Quote from zed

99:99 - This is a random sentance to see if anyone has paid attention this far in. If you have, quote it and gain my eternal respect

Quote from OGrilla

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0696457CAFD6D7C9

Quote from zed

99:99 - This is a random sentance to see if anyone has paid attention this far in. If you have, quote it and gain my eternal respect.


If you read all the way through that, get a life.

Quote from Steyene

Yes I know that is what DNA is, I know that there is information on there, but to paraphrase the video "Embedded intelligence indicates intelligence".

What I am asking is, that the actual information encoded into the DNA molecule. That information can't arise randomly, as then you would lose the information for the formation of the proteins required for the cell to function.

Quote from Zed

In answer to the first point; if the cell can't read the DNA it dies. Most cells can. They survive. Natural selection in action.

The second bit; it isn't that DNA evolved first and then differant bits evolved to use it. The cell and it's DNA will have evolved together, or the two will have had seperate functions before coming together, ie. starting off as something like a virus which had the capacity to read DNA and make proteins but never came across it untill one day some DNA molecules were passing through and the virus produced the proteins by mistake.

There are huge gaping holes in that example, don't point them out. The main point of it was that you're getting close to the flagellum examples of irreducible complexity when you talk about this. DNA didn't always have to be the molecule which is used to create proteins - it may have gotten here by accident and turned out to be really efficient leading to its survival. My knowledge of molecular bio-chemistry is not complete enough to give a conclusive answer and I suspect it's another of those things that science doesn't know yet. The point of science is that we don't know everything; it's what differentiates it from religion which will claim that anything not immediately explainable was the work of God.

Quote from Zed

Here it is. I hope to never have to do anything similar again. If you go to the film to refer to the times look a few seconds before the stated time because I paused the film after I saw a mistake and just put down the time there.

1:26 - Just a minor point, hardly relvant, but he should have sought psychiactric help at this stage.

1:40 - No, journalists are looking for a good story that they can get paid for.

2:40 - There's the problem right there. When you have someone who wants absolute truth and thinks he can find it there is no hope for him.

5:30 - This is ignorance and imbecility in its purest form. He tried to be an atheist who kept a completely closed mind about the possibility of the Bible being metaphorical and that in itself takes a degree of faith. He started off too close to Christianity. The slightest evidence can tip these people and then they become one of the most damaging people from our point of view because religious people can point to them as "scientific types" who realised that religion had got it right.

6:45 to about 7:00 - Two possibilities; 1) He's mixed up cause and effect. She started trying to become a better person and as a result decided that it was best to choose a religion, 2) She decided that since she was now a Christian she had better try and get into heaven, thus good things were necessary of her. Also, if God was making her do good things then this compromises the notion of free will (not that it exists to begin with but run with it) which destroys any theistic deffence against the problem of evil, thus his argument actually goes against God's existence.

11:39 - Ash covered this well, although I also want to point out that actually, if you wait long enough that all possible combinations of arangements of atoms within that test tube have been tried (the atoms are constantly moving around remember) you could, in fact, put humpty dumpty back together again. It would take a while but it's possible, and that gives it a damn sight more liklihood than intelligent design. It probably isn't how it happened but that guy's wrong anyway.

12:20 - I stand by the law of large numbers and elementary probability theory. It does the job, although I won't claim it's scientific because I can't propose an experiment to disprove it.

13:11 - Bullshit. DNA in all living organisms alone provides evidence supporting the hypothesis.

14:07 - Anyone with an even rudimentary grasp of basic archaeology and paeleontology should know that only an miniscule proportion of animals fossilise; the conditions need to be perfect.

15:55 - He said it himself. Before the cambrian explosion there was nothing, ie. no competition and no predators. More or less anything that happened to evolve could carve out a niche somewhere. Generally putting a bullet through the machine at random is unlikely to improve performance, but if no one is testing the machines and asking them to produce anything that mistake will go unnoticed. Therefore, with no competition you can evolve anything you like. There was probably also some shift in the local geology that meant things fossilised better so we have a better record of this time.

16:58 - No shit Sherlock. Completely differant species don't suddenly start breeding with each other? And I was looking forward to creating a species where I mixed a turtle and zebra. Anyway, there is no logical contradiction in saying that life turned up in more than one place at once.

18:22 - That would be more convincing if we had seen any evidence whatsoever. I also note that a large proportion of those scientists he mentioned were American. If you look at the nationalities of others as well you see a strong correlation between fundamentalist Christianity and the number of people who refuse to accept Darwinism. Make of this what you will.

18:30 - This should be good.

24:30 - Not necessarily. Firstly the non material thing would have to act in conjunction with the physical thing which goes against everything that exists having a cause and defeats your basic principle. Secondly; string theory.

25:02 - No it isn't. There is nothing in the world more complex than God and the attempts at proving his existence. No argument involving God can be simple. Besides, Occham's Razor would say that when you have two equally plausible alternatives the simplest one is correct. No matter how you cut it, God is not as plausible as string theory.

25:28 - I contest your job title being "cosmologist". There is such a thing as the trade descriptions act.

25:38 - Even if you could say that it was necessary for it to be God; you havn't proved the God of classical theism. All you have done is said that there is a start point and given it the name "God". You might just as well have had a dyslexic type the hypothesis up and call it "dog".

