From The Scientist: Genome Reveals Clues to Giraffes’ “Blatantly Strange” Body Shape

Apparently, I would be ill-advised to hold my breath for an apology from Fred Hickson after demonstrating that he was wrong about 20 cm hydra. -Q Querius

Fred Hickson, You're also ignoring the reference I gave you indicating that 20 cm long hydra have been observed. So, your hyperskepticism bites the dust. I think you owe me an "apparently you're right after all" acknowledgment. -Q Querius

Re Evolution by Gene Duplication, never mind. I'm having a look via Google books. Fred Hickson

Querius What is in Ohno's book that can't be found in his published papers? Re hydra, I live in a very dry region. There is no potential hydra habitat near me, so raw material is unavailable even if I saw a point in trying to reproduce your result. I'm not convinced that you achieved anything other than a favorable niche environment that allowed your hydra to flourish (not that wasn't an impressive thing for an eleven year old) so I shan't be reinventing your wheel. Thanks for info on the microscope. Unfortunately, I have complete loss of vision in one eye so it would be wasted on me. Fred Hickson

New fossils found add to complexity in the evolution of the giraffe https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01565-7 Fred Hickson

Lieutenant Commander Data @138, The abiogenesis problem is exactly why Darwinists have to separate origin of life considerations from evolution. There are those who are trying to extend evolution to all processes in the universe, even using the term, "evolution" for star formation, etc. as if there were some sort of natural selection involved. ET @140, Exactly right! Fred Hickson, Have you punted on 20 cm hydra, Susumu Ohno's Evolution by Gene Duplication, and your skepticism on my experimental results? Since you claim you still enjoy hydra, why not try my experiment for yourself? I also recommend getting a binocular dissection (aka inspection) microscope. Mine is an amazingly sweet B&L 10.5-45X ZOOM with circular-lighted stage. They're not cheap, but it all depends on one's priorities. -Q Querius

Transposition and HGT are not the same thing. Transposition is within the same organism and HGT is between two different organisms. ET

I think you’ve got your lines crossed. I think Fred meant that Transposition & HGT are the same thing, so writing “Transposition” is a duplication of the HGT concept.

That's correct, Bob. Exactly what I meant. Fred Hickson

Abiogenesis is the magical word . Duplication, HGT etc. have different meaning in the case of materialistic abiogenesis and totally different meaning in the case of intelligently designed life. Code in cell points out to ID abiogenesis hypothesis so all the darwinist struggle with duplications, HGT, mutation, selection is USELESS . Lieutenant Commander Data

Querius @ 131 -

Fred Hickson @128,

Transposition is a synonym for HGT, so that’s a duplication.

No, it isn’t. Genome duplication is not a general description, but specifically means to massively increase the size of the genome. Look up Susumu Ohno’s 2R hypothesis.

I think you've got your lines crossed. I think Fred meant that Transposition & HGT are the same thing, so writing "Transposition" is a duplication of the HGT concept. FWIW, most of the processes in the list (from post 126) are ways that variation can be generated, so they form the variation that selection can start to act on. But one way that gene duplication speeds up adaptation is by providing copies, so mutation in one copy won't affect the function of the other copy. Bob O'H

On endosymbiosis of Chlorella spcs. in H. viridis, here's some amazing work being done, extracting the algae, getting to grow independently and sequencing genomes to establish that endosymbiosis has arisen multiple times in green hydra. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328970700_Endosymbiotic_green_algae_in_European_Hydra_strains_show_quantitative_difference_on_morphological_and_isoenzyme_level Fred Hickson

I see Ohno's book is 120$. Fred Hickson

Fred Hickson @132, 133, No, the hydra, were originally purchased through a biology supply used by the school district. And no, at the time I thought their tentacles were much thinner when elongated, which I described as similar to spider silk. As I said, this is all described in a venerable biology reference. If you want to duplicate my experiment, just follow my description. Since you don't do your own homework, it took me only a couple of minutes to find this website:

Hydra has a cylindrical, radially symmetric body from 2 to 20 mm in length. It is visible to the naked eyes when fully extended. Their tentacles may extend much longer – some species of green hydra may measure about 5 cm to 20 cm when extended. The body of a hydra may retract (while sensing a danger), making the organism appear shorter and rounded. https://rsscience.com/hydra/

However, the hydra I worked with weren't green (i.e. symbiotic with algae). Isn't it odd that hydra should be called "polyps" since that's simply their form as found in other organisms exhibiting alternation of generations? After all, we don't normally call sea jellies "medusa."

Re genome duplication, you’re talking about polyploidy, Querius.

I guess you didn't run across Dr. Ohno's book, Evolution by Gene Duplication, right? -Q Querius

Re genome duplication, you're talking about polyploidy, Querius. Fred Hickson

If you had any interest in hydra, you’d be making your own tank as I described and trying it for yourself. But you didn’t even consider this. Ask yourself why.

If I didn't have any interest I wouldn't have bothered asking for clarification. As a kid, prolly 9 or 10, I recall looking at pondlife, and once coming across a hydra polyp attached to a plant stem. Prior to that moment I had no idea such things existed. I was content to just watch it for a while then go home and tell my parents about it They weren't much interested. Anyway, you seem to be telling me your super-hydra became only ten times more massive by elongating without thickening. The mystery deepens. Perhaps you discovered a strain of mutants. I'm sorry my curiosity has made you uncomfortable. Happy to drop it if you prefer. Fred Hickson

Fred Hickson @128,

Transposition is a synonym for HGT, so that’s a duplication.

No, it isn't. Genome duplication is not a general description, but specifically means to massively increase the size of the genome. Look up Susumu Ohno's 2R hypothesis. It's also known as Genome Multiplication or Whole Genome Duplication. -Q Querius

Fred Hickson @127,

Querius, I’m still struggling to process the idea that Hydra vulgaris polyps grew a thousand times larger in your care than elsewhere ever. They’re a well-studied organism with some fascinating features. But you, uniquely, achieving this result?

1. First of all, you might want to check your math. 30 mm is 3 cm. 20 – 25 cm is only a factor of seven or eight in length. I’d imagine their mass remained about the same because their tentacles became extremely thin, almost like glistening spider silk when illuminated with a flashlight against the black paper behind the tank. 2. Hydra have been obviously poorly documented due to sloppy science books written by careless authors. 3. No, I did NOT write that I uniquely achieved this result. I wrote that this information was noted in a venerable biology reference book, but apparently forgotten. Otherwise, as a high school sophomore, I would have attempted to have my results published with photographic evidence. Your skepticism is typical of the orthodoxy that crushes all curiosity and the spirit of scientific inquiry among students. The rotting carcass of biology is a giant Latin vocabulary test entombed in multiple choice tests without the delights of natural history or direct observation. If you had any interest in hydra, you’d be making your own tank as I described and trying it for yourself. But you didn’t even consider this. Ask yourself why. -Q Querius

Natural selection doesn't act at all. Evos don't even understand the concepts they try to defend. And according "Waiting for TWO Mutations", gene duplication is not a blind watchmaker mechanism. The duplicated gene needs a new binding site. And then it takes specific mutations to get a functional change to the protein. ET

This has already been done. They are • Transposition • Horizontal gene transfer • Epigenetics • Symbiogenesis • Genome duplication Any one of these are orders of magnitude more effective and speedier than incremental random mutation and filtering.

An odd list. Transposition is a synonym for HGT, so that's a duplication. The only controversial item is epigenetics, as epigenetic heritability does not last over more than a few generations. Selection acts on all products of change. Fred Hickson

Querius, I'm still struggling to process the idea that Hydra vulgaris polyps grew a thousand times larger in your care than elsewhere ever. They're a well-studied organism with some fascinating features. But you, uniquely, achieving this result? Fred Hickson

Fred Hickson,

30 mm seems about as big as they get according to any source I’ve looked at. Increasing that from 1? to 10? is a thousand-fold increase in mass. This would be fascinating news to biologists.

Yep, and that’s about the size of a Petrie dish as observed by researchers lacking any initiative or curiosity, and mindlessly copied by textbook authors solely motivated by money. But it’s not news! It’s a forgotten observation apparently recorded in a venerable biology reference book. Otherwise, I would have published my observations as a high school sophomore despite a disinterested biology teacher.

Of course, the big next step is to be the first to propose a better mechanism for what we observe.

This has already been done. They are • Transposition • Horizontal gene transfer • Epigenetics • Symbiogenesis • Genome duplication Any one of these are orders of magnitude more effective and speedier than incremental random mutation and filtering. -Q Querius

Hickson, do you recall, how i asked you, what makes Darwinists so trustworthy ? (You replied with something about loaded question ... And no, i don't beat my wife ... it is somewhat disturbing that 'beating a wife' was the first thing you thought of ) I put this question, because i think it is a very relevant question ... Because Darwinists seem to be always wrong ... you know: "...current concepts are reviewed..." "...uprooting current thinking...." "...latest findings contradict the current dogma...." “… it challenges a long-held theory…” “… it upends a common view…” "... in contrast to the decades-long dogma ..." “… it needs a rethink … ” “… the findings are surprising and unexpected …. ” “… it shakes up the dogma … ” “… earlier than thought…” “… younger than thought….” “… smarter than thought ….” “… more complex than thought ….” Today, another one was published, and sounds pretty serious:

Study suggests that most of our evolutionary trees could be wrong Scientists say convergent evolution is much more common than previously thought https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/study-suggests-that-most-of-our-evolutionary-trees-could-be-wrong/

Most of our evolutionary trees could be wrong ????? So Hickson, seriously, what makes Darwinists so trustworthy ? martin_r

Genes to proteins via transcription and translation. Error detection and correction throughout the process. But that is moot as most nucleotide changes do not have any effect on the protein. Proteins can usually handle amino acid changes. When the substitution does alter the protein, it results in a loss of function. Caveat- opsin genes are miraculously tunable to react to different wavelengths of light. So, realizing this, evolutionists have switched to the "same genes used differently" approach. Meaning it is all about how, when and where those genes are expressed, that produced the bulk of the diversity of life, ie those "endless forms most beautiful". Except that has completely fallen on its face, too. Now they just wash, rinse and repeat. ET

Querius

a self-organization ratchet through random occurrences filtered through [random] environmental [variables]

That's right. Random mutations supposedly have to become fixed in niches which are also changing due to random effects. Every new feature creates random changes in food-supply, competition, conditions for offspring to survive, temperature, humidity, geographic spaces - as well as disease and disasters. Silver Asiatic

These are popular-level videos from the DI and failed attempts to refute them. Whale Evolution: Good Evidence for Darwin? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq_oYftA2ow Whale Evolution: A Rebuttal (PZ Myers and others responded to the first one) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ErLGxrSdw0 Whale Evolution: A Further Rebuttal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCM1MjEFvqE The bottom line is similar to Behe's analysis and the ID work done in several areas - there's not enough time for the mutations required. Silver Asiatic

chuck:

Worse, it is misleading insofar as natural selection is not a “blind, material, unintelligent natural cause.”

