| Quote |
| Natural selection is death, and the last time I checked, death did not have the power to “bring together parts of a system” for any purpose whatsoever |
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| Date: 2006/01/19 01:01:14, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| More information on the Intelligent Designers = Space Aliens theory here. |
| Date: 2006/01/19 04:17:08, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Im pretty sure knowing the identity and purpose of the designer is the last thing they want to happen. As soon as ID becomes testable it's finished. Although they'd still try and get it taught in schools. |
| Date: 2006/01/19 05:07:11, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Here's a conversation I've had too many times: Religious Person: Why don't you follow the bible? Me: Because its self contradictory and innacurate, the creation and noahs flood are not only scientifically innacurate, but are just rip-offs of older stories. Plus theres a lot of weird stuff in there about how you shouldnt eat shellfish and how you can sell your daughter into slavery. Religious Person: Yes but all thats in the old testament you dont have to follow that literally. Me: Thats good then, because the ten commandments are in the old testament and i rather fancied going on a killing spree this afternoon, followed by a spot of coveting this evening. RP: Well, obviously you have to follow those but you need to study the bible and undertsand which bits are literally true and which arent. Me: Fair enough, please may I borrow your copy of the official church guide to which bits of the bible are true and which arent. RP: There isnt one. Me: Well if all morality comes from the bible, and you have to decide yourself which bits are true and which bits arent, how come there arent still people selling their daughters into slavery and stoning each other to death. Is it in fact because morality is based mainly on human history and experience. RP: I guess so. And the moral of this story is: The bible is completely consistent with science if you ignore the bits which didn't happen. |
| Date: 2006/01/19 05:30:49, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Especially as people have known about functional non protein coding RNAs for about twenty years as far as I'm aware. Im not sure how this has anything to with ID. |
| Date: 2006/01/19 06:23:08, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Thats terrible, makes me glad I live in the heathen moral-free secular West. |
| Date: 2006/01/19 07:04:09, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I live in England, and until he was on the news for his remarks over Katrina, most people i told about Roberston thought i was making him up. In a country run by him i would have been burned for heresy years ago. |
| Date: 2006/01/22 13:41:45, Link 81.106.62.228 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
I agree its not fair to try and interpret the entire bible literally, but why then should we not just take the resurrection etc as metaphor.
An interesting question for further creationist research. Presumably either God altered their genes to extend their lifespan, or altered ours to shorten it. |
| Date: 2006/01/23 02:48:35, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Isn't it a bit odd that UD has banners that link to This Page.
No comment, although I'm interested to see if the next edition of Pandas replaces intelligent design with 'guided non-Darwinian evolution'.
I thought he was banning people for talking about religion? |
| Date: 2006/01/23 03:55:14, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Does this mean that god chooses who believes in him and who doesnt? That seems a little unfair. If people did believe but then lost their faith does this mean god abondoned them, or they didnt really believe all along? |
| Date: 2006/01/23 06:29:04, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
I have read your posts on predetermination, although I have been told many times that all of my actions are selfish and sinful, i have never been told that this is all preditermined and there is nothing i can do about it. Is a good act then defined as one that is done in pursuit of god, or one that is done by someone who is preditermined to follow god? This does go some way to explain why a lot of people say you need religion to have morals, but it also widens the gap between religion and atheism if there are many people who simply cant be saved. And im sure you've heard this one before, but i take exception to being told that my good deeds are selfish and evil when someone else, (referring to the majority of religious people) whos primary motivation for good deeds is securing eternal life for themselves is not selfish. |
| Date: 2006/01/24 12:03:36, Link 81.106.62.228 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Although it could be misused, when i was being taught evolution in high school, creationism was occasionally referred to as an example of misrepresentation of scientific evidence. Since i did my gcse's fairly recently ('99), the bacterial flagellum was discussed both as an example of how molecular evolution is misunderstood (ie the 'take away one part' argument, although ID and IC were not named), and how just because we don't know something doesn't mean we never will. Do you have any links to examples of how current schools have been teaching creationsim/ID, or how the new legislation will help them? I will then be certainly writing to my MP and whoever else can think of. I have recently been worried to learn as well there are several AIG ministeries in the UK, I think i might have to pop along to their talk at Liverpool university. |
| Date: 2006/01/24 13:09:34, Link 81.106.62.228 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
This is pretty disturbing.
Do will know if this will apply to the new schools Tony Blair is proposing?
Im surprised Richard Dawkins didn't made a bigger deal out of this in his program. |
| Date: 2006/01/25 04:00:31, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Apparently it costs about £600 a week to keep someone in prison, which works out as £31200 a year so comparable to Eton. Although apparently this is still value for money. http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/prisonValue.php I dont know about most prisons but the prison near where i grew up was exactly like a center parcs, and our school and many local sports teams used to use their gym and other facilities as there were a lot better than we had. So this may account for some of the costs. My MP is a liberal democrat so he already is against Tony Blairs plans, but im sure they wouldn't mind one more reason to reject them. |
| Date: 2006/01/26 02:26:58, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Well it doesnt sound too unbelievable any more, thats pretty worrying.
Its Pat robertson, if you go to this link it has a video about the dover case which includes a clip of what he said. Wikipedia also has a great list of quotes. I think its important we let everyone know the kind of people that support creationism in America. Does anyone know what percentage of the population are religious? I know on the census it was pretty high but in polls i thought it only came to about 20%. |
| Date: 2006/01/26 04:23:17, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I agree, it is a great example of how prior bias can affect the interpretation of scientific evidence, which is something that needs to be taught. Irreducible complexity is a good example of how evolution does not work simply by incremental addition of parts and therefore a good introduction to duplication, HGT cooption etc. Also it would be useful to explain how the argument from ignorance is not a valid scientific argument, and that the 'gaps in the theory of evolution' are in fact questions which lead to new lines of scientific enquiry. I think teaching ID in this manner may actually be of some benefit to high school education, and long as the standards were stated clearly so they were not open to abuse. |
| Date: 2006/01/31 04:57:34, Link 81.106.62.228 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
It’s an interesting read, although if you’re looking to try and refute it I wouldn’t bother. I asked him a series of questions on his post on UD, and just got this in reply:
The problem with any 'frontloading' hypothesis is that it requires complete predetermination of all environmental and random genetic changes. However since he has stated in other posts on UD that he believes this is the case, this gets around most criticisms of his theory. |
| Date: 2006/02/04 14:05:14, Link 86.111.161.39 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I did once, although i was in the bathroom when it happened, and the lab door was open so people say the dog just wandered out and a cat wandered in. But it did happen goddamnit! |
| Date: 2006/02/04 14:09:09, Link 86.111.161.39 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
A great quote from Stewart Lee, creator of Jerry Springer The Opera:
I found that cartoon unfunny offensive and in bad taste, but i couldnt imagine living in a place where that kind of thing was censored. Then i remembered that Tony Blair is trying to pass a law that will make mocking religion illegal. Although i hope the dont take advice on the punishment from the people in this story otherwise im in big trouble. |
| Date: 2006/02/04 14:24:02, Link 86.111.161.39 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Hopefully when he realises no one cares he'll get rouund to answering my questions about his hypothesis.
