More on ENCODE

I found this today and thougt it might be of interest to some although I don't think science deniers like "cdesignproponentsists" will be overjoyed.

Link to oxfordjournals.org

On ENCODE, IDiots and Kjell Tveter.

Our local ID-iot, who really should know better but who lets his Christian faith take precedence over good science. He  even boasts academic credentials like being a (retired) urologist and prfessor Emeritus, but with the typical creationist tunnel vision ignore real science and gets his intellectual food from the ID camp.

He even wrote a book where he makes it abundantly clear that he is incapable of recognizing the basic fact: That the theory of evolution is not in any way concerned with HOW life got started on the planet - because we do not know. The ToE begins with the assumption ;) that there is life on the planet, there's been life here for a veeery looong time - much, much longer tha Darwin and his contemporaries even suspected, and that the beginning was very modest, with only single-celled life for the first 3 billion years.

I find him rather dim-witted as an attemt to engage him in dabet in the local newspaper got a most stupid reply, more about how happy he is for his Calvinist faith and to tell his friends that he is not bothered by my critique. Enough about that, but in true creationist fashion he's latched on to creationist misrepresentation of the ENCODE projects findings, so let's take a closer look:

About Encode & IDiots

On ENCODE and Tveter

23 september P Z Myers wrote at

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/09/the-encode-delu.html

among other things under the title The Encode Delusion:

I'm uncomfortable with the inappropriate PR. The data density of the results makes reading the work a hard slog…but that's the price you have to pay for the volume of information delivered. But then…disaster: a misstep so severe, it makes me mistrust the entire data set — not only are the papers dense, but I have no confidence in the interpretations of the authors (which, I know, is terribly unfair, because there are hundreds of investigators behind this project, and it's the bizarre interpretations of the lead that taints the whole).
I refer to the third sentence of the abstract of the initial overview paper published in Nature; the first big razzle-dazzle piece of information the leaders of the project want us to take home from the work. That 80%:

These data enabled us to assign biochemical functions for 80% of the genome.

Bullshit.
Read on into the text and you discover how they came to this startling conclusion:

The vast majority (80.4%) of the human genome participates in at least one biochemical RNA- and/or chromatin-associated event in at least one cell type.

That isn't function. That isn't even close. And it's a million light years away from "a critical role in controlling how our cells, tissue and organs behave". All that says is that any one bit of DNA is going to have something bound to it at some point in some cell in the human body, or may even be transcribed. This isn't just a loose and liberal definition of "function", it's an utterly useless one.
Now this is all anyone talks about when describing this research: that it has found a 'function' for nearly all of human DNA (not true, and not supported by their data at all) and that it spells the demise of junk DNA, also not true. We know, for example, that over 50% of the human genome has a known origin as transposable elements, and that those sequences are basically parasitic, and has no recognizable effect on the phenotype of the individual

…………………………

(Norwegian addendum)

 

Så langt rapportering og tolkning av ENCODE prosjekters resultater.

Tveter skriver også at han "ikke makter å forstå hvordan den første celle kunne oppstå spontant."

Nei, men det vel heller ikke hva vitenskapen forestiller seg når den søker svar på gåten om hvor livet kommer fra? Man tenker seg jo en langtrukken og komplisert vei fra de første grunnleggende byggesteners eksistens - og slik materie har man vel forlengst konstatert tilstedeværelsen av i det ytre rom?

Jeg finner også Tveters oppfatning av mutasjoner noe misvisende i forhold til hva jeg mener er kjent stoff, se f.ek. forskning.no: Norwegian research reporting  website

 

Jeg tror at Tveter desverre har oversett det meste av den vitenskapelige litteratur om utforskningen av livsprosessene i det 21 århundre. En ny vitenskapsgren, Evo-Devo tar for seg hva som skjer i prosessen fra befruktet egg til ferdig utviklet individ. (Sean S. Carroll: Endless Forms Most Beautiful)

Tenk om en som Tveter kunne bestemme seg for å gå til bunns i dette, men da måtte han ta sjanesn på å lære ting han svæært ugjerne vil vite, bl.a. at kreasonismen er hemningsløs nårt det gjelder å sverte og forvrnge vitenskapen for å villede sitt publikum. La det ikke være noen tvil ID-kreasjonismen var et fortvilet forsøk på å gjenopplive kreasjonismen av omsorg for fundamentalsistsk kristendom. derfor kritiserer aldri kreasjonister hverandre hva enten de er YEC (som tror Gud skape alt for ca. 6000 år siden) eller noe annet. Dette er hva som blir kalt "The Big Tent" - de som ikke er mot oss er med oss.

