Summations Only

Hi Zaius,I have the same reaction as Tangle. You appear to agree that evolution produces the types of features everyone else describes as novel, you just won't accept that term yourself.--Percy

It was the entirety of your message that gave me the same impression as Tangle, and I've said much the same thing in other messages. Your objections take the form of these assertions:

1. If evolution produced something, it isn't novel and it isn't new information.
   ​
2. If something is novel and possesses new information, evolution could not have produced it.

But the evidence doesn't support these assertions, explaining why all you do is repeat them.Could you at least provide an example of a feature you consider novel before this thread closes for summations? There's no time to make any progress in this thread, but it might help begin a new thread.--Percy

Ah, I see. You've decided to simply declare yourself the winner, an achievement normally accomplished by building arguments around evidence, an approach you've avoided so far. There's only 12 messages left in this thread, better get started.This particular message was filled with the same empty assertions whose rebuttals you ignored. We could rebut them again, but you'll likely just ignore them again, so with only 12 messages left there seems little point.--Percy

Hi MindSpawn,You replied to Taq as if you hadn't understood a thing he said, but I'll let Taq address that. I'm only writing because now that you've been here a whole 4 days it's time to start using the quoting codes instead of just quotes. Here's where you quote Taq using only quotes: But you could have done it like this: The way you do this is with quoting codes. I did it like this: Anything you want to quote just put a [qs] at the front and a [/qs] at the rear.There are a lot other codes for a variety of things like images, fonts, colors, formatting, etc. If you want to see how anybody created their message just click on the "peek" button that appears at the bottom right of their message. Or you can read the dBCode Help.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix typo.

But in that case you must have at hand the evidence that proved the Bible accurate. All you need do is propose a thread to review this evidence, and once this evidence has been revealed to us you can return to this thread and cite the Bible as scientific evidence.--Percy

I was suggesting that you suspend participation in this thread while discussing the Bible's qualifications as a science book in a new thread, not that you participate in both threads simultaneously. Also, there's no time limit on replies. Take as much time as you need. Make your goal to post x messages per week, not to reply to everyone every week.It's interesting that you said, "I would love to discuss the proof for the bible being a supernatural book," because that's not what you originally said back in Message 341. What you said there was that, "I haven't got evidence, except that the bible is a proven and accurate book..." A thread where you tried to present evidence that the Bible has supernatural origins would be very interesting, but concerning your original claim, if the Bible really is "proven and accurate" then you need only seek recourse to evidence relevant to this thread that proved the Bible accurate.Except that there isn't any Biblical evidence relevant to this thread. The Bible doesn't declare that the development of novel features is impossible. It says that creatures reproduce according to their kind, and so does evolution. The Bible says that cows beget cows and crows beget crows, and so does evolution.But evolution says something additional, which is that what we know as cows and what we know as crows changes over time. Cows have begat cows since the beginning of time, but what is a cow has changed. The Bible makes no comment on this, and there can be no Biblically based objection. You're only half right. You haven't got evidence, we have, we win. Evolution is a very widely accepted theory because of evidence, not assumptions. You're ignoring the evidence that mutations occur (indeed, they must occur since the DNA copying of reproduction is imperfect and we even know the mutation rates for many organisms), and then you're ignoring the implications. We have evidence of mutations and selection, while you only have assumptions you mistakenly think are Biblically based. I thought it was already mentioned in this thread, but maybe not, so I'll say it again. Evolution definitely does not say that the less complex precedes the more complex. It says that whatever traits are favored by the environment have increased probability of making it to the next generation. Whether those traits are simpler or more complex is not a factor.It's a common mistake to think that evolution believes the simpler precedes the more complex because that is a dominant feature in the fossil record. One reason for this is known as the evolutionary arms race. The gazelle becomes faster and more evasive, so the cheetah becomes faster and more agile in order to catch it, and so the gazelle becomes even faster and more evasive, and so on. But if the environmental situation changed so as to somehow favor being slower and less agile, then that's what would happen. There are many examples of organisms becoming simpler, for example, blind cave fish which once had sight and now do not.--Percy

What you mean is that this is our chance to prove evolution to *you*. It's already been proven within science (in this context, "prove" means provide sufficiently convincing evidence that a strong consensus forms within the relevant scientific discipline). Since you refuse to accept even the most non-controversial and basic evidence, such as that for mutation rates (for a high level outline of what we think we know, see the Wikipedia article on Mutation Rates), I can't see how persuading you would ever be possible. If you can't see how two nearly identical genes must mean there was a recent duplication because any significant passage of time would have meant each would have accumulated a number of mutations absent in the other, then convincing you of something like the introduction of novelty that involves more subtle evidence is beyond well nigh impossible. Actually, without increased complexity there would be no us (or reptiles, flowers, amphibians, grass, fish or much of any life at all beyond Archaea), but there would still be evolution. Evolution doesn't require complexity. Complexity, as I said before, is often a result of competition. Selection chooses the best competitors.There is one way I can think of in which complexity could be inherent in evolution. As environments slowly change and organisms evolve new adaptations, the old adaptations for the original environment might remain in some vestigial form. For example, some species of cave fish have vestigial eyes. It could be argued that species that possess both new and vestigial adaptations are more complex than ancestor species that had only the old adaptation. It can take a vestigial trait a great deal of time to disappear, and it is always at risk for being adapted via evolution to a role other than its original function.--Percy

No one tries to calculate mutation rates this way. It would be impossible because we don't have the genome of the common ancestor. We do have the genome of chimpanzees (our closest evolutionary relative), but since humans are not descended from chimpanzees the number of mutational differences between us would not be a measure of the number of mutational differences between us and the common ancestor, which is what you really need. Even if we did have the common ancestor's genome, the time since the supposed split is only approximate.I think I already provided a link to the Wikipedia article on mutation rates, but here it is again. It has a section on measurement. Measuring mutation rates by the impossible method you suggest some try to use is notably absent.Evolutionary change at the DNA level is inevitable because the copying that takes places during cellular reproduction is imperfect. The error rate is very low (fortunately for life in general), but it occurs and it accumulates generation after generation with only natural selection to filter out the more deleterious changes. Without mutation adaptation to changing environments would be severely hampered. So was I.--Percy