Let me clarify few things:
First of all, I don't want to discuss my faith this GMan nor with Byblos
(unless he acts as a moderator).
What I said above is just because I accept moderator right to enforce the guidelines.
I was asked few questions by a moderator, I tried to answer (honestly) to that.
Said that this discussion is not about my faith but about scientific evidences
for a common ancestor of humans and chimps.
GMan claimed there is no such a common ancestor.
Byblos asked me and I posted some which are IMO strong evidences.
Currently I am discussing with Byblos about viral insertions.
Second: English is not my first language (as you certainly guessed) so it may happen
that I misspel words, or that I find hard to follow your arguments, expecially if, as some of you
is used to, they are presented in an ellyptic way, with no clear distinction about what are opinions
and claims. In that case I usually ask to see if I got it plain.
Hence Byblos there is really no reason for you to get upset about my question.
What I do not understand is how you can find my posts ambiguous in any way.
Where did I state there is no evidence that we have common retroviral insertion points with chimps?
Even because I did not claim that your post was ambiguos. I just said that I might have
misunderstood your posts.
For the future: don't doubt I will state clearly that your posts are ambiguous when they are.
Third: If I can advise you, do not try to think what I mean to say. I usually mean exactly what I write.
Except for the typos. I never try to imply things indirectly.
For example when I say "I do not remember where I say "garbage"" I do not mean "I never said that".
Usually if I want to say "I never said that" I write "I never said that".
BTW As GMan was so kind to quote, I was there referring to ID as a scientific theory as I think anyone can
see by going back to the post. Exactly as said to the moderator I have nothing against ID
as I have nothing against Santa Claus or Jedy knights. They are IMO perfectly honest wordviews.
Just they are not supported by science.
I am sure we all agree that not anything need to be scientific. As I stated clearly in the past
I believe religion does not need to be scientific. That does not mean that I consider that badly.
But this is going away from the main subject under discussion here.
Fourth: Byblos, God is not a human male, nor a human female. For that reason, if you don't mind and unless
you find it unbarebly offensive, I will get stuck to neutral form.
With it I mean no offence.
As far as your gender is concerned, now that I know I will use the correct one when referring to you.
I do not want to start a discussion with GMan. I had enough of that on another thread.
However, it might be that he is really asking me to explain. Being in doubt about his true intentions I will
provide comments about some of his questions. Others have been exausted elsewhere.
In other posts you stated the case for a common designer was a lazy and unimaginative one...
As I said, the designer of ID is IMO lazy and immaginative.
That does not extend to any kind of possible designer.
For example, I do believe that God concerned the universal laws so that there is no need of
its action. I do believe that even the creation of the universe, if there was a beginning,
can be understood on a rational and scientific basis because it was not produced by divine action.
I believe the divine is encoded into the definition of what is rational and scientific and that the universe
will be understood to necessarily follow by that premises.
That is an "intelligent" designer.
IMO an engineer-like assembler of genomes and proteins is more a biologist than a god.
Of course, I cannot prove any of that. As ID people cannot support their claims.
Here I am talking about FAITH, not science.
And Darwinian evolution has never been proven either...
That's why it is still called to this very day a theory..
That is a naive position to hold.
On one hand there is not a single piece of science that should not be called a theory
according to your standard.
On the other hand I think that you simply do not understand science.
If I had to support this opinion, it would be enough to list the sources you are used to quote.
I think, you are just repeating arguments you heard around. None of them has proven to be substantial.
I could defend such opinion but this is not the place to do it, I guess.
I don't understand, before you stated that the case for an intelligent designer was garbage...
Intelligent design is not the only possibility of a designer, as I discussed above.
I honestly don't know what you are talking about when you called Catholics "atheistic evolutionist".
I never said that (probably I used the expression "theistic evolutionist"; I hope you see the slight difference).
This would be contrary to Biblical teachings then because God says that he DOES and IS acting
in the creation and in the affairs of this world...
I don't thgink any rational being can consider the bible as a scientific evidences.
You would be better to read what I wrote.
There are only two possibilities for the existence of life...
You forgot to mention:
- life could be proven to spontaneusly emerge from non-life,
not by chance but because of the natural laws we still don't know
- life being produced by a chaotic designer
- or by extraterrestial civilization
- or has always existed
- or by flying spaghetti monster
There are more things in the skies that in your philosophy.
Not to mention that no neo-evolutionists would claim that evolution is lead by chance.
Natural selection is not chance. Have you read what they have just posted in a parallel thread.
The biologist there exactly claims that!
