Darwinian Debating Device #17: “The Black Knight Taunt”

_{Barry Arrington
November 3, 2014

Intelligent Design

2}_{Categories
Intelligent Design}

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The essence of the “Black Knight Taunt” is to pretend overwhelming victory after suffering a crushing defeat. Here we have a classic example from a commenter named “keiths.”

In my No Bomb After 10 Years post I noted that after 10 years of debating origins I had never encountered a “science bomb” that would disabuse me of my ID position.

Amusingly, keiths insisted that he had posted just such a bomb over at The Skeptical Zone that proved that Darwinism is “trillions” of times better at explaining the data than ID. His argument failed at many levels. Yet, even more amusingly, he kept on insisting he had debunked ID after his so-called bomb had been defused by numerous commenters. See, e.g., here and here.

Here is the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

In my example, WJM lopped off the Black Knight’s arms and KF took out his legs. Yet days later he was still posting shrill comments announcing his triumph.

In the clip above Arthur gives the only response to “The Black Knight Taunt.” We pick up the scene after Arthur has cut off the knight’s arms and legs:

Black Knight: Right, I’ll do you for that!
King Arthur: You’ll what?
Black Knight: Come here!
King Arthur: What are you gonna do, bleed on me?
Black Knight: I’m invincible!
King Arthur: …You’re a loony.

Arthur rides away.

Black Knight: Oh, oh, I see! Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you! I’ll bite your legs off!

