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thurdl01



Posts: 99
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,07:18   

Quote (CloneBoySA @ Jan. 04 2007,02:05)
PS I can't help feeling that all Dave's have been given a bad name, by Afdave and DaveScot...

As a fellow David, I know the feeling.  Glad to know there's more of us on the correct side of this whole thing.  Maybe we need a sequel to Project Steve.

  
ppb



Posts: 325
Joined: Dec. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,09:20   

Another lurker coming out of the shadows to say thanks to all the regular contributers on this thread.  You are a credit to Science and the persuit of knowledge.

I have family and friends who are into creationism, including a former brother-in-law who is a proud graduate of the ICR!  I have a BS in Biology, I've had a life-long interest in Astronomy, and am a great lover of Science in general, so I was never persuaded by the YEC blather.  Still, I have something of a morbid fascination with the mindset.

With the recent court battles over ID, I started following events on Panda's Thumb and other sites.  I got drawn into this thread because I've known a number of AFDaves in the past.  I admire all the true professional scientists who have taken the time to dismember the creationist "arguments".  I've held back from contributing myself because I could not have done it as well.

I won't be following AFDave to any new forums.  He clearly has nothing new to say.  I will continue to follow PT.  It's great to read about all the exciting discoveries that real scientists are making.

--------------
"[A scientific theory] describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as She is - absurd."
- Richard P. Feynman

  
afdave



Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,09:32   

[quote=Wesley R. Elsberry,Jan. 03 2007,16:34]    
Quote

A LITTLE CLOSER LOOK AT WESLEY'S PIECE

Wesley ...            
Quote
Recombination

We have already introduced the term recombination. This term is widely used in many areas of practical and theoretical genetics, so it is absolutely necessary to be clear on its meaning at this stage. Recombination can occur in a variety of situations in addition to meiosis, but for the present we define it in relation to meiosis. To adapt the definition to other situations, we shall simply replace the words meiotic and meiosis with other appropriate terms.

Definition

Meiotic recombination is any meiotic process that generates a haploid product of meiosis whose genotype is different from the two haploid genotypes that constituted the meiotic diploid. The product of meiosis so generated is called a recombinant.


-- Suzuki, Griffiths, & Lewontin, 1981, Introduction to Genetic Analysis (2nd edition), p.140.


A good definition.  But other sources highlight something very important to the present debate ...      

       
Quote
Recombination therefore only shuffles already existing genetic variation and does not create new variation at the involved loci.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination


Wesley ...            
Quote
Those meiotic processes mentioned include crossover and inversion. A little reflection should be sufficient to convince anyone able to understand genetic mechanisms that any genotype that can be generated by the application of a point mutation can also theoretically be produced by one or more recombination events in the presence of sufficient base-pair diversity. Recombination also does not respect reading frame boundaries, so recombination is (as implied above) fully able to produce novel alleles, and is not restricted to shuffling novelty produced solely by other mechanisms. Recombination is, further, a far more common event than point mutation. Noting that one mechanism of generating novel genotypes is more common than another seems to me quite sufficient reason to write in a way that treats those processes as distinct.


Notice that word 'theoretically.'  It is the key word in the whole paragraph.  This word sums up Darwinism quite nicely.  What Wesley is saying is that RECOMBINATION and MUTATION are both THEORETICALLY capable of creating all life on earth, so making a distinction between them as mechanisms is nit-picky.  I disagree.  I am into EVIDENCE, not theory.  Isn't that what scientists (even amateur ones like me) are supposed to be into?  And the EVIDENCE says that "recombination does not create new variation", Darwinist wishful thinking notwithstanding.


   
Quote
The Wikipedia article is in error on this point. I've entered a comment in the talk page there with a verifiable reference, so I expect that it will change shortly.

The Wikipedia article is not in error.  I also have entered a comment there following your comment.  The entire exchange appears below ...    
Quote
New alleles?

Does recombination create new alleles, or does it keep the current ones intact? 5th April 2006

   Recombination does not respect reading frame boundaries, and therefore can produce novel alleles. One research article describing this says:

       The asymmetric patterns of polymorphism and the absence of simple dinucleotide variation in 23 kb of sequence are compatible with recombination or sister chromatid exchange, but not polymerase slippage. By inference, recombination should underlie the polymorphisms at (GT)n/(AC)n since they are a subset of (RY)n and they commonly occur in the context of longer (RY)n.

   Which means that the introductory statement in the main article here:

       Recombination therefore only shuffles already existing genetic variation and does not create new variation at the involved loci.

   is completely incorrect. Recombination is sufficient to produce novel alleles. It does not necessarily produce novel alleles, though, which is why a misunderstanding such as the quoted statement from the article can become widespread as a meme.

   Can somebody fix the main article, please? --Wesley R. Elsberry 22:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

   Suggested rephrasing of the bad sentence... Was:

       Recombination therefore only shuffles already existing genetic variation and does not create new variation at the involved loci.

   should become...

