Man-ape chasm of differences

Looks like the ID skeptics here musta fallen into the aforementioned chasm. ;-) -Q Querius

Since my questions remain unaddressed, here's a video posted today by Rice Professor, James Tour at the portion in which he addresses Darwinism and the Origin of Life Problem: https://youtu.be/8nRHvGdruIQ?t=1699 He invites anyone to a free lunch paid for by him to anyone who can clearly explain macro evolution or the origin of life at the molecular level. He promises to only ask questions. -Q Querius

Jerry, correct. In addition, there is need to explain organisms capable of adaptation to niches, informed by recognition of the implications of need for many, well matched, properly arranged and coupled components to achieve function. Niche is being abused as yet another form of poof magic something from nothing, i.e. origin of FSCO/I is not adequately addressed. Lucky noise incrementally filtered through differential reproductive success is grossly inadequate in itself and fails to address what the von Neumann kinematic self replicator tells us about self replication. Or for that matter Paley in his ch 2 thought exercise on a self replicating watch. KF kairosfocus

AF, you set up and knock over yet another strawman. No one has suggested that body plans do not imply significant molecular and metabolic process issues and changes, also development biology shifts, especially embryological ones. For instance, highlighted by Alfred Russel Wallace [an ID pioneer], flight feathers are a case of FSCO/I rich structures. But, such are useless without further FSCO/I rich wing, neurological, air and blood circulation, musculature, brain wiring and underlying biochemical processes. Going back to the Darwin pond or the like, origin of smart gated encapsulation, metabolic process flow networks and associated molecular nanotech units and the von Neumann kinematic self replicator have to be addressed. Suggestions of alternative architectures for early life still lack adequate observational warrant, something attested to inadvertently by the common move of setting aside OoL when its issues are inconvenient. You full well know that from Thaxton et al on, modern scientific work on ID has raised OoL as a central point, with onward shifts to body plans being in that context. Also, stories of an architecture shift -- at crude level contrast Apple II on a 6502 to Lisa and Mackintosh then Power PC then Intel then now ARM -- would have to further account for switch and disappearance of the claimed first architecture, beyond lab coat clad just so stories. And all of this does not even engage the qualitative, transformational invisible shift in our own emergence as OP highlights:

Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.,,, It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm.,,, Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man. The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men.

That is the biggest hole in the grand, lab coat clad, just so, evolutionary emergence -- that part is poof, magic -- narrative. KF kairosfocus

changes in allele frequencies in populations over time in response to ecological niche change

That’s genetics not Evolution. jerry

No, Andrew, biological evolution entails changes in allele frequencies in populations over time in response to ecological niche change. Alan Fox

"So that’s evolution!" Is people eating synthetic sweetener evolution? Andrew asauber

...they do not solve the challenge of getting to a body plan level shoreline of function.

Come off it, KF, morphological changes are much less demanding of genome changes than evolution of the cellular biochemistry. Subsequent to the origin of life, there are several milestones that set the stage: eukaryotes, sexual reproduction, multicellularity. Once you have deuterostomes, bilaterians and segmentation, much of the heavy lifting is done. Hox genes orchestrate the embryological development and sheets of cells differentiate and fold, variations on a theme. We are just variations on the basic deuterostome doughnut. Alan Fox

Bacteria can adapt to eat various things including nylon … so what ?

So that's evolution! Alan Fox

PS, AF of course refuses to note that islands are dynamic, especially barrier islands. That's before we get to the focus of the metaphor, zones of effective functional organisation amid seas of non function. His niches are within islands of function, they do not solve the challenge of getting to a body plan level shoreline of function. And of course the objection itself is a case in point of Orgel-Wicked FSCO/I. kairosfocus

If anyone is interested in the nylon eating enzyme see https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/do-nylon-eating-bacteria-show-that-new-functional-information-is-easy-to-evolve/ It is discussed in full. Aside: in this thread I bring up the name Jurgen Brosius a few times with links. The links are all dead as the university he was associated with took them down. Aside2: a proposed research study that would answer        all the questions for Darwinian Evolution as well as for punctuated equilibrium is discussed. It has been ignored by all here. Which leads one to the assessment that neither side here wants an answer.         Why? jerry

AF at 262: "While we wait for any kind of scientific hypothesis from “Intelligent Design” theorists. Every tub must stand on its own bottom" AF is falsely claiming that Darwinian evolution is a testable science and that Intelligent Design is not a testable science. That oft-repeated false claim from Darwinian atheists is a patently false claim and is, in actuality, the complete opposite of what is actually true. It is Darwinian evolution itself that lacks any rigidly defined falsification criteria so as to make it a testable science. Whereas Intelligent Design can be easily falsified by someone/anyone demonstrating that unguided processes have the capacity within themselves to produce coded information. In fact, there is a 10 million dollar prize being offered for the first person who can falsify ID,

Artificial Intelligence + Origin of Life Prize, $10 Million USD Excerpt: What You Must Do to Win The Prize You must arrange for a digital communication system to emerge or self-evolve without "cheating." The diagram below describes the system. Without explicitly designing the system, your experiment must generate an encoder that sends digital code to a decoder. Your system needs to transmit at least five bits of information. (In other words it has to be able to represent 32 states. The genetic code supports 64.) You have to be able to draw an encoding and decoding table and determine whether or not the data has been transmitted successfully. So, for example, an RNA based origin of life experiment will be considered successful if it contains an encoder, message and decoder as described above. To our knowledge, this has never been done. https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0

Whereas, on the other hand, there is simply no empirical finding within science that Darwinists will ever allow to falsify evolution,

"Evolution is slow and gradual except when it is fast. It is dynamic and creates huge changes over time, except when it keeps everything the same for millions of years. It explains both extreme complexity and elegant simplicity. It tells us how birds learned to fly and how some lost that ability. Evolution made cheetahs fast and turtles slow. Some creatures are made big and others small, some gloriously beautiful and some boringly gray. It forced fish to walk and walking animals to return to the sea. It diverges except when it converges. It produces exquisitely fine-tuned designs except when it produces junk. Evolution is random and without direction except when it moves toward a target. Life under evolution is a cruel battlefield, except when it demonstrates altruism. Evolution explains virtues and vice, love and hate, religion and atheism and it does all this with a growing number of ancillary hypotheses…It explains everything without explaining anything well." — Matti Leisola, bioengineer (former Dean of Chemistry and Material Sciences at Helsinki University of Technology) "Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. If species then persist for eons with little modification, that just means evolution takes long breaks. If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought." ~ Cornelius Hunter

In fact, as Dr. Hunter recently pointed out, everything central to Darwin's theory can be forfeited within evolutionary theory, (i.e. natural selection, random causes, common descent) save for atheistic naturalism itself,

What is evolution? The origin of species by: natural selection, random causes, common descent, gradualism, etc. Right? Wrong. Too often that is what is taught, but it is false. That’s according to evolutionists themselves. A typical example? See, “The study of evolution is fracturing — and that may be a good thing,” by Lund University biologist Erik Svensson, writing at The Conversation. Evolutionists themselves can forfeit natural selection, random causes, common descent, etc. How do I know? Because it is in the literature. So, what is evolution? In other words, what is core to the theory — and not forfeitable? It’s naturalism. Period. That is the only thing required of evolutionary theory. And naturalism is a religious requirement, not a scientific one. Aside from naturalism, practically anything is fair game: Uncanny convergence, rapid divergence, lineage-specific biology, evolution of evolution, directed mutations, saltationism, unlikely simultaneous mutations, just-so stories, multiverses … the list goes on. But this is where it gets interesting. Because if you have two theories, you don’t have one theory. In other words, you have a multitude of contradictory theories. And you have heated debates because nothing seems to fit the data. In science, that is not a good sign. But it is exactly what evolutionists have had — for over a century now. There is no such thing as a settled theory of evolution. On that point, textbook orthodoxy is simply false. - Dr. Cornelius Hunter - PhD. Biophysics https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/at-evolution-news-there-is-no-settled-theory-of-evolution/

The interesting thing about Darwinian atheists holding on to their presupposition of atheistic naturalism, in the face of all contradictory evidence that falsifies central tenets of Darwin's theory, is that presupposing atheistic naturalism, and/or 'methodological naturalism', to be true drives science itself in to catastrophic epistemological failure,

Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist (who believes Darwinian materialism to be true) is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions and/or ‘observations’ about reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. the illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who also must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the hopelessness of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must also hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, – April 2021 – Defense of each claim https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/from-philip-cunningham-the-human-eye-like-the-human-brain-is-a-wonder/#comment-727327

In fact, to add insult to injury, quantum mechanics has now falsified material particles themselves as being "real". i.e. Quantum mechanics has falsified material particles as the ultimate substratum upon which our primary definition of 'reality' can be based,

April 2022 - empirical science has now proven, via the falsification of ‘realism’ by Leggett’s inequality, that material particles themselves, (which Darwinist materialists hold to be the ultimate foundation for all of reality), are not ‘real’. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-evolution-news-recognizing-providence-in-the-history-of-life-is-a-hint-about-our-own-lives/#comment-763046

Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist may firmly believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

And although Darwinists cling to their presupposition of Atheistic Naturalism in the face of all contradictory evidence, the truth of the matter is that is all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of Intelligent Design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of Atheistic Naturalism.

From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results, from top to bottom science itself is certainly not ‘natural’. Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever just found laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analysed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.

Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of Intelligent Design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of Atheistic Naturalism. In fact, modern science was born out of, and is STILL very much crucially dependent on, Judeo-Christian presuppositions ,

Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.theistic.net/papers/R.Koons/Koons-science.pdf Rob Koons is a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. With degrees from Michigan State, Oxford, and UCLA, he specializes in metaphysics and philosophical logic, with special interest in philosophical theology and the foundations of both science and ethics.

As Paul Davies stated, "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”

Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address – by Paul Davies – August 1995 Excerpt: “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24

Thus, AF may have claimed that "Every tub must stand on its own bottom", but alas, the bottom of AF's Darwinian 'tub' is standing on atheistic naturalism. And atheistic naturalism simply can't provide a rational and coherent foundation for practicing 'science'. Shoot, for that matter, atheistic naturalism/materialism can't even provide a coherent foundation for its own 'tub' as an 'abstract' philosophy. You see, Atheistic Naturalism is a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality which renders it a profoundly immaterial, abstract, even 'non-natural', claim about the nature of reality. i.e. How much does the philosophy of Atheistic Naturalism weigh? Does the philosophy of Atheistic naturalism have a positive or negative charge? Or is Atheistic Naturalism hotter or colder than the philosophy of Judeo-Christian Theism? or etc.. etc.. etc...? As Adam Sedgwick scolded Charles Darwin, "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly",,

,,, "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly",,,, - Sedgwick to Darwin, 1859 https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml

Hopefully AF can now see that his Atheistic Naturalism collapses in on itself, and can't even provide a solid foundation for its own basis, i.e. for its own 'tub', much less can it provide a solid foundation for modern science.

Matthew 7:24-27 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

bornagain77

Alan Fox, when you mentioned this nylon thing.... I as an engineer, i was wondering, how is the capacity to digest nylon evidence for evolution ? Bacteria can adapt to eat various things including nylon ... so what ? What it has to do with some Darwinian evolution ? It looks like another example of intelligent design ... martin_r

Alan Fox, the nylon thing.... Here you go.... i quick google search: Wikipedia:

There is scientific consensus that the capacity to synthesize nylonase most probably developed as a single-step mutation that survived because it improved the fitness of the bacteria possessing the mutation.

??? most probably developed as a single-step ??? ??? scientific consensus ???? If something starts like "there is a scientific consensus" especially if it is a Darwinian scientific consensus, one can be 100% sure that there is something wrong with what the consensus claims ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria_and_creationism martin_r

Alan Fox

That some bacteria have acquired the ability to digest nylon

Are you playing games with me again ? Did you read what i wrote ? Did i talk about bacteria digesting nylon ? PS1: because Darwinists misrepresented the reality so many times, including bacteria ATB resistance, i bet, that they have misrepresented that nylon thing as well ... You should keep in mind, that these guys are ALWAYS wrong ... they can not be trusted ... PS2: i bet you never heard of efflux pumps .... martin_r

AF, I am unimpressed with your continued denial of a highly obvious phenomenon, functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information, which you full well know was identified by Orgel and Wicken in the 1970's as has been repeatedly documented. To object to such FSCO/I as an alleged fantasy, you are forced to construct a case in point, text in English. That shows the magnitude of crooked yardstick thinking and resulting ideological blindness, cognitive dissonance and projection to the obviously despised other involved in your objection. You are in repeated, predictable denial of blatant facts inconvenient to your preferred views. I suggest you pause and ponder the structure of a gear train, nuts and bolts, fishing reels, watches, moving coil meters, aircraft instrument panels, oil refineries, turboprop and turbofan engines, computer paper tape, then compare assembly line transfer machines and production cells, then the cellular metabolic reaction process flow network, ribosomes, tRNA, mRNA, DNA with protein codes, the flagellum etc. Pause and look at a few molecular cars. Then come back with fresh eyes. KF kairosfocus

SG, I will simply note on a few points of observation and implications here and around the region, noting that you seem to struggle with Sir Charles Lyell's direct point on Newton's rules much less wider matters. a: We have directly observed this island inflating and deflating like a balloon, thanks to sub mm GPS derived position fixes, showing direct motion due to magma movements. b: This already points to power, energy, work and force availability and energy in the tectonic system. Where, power is rate and work a cumulative effect, with energy directly equivalent. Also, force and displacement together give work. This tells us about available energy and rates it can be released. Well beyond nuclear bombs of course. c: Directly, subduction zones, movements and earthquake patterns have been seen, helping to construct a frame for an island arc subduction zone with a shift in subduction angle hence Guadeloupe as a double island in a butterfly shape and North of it two sub arcs. d: We have a context for seeing the islands as forming at points where magma related to the subduction surfaces, forming chains of volcanic centres, e.g. here has three. e: Wider, a global pattern of crustal plates and motions has been observed and motion monitored real time. f: 1,000 mi W, a strike slip zone is active and is associated with the phenomena of Jamaica, Haiti, Cayman etc. This is similar to the San Andreas zone in California. The big earthquake in Haiti was associated with a fault trend that runs into Jamaica and the latter awaits its turn, again. In the past, IIRC, San Andreas and related quake zones have seen crustal shifts of 10+ feet associated with quakes, again an index of forces, energies and power. g: Just long mountain in Kingston-St Andrew has in it an obvious break, showing brittle behaviour on mountain building scale. Where, direct motion of zones and plates has moved beyond nails on either side of a point to sub mm GPS measurement. That is of course a sedimentary zone with say the Liguanea plain an alluvial deposit by contrast with the volcano collapse E coast here. h: Barbados. 300 mi S, shows cu mi of jumbled staghorn corals and similar things [with a stepped pattern in the land visible in Ch Ch], where too, I have collected fossil bivalves there and on my grandpa's farm in Jamaica, that could have come off a beach here (as I was looking at a couple of weeks ago). i: So, we can see dynamics, forces, power, energy, etc and can reasonably project, noting the presence of mechanical necessity and stochastic chance [e.g. in quake patterns], for example certain seismic signals and frequency bands are tied to particular aspects of volcano dynamics. j: There have even been periods of predictable relaxation oscillator behaviour on eruptive cycles here, on scales of hours to days. A roughly 30 year deeper cycle seems evident too. It is again due about now. k: Shifting, we here see the significance of observation anchored explanations involving causal factors established on observation, involving chance and necessity. Where, text in this thread shows another, intelligently directed configuration and associated signs including FSCO/I. l: Reasonable explanation on combinations of the three and subject to observational control, are reasonable. Red herring accusation, fails. KF kairosfocus

...you are forced to create cases of FSCO/I complete with island of functioning fine tuning, just to intelligently direct text configurations to object.

That's your unique fantasy, KF. FSCO/I (try a Google search, onlookers, and see how widespread this acronym is), islands of function (the niche landscape is dynamic), text as analogy for DNA, are debunked and survive only in your repetitions. Alan Fox

AF, evidently, you would not recognise scientific explanations, hypotheses and work with concrete and successful results if you tripped over them. Once, they don't fit your ideological, crooked yardstick frame. Start from, you are forced to create cases of FSCO/I complete with island of functioning fine tuning, just to intelligently direct text configurations to object. KF kairosfocus

Martin_r Darwinian evolution is an explanation of how living organisms (populations, not individuals) can change over time in response to changes in their ecological niche. That some bacteria have acquired the ability to digest nylon since it has appeared in that habitat is Darwinian evolution in action. Alan Fox

Sir Giles @260

8) For example, antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, nylonase, etc.

please! stop parroting the nonsense about antibiotic resistance as an example of Darwinian evolution... Antibiotic resistance is a textbook example of intelligent design. Sir Giles, have you ever heard of efflux pumps ? yes, efflux pumps are nano-pumps located in bacteria cell membrane. Those are literal pumps. This is not a metaphor.

In microbiology, efflux is the moving out of a variety of different compounds out of cells, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, organic pollutants, plant-produced compounds, quorum sensing signals, bacterial metabolites and neurotransmitters.

Antibiotic resistance has nothing to do with some Darwinian evolution ... it is just another example how Darwinian biologists misrepresented the reality... These efflux pumps did not evolved ... they were always there .... they just started to work/adapted to work more efficiently when bacteria exposed to antibiotics ...

Antimicrobial resistance is a current major challenge in chemotherapy and infection control. The ability of bacterial and eukaryotic cells to recognize and pump toxic compounds from within the cell to the environment before they reach their targets is one of the important mechanisms contributing to this phenomenon.

???? The Ability to recognize toxic compounds ?????? ???? The ability to pump toxic compounds from within the cell ????? Are you Darwinists kidding ???? What has this to do with some evolution ??? If this is not a textbook example of intelligent design, then i don't know ....

Drug efflux is a key mechanism of resistance in Gram-negative bacteria. These systems pump solutes out of the cell. Efflux pumps allow the microorganisms to regulate their internal environment by removing toxic substances, including antimicrobial agents, metabolites and quorum sensing signal molecules. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3711980/#:~:text=Drug%20efflux%20is%20a%20key,and%20quorum%20sensing%20signal%20molecules.

martin_r

Yes, I’m sure we’ll need to endure mountains of additional, unsupported speculation subducted by lack of credibility and new discoveries.

While we wait for any kind of scientific hypothesis from "Intelligent Design" theorists. Every tub must stand on its own bottom Alan Fox

Sir Giles @260,

1) repetition of a red herring.

Pronouncing something as a “red herring” doesn’t make it so.

2) The Rockies, the Himalayas, the Andes for the most part were not produced by volcanoes.

Strawman. No one said they were—please quote where this was claimed.

3) They were produced by the uplifting caused by one plate subducting under another.

Oh really? You think that mountain ranges are on or adjacent to subduction zones?

4) This is as settled as science can get yet we do not have a single observation of this happening.

There’s no such thing as settled science. We do have observations. First of all, I guess you never heard of Jack Oliver’s paper, Seismology and the New Global Tectonics, was published in 1968. Before that time, plate tectonics was considered crackpot science. Secondly, you’re apparently not aware of direct measurement of mountain uplift. https://www.livescience.com/29680-gps-data-study-on-mountain-range-vertical-movement.html https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-measure-a-mountain/

5) We have concluded this by extrapolating small observable changes over long periods of time.

Extrapolating and observable are not compatible in this case. Maybe you meant “interpolating.” The problem is that linear extrapolation over long periods of time usually proves wrong.

6) Supported by geological observations of plate tectonics and the location of mountain ranges.

How does this square with your assertion in 4, that there’s not a single observation of this happening?

7) we have plenty of evidence of natural selection resulting in new function over observable time.

No, we have plenty of interpretations but we’re never seen NEW functions, only existing functions being disabled or existing suppressed functions being enabled (Lenski’s experiments).

8) For example, antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, nylonase, etc.

These are not de novo, but a shift in gene/allele frequencies. https://www.biologydiscussion.com/genetics/population-genetics/calculating-gene-allele-frequencies-in-a-population-genetics/84576

9) We have a morphological classification system that matches up very well with a genomic classification and proteomic classification.

Haha. We wish!

10) Both the morphological and genomic classification systems of extant organism are remarkably consistent with what we have derived as ancestral lineages in the fossil record.

Then why is it that a month doesn’t go by without some announcement how evolutionary biologists are surprised at some discovery? Baloney.

11) We have a fossil record showing that forms have changed over time.

We have fossils, some of which are classified as out of place. We have polystrate fossils. We have modern-looking fossils in the same strata as extinct ones. It’s been shown that strata can form quickly at river mouths or over large areas due to mega floods. https://www.usgs.gov/publications/missoula-and-bonneville-floods-a-review-ice-age-megafloods-columbia-river-basin

12) Supported by the geologic record.

The geologic record is supported by the biological record supported by the geologic record . . .

13) We have demonstrated that fairly significant phenotypic changes can be associated with minor genetic changes.

Yep. And most of these changes are fatal to the organism. Or do you mean epigenetics? And how did that evolve?

14) we have observations of complicated structures (eg, flagellum) being very similar to other complicated structures (eg injectisome).

Really? So, what’s the RPM of an injectisome?

15) Biogeography supports evolution.

Really? How?

16) ID has zero observations of the implementation of biological design other than the biological modifications intentionally caused by humans.

More baloney. ID predicts that apparent junk does indeed have an important function. For example “junk DNA” and so-called (at the time) “vestigial” organs.

17) ID has zero hypotheses on how and when designs were implemented.

Correct. On purpose. ID takes no position on the source of design. But the ID perspective of investigating poorly understood features has been demonstrated as advancing science faster than the blind alleys of assuming unknown structures have NO function.

18) ID has zero ideas of how to test the zero hypotheses they have on the implementation of design.

You mean the null hypothesis? Again, ID has no position on the SOURCE of design. This question is inaccessible to science due to a lack of evidence. Are we in an ancestor simulation? Is there some sort of god/gods? Are we a class project for an alien biology class? As far as evidence is concerned, there’s no evidence that matter has innate consciousness, intelligence, or anything else, or some entity that can result in the vast design complexity of what we observe. Until there’s scientifically accessible (measurable) evidence, ID takes no position.

There is much more that can be said, but this will do as an introductory primer.

Yes, I’m sure we’ll need to endure mountains of additional, unsupported speculation subducted by lack of credibility and new discoveries. -Q Querius

KF: SG, I simply note that we have here seen mountain building forces and destroying forces in rapid action, which allows us to address a range of other forces.

1) repetition of a red herring. 2) The Rockies, the Himalayas, the Andes for the most part were not produced by volcanoes. 3) They were produced by the uplifting caused by one plate subducting under another. 4) This is as settled as science can get yet we do not have a single observation of this happening. 5) We have concluded this by extrapolating small observable changes over long periods of time. 6) Supported by geological observations of plate tectonics and the location of mountain ranges. 7) we have plenty of evidence of natural selection resulting in new function over observable time. 8) For example, antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, nylonase, etc. 9) We have a morphological classification system that matches up very well with a genomic classification and proteomic classification. 10) Both the morphological and genomic classification systems of extant organism are remarkably consistent with what we have derived as ancestral lineages in the fossil record. 11) We have a fossil record showing that forms have changed over time. 12) Supported by the geologic record. 13) We have demonstrated that fairly significant phenotypic changes can be associated with minor genetic changes. 14) we have observations of complicated structures (eg, flagellum) being very similar to other complicated structures (eg injectisome). 15) Biogeography supports evolution. 16) ID has zero observations of the implementation of biological design other than the biological modifications intentionally caused by humans. 17) ID has zero hypotheses on how and when designs were implemented. 18) ID has zero ideas of how to test the zero hypotheses they have on the implementation of design. There is much more that can be said, but this will do as an introductory primer. Sir Giles

And the question still remains unanswered by the Evolution Experts and Darwinian Defenders . . .

