What exactly is ID?

Hi Taq, thank you so much for your comments. I apologize for taking so long getting back with you. I had realized that I was not explaining my position very well with regards to information so I spent some time examining just where I was failing in my articulation. I’ll get into that more in my next post. With regards to your comments above, I was wondering if you could cite exactly where in the paper they state which nucleotides in the chromosomal DNA of the bacteria had an addition of protein information? I couldn’t find it in the portions of the paper you linked me to. I should point out also that of course beneficial mutations occur. No one is denying that at all. What I am saying is that all mutations which occur (beneficial or detrimental) are the result of loss of information or loss of specificity or in other cases insertions and deletions. Also as I said, changes in populations occur as a result of already existing alleles in the gene pool, with of course the exception of some bacteria which appear to have been designed to effect change within the plasmid DNA. But in all other organisms it is always a manipulation within the existing genes and not an example of added information to the chromosomal DNA of an organism. This is what we would need to see in order to convince an open minded skeptic, like my self, that molecules to man evolution is possible.

Good question Taq. I'll be the first to admit here that I am only a layman and know very little about actual DNA sequences. But I can tell you what I have read and been told about it. For instance I think that it was Yockey who wrote that the genetic code is constructed to function with the same principles found in modern communication and computer code. I don't know how to speak Spanish, but my Spanish speaking friend tells me that the phrase, "Glorioso es el nombre de Hesus Christo," is a phrase that relays information that is specific and complex. Just because I personally don't speak Spanish doesn't mean that its not true. Biologists have known since the 1960's that the ability of the cell to build functional proteins depends upon the precise sequence of DNA bases.

I would say that there are some very distinguishing characteristics between living organisms and crystals. Organisms have both very complex and very specified information while crystals lack complexity and also polymers lack specificity. I would greatly disagree here. Most mutations are very detrimental to the organism. And the one's that are beneficial are not the result of added information to the chromosomal DNA. In most cases when you file off a tooth on a key it will no longer unlock the lock. But on rare occasions it will start unlocking several locks. But what has actually happened is the key has lost specificity, and that doesn't explain how all the teeth got arranged in the specific order they are in to begin with.

Are you claiming that the simplest lifeform is more complex than the most complex crystaline structure?On what basis are you judging this?

I took your friends quote and I put it through the internet anagram finder.It came back with 31,252 combos in English. It doesn't do other languages.Yes, the letters your friend used in ONE specific order carried a specific meaning. However, those SAME letters in a different order carry 31,000+ different meanings. Some make more sense than others, but they all express SOME information.You are assuming that because letters form a sequence which YOU are witnessing, it is the only or best sequence possible under all conditions at all times and therefore it must have been made by a magical wizard.Clearly you must realize that there are MANY different kinds of combinations which do MANY different things. There is nothing particularly special about any given one. No wizard needed.

Lets make a deal here Nuggin, as gentlemen. No matter how much I may disagree with your beliefs, out of respect for you I will never compare them to children's fantasy, and I would appreciate it if you would cease from doing the same. If you are in agreement then just let me know and I will go ahead and reply to your arguments. Otherwise...I guess we have no more to discuss.

Hi Brad H,I am the moderator actively on duty in this thread. I've already posted 34 messages of requests and warnings in this thread and removed the posting permissions of one evolutionist contributor. Please leave moderating responsibilities to the moderator. If you feel you are having problems with discussion that I'm not noticing then please post to Report discussion problems here: No.2.Concerning your request to Nuggin where you say you would never compare his views to children's fantasies and request the same consideration from him, I assume you're referring to his references to magical wizards. This is extremely mild compared to what often goes on at discussion boards where the topics are controversial. Moderators here will not be concerning themselves with such trivialities, particularly when the author addresses himself directly and pertinently to the topic. If you cannot bear such slight slights then even this discussion board, a discussion board that is more strictly and neutrally moderated than the vast majority of discussion boards on the Internet, is too wild for you.Since non-moderators are not permitted to moderate, and since moderators here will be enforcing the standards of EvC Forum and not of Brad H, you have two choices. Continue with the discussion or drop out.Sorry to express this so bluntly, but most of my actions in this thread have been against evolutionists, so I'm not going to coddle any creationists or IDists.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

And this is a much better analogy for the actual informational content of the genetic "code" than his sentence en espanol. The vast majority of our DNA has no meaning at all. Drawing attention to the small part that does code for things is, as no one has mentioned for more than a hundred posts, the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.Here's another analogy along the same lines. Take a box of Scrabble and dump it out haphazardly on the floor. Count up all the words that appear in every language you know. Give each word a probability score based on 26 to the power of the word length. Add all the scores together to produce a total massive improbability. Act amazed, assume there must be a dump designer. Pay no attention to the low percentage of words vs nonwords.

