Putting God's Design In Perspective

[Jose Fly]

1 but you are still unable to quote a single mistake

I've named two fundamental ones.

2 whether if we share 98% of or genome or 96% depends on whether if we consider gene duplications or not… scientists know which mutations are caused by gene duplication and which are caused by point mutations.

For the sake of simplicity I only focused on point mutations (the 2% difference) but if you what to include gene duplications then you have to explain the 60,000,000 differences caused by point mutations + the thousands of the differences caused by gene duplication. … I was trying to be generous and allowing you to worry only about the 2% differences caused by point mutations, but if you what to include other differences feel free to do it.

In other words a gene duplication doesn’t do anything to explain the 60,000,000 differences caused by point mutations,

Where are you getting these numbers from?

I didn’t shifted the burden proof

Yes you did, when you stated "My assumption is that at least a relevant portion (say more than 1%) of the differences between chimps and humans where cause by beneficial mutations….. if you what to affirm that the assumption is wrong, please let me know". You made an assumption and then put the burden on everyone else to show it wrong. That's textbook shifting the burden of proof fallacy.

I said that 50,000 mutations is not enough to explain the differences between chimps and humans and then I provided a source that concludes that there are 3 million differences between humans and chimps that where beneficial and become fixed (hence relevant for Haldines dilemma)

You provided a source? Just above you said that it was your assumption? Which is it? And what is your source?

 

[shunyadragon]

no what I am actually saying is “wow, if the values of all these constants where slightly different there wouldn’t be atoms, molecules, stars, planets etc. and therefore there wouldn’t be life.” Even if these values where determined by the laws of nature, it would still raise the question, why did the laws of nature conspired to produce this constants in the “ life permitting rage.” ?

Whether there are differences in different universes or there could have different values when our universe formed is hypothetical and unknown. The bottom line is our universe began as it is, and has the Laws of Nature and Constant that it has. It is possible as Einstein noted, "The dice are loaded." and all possible universes could have the same Laws of Nature anc Constants as ours.

things could have been different, we could have been living in a reality where it doesn’t matter how strong is gravity, stars and planets would form anyway. In this reality the universe wouldn’t be FT

It's possible, but unknown. It is possible Einstein is right.

Every single explanation opens the door for new questions, namely “what is the explanation for the explanation?”….. for example if you tell me that we all came from a universal common (UCA) ancestor I could ask, “and what caused the UCA” and you would probably answer “I don’t know, but who cares the UCA theory is true regardless if we have an explanation for the origin of UCA or not.

The answer is simpler from the scientific perspective UCA is caused by the Laws of Natural and the natural environment, no problem.

 

[Jollybear]

Either we apply a basic test of some sort of evidence or reasoning in order to take an idea seriously or we have to treat all claims the same: fairies, vampires, alien abductions, invisible pink unicorns, everything.

Let me ask you, if you wer to apply a test for God, what would it be?

For the sake of sanity, the default position is to reject an unsupported claim unless we have some reason to take it seriously.

I take it seriously, but you dont.

You are also talking as if there is only one god claim. In fact humans have, and do believed in thousands of different gods. At least most of them are untrue.

I dont understand why atheists wanna keep using this kind of argument, it angers me actually. No one is debating whether zues or Hercules is a God, atleast that im aware of. Most people debate the mystic God or judeo christian or muslim God. But, it should be a debate based on what that person believes. Not comparing apples to oranges or comparing there God to a pink unicorn.

Where is this objective test that's like gravity and atoms? If an objective test exists, why don't all the people who investigate god(s) agree?

You dont see gravity, but the test is drop an object and it falls, repeatedly.

The test for God is study nature. As you do, you find order, complexity and information. This implies or infers a designer, a God. Also NDEs reveal a God as well. God is more DIRECTLY seen in the NDE. While the study of nature is a indirect seeing of God by his handy work.

 

[Timothy Spurlin]

Hmmm....let me ask you something, when you wer seeking God, was it in a non chalunt kinda way or was it with a zealous hunger? When you are hungry for spiritual experiences and you deligently seek them, youl have them.

Also your lack of results is no barring on the fact that i have had as well as millions of other people have had spiritual experiences.



Sorry, but the way you defined "objective" earlyer is no different then the definition of "bias".

