6 days Creation

[Enoch2021]

3 hours ago, Zoltan777 said:

Oh dear!

Shall I believe in theories and anomalies or my eyes?

So you "quote" my ENTIRE Post, utterly PUMMELING the Fairytale Spinning-Ball Religion, and this is your response.  

Why did you quote the whole post and not speak to a Whisper of It?

You could have "quoted" Beethoven's 9th or posted a Beaver Dam... it would have had the same relevance.

I don't get it, can you explain it to me...?

Then, and I know this is asking waaay too much but... can you post something of substance regarding anything I actually wrote...? 

 

Thanks

[Tristen]

11 hours ago, Tristen said:

There was a nearly 10-fold divergence from what they expected to observe in typical telomeres - attributed to "a high rate of change"; prompting them to ask, " If the fusion occurred within the telomeric repeat arrays less than ∼6 Mya, why are the arrays at the fusion site so degenerate?"

 

11 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Ok, so let's just say it diverged more than expected, how is that evidence that it didn't occur? Tomkins' own research shows sequence similarities between 45% and 50% to the highly repeated telomere sequence, which is quite high, as far as DNA sequence comparisons go.

 

I forgot to mention this earlier about radiometric dating. What you may have noticed as you collected your examples of inconsistencies is that they are all rather outdated. The precision and accuracy of dating have improved (as one would expect) since those anomalies 40-50 years ago.

Hi One,

“Ok, so let's just say it diverged more than expected, how is that evidence that it didn't occur?”

The point is, this find was originally proclaimed irrefutable evidence for common ape ancestry; claiming a chromosome fusion using low-resolution molecular technologies. But the more we’ve looked at the evidence over time, with improving technologies, the less support we find for a fusion at all.

In reality, even if a fusion occurred, it doesn’t undermine creationism, because the presented facts would only indicate that it occurred in humans. So humans once having the same amount of chromosomes as chimps doesn’t contribute anything new to the evolution debate; i.e. similar creatures filling similar niches have similar DNA and morphologies. That can be interpreted as either inheritance from a common ancestor or design.

But the overall point is that the facts interpreted to support a fusion have been increasingly undermined by applications of new technology. And so such high levels of confidence expressed in the claims, as though irrefutable, are unjustified.

 

“Tomkins' own research shows sequence similarities between 45% and 50% to the highly repeated telomere sequence, which is quite high, as far as DNA sequence comparisons go.”

Humans share 50% sequence similarity with bananas. It’s really not that high. But I couldn’t find this claim in the paper (found here: http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j25_2/j25_2_111-117.pdf ).

Tolemeres are comprised of thousands of specific, 6-base, tandem repeats. If telomeres fuse, there should be thousands of these on one side of the fusion site, and thousands of the reverse compliment sequence on the other side. They found 34 and 136 respectively; and primarily monomers (i.e. with large amounts of other DNA between them – and therefore not tandem). They further found over 90,000 of these motives across the entirety of the chromosome, so their density (or lack of) around the fusion site is underwhelming. There is no justification in this data for alleging this region to be a fusion site at all. It was a fair speculation considering the observations using older technologies, but that is no longer the case.

 

“I forgot to mention this earlier about radiometric dating. What you may have noticed as you collected your examples of inconsistencies is that they are all rather outdated. The precision and accuracy of dating have improved (as one would expect) since those anomalies 40-50 years ago.”

This misses the point. The problem is with the assumptions of the modelling, not the accuracy of the technology. The models can only calculate trustworthy “ages” if they know the original conditions of the tested samples. Even without further consideration, these conditions are logically unverifiable. But my examples provided empirical evidence that this assumption cannot be trusted. Since a foundational assumption cannot be trusted, even if all the “dates” agreed (as many seem to believe), how could we know which “dates” are accurate, and which are corrupted? There is no empirical way to distinguish between them – aside from simply choosing to believe those “dates” that conform to your presupposition.  Which is all to say - that the popular high confidence expressed in secular dating methods does not survive logical scrutiny.

The age of the research does not change the chemical levels found in the rocks. If you think the research I pointed to is flawed, or in some way undermined by use of older technology, I’d be happy to consider your argument. I used older papers because I find them more honest (as they were not being careful to avoid creationist implications), and because they show that these assumptions have been known to be flawed for decades – despite that information not filtering through to the public perception.