But now let me come to more serious stuff:
In fact, we share several with other animals as well, including rodents, guinea pigs,
even roaches. I don't know about you but I wouldn't call any of them Grandpa.
I hope you are joking here. I never said that we descend from chimps!
Is it clear to you what I mean by "sharing a common ancestor"?
For that reason I should call chimps (as well as rodents, guinea pigs,
even roaches) cousins, not grandpa!
It could just as well be a case of common design.
I perfectly agree with that. I also pointed that out in the past posts.
I have been discussing at ARN forum for a while and it was "clearly" stated by
ID people that ID is not incompatible with common descendent.
BTW they also claimed that common descended is neither implied by ID.
Adding the two I must say that ID is indifferent with the hypothesis of common ancestor.
That repeated for basically any practical question I answer there.
That experience is the basis for my belief that ID actually does not claim anything about biology.
That is the main motivation for me to claim that ID is not science.
I am not saying that it is wrong. I am saying that they are not saying ANYTHING.
All irreducible complexity and complex specified information arguments, in the end boil down to nothing.
A scientific theory must live dangerously, claiming hard fact that can kill it.
Evolution for example claimes that viral insertions cannot be distributed as one like.
You asked
The answer is simple. Either one prove that insertion points have been selected among maly less
possibilities then previously believed, or evolution as a theory based on random mutations
and natural selections would be FALSIFIED.
Can you mention a hard fact that would falsify ID?
What makes your claim for common descent any more scientific than my claim?
Sorry Byblos, I should have missed it. What is your positive claim about the origin of species?
I hope it's clear[er] by now.
Yes it is. Thank you.
I have to say that my doubts were not originated by your posting directly.
I was only trying to save some of your claims.
Now that you clarified that you really meant whaat you wrote, I am left with one only option
you have strange ideas about what is science and/or what are viral insertion.
I do not want to be offensive, but I honestly cannot see how you could oversee the evidence
based on viral insertion.
Maybe you could try to explain to me what is a viral insertion.
Just to check if you understood it the same way.
I did explained the argument in details above. You replied it was nonsense but provided
no argument. Could you, Byblos?
BTW have you rad that post of mine?
Hey, I'm not the one advancing multiple LUCAs via HGT, it's a bunch of atheist scientists
who're doing so.
I understood that. However, we could check if any of those atheist scientist consider HGT
a possible alternative explanation for the emergence of humans and chimps from older apes.
As I said. I would drop this argument here.
Certainly. As long as we both recognize that it is a theory among many.
Of course evolution is a "scientific theory".
There is however a continous quite upsetting confusion about what a scientific theory is.
I understand "theory" in common English means something which is not very well established.
This has nothing to do with what a scientific theory actually is.
Anything in science, including Big Bang, gravitational theory, quantum mechanics, is "just a theory".
With that we mean that one day any piece of science can be replaced by a BETTER theory.
However, not all theories are the same. We should be much more confident with quantum mechanics
than with string theory. That is because we have plenty of evidences about quantum mechanics
and none (yet) supporting string theory.
And both are better theories than astrology.
BTW you know that according to Behe standards, astrology is a scientific theory?
He claimed that at Dover's trial. I fear that would lead us too far away from the subject, though.
I do not see how discussing "theories" would help in agree on whether we share a common ancestor with chimps.
The problem is that you are not extending DE (Darwinian Evolution) the same courtesy.
If scientists are honest enough to stick to the observable and the testable and not
make sweeping generalizations particularly inter-specially, I and so many other
Christians and God-believing people would not have any problem with evolution whatsoever.
What do you mean by observable and testable?
I can do predictions with DE.
For example that we do not share viral insertions with Gorillas which are not shared by Chimps as well.
Or that the number of synonimous genetic differences between Gorillas and Humans and not less than the one
between Chimps and Humans.
That my son will not share viral insertions with you which are not shared by me as well.
and so on.
If you want to fight DE in a scientific way, feel free to search and prove any of this.
If you don't feel free to fight in court, but that way you are not doing science.
But that is PRECISELY the point, Angel. We're not able to tell the difference
between a designed sequence and a random one.
Who tells I cannot tell the difference.
By random, I and all "atheist scientists" means the probability of each kind of mutation is
independent of the "functionality".
I can spot pretty well the mutations occurred in human histories and I can check if the frequency
of such mutations depends on the functionality it exploits.
Until today, no such dependence emerged.
I am sure tomorrow such an evidence will not emerge?
No I am not. As for any other experiment in science.
You must accept this. Rejecting evolution on philosophical position is as rejecting any other piece of science.
