Evolution, why us?

[Alchemist]

1. Initially, the Earth was a lifeless planet.
2. There is life on Earth now.
3. At some time in the past, life either originated on Earth, or came to Earth from outer space.
4. Regardless of where or when life originated, it had to originate sometime, somewhere, somehow.
5. Life either originated by purely natural processes, or else some supernatural element must have been involved.
6. Science, as defined by the American public school system, excludes supernatural explanations.
7. Science depends upon the “Scientific Method” for determining truth.
8. The Scientific Method involves testing hypotheses using repeatable experiments.
9. If there is a scientific explanation for the origin of life, it must depend entirely on natural, repeatable processes.
10. If life originated by a natural process under certain specific conditions, it should be possible to create life again under the same conditions.
11. For more than 50 years scientists have tried to find conditions that produce life, without success.
12. Fifty years of failed attempts to create life have raised more questions than answers about how life could have originated naturally.
13. Living things have been observed to die from natural processes, which can be repeated in a laboratory.
14. Life has never been observed to originate through any natural process.
15. “Abiogenesis” is the belief that life can originate from non-living substances through purely natural processes.
16. The theory of evolution depends upon abiogenesis as the starting point.
17. If the theory of abiogenesis is false, then the theory of evolution is false.
18. The American public school system teaches that somehow the first living cell formed naturally and reproduced.
19. There is no known way in which the first living cell could have formed naturally.
20. The first living cell would have needed some mechanism for metabolism.
21. There is no known natural process by which metabolism could originate in a lifeless cell.
22. The first living cell would have to grow and reproduce for life to continue past the first cell’s death.
23. Growth and reproduction require cell division.
24. Cell division is a complex process.
25. There is no known natural process by which cell division could originate by chance.
26. According to the theory of evolution, single-celled life forms evolved into multi-cellular life forms.
27. Multi-cellular life forms consist of an assembly of cells that have different functions.
28. There is no scientific explanation for how a single cell could or would naturally change function.
29. Single-celled organisms have a membrane which allows the cell to exchange some substances (“nutrients” and “waste”, for lack of better terms) with the environment.
30. Not all cells in larger multi-cellular organisms are in contact with the external environment.
31. Larger multi-cellular organisms need some method for the interior cells to exchange nutrients and waste with the external environment.
32. Very large multi-cellular animals require a complex system (typically including teeth, saliva, throat, stomach, and intestines) for absorbing nutrients from the environment.
33. Very large multi-cellular animals require a complex system (typically including lungs, intestines, heart, arteries, and veins) for distributing nutrients and oxygen to interior cells.
34. Very large multi-cellular animals require a complex system (typically including lungs, heart, arteries, veins, kidneys, and bladder) for removing waste from interior cells.
35. There is no satisfactory explanation how complex systems such as these could have originated by any natural process.
36. According to the theory of evolution, an invertebrate life-form evolved into the first vertebrate life-form.
37. Vertebrates have, by definition, a spine containing a nervous system.
38. The nervous system detects stimuli and reacts to them.
39. There is no satisfactory explanation for how the simplest nervous system could have originated by any natural process.
40. According to the theory of evolution, some of the first vertebrates were fish, which have eyes and a brain connected by a nervous system.
41. There is no satisfactory explanation how optical elements (typically including a lens, an iris and light sensors) could have assembled themselves by any natural process.
42. There is no satisfactory explanation how image processing algorithms could have originated in a fish brain by any natural process.
43. If the theory of evolution is true, then every characteristic of every living thing must be the result of a random mutation.
44. Mutations have been observed that increase or decrease the size of some portion (or portions) of a living organism.
45. Mutations have been observed that change the shape of a living organism.
46. Mutations have been observed that duplicate existing features (cows with two heads, flies with extra wings, etc.).
47. No mutation has ever been observed that provides a new function (sight, hearing, smell, lactation, etc.) in a living organism that did not previously have that function.
48. Cross-breeding and genetic engineering can transfer existing functionality from one living organism to another.
49. Cross-breeding cannot explain the origin of any new functionality in the first place.
50. Artificial selection enhances desired characteristics by removing genetic traits that inhibit the desired characteristics.
51. Artificial selection is more efficient than natural selection.
52. There are limits to the amount of change that can be produced by artificial selection.
53. Mutation and artificial selection have not been demonstrated to be sufficient to bring about new life forms from existing ones.
54. Similarity of features is not definite proof of common ancestry.
55. Similarity of features is often observed in objects designed by man.
56. The fact that one individual was born later than another individual died is not proof that the later individual is a biological descendant of the earlier one, especially if they are of different species.
57. Many different human evolutionary trees have been proposed.
58. There is disagreement about hominid lineage because the “evidence” is meager and highly speculative.
59. Darwin was correct when he said, “Any variation which is not inherited is unimportant for us.” 2
60. Acquired characteristics are not inherited because they do not cause any change in the DNA.
61. Explanations for how apelike creatures evolved into humans are fanciful speculations without experimental confirmation.
62. There is no evidence to suggest that offspring of animals that eat cooked food are smarter than offspring of the same species that eat raw food.
63. There is no evidence to suggest that mental exercises performed by parents will increase the brain size of their children.
64. There is no evidence that if apelike creatures sometimes stand upright to see over tall grasses, it will increase the brain size of their children.
65. There is no evidence that if apelike creatures sometimes stand upright to see over tall grasses, it will make it easier for their children to stand upright.
66. Sedimentary layers are formed in modern times by such things as floods, mudslides, and sandstorms.
67. The fossils in sedimentary layers formed in modern times contain the kinds of things living in that location.
68. The concept of geologic ages is based upon the evolutionary assumption that the kinds of fossils buried in sedimentary layers are determined by time rather than location.
69. All sedimentary layers formed in modern times are of the same geologic age, despite the fact that they contain different kinds of fossils.
70. Radiometric dating depends upon assumptions that cannot be verified about the initial concentrations of elements.
71. Radiometric dating of rocks brought back from the Moon is not a reliable method of determining the age of the Earth.
72. “Dark matter” and “dark energy” were postulated to explain why astronomical measurements don’t match predictions of the Big Bang theory.
73. When measurements don’t agree with theoretical predictions, it is generally because the theory was wrong.
74. “We didn’t see it happen, we can’t make it happen again, and we don’t know how it could possibly have happened, but it must have happened somehow!” is never a satisfactory scientific explanation.
75. Public schools should not teach any fanciful speculation that is inconsistent with experimentally verified laws as if it were true.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

