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Date: 2005/07/12 15:34:48, Link 152.228.2.150

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 04 2005,23:38)
so with each new discovery, will you again proclaim: goddidit! while providing no evidence....

While I agree -- and will probably repeat past arguments -- I don't think its fair to say there is "no evidence." They have evidence -- just misinterpreted evidence.

IDers do say that many features of our own machines have some analog in animal bodies, rowing oars -- dolphin flippers, seeds with sails -- sailing ships, birds with wings -- airplanes. In the cell: there are computer-like languages and their decoding systems, memory banks of molecular information storage and retrieval in DNA/RNA, control systems regulating robotic assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading, prefabrication and modular construction.... etc. etc..

There is a deep feeling of deja-vu here. We are seeing our own machines invented before we knew how to make them.

Human intelligence and evolution (or designer) do seem to be producing similar inventions. I think its fair to say these parallels point to something similar.

Where I part with IDers is in the assumption of what is similar.

I think -- more because I read William Calvin, not because I'm such an original thinker -- that this similarity happens because evolutionary algorithms are working in our own brains:

http://williamcalvin.com/
Cerebral Circuits for Creativity: Bootstrapping Coherence using a Darwin Machine

But IDers assume intelligence itself is something outside the natural -- something supernatural -- and nothing natural can invent, produce information or whatever else they wish to share with God alone.

Now here's a question: If we one day do invent a fully "conscious" feeling, creative A.I. -- a robot that can fool us into thinking it's human -- would that falsify ID theory?

Does ID depend on intelligence being something supernatural? If not, then there is not necessarily a fight between evolution and ID -- ID would simply be too overly broad and useless as it would encompass what it wishes to destroy.

If ID does need intelligence to be supernatural -- then would that mean ID is a falsifiable theory? We falsify it be creating an A.I. that's inventive and human like?

Date: 2005/07/12 17:21:54, Link 152.228.2.110

Author: normdoering

Quote (Henry J @ July 12 2005,16:09)
... the gene pool of a species has at least two of the attributes we associate with intelligence (the abilities to experiment and to "remember" previous results).

But are those attributes enough? I don't think the DNA/RNA system with ribosomes and all is a system that has other human attributes, like emotion, pre-visualizing, intension...

And as far as remembering -- doesn't evolution only remember it's successes and forget its dead failures leading it to repeat mistakes -- killer childhood diseases and children's cancer among them.

Humans and artificial neural nets can remember something of both success and failure.

Quote
So without a clear definition of "intelligence", regular evolution theory logically has as much claim to the label "I.D." as does the deliberately engineered model of life that the I.D. people are implying.

That's what we need -- a clear definition of "intelligence."

Any ID out there got one?

Date: 2005/07/12 18:46:14, Link 152.228.2.102

Author: normdoering

Quote (Henry J @ July 12 2005,17:45)
So where's that leave us?

Forever waiting for the IDers to define what they mean by intelligence -- and for that matter -- what do they mean by design?

Anyone know if Dembski or Behe ever addressed those questions?

Date: 2005/08/23 03:42:58, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (cewagner @ July 18 2005,09<!--emo&)
Quote

We are seeing our own machines invented before we knew how to make them.
Human intelligence and evolution (or designer) do seem to be producing similar inventions. I think its fair to say these parallels point to something similar.

That, sir, is one of the most brilliant and insightful comments I have seen. It is an observation of profound significance.

No, it's not. It's the starting point for ID and William Paley saw it over a century ago before Darwin wrote "Origin of Species."

Quote

Not all IDERS.
Some, like myself, believe that there may be intelligences far above ours that comfortably fit into the natural world and have a scientific explanation. I see no need to invoke a supernatural entity when we haven't ruled out unknown natural entities.

I'm not talking about an intelligence "far above" ours. I'm thinking of the kind of intelligent agency that Marvin Minsky wrote about in "The Society of Mind."

http://www.amazon.com/exec....=glance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind_theory
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/bib/nf/m/mrvnlmns.htm

"What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle." - Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, page 308

Quote

To me, ID theory simply means that we are the product of a greater intelligence than our own, not of a supernatural intelligence. In fact, there may not be any such thing as "supernatural" because as soon as something is discovered, it immediately becomes part of the natural world.

If you're thinking of intelligences in terms of greater and lesser, then you're way off track and very niave about intelligence.

I'm thinking of intelligence as a far more multi-dimentional phenomena where incredibly stupid things can still be smarter in some ways than us -- like computers. They add numbers faster than I can, these days they might have more memory than I do and with the right sorts of of software they do things I can't -- but they are stupid because they lack other dimensions of intelligence.

Quote

Sure. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. The red rocks of Sedona are not intelligent because they have no ability to affect their own destiny or solve problems related to their surroundings. On the other hand, living organisms respond to their environment and take steps to modify it. This can occur on a whole range of levels from the simplest phototropism to the most complex machine-building. There is absolutely no reason to think that human intelligence is the pinnacle of intelligence in the universe.

And what problem is "evolution" solving? It's just an algorithm, a biological and mathematical principal. Do algorithms have problems?

To have a problem you first need desire, need, wants.

Do algorithms have desires?

Date: 2005/09/01 12:23:17, Link 152.228.2.121

Author: normdoering

Here's a link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-....06.html

Date: 2005/10/19 09:44:33, Link 152.228.2.143

Author: normdoering

I’m trying to write a science fiction story that involves someone doing complex genetic engineering in 2006 — an extraordinarily sophisticated bioweapon, a virus made from scratch that has never existed before, it targets brain cells (that’s as far as I’m willing to go with revealing the plot) — and I was wondering what kind of machines or devices exist now that could write out long sequences of DNA and stuff them in a virus shell.

What tools could be used to do such genetic engineering?

Could a detective reasonably track the sale of such devices to find the possible culprits?

I know that Eckard Wimmer, at the University of New York, created a polio virus from scratch back in 2002 and then someone later did it much faster. I believe they spliced together mail order DNA sequences.

This wouldn’t be mail order — this would be writing out DNA sequences that never existed before.

And no, it's not Frank Herbert’s “The White Plague” which is a bio-engineering custom plague to get rid of Ireland's women. This virus goes for the brain. It's more like "Serpent and the Rainbow" without voodoo -- and that's all I want to say about the plot.

Date: 2005/10/20 12:07:49, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (Pastor Bentonit @ Oct. 20 2005,10:22)
I take it your "bad guys" don´t want to order a traceable whole-virus sequence mail-order...sensible, even if not just any molecular sleuth would be able to easily get past customer-synthesis lab confidentiality.

"customer-synthesis lab confidentiality" ??

Thanks for reminding me.

That means you'd need some sort of search warrent or a computer hacker.

"...who would take the risk?"

Someone desperate using someone well paid.

"Note that synthesizing viral nucleic acids from scratch is subject to some size constraints (smaller virus genome=easier in principle, large enough=not possible today)."

What are the limits today? Can you express it in a library and book metaphor? If we think of the gene sequences as letters in a book spelling out:

AGC CTG GGC TAT GCA...etc.

Would a complex virus fit into a readable book? An encyclopedia? A library? Could one write a books worth of DNA?

"... more interesting question implied in your post is, how does one custom-design such a viral genome to i) target the brain and ii) produce a predictable effect?"

By studying virii that do attack the brain. By learning the language of viral life better than anyone knows it today.

I'm finding stuff like this:
http://www.dukemednews.org/av/medminute.php?id=2111

"A team of researchers at Duke University Medical Center recently crossed the virus that causes polio with the virus that causes the common cold. They found that this new genetically engineered virus can kill malignant brain tumor cells in lab mice within six to eight hours, without any damage to normal cells."

What I am assuming is that researchers also discover a lot of negative effects they don't report in the literature because they do have bio-weapon potential.

And remember, this is fiction: reality doesn't necessarily have to get in the way. It just has to seem real enough to scare fairly knowledgable readers.

"Hope that helps."

It did, thanks.

Date: 2005/11/14 17:29:50, Link 152.228.2.154

Author: normdoering

Quote (lutsko @ Nov. 14 2005,14:29)
... I think some defenders go over board in denying the possibility that ID could ever be a scientifically respectable hypothesis. ...

I doubt you'll ever have an ID hypothesis that points at God for one simple reason: I don't think there is a God.

However, in the future, law makers and governments may want to know if virii and germs are evolved or designed so they know when a crime or an act of war has been committed.

They may want to tell genetic doping from naturally occuring differences between people.

In those cases the things to look for would be:

1) A lack of similar enough ancestors. (too big an evolutionary jump for to few generations)
2) Lack of junk DNA (though it might be faked)
3) Motive for design.

Anyone add more?

Date: 2005/12/03 17:14:46, Link 152.228.2.133

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ Dec. 03 2005,22:27)
... nowhere does it suggest that Dawkins made any claims - at all - about information theory....

In "The Selfish Gene," Dawkins defined the meme as a unit of cultural information transmission.

It's not "information theory" as Claude Shannon would have known it -- but it is a "theory" of information. Except I don't think there is a consistent, rigorous and precise definition of what a meme is. Maybe it's just a metaphor and not a theory?

He's no Claude Shannon, obviously, and his books are light on math. However, that doesn't mean his arguments are immune from mathematical arguments against his claims.

It's possible Dawkins made mistakes in regards to information theory without ever knowing the theory. You can make a mistake by not applying an idea when it's called for.

I'm not saying he did -- but I confess, while the Answers in Genesis artile is utter rubbish -- that stuff about Avidia almost makes sense.

Date: 2006/01/13 09:10:02, Link 152.228.2.121

Author: normdoering

Well, I'm here if anyone wants to continue...

Stephen Elliott, I found your answers interesting toward the end. What you said about your dying father lets me see that you have a deep desire to believe in God. It seemed very honest.

Date: 2006/01/13 09:36:31, Link 152.228.2.121

Author: normdoering

Quote
I do not know how to answer you. Anything I say you will turn into an argument.

Is it an argument? I'm just trying to understand why you claim to believe in God. Of course I fit your answers into my own context and explain them from an atheistic point of view and it appears to be an "argument" to you because you resist that context.

Quote
... maybe there is more happening than we can comprehend.

I'm sure there is. But I think I'm begining to comprehend why you believe in God -- because you want there to be one. You want there to be more to this life than we can see.

Quote
If you think everything in the universe falls into the scientific method….

There's only one way to find out how far science can take us and that's to follow it. I do think science has more potential for truthful answers than religion.

Date: 2006/01/13 09:42:27, Link 152.228.2.121

Author: normdoering

Quote (Flint @ Jan. 13 2006,15:31)
norm:

Fill me in on what the debate was about. Or alternatively, say something stupid. I'll be glad to reciprocate.

Read here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/01/kenneth_miller.html

Date: 2006/01/13 10:23:45, Link 152.228.2.121

Author: normdoering

JONBOY (in the Colbert original thread) wrote:

Quote
I believe according to some polls, about half of all scientist find a way to accommodate their religious beliefs to their scientific ideas,....

According to this survey:

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm

It's a bit less than half and strikingly different from the general public where god belief is much higher. Science either creates atheists, or atheists are attracted to science.

Date: 2006/01/13 18:04:49, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (haceaton @ Jan. 13 2006,21:37)
... consider the flip side: people who have faith. Did they aquire this faith without any experience, teaching, or study? Since it was not based on "evidence" how did it come about?

Alas, this conversation now lacks Stephen Elliott who was answering that question.

Back on the thread where this started:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archive....t-71213

Stephen Elliott wrote:
Quote
I can’t give you a rational answer.

However when my father was dying I cried out to God. I will not deny that. It might be nothing or it might be something. I do not know. But never again shall I pretend that I do not believe .

It has happened numerous times before. I always just “blew it away” previously.

Date: 2006/01/13 18:26:17, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (Flint @ Jan. 14 2006,00:16)
Stephen Elliot seems to be saying the inverse: "I'm not crippled, I'm handicapped." His brain works, but he doesn't know how to LET it work. It's one thing to recognize that one HAS a handicap. It seems something quite different to be determined to work around it, rather than wallow in it.

That's not the way I saw it. I said: "I don’t blame you. I’d want someone, something, the most improbable hope at all, to change the fate we all have to face. But I don’t confuse desire with belief."

I understood what he was talking about. I've wanted a god to intervene in tragedy too -- I've lost a few people close to me too. Haven't you? I don't call out to god first when I'm emotionally pushed to the edge by grief -- I do something even less rational -- I try to be god and will the tragedy away first, then I pray, then I cry, then I get rational.

I get rational only after the grief has passed.

Date: 2006/01/13 22:13:50, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (Stephen Elliott @ Jan. 14 2006,03:00)
Some very interesting comments.

The handicapped/crippled one is a bit confusing. I do not consider myself to be either. Perhaps you could explain more simply.

I was confused a bit by that too. Think of it as an implied question. What is implied is that you have some sort of crutch in your belief and that you would feel handicapped trying to get through life without out it -- I think.

I think you answered well enough by just saying you don't feel handicapped.

Date: 2006/01/14 12:09:37, Link 152.228.2.146

Author: normdoering

Quote (Stephen Elliott @ Jan. 14 2006,04:42)
In fact I would prefer that to the God some people believe in.

On that we agree.

Date: 2006/01/15 01:48:34, Link 152.228.2.111

Author: normdoering

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 14 2006,18:23)
Indeed. Good Hitchens bit on this notion.

And Hitchens suddenly reminded me of Jefferson:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jefferson.htm
http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

And Jefferson called himself a Christian at times -- but he took a knife to his bible and cut out all the miracles and supernatural stuff.

Date: 2006/01/15 18:08:55, Link 152.228.2.153

Author: normdoering

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 15 2006,20:52)
No, of course I know you're not a fundy, Stephen, I was just making the point that many religions are full of stuff that reasonable people have to ignore. It is not necessary to distort it to get support for terrible things, that support is right there on the printed pages.

I think he means religion begins with his feelings, (calling out to a god when his father was dying), not those books.

The books (Bible, Koran, Talmud, etc.) distort and shape the original impulse which makes us think there is a dream world beyond death.

No doubt his Christian upbringing shaped those feelings to a degree, but that Christian upbringing may not have included a lot of Old Testament reading.

Date: 2006/01/16 20:50:57, Link 152.228.2.155

Author: normdoering

Quote (Stephen Elliott @ Jan. 16 2006,05:08)
The Norse thing was just a joke.

Careful, you don't want to piss off Thor.

Have you ever considered calling yourself a "Jeffersonian Christian" or "a Christian in the style of Thomas Jefferson"?

This verbal tactic would prevent people from rushing to assumptions about what your "Christianity" is about and if they reasearched it to figure out that our founding fathers were certainly not fundies.

Date: 2006/01/24 06:46:43, Link 152.228.2.147

Author: normdoering

Back to what started the religious war in two different PT threads.

Jeffersonian Christians (Deists in my book) aside, Darwin's theory of evolution does (and did in its own time) have negative implications for "fundamentalist/evangelical" style Christianity beyond contradicting a silly, literal interpretation of Genesis.

Notions like sin, man being the crown of creation, and other biblical ideas are challenged too.

Pretending evolution has no religious implications is dishonest.

Date: 2006/04/01 12:29:01, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 01 2006,18:14)
Indeed. That's likely the reason the STEP program was funded by the Templeton foundation.

It would seem they are avoiding things known to get negative results:

If they wanted negative (or null) results for a religious study, why don't they study the effectiveness of exorcisms on people who claim to be demonically possessed. Then you could compare the priests' results with those of some good anti-psychotic drugs. (that could make exorcists look bad -- or really good.)

Why not do a study on how effective faith healers are? James Randi once investigated them... perhaps they know that and avoid it for that reason?

Date: 2006/04/01 12:59:40, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 01 2006,18:36)
If you check out the review article i posted, you will see a desire on the part of the reviewers to see studies funded that would pursue the potential pyschological damage resulting from faith healing efforts.

I'm reading your link now... but it is hard to take seriously when I read stuff like: "Religious leaders questioned whether the prayers were appropriately worded and whether those praying were really moved by the spirit."

Prayers have to be "appropriately worded"?? What are these prayers, magic spells -- get one word off and suddenly you turn the patient into a frog. Is it the words that make a prayer work or the desire?

I kind of understand that "moved by the spirit" comment though -- that's the desire part. My intuition into these things I don't believe in would suggest to me that you have to want to really, really want something (and wish real hard) before you can make it happen. Blowing out the candle on your birthday cake is just superstition -- its the intensity of the wish that matters. As a child I could temporarily fool myself with that kind of magical thinking.

Does anybody else giggle when they read comments like that?

Date: 2006/04/01 13:27:12, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 01 2006,19:12)
... did you also read the abstract?

Not yet -- I clicked the three first links and started reading but they were all articles about the study -- none had any details on how the study was conducted.

Re-link that one if you want -- but I'll recheck the thread for more links.

Date: 2006/04/01 13:37:51, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (normdoering @ April 01 2006,19:27)
Quote (sir_toejam @ April 01 2006,19:12)
... did you also read the abstract?

Not yet -- I clicked the three first links and started reading but they were all articles about the study -- none had any details on how the study was conducted.

Re-link that one if you want -- but I'll recheck the thread for more links.

Oh, you mean:
Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer

at:
http://www.ahjonline.com/article/PIIS0002870305006496/abstract

There aren't many details. It was, supposedly, double blind for two groups and the numbers were good. That's pretty standard... nothing really clever here, not even informing one group that they would be prayed for.

My gut feeling is there might be cleverer ways of approaching the subject. I'd have to think more about that.

Date: 2006/04/01 14:09:48, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 01 2006,19:43)
this is the first study to compare the double blind group to the group that actually knew it was being prayed for... and found significant results opposite to what one might expect for that group.

I see what you mean... one might expect suggestion and faith would help.

However, by clever I meant something like the way Stanley Milgram's psychology experiments were designed.

I can't say how yet, but off the top of my head:

Get faith healers like Benny Hinn to come to the hospital and do his faith healing thing for lots of patients, but then have some atheist actors pretend to be faith healers and let them do the same -- then see who was more effective and compare both of their groups with a control that never saw a faith healer.

That's not really clever enough...

Still, my aims are different than Templeton's -- I want to disillusion people. I already think the religious illusion is dangerous and unhealthy.

Date: 2006/04/02 07:35:25, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (hehe @ Mar. 31 2006,03:39)
But this is just semantics.

And it looks like fairly bad semantics to me. Life began over 3 billion years ago, conception is just another process in the continuation of life.

What is left out of that simple sentence is what is actually meant: a specific human individual. When can it be said that "a specific human individual" begins its life. The process doesn't begin with conception. Before conception, egg and sperm must be produced, each with their own load of genetic code -- why don't sperm have a right to life? (because we can't afford to give it to them?)

Date: 2006/04/02 12:33:39, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

On Uncommonly Dense:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/984

Do people have to die to save our civilization from ecological collapse?

Date: 2006/04/03 05:43:25, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (guthrie @ April 03 2006,02:38)
So we could either reduce our population drastically, to permit high levels of consumption, or we could reduce how much each of us consumes. I'd prefer the latter.

How would you feel about a humane form of genocide?

For example, instead of using a bioweapon to kill people we create a bioweapon that attacks women's egg cells or the lining of the womb the egg cells must attach to so that most (but not all) women exposed become sterile?

Then you could unleash it in the mideast and vacinate selected parts of your own population against it.

Date: 2006/04/03 17:31:26, Link 152.228.2.118

Author: normdoering

Quote (thordaddy @ April 03 2006,22:09)
Several alternate answers were given.

1. Life began before conception (the "live" egg and ovum/ "life from life" argument).

2. Life had No beginning (hence, OUR LIVES sprang from nonlife or we are eternal beings).

3. Life began after conception (the consciouness/CNS development/birth/viability/economic/choice/etc. argument)

The first 2 arguments can be easily disposed of. The third argument is said to be devoid of moral and scientific arguments.

You are confusing "life" with "thinking/feeling/awareness."

So you're asking when the mental life of each unique person begins.

Date: 2006/04/03 17:53:11, Link 152.228.2.118

Author: normdoering

Quote (thordaddy @ April 03 2006,22:44)
No... I'm asking when YOUR LIFE began.

It's always beginning.

I merely aquired a relatively unique genetic code at conception. If that exact same genetic code were put into another egg cell and that child were raised in Saudi Arabia or India by another family the result would be a different person than the one I am today. (though twin studies can have spooky results when sometimes twins raised apart get similar jobs, smoke the same brand of cigarettes and dress the same.)

I'm not just my genetic code -- I am my life experiences.

Date: 2006/04/05 07:18:41, Link 152.228.2.137

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 03 2006,15:08)
Quote
Coppenger says. "But I don't see him cooperating in a test."

hilarious!

What to get even funnier?
Check out this Onion article:
Critics Blast Bush For Not Praying Hard Enough
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46938

"There is a real possibility that the president misrepresented the number of times he invokes Jesus' power each day in accordance with the strict guidelines of scripture," said Henry Holbrook, senior fellow at the Intercession Institute, a leading conservative prayer tank. "Is he clasping his hands together tightly enough? Is he using the proper forms of the pronouns 'thine' and 'thou'? What about the verb 'hast'?"

Susan DiDomenico of the National Prayer Task Force said her organization is seeking "full disclosure" of any and all prayers Bush may have skipped or manipulated to seem more effective or holy.

Date: 2006/04/05 09:56:40, Link 152.228.2.137

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ April 05 2006,14:21)
(they're watching us)

If so, I expect them to make fun of the Pianka scrap soon.

Date: 2006/04/05 16:19:39, Link 152.228.2.152

Author: normdoering

Quote (thordaddy @ April 05 2006,18:33)
I said there is no evidence to suggest that consciousness emerges anywhere other than at conception. If you have evidence to the contrary, please present it.

Dennett's book, "Consciousness Explained." Read it.

Actually, the idea that it takes a functioning brain to produce "consciousness" (a fuzzy, ill-defined term) is a core assumption of neuroscience. Do you deny neuroscience as much as you deny evolution?

Date: 2006/04/05 20:06:10, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (thordaddy @ April 05 2006,22:52)
...as we saw with Terri Schiavo, a functioning brain is no evidence of consciouness.

Did you just say that Terri Schiavo had a functioning brain?

Her cerebral cortex was liquified -- that's not a functioning brain. That's why it was deemed okay to pull her plug.

Date: 2006/04/07 13:17:54, Link 152.228.2.141

Author: normdoering

Quote (guthrie @ April 07 2006,05:36)
I expect someone will consider it sometime, somewhere, but I wouldnt agree with it.

You don't have to agree with it. You just have to see it coming. In time it won't take much of a research effort to do that or worse. Viruses can now be created from scratch.

One of these days, someone is going to do it no matter what we think.

If you're a Muslim I would suggest you wear a facemask to the next Hajj for this reason alone:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news....ask.php

Date: 2006/04/07 13:29:51, Link 152.228.2.141

Author: normdoering

Quote (thordaddy @ April 07 2006,18:15)
So basically because "homosexuality" exists it must be due to an evolutionary pathway? We just make this assumption because...? Even though it seems, on its face, to contradict evolution?

