A Sound of Thunder: Another Fundamental Failure

_{Cornelius Hunter

April 9, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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One of the most fundamental premises of evolutionary theory is that the evolutionary process is indeterminate. The species arose via a process which did not have them in mind. This is because, from mutations to comet strikes, evolution depends on sporadic, unguided events that know nothing of making species. Evolution is contingent on random events and does not know where it is going—there is no teleology. Read more

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Logica, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/central-dogma-revisited/#comment-338098 and the first part of this paper: http://lettherebelight-77.blogspot.com/bornagain77_{April 18, 2010
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bornagain77 says: "Myself I have my own ideas as to where the information may reside, but keep that fairly close to the vest." Oh please share the secret!Logica_{April 18, 2010
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Of related interest: The Coding Found In DNA Surpasses Man's Ability To Code - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050638bornagain77_{April 10, 2010
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DATCG, Thanks for the link. This quote from the link is definitely a keeper: Welcome to CoSBi - (Computational and Systems Biology) Excerpt: Biological systems are the most parallel systems ever studied and we hope to use our better understanding of how living systems handle information to design new computational paradigms, programming languages and software development environments. The net result would be the design and implementation of better applications firmly grounded on new computational, massively parallel paradigms in many different areas. http://www.cosbi.eu/index.php/component/content/article/171bornagain77_{April 10, 2010
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Paul, put down that cracker and repeat after me...Upright BiPed_{April 10, 2010
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"a marvelous garden in which to learn, grow and be humbled." Quote of the Day.Upright BiPed_{April 10, 2010
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Gates foundation research work so far... http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/4/1DATCG_{April 10, 2010
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branched coding, nested, top down structured, cascading events and even outside calls are normal programming techniques. Internal subroutines are natural. External subroutines are natural, as are stored address overlays and shared space and dynamic address space. The code does not impress me as going in circles. Highly complex, yes. Hardly understood yet by us, yes. It is a true work of coding genious. Gates recognized this long ago and now sponsors research which treats biology as a network of interactive programs. http://www.cosbi.eu/ software code we do today is simple in comparison to the cellular architecture that is compressed(agree with Atom and have thought this for a long time) architectural 3d building codes, timed to photonic light energy or darkness, that store blueprints, dyanmically update them and allow expansion in size and other data, with shared programming space, a cooling system, transfer of nutrients and hormones, signals and new defense data and repair information that are maintained dynamically in nanosecond updates, that can be proliferated rapdily across the entire system. Compression not only in size but in shared data blueprints stored in a network of living and dynamic programs with rapid response reactions utilizing conditional processing logic calls. it is the simultaneous interaction of energy, chemical, sequential, random and conserved information space with known, locked in fucntions built upon interlocking atomic building blocks that can change from generation to generation and within a single species timeframe dependent upon variable input of different resources and/or viral attacks. Amazing stuff, all roaming around four fundamental character sets or command points if you will in a storage medium that itself can change and expand or shrink. The combinatorial outcomes of which are conserved and varied at times, even within the same species. Frankly, we still don't know fully what we're looking at. A physical 3d code space of seemingly unlimited combinations and variations. We guess at how life looked eons ago, but may never truly know the actual beauty lost. fascinating. a marvelous garden in which to learn, grow and be humbled. where eating algae leaves pink flamingos forever ingrained in your memory as something you do not want on your lawn, but is a good reminder of the dynamics allowed so quickly in the matrix of life. Design systems biology and reverse engineering has a rich future ahead of it.DATCG_{April 10, 2010
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Thanks bornagain for that video from Dr. Meyer. I've been wondering about that same issue myself. That is, how are the proteins and cells organized into specific shapes like arms and brains to name a few regulated by the DNA? In other words how is it that one person even looks like another person at all and how is it that every person looks like another barring deformities.Phaedros_{April 9, 2010
