Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:
The supposed resultant macrochemicals are not MORE resistant to chemical degradation by the environment that (supposedly) produced them, but LESS.

They are much more fragile than raw chemicals to the extent that if you put xNA into the open environment (especially one such as is thought to have existed then), everyone including an evolutionist would expect it to degrade.

To suppose that these chemical baths forced themselves out of lazy equilibrium into a high powered building program of amino acids and beyond is laughable.

We discussed entropy, remember? Oh (hits head) but that's it.

You don't believe in entropy. It doesn't apply in the real world, just in theory, right?

We've expained all this to you before RL. Hit yourself in the head for me. We covered your misconceptions of entropy, and your fantasies about xNA. I'm not going to do it again.

Please come up with something new. You're just repeating your same old tricks.

I don't blame you for not wanting to go thru it again. It was pretty rough on you.

Consigning the Laws of Thermodynamics to the 'Theory Only' category takes some major mental gymnastics, and no doubt you are still sore as a result.

As soon as your mental hamstrings heal, we'll have another go at it.

We can pick up where you explain how , as a result of 'natural selection xNA is more likely to survive than base chemicals in the 'primordial soup' you call home.

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Again you flaunt your ignorance, and pose yet another straw man. "The greenin of the continent" would among other things brought about huge changes in the presence of plant and animal populations throughout the relevant biosphere - the distribution of preferred food flora, for instance, would be inevitable, as would be the rise of previously unpresent populations of critters, critters competing with critters that had known no such competition, and critters preying on critters that had known no such predation. Habitat changes which benefit some imperil others - that's nature. Cases in point: kudzu, russian thistle, zebra mussels, lamprey, cane toads and rabbits - well regulated in their customary environments, catastrophic to environments into which lately they've been introduced. Another case in point - large arctic bears - life getting easier for other critters as the bears' habitat warms portends doom for the bears.

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Hey, we almost have a "MegaFauna" discussion going on in the ID thread.

Things are looking up Smile

At least this horse isn't dead.

Although I'm sure someone will return from the pub and kill it eventually.

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rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:
'Control of fire' to alter (purposefully?) migratory pathways?

Have you been out West, lately?

We don't control fire to that extent even now. C'mon, Ros.

You're not very imaginative or smart are you RL. Good thing you weren't a cave man, or we might have gone extinct.

Humor this poor Dumbo and tell us all how a few 'cavemen' used fire to control migration of huge mammals over an entire continent. Laughing

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real life wrote:

Humor this poor Dumbo and tell us all how a few 'cavemen' used fire to control migration of huge mammals over an entire continent.

A lot of assumptions from you RL, and a bit of freedom with my original comment.

For example, you are assuming "a few" people which isn't known. And when I said control of fire I only meant the ability to create it and burn things with it. Things like open grassland which might have been necessary food sources for large animals. And by interfering with migratory patterns, I meant that human predation might have inadvertently hindered selected migration paths. All speculative of course, but certainly not impossible.

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough before, but since we shifted from craziness like hundred year old mammoths to discussions of megafauna extinction, I didn't really think I should try too hard on the details.

At least this discussion has a bit of life to it. Maybe I'll try to reactivate one of the old Megafauna threads... or was that on Abuzz... can't remember.

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rosborne979 wrote:

real life wrote:
Humor this poor Dumbo and tell us all how a few 'cavemen' used fire to control migration of huge mammals over an entire continent.

A lot of assumptions from you RL, and a bit of freedom with my original comment.

For example, you are assuming "a few" people which isn't known. And when I said control of fire I only meant the ability to create it and burn things with it. Things like open grassland which might have been necessary food sources for large animals. And by interfering with migratory patterns, I meant that human predation might have inadvertently hindered selected migration paths. All speculative of course, but certainly not impossible.

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough before, but since we shifted from craziness like hundred year old mammoths to discussions of megafauna extinction, I didn't really think I should try too hard on the details.

At least this discussion has a bit of life to it. Maybe I'll try to reactivate one of the old Megafauna threads... or was that on Abuzz... can't remember.

