In the Beginning Adam and Eve lived with a snake in their garden.

Today Adam and Eve live with the Government in their homes.

  Sonja D.

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Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are all the same.

The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms). This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events.

Scientists are biased just like everyone else in that they bring their preconceived ideas about the past and how life originated into their research. For example, if a scientist’s presupposition is that God does not exist and that living organisms are the result of evolution over millions of years, then his interpretations of the outcome of operation science will seem to support his view of the past. When a scientist’s presupposition, however, is that God exists and that living organisms are the result of His creative powers within a six-day period, he can use this to properly interpret the results of operation science which support the Bible's claims. Because all scientists are working with the same data, the battle is not over the evidence but rather the interpretation of that evidence in light of the scientist’s presuppositions. Origins science, because it is not testable, tends to be more influenced by a scientist's bias, and therefore tends to be more subjective rather than objective.

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Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving into land animals, scientists say.

Long live evolution, down with "intelligent" design.

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Evolution should not be taught in high school science classes because it is not a scientific theory. It is not a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable. It is a theory about what happened in the past, not about the nature of the universe.

The modern scientific method is defined in terms of hypotheses, theories and laws. The difference between each is the level of acceptance in the scientific community. What they all have in common is that they must be falsifiable. This means that it must be possible to run a repeatable experiment that would disprove the theory (or hypothesis or law), if it were false.

Empiricism (a basis in experiment) is what gives science it's credibility and differentiates it from other fields of study. It means that a scientist in Poland does not have to take your word for it - they can do their own experiment and attempt to disprove it for themselves. The falsifiability part prevents people from coming up with theories that can only be proved right. Evolution fails both of these tests. There is no experiment that can test the theory. Any new evidence that comes to light cannot disprove the theory - only either back it up or call for a modification of the evolutionary tree or a modification of the theory.

Natural selection is a scientific theory. Evolution differs from natural selection by including the ideas of common ancestry and beneficial mutation. This is where people often get confused, because the proponents of evolution as a scientific theory point to the theories about natural selection to show that the theory is scientific. However, mixing in some scientific theories does not make a whole group of theories scientific.

Just because a theory is not scientific does not mean that it has no merit. However, claiming that a theory is scientific lends it undeserved authority and diminishes the authority of science.

The modern scientific method arose during the scientific revolution - after the renaissance.

Observation of nature and speculation do form part of the scientific method. That is how new hypotheses are formed. However they should be immediately checked to see whether they are scientific or not.

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=156&pst=36680

According to New Scientist: “An increasing number of scientists, most particularly a growing number of evolutionists . . . argue that Darwinian evolutionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all. . . . Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials.”—June 25, 1981, p. 828.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Popper went further and stated that a hypothesis which does not allow for experimental tests of falsity is outside the bounds of science.

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But I do understand it Chris.

doesnt mean that the whole world should obey you and your friends

Huh, who is giving orders here?

I will rather take the words of real scientists before people without degrees

What makes you think I don't have a degree? Do you have any criticism of the argument I made or just ad hominems?

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We have had this discussion so many times before, people have time after time proven to you that evolution is science, but you decide not to listen and continue to spread the notion that evolution isnt science, even though virtually all scientists agree that evolution is science.

If you had a degree in biology you would have a better understanding of evolution than you apparently do.

Here, Im guessing this will not be the last time I post this link, I doubt you will even bother to look at it as it doesnt support your claim, but maybe somebody else will find it useful.

http://www.talkorigins.org/

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We have had this discussion so many times before

then why did you start from the beginning again?

people have time after time proven to you that evolution is science

No they haven't. This question won't come down to proof.

but you decide not to listen

I did listen, which is why my argument has exapanded to include references to the counterarguments I will use if you repeat what has been said before.

though virtually all scientists agree that evolution is science

What makes you think that?

I have read that link plenty of times. I can respond to any specific claims you wish.

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Dale perhaps you should read my opening argument:

Evolution should not be taught in high school science classes because it is not a scientific theory.

When I say high school science classes I am obviously referring to the commonly understood definition of science which puts it as a separate branch of study to history, maths etc, perhaps a sub-branch of philosophy. The term science has not been used to describe knowledge in a general sense since the birth of the modern scientific method.

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The truth is that there is no strictly defined scientific method.

There is a very well defined scientific method. It's just that people aren't aware of it or disagree on how it should be defined. We need to make people aware of it first before asking them whether the definition is suitable.

Second, there is no need to or point in separating "science" from other branches of knowledge.

Yes there is. First of all, they use different methods and have different philosophical bases. What good would science be if it included mysticism? Modern science is so powerful because of the limitations imposed by the scientific method. Furthermore, deciding what to teach in each high school class would be difficult if the classes were not divided as they are now.

The universe is a single entity and it can best be understood by seeing how the various parts of it link together.

You appear to be hinting at the value of studying philosophy, yet you oppose philosophical questions about the nature of science.

Separating them creates gaps in knowledge that can lead to limits in our understanding of ourselves and the universe that we live in.

I don't think that is a real problem.

Perhaps I should rephrase - you cannot define science using constructs of science.

More semantics.

No, it's philosophy.

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How arrogant of you to assume that a philosopher like yourself (or Karl Popper) somehow knows how to define science better than those who actually do science for a living!

That's what philosphy is. Being a philosopher does not exclude you from being a scientist, a mathemetician, a historian, an expert on religion etc. It isn't arrogant at all. It's just another cap people put on to indicate how they are approaching a question.

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And you don't have the authority to tell me or anyone else how to define science.

Isn't that kind of a moot point? We are debating.

I am aware of the commonly defined scientific method and I say it is NOT suitable!

So now you are claiming to have the minority view?

The "scientific method" you refer to has a very limited usefulness, at least the narrow way you define it.

Yet all of modern technology is derived from it.

Freediver, this is why I kicked you out of my Evolution Education group last year.

Was I ever a member?

Scientists should not allow any "philosophy" to limit their thinking.

It is unavoidable in trying to define what it is they do.

If they did, they would be no better than the religious fanatics.

No, they use philosophy to separate their methods from less rigourous ones.

What matters is what works in expanding the fields of knowledge as far as possible.

There are several methods for expanding the field of knowledge. Science is only part of that, though it has been most successful.

Sagan's quote does not contradict anything I have said.

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Was I ever a member [of Evolution Education]?

Indeed you were! By implying you were not, you have LIED!

Dale that was not a lie by any stretch of the imagination.

5. Please do not post links to other forum discussions. We welcome your introduction of the topic for discussion here.

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Seriously, your childish notions and silly takes on science have not changed one iota since you started this ridiculous stuff. 

Quite clearly, and most importantly, you have completely failed to establish for yourself the credibility which should allow you to determine that the vast majority of scientists are unaware of what science is, or what the scientific method is. 

Quite clearly, you merely enjoy hearing yourself talk.

Dale that was not a lie by any stretch of the imagination.

I wasn't stretching my imagination!

5. Please do not post links to other forum discussions. We welcome your introduction of the topic for discussion here.

Strictly speaking, that wasn't a forum discussion I was linking to. It was a series of essays I was writing that you barged into and interrupted! And I'm almost sorry you were not dumb enough to delete that post above, because then I would have surely used it against you later in DELETE MY A** and Evolution Education!

I am not trying to show that the vast majority of scientists are unaware of what science is. Nor do I need credibility as my argument rests on it's own merits, not my credibility. How about you try to put together a logical counterargument?

Once again, you have made blatantly false and illogical statements. I'm dying of laughter here!!! Your arguments never HAD merits, or I'd be the first to achknowledge that!

Once again, you have made blatantly false and illogical statements.

For example?

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Freediver, the only way you can be established as correct in your interpretation of science is if you can show a clear example of a scientist who used your method of science that was able to discredit another scientist who used investigation my way. For example, if experimentation showed that there was a mechanism that prevented organisms from evolving beyond a certain range of form (thus defining a "created kind", as the Creationists would say), and then that mechanism were indentified, then indeed you'd be proven right, that macro evolution is not scientific because it would be shown to be impossible!

But that would also show that evolution has been falsified, which would be ironic since you have claimed that it is not falsifiable! But it is, and I myself would abandon evolution if my scenario came to pass.

And that is why I and so many others don't take you seriously. Your philosophy of science is such that even most religious cults make better sense than what you preach as absolute dogma. WOOF!

Freediver, the only way you can be established as correct in your interpretation of science is if you can show a clear example of a scientist who used your method of science that was able to discredit another scientist who used investigation my way.

Dale there are plenty of examples of that happening. An example would be how they proved that the earth's surface was round instead of flat. All the evidence based on observation indicated that the earth was flat. History also indicated that it had always been that way. So they conducted an experiment in which the controlled variable is the east-west location, the measured variable is the angle of inclination of sunlight and the variables held constant are things like time.

Much of what we consider to be modern technology and science was developed in this way - using the modern scientific method to debunk whatever non-scientific theories people came up with. Usually the non-scientific theories are discarded without making it into the history books, except for cases like the flat earth and evolution. The flat earth idea because it was around for so long before the popularisation of the modenr scientific method and evolution simply because the scientific method cannot be applied to the theory.

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Dale perhaps you can come up with a single modern technology that wasn't developed using the scientific method as I have described it.

The study of evolution has nothing to do with modern technological developments. You fail to make a distinction between a "pure science" (such as biology) and "applied science" (technology).

