Robert F. Shedinger, religion prof at Luther College in Iowa and author of The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion, offered a series of reflective posts at ENST, analyzing a Darwinian biology text. His last one focused on the eye:
In my previous post analyzing Strickberger’s Evolution, a prominent textbook by Brian K. Hall and Benedikt Hallgrimsson, I focused on the phenomenon of convergent evolution. One of the most amazing examples of convergence is the repeated evolution of the camera eye. I will begin this final post by considering Strickberger’s treatment of eye evolution along with comments on a few other problematic aspects of the textbook.
On eye evolution, Hall and Hallgrimsson write:
“As explained by the process of convergent evolution, the structural similarity of squid and vertebrate eyes does not come from an ancestral visual structure in a recent common ancestor of mollusks and vertebrates, but rather from convergent evolution as similar selective pressures led to similar organs that enhance visual acuity. Such morphological convergences may have arisen independently in numerous other animal lineages subject to similar selective visual pressures. “
But how could a similar series of mutations of the sort necessary to produce similarly structured eyes in different lineages occur so many times independently if the mutations are randomly produced? Hall and Hallgrimsson are not bothered by this question, but in order to convince the reader that such a thing is possible, they appeal to the well-known work of Dan-Eric Nilsson and Susanne Pelger.
Robert F. Shedinger, “Squeezing Out the Mystery: Final Comments on Strickberger’s Evolution” at Evolution News and Science Today: (August 19, 2020)
But the textbook authors ignore the caveats, he tells us. He concludes,
In this post and the five that preceded it I have tried to highlight some of the more egregious ways Strickberger’s Evolution fundamentally distorts the science of evolutionary biology in service to its real intention to indoctrinate students into the Darwinian worldview. Clearly this textbook is not alone. Many of the errors and distortions outlined in this series of posts could be found in many other evolutionary biology textbooks.
Robert F. Shedinger, “Squeezing Out the Mystery: Final Comments on Strickberger’s Evolution” at Evolution News and Science Today: (August 19, 2020)
Here’s a question: How many people would study biology with interest if we took the Darwin out of it and said, learn what the natural world of life is like without all these theories of how it came to be that way? Who would still be interested?
See also: Darwin skeptic Robert Shedinger calls out Paul Davies
Martin_r has a very interesting website dedicated to this topic:
https://stuffhappens.info/
In other words, the fossil record makes no sense, so here’s what “musta” happened . . . (speculative science fantasy follows).
-Q
Jawa, thank you for promoting my blog on repeated evolution.
Ironically, i have not posted yet on repeated evolution of camera eye, but i will.
Indeed, evolutionary biologists are death-serious about the claim, that auto-focusing, high-def camera eye evolved multiple times independently in various evolutionary non-related lineages. E.g. octopuses and humans.
Of course, most lay Darwinists are not aware of this claim. Yes, Seversky or JVL, this is what Darwinian evolutionary theory claims. You have to believe, that this miracle happened multiple times (of course, there are many other miracles, e.g. repeated evolution of placenta 100x, or a repeated evolution of C4 photosythesis 60x !!!! Your Darwinian faith has to be really strong to believe in all these miracles)
In 21st century, you Darwinists have to believe in very absurd things.
Moreover, it is more complicated … It is not only the camera eye, you also need a ‘broadband’ communication canal (optical nerve) to transfer tons of data (REAL-TIME) from the eye, to the brain.
Most lay Darwinists don’t realize the following – if you want to see, you need a very quick visual data processor (e.g. a brain), to process huge amount of visual data REAL-TIME.
So you have an idea, here is the amount of data i talk about,
from LiveScience:
“Eye Transmits to Brain at Ethernet Speed”
https://www.livescience.com/904-eye-transmits-brain-ethernet-speed.html
“The researchers calculate that the 100,000 ganglion cells in a guinea pig retina transmit roughly 875,000 bits of information per second. The human retina contains about 10 times more ganglion cells than that of guinea pigs, so it would transmit data at roughly 10 million bits per second, the researchers estimate.”
I am an engineer, and then, there is a group of natural science graduates (biologists), who never made anything, just telling just-so-stories. They are telling 21st-century-engineers, just so, that blind unguided natural process can design such an advanced technology, which is hard to mimic even in 21st century …
Basically, these biologists claim, that a system much more advanced than a 8K camcorder self-designed, no engineers were needed, moreover, it was done by some mystic, trial-error process, but they never show you the errors.
SO HOW ABSURD DOES THAT SOUND IN 21ST CENTURY ???
if it only would be the repeated evolution of camera eye, the same happened with other types of eyes as well,…
for example:
(please keep in mind, i am quoting a mainstream researcher !!!
The following is a quote from a mainstream paper !!!)
“Repeated evolution of compound eyes: one of two seemingly very unlikely evolutionary histories must be true”
“These results illustrate exactly
why arthropod compound eye evolution has remained controversial,
because one of two seemingly very unlikely evolutionary
histories must be true. Either compound eyes with detailed similarities
evolved multiple times in different arthropod groups or
compound eyes have been lost in a seemingly inordinate number
of arthropod lineages”
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/99/3/1426.full.pdf
JVL, SEVERSKY and the other Darwinian clowns.
I was wondering, how do you imagine, how a camera-autofocus works ?
from the article
“squid and vertebrate eyes does not come from an ancestral visual structure in a recent common ancestor of mollusks and vertebrates, but rather from convergent evolution as similar selective pressures led to similar organs that enhance visual acuity”
SIMILAR SELECTIVE PRESSURE ?????
SIMILAR SELECTIVE PRESSURE ?????
SIMILAR SELECTIVE PRESSURE ?????
I might be wrong, but it occurs to me, that these two species (octopus, human) live in a totally different environment, e.g. the bending of light is totally different.
Darwinians, you dive ?
Martin_r: Of course, most lay Darwinists are not aware of this claim. Yes, Seversky or JVL, this is what Darwinian evolutionary theory claims.
I am well aware of the findings which have been discussed many times over the last decade or two.
Aside from your: this stuff is all very complicated, how could it have happened via natural processes? Do you have another argument?
Over 150 years hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of working biologists have looked at the actually data and come away agreeing that life on Earth diversified and continues to diversify via a natural, unguided process of common descent with variation.
I understand that from an engineering perspective some of the end results seems fantastical but look at the supporting evidence. That can take a lot of work (and don’t just ask other people to do the work for you, did anyone get to be an engineer by asking for everything to be shown to them?) but you will find there is a lot of support for the statements you like to deride as foolish.
If you haven’t seen the evidence then maybe you should look harder instead of accusing everyone you disagree with of being a liar or lunatic or both.
JVL
Ummm. False. The bolded word is where the problem really lies: you can not prove scientifically that the process is “unguided”.
That is a philosophical statement, not a scientific one.
JVL:
‘And yet not one of them knows how to test the concept. That means it is outside of science. Probability arguments exist exactly because of the untestable nature of the claim.
That said, the peer-reviewed paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” says it is impossible for unguided evolution to do what JVL claims. The alleged evolution of trichromatic vision is well beyond the reach of blind and mindless processes.
ID’s claim is the diversity is due to TELIC processes. And thanks to genetic algorithms we know the power of evolution by means of telic processes. With telic processes Dawkins’ concept of cumulative selection actually makes sense.
Truthfreedom: Ummm. False. The bolded word is where the problem really lies: you can not prove scientifically that the process is “unguided”.
Show me a ‘guider’. Show me how the guiding is implemented. Point to specific cases of when guidance happened and what was done.
No guider means no guidance. So, can you provide a guider and its methods and techniques? We’ll not worry about its motivations.
ET: That said, the peer-reviewed paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” says it is impossible for unguided evolution to do what JVL claims.
Clearly it doesn’t actually say that since it’s a well known paper and it hasn’t stopped biological research.
ID’s claim is the diversity is due to TELIC processes.
Too bad you can’t show us the being responsible or its methods or its techniques. But hey, it’s a start: make a hypothesis and then try and support it. You are trying to support it aren’t you? Aside from making negative arguments based on mainstream papers you misinterpret.
I just love this quote from the paper in question: Waiting for Two Mutations: With Applications to Regulatory Sequence Evolution and the Limits of Darwinian Evolution
https://www.genetics.org/content/180/3/1501
And this is the paper that is supposed to shoot a hole in unguided evolution?
LoL! @ JVL- Biological research does not depend on unguided evolution. The paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” definitely says the alleged evolution of trichromatic vision is by far out of the reach of blind and mindless processes. Its says it would take over 100 million years for TWO mutations and that is by far greater than 7 million.
And why don’t YOU, JVL, formulate hypotheses with respect to blind and mindless processes? Don’t tell others to do what you and yours have FAILED to do. That is being a hypocrite. Your side has nothing but liars and bluffing cowards. I am sure that hurts.
The Hitchen;s gambit applies to unguided evolution” That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
And I didn’t misrepresent any papers. You are a liar.
JVL proves that he is clueless. He can only cherry-pick a quote and he doesn’t even understand that the quote is wrong. Dr. Behe has responded to them and it wasn’t good for Durrett and Schmidt.
JVL continues to prove that he does NOT understand science:
We don’t have that for many artifacts. That doesn’t stop them from being artifacts. We definitely don’t have to know the who or how in order to determine design exists.
That said, “Not By Chance” came out in 1997. It was in response to the Dawkins’ trope “the Blind Watchmaker”. To the point- any event that required gene duplication followed by functioning altering mutations, would be telic. That is because such a thing is well beyond the scope of blind and mindless processes, per Durrett and Schmidt.
Genetic algorithms utilize telic processes to solve the problems they were designed to solve. So at least we have that. JVL’s position just has liars and bluffers.
JVL
Show me a single instance where “stuff” (matter) has been created ex-nihilo.
Regarding “randomness”:
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html?m=1
JVL “If you haven’t seen the evidence then maybe you should look harder instead of accusing everyone you disagree with of being a liar or lunatic or both.”
i told you, i bet i know more about your ‘evidence’ and the whole theory than you, despite i don’t have a formal education in biology.
Lunatic … insane … these are exactly the right words for someone who in 21st century believe that a 8K camcorder self-designed with no help from an engineer.
Indeed, your ‘millions of biologists around the world’ are lunatic. I am not happy to say it, but it seems they all need to see a doctor, including you. Even you admit that some ‘end results look fantastic’. You see ? :)))) (you said FANTASTIC, i say ABSURD ABSURD ABSURD)
I don’t have to be a catolic fundamentalist to see that something is wrong with your theory, five year old child can see it … (perhaps it worked in 19st century)
In regards to your ‘evidence’, whatever evidence they have, they misinterpret it or even lie about it. So simple it is. We have seen it so many times in the past and we will see it in the future.
PS: JVL, keep it in your Darwinian mind, 8K camcorders DO NOT self-design whatever a biologist says.
JVL, i put you a question, how do you image a camera-autofocus works ?
JVL, speaking about squids and millions of scientists.
Last year an article about octopus was published, signed by 33 MAINSTREAM scientists.
They claim, that octopus genome landed on Earth fully evolved in a form of frozen eggs.
Of course, other scientists found this article ‘controversial’, but, tell me JVL, what leads 33 mainstream scientists to publish something like that ? and, why they chose octopus, why not some other species ?
the article is here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610718300798?via%3Dihub
ET @9 mentioned trichromatic vision.
Of course, according to evolutionary theory, also trichromatic vision should have evolved multiple times repeatedly. (when i am not wrong, first in fishes, then it got lost in primates, and then re-evolved in other primates.)
ET: Biological research does not depend on unguided evolution. The paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” definitely says the alleged evolution of trichromatic vision is by far out of the reach of blind and mindless processes. Its says it would take over 100 million years for TWO mutations and that is by far greater than 7 million.
Strange that Biological science hasn’t given up on unguided evolutionary theory then. Didn’t the paper address waiting for a prespecified pair of mutations?
And why don’t YOU, JVL, formulate hypotheses with respect to blind and mindless processes? Don’t tell others to do what you and yours have FAILED to do.
I think others have so I feel no need to recreate the wheel so to speak.
The Hitchen;s gambit applies to unguided evolution” That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
Especially if you deny the evidence!
And I didn’t misrepresent any papers. You are a liar.
You must have or thousands upon thousands of research grants and books would be thrown on the trash heap.
We don’t have that for many artifacts. That doesn’t stop them from being artifacts. We definitely don’t have to know the who or how in order to determine design exists.
For many prehistoric artefacts we know a certain class of designers were around at the time. We know what they ate, where they lived, what kind of tools they had. This is why whenever someone claims to have pushed back the arrival of humans in the Western Hemisphere, for example, it’s met with widespread skepticism and most anthropologists wait and see if more data arises.
That said, “Not By Chance” came out in 1997. It was in response to the Dawkins’ trope “the Blind Watchmaker”. To the point- any event that required gene duplication followed by functioning altering mutations, would be telic. That is because such a thing is well beyond the scope of blind and mindless processes, per Durrett and Schmidt.
Maybe you should write to the National Academy of Science and tell them to pull all the grants dealing with unguided evolution.
Genetic algorithms utilize telic processes to solve the problems they were designed to solve. So at least we have that. JVL’s position just has liars and bluffers.
Found a designer yet? Found their tools? Their energy sources? Any solid physical evidence aside from the objects you claim were designed (when and how by the way)?
Truthfreedom: Show me a single instance where “stuff” (matter) has been created ex-nihilo.
Is that what we were talking about? I don’t think so.
JVL, one more thing, because i am not sure you Darwinian clowns realize that (you Darwinian clowns do not seem to realize lots of things)
In regards to human visual system (the system includes – a camera eye, a transmission canal – the optical nerve – and an image processor (the brain),
to have this system work, your Darwinian blind unguided natural process, had to develop a communication protocol between these 2 organs (eye, brain), so all the visual data incoming from eye are interpreted correctly, including RGB color space.
Like a said, you Darwinian believe in miracles.
Martin_r: JVL, i put you a question, how do you image a camera-autofocus works ?
Oh gosh, is Martin_r upset because I didn’t answer his question? Poor baby. What’s your point, an inanimate camera’s autofocus mechanism which adjusts the focal length of the compound lens if its a mechanical focus isn’t the same thing as a living eye. Nor did it ‘arise’ in the same way.
Last year an article about octopus was published, signed by 33 MAINSTREAM scientists.
They claim, that octopus genome landed on Earth fully evolved in a form of frozen eggs.
I heard, pretty funny. Oh well, there are a lot of odd people in this world.
Of course, other scientists found this article ‘controversial’, but, tell me JVL, what leads 33 mainstream scientists to publish something like that ? and, why they chose octopus, why not some other species ?
