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Offline Rubystars

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Re: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
« Reply #25 on: April 15, 2008, 12:15:12 AM »
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You can put as many steps in the process as you want, but if something is reproducing then it didn't just spontaneously arise from non-living material.  Somewhere along the line there must have been a jump from non-life to life.

God only knows when that line was actually crossed. Since it was a gradual process and a lengthy one that would have led to the formation of the first life, exactly what would qualify as "life" at those very early stages might be impossible to determine. If you want to use cells as the dividing point, then yes, there must have been a time when the first cells with nuclear material inside of them came about, but they didn't just jump together. They would have had cell-like precursors.

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Evolutionists ARE the claimants, therefore they do have the burden of proof.  I have been consistent with my position because the claimant is always the one who challenges accepted belief.  It was the belief that G-d created all things that was the accepted belief, and it was evolution that claimed otherwise, therefore evolutionists are the "claimants" and have the burden of proof.  If they cannot demonstrate conclusively that macroevolution and abiogenesis took place, then Jews and others should have no reason not to continue believing what they believed before.

By claimant I meant the one making a claim.

Evolution can be defended by those who accept it through evidence.

I don't think that ID really has a lot of evidence to support it.

Even if Evolution were false, it doesn't mean that ID or creationism is correct. I believe God created through evolution so I suppose that's the best of both :)

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But they also use the world "theory" for ideas that they have abandoned, like steady-state theory, so you can't automatically say something's a fact just because it's a theory according to science.  Like steady-state theory, evolution and abiogenesis are very speculative about the past when humans weren't around, so they are not conclusive.  Those other theories have observable results that work every time, so those theories carry more weight.

Theories are called theories because there's always an opening for them to be disproven. That's the nature of science. New evidence is always welcomed, so long as that evidence is valid.

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It's possible to say that organisms change without believing that they all came from 1 anscestor.  Small scale changes are possible but large scale changes are not.

If you have a small change, and another small change, and another, and another, and another, and another, then eventually that's going to add up to a very large change.

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Your analogy shows that microevolution is possible.  The person starts out walking, and they end up still walking a mile later.  Macroevolution would be like saying they start out walking, but in the end their legs have been replaced with a cushion of air and they are hovering.

What's the difference between several small leaps of microevolution and macroevolution? They have the same effect. They're the same process! Macroevolution is just many of those small changes (which you accept) added together over a period of time.

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That's just part of the evolutionist religion's way of explaining why life arose once but does not happen again.  The odds are in any given situation, life is not going to form itself.  So evolutionists must invent the fact that pre-life "conditions" were a certain way.  There's got to be a catch as to why we can't observe the process of ANY form of life creation.

It's been billions of years since life first appeared on earth.  It's kind of hard to tell you exactly what that first life was like or what conditions were necessary to allow it to arise. That's why more research is needed to try to figure it out. Any new type of life that arose now would have a well-established carbon-based biosphere to compete with and would be eaten or outcompeted easily.


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What's so imperfect about it?  For practical purposes, no one notices the blind spot unless they really look for it, and the fact that we don't notice it is a testimony to our complexity.

If you come from a perspective of wanting to promote the idea that intelligent design is demonstrable through science, then you have to deal with cases like this of apparent defect. Another often brought up organ is the appendix, which is prone to bursting. What about wisdom teeth that don't have enough jaw to grow?

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It's not a defect it is just how we're engineered.  Different animals sometimes have similarities because there is one G-d who designed all creatures and did so in an orderly fashion.

I believe that there is a common Designer in nature, but I also accept common descent.

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But now we're back to the same problem as abiogenesis.  Where did the first light-sensitive cell come from? 

That I'm not sure about, but I'm sure there are people who know more than I do about that. I've been told before that such cells are not very complicated to become light sensitive because nerves are already sensitive to something. I wish I could tell you more but I just don't know about that one.

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Are you saying that at some point a human could be born with light sensitive cells somewhere and eventually they would become an eye?

Well, what I was talking about was the evolution of the eye itself. In ancient non-humans the eye was more simple and later developed into modern eyes.

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Flatworms' eyes are simpler because they are simpler creatures.  You don't start with that and end up with the type of eyes we have, and there is no animal record that shows the step by step process from the flatworm eye to the human eye.

There are animals still alive today which show every gradation from simple eye patch to complex eye and everything in between.
 The video gave examples of some of them.

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But where did the "right" mutations come from?  If they didn't have the right mutations to begin with, then how would they survive in the cold until the right traits mutate?  And if they weren't in the cold to begin with, then wouldn't a trait that made them more adapted to cold make them less adapted to where they were before?  There's a good chance that most of these mutations would have killed off an organism before they helped it.

These are really great questions. :) I think there are different ideas about this. Most speciation occurs when there's some sort of separation between different parts of a population of animals.

So let's say that a group of foxes wanted to colonize the Arctic tundra, but they were normal red foxes. There's a certain area between the tundra and the temperate zone which is colder than the temperate zone but warmer than the tundra. They could colonize that first then move further north.

Another idea would be if the climate slowly changed over time where they were and they adapted along the way.

Very quick climate changes can kill off animals and other organisms. Evolution allows populations to adapt to changing conditions or exploit new habitats.

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If the mutations are that minimal in nature, then it wouldn't make an organism THAT much more or less suited to its environment, and would have as much of a chance of dying out as it would spreading throughout the population.  Just because someone's tooth enamel is thicker doesn't mean the whole population is going to get that trait, or that the ones who don't have it are going to die out, or that all their children will even have that trait.

