This is my explanation as to why on a intellectual level, I have to dismiss Darwinism as credible science. Although I have come to the realization that materialists and theists will never be able to understand the others' point of view, I am hoping the materialists on this site can at least recognize that all theists do not necessary just dismiss science, logic and reasoning. We have science, logic and reasoning on our side.
It really takes a lot of faith to think the following occured due to evolution without ID or God.
You possess 3,000,000,000,000 (three trillion) nerve cells all coordinated by the brain.
You have 30,000,000,000 (thirty billion) working sections in your brain.
You have 131,000,000 photoreceptors in your eyes.
You have 24,000 hair-like cells in your inner ear which react to sound and convert it to nerve impulses.
Your small intestine has a surface area of 970,000 square feet.
Your heart beats 100,000 times and pumps 2,000 gallons of blood every day.
Your liver manufactures more than 1,000 different enzymes, each controlling a different chemical reaction.
You have 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.
You breathe 438 cubic feet of air each day.
There are 35,000,000 gland cells in your stomach to allow it to break down food without digesting itself.
Your kidneys have 40 miles of tubing and clean 500 gallons of your blood every day.
Every cell has 1,000,000,000,000 (one million million) bits of data in it. (That is as much information as 10,000 encyclopedia-sized books.)
Your body has 639 muscles that must work together.
Our joints must move 25,000,000 times in our lifetime without wearing out.
There are 30,000,000,000,000 (thirty million million) cells in our body with 10,000 functions.
Senses
Sight
Sight or vision is the ability of the brain and eye to detect electromagnetic waves within the visible range (light) which is why people see interpreting the image as "sight." There is disagreement as to whether this constitutes one, two or three senses. Neuroanatomists generally regard it as two senses, given that different receptors are responsible for the perception of colour (the frequency of photons of light) and brightness (amplitude/intensity - number of photons of light). Some argue[citation needed] that stereopsis, the perception of depth, also constitutes a sense, but it is generally regarded as a cognitive (that is, post-sensory) function of brain to interpret sensory input and to derive new information. The inability to see is called blindness.
Hearing
Hearing or audition is the sense of sound perception. Since sound is vibrations propagating through a medium such as air, the detection of these vibrations, that is the sense of the hearing, is a mechanical sense akin to a sense of touch, albeit a very specialized one. In humans, this perception is executed by tiny hair fibres in the inner ear which detect the motion of a membrane which vibrates in response to changes in the pressure exerted by atmospheric particles within a range of 20 to 22000 Hertz[citation needed], with substantial variation between individuals. Sound can also be detected as vibrations conducted through the body by tactition. Lower and higher frequencies than that can be heard are detected this way only. The inability to hear is called deafness.
Taste
Taste or gustation is one of the two main "chemical" senses. There are at least four types of tastes[4] that "buds" (receptors) on the tongue detect, and hence there are anatomists who argue[citation needed] that these constitute five or more different senses, given that each receptor conveys information to a slightly different region of the brain[citation needed]. The inability to taste is called ageusia.
The four well-known receptors detect sweet, salt, sour, and bitter, although the receptors for sweet and bitter have not been conclusively identified. A fifth receptor, for a sensation called umami, was first theorised in 1908 and its existence confirmed in 2000[5]. The umami receptor detects the amino acid glutamate, a flavour commonly found in meat and in artificial flavourings such as monosodium glutamate.
Note: that taste is not the same as flavour; flavour includes the smell of a food as well as its taste.
Smell
Smell or olfaction is the other "chemical" sense. Unlike taste, there are hundreds of olfactory receptors, each binding to a particular molecular feature. Odor molecules possess a variety of features and thus excite specific receptors more or less strongly. This combination of excitatory signals from different receptors makes up what we perceive as the molecule's smell. In the brain, olfaction is processed by the olfactory system. Olfactory receptor neurons in the nose differ from most other neurons in that they die and regenerate on a regular basis. The inability to smell is called anosmia. Some neurons in the nose are specialized to detect pheromones.