 

[one.opinion]

4 minutes ago, Tristen said:

Humans share 50% sequence similarity with bananas. It’s really not that high.

This is not correct. When looking at long stretches of DNA (several hundreds of nucleotides), 30% sequence similarity is a conservatively low percentage for establishing homology. When sequence identity reaches 40%, researchers are definitely observing related sequences. So the 45-50% is a very high homology. The 50% sequence similarity with bananas looks exclusively and DNA sequences involved directly for coding amino acids in a protein chain. Sequence similarities genome wide are much, much smaller. For example, comparing entire genomes between humans and opossums yields only 11% identity. Trust me, the 45-50% homology is indeed significant. (If you've been told that 50% sequence similarity between bananas and humans, that is yet another example widely-distributed misinformation in the YEC community) The 34 and 136 numbers refer to completely intact TTAGGG sequences. A mutation in any one of the 6 nucleotides and it is "out of the running" for surviving telomere repeats. Over millions of years without selective pressure to maintain the same sequence, it is unsurprising that yes, the sequence did degenerate.

 

38 minutes ago, Tristen said:

They further found over 90,000 of these motives across the entirety of the chromosome

Let's take a look at the math here and see if this is surprising. If a DNA sequence is completely random, there is a 1/4 chance of each possible nucleotide at each position. We can mathematically predict the frequency of a longer sequence occurring using simple multiplication. For a TTAGGG sequence, we would assign 1/4 for the first T, then 1/4 for the next, 1/4 for the A, and so on, giving us (1/4)^6 (or 1/4,096) for the length of the sequence. In other words, a TTAGGG sequence would be found every 4,096 nucleotides, on average, in a random DNA sequence. The human chromosome 2 is roughly 240,000,000 base pairs long. So if we search up and down both strands of the chromosome, we could divide 480,000,000 by 4,096 to determine how often we could expect to find the TTAGGG sequence (or any other 6 nucleotide sequence) on chromosome 2. I think you can see where this is going, but let's go ahead and finish the math. Lo and behold, we get a quotient of 117,187.5. So what Tomkins has shown is that the abundance of TTAGGG sequences on chromosome 2 is actually 23% less than would be predicted in completely random DNA sequence. Clearly, this is not the dramatic figure Tomkins attempts to portray in his paper. The reason scientists are confident in the veracity of the fusion point is the high preponderance of TTAGGG sequences and near-matches in a predictable spot. Tomkins claims that small clusters of TTAGGG sequences were observed elsewhere but doesn't elect to show this. This seems most curious to me... Almost as though he would be attempting to mislead readers into seeing a big number and assuming it must be meaningful...

[Tristen]

13 hours ago, Kevinb said:

 

16 hours ago, Tristen said:

 

16 hours ago, one.opinion said:

 

Duplicated post deleted

[Tristen]

13 hours ago, Kevinb said:

You are still asserting it though. What you're saying is it's designed..intelligently I presume...designed because it looks designed..presumably like a car for example?

Kevin,

“You are still asserting it though”

What I am asserting is that there is more than one logical way to interpret functional traits; 1) As fortunate, random mutations inherited through an ancestor in common with those sharing the same (or similar) traits, or 2) That the traits are designed for purpose.

 

“What you're saying is it's designed..intelligently I presume...designed because it looks designed..presumably like a car for example?”

We were talking about fins – which are not like cars. But yes, my creationist position, self-evidently, is that life is designed by the Creator.

 

“This can be considered an equivocation fallacy...an argument from ignorance or incredulity...pick one or all”

You’ll have to justify these accusations, because I don’t see how interpreting the facts to fit design employs any of these fallacies.

 

“Please demonstrate a supernatural being did it breaking the laws of physics and biology.”

I think a fin is a fin and you think a fin is a vestigial leg. You haven’t "demonstrated" the fin’s vestigiality at all, just interpreted its existence in a manner that conforms to your preferred world-view.