       Because coding regions are relatively uncommon, in most cases recombination breaks and rejoins genetic material outside those regions, with the effect of "shuffling" already-existing loci. But since recombination does not respect reading frame boundaries, from time to time it will bring together parts of differing alleles, resulting in the production of a novel allele.

   How's that sound? --Wesley R. Elsberry 22:20, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ==================================================

   I emphatically disagree with Dr. Elsberry. The sentence should remain unchanged. This article is based on one of the leading cell biology textbooks in the world, co-authored by no less an authority than the late president of the National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts.

   Note that the research article quoted by Dr. Elsberry does not say "recombination is sufficient to produce novel alleles." It simply says "By inference, recombination should underlie the polymorphisms ..." Notice the use of the words "by inference" and "should." These are not words indicative of experimental certainty. I would challenge Dr. Elsberry to produce experimental evidence supporting his idea that "recombination can produce novel alleles." To my knowledge, there have been no experiments confirming this. Rather, all experimentation to date has confirmed the sentence as it stands. Therefore, to implement Dr. Elsberry's proposed change would mislead readers. Now it might be acceptable to say something like ...

       Experiments to date indicate that recombination only shuffles already existing genetic variation and does not create new variation at the involved loci. Some evolutionary biologists have proposed that recombination can produce novel alleles by noting that recombination does not respect reading frame boundaries. However, the notion of novel allele production by recombination has not been confirmed experimentally.

   Readers should be aware that this change proposed by Dr. Elsberry was precipitated by a discussion on the "After the Bar Closes" Forum at Panda's Thumb. It appears that evolutionary biologists such as Dr. Elsberry are keen to propose new mechanisms for the generation of novel alleles in the face of accumulating evidence that RM + NS (Random Mutation + Natural Selection) is insufficient to explain all the biological innovations seen in nature. One participant in the discussion--a microbiology professor--even proposed that recombination is a "kind" of mutation. Of course, this would be a significant departure from all previous understandings of the word "mutation."

   To make the change proposed by Dr. Elsberry would be misleading to readers and in my opinion would serve to discredit the good name of Wikipedia. --David W. Hawkins 12:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Genetic_recombination#New_alleles.3F


   
Quote
The Wikipedia entry is not evidence, by the way. Nature's review of encyclopedias found that in technical articles of moderate length, domain experts found, on average, four errors within Wikipedia articles. (Encyclopedia Britannica did only modestly better, with an average of three errors per such article.) In this case, the statement in the Wikipedia article was unreferenced. In contrast, I provided reference to a research article seeking to characterize the mechanism of genetic novelty, finding that recombination accounted for the events under study and not an alternate mechanism of polymerase slippage.
I appreciate your concern for accuracy in encyclopedias.  I too desire all scientific information in encyclopedias to be accurate.  This is in the interest of us all.  But to say that an article in Wikipedia, which is based upon information from arguably the world's most important cell biology textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, seems desperate, if I may use the terminology of someone famous.  I would also ask, "Have you have voiced your concerns about accuracy to the editorial board of Encyclopedia Britannica?"  My understanding is that they typically employ PhD's who are specialists (such as youself) in their respective fields to author the various technical articles.
       
Quote

           
Quote
Seizing upon pedanticism to escape the inevitable observation that genetic variation, however it arises, is sufficient to give selection its needed scope seems to me to be a rather desperate and pathetic strategy.


I am not seizing upon pedanticism.  I am refuting ATBC notions that ...

1) bottlenecks necessarily kill diversity, and

2) 4500 years (the time since the global flood) is too short to achieve massive diversity.


   
Quote
I doubt that there has been any "rebuttal" on either. Handwaving, sure. Rebuttal, no.
So are you taking the position of disagreeing with the plethora of scientific papers which support my two statements above and rebut the objections to those statements?  [You do recall the heavily cited Carson paper I posted, I presume?]

       
Quote

           
Quote
As for the proposed rapid diversification needed to fit an evolutionary time-scale that includes a global flood about 4K years ago, the example of dog breeds doesn't satisfy this. A conspicous lack of diversification of dental formula is seen among dog breeds; no matter what breed you look at, it has the usual canine dental formula. Since mammalian paleontology is based primarily upon dental characters, and one would need to explain how so many various mammalian dental formulas diversified in the limited period of post-flood time, it appears that the example of dog breeds goes primarily to establishing that longer time periods are needed for acquiring the observed diversity in this set of characters.


I am not trying to fit anything into an evolutionary time-scale.  I have been REFUTING the evolutionary Deep Time scenario.  The present debate has nothing to do with dog teeth.  It has everything to do with 1) population bottlenecks, and 2) time needed for diversification


   
Quote
Read for comprehension, please: "an evolutionary time-scale that includes a global flood about 4K years ago". You are proposing that observed genetic diversity can be accounted for by evolutionary processes since Noah's flood. That is an "evolutionary time-scale".
Fair enough.  Your statement was confusing to me.  Thanks for the clarification.  I would suggest avoiding use of the descriptor "evolutionary" when describing issues related to the YEC model.  I believe it only confuses people as to what you are talking about.

