JW scientist banned from Institute's WebSite because of Creationistic Views

by GermanXJW 229 Replies latest jw friends

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  Jerry Bergman

  Below are some <snipped> excerpts that may be of interest. Taken from: http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2003/may/research3_030519.html

  The Dark Side of the Genome Researchers shine their lights on noncoding sequence | By Brendan A. Maher <snip> --- The human genome, the now essentially decoded 1 map of life, likewise has a light side--the genes encoding mRNA and protein--and a dark side, which is coming into view for the first time. The dark side encompasses more than its opposite: The majority of the genome comprises intronic regions, stretches of repeat sequence, and other assorted gibberish that has attained the ignoble dubbing, "junk." <snip> --- "The experimental work that we've done in the laboratory ... indicates that these low-level transcripts are really valid," she says. Referring to the genome's nonprotein-coding elements as "our own dark matter," she asks: "Is there a whole world within the nucleus about which we're fairly ignorant?" I think this comparison of "junk" DNA with "dark matter" might be a useful comparison in certain creation/evolution discussions --- legitimately pointing out the "ignorance" of science concerning the basis upon which many current (evolutionary) explanations are founded.
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  Abaddon

  Server ate my end of my post;

  ... the ‘marsupial world’ ( before man), and the ‘avian world’ ( before man), one can see how this happens.

  Australia was isolated by sea with marsupials as it genetic cargo. They had no competition from mammals (which generally out-compete marsupials), and filled every environmental niche of the continent. This involved speciation, and at some point the gap would be so large there would no longer be any genetic transfer between ‘sub-species’, and these would diverge more if appropriate selection pressure was applied until genetic drift alone made it impossible for the to interbreed even in a test tube.

  In New Zealand the same thing happened, except with birds, as the development of the was such that it had virtually no ground animals, just birds that blew in. This meant that ‘blow-ins’ were obviously rare, and restricted the initial range of organisms from which to diverge from. Speciation took place, many birds loosing the ability to fly due to the lack of ground predators, and again, at some point the resulting animals would not be interfertile with each others or the original species if that was till extant.

  Now, as I think I found the Internet page you got the idea for this question from, I have a jolly good idea what argument that you were trying to manoeuvre people towards. You will probably be really disappointed I didn’t just go for one or the other, as it means you can’t use it, although you’ll probably say I was being evasive. You will probably so this despite me explaining quite clearly how it’s largely a semantic issue, and that speciation, normally first of a ‘interfertile type, eventually of a ‘not interfertile type’, does nonetheless occur.

  Jerry, I'm not in the mood today to chase you down other avenues of debate when you've not defended your own arguments. You know what I mean.
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  Jerry Bergman

  the 95% refer to the entire genome....the 99.4% to the genes . The article (by a Prof. from the school where I earned my Ph.D.) only looked at 97 genes. My question is which ones and why did he pick these? Also, I would expect that most of the sequences for the genes involved in, for example, ATP synthesis chemical pathways (such as charging ADP) would be very similar no matter what organism they were in. Do you know of any study that covers this? The same would be true of most genes involved in manufacturing the specific biochemicals involved in biochemical pathways. Also we need to sequence most all of the genome to make any firm conclusion about similarities. At this point we do not know and should admit this instead of proclaiming to the world that the similarity is 99.7, then 98, then 95, then another number and now, for at least the 97 genes evaluated, 99.4.

  I agree...the media is generating the impression that health science and nutritional science is changing its mind constantly. this is unfortunate but probably can't be avoided. It could in part if scientists, and especially science writers, were more careful.
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  Jerry Bergman

  Please feel free to use any information that may be helpful to you. I am amazed at all the "false Dilemmas" that are created when discussing this matter.
  

  Thanks. It seems that few topics are as emotional as this one. One would think that the Darwinists would calmly relate their case and not get so emotional and ego involved. We evolution skeptics must be knocking on a sore spot, but from their standpoint, if there is no God, why does it all matter? Why not let us entertain our doubts about macroevolution and let us go on our way without the nasty comments?
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  Jerry Bergman

  Iok a few examples of speciation at work....p. maniculatus (a mouse species in the rocky mountains), A. leucurus and A. harrisi (2 chipmunk species at the grand canyon), hundreds of drosophila species (fruitflies) on hawaii, a finch species in asia, and so on and so forth...there is an endless number of cases. And a million more examples exist as has been extensively discussed by ID theorists and even creationists. This fact does not help the case for Darwinism but hurts it. So called microevolution is not at debate. The mechanism in these cases is fairly well understood. The question is, how do we get the information in the first place, not how it can be rearranged to produce new varieties?
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  Jerry Bergman

  as stated above:

  the ususal definition is: animals belong to different species if they cannot produce fertile offspring in nature.

