quote:Pretty much the same thing that is stopping all of the air molecules in your room from suddenly all being in one half of the room.
But the fact is that youa re claiming that evolution did converge on a specific sequence once. So why not once again? So it's too improbable now? What, once is probable yet two times it's too much?
quote:I would strenuously object to the words "recruited for its role", but rather something closer to "given the role".
My reading of the site leads me to believe that they dont have the "Tree of Life" properly defined in their heads, especially since their own words regarding Pax 6 would seem to imply common ancestry.
But it's not people from Ideacenter that are saying that the Tree of Life concept is obsolete. It's other scientists.
quote:No - this just means that that particular sort of result is heavily favored when it randomly comes up.
Being favored means being directed toward something, and from everything else. Which would imply design, and not randomness.
quote:No, no, no. You cant have your cake and not have your cake. All the research shows is that there are ZILLIONS of ways biology evolves. Fascinating.
No, it doesn't SHOW that. you are just ASSUMING that.
Can you tell teh difference? They ahve actually SHOWN that all tehse genes perform different and similar functions. Yet you are the one who is ASSUMING it's all evolved.
And so what, let's even say it is evolved. That would just mean CD is unfalsifiable. Because you have every pattern covered. There is no falsifiable pattern.
quote:Just because they haven't gone back far enough in the "Bush" of life doesn't mean they've falsified it.
It's because it's unfalsifiable.
quote:BTW Bush Of Life is probably a better way to describe it rather than insisting on only 2 branchings at a time.
True. But that means there is no such a thing as a nested hierarchy.
quote:Yeah - it's way more complex than the untrained peanut gallery observers can imagine. There lots of systems that have "except when it doesn't" clauses that - upon careful educated scrutiny - turn out to be reasonable conclusions based the data to date.
No surprises here.
What I see in this site is an unbelievable amount of smugness on the authors. You can almost see them rubbing their hands and nodding to each other with grins "Oh - we got them now!" LOL
They haven't made a point at all.
Regardless of what you think of the author. Hi did nothing more than quote scientists who claim that the tree of life concept is obsolete. If that's not a point, I don't know what is...
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
quote:Hi Smooth Operator.
'sup?
quote:I can, whether you will consider understanding it, or not, is the bigger question.
Simply put, they died.
As your great great ancestors are no longer able to reproduce because they are dead, so too are all organisms that have died.
In this case, millions of years ago, including all the other dead ancestors of the living populations of bears and alligators.
It's a simple concept. Each generation reproduces while that generation lives, not before nor after.
Evolution is the change in proportion of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation in response to ecological opportunity.
Okay, but you see, this doesn't really answer my question. You claimed that a species reproduced among itself. Now it can't. If that species is still alive. Not the old individuals, but the new ones, what keeps them from reproducing?
quote:ps - it's phenotype ...
For another very simple reason: there is no (natural) mechanism that would cause this to happen. You don't need to worry about stopping something that will never start.
There is no way for natural selection to operate, or any other mechanism known to biology and the real world, to draw the genes closer to similarity.
DNA doesn't change because you want it to, the change is mostly random, and the results are then filtered by selection processes to adapt the organism to the ecology it inhabits.
Both organisms are adapted to their ecology and don't need to turn into the other to be adapted to their ecology.
But can it not happen by chance? If random mutations are random, can it not happen that while mutations are mutating the genome, natural selection will select those genes which are the best and in such a way to make 2 species identical? If it can happen for a phenotype, why not for a genotype? Are you saying there is such a mechanism that drives phenotpyes to similarity, yet tehre is no such mechanism for genotype?
quote:Because they found (and continue to find) skulls with this opening and arch belonging to therapsids and therapsid descendants, but not in ancestral species or in other hereditary lineages. In later descendants the opening closes, leaving the arch as a derived new feature in all descendant species. You have this arch, as do bears.
