We have a group of species which have been inferred (on the basis of comparative anatomy and fossil evidence) to belong to a “family tree” like this:
{[(Species A and Species B) and Species C] and Species D}
i.e, Species A and B are believed to share a recent common ancestor; the common ancestor of A and B is believed to share a common ancestor with C; and the common ancestor of A-B and C is believed to share a common ancestor with D.
Looking at the non-functional portions of the DNA of these species (or non-functional portions of the proteins), it turns out that Species A and B both have a particular stretch of non-functional code, the molecular equivalent of WQERYT. Species C, at the same point in its genetic code, has the molecular equivalent of WQERTY. Species D, at that point in its code, has the equivalent of QWERTY.
What explanation is there for patterns of this sort besides:
[list=1]
[li]The evolutionary tree of common ancestors outlined above or[/li]
[li]Separate creation of these species by a designer who was deliberately attempting to make it appear that descent with modification was taking place?[/li][/list=1]
Note that we find not merely one or two isolated examples of this sort of pattern, but many different ones, in both DNA and in the amino acids of proteins.
Well the obvious one is that it’s a manufacturing mistake from an imperfect creator or an imperfect creation process. To give you an analogy (yeah I know I probably use to many of these). When I was into playing Warhammer I used to buy lead miniature molds. These are silicone rubber molds into which tin/lead is poured to make units. If the mold was deformed in the manufacturing process and an intelligent creator didn’t trim it then every miniature poured would be deformed. This didn’t mean that the original mold wasn’t created by design, or that the miniatures weren’t created by design, just that the creators were imperfect or unwillingly to fix the mold. Now I could also make my own moulds by coating existing mianitaures in silicone rubber (but I wouldn’t do that because it infringed copyrights ). If a miniature from an imperfect mould was used to make another mould then any subsequent miniatures would be flawed even worse than the original, and so on if that miniature was used to constrct a mould. Transcription errors and mutations for all intents and purposes. Doesn’t mean that one miniature spontaneously evolved from the others or that I was trying to make it appear that descent with modification was taking place. It’s just that when you work with what you’ve got you tend to repeat the same errors.
I’ve done the same thing with cannibilised Access databases. I quite often can’t remember what all the queries do twelve months after designing them, and I can’t be bothered finding out, so when I want to make a slightly different database and macros I just copy the original database and work with what’s there. As a result I end up with useless queries and forms that were only useful for the original application, but experience has taught me that as soon as I delete a query because I can’t see it doing anything one of the macros crashes and I have to try to re make the query. As a result I leave them all in. That doesn’t mean that my mortality database spontaneously evolved from my species database although they both have queries with the same name doing exactly the same thing, queries with the same name doing very slightly different things and some queries in the mortality database that appear to do nothing at all any more. Nor does it mean I’m trying to make it look like one spontaneously descended from the other. All this demonstrates is that intelligent creators are capable of replicating errors and propagating useless code.
Militant proponents of Babylonian science. Can I vote for that as a new band name? No you’re right, they do tend to keep their heads down around here. Australians have a repution for having a low tolerance for other people’s bullshit. Added to which Australians have a very relaxed attitude to religion as a whole, so if you want to spout yor beliefs go for it, but don’t expect me o listen. Still seems to me that giving in to the dark side, even in the interests of fighting ignorance is playing into their hands as well as raising Ben’s blood pressure. I’ve got to admit some of those sites are hilarious (and slightly disturbing). All the same I can’t see why anyone would bother reading that crap except as a laugh. Let them preach to the ignorant and the converted if they wish, speak the truth softly and clearly and get on with your life. You can’t eradicate all ignorance so why concentrate on those hardest to educate: fanatics who don’t want to learn? Just a fundamental differnce in outlook I guess.
So if creationists attack evolutionists who are “quite happily living their lives,” and one of the evolutionists starts a thread in which to present a response, whose motives does Gaspode question?
