Two challenges for KL – (fossil) Lucy’s defender

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 3, 2011

Human evolution}

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A most interesting discussion has got started here at “But ‘Lucy’ herself is mostly an artifact”. Commenter KL got it going, I suspect, by observing that

I certainly don’t consider you hicks. However, my spouse and associates are primate researchers, physical anthropologists, geologists and archeologists. It’s strange to come here and see their work dismissed as a just so story. Some of them have been in the field extensively and have published many, many papers. Are you guys saying that somehow all these people are simply mistaken?

Yes, it is quite possible.

My question is, is there anything fronted by “evolution researchers” that KL wouldn’t believe? How about the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution? Or Marc “Well, the monkeys talk to me!” Hauser? How about any single item on this list? Is there nothing that KL would even wonder about? Does he know that E. O. Wilson has retracted his own kin selection theory?

Two things: The public of a free society is not stupid. When we see a parade of amazing nonsense – marketed as evolution – we wisely don’t believe any of it. I don’t bother sorting through it for the same reason as I don’t scan the tabloids to see if anything in them is true.

It is no use berating us, let alone blaming us for low science scores. Revisit your strategy.

And second, would KL be willing to read The Nature of Nature, to understand what the controversy is really about? Then we could have a serious discussion.

(Note: KL has a spouse and associates in primate research, and I have a number of relatives and friends in medicine. That does not commit me to any particular theory, no matter how widely espoused, and a good thing too: Look how much medicine has changed. )

