The remarkable process of cell division

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 2, 2022

Cell biology, Intelligent Design}

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Chromosomes are densely packed DNA. The two “sister chromatids” of a chromosome, having been accurately duplicated during prophase and secured by centromeres, are arranged with all the other chromosomes on the spindle axis in metaphase. Soon after they are winched apart in anaphase into daughter cells. This elaborate choreography takes place every time a cell divides. The cell cycle is fascinating to anyone who has witnessed it under a light microscope, as you can see here:
Evolution News, “DNA Packing: One of the Supreme Wonders of Nature” at Evolution News and Science Today (January 31, 2022)

Remarkable movies made with super-resolution atomic force microscopy show the parts of cohesin undergoing conformational changes. These hand-over-hand motions operate in the dark without eyes, using ATP for energy. They get it right every time!
Evolution News, “DNA Packing: One of the Supreme Wonders of Nature” at Evolution News and Science Today (January 31, 2022)

The paper is open access.

You may also wish to read: Everything is coming up non-random (PAV)

Comments

Asauber: My suggestion: Maybe you should do more reading for comprehension and less commenting. And if I have read and understood all the statements and still disagree . . . Am I insane or evil?JVL_{February 16, 2022
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"Again, is there any point in me commenting here?" JVL, My suggestion: Maybe you should do more reading for comprehension and less commenting. Andrewasauber_{February 16, 2022
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Asauber: Your slip is showing. Is the * above what’s supposed to happen when JVL comments here? Sorry, but you are living in fantasyland. Again, is there any point in me commenting here?JVL_{February 16, 2022
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"they’ve decided and they are never, ever going to *change their mind*." JVL, Your slip is showing. Is the * above what's supposed to happen when JVL comments here? Sorry, but you are living in fantasyland. You just don't comment anything that would change somebody's mind. It's all been seen and read before 1000 times. Andrewasauber_{February 16, 2022
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Born-again77: I have thought about it and, IMHO, I am not being too harsh. I am being measured in my firmness against JVL’s insane worldview. It is simply intellectually dishonest and beyond crazy for a person to try to maintain, (especially when confronted with the nuts and bolts of the empirical evidence as JVL has been repeatedly confronted), that something as complex as say the brain, or the eye, or etc.., could have possibly been the result of an endless series of ‘selected accidents’. KF, to clear up any ambiguity about my position, I do not personally hold JVL to be ‘beyond crazy’ and to be ‘intellectually dishonest’. indeed I am presupposing that JVL has, at least, a minimal amount of sanity and honesty within himself to eventually see the sheer insanity that is clearly inherent within his Darwinian worldview and to honestly admit, (to himself and others), that it is indeed a ‘beyond crazy’ worldview for him to hold. But alas hope springs eternal and thus I persist in trying to ‘reason’ with JVL and show him, as well as with other Darwinian atheists, just how insane their worldview actually is. Speaking of trying to ‘reason’, and to clearly prove that atheistic materialism is a ‘beyond crazy’ worldview for a person to personally hold, the ability to reason in a logically coherent fashion is simply impossible on the presuppositions of Darwinian materialism. Thus, since it is so easy to grasp, I also firmly hold that it is simply ‘intellectually dishonest’ for JVL to not honestly admit that his atheistic worldview is ‘beyond crazy’ in that it undermines rationality itself. Sa, again, I am mad and maybe bad. So, what is the point of me trying to have a conversation with ID proponents? Perhaps I should just tell all the other supporters of unguided evolutionary theory to not even bother commenting at Uncommon Design; they've decided and they are never, ever going to change their mind. Is that stance science? Can a position which can never, ever be changed scientific?JVL_{February 16, 2022
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KF at 182 asks me to, "kindly ponder whether you have drifted into being too harsh in your comments." I have thought about it and, IMHO, I am not being too harsh. I am being measured in my firmness against JVL's insane worldview. It is simply intellectually dishonest and beyond crazy for a person to try to maintain, (especially when confronted with the nuts and bolts of the empirical evidence as JVL has been repeatedly confronted), that something as complex as say the brain, or the eye, or etc.., could have possibly been the result of an endless series of 'selected accidents'.
The Human Brain Is 'Beyond Belief' by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186 The Human Eye, Like The Human Brain, Is A Wonder https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/from-philip-cunningham-the-human-eye-like-the-human-brain-is-a-wonder/
KF, to clear up any ambiguity about my position, I do not personally hold JVL to be 'beyond crazy' and to be 'intellectually dishonest'. indeed I am presupposing that JVL has, at least, a minimal amount of sanity and honesty within himself to eventually see the sheer insanity that is clearly inherent within his Darwinian worldview and to honestly admit, (to himself and others), that it is indeed a 'beyond crazy' worldview for him to hold. If I truly held that JVL was personally 'beyond crazy', and pathologically dishonest, I certainly would not even bother trying to 'reason' with him about these matters in the first place. I would rather talk to a brick wall than do that. But alas hope springs eternal and thus I persist in trying to 'reason' with JVL and show him, as well as with other Darwinian atheists, just how insane their worldview actually is. Speaking of trying to 'reason',,,
reason noun 1. a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. 2. the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. verb think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
Speaking of trying to 'reason', and to clearly prove that atheistic materialism is a 'beyond crazy' worldview for a person to personally hold, the ability to reason in a logically coherent fashion is simply impossible on the presuppositions of Darwinian materialism. KF, you yourself went on to quote J.B.S. Haldane on the inability of Darwinian materialism to ground 'reasoning' in the first place.
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere byproduct of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms." - J.B.S. Haldane - from "When I am Dead" in Possible Worlds (1927)
Likewise, C.S. Lewis also clearly elucidated the sheer inability of atheistic materialism to ground 'reasoning' in the first place. i.e. "unless Reason is absolute—all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this (atheistic) world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based."
"Long before I believed Theology to be true I had already decided that the popular scientific picture at any rate was false. One absolutely central inconsistency ruins it…. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula … obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory—in other words, unless Reason is absolute—all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based. The difficulty is to me a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have not found a mare’s nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. The man who has once understood the situation is compelled henceforth to regard the scientific cosmology as being, in principle, a myth; though no doubt a great many true particulars have been worked into it." - C.S. Lewis - From “Is Theology Poetry,” in The Weight of Glory, 134–136.