Touch
Touch, also called tactition or mechanoreception, is a perception resulting from activation of neural receptors, generally in the skin including hair follicles, but also in the tongue, throat, and mucosa. A variety of pressure receptors respond to variations in pressure (firm, brushing, sustained, etc). The touch sense of itching caused by insect bites or allergies involves special itch-specific neurons in the skin and spinal cord.[6] The loss or impairment of the ability to feel anything touched is called tactile anesthesia. Paresthesia is a sensation of tingling, pricking, or numbness of the skin that may result from nerve damage and may be permanent or temporary.
Balance and acceleration
Balance, equilibrioception, or vestibular sense is the sense which allows an organism to sense body movement, direction, and acceleration, and to attain and maintain postural equilibrium and balance. The organ of equilibrioception is the vestibular labyrinthine system found in both of the inner ears. Technically this organ is responsible for two senses of angular momentum and linear acceleration (which also senses gravity), but they are known together as equilibrioception.
The vestibular nerve conducts information from the three semicircular canals corresponding to the three spatial planes, the utricle, and the saccule. The ampulla, or base, portion of the three semicircular canals each contain a structure called a crista. These bend in response to angular momentum or spinning. The saccule and utricle, also called the "otolith organs", sense linear acceleration and thus gravity. Otoliths are small crystals of calcium carbonate that provide the inertia needed to detect changes in acceleration or gravity.
Temperature
Thermoception is the sense of heat and the absence of heat (cold) by the skin and including internal skin passages, or rather, the heat flux (the rate of heat flow) in these areas. There are specialized receptors for cold (declining temperature) and to heat. The cold receptors play an important part in the dogs sense of smell, telling wind direction, the heat receptors are sensitive to infrared radiation and can occur in specialized organs for instance in pit vipers. The thermoceptors in the skin are quite different from the homeostatic thermoceptors in the brain (hypothalamus) which provide feedback on internal body temperature.
Kinesthetic sense
Proprioception, the kinesthetic sense, provides the parietal cortex of the brain with information on the relative positions of the parts of the body. Neurologists test this sense by telling patients to close their eyes and touch the tip of a finger to their nose. Assuming proper proprioceptive function, at no time will the person lose awareness of where the hand actually is, even though it is not being detected by any of the other senses. Proprioception and touch are related in subtle ways, and their impairment results in surprising and deep deficits in perception and action.
Pain
Nociception (physiological pain) signals near-damage or damage to tissue. The three types of pain receptors are cutaneous (skin), somatic (joints and bones) and visceral (body organs). It was previously believed that pain was simply the overloading of pressure receptors, but research in the first half of the 20th century indicated that pain is a distinct phenomenon that intertwines with all of the other senses, including touch. Pain was once considered an entirely subjective experience, but recent studies show that pain is registered in the anterior cingulate gyrus of the brain.
DNA
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
DNA bases pair up with each other, A with T and C with G, to form units called base pairs. Each base is also attached to a sugar molecule and a phosphate molecule. Together, a base, sugar, and phosphate are called a nucleotide. Nucleotides are arranged in two long strands that form a spiral called a double helix. The structure of the double helix is somewhat like a ladder, with the base pairs forming the ladder’s rungs and the sugar and phosphate molecules forming the vertical sidepieces of the ladder.
An important property of DNA is that it can replicate, or make copies of itself. Each strand of DNA in the double helix can serve as a pattern for duplicating the sequence of bases. This is critical when cells divide because each new cell needs to have an exact copy of the DNA present in the old cell.
If the chromosomes in one of your cells were uncoiled and placed end to end, the DNA would be about 6 feet long. If all the DNA in your body were connected in this way, it would stretch approximately 67 billion miles! That's nearly 150,000 round trips to the Moon.
Mitochondrial DNA
Although most DNA is packaged in chromosomes within the nucleus, mitochondria also have a small amount of their own DNA. This genetic material is known as mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA.
Mitochondria (illustration) are structures within cells that convert the energy from food into a form that cells can use. Each cell contains hundreds to thousands of mitochondria, which are located in the fluid that surrounds the nucleus (the cytoplasm).
Mitochondria produce energy through a process called oxidative phosphorylation. This process uses oxygen and simple sugars to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the cell’s main energy source. A set of enzyme complexes, designated as complexes I-V, carry out oxidative phosphorylation within mitochondria.
In addition to energy production, mitochondria play a role in several other cellular activities. For example, mitochondria help regulate the self-destruction of cells (apoptosis). They are also necessary for the production of substances such as cholesterol and heme (a component of hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood).