For clarity, the arch "giving a superior bite" is present in the therapsids and descendants. Descendants can take advantage of opportunities to improve the jaw further, but they don't have to: not all descendants of therapsids evolved into cyconodonts.
So you are claiming that they found more fossils, right? Okay, so tell me, how do you know that those fossils indicate a progression? How do you know those fossils are related? And how do you know, that they weren't always like that?
quote:By following the evidence of derived and inherited ancestral traits.
How can you claim that two fossils that are actually related?
quote:The whole pattern of the fossils show many aspects that are not altered from ancestral forms (ancestral traits), and some that are undergoing transitions that become more derived over time (derived traits). The synapsid arch is a case in point: it appears in one species (derived), and then you see it inherited (ancestral) in descendant species with continued development (further derived) as the arch becomes more developed and the skull closes back together under the arch. This occurs through the evolution in many species, that each inherit their pattern/s of derived and ancestral traits as they evolve generation by generation.
Aren't you first assuming that those fossils are actually related? Could it not also be the case that those fossils are species that always lokked like that? Maybe they are all simply distinct species that always lokked like that.
quote:See Derive - Wikipedia for what is meant by "derived": "In phylogenetics, a trait is derived if it is present in an organism, but was absent in the last common ancestor of the group being considered. "
An ancestral trait is a trait that is shared between the species and an ancestral species (common ancestor).
When a fossil is >90% similar to an ancestral species with <10% derived (evolved) from the remaining ancestral features, as we see with the synapsid arch, then hereditary lineage is the most logical explanation. This is no different than looking at species that are all similar fossils and concluding that they are all the same species.
Oh, I see it now! Yeah, I get it. You are basing your conclusions of relatednes on similarity.
Well, yeah you see that's the problem. Similarity is not evidence that two species were related. It's evidence that they are similar.
Similarity is not evidence for anything but similarity.
You see, two cars are also similar. Yet nobody would claim that their similarity is due to common descent. But common design. So why would you claim that similarity in animals is due to common descent?
quote:When it is between an ancestral species and a descendant species in the development of the derived traits.
Let me first note that you based the idea of relatednes on a false premisse of similarity. Therefore an intermediate can not be known because you don't know any fossil is related.
Second, could it not be true that this intermediate fossil is just a separate species that always looked like that?
quote:Again, it is a simple concept: species evolve, there is no species alive today that is not going through changes in the proportions of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation in response to ecological opportunities. Thus population A evolves into population B as the old members die and new members are born, and population B evolves into population C as the new members age, older ones die, and new ones are born: the members of population B are intermediate between population A and population C. Now introduce increasing numbers of generations between A and B and between B and C and you still have intermediate forms in population B that have ancestral traits in common with the ancestral traits in population A and derived traits in common with some of the derived traits in population C.
I agree with this. This is a fact, and a common sensse conclusion. But what I disagree with is when you want to extrapolate this interpretation on polar bears and horses without any evidence. Since you ahve no evidence that either a.) horses and polar bears ever reproduced, or b.) they were one one species that reproduced, you can't use this interpretation.
quote:Oh dear, you've made the unfounded assumption that you are a reasonable person. The vast evidence of this thread and the one about the earth being fixed with the sun orbiting around it, speak volumes to your not being a reasonable person, but an unreasonable and obstinate person. I expect you will now demonstrate how unreasonable and obstinate you are.
I'm sorry but you just presented a drawing. What else was there?
quote:The evidence is available in the information already presented, evidence that any reasonable person can take as a starting point and investigate further if they want to. Denying that this evidence exists is not being reasonable, and I'm not about to spend a lot more time on someone that I don't consider willing to confront the evidence realistically.
I'm sorry, but it seems you are confusing evidence with assumptions. Let me explain the differnece.
EVIDENCE - Observable facts which can be seen and studied.
ASSUMPTION - ideas about things and objects that are not known to be true.