And as Dr. Michael Egnor also clearly pointed out, it is simply impossible to ground logic. (and/or reasoning). within the atheist's naturalistic/materialistic worldview.,,, i.e. "Even to define naturalism is to refute it."
Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: For Clark, thoughts merely appear out of matter, which has no properties, by the laws of physics, for generating thought. For Clark to assert that naturalistic matter as described by physics gives rise to the mind, without immateriality of any sort, is merely to assert magic. Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/
As should be needless to say, if your worldview cannot possibly ground 'reason', and/or logic, in the first place then that, necessarily, makes your worldview unreasonable,,, i.e. makes it insane, even males it "beyond crazy'. Yet, the presupposition that the universe is not 'beyond crazy', but is instead rational and intelligible is, in fact, a necessary, and essential, Judeo-Christian presupposition of modern science. As Robert Koons explained, "Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics."
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons?IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.theistic.net/papers/R.Koons/Koons-science.pdf
You simply can't even 'do science' unless you first believe that the universe is rational and that we ourselves have rational minds, (minds made in the image of "God" no less), that are capable of 'partly' grasping the rationality that God has imparted to the universe. As Paul Davies himself explained, "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address – by Paul Davies – August 1995 Excerpt: “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24
i.e. Darwinian Atheists, by the very act of 'doing science', are in fact providing direct evidence that their Atheistic worldview cannot possibly be true. Thus in conclusion, KF I have been firm but measured in calling out JVL for holding his 'beyond crazy' Darwinian worldview. Indeed, rationality, reason, and/or logic, themselves cannot possibly be grounded within JVL's Darwinian worldview and thus his worldview refutes itself and thus is, necessarily, 'beyond crazy'. And this conclusion about Darwinian atheism being 'beyond crazy' is not some line of reasoning that is extremely complex for someone to grasp. But is indeed a very straightforward and easy line of reasoning for someone to grasp. Thus, since it is so easy to grasp, I also firmly hold that it is simply 'intellectually dishonest' for JVL to not honestly admit that his atheistic worldview is 'beyond crazy' in that it undermines rationality itself. Again, to repeat C.S. Lewis, "unless Reason is absolute—all is in ruins", Verse and Quotes:
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” of note: ‘the Word’ in John1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic http://etymonline.com/?term=logic What is the Logos? Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,, In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.” https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html
bornagain77_{February 16, 2022
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Kairosfocus: JVL, you know that Westboro Baptist and even Martin Luther are not foundational sources of the Christian faith. I prefer NOT to judge other people's faiths from the outside. All Christians (and Muslims and Jews and . . . ) claim to know the truth but they don't agree. I will let them and you sort out your differences. As for consequences of evolutionary materialism, the incoherence undermining credibility of mind to even form such a theory is clear. And, the amorality issue goes back to Plato. If there is reason to think an ideology incoherent — done — then it is wholly appropriate to point to its damaging effects. Again, I must be mad or bad or both. So, again, why should I or anyone else who does not think life was actually designed bother to try and carry on a conversation here? So is the trifecta pattern of red herrings led away to strawmen soaked in ad homs then set alight to cloud, confuse poison and polarise. Something no ID proponents ever does?JVL_{February 16, 2022
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BETA! BETA MALE! (Jesse Lee Peterson)Lieutenant Commander Data_{February 16, 2022
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PS: Plato:
Ath[enian Stranger, in The Laws, Bk X 2,360 ya]. . . .[The avant garde philosophers and poets, c. 360 BC] say that fire and water, and earth and air [i.e the classical "material" elements of the cosmos -- the natural order], all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art . . . [such that] all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [ --> that is, evolutionary materialism is ancient and would trace all things to blind chance and mechanical necessity; observe, too, the trichotomy: "nature" (here, mechanical, blind necessity), "chance" (similar to a tossed fair die), ART (the action of a mind, i.e. intelligently directed configuration)] . . . . [Thus, they hold] that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.-
[ --> Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT, leading to an effectively arbitrary foundation only for morality, ethics, so too justice, law and government: accident of personal preference, the ebbs and flows of power politics, accidents of history and and the shifting sands of manipulated community opinion driven by "winds and waves of doctrine and the cunning craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming . . . " cf a video on Plato's parable of the cave; from the perspective of pondering who set up the manipulative shadow-shows, why.]
These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might,
[ --> Evolutionary materialism -- having no IS that can properly ground OUGHT -- leads to the promotion of amorality on which the only basis for "OUGHT" is seen to be might (and manipulation: might in "spin"), opening the door to cynicism, hyperskepticism and nihilism . . . ]
and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [ --> Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles influenced by that amorality at the hands of ruthless power hungry nihilistic agendas], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is,to live in real dominion over others [ --> such amoral and/or nihilistic factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless abuse and arbitrariness . . . they have not learned the habits nor accepted the principles of mutual respect, justice, fairness and keeping the civil peace of justice, so they will want to deceive, manipulate and crush -- as the consistent history of radical revolutions over the past 250 years so plainly shows again and again], and not in legal subjection to them [--> nihilistic will to power not the spirit of justice and lawfulness].
kairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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F/N3: Let me bring forward Haldane, again, as this is pivotal:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For
if [p:] my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain [–> taking in DNA, epigenetics and matters of computer organisation, programming and dynamic-stochastic processes; notice, "my brain," i.e. self referential] ______________________________ [ THEN] [q:] I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. [--> indeed, blindly mechanical computation is not in itself a rational process, the only rationality is the canned rationality of the programmer, where survival-filtered lucky noise is not a credible programmer, note the funcionally specific, highly complex organised information rich code and algorithms in D/RNA, i.e. language and goal directed stepwise process . . . an observationally validated adequate source for such is _____ ?] [Corollary 1:] They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence [Corollary 2:] I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. [--> grand, self-referential delusion, utterly absurd self-falsifying incoherence]
In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. Cf. here on (and esp here) on the self-refutation by self-falsifying self referential incoherence and on linked amorality.]