All the evidence based on observation indicated that the earth was flat.

Oh, please!!!! One may show that the Earth is round due to the OBSERVATION that the Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse is curved. And what about sailing ships moving towards the horizon that have their sails visible long after their hulls are hidden?

One may show that the Earth is round due to the OBSERVATION that the Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse is curved.

Dale, you could just say that the earth is flat and round, as in a disc. That still doesn't prove that the earth is spherical.

And what about sailing ships moving towards the horizon that have their sails visible long after their hulls are hidden?

I have never observed that. You probably need pretty good optics that weren't around until long after the issue was resolved.

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You can also get something like the sailing ship affect caused by mirages. This effect is much stronger and would have cast doubt on the usefulness of the sailing ship observation alone.

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Dale, did you copy and paste that entire thread when a simple 'yes' would have sufficed? Please respond to this.

Freediver, a simple yes would NOT have sufficed. Especially since there was no question for me to say "yes" to that I was aware of. Do you ALWAYS spit out nonsense to annoy people in your dailly life, or only on Care2 forums?

Dale, you copied the link in response to this question, when a simple yes would have sufficed:

Was I ever a member [of Evolution Education]?

Then you went and copied the contents of the thread as well for some reason. Seeing as the content of the thread serves no further purpose (and even if it does you could put it far more succinctly) I will delete it.

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Why, to hide the evidence? LOL!

I know too well that if I had said yes to that particular question, you would have called me a liar and forced me to prove that you had been a member, so I saved us a step or two and this is how you respond? You are truly pathetic, fish guy!

http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/222654

I wonder if those who were fighting over the geocentric vs. the heliocentric views of the Solar System in the 16th Century could have forseen this idea. This essay of mine illustrates what happens when you take a concept that was intended for biology (Intelligent Design) and attempt to apply it to astronomy. It fails there too!

When people hear the term "evolution" they tend to think only in terms of  "Man coming from monkeys." But the most basic concepts of evolution, in terms of "gradual change and development over long periods of time" turn out to be applicable to all branches of science, including biology, geology, and astronomy.

Ultimately, all things in the universe, from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy, are connected to one another. The same laws of physics and chemistry apply everywhere, to all worlds and to all life forms. If you go back far enough, at one time we were all one, coming from a common origin.

It is a hypocritical argument to argue that the Theory of Evolution is a science, such as a "social" science, and then argue that Intelligent Design is not.

You first make the argument that Intelligent Design is not falsifyable, and therefore not science, but when it is pointed out that the Theory of Evolution is not falsifyable, you simply evade the point by saying it is a different kind of science.

Your desire is to discount Intelligent Design, because you do not want to consider any other presuppostion other than the one that the Theory of Evolution presuposes.

And you are obviously willing to say anything, and to contort your logic into the strangest forms. Listening to some of you is sort of like watching someone play Twister. In order to keep your beliefs intact, you have to twist yourself into all kinds of difficult positions.

Perhaps it would help if we did not call the other side "Intelligent Design", or "Creation."  Both of those titles do tend to lend a certain amount of presupposition to the findings of those who believe in a Creator.

Instead, let us call it, "Abrupt Appearance."

That would be those who do not believe we have evolved from the lower forms of life, but believe that all things appeared abruptly. This might have happened, there is STRONG evidence for it, and for interpreting the data in such a manner.

Indeed, many evolutionists themselves know of the "Cambrian Explosion", in which many animals suddenly and abruptly appeared. In fact, the abrupt apearance of so many life forms is the reason for most evolutionists to have abandoned Darwin in favor of Stephen Jay Gould's "Punctuated Equilibrium", because the findings simply do not mesh with the idea of phyletic gradualism. Of course, Gould's ideas of abrupt evolution falls flat as well, since the very notion of evolution must by its very nature take a great deal of time, and entire organs do not pop up over night on their own.

If evolution was really correct, then we would hardly find any full species at all in the fossil record, and we would find billions upon billions of them in transition. Of course the evolutionist knows this; Darwin himself having said as much, but the evolutionists excuse is to say that fossils are actualy very scarce.

It is ridiculous that so many fall for this lie, since the overwhelming number of fossil finds are recorded. What the evolutionist really means is that though millions of fossils are uncovered, the number of them that show any evidence that can be interpreted as a Transitional is what is scarce!

Fossils are not rare! Fossils that seem to support evolution are rare!

Just take the idea of man's "predecessors." One can take the scraps of bones and teeth and jaw pieces and skull fragments that they have built entire species out of, like Cro Magnon and Neandertal. According to even the evolutionist anthropaleontologist, the evidence is quite scant. However, once again, they would lead you to believe that this is ALL that has been found of human predecessors this old.

The big secret is that THOUSANDS of full skeletons, skulls, bones, and fragments have been found and catalogued, that DO NOT show any sign of transition at all! Fully human.

And this is documented of course - in the "Catalogue of Fossil Hominids", a three volume catalogue edited by Kenneth Oakley, Bernard Campbell, and Theya Mollison, and is published by the Natural History Museum of London. It was published in 1976, and is currently being updated by Ian Tattershal and Jeffrey Schwartz. The current number of hominid individuals is about EIGHT THOUSAND. But they don't tell you about it do they? It took a "Creationist" to let the world know this publication even existed.

What surprises me the most about evolutionist scientists, is that they strain out a gnat to prove their theory, but swallow any elephant that appears to show evidence to the contrary.

Take for example the Law of Chirality.

It very simply states that no amino acid molecule has yet been found in the universe in anything that is not alive, that has the same spacial structure of those things that are alive. Life could never have generated spontaneously because of this. All life has a certain type of amino acid spacial structure, never found in things not alive. This observation is so absolute, it has become a scientific law. It is one of the thousands of elephants that stand in the way of evolution being accurate, and yet evolutionists continue to gleefully announce every "gnat" of possibility they find as if it is monumental, and yet never openly speak about the insurmountable problems to the theory.

More later.

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Instead, let us call it, "Abrupt Appearance."

Have you heard of the theory of sufficient genetic potential?

Also, punctuated equilibria has been incorprated into the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution can be adapted to fit any evidence. A lot of the apparent assumptions are not a basis for the theory at all, they are just part of how the theory is currently communicated. For example, the fact that organisms can trade genes between species has not caused anyone to bat an eyelid.

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For example, the fact that organisms can trade genes between species has not caused anyone to bat an eyelid.

It's not a fact unless you can support it with evidence. Got some to share with the rest of us? Which genes, which species, and under what circumstances?

One of my colleagues in Evolution Education already provided the answer:

Roger W.
 

Incorporation of genes from other organisms is real and doesn't do any harm to the theory of evolution; in fact, it supports it, as Darwin successfully dissolved the notion of the immutability and sanctity (if you will) of the boundaries between species.    This idea of immutability and perfect boundaries, or as Mayr expressed it, typological thinking goes back to Plato and insists that individual organisms are imperfect representations of an "ideal" type, which doesn't exist in reality.    The old shadow dimly seen on the cave wall deal.     Creationists get all worked up about this because they adopt Plato's notion and think species must be immutable and crosses between species cannot occur, much less genetic exchange between sy, a virus and a mammal.   But it happens.     D**n but nature is messy!     I once read an intersting quote by a modern evolutionist, "Darwin would have loved viruses."

It should be noted that viruses are entirely parasitic and their extreme simplicity could indicate they are a "transition" form between ordinary organic polymers and cells as (relatively) complex as bacteria. Either that, or they evolved from bacteria-like forms that gave up free living to live off all other organisms, losing most of their other more complex traits in the process. They certainly were not DESIGNED to be parasitic, unless you think the Intelligent Designer is a sadist!

It is not just viruses Dale.

Then you should have no trouble providing other examples for us to see. Asserting things without proof is not wise in any debate.

Furthermore, it is not the same as the idea of evolution towards some ideal and does not depend on it.

Evolution has never been about advancing towards any "ideal" form in organisms. That's a "strawman" version of evolutionary thinking, not the real thing. If an organism is sufficiently adapted to survive long enough to reproduce itself, nothing else matters. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IBladder.shtml

It's just an assumption that people usually associate with the theory and use to back it up (eg lack of chimeras), but as you pointed out, the theory is infinitely maleable to whatever observations crop up.

I didn't say that evolution is "infinitely maleable to whatever observations crop up," you did. Indeed, that is simply not true. 

When predictions based on the theory turn out to be wrong, people just 'realise' that it was the assumptions that they lumped with the theory that were wrong. A theory that isn't falsifiable cannot be shown to be wrong.

You have never shown anyone why evolution is not falsifiable. You have just assumed that it is not because no experiment can either prove or disprove (to your biased satisfaction) that specific events associated with evolution happened in the past. Most scientists are not that bigoted, of course. They understand that the primary mechanism of evolution (natural selection) can account for most of what happened in the past even while experimenting to see it occur now. 

Then you should have no trouble providing other examples for us to see. Asserting things without proof is not wise in any debate.

It is common knowledge. Ever heard of gene swapping among plants? Are you familiar with the GMO debate?

Evolution has never been about advancing towards any "ideal" form in organisms.

It was before Darwin. That was Darwin's real contribtuion.

You have never shown anyone why evolution is not falsifiable.

Yes I have.

You have just assumed that it is not because no experiment can either prove or disprove

Exactly.

They understand that the primary mechanism of evolution (natural selection) can account for most of what happened in the past even while experimenting to see it occur now.

