Challenge to Creationists/IDers

Wouldn't something that's designed BE consistent some way? I don't really see your comment answering my question.

Wouldn't something that's designed BE consistent some way? I don't really see your comment answering my question.

Well, yes and . . . no. LOL!

But there is consistency here, i.e, in that which actually is. You just don't see it. There is also a certain degree of randomness, it just doesn't necessarily imply what you think it does. Not even close. What we have here is a failure to communicate, as it were. What we have here with regard to protein synthesis is a staggeringly complex and versatile system predicated on a relatively simple elegance.

Does that prove design?

I think it strongly supports the idea.

But one thing that is certain beyond my own personal belief is that your idea of what we should supposedly see if there were a designer, well, no designer in his right mind would want to claim, for your idea of consistency in this case would actually be a lemon. Protein synthesis would be the least of its problems, for though this ultimately be another chicken-egg quandary, the synthesis of nucleic acids would be problematical too. But you don't know the why or the what of which I write, do you?

You're question is not merely a philosophical disaster, it's based on pseudo-scientific gibberish. Where did you get this question?
 
I've asked this question in several posts, but haven't had anyone address it, so I'm giving it its own thread.

If we were created/designed, why of 64 possible mRNA codons coding for 20 amino acids do some AAs have one codon and some as many as 6? That implies randomness, NOT design. IMO, a designed system would have 3 codons for each AA and two each for 'stop' and 'start'. Agree/disagree?

Why is your 'design' better?

A better question, why should I defend a version of God that you define?
 
I've asked this question in several posts, but haven't had anyone address it, so I'm giving it its own thread.

If we were created/designed, why of 64 possible mRNA codons coding for 20 amino acids do some AAs have one codon and some as many as 6? That implies randomness, NOT design. IMO, a designed system would have 3 codons for each AA and two each for 'stop' and 'start'. Agree/disagree?

I have no idea. You could be right or wrong here.

It could have been designed by someone smarter than us or it could have just happened, we can't prove it either way now can we?

True, but IDers want to come into the classroom and try to prove the design side anyway.

well ID doesn't necessarly say it was god. It just says there is intelligence in how life's building blocks are designed. Maybe its natures intelligence, maybe its gods intelligence, maybe its some alien intelligence, maybe its just completely random luck......we can't prove how it all happened one way or another.
 
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. "

disagree

Wouldn't something that's designed BE consistent some way? I don't really see your comment answering my question.

Ever look at a Jackson Pollack painting? To me a lot of it looks like someone threw a bunch of paint at a wall, but they are designed, and considered quite impressive by some people. Maybe the problem here is your perception and not God's design.
 
Let me help you guys out here. When dealing with those who believe in something that can't be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are dealing with faith. Faith is the belief in something that can't be proven or disproven. So when arguing over faith there is no point or end to the debate. People believe or not based on faith, and there is no ammount of facts or evidence that will ever change their mind.

Then there are those who need facts and evidence to belive something to be true. Since there are none in a faith based arguement they cannot believe in something they can't prove. This is the very nature of faith, and why it is called faith. Faith cannot be proven or disproven.

When it comes to the creation of everything, you are dealing with faith on both sides. One side has probability on it's side as evidence, and the other says just believe, and offers a fantastical story by an unknonwn author as evidence. The real question is where do you want to put your faith? I prefer likelyhood and probability over blind faith. Yet I still might be wrong, and such is the nature of faith.

Does that mean you reject the existence of dark matter and dark energy? Because you just defined the belief in them as faith and stated that no one who believes in either of those will ever accept any factual evidence to the contrary. You obviously do not understand enough about science to opine on it in a cogent matter.
 
I have no idea. You could be right or wrong here.

It could have been designed by someone smarter than us or it could have just happened, we can't prove it either way now can we?

True, but IDers want to come into the classroom and try to prove the design side anyway.

well ID doesn't necessarly say it was god. It just says there is intelligence in how life's building blocks are designed. Maybe its natures intelligence, maybe its gods intelligence, maybe its some alien intelligence, maybe its just completely random luck......we can't prove how it all happened one way or another.

Yep! From a purely scientific perspective . . . an absolute home run.

That's the best summarization of ID theory I've ever read, better than I've ever put. I wish I'd written. Good post.
 