   
Quote
You said that domestic dog breeds demonstrate that divergence of characters occurs on the reduced time-scale that you require. However, you do not account for mammalian divergence of dental formulae with this example. Mammals have all sorts of different dental formulas, many of which would have to arise since Noah's flood, within your reduced evolutionary time-scale. So on the one hand we have the observation that many changes in mammalian dental formulae have happened, and on the other we have your example of domestic dogs, which shows no change in dental formula whatsoever. Your example does not support the notion that observed mammalian diversity in dental formula can be compressed into the evolutionary time-scale of divergence since a Noachic flood.

Get it now?
Attempting to change the subject from "diversity in spite of bottlenecks" and "diversity in a short timeframe" to "mammalian dental formulae" by pointing out the fact that I have not yet addressed this new topic seems ... well ... noteworthy.  [I will not be as hard on you as you were on me when you said I had a "desperate and pathetic strategy."]

--------------
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

  
Louis



Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:24   

Steve,

Quote
Oooo, Stella. And here I am, stuck with a few Molson XXX's. I've got a few days off so ordinarily it would be Vodka Time, but there are a few South Parks downloading, and when they get here in an hour, I'd rather be pleasantly buzzed than passed out on the floor with the cat jumping on me.


Stella is known delicately as "Wifebeater" in the UK. Mainly because it's "brewed for the UK market" i.e. filled with crap the Belgians won't touch, which drive you insane and make you fighty. Allegedly. Never had that problem with Molson when in Canuckland, but in both cases YMMV.

Now to the broader beer point of lager being like "making love in a canoe", i.e. fucking close to water. Get to your nearest microbrewer and buy something with the foreskin and fingernails of a half dozen rats in it. If you can see through it an wake up the morning after 10 pints of it (as opposed to the morning after that) then it ain't beer. Get a snootful of Lenny's Viking Piss, I've heard awful things about it. It's on the same continent at least. Failing that, get on a plane and I'll take you to a Ringwood pub and buy you some "49er".

Mind you, given your vodka comments, you sound like a drinker, so we might have to move to "Old Thumper", which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Louis

--------------
Bye.

  
k.e



Posts: 1948
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:29   

Quote
Attempting to change the subject from "diversity in spite of bottlenecks" and "diversity in a short timeframe" to "mammalian dental formulae" by pointing out the fact that I have not yet addressed this new topic seems ... well ... noteworthy.  [I will not be as hard on you as you were on me when you said I had a "desperate and pathetic strategy."]


"Attempting to change the subject" Bwhahahahahahaha

....AFD claims subject (diversity) is changed to .....er diversity.

You got us there AFD (snicker)

"by pointing out the fact that I have not yet addressed this new topic seems ..." ..........Even better!!!!!

...ah Flying Blind Dave YOU HAVE NOT addressed THE OLD  TOPICS let alone the 'new' topic (diversity).

You still think you HAVE addressed the old topics though don't you?

......AFD YOU ARE A LIVING LOGICAL FALLACY!

--------------
The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane

   
MidnightVoice



Posts: 380
Joined: Aug. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:29   

Is Theaxton's Old Peculiar still available?  :D

Or Brains SA?  (Supposed to be Special Ale, but known locally as Skull Attack)

--------------
If I fly the coop some time
And take nothing but a grip
With the few good books that really count
It's a necessary trip

I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket
The girl with the pearl-driller's hands

  
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:35   

Now we've got AFDave trying to 'correct' Wesley on Wikipedia. To the very end, this thread does not disappoint.

   
argystokes



Posts: 766
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:38   

Quote (thurdl01 @ Jan. 04 2007,05:18)
Quote (CloneBoySA @ Jan. 04 2007,02:05)
PS I can't help feeling that all Dave's have been given a bad name, by Afdave and DaveScot...

As a fellow David, I know the feeling.  Glad to know there's more of us on the correct side of this whole thing.  Maybe we need a sequel to Project Steve.

Yeah, it's my name too. And with David being a top-10 name every decade since the 50s, I'm reasonably certain we could beat project Steve.

--------------
"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin

  
Louis



Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,10:41   

Quote
Is Theaxton's Old Peculiar still available?  

Or Brains SA?  (Supposed to be Special Ale, but known locally as Skull Attack)


Yes and yes. Ouch in both cases. Brains is Welsh, and the Welsh have beer that make sheep surprisingly alluring after only a few pints. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, just mentioning the power of their beer to....aid in certain (entirely mythical of course) rural activities.

Quote
Now we've got AFDave trying to 'correct' Wesley on Wikipedia. To the very end, this thread does not disappoint.


Yup when I read that my jaw  rapidly became in close contact with the floor. The first words I thought were "the fucking GALL of the man", but then I remembered it was AFDave, the world's most unwarrantedly arrogant lunatic.

