Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Incredible Shrinking Timeline

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A new study has come out that tracks ‘tracks’; i.e., reptile ‘tracks’. It seems that the transition from a straddled to an upright position of reptilian limbs took place almost immediately. So scientists say that have studied fossilized tracks prior to, and immediately after, the end-of-the Permian mass extinction.

Fossil Reptilian Tracks

[BTW, let’s remember that the Darwinian objection to an absence of intermediate forms is the imperfection of the fossil record, with the difficulty of ‘soft-tissue’ fossilizing as a partial reason. But here we’re talking fossil footracks, which would seem even harder to form, and yet they’re found!]

Professor Mike Benton offers this:

“As it is, the new footprint evidence suggests a more dramatic pattern of replacement, where the sprawling animals that dominated Late Permian ecosystems nearly all died out, and the new groups that evolved after the crisis were upright. Any competitive interactions were compressed into a short period of time.”

Scientists (=evolutionists) were of the assumption that this pre-to-post Permian transition took 20-30 million years. It now appears to have been almost immediate.

Ah, yes, the incredible shrinking timeline for the Cambrian Explosion, the Reptilian Explosion and the Mammalian Explosion (This last one has been coming out over the last year or so, and now we’re seeing the Reptilian Explosion come to the fore). Let’s hear it for Darwinian ‘gradualism’. When will these guys ever give up?!? Behe, in his Edge of Evolution, documents that it has taken 10^16 to 10^20 replication events (progeny) of the eukaryotic malarial parasite for it to come up with a two amino acid change as a way of resisting cholorquinone. Assuming one year/generation for the reptiles, this meant evolutionists before had 20-30 million generations for ‘something’ to happen. And now? Darwinism is hopeless to explain these new discoveries. And, yet, they persist. Scientific faith is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

Comments
Ritchie, We do not have to postulate in infinite regress of designers, for logically there only has to be one, not any before it. If you imagine one from the outset, then the top-down paradigm makes sense, in which we are only some of the principle characters, but not all. The bottom-up paradigm of undirected self-assembly doesn't even get off the ground, for nothing in our experience suggests is whatsoever.
The acorn comes from a full-grown oak. the Rocket comes, not from a still crude engine, but from something much more perfect than itself and much more complex, the mind of a man, and a man of genius. The march of all things is from higher to lower... 'Developmentalism' is made to look plausible by a kind of trick.. . . And since the egg-bird-egg sequence leads us to no plausible beginnings, is it not reasonable to look for the real origin somewhere outside sequence altogether? You have to go outside the sequence of engines, into the world of men, to find the real originator of the Rocket. Is it not equally reasonable to look outside Nature for the real Originator of the natural order?
C.S. Lewis, "Two Lectures"Clive Hayden
September 19, 2009
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“Yet by the late 1980s it was becoming obvious to most genetic researchers, including myself, since my own main research interest in the ‘80s and ‘90s was human genetics, that the heroic effort to find the information specifying life’s order in the genes had failed. There was no longer the slightest justification for believing that there exists anything in the genome remotely resembling a program capable of specifying in detail all the complex order of the phenotype. The emerging picture made it increasingly difficult to see genes in Weismann’s “unambiguous bearers of information” or to view them as the sole source of the durability and stability of organic form. It is true that genes influence every aspect of development, but influencing something is not the same as determining it. Only a very small fraction of all known genes, such as developmental fate switching genes, can be imputed to have any sort of directing or controlling influence on form generation. From being “isolated directors” of a one-way game of life, genes are now considered to be interactive players in a dynamic two-way dance of almost unfathomable complexity, as described by Keller in The Century of The Gene.” Michael John Denton page 172 of Uncommon Dissent
Joseph
September 19, 2009
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Ritchie [136] The Scottish professor Hutton, under whom Lyell was trained, thought of the age of the world as being infinite. Both Darwin and Wallace, the discoverers of NS, were smitten by Lyells Principles of Geology, and, of course, thought of a world that was infinite in age. Darwin thought that sooner or later a whole host of fossils would be found prior to the Cambrian explosion of fossils---for how else could this huge number of animals be explained. And, he probably thought that if it weren't for geological erosion of fossils, that there would be a gradual chain of such abundant fossil find stretching back in time. But there is no such vast amount of similar fossils to be found before the Cambrian Explosion. Darwin was wrong. Now we know the age of the earth. We can trace life back in time. We know that the world is not infinite in age (The Big Bang---a pharse invented by Hoyle). My whole point in posting this finding is that once again, we seem to have an 'explosion'. Scientists are now reaching the conclusion that all of mammals burst onto the scene in an explosive type way. You can't explain EXPLOSIONS using GRADUALISM. It just won't work. So, Darwin was wrong. But that doesn't seem to matter to biologists these days. It does to me.PaV
September 19, 2009
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StephenB:
Reason has rules, which among other things, allow us to eliminate possibilities so that we can move logically from point A to point B.
