-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
One common tactic in the creationist’s war against evolution is to falsify evolution by demonstrating a counterexample. If such a counterexample existed, it would indeed spell the demise of evolution. The Precambrian Rabbit would be such a counterexample. After failing to find even one counterexample, some creationists have given up trying to falsify evolution and now seek to disabuse evolution by claiming it is not falsifiable. Other creationists, unable to falsify evolution, get all metaphysical and point out that the principle of falsifiability is not falsifiable.A recent paper in the journal Nature, Insights into hominid evolution from the gorilla genome sequence, after sequencing the western lowland gorilla genome, it was found that “in 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other.”
Creationists pounced, noting that depending on which DNA fragment is used for analysis, humans are more closely related to gorillas than to chimpanzees. Although this was termed “Bad News” for evolution, it would have been worse news for probability theory. While the genomes of humans and chimpanzees show a mean genetic difference of 1.37%, and a 1.75% difference between humans and gorillas, the key word is “mean.” These probabilities do not imply that there is a uniform genetic difference across all genes. Of the tens of thousands of genes, some are more similar and some are less similar. On average, humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than to gorillas.
On the genetic path from our Most Common Recent Ancestor (MCRA) to humans and gorillas, different genes mutated at different times. Although cladograms, like the one below for Humans, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, and Orangutans, show a single branch to each species, this does not imply that all the genetics differences occurred simultaneously. One would have to be a creationist to believe that all the mutations occurred simultaneously.
One would also expect to find that certain DNA fragments would more similar between humans and orangutans. This is exactly what was found in this report, based on a complete orangutan genome, published in Genome Research, in which the authors said that “in about 0.5% of our genome, we are closer related to orangutans than we are to chimpanzees.”
Even the well-funded BioLogos, a group dedicated to trying to accommodate Christianity and science, sees the errancy of these arguments:
This is exactly what one expects from the species tree: humans and chimps are much more likely to have gene trees in common, since they more recently shared a common ancestral population (around 4-5 million years ago). Humans and orangutans, on the other hand, haven’t shared a common ancestral population in about 10 million years or more, meaning that it is much less likely for any given human allele to more closely match an orangutan allele.
Creationists are engaged in a desperate, but lucrative, attempt to pull a Precambrian Rabbit out of their hat. This attempt is particularly pathetic.
H/T: Pharyngula, John Wakeley (pdf), Pharyngula.
Oh, and the development of mathematics as well.
OS,
So you think science began with tool use? I think it has to start with written language. Data analysis and preservation is incredibly difficult (if not impossible on complex data sets) without the written word. I think through tool use you can crudely interrogate the nature of reality, but you cannot codify it well (oral tradition is extremely error prone) or synthesize the information required to gain complex understanding without writing.
Just a couple of brief observations. Religion is old. Very old. Ancient burial sites dating back tens of thousands of years show ritualistic burials. It may not have been religion in the same sense that modern people think of it, but it was reflective of some sort of belief in spirits. Same for ancient cave drawings. Stonehenge was the culmination of ancient rituals that dated a hell of a long time before the beliefs were strong enough to make them cart multi-ton rocks for miles over hilly terrain. As for science, it probably began when some cave man or woman figured out how to get a hard nut open with a rock. Then gave thanks to some sort of diety for providing food.
bdaman under a different handle? Dipshit?
Awwww. You can do better than that. Or maybe you can’t, you amateur sub-par talent.
“As the very notable scientists I quote (and read their papers), clearly point out, machines came before microbes.”
Machines came before microbes, eh? Then get to quoting. And when I say quote, I mean sourced cited and quoted evidence, not flogging your own blog. Although you do seem quite adept at flogging yourself. So far you haven’t offered a shred of evidence to support your ridiculous assertions. Do you even know what a machine is? I’m starting to doubt it, so let me help you with that: a machine is a tool consisting of one or more parts that is constructed to achieve a particular goal and/or perform specific work by converting mechanical, chemical, thermal or electrical energy from one form into another. There is no way machines came before complex life. Tools are not self-assembling. Although abiogenic life is a result of self-organizing pre-organic molecules, the life is not a tool. Tools are built by complex life. Machines are complex/compound tools.
I provided evidence that neolithic civilization had religion before agriculture and certainly before science. I provided evidence that modern science is about 1,000 years old and science and the protoscience of ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, Chinese and Sumerians is no older than 6,000 years old whereas religion is at least 12,000 years old as evidenced by the temple structures at Göbekli Tepe. Here’s some more general information since you seem to be lacking in a fundamental understanding of history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science
Religion is older than science. It’s a fact.
Your respect? Well that’s a loss I am increasingly willing to live with given that you’ve gone in one thread from someone who I thought made occasionally astute observations to someone who is clearly making shit up and/or simply out of their mind (such as it is).
