Comment on What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist? by Sean Pitman.
Let me try to summarize here. You freely admit that no one really knows how the Darwinian mechanism of RM/NS really works beyond very low levels of functional complexity. You then go on to praise this as a strength of the Darwinian position and science at large – that, “In celebrating our ignorance we are celebrating the way science is a process for pushing forward the frontier of questions, of discovering new questions. Defining the scope of ignorance helps define the direction of science.”
I’m sorry, but after looking for an adequate mechanism for so long, and not finding one, perhaps you Darwinists should at least consider the possibility that there just isn’t one – that no mindless naturalistic mechanism exists to explain highly complex biomachines arising without the input of intelligent design. It’s like being determined to find a mindless naturalistic process that can explain the origin of a supercomputer or the space shuttle or even just a simple highly symmetrical granite cube that measures one meter no each side.
As with all sciences involved with the detection of ID (like anthropology, forensics, and even SETI), you deal with the information in hand regarding the potential and limits of naturalistic mechanisms vs. what intelligent agents are known to be able to create. It simply isn’t scientific to sit back and say, “Well, someday we’re bound to discover a mindless mechanism that could do the job.” That’s wishful thinking my man. That’s not science. It’s not testable in a potentially falsifiable manner…
We feel sympathy that you do not wish to join this endeavour but sit on the sidelines carping about things we of course recognize as not adequately addressed. Scientists do not sit there and lament we do not have answers, we do experiments and publish the results. Why else were there in 2012, 6642 papers recovered with a pubmed search on “evolution AND mutation AND mammal AND genome”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=evolution%20AND%20mutation%20NOT%20review%20AND%20mammal%20AND%20genome
As I’ve mentioned to you before, don’t just list off a bunch of irrelevant references and links. Present one paper, just one, which deals specifically with evolution beyond very low levels of functional complexity and show me where, in that paper (a specific quote) any novel system of function, requiring more than 1000 specifically arranged residues, has been shown to either 1) evolve in real time or 2) could have evolved in a reasonable amount of time based on relevant statistical calculations and extrapolations based on a real understanding of the odds involved of moving around in the vastness of sequence space via random mutations.
On the first page of the 333 pages there are at least 4 of the 20 publications that are relevant to your question. Look at this neat paper that looks at sequencing total genomic DNA from a single cell and comparing genomes between individual cancer cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23258894
All using a new amplification technique. Wouldnt this be neat for archaic DNA?
Tell me, how is this at all relevant to my hypothesis? It doesn’t show the evolution of anything beyond very low levels of functional complexity and it doesn’t deal with the statistical problems of evolving something new in high level sequence space.
Look at this comparison of 1092 human genomes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23128226
It is freely available so you can read it in its entirety including the 15 supplementary figures and 15 supplementary tables. I admit I do not have time to read it all and accept the conclusions of the abstract and the scrutiny of the peer reviewers and the conclusions about the SNPs and local restricted vs more frequent and increasingly generic variations.
Again, this is all based on sequence similarities. As with all other papers in literature on this topic, none deal with the minimum required differences to reach higher levels of functional complexity via RM/NS.
Look at this paper on selection and biased gene conversion in mammals
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23024185
It suggests there is a complexity in selection and mutation not captured in your naive question on the adequacy of RM/NS
Oh really? Please do detail the particular argument listed in the paper that explains how RM/NS is statistically likely to find any qualitatively novel system of function in higher level sequence space this side of a practical eternity of time. It’s just not there… sorry.
And, as far as your arguments for Matthew 5, they’re completely misplaced. Gandhi and all of his followers would have been sent to the gas chambers if he had been dealing with someone truly evil – like Hitler or Stalin. Even you, I dare say, have or would call on the police for protection in certain scenarios (like someone threatening the lives of your wife and children, or someone trying to shoot up a grade school). And, if you actually read your Bible, there was a war in heaven and Satan and his angels were physically thrown out of heaven (Revelation 12:7-12). Jesus himself describes this war and noted that He witnessed Satan fall from heaven like lightening (Luke 10:18).
I know you don’t think that Jesus would ever use force to restrict the actions of anyone, but this isn’t a Biblical concept. The wicked will, according to the Bible, be forever barred from entrance into heaven – by force. Of course, you don’t really believe what the Bible says beyond what you want it to say…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
I guess someone who accepts neo-Darwinism must have some problems with the reality of Biblical prophecy…
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
You didn’t answer my question as to what you would do if you happened to have been in a place like Sandy Hook Elementary School when a shooter entered the building. Or, what you would do if someone threatened the lives of your own family. Also, don’t tell me that Australia has no police force or that the police there don’t carry guns…
What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
The Bible and Ellen White are very clear that Satan and his angels were forced to leave heaven just as Adam and Eve were forced to leave Eden after they fell to Satan’s charms. They are also very clear that the wicked will one day be excluded, by force, from the New Jerusalem and will, eventually, be completely destroyed from existence. I don’t think that’s how it worked with you and your family…
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Thank you Ariel. Hope you are doing well these days. Miss seeing you down at Loma Linda. Hope you had a Great Thanksgiving!
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Thank you Colin. Just trying to save lives any way I can. Not everything that the government does or leaders do is “evil” BTW…
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Only someone who knows the future can make such decisions without being a monster…
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Where did I “gloss over it”?
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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.
Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).
Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.