Like everything else that exists, homosexuality exists because it can. It also exists because the difference between gay and straight is slight enough to occur at random at a genetic level.

What evolution might predict is that any gay gene that exists would not be absolutely gay -- it would be part of a range of effects that shifts sexual orientation and there should be straight people with so-called gay genes.

Date: 2006/04/28 12:32:59, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

3-->
Quote (steve_h @ April 28 2006,133)
I think he's doing something worse. He's observed a wet driveway and is trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain it.

No, it's worse than that. He is not trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain anything. This is what he learned in fundy school and therefore it must be true and scientific. If science doesn't agree, then science must be wrong... for that is also what he learned in fundy school.

Date: 2006/04/28 15:18:29, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (steve_h @ April 28 2006,19:48)
It's worse than that -- it's not just him, there are loads of 'em.

No! Even worse -- one of them is the president who was elected by the load.

Date: 2006/04/28 17:25:55, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ April 28 2006,22:06)
So is UT a fundy school now?

If you learned about "the Global Flood of Noah" at UT, then UT is a fundy school.

If you didn't learn about "the Global Flood of Noah" at UT, then you are a liar.

A rational person who actually understood logic could use that first premise to positively conclude that you are a liar. Do you know why?

Date: 2006/04/29 07:52:59, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (improvius @ April 29 2006,11:55)
I don't want to waste too much time on this nonsense, but I'll dismantle one of your predictions on the incredibly off chance it will help you.

Quote
(d) We would expect that IF there were such a thing as a Supernatural Being like my "God" persona, we would expect there to be many claims that people have received Written Messages from Him. Can we test this prediction? Again, yes. There are many ... the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran to name a few.

Let's look at just ONE major assumptions this involves:

It is impossible for such a Supernatural Being to exist unless that Being sends written messages.

Now, does this actually make sense to you?

And what about the fact that the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Koran to name a few, don't agree with each other?

Can't God keep his story straight? Why does he tell people different stories and watch them kill each other over who has the true one?

If he wants us to know what he thinks, why didn't he write it in the sky with Adam's language? Or every human language? Why do his words have to be transcribed by human hands. Are we to believe that he can kill every first born in Egypt and turn Lot's wife into salt but he can't write a message in the sky?

Date: 2006/04/29 14:21:22, Link 152.228.2.131

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ April 29 2006,18:12)
I'm afraid this particular assignment could take decades to complete, because most of the relevant fields are extremely complex and technical, and not something you could master in a semester, let alone a day or two.

And if you can't master those fields in a day or two, you might at least give these websites a look:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood.html

Lenny Flank has a site that I'd be happy to see you tear into:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/

Date: 2006/04/29 18:25:20, Link 152.228.2.131

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ April 29 2006,21:50)
I would be glad to believe what you believe if I could be convinced of it by sound arguments ...

Whoever instructed you in what a sound argument is lied to you. Please explain what you think a sound argument is.

Remember when Aureola Nominee said: "The real fun is to watch the efforts required to derive some predictions from such hypotheses, in consideration of the fact that a claim that A => B is equivalent to a claim that ~B => ~A."

That was back on this thread:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archive....omments

What Aureola was talking about was the most basic principle of a sound argument and you said about that:
"Aureola— The reason why Creationists are winning the public over is because the only people that actually understand your A>=B stuff and Bayesian logic, etc. is YOUR OWN KIND..."

That's an admission on your part that you don't know what a sound argument is. Aureola was telling you what was needed to make a sound argument.

A => B is read "A therefore B." In order for that to be sound and meaningful it must also imply "not B therefore not A." Anything else is a non sequitur and does not logically follow.

It's the first rule of making a sound argument and you can't do it or see it.

Date: 2006/05/01 05:01:21, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 01 2006,08:19)
this "Creator God Hypothesis" DOES NOT follow the Deductive Framework. I have stated prior to giving my hypothesis, that I cannot provide a watertight proof for God and I don't believe anyone can, so people are correct in saying that my hypothesis would fail using the deductive schema. However, we CAN use Abductive Reasoning then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), ...

Some people can use Abductive Reasoning and then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), but not you, Dave.

There is an old quote from David Brooks that applies to your method of reasoning: "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy."

Of course, your problem is that you don't recognise "God" as an unknown, do you?

Your "abductive inference" (that there is a least one god) is over 3,000 years old and so are the so-called "surprising facts" you are using as support. In all that time, going through several religions, it never made it past first base into the realm of deductive science.

Also, I would not recommend reading Stephen C. Meyer to learn about logic -- he'll probably forever cripple your ability to understand modern scientific reasoning.

Date: 2006/05/01 06:08:06, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 01 2006,10:23)
Quote
In all that time, going through several religions, it never made it past first base into the realm of deductive science.
Again, I am saying that I am not using Deductive Reasoning ... I am using Abductive Reasoning ...

You think you are using Abductive Reasoning but you're not really doing that. What you are doing is called "rationalization."

Abductive Reasoning is supposed to lead to a hypothesis where deductive reasoning can apply. Thus your failure to supply a testably hypothesis after doing your Abductive Reasoning means you've failed to do it correctly.

Date: 2006/05/01 08:58:53, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 01 2006,11:10)
... more I study this issue, the more I agree with Meyer that the Abductive approach with a Logical Inference to the Best Explanation is in fact used extensively by both scientists and historians to "establish" many theories (not prove, I understand) which are of great use to humanity.

The problem with your above statement is you've misread Meyer who is already lying to you.

When Meyer says "developments in modern science provide support for Christian theism" it is a lie. He has offered a very skewed argument in which many lines of evidence are omitted and the evidence he does provide will not take you as far as he claims, to confirmation of Christianity. Even if it were valid, which it is not, it could only take you a vague idea of a god.

You then misread him when you say "a Logical Inference to the Best Explanation is in fact used extensively by both scientists and historians to establish many theories." Meyer's never explores anything but the metaphysical conclusions one might draw from what science we know. I never saw him claim any where that scientific theories were established by abductive reasoning alone.

It is a lie to say abductive reasoning alone establishes a scientific theory because deductive reasoning must be involved in establishing those theories. It is paramount, the fact that an apparent use of abductive inference can also seem to "establish" them is a slight of hand distraction away from what is actually critical to those theories.

For example, the theory you so dislike, Darwinian evolution, has many lines of deductive proof and prediction from them to go on. I can lay out a few if you're interested.

Date: 2006/05/01 12:52:05, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 01 2006,15:47)
Quote
Tell us AFDave, should we suspect you of killing all those innocent people?

YES, YES!! Thankyou! A Thousand time YES! This is precisely what you should do!

Previously I said: "...the theory you so dislike, Darwinian evolution, has many lines of deductive proof and prediction from them to go on. I can lay out a few if you're interested."

Here is just one line of proof:

At this website you'll find a chapter from a book by Kevin Kelly called "Out of Control":

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch15-d.html

I will use this chapter to illustrate how science uses abductive reasoning to move into deductive reasoning and show how its the deductive reasoning that is the key to science, not the abductive.

It's about Danny Hillis who built the first massively parallel processing computer, the Connection Machine, and used it as a "proof" for a concept in Darwinian evolution.

Hillis saw a problem: The more knowledge you gave a computer, the slower it got. Yet with a person, the more knowledge you give him, the faster he gets. This paradox, that if you tried to make computers smart, they got stupider led to some pre-scientific abductive reasoning.
(Well, not really, because John Holland already did both the abductive and deductive core but Hillis' contribution is easier for me to explain because of this book - so let's look at Hillis alone.)

Hillis' abductive reasoning went: "There are only two ways we know of to make extremely complicated things. One is by engineering, and the other is evolution. And of the two, evolution will make the more complex. If we can't engineer a computer that will be proud of us, we may have to evolve it."

Hillis looks at the world and see a variety of complex things, human machines, living things and the rest of nature. He knows that people make complex and functional machine things -- he is such a person after all -- he is also told the the process of Darwinian evolution can make complex and functional machine-like things too and, unlike
you, he believes this and understands it.

From Hillis' abductive reasoning about evolution he moves then, naturally, to a deductive scientific mode of reasoning by turning his assumption about evolution into a hypothesis: He should be able, like John Holland suggests, to make a computer that can evolve computer programs and thus test this assumption about evolution. (This didn't really test evolution for anything we didn't know by the 1950s using pure math, but Hillis was first to make the argument into a machine). This hypothesis was then tested by building a machine that could evolve computer programs. If that had not been done -- it's the experiment in the experimental method, the scientific method -- then Hillis would not have been a scientist but merely a philosopher, like Hume or Kant or Meyer.

"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
-- David Hume

And note what happens when its done, we have to start talking about something you'll see a lot of in science: numbers! Measurable reality quantified. You don't see much of that in philosophy.

The Connection Machine had 64,000 processors with a population of 64,000 very simple software programs that could be altered by mutation. Each program had an entire computer processor dedicated to running it. initially the seed programs are just random sequences of computer instructions, but over tens of thousands of generations they became a program that sorted a long string of numbers into numerical order. It was a specific and real machine testing a significant assumption about evolution.

The computer used selection, akin to natural selection, tested the programs and terminated the less fit so that only the shortest (the best) sorting programs would be given a chance to reproduce. Over ten thousand generations of this cycle, Hillis' system bred a software program that was nearly as short as the best sorting programs written by human programmers.

That is a form of proof -- call it proof of concept. It's not proof that Darwinian evolution is what wrote our genomes, but it is proof that evolution could, in principle, do so. That's what I mean when I talk about science and deductive proof.

All that was in the '80s and you'll hardly ever hear any creationist ever talk about Hillis or Holland. Did you know those men existed before I told you?

Date: 2006/05/02 07:51:10, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 02 2006,10:47)
Quote
Norm Doering: ... There is an old quote from David Brooks that applies to your method of reasoning: "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy."
Of course, your problem is that you don't recognise "God" as an unknown, do you?

Actually yes. You'll notice from the discussion above that I am doing EXACTLY what you say I should do, i.e. "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure;" Namely, I am trying to explain the origin of natural phenomena (unknown), with propositions from my own experience (known).

Not quite.

You're conflating various origin concepts (origin of the universe, origin of life, origin of species) and applying exactly the same teleological reasoning to each.

Teleological reasoning has the illusionary quality of appearing "knowable" but it's really a mask for a great big unknown.

Wikipedia has an entry on teleology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument

Consider your airplane argument. It's classic teleology. You're stealing the basic concept of William Paley's watchmaker argument which was made prior to Darwin and which Darwin himself shot down after he believed it for awhile.

Wikipedia has an entry on the watchmaker argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy

Teleology and the watchmaker argument have even deeper flaws than those noted by Wikipedia.

Date: 2006/05/02 08:23:59, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 02 2006,10:47)
Quote
Abductive Reasoning is supposed to lead to a hypothesis where deductive reasoning can apply.

I would submit to you that Deductive Reasoning can apply to NOTHING in all of science or history in an absolute sense. I am only aware of its application in mathematics.

That demand for "absolutes" in the face of technological proof has got to be one of the classic examples of fundy brain damage.

There is nothing more "absolute" in human knowledge than technological proof, it is more certain than mathematical proof. For as Albert Einstein said, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

It is far more absolute than your vague obfuscations and teleologies.

Hillis' proof is as absolute as the human mind can get.

If someone says a heavier than air machine cannot fly and then someone builds one that can -- it is as absolutely certain a thing as man can know that a heavier than air machine can fly.

If Hillis builds a computer that demonstrates the ability of evolution then those abilities are absolutely demonstrated.

Date: 2006/05/02 08:41:42, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 02 2006,10:47)
... may be true that Meyer is lying about certain things. I have not investigated all his claims. But Meyer has pointed out a logical framework to determining 'truth' (proposed by Peirce in the 30's) that appears to be in use by many scientists and historians today.

You talk of "absolutes" to escape Danny Hillis' demonstration of evolutionary concepts, but then you talk of "truth" when dealing with Meyer's metaphysical conjectures.

You don't see a problem with that?

Date: 2006/05/02 12:19:37, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (C.J.O'Brien @ May 02 2006,16:36)
... we all know that machines don't just evolve.

Not quite true, of course. We can use evolution to evolve machine designs and computer code:

http://www.genetic-programming.org/hc2005/cfe2005.html

"Techniques of genetic and evolutionary computation are being increasingly applied to difficult real-world problems—often yielding results that are not merely interesting and impressive, but competitive with the work of creative and inventive humans."

http://www.aaai.org/aitopics/html/genalg.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/genalg/genalg.html

Date: 2006/05/02 21:23:56, Link 152.228.2.137

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 02 2006,06:03)
... that would force me to accept the inane, illogical position of Evolution with no Intelligent Agent ...

Define "Intelligent Agent," Dave.

That phrase is used by two people in two different ways. It's used by Dembski to mean "God." And it's used by Marvin Minsky to mean a simple computational capability that can work in a massive parallel systems.

In Minsky's view, human intelligence is built up from the interactions of simple agents, (or intelligent agents) who are themselves mindless. He describes those interactions as constituting a "Society of Mind", hence the title of his book:

The Society of Mind
http://www.amazon.com/gp....=283155
http://www.emcp.com/intro_pc/reading12.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Mind

Evolution itself, as Danny Hillis demonstrated, is potentially such an Intelligent Agent even though it is mindless. Thus your claim that you must accept Evolution with no Intelligent Agent is false from a Minsky perspective and only true from a Dumbski perspective.

Date: 2006/05/03 09:13:23, Link 152.228.2.142

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 03 2006,10:28)
I see what you are saying, but even in this case, it is only absolute certainty to the person (or people) who built it and flew it. Think about it. All other people who hear about it will get INDIRECT evidence--they will read about it, see the report on TV, etc. and of course this is quite reliable for the example you raise. But TV and newspaper reports can get unreliable when reporting less cut and dried events.

What about you, Dave? Didn't you say you were a pilot?

You don't design airplanes -- but you, and most people, do have direct evidence of a heavier than air machine flying. You've got a non-argument there. Is there anyway you could ever deny to yourself that it is possible for heavier than air machines to fly?

Evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms are that kind of evidence. It may be indirect to you now -- but you've got to be stubornly denying the obvious for you to deny such things exist.

It is still as absolute a proof as the human animal can get.

Date: 2006/05/03 09:30:47, Link 152.228.2.142

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 03 2006,10:28)
My problem with Danny Hillis' has nothing to do with the concepts of 'absolutes'. It has everything to do with the question of 'What exactly does the Hillis demo tell us?'

Read the book I linked and you'll find out.

http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/

You'll learn some basic ideas about things like "search space," co-evolution, evolutionary computer algorithms and get a very brief note on the mathematics involved.

Date: 2006/05/03 09:43:54, Link 152.228.2.142

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 03 2006,10:28)
No one has yet shown me an example of a worm-like creature evolving into a squid or a dinosaur-like creature evolving into a bird, ....

Evolution in animals takes a long time so you can't see it directly, (though you can get direct results with bacteria and fruit flies). We can, however, show you tons of evidence that it happened. You want a worm-like creature evolving into something? How about this bit of sample evidence:
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2005-06/jan/09.shtml
http://www.physorg.com/news9717.html

The genes of animals have extra bits of DNA sequence, called introns, that don't code for proteins. Humans have many and flies have fewer. Some assumed that a simple fly genome might be more ancient, but flies go through far more generations in the same period of time than humans or other animals. Genes don't always get more complex during evolution. So, animals have a lot of introns, and quickly-evolving species like flies have lost most of them.

We share introns with a worm-like creature that lived more than 550 million years ago, a last common ancestor of almost all living animals, including worms, flies and humans.

Evidence of a dinosaur-like creature evolving into a bird goes like this:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/Dinobirds.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news....yx.html

What you're talking about is phylum level evolution. Here is something you should read about creationist arguments:
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/cambevol.htm

How about an ape-like homid into a man?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761566394

Creationists have nothing like that kind of evidence not because they're not trying -- that had more than a thousand years head start on looking for evidence -- but because their evidence isn't there.

Date: 2006/05/04 03:27:13, Link 152.228.2.151

Author: normdoering

Quote (Chris Hyland @ May 04 2006,05:01)
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.

Biological evolution works with millions of years and millions of individual organisms. In the case of bacteria and insects, trillions upon trillions of individuals.

No computer simulation can match those kind of resources.

However, some genetic algorithms are meant to model and ask questions of biological evolution. For example, Avida:

http://www.krl.caltech.edu/avida/home/research.html
http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/projects/
http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2005/articles_2005_Avida.html

Date: 2006/05/04 04:03:35, Link 152.228.2.151

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,07:54)
(1) No one to my knowledge has ever proposed a stepwise solution of HOW the 2A and 2B chimp chromosomes joined. This appears to be a HUGE obstacle.
(2) The join was 'head-to-head'. If my understanding is true (stated below) that chromosomes are read in only one direction, then this would be a SECOND HUGE OBSTACLE.

Good grief! You look at a comparison of two closely related genomes with many chromosomes of exactly the same size that screams "Darwin got it right" when Darwin didn't even know DNA existed and you just miss seeing how strong that evidence is.

Instead you've got some pathetic argument about a fused chromosome.

Here's information on how chromosomes fuse:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2003/12_02_03.html

Here's information on how creationists lie about this:
http://loom.corante.com/archives/2005/08/29/the_chromosome_shuffle.php

Date: 2006/05/04 10:26:21, Link 152.228.2.132

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,14:49)
What about the other statements from Dr. LeJeune? These are strong statements from the discoverer of Downs Syndrome ... no?

The statements from Dr. LeJeune are ironically wrong because Downs syndrome is caused by fused chromosomes and Downs patients can live and reproduce. Downs syndrome may not have any obvious evolutionary edge -- but it's not a killer mutation, (maybe a hopeful monster in minature Gouldian form).

Dr. LeJeune had a lapse of vision -- it happens some times.

Yes, the statement from AIG is definitely incorrect.

It's dated speculation.

I linked information on how creationists lie about this:
http://loom.corante.com/archives/2005/08/29/the_chromosome_shuffle.php

Now let me quote some of what you missed:

Quote

Eldon Gardner summed it up as follows: “Chromosome number is probably more constant, however, than any other single morphological characteristic that is available for species identification” (1968, p. 211). To put it another way, humans always have had 46 chromosomes, whereas chimps always have had 48.

There's a lot that's wrong here, and it can be summed up up with one number: 1968.

Why would someone quote from a 37-year-old genetics textbook in an article about the science of chromosomes? It's not as if scientists have been just sitting around their labs since then with their feet up on the benches.

You have to ask yourself why is so much creationist information so often more than a couple decades old?

It's because they have to quote mine decades worth of literature to find things they can take out of context or find such lapses of vision.

Date: 2006/05/04 15:38:43, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,20:32)
... you guys finally got one over on AIG after many years of trying ...

Thanks for reminding us that no matter what we do, the light of reason will never penetrate your religion darkened brain.

Date: 2006/05/04 15:44:21, Link 152.228.2.127

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,20:26)
Hope you can keep it up for the long haul :-)

Not likely.

If you can't figure out that microevolution in your lifetime + millions of years = macroevolution then people will eventually see that trying to teach your religion darkened brain anything is about is profitable as Brian Greene trying to teach his dog string theory.

Date: 2006/05/05 06:25:26, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,08:59)
I searched TalkOrigins for a refutation of Meyer's "God Hypothesis"

Meyer doesn't warrant special attention in a search term because his arguments are stolen from old and moldy arguments that were refuted before he made them.

Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."

You think the Big Bang theory provides a scientific description of creatio ex nihilo, Creation out of nothing but that's not quite true -- define "nothing."

Spacetime, the fabric of the universe isn't really nothing. Look up the term "Casimir effect."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
http://focus.aps.org/story/v2/st28

There is no such thing as "nothing."

The metaphysical question is really "what is the primordial stuff of the universe?" What had to exist for that big bang to happen.

You propose "an intelligent being" but there is no evidence that an intelligent being could do such a thing (you have to make up your major claim out of whole cloth -- "God could speak things into existance") And besides, an intelligent being that can speak things into existance isn't nothing.

Nothing is explained by proposing an unknown entity with unknown powers. You're explaining the known in terms of the unknown.

What killed those old arguments was the death of dualism. Back in history people used to think that intelligence itself was a primordial thing, souls existing forever and all.

Religions, at least those of Judeo-Christian family, must start with a core metaphysical assumption about mind (of an entity with will, planning, intention, foresight and understanding) being the primordial stuff and cause of the universe. This is implied in Judeo-Christian creation myths when God makes a universe out of nothing, a void: Mind was first — a mind and soul as primordial stuff.

Creation myths are teleological and naturalism undermines teleology by finding non-mind, (rules of material interaction without any mind stuff like choice, will or intention coming into play), as an explanation. But when naturalism begins to explain the only organ of teleological action we know, the brain, in naturalistic terms then teleological explanations are undermined more completely.

The core assumptions of our religions were made in ignorance of such science and now neuroscience has begun to undermine this core teleological and metaphysical assumption that Christianity is rooted in.

Date: 2006/05/05 07:19:20, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,11:37)
Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.

Compare Meyer's argument to this argument:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html

It is from 1992, by Quentin Smith, and it was written before Meyer wrote his argument and yet it refutes Meyer's claims.

How do you explain that?

Date: 2006/05/05 07:37:58, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (PuckSR @ May 05 2006,12:24)
Aging is different that "getting older".

Actually, aging, as for as technical definitions go, only means getting older: adding age.

"Aging" for your view might start when cell death starts over balancing cell making.

I think there is a technical name for cell death when an old cell stops making new cells and just functions until it dies... senscience? ...

Date: 2006/05/05 07:50:11, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,12:42)
Quote
Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems.
Is there an online source you could point me to so that I can see this?

Yes, try here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

The links should lead to refutations of most of Behe's claims.

Panda's did one on the Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/04/evolution_of_ic_1.html

Date: 2006/05/05 10:02:51, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (normdoering @ May 05 2006,11:25)
Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."

If this news turns out to be true, even the shaky foundation Meyer built his argument on is shot down:

'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn9114&print=true

Date: 2006/05/05 15:20:08, Link 152.228.2.156

Author: normdoering

Quote (Faid @ April 28 2006,07:04)
I didn't know there were actually any people who thought the process of evolution was a struggle to be crowned "King of All Life".

That's why the bacteria beat us to the title; "King of all Life," because you didn't even know you were playing -- and even the creationists who thought we were playing got the rules wrong.

Next time -- PAY ATTENTION!

Date: 2006/05/06 06:23:10, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
If I find a lot of these types of wrong information, obviously I will begin to question the reliability of the whole organization, question their motives, etc. This has not yet occurred, but I'm sure you will help me on this quest.

Go ahead and dig up more.

Find some more articles on those sites that you find convincing and we'll dig out the lies and show them to you.

That appears to be the only thing you understand in your current state of ignorance.

Date: 2006/05/06 06:44:54, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
The stack of 50+ books are meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure they quite meaningful at explaining how the immune system works and I'm sure they are quite full of SINCERE ATTEMPTS to explain the origin of the immune system.