 

“I'm glad you admit later you can't as it's a position of faith and the supernatural can not be investigated”

I did not say anything “can not be investigated”. What I argued is that the same indirect methodology is used to investigate claims of supernatural, as is used to investigate claims of unobserved history. In both cases, the same logical departure from the scientific method is required because the claims themselves cannot be naturally observed. Current facts interpreted to support the model are considered to evidence the unobserved claims. But ultimately, any confidence in either a supernatural or past claim, requires an application of faith (or else commits the fallacy, Affirming the Consequent).

 

“I've been giving evidence of evolution but you reject it as it contradicts your faith”

This is actual equivocation of your challenge. You challenged me to “demonstrate” God designing. That is like me asking you to demonstrate the common ancestor. What you have been “giving” is facts which you have interpreted to support the secular evolution model (which incorporates a common ancestor). But that’s not the same level of specificity you are requiring from me.

I have not rejected anything. I have subjected your claims to scrutiny and found your exclusive confidence in the secular models to be logically unwarranted. I have looked at your evidence, stripped them of interpretation down to the raw facts, then demonstrated interpretations of the very same facts which are consistent with a different paradigm.

 

“The big bang model predicts that cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation should appear in all directions”

This is a clever deception - Using the present tense “predicts” rather than the past tense “predicted”. The Flatness and Horizon problems were both embarrassing for Big Bang advocates for some time. Big Bang theory did not predict universal inflation. But then after a time, an idea was proposed – that for no proposed reason, the early universe inflated at a super-massive speed, then, again, for no proposed reason, slowed down, to get to the accelerating universal expansion we observe today. This inflation was not based on any natural observations, but has become a just-so story because it mathematically accounts for the above-mentioned problems. And is now an indispensable, largely unquestioned component of the Standard Cosmology model.

 

“the big bang has enough supporting evidence behind it that it is likely that new discoveries will add to it, not overthrow it”

Claims of the unobserved past are unfalsifiable. So you can be certain that no fact can "overthrow it". Standard Cosmology is the most popular secular model, but there are several other secular models – some which don’t incorporate a Big Bang. You have not “demonstrated” the Big Bang. You have merely listed some facts which have been interpreted to support the Standard Cosmology model (which incorporates a Big Bang). And you have confidence in the Big Bang, not because the Big Bang can itself  be "demonstrated", but because there is evidence supporting the model that incorporates it.

 

“So otherwise please demonstrate a supernatural being poofed the universe to how we see it?”

- Only with a time machine. The same way we could “demonstrate” the Big Bang and Cosmological Inflation, and the origin of life from non-life, and the evolution of life from a common ancestor.

 

“I know you can't demonstrate the supernatural which you've admitted...i can't throw out this big bang stuff for something that can t be demonstrated”

You are simply preferring one claim that can’t be “demonstrated” over another.

I’m not asking you to throw anything out.

 

“I'd be irrational to do this surely”

There is nothing irrational about giving fair and objective consideration to an alternative viewpoint. What may be irrational is failing to consider the influence of presupposition on your own conclusions, whilst pointing out the same weaknesses in the opposing position (i.e. Special Pleading).

 

“The case I'm learning further the alternative is just to attempt to pick holes in the consensus scientific but not actually demonstrate God claims”

Pointing out the weaknesses of an opposing position is a rationally legitimate strategy – especially in a context where confidence in the opposing position is continually exaggerated beyond what can be logically justified.

 

“Even if x theory is incomplete or has issues it doesn't default the alternative is true... still gotta demonstrate that...especially when we get into invoking supernatural magical things... that defy the laws of nature... that's a massive claim.. the evidence for me then has gotta be equally impressive”

If we are being consistent, all claims about the origins of the universe are massive. Requiring natural observations of claims which cannot possibly be observed is both irrational (be it past or supernatural claims) and unreasonable.

 

“Re dover. If you search.... the collapse of intelligent design- ken Miller lecture. You'll find it. I do recommend you watch out of interest...many points and motivations come to light. I didn't know this stuff was going on in the US till recently.. was shocked to see.”

I am currently studying full time and am generally time poor. Whilst I am more than happy to consider any issues you wish to raise, I am generally reluctant to chase down the arguments of those I’m not engaging with.

 

“Culturally it's so different and more religious there than the UK. Did I see you were Australian?”

Yes, I’m Australian.

