You're an idiot. No offence, but you are an 'idiop', maybe would be a better title. "Read Genesis"? "Read Paul"? I just told you how you are making excuses for the world "where evil abounds" because everything for you ends up in the negation into the earth itself. All relies on God, this is true...but you are being far too literal. Any actual [loving] priest would surely be warranted to kiss your forehead and be as far away from you as possible, for fear they might poison your mind more; cause you can't be serious, and you can't really handle reality. You need the fairy tale version of belief, and need your faith to be not tested by merely mollycoddled, and you don't really get that in this world: whence, theology, and then theodicy...people always need reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "reason" they want i[s] the "reason" they get...then again, I suppose I don't need to keep wasting my time discussing this with you, because you are not really hearing me. I hope you at least do some studying of meditation or something...phew...study hesychasm, or something, I dunno....Jesus and the gospel-writers, they really did [as it pertains to the Word] have a way with words, but they aren't as exegetical as you think: morals is one thing, actually comprehension is another. Faith is one thing, belief-affirming revelation is another. You can have your faith, I don't really wish to contend with that: but your mind, it's just...in another world. Unless you can tell me something that is actually poignant about spirituality in your own words, I don't think I have much more time for this discussion. You've got me all wrong, and I think I got you all wrong, too.

@CynicalBroadcast

I admit, Genesis is actual history to me, as it commonly was before the likes of Charles Lyell, Lamarck, and worst of all, Darwin who made the theory of evolution as we know it today mainstream.

And we have been brainwashed into thinking that evolution is science rather than a philosophy pertaining to the origins of the universe and life on earth and the voices of those who dissent from this theory are heavily suppressed by academia and the media, regardless of how compelling of a case adherents of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) may have for regarding Genesis as actual history.

How we view the first book of the Bible affects how we view the rest of it. For those who trust that the Genesis account of creation is actual history, they should have no problem trusting the rest of the Bible.

I am being no more literal than how the written text presents itself and my faith gets tested in more ways than you know. The tests come whether we want them to or not. It is just a matter of whether or not we are willing to meet chose challenges. Some face those challenges head on and others would rather flee from the challenges and unfortunately, those who would rather flee are too many.

And if you feel like you are not being heard, it is because it is really hard to hear anyone who speaks in riddles and in terminologies that most people have never heard of or know the meaning of and as far as my mind goes, it is in the same world as my faith which speaks more plainly and in a way that people can actually understand.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast

And we have been brainwashed into thinking that evolution is science rather than a philosophy pertaining to the origins of the universe and life on earth and the voices of those who dissent from this theory are heavily suppressed by academia and the media

Evolutionary science is a thing. One difficulty I believe people have is that it does not contain a definitive explanation for the origin of life on Earth. I would assume you would acknowledge evolutionary forces on a small scale. I can provide a few examples. One is from Charles Darwin himself. On his tours of the Galapagos, he observed several species of finches with variations in their beak.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/07/how-darwins-finches-got-their-beaks/

Eventually, the immigrants evolved into 14 separate species, each with its own song, food preferences, and beak shapes. Warbler finches, for example, catch insects in beaks that are sharper and more slender than those of cactus eaters.

This is a prime example for evolutionary forces at work. If you object to this one, I shall supply another. In pre-Industrial England, light moths were the most common until large amounts of soot started covering trees. This led dark colored moths best able to survive, until pollution abated and the light moths took over again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

We can reasonably extrapolate that all of life follows this evolutionary trend at a macro scale. However, this theory doesn’t say anything about how the first life came to be. It lets us walk backwards to a time and then there is an informational barrier that evolution stops at.

the voices of those who dissent from this theory are heavily suppressed by academia and the media, regardless of how compelling of a case adherents of Young Earth Creationism (YEC) may have for regarding Genesis as actual history.

Don’t mistake lack of acceptance for suppression. If I have a theory with no supporting evidence that the center of the sun is a creamy nougat, I won’t have much acceptance in academic circles either. If you can use scientific principles to prove young earth and/or creationism you will get a Nobel prize. If you cannot apply scientific principles to the same, you will be irrelevant to the scientific community.