That doesn't make it falsifiable, or scientific.

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Freediver, I asked for specific examples to support your claims, and after an hour or so all you give me is more vague assertions. If you can't answer my questions directly, stop the pretense. It impresses no one and only gets you laughed at.

My patience with you has run out. Good night.

Evolution is not a scientific theory

...it must be possible to run an experiment that would prove the theory (or hypothesis or law) wrong, if it were not true.

There is no experiment that can test the theory.

Researchers working with chicken embryos in Britain and France were able to stimulate the embryos to do what?

Grow teeth.

The researchers injected cells from mice into the chicken embryos. The mouse cells could not "tell" the embryo how to produce teeth, but they could "translate" any available instructions to grow teeth. The embryos grew teeth, which indicated that the genetic instructions for tooth formation were still present in the chicken embryo.

This makes sense if birds evolved from reptilian ancestors that had teeth. Indeed, the teeth formed in succeeding experiments were undifferentiated, conical teeth like those of reptiles.

For more details, see: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/06/04/teeth.birds/

Of course, Freediver would reply that the experiment only shows that birds have teeth producing genes, not that birds really evolved from reptiles. Such mind twisting "disclaimers" come naturally to the desparatly bigoted.

"Dale, even if the chicken embryos never developed teeth, evolutionary theory could be modified to fit that observation."

FALSE!

The complete absence of teeth producing genes in birds would be clear evidence of CREATIONISM, and thus evolution would be falsified. Traits that disappear over time in lines of organisms do so because certain genes that code for those features are switched off by mutations, not because the genes themselves disappear entirely. Point mutations, being random, cannot remove entire genes, only alter them, and massive mutations that could remove entire genes would most likely so damage the developing organism that it would never even be born or hatch. In the case of the chicken embryos, their teeth producing genes were switched back on by the hormones provided by the mouse tissue.

Note: Darwin spent many years answering in his own mind the possible objections made by his future opponents against evolution. Hence my anticipating Freediver's responses and answering them now. I don't like to waste time.

I thought Freediver had finally returned to answer my questions about genetic transfer between species. Specifically, those questions were:

Which genes, which species, and under what circumstances?

His reply was: Ever heard of gene swapping among plants? Are you familiar with the GMO debate?

Insufficient data, of course (What is GMO? In which plants have genetic transfer been observed?). That, and the fact that it's rude and evasive to answer a question with another question.

It's not hard to discredit someone like fish guy. It's having to do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that annoys me most, really. When a claim (evolution is not a scientific theory) is as totally demolished as this one has been, the only logical thing to do is to withdraw the claim.

I wish I knew enough about the subject to be able to chime in.

It's okay though. I find this eternal struggle between the two of you to be quite amusing.

I'm content to sit back on the sidelines and watch.

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Maybe you need to upload an avatar photo, preferably one of you holding a fish.

Or maybe a big, blue letter H.

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Cheryl,

Thanks for the link, I will definitely post there.

Christian,

You don't want to see what I look like these days, LOL! I am one of those guys that was a handsome devil when they were young, but evolved into an ugly duckling!

FreeDiver,

 thank you for the offer. Here is a short article I wrote on the law of Chirality a while back:

THE LAW OF CHIRALITY

Perhaps the most important phenomenon to consider when determining the possibility of spontaneous generation is the Law of Chirality.

Simply put, the Law of Chirality states that the Molecules of Amino Acids which form the Proteins that become the building blocks of life must exhibit the correct "spacial structure."

The Molecules of Amino Acids are found to exhibit one or the other of two spacial structures, the "Evoratory Form", or the "Dextrorotatory Form." 

In order for life to have come about spontaneously, literally every Amino Acid must be in an Evoratory Form.  If even a small amount of the Molecules are of the Dextrorotatory Form, then the Proteins formed are unsuitable for life, and are in fact, fatal to most life.

All Organic life is made up of Proteins formed from Evoratory Amino Acid Molecules.

Amino Acids found outside of Organic Life or Organic Compounds including those formed by chance, are always found to have Mirror Image Molecules, called "Racemates", that is exactly half Evoratory Form, and half Dextrorotatory Form.

Absolutely no means has yet been found by which inorganic random processes could possibly form pure Evoratory Form Amino Acids.

Put even more simply, everything alive is made of a form of Protein never found in anything that is not alive. The Spacial Structures are different.

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Oh, I thought I might also point out that though many Creationists believe the earth is only a few thousand years old, the Bible actually does not teach this. The world AS WE KNOW IT, is a few thousand years old, somewhere between 6 to 12 thousand years.

If any Creationist wants to discuss this, I will make my case more fully.

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LOL, why does virtually every evolutionist on debate forums speak in such general terms when it comes to whether evolution is actually science, and ALWAYS defer to TalkOrigins.org? LOL!

TalkOrigins is the default link for evolutionists who cannot make their case for themselves, and though it is a very articulate and studied site, it continuously misrepresents the arguments of the opposition. It is easy to refute an argument that is actually doctored to be overcome.

More than that, it presents itself as a site fair to both sides, when it is in fact nothing more than a site for evolution apologists.

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Thank you for introducing me to the Law of Chirality. But there are several things you neglected to mention:

1. The theory of evolution is not about the origin of life. It it about how lines of organisms changed over millions of years AFTER life began.
2. The law of chirality does not imply that the first proteins must have formed by intelligent design because while the amino acids that build the protiens may exist in either left handed or right handed forms, it is DNA and RNA that actually synthesizes the  protiens....and if the first DNA or RNA molecule that arose made protiens only from left handed amino acids, that would explain why nearly all amino acids use in protiens today on Earth are left handed. It wasn't a matter of random chance at all, but chemical and physical laws operating naturally.
3. Even making protiens from random chance of one handed form of amino acids may be highly improbable, but not impossible, and it only needed to happen once in the right order to form an enzyme to start DNA or RNA production.

Chance, Probability, and a Deck of Cards

Creationists are fond of pointing out that a particular sequence of amino acids in a protein is highly improbable. For example, a protein that consists of 10 amino acid units has a probability of 10.2 trillion (20¹⁰ to 1 against, since there are 20 amino acids that are used to manufacture proteins. Therefore, Creationists ask, how could such improbable things ever occur by chance? Actually, such arguments are embarrassing fallacies.

1. Neither natural selection nor the chemical and physical processes involved in the making of polymers like DNA and proteins are matters of chance. If they did not involve consistent laws of nature that could be discovered via experiments, then the science of biochemistry itself would be impossible.

2. However improbable a protein sequence may be, if it occurs only once and is beneficial, then natural selection will probably act to preserve that sequence and multiply it among the descendants of the original possessor of the sequence.

3. Over billions of years, billions of generations, and billions of organisms in a population, an incredible variety and number of mutations can result that can alter and diversify that population.

I once did an experiment with a deck of cards and a calculator. I shuffled the cards and began putting out at random one card at a time, while calculating the probability of the resulting card sequences. I had counted the cards and thus knew there were 54 of them in the deck, including the two jokers.

My first card was a Two of Spades. Probability of that card being out down first: 1 in 54.

My second card was a Queen of Spades. Probability if those two cards being put down in that exact sequence: 1 in 2862 (54 X 53).

My third card was an Eight of Diamonds. Probability of those three cards being put down in that sequence: 1 in 148,824 (54 X 53 X 52)

My fourth card was a Nine of Hearts. Probability of those four cards being put down in that exact sequence: 1 in 7,590,024. (54 X 53 X 52 X 51)

I continued until all 54 cards had been put down. Probability of that exact sequence being put down at random: 2.3 x 10⁷¹!

That’s more than the number of atoms that are estimated to exist in the entire Solar System! Yet nothing prevented me from putting down that sequence of cards. Improbability does not imply impossibility. But you can be certain that if I shuffled that cards again and repeatedly put out the cards in a random sequence, I’d never see the exact sequence again twice in a row!

Evolutionists have always understood this issue. That is why scientists searching for extraterrestrial intelligence do not expect aliens from other worlds to have protein and DNA sequences that even remotely resemble ours. There is no evidence that any particular DNA sequence four billion years ago was required to start the process of replication. There is no reason for us to think that the development of primitive life would not have occurred very quickly under the conditions thought to exist on the early Earth. Experiments since the 1950s have shown that organic molecules can be synthesized in a laboratory easily and in large amounts. Thus, a favorite Creationist argument is blown away like dust.

I find it interesting, David W, that you wish to cast evolutionists as being no better than creationists in their thinking, regarding how they view evidence in a biased way. Thus you imply that your biases are no worse than those of evolutionists.

Total nonsense!

If there was any truth to such a claim, then the numbers of creationists and evolutionists among scientists would be about equal, and there would be no question about creationism being just as suitable for teaching in science classrooms.

Nearly all scientists accept evolution as true and reject creationism as psudoscience. And for that, creationists claim that there is a vast Satanic conspiracy to decieve the world into abandoning faith in God.

Such paranoia is hardly scientific, of course.

Also, your claim that no transitional fossils have been found made me die of laughter, which is why I didn't bother to answer it at first. You don't consider Archeopterx a transitional fossil? What about the "mammal-like reptiles" of the Permian and Triassic periods? Or amphibians of the Devonian period that retain fish-like features?

You don't recogize them as transitional because you don't want to.