Quote
Yeah, it's my name too. And with David being a top-10 name every decade since the 50s, I'm reasonably certain we could beat project Steve.


It's my middle name, so even I could join in this time. (#### those Steves with their exclusivity. They get all the girls and best jobs too. I wanna play! )

Louis

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Bye.

  
mitschlag



Posts: 236
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,11:06   

Quote (thurdl01 @ Jan. 04 2007,07:18)
 
Quote (CloneBoySA @ Jan. 04 2007,02:05)
PS I can't help feeling that all Dave's have been given a bad name, by Afdave and DaveScot...

As a fellow David, I know the feeling.  Glad to know there's more of us on the correct side of this whole thing.  Maybe we need a sequel to Project Steve.

Omigod, this is uncanny.  I'm another one.

Sayonara, AFDave

--------------
"You can establish any “rule” you like if you start with the rule and then interpret the evidence accordingly." - George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984)

  
oldmanintheskydidntdoit



Posts: 4999
Joined: July 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,11:39   

Quote
The most likely reason Mr. Hawkins is unaware of research demonstrating that recombination can produce new alleles is that he has not taken the time to research the subject. Allelic recombination is well represented in the scientific literature. For example from PNAS | December 10, 2002 | vol. 99 | no. 25 | 16348-16353 we have:

"Meiotic recombination in the anopheline mosquito is the major mechanism for allelic variation of PfMsp-1 (8); thus, intragenic recombination between unlike alleles generates new alleles in the progeny (10). Recombination sites are confined to the 5' and 3' regions of the gene."

Dr. Elsberry's rewrite is concise, accurate, and easy to understand, and should thus be adopted. The references from the quote are (8) Tanabe, K., Mackay, M., Goman, M. & Scaife, J. (1987) J. Mol. Biol. 195, 273-287 and (10) Kerr, P. J., Ranford-Cartwright, L. C. & Walliker, D. (1994) Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 66, 241-248. Dphippard 17:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC) David J. Phippard


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



Let's see who wins this wikipedia "war".

Bye Mr Hawkins!

Link

--------------
I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies".
FTK

if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand
Gordon Mullings

  
Roland Anderson



Posts: 51
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,11:58   

My degree is in German Literature and I have no formal science qualifications beyond GCSE (that's exams taken at 16 for those unfamiliar with the England/Wales system) and even I could understand Wesley's point about recombination creating new alleles in seconds. Once again, Dave is playing on the fact that words have interesting and complex meanings in order to attempt to obfuscate the issue. Yes, a new allele created only by recombination does not result from a point mutation at the time of the recombination - but that doesn't make it any the less a new allele. And the variation required to make a new allele in this way will have come from past point mutations anyway - that's my understanding.

I'm sorry, Dave, but in this case (and in many others) your feigned incomprehension doesn't wash. Your attitude towards truth and honesty is contemptible. You know that creation science is a lie. You know that Intelligent Design "theory" is a lie. However, you still push them on kids. This is despicable.

This is my last post on this subject so in the vein of credit-rolling may I say thanks to all the posters for the splendid variety of knowledge which has come my way thanks to reading this thread. Good-bye - and good luck!

  
incorygible



Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,12:04   

Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Jan. 04 2007,11:39)
 
Quote
The most likely reason Mr. Hawkins is unaware of research demonstrating that recombination can produce new alleles is that he has not taken the time to research the subject. Allelic recombination is well represented in the scientific literature. For example from PNAS | December 10, 2002 | vol. 99 | no. 25 | 16348-16353 we have:

"Meiotic recombination in the anopheline mosquito is the major mechanism for allelic variation of PfMsp-1 (8); thus, intragenic recombination between unlike alleles generates new alleles in the progeny (10). Recombination sites are confined to the 5' and 3' regions of the gene."

Dr. Elsberry's rewrite is concise, accurate, and easy to understand, and should thus be adopted. The references from the quote are (8) Tanabe, K., Mackay, M., Goman, M. & Scaife, J. (1987) J. Mol. Biol. 195, 273-287 and (10) Kerr, P. J., Ranford-Cartwright, L. C. & Walliker, D. (1994) Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 66, 241-248. Dphippard 17:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC) David J. Phippard


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



Let's see who wins this wikipedia "war".

Bye Mr Hawkins!

Link

Priceless! And to throw another iron(y) on the anvil, I suspect David J. Phippard is the co-author of this recent paper on global genetic diversity and polymorphism (not to mention Plasmodium and malaria), which is rather amusing (assuming he's not one of our many incognito Daves here at AtBC?):

 
Quote
Title: Global genetic diversity and evolution of var genes associated with placental and severe childhood malaria

Author(s): Trimnell AR (Trimnell, Adama R.), Kraemer SM (Kraemer, Susan M.), Mukherjee S (Mukherjee, Susan), Phippard DJ (Phippard, David J.), Janes JH (Janes, Joel H.), Flamoe E (Flamoe, Eric), Su XZ (Su, Xin-zhuan), Awadalla P (Awadalla, Philip), Smith JD (Smith, Joseph D.)