That has serious consequences, especially when Provine is pondered:
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will [--> without responsible freedom, mind, reason and morality alike disintegrate into grand delusion, hence self-referential incoherence and self-refutation. But that does not make such fallacies any less effective in the hands of clever manipulators] . . . [1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address, U of Tenn -- and yes, that is significant i/l/o the Scopes Trial, 1925]
You may not like what Provine went on record with, but that is a serious issue given Haldane. For, discrediting moral knowledge is just a subset of discrediting knowledge and objective, warranted truth, where our whole rationality is inescapably morally governed through branch on which we all sit first duties. Yes Cicero is absolutely pivotal and we THEREFORE -- logical consequence -- have a perfect right to seriously doubt the intellectual claims and policy intent of power elites wedded to or fellow travelling with ideologies that undermine moral government. Such cannot be trusted to be truthful or responsibly reasonable, prudent and restrained. You may not like that, it is not something I put on the table lightly, but it is a sobering issue. Indeed, it has been that since Plato. KFkairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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F/N2, JVL, you know that Westboro Baptist and even Martin Luther are not foundational sources of the Christian faith. Evolutionary materialist scientism is a fundamental commitment for many who fly the flag of science. It is institutionally entrenched and is enforced, marginalising whatever does not go along. That justifies pointing to the fellow traveller phenomenon, and in relevant cases where organically related bad policy or manifestly false claims are backed by power as "Science" or "knowledge" and are used to push dissent to the margins, it is in order to speak of enabling behaviour. Don't forget, we have had people held hostage over refusal to accredit their children's education to push through a fallacious, historically and factually unjustified evo mat scientism driven ideological redefinition of what Science is, backed by US NAS and NSTA. Things like that leave a very sour taste in our mouths. That's what the NSTA Board statement of 2000 was about. KFkairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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F/N: As for consequences of evolutionary materialism, the incoherence undermining credibility of mind to even form such a theory is clear. And, the amorality issue goes back to Plato. If there is reason to think an ideology incoherent -- done -- then it is wholly appropriate to point to its damaging effects. A classic of this in living memory is marxism. So, I am led to wonder if this sensitivity you are putting on the table is shifting focus from a more fundamental issue on merits. Yes, civility is important, but that is a two way street, and I note that it does not excuse us from examining worldview assertions, logical and factual implications, coherence issues and associated cultural agendas. History tells us poor thought in power has ruinous consequences and it is proverbial that if there is smoke where it ought not to be look for a fire out of control. KFkairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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BA77, kindly ponder whether you have drifted into being too harsh in your comments. KFkairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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JVL, pardon but I must note -- having seen this just now in passing -- that I have spoken to hyperskepticism as I have found this to be a common fallacy and i speak to it for cause; not as a throwaway talk point. So is the issue of crooked yardsticks used to judge what is genuinely straight. So is the trifecta pattern of red herrings led away to strawmen soaked in ad homs then set alight to cloud, confuse poison and polarise. I suggest there are merits on the table and note to you that I responded point by point substantially above, latest being to falsificationism. KFkairosfocus_{February 16, 2022
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Kairosfocus: JVL, ASSUMED, by me? I was specifically referring to comments made by Bornagain77 which is why I referred you to his comments above. You are generally more respectful although you do have a habit of saying that many people who disagree with you are being hyperskeptical or are ignoring the natural order of things or can't see the elephant in the room or are denying something in the teeth of . . . or warranting a lot of stuff. I can't remember when you've ever said: well, yes, that is a fair point but here's why I disagree with it or I understand what you are saying but I see it differently or let's say you are correct then wouldn't we see this or that? or IF there are no islands of function then how do you explain this or that. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind; I am trying to figure out what ID proponents believe and how they think life, as we see it, came about and developed because I find it hard to understand how and when design got implemented. It's also fair to ask why since design implies purpose but I'm happy to leave that until last. I generally try hard to reply to questions posed to me but when all I get is being called a liar or a clown or a denialist or a hyperskeptic and having my sanity questioned I wonder why I should bother trying to be respectful and curious in your house. I get told a lot: you should believe this or that because you believe in unguided evolution or some famous atheist said something so why do you agree with them? If I said to you: someone from the Westboro Baptist Church said something why do you agree with them or Martin Luther was a Christian, you're a Christian so you must agree with him or you believe in God, Muslims believe in God, maybe even the same one so you're part of their world and beliefs you'd get pretty annoyed and would tell me I shouldn't generalise. But you do that to me ALL THE TIME. So, again, why should I bother trying to have a conversation? Seriously.JVL_{February 16, 2022
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JVL, ASSUMED, by me? KFkairosfocus_{February 15, 2022
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^^^^ And where were you when Dawkins uttered these words,
“It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).” - Richard Dawkins
I certainly did not sulk away from Darwinists when Dawkins uttered that, sulking that, "No one cares or will seriously consider anything I have to say so why bother?" But instead I confronted Darwinists head on with the scientific evidence itself and asked them, as I am asking you now, where is your real time empirical evidence that Darwinism is, not likely to be true mind you, but that it is even remotely feasible?