There ... is that better?

Nope. It's worse than before and shows you haven't comprehended the first thing about how science actually works.

Check out this article, it gives a summary of the immune system evolution articles Behe dismissed:
http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd....ib.html

Behe is dependent on a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution. A step-by-step, mutation by mutation, analysis is hardly necessary to establish the evolution of the system when you have comparative immunology, some observed point mutations, known mechanisms for immunological diseases and more.

Date: 2006/05/06 07:59:58, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
Or maybe the reason is because no one HAS BEEN ABLE to refute him?

You seem to have missed the link where I showed Quentin Smith refuting Meyer in 1992, before Meyer wrote his article.

Smith credits the old argument to Richard Swinburne, John Leslie and William Lane Craig -- not Meyers.

Here it is again:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html

Date: 2006/05/06 08:12:36, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 06 2006,09:55)
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious. I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations.

Riiighhht, that's why you include Noah's flood in your origins hypothesis.

That's why you go to Answers in Genesis for your arguments.

That's why you call the "Intelligent Designer" God.

Have you ever though about what intelligence is? Have you ever thought about what your intelligence is? Do you know what "design" is?

Maybe evolution is intelligent. How do you define intelligence? How can you say evolution isn't intelligent? What is it lacking?

Did you know there are mathematical relationships between neural net models and evolutionary programming?

Do you even know what a neural net is?

Do you know what you're talking about when you talk about "intelligence" or "design"? If you don't, then you are using the unknown (to you) to explain the known.

Date: 2006/05/06 09:59:57, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (Glen Davidson @ May 06 2006,14:10)
Quote

Trivial? How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed. Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed. To me, this is in no way trivial.

Dawkins makes the mistake of writing that life appears designed,...

Is that a mistake?

What makes something appear designed or not appear designed?

What is design? What does it mean to design something?

If I use a genetic algorithm to "design" a radar system am I designing a radar system?

I would suggest the problem here is the vagueness of our language. I don't think Dawkins made a mistake.

It's not Dawkins' fault that afdave is a moron who just doesn't get it.

Date: 2006/05/06 12:10:44, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (Faid @ May 04 2006,12:40)
As for Greg Bear.... Whaaaaaaa?

Greg Bear wrote "Darwin's Children" -- one has to wonder if Ghost read that book.

Date: 2006/05/06 16:58:07, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 05 2006,23:18)
... up until this little incident, I have found AIG to be reliable.

That's almost funny.

What you mean is that you know so little of the subjects they discuss that you haven't figured out how unreliable they are yet.

But I had to check them out to see. First article I find on their site today is this:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0506comet.asp

The tale of a comet
by Mark Looy

Astronomers found a comet, called Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, breaking apart. AiG claims this is evidence that our solar system is young because the comet goes around the sun every 5.4 years, “it could not have lasted billions of years. It would have shed so much material at each pass around the sun that it could not last for millions—not to mention billions—of years."

But who said it was grazing the sun in its orbit every 5.4 years for a billion years? Comets don't have stable orbits like the planets. Crazy and highly unwarranted assumption they make there.

They even noted that Hubble has shown other comets (such as Shoemaker-Levy 9) breaking up. Of course they don't tell you that Shoemaker-Levy broke up because it got caught in Jupiter's gravity well and then crashed into Jupiter.

They also link an article that attacks "Oort cloud theory."

I think some more astronomically astute people here could tear that article up even more.

Date: 2006/05/07 07:24:20, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (Chris Hyland @ May 07 2006,09:39)
To a scientist who stuides these systems they don't look designed at all.

I think that needs to be explained in more detail. I don't think afdave knows why that is. There are ways to tell an evolved system from a "designed" system and we should clue afdave into them.

One clue is suboptimal design where we can imagine making a more efficient system. Within that category are vestigial features, another clue to evolution over design.

With evolution new traits must be modifications of previously existing traits. This is called "historical constraint" and it shows up in even good "designs."

This article touches on that subject:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html

There are more clues I can list later.

From this we can get predictions that confirm evolutionary causes. For example, "junk DNA" is expected to have lots of vestigial DNA and that is a prediction from evolution that is yet to be fully demonstrated.

But we also have to look at human designed systems and ask if we see vestigial features there. Is DOS on PCs a vestigial program?

Date: 2006/05/07 11:28:25, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,07:54)
The blow for Neodarwinism comes, however, with the discovery that the theoretical ‘join’ is head-to-head. Since the chromosomes are always ‘read’ in the same direction, this means that the same ‘sentence’ would be read backwards, and would make no biochemical sense!

Afdave never linked the AiG article he quoted. I found it here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v2/i1/cytogenetics.asp

The quote is from Dr Carl Wieland the author of the article.

This guy's Biography states:

"Dr. Carl Wieland is the author of several popular creation books and booklets, some of which have been translated into multiple languages. Although his formal qualifications are in medicine and surgery, Carl has not practiced in the medical profession since 1986. He is a past president of the Christian Medical Fellowship of South Australia."

Date: 2006/05/07 16:32:13, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 07 2006,21:14)
Quote
So, he says that "head to head" fusion is a biochemical impossibility. Right.

No. He does not say that. His mistake is this ...
Quote
Since the chromosomes are always ‘read’ in the same direction, this means that the same ‘sentence’ would be read backwards, and would make no biochemical sense!

I think afdave is starting to get it.

The AiG article says because the fusion is head to head it will be read backwards. That's what is wrong. The fusion and the reading are unrelated. The DNA is unzipped and floats free in shorter strands before it's read for protein production. The ends are marked by telemers.

But don't depend on us -- get an edited textbook on the subject. We're bloggers, not teachers or textbook writers. What we're all agreed on here is that the AiG sentence is in error.

Date: 2006/05/08 00:59:18, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Alan Fox @ May 08 2006,02:00)
Quote
The ends are marked by telemers.

Did you mean telomeres?

Telomeres are a region of repeat sequences at the end of a chromosome that act like a biological clock, limiting the number of cell divisions, as a sequence is lost on each division, until there are none left and the cell can no longer divide.

Promoters mark the beginning of a gene and the stop codon signals the end of the coding sequence.

Yea, what he said.
Too much genetic terminology floating around in my head to keep things straight -- especially when lack of sleep starts creeping up on me.

I goofed.

Date: 2006/05/08 01:42:17, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Faid @ May 08 2006,04:52)
Dave, Wieland says there couldn't be a "backwards" way to join the chromosomes.

It's not quite wrong to say Wieland believes the join is impossible. He certainly doesn't believe it happened.

The problem you guys are having is that Wieland doesn't believe in evolution or the fusion in this case. All that similarity between Chimp and Man is lost to Wieland because Wieland doesn't believe the fusion event happened. He says the "theoretical ‘join’ is head-to-head."

Using theoretical and putting ‘join’ in quotes speaks to it not happening. But it does not speak to the impossibility of joins ever happening (he thinks that backward join would be a killer I imagine because it would be read as nonsense).

The real evidence against Wieland is that there is lots of evidence for all sorts of fusions in all sorts of species, mice, flowers, insects etc. and sometimes with little effect. Fusions have been observed to happen in yeast.

Date: 2006/05/08 04:29:07, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,08:55)
Isn't it logical to assume that some races might be 'less evolved' than others if human evolution is true?

Not really.

The most evolved life forms on our planet are probably bacteria and virii. They go through more generations and mutations in shorter time periods.

There is no such thing as "less evolved" or "more evolved" in the context you want to use them. There is only more fit or less fit to the niche you find yourself living in.

Date: 2006/05/08 04:39:10, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,08:55)
Are there any apes that have learned how to write?

Just some notes on primate language use:

http://www.koko.org/
http://www.koko.org/world/signlanguage.html
Koko has a sign language vocabulary of over 1000 words, which she uses in complex statements and questions. Most of these signs are standard American Sign Language (ASL), but some are either invented or slightly modified by Koko to form what we call Gorilla Sign Langue (GSL), or "Gorilla Speak."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-08-09-koko-gorilla_x.htm
More Koko news.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/publica....eys.cfm
some researchers have suggested that primate "talk" may show evidence of "syntax" and/or "semantics" in a loose sense.

Date: 2006/05/08 04:44:57, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

http://www.hhmi.org/news/lahn4.html

Quote
Human Brain Is Still Evolving

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers who have analyzed sequence variations in two genes that regulate brain size in human populations have found evidence that the human brain is still evolving.

They speculate that if the human species continues to survive, the human brain may continue to evolve, driven by the pressures of natural selection. Their data suggest that major variants in these genes arose at roughly the same times as the origin of culture in human populations as well as the advent of agriculture and written language.

Date: 2006/05/08 04:59:29, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

http://www.istc.cnr.it/showabstract.php?bibid=27
Evidence for primates' understanding of causality is presented and discussed.

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi....7.1.301
Cultural primatology is hypothesized on the basis of social learning of group-specific behavior by nonhuman primates...

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/hbook/section2.htm
Our near relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, have male-bonded societies in which females migrate between troops, and individuals leave and rejoin the group. This means an individual potentially has private information it could share or withhold. Vocalizations of monkeys, and probably apes, contain semantic detail about social relations as well as external threats. Chimpanzees give food-calls in the wild which attract others; in captivity they can lead others to hidden food, and convey its quality.

Date: 2006/05/08 05:15:59, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,09:49)
Norm said ...
Quote
The most evolved life forms on our planet are probably bacteria and virii. They go through more generations and mutations in shorter time periods.

There is no such thing as "less evolved" or "more evolved" in the context you want to use them. There is only more fit or less fit to the niche you find yourself living in.

This is an amazing statement to me. Do most of you guys really believe this?

Yes. The fact that you don't indicates that you have a profound misunderstanding of what evolution is.

You seem to think that human intelligence is some sort of goal in evolution. It's not. There is no goal except for an organism's instinct to survive and reproduce itself. Brains won't be of use to all.

It's not the difference in genes that makes a primitive society primitive. It's the evolution of the society which is not genetic, but memetic.

Take Newton and Einstein and transplant them as infants into a caveman society or an Amazon tribe and they would never have accomplished what they did. They might or might not have had an edge in chipping stones to make axe heads but calculus and relativity were built on knowledge that was evolving within society, not genes.

Date: 2006/05/08 06:23:08, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,10:36)
Norm said ...
Quote
Human Brain Is Still Evolving

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers who have analyzed sequence variations in two genes that regulate brain size in human populations have found evidence that the human brain is still evolving.

They speculate that if the human species continues to survive, the human brain may continue to evolve, driven by the pressures of natural selection. Their data suggest that major variants in these genes arose at roughly the same times as the origin of culture in human populations as well as the advent of agriculture and written language.

and he also said this ...
Quote
You seem to think that human intelligence is some sort of goal in evolution. It's not. There is no goal except for an organism's instinct to survive and reproduce itself. Brains won't be of use to all. ... and ... The most evolved life forms on our planet are probably bacteria and virii. They go through more generations and mutations in shorter time periods.
There is no such thing as "less evolved" or "more evolved" in the context you want to use them. There is only more fit or less fit to the niche you find yourself living in.

These seem to be contradictory statements to me. On the one hand you seem to be saying that the brain is evolving (I assume this means humans are getting smarter), then on the other hand you say that bacteria are the most 'evolved'

Let me just explain that MY conception is this:

MORE EVOLVED=More Intelligent and More Abilities. For example, apes can walk, climb, eat, drink, sleep, communicate in a limited way, etc. Humans can of course do all these things and much more including blow all the rest of life on Planet Earth to smithereens. This is what I'M talking about.

If you want me to use a new term so I don't confuse your minds, please suggest one.

No contradiction. Humans live in a very different niche than bacteria. Our social structures demand higher levels of intelligence as more knowledge accumulates. They do say "driven by the pressures of natural selection." And selection is obviously happening in our socities. Lots of men never mate, they don't make it to where they have the economic means to raise a family. We have to figure out a social world that gets more and more complex, demands more and more scientific knowledge to find a place where one can have an income and reproduce.

Selection in bacteria demands different abilities and they are highly evolved for those abilities.

Each organism to its niche and what that niche requires to survive and reproduce.

From the moment those cave paintings began appearing on cave walls (and probably before) our niche was social organization and intelligence. We primates don't have the tiger's speed and claws, the elephant's strength, the turtles protective shell... We have something else and you see it all around you: society. That's the niche we survive in, a kind of super organism.

Science requires a complex social structure -- societies of certain size. We war with other socities...

Date: 2006/05/08 08:09:39, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,11:53)
Things ARE NOT as one would expect if evolution were true.

How can you know what to expect from evolution if you don't understand what evolution is and what it means?

Quote

Why? What is wrong with proposing this as a hypothesis and testing it? This is what am doing on my other thread (well into Point 1 already). If the evidence fails to support it, then fine. I will abandon the proposition.

How do you test for God?

How can you know what to expect from God if you don't understand what God is?

Consider this -- not only do theologians of different religions disagree hugely about the nature of God, even in what are supposed to be people of the same faiths you have wildly different views.

But across this world, biologists understand the essential features of evolution in a way theology can never approach its understanding of God. When scientists argue - things get settled. Not so with religion.

All the different religions look a lot like something you'd see in the evolutionary tree of life -- we even have fossil religions, like those of Egypt and Greece.

But science doesn't branch like that. It's nature is not divergening random mutations, but an accumulation of effective knowledge that actually has a real application to our technological world.

Or more simply -- there is only one science -- ever changing, but there are thousands of religions.

Date: 2006/05/08 09:01:48, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 08 2006,13:36)
Why are we standing up in science classes and teaching kids that Ape to Human Evolution is a FACT?

Nope. It's not Ape to Human, humans are an ape. It's that Apes, Monkeys and humans came from a common primate ancestor.

We're teaching kids that this is science's best guess and its as factual as this kind of science ever gets. And that is the truth. Nothing can be known with any absolute certainty, but that doesn't put all ideas on an equal footing. The evidence is clearly against "GODDIDIT" in at least the direct way that creationists want to have had it happen.

Date: 2006/05/08 13:12:22, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Ghost and Steve have turned this thread into a pi55ing contest.

Date: 2006/05/08 13:48:45, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ May 08 2006,18:31)
Can Ghosty find us a Young Earth Creationist who has contributed anything to the study of chromosomes, genetics, and/or evolution?

You don't think Ghost knows about Gregor Mendel and his pea plants?

Date: 2006/05/08 15:41:55, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ May 08 2006,19:13)
Quote
You don't think Ghost knows about Gregor Mendel and his pea plants?
oops. I had meant to include, as Ghostguy did, living Young Earth Creationist. But now that you mention it, I didn't know Mendel was a YECer. Was that still more typical than not in those days? I mean, sure, the "C" part of YEC was; but I don't think Darwin was particularly unusual in contemplating an earth much, much older than Bishop Ussher's.

Well, the YECs do claim him:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4.htm

Quote

Mendel believed that the laws of genetics he deduced just seven years after Darwin’s Origin of Species was published posed a serious challenge to the theory of “transformism” (that one species can be transformed into another).
...
Gregor Mendel, a Catholic creationist, believed he had demonstrated that species are resistant to change, because characters are inherited without alteration throughout generations.

I've not seen that aspect of Mendel's beliefs challenged yet. I guess he didn't think the results of dog and crop breeding would last.

Just because I guy can do good and careful scientific observation doesn't make him a good theorist. He was in the end a Catholic monk.

Date: 2006/05/08 16:08:31, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Ved @ May 08 2006,20:46)
Individuals of our species get a HUGE leg up on our planet by being immersed in the current incarnation of human culture of whatever location they happen to be born.

If you put a human infant in with a chimp troop, the chimps would probably think the baby was a moron by chimp standards and understanding.

Date: 2006/05/09 11:06:21, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (jeannot @ May 09 2006,13:57)
Do people with a more sophisticated brain have more children?

We try! We try!

The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank:
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-1400061245-0

The "Genius Babies," and How They Grew:
http://www.slate.com/id/100331/

Quote
...in the late 1970s, Graham persuaded several Nobel Prize winners in science—either three or five, depending on who's talking—to give him their sperm. Later he recruited dozens of younger scientists for his bank. Graham advertised for mothers in a Mensa magazine. Women had to be married to infertile men, well-educated, and financially comfortable. Soon he had a waiting list. He mailed out a catalog that advertised men such as "Mr. Fuschia," an Olympic gold medallist—"Tall, dark, handsome, bright, a successful businessman and author"; and "Mr. Grey-White … ruggedly handsome, outgoing, and positive, a university professor, expert marksman who enjoys the classics." (The repository revolutionized the sperm bank industry by—oddly for such an avowedly elitist institution—democratizing it: It took donor choice away from doctors and gave it to mothers. Instead of settling for a doctor's paltry offerings, mothers could be demanding customers, requiring as much [or more] accomplishment from a vial of sperm as from her flesh-and-blood husband.)

Date: 2006/05/09 12:26:41, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 09 2006,17:09)
how come we don't see any half guinea pigs half apes walking around?

It's called a koala bear.

And, according to some ancient Greeks, an ostrich is what happens when a male gnat accidently flies up into the genitals of a giraffe.

Date: 2006/05/11 05:07:29, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,09:21)
With the plagiarism case, we are talking about printed words in a well-known language. In the GLO gene case, we are talking about genetic "words" in a poorly-understood language. I hope I don't have to cite the recent literature to prove to you how poorly we understand the genetic language.

That's a half truth. It's true that we don't know enough yet to write sophisticated creatures using the DNA language. In fact we're still struggling with finding the simplest cell.

Looking for the "minimal cell":
http://microbialcellproject.org/complete.shtml
http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr2000/Hutchison.htm
http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050325-1.htm
http://www.physorg.com/news8460.html

However, it somehow seems to have escaped your notice that large parts of this DNA language are well understood and that there was enough detail in the Dr. Max article to make good comparisons. Your question is even addressed in his article:

Quote

Imagine a defendant at a murder trial defending himself--against overwhelming incriminating evidence--with the parallel argument: that since some convicted criminals have later been exonerated, he (the current defendant) should therefore be acquitted now, because someday in the future, evidence might be found to clear him! This defense would be as ridiculous as Dr. Gish's argument is.

Date: 2006/05/11 06:19:01, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,10:54)
My argument recognizes that we don't have evidence RIGHT NOW to convict the guy. To make the analogy correct, imagine that the judge and jury only spoke French and there was no interpreter. Now they could not convict him on evidence which was written in English because they could not even determine what an error is.

This is situation we have in genetics today.

Your analogy doesn't work. Your example is too unknown and there are only two versions. We have hundreds of versions and we know a lot about Vitamin C and the genes involved.

It's also a clear prediction of evolution -- we should find vestigial DNA. Humans don't have the capability to synthesize Vitamin C, we can get scurvy. Our predicted ancestors had this function (as do all animals except primates and guinea pigs). Therefore, we predicted this, not assume it, as you claim. humans, primates, and guinea pigs should carry evidence of this lost function as a molecular vestigial character. We looked for it and found it.

We found a lot of details to support that conclusion.

What does your theory look for?

What has your theory found?

What does your theory predict about the details we will find in DNA.

You have nothing.

Date: 2006/05/11 06:53:28, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,11:35)
Do you think that "The dog is barking" and "The dog is barfing" means that the second sentence is somehow "broken"??

What if "The dog is barking" and "The dog is barfing" were two sentences from two different novels that were 95+% similar?

You seem to be forgetting the Vitamin C stuff happens in that kind of context.

And it's not a rat and an ape -- it's the guinea pig and primates and there are a lot of primates and a lot of variation and variation in the Vitamin C DNA.

Date: 2006/05/11 07:36:57, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 11 2006,10:59)
Then, you notice a paragraph of about 400 characters that's identical in both samples. It's not in the same place in both texts, but it is absolutely identical down to the individual character. You even note that at the end of the fifth sentence, there's an extra period. You have no idea what any of the text means, but is there any doubt, at this point, that one sample was in fact at least partially copied from the other? Is there any possible doubt that both articles share a common provenance?

Okay, lets take a human (or God?) example:

From Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason":
Quote

... look at the first three verses in Ezra, and the last two in 2 Chronicles; for by what kind of cutting and shuffling has it been that the first three verses in Ezra should be the last two verses in 2 Chronicles, or that the last two in 2 Chronicles should be the first three in Ezra? Either the authors did not know their own works or the compilers did not know the authors.

Last Two Verses of 2 Chronicles.

Ver. 22. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord, spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.

earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. ***

First Three Verses of Ezra.

Ver. 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah, might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying.

2. Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel (he is the God) which is in Jerusalem.

*** The last verse in Chronicles is broken abruptly, and ends in the middle of the phrase with the word 'up' without signifying to what place. This abrupt break, and the appearance of the same verses in different books, show as I have already said, the disorder and ignorance in which the Bible has been put together, and that the compilers of it had no authority for what they were doing, nor we any authority for believing what they have done. [NOTE I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel xiii. 1, where it is said, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men," etc. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say any thing of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one.

If god edits the Bible poorly, why should we expect him to edit DNA any better?

Date: 2006/05/11 07:46:41, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,12:40)
... notice they are 95% (or so) similar? Do they share a common ancestor? No.

Wrong again, pine breath! You are the common ancestor of both.

Date: 2006/05/11 08:10:40, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,13:08)
I am the common DESIGNER of both :-)

Ever heard of "self-plagerism"?

Date: 2006/05/11 09:41:01, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (thurdl01 @ May 11 2006,13:15)
The ID movement has been telling us to stay tuned for 20+ years.

An interesting new google feature lets you track trends:
http://www.google.com/trends

I tried "Intelligent Design":
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Intelligent+Design

It peaks when there is a trial, but has otherwise remained flat and low.

"Creationism" scores better over time but doesn't peak as high:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Creationism

Date: 2006/05/11 10:39:14, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ May 11 2006,14:55)
Some people see the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich ...

How does anyone know what the virgin Mary looked like?

I thought that was Betty Davis or Marlaina Detrich on the sandwich.

Date: 2006/05/11 14:32:34, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 11 2006,18:49)
THIS IS NOT DESIGNED
(but it looks designed)

Yes, Dave, it is counter intuitive (given religious intuitions at least). That's why it took so long for someone to see the theory of evolution.

Heliocentrism, earth going 'round the sun, is counter intuitive too -- but some clever guys figured that out hundreds of years before they figured out evolution.

Galileo and Newton never saw a spacecraft in orbit and Darwin never saw a genetic algorithm working on a computer -- they saw the consequence in their minds though.

It seems, however, you're just not equipped with the right kind of mind for that kind of vision.

Date: 2006/05/12 12:34:57, Link 152.228.2.109

Author: normdoering

Quote (Joe the Ordinary Guy @ May 12 2006,15:13)
Dave, I sense a genuine fear on your part that “IF no Creator God, THEN anarchy and chaos”. But why can’t you see that it is incomplete to cast the choice as “either-or”.

Poor afdave, you guys have really piled on him.