Source: MOLECULAR AND BIOCHEMICAL PARASITOLOGY 148 (2): 169-180 AUG 2006

Document Type: Article

Language: English

Cited References: 56      Times Cited: 2

Abstract: In Plasmodium falciparum, var genes encode adhesive proteins that are transported to the surface of infected erythrocytes and act as major virulence determinants for infected erythrocyte binding and immune evasion. Var genes are highly diverse and can be classified into five major groups (UpsA, B, C, D, and E). Previous serological studies have suggested that the UpsA var group may contain common antigenic types that have important roles in severe childhood malaria. Here, our analysis found that UpsA vars are highly diverse between 22 world-wide parasite isolates, although they could be grouped into two broad clusters that may be separately recombining. By comparison, orthologs of the UpsA-linked Type 3 var and UpsE-linked var2csa were detected in nearly all parasite isolates, and a var2csa ortholog was also present in a chimpanzee malaria R reichenowi that diverged from P. falciparum similar to 5-7 million years ago. Although the specific function of Type 3 var genes is unknown, var2csa is a leading candidate for a pregnancy associated malaria vaccine. Compared to typical var genes, var2csa is unusually conserved but still had only 54-94% amino acid identity in extracellular binding regions. However, var2csa alleles have extensive gene mosaicism within polymorphic blocks that are shared between world-wide parasite isolates and recognizable in P rechenowi suggesting a high rate of self-self recombination and an ancient and globally-related pool of var2csa polymorphism. These studies aid our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms that shape var diversity and will be important to the development of vaccines against pregnancy associated malaria and severe malaria.

  
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,12:17   

Quote

I appreciate your concern for accuracy in encyclopedias.  I too desire all scientific information in encyclopedias to be accurate.  This is in the interest of us all.  But to say that an article in Wikipedia, which is based upon information from arguably the world's most important cell biology textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, seems desperate, if I may use the terminology of someone famous.  I would also ask, "Have you have voiced your concerns about accuracy to the editorial board of Encyclopedia Britannica?"  My understanding is that they typically employ PhD's who are specialists (such as youself) in their respective fields to author the various technical articles.


Funny, usually when somebody like Hawkins has an ace authority, a quote is provided. No quote here. The question is, was Hawkins too tired to provide the quote, or did he not provide the quote because that would bust his bluff?

I don't have an Encyclopedia Britannica handy, so I don't know whether or not they make the same error that Wikipedia had. Therefore, I have not contacted them.

Edited by Wesley R. Elsberry on Jan. 04 2007,12:20

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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,12:23   

The sun is setting on our long day here


   
deadman_932



Posts: 3094
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,12:39   

If you look VERY closely at that ship, you'll see the crew swilling grog, tequila and various other refreshing beverages in celebration of a voyage well-done. I'm the one falling overboard with a bottle of Bushmill's in my hand.

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AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism

  
Lou FCD



Posts: 5455
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,12:44   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 04 2007,12:17)
Quote

I appreciate your concern for accuracy in encyclopedias.  I too desire all scientific information in encyclopedias to be accurate.  This is in the interest of us all.  But to say that an article in Wikipedia, which is based upon information from arguably the world's most important cell biology textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, seems desperate, if I may use the terminology of someone famous.  I would also ask, "Have you have voiced your concerns about accuracy to the editorial board of Encyclopedia Britannica?"  My understanding is that they typically employ PhD's who are specialists (such as youself) in their respective fields to author the various technical articles.


Funny, usually when somebody like Hawkins has an ace authority, a quote is provided. No quote here. The question is, was Hawkins too tired to provide the quote, or did he not provide the quote because that would bust his bluff?

I don't have an Encyclopedia Britannica handy, so I don't know whether or not they make the same error that Wikipedia had. Therefore, I have not contacted them.

I have a set, and just for fun I'm looking it up now...

Stay tuned.

[EDIT:  I'm not finding any such assertion in any of the articles on genetics in either the macropedia or the micropedia, near as I can tell.  I have an older edition, though.  '94 limited anniversary edition, leather bound, gilded trim, very pretty.  :)  Just so y'know.)

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“Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?

Linky“. ~ Steve Story, Legend

   
JohnW



Posts: 3217
Joined: Aug. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,14:38   

Quote (deadman_932 @ Jan. 04 2007,12:39)
If you look VERY closely at that ship, you'll see the crew swilling grog, tequila and various other refreshing beverages in celebration of a voyage well-done. I'm the one falling overboard with a bottle of Bushmill's in my hand.

Over there on the right, you'll see afdave all alone in a lifeboat from the good ship UCGH.  Sunk without trace.

