I used to see people reading iconic books like this one (right), like it was their new religion (and, actually, it was). But I hear more and more about horizontal gene transfer in the science media. Genes jumping from one life form to the next, creating changes, for better or worse.
So what becomes of five-star Darwinian concepts like Richard Dawkins’s “selfish gene” that is supposed to uphold neo-Darwinism—which is about ancestor-descendant relationships?
The selfish gene is an entity driven by an unadmitted teleological force to replicate itself in offspring.
But horizontal gene transfer—hardly taken seriously the day before yesterday—features genes that simply somehow end up on a different string. See, for example, Horizontal gene transfer allowed plants to move to land.
Is a relentless force of selfishness driving them to do that? Or do they just drift and end up on that string? And, given the number of times HGT keeps cropping up, what becomes of the textbook Tree of Life, which makes no real sense apart from descent?
See also: Horizontal gene transfer: Sorry, Darwin, it’s not your evolution any more .
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The recent finding that bacteria actively fish for genes would put the purpose on the other end of the string. Overall, I’d guess that all imaginable combinations of purpose, and some we can’t possibly imagine, are used by Nature.
If by the day before yesterday you mean over 90 years ago.
Darwinian evolution requires three fundamental things: 1) a means of heredity of expressed traits; 2) differential reproduction based on the interaction of expressed traits and the environment; and 3) an ongoing source of variation for selection to act on. It’s obviously a lot more complicated than that but it seems to me that HGT falls quite neatly into the third category.
Ed Acartia doesn’t know what Darwinian evolution entails. How quaint. Bogart George clearly doesn’t understand that ID is NOT anti-evolution. And blind watchmaker evolution did not predict HGT.
Darwinian evolution requires the change to be purely a chance occurrence. If the change is directed/ guided then it ain’t Darwinian.
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Interesting. And what is required for that to take place – the heredity part and the expressed traits part?
It really sounds important.
UB
DNA. But Darwin didn’t know that.
Are you suggesting that HGT does not increase genetic and, therefore, phenotypic variation within a population?
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DNA is just a molecule, and like any other class of molecule, it has its particular characteristics. But what is required for DNA to be a heritable expressed trait? I’d even be willing to bet there have been fellas and gals who have figured that out and written it down.
UB
Enlighten me.
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That sounds a lot like you just taking the expression of heritable traits for granted, like an unexamined assumption.
If Acartia Ed had the brain-power to properly understand and assess the evidence, he wouldn’t have his career of equivocation, obfuscation and misrepresenting reality
If anything I would have thought it would strengthen the utility of the concept, because in the face of HGT the best way to look at evolution is at the genic level – to work out if a trait will increase in abundance, you have to be able to follow the inheritance of the genes, and calculate their contributions to fitness in each species they end up in. A selfish gene approach seems to be the best for this..
UB, it seems like you are avoiding my question. Let me repeat: “ Are you suggesting that HGT does not increase genetic and, therefore, phenotypic variation within a population?”
Keep in mind that this OP is about HGT and whether it does not fit within Darwinian evolution theory. Darwin required a source of heritable variation within a population. HGT increases heritable variation within a population.
There is honestly no way to refute Darwinian evolution of coarse horizontal transfer of DNA or horizontal gene transfer fits neatly into Darwinian evolution as everything else does
The equation is very simple find the reason why something exists and link it to survival and you have succeeded in placing it neatly into Darwinian evolution, there is literally nothing that I know of that cannot be explained by the theory, including God, God a completely supernatural being can be explained using the logic of Darwinian evolution
You can use Darwinian evolution to explain the progression of vehicles and even have a fossil record for vehicles that fits neatly into the logic to back it.
you can use Darwinian evolution to explain the universe, you can use Darwinian evolution to explain anything there’s nothing it can’t explain it’s too simple and to malleable logic to disprove
And I’m not being sarcastic you really can’t explain everything with this logic
The only way you can totally disapprove Darwinian evolution is if there is a stamp located on the object that said it was definitely created and not evolved
even then if there was a survival reason for it, with enough time you can explain that to
That is why I do not respect the theory, even though I do agree with portions of modern synthesis I do not respect the theory that is not disprovable in any particular way
Many things discovered today did not fit with Darwin’s original theory but it is amazing how it was able to encompass all of it
I know of no theory that shares that type of flexibility, it’s been wrong many times in its predictions, especially evo psych, but with the magic of reexplaining things, it always bounces back. As long as you can put things in terms of survival and why it survived then Darwin was right again
It’s its own god of gaps, but because it’s backed by science it’s ok. This is an issue
LoL! @ Acartia Ed! In true form Acartia Ed avoids upright biped’s point and moves straight back to question begging.
Darwin required the source of heritable variation be of pure chance- an accident, error or mistake. That Acartia Ed refuses to understand that proves it is intent on question begging and equivocation.
Not by chance. But then again Acartia Ed remains in willful ignorance of the actual claims being made.
Bob O’H:
As Berlinski wrote:
Also it is absurd to think that being human is just a sum of traits.
From The Strength of Natural Selection in the Wild
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Ed, frankly I think your question is a bit silly, and additionally, you are wrong about the topic of the OP – it was about the history of the concept of the selfish gene in the public sale of materialism, and how that concept is impacted by HGT, not about how HGT “fits within Darwinian evolutionary theory”. Hence, my question to you. When you wrote that Darwinian evolution requires just “three fundamental things”, and that “1) a means of heredity of expressed traits” topped the list, were you not attempting to convey something fundamental about Darwinian evolution? If so, isn’t a question about what you claim as fundamental to Darwinian evolution on the table? Or are you simply asking for a pass on the things you say?
AronS1978
I don’t think it is as simple as that. HGT fits into Darwin’s theory because his theory required a source of heritable variation otherwise we would all end up having identical DNA as variation is eliminated (which is what selection does). HGT fits the bill as a source of this variability, but it is not the only source.
However, if you found that there was no natural source of heritable variation, or found that selective reproduction couldn’t fix a trait within a population, then Darwin’s theory would be on very shaky ground. Just because everything we observe fits into a theory is a measure of the strength of the theory, not its weakness.
As predicted, Acartia Ed continues with its question-begging and equivocation. You have to be a certain type of immoral and vile person to be like Acartia Ed. What do we call people without a conscience?
However, if you found that there was no natural source of heritable variation, or found that selective reproduction couldn’t fix a trait within a population, then Darwin’s theory would be on very shaky ground. Just because everything we observe fits into a theory is a measure of the strength of the theory, not its weakness.
This I cannot agree with. It becomes a God of gaps which is a charge placed against anybody that believes in God, because god explains anything and leads to scientific dead ends
And I wouldn’t say everything we see or observed fits into the theory more so that anything we find we fit it into the theory
It is not a scientific theory at that point but a method of explanation which unfortunately brings it to philosophy and turns it into a blanket solution for anything
For example the appendix was an evolutionary artifact and it was easily explained, well easily explained away
This is a glaring hole in evolutionary thinking, which lead us to the idea that the appendix was an evolutionary artifact and that there was no reason to study it any further and it had no biological function inside of human, it became a God of gaps
2007 the appendix was found to have a function in 2014 it was proven and it actually is considered medical malpractice to remove the appendix now for no reason whatsoever
It’s a safe haven or safe house for beneficial bacteria
When I went to school back in the 80s and 90s It was very much taught that it was an evolutionary artifact and had no particular function
Scientists at the time had stopped at that answer and excepted. Because evolution easily explained it’s existence
Until more recently when somebody I decided to ask why we all still had it and started poking around it out of sheer curiosity that we found it much different answer
I’m only bringing this up as one clear example of this there are many clear examples of this
You can try to roll it into the idea that science is always changing
And I’m glad it did because it corrected a prediction done by a theory that can predict and explain everything
My point being is that a theory that’s capable of explaining anything, which ends up explaining nothing at all and that is its weakness, It ends up being philosophy And circular. Now, I’m not claiming that it hasn’t explained certain things, like cancer, It’s a giant blanket explanation it’s going to get some things right
It exists, so it had to survived, so why did it survive, and there’s the benefit that explains its survival, we have explained it with evolution
To Levi the charge of God of gaps against God and not do the same for evolution is incorrect, an “explain it all” theory leads to similar dead ends
AronS1978
Fair response. I agree that the God of the gaps argument against ID is more a rhetorical trap than a real argument. And I don’t believe I have used it. But that is also why I keep saying that for ID to be taken seriously, they have to address the designer and the mechanisms it used. Ignoring this just plays into the oppositions hands.
Yet it never stopped research into the appendix, most of the research conducted by people who accepted evolution as the best explanation. By the way, “vestigial” does not mean “without function”. Small point, but an important one.
With respect, this simply is not true. There are hundreds of papers published during and before that time about possible importance of the appendix. This paper published in 1968 talks about correlations between appendectomies and cancer rates.
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=function+of+human+appendix&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D-6Z8aiAtCjAJ
This being said, I admit that a generally accepted theory makes it difficult for a better theory (or an improving on the ordinal) to be accepted. But this isn’t unique to evolution. The same applied to plate tectonics.
Acartia Ed:
So for ID to be taken seriously it has to do something it was never intended to do? Really?
Why is it that in every design-centric venue we ALWAYS use science to FIRST determine if design exists or not? Why is it we NEVER even ask about the designer(s) or the processes used until AFTER that FIRST step is completed? It’s as if Acartia Ed is oblivious to how we conduct investigations.
And it remains that Darwin proposed was a mechanistic scenario. Yet no one has been able to find a mechanism capable of producing biological diversity. How is it that all forms of Darwinism just get a pass? Why is it they never present anything that supports the claims of their position?
