What I have noticed about these debates...

Hi jcgirl, welcome to the forum!I’m not sure that the problem is so much one of theist vs atheist — at least on this board (and possibly except for those threads specifically devoted to that topic). Although it often seems to come across that way, the real problem and indeed the reason for my participation in the debates stems from science vs anti-science. There are quite a few (possibly the majority) of Christians who are quite comfortable coupling a belief in God with an acceptance of the findings of science — several here on this board (Percy, Karl, Andya (a Moslem), gene90 and others spring immediately to mind).In that sense, I think your question, "Is the problem with having faith, or is the problem found in bigotry, misunderstanding, pride, and taking a different view to one's own as a personal offence to oneself?" represents only one possibility.In addition, I don’t think the basic approach in most cases is that one group is less intellectual than the other. Where this particular problem arises is when a scientist (or one who has some knowledge of the subject) is confronted with the stereotypical U r wrong i know evilution is fake because the BIBLE says so and there arnt any transitional fossils because of the flud u cant prove that we came from monkeys because why are there still monkeys? It might sound utterly silly, but I culled this exact statement from a message board (I saved it in my I can’t believe this person is smart enough to actually turn on a computer file). WinAce, another occasional poster on this board, has amassed a huge collection of these, hmmm, malapropisms culled from various message boards. You have to question the intellectual capacity of someone who posts like this. Of course this kind of thing makes it difficult to take the post seriously — and it is all too easy to generalize from This Christian is a moron to All Christians are morons — which is a significant fallacy, obviously, because the poster would be a moron even if he WASN’T a Christian.More subtly, and I think more unfortunately, there is a plethora of creationist websites — from the professional sites like AiG and ICR, to the one-person shows — which are simply stocked to the gills with carefully crafted but utterly erroneous scientific-sounding pontifications. Added to these sites are a growing number of popular books written and published by professional creationists which are ALSO chock full of errors. The more informed creationists most often use these websites and books as sources of information for their self-imposed mission to confront evolution — I mean what other sources do they have? So when I, at least, am confronted for the 500th time about no new information, an argument from irreducible complexity or something cut-and-pasted from some creationist website that refutes evolution, I can get a little short with the answer.Still, I don’t really think you can say it’s a question of worldview. When two people observe the same physical phenomena, they may argue about the mechanisms or reasons for the phenomena — or even what it is — and some of that may be colored by their preconceptions and experience. However, it’s unlikely that one or the other will deny that there is a phenomenon to observe — which is precisely what creationists do. As an example, it would be one thing to argue about whether Neanderthal is an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens or in fact is a distinct species of extinct human Homo neanderthalensis. It is quite another to argue — in the face of and despite mountains of evidence — that Neanderthal was merely a modern human with rikketsia. It’s one thing to argue about the relative importance of natural selection in speciation, it’s another to state that speciation doesn’t occur, and then drag in spurious out-of-context quotations from evolutionists seeming to bolster the claim as your only evidence. Finally, it becomes quite irritating when someone with shockingly limited knowledge of a subject — say evolutionary biology — comes on a message board such as this one and proclaims that 150 years of scientific progress is bunk. This isn’t a worldview difference — it’s a question of intellectual honesty.As to the acerbic nature of some of the exchanges, well, that depends a lot on the participants. Contrast, for example, a creationist such as Ten-sai or the ever-popular Jet with forgiven or even you. For my part (and everyone’s different), people will get the type of response they project.

Hi TB:'Zactly. I DO make the distinction. You have been invariably civil in our discussions - and I have treated you (hopefully) the same. Which goes back to the last point in my post where "you get what you project". I also agree that the uninformed evo can be (almost) as bad as an uninformed YEC (although apparently a rarer breed).OTOH, you still haven't answered my questions concerning the evidence for your "novel protein families" wrt the distinction between "kinds".

