DNA/genetic code as evidence for Creation

[curiosityandthecat]

(what on earth was going on in your first post - I thought you were a nutter!)

Lurk more.

[Wanstronian]

I don't why but I'm getting a strong Poe vibe from you. I could be wrong but I am after all a sceptic. Perhaps it's your lack of understanding of basic evolutionary theroy which you want us to provide the proof for.

Such as? What am I missing? What part of evolutionary theory proves my colleague wrong? Other than it's "evolutionary" theory? I think I'm fairly well aware of the theory, but just because the evidence supports the theory, that doesn't mean it disproves a different hypothesis. Hence my question.

IDK like I said I'm sceptical of all new posters, nothing personal just a long sad experience of dealing with actual poes has made me jaded.

Not taken personally. I don't even know what a Poe is - a reference to Edgar?

Just checking but you do realise The Onion is a satirical newspaper right?

Of course. Maybe I should have put one of those annoying smilies in to show that!

[Wanstronian]

I haven't read that before, thank you - hilarious.

I think the less the person understands evolution, the more room for doubt.  I'm not trying to insinuate that you co-worker is an idiot, I just want to point out that the evolutionary process is something people go to school for years and years to learn about and often even they only focus on a specialized aspect of evolution.  It's a truly awesome process and while it can be simplified, with reduction comes less and less details and that's when misunderstandings occur.  And too many misunderstandings leads us to people like Ray Comfort saying the banana is proof of god because it fits so well in our hand.  

I think you're right about understanding and doubt. He's not an idiot - he at least has the good grace to admit his faith is just that - faith... unlike a lot of theists I debate with who somehow think they have evidence of God's existence. Then when challenged to produce, they trot out some paraphrased version of contingency, quote the bible(!!) or even fall back on thinly veiled incredulity. It gets very frustrating!

He is, however in my view, irrational in his beliefs. I bate him gently, but the 'building blocks' thing has me stumped. I can't think of anything - plate tectonics, homology, fossil records and so on, that disproves it as a hypothesis. I've just started reading Dawkins' latest and maybe he'll get to it, but I haven't got far through the book yet.

[curiosityandthecat]

I can't think of anything - plate tectonics, homology, fossil records and so on, that disproves it as a hypothesis.

And you're not going to. I hypothesize that there's a planet made entirely of sharp cheddar. Can't prove that wrong, either. Not all hypotheses are created equal.

[Squid]

Genetic comparison supports what is found in the fossil record and jives with other biochemical markers for evolutionary relationships like cytochrome c.  For instance (with cyt c), here's a nifty table:



I also refer to this and a bunch of other stuff that you may find useful especially a comparison of evolution and creationism as theories.  It's actually a blog post I'm making in response to an article published in my hometown newspaper.  Take a look and you should be able to find some information to help:

http://www.happyatheistforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4390

[leonswan2000]

If you would or could take the time to show or prove evolution from the first known organism to here, your friend would say "God did it."  That would make God an Evolutionist I think.

[SSY]

I guess the problem is not that the evidence supports Creation, so much as it allows room for doubt over Evolution. If my colleague was a YEC, at least I could point to Plate Tectonics as a reason why the evidence supports Evolution but not Creation. But then, YECs are leaning against an open door anyway when it comes to their assertions!

So I guess the strongest rebuttal for Creation is that it presupposes a God for which no evidence exists. It's only if God exists that the evidence could feasibly support Creation. Evidence of Creation is contingent on evidence of God.

Regarding your last paragraph, surely you've heard of IF? http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

DNA is evidence for evolution because evolution would have you believe that the organisms we see around us today, are descended from organisms before, and they pass on information through genes from generation to generation, if this process were imperfect we would see change in the gene makeup over long periods of gene passing. Since we now posit that animals have common ancestors, each one a more central branch on the tree, each one earlier in time and more replications away, we would expect the genes of animals who have recent common ancestors to be more similar, than a pair of animals whose ancestor was a long long time ago. Compare, you and you're half brother share a dad, a common ancestor, you have very, very similar genomes, you and chimp in the zoo have an ancestor much further removed (as indicated by the fossil record), so we would expect your genome to differ far more than when compared to your half brother, and hey presto it does. We could go on, and show that while you still share a lot of genes with lemurs, you are yet more different from them, than you are from chimps, as predicted by the distance between you and your latest common ancestor. This is the essence of science, you make a hypothesis, you ask what that would imply, the you go and look at if the implications indeed match with reality.