And yet that is how evolutionary biologists describe it. ET

CD

natural selection is not a “blind, material, unintelligent natural cause.”

You could be right that natural selection is not a cause of anything. That's a philosophical distinction. But evolution is blind, unguided and unintelligent. That's not controversial.

As the term suggests, natural selection is highly selective and biased towards organisms that demonstrate superior fitness vis a vis their ecological niche.

There is no selector in natural selection - so it's not highly selective. "Fitness for their niche" is incoherent given that organisms themselves create the niche. It's like saying they have "fitness for survival". An interesting area for research is "maladaption" (as below "prevalent in evolution") - which contradicts the idea that selection is biased towards fitness and just proves to me that much of the evolution-industry is a scam at worst and a joke at best.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6691215/ Evolutionary biologists tend to approach the study of the natural world within a framework of adaptation, inspired perhaps by the power of natural selection to produce fitness advantages that drive population persistence and biological diversity. In contrast, evolution has rarely been studied through the lens of adaptation's complement, maladaptation. This contrast is surprising because maladaptation is a prevalent feature of evolution: population trait values are rarely distributed optimally; local populations often have lower fitness than imported ones; populations decline; and local and global extinctions are common. Yet we lack a general framework for understanding maladaptation; for instance in terms of distribution, severity, and dynamics. Similar uncertainties apply to the causes of maladaptation.

Silver Asiatic

Again, the non-random element of natural selection nis just that not all variants have the same chance of being eliminated. That Fred ignores that fact shows that he cannot discuss this intelligently.

Of course, the big next step is to be the first to propose a better mechanism for what we observe.

Better than what? You can't propose a testable mechanism capable of producing the transformations required. ET

Umm, chuck- there isn't any naturalistic mechanism capable of producing whales from populations of terrestrial mammals. ET

SA/101 states:

The most significant work that ID has done has been to show that whale morphology shows evidence of intelligent design and that blind, material, unintelligent natural causes could not be the explanation of the origin of whales.

Whales are apparently now part of the conversation, and the quoted statement is indicative of extravagant claims for ID that when scrutinized, show that there is "no there there." Given that whales are one of the best documented and understood examples of vertebrate evolution, statements like "ID.....shows that blind, material, unintelligent natural causes could not be the explanation of the origin of whales," say absolutely nothing about natural selection. Worse, it is misleading insofar as natural selection is not a "blind, material, unintelligent natural cause." The phrase is a potpourri of redundancy, apparently for rhetorical effect. As the term suggests, natural selection is highly selective and biased towards organisms that demonstrate superior fitness vis a vis their ecological niche. We can directly trace whale evolution from its divergence from a common ancestor with hippos ~56 mya. (See e.g., https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-whales-evolve-73276956/) Where is this "most significant work" ID has done re whale morphology, peer reviewed or otherwise? Where is this great body of ID work on whales? Likewise, where is all the disproof of natural selection as the mechanism of whale evolution? chuckdarwin

And if you can swallow a self-organization ratchet through random occurrences filtered through environmental and reproductive advantages...

Excellent, Querius. You at least mention the non-random element in evolution. You don't have to swallow it, but you are now able to criticize it more intelligently. Of course, the big next step is to be the first to propose a better mechanism for what we observe. Fred Hickson

OK, now I see my disconnect. mm / cm ET

Wow. Q was discussing hydras and FredAlan is discussing polyps. Does anyone else see the disconnect?

Fred is referring to the cnidarian species Hydra vulgaris, commonly known as freshwater polyps. Fred Hickson

By the way, how did you Hickson like my blog?

I already replied to that when you first asked. Fred Hickson

Wow. Q was discussing hydras and FredAlan is discussing polyps. Does anyone else see the disconnect? ET

Yes, it could be that Fred is not Alan Fox. But the evidence says that Fred is Alan Fox. So, if Fred isn't Alan, then Fred is doing a great impersonation of Alan ET

No, they were 20-25 cm (~8-10 inches) in total length, mostly the length of their tentacles.

I'm struggling to process this information, Querius, mainly due to the cube/square law. There's quite a bit in the literature about variation in polyp size and growth and the factors that affect it. 30 mm seems about as big as they get according to any source I've looked at. Increasing that from 1" to 10" is a thousand-fold increase in mass. This would be fascinating news to biologists. Fred Hickson

Fred – why don’t you just tell us who you were previously? It was clear that you were a former commenter here from your first postings.

If that is clear there should be no need. The norm here is pseudonymity and I'm happy to go along with the norm. Fred Hickson

Silver Asiatic @ 107, Yes. And if you can swallow a self-organization ratchet through random occurrences filtered through environmental and reproductive advantages, you can pretty much choke down everything else with liberal use of the coulda, mighta, and musta rationalizations. -Q Querius

Martin - yes, want to make it seem that way. The first trick is to say that anyone who doubts the theory obviously doesn't understand it. The first principle of evolutionary theory is "you must believe it is true". After that, everything works out very well for them. Silver Asiatic

SA,

Oh yes – and mutations are what built the proofreading and repair mechanisms to protect the organism against mutations

This was beautiful ... And we creationists/ID folks are the stupid ones, right ? martin_r

Fred

But the “science is baloney” seems a bit of a non sequitur.

This may explain why there's miscommunication at times. Here I'm just pointing to text - not the science. Just an exercise in reading for what was intended and what was there. First, Querius never said "science is baloney". Of course, we can paraphrase and summarize - that's fine. But what he actually said was "the baloney science" as was presented in his school textbook. It was just one, doctrinaire 'recipe' given for producing the hydras. The fact that the hydras starved to death using that method provide that particular science was baloney, and his own ingenuity, using some good science, helped the hydra to thrive. The textbooks will continue to give the less-effective method until someone corrects it. So this is just to point out ... maybe due to haste or misunderstanding ID motives or some other reason - but you completely misread what he said there. You did the same with me in your comment "God doesn't need puny ID". No, there wasn't a question mark on that - it was an assertion as if fact. So, sometimes I don't know what you're saying. Silver Asiatic

Fred Hickson @96,

Querius, you commented in that thread.

It brings up the interesting questions of consciousness and apparent free will. Many years ago, the General Electric Corporate Research & Development worked on artificial synapses and now, there's a software approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4nRCC9TwQ The programming in this case isn't hard-wired walking, but in the artificial learning. Same thing with Alpha-Zero that's clearly plays the best chess on the planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g9SlVdv1PY Note that intelligent minds programmed Alpha Zero to "evolve" its chess game by trial, error, and learning. This is similar to the role of epigenetics in organisms. Alpha Zero didn't program itself, and I would contend that neither did DNA or epigenetics. -Q Querius

Fred Hickson @94,

Is 25cm a typo? Did you mean 25mm?

No, they were 20-25 cm (~8-10 inches) in total length, mostly the length of their tentacles. It would be interesting to see what their maximum lengths might have reached if not limited by the diameter of the tank. If you want to repeat my experiment, keep the tank in a shady spot. Black paper behind it makes it easier to count them and see the lengths of their tentacles. -Q Querius

Fred - why don't you just tell us who you were previously? It was clear that you were a former commenter here from your first postings. Silver Asiatic

So how does the ID movement address the morphology and distribution of current species of whales and the fossil evidence found so far?

The most significant work that ID has done has been to show that whale morphology shows evidence of intelligent design and that blind, material, unintelligent natural causes could not be the explanation of the origin of whales. Silver Asiatic

martin_r

mutations ‘overlooked’ by all those checkpoints, proofreadings, repairs, genetic recombination etc, those ones created millions of species

Yes, exactly. Overlooked, blocked and if missed, the "creative work" they did is repaired and not allowed to do their magic. So why do the checkpoints, proofreading and repair mechanisms exist in the first place? Because the creative genius of mutations is so destructive that the organism cannot survive without them. Oh yes - and mutations are what built the proofreading and repair mechanisms to protect the organism against mutations. This is all supposed to make sense and be perfectly obvious to everyone. Silver Asiatic

FH

Why not?

Because their attempt to refute that was completely taken apart and that's a signal for them to not reply any further. Silver Asiatic

So how does the ID movement address the morphology and distribution of current species of whales and the fossil evidence found so far?

We are still waiting on how evolution by means of blind and mindless processes did it. But you, being an equivocator, just refuses to understand what is being debated. ID explains it as living organisms were intelligently designed with the information and ability to adapt and evolve. ET

Alan Fox is one of two or three people who promote the "niche environment is the designer" trope. He, like you, has only repeated the claim and never supported it. He, like you, equates evolution with evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. He, like you, refuses to understand that Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution. Meaning he, like you, is willfully ignorant of Intelligent Design and what evolutionists say. ET

Re Alan Fox Site Search (site:uncommondescent.com Alan Fox) got me this as first item: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/giving-alan-fox-a-chance-to-set-the-record-straight/ Querius, you commented in that thread. Fred Hickson

Hydra are indeed cool! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydra_(genus) Fred Hickson

PS @ Querius Is 25cm a typo? Did you mean 25mm? Fred Hickson

Querius I'm impressed. Both at your experimental skills at eleven and at your flexibility. "If it ain't working, try somethin' else". But the "science is baloney" seems a bit of a non sequitur. Your description is of an excellent bit of science. Fred Hickson

Martin_r @90,

silly me … everybody knows, the deeper you dive the more females will like you …

Exactly. It doesn't matter how silly the speculation is--after all, it's just a speculation on something that's "not yet completely understood"--there's never any admission of ignorance. Researchers once found (no, I don't have the reference) that the frank admission of scientific ignorance to students created more interest in science disciplines. It presented a mystery that needed solving rather than revealing a weakness that might cause students to lose "faith" in science. Here's an example. When I was in high school, I thought hydra were cool. They were like some kind of mini-monsters. As a project, I tried to raise them according to the instructions--in a small covered Petrie dish with distilled water and a few drops of some chemical to discourage algae, I think. I introduced some daphnia for their food as the instructions indicated, and I waited for the carnage to begin. I was in high school, remember. But the hydra seemed to be afraid of them, withdrawing their tentacles when they came into contact. The hydra started getting smaller every day. The instructions said that hydra will sometimes go into "depression" for reasons not yet completed understood, but to try doing some things I don't remember. But they kept getting smaller, like little blobs and then disappeared. I was determined, so I made some hypotheses: - Hydra don't normally eat daphnia. - The hydra weren't "depressed" but rather they simply starved. - Distilled water isn't natural. - The Petrie dishes were too small. So . . . I cut the top off a large glass jug, filled it with pond water, added elodea along with daphnia and checked them every day. The results were astonishing! The hydra absolutely thrived! They reproduced mainly asexually by budding and their lengths, body and tentacles together, reached 20-25 cm, crisscrossing each other across the circular tank. Their tentacles were extremely thin and sparkly. They rarely withdrew their tentacles except when some wild daphnia crashed into them. I never saw any daphnia being ensnared, though I suppose it could be made to happen for biology text photos. I kept records of their increase in population stopping at 100 because it became too tedious. My conclusion was that the hydra were most likely feeding on protozoans. I learned a lot about observation, making hypotheses (although I changed several variables, not just one), and not just accepting what the instructions and a biology book claimed. My biology teacher also loved my experiment because it enabled him to trade a virtually endless supply of hydra all over the district for other lab stuff he needed. Of course, he never shared my secret. To this day, I still think hydra are cool and I still challenge baloney science. -Q Querius

So how does the ID movement address the morphology and distribution of current species of whales and the fossil evidence found so far? Does it explain it? Or is it just "evolution sucks" and let's beat up those straw men"? Who's Alan Fox, btw? Google is no help. Fred Hickson

Q, silly me ... everybody knows, the deeper you dive the more females will like you ... martin_r

Martin and ET, You'll get no shortage of mighta/coulda/musta responses on how whales musta kept diving deeper for food or mighta been trying to get rid of parasites or coulda been engaged in dominance displays at extreme depths. -Q Querius

Hickson, and exactly what does the science of biochemistry have to do with the just-so story-telling of Darwinian evolution?

