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I disagree. Here is what Lockheed wrote: "How wrong are YEC's and advocates of intelligent design? Here you go... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amDER...mon%20ancestor" Taken literally, yes the video asserts how wrong creationism is. But it does not demonstrate with data on how wrong creationism is. Ironically, the video relies on the Argument from Analogy and that is exactly the argument IDers use with the "human artifacts are designed, so, since biological organisms look designed, they must also be artifacts". Lockheed doesn't accept analogy as a valid form of argument there, but is willing to accept it when the conclusion agrees with him! Isn't that exactly what creationists do? Isnt science supposed to be different? ALWAYS. That's what you can do with deductive logic: prove a negative. Would you not agree that science has "proved" that the earth is NOT flat? Or "proved" the the earth is NOT the center of the solar system? True statements cannot have false consequences. And that is what science does: tests statements (hypotheses/theories) to see if they have false consequences. 1. Yes, it is possible to "prove" that holding your breath for a year is impossible. In fact, it's been done! People who hold their breath for over 10 minutes always pass out and start breathing again. 2. When you introduce cryonics, you are changing the hypothesis. You now have an ad hoc hypothesis that being frozen is the same as "holding your breath". Of course it is not. 3. If SLOT is true, then cyclical universe is false. So, to get cyclical universe to be true, you must have the ad hoc hypothesis that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is false. This is also different. The statement "God created" doesn't itself have any observational consequences. To get observational consequences you must specify a mechanism by which God created. What you specified was young earth creationism. Which you know is falsified by the data: the earth isn't 6,000 years old. What you have then done is introduce an ad hoc hypothesis: God zapped the earth into place 6,000 years ago but did so to make it look old. This is not independently testable from the hypothesis you are trying to save and is, thus, an invalid ad hoc hypothesis. Now, one reason we can't "prove" that God didn't create is because we can hypothesize that God created by the mechanisms discovered by science! God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution. All the observational consequences match this mechanism, don't they? There is no way for science, using its legitimate methods, to say God is not involved. You have to believe either that God is involved or that God is not involved. And, of course, then you are out of science into the realm of belief: either theism or atheism. No. What you can do is that God's direct action is not needed. However, you have here a misuse of Ockham's Razor. The Razor was intended by Ockham for describing phenomenon. His "entities" were what we today call "hypotheses" and he didn't want hypotheses added to descriptions of phenomenon. His example was the contemporary statement "an object moves because of an impetus." Impetus is a hypothesis of an innate "desire" of an object to move. Ockham noted that "movement" is change in position over time. Therefore, all you needed to describe the phenomenon was "an object moves". You don't need the hypothesis. Let's take another example of misuse of Ockham's Razor done by a contemporary physicist: "The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance." "The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance. This force is generated by the will of some powerful aliens." Everything after the "because" is the same as Ockham's example of "impetus". The correct statement to describe the phenomenon of the movement of planets is: "The planets move around the sun in ellipses." Both the "force" and the "powerful aliens" are unnecessary. That the "force" (gravity) is a strongly supported hypothesis has nothing to do with it. In the statement describing the movement of the planets, gravity is an unnecessary entity. You can't use the Razor to evaluate between hypotheses. Skeptic, in the "Global Warming" thread you have repeatedly stated that you need data to decide what hypothesis is correct. Don't bail now. Because, if you introduce the Razor to evaluate the anti-GW arguments, anthropogenic GW is simpler. AGW wins using the Razor. But you don't think it is correct even tho it is simpler. What science tests is whether material mechanisms are sufficient AS material mechanisms. IOW, is evolution by natural selection sufficient to explain the origin of species or do we need another material mechanism: direct manufacture by God? Don't let the use of "miracle" fool you. Creationism is an alternative material mechanism: organisms (or parts of them) were directly manufactured. That we don't know how organisms were manufactured is irrelevant to manufacturing being a material mechanism that can be tested. And shown to have false consequences. Thank you for the support. All the video did was make whoever made it look silly.

This is what you want the conclusion to sound like. It in no way says that what iNow was stating was not A conclusion. You think iNow did not give the "correct" conclusion. That's a whole different thing from your original claim. Nor did you address that the data you want IS available. You are now speaking from ignorance: "until we have the ability to measure the direct input of manmade compounds". We do have the ability to measure the direct input of man-made compounds. We know what humans are putting into the atmosphere. Also "against the output of an increased greenhouse layer" shows more ignorance. There is NO "greenhouse layer". No one says the greenhouse gasses are confined to one layer of the atmosphere. The greatest concentration of ALL gasses is, of course, in the troposphere. But there is no "greenhouse layer" within the troposphere or stratosphere. Please, go read the article and the references in the article. THEN come back and argue. Read the data first before you say "there is no data". It is also done by retrodiction. This is especially true of computer models in general and climate models in particular. Remember, the computer model is supposed to model ALL climate, not just future climate. That means that the model should generate the values for climate in the past. This is how models are initially tested: do they "predict" what we have already seen. That is, does the model generate the values we have already observed. This is how the flaw in the models for cooling in the tropics was found. The model did not retrodict accurate temperatures because the model did not include increased cloud formation (and the subsequent reflection of incoming radiation). So the model was modified to take this into account. So, Bascule knows the IPCC models have been tested. They accurately retrodict data we already have. This can be seen dramatically in the graphs in the Scientific American article. You can see that the variables "predicted" by the model for the past line up exactly with the values actually seen in the past. Since the model does that, it gives support to the model as hypothesis so that we can have confidence that it is accurately predicting to values we do not yet have in the future.