Claim: New Proteins Evolve Very Easily – Cornelius Hunter – April 25, 2017 Excerpt: It is now clear that for a given protein, only a few changes to its amino acid sequence can be sustained before the protein function is all but eliminated. Here is how one paper explained it: “The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability—the ability of proteins to acquire changes in sequence and function.” In other words, protein function precipitously drops off with only a tiny fraction of its amino acids altered. It is not a gradual fitness landscape. Another paper described the protein fitness landscape as rugged. Therefore it is not surprising that various studies on evolving proteins have failed to show a viable mechanism. One study concluded that 10^63 attempts would be required to evolve a relatively short protein. And a similar result (10^65 attempts required) was obtained by comparing protein sequences. Another study found that 10^64 to 10^77 attempts are required, and another study concluded that 10^70 attempts would be required. So something like 10^70 attempts are required yet evolutionists estimate that only 10^43 attempts are possible. In other words, there is a shortfall of 27 orders of magnitude. But it gets worse. The estimate that 10^43 attempts are possible is utterly unrealistic. For it assumes billions of years are available, and that for that entire time the Earth is covered with bacteria, constantly churning out mutations and new protein experiments. Aside from the fact that these assumptions are entirely unrealistic, the estimate also suffers from the rather inconvenient fact that those bacteria are, err, full of proteins. In other word, for evolution to evolve proteins, they must already exist in the first place. This is absurd. And yet, even with these overly optimistic assumptions, evolution falls short by 27 orders of magnitude. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/04/claim-new-proteins-evolve-very-easily/
bornagain77_{February 15, 2022
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Kairosfocus: As I have already said: there is no point in my responding when I am assumed to be a liar or a lunatic, see Bornagain77's comments. No one cares or will seriously consider anything I have to say so why bother?JVL_{February 15, 2022
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JVL, there are responses to your points on the table. KFkairosfocus_{February 15, 2022
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Lately even darwinists started to talk about guided/directed processes from cell because it's obviously and can't be denied this reality anymore but even so they still believe in magical foggy far away unknown unguided processes that produced a self-guided cell. Bad luck . PS: We see now live the reality of imposing the truth by force ( some gang decided that covid have only one cure and that is an experimental vaccine and that is the final truth) .Exactly the same method was used in imposing the truth of evolution.Lieutenant Commander Data_{February 13, 2022
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As to: JVL: "Also, apparently, you don’t think your position is falsifiable, another reason to stop replying." HUH??? You've got it completely backwards JVL. Darwinists are the ones who do not have a rigid falsification criteria. As Denis Noble, President of International Union of Physiological Sciences, stated in 2015, ““If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.”
Central tenets of neo-Darwinism broken. Response to ‘Neo-Darwinism is just fine’ – 2015 Excerpt: “If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.” – Denis Noble - President of International Union of Physiological Sciences https://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/16/2659
Here are few falsifications of core tenets of Darwinian theory that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory,
1. Darwin’s theory holds mutations to the genome to be random. The vast majority of mutations to the genome are not random but are now found to be ‘directed’. 2. Darwin’s theory holds that Natural Selection is the ‘designer substitute’ that produces the ‘appearance’ and/or illusion of design. Natural Selection, especially for multicellular organisms, is found to grossly inadequate as the ‘designer substitute. 3. Darwin’s theory holds that mutations to DNA will eventually change the basic biological form of any given species into a new form of a brand new species. Yet, biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars in biology one may wish to invoke. 4. Darwin’s theory, (via Fisher’s Theorem in population genetics), assumed there to be an equal proportion of good and bad mutations to DNA which were, ultimately, responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Yet, the ratio of detrimental to beneficial mutations is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. 5. Charles Darwin himself held that the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Yet, from the Cambrian Explosion onward, the fossil record is consistently characterized by the sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record(disparity), then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. Moreover, Fossils are found in the “wrong place” all the time (either too early, or too late). 6. Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate, holds that patterns will not repeat themselves in supposedly widely divergent species. Yet thousands of instances of what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, on both the morphological and genetic level, falsifies the Darwinian belief that patterns will not repeat themselves in widely divergent species. 7. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Yet as Doug Axe pointed out, “Basically every gene and every new protein fold, there is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in that gradualistic way. It’s all a mirage. None of it happens that way.” 8. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Yet as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.” 9. Charles Darwin himself stated that, ““The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. Yet ‘our conscious selves’ are certainly not explainable by ‘chance’ (nor is consciousness explainable by any possible reductive materialistic explanation in general), i.e. ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. 10. Besides the mathematics of probability consistently showing that Darwinian evolution is impossible, the mathematics of population genetics itself has now shown Darwinian evolution to be impossible. Moreover, ‘immaterial’ mathematics itself, which undergirds all of science, engineering and technology, is held by most mathematicians to exist in some timeless, unchanging, immaterial, Platonic realm. Yet, the reductive materialism that Darwinian theory is based upon denies the existence of the immaterial realm that mathematics exists in. i.e. Darwinian evolution actually denies the objective reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered scientific in the first place! 11. Donald Hoffman has, via population genetics, shown that if Darwin’s materialistic theory were true then all our observations of reality would be illusory. Yet the scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Moreover, Quantum Mechanics itself has now shown that conscious observation must come before material reality, i.e. falsification of ‘realism’ proves that our conscious observations are reliable!. 12. The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought holds that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. Yet immaterial Information, via experimental realization of the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment, is now found to be its own distinctive physical entity that, although it can interact in a ‘top down’ manner with matter and energy, is separate from matter and energy. 13. Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science! 14. Darwinists, due to their underlying naturalistic philosophy, insist that teleology (i.e. goal directed purpose) does not exist. Yet it is impossible for Biologists to do biological research without constantly invoking words that directly imply teleology. i.e. The very words that Biologists themselves use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian evolution. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6fT6ATY700Bsx2-JSFqL6l-rzXpMcZcZKZfYRS45h4/edit
Whereas, on the other hand, ID is easily falsifiable, it is just that it has never been, (and indeed never will be), falsified. In fact, there is currently a 10 million dollar prize that is being offered for the first person that can falsify ID and prove that unguided material processes have the capacity within themselves to produce the (immaterial) coded information that is necessary to explain life,
Evolution 2.0 Prize: Unprecedented $10 Million Offered To Replicate Cellular Evolution Excerpt: An incentive prize ten times the size of the Nobel – believed to be the largest single award ever in basic science – is being offered to the person or team solving the largest mystery in history: how genetic code inside cells got there, and how cells intentionally self-organize, communicate, then purposely adapt.,,, "A germ resisting antibiotics does more programming in 12 minutes than a team of Google engineers can do in 12 days," said Marshall. "One blade of grass is 10,000 years ahead of any computer. If a single firm in Silicon Valley held a fraction of the secrets of this natural code inside a single cell, they'd set the NASDAQ on fire. Organisms self-edit and reprogram in real time in a way that dwarfs anything manmade. If we crack this, it will literally change the course of aging, disease, A.I. and humanity." https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/evolution-2-0-prize-unprecedented-10-million-offered-to-replicate-cellular-evolution-875038146.html
Of note: I am extremely confident that, since information is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence, that 10 million dollars will never be collected by Darwinists, and that therefore, ID will never be experimentally falsified.
“Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term ‘reductionism.’… Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn’t have bytes… This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.” - George Williams – Evolutionary Biologist – “A Package of Information” “One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” - Intelligent design: Why can't biological information originate through a materialistic process? - Stephen Meyer - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8 -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University, (Newton's alma mater), for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences.
Verse:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
bornagain77_{February 13, 2022
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JVL at 170: "Actually I was responding to your comment that I have ‘blind faith’ in unguided evolutionary processes." So, even though you are conceding that you have "not one scrap of scientific evidence that unguided Darwinian processes can create even a single protein" you are still trying to hold that you do not have "blind faith" that unguided Darwinian processes can create an entire human? Who is composed of, (among other things), (conservatively), something like a billion, trillion, protein molecules, all mysteriously working together as a unified whole to keep a human alive for, more or less, precisely a lifetime and not a moment longer?
HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE - Stephen L. Talbott - May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”. And further: “It’s almost as if every mRNA [an intermediate between a gene and a corresponding protein] coming out of the nucleus knows where it’s going” (Travis 2011),,, Further, the billion protein molecules in a cell are virtually all capable of interacting with each other to one degree or another; they are subject to getting misfolded or “all balled up with one another”; they are critically modified through the attachment or detachment of molecular subunits, often in rapid order and with immediate implications for changing function; they can wind up inside large-capacity “transport vehicles” headed in any number of directions; they can be sidetracked by diverse processes of degradation and recycling . . . and so on without end. Yet the coherence of the whole is maintained. The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. Two systems biologists, one from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and one from Harvard Medical School, frame one part of the problem this way: "The human body is formed by trillions of individual cells. These cells work together with remarkable precision, first forming an adult organism out of a single fertilized egg, and then keeping the organism alive and functional for decades. To achieve this precision, one would assume that each individual cell reacts in a reliable, reproducible way to a given input, faithfully executing the required task. However, a growing number of studies investigating cellular processes on the level of single cells revealed large heterogeneity even among genetically identical cells of the same cell type. (Loewer and Lahav 2011)" ,,, And then we hear that all this meaningful activity is, somehow, meaningless or a product of meaninglessness. This, I believe, is the real issue troubling the majority of the American populace when they are asked about their belief in evolution. They see one thing and then are told, more or less directly, that they are really seeing its denial. Yet no one has ever explained to them how you get meaning from meaninglessness — a difficult enough task once you realize that we cannot articulate any knowledge of the world at all except in the language of meaning.,,, http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2
JVL, If believing unguided Darwinian processes can possibly create that jaw dropping level of integrated complexity for, (conservatively), a billion, trillion, protein molecules in the human body is not "blind faith" on steroids then I don't know what in blue blazes "blind faith" is. For crying out loud, Pentecostal snake handlers and Muslim suicide bombers have far less "blind faith" than Darwinists do!
The Designed Body: Irreducible Complexity on Steroids = Exquisite Engineering - Steve Laufmann - March 8, 2017 Excerpt: The series by Dr. Glicksman discusses 40 interrelated chemical and physiological parameters that the human body must carefully balance to sustain life. The body deploys amazing, interconnected solutions to manage them. The parameters are: (1) oxygen, (2) carbon dioxide, (3) hydrogen ion, (4) water, (5) sodium, (6) potassium, (7) glucose, (8) calcium, (9) iron, (10) ammonia, (11) albumin transport, (12) proteins, (13) insulin, (14) glucagon, (15) thyroid hormone, (16) cortisol, (17) testosterone, (18) estrogen, (19) aldosterone, (20) parathormone, (21) digestive enzymes, (22) bile, (23) red blood cells, (24) white blood cells, (25) platelets, (26) clotting factors, (27) anti-clotting factors, (28) complement, (29) antibodies, (30) temperature, (31) heart rate, (32) respiratory rate, (33) blood pressure, (34) lung volume, (35) airway velocity, (36) cardiac output, (37) liver function, (38) kidney function, (39) hypothalamic function, (40) nerve impulse velocity.,,, For the human body, though, the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. This is exactly what we see with all complex engineered systems. In fact, this is a defining characteristic of engineered systems. With humans, the whole is also quite remarkable in its own right. It’s almost as if the body was designed specifically to enable the mind: thought, language, love, nobility, self-sacrifice, art, creativity, industry, and my favorite enigma (for Darwinists): music. The human body enables these things, but does not determine them. As near as we can tell, no combination of the body’s substrate — information, machinery, or operations — alone can achieve these things. Yet it’s exactly these things that make human life worth living. These are essential to our human experience. Human life involves so much more than merely being alive. This simple observation flies in the face of Darwinian expectations. How can bottom-up, random processes possibly achieve such exquisitely engineered outcomes — outcomes that deliver a life experience well beyond the chemistry and physics of the body? Such questions have enormous implications for worldviews, and for the ways that humans live their lives. I’ll look at some of those in a further post tomorrow. http://evolutionnews.org/2017/03/designed-body-engineered-system-displaying-irreducible-complexity-steroids/
Again, believing that such jaw dropping integrated complexity can possibly happen by a endless series 'selected accidents', as Darwinists believe, is "blind faith" on steroids! JVL then sulks that "not much point for me to continue to respond when I am assumed to be a liar and mentally ill." Well JVL, the proper, and honest, response from you would have been for you to, (instead of sulking about your feelings being hurt), honestly admit to yourself, and to others, that it is indeed dishonest, indeed it is beyond crazy, to believe, as Darwinists do, that such astonishing integrated complexity in the human body, (displayed from the billion, trillion, protein level up), can possibly be the result of an endless series of 'selected accidents'. It's really not rocket science JVL, "Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”
It’s Really Not Rocket Science - Granville Sewell - November 16, 2015, Excerpt: In a 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote:
"It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”
It has never required a PhD in science to understand the key issue in the debate between Darwinism and intelligent design. It is blindingly obvious to non-scientists like Jay Homnick that unintelligent forces alone cannot design hearts, eyes, ears, and brains. https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt/
Verse,
Psalm 139:13–14 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
Of supplemental note: the "true whole" of an organism, (or even the 'true whole' of a single protein for that matter if you want to get technical), is, in principal, beyond the explanatory scope of the reductive materialistic explanations, (i.e. "step-by-step analytic process"), of Darwinists.