Even living mammals such as the platypus and the echidna may be considered transitional, because they have hair and feed their young milk like all other mammals, but LAY EGGS LIKE REPTILES DO!

And then there are the entire class of animals called amphibians, that lay jelly-like eggs as fish do, but are partly adapted for land. It seems absurd for a Intelligent Designer to make such creatures, but evolution explains perfectly why they arose. 

Still wish to claim there are no transitional forms?

Thank you Dale H for the reply.

You are correct about Chirality not reffering directly to the theory of evolution, but to the theory of Abiogenesis, the theory that life sprang up on earth by spontaneous generation.

But I am afraid you misunderstood the point. I was not speaking about CHANCE at all.

I am talking about the spacial differences between organic amino acids, and non organic amino acids.

It is also not a "choice" between right and left handed structures.

ALL non organic amino acid molecular structures are "racemates." That means that they are mirror imaged structures, having half evarotory form, and half dextrarotatory forms. That means that they are unsuitable for life, they are in fact, toxic to life.

Even if it was possible for RNA or DNA to appear on its own, (and I will discuss that absurd idea in a moment,) it does not matter which molecules they would "choose" to use, because all molecules in the universe that are not already alive are "racemates", their SPACIAL STRUCTURES are unsuitable for life.

To repeat myself another way, it is not a matter of "choosing" left handed amino acid molecules over right handed amino acid molecules, it is a matter of there existing NO inorganic amino acid molecule that is not a racemate, that is, half left handed and half right handed. There would be nothing for the DNA to work with.

Now, you spoke of DNA "appearing", and it only having to happen once.

DNA and RNA have never been found just "lying around", and it has been shown through many proofs that they cannot exist prior to the regulated system of organic life.

Those compounds needed to create DNA and RNA destroy each other, are toxic to one another, and cannot even exist together except in a constantly regulated atmosphere, which only exists inside of a living organism.

I wish when evolutionary scientists and teachers push this stuff, they would at least tell the entire story, instead of allowing generations of people to believe things like DNA and RNA can just spring up from the right combination of enzymes. They leave out the fact that it takes many other things, and that they are not compatable outside of a regulated system.

Just the enzymes and sugars alone would have destroyed one another.

And I won't even go into the fact that enzymes don't just form into something like DNA and RNA, they must go through a process of synthesizing to be suitable for use.

Now, you also said "it only has to happen once."

Granted.

It only has to happen once.

But beside the fact that it is impossible to have happened even once, it must then survive in a violent atmosphere, that is, an atmosphere that is not conducive to its survival. Remeber, we are talking about SPONTANEOUS generation, so it must therefore be an OPEN SYSTEM.

And we already know that RNA or DNA cannot have formed in the ocean, because the salt content would have killed it, and it could not have formed out in the open, because oxygen would have killed it.

Then of course the temperature would have had to have been exact, and not only exact to form, but ongoingly exact to survive.

BUT, that is just to get the DNA or RNA, (which cannot form outside a regulated system anyway,) to survive long enough to replicate.

But wait a moment, it needs something to make this replication out of doesn't it.  So now we need once again just the right things the DNA needs to replicate it's information.

So it does not need to happen only once, we need for this replication to somehow continue on, and we need there to always be the correct compounds to be handy.

Then, when we finally have an organism, somehow come to LIFE, it must be able to survive long enough to replicate itself, and so on, until we have the world we have today.

Only has to happen once. Though it is impossible.

Granted.

But then another billion things have to also happen. Once.

Thank you so much for your reply, I enjoy debating this topic.

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Dale H,

Thank you for your second reply.

I ask two things of you in the future:

1.) Please do not misquote me, and then argue with the misquote, you will save us both a lot of time and trouble.

2.) Please do not argue points with me that I have not made. You will again save yourself a lot of time and trouble.

First of all, I never said I thought Creationism should be taught as science in school. I do not. If parents want their children to believe in Creationism, they can teach it to their children themselves.

Second, I never said that there are no fossils that cannot be interpreted as transitionals, I said that they are SCARCE, and I was actually quoting an evolution scientist.

What I believe:

I do not believe in interspecies evolution, also called macroevolution by some.

I DO believe in intraspecies evolution, called microevolution by some.

I DO believe in Natural Selection, also known as survival of the fittest.

I do not believe in Darwinism, that is Gradual Phylogeny, nor do I believe in Gouldism, that is Punctuated Equilibrium.

Now, are you actually telling me that you believe in evolution because there are more scientists who believe in it than disbelieve it?  Surely tell me this is not so.

I have an atheist friend who makes the same point. I point out to him that 90 percent of the population of earth believes there is a God. But that does not lead him to believe in God.

Point being, the number of people who believe something has absolutely nothing to do with how true it is.

Yes, I do think the entire argument about what makes something scientific is totally hypocritical on the part of Evolutionists, however, I also think it is a red herring, and I don't think Creationists should waste their time trying to get their point of view taught in science class.

Besides, this only springs from the ridiculous idea that if something can be labeled "science" it must be true, and anything that falls under the label of anything outside of science, must be false.

It also totally precludes that anything subjective can be true.

For example, I can say, "I have a headache", and it can be totally true, but I cannot objectively prove it to anyone else.

Therefore, let us not waste any more time arguing what is science and what isn't.

Let us center in on something far more important: WHAT IS TRUE, AND WHAT IS FALSE.

I believe interspecies evolution is false.

Even Darwin himself said that there should be a rich fossil find of nearly all transitionals, and few whole species.

But in the millions of fossil finds, those that can be interpreted as transitionals are very scarce.

Now Dale, you point out animals that have similarities with other species, and you consider them to be transitionals.

There have been about four hundred finds that have been labeled transitionals through the years, that were accepted as such. Out of those four hundred, about 90% have been proven to be something else, or a non transitional species, leaving roughly forty that are still in the running, so to speak.

You bring up the duck billed platypus as a transitional. Thank you.

Tell me what it is evolving from, and what it is evolving into, Dale.

We already have ducks, we already have furry mammals. What was the forerunner of the platypus?

Why are there such things as whole species?

Why are not all organisms dubbed transitionals?

How did there ever get to be Phylas and Familys and Species?

You bring up Archaeopteryx.  Thank you.

Even most evolutionists have dropped that one.

Lets take a look at Archaeopteryx, (I will call him Archie for short.)

Lived 150 million years ago.

Archie had fully formed flying feathers, including the asymmetric vanes and ventril, and ellyptical wings like woodland birds. Had the clasic wishbone for muscle attachments needed for downward stroke of wings, the brain capacity of a bird, with a large cerebellum and visual cortex.

Evolutionists point to Archies teeth and claws as proof of his being a transitional form, but the fact is that many extinct birds had teeth, and many reptiles DO NOT. He also had the classic moveable bird maxilla and mandable (jaws). In reptiles, only the mandable moves.

Archie is really only the best known of an entire plethora of dinosaur to bird projects. There have also been Sinosauropteryx, Mononykus, Protarchaeopteryx, Caudipteryx, and the infamous Crocodilomorphs.

I can't even begin to touch on the great contortions they have to resort to to explain these guys. Evolutionists who have supported these as transitionals have made some of the most ridiculous, outlandish, statements in order to make them sound plausible. Even Richard Dawkins had the temmerity to assert that "feathers are merely modified reptilian scales." LOL

continued on next reply......

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continued....

Scales are folds in skin, they are not structures of themselves. Feathers are complex structures with a barb, barbules, and a hook. They originated in a totally different way, from follicles, not skin. The lungs of a bird are in no way even similar to that of a reptiles. Reptiles have bellows style lungs, while birds have an avian style lung, which incorporates a series of special tubes, even involving their hollow bones. Any intermediate stages between these would be highly unlikey to survive, and natural selection would have kept birds from ever evoving from reptiles.

No, one would have to believe in so many miracles for this to take place, one might as well believe in God. It would take a lot less miracles. Besides that, the different depths and ages given to many of the fossil finds has already precluded these from being transitionals.

No, Archie has even lost a great many of the evolutionists as a transitional. He has gone the way of the others.

Last, Dale, you brought up the Duck Billed Platypus. You DO realize that evolution scientists do not consider it to be a transitional don't you?

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This thread is getting way too long. If you want to continue this discussion, let's join a different group where we can start a whole now thread on the matter. I'll start the thread and send you an invitation to the group.

I'd like it noted that most of David W's assertions about abiogenesis and about transitional forms among both fossils and living organisms are simply that, assertions. There is no documatation or support for any of those claims, period. He should have produced some instead of galloping from claim to claim to claim to claim.

And his claim that most evolutionists have abandoned Archeopterx as a transitional form and do not consider the platypus and the echidna as living transitional forms is false, period. All my readings of both websites and books on the subject of evolution indicate exactly the opposite, that they are still classic proofs of evolution that have held up over time.

You may state false information and unsubstatiated claims, but that means nothing in science.

Dale H. thank you for your reply.

That is quite a claim, I am new here, but I have not seen you produce any documented evidence.  Those in glass houses should not throw stones.

So please allow me to be the first between us to provide documentation. And by the way, let us stick to books and scientific journals and papers, since that is where we get real information. We could send each other to dozens of websites that are no more than people pushing opinions, unless of course, you can find one that considers the Law of Chirality to be just an assertion, LOL. (I take it you did not know about Chirality - no offense. And why are you not just jumping onto the "Panspermia" bandwagon when Chirality is brought up like everyone else. If you need me to I can explain about Panspermia as well.

