The central theme of evolution is that tiny improvements in fitness can steadily accumulate resulting in a new species. The unstated assumption (usually) is that the original species was in need of improvement. So let’s apply these assumptions to a common educational experience. Let’s assume that a teacher has assigned to an eighth grade class the writing of an essay on the causes of the Civil War.
You stand in for evolution and your task is to convert a poorly written “F” paper to an essay that can be published in Harper’s Magazine. This is reasonably analogous to fish evolving into an amphibians or a dinosaurs into a birds.
However, your conversion of the inept essay must proceed one word at a time and each word substitution must instantly improve the essay. No storing up words for future use is allowed.
After changing a few obvious one-word mistakes, you will run into a brick wall. It doesn’t matter how clever you are or how many dictionaries and writers’ guides you have at your disposal. Only by deleting entire paragraphs and adding complete sentences would you have any chance of getting to a better essay. But that would be equivalent to a small dinosaur sprouting functional wings or a fish being able to breathe air in a single mutation. Changing one word at a time and expecting that to result in better writing is hopeless.
But remember, this analogy is extremely friendly to evolution. If we want the analogy to be more realistic we would eliminate the intelligent agent and have a computer randomly changing one letter in each step. Furthermore, a better representation of selection would be to submit the paper with the one letter change to the same professor who gave it an “F” first time around. What could we expect in this scenario? Well, let’s assume the random letter change was very lucky. It took the word “blut”, a typo, and dropped the “L” or it converted “recieve” into “receive”. And how much better might this lucky change be?
Let’s use a number commonly used by evolutionists and say that it’s now 0.1%* better than it was before. Big deal. Is that minuscule change going to raise the grade from an F to a D? No way. The paper had 47 typos and misspellings. Fixing one has no significant effect. Nor would a 0.1% change have any effect in any characteristic of a species. In fact, such a trivial change would be astoundingly difficult to even measure. If one boxer is 0.1% better than another boxer how could you tell? Same goes for one antelope being able to run 0.1% faster than another. In fact, in real life having two different things within 0.1% of each other is another way of saying they are identical!
But of course it’s vastly more probable that random letter changes will simply introduce more mistakes and as the changes proceed, the more garbled the essay becomes. The paper will never be anything but an F paper. And as far as living things go, the outcome is far worse than getting an F. It’s death.
But before we leave this topic, let’s take another look at that 0.1% improvement. How many trials would it require to prove with statistical certainty that one thing is 0.1% better than another? You might think that a thousand trials would be enough. You would be wrong. Likewise for ten thousand trials. According to the math, you would have to run 138,889 trials* to be certain of that 0.1% difference. No matter what your testing protocol or what thing you were testing, it would be worn out long before the the trials were over. And on top of that, the supposed 0.1% difference would be swamped by various random factors impossible to eliminate from any testing.
A long sequence of tiny, incremental improvements simply cannot result in individuals becoming steadily more fit. And if they don’t become more fit generation after generation, they can’t be on the road to becoming new species. These tiny fitness steps will simply disappear from the population. Hence the most foundational supposition of evolution is false. Evolution cannot do the job demanded of it by Darwinists.
*My reference to the 0.1% differential attributed to evolutionary steps comes from Lee Spetner’s Not by Chance. The necessity for 138,889 trials comes from a mathematics student of Bill Dembski’s.
Readers? What do you think?
See also: Do random mutations never increase information? Ever?
Improvements in fitness can be many things- improvements could include- shorter, teller, smaller, larger, slower, faster, good eye sight, no eye sight, – well you get the message. Improvements in fitness is whatever it is. It is all really just contingent serendipity.
And in the end even the fittest squirrel is still a squirrel.
“However, your conversion of the inept essay must proceed one word at a time and each word substitution must instantly improve the essay. No storing up words for future use is allowed.”
Species consist of more than one individual.
Seqenenre:
Yes but the mutations occur in individuals. Fitness refers to individuals within a population. Natural selection refers to individuals within a population.
At the same time (or even one or more generations apart) more than one individual can have a beneficial mutation. The effect gets stronger when these individual mutations meet in mutual offspring.
True, but they will be different.
Given sexual reproduction the odds of that are slim
But after 10, 20 or 100 generations these multiple beneficial mutations have spread among the population, so the chance of offspring getting more than one of these mutations is getting bigger every generation.
Or have been lost. Do you understand how meiosis works?
I agree. Some will be lost, others remain.
