Announcement

Collapse

Natural Science 301 Guidelines

This is an open forum area for all members for discussions on all issues of science and origins. This area will and does get volatile at times, but we ask that it be kept to a dull roar, and moderators will intervene to keep the peace if necessary. This means obvious trolling and flaming that becomes a problem will be dealt with, and you might find yourself in the doghouse.

As usual, Tweb rules apply. If you haven't read them now would be a good time.

Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

The lungfish genome, tetrapods, and junk DNA

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #76
    Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
    I just explained that it's under selection at each step, and your response was "So it's even more difficult for the proteasome to evolve."
    Right, because paths that go through deleterious mutations are lethal, not just selected against. Thus fewer paths are available for evolution to travel through to the new proteasome.

    Forcing us to explain basic biology to you over and over while you confidently call us wrong is insulting.
    I'm willing to be proven wrong, but you all the ones hurling insults.

    Blessings,
    Lee
    "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

    Comment


    • #77
      Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
      Right, because paths that go through deleterious mutations are lethal, not just selected against. Thus fewer paths are available for evolution to travel through to the new proteasome.
      Again, this is where your lack of knowledge about biology becomes a problem. I said nulls are lethal. You're mistaking "deleterious" for "null" when the two are not equivalent. We can tolerate deleterious mutations; there are a number of known human genetic disorders caused by mutations in proteasome components. While some are quite awful, others allow people to survive to reproductive age.

      Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
      I'm willing to be proven wrong, but you all the ones hurling insults.
      And that nicely encapsulates the behavior i find offensive. One, your attitude is that you can say anything you want without bothering to verify its veracity, and it's up to the rest of us to do the hard work to "prove" you wrong. But you then steadfastly refuse to accept you've been proven wrong even when evidence is produced, turning everything into a long, drawn out fight. You typically just drop out of discussions without ever acknowledging any error, and have never once apologized for forcing us to make all of the effort we put into getting accurate information for you.

      I find all of that extraordinarily insulting.

      You're then arbitrarily declaring that insulting words are far more problematic than insulting behavior, and thus you have a right to be offended while i don't. I disagree.

      Respect is a two-way street. You want to be treated with it? Try treating the rest of us with some.
      Last edited by TheLurch; 02-02-2021, 01:42 PM.
      "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

      Comment


      • #78
        Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
        Or it could be the effect of magical, miniature, invisible blue meanies that roam DNA making changes according to their whims.

        But i'd rather stick to the things we have evidence for. I'm funny that way.
        But there is no evidence that the exterior world even exists, let alone evidence for biological evolution! We should not treat it dogmatically, then. This physical ''reality'' we have may not even BE real in the first place.

        C'mon, TheLurch. You know better than that.

        Comment


        • #79
          Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
          Again, this is where your lack of knowledge about biology becomes a problem. I said nulls are lethal. You're mistaking "deleterious" for "null" when the two are not equivalent.
          Sorry, I should have said "loss-of-function" mutations.

          And that nicely encapsulates the behavior i find offensive. One, your attitude is that you can say anything you want without bothering to verify its veracity, and it's up to the rest of us to do the hard work to "prove" you wrong. But you then steadfastly refuse to accept you've been proven wrong even when evidence is produced, turning everything into a long, drawn out fight. You typically just drop out of discussions without ever acknowledging any error, and have never once apologized for forcing us to make all of the effort we put into getting accurate information for you.
          I'm going to go back to not defending myself. I'll let the readers decide who is being offensive.

          Blessings,
          Lee
          "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
            Sorry, I should have said "loss-of-function" mutations.
            Ok, so now that we're using the same terminology, let me tell you why your argument is wrong. If you go back to my original description of the system, you'll note that the system was largely generated by the duplication of genes, followed by the diversification of the copies to more specific functions. Now, while that's going on, there are two partly redundant copies of a gene present. If they happen to pick up a null or severely deleterious mutation, it's no big deal, because there's that other copy around performing the normal function.

            That's one of the reasons why duplication and diversification is such a powerful mechanism. It allows even essential genes to be heavily altered with no fitness risk. That's why we see so much evidence of it having happened.
            "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

            Comment


            • #81
              Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post

              I'm going to go back to not defending myself. I'll let the readers decide who is being offensive.