Objective is the OPOSITE of bias.

If you presupose theres no God, or soul or spirit world, then do no testing because you presupose theres nothing there to test, what do you call that? BIAS!



The research of NDEs and ESP and spiritual and religious experiences. And intelligent design and information within nature.

What do you mean what God do humans worship? Theres different ones people can worship. Depends on how they define it.

I was trying to get closer to God.

You call it bias because I ask for objective evidence that a god is real. All you seem to have is subjective evidence for a god.

If science proved a god was real, how do know which god it is?

 

[shunyadragon]

Why would the physical laws drive all these independent constants to the narrow life permitting range? You are not removing the necessity of a designer.

There is no objective verifable evidence to support a hypothesis for the necessity of a designer.

Pretend that you have a calculator that always gives correct results, the calculator would be FT to produce “correct results” then pretend that the algorithms in the calculator are impossible to change, once you try to change them some repair mechanism would get activated and the algorithm would be restored.

In this case the calculator could have not been different, but would you therefore conclude that there was not a designer?[/QUOTE]

Its amazing how they call it "same core DESIGN". Design is too obvious that its hard not to use the word even amongs those who are biased against it.



Build a family tree eh? They really working there imagination.



Atleast there honest in admitting its a "MAY have looked like". Theres that imagination again.



Theres that word "may" again. Even 12 stators if there correct, still shows design and or complexity.



A leap? I thought evolution happens in millions of years? Looks like alot of MAGIC going on in there model here.



"Likely"? Theres that imaginatiin working again. Funny when ID proponents INFER actual design from seeing order and complexity, we are called "believers" but when evolutionists make inferences they DO NOT LIKE being called "believers". Standard is a bit double, wouldn't ya think?

Terrible reading comprehension and selective bashing of the article cited.

There are more articles to be cited.

 

[Salvador]

Exactly. it depends on which location the photon is *recorded*. That recording isn't done by a mind, but by a detector. It isn't conscious knowledge that collapses the wave function, but *measurement*.


And a fair amount has been done since then. In particular decoherence theory was done in the late 1990's and early 2000's and goes into detail about how and when a wave function 'collapse' occurs. When an irreversible measurement is made, the wave function collapses to a state among those determined by the environment. Consciousness isn't required.

Exactly. it depends on which location the photon is *recorded*. That recording isn't done by a mind, but by a detector. It isn't conscious knowledge that collapses the wave function, but *measurement*.



And a fair amount has been done since then. In particular decoherence theory was done in the late 1990's and early 2000's and goes into detail about how and when a wave function 'collapse' occurs. When an irreversible measurement is made, the wave function collapses to a state among those determined by the environment. Consciousness isn't required.

There are still many interpretations of Quantum Mechanics; some posit the wave function doesn't actually collapse - i.e. - many-worlds hypothesis or pilot-wave hypothesis.

 

[Jollybear]

We do not need to presuppose that god does not exist. There is no god in the rational skeptic's world view

Slash of the word rational. And add "hyper" skeptic. Saying theres no God is NOT rational. In fact, its not even remotely close to rational.

because there is insufficient reason to believe that one exists.

Yawn......theres lots of reasons.

God cannot be thrown out of such a worldview since no god was ever a part of it. The burden of proof is on the theist to demonstrate that his belief is correct, or more likely to be correct, than the alternative.

My goodness....theists have mounted that burden big time. Websites, articles, books, peer reviewed journals have been written making the case. The alternative is insanity.

If you want to convince the rational skeptic that you are correct, you're going to need compelling evidence.

The evidence is very compelling to me, which leads me to believe the skeptic is NOT rational.

You're committing an equivocation fallacy by using the word see in two different ways, the first meaning to detect by any method, the other meaning to detect with the eyes. There is evidence for gravity which we "see" every tine we drop an apple even though we cannot literally see a gravitational field.

Yea, and in the same way we dont directly see gravity, but see it indirectly by dropping an apple, is the same way we dont directly see God, but we indirectly see him through the order, design, complexity and information in the universe. The evidence for God is the exact same in nature as the evidence for gravity, or wind even. Seriously you may as well deny gravity exists or wind exists if you are gonna deny God exists because the evidence is the same in principle.