I agree, maybe we should help by coming up with some research ideas for them, at least that might shut them up for a while. The problem is the great deal of people who think that the design inference and Darwins black box are enough to prove design and disprove evolution, and that no more science can be done until everyone else agrees with them. |
| Date: 2006/02/04 14:30:14, Link 86.111.161.39 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Maybe Pat Robertson, although i think he does occasionally advocate violence, at least of the godly retribution kind. |
| Date: 2006/02/05 12:37:01, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/02/06 01:56:28, Link 81.106.62.201 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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As far as legal immigration goes, apart from in a few communities where immigrants do cause problems, most people in Britain do not have a problem, indeed in the long run the economy does benefit. As far as refugees and asylum seekers are concerned, the annoying thing is that Britiain should have very few, as according to the Geneva convention refugees should stop at the first safe country they come to. Our law however is such that it is very easy to stay in Britain once you have been refused asylum, and so a large number head here, and our European neighbours do everthing in their power to help them get here. Although in many cases of Islamic extremism (and I include the protesters with the banners under this description), the problem is caused by people who have been here for many generations, most of the problems in communities are caused by an influx of illegal immigrants.Even the racist fascist british national party will admit that most of the problems are caused by illegal immigrants due to government policy, as opposed to legal immigration, which is what they ussually claim. |
| Date: 2006/02/07 09:45:05, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
This is a real problem but i don't understand why this is the main thing people have against him when we've known for years: He was the main planner and financier of the 1998 Yemen hostage taking and murder of British citizens. He spent several years attempting to set up a terrorist cell in Oregon and provided fake passports among other things. He has given money to al-qeada. Legally he shouldnt be in the UK in the first place as he married a woman who was still married to her first husband. Incedentally although he claimed he sustained his injuries fighting in Afghanistan they were actually a punishment for stealing when he was living in Saudi Arabia. Regarding the riots: did anybody else find it weird that citizens in middle-eastern countries managed to get their hands on large quantities of Danish flags at extremely short notice. |
| Date: 2006/02/07 13:06:15, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
He seems to have got confused and thinks that the bacteria magically mutate the correct genes to cause resistance:
He also thinks that mutation in bacteria is Lamarckism and therefore disproves Darwinism:
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| Date: 2006/02/07 13:25:07, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/02/07 14:16:12, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/02/08 02:55:10, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
I know it cant be helped but it does sadden me that we have to resort to philosophical and political arguments, surely there must be laws which make it illegal to decieve children in schools. |
| Date: 2006/02/08 03:28:44, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
It is quite hard to work out on UD sometimes what they mean by random. In the antibiotic resistant post DaveScott uses nonradom to mean that the bacteria knows specificaly which genes it needs to mutate in order to gain antibiotic resistance. In my reply I use random to be the opposite of this, ie despite all the factors that affect mutation in parts of the genome, this does not have much affect on the chance that the correct mutation will be made to confer resistance. I seem to be having the same problem when talking to JAD about his theory, when I say that chromosome rearrangements are random and selectable, perhaps i should say 'mostly-random'. |
| Date: 2006/02/08 04:02:17, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I know, but everyone else has been banned and i feel left out. The problem is there are several definitions of random and arguments about semantics are not my strong point. Anyway now Salvador Cordova is attacking systems biology which is my area and that makes me mad
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| Date: 2006/02/12 03:30:30, Link 81.106.62.201 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Most of the biochemists and molecular biologists i work with, would probably agree that darwinian evolution is of little importance to their work, and that they could get on fine without it. They are just happy to clone their genes, assay their proteins, run their gels, and all the other things that they do that I dont entirely understand but am very glad I dont have to do myself. As i bioinformatician, what I do is give them the sequences and location of their genes, predicted structures and functions of their proteins, and all the other genomic information that they need to do their experments. The analysis of high-throughout data, be it genome sequncing and gene/protein prediction, or gene expression analysis etc, underpins much of modern biology. This also extends to medical research and drug discovery, one of my jobs is to locate drug targets in mircoorganisms using systems biology, and other people in my lab use molecular modelling to design drug candiates bases on the structures of these targets. The point of me saying all this is that all of what I do along with most of the rest of the people in my field, does depend on 'how' these things evolved. Ive seen a lot of people on a lot of different threads saying that this doesnt matter, but unless the work of a designer is purposefully created to mimic a non designed system, it really does, designed systems have very different properties from non-designed systems. When we 'borrow' algorithms from computer science and electronic engineering to use on biological data, we have to adapt them to assume the formation of the system, be that a DNA sequence, a protein structure, or a molecular network, was the result of non-guided evolution, otherwise they dont work. I admit that many scientists do not even consider evolution when doing their work, but I have heard many people say that if we assumed it didnt happen, or we assume that organisms are designed, it wouldnt make a difference. Without evolution, modern biological and medical research would slow to a crawl. |
| Date: 2006/02/12 04:31:22, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I think a creationist once said, "If there is no creation story then there is no origional sin, therefore no need for christ to come to earth". I dont claim to be an expert on the bible, but this seems fairly sensible to me. Evolution says that their was no adam and eve (see above), and that man is not created in the image of god, and was unplanned. This seems pretty incompatible with christianity, if im wrong could someone explain it to me. Having said that i used to work with someone who did a degree in phylogenetics and was a creationist. She didnt belive in evolution in any form, but it formed the entire basis of her work, and didnt affect how well she worked at all. I think perhaps that is easier for scientists, especially biologists to reconcile evolution with faith, as it is easier to ignore philosophical and theological implications, and therefore seperate the two. |
| Date: 2006/02/15 01:07:42, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/02/16 03:13:58, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/02/16 04:59:03, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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I cant remember exactly when I first heard about ID, it was sometime last year a couple of months before the Dover lawsuit, when I was browsing google news at work. Id heard of creationists before, but just brushed them off as weird religious people that werent really that important. This article talked about a large number of scientists who dissented from evolution, and that it was now possible to empirically detect design in biological structures. Specifically it mentioned the works of Behe and Dembski. So I looked them up on pubmed, and the only recent papers I found were comments and letters defending their books, or talking about how the 'Darwinians' were censoring them. It turns out my university library had Darwins black box and No Free Lunch, so i decided to see what the fuss was all about. After deciding that they either needed a refresher course in evolution or they had some ulterior motive, i decided to check the internet, and found the NCSE website. What really got me interested in the arguments was Behes statement to the effect 'Now that we can see inside cells we see that they are full of machines that have the characteristics of design', whereas most of the work in my field of bioinformatics shows that proteins and biological systems have distinctive characteristics of non-design. The fact that they seem to ignore this, and continually state 'design is obvious in nature' is of constant amusement to me. |
| Date: 2006/02/16 11:58:40, Link 81.106.62.201 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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By the sound of it he is saying that all rearrangements are preprogrammed, based on the fact that particular sites in the genome are more likely to be involved in rearrangements than others. My main problem with frontloading, assuming that it was specifically designed to produce current species, is that the frontloader would have to have complete foreknowledge of all the random mutations and environmental conditions that would occur. Apparently the first bird hatched from the egg of a reptile this way. Also in comparing phylogeny with ontogeny he says that the environment is in no way involved with evolution as it isnt involved with development, and i think developmental biologists would have something to say about that. Many lower species actually have genomes much larger than ours, but genome size has more to do with cell size and cell division rate than complexity. Plus, as far as Im aware, gene expression play just as much if not more of a role in evolution that chromosome rearragements. |
| Date: 2006/02/17 03:56:33, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/02/17 05:58:10, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Of course if this worked it probably would have been done by now. |
| Date: 2006/02/17 06:54:41, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/02/17 12:38:42, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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Its what I like to call the Tony Blair policy generation fallacy: [Something][must be done] [This half-assed badly thought out vaguley worded policy invented by a focus group] is [something] [This half-assed badly thought out vaguley worded policy invented by a focus group] [must be done] anyway... Im just having a hard time picking a hole in DaveScotts logic, oh wait hang on...
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| Date: 2006/02/17 15:02:49, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
No it doesn't. I think ths is a big part of the problem and the confusion, the assumtion that these system are perfect. A lot of these things are 'cobbled together' very crudely by any standards. It is often obvious to us how improvements could be made. In regards to how cooption works, you have to extrapolate to thousands or millions of members of a population, and maybe only one needs the proteins with the right mutation to come together (which are ussually floating around in solution, bumping into each other). When most people use analogies like parts in a garage, scrap in a junkyard etc it fails to take into account the nature of protein structure. They are often very malleable, and a small change can alter the biological function but still leave an active protein. For example in the flagellum we may say that removng one protein will cause the system to cease functioning, but we are making the assumption that the other proteins in the system were the same when this one was added. This is very unlikely to be the case, so evolution would predict that we see flagellum in other bacteria with parts missing, where the proteins that they would interact with are different, and that is what we see (and im not referring to the secretory system, there are many other examples).
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| Date: 2006/02/19 06:49:03, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
 . Although in one sense it is right to dismiss circuit boards as a bad analogy, it is interesting to note then when electronic circuits etc. are evolved with genetic algorithms, they exhibit the properties of biological networks. Creationists might see design in the networks, but I spend all day looking at them and I certainly dont, and Ive talked to dozens of engineers who work with them, and they dont either.[quote]No one hijacked any of my threads. I deleted your comment because it was lewd. You’ve been warned over and over that I won’t tolerate lewdness here yet you persist. That’s too bad. I’ve no choice at this point but to exclude you from further participation here.[quote] Sure some of Davisons posts were pretty fanatical, but i never would have described him as being lewd, even to people over here, or did i miss something. ps for a good explination of why biological networks dont look designed see Deanne M. Taylor's posts on this thread. |
| Date: 2006/02/21 02:17:54, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/02/21 23:13:01, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I dont know if this statement has much to do with evolution, drug discovery is a pretty inefficient process, so most of the failures wont have anything to do with the evolution of pathogens. Its simply a way of saying why the drugs are so exprensive. I think it costs about $800 million in total to get a drug onto the market, and many get most of the way there to fail in clinical trials. I dont think it has yet got to the point where it is worth the companies spending the money fighting the anti-science movement, although i wouldnt rule it out in the future. |
| Date: 2006/02/22 00:23:20, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Over at UD it seems that one of the main points of disagreement is we say natural causes is the null hypothesis and they say intelligence is the null hypothesis. Therefore to prove evolution and discount design we have to experimentally evolve the falgellum and a nucleus in the lab with modern bacteria. Of course, being the philosopher that I am, my general response to this would be 'What!?, are you a f****ing moron!?', does anyone have a slightly more eloquent way of putting this other than to point out that this is impossible so therefore a waste of time, because this doesnt seem to work. Neither does pointing out that we can infer the evolution of certain systems from our study of the evolution of others. |
| Date: 2006/02/22 03:58:05, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
In answer to question 2, one thing i notice in deabtes is that people who dont understand the science often say that ID may afford attempts to answer the big questions such as why are we here, what is our purpose, etc. As George Monbiot put it:
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| Date: 2006/02/22 05:01:42, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/847#comments Apparently a pig containing a jellyfish gene is not a reliable indicator of design, because of horizontal gene transfer. |
| Date: 2006/02/22 05:15:05, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Your right, but the fact that they were all voted out suggests they were not representing the will of the people very well. I dont think the former board members should have to pay, although ignorance of the law is a crime, ignorance of science isnt, and i believe they were tricked in to adopting this policy. Most of the time though I am against 'elected officials are just acting in the will of the people so the people deserve what they get' arguments, mainly because its the argument used by suicide bombers. |
| Date: 2006/02/23 01:12:13, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/02/23 01:58:15, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/02/23 02:37:08, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I am sorry if I am coming off sounding like an arrogant scientist, but that is just the problem. I read Darwins black box before I had heard of the Pandas thumb, or the NCSE, or Talk Origins, or the Discovery Institute, and I knew that it was a load of rubbish. To fully appreciate that fact you do need to understand biochemistry and evolution quite well. This is the biggest problem with the whole ID debate, it has made the public distrust scientists, and demand techincal explenations. Do you really think that I do not really believe waht I am saying, or that I am ignoring the evidence for ID even though I see some truth in it? |
| Date: 2006/02/26 13:32:35, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/02/26 13:40:20, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/01 05:32:03, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I can't quite remember what I said in my post, it was an earlier one that seems to have gone. I think your question was based on a 'parts in a garage' analogy, which does not capture many important aspects of these systems. A good example of cooption is in the bacterium Sphingomonas chlorophenolica, which is able to digest PCP, which was first introduced into the environment 70 years ago. This process is performed by three enzymes, which were coopted from other metabolic processes by gene duplication. This can happen because although the enzymes are made up of hundreds of amino-acids, the majority of them form a globular structure that serves mainly to hold in place the few amino acids in the binding site of the enzyme that are involved in the chemical reaction. A mutation causing a change in one of these amino acids can have a large effect of the specificity of the enzyme, and of course because it is a duplicate this will have no affect on the fitness of the organism. At the moment the PCP degradation is a very inefficient process, but we would predict that eventually further mutations will increase the efficiency of the enzymes. This process works of course, because these proteins are in solution, and are free to interact at will. Obviously something like the flagellum is a lot more complicated, but this same process seems to have occurred with protein complexes, often due to the duplication of an entire complex. |
| Date: 2006/03/02 05:13:19, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
It seems your argument is that a universe with a god would be very different than one with out a god. I am perfectly happy to accept that this is true, in fact so does Richard Dawkins. The problem is that the supporters of ID claim to have evidence of the former. I am open to the possibility that evidence will be found, but to say that it what is currently presented is evidence to even the most basic scientific standards is simply dishonest. I have read dozens of papers by biologists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians which all argue that biological systems exhibit the characteristics we would expect if they had arisen by evolutionary processes, so ID has a long way to catch up.
