Higgs boson: Find it in one year or bust, top physicists say

Twas written too quickly, left out a "not". Rephrase: should have been: "Nah; I have the book, and all Wells does is gloss past T. Ryan Gregory’s onion argument. Wells gives the more important point, the huge variability in genome size as a widespread pattern, not much attention at all. Considering Wells’s book is the definitive ID treatment of the junk DNA issue, and us ID critics have been bashing ID for its complete failure on the genome-size variability issue for years, this was a huge omission on Wells’s part." -- I agree it's still poorly phrased. Shorter version: Wells doesn't give the genome size variation point much attention at all. NickMatzke_UD

Nick Matzke, (as to my Casey Luskin reference) I call attention to the fact that it is YOU PERSONALLY who Casey Luskin recently refuted as to YOUR claim that neo-Darwinian processes have been observed generating a novel gene:

Leading Darwin Defender Admits Darwinism's Most "Detailed Explanation" of a Gene Doesn't Even Tell What Function's Being Selected - Casey Luskin - October 5, 2011 Excerpt: ...You (Nick Matzke) just admitted that the most "detailed explanation" for the evolution of a gene represents a case where: *they don't even know the precise function of the gene, *and thus don't know what exactly what function was being selected, *and thus don't know if there are steps that require multiple mutations to produce an advantage, *and thus haven't even begun to show that the gene can evolve in a step-by-step fashion, *and thus don't know that there are sufficient probabilistic resources to produce the gene by gene duplication+mutation+selection. In effect, you have just admitted that Darwinian explanations for the origin of genes are incredibly detail-poor. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/leading_darwin_defender_admits051551.html

Thus Nick Matzke, why does it not trouble you greatly that what you referred to as the most 'Detailed Explanation' for the evolution of a gene is found to be nothing of the sort??? Should you not humbly admit that this is a stunning lack of empirical support,,, indeed a very serious short-coming of neo-Darwinism??? Why do you go to so much personal effort to artificially prop up a 'scientific theory' that cannot even support its own weight with empirical evidence? ,,, Especially when such intellectual dishonesty on this particular matter could very well be, in the end, personally, and tremendously, tragic for you??? music and verse:

Trust In Jesus-Third Day (with lyrics) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BtaCeJYqZA John 1:1-5 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. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

bornagain77

Luckily your link doesn't work :) Elizabeth Liddle

Nick, I think your post got a bit mangled - could you rephrase it? What argument did Wells "gloss past" and what did he say (or not say) about variable genome size? Elizabeth Liddle

Jonathan has also written an excellent rebuttal of Nick’s ‘onion argument’, though I have lent my book out right now and can’t quote it at the moment;

Nah; I have the book, and all Wells does is gloss past T. Ryan Gregory's onion argument; Wells gives the more important point, the huge variability in genome size as a widespread pattern, much attention at all. Considering Wells's book is the definitive ID treatment of the junk DNA issue, and us ID critics have been bashing ID for its complete failure on the genome-size variability issue for years, this was a huge omission on Wells's part. NickMatzke_UD

ba77, I found this video to be equally as inspiring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRMBxnxWiNQ paragwinn

As well Nick Matzke, at the 7:00 minute mark of this following video, we find that 'genome length vs. mass' gives a enigmatic 1/4 power scaling on the plotted graph for a wide range of different creatures. Thus, once again, giving strong indication of a design constraint that was imposed, top down, on genome length, and which is inexplicable from the neo-Darwinian framework:

4-Dimensional Quarter Power Scaling In Biology - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5964041/

Of related note; this 'enigmatic 1/4 power scaling is found throughout life, not just for genome length;

The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection." Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79 https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/16037/#comment-369806

Though Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini rightly find it inexplicable for 'random' Natural Selection to be the rational explanation for the scaling of the physiology, and anatomy, of living things to four-dimensional parameters, they do not seem to fully realize the implications this 'four dimensional scaling' of living things presents. This 4-D scaling is something we should rightly expect from a Intelligent Design perspective. This is because Intelligent Design holds that ‘higher dimensional transcendent information’ is more foundational to life, and even to the universe itself, than either matter or energy are. This higher dimensional 'expectation' for life, from a Intelligent Design perspective, is directly opposed to the expectation of the Darwinian framework, which holds that information, and indeed even the essence of life itself, is merely an 'emergent' property of the 3-D material realm. Professor McIntosh reflects that expectation, from the Intelligent Design perspective, here:

Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSH Excerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. http://journals.witpress.com/paperinfo.asp?pid=420

And indeed that expectation that 'transcendent' information would be found to be constraining mass and 'free-energy', has now been met with the finding of 'non-local', beyond space and time, quantum information/entanglement in molecular biology:

Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA & Protein Folding - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/

bornagain77

Well Nick considering the unmatched level of poly-functional complexity we are dealing with in the genome, that computer programmers can only dream of, I should think that, by far, the best approach to this slowly unraveling C-value enigma would be to presuppose design constraints for such variance, especially given the sheer poverty of neo-Darwinism to account for the generation of a single gene or protein (Casey Luskin); notes: There seems to be no logical 'evolutionary progression' to be found for the size of genomes in less complex animals to the size of genomes found in more complex animals. In fact the genome sizes are known to vary widely between Kinds/Species, despite the clear differences in their complexity, and this mystery is known as the c-value enigma:

C-value enigma Excerpt: it was soon found that C-values (genome sizes) vary enormously among species and that this bears no relationship to the presumed number of genes (as reflected by the complexity of the organism). For example, the cells of some salamanders may contain 40 times more DNA than those of humans. Given that C-values were assumed to be constant because DNA is the stuff of genes, and yet bore no relationship to presumed gene number, this was understandably considered paradoxical; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-value_enigma

And yet, even though this C-value enigma is somewhat paradoxical to the materialistic, neo-Darwinian, point of view, since information is presupposed to simply 'emerge' from a material basis and there clearly is no linear correlation to amount of material present and amount of information expressed, from a design point of view we should rightly expect genome sizes to vary somewhat with design constraints. constraints that are imposed in trying to achieve a 'optimal design' in any particular life-form that was designed; For instance:

"There is strong positive correlation, however, between the amount of DNA and the volume of a cell and its nucleus - which effects the rate of cell growth and division. Furthermore, in mammals there is a negative correlation between genome size and rate of metabolism. Bats have very high metabolic rates and relatively small genomes. In birds, there is a negative correlation between C-value and resting metabolic rate. In salamanders, there is also a negative correlation between genome size and the rate of limb regeneration." Jonathan Wells - The Myth Of Junk DNA - page 85

Jonathan has also written an excellent rebuttal of Nick's 'onion argument', though I have lent my book out right now and can't quote it at the moment; Further notes:

Similarities Found in Genomes Across Multiple Species; Platypus Still out of Place - July 2011 Excerpt: "Basically what this all means is that if the chromosome number of a species can be given, the relative sizes of all the chromosomes can instantly be known," Yu said. "Also, if you tell me the genome size in the chromosome base pair, I can tell you the base pair length of each chromosome." http://pos-darwinista.blogspot.com/2011/07/o-grande-quadro-dos-cromossomos-revela.html THE ALLOMETRIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENOME SIZE (C-VALUE) AND TOTAL METABOLIC ENERGY PER LIFESPAN, PER UNIT BODY MASS IN ANIMALS Excerpt: this show(s) that,,, the higher total life energy per unit body mass leads to smaller C-value. http://www.sustz.com/Proceeding09/Papers/Medical%20Biology%20Studies/A_ATANASOV.pdf

Thus, though we are just barely beginning to understand these varying constraints on genome sizes that ensure 'optimal design', the point is that the evidence is indeed beginning to point strongly in the Intelligent Design direction, just as it should have rightly been presupposed years ago to do, if science were to have been unshackled from the dogma of neo-darwinism!

"To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of 1,000 volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying, and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. But to the Darwinist, the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt - the paradigm takes precedence!" Michael Denton Larry Norman - I Wish We'd All Been Ready - music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1FcTKNXlO0

bornagain77

heh. Elizabeth Liddle

Nick you just mad because physicists get all the cool toys. junkdnaforlife

So it will be really interesting to see is whether, in a year or so, some sources are rewriting history to show that they never really thought there was a Higgs boson, in just the way that Darwinists insist they never thought junk DNA was just junk and conclusive evidence for their position, when in fact there is very considerable documentary evidence that that is exactly what they did think.

It is so funny that you guys think junk DNA has been overturned, when you've never explained, and rarely even acknowledge, the crashingly important fact that genome size varies hugely among very similar species, and that many things like ferns and salamanders have genomes that are dozens of times bigger than the human genome, with the difference being mostly due to parasitic repetitive elements. The fact that species A can have a genome size of, say, 30 billion base pairs, and species B can have a genome size of, say, 3 billion base pairs, and both species are onions which only an expert could even tell apart, is *strong* evidence that most of that extra genome isn't doing anything all that amazing. Finding a functional pseudogene here or there doesn't change this basic fact a bit. You routinely ignore this kind of important information, and then start tossing insults at biologists, and you expect scientists to take you seriously? Good luck with that. NickMatzke_UD