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I've asked this question in several posts, but haven't had anyone address it, so I'm giving it its own thread.

If we were created/designed, why of 64 possible mRNA codons coding for 20 amino acids do some AAs have one codon and some as many as 6? That implies randomness, NOT design. IMO, a designed system would have 3 codons for each AA and two each for 'stop' and 'start'. Agree/disagree?

Uh . . . actually I did address it on another thread. Sadly, you don't know what you're talking about. . . . You've mostly got this all wrong, konradv.

That's because they can't answer the simple question I posed.

:lmao:

There are 64 different messenger RNA (mRNA) codons coding for 20 amino acids, actually, 61 coding for amino acids and three stops. That merely means that the 20 amino acids are variously coded for by an overlapping system of "synonyms", i.e., 1 to 6 variously "spelled" codons (or "words") that code for the same amino acid(s). This is not the stuff of randomness; it's the stuff of efficiency and versatility. This dynamic allows a small handful of "letters" to be combined into a relatively small number of the same "words" that can be variously combined to code for the production (or translation) of thousands of different proteins of varying mass and complexity . . . out of just 20 amino acids.

The blueprints for the many different proteins are encoded in DNA. mRNA strands are copies of these coded blueprints, which are read by ribosomes. Ribosomes translate the coded blueprints, word-by-word, into the corresponding amino acids and link them into peptide chains with the assistance of transfer RNA (tRNA).

Amino acids don't have codons of any kind. Strands of mRNA do. Amino acids are the substance of the information contained in codons. Codons are comprised of nucleic material. Each codon (or "word") consists of three nucleotides (or "letters") coding for one amino acid. There are two known universal start codons (or alternatives) and three known universal stop codons that tell the ribosome how to begin the respective peptide chain and where to cut it loose. Ribosomes don't start and stop with single amino acids; they're the monomers of the polymers.

What you appear to be saying here is that there should only be one mRNA codon for each of the 20 amino acids, with an additional 20 starts and 20 stops if the designer were intelligent. So 60 mRNA codons in all for each of the 20 amino acids, even though RNA is comprised of 4 different types of nucleotides yielding 64 different combinations? That would evince a designer?

I submit to you that the designer of such a clunky and vastly less dynamic system, indeed, a system that wouldn’t produce proteins at all, would have to be retarded.

Whatever you're saying here doesn't make any sense however it's rendered. You don't really understand the nature of the system that is, and you don't understand the utter uselessness of the system you would attribute to an intelligent designer.

This might help you understand things better:
Roughly, proteins are infrastructural, catalytic, metabolic and storage mechanisms. Nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) store, transmit and decode genetic information; they also perform structural, regulatory, cellular signaling, metabolic and co-catalytic tasks.

Amino acids are composed of an amine group (a nitrogen atom with a lone pair, i.e., a pair of valence electrons), a carboxylic acid group (a carbonyl and a hydroxyl), and a side chain. Their elemental constituents are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and sometimes sulfur.

A nucleic acid forms when two or more nucleotides combine by way of the covalent bond between the sugar of one nucleotide and the phosphate group of the next; hence, nucleic acids are simply macromolecules (polymers) composed of at least two or more nucleotides (monomers).

A nucleotide is composed of a nucleoside, a five-carbon molecule of a ribose sugar and at least one of three phosphate groups. A nucleoside is composed of a nucleobase bound to a five-carbon molecule of ribose sugar. The five nucleosides of living organisms are adenosine, guanosine, uridine, cytidine and thymidine. The five corresponding nucleobases are adenine, guanine, uracil, cytosine and thymine. Hence, nucleotides form when a nucleobase is combined with a ribose sugar and a phosphate group. The sugar of ribonucleotides is ribose; the sugar of deoxyribonucleotides is deoxyribose.

The "skeletal" structure of adenine and guanine is purine (a pyrimidine ring fused to an imidazole ring), thus, the purine bases. The "skeletal" structure of cytosine, thymine and uracil is pyrimidine (a heterocyclic ring with two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3), thus, the pyrimidine bases. Nucleotides can contain either a purine or a pyrimidine base. In both DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid) the purine bases, of course, are adenine and guanine; however, the pyrimidine bases in DNA are cytosine and thymine, while the pyrimidines in RNA are cytosine and uracil. Hence, RNA uses uracil in place of thymine.

