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  Topic: AF Dave Has More Questions About Apes, Creation/Evolution Debate< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
Henry J



Posts: 5786
Joined: Mar. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:38   

Then there was the Alamo, but it wasn't (yet) part of the U.S. at the time.

  
Russell



Posts: 1082
Joined: April 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:42   

English Waterloo: yes, the American Revolution. But more specifically, the final battle, Yorktown, after which Cornwallis surrendered.

Vitamin C: The Designer apparently decided to give humans, chimps, gorillas AND guinea pigs broken vitamin C making enzymes. Well, it's been said The Designer works in mysterious ways; I suppose He must have had a reason for doing that. But why did he give all the primates the same defect, and the guinea pigs another? Seems a whole lot more compatible with common descent than common (mis)design to me.

--------------
Must... not... scratch... mosquito bite.

  
Arden Chatfield



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Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:48   

Quote

Vitamin C: The Designer apparently decided to give humans, chimps, gorillas AND guinea pigs broken vitamin C making enzymes. Well, it's been said The Designer works in mysterious ways; I suppose He must have had a reason for doing that. But why did he give all the primates the same defect, and the guinea pigs another?


Some sort of punishment for the Garden of Eden, no doubt.

Do gorillas have the broken Vitamin C gene? I thought it was only humans and chimps.

--------------
"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
Henry J



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:51   

What did the guinea pigs do to merit that punishment of having their vit-C thing broken? Did they pick the wrong side in the Garden, or something? :)

  
Arden Chatfield



Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:52   

Quote (Henry J @ May 09 2006,15:51)
What did the guinea pigs do to merit that punishment of having their vit-C thing broken? Did they pick the wrong side in the Garden, or something? :)

Oh, you don't want to know what the guinea pigs did...

--------------
"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
jeannot



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Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,10:59   

Quote (Henry J @ May 09 2006,15:38)
Then there was the Alamo, but it wasn't (yet) part of the U.S. at the time.

While we're at it, the second famous French defeat, is the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954), where we got humiliated by Vietnamese (who were not vietnamese at that time). Next comes the Blitzkrieg (1940), and I dare not tell you more about it.
And don't forget Azincourt (1415), where we got soundly beaten by English who were four times less numerous than us.
 :0

(I'm preparing my defeat, that's why I'm doing some history. You should too, while there's still time  ;) )

  
Henry J



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:05   

I suppose that if the "designer" produced new species by modifying earlier species, and if an earlier species with a broken gene were picked as the "template" (so to speak) for both human and chimpanzee, then the broken gene thing could be construed as consistent with "design".

Say, what's the point in sticking the word "common" in front of "design", anyway?

Come to think of it, why do people use the phrase "common descent" to mean "common ancestry"? That phrasing puzzles me.

Henry

  
sir_toejam



Posts: 846
Joined: April 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:06   

Quote
Oh, you don't want to know what the guinea pigs did...


being the omniscient being, it was pre-emptive punishment for guinea pigs far in the future allowing themselves to be abused in a certain way by Richard Gere.

If you don't know what I'm speaking of, you don't want to, as the author of the quote correctly implies.

  
normdoering



Posts: 287
Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:06   

Quote (jeannot @ May 09 2006,13:57)
Do people with a more sophisticated brain have more children?

We try! We try!

The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank:
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-1400061245-0

The "Genius Babies," and How They Grew:
http://www.slate.com/id/100331/

Quote
...in the late 1970s, Graham persuaded several Nobel Prize winners in science—either three or five, depending on who's talking—to give him their sperm. Later he recruited dozens of younger scientists for his bank. Graham advertised for mothers in a Mensa magazine. Women had to be married to infertile men, well-educated, and financially comfortable. Soon he had a waiting list. He mailed out a catalog that advertised men such as "Mr. Fuschia," an Olympic gold medallist—"Tall, dark, handsome, bright, a successful businessman and author"; and "Mr. Grey-White … ruggedly handsome, outgoing, and positive, a university professor, expert marksman who enjoys the classics." (The repository revolutionized the sperm bank industry by—oddly for such an avowedly elitist institution—democratizing it: It took donor choice away from doctors and gave it to mothers. Instead of settling for a doctor's paltry offerings, mothers could be demanding customers, requiring as much [or more] accomplishment from a vial of sperm as from her flesh-and-blood husband.)

  
Chris Hyland



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:06   

Quote
You need to remove the word 'Christianity' from this one and insert 'Catholicism' instead.  The two are vastly different as I will show on a future "Martin Luther" post.
Please please don't.

Quote
Maybe too much ToE indocrination in higher education?
I don't know about today, but when I went they didn't make such a big deal out of it.