Yes. They're called rules of inference. Other than the LNC (depending on how broadly you define it), your PRRs are not inference rules.
Universes pop into existence, matter comes from non matter, minds come from matter, and life comes from non-life.
Which of your PRRs precludes these events, assuming that at least one necessary condition obtains in their occurrence?R0b
September 19, 2009
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Nakashima [119]:
Give yourself more credit. Didn’t you show it was closer to 25-30 nearly neutral mutations? If the selection coefficient had been .01 instead of .0001 (beneficial vs neutral) wouldn’t the number have been 2500-3000? At those levels, the problem is explaining the conseratism of evolution, not its power.
You seem unawares of why the Neutral Theory of Kimura arose in the first place. I mentioned it in my last post. With all of the 'balanced polymorphisms' found in genomes, the 'genetic load'---understood to mean the number of progeny that must be eliminated (die) for selection to take place for a particular allele---is astronomically high. Thus, most modern day evo-devo people work out their theories via neutral theory thinking. And, I only mentioned Hoyle's simple formula. As he develops his thinking, he demonstrates that what NS really does is eliminate the flood of harmful mutations that take place. If you think that 2500 beneficial mutations can take place in 25-30 million years, then what about the 10^-8(mutation rate per nucleotide)x 10^8(number of nucleotides per individual) x 100,000 (number of individuals) x 25 x 10^6 (years of production of 100,000 individuals) harmful mutations that have occurred in the same time? That is, 25 x 10^9 harmful mutations. Would you like to say a word about them? What makes evolution work---in the very limited way in which it does---is because of the eukaryotic system of separate chromosomes which go through recombination. This allows 'beneficial' mutations to gain some independence from the flood of 'harmful' mutations constantly taking place. With NS 'eliminating' the vast majority of the 'harmful' mutations (its principal work), good mutations can, and do, get fixed within the genome. But they're highly limited. You mentioned about "conserving" mutations; well that is what NS basically does, but it does it not through so much positive selection as through positive elimination of bad mutations. That is, NS is good for stasis---which, of course, basically what we see in the fossil record.
About that cat, its turtles all the way down, until you get to the basement 3.5 Gya
This, of course, is a rationalization on your part. And, I might add, it's a rationalization based on the gradualistic evolution of things. How did reptiles get upright so quickly? Darwin would be blushing if he found this stuff out.PaV
September 19, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima, part of the confusion here arises from the fact that, contrary to what one might expect, StephenB's causality rule does not entail determinism. In fact, I don't see anything of substance that it does entail. The rule says only that no event can occur, or nothing can come into existence, unless at least one necessary or sufficient condition obtains. But considering that "Nothing prevents E from occurring" is a necessary condition for any conceivable event E, there is no conceivable scenario that is precluded by the rule. Adding to the confusion is the fact that StephenB sometimes takes the position of strict determinism, but this position is not entailed by his causality rule.R0b
September 19, 2009
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Joseph [from142] "Single-celled metazoan is a contradiction. (or an embryo)" Sorry, my bad. I misread you. Let me make another stab at that one: Consider parasites. Parasites can have tremendous effects on the bodies of the host organism. For example, some species of snail are parasitized by flukes, which make the snail grow an extra-think shell. You might think this is good for the snail, but actually not. Every feature a body builds has a cost, and if a snail is putting extra resources into making an extra-thick shell, it must divert resources away from other parts of it's body, or else spend more time eating and less time doing other things (like mating). The snail's body is a balance of features which will best help it pass on its genes. However, the fluke does not 'care' what is best for the snail - only what is best for its own genes, and that is to live in a snail with the best physical defences possible, never mind whether or not it ever mates! So we see parasites can have extreme biological consequences for the host. FOr more examples, look up the effects of the Nosema parasite on flour beetle larvae, or Sacculina on crabs. But in all these cases the parasite and host are at odds because their genes leave the host's body by different means. Now consider what would happen if the genes of parasite and host BOTH left the body through the same means - the host's egg and/or sperm. the genes would start to work together since they are both working towards the same goal - the successful propagation of the host's egg and/or sperm. Wood boring ambrosia beetles provide an example of this. They are parasitized by a bacteria which travels from host to host through the host's eggs. The successful propagation of those eggs is therefore in the interests of both beetle and bacteria, and indeed the bacteria does indeed help the beetle reproduce (it's a bit complicated to get into here). In fact the service is so intimate, it becomes very hard to say that the bacteria is a parasite at all. Perhaps it may be considered simply part of the beetle's body? So to recap, the transition from single-celled organism to organisms of many cooperating cells may be explained thus: perhaps we all relics of ancient parasitic mergers. And for