Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. Thus creation attests to God and His puposes as an expression of His power and glory.
(Before we get back to information...Just a reminder to those who think the geological column supports Darwinism. It doesn't.)
Howard Roark Said: "Rules? Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it."
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand - 1943
Pluto
I am a musicial person from a musical family. Guess I am retired now, had my last paying gig maybe ten years ago and have too many irons in the fire as it is. My mom? She was a union musician for fifty years! Kind of a Doris Day pop/swing/jazz singer and percussionist in jazz bands, big bands and trios. Naturally I have always believed that a good band is always better live than what comes out of their studio albums. This has tended to hold true. Most bands I have seen at concert were better live. My favorite Hendrix album is almost certainly Band of Gypsies, which was a live performance with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles. BTW Foghat may well have been pretty good but when I saw them live they stunk. Thank God they were the front band for Jethro Tull at that time so the concert was still worthwhile.
(Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (September 25, 1843 – November 15, 1928) was an influential American geologist and educator. In 1893 he founded the Journal of Geology, of which he was editor for many years.)
An excerpt from a Chamberlin treatise with highlights by me:
affection for a favorite theory can be circumvented.
It is in the tentative stage that the affectations enter with their blinding influence. Love was long since represented as blind, and what is true in the personal realm is measurably true in the intellectual realm. Important as the intellectual affections are as stimuli and as rewards, they are nevertheless dangerous factors, which menace the integrity of the intellectual processes. The moment one has offered an original explanation for a phenomenon which seems satisfactory, that moment affection for his intellectual child springs into existence; and as the explanation grows into a definite theory, his parental affections cluster about his intellectual offspring, and it grows more and more dear to him, so that, while he holds it seemingly tentative, it is still lovingly tentative, and not impartially tentative. So soon as this parental affection takes possession of the mind, there is a rapid passage to the adoption of theory. There is an unconscious selection and magnifying of the phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it, and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence. The mind lingers with pleasure upon the facts that fall happily into the embrace of the theory, and feels a natural coldness toward those that seem refractory. Instinctively there is a special searching-out phenomena that support it, for the mind is led by its desires. There springs up, also, an unconscious pressing of the theory to make it fit the facts to make them fit the theory. When these biasing tendencies set in, the mind rapidly degenerates into the partiality of paternalism. The search for facts, the observation of phenomena and their interpretation, are all dominated by affection for the favored theory until it appears to it author or its advocate to have been overwhelmingly established. The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are controlled and directed by it. From an unduly favored child, it readily becomes master, and leads its author whithersoever it will. The subsequent history of that mind in respect to that theme is but the progressive dominance of a ruling idea.
Briefly summed up, the evolution is this: a premature explanation passes into tentative theory, then into an adopted theory, and then into ruling theory.
When the last stage has been reached, unless the theory happens, perchance, to be the true one, all hope of the best results is gone. To be sure, truth may be brought forth by an investigator dominated by a false ruling idea. His very errors may indeed stimulate investigation on the part of others. But the condition is an unfortunate one. Dust and chaff are mingled with the grain in what should be a winnowing process.
Unfortunately it did not wholly pass away with the infancy of investigation, but has lingered along in individual instances to the present day, and finds illustration in universally learned men and pseudo-scientists of our time.
The defects of the method are obvious, and its errors great. If I were to name the central psychological fault, I should say that it was the admission of intellectual affection to the place that should be dominated by impartial intellectual rectitude.
So long as intellectual interest dealt chiefly with the intangible, so long it was possible for this habit of thought to survive, and to maintain its dominance, because the phenomena themselves, being largely subjective, were plastic in the hands of the ruling idea; but so soon as investigation turned itself earnestly to an inquiry into natural phenomena, whose manifestations are tangible, whose properties are rigid, whose laws are rigorous, the defects of the method became manifest, and an effort at reformation ensued. The first great endeavor was repressive. The advocates of reform insisted that theorizing should be restrained, and efforts directed to the simple determination of facts. The effort was to make scientific study factitious instead of causal. Because theorizing in narrow lines had led to manifest evils, theorizing was to be condemned. The reformation urged was not the proper control and utilization of theoretical effort, but its suppression. We do not need to go backward more than twenty years to find ourselves in the midst of this attempted reformation. Its weakness lay in its narrowness and its restrictiveness. There is no nobler aspiration of the human intellect than desire to compass the cause of things. The disposition to find explanations and to develop theories is laudable in itself. It is only its ill use that is reprehensible. The vitality of study quickly disappears when the object sought is a mere collocation of dead unmeaning facts.
The inefficiency of this simply repressive reformation becoming apparent, improvement was sought in the method of the working hypothesis. This is affirmed to be the scientific method of the day, but to this I take exception. The working hypothesis differs from the ruling theory in that it is used as a means of determining facts, and has for its chief function the suggestion of lines of inquiry; the inquiry being made, not for the sake of facts. Under the method of the ruling theory, the stimulus was directed to the finding of facts for the support of the theory. Under the working hypothesis, the facts are sought for the purpose of ultimate induction and demonstration, the hypothesis being but a means for the ready development of facts and of their relations, and the arrangement and preservation of material for the final induction.