Ten-sai:Here's a little primer on your abiogenesis vs evolution argument. Biochemical evolution. I. Polymerization on internal, organophilic silica surfaces of dealuminated zeolites and feldspars Biochemical evolution II: Origin of life in tubular microstructures on weathered feldspar surfaces Biochemical evolution III: Polymerization on organophilic silica-rich surfaces, crystal-chemical modeling, formation of first cells, and geological cluesStrange, but to me all these articles on abiogenesis are talking chemistry, not biological evolution. Weird, hunh? Maybe you should be considering putting a chemist on the stand...

Hi Mr. D:

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That leads me to ask when is something considered in the realm of Chemistry or Biology? Is abiogenisis chemistry or biology?

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Ahh well, there's the rub as it were. In my personal opinion, there's a grey area where organic chemical molecules start taking on the properties we associate with life: replication, heritable modification, etc. The problem, again in my opinion, resides in how we define "life" - a question to which I have no good answer to be honest. Are virii alive? Are prions alive, for that matter? Are self replicating inorganics like certain clay matrices or crystals "alive"? Abiogenesis deals with the transition between non-living organic chemistry and living systems - however you define "living". I will state, unequivocally, that biological evolution deals with what happens AFTER you have a living system, and in spite of the titles of the three articles I referenced (i.e., "biochemical evolution"), doesn't relate at all to the pure organic chemistry of abiogenesis. Give me an organic self-replicator, and I'll be happy to proclaim it "alive", and hence subject to evolution and evolutionary biological study.

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On a more serious note, ahem, why would a prion be defined as alive or not? They are a product of an endogenous gene and hence a component of a living being (though with an as yet uknown function)..thought to be copper transport but not clearly established. Whether a virus could be considered alive or not is an interesting question.

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On prions - well, yeah, it is a gene product. However, the way that a mutant PrPsc can transform normal PrPc versions of the same protein into the infectious version exponentially is sort of like some of the ideas about how early macromolecules reproduced - err, replicated - in abiogenesis. So a prion falls squarely into that grey area between "living" and "non-living" (c.f., the "Lipid World" hypothesis). A better case can be made for virii, of course - they're really just a form of endoparasite with all the bells and whistles removed.

Don't forget Jonathan Wells - PhD's in Biology and Theology, both from very good schools. I'm also pretty sure Michael Denton had a biology or biology-related degree (of course, that's why he's completely recanted "Theory in Crisis").

Okay, I'll bite. I'll pretty much have to recuse myself on the evolution side - ecology's bound fairly tightly to the ToE. However, from what I very vaguely remember from high school biology in the mid-'70s, evolution was barely mentioned. Abiogenesis, OTOH, was something more or less mentioned only in passing even in college (in organic chem, IIRC, while they were beating us over the head with how carbon bonds form, etc). I didn't start becoming interested in it until '98 or so. Creationism (the carpet chewing variety) I didn't even know existed until two years ago - when I got shanghaied into the debate... It assuredly was never even an idle consideration in school.

Yeah, Funk, it's a pretty succinct statement of faith. The problem is, the entire idea that you start with immutable, untouchable "givens" and then reject anything that might appear to contradict these givens, is diametrically opposite anything that might be construed as science. Hence, if the "creation scientists" are adhering to the above guidelines (and I have no reason to doubt they do just that), then 50% of what they call themselves is an out and out fabrication.

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Originally posted by Chara:
Just a little comment here. Perhaps the AiG (whoever that is) is being honest about their bias. I am not saying that others are operating dishonestly (please don't get me wrong). Even tho' the rules of Science are excellent, it is still people who are involved in it. They choose fields to study, they choose how to study it, they come up with the hypotheses, they interpret the data .... I would suggest that every scientist still is influenced by his own biases.

