Challenge to Wordswordman

Before this degenerates any further...wordwordsman: I confess to being confused as to the actual question you're asking. I agree with Percy that whatever question it was doesn't appear to have been answered, but honestly I don't really know what the question entails. (I sorta think that's what Mr. P was trying to get at, but I'm not concerned with your standards of evidence, since nothing will convince you anyway. However, it could be an interesting and valuable exercise.)Reposting the de Beer's quote that seems to be the heart of the matter:

quote:

---

: What mechanism can it be that results in the production of homologous organs, the same ‘patterns’, in spite of their not being controlled by the same genes?

---

In your estimation, what is de Beer's looking for?1. Is it "what is the mechanism by which two unrelated organisms develop similar phenotypes?" (i.e., what would be called "convergent evolution" under the ToE)2. Is it "what is the mechanism by which specific anatomical features have developed in dissimilar organisms?" (a much narrower question, and one that might perhaps need to be further specified as to "which feature" because there could be a variety of answers)3. Some other question.I am not avoiding your "challenge", in spite of the venimous arrogance of your posting style. I would appreciate it, however, if you could state more clearly what you are asking (or what you feel de Beers is asking).To be frank, I intensely dislike your style. However, that shouldn't preclude me providing an answer once you have refined your question. After all I couldn't care less whether you personally LIKE the answer, but I'm certainly willing to try and give the question the best answer available. After all, in spite of your arrogance, you're nobody important - the ToE doesn't stand or fall on your say so.

quote:

---

How could nature, created by God, be "supernatural"? I don't accept that a creationist view of creation is in the supernatural class. A God-directed view of nature might be supernaturally endowed, but the knowledge itself isn't necessarily supernatural. What is labelled as supernatural by evolutionists is simply their way of dealing with knowledge imparted by a God whom they often say does not exist. They hide behind the skirts of science, even though it changes style frequently. At least one fool exists on this forum thread who declares openly the non-existence of God. The Bible identifies him as a fool, and commands me to avoid him and his obviously suspect, distorted rantings. He would have us believe it is now essential to understand and keep up with modern genetics in order to comprehend the evolutionist view, ignoring creationist observations that their findings often support the creationist view, though the applications of that knowledge differ. They fail to reach the world with their message, couched in dubious experiments and endless streams of terminology, adding newly coined terms often not yet found in the genetics glossaries. That is the same agenda of the Gnostics and sorcerers of old. Smoke and mirrors through what is currently called science. It is now far beyond the reach of any high school class, and probably any four year college curriculum, requiring a masters in a narrow science field to adopt particular slices of the evolutionist argument. It isn't worth it. WHY is it necessary that all people accept such an ever-increasingly complex string of explanations as an obvious attempt to prove there is no God? I don't call that education. It's propaganda. I distrust any person who subscribes to the evolutionist view while claiming they are Christian. In order to be a Christian one must obviously be a follower of Christ, who verified the holy scriptures. If such a person accepts the Bible is contrarily mostly myth, then he has no real foundation for being a believer, siding with atheists who share the evolutionary views in their claims there is no God based on the alleged faults of the Bible.
He remains on very shaky sand ready to sink at any moment. There is no middle ground. One either believes or doesn't believe.

​

My point is that part a of Darwin's first law is not provable (as you admit here), being a blindly proposed antithesis of an equally unprovable part b that can't be proven. Science can't prove anything, as claimed in this thread. It is all circumstantial evidence and supposition, often revised when advances in science demonstrate former interpretations of data were faulty. I propose science is ever moving closer to the real science already suspected by creationists. But science will never come to the point of proving or disproving what the Bible says, else the requirement of spiritual faith itself is faulty. Well, that isn't an optiion for me, having accepted the faith requirement long ago, that buttressed by experiential confirmations. That, too, can't be proven as in a case of law in the courts, but is sufficient for me to hold firmly to the report of the Bible, which then requires I take a perspective of reality that agrees with the higher truth of the Bible.

​

I came here to deal with the idiotic direct assaults on the Bible, not to debate never-ending arguments around evolution. I am already firmly convinced evolutions is a myth, regardless what scientists have to say about it. I must regard them as sorcerers, those who say there is no God, who claim the Bible is faulty, who plunge into the unknown proposing concepts that are often (too late) later retracted in a child-like level of acountability, never making effort to undo the harm done by their past antics, making excuses "that is the nature of science- self correcting". I subscribe to the perspective of the Bible, never needing correction.