Maybe we should remind them of the severe limit on the speed of evolution, which is known as . . . wait, let’s see whether JVL or Alan Fox know this one. LOL

"And just as night follows day, much, much more will be said. And, equally predictable, the arguments will not be found to be compelling by anyone knowledgeable in the science. But by all means, keep tilting at those windmills. - Sir Giles" Oh, I like it! And it's now been added to my TrollTrove (tm). -Q Querius

SG, I simply note that we have here seen mountain building forces and destroying forces in rapid action, which allows us to address a range of other forces. For example, the amount of sand and gravel produced de novo tells us much. And again much more, I will simply note your continued needlessly snide commentary and its probable intent, to cause ever sharper polarisation . . . a strong sign of failure on merits. Especially as, just to object you further provide an example of the causal factor known to create FSCO/I. KF kairosfocus

SG at 256, Evolution has no intelligence, no brain. It is a series of made up stories designed around fitting them to a framework that cannot be shown to be true. Articles in science journals include a lot of guesswork, and words and terms like, "may have," "appears to" and so on. Then I see words and terms like "unexpected," "upends previous thinking" and so on. Intelligent Design identifies complex, clearly engineered biological structures that could not have arisen unguided. Continuing research reveals more and more levels of complexity, showing evolution to be orders of magnitude improbable, including a time factor that extends to the current age of the Universe. Chance did not, and could not, do much of anything. There was not enough time. relatd

KF: Not at all, maybe first, you don’t know that I live about ten miles, line of sight from where a mountain has been destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed, then rebuilt, over the past 30 years.

1) Red herring. 2) The majority of mountains are not of volcanic origin. 3) They are the result of one plate subduction under another, causing uplift of the crust. 4) we have observed small uplift events but nobody has observed a mountain being formed by this process. 5) We extrapolate our observed events over long periods of time to theorize what the outcome could result in. 6) No different that the millions of small evolutionary events that have been observed and extrapolation over time to theorize what the potential outcome could be.

The observable expansion of the cosmos allows direct projection back to a singularity.

7) The observed changes in population genotypes and phenotypes allows projection back to a common ancestor. 8) And this is supported by observations in molecular biology, geology, palaeontology, nuclear physics and other scientific fields.

The actually observed capability of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity to generate FSCO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits is directly nil

9) And the actually observed capability of subduction to generate a mountain range is directly nil.

You full well know how inference to the best empirically anchored explanation works on Newton’s rules

10) I know that the best empirically anchored explanation is one that is supported by evidence from diverse fields of study. 11) Which evolution is. 12) ID has an inference from human design. 13) Not supported by geology, palaeontology, molecular biology, nuclear physics and the other fields of study that are consistent with evolution. Sir Giles

They are second only to the dearly departed ET in their level of abusive insult.

A poor second. Wonder what's happened to Joe, hope he's OK Alan Fox

SG at 253, You can't handle sharp and direct? You can't reply to my comments but accuse me of abuse? Sad. Reply to my comments and leave the accusations behind. relatd

KF, I notice that your admonitions about the tone of a person’s comments are only applied to those who you have disagreements with. That tells us much; none to your credit. Have you ever bothered to read Relatd’s comment. They are second only to the dearly departed ET in their level of abusive insult. Sir Giles

SG, a crude ad hominem targetting Relatd, that tells us much; none to your credit. KF kairosfocus

PM1, I draw your attention to Walker and Davies, just above. KF kairosfocus

Relatd, you here see a case in point why I use the otherwise clumsy phrase, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity. Objectors here routinely fail -- or outright refuse -- to recognise that due to the need for multiple, well matched, properly organised and coupled parts to achieve function, most of the configuration space of possibilities is taken up by non functional gibberish, leading to fine tuning and operating points clustering in narrow zones, i.e. islands of function. Text vs gibberish vs stuck keys is a simple example they refuse to acknowledge, telling us much about them as they have to compose text to object. Of course, configuration spaces are actually cut down phase spaces, and that reveals the root of this point, statistical thermodynamics. KF PS, just for fun, Walker and Davies make much the same point:

In physics, particularly in statistical mechanics [--> aka, statistical thermodynamics], we base many of our calculations on the assumption of metric transitivity, which asserts that a system’s trajectory will eventually [--> given "enough time and search resources"] explore the entirety of its state space – thus everything that is phys-ically possible will eventually happen. It should then be trivially true that one could choose an arbitrary “final state” (e.g., a living organism) and “explain” it by evolving the system backwards in time choosing an appropriate state at some ’start’ time t_0 (fine-tuning the initial state). In the case of a chaotic system [--> butterfly effect] the initial state must be specified to arbitrarily high precision. But this account amounts to no more than saying that the world is as it is because it was as it was, and our current narrative therefore scarcely constitutes an explanation in the true scientific sense. We are left in a bit of a conundrum with respect to the problem of specifying the initial conditions necessary to explain our world. A key point is that if we require specialness in our initial state (such that we observe the current state of the world and not any other state) metric transitivity cannot hold true, as it blurs any dependency on initial conditions – that is, it makes little sense for us to single out any particular state as special by calling it the ’initial’ state. If we instead relax the assumption of metric transitivity (which seems more realistic for many real world physical systems – including life), then our phase space will consist of isolated pocket regions and it is not necessarily possible to get to any other physically possible state (see e.g. Fig. 1 for a cellular automata example).

[--> or, there may not be "enough" time and/or resources for the relevant exploration, i.e. we see the 500 - 1,000 bit complexity threshold at work vs 10^57 - 10^80 atoms with fast rxn rates at about 10^-13 to 10^-15 s leading to inability to explore more than a vanishingly small fraction on the gamut of Sol system or observed cosmos . . . the only actually, credibly observed cosmos]

Thus the initial state must be tuned to be in the region of phase space in which we find ourselves [--> notice, fine tuning], and there are regions of the configuration space our physical universe would be excluded from accessing, even if those states may be equally consistent and permissible under the microscopic laws of physics (starting from a different initial state). Thus according to the standard picture, we require special initial conditions to explain the complexity of the world, but also have a sense that we should not be on a particularly special trajectory to get here (or anywhere else) as it would be a sign of fine–tuning of the initial conditions. [ --> notice, the "loading"] Stated most simply, a potential problem with the way we currently formulate physics is that you can’t necessarily get everywhere from anywhere (see Walker [31] for discussion). ["The “Hard Problem” of Life," June 23, 2016, a discussion by Sara Imari Walker and Paul C.W. Davies at Arxiv.]

kairosfocus

PM1, strawman. We both know the logic of defeasible inference to the best causal explanation and what it takes to defeat it. Just your own objections repeatedly show what intelligently directed configuration can and does do, and in our observation on trillions of cases only this factor. We can readily recognise that a heavy object routinely falls when unsupported by mechanical necessity, here, gravity. If said object is a die with eight corners and twelve edges, by the butterfly effect it effectively settles to an uppermost face at random, showing chance by a common process; quantum processes seem to follow chance patterns directly. A string of such dice can be intelligently arranged per a code to express a message and it is maximally implausible that such beyond 500 - 1,000 bits worth would be by chance. Where, actually, a coin is a two sided die with one effective edge and a similar butterfly effect. Going beyond, examining aspects of a great many phenomena, it has been found highly relevant and powerful to recognise lawlike necessities producing low contingency reliable outcomes on similar initial conditions; we call such, laws of physics . . . of which there are literally thousands. Under other circumstances, similar initial conditions routinely produce highly contingent outcomes, often fitting distributions of many types such as bells, J or reverse J, U, bimodal, flat, flicker noise, pink noise etc. Thirdly, we readily observe intelligently directed configurations that do not fit such patterns and are often associated with functional patterns of performance. All three factors are commonly operating in many cases and per aspect studies help us distinguish. Indeed, just in telecommunications, a key metric, signal to noise ratio relies on ability to distinguish such patterns, and of course so does SETI. Where, it is almost certain that you are suppressing your knowledge of statistical hypothesis testing which is another case in point. KF kairosfocus

SG, strawman projections and doubling down on the already adequately answered: >>) By that argument, mountain formation and the Big Bang are insupportable.>> 1: Not at all, maybe first, you don't know that I live about ten miles, line of sight from where a mountain has been destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed, then rebuilt, over the past 30 years. 2: The observable expansion of the cosmos allows direct projection back to a singularity. 3: The actually observed capability of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity to generate FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits is directly nil and for quite evident search challenge reasons; meanwhile there is an observed causal factor that routinely creates it, you just did in your objection -- intelligently directed configuration. >>2) And what observations does ID have of the designer>> 4: There is no THE designer observed, we have observed designers and characteristic products of intelligently directed configuration, such as FSCO/I. 5: This shows that designs and designers are possible and have known capability beyond blind forces. 6: Where, to cut off another predictable strawman, we exemplify designers, we do not exhaust them, and we have a particularly strong sign in the molecular nanotech of the cell, coded algorithms thus language and goal directed stepwise processes. 7: Attempts to obfuscate this in objections here and in the penumbra around UD, only show how far objectors are willing to go to keep up their objections. >> implementing new body plans?>> 8: You full well know how inference to the best empirically anchored explanation works on Newton's rules, let us for record note again to you from Sir Charles Lyell, as has been pointed out in your presence many times:

PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: BEING AN INQUIRY HOW FAR THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE ARE REFERABLE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION. [--> appeal to Newton's Rules, in the title of the work] BY CHARLES LYELL, Esq, F.R.S. PRESIDENT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON . . . JOHN MURRAY , , , 1835 [--> later, publisher of Origin]

9: We notice, in body plans, certain key features that are integral to the structure, especially, FSCO/I. We know separately that this is a strong and reliable sign -- trillions of observed cases, no exceptions -- of intelligently directed configuration as key causal factor. 10: Thus on reasonable like causes like, we may infer readily to the causal factor of the remote past, on what we have observed. 11: Of course, such an abductive inference is readily defeasible in principle, simply show another observed factor with the capability. It is obvious that the rhetorical expedients we are seeing are being put up because you do not have such an alternative. >> New species?>> 12: The same answer. >>3) Why dies ID have a different burden of proof than evolution?>> 13: False, you full well know the Newton Rule standard as cited from Lyell, and that one factor has met it but not the one you obviously favour. KF kairosfocus

Relatd: Cut the crap, OK? I’m a working book editor

Given the number of spelling, grammatical and other errors I see in recently published books, I am not surprised. Sir Giles

PyrrhoManiac1 @243,

I would say that my understanding of nature (and hence of “naturalism”) involves my own personal experiences as an outdoor enthusiast and amateur natural historian . . .

Let me recommend a book that I believe you would enjoy: Earthly Pleasures : Tales from a Biologist's Garden by Roger B. Swain However, let me observe that the more one learns about the stunning complexity in nature, the less credible one finds Darwin’s theory.

Querius: Maybe we should remind them of the severe limit on the speed of evolution, which is known as . . . wait, let’s see whether JVL or Alan Fox know this one. LOL

Since JVL and Alan Fox don’t know the answer to this question, maybe you can enlighten them. (smile) -Q Querius

Relatd @242,

I’m a working book editor. Out of 100 manuscripts, I might – might – see one that is worth publishing.

My highest respect goes to talented editors! This is a very challenging profession. In my experience, the insights, clarity, and expertise that editors provide, especially in their developmental and copy edits, are amazing! Keep up your invaluable work! -Q Querius

Sir Giles @235,

And just as night follows day, much, much more will be said. And, equally predictable, the arguments will not be found to be compelling by anyone knowledgeable in the science. But by all means, keep tilting at those windmills.

Thank you for the excellent generic trollbot response! This one is going into my growing collection. -Q Querius

@241

My guess is that your idea of Nature just happens to make your beliefs about Evolution possible. Right?

I would say that my understanding of nature (and hence of "naturalism") involves my own personal experiences as an outdoor enthusiast and amateur natural historian, plus my eclectic reading history that would need to include, amongst my most important influences, David Abrams , Murray Bookchin , John Dewey , Hans Jonas, and Terrence Deacon. PyrrhoManiac1

SG at 238, Cut the crap, OK? I'm a working book editor. Out of 100 manuscripts, I might - might - see one that is worth publishing. Evolution has no intelligence, no brain. Supposedly, the submissions I see were created by people who do. But most are incapable of stringing words together in an interesting, functional way. And you expect people to believe EVOLUTION can do better? relatd

PM1, My guess is that your idea of Nature just happens to make your beliefs about Evolution possible. Right? Andrew asauber

"to posit a designer to do what nature itself cannot" PM1, And you know what nature can and can't do? Did you make a list of what nature can and can't do? Andrew asauber

@238

And no evolutionary biologist would disagree with you. Sing evolutionary theory does not propose that blind, unguided chance is responsible for the diversity of life, ID’s opposition to evolution is based on a false premise.

I agree that ID's opposition to evolution is based on a false premise, but I don't think this correctly identifies what that false premise is. As I understand Dembski, the initial idea was to just stipulate that "design" was required wherever "chance" and "necessity" were insufficient. In other words, the premise is to take an Epicurean metaphysics of nature (or rather, a crude and simplified version of Epicureanism) as what nature must be like in the absence of intelligence. With that as the conceptual background, it became almost trivial to argue that therefore the intervention of an intelligent being is required to do anything beyond 17th-century billiard-ball physics. In other words, the error in ID is not to neglect how selection winnows biological novelty into adaptations but to begin with a fundamentally mistaken conception of what nature itself really is, since it is only against that background that it seems necessary to posit a designer to do what nature itself cannot. PyrrhoManiac1

Relatd: Blind, unguided chance had no ability to create such things. That is the ID position.

And no evolutionary biologist would disagree with you. Sing evolutionary theory does not propose that blind, unguided chance is responsible for the diversity of life, ID’s opposition to evolution is based on a false premise. Sir Giles

SG at 236, Your only apparent mission here is to trash ID and to use useless arguments for that position. The highly complex biological engineering found in living things is not being ignored by scientists. Blind, unguided chance had no ability to create such things. That is the ID position. relatd

KF: Any hypothesised different architecture needs to be warranted on actual observation of same in action, and that is simply not there

1) By that argument, mountain formation and the Big Bang are insupportable. 2) And what observations does ID have of the designer implementing new body plans? New species? 3) Why dies ID have a different burden of proof than evolution? Sir Giles

KF: More can be said,

And just as night follows day, much, much more will be said. And, equally predictable, the arguments will not be found to be compelling by anyone knowledgeable in the science. But by all means, keep tilting at those windmills. Sir Giles

AF, 1: as you full well know, function including reproductive function [implying a highly complex von Neumann kinematic self replicator] with metabolising automata having encapsulation and smart gating must be present for differential reproductive success to be possible for cell based life . . . what hides behind "selection". 2: Any hypothesised different architecture needs to be warranted on actual observation of same in action, and that is simply not there. 3: With cells on the table, blind chance variations and differential reproductive success directly fit blind chance and/or necessity -- as you full well know, noting too that differential reproductive success is in significant part highly chance influenced. 4: The net result of such would at best be local hill climbing, unable to span a good valley within an island of fine tuned function, much less an intervening sea of non function. 5: That is likely why some objectors pretend that it is dubious for complex configuration based function to require correct, properly oriented, matched and correctly coupled parts (sharply restricting effective configurations in the space of possibilities). 6: All this shows is, refusal to acknowledge the logic of process, even while typing out sentences that are sharply constrained to be functional English rather than at random gibberish 9ieblore6okve or stuck key repetition hhhhhhhhhhhhhh. More can be said, KF kairosfocus

Asauber @226

Says the guy who spends all his active hours at UD spamming Evolution.

Indeed! Pumping out comment after comment mostly without any content, but filled instead of examples of the genetic fallacy and pointless ad hominem attacks. And then, we get anointed with other dribbles and drools that Darwinism is not random since selection isn’t, while forgetting that mutations, purportedly (and incorrectly) are the source of all genomic change, which are indeed RANDOM, although some regions are conserved more than others. Maybe we should remind them of the severe limit on the speed of evolution, which is known as . . . wait, let’s see whether JVL or Alan Fox know this one. LOL And finally, I’d like to nominate Martin_r for the Peace & Patience Prize! -Q Querius

There are limits.

Indeed. Inbreeding is a terminal problem in small populations. Loss of genetic diversity leads to extinction. Alan Fox

Those who breed dogs can cause certain health problems with their selective breeding. https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/dogs/puppy/pedigreedogs/health There are limits. relatd

Sal Cordova held to that idea. Haven't come across Sal in a while and I can't recall the details Alan Fox

Alan Fox ever heard of Old Earth Creationists ? martin_r

What did you think ???

About Creationism? Of the 6,000 year old Earth type? I can't imagine how anyone can stare down all the contrary evidence and maintain such a belief. Alan Fox

Alan Fox, in any case, I will have a closer look at some articles on Phenotypic plasticity ... It looks like I will have lots of fun ... I already learned, that "organisms are equipped with a capacity to produce multiple phenotypes in response to environmental change" ... and that there is "a developmental program that allows the organisms to sense environmental cues in early stages of life to better adapt" .... good stuff :))))))))) martin_r

"I guess he has his own agenda." Says the guy who spends all his active hours at UD spamming Evolution. Andrew asauber

Alan Fox, That is correct. I am an engineer and a Creationist. What did you think ??? martin_r

Martin_r clearly hasn’t bothered or hasn’t grasped simple concepts.

Martin_r has mentioned he is a Creationist. I guess he has his own agenda. Alan Fox

Gerd Muller isn’t respectable ?

I'm not familiar with him but I have no reason to think he's not. Yes, I know he's attached his name to the third way group. I don't expect them to become a groundbreaking movement but we'll see. Alan Fox

Martin_r: it does not look like an unguided process …. Not my problem if you can't read and understand an explanation. It's obvious that you are either intentionally trying to waste our time or are just incapable of grasping the concepts. JVL

Alan Fox: Now that’s not true, is it, Martin_r. You expressed no interest in learning about the evolution of the mammalian four-chambered heart. Martin_r is just trying to waste our time. He thinks he's doing good work trying to get us frustrated and annoyed spending hours and hours teaching him the basics of unguided evolutionary theory which any intelligent person who was interested would have spent time learning themselves. Martin_r clearly hasn't bothered or hasn't grasped simple concepts. JVL

"Let’s just suppose you actually don’t understand the basics of unguided evolutionary theory." JVL, There's nothing to understand. It's a fairy tale. You either believe the Once Upon A Time Evolution Made Some Creatures or you reject it. Andrew asauber

JVL

the basics of unguided evolutionary theory.

what has the following to do with an unguided process ?

Most organisms are equipped with a capacity to produce multiple phenotypes in response to environmental change1,2,3,4,5,6. This so-called phenotypic plasticity is coded by a plastic developmental program that allows the organisms to sense environmental cues in early stages of life and develop phenotypes better adapted to environments encountered later in life https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25086-5

it does not look like an unguided process .... martin_r

i got schooled yesterday/ today on natural selection. From Alan Fox. How natural selection created a mechanical pump – a heart.

Now that's not true, is it, Martin_r. You expressed no interest in learning about the evolution of the mammalian four-chambered heart. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6767493/ Alan Fox

Alan Fox @213

I’m familiar with the third way, which is a bit of a misnomer. Denis Noble is respectable but has lost his way with this

Gerd Muller isn't respectable ? I don't know.. just asking ... Because he is also a part of THE THIRD WAY ... go to PEOPLE section: https://thethirdwayofevolution.com/people martin_r

Martin_r: i got schooled yesterday/ today on natural selection. From Alan Fox. How natural selection created a mechanical pump – a heart. Doesn't mean you understood it. And I don't think you did based on your comments. So, why should we bother? Let's just suppose you actually don't understand the basics of unguided evolutionary theory. Can you think of a good reason why the rest of us should keep trying to explain things to you? JVL

JVL

You argue against a narrow view that no one holds anymore.

i got schooled just yesterday/ today ...from Alan Fox... I was told, that Natural selection created a mechanical pump with one way valves, controlled by electrical signal .... martin_r

Martin_r: Don’t forget, what the “THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION”-movement thinks of natural selection… Again, since you clearly don't even understand the basic ideas of random mutations and natural selection why should we care that you read some article which said something you might have misinterpreted? Why should we spend hours and hours trying to explain things to you when you are clearly out of date? JVL

I'm familiar with the third way, which is a bit of a misnomer. Denis Noble is respectable but has lost his way with this Alan Fox

Alan @209 yes, i know Gerd Muller... he is an Austrian. I red this paper few years ago. By the way, this guy belongs to THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION movement.... Scroll down, you will find him ... https://thethirdwayofevolution.com/people Don't forget, what the "THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION"-movement thinks of natural selection... let me remind you

Some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.

martin_r

Martin_r: I came up with this article, to show how biologists fight each other and arguing about the BASICS of the theory. ABOUT THE BASICS e.g. natural selection … You are way behind the times. Decades ago it was realised that natural selection was only one influence on unguided evolution. There are lots of kinds of selection along with things like genetic drift. You really should spend more time trying to understand that which you criticise. In other words, YOU or Alan Fox, you guys have no idea how evolution works, because top biologists don’t know … They are arguing about a lot of specific effects. But the general principle is still true: unguided evolution via inheritable random variation. So JVL, in the future, please spare me the following nonsense: It's not nonsense since you clearly are not keeping up with the research and data. You argue against a narrow view that no one holds anymore. And when we point that out you get abusive. Why is that? Ashamed to admit you don't stay abreast of the research? Suppose I criticised an engineering project based on 1940s standards of construction? You'd tell me off, you'd point out I was behind the times, you'd most likely dismiss my criticism as being uninformed. We're doing the same to you. For a similar reason. AND, we are not obligated to 'catch you up'. That's up to you. Or you can keep looking uninformed. Your call. JVL

and Alan, i looked closer at a paper on phenotypic plasticity ...

Most organisms are equipped with a capacity to produce multiple phenotypes in response to environmental change1,2,3,4,5,6. This so-called phenotypic plasticity is coded by a plastic developmental program that allows the organisms to sense environmental cues in early stages of life and develop phenotypes better adapted to environments encountered later in life

??? Most organisms are equipped with a capacity to produce multiple phenotypes (shapes) ???? ??? are equipped ???? how that happened ??? ???? program that allows the organisms to sense environmental cues ???? organism can sense to adapt ???? No selection pressure, no natural selection ... nothing??? it just can sense the need ???? :)))))))))) this biologist must be joking .... he sounds like an ID proponent .... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25086-5 martin_r

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2017.0015 An article by a major proponent of an extended evolutionary synthesis. The other side of the Coyne coin. Alan Fox

Alan Fox @206

Well, if you are a Creationist, Martin_r, no wonder we are having difficulty communicating.