There's a point here, Dave. Just because evolutionary theories contradict a literal, fundy stile reading of your Bible doesn't mean there is no God (other things might there is no God -- and I think they do -- but not evolution). The universe could still have been brought into existence by something like God and then designed so that it would bring forth life.

There is a huge variety of ways people reconcile religion and science. You just haven't thought this through.

Date: 2006/05/12 15:19:06, Link 152.228.2.147

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 12 2006,18:40)
Please tell me that you guys ARE aware of all the new information coming in about "junk DNA" that apparently isn't junk after all (the gene we are discussing IS one of those genes, right?)?

I'm aware of lots of new information coming out concerning "Junk DNA." None of it supports creationism.

What are you talking about?

This? :
Quote
Andras Pellionisz claims that so-called junk DNA is actually the "real" blueprints, stored in fractal patterns, that tells genes how to build living tissue. If correct, he stands to make billions of dollars from his patent application, which covers all attempts to count, measure and compare the fractal properties of introns (the more respectable term for junk DNA)

I think that idea sounds a little screwy, but it does seem to me that some junk DNA won't be the vesigial stuff we are predicting. Supposedly 90 percent of our genetic material is this junk DNA, but our bodies don't support 90 percent junk organs -- or vestigial organs -- why would our DNA?

Are you aware of how Junk DNA was discovered and how it got called junk?

http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/2006/03/junk_dna_is_junk.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6291140

Quote
Using molecular engineering, they snipped out DNA sequences in mice embryonic stem cells and generated a strain of mice with the abridged genome.

They analyzed features such as growth, longevity and molecular and biochemical features, comparing the normal mice and those with the abridged genome, but found no difference.

You can't say Junk DNA is critical for that mouse when it is removed and the mouse still becomes a mouse.

Date: 2006/05/13 13:23:00, Link 152.228.2.122

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 13 2006,17:02)
Dave are you ever, ever going to provide some actual evidence to support your "hypothesis"?

He's still trying to fix the facts around policy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h....54.html

Date: 2006/05/14 04:13:44, Link 152.228.2.122

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 14 2006,08:40)
Talk Origins supported my position on this one.

Not really.

But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:

1) Desire, wants, will
2) Foresight
3) Memory
4) Awareness of itself
5) Creativity and originality
6) Sensory organs
7) Perceptions
8) Communications

Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.

But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.

Does your God have all those qualities?

What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?

What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God?

Date: 2006/05/14 09:07:34, Link 152.228.2.122

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 14 2006,07:08)
My view is that Dr. Max made an unwarranted assertion by saying that "GLO mistakes" were copied from the common ancestor of apes and humans. I think the GLO situation we have in humans and apes today could just as easily support Common Design Theory.

We're back to your problems with logic, Dave.

In your mind what does "warrant" any evidence used in any argument? How does "evidence" "support" any argument?

Step back from the evolution/ID argument and look at some other scientific theories. We can translate your complaints about evolution into complaints about any major scientific theory. You can name any scientific theory you like and believe in, Dave, and I'll use your style of argument to frustrate you.

Take "plate tectonics," (google it) a theory that says the Earth is covered in plates of crust floating on molten rock and growing out where the molten rock rises from the Earth's interior. One one side the plate grows cold and sinks down into the interior, where it's remelted. Continents ride on top of these plates. Sometimes they crash into each other, forming mountains.

If you're a young earth creationist than you don't believe this theory either since it requires an old Earth. But you can choose your own, Dave. Then I'll throw your illogical and irrational style of argument back at you.

Date: 2006/05/14 12:36:09, Link 152.228.2.122

Author: normdoering

Quote (PuckSR @ May 14 2006,17:02)
Are you trying to completely debunk the teleological argument?
or
Are you trying to argue that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes?

Mostly it's that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes. However, I think the fact that neuroscience has found many natural explainations for the only organ of teleology we know - the brain - undermines teleology's use for metaphysical views.

Date: 2006/05/14 12:53:23, Link 152.228.2.122

Author: normdoering

Quote (Faid @ May 14 2006,15:26)
... he's busy posting over at his newfound haven at UD right now.

And he has a website:
http://airdave.blogspot.com

He gets Warren Buffet quoting Jesus:
http://airdave.blogspot.com/2005....te.html

But he doesn't seem to know that Warren Buffet is an atheist, like Bill Gates and George Soros.

Date: 2006/05/15 04:25:48, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 15 2006,08:01)

Quote
But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:

1) Desire, wants, will
2) Foresight
3) Memory
4) Awareness of itself
5) Creativity and originality
6) Sensory organs
7) Perceptions
8) Communications

Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.

But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.

Does your God have all those qualities?

What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?

What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God?

Sure I do. You all could probably guess that I at least imagine that I communicate with God -- it's a well known claim by Christians and others -- of course I'm talking about prayer. But I have no proof to offer you of the sort you would be looking for to prove that He hears me. All I can do is offer evidence that "ET" is out there somewhere because in biological machines, we have exactly the kinds of things SETI is looking for (and apparently T.O. acknowledges this).

Dave, you're missing it. You quoted my questions, but only answered the last one; do you think that you talk to God? (You pray. But does God answer?)

I first listed 8 qualities associated with intelligence and pointed out how evolution doesn't need all of them, then I asked which of those qualities you assumed your God had. Just how mentally anthropomorphic is your vision of God?

What qualities are necessary to call something "intelligent"?

For example, how intelligent is a computer and computer program system like "Deep Blue"? That's the chess playing computer -- it has a kind of foresight, it plays chess and looks ahead, it has memory, but does it have "desire," "awareness of self," "Perceptions"?

See how different systems have different mixtures of those qualities?

Instead of exploring my questions you went off into your preaching and acting completely unaware of your audience. I bet you even frustrate other Christians with babbling preachiness, don't you?

Date: 2006/05/15 08:33:07, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (Chris Hyland @ May 15 2006,12:43)

Quote
I would expect it to be around the same as the general genetic similarity -- 95-97%. This would be consistent with Design Theory.
Please explain how design theory predicts this and common descent does not. Why does evolution predict that the sequences would be 100% identical?

Yes, Dave, do explain the logic behind those claims. It's like you have never in your life comprehended the first basic principles of Darwin's theory.

Divergence between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA sequences is 5%, counting indels:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/21/13633

Date: 2006/05/15 08:54:22, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 15 2006,12:00)
All I can tellyou for sure is that the Intelligent Agents that I know about do have all those items in (1) through (8), and of course the Bible claims these same attributes for God. It is my opinion that these claims are true ...

My understanding of an intelligent agent is something similar to animal and human intelligence. I do not have rigorous criteria yet.

You are using the term "Intelligent Agent" in the Dembski sense and not the Minsky sense, (as detailed in Marvin Minsky's book, "The Society of Mind").

http://www.amazon.com/gp....=283155

A review:
http://www.emcp.com/intro_pc/reading12.htm

Dembski assumes against the evidence of neuroscience and computational explorations of A.I. that intelligence is something supernatural. Minsky tried to build naturalistic intelligent machines and programs.

So, when you say that the Intelligent Agents that you know about do have all those items -- is that because you don't know about robots like Cog? Or chess playing computers like Deep Blue? -- or is it because you don't consider those things composed of intelligent agents?

And where do roaches, ants and other insects fall in your estimation of intelligence? Ants and termites do build things like people do -- homes and cities of a sort -- does that similarity imply that ants and termites are intelligent in your view?

Date: 2006/05/15 12:15:02, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (jeannot @ May 15 2006,16:34)
Well, maybe there isn't any identical gene between humans and chimps.

That's possible, if there were, for example, 99% similarity in DNA sequences between two species and a gene were, for example, 1,000 base pairs long, then you'll average 10 mismatches per gene -- possibly making no difference in the amino acid resulting from it.

You expect natural selection to preserve the important patterns that a creature cannot survive and reproduce without and vestigial genes to be more mutated looking. But -- I don't think you can expect to find any strings over a thousand base pairs long anywhere to go unscathed as long as critical function is preserved..

Date: 2006/05/15 13:13:55, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (PuckSR @ May 15 2006,17:30)
No...I meant to say mutually exclusive.....
The concepts of validity and factual are mutually exclusive concepts.
A thing may be both valid and factual....

but validity is simply being logically valid
while factual is a comment on the actual truth of an idea.

They are independent criteria of a statement...but mutally exclusive concepts

The term "independent criteria" is good, but you're misusing the term "mutually exclusive." If the Venn diagram can have overlapping areas, then they can't be mutually exclusive.

Date: 2006/05/15 16:37:49, Link 152.228.2.126

Author: normdoering

Quote (UnMark @ May 15 2006,21:11)
Can God create a better God?

That's what I am.

Date: 2006/05/16 05:17:57, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,09:27)
1-Complete Absence of Hominid Civilizations Today

That doesn't mean what you think, dave, unless you don't consider yourself a hominid who is now living in a civilization.

What I think you meant is that there is no signs of another hominid with a somewhat less developed civilization. No sign of something such as monkey-like creatures with tree-branch clubs living in grass huts.

If so, then you're wrong. You probably never read anything but creationist accounts of a fossil called Lucy, but she was believed to be pre-human, walking like us, and a tool user. It's the tool use that is moving towards civilization -- that's when our brains started moving toward large civilizations as a survival strategy.

When our kind does arrive on the scene, what first shows up as new is things like cave painting and better tools. The change is that these tools and tool making start improving very rapidly, driven by a new kind of evolution.

Cavemen painting on cave walls, gathering in tribes, making tools -- the big advantage they had over other primates was those stone axes and spears, and that's when our kind of homid started taking over.

Memetic, Lamarckian evolution then takes over to shape our culture and Lamarckian evolution is much faster so our genomes are not changing as fast as our civilization -- but we are adapting to civilization too.

It's rather odd that Darwinian evolution didn't produce at least a few Lamarckian rules at the genomic level since its a faster evolver/optimization method (but such rules could limit the creativity of pure chance). Maybe it does happen in bacteria? If it does, it's pretty limited.

But I digress. Thing is -- You've been told a lie.

When I have time (if others don't) I'll dig up some links to prove it.

Date: 2006/05/16 05:55:21, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,09:27)
it is perfectly logical to assume that the Creator designed apes and humans separately, then mutations later caused the GULO gene to break independently in both. What is so unbelievable about this?

The fossil record for one.

The fact that your Bible doesn't even exist till a couple million years after creatures like Ardipithecus ramidus walked the earth. Ardipithecus ramidus is the oldest known hominid, dated at 4.4 million years ago. We do not know a lot about them, but we know they had ape-like fingers and toes, chimp-like teeth, including large canines, premolars and molars and thin tooth enamel and -- they were bipedal like us.

Then there is Australopithecus anamensis from 4.2 - 3.9 million years ago. Paranthropus aethiopicus from 2.8 - 2.2 million years ago. The cranial capacity growing. Paranthropus robustus 2.2-1.5 million years ago. Paranthropus boisei 2.2-1.0 million years ago.
Then Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis 2.3-1.6 million years ago. The first tool users. They used tools that were chips of rock called Oldowan tools. The forehead begins to rise straight up, no brow ridge but still long ape arms. Then Homo erectus, Homo ergaster 1.8-27,000 years ago and 1.8-1.5 million years ago. They were found with a different type of tool called Achuelian tools, more advanced than the Oldowan tools. Both sides of the rock were worked on to make the tool sharp and it gave the tool a tear drop shape. These tools were used for many tasks such as chopping, scraping, and cutting. They may have used fire.

Then Archaic Homo sapiens around 800,000 years ago. The brain size is larger than H. erectus, but smaller than most "modern" humans. There is Homo heidelbergensis 500,000-100,000 years ago. With a new type of Achuelian tool. The tools were made with what is called the Levallois technique. The hominid worked on the rock from the middle out on both sides. Then Homo neanderthalensis 130,000 to 25,000 years ago. Maybe 225,000 years ago. H. neanderthalensis was found with a more advanced set of Achuelian tools called Mousterian tools. These tools are detailed with animal bones and horns. Mousterian tools were the first tools to be hafted, that is to have handles. There were 63 different types of these tools. They buried each other with tools, animal bones, horns and flowers, cared for the disabled, wore clothes, had shelters, culture and art.

Finally, Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens show up 200,000 years ago, at least a hundred thousand years before your Bible could have been written. There is now rapid increase in artifact change over time.

Site used and summarized:
http://www.humboldt.edu/~mrc1/

Date: 2006/05/16 06:09:42, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,11:03)
Are you going to tell me that Guinea pigs and humans are related? I hope not.

I'll tell you something even worse.

Not only are we distantly related to Guinea pigs, we're distantly related to bananas and pigs and fish and bacteria.

Sorry to dash your hopes.

Date: 2006/05/16 06:31:19, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 16 2006,11:23)
... does Creationism even have an estimate of the number of "kinds"?

Well, they would have to fit on an Ark if the creationist believes in Noah's flood.

Date: 2006/05/16 06:43:42, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,09:27)
... it is a creationist prediction that organisms will accumulate more and more harmful mutations with each generation.

What about gaining beneficial mutations? Bacteria become resistant to anti-biotics. It may not be good for us, but it's good for the bacteria.

That's the tip of an iceberg we could explore.

Date: 2006/05/16 07:05:33, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,09:27)
The probabilities against evolution of gross morphological changes are staggering.

So is the amount of time and replicated resources involved. We can mathematically demonstrate that evolution had more than enough time and resources avialable to achieve life as we know it.

While the odds against you winning the lottery are staggering, someone will eventually win the lottery, and every lottery is eventually one -- thousands of them.

Date: 2006/05/16 07:20:44, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,09:27)
The fruit flies get damaged or killed when we "speed up evolution."

Everything gets damaged and everything dies in the end.

As for fruit flies, I'll bet there sometimes are beneficial mutations in some experiment somewhere. They've certainly happened in other life forms and been observed.

This TO article lists some favorable mutations we know about:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html

1. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria
(situation with insects and pesticides is similar. Insects quickly evolve in ways to become immune to the pesticides.)

2. Bacteria that eat nylon oligomers

3. Sickle cell resistance to malaria

4. Lactose tolerance

5. Resistance to atherosclerosis
(This mutation is particularly interesting because the person who had the original mutation has been identified.)

6. Immunity to HIV

You start accumulating those kind of mutations and you get evolution.

Date: 2006/05/16 09:06:27, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 16 2006,12:56)

Quote
...this is NOT science, and we both know it, so nevermind.

It should be science. Theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences, and it should be reinstated as such.

You're dangerously misinformed and a perfect example of everything that is poisonous about Christianism, fundamentalism and the intelligent design movement.

You don't know logic.
You don't know what a scientific explanation is.

And when things are explained to you they don't penetrate your mental barriers.

And yet, you would have the arrogance to replace this mightly success that modern science is with your vague and backward notions of theology.

I hope one day you'll become a witness in another Dover type trial.

Date: 2006/05/16 13:11:02, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 16 2006,18:05)
I've always wanted to meet a god (or time traveler or space alien).

As a time travelling extraterrestrial from Mexico who plans to recreate your universe, let me just say: Hi!

Are you happy now?

Date: 2006/05/16 13:18:05, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 16 2006,18:15)
If two free plane tickets and reservations for a 2 week dive trip to the northern great barrier reef appear in my mail within the next week, I'll consider your claims truthy.

How about a monkey flying out your butt -- wouldn't that be more miraculous?

Okay, sit tight -- here it comes!

Date: 2006/05/16 14:32:57, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ May 16 2006,19:28)
... depriving me of my rightful renown as founder of the Monkey-Buttology Research Institute. I protest this injustice.

Here, have some real photographic evidence of a flying butt monkey:

Date: 2006/05/16 14:52:08, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (incorygible @ May 16 2006,17:27)
Look at them carefully. Do you get what we're saying yet?

Rat: |I|II|III|IV|V|VI|VII|VIII|IX|X|XI|XII|

Human: |VIII|IX|X| |XII|

Guinea Pig: |II|III|IV| |VI|VII|VIII|IX|X|XI|XII|

If he ever does...

Date: 2006/05/17 05:41:27, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ May 17 2006,09:54)
How does the "common design" explain anything at all about what to expect in the DNA sequences we've discussed here?

William Dembski actually did suggest a line of research:
http://acs.ucsd.edu/~idea/idprospects.htm

Scroll down to “Steganography” and see that Dembski seeme to think some junk DNA might be a kind of “operating manual,” of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism.

That's the kind of thing I'd expect if I believed we were designed. Afdave doesn't actually have any expectations about DNA because he's too ignorant of the genomic science.

You and I can laugh at Dembski's expectations, but if he really could demonstrate such an “operating manual” existing in junk DNA with real scientific evidence then ID would become a real theory.

Science itself is evolutionary and a thousand wrong ideas are tested before we hit on ideas that work. So, if there were an ID research program I wouldn't object. What I object to is the fact that they're faking having any research program and instead spending millions on PR and lawyers and think tanks that invent ways to lie and distort.

Dembski is forced to accept evolutionary computation:

Quote
Increasingly it is becoming evident that organisms employ evolutionary computation to solve many of the tasks of living. But does this show that organisms originate through some form of evolutionary computation (as through a Darwinian evolutionary process)? It seems that the immune system, for instance, is a general purpose genetic algorithm that targets an interloper, sets up a gradient that tracks the interloper, and then runs a genetic algorithm specifically adapted to that gradient whose output is a molecular assemblage that vanquishes the interloper. All of this sounds very high-tech and programmed. Are GPGAs (General Purpose Genetic Algorithms) like this actually designed or themselves the result of evolutionary computation. Evolutionary computation occurs in the behavioral repertoire of organisms but is also used to account for the origination of certain features of organisms. It would be helpful to explore the relationship between these two types of evolutionary computation as well as any design intrinsic to them. My work in chapter 4 of No Free Lunch lays out some of the theoretical groundwork here. Besides theoretical work in this area, we need a large contingent of ID computer programmers who can write and run computational simulations that investigate the scope and limits of evolutionary computation. One such simulation is the MESA program (Monotonic Evolutionary Simulation Algorithm) due to Micah Sparacio, John Bracht, and me. It is available on the ISCID website (http://www.iscid.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=3Dget_top= ic;f=3D6;t=3D000054).

So, he would seem to accept the Vitamin C story as we present it, but then say it can't be the whole story.

Date: 2006/05/17 06:21:18, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 17 2006,10:10)
Reading assignment for tonight: Mere Chrisitanity, Part 1 - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, by C. S. Lewis.

Hmmm C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity might explain why Dave laid such an egg here:

Quote
. . . If they do not understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery . . . is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. . . . People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meat that we were to lay eggs.

Could it be, Dave, that you are taking Genesis and Noah too literally and laying an egg?

Date: 2006/05/17 06:58:58, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 17 2006,08:51)
Here are 5 things it does not predict. (but evolution does predict and has been proven wrong)

1) "Upward evolution" ... it predicts "downward"
2) "Seamless fossil record" ... it predicts ubiquitous gaps
3) "Hominid civilizations" (or half-human to make Norm happy on terminology) ... it predicts fully human civilizations and fully ape "civilizations."
4) "Millions of years coal production" ... it predicts rapid coal formation
5) "An infinite universe" ... it predicts a finite universe that had a beginning

1) There is no "upward evolution" or "downward." There are more directions to travel than you are aware of. What there is -- is a branching tree-like structure with branches growing through an abstract and hyper-multi-dimensional realm called "search space" that finds the best survivors and reproducers in every niche it encounters.

2) To talk about a "seamless fossil record" versus ubiquitous gaps is a demonstration of your ignorance of what the fossil record is. Fossils happen rarely and not all fossils have been found. What you don't believe in here is called a "transitional fossil."

This link explains:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html

3) You predict fully human civilizations and fully ape "civilizations." On that the actual evidence proves you wrong. Fully human here includes those humans who lived in caves and whose only technologies to start with were stone chipping, carving, fire and paint pigments versus some more ape-like species that didn't make tools as well and had no art. We have a deeper history than your Bible tells us. This is something you've chosen to remain ignorant of.

4) "Millions of years coal production" versus rapid coal formation? Well, Dave, there's a lot of chemistry and geology behind the million years idea. Can you support rapid coal with any evidence from chemistry and geology?

5) Evolution does not need or predict "an infinite universe." It merely needs a few billion years -- maybe even less, like a hundred million.

Date: 2006/05/17 11:52:00, Link 152.228.2.157

Author: normdoering

Quote (BWE @ May 17 2006,15:35)
Does it hurt to be so stupid?

That's not fair to Dave. Remember, almost everyone before Darwin (and most people in America still) believed in some kind of special creation. Dave grew up the soon of a missionary -- the son of a believer who had practiced the art of convincing others. He's no doubt led a very sheltered life in which a lot of science was hidden from him.

He may be ignorant and brainwashed, but he's not necessarily stupid.

Date: 2006/05/17 14:32:23, Link 152.228.2.146

Author: normdoering

Quote (incorygible @ May 17 2006,19:29)
You're right. Those flying monkeys definitely make ass-sore-a-bit.

ass-sore-a-bit?

Ugg. That was bad -- why would you -- no! I won't ask-it.

Date: 2006/05/18 03:05:16, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 17 2006,22:21)
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.

I said it before, Dave has led a life sheltered from any real science and history. He's been lied too since he was a child.

He's not the only one; Colonel James Irwin, the late moon-walking Apollo astronaut, looked for Noah's Ark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Irwin

It's so surprising to us because one has to be so ignorant of history and science to believe such a thing, and yet here is an Apollo astronaut looking for Noah's Ark.

But it turns out our military is a hotbed of fundamentalism. These are the guys fighting Muslims in Iraq.

Date: 2006/05/18 05:42:27, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 18 2006,09:16)

Quote
Science itself is evolutionary and a thousand wrong ideas are tested before we hit on ideas that work. ....

Science is not evolutionary because it is directed by intelligence.

There's a key error in the way you've conceptualized intelligence. You seem to think evolution and intelligence are mutually exclusive. They're not.

We use both evolutionary trial and error and "thinking" in science. What science is engaged in is a kind of trial and error testing of theories (it's called the experimental method) and that's how evolution works, by trial and error.

But it goes even deeper than that. Genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming are used in Artificial Intelligence research. If you want to know what the #### you're talking about you better read these sites carefully:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci....rd.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_ar....biotech

http://www.discover.com/issues/aug-03/departments/feattech/

http://library.thinkquest.org/18242/ga.shtml

In fact, neural net theories and evolutionary algorithms share a lot of mathematics. Neural nets are selectionist algorithms too, working on the principal of reward and punishment and that is similar to natural selection.

Date: 2006/05/18 06:15:13, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 18 2006,09:16)
Let's use your term. Evolution predicted many transitional fossils and now that the evidence is coming in, there have been only a handful of equivocal ones.

I don't think you grasp the incredible numbers of fossils we do have and the story they tell. People here could probably dig up several transitional fossils for any existing species you could name. Some are more problematic than others, small creatures like bats don't fossilize well because of small bones and not hanging around near water where sedimentary rock forms.