More equivocation and question-begging. But even that is moot as Acartia Ed missed the point.
With respect, this simply is not true. There are hundreds of papers published during and before that time about possible importance of the appendix. This paper published in 1968 talks about correlations between appendectomies and cancer rates.
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=function+of+human+appendix&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D-6Z8aiAtCjAJ
I actually wasn’t aware of this, thank you
With that being stated though, It still was generally excepted because of evolutionary explanation that the appendix was an artifact of evolution
And you have no disagreement for me on plate tectonics
AronS1978
And this is still generally accepted as such. As a vestigial organ that originally enabled the digestion of cellulose, the function of the appendix has changed.
Again, thank you for being able to discuss this without it becoming personal. Frankly, I don’t understand why the site moderators continue to allow ET to post comments. If anyone who is truly on the fence on the ID vs evolution issue, ET’s behavior will almost certainly drive them away from the ID argument. But, it’s not my site.
No problem, Thank you, I appreciate that, I’m often the Recipient of bad behavior on the opposite end of the spectrum I have a weird knack for running into people that are particularly rude to me,
And it’s not like I’m not guilty of bad behavior to so I do try to make an active effort not to act out
I do appreciate you doing the same to me
Acartia Ed:
Question-begging
Because I have more to add than you and your ilk, Acartia Ed. All you can do is lie, bluff and equivocate.
Why? Because I prove that you are a lying, bluffing an equivocating punk?
My behavior is in direct response to Acartia Ed’s vile and immoral lies, bluffs and equivocations. Anyone truly on the fence will see Acartia Ed for exactly that.
It is a FACT that we don’t even ask about the who or the how until AFTER we have determined that design exists. It is also a fact that the science of ID is in making that determination and then studying the design in question.
So when Acartia Ed says the following:
It is proof that Acartia Ed isn’t worth responding to with anything but ridicule.
Worth noting ID does not except lack of function in something and will continue to study and figure out reasons for why something exists
Often the charges made that ID does not do this and settles on God did it, which is not true
And as I said above the same charge could be said of evolution settling for an explanation that doesn’t truly fit what it is and has to constantly be corrected
This is just food for thought, But I find it interesting that both sides accuse each other of exactly the same thing. I’m completely including myself in this.
I’m totally guilty of that
AronS1978
As are we all. What I refuse to respond to is the nonsense from people like ET. He’s got some serious wiring problems.
Acartia Ed- You refuse to respond to reality. You refuse to respond with reality. I will continue to expose you as the willfully ignorant and insipid troll that you are.
And let’s face it. You can’t respond to my exposing you, with anything of substance. But the way that you do respond to my posts just proves my point about you. So I thank you for that. 😉
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I don’t have a dog in that hunt, but after several rounds of trying myself, it appears you also don’t respond to well-known predictions, famous experimental results, or the documented history of biology either.
Ouch! That’s going to leave a mark… 😎
EG @ 2,
>If by the day before yesterday you mean over 90 years ago.
I see where what we know as HGT today was involved in an experiment in 1928 (Griffith), but the mechanism was not known at the time, nor was it called HGT. Therefore, it does not seem valid to say that we have known about HGT since that time. This comes up in other areas as well (pretty much everything epigenetic), where our interlocutors claim that something has been known much longer than we give it credit.
When it comes to ID, we are constantly pressed for the “how” and “why” and “the exact mechanism” for something. But for HGT etc., the how, why and exact mechanism was not known in 1928. Therefore, if we are going to be consistent, we should not count HGT as being known until it was also understood. Otherwise, some folks here will be guilty of a double standard.
Has ID theory proven design? If so, are ID scientists now working to discover the designer?
rhampton7:
As much as science is into “proof”, yes. But we haven’t done that for everything. It’s an ongoing process.
Scientists tend to be specialists and there are more important questions to answer. Right now IDists are working on getting the world to wake up to the charade the evolution lobby has been getting away with for decades.
EDTA
But to be fair, we didn’t know about DNA until the 50s. So the transfer of genes drone one organism to another predates our understanding of DNA. This hardly sounds like something that wasn’t talked about until the day before yesterday.
I was at college in the 70s, and we were taught back then that the phenotype was the result of the interaction between DNA and the environment. Sounds like epigenetics to me.
Acartia Ed:
And to date no one has ever supported that hypothesis. No one knows what determines phenotype. Evos need it to be as Acartia Ed said, but with the advent of whole genome sequencing it hasn’t panned out. There isn’t any plan for form in the DNA. There are only the coding for amino acid sequences- the recipe for proteins.
This ignorance is evident when one reads books like “Your Inner Fish”, “Endless Forms…” and “Making of the Fittest”. Evolutionary developmental biologists have not been able to answer the question of what determines form. And that fact was the impetus for Michael Denton’s “Nature’s Destiny” and Giuseppe Sermonti’s “Why is a Fly Not a Horse?”.
Ok, so ID scientists have “proven” design, and IDists (I take that to mean non scientists) are promoting ID. But you also said, “It is a FACT that we don’t even ask about the who or the how until AFTER we have determined that design exists.”
So now that you have determined design exists, ID scientists are supposed to be asking who is/are the designer/s and how the design was implemented.
>I was at college in the 70s, and we were taught back then that the phenotype was the result of the interaction between DNA and the environment. Sounds like epigenetics to me.
Yes, but again, if the interaction wasn’t understood in any depth at all, then it doesn’t count as a known phenomenon. So that also makes my point.
News, have you read the Selfish Gene? Hard to imagine how you could read it and end up thinking HGT was a challenge to it.
As has been pointed out before Darwin is great at explaining the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest. HGT does not explain the arrival of the fittest either. The genes come fully formed.
The Darwinists on this thread are trying to pretend that HGT is no big problem for Dawkins’s Selfish Gene and/or neo-Darwinism. Which is par for the course for them. No experimental finding is ever allowed to challenge the validity of Darwinian evolution. In other words, Darwinian evolution, at least how Darwinists treat their theory, is a unfalsifiable pseudoscience, even a religion, rather than being a testable science.
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place:
Further notes:
as well:
You know what, Mimus, I think News might not be the only one who hasn’t read the Selfish Gene.
rhampton7- Your quote-mining reflects poorly onto you. Design detection is ongoing and there are more important questions to answer. That said, your position is supposed to be all about the how an yet you and yours know NOTHING about that. And no one is working on it.
Clearly you are a hypocrite
EDTA
From that logic ID as a cause of life and evolution doesn’t count as a known phenomenon. Unless, of course, you can point us to some papers that describe our understanding of how the designer has interacted with the physical universe to create life and to change it over time.
Bob (and weave) O’Hara pretends that the selfish gene concept is OK with HGT. Specifically at post 10,
Bob is correct in a general sense as far as Darwinian presuppositions are concerned. Yet, the first irrsesolvable problem for Bob, and his atheistic Darwinian cohorts, is that nobody really knows how to define fitness in a mathematically rigorous manner
Fitness itself, although it figures centrally in the equations of population genetics, has no universally agreed upon measure so as to tell us exactly how fitness is to be numerically quantified into a rigorous, i.e. mathematically useful, measure:
Moreover, the more precise one tries to be with defining fitness, the more ‘fitness’ evaporates into thin air as a supposed useful tool for Darwinists to use as in a rigorous mathematical manner:
In fact, when the realistic rate of detrimental mutations are taken into account, then it mathematically falsifies “Fisher’s belief that he had developed a mathematical proof that fitness must always increase”
Moreover, if ‘fitness’ really were the way in which all life on earth originated, then nobody would ever see “reality as it is”
In what should be needless to say, a worldview that undermines all reliable observations about reality also undermines its own claim to ever being a true worldview about reality.
Something tells me that Bob and weave just doesn’t care that his worldview is shown to be irredeemably false and that he will continue spewing his Darwinian falsehoods no matter what the evidence says to the contrary and the he will never honestly admit when his Darwinian worldview is ‘not even wrong’.
Oh well, as they say, Bob is a ‘true believer’.
Anyways,, presupposing unfettered HGT totally undermines any attempt Darwinists may have made in regards to fitting the data to a treelike pattern:
Moreover, regardless of Darwinists shamelessly invoking HGT whenever, and whereever, they are in a fix to try to ‘explain away’ discordant genetic data, their primary prediction of a treelike pattern in the genetic data has, none-the-less, now been falsified,,,
Of supplemental note, Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) between organisms, like mutations in general, is found to be a ‘non-random’ process (which, needless to say, contradicts evolutionary presuppositions):
Also of note to the disingenuous manner in which Darwinists invoke HGT, “no mechanism of HGT for any of the hundreds of alleged “foreign genes” they found was either discovered or even suggested”
Acartia Ed:
That doesn’t follow. Evolution is supposed to be the mechanistic “theory” and it has failed in that regard.
That has nothing to do with ID, loser.
Why is it that every time evos are shown to be ignorant cowards they always try to turn it around?
This is a little off-topic but it is very telling that the anti-ID people will never come here to engage in a debate on which side has the science. Joshua Swamidass nor any of his minions will never ante up. They will just sit behind a wall of moderation and exchange lies, misconceptions and misrepresentations.
When I was allowed to post on PS I said that there wasn’t any scientific theory of evolution. All that happened was I was attacked and then banned. No one ever linked to the alleged scientific theory of evolution.
