Why Intelignt Design Isn't Intelligent

[Add Homonym]

My dear fellow idiots, let's look at the bright side- chosenbygrace isn't a YEC.

I don't know how bright that is. At least with YECs, you can have a field-day, quoting all the drivel in Genesis at them.

[atheola]

Look you idiots, fruit flies are in baltic amber, dated 30 millions years old and older,

Huh? But didn't sky daddy create the earth a mere 6000 years ago?
THIRTY MILLION YEARS vs a mere 6000..

Well...there seems to be an accounting error somewhere.

[One Above All]

*Devil's advocate mode on*
Actually, when you consider that the gods' plans hinge on people dying in order to go to the good place, intelligent design makes a lot of sense. We're intelligently designed to die by the tens of thousands, sometimes before we're even born.

[Historicity]

It's been how long now since Darwin presented his ripped off twisted version of Blyth's theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Blyth

There can be no doubt of Darwin's regard for Edward Blyth: in the first chapter of On the Origin of Species he wrote "Mr. Blyth, whose opinion, from his large and varied stores of knowledge, I should value more than that of almost any one, ..."
...
In this negative formulation, natural selection only preserves a constant and unchangeable type or essence of created form, by eliminating extreme variations or unfit individuals that deviate too far from this essence. The formulation goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles,
...
Stephen Jay Gould writes that ... natural selection was a common idea among biologists of the time, as part of the argument for created permanency of species.

[Historicity]

http://eternian.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/no-fruit-fly-evolution-after-600-generations-or-bacteria-evolution-after-40000-generations/

BROKEN LINK

[screwtape]

Hi chosenbygrace

Welcome to our forum.

My green text indicates I am responding as a moderator, not a participant in the discussion or debate.

Please refrain from posting the same thing twice.  Your post was addressed by Alzael and there was no need to repeat yourself.

You are new so if you have not done so already, please read our Rules and the Guides

If you have any questions, please PM a staff member.

Also, this:

Look you idiots, ...Truly stupid....  but you dummies aren't interested ...because it makes you look like the liars you are

is not going to make you friends, change anyone's mind or have a positive influence on anyone's life, including yours.  I suggest you try a different approach.

Regards

[screwtape]

http://eternian.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/no-fruit-fly-evolution-after-600-generations-or-bacteria-evolution-after-40000-generations/

BROKEN LINK

The rest of the site belongs to someone who is almost certainly mentally ill.  On his "about me" page:

I’m a Christian, I like to go exploring, would like to have my own farm, would like to go to Israel and plant some trees in the desert there. I’m into reading and watching shows and movies about these things: astronomy, archeology, logic, the bible, mineral hunting, farming, history, haunted houses, UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles, megaliths, pyramids, bigfoot, unexplained disappearances and cryptozoology. I know a decent amount about psychology, narcissism, psychopath, sociopathy.
...
I’ve saved a few lives over the recent years, physically (unfortunately all the people whom I saved in person, are severely hateful, backstabbing, unthankful, mentally unstable drunks) and have lead over 100 people, mostly teens, to Christ from 1998-2004. From about 2007-2009 I also lead many people to Christ and helped many to refrain from committing suicide right away, though combined, this amount does not seem to have come close to my earlier success. I had less success during the second period because of various cyberstalkers, especially atheist ones, especially a certain four atheists. Among the non-atheists were Arminian and “saved by works” type Christians, who are prone to mental illness and still in their sins.
...
However, the harassers I mentioned, especially the atheists and insane woman, hindrance from my parents, harassment from the police, harassment from false and fellow Christians (and abandonment by both) a hoard of bad neighbors, health problems, and many hardware and software failures, have delayed it greatly, since 2004.

How many personality disorders can you spot?

[velkyn]

nice. quan_lee, a new liar for christ.    Here's the real science, not some pathetic attempts to lie with the usual creationist tricks of willful ignorance, using superseded information, outright lies, etc: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7167/full/nature06341.html 
http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/296/6/R1847.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12949132

EDIT: oh and two for the price of one.  ah the ever so "humble" screen name "chosenbygrace" by a "good Christian" who is sure all of those other Christians are "wrong".  And another liar for Christ who is utterly ignorant about the evolutionary theory he tries so hard to attack.     

[atheola]

I'm not the smartest penny in the bank or I'd be rich instead of so good looking, but please explain why a Saint Bernard and a chihuahua can have puppies together. 

[Azdgari]

Artificial insemination.  Just make sure the St. Bernard is the one being impregnated, or that'll be one very unfortunate chihuahua.

[pianodwarf]

How many personality disorders can you spot?

Paranoid Personality Disorder for sure.  Narcissistic Personality Disorder is also a good possibility.

