For Creationists: What about DNA evidence?

[Dunemeister]

But cars have evolved over time, as have almost every human invention.

Yes, but the evolution was intentional. If you want to claim the same for biological creatures, I have no objection.

 

[Dunemeister]

And those evolutionary biologists are just too dumb to realize it, because they're so bad at math!

I think people who think 4.6 billion years isn't long enough don't grasp how long that is.

Well, in my particular case, inability with math is an accurate charge. However, I have it from people who are knowledgeable about statistics and biology (both agnostic professors from my university) that, even given the 4.5 billion years, the fact that we have the diversity and abundance of life that we see is, in a word, extremely surprising. It actually does defy the odds (again, assuming the guys with the PhDs know what they're talking about -- I really don't when it comes to math). Given the diversity, complexity, and distribution of life that we have, it appears that 4.5 billion years isn't enough time. At this point, these professors appealed to philosophy (an area with which they, sadly, weren't expert in) and appealed to an arcane possible worlds account that was intended to take the sting out of the observation. It amounted to the fact that, despite the odds, it's entirely possible for this state of affairs to have arisen. It arose. Therefore we as scientists have to admit that the world is stranger than we thought it was. Seems to me like a pretty good description of a miracle, but I guess that's a matter of strokes 'n folks.

 

[Dunemeister]

You're not following his argument. What he's saying is, when you take a paternity test, you agree that DNA is evidence of ancestry. You would probably accept this for a grandchild as well. But when the same evidence is used to show evidence of ancestry further apart, suddenly you reject it.

Quite reasonably. The chimp may be very similar to humans, but why does that show ancestry? After all, there is enough difference between us to make us different species, and I assume this shows up as a difference in the arrangement or length (or both) of the DNA chain. You cannot add information to a DNA chain through copulation. All you can do is replicate or bring out latent information. Although I suppose that, just as an author can add to his book if he wants to, the author of life could pen a few words here and there, thereby creating new life. But that gets us back to the notoriously miraculous appearance of things, a bridge too far for some.

 

[Autodidact]

It should be rejected because it's not science but assumption.

You're not following the argument. It's not assumption, it's conclusion--the opposite--but call it what you want. You agree, do you not, that DNA is evidence of paternal ancestry? Do you agree with that? That if paternity is in doubt, we can use DNA to establish it? O.K., if so, why? Because DNA is evidence of ancestry. So, if you agree that DNA is evidence of ancestry, why do you reject it at some point in the ancestral chain?

Please provide the peer reviewed scientific document that traces human DNA back through the evolutionary process of all of our ancestry.

You're joking, right? It's not a single document, it's thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles and books. We have the entire human genome and the entire chimp genome, and we know exactly how much they differ. We can measure the rate of difference of mitochondrial DNA. We know exactly how much an Australian aborigine's DNA differs from that of an Inuit, and from that of a banana. Are you questioning whether these studies exist?!? Because it would take a heck of a lot of my time to dig up the thousands upon thousands of cites you're asking for.

 

[Autodidact]

I hate to tell you but cars were designed and every year new designs come out.

New designs evolve, based on existing designs. No one thinks one up from scratch. The parts that work are kept and worked into the new designs. The parts that don't die out--kind of like biological evolution.

 

[Autodidact]

No my argument is for intelligent design not naturally selection without a designer. It's pretty easy to prove that cars were intelligently designed each year.

No one's arguing that. My point is that the designs evolve.

 

[Amhairghine]

Those that believe in creation point to DNA as being evidence for their positon. Same evidence, different conclusions.

What the F? Creationists believe in Magican Creation by conjuring Earth, Adam, and Eve with magic words. That is totally stupid. DNA does nothing to support that idiotic superstition. DNA only shows how closely related we are to Chimps the other animal who look most like us. DNA shows we are almost as closely related to Gorillas, less closely related to Orangs, less closely related to Monkeys, much less related to dogs and horses, more distantly related to fish, and very distantly (but still related) to worms, squids, crustaceans, protistas, diatoms/algae, and plants.

