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Pacers Digest is intended to be a place to discuss basketball without having to deal with the kinds of behaviors or attitudes that distract people from sticking with the discussion of the topics at hand. These unwanted distractions can come in many forms, and admittedly it can sometimes be tricky to pin down each and every kind that can rear its ugly head, but we feel that the following examples and explanations cover at least a good portion of that ground and should at least give people a pretty good idea of the kinds of things we actively discourage:

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Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

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  • #31
    Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

    Originally posted by Since86 View Post
    If you don't know, then how is it possible to argue that it cannot be some sort of creationism?
    A creation event is, I suppose, one possibility!

    But to consider it on even ground with other possible explanations in the absence of experiments yet to be done, there needs to be some scientific basis for that being in effect, and most importantly, there has to be some way to test it, some experiment where one possible outcome would prove it to be wrong (falsifyability, if I can make up a word).

    "Because a book says so" is not a scientific basis, and the attitude that "no matter what you find, I will still believe in exactly what I think that this book says" shows how how unfalsifiable the explanation may be.

    A powerful moment in the debate was where Bill Nye commented that he would be willing to give up any scientific notion if sufficient evidence was presented, whereas Mr. Ham was unwilling to imagine, evaluate, or even ponder any information that would budge him an inch to the left or an inch to the right.

    Einstein's relativity was "out there" and few people "got it". Some got it enough to design experiments to test it (and some experiments Einstein suggested himself). When he was right in, for example, the odd prediction that rays of starlight are in fact bent by the sun (and that it would be measurable during a full eclipse), even the newspapers were abuzz that Einstein was right. He could have been wrong. That was a possible empirical result, anyway.
    Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 02-06-2014, 06:09 PM.
    The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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    • #32
      Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

      Originally posted by Hicks View Post
      That having been said, I'd like to point out that not everyone who entertains the concept of intelligent design is religious.
      Whether or not an I.D. believer is religious or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether or not their claims are religious in nature. For I.D., the answer is clearly no.
      Premise I: The foundation for life is the genetic code, which acts as a programming language for life.
      Premise II: Every known code originates via intelligence.
      Premise III: Nature has never shown anywhere near the capability of creating such a thing.
      Conclusion: An intelligence is the best explanation for life.

      There are zero religious or faith-based claims in the above argument; it's entirely secular and logical. Trying to refute it by attacking the claimants religion commits roughly half-a-dozen logical fallacies.


      Originally posted by Hicks View Post
      Meanwhile, on this concept of natural selection being about selecting the best or eliminating the worst, I need to do more reading and thinking to have a strong position on this, but I will say this: On the surface, I think the idea that it's really just eliminating the weakest makes a lot of sense to me.
      There's room for all but the absolute most defective of organisms to survive and reproduce.

      Think about people you know. Even those people who are less than attractive, physically or otherwise, tend to reproduce, oftentimes more than attractive people.

      Now, think about anyone you know who has a severe (for lack of a better term) defect, whether it be physical or intellectual. Chances are, that person's survival was far lesser than the average person's, and chances are that person will never reproduce. His defective genes will be wiped from the gene pool.

      The same logic applies over the entire biological world. Everyone has ample opportunity to survive and reproduce bar the absolute weakest members of a population.


      Originally posted by Hicks View Post
      Like the thoroughbred horses, survival isn't just about one factor, such as how well you can run. It's factoring in all things that could kill you, and then seeing how well you can survive despite all of those factors. If their lungs are weak when it comes to disease, then that's pushes them further down towards weakest (versus up towards strongest) when it comes to survival capability. That makes sense to me.
      Natural selection acts on entire organisms, not individual traits.

      For example, if organism A has a single beneficial trait, and multiple harmful traits, then in order to select the beneficial trait natural selection must also select the multiple harmful traits. It's all or nothing.

      What this takes us to is something that makes Darwinists red in the face: Genetic entropy.

