Do the doctrines of evolutionism protect the Bible?

Oops, my mistake, and I couldn't use the edit function to correct it. Make that "a neighbouring country", not "the same country".

 

I hear what you are saying here, PoE. However, you must realize that all of this 'so called evidence' pointing to millions of years is manufactured through an interpretation of evidence based on a world view that excludes the possibility of a young earth. If the Bible is true, as we as Christians assert it to be, then the evolutionary paradigm excludes the truth. If I had you read one of Shakespear's sonnets and I told you to guess who the author was, but told you that you were forbidden from guessing Shakespear, would you ever arrive at the correct answer within the framework I have given you? Evolution is exactly like that. It is a framework that excludes supernaturalistic influence and origin to life on earth. When interpreting evidence under this framework, your conclusions, then, must also follow your assumptions - that everything came to be through naturalistic means. Therefore it is not surprising that evolutionary scientists have all this 'evidence'. It is also not surprising that creation scientists also have a huge body of 'evidence'. The evidences used are always the same evidences interpreted under differing frameworks. For example... a fossil is a fossil... a rock is a rock. The 'facts' don't change... only the conclusions people come to regarding the facts. And those conclusions are always based on the presuppositions and 'framework' of the person doing the interpreting.

This is nonsense, PoE, and I think you know that (your statement seems to have a rhetorical tone). Clearly, most YEC advocate the plainest literal interpretation of scripture which involves a young earth, and a creative week as described in Genesis 1 and 2. I find it interesting that you are advocating that Genesis 'could mean' any number of fanciful fairy tale stories which remove credibility and authority, yet you reject a plain literal interpretation that is scientifically viable. What this would seem to indicate, at least in my mind, is that you are more willing to 'side with the world' over believing the Bible is true. You are willing to believe any number of theories that make evolution possible, yet you are unwilling to entertain the one theory that makes the Bible authoritative and true.

Paul-oE, I don't know of any creationists advocating "a dome over a flat earth into which are stuck tiny stars, small sun, small moon, which then circle around over the fixed, flat earth". This is an argument that I have ONLY heard from atheists who wish to intentionally mis-interpret and remove credibility from the Bible. I am pretty disappointed to see a Christian repeating it. Is this what you honestly believe the Bible portrays? If so, how can you lend any credibility to the scriptures?

Personally I try to stay out of 2nd law of thermodynamics discussions because I am repeatedly told by evolutionists that I am stupid and don't know what I am talking about. However, this is not the case. They simply are not happy with the application of the 2nd LOT to the creation/evolution discussion. What BobRyan is trying to say is that the 2lot certainly does apply to biology and chemistry - and that Asimov is also aware of this fact.

Indeed I cannot speak for all YEC, but I can tell you what the vast majority currently believe - which is that while a mutation may or may not be beneficial, it is always a loss of information.

Information in the heredity can increase over time by the simple process of survival of the fittest.

That is akin to stating that death and sin (these are a result of the fall) have the power to improve God's design. It follows the humanistic worldview that we are our own gods, that we can decide our own fate... moreover it advocates a position that death and sin are beneficial to the well being of mankind. And that is truely the 'message' behind evolution. This follows the patter set by Satan at the birth of humanism in the garden of eden - question God's word, contradict God's word, then offer humanistic alternative.

After a few generations, the less fit genes are made manifest by their dwindling away. The more fit genes are made manifest by their accumulating in greator numbers.

You see, we have no differenc in opinion with this sentence. This is called speciation and it is how variety is isolated within a Kind. The YEC is that at creation all the animals were created with all the information for that kind. Through is exact process, loss of information occured until animals speciated into what we see today.

By this means the species gains information as to which of the genes are to be retained.

This is evolution's leap of faith. Let me repeat what you just said - "Animals loose the bad genes until all that is left is good genes - through this process information is gained". Natural Selection has been credited time and time again with 'adding' information. However, Natural Selection is a discriminating KILLER... not creator. It's power is in the death of unfit. It seeks to kill all but only those who have the genes left to withstand the attack survive. Those who have kept the genes necessary for survival live... those who have lost the genes necessary for survival die.

