I think one of my favorite events on the SDMB is the moment that Ben posts to a creation versus evolution argument. It’s like seeing Superman appear in the sky.
It’s the only reason I read any of these threads anymore.
I find that very difficult to believe, seeing as you don’t even see to know what evolution is. If you have actually looked at the evolution side, then why did you bother to mention the Big Bang, which, as you would hve to know, has nothing to do with evolution?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Tinker Grey *
**In the interest of “stamping out ignorance”, from the link provided by Meatros, the first page of the preface show the complete title as
:smack:
Whups, I was a bit tired, last night, and not thinking altogether clearly.
There are quite a few different creation/evolution messageboards out there, I know that I have at least 15 (or so) bookmarked.
I may have come off a bit…harsh, but I don’t really think you are generally ignorant, I just think you are misinformed. I’ve heard (and I’m sure many others have also heard) the gist of your post before. Now, I haven’t heard the connection between Darwin and Hitler for a long time now and it took me off guard (as you can see by my misinformation).
Ok, now I’m blushing.
Masonite, I have the FAQ which explains the questions in detail. I’d very, very much appreciate it if you or anyone else would read it and tell me what parts you did or did not understand, so I can try to make it better suited to the layman.
http://psyche11.home.mindspring.com/ben/WritingIndex.htm
I’ve been planning on making more detailed essays on specific issues, like retrogenes, but I’ve been too busy with other things. (Specifically, a page with pictures of human and primate chromosomes side-by-side, so you can see for yourself where different cut, paste, and flip operations took place in human evolution.)
For now, let’s focus on retrogenes:
When one of your cells takes the information in DNA and makes it into a protein, it first makes a “working copy” in the form of messenger RNA, or mRNA. (This lets the cell keep an “archival copy” in the DNA.) The mRNA is then edited in a number of ways. A string is pasted onto the end which reads “AAAAAAAA”. Genes also normally have intervening sequences called “introns,” which don’t code for any part of the protein. These introns are spliced out of the mRNA. After the editing, the mRNA is sent off to be read by the protein-synthesising machinery.
The odd thing is that sometimes you see genes, called retrogenes, that have an “AAAAAAA” on the end, and have no introns. These genes started out as mRNA, but the mRNA was accidentally pasted back into the genome. The evidence for this (other than the obvious similarities between retrogenes and mRNA) is as follows:
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retrogenes are flanked by repeat sequences that occur when you splice RNA back into DNA.
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retrogenes can be found far from the parent gene. By contrast, the other main mechanism of production of new genes makes two identical genes side-by-side.
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retrogenes can be cut short, as if the machinery that was writing them back into the DNA pooped out before it got finished.
So what’s the creationist explanation? Why did God create a class of genes which look exactly like they came from mRNA that was pasted back into the genome?
Sorry, should have been more clear in my post. The quote I gave about it being impossible to extrapolate a whole species from a tooth was a reply written to the Illustrated London News. I would have put more detail into my post, but it was getting mind-numbingly long enough, already 
The Talk Origins pages have a lot more detail, obviously.
False dichotomy combined with straw man - Evolution is not atheism, neither are all people who accept evolution athesits
Projection. I think this criticism would be more true of the kind of extreme fundamentalism that is so often associated with creationism. Anyway, keeping an open mind to things that have already been substantially proven false can be quite counterproductive; should we teach our kids that 'some people think 2 plus 2 is 4, but hey, keep an open mind about it!"?
reversal of cause and effect; evolution is quite fundamental to biology and genetics, creationism on the other hand, contributes nothing but confusion to the topics (along with geology, astronomy etc…)
Nonsense - kids just like monsters and dinosaurs are great monsters - I can’t see what your point is here, unless you’re trying to claim that dinosaurs never really existed.
I’m not even going to try to address the rest of your post (although all of it is of the same cloth) because what you’re doing here is the favourite tactic of spraying multiple, diverse arguments all at once in the hope that the resulting melee leaves the casual observer with the impression that you know what you’re talking about.
In fact, yes… I remember exactly that discussion in fourth grade, as an introduction to “clock arithmetic.”
“If someone told you that nine plus four was equal to one, would you say they were right, or wrong?”
In other words, the public schools do teach us to keep an open mind regarding other interpretations of the facts.
What they don’t do, and should not ever do, is ask us to be so open to every lurid claim made by extremists, as to give up on the primary avenues toward knowlege.
(e.g., yes, we should keep an open mind about the possibility of other gunmen in the JFK assassination… But no, we don’t need to pay any attention to the idiots who say that Richard Nixon orchestrated the whole affair!)
