afdave
Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006
|
OK. It's time for a review. I started this thread with 3 items which to me argue powerfully against common descent of apes and humans. You can go back to the start of the thread and read them fully if you like, but here they are ...
1-Complete Absence of Hominid Civilizations Today
2-Unconvincing Fossil Record
3-Enormous Non-physical Differences Between Apes and Humans
I also mentioned 2 possible implications of common descent which to me are kind of interesting to think about, but have nothing to do with proving or disproving common descent, so I will not bring them up again.
I then brought up the Vitamin C issue which was raised to me by Renier in another thread. Renier said that he used to be a YEC but the "broken Vitamin C" commonality between apes and humans was the major issue that made him abandon the YEC position.
I read the link that Renier referred me to, "Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics" by Dr. Edward E. Max, MD, PhD at Talk Origins. I think you all know Dr. Max's argument. He says that in the same way that plagiarism was proven in the copyright case because an error was duplicated, so also common descent is proven with apes and humans because their genomes contain the same error, namely the broken GULO gene.
I said that Dr. Max is making an unwarranted assumption in saying this for two possible reasons. And at that time, I did not have enough information to know which was the most probable reason for his unwarranted assumption. The two possible reasons were (I now put them in the order that I believe most likely) ...
Scenario 1-The GULO gene could have broken independently in apes and in humans. The Inai article shows that it did indeed break independently in guinea pigs, so why should it not break independently in apes and humans? OR ..
Scenario 2-The "broken" GULO gene was never a functional GULO gene in either apes or humans. It always has had some unknown function and still does to this day. Argystokes called this possibility "pseudo-GLO" and rightly asserted that we should be able to find this gene's homologue throughout the animal kingdom--even in animals that do have a functional GULO gene.
We went through some logic exercises comparing the DNA code to relatively unknown languages, and we went down a small rabbit trail with the AIG article and the whole "humans are more closely related to guinea pigs since they both have broken GULO and 36% similar substitutions" idea that AIG seems to be promoting. To tell you the truth, I honestly don't even know what AIG is asserting exactly, but to me it has very little bearing (if any) on the main issue that we are discussing.
We ended up yesterday determining that the "broken" GULO gene is not 100% identical between apes and humans and you say that this is not predicted by evolution anyway. OK fine. I think we agree that there is roughly 95% similarity as is also the case for most other genes compared between apes and humans.
So now we are back to Scenario 1 (I'm not sure anyone has ruled out Scenario 2, mind you ... if anyone has info to rule this out, please say so) and your contention is that 95% similarity of the broken GULO gene is powerful evidence of common descent, right?
Well I disagree and here is why.
1-We have already seen that the GULO gene "broke" independently in guinea pigs. Why should it not "break" independently in humans and apes? I think Common Descent or Common Design can explain this equally well. It is not deterministic between the two competing views.
2-You give me analogies of houses designed without steps but this is not analogous to the situation we have. I will explain why, but let me first review the Creationist position.
Again, my Creationist Theory regarding apes and humans is that there was one pair of human "kind" ancestors and one pair of ape "kind" ancestors. Now I do not have a formal definition of "kind" yet and I admit there may have been a "monkey kind" pair as well, but this is not important for the present discussion. The general idea of Creationist Theory is that there were a relatively limited number of "kinds" created by God, and that God "programmed" enough genetic information into each separate genome so that each "kind" would be able to adapt to the various environments in which they found themselves as they spread out all over the earth. Today, of course, we find that monkeys and apes have diversified into many different species and that humans also have diversified greatly.
If Scenario 1 above is confirmed, then it is perfectly logical to assume that the Creator designed apes and humans separately, then mutations later caused the GULO gene to break independently in both. What is so unbelievable about this? After all, it is a creationist prediction that organisms will accumulate more and more harmful mutations with each generation. This has been heartily confirmed with fruit flies with "evolution on fast forward." Why should it be any different with apes and humans? The "missing steps on the houses" analogy does not apply because no creationist is proposing that apes or humans were originally designed with a broken GULO gene. It is also perfectly consistent with Creationist Theory that apes and humans have 95% similarity in their genomes. After all, why shouldn't they? They do look about 95% similar in their morphology. But this supports Common Design just as well as it supports Common Descent. Sure, apes and humans could have had a common ancestor. And if they did, we would expect to see 95% similarity, an apparently fused gene, etc. But we would then have what I consider to be 3 enormous challenges outlined above.
