The ID Hypothesis

Joseph, see Dmullenix's post 102.1. Clearly, he doesn't even know the difference between a prokaryote and eukaryote and so confuses the two repeatedly. Then says we're the ones who are ignorant! You've got to laugh. Don't expect him to even understand that "Euks are more than proks with mito or chloro". Chris Doyle

dmullenix, I have some bad news for you- your gullibility and ignorance do not equal scientific evidence-

1: You may be right that there’s no direct evidence that prokaryotes branched off new types of animal. There aren’t many fossils from 1.7 billion years ago and they ones that do exist don’t show us the chemistry. However, eukaryotic cells have quite a few things in common with prokaryotes: a) They are cells. c) They share a lot of basic chemistry, physiology and metabolism. c) They both manufacture proteins by copying DNA to RNA and then use the RNA to construct the protein.

Common design accounts for the similarities.

2: They doubted Lynn Margulis when she suggested that mitochondria are captured bacteria. Then they found bacterial DNA in mitochondria and the doubts pretty much stopped.

Again it boils down to "it looks like endosymbiosis", which is not a scientific test. And all ensosymbiosis provided were mitochondria and chloroplasts. Euks are more than proks with mito or chloro. There STILL isn't any way to scientifically test the premise.

3: The theory of evolution doesn’t have to account for Horizontal Gene Transfer. We can see it in action when bacteria exchange plasmids and we have DNA evidence of viral transfer. It exists and there’s no doubt that evolution uses it.

Thanks for admitting the theory cannot account for it. Joseph

Chris, I like to argue with people, but you’re just ignoring what I write and saying it aint so with nothing to back your word up. Unfortunately, there’s no way to convince a hyper-skeptic. The record indicates that this only applies to you, Dmullenix. And I'm more than happy to leave it at that. Chris Doyle

Joseph, Chris, I have some bad news for you. It turns out that your ignorance is vincible and thus provides no excuse. Sorry. Joseph: 1: You may be right that there’s no direct evidence that prokaryotes branched off new types of animal. There aren’t many fossils from 1.7 billion years ago and they ones that do exist don’t show us the chemistry. However, eukaryotic cells have quite a few things in common with prokaryotes: a) They are cells. c) They share a lot of basic chemistry, physiology and metabolism. c) They both manufacture proteins by copying DNA to RNA and then use the RNA to construct the protein. 2: They doubted Lynn Margulis when she suggested that mitochondria are captured bacteria. Then they found bacterial DNA in mitochondria and the doubts pretty much stopped. 3: The theory of evolution doesn’t have to account for Horizontal Gene Transfer. We can see it in action when bacteria exchange plasmids and we have DNA evidence of viral transfer. It exists and there’s no doubt that evolution uses it. Chris, I like to argue with people, but you’re just ignoring what I write and saying it aint so with nothing to back your word up. Unfortunately, there’s no way to convince a hyper-skeptic. dmullenix

Dmullenix, if you just don't get it, then just be honest and admit that (and then, privately, work out why you don't get it, in your own time, on your own terms) rather than pretend otherwise. You haven't even attempted to respond to my post which clearly demonstrates that the last great hope for evolutionists - bacteria - is actually just another nail in the coffin of evolutionist beliefs. I've put the truth on a plate for you and you just can't handle it. So, let's go back to the beginning. In light of everything you would've learned from my posts on this thread if the cognitive dissonance hadn't kicked it, what exactly do you imagine we’ll see if you run Lenski's LTEE for a million years? Chris Doyle

1- There isn't any evidence that prokaryotes can evolve into something other than prokaryotes- the theory of evolution is dead at bacteria. 2- Endosymbiosis for the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts boils down to "it looks like it to me"- ie it is untestable and therefor unscientific 3- The theory of evolution cannot account for HGT, it can only try to explain it. Joseph

What I'm having trouble comprehending is your astonishing confusion on so many different fronts. To begin with, HGT is not the same as mating. HGT takes a single, small chunk of DNA and transfers it from one organism to another. There's no need to carefully match thousand of genes for compatibility, as in mating. Thanks to viruses, it's entirely possible that there's been some HGT between dogs and cats. Without googling for it, I believe that you and I have some bacterial DNA in our own genomes. I've already covered bacterial diversity and it seems to have shot right past you so I won't waste my time on that again. My explanation of why we don't see new prokaryotes emerging from modern bacteria also seems to have hung fire. I can only lead you to water, I can't make you drink. dmullenix

Good Afternoon Dmullenix, Thanks for taking the effort to “fully comprehend” what I’m saying and engaging with it: most evolutionists don’t come this far! You put it to me that: You also seriously underestimate the diversity in the bacterial kingdom. I do appreciate “the diversity in the bacterial kingdom” but they are all close enough to each other to exchange genetic material through Horizontal Gene Transfer, plasmids, bacteriophages, etc. Try combining the genetic material of two relatively closely-related mammals like a dog and a cat and see where it gets you... never mind a hedgehog and a cactus! Frankly all strains of bacteria are still just bacteria: single-celled prokaryotes that share many fundamental components (see my previous post, 102). Can we say, all animals are still just animals? No, because within the animal kingdom you have a dramatic variety of body plans, body parts and organs, physical abilities, biological functions, biochemistry, etc, etc. Consider all the differences between a human being and an amoeba: both are eukaryotes. Can you really identify two prokaryotes that are just as different to each other as humans are to amoebas? Throw the plant kingdom into the mix and the varieties and distances between species becomes even more vast and unbridgeable: just consider the difference between a Giant Redwood tree (some of which are over 2000 years old) and the tiny Red Bugs known as Chiggers (if we were the same size as them, we’d have to run at 173mph just to keep up). So, not only are you overestimating the diversity in the bacterial kingdom, but you’re massively underestimating the diversity in the animal and plant kingdoms. To put it another way, bacteria are like stamps: their numbers are countless, there is a huge variety of them, all over the world, but fascinating and diverse as stamps are, they are still just stamps. The variety we find in them, does not compare to the variety we find in planes, trains and automobiles (or phones, or computers or books). Nor do stamps shed any light whatsoever on any other design series... which brings me onto the next thing that you said: They’re all highly evolved waste free stripped down containers for sophisticated chemical factories that make anything man has designed look pathetic. Now, replace the word ‘evolved’ with ‘designed’ and I’m in complete agreement with you! And that’s only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. Prokaryotes are much, much simpler organisms than eukaryotes. Sometimes, I’m flabbergasted that anybody has convinced themselves that any living organism effectively made itself purely from random mutations in its DNA... Now, let’s go back in time to the ‘appearance’ of the first living organisms (which, only for the sake of argument, I will grant are indeed prokaryotes). Without knowing about the future, what would Darwin’s theory of evolution predict? That, in 3 billion years, prokaryotes would still just be single-celled organisms: no body plans, no body parts or organs even and certainly no prokaryotic men? Of course not! The theory was designed to explain the origin of species: and yet there are no species in prokaryotes: only strains that all exchange genetic information with each other. But now, let me withdraw my generosity for a moment: how do we know that prokaryotes came before eukaryotes? Furthermore, how do we know that eukaryotes came from prokaryotes? Don’t forget, Lenski’s LTEE demonstrated that when a splinter group of organisms turn to a new food supply, then BOTH the original group and the splinter group thrive. So there is no reason why the eukaryotes would thrive any more than the prokaryotes in your thought experiment. Nor any reason why the prokaryotes wouldn’t eat the newly evolved,vastly outnumbered, eukaryotes! And which eukaryotes today would prevent newly evolved “half-eukaryotes” from establishing a foothold anyway? Look, we can all invent just-so stories, but none of them are any good without evidence to support them. Furthermore, a just-so story that contradicts the account of another just-so story merely creates a stalemate that can only be resolved by the evidence. So, let’s stick to the indisputable facts: If evolution, specifically macro-evolution occurred, it only happened to eukaryotes. And yet, from the moment that eukaryotes ceased to reproduce asexually, they were at an immediate reproductive disadvantage to prokaryotes. And remember, bacteria is the most advantaged living organism we know of in terms of evolution: they’ve been around longer than anything else, there is more of them in existence than anything else, they reproduce quicker than anything else, they can survive more hostile environments than anything else and they can even obtain new and often useful genetic information - lamarck-like - in the course of their lifetimes which is then passed on to their offspring. You couldn’t ask for a better organism to express the full potential and creative power of evolution. Three billion years ago, if the theory of evolution made a single highly-risky, reputation-staking prediction it would be that the prokaryotes we call ‘bacteria’ would evolve into all of the mind-bogglingly sophisticated and perfectly-designed plants and animals we see today. But, we know they didn’t. Bacteria today is virtually identical to the oldest bacteria we know of. And it’s no good getting excited about nylon: at the molecular level, nylon is still composed of organic compounds, the likes of which bacteria has utilised for billions of years. The ability of a bacterium to manufacture nylonase probably just involved a single point mutation of pre-existing genetic code. Even if nylon was truly alien to bacteria, getting excited about that is a bit like getting excited about a Penny Black stamp with Charles Darwin’s face on it: great if you’re a stamp collector, entirely non-illuminating if you’re trying to manufacture cars or smartphones. So, my question still stands: why, despite all of the unique evolutionary advantages available to bacteria, hasn’t it evolved into prokaryotic animals or prokaryotic plants? If evolution was true, then the theory not only predicts but demands that such lifeforms should now fill our planet. On the other hand, if the theory of evolution wasn’t true and life on Earth didn’t evolve, then, even though bacteria has all of these amazing evolutionary advantages, it would still just be bacteria... and 3 billion years later, would be showing no signs of becoming anything else. Now do you see, Dmullenix, why bacteria does not provide evidence for evolution after all? In fact, bacteria conclusively demonstrates that life on Earth didn’t evolve: because if bacteria couldn’t evolve into humans, then nothing could. Chris Doyle