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

Young Earth Creationists do not deny that there are variations within each kind (i.e. long haired dogs, short haired dogs, and dogs in a variety of sizes and colors) but what we do deny is the amoeba to man philosophy. And we understand that this also applies to moths as well, but we also know that the ability to produce variations within each kind of living thing is also dependent on how variety is allowed by the genetic blue print of each species. It is a biological impossibility to produce that which a genetic blue print does not allow for.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast

> It is a biological impossibility to produce that which a genetic blue print does not allow for.

Regarding the finches, it is important to note they had a common ancestor that was identified in the fossil records. All forms of this animal did not appear at the same time.

DNA is not a fixed blueprint. Even within a single organism, replication is not perfect. Errors during cell replication occasionally create a beneficial mutation, which leads to success of that organism and this mutation becomes the more prevalent form of life. It is this force played out over and over over billions of years that accounts for the mind-bogging amount of speciation all over the planet.

As another point of discussion, primitive primates at varying levels of development have been dug up all over the world for hundreds of years. This lets us walk back homo sapiens to homo erectus and so forth. Do you agree that homo erectus is our ancestor?

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

DNA is not fixed in the sense that information can be lost, but information that was never in that blue print before cannot arise and despite the insistence by evolutionists that it can, they have failed to demonstrate how it can.

And what mutations may be beneficial in one environmental setting may not necessarily be beneficial in another. It also needs to be noted that Homo erectus is no longer considered a human ancestor but lived at the same time as modern man and upon further study, was considered to be every bit as human as the rest of us. Don't fall for the artist impressions.

Every so-called human ancestor claim so far has either turned out to be fraudulent, based upon fossil fragments that could belong to anything, found at different depths of the ground, and miles apart from one another, an extinct primate, or a lineage of people.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast @nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

> DNA is not fixed in the sense that information can be lost, but information that was never in that blue print before cannot arise and despite the insistence by evolutionists that it can, they have failed to demonstrate how it can.

This is flat-out wrong. One of the types of mutations that can occur during cell replication is an insertion mutation. This puts new base pairs at the insertion site. This directly conflicts with your claim that new information cannot appear in DNA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insertion_(genetics)

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

I'll admit that I have never heard of an insertion mutation, but this sounds like the act of a foreign agent and not necessarily the natural workings of the DNA itself.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast This is a defect during the replication of DNA. You can confirm this through a number of sources. If mutations did not occur, diseases such as cancer would not exist. I am not sure what kind of foreign agent you are proposing, but if you study cellular replication it should take the mystery out of this process. I would assume you are now dropping the claim that new information cannot be introduced to DNA? Your new claim appears to be that new information can be introduced but it is caused by some external agent. Let me know if I am properly stating your position.

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

Let us think about what the term "insertion" implies. It always applies an external act does it not? That is why, based upon what the term "insertion mutation" sounds like, in order for that to be possible, an external force would have to be responsible.

But if an insertion mutation is merely, as you say, a defect, than no new information is really being introduced but what is happening is that an error or corruption of present information within the genetic blue print is taking place, and external forces can have a part in that (i.e. babies have been known to suffer deformities due to narcotics or alcohol being introduced into the mother's system; external forces that can cause errors and corruption within the genetic blue print of the baby which then can lead to deformities and other health-related issues.)

But we will never witness anything like a dog giving birth to a horse or a sheep and vice versa except by an act of arcane science because the genetic information that would be needed for something like that to happen just is not there. That is why dogs will always produce dogs and horses will always produce horses. We will never witness anything in between being produced by either one.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast

Hold up.

Let us think about what the term “insertion” implies. It always applies an external act does it not? That is why, based upon what the term “insertion mutation” sounds like, in order for that to be possible, an external force would have to be responsible.