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Ed, don’t you have to suffer a bit of cognitive dissonance in order to make demands about evidence and reason from ID proponents on the one hand, and then on the other hand completely (and quite publically) refuse to engage in evidence and reason? Surely it is one thing for ID proponents to merely complain that critics won’t engage the discussion, but you have gone much further than that — you have very clearly (almost enthusiastically) demonstrated for all to see that evidence and reason (especially particular predictions, experimental results, and the documented history of biology itself) are things you simply will not even speak of. Doesn’t your fear and refusal put your demands into a rather obvious perspective?
Isn’t it true that evidence and reason do not matter where you are concerned?
bs77 @ 44, 45 – if you’re going to effectively criticise my comments @ 10, it might help if you actually criticised my comments, rather than go off at a tangent. Perhaps start with the Price equation, rather than Fisher.
Bob @ 10:
If the best way to look at evolution is at the genetic level then universal common descent is out the window. There isn’t any genetic evidence that says the physiological and anatomical transformations required can be had via genetic changes.
So in with the selfish gene and out with the rest of Darwin’s lame idea.
Bob (and weave) O’Hara,
My criticism still applies, you cannot define fitness in a mathematically concise way so as to be useful
If you disagree, then please show us the exact mathematical definition of ‘fitness’ with reference to SI units.
I won’t be holding my breath: Darwinian evolution simply has no realistic mathematical model to test against:
And the primary reason why nobody has ever been able to build a realistic mathematical model for Darwinian evolution to test against is simply because there is no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon:
As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
So again Bob (and weave) O’Hara, If you disagree, then please show us the exact mathematical definition of fitness with reference to SI units.
On top of all that, (as it that was not bad enough), Darwinian evolution and the world of mathematics are completely incompatible with each other.
The main reason why Darwinian Evolution and Mathematics are completely incompatible with each other is that Darwinian evolution is based on a Naturalistic and/or Materialistic worldview in which it is held that “only matter is real, that the world is just physical and that there is no supernatural (or metaphysical) existence, or that if there is, it has no impact on our physical world.,,,”
And where Darwinian evolution is based on a materialistic view of reality which denies that anything beyond nature exists, on the other hand, Mathematics exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time realm, a realm which is not reducible any possible material explanation. This transcendent mathematical realm has been referred to as a Platonic mathematical world.
Simply put, Mathematics itself, contrary to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, does not need the physical world in order to exist. And yet Darwinists, although they deny that anything beyond nature exists, need this transcendent world of mathematics in order for their theory to be considered scientific in the first place. The predicament that Darwinists find themselves in regards to denying the reality of this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics, and yet needing validation from this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics in order to be considered scientific, should be the very definition of a scientifically self-refuting worldview.
In fact since mathematics itself is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation then that necessary entails that the mind of man must also be fundamentally immaterial.
i.e. Our ability with Mathematics is proof in and of itself that man must possess a eternal soul:
EG @ 43,
>From that logic ID as a cause of life and evolution doesn’t count as a known phenomenon. Unless, of course, you can point us to some papers that describe our understanding of how the designer has interacted with the physical universe to create life and to change it over time.
HGT was a phenomenon. But it adds unearned prestige to something to trace it back further than when people had any idea what was going on. That standard should apply more in a purely materialistic framework—evo bio wanting to hold to higher standards and all that. We could say that we think HGT was first observed in an experiment in 1928, but not understood.
The logic leading to ID is fine without the same volume of published papers as evolution. There are many reasons for this, all reviewed here frequently. And things are necessarily different for a theory that extends into the metaphysical.
ba77 – really? The definition of fitness is part of evolution 101. Try doing some basic research like, for example, reading wikipedia.
At 49 Bob (and weave) states,
From which it necessarily follows that Bob must deeply trust George Price’s mathematical acumen to be insightful and correct. And since Bob apparently trusts Price’s mathematical acumen to be insightful and correct, then Bob should convert to Christianity since George Price’s ability with mathematics played a crucial role in his ‘sudden’ conversion to Christianity. Specifically, in 1970 Price, a militant atheist, ‘suddenly’ converted to Christianity due to, “a series of coincidences that had befallen him. After calculating the odds of their occurrence and finding them to be “astronomically low,” he was convinced that there had been supernatural manipulation.”
🙂 ,,,, Who says that God does not have a sense of humor? 🙂
Per Bob at 53, Really? REALLY??? You do know what SI units are do you not?
Here, let me google that for you,
si units list physics
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNRjZTeAD-3D6it0iVOT341LNuXndw%3A1575285304388&ei=OPLkXYikF4eWsQW0pa6gCw&q=si+units+list+physics&oq=si+units+chart&gs_l=psy-ab.1.2.0i71l8.0.0..19550…0.1..0.0.0…….0……gws-wiz.CAfhlNPQwLw
To go a bit deeper on the unscientific nature of Darwinian speculations,,,, per atheist Bob O’Hara’s “Christian” hero George Price 🙂 we find that,
Small problem, as with all things Darwinian, the real world is not kind to Darwinian assumptions in the least,
For instance, per James Shapiro, “The basic issue is that molecular genetics has made it impossible to provide a consistent, or even useful, definition of the term “gene.”
Moreover, “we have no good theory of how to read [genetic] networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes,,,”
The reason for this impasse is because, “If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions… Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.. ”
And this insurmountable problem has only gotten much, much, worse for Darwinists:
Thus Bob’s claim that he, via the equations of his Christian hero George Price 🙂 , has mathematical proof that Darwinian evolution is true, is, in fact, (and as is usual for ‘Bob and weave’), all bluff and bluster on Bob’s part.
i.e. Genes, in so far as they can even be said to exist at all, are NOT the independent units of heredity as was presupposed in the Price equation, rather ‘genes’, (again in so far as they can even be said to exist at all), instead exist in a holistic web of mutual interdependence so as to contribute to all the various phenotypic traits of any particular organism. And this holistic web of mutual interdependence is, as was pointed our previously, mathematically useless “to make quantitatively testable predictions”.
If Darwinian evolution were a normal science, this finding of a ‘holistic web of mutual interdependence’ for ‘genes’, instead of being individual units of heredity as Darwinists had presupposed, should count as yet another powerful falsification of Darwinian evolution,
But alas, Darwinian evolution, at least how Darwinists personally treat their theory, is NOT a testable, potentially falsifiable, science in any meaningful sense but is instead a pseudoscience, even a religion for atheists.
Of related note, the failure of the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
In short, the ‘form’ that any organism may take, and all the phenotypic characteristics therein, are forever beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution:
LoL! @ Bob O’H- Reproductive success is the alleged measure of fitness. And as Berlinski wrote:
All you can do is ignore that as if your ignorance is an argument
ba77 – yes, I do know what SI units are. But you, apparently, don’t know how fitness is defined, and are apparently unable to even do basic research, such as following link when they are given to you. Instead, you change the subject to “what is a gene”. I’m guessing that if I explained why that isn’t a problem in this context (short version: we use quantitative genetic theory) you would just find some other topic to try to divert us on to.
Unless you want to actually discuss HGT and the selfish gene, there seems little point in continuing.
LoL! @ Bob O’H- Seeing that you ignore that which refutes your BS, there is no point in continuing
BS Bob. everything I’ve touched upon supports the fact that you cannot define fitness in a rigorous mathematical manner. i.e. in si units. I am more than satisfied that the unbiased reader can see through your BS.
As ET pointed out, “Seeing that you ignore that which refutes your BS, there is no point in continuing”
Translation, the real world is not kind to your mathematical fantasies in the least, Yet you. like all atheistic Darwinists, blatantly ignore the real world when it falsifies your preferred worldview.
Newsflash Bob, the real world of empirical science could care less how you, as an atheist, would prefer the world to be.
ba77 – There is no SI unit of a count. Even physicists aren’t that stupid that the see the need to define it in terms of physical constants.
Um, you’ve just been emphasising that Price was a Christian (as, of course, was Fisher), so this is a very strange comment to make. Especially to someone who, unlike you, actually inhabits the world of empirical science.
Bob- you do not inhabit the world of empirical science. When it comes to science you know about as much as a new born baby
Bob claims,
LOL, You wouldn’t know empirical, i.e. real world, science if it bit you in the rear end.
If I still worked at the chemical factory that I worked at in Texas, I would fire anyone who treated science as you do. (i.e. ignoring empirical observation when you don’t like what it says), You would be a extreme danger to yourself and everyone else who worked at that chemical factory (not to mention the surrounding neighborhood).
Furthermore, I would do my damnedest to see to it that you never saw the inside of another chemical factory in the Gulf coast area.
And no one in the field would even bat an eye when I told them the reason for you being black-balled!
ba77 – in which of my papers have I “ignor[ed] empirical observation when [I] don’t like what it says”, and in what way have I done that? You’re essentially accusing me of misconduct, so I would expect you to have clear examples of this.
I’m guessing that you don’t have any actual examples, and you’re just making wild accusations. So go on, prove me wrong by giving explicit examples from my papers.
Bornagain77@ 60
To make it simple for you SI units are base measurement units of seven physical constants such as volume, mass or time:
There is no SI unit for fitness since it is not regarded as such a constant. There is also no SI unit for divine creation even though Christians seem to regard it as the most basic constant.
And you, like so many Christian creationists, blatantly ignore the real world when it falsifies your preferred religious worldview. For example, I refer you to the measured age of the universe which vastly exceeds that which can be inferred from Scripture or the lack of empirical evidence for a global flood or the existence of the son of your God manifest in physical form as Jesus.
I assume that the real world could not care less how I as an atheist or you as a Christian would prefer it to be. It is what it is.
Yet you have spent a lot of time, based on your questionable interpretation of quantum phenomena, arguing that the nature of physical reality is observer-dependent, which would seem to contradict what you wrote above.
I thought the SI unit for creation was The Day, although there is still some debate about the exact size of the unit.
