Human common descent ancestor discovered - Page 4

<*bonks head on desk at manipulations of evidentiary standards*>

At least the scientific side has published protocols trying to test this theory...

I want to ask you a question. Do you believe that in order to be a Christian you must deny evolution? Do you believe that an acceptance of biological evolution, and an old earth, would mean that you are denying the Bible, or otherwise not being a good Christian? I ask because it's my impression that the vast, vast majority of creationists are religious conservatives who believe as they do because they think they are following the Bible.

And therefore I think it's important to point out that most Christian denominations have issued statements in one way or another stating that they are not evolution-deniers. That includes the Catholic church as well as most Protestant denominations. The official position of most of these groups is what you might call "theistic evolution" - that God created the universe, but that all of the scientific explanations are still correct, like biological evolution and the 4 billion year old earth and all that good stuff.

In other words, they don't agree with you. The fact is, not only is your type of young-earth creationism a discredited belief in science, it's a discredited and fringe belief even within Christianity.

I only have the time to deal with gravity here.

Newton's law, postulated in the 18th century, relates specifically to mass and the attraction of bodies, that is, the observable, predictable properties of bodies in space.

It is not 'the law of gravity'. It is 'Newton's law.' Physics has moved along a way since Newton, and we still don't know what gravity itself is. Gravity hasn't been 'solved'. If you work in gravity you work in theory. Which is why it is agreed in the physics department of every university on the planet that gravity theory is what we call 'theory.'

It hasn't been solved. It is, like evolution, theory. All the evidence tells us that it exists.

Like evolution.

This is a rearguard action on my part to actually save some meaning in universally accepted terms from the willful ignorance of people with a vested interest in their obfuscation.

Apart from this.

This is ridiculous. The marine deposits are carved seashells. You're expecting me to believe that a flood, for which there is absolutely no evidence in the Chauvet caves, swept human artifacts into a cave and the water miraculously left the paintings in the cave in pristine condition.

The facts aren't important to you.

All it takes is for you to present evidence for your beliefs. That's all it takes. Yet 99% of these evolution v creation threads are about problems with evolution and science. Hardly an iota of evidence for creation has ever been presented.

You say A or B. It doesn't work that way. Science doesn't go about proving things with false dilemmas. It's either A or not A. Then evidence and tests for B or not B. C or not C. Since all of the discussion is always about evolution, the only agenda creationists have are to sew the seeds of doubt about evolution in society.

I don't even understand why you pick on biologists since most of your arguments would be with cosmologists, physicists, geologists and chemists. So, is Big Bang Theory the next theory to have a warning label? Can't wait for the campaigning for that. The weak force obviously must have a warning label too with all of troubles with radiametric dating. What about plate tectonics? How about the speed of light and those 10+ billion light year away quasars? Thermodynamics? Planetary formation? Genetics?

Science accepts any and all theories. The only caveat is that people have the data and experimentation that supports their theories. I've seen plenty of threads like this where a creationist is asked for their evidence and experimentation to support their theories. Yet you hardly ever see any evidence come up. You'd think that all of those Christian universities, let alone the Vatican, would sponsor some of their researchers to go gather evidence, formulate hypotheses, and perform experiments.

Can i just say that mammalian cell cultures suck ass?
Thanks for the time for that public statement...

Why is it that people can accept microevolution but not macroevolution? There is fundamentally nothing different between the two.

I think back to all the falsehoods put forward in my biology classes (with each level tweaked back to make them less false), and I honestly think the error in some of the thinking comes from the definition of a species. Our current definition is a working one and is not based upon any thing having to do with genetics -- can these two species mate producing a fertile offspring? But the unthinkable has not been done -- we have not tried to mate a human to a chimp or banobo etc etc. This definition also leads to the problems of ring species where, for instance, species around a mountain can mate with their nearest neighbors creating a logical fallacy in the definition. So what is a better definition? I don't know. But it shouldn't be based upon reproduction since a single mutation in an individual can bring about such a failure in the definition.

Where does this leave us? Not very far from microevolution and I believe that is the point.

Because there's no argument against microevolution because it's observable. Macroevolution can still be denied simply because we haven't had a long enough first person recorded history to say it's been observed. Maybe in another million years, assuming humans still exist (or have evolved), we'll finally be able to "prove" it.

In the mean time, the creationists have their book of parables and their faith.

This takes a lot of sauce.

In the face of the most preposterously abundant evidence, much of which you can see by going to your nearest museum of natural history, you're claiming that God made man when Obatala climbed down a white sheet to the banks of the River Niger / the Inuit bird of creation dived down to the bottom of the Bering Straits and came back with a fistful of pebbles / some numinous invisible force made the first man from dust in the Garden of Eden. You wilfully misunderstand terms, consider axioms 'controversial' and demand a kind of unequivocal proof for something entirely self-evident which you don't AT ALL require for an explanation which by its very frigging definition is impossible to prove.

