Primordial Soup - It's Still Mmm-mmm Good!

I just want to remind all ID/creationists that developing models of abiogenesis are another nail in coffin of their ideas.

It doesn't work the other way around. If a deity manifests itself tomorrow and shows everyone how the first cellular replicator was magically created, the theory of evolution is still strong (and ID/creationism is still wrong).

harold said: I just want to remind all ID/creationists that developing models of abiogenesis are another nail in coffin of their ideas. It doesn't work the other way around. If a deity manifests itself tomorrow and shows everyone how the first cellular replicator was magically created, the theory of evolution is still strong (and ID/creationism is still wrong).

Harold let's not rush to elevate a hypothesis to a theory.

Primordial soup -- new chunky recipe! Healthy cuisine for an emerging bioplanet! No Intelligent Preparation required, just heat and serve!

Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

Intelligent Designer said: Harold let's not rush to elevate a hypothesis to a theory.

Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

Intelligent Designer said: Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

OgreMkV said: Please ask a question that makes sense.

OgreMkV said: Please ask a question that makes sense.

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question ...

Intelligent Designer said: Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

Intelligent Designer said:

OgreMkV said: Please ask a question that makes sense.

My previous question did make sense. It just had an easy answer. This next question is kind a vague. Hopefully you can answer it. How stable are the 20 amino acids used to build protiens?

Dale Husband said: Again, ALL OF THEM are very stable! If they were not, we wouldn't even exist as organiams, since amino acids make up proteins and proteins make up US! Oh, can you be any dumber, PLEASE?! We need more entertainment now that IBIG is gone.

SWT said:

Intelligent Designer said: Why do you ask?

I am collecting information write a blog entry defending one of my early statements that was ridiculed on Pharyngula. I went out on a limb and said that "I think it's more probable that we haven't yet discovered all of the biological information required to produce humans and other forms of life."

Intelligent Designer said:

SWT said: Why do you ask?

I am collecting information write a blog entry defending one of my early statements that was ridiculed on Pharyngula. I went out on a limb and said that "I think it's more probable that we haven't yet discovered all of the biological information required to produce humans and other forms of life."

Dale Husband said: Oh, can you be any dumber, PLEASE?! We need more entertainment now that IBIG is gone.

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

Intelligent Designer said:

Dale Husband said: Oh, can you be any dumber, PLEASE?! We need more entertainment now that IBIG is gone.

Dale, why are you ridiculing me. Did I say something unkind to you. I suspect that I am just as educated as you.

OgreMkV said:

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

But did you understand it? Why not post where you found it and let us help you. I've got a whole series of peer-reviewed blogging posts about the origin of life at my blog.

Intelligent Designer said:

OgreMkV said:

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

But did you understand it? Why not post where you found it and let us help you. I've got a whole series of peer-reviewed blogging posts about the origin of life at my blog.

I found it here. Why would you assume that I can't understand that?

OrgeMkV,

I jumped over to your blog. Looks interesting. I'll read through your origins of life entries when I get time. How does one get a blog entry pier reviewed? I have one that I would like feedback on.

Intelligent Designer said:

OgreMkV said:

Intelligent Designer said: Disregard my question about amino acids. I found the answer.

But did you understand it? Why not post where you found it and let us help you. I've got a whole series of peer-reviewed blogging posts about the origin of life at my blog.

I found it here. Why would you assume that I can't understand that?

Intelligent Designer said: OrgeMkV, I jumped over to your blog. Looks interesting. I'll read through your origins of life entries when I get time. How does one get a blog entry pier reviewed? I have one that I would like feedback on.

Intelligent Designer said: OrgeMkV, I jumped over to your blog. Looks interesting. I'll read through your origins of life entries when I get time. How does one get a blog entry pier reviewed? I have one that I would like feedback on.

Dale I am wondering if you hate me. You've said a lot of unkind things to me and I am wondering why.

So intellectually delicious that even Julia Child approves ....

Yummy !!

DS said: And he wonders why he is ridiculed.

Wöhler synthesized the first organic compound in 1828 if I remember the date correctly. Whether or not they can recall these details, I assume that almost every regular on Panda's Thumb has known for a very long time that there is nothing magical about producing organic chemicals in the lab. Thing is, though, it's news to plenty of people, including, perhaps, Intelligent Designer. A critical important fact doesn't turn into an innate idea no matter how obvious it appears if you learned it long, long ago. One normally thinks of the difference between theologically oriented and scientifically oriented people as a function of their world views, but it's my guess that at least a good chunk of the mutual incomprehension comes from simple ignorance. There really are people who don't know what causes the tides, let alone the good news about amino acids.

Dale Husband said:

Intelligent Designer said: How stable are the 20 amino acids used to build protiens?

Again, ALL OF THEM! If they were not, we wouldn't even exist as organiams, since amino acids make up proteins and proteins make up US! Oh, can you be any dumber, PLEASE?! We need more entertainment now that IBIG is gone.

Intelligent Designer said: Dale I am wondering if you hate me. You've said a lot of unkind things to me and I am wondering why.

Intelligent Designer said: I probably should have defined what I meant by stable because I found this statement in the wikipedia reference I gave you guys: “in current models of early Earth conditions, carbon dioxide and nitrogen (N2) create nitrites, which destroy amino acids as fast as they form.”

However, the early Earth may have had significant amounts of iron and carbonate minerals able to neutralize the effects of the nitrites. When Bada performed the Miller-type experiment with the addition of iron and carbonate minerals, the products were rich in amino acids. This suggests the origin of significant amounts of amino acids may have occurred on Earth even with an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

mrg said:

DS said: And he wonders why he is ridiculed.

Does he? He comes here for confrontations and with every expectation of being ridiculed.

Intelligent Designer said:

mrg said:

DS said: And he wonders why he is ridiculed.

Does he? He comes here for confrontations and with every expectation of being ridiculed.

Being hating for what I think is something I experienced from a small percentage of people I used to know at church. It's not something I would expect from a group of highly educated people.

Unintelligent fundie death cult moron: Intelligent Designer said: How stable are the 20 amino acids used to build protiens?

wikipedia Murchison meteorite: Murchison contains common amino acids such as glycine, alanine and glutamic acid as well as unusual ones like isovaline and pseudoleucine.[3] The initial report stated that the amino acids were racemic (that is, the chirality of their enantiomers are equally left- and right-handed), indicating that they are not present due to terrestrial contamination. A complex mixture of alkanes was isolated as well, similar to that found in the Miller-Urey experiment. Serine and threonine, usually considered to be earthly contaminants, were conspicuously absent in the samples. A specific family of amino acids called diamino acids was identified in the Murchison meteorite as well.[4]

Intelligent Designer said:

mrg said:

DS said: And he wonders why he is ridiculed.

Does he? He comes here for confrontations and with every expectation of being ridiculed.

Being hating for what I think is something I experienced from a small percentage of people I used to know at church. It's not something I would expect from a group of highly educated people.

Dishonest kook: Dale I am wondering if you hate me. You’ve said a lot of unkind things to me and I am wondering why.

Being hating for what I think is something I experienced from a small percentage of people I used to know at church.

OgreMkV said: It really pisses me off that you quotemined an article like that. You might try reading THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE (quoted here for your benefit)

However, the early Earth may have had significant amounts of iron and carbonate minerals able to neutralize the effects of the nitrites. When Bada performed the Miller-type experiment with the addition of iron and carbonate minerals, the products were rich in amino acids. This suggests the origin of significant amounts of amino acids may have occurred on Earth even with an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Jim Harrison said: There really are people who don't know what causes the tides, let alone the good news about amino acids.

“Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that. You can’t explain why the tide goes in.”

DS said: By the way, I seriously doubt than anyone here can be bothered to care enough to actually hate you. Apathy seems a much more appropriate reaction.

wikipedia: More recent experiments by chemist Jeffrey Bada at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (in La Jolla, CA) were similar to those performed by Miller. However, Bada noted that in current models of early Earth conditions, carbon dioxide and nitrogen (N2) create nitrites, which destroy amino acids as fast as they form. However, the early Earth may have had significant amounts of iron and carbonate minerals able to neutralize the effects of the nitrites. When Bada performed the Miller-type experiment with the addition of iron and carbonate minerals, the products were rich in amino acids. This suggests the origin of significant amounts of amino acids may have occurred on Earth even with an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide and nitrogen.[18]

DS said: Maybe it is because you refuse to answer questions but still demand that others answer your questions.