ID har ikke noe vitenskapelig siktemål, kun dette ene: Få folk til å tro på den ufeilbarlige bibel og til helvete med homoseksuelle og abortionister.

Det burde våre nok å se hva slags tilhenger bevegelsen har, det finns knapt en skikkelgi vitenskapsmann blat dem, men en høylytt gruppe av patologiske kasus. Samt selvfølgelig de prominente som har sitt levebrød i å promotere ID i bøker og fora. Med Debski og Behe som toppfigurer, men med en ynkelig fremtereden. Dembski ved å produsere en video hvor han benytter seg av fiselyder.  Han er også kjent for en sweater.

Han ble forøvrig i sin tid skubbet ut fra Baylor college. Mye kunne skrives om ham. Lite å skryte av...

Behe er jo kjent for å hevde at iflg. hans opppfatning så hører astrologi til i vitenskapen. Jeg lurer på hvorledes han buker astrologi i sin vitenskap? Oh, jeg skjønner, det er den som gir ham svaret på hvorfor ting er som han sier og ikke slik som vitenskapen ellers sier.

About Origins of Life.

That's right, origins of life; not the Origins of Species, alredy a solidly developed theory of evolution.

But where did life come from? We wouldn't be human if we didn't speculate about that,  and doing our damn best to see what we could find out. Life must have an origins, a beginning and we are in the habit of ruling out magic. Especially today, as we so far never have found any evidence of applied magic a work in the universe. (If you have evidence for magic, please feel free to show it.)

So here is a little news item that puts to shame creationist claims that we alread have reached the end of research; we have met the wall. Far from it, we won't announce defeat until we are defeated.

From Science Daily:

 

Molecules Assemble in Water ...

I thing the future prospects for faith in magic are bleak, and the alternative of the little green men doing it doesn't seem to offer much hope either. Remains good old science...

Will it ever end?

As you may have recognized by now, Pandas Thumb is an excellent site for taking the pulse of the controversy the Intellignet Design movement is working so hard to keep alive.

I take the opportunity to link to a comment at PT that may demonstrate how the ID movement thrieve on creationist misconceptions: ID Creationist misconception.

But the whole thread is of course very relevant.

I don't seem to have many readers of my blog, and I am not very active in keeping it alive and interesting but that may improve if I ever get more time on my hands. In the meantime, although I don't quite miss comments, it would have been nice to have some evidence that people have been here at all. You are all welcome whether you have anything to say or not. Just a hello, Kilroy was here.

Trends in Intelligent Design

Click here:

Trends in Intelligent Design

Once again Intelligent Design...

The Pandas Thumb is a great site for anyone interested in watching the controversy between science and creationism. The creationists, whether of the YEC or ID variety or anything in between in the "Big Tent" og cerationism, regularly show up being confused even about the first thing about evolution:

It is NOT abou the origins of life on Earth! The theory of evolution simply begins by acknowledging the fact that  at some point in time, life arose on the planet. A divine miracle or a natural development? Irreleveant, we know life is here and that's that. From there on, natural forces have brought us to where we are today. Even within the ID movement claims are often made that evolution is all right - but it needs the constant nudging by the hand of an Intelligent Designer, i.e. God, to take the right course.

Which remains to be proven. Arguments from incredulity and lack of knowlede is all they have. And most of the time, a faith in sore need of tangible evidence. Faith?

Butt look for yourself, Interesting debate with good points

Elementary introduction to evolution

Links below.

A good place to start for people with a honest desire to learn, and to understand just what the dividing line between the scientific theory of evolution and pseudoscience, YEC and ID "alternatives" to science is.

"Teach the controversy"? There is no controversy over evolution, what we have is fundamentalism doing its best to keep creationism alive - in a desperate attack on science - to preserve faith in an infallible Bible.

"Critical thinking"? A code word word for using all the creationist crap you can dig up to cast doubt on science and the ToE.

How can you apply critical thinking if you only know creationism - and know science/evolution only from the cerationsist "perspective"?  Quotes because it may not even be a true perspective, but just anything the can make look trustworthy to the innocent followers of the creationist campaign against science.

There is no harm in knowledge, is there? The more you can learn to know about biology and evolution - from the scientific sources themselves - not filtered and distorted through the myopic and conditioned mind of a creationist, don't you think that might be a good idea? Ignorance breeds stupidity.

 
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/02/basics-of-evolu.html

Elementary introduction to evolution at BioLogos

The war on science hottens up?

An interesting debate at Pandas Thumb:

The war on science hottens up?

The link opens at page three of the thread, that's where the real issue gets a deserved attention!
But the previous pages shows some of what madness science has to cope with these days. 

Watching from enlightened Europe, it is a horror show going on over there!