However, some species fossilized better - and one of the best examples of a good fossil record can be found in trilobite evolution.

http://www.trilobites.info/

They're the most diverse group of extinct animals preserved in the fossil record. There are over 15,000 species of them and probably hundreds of thousands of available fossils. You can see the way they gradually changed form.

I suspect you've been lied to quite a lot about what's in that fossil record.

Date: 2006/05/18 07:17:46, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 18 2006,09:16)
To me it [upward evolution] means addition of wings where there were no wings before, ...

If we look at the fossil evidence of bird evolution we can see how wings got added by evolution.

Fluffy dinosaur 'is an early bird'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....s26.xml

Bird clue to flight of dinosaur
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....o17.xml

Gliding dinosaur 'is missing link' :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news....a23.xml

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020214080242.htm

No creature is one day born with functional wings if their parents didn't have them. Evolution does not plan ahead, it only selects for traits that are benefitial at the moment, so you argue that wings and eyes never could have evolved by natural selection. How good is half a wing? How good is half an eye?

Turns out, those things are more useful that you think.

Ever seen a flying squirrel. It jumps from tree to tree with an almost wing-like flap of skin. It glides. They can't fly, but it's not hard to imagine a gradual evolution where the gliding ability increased slowly until one day one of them could fly. That's indeed what the fossils noted above suggest.

Young birds with only partially formed wings are aided by them when in increasing running speed. Small improvements will, as it mostly does in evolution, mean the difference between life and death.

Half a wing is half as good as a whole wing, and often better than no wings. Same with eyes. You just have to figure out what those halves really are.

It would seem, Dave, that you've never read Richard Dawkins.

Date: 2006/05/18 09:32:07, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Faid @ May 18 2006,14:19)
He got to the part he quoted, ...

I doubt even that. I think he stole the quote from a creationist site and never really read Dawkins.

Date: 2006/05/18 10:12:56, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 18 2006,14:59)
...she is a zionist fundie instead of a christian one.

Where is our Muslim fundie who believes Allah created the djinn out of smokeless fire before he created man out of clay?

Date: 2006/05/18 11:08:22, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ May 18 2006,15:42)
Ahhhh....if only Dawkins could write like this...

Thank goodness he writes like this:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins....s.shtml

Date: 2006/05/18 11:47:05, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 18 2006,16:06)
The optical theory is a red herring the last time we discussed this on the LUCA thread, ...

It certainly muddies up the waters for Davey boy (as well as Paley in a white sheet). Berlinski is making a charge of fraud or incompetence against Nilsson and Pelger. Unless Davey is sharp enough to evaluate that paper he won't know what's true and can assume what he wants.

There is no escaping the fact that you have to understand these things yourself, or else you just might trust someone who wants to lie to you, or someone who just can't face the truth.

That, Davey boy, is what they're spending their PR money on, bashing biologists so they can confuse people like you.

Date: 2006/05/19 00:57:03, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 19 2006,05:26)

Quote
Uh, Dave? If you knew how to google, you'd have found out that Portuguese is not Spanish and French mixed. Quote
Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. The language began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with relatively minor influences from other languages.
from a source that even you can probably find.

Idiot.

Oh really? How much money do you want to risk that I'm wrong? Here's the specific statement that I am defending:

1) AF Dave says that Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control under a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy. From this point on, the languages diverged into the modern situation. The primary influence on the linguistic divergence was the French language.

2) Rilke and Toejam say I am wrong

How much are you willing to bet?

I don't think either side is completely wrong -- but I'm not willing to bet.

Spanish and Portuguese are certainly very close relatives (relative to any other languages) but you probably can't really set a year for the split, as Dave does by saying it happened in 1143 AD.

When it is said that Portuguese developed from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists and diverged from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire ... well, check to see if that doesn't also describe Spanish -- if not also most other European languages.

You think defining when species finally split apart is hard when you've got ring species and jackasses? I'm sure defining language species is even harder.

Date: 2006/05/19 05:14:04, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ May 19 2006,08:54)
you claim that the "hair and blood allow us to suppose that a murder has occured" IS THE EVIDENCE.

It's not. The hair and blood are the evidence.

You have presented nothing but suppositions based on your (apparently total) ignorance of science and logic.

But claiming that your 'suppositions' are themselves evidence is simply wrong.
frankly, you don't have a clue.

Good start -- but you haven't finished the argument.

David writing about it "looking like" is of course the logic of delusion. But why is the physical stuff the evidence and not the supposition Dave makes? I think that needs to be explained to him before you can get honestly frustrated with his ignorance.

I would say it's because evidence is all about physical causual connections. A bit of hair or blood establishes a causual connection to a person, "how did that bit of hair and blood get there?" The person to whom it belonged was either at the scene where it was found out it got carried there some other way.

You can pick it up from there I assume.

Date: 2006/05/19 06:30:46, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 19 2006,08:28)
MORALITY AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE

...<snip>
Second, once we establish evidence for the truth of the theistic worldview, we are then ready to make some predictions that we can investigate. One of these key predictions is that this 'God' has probably communicated to humans in some way. Makes sense, right?
<snip>...

That's not really a well reasoned prediction. Why assume the God who created this universe cares to talk to you? Why don't you go out and communicate with chimps? You have arrogantly assumed you're worth communicating with.

Quote
If we have shown that there is a Super Intelligent Mind out there somewhere, it would be a safe bet that He knows how to communicate.

That's not necessarily true. And if it were true why would God desire to communicate with you? You have a "Super Intelligent Mind" compared to a mouse. Are you going out to find mice to communicate with? If you tried, you'd only scare the poor creature and then, if you finally got it comfortable with you -- could it really have a conversation with you? At best you've got a pet.

So, here you are -- one man amoung billions, sitting on a planet that is less than a spec of dust in a cathedral, and the whole of humanity just an invisible scum on the surface of that dust spec -- and you think the God that created the cathedral wants to communicate something to you?

You seem pretty #### stupid to be so arrogant.

Quote
Third, we survey the various 'holy books' and realize pretty quickly that there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in its unique characteristics.

Ah, so you're a Hindu. You must obviously think the vedas is that book.

Quote
That book is the Christian Bible.

Is it? Are you sure? Have you ever bothered to read the Koran? Or, are you just repeating the bullshit you've been told?

Now, be honest, what other holy books have you actually read?

Date: 2006/05/19 07:20:07, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 19 2006,08:28)
MORALITY AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE

They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"

Before the discovery of mirror neurons I would have simply said "empathy is what is being evoked by that question." But now that we know about mirror neurons we can explain that empathy in more detail:

http://www.boston.com/news....ess_too

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html

In the end, after the empathy is invoked, the question contains an element of unspoken threat: "If you behave that way towards us, we will behave that way toward you." That I would maintain is the key principle of that bit of moral reasoning. It has two forms: "Do unto others as they do unto you" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Quote
"That's my seat, I was there first"

Possesion is nine tenths of the law. Such a claim for ownership of a seat only makes sense in certain circumstances. You can't go into a diner and demand to sit where you sat last month if someone else is there.

Quote
"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"

But he took my seat!

Quote
He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To he11 with your standard."

Well, monkeys have certain standards of behavior too, they need them because they are social creatures -- thus, part of our morality is a survival instinct we aquired before we were human. The cause -- evolution, my boy, evolution. Social creatures work together to survive and breed and raise young.

Quote
Lewis goes on to call this the Law of Human Nature and he argues that this Law has been in operation throughout all of human history in every culture whether or not that culture had some sort of 'holy book' or not.

As I already said, it goes back to long before we were human. Our ancestors were also social creatures. We can see it in lion packs, ants, termites, elephant herds...

Quote
They know the Law of [Human] Nature; [and] they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Do they break it? Or do we have a deeper nature that merely uses the laws as a way to avoid conflict?

Quote
Lewis dismantles this objection by noting that many times humans behave in a way contrary to our instincts, such as the man who dives into floodwaters to save a drowning man, or leaves a girl alone who he would like to have.

Lewis apparently never studied animals closely. Dogs have died to save their masters, lions die to save their cubs.

Quote
Another objection Lewis deals with is "Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" Lewis counters that many things are mere conventions, such as driving on the right or the lefthand side of the road, but other things are real truths, such as the rules of mathematics. He shows that the Law of Human Nature belongs to the 'mathematics class' of absolute truths because it is universal throughout all ages and applies to all people with only minor variation.

Show me the actual argument and I'll take it apart. Morality is not math in any way except the fuzziest kind.

Enough for now -- I might pick up the rest later.

Date: 2006/05/19 21:16:42, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 19 2006,08:28)
MORALITY AS A CLUE TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE

...

It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power--it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.

When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor.

C.S. Lewis writes the same old Christian sermon: You're a sinner, you know it and don't you feel bad? When you're properly guilty and ashamed you'll magically realize the "Truth"™ of Dave's silly religion.

Any morality that's based on a non-human, unyielding structure, set above and beyond human values is dangerous to human beings.

History gives us tons of evidence of what is wrong with using Dave's moral arguments as a starting point. From the Spanish Inquisition and witch burning to Muslims flying planes into American skyscrapers. People die and suffer because they don't believe in someone else's version of god. It goes on in the Bible's Old Testament itself and cannot be separated from that religion.

Instead of our laws and morals serving us, they serve a fantasy god, and through the fantasy god they actually serve the power of those who claim to speak for that god.

Look at the kind of people that religion empowers in our world. From Osama bin Laden to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Date: 2006/05/20 10:35:56, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,15:20)
Does how Davey argued his position on the portugeuse language support my hypothesis or yours?

Neither. You're both wrong.

Are you guys missing afdave? Do you need someone to get you boiling mad and laughing at the same time?

Try this:
http://floridajewishnews.com/articles/content/view/434/53/

Date: 2006/05/20 11:53:07, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,16:44)
alternative hypotheses are welcome.

afdave is evidence that our computer powered internet is getting signals from an alternate universe. In afdave's universe God exists and languages have different histories. Remember that old Twilight Zone episode where a boy gets calls from his dead grandmother -- at the end of the show they find phone lines going into her grave. If you try to track dave's ISP you'll follow these telephone lines that, in the end, disappear into thin air.

Date: 2006/05/20 12:15:59, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,17:00)
Norm, your hypothesis intrigues me, but I so far only see assumptions and correlative evidence.

Good! Because that's all I put in my post, assumptions and correlative evidence. It means we live in the same universe and when we look up into the sky we see the same three moons.

Date: 2006/05/20 12:55:31, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,17:33)

Quote
Maybe he's cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

Norm? any thoughts on that?

Yea, my alternate hypothesis is that he is Freaky for Frankenberry.

Date: 2006/05/20 13:07:41, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 20 2006,18:02)
You just crashed and burned about your Portuguese thing.

What color is the sky on your planet?

Date: 2006/05/20 14:27:20, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 20 2006,19:23)
I said it's arrogant to call people idiots when you don't know what you are talking about, which is what Rilke did.

Well, the pot just called the kettle black.

Date: 2006/05/20 16:45:18, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 20 2006,21:19)

Quote
What color is the sky on your planet?

Norm, my friend ... it's no use ... don't make it worse for your team than it already is ...

We saw you moving the goal post, Dave. The language argument is down to pointless hair splitting about what you meant. Call it a pointless mess that can never be settled.

Date: 2006/05/20 17:26:24, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,22:19)
I don't share your optimism that a lot of kids can simply shrug off years of exposure to this crap ...

I grew up in a similar environment:
http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst1.txt
http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst2.txt

Date: 2006/05/20 18:20:00, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 20 2006,22:38)
How old were you when you wrote this?

Over a decade younger than I am today.

Quote
What were you doing (in your life) when you wrote this?

Either typing on a computer keyboard or carving something into stone, I forget.

Quote
How close are the ideas presented to what your ideas are now?

I don't think Arrius Piso wrote the New Testament any more. (wasn't all that convinced back then.)

Date: 2006/05/21 03:50:24, Link 152.228.2.105

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 21 2006,05:40)
You guys say there is no such thing as "upward evolution," right?

That would be because there is no real "up" in evolution. There is no priviledged direction in search space. Define what you think "upward" means in terms of evolution?

Are we talking more complex, smarter, bigger, faster, more adaptable?

Quote
... I've heard someone say that the bacteria are winning.

That depends on what race you think is being run.

Quote
So presumably, a million years from now, there might be only bacteria ... no mammals, right?

If we get hit by a comet, then we humans and most mammals and lizards and fish could go extinct, but bacteria would probably survive and evolve again into more complex creatures over another billion years.... well, if the roaches don't beat them to it.

Quote
... why didn't the bacteria win before mammals appeared? Weren't they evolving just as rapidly early in earth history as they are now?

What do you mean by "win" ?

You have a really wrong idea about how this all works. Do you think some single type of life form has to take over and beat every other?

That doesn't happen because all the different life forms live in different niches. It's all part of one ecology where things become dependent on other things. Right now there are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells, you couldn't live without them and they can't live without you.

Date: 2006/05/21 05:58:19, Link 152.228.2.105

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 21 2006,08:35)
...evil, which by definition is "opposition to the will of the Creator."

So, if God's will is that the worshippers of the golden calf must be killed by melting down their calf and making them drink it, that's not evil because it's God's will?

If God's will is that Muslim hijackers crash planes into our skyscrapers, that's not evil because it's God's will?

So, if you get ebola and die a horrible death, that's obviously God's will since no man decided you should get that disease?

The problem with assuming you have to do God's will is figuring out what God's will is.

Quote
What other definition makes sense?

How about a more humanist definition of "good" and "evil"? What is good is what promotes human happiness and co-operation. What is evil is that which disrupts human happiness and co-operation.

Quote
To me, it makes perfect sense that God would feel exactly the same way.

So, God must feel the same way about things that you do? Could it be that you have made God in your own image?

Quote
Everyone agree with this logic?

Absolutely NOT!

That was the logic of delusion, Dave.

Date: 2006/05/21 18:01:08, Link 152.228.2.118

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 21 2006,06:27)
You are correct that there are mountains of evidence that there was just one original "Ape kind" and one original "Dog kind" and one original "Cat kind" and one original "Human kind" and so on.

Just one? How did it breed? Asexually?

Was there also one original "Rabbit kind"? Or is Rabbit kind just part of rodent kind?
http://darrennaish.blogspot.com/2006....ts.html

Is there just one Kangaroo kind or are the Kangaroos part of marsupial kind?

Is there a Penguin Kind?

Is there a dog kind, do wolves belong to it? Do bears belong to it?

Date: 2006/05/22 06:07:38, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 22 2006,10:24)
Come on guys. Face it. Apes and humans have some striking similarities, I agree. Apes and humans both have what appears to be a broken GULO gene. So what? This does not prove Common Descent.

All by itself, a broken GULO gene does not prove much of anything -- but it is one line of evidence.

Dave, lets get back to something you brought up earlier, the term "kinds."

According to you, a monkey or chimp is one "kind" and a human being another kind, right?

So, what exactly is a kind? Are horses, donkeys, mules and jackasses all part of one kind, or are they different kinds?

Are birds all a kind, including or excluding penguins?

Are dogs and wolves part of a single kind? Could bears be part of that kind?

Date: 2006/05/22 06:34:17, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 22 2006,11:20)
As for kinds, we will be getting into them shortly.

When you do, explain this kind:

It is Thylacinus, an extinct marsupial wolf. Is is part of wolf/dog kind?

Date: 2006/05/22 07:29:29, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ May 22 2006,12:08)

Quote
And just so Dave knows, folks: let's take a little poll. Who here believes that Dave has established the truth of his original assertion: that Portuguese is "Spanish and French mixed"?
I suppose that, given the way this is worded, one could take lack of response as a vote against dave. But I'll make it explicit: I, for one, don't believe he has even begun to establish it.

I think all languages are constantly mixed.

We english speakers use a lot of latin in science and academics -- for example: ad absurdum, a phrase that describes afdave's arguments is basically latin. As is and does ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

Aficionado is Spanish and angst is German.

That's just a tiny tip off the iceberg.

Date: 2006/05/22 08:05:16, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 22 2006,12:41)
But I agree, no language is 'pure' or exists in a vacuum.

A little fact that let afdave try to move the goal posts on you guys.

I suggest you drop the whole language argument and next time nail down the goal posts so he can't move them. For example, before we argue about kinds we have to get afdave to clearly define them... to nail down where creationisms predictive goal posts are.

Date: 2006/05/22 09:00:51, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 22 2006,13:35)
I have looked at the totality of the Ape/Human ancestor question on two separate occasions. To review briefly, the problems are (1) Lack of 'Hominid Civilizations' existing today, ...

Dave, I totally annihilated that claim of yours. There were other tool using primates, and our first human ancestors didn't live much differently than they did.

Did you ever read those posts?

Date: 2006/05/22 10:57:11, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 22 2006,14:58)
My contention is that if apes and humans have a common ancestor, there should be lots of 'beetle brow civilizations' all over the earth with half ape-men who grunt a lot and have a simple language and are at some stage between chimps and humans. These 'people' should be living today if evolution were true.

No they shouldn't. They lived in the same niche that modern humans started in. We wiped them out as we expanded even if we just competed for resources and didn't directly war with them.

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/weid.html
"Sinanthropus pekinensis" or "Peking Man", based on the finds from Zhoukoudian, China.
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/weid2.htm
Reconstruction notes

Date: 2006/05/22 13:51:45, Link 152.228.2.120

Author: normdoering

Quote (Ved @ May 22 2006,18:36)

Quote (paley @ ,)
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about anything.

Ehhhhhhhhh, whatta you know?

Of course human reasoning is worthless, I mean just look where it has got us, typing on keyboards to send messages instantly across the globe to put down human reasoning and threaten people with our atomic bombs. Flying planes into skyscrapers and creating global warming and melting our ice caps. He's got a point, something about the human mind is pretty futile and pointless.

Date: 2006/05/23 19:14:37, Link 152.228.2.103

Author: normdoering

Quote (Fractatious @ May 23 2006,23:33)
It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful capabilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws. We don't yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can't work out all the consequences of the laws we do know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.

Counterbalance - Steven Weinberg

All afdave and Dembski need to quote:

Quote
...obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful capabilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life.

Date: 2006/05/24 18:35:50, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (argystokes @ May 24 2006,22:13)
At this point it really is time to force Dave to come up with arguments and evidences of his "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," which should really be just as amusing ...

Ask him to define "kinds."

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if there's a weakest link in creationist conceptions -- it's their notion of the kinds God created that then "microevolved," not "macroevolved."

Date: 2006/05/25 11:37:57, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 25 2006,12:06)
But the really big news is that ALL THESE ARE JUST TINY EVIDENCES WHICH LEND SUPPORT. They in no way close the case, and the fact is that Common Design Theory can explain them just as well ... better, in fact, if you take other Ape/Human issues into consideration.

Remember, to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record.

I predict that as more is known about the genomes, and how similar they may be to human languages, that this too will turn into an insurmountable obstacle for Common Descent Theory.

Date: 2006/05/25 13:13:39, Link 152.228.2.135

Author: normdoering

Quote (BWE @ May 25 2006,16:45)

Quote (Ladlergo @ May 25 2006,15:19)

Quote (afdave @ May 25 2006,13:06)
ONE HALF OF ONE LOUSY PERCENTAGE POINT???

Wow! I was only off by a factor of 2! Do I win a consolation prize?

Dave, what's the genetic similarity between humans and mice? What's the genetic similarity between humans and fruit flies? Both of these answers can be found in five minutes on Google.

humans and grass?

Humans and mice both have hair, five toes on each foot and an affinity for cheese. This month's publication of a draft of the mouse genome shows that genetically, too, we have much in common: 99 percent of our genes are also in mice:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst....49C8B63

http://archives.cnn.com/2002....egenome

Scientists have unravelled virtually the entire genetic code of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The work will be enormously helpful in figuring out the more complex genome of humans:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/647139.stm

http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2003/A/20037290.html

Humans and grass:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel....ar.html

Date: 2006/05/26 12:03:39, Link 152.228.2.113

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ May 26 2006,16:51)
The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly!

Is GOP a satire? or is he serious -- it's so hard to tell these days.

Date: 2006/05/28 05:19:01, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 28 2006,08:42)
World Book is saying that "people have lived for 2 MILLION years" but they didn't figure out how to write until the last 0.275% of that time period?

You are telling me that people knew how to write for LESS THAN 1/3 OF 1% OF THE TIME THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPON THE EARTH?

That is indeed what the evidence says, Dave. Care to see some of that evidence?

Cave and rock paintings on cave walls can be dated to prehistoric times and the people who made them certainly were not living in any garden of Eden. Rock paintings were made since the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago. They didn't write but they were getting closer to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

We can't say exactly how language developed, in the sense of whether it was primarily brain hardware that was evolving or whether cultural advances working on an already capable and plastic brain let us figure out a new invention, but we can show you it was evolving with this kind of evidence.

Monkeys can learn some limited language skills and children who don't learn to speak or write early enough often never manage to aquire the ability (like wolf children).

Date: 2006/05/28 09:47:16, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 28 2006,12:03)
AFD's proof of a 5,000-year-old-earth:

1) Writing only developed a few thousand years ago.

2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without writing!

3) Therefore, people were created just before writing occurred. ~5,000 years ago.

Jesus fucking christ, this is unimaginably stupid.

normdoering's proof of a 40-year-old-earth:

1) Personal computers only developed a few decades ago.

2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without personal computers! How would they roast fundies on evolution forums? How could they buy pizza?

3) Therefore, people were created just before personal computers occurred. About 40 years ago.

I can't believe people could exist without cars, concrete, steel, airplanes, televisions, printing presses, perspective art...

Date: 2006/05/28 11:40:27, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Caledonian @ May 28 2006,16:30)
Nature is smarter than we are, afdave. It is certainly smarter than *you*.

Orgel’s Second Rule: “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”

And it's smarter for good reason, its resources are greater than the three pounds of jello-like stuff that make up the human brain.

Date: 2006/05/28 11:50:50, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ May 28 2006,16:42)
... Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. ... there's no reason to think the situation was any different 20,000 or 100,000 years ago.

I tend to agree, it's the most likely possibility. However, you can't know for sure that those so called "stone age tribes" are really stone age people genetically. You can't know they were just like that since the stone age. They might have been people who broke off from the earliest civilizations and went backwards a bit but still carried our mutant genes.

Date: 2006/05/28 13:12:45, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Origin of life prize
http://www.us.net/life/index.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/8830/rewards.html

These guys have some minor, ($2,000), prizes for observed speciation -- I think it might be winnable with a lawyers help.

Date: 2006/05/29 03:06:15, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 29 2006,02:14)
I think what Norm's trying to say is that people 8-10,000 years ago could have been different, physiologically, from people 100,000 years ago. Can't remember the source, but I seem to remember reading about some evidence that the human pharynx underwent rather rapid evolution sometime in the past 30-70,000 years, and that earlier humans may not have been physiologically capable of speech.