Our Evolution hypothesis, predicts greater genetic differences based on how far your common ancestor was, this is a trend we see in the world around us, and so we know evolution is an acceptable explanation for this phenomenon.

If we try this with god, we don't have quite such a neat experience. Okay, if god made things, he would make them all from the same building blocks (Who says? Why would he? How do we even know he exists?), therefore, the animals around us should all be made from the same building blocks (Well, they mostly are, but there are differences). We should then turn around and asks ourselves what we have really taught ourselves though. God makes things out of blocks, so they are made from blocks. This just does not stack up, it is not predictive, the premise relies on an unverifiable assertion, it is almost tautologous, "things are this way, because this is the way things are", it tells us nothing of this god, but merely stuffs him into the picture, with no attempt at explanation. Any theory relying on magic pixies doing it is never going to be experimentally testable, as you can never make the pixies conform to your experiment, and they are thus, outside the realm of science, and have no weight on the balance of evidence.

[G-Roll]

"And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

dust not blocks... magic dust, not to be confused with magic smoke.

[Wanstronian]

"And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

dust not blocks... magic dust, not to be confused with magic smoke.

Clearly God made blocks out of the dust - what's not to understand....!?  

Actually, my colleague does believe in micro-evolution (can't really deny that one), but not in macro-evolution. He seems unable (or unwilling) to grasp that they're the same thing, differentiated only by the amount of time involved. I think PZ Myers put it well in a recent lecture - "it's like allowing that a man can walk across a city, but not that he can walk across a county" (paraphrased).

Reminds me of a consistent bleat over on CAF: "You breed dogs, you get dogs" - as if you should be expecting narwhals or something.

[FredMore]

I recommend reading up on Perry Marshall, he will show you how there is intelligent design in a way that can't be doubted (except for the zealous, that's how clear it is). The evidence is overwhelming but you just have to get out of the narrow minded atheist mindset. There are other works too, information is everywhere, google is your friend.

[Wanstronian]

I recommend reading up on Perry Marshall, he will show you how there is intelligent design in a way that can't be doubted (except for the zealous, that's how clear it is). The evidence is overwhelming but you just have to get out of the narrow minded atheist mindset. There are other works too, information is everywhere, google is your friend.

Link or book title? I'd like to read this 'overwhelming' evidence for ID!

In my experience, it's the zealous, not the skeptical, who will take conjecture and read it as conclusive evidence.

(Most) atheists aren't narrow-minded, they're skeptical. It's an important distinction. A skeptic will absorb the evidence and decide whether he finds it convincing. A narrow-minded individual won't even read the argument.

[curiosityandthecat]

I recommend reading up on Perry Marshall, he will show you how there is intelligent design in a way that can't be doubted (except for the zealous, that's how clear it is). The evidence is overwhelming but you just have to get out of the narrow minded atheist mindset. There are other works too, information is everywhere, google is your friend.

[uglyduckling]

Gene theory and evolution are more useful for describing and interpreting physical phenomena than they are for proving or disproving the existence of a creator entity.  To enter into such a discussion is wrong-headed at the outset, if getting at the truth is the goal.

[pinkocommie]

Every "scientific subject" is evidence for creation claim I've ever come across has been driven by people looking for creation in science.  Problem being, science doesn't work that way.  When you approach a study with a desired outcome in mind, the integrity of the research suffers.  Much like Behe and his hypothesis on 'irreducible complexity', Creationist hypotheses tend to bounce around the Creationist community and gain a zealous momentum from people who are just happy to have something science-y that seems to back up their belief.  Unfortunately, once these hypotheses are brought to the scientific community, they are consistently proven to be junk science in one way or another.  However, given that the Creationist community has already accepted these hypotheses as theories since god fearing men in lab coats told them that was the case, the whole 'scientific conspiracy' crap is perpetuated.  The sad thing is, it's the general lack of understanding about how science actually works that aids in keeping these people believing that DNA is god's cliff notes or whatever.  Science involves integrity because it's very easy to produce junk science in order to tell people what they want to hear.  Creationist science trades integrity for the desire to prove something, and so it's essentially worthless.

[Ihateyoumike]

I recommend reading up on Perry Marshall, he will show you how there is intelligent design in a way that can't be doubted (except for the zealous, that's how clear it is). The evidence is overwhelming but you just have to get out of the narrow minded atheist mindset. There are other works too, information is everywhere, google is your friend.