[dead one]

Originally Posted by Zombrex

Once again your lack of understanding of this subject is truly staggering.

The subject,itself, is not true and it isn't universal. No one fully understand it. Your dogmatic interpretations aren't enough. What makes you to think that i will believe what you have believed and that is exact of understanding of subject, sweetheart.

[Zombrex]

Originally Posted by dead one

The subject,itself, is not true and it isn't universal. No one fully understand it.

Mutations are well understood. Certainly understood well enough that everything you just said about them is demonstratably wrong.

What is the point if you are just going to make stuff up?

[Zombrex]

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

An allegation, not a fact.

Nope, a fact. And here is the wonderful thing. If you don't believe me you can actually go off and do the research yourself and demonstrate, if only to yourself, that it is a fact. All the research and theories are open.

Of course you won't do that, and frankly I don't blame you I'm not going to do it either. But the point is you could. Despite your silly notions of science as a enclosed cabal of secret societies it is in fact one of the most, if not the most, open ventures humans have ever partaken in. It requires openness, again one of the reasons Creationists hate it so much because they cannot get other scientists to verify their claims.

[dead one]

Originally Posted by Zombrex

Mutations are well understood. Certainly understood well enough that everything you just said about them is demonstratably wrong.

What is the point if you are just going to make stuff up?

Are you mutation and did mutation tell you that they are well understood. Even if they are then can't produce real evolutionary change.

[PDN]

Originally Posted by dead one

Are you mutation and did mutation tell you that they are well understood.

STOP TROLLING. This thread gets bizarre enough without this kind of nonsense. Please consider this your one and only verbal warning.

[shizz]

Originally Posted by dead one

You're not giving me answer either. Mutation are offcoure real, I didn't deny them but real question Can mutation produce real evolutionary changes. Remember Frog to Shakespeare

I did give you an answer!? The mutations are evolutionary changes. They accumulate over time by benefiting the organism. Evolution does not say that a frog can turn into Shakespeare that is just ridiculous and verify's how little you understand about evolution. Listen to the people in here that know a lot more about it than me.

[wolfsbane]

Originally Posted by Cossax

There is no dispute. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. All there is is intellectual dishonesty and gullible people like you who'll believe them and ignore evidence because it fits in with your worldview.

More intellectual dishonesty on your behalf. One of us is blinded by Satan.

********************************************************************
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today'.

Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000.

[wolfsbane]

Originally Posted by Zombrex

Nope, a fact. And here is the wonderful thing. If you don't believe me you can actually go off and do the research yourself and demonstrate, if only to yourself, that it is a fact. All the research and theories are open.

Of course you won't do that, and frankly I don't blame you I'm not going to do it either. But the point is you could. Despite your silly notions of science as a enclosed cabal of secret societies it is in fact one of the most, if not the most, open ventures humans have ever partaken in. It requires openness, again one of the reasons Creationists hate it so much because they cannot get other scientists to verify their claims.

Many scientists have done the research and confirm my view. So it comes back to a dispute among scientists about the interpretation of evidence. What little research I can follow shows me nothing other than this.

One such bit of research I have done has shown the absence of impartiality among scientists, especially over things that matter to them personally. Your vision of happy scientists dancing at the crossroads of research is wishful thinking.

*******************************************************************
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today'.

Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000.

[Morbert]

I missed this earlier.

Originally Posted by Scientia Perceptum

Rather than try to quibble about what the author of the rebuttal does or does not believe now, I will focus on your remark, "he argues that, while the program does exhibit an increase in information, it does not comprehensively model a biological system". I would agree with this statement, as I am not claiming that the 'computer simulation of evolution' does not simulate an increase in information in the program, as it is designed by 'intelligent designers' that have made a program with the aim of 'increasing information'.

The claim of creationists is not that it is impossible to create a computer program that can 'increase information', but rather that "there is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organisms genetic code". Therefore, to state that this intelligently designed computer program does not "comprehensively model a biological system" is therefore in agreement with my understanding of the problem.

I do not agree, this intelligently designed program is 'supposed' to be a simulation of the Darwinian mechanisms, but since it is not a realistic simulation of biologically complex systems, it does not demonstrate that any new genetic information has been or can be added to living organisms.