DNA is a “self-replicating” molecule responsible for all the life on this planet. You’ll note the keyword “self”, meaning DNA in isolation can replicate. You didn’t clarify your stance directly, but now you seem to believe that insertion IS possible but are attributing it to an external force.

But if an insertion mutation is merely, as you say, a defect, than no new information is really being introduced but what is happening is that an error or corruption of present information within the genetic blue print is taking place

Wrong. DNA is composed of four nucleotide bases. We notate them in a sequence like this: AATCCGCTAG. If an insertion mutation occurs, we could have a potential sequence like this: AATCCGCTATG. In the revised sequence, we have inserted thymine before the last character, adding information to the sequence.

Secondly, this is a defect in cell replication but may actually result in a benefit to the organism, as not all mutations have negative net effects to the organism.

I would say uncharacteristically that any sort of insertion, DNA or not, involves inserting new information. Can you insert something into a drawer while leaving its contents the same?

But we will never witness anything like a dog giving birth to a horse or a sheep and vice versa

You are quite correct. In nature, this is impossible.

That is why dogs will always produce dogs and horses will always produce horses. We will never witness anything in between being produced by either one.

To be more accurate, dogs reproducing will always yield a dog that is 99.999…% similar to the parents. However, this 0.0001% over billions and billions of years can lead to significant divergence from a distant ancestor.

I would still like a direct answer to my question. You mentioned earlier that the blueprints of DNA are fixed, but you haven’t denied the existence of insertion mutations. Can you acknowledge that information can be introduced to DNA sequences by mutations?

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

I am simply examining the term "insertion mutation" from a standpoint of reason and whether or not DNA is self-replicating is not the issue of debate, but whether or not new information that was not previously present within the genetic blue print can arise and how that would even be possible.

And the hypothetical DNA sequence you mentioned in the event of an insertion mutation does not really demonstrate additional information but rather the duplication of information already present. If what you are describing as insertion mutations were really adding new information to the sequence AATCCGCTAG, instead of the resulting sequence being AATCCGCTATG, we should see something like AATCCGCTATFBDG.

We should be able to see information arising within the genetic blue print enabling a hand or a fore-foot to turn into a wing or a flipper to become a foot or a hand, but we do not really see anything like that; certainly not in nature.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast DNA consists of only 4 nucleotides. They are represented by the letters A, C, T and G. DNA is a sequence of millions and millions of these letters representing the nucleotides. These nucleotides are instructions that are used by the DNA to replicate itself.

Following your logic, if your bank account contains $1,000 and I add a zero to the number to make $10,000, your bank account’s value is the same, because the zero is “already present” in your balance.

As a further example, consider if I give you directions to the bank. If I say, “leave your house, turn right, turn left, turn right”, this is quite different than if I say “leave your house, turn right, turn left, turn right and turn left”. Even though “turn left” was already in the list of instructions, we have still introduced further information to the instructions and this would have a different end result, in the same way introducing a nucleotide to a DNA sequence has a different end result.

We should be able to see information arising within the genetic blue print enabling a hand or a fore-foot to turn into a wing or a flipper to become a foot or a hand, but we do not really see anything like that; certainly not in nature.

I would agree. We do not observe this in nature. Instead we observe very gradual changes over millions and billions of years that eventually lead a hand to turn into a foot. As an example of this, whales possess vestigial hind limbs. Land creatures did not suddenly grow fins. Instead we had intermediate forms like seals.

You seem very “locked into” the fact that evolution happens instantaneously and a dog can give birth to a cat. No serious biologists make this claim. The claim is that minuscule changes over millions and millions of years result in large changes.

You don’t have to take any of what I am saying at face value — go to a local college and speak to a biologist. They will be glad to explain the mechanisms of DNA replication to you, especially if it leads to a greater understanding on your part.

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

Even if zeroes are added to my bank account (which would be nice), the zeroes are still going to be dollars. They are not going to be Yen, Euros, Pesos, Marks, or any other currency except U.S. dollars unless the dollar loses its value and we have to switch to a currency with a much higher and more stable value.