I can just imagine the 'Paleo-Indians' (whether there's a dozen, a hundred, or a few thousand makes no difference) along the Wakarusa setting the prarie on fire (on purpose or by accident-- no matter, it's gonna be a disaster).

The mastodons flee to the next county or the next state, no problem.

And the homes and possessions of the Paleos (such homes and possessions as they were) are gone.

Yep, that 'controlling the migratory pattern' brought fat times and prosperity to this Paleo clan. Yessir.

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timber /sighs, shakes head

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Theories among scientists are but that. (Sorry Ive missed about 4 pages of "real talk with no spendi" and like ros , Im amazed at how neat it sounded , even the stuff I disagree with. Im not a fan of the environmental close on megafauna because weve gone through 4 major Ice advances and retreats similar to todays. All with the same megafauna making it through. The Illionoian Ice sheet was about the deepest reaching moraine found in the line from Misoouri to mid Pennsylvania, whereas the Wisconsin (the last) only came as far as mid NY to Ill and Montana. The only difference with the last Ice sheet advance was the existence of a number of human inhabitats that arrived from somewhere and that (those) batches grew in population to perhaps a few hundred thousand people nationwide. Cultures overlapped, as did technologies. The fact that mammoths killed in Pa, shown cut up (cut marks on bones) or found in swamps in Vermont are similar to those found in the Dakotas. Many had projectile points. I agree that overlapping events were in play, including population isolations as the Ice retreated and huge rivers isolated the entire east coast piedmont. However humans had a major role in the drop in critical population numbers

As large megafaunas became scarcer, the large predators like smilodon and the short faced bears became less frequent also.

Quote:

The most interesting thing to me would be the condition of the find. Enamel still on the teeth. Any fossilization? Any chance for recoverable DNA?

Enamel is just a name for an outer coating of a four layer tooth structure. Enamels are quickly changed to flourophates (Calcium oxy salts) These ARE fossil enamels. The pulp contains the DNA and that DNA degrades to osteocalcin , so that 10K or older fossils have less than half codeable DNA. The Neanderthal man that Svante Pabo and Penn State coded about 4 years ago was about 30k years old and they could code only about 350 sequences, and they had to use a DNA sequencing "zeroz" (PCR machines).

The metaphor of the tornado in a plane yard is quite interesting. Since early life was quite simple, how bout the analogy of spinning sugar making cotton candy in a sugar spinner? The structure of the sugar crystals is always facing outward . Early life was extremely simple in structure, it was only time (the magic ingredient ,) that helped sort out commonality of ancestry . Life moves against a chemical gradient , energy is created and duistributed to points of higher energy whereas wind through a junk yard just blows with no pattern until gravity and thermo move in. What if a magnet would be suspended at one side? Then ferrous materials would collect. Same thing happens with fats sugars and proteins. They all have charged ends or middles that seek and glom onto oppositely charged particles. Given enough time , salt ,Fatty acids and CO2, and of course water, these agglomerations could be proto life. AND I havent even had to revert to my own pet theory of collapsing double rings of surficial reactions in clay matrices. Seems like all proto life had been found in very fine silts and clays , like Isua Greenland , Mesabi, or Ediacara, or even the Burgess.

Asfar as the Mastodon in the water, we are making up tales without knowing ANY of the circumstances . Thats all of us(me included) We are all speculating from ignorance, its like a game of Texas holdem, except , here, debate skills wont be the deciding factor. We can never speculate unless we have the data. What if the stream merely meandered
for 20000 years and cut into a fossil already buried in some peat layer, Its highly possible because thats the story of the Missisppi and the Missouri. Ox bows and captured stream segments are always unearthing and burying entire major artifacts like Indian camps and Ships even.(and those are sometimes only about 100 to 200 years old) Having a disarticulated mastodon jaw show up at some spot is no big thing. We just start trying to find its context. Did it wash out somehwere? did the river excavate it and move it downstream? We really need much more before we can make up any stories . Im just not all excited about dentyne on teeth, because no chemistry was provided. Was it new or flourophosphatic. Id flourophosphatic , it could be over 100000 years old. Was it showing the beginnings of silicification? that wold make it even older.
Im going to bed