Comments

keith s:
1. You still don’t understand the difference between a nested hierarchy and an objective nested hierarchy, which means you have no idea what I am even arguing.
Nice projection. keith s is totally ignorant wrt nested hierarchies. There is no way that gradual evolution could produce an objective nested hierarchy- too many transitional forms to account for. keith s keeps ignoring that fact as if his ignorance means something. keith s, proudly ignorant of reality.Joe_{November 4, 2014
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Collin asks
If something like that were to happen, wouldn’t you say that there has been at least a soft refutation of unguided evolution?
Is there a placental mammal that exhibits more genetic similarity to marsupials than to other placental mammals?Alan Fox_{November 4, 2014
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TestAlan Fox_{November 4, 2014
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Keith, You still haven't answered my simple question. Onlookers, in post #41, I have highlighted a logical error in Keith's conclusion:
1) Unguided evolution explains X 2) A designer explains X, but also a trillion of alternatives. Therefore unguided evolution is a trillion times better as an explanation for X.
What is wrong with Keith’s conclusion? The (alleged) versatility of the designer is disjoint from the likelihood of being a cause. I have tried to explain this to Keith by presenting a comparison:
Suppose we observe a picture on a computer screen. This photo can be explained by a digital camera or by a mobile phone. Suppose that a digital camera’s sole function is taking pictures. The mobile phone can also take pictures, but has a hundred other functions. 1) a digital camera explains a picture 2) a mobile phone explains a picture, but also 100 other things. Therefore a digital camera is a 100 times better at explaining a picture. - Does the multifuntionality of the mobile phone warrant a conclusion that a digital camera is a hundred times better as an explanation for the photo on a computer screen? Does the digital camera get an even better explanation when new apps are added to the mobile phone?
This comparison makes clear that the multifunctionality (versatility) of a mobile phone does not decrease the likelihood of being a cause. Just like the (alleged) versatility of a designer does not decrease the likelihood of being a cause. What is important wrt the likelihood of being a cause is capability not versatility. Keith's request to ignore the capability question is central to his "argument".Box_{November 4, 2014
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Objective nester hierarchy is explained by unguided evolution? LOL!!!!!! Did a village lose it's idiot?Andre_{November 4, 2014
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KF, Your comment is a mess. 1. You still don't understand the difference between a nested hierarchy and an objective nested hierarchy, which means you have no idea what I am even arguing. Good luck refuting something you don't even comprehend. 2. You invoked 'islands of function' without even bothering to address the counterarguments and evidence presented here and here. 3. You invoked OOL, when I have repeatedly pointed out that my argument does not depend on naturalistic OOL. 4. You repeated an argument from WJM which has already been refuted. (Even he seems to know that. He hasn't brought it up since.) What a pitiful performance, KF. I'll bet even Barry will do better than you just did.keith s_{November 4, 2014
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F/N: It seems, predictably, we go in circles with corrected fallacious design objection arguments endlessly recirculated and declared valid and unanswered by the objectors; by the simple rhetorical device of refusing to address the corrections and/or pretending they don't exist. Patently, designers can and do design many things that follow branching tree (= nested hierarchy) architectures for one reason or another, and the just so stories of how body plans emerged in this pattern fail for lack of the required transitional forms and claimed dynamics being actually observed to have effectiveness at the relevant level of functionally specific complexity. As well as, for want of an adequate mechanism on blind chance and mechanical necessity to explain FSCO/I -- once we do not impose ideological question begging. (Where, BTW, islands of complex, specific, organised function in config spaces are for real, with the case of protein clusters in AA sequence space being a highly relevant case in point of deeply isolated fold-function domains that include a great many with a small number of proteins relatively speaking, with deep structural isolation. And where search capacity: config space size drastically trends to negligibility as complexity advances beyond 500 - 1,000 bits. Thus, only the bulk of such a space can reasonably be blindly samples for the same reason that it is so hard to find needles lost in haystacks.) Most pivotal to all this, is that for OOL, there is no existing metabolic network, there is no existing code system or set of executing machinery, there is no von Neumann self replication facility, there is no existing gated encapsulation, there is no existing set of complex proteins and organisation to function, indeed it is v hard to get to reasonable concentrations of monomers, with the chirality problem to back that up, and cross-interference from other chemicals, and just plain water. On earth there is no good reason to assume an early reducing atmosphere and there are dual problems of oxygen-poisoning on one hand and UV degradation on the other. If one tries for comets or gas giant moons, one gets into serious speculative territory. So complex are the conundrums, that Orgel and Shapiro came to mutual ruin:
[[Shapiro:] RNA's building blocks, nucleotides contain a sugar, a phosphate and one of four nitrogen-containing bases as sub-subunits. Thus, each RNA nucleotide contains 9 or 10 carbon atoms, numerous nitrogen and oxygen atoms and the phosphate group, all connected in a precise three-dimensional pattern . . . . [[S]ome writers have presumed that all of life's building could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This is not the case. A careful examination of the results of the analysis of several meteorites led the scientists who conducted the work to a different conclusion: inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . . To rescue the RNA-first concept from this otherwise lethal defect, its advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They have attempted to show that RNA and its components can be prepared in their laboratories in a sequence of carefully controlled reactions, normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth . . . . Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA . . . [[Orgel:] If complex cycles analogous to metabolic cycles could have operated on the primitive Earth, before the appearance of enzymes or other informational polymers, many of the obstacles to the construction of a plausible scenario for the origin of life would disappear . . . . It must be recognized that assessment of the feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility . . . few would believe that any assembly of minerals on the primitive Earth is likely to have promoted these syntheses in significant yield . . . . Why should one believe that an ensemble of minerals that are capable of catalyzing each of the many steps of [[for instance] the reverse citric acid cycle was present anywhere on the primitive Earth [[8], or that the cycle mysteriously organized itself topographically on a metal sulfide surface [[6]? . . . Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own . . . . The prebiotic syntheses that have been investigated experimentally almost always lead to the formation of complex mixtures. Proposed polymer replication schemes are unlikely to succeed except with reasonably pure input monomers. No solution of the origin-of-life problem will be possible until the gap between the two kinds of chemistry is closed. Simplification of product mixtures through the self-organization of organic reaction sequences, whether cyclic or not, would help enormously, as would the discovery of very simple replicating polymers. However, solutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent on “if pigs could fly” hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help.
The FSCO/I at the base of the living cell has only one empirically grounded vera causa valid causal explanation, design. So, at the root of the tree of life, absent ideological question-begging a prioris, it sits at the table as of right. Likewise, on the onward branching tree structure, we can take the typical reconstruction of our own origin as a good example of the unanswered problems lurking behind the bland assumption that blind chance and mechanical necessity adequately account for the branching tree pattern per descent with modification. For example here is Wells noting on some of these:
Most introductory biology textbooks carry draw-ings of vertebrate limbs showing similarities in their bone structures. Biologists before Darwin had noticed this sort of similarity and called it “homology,” and they attributed it to construction on a common archetype or design. In The Origin of Species, however, Darwin argued that the best explanation for homology is descent with modification, and he considered it evidence for his theory. Darwin’s followers rely on homologies to arrange fossils in branching trees that supposedly show ancestor-descendant relationships. In his 1990 book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, biologist Tim Berra compared the fossil record to a series of Corvette models: “If you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and a 1955 model, and so on, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious.” [--> the notorious Berra's blunder where he overlooked how common design accounts for descent with mods, and of course we can extend to the blunder of failing to see that for instance it is fairly easy to put vehicles into a taxonomy on keys, leading to a branching tree pattern of cars, bicycles, ships, aircraft, submarines and the like, where we can directly parallel major life forms body plan patterns by looking at the way diverse vehicles fit such a pattern, driven by commercial survival in the marketplace and technological evolution across time . . . all by design. Should we, BTW, call this one KS' blunder?] . . . . Darwin’s theory really comes into its own when it is applied to human origins. While he scarcely mentioned the topic in The Origin of Species, Darwin later wrote extensively about it in The Descent of Man. “My object,” he explained, “is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties” – even morality and religion. According to Darwin, a dog’s tendency to imagine hidden agency in things moved by the wind “would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods.” Of course, the awareness that the human body is part of nature was around long before Darwin. But Darwin was claiming much more. Like materialistic philosophers since ancient Greece, Darwin believed that human beings are nothing more than animals . . . . Accord-ing to paleoanthropologist Misia Landau, theories of human origins “far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone and in fact place a heavy burden of inter-pretation on the fossil record – a burden which is relieved by placing fossils into pre-existing narrative structures.” [--> as in, there are some big questions that seem to be begged afoot] In 1996, American Museum of Natural History Curator Ian Tattersall acknowledged that “in paleoanthropology, the patterns we perceive are as likely to result from our uncon-scious mindsets as from the evidence itself.” Arizona State University anthropologist Geoffrey Clark echoed this view in 1997 when he wrote: “We select among alternative sets of research conclusions in accordance with our biases and preconceptions.” Clark suggested that “paleoanthropology has the form but not the substance of science.” Biology students and the general public are rarely informed of the deep-seated uncertainty about human ori-gins that is reflected in these statements by scientific experts. Instead, they are simply fed the latest speculation as though it were a fact. And the speculation is typically illustrated with fanciful drawings of cave men, or pictures of human actors wearing heavy make-up.
As I went on to comment on the issue,