Who knows? Who cares? If they really have something then let them do some more work and find some more evidence. A really extraordinary claim like that, one that runs counter to a lot of well established work, requires extraordinary evidence.
Of course, according to evolutionary theory, also trichromatic vision should have evolved multiple times repeatedly. (when i am not wrong, first in fishes, then it got lost in primates, and then re-evolved in other primates.)
Did you read the evidence in support of those assertions or just look at them and decide they were farcical? In other words: did you actually look at the data and the analysis of the data before making up your mind?
To have this system work, your Darwinian blind unguided natural process, had to develop a communication protocol between these 2 organs (eye, brain), so all the visual data incoming from eye are interpreted correctly, including RGB color space.
Yes, I am aware of that. Your continual assumption that because I don’t agree with you means that either I haven’t looked at the conclusions or the work supporting the conclusion OR I am an idiot is pretty insulting you know. A lot of people disagree with you. I guess you think they’re all morons or blind evo-faith heads. What a weird world you live in.
JVL:
What theory? There isn’t any scientific theory of evolution to give up on.
Too vague to be of any use.
There aren’t any such grants
Your ignorance of science is not an argument. And it still remains that there isn’t any scientific alternative to ID
JVL
Your bolding machine has gotten stuck (again):
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html?m=1
Do you understand the meaning of “no empirical basis”?
JVL @25 “…inanimate camera’s autofocus mechanism which adjusts the focal length…”
you see, this is exactly what i am talking about. You Darwinian clowns don’t understand how things work, because you never made anything, you only scratch the surface.
So, another question, how do you know, ‘how much’ to adjust the focal length, so the object is in focus ?
JVL
Lol.
According to your worldview (atheism/ materialism):
– we are “neuronal illusions”
– the Universe “created” itself for “no reason”
-our “haphazard brains” “created” logic/ mathematics” (the most precise tools known to mankind? )
-morals are “Illusory”
-life is “meaningless”
– “truth” “does not exist”
– we are “heaps of atoms hallucinating reality”
Etc.
Oh the irony.
10 Reasons Why Atheists Are Delusional
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/11-reasons-why-atheists-are-delusional/
ET: What theory? There isn’t any scientific theory of evolution to give up on.
So you claim. But every textbook, every encyclopedia and lots and lots of other publications disagree with you.
Too vague to be of any use.
We’re talking about human beings who lived at certain place in a certain time frame. Anyway, you’re not using it; you’re not an archaeologist or an anthropologist or a scientist of any kind.
There aren’t any such grants
Saves you making the call then!
Your ignorance of science is not an argument. And it still remains that there isn’t any scientific alternative to ID
Mountains and mountains of evidence aside.
Truthfreedom: Do you understand the meaning of “no empirical basis”?
Yup. Did you actually read the whole article and notice that he is not hypothesising or supporting any kind of intelligent intervention.
Anyway, he’s not a biologist.
According to your worldview (atheism/ materialism):
– we are “neuronal illusions”
– the Universe “created” itself for “no reason”
-our “haphazard brains” “created” logic/ mathematics” (the most precise tools known to mankind? )
-morals are “Illusory”
-life is “meaningless”
– “truth” “does not exist”
– we are “heaps of atoms hallucinating reality”
That’s what you think I believe and agree with. Maybe you should learn how to be polite and ask first. Oh, I forgot, you don’t have to because you think I’m delusional, not in my right mind. So you don’t have to treat me like a human being at all. Got it. You probably would take away my right to vote if you could. Maybe even my right to breed.
It is very telling that JVL cannot link to the alleged scientific theory of evolution. JVL can’t say who the author was, when nor where it was published.
JVL is ignorant of science. JVL can only deny the evidence. JVL can only lie and bluff like all evos.
We don’t know what humans, if any, designed and built Stonehenge. We have NOT found any tools for quarrying the stones. We have NOT found any tools for transporting the stones. We have not found any models of the structure.
So, according to JVL, we cannot say that Stonehenge is an artifact
Martin_r: you see, this is exactly what i am talking about. You Darwinian clowns don’t understand how things work, because you never made anything, you only scratch the surface.
You have no idea what I’ve made or what I’ve done. You just assume things because I disagree with you. What an enlightened and objective outlook.
So, another question, how do you know, ‘how much’ to adjust the focal length, so the object is in focus ?
I can do the physics if I want to. But you’re more interested in pretending I’m stupid and ignorant of what is going on in the eye. Well, I’m not. And I still disagree with you. As do millions of other intelligent people. And a lot of them have actually looked at the biological evidence instead of just throwing their hands up and saying: no way this could have come about via unguided processes.
ET: We don’t know what humans, if any, designed and built Stonehenge.
The ones demonstrably living their at the time?
We have NOT found any tools for quarrying the stones.
Says who? Are you sure you’re up on all the research?
We have NOT found any tools for transporting the stones.
We have found plausible ways they could have transported the stones using materials at hand and skills they had.
We have not found any models of the structure.
Do you know how many standing stone circles there are in the British Isles? Do you know how long Stonehenge took to construct? Are you aware of the preliminary stages discovered by archaeologists?
Do some work before you make yourself look foolish. And that means read more than one source. In fact, if you really want to know what we know read all the academic sources and work.
OK, JVL, bluffer- Please link to the research that shows the quarrying tools. Stonehenge isn’t like other stone circles. They are NOT models of Stonehenge YOU are the fool.
How do we “know” the humans around the time and area had the capabilities of designing and building Stonehenge? Stonehenge! Circular reasoning at its finest. But to JVL that is science!
We see how genetic engineers ply their craft. Venter synthesized an entire genome. So obviously we have a plausible way for intelligent agencies to do what ID claims with respect to biology.
Then there are the genetic algorithms which demonstrate the power of evolution via telic processes. So we also have a plausible mechanism for telic evolution.
But that is all moot as JVL clearly is lying and bluffing. The reason probability arguments exist is precisely because there isn’t any supporting evidence for unguided evolution, beyond genetic diseases and deformities. The reason there is the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” would NOT be necessary if the evidence JVL said exists, actually existed.
All JVL can do is lie, bluff and deny.
ET,
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I think ignorance of science is a vital tool in the arsenal of anti-ID arguments.
For example, that same ignorance argument could be used to debunk quarks on the basis that we haven’t seen any. Or that the mathematical relationships found in physics aren’t real because we haven’t found a cosmic mathematician. Or that the “big bang” didn’t happen because cosmologists cannot identify the source of the initial energy required.
No, ignorance of science is very flexible and can be employed in a wide range of arguments even beyond those used against ID. 😉
-Q
OK, You are correct and I am mistaken.
JVL,
alright, nevermind.
My last question:
Do you really believe, that a blind unguided natural process can develop an eye-brain communication protocol for processing hi-def images and colors in RGB space ?
ET,
While JVL insists on using bold tags rather than blockquotes is mildly annoying, you should at least be glad that you don’t have to read everything in all caps. As to the trollish content you’re replying to . . .
Really Are there videotapes? Sign me up for a demonstration on who exactly the builders were!
So here, you’re supposed to spend hours summarizing the research in response to a response that took seconds to write and your lengthy response won’t be read anyway.
We? Either JVL is playing an active part of the archaeological research on Stonehenge construction or he has a tapeworm. Without further data on this point, we can only speculate.
-Q
JVL’s wife is an archaeologist. They live in the UK.
OK, You are correct and I am mistaken.
Here’s an interesting article on the subject of the builders:
https://www.digitalmedievalist.com/opinionated-celtic-faqs/stonehenge/
-Q
JVL
Yes. I have read it. And no, he is not supporting an “intelligent intervention” (whatever that means). You are missing the forest for the trees.
What he is asking is: are mutations really random? How can we know it?
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html?m=1
No, he is not a biologist. He is a philosopher (and a very good one in my opinion). Since probability/ “randomness” are a part of epistemology and epistemology is a part of philosophy, then everything is fine. He is not overstepping his bounds (cough cough Krauss, Dawkins, Coyne, Hawkings…)
Anyway, if you think you have more knowledge than Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, please tell us how to design an experiment to test the “randomness” of mutations.
You could even write it on his blog. That would be interesting.
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html?m=1
ET: OK, JVL, bluffer- Please link to the research that shows the quarrying tools. Stonehenge isn’t like other stone circles. They are NOT models of Stonehenge YOU are the fool.
This is your typical ploy but I’m not dancing to your tune anymore. If you really want to know then you can go look. If you don’t really care then you can look ignorant. It’s your call.
How do we “know” the humans around the time and area had the capabilities of designing and building Stonehenge? Stonehenge! Circular reasoning at its finest. But to JVL that is science!
Go look up the actual research.
We see how genetic engineers ply their craft. Venter synthesized an entire genome. So obviously we have a plausible way for intelligent agencies to do what ID claims with respect to biology.
Which intelligent agents were around at . . . what time was it? When you think design was implemented?
But that is all moot as JVL clearly is lying and bluffing. The reason probability arguments exist is precisely because there isn’t any supporting evidence for unguided evolution, beyond genetic diseases and deformities. The reason there is the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” would NOT be necessary if the evidence JVL said exists, actually existed.
You will never change. Unlike real scientists who adapt their ideas to new data.
Martin_r: Do you really believe, that a blind unguided natural process can develop an eye-brain communication protocol for processing hi-def images and colors in RGB space ?
Yes.
Truthfreedom: Since probability/ “randomness” are a part of epistemology and epistemology is a part of philosophy, then everything is fine.
Gee, I would have thought probability and ‘randomness’ were part of mathematics.
Anyway, if you think you have more knowledge than Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, please tell us how to design an experiment to test the “randomness” of mutations.
I would start by looking at their PDF based on their observed occurrences.
Then I would monitor some defined sites on some genome to see when mutations occurred.
I would look at some simple genomes and do some complete genome mappings to see what changed from generation to generation.
Anyway, just look up why scientists already think that mutations are random with regard to fitness. And then look at the reasons they think so.
JVL@ 10:
I say this: Apple’s OS 1.0 became Apple’s OS 2.0 by chance. I say it was unguided.
Do you believe this?
If you choose to tell me that you “don’t believe” the OS changed randomly, then my question to you would be, why?
JVL:
You always say that when I call your bluff. I have looked. The evidence for quarrying tools doesn’t exist.
How do we “know” the humans around the time and area had the capabilities of designing and building Stonehenge? Stonehenge! Circular reasoning at its finest. But to JVL that is science!
I have. If Stonehenge didn’t exist no one would think the ancients had the capability of building it. We “know” they are capable only because it exists. Fact.
We see how genetic engineers ply their craft. Venter synthesized an entire genome. So obviously we have a plausible way for intelligent agencies to do what ID claims with respect to biology.
The non-earth human kind of intelligent designers. And @ the beginning, obviously.
But that is all moot as JVL clearly is lying and bluffing. The reason probability arguments exist is precisely because there isn’t any supporting evidence for unguided evolution, beyond genetic diseases and deformities. The reason there is the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” would NOT be necessary if the evidence JVL said exists, actually existed.
And yet I have changed. I was once ignorant, like you. I was fooled by the lure of evolutionism and the want to prove my parents didn’t know anything about it. Then I looked at the data. Now I am an IDist because there isn’t any viable scientific alternative.
Martin_r: Do you really believe, that a blind unguided natural process can develop an eye-brain communication protocol for processing hi-def images and colors in RGB space ?
JVL:
Why? There isn’t any evidence for it nor a way to test it.
Well, the story goes, all our computers are being bombarded with both cosmic and background radiation that can cause errors on a disk drive, called mutations. After millions and millions of revolutions of the disk, some of the zeros stored on the disk turn into ones and some of the ones stored on the disk turn into zeros. Most of these changes are not fatal errors but randomly drift into entirely new features and capabilities. Now, it’s well known that life is far, far more complex than what has the appearance of software engineering in a computer program, so evolutionary software (ES) and spontaneous installation (SD) must certainly occur. Then, successful software programs cause humans (aka meat computers) to keep using them, which feeds the computer electrical energy. The second law of thermodynamics is not violated due to the production of heat and random messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Uncommon Descent that make no sense at all. Thus, we can be confident in the statements by Highly Qualified Experts with PhDs in Computer Science that there is no “Great Programmer in the sky” and that all computer software is generated by chance and necessity.
To deny this proven fact makes you a Computer Science Denier and one of those fringe nuts that believe in Intelligent Design.
-Q
JVL
That is because you are philosophically ignorant. Sadly, today is very common.
Less Netflix and more learning.
But there are these things, known as the Works of Mercy (that please God). And one of them consists in instructing the ignorant. So there we go.
Preface: The Philosophy of Probability and Statistics, An Introduction
https://wmbriggs.com/post/12118/
Wow, Truthfreedom . . . what an absolutely brilliant idea for providing a Public Service to those who need instruction such as JVL! 😉
After looking through the basic definitions that you provided with regard to conditional and necessary truths, associated probabilities, and beliefs, it occurred to me that I might also join you in your mission of mercy.
My first submission is about understanding Bayes’ Theorem, which is important for determining likelihoods based on incomplete information as we often find ourselves in science.
http://encyclopedia.kids.net.a.....27_theorem
Bayes’ Theorem might, for example, be used in determining whether something was intelligently designed or the result of a natural event such as a water heater exploding.
-Q
ET: “JVL’s wife is an archaeologist. …”
How else…
Biologists, archeologists, paleontologists and other ‘logists’ (natural science graduates ) doing research of an engineering masterpiece. Moreover, these ‘logists’ dare to call it “a bad design”. These ‘logists’ who never made anything. It is like in some mental hospital …
Seriously, what is wrong with this world ?
PaV: I say this: Apple’s OS 1.0 became Apple’s OS 2.0 by chance. I say it was unguided. Do you believe this? If you choose to tell me that you “don’t believe” the OS changed randomly, then my question to you would be, why?
It’s obvious it didn’t happen by chance, non-living systems don’t work that way. AND we know some of the people who worked on the modification (I don’t know personally but there would be records).
LIving systems that reproduce work differently and while most random changes are deleterious enough are positive or neutral and are preserved that new features, etc come about.
Darwin realised that looking at human guiding breeding (pre-genome era) showed that there was enough positive variation that desired modifications can come about. Natural ‘selection’ is slower but, like human selection, it’s not completely random. So variations that don’t harm or give some survival advantage tend to get fixed in a population.
ET: Why? There isn’t any evidence for it nor a way to test it.
I disagree.
to JVL @45
alright, so you believe that a blind unguided natural process can develop an eye-brain communication protocol for processing hi-def images and colors in RGB space.
I have to ask:
Do you understand what is a communication protocol or RGB color space?
Does your wife (an archeologist) understand what is a communication protocol or RGB color space?
Truthfreedom: That is because you are philosophically ignorant. Sadly, today is very common.
Less Netflix and more learning.