It will be observed that the distinction is not a sharp one, and that a working hypothesis may with the utmost ease degenerate into a ruling theory. Affection may as easily cling about an hypothesis as about a theory, and the demonstration of the one may become a ruling passion as much as of the other..."
Pluto orbits 40 times further from the sun than Earth, and for over 70 years it has been regarded as the ninth planet of our solar system. Clyde Tombaugh (1906–1997) discovered Pluto in 1930 by comparing photographs of stars taken two weeks apart at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona.1
Because of perceived irregularities in the motion of Uranus, Percival Lowell (1855–1916), the founder of the observatory, believed in the existence of a ninth planet. He dubbed it Planet X and calculated that it would be six times more massive than Earth. He even specified its location.2 Lowell searched for the planet without success from 1906 until he died.
Tombaugh was hired by the observatory in 1929 and discovered the planet near where Lowell suggested. This apparently vindicated Lowell’s predictions so the discovery was appropriately announced on Lowell’s birthday (13th March) and the first two letters of Pluto’s name are his initials.3
Pluto is so faint that it can only be seen with a telescope 30 cm (12 in) or larger, and astronomers were unable to determine its size and mass. Early estimates could rely only on the deviations of the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. The size was quickly revised down from Lowell’s estimate, and eventually astronomers settled on a mass about three quarters that of Earth.
All this changed around 1978, nearly 50 years after Pluto’s initial discovery. The key evidence was found by James Christy of the US Naval Observatory when he realized that Pluto has a moon. He noticed that some of the images from their 1.5 metre telescope showed Pluto slightly elongated but the stars in the same photographs were not. From those images he was able to estimate the diameter of the moon’s orbit and its orbital period. As a result astronomers could calculate the mass of Pluto with far more certainty.4 It is now accepted that Pluto is only 1/500th the mass of the earth. Ongoing observations confirmed Pluto’s moon, and the International Astronomical Union gave it official status in 1985 and named it Charon.5
With such a tiny mass, Pluto could not possibly have affected the orbits of the gas giants Uranus or Neptune. In 1983 astronomers searched the entire sky by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite but no hidden planet was found. It is now generally believed that the perturbations to the orbits of Uranus and Neptune were imaginary, that Lowell’s calculations were wrong, and Tombaugh’s discovery was a coincidence.1
How could so many scientists be so wrong for so long about the mass of Pluto—by a factor of 400? A similar question is often asked when creationists speak of the earth being only 6,000 years old instead of the generally accepted age of 4,600 million years.
The mass of Pluto, like the age of the earth, has not been measured directly. It is calculated from scientific models that are all based on assumptions. All the scientists got the same wrong answers because they all used the same models and the same assumptions. However, ongoing observations of the behaviour of Pluto led to more information that enabled an entirely different approach to the problem, overturning the previous assumptions and coming up with a radically new and soundly-based estimate.
There is another big difference. The mass of Pluto is operational science, where we can continue to make observations in the present using newer and better instruments and technology. But the age of the earth is historical science. We cannot travel back in time to make observations of things that only happened in the past. For information about the past we need reliable reports from eyewitnesses.
Pluto and Goofy
Case in point - John E said "To put the word scientist and creationist in the same sentence defies any logic of language or common sense."
Now I am quite certain I have already named a few hundred creationist scientists who were or are brilliant men and women with many accomplishments and many were listed in my last post, so that remark is one made by a completely brainwashed follower.
How about this from creeper?
"Let us know when creation scientists come up with falsifiable predictions about their hypotheses and then you can try to make a claim that they're doing "real science"."
I guess you missed the creationists who both predicted and explained the orbital abnormalities that far traveling space vehicles were experiencing on their way beyond the Solar System, posted maybe eight months ago? Also, bacteria over thousands of generations have basically falsified Darwinism.
Here is one of the best/worst - "How do you tell someone that water is wet? Good grief!
Heh. Now you know how Creeper and I feel when you try to poke holes in radiometric dating.
Jon, if you cannot understand that DNA is complex coding for the cell and you cannot comprehend that it is designed to transmit information...
Of course it is -- under the conventional definition of information. But your definition is not the conventional one. You yourself said that under your definition, there must be an intelligence at both ends of a data transmission before you can say that the transmission contains information. There is no intelligence involved in either sending or receiving a DNA data transmission. It's all just chemistry.
Not trying to be mean, but that statement is wrong in every way. You have run away from the dictionary definitions and you obviously have no clue about DNA or prefer to lie about it, one. A geneticist who is honest would call you on this one. DNA is a coding language expressed in organic form, among other things.
Your problem, Radar, is that you don't fully understand language, and so you can't disentangle yourself from your implicit assumptions. As just one example, look at the terms we're both using to describe DNA: "code," "information," "language," "words." These terms carry an implicit assumption that there's an intelligence involved, and it's taking conscious action. But there isn't. It's all just chemistry. In fact, what DNA is, what it does, and what it contains are not adequately described by any word in the English language. All we can do is use words that were coined for other uses, other contexts, and do our best to steer clear of the inevitable confusion. I've learned how to do that. You haven't."