^ lol is this guy PF's Kent Hovind and Ray Comfort buy-one-get-one-free package or something? How much is Answers in Genesis paying you to promote their Christian creationist mythology here?

If just one, yes - just a single fossil - shows up in the wrong geological stratum, our entire understanding of the science of evolution would have to undergo a radical change (it'll get thrown out of the window and into the garbage can, where Creationism and Intelligent Design are already lying and being eaten by street-cats). However, that is yet to happen. Additionally, if a rabbit fossil is dated back to the age of the dinosaurs, then again, we'd have to throw evolution out of the window. Now get a shovel and find me a pre-Cambrian rabbit. The winner will get a Nobel prize and some would suggest that 72 virgins are also in the offing here. Needless to say, the Bible 'scientists' have huffed and puffed and the best that they've came up with is something like this: "carbon-dating R wrong".

Evolution is just as much a part of biology now as quantum theory and relativity are a part of physics (both of which do not go with each other, incidentally). That's just how our understanding of the natural world works. We follow whatever the evidence supports. Of course there are gaps in our understanding of everything but considering that just 150 years ago, we used to believe stories about more than a million animals, insects, birds and plants sailing happily together on a pre-Bronze Age boat, the existence of giants and what not, I would say that we've come a long way.

[Alchemist]

^ Basically

Evolution= the religion of atheists.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

^ Basically

Evolution= the religion of atheists.

Evolution = scientific theory about the diversity of life.

Atheism = philosophical theory about the (non)existence of divinity.

There's no direct link between the two. For some, evolution infers atheism. For hundreds of millions of Christians and Muslims around the world, evolution does not mean atheism. A literal and absolutist interpretation of holy texts would perhaps lead to that conclusion.


Evolution is based upon scientific evidence, observation, constant testing... And as soon as another theory comes along that better explains the diversity of life in the world, the whole world will change to that. Religions, on the other hand, do not change, no matter how apparent their flaws become.

[Alchemist]

Evolution is a Myth of Origin

I guess you didn't follow the discussion for the past 30+ pages, so you missed out all my arguments against the 'supposed' proofs of evolution.

Evolution as a theory doesn't benefit mankind.
It is not a "scientific" theory because it cannot, has not and will not make predictions about the future.
It is based on circular fallacies. Like the one you contested for a "PreCambrian Rabbit". Evolution has assimilated covergence without even a blink of an eye. That evolution randomly produced wings in four different organisms, bats, birds, instects and "flying lizards" four times independent of each other defies all probability. The same creatures but of amniotic and marsupial types, all coincidental. Some ridiculous examples of vestigial organs still persist to this day, like how appendixes are remnants of a past life when "proto-humans" used to eat grass, yet 70% of all primates and rodents of the taxonomic families have species with an appendix. So many of what were taught to be proofs aren't considered "proofs" or evidence anymore. The fossil record shows full intact organisms and no "intermediates". I've read Darwin's book "Origin of Species". In the last chapter he writes about the short comings of his own theories and gives remedies to them, which to this day are being employed, such as "punctuated equilibrium" of which no genetic evidence could be found. (Just like the PreCambrian Rabbit).