Uh huh. Explain the basis of randomness philosophically.
JVL “most random changes are deleterious enough are positive or neutral and are preserved that new features”
blah blah blah …
Now focus:
“There are over 6,000 genetic disorders, many of which are fatal or severely debilitating. A genetic disease is caused by a mutation in DNA and can be divided into 4 major groups: Single-gene mutation; Multiple genes mutations; Chromosomal changes and mitochondrial mutations.”
https://www.labroots.com
6000 !!!
6000 !!!
6000 !!!
Now, you show me a list of neutral/ beneficial mutations.
Martin_r @3:
You’re very welcome!
You’re doing very well presenting solid evidences to back your arguments.
Keep it that way.
A practical staging atlas to study embryonic development of Octopus vulgaris under controlled laboratory conditions
https://bmcdevbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12861-020-00212-6
E Pluribus Octo – Building Consensus on Standards of Care and Experimentation in Cephalopod Research; a Historical Outlook
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2020.00645/full
JVL
What is the point of “statistics”?
@60:
See the extremely simplified description of the octopus embryonic development. Piece of cake, isn’t it?
Evo-Devo folks can barely describe it. No clue how to make something like that. Not even remotely.
What are we discussing here?
Focus Review
23 July 2009
The life and miracles of kinetochores
Stefano Santaguida
Andrea Musacchio
EMBO J (2009)28:2511-2531
https://doi.org/10.1038/emboj.2009.173
Why did the authors dare to use such a PI* word in the title of their scientific research paper?
I don’t know, but perhaps here’s a hint:
(*) Politically Incorrect
Here’s a list of some of the papers that cite the 2009 Italian paper:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722247/citedby/
JVL@54:
Well, did “life” always exist? Because if life didn’t always exist, then how did life come about if everything “pre-life” don’t operate by “chance”?
Truthfreedom: What is the point of “statistics”?
It depends on what you’re trying to do with them. Different modes and types of statistical analysis can help answer certain kinds of questions.
PaV: Well, did “life” always exist? Because if life didn’t always exist, then how did life come about if everything “pre-life” don’t operate by “chance”?
I don’t know. But I wouldn’t say that chemical reactions are ‘chance’.
66 JVL
What are they then?
JVL@66:
I suppose you mean that chemical reactions are deterministic: they always happen in certain ways. But evolution is supposed to be RM+NS, so, if chemical reactions are not random, then, “pre-life” there was no randomness in life-less matter. But, if so, how then could non-random, determined chemical reactions give rise to (evolve into) life itself? And even if nature was random, how could NS operate without life already existing?
Apparently not everyone here has seen a molecular modeler in operation–the random physical collisions of certain molecules with other ones. It’s amazing! Heat up a solution sufficiently and you can also watch molecules break apart.
Actually, it occurs to me that we should be thanking the skeptics here for their catalyzing effect on creating informative discussion by everyone else. Much appreciated! 🙂
-Q
PaV: I suppose you mean that chemical reactions are deterministic: they always happen in certain ways.
Depending on conditions of course; some reactions are facilitated by high temperatures, some by salinity, etc.
But evolution is supposed to be RM+NS,
And some other things.
so, if chemical reactions are not random, then, “pre-life” there was no randomness in life-less matter. But, if so, how then could non-random, determined chemical reactions give rise to (evolve into) life itself? And even if nature was random, how could NS operate without life already existing?
You seem to have an extremely simplistic view of how things work geared towards proving your predetermined view.
A chemical reatcion may be non-random but when it happens based on the dispersal of the necessary reagents is another matter.
The number and type of reagents available varied considerably in the early ages of the Earth.
NS didn’t operate before life existed. You’re just flaying around trying to find some point that your objections can hang upon.
You’re anomaly hunting.
Mother Nature and Father Time produced a child called Unknown Chemical Processes. It’s so scientific . . . . science fantasy that is, calling on naturalistic miracles that “musta” occurred.
-Q
Querius,
Chronos and Gea.
Darwinists are pagans. (Also, they worship Darwin (The Prophet).
JVL,
So you do not have a clue how life originated but dare to tell PaV he is an ‘anomaly hunter’ and you force your views on him (“I am right”) although it has been mentioned that you do not have a clue.
65 JVL
How interesting.
To answer questions, you do NEED a “subject” (let’s call him meat-robot errr… Human) with a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus.
That steak-robot wants to know things and dares to investigate his surroundings.
Do we agree?
Martin_r
Which makes no-sense (for atheists), because there is no standard of perfection against which measure anything.
Cultural Marxism.
70 JVL
Randomnes is in the eye of the beholder.
“Random” means that the agent (human) has not complete knowledge of the process. (Relation cause-effect).
JVL@70:
So, your saying that though chemical reactions are not random, nevertheless, concentrations of the reagents can be random. So, your position is that concentrations of reagents, since they can vary, can lead to life.
Is this a plausible explanation for the complexity of life modern science now reveals?
It’s interesting that when I asked you about OS 1.0 becoming OS 2.0, you inferred some person was involved. In fact, you suspected–I think rightly, that a group of persons were involved. And you mentioned that you didn’t know any of these persons first-hand: that is, you have no idea who these persons might be or what their names might be.
So, it seems to me that you consider such a change in “code” to be prima facie evidence that an intelligent agent is involved, even though you don’t know this person’s name, have likely never met him, and, even though you don’t have any direct evidence to present that what you’ve proposed is, in fact, true.
Isn’t this how we infer the work of intelligence? It seemed natural to you. I know it’s natural to me. So why is this kind of ‘move’ wrong when employed by those proposing ID thinking?
If this ‘move’ is acceptable to you, then the only other complaint opponents of ID raise, and which might be yours, is that we know the mechanisms involved by people effecting such intelligent actions: that is, how the intelligence is infused into a particular object.
Yet, the case in point, that of the change in code from OS 1.0 to OS 2.0, presents its own set of problems in this regard.
Let’s notice that code for OS 1.0 or OS 2.0 exists electronically, and not in the real world we experience. You can’t take a printout of the code and force it into a CPU. It has to be read in ‘electronically.’ Without proper signaling, signaling that gets translated into language humans can understand, no one would even ‘know’ that the new code has superseded the old code.
That is, we don’t “see” the electrons held in place, or moved around, or emitting radiation, or doing whatever electrons are prone to do. All of what happens is essentially ‘divorced’ from the world we live in. We live in a classical world. Electrons, and an electronic code, live in a quantum world.
Bottom line, it appears that though you don’t know who provided the changes–intelligent changes, to the OS code, and though you don’t know how these changes were made to this ‘code’ which is basically invisible to our human eyes, you didn’t hesitate in the least to infer that an intelligent agent(s) was(were) involved in this change.
ID says that though we don’t know who provided the changes to the genetic code in organisms, differentiating one taxonomic form from another; and, though we can’t “see” (directly) how these changes can come about, nevertheless, it is entirely reasonable and rational to reach the conclusion that the changes made to the genetic code–at higher taxonomic levels, can only be explained by invoking an “intelligent” Designer.
No. I’m just pointing out the obvious.
Truthfreedom: So you do not have a clue how life originated but dare to tell PaV he is an ‘anomaly hunter’ and you force your views on him (“I am right”) although it has been mentioned that you do not have a clue.
I’m not forcing my views on anyone, I’m offering my opinion just like you do. Oh, by the way, PaV doesn’t know how life on earth originated either.
That steak-robot wants to know things and dares to investigate his surroundings.
Whatever. Statistics was developed to draw conclusions based on collections of data.
Randomnes is in the eye of the beholder.
Not in mathematics.
“Random” means that the agent (human) has not complete knowledge of the process. (Relation cause-effect).
Not in mathematics.
PaV: So, your saying that though chemical reactions are not random, nevertheless, concentrations of the reagents can be random. So, your position is that concentrations of reagents, since they can vary, can lead to life.
I didn’t say concentrations were random. Nor did I say ‘concentrations’ varying can lead to life. You are determined to interpret what I am saying to suit your views of what I think.
Isn’t this how we infer the work of intelligence? It seemed natural to you. I know it’s natural to me. So why is this kind of ‘move’ wrong when employed by those proposing ID thinking?
Because computer code is not alive, it does not reproduce, there is no ‘space’ where variations of computer code are tested to see if they are more or less fit and then allowed to reproduce with variation. Also, we know the Mac operating system was designed, implemented and modified by human beings and we can probably find out exactly who those people were. It’s entirely possible and plausible that we can do that. ID proponents have no idea who their designer was, when design was implemented, how design was implemented, why design was implemented. In fact, we don’t even know if there was a designer.
That’s why I think IT proponents have not done enough to support their case. They haven’t done anything except hypothesise that some physical structures were designed. If and when they come up with more compelling evidence I will reconsider my opinion.
JVL #79
A strange argument indeed. Are you saying that genetic code in the cell is alive?
Secondly, have you heard about malicious self-replicating code?
How about a computer environment? Testing could be how well your virus is adapted to OS means of virus detection. My point is, artificial life is a good enough approximation of life which can help test Darwinian claims.
When an archeologist dicovers an ancient vase, does he need to know the name and address of the potmaker who made it to establish that the vase was actually made?
As to the properties of the designer of life, the designer must have been intelligent enough to devise and create a semiotically closed non-homogeneous self-replicating autonomous system we call the cell.
Why do you have to know that in order to classify X as having been designed?
I don’t think you will ever do that. Because there is absolutely no evidence to back your claims that a program can spontaneously arise and evolutionarily improve itself, and you happily live with that. And yet, we know that it is only a mind that can create a program — symbolic boundary conditions on the motion of matter in a system, — on the gamut of all observable space around us.
EugeneS: A strange argument indeed. Are you saying that genetic code in the cell is alive?
It gets reproduced billions and billons of times with no conscious intervention. Sometimes mistakes are made in the copying, sometimes the DNA string getting copied was altered by ionising radiation.
Secondly, have you heard about malicious self-replicating code?
Yes if you mean computer trojans and viruses. Again, we know humans created those and sometimes we can even figure out who.
How about a computer environment? Testing could be how well your virus is adapted to OS means of virus detection. My point is, artificial life is a good enough approximation of life which can help test Darwinian claims.
In some ways. It’s still not a great model though.
When an archeologist dicovers an ancient vase, does he need to know the name and address of the potmaker who made it to establish that the vase was actually made?
I never asked for that much specificity. I pointed out that with some ‘artefacts’ like macOS you can be that specific. With something that is clearly a container we probably already know that there were humans around that area at the approximate time it was made, we’ve probably found other examples of their work, we’ve probably found places they lived, we may have some idea of what they ate, etc. There is no great mystery, no one is asking: what group of beings brought forth the individual that made this vase. Whereas ID hasn’t even a clue what kind of being their hypothesised designer was, where they came from, what they ate, when they lived, what tools they used, nothing.
As to the properties of the designer of life, the designer must have been intelligent enough to devise and create a semiotically closed non-homogeneous self-replicating autonomous system we call the cell.
When did this happen? How was it done? Can you show there were beings with those kind of abilities around at the time? Lots and lots of questions . .
Why do you have to know that in order to classify X as having been designed?
It helps support your design inference which most scientists on the planet do not find convincing. I’m suggesting that if you started finding more supporting evidence you’d get more sympathetic responses.
Yes, I did screw up and say “IT” when I meant “ID”. My bad.
I don’t think you will ever do that. Because there is absolutely no evidence to back your claims that a program can spontaneously arise and evolutionarily improve itself, and you happily live with that. And yet, we know that it is only a mind that can create a program — symbolic boundary conditions on the motion of matter in a system, — on the gamut of all observable space around us.
Look, if there was no designer then it’s all down to unguided processes. We haven’t got any hard physical evidence that there were any beings around at whatever time you think it happened that did whatever you think they did (most ID proponents are very reluctant to commit to any stance on those issues; why is that?). Additionally a vast majority of people who study and research such things think there is plenty of evidence to establish that no guidance is necessary let alone discovered. You disagree, that’s fine. I suggest to you that instead of continually making the same arguments over and over and over again which aren’t getting you the mainstream acceptance you think you should have that you should look for more supporting evidence. I’d start with at least some work on when design was implemented but that’s up to you.
If you never find any more supporting evidence you’re never going to make it into the textbooks.
JVL
You are saying this: life has a ‘natural’ (spontaneous?) origin, although I do not have a clue about how it originated. But it had to be that way because it fits my pre-conceived worldview (materialism/no God).
PaV is telling you that not-life can not create life (if inert matter can ‘create life’, anything goes). It’s not different from ‘magic’.
It is a meta-physical issue.
JVL
You have not answered my question: to gain knowledge of the world (e.g. undestanding/ using mathematics) we do need a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus.
Yes/ No.
JVL
Then I am right. A subject (human) uses a tool (mathematics) to gain knowledge of his surroundings (he wants to know how does the Universe work).
JVL
==It gets reproduced billions and billons of times with no conscious intervention.==
And? How does that refute the ID claim that the first generation of such systems must have been designed?
Are you suggesting that in order to classify comment 79 up the thread, I need to know exactly who JVL is. I can reasonably believe that JVL has a mind and is not a bot just by analysing JVL’s responses in this thread.
You are talking past the ID claims.
==Lots and lots of questions . .==
I agree, but the problem is that your position is nowhere near even that. Saying ‘evolution did it’ without providing evidence to support it is nowhere near. The problem I have with claims like yours is that your position is heavily biased against ID even though you use ID even now as we speak. And you know that. You are happy to embrace evolution as an overarching paradigm even though it does not provide any evidence for your position. At the same time, you are being hyper-skeptical towards ID even though there is ample evidence of design.
To provide a serious answer to ID claims, you or anyone else from you ‘camp’ needs to be able to do either of these two:
1. Logically exclude the possibility of the existence of a mind that could predate humans.
2. Experimentally demonstrate that functional complexity can accumulate by evolutionary means to the orders of magnitude comparable with that already present in the biosphere. This experiment can involve human intervention only at the stage of choosing the initial conditions. You can choose temperature, pressure, concentration of chemicals, chirality, luminosity, etc. at time = 0. Any involvement of the experimenter past the point of t=0, such as in the form of controlling the dynamics of the abiogenetic synthesis of life, must be excluded.
== Textbooks ==
I am not aware of any textbook that would carefully address the problems of abiogenetic synthesis. Everyone seems to be happy with just-so story telling. I am happy to be educated and retract this claim if there is such a textbook out there, but to my knowledge no one has solved the matter/sign problem that lies at the centre of the origin of life. It seems to me you are underestimating the challenge In front of you… All you have done in your responses that I have seen is appeal to authority. This is not good enough, to be honest. The real trouble is, you know that and you are alright with it.
Computer programs don’t require intervention. Does that mean nature did it?
