No, I do not agree. Implicit in your statement is the need for “a cause” to exist before the Big Bang. To exist “before” the Big Bang means there was time before the Big Bang. I don’t expect you to know the mathematics involved, but can you show us that you at least have a conceptual idea of why physicists say there was no time before the Big Bang?
Au contraire. My beliefs are based on my best understanding, but as is true in all science – given convincing evidence that I am wrong, I will change. Are you equally open to admitting it when shown an important belief of yours is in error?
I was careful to use the word periphery – not peripheral. By that I am referring to the fact that the Big Bang involved conditions so foreign to what we see around us now that we have to go to the extreme edges of our science to try to understand it. Similarly with abiogenesis – if we assume life started here on earth, then that first life commenced billions of years ago in some microscopic place that was probably long ago carried down into the interior of the earth and melted by the action of plate tectonics.
I assume you are referring to our exchange in the “Evolution is a Falsehood” Thread. I clearly explained there that I am not conversant with many of the biological terms and concepts that are essential to understand and meaningfully evaluate the arguments relative to VSDMs. Clint Eastwood long ago taught me that “A good man knows his limitations.” I choose not to simply quote mine from materials that sound like they buttress my ideas. You seem to not impose that limitation on yourself.
Fascinating reply. Leading up to this you asserted that “if bad design is evidence against an intelligent Creator, then good design must be evidence for an intelligent creator.” In response I used the example of nature designing both good and bad wings to show how childishly nonsensical your claim was. But rather than acknowledging that, you respond as though the core idea under discussion was the role of mutations. Straw man extraordinaire.
I think you inject this mutational load idea so often because you have found it is something few people know enough about to be able to effectively respond to you. Earlier in this thread you and Jose Fly briefly tangled over this. I followed a link Jose Fly gave to another thread from earlier this year in which you two apparently had a more extended exchange on the subject. I did download a couple of peer-reviewed papers on genetic load that were linked. Although the subject-specific content in those papers was well above my pay grade, I did see where the authors of the paper titled “Negative selection in humans and fruit flies involves synergistic epistasis” stated quite clearly what the dispersion of “deleterious alleles” would look like both with and without the effects of “synergistic epistasis”. The more than a dozen co-authors of that paper concur in saying that the actual observed dispersion of “deleterious alleles” was mathematically consistent with the predictions of synergistic epistasis.
“Synergistic epistasis” is a proposed biological mechanism that Kondrashov (and others?) suggested decades ago may explain why mutational load has not been observed to necessarily lead to extinctions. It is also a term that you (and Sanford) have long denigrated as just a “rescue” device.
Arguing with me is going to get you nowhere on this, since I am simply a novice in this forwarding what I have read in the few papers on the subject. I would be impressed if you would contact one or more of the authors of the paper whose title I mentioned, and then you and Sanford show them what is wrong. Remember, their paper has already passed the peer-review process, so any counter-arguments you and Sanford might offer will need to be able withstand the same level of professional scrutiny.
Ahhh, yes, I anthropomorphized science. Not a good idea for me to do when I know you are going to focus on such an egregious error.
Hard to keep up with you. I thought we had just reached an agreement that you don’t consider the appendix as vestigial, so the “useless” argument is not applicable. But now you turn right around on a rant about whether being vestigial (yeah, I used the word) requires the organ to be useless.
Ok, so if the “useless” vs “vestigial” argument is your focus now, fine. I know you would love to demand that if Mother Nature no longer uses an organ for its original purpose, then for some unfathomable reason she is prohibited from using that organ in any other beneficial way. Please tell me your logic isn’t so crippled that you actually think that.
But, if it would help, I will send you a cute little puppy that you can cuddle with to console you while you are in emotional therapy because Mother Nature doesn’t play by your childish rules.
And, since you omitted responding to the part of my last post that most directly deals with the subject of this thread (creationists publishing), I will simply repost that part of your prior message here:
Nature does not care whether we are secular or creationist. If a scientific idea is incorrect, and that idea is used as the basis for testable studies, nature isn’t going to care a whit about the logic, the motivations, the sincerity, the reputation, the religious persuasion, the skin color, or what flavor of ice cream one prefers. Accordingly, within secular science when there is disagreement, then efforts are made to have nature demonstrate which idea is the correct one (if either one is correct). So if creationists differ with secular scientists on how nature works, then why not have the integrity to do the same - jointly find a way to see which is right? If there are fundamental errors in secular science, then wouldn’t it be more productive to demonstrate those failings rather than to form a little side clique that refuses to publish opposing technical papers?