I had difficulties keeping meiosis and mitosis apart, until I realised that the Dutch word ‘mei’ is ‘may’ in English, the month where ‘every bird lays an egg’. 🙂
“I agree. Some will be lost, others remain. ”
Like the many deleterious mutations that are not only more likely to arise, but more likely to be passed on. Using Bencze’s analogy, what we observe empirically are B essays being degraded into F’s, with random changes. But…….hope for this ridiculous theory is more eternal than the universe materialists used to think was. Evolution isn’t believed because of evidence, but swallowed because it’s essential to a religious viewpoint.
@bb: Why would a deletirious mutation be more likely to be passed on?
They are much more common than beneficial mutations.
Bencze’s analogy, like all such analogies, is flawed by two basic misconceptions: first, that evolution has some predetermined goal in mind and, second, that the theory proposes that it can make the leap from simple precursor to complex target in a single bound, In other words, it is just another version of the story of the huge improbability pf a tornado in a junkyard assembling a Boeing 747 from scattered parts or Hoyle’s fallacy.
Actually Seversky, the main flaw in Bencze’s analogy is the Darwinian assumption that it is even remotely possible that mutations to DNA can transform the basic form of any particular organism into an entirely new form.
Simply put, the basic form that any particular organism may take is not reducible to mutations to DNA, (or by mutations to any other material particulars of a organism that Darwinists may wish to invoke), PERIOD!
As Stephen Meyer states, at the 5:55 minute mark, in the following video, ” ‘you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan.’
The failure of reductive materialism to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Basically, reductive materialists trying to explain the basic form of any particular organism is very much like trying to ‘square the circle’.
i.e. The abstract ‘form’ of a circle can never be explained by appealing solely to the material ‘parts’ of a circle, for the simple reason that the abstract ‘form’ of the circle eternally precedes, (in the “Platonic realm”), the circle’s material representation in the temporal realm.
,,, And by extension of the argument, any particular abstract ‘Form’ that any particular organism may take will forever be beyond the explanation of the material ‘parts’ of that organism.
Of semi related note:
Video and verse:
Seqenenre @ 10,
Because that is precisely what we observe. The deleterious mutations are 98% more likely to occur, and they are more frequently than not passed on because they are rarely bad enough to be fatal, i.e. eligible for selection.
EDIT:
Diabetes is a genetic condition that we know has been around long before the means to treat it. While many that had it were selected out, many weren’t and so it is passed on generation after generation.
Earth to Seversky-
There isn’t any scientific theory of evolution. If you think I am wrong then please link to it, tell us who the author was, when it was published and what journal it was published in.
Or admit that you have been fooled and don’t have a clue.
Thank you
Sev@12
Bencze’s argument is not fixing a specific target to hit. He is simply pointing out an F (death) won’t cut it and, choose whatever random path you will, outside a continual counscious effort (design) to a directed goal, you will never get beyond an F (death). There are many possible paths to an A and many, many more to a C, but blindly, you won’t even get past an F to a D. In fact, your F is far more likely to degrade into total gibberish than to remain a humble F.
Nor is Bencze claiming the theory proposes that it must make the leap from simple precursor to a complex target in a single bound. That is your erroneous interpretation. What he and other skeptics of evolution say is that Darwinian evolution can only ratchet step by step and if there is any “improvement”, it must be luckily preserved on to the next steps since there is no conscious guidance. As a result the chances of preserving the “improvement” long enough to link it in an upward trend to the next “improvement” is vanishingly small. And the longer the mindless step by step “improvement” chain, the closer to zero the chance of it happening. Because probabilities of “improvement” are at each step exponentially overwhelmed by all cases that cause no improvement, which are exponentially overwhelmed by cases that cause disaster.
So, to make your tornado in a junkyard example more reasonable, let’s propose not a flying 747 as the final goal. Let’s leave it open to some artefact, just one, so long as it does not already exist in the junkyard. For example, if there happened to be lenses in the junkyard let’s see a telescope pop out, or a solar cooker, perhaps a microscope, or a triplet of bifocals of the triple eyed race that happens upon the junkyard and can appreciate its worth. And let’s allow not just one tornado but as many storms as have been raging across the Universe since its inception. For good measure, throw in all the junkyards you like. How about the whole Universe? Give yourself all the probabilistic resources you can muster outside of infinity. No cheating allowed.
I suggest a simple experiment to you similar to Bencze’s thought experiment. Why not take your response @12 and “improve” upon it (survival) by mutating your letters and words one step at a time, but without any forethought in the least. And let’s allow our fellow Darwinophiles first crack at determining how your response is improving (survival). But also also without forethought on their part. No cheating.
I’ve got all the time in the Universe, and beyond, to observe the experiment. And I’m not even asking for an improvement in grammar, let alone semantics. That would be setting a goal, after all. Deal?