It's taking me a while to fully comprehend you Chris, but if I understand you right, you're wondering why we don't see any modern bacteria evolving into prokaryotes and then into roses, redwood trees, humans and dung beetles. Is that close? Assuming it is, then let's think about it for a while. Let's assume for the sake of argument that several billion years ago there were nothing but bacteria in the world, then some of them evolved into prokaryotes. Think of their situation: kilo-mega-gazillions of bacteria in the world, all of them fighting for the limited supply of bacteria food and struggling for possession of every cubic micron of bacteria friendly environment. Now let some of those bacteria evolve into prokaryotes. Shazam! Prokaryotes can eat different food than bacteria and live in different environments - and there's no competition for the new food and the new environments are empty because there aren't any prokaryotes! The prokaryotes can stuff themselves on the new food and multiply like crazy! And, being single-celled organisms, they do just that and in a very short time by geologic standards, the world is crawling with prokaryotes fighting for every piece of prokaryote food and and every cubic micron of prokaryote livng spaces. Now let a modern bacteria evolve into a half bacteria - half prokaryote. Whoops! There are kilo-mega-gazillions of prokaryotes already out there, they've already eating all the prokaryote food, they're already living in all the prokaryote friendly environments and they've been evolving and perfecting themselves to compete for that food and those environments for billions of years. The brand new half bacteria-half prokaryotes don't have a chance. Does that clear up why we don't see bacteria evolving into prokaryotes any more? It's because we already have prokaryotes and there's no way a half-prokaryote is going to compete with them. You also seriously underestimate the diversity in the bacterial kingdom. They're all highly evolved waste free stripped down containers for sophisticated chemical factories that make anything man has designed look pathetic. There's tremendous diversity between different species of bacteria, probably more than between different species of procaryotes. This is actually an ID talking point. Remember how Darwin is supposed to have thought of bacteria as being simply "protoplasm" and didn't understand how incredibly complex they are? Remember the molecular machinery in bacteria that would supposedly have discouraged Darwin from his theories if he'd only known of them? And how do we know that the strains of bacteria today aren't identical to bacteria billions of years ago? Well, I'm betting that no bacteria was manufacturing nylonase so it could break down nylon and eat it billions of years before nylon was invented, for one thing. dmullenix

Dmullenix, answer me this question: what exactly do you think Darwin was attempting to explain in “the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”? Was it to explain which creatures dominate the Earth or why it is that there are so many different, yet perfectly ‘adapted’ creatures (with a variety of body parts, body plans, organs, etc)? Also, do you accept that the variety we see between say, a Giant Redwood tree and a blue whale and a human and an ant demands a much greater explanation than the variety we see in every single strain of bacteria put together? After all, bacteria are all still nothing more than single-celled organisms with a nucleoid, cytoplasm and ribosomes with-in a membrane, with-in a cell wall with-in an enclosing capsule. Pili protrude from the membrane and a flagellum usually provides motility. There is some trivial variation. Bacteria come in some different shapes and sizes. Different bacteria eat different things. Different bacteria are destroyed by different things. But that’s it. There are no bacterial flowers, fish, trees, whales, fungi, mice, canaries, dinosaurs, humans, etc. I strongly suspect that you are going to overplay the variety we see in bacteria as something that is equivalent to the variety we see between a rose and a dung beetle. If you genuinely believe that the two most different strains of bacteria you can identify are equivalent to the two most different plants or animals you can identify, then you are deluding yourself in the name of your evolutionist beliefs. And this conversation is over. But hopefully, you do recognise the fundamental difference between two different bacteria and an animal and a plant. It is very simple, Dmullenix. Tell me why is it that (even in ‘just’ the last billion or two years) no single-celled prokaryote has evolved into anything other than a single-celled prokaryote? You asked us to be impressed with Lenski’s LTEE and to “imagine what you’ll see if you run that experiment for a million years!” yet we know for a fact, that for at least the last billion years, nothing of any macro-evolutionary significance has occurred. Bacteria has only given rise to more bacteria (with, at best, some trivial variation in size, shape and feeding habits). Sub-specific variety in dogs is far more significant than the variety you describe in all of the strains of bacteria. Also, how do you know that virtually all of the strains of bacteria alive today did not actually exist a billion years ago (with all the same shapes and colonising, almost all the same feeding habits and environmental resistance)? Chris Doyle

Chris, eukaryotes first appeared more like a billion or two years ago. Why do you think that “absolutely nothing” has happened to bacteria since? Do you have any samples from back then? There are none that I know of. Fossils? There are a few, but they don’t show any internal detail and certainly no chemical detail. So why do you say they haven’t changed? Do you have any data or are you just saying that? Try looking up “bacteria” in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria The following is mostly paraphrased from that article: Bacteria have evolved many basic shapes: wiki lists round, rod-shaped, curved, comma-shaped, spiral-shaped, tightly coiled, and long rods with star-shaped cross sections. Here’s a drawing of some of the shapes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bacterial_morphology_diagram.svg Many bacteria characteristically join in pairs, chains, or grape-like clusters. Lots of them form filaments which help many cells join together in a colony. They also form biofilms ranging up to a half meter in thickness and containing multiple species of bacteria. The films also make it hard to kill them which you may someday discover to your displeasure if they’ve infected you. Some bacteria join together with their clonal sisters by the hundreds of thousands, differentiate various biological functions amongst themselves and then produce spores! Bacterial cell walls have become very complex, letting some materials in and chucking waste out. Some walls are very thin, some are multi-layered and very thick. Some bacteria have developed flagella, which I’m sure everybody on UD knows about (there’s a nifty animation in the article) and some have developed fine hairs called fimbriae. Some surround themselves with slime layers. Some bacteria (anthrax and tetanus for example) form spores called endospores that can be frozen, baked, irradiated with UV light and even gamma rays and survive. Some have been found that are forty million years old and survived. Some bacteria evolved the ability to use sunlight to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen and we literally owe our lives to them. They also feed on organic and inorganic compounds. More than anything else, however, bacteria have become the premier chemical factories of earth and have evolved the ability to feed on just about anything, including that brand new molecule, nylon. I’m sure that as new compounds come into existence, bacteria will evolve to eat them. In short, quite a bit has happened to bacteria and it’s still happening. If you're wondering why they haven't formed bodies - one likely reason is that animals with bodies need oxygen and by the time the bacteria had manufactured enough oxygen for animals to form, they already dominated the earth. dmullenix

dmullenix you're missing the point. I already granted you the possibility that eukaryotes were created by a one-off miraculous never-seen-since synthesis of prokaryotes. But think about it: since that event hundreds of millions of years ago, EVERY prokaryote remained almost indistinguishable from every other prokaryote. They did not evolve body plans. They did not even evolve into body parts. On the basis of Lenski's LTEE, you ask what would happen to bacteria in a million years. The answer is: we already know what happened to bacteria after hundreds of millions of years: absolutely nothing. Bacterial evolution shines no light whatsoever on how it is that a single-celled eukaryotic common ancestor evolved into trees, ants, dinosaurs, whales and humans. Which is exactly what evolution was supposed to explain in the first place! Chris Doyle

dmullenix you're missing the point. I already granted you the possibility that eukaryotes were created by a one-off miraculous never-seen-since synthesis of prokaryotes. But think about it: since that event hundreds of millions of years ago, EVERY prokaryote remained almost indistinguishable from every other prokaryote. They did not evolve body plans. They did not even evolve into body parts. On the basis of Lenski's LTEE, you ask what would happen to bacteria in a million years. The answer is: we already know what happened to bacteria after hundreds of millions of years: absolutely nothing. Bacterial evolution shines no light whatsoever on how it is that a single-celled eukaryotic common ancestor evolved into trees, ants, dinosaurs, whales and humans. Which is exactly what evolution was supposed to explain in the first place! Chris Doyle

Prokaryotic cells didn't evolve into anything at all? Is that an observation? Got a citation? Where did eukaryotic cells come from then? Poof? Are you aware that prokaryotic cells, especially bacteria, are, overwhelmingly, the dominant form of life on this planet? Their variety is unparalleled, they live in every niche and environment from the top of Mt. Everest to kilometers underground, their total weight exceeds that of ALL other living organisms combined, they contain chemical factories that can eat anything from iron to you and me, and for that matter, your body contains more bacterial cells than human. ALL eukaryotic cells, including the cells that make up you and me, are afterthoughts, filling the very few environmental niches that bacteria disdane. If every eukaryotic organism on earth was to drop dead today, life would go on. If all the bacteria died today, all the eukaryotics would join them in weeks or a few months at the most. This is the Planet of the Bacteria. Lenski's E. coli are evolving into another species of bacteria because that's where the action is, not in dead ends like eukaryotes that survive when and where bacteria allow them to. And as his tiny little experiment shows, they are evolving FAST! dmullenix

dmullenix, all animals and plants are made out of eukaryotic cells. Bacteria are prokaryotic cells. Even if we assume (and that is a big, unsupported assumption by the way) that a prokaryotic cell somehow turned into a eukaryotic cell, the all-important point is this: only the descendants of the first eukaryotic cell turned into animals and plants. Prokaryotic cells did not evolve into anything at all: they have remained as prokaryotic cells for their entire history: no body plans, no body parts even. Did you not realise that? Chris Doyle

And where do you think all the non-bacterial organisms came from? They didn't poof into existence. They came from other organisms, very possibly bacteria, which found themselves in an environment where becoming more than bacteria paid off. When a new organism evolves into being, the old organisms don't automatically die. "If men evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" is a classicly unwise question. dmullenix

dmullenix, here's another way of looking at it: E. coli has several pre-existing enzymes – coded from its gene pool – that use and digest citrate, especially in the absence of oxygen. The only problem E. coli normally has is bringing citrate through its membrane in the presence of oxygen. Nonetheless, E. coli (outside of Lenski’s experiment) has been identified which can do just this thanks to an over-expressed protein. There are also plasmids which perform the same function on its behalf. We don't need to imagine what we'll see if we run the experiment for a million years, dmullenix. We already know what happened in the real world over a vastly longer period of time. Bacteria is believed to have been in existence for 3,000,000,000 years. It has the ability to asexually reproduce so quickly that populations can double in size every 10 minutes. It thrives in all environments, extreme or otherwise. It obtains genetic information from plasmids, bacteriophages, mutations and even other bacteria (no matter how distantly related they may be). There are about 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them on the planet today. With so many features to facilitate evolution, bacteria should have given rise to a multitude of species: things like flowers, fish, trees, whales, fungi, mice, canaries, dinosaurs, humans, etc. All those random mutations, all that time and all those opportunities for natural selection… yet not a single body plan or even body part to show for it! In light of these indisputable facts, dmullenix, don't you think we should look at bacteria, especially in the light of evolution, and ask "so what?" Chris Doyle

I don’t understand you. Are you saying that nothing was broken in Lenski’s experiments or that functional complexity was not achieved. Hey, here’s an idea. Instead of “breaking”, why don’t you say the DNA was “re-written”? Since the DNA was changed and the change seemed to produce a very definite improvement (as in alive instead of dead), I think “re-written” makes more sense than “broken”. And remember, this re-writing only took 20 years. Imagine what you’ll see if you run that experiment for a million years! dmullenix

dmullenix, and your depending on breaking things to explain the origination of functional complexity??? You live in sheer denial dm!!! bornagain77