Why? There isn’t any evidence for it nor a way to test it.
JVL:
OK, present it or admit that you are lying, again. It isn’t in peer-review. It isn’t in textbooks. So it is obvious that JVL is lying or just deluded.
Not one scientist on the planet can come up with a viable scientific alternative to ID. And that is very telling.
JVL@79:
But you’re supposing “life” as already existing while the discussion is about how to solve immense improbabilities “pre-life.” This leaves you only non-random chemical reactions and random concentrations, with no room for NS since “life” has not yet arisen.
But none of that was needed by you to reach the conclusion that OS 1.O didn’t become OS 2.0 via random forces. Your immediate impulse was to assume “some” intelligent agent, though you don’t know who they are. This is a natural conclusion we intelligent beings make. Let’s admit this, or assume this.
As to OS 1.0 becoming OS 2.0, neither do you “know” who the “designer” was, when the design was implemented (yes, you know the release date of the software, but no more), nor how the design was implemented. (Did they run algorithms, was it a team, did they bring in and hire outside people with greater expertise.)
So, your belief is that we don’t even know if there was a designer, and, yet, there is no mechanism other than intelligence you can provide for how life emerged.
When highly improbable events happen, we naturally “infer” intelligence to be at work.
As to evidence for Design, let’s turn the tables some: what did evolutionary biology predict about non-coding (“junk”) DNA and what did ID thinking predict? ID thinkers said–I was one of them more than fifteen years ago right here at UD, that the coding DNA was no more than a “materials list” that architects provide while the “non-coding” DNA are the blueprints–directing how the materials are to be fashioned.
Who won that battle of ideas? I think we all know.
How could a ‘correct’ theory turn out to be so wrong while an ‘incorrect’ theory turned out to be quite right? Shouldn’t this cause every evolutionary biologist some pause?
JVL:
The overwhelming evidence says there was at least one Intelligent Designer. Without one all you have to explain our existence is sheer dumb luck. That is an untestable and unscientific concept.
REALITY says that the only way to get to the designer and the process is by studying the design and all relevant evidence. That said, there have been ID mechanisms proposed. “Built-in responses to environmental cues” for evolution. Genetic algorithms demonstrate the power of evolution by means of telic processes.
That said, we still don’t know who designed Stonehenge. The when keeps changing. And that is a structure we are capable of reproducing.
And one more thing, JVL’s position is the mechanistic position. And he doesn’t know the how or when. The why is “just because”- as if that is testable.
It is obvious that JVL doesn’t understand nor care about science.
This whole interchange reminds me of Monty Python’s black knight sketch, where after PaV, ET, EugeneS, Truthfreedom, Jawa, and Martin_r cut off the arms and legs of the arguments against ID, we read the equivalent of “Twas but a scratch.”
The complete and profound ignorance of what software is actually capable of, including self modifying code, image recognition, “blackbox testing” for vulnerabilities (cyber fitness) is proudly on display @79 regardless.
But I guess as long as you don’t actually admit defeat you can bravely type out skeptical responses and challenges.
-Q
Truthfreedom: You are saying this: life has a ‘natural’ (spontaneous?) origin, although I do not have a clue about how it originated. But it had to be that way because it fits my pre-conceived worldview (materialism/no God).
I’m saying that because of the evidence I have seen. You ASSUME my other beliefs. You should stop doing that, it’s insulting.
PaV is telling you that not-life can not create life (if inert matter can ‘create life’, anything goes). It’s not different from ‘magic’.
It is a meta-physical issue.
It’s a scientific issue. I’ll base my views on the evidence.
You have not answered my question: to gain knowledge of the world (e.g. undestanding/ using mathematics) we do need a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus.
Yes/ No.
Gosh, I’m not obligated to ask your leading questions where you will attempt to get me to contradict myself.
Mathematics is just a tool for dealing with quantitative aspects of reality. It can only answer questions that are appropriate for its approach. Apparently some animals can do some basic mathematics so perhaps you should define your terms.
Then I am right. A subject (human) uses a tool (mathematics) to gain knowledge of his surroundings (he wants to know how does the Universe work).
You’re directing the conversation to some end. I’ll just wait for you to make your point without trying to manipulate my responses.
I think, on balance, I prefer Monty Python’s Life of Brian to The Holy Grail.
“He’s not the Messiah! He’s a very naughty boy!”
EugeneS: And? How does that refute the ID claim that the first generation of such systems must have been designed?
Look, if you have evidence of some designer operating at some time doing something then present it. You spend so much time trying to make light of other people’s beliefs you forget to find evidence for your own.
Are you suggesting that in order to classify comment 79 up the thread, I need to know exactly who JVL is. I can reasonably believe that JVL has a mind and is not a bot just by analysing JVL’s responses in this thread.
You’re not really responding to what I have been saying.
You are talking past the ID claims.
Your claims get you no where. This stuff was designed! And so? Then what? It’s reasonable to ask when and how questions. Every avenue of science accepts such questions. But you seem uninterested addressing those questions. Why is that?
To provide a serious answer to ID claims, you or anyone else from you ‘camp’ needs to be able to do either of these two:
You need to support your view given the obvious and natural questions that are asked of it. You refuse to do so, why?
1. Logically exclude the possibility of the existence of a mind that could predate humans.
You need to show such a thing exists. We have no evidence of it.
2. Experimentally demonstrate that functional complexity can accumulate by evolutionary means to the orders of magnitude comparable with that already present in the biosphere. This experiment can involve human intervention only at the stage of choosing the initial conditions. You can choose temperature, pressure, concentration of chemicals, chirality, luminosity, etc. at time = 0. Any involvement of the experimenter past the point of t=0, such as in the form of controlling the dynamics of the abiogenetic synthesis of life, must be excluded.
No designer means it was all down to unguided processes. Show evidence of a designer around the pertinent time (which was when?) and specify what they did (which was what?). You always want to make it the problem of the unguided camp when it’s you that’s proposing a more complicated solution.
I am not aware of any textbook that would carefully address the problems of abiogenetic synthesis.
I haven’t surveyed all the textbooks, have you?
All you have done in your responses that I have seen is appeal to authority. This is not good enough, to be honest. The real trouble is, you know that and you are alright with it.
What have you appealed to? This stuff looks too complicated to have arisen without guidance. No other evidence of a designer. No statement as to when design was implemented. No guesses as to how design was implemented. Talk about a fairy story. You haven’t gone past the design inference at all.
ET: OK, present it or admit that you are lying, again. It isn’t in peer-review. It isn’t in textbooks. So it is obvious that JVL is lying or just deluded.
After years of presenting you with the stuff you request just to have to deny it over and over and over again I’m not responding to your requests. You’re not operating in good faith.
The overwhelming evidence says there was at least one Intelligent Designer. Without one all you have to explain our existence is sheer dumb luck. That is an untestable and unscientific concept.
The vase majority of scientists agree with you. Why is that?
REALITY says that the only way to get to the designer and the process is by studying the design and all relevant evidence. That said, there have been ID mechanisms proposed. “Built-in responses to environmental cues” for evolution. Genetic algorithms demonstrate the power of evolution by means of telic processes.
Where are these ‘built-in repsonses”? How are they stored? How are they triggered? You haven’t shown they even exist.
That said, we still don’t know who designed Stonehenge. The when keeps changing. And that is a structure we are capable of reproducing.
The when does not keep changing. You either make things up or depend on one or two dodgy references. Look at all the data not just the stuff that supports your views.
It is obvious that JVL doesn’t understand nor care about science.
If you’re so good with science then do some. Do some work. Get past the: this stuff looks designed and do something!
PaV: But you’re supposing “life” as already existing while the discussion is about how to solve immense improbabilities “pre-life.” This leaves you only non-random chemical reactions and random concentrations, with no room for NS since “life” has not yet arisen.
So, what is your explanation and what is the evidence for it? If my position is bankrupt then show me something that is better supported with hard physical evidence.
But none of that was needed by you to reach the conclusion that OS 1.O didn’t become OS 2.0 via random forces. Your immediate impulse was to assume “some” intelligent agent, though you don’t know who they are. This is a natural conclusion we intelligent beings make. Let’s admit this, or assume this.
I did not ‘assume’ some intelligent agent, I know it was human beings who coded the Mac OS! You know that as well. No one disputes it. Why are you arguing about known things? Just to get me to slip a bit and look stupid when you try and apply my criteria to things we don’t know?
As to OS 1.0 becoming OS 2.0, neither do you “know” who the “designer” was, when the design was implemented (yes, you know the release date of the software, but no more), nor how the design was implemented. (Did they run algorithms, was it a team, did they bring in and hire outside people with greater expertise.)
This is crazy. We both know it was human beings. We could, in all likelihood, figure out who was actually on the team. There’ll be notes and minutes from meetings and design documents, etc, etc, etc. What are you arguing about? That the development of the Mac OS was even close to assuming that DNA was the production of design without even the evidence that there was any designer with the capabilities around at . . . . what time was it? Who did what exactly?
If you want me to even come close to accepting there was a designer then you have to do better than that. Find some hard physical evidence. Can you do that?
When highly improbable events happen, we naturally “infer” intelligence to be at work.
That’s crazy! Let’s say some event between people had a billion-to-one chance of happening. With 7 billion people one the planet I would say we would expect to see that event happening.
Who won that battle of ideas? I think we all know.
Nope. You still have not shown any kind of function or purpose for large swaths of the human genome. You haven’t. You dance and dodge around the numbers without addressing the hard science.
How could a ‘correct’ theory turn out to be so wrong while an ‘incorrect’ theory turned out to be quite right? Shouldn’t this cause every evolutionary biologist some pause?
You didn’t turn out to be correct. You just want you and your buddies to think that.
Darwinism: This organ doesn’t do anything, therefore it must be a vestigial, a vestige of evolution. This non-coding DNA doesn’t do anything, therefore it must be “junk.”
ID: We don’t know what this organ (the pituitary, for example) is for, so let’s investigate. We don’t know what this non-coding DNA is for, so let’s investigate.
The “Get past the: this stuff looks designed” is obviously hindering science and suppresses research in areas designated as vestigial or junk.
-Q
JVL, you are a LIAR. Neither you nor anyone else on this planet has any evidence for evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. the only reason probability arguments exist is because you and your have NOTHING but lies.
JVL:
in the cells. Via electrical charges. Via environmental changes, as per their name. And the evidence for their existence, epigenetics (for one) are discussed in scientific papers and textbooks.
And AGAIN, to refute any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and mindless processes are capable to account for the alleged design. In other words, step up and actually support the claims of your own position!
That is why ID’s opponents and critics are so upset. They have all the power to refute ID and are impotent in that regard.
91 JVL
Which is?
Wrong.
That may-be possible for us (humans) to understand how matter behaves and is organized is one thing.
That “science” can “prove” that life (which is dependent on the existence of the Universe) appeared “randomly and uncaused”, my friend, that’s a WHOLE other story.
==Look, if you have evidence of some designer operating at some time doing something then present it. ==
With pleasure. Comment 79 up the thread was designed by a conscious being. It is classified as designed based on the amount of functional information it carries.
You insist that this is no evidence. Why? Is it really so difficult to grasp the crux of ID: whatever configuration of matter is associated with at least X functional bits has been designed? Where X is dependent upon the system in question. E.g. for an organism it is estimated as 140 functional bits.
You keep on asking the same questions not noticing they have already been addressed. Why? What is the problem?
The evidence of a designer is right in front of you, mate. It is the architecture of the living organisms enabling semiotic closure. The only other cases in the entire observable cosmos where semiotic closure has been established are correlates of intelligence.
De facto, all science Is based on design assumptions. Whatever has been cleverly engineered can be reverse engineered and reused elsewhere. That is why science works at all, mate.
JVL
Forgive me my interference…
==Why are you arguing about known things?==
Because this is how science progresses. From an analysis of known things (observations) you make an inference to include unknown. Simple.
There is absolutely no evidence of complex function arising non-intelligently. What is known and observed, other than life, which is the explanandum, is intelligence-correlated.
Is that so hard to understand?
How was it done?
By instantiating control and measurement into physicality to establish semiotic closure.
JVL
==What have you appealed to? This stuff looks too complicated to have arisen without guidance.==
You have been around here long enough not to say that. For your benefit again:
1. Observations: there exist configurations of matter exhibiting more than X functional bits. These are correlates of intelligence (intelligently designed), namely man made complex artifacts.
2. No observations exist where statistically significant amounts of functional information arise non-intelligently. Evolution (or whatever is thought to have been in place in a pre-biotic environment) is no exception: evolution is a process of adaptation by functional degradation.
3. Living systems exhibit statistically significant amounts of functional complexity.
4. We have reason to believe that living systems have also been intelligently designed.
1-4 are called an abductive inference to the best available explanation.
JVL @94 “Where are these ‘built-in repsonses”? How are they stored? How are they triggered? You haven’t shown they even exist.”
look here, this is the answer to your questions above.
“The Institute for Creation Research is developing an engineering-based, organism-focused model called continuous environmental tracking (CET) to explain how organisms self-adjust to changing conditions. Our model anticipates that the adaptive solutions creatures express can also be characterized as directed, rapid, and highly targeted. As we’ve highlighted in this Engineered Adaptability article series, research results are aligning with this expectation.”
so, once again, it is called CET (Continuous Environmental Tracking: An engineering framework to understand adaptation and diversification.)
here is an example of CET in real life, of course, there a many more (if interested, i can post more)
“Rapid Changes in Plants Demonstrate Innate Tracking ”
https://www.icr.org/article/rapid-changes-plants-demonstrate-innate-tracking
.
Not to butt in, but it should be kept in mind that JVL has previously affirmed that the genetic code is indeed an irreducible system of symbolic representations and non-integrable constraints, just as predicted by John Von Neumann and experimentally confirmed by Crick, Watson, Brenner, Hoagland, Zamecnik, Nirenberg, and others.
JVL just doesn’t believe that the presence of a high-capacity symbol system (a language structure and semantic closure, as defined and measured by its unique physical properties) infers design at the origin of life — unless, of course, we can find some real evidence, like perhaps, (quoting JVL) the “designers toilet” left behind to signal for us a designer with the tangible need to relieve himself. And frankly, in retrospect, it is incorrect to say that JVL “doesn’t believe” in the soundness of the design inference from semiosis (i.e. he happily accepts it from projects such as SETI and IT ). But in ID the scientific results are fundamentally unacceptable, and thus, they must be quickly dismissed whenever and wherever they appear.
