[__ Science __ ] A Hill to Die On

[journeyman]

No human is exactly like their parents. You have dozens of mutations that weren't present in either of your parents. That is what evolution is.

I don't know why I have to specifically point out that we're still human.

Let's ask Jesus...
Matthew 25:34 Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: 36 Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. 37 Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and covered thee? 39 Or when did we see thee sick or in prison, and came to thee? 40 And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.

He disagrees with you.

You need to wake up and listen to what our Lord is saying.

He's saying those who ministered to his Ambassadors on earth are saved, because they represented him.

wepray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 2Cor.5:20

Instead of Christ and therefore God on earth. That's his church now. Today. Reigning by love and patience over this world....cause that's what the King did.

Of course showing himself alive after what happened to him is so amazing, it's comparable to him creating everything in 6 days.
The rest of post is rhetoric.

 

[Barbarian]

You need to wake up and listen to what our Lord is saying.

I notice you still resist what He's telling you. There won't be a theology test at judgement. He'll judge whether or not you loved him and your fellow man enough to help them as they needed it.

No human is exactly like their parents. You have dozens of mutations that weren't present in either of your parents. That is what evolution is.

I don't know why I have to specifically point out that we're still human.

You don't. It's just that you don't have anything to counter the fact of human evolution.

 

[journeyman]

I notice you still resist what He's telling you. There won't be a theology test at judgement.

I never said there would be. I said people who repent of their sins against God understand the sacrife Jesus made by enduring sins against himself without condemning them.

He'll judge whether or not you loved him and your fellow man enough to help them as they needed it.

Just knowing this is proof Jesus suffered in place of our Father, not mankind.

No human is exactly like their parents. You have dozens of mutations that weren't present in either of your parents. That is what evolution is.

Again, not from human to non human.

I think it's true that if you keep repeating something that isn't true, people will start believing it. I'm ok that you joined the animal club.

 

[journeyman]

It's sad how evolutionists downplay salvation through what the Bible actually says.

In the beginning, man didnt need to evolve into anything. God made him complete to begin with. In his likeness.
That's the gospel. We're complete in Christ.

I remember years ago when Stephen Hawking said God wasn't necessary for anything. I felt sorry for him.

 

[Vaccine]

Or more succinctly put for Vaccine , you can't say "this flagellum is IC because it needs all its parts to function" when the T3SS functions quite well with only some of the flagellum's parts (same for the vertebrate blood clotting cascade).

That's why Behe had to change is definition for IC to where it's now all about "unselected steps" rather than "needs all its parts to function".

I pointed that out to Vaccine a while ago, but I guess it was forgotten.

Theories can be improved or modified as more information is gathered so that the accuracy of the prediction becomes greater over time. It's how science works.

 

[Vaccine]

The funny thing is, Behe had it wrong. Michael Denton is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, and he points out (in Nature's Destiny) the more evidence there might be for design, the less evidence there would be for special creationism. The "unselected steps" would be such special creationism, involving some kind of designer intervening with nature to get around a difficulty said designer was not able to cover by the initial creation.

Special creationism has as much to do with ID theory as aliens. Both can be seen as implications of the theory, but so what? The implications of a theory have no bearing on the validity of a theory.

 

[Vaccine]

Which is yet another indication that ID creationism isn't science.

Well, ID creationism isn't actually a thing so any discussion whether it's science or a tomato is moot. ID creationism is a mash up of two separate concepts. If conflation isn't a concern then married bachelors, square circles, and ID creationism exist. Not much point in discussing a married bachelor. I'm fine with discussing bachelors or married people, but it's hard to take any discussion of a married bachelor seriously.

I realize ID creationists really wish the Wedge Strategy didn't exist; it's extremely damning to the argument that ID creationism is science. But it's there and it lays out in very direct and clear terms why ID creationism was developed, what it is, etc. It isn't going away.

But since you seem to be pretty dedicated to the cause, can you tell me....

1) What, if any, new arguments have ID creationists made in the last 10 years or so?

2) What, if any, contributions to our scientific understanding of the world has ID creationism made?

Still have no idea if you mean creationists or ID theory, but whatever.
On the contrary, I think people at the Discovery institute are glad the Wedge strategy exists. I think in part they owe the success of their funding to the Wedge strategy.
1) Assuming you mean ID theory, specified-complexity and irreducible-complexity
Assuming you mean creationism, I can't think of any off the top of my head
2) Assuming you mean ID theory, predicting function for the majority of non-coding DNA. Your article from the 1970's found function in junk-DNA says nothing of the predictions of Darwinism and ID theory. Because the predictions were about the majority of junk-DNA. If what you said about the predictions was true this would never have been published in 1980:
“Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes.” -Nature 1980

Selfish genes, the phenotype paradigm and genome evolution - Nature

Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes. Prokaryotic transposable elements and eukaryotic middle-repetitive sequences can be seen as such DNAs, and thus no...

www.nature.com

So the identification of some function in 1980 did not change anything because it was and still is about the majority of non-coding DNA. The fact that it was referred to as junk is detrimental to Darwinists and the fact it is no longer referred to as junk is evidence ID theory contributes to science.

