The lie of evolution

Oh please don't say that, you'll get them started up again. I wish I had never made that joke in the first place!

We have already had extensive discussions about God's omnipotence, miracles, etc. I have a pretty lengthy post about that very thing a couple pages back in this thread, I believe.

Right now let's talk about those pesky B cells.

I think all of us have used the starting point of what "God said" according to the literal interpretation. We have tried to resolve the evidence with the idea that the universe was made a mere 6000 years ago. I spent six years on the effort off and on. It doesn't make sense.

As for the idea that evolution will be overthrown because so many other ideas have been--the only other theory with such massive amounts of evidence that has been shown "wrong" is Newtonian gravity, which was replaced by relativity. However, no one said that Newtonian gravity is wrong, it just is an approximation that is not accurate at certain scales.

Likewise, I don't think anyone is going to come up with a theory that says that evolution and the Big Bang are completely wrong. They may flesh them out more and make some modifications, but they are not going to be discarded as totally baseless.

Now how 'bout them B cells?

 

"So, UTEOTW, do you believe that God is capable of doing anything that does not require it to follow the physical rules of the universe that He created? If so, give some examples please."

I think we have had this discussion before, but here goes.

Absolutely God is capable of doing things that does not require that He follow the rules of His own universe. My opinion is that these case are rare due to how well He designed the rules of the universe to fit His will. BUt back to that in a moment.

God does violate His rules and we tend to call them miracles. God insprired many of the authors of the Bible to record specific instances of His intervention in the Bible both OT and NT. I could make you a list, but I think that it would shed little new knowledge on the subject. I think that many of us here could also speak of times where we would say that God intervened miraculously in our own lives or in the lives of people we know.

But I think we would also admit that more often than not, God works through more subtle ways to accomplish His will. I have used an analogy in the past, but not recently, which I will ressurrect here. Let's say you are having financial problems, you pray to God for help and He decides to answer that prayer in the affirmative. Do you expect to go down stairs the next day and find a pile of money on the kitchen table? No? Isn't God capable of such? What would you actually expect? Perhaps an unexpected raise at work? Maybe a letter from the state telling you about some unclaimed property which you had forgotten. Are such things any less and answer of your prayer than the big pile of money on the table? Which ways are most likely? Which ways are indistinguishable from God acting simply through the rules He has set up?

Some here try and put God into a box and tell what they could accept God doing and what they could not accept God doing. Others here choose not to limit God. Strangely enough, it seems to be the hyperliteralists who seek to limit God. About the only limitation I can think I have heard an OEer offer is doubt that God would make the universe appear deceitfully different than it is. But after putting God into a box, it is usually the hyperliteralists who will make subtle and not so subtle attacks of the faith of those who disagree.

"By the way--for a scientist who is a Christian--would it not make at least a little sense to use what 'God said' when developing a few of those guesses? Is it just possible it could save us a lot of time, instead of flipping coins?"

We do accept what God says. We just do not accept what you try and tell us that God said. God said that He created and we believe it. God said that he gave man a soul and we believe it. We just disagree with your opinion that He could only have created recently.

That Jesus was born of a virgin, we take on faith, we could never hope to have any evidence. That Jesus turned water into wine, we take on faith and could never hope to have any evidence. That God created the universe we take on faith and could never hope to have any evidence. But how He created... For this we have lot's of evidence. We have the facts and they only agree with God using mostly natural means to give us the universe that we see today.

 

"Now how 'bout them B cells? [Big Grin] "

For all the bluster about a lack of evidence for this and that and how all these things cannot happen, don't really expect a response when you show how the assertions are wrong.

They believe that only a literal interpretaion of the creation is acceptable. They blindly trust what is said by anyone who also claims to believe as they do. If AIG tells them that there are no transitionals, then no matter how many examples you provide and no matter how well it is corroberated with other data, they will always go back to saying there are no transitionals. There is no need to factually dispute you because they already know you are wrong and there is no sense in putting any effort into seeing if you might be right.

If mutations can only be harmful according to the ICR then no matter what processes and mechanisms and examples you provide, they must be wrong so there is not even a need to try and address the points you raise before the same assertions are made again. Never mind how those b-cells in their very body might be using such methods. Never mind the contrary observations to their position.