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The problem is that your answer isn’t science. You’ve made some vague statements about one organism being “derived” from another, but what does any of it mean? Do you mean that God let one species hang around for a while and then made it vanish to be replaced with a new species? Do you mean that God made all the species appear on subsequent days, but developed the blueprints for those animals in stages, using old blueprints as plans for new ones? Do you mean that one species evolved into another, but God tinkered with their DNA in detectable ways? Until you present a cogent summary of your hypothesis and then explain its ramifications for each of the 11 kinds of evidence I asked about, it’s not worth answering your replies, because they’re too vague for us to know what you mean by them. I will, however, point out some of the more obvious flaws:
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Let’s look at the original question, which Gaspode conveniently snipped:
"1. Why do the calculated phylogenetic trees (ie “family trees”) of orthologous proteins agree with the pattern of relationships between species which evolutionists claim to have reconstructed from the fossil record? Why do unrelated proteins serve similar functions in cases where evolutionists claim that those functions evolved independently in the fossil record? (For example, odorant binding proteins in vertebrates and insects, and lens crystallins in vertebrates and molluscs.) "
I don’t see a lot about the fossil record in Gaspode’s reply. In fact, he specifically states that question #1 shouldn’t be a problem for Christian fundamentalists, even though they explicitly reject the fossil record, and any evidence which backs it up should be a serious problem for them.
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Again, let’s look at the actual question:
"2. Why does the arrangement of genes and pseudogenes in the hemoglobin clusters correlate with their calculated phylogenetic trees? "
What does Gaspode’s talk of “obvious patterns of improvement” have to do with the physical arrangement of genes in a cluster?
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Wrong- they serve different functions. One has a structure which enables it to focus light, and the other has a structure which enables it to focus electrons. Clearly the analogy doesn’t accurately describe the situation as regards OBPs or crystallins.
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Wrong- in each case the glass prism is used to bend light. Same structure, same function. If you look at my actual examples, you’d see that a more accurate analogy would be someone carefully trimming a fine prism down to the right size until it could serve as a weight standard, or writing on it with a diamond and using it as a letter, etc.
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I’ve already explained it on a layman’s level. What more do you want?
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On the other hand, you have thought a great deal about the idea that all the evolutionist scientists in the world are wrong, and that you are right. If you want to claim that, you’d better know your stuff. Honestly, Gaspode, we’ve gone through this already.
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The questions as written were on a graduate level, and, as I explained, I already explained on a layman’s level as well.
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Read the FAQ. And again, here’s the original question:
“5. Why do pseudogenes exist? How do you explain their observed features?”
Has Gaspode explained the observed features of pseudogenes? No- he’s just made vague handwavings about how pseudogenes are useless bits left over.
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Again, I’ve already explained all of these things.
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Well, from an evolutionist standpoint, yes.
Again, from an evolutionist standpoint, this is a nice explanation. But what about the creationist explanation? Obviously YEC’s can’t explain the evidence by saying that a neutral mutation is more likely to be passed on to descendant species!
Turnabout is fair play,
{Note: since, as others have pointed out, this comes from someone’s website, I’m deleting it. Anyone interested can go to the website. Lynn}
"Go right ahead, guys. Prove the superiority of creation science over the evilutionist house of cards. I ask any and all believers in creation science to put their money where their mouth is by answering these eleven questions. "
I have a question for you. If you look at something like pseudogenes, then theorize a reason for their existence, does that prove your theoretical explanation to be factual?
No. It does not.
Then why would it matter if creationists did the same thing? And how does their not doing so make creationism any less viable a theory than evolution?
Freakboy, this thread is not intended for debates about abiogenesis or the Big Bang, nor is it the place for attacks on evolution. If you have comments to make about the 11 questions, then do so. Otherwise, I ask that you have the courtesy to start your own thread.
Ben, after reading that lengthy post from FreakBoy, with the n millionth iteration of the same tired, flawed arguments from creationists (“turnabout,” indeed), I take back and humbly apologize for every single bad thing I’ve ever said to or about you.
Of course all our friend Freakboy has done is SPAM us with the text copied word-for-word from this Islamic website. Can’t even be bothered to make an argument in your own words, huh Freakboy?
If you really think there is any validity to these same tired, old arguments, please start a new thread and I’ll point out the flaws in each case.
I thought the phrasing was familiar. I think the Islamic website plagiarized some of their material word-for-word from Darwin on Trial, but I don’t have a copy handy to check.
Upon further review, I think the Islamic site may have stolen it from this Creation Science website. They claim to have “authored (unless otherwise indicated)” everything on the site.
They profess to be Christians with degrees in Computer Science. Ugh… why does my chosen field attract so many creationist whackos?
The phraseology of “produced… more deformed fruit flies” rang a bell for me. I did a search in Google using “bombarding deformed flies countless” and found about four webpages using similar phrasing. One attributed its materials to the “Creation Science Institute,” while others didn’t provide any citation (and one of them seems to be a simple plagiarization, at:
“Yet scientists have been bombarding countless generations of fruit flies with radiation for several decades in order to show evolution in action and still have only produced… more (deformed) fruit flies!”)