There is evidence for each of the phenomena you listed, often not available to to the unaided eye. There is no equivalent evidence for any god or gods. If the stars in the sky rearranged one day to spell out "I am God," we have an example of a physical phenomenon evident to all with functioning eyes that could be indirect evidence of a being or rave with godlike powers. ou can probably think of other physical, detectable manifestations of nature that would speak to the existence of a god if any of them occurred. None has, which is what we would expect in a godless universe, or one occupied by gods that didn't want to be discovered.

If the stars spelled out "hey im God" you can be sure there will be atheists who will say thats like seeing a face in a cloud.

In fact, some have taken satalite pictures of the mountains over by the middle east somewhere and they claim that the formation of the mountains are shaped to spell out yahwah in hebrew. But, without the vowels. So, yhwh, but in hebrew.

But, do you think atheists will agree with that? HELL NO! lol

So.let's rewrite your first sentence containing the question how can we test that which we dont see? to say how can we test that which we can't detect in any manner?

Thats FACTUALLY FALSE! We CAN detect God by the design, order, information and spiritual experiences like NDEs. This is a form of detection.

The answer is that we cannot test for the undetectable.

Again, you may as well say gravity is undetectable.

What is needed is the detection of some phenomenon that is better explained by positing the existence of a god.

The phenomenon is design and spiritual experiences

Have you ever noticed how much the undetectable has in common with the nonexistent?

Have you ever noticed that your arguments are not rational because by this standard gravity and wind dont exist. Hell, lets throw in dark matter too, how about light? We see what light shines on, not the light itself. What about magnetism? Complexity, order and information IS a detector of intelligence. I dont care what anybody says, the evidence for this is just as strong as the evidence for those other unseen forces.

There is not a single physical finding published in any peer reviewed journal that is better explained by positing the existence of a super-human intelligent designer.

Thats not true, there is peer reviewed journals.

The rational skeptic has no reason to believe that gods exist until someone can give him one, and therefore has no need for that hypothesis.

Well, let me put it like this, the HYPER skeptic has no need for a God, so, we have no need for the hyper skeptic or his unrational nonsense in the mainstream of science. Too bad the ones in power are the hyper skeptics. Boy, its long overdue that they get overthrown. They got you brainwashed.

We could suggest untold number of possibilities about what might be true, but should accept none of them as likely to be true until we find some physical phenomenon observable to the naked senses or to scientific instruments better explained by the that possibility being actual.

Still vomiting the same nonsense.

How? What physical finding would cause you to abandon the hypothesis? If the answer is that nothing could make you believe that there is no intelligent designer in a godless universe, then your belief is unfalsifiable by definition. Falsifiable does not mean that something can be shown to be false, but that there exists the possibility that if the statement is incorrect, that there is in principle the possibility of demonstrating that to be the case.

Yes, intelligent design is falsifiable. If you or anyone could prove the universe either came from nothing or was always here, then youd falsify ID.

That argument is easily debunked just by watching a mamallian fetus develop from a single cell, the zygote. The organism goes from one with no organs at all (I'm excluding organelles) to one with a functioning heart and lungs. All the vital parts are there for the developing organism at each stage of its embryogenesis, or it would die in the womb.

Ya, you excluded the organelles, there vital parts. Thats my point. What vital part of the cell evolved first? If all the parts arent there, the cell dont work. Just like our bodies, if all the vital parts arent there at once, we dont live.

Science allows us to predict and at times control outcomes, a very valuable contribution to the human condition. Isn't that reason enough to continue doing science?

Give examples of those predictions and controlling outcomes within science?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Postulating that Humans created the pyramids gets you now where, you are just moving the problem somewhere else, ¿if humans created the pyramids, then who/what created humans?........you see the point?.... every single explanation opens the door for new questions, this “problem” (assuming that it is a problem) is not exclusive for ID everybody has this same problem.

It is perfectly valid to say “humans caused pyramids” and “I don’t know what caused humans” just like it is valid to say that an intelligent designer caused the universe and “I don’t know what caused the designer “

You do realize that we say humans created the pyramids based on a lot of evidence? It is not like we are still looking at them 5,000 years later and wondering who created them and just throwing out some biased answer based on belief. You do not even have to answer the question of who created humans to study the pyramids, their origin, and the people and culture that created them. If you explain who built the pyramids, who is going to say "Oh yeah. Well then who built the humans?"

