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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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You do realize that macroevolution does not depend on the development of new structures, right?

Furthermore, new information has been demonstrated, as demonstrated by the numerous examples I've already given you.


Dante

Are you suggesting that evolution from a bacterium to a human being doesn't require the development of new structures?

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And yet THAT is exactly what evolution postulates - adaptations to the environment.

I am unaware of any evolutionary tenet that dictates that evolution will produce universal adaptation.

Are you?

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I thought "survival of the fittest" was tantamount to universal adaptation. How do the fit survive if there's no adaptation to their environment?

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ORIGINAL: drmark

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And yet THAT is exactly what evolution postulates - adaptations to the environment.

I am unaware of any evolutionary tenet that dictates that evolution will produce universal adaptation.

Are you?

Evolution can be used to postulate everything and anything. It has zero predictive power!

I thought "survival of the fittest" was tantamount to universal adaptation. How do the fit survive if there's no adaptation to their environment?

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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ORIGINAL: Dante_Alighieri

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So sentence 2 claims there is no peer-reviewed research, yet reference [22] links to a peer-reviewed creation journal!

Lol, the devil is in the details:

"Baraminology is a pseudoscience[23], and has not produced any peer-reviewed scientific research""

Which is absolutely true. All reviews have been exceedingly poor, focusing on the pseudo-scientific methods used in the paper.
Furthermore, come on; the CRS Quarterly is hardly a good (or even a decent) source for scientific information.

Where do you get this information?

I recently posted my critique of one of their papers.
It is pretty bad stuff. As a molecular biologist, would YOU feel justified in stating that Scriptural considerations trump any actual evidence or analyses you might perform?

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quote:

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Although, I do have a question for any creationists: What method specifically inhibits speciation?


Dante

There is no mechanism that inhibits speciation (in the normal sense, but this is all depending on your view of a species of course). There is a perfectly reasonable mechanism for a population splitting and speciating (becoming unable to interbreed with the parent population). There is, however, NO mechanism for the production of new and novel structures and/or chemical pathways. Unless you'd like to propose one, I know of none.

Gene duplications, segmental duplications, etc.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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ORIGINAL: creaton
I recently posted my critique of one of their papers.
It is pretty bad stuff. As a molecular biologist, would YOU feel justified in stating that Scriptural considerations trump any actual evidence or analyses you might perform?

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Isn't that strange, I'm more motivated to read papers that disagree with my view than those who agree with it. I don't think I've ever read a paper on baraminology, but I'm going to jump into a paper that disagrees with it.

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Gene duplications, segmental duplications, etc.

Gene duplication is an explanation, it does seem to fill in a lot of gaps in the evolution story. So, admittedly, you did answer the question, but not as completely as I would like. How does gene duplication work toward the development of structures and pathways?

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The problem with gene duplication is that it seems to create just as many problems as answers. The process of getting a duplicate into the genome, especially the genome of a very complex organism, is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

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Considering the number of times that a gene duplication would have to have occurred, doesn't it seem a bit prohibitive? I understand that it would have had to have happened in evolutionary history, but really.

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You have the segment to be duplicated.
1. It must not be so great that it hinders meiosis in organisms to which it applies.

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2. The duplicate cannot create such a regulatory ruckus that it hinders the performance of the organism. This would cause natural selection to root it out through regular population dynamics (agreeably the fate of most gene duplications).

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3. Minor violators of rule number 2 must be switched off or downregulated epigenetically or with another mutation so that further mutations can make it a part of the gene family.

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4. Multiple lucky mutation make it into something that will then be a beautifully regulated participant in the organism to include all the binding sights, regulatory sequences upstream of the ORF, and all the other proteins which are able to interact with it.

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And all of this is supposed to happen countless times in life's history?

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Even the evidence (and there is a lot) to suggest that it DID happen, can't make up for the fact that it's so spurious.

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Gene duplication is implied from the fact that God made many genes homologous in gene families.