Maybe you could change some opinions if you showed that you were actually capable of learning some real science. That would go long way around here.

I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

Intelligent Designer said:

DS said: Maybe it is because you refuse to answer questions but still demand that others answer your questions.

That is a judgemental statement. I don't have time to answer everyones questions so I have to choose.

Maybe you could change some opinions if you showed that you were actually capable of learning some real science. That would go long way around here.

Well I am capable of learning science. I graduated cum laude with a bachelors degree in Math from the University of Washington. So I can't be as dumb as you guys think. I also attended graduate school at the UW and earned masters degree in applied math one year later which is no small feat.

I have learned some biology. Also some physics and some chemistry and a boat load of computer science.

raven said:

Unintelligent fundie death cult moron: Intelligent Designer said: ...

Intelligent Designer said: Dale I am wondering if you hate me. You've said a lot of unkind things to me and I am wondering why.

I probably should have defined what I meant by stable because I found this statement in the wikipedia reference I gave you guys: “in current models of early Earth conditions, carbon dioxide and nitrogen (N2) create nitrites, which destroy amino acids as fast as they form.”

Intelligent Designer said:

OgreMkV said: It really pisses me off that you quotemined an article like that. You might try reading THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE (quoted here for your benefit)

However, the early Earth may have had significant amounts of iron and carbonate minerals able to neutralize the effects of the nitrites. When Bada performed the Miller-type experiment with the addition of iron and carbonate minerals, the products were rich in amino acids. This suggests the origin of significant amounts of amino acids may have occurred on Earth even with an atmosphere containing carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Don't get mad OrgeMkV. I gave you guys the reference and I expected that you would read it. No one here accused Dale of being disingenuous because he didn't qualify his statement. Can't we try and be nice to each other and keep to the facts. Besides, the portion of the article you quoted kind of begs the question.

In fact I wrote this cool little program that show what happens to coding sequences when they are modified. It might be an eye opener for some. I call it Genomicron. This was the blog entry I wanted some peer review from.

What would be cooler to shows though is what happens to the shape of protiens when their coding sequence is modified. I need to learn a little more chemistry before I can write a program to do that. I am working on it on it though.

Or you could just use the tools already out there: http://www.expasy.ch/tools/

Why reinvent the wheel? Oh, that's right, because then you can control the result. Whatever?

Why is it always computer programmers and engineers?

Do you really think that DNA is a computer code?

Good grief

Thanks SWT.

Also I am going offline for the night so don't wait around for answers.

Intelligent Designer said: I have learned some biology. Also some physics and some chemistry and a boat load of computer science.

OgreMkV said: Even if you disprove abiogenesis and evolution right now, it doesn't mean ID or creationism is correct. So far, I have not met any creationist who disagrees with that statement, and yet none of them have ever put forth a smidgeon of evidence to support their claims. So, how will you defend ID against me, hmmm? I say that it is impossible, even in theory, for anyone to determine whether a DNA sequence, RNA sequence, or protein sequence is random or designed. You cannot do it. If you can't do that, then how, even in principle, can you determine if a sequence is designed or not? Go ahead, I'll wait while you cowardly refuse to answer the question. And please, don't play concern troll games. You lost that right when you LIED to us. Now answer the question, support YOUR POSITION, if you can.

Dale Husband said:

OgreMkV said: Even if you disprove abiogenesis and evolution right now, it doesn't mean ID or creationism is correct. So far, I have not met any creationist who disagrees with that statement, and yet none of them have ever put forth a smidgeon of evidence to support their claims. So, how will you defend ID against me, hmmm? I say that it is impossible, even in theory, for anyone to determine whether a DNA sequence, RNA sequence, or protein sequence is random or designed. You cannot do it. If you can't do that, then how, even in principle, can you determine if a sequence is designed or not? Go ahead, I'll wait while you cowardly refuse to answer the question. And please, don't play concern troll games. You lost that right when you LIED to us. Now answer the question, support YOUR POSITION, if you can.

To be fair, you should not demand something from Intelligent Designer unless you have an idea of what would be clear support for Creationism or Intelligent Design. So, before we go further, could you give us something that WOULD establish Creationism or ID as more credible than any religious dogma?

OgreMkV said: Sure, as stated, the one thing that Intelligent Design claims to be able to do is distinguish a designed thing from a non-designed thing of the same class and size. I'm willing to provide DNA sequences that we know are designed (because a human designed them) and random sequences (using random.org, with appropriate start and stop codons) of the same length. If the ID proponent cannot pick out the correct sequence more than 50% of the time, then ID cannot do what it claims it must be able to do. Since they cannot support the claim that they know something was designed, then they cannot even begin to support any conclusions based on the 'design inference'. Which, of course, is what they do. Skipping all that annoying, work and research and stuff. If the ID proponent could, using a particular process, successfully pick out the correct sequence a majority of the time (at least enough times to be statistically significant) AND teach others the process and get similar results, then I would be willing to say that there is something worth investigating.

Intelligent Designer the clueless ignorant Malingering Malicious Mendacious Dishonesty Institute IDiot Borg drone whined and moaned:

Dale Husband said: Oh, can you be any dumber, PLEASE?! We need more entertainment now that IBIG is gone.

Dale, why are you ridiculing me. Did I say something unkind to you. I suspect that I am just as educated as you.

Intelligent Designer ignored me! Boo, hoo! Why do you hate me, ID?

All I want to know is why you posted the mined quote from Wikipedia. What did you hope to achieve?

Inquiring minds want to know. Tell us.

Intelligent Designer said: I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

Dale Husband said: Speaking of boats: http://www.despair.com/mis24x30prin.html

“I think it’s more probable that we haven’t yet discovered all of the biological information required to produce humans and other forms of life.”

swt: In fairness, Intelligent Designer has been around for quite a while and has been quite consistent in approach. I don’t see any signs that he has a hidden religious agenda and he didn’t melt down like Kris when pushed in previous discussions. I urge you to reserve your criticisms to things he actually says without adding a layer of motivational suppositions … if history repeats itself, you’ll still have plenty to discuss.

UnIntelligent Moron Lying: Intelligent Designer said I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

google capture: Investigator: Keith C. ChengPh.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center-University of Washington, 1986 ... ZEBRAFISH: The zebrafish is an inch-long tropical fish with rapidly-developing, transparent embryos and a powerful bag of genetic tricks developed by the late George Streisinger and his colleagues at the University of Oregon. ...

raven said: PZ did not go to grad school at Oregon State University. Which BTW, isn't a bad university at all in many fields. He went to the University of Oregon.

mplavcan said:

Intelligent Designer said: I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

So what. I have my Ph.D from Duke Medical School. I am a fellow of the AAAS. I am a full professor. Yet still, if I say something stupid, then the thing I say is stupid, regardless of my degrees, training, or GREs. Furthermore, no matter what my qualifications in my field of training and expertise, that has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of my opinions in a field outside of my training. Flaunting degrees in order to establish authority is a hallmark of creationism, and is usually a warning that an argument is weak or flawed. Casey Luskin came to our University and flaunted his degrees (and those of the people he cited), and proceeded to barf out one of the biggest piles of stinking bullshit I have ever heard a speaker give. It wasn't just wrong -- it was dishonest. I couldn't give a rat's ass what his degree was, where he got it, and what his GREs or LSATs were -- what he said was bullshit. Furthermore, though he was trained as a lawyer, the legal opinions that sleazed out of his microphone were so transparently wrong that even the folks without degrees could see what shit it was. All showing that no degree, no GRE score, and no amount of expertise in an unrelated field can overcome "faith" and wishful thinking. What you write is YOUR responsibility, and neither PZ Myers' GRE scores, nor the institution that granted you a masters degree make what you say any more or less valid. Even so, a comment like this drains your credibility like pulling the plug on a bathtub.

mrg said:

raven said: PZ did not go to grad school at Oregon State University. Which BTW, isn't a bad university at all in many fields. He went to the University of Oregon.