Yes. You need to recognize valid forms of argument and evidence from invalid forms. The point is that many people do NOT know why creationism is wrong. They have just been fed the bad info from creationists. They are unaware -- as the Advocate was unaware -- of the data that is out there. This one is most certainly ad hominem. It insults creationism by comparing it to some very insulting positions -- without showing how those positions are equivalently wrong. The logical fallacy is, yes, the positions compared to are wrong -- but there is no data showing creationism is equivalently wrong. Without such data, the argument is ad hominem. And I don't care about cdk's "credentials". That itself is an appeal to the Argument from Authority -- which is also an invalid form of argumentation.

Actually, the data is that new cells are spontaneously being formed at hydrothermal vents: Yanagawa, H. and K. Kobayashi. 1992. An experimental approach to chemical evolution in submarine hydrothermal. systems. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 22: 147-159. Syren RM, Sanjur A, Fox SW Proteinoid microspheres more stable in hot than in cold water. Biosystems 1985;17(4):275-80 (protocells at hydrothermal vents) The problem, of course, is that these cells then face life that has 3.8 billion years of evolution behind it. Modern life looks at these newly formed cells and yells "LUNCH" and then devours them. Sorry, but ALL the early evolutionists -- including Darwin -- believed in God. You do need to expand on this. What "mathematical problem"? This isn't totally true. Mutation rates vary from species to species. It's best to look at the number of mutations/individual. In bacteria the rate is about 0.001. That is, you will only have 1 mutation per 1,000 individuals. Drosophila have about 1 mutation per individual. Humans have about 20. The calculations are GIGO. What you forget is that change is cumulative. Once you have a new favorable mutation, then that mutation increases in frequency in the population by natural selection until EVERY MEMBER of the population has that "mutation". So, when the second mutation appears, the "odds" that it will be present with the first is 1. Virtual certainty. THe problem here is not mathematical, but your ignorance of how evolution works. Actually, fairly simple chemical reactions will give you a cell ready to reproduce! If amino acids are heated in either the dry condition (evaporating tidal pool) or at high temperatures in solution at hydrothermal vents, they will form form proteins. The ordering within the new proteins is not random. When water is added (the tide comes back in) or the proteins move from the very hot water at the vent to cooler water, the proteins spontaneously form cells! This is due to hydrophobic interactions. Voila! A cell. What's more, a cell that can, and does, reproduce.

You limited this to "living". Unfortunately, Gould, Ernst Mayr,and John Maynard Smith died recently. So the giants of the Modern Synthesis are gone. Eldredge is a good nominee. So is Francisco Ayala. I can't agree with Crow. Mostly because so many of the claims of Neutral Theory have been shown to be wrong. He and Kimura proposed an interesting theory, but it turns out that nearly every locus is under natural selection and does not correspond to Neutral Theory.

This doesn't work. After all, a trait gets passed down only if you reproduce. So males that masturbate but don't reproduce later won't have kids. And therefore you lose the males that masturbate from a young age but dont have sex. Natural selection is done with you after you have kids. Whatever happens to you after that is irrelevant to natural selection. Males tend to die earlier than females due to differences in the cardiovascular system: differences due to male sex hormones such as testosterone. So, males are more likely to have heart attacks in their 40s and 50s than females. BUT, since they have already had kids, natural selection won't be able to eliminate this trait. Natural selection only works when you DO reproduce, not "assume". If the assumption isn't carried thru, then ... That's too simplistic. Remember, MOST mammalian (and other vertebrate) species have sex only when the female can get pregnant. Therefore, cats don't have or want "lots of sex" but sex very infrequently. In between, they don't want sex at all! What matters is the number of surviving offspring compared to the other members of your species. So, one strategy for a human male could be to get as many different women pregnant as possible but never stay around to rear the children. In our ancestors before technology, both pregnant females and nursing females and young children are vulnerable to lots of dangers: such as starvation and predators. Such a strategy may sire 100 children, but only 10 survive to adulthood. Another male could use the monogomous strategy and stay with one female and take care of the kids. This male may only have 15 offspring BUT 12 of them survive to adulthood. In evolutionary terms, this strategy is more effective. If there is a genetic basis to this behavior, it will gain in frequency in the population. After we have kids, natural selection is blind to what happens next. In effect, we are running on "momentum". The only hypothesis I have heard that provides an evolutionary explanation for longer human lifespans is the "grandmother" hypothesis. I'll have to see exactly where to find this but, in brief, it says that grandmothers (in primitive societies) help a lot in providing for their grandchildren: by gathering food, looking out for the kids, and being around to protect from predators. So ... women that lived longer and took care of their grandchildren would pass those longevity alleles to the population. Males simply got to go along for the ride because most of the genes were on the non-sex chromosomes.