      The cold, hard truth is, harmful traits OVERWHELMINGLY outnumber beneficial traits, which means that over time, genomes will deteriorate to the point of extinction.

      Darwinism's proposed mechanisms do exactly the opposite of what its proponents claim they do.
      Last edited by Lance George; 02-06-2014, 07:05 PM.

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      • #33
        Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

        Sorry, I hit enter too soon on my last post.

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        • #34
          Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

          Originally posted by PacerDude View Post
          Isn't this really the correct answer ??
          We don't know for certain due to the fact it was an event in the remote past which was not directly observable. However, this doesn't mean it becomes entirely guesswork. There's still evidence which can sway us towards one explanation over the other(s).

          For example:
          Premise I: The foundation for life is the genetic code, which acts as a programming language for life.
          Premise II: Every known code originates via intelligence.
          Premise III: Nature has never shown anywhere near the capability of creating such a thing.
          Conclusion: An intelligence is the best explanation for life.

          There's no legitimate rebuttal to the above facts -- every premise is true, and the conclusion logically follows from said premises. What Darwinists typically do is concoct a series of excuses for why we can't conclude intelligence:
          • It's unfalsifiable (lie)
          • Intelligence is supernatural (perhaps it is for them, but it's not for me)
          • Science only deals with the natural (see: supernatural excuse)
          • It's a God-of-the-gaps argument (lie)
          • Scientists have it all figured out (lie)
          • Trying to conflate it with Biblical creationism (lie)



          These are all cheap, flimsy, unscientific excuses which exist solely to avoid the fact that all evidence for the origin of life posits an intelligent designer.
          Last edited by Lance George; 02-06-2014, 07:29 PM.

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          • #35
            Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

            had to peek at the ignored person's "interesting" comments

            so much crap, so little time...

            The cold, hard truth is, NEUTRAL mutations OVERWHELMINGLY outnumber either harmful or beneficial mutations. This is clearly seen at the DNA level--- a changed base is more likely than not in DNA that is not even transcribed. If it is transcribed, though, it might provide a redundant codon for the same amino acid anyway. Or it might code for a different amino acid but place that amino acid far from the active site of the transcribed protein (a benign point mutation). There are common and fully functional mutant forms of just about every known biological protein, from point mutations to splice variants to deletions of entire scaffolding domains. Sometime even a point mutation has a devastating effect (see sickle cell anemia) but more often it does not. A neutral mutation might be a so-called gateway mutation, giving access to a latter mutation that has positive or negative effects, though. So even neutral mutations increased the odds for the evolution of diversity.

            that's the only misstatement I have time to correct for now... maybe more later, though there is a LOT thrown out there, It is a phenomenon called the Gish Gallop (Google it, if you will)
            The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

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            • #36
              Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

              You guys need to get a room.

              Comment


              • #37
                Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                found a cool paper...

                The average person has 175 nucleotide mutations per generation. If most genetic mutations were harmful, the odds of two people every having a healthy baby would be practically zero.

                http://www.genetics.org/content/156/1/297.full


                But some are detrimental right? Sure, but even mildly detrimental mutations can be potentiating mutations. That is, the change caused by one mutation reduces efficiency of some protein, but that mutation, when combined with another mutation results in a huge GAIN IN FUNCTION!

                such an example:

                http://www.plosbiology.org/article/i...l.pbio.0060085

                In this study, an RNA enzyme was placed in a situation where it was imperfectly copied. By reducing the amount of substrate available to the enzyme in each iteration of the experiment, the researchers could select for improved function in the enzyme. The final enzyme was genetically analyzed and found to have 11 mutations. The final enzyme had a 90-fold improvement in enzyme activity. This improvement occurred in 70 hours. What’s really interesting is that there were four main mutational groups (M1, M2, M3, M4) identified in the final enzyme. Using some cool tools, the researchers built enzymes with each mutation by itself. The M4 mutation, by itself, resulted in a 2-fold decrease in enzyme efficiency.