Comments

QI: Ever heard of a guilty silence? GEM of TKI PS: I was introduced to the sort of analysis circa 1979 - 80, when I first had to seriously do thermodynamics. One form of it is the estimation of the odds that all the O2 molecules in a room would spontaneously rush to one end. A practical zero and that precisely because a fluctuation that far from the cluster of overwhelmingly abundant highly mixed states is of such low relative statistical weight that it becomes unobservable on the gamut of the observable cosmos. An easy way to understand such is to imagine the room diced into boxes small enough that one molecule fits in them [boxes of order 10^-10 m on the side -- NB in a gas at typical temps there are about 10 molecular diameters separation on average], then work out the rate at which molecules moving around at about 200 m/s would swop boxes. Then think about the relative number of distributions with the O2 molecules clustered at one end of the room. (This is an undoing diffusion thought exercise, which you could do by first thinking of two rows of ten marbles, red and black, then working out the number of ways that marbles can be arranged.)kairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Kairosfocus, I am beginning to think that evolutinary processes can generate fcsi. Behe's recent review demonstrates this.He summarizes some examples of lab observed evolution in microbes and viruses. Most are either loss of function, or modifications of existing function. But, about 10% of the mutations in his tables are gain-of-fct, where a "“A “gain-of-FCT” adaptive mutation is a mutation that produces a specific, new, functional coded element while adapting an organism to its environment"" http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf Shockingly close to fCSI and other ID definitions. So we have empirical evidence of new functional coded elements evolving.kuartus_{April 7, 2011
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Joseph,
Lots on breaking things and loss of function.,
You've obviously not even looked at the presentations.JemimaRacktouey_{April 7, 2011
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JR: Please do not let your behaviour edge any closer to the incivility threshold KL has crossed. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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kairosfocus, thanks. What I mean by ignoring Abel is that his work has yet to be cited once in Web of Science or Pub Med. It's been ignored in that sense.QuiteID_{April 7, 2011
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Indium, on infinite monkeys, start here, go on to here and then onwards from there (don't forget here); and enjoy. (Notice how spaces of order 10^50 are searchable, but spaces of 10^300+ are not even approached.) Gkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Pardon, paleontology.kairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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QI: 1: Abel is writing things [with some extensions, true] that are based on things that any serious statistical thermodynamics course will brush on when it explains the basis of the second law of thermodynamics. 2: The issue is not to promote, or persuade or convince. If you have ever taken up the torch of science to run with it, you have a duty to truth, to empirically anchored warrant and to open-minded, sound analysis. 3: I have given links to details on the issues of fossils, including he points where they are relevant to the theory of intelligent design. 4: With these, the issue is not "evolution," a very broad and slippery-slope loaded term, as I pointed out regarding KL's remarks. 5: The part that is empirically well warranted on observations is well below the FSCI threshold, and the part that is alleged to be responsible for macroevolution at body plan level -- i.e. is beyond the FSCI threshold -- conspicuously lacks warrant on observation, including in the case of the overwhelming pattern of the fossil evidence. 6: Observe, when I quoted a founding person for Punctuated Equlibria, on the key observation in that regard, KL found himself reduced to lying by falsely alleging that I was quotemining on statements made by Johnson, whom he slandered by alleging that he was a master quoteminer. 7: That resort in the teeth of the now notorious "trade secret" of anthropology, should tell you a lot about what the fossils really say, even when the generally promoted timeline is taken at face value, without a grain or two of salt. 8: Do I need to underscore it again: Cambrian Fossil Life revolution, which BTW, was known to Darwin. 10+ million base pairs of fresh DNA to account for, in a window of 10 MY, dozens of times over, and on one little planet, not the gamut of the observed cosmos. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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JR:
What ‘they’ are in fact doing is spending their working lives trying to solve that problem. And some profound results have already been published.
Nothing about the construction of useful complex systems. Lots on breaking things and loss of function. Nothing about changing body plans nor body forms. It is all one big "we don't know"- and that is fine. As for those OoL researchers. Might as well have some geologists look into geological processes producing Stonehenge. They would have a better chance of success.Joseph_{April 7, 2011
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Upright Where is your evidence that DNA came into being in an "act of volition"? Even if we only consider human codes and DNA you can´t just look at human invented codes and infer that every code has the same properties. You can´t look at one black cow and decide that every cow is black. You don´t even know if the cow is black on its other side ;-) Also, DNA is not just a symbolic representation. In fact it´s not really symbolic at all. Via its chemical and physical properties it is directly linked by a chain of events to the amino acids. Materialistic magic at its best! kf: Did you really made a monkey+typewriter analogy in 94? What is an infinite monkey analysis? Sounds interesting!Indium_{April 7, 2011
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Don't worry Gordo, I'm getting to you.JemimaRacktouey_{April 7, 2011
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Upright Biped