---

Well, since we're all fools and eternally damned, I guess that ends this conversation. I do like the bit about sorcerers, though. I suppose there's no point in responding substantively to any more of your posts. Thanks to Mammuthus, however, for providing an excellent answer and numerous supporting articles. Your work doesn't go unnappreciated.However, in the interests of "closing the loop" on wordswordsman's initial broadside, I'd like to clarify the Gavin de Beer quotation. And yes, it's irrelevant - however, it appears wordswordsman has decided there's no possible answer, so for the "lurkers" who might feel that de Beer's challenge is unmet...Who (no peeking allowed) said, "There is no doubt whatever that the forelimb in the newt and the lizard and the arm of man are strictly homologous, inherited with modification from the pectoral fin of fishes 500 million years ago."*drumroll* Gavin de Beer, from the same reference (page 8). Hmm, sounds like typical creationist quote mining in action. They're twisting and misrepresenting de Beer's work to make it seem he was stating something other than what he really meant. I've been able to trace some of the quote: it IS in fact from de Beer's 1971 book. However, the book is devoted to an argument against then-current thinking in phylogeny and evolutionary development (especially embryology). He was basically arguing in the book that:1) embryology is not a reliable guide to true homology2) genetic control is not a reliable guide to true homology.In essence, he's arguing that homologs can owe their origin to different processes and need not be controlled by identical genes. However, he NOWHERE precludes the idea that those developmental processes taken as a whole which produce homologous structures aren't in fact homologs! Just not every gene relevant for a developmental process must be homologous to a gene involved in a homologous developmental process. So he WAS stating the observation that then-current thinking on evo-devo was missing something - not that common descent didn't happen. This misinterpretation is a creationist quote mine originally published by Denton (it's unclear where he got it), then quoted again by Johnson (quoting Denton!), and finally seized upon by Wells, Gish, etc. It's become a standard in the creationist repertoire.That aside, was de Beer right? In one sense, he was. At the time (1971) he wrote the book, there were a plethora of different (and occasionally mutually contradictory) definitions of and means of identifying homology, a few of which were mentioned in the Wells article. Each definition was quite useful for the research and efforts of individual disciplines. For example, phylogenetic homology centers on synapomorphy, and is rooted in comparative taxonomy. It uses "homology" to explain similarities and correspondence between extinct and living organisms. Biological homology, on the other hand, generally refers to embryology, with a special examination of developmental constraints. Both of these definitions are closely allied, but not synonymous. In the first case, the feature is different but the process is homologous. In the second, the feature is homologous but the process is different. Hmm, sounds like what de Beer was all bothered about, doesn't it? No single definition worked universally. ...At that time...Today, great strides have been made. Evolutionary developmental biology is a brand new science, of which one of its goals is to seek the reconciliation between phylogeny and ontogeny in an evolutionary context. In addition, the concept of "developmental constraint" has become widely accepted. In 1985, Maynard Smith described developmental constraints as "a bias on the production of variant phenotypes or a limitation on phenotypic variability caused by the structure, character, composition, or dynamics of the developmental system. (Maynard Smith, J., R. Burian, S. Kaufman, P. Alberch, J. Campbell, B. Goodwin, R. Lande, D. Raup, and L. Wolpert: 1985, "Developmental Constraints and Evolution", Quarterly Review of Biology 60:265-287). IOW, a change due to mutation in the left hindlimb of tetrapods are impossible (or highly improbable) without similar changes in the right hindlimb. Random mutations can effect any part of the genome with more or less the same probability, but this doesn't mean that any change of the phenotype is equally probable. And finally, advances in genomics have shown how Hox genes (and other homeotic determinants) determine body plan and provide the "missing linkage" between morphology and genetics. Mammuthus provided a number of references for the latter, but I'd like to add one on line for those of you who are "university challenged": Analysis of a complete homeobox gene repertoire: Implications for the evolution of diversity.What it boils down to is that de Beer's question, first posed in the late 1930's and re-capitulated () in 1971, has finally been answered by a brand new science. The research supporting the answer is large, and growing. The research supporting creationist quote-mining on the other hand, is small and diminishing.[This message has been edited by Quetzal, 10-17-2002]