"In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all." - Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 "Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. In the peer-reviewed literature, the word "evolution" often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for "evolution" some other word – "Buddhism," "Aztec cosmology," or even "creationism." I found that the substitution never touched the paper's core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.,,, Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology." - Philip S. Skell - (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. - Why Do We Invoke Darwin? - 2005 http://www.discovery.org/a/2816 Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530 “... another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness... Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling... it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.…” — Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism - The New Atlantis, Fall 2012

bornagain77

Talking about whales ... I never understood biologists, why should something voluntarily dive into a depth of extreme pressure which destroys everything (unless it was designed to withstand such a pressure)... martin_r

No one at Biologos has any idea how terrestrial mammals evolved into whales. ET

A biologist, a biochemist or a Fred Hickson ... does not matter All of you guys don’t understand what are you talking about (when talking about design)... By the way, how did you Hickson like my blog? martin_r

A biologist, a biochemist or a Fred Hickson ... does not matter All of you guys don’t understand what are you talking about (when talking about design) martin_r

After all, he is a biologist, i am an engineer.

Michael Behe is a biochemist though he hasn't published a scientific paper in the last decade. Engineers are fine people. Fred Hickson

I don’t think we’ll hear another response from the Darwinian critics.

Why not? That's the first time I've seen that video. Who is it intended for? If its purpose is to demonstrate a difficulty regarding what the fossil evidence and molecular phylogeny show? *Googles* Ah, all becomes clear. https://biologos.org/articles/defending-the-tale-of-the-whale Fred Hickson

Hickson

Goodness me, Martin_r, no matter how many times I repeat it, this doesn’t seem to sink in: Mutations are random but selection is non-random. The niche environment is the designing element in evolution.

i am so tired of people like you ... HOW MANY TIMES SHOULD I REPEAT IT, because it does not seem to sink in ... FIRST YOU HAVE TO HAVE MUTATIONS and then something can be selected ... THEREFORE, ACCORDING TO YOUR CRAZY ABSURD THEORY, RANDOM MUTATIONS CREATE SPECIES .... NATURAL SELECTION ONLY DECIDES WHICH DESIGN/SPECIES (CREATED BY THOSE RANDOM MUTATIONS) IS THE FITTEST ONE to select it ... OR DID I GET SOMETHING WRONG ???? and, let me repeat what i wrote above, YOU PEOPLE BELIEVE, that mutations 'overlooked' by all those checkpoints, proofreadings, repairs, genetic recombination etc, those ones created millions of species :))))))))) how perverted one has to be to believe such absurd things ? PS: in regards to Behe, he is a nice guy, i like to listen to his lectures, however, there are things i don't agree with Behe. After all, he is a biologist, i am an engineer. martin_r

The problem is we don't even know what determined a whale would develop. The issue of what determines biological form remains. It can't be the genome (DNA). True, DNA is an information carrier. It's just doesn't carry any blueprint for biological form. ET

In a back-and-forth on an ID video on whale evolution (which was strong enough to get a lot of responses from the evolution community), Darwinists claimed that there were errors in the dating of the fossils in the ID presentation. Here's the response: Whale Evolution: A Further Rebuttal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCM1MjEFvqE I don't think we'll hear another response from the Darwinian critics. (141 comments on YouTube and I didn't see one evolutionist counterpoint.) Silver Asiatic

Bumblebees:

It was in 1934, French entomologist Antoine Magnan and his assistant calculated that bee flight was aerodynamically impossible. From then onwards, the bees have been defying the laws of nature as we know.

ET

On whales- There aren't any naturalistic mechanisms capable of producing whales from terrestrial mammals. So, that would be a huge problem especially for a mechanistic position. ET

On whales Molecular phylogenetics indicates that the closest living relatives to cetaceans are hippopotamuses. Kind of obvious with hindsight. Fred Hickson

On bees The whole class is fascinating, showing many variations between solitariness and eusociality. Fred Hickson

Martin_r- Hickson the clown is Alan Fox the clown. ET

Fred Hickson:

To gain their attention, ID proponents have to do more than claim evolution is a bad model for biological reality.

What? Intelligent Design is not anti-evolution. Why do you continue to equivocate?

They need to propose better models.

There aren't any models for evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. Natural selection is both blind and mindless. It does not have any purpose. No goals. Genetic algorithms exemplify evolution by means of telic processes. ID's evolutionary concepts are very useful. Natural selection is non-random ONLY in that not all variants have the same probability of being eliminated. It is nothing more than contingent serendipity. There isn't any evidence that the niche environment does any designing. Only Alan Fox pushes such drivel. It isn't in evolutionary textbooks. Maybe, someday, Alan will produce a model. Doubtful. ET

LCD: "If you want to become polar bear just go to North Pole,,, This idea should become a meme." Or, if you are a bear and want to become a whale, just start swimming.

Charles Darwin wrote in the first edition of The Origin of Species that North American black bears had been seen "swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1 Critics laughed at this, and Darwin removed it from later editions of his book, though he continued privately to believe it.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/from-bears-to-whales-a-difficult-transition/

Gullible is too mild a word for such thinking. bornagain77

BA77's references to studies on bumblebees in #56 are remarkable enough and those do not touch on just the simple facts around the organization of bee colonies with division of labor and efficiencies - as well as their beautiful products of honey and wax, all produced and kept safe in sealed hexagonal containers with anti-bacterial protection from propolis. Silver Asiatic

FH

The story is that aeronautical engineers did the math and bumblebees hovering was impossible according to their model. Now I’ve seen bumblebees hover. So I think that the aeronautical engineer’s model is inaccurate rather than me hallucinating.

Our best math and technological expertise couldn't even explain what they were observing. But we're supposed to believe that we have an explanation for the origin of bumblebees? The fact that you see this amazing thing happen and yet at the same time, assert that it came about by a blind mechanism (and niches are as blind as mutations) might lend you to think that yes, maybe that you could think you are hallucinating. Again, just because something exists does not mean that is proof the evolution caused it. Silver Asiatic

FH

Would you feel more comfortable pretending that there isn’t a mainstream of science flowing blithely on which is utterly unconcerned and uninterested in the pronouncements of Michael Behe?

The "Two mutations" paper was an attempt by mainstream science to refute Michael Behe. But that attempt failed and therefore the next part of the strategy was to simply ignore him. But the truth will win out, whether it is popular with mainstream science or not. Silver Asiatic

FH

Behe is ignored by the mainstream basically because his arguments about an edge to evolution etc do not prevent a bumblebee from flying. The scientific mainstream flows on. I’m sorry that this is bad news to ID enthusiasts here.

That's a common argument. "Bees fly, therefore evolution did it and evolutionary theory is proven correct by that fact.". But Behe was merely showing that getting two mutations was an improbable event. His critics came up with a "refutation" which was eventually overturned.

So, Michael Behe Was Right After All; What Will the Critics Say Now? https://evolutionnews.org/2014/07/so_michael_behe/ What we’ll probably get is nothing more than PZ Myers’s concession, offered in the context of the rant quoted above:

Fair enough; if you demand a very specific pair of amino acid changes in specific places in a specific protein, I agree, the odds are going to be very long on theoretical considerations alone, and the empirical evidence supports the claim of improbability for that specific combination.

So, yes - Michael Behe is ignored, and yes evolutionists simply assert that for any biological organism "since it exists, then it evolved that way". But that's not a good reason to ignore Behe's argument - and moreso, he offered an open challenge that if they don't like his calculations, they can provide better ones. Silver Asiatic

Fred Hickson<The niche environment is the designing element

:))) Yep North pole designs polar bears .If you want to become polar bear just go to North Pole because niche environment will redesign your DNA and cell codes . Not DNA and cell codes make you human but environment says Fred Hickson. This idea should become a meme. PS: It's like saying that the ambient temperature in your room literally designs the air conditioner just because air conditioner reacts by changing its own "states" to an ambient temperature value and having "the goal" to maintain a constant temperature in the room. Lieutenant Commander Data

Goodness me, Martin_r, no matter how many times I repeat it, this doesn't seem to sink in: Mutations are random but selection is non-random. The niche environment is the designing element in evolution. Fred Hickson

Regarding bumblebees, that was a metaphor I thought people might already be familiar with. The story is that aeronautical engineers did the math and bumblebees hovering was impossible according to their model. Now I've seen bumblebees hover. So I think that the aeronautical engineer's model is inaccurate rather than me hallucinating. So the advice is if a model analysis says something is impossible yet we see it happen, we should suspect our model first, rather than reality. Fred Hickson

PS: there are many means how a cell is preventing mutations ... from DNA proofreading and repair to DNA recombination during sexual reproduction. Yet, Darwinists BELIEVE, that mutations created millions of species on this planet ... this theory can't be more absurd ... Darwisnists completely deny reality ... Darwinists living in some fantasy world ... martin_r

I'm sorry I upset you, Martin_r. I do wonder though what it is that upsets you so. Would you feel more comfortable pretending that there isn't a mainstream of science flowing blithely on which is utterly unconcerned and uninterested in the pronouncements of Michael Behe? To gain their attention, ID proponents have to do more than claim evolution is a bad model for biological reality. They need to propose better models. Fred Hickson

ET @60

LoL! Mainstream doesn’t have any idea how bumblebees came to be.

Mainstream has no idea how anything that flies evolved... insects, dinos, birds, mammals. Hickson is trying to ridicule me (@ 57) These Darwinian clowns have no clue why there is sexual reproduction at all (they call it a mystery), they have 20 hypothesis as to why there is sex. reproduction. TWENTY HYPOTHESIS :))))))) And this clown is trying to ridicule ME ?????? https://theconversation.com/why-did-sex-evolve-researchers-edge-closer-to-solving-longstanding-mystery-55407 PS: ET, i have to say, i admire you that you even reply to Hickson. This clown is much worse than Seversky. martin_r

Fred Hickson:

The paper presents a mathematical model. All models are wrong but some are useful, someone said. Models are always simpler than reality.