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After all, if two genes are going to have a similar function, they're going to have a similar sequence. Sequence -> structure -> function, as you know.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: drmark

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Mutations have given certain bacteria the ability to digest nylon, for example.

You certainly have studied your talkorigins propaganda well, D_A. It's a shame they forgot to remind you that nylonase is a detrimental enzyme for bacterial efficiency in every other environment without nylon!

And yet THAT is exactly what evolution postulates - adaptations to the environment.

I am unaware of any evolutionary tenet that dictates that evolution will produce universal adaptation.

Are you?

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: drmark

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Mutations have given certain bacteria the ability to digest nylon, for example.

You certainly have studied your talkorigins propaganda well, D_A. It's a shame they forgot to remind you that nylonase is a detrimental enzyme for bacterial efficiency in every other environment without nylon!

And yet THAT is exactly what evolution postulates - adaptations to the environment.

I am unaware of any evolutionary tenet that dictates that evolution will produce universal adaptation.

Are you?

I guess not.

I always enjoy seeing what posts creationists don't reply to as much as I like seeing the ones they do.

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ORIGINAL: Ohioman1972

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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ORIGINAL: drmark

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Mutations have given certain bacteria the ability to digest nylon, for example.

You certainly have studied your talkorigins propaganda well, D_A. It's a shame they forgot to remind you that nylonase is a detrimental enzyme for bacterial efficiency in every other environment without nylon!

And yet THAT is exactly what evolution postulates - adaptations to the environment.

I am unaware of any evolutionary tenet that dictates that evolution will produce universal adaptation.

Are you?

I guess not.

I always enjoy seeing what posts creationists don't reply to as much as I like seeing the ones they do.

You gave it 12 whole minutes.
It took longer than that for me to read.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Perhaps it is a bit much for you to grasp, but Dan and 'dr'mark are two different people and I was responding to 2 different posts.

Try reading for comprehension in the future. It helps to avoid making silly errors.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Sure. It was in response to a fellow claiming that 'evolution science' is based on a materialistic metaphysic, and that his preferred metaphysic (that of the YEC) produced TRUE science:

********************

"We look at the same data, just not under the same metaphysic as you."
“It’s all metaphysics, and my metaphysic is the best one!”

So the argument goes in this ‘debate’ – the evolution accepter, beholden as they are to the ‘metaphysic’ of Naturalistic materialism, cannot see how the creationist metaphysic – supernaturalistic antimaterialism, is far superior. It is, after all, premised on Scripture, and Scripture is Inspired.
And so, if one views evidence, in the words of Henry Morris, “the right way” – that is, through the eyes of the creationist metaphysic – one will see the Truth of the creationist claims.

Well, let’s take a look at this creationist metaphysic in action. I will let the objective, rational reader determine if this metaphysic is the superior one when dealing with issues scientific…
When I was a graduate student working on molecular phylogenetics, I discovered a series of articles in the Creationist peer-reviewed literature * dealing with the same subject.
The authors of these articles were applying computer algorithms to molecular data to determine the relationships between creatures that descended from the ‘kinds’ that were Created and were later allowed to live on the ark.
These and other papers lay out the creationist version of systematics, called Baraminology (or Discontinuity Systematics), which utilize standard computer programs and reproducible analyses using molecular data. These ‘baraminologists’ have set up an entire field of study, complete with its own bible-based terminology and concepts.

The first paper, “A Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Testudine Apobaramin,” 1997, DA Robinson, CRSQ 33:4 p. 262-272, examines the relationships between turtles, and establishes or at least lays out some important criteria for establishing affinity of species (baramina) – patterns of mutation bias, gaps between ingroup and outgroups, topological congruence of cladograms using differing parameters and analyses, and strong bootstrap support for the arrangements. The author was able to determine using these methods – which are essentially the same as those used by systematists – that all turtles are related via descent from a created kind, but could not resolve lower-level relationships.

The third paper dealt with cat phylogeny, and just expanded on earlier ‘proof of concept’ papers.

