and also: “Methodological naturalism is an arbitrary rule that never existed previously to 1980.”

If I understand you correctly, you claim that until recently science could legitimately consider non-natural causes for observed phenomena – perhaps not as primary but at least as secondary causes.

Can you please give us some examples where science has in the past invoked non-natural causes (even if only secondary) for observed natural phenomena? Were these explanations successful at the time? If so, how and why have they since been superceded by modern natural explanations?

Thanks,

fG

It’s not a question about who you believe. It is a question about whether you can make reasoned judgments based on evidence. Clearly, the answer is no.

CHROMOSOME STUDY STUNS EVOLUTIONISTS
Excerpt: To their great surprise, Dorit and his associates found no nucleotide differences at all in the non-recombinant part of the Y chromosomes of the 38 men. This non-variation suggests no evolution has occurred in male ancestry. The researchers, apparently committed to Darwinism, back-pedaled by doing statistical analysis on the evolutionary possibilities if the 38 men sampled somehow inaccurately represented the population at large. Based on this analysis, they concluded that men’s forefather – a single individual, not a group – lived no more than 270,00 years ago.

The challenge this study presents to Darwinism is profound. The study of women offered a shred of support for micro-evolution. The Y chromosome research lends no support for micro-evolution. As for macro-evolution, the results of both studies rule out homo erectus (0.5 to 1.5 million years ago) as a possible progenitor of modern humans.4
http://www.reasons.org/interpr.....lutionists

First off Dr. John Sanford, who is by no means a slouch when it comes to genetics (he invented the “gene gun” and pathogen derived resistance) states:

Dr. Sanford calculates it would take 12 million years to “fix” a single base pair mutation into a population. He further calculates that to create a gene with 1000 base pairs, it would take 12 million x 1000 or 12 billion years. This is obviously too slow to support the creation of the human genome containing 3 billion base pairs. http://www.detectingtruth.com/?p=66

Second is that when we remove the biased methodology that materialists have imposed on the “similarity evidence” we find some very interesting things:

The 98.8% similarity derived from the DNA code, to the body plans of chimps and man, is purely imaginary, since it is clearly shown that the overriding “architectural plan” of the body is not even encoded in the DNA in the first place. Of more clarity though, this “98.8% similarity evidence” is derived by materialists from a very biased methodology of presuming that the 1.5% of the genome, which directly codes for proteins, has complete precedence of consideration over the other remaining 98.5% of the genome which does not directly code for proteins. Yet even when considering just this 1.5% of the genome that codes for proteins, we find that the proteins, which are directly coded by that 1.5% of the genome, are shown to differ by a huge 80% difference between chimps and man.

Chimps are not like humans – May 2004
Excerpt: the International Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 Consortium reports that 83% of chimpanzee chromosome 22 proteins are different from their human counterparts,,, The results reported this week showed that “83% of the genes have changed between the human and the chimpanzee—only 17% are identical—so that means that the impression that comes from the 1.2% [sequence] difference is [misleading]. In the case of protein structures, it has a big effect,” Sakaki said. http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/news/0405/119.htm

Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees; Gene; Volume 346, 14 February 2005:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15716009

Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees; Gene; Volume 346, 14 February 2005:
The early genome comparison by DNA hybridization techniques suggested a nucleotide difference of 1-2%. Recently, direct nucleotide sequencing confirmed this estimate. These findings generated the common belief that the human is extremely close to the chimpanzee at the genetic level. However, if one looks at proteins, which are mainly responsible for phenotypic differences, the picture is quite different, and about 80% of proteins are different between the two species. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15716009

How in the world did the proteins change by +80% while the genes, which supposedly coded for those proteins during evolutionary history, remain virtually unchanged? Why is this huge +80% anomaly ignored by materialists and only the biased genetic similarity stressed in the media?

On top of this huge +80% difference in proteins, the oft quoted 98.8% DNA similarity is not even rigorously true in the first place. Just considering this 1.5% of the genome that directly codes for proteins, other recent comparisons of the protein coding genes, between chimps and man, have yielded a similarity of only 96%. Whereas, the December 2006 issue of PLoS ONE reported that human and chimpanzee gene copy numbers differ by 6.4%, which gives a similarity of only 93.6% (Hahn). Even more realistically, to how we actually should be looking at the genomes from a investigative starting point, Dr. Hugh Ross states the similarity is closer to 85% to 90% when taking into account the chimp genome is about 12% larger than the human genome. A recent, more accurate, human/chimp genome comparison study, by Richard Buggs in 2008, has found when he rigorously compared the recently completed sequences in the genomes of chimpanzees to the genomes of humans side by side, the true genome similarity between chimps and man fell to slightly below 70%! Why is this study ignored since the ENCODE study has now implicated 100% high level functionality across the entire human genome? Finding compelling evidence that implicates 100% high level functionality across the entire genome clearly shows the similarity is not to be limited to the very biased “only 1.5% of the genome” studies of materialists.