And if some YE leader has told you that they have quotes where an evolutionists says that natural selection doesn't work or that the fossil record does not exist, they are own your side. You can trust that they would never misquote someone, they claim to be Christians after all! No need to go check up on those quotations no matter how strange it may seem for Gould to be quoted as saying that evolution doesn't happen.

And radiometric dating... We all know that going out and deliberately selecting samples incorrectly and misrepresenting the results proves that dating does not work. There is no need to take a harder look. They believe in a young earth just like you. They wouldn't mislead you.

Would they?

For some humor go read this. It is short.

http://www.rae.org/nihilism.html

After you read it, consider the implications of knowing that it was allegedly exposed a few years ago that is a pseudonyme of ["ALLEDGED private information edited out]

Something quite strange is going on there. You might see why I have heard that Jan / "John" has threatened legal action for outing him. I think truth might be a defense in such a case.

[ October 20, 2005, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: Phillip ]

 

Just call me optimistic! I know in my case when I feel strongly about something I argue vehemently for my position up to the time at which I decide that position is incorrect. Maybe there are others who seem outwardly to be immobile but are really thinking about the data presented here, and maybe if I keep addressing the data they'll change their minds. At the least maybe someone will decide to stop bringing up the same disproved argument again and again, which would save us all time.

 

Yes. Please do not mix "What God said" with pseudo-scientific speculation. The implication is that somehow God has been insufficient in revealing what we need to know. See Romans Ch. 1.

To be sure, there has been "washing of the cerebral cortex" on both sides of this issue--God's Word is still infallible.

Selah,

Bro.

 

God said He made Eve from Adam's rib and you DON'T believe it. God said He made Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed life into him and you DON'T believe it. God said He made the creation in six days and you DON'T believe it. God said the serpant tempted Eve in the garden of Eden and you DON'T believe it.

How do you determine which miracles you wish to believe? If you say Genesis is not literal, then why should we believe that the Book of John is literal?

Who is putting God into a box? I'm simply stating what God SAID.

 

Well, on the other hand, don't start mixing "what God did" as perfectly revealed in nature with pseudo-religous speculation, either.

So there.

Now can we get past the word slinging and start reasoning together from evidence? Or would you just like to trade slogans a few more times first?

 

Well, now that we've traced out another loop in the spiral of repetition I'll repeat myself, and do a little repeating of UTEOTW as well.

Creation is qualitatively different from the miracles Jesus worked in that we have physical evidence in the natural world testifying to how it was created. We don't have any videos of Jesus walking on water, we don't have the GC-MS of the water before and after it was turned into wine, and we don't have all of the bloodwork and MRI's of the people he healed. There is no evidence on the mechanism of any of these occurences. But for creation there is.

 

I have followed this thread for sometime now.I'm not trying to trap anybody or be meanspirited but I would like to know the answer to a question.First I am assuming that all here are either theistic evolutionist or YEC types.Could the theistic evolutionists please tell me in 100 words or less first what type of theistic evolutionist you are(there are several positions)and what it is you actually believe about creation?

 

I apologize for the late entry.The reason for my questions are not to put in question your belief in God or to question your salvation.I think your beliefs may be misunderstood.I am just trying to get a sense of your spirit.

 

OK P.O.B this theistic evolutionist believes that after evolving the body God took Adam aside, created Eve from the rib, put them in the garden.

I take the days of creation from Genesis as each symbolic of a vast era of creation.

I further allow them to not be literally consecutive but to overlap. In doing that, I completely remove all contradiction with reality.

If you ask about why God said in Exodus "for in six days", I simply reply that is a back reference to Genesis and referring to the same usage of the word "day" that is found there and certainly the six epochs referred to have their own organization and their own claim to being valid as epochs.

But I think you may have a few evolution denying O.E.C types around as well, you know . . . maybe they'll speak up for you.