                But in the presence of any of the other three mutation groups, M4 increased the efficiency of the other mutations. That is how even a harmful mutation can result in a greater overall benefit. Even if a mutation is harmful, if it isn’t harmful enough to kill the organism, then it could very well be the change needed for future organisms to have greater benefits!

                Think of the worst mutation you can have- frame shift. You change the reading frame and make a totally wrong protein. Awful, right? Maybe not though! Sexual organisms have TWO copies of every gene (except for some genes on the male sex chromosome). One of the copies of a gene can be massively corrupted, but just like having two hard drives with the same information, our bodies can just ignore the corrupted information. We still have a good copy of the gene!

                (probably the real answer to why sex evolved, something Bill Nye alluded to. It's an insurance policy for harmful mutations)
                Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 02-06-2014, 09:42 PM.
                The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                Comment


                • #38
                  Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                  Uya know it's kinda neat reading science after an 8 year retirement. Things have changed. Ifeel like a neanderthal when I talk with my nephew now. He was a Post-Doc Geneticist at Stanford and is doing full-time cancer research there now.
                  Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                    Originally posted by GrangeRusHibbert View Post
                    We don't know for certain due to the fact it was an event in the remote past which was not directly observable. However, this doesn't mean it becomes entirely guesswork. There's still evidence which can sway us towards one explanation over the other(s).

                    For example:
                    Premise I: The foundation for life is the genetic code, which acts as a programming language for life.
                    Premise II: Every known code originates via intelligence.
                    Premise III: Nature has never shown anywhere near the capability of creating such a thing.
                    Conclusion: An intelligence is the best explanation for life.
                    But you cannot perform an experiment based on those premises. That is the whole point of science, you create a claim and try to prove it with experiments.

                    How can you say nature is not creative, there are some bacteria that evolve in the span of six months to adapt to their environment. Viruses and diseases evolve and we have to find new medicines as the old ones are not effective.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                      I'm hesitant to post in a thread like this for fear that I might offend someone. While I will try not to, please PM if I offend and I will delete my post.

                      Debates like this are absolutely silly. I got about 45 minutes in before I had to shut it off and say to myself "that was really, really stupid". You are pitting two kinds of people against each other. Type A has their opinions backed in spirituality and will not ever change it. Type B has their opinion rooted by what they deem indisputable evidence, and will not change their minds for similar reasons. It is like two immovable objects seeing who can push the other further.

                      As for the result, participants in internet polls tend to be people of my generation, who also tend to be more idealistic and more pessimistic of more conservative (not-political) and religious opinions. I personally found Bill Nye to be the more competent debater, albeit he seemed very antagonistic and condescending at times.


                      Carmel HS Class of 2011

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                      • #41
                        Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                        Originally posted by Slick Pinkham View Post
                        (responding to Hicks)

                        on the last point, no.

                        I think we only differ in that yes, the changes might help you cut it better in your environment, but the changes might also help you prosper in an entirely new, yet nearby, niche. A place where your predecessors couldn't have coped at all, if you go back far enough (and this is gradual).

                        Like land mammals finding themselves in a semiaquatic environment and (over eons) evolving into the whales of today. Whales are not better adapted to live on land than their (probably) feral pig-like terrestrial ancestor (maybe Andrewsarchus mongoliensis?), so they in no way became more fit for (at least what was once) the niche that their ancestors found themselves in. They ARE instead adapted to live in an entirely different niche altogether. So one species evolved in different directions for different purposes to thrive in different nearby niches. Seems like a blend of both "this helps me to not go extinct here" and "this helps me get over there and do something TOTALLY different"
                        But is it truly adaptation, or just being luckier with regards to your genetics than your cousins are? To me, adaptation is about reading and reacting to a situation, whereas it sounds like natural selection is just about being born with the right configuration that allows you to live and/or prosper in ways your cousins can't do because they 'lost' the 'genetic lottery'. To me, that doesn't sound like adaptation. I don't think these animals are becoming more fit for anything besides the fact that they were luckily born that way (or their ancestors were) by chance. I'm just not seeing the adaptation here; I'm seeing luck while your fellow animals die because they weren't so lucky. Thus, I don't really see that as an evolution, not in the sense of what I thought that word was supposed to mean, anyway.