1 –> It is circular to define homology as resemblance due to evolutionary descent — as has often been done, e.g. Wiki: “homology is the existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures, or genes, in different species. A common example of homologous structures in evolutionary biology are the wings of bats and the arms of primates” — then present homology as if it were factual proof of evolution. 2 –> This first fails to highlight that there are ever so many structures that are held to be independently and separately derived, as with the examples of multiple origins of flight, eyes, and echolocation in bats and whales. In short close resemblance is due to ancestry, except where it isn’t. Circularity and special pleading, presented while dressed up in the lab coat. 3 –> Similarly, a major duck-dodge is being done on accounting for the origin of required FSCO/I and particularly genetic info to account for the difference. Just 500 – 1,000 bits worth . . . i.e. 250 – 500 genetic base pairs, taxes the entire capability of blind chance and mechanical necessity across the solar system or the observed cosmos. 4 –> For example it has been commonly said that we are 98% similar in genome to chimps. But 2% of 3 billion base pairs, is 6 * 10^7, or 12 mn bits. And, with reasonable population sizes and generation times, as well as population genetics factors, this would require hundreds of millions of years and up, not the six million or so that are commonly held to be available. Assuming, that there is an incremental path. 5 –> In fact, to transform an ape-like ancestor into a human requires a huge reconstructive job, starting with posture, hanging of the head on the spine, angles of bones, creating linguistic capacity and speech organs co-ordinated with such, and more. 6 –> The number of intermediate steps required is huge, especially if we realise that on empirical genetic evidence, ~ 6 – 7 co-ordinated mutations at a time is an upper empirically plausible limit. So, transitionals from the implied ancestor to both the chimp and the modern man, should dominate the fossil forms and/or still be around. They simply are not — the screaming headlines of the past 150 years starting with Neanderthal, notwithstanding. Nor is the time that would be required. (Never mind convenient distractors on chromosome fusion events and whatnot, these are just red herrings compared to the real and unanswered challenge.) 7 –> Where, just on linguistic and closely linked rational ability, until a Darwinist can explain to you how — on observed empirical evidence not just so stories full of hypotheticals — by chance speech, language, and credible reasoning ability arose and have succeeded in accounting for our minds and their capacities to know, understand, reason and so forth, as well as consciousness, s/he refutes himself every time s/he opens the mouth to speak or keys in words on a keyboard or draws a meaningful drawing . . . A rock has no dreams and GIGO limited computation critically dependent on functionally specific organisation is not equal to conscious rational thought, insight and knowledge. 8 –> the broad-brush Darwinist sequence of reptile to mammal to ape to ape-man to man then collapses for the same basic reasons. There is no credible, properly empirically grounded incrementalist account of how the required body plan transformation changes can happen by blind chance and mechanical necessity without intelligent direction, so it is a strawman caricature — an argument from resemblance that ducks the real challenge of explaining the origin of required functional information of requisite complexity on available material resources and time on the usual timelines. . . .
So, from the root up, design is available as a serious alternative. Or, it should be . . . absent major ideological question-begging and notorious impositions, sometimes quite heavy-handed and even blatantly abusive. Meanwhile, let us remember that OOL is the root of the evolutionary materialist tree of life. Without a viable mechanism to get to the root, evo mat explanatory accounts, strictly, cannot get started. At least, without begging big questions. Thereafter, they thrive by ideological imposition, as Philip Johnson cautioned:
For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them "materialists employing science." And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." [Emphasis added] . . . . The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [Emphasis added.] [The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]
Thus, the root point is that there really is no good evo mat account for the tree of life, absent ideological question begging. Why is this important? KS' whole argument pivots on such an evo mat narrative being an adequate account. Apart from question-begging -- itself a fallacy -- it simply is not. (BTW, that's why after a year of being unanswered, on prodding when I was finally able to get a composite answer together from the circle of objectors, on the warrant for the evo mat narrative, it was so patently unsatisfactory. And, further BTW, early on in that year I stood Mr Theobald and Wikipedia in for the empty chair; their cases fall apart once the question-begging circles of a priori materialist impositions are challenged.) In addition, this from WJM is worth clipping in toto:
Ultimately, keiths asks the question of IDists (to paraphrase) – “why did the designer pick just one form of life and utilize just one lineage, when it could have utilized any number of alternate, non-nested systems?” - yet, keiths fails to ask the same question of the natural forces argument – why just one form of life, why one lineage, why one neat, nested hierarchy? Keiths attempted logical argument claims to make the same assumptions about both natural and artificial causal agencies – that natural forces and design are both capable of originating life and generating the evolutionary processes and patterns we find. However, this is obviously not the only assumption keiths makes when it comes to the “natural forces” side of the argument; he assumes that natural forces could not have generated anything other than a nested hierarchy leading back to a UCA when it comes to biological life forms. He simply asserts that this is what we should expect from natural forces and makes no case for it. If we provide the same assumptions on the ID side of the argument, then we must assume any designer could not have generated anything other than a nested hierarchy leading back to a UCA when it comes to biological life forms – which means that given the same assumptions on both sides of the ledger, keiths argument fails to produce a distinction between what we should expect to find if natural forces or if design agency generated life and evolution here on earth.