Evos loved the paper when they thought it refuted one of Behe's claims. But now that they see it also kicks their asinine claims to the gutter it's only a model. Yet models are used because evolution by means of blind and mindless processes is total untestable nonsense unless you are discussing genetic diseases and deformities. ET

Fred Hickson:

Behe is ignored by the mainstream basically because his arguments about an edge to evolution etc do not prevent a bumblebee from flying.

LoL! Mainstream doesn't have any idea how bumblebees came to be. They don't even know what determines biological form. They cannot explain how meiosis arose via blind and mindless processes. It looks like mainstream ignores the mandates of science which state the concepts must not only be testable but tested and confirmed. Mainstream doesn't have that. ET

Testing Fred Hickson

FH: "The (two mutations) paper presents a mathematical model. All models are wrong but some are useful, someone said. Models are always simpler than reality." HUH? What in the world are you going on about? Behe chastised Durrett and Schmidt precisely because they favored their mathematical model over what the empirical evidence itself was actually saying, i.e. "The difficulty with (mathematical) models such as Durrett and Schmidt’s is that their biological relevance is often uncertain, and unknown factors that are quite important to cellular evolution may be unintentionally left out of the model. That is why experimental or observational data on the evolution of microbes such as P. falciparum are invaluable,,,"

Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless “using their model” gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. Generally, when the results of a simple model disagree with observational data, it is an indication that the model is inadequate.,,, The difficulty with (mathematical) models such as Durrett and Schmidt’s is that their biological relevance is often uncertain, and unknown factors that are quite important to cellular evolution may be unintentionally left out of the model. That is why experimental or observational data on the evolution of microbes such as P. falciparum are invaluable,,, http://www.discovery.org/a/9461

Also of note, despite being contradicted by empirical evidence at every turn, FH, like other dogmatic Darwinists, apparently still believes Darwinian evolution to be 'true' no matter what the empirical evidence says to the contrary. Yet the reductive materialistic foundation of Darwinian evolution itself is what prevents Darwinian evolution from actually ever being 'true'. Simply put, 'truth', like mathematics and logic, (see bottom of post 31), is also immaterial in its foundational essence,

“Truth is immaterial and can be seen using an open mind that voluntarily follows evidence regardless.” – Andrew Fabich – Associate Professor of Microbiology – Truett McConnell University – 2016

The entire concept of Truth is an abstract property and/or definition of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. i.e. How much does the concept of Truth weigh? Does the concept of Truth weigh more in English or in Chinese? How long is the concept of Truth in millimeters? How fast does the concept of Truth go? Is the concept of Truth faster or slower than the speed of light? Is the concept of Truth positively or negatively charged? Or etc.. etc.. ?.. As John_a_designer explains, “Obviously, these questions are absurd because propositions, (truth claims), are not physical. But if the physical or material is all that exists as the materialist claims, which is by the way a propositional truth claim, how can such a proposition be true? How can something that doesn’t really exist, as the materialist claims, be true? Obviously that is self-refuting.”

“Truth claims are propositional. That is, truth claims are stated in the form of a proposition. But what is a proposition? Where do propositions exist? What do they look like? Where are they located? How much space do they take up? How much do they weigh? How long have they existed? How and where did they originate? Obviously, these questions are absurd because propositions are not physical. But if the physical or material is all that exists as the materialist claims, which is by the way a propositional truth claim, how can such a proposition be true? How can something that doesn’t really exist, as the materialist claims, be true? Obviously that is self-refuting.” – John_a_designer

And since Truth is obviously immaterial in its foundational essence then, as John_a_designer pointed out, it necessarily follows that Darwinian materialism can never possibly be true., (And this falsification of Darwinian evolution as being true comes way before we even start evaluating the myriad of falsifications of Darwin’s theory from empirical science). Moreover, since 'immaterial' truth can only be appreciated by the immaterial mind, and since the human mind is obviously not eternal, then immaterial “Truth” can only ever be properly grounded within the Mind of God, i.e. within Theism:

Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God – Peter Kreeft 11. The Argument from Truth This argument is closely related to the argument from consciousness. It comes mainly from Augustine. 1. Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being. 2. Truth properly resides in a mind. 3. But the human mind is not eternal. 4. Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#11

You don’t have to take my, (or John_a_designer’s), word for the fact that Darwinian evolution undercuts itself with its implicit denial of the existence of 'truth'. Postmodern pragmatists themselves, via their Darwinian presuppositions, have been claiming that objective truth does not actually exist for over a century now, ever since Darwin’s theory first made it to the shores of America. As Professor Nancy Pearcey explains in this following excellent article, (an article which traced the progression from Darwinism to postmodern pragmatism), “If all ideas are products of evolution, and thus not really true but only useful for survival, then evolution itself is not true either,,,, In short, naturalistic evolution is self-refuting.”

How Darwinism Dumbs Us Down by Nancy Pearcey Excerpt: I once presented this progression from Darwinism to postmodern pragmatism at a Christian college, when a man in the audience raised his hand: “I have only one question. These guys who think all our ideas and beliefs evolved . . . do they think their own ideas evolved?” The audience broke into delighted applause, because of course he had captured the key fallacy of the Darwinian approach to knowledge. If all ideas are products of evolution, and thus not really true but only useful for survival, then evolution itself is not true either–and why should the rest of us pay any attention to it? Indeed, the theory undercuts itself. For if evolution is true, then it is not true, but only useful. This kind of internal contradiction is fatal, for a theory that asserts something and denies it at the same time is simply nonsense. In short, naturalistic evolution is self-refuting. https://www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/how-darwinism-dumbs-us-down/

The denial of the existence of objective truth, as is implicit in the atheistic materialism of Darwinian evolution, (besides undercutting any claim that Darwinian evolution itself can possibly be true), also undercuts rationality altogether. As John C Wright succinctly explained, “A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false. We know this truth is basic because without it, no question can be answered, not even the question of whether or not truth is true.”

The Self Evident — A Reminder – John C. Wright – 2019 From time to time it is useful for sane men in an insane world to remind themselves of basic truths. The first truth is that truth is true. A statement that there is no truth, if true, is false. We know this truth is basic because without it, no question can be answered, not even the question of whether or not truth is true. Truth is a subtle and complex topic, but what we mean by the word can be said in a short sentence using words of one syllable: Truth is when one says ‘it is’, and it is as one says. The second conclusion springs immediately from the first. We know that truth is true because to say truth is untrue is illogical. A statement that truth is true is a self-evident statement, hence a true one. A statement that truth is untrue is a self-contradiction, hence false. http://www.scifiwright.com/2019/10/the-self-evident/

Of course, despite whatever self-refuting absurdities Darwinists are forced to believe because of their dogmatic atheism, (i.e. for instance, the denial of the existence of 'truth' itself),, 'the truth' really does exist. And 'the truth' turns out to be far more wondrous and amazing than Darwinists have ever dared imagine in their nihilistic worldview. Verse:

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. “If you were to take Mohammed out of Islam, and Buddha out of Buddhism, and Confucius out of Confucianism you would still have a faith system that was relatively in tact. However, taking Christ out of Christianity sinks the whole faith completely. This is because Jesus centred the faith on himself. He said, “This is what it means to have eternal life: to know God the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent” (John 17:3). “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Buddha, before dying, said in effect, “I am still seeking for the truth.” Mohammed said in effect, “I point you to the truth.” Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Jesus claimed to not only give the truth, but to be the very personal embodiment of it.” http://commonground.co.za/?resources=is-jesus-the-only-way-to-god Jesus Christ as the correct “Theory of Everything” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpn2Vu8–eE

bornagain77

Exactly….It is obvious, that the main reason why there is a sexual reproduction is to prevent/minimize any mutations, thank to DNA recombination… Of course, there might be some other reasons, e.g. to create some variety … e.g. humans… there are 6 billions of people and no one looks the same, of course, this is not a coincidence… this was intentional … by design….

Against arguments of this calibre, I'm lost for words. ;) Fred Hickson

FH: "Behe is ignored by the mainstream basically because his arguments about an edge to evolution etc do not prevent a bumblebee from flying." And a 'flying' bumblebee is suppose to be comforting to Darwinists how exactly?

Stingless Bee Of Dinosaur Age Lies in Amber By John Noble Wilford - Dec. 8, 1987 Excerpt: The recent finding doubles the previously known age of bees. More surprising to scientists is that the ancient bee is so similar to some modern ones.,,, ,,, bees have probably changed very little in the last 80 million years.,,, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/08/science/stingless-bee-of-dinosaur-age-lies-in-amber.html A scientist has found a 100 million-year-old bee trapped in amber, making it possibly the oldest bee ever found. - 2006 Excerpt: "I knew right away what it was, because I had seen bees in younger amber before," said George Poinar, a zoology professor at Oregon State University. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15482996/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientist-finds-million-year-old-bee/#.XjcmHt-YWis Can It Bee? Excerpt: Bees have airspeed gauges; gyroscopes; a ‘compass’ that detects the polarization of sunlight; UV sensors to track the horizon to measure tilt; and two compound eyes, each with 7,000 hexagonal (six-sided) facets. https://creation.com/can-it-bee SECRETS OF BEES? Excerpt: .,,, Freight planes carry a payload of about 25 percent of their weight. A bee can carry almost 100 per cent. http://beehive.org.nz/stories/bee-secrets Complex mathematical problem solved by bees - OCTOBER 25, 2010 Excerpt: Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences said: "In nature, bees have to link hundreds of flowers in a way that minimises travel distance, and then reliably find their way home - not a trivial feat if you have a brain the size of a pinhead! Indeed such travelling salesmen problems keep supercomputers busy for days. Studying how bee brains solve such challenging tasks might allow us to identify the minimal neural circuitry required for complex problem solving." https://phys.org/news/2010-10-complex-mathematical-problem-bees.html Finding: Bees Solve The Traveling Salesman Problem - October 2010 Excerpt: It is a classic problem in the field of computer science: In what order should a salesman visit his prospects? The traveling salesman problem may appear simple but it has engaged some of the greatest mathematical minds and today engages some of the fastest computers. This makes (these) new findings, that bees routinely solve the problem before pollinating flowers, all the more remarkable. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/finding-bees-solve-the-traveling-salesman-problem/ Bumblebees Find and Distinguish Electric Signals from Flowers - Feb. 21, 2013 Excerpt: The research shows for the first time that pollinators such as bumblebees are able to find and distinguish electric signals given out by flowers. Flowers often produce bright colours, patterns and enticing fragrances to attract their pollinators.,,, flowers also have their equivalent of a neon sign -- patterns of electrical signals that can communicate information to the insect pollinator. These electrical signals can work in concert with the flower's other attractive signals and enhance floral advertising power. Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. No spark is produced as a charged bee approaches a charged flower, but a small electric force builds up that can potentially convey information. By placing electrodes in the stems of petunias, the researchers showed that when a bee lands, the flower's potential changes and remains so for several minutes. Could this be a way by which flowers tell bees another bee has recently been visiting? To their surprise, the researchers discovered that bumblebees can detect and distinguish between different floral electric fields. Also, the researchers found that when bees were given a learning test, they were faster at learning the difference between two colours when electric signals were also available. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221143900.htm

bornagain77

ET @43

With sexual reproduction even the most beneficial mutation has a better chance of being lost than it does of becoming fixed. Meiosis and all…

Exactly....It is obvious, that the main reason why there is a sexual reproduction is to prevent/minimize any mutations, thank to DNA recombination... Of course, there might be some other reasons, e.g. to create some variety ... e.g. humans... there are 6 billions of people and no one looks the same, of course, this is not a coincidence... this was intentional ... by design.... martin_r

Waiting for Two Mutations was a paper by evolutionists which undercut their own claims.