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AiG = Answers in Genesis. It's one of the key professional creationist organizations (based out of Australia, oddly enough). It is one of the top "creation science" organizations often used by creationists arguing against evolutionary theory. They claim to be doing science, which they manifestly do not.I concur with you that every scientist is influenced (or at least, can be influenced) by his/her own bias. However, one of the powerful tools of science is the peer-review process wherein other scientists examine the same data. The assumption is that these reviewers will - even if biased - not have the SAME biases. This is especially true with new claims. If you have some brand new paradigm or explanation that you are proposing to explain some data, for example, lots of scientists are going to take a hard look at it. Lots of questions are going to be asked, lots of arguments will ensue. Eventually, if the data holds up - is replicated, validated, etc - the new idea will be accepted. If it doesn't, it becomes a historical footnote and science moves on to something else.AiG (and a lot of other professional creationist organizations) starts out with an absolute, immutable, undeniable, and even unquestionable claim/interpretation. Any new data that doesn't fit within this claim is rejected. This is NOT science, by any stretch of the imagination.

Really? Cool. What are the hypotheses and how exactly are they testing them? I've been waiting for a creationist to come up with something that isn't simply an "attack" on ToE, but rather provides actual positive support for any flavor of creationism (whether YEC or ID or anything in between). It doesn't count if the answer starts with "Evolution can't explain XYZ."

Hi jcgirl,The "kind" argument really isn't a big deal for evolutionists. It IS a big problem for creationists (along with biogeography, geology, cosmology, etc etc). The problem arises when creationists - at least the biblical inerrantists who insist that the OT is absolutely factual and correct "from the very first word" - insist that so-called macroevolution is impossible because there is a barrier preventing "change in kind". Defining "kind" would seem to be a first step in addressing this claim.There are a couple of other inconsistencies that arise from the inerrantists insistence on "kinds". For instance, there are currently some three million named species of plants and animals. Conservative estimates of ten to thirteen million species (with wild estimates going up to 100-150 million if you include single cell organisms, which are relatively unknown and undocumented). Since all these species had to have originated from the handful of kinds that were carried in the ark 4500 years ago, the hyperspeciation that would have had to occur to get just the named species popping into existence in that short a timeframe makes even the extraordinary radiation of the Cambrian look glacially slow-motion. We're talking 670 completely new species every year from the arkian kinds between the Flood and today. If they go up the taxonomic scale, and claim that the arkian kinds represent genera or even family/order, then they're having to accept macroevolution - change in higher taxa - as valid - and again at a pace that far outstrips even the most fevered dreams of any evolutionary biologist. Talk about punctuated equilibrium!So, what was a kind, again? "A class or genus of related animals" isn't really helpful unless you can specify to some extent what is meant by "related". And, for reference, animals that are related at the class level include a HUMOUNGOUS number of utterly different organisms. At that level, you're talking about "all mammals = one kind". I'm pretty sure that's not what you meant. See the problem, now?

Hi jcgirl,Thanks for your reply. Do you have any comment or question on the substance of the "kinds" discussion I presented? As I noted, there are numerous problems with the concept, only one of which I enumerated there. Feel free to ask/argue/comment.As to your question on information gain/loss, I give Percy full marks for his response. The standard Creationist "no new information" argument(s) have even more problems and holes than "kinds" does. This begins with the fundamental conflation of "semantic" vs "algorithmic" vs "structural/attributive" definitions of "information" (enough quotation marks in that sentence for everyone? Good.) This is not, as Percy pointed out, the right thread to get deeply into that particular argument. However, in the context of speciation, I'll just pose to you one question to ponder: Given that speciation is a process that occurs to populations (not individuals), said population consisting of numbers of uniquely varying organisms, how would one go about determining the "information content" of a population in order to decide whether the stochastic changes in the frequency of specific alleles in said population constituted a gain or loss of information?Interestingly, I also have some disagreement about the entire concept of "macroevolution" as somehow qualitatively different (a different "kind" ) from so-called "microevolution". Taken out of context and a very strict definition, the entire idea of two different processes (because of two different names) is highly erroneous and misleading. Again, a topic for a different thread.I look forward to your comments.