Bob O’H @ 66
Another question is whether the Standard Divine Day existed before God created it. He could have taken an eternity to create the universe and then just pretended He knocked it off in six days and rested on the seventh because even the Almighty gets tired. How would we ever know?
Biological fitness is an after-the-fact assessment. And as such:
Too funny, two atheistic materialists agreeing with me that fitness cannot be physically measured in si units.
Thanks for conceding my point. To remind, YOU GUYS are the ones who are Darwinian materialists, not me! To a Darwinian materialist if something does not have physical properties that can be measured then it simply does not exist.
Ergo. and sans your concession that fitness cannot be directly physically measured, fitness is not ‘reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories’, to wit per Darwinian materialism, fitness must be abstract, i.e. fitness does not really physically exist.
Per Bob at 61:
Aside from the fact that ‘counting’ itself is an abstract property of the immaterial mind, Bob apparently thinks that fitness is directly related to how many offspring a organism may have
Yet, as far as empirical science is concerned, (the stuff that Bob resolutely ignores), Behe wrote a paper entitled “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution” (and a subsequent book entitled “Darwin Devolves”), in which he shows, via empirical evidence, that the vast majority of mutations that increase the supposed ‘fitness’ of an organism “degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.” He dubs it, “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.”
Let me just point out the glaringly obvious, (since what is glaringly obvious is often completely lost on atheistic materialists), breaking stuff to gain a reproductive advantage is, in reality, NOT making the organism more physically fit and stronger in any meaningful sense than it originally was. In fact, such a situation directly contradicts the way ‘fitness’ is often presented to high school students. i.e. fitness is presented as a improvement to an organism to high school students, not as a loss of function.
Per Seversky at 65:
And thank you Seversky for agreeing with my post at 51 where I point out that Darwinian evolution fails to qualify as a science precisely because there are no laws or constants in the known physical universe for Darwinists to build a scientific theory upon.
To repeat:
As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
Thus, both Bob and Seversky have, in actuality, (apparently unbeknownst to themselves), conceded the major points that I was trying to make against their supposedly ‘scientific’ theory. i.e. Namely that Darwinism is a pseudoscience with no real basis in science.
Thanks for playing guys. 🙂 You two are good sports for allowing the unbiased readers to see just how vacuous your position actually is.
BA77
Maybe I am missing something but what SI units are used to measure irreducible complexity? Or Complex specified information?
ET
As opposed to the detection of intelligent design in biology? Thank you for making me laugh. It is great for relieving stress.
LOL, you just can’t make this stuff up.
You, as a Darwinian materialist, are ‘missing’ an immaterial mind in which immaterial concepts, such as mathematics itself (and/or the abstract concept of ‘fitness’), can be held.
In short, you, as an atheistic materialist, have lost your mind.
Reaper:
ID has the PRE-specified criteria something must meet before we say it is designed. But yes, like ALL of science, ID relies on OBSERVATIONs taken after the fact that something happened.
Did you have a point besides exposing your ignorance?
BA77
You ask for the SI units that are used to measure fitness, as if it is a slam dunk against evolution, and then go all insult when someone asks you the same thing about two of ID’s key “measures”. As KF would say, “that speaks volumes”.
Ed George- Please grow up and learn that ID is not anti-evolution. That way you don’t continually come off as a willfully ignorant, equivocating coward. The slam-dunk against evolution by means of blind and mindless processes is it makes untestable claims and as such is outside of science.
And ID has said exactly how to measure CSI and IC. Your ignorance speaks volumes.
ET
So, you don’t know what SI units are used to measure CSI or IR either? Is it the second? The meter? The kilogram? The ampere? The candela? The mole? The kelvin? There are only seven. Surely two of the key measures of ID are traceable to the SI. It seems rather hypocritical to expect fitness to be traceable to the SI but not for ID’s poster boys for empirical measures.
Ed Bogart, quote-mining loser:
I know that CSI and IC are measured as information, in bits. It’s logarithmic, so it’s well beyond your capabilities.
What is fitness measured in?
That pretty much says what we have is of little use.
ET
What SI unit is the bit? I don’t mean to be difficult, but if BA77 is going to insist on SI traceability for fitness, why do the CSI and IC get a free pass? Either SI traceability is required for a valid theory or it’s not.
Ed G., it is not ID that has a problem with immaterial concepts, nor with a immaterial mind. It is atheistic materialism that denies that an immaterial reality exists.
In short, it is not an insult but simply a statement of fact that Darwinian materialists have lost their minds.
Take it how you like, but that is simply the way it is.
Don’t be offended at me. Be rightly offended at the worldview that forces you, and other Darwinists, into such an insane position!
To repeat,
Eddie Bogart, quote-miner:
You are being willfully ignorant. Why does evolution by means of blind and mindless processes get a pass?
.
EDTA @ 52
A couple of thoughts:
1) ID is not in competition with the idea that variation and selection occurs in nature, so this whole comparison has a heavy dose of irrelevant rhetoric to begin with.
2) There are large swaths of “mainstream” scientific literature that support ID, which even further dissolves this rhetorical comparison. As an example, in 1961 Crick and Brenner demonstrated that a linear multi-referent code existed in DNA. If materialist defenders think that ID proponents are not allowed to count that among the knowledge that supports ID, then they clearly have another thing coming. In 1958, Mahlon Hoagland and Paul Zamecnik isolated the interpretive constraints in the gene system that Crick predicted in 1955 (with Peirce, Turing, and von Neumann intellectually in-tow). None of those things are off the ID table, and never will be. In 1961, Marshall Nirenberg set out to crack the gene code and was required to demonstrate the relationships within the code in order to know them. This is because they could not be derived otherwise (i.e. from the dynamics of the system). None of these historical points of knowledge are off the ID table. In 1948, Jon Von Neumann actually predicted the fundamental conditions of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator, which were then verified by experiment. That prediction included a multi-referent symbol system as the core condition of the system. Physicist Howard Pattee spent years writing about the physical properties of the gene system, concluding from its dynamic organization (decades ago) that it was the only other example of a general-purpose language structure known to exist. Frankly, it would be silly to expect ID proponents to ignore these things already in the record.
bornagain77- Please explain why biological fitness needs to be/ should be measured in SI units. Is it because materialistic “math” is limited to those?
There is an evolutionary unit called the Darwin, but I don’t know if it applies to genetic change. I don’t see why it couldn’t.
BA77
It is amusing how quickly you shift subjects when your own arguments are used against you. So, to repeat, what SI units are used to calculate CSI and IR? Or are you willing to admit that traceability to the SI is not critical for the validity of a theory?
ET,
Exactly! Darwinian materialism is a cruel task master, if it is not physical it is not real. Period! Yet the central concept of Darwinian evolution itself, i.e. ‘fitness’, as should be obvious by now, is immaterial,,,, it simply has no physical /material units that it can be precisely measured with,
It is just another example, in a long, long, line of examples, of Darwinists helping themselves to immaterial concepts that can only be properly grounded in a Theistic worldview.
BA77
Are you serious? The detection of design through measuring CSI and IC is every bit as “material” an endeavour as measures of fitness. As such, it is just as bound by traceability to the SI as you claim fitness is. Unless, of course, you are suggesting that traceability to the SI is not critical to assess the validity of a theory.
ED G. it is your Darwinian theory that admits no exceptions to materialism.
You can’t embrace materialism and then appeal to immaterial concepts to try to prove it feasible.
It ain’t rocket science Einstein!
BA77@86, so EC and CSI are not traceable to any SI units. I’m glad to hear that EC and CSI are no more mathematically valid than fitness.
Ed George, as an atheistic materialist, you are not even allowed immaterial mathematics in the first place. Again, your worldview is insane, you have lost your mind.
BA77@88, does this mean that you can’t tell us the SI units that are used to calculate CSI and IC?
Ed Bogart:
Except for the fact that information is not material and ID is not bound by the material.
Making testable claims is critical to assess the validity of a scientific theory. Only ID passes that critical assessment.
So- What is fitness measured in? It is said that there is no way to predict what will be selected for at any point in time. Never mind the fact that Daniel Dennett doesn’t quite grasp the fact that natural selection is a processes of elimination. What he says falls in with natural selection being nothing more than contingent serendipity. Void of rigorous mathematical framework that shows it is a creative process.
BA77, I’m afraid that Ed is making you look like a fool, all because you refuse to admit that you may have been wrong about the importance of linking fitness and SI units.
And Acartia Ed George Bogart- Please look up the tu quoque fallacy. It’s a cowardly way to “argue”, Eddie.
Reaper- Ed is a fool for invoking the “tu quoque fallacy”. All Ed, or any other evo, had to do is present the rigorous mathematical framework for biological fitness that shows it is a creative process. A process capable of creating the diversity of life in which the “selfish gene” resides. You FAILed.
Why is that?
.
EDTA,
Correct. Of course, explaining the “how” and “why” of a (presumably free) agent can be quite a challenge, but not necessarily in all cases. As far as ID and the origin of life, we believe we can derive from decades and generations of science and logic what is fundamental to the issue, and what must be accomplished in order to start the self-replicating cell system. We further find recorded in the scientific literature that those fundamentals are indeed clearly observed in the living cell. And the “exact mechanism” itself stands out directly from the observations – semiosis – the use of symbolic relationships to specify something among alternatives.
I wrote a couple of paragraphs on this in another thread:
How did a disembodied mind accomplish that feat? If you can’t say then you got nuthin’- nah-nah 😎
ET
An appeal to hypocrisy becomes valid when the hypocrisy is obvious, blatant and true. In this case BA77 argued that evolution is falsified because the units used to estimate fitness are not SI units. Yet the foundation of ID is CSI and IC, both (supposedly) robust mathematical constructs. Yet, nobody can say what SI units support the math.
