avocationist
Posts: 173
Joined: Feb. 2006
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Creeky,
| Quote | Me-That you can't perceive it means little. Can you hear a dog whistle? Can you see xrays?
You-You might want to save yourself the embarrassment and not post drivel like this. |
Why is it drivel? Someone responds to the idea of other dimensions as if they were a magical idea, and I point out that if they exist, they are invisible to us. As you mentioned yourself, it is a part of string theory. If the string theorists are right, then those other dimensions are the bedrock of what we call reality, and yet we can't perceive those dimensions. We already know that there is a world of the unseen - life forms, molecules, atoms. We know that we can perceive but a small band of the electromagnetic spectrum, and yet people perist in always thinking that the latest discovery is the final and last. That we have already uncovered so much of the unseen, should instead have the opposite effect.
Mike DSS,
| Quote | Yeesh. It sucks being you. :O
SORRY! Sorry. Shouldn't say things like that. |
Sometimes it does!I don't even know how to manage the TV set upstairs or the DVD player.
| Quote | | AND you realized that this function COULD be improved with further "evolution" |
I do not realize that. That is the supposition of the author of the bit I quoted. I included it to show that the author is not antievolution.
| Quote | | The results found two NEW bacterial strains (PAO5501 and PAO5502) where PAO5502 was actually derived from an isolated solution of PAO5501. |
I'm not clear on the relevance of 5501 and it what way it was a different strain from the original -1.
| Quote | but in this article they stated they didn't know how the bacteria aquired their ability. If we don't know that, I don't think we can assess the situation.
I think that is a bit disingenuous to the work done and support given to the "educated guess" of the experimenters.
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I am not sure why you say so. If we don't know how it happens, how can we talk about whether random processes are adequate? I don't disagree at all with their educated guess that 'the basic mechanisms acting during environmental stress are involved in this adaptation.'
You quote Spetner:
"there are two altered enzymes, not just one.
Both these enzymes are needed
Neither of these enzymes alone is effective."
But did you undersand his point that he finds two alterations mathematically suspect, i.e., improbable?
I do not understand your point here:
| Quote | | So Spetner is NOT aware of the enzymes in the NEW strain of PAO5502 that eat nylon. I wonder how many point mutations and changed amino acids are in the PAO5502 bug? |
Are you saying he was talking about a different organsm, and should have been aware also of this one? The bug he discussed did survive on nylon.
| Quote | | Spetner cannot make these claims [probability of success] without further analyzing the mutational effect of the NEW strain of PAO5502 which was produced in only 3 months (maximum, maybe faster) from PAO1. |
What was different about this case - fewer steps?
| Quote | | BUT, we saw in the experiment that PAO5502 was a new strain only AFTER PAO5501 was isolated and the conditions changed. Therefore, might it be possible that PAO1 mutates to form PAO5501 which has enzyme 1 developed but not enzyme 2. THEN PAO5501 mutates to form PAO5502 which now has both enzyme 1 AND enzyme 2. |
Of course it might be possible - but is it the case? Do we know that 5501 had the first enzyme? And if it did, what contribution did it have so as to preserve it?
| Quote | | Is this pathway a possiblility? And shouldn't Spetner examine the development of enzyme 1 instead of discarding it with a non-sequitor? |
It isn't that he dismissed it. He just concentrated on the probability of the other enzyme, and then mentions that the existence of the need for two enzymes and more steps decreases the probability further.
| Quote | Now, why should there be a built-in capability to metabolize nylon, which did not exist until 1937 or so? The answer is there shouldn't be. But there could have been a built-in capability to metabolize some other substrate. Kinoshita et al. (1981) tested enzyme 2 against 50 possible substrates and found no activity, but that does not mean that it doesn't have activity on some substrate not tested. The activity of enzyme 2 was small, but enabled the bacteria to metabolize the nylon waste.
And we finish with an argument from personal increduality. Without supporting evidence on WHY the increduality is even valid.
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I would not call this an argument from Personal Incredulity (blessed be It's name) but that he thinks bugs are already prewired to deal with environmental stressors such as the natural penicillin that occurs in bread mold.
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Avo,
Are you referring to the second-to-last paragraph in the nylon bug article where it states... |
Not directly, but rather from my memory of what I have read in a few different places about organisms being able to turn on a high mutation rate under certain conditions and which apply only to certain parts of the genome, and which gets turned off again when appropriate. And that, really, is the only point I had about all this. That it is a controlled skill which directs the mutations in these cases.
