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Author | Topic: questions evolutionists can't or won't answer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bart007 Inactive Member |
quote: No, I do not think a person is bad, mentally deficient, inept, because they believe in evolution, nor am I compelled to villify anyone simply because they hold to a materialist worldview. I fully respect honest discussion and opinions about the topic and the related science we've chosen to debate. But should anyone be dishonest about or ignore the science presented to them as a whole; engage in sophistical arguments; and resort to ridicule, browbeating and insults, then, I do not respect them at all, regardless of what side of the debate they are on.
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wj Inactive Member |
What a very strange posting this is by Bart.
quote: So far so good.
quote: Not a lot of evidence to offer in support of this statement.
quote: Try as I might, I have not found a reference to Glenn R. Morton elsewhere on this thread. And certainly Quetzal doesn't refer to Morton in his message.
quote: Yes he does, in http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/cambevol.htmPity Bart didn't provide a link to the Morton webarticle which he seems to be referring to and disputing. quote: Perhaps Bart should have done his homework better. The page is at University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontotology. It looks to be quite official. Ben Waggoner appears to have been a PhD student at UC and was granted his doctorate in integrative biology by UC in 1998. He also has been multiply published in the field of invertebrate palaeontology. See http://faculty.uca.edu/~benw/benwcv.htm So, Bart's representation of Waggoner, his status as a student and of the webpage appears to be inaccurate.
quote: It's rather difficult to make a judgement if Bart doesn't give us what Morton says to allow a comparison.
[quote] BTW, Glenn readily admits that the experts, the scientists who have obtained, examined, discussed and published in their peer reviewed journals, the scientific data of on Cambrian Phyla, that 32 of 33 Linnean classifications of Phyla of extant metazoans are found in the Cambrian explosion. He amazingly chooses to ignore them and even his primary source, Ben Waggoner, who ultimately agrees with the Paleontologists. [/qoute] Where is the Morton text to allow comparison?
quote: Source?
quote: Obviously Morton is hiding the facts by providing numerous references in his webarticle, unlike Bart.
quote: Who can blame them for trying to give an accurate summary of the current scientific position? Perhaps they are at fault for not providing equal time for the myriad of inconsistent, incompatible, evidence-free myths provided by various religious groups?
quote: Not unexpected behaviour of creationists; shooting the messenger. Are there any peer-reviewed published scientific papers which refute the PBS statements? I think we can see which side is rabid and dogmatic.
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Quetzal Member (Idle past 5872 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
You can start by explaining how what I posted constitutes "special pleading". Also, the chart I used came from Mayr, not Morton (although Morton's site provided the Porifera reference). I'm sure he'd be pleased you consider his works "great". IMO, they're pretty good, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "great".
quote: Yeah, I've seen the figure before (I think, Wilson "Diversity of Life") concerning the total number of phyla that ever existed - including proctists, archea, bacteria, etc - but not limited to the Cambrian. The most recently discovered phylum was found less than ten years ago (the Gnathostimulida), and there is absolutely no evidence it existed in the Cambrian. I've also seen as few as 22, of which only a dozen or so appear in the Cambrian. Depends on the taxonomist. However, you have some significant flaws in your diatribe, err, argument. For example, your assertion "84 phyla appeared in the Vendian/Cambrian" is incorrect (to say the least), as it completely ignores the emergence of terrestrial plants (for example) containing 12 phyla (depending on your classification scheme) all on their own - and which didn't appear until the Ordovician or later. Or phylum Uniramia which also evolved on land sometime either in the late Cambrian or early Ordovician - after the "explosion" was long over (of course, whether you consider Uniramia, Crustacea, and Chelicerata as phyla or superclass, and Arthropoda as phylum or superphylum depends on your cladistics teacher). Remember, phylum refers to body plan - it doesn't say ANYTHING about whether or not the organism that first developed the plan had an ancestor with a different plan.
quote: You're so right. It's terrible when those evilutionists invent stuff like control genes. Homeobox genes in the ribbonworm Lineus sanguineus: Evolutionary implications. You'll really like this next one - it has a much better table showing when various phyla first appear than Morton or Futuyma (fig. 3), and a really neat table showing relative numbers of Hox genes in existing phyla and the branch nodes (fig. 6): Fossils, molecules and embryos: new perspectives on the Cambrian explosion. In fact, I like this one so much I'm going to quote their conclusion:
quote:
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derwood Member (Idle past 1876 days) Posts: 1457 Joined: |
Hmmm...