Evidence backed truth always wins over irrational superstition and Stone Age mythology that some how has survived largely in North America. Personally I think people can believe in Magical Creationism mainly by incredible ignorance, stupidity, or mental retardation. There are seemingly intelligent humans who believe in God and Magic of the Conjured Creation story. However, it is rooted in a deep fear of death. Humans when they discovered their family members died, did not wish to accept the reality and finality of death. They invented spirits or souls to give them the delusion that they persisted after the death of their entire body.

A person suffering from delusions is technically not sane. If the delusion is something seemingly wonderful like immortality, it is very tempting. The delusion of immortality is at the root of the intense hostility to people who do not believe in their delusions. The rational unbeliever is a threat to the believer's delusion because it makes him THINK. Thinking is the greatest threat against blind irrational faith.

A believer trying to suppress his own inner doubts of his irrational (goofy) delusion of creationism and immortality, feels anger if someone is stirring up the believer's own inner doubts. So many believers react by violence. Atheists are harassed by believers, killed in many places. Atheist children are beaten in public schools unless they hide their lack of superstition. The fear of losing even the goofy delusion of immortality can cause violence. Muslim terrorists will commit suicide bombing. Chriistian terrorists will shoot doctors, shoot or threaten outspoken atheists, and shoot or beat to death homosexuals. The homosexual is a threat because he stirs the inner homosexual feelings of Christians who suppress their homosexuality (Homophobes) by leading a fake married life.

All in all, religion is a tool of power for leaders and a weapon of violence justification in the mentally unstable and those who become obsessed with the delusion of immortality.

Besides evolutionists have to answer how the DNA is interpreted in order to work. For example the letters "See Spot run" can possibly arrange themselves over eons of time but is only understood by someone that reads English. Same with DNA, it can jumble itself together by random chance but it has to be understood in order to function.

Yes, DNA can and does assemble itself. It happens every day a man and woman shag. There is no god smashing sperm into ova. It is not as random as you say. You are obviously scientifically illiterate. Nothing is random, it only seems that way. It follows laws of physics and chemistry and the equations of Chaos Theory and Heisenberg's Uncerrtainty principle. But it does confuse undereducated people.

Christian Superstition is far worse. It is so irrtional and so obviously crazy that I am led to think that Fundamentalistic Christians are indeed mentally ill. I will talk about Meme influence later.

Amhairghine

 

[Amhairghine]

The brain is not a fixed unchanging structure. It is a dynamic organ constantly re-routing circuits as information and experience are processed. Its actual hard ware circuitry can be altered by software input. Input that is syntactically rational is beneficial. Irrational input violating the rules of logic and forced through the Sceptical Filter are destructive. Religions are meme complexes equivalent to computer viruses. Dr. Richard Dawkins calls these destructive religious meme complexes “mind viruses”. The very behaviours of the devoutly religious person verify this hypothetically harmful virus model. My hypothesis is based on a computer model. It is the interaction of software that may include meme complexes (computer viruses) that may actually wreck the brain's hardware circuits and disrupt acquired programmes. It takes rational programmes and rewires them with irrational and harmful programmes.

A person downloads an irrational meme complex (fundamentalism.) The meme is pushed through the Rational-Sceptical networks with perhaps an emotional boost. When the rational networks are bypassed over and over by an irrational idea, the circuits actually deteriorate. The meme circuits grow stronger as the rational networks loose axons and actual synapses, i.e. microanatomic change.

Here is an analogy. One who excelled in Calculus and other higher math in college then uses it daily as a theoretical physicist causes the math skills get stronger. The actual networks grow larger. If he never does Calculus again, and you present him with a problem 20 years later, his once excellent math skill circuits have been recycled. He struggles (usually unsuccessfully) to solve the problem or even recall the steps in the formulas. Likewise if one is pre-occupied with irrational delusions (memes), the unused rational-sceptical networks fail. The more often they fail, the more likely they deteriorate.