How DARE he call a Duck a Beaver! Da noive! (Or the reverse ... OSU class of 1981.)

raven said:

swt: In fairness, Intelligent Designer has been around for quite a while and has been quite consistent in approach. I don’t see any signs that he has a hidden religious agenda and he didn’t melt down like Kris when pushed in previous discussions. I urge you to reserve your criticisms to things he actually says without adding a layer of motivational suppositions … if history repeats itself, you’ll still have plenty to discuss.

We already know. He probably isn't kris, the troll with countless ID's who has been banned twice at least. But he posted a lot on Pharyngula and did more or less the same thing as kris. Never caught on to what was going on even after simple facts were pointed out 5 and 10 times. Quote mined. Lied, Played Wackamole. He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes. You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one. You will however waste your time. There are too many pieces of a normal mind missing.

Randy Stimpson Insipidity, Spamming Tiresome intelligent design advocate who repeatedly spammed some half-assed simulation he wrote that he claimed would show evolution can't work; really crossed the line when he lied in a comment and told other readers to visit his site because I was writing a rebuttal to his claims.

Oh, that dingbat is slamming us!

http://randystimpson.blogspot.com/2011/03/pandasthumb-ad-hominem-abusive.html

Read that and tell me he didn't make $#it up! Why didn't he link to the original references, like I usually do?

Why? Why oh why are there no reasonable creationists to actually talk to...

Oh wait, I just answered my own question. Nevermind.

Dale Husband said: Oh, that dingbat is slamming us! http://randystimpson.blogspot.com/2011/03/pandasthumb-ad-hominem-abusive.html Read that and tell me he didn't make $#it up! Why didn't he link to the original references, like I usually do?

Harold let’s not rush to elevate a hypothesis to a theory.

Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

Well I am capable of learning science.

I graduated cum laude with a bachelors degree in Math from the University of Washington. So I can’t be as dumb as you guys think. I also attended graduate school at the UW and earned masters degree in applied math one year later which is no small feat.

Please clarify that. I’d think that while evolution was still supported, the diety would indeed have proven ID, unless there was something about ID that I failed to notice

Dale Husband said: Oh, that dingbat is slamming us! http://randystimpson.blogspot.com/2011/03/pandasthumb-ad-hominem-abusive.html Read that and tell me he didn't make $#it up! Why didn't he link to the original references, like I usually do?

harold said: Dale Husband -

Please clarify that. I’d think that while evolution was still supported, the diety would indeed have proven ID, unless there was something about ID that I failed to notice

Well, Dale, I'm a bit surprised you hadn't noticed this, but it does illustrate the deceptive nature of the term Intelligent Design. Dale, I am "intelligently designing" this comment as I write, but Intelligent Design specifically refers to the set of ideas promulgated mainly by Dembski, Behe, Well, Johnson, and a number of other authors, all the most prominent of whom are associated with or have been associated with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA. Intelligent Design is a form of evolution denial. For example, Behe claimed that "irreducibly complex" biological structures and pathways could not have evolved. The claim that early cellular life arose on earth by magic, but that life then subsequently evolved, is occasionally made. The recent claim that bacteria arose on meteorites and then populated the earth is an example (since no explanation of how bacteria got on meteorites is offered a magical or unexplained step is implied). However, that claim is unusual. Why bother with it? If one's religion can accept physical reality, why not just accept both the theory of evolution and hypoteses of abiogenesis.

In case no one has mentioned, the Bada article is open access and is available here.

Doc Bill said: "intelligent" designer wrote this:

I probably should have defined what I meant by stable because I found this statement in the wikipedia reference I gave you guys: “in current models of early Earth conditions, carbon dioxide and nitrogen (N2) create nitrites, which destroy amino acids as fast as they form.”

Tell us, ID, why did you mine this quote selectively when the answer to your question was in the very next sentence? Explain yourself.

Stimpson complaining in his blog?

Well, I have a blog, too -- I'll show him ... I'll say absolutely nothing about him.

Dale Husband said:

Intelligent Designer said: Harold let's not rush to elevate a hypothesis to a theory.

Just be saying that, you prove your ignorance about science. A hypothesis, in proper scientific terminology, cannot evolve into a theory. All hypotheses, theories, and observations that are supported by scientific methods become FACTS! Go away!

Intelligent Designer said: In fact I wrote this cool little program that show what happens to coding sequences when they are modified. It might be an eye opener for some. I call it Genomicron. This was the blog entry I wanted some peer review from. What would be cooler to shows though is what happens to the shape of protiens when their coding sequence is modified. I need to learn a little more chemistry before I can write a program to do that. I am working on it on it though.

phantomreader42 -

Incidentally, the phenomenon you describe can be expressed as the difference between "dialectic" and "debate".

You don't hear the term "dialectic" much any more. It's an old-fashioned term for the use of well-constructed arguments in an effort to convince a reasonable skeptic. It's essentially one of those academic areas which has been subsumed into the sciences.

US culture, meanwhile, has massively adopted the term "debate". All disputes are referred to as "debates" in the media. Science supporters, interpreting the word "debate" to imply honest dialectical dialog (possibly due to the usage "parliamentary debate", but parliamentary proceedings are actually, at least ideally, a form of dialectic), often say "there is no debate". In fact, science supporters are wrong about "debate". Debate exists whenever someone disputes a point, however wrong they may be in doing so. (The media is even more grossly wrong, constantly implying that the "true" answer is somewhere "between the two sides of the debate", when it is always plausible, and probably more likely, that one side or the other is simply correct.)

But technically, debate means competitively trying to advance a position regardless of objective evidence. The sport of "formal debate" proceeds exactly this way. In fact, it is considered a major error to ever concede a key opposing point in a formal debate, no matter how reasonable that point may be outside the narrow context of the debate. Formal debate actually has an authoritarian flavor. Each side is limited to a fixed amount of time, even if one side is supporting a position which is far more strongly supported by evidence. In depth analysis of propositions is not a goal. And an authority figure or panel of authority figures arbitrarily declares one side the "winner".

It is no coincidence that right wing fundamentalist universities place heavy emphasis on competitive debate.

Minds which are rendered excessively concrete and authoritarian, either due to innate problems in cognition or personality structure, active application of brainwash, or physical trauma to the brain (broadly defined to include illness), generally gravitate instinctively to "debate", rather than dialectic.

Intelligent Designer said: Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

Intelligent Designer said: I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

derwood said:

Intelligent Designer said: Can anyone tell me how many of the 20 amino acids used to make protiens can be sythesized in a lab?

Can anyone tellme how it is that they know that the 20 amino acids used in vertebrates today to make proteins were the only amino acids ever used by any living thing to make prteins?

harold said: Incidentally, the phenomenon you describe can be expressed as the difference between "dialectic" and "debate".

Dale Husband said:

harold said: I just want to remind all ID/creationists that developing models of abiogenesis are another nail in coffin of their ideas. It doesn't work the other way around. If a deity manifests itself tomorrow and shows everyone how the first cellular replicator was magically created, the theory of evolution is still strong (and ID/creationism is still wrong).

Please clarify that. I'd think that while evolution was still supported, the diety would indeed have proven ID, unless there was something about ID that I failed to notice.

Frank J -

I'm going to say the same thing to you that I said to Dale.

There is a difference between "intelligent design", which nobody cares about, and "Intelligent Design" (ID), associated with the Discovery Institute, and with authors such as Dembski, Behe, Johnson, Wells, Luskin, etc. The former is just a common human activity; once again, I'm intelligently designing a comment.

The latter is a specific type of evolution denial. The works exist specifically to deny evolution, and DI fellows often refer to "evolutionists" when referring to their adversaries.

For example - Behe claimed in at least one work that biological structures or pathways with "irreducible complexity" could not have evolved. He offered the bacterial flagellum as an example of something that could not have arisen through evolution. At the Dover trial, ID-supporting "expert witnesses" (the ones who actually testified) all or virtually all showed up with material about the bacterial flagellum.