You have 2 different claims here: 1. Getting life from non-life. 2. Getting "something as complex as the cells we have today." Those are 2 VERY different things. "Life" does not need to be like we see it today in order to be "life". The protocells are living by the basic definition of life: metabolism, growth, response to stimuli, reproduction. What protocells lack that modern cells have is directed protein synthesis. However, there are several paths (in small steps) to get from protocells to directed protein synthesis. As to why the proteins would assemble into cells -- with membranes -- that is easy. The membranes of modern cells are 50-60% protein. The reason the proteins would form membranes is the same reason the proteins in modern cells make up a lot of the cell membrane: hydrophobic interaction. That is the same reason that lipids make cell membranes. Remember, most amino acids have hydrophobic (water-hating) side chains. Some amino acids have hydrophilic (water-loving) side chains. The hydrophilic side chains arrange themselves in space to be together -- because that is the lowest energy. Lipids have a hydrophilic "head" and a hydrophobic "tail". Thus ,the tails tend to be together with the hydrophilic "heads" out to make the lipid bilayer. Proteins can do something similar within themselves and by interaction with other proteins. Now you are back to arguing theism and god-of-the-gaps. To get from protocells to modern cells takes chemistry AND evolution. Now that you have a population that reproduces but with variation, evolution steps in. Here is a possible first step in going from protocells to directed protein synthesis: "In more recent work, Fox and his colleagues have shown that basic proteinoids, rich in lysine residues, selectively associate with the homopolynucleotides poly C and poly U but not with poly A or poly G. On the other hand, arginine-rich proteinoids associate selectively with poly A and poly G. In this manner, the information in proteinoids can be used to select polynucleotides. Morever, it is striking that aminoacyl adenylates yield oligopeptides when incubated with proteinoid-polynucleotide complexes, which thus have some of the characteristics of ribosomes. Fox has suggested that proteinoids bearing this sort of primitive chemical information could have transferred it to a primitive nucleic acid; the specificity of interaction between certain proteinoids and polynucleotides suggests the beginning of the genetic code." A. Lehninger, Biochemistry, 1975, pp 1047-1048 You missed my point: theologically god-of-the-gaps is wrong. Having it used by "both sides" doesn't make it correct. So, in trying to make abiogenesis part of evolution, what you were doing was arguing theism vs atheism using god-of-the-gaps. You are still trying to use GOTG by your "gut instinct" that "there is more than chemistry". After all, WHAT is that "more"? I'm betting you are planning to say "God". To put God into the "gaps" in scientific knowledge has, as its corollary, that God is absent where there is no gap. This theological mistake is what allows Dawkins and other militant atheists to misuse science to say God does not exist. Trying to "prove" the existence of God by the use of "gaps" such as abiogenesis and your "gut instinct" leads you into the position where science would "disprove" God by filling in all the gaps. Judeo-Christianity long ago abandoned god-of-the-gaps partly due to the theological problems. The rejected theology has been revived by creationists and IDers. It shows that, as dreadful as creationism and ID is as science, it is even worse as theology. Since you have read Milton: does he ever state or imply that, since Darwinism is wrong, this means that God created? Darwinism is certainly falisifiable -- or was. That is, there are several pieces of data that, if found, would have falsified evolution and natural selection. Darwin suggested several of these. One of the possible falsifications of natural selection was: "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection." Origin, pg 501. Of course, no such structure has been found. Some structures or parts -- such as in those found in mutualistic organisms -- are there for the benefit of another species, but that also provides benefit for the species that have them. So there are not structures for the exclusive benefit of another species. Irreducible complexity is supposed to be a falsification of natural selection, but it has been shown that Behe used a strawman version of natural selection and that natural selection can produce any complex biological structure: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html In terms of common ancestry, there were many possible falsifications. However, when we looked at the data, the data that was there did not falsify evolution. Nearly all the possible falsifications have been tested. About the only data not looked at that could falsify common ancestry is finding mammalian fossils in pre-Cambrian or Cambrian strata. Remember, Popper never said that a theory had to be ALWAYS falsifiable. Just that, when proposed, there should be data that COULD, if found, show it false. Evolution had that. What Milton fails to see is that that tests were done and evolution was not falsified. Because all those tests were done, basically evolution is now not false and we can't think of any more tests that could possibly falsify it. I find it interesting that Milton is so ignorant of the philosophy of science that he thinks evolution fails 2 different and contradictory views of science. That's right. The Kuhnian version of how science is/should be done can't be reconciled to Popper's version of how science is/should be done. Popper says theories are falsified on the data. Kuhn denies that. If Popper is right, Kuhn is wrong, and vice versa. Yet Milton tries to tell us that evolution "fails" each one? Since I am a Popperian, I'll subject Milton's statements to testing to see if they are 1) falsifiable and 2) falsified. By Milton's statement, there should be NO novel or surprising facts found by evolution and that publications involving evolution should be decreasing over time (a declining paradigm): One of the most surprising results in the last decade or so is that natural selection is such a good method of getting design. Natural selection -- in the form of genetic algorithms -- are so good at getting design that people now use them when the design problem is too tough for them. And then they are surprised that they don't know how the design works! A Scientific American article in 2003 discussed how natural selection is being used to get patentable inventions! And, of course, to get a patent the idea must be "novel". Jr Koza, MA Keane, MJ Streeter, Evolving inventions. Scientific American, 52-59, Feb 2003 check out http://www.genetic-programming.com Also, if you look at PubMed using the search term "evolution" and then look at the time limits for how far back you search, you will see that the number of articles that involve evolution has been increasing over time. That is, in the last 6 months there are more articles using/describing evolution than in the 6 months before that, and that number is larger than the 6 months before that, etc. A declining "paradigm" doesn't do that. In terms of medicine, evolution by natural selection is providing explanations for old problems that seemed intractable. Two of these are 1) infectious diseases and 2) the failure of cancer therapies. 2. RM Nesse and GC Williams, Evolution and the origins of disease. Scientific American 279: 86-93, Nov. 1998. Concepts from evolution help unify the medical sciences. 4. BR Levin, M Lipsitch, S Bonhoeffer, Evolution and disease: population biology, evolution, and infectious disease: convergence and synthesis. Science 283: 806-809, Feb. 5, 1998. 7. KC Nicolaou, CNC Boddy, Behind enemy lines. Scientific American 284: 54-61, May 2001 So, by Popperian science, I have falsified Milton's hypotheses by finding data that can't be there if his statements are true. Wait a minute! On a science forum you reference a youtube video as evidence? Are you nuts? What's worse, the video presents no scientific evidence. It is all by ad hominem analogy. It compares YEC to some ideas that we know -- by other means -- are very wrong. BUT that doesn't tell us that YEC is wrong! If you think that ad hominem analogy is a valid form of argument and science, you really need to rethink your participation in a science forum. You are going to get very angry as scientists tell you the argumentation is wrong.