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| Date: 2006/03/02 07:01:29, Link 81.106.62.201 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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I woman used to work in my lab who was a creationist due to her religious beliefs. She absolutely did not believe that evolution occured or that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors. Her PhD however was in phylogenetics, so obviously she could not combine her beliefs with the science. She was very passionate about her work, and published several papers in good journals, so I could not say, as I supspect Richard Dawkins would, that her beliefs made her a worse scientist, she was simply able to seperate the two. When she talked about it, she said that she had to do this because there was simply no scientific evidence that supported her beliefs, and she would be dishonest if she tried to pretend otherwise. She found the philosophical implications of evolution offensive, but she knew that it could not affect her scientific judgement, and this is what made her a good scientist, and what makes ID proponents bad scientists. I dont think intelligence has much to do with it. It is the agnostic engineer types that confuse me the most, I imagine they're just more comfortable with the idea of approaching complex systems as designed entities. |
| Date: 2006/03/02 12:05:17, Link 81.106.62.201 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/02 12:24:38, Link 81.106.62.201 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Im not American so apologies if this is a daft question, but why is it a legal issue how cable companies charge for channels, as long as they're not fleecing people? I get TBN Europe and I'd be tempted to keep it if I had to choose. Half the people on it are a bunch of xenophobic racist bigots telling me that I'm going to h*ll, and I find that oddly comforting. |
| Date: 2006/03/02 23:33:11, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/03/03 03:34:58, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
I do not see any positive scientific evidence for design, is their anything specific that you see as good evidence?
That is the question science is now beginning to answer. In regards to the chromosome number, the prediction was that two ancestral chromosomes fused to form one, this is exactly what happened, and we are able to line up the sequences quite nicely. Some of the differences you mentioned are caused by quite small differences in the DNA. Remeber that very small changes, especially in promoter regions and transcription factors, can cause very large phenotypic changes. The more we understand about evolution and development, the more these differences are beoming understandable. |
| Date: 2006/03/06 01:40:57, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
The fact that the author of the article is a postdoc in cell biology suggests he might just know a little bit more about this than DS, and in any case the article links to a Nature paper. So we either have a) the author is simplifying for a non specialist audience, or b) he is an impostor masquerading as a cell biologist to rake in all the money and fame that is associated with academic science, hmm... This seems to be a common tactic on UD, if you try and simplify a scientific concept you get accused of lying or being wrong, which is ironic considering they speak mainly in bad analogy. It is a shame that 'junk DNA' has become synonymous with 'non protein coding DNA', but its just a simplification. If that is the best criticism he can come up with then the article must be pretty solid. |
| Date: 2006/03/06 02:28:11, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
Or... That explains the money the DI's getting. |
| Date: 2006/03/06 07:44:36, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I dont know how many times I have to say this to ID supporters, you can't just come up with a hypothesis and then say that it is right until someone else proves it wrong, you need evidence to back up your claim. Which particular evolutionary biologists have you contacted and what were their responses? |
| Date: 2006/03/06 09:47:18, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Now they're on to cold fusion:
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| Date: 2006/03/06 12:36:31, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Yes im having trouble working out your point shi, so assuming what you say is true what is your explanation for the phenomenon? It is now possible to detect homology between proteins that have incredibly low sequence identity, and I can only assume that methods will get progressively better, unless teaching evolution is banned of course .
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| Date: 2006/03/07 02:18:12, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Admittedly apart from this coversation I haven't payed much attention to Ruse's views, but I don't think his constant use of the words 'Dawrwinist' and 'evolutionist' is helping science's cause anmore than Dennet's religion bashing. |
| Date: 2006/03/08 09:59:29, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/09 06:40:07, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Also the author points out right at the start of the article that the evidence points toward evolution and a heliocentric universe. |
| Date: 2006/03/09 10:34:32, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
Wow I'm in group 1, I feel so special  . I guess it's because I don't post there that often. Although I am very grateful to them and other blogs like telic thoughts and IDthefuture for linking to all those articles that in no way support their position but I'm too lazy to find myself. |
| Date: 2006/03/12 12:31:26, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||
Behes point as far as I can see is that if you removed a protein from the Ecoli flagellum it would cease to function, I have no problem accepting this. It does not follow however that the system could not have evolved by addition of parts. Say the part that we remove, part A, causes the flagellum to cease functioning and we suspect that it was the last part to be added, and is attached to parts B and C. Saying that this means that part A couldn't have been added by evolution assumes that the structure of parts B and C were the same as they are now when part A was added (and the structure of part A was the same for that matter). Maybe there is some evidence I haven't seen that proves this assumption, in which case I'd be grateful if you'd point me to it.
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| Date: 2006/03/13 06:41:38, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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There seems to be a confusion between the lower limit of sequence identity at which we can reasonably infer homology, and the lower limit at which it is possible for the protein to retain its original function. The second of these, in many cases at least, is lower than the first. Up until recently, we couldn't reliably detect homolgy below about 20-30% identity, but it is now much lower than that in many cases, due to more sophisticated methods. If we have a protein structure, we can perhaps estimate the amount of change it can tolerate before it ceases to function. These estimates ussually rely on changing a number of amino acids simultaneously, this is obviously different to changing them individually, as each change will produce a protein with a slightly different structure, which has a different set of mutations that it will tolerate. We can perhaps say that there are several essential amino acids that perform the activity of the protein, and they cannot be changed, but beyond that we cant really give good lower limits. I have seen several proteins that appear to be homologous and have similar active site structures that have well below 15% sequnce identity.
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| Date: 2006/03/13 07:03:14, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Also The Intelligent Design Society of Kansas |
| Date: 2006/03/13 08:29:20, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/13 10:11:20, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Can you at least cite evidence which says that all the cytochrome c's should stop at exactly 15% sequnce identity to each other. |
| Date: 2006/03/13 13:36:05, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Fair enough, but then Im not sure I understand, your claim seems to be that there is a limit for how much the sequence of a protein can change and still retain its function, and for essential proteins therefore they will essentaily settle at the same level of divergence for all species. The problem I see is that if you have a protein, with a list of mutations that it will tolerate, as soon as you make a mutation the list changes, to a degree depending on the mutation, maybe mutations that would have been tolerated before now will disrupt function, and vice-versa. It is currently impossible to predict what this limit may be, and there is no reason to suspect that proteins will all reach the same level of maximum divergence over time. Assuming that they do however, you have provided no evidence that this hasn't happened. |
| Date: 2006/03/14 01:06:19, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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I am not an expert on the flagellum, I have no idea how it may have evolved, and i have not read Nick Matzke's essay, so I couldn't really respond to a critique of it. One point though is that I was at a conference last year where several people who are experts demonstrated that partial motility is better than no motility at all, so Im going to have to take their word for it. My problems regarding IC are mainly based on other examples of protein complex evolution that I am more familiar with, and in these cases one method of evolution is as I said before: the acestral model is without part A, but the structures of parts B and C are different so that they system does function, it almost certainly functions much less efficiency, and may not even perfrom the same function. The affinity for A binding to B and C is probably very low at this point, however over time it will get higher as this will increase the efficiency of the system, and this process will likely be caused by mutations in A B and C. Eventually B and C will mutate to the point where they can no longer function without A, hence the system will no longer function if A is removed. This is just one method of course, and may not apply to the flagellum i don't know, but there are many more similar routes. But the point is that IC says in principle if you remove a part and the system ceases to function, then that part could have not been added by evolution, and this is not true.