Quote
Bill Dembski has come up with a neat list of over 500 scientists who have had the kahoonas to sign their names to a public statement that says ...
I'd sign that statement, to say it is purely random mutation followed by natural selection is a gross oversimplification at best. Sometimes it's the other way round for a start. To say that statement reprsents a dismissal of modern evolutionary theory is just plain wrong.

Quote
STAGE 1: ToE advocates are becoming frustrated because their explanations are sounding more and more like pro-geocentrism and pro-flat-earth arguments as time goes on.
For example?

Quote
Biological Machines are great for starters
Don't pretend you've even begun to give evidence for this.

Quote
I just asked our ToE advocates why there ARE NO EXAMPLES of 'more evolved' or 'less evolved' humans.  There should be some living today if ToE is true.
More evolved is a meaningless term, just like 'genetically superior'.

Quote
There are apparently more and more scientists who have a DIFFERENT guess
Are there more and more? Actual scientists with qualifications in the relevent field?

Quote
Evidence DOES matter.  That's why we are having this discussion.  Because the EVIDENCE favors COMMON DESIGN, not common descent.
If you could list the main evidence for this in bullet points I would be very grateful.

Quote
And politicians give funding to public schools and universities.  And if universities behave irresponsibly and teach junk science -- like Darwinism -- and vilify people who don't, then the electorate can demand that the politicians RE-direct the funds to responsible schools.
If creation is so much better then let the schools an colleges that teach it produce research and make scientific discoveries based on evolution, then the electorate won't need to bother.

Quote
Your analogy works if you assume that "Teaching Darwinism = Teaching that Iraq is Somewhere near the North Pole", which I of course do believe is a good equation.
I prefer the analogy of teaching children about the holocaust. A minoroty of historians don't think it happened, but we still teach children it did.

Quote
Jeannot, Jeannot.  Come now.  Look what you just did.  You compared something with ABUNDANT EVIDENCE THAT WE SEE EVERY DAY (Gravity), with something for which there is NO EVIDENCE OF IT OCCURRING (Apelike ancestor becoming Human).
Gravity isn't the act of things falling, it is our theory of the forces that cause things to fall. Evolution is our theory explaining the distribution of species on the planet.

Quote
What I am uncomfortable with is ASSERTING things AS IF they were proven, when in fact they are not, by YOUR OWN STANDARDS.
I was never taught any theory as true, I was taught it as the best theory to explain the evidence. Yes I know you don't think evolution is the best theory to explain the evidence, and we'd all be grateful if you tell us why.

Quote
We'll do another thread [o]n ML.
I promise if you post it on another forum to where it is more suited we will all come over and argue with you about it.

Quote
I agree.  All the apes need is a good environment and they will become rocket scientists.  When I am in Washington next, I will suggest to Ike Skelton that he introduce legislation for a new, tax-funded, "Primate Education Program."  Maybe we could even have a new cabinet level office ... we already have the Department of Education ... why not have the Department of Ape Education.
You seem to be making the common creationist mistake of forgeting the millions of years part. Can you please tell us now if you won't accept evolution until you see this kind of change take place naturally.

Quote
No problem with teaching Evolution as a Theory espoused by many good scientists.  Let's just be honest and call it a theory though and quit saying it is a proven fact and shutting out the ID view.
Evolution is taught as a theory AFAIK. As far as shutting out the ID view, if we teach kids that something like Darwin's black box is a good piece of scientific analysis we will be producing bad scientists. Desing might be true but if it is it should be able to lead to superior scientific research. Even if there is a consiracy against it, point me to the research in creationist journals.

Quote
... but if we somehow collected all these bones, we could quite possibly bury fragments of them in various places throughout the world and have a 'hominid" fossil situation  quite closely resembling the naturally occurring situation which we do have.  Make sense?
No, the differences are not just the difference between us and pygmies.

This is getting very old, could you just post your evidence on whatever thread you like. We do not need a philosophical discussion of why your evidence is right, just your evidence.

  
Henry J



Posts: 5786
Joined: Mar. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:12   

Re "I'm preparing my defeat, that's why I'm doing some history. You should too, while there's still time "

Uh oh - in that case I'm in trouble; history wasn't my best subject.

Henry

  
sir_toejam



Posts: 846
Joined: April 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:12   

chris, rather than bother responding to each piece of dave's ramblings, there is a single word that correctly summarizes ALL of Dave's drivel:

PROJECTION.

in spades.

