Why is evolution so controversial?

Yes, a procedure is a method. If you're questioning your procedures then you are doing methodology.

Yes, if epigenetic modification completely switched off a gene throughout a gene pool for a million years, one might well expect the gene to be turned into garbage by mutation and drift. However, in order for your argument to work you would need to find a case where the former has happened and the latter has not. So far, your argument seems to be based on imagining that this happens --- though two paragraphs up you professed yourself "a firm believer in empirical evidence".

quote:

---

And there is a huge amount of evidence out there that you are ignoring--evidence which disproves the beliefs in a young earth and a recent origin for modern humans.

---

My finding is that every time you speculate about a phenomena (particulars of evolution), there is always a alternate or more complete explanation. It is the global view, of all evidence for evolution, that will show evolution not only incomplete but incongruent.

quote:

---

Yes, a procedure is a method. If you're questioning your procedures then you are doing methodology.

---

Would that include sfs's objection to Hawks?

I see no reason why Darwin, if he were alive today and was aware of all the current research, would disagree with the mechanisms of epigenetics that science has discovered. He would explain them just as you have, as the consequence of DNA methylation and histone ubiquitination. It would be vulnerable to genetic drift just like the other 80% or so of the genome that does not have selectable function.

There's always an alternate explanation for everything, often a very stupid one. But the thing is that evolution explains a vast variety of phenomena at a single stroke, whereas the attempts to argue it away, besides often being very stupid, are piecemeal and ad hoc, a collection of ifs and buts with no common factor except what they wish to deny.It's like a defense attorney saying: "Well, my client bought a gun two days before the crime because he wanted to shoot the raccoons in his yard; and he was seen running from the scene of the crime because he suddenly decided to take up jogging, and he had the victim's blood on his shoes because last time they met the victim had a violent nosebleed, and he had all the victim's valuables in a sack in his garage because the victim gave them to him to pay off a gambling debt, and when he told the witnesses "I'm going to kill that bastard", this is the sort of intemperate language we all use from time to time, and he was absent from work the day of the crime because he had a nasty cold that cleared up very suddenly, and the confession he gave when he was arrested was because the police unduly pressured him, and the fingerprints found on the bullet, well, someone must have broken into his house and stole some of his ammunition, and ..." ... and so on. The prosecution has a global view of the evidence, the defense has many particular views.It's the same with evolution, only magnified a thousand times. The evolutionists have a global view, the deniers have a disparate collection of excuses. Well, it hasn't yet --- and as you don't seem to have taken a global view, you have no reason to expect that it would.

I don't know and I don't care.

In this thread, all you have shown is that you don't fully understand the science. For example, you failed to understand that a 1,000 base indel is counted as a single mutation, not as 1,000 individual mutations. You also assume that populations always increase in number at a set rate. There is absolutely no science to back this up.In other words, I would suggest some introductory jousting lessons before you go tilting at windmills, Don Quixote.

The evidence produced by science that shows an old earth and modern humans originating from earlier forms some 160,000-200,000 years ago fills multiple floors of major libraries as well as hundreds of museums and other similar facilities.If you have evidence that contradicts this it would be nice if you would present it. And at the same time you present it to various peer-reviewed journals, please consider presenting it here as well.But be aware that you have to overturn multiple fields of science, and evidence accumulated over several hundred years, so you better make it good. (And check the various PRATT lists for those arguments that have already been refuted.)

Good post...

quote:

---

It would be vulnerable to genetic drift just like the other 80% or so of the genome that does not have selectable function.

---

No, The tagged gene segment is what genetics has labeled highly conserved. The exact generational transfer mechanism is still unknown. What is sure is that the epigenetic transfer mechanism is far more complicated than the information it transfers. This involves a separate transfer mechanism in chromatin. See some speculation here: How is epigenetic information maintained through DNA replication? | Epigenetics & Chromatin | Full TextWhere would you fit this into the evolution paradigm? Let me try to fit it in1. Genetic Drift.. No, gene segments are highly conserved.2. Gene Flow No, allele recombination is not a primary mechanism for epigenetic inhearatence.3. MutationsNo, tags are not initiated by genetic mutation.4. Natural Selection No, natural selection does not modify the tags.Where do you place it?Edited by zaius137, : No reason given.Edited by zaius137, : No reason given.Edited by zaius137, : No reason given.Edited by zaius137, : No reason given.

quote:

---

The evidence produced by science that shows an old earth and modern humans originating from earlier forms some 160,000-200,000 years ago fills multiple floors of major libraries as well as hundreds of museums and other similar facilities.

---

Creationists would label all of those earlier hominids apes. I already argued that examination of the human genome shows it is young. John Hawks says that Neanderthals were closer to humans than modern humans today, this drags along all the other so called lines of homo that went extinct. All human.

quote:

---

If you have evidence that contradicts this it would be nice if you would present it. And at the same time you present it to various peer-reviewed journals, please consider presenting it here as well.

---

I have done just that

quote:

---

But be aware that you have to overturn multiple fields of science, and evidence accumulated over several hundred years, so you better make it good. (And check the various PRATT lists for those arguments that have already been refuted.)

---

The evidence is evidence not the interpretation of it. I do not want to overturn science (I am the one using it here to show evolution is wrong). I do not have to overturn evolution because science is overturning it.

quote:

---

In this thread, all you have shown is that you don't fully understand the science. For example, you failed to understand that a 1,000 base indel is counted as a single mutation, not as 1,000 individual mutations. You also assume that populations always increase in number at a set rate. There is absolutely no science to back this up.
In other words, I would suggest some introductory jousting lessons before you go tilting at windmills, Don Quixote.

---

A complete misrepresentation of my posts. I never claimed any of this.

So would scientists, because they are apes. And so are humans.Humans are apes.

Of course you didn't claim, yourself, that you don't understand this stuff. It is apparent from what you write, to anyone who does understand this stuff, that you do not understand this stuff.A: Hey man, 2 + 2 = 5
B: No, that's wrong. You don't understand math.
A: That's a misrepresentation. I never claimed that I don't understand math.Huh?