Even if billions of Christians and Muslims believe in Evolution, it still won't validate it as a scientific theory. It will remain to be nothing more than a Mythology and those "Faithfuls" won't win or lose anything from believing it blindly. A Myth is anything that everyone believes everywhere at all times. Evolution isn't something new, it has been around since ancient times in the guise of different "Myths of Origin".






In all your posts in this thread never have you posited even one proof or evidence of Evolution but have been vociferously saying that it is already established fact and should not be questioned or criticized at all. This attitude of yours is no different than a religious fanatic on the flip side who'd argue that the earth is only 6000 years old and that dinosaurs are extinct because they couldn't fit on Noah's Arc. There is no reasoning with you in that sense. But I'd like to discuss further how Evolution is less science and more myth and why it means so much to you.

A Marxist Scholar once noted wisely:

"Science is, for the general public and even for many scientists, like black magic: its authority is both indisputable and incomprehensible. This accounts for certain characteristics of Scientism as a religion. As such, it is just as irrational and emotional in its motivations and intolerant in its daily pratice as any of the religions it usurped. Moreover, it does not stop at maintaining that only its own myths are true: it is the only religion that has been arrogant enough to pretend not to be based on myth at all but on reason alone, to the point of calling "tolerance" this mixture of intolerance and immorality that it proclaims." (p. 41-42, translation by PG)

But how is Evolution a Myth? It is so because it serves a function to the present day society, in a way that it is believed to be active in the present and shaping the future.

An Anthropologist says:


"What is it in myths which appeals to men so strongly that it enables them to treat them as sacred ? I think the answer to all of these questions is that because myths perform several linked functions, and because they contain levels of meaning which achieve an intuitively experienced correspondance, because myths are narrative with a time-anchored structure, because they deal simultaneously with the socially and psychologically significant, because they make use of what is experienced and available and link it to the primordial sense of a deeper reality, they have the power which we rightly attribute to them in some societies." (p. 351, emphasis added)"

How has Evolution done that?


"In a 1915 paper, Freud demonstrates his preoccupation with evolution. Immersed in the theories of Darwin, and of Lamarck, who believed acquired traits could be inherited, Freud concluded that mental disorders were the vestiges of behavior that had been appropriate in earlier stages of evolution."

Freud's influence can not be underestimated. Everything from Film, Advertisement, Theater and the media in general in one way or another has a Freudian touch to it.

"Spencer saw in it a justification for laissez-faire capitalism, Nietzche for political absolutism, and Kropotkin for cooperative anarchism ; Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin for lending support to dialectical materialism. To Huxley [Julian], evolution and the UNESCO charter convey the same message. These conclusions seem to depend largely on the prior ethical commitments that lead an author to select particular aspects of evolution as definitive." Ian Barbour.

It can't be argued that current socio-economic theories are aspired by evolution.

Curiously enough, you keep comparing evolution to theories of hard sciences in physics. But is evolution a hard science?

"There is a group of sciences committed to narrative in a more discursive style than physics and on a different time scale. They seek to reconstruct sequences of events in the past — sequences presumed to be unique or so hugely cyclic that they are beyond experiment: Cosmology and geology are such sciences. Paleontology, or the study of the origin of living things on earth, and paleoanthropology, the study of human evolution, are further examples, in descending order of taxonomic scope and of time scale. Ideally, they should all fit together in a coherent epic account of our world: how it came to be and how humankind came to have its particular place in it.
This book is concerned with the most intimate of the narrative sciences, paleoanthropology. It addresses a group of classic texts in paleoanthropology beginning in the generation of Charles Darwin. It asks what happens if we look at these texts as narratives, leaving aside issues of truth or justification. What it finds is that these texts are determined as much by traditional narrative frameworks as by material evidence."Misia Landau, in Narratives of Human Evolution

Can Evolution be honestly proven true?

"Biologists have to study all the known facts relating to the particular problem, infer all sorts of consequences from the reconstructed constellations of factors, and then attempt to construct a scenario to explain the observed facts of this particular case. In other words, they construct a historical narrative."
"Because this approach is so fundamentally different from the causal-law explanations, the classical philosophers of science - coming from logic, mathematics, or the physical sciences - considered it inadmissible. However, recent authors have vigorously refuted the narrowness of the classical view and have shown not only that the historical-narrative approach is valid but also that it is perhaps the only scientifically and philosophically valid approach in the explanation of unique occurrences."
"Of course, proving categorically that a historical narrative is 'true' is never possible." Ernst Mayr.

"There is a difficulty with Darwinism… it is far from clear what we should consider a possible refutation of the theory of natural selection. If, more especially, we accept that statistical definition of fitness which defines fitness by actual survival, then the survival of the fittest becomes tautological and irrefutable." (p. 964) Karl Popper.