The only trash being thrown in the face of anyone is the tripe you’re trying to pimp out as what? Science? Sociology? Religion? So far all I can see is a bunch of mental masturbation and fallacious logic on your part.
Then again, it is becoming apparent that masturbation is your strong suit.
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 4:37 pm
I don’t need a second opinion …
Microbes don’t build machines …
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I am convinced, now, that you are bdaman under a different handle.
I asked for a second opinion, not your second opinion, on the size of your fangs dipshit.
As to microbes and machines, again, you flout your ignorance.
As the very notable scientists I quote (and read their papers), clearly point out, machines came before microbes.
And by the way, microbes do in fact build machines, and more that that, the do quantum mechanics, and have done so for billions of years.
You are very backwards Gene H … perhaps you are the fabled “denial gene”.
At any rate, I have lost respect for you for throwing trash in the faces of Turley blog bloggers.
It is quite shameful.
Waiting for Nal.
I don’t need a second opinion. That was a factual statement. If you want to play that way, I win every time. Feel free to test that assertion if you like. I don’t mind. Really.
I have also defined science and religion before but will gladly do so again since you seem to have some kind of made up definition you’re working from.
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the nature of the universe by applying the scientific method to define the system this endeavor utilizes. The goal of science is to build a base of reliable knowledge which can be logically and rationally explained and, when not of a strictly theoretical value, put into practical applications.
Religion is a collection of cultural systems and belief systems that socially and psychologically relate humanity to spirituality and often moral values. Most religions have narratives in the forms of sacred texts, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning and/or origin of life.
“I have been talking about the machines that existed prior to organics, which real scientists talk about in real scientific papers, and I have been talking about the microbes that existed billions of years before archeology, your stone of scone.”
Really. Sounds more like you should lay off the bong. Microbes don’t build machines, pursue science or practice religion and pre-organic self-organizing chemistry is nothing more than pre-organic self-organizing chemistry – a trick of energy and chemistry inherent in the structure and interrelation between baryonic matter. If that drivel you spout above is what you are talking about, then you aren’t talking about human history or religion and certainly not science as human endeavor. Science and religion are human cultural phenomena and remain only human phenomena until and if we confirm the existence of complex, cultural and technological alien life.
It’s also not an opinion when it’s backed by archaeological fact, Dredd.
You are flat out totally and completely wrong according to the temples at Göbekli Tepe, the history of religion and the history of science. Or does the existence of Göbekli Tepe, the history of religion and the history of science not apply to your logic because it is simply your logic and ergo infallible? A wrong fact is a wrong fact and your assertion that religion is a recent development in human society is plainly and completely wrong.
Feel free to be wrong all you like.
Like I said, it’s no skin off my back.
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Dredd,
Noting an important scientific anniversary is nothing more than noting an important scientific anniversary. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Same with important religious anniversaries.
Nolo contendere.
As the little people would say.
They started that saying way before anniversaries came into existence BTW.
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Dredd,
… it was pointed out that your statement about religion was factually wrong.
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Pointing it out by opinion is ineffective and self serving.
I am dead on correct in this matter.
You must first define each term, religion and science. You have done neither is terms of lady logic which you don’t want me to dance with.
Then you must look to the first emergence of each, the first emergence of science, and the first emergence of religion.
Religiously.
I have been talking about the machines that existed prior to organics, which real scientists talk about in real scientific papers, and I have been talking about the microbes that existed billions of years before archeology, your stone of scone.
I have patiently pointed out that your concept of beginning is much closer to the concept of ending than it is to the concept of beginning.
Get those two concepts straight, and you might “get out of the office.”
Otherwise, I am going to pull rank and call your grandmother dude. 😉
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Dredd,
Now now. I have much bigger fangs than you if you want to start playing nasty.
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I would ask for a second opinion.
Dredd,
Noting an important scientific anniversary is nothing more than noting an important scientific anniversary. Nothing more, nothing less.
Dredd,
Now now. I have much bigger fangs than you if you want to start playing nasty. I also have way more than a clue and I think you do too – notwithstanding your currently and inexplicable intractable and evasive behavior.
It’s not using buzz words to point out that you are indeed attempting to argue by non-sequitur and that you were moving the goal posts. Being accurate in description isn’t using buzz words. Those are the tactics you were trying to deploy when it was pointed out that your statement about religion was factually wrong. I don’t care what you’ve programmed. That doesn’t make your statements/tactics logically formally correct and I’ll call your fallacies by their proper names.
I even pointed to evidence in the form of Göbekli Tepe to illustrate that your predicate was factually wrong, yet you persist in your meandering refusal to admit you were wrong. Religion is older than science. Admit it or not. It’s no skin off my back, but refusing the address the point only continues to make you look evasive in the face of contrary evidence.