Sorry, ghstofmaxwll, but neither. What iNow posted was the conclusion from scientific evidence. It's not an assertion. It's a conclusion from data. In August 2007 Scientific American had a summary article of the data to back the conclusion. Included in Figure 1 are the contributions of solar forcing, volcanic activity, man-made greenhouse gasses, etc. You need to read the article and then go back to the references in the article and read those. And the references in the references. THEN you will have all the data and will realize that iNow gave a conclusion from data. I have a PDF copy of the article. If absolutely necessary, I will post it as an attachment so everyone has it. I can probably get away with the copyright issue by calling this forum a "class" and distributing material to the class.

Advocate, there are so many creationist books attacking science that we don't have time to read them all. If I did, I wouldn't have time to read the scientific papers I need to read. So, you need to walk us thru the claims from the book that you find appealing and we will deal with them one by one. Claims and facts are entwined. You use facts to test claims. And you test with the idea of showing the claim to be false. You can always find "facts" to support a claim -- if that is all you are looking for. So saying Milton's "facts" are accurate is not the whole story. What you need to do is look for facts that contradict Milton's claims -- and those facts are not likely to be in Milton's book, are they? Getting the first cell is chemistry. Once you have the first replicating cell then you can have evolution. Let me tell you something: my experience is that when people ask about abiogenesis, they aren't really talking evolution, since abiogenesis isn't part of evolution. They are really arguing theism vs atheism and using god-of-the-gaps theology. Science isn't atheism. But, to answer your question, you can get a self-replicating cell by dry heating amino acids. This will cause them to form proteins. Then add water. The proteins will spontaneously form cells that metabolize, grow, respond to stimuli, and divide. Go here to start: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html This page has a picture of one type of protocell: http://www.springerlink.com/content/dxq91868368083p2/ We can discuss this in more detail if you want. Probably make a new thread. Now, from the Amazon reviews of Milton's book we get some specific claims Milton has made: "the evidence for humankind's own evolution is actually nonexistent" "Today, 'Java man' is thought to be an extinct, giant gibbonlike creature and not connected to humans." Both of these are incorrect. We have fossils of transitional individuals -- between species -- linking us (H. sapiens) to H. erectus, erectus to H. habilis, and habilis to A. afarensis. I'll provide a partial list (because I haven't done enough research to get ALL those fossils) if you want. "Java man" is actually H. erectus. This particular fossil is not on the direct line to H. sapiens because the transition from H. erectus to sapiens took place in Africa. However, anyone looking at pictures of these fossils and those of gibbons can easily see that they are not at all similar. Now, if you would give us some quotes from the book or summaries of particular arguments, we'll deal with them. IF you read Origin of Species (you got the title wrong, BTW), then you came upon this passage at the end: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450. What this says is that what you call a "fundamental question" is not a question for evolution! ALL scientific theories assume the existence of something. Relativity assumes the existence of spacetime. The triple helix theory of DNA assumes the existence of DNA. NO scientific theory explains everything. Cell theory doesn't explain gravity. Relativity doesn't explain the origin of species. Evolution does NOT explain the origin of life from non-life. That belongs to the general field of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis today consists of many different theories. Protocells are one. RNA World is another. They are all based on chemistry. Again, when someone says abiogenesis is "fundamental" to evolution, that tells me we really aren't talking about evolution. Instead, we are into the atheism vs theism fight and the person is using god-of-the-gaps and the supposed "gap' of abiogenesis to advocate for theism. If you are not doing that, then you need to convince me that this is not happening this time. Back to Darwin. IF you really read Origin of Species, the page before you encountered the quote above, you came across this quote: "To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species,pg. 449. The emphasis is mine. "Secondary causes" is a theological term common in Darwin's time but forgotten by creationists who insist on direct action by God. Theologically, secondary causes are material mechanisms by which God works. Gravity is the secondary cause by which God keeps the planets in orbit. Darwin is saying that evolution is the secondary cause by which God created the diversity of life on the planet. Similarly, for theists chemistry would be the secondary cause by which God created life from non-life. No "miracle" or direct manufacture of cells. Chemistry is sufficient as a material cause. Now, you should go back and read the Fontispiece in Origin.

So are biologists. This is because much of physics is deterministic, whereas biology deals with populations of individuals: individuals that vary between themselves. Therefore the deterministic equations that works for physics do NOT work for biology. Biology deals with probabilistic outcomes, not deterministic ones. Of course, this means that your desire to turn biology into engineering/physics is doomed. Simply because you don't understand the fundamental differences in the subject matter. I would say that the reason there is so much memorization is that evolution is not emphasized enough or taught enough. As Dobzhansky noted, evolution is the central organizing principle of biology. Without it you are left with unrelated facts. Yes, he does. Evolution. Chemistry. And there are mathematical (altho complicated) models for everything from protein folding to ecological systems. So NOW we know why you did this: not to explain data but because you are lazy. You simply ignored the basic difference between biology and engineering/physics and tried to make biology into engineering for your convenience! No wonder it's such a flawed theory. Your expections are a bit too high. I would think that a BS should be able to do your first list: "-how to make a 1:10 dilution -serial dilutions -to manually calculate the viable cell count from a hemocytometer -significant digits/reporting results to scientific form (X.XXe+0X) -to make it a common practice to properly label the value (90.6+e08 µL...say what?)" The second list is too high: "-inability to properly use a serological pipette, pipet-aid, or other common instruments -aseptic techniques -importance of proper documentation -understanding of cGMP, cGTP, and clean room regulations and standards" Most schools aren't going to do bench work for cell culture or necessarily involve experiments with a pipet-aid or the regulations and standards. These are taught in Ph.D. courses, not the master's courses. And they are learned in the lab as you do them. Many/most master's programs do not require lab bench work. You're going to have to train them, just as I do.