I strongly suspect that it came from Darwin on Trial. I’ll check it out- I’m going to the library soon.
Try the google search yourself, hardcore. This is getting interesting!
Because it makes them sound all intellectual-like. And maybe they think that people will see the “science” part of that field and assume that their expertise carries over to biology.
Pointless answering a driveby, I know, but anyway;
The difference is in the methodology; creationism decides in advance what the results will be and goes looking for evidence that appears to support them, science examines the evidence first and tries to draw conclusions/construct theories based on it, these theories are subject to modification and refinement as new evidence arises.
Ben, your reaction is at best puzzling and at worst downright rude. You asked for creationists to answer your questions, and when I did so you complain that it’s all rubbish and not worth responding to. I really need to question whether you’re interested in fighting ignorance with this thread, or simply looking for a fight. I suspect the latter. Unfortunately there are limits to how much detail of my religious beliefs I am able to discuss, but it should be sufficient to say that it really doesn’t matter whether God(s) let one species hang around for a while and then made it vanish to be replaced with a new species, made all the species appear on subsequent days, but developed the blueprints for those animals in stages, using old blueprints as plans for new ones or let one species evolved into another,but tinkered with their DNA in detectable ways? Any of those hypotheses will provide an answer to your questions that fit the facts as presented. That answers your question.
Except that of course I never snipped the question becasue I never quoted any of it. Not nice Ben!
What more can I say Ben. When I state that the design of two designed machines, one extant and the other for all intents and purposes extinct, show similarity in function of homologous systems, the analogy to the fossil record should be clear. However if it isn’t to you I will apologise and try simplifying my analogies. Try this.
Why shouldn’t the calculated phylogenetic trees (ie “family trees”) of orthologous proteins agree with the pattern of relationships between species which evolutionists claim to have reconstructed from the fossil record and why shouldn’t unrelated proteins serve similar functions in cases where evolutionists claim that those functions evolved independently in the fossil record? Orthologous proteins have the percieved relationship because one organism was derived from the other. It’s the same reason why the wheel-bearings in an ‘extinct’ (ie it is no longer being manufactured) 1967 Corvette, an ‘extinct’ 1893 Daimler-Benz and an ‘extinct’ 1860 steam engine show similar structures that happen to match the pattern of relationships which one would inherently derive if one were basing ones phylogenetic tree on the age of the organisms and the obvious design modifications. The designs for two systems can be based on one another without having spontaneously evolved from each other and as such present patterns of relationship concommitant with the age and degree of modifiction the system has undergone. The same goes for independantly evolved proteins. The lense a light microscope and the ‘lense’ of an electron microscope may serve analogous functions, but they were not directly derived from the same design. As such they aren’t the same. Understand now Ben? Just because two systems, be they biological organisms or motor vehicles, show every sign of being based off one anoher does not provide evidence that the designs were not modifed by intelligent designers.
Well I have to admit I haven’t got a great understanding of American fundamentalism, but I gathered they had no problem with the fossil record, but simply insisted it was only 5500 yo. Anyway it’s a strawman on Ben’s part. I never said that it shouldn’t be a problem for fundamentalists, just that I couldn’t see it being a major problem. Possibly the reason I couldn’t see it was a lack of knowledge of fundies. Suffice it to say it doesn’t present a problem for me personally.
OK, again I’ll dumb down my analogy. The arrangement of genes in the haemoglobin clusters of various species have undergone modification over time. The arrangement of steering mechanisms in steam engines, Fords and Ferraris have undergone modification over time. These are givens. The pattern of change in the genes correlates well to the sequence in which the organisms are assumed to have appeared and split from common ancestors. The pattern of change in the steering mechanism also of course correlates well to the sequence in which the ‘organisms’ are known to have appeared and split from common ancestors. The reason is that in both cases each arrenagement is based on (usually) fairly minor variations in the patterns of pre-existing models. Since we can’t assume that a pattern of change that maps onto the length of time since an inorganic machine split from an assumed common ancestor runs counter to intelligent design, I don’t see why we can assume the same is necessarily true for an organic machine.