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PS, those "rolling plains" can have some significant topography.Theres a book on the topography of Indiana which has to me, always been the quinissential blah landscape. Well there are moraines and high tors and rock cliffs that are ideal for herding megafaunas into piles of meat. In Nebraska and the Dakots its even more spectacular.
Reember you dont have to kill all the ani,mals, you only have to kill enough to make it difficult for them to have a critical mass for reproduction. If they dont eveolve into "something else" they go extinct

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farmerman wrote:

PS, those "rolling plains" can have some significant topography.Theres a book on the topography of Indiana which has to me, always been the quinissential blah landscape. Well there are moraines and high tors and rock cliffs that are ideal for herding megafaunas into piles of meat. In Nebraska and the Dakots its even more spectacular.
Reember you dont have to kill all the ani,mals, you only have to kill enough to make it difficult for them to have a critical mass for reproduction. If they dont eveolve into "something else" they go extinct

Not many (or really any) cliffs to speak of along the Wakarusa. Well, I guess it depends on how tall you are. To a little bugger, even a hillock can seem a cliff. Still it's pretty flat there.

You'd have to go out farther toward the Flint Hills, or back to the Missouri River to find bluffs that you might use to herd big critters off of.

No pictures to speak of were provided with the article I fetched, but in a different article, one of the four who found it was quoted as saying the enamel was 'shiny', and they found not only the jaw but much of the skull as well.

As for the river swallowing a boat, that is well known in those parts as well.

Not long ago, some intrepid diggers unearthed a 19th century steamboat that had gotten snagged on the Missouri and sunk. About 30 years later when the river flooded, the Missouri was displaced and the old boat lay forgotten a 1/2 mile away from the river's new location.

When they dug it up, it was 45 ft underground after only about 140 years.

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real life wrote:

I can just imagine the 'Paleo-Indians' (whether there's a dozen, a hundred, or a few thousand makes no difference) along the Wakarusa setting the prarie on fire (on purpose or by accident-- no matter, it's gonna be a disaster).

The mastodons flee to the next county or the next state, no problem.

And the homes and possessions of the Paleos (such homes and possessions as they were) are gone.

Yep, that 'controlling the migratory pattern' brought fat times and prosperity to this Paleo clan. Yessir.

You obviously don't know about how the British control the Yorkshire moors. Now grouse (I think its grouse anyway) are good game birds that hunters like to shoot for sport. They thrive on heather.

To ensure a good supply of young heather, which they food on, they selectively burn parts of the fields of heather. They could mow it down, but they've found that burning is far more efficient.

If you know what you're doing, it's not that difficult to start a fire and keep it nice and controlled.

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ros wrote-

Quote:

At least this discussion has a bit of life to it. Maybe I'll try to reactivate one of the old Megafauna threads... or was that on Abuzz... can't remember.

There's no life in sight. You are all going over the same old ground you have no doubt gone over before many times.

You even admit it by thinking of bringing back from the dead an "old" thread that you also admit to hardly be able to remember like an auntie who died when you were three.

You are flogging a dead horse for the nth time. I daresay you've been playing the same record for decades to curry attention and impress lesser lights and to distract yourselves from what is really happening in the world of forward going, teeming human life and, not to be underestimated, grabbing the chance to get some invective off your chests.

I have already explained the mutual pleasure giving which materialists and Creationists indulge in. The idea of intelligent design is way over both sets of head and if you were engaged in this joint enterprise in the pub you would be out on your arses for indecency. You love each other. It's often seen. Two people loving up in public as an excuse to display their respective charms and taking agreed turns. It has been labelled "contactless sociability". Just look how well you are getting on together.

How many times have you been through it all? And you believe the jawbone is genuine,both sides, which I don't, as a self-serving article of faith.