[ParkingPlaces]

chosenbygrace

Fruit flies? Which species found in amber hasn't changed a whit? Where is that specific species found today? Can you show us the specifics of the non-changes? Or do you just like the term fruit fly because it automatically indicates that nothing else has changed because, by golly, it has the same common name.

Lets see, there are over 3,000 species of them. There is still lots of fruit for them to eat. Therefore there is little pressure for them to evolve into giant flying squid eating monsters with a 20 foot wing span.

The island of Hawaii, which rose out of the sea only 8 million years ago, has 500 distinct species of fruit fly found nowhere else in the world. It is less than 30 million years old. This seems to indicate some movement on the part of genes, etc.

So I need to clarify your argument in case I have something wrong. You have a 30 million year old specimen of a fruit fly trapped in amber, which you say has never changed so evolution is false, and even though 8 million years ago the islands of Hawaii rose up out of the ocean, and 500 unique species of fruit fly exist on those islands, neither those fruit flies nor of any of the other 2500 species of fruit fly actually evolved because they are all called fruit flies, and besides, if had evolved that would be inconvenient for your argument so lets just say they didn't evolve and all turn into christians because evolution is false. Is that about right?

Successful species don't need to evolve into other critters. It's not a requirement of life to continually evolve that way. It is a requirement to have a nice little sustainable ecological niche and succeed in procreating. Even the latter requirement evolved. Those that didn't procreate, er, didn't evolve.

The fruit flies (that's singular to you) of the world fill a nice little niche that existed 30 million years ago and exists today. It gets to eat it's little heart out when there is fruit around. There is a lot of food around. Fruit flies have evolved into other species of fruit flies in order to take advantage of new food opportunities where some sort of evolved advantage makes eating that type of fruit easier or safer. Other fruit flies have stayed more or less the same because the old fruits are still there and need to be nibbled on.

I do apologize for giving you this data. It was an accident. I didn't mean to inform you. In the future, if you are going to use fruit flies as an example of proof that evolution hasn't happened, you should only go to uninformed sites that have the same need to diss information that you find inconvenient. Assuming that it is important for you to know nothing, I would suggest you stick with such sites. (don't worry, there are lots of them. There is a crayon-based version of google that can help you find more.) That way nothing troublesome will come to mind, knowledge-wise, and you can live happily and blithely uninformed for as long as you want. Enjoy.

[jaimehlers]

And talk about dishonest: so you don't think that by now some evolutionist God haters like yourself, if seeing fruit flies finally evolve after what now would be much more than 600 generations, would say, "OH LOOK THE CREATIONISTS ARE WRONG DARWIN IS RIGHT SEE THEY'VE FINALLY EVOLVED!" Every second that passes with no demonstration of evolution or claim IS CURRENT INFORMATION. You saying, "Oh but an evolutionist has to do a new study in this unspecified time I won't give and then it will be okay and then I'll believe." Talk about dishonest.

It's been how long now since Darwin presented his ripped off twisted version of Blyth's theory and still no evidence of evolution and you're still resisting the truth guys? You're really that full of stubborn bitterness? You're really that prideful? All you want then is endless arguments, that's your way of punishing God is to try and wear out those who speak the truth in his name. In the end, you will be forever worn out, always desiring sleep and never getting any.

And wow, did you not hear about the millions of years old rocks that were used as standards for all other dating methods being admitted to be only 700,000 years old? *Shakes head*. Evil, dumb, greedy, liars. Get real jobs and stop taking grant money bribes.

Given that you edited your post, I'll respond to the specific edits, but really, there's no reason for you to have copy-pasted your original response to Alzael, nor to selectively modify his post either.

First off, if you take nothing else away from this conversation, understand that atheists are not "God haters".  Atheists, as a rule, do not believe in gods of any sort, and it is irrational to hate something that you don't believe exists.  I think you would find that if atheists as a rule hate anything, they hate the way in which Christian believers and other theists presume that their religious beliefs are correct despite being completely unable to find out for sure until it's too late to do anything about it.

----

Now, regarding the fruit fly study, I've since located an ABC news report of a breakthrough made at the University of Connecticut which showed that making a change to a single gene resulted in a dramatic increase in the life span of a fruit fly[1].  According to an abstract in Science News[2] from 2000, this not only doubled the average lifespan of the fruit fly from 37 days to 70, but it increased their maximum life span by 50%.  Again, this completely contradicts the conclusion in the article linked by qwan_lee (which I noticed was no longer available on that blog (the original is available here on ICR), namely that "the experiments proved that the mutation of any of these core developmental genes?mutations that would be essential for the fruit fly to evolve into any other creature?merely resulted in dead or deformed fruit flies.".  So we have another contradiction between the conclusions of the article's writer and the actual science involved.