 

Tahnkyou Paul for your honest answer.I have no problem with YEC'ers saying what they believe about creation but I hope they wait until we get a few more replies from the theistic evolutionist.My reason being is I truly think that the theistic evolutionist (at least most)are closer in belief then most folks think.As can be seen by following the thread most YEC folks believe that theistic evolutionist believe there was no Adam & Eve and no garden of Eden therefore no fall of man.You just pointed out that at least in your case that is not true.I think there may be more like you.

 

I am another TE who believes in a literal Adam, Eve and Eden. I am open to the possibility that all of them may be representative/figurative and do not believe that such an understanding would impact my understanding of the rest of the bible.

 

UTEOTW

It is amazing how you write a novel to support evolution, but when someone presents evidence against it, you blow it off without explanation.

For instance,

19 - TOO MANY RELATED FACTORS—There are far too many factors associated with each trait for a single mutation—or even several to accomplish the needed task. Mathematical probabilities render mutational species changes impossible of attainment.

"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 480 x 1050. Such a number, if written out, would read

480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 1050 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence . . Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence; ‘random mutations,’ to use the evolutionist’s favorite expression."—*L.L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong (1984), p. 205

Your answer:

19. Gibberish. What's his point?

Very impressive, where's the novel?

The writer's point is that evolution is mathematically impossible.

So, why don't you prove this wrong. What is wrong with these statements? If these figures are wrong, what are the correct figures?

 

"UTEOTW

It is amazing how you write a novel to support evolution, but when someone presents evidence against it, you blow it off without explanation."

And apparently you did not pay attention to whom you were quoting from. That was some else's response. You also seem to have a habit of ignoring ("blowing off," is that your term) data that is presented. There are a large number of questions directed to you on this thread that you have not even pretended to try and answer.

But you want an answer to #19 on your list. Fine.

You source is deliberately misrepresenting how genes are formed through evolution. According to his model, there is no strand and then there is a strand 84 nucleotides long. And then he calculates a set of odds from that.

Too bad that this is not how genes are formed. They are built up bit by bit. The calculation is like saying that no one can write a book because of the inprobable odds of that set of letters appearing at once when books are actually written letter by letter, word by word, page by page.

This is the same error you will see whenever YEers start talking about probabilities. THey completely ignore the path that would be taken and instead make up their own. That is known as a strawman and is a fallacious argument.

Strawmen are easy to knock over. That is why YEers like to attack strawmen instead of real evolution. Real evolution explains too much and has too much supporting evidence to be knocked over.

 

Golly, no one seems to be able to keep anyone straight here. I'm the one who said it was gibberish.

I believe that number is supposed to be the number of possible 84 bp sequences. They don't really say what they are calculating. I thought initially it might be the probability of picking any one nucleotide at each position (0.25^84), but it isn't. It can't be the number of possible 84 bp sequences because from my calculations that is only 46 million.

Either way, these numbers are not really relevant to real life. It's not even relevant to make-believe life. I could sit down with my calculator and have it generate random numbers.

A = 0.75-0.999...
G = 0.50-0.749...
T = 0.25-0.499...
C = &lt 0.249...

I could generate 84 of these and plug them into our DNA synthesizer and let it go. True, I'd get lousy yield (it's too long a sequence to synthesize chemically in good yield), but I would get a random 84 bp DNA strand out of it.

According to your source, I just did something impossible.

Moreover, real life doesn't work this way. An organism doesn't have to suddenly whip up a gene out of nowhere. It builds upon what it already has (which started out very small), and increases the amount of DNA it has to work with by duplication and outright theft.

There's a less than 1% chance that a woman will have seven sons, but at every birth her odds of having a son are 50%. Like that, mutation takes things one step at a time.

Now that you're back in the fray, would you like to explain to me how somatic hypermutation resulting in increase in specificity of antibodies in B cells is consistent with the notion that all mutations are detrimental?

Added: I see you beat me to it, UTEOTW. I was busy trying to find out where he came up with that particular number.

 

UTEOTW

You are correct, it was Petrel that gave that answer. I did notice that myself a little while after I made my post. I started to make the correction and decided not to, I actually thought it would get a response from you.

Now, you didn't really address the numbers, but rather explained it away.

Also, please note that most of these quotes did not come from creationists at all, but fellow evolutionists, scientists, and geneticists.