 

“I've been arguing for the untruth but I've seen little for the truth in what you said”

I was brought up secular – so I understand the level of confidence placed in secular models as the only valid perspective. How many times have you tried to tell me that the secular perspective doesn’t use faith the way religion does? I therefore have to encourage you to a position where you are prepared to consider the possibility of another perspective being valid before there is any point to providing facts supporting Biblical creation.

The creationist position is that every fact which has been interpreted to support the secular position can be, both individually and collectively, interpreted to support the Biblical model. But if I present a fact that I interpret to support my preferred model, you will just default to the secular interpretation of that fact and assume I’m just being religiously inflexible by not accepting your preferred interpretation.

So my first goal is to demonstrate the claim that the facts can be applied to the Biblical model with equal validity as they are applied to secular models. The most efficient way to accomplish this is for you to give examples of facts which you think can only be interpreted to support your position, and for me to scrutinise the logic leading to that interpretation; thereby demonstrating, a) the influence of presupposition influencing your interpretation (by separating the objective facts from the subjective interpretations), and b) that there is another way to interpret the very same facts.

 

“What's the best argument for the truth?”

One argument for God’s existence is that every available fact can be interpreted to be consistent with the Biblical model of reality which incorporates the existence of God. The model can therefore be considered reliable, and as such, faith in an untestable/unobservable claim made by the model is rational (i.e. not blind faith).

 

 

[Tristen]

4 hours ago, one.opinion said:

This is not correct. When looking at long stretches of DNA (several hundreds of nucleotides), 30% sequence similarity is a conservatively low percentage for establishing homology. When sequence identity reaches 40%, researchers are definitely observing related sequences. So the 45-50% is a very high homology. The 50% sequence similarity with bananas looks exclusively and DNA sequences involved directly for coding amino acids in a protein chain. Sequence similarities genome wide are much, much smaller. For example, comparing entire genomes between humans and opossums yields only 11% identity. Trust me, the 45-50% homology is indeed significant. (If you've been told that 50% sequence similarity between bananas and humans, that is yet another example widely-distributed misinformation in the YEC community) The 34 and 136 numbers refer to completely intact TTAGGG sequences. A mutation in any one of the 6 nucleotides and it is "out of the running" for surviving telomere repeats. Over millions of years without selective pressure to maintain the same sequence, it is unsurprising that yes, the sequence did degenerate.

 

Let's take a look at the math here and see if this is surprising. If a DNA sequence is completely random, there is a 1/4 chance of each possible nucleotide at each position. We can mathematically predict the frequency of a longer sequence occurring using simple multiplication. For a TTAGGG sequence, we would assign 1/4 for the first T, then 1/4 for the next, 1/4 for the A, and so on, giving us (1/4)^6 (or 1/4,096) for the length of the sequence. In other words, a TTAGGG sequence would be found every 4,096 nucleotides, on average, in a random DNA sequence. The human chromosome 2 is roughly 240,000,000 base pairs long. So if we search up and down both strands of the chromosome, we could divide 480,000,000 by 4,096 to determine how often we could expect to find the TTAGGG sequence (or any other 6 nucleotide sequence) on chromosome 2. I think you can see where this is going, but let's go ahead and finish the math. Lo and behold, we get a quotient of 117,187.5. So what Tomkins has shown is that the abundance of TTAGGG sequences on chromosome 2 is actually 23% less than would be predicted in completely random DNA sequence. Clearly, this is not the dramatic figure Tomkins attempts to portray in his paper. The reason scientists are confident in the veracity of the fusion point is the high preponderance of TTAGGG sequences and near-matches in a predictable spot. Tomkins claims that small clusters of TTAGGG sequences were observed elsewhere but doesn't elect to show this. This seems most curious to me... Almost as though he would be attempting to mislead readers into seeing a big number and assuming it must be meaningful...

Hey again One,

“If you've been told that 50% sequence similarity between bananas and humans, that is yet another example widely-distributed misinformation in the YEC community”

Seems pernickety. Could it be that I simply remembered the information incorrectly?

 

“The 34 and 136 numbers refer to completely intact TTAGGG sequences. A mutation in any one of the 6 nucleotides and it is "out of the running" for surviving telomere repeats. Over millions of years without selective pressure to maintain the same sequence, it is unsurprising that yes, the sequence did degenerate.”