And you're the one telling me I 'don't understand how science works.'

I'm very busy today. I have to deal with your post bit by bit.

First: a non-fossilised dinosaur bone!


I have found your bone.

And it is a fossil. It is a fossil. It is a fossil.

It contained extractable proteins. 'Earth' magazine (a science mag for teenagers that apparently folded after three issues, which explains why I've never heard of it) ran an article about it at about the time that Jurassic Park came out.

Some creationist 'scientists' seized on it.

You have been fed, and have believed, a lie, benzene. I hope you don't post anything about this fossil again on another forum - that would be dishonest, no?

Marc, you realise that most of the stuff you cite has nothing to do with Evolution, yes? By confounding the two you're playing the Creationist game and forcing people to choose between religion and evolution, and we both know that the Bible says nothing that the vast majority of Christians believe is inconsistent with evolution.

The Creationists twist Christianity as much as they do Science.

Bravo

You obviously haven't been reading my links about scientific law. (And I've also proven you haven't even read yours very thoroughly before posting them).

(first line of google define:scientific law)
Scientific law: "A natural phenomenon that has been proven to occur invariably whenever certain conditions are met"

Sounds like gravity with has been proven to occur through testing. No testing, no scientific law. Do not drag down real science in an attempt to lend credence to a naturalists pipe dream.



Any questions?


I've been doing both actually. I've been stating over and over again the design quite evident in biological systems, and also attacking the naturalistic notion that it came about by chance.


Only one supportable inconsistency is enough to prove a theory is incorrect. Why do you think I've been hammering thermodynamics so much? As for my A vs B statement, you provide me with a third possibility for the generation of life. And don't give me panspermia (even though we spend billions of dollars flying junk to mars), because that just puts the onus on another planet.

Thermodynamics picks on biologists, chemist, and mostly physicists. (Read me earlier statement about how many physicists believe in naturalism as well). Cosmology is a purely observatory science, as is geology.



http://www.answersingenesis.org/
http://www.icr.org/
http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/


Yes, they certainly do. I only have to work with them for a bit longer though.


http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-...macroevolution
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-...microevolution

Basically, because macroevolution has never been observed in a living system (hence it cannot be proven), moreso, it is due to the massive amounts of genetic change that would have to occur to transition between even closely related "species". As I said earlier, it's very easy for a biologist to say "and then a wing evolved", while the geneticist is shaking his/her head.
Some work has been done trying to link genetics to the naturalists' "tree of life", and although it fits in some of the more obvious branches, it also has prompted significant rethinking of our understanding of species & their depiction.


I'm assuming you mean infertility, but that hardly applies since it's changed genetic material cannot be preserved after that point. As it stands, "species" has been a purely taxonomical definition, and due to the historical bent of naming systems in science (IUPAC anyone?) will not be changing in the near future.


And what evidence is that? Fossils dug from the ground force-fit into a closeminded naturalistic explanation. Nevermind that a true missing link has been found (even the "finding" that started this whole thread, a picture of which I link to here, is very clearly stated as being an ape, and not a link between humans and apes, only between previous primate subspecies.
Again, "natural history" is the strongest naturalists bastion, as they do not have to rigorously test hypotheses (hint: they can't). Whereas the harder sciences (which I've been saying all along) are much more careful about broad statements about the beggining of life. (As a matter of fact, most of the ones I've talked to stick to a more agnostic POV)

As for your examples of tribal evolution, the biblical explanation is an exercise in simplicity: An exceptionally intellegent God made the world.

You keep telling me how bad my science is. I propose we lay our credentials on the table. I'll start with mine. I'm by no means an expert, but I have looked into this matter (evolution/creation) a lot more than most in my field.
B.S. in Chemistry (analytical-weighted) from Indiana Wesleyan University (minor in biology, as well as research in cellular biology and optics)
First year grad student at Texas A&M University, in the biochemistry/biophysics department, under a NIH training grant in molecular biophysics.

You (hassan) have said that you are into geology and literature. What is your scientific background?
I once read that Mac users have a higher average I.Q. than windows users (which isn't really suprising), so hearing about the qualifications of the various members of AI would be a neat thing anyway.


Hardly.
I'll post the intro here for everyone else to read:

"Traditionally, there was little hope that biomolecules might be recovered from bone more than a few thousand years old. However, 20_years ago, partial amino acid sequences were identified from the shells of mollusks 80 million years old (33). Gurley et al. (34) followed with a report of amino acids in the bony tissues of the Late Jurassic (150 million years ago) sauropod dinosaur, Seismosaurus, and more recently the small and highly acidic bone protein, osteocalcin, has been recognized immunologically in extracts of dinosaurian bone (35). Stable isotope studies (36), including those done on the specimen used in the following study (37), indicate that at least some of these molecules are endogenous to the fossils, rather than arising from younger exogenous contaminants. These results suggest that significant protein remnants may exist in fossil bone. In light of the above studies, it was decided to examine nonpermineralized dinosaur bone for biomolecular degradation products, including hemoglobin."