Alan, it is not only us, look at the biologist-biologist communication (from Buranyi article)

Traditional evolutionary theorists were invited, but few showed up. Nick Barton, recipient of the 2008 Darwin-Wallace medal, evolutionary biology’s highest honour, told me he “decided not to go because it would add more fuel to the strange enterprise”. The influential biologists Brian and Deborah Charlesworth of the University of Edinburgh told me they didn’t attend because they found the premise “irritating”. The evolutionary theorist Jerry Coyne later wrote that the scientists behind the EES were playing “revolutionaries” to advance their own careers. One 2017 paper even suggested some of the theorists behind the EES were part of an “increasing post-truth tendency” within science. The personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were “shocking” and “ugly”, said one scientist, who is nonetheless sceptical of the EES. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution

martin_r

JVL @204 i never said that Buranyi's article supports ID. I never said that. I came up with this article, to show how biologists fight each other and arguing about the BASICS of the theory. ABOUT THE BASICS e.g. natural selection ... In other words, YOU or Alan Fox, you guys have no idea how evolution works, because top biologists don't know ... So JVL, in the future, please spare me the following nonsense:

I have to say it completely baffles me why people like martin_r can’t grasp these basic ideas

martin_r

Well, if you are a Creationist, Martin_r, no wonder we are having difficulty communicating. Alan Fox

Alan @202 you start playing games again ... Buranyi may be only a journalist, but he quoted several biologists ... and thank you for Coyne's article. I wasn't aware of it. Coyne rebuttal only confirmed what i claimed earlier today. Biologists fight each other and arguing about the BASICS of the theory ... so there is no way that YOU or JVL or let alone a creationist can understand this mess called evolutionary theory :)))))))))) martin_r

Martin_r: It seems that JVL and Alan Fox are the only ones on this planet who understand how evolution works …Because top biologists don’t … What happens in a a dynamic and changing science is that people working in that field can end up disagreeing with parts of the overall paradigm and what influences are stronger than others. It doesn't mean any of those scientists are now opting for ID. JVL, take your time, and read this article … Okay, I read it. Not one thing supporting ID in there. A lot of people saying that we need to nail down the natural processes in play and which ones have more effect than others. Fine. But no design. No one is saying that. JVL

To change species’ appearance you don’t need random mutations and natural selection?

When a caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly, there is no change to the genome. But populations of butterflies are subject to natural selection over time. The phenomena are not mutually exclusive. Alan Fox

Regarding the Guardian article by Buranyi (a journalist, not a scientist), I've said it was a bit breathless but on reading it again, there a a few statements that are a bit overblown. But don't take my word for it. Here's Jerry Coyne. https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/07/06/our-rejected-letters-to-the-guardian-about-evolution/ Alan Fox

Alan, please let me ask again, because i am lost ... To change species' appearance you don't need random mutations and natural selection ? martin_r

Alan, see my post @194 after reading that article, would you agree that you don't understand how evolution/natural selection works ? martin_r

I'm pleased you have become a Guardian reader, Martin_r. Please keep it up and keep passing on those recommendations. Alan Fox

Does it mean, that you no longer need random mutations and natural selection

No. Phenotypic plasticity does not produce heritable changes. And my needs are irrelevant Alan Fox

JVL

I have to say it completely baffles me why people like martin_r can’t grasp these basic ideas.

It seems that JVL and Alan Fox are the only ones on this planet who understand how evolution works ... Because top biologists don't ... JVL, take your time, and read this article ... DO WE NEED A NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION ? (IT IS A MAINSTREAM ARTICLE... NO CREATIONISM ...or ID ...) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution martin_r

I have to say it completely baffles me why people like martin_r can’t grasp these basic ideas. I say ‘he’ can’t grasp them because the way ‘he’ argues shows he hasn’t understood them. But they keep telling us their hypothesis (with an undefined designers who did something undefined at some undefined time) is a better explanation when they admit they aren’t even trying to answer how and when questions. Crazy.

Well, there does seem an imbalance in how the burden of proof should be share here. ;) Alan Fox

Alan Fox, Phenotypic plasticity ... so species can change without genome change. What ???? How is that suppose to work ???? Is it some miracle ???? Does it mean, that you no longer need random mutations and natural selection ?????? This theory seems to be way bigger mess than i thought ... martin_r

Alan Fox, after reading that THE GUARDIAN article, would you agree, that YOU don't understand how evolution and natural selection work ? Would you agree, that the top evolutionists don't understand ? And that maybe "the theory of evolution is a fairy tale to give up" - like the author of the article suggests ? martin_r

Related: Artificial selection by plant and animal breeders produces what? The genetic material that exists can be combined or excluded but that’s it. No novel – as in never existed before – information is created. Some animals bred for dog shows experience health problems when human beings don’t understand that there are limits to this sort of thing. Go look at all the dog breeds that have been developed in a few hundred (or less) years? Do you really think that a Chihuahua could actually breed with a Great Dane now? Look at all the brassicas. They all came from the same root plant. We know that because we have records of how they all were developed. The point isn't that bad varieties were developed. The point is that the naturally occurring variations can provide pathways to a vast assortment of different types within a fairly short period of time. Why don't you address that? JVL

Artificial selection by plant and animal breeders produces what? The genetic material that exists can be combined or excluded but that's it. No novel - as in never existed before - information is created. Some animals bred for dog shows experience health problems when human beings don't understand that there are limits to this sort of thing. relatd

Alan Fox: And yet it happens. Artificial selection by both plant and animal breeders has produced all sorts of change over time. Brassicas, for example. Or do you think artificial selection not a similar process to natural selection? It is in fact identical from the point of view of the selected organism. I think this is an important point that ID has not thought through very well if at all. The reason that Darwin used human/intelligent selection as an analogy for natural selection is because both methods work from a continual source of variation generated genetically. The objection that natural selection only takes away and doesn't add is beside the point: it's the continually generated variation that provides new pathways to explore. Also, if there is a designer with a goal in mind then how is it that humans can direct the development of new morphologies? Why doesn't the designers' plan override that of human breeders? (To argue that humans are doing 'God's work' unknowingly is just defining God in terms of humans' motivations and needs.) Anyway, selection of any kind is NOT RANDOM. The selection can be unguided but that doesn't make it random. Think about a particular environmental niche, like Siberia. That environment will 'favour' certain variations that have arisen which are better able to cope with those particular environmental pressures. The variations that can produce more offspring (because they can 'harvest' more food, out run their predators, learn to manipulate natural resources, etc) will have their variation become more prevalent in the local population. I have to say it completely baffles me why people like martin_r can't grasp these basic ideas. I say 'he' can't grasp them because the way 'he' argues shows he hasn't understood them. But they keep telling us their hypothesis (with an undefined designers who did something undefined at some undefined time) is a better explanation when they admit they aren't even trying to answer how and when questions. Crazy. JVL

I'm an avid Guardian reader, BTW. The Guardian is the only paper I know that is independent of vested interest control, having been set up as a trust that pays to keep it going indefinitely without meddling from investors. I read that article when it was published. It's a bit breathless but I don't think it's detrimental to current mainstream evolutionary ideas and it certainly doesn't give any comfort to ID. Alan Fox

Alan, could you explain to me, what is difference between Darwinian evolution (random mutations+NS) and this phenotypic plasticity ?

The genome or genotype is the total of genetic information stored in the chromosomes of a particular organism. The phenotype is the physical organism that develops and grows from that genome. Adaptive evolution involves changes in the genome due to mutation, etc being fixed in a population die to natural selection favouring phenotypes that are more successful reproductively. Phenotypic plasticity does not involve genome changes, but is the ability of some organisms to survive when faced with.a changing environment. Wikipedia Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment.[1][2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be permanent throughout an individual's lifespan.[3] En bref: plasticity; no genomic change. Adaptive evolution; genomic change. Alan Fox

I am not going to talk about this natural selection nonsense and other Darwinian conjectures.

You are under no obligation. I don't come here primarily to talk other commenters into accepting evolutionary theory, though I can't help pointing out the more egregious straw-man versions that folks here regularly present. I keep asking for the "Intelligent Design" alternative explanation of biological phenomena. I'm beginning to suspect that there isn't such a thing. Alan Fox

Alan Fox, one last thing .... in that article i posted above (THE GUARDIAN), so called Plasticity or Phenotypic plasticity is being mentioned.... i came across this term elsewhere, and i always wanted to ask some expert ... i found this definition of phenotypic plasticity

Phenotypic plasticity (often termed “plasticity”) is generally defined as the capacity of an individual organism to alter its behavior, physiology/gene expression, and/or morphology (i.e., some aspect of its phenotype) in direct response to changing environmental conditions

Alan, could you explain to me, what is difference between Darwinian evolution (random mutations+NS) and this phenotypic plasticity ? martin_r

Alan Fox.

You have a very simplistic view of how selection works

listen, this debate between you and me started as I was accused of D-K syndrome. I have argued, that all biologists who comment on design in biology or any other design whatsoever should keep their mouths shut (including you) because you people have no idea what you are talking about. You are not qualified, it is you/biologists who suffer from Dunning-Kruger syndrome when commenting on design in biology ... I am not going to talk about this natural selection nonsense and other Darwinian conjectures. I got schooled so many times from Darwinists, that I don't understand "HOW EVOLUTION WORKS" ... The fact is, that meanwhile I know you people very well. You are totally untrustworthy, your 'facts' and 'understanding' is overturned every day with new findings ... Moreover, Darwinian biologists fight each other ... in 2022 there are many views on "HOW EVOLUTION WORKS" so you must be something special or above top evolutionists when you dare to school me on evolution .... I think Querius already posted a very recent article on this, published in THE GUARDIAN (2022): "Do we need a new theory of evolution?" https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution There you will find, how biologists fight each other (and these are ugly fights) because NOBODY UNDERSTANDS THIS CRAZY ABSURD THEORY .... (but Alan Fox understands and schooling others) I will finish this conversation with a quote from that THE GUARDIAN article which perfectly illustrates what I am talking about

And underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.

A fairytale :))))) Touche! here you go, it is a very long and informative article ... you should read it instead of schooling me ... perhaps you will learn something ... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution PS: step by step heart evolution ... I hope, that after this debate, you don't think that I would even consider that a mechanical pump with all the one way valves controlled by an electrical signal evolved and wasn't engineered. Such things happen only in Darwinian fantasy world ... in real world, you have to visit a technical university to become an engineer ... martin_r

ACCORDING TO YOUR ABSURD THEORY, RANDOM MUTATIONS CREATED THAT HEART DESIGN… NOT SOME NATURAL SELECTION ….

You have a very simplistic view of how selection works. If you were better-informed, you could make a much more convincing case against evolution, especially if you were aware of the constraints. As I mentioned, for any organism that has a pumped circulatory system, the heart has to grow and develop, starting at some point in embryological development and remain functional for the lifetime of that organism. And, for evolution to be correct, there has to be a nested hierarchy of changes small enough to not disrupt that viability. That's a big target to attack but you would rather argue semantics. Very odd! Alan Fox

… i consider Natural Selection as another Darwinian conjecture.

And yet it happens. Artificial selection by both plant and animal breeders has produced all sorts of change over time. Brassicas, for example. Or do you think artificial selection not a similar process to natural selection? It is in fact identical from the point of view of the selected organism. My niece is training to become a vet and currently doing work experience on artificial insemination in sheep. It involves inducing super-ovulation in chosen ewes (which can produce up to 20 eggs), egg gathering, in-vitro fertilization, and reimplantation in host mothers. Farmers pay to have embryos implanted in their sheep. Apparently the monetary value of desirable rams and ewes are rising into multiple thousands. That's artificial selection for you. If skeptical Cumbrian hill farmers are parting with cash, it must work. Alan Fox

Alan Fox,

…mechanical engineers are useless, they should talk to biologists how to build this pump using random mutations… I see you forgot selection again

I didn't forget anything. You Darwinists keep saying the same nonsense over and over again. FIRST YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE RANDOM MUTATIONS ... THEN YOU CAN SELECT SOMETHING .... ACCORDING TO YOUR ABSURD THEORY, RANDOM MUTATIONS CREATED THAT HEART DESIGN... NOT SOME NATURAL SELECTION .... Are you really that simple ? So yes, in your fantasy world, RANDOM MUTATIONS can replace the engineers from the article on artificial heart. PS: like i said earlier ... i consider Natural Selection as another Darwinian conjecture. Similar to what THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION website states .... martin_r

...mechanical engineers are useless, they should talk to biologists how to build this pump using random mutations...

I see you forgot selection again. I bet, in the real world, artificial hearts get selected. Designs that fail as artificial hearts get discarded. Designs that work to some extent get to be modified. If there were an analogy worth developing, "suck-it-and-see" trial and error in engineering is somewhat analogous to variation and selection in adaptive evolution. Alan Fox

Alan Fox one more thing (I couldn't resist) From the article on artificial heart

Basically, the heart is a muscular pump that maintains oxygen and blood circulation through your lungs and body. In a day, your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood. Like any engine, if the heart is not well taken care of it can break down and pump less efficiently, a condition called heart failure. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/artificial-heart.htm

pump, engine, machine .... But some Alan Fox does not like the analogy :)))))))))))) Like i said ... you must be something very special .... martin_r

Alan Fox,

And if mechanical engineers are so capable, why is the development of artificial hearts not a raging success?

you are right ... mechanical engineers are useless, they should talk to biologists how to build this pump using random mutations :))))))))))) martin_r

Heart not constructed. Heart grew. Baby Martin had baby heart. Big Martin had big heart. Runs without maintenance all his life, with luck. No engineer can match that with mechanics, even in all caps. ;) Alan Fox

Alan Fox yes, as a mechanical engineer I am very qualified to comment on a mechanical pump controlled by an electrical signal ... definitely more than you or any other biologists (natural science graduate).

But your (and my) heart grew by cell differentiation and division from a unicellular embryo. Nobody built it.

Like i said, when i will continue this conversation my IQ will drop for sure .... WHY ON EARTH IT IS IMPORTANT HOW THE PUMP WAS BUILT ????? ARE YOU PLAYING GAMES WITH ME AGAIN OR ARE YOU SO SIMPLE ???? martin_r

And if mechanical engineers are so capable, why is the development of artificial hearts not a raging success? Alan Fox

Heart is a mechanical pump controlled by an electrical signal. It is a machine.

What does the word "mechanical" do in that sentence? Sure the (human) heart pumps blood. But your (and my) heart grew by cell differentiation and division from a unicellular embryo. Nobody built it. And the vagus nerve that carries impulses between brain and heart is not carrying electricity but changes in electrochemical potential. The speed of a nerve impulse is not like electricity in a wire. What remains the same is fluid dynamics and basic physics. Calling the heart a machine leads to a fruitless semantic argument on definition. Alan Fox

Education in mechanical engineering.

:) Alan Fox

Alan Fox

Not only R. Dawkins disagree with you, but what is more important, because your education, you are not qualified to make such a claim … do you understand that ? You are not qualified … Sauce for the goose… What qualifies you to make such a judgment?

Education in mechanical engineering. Alan, in 21st century, you can't make statements like "a heart is not a machine and you don't like the analogy " :)))))) Such a claim is stupid/absurd. Heart is a mechanical pump controlled by an electrical signal. It is a machine. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/artificial-heart.htm PS: by the way, this conversation is absurd .... if I will keep talking to you, i am afraid that my IQ will drop significantly ... martin_r

By the way, the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to you as well, you don’t realize that, do you ?

I have spent time at pro-evolution sites frequented by professional scientists and my errors get pointed out quickly and clearly. If you want ant more of an intellectual challenge, you should try engaging at one or two such sites. Alan Fox

Not only R. Dawkins disagree with you, but what is more important, because your education, you are not qualified to make such a claim … do you understand that ? You are not qualified …

Sauce for the goose... What qualifies you to make such a judgment? Alan Fox

so far i gave you several examples where top biologists comment on design/engineering.

No you didn't. Whether "Design" is involved is the very point at issue and you are asking the same loaded question. Alan Fox

Alan Fox so far I gave you several examples where top biologists comment on design/engineering. You perfectly understand that these guys suffer from Dunning-Kruger syndrome ... But I played this game with you ... I was wondering, how far will you go. You are a coward ... it is very common, I debated lots of Darwinian cowards through the years ... And like I said, you must be something special ... you don't like the organism-machine analogy, but even Dawkins uses this analogy in the video I posted above. And then, Dawkins is commenting on the design of this machine :))))))))))) A biologist is commenting on design/engineering ... By the way, the Dunning-Kruger effect applies to you as well, you don't realize that, do you ? Earlier you said:

"I don’t accept the equivalence between biological systems and machinery. It’s a very poor analogy...

Who are you? Not only R. Dawkins disagree with you, but what is more important, because your education, you are not qualified to make such a claim ... do you understand that ? You are not qualified ... You are textbook example of Dunning-Kruger effect .... martin_r

Regarding Dunning-Kruger, try asking a question that doesn't contain a preconception. Alan Fox

Martin_r Lents is making the same point that I made in 165. Evolutionary changes are constrained by the requirement for unbroken viability. "Design" involves no such constraints. Alan Fox

Alan Fox, you wanted some additional explanation on "In what way is the passage you quote a comment on design/engineering? I don’t see it" So here is more stuff from Lents .... New York Post (2018), a review of Lents book "Human Errors..." Lents:

“Every breath you take, you’re mixing stale air with fresh air,” Lents tells The Post. “Every breath [includes] air that was already in the lungs, because we only have one route in and out of the lungs. Birds and other creatures have two-way traffic, so every breath is purely fresh air.” The human eye is also seemingly designed for failure, as near- and farsightedness occur because our eyeballs are misshapen. “The eyeball is often too long or too short,” Lents says. “It’s too long more often than it’s too short. That makes you nearsighted, and there’s really no good [evolutionary] reason for that.” If it’s not discouraging enough that humans are poorly constructed for breathing and seeing, it turns out we’re also not perfectly designed for standing upright. “Most of the joints and bones have evolved reasonably well to stand upright, but we never really finished the job of evolving to an upright posture,” says Lents.

https://nypost.com/2018/05/12/our-horribly-designed-bodies-are-making-us-sick/ PS: can we now get back to D-K effect ? martin_r

But finding an example of a constraint violation in evolutionary theory would not be evidence of "Intelligent Design". ID's problem is its lack of constraints. There is no way to test the idea. It explains everything and nothing. Alan Fox

I think most "Intelligent Design"vs evolution hinge on constraints. Evolution imposes the requisite of the unbroken chain of descent on each and every individual organism that has ever lived. This is a huge constraint. Yet critics of evolution struggle to present any examples that do not fit these constraints. Alan Fox

Martin_r

“The Laryngeal Nerve is obviously bad design”

Good catch. I see you didn't have to do much work to find it. Dawkins is a popular quote-miner's target. I would change "obviously bad" to constrained, which is the point Dawkins is making. A huge constraint on evolutionary processes is that any adaptation must be viable enough for an organism to develop, grow, live and reproduce. Common descent constrains to the extent that there has to be an unbroken chain of viability from LUCA to every organism since that exists or has existed. Without those constraints, the pharyngeal nerve detour is inexplicable. Alan Fox

@ KF You omitted a couple of pivotal facts. 1. The process of selection. Evolution is more than blind chance. 2. Evolution is not a search. Organisms can function with adequate systems. Variation that happens to have improved function in a particular niche can be selected for. "One in a gazillion" is not a realistic model of evolution. Alan Fox

Alan Fox, first of all, i found out, that it is not entirely true that Dawkins does not say much these day. He is repeating the same "bad design" claims to these days. So lets start with this classic one it is 3 minutes long (from 2021) "The Laryngeal Nerve is obviously bad design" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OptJMRj8z-E And another classic - backwardly wired retina, 3 minutes video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE_jHzmj3kQ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ----> But the following video is the best one i have ever seen with Dawkins ... it is only 5 minutes, and it is a sum up of various Dawkins claims on design in biology. If you look at this video, and if you would not know who Dawkins is, you may think, that he is a creationists/ID proponent. 2 Top claims (from the video, you have to see it with your own eyes to believe): R. Dawkins

An organism is a survival MACHINE for self-replicating coded information

R. Dawkins

Biology has turned into computer science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prFZTMIKOi4 PS1: Alan, you said, you don't like the organism-machine analogy. You must be something special ... Even Dawkins sees the analogy ... PS2: and now Alan, it is time to get back to D-K effect .... martin_r

Q, a very good approach to science is, that it is reverse engineering nature, identifying how it was put together so how it works. It's not just ID. KF kairosfocus

SG [attn AF], gaslighting on a turnabout projection. We do routinely observe intelligently directed configuration producing FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits; many comments in this thread are cases in point, i.e. ASCII text beyond 72 - 143 characters. By contrast, as you evade constantly, blind chance and/or mechanical necessity have never been observed doing same. Also, molecular nanotech labs doing engineering of DNA, per Venter et al are observed facts. Further to this the search challenge of FSCO/I is not touched by appealing to the ocean. Take the low end, a sol system of 10^57 atoms, 10^17 s, give each a tray of 500 coins, or equivalently a paramagnetic substance with that many cells. Toss 10^14 times/s. That gives 5*10^90 samples for the space of 500 bits, which has 3.27*10^150 possibilities. Negligible sample to space. For 10^80 atoms and 1,000 bits, it is much worse. It remains, that there is no plausible blind mechanism to generate FSCO/I of relevant complexity and appeals to an imagined earlier architecture of life simply compound the speculations. You are already challenged to acknowledge the common fact that just right components have to be present, arranged and coupled on a correct wiring diagram with relatively small wiggle room to work, i.e. fine tuning and islands of function in seas of non function are observed realities. That's before we notice how readily degraded or subject to cross reactions etc such energetic molecules are. But then, the point is to see just how strained the OoL proposals on the table are, not to expect admission of same. KF kairosfocus

Intelligent Design is identifying complex biological engineering.

If true, this should be headline news. Tell me more. Which ID researcher is doing this important work? Is there a published paper I can read? Alan Fox

Notice how he ignored my challenge to explain how dyneins “musta” evolved?

*chuckles* I didn't know anything about dyneins and kinesins and their role in mitosis till glancing at Wikipedia. Seems there is still much that is unknown. How did Querius learn of dyneins, I wonder. I bet it wasn't from ID research papers. Alan Fox

PM1 at 134, Forget about the ism's. Intelligent Design is identifying complex biological engineering. That's what ID is all about. And this level of engineering cannot be created by blind, unguided chance. relatd

Thanks, Asauber, but his meaning is obviously obfuscation and evasion. I can't pry his hands off his eyes when he claims he can't see. Of course YouTube videos are actually videos rather than chemistry, but the models are reasonable facsimiles of what the molecules look like and how they behave in real time. They are extremely advanced chemical machinery, called nanomachines. Yes, machines. Engineers know about machines, machine code, and machine design. Notice how he ignored my challenge to explain how dyneins "musta" evolved? And considering the role of DNA in biological organisms, when do you suppose the dyneins first evolved and from what? Random chance maybe? -Q Querius

@ Andrew No. My position is that regarding the chemistry in biological systems as akin to engineered design is a misleadingly poor analogy. Alan Fox

AF, I thought your meaning was that there is either chemistry or engineering. Andrew asauber

“Chemical engineering is applied chemistry. It is the branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction, and operation of machines and plants that perform chemical reactions to solve practical problems or make useful products.”

And the relevance is what exactly, Andrew? Alan Fox

AF, "Chemical engineering is applied chemistry. It is the branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction, and operation of machines and plants that perform chemical reactions to solve practical problems or make useful products." Andrew asauber

As to Lents, here is a 2021 lecture, from the video description...

In what way is the passage you quote a comment on design/engineering? I don't see it Alan Fox

He [Dawkins] did comment on design/engineering in the past.

Give me an example, then, if you prefer. Alan Fox

Have to ask, Querius, where the basic facts are coming from? The results of research of mainstream science, I suggest. You seem to want to spin those facts to tell an engineering story. I don't think it's warranted and I don't think you succeed. Alan Fox

Alan Fox, Dawkins doesn't say much these days, but he did say lots of things in the past and published several books. He did comment on design/engineering in the past. I don't get what you are trying to say... As to Lents, here is a 2021 lecture, from the video description:

We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures, but if we are supposedly evolution’s greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often—two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there’s been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology, Nathan H. Lents explains how our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, a big pile of compromises. But that's also a testament to our greatness -- humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chdXO_Bxdf8 martin_r

Looks like engineering to me!