Religious memes are called mind viruses. They disrupt normal neuronal circuits and behaviour networks like a computer virus crashes your computer programmes. This causes the person infected by religion (irrational mind virus) to behave in irrational and very terrible ways.

Those people thus infected with meme complexes have an actual encephalopathy. It is akin to viral encephalitis such as rabies or herpes. The Irrational Meme Complex is a computer like code. A biological encephalitis virus is a DNA or RNA code. Since the religious meme is largely behavioural, the victims act irrationally. Violence may be committed on the basis of perverted interpretation of the irrational dogma of the complex meme.

One example is the killing of babies by their own mothers. I have read of some killer moms who killed because they believed Satan had possessed the babies. Some others kill because God ordered the killings. Some mothers wish to guarantee their children’s entry into Heaven before they have chance to sin. Some believe that one of their babies is the Anti-Christ. Their actions are clearly irrational if not psychotic.

Others with this meme encephalopathy may blow up federal buildings, clinics, gay bars, African-American Churches, Mosques, libraries, Museums, Archaeological excavations, Palaeontological digs, unbelievers, or sometimes killing innocent people for chaotic religious ideas. Their delusions are of being on a mission from God. The driving force of religious memes is usually the powerful delusion of immortality.

Muslims behave in frighteningly similar ways from their slightly variant mind virus codes. The commonality seems to be violent acts. Both Christianity and Islam have a huge monopoly on all wars of the last 1700 years, compared to Buddhism.

The human race is suffering from an epidemic of mind virus encephalitis. The virus codes are irrational memes. Some of the worst are the psychotic stories in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an. If that data is transmitted into otherwise innocent brains, it acts like a molecular DNA or RNA virus. The molecular virus transmits its destructive instructions by entering the cell nuclei, and actually rewriting the DNA. The meme complex is a defective set of coded instructions, a computer software programme or computer virus. That causes the brain to form altered error coded circuits which leads to altered patterns of thinking and behaviour.

Think about these ideas before attacking the messenger. Look at the results around the world of religion on behaviour. At least do some reading on meme complexes and mind viruses from others besides me. You deserve to know the truth for the sake of your children. Read “A Devil’s Chaplain” by Richard Dawkins, Ph.D. Oxford University.

Amhairghine

 

[AlsoAnima]

OK, so to those who deny the possibility of evolution, I'm wondering whether you believe that DNA evidence is useful in solving crimes or determining parent/child relationships? If you do, then how do you deny the DNA evidence of our relationship with all other creatures?

M.

DNA evidence actually supports Intelligence Design.

 

[Amhairghine]

Meme Complexes disrupt Neurocognitive Circuits like Computer Viruses on your PC.

My hypothesis is based on a computer model. It is the interaction of software that includes meme complexes (computer viruses) which may wreck the brain's hardware circuits and acquired rational programmes. Unlike past theories of fixed brain anatomy, we now know the brain is dynamic. Its actual hard ware circuitry can be altered by input, beneficial or destructive. Most religions being meme complexes are equivalent to computer viruses. Dr. Richard Dawkins calls Mind Viruses destructive. The very behaviours of the devoutly religious verify this hypothetical harmful virus model.

They are mind viruses because they disrupt normal neuronal circuits and behaviour networks like a computer virus fecks with your computer programmes. This causes the person infected by religious meme (religion the mind virus) to behave in very terrible ways. The biological virus alters one’s DNA which then alters formerly healthy circuits. Meme complexes like Christian Dogma present an irrational code to the developing brain repeatedly and intensively so that the Brains defence, the Sceptical Filter fails to recognise it as rubbish. However, the brain itself is anatomically altered by the meme virus in that defective circuits are made while the logical, critical, and sceptical circuits are allow to whither away from disuse. The victim’s brain accepts irrational rubbish without question and uses new defence circuits to block the rational ideas from competing.