28:30 - Another individual who really should take his degree course again. If you havn't heard of string theory get the **** out of a debate on the begginings of the universe.

29:19 - So a bioctillion then? What's with all the billions?

29:40 - Big deal. I could do that. (Given infinite attempts like string theory has, it wasn't just satirical boasting)

29:55 - again with the multiple trillions...

30:18 - what is it with these people?

31:15 - Ah, here we go

31:57 - Oh. My. God. I cannot believe my stupidity in thinking for a second that they might have had someone who knew what they were talking about. You know, I genuinely wrote the 31:15 bit before watching on.

32:13 - Their inadequecy with large numbers is really starting to get on my nerves.

32:40 - As opposed to God who of course could fill a crime museum with the evidence for His existence.

32:47 - As opposed to God who of course is fully capable of opening a crate with the crowbar that's inside it.

33:05 - Why didn't I think of that? "This whole string theory thing is far too complicated for me so we'll claim it happened by magic."

33:21 - Debatable but I'll let this one slide because I've spent an hour and a half on this already and I'm just half way through.

34:55 - No. I'm sure many alien species would dread this horrible, toxic and over-reactive oxygen that we breathe. We have just evolved to use what we had. I'm sure he's about to bring in a load of similar examples but I won't comment on them all.

35:29 - I was right.

36:15 - 1) did they take into account time scales? I doubt it because they don't know how far to extend in the future direction. 2) The above mentioned factors (that not all life requires what we require) mean that theirs is a significant under-estimate 3) String theory still applies.

37:25 - Wrong. Survival of the fitest is a gross over-simplification anyway, but an inquiring mind is very much beneficial to a species that is reliant on its inventions and discoveries.

37:56 - I bring you back to the clock you mentioned earlier. If God wanted to get to us, why did he not bother evolving complex life for the first eighteen hours? (this argument is flawed on many levels but to reach those flaws you must reject their arguments anyway)

38:13 - Not really. Ask any real scientist and he'll tell you how difficult it is to observe things when you're studying quantum physics. The very act of doing so distorts your results.

38:41 - I present you the polar bear. an animal which has evolved in very differant temperatures to the camel. Animals adapt to their climate; not the other way around.

39:20 - I think you're a moron. At least I have undistorted evidence.

39:26 - "Left Behind" Did you hear that? Did you? Our "Christian" friend here just denied the existence of a theistic God! Maybe it was a Freudian slip of the tongue but I'm latching on to this one. "The Lord has delivered him into my hands."

39:40 - No. We push him into a smaller and smaller realm, progressing him towards nothingness. It's a good thing too, but that's a debate for another time.

99:99 - This is a random sentance to see if anyone has paid attention this far in. If you have, quote it and gain my eternal respect.

39:51 - Finally

40:08 - I doubt that severely.

40:37 - He actually brought in Behe. I'm gonna enjoy this. I predict irreducible complexity.

43:04 - I knew it. I can't believe he's actually going to try and use the phlagellum example. This one was scientifically discredited within fifteen minutes of publication. Still, let's see what he has to say...

45:06 - And they succeeded too you imbecile.

45:57 - Told you so

47:49 - Evolution does not only work upwards. You can also build a scaffolding and work back down. An example is best here. Lets say that you need A, B and C to function, and without any of these, nothing happens. It is possible to arrive there, adding one thing at a time, each one beneficiary, as follows: D; D,E; D,E,F; C,D,E,F; B,C,D,E,F; A,B,C,D,E,F; A,B,C,D,E; A,B,C,D; A,B,C. et voila. In fact the phlagellum example was even easier to destroy because it is so close to a mechanism that some types of bacteria use to attack other types of bacteria. The phlagellum was not always a method of propulsion, it just started being used as one when it was discovered to be efficient.

48:19 - Luckily it doesn't.

48:40 - FAIL You utter, utter troglodyte. You claim to be a scientist. A true scientist tries to falsify his own theory (like Darwin did) because this failure to falsify is the only way that it can become a scientific theory. You, however, are refusing to accept all the evidence to the contrary, not even by explaining it away, but by ignoring it. You are not worthy of the title homo sapien.

49:50 - You sound rather American don't you? I'm a little suspicious here but let us press on.

51:06 - By people who didn't understand what they were talking about.

52:24 - Wrong; see topic: physicalism by me.

53:20 - Those are chimpanzees actually. I'm surprised you didn't notice, you are more closely related to them then you are to me.

53:33 - You assume total blind chance. You cannot simply ignore natural selection when it doesn't fit your equations.

53:50 - I knew it; a yank masquerading as someone of intelligence, simply because he broke into Cambridge and stole a piece of paper when no one was looking.

54:15 - I reckon I could form a convincing argument against the existence of intelligence in the first place. You will form my primary example.

54:33 - Um...no. Not really.

55:00 - I'm interested into how and where this shepherd learned to write. It seems a little iffy to me.

55:30 - Why not a huge carving down the side of the Grand Canyon saying "God woz 'ere" instead of the stuff which seems to indicate his non-existence?

55:36 - Definition of hypocritical I believe.

56:19 - Yes it is! You wouldn't have even considered intelligent design unless you were starting from that point and then clutching at straws to "prove" it.

57:16 - That's just plain wrong.


If you read all the way through that, get a life.

Quote from pandemedic

oh, it sounded like dragon.

Quote from pandemedic

oh, it sounded like dragon.