  This definition does not work today. We now know that there are far too many problems with it, such as many animals from clearly different species can interbreed. A whole web site exists on this (run by creationists by the way)
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  Abaddon

  Thanks. It seems that few topics are as emotional as this one. One would think that the Darwinists would calmly relate their case and not get so emotional and ego involved. We evolution skeptics must be knocking on a sore spot, but from their standpoint, if there is no God, why does it all matter? Why not let us entertain our doubts about macroevolution and let us go on our way without the nasty comments?

  Shall I cut and paste the nasty comments YOU make? Honestly Jerry! Or is that; dishonestly, Jerry?

  But you are doing your traditional rply to topic in seperate posts one by one; I don't know why, maybe you want to be a Jedi? In anycase, I'll wait until you've had your say... (dismissing from his head thoughs about Jerry being a particulary good Turing machine)
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  drwtsn32

  I think someone else mentioned the talk.origins site, but here's a really well written article that I enjoyed:

  29+ Evidences for Macroevolutionhttp://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

  ThiChi, I don't think anyone appreciates your "tactic" of posting an inordinant amount of information that no one possibly has time to go through and refute every sentence for you. You then probably view that lack of effort as additional support for your argument. At the same time, you automatically seem to reject the times when someone does explain away a statement or two in the text you post. Seems to me that your mind is already made up.

  If you are truly interested in exploring the Evolution vs Creation controversy, I suggest you take a lot of time and research the evidence at http://talkorigins.org.
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  Jerry Bergman

  A few thoughts on terms in this debate: SCIENCE: (for lack of a better contextual definition) is our best efforts to establish verifiable cause-and-effect relationships for all observable phenomenon. Such determination is generally reached using one of three basic investigative processes. 1) Bacon's empirical science (physical observation, experiment). 2) Descartes (Euclid) rational science (intuition, deductive logic). 3) Huygens (Newton) hypothetico-deductive science (conjecture, tested against observation). Each has its place and its value -- as well as providing different degrees of certainty as to the relative certainty of its conclusions. Bacon's empirical scientific method, requiring physical repeatability, is by far the most restrictive and provides the highest relative of scientific certainty. This is the ONE science taught in most introductory science curricula and as such, is the "default" definition understood and accepted by the public when the term "science" is applied to a conclusion without any further clarifying modifier. This is also the definition of science cited by evolutionists as sufficient to exclude all non-evolutionary alternative interpretations of the evidence from classroom consideration. However, there is NO evidence establishing macroevolution that meets this recognized and rigorous requirement. Darwinism is a hypothetico-deductive science conclusion -- and hence, does not carry the same high degree of relative certainty as the public have been led to believe. EVOLUTION: is often only poorly (imprecisely) defined. On a scientific cause-and-effect basis evolution is far more than 'change in gene frequencies', 'genetic change over time', etc., etc. After presuming some FIRST theoretical living cell, the cause of evolution is the progressive appearance of the necessary DNA coded instructions in this original gene pool. No new protein (organ or feature) appears that does not FIRST appear as genetic code. To scientifically establish macroevolution, one must be able to explain (demonstrate) the ability of random mutation and natural selection to cumulatively add new, biologically useful, genetic codes to a functional gene pool. This has not yet been done. Indeed, many hundreds of thousands of experiments have been conducted attempting to verify this hypothesis, but resulting in a decline, rather than addition, of useful information in the gene pool studied. Macroevolution may, or may not be true. But thus far it has not been established as "scientific" to the compelling level of certainty associated with "default" empirical science. Darwinists present many popularly promoted conclusions or speculative possibilities -- these supported only by "Just-So Story" scenarios and, as such, do not provide any example of the (default) scientific evidence requested. Here I am simply re-examine the common apparent trust that macroevolution indeed has proper scientific credentials. It has been well said that "Where controversy exists, something is wrong" . Hopefully the above might prompt some to examine the semantic, rather than scientific, basis for this long-troubling dichotomy -- and perhaps this in the future will help correct the present widespread misunderstanding in this area.
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  Jerry Bergman

  Shall I cut and paste the nasty comments YOU make? Honestly Jerry! Or is that; dishonestly, Jerry? Yes please do. I have not made what I consider nasty comments, only observations and opinions. If I am wrong please correct me.