That is a ridiculous statement. Would you go up to Ringo Starr and declare he doesn't understand the art of drumming? (I use Ringo because he is not a great drummer and I not want to compare myself to one of the great ones like the late John Bonham or Ginger Baker or Gene Krupa or Neil Peart). I have a degree in journalism, do you? I have written stories and radio copy for a living, how about you? I won an excellence in sports journalism award last year and was offered a job writing for a baseball team but cannot uproot my family. I have worked as an editor in chief for a large non-profit organization. I don't follow the AP editorial standards on my blog because a blog is a discussion and not a newspaper so my words are sometimes folksy and full of vernacular.
You are our of your depth, sport. I have you cornered to the point you either lie or play dumb about information. Dear readers, do not be fooled, Jon knows like any seeker of knowledge that there is a tremendous amount of information in the cell and it did not just happen. But the implications of this knowledge ruin his religious adherence to Darwinism. Such behavior was predicted by non-creationist Chamberlin.
Here is a definition of DNA by Wikipedia, no friend to creationists! - "Deoxyribonucleic acid (
/diːˌɒksɨˌraɪbɵ.n(j)uːˈkleɪ.ɪk ˈæsɪd/ (help·info)) (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information."
Instructions. Information. Blueprints. Recipe. Code. Etc. I am not making up a definition for DNA, you are running away from it at top speed. But running does no good. DNA is a container for the information input by God in the beginning. ID'ers would say by a designer and are agnostic as to the identity but I can fill in the blanks - God.
I just answered that question.
Your "answer" was two unconnected, unsupported propositions. That doesn't qualify as a logical argument.
You are evading because you have no answer.
Every organism contains information that was input by the Designer and we call it DNA. So there is intelligence in every cell.
Still a non sequitur. Using your definition of information, there must be an intelligence on both ends of a transmission before the transmission can be said to contain any information. What pre-existing intelligence receives the information you claim is in the genetic code?
Answered. You are evading yet again.
Your assumption is backwards.
I'm not assuming anything. I gave you three pairs of organisms that evolutionary theory says are closely related, but require "macro-evolutionary" changes to get from species A to species B. You say macro-evolution is impossible and therefore those species can't be related.
(No, I said I did not THINK that they were related and skeletal structure supports my viewpoint, But we first need DNA to compare in order to have a reasonable idea in that area of expertise. It would be much harder for you to prove they are related, seeing as how the organisms are so different). The way we are sorting animals by baraminology is helped along by discerning which species can mate. Any organisms that are able to mate are of one kind or baramin. Animals that are extinct? We must compare structures and make educated guesses. Hyracotherium as a horse kind looks like a bad guess to me!
Very well. Prove it. How much information would have to be added to explain those changes? If you can't produce a reliable number to answer that question, then how do you know the number isn't 0?
Simply to convert feet to hooves would take thousands of steps. Darwinists fail to acknowledge that such a change does not involve one gene or one mutation or change. Systems must fit together properly. This is why the poor tormented laboratory version of fruit flies who were prodded into mutations providing double wings were epic fails. The structure of the mutated fruit fly did not support wings and they could not live. To convert a four toed animal to a classically hooved animal is not a one step process. The way the leg is designed and the foot is connected to the leg involves bone and muscle and tendons and cartilage that represent huge numbers of cells that must all be adjusted from one structural aspect to another. As we have never once observed new information forming new structures in organisms it is colossally incredible to believe that thousand, no, millions of such changes were happening on a regular basis in the past.
We can only measure the information loss of creatures whose DNA can be compared or readily presumed by other means. Scientists are working on the DNA losses and mutations in various bacteria now and some plants and other organisms. Determining difference between the original horse kind and current versions is a bit harder as we are somewhat low on Eohippus DNA? Nevertheless this work is being done. Bet you would love it if I cut and pasted a technical abstract and paper on the subject. One can do a comparison between the genetic information in a mongrel versus a poodle and will find more information within the mongrel. We do not need to go back in time to see how speciation works and speciation is not helpful to Darwinism.
To quote Don Batten - "...Now the popularist treatments of this research (e.g. in New Scientist) give the impression that the E. coli developed the ability to metabolize citrate, whereas it supposedly could not do so before. However, this is clearly not the case, because the citric acid, tricarboxcylic acid (TCA), or Krebs, cycle (all names for the same thing) generates and utilizes citrate in its normal oxidative metabolism of glucose and other carbohydrates.5
Furthermore, E. coli is normally capable of utilizing citrate as an energy source under anaerobic conditions, with a whole suite of genes involved in its fermentation. This includes a citrate transporter gene that codes for a transporter protein embedded in the cell wall that takes citrate into the cell.6 This suite of genes (operon) is normally only activated under anaerobic conditions.
So what happened? It is not yet clear from the published information, but a likely scenario is that mutations jammed the regulation of this operon so that the bacteria produce citrate transporter regardless of the oxidative state of the bacterium’s environment (that is, it is permanently switched on). This can be likened to having a light that switches on when the sun goes down—a sensor detects the lack of light and turns the light on. A fault in the sensor could result in the light being on all the time. That is the sort of change we are talking about.
Another possibility is that an existing transporter gene, such as the one that normally takes up tartrate,3 which does not normally transport citrate, mutated such that it lost specificity and could then transport citrate into the cell. Such a loss of specificity is also an expected outcome of random mutations. A loss of specificity equals a loss of information, but evolution is supposed to account for the creation of new information; information that specifies the enzymes and cofactors in new biochemical pathways, how to make feathers and bone, nerves, or the components and assembly of complex motors such as ATP synthase, for example.
