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"1,000 Scientists Sign Up to Dissent from Darwin"

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I haven't forgotten natural selection, which 1) cannot enact changes on the base pair level/only sort from the pool of those changes at the macro level 2) puts the onus on the statistics YOU suggested (300 million mutations producing 32 million good ones) because it is SELECTING from among good and bad alternatives.

Your error in logic is simple--assume natural selection does magic to violate the 2 principles above.
And you fail in your first sentence where you use a strawman argument. When you do such you look as if you are either lying or do not have a clue. No one has ever said that natural selection "enacts changes". You need to make this your mantra simply repeat "natural selection and variation together". If you use that instead of "natural selection" or "variation" your error will be hopefully obvious to you.. For part two you are merely trying to shift the burden of proof since your claim that it was not possible for evolution to cause the needed number of changes. I showed that there would be more than enough mutations in that time period for your claim to be false. As I said earlier once you admit your error, which you have not done yet, then I will show that there are enough positive mutations for the event to occur as well. But until you admit that you made an obvious false statement there is no point in moving on.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I haven't forgotten natural selection, which 1) cannot enact changes on the base pair level/only sort from the pool of those changes at the macro level 2) puts the onus on the statistics YOU suggested (300 million mutations producing 32 million good ones) because it is SELECTING from among good and bad alternatives.

Your error in logic is simple--assume natural selection does magic to violate the 2 principles above.
As a Christian that rejects science you should never accuse others of errors in logic. And your two "principles" were dealt with. They were not principles at all. And yes, you did forget natural selection. You showed that in your very first "principle" when you made a very very foolish strawman argument. And you repeated it here. You are now simply repeating gross errors. So one more time:

1. This is a strawman argument of yours. Only you ignore natural selection and state the obvious. Natural selection does not exist in a vacuum. So one more time always use the phrase "natural selection and variation together" until you at least understand the concepts much much better. Otherwise you once again all but guarantee foolish mistakes by you.

2. This is an attempt to shift the burden of proof. I told you earlier that once you own up to your error that I would show you how not only enough mutations occurred, but how enough positive mutations occurred. There is no burden on me if you do not at the very least own up to the mistake that you made that led to my claim.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I find some specifics in your post, some unjustified generalities, like this one:

"Natural selection takes care of negative mutations. Evolution always moves forward."

Just stating that something is an "unjustified generality" does not make it one. Why do you think that is the case? If you did not understand it you should have asked questions. When you claim that something is unjustified you put the burden of proof upon yourself. This is an error that you I see you repeatedly commit.

And some assumptions, like this one:

"Your scheme has some combination of four parents for some odd and unknown reason. Which of these contribute half would be undetermined."

Not at all, I was pointing to the fact that we are discussing primates, they are mating pairs who birth hybrids.

Oh my! Hybrid is a specific term that is applied to subspecies mating at the very least. No one is discussing subspecies here. You may want to use some different terminology. That was an observation that was made on your earlier statement, not an assumption (another term that you should not use since it puts the burden of proof upon you again). Your attempt at clarification only made matter worse.

And you also post things you yourself must not be reading (?), like this:

"Using the former value of 350 billion and a positive allele frequency of as little as .00000001"

You cannot explain how the negative frequency of as much as .99999999 is overcome other than "Evolution always moves forward."

Do you want to move from your rhetoric to a dialectic, or no?


Actually we can explain that. This is where natural selection comes to play and your post indicates that you do not understand the process.

This may take several posts. Tell me, if a mutation is so negative that it causes the embryo or fetus to die en utero is that trait passed on? Is it a threat to the species?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
I find some specifics in your post, some unjustified generalities, like this one:

"Natural selection takes care of negative mutations. Evolution always moves forward."
How are they unjustified? Do you even understand what those facts mean?

And some assumptions, like this one:

"Your scheme has some combination of four parents for some odd and unknown reason. Which of these contribute half would be undetermined."

Not at all, I was pointing to the fact that we are discussing primates, they are mating pairs who birth hybrids.
It is not an assumption. You use the term 'binary pair.', two words that essentially mean the same thing. Together you are indicating four of something.

Whether discussing primates or any organism that reproduces sexually, the parents are a pair and not two pair.

And you also post things you yourself must not be reading (?), like this:

"Using the former value of 350 billion and a positive allele frequency of as little as .00000001"

You cannot explain how the negative frequency of as much as .99999999 is overcome other than "Evolution always moves forward."
What are you talking about? Are you reading what I am writing? Explain yourself. This makes no sense to me.

Do you want to move from your rhetoric to a dialectic, or no?
Again, what are you talking about? I am describing evolution to an unskilled novice and trying to simplify it as much as I can.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
I said "huh?" to let you know how I don't know where you discerned my imagined hidden agendas from.
What? What hidden agendas are those?

Our skeptic friends use this as shorthand all the time. I'm not "keyed up" or angry.
Your posts take on a different character when someone has revealed your use of logical fallacies or has shown your assertions to be in error. That post had that character.

You do realize that you are a sort of skeptic, just not a fact-based skeptic. Skeptic may not be the correct word to use here. Biased may be more accurate.