Actually, I don't recall anything about the human pharynx. I was thinking of articles like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005....MvSmPxw
http://www.nytimes.com/2005....ted=all

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/060316/genome.shtml

Date: 2006/05/29 03:50:01, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 29 2006,08:23)
How do you know they were made so long ago? Why couldn't they just as easily been made during historic times (<6000 ya)?? I'm sure you are right that they were not done in the Garden of Eden.

Many dating methods have been used:
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/label_F....ha.html
http://i-mass.com/cave1101.html
http://donsmaps.com/chauvetcave.html

Date: 2006/05/29 04:17:36, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (incorygible @ May 29 2006,09:00)
Further, one might wonder how we in the present age -- fallen, sinful, stupid souls that we are -- would pick one stone tablet over another to find our Maker again.

Perhaps Dave should consider using the Code of Hammurabi instead of the Bible:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

Date: 2006/05/29 05:00:33, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 29 2006,08:23)
Cute, but this does not achieve what you are wanting it to achieve for the simple reason that we do have written history of humans back to 5500 or 6000 ya.

We don't need written history because we have something much better -- ancient artifacts that are older than written history -- stone tools, carvings, cave paintings, etc. etc..

The artifacts are dated using several methods and all the dates come up older than your first writings.

If we consider not just alphabetic systems, but broader symbolic systems we can find older examples, like incised "counting tokens" about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent:

http://www.historian.net/hxwrite.htm

Quote
The advent of a writing system seems to coincide with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether it be parcels of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer that property to another individual or another settlement.

http://www.uni-ulm.de/uni/intgruppen/memosys/desn22.htm

Quote
The oldest known (homo erectus-) man-made notches are on a bear-skull from the lower Acheulian period, dated to about 430,000 years ago (Haarmann 1997: 674). As to the interpretation, it is quite debatable whether these notches "seem to be related to some religious ideas of the Azykh people" (ibid.), ie. if they are records of symbol usage. There are also indications of symbolic capacity of the Neanderthal people 150-200,000 years ago (Haarmann 1997: 675), the available specimen showing "... an example of archaic man's sense of abstraction and symmetry" (ibid.).

The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan....found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm

That's rather far from the Biblical lands.

At any rate, there is a partial record of written languages themselves evolving. Writting doesn't just pop onto the scene any more than human beings do.

Anyone who tells you different is lying to you and it can be proved if you have an open mind. Something you apparently don't have.

Date: 2006/05/29 05:21:00, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (normdoering @ May 29 2006,10:00)
The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan....found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm

That's rather far from the Biblical lands.

I did a little more digging and found an older sample of writing:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66806.htm

Quote
Neolithic graves in central China may hide the world's earliest writing, if the "signs" carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells can be deciphered by academics.

Date: 2006/05/29 06:46:05, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 29 2006,11:12)
My faith does not tell me the Bible is true. How many times do I have to say this? The evidence convinces me that the Bible is true.

Then what do you do with evidence like this:

http://i-mass.com/cave1101.html

Quote
Carbon Dating of Prehistoric Art

Mass Spectrometry has dated prehistoric cave paintings in south central France at about 30,000 years old, a discovery which has the art world rethinking its origins.

The charcoal etchings on a cave wall depict horses, rhinoceros and a deer. The drawings were discovered in 1994 at a narrow entrance to several underground chambers in a rocky escarpment in the Ardeche region in France.

Scientists of the Laboratory for Climate and Environment Studies at the France's CEA-CNRS research centre carried out carbon dating of tiny fragments of the charcoal. They used accelerator mass spectrometry, which separates and counts radioactive carbon isotopes residual in the charcoal and found the drawings to be between 29 700 and 32 400 years old.

This finding makes the drawings significantly older than those of Lascaux caves in the Pyrenees in Southwest France which are dated at around 17 000 years old. The drawings in the Chauvet caves show that early European dwellers were just as skilled at art as the humans who followed 13 000 years later.

Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of prehistoric art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art as a result of these findings.

Yet the oldest known objects considered to be art are far older than the French cave paintings and precede the existence of anatomically modern humans, the Homo sapiens. A tiny stone carving found in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in 1981 is estimated at 233 000 years old. And pigments and paint-grinding equipment found in a cave in 2000 at Twin Rivers, near Lusaka in Zambia, are believed to be between 350 000 and 400 000 years old.

http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/label_F....ha.html

Quote
... all the clues are there, as he explains: "When you examine a painted line under the magnifying glass, you notice that what appears as a continuous, unbroken line is in fact full of tiny gaps caused by erosion." Check. With time, the inner spaces in the sketches should fill up with micro-crystallisations, with concretions covering up the works... All these clues are confirmed.

...carbon 14 dating analyses showed that one buffalo and two rhinoceros were no less than 31,000 years old. Suddenly, the cave paintings at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc found themselves promoted to the rank of "the oldest known to date" by the Ministry of Culture

What flaw can you find in the dating methods, Dave?

You have to ignore mountains of evidence to believe the Bible's origin stories.

The evidence I see says that you, dave, are lying to yourself about how you have reached your beliefs.

Date: 2006/05/29 10:18:49, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ May 29 2006,11:12)
The evidence convinces me that the Bible is true. I have not yet given you all this evidence, but we have begun.

So far, the evidence convinces me that the davetard is delusional.

Could you answer these questions, Dave:

1) According to astronomers there are stars millions and billions of light years away from Earth. Wouldn't the light from those stars have take millions and billions of years to reach us? Or, did God create the light radiating from each star to earth so that an astronomer would conclude they look as if the rays had left their stars millions or billions of years ago?

2) There are creosote bushes that are supposed to be older than you think the Earth is, Dave. There's a 11,700 year old "King Clone" creosote bush in the Mojave Desert:
http://www.uark.edu/misc/ents/species/sp_threads/creosote.htm
http://www.lucernevalley.net/creosote/index.htm

There are also old trees and fossil containing tree rings which give the impression that the trees have been around for hundreds or thousands of years.

3) The climate record for the last 40,000 years was brought to light by ice cores taken in the artic and Greenland. Are they all wrong?
http://corior.blogspot.com/2006....es.html

Date: 2006/05/29 12:45:22, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Henry J @ May 29 2006,16:26)
Maybe the accelerated decay rates back then ...

Accelerated decay rates?

Good grief! Creationists have their own creationist version of physics?

Date: 2006/05/30 06:26:57, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 30 2006,11:18)
Has he persuaded anyone yet?

Yes, he has persuaded me that he is far more brain damaged than I thought was humanly possible.

He has persuaded me that he can persist in his delusions in spite of all the evidence against them.

He has persuaded me that he lives in his own mental fundy world and not in reality.

Date: 2006/05/30 10:24:13, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (Ichthyic @ May 30 2006,14:03)
has he persuaded you he shouldn't be teaching children?

That is a good question. If I were a high school principal on what grounds would I fire him if he taught any class?

Date: 2006/05/30 14:32:59, Link 152.228.2.109

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ May 30 2006,17:07)
Okay, but I want to find out how far away Dave thinks the Andromeda galaxy is. Just, you know, for entertainment purposes.

There is no Andromeda galaxy. It's just an illusion constructed for God's computer game. You see, you're just a programmed synthetic personality in one of these games:

http://www.leftbehindgames.com/
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959

Date: 2006/05/31 18:40:30, Link 152.228.2.110

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ May 31 2006,20:02)
I previously argued that the sun, stars, and galaxies inhabit a crystalline ether, which I dubbed the quintessence. I must derive a wavefunction that satisfies Shroedinger's equation for a periodic function of constant value. This can be accomplished by performing an inverse Fourier transform of our Sinc^2 function, which will also output the magnitudes and frequencies of the curve. Here, k=the wave vector. R is the x, y, z space that defines the (three) spatial dimensions.

One of us doesn't know what you're talking about, Ghost, and I think it's you.

Date: 2006/06/01 09:20:37, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29)
It stands as one of the wonders of the modern world that there is so much evidence of the Global Flood literally screaming at us from the rocks, and yet so many scientists dismiss it as a myth.

Friends, I'm here to tell you today that the Global Flood of Noah was a real event.

What evidence?

Lets look at some non-radioactive dating ideas:

We human beings have been using compasses for hundreds of years, we expect them to point North. The magnetic compass is an old Chinese invention, probaly first made in China during the Qin dynasty hundreds of years before Christ was born. There is evidence the Greeks used compasses too. By the 10th century, the idea had been brought to Europe, probably from China, by Arab traders and from then on their north pointing property is too well known to deny.

However, a million years ago, compasses would have pointed South, before that, North, and so on, because the earth's magnetic field flips its direction from time to time. It does not flip at regular intervals, so dating is only approximate. The magnetic field recorded in the rocks has been "normal" for all our recorded history, pointing the same direction as now. We think for 200,000 years.

The reversals are recorded in the rocks of the mid-Atlantic ridges. The rocks contain iron and when the volcanic flows cool, the iron in them is aligned parallel to the prevailing magnetic field at that time. This means the mid-ocean ridges preserve a record of magnetic field reversals. As the hot rock emerges from the ridge, it is pushed away in both directions by more emerging rock. This pushing out to both sides causes magnetic "stripes", or anomalies, that are symmetrical about the ridges. Because the reversal pattern is irregular, but the same all over the world, it can be used like tree rings to date rocks by examining the pattern of magnetization that they preserve.

This "magnetostratigraphy" has been verified by direct sampling of sea floor rocks and age determinations.

Now, our magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, lets say it has flipped 200 times (it's flipped more than that but I can't give you a precise number). Now, divide 4,000 or 10,000 years by 200 for a young earth's magnetic flips, at 4,000 you get a flip about every 20 years. At 10,000 divided by 200 you get a flip about every 50 years. That certainly hasn't happened since the 10th century.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1999/ofr-99-0132/
http://www.psc.edu/science/glatzmaier.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field

How, afdave, do you explain the magnetic stripping of the mid-ocean ridges?

Also, if plate tectonics and a 4,000 year old young earth are both true then the coast of Africa would have to be moving at more than a third of a mile per year to get from the mid-Atlantic ridge to where it is now. But today it's not spreading faster than your fingernail grows.

How, afdave, do you explain that? Do you reject plate tectonics?

Date: 2006/06/01 11:33:38, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29)
...the hot item for them right now is the Helium in Zircons. Now I am sure that you all are quite familiar with this raging debate ...

Anyone actually familiar with any Helium in Zircons debate? I'm not. I googled it and it seems to be a purely creationist ploy, not a real scientific debate.

I've also noted that the creationist web sites seem to have been abandoned (or censored) by any informed, scientifically educated people. The fundies are sinking deeper into the pit of their own delusions and no one is trying to help them out:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/forum....83.html
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13112

You'll see a few critics there saying sensible things like:
"...no geochronologists use helium retention to tell the age of a rock (or a zircon crystal), because it is known to be subject to all kinds of problems."

Quote
helium is very small and non-reactive, so it leaks out of zircon crystals quite quickly, especially if the zircon is even slightly heated. When warm, the zircon expands slightly, and becomes very permeable (leaky) with respect to helium, although not so with respect to lead and uranium. Above the critical closure temperature, zircon is "open" (leaky), whereas below, it is "closed" (or sealed). However, zircons also become quite leaky merely by sitting around for a while since they cooled below their closure temperature, because the decay of uranium atoms blasts tiny holes in the zircon (literally, the explosive expulsion of helium ions from the uranium creates (surprise) holes just large enough for helium to escape through.

Because helium escapes readily whereas lead and uranium don't, it is not a problem to say that the zircon has a certain number of years worth of helium but is a different number of years old by uranium-lead dating. Nor is it a problem to say that the zircon has a high closure temperature for lead but a low closure temperature for helium, or that it is closed with respect to lead but simultaneously open with respect to helium.

In other words, the whole debate is irrelevant to actual dating methods used to determine the age of things.

These would be examples of dating methods actually used:

Quote
How does Carbon-14 dating work?

1. Cosmic rays from the sun strike Nitrogen 14 atoms in the atmosphere and cause them to turn into radioactive Carbon 14, which combines with oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide.

2. Living things are in equilibrium with the atmosphere, and the radioactive carbon dioxide is absorbed and used by plants. The radioactive carbon dioxide gets into the food chain and the carbon cycle.

3. All living things contain a constant ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12. (1 in a trillion).

4. At death, Carbon 14 exchange ceases and any Carbon 14 in the tissues of the organism begins to decay to Nitrogen 14, and is not replenished by new C-14.

5. The change in the Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 ratio is the basis for dating.

6. The half-life is so short (5730 years) that this method can only be used on materials less than 70,000 years old. Archaeological dating uses this method.) Also useful for dating the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice Ages).

7. Assumes that the rate of Carbon 14 production (and hence the amount of cosmic rays striking the Earth) has been constant (through the past 70,000 years).

Fission Track Dating
Charged particles from radioactive decay pass through mineral's crystal lattice and leave trails of damage called FISSION TRACKS. These trails are due to the spontaneous fission of uranium.

Procedure to study:

* Enlarge tracks by etching in acid (so that they may be visible with light microscope)
* See readily with electron microscope
* Count the etched tracks (or note track density in an area)

Useful in dating:

* Micas (up to 50,000 tracks per cm squared)
* Tektites
* Natural and synthetic (manmade) glass

Reheating "anneals" or heals the tracks.

The number of tracks per unit area is a function of age and uranium concentration.

Date: 2006/06/01 16:51:56, Link 152.228.2.145

Author: normdoering

Quote (Joe the Ordinary Guy @ June 01 2006,15:30)
... could I ask the real scientists here for their opinions of exactly WHY science's definition of "evidence" is what it is? AFDave mischaracterizes it as "myopic" but what is the correct description? "Focused"? "Undistracted"? "Tangible"? It would have to be a word or phrase that could not be applied to AFDave's myriad offerings of conjecture and opinion.

Precise, relevant, provisional, consistent, parsimonious (Occam's Razor), Empirically testable and falsifiable, based upon multiple observations, often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments, correctable & dynamic....

Date: 2006/06/02 08:31:09, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 02 2006,12:34)
Well, I see that there are no objections to what I wrote yesterday about the Henke article.

That's not quite true, afdave. Did you miss what I posted on June 01 2006,16:33 ?

I pretty much call your stolen argument a red herring.

No geochronologists uses helium retention to tell the age of a rock or a zircon crystal. It was already known to be subject to all kinds of problems.

Helium leaks out of zircon crystals in an inconsistent manner. When warm, the zircon expands slightly, and becomes more permeable, or leaky, to helium, but not so with respect to lead and uranium.

It is not a problem to say that the zircon has a high closure temperature for lead but a low closure temperature for helium, or that it is closed with respect to lead but simultaneously open with respect to helium.

ericmurphy also dealt with your claim right after I did. He found a better article.

Quote
I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm.

No, it's because they're frauds.

You can't use helium in zircon to date rocks because it won't date consistently, because how much helium leaks depends on things you can't know just by measuring the helium -- like how hot the zircon has been in the past. That's what I had said, though not so explicitly, but you didn't seem to register that -- perhaps because you can't draw conclusions logically.

Date: 2006/06/02 09:26:50, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ June 02 2006,13:52)
Dave, the RATE experiment looked at two samples, only one of which supported their conclusion. Do you honestly expect the entire field of radiometric dating to be tossed out the window based on two flawed results?

Let us not forget the instructive poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld:
http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/

Quote

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

The rate of helium leakage in zircon is one of the known unknowns. Not as Dave thinks an unknown unknown.

And even if it were an unknown unknown it still wouldn't contradict the known knowns.

Date: 2006/06/02 10:48:20, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (keiths @ June 02 2006,15:16)
The full paper is available here.

Oh my gaawd! It's Bowfinger's low budget sci-fi feature come true! It's "Chubby Rain."

Date: 2006/06/02 11:46:13, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 02 2006,16:32)
the very first radiometric date was obtained by Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today.

If that's true (I assume it is) then the RATE group has to be a fraud and not just wrong.

I'm no expert on dating methods and I don't claim to be, I didn't know Rutherford used helium in 1905 until now -- but the RATE guys are supposed to be experts and aware of that history. If they are, then they lied, if they're not aware, then they aren't the experts they pretend to be. Either way it equals fraud, not a mistake.

Date: 2006/06/03 07:59:36, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 03 2006,11:00)
There are several other explanations; we may not know the thermal and environmental history well enough, the extrapolation of the diffusion data may be invalid, all sorts of things. I acknowledged a possible interesting anomaly at Fenton Hill already. When the RATE group comes up with more data, lots more data, and better justification for their assumptions in their analyses, then we'll pay some attention.

A possible explanation occured to me. Now keep in mind this is from a non-expert and may be error prone, but let me pop it off to see what others think:

The zircons in question may indeed never have gotten very hot, as Dave suggested. It doesn't take a young earth, however, to imagine scenarios where clumps of material can remain cool even in a molten lava flow.

Think of dumping some ice cubes into a pot of boiling water. The ice cubes still take awhile to melt (how long? I don't know - but half a minute later you'll probably still have some ice cube left) - the larger the ice cube, the longer it lasts.

The same could be true of zircon crystals in rocks that have fallen into lava flows or gotten ground off of Earth's crustal material. Thus you would have a clumpy arrangement of zircons in the ancient lava flows, clumps of zircons having lost most helium, and few dots here and there where much helium remained.

Prediction: there will be many zircons with different helium contents in a single bed of lava because of clumpy temperature histories. The pattern will be mostly aged, little helium containing zircons that surround spots of higher helium content where a cool rock was melting.

Also, heating the surround area around the cool rock could compress the zircons in the cooler rock making it even harder for helium to escape.

Date: 2006/06/03 10:00:45, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ June 03 2006,00:19)
(But of course, the Earth is only 5,000 years old and plate tectonics is a secular lie, so none of this is true. :-))

Is afdave is starting to get to you?

It does make you wonder just how does afdave deal with all the science out there that necessarily incorporates an ancient earth in its assumptions -- plate tectonics, global warming and artic ice cores, these meteor craters, ... does his brain just filter all that stuff out?

Date: 2006/06/03 10:49:51, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ June 02 2006,15:46)
I wonder if we can really blame AFDT2 for his f*cked up mental state. It seems he was taught as a child by his Missionary father that it is OK to lie in order to push your religious agenda.

Someone needs to do a study to see if fundamentalism causes brain damage.

I'm not joking. Has anyone ever investigated whether their logical abilities fail only in certain areas or if they are more broadly brain damaged?

It's blindingly obvious that afdave cannot process evidence and logic.

Date: 2006/06/03 12:30:49, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 03 2006,16:45)
I don't like your scenario much. The zircons are eentsy-weentsy, ranging from about 25-75 micrometers long and around 15-20 micrometers wide. A human hair is about 75 micrometers diameter. Without doing any calculations it seems likely to me that the zircons were always at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, even if the creationist time-frame is correct.

The zircons may indeed be eentsy-weentsy, but the rocks they are in might not be.

Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.

By the way, doing a search on zircon and age of the earth turned up this interesting article:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0101/14earthwater/

Date: 2006/06/03 13:02:27, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ June 03 2006,17:45)
... and then you go back to AnswersInGenesis and Creation Research, where you get lied to repeatedly by people with an agenda.

And part of that agenda is making money from fundies:

http://www.icr.org/index.p....ate_ii0

Quote
Table 2 shows the estimated budget for the various research projects for FY2005/2006 and in total. The amounts shown were selected based on donations to the RATE project and a realistic estimate of the amount of time each researcher has available to work on the research. If more funds become available more time could be focused on a given project. The last column in table 2 shows the total cost for each project if it were conducted over the next five years. The schedule of time is heavily dependent upon the timing of donor investments. The dollar amounts for the full effort include costs of travel, per diem, and overhead.

Prospective donors are encouraged to write ICR and request a research prospectus for these projects.

The estimates for several different projects are over a hundred thousand dollars each. The total is over a million dollars. They apparently get donations for this "science."

Date: 2006/06/03 14:36:54, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 03 2006,19:26)
The calculations were based on the measured temperature of the rocks immediately surrounding the zircons.

Who's calculations and from which link?

I'm talking about the unknown history of the zircons, not the current temperature of the rocks. How can you have their measured temperature from a thousand or more years ago except from theoretical history? How can that actually be measured?

Date: 2006/06/03 16:44:43, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 03 2006,20:02)
http://www.icr.org/pdf/research/Helium_ICC_7-22-03.pdf is the best reference for the calculations.

Additional emplacement of helium is possible?

How? Where does it come from?

Can you get enough helium from other rocks leaking it?

I don't understand geochemistry enough to figure out how crazy that assumption is. The addition of more helium seems far fetched to me.

But, as I said, this isn't my area. It's up to others to debunk these creationist claims.

Date: 2006/06/03 17:38:11, Link 152.228.2.159

Author: normdoering

Quote (Drew Headley @ June 03 2006,22:22)

Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,22:15)
(I'm sure you are very knowledgable about lemmings so I won't challenge you there ... but I did like the Disney flick ... gives a good mental image of Evolutionists mindlessly following the crowd.)

This coming from a guy who practices a religion whose adherents refer to themselves as sheep.

And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.

Date: 2006/06/04 07:59:28, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 04 2006,07:16)
Norm ...
Quote
And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.
Yes. And who set the stage for the most prosperous and freedom loving civilization in the history of the world, which you directly benefit from and yet you have the gall to laugh at.

Ah yes, the freedom and prosperity we know today was given to us by Christians, like Emporor Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian, who in the fourth century had over 3000 Christians executed because their interpretation of the Bible did not agree with his. That's more than the number of Christians who got fed to the lions during the 1st century. There is freedom for you.

From there they went on to the prosperity of the dark ages.

Then finally the stage was set for the French and American revolutions which I suspect you actually know little about except for the lies your preachers tell you.

Date: 2006/06/04 10:20:37, Link 152.228.2.139

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 04 2006,08:42)
Diffusion consists of a species moving from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. If the helium concentration outside the zircon is higher than inside, helium flows in. And, of course, the rate at which helium flows in or out depends on the concentrations in the two areas; if there was unaccounted-for helium outside the zircons the diffusion rate calculations are wrong, no matter which direction helium was moving.

I decided to check you out and find out where our helium supplies come from. They get helium from oil fields and natural gas fields -- tons of it.

So, the idea isn't as far fetched as it first sounds.

Then I got side tracked when I discovered another Halliburton conspiracy I knew nothing about:

Quote
We need to look no further than the Bush Dome Reservoir near Amarillo, Texas. Beneath its 20 square miles, the government has stockpiled about 30 billion cubic feet of helium, which it has been selling to private enterprise.

"The conspiracy isn't even hidden," said Marshbaum. "After the government sells helium to private industry, it then buys blimps from private companies with White House ties. Then since blimps need helium, the government buys it from private sources." "The only thing to be determined," said Marshbaum, "is how much profit Halliburton will receive."

"It's business as usual in the Bush White House," I said. "It'd be a real stretch for them to claim that there was an imminent threat to national security from blimps. It's not as if Fugi possessed weapons of mass destruction."

http://cryptome.quintessenz.at/mirror/helium-eyeball.htm

Date: 2006/06/05 06:24:51, Link 152.228.2.113

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 04 2006,23:24)
Remember the whole point of the argument ... civilization appeared suddenly and simultaneously and recently in several locations at once WITH written language. My explanation from Genesis fits this scenario much better than your 200,000 year gradualist story.

