Willowtree's Scientific Evidence against Evolution

If I may add to this wj, here is what is currently understood regarding thylacine genetics,Nature. 1989 Aug 10;340(6233):465-7. Related Articles, LinksDNA phylogeny of the extinct marsupial wolf.Thomas RH, Schaffner W, Wilson AC, Paabo S.Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley 94720.The phylogenetic affiliation of the extinct marsupial wolf (Thylacinus cynocephalus), which once was widespread in Australia, has been uncertain. On the basis of morphology, some systematists argue that the thylacine was most closely related to an extinct group of South American carnivorous marsupials, the borhyaenids, whereas others consider it to be closer to Australian carnivorous marsupials. Here we use direct sequencing by means of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to compare 219 bases of mitochondrial (mt) DNA from museum specimens of the marsupial wolf and representatives of six genera of extant marsupials. In agreement with the results of an antigenic study of albumin, our genetic data suggest that the marsupial wolf was more closely related to other Australian marsupial carnivores than to those of South America. Thus, the marsupial wolf represents an example of convergent morphological evolution to South American carnivorous marsupials as well as to true wolves.Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1992 Oct 22;250(1327):19-27. Related Articles, LinksPhylogenetic relationships of the thylacine (Mammalia: Thylacinidae) among dasyuroid marsupials: evidence from cytochrome b DNA sequences.Krajewski C, Driskell AC, Baverstock PR, Braun MJ.Department of Zoology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.DNA sequences from the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene were obtained from a museum specimen of the presumed extinct thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and were compared with homologous sequences from 13 representatives of the Australian marsupial family Dasyuridae. The relationship of the thylacine to dasyurids has been suggested by previous anatomical and molecular studies, but its position within the dasyuroid radiation has not been addressed with genetic data. Phylogenetic analysis of the sequences reported here suggests that the thylacine is a sister group to Dasyuridae and lends support to the hypothesis that Thylacinus represents an ancient Australian marsupial lineage. Relationships with Dasyuridae support the results of other recent molecular studies, particularly in showing the affinities of endemic New Guinean subfamilies with larger Australian clades.Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1997 Jun 22;264(1383):911-7. Related Articles, LinksDNA phylogeny of the marsupial wolf resolved.Krajewski C, Buckley L, Westerman M.Department of Zoology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 62901-6501, USA.The phylogenetic position of the recently extinct marsupial 'wolf', or thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), has been a source of contention in mammalian systematics for nearly a century. Thylacines were endemic to Australasia, but possessed striking anatomical similarities to Oligo-Miocene borhyaenid marsupials of South America. At issue has been whether these features are indicative of common ancestry or convergent adaptation to carnivory. Recent morphological studies have supported both conclusions. Although current marsupial classifications group thylacines with Australian dasyuromorphians, this putative clade is characterized by mostly primitive morphological features. Attempts to determine thylacine affinities with ancient protein and DNA analyses have supported, but not resolved, a dasyuromorphian placement. We report 1546 bp of mitochondrial DNA sequence (from cytochrome b and 12S rRNA genes) and 841 bp of nuclear protamine gene sequence from the thylacine and representatives of all or most other marsupial orders. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences shows unambiguously that thylacines are members of Dasyuromorphia, and suggests a late Oligocene or very early Miocene divergence of familial lineages.

Definitely Jesus...ok maybe Vishnu.

Any minute now of course the Elder is going to download the thylacine cytochrome b, 12S rRNA, and protamine 1 genes from GenBank, align them with those of say Canis lupus, H. sapiens, Bos taurus, and perhaps Dasyurus albopunctatus (just for fun) and then do some rough phylogenetic analysis and show us that the thylacine sequence falls closest to.....or perhaps a less complicated analysis is in order...do a BLAST search with this sequence and see if wolves or tigers are on the list1 atgattatca tacgaaaaac ccaccctctt ctaaaaacca ttaaccactc attcattgac
61 ttaccagcac cctccaacat ctcagcttga tgaaactttg gatccttact aggaatctgc
121 ctagtcattc aaatcttaac aggcctattt ctagcaatac attatacatc agacacatca
181 actgccttct cctcagtagc acatatctgc cgagacgtaa attatggatg acttattcgt
241 aacctccatg ccaatggagc ctccatattc ttcatatgct tatttcttca tgtaggacga
301 ggtatctact acggatcata cctgtacaaa gaaacatgaa acattggagt tatcctccta
361 ctaacagtaa tagcaactgc attcgtagga tatgtccttc catgaggcca aatatcattc
421 tgaggtgcta ccgtcattac taacctacta tctgccatcc cttacattgg aactacttta
481 gcagaatgag tttgaggagg attcgcagtg gacaaagcaa cactaacacg attctttgcc
541 ttccacttta tcctaccctc cattgtaaca gcacgagcta ctgttcacct actattcctt
601 catgaaacag gctctaataa cccctcagga attaacccag actcagacaa aatcccattc
661 cacccttact acaccatcaa agatgcccta ggcctcatac tcctacttct tccactcctt
721 cccctagccc tattctcacc agacttacta ggagacccag acaacttctc accagctaac
781 ccacttaaca caccacccca tattaaacca gaatggtact tcctattcgc atacgcaatc
841 ctacgatcaa tcccaaacaa actaggagga gtactagcac tactagcctc catcctaatc
901 ctcctaatta tcccattact tcatacatcc aaccaacgaa gcataatatt ccgaccaatc
961 tcccaaacac tattctgaat cctagctgcc aacctactta ccctaacctg aattggagga
1021 cagccagtag aacaaccatt catcatcatc ggacaactag ctatcattct ctacttccta
1081 ctaattgttg tcctaatgcc attagcagga ctactagaaa actatatgct agaacctaaa
1141 tgaagg
//