Thomas Aquinas contra Transformism - niwrad - August 25, 2014 Excerpt: Reply to objection 3: Some have claimed that the [first] man’s body was formed antecedently in time, and that later on God infused a soul into the already formed body. But it is contrary to the nature of the perfection of the first production of beings that God would make either the body without the soul or the soul without the body; for each of them is a part of human nature. It is especially inappropriate to make the body without the soul, since the body depends on the soul, but not vice versa. [Summa Theologiae, 91, IV] Aquinas ,,,Beings are “perfect” because they are “true wholes”. If they are “true wholes” then their constitution / organization spiritus-anima-corpus must be an integrated “unit” or “oneness”. As I said in the linked post a “true whole” is a synthesis that can be neither produced nor conceived by analysis, rather only by means of “synthetic knowledge” (related to intelligent design). Because of such “synthetic knowledge” any kind of being is a top-down manifestation / instantiation of a metaphysical archetype into matter, by means of a vertical causation across the three layers: spiritual, animic (soul), corporeal (body). Differently, a material macroevolution, or macro-morphing, of a being A to a being B would be a step-by-step analytic process, which — as we have seen — can never reach the limit of the target “true whole”. If the limit unit is not reached, and the beings are units, they neither can be produced by such analytic manner,,, https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/thomas-aquinas-contra-transformism/
bornagain77_{February 13, 2022
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JVL IF a verified, human observer is required to justify that new species arose via unguided processes then the same criteria applies to intelligent design does it not?
:lol: Nope! If you say that an arrow appeared via unguided processes burden is on you to demonstrate the processes exactly(that supposedly are more "stupid" than you) ,if I say that an arrow appeared by ID I don't need to demonstrate the process (because even if the ID landscape contain a hierarchy of increasing complexity to which I might/might not have access -ID "involvement" is self-evidently true even for a 3 years old ).Lieutenant Commander Data_{February 13, 2022
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JVL, I just note that falsifiability is not a good criterion of truthfulness. There are things that are self-evident by being undeniably true, to start with. Then, for empirically observable entities, there is the point that one's self awareness and inner reflections can be the case without falsifiability, as they are incorrigible. Then, post Godel, we know no finite, internally coherent axiomatisation will entail all true claims about logic of structure and quantity, while there is no constructive procedure to guarantee coherence of such axiom systems; mathematics is utterly central to theorising and warrant starting with physics, which means the Godel issues are embedded. Of course relativity and quantum have key points of fundamental inconsistency. Going on to things we observe in the external world, that one cannot prove or potentially disprove what one may have seen etc to the satisfaction of an objector who may be hyperskeptical is irrelevant to its truth. Then, in science, the issue is testability and support rather than falsifiability as such, for example no one has seen an electron but it is a well supported entity and its characteristics are testable based on connected phenomena we may observe, often using instruments that are designed on the accepted reality of electrons. As for origins theories, the bottomline is, the actual past beyond record is unobservable and we must be doubly cautious in our reconstructive models, the matter at stake here. For example was the actual past infinite? [I argued on logic of structure and quantity that it cannot have been so, but those who disagree imply its utter unobservability.] Yes, we must be open ended and open minded, we must realise that claims are potentially in error and that if a claim can explain [imply] everything, it is suspect of incoherence. Then, Lakatos showed that core claims are surrounded by all sorts of auxiliary claims [e.g. about instrumentation etc] that are like sacrificial armour belts so wide ranging theories with strong institutional support can only rarely be falsified in practice, where with puzzles, anomalies and open problems it is confidence in a research programme that is the real issue, as there is no guarantee that all such will be solved at any period. No, Popper did not decide the matter. KF PS, is the claim that to be meaningful or credible etc scientific claims must be falsifiable, itself falsifiable?kairosfocus_{February 13, 2022
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Bornagain77: JVL in response to me pointing out that “he has not one scrap of scientific evidence that unguided Darwinian processes can create even a single protein.” States that “That is not correct. I have taken a lot of time to examine the support for unguided evolution and ID.” Actually I was responding to your comment that I have 'blind faith' in unguided evolutionary processes. JVL then, unsurprisingly, hand-waves off “not even wrong’ Pauli’s criticism of the Darwinian misuse of mathematical probability. Another mischaracterisation. JVL then dishonestly ignores real time empirical evidence . . . JVL then tries to dishonestly insinuate . . . That is simply dishonest on JVL’s part, . . . So again I remind JVL that “denialism” is considered a mental illness, not a valid scientific refutation. Then, after all that BS, JVL then tries to claim that he is being fair and honest and has questioned Darwinian evolution. One word: MALARKEY! There's not much point for me to continue to respond when I am assumed to be a liar and mentally ill. Apparently, you don't consider it possible to disagree with you without being a knave or a fool. Also, apparently, you don't think your position is falsifiable, another reason to stop replying.JVL_{February 13, 2022
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PPS, let me follow up on a clip by BA77, on alleged evolution of proteins by easy incremental changes -- NOT:
https://evolutionnews.org/2017/04/claim-new-proteins-evolve-very-easily/ Proteins are composed of a linear string of amino acids, often hundreds in length, and perform all sorts of important tasks in the cell. They could not have evolved by any stretch of the imagination, and so pose a rather difficult problem for evolutionists . . . . For evolution to work biology must be chocked full of structures that can arise via long, gradual evolutionary pathways. Mutations must be able to slowly accumulate, gradually improving the structure. In other words, the “fitness landscape” must be smooth and gradual, not rugged or precipitous. That evolutionary expectation has been found to be false many times, and proteins are no exception. It is now clear that for a given protein, only a few changes to its amino acid sequence can be sustained before the protein function is all but eliminated. Here is how one paper explained it:
The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability—the ability of proteins to acquire changes in sequence and function.