It is critical for supporters of science education to distinguish between "intelligent design" and "Intelligent Design".

One of the strategies of the DI is precisely to use an innocuous sounding term to mislead the casual observer about the nature of its science denial.

The scenario I described (deity magically created first cell and evolution proceeded from there) might support "intelligent design", which is irrelevant, but any scenario which contains biological evolution does not support ID.

To remind everyone, I don't advocate the idea that life began by magic, I was just pointing out that ID/creationism is worthless whether or not a good model of abiogenesis is available.

harold, I think I see what you are getting out now.

Thanks

and I agree.

harold said: Frank J - I'm going to say the same thing to you that I said to Dale. There is a difference between "intelligent design", which nobody cares about, and "Intelligent Design" (ID), associated with the Discovery Institute, and with authors such as Dembski, Behe, Johnson, Wells, Luskin, etc. The former is just a common human activity; once again, I'm intelligently designing a comment. The latter is a specific type of evolution denial. The works exist specifically to deny evolution, and DI fellows often refer to "evolutionists" when referring to their adversaries. For example - Behe claimed in at least one work that biological structures or pathways with "irreducible complexity" could not have evolved. He offered the bacterial flagellum as an example of something that could not have arisen through evolution. At the Dover trial, ID-supporting "expert witnesses" (the ones who actually testified) all or virtually all showed up with material about the bacterial flagellum. It is critical for supporters of science education to distinguish between "intelligent design" and "Intelligent Design". One of the strategies of the DI is precisely to use an innocuous sounding term to mislead the casual observer about the nature of its science denial. The scenario I described (deity magically created first cell and evolution proceeded from there) might support "intelligent design", which is irrelevant, but any scenario which contains biological evolution does not support ID. To remind everyone, I don't advocate the idea that life began by magic, I was just pointing out that ID/creationism is worthless whether or not a good model of abiogenesis is available.

John Kwok said:

harold said: There is a difference between "intelligent design", which nobody cares about, and "Intelligent Design" (ID), associated with the Discovery Institute...

Excellent distinction, harold. I got it the first time you showed this to Dale, but it is well worth repeating. The very act of writing a tnoughtful, well written comment is an example of an intelligent design, but does not have any bearing on the so-called "scientific theory" of Intelligent Design.

Sci Fri talking about this right now. Bada is on now.

OgreMkV said: harold, I think I see what you are getting out now. Thanks and I agree.

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Concern troll is trolling AND concerned.

Still won't answer the hard questions eh? Still won't take the simple step of actually engaging in discussion to reduce the snark directed at you, eh?
Still won't, you know, support your position, eh?

Fair enough. I hope you enjoy what's about to hit you though.

BW: You might want to examine the recent conversation (without your participation) on this thread to see how adults discuss things.

John Kwok said: The delusional creo is indeed a graduate of the University of Washington and has at least one sister who is a Fundamentalist Protestant Christian. So I don't believe his insincere claim that he is a fellow Deist.

Intelligent Designer said: Why do some many of you feel the need to insist that I am disingenuous?

OgreMkV said: ConcernFair enough. I hope you enjoy what's about to hit you though.

Intelligent Designer said:

John Kwok said: The delusional creo is indeed a graduate of the University of Washington and has at least one sister who is a Fundamentalist Protestant Christian. So I don't believe his insincere claim that he is a fellow Deist.

Is this an example of your deductive reasoning skill. Actually I have five sisters and three of them are fundamentalist Christians. How does that make me one? Why do some many of you feel the need to insist that I am disingenuous?

I probably should have defined what I meant by stable because I found this statement in the wikipedia reference I gave you guys: "in current models of early Earth conditions, carbon dioxide and nitrogen (N2) create nitrites, which destroy amino acids as fast as they form."

Intelligent Designer said:

DS said: Maybe it is because you refuse to answer questions but still demand that others answer your questions.

That is a judgemental statement. I don't have time to answer everyones questions so I have to choose.

Maybe you could change some opinions if you showed that you were actually capable of learning some real science. That would go long way around here.

Well I am capable of learning science. I graduated cum laude with a bachelors degree in Math from the University of Washington. So I can't be as dumb as you guys think. I also attended graduate school at the UW and earned masters degree in applied math one year later which is no small feat.

Intelligent Designer said: In fact I wrote this cool little program that show what happens to coding sequences when they are modified. It might be an eye opener for some. I call it Genomicron. This was the blog entry I wanted some peer review from. What would be cooler to shows though is what happens to the shape of protiens when their coding sequence is modified. I need to learn a little more chemistry before I can write a program to do that. I am working on it on it though.

Intelligent Designer said: I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

Inteligent Designer -

Well, of course, you refuse to answer any substantive questions (yes, we all know you don't "have to", but a reasonable person would), but anyway, here's another question that occurs to me.

Since you're a great genius and your chosen field is mathematics, why are you trying to overturn the main theory in biomedical science, instead of using your superior intellect to advance the field of mathematics? The great unsolved problems of mathematics should be easy for one of your talents.

Intelligent Designer is a perfect example of the old saw: "An education never made anyone smarter".

Intelligent Designer,

I asked an organic chemist down the hall and he confirmed my hunch: amino acids in the sterile, warm carbonate buffered saline of the primordial ocean would have half-lives in the hundred of thousands to millions of years before they deaminate

RW

MosesZD said:

Intelligent Designer said: In fact I wrote this cool little program that show what happens to coding sequences when they are modified. It might be an eye opener for some. I call it Genomicron. This was the blog entry I wanted some peer review from. What would be cooler to shows though is what happens to the shape of protiens when their coding sequence is modified. I need to learn a little more chemistry before I can write a program to do that. I am working on it on it though.

I wrote a football simulator that had the 49ers winning the Superbowl every year... Garbage in, garbage out...

Because this is the nature of the terminology "Intelligent Design" - It means "evolution denial", but to the casual observer, it appears to refer to "theistic evolution".

Leviathan said: It bears on a very disingenuous, yet effective, strategy often employed by ID'ers.

Paul Burnett said:

John Kwok said:

harold said: There is a difference between "intelligent design", which nobody cares about, and "Intelligent Design" (ID), associated with the Discovery Institute...

Excellent distinction, harold. I got it the first time you showed this to Dale, but it is well worth repeating. The very act of writing a tnoughtful, well written comment is an example of an intelligent design, but does not have any bearing on the so-called "scientific theory" of Intelligent Design.

...which is why we should always refer to the Dishonesty Institute's pseudoscience as "intelligent design creationism."

Intelligent Designer the moronic malicious malingering mendacious Dishonesty Institute IDiot Borg drone whined and moaned:

John Kwok said: The delusional creo is indeed a graduate of the University of Washington and has at least one sister who is a Fundamentalist Protestant Christian. So I don't believe his insincere claim that he is a fellow Deist.

Is this an example of your deductive reasoning skill. Actually I have five sisters and three of them are fundamentalist Christians. How does that make me one? Why do some many of you feel the need to insist that I am disingenuous?

Mike in Ontario, NY said: Intelligent Designer is a perfect example of the old saw: "An education never made anyone smarter".

Thanks for the "heads up." Interesting article.

Idiotic Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Dale Husband said:

Idiotic Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Based on your behavior here so far, it seems her assessment of you is accurate. Why not let robin clarify what program she meant? You already asked stupid questions and then whined when you got called out on your trolling. So why dig your own hole any deeper?

raven said:

UnIntelligent Moron Lying: Intelligent Designer said I should point that PZ Myers also earned his bachelors at the UW. For graduate school he choose to go to Oregon State University which hardly compares to the UW. I can only speculate that PZ might not have scored high enough on his GRE to be accepted at the UW.

This is just a lie. A typical lie by someone with mental problems. ID did this on pharyngual too. I don't know whether he was eventually banned there or not but he should have been. PZ Myers did warn him at least.

google capture: Investigator: Keith C. ChengPh.D., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center-University of Washington, 1986 ... ZEBRAFISH: The zebrafish is an inch-long tropical fish with rapidly-developing, transparent embryos and a powerful bag of genetic tricks developed by the late George Streisinger and his colleagues at the University of Oregon. ...