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Then in response to this argument someone would always mention evolutionists who do credit God ultimately, then I would respond by saying that I am obviously addressing those who do not as I am now.

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However both groups use methodological naturalism to come to the conclusion that evolution is a fact.Thus, your distinction is meaningless in this context.

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The entire argument of "God sense" is that God must be considered as the ultimate Creator and to be thanked (Romans 1:18-25)(2 things) If not He disables your ability to recognize Him.

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These arguments were the unique thing that my theism brought to the debate. Occasionally, when I have the opportunity to influence an impressionable agnostic, I will state the the "God sense" argument and watch their face light up when they finally ascertain the reason why so many brilliant people fail to see God in creation.

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However, besides this admittedly esoteric perspective, the plain fact is that believers and non-believers alike can make the same observations and conduct and record the same results of scientific experiments to test the theory of evolution (or any theory for that matter). Your "godsense" nonesense is niether an observable trait, testable, nor falsifiable. If you wish to suffer delsions of grandeur then that is your choice but your musings hardly put you in the mainstream of Christians.

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I submitted a lot of posts covering the preceding philosophical arguments, which said arguments (if true) automatically make defective all scientific evidence that anyone wants to offer as proof against a Creator/Intelligent Designer.

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This again shows you have absolutely no familiarity with science whatsoever. Science and scientists do not try to prove or disprove god/gods/ intelligent designers/pink unicorns or anything else. Look up methodological naturalism and then maybe you will understand a bit better.

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I reject theistic evolution because they fail to differentiate how exactly their theism affects the claims of evolution and its terminology. Since when does theism seek a lower seat and become subordinate to any entity and ideology ? When the pseudo-peacemakers of TE misrepresent the God of the Bible by seeking the acceptance of the atheists of neo-Darwinism through their despicable brown-nosing at the expense of genuine theism which is not compatible with the philosophy that under girds evolution.

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Who appointed you with the authority to reject the beliefs of other Christians (not to mention any other religion)? Those who subscribe to TE recognize that science has produced every single advancement in our undertanding of the natural world and that introducing tooth fairies or "godnonsense" has not produced anything of any use to the advancement of science. TE means one has a mature enough faith to believe in a higher power while recognizing the only way to understand the natural world and study it is via methodological naturalism.

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There can be no peaceful co-existence between the God sense of theism and the God senseless evolutionary claims when the origin of species is at stake.

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Ohh a threat is it? Let's see what you and your "godsense" can come up with in defining the molecular mechanisms underlying genetic imprinting...nothing you say..that's right..leave it to those of us who have a clue.

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My point was : What you don't know can and will be used against you. Unless evolution can be explained practidemically ordinary people will be forced to trust the veracity of the sources and their mouthpieces. Exceed an ordinary persons ability to understand - you are "logidemicizing". However, in science discussions I acknowledge that the level of intelligent communication can only go so low before error is risked.

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Did you learn English from Don King? You make a logical error here as well. Scientific jargon for the most part attempts to communicate extremely complex data or concepts to other INFORMED scientists or laypeople through the simplest terms possible. That you complain that you don't understand anything we say is not for us to correct. The burden is upon you to get an education. You are clearly very lazy if your attitude is that one must cater to the lowest denominator of understanding in science. Extra lazy actually because there are scientists who make the effort to communicate complex scientific concepts via popular books.

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I am biased towards evidence that is consistent with my worldview (everyone is whether they admit it or not). This is why Richard Milton and his work carries an enormous weight of credibility in my eyes. He is not a creationist by his own vehement admission which makes the evidence he offers independant corroboration of my starting assumption : Evolution is not true.

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Actually what you describe is not bias. It is willful ignorance. Ignoring all evidence that runs counter to your pre-concieved notions is exactly the kind of thinking of a non-scientific mind. It is also not a particularly intelligent way to go about anything in life. That you drool over charlatans who are only slightly less ignorant regarding science than you is therefore unsurprising.