I'm sorry if you feel that your religion is on par with children's fantasies.Just because the Harry Potter books use the word Wizard, that doesn't mean that all wizards are for children.Just like the existence of Casper the Friendly Ghost doesn't mean that your "Holy Ghost" need also be "friendly" or for children.I use the term wizard to mean: "Any individual who is allegedly using *magic!* to accomplish their goal."Even the most rigid fundamentalist must admit that their religion is all about *magic!* and therefore is about a wizard.

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ID is a Christian political movement created because the term "creationism" wasn't winning court cases.

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The Discovery Institute and the "cDesign Proponentsists" that work with it, including Dembski, are actively pushing a Creationist agenda.

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They've even published the Wedge Document which OUTLINES their strategy.

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They are all Creationists.

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Everyone who knows anything about the history of the modern ID movement knows this is not true. The majority of ID proponents are Christians, so what? The majority of evolutionists are atheists, again so what? I could also call modern evolutionary theory a political atheist movement. What good would that do?Modern ID movement was formed separately from any court case concerning "creationism". The notions and the term Intelligent Design was used way before any such court case.

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Opponents of the theory often insist that intelligent design emerged as a conspiracy to circumvent the 1987 Supreme Court decision, Edwards vs. Aguillard.1 There the Court struck down a Louisiana law promoting the teaching of creation science in public school science classes. The theory of intelligent design, critics insist, is merely a clever end-run around this ruling, biblical creationism in disguise.
The problem with this claim is the intelligent design predates Edwards vs. Aguillard by many years. Its roots stretch back to design arguments made by Socrates and Plato,2 and even the term intelligent design is more than 100 years old. Oxford scholar F.C.S. Schiller employed it in an 1897 essay, writing that it will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.

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The Origin of Intelligent Design | Discovery Institute

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Find me some prominent ID proponents who are not Christian. People who are published and recognized in the field. Not "My cousin Larry". Real people.

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Why? What would be the point? Why are "prominent" and "published" scientists so much more important than the rest? What's your point anyway?What about Steve Fuller who is a secular humanist. He supports ID.
Steve Fuller (sociologist) - Wikipedia

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And round and round we go.

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No. It's not. You know it's not. I've explained to you why it is not. You've commented on my explanations.

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You CAN NOT check something against itself for verification.

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I can't give you a newly manufactured ruler with a "1 foot" marking on it and have you VERIFY that it is 1 foot long by simply reading that it says "1 foot".

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That's NOT verification.

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Likewise, your "magic Creationism Equation" can not be used to VERIFY ITSELF as proof that the Jew Wizards Jew Beams are zipping around poofing everything into existence.

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And you KNOW that I'm right.

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That's why you are so busy ducking and dodging. If you thought that your explanation worked for other examples, you'd be trotting them out left and right.

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But you aren't.

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Instead you are hiding.

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So here's the situation. You are wrong. You know you are wrong. I know you are wrong. Everyone reading the post knows you are wrong.

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So, just admit you can't come up with any more examples cuz you're making it all up

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I'm not checking soemthing against itself. I'm checking the validity of CSI in the way it was supposed to be done. I'm not going to bother doing anything else, so you might as well drop it right there.

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I am saying that we DON'T KNOW if it lost all function. How hard is that to understand ?

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We know it lost all KNOWN functions. That is the only thing I'm interested in anyway. Like I said before, it may very well be that it's useful for something else. I'm not disputing that. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But what we do know, is that now we know how many mutations it takes for an enzyme to lose it's known function.

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Hello! Nobody disagreed with that ! This argument is over whether we KNOW that it lost ALL function. And it seems that you concede that we don't, but you go on arguing and arguing about nothing.

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Umm... no. I don't care if it lost all function, even those we do not know if it might had. Because they were not tested for anyway.

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Wrong. The number 10^20 is the estimated number of 4-level concepts. It is Dembski's attempt to compensate for the fact that "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" is chosen in hindsight.

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And D* = bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.

