides to code an amino acid, the extra on tagged on at the end is wasted, amino acid wise). It could just as easily be a deletion, (This would result in one LESS amino acids in the sequence) it matters not. A mutation caused an increase in functionality.Read the link again, the new amino acid sequence can be DEMONSTRATED from the original sequence, the new amino acid sequence & old sequence are defined by that ONE nucleotide difference."Now, let's get back to Biology, and the case of the bacterium which has evolved the capability of ingesting nylon waste. This case is most interesting. Nylon didn't exist before 1937, and neither did this organism. Detailed examination of the DNA sequences of the original bacterium and of the nylon-ingesting version show identical versions in the gene for a key metabolic enzyme, with only one difference in over 400 nucleotides. However, this single microevolutionary addition of a single thymine ('T') nucleotide caused the new bacterium's enzyme to be composed of a completely novel sequence of amino acids, via the mechanism of frame shifting. The new enzyme is 50 times less efficient than its precursor, as would be expected for a new structure which has not had time to be polished by natural selection. However, this inefficiency would certainly not be expected in the work of an intelligent designer. The genetic mutation that produced this particular irreducibly-complex enzyme probably occurred countless times in the past, and probably was always lethal, until the environment changed, and nylon was introduced."I repeat."Detailed examination of the DNA sequences of the original bacterium and of the nylon-ingesting version show identical versions in the gene for a key metabolic enzyme, with only one difference in over 400 nucleotides".That is to say, an allele has ONE nucleotide difference, compared to the wild type, & has a completely different function.That more than one species has the ability is mentioned in the link. Again, for prokaryotic bacterial plasmids, read eukaryotic chromosomes.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-08-2002]

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Originally posted by Cobra_snake:

What are evolutionists teaching? That humans are a freak rearrangement of matter, and our most distant ancestor was a one-celled organism that arose from pond scum.

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Inelegant, but basically sound, apart from the "freak" part.

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Originally posted by Cobra_snake:

Sounds like a nice story. Please give me one way in which evolutionary thought can be important for moral reasoning. After all, moral reasoning is perhaps the MOST important thing for a young individual

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What on earth has evolutionary theory got to with moral reasoning?If you think homosexuals are immoral, or giving babies congenital diseases is actually OK, because someone allegedly ate an apple 6,000 years ago, then you really need to take a long hard look at the bibles so called "morality". Because to me it just looks like spiteful, nasty, vindictiveness. I find it hard to believe that Lucifer is worse than God.As I have shown in the "Always a laugh" thread, message 20, there was plenty of evidence that pointed to evolution, BEFORE Charles Darwin came along. So why do you persist with this "sounds like a nice story" crap? Does the bible have any evidence to support its divine nature? Or evidence to support the divine actions that allegedly took place? No. Does the bible provide us with any evidence that compares to the COLOSSAL amount of data now available, that supports the ToE? No.To mutter that the theory of evolution is a story, is a triumph of hope over expectation, & frankly, uttering it in the face of such evidence, just makes you look silly & unreasonable.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-10-2002]

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[This message has been edited by mark24, 02-10-2002]

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Originally posted by Cobra_snake:
I am not being unreasonable. What exactly the collosal amount of evidence points to is what we are debating in this forum.

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Are you seriously telling me you have rejected the ToE without making yourself familiar with the evidence?Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.