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Math is just a language of reality. Its a waste of time to know it. - Robert Byers

There isn't any probability that the letter d is in the word "mathematics"...  The correct answer would be "not even 0" - JoeG

  
Faid



Posts: 1143
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,14:59   

A (sort of) Goobye post to dave

(no boldcaps, I'm done with that-almost)

oh man. Even at the end of this tired old thread, dave manages to embarrass himself again- on Wikipedia nonetheless! What was that dave? "Recombination cannot create new alleles"?

Do you know what recombination is?

Do you know what an allele is?

Face it, dave. You can be many things, but "amateur scientist" is not one of them.
Sorry to (yet again) bust your delusions of grandeur,but you are as related to science as Paris Hilton is to Mother Teresa.

What happened to Jan Pezckis and his Dancing Macaques, dave?

What happened to all that explaining you would do about Sanford, Crow, the Schoen paper and it's supposed relevance?

What did your pal Sanford have to say about why, always according to his "theory", all those 'higher genome' animals didn't become extinct after the flood?
Or didn't you talk about that- just chatted about evos and how "stubborn" they are?

I could, of course, go on (and on, and on) looking backwards in this thread, dave. But what's the use? You'll just claim you "already answered", "sucessfully refuted", "beat down" or "demolished" all those questions, like the HUGE MOUNTAIN of ones before them...

...And, of course, NEVER GIVE A LINK. Or repost the same old assertions and blabber, as if noone ever addressed them.
We've come to know you like the plam of our hand by now, dave. And, I must say that, without a doubt, You are the most amazing creationist I have seen.

(oh and PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE quotemine this. I'd love to see you do it and then simply quote my next paragraph:)

You are the most amazing creationist I have seen, because I have never, NEVER seen such a blatant mix of IGNORANCE, ARROGANCE AND DISHONESTY.

You are, of course, ignorant: your complete lack of education in issues others know about from their highscool years is evident in every post. You are even unable to construct a coherent argument without relying on your precious AiG quotes:
But that's no big thing. Almost all creationists are, and those that are not, often declare that they had willfully rejected all their previous knowledge for the sake of blind faith. Nothing new.

You also are unbelievably arrogant: Your inflated ego always seeks ways to shine through. Saying you are an "amateur scientist", that "you are no expert in genetics YET" (as if it were possible you ever would be), an so on- and of course, combined with your ignorance, this leads to hilarious results:
Claiming to have "answered your own question", after a dozen people explain your stupid mistake to you,
Gloating about how "you bet" that "Dr. Russel Durbin" didn't know about Lysigony (Lysigony, for crying out loud), and about how YOU, a CREATIONIST, supposedly told him first,
And other instances too numerous to mention, except, of course, the most prominent one: The Poruguese Moment, when you "sawed off the branch", only to realize you were sitting on the wrong end... And ever since, act as if you "won", to keep your poor ego from collapsing in tears inside your head.

But, then again, that's no biggie either. Many YECs are arrogant: I suppose trying to claim you know better than 99% of scientists requires some amount of arrogance. :)

No dave, something else makes you stand out. It's your amazing level of blatant DISHONESTY.
At first, it surprised me; I couldn't think how a person that calls himself a christian would distance himself so much from honesty.
Then it got me angry; I thought that, in your mind, the fact that you were "on a mission" supposedly gave you the right to lie and ignore and distort and evade the truth, all for the sake of your God, and I resented that...
...But then I realized it wasn't about your God at all; you were lying to protect your fragile little ego. To maintain the image of the Knight in shining armor you had imposed on yourself, to deal with your inferiority complex towards those that are more educated and, well, more smart than you (or do you think it's not clear to all what things like, say, your mocking declaration of other people's titles and credentials, show?)
Nowdays, whenever I see you lie (and get caught lying, and lie to cover that up, and then lose track of your lies- see my SIG, dave) I just laugh and laugh. :D

But, I see it's going to end soon. This infamous thread will end, and AFDave the Great will leave us, never to return- save to make a cowardly hit-and-run post or two.

(Not that anyone's gonna ban you or anything, of course: You'll simply won't stand not being the center of attention. And we both know it.)

But wait: there's still time! All you have to do is to offer a single, teensy bit of evidence in favor of your "scientific hypothesis"! How about some archaeological finds related to the Ark? Some evidence or records of an Ice Age in the third millenia BC? Oh oh I know, some proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted! THAT must be abundant!

Come on, champ, you can do it!

...


:D

Oh man I kill me sometimes, as that other Dave would say.


Good-bye, dave with a lowercase d. You are a joke, as your YEC beliefs are a joke. And you know it. You know that there's no way you'll ever get them to be anything more than a joke, as long as the Civilized World, the world of Science and Reason, exists. And you know, deep down in your hearts, underneath all those defense mechanisms that keep your mind from seeing the facts, you know time works against you.
That's why you try to fool small kids and gullible minds. And keep praying for the Rupture, of course.