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| Date: 2006/03/14 09:40:11, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Can you provide a source for this, I see no reason to expect that if proteins do stop evolving at some maximum level, all homologues will show the same level of sequence identity. |
| Date: 2006/03/14 12:54:47, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/14 14:55:13, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
a) I am lying now, and I don't believe in evolution. b) They are lying to me. c) The evolutionary biologists I have spoken to belive in evolution, but the rest don't. Ill give you a clue, it's definately not a). I'm still not sure how any fact you've stated so far refutes evolution, could you restate the one fact you think does this, with links to the relevant evidence. |
| Date: 2006/03/14 15:06:09, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
One of the 5 year goals:
I think they're a bit behind schedule |
| Date: 2006/03/15 11:12:46, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| So your point is that the molecular clock hypothesis does not always hold, and some lineages diverge faster than others, how does this refute 'Darwinism' exactly. Like jeannot said, modern phylogenetic techniques do not use it, and they have turned out to be more accurate. Can I confirm that by 'Darwinism' you mean 'current evolutionary theory'? |
| Date: 2006/03/15 12:04:42, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/15 12:33:17, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
Apparently I need to do some english homework as well as biology homework.  |
| Date: 2006/03/16 00:27:07, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/16 11:58:00, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/16 13:26:51, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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To be fair, thats ussualy because they highlight a topic that completely disagrees with their theories. Thats the main reason I keep going, all the interesting papers that support evolution. That and the comedy. Go disagree somewhere else. Whos laughing now? -ds |
| Date: 2006/03/16 13:33:16, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
In my opinion in the 'post ID world' a new generation of spokespeople will emerge who will argue what they will probably call 'non-darwinian evolution', or possibly 'guided evolution'. They will no longer argue for a designer, but when pushed will say that their theories likely point to a designer in the same way the current proponents will say that the designer is likely god. Then if we're lucky this dilution will continue there is nothing left and we can get back to more productive things. |
| Date: 2006/03/16 23:10:12, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/03/17 03:12:17, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| He keeps going on about this I wonder how many engineers he has spoken to who study biological systems. In my experience they certainly have a different take on the whole thing. |
| Date: 2006/03/17 06:03:01, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
The design inference has been applied to mount rushmore, lottery results, election fixing, Shakespearian sonnets and many other examples that are applicable to complex biological systems. |
| Date: 2006/03/17 15:53:37, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/18 01:10:46, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/18 08:28:58, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/18 17:30:15, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/03/18 17:36:15, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Disclaimer: the second half of the previous sentence is intended as a joke, and should not be taken as proof that scientists make baseless insulting accusations, so I don't want any complaints. The stuff before the comma is as true as the day is long. |
| Date: 2006/03/19 05:11:30, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
Surprisingly different chromosome structure can hybridize and produce viable offspring. As I said it is likely that humand and chimp chromosomes could hybridize, however the differences in gene expression during development would kill any embryo. Regarding my view point, I read no free lunch and darwins black box, and several essayss at the discovery institute before I'd even heard of the NCSE or pandas thumb or talk origins. My objections to CSI are not to how his method works in principle, but how he applies it to biological systems, at the very best he can say it has a low probability of evolving in the same way that someone has a low probability of winnig the lottery. What gets me irate about it again is based on the fact that this is presented as positive evidence of design in life. I am even willing to give Dembski the benefit of the doubt and say that it may be possible to detect design without knowing about the designer. He might even be right, the point is he hasn't even started to prove it yet, but claims he has and that he has put another nail in the coffin of 'Darwinism'. |
| Date: 2006/03/19 06:50:55, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/19 07:11:22, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/19 08:03:57, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
senatorchunk:
davescot:
From the Cornell website:
From the MIT website:
Edit: Just noticed the post that says DaveScots post about PT trackbacks is inane has been deleted. |
| Date: 2006/03/19 08:19:11, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Thanks for the correction, most of my knowledge on the subject comes from a couple of seminars I went to over a year ago, so its a little sketchy. |
| Date: 2006/03/20 00:50:28, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/03/20 04:45:47, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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They'll tell you it is all because of the fall of man. Apparently before the fall all bacteria, snakes, spiders, sharks, lions dinosaurs and all the other dangerous critters were in fact vegetarian, and what we see now is all a result of the fall. Im just waiting for a fundementalist to tell me that God destoryed the vitamin C gene so we'd have to eat lots of fruit as a kind of ironic punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge. Someone at uncommon descent, I think it was Salvador Cordova, told me that it would be better if we treated antibiotic resistance as a planned germ warfare attack. I didnt ask him about the implications for god but I imagine he would have said it was satan. |
| Date: 2006/03/25 05:31:55, Link 86.111.161.39 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/03/26 22:17:55, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/03/29 01:12:02, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
No ... words ... to describe it ... should've ... sent a ... poet. Very nice to see Dembski once again bringing up a paper that in no way advances his arguments. ps I don't know why people are still arguing about the church burnings, in Europe we always turn to the most obvious suspects; Norwegian black metal bands. |
| Date: 2006/03/29 01:47:35, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/03/29 02:42:25, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| A Greek postdoc who used to work in my lab told us that in many cases the textbooks would be quite long, and the chapters on evolution would be at the end, so there would conviniently be not enough time to teach it. |
| Date: 2006/03/29 23:56:05, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| There is a large amount of functional noncoding DNA in the genome that is nessecary and therefore wont be lost. Promoter regions and telomeres are an example, but there are also many functional RNAs that are transcribed but not translated that play many vital roles including Post-transcriptional regulation, cell differentiation, cell death regulation, developmental regulation, dosage compensation, chromosome inactivation and DNA demethylation to name a few. Im not sure what this has to do with ID, I imagine the argument is that ID would predict that a designer would not leave useless DNA in the genome. However since scientists have known about functions of non coding DNA for about 20 years Im not sure if the argument carries much weight. |
| Date: 2006/03/30 22:10:15, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/02 12:41:42, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||||
I did say it wasnt a good analogy, I havent heard any decent analogy describing biological evolution. I think IC is a different argument from probability, Im not trying to argue that an entire protein or set of proteins will from form random sequences or anything like that, so I am inferring that there is some kind of path. Thinking about it perhaps the probabilistic arguments are irrelevant, if the flagellum had to evolve by entirely new proteins evolving spontaneously from hundreds of simeltaneous mutations in random sequence, that IDists would have a good argument, although I dont think any biologist is claiming that. On the other hand if it could have formed by succesive mutations, then the population size and mutation rate of E.coli mean "search space" or whatever people are calling it these days is explored fairly quickly. I will have a look through NFL again and remind myself exactly how Dembski calculates his probability. The weasel program was meant to demonstrate cumulative selection not evolution.
EDIT: And no Im not referring to Strenberg or any other 'ID' paper. |
| Date: 2006/04/03 03:08:59, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I agree that this is not a scientific argument but science does play an important advisory role. The current law is that a pregnancy cannot be terminated if the fetus can survive outside the mother and since the laws were introduced, the age has been reduced according to the latest science. In the UK there is currently a big move to reduce the age further as it has been shown that fetuses can be viable at 20-22 weeks. This does depend on the abortion law being concerned with fetus viability, which is based on a moral argument. If it was decided for example, that the abortion age was to be decided based on the ability to suffer, then the limit would have to be reduced to 18 weeks based on science. So when thordaddy says:
I dont know about the US, but in the UK there is no 'right to an abortion' the woman must convince two doctors that carrying the pregnancy to term would result in physical or mental damage to her and/or the baby. I know people who have been refused abortions (due to the availability of adoption, financial grounds usually don't suffice), and there are many cases of women being refused abortions even in cases of rape. The only people I know who have had abortions got them due to mental health problems and extreme health risks. |
| Date: 2006/04/03 03:28:13, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Regarding probability arguments and the evolution of systems, it is also probably worth pointing out that short random sequences being bound by a transcription factor, and random rearrangement of short protein domains resulting in novel protein interactions is a fairly common phenomenon (evolutionarily speaking). I suspect that this gives evolution a lot to play with, although I imagine there's some very good reason why it doesn't count as generating specified complexity. |
| Date: 2006/04/03 03:37:22, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/03 05:20:21, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Perhaps instead of moral arguments I should have said non-scientific arguments. That is just my experience of the law in the UK, and the wording of the law does say you can't just have one because you want one, although I doubt doctors are that strict in all cases and my experiences might be the exception as opposed to the rule. I suspect wealthier or more privileged people are less likely to accidentally get pregnant and possibly are better at persuading doctors that they will by psychologically damaged. More details. |
| Date: 2006/04/03 05:25:30, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/03 23:32:07, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| The evolution of symmetry of organisms is well understood, I really hope this isn't your only reason for supporting ID. |
| Date: 2006/04/03 23:41:55, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
If you are saying that evolution requires speciation to be solely the result of changing alleles in populations then you are misrepresenting modern evolutionary theory. Secondly, it is now possible to detect genes that are the result of lateral tranfer in eukaryotes so there should be plenty of data supporting your hypothesis. |
| Date: 2006/04/04 00:43:17, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/04 01:18:13, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Also, could he draw a triangle where the internal angles don't add up to 180 degrees. Edit: and no he can't use spherical geometry. |
| Date: 2006/04/04 02:30:37, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Thats just the point, he didn't say that it should happen, he said he thinks it will happen. I have now read several articles in mainstream and alternative media that say that scientists are now generally condoning manmade genocide because of this. |
| Date: 2006/04/04 03:21:56, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Well we understand the developmental mechanisms, the genes that active the simeltaneous expression of other genes on the different sides of the body, producing symmetry. We see how these developmental networks are conserved across phyla, and so have some understanding of how these mechanisms evolved. We also understand how random forces affect ontogoney causing differences between the different sides such as position of hairs, fingerprints etc (and maybe freckles Im not sure). Obviously when I say understand I don't mean fully understand, but its far from a problem for evolution. |
| Date: 2006/04/04 03:56:47, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/04 12:41:23, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I agree, but it is a problem not easily solved. You can't teach the theory of evolution as an evolutionary biologist understands it to a high-school student or a layperson who does not have time to fully learn it. Consequently things are learnt that are not strictly true, as with all subjects that are taught at these various levels. Up to and including doing a biochemistry degree, I would have said that saltation was not compatible with modern evolutionary theory, however now I have done much reading I understand that it is. If I had left with just a high school science education, I would have said that change in allele frequency is sufficient to create the new species that we see and account for the complexity we see in life, but I now know that is not true. The problem then comes when someone says something that has been 'watered down' the creationists accuse them of making false or unscientific statements that do not fit the data. I have experienced it many times, I make a simplified scientific statement on a creationist website, as I assume that not everyone I am speaking to is a scientist, and someone who has some knowledge of the science then assumes I am an idiot and wrongly interpreting evidence because of my atheistic commitment to materialism or whatever. For most of the people on this board and others the science is something they do in their spare time. Most gaps in the fossil record are likely to be the result of missing fossils, but from what I understand from reading evolutionary biology papers saltation is also likely and we would expect to see it in the record. The point is I wouldn't expect most people who aren't geeks and spend time reading sceintific papers to know that. Nor should people have to for that matter. .................. That's the problem with creationist kooks in general, they learn about several specific scientific points from different disciplines so its actually quite hard to argue with them. For example I couldn't argue with a creationsit about radioisotope dating even though I know their arguments are rubbish as far as geologists are concerned. You have to be some kind of polymath or memorise the entire of talkorigins . I honestly think you could fill a degree in anticreationsim. |
| Date: 2006/04/05 01:39:07, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I would have thought it would be worse if there is a gay gene. At the moment it is assumed to be purely psychological. Therefore people say it is a choice, and try to cure it through psychological means. If it is genetic, then they will say it is a disease, and no doubt the templeton foundation will fund research into a cure. |
| Date: 2006/04/05 03:07:43, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I find it quite comforting, and have done ever since I was a child and used to sit in the garden: imagining bits of myself pushing up through the grass as trees and crawling around as insects. The fact that people seek more still puzzles me, and seems to be one of the main reasons in my experience that people are religious other than tradition. |
| Date: 2006/04/05 03:22:07, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Apologies if I missed it somewhere in the thread, but could you define exactly what you mean by human life, and then science may be able to tell you when it starts. A zygote is alive, but then so is an egg and a sperm. If you define a human life genetically then life begins at conception. You might define life as consciousness, so then it starts a bit later. You might define a seprearte living entity as one that can that can live independently of the mother, in which case it starts later. Science cannot answer this philosophical question, but I fail to see how this makes science worthless. |
| Date: 2006/04/06 06:53:17, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||||||||
You appear to have responded to some of my points in the gay gene thread:
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| Date: 2006/04/06 07:03:48, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
DaveRAFinn I was not referring to you when I said creationist kooks don't worry, I havent seen any evidence to put you in that category. Your hypothesis is interesting, but if there is a large amount of lateral gene transfer between eukaryotes this should be detectable, indeed some examples have been published. If I understand right you are saying that somehow animals can absorb genetic material from other organisms and pass it on to their offspring? I would expect this to be quite easy to prove if it were true. |
| Date: 2006/04/06 08:51:46, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| That's easy we just inject all the survivors with the gay gene. |
| Date: 2006/04/06 09:25:49, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| ID avocates ask for us to demonstrate thousands of years of evolution in the lab. Therefore the only way to refute it is to speed up time. I have asked my physicist friends to get on it. |
| Date: 2006/04/06 10:24:18, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Ha, good summary! |
| Date: 2006/04/06 12:16:59, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
We would but we have computers in there that cost half a million dollars and they don't like us to spill beer on them.