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I have thought about it and it makes no sense to do anything else. As Dembski points out it is P(D*) that needs to be low to conclude design. And if you think about that (and remember the examples discussed before) that makes perfect sense - it makes no sense to use the probability of the exact event - and that is exactly what Dembski does in his handling of the Caputo case. Since D is "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller", we need the probability of getting a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller".

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Is the probability of a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" that consists of 10 proteins equal to the probability of "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" that consists of 100.000.000.000 proteins?

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D* is D considered as an event. In this case that would be "a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller". 10^20 is Dembski's estimate of the number of 4-level concepts.

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Yes, exactly, D* here is the "a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller", which let me repeat, means that: D* = bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20. So I was rigth from the start.

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In that case it won't contribute much to P(D*). That would be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of the mathematics. Very unlikely events that fall within the specification won't contribute much to the probability of meeting the specification. And 1,000,000 bits is a probability of 2^-1000,000 - very, very unlikely.

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I know it does't! But it does matter to the probability of E! Which is also imprtant.Do you, or do you not understand that getting number 6 fher throwing a die i 1/6? If you have two dice, and you want to get the number 6 on both, the probability decreases, and now it's 1/12. Therefore, aflagellum consisting of 50 proteins has higher probability of forming by chance than a hypothetical one consisting of 10.00.000 proteins. Therefore it's complexity is relevant to the calculation!

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I think that you mean that you took 20% away from the exponent. Because taking 20% away from 10^2954 gets you 8*10^2953. Yes, I already worked out that that was how you applied the 20%. And if you remember I showed exactly why that was wrong.
That's not the calculation I need to know. I need to know how you got the figure of 10^2954 in the first place.

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Dear God! I already told you! It's in the NFL, which I already said is what Dembski calculated.

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Actually you should quote the relevant stuff. The figure 10^120 is just another way of presenting Dembski's universal probability bound (in this case reduced to 400 bits).

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If you know what the number represents than obviously I shouldn0t bother.

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The pulsar signal does. It's a regular series of pulses. It's certainly not random. A lighthouse produces much the same sort of signal.

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A regular pattern does not equal specification. Just becasue it's regular it doesnn't mean anything. It has to have some meaning besides itself. Liek I said, a cure for cancer, a Guns'n'Roses song in binary digits, etc...

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In other words you choose to dodge the issue. I said that the sickle-cell allele was unusual as a beneficial mutation because it is only beneficial in the heterozygous state, while being deleterious in the homozygous state. If you want to argue otherwise you have to produce evidence that that is not unusual. Arguing that it is normal in some other respects simply ignores my point.

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WTF am I didging? Nothing! You are the one who is pretending not to understand what I'm talking about.I DO NOT CARE IF THE MUTATION IS UNUSUAL!!!!!!The point is that natural seelction selects anything, including the "unusual" mutations, if they confer reproductive fitness. Even those mutations that reduce biological functions, such as the sickle cell mutation. Therefore, it contributes to genetic entropy.

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As I said, it is your argument that would benefit from the existence of the correlation. If we are simply dealing with "noise" then the larger the population, the less effect it has. This is why genetic entropy is only a real problem for small populations.

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No! Stop repeating this crap over and over again. There is no noise averageing. For a full removal of all mutations you would need an infinitely large population. Since you don't have one, mutations accumulate. I never said ANYTHING about some correlation. The effects, that is, the noise is too strong to be averaged out, precisely becasue genetic changes are not strong enough, and they are just a tiny part of what is being evaluated by natural selection.This is the last source I'm citing for you because you are pretending not to understand what I'm talking about. Therefroe, this conversation is useless. http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/coverLook at these two mice. They are from the same parents. They are genntically almost identical, as two offspring can be. No mutations have happened in any of them. This is an epigenetic effect known as DNA methylation. The mother first gave birth to a giant crappy low fitness yellow mouse. After the mother got fed with food consisting of a large portion of methyl groups, those chemicals attached themselves to the backbone of the DNA, and regulated the DNA so the next mouse that was born was small brown and was more healthy and has high fitness. And ZERO, and I mean ZERO genetic changes happened. No changes in the genetic sequence occured.As anyone can clearly see, these changes are drastic, and have absolutely nothing to do with genetics. As a matter of fact, the more healthy small rat could actually have a deleterious mutation for all we know, and he would on average have MORE reproductive fitness than the crappy giant rat. Therefore, natural selection would on average favor it. No large population is going to average out this kind of noise. So deleterious mutations in those rats on average do get passed on.And the best part is this is only ONE, yes only ONE source of noise! You still have FIVE other sources to consider. It's plain and obvious that the noise is too large for natural selection to effectively remove deleterious mutations.