Good luck with that. You'll need it.  :p

--------------
A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:

"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"

"...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

  
Faid



Posts: 1143
Joined: Mar. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,15:14   

Quote (deadman_932 @ Jan. 04 2007,12:39)
If you look VERY closely at that ship, you'll see the crew swilling grog, tequila and various other refreshing beverages in celebration of a voyage well-done. I'm the one falling overboard with a bottle of Bushmill's in my hand.

Arrrr! Who took my Ouzo? No fair mates, just because I was on shore leave for New Years...

--------------
A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:

"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"

"...mutations can add information to a genome.  And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."

  
bfish



Posts: 267
Joined: Feb. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,15:55   

Boy, when I got back from Christmas vacation I faced 25+ pages of Uncommonly Dense and 25+ pages of AFDave. It was no contest which to read: I caught myself up on the goings on at Uncommonly Dense. I figured I wouldn't return to the AFDave thread. Nothing left to see. Then a comment on another thread said that Mayberry AFD was being closed down, so I figured I'd make a final comment.

When I was learning how to ski, I was terribly afraid that an expert skier would come zooming past me at 100 mph and cause me to crash. I remember wishing that beginning skiers were given special jackets, so the good skiers would be able to spot the rookies on the mountain and give them a wide berth. Then I got to be a better skier, and I realized that beginners don't NEED to wear bright orange vests. Good skiers can spot the beginners from a mile away.

Dave, you are a dilettante. You understand this a little bit, but you have NO IDEA how much a dilettante you are, and how easily the experts can find you out. They can spot you a mile away. My personal favorite might be your Adventures with Punnett Squares. Not much you can do with a Punnet Square for a single locus. Two alleles on the top and two alleles on the side. Four possible progeny outcomes. Doesn't look very impressive. So the spin-doctors at AIG gave you a Punnet Square with two loci (and another with three? I can't be bothered to look it up). This gave 16 possible progeny outcomes and looked MUCH more impressive. You talked about getting a genotype in one of the middle squares, as if that had any meaning whatsoever beyond what order the alleles were written on the top of the Square. And then, when someone pointed out to you that the Square represented TWO loci, you said, "Good catch." Good catch? Good grief. You had on your orange vest and were snowplowing down the bunny hill.

There's nothing wrong with not being an expert on something. We are all amateurs and dilettantes on far more things than we are expert on. But most of us have some degree of self-awareness of what we don't know. We don't walk up to a neurosurgeon and tell her she knows nothing about the brain, but we learned all about it on Wikipedia.

Dave, you have spent hundreds of hours researching various scientific fields during the last 8 months. That is to your credit. But during that same period, real scientists, like Incorygible and Russell, have spent much more time than that doing research. It's their job! It's what they do. Ask Argystokes how much time he spends working on and thinking about biology as a first year grad student. My guess is 60 hours a week. Six years from now he might have his PhD. Then he'll work 60 hour weeks as a Post-Doc for another three or four years. That's about 30,000 hours of focused work to be able to call himself an Assistant Professor. You don't catch up to that by doing a few google searches.

Dave, I've been reading this thread since Day 1, because you remind me of my brother. I suspect that he believes most of the same things you do. I say "suspect," because I don't know for sure. We can't talk about these things. Fundamentalist religion, that is to say a belief in one book's literal, word-for-word truth and the One True Interpretation of that literalness, is a profound barrier between folks who don't share that belief. My brother and I don't talk about much that is of any real import. I've been reading this thread to get an idea of what my brother believes and how he thinks. I hope I'm wrong that he thinks as you do. It's too depressing.

Dave, I'm sorry that science conflicts with your religious beliefs. But the science is the science. It's not evaluated by whether or not we like it.

As my last words on this thread, I'd like to thank the many folks who patiently tried to explain to AFDave why he was wrong, even after it was demonstrated that he was incapable of learning, that he actively chooses not to learn. Thank you Incorygible, JonF, Deadman, Eric Murphy, Russell, and everyone else. Wish I could take your class, Incorygible. I bet it's great.

-Bill

  
deadman_932



Posts: 3094
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,16:55   

"Hi, My name is AFDave, and I'm here to burn down the evilushunist House of CARDS!!

Oh, Noes!!

--------------
AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism

  
argystokes



Posts: 766
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:14   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 04 2007,10:17)
Quote

I appreciate your concern for accuracy in encyclopedias.  I too desire all scientific information in encyclopedias to be accurate.  This is in the interest of us all.  But to say that an article in Wikipedia, which is based upon information from arguably the world's most important cell biology textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, seems desperate, if I may use the terminology of someone famous.  I would also ask, "Have you have voiced your concerns about accuracy to the editorial board of Encyclopedia Britannica?"  My understanding is that they typically employ PhD's who are specialists (such as youself) in their respective fields to author the various technical articles.


Funny, usually when somebody like Hawkins has an ace authority, a quote is provided. No quote here. The question is, was Hawkins too tired to provide the quote, or did he not provide the quote because that would bust his bluff?