Doesn't anyone know how to do a simple Google search? http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/05/shannon_entropy.html http://www.citeulike.org/user/zono/article/769969 In this paper the Shannon entropy of several species was ~1 http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/Research/publications/schmidt1997 Get the paper and it will give you the Shannon entropy of the Epstein-Barr virus.

Smith started out as an aeronautical engineeer but went back to school for training in genetics. Therefore I would have thought that you would not count him. It remains to be seen how important Vincent's contributions are going to be. The cancer people I know haven't taken his work seriously, and I see that it hasn't been published in the main cancer journals. Pioneer, forget the analogy. First you have to demonstrate the assertion before you try to make an analogy of it. What exactly do you mean by that first sentence? What "final affect"? Some DNA has no use. Pseudogenes are not expressed and they do not serve as control regions. Someday they may have a use again, but right now they don't contribute to the phenotype of the organism. DUH! The term you want is "expressed". The difference between phenotypes are the genes expressed. As you noted, the repressed genes are not acting AT ALL! No "potential" of bone cell differentiation because the bone cells don't use them. The reason the unexpressed genes are not "cut out" is because there is no cellular mechanism to do so. Why? Because the energy needed to code for specific proteins to cut out specific sequences in EACH of the 200 or more differentiated phenotypes in the human body is greater than the energy to simply repress expression and keep the sequences in place. Also remember that those excising proteins would have to be actively suppressed in all but the intended differentiated cell. The benefit isn't worth the cost. Please be more specific. What do you consider a "professional" system? What does engineering do that biology does not?

Maybe that is what the proposed "bubble" universes and multiverses are for:-) Shoot, maybe our universe is one of the backups!

Then SFN needs to change its opinion. The problem is not with God, but science. Science, by its methodology, simply cannot detect God WITHIN "natural causality". This is called Methodological Naturalism and arises from how we do science. Science detects causality by comparing experiments where we know the entity is present to those where we know the entity is absent. For instance, we explore the causal agents for the production of water by looking at hydrogen, oxygen, and a spark. So, we set up chambers (experiments) where we have: 1. Hydrogen alone 2. Oxygen alone 3. Oxygen and hydrogen 4. A vacuum but an electrical spark. 5. Hydrogen + spark 6. Oxygen + spark 7. Hydrogen + oxygen + spark What we get from all this is that hydrogen, oxygen, and a spark are the material agents/causes necessary for water formation. BUT, is God also necessary. How can we test for that? We would have to have 2 chambers: one where we knew God was present and one where we knew God was absent. We can't do that. So, are the causal agents for water formation hydrogen + oxygen + spark + God? We don't know and can't find out. Not God's problem, but science's. Science is limited to looking at only material causes and is completely clueless as to whether, or not, there are other than material causes. God gets into science by the backdoor in that people propose a material cause by which God works. Such as causing a material world-wide Flood to cause geology. Or directly manufacturing irreducibly complex structures. We then test the material cause. Notice we don't test God. So, if you hypothesize, like Darwin quoted in the Fontispiece to Origin of Species, that all "natural" causes depend on God having them take place, then God is indispensable but undetectable. BTW, the original formulation of unicorn can be, and has been, falsified. Remember, unicorns were material, horse-sized animals that lived in Europe. Well, we've searched all of Europe and no material horse-sized animals that are unicorns. Unicorns falsified. The problem is that, due to Methodological Materialism, science can't do the same search for God. For people who claim God has shown Himself or communicated, then they don't have your idea of "faith without proof", do they? Would you say the Hebrews watching the Parting of the Red Sea had "faith without proof"? Or Doubting Thomas? Or even Saul of Tarsus with his experience on the road to Damascus? The difference, Phil, is that God has not shown Himself to YOU. Therefore, you would have to have "faith without proof" -- altho if you trusted that the accounts were accurate you would have "faith with evidence". I think the issue isn't whether God is subject ot natural causation, but whether natural causation is due to God. I will stick to my claim that God is unobservable due to limitations of science, not choice by God (altho there may be an element of that, too). Can you break this down to more everyday English, please? What specifically is "apophatic" and "theophanic manifestation"? How exactly is there a distinction between Orthodox and Catholic and Protestantism? Thank you.