And in order to get to the bank from my house, there is a specific set of direction and a route that I must follow, but change the directions in any way, shape, or fashion, and I might end up at any other place but the bank.

In the same sense, if a genetic blue print only allows for horses to reproduce horses or people to reproduce people, that is all you are going to get. Any attempt to change that information to go any direction other than what it was specifically instructed to carry out may only result in the extinction of the species instead of producing new ones.

As for the so called vestigial hind limbs in whales, it is now believed that they do serve a purpose and seem to be more associated with one gender than another, but I am not sure which; if I remember correctly, the so called vestigial hind limbs have been found in males rather than females.

As for seals, they are not scientifically considered to be a transitional life-form, even by evolutionary standards. And it is not that I am locked into evolution happening instantaneously. It is that there would have to be undeniable proof of the amoeba to man theory, but such evidence does not exist nor can it be demonstrated as being fact.

There is, however, a school of evolutionary thought that does adhere to the philosophy that evolution can happen quite rapidly, even instantaneously in some cases and it is called "Punctuated-Equilibrium" of which the late Stephen Jay Gould was a major proponent. It was proposed to describe the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record.

The gradualist camp would claim that such phenomena is biologically impossible while the punctual equilibrium camp would say that there is no paleontological evidence for slow gradual biological processes.

The Young Earth Creationist would say that they are both right: There is no fossil evidence for slow gradual processes, (the many that have been proposed have either been hoaxes, based on scant fragments, or not really transitional at all) nor is it biologically possible for a cat to give birth to a dog or a dog to give birth to a horse.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast

nor is it biologically possible for a cat to give birth to a dog or a dog to give birth to a horse.

I don’t know why you keep mentioning this because I do not make this claim, nor do any serious biologists.

And in order to get to the bank from my house, there is a specific set of direction and a route that I must follow, but change the directions in any way, shape, or fashion, and I might end up at any other place but the bank.

You have inadvertently proved my point. If we change the directions in DNA in any way, shape or form, you will end up with a different creature than what you started with, but typically in a very minuscule way and not always a beneficial one.

By the way, thanks for mentioning Gould. Here is a quote from him:

Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. PE is founded on the positive evidence of paleontological studies that show periods of stasis and rapid evolution of evolutionary lines.

So, Gould himself acknowledges that we can observe evolution between larger groups, like the finch example I mentioned earlier. Gould himself admits there is ample proof provided by palaeontological evidence to support life changing form over time, just not at the species level. This statement is also compatible with “a dog not giving birth to a cat”. This further lends credence to the theory that we witness many small changes to creatures over millions of years.

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

My whole point is that there are limitations to which any genetic blue print will produce. It can only produce what it was designed to produce. Nothing more, nothing less. And even though you yourself may not believe that a cat can give birth to anything but a cat, unfortunately, there are many biologists who do believe in something like that in one way or another because they believe that all life evolved from cells or millions of years. So in essence, they do believe in a "cat to dog" scenario but without comprehension because they have not taken some time to think about what the theory of evolution is teaching them about the origins of life.

They may not believe in the instantaneous transformation of "cat to dog" but they believe in it nonetheless, and while DNA may allow for minor changes, it does not allow for the major changes proposed by evolutionary theory. This is rather an assumption based upon the small variational changes we may witness, but not one that has ever been observed, repeated, or tested, but hereditary traits were already well known in the scientific community in the generations preceding Darwin and even experimented with to determine the extent of what traits could be passed down from parent to offspring.

Now what examples of transitional forms does Gould point to between the larger groups? If he really believed that, then he was violating the very PE doctrine that he had championed because PE was proposed to explain the lack of transitional forms by proposing the stasis period/rapid evolution theory.

@ContendersEdge @CynicalBroadcast

My whole point is that there are limitations to which any genetic blue print will produce. It can only produce what it was designed to produce. Nothing more, nothing less.

