My wife, a Ph.D candidate in Molecular Biogenetics, thanks you for a hearty laugh. =]

Now, repeat, after, me: DNA *does not* disprove evolution. Indeed, DNA buttresses evolutionary theory by providing the vehicle for inheratance. Evolution is quite mundane as a "theory" in light of all the reasons listed in my ^last post^. Moreover, while the two may have some of the same feature sub-sets, most evolutionists/athiests do not hold their beliefs for the same reasons Christians hold theirs. Religion is a human response to our ability to understand that we and all those we love will die. Athieism inherits the lineage of rational inquiry (like philosophy). Religion's ultimate goal is to provide refuge from The Human Dilemma, whereas rational inquiry's ultimate goal is to be right--regardless of whether that makes us feel better or worse.

Last, "scientists," unless we are talking about comparitive cultural anthropologists, do not study negro behaviour and would not have any educated opinion beyond the one the media tells everyone else to have.

Hey, great! I am glad the good doctor was able to enjoy herself, for a change. Perhaps the dear lady in man-pants would like to verify or contradict this:

DEVASTATING MATH PROBABILITIES

The possibilities of it occurring by chance are devastating.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 1050. Such a number, if written out, would read:

480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger number of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."—I.L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong (1984), p. 205.

"This means 1 / 1089190 DNA molecules, on the average, must form to provide the one chance of forming the specific DNA sequence necessary to code the 124 proteins. 1089190 DNA's would weigh 1089147 times more than the earth, and would certainly be sufficient to fill the universe many times over. It is estimated that the total amount of DNA necessary to code 100 billion people could be contained in ½ of an aspirin tablet. Surely 1089147 times the weight of the earth in DNA's is a stupendous amount and emphasizes how remote the chance is to form the one DNA molecule. A quantity of DNA this colossal could never have formed."—R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, p. 115.

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/08dna04.htm
The rest of the article is really good too, but I didn't want to post the whole page. I think if JP and Neon would read some of this stuff with an open mind, they might be able to see that evolution is a sham. That's what I did, but I recognize that simple people need there religious beliefs. I don't have that "I-hate-all-religions-because-I-was-touched-by-a-priest-as-a-little-boy" problem that some people have.

I wish I had a dime for each time I've heard something like the following from Creationist sources.

DEVASTATING MATH PROBABILITIES

The possibilities of it occurring by chance are devastating.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 1050. Such a number, if written out, would read:

480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000.

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger number of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."—I.L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong (1984), p. 205.

"This means 1 / 1089190 DNA molecules, on the average, must form to provide the one chance of forming the specific DNA sequence necessary to code the 124 proteins. 1089190 DNA's would weigh 1089147 times more than the earth, and would certainly be sufficient to fill the universe many times over. It is estimated that the total amount of DNA necessary to code 100 billion people could be contained in ½ of an aspirin tablet. Surely 1089147 times the weight of the earth in DNA's is a stupendous amount and emphasizes how remote the chance is to form the one DNA molecule. A quantity of DNA this colossal could never have formed."—R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, p. 115.

Not every "haphazard" combination of molecules is a replicator. But there are at least several, and probably many, molecules that can replicate themselves. The shortest of these replicators are the most likely to form from continuous processes of pre-biotic evolution (e.g., photochemistry). But once a replicator has formed, the environment it formed in will soon be dominated by replicators.

Initially the replicators will all be of the type that originally formed, but random mutations will change the structure of the replicating molecule in some cases. Most of the mutations will be disadvantageous, possibly to the point of terminating the reproducing function of the molecule. These bad mutations will disappear precisely because they decrease the reproductive powers of the molecule carrying them. But the advantageous mutations will conversely rise in occurance because they increase the reproductive powers of the molecule carrying them.

The point is that these early replicators were not so long and complex as today's DNA is. Rather, they began small and gained in size and complexity through series of mutations that gave reproductive advantages that justified the higher thermodynamic costs.

So the Creationists rig the game by demanding a leap from unassociated simple molecules (like ammonia, water, and methane) straight to DNA. The construction of the overwhelming adverse probabilities is their way of obscuring the true nature of biogenesis.

Jerry Abbott

Hey, great! I am glad the good doctor was able to enjoy herself, for a change. Perhaps the dear lady in man-pants would like to verify or contradict this:.

I understand that you may have an emotional little bra-snapping contest over evolution, and at this point I am sorry to have walked into it. However, you give yourself away by insulting a man's wife you don't even know. While you're obviously a very ignorant person who prefers emotional outbursts over science, she's finishing a Ph.D. You're posting on a message board, she is doing her doctoral defense. Now, if she is a dear lady in man-pants, what pray-tell are you?

The "scientific" part of your question represents a logical fallacy.