Very interesting. If you remember, the whole point of this topic was to state that your previous statement about the ability to date the fossilization process was trash. This paper goes to prove my point, right from the opening statement. Fact of the matter is, unless you know the conditions in which the bone was first situated, you cannot make anything better than a guess at how long it's been there. A perfect example: link.


Well, considering that this entire argument is about the orgins and development of life, how could you not include biology? Your statement makes no sense.
I've been stating the design of life many times this thread, which is great evidence that life was created, not "generated by chance". Ask me about the photosensitive cells in the eyes being installed backward. That's a tough question for design.

DISCLAIMER: MarcUK has asked me to reply to several questions. Due to a previous misunderstanding about my beliefs, I (as descartes) believe:
1) Life was obviously created, not evolved
2) The holy book that is most accurate and explains the creation process best is the Bible.

That said, onto the questions:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...11011?v=glance


All of the archalogical evidence pertaining to biblical times has meshed with the bible, not disproved it.


Most biblical scholars believe that moses compiled Genesis, as he would have access (as the adopted son of the Pharoh) to the massive library at Alexandria.


Well, other than the interesting egyptian custom of chiseling all the names of previous dynasties off their buildings, it could be due to a royal name vs. a common name. Especially since Horus was an egyptian god, he might have been given that as powerful nickname. A link for this would be nice.


Because the bible has been accurate in the other historically and scientifically verifyable facts, I belive that the Bible can be trusted when it says 6 days.


See above.


A paper (and subsequent book) by Dr. Russell Humphreys (whom I've had the pleasure of meeting with) does an excellent job of explaning how this might happen:
http://www.icr.org/starlightandtime/index.html

I can give you a short synopsis if you'd like.


How so? The bible says that Adam was right there with her, and is equally to blame for not intervening.


Read Romans 5:12


I don't know how big you think the Ark was, but it was only about as high as a three-story building. As for plywood, you can make it as thick as you need, and being naturally bouyant, would float excellently.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/rdoolan/arksize.html


I have already made statements about a water canopy.


The oceans. If the earth did not have as much topographical convolutions as before the flood, a global flood could be very possible. In any case, people are all freaked out about the polar icecaps melting and flooding a lot of what we do have anyway.


A ten second google search yielded this: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks.htm


All of the dates and and lifetimes of the patriarchs are tabulated in the bible (I believe the reason they're there is to close any possiblities of "millions of years" inserted between thm). You can add them up yourself with a calculator. (I haven't done it personally, but my wife has).


You have? Really? Where?


Because that amount of genetic diversion has never been seen. Only postulated.

A full analysis of MarcUK's article will have to come later. Too much to do, too little time.

You might want to check out this book. For a summary of the J,E,P,D hypothesis, see here.:

Oh. Cool. You're even quoting me saying things I haven't even posted.

You are misunderstanding me on purpose, it appears, and you've signally avoided dealing with what I've actually said, and now we're arguing about gravity a lot.

We don't know what causes gravity. Yes, we can observe its effects. Gravity research is theory because we're still trying to work out what it actually is.

Gravity has not been been 'proven' or 'solved'. It is theory.

It is still theory.

Even when you've finished reading this sentence it will still be theory. That's because, since the facts are on my side, I am right. Hey ho.


YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THERMODYNAMICS. You've been 'hammering' on thermodynamics and you've had half a dozen posts pointing out your errors. Go and frigging read them. Pages 2 and 3. Go and read them.


The speed of light is constant. The properties of radiation are to all practical purposes entirely predictable. Mathematics are far more useful to an understanding of the forces that shaped the universe (cosmology) than they are to geology. Your comparison is absolutely useless.

What are you talking about?

And the universe is far too big and far too old. Unless, of course, God sped up light from ludicrously distant galaxies in order to, I don't know, test us, or do our heads in. Or something. He's God, after all. Might as well make things difficult for us, eh?

And you can be as patronising as you please, but if you're seriously expecting me to believe that a flood swept into a cave carrying only pierced sea shells, leaving no other marine detritus, and left ancient, fragile cave paintings entirely intact than you are nuts. I know a hell of a lot about these caves. There was no flood. It didn't happen. It is impossible. This cave was sealed by glaciation with artifacts like cave bear skulls placed carefully about it. These artifacts were covered by virgin mineral deposits. The paintings were pristine. There is still carbon from lampsmoke on the walls.

