Challenge to Creationists

by cofty 147 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Sanchy

  

  All the evidence needed. I rest my case :)

  P.S. to my wife, if you see this message, I love you!
  
• 

  WhatshallIcallmyself

  A point about entropy. Entropy, in a simplistic term, is a measure of how distributed energy is in a specified environment/system; an increase in entropy means a more distributed and less effective energy supply. In the context of this thread we can assume the system to be the universe. With no outside influence the energy in the universe will tend towards the less organised state which means it spreads out and dissipates; entropy increases.

  That, however, describes the universe as a whole and does not mean that it will spread out equally everywhere. Instead there will be localised areas where entropy decreases, our Solar System being one of them. The Sun gives out its energy which our planet receives and that decreases the entropy on Earth i.e. the energy we receive from the Sun is feeding the Earth and it's systems.

  The Universe is a closed system, the Solar System is an open system. Overall, entropy increases in the Universe but decreases (at the moment) in the Solar System.

  I said it was a simplistic explanation...

  
  
• 

  shepherdless

  Sanchy: All the evidence needed.

  
  

  Sanchy, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system increases with time. The girl in the photo, like every other living creature, eats and breathes.

  
  

  It is fundamentally flawed to apply the second law of thermodynamics to a living thing or a collection of living things that have an external source of energy (ie that eat and breathe).

  
  

  If you have a system that has an external source of energy, you have to apply the first law of thermodynamics; something creationists never mention.
• 

  shepherdless

  cantleave: The Earth is not a closed system so the 2nd Law is irrelevant

  Spot on.

  Prologs: May be I did misunderstand... Any system dead or alive, will grow in such a way to decrease entropy, and it will do that by favouring the increasing of shedding of excess heat, like an elephant growing bigger ears to have more air flowing over the veins carrying the evaporation - cooled blood. This growth of the right area is a build - in mechanism in nature, dead or alive. It is in the nature of things. or?

  The article is not well written, and is confusing. I doubt the scientist wrote it himself; I suspect some journalist dumbed it down. A living thing in a closed system will eventually die, because of second law of thermodynamics. The article suggests abiogenesis could arise in an "open" system because, as every first year chemistry student knows, the second law of thermodynamics would not apply. It is not about a dissipation of excess heat, per se.
  
• 

  prologos

  shepherless: "--It is not about a dissipation of excess heat, per se. "--As I understood it, England, the scientist, theorizes, that matter is structured to align itself to create an energy gradient, not only at the receiving end, but also by efficient dissipation.? and as cofty observed such an automatic tendency would greatly facilitate abiogenesis.
• 

  Vidqun

  Cofty: Are you not even curious enough to ask for details? Is this not your professional field?
  

  Thanks, I quickly looked it up on Wiki, seems I am out of date. No I haven’t been active in Microbiology or Clinical Pathology for many years. But unfortunately copy and paste are out of the question, so I left it at that.

  
  Cofty: Some of the genes were transferred to the nucleus of the host cell and some of the genes are still active in the mitochondria for very good reason.

  Cofty, with one sentence, you have summarized some incredibly complicated processes there. Just ask the genetic engineers if you are in doubt. What you are actually saying, some of the organism’s genes were transferred to the nucleus and some were kept in the organel, with all this happening naturally and spontaneously. A one-celled organism orchestrated all this by itself: First it would decide which part of its genetic material had to be shed, which part had to be kept, and which part it had to transfer to the nucleus of its host. Again: By what mechanism would it be able to accomplish such a feat (on its own)? Was it not perhaps assisted by the Big Genetic Engineer, you know, prodded in the right direction?
• 

  cofty

  seems I am out of date - Vidqun

  Endosymbiosis was observed in the lab by Kwang Jeon in 1966.

  Just to review, your objection to endosymbiosis was...

  "Why are these classified as hypotheses and not facts? Because these findings cannot be replicated in a lab."

  But it turned out that endosymbiosis was observed to happen in the lab. And you quickly pass over that astonishing fact as if it was of no consequence.

  Now you move straight on to a different objection.

  First it would decide which part of its genetic material had to be shed, which part had to be kept, and which part it had to transfer to the nucleus of its host. Again: By what mechanism would it be able to accomplish such a feat (on its own)? - Vidqun

  Natural selection. I will describe the selection pressures in a future thread.

  If you do some more research on Kwang Jeon's work you will see that endosymbiotic gene switching occurred in the lab as well.