BA77 at 94 “But was any functional complexity/information gained over and above what was already present dm ???” Do you consider staying alive instead of starving to death “functional”? If so, then YES!!! “It seems likely that Lenski’s mutant will turn out to be either this gene or another of the bacterium’s citrate-using genes, tweaked a bit to allow it to transport citrate in the presence of oxygen.” Thus enabling the E. coli to stay alive instead of starving. And it only took a minuscule sample of E. coli 20 years to evolve that ability. Now let’s be VERY conservative and say that E. coli has only been around for a million years. 1,000,000 / 20 = 50,000 mutations * 2 = 100,000 new base pairs. And this in a tiny sample of a bacteria that is already fully functioning and highly fit. “If Lenski’s results are about the best we’ve seen evolution do, then there’s no reason to believe evolution could produce many of the complex biological features we see in the cell.” Oops. Try again. “The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function.” Which is about what you’d expect – it’s a lot easier to break something than to build something new. But apparently new things are built, even in highly evolved, highly fit organisms. Oops. “The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases.” Did you actually read that paper? I suspect not. I found the abstract at http://www.mendeley.com/research/deletional-bias-and-the-evolution-of-bacterial-genomes/ Here’s an excerpt: “Although bacteria increase their DNA content through horizontal transfer and gene duplication, their genomes remain small and, in particular, lack nonfunctional sequences. This pattern is most readily explained by a pervasive bias towards higher numbers of deletions than insertions. When selection is not strong enough to maintain them, genes are lost in large deletions or inactivated and subsequently eroded. Gene inactivation and loss are particularly apparent in obligate parasites and symbionts, in which dramatic reductions in genome size can result not from selection to lose DNA, but from decreased selection to maintain gene functionality.” Gee, you’d almost think that Dr. Abel misread the paper and everybody else has just been copying his reference without actually reading the paper themselves. dmullenix

dm you state: ‘A wall? Lenski takes 12 flasks of E. coli, which fit into a single laboratory shaker, and lets them evolve for only 20 years and they evolve a way to eat a new food? And he saves enough samples so they can go back and find out exactly which TWO mutations made this possible? And you call this a wall?’ But was any functional complexity/information gained over and above what was already present dm ??? Multiple Mutations Needed for E. Coli – Michael Behe Excerpt: As Lenski put it, “The only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to transport citrate under oxic conditions.” (1) Other workers (cited by Lenski) in the past several decades have also identified mutant E. coli that could use citrate as a food source. In one instance the mutation wasn’t tracked down. (2) In another instance a protein coded by a gene called citT, which normally transports citrate in the absence of oxygen, was overexpressed. (3) The overexpressed protein allowed E. coli to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen. It seems likely that Lenski’s mutant will turn out to be either this gene or another of the bacterium’s citrate-using genes, tweaked a bit to allow it to transport citrate in the presence of oxygen. (He hasn’t yet tracked down the mutation.),,, If Lenski’s results are about the best we’ve seen evolution do, then there’s no reason to believe evolution could produce many of the complex biological features we see in the cell.' In fact dm, despite the severe obfuscation that neo-Darwinists obscure this issue with, there has never been an observered violation of what is termed Genetic Entropy by natural processes; Michael Behe’s Quarterly Review of Biology Paper Critiques Richard Lenski’s E. Coli Evolution Experiments – December 2010 Excerpt: After reviewing the results of Lenski’s research, Behe concludes that the observed adaptive mutations all entail either loss or modification–but not gain–of Functional Coding ElemenTs (FCTs)' ================= “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.' The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases. This paper parallels Petrov’s papers starting with (66) showing a net DNA loss with Drosophila evolution (67). Konopka (68) found strong evidence against the contention of Subba Rao et al (69, 70) that information increases with mutations. The information content of the coding regions in DNA does not tend to increase with evolution as hypothesized. Konopka also found Shannon complexity not to be a suitable indicator of evolutionary progress over a wide range of evolving genes. Konopka’s work applies Shannon theory to known functional text. Kok et al. (71) also found that information does not increase in DNA with evolution. As with Konopka, this finding is in the context of the change in mere Shannon uncertainty. The latter is a far more forgiving definition of information than that required for prescriptive information (PI) (21, 22, 33, 72). It is all the more significant that mutations do not program increased PI. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces formal function. No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.bioscience.org/2009.....6/3426.pdf http://www.us.net/life/index.htm The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency – Dr David L. Abel – November 2010 Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_L.....iency.html Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – ‘The Fitness Test’ – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248 Evolution Vs Genetic Entropy – Andy McIntosh – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028086 Dr. David Berlinski: Random Mutations – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaUEAkqhMY ================== Jessa Anderson- Fireflies (Lyric Video)? – Music Videos http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=K7WPDLNX bornagain77

dm you state: 'A wall? Lenski takes 12 flasks of E. coli, which fit into a single laboratory shaker, and lets them evolve for only 20 years and they evolve a way to eat a new food? And he saves enough samples so they can go back and find out exactly which TWO mutations made this possible? And you call this a wall?' But was any functional complexity/information gained over and above what was already present dm ??? Multiple Mutations Needed for E. Coli - Michael Behe Excerpt: As Lenski put it, “The only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to transport citrate under oxic conditions.” (1) Other workers (cited by Lenski) in the past several decades have also identified mutant E. coli that could use citrate as a food source. In one instance the mutation wasn’t tracked down. (2) In another instance a protein coded by a gene called citT, which normally transports citrate in the absence of oxygen, was overexpressed. (3) The overexpressed protein allowed E. coli to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen. It seems likely that Lenski’s mutant will turn out to be either this gene or another of the bacterium’s citrate-using genes, tweaked a bit to allow it to transport citrate in the presence of oxygen. (He hasn’t yet tracked down the mutation.),,, If Lenski’s results are about the best we've seen evolution do, then there's no reason to believe evolution could produce many of the complex biological features we see in the cell. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2008/06/multiple-mutations-needed-for-e-coli/ In fact dm, despite the severe obfuscation that neo-Darwinists obscure this issue with, there has never been an observered violation of what is termed Genetic Entropy by natural processes; Michael Behe's Quarterly Review of Biology Paper Critiques Richard Lenski's E. Coli Evolution Experiments - December 2010 Excerpt: After reviewing the results of Lenski's research, Behe concludes that the observed adaptive mutations all entail either loss or modification--but not gain--of Functional Coding ElemenTs (FCTs) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/michael_behes_quarterly_review041221.html ================= “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: Stunningly, information has been shown not to increase in the coding regions of DNA with evolution. Mutations do not produce increased information. Mira et al (65) showed that the amount of coding in DNA actually decreases with evolution of bacterial genomes, not increases. This paper parallels Petrov’s papers starting with (66) showing a net DNA loss with Drosophila evolution (67). Konopka (68) found strong evidence against the contention of Subba Rao et al (69, 70) that information increases with mutations. The information content of the coding regions in DNA does not tend to increase with evolution as hypothesized. Konopka also found Shannon complexity not to be a suitable indicator of evolutionary progress over a wide range of evolving genes. Konopka’s work applies Shannon theory to known functional text. Kok et al. (71) also found that information does not increase in DNA with evolution. As with Konopka, this finding is in the context of the change in mere Shannon uncertainty. The latter is a far more forgiving definition of information than that required for prescriptive information (PI) (21, 22, 33, 72). It is all the more significant that mutations do not program increased PI. Prescriptive information either instructs or directly produces formal function. No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.bioscience.org/2009/v14/af/3426/3426.pdf http://www.us.net/life/index.htm The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency - Dr David L. Abel - November 2010 Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Insufficiency.html Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248 Evolution Vs Genetic Entropy - Andy McIntosh - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028086 Dr. David Berlinski: Random Mutations – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGaUEAkqhMY ================== Jessa Anderson- Fireflies (Lyric Video)? - Music Videos http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=K7WPDLNX bornagain77

Only if E coli. reproduces once every 20 years. dmullenix

dm, 50,000+ e-coli generations is equivalent to 1,000,000+ years, not 2500. junkdnaforlife

Junkdnaforlife at 80: “The lenski studies + mathematics will eventually erode Darwinism. 10-20 beneficial mutations over 50,000+ generations. 12 independent populations, after millions of mutations (lenski claims every single point mutation has mutated), and we end up with is the same distribution of 10-20 beneficial mutations in each of the 12 independent populations after 50000+ generations. It looks like a wall.” A wall? Lenski takes 12 flasks of E. coli, which fit into a single laboratory shaker, and lets them evolve for only 20 years and they evolve a way to eat a new food? And he saves enough samples so they can go back and find out exactly which TWO mutations made this possible? And you call this a wall? SOME WALL! Say, if it took those 12 flasks of E. coli 20 years to find two beneficial mutations, how long do you think the E. coli in billions of human guts to find 50,000 beneficial mutations? I’d guess about 50,000/20 = 2,500 years. Why don’t you try this tactic: DEMAND to know why we don’t see cows evolving into whales every 2,500 years! Go talk to Andrew Schlafly about Lenski and his experiment. See if Schlafly’s wounds have healed yet. I’ll bet he advises you to just leave that experiment alone. Don’t even talk about it because it really bites hard when you do. dmullenix

KR at 78: What theistic evolutionists think of ID is unimportant. What is important is that “CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two” does not invalidate ID. The deeper problem is that Dr. Dembski decided that CSI can’t be produced by material means and then built his entire CSI/Explanatory Filter apparatus around that mistaken belief. This leaves ID based on a falsehood. Since Behe built his irreducible complexity apparatus on the mistaken belief that evolution can only proceed step by step and neglected to factor in co-option and scaffolding, ID finds itself high and dry philosophically and scientifically. dmullenix

Elizabeth Liddle:

There are indeed some walls in bacterial evolution (breached by HGT however).

Breached by HGT? Do you know what conjugation is? Mung

Elizabeth Liddle:

Given a highly structured search space, I submit that Darwinian search works extremely well...

Yet more improbables pile on improbables. How does adding to the improbability of it all help your case? Oh luck, we just happened to stumble on a highly structured search space. Oh look, we just happened to stumble upon an effective search algorithm fitted to the nature of the search space. Whee! Looks like design to me. Mung

Elizabeth Liddle:

CSI, by Dembski’s definition, is a pattern is vanishingly unlikely to have arisen through chance and necessity, and given that the only other inference allowable is design, then it assumes its conclusion.

A lie.

Not in the same sense as in a non-cloning population.

