A stupidity of Darwinism: "There was never a time when there were only two humans!"

[Stuu]

I find it funny that you think that you've found some magic bullet with DNA.

I’m flattered, but all I am doing is explaining to you the work of others.

DNA is a chemical system for CODEING INFORMATION. INFORMATION only comes from intelligence and is not found "creating itself" in nature. In other words, INFORMATION always has a SENDER.

Here is some coded information that came from a sender:
https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/everyone/pulsars/pulseprofile.gif[/img

Looks a bit like a trace of the regular click you might get from a clockwork metronome, designed carefully by a clockmaker to keep strict time for a musician to follow. Actually it is the signal received in a radio telescope from a pulsar star, one called PSR B0329+54. Pulsars spin unbelievably fast and have a beam of radiation coming from the axis of rotation, so it works a bit like the regular pulses of light from a rotating lighthouse. The pulses are so regular that the discoverers of pulsars Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish nicknamed the signal LGM-1, for Little Green Men. The illusion of intelligent design is powerful, but pulsars are just stars behaving according to the physics governing the stages of their lives. There is no intelligence behind the signal.

Again, DNA is evidence of a COMMON DESIGNER and not "common descent from a single original creature".

It would help to move the conversation forwards if you could get to the part where you explain how you have eliminated common descent as a possible explanation for the universality of the genetic code. I think I have only read you denying it.

The evidence is self-evident to anyone that is has not decided to reject it first.

The evidence of intelligent design is clear in the signal graph above too. But it is an illusion that plays on how the human mind works.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

If you're going to call it a "universal" code, there certainly is an assumption built in.

That would be the same assumption as the one contained in the claim that all cows eat grass. The scientific inference is, based on all cases studied to date, that all cows eat grass and all species can read one another’s DNA. Is the cow that refuses to eat grass the end of the model?

That the "universal" genetic system might be implemented in very different ways among different groups of organisms.

So far, that’s disproved by the survival of transgenic organisms.

We're still not sure what you're talking about when you say "same system." What is that system? DNA?

Here’s what the system involves: The machinery of a cell can make a complete and almost always accurate copy of all the DNA in a cell nucleus each time the cell divides. So the same genetic code is contained in pretty much all cells. For the purpose of making proteins needed for life functions, the DNA is transcribed onto lengths of messenger RNA which are sent out from the nucleus into the cell (a bit like sending out photocopies of the main plans stored in the vault), and the RNA is read by a machine called a ribosome. The ribosome moves along the RNA strand and matches each set of three bases with a corresponding piece of transfer RNA that is carrying an amino acid. The amino acids are stitched together into a chain that folds to make a protein. Proteins can be the building blocks themselves, or be the enzymes that carry out the chemical reactions in the cell.

This is what all life shares in common.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

By your pronoun, 'them', to which are you referring? To humans or to non-humans?

Originally posted by Stuu
<NO ANSWER>
Why can't you answer this question, Stuu?

In #89 I defined ‘them’ as ‘the whole population of hominins that were in the process of acquiring traits that you might call human.’

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

Cows and whales last shared a common ancestor about 80 million years ago.

Just wish to apologise for, and correct an error I made in this reply to Stripe.

Whales and cows actually shared a common ancestor about 54 million years ago.

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

The scientific inference is, based on all cases studied to date, that ... all species can read one another’s DNA. Is the [species] that [cannot read other DNA] the end of the model?

No, but that does not justify the assumption of universality.

So far, that’s disproved by the survival of transgenic organisms.

:AMR:

Which have cases of failure all the time.

Here’s what the system involves.

Just tell us what it is called. Define it so we can analyze the claims based on your assumptions. We can get into teaching each other biology when it becomes apparent that remedial lessons are required.

 

[Stuu]

No, but that does not justify the assumption of universality.

It’s not an assumption, it’s an inference, and if you want to talk science you had better learn the difference.

I will happily eat my words if you can provide a single case of DNA usage to the contrary. I can save you time looking: you won’t find one.

Stuu: So far, that’s disproved by the survival of transgenic organisms.

Which have cases of failure all the time.

Transgenic organisms work because the ribosomes of the first organism can read the DNA of the second one that has been transplanted into the first. There is no failure in that aspect whatever. The genes that cause bioluminescence in fireflies can be inserted into yeast, and what do you imagine those genes cause in the yeast? Yep, no prizes: bioluminescence.

Transplanting a gene from humans into a bacterium is how we make human insulin for the treatment of diabetes.