JVL’s defense against science and reason is a real-time documented example of moving the goalpost, taken to the very extreme, as is required by his ideology. Actually he has a two part defense. When confronted with irrefutable evidence of design, first move the goalpost to a safe, even laughable, distance from the offending evidence, then manufacture and pursue a false narrative against anyone who doesn’t accept the new standard (PAV is already beginning to see the budding out of this little maneuver). This second part is intended to insulate JVL from having to justify his unjustifiable double standard and the ideology-based hyperskepticism behind it. The need to insulate himself is necessary because he has no desire to actually leave the conversation. Having clearly lost the argument over the objective evidence of design, he simply wants to stay and attack design without having to address that evidence.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
The is terribly incoherent; the ability to reproduce didn’t produce the code. The genetic code enables life and evolution, not the other way around. JVL clearly (and correctly) understands that evolution did not create life. If A requires B for A to exist, than A cannot be the source of B. To say that we cannot infer design from the physical properties of the genetic code because it causes life and evolution to exist is an meaningless attempt squint your eyes and point at the fog where none exist.
This is more of the same incoherent double standard at work. JVL is entirely happy with SETI inferring intelligent action from the reception of a narrow-band radio signal from outer space — without any requirement that we know anything of when or where or why the signal was produced. That is to say, the presence of an intelligence is inferred directly from the presence of something that is uniquely and universally associated only with intelligence. It is, in fact, the whole basis of the SETI methodology, as unambiguously stated by SETI themselves. Period, end. It is a sheer denial of recorded fact to pretend otherwise. JVL already knows this because I have provided him the relevant quotes taken directly from the SETI website (twice now, I think). It is his refusal to integrate facts and knowledge (of which he is fully aware) that is on display.
They have caused you admit that the gene system is indeed an irreducible organization of symbols and constraints. They have also forced you to shamelessly move the goalpost to a non-scientific position and adopt a series of glaring double-standards in order to maintain what is left of your position. To a fair-minded observer, I would think that you are the one on his back foot.
EugeneS @ 102
Arrangements of matter do not exhibit functional or non-functional bits. A bit is a metric we use to express or represent information we have abstracted from our observations of various “configurations of matter”. It is a model of what we observe and what we choose to abstract from the raw observational data but not the thing observed.
“Function” generally means what something does, a change of state rather than stasis, but it does not necessarily indicate intelligent agency. A river and a canal have much the same function but one is an artefact and one is a natural phenomenon. If you calculated the number of functional bits needed to describe them to an arbitrary degree of fidelity, would you be able to discriminate between the natural and the artificial?
There can certainly be degradation or loss of function in evolution but it is not just functional degradation, there can be functional gain as well. In a way, it is more accurate to regard it as change in function which may be advantageous or disadvantageous depending on the environmental context in which it occurs.
Genetic mutations are the result of a number of causes but there is nothing to indicate they are the result of some intelligent agency with the purpose of influencing the course of evolution of life on Earth. If there were it is doing a pretty bad job of it given that it appears that 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. More likely that mutations are random with respect to fitness.
And, as I have asked before, if Sanford’s genetic entropy is such a catastrophically inevitable process then how did life ever get started in the first place? And if he attempts to pull some YEC stunt about God’s design we have to ask why on Earth a perfect God would design something that is doomed to fall apart in a relatively short time?
So what?
We didn’t design the living systems we observe, as far as we know, so either it was some unknown alien intelligence or they came about through natural processes. The only reason for inferring design is some parts of living systems, although not all, resemble things we design to varying degrees. Design can’t be ruled out but neither can natural processes like evolution.
Querius: Darwinism: This organ doesn’t do anything, therefore it must be a vestigial, a vestige of evolution. This non-coding DNA doesn’t do anything, therefore it must be “junk.”
Nice try but no one actually says that. You guys complain about strawman arguments but you make them all the time.
ID: We don’t know what this organ (the pituitary, for example) is for, so let’s investigate. We don’t know what this non-coding DNA is for, so let’s investigate.
Hey, guess what: all the recent insight into what was previously thought to be evolutionary backwaters was done by mainstream researchers NOT by ID proponents. Why is that do you think?
ET: JVL, you are a LIAR. Neither you nor anyone else on this planet has any evidence for evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. the only reason probability arguments exist is because you and your have NOTHING but lies.
Oh, poor baby. Nobody takes you seriously so you have to make up some controversy about probability arguments. Very sad.
in the cells. Via electrical charges. Via environmental changes, as per their name. And the evidence for their existence, epigenetics (for one) are discussed in scientific papers and textbooks.
Fine, spell it out. Show us the actual locations where this is happening. Snow us some evidence this is happenong. Show us something.
And AGAIN, to refute any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and mindless processes are capable to account for the alleged design. In other words, step up and actually support the claims of your own position!
Show me a designer around at . . . what time exactly? Who did what exactly?
That is why ID’s opponents and critics are so upset. They have all the power to refute ID and are impotent in that regard.
Show us a designer who did what exactly? And when exactly?
Truthfreedom: Which is?
The evidence I have seen.
Wrong.
That may-be possible for us (humans) to understand how matter behaves and is organized is one thing.
That “science” can “prove” that life (which is dependent on the existence of the Universe) appeared “randomly and uncaused”, my friend, that’s a WHOLE other story.
Look, show me your evidence or not. You’re just playing games. Otherwise you’re just a merchant of doubt.
EugeneS: The evidence of a designer is right in front of you, mate. It is the architecture of the living organisms enabling semiotic closure. The only other cases in the entire observable cosmos where semiotic closure has been established are correlates of intelligence.
The question is: was there a designer about at . . . what time exactly? Who did what exactly? With what exactly?
If you want to do science then you have to start answering those kinds of questions. Show us the evidence. And, if your evidence is vague and uncompelling, then go find some more evidence. Don’t whine and moan and complain that we’re not taking you seriously. Go find more evidence.
There is absolutely no evidence of complex function arising non-intelligently. What is known and observed, other than life, which is the explanandum, is intelligence-correlated.
That is disputed. So you need to go find more evidence to support your case. Can you do that?
By instantiating control and measurement into physicality to establish semiotic closure.
Go and find more evidence. Sitting in your front room pontificating is all well and good but real solid physical evidence is much, much more compelling.
1. Observations: there exist configurations of matter exhibiting more than X functional bits. These are correlates of intelligence (intelligently designed), namely man made complex artifacts.
Yes, yes, more armchair logic which is not a substitute for real, physical evidence. Can you provide that? When did your deisgner implement design? And if you can’t answer that then why not?
Martin_r: “The Institute for Creation Research is developing an engineering-based, organism-focused model called continuous environmental tracking (CET) to explain how organisms self-adjust to changing conditions. Our model anticipates that the adaptive solutions creatures express can also be characterized as directed, rapid, and highly targeted. As we’ve highlighted in this Engineered Adaptability article series, research results are aligning with this expectation.”
Well, let me know when they come up with something. Right now, it’s all just faith . .Show me the evidence.
UPright Biped: Not to butt in, but it should be kept in mind that JVL has previously affirmed that the genetic code is indeed an irreducible system of symbolic representations and non-integrable constraints, just as predicted by John Von Neumann and experimentally confirmed by Crick, Watson, Brenner, Hoagland, Zamecnik, Nirenberg, and others.
But what I did not admit, based on the comments by Dr Pattee, was that the systems under question were necessarily due to the influence of an intelligent agent.
You need to stop trying to promulgate the same approach over and over and over again. It’s not working. Most readers of this forum don’t even bother reading your multiple links and mined quotes. Nobody actually reads your posts. Really.
LoL! @ JVL:
Now facts are a controversy. Your ignorance isn’t an argument, JVL
in the cells. Via electrical charges. Via environmental changes, as per their name. And the evidence for their existence, epigenetics (for one) are discussed in scientific papers and textbooks.
I have showed you more for ID than anyone has ever presented for unguided evolution.
And AGAIN, to refute any given design inference all one has to do is step up and demonstrate that blind and mindless processes are capable to account for the alleged design. In other words, step up and actually support the claims of your own position!
In the beginning, designed the universe and intelligent agencies to observe it.
As I said, it must really bother you to be so impotent.
After lots of bolding/ whining…
91 JVL
Truthfreedom wrote:
JVL “replied” (to be generous):
___
2nd attempt:
To gain knowledge of the world (e.g. understanding/ using mathematics) we do need a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus.
Yes/ No.
Some unknown processes did some things in the distant past, is all you and yours have, JVL.
46 JVL
Your proposed “experiment” to test “randomness” (in mutations).
Umm. Maybe I did not make myself clear. My question was:
How would you design an experiment/s to include all mutations since the beginning of life?
(And, why should I read a PDF?)
Actually, this was precisely the assumption of the brilliant geneticist and evolutionary biologist, Dr. Susumu Ohno in his seminal paper published in the journal, Evolution of Genetic Systems, Vol. 23, 1972, titled (drumroll) So much ‘junk’ DNA in our genome.
So once again, your groundless assertions have been falsified. Unfortunately, this is a recurring pattern in your posts.
Not to mention your efforts at convincing us that code cannot reproduce itself in @79. Gosh, haven’t you ever heard of “computer viruses” that spread copies of themselves over the internet? Or do I have to define what I mean by reproduce and internet?
-Q
105 Seversky
False. Under materialism (atheism) (and you are a materialist), there is no division ‘natural’/ ‘artefact’.
Humans are just another “pile of chemicals” (as any other animal/ living thing).
We do not create artifacts then. There is no difference between a beaver “building” a dam and a H. sapiens “building” a dam.
All “creations” in “nature” are the function of the same biological processes.
JVL@95:
How could you “know” this? Maybe some kind of AI algorithm was designed that performed the needed upgrade. Didn’t you dismiss this possibility?
And I’m not trying to make you “slip up” and look “stupid.” I’m trying to get you to see that we, as humans, understand what the work of intelligent beings looks like.
We’re able to intuit this. Most of Darwinian evolutionary biology doesn’t want to admit this; yet, we do it without thinking–my point all along.
As to “junk” DNA, you should look at what is being discovered every day and especially what the ENCODE project–with recent results, shows about so-called “junk” DNA–most of it has some kind of function. Their project is one of discovering it. And they’ve reached the point where they now presume that if they haven’t identified a function for some part of the genome, that it’s only a matter of time before one turns up.
Yes, but what if the total number of particles in the entire Universe were 10^60, but the improbability of an event is 10^250? How do you get around that problem?
When it comes to statistics, if you want to completely gut improbabilities all you have to do is to take any number of independent events and simply say that their dependent events and you go from multiplying improbabilities to adding them. This is Dawkin’s little trick, one that doesn’t hold up to rigor, with his Blind Watchmaker and Mt. Improbability.
But the improbabilities are real and, so, devastating to Darwinian theory.
[By the way, let’s remember that in Darwin’s first edition of the OoS (Origin of Species), he had to admit that a “creator” brought about “one, or several forms.”]
Truthfreedom: (And, why should I read a PDF?)
Too funny! Someone who says they know about probability and statistics and thinks a PDF is a document!! Tells me all I need to know really.
.
Yes, I know. You conceded that ”the genetic code is indeed an irreducible system of symbolic representations and non-integrable constraints”. That is why I wrote those particular words.
You think I should stop talking about the documented science and history regarding semiosis at the origin of life? Thank you for your counsel on the matter, but that’s probably not going to happen.
Welcome to the world of symbolic representation and irreducible complexity at the origin of life.
JVL, you have enthusiastically endorsed the reception of a narrow-band radio signal from outer space as a valid inference to an unknown intelligence acting somewhere in the cosmos. This well-known SETI inference is based on the universal observation that narrow-band radio signals are only associated with intelligent activity, and this inference is clearly made independent of having any additional knowledge such as “who, what, when, or where” the radio signal comes from. Even so, if there were any questions whatsoever regarding the validity of the inference, those questions would be immediately abandoned if genuine symbolic content was found encoded within that signal. In other words, it is specifically the presence of symbolic content that would provide science with a complete and indeed inescapable confirmation of a previously unknown intelligence. Other than pure ideological bias, what is it that could possibly explain the obvious contradiction when you then turn around to claim that the encoded symbolic content in the gene system (which was specifically predicted to exist as a logical necessity prior to its experimental confirmation in the 1950s and 1960s) is in fact no inference to intelligent activity?
Why the sudden double standard?
ET: in the cells. Via electrical charges. Via environmental changes, as per their name. And the evidence for their existence, epigenetics (for one) are discussed in scientific papers and textbooks.
Really? Where are the electrical charges generated and stored? What triggers their release specifically?
In the beginning, designed the universe and intelligent agencies to observe it.
Sounds like the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God. Is that right?
Truthfreedom: To gain knowledge of the world (e.g. understanding/ using mathematics) we do need a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus.
Yes/ No.
Just make your point without all this verbal dancing about.
How would you design an experiment/s to include all mutations since the beginning of life?
Couldn’t be done. Obviously.
(And, why should I read a PDF?)
Did you figure out what a PDF is yet or do I have to explain that to you?
Querius: Not to mention your efforts at convincing us that code cannot reproduce itself in @79. Gosh, haven’t you ever heard of “computer viruses” that spread copies of themselves over the internet? Or do I have to define what I mean by reproduce and internet?
Do they exhibit common descent with variation? Are later generations better adapted to exploit their environment? The analogy only works so far.
PaV: How could you “know” this? Maybe some kind of AI algorithm was designed that performed the needed upgrade. Didn’t you dismiss this possibility?
We know that didn’t happen. Why are you arguing about things you know did not happen?
And I’m not trying to make you “slip up” and look “stupid.” I’m trying to get you to see that we, as humans, understand what the work of intelligent beings looks like.
Sigh. You look at DNA and think: that looks like the work of a mind. Many, many, many others have looked at DNA and concluded that it’s NOT the creation of an intelligent being. So: your intuition vs decades of research and work by specialists in the field . .
As to “junk” DNA, you should look at what is being discovered every day and especially what the ENCODE project–with recent results, shows about so-called “junk” DNA–most of it has some kind of function. Their project is one of discovering it. And they’ve reached the point where they now presume that if they haven’t identified a function for some part of the genome, that it’s only a matter of time before one turns up.
We’ll see. And, as well you know, not everyone agrees with the ENCODE projects characterisation of parts of the human genome. Being transcribed does not mean having a biological function.
Yes, but what if the total number of particles in the entire Universe were 10^60, but the improbability of an event is 10^250? How do you get around that problem?
I’d say your probabilities were wrong.
When it comes to statistics, if you want to completely gut improbabilities all you have to do is to take any number of independent events and simply say that their dependent events and you go from multiplying improbabilities to adding them. This is Dawkin’s little trick, one that doesn’t hold up to rigor, with his Blind Watchmaker and Mt. Improbability.
Uh huh. I don’t agree.
Upright Biped: Yes, I know. You conceded that ”the genetic code is indeed an irreducible system of symbolic representations and non-integrable constraints”. That is why I wrote those particular words.