Biologists are competitive individuals, not a cabal. The paper presents a mathematical model. All models are wrong but some are useful, someone said. Models are always simpler than reality. Fred Hickson

Behe is ignored by the mainstream basically because his arguments about an edge to evolution etc do not prevent a bumblebee from flying. The scientific mainstream flows on. I'm sorry that this is bad news to ID enthusiasts here. Fred Hickson

Querius

Science has thus has been reduced to vocabulary, multiple-choice questions, and a priesthood.

True. It's a priesthood of magic and miracles. They'll just make assertions that go against even their own papers (as Waiting for Two Mutations was a paper by evolutionists which undercut their own claims). Silver Asiatic

ET - thank you Silver Asiatic

Silver Asiatic @47,

And they never gave him different numbers. He called their bluff and they backed away in silence. That was 2014 – the challenge remains open.

That's just pathetic.

They want everyone to believe “there is no edge to evolution” – any number of mutations can and supposedly have happened.

They ignore Haldane then, just to reinforce their orthodoxy. Science has thus has been reduced to vocabulary, multiple-choice questions, and a priesthood. Ugh. -Q Querius

Here ya go: why is a fly not a horse ET

I'm trying to find a non-Amazon purchase - for some reason the DI doesn't give a purchase link. https://www.discovery.org/b/why-is-a-fly-not-a-horse/ Silver Asiatic

to quote Behe, “Talk is cheap. Let’s see your numbers.,,, the development of chloroquine-resistance in malaria is an event of probability about 1 in 10^20 malaria-cell replications. Okay, if you don’t like that, what’s your estimate? Let’s see your numbers

And they never gave him different numbers. He called their bluff and they backed away in silence. That was 2014 - the challenge remains open. I've asked evolutionists for this several times, none have ever given a "corrected" number. They want everyone to believe "there is no edge to evolution" - any number of mutations can and supposedly have happened. There's no negative probability that is too difficult to overcome. Silver Asiatic

The Discovery Institute published his book "Why is a Fly Not a Horse?". ET

geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti

He is not as well known as he should be (even among IDists) - I appreciate the quoted passages and definitely want to read his book. Silver Asiatic

There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse. That holds true for all of geometry. Geometry is about concepts, not about anything in the natural world or about anything that can be described by physics.

There's a good argument by Feser that uses this and goes beyond it: 1. All physical things are particular. (There is this triangle, this circle - things individual and particularized by space and dimension and physical measures.) 2. But some things are universal. (The concept of "triangle" - not a specific triangle. That's the triangle of geometry where dimensions are exactly what the math describes.) 3. Therefore, there are some things that are not physical. Silver Asiatic

A dose of reality from geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti:

Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.

and

Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang. Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times. It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.

With sexual reproduction even the most beneficial mutation has a better chance of being lost than it does of becoming fixed. Meiosis and all... ET

Fred Hickson:

I occasionally look in at Peaceful Science, a site set up by Joshua Swamidass. There have been several threads rather critical of Michael Behe’s claims on chloroquine resistance that suggest “correctly” may not be the correct word.

Behe made Swamidass look like a fool. And Behe's numbers on chloroquine resistance comes from a peer-reviewed paper. So Peaceful Science just proves how clueless they are. ET

Fred Hickson:

Giraffes are diploid and reproduce sexually. You realise that mutations do not have to occur in series in a single individual. You know what happens at meiosis?

Fred, meiosis is a process that evolution by means of blind and mindless processes cannot account for. But that is moot as the paper deals with fruit flies and humans. They are also diploid and reproduce sexually. The paper also takes into account everything you said. The paper "Waiting for TWO Mutations" says there isn't enough time in the universe for blind and mindless processes to produce 500 genes in a diploid, sexually reproducing population. Do the math. ET

as to: "suggest “correctly” may not be the correct word." Yet the 10^20 number is a empirically derived fact, not a calculation based on a 'mathematical guess'

Michael Behe - Empirically observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution - video - Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines 25:56 minute quote - "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svV8wNUqvA Real-World Data and the Lesson of Chloroquine Resistance Eric H. Anderson – February 28, 2022 Excerpt: “Behe’s argument was simply to observe, on the basis of White’s public health data, that chloroquine resistance arises in 1 in 10^20 cells. That’s a data point. He then asked a hypothetical question: If one CCC requires 10^20 replications, what would happen if there were a trait that was as complex as a “double-CCC”? Such a trait, Behe argued, would require 10^40 cells to arise, which is more cells than have lived over the course of the history of the Earth. This, he concluded, would pose a problem for Darwinism…” (C. Luskin) We can argue about whether “effective” chloroquine resistance should be defined as requiring exactly four mutations. We can quibble about whether the mutations are beneficial or neutral. We can debate the math and even be off by an order of magnitude or more. Yet none of this alleviates the significant challenge the real-world data poses to the evolutionary story.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2022/02/real-world-data-and-the-lesson-of-chloroquine-resistance/

Moreover, as hard as it is for Darwinian processes to account for chloroquine resistance in the malaria parasite ( 1 in 10^20), the adaptation came at a loss of fitness for the parasite, not a gain.

Metabolic QTL Analysis Links Chloroquine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to Impaired Hemoglobin Catabolism - January, 2014 Summary: Chloroquine was formerly a front line drug in the treatment of malaria. However, drug resistant strains of the malaria parasite have made this drug ineffective in many malaria endemic regions. Surprisingly, the discontinuation of chloroquine therapy has led to the reappearance of drug-sensitive parasites. In this study, we use metabolite quantitative trait locus analysis, parasite genetics, and peptidomics to demonstrate that chloroquine resistance is inherently linked to a defect in the parasite's ability to digest hemoglobin, which is an essential metabolic activity for malaria parasites. This metabolic impairment makes it harder for the drug-resistant parasites to reproduce than genetically-equivalent drug-sensitive parasites, and thus favors selection for drug-sensitive lines when parasites are in direct competition. Given these results, we attribute the re-emergence of chloroquine sensitive parasites in the wild to more efficient hemoglobin digestion. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004085

So, to quote Behe, "Talk is cheap. Let's see your numbers.,,, the development of chloroquine-resistance in malaria is an event of probability about 1 in 10^20 malaria-cell replications. Okay, if you don't like that, what's your estimate? Let's see your numbers.,,, ,,, If you folks think that direct, parsimonious, rather obvious route to 1 in 10^20 isn't reasonable, go ahead, calculate a different one, then tell us how much it matters, quantitatively. Posit whatever favorable or neutral mutations you want. Just make sure they're consistent with the evidence in the literature (especially the rarity of resistance, the total number of cells available, and the demonstration by Summers et al. that a minimum of two specific mutations in PfCRT is needed for chloroquine transport). Tell us about the effects of other genes, or population structures, if you think they matter much, or let us know if you disagree for some reason with a reported literature result. Or, Ken, tell us how that ARMD phenotype you like to mention affects the math. Just make sure it all works out to around 1 in 10^20, or let us know why not."

An Open Letter to Kenneth Miller and PZ Myers - Michael Behe July 21, 2014 Dear Professors Miller and Myers, Talk is cheap. Let's see your numbers. In your recent post on and earlier reviews of my book The Edge of Evolution you toss out a lot of words, but no calculations. You downplay FRS Nicholas White's straightforward estimate that -- considering the number of cells per malaria patient (a trillion), times the number of ill people over the years (billions), divided by the number of independent events (fewer than ten) -- the development of chloroquine-resistance in malaria is an event of probability about 1 in 10^20 malaria-cell replications. Okay, if you don't like that, what's your estimate? Let's see your numbers.,,, ,,, If you folks think that direct, parsimonious, rather obvious route to 1 in 10^20 isn't reasonable, go ahead, calculate a different one, then tell us how much it matters, quantitatively. Posit whatever favorable or neutral mutations you want. Just make sure they're consistent with the evidence in the literature (especially the rarity of resistance, the total number of cells available, and the demonstration by Summers et al. that a minimum of two specific mutations in PfCRT is needed for chloroquine transport). Tell us about the effects of other genes, or population structures, if you think they matter much, or let us know if you disagree for some reason with a reported literature result. Or, Ken, tell us how that ARMD phenotype you like to mention affects the math. Just make sure it all works out to around 1 in 10^20, or let us know why not. Everyone is looking forward to seeing your calculations. Please keep the rhetoric to a minimum. With all best wishes (especially to Professor Myers for a speedy recovery), Mike Behe http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/show_me_the_num088041.html February 2022 - All the responses from Dr. Behe to his critics defending the 1 in 10^20 finding https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/asked-at-evolution-news-how-much-can-evolution-really-accomplish/#comment-748038 February 2022- Several other lines of empirical, and mathematical, evidence are in general agreement with Dr. Behe's 1 in 10^20 findings https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/asked-at-evolution-news-how-much-can-evolution-really-accomplish/#comment-748040 February 2022 - Recently a Darwinist claimed that Dr. Behe was not using probability properly in his calculations. But then, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that Darwinists are the ones who are flagrantly misusing probability. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/asked-at-evolution-news-how-much-can-evolution-really-accomplish/#comment-748070

bornagain77

The piece suggests that the giraffe's long neck and high blood pressure needed to get blood up to the head are unique. Yet surely some dinosaurs had longer necks and could raise their heads higher than a giraffe? This suggests the design problems were solved over 100 million years ago! Fasteddious

Also, didn’t Michael Behe correctly predict the amount of time needed for the malaria pathogens to mutate around a human defensive mutation?

I occasionally look in at Peaceful Science, a site set up by Joshua Swamidass. There have been several threads rather critical of Michael Behe's claims on chloroquine resistance that suggest "correctly" may not be the correct word. Fred Hickson

Bornagain77 @31, Thanks for the link to the paper. Isn't this an example of Haldane's dilemma? A reduced "waiting time" would destabilize an organism's genome. And then there's a minimum number of the same mutation in a population to achieve fixation. Also, didn't Michael Behe correctly predict the amount of time needed for the malaria pathogens to mutate around a human defensive mutation? His back-of-the-envelope calculation was around 30 years IIRC. -Q Querius

And it dealt with the waiting time for TWO specific mutations. Obviously 500 new genes would require more than TWO specific mutations.