              Blessings,
              Lee
              You've never even come close to being able to defend the ridiculous ID-Creationist horse crap you C&P without understanding. How will this be any different?

              Comment


              • #82
                Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                Ok, so now that we're using the same terminology, let me tell you why your argument is wrong. If you go back to my original description of the system, you'll note that the system was largely generated by the duplication of genes, followed by the diversification of the copies to more specific functions. Now, while that's going on, there are two partly redundant copies of a gene present. If they happen to pick up a null or severely deleterious mutation, it's no big deal, because there's that other copy around performing the normal function.

                That's one of the reasons why duplication and diversification is such a powerful mechanism. It allows even essential genes to be heavily altered with no fitness risk. That's why we see so much evidence of it having happened.
                Several library shelves could be filled with examples of this that we know about and yet evolution deniers always hand wave it off dismissively or utterly ignore it.

                I'm always still in trouble again

                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                Comment


                • #83
                  Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                  So where is the lie in what I posted from Evolution News?
                  One possibility is that Nature didn't actually say Tiktaalik was a "direct transitional form". Luskin doesn't cite any reference for this, only a reference to Nature saying it and other fossils are not direct transitional forms. Nor have I found any such quote - the only results are Luskin's article and the negative form.

                  Can you can find the Nature article Luskin is referring to? Is it in context? If you can't, or it's out-of-context, Luskin's 'quote' is the lie.
                  Maybe here? "Tiktaalik is clearly a transitional form..." Meaning an actual intermediate. But I can only search articles and abstracts, so Luskin might have meant a quote from the body of a journal.
                  That article does not contain the words 'direct transitional form', so you know it can't be what Luskin was referring to, and shouldn't have posted it.

                  Since you can't find Luskin's 'quote', it is likely to be the lie you demanded we show you.

                  Last edited by Roy; 02-04-2021, 12:10 PM.
                  Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

                  MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
                  MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

                  seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    As the saying goes, if Man indeed came from apes, does that means Man can still be said to be ''made in the image of God''? What does ''image of God'' mean?

                    This question should be especially relevant for CHRISTIANS who defend (or wish to defend) Darwinian evolution.

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                      If you go back to my original description of the system, you'll note that the system was largely generated by the duplication of genes, followed by the diversification of the copies to more specific functions. Now, while that's going on, there are two partly redundant copies of a gene present. If they happen to pick up a null or severely deleterious mutation, it's no big deal, because there's that other copy around performing the normal function.
                      Well, I would ask, are the changes generally selectable? If so, that is within the range of what Behe says evolution can do. If not, then a path to a new function becomes exponentially unlikely, the longer the path is.

                      Blessings,
                      Lee
                      "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        Originally posted by Seeker View Post
                        As the saying goes, if Man indeed came from apes, does that means Man can still be said to be ''made in the image of God''? What does ''image of God'' mean?

                        This question should be especially relevant for CHRISTIANS who defend (or wish to defend) Darwinian evolution.
                        From what I understand, a distinction is made between the evolutionary predecessors of "true humans" (Catholic terminology) and "true humans" having a rational soul (aka the Imago Dei).
                        P1) If , then I win.

                        P2)

                        C) I win.

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                          Well, I would ask, are the changes generally selectable?
                          Yes, they are. The central core is a group of proteases, which digest cellular proteins. Cellular proteins are pretty diverse, so having more types of proteases make it more likely that the digestion will be efficient, so that's selectable. Meanwhile, the rest is regulatory. Obviously, digesting the right proteins while avoiding digesting the wrong ones is very valuable to a cell.

                          Originally posted by lee_merrill View Post
                          If so, that is within the range of what Behe says evolution can do.
                          And yet Behe constantly claims that evolution cannot produce these large, multiprotein complexes.

                          So, logically, what do we have to conclude based on those two contradictory items?
                          "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Originally posted by Seeker View Post
                            As the saying goes, if Man indeed came from apes, does that means Man can still be said to be ''made in the image of God''? What does ''image of God'' mean?

                            This question should be especially relevant for CHRISTIANS who defend (or wish to defend) Darwinian evolution.
                            I don't think we're talking about "literally" in the image of God since God doesn't have a physical form (although He can take on one if desired).

                            I probably should note that the idea that Adam and Eve may have descended from earlier ancestors is not some new, radical fringe view but rather has the support[1] of a fairly large number of eminent conservative, orthodox theologians, scholars and preachers.