And I shot down that claim, Dave -- several times. You just keep ignoring my data. I've pointed out how we have evidence of the slow growth of tool use among pre-human primates. Then, before cities and civilization as we know it, agriculture comes on line for early humans requiring stay-put human groups that have to defend their territory.

Your version of history assumes the Mediterranean area with Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations are first. Because your bible ignores the many signs of earlier civilizations in India and China.

Even in Middle Eastern archeology we get agriculture evidence around 6500 BC, older than you think Earth is, with people living in tribes, not on the move continually searching for food or herding their animals, and doing primitive farming. Once people could control the production of food and be assured of a reliable annual supply of it, their lives changed completely, but it took time for civilization to rise from it.

But we can get older groups:
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/bodhisattva/vulture-shamans.html

Quote
This cave had been used for burials by the Zawi Chemi people (as this small area is called) around 8870 BC (plus or minus 300 years, according to carbon-dating) -- over 10,000 years ago -- and 4,000 years before the beginnings of the various Mesopotamia cultures referred to here.

Date: 2006/06/05 09:33:32, Link 152.228.2.113

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 05 2006,12:53)
Norm ...
Quote
Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.

By the way, doing a search on zircon and age of the earth turned up this interesting article:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0101/14earthwater/
Yes. The rebuttal is sounding 'FLAKIER AND FLAKIER' so let's change the subject and talk about space flight. Maybe Aftershave could contribute to this one. He's a rocket scientist.

You never even bothered to read the link you lazy ass.

Just because I link an article from Spaceflight Now doesn't mean the article is about space flight. The article in question is about zircons and dating the age of the Earth.

Quote
By probing a tiny grain of zircon, a mineral commonly used to determine the geological age of rocks, scientists from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Colgate University, Curtin University in Australia and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have found evidence that 4.4 billion years ago, temperatures had cooled to the 100-degree Centigrade range, a discovery that suggests an early Earth far different from the one previously imagined.

....

The new picture of the earliest Earth is based on a single, tiny grain of zircon from western Australia found and dated by Simon Wilde, of the School of Applied Geology at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. Valley worked with William Peck, a geologist at Colgate University, to analyze oxygen isotope ratios, measure rare earth elements, and determine element composition in a grain of zircon that measured little more than the diameter of two human hairs. Colin Graham's laboratory analyzed the zircon to obtain the oxygen isotope ratios.

So, your data based on helium is contradicted by data based on oxygen isotope ratios.

It looks like just two different anomalies with little supporting evidence to back them up.

You can't depend on the law of averages when you samples are so small.

Date: 2006/06/05 13:18:50, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 05 2006,16:54)
But one of the appealing things about religious conservatism is the pressure it puts on its adherents to refine their ethical behavior and thought.

You mean like George W. Bush endorsing torture and rendition and using signing statements to get past the McCain amendment? Or do you mean like Pat Robertson lying about lifting 2000 pounds with a leg press because he drinks an energy shake he wants to sell you? Or do you mean like how the Roman Catholics tried to hide the sexual abuse of children going on among their priests?

Date: 2006/06/05 14:03:23, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (Arden Chatfield @ June 05 2006,18:42)
I think the thing is, in their worldview, there's no principled reason it should be that way, so that makes them feel justified in claiming that for all intents and purposes, it isn't that way.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H. P. Lovecraft

Date: 2006/06/05 15:41:58, Link 152.228.2.125

Author: normdoering

Quote (Russell @ June 05 2006,20:28)

Quote
[GoP:]To improve ourselves, heal society, and seek truth: these goals shape our [religious conservatives'] thoughts and deeds. Proof? Just look at the societies and communities we create. Measured against the ideal, they may fall woefully short; measured against the pagan past, they more than clear the bar.
[guffaw]

PZ Myers ran into another incarnation of that old lie a few days ago:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/05/rabbi_avi_shafran.php

Date: 2006/06/06 06:08:31, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (Ichthyic @ June 05 2006,23:22)

Quote
I am taking the time to go back and look over all DaveTard2's claims and make a synopsis

that is bound to be useful at some point.

Useful for what?

Afdave mave have gone away and given up.

Date: 2006/06/06 08:38:26, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 06 2006,13:19)

Quote
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.

The believers in the Darwinian religion regualarly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themsleves intact.

Why is someone who professes to think Michel Foucault is evil echoing exactly what Foucault wrote in "Madness and Civilization"? Another name for "PSYCHIATRIC FASCISM."

Foucault claimed that the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane were no less controlling than previous methods.

Quote
I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.

It might be a good idea after all. Maybe we should? It would keep them from engaging the kind of mass killing they're doing as leaders of various countries and terrorist groups.

Date: 2006/06/06 10:49:25, Link 152.228.2.134

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 06 2006,14:58)

Quote
This is opposite what we would expect from igneous rocks.

What we would expect based on your extensive geologic knowledge and experience? Hint 1: the rocks are almost certainly not igneous, they are almost certainly metamorphic.

I think Dave is picking up that mistake from me. I thought they were igneous too. It was implied in my ice cube melting analogy. I forget why I aassumed that.

Date: 2006/06/09 06:56:01, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,07:13)
...only hope for long agers is that maybe somehow some helium was transported to the zircons through some mechanism. This was explored very thoroughly by Humphreys and it is extremely doubtful that this could have occurred.

The Nation Helium Reserve stores over a billion cubic feet of helium in a natural geologic gas storage formation. Now, keep in mind that on Earth, helium is primarily a product of radioactive decay and is found in significant amounts only in natural gas.

It turns out they're looking for natural gas at Fenton Hill:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technol....be.html
http://www.smartcommunities.ncat.org/municipal/arttoc.shtml

That showed up when I googled "Fenton Hill, natural gas."

Now, Dave, keep in mind how much helium we've already stored. Given 6,000 to 10,000 years, Dave, how much radioactive decay of how many tons of radioactive heavy elements would have been needed to produce just that much helium, a billion cubic feet of it, in the time YEC allows? Now, keep in mind that Uranium-238, one of the more common elements we can dig up, decays through a chain of transformations, ultimately producing lead-206 and eight helium atoms.

The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years, a gram of U-238 would produce so few decays per year that it would take how many tons of it to produce a billion cubic feet of helium?

I leave the calculations to you, Dave. How much radioactive stuff has to be in our Earth to get that helium in a YEC time frame?

Date: 2006/06/09 08:48:59, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 09 2006,13:13)
I think a key part of the problem with holding any attempt at a dicussion with Dave here is that he does not understand what 'evidence' is. Certainly he doesn't understand even the concept of scientific evidence.

That's because afdave isn't from our universe, he's from Bizarro World:

As you can see, people there are obviously made of zircon crystals infused with lots of helium and they speak a
Portuguese that sounds like Spanish and French combined.

Quote
I've seen no sign that he is capable of learning or understanding pretty much anything,...

You'd have a better chance teaching your dog about quantum mechanics.

Date: 2006/06/09 10:08:35, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,07:13)
Again, YECs don't say 'it's magic.' They just recognize that there is an Intelligent Designer that may have the ability to interact with His designs, ...

By what non-magical method does your designer create his designs? By what non-miraculous method did your designer construct a universe with light already on its way from galaxies a billion light years away? (Are there really galaxies there, or just the light coming from them?) By what non-magic method did your designer construct a planet Earth with tectonic plates and artic ice that seems to be billions of years old but isn't? By what non-miraculous method did your designer construct all this?

When we say Humphreys talks about magic, he's literally quoted doing so here:

Quote
Humphreys (1990) makes up some stories about God interacting with water molecules and invokes some cursory and inaccurate claims about the inadequacy of modern models of magnetic dynamos. Dr. Humphreys then expects his readers to accept his claims that modern scientific models should be replaced with his magical fantasies. Unlike Dr. Humphreys' aquatic alchemy, Van Allen and Bagenal (1999) present far more coherent and realistic views of what is known and unknown about planetary magnetic fields. Chapter 2 in Faure (1998) and Delsemme (1998) further demonstrate that the distribution of elements in the Universe (including the Oddo-Harkins rule and H/He ratios) is consistent with the Big Bang and nuclear fusion reactions in stars. That is, nuclear fusion reactions in stars, and not Dr. Humphreys' aquatic myths, explain why oxygen-16 is more abundant in nature than oxygen-17 or oxygen-18.

Besides failing to properly distinguish between a scientific hypothesis and a theory, Humphreys (1990) frequently props his "science" on top of groundless and unproven miracles. For example, he states:

"By the same laws, the currents and fields would preserve themselves with only minor losses, as God rapidly transformed the water into other materials."

In the same sentence, Humphreys (1990) talks about two contradictory concepts: natural laws and supernatural intervention. Dr. Humphreys is stuck in the old Gosse Hypothesis trap. How can Dr. Humphreys' "science" ever distinguish between what is a product of nature and what is supposedly supernatural?

Physicist Tim Thompson concisely demonstrates that Dr. Humphreys' aquatic alchemy and its "predictions" amount to nothing. He shows that Dr. Humphreys' equations and variables are so plastic that they could be used to support any planetary magnetic field hypothesis.

From:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html

Date: 2006/06/09 12:46:04, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (JonF @ June 09 2006,15:18)

Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,14:56)
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.

That's what I thought.

Nope, Deadman and I understand exactly what Henke meant, and what both his proposed tests would reveal. He's just looking for you to respond to his questions before responding to yours. I won't step on his toes, but here's another hint for you, Davetard: "primordial helium".

Primordial helium?

Hmmm, how primodial? From the big bang? Fused from the first stars?

Why is primordial helium relevant? Isn't almost all the helium we're going to encounter on Earth going to be a product of radioactive decay?

Helium on/in Earth is mostly helium-4 and there's only a tiny amount of helium-3, while extraterrestrial helium - the primodrial helium - is mostly helium-3, a product of fussion not fission.

How does primordial helium get into a zircon?

When Earth was forming the primordial helium wouldn't have settled anywhere where it wouldn't get blown away by the stellar wind. It would have laid on the top of the atmosphere and gotten pushed off into the solar wind as other gases filled the limit of a gas shell our planet can keep. Why would there be any primordial helium at all on Earth?

Did I just give afdave a bigger clue than you wanted to give him?

Date: 2006/06/09 15:49:02, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (stephenWells @ June 09 2006,18:21)
Nice failure of reading comprehension, Davey. Now go learn something about isotope ratios.

Here's another clue:

From:
http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/713_23.html

Quote

Although there are six known isotopes of helium, only two are stable: helium-3 (symbolized 3He) and helium-4 (symbolized 4He). The four other isotopes are all radioactive, decaying very rapidly into other substances. The helium that is present on Earth is not a primordial component of the Earth but has been generated by radioactive decay. Alpha particles, ejected from the nuclei of heavier radioactive substances, are nuclei of the isotope helium-4. Helium does not accumulate in large quantities in the atmosphere because Earth's gravity is not sufficient to prevent its gradual escape into space. The trace of the isotope helium-3 on Earth is attributable to the negative beta decay of the rare hydrogen-3 isotope (tritium). Helium-4 is by far the most plentiful of the stable isotopes: helium-4 atoms outnumber those of helium-3 about 700,000:1 in atmospheric helium and about 7,000,000:1 in certain helium-bearing minerals.

Date: 2006/06/09 18:10:55, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ June 09 2006,22:00)
Right, Dave, it has nothing at all to do with an illustration of how pressure affects differential diffusion rates of gasses through materials

If you enjoy Dave's insanity, take a look at how they deal with this same topic on the freeper site:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1406836/posts

Date: 2006/06/10 08:06:24, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ June 10 2006,12:30)
Interesting that AFDave has chosen to cite the " Julian Huxley Lie." Dave...look at the alleged Title of the "Julian Huxley" book cited. Now find that "book" listed anywhere online or otherwise. You won't find it.

As to the canard (this also means "lie," AirHead) about Julian Huxley and any claims of a "new humanist theology"...please show me those quotes. The ones you cited are faked....lies, in a word, AirHead. http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/julian_huxley_lie.html has a good description of trying to seek out the sources of these Creationist lies, and having Christians like you, AirHeadDave...pile lies upon lies in an effort to avoid responsibility.

The source is:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home....ion.asp

The wikipedia entry on Julian Huxley lists his books, note that the one afdave mentions, "Growth of Ideas. The evolution of thought and knowledge" is not on the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley

The quote does indeed seem to be a bald-faced lie that distorts Julian Huxley's views in ways that delusional people like afdave could not detect if they did read Huxely.

However, I found this:
http://www.anybook.biz/si/85364.html

Huxley, did consider humanism a replacement for religion which was destined to die out as scientific discoveries invalidated it. The lie is that Humanism "does away with traditional Christianity." No, his view was that it was dying and didn't need to be "done away with."

Perhaps it is a quote out of context from a little known work not listed on Wikipedia?

Date: 2006/06/10 09:15:34, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ June 10 2006,13:52)
The habit of creationists in not supplying publishing companies is annoying.

The company listed on the anybook site was "London, Macdonald & Co 1965"

Here are some other books they published:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle....t=title

It's starting to look suspicious again, considering the other books they publish that they would publish Huxley.

They may have gone out of business in 1989.

Date: 2006/06/10 10:45:45, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ June 10 2006,15:36)
Steve: It's possible that he thinks he's not *deliberately* lying, but then the evidence weighs against that.

Guys, we're talking seriously delusional. As "granddaughter" said: "he simply reboots his brain and starts repeating the same, refuted, irrelevant, non-arguments over again."

Dave and Paley cannot follow a logical reasoned argument and they wouldn't know one if they saw one.

Date: 2006/06/10 18:18:49, Link 152.228.2.140

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 10 2006,22:26)
Truly baffling to me, guys. I guess one reason I keep coming back here is that I just can't believe that there are real live human beings that believe the 'blind-watchmaker' story-telling. You are probably right that I am delusional ... but my delusion is that I imagine that no one could possibly reject Intelligent Design if they really understood it.

So I keep trying to explain it.

Dave, if you want to get anywhere at all you are going to have to stop preaching and start trying to listen.

This math thing you bring up -- I already brought up the answer to it in a post where I wrote about Danny Hillis. Do you remember that post at all? It was about how Hillis was evolving computer programs, search algorithms, through random mutation and natural selection.

The question for you to ask is, how can someone build a computer that evolves computer code when you've just quoted a Dembski site post that just declared that impossible?

Try to get your head around this:
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch15-d.html

I could explain it in more detail -- but you've got to be able to sit still for it and start grasping a few concepts inch by inch in a journey that might be several miles for you.

The first thing we have to determine is where are you mathematically.

Are you familiar with the concept of "permutations"?

Are you familiar with a book called "One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science" by George Gamow?

Can you estimate how many amino acids could fit into a one inch square area at normal Earth pressures?

Date: 2006/06/11 06:52:32, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 11 2006,07:31)
Norm...
Quote
Dave, if you want to get anywhere at all you are going to have to stop preaching and start trying to listen.
I AM getting somewhere already. I am accomplishing what I set out to do and I do listen carefully to what people say. There are 20 or so of you and only one of me, so you'll have to forgive me if I miss a thing or two.

No, Dave, if you were really listening you would not have brought up the GilDodgen quote about the "hello world" program from Uncommon Descent because I gave you that link to the Chapter from Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" about Danny Hillis many days ago. If you had understood what I wrote about Hillis you would have realized that GilDodgen simply didn't know anything about genetic algolrithims and evolutionary programming.

Now, you may be overwhelmed by the amount and diversity of information people are throwing at you (at least what they use to) but you're not picking up anything.

You didn't even pick up the questions I asked about where were you mathematically. Why not?

Date: 2006/06/11 15:15:50, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (RamsandGolf @ June 11 2006,20:06)
Commentary asked for. <a href="www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1646999/posts?page=132#132"target="_blank">Info</a>OK, I don't know how to post if, but if you're interested, here is the site.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus....lank%22

Hmm... what do you call a freeper who is also a creationist?

A creeper.

Date: 2006/06/11 18:12:41, Link 152.228.2.116

Author: normdoering

Quote (Henry J @ June 10 2006,19:00)
I'm wondering what a scientific movement might be. Somehow acceptance of experts of something that's supported by evidence, doesn't strike me as what I'd call a "movement".

What about Global Warming?

Can you imagine Dembski trying to do the Al Gore thing and putting out a movie?

Date: 2006/06/12 06:26:46, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,09:21)
Norm…

Quote
If you had understood what I wrote about Hillis you would have realized that GilDodgen simply didn't know anything about genetic algolrithims and evolutionary programming.

Norm- I understood your genetic algorithm piece, and I understood it and I consider it to be irrelevant to macroevolution. Remember the AIG article I gave you?

If you're bringing up macroevolution in relation my post and to the GilDodgen "Writing Computer Programs by Random Mutation and Natural Selection" post on Uncommon Descent -- then you are mentally impaired.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1204

I don't remember any specific AIG article you linked or copied here. Go ahead and link it again. I am familiar with most creo arguments and I consider them weak. What prevents microevolution from becoming macroevolution over much larger time frames? Bringing up macro/micro evolution seems irrelevant. Why would the fact that computers can evolve code have anything to do with that?

Are you saying that you disagree with GilDodgen and you are willing to consider genetic algorithims at least proof of microevolution?

Be specific.

Date: 2006/06/12 06:41:45, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,09:21)

Quote
Now, Dave, keep in mind how much helium we've already stored. Given 6,000 to 10,000 years, Dave, how much radioactive decay of how many tons of radioactive heavy elements would have been needed to produce just that much helium, a billion cubic feet of it, in the time YEC allows? Now, keep in mind that Uranium-238, one of the more common elements we can dig up, decays through a chain of transformations, ultimately producing lead-206 and eight helium atoms.

The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years, a gram of U-238 would produce so few decays per year that it would take how many tons of it to produce a billion cubic feet of helium?

I leave the calculations to you, Dave. How much radioactive stuff has to be in our Earth to get that helium in a YEC time frame?

Norm ... I have not studied this yet and it would be interesting to study. You are correct that there would not be anywhere close to enough time available to generate enough Heium assuming today's decay rates, but as the RATE Group has pointed out many times, this is an assumption, and there are beginning to be many indicators supporting the idea that this assumption may be grossly wrong. We will be discussing this in more detail as we walk through the RATE Group findings.

So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?

Date: 2006/06/12 06:52:12, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,11:42)
But this provides no help for Macroevolution, which is what I disagree with.

Do you have any reason, other than the fact that it contradicts your faith in the Bible, to reject Macroevolution?

If you can have microevolution, then how do you prevent macroevolution over longer time frames?

Date: 2006/06/12 07:08:10, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (incorygible @ June 12 2006,08:05)

Quote (afdave @ June 10 2006,09:53)
After much effort and conflicting information, I found out that Gorillas, Chimps and Humans have about 98% genetic similarity, they share a common defect, and that evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer. Pretty exciting stuff, to be sure! Never mind all those HUGE differences ... we're 98% similar! Let's give 'em minority status and voting rights! Yippeee! There was some intriguing info about chromosomes, but again, nothing which requires common ancestry.

Dave, I love how you keep returning to the "1/2% closer" (even if you can't keep track of what is closer to what).

But is the "1/2% closer" an example of microevolution or macroevolution?

Date: 2006/06/12 07:15:47, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,12:09)
Argy...
Quote
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
Sure, if by 'statistical significance' you mean a difference that we can measure. Obviously, we can measure 1/2%.

But it is nothing to write home about if you are using the data to try to show how much closer chimps are to humans than gorillas are.

Does that "not writing home" mean we've got an example of microevolution here?

Date: 2006/06/12 07:29:09, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 12 2006,12:09)
Norm...
Quote
So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?
No, no, no. The best theory YECs have for this is that it may have happened before there was any life on earth (before Creation Day 3) or during the Flood where the water would have formed a shield, or both. This is unclear without further RATE research, but no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation.

So, no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation, you just postulate a magic trick where the half-life of uranium drops from 4.5 billion years to one day before Adam and Eve were created.

Date: 2006/06/13 09:00:21, Link 152.228.2.150

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 13 2006,12:11)
I am not sure who came up with the number 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. I would like to find out. I would also like to know how it is known that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya.

It's hard to take you seriously when you make statements like that.

If you really wanted to know it's very easy to find out. The very fact that you don't know tells us you are not qualified to debate these scientific opinions.

Today's accepted age of the Earth, 4.55 billion years, was determined by C.C. Patterson using Uranium-Lead dating on fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite and published in 1956. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, Dave. Why didn't you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_earth
http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology/usgsnps/gtime/ageofearth.pdf
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-youngearth.html

You can also look up "human evolution" on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

Quote
YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence

Intelligence is a vague concept, Dave, can you define it?

Does your super-intelligence have to be conscious? Does it have to have desires? What exactly are the properties of intelligent things?

Quote
Finely tuned cosmos

A "Finely tuned cosmos" is also a vague idea, it's not a quantifiable, scientific concept.

What would a not tuned cosmos look like? Would galaxies be crashing into each other? Would life be possible but rare, existing only as scum of life on a tiny spec of dust in a vast and hostile universe.

Scientists deal in numbers and precision as much as possible. You deal in vague, half-baked ideas.

There is so much wrong with you view I can only scratch the surface in the time I have here.

Date: 2006/06/13 12:07:19, Link 152.228.2.150

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 13 2006,13:48)
Ved...
Quote
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.

If you compare humans and chimps, on the other hand, the differences are very great. Do you want me to go through those with you?

Yes, Dave, go through the differences between man and chimp, versus the differences between chimps and other non-human primates.

It should be amusing.

http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/similarities/

Date: 2006/06/14 06:51:19, Link 152.228.2.124

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,10:59)
There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields.

When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.

No, Dave, there is no science where phenomena which we cannot measure or count are considered. We can actually measure linguistic skill (ever take a foriegn language and get graded on it), abstract thinking ability (ever take an IQ test), scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.

Date: 2006/06/14 07:09:48, Link 152.228.2.124

Author: normdoering

Quote (Chris Hyland @ June 14 2006,11:28)

Quote
In short, it's because of non-biological differences.
If they are not caused by biology they have nothing to do with evolution. If you are going to argue that aspects of human intelligence are not a result of our more complex brains, but of some supernatural intervention, I dont see why this is an argument against common descent.

Arguing that aspects of human intelligence are not a result of our more complex brains, but of some supernatural intervention could get you shot down tommorow:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/020412080048.htm

Quote
In a study published in the April 12, 2002 issue of the journal Science, the scientists noted that the striking difference between these primate cousins is most evident in their brains. The disparity appears to be the result of evolutionary differences in gene and protein expression, the manner in which coded information in genes is activated in the brain, then converted into proteins that carry out many cellular functions.

The brain differences are more a matter of quantity than quality. Differences in the amount of gene and protein expression, rather than differences in the structure of the genes or proteins themselves, distinguish the two species.