Adenine always pairs with thymine (or uracil in RNA) by way of two hydrogen bonds, and guanine always pairs with cytosine by way of three hydrogen bonds.

. . . There are a total of 22 standard, proteinogenic amino acids. Twenty of them constitute the fundamental building blocks of life, and these are fed into specialized cellular machines (ribosomes) that read (or decipher) encoded bites of information divulged by messenger RNA (mRNA) and then "translate" that information into proteins. The encodements are derived from an organism's genes, which are composed of variously numbered and arranged codons, with each codon consisting of three adjacent nucleotides. In other words, an mRNA molecule is a copy of a gene's sequentially arranged codons and is used by a ribosome as a template for the correct sequence of amino acids in a particular protein. Hence, ribosomes translate codons, one after the other, and, with the assistance of transfer RNA (tRNA), appropriate the corresponding amino acids, bind them together in the specified order and produce peptide chains (proteins).

An organism's genes are contained in its DNA (or in its RNA for many types of viruses, which, technically, are not organisms, at least not in any sense with respect to their dormant state). An organism's genome is the entirety of its hereditary information, consisting of both the genetic and the structural sequences of its combined DNA. The genome is the master blueprint of an organism's essential design and dynamics.

The assembly of 20 of the 22 standard amino acids are encoded for by the universal genetic code, i.e., the code that is found in all living organisms. Hence, these 20 are used by all living organisms for the creation and maintenance of their essential design and dynamics. The other two standard amino acids—selenocysteine and pyrrolysine—are also assembled proteinogenically, i.e., inside ribosomes via alterations of certain canonical amino acids during the initial stage of protein synthesis. These alterations, encoded by UGA and UAG codons, are incorporated (or inserted) by dissimilar mechanisms involving discrete or highly specialized mRNA and tRNA molecules. In other words, these co-transitional mechanisms and, therefore, these amino acids are not found in all living organisms. Selenocysteine is found in all eukaryotic organisms and in some prokaryotic organisms. Pyrrolysine is found in prokaryotic organisms only (i.e., in the enzymes of some methanogenic archaea and bacteria). Only one organism—an archaea species—is known to have both.

Some routinely confound the distinction between standard and nonstandard amino acids. The distinction between them is based on the phases of protein synthesis, not on the processes/mechanisms associated with the synthesis of amino acids. Accordingly, the standard amino acids are the initial components of the translational phase of protein development, and the transitional phase occurs inside an organism's ribosomes. The nonstandard amino acids are the specialized components of the modification phase of protein development, and the post-transitional, modification phase involves certain metabolic processes that occur outside the organism's ribosomes. Hence, nonstandard amino acids are those that have been chemically modified after they have been incorporated into proteins, as well as those that are found in organisms, but not found in proteins. In addition to these, there exist an unknown number of abiotic amino acids.

The twenty canonical amino acids are alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine. These are divided into the essentials and nonessentials: (1) the essentials are those that an organism cannot synthesize inside its own body for itself, so they must be ingested, acquired from an organism's diet; (2) the rest are said to be nonessential because they are already produced by the organism's body. For humans, the essentials are those contained in the proteins that build muscle and organs. Human adults can synthesis 10 of the 20 canonicals via replication or intermediate metabolic processes. The rest are readily acquired from animal flesh. —Michael David Rawlings, Abiogenesis: The Holy Grail of Atheism
Any more questions?

I don't understand biochemistry at all, but that sounds a lot more reasonable that the blather konradv was saying.

Thanks.
 
I just want to know what "scientific discoveries" are based on "intelligent design".

I'll make it easy. Name one!
 
I just want to know what "scientific discoveries" are based on "intelligent design".

I'll make it easy. Name one!

What do you think you are asking? Are you aware that there are no scientific discoveries, with or without quotes, that are based on evolution?
 
I just want to know what "scientific discoveries" are based on "intelligent design".

I'll make it easy. Name one!

What do you think you are asking? Are you aware that there are no scientific discoveries, with or without quotes, that are based on evolution?

Wait right there!That's completely wrong.