:) It's chemistry, in reality. Whilst Veritasium make very good videos, these are pitched at a popular audience. The animations are models, not reality. Alan Fox

Alan Fox @141,

My position that evolutionary theory is the only credible, consilient set of overlapping explanations for the biological reality that we see? I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There’s a mountain of evidence and libraries full of literature.

So how did dynein motors evolve? (https://youtu.be/X_tYrnv_o6A?t=275) Functions and mechanics of dynein motor proteins https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972880/ But there's some good news. You don't have to answer the question for free. You can receive a US $10,000,000 prize! https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0 I highly enjoyed Perry Marshall's book, Evolution 2.0. You might, too. https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-2-0-Breaking-Deadlock-Between/dp/1944648755/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1669666999&sr=8-2 -Q Querius

Looks like engineering to me!

:) It's chemistry, in reality. Alan Fox

But you must remember how DNA works and mRNA synthesizes proteins, right?

It's the ribosome that brings everything together.

No, there aren’t any tiny workers on a production line, but there is a line of amino acids.

Well no there isn't a line of amino acids either. Assembly of proteins depends on collisions between aminoacyl RNA transferases and the ribosome active site. Alan Fox

Alan Fox @139,

…in an aqueous medium.

Yes, and chemical reactions also occur in gaseous and solid media.

But there’s no production line, no assembly process.

But you must remember how DNA works and mRNA synthesizes proteins, right? No, there aren't any tiny workers on a production line, but there is a line of amino acids. A lot of new insights have been discovered since you studied biochemistry many years ago! Take a look at this terrific video: Your Body's Molecular Machines (6:20 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_tYrnv_o6A Looks like engineering to me! -Q Querius

...biologists Dawkins and Lents commenting on design/engineering...

Dawkins doesn't say much publicly these days. Give me an example of Nathan Lents commenting on "design/engineering" so I'm clear on what you mean. Alan Fox

What’s the point of your posts if you are unwilling or unable to support your position?

I am a long-time lurker here and former contributor. I even wrote a guest post here once. Random variation in moderation policy has at times prevented me from posting and allowed me to contribute at other times including currently. I was prompted to reregister here on seeing JVL being stalked by Upright Biped and thinking JVL needed a bit of support. Why I stick around now? Amusement? Inertia? Ego? I've given up on anyone presenting a convincing case for "Intelligent Design". Regarding my position? My position that evolutionary theory is the only credible, consilient set of overlapping explanations for the biological reality that we see? I don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's a mountain of evidence and libraries full of literature. Though the basic concept of evolution is so simple, anyone should be able to grasp it. I do pick up on the straw man misrepresentations that keep popping up in comments here but it is a bit of a thankless task. I feel like Sisyphus sometimes. Alan Fox

Alan Fox i am trying to understand (but it is really hard), what has yours:

I don’t accept the equivalence between biological systems and machinery. It’s a very poor analogy,

to do with the fact, that biologists Dawkins and Lents commenting on design/engineering. Could you clarify ? martin_r

Each of these chemical pathways involve physical interaction between molecules.

...in an aqueous medium. And biochemical reactions happen when molecules collide. Enzymes act as marriage brokers, introducing reactants to each other, which results in faster reactions. But there's no production line, no assembly process. What drives reactions in, say, the Krebs (citric acid) cycle is removal of products, preventing a reaction from reaching equilibrium. I spent three years a long while ago studying biochemistry at undergraduate level. Alan Fox

PyrrhoManiac1 @134,

The job of theoretical biology is to explore the conceptual foundations of biology, which is what we’re talking about here. The question is whether reductionism or organicism is a better conceptual framework in which to do biology and biomedical science. I think ID is mistaken because it assumes reductionism.

Sadly, though perhaps mercifully, the paper is behind a $20 paywall. Reading the abstract leaves me with some concerns. The science of physics starts from a reductionist base rather than some organic emergence reminiscent of Greek philosophy that perfection in circularity is intrinsic to the (emergent organic) nature of celestial objects. While reductionism must always adapt to increasingly finer adjustments (the orbit of Mercury being a "stellar" example), emergent organic explanations are immune from scientific experimentation and are reminiscent of Von Helmont's celebrated experiment. You might argue along with Michael Behe that some systems are irreducibly complex. This might indeed be the case, but I'd imagine you'd hardly be an advocate for Dr. Behe. Right? -Q Querius

Alan Fox @135, Sorry about the link not working in the UK. Here's an excerpt to make my point:

Now there are approximately 1300 enzymes found in the human cell and each of these enzymes are coded by a different gene. Metabolism takes place when these enzymes work synchronously resulting in chemical reactions taking place at the rate of 37 thousand billion times billion per second in the human body. Enzymes play a critical role as they are the only ones who are capable of making small minute changes to a molecular layer by either breaking a bond or making a bond. Types Of Biochemical Pathways . . . Anabolic Pathways It is a biosynthetic pathway wherein energy is required to form bonds. The pools of reactants, intermediates and products are jointly called metabolites. The chemical reactions occurring are concerned with building up or production of larger, complex macromolecules from simpler micro molecules. A typical example is the synthesis of sugar (glucose from CO2 and H2O). Other examples include synthesis of fatty acids from acetyl CoA, synthesis of larger proteins from amino acid building blocks, and synthesis of new DNA strands from nucleotides. These reactions constantly take place in the cell and are critical to the survival of the cell. These reactions demand the input of energy which is provided by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and other high energy molecules such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). The up taken energy will be stored in the C-C bond of larger molecules. List of examples for major anabolic pathways: - Photosynthesis (synthesis of glucose from CO2 and H2O) - Pentose phosphate pathway (synthesis of pentoses and release of reducing the power needed for anabolic reactions) - Gluconeogenesis (synthesis of glucose from non-carbohydrate sources, mainly used by the brain) - Protein Biosynthesis - Fatty acid synthesis - Glycogenesis (synthesis of glycogen primarily from glucose occurs in liver and muscle) . . .

Additionally, there are also catabolic pathways and amphibolic pathways. Hopefully, you get the idea. Each of these chemical pathways involve physical interaction between molecules. It's extremely complex, but not magic. Science cannot study magic. @132,

Reverse engineering is a respectable process. ID, not a process at all, more of a scam.

Why do you resort to plastering the discussion with unsupported assertions? "ID is similar to reverse engineering." "No, it's a scam." "No, it's not" "Yes, it is." "No, it's not" "Yes, it is." etc. What's the point of your posts if you are unwilling or unable to support your position? -Q Querius

Bornagain77 @116,

But there are better reasons for us to be wary of the machine metaphor than wanting to keep intelligent design out of classroom. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out that a machine is organized by an external agent from the outside in, while a living thing organizes itself from the inside out. Kant wrote that a living thing “is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organizes them.”

While there's no question that Kant was brilliant, he did not have any idea of DNA, biochemistry, ribosomes, etc. The machines he was familiar with were fairly simple. The epitome of mechanical complexity in his day were pocket watches. And yes, those pocket watches were designed by an external agent. However, not knowing the mechanical nature of how molecules bond together and that biochemistry is mechanical and physical at its core (this is how drug companies experiment with drugs using software), he recognized a fundamental difference in cellular processes of metabolism, reproduction, growth, defense (immune response), and repair as completely different. They are different, but it's a matter of size, scale, complexity, interaction, and most importantly INFORMATION. -Q Querius

Do you have any idea of the number of biochemical cycles in cells? Do you know how many enzymes operate in a cell?

Probably better than you judging by previous experience. Your link doesn't work for me (I'm in the EU). Alan Fox

@127

There are no experimental results that falsify the mechanical duplication of DNA molecules, protein molecules, the mechanical (in physical chemistry) operation of the ADP-ATP cycles as well as a vast number of other cycles.

The job of theoretical biology is to explore the conceptual foundations of biology, which is what we're talking about here. The question is whether reductionism or organicism is a better conceptual framework in which to do biology and biomedical science. I think ID is mistaken because it assumes reductionism. PyrrhoManiac1

Alan Fox @129,

mechanical =/= physical. “Vast number of other cycles”? Ah, is that your disingenuous list you posted previously?

Huh? Do you have any idea of the number of biochemical cycles in cells? Do you know how many enzymes operate in a cell? You can read up on them here: https://byjus.com/neet/biochemical-pathways/ Or you can post more trolls and ad hominems. -Q Querius

ID is similar to reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is a respectable process. ID, not a process at all, more of a scam. Alan Fox

Until then, science has no answers. If you want “answers,” you might want to reconsider Greek mythology or something else outside the domain of science.

No, I think I'll stick with mainstream science. I'm quite content with partial explanations. The pattern that has emerged so far since Darwin's day remains coherent and consilient. Maybe ID will manage to leave the starting gate one day. Wish harder! :) Alan Fox

Alan Fox @128,

Agreed. ID is not any sort of position. But the folks that try to claim ID has merit tend to hold strong religious views.

Now you're trolling me. So here's my familiar cut-and-paste answer.

General Note – ID is not synonymous with Creationism. – ID Takes no position on the source of the intelligent design. – ID recognizes that biological research based on the appearance of design advances scientific progress faster than the presumption of undirected random chance. Examples: – The presumption of over 100 supposedly useless “vestigial” organs such as the thyroid (an other ductless glands) as useless vestiges of random, undirected evolution. – The presumption that 98.8% of our genome is “junk DNA,” now called “non-coding DNA,” as additional examples of vestiges of random, undirected evolution by Susumu Ohno, the originator of the term. – The skeletal remains of extinct animals called dinosaurs supposedly lived roughly 65-250 million years ago were ALL supposedly petrified artifacts without any possibility for organic matter to survive. This was PREDICTED by Darwinism. It’s also failed, but Darwinists are grimly hanging on to the unscientific possibility that 100+ million years of background radiation miraculously allowed organic bone, stretchy connective tissue, and even red blood cells to survive (in Chile, a recent find of Ichthyosaurus remains included preserved soft tissue in strata dated to 130-140 million years ago). See also Weak Anti_ID Arguments: https://uncommondescent.com/faq/

As Martin_r explained to you, ID is similar to reverse engineering. Reverse engineering assumes that all parts in a design have a function. The parts are not mostly random junk, some of which happen to work and have survived as a result. -Q Querius

There are no experimental results that falsify the mechanical duplication of DNA molecules, protein molecules, the mechanical (in physical chemistry) operation of the ADP-ATP cycles as well as a vast number of other cycles.

mechanical =/= physical. "Vast number of other cycles"? Ah, is that your disingenuous list you posted previously? Alan Fox

ID is not a religious position as I’ve explained innumerable times here.

Agreed. ID is not any sort of position. But the folks that try to claim ID has merit tend to hold strong religious views. Alan Fox

PyrrhoManiac1 @115,

Querius: The problem is that on the level of physical chemistry, that’s exactly what organisms are! They are EXTREMELY complex machines, but machines nevertheless by means of trillions of moving parts in billions of cells (in humans, the majority of which are bacteria). PyrrhoManiac1: Nope, not even close — cells are not machines.

What? Did you actually read what’s in that paper? This is crackpot philosophy, not science! Or maybe that’s why it’s published in Theoretical Biology. The paper starts out attacking mainstream science like this:

It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine only in terms of its superior complexity. This familiar understanding grounds the conviction that a cell's organization can be explained reductionistically, as well as the idea that its molecular pathways can be construed as deterministic circuits. The machine conception of the cell owes a great deal of its success to the methods traditionally used in molecular biology.

And then we’re treated to a gooey magic sauce that claims to track individual molecules in cells, resulting in such confusion that the basic principle of cause and effect seems to be lost. There are no experimental results that falsify the mechanical duplication of DNA molecules, protein molecules, the mechanical (in physical chemistry) operation of the ADP-ATP cycles as well as a vast number of other cycles. Oh, please. -Q Querius

Alan Fox @108,

The question is what is the source of design in nature.

Oh really? Or is the question the study of what exists and how it works?

Evolutionary theory gives an explanation for the source of design processes – the niche.

Yes, Darwinism provides “an explanation.” But so does Greek mythology. What exactly makes Darwinism superior to Greek mythology? Experimental evidence is lacking and, as Martin_r showed in the latest example, Darwinism is frequently and continually embarrassed by new findings.

“Intelligent Design” has no answers.

Exactly! It takes no position on the source of design. Currently, we’re clueless. However, if someone is able to cook up a primordial soup (salt to taste), bubble through ammonia and other gases, fry it and freeze it, and finally blast it with spectacular electrical discharges like in the movies to produce living cells, we would know that something like it is indeed possible. Until then, science has no answers. If you want “answers,” you might want to reconsider Greek mythology or something else outside the domain of science. -Q Querius

Martin_r @107,

525-million-year-old fossil defies textbook explanation for brain evolution

Haha! Great timing, but then this is a pretty common event. What do you call a theory that repeatedly gets surprised by new findings? That Darwinists grimly hang on to their ridiculous theory speaks to an ideological motive rather than a scientific one. -Q Querius

Alan Fox @92,

There is no fixed certainty in science, no unquestionable authority. Scientific endeavour follows evidence and theories must adapt to new discoveries or die.

Yes, exactly. But Darwinism is now taught as a FACT. If you want to get published and remain in academia, you must have unquestioning loyalty to this 19th century racist conjecture that concludes with the ultimate “humane” extinction of brown and black people. No, I’m not accepting this crap science.

This desire for certainty, control even, seems a strong instinct among engineers, add a little religious fervour and you have an ID proponent in the making.

ID is not a religious position as I’ve explained innumerable times here. It pragmatically results in demonstrably faster scientific progress by approaching the appearance of design with a reverse engineering mindset. One of those “vestigial” organs was a ductless gland called the thyroid. Note the profound difference between an assertion that it has no function and the admission that it likely has a function that we don’t understand.

What next though? Conquer the scientific realm or just hang here sharing bitter discontent?

Yes, I’m disgusted by the implicit racism in dogmatic Darwinism. I would love to see Darwin’s cold dead, fingers pried from the throat of science. -Q Querius

PM!, "I’m less impressed by his attempt to salvage the machine metaphor with regard to sub-cellular biomolecular processes, because (as Nicholson argues here) the kinds of physical and chemical forces operating on large biomolecules are nothing like what we know about from macroscopic machines." Two things, first molecular machines greatly outclass man-made machines. For instance,

Bacterial Flagellum - A Sheer Wonder Of Intelligent Design – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFq_MGf3sbk

Secondly, the means by which molecular machines achieve nearly 100% efficiency, and speeds much greater than man-made machines, via "information engines", is simply completely devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution,

Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency – Lisa Zyga – January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine’s efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html World’s fastest information-fuelled engine designed by SFU researchers – May 11, 2021 Excerpt: Simon Fraser University researchers have designed a remarkably fast engine that taps into a new kind of fuel — information. The development of this engine, which converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy, is outlined in research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and could lead to significant advances in the speed and cost of computers and bio-nanotechnologies. SFU physics professor and senior author John Bechhoefer says researchers’ understanding of how to rapidly and efficiently convert information into “work” may inform the design and creation of real-world information engines. “We wanted to find out how fast an information engine can go and how much energy it can extract, so we made one,” says Bechhoefer, whose experimental group collaborated with theorists led by SFU physics professor David Sivak. Engines of this type were first proposed over 150 years ago, (via Maxwell), but actually making them has only recently become possible. “By systematically studying this engine, and choosing the right system characteristics, we have pushed its capabilities over ten times farther than other similar implementations, thus making it the current best-in-class,” says Sivak. The information engine designed by SFU researchers consists of a microscopic particle immersed in water and attached to a spring which, itself, is fixed to a movable stage. Researchers then observe the particle bouncing up and down due to thermal motion. “When we see an upward bounce, we move the stage up in response,” explains lead author and PhD student Tushar Saha. “When we see a downward bounce, we wait. This ends up lifting the entire system using only information about the particle’s position.” Repeating this procedure, they raise the particle “a great height, and thus store a significant amount of gravitational energy,” without having to directly pull on the particle. Saha further explains that, “in the lab, we implement this engine with an instrument known as an optical trap, which uses a laser to create a force on the particle that mimics that of the spring and stage.” Joseph Lucero, a Master of Science student adds, “in our theoretical analysis, we find an interesting trade-off between the particle mass and the average time for the particle to bounce up. While heavier particles can store more gravitational energy, they generally also take longer to move up.” “Guided by this insight, we picked the particle mass and other engine properties to maximize how fast the engine extracts energy, outperforming previous designs and achieving power comparable to molecular machinery in living cells, and speeds comparable to fast-swimming bacteria,” says postdoctoral fellow Jannik Ehrich. https://www.sfu.ca/university-communications/issues-experts/2021/05/world-s-fastest-information-fuelled-engine-designed-by-sfu-resea.html

bornagain77

@116 I'm gratified to see that Wells has the intellectual acumen to see that Kant and Nicholson are basically right: organisms (even single cells) are not machines and there are limits to the machine metaphor for biology. I'm less impressed by his attempt to salvage the machine metaphor with regard to sub-cellular biomolecular processes, because (as Nicholson argues here) the kinds of physical and chemical forces operating on large biomolecules are nothing like what we know about from macroscopic machines. So while I agree with Wells (following Kant and Nicholson) that the machine metaphor fails at the level of the whole organism, I disagree that it can be retained for any processes at the sub-organismal level. I might add that I'm also echoing views developed by Stephen Talbott (see also here and J. Scott Turner (see also here). This is not to say that I would say "yes" to the question, "is it reasonable to posit supernatural intervention as the best explanation for the transition from non-teleological thermodynamic systems to teleological systems?" -- but it is to say that accepting the reality of teleology is a sine qua non for any intellectually adequate form of naturalism in the 21st century. PyrrhoManiac1

Now i really don’t follow. Are you playing games with me ?

No. I'm telling you your question contains a false premise making it a loaded question. A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt). Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. I don't accept the equivalence between biological systems and machinery. It's a very poor analogy, poor enough to be counterproductive, as you continue to demonstrate. Alan Fox

KF: Meanwhile, you have yet to show the capability of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity to create FSCO/I beyond 500 – 1,000 bits per actual observation.

We have only been studying DNA for less than 100 years. Life has been around of 3,000,000,000+ years. Scientists conduct experiments using litres of solution whereas the earth has 1.386 billion cubic kilometres of solution to play with. But, more significantly, why do you expect evolutionary biologists to directly observe something to demonstrate the validity of their claim when you do not expect the same burden of proof for ID claims? Sir Giles

“There are, according to Wiedersheim, no less than 180 vestigial structures in the human body, sufficient to make of a man a veritable walking museum of antiquities.” -evidence submitted to the Scopes trial “The thyroid gland, pituitary gland, thymus, pineal gland, and coccyx, … once considered useless by evolutionists, are now known to have important functions. The list of 180 “vestigial” structures is practically down to zero. Unfortunately, earlier Darwinists assumed that if they were ignorant of an organ’s function, then it had no function.” "Tornado in a Junkyard" - book - by former atheist James Perloff Vestigial Organs: Comparing ID and Darwinian Approaches - July 20, 2012 Excerpt: A favorite criticisms of ID is that it is a science stopper. The opposite is true. The Live Science article shows that the "vestigial organs" argument has not changed for over a century, since Wiedersheim coined the term and listed over a hundred examples (in 1893). Evolutionary theory, in fact, has been worse than a science stopper: its predictions have been flat out wrong. Only a handful of alleged vestigial organs remains from Wiedersheim's original list, and each of those is questionable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/vestigial_organ062281.html

Evolutionists try to have their cake and eat it too with their definition of the word 'vestigial':

From Jerry Coyne, "Evolution-of-the-Gaps" and Other Fallacies - Jonathan M. - December 5, 2012 Excerpt: Coyne anticipates the typical response to the argument from vestigiality: "Opponents of evolution always raise the same argument when vestigial traits are cited as evidence for evolution. "The features are not useless," they say. "They are either useful for something, or we haven't yet discovered what they're for." They claim, in other words, that a trait can't be vestigial if it still has a function, or a function yet to be found. But this rejoinder misses the point. Evolutionary theory doesn't say that vestigial characters have no function. A trait can be vestigial and functional at the same time. It is vestigial not because it's functionless, but because it no longer performs the function for which it evolved. (p. 58)" But surely, by Coyne's reckoning, this loose definition of "vestigiality" would entail that every organ and structure is vestigial, since, in Coyne's view, all traits have evolved from something else. As Jonathan Wells explains in his own review of the book, "If the human arm evolved from the leg of a four-footed mammal (as Darwinists claim), then the human arm is vestigial. And if (as Coyne argues) the wings of flying birds evolved from feathered forelimbs of dinosaurs that used them for other purposes, then the wings of flying birds are vestigial. This is the opposite of what most people mean by "vestigial." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/from_jerry_coyn_15067091.html Now It's Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit - September 15, 2014 Excerpt: You see the problem. Whale hips are "vestigial" yet still extremely important. Comments our colleague Michael Behe, "So doesn't that make everything a vestigial structure from a Darwinian viewpoint? And if so, of what use is the word?" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/whales_hips_ano089811.html

Moreover, the false claim from Darwinists that many structures and organs in the human body are vestigial has not been harmless, but has led to rampant medical malpractice in the past,

Evolution's "vestigial organ" argument debunked Excerpt: "The appendix, like the once 'vestigial' tonsils and adenoids, is a lymphoid organ (part of the body's immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the digestive system. Believing it to be a useless evolutionary 'left over,' many surgeons once removed even the healthy appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. Today, removal of a healthy appendix under most circumstances would be considered medical malpractice" (David Menton, Ph.D., "The Human Tail, and Other Tales of Evolution," St. Louis MetroVoice , January 1994, Vol. 4, No. 1). "Doctors once thought tonsils were simply useless evolutionary leftovers and took them out thinking that it could do no harm. Today there is considerable evidence that there are more troubles in the upper respiratory tract after tonsil removal than before, and doctors generally agree that simple enlargement of tonsils is hardly an indication for surgery" (J.D. Ratcliff, Your Body and How it Works, 1975, p. 137). The tailbone, properly known as the coccyx, is another supposed example of a vestigial structure that has been found to have a valuable function—especially regarding the ability to sit comfortably. Many people who have had this bone removed have great difficulty sitting. http://www.ucg.org/science/god-science-and-bible-evolutions-vestigial-organ-argument-debunked/

Verse:

Psalm 139:13-14 For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well.

bornagain77

Alan Fox @114

Martin_r: That is why i am asking (for the 2nd time), if the above doesn’t apply to biologists (natural science graduates) when they comment on design/engineering ? It’s a loaded question, where you are assuming that biological processes are akin to human engineering.

Now i really don't follow. Are you playing games with me ? Biologists like Dawkins and Lents claim "Backwardly wired human retina is a bad design ... human ankle joint is a bad design .... there are useless bones in human legs and so on .... " and they continue "... no designer would it make that way ... " Perhaps i am totally stupid, but i see how THEY PUBLICLY COMMENT ON DESIGN/ ENGINEERING AND THEY ALSO SPEAK ON BEHALF OF OTHER DESIGNERS/ENGINEERS .... So why is my question loaded ??????? So i am asking for the 3rd time ... does D-K effect also apply to biologists who comment on design/engineering ? martin_r

Querius: Note that at the time of the Scopes trial, over 100 “vestigial” organs were trotted out as proofs of evolution. How many of those “vestigial” are still considered vestiges of evolution?