 

[Vaccine]

Well you can say that all you like, but the evidence is what matters. And it was the evidence that led a federal court and every scientific organization that weighed in on the matter to conclude that ID is a form of creationism that was developed as a social/legal strategy to get creationism into schools.

Courts have ruled black people are property, corporations are people, and ID theory is creationism.
Seems to me courts weigh in on legal matters and aren't a good source of truth. Considering:

• Black people aren't actually property, they are humans
• Corporations aren't actually people, they're a legal entity on paper
• ID theory isn't actually a form of creationism, it's a scientific theory

I imagine many people used the Dred Scott decision as evidence black people were property. I imagine many people are tying to get corporations the right to vote based on the Riggs case. I see many people are trying to use the Dover case to support their assertion ID theory is a form of creationism. Using court case for definitions is about as weak an argument as can be made. The evidence that matters shows Creationism is faith-based; Intelligent Design is empirically-based.

 

[Barbarian]

Special creationism has as much to do with ID theory as aliens.

That was settled in the Dover Trial. An "ID textbook" turned out to be a special creationism textbook that had been altered to remove "creationist" and replaced with "design advocate." Only they messed up one deletion and mixed the two words together. Smoking gun.

Some IDers have moved away from creationism, but most "ID advocates" are still creationists.

I see many people are trying to use the Dover case to support their assertion ID theory is a form of creationism.

Evidence will do that, yes.

The evidence that matters shows Creationism is faith-based; Intelligent Design is empirically-based.

Well, let's ask the IDers. From the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document...

Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

So it's a religious doctrine. Not "empirical" at all. It starts with a religious belief, and ends there.

 

[Barbarian]

Theories can be improved or modified as more information is gathered so that the accuracy of the prediction becomes greater over time. It's how science works.

Problem is, he went from a testable hypothesis that was falsified, (irreducible complexity) to an unfalsible religious belief. (unselected steps). That's not how science works.

 

[Vaccine]

LOL...what? "ID theory itself" is an argument of design! Geez.

Obviously you don't understand the difference between a theory and the implication of a theory.

Is information theory an argument?
Is germ theory an argument?
Is the theory of evolution an argument?
Is big bang theory an argument?

Of course, the answer is no, none of those are arguments. They are theories. Theories are based on observation and experiments. Theories do not advance arguments. Theories are reliable accounts of the real world that are open to experimental rebuttal.

Now we can certainly argue about the implications of those theories, but in doing so we are leaving the realm of scientific theory and entering philosophy.

Right, that's the charade, which was a crucial component of the legal strategy.

The federal courts had ruled against teaching creationism in public school science classes. So the creationists stripped their arguments and talking points of all the overt religious references (e.g., Noah's flood, Adam and Eve, God, the Bible) and tried to recast their beliefs as "intelligent design" and claim it was purely scientific.

But they had two main problems. First, they'd left a massive paper trail that exposed their scam. Second, their own believers couldn't keep up the charade and oftentimes when they were speaking or writing to sympathetic Christian audiences, they'd give up the game and fall right back into old habits (e.g., referring to themselves as creationists, referring to their arguments as creationist arguments, citing the Bible, etc.).

Finally, the main thing to keep in mind here is that all this is quite old. Kitzmiller v Dover was decided in 2005, 18 years ago. That killed their legal strategy and since it never was a science to begin with, it rendered ID creationism effectively dead.

But if you want to hitch your wagon to this long dead horse, go ahead I guess.

This post reads like the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory. Like all conspiracy theories, they are based on conflation and quote mining. And a nominal fallacy thrown in to drive home the point of how rational all this is.

This started off about the judge distorting Behe's quote to conclude he was talking about the theory itself. By the Judge's logic, Behe both asserted design is empirically based and design is an argument. Which is nonsense. Empirically based theories aren't up for debate, they're open to experimental rebuttal. Whether you agree with Behe or not, Behe definitely asserted ID theory is empirically based at the trial. So attributing ID theory to Behe's quote about the plausibility of the argument of design is a distortion of Behe's words. When you understand Behe was talking about the implication from his theory, it makes sense whether this would be plausible or not. The "argument of design" is the implication open to interpretation and debate. Behe views ID theory as empirically based, not an argument. So viewing an "argument of design" as Id theory is just conflation.
Conspiracy theories are based on conflation and quote mining. All your quotes apply creationism, and creationist strategies, not ID theory itself. All your complaints and criticisms apply to creationism, not ID theory itself. In case you don't know, ID theory implicates aliens just the same as a creator. So it's ridiculous to think it's a form of creationism.
The Dover trial actually increased popular opinion of ID theory. Probably because most people recognized the difference between creationism and ID theory.