Again, it is valid to say that humans built the pyramids, because we have evidence to support that claim.

 

[ratiocinator]

things could have been different, we could have been living in a reality where it doesn’t matter how strong is gravity, stars and planets would form anyway. In this reality the universe wouldn’t be FT

This is just a fantasy though, isn't it? I mean you couldn't have a universe with anything like our physical laws that would meet your conditions. The fact is that if a 'universe' allows for life, then there would be reasons why and you'd be arguing about them instead.

I suggest that what is more instructive is to think how an intelligent designer might design a universe specifically for life. I can't think it would be much like this one - almost all of which is hostile to life.

Sure, in that case questions like “who is the designer” or “where did he come from” are simply beyond the scope of the FT argument, the answer could simply be I don’t know.

Every single explanation opens the door for new questions, namely “what is the explanation for the explanation?”….. for example if you tell me that we all came from a universal common (UCA) ancestor I could ask, “and what caused the UCA” and you would probably answer “I don’t know, but who cares the UCA theory is true regardless if we have an explanation for the origin of UCA or not.

The point is that we have a chain of evidence that leads us back to the UCA. We have evidence that life evolved from simpler forms on the early earth.

There is no such chain of evidence for a designer. The only 'problem' it 'addresses' applies directly to the 'solution'. It explains exactly nothing.

"How come there is an environment in which life can exist?"
"Because a living thing made it that way."

See the problem?

 

[ratiocinator]

Let me ask you, if you wer to apply a test for God, what would it be?

It's not up to me to find a reason to take other people's claims seriously. It's up to people who make the claims to justify them.

Burden of proof (philosophy)

I take it seriously, but you dont.

Why do you take it seriously?

I dont understand why atheists wanna keep using this kind of argument, it angers me actually. No one is debating whether zues or Hercules is a God, atleast that im aware of. Most people debate the mystic God or judeo christian or muslim God. But, it should be a debate based on what that person believes. Not comparing apples to oranges or comparing there God to a pink unicorn.

Firstly, I can see no more reason to take your god seriously than Zues. Secondly, even if we confine ourselves to modern monotheistic gods, we are still talking about many, many different ideas.

You dont see gravity, but the test is drop an object and it falls, repeatedly.

The test for God is study nature. As you do, you find order, complexity and information. This implies or infers a designer, a God.

Not to me it doesn't. We have a very good explanation for biological complexity. We also have a very good account of how the universe developed from a hot dense state some 14 billion years ago and how it came to be in the state it is. None of this needs a designer.

Quite apart from all that, though - a designer really doens't explain anything. As I said before, instead of "why this complex ordered universe?" we have "why this complex ordered god?"

Basically a universe created by a god is no less mysterious and unexplained than just a universe by itself.

Also NDEs reveal a God as well. God is more DIRECTLY seen in the NDE.

Some odd experiences when people are near death are evidence of a god - is this a serious suggestion?

 

[Polymath257]

There are still many interpretations of Quantum Mechanics; some posit the wave function doesn't actually collapse - i.e. - many-worlds hypothesis or pilot-wave hypothesis.

That's actually why I often put 'collapse' in scare quotes. And, even more so, in those interpretations where there is no collapse, consciousness isn't the deciding factor for splits of the universe. Truthfully, worrying about the interpretation gets into philosophical silliness. Since they all give the same observable effects, all interpretations are the same in everything that counts (observable tests).

But this also means that trying to follow the 'path' of a quantum particle is meaningless. There is a very real sense in which all paths are taken and they all interfere with each other to give the observable results. So, in the experiment you alluded to, all of the available paths are taken by every photon. The way they interfere is determined by whether 'which path' information is available on the paths or not. The results at the detector reflect ALL of the available paths and how they interfere.

 

[Polymath257]

So, science does not say or have any views at all? What then does science do?

it has views on those things that can be determined and tested by observation. That excludes theology and most philosophy.

If the egg comes first, how will it survive without the parrent? Also how will it get born without the parents?

You realize that many fish and amphibians lay eggs and don't take care of them? You are thinking about much later stages (probably shelled eggs that are cared for--not even all shelled eggs are) and not the *first* eggs.