Note the creationist buzzwords: dogmatic rapid anti-creationist browbeat Wow, bart.... Looks like the jury came back....
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derwood Member (Idle past 1876 days) Posts: 1457 Joined: |
quote: Interesting stance, considering what you have written thus far... So, what is your stance on plagiarism again?
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thestickman Inactive Member |
Ok, i'm new to this [i'm only 16] but if John Paul is a religious person, isn't the whole nature of his beliefs that they are based on faith rather than evidence? If he asks for scientific proof of evolution isn't it odd that he needs no proof for his religious beliefs, rather the opposite. He believes they are true then it is a unbelievers role to disprove them. 'Bottom line is the Theory of Evolution is a philosophy and should be discussed in that venue. That is until it can be objectively tested.', then shouldn't he do the same for religion? I know this is a hotly debated issue, the nature of burden of proof but it seems quite odd to me. Maybe i'm wrong, as i said i'm only new, but it seems to me that there are different criteria of proof for evolution and religion. As in, religion assumes there to be a God, while they then demand evolutionists treat evolution as a theory while they treat the presence of a God as a fact. Any feedback would be a help
cheers ryan
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Mammuthus Member (Idle past 6475 days) Posts: 3085 From: Munich, Germany Joined: |
quote: *********************++ Hi ryan,Welcome aboard. One of the main problems is that religion cannot be objectively tested. For example, what is the testable hypothesis of creation? How can it be falsified? How do you distinguish a natural phenomenon which we do not have an answer for yet from something that is divine? Which god created everything i.e. Vishnu? What created god? It goes on and on. A major problem with creationists is that they are almost universally uninformed about the scientific method and the tentative nature of science i.e. hypotheses, theories that adapt over time with increase in knowledge and data and fall back on faith based absolutes. My experience is that many also have never actually read anything about the theory of evolution much less abiogenesis. You will also find that many creationists on this board either willfully or out of ignorance claim that abiogenesis and evolution are the same i.e. origin of life versus origin of species etc etc.It is a debating tactic i.e. a strawman argument. You will find active discussion on most if not all the topics you are interested in by reading the exchanges in the various forums. I would suggest the Faith and Belief and Evolution forums to begin with. Best wishes,Mammuthus
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Hideyoshi Junior Member (Idle past 4212 days) Posts: 5 From: Kobe, Japan Joined: |
Forgive me for not using technical terms, but I wanted to answer the question of (how can life be created out of non-living things) that the original poster asked.
To answer that question, one would have to ask what living things are comprised of; and the answer boils down to proteins. Every living organism is a compilation of proteins that serve some sort of chemical function, be it to contract, to warm up, to produce spider's silk, or venom, to conduct electrical impulses, to burn carbohydrates and other food stuffs, whatever the function may be...they are proteins. Proteins are long chains of amino-acids, there are around 25 known amino-acids on the planet; the limit to how many types of amino-acids there can be is based largely on what kinds of chemical elements are in existence on the planet. All amino-acids are comprised of a Carboxyl group (COOH -Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen) and an Amino group (NH2, Nitrogen and Hydrogen); and when they link together in long chains they form the proteins. You can ask a biologist for the exact terminology, but in the interest of using layman's terms...proteins and amino-acids have predictable chemical reactions with one-another; which have nothing to do with conscious thought. So now we're down to the non-biological level, that is, chemicals which react with one-another because of valent electrons and other physical principles. The question can be asked, how does this non-biological situation suddenly become biological? (and indeed it was asked). Is there anything you can do to a mass of these non-biological materials (a chemical soup) that would make them arrange in a replicating fashion? For a long time, there was no answer, and everyone assumed that if it was possible at all, it must still be happening everywhere all the time. But it didn't, and life seems to spring only from other life. But geology has indicated that the Earth's atmosphere was not exactly the same, throughout its history. Indeed, early on, it was filled with mostly methane, nitrogen, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and various acids. There were no large quantities of oxygen, and there would have been no ozone layer to block out the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. So some scientists gathered together the various chemicals and substances thought to exist in the early Earth in a controlled environment, then irradiated the soup with ultra-violet radiation. While far from a climactic dawn of little green men; it did show one thing. It showed that due to the influence of ultra-violet radiation, several amino-acids were indeed formed and did