This may be your belief, but it is not shared by some highly qualified people that have studied the program in greater detail than I would assume you have. "Genetic algorithms typically succeed because programmers incorporate problem-specific knowledge into the search algorithm. Various examples have been published in the literature. Avida , a program purported to demonstrate evolution, works by rewarding simpler versions of complex components. Dawkin’s “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL” simulation works by providing the distance to a target phrase. Ev, another program purported to demonstrate evolution, works by providing the distance to a target along with a biased genomic representation. Such algorithms do not demonstrate the abilities of undirected processes, but rather the powerful combination of human intelligence and brute force computing power. (P2 of pdf)

On the contrary, I think that it is highly relevant that we are not dealing with a 'strictly biological system' as this is the system that creationists are claiming that new genetic information is needed to be added to. The system being simulated by these intelligently designed computer programs are not 'simulating the complexity that is exhibited in biologically complex systems', such as a 'simple cell', and therefore they do not impact on the creationist claim.

I was unable to access your link as I did not have the ability to see your examples, but unless you wish to quote excerpts from them anyway which demonstrated that new genetic information was added to a biological system, the results would be irrelevant to the creationist claim anyway.

All of these intelligently designed computer simulations have the same basic flaw, in that they rely on the input of complexity before they even begin to 'simulate' anything.

"As with our prior work, we have shown that the search algorithm proposed as an example of the power of natural selection to generate information from scratch in fact demonstrates the abilities of humans to devise genetic algorithms that draw on existing information.... In order to demonstrate the abilities of natural selection, it would be necessary to avoid making any decisions in the development of the genetic algorithm that deliberately assist in finding the solution. Only a teleological process guided by some form of intelligence can function in this way. Insofar as simulations of evolution make use of prior knowledge, they are not simulations of Darwinian evolution in any meaningful sense." (P13 of pdf)

I am not sure that I do agree with this statement. I can see that information theory is perfectly consistent with complexity, as it appears that these intelligently designed computer programs do have something to tell us about the complexity of the cell, as they both seem to rely on the input of a 'code' to run the systems. The computer 'code' is written by the computer programmers but the DNA code seems to be more more complex and to exhibit a greater degree of efficiency that the computer code, perhaps signifying that the author of the DNA code is much more Intelligent that the computer code authors I am not convinced though that information theory is compatible with Darwinism. Are trying to suggest that an 'unguided' process can create either a computer program or a biologically complex system?

The above can be distilled into the following objections:

a) The scope of the program does not extend to living organisms.
b) The program was intelligently designed.

The first can be answered simply. While the programs do not comprehensively model living organisms, the consequences and behaviour of Darwinian mechanisms exhibited by the programs have been extended to living organisms, and in conjunction with experimental evidence, have affirmed the increase in information in living organisms via Darwinian mechanisms. This is evidenced by the papers which cite the program, and the resultant papers. In other words, the attempt by creationists to establish a principle of information theory which constrains the increase in biological information to intelligent processes is refuted by the program, and conjectured obstacles to the increase of information in living organisms have not been demonstrated.

The second objection arises from a misapplication of analogies. The program is intelligently designed. The rules are intelligently designed. The resultant code complexity is not. Similarly, a creationist could argue that the laws of physics are intelligently designed. They would be wrong, but more importantly, they would not be arguing against evolution, since plenty of people are theistic evolutionists. They might go further and say the first few bits of DNA had to be intelligently designed, but then the discussion is no longer about evolution, but instead about abiogenesis (and, like before, they would be incorrect).

As I had limited time when I made my last post, I did not want to go into any great detail on the paper itself, but I did notice some things about it that made it appear to be either wrong or irrelevant to the creationist claim that you seem to think that it demolishes.

In the opening paragraph he points us to a paper published in 1948 by Claude Shannon and gives us his definition of information. The problem is, creationist are not questioning this definition of Shannon information, but rather we are claiming that this is the wrong sort of information and that rather what should be being discussed is the type of prescriptive information found in cells. It may be useful to watch the whole program, but here is an excerpt from the program which describes the differences between the different types of information and demonstrates that the Shannon information that the paper you quoted used is irrelevant to the claim that creationists make about the information in living organisms.

The full video of the Progamming of life can be found here.

So I would say that though these intelligently designed computer programs are very interesting and may have some limited use, they do nothing to refute the creationist claim that "there is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organisms genetic code".

As you may be aware Michael Behe explored the papers published about actual biological systems in his book "The edge of evolution" and showed that the Darwinian mechanism is only capable of a few small steps, and that it is incapable of producing the vast amount of increase in biologically complex information that we see in organisms by purely naturalistic processes.

Dr. J. C. Sandford also demonstrated the that natural selection and mutations are only a downhill process in all real life examples that have been studied in his book " Genetic Entropy and the mystery of the genome".

