Creation vs. Evolution

[Thalassamania]

So by that logic, is a car a lemon if if has one repair issue? I'm curious about this "scorched earth" Christianity you believe in where if any part turns out to be in err the entire thing is wrong.

Hey, don't interfere with the one dang thing we agree on.

 

[Sas]

On your first point...clearly there are adaptations in humans which give them advantages in their respective environments. Are you denying those exist? If I isolate the gene for blond hair I can't determine that they're caucasion? I think forensics would disagree with you.

Oh dear. You've really shown your ignorance about genetics now.

Can't be bothered retyping what was mentioned many posts ago but here you are:
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/3551953-post4287.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/3552164-post4288.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/3552451-post4289.html

 

[Warthaug]

Clearly a colloquialism much as it was when I watched the morning weather report, but that clearly eludes you as it did the early church.

Clearly it is not. The bible clearly states that the earth is immobile:

From Psalm 93:1
The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength.
The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.

Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5 and 1 Chronicles 16:30 makes the exact same statement that I underlined.

Furthermore, the bible pretty clearly states that the sun moves around the earth.

From Ecclesiastes 1:5
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.

That geocentrism was a definitive belief of the church, based on their interpretation of genesis, for over 1600 years, is a matter of historical fact. It was not "colloquialism"; Galileo was persecuted for his claim that Jupiter was orbited by moons. Copernicus delayed publishing his works out of fear of the churches response, knowing full well he could be murdered for his claims.

...and Popes have never been wrong.

I know you think you're being funny, but according to Catholic dogma, the pope cannot be wrong as he is the voice of god on earth. Its called Papal infallibility, and its been Catholic dogma for a very, very long time.

The point is unless it becomes an official church position, what Pope XXX says has little bearing on this discussion.

Actually, anything published as an encyclical becomes church policy. Two popes have published papal encyclicals on evolution, both of which I quoted. In doing so they made their stance on evolution de facto dogma of the catholic faith.

The kind of evolution the Pope is clearly referring too is theistic at best.

Hardly. If you'd bother to read the encyclical, you'd have seen it started off with the following statement:

"I am delighted with the first theme which you have chosen: the origin of life and evolution—an essential theme of lively interest to the Church, since Revelation contains some of its own teachings concerning the nature and origins of man. How should the conclusions reached by the diverse scientific disciplines be brought together with those contained in the message of Revelation?"

Have you read a confirmation study guide lately? The Church is very clear about its "must" subscribe to list and interpretation of Genesis wasn't one of the items on that list. Therefore it falls under the catagory that each believer has the capacity to make up their minds about. Unless all Catholics are robots, then that belief can range from literalism to evolution.

Given your statements so far, I think its safe to assume your knowledge of Catholicism is about as good as your knowledge of evolution, so we can safely ignore what you wrote above.

Long story short - papal encyclicals define church dogma. All your hand waving doesn't change that.

Your first link clearly states 3rd world countries (ie more than 2/3 of the world's population) are almost unaccounted for. So it did nothing for your argument.

Actually, it clearly showed that your claim - that creationists are the majority of Christians - is false; at least in countries where we can collect the stats.

Your second link was unaccessible.

Works for me: Clergy Letter Project Background

Yes...figures lie and liars figure. I have my first hand knowledge of hundreds of churches across the US along with laisons in several poor countries throughout the world.

So? Your limited personal sphere hardly described the whole of the planet. Face facts - what stats that are available fly in the face of your claim. The single largest Christian domination, which contains more than 50% of all Christians (that would be catholosism) officially accepts evolution. As do the majority of the large churches out there - Church of England, Anglicans, among others.

Bryan

 

[Warthaug]

Are you saying the pouches developed simulaneously? What are the odds on that? and even if that were the case,

Could be simultaneous, or it could be separated by tens of millions of years. So long as species with the "proto-pouch" were not extinct, the possibility of diverging to alternate pouches would remain.

From a statistical point of view, the process is highly likely. Divergent evolution is what forms most traits...

is this pouchless marsupial the most recent relative of the wombat?

Probably not, given that marsipials have been around for at least 125 million years. Given that koalas also have a backwards pouch, its quite likely that the pouchless ancestor was from before koalas and wombats diverged.

clearly we can't tell the direction of a pouch by a fossil but we can ascertain whether it had a pouch or not?

The oldest confirmed marsupial had an impression of its skin fossilized, which is how we know it had a pouch. That said, marsipials can probably be ID'd by characteristics of their skeleton. I'm no expert, but I'd be willing to bet they have skeletal differences not seen in placental mammals - they're pretty odd. Hell, they've got 2 vagina's on the gals, and a 'Y' shaped penis on the males.

So did the distant cousin of the wombat dig first, or after, the pouch was rotated?

Who knows? Digging isn't the only reason you'd want a backwards facing pouch. If you wanted to run fast, and not snag things, would be another.

What has that got to do with Jesus not endorsing it as you claimed?

But he did endorse it. You were the one who tried to rationalize it away by saying "it was only indentured servitude, so it doesn't count". I simply pointed out how wrong that statement is.

The ramifications for dropping out of the workforce, by nature, FORCE us to go to work to receive food, clothing, shelter.

There are several thousands of homeless who live in my neighborhood who put the lie to that. Between begging, charities and dumpster diving they get buy.

However, I knew you'd cling to the letter of the law on this. Yes its not slavery, but metaphorically speaking, it can be.