My qualifications are in English literature and performance and I write about African hunter gatherer cultures and paleolithic parietal art. So what?

Oh, that dinosaur bone.

Re-reading that article, I see it is still a fossil. It just is. It's a fossil, not 'an unfossilised dinosaur bone' as you incorrectly posted.

That was untrue. Because the bone is a fossil.

...just real quickly...



Yes, I have read them, and responded to them. Go and read them.


So let me get this straight...you're basically an artist with a hobby and you're telling me, a biophysicist, that I don't understand thermodynamics?

I find it funny that Benzene, as educated as he claims to be, is using the non-sequitur "naturalist" which means "nudist" in almost all references.

MarcUK, this is the second time I've had to remind you of this. Please make sure you know what you're talking about before you post:

(from page 3)

That's not even the problem. Copying DNA is one thing, generating useful DNA from scratch is a completely different issue.


I do not use the term "evolutionists" because evolution means a change in genetic information over time.
I use the term "naturalist" in application to people who believe natural processes only.

In addition, I think you should take a look at this link and get a different dictionary.


I'm not denying that there are two questions, as a matter of fact I've said that very thing oh, about five times in the course of this thread.
Currently however, because of the opening post in this thread, we seem to be concentrating on evolution and origins. Not whether or not the bible is true. (Even though I have proffered explanations pertaining to questions about the bible).

it is sad that he does have a better understanding of thermodynamics than an honest to god "biophysicist". You see, as a biophysicist, I can as well as anyone here who has had an interest in thermodynamics tell you you are completely and totally wrong.
I guess the best explanation is the failure that is the american education system...

Really. Where did you go to school?
And even if you are a biochemist, give one example of where I've been wrong in my earlier statements.

If you think my statements about thermodynamics of the cell are incorrect then listen to what Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry (3rd edition) has to say (and this is all within the first 20 pages):

"In any physical or chemical change, the total amount of energy in the universe remains constant, although the form of the energy may change." (page 8 )

"Living cells are chemical engines that function at constant temperature." (page 8 )
(emphasis mine)

"Living organisms are interdependent, exchanging energy and matter via the environment." (page 9)

"The amount of energy actually avalible to do work, called the free energy (delta G) will always be somewhat less than the theoretical amount of energy released, because some energy is dissipated as [heat]..." (page 9)

"Chemical reactions can also be coupled so that an energy-releasing reaction drives an energy-requiring one." (page 9, emphasis mine)

Now, even for cellular reactions that are endergonic, many undergo conversion at such a low rate as to be impossible for the supporting of life without enzymes (like the breakdown of glucose). (and the formation of macromolecules like proteins and DNA is hardly endergonic)

As a matter of fact, Lehninger even titles a subsection of the first chapter "Biological information transfer". (page 13).

"A living cell is a self-contained, self-assembling, self-adjusting, self-perpetuating constant-temperature system of molecules that extracts free energy and raw materias from within it's environment." (page 18 )

Point: you have to have a mechanism in place to couple the reactions that are responsible for life. Starting life from basic components has a much too large overhead to be even remotely possible. You can't just throw energy into a reaction and expect anything without the proper mechanism in place already.

If you really are a biochemist (or anybody that's even had a course in chemistry), you will recognize these statements, and acknowledge that they are true. Show me where someone has shown a protein to autoassemble. (And the miller-urey experiment made L & R amino acids, not proteins, so don't give me that).

Elihu (and now benzene isn't simply a carcinogen, he is an honest to goodness human),

Sorry about finding background info (granted not very hard) because I often approach these situations with reservation unless someone has proven trust worthy. You seem to be trusting of all of us with your more personal information, so the least I can do is to tell you that I am a graduate student in Biochemistry/Biophysics at UPENN. Yes, everything you list is more or less true, I would take issues with the vocabulary used however.

I can however state that it is a profound fault of scientists to write things off as impossible because they cannot conceive of it. This goes for scientist who say God cannot exist because it isn't possible. I say god does not exist because it/she/he/they are not necessary, immortal soul be damned (though really, my background is American Conservative Judaism, and we have no place for heaven or hell or even a soul -- it makes the meaning of good works a little more personal, if you know what I mean)...

The cell has never been claimed to have come about in one step. What is even more convincing of this is that all of the genetic family trees of enzymes (as you know functional and not simply structural proteins) point to a common ancestor before which we know nothing. Now -- if you want to claim that God created this ancestral bacteria-like mono-cellular entity from which all life has emerged, I can't provide one iota of evidence that would contradict that since well there isn't any -- I can however point out that this would make everything in the Judeo-Christian genesis a lie. Also of note is that almost none of our enzymes are optimized. These things compound in my mind to suggest that we are still very much in the process of evolving, after all, we certainly aren't perfect if we are in God's image.