evidence, consider the examples I cited above. " There is Australopithecus Africanus and Australopithecus Afarensis, which provide evidence for how apes began to walk upright. They do? Please explain." Well,Australopithecus Afarensis is our earliest discovered ancestor since humans split from other apes. We may think of it as having a ape's head on a human's body. In other words, the skulls are essentially very ape-like (particularly in size), but it walked upright. The upper arm bone, or humerus, is longer than an ape's but shorter than a humans. But the lower limbs are practically indistinguishable from a human's. Their skeletons had a spongy, bony pad on the heel of the foot, the femur had a spongy centre and the top where it connected to the hip socket to absorb the impact of walking. These, and several other features mark the Austrilopithicus Afarensis out as a bipedal ape. "I am interested in the genetics- what DNA sequence(s) were involved?" I don't know. But that doesn't undermine the evidence I have given above. "As for genes- we know they influence development but influencing is not the same as determining it." Isn't it? What's the critical distinction here? "There isn’t any evidence that demonstrates we are a sum of our DNA." I assume you mean '...MERELY the sum of our DNA'? And there is no evidence that we are not. And the onus is really on you here to assert you side, not on me to assert mine.Ritchie
September 19, 2009
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Ritchie:
Single-cell metazoan don’t fossilize.
Single-celled metazoan is a contradiction. (or an embryo)
There is Australopithecus Africanus and Australopithecus Afarensis, which provide evidence for how apes began to walk upright.
They do? Please explain. I am interested in the genetics- what DNA sequence(s) were involved? As for genes- we know they influence development but influencing is not the same as determining it. There isn't any evidence that demonstrates we are a sum of our DNA.Joseph
September 19, 2009
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Joseph Phew, I'm playing catch up here, so I'll respond to all your posts in one... [from 130] "For an intelligent designer to have deliberately created the universe and everything in it, he must be more complex than the entire universe and everything in it. Good luck substantiating that bald claim." That just seems logical to me. An intelligence which designs something has to conceive of the idea of the designed object. SO it must be more complicated. How could an intelligent entity possibly design something that was MORE complicated than itself? " His existence is therefore statistically more unlikely than the existence of the universe and everything in it. Another bald claim." Again, logical extrapolation, surely? Would you disagree with it? Are you saying an intelligent entity CAN create something more complicated than itself? [from 135] Thanks for the list. [from 138] Joseph 09/19/2009 10:38 am Ritchie: "Evolution doesn’t have a direction so why draw a tree? Why not an asterisk?" Evolution does have a direction. Forwards. Though perhaps you could still make an asterisk of life. That wasn't really my point though. "Yet in that vast majority there isn’t any evidence for universal common descent." That's not true at all. The fossil record completely supports the tree (or asterisk if you prefer) of life as predicted by the theory of evolution.All it would take for the whole theory to come crashing down is one single fossil in the wrong place (I'm sure you've heard reference to the 'rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian), but there simply is not one. What 'missing' evidence would we expect to find if universal common descent WAS true?Ritchie
September 19, 2009
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---Nakashima: "My standard is efficient explanation, I think that is clear in the words you quoted." Your standard does not answer my questions. I answered all your questions but you avoided all my questions. ---"The law of causality does not apply to radioactive decay?(??) How very convenient for this conversation, though I don’t remember seeing this exemption before." Perhaps that is because you didn't read what was written and retreated back to your talking points. The law of causality holds that everything that begins to exist must have a cause. Learn it, love it, live it. ----"I’ve met John Sowa a few times, here’s a quote from his web page on Process and Causality –" How does having met John Sowa help your case? Perhaps you can contact him and ask him to answer my quesions on your behalf. If you can dispense with causality in two or three contexts, as you clearly do, why not twenty or thiry or a million? If a universe or a quantum particle can pop into existence without a cause—why cannot anything pop into existence without a cause? If some events are caused and others are not, how do you distinguish one from the other? If you appeal to quantum mechanics as your main justification for abandoning the principle of causality at the micro level, why do you also abandon causality at the macro level as an explanation for the beginning of the universe?StephenB
September 19, 2009
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Joseph [from 129] "For starters single-cell to metazoan." Single-cell metazoan don't fossilize. What evidence should we expect to find if evolutionary theory were true? "For another upright bipedal motion." Not true. There is Australopithecus Africanus and Australopithecus Afarensis, which provide evidence for how apes began to walk upright. "Heck we don’t even know what determines body form." Errrrm, I really want to say 'our genes', but would that be a really silly thing to say...?Ritchie
September 19, 2009
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Ritchie:
Evolutionary theory has to draw the tree of life from best guesses.