Whether you wish to appear that way or not is entirely up to you.
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 2:45 pm
BTW, this month is the 59th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick publishing their findings about DNA in the magazine Nature. The link takes you to a .pdf of the original article.
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Outdated material is published all the time.
It is a queue thingy. Human DNA is the 1%, microbial DNA is the 99% …
You have not addressed what I quoted, nor has Nal, as I stand on the edge of science:
(link up-thread). C’mon Gene, come on over here near the edge where I am and take a look inside the deeper cosmos, beyond the confines of an aggressive office, beyond the edge of town, beyond western bullshit borders, and way out there.
Where the most recent discoveries are.
Don’t get angry because you are afraid.
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Dredd,
Oh come on! Argument by non-sequitur? Moving the goal posts? Really? I expected better from you. If you don’t want to admit that religion is a far older social phenomena than science despite the overwhelming archaeological evidence to the contrary, that’s fine by me.
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C’mon Gene, don’t get chicken shit on me, OK?
If you have no clue, admit it, otherwise keep up the good work, like I am.
The top evolutionary scientists are focusing on messaging between microbes, and between microbe / human cells in what has recently been discovered as a symbiotic relationship. Symbiont.
We exist with symbiont life forms that predate “archaeological evidence”, and mammals, by billions of years.
Beginning is not where stuff ends Gene, it is way earlier than that, and in the beginning there had to be successful hermeneutics:
See Microbial Hermeneutics linked to up-thread, quoting inter alia, Molecular Cell, Volume 42, Issue 4, p. 405.
Stop using buzz words of formal logic, I have programmed formal logic interpreters in various programming languages, including the tautologies, so don’t run that song and dance on me, please.
Nal has brought up some things that used to be, and still are, but as Dylan’s song lyrics indicate, the ultra recent science I cite to, and watch closely, indicates that “Things Have Changed“, no pun intended.
Signal evolution is very important, like legal hermeneutics, a recent development.
To be coherent in evolutionary science one must be on edge. 😉
BTW, this month is the 59th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick publishing their findings about DNA in the magazine Nature. The link takes you to a .pdf of the original article.
Awkward construction, clarification:
If you don’t want to admit that religion is a far older social phenomena than science despite the overwhelming archaeological evidence indicating that religion is neolithic or older, then that’s fine by me.
Dredd,
Oh come on! Argument by non-sequitur? Moving the goal posts? Really? I expected better from you. If you don’t want to admit that religion is a far older social phenomena than science despite the overwhelming archaeological evidence to the contrary, that’s fine by me.
” … letting the 99% remain ignored.”
Gene H. 1, April 2, 2012 at 2:17 pm
None of which changes that religion is not a newer invention than science or that religion has had a far longer time span to work misdeeds upon society than science, Dredd. You don’t understand that your statement “[r]eligion as we know it is a fairly recent development too” is simply factually wrong as a matter of the archaeological record.
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There is no archaeological record for machines morphing / evolving into organics, which happened before microbes.
Nor is there any genetic record of microbes that inhabited the earth billions of years before mammals.
The first science I will bring up is messaging / signaling hermeneutics, Microbial Hermeneutics, which had to be developed first.
You can’t seem to address the greatest portion of evolution, limiting yourself to the 1% and letting the 99% ignored.
Nal,
Are you a science bully? 😉 Don’t freak out yet.
You said:
That is very recent evolution, a tiny portion of the issue, thus you are picking on weak creationist arguments.
Wouldn’t it be more heroic to explain the difficulties in cosmological and evolutionary biology instead? That is what scientists do.
If so, recent discoveries require us to look at microbiology, not genetics alone, because:
(The Human Microbiome Congress). We need to shake the sleep out of the tired eyes, and get modern in our hypotheses and develop some theory that includes machine evolution into prelife entities like prions, then take it on into microbes, which predate mammals on this planet for billions of years.
None of which changes that religion is not a newer invention than science or that religion has had a far longer time span to work misdeeds upon society than science, Dredd. You don’t understand that your statement “[r]eligion as we know it is a fairly recent development too” is simply factually wrong as a matter of the archaeological record. I understood perfectly your point about the science of religion and the religion of science. I don’t disagree with it either. However, religion being conflated with science (and vice versa) could not have happened until recently because there was for the predominance of human history no science with which to be conflated as a matter of evidentiary fact. You admit this yourself. What you fail to appreciate is the timescales involved where religion was left to its own devices in oppressing society compared to the timescale where any form of science – be it legitimate science or the religion of science – has been able to oppress society are so disproportionate as to make the comparison a little ridiculous. Your predicate as stated is factually incorrect even though your observations about modern conflation are correct.