The lie of evolution

[Helen]

A paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal says that one of the primary "evidences" for Dark Matter can actually be explained by using General Relativity.

from http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0507619

"General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter"

"A galaxy is modeled as a stationary axially symmetric pressure-free fluid in general relativity. For the weak gravitational fields under consideration, the field equations and the equations of motion ultimately lead to one linear and one nonlinear equation relating the angular velocity to the fluid density. It is shown that the rotation curves for the Milky Way, NGC 3031, NGC 3198 and NGC 7331 are consistent with the mass density distributions of the visible matter concentrated in flattened disks. Thus the need for a massive halo of exotic dark matter is removed."

 

[Helen]

With permission of the author, the following email was sent to me as part of an email group, in response to another member of the group:

------

It's been mentioned many times before but I'll say it again, natural selection can NOT be a mechanism to reduce the formidable probabilities proposed in either the origin of life or the diversity of life. The origin of life is obvious because there's no reproduction yet which is what natural selection needs before it can work. As for the diversity of life, natural selection can only subtract, it cannot add. Suppose we have to explain a nucleotide sequence for a gene that did not exist in the first life form and is dissimilar to any gene in the first life form. If the species that carries this gene dies out because of natural selection then the whole gene is lost, not just a nucleotide or two! Natural selection doesn’t build up the genome one nucleotide at a time; it actually tears it down one gene at a time. To me this is an obviously true statement. Can anyone find fault in what I am saying? I am tired of hearing evolutionists argue for natural selection as some kind of creative force that reduces probabilities.

 

[UTEOTW]

And if you look at my response to JWI you will see that I acknowledge that there are other ideas that have been proposed. I am aware of the abstract you posted and was why I made the statement that I did.

As far as dark matter goes, I am more interested in the gravitational lensing examples since they provide a fairly direct calculation of mass. The idea proposed for galaxy rotation is an interesting one and I am curious to see how it plays out. (This underscores the importance of peer review. The idea has been placed into the marketplace of ideas to be judged. Others can look at the logic and the math to see how well it stands up. It will survive or die based on its quality.) From a purely layman's perspective, I immediately have doubt just because the older ideas match up so closely with observations through other means.

More broadly, I think that the CMB data not only provides an independent method of determining the amount of dark matter, and dark energy for that matter, it also has buried in it details that need to be explained in a YE paradigm.

[ October 17, 2005, 01:04 PM: Message edited by: UTEOTW ]

 

[UTEOTW]

As for the quote, I am going to take Paul's lead. This is a very broad subject. It would take a very broad answer. But there are whole books and journals available to show how this has actually happened and happens. For instance, the Journal of Molecular Evolution.

http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=100107

I have also posted examples of new and useful genes evolving. So it is not so impossible. I even have a whole thread on how the patterns in the genomes of organisms show the evidence of being built up through time.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/104.html

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Helen:
A paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal says that one of the primary "evidences" for Dark Matter can actually be explained by using General Relativity.

from http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0507619

"General Relativity Resolves Galactic Rotation Without Exotic Dark Matter"

"A galaxy is modeled as a stationary axially symmetric pressure-free fluid in general relativity. For the weak gravitational fields under consideration, the field equations and the equations of motion ultimately lead to one linear and one nonlinear equation relating the angular velocity to the fluid density. It is shown that the rotation curves for the Milky Way, NGC 3031, NGC 3198 and NGC 7331 are consistent with the mass density distributions of the visible matter concentrated in flattened disks. Thus the need for a massive halo of exotic dark matter is removed."

Thank you for the link to a fascinating article. Perhaps "dark matter" as an idea will be explained and go away. We leave it to those who actually understand the math to work on that. But have you considered, that if you accept this idea as an alternative to dark matter, you are in affect giving a very powerful endoresment to Einstein's theory of relativity, including the general theory? And as I recall, that theory is something you have felt free to disregard in earlier epochs in your own cosmology. Just asking.

 

[Helen]

Barry has never 'disregarded' Einstein's theories and works with them in his math. What your post does show me, however, is how little you know about his work.

 

[Petrel]

The article you posted has already received a critique. This scientist contends that the equations Cooperstock and Tieu used actually produce a galaxy different from their assumed rotating dust cloud, having a gravitational contribution from a thin halo as well.

Since neither of these has apparently been published yet (?) for peer review, I'd be hesitant at making any solid claims about the nonexistance of dark matter (especially since that goes beyond Cooperstock and Tieu's claim!)