Foodchain, then please do some research. Timothy Ferris' The Whole Shebang would be a good place to start. Let me see if I can help. In large numbers, QM is regular and produces regular results. At the level of the individual quantum particle, then things get random. For instance, take any amount of C14 atoms. ALWAYS 1/2 of them will decay in ~5,200 years. That's the regular part. When you look at each individual C14 atom, you have no idea when or why it is going to decay! Will it be a second from now or will it be a million years from now? What makes it different from the C14 atom next to it that will decay at a different time? However, you ALWAYS know that 1/2 of C14 atoms will decay in a half-life. So, the regularity of QM events and the regular probabilisitic behavior gives many of the "laws" of physics we see at the macro level. Does that help your confusion? Of course, then there is the discontinuity between Relativity and QM. Relativity -- motion and gravity and spacetime -- are not quantized (yet). We have 2 separate realms/theories of physics that are not united. You are just going to have to live with having QM explain the very small while Relativity explains the rest and the two of them don't match. What you appear to want is how to quietly go from the QM level to the macro level. What happens is that the QM effects get so small that we don't notice them. For instance, you and I do have a wave function of location. But because of our size the wave function of where we can be is smaller than the diameter of an atom. So that doesn't mean anything at our size. Now, there are systems where you can contrive to get the quantum level to the macro level that we can see. Bose-Einstein condensates of atoms do that. You get masses of atoms to behave as tho they are are just one atom. You can actually see the probability waves! No, they aren't "busting up". One thing a scientist learns very quickly in his/her training, however, is to live with unanswered questions. No, we have no consensus on the deep reality of gravity or on what constitutes the "dark energy" that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. We simply live with that unanswered question. Don't force an answer. By that I mean don't want an answer so badly that you try to make one and insist it be right. Just live with the unanswered question and be patient.

I've done papers in physical chemistry and theoretical biology where equations were used. We submitted in Times New Roman. I don't think I've seen a font requirement in biology, just a size requirement. So I suppose you could submit in any font if you wished. What the journal will typeset the paper into later is, of course, up to them. I could be specific in review, but that would mean we would be doing the peer-reviewing here. Convincing us is not your goal; you want to convince the physics community. So send it in and see what happens. The only thing I would say is that a "qualitative model" needs to produce some results that other models do not. Othwerwise, what good is it? For any specific set of data points, there are a near infinite number of theories that can be constructed to explain the data. The only way you can tell whether one theory is accurate is that if it predicts data the other theories don't. I didn't see that in my browse of your paper. Perhaps I missed it. I did note that your yttrium barium copper oxide on page 16 should be YBaCuO, not the "YBCO" that you had. You have yttrium boron carbon oxide.

The source says differently. It is a .edu site: an academic institution with a physicist talking. You are going to have to do better than simple denial. No, we don't. Your example from class is flawed because you were supposed to know an already tested and accepted theory. http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Services/Class/PHYS480/qm_PDF/chp10.pdf Not distinguish between 2 different proposed theories. Yes, you "missed the point" because you didn't know the equations that were already out there for relativistic quantum mechanics. But, in trying to evaluate the accuracy or truth of 2 theories, we absolutely do NOT think the simpler is correct. This is particularly true in biology because natural selection -- because it is unable to subtract information -- makes things extremely complex. Selecting theories on simplicity ends up, more often than not, in being wrong. I have a Sid Harris science cartoon I use in my Philosophy of Science lecture whose caption has a quote from Dirac: "It is more important that an equation be beautiful than that it correspond to experiment." Dirac was wrong. I didn't say it wasn't "elegant", I said it was not the simplest equation. The math is much more complicated. Now you are taking my point: use Feynman's equations because that is what the electron actually does, even tho they are not simple. Some entities that can't be detected are allowed while others are not. It's complicated so try to stay with me. IF the entity can't be detected due to limitations of science or of the technology, then that is allowed. This is what initially happened with the rolled up dimensions in M theory -- the instrumentation was too crude to detect it. It is what also happens if you postulate that a deity influences evolution be introducing specific mutations. The background of random mutations is so high that, if a deity introduced a few particular mutations to drive evolution toward a specific goal, we wouldn't be able to detect that interference. BTW, ID can be, and has been falsified. ID isn't just that an intelligent designer used evolution to create. That's theistic evolution. Instead, ID is that some things must have been directly manufactured by an intelligent entity: irreducibly complex structures, complex specified information, whole species, etc. So, that's one form of can't be detected: our tools simply won't pick it up but theoretically it does have an effect that could be detected. The second form of "not detected" is an ad hoc hypothesis that has no other effect than keeping the hypothesis from being falsified. That is what the "aether" you are talking about is. Lorentz's aether did nothing but shorten the length by just the right amount so that the speed of light would measure the same in all directions. It has no other effect in the universe. And, as one of the sources I posted pointed out, even this doesn't work because it should be detectable. Another ad hoc hypothesis (or series of them) are the mechanisms by which creationists propose that fossils were sorted by the Flood such that they form a series that mimics evolution. Each mechanism, by itself, has refutations, but the ad hoc hypothesis is put out that there are exceptions to the process. Exceptions that give us exactly what we see but that have no other effect. Yes, your original statement was "Physicists do evaluate theories in part based on simplicity." Evaluate = decide which is valid. I wouldn't prefer either. I'd wait for data to establish which is correct. And from the sites I have found, LET and SR are not "indistinguishable" in their results. I submit again that you are confusing "prefer" with accurate. When you get to deciding what the universe is based on what you prefer, you are violating the basic principles of scientific methodology: "...what we learned in school about the scientific method can be reduced to two basic principles. "1. All our theory, ideas, preconceptions, instincts, and prejudices about how things logically ought to be, how they in all fairness ought to be, or how we would prefer them to be, must be tested against external reality --what they *really* are. How do we determine what they really are? Through direct experience of the universe itself." Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pg. 38.

It's not about defining "human life", but defining what the "prolife" position is. You call yourself prolife. You've taken that label to describe your position. However, your position doesn't correspond to what the prolife position is: prolife states that the fertilized ovum is a "human being". Since you disagree with that, you aren't prolife. Pick another label. I don't agree with prolifers that a fertilized ovum is a "human being" in the ethical and legal sense of the term. Therefore I'm not prolife either.