PZ did not go to grad school at Oregon State University. Which BTW, isn't a bad university at all in many fields.

RWilson said: Intelligent Designer, I asked an organic chemist down the hall and he confirmed my hunch: amino acids in the sterile, warm carbonate buffered saline of the primordial ocean would have half-lives in the hundred of thousands to millions of years before they deaminate RW

Yep, thanks for confirmation. Three posts, and not even an acknowledgement of anything that I have said, no answering any questions.

IMO, "theistic evolution" is a term that needs to go away.

There are a number of theists (like me) who (like me) accept that modern evolutionary theory is the best available scientific explanation we've got for the diversity of terrestrial life. Period. The evidence is clear, convincing, and abundant. (The fact that it's a beautiful explanation is an added bonus for me.) These people (like me) get called "theistic evolutionists". This would be, I suppose, an acceptable way to describe people like me, except for a couple of problems.

The first problem is, the term suggests that theistic evolutionists advocate something called "theistic evolution". This is often incorrect; in my case, the "theistic" applies to me and not to evolutionary theory. This leads to the second problem: some people are wont to believe that, as a "theistic evolutionist," I think that God intervenes, perhaps undetectably, the evolutionary process here and there to get a desired outcome. I don't think that that's the case; no divine tweaking is needed.

Intelligent Designer said:

RWilson said: Intelligent Designer, I asked an organic chemist down the hall and he confirmed my hunch: amino acids in the sterile, warm carbonate buffered saline of the primordial ocean would have half-lives in the hundred of thousands to millions of years before they deaminate RW

Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post.

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

afarensis, FCD said: In case no one has mentioned, the Bada article is open access and is available here.

SWT said: IMO, "theistic evolution" is a term that needs to go away.

harold said: There is a position, held by many people, which amounts to accepting scientific reality, including biological evolution, but also believing in some kind of deity (or deities). It's common to refer to that position as "theistic evolution". (That name is both awkward and imprecise, because it is sometimes taken to imply that evolution happened but that a deity subtly but directly influenced evolution, and at other times, merely taken to imply acceptance of scientific reality concurrent with belief in some kind of spiritual entity, divine being, or whatever. At any rate, it's what we've got to refer to that position.) In practice, there has been no organized effort whatsoever by any group or individual adhering to a "theistic evolution" belief to violate constitutional rights by teaching religious dogma as "science" in public schools. Which makes sense, because science does not directly contradict the belief system of these people. In fact, putting aside critiques of theism, which are not relevant to the point I am making here, some theistic evolutionists have been strong actors against organized creationism. Why do I bother to mention this? Because this is the nature of the terminology "Intelligent Design" - It means "evolution denial", but to the casual observer, it appears to refer to "theistic evolution". From 1999-2006, Intelligent Design was an enormously successful commercial phenomenon (it still is but post-Dover the buzz has worn off). Not only did DI fellows crank out massive numbers of books directly, but commercially successful works like "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" and Ann Coulter's "Godless" touted Intelligent Design. A lot of this success was just caused by certain people buying whatever books their preferred preachers or "pundits" told them to, of course, and a lot of it was even just due to bulk orders by right wing think tanks, with a fair number of ID books "sold" not even being unpacked. However, a fair amount of the commercial and media success can also be attributed to public confusion at the name. One strategy I often employed at that time was to explain to people very precisely that major ID advocates deny biological evolution, and use the bacterial flagellum as an example of something that "could not have evolved". I found this to be very effective - people found the example ridiculous. The same thing happened later in Dover. People in the court room eventually began to laugh as "expert" after "expert" put up similar powerpoint presentations of "the bacterial flagellum". It's important to communicate to people precisely what ID/creationists are claiming (and denying).

SWT said: IMO, "theistic evolution" is a term that needs to go away. There are a number of theists (like me) who (like me) accept that modern evolutionary theory is the best available scientific explanation we've got for the diversity of terrestrial life. Period. The evidence is clear, convincing, and abundant. (The fact that it's a beautiful explanation is an added bonus for me.) These people (like me) get called "theistic evolutionists". This would be, I suppose, an acceptable way to describe people like me, except for a couple of problems. The first problem is, the term suggests that theistic evolutionists advocate something called "theistic evolution". This is often incorrect; in my case, the "theistic" applies to me and not to evolutionary theory. This leads to the second problem: some people are wont to believe that, as a "theistic evolutionist," I think that God intervenes, perhaps undetectably, the evolutionary process here and there to get a desired outcome. I don't think that that's the case; no divine tweaking is needed.

Intelligent Designer said:

Dale Husband said: Based on your behavior here so far, it seems her assessment of you is accurate. Why not let robin clarify what program she meant? You already asked stupid questions and then whined when you got called out on your trolling. So why dig your own hole any deeper?

This is interesting. I catch Raven making a blatent lie and Dale presumes she is innocent.

Why not just be an atheist? It seems that if you were being honest with yourself you would become one. What is holding you back?

Intelligent Designer said: Why not just be an atheist? It seems that if you were being honest with yourself you would become one. What is holding you back?

SWT said:

afarensis, FCD said: In case no one has mentioned, the Bada article is open access and is available here.

afarensis's link didn't go where I expected it to, try this one if you're interested in the paper.

Intelligent Designer said: Harold, It's a mistake to think that all ID folk think the same way and have the same politics. It's a fact that I haven't read anything by Behe and others, only a few web pages of Dembski's stuff. The only substantial reading that I have done by modern IDers is that I read about 1/3 of the way through Signature of the Cell. I thought the book was tedious and boring so I didn't finish it but I did agree with much of what I read. It was my impression while reading the book that Stephen Myer did not consider evolution and intelligent design to be in conflict. I don't recall him making any statement about evolution being untrue. So you really can't squeeze him into the box that you want to put all IDers in. Nor can you put me there. Any one who has bothered to read my blog knows I am not a Christian and I am not a right-winger. Becareful not to stereotype.

Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

“If we take seriously the word-flesh Christology of Chalcedon (i.e. the doctrine that Christ is fully human and fully divine) and view Christ as the telos toward which God is drawing the whole of creation, then any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient.”

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West’s greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.

We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science. To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts. To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

IDer, harold didn't say you were a believer, nor a right-winger. He implied that the ID gets a lot of support from them, and that's absolutely correct.

Your problem is partly that when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. The rest of your problem is that ID is wrong. You're wrong.

It really doesn't matter a hoot who your fellow-travellers are. They make you look even wronger than you are, of course, but let's face it, when you're wrong, what you look like doesn't really matter. You're still wrong.

As for what harold believes about the existence of God and what God does or doesn't do, it's nothing to do with you or ID. Your enquiry is, in the classic sense, impertinent. You and it are still both wrong.

OgreMkV said: Yep, thanks for confirmation. Three posts, and not even an acknowledgement of anything that I have said, no answering any questions.

It was my impression while reading the book that Stephen Myer did not consider evolution and intelligent design to be in conflict. I don’t recall him making any statement about evolution being untrue. So you really can’t squeeze him into the box that you want to put all IDers in. Nor can you put me there.

Flint said:

Why not just be an atheist? It seems that if you were being honest with yourself you would become one. What is holding you back?

I'm curious as well. Even if we posit that there are patterns or phenomena for which no beautiful or abundantly evidenced explanation seems available, conjuring a god to explain these is a pure god of the gaps. But possibly his god is one who IS, not one who DOES. I suppose for some this is sufficient, but it seems a bit abstract and arbitrary to me.

Primordial Soup - It's Still Mmm-mmm Good!

Why not just be an atheist? It seems that if you were being honest with yourself you would become one. What is holding you back?

Intelligent Designer said:

SWT said: IMO, "theistic evolution" is a term that needs to go away. There are a number of theists (like me) who (like me) accept that modern evolutionary theory is the best available scientific explanation we've got for the diversity of terrestrial life. Period. The evidence is clear, convincing, and abundant. (The fact that it's a beautiful explanation is an added bonus for me.) These people (like me) get called "theistic evolutionists". This would be, I suppose, an acceptable way to describe people like me, except for a couple of problems. The first problem is, the term suggests that theistic evolutionists advocate something called "theistic evolution". This is often incorrect; in my case, the "theistic" applies to me and not to evolutionary theory. This leads to the second problem: some people are wont to believe that, as a "theistic evolutionist," I think that God intervenes, perhaps undetectably, the evolutionary process here and there to get a desired outcome. I don't think that that's the case; no divine tweaking is needed.