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But Milton's point is intac : Virtually identical creatures evolving on two different continents via random mutation ?

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Except that besides NOT being identical to wolves, thylacines are also easy as pie to distinguish genetically form wolves or any other eutherian mammal...this was dealt with ages ago in this thread...are you that stupid?

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Then there was the evidence of Milton's claim that Darwinists cannot demonstrate to a non-Darwinist conclusive scientific evidence to substantiate the theory the same way the National Physical Laboratory can demonstrate physical constants, the College of Surgeons can demonstrate the circulation of the blood, or the Greenwich Observatory can demonstrate the expanding universe.

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And evolution can be demonstrated both directly and indirectly as often as you like for exampleCooper TF, Rozen DE, Lenski RE. Parallel changes in gene expression after 20,000 generations of evolution in Escherichiacoli.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Feb 4; 100(3): 1072-7.For any of your points can you provide a single primary literature article that supports yours or Milton's assertions?By the way, run your posts through a spell checker...you would not want to give everyone the impression you don't know what your are talking about

It is perfectly clear what he means people..his logidemics are confuseodomus because his intellectualemics are minimalestetic. He is practidemically flatulantelic!
Just listen to Mushmouth from the Fat Albert gang and Willotree's grammar will become instantly understandababble.

Hi Willowtree,
If I responded in some parts of my post with sarcasm, it is because you too often make absolute statements about science while at the same time, admitting in some instances, that your background in the subject is not strong. But in any case, glad to see you are interested in the subject.

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The claims of methodological naturalism and rational enquiry say that no position is taken concerning the Divine.
God, in the book of Romans says the true intent of MN and RE is to take a position concerning Him. God saw the true intent of those who subscribe to these methods and He tells on them.

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You can claim that MN and RE are God neutral but Romans says they are not.

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The problem with this is the bible has nothing to say about methodological naturalism. Do you know that methodological naturalism is just another way of saying science? It is not a philosophical position. It is a tool for finding the best, evidence supported, testable and falsifiable explanation for natural observations. That is why the supernatural is not included.

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On one hand, when challenged about making conclusions about the Divine you quickly point to these methods and their definitions, then as soon as this falsehood is invoked the deception continues under this disguise. God isn't fooled and neither am I thanks to Romans.
Every atheist paleontolgist offers their evidence as evidence that God is not the Creator, and this fact is not nullified because of the defintions contained in MN and RE.

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I am not sure where you get this either. Scientists in the scientific literature make no statements about the divine. Paleontologists, in the primary literature, write primarily descriptive works i.e. this fossil has characteristic X,Y, and Z. Same with molecular biolgists though the description tends to be about a process rather than a single event i.e. one fossil..unless one describes a gene and its structure/function. I challenge you to open any issue of Science or Nature and find an article on paleontology that claims that there is no creator.

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God only demands that He be credited as the ultimate Creator. But the pseudo claims of MN and RE will not even allow that. By saying no position is taken, a position is being taken. That position excludes God as a possibility, and this position is what triggers God's response of insight removal - the inner ability to recognize His fingerprints in what is made.

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The human genome project was a public and privately funded undertaking to develope sequencing methods and then determine the sequence of the entire human genome. This was followed by annotation of the genome (still in progress). What about this project is a "pseudo claim" of MN? In what way would the science benefit from running around praying? How has religion ever made a single contribution to any scientific endeavor?You claim you have some "godsense" that gives you a better insight into science than I could have as a scientist or anyone else. So please use you godsense to tell me the precise number, distribution, and frequency of recomibination of HERV-K elements near centromeres in the human genome. I would really like to know this for my own research and since you claim that MN is insufficient to make any determination, I assume your super powered sense should allow you to provide the evidence right away.

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MN and RE are sound methods to determine truth. I am only arguing against their ridiculous God neutral declarations. What about TE ?
What about them ? They credit God and thats all He demands/asks.
I criticize TE for not having the courage to claim the scientific discoveries for God without qualification. Instead they let the atheists of neo Darwinism get away with their silly MN and RE claims.

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You have still to provide a single example where the merely stating that a creator exists has any benefit for any descriptive science. It seems you are making an appeal just to make yourself feel better by having other people acknowledge your diety..this makes your faith sound extremely weak. There are no scientific discoveries for god/gods/demi-gods etc because they are not amendable to test or falsifiablilty and thus no evidence can be gleaned to support or refute their existence. Hence, the supernatural is ignored and not just be neo-Darwinists but but by chemists, physicists, engineers, and every other flavor of scientist.

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"God sense" and your description of it as nonsense reveals you have none. Mainstream christianity is just like the majorities found in the Bible - they are always wrong.

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You have no objective way to evaluate this bizarre statement.