I would say that both the gene changed that so dramatically increased the lifespan of fruit flies and the mutation which resulted in E.coli being able to metabolize citrine demonstrate that it is indeed possible to get beneficial changes from genetic changes.  Given that this is a key part of the theory of evolution, I would say that these studies stand as evidence that Christian creationist beliefs are flawed in conception and that evolution by selection is a fact of life.

----

Regarding the rest of your post, it seems that you're attributing your own bile and bitterness against atheists and "evolutionists" to them, the well-known phenomenon of "projection".  Let me clue you in on something, I get more "exhausted" from eight hours a day of working with computers for a living than in refuting the bad arguments posited by creationists.  I don't do it to "punish" some deity (I don't think sad deity would even notice, it would be like an ant "punishing" me by arguing against other ants), I do it because those creationists are wrong, and it's my duty to show it.

And as for those rocks you mentioned that only ended up being 700,000 years old, you trumpet this as if it disproves the whole concept of radiometric dating.  It does not.  What that really means is that someone made a mistake, and then caught it and corrected it after the fact.  That is what science is about, finding errors in our understanding of things and correcting them.  That's one of the reasons we use different methods of radiometric dating, because it provides us a cross-check in case someone screws up.

1.	http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119719&page=1
2.	http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/pdfs/data/2000/158-25/15825-18.pdf

[Dante]

Hey chosen, or quan, care to answer this question? Your other theist friends apparently declined.

What is it about evolution that makes you afraid? Why do you accept other scientific facts, but not this one?

For years, people have had to move on from one outdated world view to the more current, corrected one. The planet is not flat. Thor does not make thunder. Other worlds do exist.

Science is a tool for understanding the world around us. It does not care about your beliefs, nor mine. It is non-sentient, with no agenda, save to answer questions about how things work. And, one of the beauties of it is that it requires no faith to work. It works whether you believe it, or not. If you choose to dismiss all the evidence and rationale for any science, it doesn't care. It still works.

Are you such a narcissist that you believe science has the hidden agenda to disprove your god? To make your god irrelevant? I tell you, it does not. And why would it? To what end?

Why would science be out to disprove your god? What happens? According to you, we're in a "fallen state" anyway. Why would this make it worse? And, moreover, why would you, personally, care? Wouldn't all this have the effect of speeding toward the rapture anyway? And, isn't that a good thing for you?

Thoughts?

[atheola]

Goodness! We're all god haters now.. I don't hate things that don't exist, but there is that special deity who left money under my pillow at night. All hail the Tooth Fairy^tm!

Artificial insemination. Just make sure the St. Bernard is the one being impregnated, or that'll be one very unfortunate chihuahua.

Indeed..poor mother chihuahua.
When I was a kid we had a large German Shepherd and when she went into heat the little ankle biter next door was usually first in line to hump her leg which became a regular comedy show for the neighborhood..

[Alzael]

Look you idiots, fruit flies are in baltic amber, dated 30 millions years old and older, and there is no apparent change. How many generations of fruit flies have passed by since 38 million years ago, yet you're whining about studies done since 1920 and onward showing no evolution? Truly stupid. "Living fossils" are always being found, but you dummies aren't interested in cataloging them all because it makes you look like the liars you are every time another is found.

Ad hominems combined with wild accusations. However I note the distinct lack of any sort of evidence to support yourself, not to mention the lack of any reasonable thought processes. Even your insane rambling is dull and vacant.

[Historicity]

... I like to go exploring, would like to have my own farm, would like to go to Israel and plant some trees in the desert there. I’m into reading and watching shows and movies about these things: astronomy, archeology, logic, the bible, mineral hunting, farming, history, haunted houses, UFOs, alien abductions, crop circles, megaliths, pyramids, bigfoot, unexplained disappearances and cryptozoology. I know a decent amount about psychology, narcissism, psychopath, sociopathy.

Actually he sounds a bit like me. 

And he looks a lot like me only decades younger.

SOMEONE CLONED ME WITHOUT MY KNOWING IT.

[atheola]

Don't fret Historocity.
I look just like Abraham Lincoln from the side and I haven't freed any slaves although my grandkids would argue I'm a slave driver come room cleaning day..
Did they secretly clone Lincoln in the 50s?

[ungod]

please explain why a Saint Bernard and a chihuahua can have puppies together. 

Becuz they're the same species? DUH!

I'm not the smartest penny in the bank or I'd be rich instead of so good looking

You don't need to be smart to be rich - just really greedy and a sociopath.

[Omen]

http://eternian.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/no-fruit-fly-evolution-after-600-generations-or-bacteria-evolution-after-40000-generations/

"Evolution was not observed in fruit fly genetic manipulations in 1980, nor has it been observed in decades-long ___multigenerational__(there goes the "time" theory) studies of bacteria and fruit flies. The experiments only showed that these creatures have practical limits to the amount of genetic change they can tolerate. When those limits are breached, the creatures don’t evolve—they just die."