So in conclusion, I repeat that there hasn't been any Scientific evidence of Evolution because the fields engaged are not Scientific to begin with, as they do not utilize the scientific method, which depends on tested and repeatable experimentation. Evolution is a mythology and even scientists are still humans, and in one way or another, we believe in a myth of origin. Some theists incorporate evolution with the myths of their parents without understanding one or the other, so they miss on the incoherence - so as they say "ignorance is bliss." The prevailing culture of this world has accepted this myth over the past century and half such that despite the evidence to the contrary many will refuse to abandon the old paradigm for they have already internalized it so much so that it now shapes the way they perceive the world.

There is nothing to be gained or lost from believing in a myth, in this world at least, since you won't be the last or first to have fallen for it.

Salam

[طالب]

Talking to Alchemist is like talking to a child with ADHD. He hardly ever listens and whenever you do seem to get through to him (after explaining the same thing three times) it takes approximately 4 posts before he has happily forgotten what you just painstakingly explained.

E.g. I've probably explained around 10 times in this thread how the origin of life, i.e. abiogenesis, is a red herring since evolution concerns itself with the diversity of life once established on Earth, not with how life first began.

Yet here we have Alchemist pulling the exact same argument out of his hat in post #336.

[ScimitarXEdge]

Ok so I spent yesterday evening reading the Two Sanford "peer reviewed publications" and this is what I found

first one



Using Computer Simulation to Understand Mutation
Accumulation Dynamics and Genetic Load

http://bioinformatics.cau.edu.cn/lecture/chinaproof.pdf

This is the last few sentences of the abstract.

Numerical simulations strongly support earlier theoretical and mathematical
studies indicating that human mutation accumulation is a serious concern. Our simulations indicate that reduction of mutation rate is the most effective means for addressing this problem.

This is about a simulation method which they believe lowers mutation rates.
not evidence that evolution doesn't happen.

however his argument and the evidence has been refuted

Selection on a Modifier of Recombination Rate Due to Linked Deleterious Mutations

Different models have been proposed to explain the origin and maintenance of recombination. Several models, relying on large population size, have shown that modifiers that increase recombination are not favored except under some patterns of epistasis or environmental change (Feldman et al. 1997; Kondrashov 1993). However, by considering the stochastic behavior of new mutations and the Hill–Robertson effect (Hill and Robertson 1966) among selected loci with beneficial mutations and no epistatic effects, Otto and Barton (1997) found that a neutral modifier allele that increased recombination increased in frequency, on average, because linked beneficial mutations had a higher chance of fixation. The Hill–Robertson effect refers to a buildup of negative linkage disequilibrium, so that deleterious or positive mutations are in repulsion and the efficacy of selection of a site linked to other sites undergoing selection is weakened. The advantage or disadvantage of recombination follows the sign of the disequilibrium, negative linkage disequilibrium rendering an advantage to mixis, positive linkage disequilibrium to linkage. Recent studies by Gessler and Xu (1999) and Hey (1998) on haploid organisms have confirmed these predictions.

and

http://www.genetics.org/content/90/2/349.full.pdf

However, it should be stressed that even severely deleterious alleles can accumulate in the population if they enjoy heterozygote advantage or minority advantage. The best example of this is the sickle-cell anemia gene in Africa; despite its lethality in homozygous condition, the frequencies of this gene in some African populations are as high as 0.15, sometimes even 0.20 (ALLISON 1961). Therefore, if balancing selection is prevalent, then even severely deleterious mutations may persist in the population for a long time and the distribution would soon become non-U-shaped as the population size GENETIC VARIABILITY 365 increases. ( 3 ) “Purifying” (or “negative”) selection, which includes genic selec-
tion, recessive selection, etc., tends to force the distribution to be U-shape

So not only did his Material not have to do with whether evolution happened; it's not all correct to begin with according to other current research.

Mendel's Accountant: a biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program | Sanford | Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience

Mendel's Accountant (hereafter referred to as Mendel) is a user-friendly biologically realistic simulation program for investigating the processes of mutation and selection in sexually reproducing diploid populations. Mendel
represents an advance over previous forward-time programs in that it
incorporates several new features that enhance biological realism including:
(a)

all this one is about is about the efficacy of Medel's Account, a simulation tool; not a refutation on Evolution


again you are once again using Appeal to Authority

be more relevant next time?

[Alchemist]

This is amusing.
It has now become clear to me that I am dealing with two illiterates.

You are such a self deluded person that it is too obvious to see that you are only trying to fool your self and convince your self that I am wrong ...and aren't even thinking of convincing me of anything.

I can't believe I actually have to spoon feed you every single line because like a baby you refuse to eat what is good for you and only choose to make a mess out of everything I present to you in a clean dish.