Mitochondrial DNA contains 37 genes, all of which are essential for normal mitochondrial function. Thirteen of these genes provide instructions for making enzymes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. The remaining genes provide instructions for making molecules called transfer RNAs (tRNAs) and ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), which are chemical cousins of DNA. These types of RNA help assemble protein building blocks (amino acids) into functioning proteins.
Major organ systems
Circulatory system: pumping and channeling blood to and from the body and lungs with heart, blood, and blood vessels.
Digestive System: digestion and processing food with salivary glands, esophagus, stomach, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, intestines, rectum, and anus.
Endocrine system: communication within the body using hormones made by endocrine glands such as the hypothalamus, pituitary or pituitary gland, pineal body or pineal gland, thyroid, parathyroids, and adrenals or adrenal glands
Integumentary system: skin, hair and nails
Immune system: the system that fights off disease; composed of leukocytes, tonsils, adenoids, thymus, and spleen.
Lymphatic system: structures involved in the transfer of lymph between tissues and the blood stream, the lymph and the nodes and vessels that transport it.
Musculoskeletal system: movement with muscles and human skeleton (structural support and protection with bones, cartilage, ligaments, and tendons).
Muscular system: the system that moves the body with muscles, ligaments, and tendons.
Nervous system: collecting, transferring and processing information with brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and nerves
Reproductive system: the sex organs; in the female; ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, vagina, mammary glands, and in the male; testes, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, and penis.
Respiratory system: the organs used for breathing, the pharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchi, lungs, and diaphragm.
Skeletal system:the system that holds the body together and gives it shape; composed of bones, cartilage, and tendons.
Urinary system: kidneys, ureters, bladder and urethra involved in fluid balance, electrolyte balance and excretion of urine.
Vestibular system : contributes to our balance and our sense of spatial orientation.
Intelligent design can’t be dismissed from a scientific perspective
December 14, 2005 by david-berlinski
Filed under Science
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The defense of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has now fallen into the hands of biologists who believe in suppressing criticism when possible and ignoring it when not.
It is not a strategy calculated to induce confidence in the scientific method.
A paper published recently in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington concluded that the events taking place during the Cambrian era could best be understood in terms of an intelligent design - hardly a position unknown in the history of Western science. The paper was, of course, peer-reviewed by three prominent evolutionary biologists.
Wise men attend to the publication of every one of the society’s papers, but in this case, the editors were given to understand that they had done a bad thing. Their indecent capitulation followed at once. Publication of the paper, they confessed, was a mistake. And peer review? The heck with it.
“If scientists do not oppose anti-evolutionism,” remarked Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Council for Science Education, “it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak.”
Scott’s understanding of “opposition” had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question.
Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: “Avoid debates.” Everyone had better shut up. But in this country, at least, no one is ever going to shut up, the more so since the case against Darwin’s theory retains an almost lunatic vitality.
Look: The suggestion that Darwin’s theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences - for example, quantum electrodynamics - is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin’s theory makes no tight quantitative predictions all.
Look: Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak to non-existent selection effects.
Look: Darwin’s theory is open at one end since there is no plausible account for the origins of life.
Look: The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.
Look: A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors and depart for Valhalla leaving no obvious descendents.
Look: Where attempts to replicate Darwinian evolution on the computer have been successful, they have not used classical Darwinian principles. Where they have used such principles, they have not been successful.
Look: Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.
Look: The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is, at bottom, only one living system. But how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives, differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?
But look again: If the differences between organisms are scientifically more interesting than their genomic similarities, of what use is Darwin’s theory since its otherwise mysterious operations take place by genetic variations?
These are hardly trivial questions. Each suggests a dozen others. These are hardly circumstances that do much to support the view that there are “no valid criticisms of Darwin’s theory,” as so many recent editorials have suggested.
Serious biologists quite understand all this. They rather regard Darwin’s theory as an elderly uncle invited to a family dinner. The old boy has no hair, he has no teeth, he is hard of hearing and he often drools. Addressing even senior members at table as “sonny,” he is inordinately eager to tell the same story over and over again. But he’s family. What can you do?
- By Good_Egg
- By Fried Egg