Giraffes are diploid and reproduce sexually. You realise that mutations do not have to occur in series in a single individual. You know what happens at meiosis? Fred Hickson

The Bermuda triangle is manmade. ET

BA/31

After all, no actual triangle is perfect, and thus no actual triangle in nature has sides such that the Pythagorean theorem holds. There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse.

The Bermuda Triangle is a perfect triangle..... chuckdarwin

Fred Hickson:

Does it? I just looked through the paper and I can find no reference to Giraffes or “blind and mindless processes”

No doubt. The entire paper pertained to evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. And it dealt with the waiting time for TWO specific mutations. Obviously 500 new genes would require more than TWO specific mutations. So, clearly you are clueless and desperate. ET

Fred Hickson:

So ID proponents, tell me about TELIC PROCESSES. How do they work?

'Stop quote-mining and you would have read about it. "built-in responses to environmental cues", Spetner 1997. Genetic algorithms exemplify evolution by means of telic processes. We see what they can do. But how does natural selection work? It is nothing but contingent serendipity. There isn't any evidence for Dawkins' "cumulative natural selection". There isn't any evidence that the environment designs (maybe that is why only 1 or 2 people claim such a thing). If you people don't like ID, you have all of the power to refute it. And we are powerless to stop you. All you have to do, for example, is demonstrate that nature can produce coded information processing systems. Synthetic biologist and member of the NAS, George Church, is one of the judges in the challenge to do so. ET

FH states, "I can find no reference to Giraffes" And he is right. In their paper Durrett and Schmidt 'mathematically', (not empirically), estimated the 'waiting time' problem for Drosophila and humans,,,

Waiting for two mutations: with applications to regulatory sequence evolution and the limits of Darwinian evolution - 2007 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18791261/ Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. Generally, when the results of a simple model disagree with observational data, it is an indication that the model is inadequate.,,, The difficulty with models such as Durrett and Schmidt’s is that their biological relevance is often uncertain, and unknown factors that are quite important to cellular evolution may be unintentionally left out of the model. That is why experimental or observational data on the evolution of microbes such as P. falciparum are invaluable,,, ?http://www.discovery.org/a/9461 More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said - July 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes,, in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/ The Origin of Man and the “Waiting Time” Problem - John Sanford - August 10, 2016 Excerpt: Historically, Darwin-defenders have argued that time is on their side. They have claimed that given enough time, any evolutionary scenario is feasible. They have consistently argued that given millions of years, very large amounts of new biologically meaningful information can arise by the Darwinian process of mutation/selection. However, careful analysis of what is required to establish even a single genetic “word” (a short functional string of genetic letters) within a hominin genome shows just the opposite. Even given tens of millions of years, there is not enough time to generate the genetic equivalent of the simplest “word” (two or more nucleotides). Even in a hundred billion years, much longer than the age of the universe, there is not enough time to establish the genetic equivalent of a very simple “sentence” (ten or more nucleotides). This problem is so fundamental that it justifies a complete re-assessment of the basic Darwinian mechanism. In my book Genetic Entropy, I have previously outlined the waiting time problem (for example, see the 2014 edition, Chapter 9, pp. 133-136). My calculations there, and calculations published by others (Behe, Snoke, Axe, Gauger et al.), all demonstrate the same basic problem. (For a complete literature review, see the link to our new paper given above.) What this new paper provides is an independent validation, by a totally different method, of the previous works done by Behe, others, and myself. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/08/the_origin_of_m/

And although the 'waiting time problem' for humans has been mathematically modeled, to my knowledge no one, (neither Darwinists nor ID proponents), has ever mathematically modeled the 'waiting time problem' as applied to Giraffes. (although Richard Sternberg has modeled the problem for whales),

Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q Evolution And Probabilities: A Response to Jason Rosenhouse - August 2011 Excerpt: The equations of population genetics predict that – assuming an effective population size of 100,000 individuals per generation, and a generation turnover time of 5 years – according to Richard Sternberg’s calculations and based on equations of population genetics applied in the Durrett and Schmidt paper, that one may reasonably expect two specific co-ordinated mutations to achieve fixation in the timeframe of around 43.3 million years. When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. - per uncommon descent

,,, Thus, since no one has specifically modeled Giraffes per se, I invite FH to do so so as to finally provide some type of mathematical proof that Darwinian evolution is remotely feasible. Because, as things stand right now, “there exists no (mathematical) model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”

Top Ten Questions and Objections to ‘Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics’ – Robert J. Marks II – June 12, 2017 Excerpt: “There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated. These models contain guidance mechanisms to land the airplane squarely on the target runway despite stochastic wind gusts. Not only can the guiding assistance be specifically identified in each proposed evolution model, its contribution to the success can be measured, in bits, as active information.,,,”,,, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,” https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/top-ten-questions-and-objections-to-introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/ Robert Jackson Marks II is an American electrical engineer. His contributions include the Zhao-Atlas-Marks (ZAM) time-frequency distribution in the field of signal processing,[1] the Cheung–Marks theorem[2] in Shannon sampling theory and the Papoulis-Marks-Cheung (PMC) approach in multidimensional sampling.[3] He was instrumental in the defining of the field of computational intelligence and co-edited the first book using computational intelligence in the title.[4][5] – per wikipedia

Of supplemental note, The fact that mathematics, (which provides the backbone for all of science), is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence is completely antithetical to the entire reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian theory, (which holds that everything is reducible to materialistic explanations),,

What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? - M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 Excerpt: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist (as a person), he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities.,,, https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html Naturalism and Self-Refutation - Michael Egnor - January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Mathematics is certainly something we do. Is mathematics “included in the space-time continuum [with] basic elements … described by physics”? It seems a stretch. What is the physics behind the Pythagorean theorem? After all, no actual triangle is perfect, and thus no actual triangle in nature has sides such that the Pythagorean theorem holds. There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse. That holds true for all of geometry. Geometry is about concepts, not about anything in the natural world or about anything that can be described by physics. What is the “physics” of the fact that the area of a circle is pi multiplied by the square of the radius? And of course what is natural and physical about imaginary numbers, infinite series, irrational numbers, and the mathematics of more than three spatial dimensions? Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature as described by physics.,,, Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/

bornagain77

The peer-reviewed paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” says the evolution of the giraffe via blind and mindless processes is impossible.

Does it? I just looked through the paper and I can find no reference to Giraffes or "blind and mindless processes". Admittedly it is a bit math-heavy and population genetics is not my field so I could have missed something. ET? Anyone? Fred Hickson

@ Chuckdarwin, I'm an incurable optimist. Maybe this will be the day when ID proponents tell us something beyond "evolution sucks". ET could be setting the ball rolling with "TELIC PROCESSES". So ID proponents, tell me about TELIC PROCESSES. How do they work? Fred Hickson

Silver Asiatic @27, It's been noted that the humans have no obvious ecological function. Our "superpowers" include physical endurance, hand dexterity, and problem solving (including tool making and the resulting adaptability). Outside of these superpowers, humans do most everything, but very poorly compared to the specialization found in animals. To the OP, it seems that many genes of the giraffe's superpowers are unique--as are humans with respect to our superpowers compared to other primates. The ecosystems of the world also seem to be balanced in a way that doesn't allow any single set of superpowers to dominate. I've learned that biologists who try to simulate ecosystems in software commonly find that their virtual ecosystems quickly get out of balance and collapse, destroying the carrying capacity of their ecosystem in the process. One might think that evolution would produce many types of animals that can fly, swim, run, and dig, and defend themselves with monster teeth, claws, tough skin, venom, and noxious spray. The African honey badger (Mellivora capensis) is the only animal that even comes close as far as I know. -Q Querius

The fact that every generation, human beings continue to learn more about the world and themselves, and acquire new skills and produce new things - the majority of which has nothing to do with survival and fitness - is a strong argument against mindless evolution. Other organisms don't do that. Squirrels, sparrows, trout, rattlesnakes - as a whole, don't develop themselves. What they need to survive and reproduce has remained the same, generation after generation. Silver Asiatic

chuckdarwin/ 25 No. ET

ET/24 Answer me this question: is the end point for your “telic processes” man as he exists today? chuckdarwin

Chuck- That "something else" has been explained- TELIC PROCESSES.

Who, when, how or why that design came to be is outside the scope of ID.

Yes, they are. But ID does NOT prevent anyone from trying to answer those questions. It's just that those answers are NOT required to determine (intelligent) design exists and then study it. That said, the authors of "the Privileged Planet" says the why was a universe designed for scientific discovery. And Lee Spetner posited a mechanism of "built-in responses to environmental cues", as a mechanism for adaptations. Yours is the mechanistic scenario, ever since Darwin who claimed to have a MECHANISM capable of producing the appearance of design without the need of an intelligent designer. Yet you and yours don't have any idea as to the how. You spew random mutations, natural selection, drift, blah, blah, blah, but no specifics. It's all done via promissory notes. ET

FH/5

Now I understand that ID proponents claim evolutionary processes are impossible or limited. Therefore they must think something else is the explanation. What is that?

It will be the proverbial cold day in hell before you get an answer to your question on this blog. However, I will promise you that you will get endless hours of amusement (or frustration)trying to glean an answer to your question off the blog. Let me give you just one quick example from this very comment chain:

PS: from an engineering point of view it is clear, that giraffe was designed the way it looks. The whole body has to be in balance. That includes a proper length of legs as well. All four legs. You can’t have short legs with such a long neck. Otherwise giraffes could not move let alone run. Would flip over and then die = NO EVOLUTION. NO GIRAFFES. (emphasis added)

"Designed" is as close as you will get here. Who, when, how or why that design came to be is outside the scope of ID. One should add that the giraffe's legs also must be just long enough to reach the ground, no more, no less. And that applies to all four legs..... chuckdarwin

ET, really!? So, in addition to my not having read the paper, trollbots automatically pretend to be familiar with the contents and author(s) of any papers used against them. Very disingenuous and further reason not to feed them! Thanks! -Q Querius

Yes, but Q, the paper was authored by evolutionists trying to refute Dr. Behe. ET

ET @ 18, Let me suggest not to feed the trollbots. Notice that the "[The debunked]" was inserted with ZERO supporting evidence and ZERO new information except for negation. The formats of trollbots can take many forms. For example: 1. That study was debunked years ago. 2. The author of the study is a quack. 3. This flawed study has been touted many times by people like you. 4. The study is completely irrelevant to the point. 5. The study is considered by authoritative sources to be fringe. 6. Of course, you'd bring up that tired old study. Everyone knows that you can't find any others. 7. Only a total ignoramus would try to use that study. 8. I bet you can't even find five studies that came to the same conclusion. etc. etc. etc. Trollbots can cycle endlessly through these pseudo-responses and more like them. No synapses were fired in their posting. It's all automatic in some cases or cut and paste from a kit in other cases. Naturally, we'll get a cut-and-paste response challenging what I wrote, so let me just say, "If it quacks like a duck . . ." -Q Querius

Martin_r @17, Great point! Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws state

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (1968)

Considering Clarke’s third law along with your observation as an engineer, I’d add the following: 4. Any process ascribed to nearly infinite random interactions and probabilities over a nearly infinite amount of time as filtered by a randomly generated environment on the presumption that entropy is conserved somewhere else is also indistinguishable from magic. Quite obviously to an engineer or architect, random interactions over infinite amounts of time cannot result in something that might be considered sufficiently advanced alien technology. It also occurs to me that only an infinite universe can accommodate a large enough “entropy sink” to offset a decrease in entropy sufficient to create the information and complexity of a cell. Some years ago, I suggested that finding three lone rocks randomly stacked in a desert (i.e. singly, not in a pile of rocks) is of sufficient complexity that even given 4.5 billion years of earthquakes, it's an extremely unlikely find. Someone with direct experience in that environment said that he'd never seen even two single rocks stacked this way. -Q Querius

Earth to JHolo- How was that paper debunked? It was openly touted when evos thought it was evidence against Dr Behe's claims. So, clearly you have dishonesty issues or you are just ignorant. Either way you are a loser. ET

LCD @13

DNA is just a box full with many DVD-RW. Whoever reads ,indexes,edits and manages those DVD-RW has much more complexity than DNA itself.

