Aliens and religious beliefs.

[cladking]

Why yes, the last common ancestor of humans and oaks would share a lot of DNA with both.

Why would such simple organisms have vast amounts of "useless" DNA?

That includes quite a large number of genes, actually.

This is an assumption and doesn't seem logical to me.

That is clearly *plenty* of time for a LOT of genetic change (since all vertebrate evolution has been within the last half billion years).

All such change should be simple. It should not require vast amounts of DNA.

 

[cladking]

Some readers may not be aware that oaks and humans share nearly half of DNA. If the split was at some very simple organism everything that defines the difference between them should have arisen after the split.

Since it did not then the most logical explanation is terrestrial life originated elsewhere and was brought here or blown in on the solar wind.

The salient point is EVERY world that has ever been ready to generate life would have been contaminated before it did.

I'm sure many of the resident believers in science will miss all the implications.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Right, we only saw the aircraft and by that you think 4 aircraft the size of 2 buses each, controlled by humans can disappear.
Kudos if they can, but that means there is no such thing as privacy as anything can be anywhere watching anyone because they can be unseen and are silent.

How far away was it? Was it above you? You don't even know what it was. You said so. You saw something in the air. You seem to think that you were closer than 100 feet away from it. You should have a bit more detail than that.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Why would such simple organisms have vast amounts of "useless" DNA?

Because of gene duplication.

This is an assumption and doesn't seem logical to me.

Really? Do tell! So you can prove that is an assumption. That is amazing! How are you going to prove that it was an assumption?

I hope that you do realize that when you declare something to be an assumption that you just took on the burden of proof to show that he has no evidence for that statement. This should be interesting.

All such change should be simple. It should not require vast amounts of DNA.

Ooh! Another claim. Please prove this. Where is your evidence that changes should be simple? And since when did you become an expert in evolution?

Martha!!!! Get me my popcorn!!

 

[cladking]

Really? Do tell! So you can prove that is an assumption. That is amazing! How are you going to prove that it was an assumption?

I hope that you do realize that when you declare something to be an assumption that you just took on the burden of proof to show that he has no evidence for that statement. This should be interesting.

If you can't follow the logic or cite evidence I'm wrong then why reply at all?

 

[ppp]

If you can't follow the logic or cite evidence I'm wrong then why reply at all?

If you cannot follow logic and present evidence that you are correct then why post at all?

 

[Triumph]

How far away was it? Was it above you? You don't even know what it was. You said so. You saw something in the air. You seem to think that you were closer than 100 feet away from it. You should have a bit more detail than that.

There was no details to the aircraft, no markings, they were a dull silver gray, smooth in the shape of a tic tac. No windows.
Stop acting like there should be more details when the machines were smooth with no details, no wings, nothing that looked like it would propel it, no exhaust, no sound, no appendages.
It really is not important if you believe it or not. It was an amazing event in my life, not yours. Thousands of people around the world have had UFO sightings as clear as the one we had, with many witnesses at the same time, all seeing the same event. Many people have claimed they saw aircraft disappear and I know exactly what it is like to see an event like that because I experienced seeing it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

There was no details to the aircraft, no markings, they were a dull silver gray, smooth in the shape of a tic tac. No windows.
Stop acting like there should be more details when the machines were smooth with no details, no wings, nothing that looked like it would propel it, no exhaust, no sound, no appendages.
It really is not important if you believe it or not. It was an amazing event in my life, not yours. Thousands of people around the world have had UFO sightings as clear as the one we had, with many witnesses at the same time, all seeing the same event. Many people have claimed they saw aircraft disappear and I know exactly what it is like to see an event like that because I experienced seeing it.

The problem is that your claims are self contradictory. And it does not matter what "many people" saw. You need to realize why eye witness testimony is the weakest standard of evidence for a court of law. Anything weaker than that is thrown out .

I believe you. You saw something and you have no clue at all what it is.

EDIT: By the way, ease up on the personal attacks. I have not called you names, I have only pointed out your failings.

 

[Subduction Zone]

If you can't follow the logic or cite evidence I'm wrong then why reply at all?

You did not use any logic. You did not cite any evidence. The burden of proof is upon you. You were the one that made claims that you cannot support. In other words since the burden of proof was upon you and you refuse to support your own claims you have proven yourself wrong until you support what you said.

I am sure that I will and others will take this as an open admission by you that you were wrong.

 

[Triumph]

The problem is that your claims are self contradictory. And it does not matter what "many people" saw. You need to realize why eye witness testimony is the weakest standard of evidence for a court of law. Anything weaker than that is thrown out .

I believe you. You saw something and you have no clue at all what it is.

EDIT: By the way, ease up on the personal attacks. I have not called you names, I have only pointed out your failings.

How are you deciding I have personally attacked you? I never did and it never was intended even if you think it was. It is not my fault you have never had the amazing opportunity to view what I have seen. Attacking you is a false claim, you are the one trying to make me out to be not telling the truth trying to discredit me, when I am telling the truth. I saw it, you didn't, end of story.

 

[Subduction Zone]

How are you deciding I have personally attacked you? I never did and it never was intended even if you think it was. It is not my fault you have never had the amazing opportunity to view what I have seen. Attacking you is a false claim, you are the one trying to make me out to be not telling the truth trying to discredit me, when I am telling the truth. I saw it, you didn't, end of story.