Evolution doesn't have a direction so why draw a tree? Why not an asterisk?
The fossil record, for example, may be impressive by itself, but it does not contain fossil representatives from every species that has ever lived, or anything close to that number.
The vast majority of the fossil record (>95%) is of marine inverts, which is to be expected given what we know about fossilization. Yet in that vast majority there isn't any evidence for universal common descent. So how impressive does it look now?Joseph
September 19, 2009
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Dave Wisker, A possible origin of multicellularity? Colonies are not metazoans. They are aggregates of the single-celled organisms that formed them. When animals form a group to keep out predators are they evolving into something else? But anyway I have the textbook "Volvox" by Kirk. IOW I am not ignorant of the literature. It is that the literature is full of speculations and conjectures all based on the assumption that such a transformation did occur. We see colonies forming today and not one has the appearance of becoming a metazoan.Joseph
September 19, 2009
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PaV [from 103] "The whole point of this post is that the Darwinian fairy tale keeps losing time, not gaining it. It has to account for more and more, in less and less time. From a probabilistic viewpoint, this is a catastrophe for the theory." I'm really not sure I followed the calculations that followed, but I assume this quote is the crux of your response. And I'm afraid it's not the case. Evolutionary theory has to draw the tree of life from best guesses. The fossil record, for example, may be impressive by itself, but it does not contain fossil representatives from every species that has ever lived, or anything close to that number. So we have to draw inferences such as - between 1 million year ago and 2 million years ago, creature X developed feature Y. Now, as more discoveries are made, that bracket will inevitably close - we may find a fossil of creature X from 1.5 million years ago and see if it has feature Y or not. But this is not 'losing time in which to account for the mutation', it is narrowing down the specific time at which the mutation took place. And it is not at all 'catastrophic for the theory'. "IOW, if it takes only six millions years for a few mutations to change reptiles from ’straddling’ to ‘upright’, then why didn’t it happen before the mass exinction? Why hasn’t it happened since?" It may only have taken 6 million years, but that's 6 million years from the first mutation, which, as you point out, was an unlikely event. The fact that it was unlikely perfectly explains why it didn't happen sooner. Your question seems to my mind to sound like, 'If it only takes one attempt to win the lottery, then why haven't I won the lottery yet? I've made loads of attempts...'Ritchie
September 19, 2009
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Ritchie:
I’m just here to find out what all this ID stuff is about.