To say that ‘evolution did it’ is to merely assume the conclusion without evidence, while ignoring the only verified inference we have to its source.
But that's a strawman. Nobody is saying 'evolution did it' What 'they' are in fact doing is spending their working lives trying to solve that problem. And some profound results have already been published. NASA origin of life workshop Many many hours of information to absorb. All by people trying to answer the question that you claim you already have an answer to, the origin of life. Perhaps you should let them know? But what, exactly, will you say? Saying that people simply claim that 'evolution did it' is akin to saying that when asked how the designer did it the ID supporter says 'it was designed, as design is a mechanism' Nobody would say that. Would they? So put your strawman away. Or provide a citation to somebody in the published mainstream scientific community saying exactly that. Or tell me Upright, given that you know the answer to the origin of life how would that affect NASA's research if you told them? What would they do differently? What would you say to them anyway? Other then "it was designed that way - only designers design codes"? Very useful...JemimaRacktouey_{April 7, 2011
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Upright Biped
In our universal experience, the use of symbols in such a system arises from a singular source – that is, from a deliberate act of volition.
You, and we, in fact have no such experence. We have not observed such a system arise from a singular source. As Bornagain77 is fond of reminding us, the genome is full of complex multilayer networks well beyond current and long term future abilities of the human race. We don't understand more then a fraction of it I'm sure. It's such a profoundly complex system that you observe it and claim design. On the basis that similar systems are also designed. Yet we've designed no such similar system. If we have then BA77 is wrong. And it means that your "designer" is no more capable then us small brained humans who've taken thousands of years just to drag ourselves out of the mud and into centrally heated houses. You ascribe the creation of the universe to what are essentially monkeys?
Do you have any evidence of symbolic representation arising by any other means?
If DNA is indeed a language (I.E a symbolic representation enabling the mapping of concepts onto components that are interchangeable or possible to recreate with similar components representing the same or similar concepts) then could you translate some of it into French for me? Then German. Then English. Then back to, well, DNA? And see if it still does the same thing, or more or less the same thing? You can translate a poem into French then German then Spanish and then back into it's original language. It'll be a bit odd but still usually recognizably and the "same" poem.JemimaRacktouey_{April 7, 2011
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StephenB
Do you agree that they are not composed of matter or energy, that they are not extended in time/space, and that they are universal, and unchangeable?
I will answer the question in the context of there being an "intelligent designer" who created everything. In such a universe these "laws" are not unchangeable as they were created in the first place. So there is no prior requirement for those rules to take the form that the take now other then by design from your "designer". Your "designer" could have chosen different rules, could it not? So, no. They are neither universal nor unchangeable. They could change without a moments notice, at the whim of your designer. At any point in the universe, near or far. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen. If miracles happen then changing the unchangeable is possible. Perhaps they have already changed and will continue to change. Who can tell? How can you tell such things? As to your question of do the rules themselves exist? Is the temperature of a gas composed of matter or energy?JemimaRacktouey_{April 7, 2011
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It would be nice to know what you thought about fossil "evidences" more directly -- how should we understand those if not in evolutionary terms?QuiteID_{April 7, 2011
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kairosfocus, what do you think it would take to get people to pay attention to Abel's paper? It's been utterly ignored by the scientific community.QuiteID_{April 7, 2011
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Sorry, but until you have explained the fossils and their ages, distribution and features using another paradigm, the old one stands. Interesting that now you criticize my integrity and citizenship-how arrogant: "KL, you need to take some serious reflection time, and look at what you have been doing, and how you have dealt with other people. Not just on the topics and issues that happen to be under discussion, but as a duty of basic membership of the human civil community." after you declared the work of my friends, associates and spouse to be a waste of career and a delusion, yet cannot answer to the specific claims that you and others here have made. And you wonder why the science community fails to take your claims seriously. Anyone can criticize the hypotheses made by scientists, but those critiques are meaningless until alternatives are offered. Finally, I never made any comments that would lead you to believe that I am a "sir", yet you have assumed so. I am female, and my (male) spouse finds what has been posted here on this site completely off the mark regarding anthropology. You have demonstrated not only evasion, but dishonesty, which discerning onlookers should recognize easily.KL_{April 7, 2011