You see, by saying that dogs reproduce and certain breeds of dogs are intermediate between a breed A and a breed B is a fact. It's an observable fact. Dogs do reproduce, they do change, and they do produce different breeds. This is evidence for their change over time. Call it evolution if you want.
But, where you go painfully wrong. Oh so terribly wrong. Is when you apply this explanation for change over time, to species that were NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, EVER know, or have been seen to reproduce. You can NOT, say that the same applies to polar bears and horses becasue you do not know that they were ever able to reproduce. You simply ASSUME! I repeat, you simply ASSUME that they once could have reproduced, them being one species.
But that's just it. It's a pipe dream. An illusion. An evolutionary just so story. With no evidence to back it up.
quote:Because there are no fossils of existing species in the fossil record at the time of the reptilomorphs, while there are fossils that show their evolution from the ancestral forms from reptilomorphs to today
Wow, that's a great logic.
If I go to the store and see they have no bread, it means they neevr had any bread.
If I go to a school and see it's empty, it means nobody was ever there.
If I go to my room and find no computer there, it means it was never there.
There is simply no fossilesed animals of that kind at that period of time. That doesn't mean they were not there. Does not finding a Coelacanth prior to 1938 mean it's extinct? No it doesn't. It simply means we didn't find it before.
quote:Because there is evidence that shows the evolution pattern given and there is no evidence that shows your pattern.
What patterns are those?
quote:I said that observing a bear and an alligator reproduce viable offspring would tend to invalidate common descent, not that any hybrid between closely related species would invalidate it.
Tend to? Tend to!? Wait... tend to? Listen, something is eitehr falsifiable, or it isn't. Which one is it with CD, is it falsifiable, or not?
quote:So they are interbreeding between members of the same subfamily, not between organisms from different class levels of ancestry.
What's teh difference? Why is one better than the other? Why does one falsify CD on other does not?
quote:There is much much more genetic difference between bears and alligators than there is between cows and bison.
Where's the line? Where is the live where CD get's falsified?
quote:They are not much more different that the hybrids of horse and donkey and zebra, some of which are fertile.
Interfertility does not necessarily cease between sibling species if there is no opportunity to interbreed and no selection pressure to change.
The cow and bison did naturally interbreed, once they were introduced to the same area, but not all of the offspring were fertile, and it took a while for humans to develop a complete separate breed.
There is also the "cama" - part camel part llama (only 3 so far, don't know if they are fertile).
Great. The point remains that you don't know what a species is. A species should be a population that can't reproduce. Yet we have instances of different not only species but genera that reproduce. That just means that your whole idea of taxonomy is flawed. You can't consistently group animals into groups. So why would you thing you can group fossils into related species if you can't even with live animals?
quote:So we see that evolution doesn't necessarily change the ability to breed between species that do not normally come into contact.
Yes, which makes the ieda of evolution totally useless. Sometimes id does do something, the other times by doing the same thing it doesn't. That's unfalsifiable.
quote:There have also been no successful attempts to mate cows and camels even though they have coexisted for thousands of years and belong to the same order level above family (but which excludes horses and bears). There have been no successful attempts to mate species at higher\older levels of ancestry, and the common ancestor level of alligator and bear is significantly higher\older than these examples.
Again, great, I'm happy for you. This is all irrelevant information. The point remains you can't reliably group animals and infer their ancestry while they are alive. And than to turn and say you can do it for dead bones you find in teh ground is laughable to the highest extreme!
quote:
Why would I argue for that when I said before, and now, that that is NOT my main argument?
If you don't know why you did it, why should I know ? And it still doesn't change the fact that you DID argue for it, and that is why this bit off the discussion has gone on so long.
quote:
But genes are the ones that are under teh question of being designed. It's notl like they are a product of some natural law. There is no natural law that directs a DNA sequence to code for a flagellum. It was either produced by chance, or it was designed.