1. It is standard theology to separate God and Creation. Creation is the result of action by God. 2. I don't see how "supernatural" blurs the distinction. Instead it makes the distinction if done properly. Creation is "nature", God is "supernature". I might see your point if you were thinking of things like ghosts in the category "supernature". 3. If you do not use "supernatural" to distinguish God from Creation, what term do you use? I would think that eliminating "supernatural" would lead to pantheism or panentheism. After all, if everything is "natural", then God is part of Creation, not distinguished from it.

Just one instance where your physics is in error: the earth moves around the sun in an ellipse, not an "egg shape". The movement does NOT = projecting light. The earth would reflect sunlight if it were standing still. In looking at new ideas/theories, it is ALWAYS helpful to look at what people have thought before. Because it is very probable that someone has either 1) thought the same thing and found it wrong or 2) found some data that will show the idea to be wrong. Refusing to see what is already known is simply refusing to try to do what you should do in science: show your idea to be wrong.

If you mean that the universe changed from an earlier form into what we see now, then that is established. Remember, the universe started as a small, very hot volume of spacetime. So hot that there was no matter, only energy. It was only later that matter appeared in a phase transition. Also, looking backward in time to distant objects, it is clear that the early universe was different than what we see now. We don't see any quasars near us, for instance. Instead, quasars existed in the early universe. No. The changes you are thinking of took place at levels and interactions higher than quantum mechanics. For instance, the QM for molecules is the same for amino acids as for proteins. However, life itself came from interactions between proteins. Please don't do that. It is just confusing and inaccurate. Natural selection is very precisely defined. Also, natural selection is limited to those systems that satisfy the requirements necessary for natural selection to occur. Your "broad meaning" takes natural selection to systems where it does not apply. No. To have natural selection you need a population, variation, and selection. The reality of physics doesn't work that way. States of matter and energy are determined by QM without a selection process. What you seem to be doing is what a lot of people try to do: insert "intelligence" somewhere into the process. You apparently can't accept that the processes themselves will yield what we see. So you try to insert some "direction" to this. Some people do this by postulating direct action by deity. You are doing it by trying to make the universe itself be an intelligent entity. Then please remember what you are doing and not react negatively when they test the idea scientifically -- trying to show it to be wrong. And finding problems that do show the idea to be mistaken. Just shrug your shoulders, smile, and accept that the idea doesn't work.

Uh, not really. That still means the universe has boundaries; it just means the universe is "closed". The idea that ghosts are in the "fourth dimension" doesn't work, because WE are in the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is time. We live in a 4-dimensional spacetime. Three dimensions of space and one of time. I would say that theology doesn't need god-of-the-gaps either! See quote at end of post. You seem to be separating God from the "natural". That is, where there is 'natural' there is not God. That's god-of-the-gaps. Strictly speaking as science, we cannot say that natural = without God. Yeah. That idea fell apart when it was discovered that the quantum possibilities collapsed whether they were observed or not. Sorry, but Schroedinger's Cat does not stay both dead and alive. At some point -- without observation -- it is either dead OR alive, but not both. "There are profound biblical objections to such a "God-of-the-gaps," as this understanding of God's relation to the universe has come to be called. By "gap" it is meant that no member or members of the universe can be found to account for regularly occurring phenomana in nature. God is inserted in the gaps which could be occupied by members of the universe. This is theologically improper because God, as creator of the universe, is not a member of the universe. God can never properly be used in scientific accounts, which are formulated in terms of the relations between members of the universe, because that would reduce God to the status of a creature. According to a Christian conception of God as creator of a universe that is rational through and through, there are no missing relations between the members of nature. If, in our study of nature, we run into what seems to be an instance of a connection missing between members of nature, the Christian doctrine of creation implies that we should keep looking for one. ...But, according to the doctrine of creation, we are never to postulate God as the *immediate* cause of any *regular* [emphases in original] occurrence in nature. In time, a "God of the gaps" was seen to be bad science as well as bad theology. Science now is programamatically committed to a view of nature in which there are no gaps between members of the universe." Diogenes Allen, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World, pp. 45-46.

Macrophages are fused monocytes. Macrophages are multinuclear cells and arise from the precursor monocytes. M-CSF is a mitogen for monocytes. That is, it causes them to divide (proliferate) and increases their number. I worked at Argonne for 6 months as an undergraduate. The "government" has nothing to do with it! There has been some fantastic work come out of Argonne (one paper with my name on it ) We are dealing with this specific paper, not the institution where it was produced. I would note that a lot worse work comes out of small companies. Pioneer, will you please stop trying to pass off your "theory" as fact? It's not. We've shown the fallacies of this idea several times. BTW, what are "transition cells"? Oh good grief. Please stop trying to make up your own nonsensical terms. Or is your aim to confuse people about what the science really is? The correct way to say this is that stem cells respond to inductive factors that bind to specific receptors on the cell membrane. Those receptors, in turn, activate specific signalling pathways that translate the signal to the nulceus. The end result is to specifically turn some genes on and other genes off by means of transcription factors. Once high level control genes are turned on (such as Sox-9 or sonic hedgehog), the proteins made from those genes then bind to other control sites on the DNA to cause the expression of still other genes. For instance, Sox-9 controls the expression of type II collagen and proteoglycan core protein in differentiating chondrocytes. Synthesis of type II collagen and PG core protein is a major component of making a chondrocyte be a chondrocyte. Uh, they already do this in making embryonic stem cells! BTW, the prolife people still insist that the resulting blastocyst is "human". You need to research what the position of "prolife" is before you accept the label. However, we are talking about ADULT stem cells here. That's apples and oranges. The f-monocytes of Haberman come from the blood of adults. IOW, they can be found in YOUR blood.