So, bottomline is that (a) evo mat -- neat little for argument assumptions notwithstanding -- cannot credibly and on good empirical warrant of causal capacity account for the tree of life/world of life absent major question-begging (b) the FSCO/I that is a major feature of life forms from cells to us is known empirically to have but one observed causal explanation, design, where it is utterly no coincidence in this context of debates that the number of observed cases in point establishing that causal connexion lies in the trillions. (c) As WJM et al pointed out, even if there were some mechanism for chance and necessity in Darwin's pond or the like to create life forms, there would be no good reason to see just one hierarchy on the assumptions of evo mat, i.e. the same knife cuts both ways even on KS' assumptions . . . it cannot distinguish apart from an unwarranted stipulation that evo mat will produce a tree pattern. (d) All along, it is commonly known that designers, if they wish to can and do use designs that fall into tree pattern hierarchies, so this issue would be inherently incapable of distinguishing design from non-design on basic inductive reasoning, where one goes for that which makes a difference between two hypotheses. (e) so, KS has assumed away the lack of evidence for the ability of evo mat mechanisms to get to OOL and thence the tree of life pattern, has failed to adequately answer the empirically grounded point that FSCO/I is such that the only (and routinely) observed cause is design, and he has put up a proposed issue about what designers can or would do or would be likely to do that runs counter tot he fact that designers do create sets of things that fall into branching tree taxonomy patterns and indeed can show descent with modifications in the context of an initial "sudden" appearance . . . the family of Corvettes, Berra's blunder notwithstanding, being a clear case in point. The actual fossil record interpreted on the usual timelines, of course, fits in with sudden appearances of basic forms, modifications and elaborations, then disappearance and/or continuity into the modern world. The argument by KS fails, for multiple reasons. But, predictably, the underlying a priori ideological framework will prop it up and it will be repeated endlessly. However, there is enough for the serious minded onlooker to spot the key unmet issues in the confidently presented "bomb" argument. Later, the real world calls. KFkairosfocus_{November 3, 2014
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The link above is stating your case..... Take note the tactic is exactly the same as what you employ..... Character assassination instead of stating the facts..... Why is this? Because letting of Darwinism is letting go of atheism.... and you lot just can't imagine that......Andre_{November 3, 2014
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Perhaps Enkidu et al might want to give this a read? http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/49/6/718.fullAndre_{November 3, 2014
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Enkidu What does rain have to do with the falsification of sexual selection? The failed Bateman experiments are not the only falsification there are other sources too.... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13535-have-peacock-tails-lost-their-sexual-allure.html But still the question remain, how does falsification of Darwinian sexual selection tie in with rain?Andre_{November 3, 2014
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Enkidu:
That’s right Andre. It didn’t rain last night on my street so that means all rain everywhere is falsified. Go have a cookie.
Rich gave the last one to Joe. Sorry, Andre.keith s_{November 3, 2014
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Keith an argument that does not address the actual premise to discuss is self-defeating. Even where you convince all at UD that what you said is true, you still did not address the Theory of Intelligent Design. You none the less have to start all over again for specifically "intelligent cause" type reciprocal cause not "a designer" religious entity that you operationally defined instead of a scientifically testable model with theory of operation to explain how the model works (or other reliable scientific method). Science has ways to separate out your religious bias, too. And for all our sake I have to make sure it's not wasted. At this point Keith you can at least say it's not all your fault. But your ID enablers only have to stop enabling, to make it clear that your argument was already defeated by not being precise enough for science. I would seriously hurry up and lighten up, before the weird scientific ways of ID drive you totally nuts: Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIYiGA_rIlsGary S. Gaulin_{November 3, 2014
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Andre We know Darwinian sexual selection has been falsified That's right Andre. It didn't rain last night on my street so that means all rain everywhere is falsified. Go have a cookie.Enkidu_{November 3, 2014
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Collin I wouldn’t expect a certain placental to have more genomic similarity to a certain marsupial than to other placentals. If something like that were to happen, wouldn’t you say that there has been at least a soft refutation of unguided evolution? Of course not. Finding the odd as yet unexplained outlier among a field of millions of pieces of consilient positive evidence doesn't make all those millions of pieces suddenly vanish. If you find major discrepancies across the board in all the consilence then you may have something. But you don't.Enkidu_{November 3, 2014
