Biological Taxonomy - Kinds vs. Species (Linnaean taxonomy)

[6days]

Oh so you do believe in evolution! How nice.

Biblical creationists are excited how science helps confirm the truth of scripture.

Mutation rates, genetic drift, natural selection, adaptation, genetic load etc is observational empirical science. Belief is not required and the evidence is totally consistent with God's Word. We see evidence of a perfectly created genome that has been subjected to several thousand years of corruption/ mutations.

The common ancestry belief system does require belief, and is contradictory to both Scripture and science. Fortunately science often helps expose the faulty nature of this belief (junk DNA, backwards wired retina, pseudogenes and retroviruses, dim-witted Neanderthals, scientific racism, beneficial mutations winning against deleterious mutations, simple cells, Darwin's tree and the hundreds of redrawn variations since, eye evolution, recapitulation theory... and human embryos with gill slits, mutations as a creative engine, etc)

 

[Stuu]

Darwinists are so desperate for validation that they call everything evolution.

What do you call this 'branching off'?

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Mutation rates, genetic drift, natural selection, adaptation, genetic load etc is observational empirical science. Belief is not required and the evidence is totally consistent with God's Word. We see evidence of a perfectly created genome that has been subjected to several thousand years of corruption/ mutations.

Except there is no 'perfect genome' left, is there, so how did you observe that?

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

What do you call this 'branching off'?

Stuart

Adaptation.

Do try to keep up.

 

[6days]

Except there is no 'perfect genome' left, is there, so how did you observe that?

Stuart

Hey Stuu!! How are you?Good to see you back here.

 

[Stuu]

Hey Stuu!! How are you?Good to see you back here.

I am very well thank you. I am a non-biblical fan of science who is surprised by how well I can confirm the wellness of my existence.

Hope you are well also!

Have you ever observed a perfect genome, one that could be compared with the cruddy ones we have had to cope with since a certain serpent (which presumably was made by your god) encouraged a certain naughtiness in Paradise resulting in some kind of entropic process?

(And have you got a mechanism for that?)

Stuart

 

[Right Divider]

Have you ever observed a perfect genome, one that could be compared with the cruddy ones we have had to cope with since a certain serpent (which presumably was made by your god) encouraged a certain naughtiness in Paradise resulting in some kind of entropic process?

(And have you got a mechanism for that?)

Stuart

Have you ever observed the universal common ancestor that we are all supposed descended from?

I didn't think so.

Both creation and evolution are belief systems about the distant past.

Neither uses science in the sense in which we use science to get computers or airplanes, etc.

Neither creation nor evolution are repeatable or directly observable.

 

[Stuu]

<repeat post deleted>

 

[Stuu]

Have you ever observed the universal common ancestor that we are all supposed descended from?

No. My often retort is to ask why there is no photograph of the Judeo-christian god on the front of the bible, with a question asking why it is not possible to have one. So, if I now have to answer that question regarding the 'universal common ancestor' (or common ancestor population, right?) then I would say there are good reasons for having no photos: it was almost certainly a soft-bodied single-cell organism which won't leave fossil remains. We do have fossils which are impressions of soft-bodied organisms left in mud, but when we are considering something that probably existed up to 4 billion years ago, on the surface of a planet that has almost completely rearranged itself many times over due to tectonic plate movement, it is going to be extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to find remains of the actual one, and I don't think that is something that can be criticised negatively. I should be careful, because often enough the one claiming impossible is interrupted by someone announcing that it has been done.

Both creation and evolution are belief systems about the distant past.

Neither uses science in the sense in which we use science to get computers or airplanes, etc.

Neither creation nor evolution are repeatable or directly observable.

I know nothing about 'creation' in the sense you use it, and I suggest that no one does. And further you are not meant to, because the religious stories about creation have been invented for the political and social reasons that religion exists. Science and religions both require mystery: science explains the mystery but religion must maintain the mystery. That's why wrong ideas are eliminated from science (eventually) but for something that claims to be true, creationism has more wrong ideas than just about any field of human belief. Except maybe flat Earthism.

Evolution is directly observable by you if you have had the flu more than once in your life, or if you have read about superbugs in hospitals. There are bacteria that have evolved to feed on chemical materials that never existed until humans started making them in the past couple of centuries. These bacteria can be reasonably said to form a distinct population that has been permanently changed.

It is possible to observe some permanent changes in larger organisms happening quite quickly, but the most obvious examples of new species arising while we are watching is in single-cell organisms that can go through 10,000s of generations in a relatively short time, which is what is needed for mutated alleles to increase in frequency in a population.

I disagree that the science used to determine how the variety of life we see came about is any different to the science used to develop engineering technology. You would not deny the value of forensic science in catching criminals, I assume.

