Again…. You don’t have other parts of the car… Your natural selection can’t even produce a single atom… Please stop dreaming..

“No it isn’t. It is random mutation (i.e. chance) combined with natural selection. Continuously leaving out one portion of the process to denigrate it as merely the other is dishonest. If you claim one more time that evolution is singularly one or the other our conversation is over. It is both together that make the process work.”

Again… You have no other portions… You have nothing…

“Maybe I can give you an example. Sometimes when species are reproducing an accident happens and a whole section of their DNA is copied twice. Their offspring then has the same set of genes twice in part of their DNA. This may have a major negative effect and the offspring may die, or it may be neutral or even slightly beneficial and the offspring may live. (It may result in an extra set of limbs or leaves and there even a single mutation could greatly effect the body plan.) If the change in any way gives the individual (and its similar offspring) an advantage then they could thrive and replace their “parent species”. Has information been created yet?”

Again you have NO offspring to reproduce.. Remember you are trying to produce life from scratch from non-living chemicals.. This cannot be done and any science class..

“Or maybe you are asking “where did DNA or the structure of DNA come from?” That’s a different question. Please don’t act like I don’t know what I’m talking about, if the problem is really that I am not sure what you are talking about.”

You can word it anyway you want… Because you will still come up empty handed… Maybe you don’t understand what I’m talking about because you don’t understand what you are talking about..

“Natural selection is single process that is part of the main false process called Darwinian evolution. It cannot stand on it’s own… If one of your cards is missing, then your house of cards falls.”
it is one part of the process. It does not work alone. Do you think automobiles are impossible because a piston alone can’t make them go? Evolution is a process that requires selection and random variation. If you don’t have both it doesn’t happen.

“Your whole “structure” is built on a cheap plastic notion that “chance” is the chief sole orchestrator and creator of life. This is beyond silliness and has never been proven in any science class.”
No it isn’t. It is random mutation (i.e. chance) combined with natural selection. Continuously leaving out one portion of the process to denigrate it as merely the other is dishonest. If you claim one more time that evolution is singularly one or the other our conversation is over. It is both together that make the process work.

“Again, where did the information in DNA come from?”
Maybe I can give you an example. Sometimes when species are reproducing an accident happens and a whole section of their DNA is copied twice. Their offspring then has the same set of genes twice in part of their DNA. This may have a major negative effect and the offspring may die, or it may be neutral or even slightly beneficial and the offspring may live. (It may result in an extra set of limbs or leaves and there even a single mutation could greatly effect the body plan.) If the change in any way gives the individual (and its similar offspring) an advantage then they could thrive and replace their “parent species”. Has information been created yet?

What if after fifty years the new type of plant has further adapted so that the new leaves are a different color than the original so that they are now what we might call pedals, now have we created information?

Or maybe you are asking “where did DNA or the structure of DNA come from?” That’s a different question. Please don’t act like I don’t know what I’m talking about, if the problem is really that I am not sure what you are talking about.

Natural selection is single process that is part of the main false process called Darwinian evolution. It cannot stand on it’s own… If one of your cards is missing, then your house of cards falls.

Your whole “structure” is built on a cheap plastic notion that “chance” is the chief sole orchestrator and creator of life. This is beyond silliness and has never been proven in any science class.

Again, where did the information in DNA come from?

Natural selection doesn’t “stand on its own”. It is only a single part of the process. The “information” comes from random mutation (and later sexual gene shuffling). The “design” comes from natural selection. Neither, on its own, is sufficient.

Perhaps this article will help you understand the DNA formations better.

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

As for as your response to natural selection you have again confirmed my point that it CANNOT stand on it’s own.. Why? Because it can’t build anything from scratch.

So where did the information in DNA come from then?

I am not sure what “structure” you are talking about. DNA is essentially a recipe for how to make an animal. When an animal is developing and growing it is following the recipe described by its DNA. Selection occurs when that animal is either able to reproduce and send that DNA into the next generation, or it dies before it is able to reproduce and its genes die with it. Any structure involved is developed from the instructions in DNA.

Other than that I am not sure what you are asking. Sound like a good overview of biology might help you answer them though. I am certainly not an expert in the field so I may not be able to answer them sufficiently.