Prophecy explains how people on this forum behave, and it does so, unerringly. I find that extraordinary!
What prophecy speaks of participants in internet forums?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Chirality - severely (to a near-infinite order of magnitude without counter-factors) limits how base substances may combine to form life building blocks, and the nano "technology" that powers life (like homochiral sugar creation and processing)...
What is an infinite order of magnitude?

Do you know what chirality is?

There is no known technology powering the formation of life.

Thermodynamics/entropy - we see nearly all things in the known universe tending toward either entropy (or if self-renewed on a cyclical basis) destruction/implosion before reorder. Case in point - scientists admonish us that we need to protect the natural world and species on the brink of extermination--after all, we could "lose just a few key species" and life dies out--yet the same scientists explain that entire kingdoms of created organic things didn't exist for a billion years, etc. Anyone seeing the interdependence of all life from bacteria to parasites to complex mammals and plants has to balk at the "it just always kind of worked out, mechanistically" approach, even given long epochs of time.
Wow! Another topic you seem to declare yourself expert in, and know practically nothing about it.

Life and the evolution of life do not defy the SLoT.

Aren't you the one promoting the idea of regressing to your infanthood in order to learn from the ground up without pre-conceived notions? You should give it a whirl?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
You are conflating "a small amount of base changes can change species" (correct) with "from 300 million mutations, 30 million passed to the new species without destroying its survivability". You are making near-infinite assumptions for junk DNA and etc.

You are compounding the error by mentioning how very bad mutations cause death, sterility, etc.
I have no clue what your objection here is. If I were assessing your understanding, based on these posts, I would have to give you an incomplete, since this seems below an F.

Show us all how 32,000,000 differences between the human and chimpanzee genome cannot occur in six to 10 million years and explain why. Explain how you have determined the number of positive, negative and neutral mutations for each line. Explain what a near-infinite assumption is and how it is being applied to non-coding DNA. What is etc to all of this?
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
I haven't forgotten natural selection, which 1) cannot enact changes on the base pair level/only sort from the pool of those changes at the macro level
What does this mean? What do you mean by macro level? Are you saying that natural selection cannot act on a single point mutation? What do you mean by sort?

2) puts the onus on the statistics YOU suggested (300 million mutations producing 32 million good ones) because it is SELECTING from among good and bad alternatives.
I would be interested to know what you mean here. I cannot see what you are trying to say.

Your error in logic is simple--assume natural selection does magic to violate the 2 principles above.
This is your error. Not his. They are not principles. They are you assertions. Do not get ahead of yourself and start considering yourself for such honors as having formulated principles.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
You said, "My God set laws in place that abiogenesis seems to defy, including chirality, thermodynamics and entropy, etc."

Could you clarify exactly how abiogenesis violates those?
If only he could. There might be something to clarify for him. From the looks of it, he needs to get through general chemistry and physics first, before tackling these more advanced concepts.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
If only he could. There might be something to clarify for him. From the looks of it, he needs to get through general chemistry and physics first, before tackling these more advanced concepts.


If only they would. I often offer to help creationists with the basics of science. Topics that I know are well within their ability to understand. Even declaring that if they demonstrate that they do understand the basics that I would apologize to them for my error. They never take me up on it. That demonstrates to me that they do not want to learn, they do not want to know, they only want to believe. I have noticed a similarity to Christian apologists in that manner. The various apologetics sites never are interested in knowing what really happened. They only offer excuses for errors and inconsistencies in the Bible, as if that were good enough.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Why make such a claim? By doing so you put the burden of proof upon yourself. Now if you can't prove this claim it only looks as if you were lying. Let's look at your numbers though, just for fun. I will assume that they are correct. Let's say 30 million base pair changes in 10 million years. You emphasized the word "pair" as if that matters, I don't think that is the case. Mutations can happen one at a time. With a population averaging just one million, which would be on the low side, and fifteen years for the average generation, it has gotten longer only recently and is probably less than that. And with 100 mutations per individual per generation we get: 6 *10^13 mutations. Now granted, most of those will not stick. But we only need one out of two million mutations to become part of the genome. Do you understand that the math looks like it totally goes against you? I only need one out of 2 million mutations to be positive and become part of our genome. I am betting that I can show far more than one out of two million mutations are positive.
Using your parameters and the positive mutation rate 1 in a billion (0.000000001) that I recently used, 60,000 positive mutations would result. This corresponds fairly well to a 32 million bp difference between human and chimp occurring over 10 million years. Too support a difference of 32 million bp, the average size of a positive mutation would would work out to about 500 bp with an average accumulation rate of 3,200,000 bp per million years or 6400 positive mutations per million years. You are suggesting a higher frequency of positive mutation, which would be more in line with actual observed positive muation rates. All meaning there is no barrier to this number of positive mutations and the observed quantity of bp difference between humans and chimps for the 10 million year period.

