On 12/23/2011 9:12 AM, Warp wrote:
>    Anyways, these denialists and creationists seem to think that even if
> there are hundreds and thousands of experiments that confirm a certain
> theory, if you present a few dozens that seem to contradict it, that
> means that the theory is completely false.
>
>    What's funny is that this kind of thinking does not go only against
> the scientific method, it actually goes against common sense and
> everyday human experience.

Actually, in my experience, its worse than that. Usually the papers they 
quote fall into one of several categories:

1. A laundry list of objections, based on how evolution contradicts 
their beliefs, with no science in it.

2. Something that might be mistaken for science, until you ask someone 
who knows the specific subject better, whether it be thermodynamics, 
statistics, genetic mutation, etc.

3. Stuff they just didn't understand, or intentionally misquoted, which, 
when examined, actually says the exact opposite.

In category #2 is, for example, "junk DNA". A good article on just what 
that really means is here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/junk_is_what_junk_does.php

Basically, the short version is 23% = 868,000 copies of a virus fragment 
that simply endlessly copies itself, called SINE,(or at least 20-50% of 
the copies can) + 1.6 million copies of a fragment of that fragment, 
called SINE, that can only replicate by hijacking LINE's replication 
function. A bunch of the genes are also "retrotransposons", which just 
move from place to place, sometimes into places that break things 
(another fragment from viruses). And, well, there is a video from some 
conference that PZ went to, where he goes into more depth. But, there is 
a lot of what he describes as, "they are the plastic boxes and styrofoam 
packing peanuts of the functional elements of the genome." And then, of 
course, the copy function in DNA works real badly, so we have a stupid 
number of fragments tacked onto the end of every functional sequence, so 
that, when copied, we only lose the mess off the end, not a critical 
piece of genetic material.

And, then there is the joke of how genes themselves get encoded. Imagine 
50 feet of rope, with multiple sections colored red, some of them feet 
apart. To "read" the working bits, we strip off all the blank parts, and 
patch back together the 3 inches of red parts.

So, if 65% of the entire genome is this shit, how the hell does "every 
gene have a purpose"? lol

As I said, the problem isn't just that they have some objection, its 
that they have completely stupid objections, which have no basis, at 
all, in reality. And, what science they attempt to do (the closest any 
of them ever tried was Behe and his horribly wrong math), has about as 
much to do with reality as early movies, like, "Them", had to do with 
the real effects of radiation. lol

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