There is no verbal trickery, I assure you. I am using the commonly used terms for these germs. Doctors actually call them supergerms. Also, it is very commonly seen that evolutionists use resistance to anti-biotics or resistence to pesticides... or any sort of resistance as evidence of a gain of information.

See the following account of Dr. Carl Wieland (MD):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/337.asp


(more to come later)

 

"See the following account of Dr. Carl Wieland (MD):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/337.asp "

Let's take a look.

Wieland gives three posibilities on how "superbugs" come about.

"1. Some germs already had the resistance."

He gets this right. He just drawsthe wrong conclusion. Some of the existing bacteria developed mutations that turned out to be useful in resisting antibiotics. Before they were exposed to these antibiotics, they did not serve much of a purpose. But they were not harmful, either, so they just sat around. When the environment changed and placed these microbes under the stress of antibiotics, those with the right mutations survived. You see this idea in punctuated equilibrium. For long periods of time, the population remains in relative stasis while random mutations collect in the population. Natural selection can go ahead and weed out the harmful ones. But when the situation changes, the formerly neutral mutations now have pressure applied and some allow some individuals to have a better chance of survival. He is talking about evolution.

"2. Some germs directly transfer their resistance to others."

Similar to that above except that we are adding that bacteria can laterally transfer genes. If you see how this can be useful then you see why sex evolved.

"3. Some germs become resistant through mutation."

Ah, your favorite. Now he talks about no new information. Let's look and see if there is evidence of new information, as you put it, in biology.

I have given you an example previously of how new information arises. A gene becomes duplicated. One copy serves the original function while a copy evolves a new function. This neatly gets around your information problem, but does it actually happen? Let's take a look at serine proteases.

These proteins cut peptide bonds in other proteins. SOme are secreted by the digestive system to break up proteins to aid in digestion. Some are proteins involved in blood clotting (you might be famialr with thrombin). Some are involved in the complement cascade of the immune system.

Now if you look at the sequence of amino acids in all of these various proteins, you will see that they are quite similar. (Since this is an example of a common situation, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find further information.) You have very good circumstantial evidence that this whole family of genes is the result of repeated duplications of an original gene and the evolution of new functions from the varieties produced by mutation. If needed I'll give more later. But this is an example of not only how new information can arise, but evidence that shows that it has actually happened.

 

Bob

Do you really expect us to believe that Asimov thinks that evolution is prevented by entropy? Then why do you keep saying he does? I accuse you of misquoting him. Prove me wrong. Give us several actual sentences from each side to show us that you have not quoted him out of context. I think that what PoE gave us shows that Asimov does not think what you are trying to tell us that he thinks.

 

The quote on Asimov that cuts him off before he explains himself reminds me of atheists who quote Ecclesiastes 3:19 as the Bible's final word on the afterlife: "Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless."

An accurate quote, no doubt. But it ignores the context of the verse (especially the following verse) as well as other passages in the Bible that reveal far more about the afterlife.

It's frustrating that Christians resort to the same tactics.

 

Bob

You know that I know that there is more to the quote than what you are giving us. If I did not, why would I press so hard? (Actually, young earthers do such a poor job of quoting scientists, I would feel safe pressing any such quote without knowing the contextfor sure.) So, let's cut to the chase. Here are a few of the sentences following your quotation.

"Life on earth has steadily grown more complex, more versatile, more elaborate, more orderly over the billions of years of the planet's existence .... How could that vast increase in order (and therefore the vast decrease in entropy) have taken place? The answer is it could not have taken place without a tremendous source of energy constantly bathing the earth, for it is on that energy that life subsists .... In the billions of years that it took for the human brain to develop, the increase in entropy that took place in the sun was far greater: far, far greater than the decrease that is represented b y the evolution required to develop the human brain."