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| Date: 2006/04/06 13:02:52, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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If you are referring to my post: I never questioned your statistics, I simply said that pointing it out to homosexual people will not make them 'repent'. I never said thay homosexiality is 'normal'. I never said you were a fundamentalist. I never expressed animosity towards religion. What makes you think I am an ideologue? |
| Date: 2006/04/07 02:06:44, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Regarding free will you seem to be confusing two issues. Indeed it is a choice to live a homosexual 'lifestyle' and to have homosexual sex. But I am curious as to what evidence you have that in the majority of cases the feelings of attraction towards the same sex are a result of free will. Most gay people I know started to have these feelings at the same time or slightly later than the rest of us do. Many people struglle with it for years and it can take a psychological toll, especially when they have been raised in an environment where they have come to regard it is sinful. Additionally if they decide to come out they can expect much ridicule and bullying, especially if it is at a young age. Im not sure what you mean by teaching that homosexuality is normal, but it is very important that people who are gay are taught that there is nothing wrong with that. Of course they should be taught the statistics about AIDs etc, I certainly was when I was in high school, in the US is there a deliberate attempt to hide this information? Teaching people that it is not OK to be gay will not make less people gay it will just make more people depressed and unhappy. |
| Date: 2006/04/07 05:51:35, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
We thought about it, but then we realised that puposefully keeping ID out of the literature because it hasn't actually produced any research isn't strictly a conspircay. |
| Date: 2006/04/07 12:17:53, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
Our disagreement appears to rest mainly on the fact that you believe homosexuality to be a choice. You ask for proof otherwise, Im not sure what form this would take, as I would guess you think gay people are lying about this fact.
Again they should be told this, Im not saying you should encourage people to be gay, but people do commit suicide because they are gay in a society where it is seen as a sin. Students have an over representation of stds, religious people have an over representation of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STDs, teen pregnancy, and abortion. I do not think we should tell people religion and going to university are wrong, but these things are more of a choice than being gay. Again just because you are gay does not mean you go out and sleep with loads of random guys and take drugs, these things are choices, being attracted to the same sex is not.
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| Date: 2006/04/09 13:14:25, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Thordaddy, Do you think that if children are taught these statistics about homosexuality (and I don't know what they teach in the US but I was certainly taught that gays get more STDs), then a large number of men will decide not to become gay after all? Do you disagree that if we also teach these statistics, then it is also OK to say if you think you are gay this does not automatically make you a sinner or a bad person? Do you disagree that the attraction to the opposite sex is not a choice, and a person can then decide to live as a homosexual without descending into a life of drugs and promiscuous unprotected sex. |
| Date: 2006/04/09 14:28:06, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I knew a few medical students when I was doing my degree, and in our city homosexuals were behind immigrants and students for STDs percentage-wise. |
| Date: 2006/04/09 14:46:47, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/10 06:24:24, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/10 06:57:26, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/10 09:33:09, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
What I find hilarious about these analogies is that they don't realise that their ideas are the equivalent of saying Galileo was wrong. They might as well compare themselves to Darwin. |
| Date: 2006/04/11 01:31:39, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||||||
Because of this we would not expect body plan development to be controlled the same way, as this is likely the main cause of change in body plans. We cannot just look at individual genes for homology, we need to look at the structure of the network as a whole.
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| Date: 2006/04/11 04:02:00, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
As an Englishman I find trivialising the position of Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire quite offensive!
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| Date: 2006/04/11 10:48:55, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/11 11:13:35, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Intelligent Design theory specifically states that the evolution of the bacterial flagellum without intelligent input is impossible because the probability that every protein would form simeltaneously as a random combination of amino acids, along with the correct expression and arrangement mechanisms in place, is less than the universal probability bound. Have you not read No Free Lunch? |
| Date: 2006/04/11 13:22:41, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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Has anyone ever claimed there is a universal evolution law? Ok because Im generous ... 2, 3, 4, 6, 10: start with this. For these and 5 then try reading up on phenotypic plasticity and evodevo. If you think evolution should currently be able to explain all of these then you seem to be slightly out of touch with what evolutionists are claiming it actually is.
Im not sure how your philosophical musings count as facts that have anything to do with evolution at all. |
| Date: 2006/04/11 13:29:43, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/11 13:47:34, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
 ...maybe. |
| Date: 2006/04/11 14:00:25, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/11 14:27:34, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/12 00:00:43, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/12 00:03:48, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/12 04:34:25, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/12 12:46:36, Link 82.1.155.40 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Assuming that the stats you cite are true, what on earth would change other than teaching children this in sex education? You say homosexuality is a choice so I ask you again assuming it isnt genetic what evidence do you have that it is a lifestyle choice? |
| Date: 2006/04/12 13:22:29, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Although I am not an evolutionary biologist evolution does feature heavily in my work, and I collaborate with several evolutionary biologists. Bearing that in mind I feel I have a good idea of what evolutionary theory actually says.
You seem to be confusing biology and philosophy, biology can be defined as:
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| Date: 2006/04/12 13:46:53, Link 82.1.155.40 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/13 06:00:21, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1034#comments A post on uncommon descent, arguing for common descent, using an article from talkorigins. Irony taken to a whole new level. |
| Date: 2006/04/13 07:36:17, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Thats true, it never occured to me before that anything other than the vaugest ID hypothesis would have to take a position on common descent and possibly alienate most of their supporters. Sounds like another 'here is our theory but we're not going to test it and it's up to you to test it otherwise you have to assume we're right'. |
| Date: 2006/04/13 09:31:01, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/14 08:19:20, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Well at the moment all their arguments are based on analogies to human machines. So we have: All information processing systems are either human designed machines or organisms, therefore humans designed organisms. This is why Im sticking to the time-traveller theory. |
| Date: 2006/04/14 08:30:23, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/14 09:04:11, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Here's a good place to start |
| Date: 2006/04/14 10:07:28, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/14 12:21:29, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Haha, but maybe the designer created the organisms using a trail and error method, therefore creating the same pattern! And remember when common descent and common design are equally plausible, we must assume common design because you are all atheist materialist scum and Jesus is on our side! |
| Date: 2006/04/14 23:36:17, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/04/15 06:33:00, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/15 14:14:03, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/16 02:37:26, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Just noticed the JAD papers have been removed from the sidebar. |
| Date: 2006/04/16 03:39:12, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/17 01:58:54, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
DS:
So for a system to be classified as IC it requires that if parts are removed the system will cease to function. Then once we have an IC system the testable prediction is that if you remove parts it will cease to function. Riiiight. |
| Date: 2006/04/17 12:53:57, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/18 04:20:49, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
Also with Tiktaalik evolution told us exactly where to look to find the fossil based on where it would fit in the phylogeny. This is why evolution is the best scientific theory because it makes the best predictions. Creation science has made predictions, especially based on flood geology, but these have been shown to be wrong. The fossil record supports a gradual sedimentation, and features such as the grand canyon would look quite different if they were caused by the flood. |
| Date: 2006/04/18 08:00:23, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I've read artlicles by him about this before, and it has been pointed out to the IDists several times, but that hasn't stopped them claiming that SETI somehow gives them scientific validity. |
| Date: 2006/04/18 09:46:44, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| And how do you think societies treatment of homosexuals affects these numbers? |
| Date: 2006/04/18 09:54:23, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I see, and when my highschool geography teacher told me that the magma under the crust was trying to escape... Is it possible that anthropomorphising during school teaching could have a permanent effect of people? |
| Date: 2006/04/18 14:18:07, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
Homophobia certainly isn't going to keep gay people from having sex any more. There is no going back, you are not going to stop people who want to have sex from having sex, unless you introduce some pretty harsh punishments. I really think at this point legalising gay marriage can at worst have no effect on the problem of promiscuity. We don't really have black communities in England, but there certainly are several groups that have a much higher rate of STDs than normal such as students and chavs, who in fact have a higher rate than gays in most areas. However this is due to lack of money, laziness (students) and lack of education (chavs) that leads to higher rates of unprotected sex. In fact where I went to university and was able to look at the records the majority of AIDS cases were among immigrants, so I dont think the gay marriage laws in the UK will make any difference whatsoever. If you are worried I suggest not having unprotected sex with anyone who hasn't been tested. If you think American marriage could go down a slippery slope look at what we have to contend with. ps this happened before the gay marriage law was inacted. |
| Date: 2006/04/18 15:01:59, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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It's probably worth pointing out since you quoted the libertarian defininition of freedom of association, that libertarians regard any company with limited liability as an extension of the state, so any freedom of association law would not apply according to the libertarians who I have asked about this. Also, under freedom of association is freedom of contract, so gay marriage is covered. Remember the difference between liberal and left-wing. |
| Date: 2006/04/19 03:19:13, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Oh no, evolution has been disproved. |
| Date: 2006/04/19 13:04:39, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/20 02:02:02, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/20 05:28:22, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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And the lizards that evolved the ability to regrow limbs survived, or something... Mind you if I was Hovind I wouldn't give money to the government who apparently is sitting on the cure for cancer. |
| Date: 2006/04/20 10:21:45, Link 81.105.98.104 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I dont think anyone is claiming that was why marriage was defined. I still don't understand your objections, do you think gay people are hoping that homosexuality being seen as normal will make more people gay? |
| Date: 2006/04/20 10:53:59, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/20 11:41:56, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/20 13:56:03, Link 81.105.98.104 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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Ghost, I am as frustrated with societies general attitude towards civil iberties as you are, and if legalizing gay marriage was a restriction on your freedoms, the I agree there would need to be some give and take, but I don't see how it is. Thor,