The notion of "special" complexity is common among ID proponents. I am most familiar with the work of William Dembski when it comes to this line of argument. The demand for "specified" or "prescriptive" information complexity is thoroughly rejected, not only by the scientific community of molecular biologists, but also by information theorists. Dembski's, and to a lesser extent Behe's strategy is effectively to establish a giant straw-man, construct some consistent principles around the straw man, and present it in books, and notoriously ambiguous ID journals like the bio-complexity one you linked to. Ironically, they have never established such principles in the domain of biology.

[lmaopml]

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

*******************************************************************
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today'.

Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000.

While I'm not a Creationist, I like this quote Wolfe. Although I don't think people 'practice' evolution, I do believe that they are excited by learning more, discovering more - what we're made for.

I think many times that the real 'Scientists' actually don't really put too much thought into what 'Evolution' means in relation to theology, many are just caught up in exploration and new discovery, and don't really comment one way or the other - they simply are too caught up in re- examination and testing and theorising and field experiments and the lab and making sure all the evidence points to what is most apparent etc etc. etc. - and then re-evaluating and theorising etc. - it's an exciting job They're not the ones who are very vocal tbh.

I find more often than not that it's Atheists who seem to think that evolution is important insofar as their own lack of belief is concerned - and they aint all Scientists, many just read pop culture books, or are led to believe that Science and Faith are oceans apart mores the pity. I find these guys are the most vocal and perhaps they are vocal because they feel that Creationism is not Science? Thus driving the wedge that doesn't exist and I think both do an injustice to all the rest in between -

[HamletOrHecuba]

Originally Posted by lmaopml

While I'm not a Creationist, I like this quote Wolfe. Although I don't think people 'practice' evolution, I do believe that they are excited by learning more, discovering more - what we're made for.

Indeed they do people do practice evolution, "Social Darwinism" quickly became the undeclared ideology of the British Empire because the logical outcome of belief in evolution already fitted in with its practice, the evil parts of the NSADP government in Germany during the 30s and 40s also came from evolutionism- and need I mention Marxism which was very open about its inspiration from Darwin and drew its whole ethics from a belief in continual evolution? Now most people- thank God!- do not take their belief in evolution to its logical conclusions, just as most Christians fail to take their beliefs to their logical conclusion- but there is no denying that a whole string of conclusions flow from believing in evolution.

[Corkfeen]

Originally Posted by HamletOrHecuba

Indeed they do people do practice evolution, "Social Darwinism" quickly became the undeclared ideology of the British Empire because the logical outcome of belief in evolution already fitted in with its practice, the evil parts of the NSADP government in Germany during the 30s and 40s also came from evolutionism- and need I mention Marxism which was very open about its inspiration from Darwin and drew its whole ethics from a belief in continual evolution? Now most people- thank God!- do not take their belief in evolution to its logical conclusions, just as most Christians fail to take their beliefs to their logical conclusion- but there is no denying that a whole string of conclusions flow from believing in evolution.

It's not a logical conclusion and to claim it is, is silly. They used biological science to dictate social structures which automatically makes it illogical. It was a methodology which individuals used to make prejudices (racism, homophobia, anti-semitism etc) acceptable. But these are social issues so it would make no sense to apply a biological theory to it.

[wolfsbane]

This inter-evolutionist spat makes informative and entertaining reading:

The descent of Edward Wilson
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ma...rigin-species/





******************************************************************
‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today'.

Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000.

[Zombrex]

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

Many scientists have done the research and confirm my view.

And may more have done the research and not confirmed your view. So surely the point here is to do the research yourself and see what is actually real. Or more specifically, that you can do that even if you actually couldn't be bothered.

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

So it comes back to a dispute among scientists about the interpretation of evidence.

No it doesn't. You don't need to listen to any scientists interpretation of the evidence. You can do the science yourself, and you will either get the predicted result or you won't. No interpretation necessary.

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

What little research I can follow shows me nothing other than this.

Have you carried out any of the experiments on radio carbon dating yourself?

Originally Posted by wolfsbane

One such bit of research I have done has shown the absence of impartiality among scientists, especially over things that matter to them personally. Your vision of happy scientists dancing at the crossroads of research is wishful thinking.

The impartiality of scientists is irrelevant. You will either get the same results as the other papers claim you should or you won't. If you are honest about setting up the experiments as the papers describe and you don't get the predicted results you will most definately have something to discuss with the other scientists, the first question would be "Hey, your results aren't repeatable, what's up with that?"

[Zombrex]

Originally Posted by HamletOrHecuba

but there is no denying that a whole string of conclusions flow from believing in evolution.

Can you actually point out any of those conclusions and then refer back to the part of Darwinian theory that supports them?

(I ask because social Darwinism is actually completely contradictory to theory of evolution, since it attempts to predict future fitness and manipulate the environment to achieve this outcome, which is in mild terms putting the horse before the cart so to speak).