But the second paper was of great interest to me.

“A Quantitative Approach to Baraminology With Examples from the Catarrhine Primates,” 1998, D. Ashley Robinson and David P. Cavanaugh, CRSQ 34:4 p. 196-208, was the very subject I was working on.

Much of the paper consists of quoting/referring to Scripture, which is odd for a scientific paper but not, I assume, for a scientific paper premised on the supernaturalistic metaphysic, and outlining their justification for their “baraminic distance” criterion. This takes up about the first 4 pages. The baraminic distance is essentially equivalent to the materialistic genetic distance measure, it is just called something else.

Those pages are, save for the references to Scripture, well written and exhibit a great deal of thought. The paper gets interesting, however, when we get to the Materials and Methods section on p. 201. The title of the paper and several sentences in the introductory portion indicate that the interest here is in the Old World monkeys, not the human-ape question. Indeed, they discount that question altogether:
“Since Scriptures clearly imply that humans were specially created (Genesis 1:26-272 , 22), and thus phylogenetically distinct from other organisms, we utilize the human-nonhuman primate relationship as a control.”
This will be of interest later.
Their data consisted of 12s rRNA gene sequences, chromosomal characters, morphological characters, and ecological characters. The data were analyzed individually and as a total evidence dataset using standard phylogenetic analysis software.
It is the results and discussion in which the metaphysic of supernaturalism comes into play.

For those of you that do not know, when you set up a data matrix for analysis you utilize what is called an outgroup – a taxon that is not closely related to the group under study – for use as a ‘yardstick’ of sorts. For example, when analyzing primates you might use rabbit as an outgroup. Interestingly, as quoted above, the baraminologists use human as the outgroup in their analyses.
Outgroups must be designated prior to running the analysis, or the results will appear strange. If you designate the wrong taxon as the outgroup, your results will be strange indeed (you can, of course, run analyses without an outgroup, but these analyses were not utilized by the baraminologists).
So, when the baraminologists ran neighbor joining analyses on the data, they used human as the outgroup. NJ methods assume a constant rate of evolution, which is not indicated by either fossil or molecular evidence and so has fallen out of favor. Though they do not specifically state that they designated human as outgroup, this is what must have happened. This is because the order of the taxa in the dataset can influence the arrangement produced in NJ analyses. For example, I analyzed one of my datasets and I got an arrangement similar to the one seen in the CRSQ paper. Human is first in that dataset, so I cut and pasted it last, re-ran the analysis, and Human got stuck somewhere in the middle of the cluster (however, when I ran a bootstrap analysis, human grouped with chimp). However, when I designated a new world monkey as outgroup, I got the ‘accepted’ arrangement – human + chimp. Making human the outgroup produces an arrangement similar to the one in the CRSQ paper – NJ analyses by default use the first taxon as the outgroup unless designated otherwise.
And what follows from that is the production of weakly supported topologies, since they tried to force the data to conform to a ‘non-natural’ topology. The node linking chimps and gorillas was supported with only 53% bootstrap support. That is fairly low. In a paper not constrained by the antimaterialism metaphysic, in which human is not the outgroup, chimps join gorilla with 96-100% support, depending on the data used. Forcing the data to fit a preconceived notion based on a metaphysic produces statistically significant error.
They mention in the abstract “We have found that baraminic distances based on hemoglobin amino acid sequences, 12S-rRNA sequences, and chromosomal data were largely ineffective for identifying the Human holobaramin. Baraminic distances based on ecological and morphological characters, however, were quite reliable for distinguishing humans from nonhuman primates.”