Ok....so, does science say this or does the individual scientist say this from philosophy?

The actual science shows this.

 

[Polymath257]

Despite not knowing if they can change, I have read that some physicists argue over what the range of change could be, before we saw changes that would eliminate conditions that we know to exist now. If a constant could change, some have said there is potentially more flexibility in a proposed constant change than is claimed by others.

To me, this is rather confusing and indicates that you are correct. It is all speculation. Most of the "designed for life" claims are speculation driven, not so much by evidence, but by a bias to see an agenda win out.

Also, most of the FT arguments are based on the idea that all the constants that we could fit into our equations are equally probable. But what *that* could even mean hasn't been discussed (what does it mean to talk about a probability distribution in this context?), let alone whether a uniform distribution (as opposed to various logarithmic distributions) are the more likely.

And, again, like I said, we don't know to what extent the values of those constants are determined by physical laws we don't yet know. We don't know if they *can* change over time or between 'universes' in a multiverse.

But there is *no* reason to leap from FT to the existence of a deity operating by unknown laws, with unknown powers, with unknown complexity, with unknown composition and existing in an unknown realm.

To conclude the existence of an intelligence, we must *first* understand what effects are possible without an acting intelligence. We are quite far from knowing that in the cases of FT or of abiogenesis.

 

[tas8831]

I didn’t shifted the burden proof, I said that 50,000 mutations is not enough to explain the differences between chimps and humans and then I provided a source that concludes that there are 3 million differences between humans and chimps that where beneficial and become fixed (hence relevant for Haldines dilemma)…. Of course these 3 million differences do not take in to account the differences in regions in DNA that have not been explored.

You misrepresented that article.

and so far @tas8831 has not answered.

Why the lie?

Obviously I understand that he has other things to with his life and that he might take a few days or weeks in answering, but the point is that I did supported my claims.

I addressed it already - this is why I get frustrated with creationists with n o science knowledge - they do keyword searches and/or take the lies of professional creationists at face value and run with them, then when their errors and fallacious reasoning is called out, they dodge and misrepresent to cover up their ineptness and gullibility.
So Jesus-like...

YOU presented Haldane's model.
YOU could not defend it and shifted the burden.
YOU then brought up neutral mutation for no reason.
YOU merely assert that even 50,000 fixed beneficial mutations is 'too few'.
YOU then desperately search, upon being made aware that you had no rationale for such a claim, to find some justification. and then you misrepresented THAT - not understanding, of course, that even if those 3 million mutations are ALL fixed beneficial mutations, you just totally DESTROYED the creationist argument re: Haldane's Dilemma!

HILARIOUS!

You ignored this post to be able to continue your charade:

Putting God's Design In Perspective


And you STILL cannot even produce an evidence-supported rationale for your empty assertions!

And so you don't ignore it again, I reproduce it here in its entirety:

SMH....

I am not shifting the burden; you claimed to be capable of refuting this assertion

YOU presented the claim, with NO support whatsoever. Asking me to then refute the mere assertion you made (copied from Don Batten) is disingenuous and lame.

so can you refuted?

So can you provide rationale and evidence FOR? it was, after all, your claim.

See, it doesn't work the way you want it to - you cannot just toss out an assertion then demand others refute it. Your way is the child's way. Are you a child?

So seemed to be arguing that most of the 2% difference between chimps and humans where caused by neutral mutations, given that most neutral mutations don’t get fixed, it is unlikely that any relevant number of neutral mutations account for the differences that we see in chimps and humans.

What is your evidence for your yet-again repeated claim about neutral mutations?

I that is not what you where arguing then I apologize for misrepresenting your view

Thanks. Now how about providing some actual SUPPORT for your Batten/ReMine paraphrases?

Care to provide an example of a single error

Like about neutral mutations? Like about how all the mutational differences between humans and chimps are beneficial? Like ignoring the Grant and Flake papers and the Ewans' quote? Like your repeated unsupported claims about 50,000 mutations being 'too few'?


Let me help you out, as you are clearly in over your head -

Haldane's model was about FIXED, BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS.

NOT total number of mutations. NOT NOT NOT total number of mutations.

Get it?

Sure, what makes you think that I didn’t understand any of that?

