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Thanks, this really was what i was looking for, I like to know opinions of other people other then the ones in my area.
Posts: 160 | Registered: Nov 2006
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Without going too much into my beliefs, I'll say that if I were a believer I'm not sure I'd like the idea of a god who tested his followers by planting evidence that directly contradicted his word.
That's not how faith, or trust, is supposed to work, IMO.
Edit: Much the same way I didn't like it when a buddy of mine 'tested' his girlfriend by asking a third party to try to get her to be unfaithful to him. It's just dishonest.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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If we didnt know what wrong was how would we know right? There needs to be opposition in all things.
Posts: 160 | Registered: Nov 2006
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I just wanted to applaud, CT, your entirely unintentional but nonetheless masterful set-up of Feer. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I think the real question hinges on whether you take the Bible/Genisis literally or symbolically. If you take it literally then there really is no hope for understanding or reconciliation with the scientific world. Further, the Bible is so self-contradictory that I don't see how it can be taken literally. Next, in the Bible I have, the Creation story is told twice, just a page apart. The two version don't match, so which is the correct version? Finally, a day is only a day relative to where you are when you measure a day and by what means you measure a day. The Sun, which is our world standard for a day, was not created on the first day, so how was a day measured, and who says God was standing on earth when he created earth? Maybe he was standing on Mars when he created earth, in which case, the day would not be 24 hours. More likely God was standing in his own infinite time and space, in which case, a day has no meaning in human terms. To God, his day could be a billion years.
Perhaps to God a day is infinite, or perhaps it is as long as he chose to take for that stage of development of the universe, and keep in mind that God wasn't only creating Earth, he was indeed creating the universe. So, by what logic would God, creator of a great and complex universe, choose to measure a day as 24 hours?
As far as I'm concerned Science merely documents God's methods. The problem is that most religious people measure 'Gods' works by human standards and by human time when the should be measuring it by the standards of a God and a wide near infinite universe. Why would a God of infinite knowledge, infinite time, and infinite wisdom allow himself to be trapped in a 24 hour mindset? Makes no sense.
I see no conflict between Science and Genisis, if fact, I think science very accurately documents Genisis.
That brings up another good point about fossils. If indeed a day to god can be any amount of time, then when he made the beast of the earth, it could have been thousands of years before he made man, so there are already alot of fossils becuase animals came years before man.
Posts: 160 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Gene splicing is one.
Fair enough. Assuming you mean insertion/deletion of actual DNA fragments into a given genome, rather than mRNA splicing (which is actually the more common usage for the term "splicing"), that is. The former *does* result in generation of new information, and is actually considered a mutation, albeit one that isn't strictly random... although one could actually argue that mutation is never truly random, since a given method of mutation will generally result in particular base mispairings (for example, GC pair to a TA pair, versus GC pair to an AT pair).
BTW mph, I want to be up-front about the fact that I really enjoy discussing this subject with you and most of the other nominal IDers on Hatrack. It's useful to me as a biologist to have my own ideas challenged, and there has been more than once instance when you guys raised an objection that I couldn't immediately answer. Of course, a bit of research into the literature has always yielded a good response (in my eyes, at least ) eventually, but I like being kept on my toes. So, thanks!
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Feer: ... If indeed a day to god can be any amount of time, then when he made the beast of the earth, it could have been thousands of years before he made man, so there are already alot of fossils becuase animals came years before man.
That seems unnecessarily complicated. How do you explain the fossil record leading up to Homo sapiens? Did God wait for the lineage up to Homo erectus to evolve, and then suddenly jump in to create man, which coincidentally both happened to be in his image and the next step in the lineage?
Also, when you say "thousands" you actually mean millions. The human-chimpanzee split is roughly 5 million years ago and we have fossil evidence of life at least a billion years back. This is not a trivial difference.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: [qb] Gene splicing is one.
Fair enough. Assuming you mean insertion/deletion of actual DNA fragments into a given genome, rather than mRNA splicing (which is actually the more common usage for the term "splicing"), that is.
Um, you just went waaaay over my head.
quote: The former *does* result in generation of new information, and is actually considered a mutation, albeit one that isn't strictly random...
Then we're using different definitions of mutation. I have little doubt that yours is more accurate.
quote: BTW mph, I want to be up-front about the fact that I really enjoy discussing this subject with you and most of the other nominal IDers on Hatrack. It's useful to me as a biologist to have my own ideas challenged, and there has been more than once instance when you guys raised an objection that I couldn't immediately answer. Of course, a bit of research into the literature has always yielded a good response (in my eyes, at least ) eventually, but I like being kept on my toes. So, thanks!
Thanks. I'm not trying to push any agenda here.
I do start from the assumption that the scriptures are literally and factually correct, and work from there, but that doesn't mean that I can't consider the evidence for seemingly contradictory theories. But it does mean that those theories have to be somewhat persuasive, in my eyes.
quote:Also, when you say "thousands" you actually mean millions. The human-chimpanzee split is roughly 5 million years ago and we have fossil evidence of life at least a billion years back. This is not a trivial difference.