Those people thus infected with meme complexes have an actual encephalopathy. It is akin to viral encephalitis such as rabies or herpes. They act irrationally. Violence may be committed on the basis of further perverted interpretation of the irrational dogma of their memes.

An example is the killing of babies by their own mothers. They do so because Satan is possessing the babies or because God ordered the killings. The meme infected mother wishes to guarantee their entry into Heaven before they have chance to sin, or one of the babies is the Anti-Christ.

Others with this meme encephalopathy may blow up federal buildings, clinics, gay bars, African-American Churches, Mosques, libraries, Museums, Archaeological excavations, Palaeontological digs, or sometimes killing innocent people for chaotic religious ideas and delusions of being on a mission from God.

Muslims behave in frighteningly similar ways from their slightly variant mind virus codes. The commonality seems to be violence, sexual obsession, and oppression of women. Both Christianity and Islam have a huge monopoly on all wars of the last 1700 years, compared to Buddhism. And Deism's only known war was the American Revolution which pitted Freedom oriented liberal Deists against Conservative Authoritarian Christians. But it should be noted that Deists did not fight FOR RELIGION but FOR FREEDOM FROM RELIGON.

There are so many examples from current news. There are Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Osama Bin Laden. And there are Benjamin Smith, Buford Furrow, Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh, Paul Hill, Army of God, The Order, Robert Matthews, Christian Identity, the KKK, and George W. Bush's Crusade (unprovoked invasion of Iraq.) The latter I suspect happened because of Bush's Armageddon Delusions, and the psychiatric significance of Iraq = Mesopotamia the location of ancient Babylon. He has killed 1000 to 1500 American soldiers, a hundred thousand or more Iraqis, to promote a full Armageddon. In his delusional mind, disrupted from meme virus damage to circuits, it is his privilege to bring on the bloody End War. The billions of deaths will force Jesus to return. He assumes that Jesus will reward the murderers of infidels with salvation.

The whole process is indeed insane. Perhaps many fail to notice the insanity until one puts it in the plain terms above. The human race is suffering from an epidemic of mind virus encephalitis, the meme being the psychotic story in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an. That data is transmitted into otherwise innocent brains acts like a molecular virus But the molecular virus transmits its destructive instructions to a brain cell by entering the cell nuclei, and actually rewriting the DNA. The meme complex is not a molecule or biological virus, but a defective computer software programme or computer virus. That causes the brain to form altered circuits that lead to altered patterns of thinking and behaviour.

Look at the results around the world of religion on behaviour. At least do some reading on meme complexes and mind viruses from others besides me. You deserve to know the truth for the sake of your children.

Amhairghine

 

[MSizer]

Quite reasonably. The chimp may be very similar to humans, but why does that show ancestry? After all, there is enough difference between us to make us different species, and I assume this shows up as a difference in the arrangement or length (or both) of the DNA chain. You cannot add information to a DNA chain through copulation. All you can do is replicate or bring out latent information. Although I suppose that, just as an author can add to his book if he wants to, the author of life could pen a few words here and there, thereby creating new life. But that gets us back to the notoriously miraculous appearance of things, a bridge too far for some.

I don't know how else to say this! DNA tests do exactly that - show ancestory!!! It has nothing to do with the phenotypical similarities, which happen to also be evidence, but they're not necessary because DNA already shows us the relationship between any two individuals! How manyt times do we have to repeat it?

 

[Amhairghine]

Dr Susan Blackmore offered a theory of the mind, based upon Richard Dawkins' concept of the meme. A meme, like a gene, is a replicator that behaves selfishly, but creates minds rather than bodies in the cause of maintaining its own propagation.

According to Blackmore:

'The meme is a unit of information (or instruction for behaviour) stored in a brain and passed on by one brain to another. Dawkins gave as examples: ideas, tunes, scientific theories, religious beliefs, clothes fashions, and skills, such as new ways of making pots or building arches.