A tu quoque fallacy is cowardice. I can understand why you would try to support it. Rigorous mathematical constructs do not require SI units. Your ignorance, while amusing, is still not an argument.
ET
A tu quoque fallacy is only a fallacy if the hypocrisy isn’t real, blatant and obvious. Otherwise, it is just hypocrisy. I guess you don’t know the SI units that are used to calculate CSI or IC.
Reaper, you are just a clueless troll. There wasn’t any hypocrisy. There is just evo ignorance and desperation. And the fact that you are a quote-mining loser, just proves my point.
Thank you
ET
Then I strongly suggest that you read up on the definition of hypocrisy. Nuf said.
R. P. claims that I’m a hypocrite,
I can assure you R.P. that the hypocrisy resides squarely within the claims of atheistic materialists and how they themselves are forced to live their lives.
R.P. suggested to ET “I strongly suggest that you read up on the definition of hypocrisy.”
Okie Dokie,,, let’s do that,,,
Let’s define naturalism and/or materialism while we are at it.
Darwinian evolution is based on a Naturalistic and/or Materialistic worldview in which it is held that “only matter is real, that the world is just physical and that there is no supernatural (or metaphysical) existence, or that if there is, it has no impact on our physical world.,,,”
Yet, Darwinian materialists themselves, (as is currently illustrated in this thread in their appeal to the immaterial concept of fitness and in their appeal to the immaterial world of mathematics), HYPOCRITICALLY do not live their lives as if “only matter is real, that the world is just physical and that there is no supernatural (or metaphysical) existence, or that if there is, it has no impact on our physical world.,,,”
In fact, it is impossible for atheistic materialists to live their lives as if Darwinian materialism were actually true.
In others words, (pay attention Reapers Plague) it is impossible for atheistic Darwinian materialists to live their lives in a non-hypocritical fashion.
In the following article Nancy Pearcey lists several prominent atheists in academia who honestly admit it is impossible for them to live their lives as if atheistic materialism is actually true. In other words, they honestly admitted that they are forced to live their lives as hypocrites.
Richard Dawkins himself admitted that it would be ‘intolerable’ for him to live his life as if his atheistic materialism were actually true
In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
Thus if Reapers Plague were truly concerned that people live their lives in a non-hypocritical fashion, then he should immediately drop his atheistic materialism and become a Theist, even become a Christian Theist, so as to avoid being forced to live his life in a hypocritical fashion.
Call me a cynic, yet something tells me that Reapers Plague would much rather live his life in flaming hypocrisy than ever admit that God is real.
Of further note, besides ‘fitness’ itself being an abstract immaterial concept of the immaterial mind, the term ‘species’ itself, (which is another central concept in Darwinian thinking), is also an abstract property and/or definition of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. i.e. How much does the immaterial concept of species weigh? How long is the immaterial concept of species in millimeters? How fast does the immaterial concept go? Is the immaterial concept of species positively or negatively charged? What are the si units for the abstract immaterial concept of species??? etc.. etc..
The term species, just like all other abstract properties of the immaterial mind, simply can find no grounding within materialism. The fact that the term species is an abstract definition that is created by the immaterial mind creates an irredeemable problem for Darwinists. You don’t have to take my word for it. A Darwinist admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”
This inability for Darwinists to define what the concept of species truly is within the materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution gives us a glimpse into a irredeemable, and catastrophic, defect within the Darwinist’s reductive materialistic framework.
Darwinists ultimately seek to ‘scientifically’ explain everything in materialistic terms. i.e. Reductive materialism. And yet, if something is not composed of particles or does not have physical properties (e.g., length, mass, energy, momentum, orientation, position, etc), it is abstract, i.e., spiritual. (Numbers, mathematics, geometric objects, logic, truth, distance, time, beauty, ugliness, species, fitness, person, information, etc.. etc.. etc.. all fall into this category of being an abstract properties of the immaterial mind.) It is amazing how many things fall into that ‘abstract’ category of being immaterial objects even though most of us, including atheistic scientists themselves, (“scientists” also happens to be an abstract term itself), resolutely swear that they must exist physically.
This inability of Darwinists to ground abstract immaterial concepts within their reductive materialistic worldview leads to the catastrophic failure of Darwinian evolution as a scientific worldview.
The primary place that Darwinian evolution winds up in catastrophic epistemological failure as a ‘supposedly’ scientific worldview is that mathematics itself, (which is the very backbone of all science, engineering and technology), is an abstract immaterial concept that simply can find no foundation within the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution.
To repeat, for the third time now,
Simply put, Mathematics itself, as well as logic itself, (directly contrary to the presuppositions of atheistic materialism), exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time, realm. A platonic immaterial mathematical realm of abstract concepts which simply is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation.
Thus, Mathematics itself, (the very backbone of science itself), and directly contrary to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, does not need the physical world in order to exist. And yet Darwinists, although they deny that anything beyond the physical world exists, are absolutely dependent on this transcendent world of mathematics to be real in order for their theory to even be considered scientific in the first place. The predicament that Darwinists find themselves in regards to denying the reality of this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics, and yet needing validation from this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics in order for their theory to even be considered scientific in the first place, should be the very definition of a scientifically self-refuting worldview.
Not so surprisingly, this abstract realm of mathematics, when applied to Darwinian claims, has not been kind to Darwinian claims in the least, i.e. “mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work.”
Moreover, to make this dilemma of ‘abstract immaterial concepts’ even more devastating to the Darwinian materialists, it turns out that atoms themselves are not the solid indivisible concrete particles, as they were originally envisioned to be by the Greek materialists, but it turns out that the descriptions we now use to describe atoms themselves, the further down we go, dissolve into “abstract conceptual tools for describing nature, which themselves seem to lack any real, concrete essence.,,,”
In fact, according to quantum theory, the most fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world is not even matter or energy at all, (as Darwinian materialists presuppose) but is immaterial information itself
Thus, in irony of ironies, not even the material particles themselves turn to be are ‘real’, (on a materialistic definition of what is suppose to be ‘real’), but the foundation of reality itself turns out to be “abstract” immaterial information. As Anton Zeilinger pointed out in the above video link, this finding of information being the basis of reality fits very well into Christian presuppositions:
This finding also puts the die-hard atheistic materialist in quite the dilemma because as Bernardo Kastrup further explains, to make sense of this conundrum of a non-material world of pure abstractions we must ultimately appeal to an immaterial mind. i.e. we must ultimately appeal to God!
Or to put it much more simply, as Physics professor Richard Conn Henry put it at the end of the following article, “The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”
Of supplemental note:
The Darwinian materialist, in his rejection of God, simply has no anchor for reality to grab onto:
As I have pointed out several times now, assuming Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself, indeed to the failure of all rationality itself.
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believes 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.
I’m wondering, RP & ET, is this a tu quoque fallacy. Answers in a comment of no less than 1000 words, with at least 3 irrelevant quotes, and a Bible verse to finish. Extra marks will be gained for random insults of the other side.
a few more supplemental notes to make atheistic materialists scratch their heads:
Bob (and weave) O’Hara. I am more than satisfied that I have made my point clear for the unbiased reader,,,, the point that it is indeed the atheistic materialists themselves that are forced to live their lives in flaming hypocrisy. Whereas, on the other hand, I can live my life quite consistently and happily, with no contradiction, as a Christian Theist where, for instance, I can hold that I really do exist as a real person and not as a fictitious neuronal illusion:
To repeat for the fourth time now for the willfully ignorant trolls on UD
Reaper chooses willful ignorance. Why am I not surprised?
Earth to Bob O’H- your entire position is a fallacy. Maybe, someday, you will have some empirical evidence to support it but obviously today is not that day
For our willfully ignorant evos:
Acartia Eddie invoked it. Reaper piled on it. And Bob is their cheerleader. It’s a beautiful day
ba77 @ 69 (ooh-err missus) –
Having offspring is surely a physical property. Being dead is surely a physical property. We can observe both of these, and they provide the observations to estimate fitness. Your insistence on SI units is just bizarre – physics has a lot of constants that can’t be written in Si units. Are you similarly going to condemn fluid dynamics because Reynolds numbers have no dimension? Or are you going to argue that chemistry needs God because pH exists?
I’m genuinely struggling to see how you could not understand that fitness is related to the number of offspring. Have you actually tried to learn any basic population genetics?
Bob O’H:
And yet that number can be influenced by nothing but mere chance. It’s called genetic drift.
I would love to see Bob, or any other evo, apply population genetics to show that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. Or the alleged evolution of vision systems.
BA77, you have commented at 72, 79, 86, 88, 101, 102, 104 and 105. To save me the effort of reading through 5,877 words, in any of that did you answer the question about what SI units CSI and IC are traceable to?
Acartia Eddie- Your cowardly tu quoque has been exposed. Run along, little-minded boy.
ET – well, other than it’s called demographic stochasticity, you’re right. That’s why fitness is defined as the expected number of offspring (expected here means, roughly, the average).
Bob (and weave) O’Hara,
If being alive and ‘having offspring’, (as well as dying), “is surely a physical property”, (as you must hold within your atheistic materialism), then you should have no problem showing us exactly how life can arise from purely material/physical processes.
🙂
And so it goes. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Bob- it is also called genetic drift, just as I posted.
It is defined as an organisms’ ability to survive and reproduce.