I think that settles whether you have quoted Asimov in context once and for all. By leaving out this part, you attempted to change the meaning of what you were quoting. You took a part of a quote that states the opposite of what you think and cut it down until you could say it supported you. Now, with the context added, we can all see that Asimov does not think as you were trying to make it out that he does. It also gives one concise answer to the "entropy problem." No matter how much energy was being lost to entropy, the sun was providing an incredibly larger amount of energy to the system of life on earth. Thermodynamics still wins.

 

"Life on earth has steadily grown more complex, more versatile, more elaborate, more orderly over the billions of years of the planet's existence .... How could that vast increase in order (and therefore the vast decrease in entropy) have taken place? The answer is it could not have taken place without a tremendous source of energy constantly bathing the earth, for it is on that energy that life subsists .... In the billions of years that it took for the human brain to develop, the increase in entropy that took place in the sun was far greater: far, far greater than the decrease that is represented b y the evolution required to develop the human brain."

 

I have no need to deny that Asimov is an evolutionists. He is and what of it? You "embrace" his science only when you can pare down the words until the mean the opposite of what he intended. I am not missing any points. You have completely failed to show in any way how the chemistry of a bad mutation is different than that of a good one. I gave you a great example above, a single base pair mutation leading to a different but similar amino acid being put into a protein. How is that substituation differnet between a good mutation and a bad one? They are exactly the same! I see your points, I simply fail to accept them. They have no basis in fact. If you disagree, then tell me how a good and a bad mutaion would differ in the example above. The point about the Smithsonian was that you could not even cite the correct publication. You cited a publication that has never existed. And I know about the article. Enough to have strung you along all this time. I gave you plenty of opportunty to withdraw the misquote before I became aggessive. Now I have filled in the hole so to speak. You took him out of context, plain and simple. And I have never claimed that any of us has said that Asimov is not an evolutionists, so I do not know where that accusation is coming from.

 

I do not have to pretend he did not say it. First, I have the rest of the quote that completely changes the meaning and shows you to have misquoted. Second, as I have shown you from books on thermo, I have the science on my side. Third, I have the ringing silence from all the times I have asked you to show, in technical terms, how a bad and a good mutation differ.

 

Notice the repeated posts "Asimov fixed this we hope. So possibly-maybe in some quote following the part where Bob stops quoting Asimov he will make it all better".

No hope was needed. I knew. But I could have just as easily assumed as much.

"Yes but Christians are too stupid to understand entropy - and the example you give is NOT what the 2nd law is ALL ABOUT".

Nope. Many Christians, myself included, understand the second law. It is not a matter of being "stupid" it is a matter of having been taught the knowledge of the subject.

you proved yourself wrong as well when you admitted (confirmed) that the Smithsonian DID publish the exact words that I quoted.

You have to do more than just get the words you choose to quote correct to have quoted correctly. You seem to think that you can change the meaning all you want but as long as the exact words you chose to quote were accually there, that you have done nothing wrong. You could not be further from the truth. It is dishonest. You have done the same as if an atheist were to quote Psalm 14:1 as "There is no God." I mean, the words are there exactly like that. What would be your response to that?

 

I tire of this. The audience can judge whether you have quoted truthfully. Let's move on to a new topic. You have no answers only half a quote to hide behind.

 

So apart from the delicate art of quote mining what else has young earth science contributed to the world?

 

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. I previously provided Gup20 with one family of proteins, the serine protease family,that show strong evidence of increasing "information," whatever that may be, through the process of gene duplication and mutation. Here I will briefly discuss another such family.

Development is controlled in part by a familt of genes called homeobox genes. They first have the odd trait that they contain a section of exactly 180 nucleotides called, well, a homeobox. There is great simularity between these selector genes indicating that they were the result of gene duplication and mutation. Another case of evolution making new use of something that prexisted when developing a new trait. The similarity of some genes of this family across great ranges of species is also a good piece of evidence for the common descent of all life on earth.