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Natural selection doesn't have to be anything like 100% efficient to prevent genetic entropy. All it has to do is to maintain a balance where the average fitness is held at a high enough level to maintain the population. If the population is adequately fit, and the rate at deleterious alleles are lost is the same as the rate at which they enter the population then they aren't accumulating. If you want to prove that genetic entropy is inevitable on theoretical grounds you are going to have to crunch the numbers and find out where that balance point is.

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LOL! This is simple math! Anything less than 100% equals accumulation of mutations!If every deleterious mutation gets removed only than are the genetic traits kept in balance.If 1 in 10 are not removed, genetic entropy increases. Because for every 10 muations 1 will accumulate!
if 1 in 1.000 are not removed, genetic entropy increases. Because for every 1.000 muations 1 will accumulate!
if 1 in 10.000.000 are not removed, genetic entropy increases. Because for every 10.000.000 muations 1 will accumulate!
etc...Only a perfect selection can keep the order in balance. Anything else equals accumulation.

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I already told you that I do not intend to add another separate topic to this discussion. You've seen Admin ask for focus, and suggest narrowing posts down to a single topic. We're already discussing two topics. I decline to add a third.

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Thank you for admitting that it's physically impossible for the chain to evolve into a human, because it's obvious to any reasonable person, that a mechanism that makes something constantly get SHORTER, can not in the same time make it LONGER!It's a phisical impossibillity!Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

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Yes it does because most bad mutations are fatal. Neutral and positive oones don't count for obvious reasons.

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No they are not. The majority of mutations are nearly neutral. Actually slightly deleterious. And since there is noise, natural selection is blind to them, so they keep accumulationg.

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And the organism dies before it can reproduce, removing it from the gene pool. thus the mutation is not conserved.

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Again no. It's more subtle than this. The biological functions gradually lose their functions. So subtle, that they do not get detected by natural selection. That is why those individuals with subtly lower fitness spread their genes. Decreasingt he fitness of the whole population. And this means that since the whole populations has now a lower fitness, even stronger mutations won't get noticed by natural slelection now. So they can accumulate to. So the process continues untill a population goes extinct.A very harmful mutation if it happened in pupulation with high enough fitness would probably get removed. But, if a subtle deleterious occurse, and spreads, the whole populating gets it's fitness decreased. Now if that very harmful mutation happens, it will not be as bad as before, so it too can be spread throughout the population. And that's how genetic entropy increases.

While I'm sympathetic to the view that some changes in the genes are not 'recognised' by NS I can't help but wonder about ancient lineages such as crocodiles: they are immune to this 'genetic entropy?

Hi Brad H, just a small point (not really on topic, but ..) First off, why are insertions not additions? They were not there before, yes?Second, we have the case of walkingstick insects.See Figure 1 from Nature 421, 264 - 267 (16 January 2003); doi:10.1038/nature01313 (reproduced below)Walkingstick insects originally started out as winged insects (blue at start and top row). That diversified.And some lost wings (red). And diversified.And some regained wings (blue again). And diversified.And one lost wings again (Lapaphus parakensis, below, red again).

Can you explain how this occurs when information is only lost?Wings
No wings
Wings
No wingsAll by loss of information? Did they 1st lose the information on how to make wings, then 2nd lose the information on how to lose the information on how to make wings, and then 3rd lose the information on how to lose the information on how to lose the information on how to make wings? How can you lose information to not do something that you have lost the information to do?We can calculate the effect of such information on evolution as follows:

1. Wings
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2. No wings = (a) + information_a = Wings + information_a
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3. Wings = (b) + information_b = No wings + information_b = (a) + information_a + information_b = Wings + information_a + information_b

Wings - Wings = information_a + information_b = 0
information_a + information_b = 0
information_a = 0 - information_bEither information is gained in one case, or the information content that affects evolution ≡ 0Obviously if information is always lost, that then this concept of information has no effect on what can and cannot evolve.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : addedEdited by RAZD, : clrtyEdited by RAZD, : fixed nature link

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We know it lost all KNOWN functions. That is the only thing I'm interested in anyway. Like I said before, it may very well be that it's useful for something else. I'm not disputing that. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But what we do know, is that now we know how many mutations it takes for an enzyme to lose it's known function.