Well, we can start by your favorably referring to the Batten essay, wherein he implies that Haldane's model was about 'building' genomes. Then we have you bringing up neutral mutations.
Anything else?

Sure, that is the meaning of fixed mutation,. Did I ever used the term “fixed mutation” implying another meaning?

You referred to neutral mutations and total mutations in a discussion on Haldane's model, which is only about fixing beneficial mutations.
If you knew all about that, why did you even mention neutral mutations?

As a dodge? As a distraction?
Why?

Sure, that is the meaning of benefitial mutation,. Did I ever used the term “benefitial mutation” implying another meaning?

You referred to neutral mutations and total mutations in a discussion on Haldane's model, which is only about fixing beneficial mutations.
If you knew all about that, why did you even mention neutral mutations?

As a dodge? As a distraction?
Why?

sure, but weren’t most of the differences caused by beneficial mutations?...or would you argue that most (say more than 99% of the differences)where caused by neutral mutations? What is your view?

I never mentioned neutral mutations - YOU DID.

So tell me why YOU brought up neutral mutations in the first place.

Have you read ReMine's book? It seems not, for even the great electrical engineer creationist ReMine allowed for some tens of thousands of fixed neutral mutations on top of his calculated 1667 fixed beneficial ones. He said they were too few, of course - but like you and Batten, he never even tried to explain why he drew that conclusion.

By the way - yes, neutral mutant alleles can affect phenotype, but by definition, the changes are do not affect fitness.

what makes you think that I didn’t know it?

The fact that you brought up neutral mutations.

So are you going to refute the assertion or not?

Can you SUPPORT it with evidence or not? Can you even provide a logical rationale for asserting that it is too few?

It seems the answer is no, and you expect me to "refute" a made-up assertion.

Unlike you - or Batten, or ReMine - I, at least, provided a rationale and some supporting evidence. Odd that you decided to totally ignore it.

According to this article 3,000,000 mutations where cruzial in developing important stuff that differentiate us from chimps



So obviously 50,000 is not enough to explain the 3M differences that where caused by positive mutations. and this only if we look at the coding DNA

SO I PROVIDED EVIDENCE THAT SHOWS THAT 50,000 IS too few………can you refute it?

Um....

Yes, I can refute your claim that the article you linked indicates that "3,000,000 mutations where cruzial [sic] in developing important stuff that differentiate us from chimps" is at all relevant to your initial claims (which you are now, of course, changing upon realizing that you screwed up royally) -

"Most of these differences lie in what is believed to be DNA of little or no function. However, as many as 3 million of the differences may lie in crucial protein-coding genes or other functional areas of the genome."​

No mention of "fixed beneficial mutations", which is what your original claims ala Batten/ReMine were about. Just "differences".

Remember? CONGRATS! You just DEMOLISHED ReMine's and Batten's Haldane's Dilemma argument!

LOL!!!

And the very next sentence:

"As the sequences of other mammals and primates emerge in the next couple of years, we will be able to determine what DNA sequence changes are specific to the human lineage. The genetic changes that distinguish humans from chimps will likely be a very small fraction of this set,"​

The word "beneficial" occurs nowhere in the article.


FAIL.


Please provide evidence that 50,000 FIXED BENEFICIAL mutations are "too few" to account for human evolution from an apelike ancestor.

No more dodging and obfuscation and goal post shifting.

As I have already outlined (and you either did not understand or ignored for "plausible deniability" purposes), I do not think some gigantic number of mutations (beneficial or otherwise) are "required" to explain human traits evolved from an ape-like ancestor for the following reasons:

1. There really no 'brand new' traits that humans possess that chimps do not, indicating that our common ancestor also had some versionof the same basic traits
2. Therefore, we only need to "tweak" existing traits, and tweaking an existing trait does NOT require some large number of beneficial mutations
3. Support for this - point mutation in the FGFR-3 gene causing achondroplasia - altered limb-to-trunk proportion, altered facial characteristics, reduced joints, etc. All from one mutation. Reminder - I am NOT presenting this as a beneficial mutation, just the reality that MULTIPLE phenotypic traits can be altered, in this case, by a single mutation.

I predict that it will be possible, at some point, to map out specific mutations that resulted in specific phenotypes. We are not there now. But at least I have a foundationally-supported position with an example.

