Alternatives to Modern Evolutionary Theory

Does a forensic scientist have to watch the suspect create a fingerprint during the commission of the crime in order to use fingerprints as evidence?

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No, it’s observed. Retroviruses have been a major focus of both virology and cancer research since the 1970s.

Why do you fabricate so much, scd?

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actually human telomerase is a kind of reverse transcriptase. so here you go.

true but the problem with this specific situation is that we have another possible explanation then common descent. so you cant argue that evidence x point to a common descent when it c an also point to a common designer.

see above. in this specific situation we have another possible explanation rather then common descent. so you cant argue that evidence x point to a common descent when in realiy it can also point to a common designer.

What do you mean by that?

What explanation is that?

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that human has a kind of viral reverse transcriptase.

common designer of course.

I’ll need a citation for that one.

That isn’t an explanation. A common designer doesn’t explain nested hierarchy. We’ve been through this before, and that way lies madness and truck phylogenies.

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That’s like claiming a designer is a possible explanation for fingerprints since God could plant fingerprints at crime scenes. Your argument simply doesn’t work. We have an observed mechanism that produces ERV’s, and you have yet to show any plausible designer creating ERV’s in genomes.

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" Reverse transcriptases are used by retroviruses to replicate their genomes, by retrotransposon mobile genetic elements to proliferate within the host genome, by eukaryotic cells to extend the telomeres at the ends of their linear chromosomes"

Sorry but “common design” isn’t an explanation when you’ve shown no evidence for “design” of any kind. “Common design” is just an empty excuse for avoiding the huge amount of evidence for common descent we do have.

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so we need to check for the best explanation. right? so i will ask you this: what do you think is the best explanation for the existence of a self replicating watch: design or a natural process?

What self replicating watch?

The circadian rhythm internal “watch” of self-replicating living creatures evolved through natural processes.

The forensic investigator can explain all his crime scene observations by appealing to an invisible fairy (or some other kind of nefarious, undetected intelligent designer) having planted all the evidence.

The mere fact that another explanation is logically conceivable does not make that explanation reasonable or plausible. While it will ALWAYS be possible to explain the data with some alternative hypothesis, some kinds of data simply fits better with some explanations than others. Some explanations are more reasonable than others.

We evaluate explanations by their parsimony(the simpler the better), falsifiability(they must be able to be contradicted by new data), and explanatory power(they must explain as much as the data as possible).

The “an intelligent designer planted the evidence”-hypothesis fails on falsifiability at the very least. There is no conceivable explanation for which that can not be invoked.

Ah, I see. Yes, you could call that a reverse transcriptase. But is it the same as a viral reverse transcriptase?

The texas sharp shooter assumes a target because the bullets are grouped together. You just like him are assuming the cause of the pattern based on the pattern itself.

The theory of evolution predicted these features, so we aren’t drawing patterns after the data was already in.

This is historical data. You didn’t predict it, you are observing it.

The proposed cause of common descent and evolution predicts a target independently of the bullet holes. That’s the difference.

The correlation between morphological and molecular phylogenies was predicted before the molecular data was in. Also, you can predict that evolution would produce a nested hierarchy from first principles. The theory also predicts which mixtures of features you will see in fossil species, and that prediction is tested with each new fossil species that is discovered.

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And we do science to check. You don’t.

You need to brush up on the metaphor. No, he doesn’t. He draws a target around every bullet; there’s nothing about them being grouped.

You are sorely mistaken again. In science, we predict things we don’t know. Whether they are from past events is irrelevant.

You should try it sometime, Bill.