The consequences of "Evolution is false"

Not so. "Observation is theory-laden", as they say. Absent theory you don't even know which observations to make, or which are significant.Even Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. If you're not building on what came before, you're starting at ground zero. How could it be any other way? But it doesn't make sense except in the light of evolution; absent the light of evolution you don't know how to proceed, what questions to ask next.Anybody can hand out an asprin, splint a broken wrist, wash a wound. The difference between a doctor and a shaman is that a doctor knows why those things work, and it's because of his knowledge of medical theory that the doctor is able to develop new treatments, answer new questions, instead of just stumbling into things by trial and error.

Can it? Even Mendel didn't understand what he was seeing with his pea plants; all he could do was record the outcomes. He had no idea at all why some traits segregated in the Mendellian way, but why (for instance) the child of a black woman and a white man has an intermediate skin tone.If DNA can be studied and understood outside of the light of evolution, why is it that we couldn't understand or study DNA until after the development of evolution?

Why do all organisms, regardless of body plan, share homologous Homeobox structure, if not because of the ToE?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Fair enough. If you like, what I meant was "... if not as a result of the processes and conditions specified by the ToE." Heh! Funny how a creationist always wilts when specifics are presented. In fact, I've never met or even heard of a creationist who actually did understand DNA. It's their lack of understanding, in fact, that results in them being creationists. I mean clearly you don't understand how what I told you could be true, because you reject the ToE. You'd rather "not turn it onto a thread about specifics." Convinient, that. Of course it proves my point - absent the ToE you don't have an answer for why, regardless of body plan, all organisms have essentially an identically-structured Homeobox region. "Design economy" has been refuted, so if that's all creationists had, they have nothing. Creationists have no explanation for the recurring, nonsensical homologies of the living world. Evolutionists have an overarching explanation that works for every such homology.

Well, it can be refuted in instances where a from-scratch redesign would have been more economical than the modifications needed to reuse pre-existing design.Of course, if you're openly admitting that there's absolutely nothing that could refute creationism, you've come right out and proven that creationism can never be science. Parallel evolution is part of the explanation, and indeed, evolution lets us predict what kind of homologies will be explainable by parallel evolution, and those accurate predictions confirm the theory.So you've refuted yourself with your own example. Homologies that don't make any sense from a design perspective. It makes a little sense for a purported "designer" to copy his successful designs to save labor*, but why would a designer copy over his failures?*Actually? That doesn't make a lick of sense. We're talking about infinite God, who has the power to create a universe in one day. It's nonsense to suggest that God needs to take shortcuts, cut corners, save labor. It's idiotic, in fact. It's no harder for God to design from scratch than to copy-paste gene sequences. I hope you can do better than "design economy", it's nonsense from purely theological grounds.

But that's true for you, too. You don't know any more about what God would consider a "good design" than I do.So exactly what basis do you have to use your speculations about what God would or wouldn't have designed or done to refute the science of evolution? None, of course.

It's not assumed; it's concluded from what creationists are telling us about the science behind evolution.They claim it's not there, period. That every piece of evidence evolutionists have doesn't actually exist. According to creationists, evolutionists are at best mistaken or simply parroting the unchallenged statements of their authorities, or at worst engaged in a deliberate attempt to suborn science to hoodwink the "common person."Those are the literal claims of creationists. What else can we take from that other than what Schraf has in her OP? Creationists don't simply assert that scientists are merely coming down on the wrong side of an ambiguous question; guessing "A" when it's hard to tell the difference between "A" and "B".The assertion of creationists is that evolution, top to bottom, is flat-out wrong, and that scientists aren't simply slightly mistaken about an obscure point of fact; they're as deluded as the guy in the straightjacket who asserts he's Napoleon. If creationists had respect for the work they'd be a lot more familiar with it, for starters. Moreover if they had respect for the science behind evolution they'd be able to address it in ways that had scientific merit.Maybe a creationist could respect evolution. Maybe Kurt Wise does, not sure. But it's quite telling, and a major flaw in your rebuttal, than none of them appear to. From the level of their argumentation alone, it's clear that creationists have nothing but contempt for those who refuse to believe that the only way to learn about the natural world is to see what a thousand-year-old book has to say about it.