 

[UTEOTW]

"Barry has never 'disregarded' Einstein's theories and works with them in his math. What your post does show me, however, is how little you know about his work. "

Reading through your website in the past, I have run across references to an obscure journal (maybe more than one, it has been a while) whose main theme is that relativity is wrong. I asked you about it at the time and you brushed me off. You said something along the lines that Barry was not published in that journal so why did it matter. But there is room in such references to raise the question. Plus you seem to deny most of modern science in any case so I don't think it is too far of a leap to ask if you question relativity as well.

 

[JWI]

UTEOTW

I believe Gravitational Lensing is not due to gravity at all, and I am not alone in this. I believe the Sun's atmosphere bent the light as our own atmosphere does in the test that supposedly proved this theory.

Here is an interesting article I think you will respect.

http://paias.org/Science/Einstein/Einstein.htm

I do not claim to know all the answers. I know very little. But I have read many articles and am not sure Einstein was correct. But this article is just to show that other theories exist. Which is correct, I do not know.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Uh - JWI - that link questions simultaneousness as being absolute in physics because it cites a law that declared a tax to take place at a certain time around the whole state.

That is said to be a true questioning of Einstein's physics?

Allow me to point out that in Einstein's theory, the event of midnight occuring in two different cities, while considered to be simultaneous according to the residents of the two cities, will not be percieved as simulaneous by observers that are MOVING relative to the two cities.

So if the tax takes affect at MIDNIGHT of a certain day, then it truly is NOT simultaneous across the state - to a moving observer - after all.

I think the whole article is based on saying Einstein is wrong because the writer doesn't understand what was being said by Einstein.

 

[JWI]

Obviously you did not read the article. I believe the state tax mentioned was a joke.

Try reading the rest.

 

[JWI]

I was questioning Gravitational Lensing which UTEOTW has so much faith in.

All I am trying to show is that there are other explanations that are actually more credible than the bending of space by gravity.

Of course this doesn't fit the popular belief. But I have never been Politically Correct.

http://paias.org/Science/Einstein/Ein2Detail.htm#lensing

 

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by JWI:
I believe Gravitational Lensing is not due to gravity at all, and I am not alone in this. I believe the Sun's atmosphere bent the light as our own atmosphere does in the test that supposedly proved this theory.

Here is an interesting article I think you will respect.

http://paias.org/Science/Einstein/Einstein.htm

I do not claim to know all the answers. I know very little. But I have read many articles and am not sure Einstein was correct. But this article is just to show that other theories exist. Which is correct, I do not know.

First off, it does not matter if I respect their opinion or not. There is some, likely unintentional, equivocation going on here. I am speaking of the gravitational lensing of a background galaxy by a foreground galaxy. You source is discussing a different kind of lensing, namely the bending of starlight by the sun. For the example of the sun, they seem to be splitting hairs. For my example, the results are much easier to see.

Here are some pictures of graviational lenses.

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2005/images/phot-20c-05-preview.jpg
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2003/images/Phot20/phot-20a-03-preview.jpg
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-1998/phot-48c-98-preview.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0402/abell2218_hst_big.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0010/qso2237_wiyn.jpg
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0004/cl0024_hst_big.gif
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0110/a2218c_hst_big.jpg

As far as the rest of the site goes, I started poking around and then quit when they started trying to show how different objects don't really fall at the same rate.

If they want to doubt relativity, fine. Publish their results in one of the physics magazines and see if it stands up.

Did you follow my links and read the rest of the articles on the Cambrian and on transitional birds?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by JWI:
Obviously you did not read the article. I believe the state tax mentioned was a joke.

Try reading the rest.

What makes you think its a joke? Its hard to tell that objection apart from the science quality in the rest of the objections.

The whole thing is cast into finding verbal quibbles about the verbal examples given to illustrate what Einstein's theory is all about. To disprove it, you have to get into the real math and show where the real math is in error. I don't think the writer of that piece is capable of doing that kind of math.

He makes a big deal about how body that is large in comparison to the earth would, for example, draw closer to the earth faster than a body that is very much smaller than the earth. He neglects to mention that this would be because the gravitational fields involved would be correspondingly larger due to the contribution of the mass of the other body.

Let me mention the wonderful Global Positioning Satellite system we have around us. It allows us to track our way on earth with those handy little GPS devices. Scientists use Einstein's general and special theories of relativity to program the clocks in those satellites to compensate for the time anomalies they would otherwise experience to make them useless.

They will continue to use Einstein's formulas because they work so well, or until you suggest some better formulas that work, based on a better theory.

Got one yet?