This article is atrociously bad, it quotes none of the findings and instead the author of the article quotes himself dismissively summarizing the report without actually citing anything in the report.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

Since the experiment's inception, Lenski and his colleagues have reported a wide array of genetic changes; some evolutionary adaptations have occurred in all 12 populations, while others have only appeared in one or a few populations. One particularly striking adaption was the evolution of a strain of E. coli that was able to grow on citric acid in the growth media.[2]

They even narrowed down the genetic stages of development to within 20,000 generations.  Meaning that earlier changes were also necessary for the ability for the E coli to evolve the functionality to grow on citric acid.  Generations before the 20,000 point lack the genetic changes to develop the ability to grow on citric acid in the future.

In 2008 Lenski and his collaborators reported on a particularly important adaptation that occurred in one of the twelve populations: the bacteria evolved the ability to utilize citrate as a source of energy. Wild type E. coli cannot transport citrate across the cell membrane to the cell interior (where it could be incorporated into the citric acid cycle) when oxygen is present. The consequent lack of growth on citrate under oxic conditions is considered a defining characteristic of the species that has been a valuable means of differentiating E. coli from pathogenic Salmonella. Around generation 33,127, the experimenters noticed a dramatically expanded population-size in one of the samples; they found that there were clones in this population that could grow on the citrate included in the growth medium to permit iron acquisition. Examination of samples of the population frozen at earlier time points led to the discovery that a citrate-using variant had evolved in the population at some point between generations 31,000 and 31,500. They used a number of genetic markers unique to this population to exclude the possibility that the citrate-using E. coli were contaminants. They also found that the ability to use citrate could spontaneously re-evolve in populations of genetically pure clones isolated from earlier time points in the population's history. Such re-evolution of citrate utilization was never observed in clones isolated from before generation 20,000. Even in those clones that were able to re-evolve citrate utilization, the function showed a rate of occurrence on the order of once per trillion cells. The authors interpret these results as indicating that the evolution of citrate utilization in this one population depended on an earlier, perhaps non-adaptive "potentiating" mutation that had the effect of increasing the rate of mutation to citrate utilization to an accessible level (with the data they present further suggesting that citrate utilization required at least two mutations subsequent to this "potentiating" mutation). More generally the authors suggest that these results indicate (following the argument of Stephen Jay Gould) "that historical contingency can have a profound and lasting impact" on the course of evolution.[2]

[Tero]

We all are waiting for the intermediate species to show up ANYWHERE! 7 BILLION people on earth and WHERE oh
WHERE are the intermediate human-like species?

Here we are. We are an intermediate. Or we may be the end of the road.  Our humanlike ancestors are dead. There are lots of bones out there. SInce the time span is quite large, we do not have a whole lot from the last 500 000 years. But certainly we have lots.

[jeremy0]

We all are waiting for the intermediate species to show up ANYWHERE! 7 BILLION people on earth and WHERE oh
WHERE are the intermediate human-like species?

Here we are. We are an intermediate. Or we may be the end of the road.  Our humanlike ancestors are dead. There are lots of bones out there. SInce the time span is quite large, we do not have a whole lot from the last 500 000 years. But certainly we have lots.

It seems I'm late to the party..  I would argue against the teaching of anything in any school that has not been proven or verified.  For example, I haven't proven to the outside world that I have a single-read index structure for numerical searches and a vastly two-read index for strings (text).  I have proof of this on my computer, with working and thoroughly tested code.  However, it won't make any algorithm book based on disk-based searching, because I have not finished it and proven it to the outside world.  That means it shouldn't be taught until it becomes validated by some higher authority.

Also, I have an idea that using one key out of an asymmetrical encryption algorithm and encrypting a password with that key, while never storing the other key to decrypt it anywhere, and then doing an md5 or sha1 to store it, might be better than just a straight md5 or an md5 with salt (random letters appended/prepended).  However, this is a theory, that has not been contested or argued.  Therefore, it may be invalid, and should not be taught to computer programmers yet. 

The same is true for teaching intelligent design in school.  Until it has been validated, it is only a loosely-knit theory, one that has not been studied, and is constantly challenged.  Because it cannot be verified or validated, it has no place being taught in any school at this time.

(how did we get so side-tracked on this discussion?)

[MadBunny]

The same is true for teaching intelligent design in school.  Until it has been validated, it is only a loosely-knit theory, one that has not been studied, and is constantly challenged. Because it cannot be verified or validated, it has no place being taught in any school at this time.

Hence lies the problem.  ID isn't science, it isn't even a theory.  At best it's an unproven hypothesis.