I, as an engineer, i agree with that. There has to be something more that manages all the processes inside the cell. In any case, when you consider, that these things have been running for millions of years without any outside intervention, fully automated ... The cell is an engineering marvel, something beyond our comprehension... and i really doubt, that humans will ever understand what is going on ... martin_r

ET: [The debunked] peer-reviewed paper “Waiting for TWO Mutations” says the evolution of the giraffe via blind and mindless processes is impossible.

JHolo

Fred Hickson:

Now I understand that ID proponents claim evolutionary processes are impossible or limited.

Wrong again. ID proponents claim that evolution by means of blind and mindless processes are limited. And science demonstrates that they are. The peer-reviewed paper "Waiting for TWO Mutations" says the evolution of the giraffe via blind and mindless processes is impossible. But you are proud to equivocate and obfuscate. ET

The giraffe is often used as the poster child of genetic evolution and as such the average person nods. The neck gets a little bit longer each millennium as it seeks higher food sources. But it is just the opposite. As some implied where are the other species with long necks? Why just one species? It is actually a disproof of natural Evolution even without the gene problem. jerry

Bornagain77 And as Paul Davies stated, “DNA is not a blueprint for an organism,,,, Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA,”

DNA is just a box full with many DVD-RW. Whoever reads ,indexes,edits and manages those DVD-RW has much more complexity than DNA itself. Lieutenant Commander Data

Moreover, we don’t have to rely solely on our mathematics to tell us that a massive amount of immaterial information must somehow be coming into a developing human embryo, (‘from the outside by some ‘non-material’ method’), during embryological development. Advances in quantum biology have now proven, contrary to what was thought to be possible just a few short years ago, that quantum entanglement and/or quantum information, is ubiquitous within molecular biology. As Dr Rieper remarks in the following video, ‘practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it’

“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.” Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176

And as the following article states, “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and “the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

And as this follow up article stated, “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”

Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015); Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)

The absolutely devastating thing for Darwinian materialists in finding quantum information to be ubiquitous with biological life is that it takes a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, cause in order to explain quantum correlations in the first place,. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php

Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of ‘hidden variables’, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum coherence, quantum information, and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.

“hidden variables don’t exist. If you have proved them come back with PROOF and a Nobel Prize. John Bell theorized that maybe the particles can signal faster than the speed of light. This is what he advocated in his interview in “The Ghost in the Atom.” But the violation of Leggett’s inequality in 2007 takes away that possibility and rules out all non-local hidden variables. Observation instantly defines what properties a particle has and if you assume they had properties before we measured them, then you need evidence, because right now there is none which is why realism is dead, and materialism dies with it. How does the particle know what we are going to pick so it can conform to that?” per Jimfit https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/philosophy/quantum-physicist-david-bohm-on-why-there-cannot-be-a-theory-of-everything/#comment-662358

Christians, on the other hand, readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement.

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Moreover, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html

The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, cannot be created nor destroyed, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe – Oct. 19, 2017 – Spiritual Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) (of note, this video is no longer available for public viewing) https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/life-after-death-soul-science-morgan-freeman/

Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of theological, even personal, significance. As Jesus once asked his disciples along with a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?

Of supplemental note, long before the ubiquitous, and immaterial, quantum and classical information within biology was even known about, Christians were steadfastly claiming that life has a ‘beyond space and time’ author,

Acts 3:15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

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Moreover, the following article notes that “it is hard not to be impressed how a repeatable form reliably emerges despite considerable variation in both genes and environment.’

Criticality in morphogenesis – September 17, 2013 Excerpt: In many regards, a brief time-lapse video can teach more about embryonic development than any amount of reading. It is hard not to be impressed how a repeatable form reliably emerges despite considerable variation in both genes and environment. While it had been hoped that concepts borrowed from statistical mechanics or the ideas of self-organized criticality could help to create some kind of physics-based theory of development, much of what has been done lies only at the level of metaphor. In a paper just released to ArXiv, William Bialek and his colleagues from Princeton University, have taken their search for the signature of criticality in a more specific direction. They looked at a particular set of transcription factors in Drosophila embryos which control spatiotemporal development. By analyzing fluctuations in the expression levels of these so-called gap genes, they found evidence for critical (fine) tuning in this particular network. http://phys.org/news/2013-09-criticality-morphogenesis.html

To further drive the point home that the basic form of any particular organism is not reducible to any material particulars of an organism, in the following article it is noted that, Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.

What Do Organisms Mean? Stephen L. Talbott – Winter 2011 Excerpt: Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern. Lewontin went on to remark: “Unlike a machine whose totality is created by the juxtaposition of bits and pieces with different functions and properties, the bits and pieces of a developing organism seem to come into existence as a consequence of their spatial position at critical moments in the embryo’s development. Such an object is less like a machine than it is like a language whose elements… take unique meaning from their context.[3]”,,, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean

As the preceding experiments, and many more experiments like these, have made clear, ‘biological form’ simply cannot be reduced to mutations to DNA, nor can it be reduced to any other material particulars, (i..e. proteins, carbohydrates, etc.. etc..), that Darwinists may try to invoke. And this failure of the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinists to explain biological form, (and the failure of reductive materialists to explain any other type of ‘form’ in the universe for that matter), occurs at a much lower level than DNA itself. Specifically, in the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html

Moreover Jonathan Wells, in the following video, after demonstrating that the Central Dogma of molecular biology, (which states (in effect) that DNA, makes RNA, makes protein, makes us), is incorrect at every step,

Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

,,, after demonstrating that the Central Dogma of molecular biology is incorrect at every step, Dr. Wells, (who specializes in embryology by the way), then, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, and as cells ‘transdifferentiate’, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method. And just how much information is coming into a developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method? Well, when working from a thermodynamic perspective, it is found that the ‘positional information’ that is inherent in a ‘simple’ bacterium is on the order of 10^12 bits,

Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. https://docs.google.com/document/d/18hO1bteXTPOqQtd2H12PI5wFFoTjwg8uBAU5N0nEQIE/edit

,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”

“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” – Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894

Thus since bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.

Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small – about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html

And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body – 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg “reference man” to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533

Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of all the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of 'positional' information that is somehow coming into the developing embryo of a single human body, “from the outside by some ‘non-material’ method’. As the following video states that “There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer, that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.”

“There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.” Will (Quantum) Teleportation Ever Be Possible? – video – 2013 https://youtu.be/yfePpMTbFYY?t=76

Verse:

Psalm 139:13-14 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

bornagain77

And as Paul Davies stated, “DNA is not a blueprint for an organism,,,, Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA,”

(Paul) Davies And Walker On Origin Of Life: Life As Information – March 7, 2020 Excerpt: However, the genome is only a small part of the story. DNA is not a blueprint for an organism:1 no information is actively processed by DNA alone [17]. Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins. The biologically relevant information stored in DNA therefore has very little to do with its specific chemical nature (beyond the fact that it is a digital linear polymer). https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/davies-and-walker-on-origin-of-life-life-as-information/

And as Antony Jose stated, “DNA cannot be seen as the ‘blueprint’ for life,”,,, “It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times.”,,,

DNA may not be life’s instruction book—just a jumbled list of ingredients – Kimbra Cutlip, University of Maryland – APRIL 22, 2020 Excerpt: The common view of heredity is that all information passed down from one generation to the next is stored in an organism’s DNA. But Antony Jose, associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at the University of Maryland, disagrees. In two new papers, Jose argues that DNA is just the ingredient list, not the set of instructions used to build and maintain a living organism.,,, ,,, “DNA cannot be seen as the ‘blueprint’ for life,” Jose said. “It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times.” ,,, In addition, scientists are unable to determine the complex shape of an organ such as an eye, or that a creature will have eyes at all, by reading the creature’s DNA. These fundamental aspects of anatomy are dictated by something outside of the DNA. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-dna-life-bookjust-jumbled-ingredients.html

And indeed, the entire concept of 'biological form', and/or a genetic blueprint, is simply antithetical to the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution. As the following article points out, the reductive materialism of Darwinism actually “abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.”,,,, and for Darwinists there is “no immaterial, immutable (human) form”, “only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow.”

Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design by Logan Paul Gage Excerpt:,,, In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms. Denial of True Species Enter Darwinism. Recall that Darwin sought to explain the origin of “species.” Yet as he pondered his theory, he realized that it destroyed species as a reality altogether. For Darwinism suggests that any matter can potentially morph into any other arrangement of matter without the aid of an organizing principle. He thought cells were like simple blobs of Jell-O, easily re-arrangeable. For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes: “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” Statements like this should make card-carrying Thomists shudder.,,, The first conflict between Darwinism and Thomism, then, is the denial of true species or essences. For the Thomist, this denial is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge. As philosopher Benjamin Wiker observes in Moral Darwinism, Darwin reduced species to “mere epiphenomena of matter in motion.” What we call a “dog,” in other words, is really just an arbitrary snapshot of the way things look at present. If we take the Darwinian view, Wiker suggests, there is no species “dog” but only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow. What About Man? Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.,,, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-037-f

Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no answer for the following question,,, " the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?"

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings

Yet ID proponents can readily answer that question. Specifically, ID proponents hold that it is immaterial information that explains "why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death." In the following paper, Dr Andy C. McIntosh, who is professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, holds that it is non-material information that is constraining the cell to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium. As well, Dr. McIntosh holds that regarding information as independent of energy and matter ‘resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions’.

Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems – Andy C. McIntosh – 2013 Excerpt: ,,, information is in fact non-material and that the coded information systems (such as, but not restricted to the coding of DNA in all living systems) is not defined at all by the biochemistry or physics of the molecules used to store the data. Rather than matter and energy defining the information sitting on the polymers of life, this approach posits that the reverse is in fact the case. Information has its definition outside the matter and energy on which it sits, and furthermore constrains it to operate in a highly non-equilibrium thermodynamic environment. This proposal resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions, which despite the efforts from alternative paradigms has not given a satisfactory explanation of the way information in systems operates.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814508728_0008 "Since living organisms consistently resist the ravages of entropy that all forms of inanimate matter are subject to, there must be some non-physical principle allowing living matter to consistently defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And for Davies there is; the demon in the machine turns out to be (immaterial) information." Robert Shedinger, “Hey, Paul Davies — Your ID Is Showing”

And it is fairly easy to (further) empirically demonstrate that biological form cannot be reduced to DNA, (nor can it be reduced to any other material particulars in biology that Darwinists may try to invoke). In the following, fairly astonishing, experiment, a bacterium, ‘after shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces,,, miraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal.,,,’

Extreme Genome Repair – 2009 Excerpt: If its naming had followed, rather than preceded, molecular analyses of its DNA, the extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans might have been called Lazarus. After shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces by desiccation or a high dose of ionizing radiation, D. radiodurans miraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal.,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3319128/

And this seemingly ‘miraculous’ ability of D. radiodurans to reassemble its shattered genome is not just some freak of nature, but this ‘miraculous’ ability is now shown to be an inherent, and common, feature of e-coli in general.

In the lab, scientists coax E. coli to resist radiation damage – March 17, 2014 Excerpt: ,,, John R. Battista, a professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University, showed that E. coli could evolve to resist ionizing radiation by exposing cultures of the bacterium to the highly radioactive isotope cobalt-60. “We blasted the cultures until 99 percent of the bacteria were dead. Then we’d grow up the survivors and blast them again. We did that twenty times,” explains Cox. The result were E. coli capable of enduring as much as four orders of magnitude more ionizing radiation, making them similar to Deinococcus radiodurans, a desert-dwelling bacterium found in the 1950s to be remarkably resistant to radiation. That bacterium is capable of surviving more than one thousand times the radiation dose that would kill a human. http://www.news.wisc.edu/22641

As well, in the following study, “researchers implanted human embryonic neuronal cells into a mouse embryo”.,,, Yet, “the human neurons, despite having human DNA, had a mouse morphology”. If DNA really ruled morphology, (as Darwinists have presupposed), we would have expected a human morphology.

If DNA really rules (morphology), why did THIS happen? – April 2014 Excerpt: Researchers implanted human embryonic neuronal cells into a mouse embryo. Mouse and human neurons have distinct morphologies (shapes). Because the human neurons feature human DNA, they should be easy to identify. Which raises a question: Would the human neurons implanted in developing mouse brain have a mouse or a human morphology? Well, the answer is, the human neurons had a mouse morphology. They could be distinguished from the mouse ones only by their human genetic markers. If DNA really ruled, we would expect a human morphology. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/if-dna-really-rules-why-did-this-happen/

Along that same line is this tidbit from a UD blogger

“Last year I had a fair chunk of my nose removed in skin cancer surgery (Mohs). The surgeon took flesh from a nearby area to fill in the large hole he’d made. The pictures of it were scary. But in the healing process the replanted cells somehow ‘knew’ how to take a different shape appropriate for the new location so that the nose now looks remarkably natural. The doctor said he could take only half the credit because the cells somehow know how to change form for a different location (though they presumably still follow the same DNA code) . — I’m getting the feeling that we’ve been nearly as reductionist in the 20-21st century as Darwin and his peers were when they viewed cells as little blobs of jelly.” - leodp – UD blogger

bornagain77

As to:

Genome Reveals Clues to Giraffes’ “Blatantly Strange” Body Shape - Mar 19, 2021 Excerpt: When the team probed the genome further, they identified almost 500 genes that are either unique to giraffes or contain variants found only in giraffes. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/genome-reveals-clues-to-giraffes-blatantly-strange-body-shape--68567

On top of the mathematical impossibility of Darwinian processes to ever be able to explain the origin of "almost 500 genes that are either unique to giraffes or contain variants found only in giraffes",,,

More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said - July 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes,, in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/ Evolution And Probabilities: A Response to Jason Rosenhouse - August 2011 Excerpt: The equations of population genetics predict that – assuming an effective population size of 100,000 individuals per generation, and a generation turnover time of 5 years – according to Richard Sternberg’s calculations and based on equations of population genetics applied in the Durrett and Schmidt paper, that one may reasonably expect two specific co-ordinated mutations to achieve fixation in the timeframe of around 43.3 million years. When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/evolution-and-probabilities-a-response-to-jason-rosenhouse/?

,,, On top of that mathematical impossibility for Darwinian processes, the “Blatantly Strange” Body Shape of the giraffe, and/or any other creature, is also forever beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. Specifically, when Darwinists first formulated the modern synthesis, they excluded 'biological form' from the conceptual framework of the Modern Synthesis as being quote-unquote ‘irrelevant’

On the problem of biological form – Marta Linde-Medina (2020) Excerpt: Embryonic development, which inspired the first theories of biological form, was eventually excluded from the conceptual framework of the Modern Synthesis, (neo-Darwinism) as irrelevant.,,, At present, the problem of biological form remains unsolved. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12064-020-00317-3

Needless to say, excluding 'biological form' from the conceptual framework of the Modern Synthesis is NOT a minor omission on their part. Yet, in spite of the fact that Darwinists themselves excluded biological form from the conceptual framework of the Modern Synthesis as being quote-unquote ‘irrelevant’, Darwinists still assume, (apparently without any justification whatsoever), that changes to DNA have the potential to eventually change the basic biological form and/or body plan of any given species into a brand new body plan of a brand new species. Yet, (directly contrary to what Darwinists have assumed without any warrant), biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars, (i.e. proteins, carbohydrates, etc..), in biology that Darwinists may wish to invoke. As Dr. Jonathan Wells explained, “Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly.”

Jonathan Wells: Far from being all-powerful, DNA does not wholly determine biological form – March 31, 2014 Excerpt: Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/jonathan-wells-far-from-being-all-powerful-dna-does-not-wholly-determine-biological-form/ Response to John Wise – October 2010 Excerpt: But there are solid empirical grounds for arguing that changes in DNA alone cannot produce new organs or body plans. A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,, (As Jonathan Wells states),,, We can modify the DNA of a fruit fly embryo in any way we want, and there are only three possible outcomes: A normal fruit fly; A defective fruit fly; or A dead fruit fly. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html

And as Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig points out, “even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements”,,, “the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated”…

Peer-Reviewed Research Paper on Plant Biology Favorably Cites Intelligent Design and Challenges Darwinian Evolution – Casey Luskin December 29, 2010 Excerpt: Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species… (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) https://evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o/ Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, (retired) Senior Scientist (Biology), Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Emeritus, Cologne, Germany.

The ‘blueprint’ for the biological form of any given species simply does not reside in DNA as Darwinists had falsely presupposed it to within population genetics.. As Michael Denton remarks in the following article,’”to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint.”

The Types: A Persistent Structuralist Challenge to Darwinian Pan-Selectionism – Michael J. Denton – 2013 Excerpt: Cell form ,,,Karsenti comments that despite the attraction of the (genetic) blueprint model there are no “simple linear chains of causal events that link genes to phenotypes” [77: p. 255]. And wherever there is no simple linear causal chain linking genes with phenotypes,,,—at any level in the organic hierarchy, from cells to body plans—the resulting form is bound to be to a degree epigenetic and emergent, and cannot be inferred from even the most exhaustive analysis of the genes.,,, To this author’s knowledge, to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint. As mentioned above, between genes and mature cell form there is a complex hierarchy of self-organization and emergent phenomena, rendering cell form profoundly epigenetic. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.3/BIO-C.2013.3

bornagain77

BobRyan Where are the fossils that show a gradual lengthening of neck?

Eaten by those lions with long neck. We don't find those lions with long neck in the fossil record because the Tyrannosaurs preffered to eat only that kind of long neck lions so they were extinct exactly before the flood that would form fossil strata . :))) Lieutenant Commander Data

Where are the fossils that show a gradual lengthening of neck? BobRyan

FH, you are correct that deductive proof is not in the gift of empirical science, though its stock in trade is warrant by inference to best current explanation, a type of modern sense inductive reasoning. The observed presence of 500 genes "that are either unique to giraffes or contain variants found only in giraffes" constitutes a case of a deeply isolated island of function. This warrants a design inference. KF PS, In deductive reasoning the truth status of premises is often a matter of observation or induction. Even in Math, we have Godel incompleteness. Of course some things are self evident on pain of patent absurdity on attempted denial, but they are never enough to be comprehensive. kairosfocus

500 unique genes that should not be unique with common ancestry. Science continues to prove design.

Nit-pick : science doesn't prove or disprove anything, that's math. Science is an endeavor using observation, experiment, hypothesis testing to build models and develop explanations for aspects of reality. So you have common descent with modification due to variation and selection with the result that different species possess different genomes. Now I understand that ID proponents claim evolutionary processes are impossible or limited. Therefore they must think something else is the explanation. What is that? Fred Hickson

500 unique genes that should not be unique with common ancestry. Science continues to prove design. BobRyan

from a mainstream paper (NewScientists) 2010 article:

Most people assume that giraffes’ long necks evolved to help them feed. If you have a long neck, runs the argument, you can eat leaves on tall trees that your rivals can’t reach. The evidence supporting the high-feeding theory is surprisingly weak. Giraffes in South Africa do spend a lot of time browsing for food high up in trees, but elsewhere in Africa they don’t seem to bother, even when food is scarce.

So now Darwinists claim, that Giraffe's long neck is because of sexual selection. Allegedly, females prefer males with longer neck. Allegedly. Because some biologist says so. And, recently, another article came with an idea of thermoregulation. This theory is a mess. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19135-zoologger-how-did-the-giraffe-get-its-long-neck/#:~:text=Because%20a%20giraffe's%20brain%20is,keep%20giraffes'%20necks%20so%20long. PS: from an engineering point of view it is clear, that giraffe was designed the way it looks. The whole body has to be in balance. That includes a proper length of legs as well. All four legs. You can't have short legs with such a long neck. Otherwise giraffes could not move let alone run. Would flip over and then die = NO EVOLUTION. NO GIRAFFES. Seversky and Co. may argue, that long legs evolved first and then the long neck. Yes, but you have to support such a claim with evidence. E.g. fossil record. Ahh, i know, you can't, because fossils are rare. Eventually, you can claim, that long legs and long neck 'co-evolved', at the same moment, by random mutations. Step by step: a bit longer neck, and at the same moment a bit longer front legs and then a bit longer hind legs and so on... like in a fairy tale. When you are a Darwinist, you can believe anything ... martin_r

When the team probed the genome further, they identified almost 500 genes that are either unique to giraffes or contain variants found only in giraffes.

500 unique genes ? Darwinian scientists believe in miracles. martin_r

When the team probed the genome further, they identified almost 500 genes that are either unique to giraffes or contain variants found only in giraffes.

Given that, plus the paper "Waiting for TWO Mutations", evolution by means of blind and mindless processes is for deluded people who can deny reality. ET