There is nothing philosophically wrong with DE. Only experiments can defeat a scientific theory.
Period.
Of course, once I confirmed random mutations, I cannot rule out a designer.
That is way I disagree with Dawkin when he says that we have scientific evidences that God
does not exist.
I consider a perfectly honest faith position to assume that the designer decided to hide itself
behind random appearence. And no sientific evidence can confute this believe.
That is why I do not think DE rule out a designer. Just it constrains it to act according to what we learned
from evolution.
There is no philosophical defence of DE on my side. I do believe there is no philosophy behind DE.
I hope you see the difference between not being able to rule the designer out and claiming that
genome has obviously be designed.
I honestly don'y believe I did any claim I cannot support by experiments. ID people did.
Of course I may be wrong about the first part.
So what makes your choice of a random act better than my design theory?
In other words, tell me exactly what is your design theory.
If you accept that your designer acted in disguise as if it were random,
there is absolutely no scientific difference between the two models.
But that is not what ID people claim. They claim the are (or will be) able to produce
positive evienced that the designer acted differently.
Well, we shall see. When they will do that, I would convert to ID.
I think Gman answered this quite well.
I was not aware GMan waas in charge for enforcing the guidelines.
His post was improper as I said above.
It started with the unfounded claim that common descent is scientific
when it is nothing more than an unproven theory among many.
Excuse me if I ask it again Byblos. Are you sure you understand viral insertion argument?
Again, if you were so kind to summarize the argument we could avoid misunderstandings.
By not acknowledging the scientific uncertainty of the origin of life, DErs
have painted themselves into a corner.
I did acknowledge that. Can you mention one peer reviewed paper in which a DEr
claims that we know everything about the origin of life?
Your position is untenable, Angel.
Maybe it is untenable on a rational basis. That is why I called FAITH for it.
I suppose we agree that there is no reason for God/faith to be rational.
My point, really the unique point of all my post, is that we shoudl not filter facts.
If evidences points to random mutations, one does no good service to God by refuting the fact.
What if your faith would tell that algebra is wrong. There is no possible conflict between faith and
reason if you accept what reason tells you.
That is the only way my faith can go. Sorry if you don't like it.
Nor I wish to enforce my views on you.
If they do, they do not believe in the same God I believe in.
What a news. It is not the first time in history that people disagree on the nature of God.
Nor it is the first time that this leads to war.
I hope you are not meaning that your vision is BETTER than their one ON A RATIONAL BASIS!
Huh? what do you call this:
angel wrote:
I simply believe that there is no scientific evidence that God is acting on the world.
I call it a misquote.
There I claimed there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE of God action.
I don't think producing physical action is the only way God could "guide" the universe.
do you?
What you've shown is that two distinct species have something in common.
Out of some 98,000 insertion points, there happens to be 7 common ones between humans and chimps.
Out of this observed commonality you conclude a common ancestor.
That is what you understood of viral insertions argument?
That would explain your attitude!
Read back to my post. That is not a fair rendering of the argument.
Let us talk about probabilities. Can you anwer the following question for me?
Which is the probability that the seven insertion happened independently though they
end up at the same positions?
I know analogies most often fail miserably but I will offer one anyway.
Uncle Bob has 6 toes on his right foot and uncle Tom has six toes on his right foot.
Therefore, uncle Bob and uncle Tom must be twins.
Except they're 10 years apart and not even brothers
(from 2 different parents, one on my mother's side and the other on my father's).
That is the argument you are forwarding re common retroviral insertion points and common descent.
I believe it is called the fallacy of the undistributed middle.
That does not even fail miserably.
That analogy would be appropriate if I said that we share a common ancestor with chimps because we
share with them 98% or so of the genome.
Which is not the argument as clearly explained above.
A more appropriate analogy would be if we lived on a planet where humans have 100000 toes in their feet
and a virus is known so that when one is infected one of his toes become green.
The selected toe is known to be chosen at random and to be passed to offstrings.
Now imagine uncle Bob and uncle Tom has the corresponding 7 toes green.
[an even better analogy would consider the tone of green to be different in independent infections.
But I don't want to push it too much....]
Would it be reasonable to expect that they do not share a common ancestor?
Of course, it may not be the case. As it may be that a viral insertion is found to be shared by
gorillas and humans but not by chimps.
In that case, evolution would be wrong.
Until evidences are provided that such uncorrelated match might happen by chance,
I prefer to believe that the mother of your mother could have had an affair with
the father of your father.
You of course are free to believe what you please.