First, it's written "4.80 x 10^50" or "4.80 x 10e50" (see, this is why I made a mistake getting involved here, I have to give a remedial lesson in scientific notation--taught in pub schools in ~5th grade--and I'm a lib. arts student!)

Second, if each of billions of strands of nucleotides have that little a chance, that is more than enough. Evolution, at its point of actuation, is the natural illustration of 10,000 monkeys at 10,000 typewriters having an infinite amount of time to write Shakespeare. It will eventually happen by virtue of the sheer numbers X time. This doesn't even include environmental factors and mate-selection (higher up the chain) which are indeed the essence of evolutionary theory.

Your source is, with respect, kookery. Religion was the way we explained the universe before we had the scientific method. Stick to helping people face death and other human problems. People like you trying to use God to debunk non-contraversial, demonstrable, observable science is just really, really unfortunate.

edit: speling vury bad

Wow, I'm really impressed by the debate in this thread. It's like, completely...not retarded.

/applause

Wow, I'm really impressed by the debate in this thread. It's like, completely...not retarded.

/applause

. . . then you should stop reading where you are, because you obviously haven't read the whole thread. =]

Neon Itchy, are you seriously bent out of shape over the little cracks in your evolution religion? It's clear that JP is a pure religious evolutionist zealot, but I figured you were just a misinformed idiot with a flair for excessive wordiness. Since you guys had earlier disagreed on the WTC thing, maybe you can agree that the WTC towers collapsed due to evolution. That may seem stragnge at first, but if you think about it]

I'm not the one redefining scientific evidence, refusing to read it, and constantly changing the argument. Nor am I posting OUTDATED Creationist argument. And once again, evolution is not a RELIGION. It is not based on FAITH. Evolution is a FACT and a THEORY. Since you haven't got enough scientific knowledge to undestand that basic concept of terminology you are really wasting your time posting Creationist attacks on evolution.

Hey morons!! BAN ME!!!

 

I understand that you may have an emotional little bra-snapping contest over evolution, and at this point I am sorry to have walked into it. However, you give yourself away by insulting a man's wife you don't even know. While you're obviously a very ignorant person who prefers emotional outbursts over science, she's finishing a Ph.D. You're posting on a message board, she is doing her doctoral defense. Now, if she is a dear lady in man-pants, what pray-tell are you?

The "scientific" part of your question represents a logical fallacy.

First, it's written "4.80 x 10^50" or "4.80 x 10e50" (see, this is why I made a mistake getting involved here, I have to give a remedial lesson in scientific notation--taught in pub schools in ~5th grade--and I'm a lib. arts student!)

Second, if each of billions of strands of nucleotides have that little a chance, that is more than enough. Evolution, at its point of actuation, is the natural illustration of 10,000 monkeys at 10,000 typewriters having an infinite amount of time to write Shakespeare. It will eventually happen by virtue of the sheer numbers X time. This doesn't even include environmental factors and mate-selection (higher up the chain) which are indeed the essence of evolutionary theory.

Your source is, with respect, kookery. Religion was the way we explained the universe before we had the scientific method. Stick to helping people face death and other human problems. People like you trying to use God to debunk non-contraversial, demonstrable, observable science is just really, really unfortunate.

edit: speling vury bad

If you had read the text from the article that I referenced, you would have seen that the superscript notation is intact at the source. It didn't survive the copy paste and html encoding that it required to post the sample on this board - I know that because I am a science major.

That was a pretty low-brow attack on the wifey, but you brought her into the VNN fun park, not me. If it's any consolation to you, my wife is also a PhD candidate.

Your response, like so much related to evolutionary theories and their purveyors, is full of inaccuracies. The 10,000 monkeys bit is wrong because it requires the little spin about an infinite amount of time. Without stretching this discussion into a debate about infinity and the paradoxes that shadow it, I will just suppose you meant a "near infinite amount of time". With that said, the point of the math analogy is that the amount of time evolution requires is exponentially beyond the amount of time that real science says it would have had. The universe is not infinitely old, if you will, and mammalian so-called evolution only began some 65 mya, or so I think the evolutionists agree. So you see, in order for evolution to have happened the way that the evolutionoids claim, there would have to have been significant biological changes in every generation in order to get where we are today. They evolutionoids know this, but they ignore it the way that xians ignore the fact that the earth is not 7,000 years old.

All "kookery" aside, we honest scientists agree that there are some things that we cannot yet explain.

Neon Itchy, are you seriously bent out of shape over the little cracks in your evolution religion?

We'll discuss that when your premises bear some relationship to reality.

It's clear that JP is a pure religious evolutionist zealot, but I figured you were just a misinformed idiot with a flair for excessive wordiness.