P.S. - I also wanted to point out that your assertion that all scientists believe in evolution is just plain malarky - when ALL scientists from all branches of science are asked, you only outnumber us 5 to 4. And even Doctors of Biology and microbiology will admit they were taught biology with evolution presuposed into their learning anyway.

On the Law of Chirality:

"The Creation/Evolution Controversy" by R.L. Wysong, 1976, page 124.

"The Early Atmosphere of the Terrestrial Planet", by Benlow, Meadows, ans Henderson-Sellers, p21 "Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society," 1980, pp 79-81

"Theoretical Blow to the Origin of Life" by Frederick Denton, "New Scientist", 19. February 1970 page 344.

"Voices for Evolution", The National Center for Science Education, Inc. page 59.

"A Review of Exobiogenesis Theories", by Jerry Bergman, Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1995, page213

to name an extreme few. I can add things written by Creationists and IDists that I have read about it as long as the day is long, and I know you would simply discount it as research, because it did not come from someone who agrees with you. But some here are from evolutioists, and you will find in your research that evolutionists and their journals and papers are always very sparce when it comes to those things that are true roadblocks to their religion, oops, I mean science.

You know what I find funny is that nowhere is philosophy and religious views more pronounced than in the books by Evolutionists. I read their books too of course, as all part of my research.

"The Blind Watchmaker", by Richard Dawkins

"Rocks of Ages", by Stephen Jay Gould

"Origins of Existence" by Fred Adams.

These guys seem to be much more about pushing an alternative to the presupposition that God created the earth, than they are into the actual data they SHOULD be emphasizing - of course with the data they have, I don't blame them a bit.

I am surprised at how you do not seem to have any pause over the fact that you look at each and every finding with the idea already firmly in place that macroevolution is true.

As "Free" said, "evolution can adapt to any data or finding."  I guess he didn't realize that that makes evolution automatically unfalsifyable.

When you decide you are going to choose one presupposition, don't you realize that you do just that? You will always find everything to be a proof of what you already believe.

What are your thoughts on this?

And have you considered actually answering all the other questions I have posed to you in the last four replies?    

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And you misquoted me AGAIN by the way - I never ever spoke about the echidna.

And if you meant that there is no documentation about any of these things period, did you actually mean I was making these things up?

If you do not know about the arguments that you are going to be presented with, so much so that you think they have been made up, you need to realize there is a whole world of facts and stats and data that does not agree with you. If I were you I would edit that reply, before someone else reads it and gets a good laugh.

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David W, I already told you that this thread was getting too long and so I sent you an invitation to another group so we could continue this discussion. You ignored it, so I guess I must return here yet again to finish you off.

Also, I would appreciate you not making cheap shots like accusing me of misquoting you. I did no such thing. The echidna reference (which I mentioned first and you ignored) was because those mammals, like the platypus, lay eggs. Sorry if you didn't recognize that fact. Such nitpicking does not negate the real issue of such transitional animals, which are an embarrassment to any Creationist, whether they care to admit it or not.

Now for your bogus "facts":

1. Salt ions are inert, meaning that they almost never react with other substances to form new compounds, but float freely in solutions. Thus they can neither help nor hinder the formation or maintenance of the early DNA and RNA molecules that would have given rise to the first life forms on Earth. STRIKE ONE!
2. There was no free molecular oxygen in the early atmosphere of Earth. We know this because the universe as a whole, along with the Sun and the giant planets that make up most of the mass of the Solar System, are made mostly of hydrogen, so therefore the atmosphere that first formed on Earth would also have had the same composition. Hydrogen would gobble up any oxygen and make water vapor, which is exactly what is needed to help make amino acids and other organic molecules, including the building blocks of DNA and RNA. STRIKE TWO!
3. A stable environment, with consistent temperatures for the formation and maintence of the organic molecules that later produced the first life forms would have been found deep in the oceans. Therefore, the first life forms would have been found there, and this is consistent with the fossil record showing life in the oceans first. STRIKE THREE!

Casey, take your baseball bat and go home. And come back only when you have more credible arguments, instead of your lame excuses.

to take anyone seriously, when he uses the non-word "evorotatory" (repeatedly, indicating it wasn't just a typo) instead of "levorotatory"  and clearly doesn't even understand the arguments he makes about chirality.   While pre-biotic organic chemistry on the early Earth was probably net achiral, or close to it, dominance of one chirality over another can be reasonably explained, and was probably inevitable.   

You really don't want to bring abiogenesis into this discussion - the rapid advances in this field, driven by some very cool experiments, will disturb your presuppositions.    And you can't discuss it sensibly without learning some real chemistry, not the feeble nonsense they teach you in the creationist pamphlets and websites. 

It is hard to take anyone seriously when they contend that Archaeopteryx has been abandoned by evolutionary scientists and paleontologists as a transition fossil when they regard it as among the most important of transition fossils.    You might want to read Robert Carroll's  " Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution " or Pat Shipman's "Taking Wing, Archaeopteryx and the Origin of Bird Flight", or I can recommend several others.    If you disagree with the conclusions of scientists, go ahead and disagree, but don't misrepresent what the vast majority of scientists believe, or you will be judged and answered accordingly. 

It is hard to take anyone seriously when they purport to fatally critique evolutionary science and demonstrate minimal understanding of the subject they wish to critique.    Copernicus,  Kepler, and Galileo understood Ptolemaic astronomy and Ptolomy's clever mathematics, and defeated it;   Lavoisier  understood the arguments of the excellent chemists, such as Priestley and Cavendish, who were advancing the phlogiston hypothesis, and proved that they were wrong;   Lyell understood why flood geology couldn't cut it and convinced the best geologists of the day, even if they were theists;      Darwin understood Paley's argument from design and demolished it, and understood Lamarck's inadequate evolutionary theory and supplanted it, and understood the problem of using Platonian ideal typology in discussing biological species, and ushered in modern biological science by eliminating it.

You're in the position of someone today arguing for phlogiston; if Priestley or Cavendish were brought back to life, excellent scientists that they were, they'd agree that their hypothesis had been flawed and would perhaps get on with learning modern science.    We don't take phlogistonites seriously anymore, even if they were taken seriously in 1780.    We certainly can't take critics of evolution seriously when they know next to nothing about it.    The scientific argument has been over for more than 100 years, your side lost, and your side has not come up with a really new idea even worth the trouble of shooting down for a long time.   But we patiently do so, to inhibit the spread of ignorance. 

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Dale H,

Thank you for your reply.

I don't quite understand the need to abandon this thread, I have seen some here much longer. Is there something wrong with a long thread that I don't know about? What is this other group you speak of? Why do you desire me to leave this thread?

Next, ....if you do not wish to be told you are misquoting me, perhaps you might consider refraining from it. It is not a cheap shot to point out the misquotes; surely asking and expecting you to get it right and be accurate is not a cheap shot. By misquoting me, you waste effort and time on both our parts and on the parts of others reading. It cannot be that difficult to keep from misquoting me when my replies are in writing.

Next, ....before I get into my rebuttles of your three points, I would like to ask why you demand documentation and sources from your opponents, but never provide any to back up to YOUR assertions. Surely you have scientific sources for your own arguments that you have noted along the years of personal research into this matter. I would hate to think you are simply one of the many who debate this subject by simply running to TalkOrigins.org to get their answers, instead of mastering the subject for themselves.

Now to address your points:

1.) You are absolutely correct about salt ions being inert. However, I am afraid you are not applying the fact correctly. We are not speaking about it reacting with other substances to form new compounds, we are talking about the fact that sodium chloride (the salt predominantly found in sea water,) is toxic to most microorganisms, and does not allow them to form, which is why it is often used to preserve meats. It also has a coorosive effect on many compounds and elements. To act as if it has no effect on other things is a little silly. Saline solution we call "brine" is also used to clean negatively charged resins in water softeners, washing away the mineral content and giving the resins back their positive charge.

Even then, you missed the whole point when I said "salt water." The greater obstacle to overcome is the fact that the first spontaneous generation would have to occur in the ocean, as fossil evidence would prove if you believe in evolution. Unfortunately for the theory, any polypeptides that would be built up from amino acid molecules would actually be broken down by excess water, which we have an abundance of in the ocean of course. Those who postulate such a theory, have to have a very great unfamiliarity with organic chemistry. Synthesis of polypeptides from amino acids does not take place in the presence of excess water, they are broken down immediately. It is too strange that the basic facts of chemistry are ignored in order to further the beliefs in evolution.

2.) You stated categorically that no oxygen was present in the prehistoric atmosphere. That the hydrogen atmosphere would "gobble up" any oxygen molecules, forming water vapor; just the thing for spontaneous life to begin.

According to R.T Brinkman of the California Institute of Technology: "Biochemists generally agree that the presence of oxygen would preclude biological evolution as presently understood. Yet all the evidence tells us that oxygen did exist. The evidence for an early oxidized atmosphere is increasingly so compelling that the Henderson -Sellers, the Benlows and Meadows, are conceding that without oxygen there could be no ozone layer."

After that particular concession, author John Weldon pointed out that either way, life could not exist. "An ozone layer means there had to be oxygen, but if there was no ozone layer, then no life could exist on earth."

3.) Ignoring the Law of Chirality, and the facts submitted so far, I believe you are correct that the fossil record as interpreted by evolutionists would reflect that life had to have begun in the ocean,       -deep in the ocean.