If this reasoning was correct, children would be the same as their parents. How else would you explain a child born with a genetic disorder such as Down Syndrome when the parents do not have this syndrome. Was the parent’s DNA designed to have Down Syndrome? Even your previously quoted Gould acknowledges that DNA is heritable between groups of individuals and backs it up with paleontological evidence.

And even though you yourself may not believe that a cat can give birth to anything but a cat, unfortunately, there are many biologists who do believe in something like that in one way or another because they believe that all life evolved from cells or millions of years.

A dog giving birth to a cat and changes over millions of years are quite dissimilar. There would be a spectrum of changes over this time, perhaps not linear as Gould indicates. Two examples of relatively stable organisms are the shark and the crocodile. They have been largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. If you believe that biologists believing that life evolved from cells and a dog giving birth to a cat are equivalent, we are at an impasse because they are not the same. I don’t have another way to say it.

Regarding Gould:

[T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common — and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples: therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.] — Gould, from “Evolution as Fact and Theory”, originally published in 1981

Regarding the origins of life:

theory of evolution is teaching them about the origins of life

Evolution says nothing about the origins of life. Evolution is an observation about pre-existing organisms and how they come to adapt to their local conditions. Your particular world view seems to have some strong answers for the origins of life but evolution is silent on the matter. Given a single celled organism, (or even some strands of RNA) we can extrapolate the rest of the history of life. However, prior to this organism, we can make no judgement. Ironically, evolution is actually compatible with the idea of God as creator, as I can’t see why He couldn’t have touched the primitive Earth with his hand and created the first bit of life which then underwent the evolutionary process as modern science has come to understand it.

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around you simultaneously acknowledging that DNA can change over time, your quoted expert Gould also agreeing with this but you denying that over millions of years these changes can accrue to quite large changes from millions of years past. Do you believe DNA would “hit a wall” after a given amount of change? If so, what would cause this?

Finally, I’m not sure I got a clear answer regarding DNA and insertion mutations. Can we finally agree that new information can be added to DNA which will have consequences for the resultant organism? I have addressed this point several times and I am not sure you have acknowledged it fully.

@nothingplanet @CynicalBroadcast

I am afraid you have misunderstood my reasoning. I did say that there are limitations to any genetic blue print, but I never said that there could not be errors or corruption within the replicating process. It is those errors and corruptions that cause things like Down Syndrome and cancer but errors and corruptions do not constitute as being added information; just a corruption of what is already there and when errors and corruptions occur during the replicating process, then that means the replicating process is not operating in the way it was originally designed.

How Stephen J. Gould is able to demonstrate DNA heritability with paleontological evidence is beyond me. DNA is largely absent from the fossil record and while there have been many cases of soft tissues being discovered within fossils, even the amount of soft tissues from the record are not necessarily enough to demonstrate DNA heritability. This can only be best done by way of genetic and breeding experiments involving living creatures.

A dog to cat scenario and changes over millions of years may seem dissimilar but if you think about it, the only difference is that instead of the scenario happening in one generation, it can still happen gradually over a long period of time through small changes that grow ever larger according to evolutionary theory.

The therapsids, being a greater mystery than even the dinosaurs may have been touted in the past to be intermediaries, but presently no longer. According to evolutionary theory, they never even made the leap from reptile to mammal, but became extinct before then. As to what there was about the therapsids that would lead anyone to think that they were an intermediary of anything, I do not know. We do not know if they were warm or cold-blooded or if they gave birth or laid eggs.

As for the half-dozen human species, as I have mentioned before, they do not qualify as being intermediates due to several factors involving each.

If evolution says nothing about the origin of life, then it cannot tell us anything about how any life form originated.

I've not enough space to address everything in this entire reply, but once again to clarify my position on DNA and insertion mutations, no new information can be added to DNA. DNA can lose information and errors and corruptions can take place, but new information cannot simply just appear. There has to be a biological mechanism for that and the solution will not be found in the insertion mutation proposal since according to how even you described it, such a tendency is an internal occurrence; an error or corruption in the replicating process.

And besides, it does not even make sense to call that which is an internal act an insertion of anything since insertion always involves an external act.