Demallion,
| Quote | Quote (avocationist @ Jan. 29 2007,14:09)
It (rapid mutation) gets turned on in response to the environment, is confined to speific loci in the genome, and is turned off when it's job is done. The mutations which occur under those conditions are random. Thus it took (if I understood the article) 3 months to produce the nylon eating mutation(s) but apparently that was not the only time it occurred. Spetner mentions it being discovered accidentally 30 years after nylon was invented.
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Ahhh, OK, there's the disconnect! For you, God is in there fiddling with the mutations that occur so that our bacteria can adapt to it's new environment. |
Well wow and double wow. I mean, where did you ever come up with that? How can you just make up stuff that is so completely at odds with everything I said? Are you that desperate to have me say what you think a 'creationist' would say?
| Quote | | This leads me to ask you if you consider God to be completely incompetent? Because I don't see any other justification for all of the other mutations that are observed in the experiment, but which don't aid in the task of adapting to the environment, if it's God that's responable. Remember the "silent" point mutations that were observed? |
I mean, how hard is this? I responded to another poster's misunderstanding of what I wrote, I clarified that the mutations are random. The organism turns up mutations somehow, in what is probably a random search for solutions. Faced with certain stressors, it turns up mutations in certain areas of the genome, and when a solution is found, turns it off again.
Serendipity,
| Quote | | Anyway, heading towards a more reductionist view (it seems) how would Planck and Classical Quantum (Gauge Field) be divided into smaller microstats? |
could you clarify your question?
Cedric,
You ask for my scientific arguments for ID, and you insist that unless the game is played on your terms, I can be dismissed. But I have answered you by telling what books and papers I have read, and said I find their arguments tenable. I also said I find the arguments about information buildup and IC particularly strong. For you to dismiss Denton's arguments in Nature's Destiny and Crisis as unscientific is idiotic. If all you guys can come up with is that the counterarguments to evolution are not science, then you really are playing games.
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I am VERY dismayed by the level of hatred expressed by most of the posters here. I was going to use the word hostility, but it isn't adequate. You have quite convined me that you are fundamentalists. Numbers of comments show that the poster considers it just fine to dismiss other human beings based upon their prejudice, and that they do not deserve civil treatment. This means that you are unable to hear what they say, and the constant assumptions and misunderstandings of my many plain statements mean that my words are just piss in the wind here. There is little point in talking to people who can't listen. And I do want to emphasize the word 'can't.'
You guys seriously believe that those who don't agree with you are dishonest, and you use words such as nutters and the insane so that you can keep it up - the ability to completely dismiss other points of view by dehumanizing those who hold them. Please tell me how you are different from an Islamic fundamentalist who wants to engage in Jihad with the infidels. Or the Christian explorers of yore who killed and abused the natives who were, after all, destined for ####? And if I had tried to point out to them the error of their ways - could they hear it?
This means you have isolated yourselves in a mental world of your making.
THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE! And I know you can't hear me, can't believe me, can't examine yourselves.
I don't have any hope that more than a slight amount of real progress can be had in a discussion like this. People are not going to change, generally, but what does interest me is the patterns I see in human beings, and how it matters little what position you take, but that the content of your character determines how you behave within that position.
Just look at this:
| Quote | Creationists are every single one to the last drop COMPLETELY AND UTERLY INSANE and are no different to the 9/11 bombers...they believe the biggest lie ever told.
| Quote | | Anyone who thinks that being polite to a Theofacist will stop them, is living in fantasy land. |
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I am shocked, and even frightened by this level of hatred. There is nothing to which such a person would not stoop. This is the seed of violence. k.e. has given us a picture of his inner world, and it is not a decent place. k.e. apparently believes that if you believe in God you are a theofascist. That would include Wesley, apparently. And if that is not what he believes, then he has some nerve calling me a theofascist. If anyone would call me a theofascist then they have not seen a word I have said, and have made up an opinion out of pure fantasy. I don't appreciate it, it is cetainly dishonest, and it indicates a mind that is so tied up with preconceptions that you just can't get into it's smooth, billard ball surface.
I don't mind the F word near as much as this, and I would overlook some of Lenny's nastiness if what he had to say contained any substance. It doesn't. His posts are downright silly.
But generally, it is hard to overlook nastiness, because it is draining. I don't live that way. It's like if you had some relative who asked you to take her in during some crisis, and she pulls her world into your life. Her ex-husband comes and knocks her around, there are fights and screaming, glasses get thrown, police arrive. Drug dealing boyfriends spend the night, she drinks and gets into fights and cries, etc, etc. I just wouldn't want something like that in my house.
I find it best to distance myself from people who don't know how else to live but in extremes of useless emotion.
The level of emotionality expressed here is way beyond what it should be.
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