Date: 2006/06/14 12:01:22, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,13:07)
Get the book. I did and he explains it perfectly.

Never. I will not support creationist lies.

Date: 2006/06/14 22:27:53, Link 152.228.2.158

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,17:43)
...you guys think Humphreys is just out there padding his pockets with Creo propaganda?

Based on the AiG page where they were asking for money for their research, yes. It seemed a bit high for the low quality you seem to be presenting.

Date: 2006/06/15 07:36:49, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 15 2006,11:27)
I propose a test to quantify all the non-biological differences among humans, chimps and gorillas. What do you think this test will show?

It will show that you don't know what the #### you are talking about.

There is no such thing as "non-biological" in these differences between human and ape. Everything that you can or cannot think is defined by the structure of your brain which is determined by genetic and epigenetic inheritance.

Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.

Date: 2006/06/15 07:56:02, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 15 2006,11:27)
Have you never read "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" ?? Molecular biology proved conclusively that nothing is "ancestral" to anything else as evolutionists would have liked for it to.

Gee, then how come there are so few molecular biologists who know about that? They're all still talking about molecular evolution.

Date: 2006/06/15 09:07:49, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 15 2006,13:25)

Quote
Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.
No. It's just things you cannot see. There are many natural things that you cannot see which do not require invocation of the supernatural. And of course, my definition of the supernatural is simply natural things which we don't presently understand.

Things I cannot see?

So, if you can't see a chromosome, then it's non-biological?

Does it become biological after you find it?

You're really screwed up there. You can't be cured until you understand why that is an absurdly irrational thing you've just said.

Date: 2006/06/15 09:36:54, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 15 2006,14:08)
Incorygible...
Quote
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test.

Monkeys don't read English, Dave.

If we gave you, the monkeys and the apes an IQ test in Esperanto I think you'd all come out the same. Would that be fair?

We do have tests that don't require language abilities and monkeys have surprising abstract reasoning abilities -- in fact, some might do better than you on some tests.

Have you never watched a nature show where they give puzzles to monkeys to test their abilities?

Here are some subtle mental tests that give us measures:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030123073355.htm
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=28819
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/04.13/monkey.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news....es.html

Date: 2006/06/15 11:52:41, Link 152.228.2.129

Author: normdoering

Quote (Occam's Aftershave @ June 15 2006,16:30)
After this long no one really expects anything like factual data or supporting evidence out of you.

Here's an idea of what to expect from P Z Myers:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/creationist_amorality.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....ert.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....you.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyng....m_t.php

Date: 2006/06/16 08:33:33, Link 152.228.2.128

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,12:02)
Jeannot...
Quote
When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy.
You've got old information, Jeannot. Modern AMS technology can detect it accurately down to around 0.025 pMC, 1/10 of the levels that we are talking about in the RATE samples.

Dave is on to something when he talks about increased carbon dating accuracy:
http://www.cwru.edu/news/2005/3-05/waltersages.htm

New technologies, like laser-fusion and argon-argon dating methods have been refined to the point where the age of a volcanic particle as small as a grain of salt can be determined with great precision and accuracy.

Alas, poor Dave's larger argument about a young Earth is deeply undermined by these new techniques. They are still supporting and adding detail to a very old Earth. If things change, the Earth is going to start looking older, not younger. That's were the new discoveries not filtered by creationists are pointing.

Date: 2006/06/16 09:03:32, Link 152.228.2.128

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,10:02)
We shall see what future data brings to light in regard to this question.

No, Dave, you won't see. You've already missed major lines of evidence. You're only paying attention to creationists and ignoring the much broader feild of geology that encompasses rock dating and gives it context. You want to argue that neither fossils nor rock dating can be trusted, and that YEC interpretations are better. In order to do this YECs have constructed a delusional geology all their own, but so far Dave deals with one tiny detail, the dating of zircons.

The larger context includes Plate Tectonics which helps explain and predict volcanism, earthquakes, and mountain building. It includes arctic ice cores and evidence of global warming. It also includes fossils found in sequences recognized and established in their broad outlines before Darwin wrote about his theory.

Geologists in the 1700s and 1800s had already noticed how fossils occured in sequences and Dave cannot deny the hundreds of millions of fossils now in museum display cases and drawers around the world. Huge dinosaurs, ancient shell beds containing hundreds of specimens, etc.. Dave is forced to claim that all these fossils are of the same age, buried in the rocks by Noah's flood.

Rejection of rock dating by YECs is easy to assume, but hard to demonstrate. In order to demonstrate his Helium-Zircon thing, Dave still has to deal with stratigraphy, the observation that older rocks lie below younger rocks and that fossils occur in a particular, predictable order. That's why we have the stratigraphic column, the divisions of geological time into Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and so on. Each time slice characterized by its own fossils. If we have a young Earth, why and how could we have the stratigraphic column? What's happening there, Dave? Do we get life on Earth re-created every couple hundred years and then rocks made around them?

The oldest rocks have no fossils, then came simple cells, then simple sea creatures, then more complex ones like fishes, then life on land, then reptiles, then mammals, then us. How can a six-day creation explain that story in the rocks?

Date: 2006/06/16 09:33:57, Link 152.228.2.128

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,10:02)
I think I have beat the Helium-Zircon thing to death ...

Lets beat it some more.
This might be relevant:
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146411491
"Contrary to perceived wisdom, we have demonstrated that zircon typically does grow at low temperatures in slates. The exceptionally small zircons that grow in these conditions now reveal exciting potential for dating events occurring during their growth and open up new horizons for the determination of geological ages from rocks that were previously impossible to date."

Date: 2006/06/16 12:09:29, Link 152.228.2.128

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,13:48)
Look at this ... they even have a name for 'Humphreys type zircons' now ...
Quote
Implications for Timing of Andean Uplift from Thermal Resetting of Radiation-Damaged Zircon in the … - group of 3 »
JI Garver, PW Reiners, LJ Walker, JM Ramage, SE … - The Journal of Geology, 2005 - journals.uchicago.edu
... 2000). Helium dating of zircons is currently in a renaissance, and application to
tectonic studies is still in its infancy (Reiners et al. 2002, 2003, 2004). ...

Zircon fission track (ZFT) and (U-Th)/He (ZHe) dating of zircons along a west-east transect elucidates the thermal evolution of exhumed and uplifted rocks. The stability of fission tracks in zircons is a function of single-grain radiation damage. In samples with grain-to-grain variability in radiation damage, resetting results in variable resetting and multiple age populations. Low retentive zircons (LRZs), which have a partly disordered crystalline structure, have significant radiation damage and a low temperature of annealing (ca. 180°200°C). High retentive zircons (HRZs), which are nearly crystalline, fully anneal at temperatures in excess of ca. 280°300°C.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/427664

They have a name for 'Humphreys type' zircons?

Maybe they have an explanation that isn't a creationist one too?

I googled "High retentive zircons" and got:
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~reiners/garveretal2005.pdf

And, Dave, when you read sentances from your link like "...folded Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks unconformably overlain by mid-Tertiary volcanics..." what do the terms "Mesozoic" and "mid-Tertiary" mean to you?

What does "Lower Cretaceous quartzites" mean to you?

Date: 2006/06/17 05:31:33, Link 152.228.2.119

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 17 2006,07:14)
Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses?

Looks aren't everything. Dog breeding is shallow and forced. The traits breeders have selected for were much narrower than nature selects for. Many pure breed dogs have all the symptoms of inbred human families with lots of genetic diseases. Dog breeders haven't really created a new species, not quite. In fact, dogs and wolves can still be bred together to create a hybrid.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/newsletters/v5n4/5n4wille.htm
http://www.apetsblog.com/dogbreedinformation/wolf-dog-hybrid.htm

Dog breeding is now improving because of what we've learned about genetics and evolution.

The genetic variability in monkeys is much wider. They can't all breed together and create hybrids. The genetic differences between wild canines is greater than that of dogs.

Date: 2006/06/17 13:00:23, Link 152.228.2.119

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 17 2006,17:07)
But experts don't know everything. And in the area of origins, they have this curious blindness which is only explainable as resembling some sort of weird religious belief.

"Some sort of weird religious belief", Dave? Since when do you associate religion with blindness?

Oh! The irony!

Quote
Matt.7.3 : Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
Matt.7.4 : Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?
Matt.7.5 : You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

Date: 2006/06/18 12:18:42, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 18 2006,15:05)
your posts also expose the immaturity of the other side.

That's a valid, if very subjective, point.

But Dave has been equally immature.

Date: 2006/06/18 12:52:17, Link 152.228.2.123

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,17:21)
I said I am happy to continue to answer questions ...

But you don't answer them. You re-interpret them to suit your ignorance.

When you linked an article with phrases like "...folded Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks unconformably overlain by mid-Tertiary volcanics..." I asked you what do the terms "Mesozoic" and "mid-Tertiary" mean to you? I asked what does "Lower Cretaceous quartzites" mean to you?

Instead of answering the question, you just wrote the, well, geologists got it wrong. What wrong? Everything? Do you know why Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks are Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks? Or why mid-Tertiary volcanics are mid-Tertiary volcanics? How did they arrive at these names, Dave? Be specific.

Date: 2006/06/19 10:54:30, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (Flint @ June 19 2006,15:01)
Pretty natural for all of us to assume the inherent superiority of whatever in-group we identify with. Northern Europeans of Darwin's time never thought to ask *whether* those who looked different were inferior, they only sought to explain why.

Meanwhile, engineers (such as, ahem, myself) are superior to everyone else for good solid reasons. Objective critical analysis tells us so.

I know you're joking, but there really are people with such one dimensional thinking, perhaps afdave, who think they can graph "superiority" on a single line. We can't think in enough dimensions to create a graph of fitness for this world.

We're all probably going to be surprised (except me) when it turns out that the evolution that matters is happening in the poorest parts of Africa where there will rise people resistant to things like ebola and AIDS and when the really nasty virus comes out and kills us all -- they'll take over.

Date: 2006/06/19 14:17:12, Link 152.228.2.109

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 18 2006,15:17)
Actually, I'm quite offended by her comments....

"Frag Congressman Murtha? Why not? He's one of the enemy now. People who understand Coulter can see these things clearly," - a letter-writer to WorldNetDaily.
-- Hat tip,Andrew Sullivan
World Nut Daily

Date: 2006/06/19 14:55:49, Link 152.228.2.109

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 19 2006,19:35)
I think you know deep down that conservatism is no more racist than liberalism ...

He's right, conservatism is no more racist than liberalism, it's conservatives who are more racist than liberals.

Date: 2006/06/19 15:03:47, Link 152.228.2.109

Author: normdoering

Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ June 19 2006,19:59)

Quote
He's right, conservatism is no more racist than liberalism, it's conservatives who are more racist than liberals.

Says the liberal, pontificating in the middle of his lily-white neighborhood....

Not just me. Scientific studies have shown that conservatives are stupid and ignorant biggots who have a lot of nightmares with a significant number of them being closet homosexuals in deep denial.

Date: 2006/06/22 13:50:15, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Here at this web site:
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200407/0743488288.htm?blurb

Baen books, a science fiction publisher, has got some free chapters for "Kicking the Sacred Cow," by sci-fi writer James P. Hogan.

It's not all ID, but looking over it, it seems to have a few positive ID chapters and it echoes Dembski's goofy ideas on information.

Date: 2006/06/22 15:03:00, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (Guest @ June 22 2006,18:50)
I`m a scientist and atheist, ...

I don't believe you.

Which branch of science? As far as I know unless all you've got is a B.S. degree then you have to have degrees in some specific branch of science. Which general branch is it? Computer science, physics, geology, biochemistry...? What kind of research do you do?

Also, explain why you are an atheist.

Date: 2006/06/24 07:58:43, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,11:08)
The Bible is the oldest, most reliable history book ever.

Dave, that statement is contradicted by the Bible itself.

Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt.

Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?

Those histories still exist in part. We know Pharaoh Akhenaten introduced monotheism in Egypt before there was a Moses. It didn't last long.

Here's one older religious book: The Egyptian Book of the Dead:
http://www.touregypt.net/bkofdead.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ebod/

Date: 2006/06/24 08:19:25, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,12:31)
Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it.

Fundies say that archaeology supports the accuracy of the Bible. Archaeology only supports at most the general background of the Bible. Egypt did, indeed, exist and some other nations and geographic information are real -- Just like New England exists in a Stephen King novel. Archaeology does not support every biblical claim. It does not support anything about creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, or even the conquest of the Holy Land.

If such instances of historical accuracy are so significant, then an equal claim for accuracy can be made for the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. Remember that guy who found Troy using the works of Homer? Does that mean Achilles really existed and was invulnerable? That Helen was so beautiful they fought a war over her?

Archaeology contradicts significant parts of the Bible:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH120.html

Quote
The Bible contains anachronisms. Details attributed to one era actually apply to a much later era. For example, camels, mentioned in Genesis 24:10, were not widely used until after 1000 B.C.E.

The Exodus, which should have been a major event, does not appear in Egyptian records. There are no traces in the Sinai that one would expect from forty years of wandering of more than half a million people. And other archaeological evidence contradicts it, showing instead that the Hebrews were a native people.

There is no evidence that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were nearly as powerful as the Bible indicates; they may not have existed at all.

Date: 2006/06/24 08:41:00, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,12:31)
Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it.

Try this book:
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts --
by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein
http://www.amazon.com/gp....=283155
https://www.eisenbrauns.com/ECOM/_1U10V7ZOA.HTM

Quote
In "The Bible Unearthed," Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman display a rare talent among scholars--the ability to make specialized research accessible to a general audience. In this book the authors reveal how recent archaeological research forces us to reconsider the historical account woven into the Hebrew Bible. Among the conclusions they draw are:

1) The tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are largely legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. This is seen in anachronisms such as the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time, in many of the stories.

2) There is good reason to believe that the Exodus never happened. Had migrants to the number of even a small fraction of the 600,000 claimed in the Bible truly sojourned in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years, archaeological evidence of their passage would be abundant. In fact, there are no traces of any signifant group living in the Sinai at the supposed time of the Exodus.

3) The Israelite "conquest" of Canaan, such as there was, was far from the military invasion of the books of Joshua and Judges. Many of the cities described as being conquered and destroyed did not even exist at the time, while those that did were small, unfortified villages, with no walls to be brought down, by blowing trumpets or otherwise.

4) While there is evidence that a historical David existed, and founded some sort of ruling dynasty known by his name, there is good reason to believe that he did not rule over the powerful united monarchy described in II Samuel. One reason for doubt: Jerusalem, portrayed as the great capital of a prosperous nation, was during the time of David little more than a village.

5) Neither Israel nor Judah emerged as organized kingdoms until significantly after the supposed period of the united monarchy. Israel does not appear as a recognizable kingdom until the time of the Omrides of the 9th century BCE, while Judah does not appear as such until the late 8th century BCE, at the time of kings Ahaz and Hezekiah.

Along with their revision of the biblical account of history, Finkelstein and Silberman attempt to explain the origins of the Hebrew Bible, suggesting that the composition of much of the Bible can be tied to the religious agenda of King Josiah of Judah during the late 7th century BCE. While the origins of the Bible will never be known with certainty--there simply isn't enough evidence--Finkelstein and Silberman definitely provide a plausible interpretation.

The authors, as I noted above, do a superb job of making their work understandable to non-specialists; since even college history majors often don't study the ancient Near East, they take care to include sufficient background information for the reader to understand the context of their account. Anyone with an interest in the subject will find "The Bible Unearthed" to be fascinating reading. And anyone who thinks the Bible is an accurate history book should definitely read it.

Date: 2006/06/24 09:51:40, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,14:33)
Norm...
Quote
Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt. Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?
Norm, The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 ta

Dave, you're trying to move the goal posts again. You said that "The Bible is the oldest, most reliable history book ever." Now you're only saying it's only the first few chapters of Genesis that are older, something you can't prove.

A book is a book, not it's first few paragraphs. If your book mentions a people with another book then your book cannot be older than their book, that's logic.

Can you prove that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are much older than the creation myths of ancient Sumer? In order for it to be true, Hebrew would have to be the oldest language and it is not. The oldest story is logically the earliest story dated in the earliest language.

Date: 2006/06/24 10:06:08, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,14:48)
...you still fail to give me even ONE archaeological find that contradicts a Biblical statement.

You're blind.

What about the anachronism evidence that the tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. One anachronisms is the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time.

How does that not contradict your biblical story?

Date: 2006/06/24 10:20:52, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,14:48)
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 tablets, the first two being the oldest documents ever written. Go read my essay on page 82, then we can argue intelligently.

So, in addition to creating a completely bogus geology to support the flood, it appears you now have a bogus creationist archeology.

Last I heard the Epic of Gilgamesh was probably the oldest written story ever found. It is not the oldest example of language however and it most probably is not the first story -- just the first we've found. It comes from ancient Sumeria, originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE).

It's not the first chapers of Genesis -- but it does mention a flood and a few Bible-like tidbits. This only proves that the Bible's authors plagerized parts of their very different story.

Date: 2006/06/24 16:28:27, Link 152.228.2.107

Author: normdoering

Quote (ericmurphy @ June 24 2006,19:32)
... he's not lying. In his universe, we actually haven't given him evidence, because he can't see it. He is simply constitutionally incapable of seeing things that contradict his worldview.

You mean that afdave is like the missionary in the movie Erik the Viking?

Date: 2006/06/25 03:23:40, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 25 2006,07:19)
Norm...
Quote
What about the anachronism evidence that the tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. One anachronisms is the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time.
You have old info. People used to think writing was not invented until after Moses. Do you think that too? There are no anachronisms that I am aware of. 20th century archaeology has refuted those ideas.

You are like the missionary in Erik the Viking!

Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that. Moses was in Egypt and Egypt is still full of old writing and we know that writing evolved from earlier non-Egyptian writing. It's part of your delusion, Dave, that you would throw that lame straw man around.

Good lord, Dave -- I even linked The Egyptian Book of the Dead which probably reflects writing and religious belief older than Moses. This a measure of how little attention you are paying to what is being said.

http://www.touregypt.net/bkofdead.htm

My info isn't that old. "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts" by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein was published in 2001. So, that's 21st century archaeology, not:

Quote
20th century archaeology has refuted those ideas.

If you are unaware of anachronisms:

Quote
There are no anachronisms that I am aware of.

It is because you are not paying attention.

The use of camels anachronisms is from Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein:

Quote
The tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are largely legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. This is seen in anachronisms such as the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time, in many of the stories.

Dave, people here are watching you stumple around blindly in our information universe. We're all seeing things you can't see.

Date: 2006/06/25 03:58:22, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (afdave @ June 25 2006,08:33)
Norm...
Quote
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that.
Oh really, now! How about Astruc and Wellhausen ... you know ... the guys who came up with the Documentary Hypothesis? They based their whole theory on the idea that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write. So they decided that the Pentateuch was just oral tradition which was eventually written down during the kingdom years of Israel.

Come on, Norm. You should know this stuff. But I'm glad to see that you at least have discarded that fairy tale. Believe it or not, some liberal seminaries still teach the Documentary Hypothesis. And I would bet that some here still beleive it.

I don't know Astruc and Wellhausen but saying that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write doesn't mean that writing did not exist yet! There are illiterate people in the world today -- does that prove writing doesn't exist today?

Dave, your logical abilities are pathetic. You're brain damaged.

Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein also think the Bible was mostly written later, with much of the Bible tied to the religious agenda of King Josiah of Judah during the late 7th century BCE. That doesn't mean writing didn't exist. They used some old myths, but shaped them to their "religious" and political needs. (In other words, they lied in order to manipulate people.)

Like the missionary in Erik the Viking you're not able to see the rest of the world with its different religions, different writings and histories.

The origins of the Bible will never be known with certainty--there simply isn't enough evidence to say anything for certain--Finkelstein and Silberman definitely provide a plausible interpretation. You, Dave, do not.

Date: 2006/06/25 07:11:13, Link 152.228.2.148

Author: normdoering

Quote (normdoering @ June 25 2006,08:58)

Quote (afdave @ June 25 2006,08:33)
Norm...
Quote
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that.
Oh really, now! How about Astruc and Wellhausen ... you know ... the guys who came up with the Documentary Hypothesis? They based their whole theory on the idea that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write. So they decided that the Pentateuch was just oral tradition which was eventually written down during the kingdom years of Israel.

Come on, Norm. You should know this stuff. But I'm glad to see that you at least have discarded that fairy tale. Believe it or not, some liberal seminaries still teach the Documentary Hypothesis. And I would bet that some here still beleive it.

Okay, there is a fundy belief that Genesis was originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, before the Epic of Gilgamesh. It was proposed by Percy J. Wiseman in his 1936 book, "New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis". It's out-of-print currently, so finding out what exactly they're talking about isn't going to be easy.

There's a big problem with this idea, cuneiform is Sumerian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script
http://www.usc.edu/dept....m.shtml

And the Sumerians were polytheists, not monotheists:
http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html

Quote
Nammu is the Goddess of the watery abyss, the primeval sea. She may be the earliest of deities within Sumerian cosmology as she gave birth to heaven and earth. (Kramer 1961 p. 39) She is elsewhere described both as the mother of all the gods and as the wife of An. (Kramer 1961 p. 114) She is Enki's mother. She prompts him to create servants for the gods and is then directed by him on how, with the help of Nimmah/Ninhursag to create man. (Kramer 1963 p. 150; Kramer 1961 p. 70)

http://www.crystalinks.com/sumereligion.html

There are possibly such clay tablets in which a polytheistic account has some parallel to Genesis -- religions do mix their myths up a lot in the ancient times (even today, New Agers think they're Christans and use astrology and practice Buddhist mediation).

What should be impossible is a monotheistic account of creation in Sumerian. If that were true it would be a big find (a few parallels are to be expected) and I can't find anything about such tablets on reputable archeology sites, even Christian ones:
http://www.archaeological.org/
http://www.faithsearch.org/news/recent.htm
http://www.athenapub.com/archnew2.htm

Date: 2006/06/26 11:55:59, Link 152.228.2.160

Author: normdoering

Quote (deadman_932 @ June 26 2006,15:05)
No, Dave, despite your shrill screams of me defaming your "Daddy" I didn't conjure up any of the things you imagine.

If it did happen, Dave, then it should be easy for you to prove. Go back and link the posts where you found what you claim deadman said and quote him directly -- then we can all check and see who is right.

I don't believe the line about picking cotton -- that's what American blacks did. Brazil had in, what, the 40s and 50s?, other argricultural products dominating export I think. Not that they didn't grow cotton, but that it's not something that would be first to pop into deadman's mind unless they
were thinking of American blacks or knew something I didn't.

In Brazil the first thing that would pop into my mind would be sugar cane.

I want to know if lines like "...while my dad sat on his veranda sipping tequila and enjoying the scenic views while beautiful native women fanned him." is afdave's invention or what deadmen actually said.

Date: 2006/06/26 11:59:24, Link 152.228.2.160

Author: normdoering

afdave wrote:

Quote
One guy didn't even know who Jean Astr