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UB: In addition, Indium is ignoring the implications of the infinite monkey type analysis on the limitations of an unintelligent search on the gamut of our observed universe. Gkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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JR: Pardon, Implicated in KL's . . . GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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JR: Pardon, but I should note to you that by your actions of uncritically forwarding an uncivil comment above, you have been implicated in JR's lies, slanders and misrepresentations of facts, issues and people. Please, be careful in future. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Indium, You are trying too hard. I did not say what you claim. My post stands. a) "ID adherents believe that the encoded mapping of discrete nucleotides to discrete amino acids in the translation of DNA is an example of a system using symbolic representation (presented in a linear digital format)." b) "In our universal experience, the use of symbols in such a system arises from a singular source – that is, from a deliberate act of volition." You've played the obfuscation card twice now, so I'll answer the question for you - "No" you do not have any evidence of such a system arising by natural law + chance alone. So what you are left with is to simply assume that a natural process accomplished it without having any evidence to that effect, and you do so while ignoring evidence of the only verified source of such a system.Upright BiPed_{April 7, 2011
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24 --> that is why the disciplines now called the physical sciences were formerly known as natural philosophy; confirmed findings, were termed "knowledge," or a cognate for "Science" in Latin. and computer science analogies 25 --> is it an "analogy" that the DNA code, on A/G/C/T or U elements, is discrete state, and used to drive protein assembly step by step in the ribosome? That the sequence of AA's so assembled is based on the coded sequence in the mRNA's codons as transcribed from the DNA? (And I will not even bother to point out how analogical reasoning lies at the heart of inductive reasoning; so impoverished are we in our epistemological knowledge base today.) 26 --> that is not "analogy" it is instantiation of a digital, discrete state, algorithmic, flexible code driven programmed system. 27 --> that you are driven to deny and dismiss so plain a fact is utterly telling. are not sufficient to convince any scientist to abandon the reigning paradigm. 28 --> This is a gross mistake on the issue of epistemic virtues. No one should have to convince a scientist, s/he should be open to and motivated towards duty to the objective facts and the truth. New post: Reams of typing, 29 --> this is rich: when I did not have time to answer on points, I was dodging to answer and had no answer. Take time to answer on points and you are dismissed for reams of typing. heads I win, tails you lose. quotemines of Gould 30 --> this is an outright lie at minimum by refusal to do basic duties of care on truth and fairness:
Quote mining Quote mining is the practice of purposely compiling frequently misleading quotes from large volumes of literature or speech.[1] The term is pejorative. "Quote miners" are often accused of contextomy and misquotation, in an attempt to represent the views of the person being quoted inaccurately . . . [Wiki, as used by The Free dictionary]
31 --> Gould is not being taken out of context (and BTW, the cite I made does NOT come from Johnson] to say what he did not mean. He most definitely stated and meant -- on abundant evidence and considerable support of other paleontologists -- that the predominant fact of the fossil record is sudden appearance, stasis and disappearance and/or continuation into the modern world. that is in part why he and others developed the theory of punctuated equlibria. 32 --> KL, if you have to stoop to an outright lie to duck the significance of a dominant feature of the fossil record, that utterly unravels your attempt to pretend that that record is explained by your preferred evo mat paradigm on gradualism. offered by Philip Johnson, who I think has perfected the art, 33 --> FYI, I have not sourced the above cites in Johnson. If you had bothered to read the IOSE unit on body plan origins where I cited Gould, you would have seen this further cite, from the NYRB review of Gould's last book (which is what I cited), by Tim Flannery:
Niles Eldredge and Gould first coined the term "punctuated equilibrium" in 1971 and published it the following year. The theory seeks to explain a persistent pattern in the fossil record whereby a species suddenly appears, then persists unchanged for a very long time before going extinct. This pattern is seen in a wide variety of contexts, from marine creatures such as shellfish and sea urchins to mammals and birds. Punctuated equilibrium posits that these species come into existence relatively rapidly (over tens of thousands of years), though just how (and indeed if) this happens is hotly debated. An opposing explanation is that these species have evolved much more slowly somewhere else, and their "sudden" appearance is the result of migration. While, as Galton's polyhedron suggests, the concept of punctuated equilibrium was not entirely new to paleontology, Eldredge and Gould's formulation of it was timely and coherent. Even among its supporters, however, argument has raged over its significance, with many questioning whether it really challenges Darwin's concept of gradualism. (After all, tens of thousands of years is sufficient time for species to evolve "gradually.") Most researchers, though, recognize that the concept has been invaluable in encouraging paleontologists to examine the fossil record with a rigor and attention to detail that previously was largely lacking. Punctuated equilibrium has forced paleontologists to focus not only on the origin of species, but also on their often long, unchanged persistence in the fossil record . . . [["A New Darwinism?," The New York Review of Books, 49 (May 23, 2002): pp. 52–54.]