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Has any evolutionary scientist ever been able to explain the decision making algorithms that are abundant in the cell?... For instance, the reguation of a cell cycle... On Wiki we can read: "Regulation of the cell cycle involves processes crucial to the survival of a cell, including the detection and repair of genetic damage as well as the prevention of uncontrolled cell division. The molecular events that control the cell cycle are ordered and directional; that is, each process occurs in a sequential fashion and it is impossible to "reverse" the cycle." Key words: regulation, repair and detection, prevention, control, order... For example, an "repair and detection" mechanism/algorithm has no chance to appear from scratch, it has to be designed. An IF-THEN-ELSE structure cannot arise from materialistic processes... Because it is a logical structure, that can appear and function only within consciousness of a mind, where it makes sense.Sladjo_{April 9, 2010
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Or compiled. It doesn't appear to be encrypted or compressed with the intention of blocking understanding. It just looks like parts of it mean different things depending on the reading frame.Petrushka_{April 9, 2010
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Petrushka, Hard to follow code may also be compressed code. Compare the output of minified/packed javascript with unminified code: you'll see one is much easy to follow than the other. But one is more efficient in terms of space complexity. I'm not saying that the genome is compressed, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was. Imagine how much information is required to specify all functions and structures of self-replicating, self-healing, autonomous humanoid robots. I think the human genome looks small from my perspective. AtomAtom_{April 9, 2010
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I'm not really trying to draw that kind of conclusion. My only experience is with human designers of computer code. I don't know if any valid analogies can be made with DNA. But when I look at computer code, I tend to assume that clean, easily readable code is the result of a fresh start and top down design. When I see spaghetti code that is hard to follow and has lots of functions that do many unrelated things, I tend to think it is old code that has been incrementally modified to do things not anticipated by the original programmer.Petrushka_{April 9, 2010
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Petrushka, Lots of wheels within wheels. I was a programmer for many years. I was taught not to program like that. And did the computer you programmed multiply itself from a single transistor into the entire computer from the results of your program?bornagain77_{April 9, 2010
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Unfortunately this simple explanation does not help as it, itself, invokes the non evolutionary concept of environmental pressures inducing biological change.
Huh? Environmental pressures inducing biological change is the very heart of natural selection, and so is very evolutionary.Heinrich_{April 9, 2010
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I read the Nature article, which is what prompted me to post my initial comment. I didn't get the impression that DNA didn't code for phenotypes, just that the code interpreter didn't read it in a linear fashion. Lots of wheels within wheels. I was a programmer for many years. I was taught not to program like that. But I nevertheless saw lots of code that was hard to trace. Usually it was the result of years of maintaining old programs and addinge new functions without starting from scratch.Petrushka_{April 9, 2010
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Petrushka, Basically that is all there is to explain, The evidence indicates that the overall architectural structure of the Body Plan resides outside the DNA itself. Nobody really knows for sure where the information for body plans resides since no one has been able to drastically deviate from a basic body plan through extensive mutation studies to organisms such as fruit flies. Myself I have my own ideas as to where the information may reside, but keep that fairly close to the vest. As far as reverse engineering, what researchers are now finding is an immensely intricate web of polyfunctionality, for even simple proteins, that gives clear indication of "top down" design, not the simple "bottom up", cobbled together, picture that Darwinists had given us. For example in this paper that just came out in Nature: Human genome at ten: Life is complicated: Excerpt: Even for a single molecule, vast swathes of messy complexity arise. The protein p53, for example, was first discovered in 1979, and despite initially being misjudged as a cancer promoter, it soon gained notoriety as a tumour suppressor — a 'guardian of the genome' that stifles cancer growth by condemning genetically damaged cells to death. Few proteins have been studied more than p53, and it even commands its own meetings. Yet the p53 story has turned out to be immensely more complex than it seemed at first. In 1990, several labs found that p53 binds directly to DNA to control