Why not just be an atheist? It seems that if you were being honest with yourself you would become one. What is holding you back?

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Malchus said: I believe Raven is correct. The couple of programs ID offered on Pharyngula were simplistic, poorly designed, and failed to simulate biological evolution in any meaningful way. But ID troll-pimped them until Myers grew annoyed. ID tol several lies about his programs as well. I don't necessarily know he's dishonest, but his ignorance of basic science is profound.

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Dave Thomas said:

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Bump for Intelligent Designer - I was serious when I asked you to back up your accusations of Raven's lying with data.

Intelligent Designer the delusional ignorant malicious malingering mendacious Dishonesty Institute IDiot Borg drone whined and moaned:

harold said: There is a position, held by many people, which amounts to accepting scientific reality, including biological evolution, but also believing in some kind of deity (or deities). It's common to refer to that position as "theistic evolution". (That name is both awkward and imprecise, because it is sometimes taken to imply that evolution happened but that a deity subtly but directly influenced evolution, and at other times, merely taken to imply acceptance of scientific reality concurrent with belief in some kind of spiritual entity, divine being, or whatever. At any rate, it's what we've got to refer to that position.) In practice, there has been no organized effort whatsoever by any group or individual adhering to a "theistic evolution" belief to violate constitutional rights by teaching religious dogma as "science" in public schools. Which makes sense, because science does not directly contradict the belief system of these people. In fact, putting aside critiques of theism, which are not relevant to the point I am making here, some theistic evolutionists have been strong actors against organized creationism. Why do I bother to mention this? Because this is the nature of the terminology "Intelligent Design" - It means "evolution denial", but to the casual observer, it appears to refer to "theistic evolution". From 1999-2006, Intelligent Design was an enormously successful commercial phenomenon (it still is but post-Dover the buzz has worn off). Not only did DI fellows crank out massive numbers of books directly, but commercially successful works like "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science" and Ann Coulter's "Godless" touted Intelligent Design. A lot of this success was just caused by certain people buying whatever books their preferred preachers or "pundits" told them to, of course, and a lot of it was even just due to bulk orders by right wing think tanks, with a fair number of ID books "sold" not even being unpacked. However, a fair amount of the commercial and media success can also be attributed to public confusion at the name. One strategy I often employed at that time was to explain to people very precisely that major ID advocates deny biological evolution, and use the bacterial flagellum as an example of something that "could not have evolved". I found this to be very effective - people found the example ridiculous. The same thing happened later in Dover. People in the court room eventually began to laugh as "expert" after "expert" put up similar powerpoint presentations of "the bacterial flagellum". It's important to communicate to people precisely what ID/creationists are claiming (and denying).

Harold, It's a mistake to think that all ID folk think the same way and have the same politics. It's a fact that I haven't read anything by Behe and others, only a few web pages of Dembski's stuff. The only substantial reading that I have done by modern IDers is that I read about 1/3 of the way through Signature of the Cell. I thought the book was tedious and boring so I didn't finish it but I did agree with much of what I read. It was my impression while reading the book that Stephen Myer did not consider evolution and intelligent design to be in conflict. I don't recall him making any statement about evolution being untrue. So you really can't squeeze him into the box that you want to put all IDers in. Nor can you put me there. Any one who has bothered to read my blog knows I am not a Christian and I am not a right-winger. Becareful not to stereotype.

What's really funny, is that in almost every way but one, I'm more conservative than probably anyone here... including ID-dude (Can't call him IDguy... that's JoeG).

That one way that I'm different though is very important. I don't want a theocracy in the US.

Dale Husband said:

Intelligent Designer said:

Dale Husband said: Based on your behavior here so far, it seems her assessment of you is accurate. Why not let robin clarify what program she meant? You already asked stupid questions and then whined when you got called out on your trolling. So why dig your own hole any deeper?

This is interesting. I catch Raven making a blatent lie and Dale presumes she is innocent.

So would any court of law, buttwiper. The burden of proof is on your showing that she lied by producing any facts that she denied or assertions she made that contradict clear facts. Which you haven't done yet. I'm still waiting for her to return to clarify her remarks. So far on this blog, her track record outstrips yours by a light-year, so for the moment I think she has more credibility than you.

OgreMkV said: What's really funny, is that in almost every way but one, I'm more conservative than probably anyone here... including ID-dude (Can't call him IDguy... that's JoeG). That one way that I'm different though is very important. I don't want a theocracy in the US.

Intelligent Designer the malingering malicious mendacious delusional Dishonesty Institute IDiot Borg drone whined and moaned:

John Kwok said: The delusional creo is indeed a graduate of the University of Washington and has at least one sister who is a Fundamentalist Protestant Christian. So I don't believe his insincere claim that he is a fellow Deist.

Is this an example of your deductive reasoning skill. Actually I have five sisters and three of them are fundamentalist Christians. How does that make me one? Why do some many of you feel the need to insist that I am disingenuous?

John Kwok said:

Intelligent Designer the malingering malicious mendacious delusional Dishonesty Institute IDiot Borg drone whined and moaned:

John Kwok said: The delusional creo is indeed a graduate of the University of Washington and has at least one sister who is a Fundamentalist Protestant Christian. So I don't believe his insincere claim that he is a fellow Deist.

Is this an example of your deductive reasoning skill. Actually I have five sisters and three of them are fundamentalist Christians. How does that make me one? Why do some many of you feel the need to insist that I am disingenuous?

Because you are disingenuous, you pathetic piece of living manure. Didn't Christ say something about he who is without sin should cast the first stone? In plain English, dummy, what gives you the right to accuse raven and others of being liars when virtually every comment you post here is an outright lie born of our own mendacity and ignorance?

It’s a mistake to think that all ID folk think the same way and have the same politics. It’s a fact that I haven’t read anything by Behe and others, only a few web pages of Dembski’s stuff.

The only substantial reading that I have done by modern IDers is that I read about 1/3 of the way through Signature of the Cell. I thought the book was tedious and boring so I didn’t finish it but I did agree with much of what I read. It was my impression while reading the book that Stephen Myer did not consider evolution and intelligent design to be in conflict. I don’t recall him making any statement about evolution being untrue. So you really can’t squeeze him into the box that you want to put all IDers in.

Nor can you put me there.

John Kwok and OgreMkV -

Just remember, if you don't want "The Handmaid's Tale", don't vote for it.

I'm lucky. There is no major party that represents my views very well, to put it mildly.

BUT one of the two major parties has a few members who represent my views to a decent degree, and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who represents my views with a high degree of overlap (no, I am not from Vermont), usually votes with that party.

At least there is a party that tolerates some members and allies who come close to representing my views. It isn't much, of course.

The other major party seems to have been entirely taken over by either theocrats, or people who are willing to compromise with theocrats.

harold said: John Kwok and OgreMkV - Just remember, if you don't want "The Handmaid's Tale", don't vote for it. I'm lucky. There is no major party that represents my views very well, to put it mildly. BUT one of the two major parties has a few members who represent my views to a decent degree, and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who represents my views with a high degree of overlap (no, I am not from Vermont), usually votes with that party. At least there is a party that tolerates some members and allies who come close to representing my views. It isn't much, of course. The other major party seems to have been entirely taken over by either theocrats, or people who are willing to compromise with theocrats.

harold said: John Kwok and OgreMkV - Just remember, if you don't want "The Handmaid's Tale", don't vote for it. I'm lucky. There is no major party that represents my views very well, to put it mildly. BUT one of the two major parties has a few members who represent my views to a decent degree, and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who represents my views with a high degree of overlap (no, I am not from Vermont), usually votes with that party. At least there is a party that tolerates some members and allies who come close to representing my views. It isn't much, of course. The other major party seems to have been entirely taken over by either theocrats, or people who are willing to compromise with theocrats.