However, mutations are good at destroying things, not creating them. Sometimes destroying things can be helpful (adaptive),7 but that does not account for the creation of the staggering amount of information in the DNA of all living things. Behe (in The Edge of Evolution) likened the role of mutations in antibiotic resistance and pathogen resistance, for example, to trench warfare, whereby mutations destroy some of the functionality of the target or host to overcome susceptibility. It’s like putting chewing gum in a mechanical watch; it’s not the way the watch could have been created." Read entire article and etc. here.
But I do really need to get back on creepers pet dating methods concerns pretty soon as I promised I would say more on that subject as well. I have expressed my opinion in concert with thousands of scientists who see that information has never been observed entering the genome and therefore have grave doubts that it will EVER be observed because the information was in the organism at the start and any changes we see are all downhill or descending. No commenter has ever provided an example of new information entering the cell but rather resort to arguing over the semantics involving the meaning of the word, "information." Now Bill Clinton tried parsing the meaning of "is" during his impeachment and managed to keep his Presidency. But no one doubted that he had lied under oath and we had physical evidence of his guilt. So often it is the cover-up and not the crime! Darwinists are in cover-up mode right now, trying to hush the creationists and ID'ers and fretting over a general populace that is beginning to turn away from Darwinism despite the fervent inanities of "Darwin's Golder Retriever" Eugenie Scott and the published works of Richard Dawkins and the non-stop brainwashing in the media and in our schools. Sometimes common sense wins out anyway.
Howard Roark Said: "Rules? Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it."
Ayn Rand and I would disagree on many things but I love that quote. The Maker of all things did, indeed give all organisms the "soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express" His will and purpose in material form so that mankind, once certain of the glorious wonder of creation, will naturally worship the Creator of it all.
Addendum specific to ERVs...this pdf
(Large scale function for‘endogenous retroviruses’)
I get the technical journals but they do not convert them to online format in most cases for a year or a bit more. ERV and junk DNA in general are better understood as design features that are devolving than any kind of evolutionary leftovers. So far both sides can make subjective statements about ERVs but objective evidence is another matter entirely.
Howard Roark Said: "Rules? Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it."
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand - 1943
I am a musicial person from a musical family. Guess I am retired now, had my last paying gig maybe ten years ago and have too many irons in the fire as it is. My mom? She was a union musician for fifty years! Kind of a Doris Day pop/swing/jazz singer and percussionist in jazz bands, big bands and trios. Naturally I have always believed that a good band is always better live than what comes out of their studio albums. This has tended to hold true. Most bands I have seen at concert were better live. My favorite Hendrix album is almost certainly Band of Gypsies, which was a live performance with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles. BTW Foghat may well have been pretty good but when I saw them live they stunk. Thank God they were the front band for Jethro Tull at that time so the concert was still worthwhile.
So anyway I get DirecTv and there is a channel that shows concerts in HD and stereo. I have a very good stereo system and my son Rob brought a big plasma TV home when he left the military after his enlistment was up. Rob put that in the family room and declared it would be his "coming home" gift to us. This weekend Toto was playing as recorded in Amsterdam, I believe, in 2007. Steve Lukather can flat shred and the band is tight as a drum. Great concert, great to ride the exercise bike to for sure!
Do you know what goes into making a concert like that happen? I am not talking about selling tickets and stuff, I am just talking about the band's setup. There are an amazing amount of speakers and amps and cables and you have to tune the speakers to the venue's particular acoustics and not only set the base mix on the board but go through the songs so the sound man can see when he needs to crank one feed up and one down. Live sound mixing on the fly works better when you have notes to work from. In fact, since they were involved in both the sound mix for the crowd and also getting a good recording for the DVD it must have been one heck of a job!
You gotta bring in all the instruments and make sure the guitars are tuned and the drums have the right tension after being transported and you need your spares ready and on and on and on...just running the sound board during a concert (one of my sons learned to run sound boards back in the days when we had a family band and taught me the basics on a very small minimal board for our church) would be tricky at times I am sure. Bands have to deal with a string breaking, a drumstick slipping out of a hand or cracking, a short in a keyboad and all that. One of my guitarist buddies used to break an average of one string per show for some reason. Cheap strings or strong fingers, not sure which now.
You gotta bring in all the instruments and make sure the guitars are tuned and the drums have the right tension after being transported and you need your spares ready and on and on and on...just running the sound board during a concert (one of my sons learned to run sound boards back in the days when we had a family band and taught me the basics on a very small minimal board for our church) would be tricky at times I am sure. Bands have to deal with a string breaking, a drumstick slipping out of a hand or cracking, a short in a keyboad and all that. One of my guitarist buddies used to break an average of one string per show for some reason. Cheap strings or strong fingers, not sure which now.