I never said or even implied that you did not tell the truth. You probably are telling the truth about what you thought that you saw. But once again, human perception can be very unreliable. You claimed that it was the size of two buses. Two claim that you have hade to be very close. With your claims about the object you would have had to have been close enough so that you could judge it using binocular vision only. The distance to familiar objects can be judged by a whole range of cues, but you took all of those away with your description with the exception of binocular vision. You gave a distance estimate and that is why I said that you would have had to have been no more than 100 feet away. And yet your reluctance to affirm that makes me doubt your claim about the objects size.

Like I said, one does not necessarily have had to have been there. I trusted your statement when I estimated how close it had to be. Perhaps you either did not know the size or know the distance as you though. A small smooth object without any details is going to look the same as a large smooth object with no details if the distances are correct.

By the way, that is used in trick photography at times. You can make one object look much larger than other by having one closer to the camera and controlling the other visual cues that one can see.

 

[gnostic]

If you can't follow the logic or cite evidence I'm wrong then why reply at all?

But you have cited any evidence, you only just make claims.

And you're the one to talk about assumptions.

What do you think claims are, cladking, they are assumptions. And that's all your claims are assumptions.

As to logic, much of the evidence support Evolution's logic. But you haven't presented any evidence to support your logic.

You really don't understand how science works.

When the evidence already exist for Evolution, and you want to challenge Evolution is with the alternative (eg alternative hypothesis), then the only objective ways to challenge Evolution is to present evidence and data that support your alternative.

But you haven't don't that. All you do is ignore request that you present evidence, you make excuses, by trying to shift the burden of proof to others.

You need to test your own alternative, not merely argue against Evolution.

You say your alternative is that Evolution is sudden, then present evidence to support this. You haven't done this. You say you have, but you haven't.

 

[ChristineM]

It would be interesting to find out what aliens think about a God.

I think there are far more important thing to find out should we ever encounter aliens

 

[ChristineM]

We can turn the tables on mosquitos. We could get tiny hypodermic needles, remove the mosquito's blood, and walk around the mosquito's head making a buzzing sound, and send probes into the mosquito's ears (annoying).

Also, I have a plan to get back at birds who poop on my head. First I have to climb a tree, then tell the bird that I have more than it does. Hmm....maybe this is why the neighbors always complain?

It's supposed to be lucky for a bird to poop on your head

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You quoted Neil De Grasse Tyson saying that reality is what science reveals. Yet, it was Tyson who said that we are in a virtual world (like the movie Matrix).

Show me the science paper where he says that.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Far too many creationists seem to believe that evolution started at the beginning of the Cambrian. 600 million years ago. They are completely ignorant about the 3.2 billion years of evolution before that.

I think it's more a case of being willfully ignorant though.
I mean, it's not like this mistake of them isn't pointed out constantly.

We see the behavior all the time with our resident creationists here.
I won't name names, but I know for a fact that even only in the last month, I have corrected someone's strawman a couple dozen times over. Only to see that person repeat the very same false claim only a day later. Sometimes even the same day in another thread.

There comes a point where I can no longer assume the person to be genuine and honest.

I have no problem at all with honest ignorance. But when the same mistakes are pointed out over and over and over and over again, and then some,... at some point I can only include deliberate malicious and / or intellectually dishonest intent.

 

[Polymath257]

Why would such simple organisms have vast amounts of "useless" DNA?

Gene duplication is quite common. Some single celled animals have more DNA than humans. There is no correlation between complexity and the amount of DNA.

This is an assumption and doesn't seem logical to me.

On the contrary, we have a decent idea of which genes are common to all eucaryotes. All of the genes associated with cell division, formation of the various typo RNA, of interacting with mitochondria, the regulation of organelles, etc. will be common to all eucaryotes.

Most of the biochemistry that is encoded in the genes is common to ALL eucaryotes. This is why they all share about half of their DNA.

All such change should be simple. It should not require vast amounts of DNA.

Really? What models have you run to get to this conclusion? Or is it simply an intuition with no actual foundation?

What happens when you start with organisms with simple DNA and allow them to evolve using the mechanisms we know exist? Are changes limited to ;simple' changes? Or are vast amounts of genetic material produced?

Have you run any simulations to see?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Quite possibly, yes. But then this would imply several things that aren't really supported by evidence and logic. Most importantly being that a lone single celled life form was the origin of all life on the planet and the vast amounts of DNA with no known purpose arose from it (at least indirectly). It seems a simpler explanation that just as you envision there was "an original life form" but it landed here from, some distant place where all that wasted DNA was necessary to survival.

You discount the terrestrial origin of life because living things evolved to have genetic material with no known purpose and counter it with the proposed arrival of extraterrestrial cells that evolved to have genetic material with no known purpose? Of course, you don't accept evolution, so the evolved genetic material derived through some unexplained process that so closely mimics evolution that the evidence supports evolution?

An extraterrestrial origin is not a simpler explanation.

Have you ever considered the fact that we are just beginning to find out what these mysterious genes do or that they served a purpose that is different in the existing species, but had some other function in the ancestors of these things? Probably not from the limited scope of your posts on the subject.

 

[cladking]

Gene duplication is quite common. Some single celled animals have more DNA than humans. There is no correlation between complexity and the amount of DNA.

I'm suggesting there is more DNA for species that have undergone more change; that a species DNA is a record of where it has been. I would guess there is a correlation after peeling off any duplicate genes.

Really? What models have you run to get to this conclusion? Or is it simply an intuition with no actual foundation?

Just logic. I haven't followed the literature very much since human genome was first mapped. I'm waiting for something new.

 

[cladking]

You did not use any logic. You did not cite any evidence. The burden of proof is upon you.

I wasn't aware that the eukaryote genome had been mapped already.