What we later learn is NOT the basis for what we have learned. The question logically is "at what point have you learned anything" if sometime between now and the end of the world a possible contradiction might show up?

I posted a reply to Susan but am not sure it got through. Please help.

HIV/AIDS is another example. It is the direct result of the mutation of a relatively benign virus into a malignant one by passaging such as occurs with anal intercourse

And other forms of intercourse. Also, blood transfusions. What about all those other diseases that don't result from sexual behavior you don't approve of?

Blood clots associated with the use of oral contraceptives are responsible for the death of young women.

So is pregnancy and childbirth.

Classic example of "false consequentialism" - X is bad, therefore X must have harmful consequences, which we'll invent from whole cloth if we can't find any that fit the bill.

Now, I promised myself out of respect for what the site owners are trying to do here that I would not submit a single thing to FSTDT... but damn, does this post make that promise hard to keep.

It's certainly true that a lot of non-coding DNA is actually "just a harmless but useless passenger", like Alu elements. But you'll notice Dawkins says it's the simplest explanation (available in 1976), not the definitive one.

Similarly, the old 1994 edition of MBC you quote says some scientists *suggested* that introns aren't functional, and that's true of many (probably most) introns. The fine detail that some introns are functional doesn't invalidate the general principle of natural selection.

I'm not that impressed that the ID guy you quote 'predicts' that junk DNA is functional in 2004, when the real scientists you quote are from 1994, 1976 and 1972.

Intelligent design would predict that EVERYTHING is adaptive and designed by a superintelligence - yet people choke to death every day because their oesophagus and trachea are close together. So intelligent design by a non-sadist is definitely ruled out.

Moving on to another topic:

Red shift is observed isotropically . What sort of a "rotation" produces an effect that is the same in every direction?

If I rotate a bucket by spinning in place, obviously the centrifugal force is produced in a plane. There's no centrifugal component generated upward or down towards the ground. How can a centrifugal force create redshift wherever we look into the universe? That makes no sense.

And certainly I don't understand how a fixed Earth and a spinning universe makes Mars appear to go back and forwards in its orbit. That's explained by everything orbiting the Sun at different rates, but how your geocentric universe explain that?

I don't recognise the distinction between "Faith" and "metaphysics". There's only evidence and assumptions you have to make to make sense of the evidence, with the latter best kept to a minimum, in my opinion.

What is the distinction between a "theological" belief and a "metaphysical" one? Why does being Catholic count as a more impressive theological belief, whereas thinking radioactive isotopes probably don't decay at different rates depending on what millennium it is is mere "metaphysics"?

You believe Jesus founded the Catholic Church because you're a Catholic, but why do you accept that belief system?

"Sorry I haven't got back to you in a while."

>> No problem.

"I'm not competent to check all the physics in that paper, but it doesn't seem to address red shift. If red shift is just down to a spinning universe, it would only be observed in one plane (ie roughly along the equator)."

>> Nope. It would be exactly the same as we observe now, right down to the redshifts, which are centrifugal rather than recessional.

It is the entire universe that is rotating, not just one plane, and redshift is a function of centrifugal force.

"It just seems to be saying that you can formally picture the spinning Earth as a fixed Earth with a universe spinning round it, but that certainly doesn't account for epicycles etc."

>> It accounts for every motion observed, and there are no epicycles.

Just a scalar and a tensor.

"Darwinian theorists didn't predict that "junk DNA" was useless"

Au contraire..........

>> "Biologists are racking their brains trying to think what useful task this apparently surplus DNA is doing. But from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves, there is no paradox. The true "purpose" of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite, or at best a harmless but useless passenger." ---Richard Dawkins 1976 (The Selfish Gene, p. 47)

"they are the remains of nature's experiments which failed. The earth is strewn with fossil remains of extinct species; is it a wonder that our genome too is filled with the remains of extinct genes?"---Susumu Ohno 1972 ("So much 'junk' DNA in our genome," Brook Haven Symposia in Biology, Vol. 23:366-370)

"Unlike the sequence of an exon, the exact nucleotide sequence of an intron seems to be unimportant. Thus introns have accumulated mutations rapidly during evolution, and it is often possible to alter most of an intron’s nucleotide sequence without greatly affecting gene function. This has led to the suggestion that intron sequences have no function at all and are largely genetic “junk”----Bruce Alberts, Dennis Bray, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts, and James D. Watson, Molecular biology of the Cell, pg. 373 (3rd Ed., 1994).

Bruce Alberts, by the way, is a past President of the National Academy of Sciences.

Examples could be multiplied.

"and whether the "junk" is more or less functional, I don't think that affects the credibility of Darwinism either way."

>> Falsified predictions, I admit, only count in *scientific* research programs, and Darwinism is not a scientific research program:

http://magisterialfundies.blogspot.com/2012/02/marys-bones-part-iii-is-evolution.html

"Plus, I remember that many people suspected that there was some function or structure to the non-coding part of the genome."

>> Yes. The ID guys made that prediction:

"From an ID perspective, however, it is extremely unlikely that an organism would expend its resources on preserving and transmitting so much ‘junk'."----Jonathan Wells, “Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research,” Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, 3.1.2 (Nov. 2004).

"It seems like your major point is that science rests on certain modest metaphysical assumptions."

>> My point is that Darwinism isn't science. Science is a program of research where the intention is to subject what we think we know to crucial, experimental test, with the intention of possibly falsifying it.

The link above is conclusive evidence that isn't happening.

Darwinism is a metaphysical research program, where the intention is to find explanations for any anomalies and defend the theory against falsification.

"But you make a huge metaphysical assumption that Catholicism is true."

>> That is a theological act of Faith, not a metaphysical assumption.

"Why are you a Catholic?"

>> Because Jesus Christ founded the Catholic Church.

"If you'd grown up in a Muslim country, you'd probably be defending the scientific inerrancy of the Qu'ran in the same way."

>> I grew up atheist in the USA.

Sorry I haven't got back to you in a while.

I'm not competent to check all the physics in that paper, but it doesn't seem to address red shift. If red shift is just down to a spinning universe, it would only be observed in one plane (ie roughly along the equator). It just seems to be saying that you can formally picture the spinning Earth as a fixed Earth with a universe spinning round it, but that certainly doesn't account for epicycles etc.

Darwinian theorists didn't predict that "junk DNA" was useless - I don't think theorists predicted that most of the genome would be non-coding, and whether the "junk" is more or less functional, I don't think that affects the credibility of Darwinism either way. Plus, I remember that many people suspected that there was some function or structure to the non-coding part of the genome.

It seems like your major point is that science rests on certain modest metaphysical assumptions. But you make a huge metaphysical assumption that Catholicism is true. Why are you a Catholic? If you'd grown up in a Muslim country, you'd probably be defending the scientific inerrancy of the Qu'ran in the same way.

In brief, I believe that the Bible chronicles humanities search for God
gradually revealed through the Prophets, Hebrew history, inspired
writings, and ultimately in Jesus, God made flesh.

Muslims sometimes say the same sort of thing, just with Jesus in a line of prophets, and an additional chap coming along later.

They then say it all stops with their new guy.