                            For instance, the great and highly respected Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong used the term "brute" and spoke of the brutish ancestry of human beings saying that such an ancestry was in no way incompatible with our excelling status as creatures in the image of God.

                            IIRC it is in his Systematic Theology (which has been a mainstay of Baptist theological education even today and still required reading in some conservative Christian colleges) where Strong drew an analogy with Christ's miraculous conversion of water into wine saying that

                            "The wine in the miracle was not water because water had been used in the making of it, nor is man a brute because the brute has made some contributions to its creation."


                            And at the 17th Annual Sessions of the Baptist Congress held in the Delaware Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York during November of 1898 Strong stated

                            "That man is the offspring of the brute creation does not prevent him from being also the offspring of God."


                            Another well regarded Baptist, the Rev. Billy Graham, who is arguably the greatest evangelist of our time, is of a similar mind as Strong, stating in his autobiography Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (written with the help of David Frost)

                            "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man ... I personally believe that it's just as easy to accept the fact that God took some dust and blew on it and out came a man as it is to accept the fact that God breathed upon man and he became a living soul and it started with some protoplasm and went right on up through the evolutionary process. Either way is by faith and whichever God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God."


                            And this wasn't something that Graham has only recently come to believe. Nearly 50 years prior to this Graham is quoted in the United Church Observer in July of 1966 that

                            "How you believe doesnt affect the doctrine. Either at a certain moment in evolution God breathed into one particular ape-man who was Adam, or God could have taken a handful of dust and blowed and created a man just like that."


                            Benjamin B. Warfield, rightly regarded as the great apologist or champion of biblical inerrancy and whose influence can be seen in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (in that he was probably the most vocal advocate of that doctrine), held that there was nothing in the first chapters of Genesis that could not be properly interpreted in a way consistent with the evolutionary development of the present world. He explained that

                            "If under the directing hand of God a human body is formed at a leap by propagation from brutish parents [that is, per saltum evolution (evolution by mutation)], it would be quite consonant with the fitness of things that it should be provided by his creative energy with a truly human soul."


                            IOW, God created the matter of the universe with the forces of nature ex nihilo, through evolution he providentially formed man, and by a special act of mediate creation he created the soul of humans.

                            George Frederick Wright, who pastored Congregational churches in Vermont and Massachusetts before becoming professor and later professor emeritus of New Testament language and literature at Oberlin Theological Seminary, pointed out that Genesis truthfully portrayed "an ordered progress from lower to higher forms of matter and life" that left room for God's creation of life forms with "a marvelous capacity for variation" -- and for Adam and Eve as well.

                            He held that the biblical creation accounts were meant to teach theological truths, and thus should not be expected to reveal scientific knowledge.

                            The Rev. George Macloskie who wrote in his Theistic Evolution in 1898 that

                            "It has been recognized that man may have been both created and evolved, that his creation may have been effected under divinely directed evolution, either as a natural development or possibly as a development with supernatural incidents and expediated."


                            Elsewhere he remarked that "the theory of the Predamites does not affect the unity of the race" while simultaneously noting that the "Bible seems to set forth Adam as our first father."

                            James Orr, yet another influential defender of evangelical doctrine and a contributor to The Fundamentals, who was a vocal critic of theological liberalism with his writings and lectures upholding the doctrines of the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus, and the infallibility of the Bible, was also open to the idea. He once noted that

                            "evolution is coming to be recognized as but a new name for creation."


                            This view was echoed by others like William L. Poteat, President of Wake Forest University who defended the teaching of evolution as the "divine method of creation", arguing it was fully compatible with Baptist beliefs.

                            Another great conservative and utterly orthodox Christian thinker that I'll cite is G.K. Chesterton, who wrote in his classic of Christian apologetics, Orthodoxy:

                            "IF evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time."


                            A few others include the Congregational evangelist R. A. Torrey, one of the three editors of The Fundamentals[2], the series of essays that gave its name to what came to be called "fundamentalism," and who accepted the idea of pre-Adamites.