The following is my "top ten" (plus one) list of recommended literture pertaining to Intelligent Design. These are the books that anyone interested in ID must read- and that goes for anyone who wants to refute ID (you can't refute what you don't understand). 1) Nature, Design and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science by Del Ratzsch 2) The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues by Mike Gene These first two books are not just recommended, they are required to get an understanding of what is being debated and how it should be approached. IOW they help set the table for the context of the debate. The rest of the books finish setting the table and provide scientific data, observations and evidence that supports the design inference. 3) Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design edited by Wm. Dembski & James Kushiner (15 authors weigh in on the side of Intelligent Design) 4) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design by Jonathon Wells (replaced Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe, because Behe makes the same points in books 3 & 5) 5) Darwinism, Design and Public Education edited by John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer (several topics covered with entries from both sides) 6) The Edge of Evolution by Michael Behe 7) The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery by Guillermo Gonzalez & Jay Richards 8) Not By Chance by Lee Spetner (on the list because it deals with “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins) 9) No Free Lunch by Wm. Dembski (low on the list because it is very technical- may substitute The Design Revolution by Wm. Dembski if you would rather pass on the very technical NFL) 10) The Design of Life by Dembski & Wells (replacied "Darwin on Trial") 11) Signature in the Cell by Stephen C. Meyer These are just my cloices but they will provide a very good perspective on what ID is all about.Joseph
September 19, 2009
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ScottAndrews [from 100] "You’re missing a critical distinction. The Greek gods and the tooth fairy are stories made up for entertainment." Not so. The ancient Greeks believed sincerely in their gods. They were not just made up for storytelling purposes. My point though was that unproven things - myths/ideas/hypotheses do not inevitably end up being validated. If there if an intelligent designer, then we can only infer it from solid evidence. "There is, on the other hand, overwhelming evidence that many things in nature required design. Science must account for evidence, not put its head in the sand." Whilst I agree with your last statement, could you please provide some examples of things in nature which require design? "Your arguments suggest that you haven’t done a cursory reading about ID before joining this debate." Guilty. I'm just here to find out what all this ID stuff is about. "May I suggest that you read the glossary?" I took your advice. However, I'm still puzzled. For one thing, the definition of design does not explain how we are to distinguish features we see in nature which are 'designed' from those which are not. If we see a particular feature of a particular animal, what sort of characteristics would mark it out as being designed?Ritchie
September 19, 2009
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This may be a bit late, but I thought I would add to Dave Wisker's comment above. In the opening post, PaV stated:
Behe, in his Edge of Evolution, documents that it has taken 10^16 to 10^20 replication events (progeny) of the eukaryotic malarial parasite for it to come up with a two amino acid change as a way of resisting cholorquinone.
Actually, Behe demonstrated no such thing. Rather, he lifted a nmber out of its context and crafted an entire piece of fiction around it. As I explain here: "I’ll close this essay by noting one source of error on Behe’s part. As I have discussed, Behe asserts that the probability associated with a “CCC” is 1 in 10^20. Where does this number come from? From footnote 16 in the first excerpt given above – White, N. J. 2004. Antimalarial drug resistance. J. Clin. Invest. 113:1084-92. Here is the actual passage from the review by White that mentions the number 10^20:
“Chloroquine resistance in P. falciparum may be multigenic and is initially conferred by mutations in a gene encoding a transporter (PfCRT) (13). In the presence of PfCRT mutations, mutations in a second transporter (PfMDR1) modulate the level of resistance in vitro, but the role of PfMDR1 mutations in determining the therapeutic response following chloroquine treatment remains unclear (13). At least one other as-yet unidentified gene is thought to be involved. Resistance to chloroquine in P. falciparum has arisen spontaneously less than ten times in the past fifty years (14). This suggests that the per-parasite probability of developing resistance de novo is on the order of 1 in 10^20 parasite multiplications.“
Recall that Behe equated one CCC with a double mutation, presumably based on other work showing that two point mutations in the PfCRT gene are associated with durable resistance in the parasite. But White is not talking about double mutations in PfCRT when he tosses out the number 10^20. Rather, he is speculating about the frequency of occurrence of a multigenic trait that involves two or three genes, and more (perhaps many more) than two mutations. In other words, Behe’s use of this citation to argue that the natural frequency of occurrence of a double mutation in PfCRT is 10^20 is inappropriate. This is one reason (not the only reason, but one) why Behe’s claims are so out of touch with reality."Arthur Hunt
September 19, 2009
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joseph: 3- There isn’t any scientific data which demonstrates the transformations required (for universal common descent) are even possible.”
What transformations are you talking about here?
For starters single-cell to metazoan.