The implications of this idea are staggering and Dawkins spelt some of them out. If memes are merely replicators then they will, inevitably, behave selfishly. That is, ones that are good at spreading will spread and ones that are not will not. As a consequence the world of ideas - or memosphere - will not fill up with the best, truest, most hopeful or helpful ideas, but with the survivors. Memes are just survivors like genes.'

http://www.redcrow.demon.co.uk/Ctombs/Articles/Memes.htm

In spending much of my work and hobbies on computer, I extrapolated these ideas only slightly. I prefer to think of a Meme Complex or Memeplex as a detailed programme introduced to one or more brains. It is like a Computer virus in that it not only replicates and spreads brain to brain, but initiates changes in basic circuits for processing input.

Those Memeplex induced alterations of brain circuits are not necessarily harmful, but can be positive, neutral, or harmful. Memeplexes of calculation, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, discrete mathematics likely enhance logical or rational networks of the brain by actually changing circuits. Some of those circuits may sprout new axons, new nerve terminals on axons, new synapses, neurochemical transmitter concentrations, numbers of receptors, and receptor up regulation. In other words, mathematical memes may actually enhance logical thinking.

Memeplexes that introduce a mathematical system in which methods are wrong, and answers do not fit the numbers presented, will have a negative effect on logical or rational networks. These important networks will then allow irrational or illogical data to be accepted without recognising the errors. Irrational religious memeplexes do the same and may be more dangerous because of the enhancing effects of affect/emotion.

Memes are most like computer viruses. Since they act on biological systems in which dynamic brains constantly re-wire their circuits, they actually change microanatomy of living circuits. Computer viruses cause no visible changes anatomically but change the binary direction of signal codes. You already know that concept.

Encephalitis is a term for an infection (viral usually) that alters neurological or neurocognitive function. It is accompanied by inflammation and actual cell death. Memeplexes do not do that. Encephalopathy is a generic term for any brain malfunction due to altered, malformed, or degenerative changes in brain macro or micro-anatomy.

The big question is this. Assume that the harmful Memeplex virus alters rational circuits causing impairments in thinking, associations, analytical processing, and weak sceptical screening. Then if one could debunk the memeplex with sound reasoning and logical syllogisms, likely over a long time, would the debunking and rational method itself be a beneficial memeplex. Would this “fix” the damaged circuitry and by extrapolation restore reason and logic to an irrational thinker?

 

[Kathryn]

Evolution is not something you believe in, like a religion. It is a scientific theory. You either accept science and its theories, or you reject them. Those who reject science assert that for some reason the existence of DNA (one of the most powerful pieces of evidence for the Theory of Evolution [ToE]) shows that ToE is incorrect. They are mistaken.

Wait a minute here. The options aren't "Either accept science or accept religion." One doesn't have to accept or reject ALL scientific theories or ALL religious dogmas in order to be either religious or scientific in approach.

There have probably been as many hare-brained scientific theories as there have been hare-brained religious beliefs throughout the passage of time.

I'm not a scientist or a theologian, but I am smart enough to figure out that the field of science is full of theories that either pan out to be true, or fall by the wayside into oblivion. The tenets of my faith are timeless and unshakeable.

Scientific principles and religious principles aren't necessarily in disagreement, and I found the OP to be erroneous in this regard from the start - with the assumption that if one understands DNA then that somehow undermines the integrity of their religion.

I just don't see that.

 

[Jose Fly]

DNA is used to indicate common ancestry in paternity tests because of shared "mistakes" in non-functional regions of the genome. There are large regions of the human genome that we know have no function that's tied to their specific sequence, so the odds of any two people having the same sequence at the same location is very, very small.

