<p>And so you thought it appropriate to insult what you assumed would be her response, based upon your generalization that creationists are blinded by religious fundamentalism? </p>
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<p>Yet another jab at creationist reasoning. </p>
<p>You mentioned hoping to publish these arguments someday. Unless your aim is to earn the praise of your peers and the resentment of your opposition (in which case nothing of value will be accomplished in the larger scope of the debate), I pray you reevaluate your approach to the subject, particularly the way in which you address creationist and religious apologetic reasoning.</p>
<p>What do you mean “what * assumed would be her response?” Have you read her contributions? It’s not so much generalization if you would simply ask yourself from where creationism is derived.</p>
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<p>This is unfounded. Many novels that have been published regarding this debate have become international bestsellers so many individuals – including those who hold hostility or dissent towards secularism and secular values – are willing to listen. But yes, inevitably, arguments – regardless of their validity – will be opposed due to conflict with ideological standards. But should a Democrat stop adhering to liberal values in order to appease conservatives? If such consciousness raising teaches other individuals to question unfounded assertions and lead on the basis of reason and evidence, it’s certainly a success. I have had self-proclaimed religious people or those in the ideological middle ground comment on how they found my posts enlightening or grounded in substantive logic and evidence. Feel free to disregard this since I cannot prove that to you, but unlike what you may believe, many are indeed receptive to ideas grounded in evidence rather than those rooted Bronze Age mythology and at insurmountable odds with scientific findings. Regarding approach, instances of social enlightenment that have had the biggest historical impact are rarely delicate.</p>
<p>This is a very weak analogy. No one is suggesting that atheists should not adhere to their own worldviews, only that they don’t endeavor to ram them down everyone’s throats and then engage in mudslinging when their ideas are not received well.</p>
<p>Cannot occur unless the genes in question already existed in at least one species before. No new genes are created, only old ones are distributed.</p>
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<p>If a gene does not exist in the parents, sexual reproduction will never cause it to exist in the child.</p>
<p>Please take those off of your list.</p>
<p>The only mechanism you can claim to produce new information is Mutation, or a copy error in DNA. There are several types, only some of which might produce “new” information. Others simply destroy existing information.</p>
<p>The thing I would want to know about this is: Did the bacteria become resistant because they developed some new kind of feature bacteria didn’t have before, or did they become resistant because a mutation, say, caused an error in an enzyme that normally breaks down one compund, which resulted in an enzyme that could break down streptomycin?</p>
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<p>All of these that I am aware of are cases of the existing gene pool being subdivided, not a new gene pool being created.</p>
<p>If Puggles can be red or green, but the green ones get eaten in Redland and vice versa, then you will soon have two species: Green Puggles and Red Puggles. But nothing new has been added.</p>
<p>The problem is that natural selection doesn’t know that the end goal is “TOBEORNOTTOBE”. THBTKRNPTTKBH is of no more literary value than BGHORENPQYJS, even though the first one has 7 letters “correct” while the second has none.</p>
<p>A better analogy would be to take a random series of letters, present it to several audiences, and, if it gets rave reviews, slightly increase the weight of those letters appearing in those positions for the next cycle.</p>
<p>At low complexity levels, this kind of thing might work: TOBYONEILTHEBEST (Toby O’Neil: The best) only need two changes to become TOBEONEISTHEBEST (To be one is the best), which might be popular with pacifists and survive.</p>
<p>But now take this:</p>
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<p>There are an astronomical number of things you could do the that passage that would ruin it. The only significant changes you could expect to survive would be superficial things like “Bilbo” to “Balbo”.</p>
<p>The problem is not in finding a bunch of creatures that exist today with varying levels of complexity, it is in constructing a plausible sequence of events that would bring one to the other. Suppose a creature mutates so that there is a piece of transparent tissue in it. This is a step towards a lens, but the immediate result is likely to be that the creature’s sense of sight is distorted. Until the bit a tissue can evolve into a finely shaped lens, and the creature’s brain can develop imaging capability, what use is it?</p>
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<p>In this case, a wing will go from 50% to 51% only if a large number of members of this species fall from trees that are exactly 51% high, and do so over a short enough time that other hazards do not randomly kill the mutated members.</p>
<p>Because in a fall from a <50% high tree, or a >52% high tree, both mutated and non-mutated individuals fare equally.</p>