Seversky @12:
In your partial definition of evolution, you assert “… Bencze’s analogy, like all such analogies, is flawed by two basic misconceptions: first, that evolution has some predetermined goal in mind … ”
If evolution has no goals in mind, then how would you explain how the multitudes of functional designs came to be. For example, a symphony orchestra performance, complete with all of the musicians and instruments?
Or how do you explain the flawless execution of a double play on the baseball diamond?
These came to be through the construction and integration of multitudes of purposeful and functional machines of the lever, joint, pneumatic/hydraulic sort … and other machines like a computational brain.
So yes, evolution, if it is to be as asserted as a valid description and explanation of the nature we all live in … must include a concept of “predetermined goals.”
Yes, and we observe something like this in evolution, e.g. recombination and horizontal gene transfer (hm, perhaps Ms. O’Leary should send Bencze links to some of her articles about this).
Bob- Do you really think that you can form coherent sentences by blindly and mindlessly rearranging groups of letters? Really? Or doing that and then incorporating more letters?
How did you determine that recombination and HGT are blind watchmaker processes? Do tell
ET –
Isn’t that what you do?
Maybe you do that, Bob.
Bob, horizontal gene transfer, like all other processes being discovered in biology, are exactly that, processes. Meaning, there is methodology, planning, feedback, correction, communication, information, highly coordinated and sophisticated procedures in use, on and on.
Your “isn’t that what you do?” is “cute”. Can you provide substance beyond “cute”? How about taking a serious crack at comment 16 above? Do you have something worth sharing from a mathematical, scientific, or philosophical perspective?
blip – yes I admit that my comment was “cute”. ET is basically a troll. FWIW, what he’s describing is how a lot of evolution works: it’s not point mutations, but larger stretches of DNA that get shuffled. This is undergrad genetics level (I know, I did undergrad genetics).
Bob, if ET is a troll, then so are you. And the best way to show trolls for what they are is to challenge them to put up.
Glad you did undergrad genetics. Now please, put it to use and give me a plausible response to 16.
I’m still waiting. Get Sev and anyone else in on it too. Please note I’m going easy on you by letting you start with debris which might already include lenses, pipes, and circuit boards. In other words, you aren’t even being asked to make your own dust.
Well?
Bob O’H:
Nice projection
That is true. But how did you or anyone determine those are just accidents, errors and mistakes?
Also Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution. Evolution by design is still evolution, Bob.
blip @ 24 – I already gave a response at 18 which is more than plausible, it’s been widely demonstrated. Transposons and viruses can also shuffle around larger blocks of DNA.
If you’re genuinely interested, then the cartoon guide to genetics is a good place to start to learn about these topics.
Yes, Bob, and your cowardly equivocation has been duly noted.
Do you have anything else besides that?
Bob @26. Seriously, you don’t understand probabilities. Or don’t want to understan. You provided no answer at all.
Bobb’s great reasoning:
I have a computer in my office. It does all sorts of amazing things. Therefore Darwinism is true.
I have a ladder I can use to reach apples on my tree. By extending it a bit more I can provide you with a plausible way to step out on the Moon.
Ain’t Darwinism great!
blip – could you actually give a substantive argument rather than just state that a professor of statistics doesn’t understand probabilities. I didn’t even give a probabilistic argument!
Bob:
Pot, meet kettle. 😛
Bob, you claim to have answered my 16 by simply stating that transposons and viruses can shuffle around larger blocks of DNA. If you don’t understand how that doesn’t solve my challenge at 16, it’s because you don’t understand mathematics, probability, or information, professorships and degrees notwithstanding.
I can also sit in a box, stick my arms out, and imagine I’m charging through the air in my flying machine, totally oblivious to the fact that I never will fly because the math is all wrong.
Or to transpose your transposon example into my silly ladder example, I have a ladder that can reach my tree, therefore, by extension I can reach the Moon in the same manner. You come along and shoot down my idea by saying no ladder can go that far. But now I counter: transposon ladders! Bigger segments! Get it? Maybe not with my rickety ladder, but with transposon ladders I can get to the Moon!
The two of us couldn’t be more off base. Because we can’t just ratchet up step by step to the Moon, regardless of whether you try with rickety home ladders held together by duct tape, or fancy transposon ladders that can “shuffle the possibilities in much larger chunks”.
You need a completely different approach, one that, first and foremost, requires information, planning, invention, teleology, the very things Darwinism excludes right off the bat.
That’s why neither you, nor anyone else, will solve the challenge at 16 in a Darwinian fashion, with or without fancy degrees and professorships. Even though high level information was snuck in at the beginning – lenses, pipes, circuit boards; you weren’t asked to start with “dust” – you still can’t build anything. And the more you shuffle stuff around, the more everything will break. Entropy.