The functions and components of the average human cell are more complex by far than everything being done to prepare for a big concert and everything that is being done by the band and the roadies and the sound crew. Yet Darwinists actually think, and want you to think, that the cell just happened by a series of happy accidents! Amazing. Does Toto "poof" into existence and present a concert? Preposterous. Does a concert hall just pile up a bunch of junk and shine a tanning light on it for a few years in hopes a rock group will evolve? People, think! If simple things like a Fender Stratocaster have to be designed and manufactured and set up and properly amplified and connected to various sound effect devices and played, this requires energy and intellect and planning and work and time. None of it "just happens" and neither does life!
Imagine for a moment that a carnival comes to town and the main exhibit is a Duckbill Platypus live within a oversized trailer. Duckbill Inside is proclaimed on the side of the trailer. The ticket booth has a similar sign. The tickets are for See The Duckbill! You get in line and when finally you get in you stand in front of a cage and see...a dog! The sign above the cage? Duckbill Platypus. A guide tells you all about the animal's traits and so on. As you walk out people are talking about the good old Platypus. You are amazed.and puzzled. Can't everyone see that it is just a dog in there? But you see Darwinism went from a working hypothesis into a kind of a religion without ever passing the stringent tests required to even be a theory, let alone fact. How did this happen? Read on below...
Pluto
(Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (September 25, 1843 – November 15, 1928) was an influential American geologist and educator. In 1893 he founded the Journal of Geology, of which he was editor for many years.)
An excerpt from a Chamberlin treatise with highlights by me:
"The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses
With this method the dangers of parentalaffection for a favorite theory can be circumvented.
by T. C. Chamberlin
Premature Theories
The habit of precipitate explanation leads rapidly on to the development of tentative theories. The explanation offered for a given phenomenon is naturally, under the impulse of self-consistency, offered for like phenomena as they present themselves, and there is soon developed a general theory explanatory of a large class of phenomena similar to the original one. This general theory may not be supported by any further considerations than those which were involved in the first hasty inspection. For a time it is likely to be held in a tentative way with a measure of candor. With this tentative spirit and measurable candor, the mind satisfies its moral sense, and deceives itself with the thought that it is proceeding cautiously and impartially toward the goal of ultimate truth. It fails to recognize that no amount of provisional holding of a theory, so long as the view is limited and the investigation partial, justifies an ultimate conviction. It is not the slowness with which conclusions are arrived at that should give satisfaction to the moral sense, but the thoroughness, the completeness, the all-sidedness, the impartiality, of the investigation.It is in the tentative stage that the affectations enter with their blinding influence. Love was long since represented as blind, and what is true in the personal realm is measurably true in the intellectual realm. Important as the intellectual affections are as stimuli and as rewards, they are nevertheless dangerous factors, which menace the integrity of the intellectual processes. The moment one has offered an original explanation for a phenomenon which seems satisfactory, that moment affection for his intellectual child springs into existence; and as the explanation grows into a definite theory, his parental affections cluster about his intellectual offspring, and it grows more and more dear to him, so that, while he holds it seemingly tentative, it is still lovingly tentative, and not impartially tentative. So soon as this parental affection takes possession of the mind, there is a rapid passage to the adoption of theory. There is an unconscious selection and magnifying of the phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it, and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence. The mind lingers with pleasure upon the facts that fall happily into the embrace of the theory, and feels a natural coldness toward those that seem refractory. Instinctively there is a special searching-out phenomena that support it, for the mind is led by its desires. There springs up, also, an unconscious pressing of the theory to make it fit the facts to make them fit the theory. When these biasing tendencies set in, the mind rapidly degenerates into the partiality of paternalism. The search for facts, the observation of phenomena and their interpretation, are all dominated by affection for the favored theory until it appears to it author or its advocate to have been overwhelmingly established. The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are controlled and directed by it. From an unduly favored child, it readily becomes master, and leads its author whithersoever it will. The subsequent history of that mind in respect to that theme is but the progressive dominance of a ruling idea.
Briefly summed up, the evolution is this: a premature explanation passes into tentative theory, then into an adopted theory, and then into ruling theory.
When the last stage has been reached, unless the theory happens, perchance, to be the true one, all hope of the best results is gone. To be sure, truth may be brought forth by an investigator dominated by a false ruling idea. His very errors may indeed stimulate investigation on the part of others. But the condition is an unfortunate one. Dust and chaff are mingled with the grain in what should be a winnowing process.
Ruling Theories Linger
As previously implied, the method of the ruling theory occupied a chief place during the infancy of investigation. It is an expression of the natural infantile tendencies of the mind, though in this case applied to its higher activities, for in the earlier stages of development the feelings are relatively greater than in later stages.Unfortunately it did not wholly pass away with the infancy of investigation, but has lingered along in individual instances to the present day, and finds illustration in universally learned men and pseudo-scientists of our time.
The defects of the method are obvious, and its errors great. If I were to name the central psychological fault, I should say that it was the admission of intellectual affection to the place that should be dominated by impartial intellectual rectitude.