34 --> Further to this, KL, you have slandered professor Johnson, and reveal yourself to be utterly uncivil. If this is your method in discussion, then your relegation to moderation is both justified and understandable. an piece from Proverbs, 35 --> I of course simply alluded to Solomon's advice to study the diligence and work of the humble ant, in a context where my primary reference was to the possibility of swarm intelligence and its implementation in c-chemistry life forms or Fe-Si robots. 36 --> So, in fact, if anyone was here guilty of quotemining, KL, it is YOU. more metaphysics, 37 --> The main philosophy questions I have raised were those of EPISTEMOLOGY, the critical analysis of knowledge. Where metaphysical issues come in, it is to expose and correct a confessed censoring a priori, evolutionary materialism. but nothing regarding the age, features or distribution of the hundreds of hominid fossils. 38 --> Plainly, you failed to do the basic courtesy of following the relevant links before adversely criticising me. I have linked a whole course unit that discusses the origin of man, mind and morals. From that page you may find a link to another on cosmology and timelines, which discusses the whole dating problem. Also, there was a link to a page on body plans, which discusses the claimed ape to man transition in several places, with sufficient details to highlight the key problems that have dogged this area of origins science since the 1860's or 70s on. 39 --> Plus, you are still ducking the calculation and analysis on the need to account for the FSCO/I required to transform say Lucy and kin into a man, in say 6 - 10 MY. Plus, another post in moderation for going on 3.5 hours. 40 --> In my homeland, they have a saying: "de higher monkey climb, de more im expose imself." In your case, the performance I have just had to correct amply shows why you are in moderation, KL. Or, expanding the saying a bit: If im climb high enough, thwack, monkey stew for lunch.">> _______________ KL, you need to take some serious reflection time, and look at what you have been doing, and how you have dealt with other people. Not just on the topics and issues that happen to be under discussion, but as a duty of basic membership of the human civil community. Good day, sir. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Onlookers (and KL): Since there is need to highlight what is really going on, let me answer on points, also, the latest in-mod clip by KL, forwarded here by JR [who plainly is not in mod; evidence that if KL's in-mod status is not by Akismet, it is probably for cause]: ______________ >> KL 04/06/2011 1:40 pm Your comment is awaiting moderation. If you want your ideas to be considered science, you must do what scientists do: the hard work of developing explanations for evidence. 1 --> Arrogantly condescending strawman talking point, in a context where just one click away, there were relevant explanations of the relevant dominant features of the fossil record, which have been known to be so ever since Darwin: sudden appearance, stasis, disappearance and/or continuation into the modern world. 2 --> And, nowhere do we find the faintest trace of an attempt6 to explain FSCO/I on chance plus necessity, with empirical support. 3 --> perhaps, too, KL is unaware of the growing stream of work on FSCI and the broader CSI in the context of active information and evolutionary informatics. The result is that it is active information based on intelligence about a specific domain and purpose, that accounts for search performance that significantly exceeds random walk with trial and error. 4 --> If so, then he has failed to do due diligence homework before adversely commenting on another person, which is bad enough. But if he does know of the work, but insists on slander, then that is utterly disgraceful and inexcusable. Detailed work involving mechanisms, patterns, empirical and relative ages, geographic distribution, biometrics, variations within and between related species. 5 --> All of which work is compatible with design as the known source of FSCO/I, and none of which offers a credible, empirically anchored accounting ofr FSCO/I on chance plus necessity. To answer scientific questions by claiming another paradigm but then not using that paradigm to offer a better explanation is not science. 6 --> turnabout triumphalist rhetoric, having ducked the material question, the known source of FSCO/I, and the want of empirical evidence for FSCO/I on chance plus necessity That’s fine, if you don’t care to be called scientists or what you do science. But, if you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch. 7 --> More conceited condescending, turnabout ad hominem laced, contempt-filled rhetoric, in a context where the material issue: the source of FSCO/I is unanswered. 8 --> If you have the facts, pound on the facts. If you have the law, pound on the law. if you have neither, pound on the table and shout a lot. Don’t try to play scientist by offering up analogies that are meaningless in practice, 9 --> I repeat the challenge as yet unanswered by MG et al: When Wicken and Orgel spoke of functional, complex organisation and associated information as well as specified complexity, were they speaking meaninglessly? 10 --> The fact of FSCO/I is easily observable, and we can do a very simple metric to set a threshold of 1,000 bits of functionally specific, complex information that sits within a cluster of functional states [termed an island of function for obvious and material reasons] within a wider space of possible configs [BTW, an application of phase space analysis or state space analysis, common in physics, mathematics and control theory FYI]. 11 --> Once that is done, we can see that a cosmos which can search through 10^150 states cannot credibly search in a space of at least 10^301 cells. So, the best and empirically anchored explanation for functional clusters and being at these in such spaces, is intelligence. philosophy instead of mechanisms, 12 --> Philosophy is offered to correct an openly confessed, agenda motivated worldview level a prioi contrainty of evolutionary materialism, and it is the evo mat view that needs to ofer a credible mechanism for the origin of FSCO/I. Which itr has not. 13 --> by contrast, and as was pointed out repeatedly, even posts in threads at UD offer empirical cases of how FSCI routinely and reliably arises from intelligence. 14 --> When it comes to origin of biological FSCO/I, it was long since and repeatedly pointed out that a molecular nanotech lab a few generations beyond Venter et al, would be a sufficient source for the phenomena in life, and in body plans. 15 --> Does it need a special mechanism to say that engineers design and implement using the forces and material of nature, intelligently, to achieve their purposes, in a world dominated by technology? and claims you cannot support with evidence. 16 --> this is now willful closed mindedness and selectively hyperskeptical dismissal on the blunder of Sagan: "extraordinary [to me] claims require ~~extraordinary~~ [in fact only adequate and accessible] evidence. 