The description of the morphological analysis sounds impressive – 43 characters. The morphological characters, however, I believe, were specifically selected to produce the desired results. Why do I say this? Because this paper:
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 1996 Feb; 5(1): 102-54. Primate phylogeny: morphological vs. molecular results. Shoshani J, Groves CP, Simons EL, Gunnell GF.**
Was known to the authors. It contained an analysis of not 43 characters, but 264, and this analysis grouped human with chimp.
The other data, ecological data, is the most subjective and should produce no surprise when it was this data that provided the baraminologists their ‘strongest evidence' for a separate human baramin. And what were some of these data? Things like percent foliage in diet, monogamy, population group size and density, home range size, etc. It looks to me like these data too were chosen to produce a desired outcome, for what exactly does “monogamy” have to do with descent?

Indeed, the authors state in their Discussion section:
“Character selection, not the method of analysis, is expected to be the primary factor affecting baraminic hypotheses. False conclusions can be reached unless baraminically informative data has been sampled. Since we have no a priori knowledge regarding which characters are more reliable for identifying holobaramins, it is important to evaluate the reliability of a wide variety of biological data for inferring baraminic relationships.”

And later:

“it is interesting to note that the ecological and morphological criteria were the most adept at distinguishing humans and the most highly correlated, indicating that the datasets in the strongest agreement were the most reliable.”

Yes, that is interesting – the most subjective and limited criteria are the most reliable for giving the creationist the arrangement they want…

That is, they have to pick data that give them the results they want – those that conform to Scripture.

Creationism’s metaphysic in action…
What I did not mention is this, from the section on selecting characters:
“With the exception of the Scriptural criterion no single data set is sufficient to define the holobaramin.”

Translation: Scripture gives us the answers, we need to find the data that will conform to these answers.
The ‘superior’ metaphysic in action.

*I had contacted the authors of this paper in 1999 asking for reprints and neither replied to my requests. I had to buy the issues from CRSQ. Later, after reading in the paper that the data sets were available from the authors on request, I sent an IM to DA Robinson while online one day. First he pretended not to know what I was talking about. After he acknowledged co-authoring the paper, he said something that astounded me – he said that he didn’t think the data sets even existed anymore!
********************

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Isn't that strange, I'm more motivated to read papers that disagree with my view than those who agree with it. I don't think I've ever read a paper on baraminology, but I'm going to jump into a paper that disagrees with it.

I wouldn't call it a paper - I certainly could have gon einto more detail, but I think the little critique is pretty devastating re: their reserach methods, if I do say so.

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Are you aware that living humans have a number of genes of variable number?

Large-Scale Copy Number Polymorphism in the Human Genome

"Here, we show that large-scale copy number polymorphisms (CNPs) (about 100 kilobases and greater) contribute substantially to genomic variation between normal humans. Representational oligonucleotide microarray analysis of 20 individuals revealed a total of 221 copy number differences representing 76 unique CNPs. On average, individuals differed by 11 CNPs, and the average length of a CNP interval was 465 kilobases. We observed copy number variation of 70 different genes within CNP intervals, including genes involved in neurological function, regulation of cell growth, regulation of metabolism, and several genes known to be associated with disease."

Fact is, gene duplication is noit how you describe it. It happens, even within extant populations, primarily via incomplete crossing over. Sure, sometimes it causes problems, somoetimes it doesn't.

And this is just plain old duplication of functional genes. Post-duplication modification can produce slightly different genes with variable functions.

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Considering the number of times that a gene duplication would have to have occurred, doesn't it seem a bit prohibitive? I understand that it would have had to have happened in evolutionary history, but really.

Don't know what you are getting at. It seems as if you are implying that we are saying that all genes arose via duplicatins of one gene?

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You have the segment to be duplicated.
1. It must not be so great that it hinders meiosis in organisms to which it applies.

Most of these events occur during meiosis.

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2. The duplicate cannot create such a regulatory ruckus that it hinders the performance of the organism. This would cause natural selection to root it out through regular population dynamics (agreeably the fate of most gene duplications).

If it caused that much of a problem it would likely not produce a viable gamete in the first place.

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3. Minor violators of rule number 2 must be switched off or downregulated epigenetically or with another mutation so that further mutations can make it a part of the gene family.

You presuppose that your scenario is the primary phenomenon by which this occurs.