Ever heard of the Toumai skull? It was Michel Brunet who unearthed the oldest hominid fossil to date in the desert of the central African nation of Chad back in 2002. The fragments of this 6 to 7 million-year-old skull, with characteristics resembling humans, were found outside eastern and southern Africa, suggesting human evolution may have been taking place all across the continent.
 
I just want to know what "scientific discoveries" are based on "intelligent design".

I'll make it easy. Name one!

What do you think you are asking? Are you aware that there are no scientific discoveries, with or without quotes, that are based on evolution?

Wait right there!That's completely wrong.

Ever heard of the Toumai skull? It was Michel Brunet who unearthed the oldest hominid fossil to date in the desert of the central African nation of Chad back in 2002. The fragments of this 6 to 7 million-year-old skull, with characteristics resembling humans, were found outside eastern and southern Africa, suggesting human evolution may have been taking place all across the continent.

All that proves is you do not understand the English language.

That is a discovery that provides evidence of evolution. If was not based on evolution, it just happened. If it was actually based on anything it was based on archeology.
 
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True, but IDers want to come into the classroom and try to prove the design side anyway.

well ID doesn't necessarly say it was god. It just says there is intelligence in how life's building blocks are designed. Maybe its natures intelligence, maybe its gods intelligence, maybe its some alien intelligence, maybe its just completely random luck......we can't prove how it all happened one way or another.

Yep! From a purely scientific perspective . . . an absolute home run.

That's the best summarization of ID theory I've ever read, better than I've ever put. I wish I'd written. Good post.

REALLY?!?! Then if it's maybe this and maybe that, what would IDers actually be teaching in a science class that demands facts? That's the question that isn't being answered.
 
M.D.Rawlings said:
What you appear to be saying here is that there should only be one mRNA codon for each of the 20 amino acids, with an additional 20 starts and 20 stops if the designer were intelligent. So 60 mRNA codons in all for each of the 20 amino acids, even though RNA is comprised of 4 different types of nucleotides yielding 64 different combinations? That would evince a designer?

Why don't you post what I ACTUALLY said instead of what YOU think I seem to be saying?(see below)

I've asked this question in several posts, but haven't had anyone address it, so I'm giving it its own thread.

If we were created/designed, why of 64 possible mRNA codons coding for 20 amino acids do some AAs have one codon and some as many as 6? That implies randomness, NOT design. IMO, a designed system would have 3 codons for each AA and two each for 'stop' and 'start'. Agree/disagree?

I know quite well how prorein synthesis takes place. That was not the question. Rather, as in what I ACTUALLY said, why wouldn't the case I laid out show more in the way of design than the case as is, which IMO shows randomness? I don't get what the design advantage of the codon vs AA scheme is and the explanation wasn't clear on the point.
 
Let me help you guys out here. When dealing with those who believe in something that can't be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, you are dealing with faith. Faith is the belief in something that can't be proven or disproven. So when arguing over faith there is no point or end to the debate. People believe or not based on faith, and there is no ammount of facts or evidence that will ever change their mind.

Then there are those who need facts and evidence to belive something to be true. Since there are none in a faith based arguement they cannot believe in something they can't prove. This is the very nature of faith, and why it is called faith. Faith cannot be proven or disproven.

When it comes to the creation of everything, you are dealing with faith on both sides. One side has probability on it's side as evidence, and the other says just believe, and offers a fantastical story by an unknonwn author as evidence. The real question is where do you want to put your faith? I prefer likelyhood and probability over blind faith. Yet I still might be wrong, and such is the nature of faith.

Does that mean you reject the existence of dark matter and dark energy? Because you just defined the belief in them as faith and stated that no one who believes in either of those will ever accept any factual evidence to the contrary. You obviously do not understand enough about science to opine on it in a cogent matter.

Dark energy and matter aren't matters of faith, but theory. Observed SCIENTIFIC facts leading to the assembling of a story linking them together becomes a theory. That's totally dofferent than saying that evolution was guided by something other than the Laws of Chemistry and Physics that we can't see or measure. THAT'S FAITH. Using the word in the context of science by spectrum, I consider unfortunate and untrue.
 
I just want to know what "scientific discoveries" are based on "intelligent design".

I'll make it easy. Name one!