Ignorance of the literature is no excuse for making such absolute statements. See below (my emphasis): Boraas ME, DB Seale and JE Boxhorn (1998). Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity Evolutionary Ecology 12(2): 153-164
Predation was a powerful selective force promoting increased morphological complexity in a unicellular prey held in constant environmental conditions. The green alga, Chlorella vulgaris, is a well-studied eukaryote, which has retained its normal unicellular form in cultures in our laboratories for thousands of generations. For the experiments reported here, steady-state unicellular C. vulgaris continuous cultures were inoculated with the predator Ochromonas vallescia, a phagotrophic flagellated protist (‘flagellate’). Within less than 100 generations of the prey, a multicellular Chlorella growth form became dominant in the culture (subsequently repeated in other cultures). The prey Chlorella first formed globose clusters of tens to hundreds of cells. After about 10–20 generations in the presence of the phagotroph, eight-celled colonies predominated. These colonies retained the eight-celled form indefinitely in continuous culture and when plated onto agar. These self-replicating, stable colonies were virtually immune to predation by the flagellate, but small enough that each Chlorella cell was exposed directly to the nutrient medium.
Dave Wisker
September 19, 2009
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"Rather than re-discuss the wheel...and read carefully...Therein StephenB stated...He also stated...He has discussed...Also see my summary. TRANSLATION: He called it a ball, but I argued with him so he called it round, but I got him to say it was spherical. D-Huh, D-Huh.Upright BiPed
September 19, 2009
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Mr. Nakshima: Rather than re-discuss the wheel, I'd suggest that you incorporate by reference (and read carefully) a prior discussion with StephenB on these topics: https://uncommondescent.com/religion/and-there-you-have-it/ Therein StephenB stated that "every effect has a cause" is tautological, and that self-evidence based upon tautology is trivial: https://uncommondescent.com/religion/and-there-you-have-it/#comment-333043 He also stated (as he does here) that "cause and effect" does not apply to events such as changes in position and momentum, which may therefore be acausal: https://uncommondescent.com/religion/and-there-you-have-it/#comment-332851 He has discussed several versions of his law of causality, which is unchanging. Those versions (to date) are, - Version 1.0: “All effects have causes.” - Version 2.0: “All physical events have causes.” - Version 3.0: “All beginnings of existence have causes.” (See mine at 269 and work backward.) https://uncommondescent.com/religion/and-there-you-have-it/#comment-333005 Also see my summary post at 273. https://uncommondescent.com/religion/and-there-you-have-it/#comment-333199 I see a wet road and maybe a crankshaft or two in your future.Diffaxial
September 19, 2009
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Ritchie:
For an intelligent designer to have deliberately created the universe and everything in it, he must be more complex than the entire universe and everything in it.
Good luck substantiating that bald claim.
His existence is therefore statistically more unlikely than the existence of the universe and everything in it.
Another bald claim. You do realize that all you have to do to refute the design inference is to actually support YOUR position. IOW stop with the bald assertions and actually find something to support your position!Joseph
September 19, 2009
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3- There isn’t any scientific data which demonstrates the transformations required (for universal common descent) are even possible.”
What transformations are you talking about here?
For starters single-cell to metazoan. For another upright bipedal motion. Heck we don't even know what determines body form.Joseph
September 19, 2009
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Mr StephenB, My standard is efficient explanation, I think that is clear in the words you quoted. The law of causality does not apply to radioactive decay?(??) How very convenient for this conversation, though I don't remember seeing this exemption before. How did you choose to dispose of causality so easily? To apply it in one situation and not another? How can I trust any of your reasoning at all when you admit to such a fundamental error? I've met John Sowa a few times, here's a quote from his web page on Process and Causality - In his lectures on cause and chance in physics, Max Born (1949) stated three assumptions that dominated physics until the twentieth century: "Causality postulates that there are laws by which the occurrence of an entity B of a certain class depends on the occurrence of an entity A of another class, where the word entity means any physical object, phenomenon, situation, or event. A is called the cause, B the effect." "Antecedence postulates that the cause must be prior to, or at least simultaneous with, the effect." "Contiguity postulates that cause and effect must be in spatial contact or connected by a chain of intermediate things in contact." Relativity and quantum mechanics have forced physicists to abandon these assumptions as exact statements of what happens at the most fundamental levels, but they remain valid at the level of human experience. After analyzing them in terms of modern physics, Born concluded "chance has become the primary notion, mechanics an expression of its quantitative laws, and the overwhelming evidence of causality with all its attributes in the realm of ordinary experience is satisfactorily explained by the statistical laws of large numbers." The rest of the page is quite interesting. I recommend it to you (and to Mr Vjtorley). Especially note that "no time loops" is an axiom of the system he develops. He has to assume it is true, he can't prove it is true. Now tell me again why my position on causality means I can't balance my checkbook?Nakashima