Seems like you went and read the wrong paper's Abstract. Are you that stupid to think that he wrote a book that disputes the idea that mutation leads to evolution based on how efficient his simulation program runs? You failed at such a simple task.

Here is the title of the Paper again. It was on the wikipedia page that I referenced you to...but your delusional psychosis is so powerful, that I doubt you will get it this time either:

Sanford, J.C., Baumgardner, J., Gibson, P., Brewer, W., ReMine, W. (2007). Using computer simulation to understand mutation accumulation dynamics and genetic load. In Shi et al. (Eds.), ICCS 2007, Part II, LNCS 4488 (pp.386-392), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg.


You notice how it is a 2007 paper?
You are referencing for me a paper from 1987 and another from 2001 and you are telling me that "based on current research" it is disputed? What kind of backwards logic is that anyway? How did you even manage to link those totally unrelated articles together? No, you didn't. You just think you did.
For that matter Why would you even read just the abstract of the paper if you were going to spend your afternoon to critique it? You have access to the journals as a master's student, you can get the full article. Why don't you email it to me too brah? Make sure you get the right paper this time. Double Fail.

How does Sanford's paper relate to evolution?

Well you might want to read some other related articles:

"The deleterious mutation rate appears to be so high in humans and our close relatives that it is doubtful that such species, which have low reproductive rates, could survive if mutational effects on fitness were to combine in a multiplicative way."

Crow, J.F. 1999. The odds of losing at genetic roulette. Nature 397: 293-294.


Oh yeah .. the illiterate goat needs a lesson too.

Since the two of you have stolen all your arguments from TalkOrigin.com did you ever bother to actually read the basic material on what evolution is first, before you decided to redefine it yourself?
Abiogensis is a red herring? Maybe you should shoot an email to the authors of Talk Origin to have them rewrite what evolution is because they are saying:

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."

This is a quote endorsed by talk origin from a book that dates back to 1987.

CURRENT research has debunked the idea of a protoogranism:

A concept of the universal ancestor turns on more than phylogenetic trees, however. The Archaea and Bacteria share a large number of metabolic genes that are not found in eukaryotes (18, 20). If these two “prokaryotic” groups span the primary phylogenetic divide and their genes are vertically (genealogically) inherited, then the universal ancestor must have had all of these genes, these many functions: This distribution of genes would make the ancestor a prototroph with a complete tricarboxylic acid cycle, polysaccharide metabolism, both sulfur oxidation and reduction, and nitrogen fixation; it was motile by means of flagella; it had a regulated cell cycle, and more. This is not the simple ancestor, limited in metabolic capabilities, that biologists originally intuited. That ancestor can explain neither this broad distribution of diverse metabolic functions nor the early origin of autotrophy implied by this distribution. The ancestor that this broad spread of metabolic genes demands is totipotent (21), a genetically rich and complex entity, as rich and complex as any modern cell—seemingly more so.
Yet the totipotent ancestor also fails: it cannot explain the manner of the ancestor’s evolution, i.e., how it became so miraculously complex in so short a time and just as rapidly gave rise to the ancestors of the three primary lines of descent. All of this apparently happened in far less than 1 billion years, whereas evolution within each of the three primary lines of descent has been going on for over 3 billion years now with outcomes that don’t even begin to compare with the spectacular ones associated with the ancestor and its original offspring (4)—yet experience teaches that complex, integrated structures change more slowly than do simple ones. Moreover, the totipotent ancestor associates physiologies that have not been observed together in any modern lineage and asks that all of this come about through vertical inheritance. Thus, we are left with no consistent and satisfactory picture of the universal ancestor. It is time to question underlying assumptions.

The universal ancestor


So you two smart guys can read?


Look at the faulty logic here:

Furthermore, because it is not part of evolutionary theory, abiogenesis also is not considered in this discussion of macroevolution: abiogenesis is an independent hypothesis. In evolutionary theory it is taken as axiomatic that an original self-replicating life form existed in the distant past, regardless of its origin. All scientific theories have their respective, specific explanatory domains; no scientific theory proposes to explain everything.

Then he gives this explanation:

A Brief History of Life

Biologists studying evolution do a variety of things: population geneticists study the process as it is occurring; systematists seek to determine relationships between species and paleontologists seek to uncover details of the unfolding of life in the past. Discerning these details is often difficult, but hypotheses can be made and tested as new evidence comes to light. This section should be viewed as the best hypothesis scientists have as to the history of the planet. The material here ranges from some issues that are fairly certain to some topics that are nothing more than informed speculation. For some points there are opposing hypotheses -- I have tried to compile a consensus picture. In general, the more remote the time, the more likely the story is incomplete or in error.
Life evolved in the sea . It stayed there for the majority of the history of earth.
The first replicating molecules were most likely RNA. RNA is a nucleic acid similar to DNA. In laboratory studies it has been shown that some RNA sequences have catalytic capabilities. Most importantly, certain RNA sequences act as polymerases -- enzymes that form strands of RNA from its monomers. This process of self replication is the crucial step in the formation of life. This is called the RNA world hypothesis.
The common ancestor of all life probably used RNA as its genetic material. This ancestor gave rise to three major lineages of life. These are: the prokaryotes ("ordinary" bacteria), archaebacteria (thermophilic, methanogenic and halophilic bacteria) and eukaryotes. Eukaryotes include protists (single celled organisms like amoebas and diatoms and a few multicellular forms such as kelp), fungi (including mushrooms and yeast), plants and animals. Eukaryotes and archaebacteria are the two most closely related of the three. The process of translation (making protein from the instructions on a messenger RNA template) is similar in these lineages, but the organization of the genome and transcription (making messenger RNA from a DNA template) is very different in prokaryotes than in eukaryotes and archaebacteria. Scientists interpret this to mean that the common ancestor was RNA based; it gave rise to two lineages that independently formed a DNA genome and hence independently evolved mechanisms to transcribe DNA into RNA.

This is considered to be the Axiom?!

Is this Axiom still considered true?

Conclusion
The inevitable conclusion of this survey of nucleotide synthesis
is that there is at present no convincing, prebiotic
total synthesis of any of the nucleotides. Many individual
steps that might have contributed to the formation of nucleotides
on the primitive Earth have been demonstrated,
but few of the reactions give high yields of products, and
those that do tend to produce complex mixtures of products.
It should also be realized that any prebiotic synthesis
of a nucleotide would yield a racemic product, not
the biologically important D-nucleotide

http://physwww.mcmaster.ca/~higgsp/3D03/OrgelRNAWorld.pdf

So if the Axiom is not even plausible to begin with, then what is left with this problem? When did evolution begin then?

Other puzzles remain, such as the Endosymbiotic theory of mitochondria and chloroplast - which is also a fundamental hypothesis of evolution and was considered absolutely true.
CURRENT research shows otherwise:

"The possibility has been raised more generally that the earliest branchings of the eukaryotic tree may all be suspect for similar reasons (34, 53), with both "early" and "intermediate" branchings actually collapsing to an unresolved radiation (polychotomy) (54). The emerging revisionist view of eukaryotic evolution is a scenario characterized by a massive and virtually simultaneous radiation (big bang) at the base of the eukaryotic tree, involving virtually all extant eukaryotic phyla (34)."

Mitochondrial Evolution


Yes. These are all related to Abiogensis - since the phrase "Life evolved in the sea" means a direct reference to the Millery and Urey Experiment...which now we know is also a product of bad science since the initial conditions assumed were too strongly Reducing than plausible. Where you draw the line between where evolution starts and "abiogenesis" ends is faulty in it self. Rather it is you two who don't know what abiogenesis actually implies. The authors of TalkOrigin are humans just like you. They are not some angelic or demigod forms who can't use circular arguments to cover to keep you deluded.


Well I can't wait to see how you two will now convince yourselves otherwise. It will be a treat to see what sort of strawmans you'll produce.

In suspense,

Alchemist : )

[Midnight_Sun]

I will be able to present - but right now this argument has turned stagnant because my opponents are too busy trying to attack my character instead of my arguments.

This coming from the guy who referred to me as a Mongoloid, a demon worshipper, called other members countless names; and called Qrratugai an Ismaeli. You are such a hypocrite man. Get a life.

Keep on crying your crocodile tears bro. Your rhetorical posts serve no purpose other than confusing yourself.

[Alchemist]

^ I do recall calling you an idiot also. And I stand corrected since the above post is an ironic example of you trying to character assassinate me AGAIN.
Everything else that I said in that post in relation to the debunked theory of evolution flew over your head.
This goes to show that my opponents adhere to the Evolution Mythology, not for "Scientific" reasons, but because they have emotionally vested themselves to it, as it is a way for them to identify themselves with others they hold in esteem. Coincidentally, these persons of interests who have an influence on them just happen to be atheists. Subconsciously they have adopted their ideals, and I merely pointed out how her nickname, midnight sun aka osiris is associated with her idol's, AaronRa. (I thought you said you didn't read that post ... do you feel like a sheep yet? or a goat? ba-aah... ba-aah.)

Here is some more evidence for you to chock on...little girl:


Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex

• Schweitzer, et al.

Science 25 March 2005: 1952-1955.DOI:10.1126/science.1108397

"Abstract: Soft tissues are preserved within hindlimb elements of Tyrannosaurus rex (Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125). Removal of the mineral phase reveals transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels containing small round microstructures that can be expressed from the vessels into solution. Some regions of the demineralized bone matrix are highly fibrous, and the matrix possesses elasticity and resilience. Three populations of microstructures have cell-like morphology. Thus, some dinosaurian soft tissues may retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity, and resilience"

Soft tissue and Cells found from a dinosaur that dates back to 60 - 70 million years!
Is that even physically possible? For a cell to exist over millions of years? Really, think about it.

Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone

1. Mary H. Schweitzer*,
2. Mark Marshall†,
3. Keith Carron‡,
4. D. Scott Bohle‡,
5. Scott C. Busse§,
6. Ernst V. Arnold‡,
7. Darlene Barnard†,
8. J. R. Horner*, and
9. Jean R. Starkey¶

Six independent lines of evidence point to the existence of heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products in extracts of trabecular tissues of the large theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. These include signatures from nuclear magnetic resonance and electron spin resonance that indicate the presence of a paramagnetic compound consistent with heme. In addition, UV/visible spectroscopy and high performance liquid chromatography data are consistent with the Soret absorbance characteristic of this molecule. Resonance Raman profiles are also consistent with a modified heme structure. Finally, when dinosaurian tissues were extracted for protein fragments and were used to immunize rats, the resulting antisera reacted positively with purified avian and mammalian hemoglobins. The most parsimonious explanation of this evidence is the presence of blood-derived hemoglobin compounds preserved in the dinosaurian tissues.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/30...2/F2.large.jpg
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/30...2/F4.large.jpg

YouTube - ‪Dinosaurs: warm blooded vs cold blooded - My Pet Dinosaur - BBC‬‏

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

Alchemist, I think what you're trying to achieve here is to misrepresent evolution as something that is completely under doubt and is a controversial field at best. The truth, however, is that in the scientific community, 99% attest to the fact that evolution is true. However, that percentage drops down to 30% or lower in places like the American Midwest, Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia when laymen are surveyed. If Nobel Laureates and a seriously overwhelming number (99%) of earth and life scientists say that evolution is a fact, it is dishonest to spread the impression that evolution is a controversial field and that it is unscientific. If you have real evidence of evolution being a myth, write a scientific paper on it and win a Nobel prize. However, copy-pasting creationist mythology won't get you anywhere.

According to the Discovery Institute, 700 American scientists believe in the Creation story and dismiss evolution. That's less than 1% of the American scientific community. So even a multi-million dollar Church could not portray evolution as unscientific and under doubt.

A lot of stuff you bring up (such as irreducible complexity) have been dealt with in detail by scientists and even organs such as the eye are no longer considered "irreducibly complex", even by the skeptics. If you really want the answers, Google them.

Furthermore, all the people who claim that evolution is unscientific have been unable thus far to give an alternative scientific theory that explains the diversity of life on earth. Perhaps you have your own unified theory. I'd like to see it. At least we now know that Harun Yahya has been sufficiently discredited to be taken seriously, even by creationists such as yourself:

An equally ludicrous example (of ignorance) is to be found in the Muslim apologist Harun Yahya’s enormous lavishly produced, glossily illustrated and fatuously ignorant book Atlas of Creation. This book obviously cost a fortune to produce, which makes it all the more astounding that it was distributed free to tens of thousands of science teachers, including me. Notwithstanding the prodigious sums of money spent on this book, the errors in it have become legendary. In the service of illustrating the falsehood that most ancient fossils are indistinguishable from their modern counterparts, Yahya shows a sea snake as an ‘eel’ (two animals so different that they are placed in different classes of verterbrates), a starfish as a “brittlestar’ (actually different classes of echnoderms), a sabellid (annelid )worm as a crinoid ‘sea lily’ ( an echinoderm: this pair come not just from different phyla but from different sub- kingdoms, so they could hardly be more distant from each other if they tried, while still both being animals) and – best of all – a fishing lure as a ‘caddis fly’.

But in addition to these gems of partisan risibility, the book has a section on missing links. One picture is seriously offered to illustrate the fact that there is no intermediate form between a fish and a starfish. I find it impossible to believe that the author seriously thinks evolutionists would expect to find a transition between two such differing animals as a starfish and a fish. I therefore cannot help suspecting that he knows his audience all too well, and is deliberately and cynically exploiting their ignorance.

But in addition to these gems of partisan risibility

If this is your alternative to the scientific theory of evolution, you're not getting anywhere as far as science is concerned. The rank and file can be easily convinced, men of understanding need a lot more to be swayed.

Perhaps the fault lies in your failure to understand the scientific process. For example, the Big Bang theory is still being improved upon as it doesn't nearly satisfy all the questions that continue to be raised about our universe. We have the cyclic and osculating models of the universe along with the concept of parallel universes (of 11 dimensions) that incorporate the Big Bang theory into their own assumptions. Now that doesn't mean that everything we believed since the Big Bang theory was wrong. It just means that in the field of science, if you have a better explanation to help us understand the natural world, you will be given a chance to speak. Similarly, as our understanding of the natural world increases, more and more new areas are coming up (you can call them 'gaps' in our knowledge) but to date, nothing so startling has come up that can completely discredit the theory of evolution. If anything, most new discoveries (such as genetics and what not) only confirm evolution.