I don't have an Encyclopedia Britannica handy, so I don't know whether or not they make the same error that Wikipedia had. Therefore, I have not contacted them.

After the evidence in the discussion went up that your sentences were clearly more accurate than the original, I changed the entry using your suggestion. A couple hours later, it was changed back. Is that likely someone from wiki freezing a page during ongoing discussion, or is it more likely we've got a jokester trying to cover up THE TRUTH?

--------------
"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:39   

You know, Dave, you're trying to figure out complicated stuff like genotypes, alleles, recombination, meiosis, etc.

Why don't you try easy stuff? Like explaining why it is that

4,500,000,000 years isn't nearly enough to get from a few thousand species to a few million species;

but

4,500 years is plenty of time to get from a few thousand "kinds" to a few million species.


Especially since you now know that no "kind" on the ark could have been any more "genetically rich" than any other diploid organism in existence today.

Can you do that, Dave? In the next 30 or so posts?

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
Malum Regnat



Posts: 98
Joined: Dec. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:41   

Quote
For a good time, call Janie @ 555-UDoJ


What about Corporal Kate?

Is it my imagination or wasn't Dave arguing the exact opposite about recombination of genes just a few pages back?  You know, back when he was claiming that his 'friend' Francisco said that 'genetic diversity' had some way of magically slipping through a genetic bottleneck.

--------------
This universe as explained by the 'other' Hawkins

Blah Hi-tech blah blah blah blah ... DESIGNED.
Blah Hi-tech blah blah blah blah ... NOT DESIGNED.

;-}>

  
stevestory



Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:48   

Quote (Faid @ Jan. 04 2007,15:59)
(Not that anyone's gonna ban you or anything, of course: You'll simply won't stand not being the center of attention. And we both know it.)

AFDave needs a new audience and we need to move on to other things, so I'm afraid I can't let him simply jump to a new thread and carry on as before. Not allowing him to post here once the thread is closed will encourage him to set up shop elsewhere. It's nothing personal, and he's not being banned for misbehavior, it's just in everyone's best interests that we start seeing other people.

   
Wesley R. Elsberry



Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:52   

Quote

After the evidence in the discussion went up that your sentences were clearly more accurate than the original, I changed the entry using your suggestion. A couple hours later, it was changed back. Is that likely someone from wiki freezing a page during ongoing discussion, or is it more likely we've got a jokester trying to cover up THE TRUTH?


I don't see that in the edit history.

--------------
"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker

    
argystokes



Posts: 766
Joined: Jan. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,17:55   

Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Jan. 04 2007,15:52)
Quote

After the evidence in the discussion went up that your sentences were clearly more accurate than the original, I changed the entry using your suggestion. A couple hours later, it was changed back. Is that likely someone from wiki freezing a page during ongoing discussion, or is it more likely we've got a jokester trying to cover up THE TRUTH?


I don't see that in the edit history.

Strange. Well, I promise I did it, and now I'm going to do it again.

EDIT: When I went to the "edit this page," my changes were already there, but hadn't taken effect on the main page. Now it appears they have. Weird.

--------------
"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin

  
ericmurphy



Posts: 2460
Joined: Oct. 2005

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,18:02   

Quote (afdave @ Jan. 04 2007,07:32)
I am not seizing upon pedanticism.  I am refuting ATBC notions that ...

1) bottlenecks necessarily kill diversity, and

2) 4500 years (the time since the global flood) is too short to achieve massive diversity.

Dave, this is one of those really simple concepts that your religious fantaticism simply prevents you from understanding.

Bottlenecks necessarily kill diversity. That's why they're called "bottlenecks." If a reduction in population does not reduce diversity, then it simply does not qualify as a "bottleneck." A genetic bottleneck kills diversity by definition.

And when you're talking about a genetic bottleneck that reduces an entire population down to a single mating pair, you're pretty much at the absolute minimum amount of genetic diversity possible. The only way it could go lower is if both members of the pair are homozygotic for every single gene. It doesn't get much worse than that, Dave.

If you think that a single mating pair, even if it is heterozygotic for every single solitary gene, can diversify into an average of a thousand species in a few millennia, you're quite simply insane. An entire population, with immense genetic diversity, cannot possibly diversify into a thousand species in that time. If you think it can, I'd like to see some evidence of any organism anywhere who has diversified into even a hundred species in the last five millennia. As has been pointed out to you absolutely to the point of exhaustion, your "hypothesis" requires levels of über-hyper-super-macroevolution vastly, astronomically beyond anything proposed by the Theory of Evolution. So again, why is 4,500 years plenty of time for this to happen, but a million times longer is not nearly enough time?

--------------
2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity

"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams

  
carlsonjok



Posts: 3326
Joined: May 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Jan. 04 2007,18:14   

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 04 2007,17:48)
It's nothing personal, and he's not being banned for misbehavior, it's just in everyone's best interests that we start seeing other people.

What?  This board doesn't have a "friend with privileges" setting?

--------------
It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it.  We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

  
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