  
Arden Chatfield



Posts: 6657
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:16   

Quote (sir_toejam @ May 09 2006,16:06)
Quote
Oh, you don't want to know what the guinea pigs did...


being the omniscient being, it was pre-emptive punishment for guinea pigs far in the future allowing themselves to be abused in a certain way by Richard Gere.

If you don't know what I'm speaking of, you don't want to, as the author of the quote correctly implies.

(a) I thought that was hamsters, not guinea pigs, and
(b) it's an urban legend anyway.

--------------
"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

  
Henry J



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Joined: Mar. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:21   

And anyway, I thought that was Bill Murray and groundhogs?

(Uh - on second thought, never mind. :) )

  
Ved



Posts: 398
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:27   

Guinea pigs ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Eating Their Own Young, of course!

sir_toejam, projection and how! I think it's the only way a person can cope with making those kind of arguments...

  
jeannot



Posts: 1201
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:28   

Don't be ironical.
Dave certainly knows what the guinea pig did, and we'll be PWNED when he expose this biblical evidence.

  
Henry J



Posts: 5786
Joined: Mar. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:29   

Re "The predictions that quantum theory makes are vastly more absurd, incomprehensible, and counterintuitive than anything in the Theory of Evolution."

Yep. Quantum tunneling, particle entanglement, discrete possible "orbits", wave-particle duality, etc.

Otoh, evolution "predicts" that new species will be slight modifications of a previous nearby species, and that developments that are indedendent of each other will for the most part differ from each other in areas not constained by environment. And both of those sound like common sense to me.

Henry

  
stevestory



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,11:51   

Quote
Dave certainly knows what the guinea pig did, and we'll be PWNED when he expose this biblical evidence.
Paley has a definitive model showing what the guinea pigs did. But he's just been busy at work lately, and really not enough people have voted for the guinea pigs, and anyway this thread is supposed to be about apes,....

   
Mr_Christopher



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,12:09   

Riddle me this,  guinea pigs are fine tuned creatures, apes are fine tuned creatures....how come we don't see any half guinea pigs half apes walking around?  I think afdave might be on to something after all....

Gosh, I'm starting to think I've been listening to the wrong crowd the whole time!   A space alien musta invented guinea pigs!

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
normdoering



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Joined: July 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,12:26   

Quote (Mr_Christopher @ May 09 2006,17:09)
how come we don't see any half guinea pigs half apes walking around?

It's called a koala bear.


And, according to some ancient Greeks, an ostrich is what happens when a male gnat accidently flies up into the genitals of a giraffe.

  
Russell



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Joined: April 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,12:36   

Quote
Do gorillas have the broken Vitamin C gene? I thought it was only humans and chimps.
Apparently it's all primates. The broken gene is thought to be inherited from an ancestor common to all the primates about 40 million years ago. So you've got all these primates with a broken gene. And, once it was broken, of course, there's no selection that prevents it from accumulating more mutations. And, just like other DNA that's not under strong selection, you generate a nested hierarchy of mutations that pretty much overlaps the nested hierarchy of mutations in any other representative sample of the genome. Now, how does the "common designer hypothesis" explain that?

(Actually, I don't know how much of the relevant data is already in; I certainly can't cite the relevant research. So you can regard it both as a sketchy summary of the sketchy data that's already in and a prediction of data yet to be produced. What predictions does the "common designer hypothesis" make about it?)

--------------
Must... not... scratch... mosquito bite.

  
Mr_Christopher



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(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,12:40   

You don't fool ME, Mr Darwinist.  That picture of a half guinea pig half ape is obviously a forgery!

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Uncommon Descent is a moral cesspool, a festering intellectual ghetto that intoxicates and degrades its inhabitants - Stephen Matheson

  
Paul Flocken



Posts: 290
Joined: Dec. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,15:26   

Quote (jeannot @ May 09 2006,14:23)
Quote (Henry J @ May 09 2006,14:17)
Re " OMG! We're going toward our Waterloo ? (gasp!"

Darwin was English. ;)

So I'm going toward my Waterloo, and you'll meet your Pearl Harbour soon.
I don't know any famous British defeat.

Isandlwana

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"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.  Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy

  
Seven Popes



Posts: 190
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 09 2006,16:55   

And the wiki link to the above mentioned war.
The Battle of Isandlwana was a battle in the Anglo-Zulu War in which a Zulu army wiped out a British force on January 22, 1879. The British were commanded by Frederick Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford.

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Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.

  
Chris Hyland



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Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,00:36   

Quote
The British were commanded by Frederick Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford.
Was that the guy that looks an awful lot like Michael Caine?