Not sure where to start with this one. Firstly you never gave any actual examples for this question. In its entirety it reads “Why are similar functions sometimes served by completely different proteins? Why are completely different functions sometimes served by similar proteins?” That’s it, we have to guess what you’re taliking about, no examples. Even if this weren’t true you are again being either disingenuous or obtuse. A splitting prism does not have the same function as a contact lense or the lense of a camera. If it did it would function as a monocle, which it obviously doesn’t. Aside from that none of the examples you list would actually be impossible, so you’ve negated your own argument. But I’m not going to be drawn on this. I’ll simply dumb it down (again) and substitute ethanol for a lense. Ethanol can be used as an anaesthetic, a beverage, a sterilant, a fire accelerant, a chemical reagent and a fixative amongst thousnads of other uses. Same structure, same substance, completely different functions. Does that somehow conflict with ethanol being produces by inteligent design? I really can’t see where this is going. It’s pretty bloody clear to everyone else that intelligent designers are capable of turning their creations to multiple uses.
Again Ben is being disingenuous. lay·man: A man who is a nonprofessional: His is just the layman’s view of medicine. There is no way on Earth that anyone on this board aside from you Ben is going to believe that terms like ‘retrogenes’ ‘introns’ ‘poly-A tail’ ‘repeat sequences’ and ‘inserted sequences’ are in common usage by non-professional people. You’re trying to say that bus drivers, waitresses and garbage collectors are all familiar with these terms. I’m sorry mate but if you really believe that you need to get out of the lab and into the real world more. Those terms aren’t even in most dictionaries.
And honestly Ben it’s becoming painfully obvious to everyone you’re spoiling for a fight. Since Ben brought it up I’ll repeat for the benefit of everyone else what he already knows to demonstrate his strawman tactics.
1)I am an evolutionist. I have stated this directly in numerous threads and my participation in, amongst other things, the race debates has made this quite clear to most of the memebers of this board.
2)I am a scientist. Says so right there in my profile.
3)I have never at any stage stated that “all the evolutionist scientists in the world are wrong” and I’m going to ask ben to provide a cite for where I said that. NOT A LINK, BEN, BUT AN ACTUAL QUOTE OF ME SAYING ANYTHING EVEN APPROACHING THAT STRAWMAN. Put up or shut up Ben.
5)Ben is more than prepared to say that all creationists are wrong, without having a full and comprehensive knowledge of all the potential eveidence fo creation found in the Mt. Isa highlands. Can anyone see the logical fallacy in this statement? I’ll explain it carefully for Ben’s sake. No one has access to all information. We use the informtion to hand to make our decisions. If you believe that someone is making a decision based on an absence of evidence you must explain that evidence in a way that can be understood. it is not a valid debating tactic to state that the evidence is out their, spew some jargon and then expect everyone participating to accept that you are right. For a thought excercise I’m going to ask how creationists, and Ben in particular, explain the pattern of Adnataria basal bark tesselation, combined with the east-west geographical distribution of Petalostigma banksii and P. pubescens, when superimposed on the ENSO dominated rainfall distribution of the Mt. Isa uplands. (And yes that statement makes perfect sense) If Ben can’t respond, that proves that evolution is unsupportable doesn’t it?
Ben, it’s clear to all participants of this debate by now that you are either being deliberatley dense, disingenuous, or are completely divorced form the real world. I’m not sure which any more. In additions to the terms quoted above, Ben apparently believes that the average non-professional is also familiar with the terms ‘class 1-1 exons’ and ‘pseudoexons’. Yep, I know I can walk up to the bloke operating the checkout at my local supermarket and say ‘Hey, you heard the latest news about class 1-1 exons’ and he’ll give me a response other than ‘Huh?’ Nice attempt at weaseling ben, but I really don’t think anyone here believes ‘class 1-1 exon’ is on a lyman’s level.
How about it folks. Should we take a vote. I’m starting to wonder if Ben is willing to understand English. If something is junk do its features need to be explained? Do I need to explain the features of the crumpled up paper in my bin? What am I missing here. It’s junk material resulting from errors, what features aren’t explained by that? Hell, what does Ben believe it is and how does he explain its features?
Then you won’t mind posting a quote of where you explained them, because I’ve read that question through and through and I can’t see any explanations. I have no intention of going through all four pages of this thread with a fine-tooth comb looking for it. If you are truly interested in fighting ignorance and getting answers to your questions you should be prepared to phrase your questions in such a way that those being questioned understand it. I suspect your not very interested though.
But Ben, mate, I’m a creationist and that’s also my standpoint. You asked how creationists explained that observation, that’s how I explained it. How does that conflict with creationism?