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4. Multiple lucky mutation make it into something that will then be a beautifully regulated participant in the organism to include all the binding sights, regulatory sequences upstream of the ORF, and all the other proteins which are able to interact with it.

Most gene and segmental duplication events include their regulatory sequence, certainly the proximal sequences. More distal regulatory elements can affect non-duplicated genes as well.

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As for beautiful regulation, I submit you've not been exposed to many gene expression loops. Gene regulation and expression is a messy, inefficient mess.

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And all of this is supposed to happen countless times in life's history?

Let's say that a single dupication even occurs during the production of a gamete in the human population. That is 6 billion such events, just for those alive now.

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Even the evidence (and there is a lot) to suggest that it DID happen, can't make up for the fact that it's so spurious.

So, you are engaging in an argument from personal disbelief? Can I engage in a similar form of argumentation and have it accepted as valid?

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Gene duplication is implied from the fact that God made many genes homologous in gene families.

You are assuming what you conclude. I believe that is logically fallacious, for how has it been stablished as 'fact' that God did this?

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After all, if two genes are going to have a similar function, they're going to have a similar sequence. Sequence -> structure -> function, as you know.

Sure, but why would the God capable of creating the entire universe and everything in it, to include creating a fully-formed human male from dirt, be limited to genes that must be of similar sequence if they produce similar function?

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And why would this God put mutations inn identical sites in the noncoding portions of genes in differing 'kinds' which produce the appearance of a shared ancestry?

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ORIGINAL: Ohioman1972

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Perhaps it is a bit much for you to grasp, but Dan and 'dr'mark are two different people and I was responding to 2 different posts.

Try reading for comprehension in the future. It helps to avoid making silly errors.

Try using smaller words. Remember, I am a Creationist...

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

Sorry for taking forever to respond. People keep encroaching on my Crosswalk time.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Sure. It was in response to a fellow claiming that 'evolution science' is based on a materialistic metaphysic, and that his preferred metaphysic (that of the YEC) produced TRUE science:

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By the way, you made the point "Scripture gives us the answers, we need to find the data that will conform to these answers." And I think that that's kind of an unfair assessment of what they said. I think that what they're saying is that a "holobaramin" is just like any other taxon in that it's difficult to define unless scripture states that the group was made separate from the others.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Hi Dan,

I'm afraid that this time I am going to have to take a break for a few days - got a bunch of stuff going on and I actually have to leave to pick up a physicist who is giving a talk today in a bout 15 minutes so can only respond to a couple points.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

Sorry for taking forever to respond. People keep encroaching on my Crosswalk time.

How dare they!

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ORIGINAL: creaton

Sure. It was in response to a fellow claiming that 'evolution science' is based on a materialistic metaphysic, and that his preferred metaphysic (that of the YEC) produced TRUE science:

quote:


Ick, bioinformatics. I've never had to take a statistics class, and my bioinformatics training is limited to how to use a blast search. You do make some interesting points. I'm not exactly sure how the whole "outgroup" thing works, but I don't see why they would be opposed to criticism in their methods.

I had some email exchanges with one of the authors about a year ago. He took exception to my characterizing it as testing whether or not humans are related to other apes. But one can easily see from the paper that while they start with that assumption, when their analyses do not provide suipport for that assumption, they alter the analyses and ultimately resort to picking the least reliable and most irrelevant chacters to use to give then the results they wanted.

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Now, I don't know if you have any publications, but I do, and I know that I would not dream of engaging what they did.

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By the way, you made the point "Scripture gives us the answers, we need to find the data that will conform to these answers." And I think that that's kind of an unfair assessment of what they said. I think that what they're saying is that a "holobaramin" is just like any other taxon in that it's difficult to define unless scripture states that the group was made separate from the others.

And how does giving Scripture the the last word substantively any different from my characterization?