Until you do, don't expect much attention to your anti-Einstein point of view.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Thank you Helen for getting us back on topic for this thread . . .

Originally posted by Helen:
With permission of the author, the following email was sent to me as part of an email group, in response to another member of the group:

------

It's been mentioned many times before but I'll say it again, natural selection can NOT be a mechanism to reduce the formidable probabilities proposed in either the origin of life or the diversity of life. The origin of life is obvious because there's no reproduction yet which is what natural selection needs before it can work.

We all know that science has not yet reached the point where they can create a living cell. They have managed to construct infective viruses from scratch. That is borderline life.

It is a truism that God, if He desired, could construct a universe that would eventually wind up creating life. It would be an awesome Universe, indeed . . . . I wonder what it would look like to live in such a universe?

The only real reason to oppose that idea is because one wishes to keep to seperate creation of species and perhaps a young earth due to one's desire to hang on to a literal interpretation of Genesis. It would appear we've already had that option ruled out for us by the other great book God provided, the book of Nature.

On the other hand, should it turn out that the origin of life actually requires a creator, I'm not going to be "disapointed". To my way of thinking, its all creation anyway, whether by natural means as designed by Him or by direct miracle by Him at whatever key points He chose.

As for the diversity of life, natural selection can only subtract, it cannot add.

Wrong. If a mutation is truly random, what rule is there that says it must always be harmful? In a truly random world, on that rare occasion, a beneficial mutation will occur.

Suppose we have to explain a nucleotide sequence for a gene that did not exist in the first life form and is dissimilar to any gene in the first life form. If the species that carries this gene dies out because of natural selection then the whole gene is lost, not just a nucleotide or two! Natural selection doesn’t build up the genome one nucleotide at a time; it actually tears it down one gene at a time. To me this is an obviously true statement. Can anyone find fault in what I am saying? I am tired of hearing evolutionists argue for natural selection as some kind of creative force that reduces probabilities.

Of course its a creative force that reduces probablities. Perhaps one might argue it doesn't reduce them enough, but one cannot argue it wouldn't reduce them. As for the "enough" part, bear in mind that mathematical simulation shows that in a population of one million creatures, the arrival of one beneficial mutation per generation in the presence of ten thousand harmful mutations per generation is enough to drive evolution forward towards a better and better genome.

 

[AntennaFarmer]

Brother Paul: We know that it is possible to induce mutations by radioactivity and other means. Could you provide a reference to data that 1 in 10,000 mutations induced in a lab were beneficial? I would think that experiment was done somewhere.

Thanks,
A.F.

 

[Petrel]

I don't think that is really comparable to natural mutations. For one thing, the number of damage sites in the DNA is uncontrollable. It is definitely going to be harder for an organism to survive multiple single-strand breaks, double-strand breaks, and crosslinks compared to one single-base alteration. Secondly, these types of lesions are way more dangerous for an organism than a simple copying error. Each of these lesions requires some type of repair before DNA copying can even begin, and many cells with multiple lesions of this type experience cell-cycle arrest and apoptosis instead. It's like doing brain surgery with an axe (and then taking the patients' inevitable death as proof that it can't be done!)

Some mutations I'm sure do take place as a lesion of one of these types followed by faulty DNA repair and copying, but many others occur just by DNA polymerase making a mistake in copying.

As for evidence that these mutations do exist, well, we can look at the homologous proteins for various species and see many conserved sequences with a few variable bases. Theistic evolutionists interpret this as evidence of a common ancestor, while young earth creationists think that God just gave each animal a slightly different gene for the enzyme even though they are functionally the same (don't ask me why!) However, since the sequences are so variable yet function is retained I think we can determine from this that an additional mutation is not necessarily going to be deleterious.

We definitely do have an example of mutation of a gene producing a better product--B cells. These antibody-producing cells go through a tremendously complicated mechanism of genome reassortment to produce all of the types of antibodies. Once the B cell has determined which regions of the antibody it is going to make by splicing out some of its genes, it then undergoes a process called somatic hypermutation. This mutates at a fast rate the part of the genome coding for the antibody. New mutants that bind antigen well go on to survive and multiply. This means that your immune response is different along a timeline and that late antibodies often bind better than early ones.

If you need more examples of beneficial mutations, look at the viruses, which are constantly changing!

 

[JWI]

Mutations good? No Way.

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut02.htm

 

[JWI]

Scientists who do not believe in Natural Selection. The vast majority are not Creationists.

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/09nsel04.htm

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by JWI:
Mutations good? No Way.

Did you even read my post above?

Explain B cells, then.