But even evolutionists are having major problems pushing this idea. In the words of evolutionist George Javor: "There is a crisis in the field of chemical evolution today; The best efforts of brilliant scientists over the past 40 years have stalled in logical deadends."

One problem he spoke of, is the complete lack of evidence for any prebiotic compounds that would allow evolution to occur. If these had existed, they most certainly would have left large traces in the oceanic sediment. There is SUPOSED to have accumulated ijn the ocean a nutrient broth known as the "prebiotic soup." Without an abiotic accumulation of the building blocks of the cell, no life could evolve of course.

If this is to be believed, then there must have existed for millions of years a rich mixture of organic compounds in the ancient oceans, and at least some of this would have left some sort of residue in the sedimentary rocks laid down in the seas of those remote times.

Yet for the last three decades rocks of great antiquity have been examined, and in NONE OF THEM has any trace of a biotically produced compound been found.

Considering the way the prebiotic soup has been referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established fact, it comes as something of a shock I am sure to realize that there is absolutely NO positive evidence for its existence.

Last, ....I find your references to strike one, strike two, and three, and to Casey at the Bat, to be rather .....adolescent. Am I debating a teenager? Let's be adults and keep to the subject at hand.   

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Roger W,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes indeed, the word is mispelled in two ways, as it is spelled, "Evoratory", instead of LevoROtatory. A mistake indeed when one  realizes they are called, "L" and "D" forms for short. If you will notice, the lettering is in green, and not my type color, I pasted and copied it from a newsletter that had reproduced my article from my university newspaper. Why the mispelling I don't know.

It is somewhat nice to see that someone who believes in evolution knows about the Law of Chirality, unlike our friend Dale H.

However, after you pointed out the mispelled word, was there anything at all of substance in your reply?

I don't think I have seen a more subjective and meaningless reply.

And it is silly to use twenty year old books to tell me what the majority of hands on scientists today have to say about Archie.

And if you really believe things simply because a lot of others do, you are just another koolaid drinker, like our Dale here.

You tell me that I do not understand chirality, and then say something as silly as that dominance of one chirality over another can be explained. You make the classic mistake that we are talking about the differences between right and left handed chiralities. We are not.

We are talking about miror imaged molecules called "racemates." Half left handed, and half right handed. That is half L and half D.

ALL NON ORGANIC AMINO ACID MOLECULES ARE RACEMATES AND ARE UNSUITABLE, IN FACT FATAL, TO LIFE.

Even those created in the laboratory, even in the Urey/Miller experiment, are racemates.

No amino acid ever found outside of living tissue has ever been found that is not a racemate.

Now, do you have anything of substance?

These arguments based on this:  "nah nah nah nah nah, more people agree with me than with you so you must be wrong" nonsense is the weakest argument one could come up with, and it is all you evolutionists seem to have.

Do you have anything of substance to bring to the discussion? Even Dale H had the guts to come up with a real argument about a point or two!

One last thing, for both Roger and Dale.

There is an attitude in both of your replies. Especially in yours Roger. I find it more and more in the young people today in these forums. You do not come here to put up your own ideas for scrutiny.

That is what debate is truly about. Offering up your ideas and beliefs before others to be scrutinized, and to see if they really stand up to the light of day.

To see how well you know your own beliefs, and to find out if your own sources of information may be questionable in the eyes of others.

To sharpen and hone your own communication skills, and to share knowledge that may have been heretofore unknown to you.

And most especially, to find out if someone of the opposite persuasion has a better case, and if not, to persuade them to the truth.

In this fashion, debate helps us to find out what parts of our beliefs are possibly wrong, or perhaps simply need adjustment. The entire point of discussion and debate, is to come to a point of TRUTH.

Personal insult, innuendo, and subjective dictation, such as telling someone for seven paragraphs how wrong they are, without telling them WHY they are wrong, is absolutely useless, and wasted effort.

Perhaps the three of us can proceed, with a minimum of personal antagonism, and a little more desire to share what we know, in order to come to a more perfect understanding of the subject at hand.

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You lament, like most creationists, criticisms of your arguments which you call ad hominem.  But like most creationists, your reply is composed simply of ad hominem and appeal to authority without understanding what the authority said. 

I am quite familair with chirality, but your "Law of Chirality" seesm to be sheer nonsense, invented by you, which I can't find in any of quite a few chemistry textbooks.      If you mean that there is no means for chiral life forms to evolve from achiral organic chemicals, you are sadly mistaken.   I assume you get your unscientific notions from "answersingenesis" which provides a simplistic introduction, a general statement from an organic chemistry book, and then sloppily tries to tie it to the Laws of Thermodynamics, which creationists love but do not understand in the slightest.     No chemistry book would cite a "Law of Chirality" because it's a general, approximate rule applying to laboratory organic synthesis and doesn't have the status of a scientific law for many good  reasons.  Even what I read in "answersingenesis" doesn't promote it to a "Law"  although I have only limited tolerance for the sloppy thinking therein, so I have not exhaustively read that nonsensical website.      Needless to say, the thermodynamic argument doesn't cut it for the simple reason that it requires a neglegibly small energy input to seperate an achiral mixture and Earth is not a closed system, with large inputs of energy. (From the sun!)     Are you aware that achiral solutions usually crystallize to give separate chiral crystals?     From there, random processes easily solve the problem.     Yes, I know, you creationists have deep feelings about random processes.   If lightening struck the right-handed crystal and not the left, you'll say, SOMEONE had to have aimed the lightening.    How, you protest, could the left-handed crystals possibly be subjected to some destructive process that did not equally affect the right.     It just doesn't seem fair, does it?   You are probably unaware that many non-chiral molecules, such as silicon dioxide, crystallize into chiral crystals, such as the common mineral quartz.    You are probably unaware that such "handed" crystals very often have catalytic properties associated with some or all of their crystal faces, and will catalize organic chermical reactions to give chiarl or somewaht chiral products from achiral precursors.    (By the way, it's not proper to talk about "inorganic " amino acids", all amino acids, whether chiral or racemic mixtures, are organic compounds.    This is just a nit about terminology, but it betrays your ignorance of chemistry.) 

In fact, the origin of biochemical chirality is a problem, but not for reason of some imagined "Law of Chirality" such as you have apparently invented.    The problem is more an embarrassment of riches, as symmetry breaking may have occurred at many stages on the early Earth, and we can't distinguish which ones were the most important.   Personally, my favorite explanation is that the winners, our ancestors, simply ate the losers.    The real world involves stochastic processes, life, from it's very beginning is undoubtedly a process involving much contingency.    You guys hate that.    Scientists understand it and deal with it.   You guys think you don't need it; when confronted with a puzzle, your answer is always "God did it!"     

You dismiss a classic of paleontology, Carroll's book, because it's 20 years old.     It's hardly out of date, as the content is well established and non-controversial among scientists; also it's hard scisnce, not the silly conjecture and ad hoc inconsistent argumants of the creationist wensites.     The fossil evidence hasn't gone away, much as you'd like it to, and it's been reinforced by new discoveries which buttress the enormous proponderance of evidenc for evolution.      Nothing has been discovered in the meantime which supports creationism.      Your "science"  text is 2000 years old and its science is really out of date.  Shipman's book was published in 1998, so once again, you made a claim that wasn't true.

Your argument about a tiny percentage of oxygen in the early Earth atmosphere is irrelevant, as there are many environments on the modern Earth which are anoxic, and support life.   But the fact that you cite this claim shows that you CHERRY-PICK scientific evidence if it suits your argumentative needs, even though you'd reject all the science on which that evidence is based.    If you rejct the basic science, you have no justification for citing results which you'd like to believe, fooling yourself, support your argument.

Don't you ever wonder why there are hundreds of thousands of scientists and scientifically educated people in the world and probably  more than 99% of them think your notions are utter nonsense?    Yeah, this is, there are more of us than there are of you, but I'll gladly concede that you've got way more ignorant people on your side.    If you dislike my argumentative approach. look to your own, and try to present reasoned arguments instead of nonsense.     Present a reasoned, intelligible scientific argument, without invented "laws" or appeals to authority, and I'll refute it.    Otherwise, don't complain,   you're just getting what's coming to you.

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Roger W,

Thank you for your reply.

I am afraid I can make nothing of your comments - just more personal jargon. Once again you show you that you think chirality has to do with the difference between left handed and right handed amino acid molecules.

The way you tell it, there are right handed amino acid molecules, and left handed molecules, and life decided to take one of them, instead of the other.

You are absolutely mistaken.

Though I realize I am speaking to a brick wall with no desire to learn, I will explain it for you one more time.

ALL amino acid molecular structures found outside organic matter are RACEMATES, that is, they are half right handed, and half left handed. They are not only unsuitable for life, they are destructive to life.

Organic life forms are made of amino acid structures that are all right handed, and not mirror imaged. There has never been found, EVER, right handed or left handed amino acid molecules lying around. ONLY racemates.

Perhaps this will clarify it for you, but since you are looking for microbiology in chemistry textbooks, I doubt you will find it. LOL!

Next time you want to find information about microbiology, you might want to check out a microbiology textbook, not a chemistry textbook! LOL!

It is a great deal of fun watching you learn that evolutionist scientists stay quiet about those things that are insurmountable to their religion, oops, I mean science, but it is gravely disappointing watching you choose to drink the koolaid and decide to be a member of the majority simply because it makes you feel better about yourself.