September 19, 2009
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---Mr. Nakashima: "It is hardly a matter of choice. Causality is an efficient explanation for large ensembles of particles, and its not for individual quanta, and in between things are complex." It is clearly a matter of choice for you, because you have chosen to affirm causality in some contexts and deny it in other contexts. Yet, you have not provided your standard for making these choices. If you can dispense with causality in two or three contexts, as you clearly do, why not twenty or thiry or a million? By what principle do you draw the line where you draw it? If a universe or a quantum particle can pop into existence without a cause—why cannot anything pop into existence without a cause? If some events are caused and others are not, how do you distinguish one from the other? ----"You didn’t answer my question about radioactive decay. “Inherent in it are the conditions which constitute the necessary cause for the unpredictable events.” What inherent conditions might those be? Hidden variables?" The law of causality does not apply to the timing of radioactive decay, nor, for that matter, does it apply to the changes in position of sub atomic particles; it only applies to the beginning of the existence of the particles. In some cases, we may not be able to identify the cause of a physical event. What we do know, or at least what we assume in the name of rationality, is that that there must be a cause. One cannot logically abandon the principle of causality simply because, in many cases, we don't know what it is. ----If all things have a cause, is there anything that is truly random? Of course. Causation, randomness, and, free will, for that matter, are all compatible. The statistical results of a series of coin flips are random, but they are clearly caused by the flips. Causality is not synonymous with determinism.StephenB
September 19, 2009
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Mr StephenB, If you can dispense with causality in one context, why not another? It is hardly a matter of choice. Causality is an efficient explanation for large ensembles of particles, and its not for individual quanta, and in between things are complex. You didn't answer my question about radioactive decay. "Inherent in it are the conditions which constitute the necessary cause for the unpredictable events." What inherent conditions might those be? Hidden variables? If all things have a cause, is there anything that is truly random?Nakashima
September 18, 2009
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Mr. Nakashima, I appreciate your good natured response, but you answered none of my questions. If you can dispense with causality in one context, why not another? By what principle do you draw the line where you draw it? If a universe or a quantum particle can pop into existence without a cause—why not anything? Even the chief of skeptics, David Hume, rejected as absurd the proposition that things might arise without a cause. Only philosophically naïve Darwinists who visit this site dare propose such a thing, and that is only because they cannot hear the laughter coming from all reasonable people on the sidelines. With regard to the law of non-contradiction, you cannot escape it by using your strategy of abandoning deductive reasoning and limiting your analysis to inductive reasoning. Both depend on the law of non-contradiction. It is impossible to do science without the law of causality and it is impossible to interpret evidence without the law of non-contradiction. Darwinists have a big problem. Reason logic, and the evidence all point to a first cause, so, from their vantage point, reason, logic, and the evidence have got to go. That is not rational, but it pretty much sums up the thinking of Darwinists who visit this site. Down with logic and up with the Darwinist explanation about the origin of everything---“poof, there it is.” Universes pop into existence, matter comes from non matter, minds come from matter, and life comes from non-life. ----"If you can prove that every physicist since Einstein (except Mapou) can’t balance their checkbook, you will acheived something great." You might want to be a bit more specific here. Are you saying that Einstein rejected the law of causality. If so, I would ask you to present your evidence. If not, I don't get your point.StephenB
September 18, 2009
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Mr StephenB, Er, no. I'll happily reason probabilistically, or with reference to specific sets of axioms all day long. Just be careful which sets of axioms you assert actually agree with experiment. To your assertion that reason has rules - by all means take this further. You've previously asserted that I can't be right about population genetics because I don't accept your view of classical causality. Please, fill in the blanks beween those two endpoints. Not with A, B, C and Z but with real, complex, but not imaginary, arguments. if you can prove that every physicist since Einstein (except Mapou) can't balance their checkbook, you will acheived something great.Nakashima
September 18, 2009