LOL, I've worked some horrible jobs over the years, and yet none of them come close to the horrors of slavery. Its strange though, that a "compassionate christian" like yourself would so readily demean the true horrors of slavery by comparing it to work.

Bryan

 

[Warthaug]

So where's the endorsement? Christ acknowledged it existed and spoke to Christian Slaves on how they should act. That is far from an endorsement.

By telling slaves how to act he was endorsing it. If he thought it was wrong he should have given a sermon to the enslavers, about how slavery was evil.

Instead, he told the slaves to obey their masters. Its pretty clearly an endorsement. Silence would have been less damning.

On your first point...clearly there are adaptations in humans which give them advantages in their respective environments.

Name 1. I know that you're going to jump on the skin colour thing, but forget it - thats a sexually selected trait and offers no advantage.

Are you denying those exist?

I'm challenging you to name one. Decades of genetic research have yet to find one.

If I isolate the gene for blond hair I can't determine that they're caucasion? I think forensics would disagree with you.

Actually, the forensic guys would disagree with you most strongly. We cannot tell a persons race from their DNA, you've been watching too much CSI. As for hair colour, you picked on a horrible example. Hair colour is determined by a multitude of genes, not one. Like all human traits, gene flow has spread pretty much every hair allele across the world. And many of the hair colourations - blond & red for example - are recessive. What this means is that many of the "blond" and "red" genes are common in some populations, but blond/red hair is rarely seen, due to the presence of dominant genes.

Just as an example, the same allele that causes redhedidness in the Irish is actually far more commonly found in people from the middle east. But the black hair alleles are dominant, and extremely common, hence why red hair is rare in the middle east - but its those genes which probably gave Mohamed (of Koranic fame, not the boxer) his red hair...

Secondly - This just doesn't pass the common sense smell factor. While I agree that in mixed cultures these lines are certainly blurred one only needs to see some isolated tribes in South America and Africa to know this is false.

Biology rarely follows common sense. Africa is a horrible example; the degree of gene flow is greater in Africa than in nearly any other place on earth. Subsequent waves of humans leaving Africa carried many traits to the populations where they are now seen. As for places like the Americas or Polynesian, while their natives have been separated from Eurasian gene flow for a while, they haven't been separated long enough to develop any degree of novel genes. And just like in Europe/Asia/Africa, interbreeding within their respective regions diluted out the few novel genes they formed.

I know you won't bother looking, but HapMap is a collection of the 6 million-ish human alleles identified to date. And despite intensive investigation, not one of those has been identified as belonging to a single "race".

Which is why science used it as a lure to kids for 70 years in text books. Go sell your correction to anyone who will buy it. If the correction were authentic, it wouldn't have been written into 1970's high school science books.

Wow, good comeback. Some imaginary textbook may or maynot have an error, therefore all of science must be wrong.

So I challenge you - name one 1970's science book that had the incorrect skull on brontosaurus, or claimed it was a separate genus from apatosaurus. Don't forget - while brotosaurus was incorrectly ID'd as a new genus, it is a distinct species within the apatosaurus genus. It wasn't imaginary, just misclassified.

Yes ostracize anyone in the science community who disagrees with you. Very sound indeed.

Who's been ostracized? The people who've published the papers that the antiwarming front jumps on as proof the earth isn't warming are still publishing, and publishing quite successfully. Unless, having a successful career, now qualifies as "ostracizing"...


Bryan

 

[coachpill]

The citrate-utilizing strain arose independently of those other mutations, and both metabolizes ribose and repairs DNA normally.

Mechanisms Causing Rapid and Parallel Losses of Ribose Catabolism in Evolving Populations of Escherichia coli B -- Cooper et al. 183 (9): 2834 -- The Journal of Bacteriology

The above stated that all 12 lines experienced various degrees of catabolic function decrease and that all 12 lines lost the ability to catabolize D-ribose. That's where the comment came from.

 

[coachpill]

And I notice that you chose to ignore their several reports of strains with hugely increased fitness.

They were obviously more fit for that environment; that is not in question.

E. coli already possess the ability to utilize citrate so there was not the novel function introduced as proclaimed. I don't have access to the paper, but I hear tell that Lenski thinks that a different transporter may have been "co-opted" to be able to transport citrate as well. That would be a loss of specificity.

And again, if all evolution claimed was that organisms can adapt to their environments, then I don't think we'd have issues.

 

[ce4jesus]

My ticker is just fine thanks, wish we could say the same for the plaques that seem to clogging your thought processes.

Got that item yet? No? Well that's about what we all expected. You're a looser, your god's a looser.

What's a looser? I guess there's some things that elude you as well.

Josh McDowell holds no discernible credentials in any of the areas in which he professes expertise. He remains, however, one of the most widely-believed liars for the Christian pantheon in contemporary times. These archives debunk his religious beliefs utterly.

Wow you linked an atheistic website with counter arguments to Josh. Did you find that all by yourself...I'm impressed.

 

[Sas]

What's a looser? I guess there's some things that elude you as well.

Wow you linked an atheistic website with counter arguments to Josh. Did you find that all by yourself...I'm impressed.

ce4jesus, why don't you address all the weaknesses Warthaug has found in your arguments? You seem to just start with diversionary posts as soon as someone posts a thoughtful and well-researched post that destroys all your arguments.

 

[nereas]

Yup, and that is called "sandbagging." Almost everyone here is good at that little trick.

If you are going to argue in favour of religion, I believe you should keep it brotherly.

And if you are going to argue in favour of science, I think you should keep it factual.

Otherwise there is no winner except base hypocracy.