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I will only comment that you were interested enough in the claim that it had lost ALL function to try to dispute the point.

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And D* = bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.

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Wrong ! D* = the set of bidirectional rotary motor-driven propellers". Your 10^20 is Dembski's estimate of the number of four-level concepts, as your quotes showed.

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Is the probability of a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" that consists of 10 proteins equal to the probability of "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" that consists of 100.000.000.000 proteins?

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No, and the probability of getting some "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" - the probability that we actually want - is different from both of them.

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Yes, exactly, D* here is the "a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller", which let me repeat, means that: D* = bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20. So I was rigth from the start.

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Where "Yes, exactly" means "No". All you have done is repeat the same grossly erroneous claim. 10^20 is Dembski's estimate of the number of 4-level concepts, of which
bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is one.

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I know it does't! But it does matter to the probability of E! Which is also imprtant.

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No, the probability of E is not important. Only the specified information matters. And that is derived from the probability of D*.

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Do you, or do you not understand that getting number 6 fher throwing a die i 1/6? If you have two dice, and you want to get the number 6 on both, the probability decreases, and now it's 1/12. Therefore, aflagellum consisting of 50 proteins has higher probability of forming by chance than a hypothetical one consisting of 10.00.000 proteins. Therefore it's complexity is relevant to the calculation!

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You can't even get the probability of rolling two 6s on 2 dice correct. It's 1/36. Besides that your whole argument deals with irrelevancies. We want to know the probability of getting ANY "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller", not one using a particular number of proteins, because the number of proteins is not part of the specification,.

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Dear God! I already told you! It's in the NFL, which I already said is what Dembski calculated.

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Do you want my help or not ? If you want it then all you have to do is to provide the information I ask for. Remember I'm only doing this as a favour to you. If you can't be bothered to look up the details of the calculation then there's no reason why I should.

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A regular pattern does not equal specification.

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I'm afraid that it does. Look up Dembski's definition of specification again.

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WTF am I didging? Nothing! You are the one who is pretending not to understand what I'm talking about.

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I DO NOT CARE IF THE MUTATION IS UNUSUAL!!!!!!

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I will observe again that you cared enough to try to argue against it. Even if you did not care enough to actually address the reason why it is unusual (which is the dodging). And in fact there is a reason why you should care. If sickle-cell is not a typical example of a beneficial mutation it cannot be used as such.

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The point is that natural seelction selects anything, including the "unusual" mutations, if they confer reproductive fitness. Even those mutations that reduce biological functions, such as the sickle cell mutation. Therefore, it contributes to genetic entropy.

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Of course this argument is absurd since it equates increasing fitness with declining fitness. And your main example - sickle-cell is atypical, and so can't be used.

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No! Stop repeating this crap over and over again. There is no noise averageing.

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The field of statistics would disagree with you. It is a fact that given a large population (of samples) noise will tend to average out - because it is random.

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For a full removal of all mutations you would need an infinitely large population. Since you don't have one, mutations accumulate. I never said ANYTHING about some correlation. The effects, that is, the noise is too strong to be averaged out, precisely becasue genetic changes are not strong enough, and they are just a tiny part of what is being evaluated by natural selection.

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I'm not arguing for a "full removal of mutations". Just a dynamic equilibrium where the number of deleterious mutations maintained in the population falls short of mutational meltdown. The other problem is that you are now assuming that drift dominates to the point where there is no selection at all. I suggest that you produce evidence for this bold claim.(And yes, I know that you didn't mention correlation because I know that I brought it up. Because you need correlation to avoid the averaging effect of large populations.)

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LOL! This is simple math! Anything less than 100% equals accumulation of mutations!

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Wrong again. 100% efficiency would produce guaranteed removal of all deleterious mutations when in fact some can reach fixation. Unfortunately accumulation requires more than that - it requires that there cannot be a balance point, where the rate of removal of deleterious mutations equals the rate at which more enter the gene pool. However, by your own admissions all surviving organisms must at least be close to such a point (because the rate of accumulation must be very, very slow to explain why life still survives). And if it is that close the evidence offered so far cannot tell us that the balance point has not been reached in at least some species.I will reply to your comments on the monster only to point out that I make no admissions. I simply decline - in deference to the preferences of the site owner - to add another subject to this discussion.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.