In other words, protein function precipitously drops off with only a tiny fraction of its amino acids altered. It is not a gradual fitness landscape. Another paper described the protein fitness landscape as rugged. [--> That is, we are looking at islands of function isolated in vast configuration spaces] Therefore it is not surprising that various studies on evolving proteins have failed to show a viable mechanism. One study concluded that 10^63 attempts would be required to evolve a relatively short protein. And a similar result (10^65 attempts required) was obtained by comparing protein sequences. Another study found that 10^64 to 10^77 attempts are required, and another study concluded that 10^70 attempts would be required. [several links are given at ENV] So something like 10^70 attempts are required yet evolutionists estimate that only 10^43 attempts are possible. In other words, there is a shortfall of 27 orders of magnitude. But it gets worse. The estimate that 10^43 attempts are possible is utterly unrealistic. For it assumes billions of years are available, and that for that entire time the Earth is covered with bacteria, constantly churning out mutations and new protein experiments. Aside from the fact that these assumptions are entirely unrealistic, the estimate also suffers from the rather inconvenient fact that those bacteria are, err, full of proteins. In other word, for evolution to evolve proteins, they must already exist in the first place. This is absurd. And yet, even with these overly optimistic assumptions, evolution falls short by 27 orders of magnitude. The numbers don’t add up. [NB: there is a discussion of nylonase, leading to the apt point, "A new gene, arising within a modern cell responding to an environmental challenge, is not analogous to chance origin." actual origin is not equated properly to low information content adaptation]
Proteins, the workhorses of the cell, exhibit observable islands of function.kairosfocus_{February 12, 2022
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PS: To further underscore my point, observe the subtitle for Vol III of Lyell's Principles of Geology:
Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation. VOL. III, THE SIXTH EDITION Charles Lyell
This is the like causes like premise, referred to observed causes and effects. It is of course not new to me, e.g. it is a key part of the work of Stephen Meyer when he did his PhD in Phil of Sci.kairosfocus_{February 12, 2022
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JVL: >>IF a verified, human observer is required to justify that new species arose via unguided processes>> 37: No such claim has been made, you are setting up and knocking over a strawman. 38: The actual claim is that explanatory causal factors for entities or events remote from observation in space and/or time should be warranted in our observation as having capability to cause effects observed in traces from what we did not directly observe. Do I need to note that species is not the relevant level, body plan origin is, where I have cited circumpolar species complexes, Red Deer vs American Elk and similar cases. Note in the 80s in Galapagos, a famous case of highly successful mating of a pair of birds of distinct species in the Darwin's Finches group of species is part of the observational record. 39, here, I excerpt Newton's Rules:
Rule I [--> adequacy and simplicity] We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true [--> it is probably best to take this liberally as meaning "potentially and plausibly true"] and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes. Rule II [--> uniformity of causes: "like forces cause like effects"] Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes. As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets. Rule III [--> confident universality] The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever. For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple, and always consonant to [398/399] itself . . . . Rule IV [--> provisionality and primacy of induction] In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the arguments of induction may not be evaded by [speculative] hypotheses.
40: That is precisely the problem, you are using a speculative hypothesis to evade what is rooted in reliable patterns of actual observation. >> then the same criteria applies to intelligent design does it not?>> 41: Not at all, we know on trillions of observed cases that reliably, FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits of complexity is routinely produced by intelligently directed configuration, while we know that designing intelligence cannot reasonably be exhausted by us. We already see beaver dams and the like to tell us other creatures show some intelligence. 42: Thus, having shown relevant capability we are entitled to infer, like causes like. Where the key phenomenon includes coded information bearing strings in the cell [ language] and algorithms expressed through such codes [goal directed, stepwise processes] well beyond the 500 - 1,000 bit threshold. This, for origin of life and of dozens of body plans. >> If we can only accept ‘evidence’ that can be collected in one human lifetime then there is no ancient history is there?>> 42: The strawman caricature is elaborated. Notice, what is actually put forward is that explanatory factors of causal nature be validated as actually existing and having claimed powers. 43: Where, on trillions of observed cases, FSCO/I readily comes about by intelligently directed configuration AND, 44: We have analysis -- ducked, of course -- on blind, needle in haystack search challenge, that going to turning every atom in the sol system or in the observed cosmos into an observer and allowing fresh observations at rates comparable to fast organic chemical reaction speeds, there is not enough scope of materials and time in 10^57 or 10^80 atoms and 10^17 s, at 10^12 to 10^14 observations per second of 500 or 1,000 bits worth of configuration space, to sample more than a negligibly small fraction of the space, i.e. we have negligible search potential. 45: Where also, on observing -- that key term again -- the nature of function based on specific, complex configuration of parts, whether say a fishing reel as illustrative or information bearing string data structures as key examples actually found in cells -- and strings are WLOG once we can reduce 3-d entities through description languages such as AUTOCAD etc -- we readily see that relevant function comes in deeply isolated islands in such beyond astronomical configuration spaces. 46: We note, that the vast continent of incrementally accessible function implied in the tree of life interpreted as a record of the origin and unfolding of life is wholly speculative; indeed the trade secret of paleontology as admitted by Gould is the systematic pattern of gaps in accounting for major features of body plans. 47: So, we see the strawman knocked over . . . >>Can you have a double standard for evidence?>> 48: Strawman. >>Also, does that mean we cannot have any kind of geographical reasoning before verified written records?>> 49: A forest of strawmen begins to be set up. 50: We obviously have geographical, geological, bio-geographical etc reasoning on matters of pre-history, However, such reasoning needs to be controlled by the principle that merely speculative hypotheses should not be allowed to present themselves as though claimed causes have been observed in action with requisite capability. 51: As biogeographical issues are likely intended, the stricture that there is absence of evidence of gradual emergence of body plan level features. [Such body plans for animals emerged "suddenly" in beds dated to the Cambrian era, without incremental precursors, cf the trade secret noted just above.] >> Does that mean that almost all archaeological evidence is rubbish?>> 52: Strawman, we note capabilities of human beings per observation and record so we have abundant patterns of empirical signs that distinguish archaeology from natural. 53: Indeed, you, JVL, are here neatly side stepping how archaeology is pervaded with recognition of the validity of the design inference on sign. 54: Where, of course, there are cases of shoddy or even fraudulent work in archaeology and beyond in paleontology. >>What is your definition of evidence?>> 55: The strawman continues, with invited inference that as not a true ~~Scotsman~~ [--> Scientist], I do not have a sound understanding of observation and evidence, we can read subtext. 56: Observation having been answered above, the word evidence is now trotted out. Okay, Wikipedia testifying against interest, is forced to acknowledge:
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies [--> I would, post Gettier, use "warrants"] beliefs or what makes it rational to hold a certain doxastic [--> believing] attitude. For example, a perceptual experience of a tree may act as evidence that justifies the belief that there is a tree.