This misses the point that we were talking about individual protein molecules, not genes. And in fact the version using 1,000,000 molecules need have no more genes than the version using 50 since you insist that each uses the same set of proteins.
quote:
I see you basicly have no more arguments. You are not arguing with me anymore, nor with Dembski, nor with the whole mathematical community. You are now in an argument with the logic itself. As far as I'm concerned, our discussion is over. I'll continue it simply because I will do so, but in reality there is no real reason to do so.
If you deny something as simple as the inversly proportional relation between complexity and probability than we have nothign to talk about anymore.
Even using Dembski's idiosyncrative definition of complexity the relation is not an inverse proportionality (the complexity is proportional to the logarithm of the inverse probability). Using a more normal understanding of complexity your assertion is even more laughable.
But if you won't communicate unless I agree with your silly assertion, all I can say is goodbye and good riddance.
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
Hi Smooth Operator,
Thanks for confirming that you are simply unreasonable when it comes to understanding reality. I'll just hit the high points.
Okay, but you see, this doesn't really answer my question. You claimed that a species reproduced among itself. Now it can't. If that species is still alive. ...
It isn't. The descendants have become different species. That's what happens over long periods of time, such as the span of time between the common ancestor between alligators and bears to the present.
... Not the old individuals, but the new ones, what keeps them from reproducing?
Nothing, but what they reproduce are their current species, not the original species. All the individuals in the population have evolved into a different species that continues to be a breeding population, but it is not the same as the ancestor population.
But, where you go painfully wrong. Oh so terribly wrong. Is when you apply this explanation for change over time, to species that were NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, EVER know, or have been seen to reproduce. You can NOT, say that the same applies to polar bears and horses becasue you do not know that they were ever able to reproduce. You simply ASSUME! I repeat, you simply ASSUME that they once could have reproduced, them being one species.
But that's just it. It's a pipe dream. An illusion. An evolutionary just so story. With no evidence to back it up.
...
Again, great, I'm happy for you. This is all irrelevant information. The point remains you can't reliably group animals and infer their ancestry while they are alive. And than to turn and say you can do it for dead bones you find in teh ground is laughable to the highest extreme!
Curiously, your opinion is completely unable to affect reality in any way.
Below is an example of the type of evidence used by reasonable people to come to reasonable conclusions about reality:
Pelycodus was a tree-dwelling primate that looked A complete fossil much like a modern lemur. The skull shown is probably 7.5 centimeters long.
The numbers down the left hand side indicate the depth (in feet) at which each group of fossils was found. As is usual in geology, the diagram gives the data for the deepest (oldest) fossils at the bottom, and the upper (youngest) fossils at the top. The diagram covers about five million years.
The numbers across the bottom are a measure of body size. Each horizontal line shows the range of sizes that were found at that depth. The dark part of each line shows the average value, and the standard deviation around the average.
The dashed lines show the overall trend. The species at the bottom is Pelycodus ralstoni, but at the top we find two species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus. The two species later became even more distinct, and the descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of genus Notharctus.
As you look from bottom to top, you will see that each group has some overlap with what came before. There are no major breaks or sudden jumps. And the form of the creatures was changing steadily.
Here, not only do we see that the ancestral population had no trouble interbreeding among their members, and that the daughter species at the top are now reproductively isolated, but we also see the level by level transition from the ancestral forms to the derived forms.
We also see that each level reproduces, but that at the top there are no more Pelycodus ralstoni being produced by that reproduction. This in only 5 million years, compared to the hundreds of million years between the common ancestor to bears and alligators and these animals today.
Oh, I see it now! Yeah, I get it. You are basing your conclusions of relatednes on similarity.
Except that it is much more than simple similarity - more than the similarity between sugar gliders and flying squirrels for instance (that you find curiously compelling) - rather it is based on a preponderance of homological identity. A fossil that is 90% homologically identical to a previous fossil is more than just similar.
In the above example we see that there are many individuals at one level that could belong to the level above or the level below, and that it is only the ones at the end of the spectrum of change in the direction of the overall trend that lie just outside the parameters of the previous population, but within the parameters of the next. We know that they are related to the rest of their level population, and hence can readily conclude relation to the previous generation.