You might find it more satisfying to fully investigate a matter, rather than just take the majority opinion and use that as your one and only debate point against anyone who has taken a more courageous stand.

You simply become one of an entire chorus of people just like Dale, parroting what you are fed, and attempting to drum out the opposition with declarations that everyone agrees with you.

The point being, who cares how many people agree with you? History has shown thousands of times over that the majority usually is in the wrong.

But take safety and comfort from your numbers, I can see by your arguments, it is all you have.

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Your statements are so unintelligible, that it is hardly worth while to debate you.    For example:

"ALL amino acid molecular structures found outside organic matter are RACEMATES, that is, they are half right handed, and half left handed. "

What do you mean by this statement?   The statements's most obvious interpretation is that, outside of (sic) "organic matter" (by which I assume you mean living organisms or their constituent parts) a molecule of tryptophan, for example, is half right-handed and half left handed!

I'd prefer to believe that you are not so ignorant as to believe this, but your other statements cast much doubt.

You haven't responded to my statement that Carroll's book is not outdated, for the simple and obvious reason that the fossils described therein still exist, and still tell us the same thing.

You haven't resonded to my comments about the possible origins of chirality, except to claim that I don't understand it, betraying your own ignorance.         If you can manage to ask me a coherent intelligible question, I'll answer it, but if you can only quote from creationist website nonsense, there is no hope for you.    You might start by clarifying what you really meant by your incomprehensible statement which I've quoted above.    Or you can hope that there are ignorant readers who believe your nonsense and play to them.

If you wish to be taken even slightly seriously, tell us exactly what you do believe,  ( Young Earth Creationism;   old earth creationism;  intelligent design, or whatever)  instead of taking potshots at evolution, using CHERRY-PICKED sources, from all over the map.    Quote more than a CHERRY-PICKED sentence from Brinkman's paper: give us the abstract, introduction and conclusions.    You can't because you got it from a creationist website and the paper doesn't mean what you imply it does, and the author also isn't what you imply.   By the way, one doesn't normally emphasisize the institution in a one sentence citation.   Bad form.    I'm so sick of creationist CHERRY-PICKING, the one sentence Darwin eye quote is the most infamous; right after the introductory sentence Darwin DEMOLISHED the argument from design.     Creationist CHERRY-PICKING  =  DECEPTION.

I've asked you a few serious questions here, but I'm pretty sure you'll squirm your way out of answering.     I've met your type before.     But I'd really be happy to teach you some chemistry, if you show any inclination toward learning.

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I think David W meant that half of the amino acid molecules formed on the primitive Earth were left-handed, and half were right-handed.

But that would not prevent the development of life forms on Earth that used only the left-handed and not the right handed amino acids to make protiens. Indeed, the very structure of DNA (like a coiled ladder that turns only one way) would naturally produce proteins that would have amino acids with left-handed structures only.

But to assume that a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids is somehow harmful to life on Earth is beyond ridiculous. Perhaps an experiment has been done to synthesize a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids and then the mixture was fed to an animal, causing it to die.

Any record of this, David W?

We are not talking about chemical makeup. We are talking about spacial structure, something learned in microbiology, not chemistry.

You might consider researching the subject, but I doubt you will.

And I do not trust Creationist Websites. They are full of old news, like Piltdown Man, and Haeckel's Embryos Hoax.

One stays much more up to date by reading scientific papers and articles in scientific journals.

One can know far more about evolutionist scientists and their true personal beliefs and ideas by reading their papers, not that of Creationists.

Besides, Creationists are wrong about many of their presupositions, such as the age of the earth.

As a member of the American Society for MicroBiology I am of course inundated with magazines and journals, though I never let one go by unperused. Microbe World and Microbe Magazine are the best as far as being updated, but the papers let you know how often evolutionist scientists disagree with one another. Very often the papers are nothing more than a refutation of some other scientists findings.

Believe me, when you put your faith in scientists, you might as well be believing in politicians. The real world of sciencs is one of politics, selfishness, and desire for fame. And if you believe in the nobility of scientists, I have a bridge in brooklyn to sell you.

If you refuse to listen to me that is quite alright, but just make sure you give every claim the same scrutiny. And take nothing on faith.

I am now an intern studying under Dr. Larry Meissner, at Concordia Lutheran University in Austin. Prof meissner always tells his students to take nothing on faith, and to always study it out; there is as much false information as there is true, and far too much of it is built upon the presupositions of other men who are wrong.

Take care, and do your own thinking.

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sorry Dale, you have missed the boat a hundred percent. I have explained it three ways, but you still aren't getting it, and I just don't have the time.

Please go research this on your own. It is that important.

Take care, and do your own thinking.

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Gosh David, could you recommend a good microbiology book. 

I mean, one you've read, and can cite from.    

Mine relegates chirality to chemistry, against your (snicker) superior knowledge.   I'll have to write the authors. 

And it's filled with evidence for evolution from microbiology.  

I guess you're as ignorant of microbiology as you are of chemistry.

I don't buy it, David.  If you were knowledgable about microbio, you'd KNOW chemical structure is part of chemistry, not microbio.

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Everything you've cited is nonsense from creationist websites.   I can't say which one because they all copy each other.     You sure didn't get Brinkman from a microbiology book.    Come on, fess up.

Lying for God?

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You said clearly that "ALL non organic amino acid molecular structures are "racemates." That means that they are mirror imaged structures, having half evarotory form, and half dextrarotatory forms. That means that they are unsuitable for life, they are in fact, toxic to life."

And later you say "ALL NON ORGANIC AMINO ACID MOLECULES ARE RACEMATES AND ARE UNSUITABLE, IN FACT FATAL, TO LIFE."

I'm NOT misquoting you! That's EXACTLY what you said, as anyone can see by scrolling up this thread!

So I asked, "Perhaps an experiment has been done to synthesize a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids and then the mixture was fed to an animal, causing it to die. Any record of this, David W?"

And you evade the question!

Checked on Meissner, ran into this at a creationist website where he was interviewed:

http://www.creationhistory.net/index.shtml  

David W. apparently got his understanding of evolution from this:

This is their "geological model":

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David may NOT have got his misinformation from crazy creationist websites.  

He may have got it from his professor, who is unknown and doesn't publish in the scientific literature, and who got the creationist nonsense from crazy creationist websites.

If that's so, I apologize, David.    Not your fault.    You were misinformed by your teacher.

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Misinformation is misinformation. Like the claim that the salt water in the oceans would destroy the first life forms. Where did THAT idea come from? That's like saying a fetus in the womb would die because it cannot breath oxygen through his lungs, like all people already born do.

Maybe an experiment can be done to put DNA in ocean water and see if it is destroyed by the salt.

If life arose in the oceans, it would be adapted for the salt there. Only life forms adapted for fresh water only would be killed by salt water!

I'd need to check, but I think the evidence suggests that the early seas where life started were less saline than today, and life has since evolved and adapted to a large number of environments.    Here's a photo of some actual microbiologists ( who surpisingly study microbes instead of chemical structure )  sampling water from Don Juan Pond in an Antarctic dry valley.     The lake contains frigid water saturated with calcium chloride, and supports several sorts of organisms.      Madigan is one of the authors of my microbiology text, "Brock Biology of Microorganisms" and although I've never met him, I kinda like him 'cause his dedication to the book was to two of his dogs, and his author photograph featured one of them!     What a cool job.

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My apologies gentlemen, you are absolutely correct about chirality being a chemistry subject, and not a microbiological one.

After our discussions here, I  went to Dr. Meissner, and discussed the subject with him. He told me that in no uncertain terms chirality is indeed a subject for chemists and specifically biochemists.

So I will now eat a plate of crow.

However, since you seemed to think it was a term that was simply made up, and I think it was Roger who actually made laughing smileys at the term "Racemates", let me direct you to a very fundamental website called: "Dictionary.com". There type in the word, "chirality", and you will find that it does indeed exist, and concerns exactly what I said it does. You will find that even the mirror images I spoke of apart of a couple of the definitions.

Then if you would type in the words, "chiral racemates" it will take you to "Reference.com", where there will be some 8000 entries.

You will find that "racemates" is also a term about mirror images having to do with chirality.

BY the way, I DID already give you my own sources for the concept of chirality, if you will scroll back, you will find them.

What really is curious to me though, is why you did not already know about it, and why you do not respond like so many other evolutionists do. MOST of the people who I have spoken to all already knew about chirality, and already knew what I had to say about it, I do not know why you guys did not know about it.

Most evolutionists immediately respond to the chirality question with "Panspermia", a far better possibility than spontaneous generation on earth. It has none of the problems that abiogenensis has, save one, and even that argument cannot be substantiated against it.

Why have you not responded with "Panspermia?"

Again, let me say you were absolutely correct about the chemistry versus biology argument. You were right, I was wrong.

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What really is curious to me though, is why you did not already know about it, and why you do not respond like so many other evolutionists do. MOST of the people who I have spoken to all already knew about chirality, and already knew what I had to say about it, I do not know why you guys did not know about it.

You already answered that question when you noted that "chirality is indeed a subject for chemists and specifically biochemists." Most creation/evolution dialogues don't address such issues, at least to my knowledge. They focus on the fossil record, on the makeup of present day animals and plants and the supposed moral implications of evolution, but not abiogenesis, since even Darwin never addressed that matter. Since I (and perhaps Roger as well) am more specialized in dealing with evolution than with abiogenesis, we don't normally deal with chirality. And "racemates" must be a newly coined term even many scientists may not be familiar with.