This was the report I posted. What you posted was selective data. What you have is Clifton's data. However, on the main site we find this: "The disagreement among experts, and the dearth of recent statistics, were two of the reasons why an appellate court for the State of Ohio ruled in 2006 that a pair of breed-based dangerous dog laws were unconstitutional. City of Toledo v. Tellings, 5th Dist. No. L-04-1224, 2006-Ohio-975 (Ohio App. 2006). The supreme court of the state accepted this case for review in August 2006 (110 Ohio St.3d 1435). The court of appeals began its analysis by noting: Breed-specific laws were enacted because, in the past, courts and legislatures considered it to be a "well-known fact" that pit bulls are "unpredictable," "vicious" creatures owned only by "drug dealers, dog fighters, gang members," or other undesirable members of society. [Citing State v. Anderson (1991), 57 Ohio St.3d 168.] ... As scientific information advances and becomes available, courts have a duty to reconsider issues and make decisions which are supported by the actual evidence presented, instead of relying on "common knowledge" and opinion generated by newspaper sensationalism and hearsay, rather than accurate, scientific evidence. [Par.] As the evidence presented in this case demonstrates, previous cases involving "vicious dog" laws, especially from the late 1980's and early 1990's, relied on what is now outdated information which perpetuated a stereotypical image of pit bulls. ... The trial court noted that all the animal behaviorists from both parties testified that a pit bull, trained and properly socialized like other dogs, would not exhibit any more dangerous characteristics than any other breed of dog. After considering all the evidence before it, the trial court agreed, finding that pit bulls, as a breed, are not more dangerous than other breeds." The court then stated that, Our review of the record reveals no current statistics since 1996 were presented to support the notion that pit bulls have continued to be involved in a "disproportionate number" of attacks or fatalities. In our view, despite its own factual finding to the contrary, the trial court improperly relied on an outdated, irrelevant, and inadmissible source of factual information to revive the "vicious" pit bull sentiment and justify the finding that the statutes and ordinance are constitutional." http://www.dogbitelaw.com/Dog%20Attacks%201982%20to%202006%20Clifton.pdf Now, we have some trouble with the data. From the paper: "Compiled by the editor of ANIMAL PEOPLE from press accounts since 1982, this table covers only attacks by dogs of clearly identified breed type or ancestry, as designated by animal control officers or others with evident expertise, who have been kept as pets. Due to the exclusion of dogs whose breed type whose breed type may be uncertain, this is by no means a complete list of fatal and otherwise serious dog attacks." Again, we aren't given the total number of attacks to determine how many unknowns there are. The statistics are skewed toward "bodily harm" and thus the larger breeds of dogs. As Clifton notes: "If almost any other dog has a bad moment, someone may get bitten, but will not be maimed for life or killed, and the actuarial risk is accordingly reasonable. If a pit bull terrier or a Rottweiler has a bad moment, often someone is maimed or killed" So, other breeds may attack humans more, but they don't do as much damage and aren't reflected in the Clifton study. Selective data. Actually, the assumption that the majority of pitbull owners train their dogs to fight is not necessary. Yes, you have 2209 attacks doing bodily harm. How many dogs are there? How many pit bulls? If there are 100,000 pit bulls (at one per owner), then only 1% of the owners would be training them to attack to satisfy the hypothesis that the danger from pit bulls comes mostly from training rather than breeding. Now, since pit bulls ARE used in dog fighting and now have a reputation for fighting, having 1% of owners train them for fighting is not an unreasonable hypothesis. As it turns out there are 4.8 million pit bulls. So, to have 1,000 pit bull attacks, you only have to have 0.02% if owners to be bad. That's a very small percentage.

I love how you always go to ad hominem! Instead of just addressing the point, you try to belittle me as a scientist. Sorry, SkepticLance, but you are being "naughty". You are applying a new hypothesis: that the distribution of the unkowns will follow the knowns. That is what you call "probability". But you don't know this. So you can't try to pass your hypothesis off as supported and as "fact". As you said: "This cannot be guaranteed, but simple logic suggests that it is most probable. The reason some breeds are 'unknown' is simply that they were not identified. This will not very likely change the overall picture, and you know it." Right, the breed was unidentified. That's the whole point! You have no idea whether there is bias in identifying breeds or that people are more likely to recognize certain breeds over others. So your statmeent "This will not very likely change the overall picture" is completely unsupported! Now, you would have been justified IF the "unknowns" had been much less than the knowns. Say the unknowns had been only 20. Even IF all the unknowns had turned out to be Rottweiler's, that would not have changed the data. However, with the total unknowns outnumbering the knowns, this is not the case. The percentage of known attacks that are pit bulls is about 25% and the percentage for rottweilers is 17%. So, if those percentages are simply reversed for the unknowns, then rottweiler's become #1. That's not a big change. Do some thinking, SkepticLance, and please stop being dogmatic about your position. LOOK at the data skeptically. Scientists do. You don't. Live up to your name. They do have more attacks. No, that is what we are discussing. Is it the breeding or the training? The statistics don't tell you which hypothesis is correct. The data doesn't tell you whether the dogs that did the attacking had been trained for violence. One thing we would need to look at is number of dogs vs number of attacks. IOW, what percentage of pit bulls participate in attacks. If you are correct and it is breeding, that percentage should be fairly high. If training is more correct, the percentage will be low. So, do we have any data on total number of pit bulls during that time period?