I suspect that there are a few structures originally classified as vestigial that have been reclassified. This is not unexpected as we gain more knowledge. But I also suspect that you do not understand what vestigial means. Sir Giles

Why the Design in Living Things Goes Far Beyond Machinery Jonathan Wells - February 15, 2019 Excerpt: Organized from the Inside Out But there are better reasons for us to be wary of the machine metaphor than wanting to keep intelligent design out of classroom. Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out that a machine is organized by an external agent from the outside in, while a living thing organizes itself from the inside out. Kant wrote that a living thing “is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organizes them.”7 According to philosopher of biology Daniel Nicholson, “despite some interesting similarities, organisms and machines are fundamentally different kinds of systems . . . the former are intrinsically purposive whereas the latter are extrinsically purposive.” Thus, the machine metaphor “fails to provide an appropriate theoretical understanding of what living systems are.”8 Biologist (and intelligent design advocate) Ann Gauger has written that “the machine metaphor fails,” in part, because living organisms are “causally circular beings.”9 Not only do new cells require existing cells, but also many biosynthetic pathways require the very molecule that is being synthesized. For example, the biosynthesis of the amino acid cysteine requires an enzyme that contains cysteine.10 Without cysteine, a cell cannot make cysteine. Similarly, ATP synthase consists of more than a half-dozen protein subunits, each of which requires ATP for its biosynthesis.11 In other words, ATP is needed to make the molecular motor that makes ATP. So the machine metaphor is inadequate as a description of living organisms. Then what about the inference to design from molecular machines? The inference is still justified, because the machine metaphor is appropriate for isolated structures such as ATP synthase, kinesin, and the ribosome. Each of these consists of several parts that are precisely arranged by a cell to utilize energy to perform a specific function (which is how “machine” is usually defined). None of them can perform their functions if parts are missing or arranged incorrectly. They point to intelligent design just as much as machines made by humans. Awe-Inspiring Design An organism, however, in contrast to an isolated structure, rearranges its parts over time. An organism imposes organization on the materials it comprises, and its organization changes throughout its life cycle. To see how remarkable this is, imagine a machine familiar to most of us: a laptop computer. If a laptop computer were a plant or animal, it would start out as a protocomputer consisting of perhaps a few transistors, a little memory with some software, and a battery on a small circuit board. Then it would obtain materials from its surroundings to fabricate other components, and it would make its circuit board larger and more complex. Along the way, it would find ways to recharge its own battery. It would also write more programs. After reaching maturity, the laptop would run its programs by itself—imagine keys on the keyboard going up and down as though pressed by some unseen finger. If components were damaged, the computer could repair or replace them while continuing to operate. Eventually, the computer would fabricate one or more protocomputers, each capable of developing into other laptops just like it. A lot of design goes into laptop computers. How much more design would have to go into making a laptop computer that could do all the things listed above? No one knows. But such a computer would certainly require more design, not less. And the design would be radically different from human design, because, after the origin of the protocomputer, the design would be intrinsic rather than extrinsic. So the inference to design from molecular machines is robust, but it’s only the beginning. There is design in living things that far transcends the machine metaphor — and it should inspire awe. https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/why-the-design-in-living-things-goes-far-beyond-machinery/

bornagain77

@86

The problem is that on the level of physical chemistry, that’s exactly what organisms are! They are EXTREMELY complex machines, but machines nevertheless by means of trillions of moving parts in billions of cells (in humans, the majority of which are bacteria).

Nope, not even close -- cells are not machines. PyrrhoManiac1

That is why i am asking (for the 2nd time), if the above doesn’t apply to biologists (natural science graduates) when they comment on design/engineering ?

It's a loaded question, where you are assuming that biological processes are akin to human engineering. I disagree with the premise. I do agree that engineers can learn a lot from deconstructing biological systems. But that biological systems were magically engineered by some divine designer whose modus operandi is secret is an unfounded assumption that adds nothing to scientific endeavour. Alan Fox

AF, 96, and why do you spend so much energy on objections and side tracks, if you imagine this is all in a little overlooked corner?

Several answers come to mind. Mohamed has to come to the mountain, as ID enthusiasts on the whole don't venture out from their safe space. It's mental exercise for me. I'm probably a bit OCD. My wife thinks it's ego-driven. Alan Fox

AF: “Intelligent Design” has no answers. Says the man who holds an Atheistic metaphysics which says that there is no real purpose and/or reason to be found for why the universe and life exist, i.e. "Why Look for a Reason When There Are No Reasons?" and champions a theory that must be protected by lawyers so as to avoid embarrassing questions from students that it can't answer, i.e. “‘Put Your Hand Down, Johnny’: When Asking Questions About Science Is Unconstitutional,”

An Open Letter to A.C. Grayling - Michael Egnor - November 23, 2015 Excerpt: Dear Dr. Grayling: ,,, here’s a suggestion for the title of your atheist Oxford conference: “The Metaphysics of Nullity: How Nothing Happened and Then Nothing Made Everything for No Reason.” It could be a part of a much bigger atheist project: “The Metaphysics of Entanglement from an Atheist Perspective: Why Look for a Reason When There Are No Reasons?” No doubt you’d get a big crowd. Even in Oxford, there are plenty of folks who wouldn’t know a Prime Mover from a prime rib. You could pack the conference with the New Atheist vanguard. Imagine a room full of Brights tackling the metaphysical implications of Nothing! There could be some great speakers, and the topics write themselves: “Why Quantum Mechanics Is Nothing,” by Lawrence Krauss,,, “‘Put Your Hand Down, Johnny’: When Asking Questions About Science Is Unconstitutional,” by Josh Rosenau,,, Best regards, Mike Egnor http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/an_open_letter_1101111.html

Of note:

What Science Is Really Teaching Us - John Bloom - June 2018 Excerpt: What the Design of Life Is Shouting I see the same trend over time in biology, biochemistry, and genetics. With almost every new discovery, the overwhelming sense grows that life is not simply chemistry, but rather life is stupendously complex information-processing systems. Years ago, “the simple cell” was called a “blob of protoplasm.” Today, cells contain “intricate, interlocking networks of protein machines” and assembly lines that are carefully regulated and controlled by multiple feedback loops. Could complex systems like this have evolved through blind, unguided mutation and natural selection? Could I construct a model of the Death Star by putting a bunch of Lego bricks in a bag and shaking it until the model formed? No. The plastic bricks would rub against each other and turn to dust long before some might lock together to form anything of interest. Similarly, evolutionary “just so” stories cannot explain the beauty and design of life that shouts of its Creator. No series of accidents can ever replace skill. Let the Data Speak for Itself What science is really teaching us is that God’s glory is clearly visible. But sadly, many people would rather not see it,,, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-science-is-really-teaching-us

bornagain77

PPS: You were present when I pointed to Venter years ago and suggested, go some generations beyond, for a molecular nanotech lab. That is a plausible model that builds on what we are already doing. Your no means accusation is false and held up in the teeth or repeated correction. kairosfocus

AF, 96, and why do you spend so much energy on objections and side tracks, if you imagine this is all in a little overlooked corner? Meanwhile, you have yet to show the capability of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity to create FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits per actual observation. That is telling as design routinely exceeds that including many of your own comments here. KF PS, I would find it amusing that people can look at molecular nanotech then deny what they are seeing if it were not sad;y telling. kairosfocus

Alan Fox

Evolutionary theory gives an explanation

This theory is a bunch of nonsense. All the 'supporting evidence' is just a misrepresentation of reality. And Darwinists start to realize that ... and it will get much worse for them ... because they just started looking ... Alan, in 21st century, you can't claim that fully autonomous self-navigating flying systems weren't designed by engineers. And this is exactly what Darwinian biologists claim ... this simple fact makes this theory as stupid/absurd as it gets .... what is even more absurd, biologists claim that it happened 4 times repeatedly and independently (birds, insects, mammals, dinos If you claim such things in 21st century, people may think that you lost your mind ... martin_r

Whether design is everywhere is not the question. The question is what is the source of design in nature. Evolutionary theory gives an explanation for the source of design processes - the niche. "Intelligent Design" has no answers. Alan Fox

Like i said earlier today

There is a simple rule to follow: If a Darwinist claim something, you can be sure, that the exact opposite is true.

Published today at ScienceDaily:

525-million-year-old fossil defies textbook explanation for brain evolution According to a new study, fossils of a tiny sea creature with a delicately preserved nervous system solve a century-old debate over how the brain evolved in arthropods, the most species-rich group in the animal kingdom. Combining detailed anatomical studies of the fossilized nervous system with analyses of gene expression patterns in living descendants, they conclude that a shared blueprint of brain organization has been maintained from the Cambrian until today. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221125132137.htm

Darwinists - always wrong .... PS: this Cambrian brain organization ... just another confirmation of common design ... martin_r

Alan Fox

Martin_r, the effect is observed in people whose confidence exceeds their knowledge and ability. As you are demonstrating here now.

I perfectly understand what is D-K effect. You don't need to explain it to me over and over again. Perhaps you have overlooked it, but I myself posted the following:

“The Dunning-Kruger effect effect occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence.”

That is why i am asking (for the 2nd time), if the above doesn't apply to biologists (natural science graduates) when they comment on design/engineering ? It is a pretty simple question .... martin_r

Alan Fox

Selection is not accidental or random. Selection designs.

i as an engineer, i never understood this 'natural selection' nonsense. Isn't it self-evident, that weak die, and strong survive ? It is common sense .... Why biologists need to give it some names ??????? So their absurd theory look more convincing and scientific ? Years ago I came across a website called the "THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION", Among other things, right on the title page, there was highlighted the following statement:

... some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.

First i thought, i have landed at some creationists' website. But then i found the following disclaimer (still on the title page):

It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.

Here is the website- it is still there: https://thethirdwayofevolution.com/ PS: i see that BA77 is also aware of THE THIRD WAY OF EVOLUTION martin_r

Without any empirical basis in science, natural selection, Darwin’s supposed ‘designer substitute’, functions far more in the realm of imagination, and fictional ‘just-so story’ telling, than it does in the real world of empirical science,

Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology (the late) Philip S. Skell, August 29, 2005 Excerpt: Darwinian explanations for such things are often too supple: Natural selection makes humans self-centered and aggressive, except when it makes them altruistic and peaceable. Or natural selection produces virile men who eagerly spread their seed, except when it prefers men who are faithful protectors and providers. When an explanation is so supple that it can explain any behavior, it is difficult to test it experimentally, much less use it as a catalyst for scientific discovery. Darwinian evolution, whatever its other virtues, does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. https://www.discovery.org/a/2816/ Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection Has Left a Legacy of Confusion over Biological Adaptation Brian Miller – September 20, 2021 Excerpt: Evolutionary biologist Robert Reid stated: “Indeed the language of neo-Darwinism is so careless that the words ‘divine plan’ can be substituted for ‘selection pressure’ in any popular work in the biological literature without the slightest disruption in the logical flow of argument.” Robert Reid, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, PP. 37-38 (2009) To fully comprehend the critique, one simply needs to imagine attempting to craft an evolutionary barometer that measures the selection pressure driving one organism to transform into something different (e.g., fish into an amphibian). The fact that no such instrument could be constructed highlights the fictitious nature of such mystical forces. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/09/darwins-theory-of-natural-selection-has-left-a-legacy-of-confusion-over-biological-adaptation/ 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. – per google books From Adam Sedgwick – 24 November 1859 – Cambridge My dear Darwin, Excerpt: As to your grand principle—natural selection—what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts. Development is a better word because more close to the cause of the fact.,,, You write of “natural selection” as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent.,,, We all admit development as a fact of history; but how came it about?,,, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml “Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for, or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push or adjust. Natural selection does nothing. Natural selection as a natural force belongs in the insubstantial category already populated by the Necker/Stahl phlogiston or Newton’s ‘ether’…Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for Darwinists now. Creationists have discovered our empty ‘natural selection’ language, and the ‘actions’ of natural selection make huge vulnerable targets.” – (the late) William B. Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 199-200

,,, Darwinists, although they, in their ‘just-so stories’, often speak as if natural selection can explain any facet of biology, no matter how sophisticated the ‘design feature’ in biology may be, Darwinists, to repeat, simply have no real-time empirical evidence, especially for multicellular creatures, that natural selection can do anything of significance. Moreover, besides its failure to have any ‘real empirical basis’, natural selection is also found, via the mathematics of population genetics and the ‘waiting time problem’, to be grossly inadequate in its role as a supposed ‘designer substitute’,

The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. ,,, While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution.,,, Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man. ,,, When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/

With natural selection being cast to the wayside by empirical evidence, and by the mathematics of population genetics, as the supposed 'designer substitute, then "the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.” As Richard Sternberg states, “Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.”

“Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.” Richard Sternberg – Living Waters documentary Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics – Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson – (excerpt from Living Waters video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q

Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

bornagain77

"Selection designs." At least 'selection' producing the 'appearance of design' is what evolutionary biologists falsely claim for their theory,,,

Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought By Ernst Mayr - November 24, 2009 Excerpt: Every aspect of the “wonderful design” so admired by the natural theologians could be explained by natural selection. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwins-influence-on-modern-thought/ Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer - Francisco J. Ayala - May 15, 2007 Excerpt: "Darwin’s theory of natural selection accounts for the 'design' of organisms, and for their wondrous diversity, as the result of natural processes,",,, Darwin's Explanation of Design Darwin's focus in The Origin was the explanation of design, with evolution playing the subsidiary role of supporting evidence. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8567.full “Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning.” Richard Dawkins – “The Blind Watchmaker” – 1986 – page 21 quoted from this video – Michael Behe – Life Reeks Of Design – 2010 – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh-YcNYThY 4:30 minute mark: “It cannot come about by chance. It’s absolutely inconceivable that you could get anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog coming about by chance. That’s absolutely out.,,, It’s out of the question.,,, So where (does this appearance of design) it come from? The process of gradual evolution by natural selection.” Richard Dawkins – From a Frog to a Prince – video https://youtu.be/ClleN8ysimg?t=267

The 'small' problem with this claim from Darwinists of selection 'producing the appearance of design' is that Darwinists have no evidence whatsoever for selection designing anything. For instance, in the following long term study on fruit flies it was found that,,, “Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.”

Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila – 2010 Excerpt of concluding paragraph: “Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles. This is notable because in wild populations we expect the strength of natural selection to be less intense and the environment unlikely to remain constant for ~600 generations. Consequently, the probability of fixation in wild populations should be even lower than its likelihood in these experiments.” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09352 Genome-wide analysis of long-term evolutionary domestication in Drosophila melanogaster – 2016 Excerpt: We used next-generation resequencing data from this experiment to examine genome-wide patterns of genetic variation over an evolutionary time-scale that approaches 1,000 generations. We also compared measures of variation within and differentiation between our populations to simulations based on a variety of evolutionary scenarios. Our analysis yielded no clear evidence of hard selective sweeps, whereby natural selection acts to increase the frequency of a newly-arising mutation in a population until it becomes fixed. We do find evidence for selection acting on standing genetic variation, as independent replicate populations exhibit similar population-genetic dynamics, without obvious fixation of candidate alleles under selection. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311852574_Genome-wide_analysis_of_long-term_evolutionary_domestication_in_Drosophila_melanogaster

As Michael Lynch stated, “There is no compelling empirical or theoretical evidence that complexity, modularity, redundancy or other features of genetic pathways are promoted by natural selection…”

“There is no compelling empirical or theoretical evidence that complexity, modularity, redundancy or other features of genetic pathways are promoted by natural selection…” – Michael Lynch, “The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes,” Nature Rev. Gen., 8:803-13, (October, 2007)

And as James Shapiro and company at the ‘Third Way’ have observed, “some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.”

“The Third Way” – James Shapiro, Denis Noble, etc.. etc..,,, Excerpt: “some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.” http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/

bornagain77

Martin_r, the effect is observed in people whose confidence exceeds their knowledge and ability. As you are demonstrating here now. Alan Fox

Alan Fox as to Dunning-Kruger effect Does it not apply to biologists commenting on design/engineering ? Does it only apply to engineers commenting on design/engineering ? :))))))) martin_r

Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”

Good job this is not the evolutionary position. Selection is not accidental or random. Selection designs. Alan Fox

...designing things that outclass our best engineered systems by orders of magnitude.

We agree on this, at least. ;) Alan Fox

"the amazing products of the evolutionary process,",,, Save for the small fact that no one can ever seem to catch evolutionary processes designing anything, much less designing things that outclass our best engineered systems by orders of magnitude. Which is precisely the point.

"It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.” - Jay Homnick https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt/

bornagain77

BA @ 95 You have the cart before the horse, learning from nature, the amazing products of the evolutionary process, is the way of science. Alan Fox

And you, KF, invest much time in posting stuff here. I wonder what you think you achieve. Who is taking notice? Alan Fox

"But engineers seem particularly susceptible to (see) “Intelligent Design” as somehow a productive approach to understanding reality." I think I will just park a few examples here :

March 2022 ,,, top engineering firms are paying big money to learn from the extraordinary designs found in biology so as to improve their own designs.,,, ,, Burgess has designed groundbreaking linkage mechanisms, but he says the human knee is still well ahead of what even the most advanced human engineers have managed in this area, even accounting for the fact that wear and tear and misuse can lead to knee problems. He walks listeners through some things that make the knee an engineering marvel, and takes a look at some other masterfully designed linkage mechanisms in nature, including those found in the jaws of fish. https://evolutionnews.org/2022/03/stuart-burgess-biologys-designs-tutor-our-top-engineers/ Biomimicry https://synapse.bio "Bring nature's genius to your design table"... Here's a no-brainer. Scientists create faster, more efficient chip based on human brain! Scientists create circuit board modeled on the human brain - April 28, 2014 Excerpt: Scientists have developed faster, more energy-efficient microchips based on the human brain -- 9,000 times faster and using significantly less power than a typical PC. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140428134051.htm Mantis Shrimp Stronger than Airplanes - April 21, 2014 Inspired by mantis shrimp, researchers design composite material stronger than standard used in airplane frames (w/video) Excerpt: Inspired by the fist-like club of a mantis shrimp, a team of researchers led by University of California, Riverside, in collaboration with University of Southern California and Purdue University, have developed a design structure for composite materials that is more impact resistant and tougher than the standard used in airplanes. “The more we study the club of this tiny crustacean, the more we realize its structure could improve so many things we use every day,”,, The peacock mantis shrimp, or stomatopod, is a 4- to 6-inch-long rainbow-colored crustacean with a fist-like club that accelerates underwater faster than a 22-calibur bullet. Researchers, led by Kisailus, an associate professor of chemical engineering, are interested in the club because it can strike prey thousands of times without breaking. The force created by the impact of the mantis shrimp’s club is more than 1,000 times its own weight. It’s so powerful that Kisailus needs to keep the animal in a special aquarium in his lab so it doesn’t break the glass,,, ,,,Kisailus recently learned he has been selected to receive a $7.5 million Department of Defense grant to continue this work. “Biology has an incredible diversity of species, which can provide us new design cues and synthetic routes to the next generation of advanced materials for light-weight automobiles, aircraft and other structural applications,” Kisailus said. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140422130944.htm Biomimicry: Researchers develop metamaterials able to control spread of light - May 10, 2013 Excerpt: The new metamaterials developed by the team are based on spin optics where photon helicity degeneracy is prevented due to the geometric gradient that exists on their surface. They are also anisotropic—they don't behave the same way when measured from different directions. Also, unlike current technology, they are polarization-dependent. Together these features cause light waves to propagate in ways not typically seen in current communications equipment. In addition, because of their polarization dependence, design engineers can create new devices that allow for a novel way to control communication devices—by the selection of the polarization of light at the outset. The researchers also report the new materials don't show inversion symmetry on their surface.,,, The new materials were inspired by metallic nanoantennae found in nature, the team reports. http://phys.org/news/2013-05-metamaterials.html Make Like a Firefly - January 2013 Excerpt: A new LED inspired by fireflies is 55% more efficient, reported PhysOrg. http://crev.info/2013/01/make-like-a-firefly/ Eyeballing Design "Biomimetics" Exposes Attacks on ID as Poorly Designed By: Casey Luskin - December 2011 Perhaps the most familiar example of biomimetics is the body shape of birds serving as the inspiration for aircraft design. But the list of fascinating cases where engineers have mimicked nature to develop or improve human technology goes on and on: • Faster Speedo swimsuits have been developed by studying the properties of sharkskin. • Spiny hooks on plant seeds and fruits led to the development of Velcro. • Better tire treads were created by understanding the shape of toe pads on tree frogs. • Polar bear furs have inspired textiles and thermal collectors. • Studying hippo sweat promises to lead to better sunscreen. • Volvo has studied how locusts swarm without crashing into one another to develop an anti-collision system. • Mimicking mechanisms of photosynthesis and chemical energy conversion might lead to the creation of cheaper solar cells. • Copying the structure of sticky gecko feet could lead to the development of tape with cleaner and dryer super-adhesion. • Color-changing cuttlefish have inspired television screens that use a fraction of the power of standard TVs. • DNA might become a framework for building faster microchips. • The ability of the human ear to pick up many frequencies of sound is being replicated to build better antennas. • The Namibian fog-­basking beetle has inspired methods of desalinizing ocean water, growing crops, and producing electricity, all in one!,,, The answer is hard to miss. The widespread practice and success of biomimetics among technology-creating engineers has powerful implications that point to intelligent design (ID). After all, if human technology is intelligently designed, and if biological systems inspire or outperform man-made systems, then we are confronted with the not-so-subtle inference that nature, too, might have been designed. http://www.discovery.org/a/18011 Brian Miller: The Surprising Relevance of Engineering in Biology - 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9i2vFEa6rE

bornagain77

I dunno, KF, I look at the physical world and try to see what is there rather than what I would like or imagine it to be. Alan Fox

AF, has it occurred to you that familiarity with the substance and challenges of successful design allows us to appreciate what is implicit in other designs, via reverse engineering? Setting aside personalities and invidious associations in your rhetoric, you are trying to deny that strong, empirically well founded signs of intelligently directed configuration are just that, signs of design. This, to substitute a claimed design mimic that has never been shown per observation, capable of creating 500 - 1,000 bits of functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information. We therefore, per fair comment, infer from your agitated manner, confession by projection to the other. KF kairosfocus

And another point: Querius:

Note that at the time of the Scopes trial, over 100 “vestigial” organs were trotted out as proofs of evolution. How many of those “vestigial” are still considered vestiges of evolution?

There is no fixed certainty in science, no unquestionable authority. Scientific endeavour follows evidence and theories must adapt to new discoveries or die. This desire for certainty, control even, seems a strong instinct among engineers, add a little religious fervour and you have an ID proponent in the making. What next though? Conquer the scientific realm or just hang here sharing bitter discontent? Alan Fox

Another parallel I see is the ID movement failing the fundamentalist Christian right as Trump is failing the Republican party. Alan Fox

But engineers seem particularly susceptible to "Intelligent Design" as somehow a productive approach to understanding reality. Martin_r is perhaps the most blatant example here. There are echos of the cargo cult and John Frum. As I said, the phenomenon has a mild fascination for me, from a sociological perspective. Alan Fox

I'm talking about you, Martin_r. Alan Fox

Alan Fox

Classic illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

"The Dunning-Kruger effect effect occurs when a person's lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area cause them to overestimate their own competence." I assume you are talking about Darwinian biologists commenting on design/engineering. Could you confirm ? martin_r

Querius

It must be frustrating when you encounter statements from PyrrhoManiac1 such as That would be true if organisms were machines. But they aren’t. Hence it is false.

it is not. I am used to Darwinian nonsense. We see it all the time. Moreover, there is a simple rule to follow: If a Darwinist claim something, you can be sure, that the exact opposite is true. 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 ….” martin_r

Martin_r, It must be frustrating when you encounter statements from PyrrhoManiac1 such as

That would be true if organisms were machines. But they aren’t. Hence it is false.