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| Date: 2006/04/21 03:23:37, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Ghost quoted the libertarian definition. Basically the result is that it allows people to discriminate against whoever they want. So for example a company could refuse to hire gay people, or a shop to refuse to serve black people. Although as I pointed out before, to make most libertarian economic ideas workable, you either need to abolish limited liability all together, or accept that these companies are extensions of the state, and freedom of association does not mean state sponsered discrimination. This also means ending any kind of positive discrimination on the part of the state, except perhaps where it is of practical benefit. I don't understand the point of bringing this up though, because I don't see how legalizing gay marriage will have as nearly as much of an effect as complete freedom of association. It isn't give and take, allowing gays to marry will not affect Ghost or Thordaddy in the slightest. The only peoples lives to be affected will be the people who get married. I think Ghost would agree with me that no one has the right not to be offended by the sight of gay people any more than a gay person would have the right to be offended in his world where he wasn't allowed into a shop. I am still waiting on this thread for someone to give a reason why legalizing gay marriage would cause an increase in anal sex, promiscuity or HIV infection rate. There seems to be an assumption that more people will be gay if it is 'normalized'. Im sure more people will be openly gay who wouldn't have been before, but I can guarentee that they were still having sex with men, and in my experience gay people who are not openly gay are more likely to be promiscuos because they are not able to have a steady relationship. |
| Date: 2006/04/23 11:40:32, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Several people have pointed out how family disruption affects the children, and a single parent family fares worse than those with two parents. The point is that children from a two parent gay faimly are no more emotionally worse off than with a heterosexual family, and are no more likely to become gay themselves. The difference between allowing gay people to marry and allowing any arbitrary union is that the vast majority of openly gay people are not attracted to the opposite sex. So for example if we allowed 5 people to marry this would not solve any problem whatsoever and is unessecary, I am of course assuming that there is not a large number of people who are only attracted to 4 other people and no other number. So for the vast majority of the population the union of either man/man or man/woman will suffice. Regarding the 'normailizing gay marriage will encourage more people to experiment with their tendancies' argument: in many cases that might be true but in most cases these people will find a way to experiment regardless, which if they are terrified of anyone finding out is likely to be more promiscuos than otherwise.
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| Date: 2006/04/23 12:48:50, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/23 13:43:46, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/24 03:19:53, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||
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| Date: 2006/04/24 05:05:36, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Remind me again how legalizing gay marriage will result in loss of free speech and hiring rights. |
| Date: 2006/04/24 07:22:38, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
You have spoken about affirmitive action and freedom of hiring. I still don't see how legalizing gay marriage will change this. Saying that the 'hub of marriage' will be altered by allowing homosexuals to marry is not self-evident unless you define what the network is. |
| Date: 2006/04/24 08:22:21, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| The JAD post is legit based on his profile. The davescot post he is responding to probably isn't. |
| Date: 2006/04/24 10:10:34, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I will ask again: How does legalizing gay marriage infringe upon your civil rights? |
| Date: 2006/04/24 11:58:28, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| What has anything you quoted got to do with marriage? I can sympathise with you on some of the things you have said, I despair at the erosion of freedom of speech, but it's a seperate issue to gay marriage. |
| Date: 2006/04/24 12:46:32, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| By the end of next year genome sequencing will be 100 times quicker and a helluva lot cheaper so that thing's going to grow pretty fast. |
| Date: 2006/04/24 14:17:38, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Thats easy:
Similar to
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| Date: 2006/04/24 14:34:25, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| You've shown studies regarding a number of things but none of the points you are making are to do with gay marriage. I do not want to see a general increase in unprotected promiscuous sex, anal or otherwise (although if it has to happen I'd prefer the option that reduces unwanted pregnancies). I do not wan't to see my freedom of speech eroded based on someone elses imaginary right not to be insulted by what I say. I don't want to see a reduction of peoples freedom of association. I agree that single parent families are more likely to lead to emotionally unhealthy children. All you need to do is say how gay marriage will lead to any of this. There is no evidence that it will increase promiscuity, that it will reduce freedom of speech any more than it already has been, that it will affect hiring laws, or that childern raised with gay parents are any worse off than with straight parents. |
| Date: 2006/04/25 04:08:49, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
That's some subtle psychological trickery there. Hmm... |
| Date: 2006/04/25 04:45:02, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Firstly there have been several finds to create these reconstructions, for exapmle for Ambulocetus when you say all we found is what you have shown, you fail to include we also have this fossil:  You quote that these fossils could be ancestors on hippos and pigs, but this is because they share a common ancestor. Indeed molecular studies have shown that whales are more closely related to ungulates than they are to other mammals. The geographic evidence of the fossils also fits (the land dwelling creatures were more isolated than their aquatic descendants), and dating of the fossils shows that they started becoming aquatic just after the large canivourus aquatic reptiles died out. Modern whales have many vestigial trates including muscles for controling the outer ear, and whale embryos gain and loose many structures that their land dwelling ancestors would have had, including hind leg buds. The envirmonments in which these creatures would have lived transistions from fully terrestrial to fully marine, and the fossils contain oxygen isotopes consistant with transitioning from drinking fresh water to drinking salt water. A transitional fossil does not mean 'direct descendant of one species and driect ancestor of another', it means a fossil that shows transitional features between the two. This is why we say the evidence points to evolution, becuase all the different evidence says the same thing, so you need more than 'some of the fossils were partially reconstructed' to prove creation. I would love to see all the evidence pointing to a designer that isn't a negative argument from ignorance, but I have yet to be shown it. Perhaps you would be so kind. Ps. you can get all this stuff from googling it's not like it's locked away in dusty journals. |
| Date: 2006/04/25 08:03:28, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/25 10:48:27, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Why are you against things that 'go against evolution'? |
| Date: 2006/04/25 13:34:24, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I see the thread has gone completely of gay marriage then. Never mind. |
| Date: 2006/04/25 14:03:11, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Plus, if a gay man or a lesbiand get married, and they adopt a child to break up the American family. How likely is it that the child will burn down a church? And don't get me started on the implications for teaching evolution in schools. |
| Date: 2006/04/25 14:41:40, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/25 23:29:54, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/26 02:07:39, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||
there is just no way to prove that one is "more evolved" or "an ancestor or descendant" of the other. Keep in mind also that fossils that can be considered "transitional" are very few in number.
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| Date: 2006/04/26 04:28:33, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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When I say 'understand' I don't mean 'have observed'. I don't expect to observe something occur that takes thousands or millions of years, unless someone discovers a way to speed up time. I am not talking about small 'traits' that people generally ascribe to particular alleles. No one expects gorillas to evolve the ability to speak (insert planet of the apes joke here), but we have some good ideas how it happened, and can think of functional intermediates, for example some tribal languages that have a reduced number of vowel sounds would require a 'less evolved' larynx, and a language with just one less evolved still.
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| Date: 2006/04/26 07:09:08, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I will say again, science can deal with historical processes and can test hypothesis based predictions we can make from those processes.
Firstly the origin of life is not taught in schools. What the public believes is irrelevant to a science class, although maybe not a philosophy of science class, same with theologians and philosophers. I have not seen any evidence to support the supernatural side, and masses of evidence to support the natural side, and like Ken Ham says, we all use the same evidence. To teach this statement would be dishonest, I would prefer: "The vast majority of scientists believe that life on earth has evolved from one or more common ancestors over the course of billions of years. Although there are a small minority who doubt this view the masses of evidence collected in the past 150 years since the theory was first proposed support it. Although events that occured in the past cannot be proved with 100% accuracy there is no other theory that fits the data and makes predictions better than, and no evidence yet discovered that contradicts evolution. While there are questions regarding the specific mechanisms involved, there is no controvesy among scientists as to whether evolution occurred." |
| Date: 2006/04/26 11:24:28, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Oxford university was founded over 800 years ago. I do not blame those people for assuming that the bible was scientifically accurate, there was not enough evidence to the contrary. Do you see the difference in positions here, it always happens in these kinds of arguments, just look at the thread with Shi for an example. Eventually you see that the evidence does not support your views, so you have to claim atheist conspircay and make sweeping claims about the evils of secularism and how only religion can sort it all out. Even Richard Dawkins has never said that evolution is true because there is no god. We teach evolution because it fits the evidence and makes predictions that help us understand life on earth and cure diseases. If you have any evidence that it is entirely based on secularism I suggest you present it. |
| Date: 2006/04/26 12:47:39, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/27 16:21:32, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| If you want to know why some atheists mock the religious just watch this film. Please tell me you are joking, this has to be a joke. |
| Date: 2006/04/27 16:37:02, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/04/27 16:47:42, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| What exactly do you mean by balance? Most of the scientists I work with are religious. I have also worked with a biblical literalist but she would at least admit that the scientific evidence does not support her beliefs and that is the point here. |
| Date: 2006/04/27 16:52:41, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Everyone who has read my posts on this forum knows I have never said anything disparaging about religion or religious people. But for my own piece of mind, a religious person needs to tell me that this movie is nonsense. |
| Date: 2006/04/28 03:26:57, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I meant respect him for being honest. Instead of lying and saying that he believes because of the evidence. |
| Date: 2006/04/28 04:47:29, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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This interesting thread : http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1078#comments links you to this essay by Casey Luskin: http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1392 It's worth a read, if only because its the worst thing claiming to be a scientific article I have read in a long time. |
| Date: 2006/04/29 04:44:39, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
As other people have pointed out you seem to have misunderstood what a prediction is. I imagine you are aware of the prediciton regarding the chromosome fusion in humans as compared to chimps. This was a prediction because we did not know the sequences or the mappings of chimp chromosomes. If we already had the sequences of chimp chromosomes 12 & 13 (Now 2A and 2B) we would already know how they matched up and it wouldn't be a prediction, it would be a retrodiction of a postdiction. |
| Date: 2006/04/29 12:20:23, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Yes! I bet my friend that this would be on UD within a week of it being published, and I won. Shame he would only bet five pounds. It was a pretty safe bet I guess.