Telomeres are not just “completely intact TTAGGG sequences”, but thousands of such sequences back –to-back. You are justifying an argument claiming the site is evidence of fused telomeres because it doesn’t resemble fused telomeres. Alternatively, it may not look like fused telomeres because it isn’t fused telomeres. Either way, unequivocal confidence in the fusion is not justified by the facts.

 

“So what Tomkins has shown is that the abundance of TTAGGG sequences on chromosome 2 is actually 23% less than would be predicted in completely random DNA sequence.”

Whilst I disagree with your math, a fused chromosome should have more telomere motives than a normal chromosome (from 4 telomeres rather than 2), not less. Fewer telomere motives in the chromosome than predicted would actually support “Tomkins” position.

 

“The reason scientists are confident in the veracity of the fusion point is the high preponderance of TTAGGG sequences and near-matches in a predictable spot”

This paper found 34(F) and 136(R) mostly monomers explicitly around the alleged fusion site when they should have found thousands of such motives in tandem. I’m not sure what data you are referring to, but I’d be happy to take a look.

 

“Tomkins claims that small clusters of TTAGGG sequences were observed elsewhere but doesn't elect to show this. This seems most curious to me”

Or maybe they figured that the main point of the research was the telomere motives around the putative fusion site – and since the human genome is freely downloadable and searchable, anyone wanting to verify his claim could repeat the experiment at any time. It is common for ancillary data to be left out of journal reports. Some journals (e.g.PNAS) have facilities to make supplemental information available online to save on printed space.

[one.opinion]

Hi Tristen, (or is g'day really a proper salutation?)

Let me start this comment on a different note. I appreciate your willingness to actually converse with me, and I appreciate the considered and thoughtful approach you take to your young earth creationist viewpoint. This is honest and admirable. Let me apologize in general for the occasions when I do get overly grumpy. You called me out on it specifically in your latest post, so I'll apologize directly for that one.

5 hours ago, Tristen said:

“If you've been told that 50% sequence similarity between bananas and humans, that is yet another example widely-distributed misinformation in the YEC community”

Seems pernickety. Could it be that I simply remembered the information incorrectly?

This figure is on display quite a bit on the internet and I've explained why this is very misleading. It is entirely possible that you read this on some site completely separate from the YEC context. However, this is the type of misinformation that is often spread through YEC circles (I've spent close to half of my life in those circles) that is misleading at best, and just plain false at worst. When things like this are spread as fact by the YEC community, it reflects negatively on the entire Christian viewpoint, something we should take great pains to avoid as Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). I apologize for my initial reaction, it should have been made more objectively.

6 hours ago, Tristen said:

Telomeres are not just “completely intact TTAGGG sequences”, but thousands of such sequences back –to-back. You are justifying an argument claiming the site is evidence of fused telomeres because it doesn’t resemble fused telomeres. Alternatively, it may not look like fused telomeres because it isn’t fused telomeres. Either way, unequivocal confidence in the fusion is not justified by the facts.

Intact, functional telomeres are indeed hundreds to thousands of repeated TTAGGG sequences. My argument is that it is unsurprising (and even predicted) that the repeated sequence will have lost fidelity over millions of years. Pause and consider.... millions of years -- that's an incredibly long time for mutations to have altered the sequence. One of the really interesting things about telomeres is that the length is not simply passed down from mom and dad, but a telomerase complex actually builds up the length of these sequences in embryonic cells. The telomerase complex contains an RNA molecule that acts as a template to build new repeat sequences. With a template to guide the synthesis, the repeat sequences are very accurately built. But after a hypothetical fusion event, the telomere sequences are "stranded" and without function, there is no selective pressure to keep the sequence accurate. Thus, mistakes will take place, especially in the time frame consistent with the hypothesis.

 

6 hours ago, Tristen said:

“So what Tomkins has shown is that the abundance of TTAGGG sequences on chromosome 2 is actually 23% less than would be predicted in completely random DNA sequence.”

Whilst I disagree with your math, a fused chromosome should have more telomere motives than a normal chromosome (from 4 telomeres rather than 2), not less. Fewer telomere motives in the chromosome than predicted would actually support “Tomkins” position.

(Before I forget, the word really is "motif", it's commonly used in nucleic acid and popypeptide contexts.)