Now I do realize that proposing a Creator is an enormous challenge to the intellect as well. And I do appreciate your objections to this idea that you have voiced. I admit that I have absolutely no idea how the Creator designed these creatures. Does he have a neat "Animal Design Software" package that he has on His computer that he can "drag and drop" different animal parts, then hit "Process" and the computer spits out the genome? I have no idea and I know it challenges the mind to try to imagine how any Supernatural Being could achieve the designs we see in Nature. But to me it is an even larger mental challenge to envision how it all comes about by random mutation and natural selection. The probabilities against evolution of gross morphological changes are staggering. The experimental evidence is non-existent. The fruit flies get damaged or killed when we "speed up evolution." And where did the first single cell organism come from? I don't think anyone has a clue about that. The proposals for how the bacterial flagellum and other innovations might have evolved are just as "Alice-in-Wonderland-ish" to me as proposing a Creator. I have read them. They are a joke to me. The fossil record is extremely weak. The "evidence" that the earth is millions of years old is based on unwarranted assumptions which I will show. The typological perception of nature shown by Denton to exist at the molecular level is powerful confirmation of the Creationist model, not the common descent model (in spite of Talk Origins lame attempt to discredit it). It is obvious that a global tectonic and hydraulic catastrophe was responsible for the universal phenomenon of sedimentary, fossiliferous rocks, not uniformitarian processes over millions of years. More on all of these issues on my other thread.
But just because I have no idea how the Creator might have designed these creatures does not mean that He did not. And I admit that I am not going to be able to "prove" to you that He did with the "Scientific Method" as you understand it. This is an extremely important point. Scientists today do not admit certain kinds of evidence into the arena and I (and Meyer, et al) believe this is an enormous mistake. To explain this simply, what you are really saying when you say that a "God Hypothesis" is unscientific, is that you rule out the "ET Hypothesis" that maybe an advanced civilization "planted" life here, and you rule out any possibility of any kind of Intelligence that could have been responsible for life here on earth. This to me is ultra-naive. Why are we so proud as to think there could be no advanced civilization that is far advanced in their technology so that they would be able to sit down at their computers and design 1000 or so distinct, original "kinds" and "plant them" here on earth? Maybe we are one big "science experiment" to them. Or maybe it's not a civilization at all. Maybe its ONE SUPER-MIND, like God, for example. To me, it is utter folly to rule out these possibilities. And to really explore these issues, we need a broader definition of science than your definitions. Falsifiability and some of the other demarcation criteria proposed last century must be dispensed with. We need a robust science that admits all possibilities. Quackery should not be defined and dictated by a ruling elite of naturalistic scientists. We should allow quackery to take its course and wind up on the rubbish heap of junk science all by itself through action of the free market of ideas. Allow astrology into the arena. It will die a quick death on its own. Allow Scientology and "Christian Scientists" into the arena. They will die as well. Allow homeopathy and acupuncture and everything else you can think of into the arena. Who cares? They will not gain a majority if they don't have any merit. The only reason flat earthism and geocentrism gained a majority was because the ruling elite (the Catholic Church) force fed it to the people. In my opinion, this is why neo-Darwinism has any following at all among the people. It is basically being force fed by the "ruling elite" of the scientific community, which I think is quite heavily funded by the government.
Now don't accuse me of thinking there is some kind of conspiracy among scientists. I don't think that. I just think there is a powerfully tempting idea out there among scientists called Darwinism, or naturalistic evolution, or whatever you want to call it. Scientists like it because it requires no Creator and that has a lot of good implications from their perspective. Younger scientists are taught this theory and want approval from superiors and peers alike. So naturally they overlook some of the glaring difficulties and explain them away. And so the cycle goes in academia. But I do not think there is some hierarchy somewhere that is somehow planning to brainwash everyone with Darwinism. I just think there is a government funded consensus and the result is that it has a similar effect as the medieval Catholic church did in that the people are force fed some rather strange views of Origins.
Anyway, back to the Vitamin C issue. Let's get to the bottom line.
It appears to me that no one here has a convincing argument that favors Common Descent over Common Design to explain the "broken" gene in both apes and humans. Either one can explain it just as well.
Am I correct? Or am I missing something?
(Note for Faid: I know you are trying very hard to get me to see that the AIG people are a bunch of liars, so I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll agree with you that they are all a bunch of liars and we all know what a liar I am--I've been told this many times here--and I would add that the Talk Origins people are probably liars as well, and probably many of you are also liars, and of course, the President is a liar and all Republicans are liars. So why don't we just agree that we are ALL a bunch of liars, then we can agree on something and get on with arguing. What do you think? :-)
(One more note: As a side issue, I am interested in hearing continuing dialog about the AIG paper by Woodmorappe and what your analysis is regarding what their argument even is and the various data which may confirm or refute it. But I am more interested in people presenting actual relevant data to me as opposed to evolutionary analysis of that data.)
(And remember ... I WILL become an evolutionist if the evidence is convincing enough to me.)
--------------
A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
|
, we KNOW that this is THE BEST neighbourhood in the city -- the top of the top when it comes to real estate. Lo and behold, on every house here, there are walkways, porches, and even railings -- but no stairs! Almost every other house in this neighbourhood has stairs (the lone exception of which we are aware being one other group of houses on a sidestreet about 70 blocks back). One is left to wonder how the residents in these wonderful, top-of-the-line mansions get to their front door. (The answer seems to be that they borrow stepladders from the yards of other houses, and get by well enough doing this, though once in a while they run into ugly problems when they really need up to that porch and there is no ladder to be found.)