IMHO, any person who claims that ancestry cannot be logically and rationally inferred from evidence like this is not just smoking ignorance, but holding firmly onto delusion.
Where you fall on that scale is up to you. A 1b is curable, a 2 may need some work, but a 3 is clinical.
I see you basicly have no more arguments. You are not arguing with me anymore, nor with Dembski, nor with the whole mathematical community.
I don't think he was ever arguing with "the whole mathematical community", since the whole mathematical community has not been swindled by cdesign proponentists into agreeing with their nutty dogma. In fact, I can't think of a single mathematician who's been duped by Dembski other than Dembski himself.
You misunderstood me. I said that the notion of "design without a designer" is impossible...
Right. But then you deny that ID has anything at all to say about a designer:
ID is simply the science of design detection, and as such does not deal with the designer or it's mechanisms.
The question I've been seeking an answer to for lo these many messages is very simple: If ID has nothing to say about a designer, how can it say that "design without a designer" is impossible. Isn't that saying something about the designer?
There are also numerous peer reviewed papers that discuss this evidence, one of which is here:
"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
How does ID explain orthologous ERV's? How does ID explain the correlation between time since common ancestry and LTR divergence? How does ID explain the nested hierarchy produced by a comparison of orthologous ERV's?
Which part of "Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded" do you not understand?
Obsolete for all life? Yes, due to horizontal gene transfer among prokaryotes and basal eukaryotes. Obsolete for metazoans? No, due to the lack of horizontal gene transfer among metazoans. So how do you explain the nested hierarchy found among metazoans? Can you answer this or not? Can ID explain this?
No. A bush is an exact opposite. Branches is what was supposed to be seen, not a bush.
A bush doesn't have branches? That's news to me. If ID is true then we should see an orchard, trees that do not connect. That is not what we see.
You don't get it. You are confusing interpretations and assumptions with evidence and facts.
Projection?
You miss the point. The whole organism was selected that contained that mutation. Not the mutation itself. The whole organism was evaluated. Do you think that mutation would be passed on if the organism was sterile?
What you seem to ignore is that the single hemoglobin S mutation has a lot to do with the survival of the individual in areas with malaria. This is why the frequency of the mutation is much higher in areas with endemic malaria.
Why aren't eyes found in a single lineage of animals?
They are. Vertebrate eyes are only found in vertebrates. Cephalopod eyes are only found in cephalopods. Insect eyes are only found in insects.
Yet they evolved independently few times. So what does that tell you?
That is not what your quote says. The common ancestor had feathers as did the descendants.
Who said they can't? They simply don't.
This is why ID can not explain the nested hierarchy. There is no reason we should observe one if ID is true, and yet we do. However, a nested hierarchy is the only pattern that evolution can produce among species that do not participate in horizontal gene transfer. Metazoans do not participate in horizontal gene transfer. What do we see? A nested hierarchy.
ID can not explain why bats do not have feathers, why birds have a single middle ear bone, why fish have an inverted retina while squid do not. As you have shown, ID can not even explain biogeography.
He can. There is no nested hierarchy.
Among metazoans there is a nested hierarchy. How does ID explain this?
Listen, you don't know what you're talking about. The number 10^20 has nothing to do with the flagellum. It's the complexity of the specification. Please don't go into this, it's out ov your league.
So says the guy who didn't even understand meiosis. C'mon, lets see the math.
Penicilin is not intelligent, and it's not selecting anything.
Yes it does select. It selects for penicillin resistant bacteria.
quote:PLoS One. 2009;4(3):e4969. Epub 2009 Mar 23.
Mutational meltdown in primary endosymbionts: selection limits Muller's ratchet. Allen JM, Light JE, Perotti MA, Braig HR, Reed DL.