One thought experiment i need you to do for me, Elihu: An inorganic crystal capable of adding phosphates to the known to occur spontaneously nucleotides. Lets say a pool of this broth sits in some complex equlibrium for a long time -- it is quite probable that a large number of poly nucleotides of different lengths will form with time. Some of these may have the property that "pathogenic DNA" has -- that is it is quite likely that once they get long enough the reaction which extends the length of the nucleotide chain may be autocatalyzed by approximation (I will ask you to recall that most catalysis involves simply getting the reactants in close proximity, that is approximating the ideal reaction collision geometry). This means that after a certain length the chain will eventually fold onto itself until it can add no more charged nucleotides. Some fraction of these will be unfolded at least partially at almost all reasonable temperatures. These unfolded species would allow for the binding of smaller fragments that have very similar if not completely identical sequence identity -- once again aiding catalysis of the extension reaction by approximation. I am not claiming this occurs quickly -- but it could happen. We can predict that over time we would find a build up of the best sequences of nucleotides -- those that have less geometric restrictions on extension, and perhaps even some that do more than simply catalyze by approximation. These sequences of nucleotides may not constitute a formal definition of life, but they catalyze their own creation which is as near to life as i think a chemical system can get.

What does this need from the Universe? An inorganic crystal capable of catalyzing the charging reaction, and the existence of nucleotides.

What I am trying to suggest is that everything that we do as life forms, something inorganic does out there -- in fact there are reactions that inorganic complexes do that life doesn't due -- most likely because of the rarity of metals required.

One last comment: The "pathogenic DNA" that I discussed above does exist -- it tends to need the existence of cellular machinery for its replication to be competitive with the current lifeforms on earth -- but in a situation in which there is nothing but it, these reactions can take decades and there would still be a significant chance that it would survive to the next coupling reaction. Also of note is that evidently a great deal of the reactions that us lifeforms do are very close to spontaneous -- that is there is very rarely a large thermodynamic barrier to any one reaction.

Hey, I have nothing to hide. If you had asked me my name to find out my credentials (I think I even linked to my homepage in my profile) I would have given it to you.
I'm actually very glad to be talking to a fellow (formal) scientist. We at least have same foundation of common background on which to talk.


Although the imagination does play a large part in science (i.e. the generation of an hypotheses), they must be backed up with solid fact. In that regard, it seems that the design of the cell is a de facto standard for design.


This is true. However, even with the thought experiment you postulate below, the probabilities of even a single cell forming are not even remotely possible. Here's the reason why:

1) Need a localized high concentration of nucleotides/amino acid
2) Need an autocatalyzing reaction (ok, your crystal is a hypotheses of that)
3) Need to have that autocatalyzing reaction work approximately 200 times to make a minimal competent complement of cellular machinery (and 200 is a very generous number, as you would agree)
4) Need a lipid bilayer
5) Need somethin in the way of a reverse-reverse transcriptase to turn the protein into RNA.

Even if you subscribe to the "RNA world" hypotheses, all of the same problems apply.


Actually, on of the P.I.s I worked with had some interesting research in which large "superfamilies" of proteins were classified, but we never observed them converging across the board. I've heard the general statements, but there is always a large gap between analogous proteins in different families. Of course, this could be explained by an extensive proteome history that we're not aware of (but then again, that's making the problem much more complex).

If I was designing proteins, I wouldn't reinvent the wheel for each one, which is probably why the eukaryotic ribosome looks (on the macroscopic scale) quite similar to the prokaryotic version. I don't think God would do it much different either.


If you have to have a God at all (and one as intellegent as I think he is), why would he make just a single celled organism and stop there? It doesn't make any sense.


I'm guessing that you mean our proteins haven't all reached turnover perfection. In many cases, the cell would want unoptimized enzymes, so as to provide unfinished intermediates for other processes. Also, remember what I said about humans having been accumulating genetic defects for a long time. As a matter of fact, the bible talks about early humans with very long lifespans.


I have heard of this before, but I believe that they were using the surface of clay particles, not an inorganic crystal. Also, it (as you would admit) does rely on a lot of handwaving (as well as some of the problems I've posted above). A variant of this theory was postulated in the book I mentioned earlier, "Biochemical Predistination", that some biological molecules were more "fit" than others. This has never been observed, however.
But ok. Let's say that you have made an autocatalyzing DNA/RNA molecule. We are no closer to life than we would be on mars by jumping toward it. We still need an almost endless supply of nucleotides present (for which a mechanism has not been explained), and we need a transcription machine to get to proteins. Too many holes, and they present themselves much too quickly.