group into long chains, forming several simple proteins. The quantities of the chemicals, and the duration of the radiation together were exponentially dwarfed by the duration and quantity of the same factors in the early Earth. The proteins and amino-acids are not, themselves, lifeforms...they are simply the mechanism by which useful in-organic foundations of organic processes came about. Given the size of the earth, quantity of the starting materials, duration of exposure, etc...a great many more reactions and interactions of chemical constructs and proteins would have progressed. But then you might ask, why doesn't this still happen all over the Earth today? The reason is that most of the ultra-violet radiation is blocked through our atmosphere today, by its composition. Several hundred million years ago, a much simpler lifeform than ourselves existed, whose somewhat rarer descendants are now known as cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are able to utilize the hydrogen from water to provide energy, and in the process they liberate a great deal of oxygen. The cyanobacteria multiplied in the shallow oceans and produced so much oxygen that it began cutting off the ultra-violet radiation streaming in through the atmosphere. In a way, the cyanobacteria caused a "point of no return" transition in the life on Earth. Before this early Paleozoic era, one could expect new forms to come into existence with quite different characteristics; after that era, life predominantly descended from the major Phyla that survived the transition. Whether you wish to define that as good or bad is up to speculation (more forms tended not to start from scratch at all anymore, yet those that did survive were able to thrive and multiply in ever varying forms referred to in this thread and elsewhere as the Cambrian explosion. If you wish to be particular about it and demand that experiments be done to show organic processes emerging from the inorganic soup; it is possible. All you have to do is find the funding to acquire 10 billion cubic meters of ocean water filled with methane, carbon dioxide, acids, etc, irradiate it all with ultra-violet radiation continuously for the next 1 million years and monitor all the billions and billions of molecules in the mix along the way. You could ask Jerry Falwell, he seems to be good at finding cash.
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John Inactive Member |
Hey,
Welcome. That's really a very good synopsis. Congrats. ------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com
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truthlover Member (Idle past 4060 days) Posts: 1548 From: Selmer, TN Joined: |
Gosh, that you could make a post like that be as interesting as that is phenomenal. That whole explanation was incredible, and the "point of view" or "reference frame" or whatever you call it, makes a real clear way of looking at the subject.
I was impressed.
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sidelined Member (Idle past 5908 days) Posts: 3435 From: Edmonton Alberta Canada Joined: |
Something has occured to me in thinking about the original post of this thread. We must be able to fully define the point at which we consider something as alive as opposed to inanimate before we can give a sufficient investigation into the process.Anybody here have an idea of how we can do this?
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roxrkool Member (Idle past 989 days) Posts: 1497 From: Nevada Joined: |
What a great post! I'm sorry I missed it the first time around.
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1467 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
We must be able to fully define the point at which we consider something as alive as opposed to inanimate before we can give a sufficient investigation into the process.Anybody here have an idea of how we can do this? I would suggest that those things that we call "alive" have these properties: 1) The ability to utilize energy and matter in the environment to construct/maintain itself and its functions (if any) 2) The ability to, through some process, make more of itself 3) Possession of a mechanism for heritable change I submit that this describes everything that we refer to as alive. (I don't consider viruses or prions alive as they meet only one of these criteria. Perhaps biologists disagree.)
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Mammuthus Member (Idle past 6475 days) Posts: 3085 From: Munich, Germany Joined: |
I think 2 and 3 on your list are the same in principle. Would we even recognize the origins of life? I think any molecule that can replicate itself, not even well but can produce copies of itself could over time generate what we would recognize as life. That is why I think catalytic RNA's are interesting. The problem is, even the most simple virus has evolved for millions if not billions of years so trying to deconstruct it back to an original replicating molecule would be extremely difficult if not impossible to replot its evolutionary trajectory.
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Andor Inactive Member |
quote: But taking too literally that definition, we could consider that bacterial spores, which have been probed to germinate after centuries (and probably even millennia) of dormant state were not alive. Is cryptolife life? Perhaps in the search of how life started, (and of extraterrestrial life), we should extend that definition, because we (still) have nothing to compare to.
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