 

[Vaccine]

It's just a fact that it isn't. As you just learned, there are different versions of the bacterial flagellum, of varying levels of complexity. By definition it's not irreducibly complex.

How do you define irreducibly complex?

As you learned, skin cells can detect light. So they are photodetectors to begin with. Just not very good ones.
A dark spot can make them more sensitive. Turns out, that adaptation exists in very primitive eukaryotes:

J Cell Sci (1991) 99 (1): 67–72.

Photoreception of Paramecium cilia: localization of photosensitivity and binding with anti-frog-rhodopsin IgG​

Paramecium bursaria is photosensitive and accumulates in a lighted area. The cells can be deciliated by a brief suspension in dilute ethanol. Both intact and deciliated cells showed depolarization in response to light stimulation by a step-increase from dark to above 0.7 mW cm−2 (550 nm). On the other hand, after a step-increase to below 0·4mWcm−1, intact cells showed hyperpolarization, while the deciliated cells showed no change in membrane potential. This difference in membrane potential response between ciliated and deciliated cells suggests that both somatic and ciliary structures are photosensitive. In our search for the photoreceptive molecules, a polyclonal antibody induced in rabbits against frog rhodopsin was found to croos-react with a 63 × 103Mτ protein of P. bursaria, by Immunoelectrophoresis. Immunocytochemical studies showed that the antibody labeling was localized on both the ciliary and the somatic membranes. These results raise the possibility that P. bursaria may contain a rhodopsin-like protein as a photoreceptor molecule.

While these articles are fascinating to read, none provide provide a step by step process showing how photoreceptive cells are produced.

(Revelation that the clotting cascade is not irreducibly complex, and exists in various levels of complexity.)

By definition, a feature that exists in various levels of complexity cannot be irreducibly complex.


Sorry, if your car comes in last, you don't get points if it comes in backwards with the lights on. Bottom line? The blood clotting cascade exists in various levels of complexity and cannot by definition, be irreducibly complex.

The fact varying levels of complexity exist doesn't disprove IC. As Behe pointed out in Darwin's Black Box, the minimal amount components to function is what's irreducibly complex. Various levels of complexity still form blood clots.

 

[Barbarian]

It's just a fact that it isn't. As you just learned, there are different versions of the bacterial flagellum, of varying levels of complexity. By definition it's not irreducibly complex.

How do you define irreducibly complex?

"a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function of the system, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." (Darwin's Black Box, page 39, 1996)​

Behe's example is a mousetrap. But several people have pointed out that a mousetrap will still work with one or another component missing.

As you learned, skin cells can detect light. So they are photodetectors to begin with. Just not very good ones.
A dark spot can make them more sensitive. Turns out, that adaptation exists in very primitive eukaryotes:

J Cell Sci (1991) 99 (1): 67–72.

Photoreception of Paramecium cilia: localization of photosensitivity and binding with anti-frog-rhodopsin IgG​

While these articles are fascinating to read, none provide provide a step by step process showing how photoreceptive cells are produced.

They merely show that such cells can evolve in a stepwise manner.
O

The fact varying levels of complexity exist doesn't disprove IC.

By definition, it does. If something exists in a simpler form with fewer components, but definition it's not irreducibly complex. More to the point, a series of increasingly complex functions shows that it can evolve over time.

As Behe pointed out in Darwin's Black Box, the minimal amount components to function is what's irreducibly complex.

Yes. He messed up by citing the vertebrate clotting system.

 

[Uncle J]

Theories can be improved or modified as more information is gathered so that the accuracy of the prediction becomes greater over time. It's how science works.

Except ID creationism isn't a theory. It's never explained anything nor has it been subjected to scientific testing.

 

[Uncle J]

1) Assuming you mean ID theory, specified-complexity and irreducible-complexity

That's an interesting claim. Can you cite any papers published in scientific journals that utilize those terms?

2) Assuming you mean ID theory, predicting function for the majority of non-coding DNA.

Another interesting claim. Where and when specifically did ID creationists make that prediction?

Your article from the 1970's found function in junk-DNA says nothing of the predictions of Darwinism and ID theory. Because the predictions were about the majority of junk-DNA. If what you said about the predictions was true this would never have been published in 1980:
“Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes.” -Nature 1980

https://www.nature.com/articles/284...s evidence ID theory contributes to science.