Got to run. I'll finish up hopefully Friday.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

I had some email exchanges with one of the authors about a year ago. He took exception to my characterizing it as testing whether or not humans are related to other apes. But one can easily see from the paper that while they start with that assumption, when their analyses do not provide suipport for that assumption, they alter the analyses and ultimately resort to picking the least reliable and most irrelevant chacters to use to give then the results they wanted.

Well, I suppose it's because they aren't testing whether or not humans are related to apes. We already know that humans are not related to apes.

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Baraminologists are not out to disprove the origin of species. They start with the assumption that God's word is true and are out to taxonomically classify organisms accordingly. You might call it bad science because they assume that God's word is true, but I would call a lot of stuff bad science for not taking God's word into consideration. If God has something to say on an issue, anything that disagrees with what he says must necessarily be wrong.

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That being the case (if I understand what you've told me about genetic distance), I would have used a rabbit rather than a human, and measured the distance to human as a part of their experiment. This is why: because it would demonstrate that their methods work. You of course know that scientists do this all the time. They use a method, for instance, to systematically discover aging-related genes, and in the process they highlight the fact that their methods "discovered" proteins that are already known to affect aging. If the scientists' methods work with proteins of KNOWN function, it can be assumed to work with proteins of UNKNOWN function. So I agree with your conclusion, they should have used a rabbit, rather than flexing their bible-knowledge muscles and using human as the control. Since humans and apes are so similar, detecting that they are of different baramin with their methods would have given a great deal of corroboration that their methods are trustworthy. That is all, of course, if I understand their methods as you've described them.

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Now, I don't know if you have any publications, but I do, and I know that I would not dream of engaging what they did.

I don't know what I'm going to say will help, but try to understand (if you haven't already) that baraminologists always start with the assumption that scripture is correct, regardless of how wacky it might look from an evolutionary perspective, and THEN they do their work. They are, in every sense of the term, Creation Biologists.

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By the way, you made the point "Scripture gives us the answers, we need to find the data that will conform to these answers." And I think that that's kind of an unfair assessment of what they said. I think that what they're saying is that a "holobaramin" is just like any other taxon in that it's difficult to define unless scripture states that the group was made separate from the others.

And how does giving Scripture the the last word substantively any different from my characterization?

Got to run. I'll finish up hopefully Friday.

Cool, man. Enjoy the lecture.

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ORIGINAL: creaton

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Well, I suppose it's because they aren't testing whether or not humans are related to apes. We already know that humans are not related to apes.

But that is the whole point!

You DON'T know that - you simply 'believe' it because Scripture says so. So, the baraminologists started with such an 'assumption', and when they attempted to run objective analyses using that 'assumption' as a sort of baseline, they did not get the results they were hoping for, as the data want to join humans and chimps together despite the constraint not to.

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Baraminologists are not out to disprove the origin of species. They start with the assumption that God's word is true and are out to taxonomically classify organisms accordingly. You might call it bad science because they assume that God's word is true, but I would call a lot of stuff bad science for not taking God's word into consideration. If God has something to say on an issue, anything that disagrees with what he says must necessarily be wrong.

And thus you have left the realm of science.

In science, NOTHING is 'set in stone.'

There are things that have stood the test of time and are not really questioned any more, but they could be, should new evidence warrant it. You have just declared that your preferred set of assumptions can and will NEVER be questioned, no matter what.
Do you really think this is the hallmark of genuine scientific inquiry?

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That seems pretty accurate. I have not read the paper in some time, but as I recall, they used the human-ape values as a yardstick because they are so similar phenotypically and genetically yet they 'know' they are not related and so anything more similar genetically than we are to apes must be related via descent. Problem is, some of the critters they accpet as being related via descent have mush lower 'baraminic distances' than huamns and chimps do.

When your criterion does not fall in line with your assumptions, you throw out the criterion in baraminology.

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Now, I don't know if you have any publications, but I do, and I know that I would not dream of engaging what they did.