There are many examples of science where once-only events have been reasonably explained by science. Whatever the reasons the dinosaurs finally disappeared, it would be really perverse to deny that a large meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. The layer of iridium around the world in the layer that dates to then, and the enormous crater still clearly visible in the geology don't really have any other explanation. Everyday you look at the last second of the sunset as it appears to dip in the west, you are looking at an arrangement of the sun and Earth that had already finished more than nine minutes earlier. The sun has already gone before you see it disappear. Does that make you doubt anything about how astronomy describes the solar system? Many of the stars you can see in the night sky aren't actually there any more, or at least not in the form you observe. Does than mean you should deny the facts we know about them even as you look at the starlight that is still arriving from them? They are observable, but it's from the past and not repeatable.

Stuart

 

[Right Divider]

No. My often retort is to ask why there is no photograph of the Judeo-christian god on the front of the bible, with a question asking why it is not possible to have one.

Materialists always say the silliest things.

So, if I now have to answer that question regarding the 'universal common ancestor' (or common ancestor population, right?) then I would say there are good reasons for having no photos: it was almost certainly a soft-bodied single-cell organism which won't leave fossil remains.

Thanks for confirming that you have no observational evidence of the "single universal common ancestor" and therefore must make gross assumptions to support your belief system.

We do have fossils which are impressions of soft-bodied organisms left in mud, but when we are considering something that probably existed up to 4 billion years ago, on the surface of a planet that has almost completely rearranged itself many times over due to tectonic plate movement, it is going to be extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to find remains of the actual one, and I don't think that is something that can be criticised negatively. I should be careful, because often enough the one claiming impossible is interrupted by someone announcing that it has been done.

:juggle:

I know nothing about 'creation' in the sense you use it, and I suggest that no one does. And further you are not meant to, because the religious stories about creation have been invented for the political and social reasons that religion exists.

You have a lot of unproveable theories in your bag of tricks.

Science and religions both require mystery: science explains the mystery but religion must maintain the mystery.

Nonsense. Science is your "god" and therefore MUST "explain all things".

That's why wrong ideas are eliminated from science (eventually) but for something that claims to be true, creationism has more wrong ideas than just about any field of human belief. Except maybe flat Earthism.

Your personal opinions don't have any weight with me and your hatred of God is duly noted.

Evolution is directly observable by you if you have had the flu more than once in your life, or if you have read about superbugs in hospitals. There are bacteria that have evolved to feed on chemical materials that never existed until humans started making them in the past couple of centuries. These bacteria can be reasonably said to form a distinct population that has been permanently changed.

Indeed, the Bible says that the created kinds reproduce after their kind. No great mystery there as we do observe this all the time. That's called science.

It is possible to observe some permanent changes in larger organisms happening quite quickly, but the most obvious examples of new species arising while we are watching is in single-cell organisms that can go through 10,000s of generations in a relatively short time, which is what is needed for mutated alleles to increase in frequency in a population.

Once again, we observe reproduction along with "change" all of the time. This does NOT prove that all life has a single universal common ancestor. But I do understand that your religion requires one.

I disagree that the science used to determine how the variety of life we see came about is any different to the science used to develop engineering technology. You would not deny the value of forensic science in catching criminals, I assume.

:juggle:
Once again, we observe reproduction with distinct limitations and not the free-for-all that evolutionists dream of.

There are many examples of science where once-only events have been reasonably explained by science. Whatever the reasons the dinosaurs finally disappeared, it would be really perverse to deny that a large meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago. The layer of iridium around the world in the layer that dates to then, and the enormous crater still clearly visible in the geology don't really have any other explanation. Everyday you look at the last second of the sunset as it appears to dip in the west, you are looking at an arrangement of the sun and Earth that had already finished more than nine minutes earlier. The sun has already gone before you see it disappear. Does that make you doubt anything about how astronomy describes the solar system? Many of the stars you can see in the night sky aren't actually there any more, or at least not in the form you observe. Does than mean you should deny the facts we know about them even as you look at the starlight that is still arriving from them? They are observable, but it's from the past and not repeatable.

Stuart

:juggle:

You are really into juggling.

 

[6days]

I am a non-biblical fan of science who is surprised by how well I can confirm the wellness of my existence.

Glad you are well!

Have you ever observed a perfect genome

Of course not... We all have genomes corrupted by several thousand years of mutations. Genetic load is increasing. As geneticist JF Crow said our stone age ancestors would have had greater fitness than ourselves. Secularists call it a paradox, because the evidence is inconsistent with their beliefs. (Relaxed selection doesn't solve their problem)

 

[Stuu]

Thanks for confirming that you have no observational evidence of the "single universal common ancestor"

Any time. We certainly don't have the kind of evidence that would tell us exactly how chemistry became biology that time.

and therefore must make gross assumptions to support your belief system.