See some of my points above. Clay you have a lot of, but a mechanism to generate nucleotides has not. (even miller's experiment hardly made "a lot" of much simpler amino acids)


Wait a second. You're telling me there's a crystal that specifically adds a phosphate to the first carbon of fructose?
It's starting to sound like you're advocating something like the "andromeda strain"


You have a problem though, when you're talking about biomolecules, you hardly have even days for them to live in solution (especially when they're not in laboratory conditions), let alone the decades or thousands/millions of years for them to find any kind of propogating reaction mechanism.

And finally, there are many reactions necessary for life that have large thermodynamic barriers. Enzymes are what allow organisms to lower that activation energy, or to break the problem up into smaller chunks.

Also, be specific about where I'm wrong. Statements like "I can as well as anyone here who has had an interest in thermodynamics tell you you are completely and totally wrong." are completely misleading. Now that I know you are a fellow scientist, I'm going to expect more.

I'm making a serious, grown-up contribution to paleoanthropological research and I make a living doing it.

As far as I can tell, your only contribution to society is innovation in the field of being a patronising dickhead. Extremely galling.

Incidentally, the dinosaur bone remains a fossil (not, as you tried to have us believe, 'an unfossilised t-rex bone') and you still haven't offered a serious explanation for the sealing of the Chauvet caves that accords with a young earth.

Incidentally, I've just found a lot of material on that bone and I'm going to be reading it.

Please don't patronise me anymore. I will have to tell you to fuck off.

Photocopying a single piece of paper a thousand times "makes" more information, but does not result in any new information. Macro evolution requires reams of new material, not recycled old genes.
Also for macroevolution to be true, it didn't have to happen only once, it had to happen several billion times. (for each and every new gene that ever existed)


Sorry, you haven't gotten off that easily.


An patronising (and insistent!) dickhead with a lot of tough questions, and even tougher answers.


And you seem to be intentionally ignoring what I said, and about the reason we were even talking about the bone in the first place.


How mature of you. You seem to be getting a little shrill these days.


You know, I've been asked a lot of questions in this thread, and really haven't posted my own set. Here's a few for you naturalists out there to cut your teeth on:

1 ) Explain how human and dinosaur tracks are in the same layer of fossilized mud. The link to the find(s) in question is present earlier in the thread.

2 ) Explain how something a complex as a cell can come from chance.

3 ) Explain why we haven't found intellegent life yet (or visa versa), if evolution is so supposedly easy.

4 ) Explain why we've never observed new genetic information being made.

5 ) Explain why panspermia is a scientific theory.

6 ) Explain why it is that degenerative genetic mutations are increasing, and why we're not getting more "fit" as a race.

7 ) Explain why the church gets such a bad rap for the crusades, and how stalin's naturalistic mess was ignored.

8 ) Explain why the term "billions" of years has become the alchemists stone of the 20th century?

9 ) Explain why you can recognize a watch as being designed, but not phosphofructokinase?

10) Explain why Hassan i Sabbah is getting more and more progressively loud.

Oh, and somebody please ask me why the rods and cones in your eyes are installed backward! (Because Dawkins thought that implied an incomptent creator)

No. Not at all.

The whole point of 'this topic' was to call you out for claiming that an unfossilised dinosaur bone had been discovered as proof for your young earth nonsense when in fact the bone was a fossil. It wanted to assert that you were repeating 'a lie' you had been fed.

You're very proud that this first paragraph 'proves your point', but for the life of me I can't see what point it proves other than that the bone was a fossil (because it is a fossil, so that's a fact we can be certain of) and that the people who were extracting unperimineralised proteins from it believed it be very ancient indeed.

So. The 'problem' of dating fossils.

In the fossil record we see (bullet point for the hard of thinking):

• sequential transistions from one class of organism to another
• simpler life forms early in the geological column, larger and more anatomically complex forms appearing later
• like, vertabrates first, simple vertebrates next, then jawed fishes, then amphibiansm then reptiles, then birds, then mammals. Say.
• extinct species and extinct flora appearing and disappearing together

And yet, in a single flood, over forty days, dozens of sedimentary layers were allowed to accumulate sorting animals by complexity. OK. Miracle water? You bet.

And extinct flora is found in the same sedimentary layers as animal fossils. In the times of Noah's flood, apparently, vegetation didn't float. No, it went the same sorting-by-age-and-complexity route as the herbivores that ate it while Noah floated on top waving goodbye to the drowning velociraptors and unicorns.

And as soon as you find hominid artifacts or fossils in the same sedimentary layers as dinosaurs, do let me know.

And there is still no evidence for flood water in Lascaux, Chauvet, Alta Mira, or Storm Pass. Beautiful, ancient paintings.

And etc and etc.

If you would like to discuss how the Flood sorted creatures as neatly as it did I would be absolutely delighted. I can't wait to hear your explanation of how the oak trees made a run for the high ground along with the willows and the sabre-toothed tigers.