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| Date: 2006/04/30 04:38:31, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I have pointed out over there, to no avail, that I have read several papers from the early to mid eighties that describe different functions of non-coding DNA, so I really would like to know how this counts as an ID prediciton. Where in the theory of ID does it say that all DNA has to have function. If the frontloading hypothesis is true I would think there would be quite a bit of stuff left over.
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| Date: 2006/04/30 05:36:29, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Ah that makes more sense I thought he meant the band thanks. According to all ID advocates the theory is that some features of nature are best explained by an intelligence. I fail to see how this has got anything to do with junk DNA. |
| Date: 2006/04/30 06:20:22, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 02:35:05, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 02:53:45, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 03:02:26, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 03:36:32, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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A few pointers: To save you some time, we don't need evidence that there was an ice age. If you could give us something that we haven't heard a hundred times before I'm sure we'd all be very grateful. If you're going to present this theory as an alternative to current science theories using abductive reasoning you need to show why it explains the data better than current theories. Just because your hypothesis also talks about the origin of the universe it does not mean it is automatically a better theory of the origin of species than evolution. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 03:46:25, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I know but I have a day off and im bored. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 04:12:15, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Is there any way to copy this stuff over to the other topic?
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| Date: 2006/05/01 06:41:14, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Because you can't start from the conclusion and then look for the evidence to fit your conclusion, that is not science. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 07:32:10, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 09:00:04, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I didn't think it was that good, but then again I had already read the book that most of the mythology in TDC was lifted from so it ruined a lot of the surprises for me. I will go and see the film but I swear if it has a disclaimer at the start saying any of the stuff is true Im leaving. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 09:21:16, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I wonder why then apparently it's not ok for molecular biologists to design drugs using the evolution model. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 10:55:59, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Just post your evidence already. |
| Date: 2006/05/01 11:00:23, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 13:06:42, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/01 14:47:42, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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No no, he is of course referring to this piece of exquisitley crafted To summarise because the earth is at the literal center of the universe there is a time dilation which causes the rest of the universe to move much faster so 6000 years for stars thousands of light years away seems like billions of years for us. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 03:43:46, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Really? I was hoping to be able to use my summon bevets card. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 06:30:51, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Remember you have to present why the evidence fits your hypothesis better than the competing hypothesis. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 08:20:41, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Chris Hyland's Evolution Hypothesis A1=WE OBSERVE A FINELY TUNED COSMOS. Stars and that... B1=A SUPER-INTELLIGENCE DIDN'T SET THE PARAMETERS. Because evolution is bound by many factors including physical constants ie the properties of water and carbon, and the availability of energy, it will create organisms that depend heavily on these. Therefore because we observe that if any of the physical constants change life would not exist we assume that evolution is true. Under the alternative hypothesis, we could just as easily see organisms survive if the universe was stacked against them. A2=BIOLOGICAL MACHINES. "systems of HORRENDOUS, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell" B2=THE MACHINES EVOLVED. Based on what we understand of evolution including duplication followed by differential loss of both genes and interactions, we expect these systems to be incredibly complex, and exhibit certain properties, such as being scale-free, modular and heirachical. We increase our knowledge of A, and find that they are, so we increase our confidence in B. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 08:32:49, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| The scientist in me says B, but the lazy bas**rd in me says A. Tough call. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 12:38:50, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I think the greatest weapons they have are those kinds of arguments from analogy. The great thing is when an engineer learns ome biology they can tell you that the holistic properties of these systems are exactly what we would expect if they had evolved by the processes that we are aware of. In the same system, you see parts that appear to be incredibly efficient and other parts that would be down right incompotent if they were designed, and all the different interacting modules are coupled together with what seems like no thought. In a few decades time we will see systems like the flagellum as incredibly ineficient compared to what we can create so, this argument wont make much sense. |
| Date: 2006/05/02 23:43:20, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
How is what genetic-id do not design detection? Not only do they detect the presence of design, but they identify the designer as well. Thats top quality design detection at low-low prices.
The Fovever Dimension eh? |
| Date: 2006/05/03 03:16:42, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Not fair I was just about to go over there and point out how technically it is the explanatory filter in reverse, something occurs naturally if it has a low probability of being designed.
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| Date: 2006/05/03 03:26:44, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Or Dembski's pal Ann Coulter:
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| Date: 2006/05/03 06:59:36, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/05/03 12:23:43, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
And the fact that people have been publishing on the evolution of transcriptional developmental networks for about a decade points seductively to that last comment being either purposefully misleading or ignorant. |
| Date: 2006/05/03 23:40:18, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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My first suggestion is that you start your own blog and publish all of these models. As I recall, the guts to gametes model was that most of the appearence of homology was due to the result of lateral gene transfer when one organism ate another. In this case I would vote for that one. I also recommend that you publish the geocentrism model on the bad astronomy forum there are a lot more physicists there. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 00:01:21, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
I think the point seems to be that genetic algorithms aren't perfect simulations of biological evolution. I don't think they were ever supposed to be. The idea was to use specific ideas from evolution to solve problems. You can say that is doesn't generate much information, and thats fine the point is it solves the problem that we can't in novel ways. Most creationists say that evolution can't generate 'information' either, thats fine too. It still works whether we say it can generate information or not. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 00:01:21, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||
I think the point seems to be that genetic algorithms aren't perfect simulations of biological evolution. I don't think they were ever supposed to be. The idea was to use specific ideas from evolution to solve problems. You can say that is doesn't generate much information, and thats fine the point is it solves the problem that we can't in novel ways. Most creationists say that evolution can't generate 'information' either, thats fine too. It still works whether we say it can generate information or not. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 03:49:43, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Just so I understand what you are saying fully. You think that the fusion resulted in half of the genes on the chromosome being backwards and therefore untranscribable? |
| Date: 2006/05/04 04:04:23, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Could you explain why two pieces of DNA couldn't join together and preserve the correct direction. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 05:31:23, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/04 06:20:26, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/04 06:27:19, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Don't tell him, I wanted to see if he could work it out. This is really elementary stuff, biology 101 as they say in the US (on tv at least). You see Dave this is why people have very little patience, if you say that this is an insurmountable obstacle, you obviously don't know a great deal about biology. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 07:32:39, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
It would be better for all concerned if you just present your evidence. We will judge it in the same way that we judge the evidence for evolution. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 09:03:09, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Yes that's the right word. It was AFDaves question not mine. Again, no one here is a 'neo-Darwinist'. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 10:07:53, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/05/04 10:10:39, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Have you never heard of image mining? |
| Date: 2006/05/04 10:47:13, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Because chromosomes have two strands, it doesn't matter whether they have a direction or not, they can still join up at either end. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 11:11:35, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Yes, I just mean that two pieces of double stranded DNA will line up to preserve the 3'-5' direction. I think AiGs argument was that if the chromosomes joined up face to face half of the new chromosome would run in the opposite direction and the codons would be backwards. I was just pointing out this wouldn't happen. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 11:56:30, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Exactly. |
| Date: 2006/05/04 23:13:50, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/04 23:29:02, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/05/04 23:47:40, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Anyone who thinks the fact that the probability of all the proteins of the flagellum spontaneously forming from random amino acid sequences is very low, is good reason to believe it is designed, is a bad scientist. Anyone who thinks that becuase we don't have a step by step mutational path for every protein we have to assume it didn't evolve is a bad scientist. Anyone who thinks that becuase evolutionary biology is partly examining the past means that the evidence can only be ambiguous and that all hypothesis must in the end be given equal weight, is a terrible scientist. Anyone who teaches that these things are acceptable is supressing science, because they will produce students who are unable to effectively practice science. |
| Date: 2006/05/05 02:28:13, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| But what the AiG article seems to be suggesting is that the chromatids fused so that one strand would run 5'-3' up to the join, and then 3'-5' after the join. So what they are saying is that half the genes on the chromosome would be backwards. My guess is that whoever wrote that didn't realise that there are two pairs of double stranded DNA. |
| Date: 2006/05/05 02:58:09, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/05 03:11:35, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| How about for the scale free network thing you just tell us what the nodes and edges of the network represent. You should already know this assuming you didn't just pull the claim out of your a$$ to sound clever. |
| Date: 2006/05/05 05:33:44, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/05 05:54:18, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed. You can't just say 'they look designed' and assume they are. People who actually study these systems don't think they look designed at all. |
| Date: 2006/05/05 07:35:49, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/05 07:58:40, Link 81.105.96.100 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
 You can see from this that there is clearly a direction thats runs from the 5 prime carbon of one sugar to the 3 prime carbon of the other. The 'prime' is used to number the carbon atoms. |
| Date: 2006/05/05 11:45:44, Link 81.105.96.100 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| No |
| Date: 2006/05/07 04:39:14, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||
Richard Dawkins writes popular science books. To a scientist who stuides these systems they don't look designed at all.