There are a lot of really good models of abiogenesis, as it is called, with lots of observations of chemistry spontaneously doing the kinds of things we see in living cells. But there is not a proper scientific theory of abiogenesis in the same way that the theory of evolution by natural selection is a complete 'proved' explanation for how life came to have the variety of species it does.
The original appearance of the first living species is very interesting but isn't really that important, in my opinion. It would probably become more important to me if creationists could give a testable explanation for how gods breathe into dirt to make humans, and so on. As for my belief system, it can be entirely changed by unambiguous evidence, and while that might not strike you as very reliable, I like the fact that I can claim to hold a worldview based on things that can reasonably be said to be true. Life from invisible beings breathing into dirt I would say cannot reasonably be said to be true.

You have a lot of unproveable theories in your bag of tricks.

'Provable', if you mean like in mathematics, isn't important to me. I could be wrong, just as you could be wrong. I can be proved wrong, which is always gives the possibility that I might learn something new, and indeed that has happened often.

But science doesn't deal with 'proved', it deals with probability. But, in the common non-scientific sense of the word, evolution by natural selection is proved beyond any reasonable doubt. It can be disproved, but creationists have failed over the past 160 years to disprove it. Most claims of creationism that have been tested have been proved wrong. The earth is not young, the complexity turns out not to be irreducible, the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not prohibit evolution in any way, and so on.

Nonsense. Science is your "god" and therefore MUST "explain all things".

Well the problem there is that science has not explained all things. But science doesn't try to hide from its failings, whereas already you have told me that I am a silly materialist when I ask for a photograph of your god, which I consider to be you hiding your god from a serious consideration of the question.

Your personal opinions don't have any weight with me and your hatred of God is duly noted.

It would be pretty insane for me to hate your god, wouldn't it.

Indeed, the Bible says that the created kinds reproduce after their kind. No great mystery there as we do observe this all the time. That's called science.

Creation.com has this diagram of the evolutionary tree model:

and this one, of the creationist orchard model.

I imagine you would agree with the lower one, and it does match what you write above. Had you considered that the two diagrams are pretty much the same, but the first one just starts further back in time, meaning your only objection is to what is claimed to have happened in time before the point you believe creation happened?

Once again, we observe reproduction along with "change" all of the time. This does NOT prove that all life has a single universal common ancestor.

No, what proves it is patterns in things like endogenous retroviruses. If a stretch of virus DNA gets permanently stuck into the germ cell line (sperm or egg cells) then it can be passed on along with the rest of the DNA. If you find the same virus DNA in the same location in two different species (and find several viruses with the same pattern) then you can know they shared a common ancestor more recently than other species without the same number of identical viruses. Build up a database of which modern species have which viruses where and you get a tree that almost perfectly matches the tree of life you get from looking at fossils. That alone proves common ancestry beyond doubt.

But I do understand that your religion requires one.

According to the data I submitted in my country's last census, I don't have a religion, and I think that means legally I don't have a religion.

Once again, we observe reproduction with distinct limitations and not the free-for-all that evolutionists dream of.

Can you give an example of what you mean by this free-for-all?

Stuart

 

[JudgeRightly]

The original appearance of the first living species is very interesting but isn't really that important, in my opinion. It would probably become more important to me if creationists could give a testable explanation for how gods breathe into dirt to make humans, and so on. As for my belief system, it can be entirely changed by unambiguous evidence, and while that might not strike you as very reliable, I like the fact that I can claim to hold a worldview based on things that can reasonably be said to be true. Life from invisible beings breathing into dirt I would say cannot reasonably be said to be true.

When your worldview inherently excludes the supernatural (which cannot be explained by natural explanations), it therefore cannot argue either for or against such.

It's the "against such" part that you seem to be forgetting here.

The Bible is your unambiguous evidence that such a Being exists, and that He created man from the dust of the earth. And that he created everything that is natural in six days.

Bu you can't accept that evidence, because it doesn't fit your worldview. And so the only rational thing you can do in your worldview is to try to rationalize it away, as if that does anything to make the problem go away that it is evidence of the supernatural, making up excuses that only distract from the problem that you have.

 

[Stuu]

We all have genomes corrupted by several thousand years of mutations. Genetic load is increasing. As geneticist JF Crow said our stone age ancestors would have had greater fitness than ourselves. Secularists call it a paradox, because the evidence is inconsistent with their beliefs. (Relaxed selection doesn't solve their problem)

But you are saying there is no evidence for the 'perfect genome'. So how do you justify the claim that it's getting worse? You have the 'after' picture but not the 'before'.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

When your worldview inherently excludes the supernatural (which cannot be explained by natural explanations), it therefore cannot argue either for or against such.