There are little points of attraction all over the place for the bored to trek to on weekends, or come across on their aimless meanderings courtesy of big business, and Tongy is set to become another when the reassembled jigsaw created in the butcher's back room for a laugh is erected over the door of the restaurant and signs on all the roads "TONGY MASTODON" are erected and some "friendly" journalists give the tale a tweak at regular intervals.

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Wolf wrote-

Quote:

You obviously don't know about how the British control the Yorkshire moors. Now grouse (I think its grouse anyway) are good game birds that hunters like to shoot for sport. They thrive on heather.

That's a typically anti-ID naive generalisation about what is a very complex business.

One might just as easily opine that tennis and cricket clubs are for the playing of tennis and cricket simply because that is what they look like to the unobservant with a ready opinion.

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spendius wrote:

Wolf wrote-

Quote:
You obviously don't know about how the British control the Yorkshire moors. Now grouse (I think its grouse anyway) are good game birds that hunters like to shoot for sport. They thrive on heather.

That's a typically anti-ID naive generalisation about what is a very complex business.

It's not a freaking anti-ID generalisation. I was just pointing out that it is possible.

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Suit yourself Wolf

Stay ignorant if you wish. It's no skin off my nose.

I was simply offering you a hint so that you might take the trouble to find out about what it is of which you speak to a world-wide audience.

You almost made us sound like oiks.

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RL I have a mastodon tooth from the La Brea tarpits on my office desk. Its got a very shiny enamel, all black.. converted to bitumen. I also have an "eohippus" skull from yhe Dakota fossil Eocene beds and the enamels of the fossil look almost recent. Except for the fact that the fossil is encased in a silica matrix, itd pass for yesterday road-kill. I use these two in economic geology classes for use of available fossils and matrix context where we are looking at a prospect for minerals. Fossils are rare in Titanium deposits so, whenever we find a fossil assemblage, we try to use them.I have these fossils sampled and Thin section cut and mounted to look a the mineralization across the tooth structure. Under polarized light, the mineral/chemistry assemblage can be quantified by its crystal structure. The mastodon is converted to a coal-like substance , whikle the eohippus is silicified.

The rapid burial and erosion of an active mature stream mender belt is an exception that proves the rule about sedimentation. The conditions of stream meander causing a dynamic sedimentation suite is a unique environmental indicator of "braided" streams and pro-deltaic deposits. We can model these environments worldwide and are aware that such deposits , whenever associated with tectonic hinging, are good areas to concentrate on oil reservoir analyses.

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OHIO UPDATE

Quote:

State school board race evolves into debate over science
(By Katie Byard, Akron Beacon Journal, August 25, 2006)

State school board races rarely generate much interest. But this year's race in the Akron area is drawing national attention.

The issue heating up this race is the teaching of evolution.

The nonpartisan race for the District 7 school board seat includes two prominent names: former Congressman and former Akron Mayor Tom Sawyer and incumbent Deborah Owens Fink, a University of Akron marketing professor.

Owens Fink was a leader in the effort to adopt a controversial science curriculum standard and lesson plan calling for a critical analysis of evolution, Charles Darwin's theory that life on Earth evolved over millions of years from common ancestors.

Sawyer was drafted to run by the newly formed Help Ohio Public Education. The group's founders, Case Western Reserve University professors Patricia Princehouse and Lawrence Krauss, say the curriculum changes promoted intelligent design and were an effort to insert religion into the science curriculum.

In February, the state board rescinded the curriculum changes. The vote came after a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected the teaching of intelligent design there, saying it is religion masquerading as science.

Princehouse said a HOPE Web site endorsing Sawyer is drawing viewers from across the country and a reporter from the New York Times recently interviewed Krauss.

``People perceive the Ohio race as having the potential for real positive change for addressing root causes in poor science education,'' Princehouse said.

Princehouse said that Owens Fink consistently thumbs ``her nose at education experts, science experts and parents.''

Owens Fink, a Bath Township Republican, said she's not running on the ``evolution issue,'' but rather the ``broad base that I have brought to the table, most specifically this issue of really increasing the rigor in the curriculum'' and aligning it with ``what students should know and be able to do.''