If I agreed to your characterisation of the genetic code as being irreducible then I made a mistake. Since there was no designer around at the time (that we know of) then it must have arose through unguided, natural processes some of which we seemingly haven’t fully grasped.
Why the sudden double standard?
Because there is no plausible designer available. How can I even contemplate design when there doesn’t seem to have been anyone around to do the designing?
And it would have to be a pretty slam-duck bit of symbolic content in an interstellar signal for me and the folks at SETI to accept that it came from an intelligent being. There have been some false alarms in the past because people have been very, very careful not to jump the gun.
I think you have jumped the gun inferring design in the genomic code. The scientific community has only been truly coming to terms with it for a few decades so it’s safe to assume we do not understand it fully yet. We certainly have not exhausted all the possible work into ways it could have arose. (Yes, I know, you think the research has hit a dead end but that’s not true. If it was true then no one would be doing any work in the field but they are.) And, on top of that, you’ve got zero outside, physical evidence that there was any kind of intelligent being around . . . when exactly? Who did what exactly?
When Lynn Margolis came up with some whacky ideas that were roundly dismissed by her peers she didn’t just keep making the same argument over and over again; she looked for more evidence. When people initially heard of plate tectonics they thought: what a load of rubbish. But the proponents didn’t just repeat themselves; they looked for more evidence. Einstein’s theory or relativity was controversial and someone had to look for evidence that it was true. You can’t just expect the scientific community to just roll over because you have some strong conviction that something is true. If people aren’t accepting what you say then look for more evidence, different kinds of evidence. For some reason the ID community hasn’t grasped this and just keeps saying the same thing over and over and over again. You haven’t had any new ideas or discoveries in a couple of decades. Even Dr Dembski has given up on arguing for ID. He never even published some of his mathematical work in a peer-reviewed journal.
JVL, always the infant:
Generated by IONs, and stored inside the cell- all over. That is how our nervous systems works- a potential difference caused by ions.
But all that is moot as you have been caught lying and bluffing again.
It is a FACT that probability arguments exist only because you and yours have nothing. It is a fact that no one on this planet knows how blind and mindless processes could have produced the genetic code and all of its components.
It is also a fact that “Waiting for TWO Mutations” refutes Dawkins’ claim of cumulative selection. And cumulative selection was the only posited mechanism capable of producing the changes required for universal common descent.
So you lose, regardless of anything else. Your only recourse to to get belligerent with respect to science and Intelligent Design.
91 JVL
To understand “reality” (and its quantitative “aspects”): do we need a subject (let’s call him it meat-robot errr… human) with a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus?
Yes/ No.
“Apparently”? What does that mean? They can do mathematics or they can not do mathematics.
It is an either/ or question.
121 JVL
What is the alternative? The atheist’s god “nothingness”?
“Nothingness” created “everything”?
Where should I go to worship “nothingness”?
95 JVL
Why is “coding” the only “function” allowed for DNA?
JVL @123,
The answer to both questions is yes, they can and do, depending on the virus.
Why do you assume computer viruses are an analogy? In both cases, it’s simply information and instructions encoded in two different media for two different environments. Here’s a paper that once again refutes your position, which is firmly anchored in ignorance:
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci725s2c/archive/termpapers/gnotoadmojo.pdf
You could at least have done a miniscule amount research before posting yet another false statement.
-Q
ET: Generated by IONs, and stored inside the cell- all over. That is how our nervous systems works- a potential difference caused by ions.
Really? Well how do those ion generated electrical charges affect mutations?
It is a FACT that probability arguments exist only because you and yours have nothing. It is a fact that no one on this planet knows how blind and mindless processes could have produced the genetic code and all of its components.
You don’t know how the genetic code was produced either do you? “Oh, it was designed” doesn’t mean you know how it was done. But at least the mainstream biologists are exploring ways it might have happened. They would like to know that. You’re happy with: it was designed and stop asking questions.
It is also a fact that “Waiting for TWO Mutations” refutes Dawkins’ claim of cumulative selection. And cumulative selection was the only posited mechanism capable of producing the changes required for universal common descent.
That is clearly not the case since many, many mainstream biologists have considered that paper since ID proponents raised it as some kind of show stopper and a) they disagree with you and b) they are happily still working on stuff you say cannot be true. So, your possible misinterpretation of one paper vs the years and years of experience from thousands upon thousands of biological researchers . . . hmmm, what should I pick?
Truthfreedom: To understand “reality” (and its quantitative “aspects”): do we need a subject (let’s call him it meat-robot errr… human) with a RELIABLE cognitive apparatus?
Yes/ No.
Nah, you can have a purely spiritual being like God who understands everything. I bet she’s a really good mathematician as well.
“Apparently”? What does that mean? They can do mathematics or they can not do mathematics.
It is an either/ or question.
You should look up some of the research sometime; they seem to have a basic grasp of greater and lesser quantities at least.
What is the alternative? The atheist’s god “nothingness”?
“Nothingness” created “everything”?
Where should I go to worship “nothingness”?
Do what you like, the question was directed at ET who, typically, avoided answering it. He doesn’t like admitting he believes in Gad for some reason. `i don’t see the problem myself, lots of excellent scientists are devote Christians or Muslims or Jews or Janes or Buddhists or Zoroastrians or Hindus or whatever. Who cares? Let’s just judge them based on the quality of their work.
Did you figure out what a PDF was yet?
Querius: Why do you assume computer viruses are an analogy? In both cases, it’s simply information and instructions encoded in two different media for two different environments. Here’s a paper that once again refutes your position, which is firmly anchored in ignorance:
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci725s2c/archive/termpapers/gnotoadmojo.pdf
The viruses mentioned in the paper are programmed to reproduce with variation to avoid detection. The methods of variation are predetermined. The human genome is not ‘programmed’ to reproduce with variation; the variations are ‘mistakes’ or ”errors’.
So, okay, some viruses do descend with variation but that variation is built into the system unlike live, in the world, genomes.
Computer viruses only ‘live’ in designed systems; real world genomes live and reproduce with variation in undesigned systems.
Computer viruses are designed to exploit particular aspects of their environment; real world genomes can alter their approach if the right variation is generated.
Computer viruses do not create whole new classes and family of viruses. They do not learn to exploit new food sources or environments.
It’s an interesting analogy but it only goes so far.
Earth to JVL- I do NOT care who disagrees with me. The fact remains that you and yours still have NOTHING but lies, bluffs and a ton of meaningless promissory notes.
The claim that I am misinterpreting the paper is pure cowardice. The fact remains that probability arguments exist precisely because you and yours have nothing.
Saying the genetic code was intelligently designed is a start down the right path. We can only understand design, like Stonehenge, by studying it as such. But again, you couldn’t conduct a scientific investigation if your life depended on it.
Without ID all you have to explain what we observe is sheer dumb luck. That is untestable and as such outside of science.
JVL’s scientists with all their experience still don’t even know what determines biological form! They don’t even use BWE to guide any of their research.
JVL
==Don’t whine and moan and complain that we’re not taking you seriously.==
Who are ‘we’? We are all here discussing things on equal ground, are we not?
So far you haven’t presented anything worthy of being classified as an argument. You simply don’t have a case. All you do is appeal to authority. The only difference is that earlier you pointed to a ‘majority of researchers’, now you include yourself in it. It doesn’t work this way, I am afraid. You need to seriously engage and dismantle ID.
It is you who needs to show how exactly complex function arises without intelligence. ID has an argument. To falsify it, you need to show that functional complexity can arise spontaneously either theoretically or prove it in a test tube. It doesn’t work any other way.
JVL
[To UB]
==Nobody actually reads your posts. Really.==
It is a strange thing to say because how can you be sure? Second, I consider UB’s comments here at this blog among the strongest and I personally read them with great interest. I can tell you more. Some of his posts I even copy for my records. So, technically, I think this proves you wrong.
I think you are just being too partial. I am really sorry to find out you can write things like this…
JVL, UB is a longtime, able contributor, we only wish we would hear more from him. As for his core point, he is well researched and credibly correct. Your non-design answer for why there is alphanumeric, algorithmic code in the heart of the cell is ____, and why is it credible ____ ? We await your answers. KF
PS: BTW, ES and I are physicists with some familiarity with info-comms technologies.
ET: Earth to JVL- I do NOT care who disagrees with me. The fact remains that you and yours still have NOTHING but lies, bluffs and a ton of meaningless promissory notes.
Are you going to answer the questions I put to you?
The claim that I am misinterpreting the paper is pure cowardice. The fact remains that probability arguments exist precisely because you and yours have nothing.
Are you going to answer the questions I put to you?
Saying the genetic code was intelligently designed is a start down the right path. We can only understand design, like Stonehenge, by studying it as such. But again, you couldn’t conduct a scientific investigation if your life depended on it.
Are you going to answer the questions I put to you?
Without ID all you have to explain what we observe is sheer dumb luck. That is untestable and as such outside of science.
Are you going to answer the questions I put to you?
JVL’s scientists with all their experience still don’t even know what determines biological form! They don’t even use BWE to guide any of their research.
Are you going to answer the questions I put to you? Clearly not. You can’t explain how your proposed system of built-in variation works. So we don’t have nothing to consider because you haven’t been able to give anyone anything to look at.
EugeneS: Who are ‘we’? We are all here discussing things on equal ground, are we not?
We is the general scientific community.
So far you haven’t presented anything worthy of being classified as an argument. You simply don’t have a case. All you do is appeal to authority. The only difference is that earlier you pointed to a ‘majority of researchers’, now you include yourself in it. It doesn’t work this way, I am afraid. You need to seriously engage and dismantle ID.
Hey, it’s fine with me if you guys don’t even try to look for more real physical data to support your inference. I’m good with that.
It is you who needs to show how exactly complex function arises without intelligence. ID has an argument. To falsify it, you need to show that functional complexity can arise spontaneously either theoretically or prove it in a test tube. It doesn’t work any other way.
You want the whole planet to take your view as the default meaning that the unguided crowd has to prove their point. I think they have proved their point and that means that for you to overturn that you have to come up with some extraordinary data and results.
It is a strange thing to say because how can you be sure? Second, I consider UB’s comments here at this blog among the strongest and I personally read them with great interest. I can tell you more. Some of his posts I even copy for my records. So, technically, I think this proves you wrong.
After years and years of seeing Upright Biped‘s post I can say: a) for the most part the only positive responses are things like: “Great post” or “Well put” and b) most critics can’t even be bothered to respond to his Gish-Gallop of stuff. Some of which is just youtube clips.
Just because you take them seriously doesn’t mean anyone else does.
Kairosfocus: ES and I are physicists with some familiarity with info-comms technologies.
You’re a physicist? By what standard?
Holy Cow! JVL thinks that ID has to have ALL of the answers before it can be considered science. All the while his side has NOTHING but the blatant denial of the design inference.
Earth to JVL- That is what science is for- to help us figure out the design. We START with the design inference. “Built-in responses to environmental cues” is observed via epigenetics, as well as other traits such as anti-freeze and nylon breakdown.
What we know, right now, is that there isn’t any evidence that nature can produce coded information processing systems. From there it is simple deduction that there is more to living organisms than meets the eye. Blind chemicals don’t know how to edit and splice. They don’t care about errors nor correcting them. Heck they are fine being a rock.
Given that, plus what we know about software and evolution by means of telic processes, we know 2 more things- intervention may not be required and the actions inside of a cell make sense. As does our failure to produce life in a lab.
And I will remind you that YOURS is the mechanistic “theory”. And yet you have nothing.
JVL:
I never said they did. However we are aware of SENSORS. We are also aware that cells communicate.
Nerves operate when a threshold potential difference is reached and exceeded. The built-in responses would be like that- sense an input and react
No, that is the infant in you speaking.
How many times do I have to tell you that there is more work to do? How many times do I have to tell you it has to do with resources? Resources that are being wasted on the loser paradigm of materialistic/ unguided evolution? Scientists are specialists. These new questions are for a new breed of scientist open to answering them.
JVL expects ID to have all of the answers. The science of ID is in the detection and study of design in nature. For the most part it involves things that are above our capabilities to reproduce.
We don’t need to answer your infantile questions, JVL. Given the resources they will all be fleshed out in due time.
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JVL,
I asked you why you apply a double standard in your reasoning.
Your answer quite literally began with “Because”.
Because?
Q: Why do you insist on using a logical fallacy to defend yourself?
A: Because!
Good grief
JVL, the only thing that can follow “because” in the defense of logical fallacy is a fallacious justification. How does this escape you?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
And what is it that follows?
Oh my. The product of the fallacy. That’s why you do it. You just told me the reason you use a fallacious double-standard is because of the product it gives you.
Q: Why do you insist on a double standard, where a singlularly unique phenomena (which is both physically measurable and exclusively indentifiable) provides an unambiguous inference to an act by a previously unknown intelligence in one instance, but is immediately denied that status in another instance.
A: Because it allows me to deny an unknown intelligence in the second instance.
Q: But since both intelligences are previously unknown, the inference — based on being a universal correlate of intelligence — that is judged as valid in the first instance must also be judged as valid in the second, doesn’t it?
A: No it doesn’t.
Q: Why?
A: Because there is no evidence of the second.
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JVL, there is no such thing as a symbol without a constraint.
It is the presence of a constraint that establishes the symbol. It is the presence of a constraint that allows us to know that any given arrangement of matter is a symbol, or not. They are irreducible and inseparable. Without one, the other does not exist. You read the research. You know this to be universally true.
This is another snapshot of a man on his back foot, in utter denial of recorded science and history.
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ES and KF,
Thank you both. Thank you for your kind words.
There is no need for you to involve yourself. JVL has communicated through his comments that there is no length he will not go in order to defend his ideology from science and reason. He has already tried repeatedly to manufacture false narratives about me, and he will do the same to you.
Here’s a good one:
JVL: … his Gish-Gallop of stuff. Some of which is just youtube clips.
lol
If there is anything I might be associated with, it is certainly not for walking away from a good argument. And YouTube? I am not certain I have ever posted a YouTube clip in my life, ever.
These things are just complete fabrications, divorced from reality. He wants me to shut up.
“JVL, UB is a longtime, able contributor, we only wish we would hear more from him.”
Ditto!!
Vivid
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You know, I think just I remembered posting a You Tube video to UD a while back. I think it was a link to the song Stimela (the S. African coal train), by South African dissident and musician Hugh Masekela, upon hearing of his death. His trumpet work on this track is beyond belief.
Thankfully I was able to meet him and see him perform before his passing.
Something tells me this is not what JVL had in mind in his stunt.
🙂
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Hello Vivid.
Thank you. You already know how much I appreciate you as well. Thank you for all that you have contributed here over many moons.