<p>Of course, they did use living organisms (yeast) to synthesize the DNA, and then put said DNA into the shell of another living organism (a bacterium).</p>
<p>The headline should be “Scientists figure out how to make life synthesize itself according to their wishes”.</p>
<p>Not to mention that this was the result of the design of a team of 25 extremely intelligent beings.</p>
<p>Apparently you missed the point. I was told to revise my approach to this topic and essentially be more sympathetic towards the beloved mythology calcified into the minds of biblical fundamentalists or those who simply adhere to the certainty of belief in their particular god. But I am not going to compromise what I say for the sake of remaining excessively polite or politically correct just as a politician doesn’t have the need to adopt bipartisanship to appease political opposition. If there is something scientifically wrong, contradictory, or analytically spurious about a particular stance – theological or otherwise – it ought to be honestly discussed. But in this case, it’s simply impossible to please every single religious faction given the diversity of ideological opinion. </p>
<p>Also, there is a profound difference between mudslinging and speaking the truth. For instance, labeling the thought that each human mind works on the basis of the workings of 50,000 invisible leprechauns as ignorant is not provocative slander but the truth. On the same note, calling The Atlas of Creation the most fatuously ignorant book ever written is not spiteful obloquy but legitimate fact. (One can read this wrongheaded propaganda [url=<a href=“http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_01.php]here[/url”>http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation/atlas_creation_01.php]here[/url</a>]. Select a download option off to the right side of the screen to access this ignorance overload.)</p>
<p>No, both genetic recombination and horizontal gene transfer lead to genomic diversity. Every time genetic information is reorganized in a different format, it’s new. From there, natural selection tests its survival value and mediates the evolutionary process.</p>
<p>That’s incorrect; base pair mutation is the predominant derivation of variation, but not the exclusive source.</p>
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<p>Antibiotics have become so medically useful because they disable bacterial ribosomes, which disrupts the cellular machinery that produces proteins. Without that capability, the bacteria is non-functional and cannot survive. Genomic mutations that occur on the ribosomal RNA and fundamentally alter the antibiotics’ capacity to bind to the bacteria without disrupting the its ability to synthesize proteins will provide survival benefit and facilitate perpetuation. Natural selection favors mutation since antibiotic resistance confers supreme survival value. Evolution – specifically the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection – causes this resistance. It is because of evolution that we have the concept of antibiotic resistance and is also why it happens to be necessary to receive an annual flu shot, rather than one that provides enduring lifetime resistance. Fortunately, mutations providing antibiotic resistance are relatively rare, but bacteria that develop the mutation for immunity are easily able to survive, propagate, and cause infectious disease. So to answer your question, it more closely resembles the former (“new kind of feature”) scenario.</p>
<p>Natural selection is a blind process but the key to this concept is optimization. This computer program that was designed, if we apply it to evolutionary context, is run on the basis of 26 mutations (letters in the alphabet). It mimics the process of natural selection by selecting for the most optimal trait while discarding the others (i.e. maintaining the E in the fourth position from the left). Of any thirteen-letter combination, TOBEORNOTTOBE was defined as the most optimized entity. That is, if any arbitrary combination of thirteen letters was displayed, it, on average, was the programmed to be the most fit. If a random sequence was created that matched the exact letter length of Hamlet, the play itself was created in just four-and-one-half days, providing a simple demonstration that complexity can be attained from primitivity in relatively short periods of time.</p>
<p>Natural selection filters out deleterious mutations.</p>
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<p>This is extraordinarily bad science and no where proximate to how eyes actually evolved. They evolved from far more primitive photo-sensitive receptors. </p>
<p>The “falling from a tree” example is just a simple example of potential survival advantage. Without question, the development of wings has led to the tremendous diversification of insect species that we have today.</p>
<p>None of whom were named “God.” People can no longer propagate the tenacious conceit that life cannot be created in the absence of a superhuman controlling force.</p>
<p>The genome was created using a computer and actualized through chemical synthesis, without the use of natural DNA.</p>
<p>By my understanding of the article, they took the existing DNA sequence of Mycoplasma mycoides, inserted some custom code, and then used the existing “natural capacities of yeast and other bacteria to meld genes and chromosomes” to stich together this new sequence from the basic snippets.</p>