“But you are contradicting yourself. If creationism is making predictions, whether they are true or not, then by your reckoning it should be scientific, the same as astrology. It may be bad science, but it is still science.”
This is a good point. But I am actually discussing different types of creationism all wrapped up in a single word. Lets call strict young earth, six days, no adaptation at all creationism(1). That version can and has been studied scientifically and was found to not fit the evidence. It was modified and then later abandoned for evolution.

Then we have creationism(2) a somewhat modern invention that removes the falsifiability from c(1) and renders it non-science. This neutered version of c(1) seems intentionally designed to make as few testable predictions as possible. c(2) is essentially ID and its ilk. This is a vast simplification of course. There are nearly as many versions of creationism as there are creationists.

“Of course it is falsifiable. Just show the way in which any of the posited IC systems evolved by using the mechanisms of evolution.”
And then the believing creationist(2) simply ignores it or denies it. Take the eye. The IDists claimed it as IC even though Darwin explained a possible natural explanation in his bloody book! There are explanations for most “IC” notions and the other systems are being studied. What you are arguing for is a sort of IC of the gaps. Why should “we don’t know” = “It’s impossible”? History shows that those gaps get filled in when we spend some time on these things.

The problem is that it is impossible to demonstrate that something is IC. The argument essentially relies on a failure of the imagination.

I’m not sure why you are questioning my statements about evidence. Are you disagreeing with them and claiming you should be able to be convinced by pure reason? One of the revolutions of the renaissance scientists was the overturning of conclusions made by pure reason by doing experiments. You insist that I demonstrate that you should only be convinced by evidence?

“But the point remains that one interprets the evidence (your version) in terms of your presuppositions.”
Well there is always a bit of that yes. You do the same. If you could explain where a presupposition of mine has lead me astray, please do.

“Again, if evolution stands on its own, why does it need defending?”
Because people with certain religious beliefs attack the theory because they see it as contradicting their religion. If there was a mainstream religion that still maintained that diseases were caused by demons, would you want that taught in schools along side all the wacky stuff about tiny animals that you can’t see? It is not really the fault nor the concern of science that your religion contains false notions about the world.

“I don’t hesitate to grant that chromosomal fusion seems to present a strong case for common descent. But it does not prove that the mechanisms proposed by the theory of evolution were responsible.”
Nor was I using it to demonstrate that. I was suggesting it as I demonstration of common descent. Which leads us back to the too many definitions of creationism issue. I am at a disadvantage because I actually don’t know what you believe. Could you clarify this for me? DO you believe that evolution essentially occurred as described by science excepting that “divine selection” played a bigger role than natural selection?

“It also does not account for other explanations, such as a chromosome split, since the genome of the common ancestor is not known. I am not even sure that the last common ancestor has been identified.”
Oh it certainly does because all the other great apes have the two chromosomes like the chimps. We know this was a fusion not a split. At least that is the far more probable explanation.

“Also, that did not answer my question at all. I asked for a demonstration of biochemical pathways from ancestor to descendant taken from any example in the fossil record.”
I’m not sure what you mean by “biochemical pathways”. I doubt such a thing can be seen in the fossil record. Mostly it is just the “hard parts” that get fossilized and when rarely we see soft parts the details have been destroyed. The fossil record is almost wholly limited to morphology.

“Well, can you falsify the proposition that it happen via random mutation followed by natural selection?”
We can definitely show that it could easily occur by random mutation. Which completely eliminates the need to hypothesize any supernatural aid. Natural selection probably didn’t have much to do with this particular case. I don’t know that there is necessarily an advantage or a disadvantage here, but I am far from an expert. As I said above this is evidence for common descent not natural selection.

Hopefully that cleared some things up.

Regarding randomness:

Evolution is certainly random in the sense that it has no predictable or deterministic direction. As described by Daniel Dennett above. But with selection it is far from the “tornado in a junkyard” randomness that many creationists like to misrepresent it as. Natural selection preserves the useful mutations. It is a simple, but very powerful mechanism.

Regarding the pre-cell origin of life:
According to the theory the only thing that is needed for evolution to occur is imperfect replication and struggle for resources. There are many proposed possibilities for pre-DNA evolution and theories of abiogenesis. It is the cutting edge and requires much more study. But we have to be willing to say “I don’t know” rather than assuming that anything we can’t explain must be supernatural. We have made many mistakes in our past with those kinds of assumptions.