But you aren't equivocating, are you. You just got caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and you're excuse is there's no cookies in it because you already ate them all? Mung

kf:

Dr Liddle: Sorry, you have proposed precisely what is not available, a handy ladder to whatever configs can work, and stepping-stones from one island of function to the next.

Yes indeed, kairosfocus! And what I dispute is that such "handy ladders" are not available! That is the crux of the issue (or an important one, anyway!). Or, to put it another way - your "islands of function" are not islands at all but connected by bridges and tunnels and isthmuses (isthmi?)

Such a near arranement coems about by design.

Well, it seems quite natural from here. If a slightly longer neck gives a slight advantage, and a slightly longer neck still gives a lightly greater advantage, then those two "solutions" are next door to each other along a single dimension of search space. There may be some "irreducible" areas even those are often not as cut-off as they seem, and can be reached by way of, for example, greater complexity downwards, or indeed with the help of drift.

In the case we do have to deal with, deeply isolated needles, even if present in great number, as long as tghey do not dominate the 1 light monthsh onthe side haystack, are overwhelmingly not going to come up if you do the equivalent of pulling just one straw [or if you are lucky, needle] by chance.

Only if you are correct about the needles being deeply isolated. I don't think you are :) But that's worth discussing, I think.

the overwhelming pattern is gibberish or non functional configs.

Sure. And if each functional solution was a lonely island in a "sea of gibberish or non functional configs" then Darwinian evolution would indeed be useless. But I think this is a false premise.

You have to get to the shores of an island of function first — a function that is highly complex and specific — the challenge in hand — before the hill climbing on differential function can happen.

Sure, if the function is really a lone island in a vast sea of functionlessness. This is what I dispute (and what Darwinists dispute).

That is why GAs and the like all fail to be material, they start within islands of function and follow gradients on defined fitness functions that are not dominated by non-function.

This isn't true. They do all start with the basic function of self-replication, but that's a prerequisite for Darwinian evolution anyway. But in many cases that is all. In that clock evolution example, the vast majority of "clocks" started with no clock function at all, but a couple of percent found minimal function by random search. Once on the shores of one of those islands, the journey to clocks was pretty well guaranteed. Now, I know that your argument is based on the premise that a minimal self-replicator is itself on an island, which is a fair enough point (though not an impregnable one, in my opinion) but do you agree that once you have that minimal self-replicator, the rest of the solution space is joined up? Elizabeth Liddle

Not in the same sense as in a non-cloning population. For a mutation to "fix" in a cloning population it would mean that the lineage with the mutation, together with any other mutations in that lineage is the only lineage remaining. This is not the case in a sexually reproducing population and that makes a difference to interpretation. Elizabeth Liddle

Liz:"Mutations don’t “fix” in a bacterial population," "Lenski has estimated that only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with less than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population" junkdnaforlife

such a neat arrangement comes about by design, real butterfingers this morning kairosfocus

Dr Liddle: Sorry, you have proposed precisely what is not available, a handy ladder to whatever configs can work, and stepping-stones from one island of function to the next. Such a near arranement coems about by design. In the case we do have to deal with, deeply isolated needles, even if present in great number, as long as tghey do not dominate the 1 light monthsh onthe side haystack, are overwhelmingly not going to come up if you do the equivalent of pulling just one straw [or if you are lucky, needle] by chance. the overwhelming pattern is gibberish or non functional configs. You have to get to the shores of an island of function first -- a function that is highly complex and specific -- the challenge in hand -- before the hill climbing on differential function can happen. That is why GAs and the like all fail to be material, they start within islands of function and follow gradients on defined fitness functions that are not dominated by non-function. Begging he question consistently can blind you to what would otherwise be obvious. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

There are indeed some walls in bacterial evolution (breached by HGT however). These walls are not present in sexually reproducing populations, in which mutations can propagate independently of the rest of the genotype. So Darwinism is in no danger from Lenski, even if your interpretation were correct. But you are not correct, because you are equivocating with concepts developed for sexually-reproducing species applied to cloning populations. Mutations don't "fix" in a bacterial population, because they don't jump lineages. What you get is competition between one lineage bearing a mutation and another that doesn't, and that competition occurs within a specific environment in which "beneficial" is defined only within that environment. What Lenski has shown is a "law of diminishing returns" when bacteria adapt to a new environment. But even that is not a universal law - in one of his examples, a mutation only became beneficial when combined with another - law of increasing returns. But it is true that adaptation tends to be asymptotic along any one dimension. Fortunately there are usually lots. Elizabeth Liddle

The lenski studies + mathematics will eventually erode Darwinism. 10-20 beneficial mutations over 50,000+ generations. 12 independent populations, after millions of mutations (lenski claims every single point mutation has mutated), and we end up with is the same distribution of 10-20 beneficial mutations in each of the 12 independent populations after 50000+ generations. It looks like a wall. If say, one population had fixed 200 beneficial mutations, and another only 5, then there is more wiggle room for hand waving. Instead it appears a very evenly distributed mut+sel rate for beneficial mutations to fix in a population. No Darwinian magic. Mut+sel appears to be a slow and predictable engine, not the robust creative force that can power a possible 50,000 modifications (Berlinski's guess) to evolve a cow into a whale. Something is missing. The watch guy's model looks more analogous to Yorkshire terrier breeding. junkdnaforlife

kf

The reason why CSI would be vanishingly unlikely to emerge by forces and processes of blind chance and mechanical necessity have been explained to you repeatedly.

And I have tried, repeatedly, to explain why the argument does not work :) Communication is tough, eh :)

If you take the equivalent of a one-straw sample from a cubical hay bale a light month across, at random or by a combination of random walk and trial and error success leading to improved solutions once a first success has been found, the problem is that you are not credibly going to get to needle instead of hay in the stack.

Well, I disagree. Obviously you won't get there by choosing straws at random. By definition, in fact - if something has CSI it can't be reached in the time and space of the universe by choosing straws at random. The same is not true of other non-design search strategies. Let's take a toy model - the clock evolution model I linked to in another thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0 Here, the search space is finite and large (every possible genome) and the solution space also large, but much smaller magnitude smaller than the search space (the author says that a random sampling of the search space generates 2% hits in solution space). Yet the algorithm finds a member of the solution space reliably every time, and does not waste probabilistic resources (in this case, iterations) randomly sampling the entire space. If it did, it would probably still be running. And the reason it can do so is not simply that Darwinian algorithms work (they do) but that the reason they work is that the search space itself is structured. By that, I mean that the tiny subset of the search space that comprises solutions are adjacent to each other, and the crudest solutions are nearest the edge. So you just need to find one edge of the solution space by random search, and you are aboard. Clearly living things occupy a much larger search space. But, equally the solution space is also much larger, and similarly structured. In fact, much more highly structured because it is a high-dimensioned space. Now, while I accept that you do not think the above is plausible (that "if you think mere objection or imagination of a wonderful path to complexity that starts from just about anywhere and proceeds by nice easy steps up Mt Improbable, suffices to overwhelm a search challenge like this, we are entitled to draw our own conclusions") the objections I am hearing to my position are all based on the assumption that evolution is a random search of unstructured search space, not a Darwinian search of highly structured search space. Given a highly structured search space, I submit that Darwinian search works extremely well, which is why clocks reliable evolve in that toy model. So the question, I suggest, that ID proponents need to address is: is the search space explored by evolutionary processes in the living world highly structured or not? If not, sure, Darwinian mechanisms won't work. If it is, then it will. And I submit that it is. Elizabeth Liddle

Re DM: If it were empirically shown that CSI is not a reliable sign that points to design as more or less direct causal factor, then the design theory project would collapse. And, theistic evolutionists, at least many prominent and vociferous ones, are NOT supporters of the design inference on CSI etc as reliable sign. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Dr Liddle: The reason why CSI would be vanishingly unlikely to emerge by forces and processes of blind chance and mechanical necessity have been explained to you repeatedly. If you take the equivalent of a one-straw sample from a cubical hay bale a light month across, at random or by a combination of random walk and trial and error success leading to improved solutions once a first success has been found, the problem is that you are not credibly going to get to needle instead of hay in the stack. And that is the ratio of the ptqs resources of our solar system tot he space of configs of just 500 bits or 72 ASCII characters. so, if I see 73 or more characters worth of functionally specific info UNrepresentative of the set of all possibilities -- mostly gibberish -- i have excellent reason to infer design on seeing this sign. For more detail cf here. You are free to hold your own views, but if you think mere objection or imagination of a wonderful path to complexity that starts from just about anywhere and proceeds by nice easy steps up Mt Improbable, suffices to overwhelm a search challenge like this, we are entitled to draw our own conclusions. One of these is that a one straw size sample from a one light month size haystack, is not going to be at all likely to pick up anything but hay. And that sample is the whole solar system racing away at a state per Planck time for 5 - 20 BY. For just 500 bits, the evidence on life forms is that 100,000 bits is more like the threshold for a living cell. The evidence for design as key causal process for life forms, from the first body plan to our own, is overwhelming. Save, if one has swallowed materialistic a priorism as a censoring constraint; often under the disguise that science may only infer to "natural causes" where the contrast made is to the despised "supernatural" -- but where the real issue [since PLATO] is nature vs art on empirically tested reliable signs. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Barry writes:

A friend writes and asks how ID comports with the “scientific method.” I respond: As for the scientific method, I am all for it:

But what follows is not an example of the scientific method!

Question to be Investigated: What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?

Problem starts here: CSI, by Dembski's definition, is a pattern is vanishingly unlikely to have arisen through chance and necessity, and given that the only other inference allowable is design, then it assumes its conclusion. So to procede you need a better definition of CSI.

Hypothesis: CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two.

That is not a hypothesis. It is a premise. Not only that, it is a circular premise, because if CSI is observed in living things, then you can equally well note that it has frequently been observed to arise without the aid of any observable designer.

Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents.

Again, a premise, not a hypothesis. This one happens to be true.

Moreover, intelligent agents leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned.

Again, not a hypothesis, and not even clear as a statement - what "indicia"?

Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of intelligent agent.”

Again, not a hypothesis. It seems you are attempting a syllogism not a hypothesis.

The intelligent design project is, essentially, the scientific investigation of this hypothesis.

And it is because it is not a hypothesis that it is not a scientific investigation. It may be a philosophical investigation, in which case the first state will be to verify your premises. The don't look very good to me :)

Interestingly, Darwinists make mutually exclusive attacks on the hypothesis. Some claim the hypothesis is not scientific because it cannot be, even in principle, falsified. Others claim the hypothesis fails because it has been falsified. Surely you will agree that it cannot be both.