I'll keep my radiometric dating and estimates of geological processes, thanks. Even if the dating's imperfect it's impossible for it to be out as many orders of magnitude as it would have to be for the planet to be as young as you claim it is.

You believe that one single flood arranged the fossil record with complex fossils overlying simple fossils, distributed ordered layers of incongruous sedimentary material and simulated successive ice ages.

You asking me to believe that, although the speed of light is constant and the universe is enormous and ancient, this planet is the youngest thing in it (unless God sped up the speed of light for a few thousand years for reasons best known to himself). Cosmology tells us the universe is ancient. Geology tells us that continents move across the crust, they're still doing it, they've been doing it for billions of years. Genetics accords, telling us how species are related. Mitochondrial DNA decay rates (something I do actually know something about), which are predictable, can even be used to give us an indication of ancient human migrations and the age of our species.

And you are accusing me of wanting the facts to fit my thesis?

How dare you?

Because you are trying to wind me up. It's an excellent tactic; one I pioneered myself. You are very good at it. Congratulations.

I am still right.

Many of these questions (particularly the footprints) are valid and I touched on them earlier.

We need answers.

However assuming for arguments sake that the dinosaur and human footprints are contemporaneous, the 'answer' that it pushes dinosaurs forward millions of years (something we know cannot be true) rather than pushes human existence back (something that possibly could be true) is rank stupidity, an insult to any intelligence that has somehow miraculously survived complete atrophy in these 'enlightened' times and represents a brawling obscenity when adduced in the cause of a higher being or creator whose leitmotif must surely be one of sanity and reason.


I should imagine he feels he is confronted with an unfeasibly dense form of matter and hopes forlornly that increased pitch will somehow penetrate through the carapace.

Enough of this nonsense. Let's dispose of the creationists and move the debate on. Obviously we cannot discuss this rationally while their position is not demolished.

Their position rests on one thing and one thing only: a literal belief that the Bible says the world is X thousand years old (usually perceived as 10,000 though there are dissenters who used to opt for 4000).

Everything follows from this. They do not look at facts, assess them and reach conclusions. They reach a conclusion and then set about twisting and distorting facts to fit that. Often they are quite ingenious at this but it is not the scientific method.

That's also why discussing rationally never works in these threads.

Luckily, all that is needed is to find just one instance of the Bible's inaccuracy or contradictory nature to dispose of their literalist theory. And fortunately there is not just one of these contradictions but hundreds. Their name is legion and they number as the stars in the sky.

Once this plank is removed then any 'argument' based on Biblical evidence is fallacious.

I know all sane people know this but one gets the impression it needs repeating. A lot.

I can answer some of your questions.


The short answer is 'they aren't.' And the long answer is 'they are not'. Ba-dum-bum. The Paluxy River 'man tracks' appear to be eroded dinosaur footprints. They bear the prints of dinosaur metatarsals and whatnot, apparently. Some of them are carved. It seems that even creationists have given up on these tracks.

Here is a link.


Read some Dawkins. I can't believe someone as clued up on this young earth nonsense as you hasn't read up the other side.


The universe is very big, benzene. It's really, really big. Really big. And I don't remember anyone saying it was 'easy'. Merely that it's possible and it's clearly happened here.


Er, we do. We have. We observe it all the time. Is this a trick question?


This is an interesting question but it's predicated on an outdated understanding of evolutionary theory. 'Survival of the fittest' isn't a defining component of current evolutionary thinking at all. It's an interesting question because it's been posited that as a species we've 'beaten our genes' through our success at adapting to environments, and there might be some truth to that.

We're a young species, less than a million years old. Nonetheless, different populations are certainly magnificently adapted to their particular environments, which is why northern Europeans are fair (vitamin D synthesis baby), eastern Africans have a natural resistance to malaria, many desert people have a fold of skin in their upper eyelids, indigenous Australians don't ever get melanomas, stuff like that.


OK. And who, exactly, is 'ignoring' what Stalin did? And why are you making this curious comparison? And why is what Stalin did 'naturalistic'? Man, change your terms. Stalin's rule was bad and awful. The Crusades were a mistake. People do fucked up things in the name of good ideals. Welcome to the human race, we ain't all that nice.


When did you stop beating your wife. Billions of years is an accurate number according to all the available evidence. That's why. Why is 10,000 years the alchemist's stone of young earthers?


I don't know what phosphofruckinase is. Why do I have nipples and an appendix?

You say the probabilities are too small (but non zero), I say the universe is big (and old) enought to compensate. The Theory of Evolution does not provide an explanation for the appearance of life.


Again, the universe is big and we have no idea how many instances of intelligent life there are in it (I'd guess more than none ). On a more grim note, it appears that the level of technology required to be visible to other civilisations light years distant is only slightly less than that needed to wipe out your own.