transcription, supporting the traditional Jacob–Monod model of gene regulation. But as researchers broadened their understanding of gene regulation, they found more facets to p53. Just last year, Japanese researchers reported3 that p53 helps to process several varieties of small RNA that keep cell growth in check, revealing a mechanism by which the protein exerts its tumour-suppressing power. Even before that, it was clear that p53 sat at the centre of a dynamic network of protein, chemical and genetic interactions. Researchers now know that p53 binds to thousands of sites in DNA, and some of these sites are thousands of base pairs away from any genes. It influences cell growth, death and structure and DNA repair. It also binds to numerous other proteins, which can modify its activity, and these protein–protein interactions can be tuned by the addition of chemical modifiers, such as phosphates and methyl groups. Through a process known as alternative splicing, p53 can take nine different forms, each of which has its own activities and chemical modifiers. Biologists are now realizing that p53 is also involved in processes beyond cancer, such as fertility and very early embryonic development. In fact, it seems wilfully ignorant to try to understand p53 on its own. Instead, biologists have shifted to studying the p53 network, as depicted in cartoons containing boxes, circles and arrows meant to symbolize its maze of interactions. Data deluge The p53 story is just one example of how biologists' understanding has been reshaped, thanks to genomic-era technologies. Knowing the sequence of p53 allows computational biologists to search the genome for sequences where the protein might bind, or to predict positions where other proteins or chemical modifications might attach to the protein. That has expanded the universe of known protein interactions — and has dismantled old ideas about signalling 'pathways', in which proteins such as p53 would trigger a defined set of downstream consequences. "When we started out, the idea was that signalling pathways were fairly simple and linear," says Tony Pawson, a cell biologist at the University of Toronto in Ontario. "Now, we appreciate that the signalling information in cells is organized through networks of information rather than simple discrete pathways. It's infinitely more complex." http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100331/full/464664a.htmlbornagain77_{April 9, 2010
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I'm afraid my sound isn't working, so I can't watch videos. Perhaps you could explain it. I was just thinking that if something is designed, it could be reverse engineered, if you knew how the parts worked together. I wasn't aware that genomes were not the cause of body plans.Petrushka_{April 9, 2010
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I remember that story but forgot it's name! Thank you for mentioning it Dr. Hunter. It was a very memorable story.Morgentau_{April 9, 2010
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Petrushka you stated: "It would be glorious coup to unravel the design principles, so that one could predict how changes to the genome would be expressed in phenotypes." Actually the inability of Body Plans (phenotypes) to be reduced to the genetic text of the DNA has been a major blow to the neo-Darwinian requirement for "Genetic Reductionaism" since the evolutionists are now proven to operate from a falsified premise in the first place i.e. you can mutate DNA til the cows come home and it will not effect Body Plan morphogenesis: notes: Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681 Cortical Inheritance: The Crushing Critique Against Genetic Reductionism - Arthur Jones - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4187488 “Live memory” of the cell, the other hereditary memory of living systems - 2005 Excerpt: To understand this notion of “live memory”, its role and interactions with DNA must be resituated; indeed, operational information belongs as much to the cell body and to its cytoplasmic regulatory protein components and other endogenous or exogenous ligands as it does to the DNA database. We will see in Section 2, using examples from recent experiments in biology, the principal roles of “live memory” in relation to the four aspects of cellular identity, memory of form, hereditary transmission and also working memory. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T2K-4FJXNG6-1&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1273117547&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0bfa74d6bb0937402472343daa6bdef8 The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories - Stephen Meyer"Neo-Darwinism seeks to explain the origin of new information, form, and structure as a result of selection acting on randomly arising variation at a very low level within the biological hierarchy, mainly, within the genetic text. Yet the major morphological innovations depend on a specificity of arrangement at a much higher level of the organizational hierarchy, a level that DNA alone does not determine. Yet if DNA is not wholly responsible for body plan morphogenesis, then DNA sequences can mutate indefinitely, without regard to realistic probabilistic limits, and still not produce a new body plan. Thus, the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot in principle generate novel body plans, including those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion." http://eyedesignbook.com/ch6/eyech6-append-d.html “Yet by the late 1980s it was becoming obvious to most genetic researchers, including myself, since my own main research interest in the ‘80s and ‘90s was human genetics, that the heroic effort to find the information specifying life’s order in the genes had failed. There was no longer the slightest justification for believing that there exists anything in the genome remotely resembling a program capable of specifying in detail all the complex order of the phenotype (Body Plan)." Michael John Denton page 172 of Uncommon Dissent Fearfully and Wonderfully Made - Glimpses At Human Development In The Womb - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4249713 Darwin's Theory - Fruit Flies and Morphology - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJTIwRY0bsbornagain77_{April 9, 2010
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"The prediction then is that evolution is unpredictable." The converse of this would seem to reveal a wonderful opportunity for ID research. It would be glorious coup to unravel the design principles, so that one could predict how changes to the genome would be expressed in phenotypes.Petrushka_{April 9, 2010
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Excellent post Dr. Hunter. Another thing besides "convergent evolution", that strongly speaks against the chaos that is embedded within the foundation of evolutionary thought, is "balanced" symbiosis: Chemical Cycles: Long term chemical balance is essential for life on earth. Complex symbiotic chemical cycles keep the amount of elements on the earth surface in relatively perfect balance and thus in steady supply to the higher life forms that depend on them to remain stable. This is absolutely essential for the higher life forms to exist on Earth for any extended period of time. http://www.uen.org/themepark/cycles/chemical.shtml Moreover, the overall principle of long term balanced symbiosis, which is what we have with the overall chemical cycles of the earth, is a very anti-random chance fact which pervades the entire ecology of our planet: God's Creation - Symbiotic (Cooperative) Relationships - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023110 This balance for the "biosphere" is maintained through complex symbiotic relationships with other bacteria, all of which are intertwined in a very complex biogeochemical process (Falkowski). All the preliminary studies of early life, and processes, on early earth fall in line with the anthropic hypothesis and have no rational explanation, from any materialistic theory based on blind chance/chaos, as to why all the first types of bacterial life found in the fossil record would suddenly, from the very start of their appearance on earth, start working in precise harmony with each other to prepare the earth for future life to appear. Nor can materialism explain why, once the bacteria had helped prepare the earth for higher life forms, they continue to work in precise harmony with each other to help maintain the proper balanced conditions that are of primary benefit for the complex life that is above them. Moreover the extent to the "fine-tuning" of the symbiosis is found to be extreme. Engineering and Science Magazine - Caltech - March 2010 Excerpt: “Without these microbes, the planet would run out of biologically available nitrogen in less than a month,” Realizations like this are stimulating a flourishing field of “geobiology” – the study of relationships between life and the earth. One member of the Caltech team commented, “If all bacteria and archaea just stopped functioning, life on Earth would come to an abrupt halt.” Microbes are key players in earth’s nutrient cycles. Dr. Orphan added, “...every fifth breath you take, thank a microbe.” http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201003.htm#20100316a Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides. - Paul G. Falkowski - Professor Geological Sciences - Rutgers To this day, sulfate-reducing bacteria maintain an essential minimal level of these heavy metals in the ecosystem which are high enough so as to be available to the biological systems of the higher life forms that need them yet low enough so as not to be poisonous to those very same higher life forms. Bacterial Heavy Metal Detoxification and Resistance Systems: Excerpt: Bacterial plasmids contain genetic determinants for resistance systems for Hg2+ (and organomercurials), Cd2+, AsO2, AsO43-, CrO4 2-, TeO3 2-, Cu2+, Ag+, Co2+, Pb2+, and other metals of environmental concern. http://www.springerlink.com/content/u1t281704577v8t3/ Rich Ore Deposits Linked to Ancient Atmosphere - Nov. 2009 Excerpt: Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. This delicate balance of the biosphere, which is essential for higher life to exist, also seems to have a certain level of robustness, exactly where it happens to be needed for technologically advanced human life to exist, that evolutionary thought (chaos) also fails to predict: Earth's Capacity To Absorb CO2 Much Greater Than Expected: Nov. 2009 Excerpt: New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110141842.htmbornagain77_{April 9, 2010
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