122 JVL
Then Dr. Bernardo Kastrup is right. And you dismissed him because “he is not a biologist” (which he does not pretend to be. Again, “randomness” is a part of epistemology/ philosophy).
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/08/evolution-is-true-but-are-mutations.html?m=1
JVL @133,
Your unsupported assertions don’t refute anything.
1. What evidence can you produce that the human genome is not programmed to reproduce with variations?
2. What evidence can you produce that that variation is not built into live, in-the-world, genomes? Hint: look up epigenetics.
3. What evidence can you produce that real world genomes live and reproduce with variation in undesigned systems? Have you ever tried programming a simulated ecosystem and do you know what common results emerges?
4. What evidence can you produce that, real-world genomes are not designed to exploit particular aspects of their environment? Hint think of viral activity within a cellular environment.
5. What makes you think that computer viruses do not create whole new classes or families of viruses? They are indeed beginning to do so.
6. Far from being an analogy, what evidence can you produce that real-world viruses cannot possibly be programmed?
All your assertions seem to be based on a childlike faith in what you’re sure to be immutable facts. You might want to consider studying the role of information in quantum physics and its impact on our conceptions of reality to shake up your faith a little and consider evidence contrary to your opinions.
Just sayin’ . . .
-Q
JVL, I do not need to prove myself or ES (or others with relevant background in Math, Sci and Tech or even phil) to you. However, it is readily noted that you have no answer to the implied blind origin of alphanumeric, algorithmic code and associated molecular nanotech execution machinery in the heart of the cell. We freely note, alphanumeric, string code is linguistic and algorithms are goal directed and procedurally rational, thus we see strong signatures of design in the cell. A goodly number of Nobel prizes were won for the relevant work, this was not demonstrated in a corner. We further freely infer that the resistance to a patently strong conclusion is due to ideology and ideological captivity of key institutions, captivity to a priori evolutionary materialism. The game is over. KF
TF, Kastrup has a serious point. That’s why a per aspect design inference filter has necessity and/or chance as defaults, with plausible reasons to infer design on reliable signs. Inference to best current explanation, of course, is the secret weapon of scientific and particularly causal explanation. I observe, JVL has no explanation with good empirical warrant, on how blind chance and/or mechanical necessity could account for the alphanumeric, complex, algorithmic code and associated execution machinery of the cell. Appeal to statistical miracles not plausibly observable on gamut of sol system or observable cosmos — 500 – 1,000 bits — is NOT a good explanation. The genome starts at about 100 kbits. KF
152 Kairosfocus
They (atheists/ evos) implicitly acknowledge that there is order in nature (the cell). It is so “bad” when no-teleology (disorder) enters the stage that DNA not copying itself verbatim , is called a “mistake”. And it is so bad, that then an ethereal process ( natural selection ) has to appear to “counteract” such disorder (replication “errors”).
Because the human mind is inherently geared towards order. And disorder gives the humand mind an unbearable amount of discomfort (logic “knows” that it can not be violated).
And logic does not calibrate itself. It needs an external source of calibration.
152 Kairosfocus
Yes, it is. And they know it. Atheistic “evolutionism” is false (a self-refuting and therefore not true worldview).
We should not concede another inch. They have caused society an enormous amount of harm.
Truthfreedom @154,
No, a transcription error is not a mistake, it’s a wonderful opportunity! LOL
Once when I saw a typo on the web page of a staunch Darwinist, I responded with feedback that this typo was an exciting new change that will ultimately lead to a bold new idea! Imagine how disappointing it was when he simply fixed the typo.
Darwinian Artist: This is a marvelous painting of a cow eating grass in a mountain meadow.
Me: Where’s the grass?
Darwinian Artist: The cow has eaten it.
Me: So, where’s the cow?
Darwinian Artist: The cow left after eating the grass.
Me: And the mountain meadow?
Darwinian Artist: It is now midnight in the mountain meadow. My painting has won numerous accolades and awards from the most prestigious artists and galleries and is worth millions.
-Q
JVL@124:
We know that didn’t happen. Why are you arguing about things you know did not happen?
You don’t “know” this happened. I threw out a possibility and you immediately dismiss it. You “presume” it didn’t happen. And why? Because you intuitively know that the only way to generate intelligence on the scale we’re treating is through human intelligence.
You see the effects and you “presume” intelligence. ID makes the same presumption as you are doing with OS 1.0 to OS 2.0 conversion.
Sigh. You look at DNA and think: that looks like the work of a mind.
Tell me, JVL, what’s the difference between the printout of the OS code and that of the genome using binary code? Do you see any difference? What about the huge differences that are seen from one genome (operating system printout) to another genome (another operating system printout)? Why do you presume the one is the work of human intelligence and then dismiss completely that the difference in the other, the genomes, is NOT the work of some sort of intelligence?
You would do well to think this over a bit.
Uh huh. I don’t agree.
I don’t know how you can disagree with my statement concerning Dawkins. This is exactly what he does: he takes independent events and treats them as dependent events, adding instead of multiplying all the steps that are needed in moving from one form of life to another.
Have you looked at, or read, his books?
156 Querius
… until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all.
PaV
Isn’t he the man that hires monkeys to write his books?
TF@159:
No, he tried to do that, but it didn’t work.
Apparently, JVL has fled the thread. 😉
Querius: Apparently, JVL has fled the thread. ????
I found myself getting angry and frustrated and felt that I was allowing my responses to become more cynical and mean. So I decided to pause for a bit.
Also, I’m not sure anyone was saying anything much different. Seems like we frequently end up at the same impasse.
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JVL,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re getting angry and frustrated and I’m glad you wanted to step back from being cynical and mean.
Let me suggest that your frustration doesn’t stem so much from an impasse as much as a challenge to communicate what you’re convinced must be true. I’d imagine that you might feel like you can’t convince a bunch of well-informed flat-earth advocates.
So please allow me to recommend an action that will still support your evolutionary paradigm, but simply demonstrate that there are scientifically accepted alternatives within evolution that don’t depend exclusively on random mutation. I say this with all sincerity.
There’s an interesting book called Evolution 2.0 by Perry Marshall and costs under $14 US.
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-2-0-Breaking-Deadlock-Between/dp/1944648755/
He suggests that evolution has five or six tools and that while random mutation is one of them, it’s the least effective one. None of these genetic tools are theoretical. I think it will give you a stronger perspective and you’ll become less dependent solely on random mutation, which is such a weak explanation.
Kindly,
-Q
Querius: Let me suggest that your frustration doesn’t stem so much from an impasse as much as a challenge to communicate what you’re convinced must be true. I’d imagine that you might feel like you can’t convince a bunch of well-informed flat-earth advocates.
That is not the issue that is causing my consternation and frustration leading to anger and cynicism.
I don’t get a sense that most of the contributors here have views that are falsifiable. All I hear is that I am wrong, I am delusional, my viewpoint is self refuting.
I admit that I feel pretty strongly that purely unguided processes are adequate for explaing the origin and development of life on earth. BUT, I have also said, that if and when the ID community comes up with more evidence for their case I will take that into account and reconsider. Which is what any evidence driven person should do: re-evaluate when there is new data. Clearly.
So, I would like to know: which of the contributors here have views about the origin and development of living systems on this planet that are falsifiable. There is no point in me annoying you with an argument if it’s not going to register.
I’m happy to shut up for a while and just listen. Thank you.
Ok, JVL, but please do consider getting a copy of Evolution 2.0 and reading it. I think it will open your eyes to some really interesting possibilities.
I’d be interested in your reactions to the additional mechanisms described. Again, these are well documented. After you read it, I think there will be some interesting questions to address.
-Q
JVL:
Along the lines of your recent discussion with Querius: I have two questions, asked in a straightforward way:
1) Do you consider (Darwinian) evolutionary theory to be falsifiable?
2) What would falsify it?
As to “falsifying” ID thinking, here’s what would change my mind: (1) If it were discovered that significant taxonomical changes–between Orders, e.g., could be traced through small phenotypic changes in the fossil record. (2) If small changes in a species could be traced out in time (e.g., Lenski’s bacterial lineages) which begin to transform the innate character of the species. (3) If computers could be used in such a way that a simple program could produce a more complex program via strictly non-random changes.
If any of these could honestly and clearly be demonstrated, then I would be open to Darwinian thinking.
For my part, I’d like to see an updated version of the 1952 Miller-Urey experiment that demonstrates spontaneous generation of living forms. Here’s a link to a discussion concerning the experiment:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/03/long-neglected-experiment-gives-new-clues-origin-life
Another experiment might subject protozoans to enough ionizing radiation and mutagens that could compress the the mutation rate of millions of years of evolution into just a few years and demonstrate the production of novel structures and organelles through random mutation.
If either of these experiments were successful, I’d say that it would provide a very strong case against intelligent design, if not outright falsifying it.
-Q
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Oh goodness. JVL stammers forward from his silence, not to man up on the grotesque logical fallacies in his position (#144) nor his willingness to drain them of every drop of their usefulness to him, but to showcase his great personal discipline and a burning desire to carry forward in constructive dialogue.
There’s our hero, embossed in open-minded reason, with a cadre of French horns playing in the background.
There still isn’t any scientifically viable alternative to ID. JVL will disagree but he will never say what that alternative is or how it is scientific.
PaV: Along the lines of your recent discussion with Querius: I have two questions, asked in a straightforward way:
1) Do you consider (Darwinian) evolutionary theory to be falsifiable?
Yes.
2) What would falsify it?
Several things. There’s the famous comment about finding a rabbit fossil in a Cambrian layer, which is good. I’d say clear, physical evidence of a designer around at whatever time ID proposes doing whatever ID proposes would certainly get my attention and make me reconsider things.
As to “falsifying” ID thinking, here’s what would change my mind: (1) If it were discovered that significant taxonomical changes–between Orders, e.g., could be traced through small phenotypic changes in the fossil record.
That’s going to be difficult to do but okay.
(2) If small changes in a species could be traced out in time (e.g., Lenski’s bacterial lineages) which begin to transform the innate character of the species.
So, clear genomic evidence?
(3) If computers could be used in such a way that a simple program could produce a more complex program via strictly non-random changes.
I wouldn’t find that convincing myself but okay.
Thanks for answering honestly and clearly.
Querius: For my part, I’d like to see an updated version of the 1952 Miller-Urey experiment that demonstrates spontaneous generation of living forms.
That would be incredible evidence! How far along are you thinking? If it could be showed that something like yeast could come about without guidance would that be enough?
Another experiment might subject protozoans to enough ionizing radiation and mutagens that could compress the the mutation rate of millions of years of evolution into just a few years and demonstrate the production of novel structures and organelles through random mutation.
So, a substantial increase in the mutation rate and . . . .
Upright Biped: Oh goodness. JVL stammers forward from his silence, not to man up on the grotesque logical fallacies in his position (#144) nor his willingness to drain them of every drop of their usefulness to him, but to showcase his great personal discipline and a burning desire to carry forward in constructive dialogue.
Since we don’t seem to be able to carry on any kind of constructive conversation anymore I’ll just just leave your vitriol on the table if that’s okay with you.
There’s our hero, embossed in open-minded reason, with a cadre of French horns playing in the background.
They do have a lovely sound.
ET: There still isn’t any scientifically viable alternative to ID. JVL will disagree but he will never say what that alternative is or how it is scientific.
So you don’t want to address my question. Fair enough, I can’t force you. I think I know what you would say if you chose to play along. I think you’d say that it cannot be shown that all the variation we observe in life on earth is due to unguided mutations. I think you’d say that there is no evidence that all the significant and important mutations were random events. Is that correct?
If, in fact, that is your view then what evidence can your present that a large number of beneficial mutations are determined (via built-in programming) or guided?
JVL @170,
That was J.B.S. Haldane, who also posed “Haldane’s Dilemma,” a hypothetical speed limit on the rate of beneficial evolution that caused so much consternation among Darwinists until several people came up with complex counter-hypothetical explanations and everyone was able to breathe a sigh of relief and go back to ignoring it.
So, does it have to be bunnies?
For example, would you settle for finding pollen from flowering plants, vascular wood, and six-legged, composite-eyed insects in the Precambrian?
Or how about finding ducks, squirrels, platypus, beaver-like and badger-like animals, bees, cockroaches, frogs and pine trees in the same strata that dinosaurs are found?
I didn’t think so.
-Q
JVL:
I have addressed many of your questions. You refuse to address mine.
The only way blind and mindless processes are responsible for the diversity of life is to show they also produced living organisms. You can’t No one can. It didn’t happen. It is impossible.
That said, the paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” refutes cumulative selection, ala Dawkins. Cumulative selection was unguided evolution’s only hope.
Besides what Dr. Spetner wrote about in TWO books? Besides what I have already stated?
And it has nothing to do with “beneficial” mutations. Sickle-cell anemia can be beneficial, yet it is clearly detrimental. You need something that can produce multi-protein functional complexes.
How can a rabbit fossil in the Precambrian falsify something that can’t even account for rabbits?
Do tell
LOL, ET!
-Q
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Having a “constructive” conversation would require the participants to adhere to having a forthright and honest engagement, wouldn’t you agree? I personally can’t imagine it being otherwise. Surely you are not suggesting that a “constructive” conversation needn’t entail a sense of honesty among the participants, are you? I seriously doubt that. What I believe instead is that a fatal flaw has been demonstrated in your attack on design, and that you do not want to face that fact, and thus, you want me to shut up about it. I would be happy to shut up about it except that you also want to stay here, jumping from thread to thread, and continue your attack on ID evidence as if the fatal flaw in your reasoning had not been demonstrated. It is a fact — clearly recorded in your own words on this blog in July — that you affirm the presence of semiotic content (i.e. the symbolic encoding of information in a medium) as an unambiguous inferenced to an unknown intelligence. So why do you suddenly impose a double standard when ID proponents point to well-documented science and history to demonstrate that exact phenomenon at the origin of life?
In July you were asked HOW you would clearly determine that you in fact had received a signal from an unknown intelligence (i.e. SETI) and you did not hesitate in your answer:
So why the double standard JVL? Why the campaign to paint me as unreasonable for asking the question? Why the transparent nonsense about not being able to have a “constructive” conversation? Why the pretense about this being a disagreement between us and not about the incontrovertible double standard you apply to evidence? Why do you suddenly move the goalpost in the face of documented prediction and experimental result? If you consider your reasoning to be so exemplary, why are these nauseous deceptions required to maintain it?
Why can we not ask of you the same level of honesty that you ask of others?
Querius: I didn’t think so.
Since you have already incorrectly anticipated my answer I shan’t bother to first dissuade you from your misconception and then attempt to explain my position because clearly you’re not really interested.
LOL, ET!
See what I mean.
ET: The only way blind and mindless processes are responsible for the diversity of life is to show they also produced living organisms. You can’t No one can. It didn’t happen. It is impossible.