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----Nakashima: “Radioactive decay. Where is the causality in its timing? ----Pairs of virtual particles. Ibid” None of these things you mentioned “come into existence” without a cause, so they do not violate the principle of causality. A quantum void is not nothing. Inherent in it are the conditions which constitute the necessary cause for the unpredictable events. If those conditions were not present there would be no events at all, predictable or unpredictable. -----“We do not live in a world correctly described by classical physics. No matter how great your affection for classical logic in the abstract, please accept that it does not make accurate predictions of physical objects” You are confusing classical physics with the laws of logic on which they depend. The uncertainly principle does not violate the laws of logic. Indeed, it could never have been discovered independent of them. . -----“But have no fear, I am a firm believer in causality for large ensembles of particles.” Why? If you can dispose of it in one context, why not another? By what principle do you draw the line where you draw it? If a universe or a quantum particle can pop into existence without a cause---why not anything? ----“But this line of “reasoning” is like saying I’ll never be able match my socks because I trust in Thor. Back when I believed in Santa Claus, I agree that my understanding of causality was incredibly mistaken, and yet, and yet my math problems still worked most of the time.” If causality is abandoned, anything is possible. That is why Darwinists believe that life can come from non-life, that matter can come from non-matter, and universes can come from out of nowhere. They rule out nothing, which prevents them from reasoning in the abstract. ----“I can only assume that being mistaken about fundamental questions of causality does not greatly affect a human’s mathematical ability or several other logical reasoning powers. If it did, we could quickly determine the only true faith by discovering which group consistently succeeded in balancing their checkbooks” Reason has rules, which among other things, allow us to eliminate possibilities so that we can move logically from point A to point B. We cannot say, for example, IF A is true, then B MUST be true, unless we can also say that C through Z are unthinkable. If we didn’t agree, in advance, that C through Z are unthinkable, such as [a thing cannot be and not be], [the whole cannot be less that any of its parts], [something cannot come from nothing], [a thing cannot begin to exist without a cause.], then we couldn’t reason our way from A to B or enter into rational discouse with others. But postmodernist cosmologists and atheist Darwinists, who reject these rules, cannot, in any context, say If A is true, then B must be true, because they refuse to rule out C through Z. That is another way of saying that they cannot reason, or more precisely, they choose not to.StephenB
September 18, 2009
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SpitfireIXA to answer your questions/comments in no particular order.
Add to this the significant redesign of the leg/knees to support vertical weight and movement, an overhaul of the hands and feet (especially the digits), a major redesign of the spine to handle bipedalism, and a reorganization of the interplay and tension of the torso/back muscles to balance.
There is quite a bit of incorrect morphology in this. Let's start with the spine. The major spinal difference between chimps and humans occurs in the lumbar region. Humans have longer and wider lumbar vertebrate than chimps - hardly a major redesign of the spine. The same can be said about the differences in the chimp femur vs the human femur. In overall all morphology they are very similar. The human has a longer femur and a slightly more rotated head and a slightly larger degree of valgus. In terms of the hands and feet the biggest change is between the chimp and human feet which is more specialized than the chimp foot. The hands - not so much. A "reorganization of the interplay and tension of the torso/back muscles" isn't required either. The muscles have their origins and insertions in the same spots in both chimps and humans what is different is the changes in morphology change the biomechanics. In 44 you claim I quoted the wrong part. This is somewhat disingenuous on your part since you did say that nearly all the muscles have changed which, as I have mentioned is incorrect. Further, as I pointed out above, the back and pelvis muscle do not attache at different locations nor do they need to the changes that we see in the pelvis between chimps, australopithecines, and Homo erectus for example, provide different lever arms.grannyape92
September 18, 2009
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Mr StephenB, Radioactive decay. Where is the causality in its timing? Pairs of virtual particles. Ibid. We do not live in a world correctly described by classical physics. No matter how great your affection for classical logic in the abstract, please accept that it does not make accurate predictions of physical objects. But have no fear, I am a firm believer in causality for large ensembles of particles. But this line of "reasoning" is like saying I'll never be able match my socks because I trust in Thor. Back when I believed in Santa Claus, I agree that my understanding of causality was incredibly mistaken, and yet, and yet my math problems still worked most of the time. I can only assume that being mistaken about fundamental questions of causality does not greatly affect a human's mathematical ability or several other logical reasoning powers. If it did, we could quickly determine the only true faith by discovering which group consistently succeeded in balancing their checkbooks. In classical logic, I think that is called proof by contradiction.Nakashima
September 18, 2009
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