My view is that as you have stated it, it isn't even a hypothesis. The criticism launched at ID hypotheses tend to depend on how they are stated. Some have been falsified. Others cannot be. A few can be falsified and haven't been. I'd like to see more of those :)

The answer is that the hypothesis is, in principle, falsifiable.

Not this one because it isn't a hypothesis!

All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.

So let me help: Hypothesis: That a certain class of pattern, exhibiting both complexity (large number of bits required to notate) and specification (one of a small subset of the possible number of comparable sequences that are fairly compressible/specify some function) are extremely unlikely to arise through from regular physical-chemical processes combined with stochastic events. That's falsifiable. I'd argue it has been falsified.

I have to add that typical Darwinist circular reasoning and “just so stories” will not do the trick. That is to say, reasoning of the following sort fails to impress: CSI arose though the combination of chance and mechanical necessity.

Well,that wouldn't be an argument. It would just be a counter-assertion.

How do you know this? Well, we inferred it from the data. And on what was your inference based? It was based on our a priori commitment to explanations based solely on chance and mechanical necessity through which all interpretations of the data must be filtered.

No, the falsifier is the demonstration that given a minimal self-replicator that replicates with variance in the ability to replicate in a given environment, highly complex and specified sequences can emerge. Which is why GAs are used to design things. The counter-rebuttal to this has to take the form of demonstrating that GAs don't produce CSI (by a non-circular definition) or, that only do so by virtue of being Designed. Simply pointing out that the fitness function is designed doesn't work, because the fitness function is simply a simulation of a natural environment. Pointing out that the initial population of self-replicators are designed doesn't work because nobody is claiming that Darwinian mechanisms account for the origins of Darwinian-capable organisms. This means that the remaining valid argument (on your side) is that the minimum Darwinian-capable entity has too much CSI to have arisen by chance. Which is a different question. and an interesting one :) If you want to do science, that's the one I'd tackle, if I were you. Kf is on it. I think he's wrong, but he's on it, at least :) Elizabeth Liddle

Barry Arrington: You said in the OP, “All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.” I said in 45: “No it wouldn’t. ID could still be in operation in addition to evolution. That’s basic theistic evolution: God set up the world to generate species mostly through evolution, but He adds a little design when it suites His purposes.” Do you agree with me that finding that CSI arises from mutation and natural selection would not blow ID out of the water because if Theistic Evolution is true then this is exactly what we would expect and TE incorporates a Designer. dmullenix

Mung at 72: “non-workable” information in this case would be “bad” mutations – mutations that stop the DNA from doing what it used to do. Yes, information can be meaningless. Random noise is information, it’s just not information that means anything. You could assign a meaning to a chunk of random noise, however. For instance, you could easily set up an electronic circuit to make this sequence “0110100101” turn on a light or even trigger a bomb. “Give us just one standard according to which this is a gain in information.” The standard Dr. Dembski sets out at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm Scan down to the paragraph that contains “But consider now a different example”. Bob and Alice flip a coin 5 times. That’s a pure random number. No meaning is ever assigned to it. Bob misses the first toss, Alice doesn’t see the fifth toss. But they combine their observations to obtain all 5 bits of information. Dembski never assigns a meaning to the five bits, but he spends several paragraphs and some math showing how to combine the information in the two observations to recover all five of the original bits. I’d hate to think you’re one of those Dembski Deniers who think information has to have a meaning assigned to it to be information. Message B in my example is message A with the last character mutated. We know that Apo-AI is the original protein because everybody in the world has it except for members of one family in Milan who never get heart attacks or strokes. Upright BiPed at 73 I’m not sure what you mean. Could you explain a little more clearly? dmullenix

DM You simply assume the representations that make the entire system possible. It's good that you can speak with such certainty having that minor assumption in hand. Upright BiPed

dmullenix:

Information can be generated by chance mutations and natural selection weeds out the non-workable information and leaves the useful information – CSI.

Non-workable information? Do you mean nonsense? I'd hate to think you're one of those people that think information can be meaningless.

That one base change has given us a brand new protein, one almost identical to its predecessor, but which works much better. That’s a gain in information by any standards.

By any standards? Give us just one standard according to which this is a gain in information. And how do you know which one is the predecessor?

Apo-AIM is exactly like Apo-AI except that one base has mutated.

Why do you say one of them is a brand new protein?

The last character of message B has changed.

No it hasn't. Message B is message B. It's just different from message A. Nothing about message B has changed.

That changes the information in B.

There is no change to B, therefore there is no change to the "information in B."

That can also change the meaning of message B.

Nothing about B was changed. So there was no change in the meaning of message B. Mung

Joseph at 48: Me: A: CATGCATGCATG and you change it to B: CATGCATGCATT you haven’t generated new information? Joseph: “What information? I am an information technologist and no one in my industry would confuse what you posted for information.” DM: Assume they’re both ASCII text messages. If you send message A, can you send message B by saying “Copy message A”? No, because they are different. The last character of message B has changed. That changes the information in B. That can also change the meaning of message B. Dembski explains how to calculate the total information in the two messages at http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm . He says that “the information in both A and B jointly is the information in A plus the information in B that is not in A”, so the total information in the two messages is CATGCATGCATGT, a gain of one character. I mentioned Apolipoprotein AI (Apo-AI) and Apolipoprotein AIM (Apo-AIM). Apolipoprotein is the main ingredient in High Density Lipoprotein or HDL. HDL is the “good” cholesterol because it cleans the arteries. Apo-AIM is exactly like Apo-AI except that one base has mutated. Apo-AIM is much better at removing cholesterol from arteries than Apo-AI and protects against heart disease and stroke. People lucky enough to have it live longer than the rest of us. That one base change has given us a brand new protein, one almost identical to its predecessor, but which works much better. That’s a gain in information by any standards. Information can be generated by chance mutations and natural selection weeds out the non-workable information and leaves the useful information - CSI. dmullenix

You really love your schoolyard ‘manners’, don’t you?

I do think it's more honest than trying to cloak bad manners in a guise of civility. Mung

"When you wind that back to the first living entity you don’t find a paradox, you find a straightforward logioal contradiction." Correct but...one that expresses a possible truth.” This is paradox: No plausible scenario exists for the production of CSI and IC by a non-living entity. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. The laws of nature are not living entities The laws of nature producing CSI and IC is not a plausible scenario. -- This is incoherent: A married bachelor. junkdnaforlife

FG: Pardon a short intervention and a link. Your problem is in your misunderstanding of cause and even of life. Cf the discussion here, with the particular issue highlighted by Plato at point 25. (This also comes up in the Designer thread where you made some similarish remarks.) GEM of TKI kairosfocus

Look, unless you allow for the possibility of non-living intelligent agents, Barry's argument very clearly and unambiguously equals to saying that only living entities can create living entities. When you wind that back to the first living entity you don't find a paradox, you find a straightforward logioal contradiction. The solution is not to play with words and pretend that calling a logical contradiction a paradox is going to make the problem go away. The solution is to not make the argument in the form presented by Barry. Specifically, not to make the argument in the absolute and universal sense but only make it for local and specific cases. The consequence of that, though, is that the argument cannot be used as a categorical denial of the possibility that Life originated from a previous non-living entity. And if one disallows non-living intelligence, therefore the origin of Life could potentially include a non-living non-intelligent entity. Which rather limits its use in the debate against Darwinism, I guess. fG faded_Glory

fg, i wouldn't say (as it stands now), that it is incoherent as much as it is a paradox. "1)a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth." -- No plausible scenario exists for the production of CSI and IC by a non-living entity. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. The laws of nature are not living entities The laws of nature producing CSI and IC is not a plausible scenario. junkdnaforlife

Mung: You really love your schoolyard 'manners', don't you? Anyway, let's look at your objections: 1. CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities. Your response: "While true, it doesn’t do justice to Barry’s claim. Chance + Necessity would include living things. Evolution. Requires biological life." So you agree my premise 1 is true. Good, I thought you would. It doesn't matter if it does justice to Barry's claim, because what I am doing here is using Barry's exact same reasoning on a somewhat different set of premises, yet premises that I think most ID-ers will agree with. This one you agree with. Fine. 2. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. Your response: "Intelligent agents, not living entities. So unless you’re going to argue that all living entities are intelligent agents and all living entities are routinely observed to produce CSI and IC." When I say: CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities - you dispute this? You say it is not true that CSI and IC are routinely observed to be produced by living entities? Does that mean that there are cases where CSI and IC are being prodced by non-living entities? I'm surprised you take that position, because it is one that virtually all ID proponents contest. If you want to build a third argument using 'íntelligent agents' instead of 'living entities', feel free, but that does not invalidate mine. My point still stands, whether you think it is stupid or not: the argument fails because it leads to a logical absurdity. It is therefore wrong. The problem could be in the premises, or in the reasoning, or in both. Personally I think the problem lies in both. Premise 1 assumes the conclusion, and the reasoning excludes the possibility that there are other sources of life then pre-existing life. I think Barry's argument fails for the same reasons. While it may be true for some instances, it is not universally true - indeed it cannot be universally true, and therefore as a scientific hypothesis it is simply incorrectly formulated. fG faded_Glory

f_g:

So now I am stupid?

How you turned my statement that you can't be that stupid into an assertion that you are stupid is beyond me. But you're doing a good job of settling the question one way or the other. Barry:

CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two.

You:

CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities.

While true, it doesn't do justice to Barry's claim. Chance + Necessity would include living things. Evolution. Requires biological life. Barry's argument lacks the mutually exclusive that you're trying to smuggle in. Barry: CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents. You:

Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities.