I did not ask you for a probabilistic argument. I ask you to understand how probabilities work against any attempt to build anything even requiring just a handful of coordinated steps, without the help of teleology. And yet this is what Darwinism demands we swallow.
In post 29 Bob (and weave) O’Hara states that he is a
That makes him doubly without excuse. His very field of claimed expertise testifies against him!
Another, somewhat esoteric, and interesting falsification of the reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian evolution comes from the nature of mathematics itself.
Although it is almost universally acknowledged that mathematics exists in some transcendent “Platonic” realm,
,,, and although every rigorous theory of science requires verification from mathematics, and experimentation, in order to be considered scientific in the first place,
,,, the reductive materialism that Darwinian evolution is based upon denies the existence of anything beyond the material realm.
There simply is no place for the immaterial realm of mathematics to find grounding for its reality in the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought.
As David Berlinski states, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….”
Therefore, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible (by Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..),,,
,,,, Darwinian evolution is further falsified by mathematics as being a scientific theory since Darwinism denies the very reality of one the thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place.
Thus, to repeat, our illustrious ‘professor of statistics’ is doubly without excuse
Indeed BA, indeed.
If Bob were arguing that loads of design snuck in up front can create a system that uses randomization to achieve some moderate improvements, sure, I would agree.
For example, genetic algorithms. But the only reason they work somewhat is because someone(s) did an enormous effort front-loading the system to make it function so that, starting at point x, with the goal at point y, where the space including the path(s) from x to y is essentially smooth, continuous, and uphill all the way (or downhill), there is a decent chance the system will get to the desired goal.
Think about some things that were included to achieve this:
A goal, a starting point from where the goal can be reached in a fairly straightforward manner (otherwise the system would fail very quickly), a complex program in a complex language, a complex operating system in possibly another complex language, complex hardware to run the software, complex power generation systems to energize the hardware, complex fuels to provide the energy…
And none of this begins to address the systems that had to be built to extract and process the fuel, create the power generation plants, machines to create microscopic hardware to take advantage of quantum phenomena, logic, mathematics, communication, on and on. In other words, second order systems, third order systems, …
And all of the above, plus all the intermediate steps that were not listed but are, nonetheless essential… all of it pales in comparison to the complexity, intricacy, sophistication of the “simplest” life form known.
But am I supposed to see genetic algorithms or some other flavor of the month algorithm pop out some result and suddenly feel compelled to genuflect to the god of Darwinism? Few things could be more foolish. But oh! Isn’t it so tempting! Because if Darwinism is “god” … then … then “God” is not! YES! (The blip translation of Romans 1)
It’s information, planning, teleology, mind. All the way up and all the way down. Darwinism plays absolutely no role in any of it. If it did, nothing in the long chain above would work. Nothing. Right out the gate the horse would keel over, dead.
(Odd how Romans is right.)
Wait, who let it in here anyway! We are sophisticated! Don’t need any of that myth. We have degrees! And professorships! And anyone who is anything agrees with us!
(sigh)
It might help, then, if you provide your maths, rather than waving your arms around. Your argument at 16 doesn’t present any actual maths.
As to:
And exactly why does Bob (and weave) O’Hara want immaterial mathematics to prove that the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution cannot produce immaterial information when reductive materialism denies the existence of immaterial realities in the first place?
Thus Bob (and weave) O’Hara himself, by demanding,,,
,,, concedes the primacy of the immaterial realm of mathematics in science, and thus undercuts his very own argument for his materialistic Darwinian worldview in the process.
Moreover, just how is it that the supposedly ‘material mind’ of Bob (and weave) is able to contemplate these immaterial abstract concepts of mathematics in the first place?
Moreover, as much confidence as Bob (and weave) may have in the immaterial realm of mathematics to differentiate between what is true and what is false, the immaterial realm of mathematics is not sufficient within itself to warrant such confidence on Bob’s part.
As Gödel proved, mathematics is ‘incomplete’ and therefore is not sufficient within itself to provide us with the answer, and confidence, for why we intuitively know mathematics to be true.
Thus, basically, in his appeal to immaterial mathematics to try to make Darwinian evolution seem remotely plausible, Bob (and weave), in actuality, ends up acknowledging that he needs God in order to be able to deny God.