I don't know what I'm going to say will help, but try to understand (if you haven't already) that baraminologists always start with the assumption that scripture is correct, regardless of how wacky it might look from an evolutionary perspective, and THEN they do their work. They are, in every sense of the term, Creation Biologists.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

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ORIGINAL: creaton
You DON'T know that - you simply 'believe' it because Scripture says so. So, the baraminologists started with such an 'assumption', and when they attempted to run objective analyses using that 'assumption' as a sort of baseline, they did not get the results they were hoping for, as the data want to join humans and chimps together despite the constraint not to.

Ironically, this is exactly the accusation that many creationists make against evolutionists. Despite the evidence to the contrary, it is assumed that God did not make the universe as He has claimed.

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The word of God is the only demonstrably divine, and therefore objective, source of truth.

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So the naturalist starts with the assumption of a universe in which God has not spoken, and then attempts to run objective analyses.

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The problem is that with such assumptions, evolution MUST be true. There is no other way imaginable in which the complex life could have possibly come to be without an intelligent designer! And, if evolution must be true in a godless world, no other explanations can possibly be. With the assumption of naturalism implicit in the very word "science" Intelligent Design cannot possibly be discovered using the scientific method.

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Baraminologists are not out to disprove the origin of species. They start with the assumption that God's word is true and are out to taxonomically classify organisms accordingly. You might call it bad science because they assume that God's word is true, but I would call a lot of stuff bad science for not taking God's word into consideration. If God has something to say on an issue, anything that disagrees with what he says must necessarily be wrong.

And thus you have left the realm of science.

In science, NOTHING is 'set in stone.'

There are things that have stood the test of time and are not really questioned any more, but they could be, should new evidence warrant it. You have just declared that your preferred set of assumptions can and will NEVER be questioned, no matter what.
Do you really think this is the hallmark of genuine scientific inquiry?

It is reasonable for the baraminologist because they know that God has spoken on certain issues.

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Their prefered set of assumptions are reasonable because they are anchored in the trustworthy testimony of the Creator of the universe as recorded by the inspired authors of Genesis.

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That being the case, you are wrong. In science, some things must be set in stone because the data acquired in scientific inquiry WILL agree with God's word.

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That seems pretty accurate. I have not read the paper in some time, but as I recall, they used the human-ape values as a yardstick because they are so similar phenotypically and genetically yet they 'know' they are not related and so anything more similar genetically than we are to apes must be related via descent. Problem is, some of the critters they accpet as being related via descent have mush lower 'baraminic distances' than huamns and chimps do.

When your criterion does not fall in line with your assumptions, you throw out the criterion in baraminology.

That is an excellent point. However, two animals can be nearly identical genetically yet be vastly different depending on the regulatory epigenome. Not knowing the history of dogs, nobody could know just by looking superficially whether a chihuahua is very similar or dissimilar genetically from the parent wolf population. God could have made humans and apes almost identical and left lion's share of the differences up to the epigenome. In fact, if I recall correctly, that is the case.

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Now, I don't know if you have any publications, but I do, and I know that I would not dream of engaging what they did.

I don't know what I'm going to say will help, but try to understand (if you haven't already) that baraminologists always start with the assumption that scripture is correct, regardless of how wacky it might look from an evolutionary perspective, and THEN they do their work. They are, in every sense of the term, Creation Biologists.

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Well, I get that, but what I DON'T get is how they can justify keeping that assumption when their own work casts doubt on its validity.

The assumption that human/chimp relationships can be used as a ruler should be scrutinized, but the fact that humans and chimps are NOT evolutionarily related has been settled by God's word.

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There is no other way imaginable in which the complex life could have possibly come to be without an intelligent designer! And, if evolution must be true in a godless world, no other explanations can possibly be.

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Intelligent Design cannot possibly be discovered using the scientific method.

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In science, some things must be set in stone because the data acquired in scientific inquiry WILL agree with God's word.

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but the fact that humans and chimps are NOT evolutionarily related has been settled by God's word.

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Doubting anyone cares to respond.

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ORIGINAL: drmark

Doubting anyone cares to respond.