That makes no sense at all. The abstract you linked to simply points out that there are some genetic sequence types that only exist to replicate themselves while doing nothing for the organism in which they exist. That's simply an observed fact (transposable elements).

As far as predictions about non-functional DNA, I think you've missed the point. You claimed ID creationists "predicted" that what was previously thought to be "junk DNA" would be functional. As I pointed out by citing a paper from the 80's, geneticists already knew that some non-coding sequences (what was labelled "junk DNA") were functional.

So ID creationists can't say they "predicted" something that was already known.

Also I have to wonder....why would functional non-coding sequences be a necessary prediction of ID creationism?

 

[Uncle J]

Courts have ruled black people are property, corporations are people, and ID theory is creationism.
Seems to me courts weigh in on legal matters and aren't a good source of truth. Considering:

• Black people aren't actually property, they are humans
• Corporations aren't actually people, they're a legal entity on paper
• ID theory isn't actually a form of creationism, it's a scientific theory

I imagine many people used the Dred Scott decision as evidence black people were property. I imagine many people are tying to get corporations the right to vote based on the Riggs case. I see many people are trying to use the Dover case to support their assertion ID theory is a form of creationism. Using court case for definitions is about as weak an argument as can be made. The evidence that matters shows Creationism is faith-based; Intelligent Design is empirically-based.

Again, that's just lazy thinking. "Courts have been wrong in the past, therefore I can wave away any court ruling I don't like".

 

[Uncle J]

Obviously you don't understand the difference between a theory and the implication of a theory.

Your intermittent posting may be causing you to forget some context. You stated "Behe was talking about the plausibility of an argument of design, not ID theory itself", which is rather goofy since "ID theory" is an argument of design.

Theories are based on observation and experiments.

Which ID creationism completely lacks.

This post reads like the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory.

Except for one major inconvenient fact.....we have the documents, statements from ID creationists themselves, and a host of other direct evidence clearly showing how ID creationism was crafted as a legal strategy in response to court rulings against teaching creationism. We have the creationists' own textbook where they defined "creation" and "intelligent design" in precisely the same terms. We have examples of ID creationists referring to themselves as creationists and their arguments as creationist arguments. We have their own document that lays out in direct terms what ID creationism is all about (trying to bring science in line with Christianity and defeat materialism).

I know you'd like all that to go away, but it's not going anywhere.

This started off about the judge distorting Behe's quote to conclude he was talking about the theory itself.

Um....what? That quote wasn't the start of anything, nor was it even a crucial component of the ruling.

I have to ask....have you ever read the Kitzmiller ruling?

Whether you agree with Behe or not, Behe definitely asserted ID theory is empirically based at the trial.

He also said that's only true in the same sense that astrology is a science.

Conspiracy theories are based on conflation and quote mining. All your quotes apply creationism, and creationist strategies, not ID theory itself. All your complaints and criticisms apply to creationism, not ID theory itself. In case you don't know, ID theory implicates aliens just the same as a creator. So it's ridiculous to think it's a form of creationism.

Well, you're welcome to that opinion if you like. But it doesn't change the fact that a federal court has ruled otherwise and every scientific organization that's weighed in on the matter all agreed that it's not science and is a form of creationism.

I suppose you can keep repeating "But it's not" all you like, but really....who cares? Like I keep saying, it's dead. No one is trying to get it taught in schools and no one is utilizing it in any scientific sense at all.

Honestly, we may as well be arguing about phrenology.

The Dover trial actually increased popular opinion of ID theory. Probably because most people recognized the difference between creationism and ID theory.

Citation?

 

[Barbarian]

Assuming you mean ID theory, predicting function for the majority of non-coding DNA. Your article from the 1970's found function in junk-DNA says nothing of the predictions of Darwinism and ID theory. Because the predictions were about the majority of junk-DNA. If what you said about the predictions was true this would never have been published in 1980:
“Natural selection operating within genomes will inevitably result in the appearance of DNAs with no phenotypic expression whose only ‘function’ is survival within genomes.” -Nature 1980

As IDers admit in the Wedge Document,the goal of ID is to advance a religious doctrine. Hence, religion, not a theory.

But the broken vitamin C gene in primates is an example of DNA with no phenotypic expression. So Nature had it right. This is entirely inconsistent with the religious doctrine of ID, but makes perfect sense in light of evolutionary theory.

 

[Barbarian]

He also said that's only true in the same sense that astrology is a science.

Yes, because Behe has an expanded definition of science that includes concepts like astrology and ID.

 

[Uncle J]

Yes, because Behe has an expanded definition of science that includes concepts like astrology and ID.

Yep, and it's also of note that ID creationists have lobbied states to change the definition of science in their science standards to include non-natural explanations (e.g., Kansas). Just one more piece of evidence clearly showing that it was just another form of creationism.