Bob, you know the arm waving you claim I’m doing came from a silly skit I told for the purpose of making the point that it’s you who does the arm waving by just claiming that Darwinism is capable of such amazing things and throwing around transposons and viruses as if they happened by sheer dumb Darwinian luck. No, you first have to provide evidence that transposons and viruses come about by sheer dumb Darwinian luck. Bank vaults and cryptographic algorithms also work, in part, on a randomizing component and they don’t come about except by design. So just because there is a randomizing element to something such as a virus, that fact alone doesn’t prove the virus came about by sheer dumb Darwinian luck.
But the fact that you pick my story to claim I’m arm waving instead of addressing the long, though incomplete, list of processes I noted, all of which requires intelligence every step of the way, reveals your disingenuous attitude. Sorry, but you ask for it, time and again. Goes to show you’re not stuck on evidence but on willful blindness.
That said, if you can get past your obfuscation some day, and really want to own the math, start first with Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, published 2017. It is well referenced with peer reviewed papers.
I also recommend this https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-017-1190-x
You can start with those. What I have mentioned in this discussion is a subset of what is discussed in the book.
If you’re serious about understanding, study the book. Ask if you have questions. But dismissal? Don’t come back, then.
blip – Yes, I’ve read Basener & Sandford. It has maths in it. it shows (amongst other things) that mutation and selection can increase the mean fitness of a population.
My original point was that transposons & recombination move around larger chunks than individual base pairs. I don’t need maths for that argument, because it’s a biological observation. I wan’t attempting to defends the whole of evolutionary biology; it would take too long (after all, other people have written whole books doing that).
Fitness itself, although it figures centrally in the equations of population genetics, has no universally agreed upon measure so as to tell us exactly how fitness is to be numerically quantified into a rigorous, i.e. mathematically useful, measure:
Moreover, the more precise one tries to be with measuring fitness, the more ‘fitness’ evaporates into thin air as a supposed useful tool for Darwinists to use as a rigorous mathematical measure:
Moreover, due to epistatic interactions, fitness effects are experimentally found to be highly unpredictable (which is directly contrary to what is a-priori assumed in the mathematics of population genetics).
Moreover, even if ‘fitness’ were a realistic mathematical measure of an organism, instead of just some ill defined pipe dream in the Darwinist’s head, and as it is currently used in population genetics, fitness would still undermine Darwinian evolution in that if ‘fitness’ were the true means by which all species were created, i.e. “survival of the fittest”, then all our perceptions and beliefs about reality would become illusory and unreliable.
In the following video and article, Donald Hoffman has, through numerous computer simulations of population genetics, proved that if Darwinian evolution were actually true then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be illusory.
“Fitness” also undermines the reliability of our beliefs about reality
Thus in conclusion, when Darwinists speak about ‘fitness’ they are not speaking about a rigorous, i.e. mathematically useful, measure that is rigorously quantified. They are basically speaking about some mythical thing that is in their imagination that has no rigorously defined relationship with the real world.
Moreover, even if Darwinists were speaking about something that could be rigorously quantified, ‘fitness’ would still falsify Darwinian evolution in that all our perceptions and beliefs about reality would become unreliable and illusory.
,,, Especially including supposed unquestionable beliefs about Darwinian evolution itself would become illusory and unreliable! As Nancy Pearcey stated, “The theory undercuts itself”,,,
One final note:
Bob (and weave) stated this in post 38:
And that is exacly why I nicknamed him Bob (and weave). Bob (and weave) completely omits the biggest finding of the paper which is directly at odds to what he apparently wants others to falsely believe. Bill Basener and John Sanford actually demonstrated that “Our paper shows that Fisher’s corollary is clearly false, and that he misunderstood the implications of his own theorem. He incorrectly believed that his theorem was a mathematical proof that showed that natural selection plus mutation will necessarily and always increase fitness. He also believed his theorem was on a par with a natural law (such as entropic dissipation and the second law of thermodynamics). Because Fisher did not understand the actual fitness distribution of new mutations, his belief in the application of his “fundamental theorem of natural selection” was fundamentally and profoundly wrong – having little correspondence to biological reality.”
Thus, once again, the more rigorously one tries to bring Darwinian assuptions into line with biological and physical realities, the more those biological and physical realities falsify those Darwinian assumptions.
BA @ 39, thanks for providing that awesome quote. I was tempted to include it but then decided not to in order to test what Bob would do.
Sure enough he took the bait: “Yes, I’ve read Basener & Sandford. It has maths in it. it shows (amongst other things) that mutation and selection can increase the mean fitness of a population.”
Thereby leaving the impression the paper supports Bob’s position when, in fact, the paper contradicts Darwinism.
By your posting the quote after Bob took the bait, your comment unequivocally shows Bob for the deceiver he is. Mission accomplished.
Enough said.
Thanks!