What about giraffes? They eat leaves from trees with their tongue. The longer the tongue, the better they are getting leaves. A one inch longer tongue may seem not to make a difference, but if it gives the giraffe with that mutation better access to food as opposed to other giraffes, then that one is more likely to reproduce and spread that trait through the population.

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I thought you said that the people who accept the idea of global warming were the ones with the agenda.

I think any science can be used for good or for bad things. A lot of people are using global warming science for bad things but that doesn't invalidate the science itself.






Offline Kahane-Was-Right BT

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Re: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
« Reply #26 on: April 23, 2008, 02:04:49 AM »

I have a personal belief in G-d and that G-d used natural processes (that he created) to form the universe and life. What I don't claim is that science can demonstrate G-d's presence. It's my opinion that science can't do that. It's a matter of faith, not science, to believe in G-d.


Please allow me to interject in this conversation, but rubystars it sounds as if "What I don't claim is that science can demonstrate G-d's presence. It's my opinion that science can't do that." - is as much a matter of faith as any religion, wouldn't you say?  Why is it your opinion that science can't do that and how is that not a matter of faith?

Also, in terms of "proof," the Jews have all the proof they need, a collective national experience of revelation on Mt. Sinai recorded in writing and passed on father to son generation to generation.  For proof more in the realm of "natural science" I think Dan has raised good points about the limitations of evolution, which really do exist.  Darwin himself had nothing to say about the origin of life.  Yet his work has been hijacked and transformed into an atheist dogma of life coming from randomness.  Ben Stein focuses on this point among others.

Offline Kahane-Was-Right BT

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Re: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
« Reply #27 on: April 23, 2008, 02:16:15 AM »
If they are right then they should do more studies and publish them in respected journals to back up their claims. Peer review is a necessary part of the modern scientific method. If they can't convince other scientists there's probably a good reason for it.

You must not be aware of the 'peer review' process and how it works, but I'll tell you that it is completely political.  If you have an idea that doesn't sit well with the "establishment," no matter how rock solid your research is, no matter how strong your work, it will be rejected and you can easily be "ostracized" in this way as Dan has pointed out.  The people sitting on the review boards got there for a reason, and those with a vested interest in the status quo will see to it that their prestige (and monopoly on establishment dogma) remains in tact.  Don't pretend that science is immune from politics and favortism.  It is infested just like every other field.  Scientific method is a great rational approach designed to arrive at truth, but 'Science,' the occupational field, aint so pristine.  All one needs to do is work in a controversial subject of research to find this out first hand.

There are some physicists who argue that actually the earth is headed for an ice age.  They are outcasts, but their work looks at the bigger picture.  The bigger picture shows that earth has gone through cycles of climate changes irregardless of human input or influence.  This concept is almost unanimously shunned, and those daring to point it out are often tarred and feathered.

Offline Kahane-Was-Right BT

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Re: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
« Reply #28 on: April 23, 2008, 02:32:34 AM »

For example, the human species was probably one race in the beginning. Later people moved around the world and became different races. How the different races of humankind developed has really nothing to do with how humans came about to begin with. They're two separate discussions.


That's not so.  Evolution says definitively that humans evolved from apes, that apes from ealier mammalian ancestor, mammals, etc.  Amphibians from sea creatures, reptiles from amphibians and so on.  Evolution includes the origin of species....afterall, that was the title of Darwin's work....
:)

I'm not sure why you think abiogenesis (and the concepts therein) can be so definitively isolated from evolution or diversification of life.  They are very much tied together if one believes in those ideas.  And Dan is correct in his analogy regarding the sieve.  In evolution, it is random mutations that led to certain lifeforms, and these lifeforms appearing in certain ways, and these lifeforms survived only because these particular qualities enabled their survival in the given environment.  When you said that there were rocks and sand in a sieve and the sand went through, that actually is a concept of creationism, because those particular types were preformed and an environmental pressure came along to root one of them out.  Evolution involves natural selection, which goes way beyond simply survival of the fittest.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2008, 03:14:28 AM by Kahane-Was-Right BT »

Offline Kahane-Was-Right BT

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Re: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
« Reply #29 on: April 23, 2008, 03:01:24 AM »
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And I don't understand what there is to explain about a blind spot that is different from any other body part that is different between different species.

It's an imperfection. If someone wants to argue that "intelligent design" can be seen in nature, then they have to explain why this happens. Also, because fish and other animals that are on the same evolutionary line share the same defect, it indicates a common ancestry with them.


But the blind spot is not a "defect."  For a more complex eye (with 'better' vision, the kind of incredibly precise and complicated processes that the human eye engages in for example), there cannot be photoreceptor cells where the optic nerve passes through the retina (the optic nerve transmits the information of the eye to the brain), thus there is a 'break' where cells are not in place to detect the light as happens across the rest of the retina.  But the real marvel is that the brain is designed to fill in the missing information, and we have no perception of this 'blind spot' in our every day vision.  The brain can actually judge the surrounding field of vision and fill in the small spot with appropriate information to complete the image.  That is truly amazing. 

All vertebrates have this type of blind spot.  But you draw the wrong conclusion from this.  It does not necessarily indicate a common ancestry.  I checked online and Cephalopods are the most 'intelligent' (if we can call them that) of invertebrates, and they do not have the eye blindspot supposed "defect."  But why?  Because they have a different type of vision, appropriate for their own life and environment, and they have a different type of eye.  The optic nerve of the cephalopods approaches from behind photoreceptor cells, thus a 'break' in the retina's photoreceptors is not necessary.  I need not mention that a human with this type of eye would fail to function as a human.  But when you say it indicates common ancestry, it is no less indicative of a specific design for a specific purpose.
Almost all cephalopods are color blind and of course while they have advanced senses for invertebrates, they are vastly simplistic in comparison to human vision.