Chimpanzee?
10-10-2008 – Dr Richard Buggs – research geneticist at the University of Florida
…Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%.
http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1.....anzee.html

as well, we are still early in this line of investigation ,,,yet even from this early starting point things are not looking good for the materialists in the least:

Kangaroo genes close to humans
Excerpt: Australia’s kangaroos are genetically similar to humans,,, “There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order,” ,,,”We thought they’d be completely scrambled, but they’re not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome,”
http://www.reuters.com/article.....P020081118

As well, it is now shown that over one thousand protein coding genes are completely unique between human and chimps:

The Evolution of Mammalian Gene Families – Jeffery P. Demuth
Excerpt: Our results imply that humans and chimpanzees differ by at least 6% (1,418 of 22,000 genes) in their complement of genes, which stands in stark contrast to the oft-cited 1.5% difference between orthologous nucleotide sequences.

But if we to actually try to account for just one gene occuring by accident, much less several hundred orginating in a “poly-functional interweaved” way we find” the problem quickly outstrips the probabilistic resources of the universe (1 in 10^236 for genes: 1 in 10^77 for specific functional proteins)

And on top of all this, the 80% of different proteins are not nearly as passive as materialists have led us to believe:

Researchers Uncover New Kink In Gene Control: – Oct. 2009
Excerpt: a collaborative effort,, has uncovered more than 300 proteins that appear to control genes, a newly discovered function for all of these proteins previously known to play other roles in cells.,,,The team suspects that many more proteins encoded by the human genome might also be moonlighting to control genes,,,

But the top off killer in all this, that clearly sets man apart as a distinct kind from the rest of the animals is that the genome is found to be severely poly-constrained to random mutations with ENCODE:

Poly-Functional Complexity equals Poly-Constrained Complexity
http://docs.google.com/Doc?doc.....Zmd2emZncQ

Encyclopedia Of DNA: New Findings Challenge Established Views On Human Genome:
The ENCODE consortium’s major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active. The new data indicate the genome contains very little unused sequences and, in fact, is a complex, interwoven network. In this network, genes are just one of many types of DNA sequences that have a functional impact.

etc..etc…etc…

The overall point being vjtorley, is that though the evolutionists may have “a” suggestive piece of evidence in the fossil record (which is by far not the continuous transition of fossils they need to establish just a first level order plausibility), the conclusive evidence they need to prove the evolution in the genome simply does not exist, all evidence that has been put forth by evolutionists for genetic similarity literally falls apart with the slightest breeze of scrutiny is applied:

Frankly vjtorley I did not feel the need to defend my last point 14 in post 32 as rigorously as Mustela seems to think I should have since, in my eyes at least, the evolutionists frankly don’t even have a empirical leg to stand on in the first place as far as the actual evidence is concerned:

You don’t handle evidence-based refutations very well do you?

If you are asking me whether I believe the statements of real working scientists, Christians among them, that have told me (and you, BTW) that you are wrong instead of some guy on the internet who refuses to say whether he has any experience or training in science other than sniping at scientists from the safety of a tightly moderated blog? Well, what can I say, ya got me there.

For though life shares a optimal DNA code, which is a “miracle in and of itself, There simply is no smooth “gradual transition” to be found between these most ancient of life forms, bacteria and archaea, as even this following “evolution friendly” article clearly points out:

Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock?
Excerpt: In particular, the detailed mechanics of DNA replication would have been quite different. It looks as if DNA replication evolved independently in bacteria and archaea,… Even more baffling, says Martin, neither the cell membranes nor the cell walls have any details in common (between the bacteria and the archaea). http://www.newscientist.com/ar.....tml?page=1

About the only thing common in the ancestry that I can hold on to, especially considering the explosive appearance of radically new body plans in the Cambrian, would be the “commonality of descent” that God implements his plan with,,,

As far as the human line is concerned, my position is as follows:

1. I would agree with Professor Michael Behe that a very strong case can be made for the common ancestry of all living organisms. That includes human beings.