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The ONLY conclusion I ever made was to declare defective any claim of certainty that is offered as proof that God does not exist, and any claim of certainty offered by a person with no God sense. And I explained the defect and its cause.

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1. science has no way of making any claims regarding god so there is no real science that has the aim of proving that god does not exist. This seems to be a fear of yours regarding scientists that stems directly from your lack of experience and background with scientific work.
2. I cannot take your claims of certainty when you clearly do not even know what scientists are doing. You are able to type on a computer because of MN and not "godsense". You also have completely failed to show that you have any unique insight into any aspect of science (though I am waiting for your report on HERV-K element distribution).

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I have to get off line, I will respond to the rest of your post ASAP.

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No problem, thake you time.cheers,
M

Willowtree,
you were rather incensed when your post 116 was ignored. Now you ignore my reply...tsk tsk

Hi WT,
I was poking fun. Take your time..I will be offline the next few days so can't respond anyway.cheers
M

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I agree with you that MN and RE are the best ways of determining scientific truth. God's only quarrel is the dishonest clauses contained therein that claim Divine neutrality. No such beast exists and God in Romans says you are taking a position of exclusion toward Him.

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I think I am beginning to see where the problem is here. The quarrel does not exist. Science i.e. methodological naturalism makes no statements positive or negative about any diety or anything supernatural. Science deals exclusively with that which is amenable to test and falsifiability. It does not disprove the existance of God/Gods/ or any other supernatural being(s). That is why it is naturalism and not supernaturalism. If you seek support for your faith in science, you will be disappointed.

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Yes, for the most part this is true. Every person reading this literature knows the worldview from which it is written. Every honest and intelligent person knows what they are also saying without having to actually say it - there is no single almighty Bible type of God.

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This is just simply not true. I challenge you to open a single issue of Nature or Science (primary literature journals of the highest prestige) and find a single article that even deals with the supernatural. You will find last weeks papers describing the observations from the various mars probes. There is a signal transduction paper. One on ecology. None of them say anything one way or the other about any diety.

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" What is ruled out is a single highly intelligent designer, operating always at the height of his powers. "

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You are failing to distinguish the opinion of a person (whether scientist or not) from science and the subjects amenable to scientific study. If Richard Dawkin's wants to make anti-religious rants, that is his opinion and is not based on anything testable or falsifiable. If he describes a natural observation and details the experiments that support a hypothesis explaining the observations, this is not an opinion but a scientific fact. It is amenable to testing, is falsifiable, and anyone from any religion (or no religion) can go to the lab and do the same experiments themselves without relying on his say so.

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He only demands credit and thanks but these brilliant scientific types will not fork up. I am saying any and all scientific work presented under the umbrella of atheistic worldview has the twin message that a Creator was not involved.

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The manual that came with my car says nothig about a Creator or God. Should I assume that everyone who makes or owns a Volkswagen is an god hating atheist? In fact, the head of the Human Genome Project (the publicly funded one not the Celera private venture), is an openly devout christian. I think he would be very surprised to be accused of being an atheist.

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Then you misinterpret my arguments by accusing me of wanting to see prayer in the laboratory.

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Prayer belongs in the closet just like Christ ordered.

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It is not very clear what you want exactly. It seems you want every paper on epigenetics to say "thanks god for the paper". I say this because on the one hand you claim that religion does not need to be a part of published science and on the other hand that the absence of commentary about religion in scientific literature is bad.

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Every honest and intelligent person knows Sagan was lashing out at the Divine. But oh, I forgot Sagan conducted his work under MN and RE therefore this famous statement has no connection in evidencing atheist worldview.

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And that is why you should ignore Sagan's opinion about religion and separate that from his objective work in science. You are confusing the two. I had a supervisor as a postdoc who miserable. He had absolutely the worst personality you can imagine. However, he and his group have published some very good research. It really does not matter if I like his politics, his favorite color, or him as a person. All that matters in this case are the methods he used and if his hypotheses are supported by the evidence he gathered.

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Your HERV-K challenge was made under the misunderstood belief that God sense makes one brighter.

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I never said or implied that.

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I have always maintained that atheist scientists are the absolute brightest minds. Once again, my argument says IF they offer their evidence to also mean God is not he Creator (and they do) then this evidences that they have no God sense.

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If a scientist tells you that they have evidence that there is no god, you should be very very skeptical. They have no common sense. There is no way for science to prove or disprove anything supernatural.

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Romans says God is the Creator and anyone who cannot embace this truth has had their God sense removed from them as a penalty for arbitrarily excluding Him.

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You just have to be very careful that you are distinguishing the opinions of those who practice science, basket weaving, or kickboxing, from actual science. Again, science has nothing to say about the existence of the supernatural.

Hi crash,
I meant Francis Collins. It was probably wrong to say he is the head of the project as it is a consortium of different institutes each with its own director.