So long as intellectual interest dealt chiefly with the intangible, so long it was possible for this habit of thought to survive, and to maintain its dominance, because the phenomena themselves, being largely subjective, were plastic in the hands of the ruling idea; but so soon as investigation turned itself earnestly to an inquiry into natural phenomena, whose manifestations are tangible, whose properties are rigid, whose laws are rigorous, the defects of the method became manifest, and an effort at reformation ensued. The first great endeavor was repressive. The advocates of reform insisted that theorizing should be restrained, and efforts directed to the simple determination of facts. The effort was to make scientific study factitious instead of causal. Because theorizing in narrow lines had led to manifest evils, theorizing was to be condemned. The reformation urged was not the proper control and utilization of theoretical effort, but its suppression. We do not need to go backward more than twenty years to find ourselves in the midst of this attempted reformation. Its weakness lay in its narrowness and its restrictiveness. There is no nobler aspiration of the human intellect than desire to compass the cause of things. The disposition to find explanations and to develop theories is laudable in itself. It is only its ill use that is reprehensible. The vitality of study quickly disappears when the object sought is a mere collocation of dead unmeaning facts.
The inefficiency of this simply repressive reformation becoming apparent, improvement was sought in the method of the working hypothesis. This is affirmed to be the scientific method of the day, but to this I take exception. The working hypothesis differs from the ruling theory in that it is used as a means of determining facts, and has for its chief function the suggestion of lines of inquiry; the inquiry being made, not for the sake of facts. Under the method of the ruling theory, the stimulus was directed to the finding of facts for the support of the theory. Under the working hypothesis, the facts are sought for the purpose of ultimate induction and demonstration, the hypothesis being but a means for the ready development of facts and of their relations, and the arrangement and preservation of material for the final induction.
It will be observed that the distinction is not a sharp one, and that a working hypothesis may with the utmost ease degenerate into a ruling theory. Affection may as easily cling about an hypothesis as about a theory, and the demonstration of the one may become a ruling passion as much as of the other..."
The author recognized the lure of the ruling hypothesis and the great damage to scientific advancements when said hypothesis is elevated in stature to an unproven law that stifles debate and research. In other words, gentlemen, I give you Darwinism - Darwinism is, depending on your point of view, either an unproven hypothesis or a falsified one. Adherence to Darwinism in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is, as Chamberlin said, "reprehensible."
Another thought:
A lesson from Pluto
Image NASA
Lowell Observatory Archives
Clyde W. Tombaugh at the door of the Pluto discovery telescope, Lowell Observatory, Arizona.
Tombaugh was hired by the observatory in 1929 and discovered the planet near where Lowell suggested. This apparently vindicated Lowell’s predictions so the discovery was appropriately announced on Lowell’s birthday (13th March) and the first two letters of Pluto’s name are his initials.3
Pluto is so faint that it can only be seen with a telescope 30 cm (12 in) or larger, and astronomers were unable to determine its size and mass. Early estimates could rely only on the deviations of the orbits of Neptune and Uranus. The size was quickly revised down from Lowell’s estimate, and eventually astronomers settled on a mass about three quarters that of Earth.
All this changed around 1978, nearly 50 years after Pluto’s initial discovery. The key evidence was found by James Christy of the US Naval Observatory when he realized that Pluto has a moon. He noticed that some of the images from their 1.5 metre telescope showed Pluto slightly elongated but the stars in the same photographs were not. From those images he was able to estimate the diameter of the moon’s orbit and its orbital period. As a result astronomers could calculate the mass of Pluto with far more certainty.4 It is now accepted that Pluto is only 1/500th the mass of the earth. Ongoing observations confirmed Pluto’s moon, and the International Astronomical Union gave it official status in 1985 and named it Charon.5
Above sentiment from Gray, R., Pluto should get back planet status, say astronomers, , 10 August 2008.
How could so many scientists be so wrong for so long about the mass of Pluto—by a factor of 400? A similar question is often asked when creationists speak of the earth being only 6,000 years old instead of the generally accepted age of 4,600 million years.
All the scientists got the same wrong answers because they all used the same models and the same assumptions.
There is another big difference. The mass of Pluto is operational science, where we can continue to make observations in the present using newer and better instruments and technology. But the age of the earth is historical science. We cannot travel back in time to make observations of things that only happened in the past. For information about the past we need reliable reports from eyewitnesses.
Pluto contradicts the nebular hypothesisPluto belongs to a class of objects that orbit the sun beyond Neptune, called TNOs (Trans Neptunian Objects). Astronomers regard these as material left over from the gas and dust nebula from which the solar system supposedly formed, supposedly 4.6 billion years ago.But Pluto is a problem for the nebular hypothesis. First, it does not orbit in the same plane as the other planets (i.e., the ecliptic) but at an angle of 17°. Why not? Second, its axis of rotation is not perpendicular to its orbital plane but tilted so that it points almost directly at the sun at present. How come? Third, Pluto’s orbit is not circular but highly elliptical. In fact, it occasionally comes closer to the sun than Neptune. Why? These features of Pluto contradict the predictions of the nebular hypothesis, so astronomers have had to invent ad hoc secondary stories to explain them. So much for the nebular hypothesis. Pluto and its moons1 don’t support the idea of billions of years either. Analysis of light from Charon suggests that its surface is covered with active volcanoes of ammonia-rich water spewing out of the moon’s deep interior. Similar conclusions have been reached for many TNO’s. This means there must be a source of internal heat within these objects. But if they are billions of years old they should have been cold and dead billions of years ago.
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References and notes
- Abell, G.O., Morrison, D. and Wolff, S.C., Exploration of the Universe, 6th edition, Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, USA, p. 186, 1993. Return to text.