How fortunate for me, then, that your figuring represents no more than regurgitated ruminations by the reality-challenged.

We'll discuss that when your premises bear some relationship to reality.

How fortunate for me, then, that your figuring represents no more than regurgitated ruminations by the reality-challenged.

. dork

I know that because I am a science major.

Say it isn't so.

Your response, like so much related to evolutionary theories and their purveyors, is full of inaccuracies. The 10,000 monkeys bit is wrong because it requires the little spin about an infinite amount of time. Without stretching this discussion into a debate about infinity and the paradoxes that shadow it, I will just suppose you meant a "near infinite amount of time".

No - infinite amount of time is correct, toward generating the first organisms. Only thereafter are time constraints involved.

The "many worlds" of QM are not excluded in calculating odds, and neither is an infinite sequence or simultaneity of universes. The genesis of life may be reckoned wildly improbable or inevitable.

With that said, the point of the math analogy is that the amount of time evolution requires is exponentially beyond the amount of time that real science says it would have had.

This is to make the error, as already discussed by Jenab, of excluding intermediate processes. The Creationists' argument stupidly excludes this consideration, under the influence of a dogmatic insistence upon "limitations" to the introduction of new genetic material which have been repeatedly demonstrated not to be such - whatever the theoretical limitations - by multiple instances of ring species, as discussed. The Creationists' bumble bee cannot fly.

dork

Neo..."Neee-oh"

Dork want banana?

... All "kookery" aside, we honest scientists agree that there are some things that we cannot yet explain.

Joe, tell me something. Are you by chance one of those aggressively depressed people who derive some kind of odd comfort from the knowledge that "I don't know everything]relax ??

If that's the case, maybe that's why some here are beginning to suspect you're actually a xian playing a part.

See, xians have that same mentality; "We're helpless, weak, sinful beings. God is all-powerful. So there's no point in us trying to change anything, since everything that happens is God's will. It's out of our hands. So we might as well surrender to God's will, and relax."

Compare that to your, "I'm just someone who's honest enough to say that I don't know." and, "We honest people admit that there are things we can't explain." And remember, you're the one who keeps referring to religion, when everybody else is discussing science. Hmmm?

So, is that your problem, Joe? You depressed, buddy?

Your response, like so much related to evolutionary theories and their purveyors, is full of inaccuracies. The 10,000 monkeys bit is wrong because it requires the little spin about an infinite amount of time.

All "kookery" aside, we honest scientists agree that there are some things that we cannot yet explain.

Slow down. You are so fast and loose with your processing that you're liable to jump the tracks at any moment. This is so prevalent with you that I am not sure what to think when you say something I agree with. Who said anything about an infinite amount of time? The saying says "for 10,000 years," so I ask again---WHO said ANYTHING about an INFINITE amount of time? Getting back to the numbers, conservative estimates on the universe's age are now 15,000,000,000 years, therefore to you and I, it may as well be infinite as neither of us can fathom it. Thus, I believe it fairly safe to say that any lack of time is a big issue. We see how fast negroids evolve into Homo Sapien, for instance. /rimshot/ We are not dealing w/ the beginning of time itself, however, just to the beginning of DNA in its current form. You really miss that one.

The reason those numbers are unreliable is because our "sample size" is horribly small. Under current trends, the universe "ages" in popular theory about ~1% / year since 1900 and ~5% year since the 1980s. You want to use some science (theorized properties of DNA) to debunk other science (evolution) and it's nonsense. Your argument on this thread has consisted of sling-mud/retreat to moral high ground, wash, rinse, repeat.

You live in a strange world where scientists get their emotional panties bunched over a competing set of theories. You're doing a "Kirk vs. Picard" chatroom, 5 years later after half an undergraduate degree. You should consider not being so defensive. For instance, I don't think people are, as you claimed, accepting any theory except the Christian one re: evolution. This shows me that you're looking at it from a very biased POV.

It is not just Christianity--it is an argument between a universe of the supernatural, or a universe of natural phenomena. You believe in the supernatural, which tends to pique interest in your motivation towards science, but we both know it's the EOS and neither of us are likely to have that kind of time. I, OTOH, am arguing a universe of natural forces.

And why do we argue these things? I say, "To get them right." In that case, I submit to you that NASA relies more on slide-rules and computing power than prayer in order to place a satellite in orbit, thus, pursuite of science is more useful than pursuit of God for anything more than human comfort.

We're programmed to be superstitious, but we don't have to let it get the best of us.

This has been another horribly abridged post.

There's no way that guy could be a science major. You can't be a science major and not understand the basic terminology relating to theories, facts, and hypothesis.

More reference provided, refutations of his very arguments.

http://vuletic.com/hume/cefec/5.html#5_5