Just tell us what it is called. Define it so we can analyze the claims based on your assumptions. We can get into teaching each other biology when it becomes apparent that remedial lessons are required.

At what point did I lose you? To where do we backtrack so you can pick up the thread of the concept of how DNA is used in the same way throughout all known life? How are you doing with the comparative DNA phylogenetic tree of life?

Are you enjoying this discussion of evidence?

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

It’s not an assumption, it’s an inference.

You assert a "universal system." Either tell us what that system is called or drop the assumption of universality. That'll help us avoid the fallacy of begging the question. :thumb:

I will happily eat my words if you can provide a single case of DNA usage to the contrary.

So it's DNA you're talking about?

Transgenic organisms work because the ribosomes of the first organism can read the DNA of the second one that has been transplanted into the first. There is no failure in that aspect whatever. The genes that cause bioluminescence in fireflies can be inserted into yeast, and what do you imagine those genes cause in the yeast? Yep, no prizes: bioluminescence.

Yeah, it can work, yet it commonly fails.

At what point did I lose you?

At no point. Also at no point did you answer the simple question. This ain't hard: You assert a "universal system." Tell us what the name of that system is. DNA?

Are you enjoying this discussion of evidence?

It hasn't started yet. :chuckle:

 

[Right Divider]

I’m flattered, but all I am doing is explaining to you the work of others.

No, you're just reiterating their bias.

Here is some coded information that came from a sender:
https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/everyone/pulsars/pulseprofile.gif[/img

Looks a bit like a trace of the regular click you might get from a clockwork metronome, designed carefully by a clockmaker to keep strict time for a musician to follow. Actually it is the signal received in a radio telescope from a pulsar star, one called PSR B0329+54. Pulsars spin unbelievably fast and have a beam of radiation coming from the axis of rotation, so it works a bit like the regular pulses of light from a rotating lighthouse. The pulses are so regular that the discoverers of pulsars Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish nicknamed the signal LGM-1, for Little Green Men. The illusion of intelligent design is powerful, but pulsars are just stars behaving according to the physics governing the stages of their lives.

Dude... that is NOT "coded information" that is just simple DATA.

There is no intelligence behind the signal.

Of course there IS intelligence behind the signal... God created the object generating the signal. Your bias bites you in the butt again.

It would help to move the conversation forwards if you could get to the part where you explain how you have eliminated common descent as a possible explanation for the universality of the genetic code. I think I have only read you denying it.

I have not "eliminated common descent". All of the creatures alive today have "commonly descended" from their created KINDS.

YOU were trying to use DNA to prove "common descent" of ALL creatures from a single creature that somehow came to life by magic (please let me know if that's not what you believe).

DNA does NOT prove "common descent" of ALL creatures from a single creature that somehow came to life by magic.

The evidence of intelligent design is clear in the signal graph above too. But it is an illusion that plays on how the human mind works.

Stuart

A load of baloney.

You need to learn the difference between raw data and coded information.

 

[Stuu]

You assert a "universal system." Either tell us what that system is called or drop the assumption of universality. That'll help us avoid the fallacy of begging the question.

Once again, I didn't assert it, I didn't assume it, it is an inference.

So it's DNA you're talking about?

And it's little friend RNA too.

Yeah, it can work, yet it commonly fails.

Can you be more specific, or give examples of what you mean? Perhaps demonstrate that the failure is related to the inability of a ribosome to read a stretch of messenger RNA?

At no point. Also at no point did you answer the simple question. This ain't hard: You assert a "universal system." Tell us what the name of that system is. DNA?

DNA is not the name of a system, it is the name of a molecule. Deoxyribonucleic acid. The system is as described in #102.

It hasn't started yet. :chuckle:

Let's keep working on it then!

Stuart

 

[Right Divider]

This is what all life shares in common.

Stuart

Yep... God is amazing.

That you think that all of this came into being "by itself" is also amazing.

 

[Lon]

It would probably seem more obvious to you if we had not lost to extinction all of the members of the subfamily homininae that looked much more like us than the other great apes do. We are the only ones on our line of descent to have made it. If the recently extinct 'hobbit' people of the island of Flores in Indonesia, the Denisovans of Asia, the Luzon people of the Philippines and the Eurasian Neanderthals were all still extant then it wouldn't look so isolated in our part of the tree of life.

So don't you ever ask questions? If something more intelligent than apes existed, they had a BETTER chance than apes to survive. It all begs questions, despite however 'expertly' done the speculation. While Darwin was intelligent, I see most of this as an 'intelligent' story than actual connections that exist. This is the problem with much of evolutionary theory on the grand scale.

