Gman wrote:Pierson5 wrote:
I never said the origin of life couldn't be poofed into existence by a designer. That's not what we are discussing. You can believe whatever you want about the origin of life, what we are discussing is evolution and the hypotheses opposing it. Evolution is as much a "philosophy" as chemistry and gravity.
Actually it does... Whenever you mix philosophy into you science, you are entering the realm of hypothetical questions... Beliefs...
Darwin made observations but no real mathematical calculations for it. In regards to gravity, I don’t think you can compare Darwinian evolution to gravity. When you look at the scientific methods of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton they made observations plus predictions that anyone could observe… Darwinian evolution is not like that. DE is a different kind of science, it’s a historical science that claims what happened in the past, it’s not like gravity at all… There is a categorical difference between evolutionary science and gravity.. Gravity can make simple predictions like the gravitational force between the earth and the moon. It’s something that can be measured.. You can’t take Darwinism and formulate it to an equation like F=MA the force of gravity. Dawinism is NOT a law, you can’t measure it.. It’s all just speculation… And if you believed that life arose by chance processes, you have to believe that millions of years ago life arouse from non-life, from matter, and this violates the law of biogeneis. No scientist has ever showed this law could ever be violated.
Evolution IS like that! Here is an example (look back to the fossil record a page or 2 back if you have to). We dig up fossils an find a clear transition from reptile to birds. Hmm, strange. So, if evolution is true, and the fossil record is accurate, we would predict to find molecular evidence for such. Well, what a coincidence, the molecular evidence shows modern birds' closest relative is not mammals or fish, but reptiles. Hmm, but that's just one test, surely we could do better? Lets try transposons.
There are sections of an organism’s genome, called transposons, that have no other function except to insert copies of themselves elsewhere on the genome. And there are many very well known sequences that do this. Two such sequences are SINE’s or “Short Interspersed Transposable Elements” and LINE’s or “Long Interspersed Transposable Elements”. There are about 850,000 LINE’s and 1,500,000 SINE’s scattered throughout your genome… accounting for nearly 30 percent of the entire sequence. While they are useless to the genome and sometimes cause significant damage, they are useful to our investigation since essentially the only way for them to go from one organism to another is through direct DNA duplication and inheritance. Your LINE’s, SINE’s are given to your children. The parts of your DNA that make up your genes are relatively small sections scattered among the other useful parts of your genome as well as your LINE’s and SINE’s. Like fingerprints, the patterns recognizable in these non-gene sections are unique to individuals. They are similar in relatives, and less-similar in distant relatives. This is the basis of DNA “fingerprinting”.
Well, what a coincidence, AGAIN these match up perfectly with our predictions. Hmm, any more? Maybe the designer just built these organisms that way, can you rule that out? Well, what about retroviruses?
Retroviruses like HTLV1 (which causes a type of leukemia) and AIDS make a DNA copy of their own viral genome and insert it into their host's genome. If this happens inside of sperm cells or egg cells the retroviral DNA will be inherited by descendants of the host. And these copies of virus DNA are called endogenous retroviruses.
These certainly aren't from a designer. What do they point to? My! Another coincidence! The ERV evidence show modern birds share a common ancestor with reptiles!
Do I really need to continue... Saying that evolution makes no testable scientific predictions is ludicrous.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
-Marcus Aurelius