Christianity and Creationism are NOT the Same Thing
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Roquefort — 16 years ago(June 18, 2009 07:06 PM)
- Darwinism cannot explain why chromosomal mutants would have an incentive to inbreed or why chromosomal mutants would have such genetic ability.
- 'We' are those that consider radiometric dating less reliable then observable reality.
- We conside rthe Bible closer to observable reality. There is no reason to believe that honeybees had ancestors that were in the early stages of developing the ability to convert honey to wax.
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agentwhim — 16 years ago(June 19, 2009 09:01 AM)
I don't really believe that you're interested in observable reality.
Your goal is to find holes in Darwinism in the hope of proving that it isn't right, but that misses the point. As I mentioned earlier on, the scientific method works by trying to falsify existing scientific theories in order to better understand the way in which the universe works. Because of this, finding a problem with Darwinism isn't a problem for scientists - it simply acts as an incentive to look for an improved model which doesn't include the flaw. In fact, scientific experiments are normally designed to find problems with theories for just this reason - the usual process is:- make up a theory which explains the known facts
- invent an experiment to disprove that theory
- perform the experiment
if the experiment disproves the theory go back to the start in the light of the new information
if the experiment doesn't disprove the theory, publish it so that your peers can try to disprove it or find a problem with your experiment
That's pretty much it! The great thing about this is that over time you gradually home in on a better understanding of things. Of course, there are situations where scientists have a fixed idea of how things should be (which is bad science) or where people head down blind alleys and get distracted this way (which is bad luck), but in the long run it should provide the desired results. (By the way, I don't know enough about evolutionary biology to comment on your specific point about chromosome numbers.)
On the other hand, from a religious point of view the goal is completely different. The religious observer sees a mismatch between the scientific view and the view presented in the observer's preferred holy book and then tries to find a hole in the scientific argument. This person then says "Aha! This theory has a flaw, so it must be wrong! My religious book must therefore be right.", whereas the scientist will say "Oh, this theory has a flaw! I must improve my theory to account for it." In other words, the religious person has a particular goal in mind, whereas the scientist (admittedly rather idealised in my description) doesn't. Both people see finding a flaw as a positive result, but for completely different reasons.
That's why I said at the top of this post that you aren't really interested in observable reality - what you are interested in doing is proving that the description in your holy book is true. To do that, you need to continually pick holes in the scientific view of the world in the hope that people will believe the logic incongruity: "I assert that only two possible explanations are valid: my religiously-inspired view or the current scientific view. I have demonstrated a flaw in the current scientific view, therefore my religiously-inspired view is true." The initial assertion is wrong - there are many possible explanations for how things are.
I'd have thought that religions would be better off concentrating on the role of faith, which doesn't get into these discussions since it doesn't depend on proof but then I'm just an interested observer.
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Roquefort — 16 years ago(June 19, 2009 04:29 PM)
[Your goal is to find holes in Darwinism in the hope of proving that it isn't right, but that misses the point.]
It could just as well be said that the goal of Darwinism is to find holes in the Bible.
One way to make high schoool biology more agnostic and less atheistic would be to teach about chromosomes before the teacher pushes Darwinist dogma. Then the students would see the contradiction more easily.
It is inconceivable that if chromosome numbers had been discovered before 1859 how Darwin's writings would ever have been printed. -
frontiersmantanis — 16 years ago(June 19, 2009 09:09 PM)
Evolution is meant to explain the diversity of life on earth and it does it in fine style.
If were playing the "what if" game about primate chromosomes, then theres no problem conceiving what would've happened had they discovered the number of chromosomes THEN discovered chromosome 2, along with its double centromere and telomere in the middle. The it wouldn't be hard to imagine Darwin's writings, but even more supported by empirical evidence. -
Roquefort — 16 years ago(June 20, 2009 09:11 AM)
The Ken Miller test is that two species with different chromosome numbers cannot have a common ancestor unless the difference can be accounted for by chromosome fusion.
This test works for apes and humans (although cannot expain the different genes), but 99 per cent of the time will disprove Darwin.
Cats have 38 chromosomes, dogs have 78. For there to be a common ancestor, cats would need evidence of 20 chromosome fusions. -
frontiersmantanis — 16 years ago(June 20, 2009 08:46 PM)
Yes evolution accounts for the differences. No there needn't be 20 fusions, you're ignoring, or not aware of, chromosome splitting and polyploidy, both of which can increase the number of chromosomes.