                        To me, as I thought I understood it, the concepts of adaptation and evolution were about changing to fit your circumstances, but natural selection does not appear to be that to me, for reasons already stated.

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                          Originally posted by GrangeRusHibbert View Post
                          Whether or not an I.D. believer is religious or not is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether or not their claims are religious in nature. For I.D., the answer is clearly no.
                          In terms of its truth or falsehood, I agree it's irrelevant as to whether it's religious or not. My point was that it's something a non-religious person could consider to be a truly possible explanation (such as myself), not something where you are required to be a Bible believer or whatnot (which I am not). That's all I meant.

                          Premise I: The foundation for life is the genetic code, which acts as a programming language for life.
                          Premise II: Every known code originates via intelligence.
                          Premise III: Nature has never shown anywhere near the capability of creating such a thing.
                          Conclusion: An intelligence is the best explanation for life.
                          Truly, I buy into this reasoning. I do. I have a feeling there's more to it I don't know yet, but on the surface, I'm with this kind of reasoning. The idea of genetic coding emerging from pure chaos sounds absurd to me, honestly, which is one of the reasons I'm open to the idea that there may, in fact, be some sort of intelligence behind it, because the idea that an intelligence is behind the formation of DNA makes sense to me from this point of view. Doesn't mean an existence of God (or how that would happen) makes sense, but nonetheless.

                          There are zero religious or faith-based claims in the above argument; it's entirely secular and logical. Trying to refute it by attacking the claimants religion commits roughly half-a-dozen logical fallacies.
                          Again, I'm with you on it not mattering if it's religious or not; my point was just that one can entertain I.D. while not being religious, and I think we agree about that.

                          There's room for all but the absolute most defective of organisms to survive and reproduce.

                          Think about people you know. Even those people who are less than attractive, physically or otherwise, tend to reproduce, oftentimes more than attractive people.
                          Sure, they do in our societies. But if pickings were slimmer, I bet they'd make a lot less babies if the few woman around had more appealing men to choose from than the 'rougher' (so to speak) men they might select as a mate. The more appealing men would make babies, the less appealing ones would not. Or if we lived in a far less organized society, every man for himself type stuff, many men who exist today would be far more likely to die childless than happens in modern society due to its structure and comforts.

                          Now, think about anyone you know who has a severe (for lack of a better term) defect, whether it be physical or intellectual. Chances are, that person's survival was far lesser than the average person's, and chances are that person will never reproduce. His defective genes will be wiped from the gene pool.
                          Right.

                          The same logic applies over the entire biological world. Everyone has ample opportunity to survive and reproduce bar the absolute weakest members of a population.
                          Makes sense to me.

                          Natural selection acts on entire organisms, not individual traits.

                          For example, if organism A has a single beneficial trait, and multiple harmful traits, then in order to select the beneficial trait natural selection must also select the multiple harmful traits. It's all or nothing.

                          What this takes us to is something that makes Darwinists red in the face: Genetic entropy.

                          The cold, hard truth is, harmful traits OVERWHELMINGLY outnumber beneficial traits, which means that over time, genomes will deteriorate to the point of extinction.

                          Darwinism's proposed mechanisms do exactly the opposite of what its proponents claim they do.
                          I thought most of our genetic code doesn't actually manifest itself, though? Like we carry a ton of things with our code that don't necessarily ever reveal themselves by means of our physical or mental makeup?

                          Comment


                          • #43
                            Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                            Originally posted by immortality View Post
                            But you cannot perform an experiment based on those premises. That is the whole point of science, you create a claim and try to prove it with experiments.