I'm pretty confident I did the math correctly, but please point out and perceived errors. Tomkins looked at the rest of the human chromosome 2 sequence and counted up all the other TTAGGG sequences (on both strands) that he could find. His claim was "why should TTAGGG (or closely-related sequence) abundance be a big deal? Look and see! There are TTAGGG sequences everywhere in the chromosome". But I have shown why this particular argument is invalid. I'm not saying this invalidates his entire paper, but he spent a great deal of time and effort to collect the data -- which happens to not support his point -- and portrays it like is really is a meaningful point. With all objectiveness, why would he include this in his paper if it really doesn't support what he is trying to get his readers to understand?

6 hours ago, Tristen said:

“Tomkins claims that small clusters of TTAGGG sequences were observed elsewhere but doesn't elect to show this. This seems most curious to me”

Or maybe they figured that the main point of the research was the telomere motives around the putative fusion site – and since the human genome is freely downloadable and searchable, anyone wanting to verify his claim could repeat the experiment at any time. It is common for ancillary data to be left out of journal reports. Some journals (e.g.PNAS) have facilities to make supplemental information available online to save on printed space.

If I were the author of this paper, and I was arguing that the cluster of TTAGGG-like and TTAGGG sequences was meaningless, I would have CERTAINLY included the other clusters to demonstrate my point. Learning to do bioinformatics well is not a short, easy process. I was reasonably proficient at this about 20 years ago, but would have a hard time getting back "into the groove" today. Not anyone could just go to a search engine and ask for "all the TTAGGG clusters on chromosome 2" and have the information dropped into their lap. Which seems all that much more curious why he would not have shared this information with his readers. It is true that many peer-reviewed journals often stash data online instead of in a printed version, this is not the case for "The Journal of Creation". Maybe he would share the data with you if you asked, though.

[Tristen]

9 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Hi Tristen, (or is g'day really a proper salutation?)

Hi One,

“Hi” or “g’day” works. Any English salutation really.

 

“It is entirely possible that you read this on some site completely separate from the YEC context”

I suspect I read it on a YEC site where it was correctly reported, but maybe 5-10 years ago – and so I had forgotten the nuance of the information.

 

“However, this is the type of misinformation that is often spread through YEC circles (I've spent close to half of my life in those circles) that is misleading at best, and just plain false at worst”

I don’t think this is fair minded. The reality is, direct whole genome comparisons have only recently become possible. It was also, until fairly recently, assumed that most of the genome was irrelevant “junk”. All the similarity studies (including those claiming ~80-99% similarity between humans and chimps) were based on small portions of the genome. That nuance is rarely reported (or probably even understood) beyond those reading the journal paper (and even by some of those).

In reality, all percentage-similarity claims are somewhat spurious. If two species share the same gene but one has more variations of that gene, is that a similarity or a difference. If one species has one copy of a gene, and another species has multiple copies of the same gene, is that a similarity or a difference. What about the same gene, but at different locations in the genome, or the same gene coded by different codons etc. How do you quantify those kinds of variations into a percentage?

Overall, this feels to me like you felt as though you thought you’d found a gotcha – something to invalidate my position by pointing out my imperfect knowledge. But really, percentage similarity between humans and bananas is hardly a critical issue in the debate.

 

“When things like this are spread as fact by the YEC community, it reflects negatively on the entire Christian viewpoint, something we should take great pains to avoid as Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)”

On all sides of the debate, there are people with varying degrees of correct information. And not everyone participating in the debate are equally motivated to chase down the data. Christians are not immune, but neither does this kind of misinformation exclusively apply to Christians.

 

“My argument is that it is unsurprising (and even predicted) that the repeated sequence will have lost fidelity over millions of years. Pause and consider.... millions of years -- that's an incredibly long time for mutations to have altered the sequence”

My point is - that the best evidence doesn’t justify the assumption of a fusion at all. It’s only if you feel obligated to the fusion story that you would be compelled to explain why it no longer looks like a telomere. Therefore, based on the best evidence, I am not in any sense obligated to accept the proposed fusion as overwhelmingly supporting a common ancestor between chimps and humans (as is commonly suggested based on this evidence).

 

“But after a hypothetical fusion event”

I appreciate that you are using appropriately hedged language – which is more consistent with the evidence (and more scientific in general).