Intelligent agents, not living entities. So unless you're going to argue that all living entities are intelligent agents and all living entities are routinely observed to produce CSI and IC. I suppose I could have been wrong about you. Let's see how long you hang on to your absurd and STUPID argument. Mung

Here's another way of explaining why it's not absurd. I must exist to create something that exists. You could rephrase that as, "Only existence can create existence," and then it sounds funny, as if existence is creating itself. But I'm not creating "existence." I'm just creating something that exists. Likewise, rather than saying that only life can design life, I would say that only something alive can design something alive. (I don't offer that as an absolute statement. That's not the point.) ScottAndrews

fg, It's logically incomprehensible. (For me, at least.) But it's not absurd because any explanation for our existence or anything's faces the same challenge. Everything that exists requires a cause that also existed. Including or excluding intelligence makes no difference. We could use that logic to refute any explanation of anything. Why did the house catch fire? Where did the match come from? Where did the tree come from? Where did the earth come from, etc. I don't understand it. But I understand that matches start fires. ScottAndrews

Let's back up for a moment. Using my version of Barry's argument with assumptions that I think most ID-ers would agree with, leads to the conclusion that whatever designed first life was already alive. You don't think this is a logical absurdity? fG faded_Glory

fg, My version of Barry’s argument fails at the Origin of Life because we can’t allow for a living entity before then to design Life without being hopelessly incoherent. Do you agree on that? No, that's where the hangup is. It does not follow that for someone to design a life, that they must also design their own life. It's not incoherent. ScottAndrews

Ok let me try to clarify. My version of Barry's argument fails at the Origin of Life because we can't allow for a living entity before then to design Life without being hopelessly incoherent. Do you agree on that? Your suggestion to get round this, if I understand you correctly, is not to disagree with my assumptions, nor with the logical reasoning in the argument (which is exactly the same as Barry's), but to suggest that perhaps there are different kinds of life, i.e. maybe there was a somewhat different living entity already in existence at the origin of Life that could create the living things in the sense Barry uses the term (i.e. with lots of CSI and IC). Ok? If this is so, this particular living entity could not itself have lots of CSI and IC, ok? Otherwise we would be straight back into the logical incoherence. So basically you say: perhaps right at the beginning of Life there was a very simpe life form, one without lots of CSI and IC, that created the more complicated life forms as we know them, the ones wih lots of CSI and IC (as per Barry's argument). Ok? Congratulations - you've just described evolution in its earliest stages. fG faded_Glory

fg, Sorry, you lost me. You have returned the favor. ScottAndrews

Scott: Your assumption is that the life that was designed is the the same as the life that designed it. Can’t one life design another? ------------ Sorry, you lost me. What kind of life do you refer to (the kind doing the designing) that doesn't contain the CSI and IC Barry observes even in the simplest of living things? fG faded_Glory

fg, Here's where your logic is flawed. Is ID agnostic about the orgin of life? Or does it claim that the origin of life is Intelligent Design? And then it follows that the designer is alive, so how did anyone design their own life? Your assumption is that the life that was designed is the the same as the life that designed it. Can't one life design another? The problem goes away with the assumption. Please don't ask who designed the designer unless you can explain reality without confronting infinite regression. ScottAndrews

Scott Andrews: What commonality are you assuming between the the designer(s) and the designed? ------ Nothing. I am not in the game of making assumptions about the designer. I am just using Barry's line of reasoning, changing the asumptions in a way I thought no ID proponent could disagree with. But if I'm wrong, please correct me. Which of the premises in my version of the argument do you disagree with? Thanks. fG faded_Glory

So now I am stupid? For highlighting that there is a problem with either the assumptions or the reasoning in the paragraph I quoted? Is ID agnostic about the orgin of life? Or does it claim that the origin of life is Intelligent Design? If the latter, then what is wrong with my version of Barry's argument? Let's look a it again: 1. CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities. Do you agree or not? 2. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. Do you agree or not? 3. Moreover, living entities leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned. Do you agree or not? 4. Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of a living entity.” Do you think this is sound reasoning or not? Something has to be wrong here because this line of thinking leads to a logical absurdity: that the origin of life was alive itself. fG faded_Glory

Ergo, Life was designed by a living entity. Whoops

fg, you can't be that stupid. Mung

dmullenix:

99% of the scientific world says that evolution generates CSI through mutation (which generates information) and natural selection (which weeds out the useless information). Do you disagree with this?

I absolutely disagree. 98% of the scientific world probably doesn't even know what CSI is. Mung

Faded Glory, are you suggesting that Craig Ventor is not a living entity? Does his mother know? Barry Arrington

Faded Glory, Ergo, Life was designed by a living entity. Whoops… Why is that a "whoops?" What commonality are you assuming between the the designer(s) and the designed? ScottAndrews

But anyway ID does say that not all mutations are genetic accidents, meaning some, most and maybe all are directed and the designer need not be there, just as a programmer doesn't have to be present to run a program nor to do any auto spell checking. Read "Not By Chance" by Dr Lee Spetner. Joseph

dmullenix:

So the scientific world has it all wrong?

All we have is your bald assertion about it. dmullenix:

CATGCATGCATG and you change it to CATGCATGCATT you haven’t generated new information?

What information? dmullenix:

That would be big news to science and to the information industry.

I am an information technologist and no one in my industry would confuse what you posted for information. But anyway YOU said something about CSI. Now you are mething called "new" information. Can you please keep your "argument" straight? Please focus on your original argument and stop back-peddling. Joseph

So the scientific world has it all wrong? Are you saying that if you have CATGCATGCATG and you change it to CATGCATGCATT you haven't generated new information? That would be big news to science and to the information industry. Are you saying that when the DNA that generates the protein Apolipoprotein AI mutated to produce a variant called Apolipoprotein AIM which makes its possessor almost immune to heart attacks, that changed DNA didn't contain new information? Or are you saying that a Designer did the mutation? If so, what is your evidence for that? dmullenix

dmullenix:

99% of the scientific world says that evolution generates CSI through mutation (which generates information) and natural selection (which weeds out the useless information).

Except there isn't any evidence for that. So that would be a problem. (and mutation does not generate information) Ya see every time we have observed CSI and knew the cause it has always been via agency involvement- always, 100% of the time. Joseph

Barry: "All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water." No it wouldn't. ID could still be in operation in addition to evolution. That's basic theistic evolution: God set up the world to generate species mostly through evolution, but He adds a little design when it suites His purposes. Or in other words, God can make a cake by mixing flour, eggs, sugar, water, and the other ingredients together in a bowl and bake it in an oven. He doesn't have to manufacture every molecule from scratch and place it in its final position by hand. 99% of the scientific world says that evolution generates CSI through mutation (which generates information) and natural selection (which weeds out the useless information). Do you disagree with this? If intelligent design is the investigation of the generation of the CSI found in living organisms by an intelligent agent, could you give us some examples of people who are investigating this and some of their experiments? All the intelligent design research I've ever heard about, both theoretical and experimental, just tries to falsify evolution. If I was an alien and I saw Mount Rushmore, I would say it was designed because it looks like four human faces, which would be massivly improbable through chance alone, but rock doesn't reproduce so evolution couldn't have generated it. dmullenix

“a false negative is possible initially without any prior knowledge of the designer” you left out "or geology." I'm assuming the same physics. A thorough examination of earths geology is all that alien should need to infer design as argument to best explanation for mt. rushmore, cave drawings or a washing machine in the woods. junkdnaforlife

Well, Dr. Bot, perhaps we should have our aliens come across an abandoned washing machine in the woods. Could they infer design? Remember, they just landed a spacecraft. avocationist

As for landing on another planet and seeing formations that may or may not be design, a false negative is possible initially without any prior knowledge of the alien race or geology of the planet. But after a thorough inspection of the geology of the planet and a little club hopping with the alien chicks, correctly inferring design as argument to best explanation for a particular feature would be commonplace. Just as after acquiring a reasonable understanding of Earths geology and a weekend bender in vegas would permit the alien to confidently infer design on this planet. Just as after the acquiring of a thorough understanding of chemistry and physics on planet earth has led many to infer design as argument to best explanation for the OOL phenomenon.

All these examples except the last require a direct observation of the designers in order to eliminate false positives. ID says nothing about the designer and doesn't require any knowledge of the designer in order to reliably infer design - or so we are told. Let me paraphrase you - "a false negative is possible initially without any prior knowledge of the designer" DrBot

Actually, I think people go a little too far in assuming that an alien life form, one capable of building and piloting spacecraft, would have so little biological resemblance to earthly life forms as to find them unrecognizable. avocationist

David: "I was recently driving through the black hills, and I was struct by a formation that looked amazingly like the Mt. Rushmore carvings." It is not the resemblance that is important, it is whether or not it can be produced by means of chance and necessity. This is similar to the cloud formation fallacy. Clouds can look like dragons and cats. And no one argues that these formations can be attributed to chance and necessity. But if you looked up and saw, "Marry me Theresa," written in cloud or smoke, you would infer an intelligent agent was the cause. As for landing on another planet and seeing formations that may or may not be design, a false negative is possible initially without any prior knowledge of the alien race or geology of the planet. But after a thorough inspection of the geology of the planet and a little club hopping with the alien chicks, correctly inferring design as argument to best explanation for a particular feature would be commonplace. Just as after acquiring a reasonable understanding of Earths geology and a weekend bender in vegas would permit the alien to confidently infer design on this planet. Just as after the acquiring of a thorough understanding of chemistry and physics on planet earth has led many to infer design as argument to best explanation for the OOL phenomenon. Back in the day, Darwin was exactly that earthling studying the formations on an alien planet: The cell. But Darwin didn't recognize much, so he shrugged his shoulders, got in his spaceship and flew away. Nothing to see here. A century later however, another team flew to the same planet, to the same spot Darwin examined, and put a microscope against the same formations and discovered the novel war and peace etched into the crust. junkdnaforlife

Hypothesis: CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents. Moreover, intelligent agents leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned. Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of intelligent agent.” ------------ Equally: Hypothesis: CSI and IC have never been directly observed to have arisen from non-living entities. Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by living entities. Moreover, living entities leave behind indicia of their acts that can be objectively discerned. Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of a living entity.” Ergo, Life was designed by a living entity. Whoops... fG faded_Glory

We simply DO NOT KNOW whether there is “reason” to find alien portraits, because we lack any basis for comparison. If we’ve seen any aliens, we haven’t recognized them as such. No, we don't know. DrBot seemed to find fault with that uncertainty. I don't. Admitting limitations to what we know or think we know is good. (And it's not the same thing as declaring something "unknowable.") ScottAndrews

Are you saying you have a problem with not inferring design when there is no reason to?