1) We have detected the (presumably IR) spectral signatures of both nucleotides and amino acids in distant nebulae. They arise spontaneously in space. High concentrations aren't necessary unless you want this to be done on a laboratory time scale -- and I am trying very hard to argue that we have bucket loads of time so that really isn't an issue.
2) Autocatalyzing reactions are only necessary after the first basic components have been created -- in my example, the activated nucleotides. But autocatalyzing reactions are necessarily the ones that would have a reduced kinetic barrier in a system with no other catalysis, that is the products of the reactions that are autocatalyzed would build up much more rapidly than those that aren't autocatalyzed.
3) I have again never argued that all the components for life needed to be in the first reaction vessels, if you will. I think we can both agree that there are selection pressures on reactions which are catalyzed well, that don't build up side products that damage the catalyst or kill the substrates, and even so far as catalytic reactions whose products protect the reaction conditions.
4) Lipid bilayers are quite obviously one of the most recently evolved traits of cellular life -- think of the major thing that really separates physiologically the three forms of cellular life (prokaryotes, archea, and eukaryotes). It is their membranes, how many, how diverse, and what linkages are formed between the phosphorylated glycerol and the alkyl chain. But what is clear is that there was a lot of glycerol and phosphate in the initial cesspool of life. As far as these lipid bilayers being generated by catalyst -- well they are now, and there is no functional reason to believe that there creation couldn't be catalyzed by nucleotide based catalytic mechanisms (although, given the timing of the creation of the membranes in the branches of life the machinery for peptide synthesis may well have existed. Also, as we both know, lipids and their related precursor molecules will form bilayers spontaneously. All it takes is a pressure to develop a membrane around the ever more complicating "machinery" -- and we know why we need membranes, it creates the possibility of generating energy from potential gradients across the membrane as well as providing a means to separate the growing list of reactions preformed by our biomolecules from undesirable side products (the second probably came as a reason before the first). Also, if there was as much glycerol as i think there was in the cesspool, these bilayers wouldn't be as selective as ours are today -- and there is no reason to think that they would need to be.
5) It is an insurmountable problem to think of this as having arisen from peptides and somehow -- mysteriously -- got back translated to RNA or DNA. However, I will not say that it is impossible -- a system that accidently creates the biomolecules that are keeping it around has a better chance of surviving than those that don't -- hence back translation by being able to produce more catalysts. I do actually subscribe to the simpler RNA world hypothesis since we have a great deal of evidence that these things can be catalytic -- it also reduces the complexity of the initial steps, involving less inorganic compounds and more stuff we know works.


And if I were nature, I wouldn't mess with things that work. However, as a person who does de novo protein design, I must say, at this point we are reinventing the wheel with each iteration. There are rules we garnered from nature/geometry, but really each design isn't related to the previous designs as much as we find in nature. Perhaps we are going about this stupidly, but the ability to make leaps from one protein design to another is a trait of human intelligence...


Well, there is growing evidence that that is all God needed to have done -- after you have a single celled organism containing all of the mechanisms for the diversification of life, natural history and random chance tells the rest of the story. If I were God, I would stop there, because I am a scientist and not an engineer. If I was an engineer, I wouldn't want things to change from my initial set up. So is your God a scientist or an engineer?



The bible wasn't written when these people were "alive." From everything we can tell, people living before the spread of agriculture probably did live longer because their particular nutrient requirements were better suited to hunting and foraging. We have all the genetic evidence in the world to suggest that unless something is seriously off the decrease in telomere length of any and all humans provides a reasonable maximum life span. I believe that this is significantly shorter than many of the people's ages in the old testament.




Actually you don't need an endless supply, you need a degredation reaction that is much slower than the polymerization reaction. You do need enough to get to the point that the system can make them itself -- acetate, ammonia, CO2, glycerol, water and phosphate. There exist several syntheses to making nucleotides, pick one, it can occur in nature. Again, if we take the view that proteins are where life started, we get nowhere fast (and again, I am not saying however that this couldn't be the case).


Actually that isn't true. In truly sterile conditions (which let me tell you, young earth was), biomolecules (excepting largely complex proteins which don't unfold reversibly) are perfectly stable at almost all temperatures an aqueous solution can have. Most instability is due to irreversible unfolding of protein, and/or nucleases or proteases which now (due to the profundity of life) coat the planet.


No. There exist kinetic barriers to reactions in nature. A thermodynamic barrier is one in which the product is so high in energy compared to the starting materials that equilibrium lies far to the starting materials. Meaning the reaction would be nearly impossible unless the product was being consumed. Kinetic barriers are overcome by time. Thermodynamic barriers are overcome by chemistry.


I have to get back to you on this one...