Why have you not responded with "Panspermia?"

Because there is no evidence for it. Furthermore, until we have confirmation of life of any kind beyond Earth, we can't even test such a hypothesis.

Actually there was a special program a few months ago on the Discovery Channel, where some scientists made quite a case for Panspermia, in that they believed microbes were present on at least one meteorite that had been found recently.

I really wish I had taped it, but there you have it.

By the way, did you see the news that there is a planet that they say is very earthlike orbitting a red dwarf star? Very exciting indeed!

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No David, racemate is a legitimate term, though it can be ambiguous, so I don't prefer to use it.   Saying racemate sounds like it's one thing, one chemical compound.   If anthing, I'd describe "racemate" as antiquated and therefore not used much any more.    A racemic mixture consists of an optically inactive mixture of optically active isomers, and obviously isn't one thing, one compound.   A racemate obviously isn't one specific compound, so saying racemic mixture is more precise.  From uncontroversial  Wikipedia, defintion of racemic:

"In chemistry, a racemic mixture is one that has equal amounts of left- and right-handed enantiomers of a chiral molecule.

The first known racemic mixture, or racemate, was 'racemic acid', which Pasteur found to be a mixture of the two enantiomeric isomers of tartaric acid. "

You won't find many definitions of "racemate" around because it's a less useful term than racemic mixture.  Saying racemic mixture is clear and precise; the way you used the term "racemate" seemed to suggest a compound, instead of a mixture of compounds, hence my reaction.

There is no evidence of panspermia, so at this point it's purely a hypothesis, not a theory.   Personally, I hope it's not true because I think it would be wonderful to find life on another world which evlolved differently than life on Earth.

Actually, (1) panspermia compared with (2) abiogenesis and (3) Darwinian evolution provides a great example of a (1) scientific hypothesis and (2) a developing scientific theory, and (3) an established scientific theory.

Some evidence for panspermia, especially in limited form, may occur, pushing it forward to theory status.

Abiogenesis has lots of evidence, but it may not become established theory, due to lack of overwhelming evidence, or contrary evidence.

Most scientists are quite certain that Darwinian evolution will not be overthrown, although Darwin and later evolutionists expect occasional additions and modifications.

Finally there is nonsense.   From Wikipedia, "theory":

The difference between science and unscientific nonsense was well caught in Wolfgang Pauli's famous comment on a paper he was shown: "This isn't right. It's not even wrong".  

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I'm extremely comfortable talking about chirality, but I need to know I'm talking to someone who can understand, or will try to do so.

I probably know a higher %-age of what is known re. abiogenesis than evolutionary science, because the extent of evolutionary science is relatively enormous.    It's much easier to know a lot about a little than a lot about a lot.   But I know a lot more about evolution than abiogenesis.   There just isn't that much to know about abiogenesis yet.   But it's growing fast, and we don't need time machines.   The possible reactions can be and are studied in the lab.   

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When I went to Wikipedia and looked up "Chirality", it of course spoke about chirality as it applied to all compounds and molecules.

If you will go to Wikipedia, and type in "Chirality", and scroll down to the fourth section where it discusses chirailty in biology, the first sentence says:

"Many biologically-active molecules are chiral, including the naturally-occurring amino acids (the building blocks of proteins.)"

THIS is the phenomenon I have been speaking about. Biologically active amino acid molecules being chiral, that is non mirror imaged. Notice also as you go to the site, it has two pictures depicting exactly what it is speaking of.

I understand what you are speaking about when you talk about a racemic mixture, but we are not discussing chirality in all its vast compound applications. If I understand the concept correctly, in the pictures, those are pictures of mirror image molecules, ONE molecule made up of two isomers.

My understanding as Wikipedia explains it, is that chiral molecules have non superimposable isomers.

As I have used the terms and learned them before, a "racemate" is ONE molecule made up of two isomers, that are mirror imaged, or "superimposable."

As Wikipedia stated, biologically active amino acid molecules are not superimposable.

Non biologically active amino acid molecules are superimposable.

Their spatial structures therefore are different. And according to my references listed far above, they are not interchangeable, and no non biologically active amino acid molecule is suitable for life.

Wikipedia certainly seems to back up this concept when it points out the difference in biologically active amino acid molecules.

Thoughts?

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My understanding as Wikipedia explains it, is that chiral molecules have non superimposable isomers.

As I have used the terms and learned them before, a "racemate" is ONE molecule made up of two isomers, that are mirror imaged, or "superimposable." "

NO!   "Racemates" are mixtures of optical isomers, in the case of the amino acids, equal numbers of molecules of two different chiralities.  

The usual natural amino acids are all of one chirality, levo-; there opposite chirality can be synthesized readily, but aren't present as commonly in nature in biochemical materials. 

 You can't have a carbon atom in one half one chirality and one half the other.    And the important amino acids have only one chiral carbon, except glycine, which isn't chiral.   Take a look at this website:

http://www.registech.com/chiral/chiralreview.pdf

Assume a very simple chiral molecule, a methane with three hydrogens replaced with a fluorine, F, a chlorine, Cl, and a bromine, Br.    So you have a simple (more or less) tetrahedral molecule CHFClBr:

          Imagine C in the plane of the screen, H and F coming out of the screen and Cl and Br going backward.    Switch two atoms and you get the other isomer and they can't go into each other - see below.

The amino acid case is exactly the same escept each has a hydrogen, an amino group a carboxylic acid group, and a unique fourth side group.  Glycine has a second hydrogen and hence isn't optically active.   There are a bunch of non-standard amino acids as well as the usual twenty, used by certain organisms, and the d-amino acids are found in biochemical materials, including proteins in snails and bacterial cell walls, but they are somewhat unusual.   Read the amino acid entry in Wkipedia.   Get an organic chemistry text; used ones are cheap. 

No chiral molecule* can be turned into its mirror image.     The two forms can't be turned into each other without breaking bonds - that's the point.     Build a couple paper tetrahedrons, and paint the four vertices of one with four different colors.     Then paint the other so that it is the mirror image of the other;    you can do that by placing them trangular side to triangular side, painting the touching vertices the same and the vertices pointing back the same.    Then those two tetrahedrons can't be superimposed with all the same vertices in the same places.     But a molecule like that will have exactly the same properties if it reacts with a non-chiral molecule, whichever it's own chirality.   That stops being true when there are more than one chiral center in the molecule.    Amazingly (or it ought to be) the clever nineteenth century chemists solved the structure of glucose, with five chiral carbons, with correct relationships between all the chiral carbons (but one left undetermined until x-ray crystal structures using anomalous dispirsion could prove the absolute structure about a century later) using nothing but chemical reactions and one simple instrument, the polariscope which measure the chnage in the polariztion angle of light.     And that was before "atomism" was fully accepted.

* with the possible bizarre exception of a complex molecule with two equal but opposite chiral centers and a possible inversion center or mirror plane between them - but such a bizarre molecule wouldn't rotate polarized light and I think it wouldn't technically be called chiral.

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Dale H.
 

Freediver should have said long ago, "I advocate altering the definition of science to include only hypotheses, theories, and laws that can be subject to experiment. Any such idea that has specific references to historical events in deep time, and thus cannot be subjected directly to experimentation, should be considered natural history and not science."

Freediver O.
 

Dale, science is already defined that way. You just haven't realised that that is the only consistent way to do it.

Freediver O.
 

But you didn't get a consistent definition that way. You can hardly reject my definition and replace it with one the differs depending on circumstance. Furthermore giving examples of what other people think is hardly a solid basis for your argument. For each example, I pointed out why it was wrong.

All you ever did, Freediver was demonstrate over and over again that you are not capable of doing any real science because you have no understanding of how scientists do their own work and how it all fits together in a coherent depiction of natural reality. Your claim that their definitions of science and the scientific method are inconsistent is just a ton of hot air. Specifically, both your claim that evolution is not a scientific theory and that atheism is a religion are just more pointless nitpicking that are insulting to both actual athiests and actual scientists. You don't tell others what their own beliefs or their own jobs involve, EVER! That is the height of hubris and only gets you laughed at.

You'd make an excellent attorney, I'll grant you that.

All you ever did, Freediver was demonstrate over and over again that you are not capable of doing any real science

This is philosophy, not science.

Your claim that their definitions of science and the scientific method are inconsistent is just a ton of hot air.

Then why can't you refute them? I didn't just claim it. I pointed out why.

You don't tell others what their own beliefs or their own jobs involve

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, it is not actually necessary for a scientist to understand the broader context of their work in order to make a valuable contribution. I have never contradicted anyone on what their job is about.

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Whatever, Freediver. Debating with you about science is a waste of time because you don't use the same definitions of terms I do. That hinders effective communication. I might as well be arguing about mathmatics with someone who insists 2 + 2 = 5. If he counts numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and does not recognize 4 as a number, no amount of argumentation will make a difference. So why bother?

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omg...  Dale, are you the ANONYMOUS on here and rebirthed this discussion from 2007 the other night?

Yes, Carolyn. Most of the "anonymous" posts on this thread were of me years ago. You recognize my handiwork?

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LOL  I do hope you stick with it...  a good showdown between you and FD is what every C2 person looks forward to!