Also, there are significant differences between chimpanzees and gorillas, and when you make the physiological comparison between us and chimpanzees, pretty much every bone and every muscle are placed identically, it is really just the sizes of them that are different.

Disagree. I've held some of these bones (casts) in my hands.

The whispers game involves humans who make copying errors but will at least tend to preserve the message in a form that is somehow intelligible, even if it contains a nonsense concept. At least the sentence will continue with some kind of basic language structure intact. So, have one whisperer tell two people, and each of the hearers then pass it on to two more. After a while you will have some variation in the population of messages being reproduced. The message that says 'Don't eat the red berries' might save the lives of its transmitters, whereas the message that says 'Don't eat the red cherries' might lead to the demise of a cherry-dependent people. Ridiculous, I know, but actually not that ridiculous.

Last I participated, nothing was left of the original story. The class was newspaper reporting and was done to check the veracity of verbal account.

Evidence is king.

...such as a puzzle with a lion head and horse tail end. It doesn't automatically mean both were the same animal when those puzzle pieces are missing. OFTEN science speculation ties things together (like brontosaurus). Speculations aren't that much of a problem, but if reports take on 'this is a true story' narrative, then it is problematic.

Opinion is irrelevant.

:nono: Just depends on 'whose' in different circles. Opinions shared are often confirmation bias rather than forensic.

The reality is often that the proponents of old, wrong ideas have to retire or die before a field can move on. It is getting better though as interdisciplinary cooperation replaces the obsessed scientist working alone.

I don't think so. There wasn't a whole lot of problem whether the earth was flat or globe when Christopher Columbus searched for a route to India.
There is a bans with unethical experiments but it doesn't stop those experiments from being conducted by the unlawful, etc.

]Wasn't there something about a platypus as well?

Yeah, but I'll continue to contest that 'time' had anything to do with it. While time is required to bake a cake, time is completely unable to 'bake' a cake. It is giving a non-participant WAY too much credit. 12th man may indeed win football games, but 'time' had very little to do with the win, just a passing disinterested (because it has no intelligence to assist) party.


From the Holy Wikipedia:

[/QUOTE]
Of course. As I said the first and the last look a lot alike.

No, because humans and onions are both modern species. Neither can possibly be descended from the other.

Not sure if this is true, living fossils virtually unchanged exist today.

Each species has its own ancestry; onions and humans share a single-celled alga as a common ancestor that lived about 1.2 billion years ago.

"We estimate..." "We speculate..." or "Our best guess..." would make the above an accurate statement. Quick question: In the primordial stew, why couldn't the same circumstance for one organism, have also created more at the same time? Moreover, since time is incapable of baking a cake, many nonChristians have speculated 'seeding' etc. You know why? Because they are asking honest questions and coming up perplexed unless they bought into an answer already and never really asked. There is a reason, then, that anybody, not just Christians, would question the evolution story with good and intelligent reasons.

So you are selective about the bold assertions you question. Isn't that going to leave you with a biased view of the world?

Stuart

This is a dodge. I asked YOU if you believe man came from the dust of the earth. Answer? OF COURSE YOU DO! Why find arguments where you DON'T disagree? What is driving that Stuart?

After that, sure I'll entertain 'bold assertions' and 'selective in questions.' Truth is biased. Unassailable? No, but we shouldn't demand glue is related to strawberry jello (agar etc. may be substituted).

 

[7djengo7]

By your pronoun, 'them', to which are you referring? To humans or to non-humans?

<STILL NO ANSWER>

Why can't you answer this question, Stuu?

In #89 I defined ‘them’ as ‘the whole population of hominins that were in the process of acquiring traits that you might call human.’

By your phrase--"the whole population of hominins that were in the process of acquiring traits that you might call human"--to which are you referring? To humans or to non-humans?

 

[Stripe]

Once again, I didn't assert it, I didn't assume it, it is an inference.

We'll be the judge of that ... when you tell us what you're talking about. You asserted a "universal" system. I immediately asked you to clarify exactly what you were referring to. Is it DNA? Is it all biological systems? What is it you are talking about?

And it's little friend RNA too.

So DNA and RNA. Anything else?

Can you be more specific, or give examples of what you mean? Perhaps demonstrate that the failure is related to the inability of a ribosome to read a stretch of messenger RNA?

The simple fact that a random set of genetic instructions can't be thrown onto any organism and expected to not fail.

The system is as described in #102.

I know what you're describing. I want you to name it. I want to be able to use the same words as you if we agree on their definitions.