I think the crux of the issue is the "reason" in your question. We simply DO NOT KNOW whether there is "reason" to find alien portraits, because we lack any basis for comparison. If we've seen any aliens, we haven't recognized them as such. The only conclusions that are not tentative, are those we assume a priori. Tentative conclusions are always subject to change at any time. A priori conclusions are the Rock of Ages. So the question becomes, would we rather be absolutely certain, or would we rather be probably correct, but not completely, most of the time, depending, when the processes leading to either condition are mutually exclusive? I would love to be sure I'm right. I've achieved that condition many times in my life, and it's very pleasant. Of course, I've been wrong each time, and that's a bummer, but I would STILL prefer to be sure I'm right. David W. Gibson

I wish I could reproduce photographs on this site. But I was recently driving through the black hills, and I was struct by a formation that looked amazingly like the Mt. Rushmore carvings. Granted, I couldn't find any human faces, but there was definitely a pattern to the rocks, and the overall presentation looked amazingly similar. If I were an alien, and totally unfamiliar with human faces, I probably would not consider either of them to be artificially carved, and equally improbable. I took a high resolution picture of that formation, and blew it up to 16x20 to hang on my wall. Nature can do amazing things. Or maybe it WAS carved by an alien? David W. Gibson

DrBot, I have news for you all, the earth is littered with the portraits of aliens carved into rock, unfortunately because we have never seen the aliens first hand we keep mistaking them for natural formations and concocting naturalistic (or as KF would say the evolutionary materialist) just so stories to explain their presence. Are you saying you have a problem with not inferring design when there is no reason to? Why would that be bad? You reject design when it's a valid conclusion but expect it to be found when there's no basis for seeing it. It sounds like you're going to find fault no matter what. ScottAndrews

Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “act of intelligent agent.”

Actually, the above has a hidden bias - the assumption of a singular act by a singular agent. A more accurate version would read; "Therefore, using abductive reasoning, the best explanation for CSI and IC is “one or more acts by one more intelligent agents (in competition and/or cooperation)" rhampton7

Here we demonstrate how [fill in the blank] ... evolved by a stepwise Darwinian process. They always forgot to mention step two in their rigorous, thoroughly scientific analysis. Darwinists believe in miracles. They just won't admit it. GilDodgen

Elizabeth, You have a copy of Signature in the Cell, and last I heard you were reading it and had reached at least as far as Chapter 8. So why are you bugging Barry? SitC isn't about the origin of life?

On another thread there is an ongoing discussion on how to define “information” in such a way that its presence can be unambiguously determined in the produces of Chance and Necessity.

My my how differently things can look to two different people. We're not trying to define information. Information is what it is, or to put it another way, information is as information does. Elizabeth rather rashly claimed (months ago now) that Chance + Necessity sans Intelligence could generate Information. And she proposed to demonstrate this to be the case and to thereby demonstrate that a central claim of ID is false. Since then, it's been a constant struggle to get her to proceed with her falsification of ID. Her current excuse for not continuing is that she has not been able to "operationalize" the concept of information. IOW, she has no clue how to demonstrate Information. (Perhaps she should have been more circumspect.) So now it's all about what is required to show that information is present. And so when she talks about trying to "define" information, what she means is she hasn't been able to come up with an "operational definition" which would allow her to say that her proposed simulation has generated information. CSI is completely irrelevant to this exercise. The question is not, what is information. The question is, how do we know when we've found it? What should we look for? Elizabeth doesn't like the answers because she can't conceive of a way to program them into her sim. But it is not the case that the things we should look for have not been given to her. They have. Repeatedly. ad nauseam.

For quite good reasons, I think, we have eschewed CSI.

lawl. If you have "good reasons" other than "CSI is irrelevant to your claim," name them. If you can't generate Information do you think you can generate CSI? It is Dembski who has claimed that Chance + Necessity cannot generate CSI. Surely there's already a refutation out there! Surely! And if Chance + Necessity can generate CSI, doesn't it follow that Chance + Necessity can generate plain old Information? Mung

There is a finite number of counting operations that could have been performed since the beginning of time. Mung

Wouldn't/ couldn't it also be akin to archaeology and forensic science- RE Intelligent Design? That is when agencies act they tend to leave behind traces of their involvement. In Barry's OP IC and CSI would be such traces based on our knowledge of cause and effect relationships. Therefor to refute the design inference all one would need to do is demonstrate IC and CSI can indeed be produced by necessity and chance*. *Dr Behe:

In fact, my argument for intelligent design is open to direct experimental rebuttal. Here is a thought experiment that makes the point clear. In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I claimed that the bacterial flagellum was irreducibly complex and so required deliberate intelligent design. The flip side of this claim is that the flagellum can’t be produced by natural selection acting on random mutation, or any other unintelligent process. To falsify such a claim, a scientist could go into the laboratory, place a bacterial species lacking a flagellum under some selective pressure (for mobility, say), grow it for ten thousand generations, and see if a flagellum--or any equally complex system--was produced. If that happened, my claims would be neatly disproven.(1) How about Professor Coyne’s concern that, if one system were shown to be the result of natural selection, proponents of ID could just claim that some other system was designed? I think the objection has little force. If natural selection were shown to be capable of producing a system of a certain degree of complexity, then the assumption would be that it could produce any other system of an equal or lesser degree of complexity. If Coyne demonstrated that the flagellum (which requires approximately forty gene products) could be produced by selection, I would be rather foolish to then assert that the blood clotting system (which consists of about twenty proteins) required intelligent design.

Joseph

They mostly look like rocks...mostly material.infantacy

RK, the design comes from the artificial constraint. That can be accomplishred by the hand, or the machine. Upright BiPed

I don't think if "mechanical necessity" were proven it would invalidate ID. Behe, e.g., says that life could have originated via purely natural means without recourse to agent intervention. As do other ID spokespersons, who at remain publicly agnostic on the issue of agent intervention. Think of a signature-writing machine. Once set up, it writes signatures entirely via "mechanical necessity". So, is the signature a result of intelligent design, or not? RkBall

Hey Tragic (20) Ya got me :) fair and square. Of course, I could just say that my "1-2-3" was simply a demonstration of counting, and was never meant to be comprehensive. I could further the scam by humbling myself to say "I am sorry" for leading you to believe otherwise. :) I like that one. I picked it up from our recent opponents. Upright BiPed

Barry:

All it would take is even one instance of CSI or IC being observed to arise through chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. Such an observation would blow the ID project out of the water.

# On another thread there is an ongoing discussion on how to define "information" in such a way that its presence can be unambiguously determined in the produces of Chance and Necessity. For quite good reasons, I think, we have eschewed CSI. But as you have laid out the challenge in CSI terms, can you say how you would apply the calculation to the product of a simulation of OOL? Elizabeth Liddle

As to Joseph Thorton. Dr. Behe had an exchange with him in 2009; Excerpt: listen to Professor Thornton (1): “To restore the ancestral conformation by reversing group X, the restrictive effect of the substitutions in group W must first be reversed, as must group Y. Reversal to w and y in the absence of x, however, does nothing to enhance the ancestral function; in most contexts, reversing these mutations substantially impairs both the ancestral and derived functions. Furthermore, the permissive effect of reversing four of the mutations in group W requires pairs of substitutions at interacting sites. Selection for the ancestral function would therefore not be sufficient to drive AncGR2 back to the ancestral states of w and x, because passage through deleterious and/or neutral intermediates would be required; the probability of each required substitution would be low, and the probability of all in combination would be virtually zero.” Behe: 'Let’s quote that last sentence again, with emphasis: “Selection for the ancestral function would therefore not be sufficient … because passage through deleterious and/or neutral intermediates would be required; the probability of each required substitution would be low, and the probability of all in combination would be virtually zero.” If Thornton himself discounts the power of genetic drift when it suits him, why shouldn’t I?' http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2009/10/response-to-carl-zimmer-and-joseph-thornton-part-3/ Entire exchange can be accessed here: http://telicthoughts.com/is-behe-right-about-thornton/ further notes: Nature Paper,, Finds Darwinian Processes Lacking - Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: Now, thanks to the work of Bridgham et al (2009), even such apparently minor switches in structure and function (of a protein to its supposed ancestral form) are shown to be quite problematic. It seems Darwinian processes can’t manage to do even as much as I had thought. (which was 1 in 10^40 for just 2 binding sites) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/nature_paper_finally_reaches_t.html bornagain77

The fourth dude is Teddy Roosevelt. He is special because he was the first progressive president. tragic mishap

ET: Kindly take a look here, and note the track record since April. Notice in particular the biological values. The MG talking point has passed sell-by date months ago; just, the radical evo mat forums have failed to notice. GEM of TKI kairosfocus

I have a question for you then. If you were to land on an alien planet and encounter a structure that, to you, looked designed would you assume it was a representation of the aliens on that planet, without seeing them first?

...

Does Ms. Tanner really believe that someone can look at Mount Rushmore and conclude “obvious design” and that someone else just as reasonably might think, “Oh, not so fast. That could have evolved through eons of rain and wind.” Rubbish.

I have news for you all, the earth is littered with the portraits of aliens carved into rock, unfortunately because we have never seen the aliens first hand we keep mistaking them for natural formations and concocting naturalistic (or as KF would say the evolutionary materialist) just so stories to explain their presence. ;) If only we hadn't been brain washed by the evo mat conspiracy imposed by the priests of the darwinistic majesterium we would be able to see in what direction the warrant to the best explanation lies. Of course, I can't tell you what they look like, but I know them when I see them ;) DrBot

Uh UP, there are four heads on Mt. Rushmore. -_- tragic mishap

By the way ElsieTanner, before you move the goalposts again, what exactly is your claim wrt CSI? Are you saying CSI cannot ever be calculated, period? And who cares if Chance + Necessity might in some alternative universe might be able to generate CSI. The point is that in this one it's a reliable indicator of design. And that remains true until someone comes along and demonstrates otherwise. That's the way science works. See the OP. Mung