You have mere assertions premised on someone else's mere assertions based on someone else's mere assertions, who premised those assertions on personal incredulity, ignorance, and a desire to sway the under-informed to a creationist viewpoint by arguing with numbers.

Now YOU provide the evidence-based rationale for YOUR position, that "50,000 mutations do not even explain a small portion of the differences between chimps and humans" - and to be specific, this has to be 'fixed, beneficial mutations', because THAT is what Haldane's model and the creationist argument based on that is actually about.

In order for you to make your position valid, you must, at least:

1. Pick a trait that you think is so special in us
2. Identify the ancestral version of it
3. explain how many fixed beneficial mutations would have been required for that transition
4. explain how you know this, with at least a real-life "model" as I presented

OR

You could just admit that you were taken in by Don Batten's distorted misrepresentation of Haldane's model (it is NOT about 'building' a genome!) and ran with it without understanding the premise.

Your move.



*added in edit - re: ReMine 'allowing' some tens of thousands of fixed neutral mutations - these were fixed, neutral mutations that affected phenotype, not just 'neutral' mutations that did nothing.

 

[tas8831]

Regarding this claim of Leroy's:

"the fact that genomes are 3B base pairs long, we can conclude that the 2% difference between chimps and humans represents 60,000,000 base pairs. …….therefore 50,000 mutations do not even explain a small portion of the differences between chimps and humans"


Wow... Where to start? Jose already explained the error, but just to add - The TOTAL sequence difference between humans and chimps is NOT all beneficial mutations. MOST of it is, indeed, "neutral."
But Leroy doesn't understand basic genetics, so apparently he thinks all of the differences must be point mutations that have undergone independent fixation (not sure why he continues to lie about neutral mutations not getting fixed).

Mutations are changes to the DNA sequence. That is, a mutation is an EVENT. Changing one base for another is an EVENT.
If we delete a base, that is a mutation - an EVENT.
If we insert a base, that is a mutation - an EVENT.
If we duplicate an entire gene - that is a mutation - an EVENT, but one that involves thousands of base pairs.
If we duplicate an entire segment of a chromosome ( a segmental duplication) - it is one EVENT involving thousands (10's of thousands?) of bases.

Starting to see why your claims are bogus, Leroy? I suspect everyone else is.

Wait - there is more -

More than half the genome is likely repetitive sequence. Most of these elements have no effect on fitness - and can produce many may copies of themselves in a single generation, in many members of a population, making it more likely that these multiple thousands of copies will reach fixation..

A recent analysis indicate that any 2 humans differ by about 1.6% in terms of sequence difference.

Is Leroy going to argue that these are all fixed beneficial mutations? Time will tell.

 

[tas8831]

And even more - the 1000 Genome Project wrapped up in 2015 - with interesting results.

Among them:

"We characterized a broad spectrum of genetic variation, in total over 88 million variants (84.7 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), 3.6 million short insertions/deletions (indels), and 60,000 structural variants)..."

I think creationists may want to re-think their 'x-many DNA differences are too few/too many/etc.' arguments.

 

[tas8831]

Ok, I accept my burden.

My claim is that ID is a better explanation for the FT of the universe than your favorite alterative hypothesis.

And the puddle of water knows that the hole that it is in was created just for it.

 

[shunyadragon]

The test for God is study nature. As you do, you find order, complexity and information. This implies or infers a designer, a God. Also NDEs reveal a God as well. God is more DIRECTLY seen in the NDE. While the study of nature is a indirect seeing of God by his handy work.

Finding order. complexity and information can be easily explained by the Laws of Nature and natural environments. It remains the ID religious proposal cannot propose a hypothesis that does not allow for a natural explanation.

NDE's remain in the unknown category, and the desire for an explanation leads to a desire for an explanation.

 

[tas8831]

IOW, rather than requiring 750 separate mutations to generate the sequence difference, it only takes one mutation.

Shouldn't this be pretty easy to grasp??

 

[tas8831]

In other words a gene duplication doesn’t do anything to explain the 60,000,000 differences caused by point mutations,

LOL!

Wait - what?

You do realize that if you are comparing chimps and humans, that roughly half of those are in each group?

Maybe I missed it - what is your source for the 2% difference being all point mutations?