Ben, you’ve made this logical error before. Creationism and Evolutionism aren’t mutually exclsuive. I’m not a young Earth creationist. I’m a creationist, I accept that mutations occur and that is my creationist explanation. What part of this don’t you understand? You issued an invitation/challenge that read “I ask any and all believers in creation science to put their money where their mouth is by answering these eleven questions.” Well I’ve answered your questions (the ones I could understand), why are you now apparently demanding that I argue the case for YECs? You stated that attacking evolution without supporting creationsism and introducing extraneous material would be an implicit admission of abject defeat. I’m going to enforce the same rules on you Ben. Attack creationism without supporting evolution or use diversionary tactics such as YEC one more time and I’m going to take it as an implicit admission of abject defeat.
I’m starting to think that the reason why creationists refuse to participate in any of Ben’s threads is not because his intellect overpowers them, but rather because he is disingenuous, attempts to baffle them with jargon rather than debating the point, and argues using strawmen. This is tiring and counter-productive to fighting ignorance, as I am discovering.
It’s like when the professor suspects two students of cheating on a test. If they both have all the same right answers, well, maybe they just both knew the correct answers. If two organisms have the same protein, maybe that protein is just best suited for that function. (Whether the organism evolved or was intelligently designed.) But, if both students have the same pattern of wrong answers, the professor will conclude that somebody likely cheated; they shared answers, or one student copied from the other’s test, with or without that student’s knowledge. And if two organisms have the same molecular errors, there has likely been “plagiarism”. The same goes for plagiarized term papers, except that with term papers or essays, as opposed to a multiple-choice test, it’s much harder to hide plagiarism, since there are many ways to express the correct ideas. Organisms are much more like essays than they are like multiple-choice tests.
Now, you seem to agree that in fact all this is evidence that organisms were “copied” from one another. It’s just that you suppose this ad hoc mechanism, whereby the “designer”, when he (or she, or it, or they) wants to build a Homo sapiens, takes a copy of an earlier hominid and tinkers with the design a bit. Sort of like, the “designer” makes a copy of the blueprint file for an “ape-man”, makes some changes, and does a “Save As” as a new file for Homo sapiens.
But…organisms aren’t ever reproduced that way, are they? Maybe someday people will be able to synthesize life forms in test tubes from raw materials (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.), using computer databank blueprints. But no one’s ever seen that happen, have they? Organisms reproduce by asexual or sexual reproduction. So, if we think this organism is a “copy” of another organism, it’s likely the offspring of the other organism, or a descendant of the other organism. Furthermore, we have all sorts of evidence and lines of reasoning to support the “descent with modification” view, as opposed to the “tinkering by intelligent (but not omniscient) designers”. For example, the “designer’s” modus operandi seems to consistently reject coming up with a new design in favor of always modifying existing designs. You might get some tinkering, but why don’t you ever see the “designer” just plopping down a whole new organism, built from scratch, onto the Serengeti or wherever? This applies to everything from organisms to organs–the “designer” hasn’t bothered to come up with a completely redesigned from the ground floor vertebrate forelimb, in, what, 400 million years? And this despite the fact that vertebrate forelimbs are used from everything to swimming to plodding to climbing to running to flying to typing on keyboards. This is a pretty weird engineering style. No competant engineer would start out to build an airplane by modifying the blueprints of a suspension bridge.
You’ve also got a metaphysical problem, I think. Conventional theists run into the “Well, if everything needs a Creator, who made God?” They at least have some answers to this–their God is a transcendant, perfect, self-sufficient, and self-existing being. Without getting into a philosophical debate between atheism and theism, this at least, I dunno, dodges the issue in a fancy-sounding way. But your “designer” or “designers” are admittedly imperfect, rather kludgey builders. So–who or what made them?
Um…before anyone gets it into their head that I’m favoring censorship, let me explain what I meant. That post was very long, and my computer’s slow connection seemed to prefer sitting with that as the last post this evening. So that’s why I was excited about it being gone, not because I didn’t agree with what it said.
). If a miniature from an imperfect mould was used to make another mould then any subsequent miniatures would be flawed even worse than the original, and so on if that miniature was used to constrct a mould. Transcription errors and mutations for all intents and purposes. Doesn’t mean that one miniature spontaneously evolved from the others or that I was trying to make it appear that descent with modification was taking place. It’s just that when you work with what you’ve got you tend to repeat the same errors.