You do realize that none of the people that you follow can support this claim. All they can make are faulty arguments based upon man being a goal. Man is not a goal he is a result. Your argument only works if you treat man as a goal and not as a result. But that would be like taking the latest list of lottery winners and saying that it is impossible for them to have won since the cumulative odds of their winning is lower than the 1 out of 10^60 figure used by some as to what they call "impossible odds". In reality the odds of someone winning the lottery is for all practical purposes 1 since the number of people playing continually grows as the jackpot grows. Learn how to do odds correctly and you will not make such poor arguments.
He does not appear to understand this.
 
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Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
If only they would. I often offer to help creationists with the basics of science. Topics that I know are well within their ability to understand. Even declaring that if they demonstrate that they do understand the basics that I would apologize to them for my error. They never take me up on it. That demonstrates to me that they do not want to learn, they do not want to know, they only want to believe. I have noticed a similarity to Christian apologists in that manner. The various apologetics sites never are interested in knowing what really happened. They only offer excuses for errors and inconsistencies in the Bible, as if that were good enough.
It certainly does not help that so many think they are experts, while revealing the opposite.

I agree. Often to accept the excuses would require back-breaking effort and self-deception as a rule. At least for those not obviously so silly they cannot be taken seriously on any level.
 

Dan From Smithville

What's up Doc?
Staff member
Premium Member
Just stating that something is an "unjustified generality" does not make it one. Why do you think that is the case? If you did not understand it you should have asked questions. When you claim that something is unjustified you put the burden of proof upon yourself. This is an error that you I see you repeatedly commit.



Oh my! Hybrid is a specific term that is applied to subspecies mating at the very least. No one is discussing subspecies here. You may want to use some different terminology. That was an observation that was made on your earlier statement, not an assumption (another term that you should not use since it puts the burden of proof upon you again). Your attempt at clarification only made matter worse.




Actually we can explain that. This is where natural selection comes to play and your post indicates that you do not understand the process.

This may take several posts. Tell me, if a mutation is so negative that it causes the embryo or fetus to die en utero is that trait passed on? Is it a threat to the species?
Good catch. I missed his hybrid reference completely.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
I said "huh?" to let you know how I don't know where you discerned my imagined hidden agendas from. Our skeptic friends use this as shorthand all the time. I'm not "keyed up" or angry.

Like you, Dan is a Christian too.

The main difference between you and him (other than the obvious of belonging to different sects), is that Dan understand biology, you obviously don’t.

Dan knows how to approach the science, objectively by looking at the available evidences. Again, you don’t.

You have the tendencies to lie, or at least spread misinformation regarding to science and religion. I have not detect any lie or misinformation from Dan, since he joined us.

Clearly, not all Christians are the same.

If anyone has agenda, billiardsball, it is you.
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
And you fail in your first sentence where you use a strawman argument. When you do such you look as if you are either lying or do not have a clue. No one has ever said that natural selection "enacts changes". You need to make this your mantra simply repeat "natural selection and variation together". If you use that instead of "natural selection" or "variation" your error will be hopefully obvious to you.. For part two you are merely trying to shift the burden of proof since your claim that it was not possible for evolution to cause the needed number of changes. I showed that there would be more than enough mutations in that time period for your claim to be false. As I said earlier once you admit your error, which you have not done yet, then I will show that there are enough positive mutations for the event to occur as well. But until you admit that you made an obvious false statement there is no point in moving on.

Natural selection + variation are insufficient to cause DIRECT change to DNA! That is an outrageous claim you've made (again).
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
As a Christian that rejects science you should never accuse others of errors in logic. And your two "principles" were dealt with. They were not principles at all. And yes, you did forget natural selection. You showed that in your very first "principle" when you made a very very foolish strawman argument. And you repeated it here. You are now simply repeating gross errors. So one more time:

1. This is a strawman argument of yours. Only you ignore natural selection and state the obvious. Natural selection does not exist in a vacuum. So one more time always use the phrase "natural selection and variation together" until you at least understand the concepts much much better. Otherwise you once again all but guarantee foolish mistakes by you.

2. This is an attempt to shift the burden of proof. I told you earlier that once you own up to your error that I would show you how not only enough mutations occurred, but how enough positive mutations occurred. There is no burden on me if you do not at the very least own up to the mistake that you made that led to my claim.

You gave math re: positive mutations, without:

1) Answering the math I completed for you, showing your outrageous claim that 1 in 10 mutations is positive! That's why I referred you to Dan from Smithville, who more rightly claimed an assumed .000000001 positive alleles likely or possible!

2) That alone is enough to make your argument moot, so see other post re: your additional faulty claims.

Stop using rhetoric, look at the math, and learn something!
 

BilliardsBall

Veteran Member
Like you, Dan is a Christian too.

The main difference between you and him (other than the obvious of belonging to different sects), is that Dan understand biology, you obviously don’t.

Dan knows how to approach the science, objectively by looking at the available evidences. Again, you don’t.

You have the tendencies to lie, or at least spread misinformation regarding to science and religion. I have not detect any lie or misinformation from Dan, since he joined us.

Clearly, not all Christians are the same.

If anyone has agenda, billiardsball, it is you.

The main difference between Dan and I and you is Dan and I are making efforts to show love, without accusations, since we are Christians. You have changed (descended) since you walked away from the church. You consistently do rude things including accusing me of lying. Please put me on ignore.
 
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