2. I find it very interesting that none of Behe’s scientific critics have been able to dent his thesis that there is an edge of evolution, as far as blind, undirected processes are concerned. Behe identifies this with the taxonomic level of either the genus or family.

3. The article by S. Huang which I linked to above in #80 provided evidence that human beings belong to a separate family – hominids – which appeared approximately 17.3 million years ago.

4. Nevertheless, a hominid is not necessarily a human being. If we’re talking about the genus Homo, then the evidence indicates that this genus appeared suddenly, about 2 million years ago.

Two paleoanthropologists have admitted in Nature in 2005 that we don’t know the direct ancestor of our genus Homo:

[Homo ergaster] marks such a radical departure from previous forms of Homo (such as H. habilis) in its height, reduced sexual dimorphism, long limbs and modern body proportions that it is hard at present to identify its immediate ancestry in east Africa. Not for nothing has it been described as a hominin “without an ancestor, without a clear past.” [Robin Dennell & Wil Roebroeks, “An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa,” Nature, Vol. 438:1099-1104 (Dec. 22/29, 2005) (internal citations removed).]

A 2009 article (Texas Hold ’Em Part III: Calling Ronald Wetherington’s Bluffs About Human Evolution in His January Texas State Board of Education Testimony) by Casey Luskin at http://www.evolutionnews.org/2......html#fn59 certainly gives the lie to claims that human evolution contains no gaps and no lack of transitional fossils, and that the origins of our species represents a gradualistic evolutionary change.

To be fair, however, it has been suggested that the Dmanisi remains in Georgia represent a transition between Homo ergaster and earlier forms. See this link:

http://books.google.com/books?.....38;f=false

5. My own position is that the human brain is the most exquisitely complex organ known to exist in nature, so I am highly skeptical of claims that it evolved gradualistically. Some kind of intelligent guidance must have been required to explain its origin.

6. However, the human mind is not reducible to the brain, as I have argued elsewhere. The brain is a necessary but not sufficient condition for human thought to occur. Thus I would also expect to find evidence of another quantum leap in the archeological record, either 600,000 or 200,000 years ago, as I argued above.

7. As far as I know, no families have appeared in the last two million years, and certainly none since the dawn of true human beings.

http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-338458

Now I find it interesting that you are not contesting none of the other 13 failed postulations of materialism, Such as a transcendent origin of the “material” universe. Or that time is not constant everywhere, or the fact the photosynthetic cell appeared on earth as soon as water appeared on earth, or the fact that the “simplest life’ is more complex than any man made machine or even the Cambrian explosion or the general pattern of sudden appeareance of distinct kinds in the fossil record since the Cambrian,,,No all this seems to have slipped your attention and you pretend as if it has absolutely no bearing on point 14 (you accuse it of being a red herring, when in fact they are just 13 cold hard facts that bear directly on the matter of point 14),,,but instead of giving fair hearing to all this, you want to pick on what is a fairly modest observation that Humans as a “kind” are the last distinct kind to appear in the fossil record,,, But in reflection, I think it is not to bold at all on my part to make the claim, for even in the evolutionists in their very own own fossil graphs,,,, the graphs with the infamous dotted lines that we all love so well, those dotted lines that connect all the “current” tree (or is that bush) of hominids,,,, even in those graphs, Man is always the last to appear on the graph,,,, Now if a new type of ape were to have appeared since man arrived on the scene I am pretty sure evolutionists would have triple highlighted that on their graphs and I am also fairly certain it probably would have garnered National Geographic healines for at least a year! But No this is not the case,,,there Man sits all alone on all the graphs as the last distinct type to appear in the fossil record,,, connected with nothing but our beloved dotted line,,, and as Erst Mayr, a leading expert in “human evolution” has stated:

“Man is indeed as unique, as different from all other animals, as had been traditionally claimed by theologians and philosophers.” – Evolutionist Ernst Mayr

or Ian Tattersall:

“Something extraordinary, if totally fortuitous, happened with the birth of our species….Homo sapiens is as distinctive an entity as exists on the face of the Earth, and should be dignified as such instead of being adulterated with every reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that happened to come along.” Anthropologist Ian Tattersall (curator at the American Museum of Natural History)

I just don’t know what it is your missing Mustela,,,It is hard for me to believe that someone could either be so blind to the evidence or so deceptive but that is all that is left for me to think.