(I mean, obviously, it was GHW Bush, right?)
Trinopus
Ben its going to take me a while but I am working on answering your questions.
Why don’t you just focus on retrogenes for now?
Nomadic_One, if you’re feeling sort of lonely in your attack on Darwin, may I point you to this thread (Warning! The OPer on that one believes in posts of thousands of words quoted verbatim from obscure sources! And when using his own words is rude in a kinda half-arsed way) He’s not even a Christian Creationist! 
HOWEVER, more seriously, the SDMB does contain believers in Creationism, or at the very least in “Intelligent Design”. But…, they usually know better than to come up with things so lame as to call upon the 2d Law of Thermodynamics argument (Earth is NOT a closed system) or demanding “the missing link”. They know our followers of the various schools of Evolutionary theory are just too well-prepared. I must respectfully join the earlier comment that your friend Andrew did you no favor at all by equipping you with such an inferior set of tools.
If you’re going to stand fast for Creationism because your Faith demands it, that is fine with most of us. (BTW that is the attitude of the OP in the quoted thread: “because The Master says so and he has Perfect Knowledge”) And you could then preach it at us until you’re blue in the face, the cows come home, and there is a Constitutional Amendment requiring a President be able to correctly pronounce “nuclear”; complete with any necessary theological/scriptural arguments about requiring a literal reading of the Bible (or Vedas, or Qur’an). But that is witnessing, not “debate”. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s “that simple” to win the science argument.
Have fun ,
JRD
Ben, I think you would like In the Beginning, by
Dr. Walt Brown, Ph.D. Have you read it? I just started, and it’s wonderful.
Nomadic one, pick that book up, you will like it
A person at the bookstore I go to just told me about another book to pick up. I can’t think of it right now, but it’s by a MIT professor. I’ll let you know.
JerseyDiamond, why don’t you actually contribute to the debate instead of linking to religious websites. Pick out a point from that book you like so much and throw it at us. You sound very confident so let us have it. What impresses you so much about Walter brown, Ph.D? (Ph.D. in what, btw?)
Like I said, diogenes, I just started the book, and I am not finished reading. If you want more info about Dr Brown, read the link I posted, ok?!
Anyway, if you don’t like what I post, you don’t have to read it. It’s that easy.
How do you know it’s “wonderful” if you just started reading it? What have you read already that merits the adjective “wonderful?”
Your link contains an advertisement for the book but does not outline any of the author’s arguments so it’s hard to respond to if we don’t know what he’s saying. If we can’t see his argument to analyze it, wnd you don’t know enough about to to articulate it yourself, what was the point of posting it in this debate?
I notice, btw, that Dr. Brown has a Ph. D. in mechanical engineering which means he has no discernible credentials as a biologist. So why would an engineer know anything about evolutionary theory?
Oh yeah, Walter Brown. How about this nice little tidbit to begin with?
Oh, and his doctoral degree is in Mechancial Engineering.
Ok. Admittedly, I’m no great research scientist, hell, I can’t even get to the second page of the bloody thread because the site won’t respond, but isn’t there just waaaay to much information to deal with for something so simple as life? I mean I get the gist of Bens’ posts, and I understand Nomads’ as well, but here’s a question for both of you. What if your’re both right? I mean yeah, it’s a bit simplistic (it’s also 0230) and perhaps I’m just an idiot, but what about the idea that first there was creation, and from that sprang evolution? Really, why the big effin debate over something so (at least to me) obvious?
Yeah you can pour over text, both religious and scientific, until your head explodes, but it is a mystery that no man, no human is meant to solve, which, IMO, is the reason that we’ve been perpetually on the cusp of discovery.
Personally, I applaud and encourage folks on both sides of the aisle, because it just makes for damn fine reading, (not to mention VERY informative thanks again Ben) but when it comes to something that needs debated, I think I’ll stick with politics. It’s less delicate, and there’s a clear way to determine who’s right, and who’s republican
Evolutionary science does not make any claim as to how the universe started or as to the origin of life. Nomad has conflated those issues. The rest of us have not. In fact, if you scroll around in the thread i think you’ll see a few posters who try to make the point that evolution does not have to be an atheistic theory. It’s creationists who seem to think that evolutionary science seeks to disprove God. Scientists have never, ever tried to assert any such thing.
A rebuttal of Walt Brown’s flood geology:
http://www.geocities.com/pgspears/pflood.htm
Jersey Diamond:
You are mistaken. He is not a professor at MIT.