[Alchemist]

^ Another rhetorical diarrhea devoid of any real substance. Empty of any facts but just blanket statements like "99% of scientists believe this". At one point 99% of the people of the world believed that the earth's position was fixed and the sun and moon and stars revolved around it.
Then your idea of a rebuttal is to quote Richard Dawkin's view of Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation. When did I ever quote anything from Yahya? Find one post where I did this...

the theory of evolution originally stated that "acquired traits are heritable"... that means that if you practice everyday at making loud fart noises and eventually become the world champion at farting, your children will be born with that gift. This is a ludicrous idea in itself and countless experiments have disproved this belief long ago. Mendalian Genetics disproved it 120 years ago. In fact Mendal's original works were not accepted in the beginning because it contradicted evolution. Gregor Mendal's original paper has words like "Constant Form", "constant species", "constant law..infact the word "Constant" appears 67 times in his original paper. He was sure "that species are fixed with limits beyond which they cannot change".


Callender, L. A., Gregor Mendel: An opponent of descent with modification. History of Science 26: 41-75. 1988.

Mendel's Opposition to Evolution and to Darwin

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

^

You missed the point of my scientist-laymen argument but you proved it yourself in a way. Even when 99% of the world's people believed in a geocentric solar system, there were many scientists who were convinced that the sun was at the center and that the moon's light was a reflection of the sun's and so on and so forth. The point is that there has always been a huge gap between the understanding of the common man (who is brutish and superstitious) and that of scientists (who are mostly rational). That gap remains to this day. You are a living testament to that.

You cannot disprove the fact that the people who have the best understanding of the physical world (the scientists) are overwhelmingly of the opinion that evolution is not a farce or a mystery or whatever you're trying to portray it as here. My point is:

Why are the vast majority of the scientists of the world in favor of evolution and not creationism? Why are those equipped with the best tools to study the living world proponents of an explanation different from creationism?

As for Yahya, your posts reek of him. I just wanted you, and others, to know that he is not a reliable source to refer to unless you want some good old fashioned comedy and you're bored of watching Monty Python over and over again.


This is relevant to what you copy/pasted about Mendel:

The specific hereditary mechanism Darwin provided, pangenesis, lacked any supporting evidence. In the early 20th century, pangenesis was replaced by Mendelian inheritance, leading to the rise of the modern evolutionary synthesis. The modern synthesis rose to universal acceptance among biologists with the help of new evidence, such as genetics, which confirmed Darwin's predictions and refuted the competing theories.


Bowler, PJ (2003). Evolution: The History of an Idea, Third Edition, Completely Revised and Expanded. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520236936.



Lastly, this little nugget is from your own source:

Although the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Mendel's role in the origin of genetic theory, only one writer, L. A. Callender (1988), has concluded that Mendel was opposed to evolution...

Mendel's Opposition to Evolution and to Darwin


And this, in a nutshell, is what you're trying to do here. You're ignoring what 99% of the world's scientists are saying and you're blowing out or proportion the views of 1% of the members of the scientific community, most of whom are religiously motivated anyway (they're Bible literalists). You, just like your mentor, Yahya, exploit the ignorance of your audience. You misrepresent fringe religious Christian elements as mainstream scientists, which they are not and you misrepresent evolution as a field of uncertainty and confusion, which it is not.

[Alchemist]

Etymology:

The name "bandwagon fallacy" comes from the phrase "jump on the bandwagon" or "climb on the bandwagon", a bandwagon being a wagon big enough to hold a band of musicians. In past political campaigns, candidates would ride a bandwagon through town, and people would show support for the candidate by climbing aboard the wagon. The phrase has come to refer to joining a cause because of its popularity.

Alias:

• Appeal to Popularity
• Argument by Consensus
• Argumentum ad Populum
• Authority of the Many

Form:

Idea I is popular.
Therefore, I is correct.

Exposure:

Advertising is a rich source of Bandwagon arguments, with many products claiming to be "number 1" or "most popular", even though this is irrelevant to the product's merits.

Lastly, this little nugget is from your own source:

Although the past decade or so has seen a resurgence of interest in Mendel's role in the origin of genetic theory, only one writer, L. A. Callender (1988), has concluded that Mendel was opposed to evolution...

This little nugget of turd is another example of how weak your mind is.

The Author is astonished to find that even though many have an interest on Mendal, only onehas written....Sooooooo....he writes MORE on it... and the conclusion is in the title...obviously you don't care about facts...you only care about the hype.

[Michin Khel]

Very good discussion, carry on.