—————
By the way Mustela with ENCODE finding virtually 100% poly-functional complexity, the true genome similarity between Man and Chimps is this:

Chimpanzee?
10-10-2008 – Dr Richard Buggs – research geneticist at the University of Florida
…Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%.
http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1.....anzee.html

A few points on cichlids:

1. You are perfectly correct in asserting that cichlids have been around for much longer than human beings, or even hominids for that matter.

Age of Cichlids: New Dates for Ancient Lake Fish Radiations by Martin J. Genner, Ole Seehausen, David H. Lunt, Domino A. Joyce, Paul W. Shaw, Gary R. Carvalho and George F. Turner, in
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm050.

Abstract:
Timing divergence events allows us to infer the conditions under which biodiversity has evolved and gain important insights into the mechanisms driving evolution. Cichlid fishes are a model system for studying speciation and adaptive radiation, yet we have lacked reliable timescales for their evolution. Phylogenetic reconstructions are consistent with cichlid origins prior to Gondwanan landmass fragmentation 165-121 million years ago, considerably earlier than the first known fossil cichlids (Eocene). We examined the timing of cichlid evolution using a relaxed molecular clock calibrated with geological estimates for the ages of (i) Gondwanan fragmentation and (ii) cichlid fossils. Timescales of cichlid evolution derived from fossil-dated phylogenies of other bony fishes most closely matched those suggested by Gondwanan break-up calibrations, suggesting the Eocene origins and marine dispersal implied by the cichlid fossil record may be due to its incompleteness. (Emphases mine – VJT.)

2. Cichlids constitute a single family, with a very large number of species. According to Wikipedia :

Cichlids … are fish from the family Cichlidae in the order Perciformes. The family Cichlidae, a major family of perciform fish, is both large and diverse. There are at least 1300 scientifically described species, making it one of the largest vertebrate families. Numerous new species are discovered annually, and many species remain undescribed. The actual number of species is therefore unclear, with estimates varying between 1,300 and 3,000 species.

3. Creationist Arthur Jones, whose doctoral thesis in biology was on cichlid fish, has written :

For all the diversity of species, I found the cichlids to be an unmistakably natural group, a created kind. The more I worked with these fish the clearer my recognition of “cichlidness” became and the more distinct they seemed from all the “similar” fishes I studied. Conversations at conferences and literature searches confirmed that this was the common experience of experts in every area of systematic biology. Distinct kinds really are there and the experts know it to be so.

Jones continues :

Developmental studies then showed that the enormous cichlid diversity (over 1,000 “species”) was actually produced by the endless permutation of a relatively small number of character states: 4 colors, ten or so basic pigment patterns and so on. The same characters (or character patterns) appeared “randomly” all over the cichlid distribution. The patterns of variation were “modular” or “mosaic”; evolutionary lines of descent were nowhere to be found. This kind of adaptive variation can occur quite rapidly (since it involves only what was already there) and some instances of cichlid “radiation” (in geologically “recent” lakes) were indeed dateable (by evolutionists) to within timespans of no more than a few thousand years.

In other words: here we have a creationist biologist who readily acknowledges that the members of a fish family (Cichlidae) share a common ancestry.

4. According to an article in Science magazine (Vol. 300. no. 5617, pp. 325 – 329, April 11, 2003) entitled Origin of the Superflock of Cichlid Fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa by Erik Verheyen, Walter Salzburger, Jos Snoeks, Axel Meyer (abstract available online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/.....0/5617/325 ), 500 species of cichlid fish have evolved in the last 100,000 years in a single lake:

Lake Victoria harbors a unique species-rich flock of more than 500 endemic haplochromine cichlid fishes. The origin, age, and mechanism of diversification of this extraordinary radiation are still debated. Geological evidence suggests that the lake dried out completely about 14,700 years ago. On the basis of phylogenetic analyses of almost 300 DNA sequences of the mitochondrial control region of East African cichlids, we find that the Lake Victoria cichlid flock is derived from the geologically older Lake Kivu. We suggest that the two seeding lineages may have already been lake-adapted when they colonized Lake Victoria. A haplotype analysis further shows that the most recent desiccation of Lake Victoria did not lead to a complete extinction of its endemic cichlid fauna and that the major lineage diversification took place about 100,000 years ago.

In other words, as far as cichlids are concerned, the last time any intelligent intervention in their origin could have taken place would have been 165-121 million years ago.