 

“His claim was "why should TTAGGG (or closely-related sequence) abundance be a big deal? Look and see! There are TTAGGG sequences everywhere in the chromosome". But I have shown why this particular argument is invalid … why would he include this in his paper if it really doesn't support what he is trying to get his readers to understand?”

With the scarcity of tandem telomeric repeats around the proposed telomere fusion site, it is perfectly valid to imply that there is no significant difference observed between the putative fusion site and the rest of the chromosome. And that these same motifs are commonly dispersed throughout the chromosome - so finding a small number around the proposed fusion site not significant.

 

“If I were the author of this paper, and I was arguing that the cluster of TTAGGG-like and TTAGGG sequences was meaningless, I would have CERTAINLY included the other clusters to demonstrate my point”

You would not get published if you tried to report the sequence of the chromosome (which already exists) highlighting the 90,000+ telomere ‘motifs’. The paper has methods, and all the data is freely available. Maybe people ‘off-the-street’ wouldn’t know how to access the information, but anyone with any kind of molecular-based training could figure it out – given the provided information. With the advent of next-gen sequencing technologies, bioinformatics has had to become largely automated (if you can figure out how to install the relevant software on Linux – a much bigger challenge in my experience).

[one.opinion]

Hi Tristen,

3 hours ago, Tristen said:

Overall, this feels to me like you felt as though you thought you’d found a gotcha – something to invalidate my position by pointing out my imperfect knowledge. But really, percentage similarity between humans and bananas is hardly a critical issue in the debate.

 

No, just informing you (and anyone else reading) that the "humans and bananas share 50% of their DNA" argument is incorrect and should not be used. I'm working on the assumption that if you are making an error or reporting an error, you would want me to correct it. Is this not an acceptable assumption?

3 hours ago, Tristen said:

In reality, all percentage-similarity claims are somewhat spurious. If two species share the same gene but one has more variations of that gene, is that a similarity or a difference. If one species has one copy of a gene, and another species has multiple copies of the same gene, is that a similarity or a difference. What about the same gene, but at different locations in the genome, or the same gene coded by different codons etc. How do you quantify those kinds of variations into a percentage?

Honestly, there are slightly different ways to carry out the comparisons and come up with "percent identical" figures. Jeffrey Tomkins has estimated that the percentage similarity is as low as 80%. I have read a scientific explanation (from someone working in this field at a top US university) of mistakes that Tomkins made and why the number is quite a bit higher. But even the conservative 80% number would mean 4/5 nucleotides would be identical between the two genomes. Personally, this seems like a pretty darn good argument for common descent. This is especially true when regions like ERVs that would have no expectation to be similar are often highly similar between the genomes.

 

3 hours ago, Tristen said:

You would not get published if you tried to report the sequence of the chromosome (which already exists) highlighting the 90,000+ telomere ‘motifs’.

Tomkins published this paper in the Journal of Creation and I'm going to guess he isn't attempting to publish this work in a  peer-reviewed journal, so this would not be a concern.

[Enoch2021]

12 hours ago, one.opinion said:

Honestly, there are slightly different ways to carry out the comparisons and come up with "percent identical" figures. Jeffrey Tomkins has estimated that the percentage similarity is as low as 80%. Personally, this seems like a pretty darn good argument for common descent. This is especially true when regions like ERVs that would have no expectation to be similar are often highly similar between the genomes.

Your "Parroting" of this 'Human Chromosome 2 Fusion' is nonsensical and the entire conversation is Utter Buffoonery.

 

Jeffrey P. Tomkins PhD from ICR and/or anyone else for that matter, shouldn't have even entertained (MUCH LESS WRITTEN ON !!) the Complete Argument From Ignorance/Affirming The Consequent/ and Begging The Question Fallacy ("The Triple Crown", congrats!!) to BEGIN WITH !!!!

 

Chromosome 2 Fusion Evidence:  

Synteny -- A term used to describe the state of two or more genes being present on the same chromosome, though not necessarily linked.

http://www.nature.com/scitable /definition/synteny-137

 

Scientific Evidence: The TESTING of a hypothesis or theory that is objective and in a controlled environment.

http://thelawdictionary.org/sc ientific-evidence/

 

So, and I know this gonna sound like "GREEK" to Ya but ... Where's The Formal 'Synteny' Scientific Hypothesis then EXPERIMENT (Hypothesis TEST) that VALIDATES the 'physical evidence' ??