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frontiersmantanis — 16 years ago(June 22, 2009 09:58 PM)
centromere : http://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/9/1696.full
telomere : http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=231109 -
Roquefort — 16 years ago(June 25, 2009 10:59 AM)
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/9/1696.full
If we look at the actual cases in progress:
(1) A neocentromere at 3q26 was observed in a father, mildly mentally retarded, and his daughter, on an abnormal chromosome 3 lacking the centromeric region that appeared excised to form a supernumerary minichromosome
(2) A prenatal cytogenetic analysis due to increased maternal age showed a male fetus with trisomy 21. An abnormal chromosome 3 was also evident, with an abnormal centromere location.
It does not look as if such cases have much promise for evolution.
We might conclude that evidence of "neocentromeres" shows that they came into existence suddenly by genetic re-design.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=231109
Programmed chromosome breakage occurs in many ciliated protozoa and is accompanied by efficient new telomere formation.
This would be a good start at explaining 5 percent of evolution, but of course we would like to see something like this in multi-cell animals and also in sexual reproduction. -
DigitalPhreaker — 16 years ago(June 29, 2009 01:08 AM)
I don't think I've ever read a flame war that was more civilized and well written. I actually have to take my hat off to you guys for keeping it so mellow. Here on IMDb, I'm used to people pulling out the beep you" card whenever someone disagrees with them, so this is actually quite refreshing and educational.
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Roquefort — 16 years ago(June 29, 2009 08:30 AM)
[Moving the goalpost is an informal logically fallacious argument }
Since you are the one who claims dogs and cats have a common ancestor,and all you can give us is protozoa as an example, it would appear you are the one moving the goal posts. -
Roquefort — 16 years ago(July 06, 2009 05:20 PM)
Brittanica goes so far as to say:"the miacids, that were the ancestors of modern caniformswhich include the canids (that is, the dogs, coyotes, wolves, foxes, and jackals) and a large group made up of the bear, raccoon, and weasel families."
This is highly unlikely because
(1) We would be 10 feet deep in fossils of transitional species.
(2) The chromosomal mutations involved would produce no such thing.
Some human diseases caused by translocations are:
Cancer: several forms of cancer are caused by translocations; this has been described mainly in leukemia (acute myelogenous leukemia and chronic myelogenous leukemia).
Infertility: one of the would-be parents carries a balanced translocation, where the parent is asymptomatic but conceived fetuses are not viable.
Down syndrome is caused in a minority (5% or less) of cases by a Robertsonian translocation of about a third of chromosome 21 onto chromosome 14.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomal_translocation
(3) Dogs with 78 chromosomes would still have the ability to split into 80 chromosomes by growing new telemeres and centromeres.
Evolution is something that is always happening everywhere except the real world. -
frontiersmantanis — 16 years ago(July 08, 2009 05:49 AM)
1: Considering the rarity of fossilization we have an abundance
2: You not understanding polyploidy and chromosome splitting is not evidence against it
3: Which I've given examples of on this board.
I know you're probably trolling but I'm still not going to let you spread your ignorance to people who might not know better. -
Roquefort — 16 years ago(July 09, 2009 08:21 AM)
[ but I'm still not going to let you spread your ignorance to people who might not know better ]
You have, with your own web references, helped dispel ignorance.
For example, if you ever have a biopsy that shows cells with failing telemeres, you may realize that this is not a new species evolving. -
frontiersmantanis — 16 years ago(July 12, 2009 09:30 PM)
"if you ever have a biopsy that shows cells with failing telomeres, you may realize that this is not a new species evolving."
Of course anyone who understands evolution or biology in general is not claiming this, so thats pretty pointless and irrelevant. -
davorb — 14 years ago(April 14, 2011 12:16 PM)
When it comes to the number of chromosomes, you clearly do not know much about the subject. Please read this and all will be explained to you.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html -
agentwhim — 16 years ago(June 20, 2009 08:04 AM)
"It could just as well be said that the goal of Darwinism is to find holes in the Bible."
That just doesn't make sense. The idea that a scientific theory might be produced in order to discredit a book is ludicrous. From a scientific standpoint, the Bible is just a book like any other. Any claims which might be subject to verification by experimentation might be followed up, but I think most scientists would think that this is a pointless exercise. The really fundamental tenets of the Bible, like the existence of an omnipotent creator, are so obviously untestable that there is no point in even beginning.
That's why I don't really understand the interest that religious people take in trying to promote scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations of the most glaring problems with the Bible (or other religious books). You'd really be on much safer ground with the usual "God works in mysterious ways" style of argument. After all the whole point of religion is faith isn't it? Not proof.
You've still missed the point, though. Scientists don't sit around thinking "Hmmm my new theory could disprove the Bible hehehe", they are looking for ever better ways of understanding the universe. The Bible might have been a reasonable explanation of how things work when it was compiled, but that was a long time ago.