Posted by GaDS on August 27, 1998 at 20:11:50:
In Reply to: Presuppositions are clouding your scenery posted by rpcman on August 27, 1998 at 12:56:13:
Since you seem to like picking out bits and pieces to respond to I guess I'll start doing the same. I'm still waiting to hear why scientists haven't been able to duplicate in labs what is supposedly occuring in nature.
: But there is no intelligent design...
Isn't there? You obviously haven't looked closely enough. You seem to be blissfully unaware of just what intricate and marvelously complex mechanisms living organisms really are. Using sequences of three-base codons involving only 4 bases living cells are able to replicate, differentiate, organize, and develop into creatures that are more than just the sum of their individual tissues and organs. Can you think of a way to predictively sequence amino acids so that they assume specific shapes and configurations that enable them to perform the thousands of functions necessary for even the simplest cells to live? The last I heard, the weak forces and interatomic bonding geometries are so complicated that even supercomputers can't predict what form a specific string of amino acids will take, and yet their geometries are critical for enzymes and proteins to function correctly. System functions in multicellular organisms like blood clotting, oxygen binding, antibody production, etc. are even more complicated and leave little room for error (hemophelia and Sickle-cell anemia are examples of life-threatening deviations). All this by chance? I believe that about as much as I believe that every book we read was the result of an explosions in a printing plant somewhere. I challenge you or anyone else to devise a system from scratch that fits will inside the nucleus of a cell that would do as well. And remember - evolution does not allow "learning from mistakes". Fatal genetic mutations act upon the individual, and not the group. If you try a variation on a theme while developing your system and it fails, you can't allow yourself the luxury of automatically avoiding it on your next attempt.
: : One strange misconception people have is that God is not practical. Why shouldn't God be practical? Why should He have had to come up with completely new designs for each creature or plant He chose to make?
: An even stranger phenomenum is that people will only look at the facts with their "God eye glasses" on. Your presupposition won't allow you to objectively form a rational theory or believe in an existing theory which does fit the facts.
: : ...similarity of form does not mandate progression of species...
: Who said anything about "progression"? Read Full House For someone who critiques Darwinian evolution, you certainly make claims for it that it doesn't make itself. Yesterday you claimed that we should be able to witness (in real time or at least human time) dogs turning into cats, etc. Darwinism doesn't claim this. Why pretend that it does?
Really? Natural selection states in the competition for limited resources those organisms better suited to utilizing resources will survive at the expense of those less fit, resulting in the favoring of certain inheritable traits. Darwin used this mechanism to explain speciation. Evolutionists took it a step further and used it to propound the theory that cells turned into colonies, colonies into multicellular organisms, multicellular organisms into fish, fish into amphibians, amphibians into reptiles, and reptiles into birds and mammals. My contention was that if nature could favor random variations in populations to the point of creating entirely new species over the course of millions of years, Man could certainly do it artificially by taking the randomizing factors slowing the process (such as mating opportunities and premature fatalities not related to the trait in question) out of the picture, and duplicate speciation in a far shorter amount of time. Despite all man's eugenic efforts only varieties and non-viable offspring have resulted, not species.
: : Evolution (or creationism) the only theory? Only when it (and only it) can explain everything, I think.
: So you have no theory? Or are you a creationist who doesn't like to say so?
I have theories, not a theory. Is the nature of the Universe wave or particle? How can something be both, yet neither? The Universe itself is a study in ambiguity. I see no difference in creationism/evolutionism. Going beyond the question of living organisms on this puny planet, where did the Universe come from? Was it a result of creation or evolution? If it evolved from something, where did that something come from to begin with? Physicists theorize that the Universe existed as a hyperdense speck of matter that blew apart and that time did not always exist. If time did not exist, how could the proto-Universe have ever changed from its inert state since any change must involve time? If nothing was changing, what could have caused time to come into existence? Non-creationists must adhere to the axiom that something cannot come from nothing, leading them into either an infinite and unrevealing loop, or an unanswered question about the beginning of the Universe. In the case of the former the explanation is worthless, and in the later the theory fails as it is unable to account for a facet of the system it purports to explain.
GaDS
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