Jonathan Sarfati wrote:
However, many evolutionary propagandists are guilty of the deceitful practice of equivocation, that is, switching the meaning of a single word (evolution) part way through an argument.
That is why I so often remind creationists to be clear when they mean biological evolution, and when cosmology, or geology, or something else. I object to bait and switch.
Jonathan Sarfati wrote:
A common tactic, ‘bait-and-switch,’ is simply to produce examples of change over time, call this ‘evolution,’ then imply that the GTE is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved.
If that were the whole argument, he'd have a point. It isn't. Much of the evidence for phylogenies within the limits you accept, what you call microevolution within a kind, is the same as for phylogenies across taxonomic distances that you claim can't be bridged by evolution. I have not seen you offer any argument why the same sort of evidence should be valid in one case but not another.
Awesomelyglorious wrote:
The rule about direct observation really doesn't matter so much given that scientific explanations of reality are often still considered science, just not laboratory science. Such a rule that all science must be laboratory science would outright exclude a lot of social scientific inquiry, as well as cosmology, geology, etc. The problem is that such a rigidity of definition just makes no sense, as the logical method of inquiry bears some similarity to actual science, and the knowledge used has overlaps with laboratory science.
Exactly.
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
I think that although it may not make one more honest to admit to their bias openly it does help with individual intellectual honesty to realize that everyone including one's own person has bias, or as Dr Sarfati said in a response to one of his facebook statuses, "Everyone with an IQ above freezing point has a bias..."
Acknowledging bias definitely is more honest than denying it. The acknowledgment doesn't lead to greater intellectual honesty if one then carries right on with biased reasoning and claims it to be as valid as anything else. Who is probably more affected by bias?
A) People who think bias is a vice and try to reduce or eliminate it?
B) People who think because everyone is biased, all reasoning is equally valid?
C) People who are proud to be biased and see their own bias as a virtue?
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
I'm not arguing against the existence of variation. Rather the type of variation which is required to produce new organs, or at least new organelles, needs to be demonstrated empirically in the present repeatably
What do you think of conan's answer?
conan wrote:
certain organelles like chloroplasts and mitochondria are a result of one cell engulfing another cell and them both co-existing in a mutually beneficial arrangement (symbiosis(a widely accepted concept. eg root nodules of plants and mycorrhizi, gut bacteria in humans.))
You want to see that sort of process in the present. I found something for you that looks promising. If it's not what you're looking for, tell us why. Or are you now satisfied?
Kodama & Fujishima in INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF CELL AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, VOL 279 wrote:
Each symbiotic Chlorella species of Paramecium bursaria is enclosed in a perialgal vacuole (PV) membrane derived from the host digestive vacuole (DV) membrane. Algae-free paramecia and symbiotic algae are capable of growing independently and paramecia can be reinfected experimentally by mixing them. This phenomenon provides an excellent model for studying cell-to-cell interaction and the evolution of eukaryotic cells through secondary endosymbiosis between different protists. However, the detailed algal infection process remains unclear. Using pulse labeling of the algae-free paramecia with the isolated symbiotic algae and chase method, we found four necessary cytological events for establishing endosymbiosis. (1) At about 3 min after mixing, some algae show resistance to the host lysosomal enzymes in the DVs, even if the digested ones are present. (2) At about 30 min after mixing, the alga starts to escape from the DVs as the result of the budding of the DV membrane into the cytoplasm. (3) Within 15 min after the escape, the DV membrane enclosing a single green alga differentiates to the PV membrane, which provides protection from lysosomal fusion. (4) The alga localizes at the primary lysosome-less host cell surface by affinity of the PV to unknown structures of the host. At about 24 h after mixing, the alga multiplies by cell division and establishes endosymbiosis. Infection experiments with infection-capable and infection-incapable algae indicate that the infectivity of algae is based on their ability to localize beneath the host surface after escaping from the DVs. This algal infection process differs from known infection processes of other symbiotic or parasitic organisms to their hosts.
08 Jun 2010, 10:30 am