What do you think you are asking? Are you aware that there are no scientific discoveries, with or without quotes, that are based on evolution?

Wait right there!That's completely wrong.

Ever heard of the Toumai skull? It was Michel Brunet who unearthed the oldest hominid fossil to date in the desert of the central African nation of Chad back in 2002. The fragments of this 6 to 7 million-year-old skull, with characteristics resembling humans, were found outside eastern and southern Africa, suggesting human evolution may have been taking place all across the continent.

Evolutionist can suggest anything they want, it doesn't make if FACT.

"On October 10, 2002, an international team headed by Milford Wolpoff (University of Michigan) wrote a letter to Nature challenging the fact that “Toumaï” was a hominid. They claimed that the features in the teeth, face and skull used by Burnet in calling “Toumaï” a hominid are not unique to hominids but can be found in apes as well. They suggested that “Toumaï” might be an ancestral female gorilla (Ann Gibbons, The First Human, Doubleday, 2006, p. 218). The controversy continues to this day.

Controversies like this arise is not surprising. Since evolutionists believe that humans evolved from an ape-like stock, it is not surprising that they should consider ape-like fossils as possible human ancestors. Evolutionists claim: “During the Miocene epoch [from 5.5 to 22 million years ago] as many as 100 species of apes roamed throughout the Old World” (“Becoming Human,” Scientific American special, 16:2, 2006, p. 5). Yet, evolutionists claim that virtually no ape fossils have been found. Creationists suspect that many fossils of extinct ape species have been found but that they are misinterpreted as human evolutionary ancestors. The reasons for such misidentification are easily understood.

1. The definition of the term hominid is still disputed. There seems to be a consensus among evolutionists that there are at least two defining qualifications: (a) bipedal locomotion and (b) reduced canines. However, this is an improper definition. It is loaded with evolutionary presuppositions that prejudice a fossil toward possible human ancestry without proving it. The biblical distinction that true humans are made in the “image of God” is disregarded. In other words, in diagnosing fossils, the dice are loaded improperly in favor of evolution.

2. Finding a human ancestor guarantees celebrity status for the discoverer. No other type of fossil discovery delivers such rewards for the finder. To find a non-human primate ancestor is not newsworthy. Thus, there is a subconscious bias to interpret any primate fossil as a possible human ancestor.

3. Funding for field expeditions from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society or other foundations is often based on whether or not one has found hominid fossils. Thus there is a further subconscious bias to interpret any primate fossil as a possible human ancestor in order to guarantee funding for future research.

4. A National Science Foundation director observed: “The exceedingly cut-throat level of competition in Eastern African anthropology is a long-standing problem” (Ann Gibbons, The First Human, p. 101). This unbelievable competition adds to the bias in interpreting primate fossils as possible human ancestors in an attempt to outdo others working in the field to gain fame and other rewards.

It is my belief, after study in this field for forty years, that all of the hominid fossils below the level of Homo erectus (which is fully human) are nothing but extinct primates that have been arranged in a sequence to attempt to prove that humans have evolved."

Marvin L. Lubenow, Th.M., M.S.
 
So, if they didn't evolve and were created or designed, why does there appear to be randomness as shown in the OP? So far, NO ONE has satisfactorily answered the question. You can talk all yopu want about fossil, but it's the DNA the PROVES we're all related.
 
So, if they didn't evolve and were created or designed, why does there appear to be randomness as shown in the OP? So far, NO ONE has satisfactorily answered the question. You can talk all yopu want about fossil, but it's the DNA the PROVES we're all related.

The only reasonable explanation for all the information in DNA is that a Designer put all the information in the original genes—e.g. the ‘kinds’ that He made during the six days of Creation.
 
So, if they didn't evolve and were created or designed, why does there appear to be randomness as shown in the OP? So far, NO ONE has satisfactorily answered the question. You can talk all yopu want about fossil, but it's the DNA the PROVES we're all related.

The only reasonable explanation for all the information in DNA is that a Designer put all the information in the original genes—e.g. the ‘kinds’ that He made during the six days of Creation.

If that's true, why do we see randomness instead of indications of design? Are you saying God plays with our minds? It would seem to me that a just God that designed Nature would have left signs of the design, instead of making things appear to be random and undesigned.
 

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