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| Date: 2006/05/08 01:45:50, Link 217.175.221.76 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| You seem to be missing the main point. I have no problem with people not understanding this stuff. It's taken me years of reading to understand evolution properly. The point is when you made this mistake you described it as an unsurmountable obstacle. I suspect the AiG article uses similar language. It is very rare for scientists to make those kinds of mistakes without someone pointing them out. It is this arrogance that annoys people, and you will find that most of the problems that you think you have found with evolution are also easily answered if there is someone with the appropriate knowledge listening. You will find scientists will be a lot more receptive if you say 'could someone please answer this question' instead of 'Ha, how will the Darwinists overcome this obstacle!'. |
| Date: 2006/05/08 01:53:30, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
EDIT: Even better theory, a guy persuaded her that this was the case so she wouldn't want to wear one. |
| Date: 2006/05/08 09:40:33, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/08 21:38:09, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||
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Apologies if this stuff gas already been covered I haven't had time to read the whole thread. Firstly, what has whether Hitler based his views on Darwin got to do wih whether or not Darwin was right. If Hitlers book was called: 'Mein Kampf, or why Charles Darwin's theory of evolution says we should kill all the Jews' this would have no effect on whether evolution was true.
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| Date: 2006/05/08 21:49:16, Link 217.175.221.76 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I was under the impression that marriage us so exhalted in society because it has been demonstrated to be the best support for a family. The reason we ask for gay marriage but still want to see marriage as important is that this would then allow practically everyone in society to start a family, legalizing polygamy, incest or any other kind of marriage would have no positive effects but some negative effects. |
| Date: 2006/05/08 23:56:17, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/09 11:06:31, Link 217.175.221.76 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This is getting very old, could you just post your evidence on whatever thread you like. We do not need a philosophical discussion of why your evidence is right, just your evidence. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 00:08:53, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||
I am just speaking from a practical point of view regarding the emotional wellbeing of the children. On average a child being raised by a gay couple will be no worse off than a heterosexual couple, and better off than a child raised by a single parent with no contact from the other, on average.
Origionally I was concerned about gay marriage because I wasn't sure what effect a gay couple, even with the best intentions, would have on the child. However several sociologists and psychologists have assured me it doesn't make any difference, and that a child brought up by a gay familiy is no more likely to be gay than one brought up by a straight family.
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| Date: 2006/05/11 00:36:20, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 03:43:43, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Read his creator God hypothesis, apparently biological 'machines' and the fine tuned universe proves that the designer is God because that's the way God would do it. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 04:57:37, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I haven't read any of those vitamin c articles you mentioned, but I think your missing the point. The pseudogene may have function but is no longer a gene which produces a protein involved vitamin C synthesis. It is good evidence for common descent whether or not the pseudogene has function. Am I missing something there? |
| Date: 2006/05/11 06:11:02, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 06:18:07, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Just a quick question. If you claim that you have these models why do you need so long to work on them? Im assuming of course that you didn't just say you have the models and now just need time to actually think them up. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 07:39:39, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
Although I have not read much about cosmic fine tuning, my concern is this: If there is no divine creator, life can only exist in a universe that has the correct constants. If there is a divine creator, life could be created in a very unhospitable universe. Does this disprove God? No, but the point is there is no proof that these constants were set by a creator. For the purposes of the argument on evolution I am prepared to accept that they are however. BIOLOGICAL "MACHINES" DO NOT LOOK DESIGNED I can only say this so many times, if you study biological systems they look like they have evolved. We call them "machines" because they have some trivial similarities to man made machines, that does not mean they are designed. They are complex, this does not mean they are designed. They perform functions, this does not mean they are designed. Dawkins writes popular science books, I will agree that they look designed to a layman who does not have a good grasp of the relevant topics in evolution and biochemistry. I have never used the word machine, and in all my conversations with scientists who study these systems I have never heard the word machine used to describe them. These words are used becuase anthropomorphisms make it easier to teach complex subjects. You can understand what a flagellum is if you think of it as an outboard motor, or a ribosome as a factory that makes proteins, but biologists who study them do not use these words except to teach. Saying that because biologists say the word machine means that they are designed systems is perhaps the worst and least scientific creationist argument I have ever heard. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 07:49:24, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 08:39:53, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 08:47:29, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Er, Im all for freedom of speech, but Im pretty sure this falls under libel laws. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 09:11:40, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 09:18:10, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
For anyone who didn't see the picture: |
| Date: 2006/05/11 12:34:46, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Thordaddy, this is not opinion, this is the statistics. Children raised by homosexual couples are no more likely to become homosexual than those raised by straight parents. Yes a religious family will bring up the child religious, but this is completely different. Do you believe that homosexual parents will try and raise their children gay? I would love to know what evidence you have for this. Forgive me if I trust my friends with PhD dissertations in this area over your assumptions. I do not want to say that your ideas are based on predjudice but I really can't think where you are getting your arguments from becuase they definately are not based on evidence, experience or common sense, unless you have had some really bad experiences with homosexuals. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 14:21:52, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||
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| Date: 2006/05/11 21:14:18, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Apologies, I didn't make myself clear. A child raised by two women is no less likely to be gay than a child raised by a man and a woman. Again this is based on studies of people who have been raised by two women. A man raised by single woman is slightly more likely to be gay, the absence of a father figure was my best guess as to why this occured.
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| Date: 2006/05/11 22:00:25, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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Again I am not sure of the reasons for these occurences. Perhaps a lesbain can fill the 'father figure' role, I don't know. But that isn't my point. It doesn't matter what you or I think, children who have been raised by homosexual parents are not more likely to be gay than those that weren't.This is based on people who have already been raised in a gay household, of which there are many all over the world. |
| Date: 2006/05/11 22:53:24, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
People are trying to explain the results, it's not my field so I don't know what the explanations are. I dont know if there is any evidence in the statistics for a genetic cause ie are children with gay parents more likely to be gay even if they are not brought up in a gay household. I don't think that anyone can argue that there is no environmental cause whatsoever, but what that is is a mystery. It might be something like high levels of a certain hormone suring pregnancy, or it might be linked to an event during childhood, such as a father leaving. I suspect it is different for different people. I am not arguing for or against a genetic cause, I am saying that it I have no problem with gay people to start a family becuase there will no emotional effects on the children, which was against my initial assumptions. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 00:19:12, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
Again, it is not scince describing the cause that has lead me to the conclusions of no emotional effects, it is the actual observations. There are ways we can measure emotional health, and children who have been raised by gay parents are just as emotionally healty as those who have been raised by straight parents. My statement that children will be just as healthy is not based on any idea about what causes homosexuality, it is based on observations of people who were raised in homosexual households. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 02:17:30, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Im sure there are pretty interesting statistics about where in America gay people raise emotionally healthy children. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 03:14:16, Link 129.11.110.145 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I think people from some places probably do (ie liverpool), but most people pronouce it correctly. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 07:40:30, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I would say it is someone who is primarily attracted to people of the same gender. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 08:27:24, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Please explain why you think common design explains the evidence better than common descent? |
| Date: 2006/05/12 08:47:48, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Or watch this. |
| Date: 2006/05/12 14:21:17, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||||||||||||||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||||||||||||||
The reason we are certain that a chromosome fusion occured is becuase we see the evidence that the sequences appear to match, and we know that such chromosome rearrangements commonly occur. Think about what you have learned about the vitamin C gene and you will see that we have applied the same reasoning. On the other hand, if you claim common design is a better hypothesis, you need only explain why. ps Once again could you confirm or deny that you don't think we can infer any of this stuff as we didn't see it happen. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 01:21:26, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
A. They are called biophysicists and B. No they don't Does anyone else get the impression that they think that there are currently no physicists, engineers, computer scientists or mathematicians working on topics related to evolution and that these people haven't proveide some of the best confirmations of the theory over the last decade. Perhaps they should read some journals in those fields. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 05:49:18, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Dave, could you give me a reference that says the guinea pig pseudogene appears to be more closely related to the human pseudogene than the other simians, thanks. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 06:27:50, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
|
I guess Darwinite wisdom is the wisdom of the people who come from Darwin. Read Kevin Padian Hating Fundamentalists in SciAm Letters, and tell me where in the article Kevin Padian says he hates fundementalists, because I can't find it. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 07:24:39, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/13 07:56:39, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/13 10:08:26, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
I vote this as quote of the week. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 10:33:34, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| I think someone can join in the debate without learning a lot of science, the problem comes when you think you know more than the experts. A little knowledge of course comes in handy if you want to understand the reasons why you are wrong. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 11:00:23, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Looks like JAD and DS moved there argument over to brainstorms. Check it out, funny funny stuff. They've derailed about 3 threads. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 12:53:02, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/13 13:50:26, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
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The friends I am talking about are old schoolfriends, but I get your point, not everyone can ask a scientist. My point was that if somebody told me something about a subject I would not just read the first article that comes up on google, and then decide Im an expert, which is what a lot of creationists seem to do. Reading popular science books is I think the way to go, unless of course you are talking about The Genesis Flood, and Darwins Black Box. |
| Date: 2006/05/13 14:01:02, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| BarryA's back. Apparently evolutionists don't like quote mining becuase they all know evolution's in trouble. |
| Date: 2006/05/14 00:39:47, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/14 04:13:36, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
What do you want us to admit? That biological machines are a good argument for design, no chance at the moment I'm afraid. Look how I can write stuff in bold too: Biological systems ony have a superficial resemblance to man-made machines. Biological systems do not look designed. SETI has absolutely nothing to do with it, it isnt a comparable situation Plus of course SETI says ID is a load of crap and has nothing to do with what they do. |
| Date: 2006/05/14 06:10:32, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/14 11:02:01, Link 81.105.97.73 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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| Date: 2006/05/14 11:47:31, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| Definately worth a read. |
| Date: 2006/05/14 12:27:44, Link 81.105.97.73 |
| Author: Chris Hyland |
| As a proud member of everyone else I heartily endorse the fourth statement. |
| Date: 2006/05/15 03:19:26, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
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| Date: 2006/05/15 04:15:03, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||||
Ok so if we say God make very small molecular changes in man fair enough, even though it doesn't appear that way. Why would he then make the same changes in all other organisms, which don't have any phenotypic effect on man at all in his interaction with them You can shrug off 'bad design' but you can't escape the fact that these sytems look like they have evolved as opposed to been engineered. |
| Date: 2006/05/15 07:43:44, Link 129.11.110.145 | ||
| Author: Chris Hyland | ||
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3 am
into a motile strain. That would definitely be convincing.