- Ref. 1, p. 185. Return to text.
- Ref. 1. The name is from classical mythology and was suggested by Venetia Burney, an 11 year old school girl from Oxford, England. Return to text.
- Using Newton’s formulation of Kepler’s third law. Return to text.
- Ref. 1, pp. 288–289. Return to text.
I assure you that I not only assert but can prove that Darwinism is merely an interpretation of historical science with no operational science to back it up. Right now the best scientific research in this area is being done by people who do not trust the baby hypothesis who grew up to be a tyrant, Darwinism. They are free to follow the evidence without the need to shoehorn it into a failed hypothesis.
So many of the comments I get are complete speculation presented as established fact,
Case in point - John E said "To put the word scientist and creationist in the same sentence defies any logic of language or common sense."
Now I am quite certain I have already named a few hundred creationist scientists who were or are brilliant men and women with many accomplishments and many were listed in my last post, so that remark is one made by a completely brainwashed follower.
How about this from creeper?
"Let us know when creation scientists come up with falsifiable predictions about their hypotheses and then you can try to make a claim that they're doing "real science"."
I guess you missed the creationists who both predicted and explained the orbital abnormalities that far traveling space vehicles were experiencing on their way beyond the Solar System, posted maybe eight months ago? Also, bacteria over thousands of generations have basically falsified Darwinism.
Here is one of the best/worst - "How do you tell someone that water is wet? Good grief!
Heh. Now you know how Creeper and I feel when you try to poke holes in radiometric dating.
Jon, if you cannot understand that DNA is complex coding for the cell and you cannot comprehend that it is designed to transmit information...
Of course it is -- under the conventional definition of information. But your definition is not the conventional one. You yourself said that under your definition, there must be an intelligence at both ends of a data transmission before you can say that the transmission contains information. There is no intelligence involved in either sending or receiving a DNA data transmission. It's all just chemistry.
Not trying to be mean, but that statement is wrong in every way. You have run away from the dictionary definitions and you obviously have no clue about DNA or prefer to lie about it, one. A geneticist who is honest would call you on this one. DNA is a coding language expressed in organic form, among other things.
Your problem, Radar, is that you don't fully understand language, and so you can't disentangle yourself from your implicit assumptions. As just one example, look at the terms we're both using to describe DNA: "code," "information," "language," "words." These terms carry an implicit assumption that there's an intelligence involved, and it's taking conscious action. But there isn't. It's all just chemistry. In fact, what DNA is, what it does, and what it contains are not adequately described by any word in the English language. All we can do is use words that were coined for other uses, other contexts, and do our best to steer clear of the inevitable confusion. I've learned how to do that. You haven't."
That is a ridiculous statement. Would you go up to Ringo Starr and declare he doesn't understand the art of drumming? (I use Ringo because he is not a great drummer and I not want to compare myself to one of the great ones like the late John Bonham or Ginger Baker or Gene Krupa or Neil Peart). I have a degree in journalism, do you? I have written stories and radio copy for a living, how about you? I won an excellence in sports journalism award last year and was offered a job writing for a baseball team but cannot uproot my family. I have worked as an editor in chief for a large non-profit organization. I don't follow the AP editorial standards on my blog because a blog is a discussion and not a newspaper so my words are sometimes folksy and full of vernacular.
You are our of your depth, sport. I have you cornered to the point you either lie or play dumb about information. Dear readers, do not be fooled, Jon knows like any seeker of knowledge that there is a tremendous amount of information in the cell and it did not just happen. But the implications of this knowledge ruin his religious adherence to Darwinism. Such behavior was predicted by non-creationist Chamberlin.
Here is a definition of DNA by Wikipedia, no friend to creationists! - "Deoxyribonucleic acid (
/diːˌɒksɨˌraɪbɵ.n(j)uːˈkleɪ.ɪk ˈæsɪd/ (help·info)) (DNA) is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information. DNA is often compared to a set of blueprints, like a recipe or a code, since it contains the instructions needed to construct other components of cells, such as proteins and RNA molecules. The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information."Instructions. Information. Blueprints. Recipe. Code. Etc. I am not making up a definition for DNA, you are running away from it at top speed. But running does no good. DNA is a container for the information input by God in the beginning. ID'ers would say by a designer and are agnostic as to the identity but I can fill in the blanks - God.
Toto does not just "poof" onto a stage and begin making music. Organisms do not just "poof" into existence. There is a complete lack of means to accomplish macroevolution by mutation and natural selection and there is a built-in barrier within the process of reproduction. Even mutations are not always random but rather tend to happen in "hot zones" and many times at the same point in the genome across various lines of animal kinds. Mutations often simply work a pre-existing switch. The more we know, the less Darwin means to science. (Toto by the way is from the latin word for "encompassing all" rather than Dorothy's little dog).
I just answered that question.
Your "answer" was two unconnected, unsupported propositions. That doesn't qualify as a logical argument.
You are evading because you have no answer.
Every organism contains information that was input by the Designer and we call it DNA. So there is intelligence in every cell.
Still a non sequitur. Using your definition of information, there must be an intelligence on both ends of a transmission before the transmission can be said to contain any information. What pre-existing intelligence receives the information you claim is in the genetic code?
Answered. You are evading yet again.