WTH is this supposed to be? Argumentum ad O'Reilly?

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was speaking to someone with 1190+ posts at the EvC forum.C'mon, Proph. These things are self-evident. I expect that there's a creationist in some other thread acting this way right now. There's no shortage of examples; this very website is dedicated to being that example. Its sufficient to participate in any thread at this forum in order to see what I'm talking about.Seriously. Why play dumb? Uh-huh. Do you think it's respecting the efforts of scientists when creationists assert that the wisdom of man is folly, and that any time scientific reasoning contradicts the Bible, it's the science that must give way?Does that sound like respect to you? To me that sounds like contempt.

Well, great, I guess. I don't have any respect whatsoever for someone who simply picks the conclusion that makes them feel better, opposed to what's best supported by the evidence. Such a person is a coward.

Well, educate yourself. Stop being ignorant.That doesn't mean "accept evolution without question", but a deep understanding of biology would serve you well, and be interesting to learn to boot.Don't get me wrong; the debate is stacked against you. That's because creationists have the added burden of arguing from a position that is contradicted by the evidence. But a large number of concessions are made to creationists around here to make up for that. In fact creationists around here are treated so well, the only thing it seems like we don't concede to you is the debate entire.But still you want more. Sigh. I hope you do apply yourself to the study of science, if only that you might understand what it really means to have to defend a position against skeptics, like scientists have to do amongst themselves every time they publish. You creationists get off easy. Count your lucky stars that's so.

Have you ever played those word games where you have two words, and you have to step between them, and the rule is that at each step, you can only change one letter, but each step has to be a real word? That's a kind of microevolutionary change. The evidence is that there's absolutely no difference between any two organisms that isn't microevolutionary. Remember that any difference between two organisms is the result ultimately of different proteins, and

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Experiments show that roughly 1 in 1011 of all random-sequence proteins have ATP-binding activity (Keefe and Szostak 2001), and theoretical work by H. P. Yockey (1992, 326-330) shows that at this density all functional sequences are connected by single amino acid changes.

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CB150: Functional genetic sequences changingGet that? All functional sequences are connected by single amino acid changes. That means that it's been proven that, between any two arbitrary protein sequences found in the natural world, you can go stepwise between them changing only one amino acid each time, and each step is a functional protein. Just like the word game!Why might this be the case? Well:

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Denton (1998, 276) wrote, "One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps."

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In other words, there's a great ocean of untapped diversity within the world of living things that simply isn't accessable, because it hasn't been reached yet - may not be reachable - by stepwise alteration to genetic sequences. There are no "kinds", no genetic barriers, no gulfs.That's proof, as far as I'm concerned. I've always thought that it's weird that this article is buried on TalkOrigins because it absolutely proves the fundamental accuracy of Mayr's contention. It single-handedly sealed the deal for me, I guess. Proved evolution and refuted intelligent design in one easy step. The entire history of living things on Earth, all their different forms, are absolutely proven to be explainable as nothing more than recursive microevolution.I hope my post is clear. If you didn't understand something, please ask me about it.

No, but then, the F22 Raptor is far more complex than the first living things.A bit larger, too. Well, that's an erroneous claim. We're aware of hundreds of different molecules that are capable of catalyzing the formation of replicates. There's no "spark" or breath, myserious or otherwise.Just chemistry. Life is simply chemistry. Gosh, you're so smart, maybe you can tell us where we're going wrong. It really is a shame you didn't decide to become a biologist. Lucky for us that doesn't seem to stop you from making sweeping pronouncments about the mental state and motivations of the men and women who labor in that field.