The problem is that on the level of physical chemistry, that’s exactly what organisms are! They are EXTREMELY complex machines, but machines nevertheless by means of trillions of moving parts in billions of cells (in humans, the majority of which are bacteria). What makes them “alive”? Well, one first has to define “alive,” and this is where viruses become controversial. “Alive” requires fine-tuned interplay between machine components called metabolism and systems within systems (among other things). A crude analogy is an automobile engine that won’t start and is starting to rust compared with one that’s purring happily.

And that is why the entire “intelligent design” movement rests on a mistake — indeed, I would say, a category error (if “machine” and “organism” are categories).

More nonsense! ID is simply a useful model with a FAR better track record at predicting new functions than undirected random chance together with selective extinction of unworkable or suboptimal combinations. So here’s what PyrrhoManiac1 should be addressing to falsify ID by something stronger than unsupported assertion: PyrrhoManiac1 needs to find an example of something Darwinism successfully predicted as FUNCTIONLESS junk that was thought by ID researchers to have a function but turned out to be a random and useless vestige of evolution after all. Note that at the time of the Scopes trial, over 100 “vestigial” organs were trotted out as proofs of evolution. How many of those “vestigial” are still considered vestiges of evolution? -Q Querius

PMI, at 52 I quoted your 'favored' philosophical sources calling consciousness a fiction, an illusion etc... You punted on defending those outlandish claims of your favored philosophers and said, "It’s true that I think Chalmers was mistaken to distinguish between what he called “the easy problem of consciousness” and “the hard problem of consciousness”. So what??? I didn't ask you if you thought the hard problem was explicable in materialistic terms. Write a philosophy book on it if you think that consciousness can be explained in materialistic terms. What do I care what you think 'philosophically' about the hard problem??? I simply don't care. What I do care about is what the science says. And right now you have ZERO empirical evidence that such is possible

Darwinian Psychologist David Barash Admits the Seeming Insolubility of Science’s “Hardest Problem” Excerpt: ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’ David Barash – Materialist/Atheist - evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology at the ­University of Washington http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo19/opening_salvo_19.php "Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness." - Jerry Fodor - Rutgers University philosopher [2] Fodor, J. A., Can there be a science of mind? Times Literary Supplement. July 3, 1992, pp5-7. "No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians' hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it." - Larry Dossey - Physician and author "Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature." Roger Wolcott Sperry - Nobel neurophysiologist As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian ISBN 0306450895 "We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind." - Eugene Wigner - Nobel prize-winner – Quantum Symmetries "Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot." Nick Herbert - Contemporary physicist “I have a much easier time imagining how we would understand the big bang, even though we can’t do it yet, than I can imagine understanding consciousness.” – Edward Witten – professor of mathematical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey

The rest of PMI's post is just as incoherent, if not more so, so I'll let my posts at 52 and 53 stand for unbiased readers to judge for themselves who is making a sound argument for his position and who is simply blowing smoke trying to protect his atheistic worldview. https://uncommondescent.com/human-exceptionalism/man-ape-chasm-of-differences/#comment-770647 bornagain77

But i don’t expect you to understand anything from this lecture … it is too technical … most lay people (including Lents) won’t understand a single word, but we engineers do …

Classic illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Alan Fox

Alan Fox,

That would be true if organisms were machines. But they aren’t.

Look at these Darwinists from Yale, they obviously don't agree with you :)))))))))))

Human body as machine ... This deeper understanding elicited an “aha” moment—the human body looked more and more like a hugely complex machine. Researchers started applying engineering principles to biology and clinical treatment. “People began to realize that a biological system is just a complicated device, and that the engineering and computer science side of things has solutions,” Morrow said. By the late 1990s, biology and engineering had merged into a new and exciting discipline with the promise of everything from artificial limbs and organs to individualized drug therapies, from medical devices to cures for genetic diseases ... https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/human-body-as-machine/

martin_r

Alan Fox

Sure i can …. But you don’t in the text that follows. You just restate your prejudice.

i told you, BECAUSE BIOLOGISTS NEVER MADE ANYTHING .... this says it all .... it is not a prejudice, it is a fact... BIOLOGISTS (natural science graduates) NEVER MADE ANYTHING .... most of the time, they are telling just-so stories .... martin_r

Alan Fox

From an engineer point of view, Dr. Lents is saying very stupid things… Really? Such as?

i just showed you ... a very skilled engineer (Stuart Burgess) is explaining it in his lecture "Why Human Skeletal Joints Are Masterpieces of Engineering" . But i don't expect you to understand anything from this lecture ... it is too technical ... most lay people (including Lents) won't understand a single word, but we engineers do ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmXjK4HiM4M martin_r

Pyr @75

Martin_r: Biology IS ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING. PERIOD. That would be true if organisms were machines. But they aren’t. Hence it is false. And that is why the entire “intelligent design” movement rests on a mistake

You are as confused as it gets, so I will try to keep the following as simple as possible for you ... Are you saying, that engineers only design machines ? What about civil engineers ? They design bridges ... Bridges made of concrete skeleton. A skeleton designed to handle an enormous static and dynamic stress. I was wondering, if biologists can tell the difference between static and dynamic stress. I bet you hear these two words for the first time. Now let's have a look at some trees - a giant sequoia (300 feet tall) has to handle its enormous own weight (static stress), and also enormous dynamic stress (wind). Sequoia's root is just another example of an engineering masterpiece. No concrete or metal armoring is needed, because it evolved that way :)))))))))) Have a look at this short video - a pretty huge and complex concrete foundation needs to be ENGINEERED for a wind-turbine's pillar, so it can handle enormous static and dynamic stress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHkWMQMECZ0 And then, smart biologists come around with their 'theory' and claim, that sequoia root doesn't need any engineer and that it has nothing to do with engineering, because it is biology :))))))))))))))))))))))))) It is like in some mental hospital ... martin_r

PM1 at 75, You're wrong. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-022-01402-2 https://intelligentdesign.org/articles/molecular-machines-in-the-cell/ relatd

@76

Agree: Alex Rosenberg is (in what I’ve observed) incoherent.

There seems to be somewhat little attention to what is (I think) the gravest problem in Rosenberg's entire project: he says that the facts about fermions and bosons determine all the facts that there are. But this cannot be the case, because we don't have a theory that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics. We don't have the slightest idea of how to explain gravitational attraction in terms of fermions and bosons.

Disagree: Dawkins on gene-centric selection was a side issue to his best idea, the extended phenotype. Denis Noble overstates physiology first.

I like niche construction, so in that regard I don't hate the extended phenotype. But I think that "memes" is a dumb way of thinking about culture. I don't mind over-stating the importance of physiology given how neglected its been in the second half of 20th century evolutionary theory, when everyone talked about genes and populations and organisms were considered irrelevant.

Rorty got a lot right, and Dennett too.

Definite agreement there. Not everything, but a good deal. PyrrhoManiac1

@52

As should be needless to say, denying the reality of consciousness, and calling it a ‘fiction’, an ‘illusion’, a ‘controlled hallucination’, a ‘process’, even if you use 25 cent philosophical words to deny the reality of consciousness, is not honestly dealing with the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. But is, DUH, in reality denying the reality of consciousness.

It's true that I think Chalmers was mistaken to distinguish between what he called "the easy problem of consciousness" and "the hard problem of consciousness". Rejecting that distinction as mistaken does not entail denying the reality of consciousness.

Secondly, PMI’s claim that consciousness has no place in science, but belongs, solely, to the realm of philosophy, is another false claim for him to make.

Good thing for me that I never claimed that, nor did anything that I did say have that implication. I claimed that we should reject the conceptual basis of the distinction between the easy problem of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness. I wouldn't mind explaining my reasoning here, but first you'd have to understand what the claim is that I'm actually making. @53

Hoffman tried to limit his results to just our visual perceptions, (i.e. conscious observations), as Plantinga had pointed out years before Hoffman came along, there is no reason why the results do not also extend to undermining our other cognitive faculties as well

Hoffman is only able to generate his results because he configures his algorithm by treating veridicality and fitness as independent variables. Taking them as independent variables makes it easy to optimize one at the expense of the other. If he had configured the parameters so that fitness depended on veridicality, he could not have come up with his silly little result. Plantinga has been ably refuted by numerous philosophers, but I especially recommend the responses by Paul Churchland and by Feng Ye. The fatal flaw at the heart of Plantinga's entire argument is that, on his conception of naturalism, the naturalist is not entitled to a conception of semantic content as itself being a target of natural selection. This is flawed because, in point of fact, naturalists do have a conception of semantic content as causally efficacious and therefore as a target of natural selection. This view is generally called "teleosemantics". The most recent (and I think most successful) version of informational teleosemantics is that of Gualtierro Piccinini though he builds upon important previous work by Karen Neander and Nicholas Shea. In other words, Plantinga's argument assumes that naturalists don't have a conception of semantic content as a target of selection, and that's simply not true. Everything else in the EAAN depends on that assumption, and without it, the whole rest of the argument falls apart. PyrrhoManiac1

@ PyrrhoManiac1 Agree: Alex Rosenberg is (in what I've observed) incoherent. Disagree: Dawkins on gene-centric selection was a side issue to his best idea, the extended phenotype. Denis Noble overstates physiology first. Rorty got a lot right, and Dennett too. Alan Fox

@62

Biology IS ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING. PERIOD.

That would be true if organisms were machines. But they aren't. Hence it is false. And that is why the entire "intelligent design" movement rests on a mistake -- indeed, I would say, a category error (if "machine" and "organism" are categories). I feel this merits some further belaboring: my opposition to intelligent design has nothing at all to do with my commitment to materialism*, Darwinism**, or atheism***. It is due to my understanding that intelligent design is based upon a mechanistic conception of organisms, which I consider to be fundamentally and incorrigibly confused. * = I think that some version of emergentism is true and that Kim's argument against emergence is badly confused. Moreover I'm quite opposed to every version of "reductive materialism", but especially that of Alex Rosenberg, which I regard as incoherent even by his own standards of philosophical adequacy. ** = I like the organism-centered approaches to evolution (Darwin, Dewey, Lewontin, Oyama, Walsh, Noble, Nicholson, Moss, Newman) and think that the gene-centered approach of the Modern Synthesis was generally speaking mistaken, as are its propagandists such as Monod and Dawkins. *** = not an atheist but a theistic naturalist. PyrrhoManiac1

Sure i can ….

But you don't in the text that follows. You just restate your prejudice. Alan Fox

Alan Fox

Do you guys realize, that with your education, you should never, NEVER, comment on design in biology or any other design whatsoever ? Nonsense. I’m mildly curious however how you justify the quoted statement. Can you?

Sure i can .... BECAUSE BIOLOGISTS NEVER MADE ANYTHING ... you guys don't understand how things work ... you guys are not qualified to comment on simple design let alone to comment on very advanced design like we see in biology. This is so absurd. You don't even see how absurd it is :))))))))) Do you recall how biologist Dawkins commented on backwardly wired retina ? (you know, eye's bad design ) ? and then ... at Scientific American (2015): "The reverse-wiring of the eyeball has long been a mystery, but new research shows a remarkable structural purpose: increasing and sharpening our color vision" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-purpose-of-our-eyes-strange-wiring-is-unveiled/ Like i said, you guys don't understand how things work ... so you should never comment on design in biology ... because then you look stupid .... but it seems, you will never learn your lesson (now biologist Lents) ... martin_r

From an engineer point of view, Dr. Lents is saying very stupid things...

Really? Such as? Dr Lents has been a frequent commenter at Peaceful Science and I have found his comments there to be erudite and insightful. Alan Fox

So Alan, now focus, a quick google search:

Hmm. That paper is behind a paywall. Alan Fox

Alan Fox

Dr Lents is somewhat of a bête noire with Evolution News and the Discovery Institute (I suspect over his rôle in exposing Mike Behe’s dishonest use of data regarding polar bear genes) so I understand why you might not hold him in high regard.

Are you saying, that Discovery institute doesn't like Dr. Lents, EvolutionNews doesn't like Dr. Lents, and that is the reason why I don't like Dr. Lents ? Is that right? English is not my first language, so perhaps i misunderstood something. if so, let me clarify the following: From an engineer point of view, Dr. Lents is saying very stupid things ....( no wonder, he is a biologist) ... And that is the reason why I have mentioned him in my previous post ... yes, EvolutionNews or some other blog brought Dr. Lents to my attention ... never before heard of him.... i am always surprised how many biologists (natural science graduates) dare to comment on design/engineering. Even publish a book !!!! This is something unbelievable ... what is wrong with these people ? martin_r

Do you guys realize, that with your education, you should never, NEVER, comment on design in biology or any other design whatsoever ?

Nonsense. I'm mildly curious however how you justify the quoted statement. Can you? Personally, I'm fascinated how the environment designs living organisms. Everywhere I look, I see the process in action. Alan Fox

Alan Fox

Of course you may. I studied biochemistry at undergraduate level but did not pursue a career in academia. And I guess Martin_r is/was some kind of engineer?

Yes, i am a mechanical engineer (university degree). Yesterday I gave the same advice to Chuckdarwin ... Do you guys realize, that with your education, you should never, NEVER, comment on design in biology or any other design whatsoever ? Do you realize that ? martin_r

Alan Fox.

You must have some reason to think an engineering approach brings value to biological and biochemical research. It may do though I can’t think of an example other than designing, constructing and improving scientific instruments. Maybe you can list some, Martin_r.

:)))))))))))))))))))))))) So Alan, now focus, a quick google search: Science.org (published 20 years ago!!!!):

Advanced technologies and biology have extremely different physical implementations, but they are far more alike in systems-level organization than is widely appreciated. Convergent evolution in both domains produces modular architectures that are composed of elaborate hierarchies of protocols and layers of feedback regulation, are driven by demand for robustness to uncertain environments, and use often imprecise components. This complexity may be largely hidden in idealized laboratory settings and in normal operation, becoming conspicuous only when contributing to rare cascading failures. These puzzling and paradoxical features are neither accidental nor artificial, but derive from a deep and necessary interplay between complexity and robustness, modularity, feedback, and fragility. This review describes insights from engineering theory and practice that can shed some light on biological complexity. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1069981

PS: like i said ... you guys are completely confused. martin_r

PS: may i ask, what is your education ?

Of course you may. I studied biochemistry at undergraduate level but did not pursue a career in academia. And I guess Martin_r is/was some kind of engineer? The university I attended half a century ago was in the UK and riddled with class prejudice in all sorts of ways. Status depended on choice of faculty. Medicine and Law were top, then Science, Arts, a sharp drop to Social Science, and at the bottom, Engineering. Alan Fox

This Nathan Lents and his book about human errors, this is a textbook example when biologists should keep their mouths shut.

I guess you refer to Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes whose central theme, that cultural evolution has overwhelmed and diminished the effects of biological evolution in humans, seems pretty obvious to me. Dr Lents is somewhat of a bête noire with Evolution News and the Discovery Institute (I suspect over his rôle in exposing Mike Behe's dishonest use of data regarding polar bear genes) so I understand why you might not hold him in high regard. Alan Fox

Biology IS ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING. PERIOD.

Good grief, what arrant nonsense!

Actually, biologists – natural science graduates are the last ones who should comment on design in biology …

You must have some reason to think an engineering approach brings value to biological and biochemical research. It may do though I can't think of an example other than designing, constructing and improving scientific instruments. Maybe you can list some, Martin_r. Alan Fox

Alan Fox @60

And generally, why is the “Intelligent Design” community populated with engineers?

so what do you think? why is that ? :))))) PS: may i ask, what is your education ? martin_r

Alan Fox @60

for example, this guy [Stuart Burgess] is pretty qualified to comment on design in biology. On googling, I see he gets a good press from Creationist websites? What other credentials does he have to qualify him in the field of biology?

What other credentials does he have to qualify him in the field of biology ???? Professor of mechanical engineering at Bristol University is not enough ? :))) Ohh... i forgot. You think that biologists are qualified to comment on design in biology, ...right ? :)))))) You see ? You guys are completely confused ... Now focus: Biology IS ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING. PERIOD. Actually, biologists - natural science graduates are the last ones who should comment on design in biology ... Biologists can eventually do some research, but to be honest, i am not sure whether this is/was a good idea too ... to leave the whole biology research to biologists, i don't know ... these guys just don't understand what they are looking at ... when doing research, a biologist should always come with an engineer ... This Nathan Lents and his book about human errors, this is a textbook example when biologists should keep their mouths shut. But for some unknown reason, people like you listen to them instead of listen to experts (e.g. Stuart Burgess) martin_r

Another data-point for the Salem Hypothesis? Seversky

...for example, this guy [Stuart Burgess] is pretty qualified to comment on design in biology.

On googling, I see he gets a good press from Creationist websites? What other credentials does he have to qualify him in the field of biology? And generally, why is the "Intelligent Design" community populated with engineers? Alan Fox

Martin_r i found another great comment below the video i posted above from Mike M

Even more amazing is the information processing system inside each cell that makes it possible to translate basic chemical compounds in DNA into efficient structures in the body. It's like billions of microscopic adaptable 3d printers that work in coordination to produce the coded body plan. Information processing (copy, compression, translation, error correction, etc) is not something that just happens, it must be engineered especially when involved in something as intricate as a biological system.

the cell is a 3D printer. ( prints 3D 'objects' ... from grass, trees, insects, birds to humans) An excellent analogy. martin_r

CD

I said I had taught bio many years ago for a short time (1975-76). Almost 50 years ago.

I see ... but you know that since then, lots of very important discoveries have been made ... I don't understand, how you guys can still deny the obvious. I am sure, that you guys perfectly understand what is going on, but you just can't admit that you were wrong the whole life. I know, it hurts. A lot. I, as an engineer, I never trusted Darwinian biologists ... what they claimed just did not make any sense ... I have no formal education in biology, so i started to study biology as a hobby. It just confirmed what i was suspecting - that Darwinism is a fake news, a hoax. Most biology papers i was interested in, i was like "these guys must be joking..." or "these guys are completely insane" ... This has nothing to do with any religion. I just have to defend a fellow engineer, our Creator. Because what you guys claim, is as offensive as it gets. We are looking at the most advanced technology imaginable (beyond human comprehension) .... and you guys even dare to call it a bad design. This is so absurd and very very offensive. All engineers should stand up against biologists ... Biologists infested the whole world with a crazy absurd theory ... Here is another very important point: Let's say, that all species emerged via evolution. You guys don't realize the following - if it would be true, that all the sophisticated species evolved from some single celled organism, such a design would be way way way sophisticated than a special creation of species. You don't realize that, do you ? I can imagine, that some species may have emerged via some process of hybridization or horizontal gene transfer, but, from engineering point of view, a special creation makes more sense. Or, special creation plus hybridization plus HGT. No problem with that. If i would be such a skilled engineer, i would like to demonstrate what i can, my skills .... just for fun ... so i would design completely distinct species ... and that is exactly what we see (from octopuses to hummingbirds or mosquitos) ... if Darwinian evolution and this natural selection non-sense would be true, we would see a very limited variety in species ...

I’m curious, do you apply the same exclusionary criteria to biologists and biochemists at the Discovery Institute?

Sure. We are looking at very advanced engineering, almost beyond human comprehension. Only very skilled engineers should comment on this. I am definitely not that skilled, but i can comment on some simple things ... Also, when Dr. Behe and Co. claim, that e.g. bacterium flagellum was designed, i can only agree ... i won't fight with him ... it is obvious ... PS: for example, this guy is pretty qualified to comment on design in biology. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Stuart-Burgess-d9aa408b-265a-46e0-9446-b3d77d3477dc/ "Why Human Skeletal Joints Are Masterpieces of Engineering" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmXjK4HiM4M&t=4s i suggest to read some comments below the video, lots of engineers there a top comment: "They make fun of the design argument but they attempt to replicate designs from nature because they’re… well designed ?" martin_r

Chuckdarwin @56, Much has happened since you taught biology. There have been so many discoveries that the 19th century theory of evolution needs to be overturned. And this call is from evolutionists! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution The scientific attractiveness of ID is that this approach results in faster scientific progress than a presumption of undirected random chance together with natural selection. ID doesn’t depend on theism. It doesn’t depend on science fantasy stories. It doesn’t depend on alien intrusions. All that ID claims is that living things appear intelligently designed, so that organelles, biochemical cycles, and genetic mechanisms that are poorly understood should be studied as if they were intelligently designed rather than ignored as useless vestiges of undirected evolution. In contrast, Darwinism presumes that any poorly understood biological feature or structure is junk, proving evolution. This is an ideological, not a scientific position. Examples: • Evolutionary biologists once claimed over 100 “vestigial” organs in the human body, including the thyroid and other ductless glands. The was PREDICTED by Darwinism. It failed. • Evolutionary geneticists once believed in “junk” DNA, which is now termed non-coding DNA. Junk DNA was PREDICTED by Darwinism. It failed, but Darwinists are grimly hanging on to the shrinking areas of DNA that they can still claim as junk. • Evolutionary paleontologists PREDICTED that the skeletal remains of extinct animals called dinosaurs supposedly lived roughly 65-250 million years ago were all PETRIFIED artifacts without any possibility for organic matter to survive. It failed, but Darwinists are grimly hanging on to the scientific impossibility that 100 million years of background radiation miraculously allowed organic bone, stretchy connective tissue, and even red blood cells to survive. However, ID takes NO POSITION on the source of biological design, nor does it take a position on the origin of life. This is where it departs from Creationism. All that ID advocates is researching biology as if it were intelligently designed. -Q Querius

Martin_r I said I had taught bio many years ago for a short time (1975-76). Almost 50 years ago. I don’t know the answer to your retrovirus question. I’m curious, do you apply the same exclusionary criteria to biologists and biochemists at the Discovery Institute? That they are unqualified to comment on ID? People like Behe or Axe. How about DI philosophers such as Meyer or Dembski? How about folks with no science background at all? chuckdarwin

to CD you said you are a biology teacher. You comment on Evolution/Creation issues. Can i ask you a question ? It is a bit off topic, I asked this question elsewhere, it is regarding retroviruses. I was unable to google the answer. Did the same retrovirus insert in human genome more than once ? In other words, was the same retrovirus DNA found more than once in human genome ? martin_r

to CD one more note in regards to parts-recycling ... Have you ever seen a software code ? For a coder, it is crucial to re-use the same code in various projects ... moreover, it is very common to share code with other software developers (some species doing it as well via HGT) . I am sure, despite you are a biology teacher, you know how a code/software engineer works. So why it is so surprising, that our Creator would re-use the same code/DNA code/ over and over again ? The basics of most species is the same. Most of the species have to eat, sleep, think, see, hear, feel, they have legs, hands, hair, skin, bones, blood, etc etc ... so why it is so surprising that our Creator re-used most of the DNA over and over again ? martin_r

Although Hoffman tried to limit his results to just our visual perceptions, (i.e. conscious observations), as Plantinga had pointed out years before Hoffman came along, there is no reason why the results do not also extend to undermining our other cognitive faculties as well:

The Case Against Reality – May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Hoffman seems to come to a conclusion similar to the one Alvin Plantinga argues in ch. 10 of Where the Conflict Really Lies: we should not expect — in the absence of further argument — that creatures formed by a naturalistic evolutionary process would have veridical perceptions.,,, First, even if Hoffman’s argument were restricted to visual perception, and not to our cognitive faculties more generally (e.g., memory, introspection, a priori rational insight, testimonial belief, inferential reasoning, etc.), the conclusion that our visual perceptions would be wholly unreliable given natural selection would be sufficient for Plantinga’s conclusion of self-defeat. After all, reliance upon the veridicality of our visual perceptions was and always will be crucial for any scientific argument for the truth of evolution. So if these perceptions cannot be trusted, we have little reason to think evolutionary theory is true. Second, it’s not clear that Hoffman’s application of evolutionary game theory is only specially applicable to visual perception, rather than being relevant for our cognitive faculties generally. If “we find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality” (2010, p. 504, my emphasis), then why wouldn’t veridical cognitive faculties (more generally) be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality? After all, evolutionary theory purports to be the true account of the formation of all of our cognitive faculties, not just our faculty of visual perception. If evolutionary game theory proves that “true perception generally goes extinct” when “animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency” (2008), why wouldn’t there be a similar sacrifice with respect to other cognitive faculties? In fact, Hoffman regards the following theorem as now proven: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness” (Atlantic interview). But then wouldn’t it also be the case that an organism that cognizes reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that cognizes none of reality but is just tuned to fitness? On the evolutionary story, every cognitive faculty we have was produced by a process that was tuned to fitness (rather than tuned to some other value, such as truth). http://www.gregwelty.com/2016/05/the-case-against-reality/

Moreover, in direct contradiction to the mathematical prediction from population genetics that tell us, (if Darwin's theory is held to be true), that ALL of of perceptions of reality will be illusory , experimental results from quantum theory could care less what the mathematics of population genetics predict for Darwin's theory. In the following experiment, it was found that ““It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html

Likewise, the following experiment also found that “reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell’s inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.” http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

And as the following experiment also found that, “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.