[--> our senses, though prone to error are typically reliable in most circumstances of relevance, and a credible witness can report accurately and provide good reason to accept claims as factual: I saw Tom club Tim who fell down . . . ]
In this role, evidence is usually understood as a private mental state.
[--> but such can be testified to and can warrant conclusions as to facts, which can be recorded and transmitted in good chain of custody to us. This is directly tied to what observation is.]
Important topics in this field include the questions of what the nature of these mental states is, for example, whether they have to be propositional, and whether misleading mental states can still qualify as evidence. [--> Yes, of our error prone cognitive framework and faculties] Other fields, including the sciences and the law, tend to emphasize more the public nature of evidence (for example, scientists tend to focus on how the data used during statistical inference are generated).[1] In philosophy of science, evidence is understood as that which confirms or disconfirms scientific hypotheses. Measurements of Mercury's "anomalous" orbit, for example, are seen as evidence that confirms Einstein's theory of general relativity. In order to play the role of neutral [--> Wiki's bias shows here, OBJECTIVE is more correct] arbiter between competing theories, it is important that scientific evidence is public and uncontroversial [--> history shows that scientific evidence of good validity has often been controversial, try the case of recognising importance of handwashing by doctors], like observable physical objects or events, so that the proponents of the different theories can agree on what the evidence is. This is ensured by following the scientific method [--> there is no one, unique, one size fits all and only cases of Science method] and tends to lead to an emerging scientific consensus [--> consensus is not a sound criterion of truth or warrant in science, scientific theories are open ended and many key observations have had to be corrected] through the gradual accumulation of evidence. [--> refer to Kuhn's Structure of Scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts] Two issues for the scientific conception of evidence are the problem of underdetermination, i.e. that the available evidence may support competing theories equally well, and theory-ladenness, i.e. that what some scientists consider the evidence to be may already involve various theoretical assumptions not shared by other scientists. [--> a key admission!!!!!] It is often held that there are two kinds of evidence: intellectual evidence or what is self-evident and empirical evidence or evidence accessible through the senses. In order for something to act as evidence for a hypothesis, it has to stand in the right relation to it. In philosophy, this is referred to as the "evidential relation" . . . Probabilistic approaches hold that something counts as evidence if it increases the probability of the supported hypothesis. [--> broaden to include, plausibility or credibility] According to hypothetico-deductivism, evidence consists in observational consequences of the hypothesis. The positive-instance approach states that an observation sentence is evidence for a universal hypothesis if the sentence describes a positive instance of this hypothesis. The evidential relation can occur in various degrees of strength. These degrees range from direct proof of the truth of a hypothesis to weak evidence that is merely consistent with the hypothesis but does not rule out other, competing hypotheses, as in circumstantial evidence. In law, rules of evidence govern the types of evidence that are admissible in a legal proceeding. Types of legal evidence include testimony, documentary evidence, and physical evidence.
57: Evidence, can be seen in that context as observations and associated inferences or reasoning [to include mathematical derivations and calculations, where Statistics is a branch of Math, also credible testimony of observations or contemplations or self-awareness etc] that contribute to responsible warrant for claims. So, Merriam-Webster:
Essential Meaning of evidence 1 : something which shows that something else exists or is true There is no evidence that these devices actually work. He has been unable to find evidence to support his theory. See More Examples 2 chiefly US, somewhat formal : a visible sign of something 3 : material that is presented to a court of law to help find the truth about something The jury had a great deal of evidence to sort through before reaching a verdict. There is not a scrap/shred of evidence in her favor.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The pattern of evasion and absence of an actually observed case of FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits coming about by blind chance and/or machanical necessity continues. As predicted. KFkairosfocus_{February 12, 2022
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JVL, It is obvious that you need to distinguish the differing degree of warrant attaching to direct observation and witness, then to record of same [including issues of copies and chain of transmission] from THEORY-LADEN INTERPRETATION of traces from remote entities or events, remote in space and/or time. Newton rightly insisted that we observationally validate capability [thus, limitations] of causal processes we claim to have acted or be acting in circumstances where observation is absent, so that we have empirical control on speculations. The matter has nothing to do with my views or idiosyncrasies . . . your now habitual personalisation is fallacious . . . but is a matter of assuring that there is empirical observational control on models or explanations of things remote from our observation. It has nothing to do with whether archaeology of prehistoric sites [vs "natural"] can provide a degree of warrant, or whether dating techniques have some degree of warrant, or the like. It has nothing to do with estimated times for changes in question, the timeline itself is part of the theory-laden interpretive reconstruction we are talking about and insofar as it is based on assumed or extrapolated but not actually observed powers of incremental, claimed cumulative mutations filtered through differential reproductive success, it is a part of the same warrant challenge. The point is clear, you imply that you do not have actual observation of the power of blind chance and/or mechanical necessity to produce FSCO/I beyond 500 - 1,000 bits so you have committed to faith in a model that reconstructs the remote past of origins on the assumption that such factors, however, did shape the past, never mind the relevant search challenge and nature of complex configuration based function; that is, you have begged the question and have tried to rewrite key meanings of terms like history in support. I do not expect you to acknowledge the point, but that is a conclusion quite clearly warranted by your arguments above. KFkairosfocus_{February 12, 2022
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKRTiHxvVJY 1 Minute worth your time.zweston_{February 12, 2022
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