                            How can you say nature is not creative, there are some bacteria that evolve in the span of six months to adapt to their environment. Viruses and diseases evolve and we have to find new medicines as the old ones are not effective.
                            So are you saying there are no experiments to test whether nature itself can produce a genetic code? If not, then why would scientists act like that must be the case? Isn't that assumption unscientific? Or are there tests after all?

                            Can you elaborate on the changes of bacteria, viruses, and diseases? It's been a while, but I've heard about that kind of thing before because they have such short lifespans and in turn we can observe generational changes at a much more rapid pace than with, for example, a human being. I think fruit flies are often studied because of their short lives, too? What is actually happening? Would I be guessing correctly that some of the bacteria, viruses, and/or diseases die out while others live, and in turn the longer (over generations) they are kept in the same environment, the more 'bad genes' get weeded out while the lucky ones keep reproducing?

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                            • #44
                              Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                              Originally posted by neosmndrew View Post
                              I'm hesitant to post in a thread like this for fear that I might offend someone. While I will try not to, please PM if I offend and I will delete my post.

                              Debates like this are absolutely silly. I got about 45 minutes in before I had to shut it off and say to myself "that was really, really stupid". You are pitting two kinds of people against each other. Type A has their opinions backed in spirituality and will not ever change it. Type B has their opinion rooted by what they deem indisputable evidence, and will not change their minds for similar reasons. It is like two immovable objects seeing who can push the other further.

                              As for the result, participants in internet polls tend to be people of my generation, who also tend to be more idealistic and more pessimistic of more conservative (not-political) and religious opinions. I personally found Bill Nye to be the more competent debater, albeit he seemed very antagonistic and condescending at times.
                              I didn't watch the debate, but I've listened to various scientists/believers debate on various topics before, and I know what you mean when it comes to how it's not just those with religion who will stick to their guns and refuse to budge on certain beliefs. They just hold on for different reasons, but both boil down to stubbornness at some point and the mindset of, 'this cannot be, therefore I reject it' no matter what is used to try to persuade them otherwise.

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                              • #45
                                Re: Bill Nye totally crushes Phil Ham in creationism debate

                                Originally posted by Hicks View Post
                                So are you saying there are no experiments to test whether nature itself can produce a genetic code? If not, then why would scientists act like that must be the case? Isn't that assumption unscientific? Or are there tests after all?

                                Can you elaborate on the changes of bacteria, viruses, and diseases? It's been a while, but I've heard about that kind of thing before because they have such short lifespans and in turn we can observe generational changes at a much more rapid pace than with, for example, a human being. I think fruit flies are often studied because of their short lives, too? What is actually happening? Would I be guessing correctly that some of the bacteria, viruses, and/or diseases die out while others live, and in turn the longer (over generations) they are kept in the same environment, the more 'bad genes' get weeded out while the lucky ones keep reproducing?
                                I'm arguing his 2nd, how do you create an experiment that the genetic code is created by something intelligent. As for the 3rd premise you can also argue nature created genetic code for various diseases, viruses aren't complex but they effect so much of a persons body it becomes difficult to cure, our body is not perfect, it is very fragile if you look at the various diseases and what they can do.

                                As for evolving bacteria, here is a cool NPR report http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013...on-never-stops .

                                Another example is when you try to study cells, they are stained to a particular color, called gram-staining. Some cells evolve to protect themselves against the stains, but then lose their ability to communicate. Evolution in smaller organisms is much easier to see because of their small genome, but if you see that it took 25 years for just some bacteria evolve whose genome is much smaller than ours then you can imagine how long it will take evolution to take place in animals.

                                I just wanted to say that, you can believe whatever you want religious or not, but concepts based on religions do not belong in a science class, it's why I am disappointed in when some states are requiring to teach creationism in a science class, as it does follow the basic concepts of science.

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