Bob (and weave) comedic struggle with understanding continues,,,
So., I will repeat. (Leaving aside the fact that ‘counting’ is an abstract property of the immaterial mind.),, we find that ‘fitness’, (as fitness is defined in common language), is not directly correlated with ‘the number of offspring’ in the following paper
One of the most interesting findings to come out of Dr. Behe’s survey of the primary literature is that it was found, (directly contrary to Darwinian ‘survival if the fittest’ mentality), that “Loss of function mutations that give an adaptive advantage are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations”
Dr. Behe recently wrote a book, i.e. ‘Darwin Devolves’, extending the thesis of the preceding paper with many more examples from the primary literature, showing that “The First Rule” is a pervasive rule in biology
So let me (once again) point out the glaringly obvious, (since what is glaringly obvious is often completely lost on atheistic materialists), breaking stuff to gain a reproductive advantage is, in reality, NOT making the organism any more physically fit and stronger than it originally was. In other words, to define fitness as ‘just’ the number of offspring that a organism may have, whilst overlooking the fact that the organism is actually devolving, (i.e. becoming less ‘fit’ on the molecular level), to gain a reproductive advantage is to blatantly overlook the primary definition of ‘fitness’ as it is used in common language,
Thus Darwinists are in actuality playing a game of smoke and mirrors with the word fitness in order to hoodwink people into believing that they have evidence that Darwinian processes can create functional complexity and/or functional information.
Antibiotic resistance is a shining example of the way Darwinists have misled students for years in regards to the way they use the word ‘fitness’ to imply proof for Darwinism that simply is not there,,,
In short, despite decades of Darwinian claims to the contrary, nothing new is being created with antibiotic resistant bacteria, (i.e. the bacteria are not becoming ‘more fit’ (as is commonly understood to be ‘more fit’), but are in fact, in the vast majority of instances, devolving to gain a reproductive advantage.)
In fact, antibiotic resistance is ‘hard-wired’ into bacteria and could be ‘billions of years old’
Also of note, many times bacteria will ‘borrow’ antibiotic resistant genes:
of course, nothing new is being created when bacteria must borrow a preexistent gene to gain antibiotic resistance.
So in conclusion, the way in which Darwinists define ‘fitness’ as being directly correlated to the number of offspring that an organism may have, whilst neglecting to take into consideration the fact that the organism is, in the vast majority of instances, ‘breaking stuff’ to gain that reproductive advantage is to do a disservice to the primary definition of ‘fitness’ as it is used in common language, and is, in fact, to deceive people into believing actual fitness of an organism has increased just because it produced more offspring.
The shame of it all is that this far from the only instance of Darwinists using misleading and fraudulent evidence in order to try to make their case.
For several examples of the fraudulent way in which Darwinists present evidence, see Jonathan Wells “Icons of Evolution” and his subsequent book “Zombie Science”.
bs77 –
Where in the paper does he say that? I’ve just checked it and can’t find it. He doesn’t define fitness, even though he uses the terms many times. The word “offspring” doesn’t appear, still less ‘the number of offspring’.
Really, you should try reading papers before you cite them.
Bob O’H:
LoL! That is what you and yours needs to do, Bob. It seems that all you evos do is a title search because you have never presented a paper that supports blind watchmaker evolution
Bob (and weave) O’Hara demonstrates why his nickname is well deserved.
i.e. we find that ‘fitness’, (as fitness is defined in common language), is not directly correlated with ‘the number of offspring’ in the following paper,,,
Note the caveat Bob?
I even cited the common language definition so as to avoid any possible confusion on your part:
And yet Bob still does not get it?
I just don’t buy it. Bob is obviously not retarded. It must be willful ignorance on his part.
Bob O’H@ 109, thank you for the link to dimensionless quantities. The validity and robustness of a mathematical expression (model) is obviously not contingent on it being traceable to the SI. That is like saying that value of the dollar is contingent on the amount of gold in Fort Knox.
Acartia Eddie- your cowardly tu quoque stands as evidence of your immoral and vile character.
Acartia Eddie:
Your side doesn’t have any mathematics to support it. It’s lack of validity is based on its untestable claims.
ET
You really are a reprehensible little slug. Does anyone who supports ID support your approach to defending it? Barry? KF? BA77? JaD? UB? Do any of you want to stand up for ET’s behavior?
Crickets?
Wow. Coming from a quote-mining, willfully ignorant troll, your attempt to insult me is amusing. And there is no way I will disrespect slugs by lumping the likes of you in with them.
Have a good day…
Bob links a site of dimensionless constants,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dimensionless_quantities
You simply can’t make this stuff up.
Atheistic materialism, Reductive Materialism, and/or Darwinian materialism, however you want to describe the philosophy that undergirds Darwinian evolution, is what is denying the existence of the immaterial realm of mathematics (as well as denying the reality of all other immaterial realities).
And yet Bob, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that HIS materialistic philosophy necessarily entails that the immaterial realm of mathematics does not really exists, links to, of all things, dimensionless quantities in mathematics. For example pi, and the square root of negative 1, are listed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_quantity#Pure_numbers
You simply cannot make this stuff up.
So tell us Bob, explain to us exactly, in materialistic terms mind you, How fast does pi go? Is pi closer to Virginian or Utah? Does pi have a negative or positive charge? etc.. etc..
For crying out loud Bob, it is hard (even impossible) for me to believe that you are this dense. Pi, like the rest of the dimensionless constants on the site you listed, is a completely immaterial concept that belongs squarely in the Platonic realm of mathematics, not in YOUR material realm of Darwinian materialism:
Perhaps Bob will next list Near Death Experiences as proof for his atheistic materialism??? 🙂 It would make about as much sense as him listing pi as supposed proof for his atheistic materialism.
BA77, I can’t fail no notice that you still cannot identify the SI units that are used to estimate CSI or IC. Is that because they are not traceable to the SI, and therefore not meaningful measures?
Ed George, like Bob, you apparently don’t even realize what your own philosophy, i.e. atheistic materialism, actually entails.
Graduate kindergarten, in regards to understanding what your own philosophy entails, then get back to me.
BA77@127, so, you are completely avoiding a ver simple question. The same simple question you asked Bob O’H is the same one that you continue to refuse to answer. What SI unit dies CSI and IC use?
Oh my. Acartia Eddie doesn’t just double-down on its tu quoque fallacy. Acartia Eddie loses and keeps playing the losing hand. How pathetic does one have to be to carry on with a fallacy?
Has anyone figured out how to tell which individuals in a population will out reproduce the others and by how much? You know, Bob’s expectation hypothesis? Or which genes in a population will be “selfish”?
Tell you what Ed. G., you tell me how mathematics can possibly be grounded within your atheistic materialism in the first place, and I will gladly show you the empirical evidence that has now demonstrated that immaterial information has a ‘thermodynamic content’.
I certainly won’t hold my breath for you upholding your end of the bargain, so I guess I will show you the empirical evidence anyway:
Upright BiPed @ 81, 94
Thanks for your explanations.
Infants are good at invoking the tu quoque fallacy. They don’t seem to know any better. It’s a lack of education that does it.
BA77
Translation: I made a mistake demanding the SI units that fitness is traceable to. I forgot that CSI and IC are not traceable to the SI either.
Acartia Eddie is proud to be an infant. Your parents would be so ashamed.
The only mistake bornagain77 is making is responding to infants who use infantile tactics, like the tu quoque fallacy. 😀
Ed G, you misunderstand my argument. My argument is that atheistic materialism, YOUR PHILOSOPHY, demands that EVERYTHING be reducible to purely material explanation. Fitness, a central concept in Darwinian evolution, is a immaterial mathematical construct that is NOT reducible to purely material explanation, hence my asking you guys what physical and/or material si units fitness is measured in.
You, misunderstanding my argument, want me to also give the material/physical si units to measure the abstract mathematical and engineering concepts of CSI and IC with.
Yet Intelligent Design does not insanely claim that everything is reducible to purely material explanation. That is YOUR claim.
It is not hypocrisy in the least for me to ask you to prove that a central concept in Darwinian thinking, i.e. fitness, is in fact reducible to purely materialistic explanation when in fact that is EXACTLY what your materialistic philosophy claims can be done.
The fact that you cannot do it, and yet demand of me that I reduce the abstract concepts of CSI and IC to material explanations, (when I in fact am the one claiming that abstract concepts cannot be reduced to purely material explanations) just proves the point that you do even understand what your very own philosophy actually entails.
Like I said, “Graduate kindergarten, in regards to understanding what your own philosophy entails, then get back to me.”
LoL! Explaining it will only make it worse. Watch and see… 😉
BA77, both CSI and IC are attempts to explain observations of material things. The flagellum is material. A gene is material. DNA is material. Fitness is also an attempt to explain observations of material things. If traceability to the SI is required to validate fitness then the same must apply to CSI and IC.
See, another prediction fulfilled. Eddie is so clueless and desperate it doesn’t grasp the fact that there is no evidence that materialistic processes produced any genes from scratch. There isn’t any evidence that materialistic processes produced any bacterial flagellum. And the same goes for DNA.
Eddie the infant tu quoque fallacy strikes again!
Maybe someday someone will figure out why evos think their cowardice and ignorance are arguments
ba77 @ 119 – We’re discussing biological fitness, and you’ve given the common language definition “an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in a particular environment.”. We measure reproduction as the number of offspring, so we have to count them (we even use counting for over-lapping generations when we include survival: if it survives we also count the individual).
In biology “fitness” has a standard meaning, that is well understood. Even Behe understands it (which is why he repeatedly mentions fitness in his QRB paper without defining it). If you’re confused by this, that’s OK: people can be confused by new terminology – it took me a long time to work out what “non-linear” meant in the social sciences and humanities. I’m rather surprised that you didn’t understand what the term means, but hopefully now you do, and perhaps we can move on to more fruitful discussions (e.g. why the Selfish Gene isn’t actually helpful for understanding HGT).