17 --> How much support does it require beyond what is already offered, that FSCO/I is routinely and reliably in our experience and observation, produced by intelligence? to point out, on the infinite monkeys analysis introduced by physicists dealing with the statistical foundations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that once we are searching a space of say 10^301 or so cells on the gamut of the search resources of our observable cosmos, blind chance plus necessity are utterly implausible as sufficient forces? 18 --> Have you even bothered to read Abel -- duly peer reviewed -- on the universal plausibility bound, the galactic and the solarsystem level bounds? Not to mention outrageous statements about scientists wasting their careers; scientists who have done and continued to do the hard work of science. QuiteID, the paradigm of evolution has stood the test of time, and continues to explain all the evidence, even down to the tiniest detail, very well. 19 --> Slippery slope use of the term evolution, on both sides of the FSCO/I threshold. Small changes to already incredibly complex and functional creatures are documented asnd observed; origin of the underlying FSCO/I behind the cell based life and the body plans, has not. And is not. 20 -> the claim about evidence explained ignores the fact thsat he allowable explanations have been censored by imposition of a priori evolutionary materialism that silencesd inconvenient facts such as the known and only known source of FSCO/I. A shift in paradigm is an extraordinary claim, which must be demonstrated by extraordinary evidence. 21 --> there we have it, the Sagan fallacy in so many words. 22 --> Actually, all that is needed is the exposure of the censoring a priori imposition of materialism, which fatally cripples inference to best explanation, and closes minds. beyond that the known source of FSCO/I and the known lack of plausibility of chance plus necessity as credible explanations for FSCO/I are enough. Philosophical explanations 23 --> Science, is about empirically based knowledge claims, so epistemological considerations cannot be neatly severed from science, as we can see in Newton, in Query 31 in his Opticks; the key source of the commonly met Grade School definition of the scientific method:
As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.
[ . . . ]kairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Upright You said that all codes we know come into existence by an "act of volition". You have no evidence that this is true for the genetic code. And 99% of all biologist working in this field would strongly disagree with you. So, you are the one assuming your conclusion when you say that the only known source of a code is an "act of volition". Bees? Meerkat? Dolphins? DNA? Ants? Where is the evidence for the "act of volition"?Indium_{April 7, 2011
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Indium, I’ll be the first person to acknowledge that semiosis is replete within the living kingdom (as I have so commented several times on this blog), just as it is completely absent from the remaining inanimate world. (You should also note that in my comment above I referred symbolic representations presented in a linear digital format). The question is this; how to get to symbolic representation from inanimate chemistry. If the rise of symbolic representation is a property of matter (being acted upon by physical law and chance) then there should be evidence of it to support the claim. To say that ‘evolution did it’ is to merely assume the conclusion without evidence, while ignoring the only verified inference we have to its source.Upright BiPed_{April 7, 2011
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Upright: DNA=Code Morse Code=Code -> In our universal experience there are at least two sources for codes (humans+evolution). I might add that animals also have specific languages or codes (bee, meerkat, dolphins to name a few). So, did the dolphins sit together and developed their code in an "act of volition"?Indium_{April 7, 2011
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Stephen, we can also ask JR to tell us whether numbers and propositions and information are material realities or not. If they are material, what are they composed of [with what relevant properties], and how was this observationally confirmed. Gkairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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Jemima, ID adherents believe that the encoded mapping of discrete nucleotides to discrete amino acids in the translation of DNA is an example of a system using symbolic representation (presented in a linear digital format). In our universal experience, the use of symbols in such a system arises from a singular source - that is, from a deliberate act of volition. Do you have any evidence of symbolic representation arising by any other means?Upright BiPed_{April 7, 2011
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F/n 2: Onlookers, observe carefully: the latest attack on UD's moderation policy has happened within a matter of a few weeks of our having MG do a guest post on her views. It occurs in a context where several objectors in the relevant threads seem to have rapid post privilege, and where the practice is that those who are manually moderated are moderated for cause on a declared policy. Akismet also blocks posts or dumps them into the spam pile, but the reasons for that are quite obvious. I am sorry, but the fussing I see above -- within that context, and int eh conrtext of the sort of strawman caricatures I have been subjected to just above -- comes across to me as largely insincere talking points meant to then be twisted into yet another red herring led away to a strawman soaked in ad homiems and ignited for the delectation of onlookers, elsewhere.kairosfocus_{April 7, 2011
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In other words (and that's a lot of words) you have no real working knowledge of the fossil record so you dismiss evolution based on metaphysics. Sorry-that's not doing science. And that is not an answer to my very direct and very concrete question regarding the ORIGINAL claim of the original thread about hominid fossils in general and Lucy and Ida specifically. Of course, this comment will be in moderation for hours, so no one will see it.KL_{April 7, 2011
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