Ogre -

One final comment.

Paradoxically, we may not be as far apart as it would seem. Before George W. Bush was elected I had relatively few problems with honest conservatives.

I'm in favor of a capitalist system as opposed to a command economy, I'm against government waste (to the best of my knowledge everyone is), and if you're not a theocrat, it's plausible that my strong support for full legal rights for my gay fellow citizens (and for all my other fellow citizens) and my support for things like legalizing marijuana, wouldn't bother you.

I do strongly support social programs for the needy and universal access to health care, but I will remind you that the former make up a fairly small proportion of overall government spending, and that we already provide Medicare to all of the oldest and sickest members of the population. I also support strong public education from kindergarten to the doctoral level, and honest regulations to prevent destruction of the common environment. However, that last one is just free market capitalistic common sense. We all breathe the same air. Either people should be restrained from polluting it for their own selfish purposes, or they should have to bear all the costs associated with their own actions.

I used to think that libertarians were closer to me than they were to authoritarian theocrats.

I lost my patience with libertarians when they explicitly or implicitly supported destruction of human rights and wars of aggression under George W. Bush. And yes, I agree, now that Bush/Cheney established the precedent, the following administration has not moved strongly to reverse it - all the more reason not to establish it in the first place. Of course we are now stuck with a more "imperial" presidency than we used to have, and the blame is shared, but not equally shared - the guy who started it is more to blame.

If libertarians are against both imprisonment without trial, and food stamps, and I'm only against the first one, that's one thing. But if libertarians prioritize being against food stamps and wind hypocritical justifications for imprisonment without trial, for example, well that's very different.

I'd love to get back to being able to dialog and work with reasonable conservatives, but the events of the last ten years have made me much more cynical.

This will be my final comment on this topic.

harold,

I agree with everything you said 100%.

Intelligent Designer said:

RWilson said: Intelligent Designer, I asked an organic chemist down the hall and he confirmed my hunch: amino acids in the sterile, warm carbonate buffered saline of the primordial ocean would have half-lives in the hundred of thousands to millions of years before they deaminate RW

Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post.

This is amazing!

Primordial Soup With Julia Child

IDer said;
Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post.

IDer,

No prob. Things can get pretty nasty on here and I dont think its necessary. I dont think most IDers are dishonest but I understand why it appears that way to the science advocates. Its had to do with the initial assumptions: Scientists make only the assumption that the world is understandable, but ID advocates start with the premise that the universe was made by God. They look for individual scientific facts to disprove that which will never happen of course. It seems to me that when one looks at the totality of scientific evidence objectively there is no evidence for intelligent intervention in the natural world and overwhelming evidence for evolution

Rwilson

Stanton said:

Dave Thomas said:

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Bump for Intelligent Designer - I was serious when I asked you to back up your accusations of Raven's lying with data.

RWilson said: IDer said; Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post. IDer, No prob. Things can get pretty nasty on here and I dont think its necessary. I dont think most IDers are dishonest but I understand why it appears that way to the science advocates. Its had to do with the initial assumptions: Scientists make only the assumption that the world is understandable, but ID advocates start with the premise that the universe was made by God. They look for individual scientific facts to disprove that which will never happen of course. It seems to me that when one looks at the totality of scientific evidence objectively there is no evidence for intelligent intervention in the natural world and overwhelming evidence for evolution Rwilson

OgreMkV said:

RWilson said: IDer said; Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post. IDer, No prob. Things can get pretty nasty on here and I dont think its necessary. I dont think most IDers are dishonest but I understand why it appears that way to the science advocates. Its had to do with the initial assumptions: Scientists make only the assumption that the world is understandable, but ID advocates start with the premise that the universe was made by God. They look for individual scientific facts to disprove that which will never happen of course. It seems to me that when one looks at the totality of scientific evidence objectively there is no evidence for intelligent intervention in the natural world and overwhelming evidence for evolution Rwilson

I disagree RW. You can't change a mind with reason, if it didn't use reason in the first place. The only thing left is to correct everything that they say, point out where they have lied to support their position, ask them questions that they cannot answer about their position, and then laugh at them. Yes, I agree that we are coming at this from two totally different points of view. They think we have an organization like the church and we worship pope Darwin and Bishops Dawkins and Myer or whatever. We can't understand why they don't understand simple reasoning and logic. There will never be a way for the fundamentalist and the scientist to understand one another. So, when we get to that point, we're pretty much reduced to pointing out all the problems that there religion has caused in the hope that more and more people abandon fundamentalist religions and the whole thing will go away, preferably forever. That will never happen, of course, because, just like now, there are sheep that want to be led and there are wolves that want to take advantage of them. It's the way of social animals (which is really funny when you think about it. We really aren't any different from chimpanzee society.)

RWilson said: Ogre, I dont think we can ever change their minds no matter what evidence is presented because they start from position that there is a God. That can never be disproved. I just dont think the nastiness is necessary. I dont think IDers lie: they're 100% convinced they're correct

OgreMkV said: I think they can lie. ID's quotemine of Wikipedia is a perfect example. He lied by omission, leaving the impression that the article stated something that it did not. That's a lie.

I prefer to avoid the whole question of whether or not Creationists know they're saying things that aren't true; I just call them false witnesses, and point out that they're bearing false witness. Since the Bible does tell us that "thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of God's Commandments, I think it makes a good deal of sense to use that phrase when calling a Creationist out on their many, many falsehoods. Sure, calling a Creationist a 'false witness' isn't likely to get that Creationist to abandon his lies... but it may have a salutary effect on people who read the posts at whichever later date.

It is critical for supporters of science education to distinguish between “intelligent design” and “Intelligent Design”. One of the strategies of the DI is precisely to use an innocuous sounding term to mislead the casual observer about the nature of its science denial.

— harold

RWilson said:

OgreMkV said:

RWilson said: IDer said; Thanks RW. This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post. IDer, No prob. Things can get pretty nasty on here and I dont think its necessary. I dont think most IDers are dishonest but I understand why it appears that way to the science advocates. Its had to do with the initial assumptions: Scientists make only the assumption that the world is understandable, but ID advocates start with the premise that the universe was made by God. They look for individual scientific facts to disprove that which will never happen of course. It seems to me that when one looks at the totality of scientific evidence objectively there is no evidence for intelligent intervention in the natural world and overwhelming evidence for evolution Rwilson

I disagree RW. You can't change a mind with reason, if it didn't use reason in the first place. The only thing left is to correct everything that they say, point out where they have lied to support their position, ask them questions that they cannot answer about their position, and then laugh at them. Yes, I agree that we are coming at this from two totally different points of view. They think we have an organization like the church and we worship pope Darwin and Bishops Dawkins and Myer or whatever. We can't understand why they don't understand simple reasoning and logic. There will never be a way for the fundamentalist and the scientist to understand one another. So, when we get to that point, we're pretty much reduced to pointing out all the problems that there religion has caused in the hope that more and more people abandon fundamentalist religions and the whole thing will go away, preferably forever. That will never happen, of course, because, just like now, there are sheep that want to be led and there are wolves that want to take advantage of them. It's the way of social animals (which is really funny when you think about it. We really aren't any different from chimpanzee society.)

Ogre, I dont think we can ever change their minds no matter what evidence is presented because they start from position that there is a God. That can never be disproved. I just dont think the nastiness is necessary. I dont think IDers lie: they're 100% convinced they're correct

Here is a link to a science fiction story with intelligent design and panspermia elements. I took a course in physical anthropology from the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfusion_(short_story)

Panspermia is an old idea, but it just pushes the question of origin of living things to out there somewhere. Because the only place we are sure there is life is planet earth, the most parsimonious (but not necessarily correct) assumption is that life originated here.

We do not know how life originated. if it was a supernatural event, it is outside the scope of science. If we assume, however, that it was a natural event, we can then study the matter. Even if our assumption is incorrect, we will learn a lot of interesting things from our effort.

Jim Thomerson said: Panspermia is an old idea, but it just pushes the question of origin of living things to out there somewhere. Because the only place we are sure there is life is planet earth, the most parsimonious (but not necessarily correct) assumption is that life originated here.