More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html

In short, experimental results from quantum mechanics could care less that the Darwinist, via population genetics, is forced to believe that all of his observations of reality are illusory. Quantum mechanics experimentally proves that ALL our perceptions, and/or our conscious 'observations', of reality, far from being unreliable and illusory, are far more reliable of reality, even far more integral to reality, than the mathematics of population genetics predict for Darwinian theory. And in science, experimental results trumps theory, (and especially trumps philosophical theorizing), every time. As Feynman stated, “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”

“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” – Richard Feynman – On the Scientific Method

Verse:

Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.

bornagain77

PMI at 46, instead of honestly engaging the empirical science that I presented to him as he should have done, tries to retreat into philosophy. Moreover, PMI claims that the hard problem of consciousness, i.e. qualia "are philosophical concepts, not scientific ones" and further tries to retreat into the philosophical arms of Dennett and Frankish in particular, in order to try to counter Chalmers' claims about the irresolvable 'hard problem' of consciousness for materialists. i.e. " It would be one thing if you were familiar with Dennett or Frankish," First off, to put it mildly, I'm not impressed with PMI's retreat into the philosophical arms of Dennett and Frankish, (and/or any other 'esteemed' materialistic philosopher PMI may wish to retreat into the arms of), to try to avoid engaging the harsh reality of the scientific evidence I presented to him that has falsified his claims against Dr. Egnor.

The consciousness illusion - Keith Frankish Phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains to help us track the impact that the world makes on us Excerpt: The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us. To call it a fiction is not to disparage it. https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-consciousness-is-an-illusion-created-by-your-brain “(Daniel) Dennett concludes, ‘nobody is conscious … we are all zombies’.” J.W. Schooler & C.A. Schreiber – Experience, Meta-consciousness, and the Paradox of Introspection – 2004 The Consciousness Deniers – Galen Strawson – March 13, 2018 Excerpt: What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience.,,, Who are the Deniers?,,, Few have been fully explicit in their denial, but among those who have been, we find Brian Farrell, Paul Feyerabend, Richard Rorty, and the generally admirable Daniel Dennett.,,, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/ The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness – Monday, Jan. 29, 2007 Part II The Illusion Of Control Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Steven Pinker - Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University http://www.academia.edu/2794859/The_Brain_The_Mystery_of_Consciousness “Our experiences of being and having a body are ‘controlled hallucinations’ of a very distinctive kind.” Anil Seth, "The Real Problem" at Aeon - (Nov. 2, 2016) https://evolutionnews.org/2022/10/is-consciousness-a-controlled-brain-hallucination/ "There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does. Every morning’s introspectively fantasized self is a new one, remarkably similar to the one that consciousness ceased fantasizing when we fell sleep sometime the night before. Whatever purpose yesterday’s self thought it contrived to set the alarm last night, today’s newly fictionalized self is not identical to yesterday’s. It’s on its own, having to deal with the whole problem of why to bother getting out of bed all over again.,,, - Alex Rosenberg - Professor of Philosophy Duke University - The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10 "The first thing to understand, I believe, is that there is no thing like “the self.” Nobody ever had or was a self. Selves are not part of reality. Selves are not something that endures over time. The first person pronoun “I” doesn’t refer to an object like a football or a bicycle, it just points to the speaker of the current sentence. There is no thing in the brain or outside in the world, which is us. We are processes… the self is not a thing but a process." - Thomas Metzinger is a German philosopher. As of 2011 he holds the position of director of the theoretical philosophy group at the department of philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

As should be needless to say, denying the reality of consciousness, and calling it a 'fiction', an 'illusion', a ‘controlled hallucination', a 'process', even if you use 25 cent philosophical words to deny the reality of consciousness, is not honestly dealing with the 'hard problem' of consciousness. But is, DUH, in reality denying the reality of consciousness. The claim from materialists that consciousness is a fictional illusion is simply self-refuting nonsense,

The Illusionist – Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. – 2017 Excerpt: “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist

Secondly, PMI's claim that consciousness has no place in science, but belongs, solely, to the realm of philosophy, is another false claim for him to make. We simply could not do science if we were not first conscious. Consciousness, and/or conscious 'observation', is a primary prerequisite for doing science. As Eugene Wigner noted, "The principal argument (against materialism) is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied."

“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177

And as John von Neuman noted, "we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.”

"We wish to measure a temperature.,,, But in any case, no matter how far we calculate -- to the mercury vessel, to the scale of the thermometer, to the retina, or into the brain, at some time we must say: and this is perceived by the observer. That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.” John von Neumann - 1903-1957 - The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, pp.418-21 - 1955

In fact, the scientific method itself lists conscious 'observation' as the first step, the cornerstone if you will, of the scientific method,

Steps of the Scientific Method Observation/Research Hypothesis Prediction Experimentation Conclusion http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scientific_method.html

Moreover, besides materialism claiming that consciousness is a fictional illusion, if Darwinian materialism were actually true, then ALL of our perceptions, and/or conscious 'observations', of reality would also be illusory too. (thus Darwinian materialism, in its claim that our observations of reality are illusory, actually undermines a necessary cornerstone for doing science) Donald Hoffman, via the mathematics of population genetics, proved that if Darwinian evolution were true then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be illusory,

Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction (those organisms) that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality – April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/

bornagain77

to CD. Thank you for the clarification. I knew you are a teacher. The very moment you started correcting my bad English, I knew it ... Moreover, a biology teacher. I don't want to be rude, but do you understand, that you shouldn't comment on intelligent design or any other design whatsoever ? You are not qualified ... Do you understand that ? martin_r

Querius @49

25% of the human DNA and a different 18% of the chimp DNA were excluded so as to compare only the matching sections to get the desired result.

Right. And, because the video is 7 years old, you have to add another 8% to these numbers. Those 8% of DNA missing until 2022. As Relatd explained, those missing 8% are 'only' repetitive stretches of letters, but i can't wait to see how it will align with chimp's DNA. PS: I would like to hear, what our dear colleague biologist CD thinks about this video ... martin_r

Martin_r @36,

here is a most comprehensive video on human- chimp DNA comparison I have ever seen.

Thank you! Your video link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w) makes the explanation of what was left out of the human-chimp DNA comparison very clear! 25% of the human DNA and a different 18% of the chimp DNA were excluded so as to compare only the matching sections to get the desired result. Actually, human-banana DNA comparison could achieve similar results by selective exclusion, however more mismatching DNA would need to be excluded to get the desired result. It should now be obvious to Darwinists that chimps actually more evolved than humans, being far better adapted to their natural environment in Africa than humans are! In a fight, chimps can easily kill an unarmed human! https://animalworldfacts.com/man-vs-chimp-who-would-win-in-a-fight/ https://www.foxnews.com/science/chimps-killing-people-in-uganda So the only way that humans were able to survive in their competition with chimps was to change the natural environment. You see, Darwinism can be used to rationalize anything, but successfully predicts nothing. This is why one frequently reads about evolutionary scientists being surprised at some latest discovery. -Q Querius

CD at 41, I can see you and Seversky standing before God. Chuck: You go first. Seversky: No, no, YOU go first. Chuck: No, I insist. Seversky: No, I insist. And so on... relatd

Martin_r/43 It's no mystery. My undergrad degree is in biology, and I taught HS bio for a couple years many decades ago, but I would never hold myself out as a professional biologist....... chuckdarwin

@42

I went into the empirical evidence detailing exactly why your, intuitively false, belief that the material realm can give rise to perception of immaterial objects is wrong.

Oh, bless your heart. Firstly, at no point did I say that I believed that a material intellect can know immaterial objects. I was only pointing out that even if there are immaterial objects, that does not entail that the intellect is immaterial. Some further premise is needed and not just whatever seems "intuitively obvious" to you. Secondly, you did more than just marshal "empirical evidence": you introduced Chalmers's argument that there is a 'hard problem of consciousness' because of 'qualia.' Those are philosophical concepts, not scientific ones. It would be one thing if you were familiar with Dennett or Frankish, but I very much doubt you do. So I shall leave you with the wisdom of John Stuart Mil:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

I know the reasoning of Chalmers and many other philosophers who I respectfully disagree with. I very much doubt you understand the reasoning of the philosophers you disagree with, and I'm not even sure you understand of the reasoning of the philosophers you do agree with. On Mill's principle, you have no rational basis for your own opinions. PyrrhoManiac1

Bornagain77 @26, 27, Thanks for your excellent comments! I wasn't aware of the following:

As the following 2010 experiment found, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”

https://phys.org/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html This is huge! And also the following quote.

Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum mechanics and 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 scientific, theological, and even personal, significance.

Yes, indeed! These findings strengthen an experiment-based validation for information being the ground for our reality! -Q Querius

@28

. Psychologists have long speculated that if we could devise an accurate non-verbal IQ measure for chimps and superimpose that distribution over a human non-verbal IQ distribution, how much overlap we would find. The results would likely be humbling.

I don't like this way of putting the thought, since it assumes too much about IQ tests and I'm not even sure it makes sense to say that intelligence is a linear cross-species metric. Chimpanzees are surely very intelligent animals, but they are intelligent at doing the things that chimpanzees need to do, as the kind of social animal that they are, in the specific ecological niches that they occupy. But I agree with the more general point: that there's a very anthropocentric bias to how we talk (or don't talk) about animal cognition and consciousness, and it's difficult for us to overcome that bias. Frans de Waal summarized that problem in a paradoxical title, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?. PyrrhoManiac1

CD @41 are coders eco-friendly recyclers ? CD, I was always wondering, what is your education ? You sound like a biologist .... I also asked Seversky about his education, you guys never want to share with us ... martin_r

PMI at 37. in posts 25-27, I went into the empirical evidence detailing exactly why your, intuitively false, belief that the material realm can give rise to perception of immaterial objects is wrong. You can, in your refusal to be honest to the evidence, retreat into philosophical posturing all you want. The empirical evidence, nor I, care.

"If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it." - Feynman

bornagain77

Relatd/39 So now God is an eco-friendly recycler? Where do you come up with this stuff? chuckdarwin

PM1 Don't hold back, some of us here actually value your comments. I do think, however, that Chalmers desperately needs a decent haircut..... chuckdarwin

CD at 28, Your lack of proper psychoanalytical skills is showing. I think it is horrible that non-religionists/agnostics still push the ape-human common ancestor idea with nothing to show for it. God - the Creator - reused various body plans. Two arms, two legs and so on, but it clearly states in the Bible that man was a special creation. Man was made to be in communion with God and other human persons. relatd

Sir Giles/33 Ouch!!! But kind of unfair to chimps..... chuckdarwin

@25

It is intuitively obvious that that which is material can never apprehend, understand, and perceive, immaterial objects.

"Intuitively obvious" is not an argument. What someone finds "intuitively obvious" is simply a feature of what beliefs they already hold, not a reason for holding those beliefs. Consider it this way: it would be quite problematic for someone to say "the intellect must be immaterial because there can't be a causal relation between what is material and what is immaterial". If the intellect is immaterial, but the sense-organs are material and so are the brain-regions that initiate movement, then the impossibility of a causal relation between the material and the immaterial would make impossible both perceptual judgment and intentional action. So, if even the most staunch defender of the immaterial intellect must accept that the immaterial and the material must be able to causally affect each other, then why couldn't a material intellect be causally affected by immaterial objects?

The inability of materialism to explain subjective conscious experience is known as the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness i.e. ‘qualia’. Perhaps PMI can, as he chastised Dr. Egnor to do, “take an hour of his life to learn” about the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, i.e. ‘qualia’?

I've read The Conscious Mind in its entirety, plus some related essays. (It took about two weeks, I think.) I respect Chalmers immensely as a philosopher but I cannot agree with him about qualia. I think his arguments rely upon a version of possible world semantics I don't accept and also an impossibly demanding conception of scientific explanations. I think that the very distinction between the easy problem of consciousness and the hard problem of consciousness relies on a conception of the nature of explanations in cognitive science that we ought to reject. I'd say more, but I don't see the point in going into detail when talking someone with such open disdain for philosophy. PyrrhoManiac1

Querius, here is a most comprehensive video on human- chimp DNA comparison I have ever seen. It is obvious, that this video wasn't created by creationists because in the video is Human-chimp common ancestor mentioned and other mainstream stuff. But if creationists would create a video on human-chimp similarity, it wouldn't look much different :))))) "Are we really 99% Chimp" ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w martin_r

CD @28

Psychologists have long speculated that if we could devise an accurate non-verbal IQ measure for chimps and superimpose that distribution over a human non-verbal IQ distribution, how much overlap we would find.

i am surprised that you mentioning psychologists :)))) These guys are the last ones i would mention in any debate :)))) Today, psychology is considered pseudoscientific ...

Modern psychology is apparently in crisis. This claim is nothing new. From phrenology to psychoanalysis, psychology has traditionally had an uneasy scientific status. Indeed, the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, viewed Freud’s theories as a typical example of pseudoscience because no test could ever show them to be false. More recently, psychology has feasted on a banquet of extraordinary findings whose scientific credibility has also been questioned. https://theconversation.com/is-psychology-really-in-crisis-60869

"because no test could ever show them to be false." reminds me of evo theory :))))) martin_r

"A MAGA Republican?" SG, Evidence indicates they didn't exist back when a Common Ancestor would have existed. Try again. Andrew asauber

<blockquoteWhich ancestor would that be? A MAGA Republican? Sir Giles

as to CD's claim, "it’s hard to give up one’s privileged spot in the cosmos",,,

,,, despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians today, presently hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, (and therefore concede the necessary premise of the Principle of Mediocrity to atheists), the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principal is now shown, via our most powerful theories in science, (i.e. quantum mechanics and general relativity), to be a false assumption. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mike-keas-on-the-myth-that-a-big-universe-is-a-problem-for-religion/#comment-738443

bornagain77

CD: “the fact that humans and chimps share a common ancestor” Balderdash.

Jan. 2022 Fossil Record refutes human evolution https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-fox-news-adam-and-eve-are-compatible-with-evolution/#comment-744141 Fossils and Human Evolution (full series) - Casey Luskin - Oct. 2022 https://evolutionnews.org/tag/fossils-and-human-evolution-series/ Sept: 2022 - Genetic Evidence falsifies the claim the humans evolved from apes-like creature. And falsifies it in a ‘hard’ manner. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-evolution-news-did-life-first-arise-by-purely-natural-means/#comment-765765 Darwinists simply have no evidence that morphology, and/or biological form, is reducible to mutations to DNA. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evangelical-scientists-getting-it-wrong/#comment-740247 Population Genetics falsifies, instead of confirms, Darwinian claims for human evolution https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/christian-darwinists-must-now-backtrack-re-adam-and-eve/#comment-741335 Human exceptionalism falsifies Darwinian claims for human evolution https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evangelical-scientists-getting-it-wrong/#comment-740249 Darwinists, (in what makes the ‘problem’ of explaining the origin of the human species pale in comparison), have no clue whatsoever why “I” should even come into existence as a “person” with a unique individual subjective conscious experience, but are instead reduced to arguing that my sense of self, my “I”, is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ Nov. 2022 - https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/at-evolution-news-there-is-no-settled-theory-of-evolution/#comment-770111

bornagain77

"the fact that humans and chimps share a common ancestor" CD, Which ancestor would that be? You guys keep using the phrase Common Ancestor and Precursor instead of just identifying the ancestor. Andrew asauber

Psychologists have long speculated that if we could devise an accurate non-verbal IQ measure for chimps and superimpose that distribution over a human non-verbal IQ distribution, how much overlap we would find. The results would likely be humbling.

They have such measures. What a ridiculous comment. Does ChuckDarwin actually believe chimps and humans overlap? That may explain a lot of comments here. jerry

I've never understood the horror that some religionists express over the fact that humans and chimps share a common ancestor and demonstrate an unusually high degree of genetic overlap. Psychologists have long speculated that if we could devise an accurate non-verbal IQ measure for chimps and superimpose that distribution over a human non-verbal IQ distribution, how much overlap we would find. The results would likely be humbling. Perhaps it would end the ridiculous debate this OP underscores. Most likely not, it’s hard to give up one’s privileged spot in the cosmos….. chuckdarwin

Moreover, this independent entity of immaterial quantum information, which is shown to be separate from matter and energy, (and of which classical information is a subset), is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology,

“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 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

The thing that is so antagonistic, indeed so devastating, for Darwinian materialists with quantum entanglement, and/or quantum information, is that it takes a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain quantum entanglement, and/or quantum information. 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

In fact, the evidence for beyond space and time quantum ‘non-locality’ has now become so strong that, just last month, a Nobel prize was finally awarded to the main scientists, (John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger), who empirically established the reality of quantum non-locality.

The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality – Daniel Garisto – October 6, 2022 Excerpt: This is, of course, deeply contrary to our everyday experiences. To paraphrase Douglas Adams, the demise of local realism has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Blame for this achievement has now been laid squarely on the shoulders of three physicists: John Clauser, Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger. They equally split the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/

Darwinian atheists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain quantum non-locality. Whereas Christian Theists readily do have an explanation that they can appeal to in order to explain the quantum non-locality of quantum entanglement, (and/or quantum information).

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

It is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical information, is physically 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 strongly 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 mechanics and 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 scientific, theological, and even personal, significance. To repeat, and 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?

Related 'overarching' verse;

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.

bornagain77

That immaterial information has causal power over material particles has also now been experimentally established in quantum information theory and the recent experimental realization of the Maxwell demon thought experiment. As the following 2010 experiment found, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”

Maxwell’s demon demonstration (knowledge of a particle’s position) turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html

As Christopher Jarzynski, who was instrumental in formulating the ‘equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information’, stated, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”

Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

In short, it is now experimentally shown that, when dealing with immaterial ‘positional’ information, we are not dealing with some abstract, ethereal, entity that has no real causal effect on the material world, (as Darwinian materialist hold), but we are instead dealing with an immaterial entity that has a quote-unquote “thermodynamic content”, i.e. that has a ‘real causal effect’ on the material world. Moreover, and even more antagonistic for Atheistic materialists, advances in quantum information theory have now shown that, quote-unquote, “an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer”

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 1, 2011 Excerpt: The new study revisits Landauer’s principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

And as the following article 2017 stated, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

To repeat that last statement, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.” That statement is simply completely devastating to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian atheists, and is a full vindication of the presuppositions of Intelligent Design where it is held that only an Intelligent Mind has the capacity to create the (positional) information needed to explain why life is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium (which is 10^12 bits for a 'simple' bacterium). Moreover, immaterial information, on top of having 'top-down' causal power over material particles, is now also shown to be a completely independent, and separate, entity from matter and energy. This was done with quantum teleportation. For instance, the following article states, “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”

Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. https://www.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR

And as the following article states. “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”

First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing. Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms

Moreover, this independent entity of immaterial quantum information, which is shown to be separate from matter and energy, (and of which classical information is a subset),

Classical Information is a subset of Quantum information – illustration https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/images/figure1.gif below that illustration they have this caption, “Figure 1: The well-established theory of classical information and computation is actually a subset of a much larger topic, the emerging theory of quantum information and computation.” Quantum Information Science Steering Committee C. H. Bennett IBM D. P. DiVincenzo IBM N. Gershenfeld MIT H. M. Gibbs University of Arizona H. J. Kimble Caltech J. Preskill Caltech U. V. Vazirani UC/Berkeley D. J. Wineland NIST C. Yao Princeton University https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/nsf00101.htm

bornagain77

PMI at 10, in trying counter Dr. Egnor, asks, "Why couldn’t a purely material intellect — a brain, for example — apprehend immaterial objects?" So, let's get this straight, instead of PMI presenting any empirical evidence that such a fairly extraordinary claim is remotely possible, PMI's instead asks us why should we consider such a thing to be considered impossible? Well, my first response is that "DUH, they're immaterial objects for crying out loud, that's why it's not possible". In other words, It is intuitively obvious that that which is material can never apprehend, understand, and perceive, immaterial objects.

ap·pre·hend,,, 2. understand or perceive. "great art invites us to apprehend beauty"

But to go beyond what is intuitively, even blatantly, obvious, and to demonstrate exactly why it is impossible for material objects to 'apprehend', understand or perceive, immaterial objects. First off, it is important to note that reductive materialism can't even explain our ability to apprehend, i.e. subjectively perceive, material objects, (so thus much less can reductive materialism ever explain how we can possibly apprehend, i.e. subjectively perceive, 'objects' which are immaterial in their foundational essence). The inability of materialism to explain subjective conscious experience is known as the 'hard problem' of consciousness i.e. 'qualia'. Perhaps PMI can, as he chastised Dr. Egnor to do, "take an hour of his life to learn" about the 'hard problem' of consciousness, i.e. 'qualia'?

David Chalmers on Consciousness (Descartes, Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem of Consciousness) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTIk9MN3T6w

Materialists simply do not have any realistic clue, much less any real-time empirical evidence, for how anything material could ever give rise to the inner subjective consciousness experience of qualia. As Professor of Psychology David Barash honestly admitted in the following article, an article which happens to be entitled “the hardest problem in science?”, “But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.”

The Hardest Problem in Science? October 28, 2011 Excerpt: ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’ - David Barash - Professor of Psychology emeritus at the University of Washington. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-hardest-problem-in-science/40845

And since Darwinian materialists have no realistic clue how it is even possible for the material brain to have subjective conscious experience of material objects, i.e. qualia, how much more so is the perception, and contemplation, of immaterial objects to be considered beyond the reach of any possible materialistic explanation? As Dr. noted in the OP, "Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.,,," For example, as Dr. Egnor noted elsewhere, "Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,,"

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”?,,, 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,,, 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/

Moreover, although there are a virtual infinity of immaterial mathematical objects which we contemplate, but which are immaterial mathematical objects for which there is no precise instantiation in nature, when we do find immaterial mathematical objects that do have a precise instantiation in nature, such as we find with relativity and quantum electrodynamics, it is a correspondence between the immaterial realm of mathematics and the material realm which is, by all rights, to be considered a 'miracle'. Don't take my word for it. Both Eugene Wigner (quantum mechanics) and Albert Einstein (relativity) are on record as to regarding it as a 'miracle' that math should even be applicable to the universe in the first place. Moreover, Wigner questioned the ability of Darwinian processes to produce our "reasoning power" in his process of calling it a miracle, and Einstein even went so far as to chastise ‘professional atheists’ in his process of calling it a 'miracle'.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf On the Rational Order of the World: a Letter to Maurice Solovine – Albert Einstein – March 30, 1952 Excerpt: “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands. There lies the weakness of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but “bared the miracles.” -Albert Einstein http://inters.org/Einstein-Letter-Solovine

Moreover, another obvious reason why Darwinian materialism can never explain why we can 'apprehend', understand and perceive, immaterial objects, is simply because, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it is now widely held that it is the immaterial realm of information which is giving rise to the material realm.