Quote
And, just like other DNA that's not under strong selection, you generate a nested hierarchy of mutations that pretty much overlaps the nested hierarchy of mutations in any other representative sample of the genome. Now, how does the "common designer hypothesis" explain that?
The best answer I can think of is that the designer knew that primates were getting ample amounts of vitamin C from their diets, and so he inactivated the gene. The advantage of this would be that the animals would waste less energy producing an unessecary protein. This still suggests common descent though, but I'm confident it's better than the official creationist story.

  
Renier



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Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,01:18   

Afdave keeps on harping on about the evidence he presented. I have been reading all his threads, but cannot see any evidence presented by him. It appears as if he thinks the cc is evidence. Is it just me, or are other people also still waiting on his evidence? Is there ANYONE here that picked up on any evidence that Afdave has presented? Is there ANYONE?

  
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,03:00   

Renier:

You have to understand that within the religious mindset, 'evidence' has a very different meaning from what you may expect. The bible is evidence. Claims made by congenial authorities are evidence. Sincere belief in the absence of, or even defiance of, scientific evidence is also evidence.

Basically, start with your convictions. Find something that can be represented as supporting them. *Anything* that can be so represented is a good candidate, including uninformed opinions, declarations of doctrine, making stuff up, whatever works. Since these support the target convictions, they become evidence.

Remember, Behe testified that "an intelligence is involved" is something he regards as raw data, a straight unambiguous observation. Evidence.

  
stevestory



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Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,03:16   

Remember the guy on Uncommonly Dense who claimed that he could feel his Intelligent Designer, and why wasn't that scientific evidence?

   
Flint



Posts: 478
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,04:19   

Good point. How can one deny the reality of anything that answers your prayers, enters your heart, and speaks directly to your soul?

  
afdave



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Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: May 11 2006,04:21   

Good morning to all my "Evo" friends ...

The Vitamin C issue with apes and humans seems to be a very compelling evidence for you that Apes and Humans do indeed share a common ancestor.

OK.  Let's take a look.  I assume everyone is familiar with the Talk Origins article my Dr. Edward Max here and the AIG article by Woodmorappe here, right?

Dr. Max begins with an analogy to a plagiarism case ...
Quote
One way to distinguish between copying and independent creation is suggested by analogy to the following two cases from the legal literature. In 1941 the author of a chemistry textbook brought suit charging that portions of his textbook had been plagiarized by the author of a competing textbook (Colonial Book Co, Inc. v. Amsco School Publications, Inc., 41 F. Supp.156 (S.D.N.Y. 1941), aff'd 142 F.2d 362 (2nd Cir. 1944)). In 1946 the publisher of a trade directory for the construction industry made similar charges against a competing directory publisher (Sub-Contractors Register, Inc. v McGovern's Contractors & Builders Manual, Inc. 69 F.Supp. 507, 509 (S.D.N.Y. 1946)). In both cases, mere similarity between the contents of the alleged copies and the originals was not considered compelling evidence of copying. After all, both chemistry textbooks were describing the same body of chemical knowledge (the books were designed to "function similarly") and both directories listed members of the same industry, so substantial resemblance would be expected even if no copying had occurred. However, in both cases errors present in the "originals" appeared in the alleged copies. The courts judged that it was inconceivable that the same errors could have been made independently by each plaintiff and defendant, and ruled in both cases that copying had occurred. The principle that duplicated errors imply copying is now well established in copyright law. (In recognition of this fact, directory publishers routinely include false entries in their directories to trap potential plagiarizers.)


Now I have read both articles in their entirety, but before Dr. Max even gets into the details of gene "mistakes", there is one very large item jumps out at me. The analogy seems very clever, but there is a huge assumption that is made which I consider to be invalid and to me this destroys the whole analogy.  See what you think and please correct me if I am wrong.

OK.  Are you ready?  With the plagiarism case, we are talking about printed words in a well-known language.  In the GLO gene case, we are talking about genetic "words" in a poorly-understood language.  I hope I don't have to cite the recent literature to prove to you how poorly we understand the genetic language.  If you do a Google Scholar search, you will see numerous articles talking about pseudogene and "junk DNA" function and how much we are learning and how much there is remaining to be learned.  Here's just one with an appropriate comment from Woodmorappe ...
Quote
Balakirev, E.S. and Ayala, F.J., Pseudogenes: are they ‘junk’ or functional DNA? Annual Review of Genetics 37:123–151, 2003. The very title of this article would have, only a few years ago, been almost on a par with the following: ‘The Earth: is it spherical or flat?’


Are you with me so far?  I don't want to lose anyone.  Again, I am saying that ...

With the plagiarism case, we are talking about printed words in a well-known language.  In the GLO gene case, we are talking about genetic "words" in a poorly-understood language.  This is a big, big difference.