As I wrote elsewhere, the greatest critics to evolution are not creationists, but those within your very field.

Now, since you were kind enough to answer, please answer these objections. They relate directly to your answer.

17 - INCONSEQUENTIAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS—A major problem here is that, on one hand, mutations are damaging and deadly; but on the other,—aside from the damage—they only directly change small features.

"Is it really certain, then, as the neo-Darwinists maintain, that the problem of evolution is a settled matter? I, personally, do not think so, and, along with a good many others, I must insist on raising some banal objections to the doctrine of neo-Darwinism . .

"The mutations which we know and which are considered responsible for the creation of the living world are, in general, either organic deprivations, deficiencies (loss of pigment, loss of an appendage), or the doubling of the pre-existing organs. In any case, they never produce anything really new or original in the organic scheme, nothing which one might consider the basis for a new organ or the priming for a new function."—*Jean Rostand, The Orion Book of Evolution (1961), p. 79.

*Richard Goldschmidt was the geneticist who first proposed miraculous multimillion, beneficial mutations as the only possible cause of species crossover. (More on this later.) This is what he wrote about the inconsequential nature of individual mutations:

"Such an assumption [that little mutations here and there can gradually, over several generations, produce a new species] is violently opposed by the majority of geneticists, who claim that the facts found on the subspecific level must apply also to the higher categories. Incessant repetition of this unproved claim, glossing lightly over the difficulties, and the assumption of an arrogant attitude toward those who are not so easily swayed by fashions in science, are considered to afford scientific proof of the doctrine. It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation. It is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations."—*Richard Goldschmidt, in American Scientist (1952), p. 94.

Later in this chapter, we will briefly discuss *Goldschmidt’s "hopeful monster" theory, since it is based on mutational changes.

18 - TRAITS ARE TOTALLY INTERCONNECTED—Experienced geneticists are well-aware of the fact that the traits contained within the genes are closely interlocked with one another. That which affects one trait will affect many others. They work together. Because of this, all the traits, in changed form, would have to all be there together—instantly,—in order for a new species to form!

Here is how two scientists describe the problem:

"Each mutation occurring alone would be wiped out before it could be combined with the others. They are all interdependent. The doctrine that their coming together was due to a series of blind coincidences is an affront not only to common sense but to the basic principles of scientific explanation."—*A. Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (1975), p. 129.

"Most biological reactions are chain reactions. To interact in a chain, these precisely built molecules must fit together most precisely, as the cogwheels of a Swiss watch do. But if this is so, then how can such a system develop at all? For if any one of the specific cogwheels in these chains is changed, then the whole system must simply become inoperative. Saying it can be improved by random mutation of one link . . [is] like saying you could improve a Swiss watch by dropping it and thus bending one of its wheels or axles. To get a better watch all the wheels must be changed simultaneously to make a good fit again."—*Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, "Drive in Living Matter to Perfect Itself," Synthesis I, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 18 (1977), [Winner of two Nobel Prizes for scientific research and Director of Research at the Institute for Muscle Research in Massachusetts].


I especially like this comment,

"Incessant repetition of this unproved claim, glossing lightly over the difficulties, and the assumption of an arrogant attitude toward those who are not so easily swayed by fashions in science, are considered to afford scientific proof of the doctrine"

This from someone in the field of genetics. He is 100% correct too.

 

Try my answer on for size. And then explain why B cells must mutate if mutation is so detrimental.

 

Petrel

You and UTEOTW like to write long answers in jargon that most regular folks cannot understand whatsoever.

Just because we do not understand the language, we DO grasp the concept.

Just because this B Cell can mutate does not prove that it is mutating into another type of lifeform. It is still and always will be a B Cell.

This is not what evolution requires. Evolution requires one type of animal to mutate into another. A reptile must mutate into a mammal or bird or whatever.

Within your own field, many object strongly to this being possible. This is why I gave the mathematical objection. This is why I provided more objections from geneticists on mutation.

"glossing lightly over the difficulties"

You can write a novel 20 pages long with 1000 references. But you cannot ignore these objections. And there are many more I can post.

And will.