Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 17 Mar 2014 3:50:47pm
Actually Alpo, I do have some other comments to offer. Firstly all people are religious in the sense that we all believe things we can't possibly know are true so hold them by faith. Based on this I guess that last religious person will be the last human being in about a thousand years or so ; )

Secondly the cosmological argument is only one of a number of evidences for God, just because the first cause of the universe shows that some intelligence external to said universe must exist does not mean that's all the evidence there is. In fact there is abundant evidence in the design of nature, the huge information content of DNA being a prime example. Surely as an evolutionary biologist you would know this.

As far as chemical evolution goes the following are just some of the insurmountable problems based, as I said, on real observable science in the present:

1. There is pretty much universal agreement that the early atmosphere contained no reducing gases and Miller type experiments don't work without these reducing gases.
2. The atmosphere contained free oxygen, which would destroy any fledging organic compounds.
3. Life requires homochiral polymers, all the same ‘handedness’ but Miller experiments produce racemates, equal mixtures of left and right handed molecules so could never form a living organism.

There is plenty more at if your interested. And yes it is a creationist website but if you dismiss it simply for this then you are even more close minded than you appear.

Now we get to genetic entropy. With respect I'm not really sure who should be embarrassed here, you or me, as this has clearly hit a nerve. Look, I'm no expert and don't claim to be so may I, as a layman, ask you as an evolutionary biologist some simple questions?

1. Are the vast majority of point mutations of nucleotides in the human genome deleterious or beneficial?
2. Is it true that the current thinking on the number of mutations per generation is in the order of 100-300 per individual?
3. How does natural selection select for individual nucleotide mutations when it only sees fitness of the whole person? Remember we have up to 300 mutations (mostly negative) that natural selection must remove simultaneously just to prevent degeneration of the genome, let alone any improvement (evolution).
4. If the current estimate of useful DNA is 30%, and increasing daily it seems, how can the human genome possibly absorb these mutations without losing real information?
5. Given this, how can the human genome even maintain the current information content without eventual decline?

I will ignore the personal attacks and just simply ask you, as an evolutionary biologist, to answer these rational questions.