 

[Stuu]

No, you're just reiterating their bias.

You should name exactly who you mean, and be specific about your accusation.

Dude... that is NOT "coded information" that is just simple DATA.

So in your dictionary, a metronome is producing data but not coded information.

Of course there IS intelligence behind the signal... God created the object generating the signal. Your bias bites you in the butt again.

So the signal you are receiving from me must be a signal from this god too.

I have not "eliminated common descent". All of the creatures alive today have "commonly descended" from their created KINDS.

Well ok, you could have said so before.

YOU were trying to use DNA to prove "common descent" of ALL creatures from a single creature that somehow came to life by magic (please let me know if that's not what you believe). DNA does NOT prove "common descent" of ALL creatures from a single creature that somehow came to life by magic.

Let’s just steady the horses, shall we? I’m not claiming to prove anything. I’m not invoking anything regarding abiogenesis.

All I have claimed is what I actually claimed: The first important piece of evidence for common descent is the fact that all living species use the same system to store and transmit their genetic code, and the molecular machinery of any one species can read the DNA of any other species.

A load of baloney. You need to learn the difference between raw data and coded information.

I would have said that both DNA and the pulsar’s signal contain coded information. In the case of the pulsar the machine you need to read it is a radio telescope, and in the case of DNA the machine you need to read it is a ribosome, or one of the flash new hand-held sequencing machines that they are using to read the genomes of coronaviruses.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

That you think that all of this came into being "by itself" is also amazing.

Here is what I actually claimed: The first important piece of evidence for common descent is the fact that all living species use the same system to store and transmit their genetic code, and the molecular machinery of any one species can read the DNA of any other species.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

By your phrase--"the whole population of hominins that were in the process of acquiring traits that you might call human"--to which are you referring? To humans or to non-humans

Neither, obviously. I refer you to my earlier ASCII diagram.

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

So DNA and RNA. Anything else?

Stuu: “The first important piece of evidence for common descent is the fact that all living species use the same system to store and transmit their genetic code, and the molecular machinery of any one species can read the DNA of any other species.”

The simple fact that a random set of genetic instructions can't be thrown onto any organism and expected to not fail.

And how do you know that? Have you tried it? What would be your criterion for ‘fail’? What relevance does this claim have to mine? Did I mention trying random genetic instructions and expecting a coherent outcome?

I know what you're describing. I want you to name it. I want to be able to use the same words as you if we agree on their definitions.

Common decent: different species are descended from common ancestors

DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid

RNA: ribonucleic acid

Ribosome: molecular machinery made of proteins adapted to reading mRNA and producing proteins from the original DNA code

Protein: long polymer of 20 different alpha-amino acids that acts either as structural material or enzymes that catalyse chemical reactions

Fact: something that would be perverse to deny

Living species: category of cell-based organism capable of life functions such as respiration, growth, reproduction, excretion, sensitivity to the environment, and requiring nutrition

Molecular machinery: ribosomes, cellular enzymes and structural proteins that carry out the copying and packaging of DNA and the preparation of tRNA as part of the translation of codons into ordered amino acids

Transmission of genetic code: replication of DNA and by meiosis or mitosis (or binary fission in bacteria) producing gamete or daughter cells that become offspring containing a version of their parents’ DNA

That’s pretty much all the terms I used in my evidence claim. Are there any you would like me to add? Can we agree on these definitions?

Stuart

 

[Stuu]

So don't you ever ask questions? If something more intelligent than apes existed, they had a BETTER chance than apes to survive.

You will have noticed that other great apes still exist. They don’t live on farms in the country or in cities. They live in forests. They are perfectly well adapted to their environment, despite the rate that us humans are changing their environments to make them unsuitable. Give a chimpanzee the challenge of learning to tie a shoelace, and they fail regardless of how long they try. Give a human the challenge of brachiating through a forest canopy, and you get the same degree of failure. One task requires intelligence that the chimpanzee doesn’t really need to possess, and the other requires upper body strength and coordination that humans have not needed for well over four million years.

It all begs questions, despite however 'expertly' done the speculation. While Darwin was intelligent, I see most of this as an 'intelligent' story than actual connections that exist. This is the problem with much of evolutionary theory on the grand scale.

You might need to be more specific about the problem you are identifying.

Disagree. I've held some of these bones (casts) in my hands.

