"Evilution"

[POI]

From post 172 (http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 7#p1151917):

we should be skeptical about school textbooks on biology as relates to evolution, as my pal Kent Hovind has spent a lifetime exposing the lies and the frauds

It's clear here the claim is that biology textbooks outright present lies and/or fraud, as it relates to the topic of evolution.

Even if this were true, evolution being false does absolutely nothing to post up claims from Christianity. Christianity still rises and falls upon its own merits. But since the claim has been placed forward, let's vet these claim(s) out.

For debate: Please present one lie, or one piece of fraud, in which Kent Hovind has demonstrated about biology textbooks? More, if you can. And then please tell us why proving evolutionary biology wrong helps Christianity?

[SiNcE_1985]

Sure - all the time you think it's one claim countered by another, and not about presenting a case. You are not presenting a case but reciting denial. That's the problem. You may find an excuse not to look at videos, but there is no excuse for responding to all presented evidence with 'dogs from dogs',

Wait a minute, evidence was presented?

[SiNcE_1985]

Even if the "taxicab fallacy" were really a logical fallacy, you're using it wrong. In order to be guilty of such a fallacy, I'd have to somehow be switching worldviews. In the case you describe, I'd be switching from your worldview that doesn't understand protein synthesis to mine that does.

What you're actually describing would be a case of special pleading. It's not that, either, because DNA isn't really an instruction manual.

That is what you say...but that isn't what every keyword search on this topic says.

Google..

"Yes, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a chemical code that contains instructions for how the body grows, develops, and functions".

Keywords: Instructions. Code.

Instructions come from intelligent minds.

Codes come from intelligent programmers/engineers.

Or..

"DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created." -Bill Gates

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/336336 ... r-far-more

So, let's play a game..a game at which you continually go against the grain of actual science by making such statements as..

"DNA isn't really an instruction manual".

For every one of those kinds of statements, I will match it with a quote from an expert in the field, which contradicts your statement.

Let's play.

[SiNcE_1985]

Yes. Look, Creationism already accepts that 'blind/unplanned_ process of evolution by natural selection - within kinds. It is as perverse to claim that it is impossible that the DNA molecule came about through natural processes as to say it is 'impossible' that Mict ro cannot become macro - given time.

Ahh, yes.."time of the gaps" reasoning.

Snowflakes are amazing and wonderful and all individual, or so iut seems, yet do you suggest that each one was designed and manufactured by a god, let alone which one. Your case fails on two levels.

Um, no...it takes more than just design..it is design + function...which no snowflakes posesse.

False equivalency fallacy.

In fact I don't think your argument is Individuality at all, but complexity. How could DNA have happened uninetntionally? Such arguments are flawed. DNA is not a incredibly complex as is supposed. There are a lot of elements, but then so are the atoms in a pebble, but who would suggest that didn't come obout naturally? All that had to happen is that a simple kind of DNA reproduced. The rest is..evilooshun.

An attempt at downplaying the complexity of DNA..and a feeble one at that.

A pebble isn't a living organism...so this is yet another false equivalency fallacy.

I know we don't see DNA molecules of a new kind happen all around us. We don't see people rise from the dead, either. It is true we haven't shown the abiogenesis process in a lab, but the process of living hasn't been shown to be done by a god, either. What we do have is evidence - compelling evidence - that however life began, it evolved, and was not made in one go over a week.

"Time of the gaps".

What you have to do to debunk Abiogenesis is to show that it cannot happen, and that is what you are trying to do.

Mental properties cannot originate from physical properties.

But your own theist apologetics refutes that as undisprovable possibilities are claimed just as valid as better supported claims.

But not where it doesn't suit Bible - belief. The possibility that abiogenesis could be true is dismissed and it is declared impossible. Noy quite unlikely, but not possible, and the Creationists cannot say what is possible and what is not.



cue - "ha ha! They are claiming as Fact what is only theory".

Yes, yes. The caveat that does not to be said every time, like disbelieving in a god does not need to be qualified as 'is the working theory and the more likel', so this is the theory (hypothesis) of how it happened, a a flawed and rather daft experiment does not prove anything any more that daring God to strike me dead proves anything when it doesn't happen.,

?

[Difflugia]

So, let's play a game..a game at which you continually go against the grain of actual science

Those are some awfully big shoes you're trying to fill.

by making such statements as..

"DNA isn't really an instruction manual".

This is why relying on simplified analogies of actual science is the bread and butter of creationists. Taking a conceptual overview and pretending that it's complete and accurate in arbitrary details allows for all sorts of equivocal statements.

"Yes, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is a chemical code that contains instructions for how the body grows, develops, and functions".

That's already different than "an instruction manual." Even a computer program isn't an instruction manual, nor is every product of written language. If you want anyone to think you're not equivocating on your terms, you'll have to define them. If you're going to support your assertion that the DNA as a "code" requires an intelligent designer, then you're going to have to identify what attributes of other kinds of code necessitate design and why the analogous attributes of DNA chemistry do, too.

To liken DNA to a programming or linguistic code is useful as an initial aid to understanding, but ignores the actual science of what's going on. So, tell me, in what literal ways is DNA like an instruction manual? Describe the syntax and grammar of the DNA "code." Can you show that the DNA "code" is analogous to other codes in ways that allow you to extrapolate a designer? If not, then you're just equivocating on the definition of "code." How is this "code" interpreted? In what ways is the chemistry of protein synthesis analogous to, say, the solid-state electronics of a microprocessor's fetch-execute cycle? What ways is it different?

For every one of those kinds of statements, I will match it with a quote from an expert in the field, which contradicts your statement.

Let's play.

If you insist. You'll have to quote an expert first, though. You haven't done that, yet. Remember, an expert here would be a biochemist.

[brunumb]

That is what you say...but that isn't what every keyword search on this topic says.

"No, it's not a code, it's a molecule (a macromolecule). Neither does it contain a code. The only way that “code” is related to DNA is when we write down a DNA sequence using code, such as “TGAACTTA”. "

Try searching for DNA is not a code and your misunderstanding might be corrected.

[brunumb]

An attempt at downplaying the complexity of DNA..and a feeble one at that.

DNA is not that complex, unless you insist on equating size with complexity. It consists of only 6 components. The backbone is a long chain made from deoxyribose (a simple sugar) molecules linked together via phosphate ester links. Attached to each of the deoxyribose molecules is one of 4 different molecules, bases named adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Chromosomes contain a single very long, linear DNA molecule composed of millions of the basic units. That's it.

[TRANSPONDER]

As i understand it, the way DNA works is not that complicated, though ingenious, and so more astounding than the relations of bes or birds with flowers the evolutionary development of which is more demonstrable that how DNA might have evolved.

If anyone has read the discworld novels, they may have read about the 'clacks', the telegraph system (based in fact on the telegraph system used by Napoleon) where slats are opened and closed to make combinations of letters. DNa works that way with the chromosomes acting like signals for various things to happen or not happen.

It is not an instruction manual or a computer code, but a collection of evolved instincts one could say, that operate o obtain an effect. They no more have to be intelligently designed than a flinch or a sneeze.