I don't think my worldview inherently excludes anything. You are presenting me with a word here, the 'supernatural'. You would have to say what that is before you can claim I have excluded it. Can you show that it is anything more than psychological effects within human brains?

The Bible is your unambiguous evidence that such a Being exists, and that He created man from the dust of the earth. And that he created everything that is natural in six days.

The problem with claiming the bible is evidence is that it is also evidence for a benign, caring god and for a brutal dictator of a god, and for a god that is deeply involved and a god that looks down with indifference, and there is no kind of arbitration. So it's not unambiguous. At least if it definitely said there was a caring, omnipotent god we could test that claim.

Bu you can't accept that evidence, because it doesn't fit your worldview.

Well it is not unambiguous, so it can't fit my worldview that the evidence you use to form your worldview should be unambiguous, that's true. But then I think you should take the same view. After all, what is the arbitration on whether the bible is an accurate historical account? If you want to use history to compare with the biblical account then the bible is wrong. The census of Quirinius happened in a different decade from the rule of Herod (as in the Herod meant by the gospels).

If you know there is one thing wrong in scripture, what stops the whole thing coming under suspicion? you can't say it is unreasonable to conclude that stories of men walking after execution are not true, and that it's not true that a human can be born of one parent, or walk on the surface of water. Your response to that will seem like you are invoking magic. You must already know this is absurd.

And so the only rational thing you can do in your worldview is to try to rationalize it away, as if that does anything to make the problem go away that it is evidence of the supernatural, making up excuses that only distract from the problem that you have.

I don't think I have any problem here because I think what you call the supernatural is a psychological effect, and I think I have good reasons for believing that to be the case. The problem of evil is not a problem for me. The problem of losing ones faith is not a problem for me. The problem of having to give up responsibility for one's wrongdoing is not a problem for me.

Stuart

 

[6days]

But you are saying there is no evidence for the 'perfect genome'

I am saying science helps confirm the truth of the Genesis account. We have the evidence from genetics and the evidence from the Author of Life.

So how do you justify that it's getting worse?

Science..
Genetic research.... Scripture.
Genetic load is irreversibly increasing. It is impossible that selection can detect and remove the 70+ slightly deleterious mutations added to our genome every generation. Some geneticists have referred to this as the population bomb with a long fuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33757/

You have the 'after' picture but not the 'before'.

We don't have the picture... We have the evidence.

 

[Alate_One]

I am saying science helps confirm the truth of the Genesis account. We have the evidence from genetics and the evidence from the Author of Life. Science.
Genetic research.... Scripture.

Blah blah blah. Assertions over and over. No evidence.

Some geneticists have referred to this as the population bomb with a long fuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33757/

A 1997 article? An article based primarily on speculation since genome sequences were not readily available until at least the late 2000s?

Regardless, yes mutations happen. This doesn't mean they are evidence of a once perfect genome. The author in the article you linked cites improved selection in the past to remove mutations. So, self defeating citation on your part.

 

[6days]

Blah blah blah. Assertions over and over. (Re. Science helps confirm truth of the Genesis account) No evidence.

We all have the exact same evidence. "In six days God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them"... That may be just an assertion to you. But, it is exciting times for Christians as science helps confirm the truth of God's word.

A 1997 article? An article based primarily on speculation since genome sequences were not readily available until at least the late 2000s?

The problem was well-known long before 1997.... And is still known in 2019. Modern geneticists are still proposing various hypothetical, and unrealistic solutions (as Crow did in '97 trying to solve the paradox with quasi truncation) trying to shoehorn evolutionary beliefs into the evidence.

Regardless, yes mutations happen. This doesn't mean they are evidence of a once perfect genome.

You choose not to accept it as evidence. God's word tells us that he is perfect, and that his works are perfect, but that his creation has been subjected to corruption. Genetics provides awesome evidence of the truth of scripture.

 

[Stuu]

I am saying science helps confirm the truth of the Genesis account. We have the evidence from genetics and the evidence from the Author of Life. Science..
Genetic research.... Scripture.
Genetic load is irreversibly increasing. It is impossible that selection can detect and remove the 70+ slightly deleterious mutations added to our genome every generation. Some geneticists have referred to this as the population bomb with a long fuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33757/
We don't have the picture... We have the evidence.

Where is the 'starting genome' then? The one you have compared with the current one?

Stuart

 

[Right Divider]

Where is the 'starting genome' then? The one you have compared with the current one?

Stuart

You can't possibly be that stupid. So we know that you're just acting stupid.