Barry correct. And by the way, that paper has made the rounds here before. After all, they used "state-of'the art" statistical analysis to "ressurrect" and understand the binding activity of ancient organics compounds. Cool huh? - - - - - - - - - - - - - Gpuccio in 2006: I have found, I think, the abstract of the first paper (but I remember I read the full paper, so I will go on looking for it). It should be the following: Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation Jamie T. Bridgham, Sean M. Carroll, Joseph W. Thornton* Abstract: According to Darwinian theory, complexity evolves by a stepwise process of elaboration and optimization under natural selection. Biological systems composed of tightly integrated parts seem to challenge this view, because it is not obvious how any element’s function can be selected for unless the partners with which it interacts are already present. Here we demonstrate how an integrated molecular system—the specific functional interaction between the steroid hormone aldosterone and its partner the mineralocorticoid receptor—evolved by a stepwise Darwinian process. Using ancestral gene resurrection, we show that, long before the hormone evolved, the receptor’s affinity for aldosterone was present as a structural by-product of its partnership with chemically similar, more ancient ligands. Introducing two amino acid changes into the ancestral sequence recapitulates the evolution of present-day receptor specificity. Our results indicate that tight interactions can evolve by molecular exploitation—recruitment of an older molecule, previously constrained for a different role, into a new functional complex. Just to start the discussion, and without entering in detail about the procedure of “using ancestral gene resurrection” and its possible biases, I just ask you: do you really think that an artificial lab work which modifies just two aminoacids, simply altering the affinity of a receptor for very similar ligands, is evidence of anything? What is it showing? That very similar interactions can be slightly modified in what is essentially the same molecule by small modifications? Who has ever denied that? I am sorry, but I must say that Behe is perfectly right here. When we ask for a path, we are asking for a path, not a single (or double) jump from here to almost here. I will be more clear: we need a model for at least two scenarios: 1) A de novo protein gene. See for that my detailed discussion in the relevant thread. De novo protein genes, which bear no recognizable homology to other proteins, are being increasingly recognized. They are an empirical fact, and they must be explained by some model. The length of these genes is conspicous (130 aminoacids in the example discussed on the thread). The search space huge. Where is the traversing apparatus? What form could it take? 2) The transition from a protein with a function to one other with another function, where the functions are distinctly different, and the proteins are too. Let’s say that they present some homology, say 30%, which lets darwinist boast that one is the ancestor of the other. That’s more or less the scenario for some proteins in the flagellum, isn’t it? Well we still have a 70% difference to explain. That’s quite a landscape to traverse, and the same questions as at point 1) apply. You cannot explain away these problems with examples of one or two muations bearing very similar proteins, indeed a same protein with slightly different recognition code. It is obvious hat even a single aminoacid can deeply affect recognition. You must explain different protein folding, different function (not just the same function on slightly different ligands), different protein assembly. That’s the kind of problems ID has always pointed out. Behe is not just “shifting the goalposts”. The goalposts have never been there. One or two aminoacid jumps inside the same island of functionality have never been denied by anyone, either logically or empirically. They are exactly the basic steps which you should use to build your model pathway: they are not the pathway itself. Let’s remember that Behe, in TEOE, places exactly at two coordnated aminoacid mutations the empirical “edge”, according to his reasonings about malaria parasite mutations. You can agree or not, but that is exactly his view. He is not shifting anything. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/chance-law-agency-or-other/#comment-289730 Upright BiPed

...if you can’t “count” CSI how can you observe it arising though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two

Don't you just love it when folks come here and want to teach us about CSI? CSI is a way to measure, like Shannon Information. You don't "count" Shannon information in order to quantify "the amount of information." You don't "count" a thermometer to get the temperature. Mung

Welcome to the design revolution, Barry. I'm literally laughing out loud right now at Mung's #14. material.infantacy

I also note this from the article Ms. Tanner quotes from: “How natural selection can drive the evolution of tightly integrated molecular systems – those in which the function of each part depends on its interactions with the other parts—has been an unsolved issue in evolutionary biology.” Wait a minute!!! Darwinists have been telling us that the irreducible complexity problem has been solved since shortly after Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” came out in the mid-90’s. Why are these Darwinists telling us in 2006 that the problem has been unsolved? Are the authors of this article prepared to say that all the countless Darwinists who said the problem was solved for 10 years were mistaken or lying? Barry Arrington

If you were to land on an alien planet and encounter a structure that, to you, looked designed would you assume it was a representation of the aliens on that planet, without seeing them first?

Yeah Barry, If you landed on an alien planet and saw: http://images.wikia.com/marveldatabase/images/8/82/Mount_Rushmore.jpg ...you would immediately attribute that to chance, or perhaps even chance plus necessity (you don't think those slaves who built the pyramids did so voluntarily do you). Why you would think that was designed unless you knew who washington, lincoln, jefferson, and whoever that fourth dude is. Mung

ElsieTanner writes: “Given that what looks designed to you might look as it evolved to somebody else does that not mean that CSI needs to be objectively calculated so it’s appearance can be tracked?” This is a pristine example of what our friend Kairosfocus calls “selective hyperskepticism.” Does Ms. Tanner really believe that someone can look at Mount Rushmore and conclude “obvious design” and that someone else just as reasonably might think, “Oh, not so fast. That could have evolved through eons of rain and wind.” Rubbish. There is a reason Ms. Tanner dodged my question about Mount Rushmore and desperately tried to change the subject. The sheer inanity of her proposition (i.e., CSI does not exist where it cannot be precisely quantified) becomes immediately apparent upon just a moment’s reflection on the question. She knows the answer. Yet, she refused to give it because it utterly undermines her argument from selective hyperskepticism. I personally have no use for trolls like Ms. Tanner. Notice how she pretended to be genuinely interested in engaging with ID. This served only to add mendacity to her trollish behavior. Finally, as has been shown on this site many times, CSI quite often can be precisely quantified. But to deny its existence in a case where it is difficult to do so is sheer fatuousness. Barry Arrington

After all, you can’t explore the origin of something until you can quantify it objectively – how will you know it’s appeared unless you can “count” it?

Like temperature. Mung

ElsieTanner. Just as I predicted, you dodged the question. Move along. Barry Arrington

Hey wait a minute, Elsie. In your first post you said that the only way to know the origins of something is if we could count something. Then in you very next post you say that we can make comparisons as well:

I’d say it was only possible if the Aliens know in advance what human faces look like.

So in the space of one post you've managed to get your foot in your mouth. Good Job. Upright BiPed

I reject the notion that the CSI in an entire organism would need to be calculated, but rather we could calculate the CSI for ANY SINGLE protein in the system, which is also coded for in the DNA. Could I calculate the CSI for a protein myself? Not at the moment. Although I believe it's been done here before. But if we consider a protein of sequence length 300 (that is, 300 amino acids in the polypeptide) we would be looking at one of 20^300 permutations which account for it. That's roughly one in 10^390, also known as "one over practical infinity." material.infantacy

I also found this summary of some work done in 2006: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=746

EUGENE, Ore.—(April 4, 2006)—Using new techniques for resurrecting ancient genes, scientists have for the first time reconstructed the Darwinian evolution of an apparently “irreducibly complex” molecular system. The research was led by Joe Thornton, assistant professor of biology at the University of Oregon’s Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and will be published in the April 7 issue of SCIENCE. How natural selection can drive the evolution of tightly integrated molecular systems – those in which the function of each part depends on its interactions with the other parts—has been an unsolved issue in evolutionary biology. Advocates of Intelligent Design argue that such systems are “irreducibly complex” and thus incompatible with gradual evolution by natural selection. “Our work demonstrates a fundamental error in the current challenges to Darwinism,” said Thornton. “New techniques allow us to see how ancient genes and their functions evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. We found that complexity evolved piecemeal through a process of Molecular Exploitation -- old genes, constrained by selection for entirely different functions, have been recruited by evolution to participate in new interactions and new functions.” Thornton and coworkers used state-of-the-art statistical and molecular methods to unravel the evolution of an elegant example of molecular complexity – the specific partnership of the hormone aldosterone, which regulates behavior and kidney function, along with the receptor protein that allows the body’s cells to respond to the hormone. They resurrected the ancestral receptor gene – which existed more than 450 million years ago, before the first animals with bones appeared on Earth – and characterized its molecular functions. The experiments showed that the receptor had the capacity to respond to aldosterone long before the hormone actually evolved.

Is there a ID refutation of this, as it seems to be solid evidence that IC systems can evolve and did evolve. ElsieTanner

I also noticed this in the definition of terms:

(iii) provide a probability and information theory based explicitly formal model for quantifying CSI.

And the OP says:

What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?

Yet when I ask "what is the value of CSI in one of these "simplest living things" I get the feeling I've said something wrong? Why? If you can't quantify the CSI in a simple living thing how do you know that there is any at all there? If you have not yet calculated the CSI in such a simple living thing then perhaps that would be a good place to start. Then once the amount of CSI that 'chance' can create is determined (can it create any?) then the answer to if that simple living thing was designed becomes obvious. ElsieTanner

Barry,

How is that possible?

I'd say it was only possible if the Aliens know in advance what human faces look like.

that the faces carved in the rock are the product of design and cannot be attributed to chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two.

I have a question for you then. If you were to land on an alien planet and encounter a structure that, to you, looked designed would you assume it was a representation of the aliens on that planet, without seeing them first? How can you determine design (i.e. rule out C+N) if you don't' know what processes are operating on that Alien planet in perfect detail? I.E would you see such a structure (that appeared designed to you) and immediately presume that it was a sculpture of an alien face? Why? It seems to me that you can't rule out chance or mechanical necessity in such a case until you have a perfect understanding of the processes operating on that alien planet. Upright,

So the ability to ‘count something’ is the only entailment of the existence of something that can be explored?

I was simply responding to this in the OP

Conversely, CSI and IC are routinely observed to have been produced by intelligent agents.

And

What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?

So it seems to me, from what I've read on this thread so far, that CSI is much like obscenity. Impossible to define in advance but "you know it when you see it". As such, I believe the challenge in the OP to be impossible to meet, as if you can't "count" CSI how can you observe it arising though chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two? How will you know when your challenge has been met except in the most subjective of ways? Given that what looks designed to you might look as it evolved to somebody else does that not mean that CSI needs to be objectively calculated so it's appearance can be tracked? How do we know evolution cannot create it if you are unable to "count" it so you know when in increases? If you can't "count" it how do you know natural processes are not increasing it? Perhaps I just need to read more about it, are there any books you can recommend? ElsieTanner

The alien was able to count the heads... one-two-three. So there. Upright BiPed

ElsieTanner I will answer your question when you answer the following: Imagine an alien comes to earth and lands in front of Mount Rushmore. He looks at the side of the mountain and immediately recognizes that the faces carved in the rock are the product of design and cannot be attributed to chance or mechanical necessity or a combination of the two. He performed no calculations to determine the “value” of the CSI present in the carving. Yet his design inference is correct? How is that possible? Prediction: You will refuse to answer this question. Barry Arrington

After all, you can’t explore the origin of something until you can quantify it objectively – how will you know it’s appeared unless you can “count” it? Really? So the ability to 'count something' is the only entailment of the existence of something that can be explored? Upright BiPed

I believe that ID theory should incorporate some design science. Here are a couple of dealing with that: http://design.open.ac.uk/alexiou/papers/cybernetic%20basis%20of%20design_%20Zamenopoulos&Alexiou.pdf http://design.open.ac.uk/alexiou/papers/anticipatory%20view%20of%20design_%20Zamenopoulos&Alexiou.pdf kuartus

Barry,

What is the origin of complex specified information (CSI) and irreducibly complex (IC) mechanisms seen in even the simplest living things?

I find this very interesting. Would it be possible for you to name "a simple living thing" and tell me the value of CSI present in it, so as to set a benchmark? After all, you can't explore the origin of something until you can quantify it objectively - how will you know it's appeared unless you can "count" it? ElsieTanner