Interestingly, the same methodology tells us that we share a common ancestry with chimpanzees. I wrote the following a few years ago:



Transposons are a type of genetic parasite that replicates only in the genetic material of their host. However, unlike viruses, they don’t have genes for viral coat proteins and can’t cross cellular boundaries. Also, as I explained earlier, transposons come in two general categories: retrotransposons and DNA transposons. Retrotransposons replicate via “copy-n-paste” (they use RNA to make a copy of themselves, which is inserted elsewhere in the genome). DNA transposons move about via “cut-n-paste” (they use an enzyme to cut themselves out of the genome and then reinsert themselves somewhere else in the genome). In both cases the location of the insertion/reinsertion is random. This has been directly observed to have happened to many organisms (e.g. yeast, humans, bacterial, flies).

If the genetic material of the transposon is inserted directly into the host’s genome in a germ line cell (an egg or sperm), all the descendants of the host will inherit this material. Additionally, because the insertion is random, the only way two organisms would share the same transposons in the exact same locations is if they shared a common ancestor. Therefore, if common descent is accurate, we should be able to predict, based on the phylogenetic tree, which organisms will share transposons and their genetic locations.

So, is this what we see in nature?

Was there ever any doubt?! A common class of retrotransposon are SINEs (short interspersed elements). One important SINE is the Alu element. Alu elements are around 300 base pairs long, and are commonly used in paternity testing and in criminal forensics to identify individuals and establish relatedness. They are reliable identifiers because of what I discussed above, namely that the only reason two individuals would share the exact same particular Alu sequence insertion is if they share a common ancestor.

About 2,000 Alu insertions are specific to humans, and an even larger number are shared with other primates. But more specifically, in the human alpha-globin cluster there are seven Alu elements, and each one is shared with chimpanzees in the exact same seven locations!

Evolution of Alu family repeats since the divergen...[J Mol Evol. 1985] - PubMed Result

So again, the same methodology that allows us to determine paternity and relatedness in courts of law also allows us to show that humans, chimpanzees, and other primates share a common ancestry. I suppose one can argue that this bit of evidence “proves” human/primate shared ancestry in the same way the same evidence “proves” paternity in courts of law.

 

[Dunemeister]

I don't know how else to say this! DNA tests do exactly that - show ancestory!!! It has nothing to do with the phenotypical similarities, which happen to also be evidence, but they're not necessary because DNA already shows us the relationship between any two individuals! How manyt times do we have to repeat it?

I realize that you may use a DNA test to show a relationship between two humans. I'm not satisfied that you can do a DNA test to show a genetic relationship between species.

 

[Dunemeister]

No one's arguing that. My point is that the designs evolve.

This is compatible with the belief that God is the source of all life and intentionally guides its development.

 

[Autodidact]

Wait a minute here. The options aren't "Either accept science or accept religion." One doesn't have to accept or reject ALL scientific theories or ALL religious dogmas in order to be either religious or scientific in approach.

There have probably been as many hare-brained scientific theories as there have been hare-brained religious beliefs throughout the passage of time.

Do you think the Theory of Evolution (ToE) is a hare-brained scientific theory?

I'm not a scientist or a theologian, but I am smart enough to figure out that the field of science is full of theories that either pan out to be true, or fall by the wayside into oblivion. The tenets of my faith are timeless and unshakeable.

ToE is one of the former.

It's not some hare-brained notion cooked up last week. It's one of the most solid, well-supported, robust and important theories in the history of science. To reject ToE, you either have to get a PhD and then find some evidence to undermine it, something no one has managed to do in the last 150 years, or reject the scientific method itself.

 

[Kathryn]

I don't see that the theory of evolution is incompatible with Christianity. That's my point. But your earlier post implied that you have to either believe in religious tenets OR science, and I don't agree with that premise.

 

[themadhair]

[size=+2]Nested hierarchies[/size]

 

[painted wolf]

I realize that you may use a DNA test to show a relationship between two humans. I'm not satisfied that you can do a DNA test to show a genetic relationship between species.

So you doubt the genetic relationship of Horses and Zebras?
Wolves, dogs and Dingos?

wa:do