During her tenure on the Ohio school board, she said, scores on state-mandated tests have improved ``because we were really focusing on being very clear about what students should know.''

Owens Fink calls Princehouse, Krauss and other scientists supportive of Sawyer ``members of the dogmatic scientific community'' who want to stifle discussion about ``the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.''

Sawyer rejected Owens Fink's suggestion that his campaign is narrowly focused on the debate over teaching evolution.

Sawyer, an Akron Democrat, said his platform embraces the ``broad range of the curriculum -- the building blocks that comprise a thorough efficient education... Science education is an important part of that.''

He said he will also campaign about addressing school funding woes and a ``stronger role for the state board of education.''

Owens Fink and Sawyer agree that more money will be spent on this race than usual.

``I'm going to do what it takes.... I've not had a major competitor before,'' Owens Fink said. ``This is new territory.''

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fm wrote-

Quote:

I have a mastodon tooth from the La Brea tarpits on my office desk.

We don't allow that type of uninterrupted goofing off in our pub.

A wisecrack or even a piece of low wit would have come up on-

Quote:

I have a mastodon tooth from the

and that would have been the end of that.

There's guys like fm who we daren't mention things to for fear of them taking off on a long boring ramble to show their expertise. Cars are out.
Finance is deadly. And where they have been today and what they have been doing is worst of all. That's why pubs make such a racket near closing time when they are all pissed. Late on they simply won't be interrupted.

I bet it has been like that since alcohol was invented: praise the Lord.

But I'll read it seeing as I have nothing better to do at the moment. If smorgie walked in the door saying "Hello sailor" breathily and swelling with promise I would save it for later assuming nothing else had happened in the meantime.

Do you really have La Brea tarpits on your office desk fm?

You do realise that if the tooth had no black enamel it would have something else which it would be just as easy to explain to an attentive audience as the conversion to bitumen described in such detail was.

And fancy something, an eohippus skull no less, "looking almost recent".

I never look at road kill myself. I avert my gaze and weep silently. So I have no idea what a poor creature like that would look like encased in a silica matrix and if it was almost very very recent it might still have one wing flapping.

If, by some remote chance, you didn't own these two specimens what would you use instead in the "economic geology" classes. It might be interesting to find out how you came about these two items. Did you steal them or anything like that. You once didn't have them and now you have.
A prize maybe or a purchase in an antique shoppe.

One assumes that the rarity of fossils in titanium deposits is due to life forms avoiding titanium rich substances and, if so, evolution has sent a message that maybe we should too.

I'll pass on the second paragraph. Jaques Derrida said that a text means what it means to the readers. I found it quite funny if a trifle cynical.

But I'm all in favour of prospecting for oil. The more that is found the cheaper it will be and the jollier the pub will become all other things being equal which they obviously won't be now that $70 a barrel has been assimilated painlessly.

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wande quoted-

Quote:

``People perceive the Ohio race as having the potential for real positive change for addressing root causes in poor science education,'' Princehouse said.

That's a mantra chanted out many times each day here.

" (Something--anything ) as having the potential for real positive change for addressing root causes in ( something--anything), (Somebody--anybody who earns a living in rhetoric).

Mr Pricehouse used the flat-ribbed version for which he has my gratitude at least.

thumbs " her nose......" Indeed! She must have annealed her thumb to her nose by now with that lot to consistently thumb it at.

Quote:

Owens Fink, a Bath Township Republican, said she's not running on the ``evolution issue,'' but rather the ``broad base that I have brought to the table, most specifically this issue of really increasing the rigor in the curriculum'' and aligning it with ``what students should know and be able to do.''

Copy like that would have any decent editor howling with laughter.

Usual assertion count. Nothing untoward.

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farmerman wrote:

Theories among scientists are but that. (Sorry Ive missed about 4 pages of "real talk with no spendi" and like ros , Im amazed at how neat it sounded , even the stuff I disagree with.

It was fun while it lasted wasn't it? Even though I disagree with almost everything RL writes, I still find it entertaining for some reason. Smile

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Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

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