To test my claim you would need to have seen how the bones and muscles interconnect on a chimp or gorilla. I did say it was a matter of different sizes of the same bones in chimps and humans, but perhaps I should add it is also a matter of different proportions: a chimpanzee’s pelvis is long and relatively narrow, which suits a tree dweller that occasionally has to knuckle-walk on the ground. The human pelvis is much shorter as an adaptation to walking and running on legs held much straighter.

Last I participated, nothing was left of the original story. The class was newspaper reporting and was done to check the veracity of verbal account.

It certainly is a telling phenomenon.

OFTEN science speculation ties things together (like brontosaurus). Speculations aren't that much of a problem, but if reports take on 'this is a true story' narrative, then it is problematic.

I tend to agree with you there. While modern science is a few hundred years old now, professional science communication is really a recent product of public service broadcasting and also social media these days. It is quite challenging to do it well and to represent the nature of scientific conclusions accurately, while also appealing to the human capacity to follow a ‘story’. Perhaps there should be disclaimers in the end credits of documentaries about the provisional nature of all such science ‘stories’ and their vulnerability to being destroyed by new evidence. Creationists could play their part in this and stop trying to interfere with science education in the United States.

Opinions shared are often confirmation bias rather than forensic.

That’s why the Royal Society has a motto to that effect. Take no one’s word.

While time is required to bake a cake, time is completely unable to 'bake' a cake. It is giving a non-participant WAY too much credit. 12th man may indeed win football games, but 'time' had very little to do with the win, just a passing disinterested (because it has no intelligence to assist) party.

Time is just the scaling factor in common descent. Those who deny common descent don’t actually deny common descent, because they are a very small minority of religious enthusiasts who are happy with descent within ‘kinds’ but they place an arbitrary time limit on it based on scriptural calculations by a 17^th Century bishop. Just keep the line of common descent going backwards into much longer time, and you discover that the ‘kinds’ have common ancestry too, just like their descendants.

Of course. As I said the first and the last look a lot alike.

Except the last is four times taller than the first, and has only one-quarter of the toes and a different posture.

Not sure if this is true, living fossils virtually unchanged exist today.

Yes, and an interesting phenomenon that is too. But neither onions nor humans are in this category. For that you want deep sea fish like lampreys, that live in an environment that has barely changed for millions of years, and hence has not imposed large selection pressures.

Stuu: Each species has its own ancestry; onions and humans share a single-celled alga as a common ancestor that lived about 1.2 billion years ago.

"We estimate..." "We speculate..." or "Our best guess..." would make the above an accurate statement.

You might be amazed how good the evidence for it is. It’s not very far off ‘We know…’.

Quick question: In the primordial stew, why couldn't the same circumstance for one organism, have also created more at the same time?

A good question. There is no scientific theory of abiogenesis, so what you have instead are different hypotheses based on known situations that could have formed a chemical system from which a simple primordial cell could extract energy. Sulfur-rich hot water around deep sea fumeroles is one such situation you could imagine that populations could adapt to cope with lower sulfur concentrations or different temperatures in order to exploit a niche within that ecosystem. Another possibility is the extraction of energy from acidity gradients that exist naturally in water systems near volcanoes. In our own cells, acidity gradients (proton gradients) are used in the production of ATP, the actual energy transfer molecule of our biochemistry.

Moreover, since time is incapable of baking a cake, many nonChristians have speculated 'seeding' etc. You know why? Because they are asking honest questions and coming up perplexed unless they bought into an answer already and never really asked. There is a reason, then, that anybody, not just Christians, would question the evolution story with good and intelligent reasons.

There are some here who would not only throw the baby out with the bathwater, but they are prepared to go further and throw away the bath and the house plumbing as well.

I asked YOU if you believe man came from the dust of the earth. Answer? OF COURSE YOU DO! Why find arguments where you DON'T disagree? What is driving that Stuart?

So then, when you question Genesis 2:7, do you consider it to be allegory in the manner you are inviting me to consider it? Or is it allegory for me and literal for you?

Stuart

 

[Stripe]

“The first important piece of evidence for common descent is the fact that all living species use the same system to store and transmit their genetic code, and the molecular machinery of any one species can read the DNA of any other species.”

Yeah. You said this. I immediately asked you to give the system a name. You called it a "universal" system. That would lead to the fallacy of question begging.

 

[Stuu]

Yeah. You said this. I immediately asked you to give the system a "name." You called it a "universal" system. That would lead to the fallacy of question begging.

What is the difference between me giving the fact that all living species use the same system and describing the system as universal? Aren't they just two ways of saying the same thing?

More to the point, is this marginal philosophical point your response to the evidence presented?

Stuart