                            Gleason Archer was yet another one who believed in pre-Adamism. Gleason writes in his 1985 book titled A Survey of Old Testament Introduction:

                            "To revert to the problem of the Pithecanthropus, the Swanscombe man, the Neanderthal and all the rest (possibly even the Cro-magnon man, who is apparently to be classed as Homo sapiens, but whose remains seem to date back at least to 20,000 B.C.) it seems best to regard these races as all prior to Adams time, and not involved in the Adamic covenant. We must leave the question open, in view of the cultural remains, whether these pre-Adamic creatures had souls (or, to use the trichotomic terminology, spirits)."


                            And the well known Anglican cleric John R.W. Stott[3] also believed that God could have created Adam out of some supposed pre-Adamite "hominid".

                            I guess I should also mention that, in his commentary on Genesis (Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary) in the Tyndale Commentary Series, Derek Kinder suggests that "if ... God initially shaped man by a process of evolution, it would follow that a considerable stock of near-humans preceded the first true man, and it would be arbitrary to picture these as mindless brutes."

                            In his Genesis commentary he notes that in Job 10:8-9 God is said to have fashioned Job with his hands, like a potter shaping clay out of the dust of the ground, even though God obviously did this through the natural process of formation in the womb. Kidner asks why the same potter-terminology in Genesis 2:7 could not denote a natural process like evolution... Then they were put into the garden of Eden as representatives of the whole human race. Their creation in God's image and their fall affected not only their offspring, but all other contemporaries. In this telling, Kidner accounts for both the continuity between animals and humans that scientists see, and the discontinuity that the Bible describes. Only human beings are in God's image, have fallen into sin, and will be saved by grace. This approach would explain perennially difficult Biblical questions such as--who were the people that Cain feared would slay him in revenge for the murder of Abel (Gen 4:14)? Who was Cains wife, and how could Cain have built a city filled with inhabitants (Gen 4:17)? We might even ask why Genesis 2:20 hints that Adam went on a search to find a spouse if there were only animals around? In Kidner's approach, Adam and Eve were not alone in the world, and that answers all these questions.

                            When Derek Kidner concluded his account of human origins, he said that his view was an "exploratory suggestion -- only tentative, and it is a personal view. It invites correction and a better synthesis." That is the right attitude for all of us working in this area

                            There are a good many others with the above list being anything but an exhaustive list.

                            So it seems that I'm standing on pretty firm ground here.







                            1. or at the very least consider it a distinct, viable possibility

                            2. A.C. Dixon, was another editor of The Fundamentals), is cited much in the same way Charles Hodge is (see post #130 including the footnote) for his comments against "evolution" -- but his target was actually Spencer and the Social Gospel. As one biographer, Brena M. Meeham, wrote:

                            "Dixon upheld the possibility that Darwinian evolution could find a place in the Bible, with God as Evolver and evolution as his method of creation."


                            3. Stott was one of the authors of the Lausanne Covenant (a 1974 Christian religious manifesto promoting active world-wide Christian evangelism and one of the most influential documents in modern Evangelical Christianity. It was written and adopted by 2300 evangelicals at the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, from which it takes its name). Time Magazine ranked John R.W. Stott among the top 100 MOST influential people in the world in 2005.

                            I'm always still in trouble again

                            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Originally posted by Diogenes View Post

                              From what I understand, a distinction is made between the evolutionary predecessors of "true humans" (Catholic terminology) and "true humans" having a rational soul (aka the Imago Dei).
                              There appears to be a difference between what scientists refer to as mankind or humanity and what the Bible refers to as mankind. "Biblical man" if you will.

                              I'm always still in trouble again

                              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                              Comment


                              • #90
                                Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                                And yet Behe constantly claims that evolution cannot produce these large, multiprotein complexes.
                                Well, no, evolution can go far, selectable step by selectable step. Behe's argument is that evolution cannot realistically be expected to get through multiple, unselected steps, the edge is at four or more.

                                Blessings,
                                Lee
                                "What I pray of you is, to keep your eye upon Him, for that is everything. Do you say, 'How am I to keep my eye on Him?' I reply, keep your eye off everything else, and you will soon see Him. All depends on the eye of faith being kept on Him. How simple it is!" (J.B. Stoney)

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-18-2024, 12:15 PM
                                48 responses
                                135 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post Sparko
                                by Sparko
                                 
                                Started by Sparko, 03-07-2024, 08:52 AM
                                16 responses
                                74 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Started by rogue06, 02-28-2024, 11:06 AM
                                6 responses
                                47 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Working...
                                X