So your position is unfalsifiable according to you.
I won’t bother discussing it further then.
Upright Biped: I seriously doubt that. What I believe instead is that a fatal flaw has been demonstrated in your attack on design, and that you do not want to face that fact, and thus, you want me to shut up about it.
Competely incorrect. But please, keep making assumptions.
It is a fact — clearly recorded in your own words on this blog in July — that you affirm the presence of semiotic content (i.e. the symbolic encoding of information in a medium) as an unambiguous inferenced to an unknown intelligence.
I agreed with everything Dr Pattee wrote which did NOT include an unabmbiguous inference to an unknown intelligence. It does for you but not for me or Dr Pattee.
So why the double standard JVL?
There is no double standard. The claim to have detected an interstellar signal is very much akin to claiming to have detected desigh; both are extraordinary claims which require extremely careful and scrupulous examination before they can be accepted. I do not think that the claims of design have met that kind of standard just like no interstellar signal has been accepted as coming from an alien intelligence.
No one wants to make a false positive claim. And that means the evidence has to be very, very strong. I do not think the evidence for alien intelligence or design are up to that level yet. They may be, I am open to new data and new evidence. Which is why I encourage both the SETI Institute and ID proponents to continue to search for more evidence. When a lot of people don’t agree with you then look for more evidence.
Querius, PaV
I think that it should be kept in mind that evolution, whatever its capabilities, on the one hand, and the origin of life, on the other, are two distinct problems. The first pales into insignificance in terms of the magnitude of challenges it presents to the naturalistic view, compared to the second. Evolution starts once the origin of life has happened, obviously. However, in terms of the discussion in this thread, it translates to the statement that semiosis is a prerequisite of evolution, and not the other way around. Again, to explain semiosis in Darwinian terms is a hopeless enterprise. Biologist Eugene Koonin, being a staunch evolutionist, BTW, clearly understands and acknowledges it. He claims that the neo-Darwinian paradigm is dead. That is, actually, why he promulgates the (unscientific) idea of the multiverse, but it is another story. What is important here is that people like him fully understand the challenge.
.
The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
This is obfuscation.
The topic at hand has nothing to do with Dr Pattee.
This is more obfuscation.
The operational definition of intelligence for SETI is the reception of a narrow band radio signal that is detectable on Earth. SETI is unambiguous that a narrow-band radio signal is a product only of a narrow band radio transmitter, thus allowing them to make the inference to the presence of a narrow band radio transmitter and an intelligence that constructed it. You already know this because, once again, I have provided the quotes from SETI on the matter.
HOWEVER, IF there was any question whatsoever about the legitimacy of the inference, that question would be immediately abandoned in the case that semiotic content (what you refer to as “compressed data”) was found in that signal. SETI is well aware of this, as you are, which is why you pointed to it as the KEY OBSERVABLE in an inference to design.
This is all territory that we have been over before. It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise, as disingenuous as it is to pretend that this somehow answers the blatant double standard you place on evidence. Here is my response to you in July:
The question still stands. You have done nothing but run from it, which you will continue to do. Having given up your intellectual ability to acknowledge what is made completely obvious by your own words, you have no other choice. Accepting semiosis in a radio signal from outer space as an unambiguous inference to an unknown intelligence, but denying semiosis as an unambiguous inference to an unknown intelligence at the origin of life on earth is a blatant double standard every day of the week. You cannot obfuscate and dissemble your way out of it.
… and by the way, did I mention that the semiosis in the cell was clearly predicted and then confirmed by experimental result, with multiple Nobel prizes being awarded in the process?
Upright Biped: The operational definition of intelligence for SETI is the reception of a narrow band radio signal that is detectable on Earth. SETI is unambiguous that a narrow-band radio signal is a product only of a narrow band radio transmitter, thus allowing them to make the inference to the presence of a narrow band radio transmitter and an intelligence that constructed it.
Except that the SETI institute has changed its focus:
https://seti.org/seti-institute/Search-Extraterrestrial-Intelligence
The question still stands. You have done nothing but run from it, which you will continue to do. Having given up your intellectual ability to acknowledge what is made completely obvious by your own words, you have no other choice. Accepting semiosis in a radio signal from outer space as an unambiguous inference to an unknown intelligence, but denying semiosis as an unambiguous inference to an unknown intelligence at the origin of life on earth is a blatant double standard every day of the week. You cannot obfuscate and dissemble your way out of it.
I tell you what, when there is a suspect signal from another planetary system let’s both examine it together and see what we both think. That makes sense. I acknowledge that the joint conclusion might end up balanced on the same knife-edge as the origin of life debate but we really should not prejudge the outcome should we?
I’m interested in promoting co-operation and joint exploration. What do you think?
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Yet again, this is more obfuscation.
SETI has not “changed” focus, it had added additional methods to the search. That SETI has adopted additional methods in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence does absolutely nothing whatsoever to nullify or delegitimize the methods they already (and continue) to employ. If they develop even newer methods tomorrow and add them to their practices, that again will change nothing. You already know this. And just as before, if SETI receives a narrow-band radio signal from space, they will still infer intelligence from it. You know that too. Can you just not stop with the obfuscation?
Good grief.
JVL, your blatant double standard remains, as does my previous question. If your reasoning is sound, then why is this deception and obfuscation (clearly and obviously) required to maintain it?
.
There is no knife edge, and there is no prejudging the outcome. If we receive a narrow-band radio signal from space that displays semiosis (encoded symbolic content) we will immediate infer that a previously unknown intelligence is the source of that signal, which is the exact same as finding symbolic content inside the cell (a phenomenon was both clearly predicted and famously confirmed by experiment). So why the double standard JVL?
Why the need for obfuscation and deception in the defense of your reasoning?
JVL:
It is, by demonstrating the impossible.
EugeneS @182,
Agreed. The origin of life is immeasurably more complex. Then there’s the separation between novel body plans and adaptation.
JVL, but I was correct, wasn’t I? LOL
There’s really no discovery that could shake your faith in or ability to rationalize Darwin’s feeble speculation because any alternative is ideologically unacceptable to you.
I wish you would go ahead and read Evolution 2.0 because in it, you’ll see a whole new world of scientific investigation into modern scientific evolution that’s based on observed phenomena.
But are you interested in learning more or sticking to a theory proposed in 1859?
-Q
Seversky
Shannon information should not be confused with functional information.
I can’t go into detail just now.
JVL
Since you like ‘falsiability’ so much, Dr. Dennis Bonnette, an intelligent man and philosopher (which then excludes him from being a naturalist), has some words that you might find interesting:
They rely on the philosophy of naturalism, which presents them as
just-so stories that defy disproof, but for which naturalism itself offers no direct scientific demonstration that is independent of philosophical assumptions.
But you are a philosophical brute. If only you could understand the difference science vs. PHILOSOPHY.
Naturalism is an ideology that feeds on ignorant fools.
The Big Problems With Naturalism
Yikes, Truthfreedom! I wouldn’t go that far.
My take is that some theories are ideologically unacceptable to JVL and simply unthinkable. Even my suggestion for JVL to get additional, more modern information on Evolution seems to have been ignored. So I have to ask myself why. Why would JVL be closed to new ideas even if they don’t refute the obsolete ideas he’s clinging to?
I don’t know. Maybe, he’s too comfortable with what served his ideology well for years and so he doesn’t have any motivation to learn new things. Again, this is just speculation.
-Q
Seversky
Shannon information and functional information are two different concepts that should not be confused. Shannon information does not take into account meaning while functional information does.
Functional information in the context of a given function f is information associated with function f of some configuration K of matter. It is, just like Shannon information, a measure of reduction in uncertainty as a result of observing K. But, in contrast to Shannon information, this uncertainty is semantic.
Configurations of matter (such as molecules, macromolecular complexes, etc) that are characterized by a complex function f, define a relatively small area O(f) in the space P of all possible configurations. Without loss of generality configurations of matter can be represented in our analysis as strings of symbols from an alphabet, given some universal description language L. O(f) is then represented by the set of all synonymous strings, each of which is a representation of f in L. We can say that a string s from O(f) encodes f.
Let |X| denote the size of set X.
Intuitively, the less |O(f)| becomes in relation to |P|, the more functional information is conveyed by observing a string s that encodes f. If |P| is given, the observer receives a maximum of functional information if f is maximally specific (i.e. if s does not have synonyms, in other words, if |O(f)| = 1). Conversely, the amount of functional information is minimal (equal to 0) if any string from P encodes f (i.e. if f is minimally specific).
As a measure of functional information of a configuration K of matter (or, equivalently, of its representation string s), we can use the following expression:
I_f(K) = — log (|O(f)| / |P|),
where |O(f)| is the size of O(f), i.e. the number of synonymous strings each of which encodes f, and |P| is the size of the space of all possible configurations or, equivalently, the number of possible strings of a given length.
In the context of biosystems, strings can represent e.g. nucleotide sequences in DNA/RNA molecules or sequences of amino acids in a protein (primary protein structures).
Example.
Assume we have a processor of textual information which raises an alert upon receiving the string s = “ALARM” ignoring any other string. For simplicity, assume that any string that it can receive is 5 symbols long. Also, for simplicity, assume that our alphabet includes 23 letters, 14 punctuation symbols and a blank space (38 symbols in total).
So in our example, the function f is to raise an alarm signal upon receiving a corresponding message.
Consequently, the size of the parameter space is |P| = 38^5 (38 raised to the power 5). The amount of functional information associated with string s (or, simply, the functional complexity of s) in the context of function f is:
I_f(s) = — log (1 / |P|) = 5 log (38) = 26.24 functional bits (fits).
Now assume that our processor can recognize s as well as the string s’ = “MRALA” (inverted s). In this case s’ and s will be synonimous, and the size of O(f) is 2. The amount of functional information associated with either s or s’ is now as follows:
I_f(s) = I_f(s’) = — log (2 / |P|) = 5 log (38/2) = 21.24 functional bits.
This example shows that as the number of synonyms increases, the amount of functional information associated with each of them is reduced.
Finally, observe that upon receiving any string – functional or not – our processor from the example receives the same amount of Shannon information, whereas it is only s and its synonyms, if any, that convey functional bits. Any other string’s functional complexity will be 0.
“Shannon information” is most likely a misnomer. Information is information. Shannon just provided a way to measure it under certain contexts.
And yes, it is true that Shannon didn’t care about meaning. That is because the equipment used to transmit and receive it do not care. Shannon was only interested in what was transmitted was received without error.
Seversky
Building on my comment 192, statistically significant functional information gains are observed only as correlates of intelligence, in the entire observable cosmos, with the exception of living systems, which is the explanandum. There are no observations of significant functional information gains that would be a result of purely so-called unguided processes and/or natural regularities, i.e. without intelligence external to the system. Consequenly, we have sufficient reason to believe that the significant functional information gains in living systems (starting from the biochemical level through the cellular, tissue, organ, system of organs to the entire organism) are a result of external intelligence.
That is a solid foundation of ID. It is possible to falsify it either by theoretically excluding the possibility of external intelligence or by, at least, demonstrating that life can originate chemically in a test tube. However, the latter should be demonstrated in such a way that excludes the interference or guidance by the experimenter at any point beyond the choice of initial conditions (reagents, concentrations, temperatures, pressures, luminosity, chirality, etc). Otherwise it is nothing but a proof of concept for ID rather than its experimental falsification.
ET
Agreed in principle. But I’d rather stick to the established terminology, out of respect for our naturalist interlocutors ) Also, I would say that the “unguided process” is an oxymoron by virtue of the definition of ‘process’. Finally, ‘guided evolution’ is also an oxymoron, because as soon as there is guidance, it stops being ‘evolution’.
How does guidance make it stop being evolution? Guidance stops it from being blind watchmaker evolution. And there are definitions of process that don’t require guidance. Spontaneous chemical reactions are still a process.
==How does guidance make it stop being evolution?==
By definition. Evolution is ‘unfolding’, ‘unrolling’ of something that is left to itself. Control or guidance makes it an entirely different thing. It is a mistake to continue to call it ‘evolution’. That is my personal point of view, in any case.
What? Evolution is merely the change in allele frequency over time, by definition. Genetic algorithms exemplify evolution by means of telic processes.
origin of the word evolution:
ET
This is an argument purely about nomenclature.
Genetic algorithms exemplify artificial (intelligent) selection, not evolution.
Whatever is done by means of telic processes is not evolution but an artificial selection.
If you define evolution as merely dynamics, I have no objection but I don’t think this is standard.
Evolution as such is a more general term than biological evolution.
EugeneS @192,
Thank you for the explanation!
I’m thinking of the mathematical context of cryptography, which would transform nearly random bits into a decoded message.
ET @193,
I think the correct term should be “Shannon Data.”
EugeneS @194,
Brilliantly summarized!
Also, regarding nomenclature, I’m sure you can think of other examples where poorly chosen terms impede understanding.
I believe that information, its source, and its conservation or lack thereof is central to understanding design . . . and the nature of existence.
-Q
Queries,
Thank you. I agree that cryptography is interesting. In that context, even a (pseudo)-random sequence of bits has a function (i.e. a cryptographic key).
Querius,
More on cryptography:
From here.
Yes, your quote articulates the concept very well. Two strings of data might have the same amount of Shannon “information” (data) but it’s possible that only one of them has any functional information.
-Q
Q,
Exactly. Formally, Shannon information is the upper bound on functional information. I remember reading Abel’s paper on measuring FI in proteins. In certain parts (amino acid sites) of the molecule the measured values reached a max of log(20), which is the theoretical max provided by the Shannon model given the uniform distribution of amino acid ‘letters’. These maxima then structurally correlated with the active sites of the proteins (i.e. sites responsible for some specific chemical interaction the protein carries out).
EugeneS,
Interesting. It also makes me wonder whether there’s a contextual aspect to DNA coding. The idea is that the segment acquires additional information from the other DNA in proximity, both linear or 3D folded. And I’m not including associated epigenetic information.
I would guess you know a lot more about this than I do.
-Q
Q
Good observation. I think the real ‘meat’ is in splicing where the system decides how to actually interpret the data dynamically given some inputs from the environment. It feels like what UB talks about is only scratching the surface. ‘Design’ is written all over it. I feel sorry for those who still stick to the old paradigm for fear of the ideological bankruptcy.
Of course not.
206 EugeneS
The “materialist” Titanic is struggling to stay afloat, but it’s just a matter of time for them to sink.
And no Carpathia in sight.
What a disaster. 🙂
And much later, when a new theory that’s consistent with observed facts finally emerges, the promoters of Darwinism will glibly claim they knew all along that it was all hot air but they were just fighting to keep the fatally flawed theory afloat long enough to stave off “the creationist pirates.”
-Q