ET @ 129 – Yes, that has been done. Animal breeders, in particular, have spent a lot of time and money on precisely that problem (for obvious reasons). Mathematically they use the Breeder’s equation, which builds their methods on Fisher’s maths.
Ed George claims that
Not exactly. They are attempts to explain the observation* of immaterial functional information/engineering in material things, i.e. in genes, DNA, proteins, and molecular machines, etc.. So your sentence would best be written as “both CSI and IC are attempts to explain observations* of immaterial functional information/engineering in material things.”
*Of note: Conscious Observation itself is not reducible to materialistic explanation, (Donald Hoffman’s work in population genetics, and the Falsification of Realism in quantum mechanics)
You then claim,
Not exactly. Not even close really. Besides the immaterial engineering from an immaterial mind that is readily apparent in the flagellum for all to see,,
Besides that, the flagellum is also now found to belong to the world of quantum mechanics, not to the ‘classical’ world of reductive materialism
Non-local quantum effects simply are not within the classical reductive materialistic framework of neo-Darwinism to explain. i.e. “quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
For example, as Jonathan McLatchie explains, “we don’t even fully understand the mechanism of rotation (for the flagellum)!”
You then claim,
Again, not exactly. Not even close really. As was pointed out in post 56,,
You then claim
Again, not exactly. Not even close really. DNA itself does not belong to the world of classical mechanics but instead belongs to the world of quantum mechanics. In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
You then claim
Get back to me when you find purely material things in biology that can be be explained within your ‘classical’ reductive materialistic framework. Everything you listed thus far fails to qualify as a purely material thing. They are all material things that are infused, from top to bottom, with immaterial quantum information.
The irresolvable dichotomy that quantum biology presents for reductive materialists, (the irresolvable dichotomy between the material realm and the immaterial realm), is present throughout all of molecular biology. As the following article entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” explains “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “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,”,,,
And as this follow up article also explained, “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement of the cell. Whereas Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verse:
Since earlier in this thread Bob (and weave) O’Hara scoffed at me for daring to quote scripture as if it was beneath his dignity to even have to read a bible verse, I will now, besides quoting scripture, give Bob some Christmas music to listen to. 🙂
Merry Christmas Bob, May God melt your Scrooge heart.
It might melt faster if you showed some genuine Christmas spirit and refrained from the insults.
Bob O’H:
Oh my. Try again, Bob. The discussion pertains to natural selection and not artificial selection. And yes, there is a HUGE difference.
Has anyone figured out how to tell which individuals in a population will out reproduce the others and by how much? You know, Bob’s expectation hypothesis? Or which genes in a population will be “selfish”?
Obviously the answer is No. Thanks Bob
Bob O’H:
Apparently it isn’t well understood. If it was then scientists would be able to make predictions based on it and yet they cannot.
ET @ 144 – exactly the same methods are used to study wild populations. So the answer is “yes”, and your comment @ 145 is moot.
(and your question about which genes will be selfish has a trivial answer of “all of them”, as would be apparent if you had read The Selfish Gene)
Bob O’H:
Doubtful. And clearly not all genes are selfish.
Look Daniel Dennett said there is no way to predict what will be selected for at any point in time. The NCSE backed PBS show “Evolution” echoed those words. David Berlinski exposed the nonsense of your methodology:
You lose, Bob. YOU are moot.
The selfish gene is a work of fiction written by someone out of touch with reality. Just sayin’
ET – yes, exactly the same methods (animal models) are used. if you want to have any credibility to your denials, you’ll have to show what the differences in the methods are. I know most of the people who developed the use of these methods in natural populations, so I can speak with at least some authority.
If Dennett said that then he’s wrong. Do you have the citation for that comment?
Berlinski does not, I think, understand the theory. The regression coefficients are measures of selection: the causal theory reduces down to regressions, but the epistemic status of these coefficients isn’t just as correlations.
Bob, there is no way we are going to take your word for it. Pease provide the valid references. With artificial selection we know which are going to be allowed to breed, duh. That is the whole purpose.
Berlinski understands the theory better than you do, Bob. I dare you to challenge him. That would be very entertaining.
As for Dennett, look up “PBS Evolution and search there. Or read his book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”. If you think Dennett is wrong then demonstrate it. It should be easy.
ET – start here, and in particular this paper.
Can you be more specific about Dennett? The only thing I can find is this, where he says something a bit different:
Is this what you were referring to?
(editted to remove typos)
ET per post 44:
Bob, your links don’t work, just like evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. Watch the program- PBS “Evolution”, Bob.
ET – the Dennett link works for me. For the other two, my apologies. The first is to this, and the second to this.
The first link doesn’t help you, Bob. The second pertains to a model- yet it is said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. They used their model on a gryphon. Yeah, that is very telling…
Are there any peer-reviewed papers on how to measure biological fitness?
ET:
To wit:
Thank you, sir. Awesome!
Bornagain77 @ 157
Do any of these references discuss measuring fitness in SI units? If not, they can’t be scientific according to you.
^^^^^
Seversky, thanks for demonstrating for all to see that you have no clue what the argument actually is that I actually made against YOUR PHILOSOPHY of atheistic materialism.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/question-for-readers-in-a-world-where-horizontal-gene-transfer-is-an-important-force-what-becomes-of-dawkinss-selfish-gene/#comment-689051
Sev
BA77
Sorry, but you are demonstrating the fine art of goalpost shifting. Let me remind you of your original argument.
There is nothing here about an argument made against the philosophy of materialistic atheism. That is just where you took the argument when you were incapable of identifying the SI units that ID mathematical constructs were traceable to.
And I note that you left off the rest of my post at 51 where I develop the argument more fully: Context is everything
My criticism still applies, you cannot define fitness in a mathematically concise way so as to be useful
If you disagree, then please show us the exact mathematical definition of ‘fitness’ with reference to SI units.
I won’t be holding my breath: Darwinian evolution simply has no realistic mathematical model to test against:
a little more context for you:
Like I said context is everything. Moreover, I, (once my argument was more fully developed), made it explicitly clear to you what my actual argument against YOUR PHILOSOPHY of atheistic materialism actually is.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/question-for-readers-in-a-world-where-horizontal-gene-transfer-is-an-important-force-what-becomes-of-dawkinss-selfish-gene/#comment-689051
That you ignore that fully developed argument, that I went to pains to make especially clear for you, shows that you are intellectually dishonest in forthrightly addressing the, IMHO, irresolvable weaknesses in your own philosophy.
It shows, in actuality, a pathetic lack of integrity on your part!
Wow, more infantile tu quoque. Why do evos think their infantile responses are meaningful discourse?
BA77
And my point is that if this is the case for fitness, it also applies to CSI and IC (and the explanatory filter).
As has been shown, their are numerous physical quantities, such as fitness, that are dimensionless and, therefore, not traceable to the SI. You can either acknowledge that such dimensionless quantities have merit or acknowledge that ID measures are without merit. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Acartia Eddie, infant:
That is called the cowardly to quoque fallacy, Acartia.
There isn’t any rigorous mathematics behind biological fitness. You lose, twice.
ET @ 155 – you asked if the methods used in animal breeding had been used in wild populations. I linked to a wiki about precisely that. How does that not help? The second link is to a model because that’s what you were asking about. You should also look at the references to see examples of using the animal model on real populations.
@156 – there’s a whole book on it (it’s a bit old but still it’s there). And there’s the paper I linked to (plus the references therein).
Ed. G. lifts a quote out of context in one post and then ignores the subsequent argument in another post that I actually made against atheistic materialism.
To repeat the actual argument against YOUR atheistic materialism,
E. G. then falsely claims
That is a false claim. One, Fitness is NOT listed as a dimensionless constant on the wiki page that Bob linked to.
Moreover, from the numerous links I provided, show that the precise mathematical definition of Fitness is not even agreed upon. Thus, besides failing to have any precise way to physically measure it (which should be possible if atheistic materialism were actually true), ‘fitness’ also fails as a rigid abstract mathematical construct too.
Moreover, as was pointed out to Bob, it is insane for a reductive materialist to appeal to dimensionless constants to try to support atheistic materialism,
It ain’t rocket science. Only willfully ignorant atheistic trolls could be so dense as to not see the fatal flaw in atheistic materialism.
Bob’s claim to ET,
The page that Bob linked to,
Note the disclaimer at the bottom of Bob’s page
LOL 🙂 “It should not be seen as a one stop solution to cover all scenarios” ,,,.translation, Bob is a used car salesman that is trying to sell a junker, 🙂
You just can’t make this stuff up. Atheistic arguments are literally a comedy of errors! 🙂
But seriously, there are a very few examples that Bob can point to, but those examples are rare exceptions and are not the rule. As the paper I listed at post 56 stated, “Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis.
But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way,,,”
The irresolvable dilemma this presents to population genetics is as such:
Thus, despite Bob’s claims to the contrary, population genetics is at a severe impasse.
Bottom line, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
Of course it isn’t listed, it’s not a constant.
ba77 @ 169 –
And the relevance of this to animal models is…
Oh yes, it provides a strong justification for using them, because the precise genetic architecture doesn’t have to be know for them to work. We can sidestep these problems because the animal model provides us a way to estimate the additive genetic variance, and Fisher showed that the response to (directional) selection is determined by the additive genetic variance.
Bob O’H- All you have done is to reinforce what Berlinski wrote- ie statistical regression.