Notice again that Dr. Max's whole argument rests on the following ...
Quote
In both cases, mere similarity between the contents of the alleged copies and the originals was not considered compelling evidence of copying ... The principle that duplicated errors imply copying is now well established in copyright law.


Do you see where I am going?  Dr. Max is assuming that the state of the GLO gene in humans and apes is an error and with our as yet limited knowledge of gene function, genome function as a whole, pseudogene function discoveries, and "not-junk-after-all" discoveries about "junk DNA", this seems to be an enormous unwarranted assumption.  If, in fact, this GLO gene turns out to have some function, then Max's whole argument fails, because now the gene would be rightly interpreted as part of the correct informational content analogous to the correct informational content in the textbooks.

To emphasize this point, consider a passage of text from a language which you do not know, but I do (my dad's jungle tribe for whom he is a Bible translator).  In this case, I am playing the role of the hypothetical "Designer" and you are playing the role of the genetic researcher trying to unlock the code.    Let us say the above plagiarism case involved the following text ...

Quote

ORIGINAL TEXT:  Twaihsom me thakwa xatkene roowo pono komo ahnoro.  Yipinin yaw so tko xakne Kaan.  Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne rma okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so.  Waipini ro me xa matko naxe Noro pona enine komo.

ALLEGED PLAGIARIZED TEXT:  Twaihsom me thakwa xatkene roowo pono komo.  Yipinin yaw so xakne Kaan.  Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so. Waipini ro me naxe Noro pona enine komo.


While a word by word comparison of the above text gives some evidence of plagiarism, i.e. they are similar, you cannot conclude this positively if we use the court case guidelines because you do not know the language so as to be able to detect errors.

Now I DO know the language, so I can identify an error, namely that the word "cewnaninhiri" which means "only begotten" (it is John 3:16) is left out of both texts.

So we see that for Dr. Max's argument to be valid, we have to know the language which obviously, genetic researchers do not yet very well.


Now there is something else interesting here.  This text of John 3:16 could be rendered in a number of different ways and yet communicate the same meaning.  For example, we could say ...
Quote
Yipinin yaw so xakne Kaan roowo pono komo poko. Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so. Waipini ro me naxe Kaan pona enine komo.


I know the language well enough to know that this would communicate the same message, but with different structure.

Now, back to biology.  It is my theory that this is exactly the situation which we will find in the genomes of various organisms as we understand more and more about them every year.  I predict that we will find that the genetic code is a very real language, complete with "words", "sentences", "phrases", "paragraphs", and different ways of saying the same thing.

Now, here is something else ...

How do you explain the similarity of the GLO gene "defects" of humans and guinea pigs? (you knew I was going to go here, didn't you)  Apparently, something like 36% of the substitutions are the same when compared to the functional rat GLO gene.  If we assume that there is some pro-simian ancestor that has a functional GLO gene, then it would appear that humans are more closely related to guinea pigs than to this pro-simian ancestor.  This would seem to defy the evolutionary scenario.  How do you explain this?

OK.  There's some food for thought.  Now pick me apart.


Oh ... and here the quote from Balakirev and Ayala for you

Quote
Annual Review of Genetics
Vol. 37: 123-151 (Volume publication date December 2003)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.37.040103.103949)

First published online as a Review in Advance on June 25, 2003

PSEUDOGENES: Are They "Junk" or Functional DNA?

Evgeniy S. Balakirev1,2 and ­Francisco J. Ayala1­
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-2525; email: fjayala@uci.edu

2Institute of Marine Biology, Vladivostok 690041,

Russia and Academy of Ecology, Marine Biology, and Biotechnology, Far Eastern State University, Vladivostok 690600, Russia; email: esbalak@bio.dvgu.ru

Pseudogenes have been defined as nonfunctional sequences of genomic DNA originally derived from functional genes. It is therefore assumed that all pseudogene mutations are selectively neutral and have equal probability to become fixed in the population. Rather, pseudogenes that have been suitably investigated often exhibit functional roles, such as gene expression, gene regulation, generation of genetic (antibody, antigenic, and other) diversity. Pseudogenes are involved in gene conversion or recombination with functional genes. Link to article




And here's one I like from Dr. Max that confirms what us YECers so often say about mutations ...
Quote
Mutations causing genetic diseases and malformations are generally so detrimental to the organism's survival and reproductive success that in the wild--i.e. in the absence of modern medical science--they would tend to be "weeded out" by the pressure of natural selection. Rarely, mutations can be beneficial to an organism: these rare cases form the basis for evolutionary adaptations that improve the "fitness" of an organism to its environment.Link to article


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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

  
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