When he has the assumption that "a day to god can be any amount of time" (emphasis mine), the difference between thousands and billions is trivial.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Also, when you say "thousands" you actually mean millions. The human-chimpanzee split is roughly 5 million years ago and we have fossil evidence of life at least a billion years back. This is not a trivial difference.
When he has the assumption that "a day to god can be any amount of time" (emphasis mine), the difference between thousands and billions is trivial.
And how acurate is our dating anyhow?
Posts: 160 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:Also, when you say "thousands" you actually mean millions. The human-chimpanzee split is roughly 5 million years ago and we have fossil evidence of life at least a billion years back. This is not a trivial difference.
When he has the assumption that "a day to god can be any amount of time" (emphasis mine), the difference between thousands and billions is trivial.
And how acurate is our dating anyhow?
Quite accurate. Thesetwo talk.origins pages broadly summarize how radiometric dating is done, and why the results are trustworthy, again with appropriate citations to the primary literature should you wish to investigate their conclusions in more detail. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Gene splicing is one.
Fair enough. Assuming you mean insertion/deletion of actual DNA fragments into a given genome, rather than mRNA splicing (which is actually the more common usage for the term "splicing"), that is.
Um, you just went waaaay over my head.
Heh, sorry. mRNA splicing is one way to get a whole bunch of different proteins from a single gene sequence. The traditional understanding of molecular biology held that a gene encodes an mRNA transcript, which is in turn translated into a working protein by ribosomes. However, it turns out that the reality (at least in higher eukaryotes than, say, yeast) is far more complex. Most eukaryotic genes, including our own, consist of alternating sequences of coding DNA ("exons") and non-coding DNA ("introns"). After transcription, the initial RNA is cut up and the exons spliced back together to form the mRNA message. The respliced mRNA is then exported from the nucleus and translated to protein.
Of course, even this turns out to be a simplification of the situation. It turns out that the divide between exon and intron is not nearly as cut-and-dry as once thought. Some putative introns are actually incorporated into the mRNA message in certain situations, and some exons are treated as introns. By mixing and matching these chunks of RNA, the cell can produce an incredible variety of mRNA splice variants from a single gene. The current record-holder for "most splice variants from one gene" is the fruit fly gene Dscam, which has 38,000 known splice variants.
Sadly for those of us who have to memorize this stuff, that too is still an oversimplification. But I'll only go into that if you reeeeeeeeeally want me to.
quote:
quote:The former *does* result in generation of new information, and is actually considered a mutation, albeit one that isn't strictly random...
Then we're using different definitions of mutation. I have little doubt that yours is more accurate.
Well, for a given value of "accurate." Like "planet," "mutation" is ultimately just terminology with a particular definition that scientists have decided is useful. In the case of "mutation," I take it to mean "a change in the DNA sequence," admittedly a very broad definition. I think what you think of when you hear the word is strictly considered a "point mutation"- that is, a change in a single base-pair due to exposure to a mutagen or an error in DNA replication.
quote:Thanks. I'm not trying to push any agenda here.
I do start from the assumption that the scriptures are literally and factually correct, and work from there, but that doesn't mean that I can't consider the evidence for seemingly contradictory theories. But it does mean that those theories have to be somewhat persuasive, in my eyes. [/qb]
posted
Tarrsk- what did you think of that Science paper that showed that the same amino acid sequence could lead to different protein configurations? Silent mutations may not be so silent afterall. Very, very upsetting for a biochemist.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Originally published in Science Express on 21 December 2006 Science 26 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5811, pp. 525 - 528 DOI: 10.1126/science.1135308
quote:Originally posted by scholar: Originally published in Science Express on 21 December 2006 Science 26 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5811, pp. 525 - 528 DOI: 10.1126/science.1135308
Thanks! I'll take a look at work tomorrow, when I have access to a subscription to Science. Speaking of which- hey hey, the author of that paper works right down the street from me!
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Also, many gay men marry and have kids. It was blasphemous to come out of the closet in Darwin's day (like it is in certain contexts today). There's no reason to assume that there were fewer gay men at the time, so hiding one's homosexuality or trying to deliberately suppress it in oneself would have been the recourse of a great many gay men and women.
I had no idea that there were rumours about Darwin being gay. It would be ironic if it were started by fundamentalist Christians; the vilification would only work if the audience was already a part of their group.
Ultimately though, I don't care at all whether Darwin liked sleeping with men.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Well, it seems that the only person who can say whether or not someone is gay is the person themselves. If a person says they're not gay, and they marry someone of the opposite sex and have a bunch of kids, then I don't see any meaningful test that could look at that person and say, "No, they really were gay."
Does gay mean you ever feel any attraction at all to people of the same sex? If so then I think everyone is gay.
