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Author | Topic: Biological classification vs 'Kind' | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
As far as I understand it, the 'kind' of a creature is the name of the creature on Noah's ark from which it is descended.
If we assume that none of these creatures could interbreed, it's actually a very clear definition, and clearer than the evolutionary definition of species. Of course, it's a useless definition because it bears no relation to reality. And also because the bible does not tell us all the kinds on the ark. But I don't think it's unclear in principle.
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote: Hi Bob, the probability calculations I've seen used against abiogenesis are always wrong, and in very basic ways. The two biggest errors are :- assuming that there are no intermediate steps between raw chemicals in solution and something extremely complex, such as a cell. assuming that there is only one way to get life - the way we happen to have it If you make these assumptions you can indeed get astrononical numbers, but scientists don't do that. Creationists do.
quote: As others have said, that's not the case. Beyond the now ancient Miller-Urey studies, much more sophisticated work is going on to explore the intermediate steps. See for example the work of Jack Szostak and Brian Paegel. This is still at a relatively early stage of development, but they have already some interesting findings. But even if there were no experimental evidence, a supernatural assumption is not reasonable. This is because not a single phenomenon that has been understood proves to have a supernatural explanation. The track record of naturalistic explanations is superb. The track record for the supernatural is non-existent. The supernatural has been removed from many domains by science.
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote: But there is, so far as I know, no evidence against abiogenesis. The probability arguments advanced by creationists are spurious. What evidence do you have against it? Bear in mind that that science has not ruled out other options. Just that abiogenesis is the best scientific theory currently available. It does not require new scientific laws. It does not require the existence of designers, supernatural or otherwise, for which there is no evidence. But it might not be right. Edited by Peepul, : No reason given.
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined:
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quote: I followed the link you attached here to One Reason I Am Skeptical of an Ancient Earth : Proslogion Dr Wile is saying that it is wrong to extrapolate our knowledge of radioactive decay rates from 100 years to billions of years. He would have a point if there were no evidence about radioactive decay rates in the past - but there is a lot of evidence of this. For example, correlations with other dating methods, the Oklo nuclear reactor, astronomical observations, lack of other effects correlating with changes in radioactive decay rates. Plus Dr Wile engages in very questionable reasoning:-
quote: There is of course overwhelming evidence that rates are stable across a wide range of pressures, temperatures and environments. There are huge numbers of experiments that show this. As a nuclear chemist, Dr Wile must know this. But he does not reference any of them. Instead he references just two papers that he believes support his view. This cherry picking is sufficient in itself to show that he is not a trustworthy source on this issue. His two quoted papers are interesting. The first shows a reduced decay rate for tritium in particular circumstances. However, there is no suggestion of time variation here - there is no relevance to his argument about stability. The second is revealing. He quotes a paper that claims a small variation in decay rates (< 0.1%) with distance from the sun. What he does not mention is that subsequent experimenters repeated this kind of experiment and disagree with this conclusion :-
quote: from http://donuts.berkeley.edu/papers/EarthSun.pdf So, there is hardly 'strong evidence' in favour of this, as Dr Wile claims. This rebuttal was published before Dr Wile wrote his piece. Bob, this is typical creationist material. When it's examined carefully, it leaves a bad taste. Dr Wile represents himself as an expert ('earned PhD in nuclear chemistry') and yet does not honestly present the balance of the evidence. This is almost universal behaviour among creationists and it means that you cannot trust what creationists tell you . Read the original science and draw your own conclusions.
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote: Great attitude! Have a look at some of the work of Szostak and Paegel - they have gone beyond Miller / Urey. Szostak Lab: Home# Darwinian Evolution On A Chip by Brian M. Paegel and Gerald F. Joyce, Public Library of Science Biology, 6(4): e85 (April 2008)
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote: Otto, Bob, this is very off-topic, but its another ICR article linked to on the page that displays the ICR article you referred to. I think it's an even more blatant example of dishonesty or stupidity in the ICR - quite breathtaking! Paras 1 and 3 could be down to stupidity, para 2 looks very much like dishonesty. Edited by Peepul, : No reason given.
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Peepul Member (Idle past 5046 days) Posts: 206 Joined: |
quote: Hi Bob, the fact that we get consistent nested hierarchies using different methods demonstrates much more than life sharing similairities. Life could share similarities without falling naturally into a nested hierarchy. Cars do not fall naturally into a nested hierarchy, for example, because innovations are taken up in many 'lineages' - an analogue of horizontal gene transmission. As you probably know, when building these nested trees, it's possible to estimate how 'genuine' the tree is - ie how strong is the signal that it really is nested. So the strength of the nestedness can be estimated statistically. The results show that life's trees are significant. A designer would not be constrained in this way, evolution has to be (assuming that HGT is not significant). This is why it's such strong evidence for evolution.
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