  Evolution in the lab. Is that science "real" enough for you?
  
• 

  Vidqun

  The Wiki article reveals a few flaws with the theory symbiogenesis:

  1) Genome size. Cyanobacteria and a-proteobacteria are the most closely related free-living organisms to plastids and mitochondria respectively. However, plastid and mitochondria exhibit a dramatic reduction in genome size when compared to their bacterial relatives. Chloroplast genomes in photosynthetic organisms are normally 120-200kb encoding 20-200 proteins and mitochondrial genomes in humans are approximately 16kb and encode 37 genes, 13 of which are proteins.

  2) Loss of genetic autonomy: The authors, i.e., Keeling and Archibald, argue that the host cell has assumed control of the regulation of the former endosymbiont's division, thereby synchronizing it with the cell's own division. The mechanisms of gene transfer are not fully known; however, multiple hypotheses exist to explain this phenomenon.

  The cDNA hypothesis is based on studies of the genomes of flowering plants. Protein coding RNAs in mitochondria are spliced and edited using organelle-specific splice and editing sites. Nuclear copies of some mitochondrial genes, however, do not contain organelle-specific splice sites, suggesting a processed mRNA intermediate. The cDNA hypothesis has since been revised as edited mitochondrial cDNAs are unlikely to recombine with the nuclear genome and are more likely to recombine with their native mitochondrial genome. If the edited mitochondrial sequence recombines with the mitochondrial genome, mitochondrial splice sites would no longer exist in the mitochondrial genome. Any subsequent nuclear gene transfer would therefore also lack mitochondrial splice sites.

  Bulk-flow hypothesis views escaped DNA, rather than mRNA, as the mechanism of gene transfer. According to this hypothesis, disturbances to organelles, including autophagy (normal cell destruction), gametogenesis (the formation of gametes), and cell stress, release DNA which is imported into the nucleus and incorporated into the nuclear DNA using non-homologous end joining (repair of double stranded breaks). For example, in the initial stages of endosymbiosis, due to a lack of major gene transfer, the host cell had little to no control over the endosymbiont. The endosymbiont underwent cell division independently of the host cell, resulting in many "copies" of the endosymbiont within the host cell. Some of the endosymbionts lysed and high levels of DNA were incorporated into the nucleus. A similar mechanism is thought to occur in tobacco plants, who show a high rate of gene transfer and whose cells contain multiple chloroplasts. In addition, the bulk flow hypothesis is also supported by the presence of non-random clusters of organelle genes, suggesting the simultaneous movement of multiple genes.
  

  3) The hypotheses are demonstrated by mechanisms found in “near-living relatives,” e.g., Cyanobacteria and a-proteobacteria, as well as flowering plants and the tobacco plant. However, these processes never transcend the species barrier, which the endosymbiotic hypothesis suggests.
• 

  cofty

  Vidqun - Cantleave explained the evidence for endosymbiosis.

  I provided the evidence that it has actually been observed in the lab.

  I give you a link to the paper in the Journal of Cell Science that describes endosymbiotic gene transfer.

  Your response is a total lack of willingness to acknowledge you were wrong. Instead you post a copy-paste from Wiki with no link so that I can look it up.

  Absolutely nothing will satisfy you.
  

  The challenge is still on if you or anybody else has the courage to accept it.
• 

  Vidqun

  Cofty, must say, you are hard to please. None of what I wrote is copy and paste. I put it in my own words as per instruction. And I did explain to you that I was not up to date with the latest developments. When I tried to access your article, I was unsuccessful, so I went with Wiki instead. You could just have ignored the text, and responded to my objections: 1) Genome size, 2) Loss of genetic autonomy, 3) Examples used.

  That's why endosymbiosis has not yet advanced from theory to fact, there's still too many loose ends. Yes, Cantleave did explain endosymbiosis quite nicely, and I thank him for that. And I am trying to explain to you my objections to endosymbiosis.

  Do you realize the difference here? I entertain all options (as a true scientist should), whereas you will entertain only a single option. To you it's either your beloved evolution or bust! You want to make up rules as you go along and are not really interested in anybody else's opinion, especially concerning ID, because it clashes with your personal agenda, whatever that is. Could it be that you have become a disciple of Richard Dawkins. Yes, he also hated religion with a fervent hatred.

  Allow me two quotes from him: "By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."

  "Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can f$%k off" (quote censored). I think here he was quoting someone else.