Understand that I don't think it matters, either way. People are a huge complexity, and they fall anywhere on millions of different continua. Darwin was really smart, and a great scientist. He transformed the way we think about life, and all of genetics and biology and medicine and every other field of life sciences is profoundly informed by what he realized, that all life on Earth are blood-kin.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I see it this way...when explaining something important to a child, you often have to make sure you are using language that child understands. That doesn't mean you lie, but it does mean you oversimplify complex actions and events.
Compared to God, we are children. As we evolve, because I don't think we are a complete work of his yet, his message will probably continue to change. Not so much the basic message, but the details.
Evolution holds the details we can handle right now in our species evolution.
I agree with mph......despite anything KoM says, God or Science is a false dichotomy. I refuse to chose one over the other when the best explanation to me is that evolution is the tool God is using to shape our world.
Keep in mind that I really don't think THAT is what should be taught in science class, though. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Does gay mean you ever feel any attraction at all to people of the same sex?
No, those are homoerotic tendencies which everyone shares. There are degrees of homosexuality though (as you say).
The thing is, it's not unheard of to have gay men coming out of the closet after marrying, or after serious relationships with members of the opposite sex after conscious suppression of homosexual desires.
quote:Originally posted by Jon Boy: Sounds like we're in the same boat. I used to be one of the "microevolution but not macroevolution" types. It was actually a course in historical linguistics that made me change my mind (or opened my mind to the possibility, anyway).
Jon Boy, that's really interesting. What was it about the historical linguistics class that made you reconsider your beliefs on the subject?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Euripides: I had no idea that there were rumours about Darwin being gay. It would be ironic if it were started by fundamentalist Christians; the vilification would only work if the audience was already a part of their group.
Umm... just for the sake of clarification, there aren't any such rumors, as far as I know. I was joking around in my first post, back before the sarcastic asshat cap (sarcastic ass-hat?) came off.
That being said, Darwin liking the dudes would not surprise me terribly. Have you seen the way that guy dressed?! Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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"Darwin was really smart, and a great scientist."
Actually his whole theory was taken from his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, as well as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. He merely looked for evidence to prove the theory, if I understand correctly.
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Charles Darwin hardly existed in a vacuum; no scientist does; in almost every case of a major discovery people have made parts or closely related discoveries around the same time and often shortly before. This happens in math, too, which is perhaps slightly more odd.
However, he definitely contributed original thought. Charles Darwin provided the first coherent theory as to the mechanism of evolution; that species change over time was old hat, a good explanation of why they change was lacking. He was able to reach this greater understanding by his empirical study, and he did not merely look for evidence to prove the theory. Notice in the Erasmus quotation on wikipedia that his understanding of the reason for improvement is entirely flawed.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Jon Boy, that's really interesting. What was it about the historical linguistics class that made you reconsider your beliefs on the subject?
I think it was that beforehand, I lacked both perspective and an understanding of the processes behind many language changes. Like people who can't understand how single-celled organisms could evolve into multicellular organisms, or how asexual organisms could evolve into sexual organisms, I couldn't see how a language without something like noun declensions could evolve into a language with them. I had no problem seeing how they could change once they existed, but I couldn't figure out how they could ever come to be.
But in my historical linguistics class, I discovered that declensions come from eroded postpositions (just like prepositions, but they come after the noun instead of before). If you have a little function word that always comes after a noun in certain situations, pretty soon it becomes attached to the noun. In turn, postpositions come from verbs that were similarly worn down from constant use as function words.
And not only are there typical methods of evolving various bits of grammar, but there are languages at all different points on the spectrum. Chinese, for example, has no declensions (or virtually none, I believe), but in a couple thousand more years, it might have gained them again. Meanwhile, European languages have been losing them for the past few thousand years, and they might eventually get to the point Chinese is at now.
In other words, languages are generally not moving from complexity to simplicity, but rather shedding complexity in some areas and gaining it in others. For the most part, anyway—languages with few speakers do tend to accumulate more grammatical bric-a-brac than others, and languages with many speakers tend to shed some of that dead weight, but that's sort of beside the point. The point is that I realized that something that appears to be incredibly complex really can evolve one step at a time.
And by the way, you might be interested in reading The Power of Babel by John McWhorter. He covers these topics and a lot more. Very fascinating stuff.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:Originally posted by scholar: Originally published in Science Express on 21 December 2006 Science 26 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5811, pp. 525 - 528 DOI: 10.1126/science.1135308
Thanks! I'll take a look at work tomorrow, when I have access to a subscription to Science. Speaking of which- hey hey, the author of that paper works right down the street from me!
This has caused a lot of discussion amongst the grad students in my dept, since we routinely clone and purify based only on the amino acid sequence. However, we aren't willing to accept the conformational differences are proven. We will accept the differences in function and that mRNA concentrations, protein concentrations and splicing are not the culprits, but we need a lot more proof to believe the fold is different. I haven't seen people so eager to rip apart a paper in a long time. Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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There's been some interesting work showing how homosexuality could improve the survival chances of your other genes, by providing additional parents to help raise closely related offspring.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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