"it from bit” Every “it”— every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation, that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment—evoked responses, in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." – John Wheeler (1911–2008) Princeton University physicist -(Wheeler, John A. (1990), “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley)) "The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." - Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College - Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." - Anton Zeilinger - (recent Nobel Laureate in Quantum Physics - Oct. 2022) http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf

In short, since it turns out to be the immaterial realm of information which is giving rise to the material realm then, obviously, it is impossible for that which is material to ever give rise to that which is immaterial. i.e. No effect can give rise to its own cause. Darwinian materialists, with their claim that it is the material realm that is giving rise to the immaterial realms of information, (and consciousness), simply have the entire concept of cause and effect completely backwards. As George Ellis illustrated, the fact that immaterial information, (and consciousness), have causal power over the material realm, (and not the other way around as Darwinian materialists hold), is easily demonstrated via computers.

Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: Causation: The nature of causation is highly contested territory, and I will take a pragmatic view: Definition 1: Causal Effect If making a change in a quantity X results in a reliable demonstrable change in a quantity Y in a given context, then X has a causal effect on Y. Example: I press the key labelled “A” on my computer keyboard; the letter “A” appears on my computer screen.,,, Definition 2: Existence If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter). This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,, Excerpt: page 5: A: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts.,,, ,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.2275.pdf

bornagain77

Re: human vs chimp Forgetting the morpological differences, when it comes to intellectual differences, the differences are obvious and radical. Now, how to explain them. Nobody can. Because we don't know the details of the "what" that leads to the intellectual differences. (The brain programming.) If you don't know the "what" you can't even begin to explain the "how." Paxx

I have to hand it to him, Seversky says entertainingly stupid sh*t. Paxx

Martin_r @18,

Did you know that no mammalian genome was fully sequenced ?

No, I sure did not know this! Reading the article you linked . . .

Researchers in 2003 unveiled what was then billed as the complete sequence of the human genome. But about 8% of it had not been fully deciphered, mainly because it consisted of highly repetitive chunks of DNA that were difficult to mesh with the rest.

Yeah, I remember the self-congratulatory celebrations, so I’m bothered by the expressions, “what was then billed as.” Is this what they call “lying” nowadays?

Chimp genome was also never fully sequenced. I was wondering, how can Darwinists compare two genomes and throw any numbers on similarity when you missing 8 % of the data ?????

It worse than what you’re imagining. If I remember correctly, the comparison was done only with homologous DNA sequences. In other words, the purported 98.6% (three decimal precision!) similarity of human versus chimp DNA was ONLY CONSIDERING THE PARTS THAT WERE ALREADY SIMILAR. The other stuff didn’t count for some reason.

Can some smart Darwinist explain it to me ?

Not a chance. -Q Querius

Fast: The exceptional people I know also tend to have a good degree of humility.

Well, you obviously didn’t meet any of them here. Sir Giles

The exceptional people I know also tend to have a good degree of humility. Fasteddious

Yes, The Human Genome Project was completed only in this year. But for anyone familiar with computer programming, strange - and for anyone in ID, not strange - repetitions appeared. "Some parts of our DNA are painfully repetitive. "Some sections of the human genome sequence consist of long, repetitive stretches of letters that are difficult to put in the right place. Over the past two decades, researchers developed new technologies to read longer stretches of DNA - from only about 500 to now over 100,000 letters at a time - which allowed them to assemble the full length of the most difficult repeats." Check-sum instructions, full stop instructions and limiters. Source: https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/infographics/Completing-the-human-genome-sequence relatd

Querius, As to human vs chimp Did you know that no mammalian genome was fully sequenced ? Human genome was fully sequenced only this year ( for 20 years, there were 8 % of the genome data missing ) Now they discovered 2000 new genes. Chimp genome was also never fully sequenced. I was wondering, how can Darwinists compare two genomes and throw any numbers on similarity when you missing 8 % of the data ????? Can some smart Darwinist explain it to me ? https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/scientists-publish-first-complete-human-genome-2022-03-31/ I martin_r

@PM1@10. Agree that Egnor jars with his generalizations but not with the statement,"it’s not just true that nonhuman animals can’t reason abstractly." In https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0735-7036.122.2.176 a serious test was made recently using humans, chimps, and Rhesus monkeys. The results were clear enough. Humans can reason abstractly, the monkeys can't, and equivocal results were obtained from the chimps. In some, abstract reason benefited, in others, it handicapped. A problem lay in interpretation of results. When some chimps appeared to respond to abstract reasoning it was put down to individual differences - basically some were smart, the others were dumb. To me, a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Neuroscience is plagued with the problem that they have better and better instrumentation to measuring how, what, where, and when but no instrumentation to measure why. Belfast

Young Children Have Grammar and Chimpanzees Don't - Apr. 10, 2013 Excerpt: "When you compare what children should say if they follow grammar against what children do say, you find it to almost indistinguishable," Yang said. "If you simulate the expected diversity when a child is only repeating what adults say, it produces a diversity much lower than what children actually say." As a comparison, Yang applied the same predictive models to the set of Nim Chimpsky's signed phrases, the only data set of spontaneous animal language usage publicly available. He found further evidence for what many scientists, including Nim's own trainers, have contended about Nim: that the sequences of signs Nim put together did not follow from rules like those in human language. Nim's signs show significantly lower diversity than what is expected under a systematic grammar and were similar to the level expected with memorization. This suggests that true language learning is -- so far -- a uniquely human trait, and that it is present very early in development. "The idea that children are only imitating adults' language is very intuitive, so it's seen a revival over the last few years," Yang said. "But this is strong statistical evidence in favor of the idea that children actually know a lot about abstract grammar from an early age." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130410131327.htm Quantitative Reasoning In Babies: They Count Long Before They Talk - June 14th 2010 Excerpt: Babies can grasp information about numbers, space and time before they can speak, and they do so in more complex ways than previously realized, according to new research. In 1890 William James wrote in "The Principles of Psychology" that the baby's impression of the world as "one great blooming, buzzing confusion." But modern evidence indicates otherwise. Babies understand quantity quite well, say Emory University psychologist Stella Lourenco and University College London neuroscientist Matthew Longo, and so much earlier than thought. https://www.science20.com/news_articles/quantitative_reasoning_babies_they_count_long_they_talk Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser - Scientific American - April 2009 Excerpt: "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,, http://www.wjh.harvard.edu?/~mnkylab/publications/rec?ent/mindSciAm.pdf Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language – December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, “The mystery of language evolution,” Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It’s difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html The Galilean Challenge – Noam Chomsky – April 2017 Excerpt: The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them. It is the most striking feature of this curious organism, and a foundation for its remarkable achievement,,, There has been considerable progress in understanding the nature of the internal language, but its free creative use remains a mystery. This should come as no surprise. In a recent review of far simpler cases of voluntary action, neuroscientists Emilio Bizzi and Robert Ajemian remark, in the case of something so simple as raising one’s arm, that “the detail of this complicated process, which critically involves coordinate and variable transformations from spatial movement goals to muscle activations, needs to be elaborated further. Phrased more fancifully, we have some idea as to the intricate design of the puppet and the puppet strings, but we lack insight into the mind of the puppeteer.”8 The normal creative use of language is an even more dramatic example.,,, One fact appears to be well established. The faculty of language is a true species property, invariant among human groups, and unique to humans in its essential properties. It follows that there has been little or no evolution of the faculty since human groups separated from one another,,, There is little evidence of anything like human language, or symbolic behavior altogether, before the emergence of modern humans.,,, Our intricate knowledge of what even the simplest words mean is acquired virtually without experience. At peak periods of language acquisition, children acquire about a word an hour, often on one presentation.26 The rich meaning of even the most elementary words must be substantially innate. The evolutionary origin of such concepts is a complete mystery.,,, — Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT. http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge The Siege of Paris - Robert Berwick & Noam Chomsky - March 2019 Excerpt: Linguists told themselves many stories about the evolution of language, and so did evolutionary biologists; but stories, as Richard Lewontin rightly notes, are not hypotheses, a term that should be “reserved for assertions that can be tested.”4 The human language faculty is a species-specific property, with no known group differences and little variation. There are no significant analogues or homologues to the human language faculty in other species.5,,, How far back does language go? There is no evidence of significant symbolic activity before the appearance of anatomically modern humans 200 thousand years ago (kya).22,,, There is no evidence that great apes, however sophisticated, have any of the crucial distinguishing features of language and ample evidence that they do not.48 Claims made in favor of their semantic powers, we might observe, are wrong. Recent research reveals that the semantic properties of even the simplest words are radically different from anything in animal symbolic systems.49,,, Why only us?,,, We were not, of course, the first to ask them. We echo in modern terms the Cartesian philosophers Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, seventeenth-century authors of the Port-Royal Grammar, for whom language with its infinite combinatorial capacity wrought from a finite inventory of sounds was uniquely human and the very foundation of thought. It is subtle enough to express all that we can conceive, down to the innermost and “diverse movements of our souls.” https://inference-review.com/article/the-siege-of-paris "We are unique and alone now in the world. There is no other animal species that truly resembles our own. A physical and mental chasm separates us from all other living creatures. There is no other bipedal mammal. No other mammal controls and uses fire, writes books, travels in space, paints portraits, or prays. This is not a question of degree. It is all or nothing: there is no semi-bipedal animal, none that makes only small fires, writes only short sentences, builds only rudimentary spaceships, draws just a little bit, or prays only occasionally. The extraordinary originality of our species is not common in the living world. Most species belong to groups of similar ones.,," - Juan Arsuaga (paleoanthropologist) - The Neanderthals Necklace - 2002 - page 3-4 Language Is a Rock Against Which Evolutionary Theory Wrecks Itself - Michael Egnor - September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Wolfe provides a précis of his argument: "Speech is not one of man's several unique attributes -- speech is the attribute of all attributes!" And yet, as Wolfe points out, Darwinists are at an utter loss to explain how language -- the salient characteristic of man -- "evolved." None of the deep drawer of evolutionary just-so stories come anywhere close to explaining how man might have acquired the astonishing ability to craft unlimited propositions and concepts and subtleties within subtleties using a system of grammar and abstract designators (i.e. words) that are utterly lacking anywhere else in the animal kingdom. Darwin and his progeny have had no dearth of fanciful guesses -- birdsongs (Darwin's favorite theory) and grunts and grimaces that mutate (survivors survive!) into Cicero and Shakespeare. Evolutionary theorizing about language has been a colossal waste of time. None of this evolutionary fancifulness makes any sense, nor has any real scientific basis, and these "theories" are published almost sheepishly, as if their authors tacitly acknowledge the fecklessness of Darwinian mechanism in the face of such a gift as language. I have argued before that the human mind is qualitatively different from the animal mind. The human mind has immaterial abilities -- the intellect's ability to grasp abstract universal concepts divorced from any particular thing -- and that this ability makes us more different from apes than apes are from viruses. We are ontologically different. We are a different kind of being from animals. We are not just animals who talk. Although we share much in our bodies with animals, our language -- a simulacrum of our abstract minds -- has no root in the animal world. Language is the tool by which we think abstractly. It is sui generis. It is a gift, a window into the human soul, something we are made with, and it did not evolve. Language is a rock against which evolutionary theory wrecks, one of the many rocks -- the uncooperative fossil record, the jumbled molecular evolutionary tree, irreducible complexity, intricate intracellular design, the genetic code, the collapsing myth of junk DNA, the immaterial human mind -- that comprise the shoal that is sinking Darwin's Victorian fable. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/09/language_is_a_r103151.html

bornagain77

PMI: "Apart from that, it’s not just true that nonhuman animals can’t reason abstractly." Hmm, that claim reminds me of this 'experiment',

Monkey Theory Proven Wrong: Excerpt: A group of faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques. Then, they waited. At first, said researcher Mike Phillips, “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it. “Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard,” added Phillips, who runs the university’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies. Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in — not quite literature. http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/monkeysandtypewriters051103.htm

Of note:

A scientist looks again at Project Nim - Trying to teach Chimps to talk fails Excerpt: "The language didn't materialize. A human baby starts out mostly imitating, then begins to string words together. Nim didn't learn. His three-sign combinations - such as 'eat me eat' or 'play me Nim' - were redundant. He imitated signs to get rewards. I published the negative results in 1979 in the journal Science, which had a chilling effect on the field." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-truth-about-%E2%80%9Cchimp-language-capabilities

bornagain77

And more . . . Input: chimps humans evolution adapt "Chimps evolved from humans by means of adaptation." Input: Thanksgiving Turkey celebrate football "Turkey celebrates Thanksgiving by means of football." Have a nice one. (smile) -Q Querius

I had an idea for another bot here. I've named it Banalbot (tm). It generates vacuous clichés from keywords, their dictionary definitions, and linking words. I'm ready to try it out! Input: global temperature geography "It's cooler in the summer than in the mountains." Input: universe evolution nothing "The universe evolved from nothing by means of random mutations and natural selection." Input: biology structures evolution "All biological structures are random mutations, but some survive by means of natural selection." Input: human Christian exceptionalism "Human exceptionalism does not square with Christian humility." WOW, IT REALLY WORKS!!! -Q Querius

In a fictional world created by evolutionists, our 'evolutionary cousins,' meaning chimps, can be taught to talk. After trying to teach chimps to speak - after all, all that is required is a little help from humans - a few will now appear in the play, Hamlet. Yeah, right. Here, some scientists give the differences. But they have nothing but guesses to explain why such differences exist. https://elifesciences.org/articles/18683 relatd

Sir Giles 6 I would love to tour the animal cities and see their technology at work. Their libraries of literature would be cool, too. Got a location? buffalo

My major complaint about Egnor (and this is by no means limited to him) is that he's smart enough to read and understand philosophers who agree with him, but he's never taken the time to study carefully anyone who doesn't. As far as I can tell, Egnor is committed to all of the following premises: 1. Rational thought involves apprehension of real universals. 2. Real universals are abstract objects. 3. Abstract objects have no material properties. 4. Therefore rational thought involves apprehension of objects with no material properties. Firstly, premises (1) and (2) are hugely questionable, yet Egnor writes as if they are just obviously true. It's as if he's never taken any time at all -- not one hour out of one day in his life -- to take seriously nominalism. Secondly, the conclusion (4) is too weak to sustain the conclusion "therefore the intellect itself must be immaterial". What would be needed is some further principle, such as "a material intellect could not apprehend immaterial objects". Egnor needs to show the following: (4) rational thought involves apprehension of immaterial objects (5) the intellect is the capacity of rational thought (6) but a material intellect could not apprehend immaterial objects (7) therefore the intellect must be immaterial. But what would justify (6)? Why couldn't a purely material intellect -- a brain, for example -- apprehend immaterial objects? I suspect that part of what's driving Egnor's view is that idea that the intellect must somehow share in the nature of or resemble that which it apprehends. Apprehension, cognitive awareness, requires a similarity in nature -- they need to be of the same kind. But while this assumption has certainly played an important role in the history of metaphysical thinking, I'm not sure what actually justifies it. Apart from that, it's not just true that nonhuman animals can't reason abstractly. There's a growing body of evidence for analogical reason, categorization, metacognition, and other psychological capacities in some nonhuman animals. I suspect that we're just now beginning to scratch the surface on what animal minds are really like. Again, something that Egnor knows nothing about and can't be bothered to take an hour of his life to learn. PyrrhoManiac1

David Hume Notwithstanding, Abstract Thought in Animals Is a Myth - Michael Egnor - July 15, 2016 Excerpt: A diehard believer in animal abstraction might ask: How do you know that animals can't think abstractly without particulars? I answer that there is not a shred of evidence for abstract thought in animals, when the clear distinction between sensus communis and abstract thought is recognized. The inability of animals to think abstractly is demonstrable not only empirically, but logically. How could an animal think about universals, without particulars and without language? What would be the content of the animal's abstract thought, if not particular things or words? Abstract thought in animals is a myth. And I mean "myth" in its richest sense. Abstract thought in animals is a cultural myth at the heart of the Darwinian understanding of man, the predicate of which excludes any qualitative difference between man and beast. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/07/david_hume_notw102999.html Prairie Dogs Are Cute, But Can They Talk? - Michael Egnor - June 2, 2017 Excerpt: It’s a great article, and the prairie dogs are fascinating (and adorable) little creatures, but with all due respect to Doctor Dolittle, the assertion that non-human animals have language is indeed nonsense. Animals have no language, despite the occasional complexity of their communication. The error these scientists and journalists make in attributing language to animals is an easy error to make, but it is an error nonetheless. The error lies in the failure to distinguish between designators and signals.,,, Words (designators) are language, and signals are not. Words are arranged syntactically, to enhance meaning. Some words are nouns, which designate things, and some words are verbs, which designate change or states of being. Proper names designate particular things, and general names designate universals. You will notice that the structure of genuine language, as contrasted with a set of signals, has a metaphysical structure — it uses signs that point to particulars and universals and change and states of being. Signals lack this metaphysical structure. Signals point to specific things, albeit sometimes (as with these prairie dogs) with unexpected complexity. But complexity is not the same as abstraction, and it is abstraction that is the hallmark of language. Prairie dogs and other non-human animals are capable of using signals — signs that point to particular things in a concrete way — in order to communicate. Human beings are rational animals, and we are the only animals capable of abstract thought, which is thought that entails contemplation of universals. We are the only animals capable of using abstract signs – designators — to communicate, and we are the only animals capable of genuine language. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/06/prairie-dogs-are-cute-but-can-they-talk/ Mental time travel: An exclusively human capacity? December 22, 2015 Excerpt: There is, however, no evidence that they (animals) are able to construct, reflect and compare different future scenarios like humans are. We therefore don't believe that animals are capable of mental time travel," says Prof Sen Cheng. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151222082343.htm Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity - David Premack - August 28, 2007 Excerpt: Microscopic study of the human brain has revealed neural structures, enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not found in any animal, challenging the view that the human brain is simply an enlarged chimpanzee brain.,,, In examining claims of similarity between animals and humans, one must ask: What are the dissimilarities? This approach prevents confusing similarity with equivalence. We follow this approach in examining eight cognitive cases—teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning, deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language—and find, in all cases, that similarities between animal and human abilities are small, dissimilarities large. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0706147104 The Human Brain Is Something New – Ann Gauger – September 18, 2018 Excerpt: Physically a human brain is three times the size of a chimpanzee brain, and uses considerably more energy. Our brain represents 2 percent of our body weight but uses 20 percent of the oxygen we breathe. However, our brains are not merely enlarged ape brains — there are other differences. Our brains contain neural structures, enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not found in any animal.1 Our neurons continue dividing well into adulthood and have a 10-fold higher density than chimps. The human brain is something new, something different, as can be seen by the things we do that animals don’t.,,, David Premack, the late psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania said: “In examining claims of similarity between animals and humans, one must ask: What are the dissimilarities? This approach prevents confusing similarity with equivalence. We follow this approach in examining eight cognitive cases — teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning, deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language — and find, in all cases, that similarities between animal and human abilities are small, dissimilarities large.2” Our brains have vastly more ability than is needed for survival, most notably the capacity for language and abstract thought. We are orders of magnitude beyond anything animals can do. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/beyond-adapation-the-human-brain-is-something-new/

bornagain77

Seversky at 1, You are not God's stand in. OK? The Bible makes humans exceptional. Genesis 1:26 'Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” In the Catholic understanding, God consists of three persons. Man is not an animal. God gives him dominion over the other creatures on Earth. relatd

Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not

I believe this is the general conclusion of scientists that have researched this. There is no evidence of any animal except humans building something better for future generations. A good reference

Derek C. Penn, Keith Holyoak, and Daniel J. Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake: Explaining the Discontinuity between Human and Nonhuman Minds,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, no. 2 (2008): 109–30. Abstract Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as "one of degree and not of kind" (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain. We propose a representational-level specification as to where human and nonhuman animals' abilities to approximate a PSS are similar and where they differ. We conclude by suggesting that recent symbolic-connectionist models of cognition shed new light on the mechanisms that underlie the gap between human and nonhuman minds... Animals certainly communicate, but none has even the beginning of a recursively structured language. Although apes and a few other species can identify the numerosity of up to four objects, they cannot intuit the abstract system behind integer addition. Animals learn to run mazes; they cannot learn to read maps... But no nonhuman animal has been shown to understand invisible causal forces such as gravity... Apes and other animals use specialized neural modules to derive and update patterns from incoming sensory streams. This perceptual processing is specific to sensory domains, concrete (tied to physical objects), fast acting, automatic, and limited... new combinations of ideas can be generated and tested (the default network connects widely; processes social information; enhances creativity; produces self-awareness, time travels, and daydreams; and is likely unique to modern humans). This secondary level derives abstract information from the patterns produced by the primary systems—recursive rules and hierarchical structures. It links those patterns together, forming the core of logical cognition... Processed through this system of secondary integration, the expected behavior of physical systems and tool skills becomes theoretical laws and technical reasoning. Numeric perceptions become mathematical deductions and theorems. Perceptions of location are transformed into symbolic representations of space, namely, into maps by age 3... But how did humanity reach the point to be able to choose to so honor the altruistic impulse? For a self- aware species to become a highly coordinated social entity, it must develop something beyond the intelligent competition of the chimpanzee. The question is, what is needed? Chimpanzees (our “next of kin”) are intelligent and socially complex. Thus, much of their behavior troubles us—infanticide, murder, and war have all been attributed to them. But though chimps can hold grudges, there is no evidence that they feel shame or guilt. They can coordinate activities, but there is little evidence that they have altruistic impulses. They communicate imperatives, not gossip. What is missing? One key is probably the level of their theory of mind, or mind reading. It is clear from numerous experiments that chimps can detect from observation what other chimps are observing and anticipate what they probably will do. It is not clear that they are attributing mental states to those other chimps, forming explanations of why they are acting in a particular fashion. In such cases, humans would be “mind reading,” but a simple reaction to the observed state or action will explain the chimpanzees’ responses—and that is, of course, the simplest explanation.

jerry

I stopped reading after the falsehood claimed in the second sentence.

Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not.

Sir Giles

In "Nature" 2010:Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content

"We suggest that the extraordinary divergence[objective fact] of the chimpanzee and human MSYs ...[just-so stories follow]

whistler

Exceptional and Humble are not mutually exclusive. Andrew asauber

Human exceptionalism does not square with Christian humility.

Sounds like jealousy to me. Is this an attempt to be the creator of the most absurd comments? We have a lot of potential winners here. Relevant to the OP, look to the huge differences that appear in the expression of neural genes as one factor. Something that has no explanation from science. jerry

correction: "Human exceptionalism does not square with Christian humility with Darwin's belief that the difference between apes and men is one of degree and not of kind." There, all better! :)

“The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.” - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man. "There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly",, - Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin - 24 November 1859 https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml

bornagain77

Human exceptionalism does not square with Christian humility. Seversky