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Collin Although I have not really falsified evolution, I do note that whenever a qualified scientist expresses doubts about evolution, it does not get much of a peep in the news. BA77 quoted a highly respected French microbiologists. Also, in another UD post, a world-famous chemist, James M. Tour, says no one really understands how evolution is supposed to work, and there isn’t much news about it because he happens to believe in God. https://uncommondescent.com.....evolution/ When John Sanford, brilliant, highly-published botanist goes from darwinist, to theistic evolutionist, to IDer to young earth creationist and cites evidence in support, it also seems to not make ripples. That's because what a scientist no matter how qualified merely opines doesn't matter to the scientific community. All that matters is what he/she can demonstrate. Results that are written up, reviewed, and published. Ba77's buddies didn't demonstrate any problems with evolutionary theory. Tour is a chemist, basically no better than a layman when discussing genetics and biology. Sanford is the sad case of a once brilliant man who has slipped so far his current mental competence has been questioned. His evidence for YEC is atrociously bad, so much so that most of the scientific community pities him and doesn't want to embarrass him. One of many reasons ID has so little respect with scientists is because ID proponents are always bypassing proper scientific methodology in their political pursuits. All they do is write popular press books full of misrepresentations, half-truths, and outright lies. They never go through the hard work of getting their work critically vetted by other experts. The science community knows ID doesn't have a technical leg to stand on. ID knows it too.Enkidu_{November 3, 2014
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Hi Keith S I highly recommend this course, it will hopefully cure you from the unguided evolution did it blinkers you have on.... https://www.coursera.org/course/pcdAndre_{November 3, 2014
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Endiku, funny thing..... We know Darwinian sexual selection has been falsified, when they redid the Bateman experiments there was no evidence. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/29/11740.abstract Just one example...... there are many more..... PCD is of course one of those mechanism that Darwinian evolution will never ever be able to explain..... Can you try?Andre_{November 3, 2014
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Enkidu, I wouldn't expect a certain placental to have more genomic similarity to a certain marsupial than to other placentals. If something like that were to happen, wouldn't you say that there has been at least a soft refutation of unguided evolution?Collin_{November 3, 2014
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Keiths, I appreciate the quotation to science. I will take a look at it, no joke. Enkidu, Although I have not really falsified evolution, I do note that whenever a qualified scientist expresses doubts about evolution, it does not get much of a peep in the news. BA77 quoted a highly respected French microbiologists. Also, in another UD post, a world-famous chemist, James M. Tour, says no one really understands how evolution is supposed to work, and there isn't much news about it because he happens to believe in God. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-world-famous-chemist-tells-the-truth-theres-no-scientist-alive-today-who-understands-macroevolution/ When John Sanford, brilliant, highly-published botanist goes from darwinist, to theistic evolutionist, to IDer to young earth creationist and cites evidence in support, it also seems to not make ripples. I must conclude that the prevailing paradigm is resistant to change. So we wouldn't expect much news anyway.Collin_{November 3, 2014
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In circles we go! Keith S please will you show us how unguided processes created a guided process to stop unguided processes from happening? Please Keith.......Andre_{November 3, 2014
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Collin at 81 said: We’d expect the tree of life by genome to match with the tree of life by phenome. Why in the world would you expect to see that? What would be your explanation for the remarkably different forms of the closely related Hawaiian Silver Sword Alliance? We don’t. Evolution = falsified. That's amazing. You're the third UD poster in the last 24 hours who has falsified evolution! Yet there's not a peep on the news or in the scientific literature anywhere! You guys need to hire Baghdad Bob as your PR man. :)Enkidu_{November 3, 2014
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Regarding this part of comment 87:
...and to reduce this to the order of 10-50 trees is analogous to an accuracy of measurement of approximately one part in 106.
The 106 should read 10^6, but the cut and paste didn't preserve the caret.keith s_{November 3, 2014
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logically_speaking,
Each method infers from existing data, each has strengths and weaknesses, each has underlying assumptions, and they are highly similar [only] when judged statistically. All this seems totally subjective to me, in other words they are using subjective means to try to get to an objective end. Is that possible? One last thing, why are phylogenies only SIMULAR statistically? If an objective nested hierarchy is true they would all be THE SAME. Think about it, there is only ONE HISTORY OF LIFE.
See the second part of my reply to Collin in #87. They're not expected to match exactly, but the degree to which they do match is extraordinary.keith s_{November 3, 2014
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The real weakness to Keith’s argument is that the pattern seen in life is not what we’d expect with unguided evolution. We’d expect the tree of life by genome to match with the tree of life by phenome. We don’t. Evolution = falsified.
In my opinion the science of phylogenetics is not able to make reliable predictions that pertain to "intelligence" and "intelligent cause", which to explain how they work requires cognitive science and systems biology.Gary S. Gaulin_{November 3, 2014
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Collin:
The real weakness to Keith’s argument is that the pattern seen in life is not what we’d expect with unguided evolution. We’d expect the tree of life by genome to match with the tree of life by phenome. We don’t. Evolution = falsified.
Theobald:
So, how well do phylogenetic trees from morphological studies match the trees made from independent molecular studies? There are over 1038 different possible ways to arrange the 30 major taxa represented in Figure 1 into a phylogenetic tree (see Table 1.3.1; Felsenstein 1982; Li 1997, p. 102). In spite of these odds, the relationships given in Figure 1, as determined from morphological characters, are completely congruent with the relationships determined independently from cytochrome c molecular studies (for consensus phylogenies from pre-molecular studies see Carter 1954, Figure 1, p. 13; Dodson 1960, Figures 43, p. 125, and Figure 50, p. 150; Osborn 1918, Figure 42, p. 161; Haeckel 1898, p. 55; Gregory 1951, Fig. opposite title page; for phylogenies from the early cytochrome c studies see McLaughlin and Dayhoff 1973; Dickerson and Timkovich 1975, pp. 438-439). Speaking quantitatively, independent morphological and molecular measurements such as these have determined the standard phylogenetic tree, as shown in Figure 1, to better than 38 decimal places. This phenomenal corroboration of universal common descent is referred to as the "twin nested hierarchy". This term is something of a misnomer, however, since there are in reality multiple nested hierarchies, independently determined from many sources of data.
Also, many IDers get hung up on the fact that cladograms don't always match perfectly. But they're not expected to always match perfectly. Theobald:
When two independently determined trees mismatch by some branches, they are called "incongruent". In general, phylogenetic trees may be very incongruent and still match with an extremely high degree of statistical significance (Hendy et al. 1984; Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986; Steel and Penny 1993). Even for a phylogeny with a small number of organisms, the total number of possible trees is extremely large. For example, there are about a thousand different possible phylogenies for only six organisms; for nine organisms, there are millions of possible phylogenies; for 12 organisms, there are nearly 14 trillion different possible phylogenies (Table 1.3.1; Felsenstein 1982; Li 1997, p. 102). Thus, the probability of finding two similar trees by chance via two independent methods is extremely small in most cases. In fact, two different trees of 16 organisms that mismatch by as many as 10 branches still match with high statistical significance (Hendy et al. 1984, Table 4; Steel and Penny 1993). For more information on the statistical significance of trees that do not match exactly, see "Statistics of Incongruent Phylogenetic Trees". The stunning degree of match between even the most incongruent phylogenetic trees found in the biological literature is widely unappreciated, mainly because most people (including many biologists) are unaware of the mathematics involved (Bryant et al. 2002; Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986). Penny and Hendy have performed a series of detailed statistical analyses of the significance of incongruent phylogenetic trees, and here is their conclusion: "Biologists seem to seek the 'The One Tree' and appear not to be satisfied by a range of options. However, there is no logical difficulty in having a range of trees. There are 34,459,425 possible [unrooted] trees for 11 taxa (Penny et al. 1982), and to reduce this to the order of 10-50 trees is analogous to an accuracy of measurement of approximately one part in 106." (Penny and Hendy 1986, p. 414)
keith s_{November 3, 2014
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Collin,
William J. Murray, may I make a suggestion? Let’s have BA77 write up his most epic post ever. And then invite him to post it 5 times after every nonsensical comment. Let’s see how long this thread goes after that.
People are already used to scrolling past spamagain77's effluvia, so I don't think it will make a difference.keith s_{November 3, 2014
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PCD refutes you Keith....... You need to explain it using unguided processes Keith..... can you Keith?Andre_{November 3, 2014
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Keith S, "If my argument is incorrect, there must be at least one fatal flaw in it". Here's one (of the many), Douglas Theobald, Ph.D. Is a biochemist, not a biologist, so he is writing out of his field. Also his article is not in a "respectable peer reviewed publication". Lol sorry, even though that is all true please take it a a joke. I was going to give a serious answer but I think this bomb stuff has been beaten to death, so because my heart wasn't into finding another flaw in your argument (I already pointed out some problems with Theobald's Consensus Phylogenetic Tree), I got distracted with other stuff on the Internet and found some sites to bookmark, including Joes own blog. However having said all that I want to bring this point out, Theobald says, "Each method attempts to infer a phylogeny from existing data, and each has its respective strengths and weaknesses. Years of empirical testing and simulation have shown that, in general, these different algorithms, each with very different underlying assumptions, converge on trees that are highly similar when judged statistically". Each method infers from existing data, each has strengths and weaknesses, each has underlying assumptions, and they are highly similar [only] when judged statistically. All this seems totally subjective to me, in other words they are using subjective means to try to get to an objective end. Is that possible? One last thing, why are phylogenies only SIMULAR statistically? If an objective nested hierarchy is true they would all be THE SAME. Think about it, there is only ONE HISTORY OF LIFE.logically_speaking_{November 3, 2014
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William J. Murray, may I make a suggestion? Let's have BA77 write up his most epic post ever. And then invite him to post it 5 times after every nonsensical comment. Let's see how long this thread goes after that.Collin_{November 3, 2014
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How long are we going to have to wade through this unrelenting nonsense?
Unless a miracle happens I would estimate at least 10,000 more comments.Gary S. Gaulin_{November 3, 2014
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