Pericles,
Go easy on the grumpy pills. Or point the finger at Bugsy. It was he who raised the challenge. It was Bugsy who brought up the concept of ‘usefulness’.

Bugsy,
From the link you gave me, it appears phylogenomics is involved in the integration of genome analysis and evolutionary reconstruction. Or in other words, you’re trying to trace the evolutionary development and history of a living thing.

So your argument seems to be that using evolution theory as a basis for research is useful for working out the evolutionary history of something. It sounds as if evolution is useful for understanding evolution.

Looks like a cat chasing its tail; more self perpetuating than useful.

One example of how a 'design framework' would be better for biology is in the case of vestigial organs. I mentioned earlier how Michael Zimmerman spoke of Darwin claiming that certain organs in the body “bear the plain stamp of inutility”. If the organs are already declared to be useless, then why bother investigating them? It’s this kind of thinking that can discourage scientific investigation. Wouldn’t it be better to say that we suspect that the organs were put there for a reason; so though we don’t currently understand their function, we’ll investigate them further?

I believe that the list of vestigial organs has decreased under further investigation.

In regards to medicine and healing, comparing our bodies to a car, having an authorised owner’s manual will help bring it back into proper repair and optimised function. With evolution what is health or healing? The body, as a survival casing for genetic material (in Dawkins’ version), is never in a state of proper repair or optimised function. For it is always in a state of flux, waiting for genes to incorporate the next survival advantage.

I think the usefulness in creation or evolution is in the big picture of who and what we really are. The whole issue is more one of philosophical concern, as by now most scientists in practice follow a similar scientific method.

The following is an article discussing how the homology of different animals is poorly explained by evolution.

http://creation.com/does-homology-provide-evidence-of-evolutionary-naturalism

OUG,

Thanks.

My point was did God knowing, with His free will, create Satan knowingly realising that Satan would tempt Even and that ultimately Jesus would need to come to Earth to fix things up. Who set the ball rolling that led to the crucifixion? Who was the prime mover of the events before Satan?

Well if it was a State of origin Dan has won hands down. His faith is so much more rational than the faith of those trying to defend the pseudo faith of evolution. Congratulations Dan.

Not convinced, Dan S de Merengue. But you wouldn't expect me to be, would you.

>>So your argument seems to be that using evolution theory as a basis for research is useful for working out the evolutionary history of something. It sounds as if evolution is useful for understanding evolution. Looks like a cat chasing its tail; more self perpetuating than useful.<<

This is of course an essential circularity for the God-people, since belief in the existence of God is necessary in order to believe in the existence of God.

As this argument is one with which you are entirely familiar, you attempt to circumscribe evolution in the same manner.

The difference, of course, is that you have popped "evolution" into the equation in two places, instead of just one.

If you were being honest, you would have said:

"Your argument seems to be that using science as a basis for research is useful for working out the evolutionary history of something"

Which of course blows your entire circular-argument theory out of the water.

Interestingly, you cannot perform a similar simple substitution for the God-equation, can you.

Actually Dan, phylogenomics is being used to annotate and predict protein functions by their evolutionary relationships. Evolutionary reconstructions help in determining which sites are the most conserved and predict what the likely function of the protein might be by using a phylogenetic approach rather than a simple homology/similarity analysis. there is no circularity here. I don't really expect you to understand this, but it is an important new area, especially since new genome sequences are being generated at an exceptionally fast pace.

While I am sure that vestigial organs are an exciting and fast paced field as well, you still haven't risen to the challenge, care to have a link to how ID is actually being used as the basis for research? Or even in medical research? Perhaps someone using 'optimal function' theory for controlling communicable disease outbreaks. Even in the most rudimentary way, that would be fine.

Your link is quite interesting, considering that most of the references regarding biochemistry and genetics are earlier than 1988, when Kary Mullis published on the polymerase chain reaction, PCR. Things have moved on a little since then. Heck, things have moved on since 2001. It's a bit schizophrenic as well, on the one hand the author argues that the biochemistry and genetics are too similar, and thus cannot be explained by millions of years of evolution. Yet on the other hand the genetic control of homologous structures is too divergent, and thus cannot be explained by evolution. It seems that no matter what you observe, evolution can't explain it.

I know you don't understand this, but ID theory can only say that things are created as they are, no more and no less, not how they came to be, other than divine providence, for some divine reason. It gives us no insight as to what we can expect given a particular relationship or what the patterns in nature are, what they might mean. They are as they are, and biologists would be reduced to catalogers. But thankfully, this is not and never will be the case.