What you cannot do is show the model you linked to has any basis in reality.
The fact remains that in a world of evolution by means of blind, mindless and purposeless processes that you don’t have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes, let alone metazoans. And given that type of process all you have to “model” is contingent serendipity.
Bob @ 167- I just purchased that “whole book” you linked to.
Bob claims,
Yet, as was already shown in this thread, and Bob refuses to accept, Fisher has been falsified.
When the realistic rate of detrimental mutations are taken into account, then it mathematically falsifies “Fisher’s belief that he had developed a mathematical proof that fitness must always increase”
As to the realistic rate of deleterious to beneficial mutations,
Thus in conclusion, Bob (and weave) lives in a mathematical fantasy land that bears no resemblance to reality. In fact, Bob refuses to acknowledge any empirical evidence that might falsify his mathematical fantasies.
.
Has the battle on this thread run its course? Okay.
Ed, just so you know — as a matter of physical necessity, Darwinian “fitness” is specified by a system if symbols in a multi-referent code. The critical state of fitness (think von Neumann’s “threshold of complexity”) is called “semantic closure”. It is a state that not only has very specific physical requirements, but also organizational requirements. It requires the simultaneous coordination of multiple microstates in order to occur, and is the vital condition that enables the system to persist over time. Without it, I would not be here to point it out to you, and you would not be here to ignore it and deny its nature.
Bob O’Hara is Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He jokes that,
Thus, obviously Bob should have a fairly descent idea about what the mathematics behind Darwinian evolution actually entail.
And in post 171 (Professor) Bob O’Hara’s claims that,
Yet, besides the fact that, (as was shown in post 174), “When the realistic rate of detrimental mutations are taken into account, then it mathematically falsifies “Fisher’s belief that he had developed a mathematical proof that fitness must always increase”, besides that little inconvenient ‘correction’ to Fisher’s theorem that falsifies it, it is also now empirically shown, via Lenski’s “Long Term Evolution Experiment” (LTEE), that Fisher’s belief that beneficial mutations will be “additive” was also another false presupposition on Fisher’s part (and thus, is also currently a false presupposition on Bob’s part).
Specifically, “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations shows that beneficial mutations are not “additive”. As the following study found, “the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually.”
As Casey Luskin explained, The title of a summary piece in Science tells the whole story: “In Evolution, the Sum Is Less than Its Parts.”
That these findings falsify Darwinian expectations that beneficial mutations should be additive, these findings also reveal that Darwinists don’t even have a coherent explanation why “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations should even exist.
On the other hand, Intelligent Design advocates readily understand why “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations are as they are.
As was mentioned previously in this thread, instead of the genome being dominated by ‘genes for’ something, as is presupposed in Darwinian thought,
,,, instead of the genome being dominated by ‘genes for’ something, as is presupposed in Darwinian thought, the ‘genes’ in a genome are instead now found to be existing in a holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation, wherein, “such traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants, working in concert.”
This ‘holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation’ places severe constraints on Darwinian evolution.
As Dr. Sanford explained in his book “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome”, if we were to actually get a proper “beneficial mutation’ in a polyfunctional genome of say 500 mutually interdependent genes, then instead of the infamous “Methinks it is like a weasel” single element of functional information that Darwinists pretend they are facing in any evolutionary search, we would instead be encountering something much more akin to this illustration found on page 141 of the book ‘Genetic Entropy’ by Dr. Sanford.
That five-word palindrome translates as,
This ancient palindrome, which dates back to at least 79 AD, reads the same four different ways, Thus, if we change (mutate) any letter we may get a new (beneficial) meaning for a single reading read any one way, but we will consistently destroy the other 3 readings of the message with the new mutation (save for the center letter). Moreover, mutating any subsequent letter in the palindrome will obviously induce “antagonistic epistasis” towards the first mutated letter, wherein any benefit that the first mutated letter may have conferred will be compromised by any subsequent change, with the benefit being compromised even further as even more letters are changed in the palindrome.
As John Sanford and company explained in the following paper, “As the number of overlapping codes increases, the rate of potential beneficial mutation decreases exponentially, quickly approaching zero.”
And the genome is indeed found to be severely poly-functional
For one particularly crystal clear example of the staggering level of poly-functionality now being found in genomes, “there is one human gene that codes for 576 different proteins, and there is one fruit fly gene that codes for 38,016 different proteins!”
Thus in conclusion, “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations falsifies Fisher’s belief that beneficial mutations should be additive, and also reveals that Darwinists, (with their reductive materialistic framework), don’t even have a coherent explanation why “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations should even exist,
Whereas on the other hand, Intelligent Design advocates readily do understand why “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations are as they are. Moreover, the staggering levels of overlapping poly-functional complexity now being found in genomes, renders the Darwinian belief in ‘additive beneficial mutations’ to be a patently absurd belief. And, on the other hand, renders the belief that the genome was Intelligently Designed to be glaringly obvious.
If Bob O’Hara has an ounce of integrity in his responsibility as a professor, he should take all this falsifying evidence into account and adjust his teaching accordingly. Simply put, Darwinian evolution is empirically and mathematically shown to be false and Bob should, as a responsible educator, accept what the science is actually saying no matter how he may personally feel about it.
ba77 – additive genetic variance is not an easy concept to understand: it doesn’t mean (for example) that mutations have to be additive. Epistasis will also include an additive component: the additive effect of an allele is the average effect of changing that allele (i.e. averaged over the different genetic backgrounds it could appear in).
As you might guess, I don’t feel inclined to change my views if I’m being lectured by someone who clearly doesn’t understand the topic.
Bob (and weave) O’Hara states that,,
And then after Bob figures he has tossed enough word salad around, he adds this ad hominem dressing to his word salad for good measure.
Contrary to the self smugness that Bob flatters himself with, the ‘concept’ of ‘additive genetic variance’ is, comparatively speaking, an amazingly easy concept to grasp. “You can be drunk, addled, or stupid and still understand it”
Although Bob has deluded himself into believing that he has proof for Darwinian evolution in the mathematical fantasy land of population genetics that he lives in, (which I remind Bob, and unbiased readers, the existence of mathematics itself falsifies the reductive materialistic foundation of Darwinian evolution.)
And although Bob, as a Darwinian materialist, has no right to the immaterial realm of mathematics in the first place, none-the-less Fisher’s mathematical theorem, which Bob is reliant on for his claims, and as referenced several times now, has been falsified by John Sanford and company when taking into account realistic rates of detrimental to beneficial mutations.
Bob, as usual for a Darwinist, refuses to accept this falsification of his theory. (Nor will he accept any other falsification of his theory)
Thus, I went back to the empirical evidence itself. Since, in empirical science, the empirical evidence itself has final say, PERIOD! As Richard Feynman stated,
Yet Bob also refused to listen to what the empirical evidence was saying for “antagonistic epistasis” between beneficial mutations being “less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually.”
I even threw in the empirical fact that the entire genome is now known to be, directly contrary to the Darwinian presupposition of ‘selfish genes’, a holisitc web of mutual interdependence. A holistic web in which extensive multiple overlapping coding in the genome (and protein interactions for that matter) is the overriding rule instead of the exception.
Bob, living in his mathematical fantasy land, apparently claims to be wiser than the empirical evidence itself is and simply refuses to ever accept any empirical evidence that might falsify his theory. Simply put, Bob has severely deluded himself with his mathematical musings. Musings that have little, if any, connection to the real world.
To give Bob a little lesson in how science actually operates in the real world,
Karl Popper stated that “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
And as Denis Noble, President of International Union of Physiological Sciences, stated, “it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.”
Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich stated that the Theory of Evolution ‘cannot be refuted by any possible observations’ and is thus “outside empirical science.”
Moreover, it is not that Darwinism has not already been falsified time and time again. It is that Darwinists themselves simple refuse to ever accept any falsification of their theory.
Here are a few falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory:
Verse:
Besides Darwinists refusing to adhere to the criteria of falsification for their supposed scientific theory, by any other reasonable measure that one may wish to judge whether Darwinian evolution even qualifies as a science or not, as is shown in the following video, Darwinian evolution fails to meet those criteria as well:
Simply put, Darwinian evolution simply fails to qualify as a rigorous and testable science by any reasonable measure one may wish to invoke and is therefore more properly classified as a pseudoscience, even as a religion for atheists, rather than ever being classified as a real and testable science.
In other words, the Darwinian Emperor, contrary to what the supposedly ‘smart’ people on the street may say, is completely naked, The Darwinian Emperor doesn’t even have any underwear on to cover his nakedness!
Moreover, contrary to what many people have been falsely led to believe by Darwinian atheists, about Intelligent Design supposedly being a pseudo-science, the fact of the matter is that 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 methodological 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 themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man.
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 found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and 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 methodological naturalism.
Moreover, following the restriction of methodological naturalism on science, that is to say, following the presumption that only natural, material, and/or physical causes are allowed to be given in order to explain any given effect in science, leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Thus, although the Darwinist 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 and/or naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinian materialists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
Again, It would be hard to fathom a worldview that turns out to be more antagonistic towards modern science, indeed more antagonistic towards reality itself, than the presumption of methodological naturalism has turned out to be.
Bottom line, without God nothing turns out to be truly real in the atheist’s worldview. Not even the atheist himself turns out to be real in his materialistic worldview.
One final note, Bob, in his put down of me, apparently, in his own mind, fancies himself to be a pretty smart fellow. Yet, the reality of the situation, as everyone can see by now, is far different than what Bob fancies.
Anyone who believes in Darwinian evolution, by definition, can’t be all that smart. It is simply a completely insane worldview.