This is one of the few intelligent comments I have read on this post. IDer, No prob. Things can get pretty nasty on here and I dont think its necessary.

I dont think we can ever change their minds no matter what evidence is presented

because they start from position that there is a God. That can never be disproved.

I just dont think the nastiness is necessary.

I dont think IDers lie: they’re 100% convinced they’re correct

harold said: One way to provoke people into using insulting language is to frustrate them. One way to frustrate people is to present the same false arguments over and over again. One common false argument, often used to deliberately frustrate people, is to create a false equivalence between ID/creationism science denial and "belief in God", and by extension, to create a false equivalence between accepting scientific reality and rejection of religious beliefs. Is it perhaps rude to advance false arguments that have been repeatedly shown to be false, and that are actually obviously false to a reasonable observer by inspection?

Dale Husband said: A classic example of falsehoods being made to prop up an unfounded claim is the attempt to explain away the two different genealogies of Jesus in the Gosples of Matthew and Luke (snip) specifying Jesus as the supposed son of JOSEPH.... why continue digging?

“I am descended from ancient kings, albeit distantly and through a long line of apparently common working men, as pretty much all of us in this small community are”, or “My Dad is God.” ?

Henry J said:

“I am descended from ancient kings, albeit distantly and through a long line of apparently common working men, as pretty much all of us in this small community are”, or “My Dad is God.” ?

So either he got half his DNA from people, or else he got half of it from a being that doesn't use DNA in the first place? Which makes him what, half human and half genetically engineered intelligently designed? Oh. Henry J

The reason why a geneology was given for Jesus is that the prophecy required that the Messiah be of David's line, "a root of Jesse" (Isaiah 11:1)

Of course the rest of the prophecy given in that passage was conveniently ignored. Take a look at what it says the Messiah will do, and reflect that Jesus, whatever other things he was, could not be that Messiah. And if he wasn't, then someone in the Bible got it wrong.

That's also why Jesus has to be born in Bethlehem, even though everyone knew he was from Galilee. A story had to be told. Several stories, in fact, all of them whoppers.

Oh, and the attempt to explain the inconsistency of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke by making one of them Mary's and the other Joseph's? Another whopper. This is what comes of assuming your conclusion, then and now.

Dave Luckett said: The reason why a geneology was given for Jesus is that the prophecy required that the Messiah be of David's line, "a root of Jesse" (Isaiah 11:1) Of course the rest of the prophecy given in that passage was conveniently ignored. Take a look at what it says the Messiah will do, and reflect that Jesus, whatever other things he was, could not be that Messiah. And if he wasn't, then someone in the Bible got it wrong. That's also why Jesus has to be born in Bethlehem, even though everyone knew he was from Galilee. A story had to be told. Several stories, in fact, all of them whoppers. Oh, and the attempt to explain the inconsistency of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke by making one of them Mary's and the other Joseph's? Another whopper. This is what comes of assuming your conclusion, then and now.

If Jesus was truly the result of a virgin birth, he would have been female. There are actual cases of pathenogenesis in the animal kingdom and the offspring in all known cases are female.

Hmm... either God has His own DNA, which was somehow combined with Mary's (in other words, SEXUAL reproduction), or He created some on the spot, specially for Jesus (bioengineering).

Or else Jesus didn't really have human DNA at all. Maybe that's why, according to the Bible, he never demonstrated any sexual interest in women (unless we do some reading between the lines about Mary Magdalene). But if he didn't really have natural human DNA, then he WASN'T HUMAN! Seems like that would make him an android or golem or something.

So how about it? Did Jesus have a full complement of naturally derived DNA from a pair of parents with human DNA or not?

P.S.
Q: What do we call it if someone is made pregnant without her permission--without even her knowledge that an act would take place that could result in pregnancy?

A: Rape.

stevaroni said:

Dale Husband said: A classic example of falsehoods being made to prop up an unfounded claim is the attempt to explain away the two different genealogies of Jesus in the Gosples of Matthew and Luke (snip) specifying Jesus as the supposed son of JOSEPH.... why continue digging?

Why does Jesus have a 'geneology' through Joseph at all? Jesus was, as it were, adopted by Joseph, or maybe, more accurately, assigned to Joseph. But not actually fathered by Joseph. And after all, let's face it, given the other lineage he could claim, the line through Joseph is significantly less impressive. Given the choice, how would you describe your parentage; "I am descended from ancient kings, albeit distantly and through a long line of apparently common working men, as pretty much all of us in this small community are", or "My Dad is God." ?

So far as I know, fish, lizards, and an occasional bird produced by parthenogenesis are diploid, not haploid. They are also all female. Some of the all female species are of hybrid origin, but I'm not sure all are.

Jim Thomerson said: They are also all female.

I didn't know that about turkeys, but should have, given bird sex determination.

Jim Thomerson said: I didn't know that about turkeys, but should have, given bird sex determination.

Anybuddy else notice how quiet Intelligent Designer got when I asked for evidence supporting his claims of Raven's lying about his toy simulations?

Crickets, to your stations!

Jim Thomerson said: I didn't know that about turkeys, but should have, given bird sex determination.

Dave Thomas said: Anybuddy else notice how quiet Intelligent Designer got when I asked for evidence supporting his claims of Raven's lying about his toy simulations? Crickets, to your stations!

Stanton said: As usual.

mrg said:

Stanton said: As usual.

Geez, you guys. He runs a software shop -- dang, I hate to think of what he'd be like to work for -- and he may be too busy for the moment, eager for the opportunity to come back with his usual song-&-dance. I mean, he has to enjoy it, there no's practical reason for him to rush in here to play games and pick fights. And here you folks are challenging him to come back. Myself, I'd be missing nothing in my life if I never heard from him again.

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Intelligent Designer said:

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Raven, I am still waiting for your response.

support or even explain your claim, that is.

Intelligent Designer said:

Intelligent Designer said:

raven said: He spent years writing a simple computer program that people on the threads wrote in a few minutes.

Why would you make up a lie like this? I assume you are talking about the Interactive Weasel Program.

You won't get anything intelligent or honest out of this one.

Raven, I think you are projecting. You are a liar.

Raven, I am still waiting for your response.

There is no way that Raven could know how long it took me to write the Interactive Weasel Program. I am the only one here who knows that. Raven was obviously making up a lie and you all are supporting it. How can anyone believe anything you guys say. PandasThumb.org has no credibility.

Intelligent Designer said: How can anyone believe anything you guys say. PandasThumb.org has no credibility.

Intelligent Designer said: There is no way that Raven could know how long it took me to write the Interactive Weasel Program. I am the only one here who knows that. Raven was obviously making up a lie and you all are supporting it. How can anyone believe anything you guys say. PandasThumb.org has no credibility.

P.S.

Like I mentioned on your blog, 'Weasel' is so yesterday.

Time to move the discussion beyond 'Weasel'!

Much more here.

mrg said:

Intelligent Designer said: How can anyone believe anything you guys say. PandasThumb.org has no credibility.

Oh, you can't believe anyone here, and you don't have any reason to think PT has any credibility at all.

You have more important things to do with your time and you shouldn't be wasting any more of it here.

Dave Thomas, Stanton, and Malchus, why do you insist on supporting Raven in this lie. This thread in one of many examples on how some of you will support the lies and stupid assertions made by each other.

Raven, why don't you come clean. Tell us why you said what you said.

Intelligent Designer said: Dave Thomas, Stanton, and Malchus, why do you insist on supporting Raven in this lie. This thread in one of many examples on how some of you will support the lies and stupid assertions made by each other.

Raven, why don't you come clean. Tell us why you said what you said.

Stanton said: Like doing research for Intelligent Design or coming up with new programming innovations?

mrg said:

Stanton said: Like doing research for Intelligent Design or coming up with new programming innovations?

I don't know what else Stimpson has to do to occupy his time -- but whatever it is, I would suggest to him that it would be more profitable to him than hanging around on PT. After all, he makes no secret of his low opinion of PT and the Pandas. Very well, then why does he keep wasting his time here?

Mike Elzinga said: He no doubt shows up ...