Your assumption is backwards.
I'm not assuming anything. I gave you three pairs of organisms that evolutionary theory says are closely related, but require "macro-evolutionary" changes to get from species A to species B. You say macro-evolution is impossible and therefore those species can't be related.
(No, I said I did not THINK that they were related and skeletal structure supports my viewpoint, But we first need DNA to compare in order to have a reasonable idea in that area of expertise. It would be much harder for you to prove they are related, seeing as how the organisms are so different). The way we are sorting animals by baraminology is helped along by discerning which species can mate. Any organisms that are able to mate are of one kind or baramin. Animals that are extinct? We must compare structures and make educated guesses. Hyracotherium as a horse kind looks like a bad guess to me!
Very well. Prove it. How much information would have to be added to explain those changes? If you can't produce a reliable number to answer that question, then how do you know the number isn't 0?
Simply to convert feet to hooves would take thousands of steps. Darwinists fail to acknowledge that such a change does not involve one gene or one mutation or change. Systems must fit together properly. This is why the poor tormented laboratory version of fruit flies who were prodded into mutations providing double wings were epic fails. The structure of the mutated fruit fly did not support wings and they could not live. To convert a four toed animal to a classically hooved animal is not a one step process. The way the leg is designed and the foot is connected to the leg involves bone and muscle and tendons and cartilage that represent huge numbers of cells that must all be adjusted from one structural aspect to another. As we have never once observed new information forming new structures in organisms it is colossally incredible to believe that thousand, no, millions of such changes were happening on a regular basis in the past.
We can only measure the information loss of creatures whose DNA can be compared or readily presumed by other means. Scientists are working on the DNA losses and mutations in various bacteria now and some plants and other organisms. Determining difference between the original horse kind and current versions is a bit harder as we are somewhat low on Eohippus DNA? Nevertheless this work is being done. Bet you would love it if I cut and pasted a technical abstract and paper on the subject. One can do a comparison between the genetic information in a mongrel versus a poodle and will find more information within the mongrel. We do not need to go back in time to see how speciation works and speciation is not helpful to Darwinism.
Yes, and do not be fooled by the scientists who trumpet, for instance, citrate-eating bacteria as a Darwinist victory! The comparison might be, look, we invented a submarine that can take water into itself and sink by removing a section of the hull!!!!! Yahoo, a new species of submarine! (not going to last too long, is it?)
Furthermore, E. coli is normally capable of utilizing citrate as an energy source under anaerobic conditions, with a whole suite of genes involved in its fermentation. This includes a citrate transporter gene that codes for a transporter protein embedded in the cell wall that takes citrate into the cell.6 This suite of genes (operon) is normally only activated under anaerobic conditions.
this would be the sort of thing that mutations are good at: destroying things
Another possibility is that an existing transporter gene, such as the one that normally takes up tartrate,3 which does not normally transport citrate, mutated such that it lost specificity and could then transport citrate into the cell. Such a loss of specificity is also an expected outcome of random mutations. A loss of specificity equals a loss of information, but evolution is supposed to account for the creation of new information; information that specifies the enzymes and cofactors in new biochemical pathways, how to make feathers and bone, nerves, or the components and assembly of complex motors such as ATP synthase, for example.
However, mutations are good at destroying things, not creating them. Sometimes destroying things can be helpful (adaptive),7 but that does not account for the creation of the staggering amount of information in the DNA of all living things. Behe (in The Edge of Evolution) likened the role of mutations in antibiotic resistance and pathogen resistance, for example, to trench warfare, whereby mutations destroy some of the functionality of the target or host to overcome susceptibility. It’s like putting chewing gum in a mechanical watch; it’s not the way the watch could have been created." Read entire article and etc. here.
But I do really need to get back on creepers pet dating methods concerns pretty soon as I promised I would say more on that subject as well. I have expressed my opinion in concert with thousands of scientists who see that information has never been observed entering the genome and therefore have grave doubts that it will EVER be observed because the information was in the organism at the start and any changes we see are all downhill or descending. No commenter has ever provided an example of new information entering the cell but rather resort to arguing over the semantics involving the meaning of the word, "information." Now Bill Clinton tried parsing the meaning of "is" during his impeachment and managed to keep his Presidency. But no one doubted that he had lied under oath and we had physical evidence of his guilt. So often it is the cover-up and not the crime! Darwinists are in cover-up mode right now, trying to hush the creationists and ID'ers and fretting over a general populace that is beginning to turn away from Darwinism despite the fervent inanities of "Darwin's Golder Retriever" Eugenie Scott and the published works of Richard Dawkins and the non-stop brainwashing in the media and in our schools. Sometimes common sense wins out anyway.
Ayn Rand and I would disagree on many things but I love that quote. The Maker of all things did, indeed give all organisms the "soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express" His will and purpose in material form so that mankind, once certain of the glorious wonder of creation, will naturally worship the Creator of it all.
Addendum specific to ERVs...this pdf
(Large scale function for‘endogenous retroviruses’)
I get the technical journals but they do not convert them to online format in most cases for a year or a bit more. ERV and junk DNA in general are better understood as design features that are devolving than any kind of evolutionary leftovers. So far both sides can make subjective statements about ERVs but objective evidence is another matter entirely.