 

And since there are actually TWO Hypotheses in EVERY Experiment--(HYPOTHESIS TEST), Post the Null Hypothesis that was REJECTED/FALSIFIED (!!) ...?    

 

Audience TIP:  Don't hold your breath, cause they...

 

DON'T, NEVER, and NEVER WILL... EXIST!!

 

 

And remember, No Hypothesis ='s No Experiment (Hypothesis TEST) which ='s No "SCIENCE".  

 

So all that's left, like Max Planck said, is: "Poetry and  IMAGINATION "...

 

 

So they look at Genes ("Concrete Nouns" --- No Phenomenon --- Wholesale SKIP The First Step of The Scientific Method ) make a 'comparison' then conjure up a "Just-So" Story then ask us to DISPROVE IT ??  Ha ha...

 

It's the Acme of Foolishness to even attempt to disprove a complete Argument from Ignorance Fallacy, Sherlock.

 

Do you find it 'Scientific' or 'Logical' to imagine things, THEN have other people attempt to Disprove your imaginings BEFORE you give Scientific Evidence of your Imaginings...?

 

 

This is tantamount to claiming that Invisible 3 Toed Gnomes throwing Pixie Dust in a black hole behind the Crab Nebula are responsible for creating dark matter; then you ask us to DISPROVE IT, if not...Therefore, your claim is TRUE.

 

 

 

 

All this Nonsensical Buffoonery "Chromosome 2 Fusion", is just another fiasco in the never ending Post Hoc 'Observation' Parade of re-packaged evolution Fallacies: Vestigial Structures, ERV's, Junk DNA (lol, btw), Ring species, Fossils, Punctuated Equilibrium, Piltdown Man, Lenski's E coli , To establish:

 

"Universal Common Decent"

or

"The Tree of Life"

 

 

1. If ancestry is not assumed from similarities, then there is no correlation between similarities and ancestry; Ergo, to make the argument you need to make that "assumption". So right from "Jump Street", you're assuming the very thing you're attempting to prove... that ='s a TEXTBOOK: Begging The Question Fallacy.

 

 

2.  Then, they ALL take this Form:

TEXTBOOK...Affirming The Consequent (Formal Logical Fallacy) --- 

http://www.logicalfa...the-con sequent/
 
If P then Q.
Q.
Therefore P.
 

1. IF evolution is true "P": then Insert any "Darwinian Grab-Bag" Post-Hoc Observations (Fossils/Homology /Similarity/Genetic Variation et al) "Q".

2. We observe (Post Hoc Observation) "Q".
3. Therefore, Evolution is true. "Therefore P".

Or...

 

If Common Ancestry is True (P) we will Observe Similarities (Q).

We Observe Similarities (Q).
Therefore, Common Ancestry is True (Therefore, P).

The logical fallacy is that "P" doesn't necessarily follow from "Q". 
 

e.g.,
 

1)  If I had just eaten a whole pizza (P), I would feel very full (Q);

2)  I feel very full (Q);

3.) Therefore: I have just eaten a whole pizza (Therefore, P).

 
Couldn't I have eaten a 20 ounce Ribeye with Fries or the ole 96'er (!!!) ? 

 

 

Let's put this quackery out of it's misery QUICK!!! ...

 

Dr. Craig Venter (atheist, evolutionist); The Grand Poobah of Geneticists, The Geneticists of Geneticists... 

 

"There is no tree of life...it's an artifact from early scientific studies that aren't holding up...

 

"So THERE IS NOT A TREE OF LIFE."

Craig Venter PhD Geneticist (NIH, Celera Genomics); Arizona State Origins Project; 12 February 2011 (TIME: 9:14).

 

The Audience Gasped, Dawkins and Krauss turned different shades of GREEN.

 

Ya hear that sound?? ...that's the "Common Descent" Fairytale "Tree" Carousel circling the drain @ Light Speed !!! ("as if" he actually needed to say it.) smh

 

 

Quote

....it's commonly used in nucleic acid and popypeptide contexts.

What's a "popypeptide" ??

 

regards