Zoology Department and Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. juliema@ufl.edu
BACKGROUND: Primary bacterial endosymbionts of insects (p-endosymbionts) are thought to be undergoing the process of Muller's ratchet where they accrue slightly deleterious mutations due to genetic drift in small populations with negligible recombination rates. If this process were to go unchecked over time, theory predicts mutational meltdown and eventual extinction. Although genome degradation is common among p-endosymbionts, we do not observe widespread p-endosymbiont extinction, suggesting that Muller's ratchet may be slowed or even stopped over time. For example, selection may act to slow the effects of Muller's ratchet by removing slightly deleterious mutations before they go to fixation thereby causing a decrease in nucleotide substitutions rates in older p-endosymbiont lineages. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: To determine whether selection is slowing the effects of Muller's ratchet, we determined the age of the Candidatus Riesia/sucking louse assemblage and analyzed the nucleotide substitution rates of several p-endosymbiont lineages that differ in the length of time that they have been associated with their insect hosts. We find that Riesia is the youngest p-endosymbiont known to date, and has been associated with its louse hosts for only 13-25 My. Further, it is the fastest evolving p-endosymbiont with substitution rates of 19-34% per 50 My. When comparing Riesia to other insect p-endosymbionts, we find that nucleotide substitution rates decrease dramatically as the age of endosymbiosis increases. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: A decrease in nucleotide substitution rates over time suggests that selection may be limiting the effects of Muller's ratchet by removing individuals with the highest mutational loads and decreasing the rate at which new mutations become fixed. This countering effect of selection could slow the overall rate of endosymbiont extinction.
The genetic data shows that negative selection slows down mutational meltdown even in large populations of asexually reproducing populations.
quote:The question I've been seeking an answer to for lo these many messages is very simple: If ID has nothing to say about a designer, how can it say that "design without a designer" is impossible. Isn't that saying something about the designer?
ID says much more than that about a designer, Percy.
It says a designer must have been.......designed! Isn't that great
Unless Smooth Operator can explain why not, of course
quote:If you don't know why you did it, why should I know ? And it still doesn't change the fact that you DID argue for it, and that is why this bit off the discussion has gone on so long.
Who ever said I didn't know? What I actually said, is that I did know, and I told you that I did know, and I told you why I said it.
quote:But I did say it. And I told you why I said it. So why again are we talking about it?
See? This is my quote. I said it few posts ago. I never claimed that I didn't say it, or that I didn't know why I said it. I told you that I said it and I knew why I said it.
quote:This misses the point that we were talking about individual protein molecules, not genes. And in fact the version using 1,000,000 molecules need have no more genes than the version using 50 since you insist that each uses the same set of proteins.
Why are you switching the discussion to DNA now? From the start 'till now, we were talking about proteins not DNA. DNA is irrelevant. Besides, there is a differnece in DNA if it's going to code for 50 proteins or 1.000.000 proteins.
Anyway, that's irrelevant. The point is to get those proteins in the same place at the same time in the exact configuration. Which becomes more improbable with the increase of proteins.
quote:Even using Dembski's idiosyncrative definition of complexity the relation is not an inverse proportionality (the complexity is proportional to the logarithm of the inverse probability). Using a more normal understanding of complexity your assertion is even more laughable.
1.) Tell me the difference between Dembski's definition of complexity and the "normal" definition.
2.) You contradict yourself in one single statement. Saying that: "relation is not an inverse proportionality" and that right after that saying: "the complexity is proportional to the logarithm of the inverse probability" is a contradiction.
A proportional relation between complexity and inverese probability is the inverse relation between complexity and brobability.
So if you agree that complexity is proportiional to inverse probability, than you also agree with what I said which is that complexity is inversely proportional to probability. WHich are two identical definitions.
Basicly what I'm saying is that you are confused.
quote:But if you won't communicate unless I agree with your silly assertion, all I can say is goodbye and good riddance.
Please don't misrepresent me. It's obvious that you are confused. So let me explain myself in more detail
I never said that I do not want to communicate with you unless you agree with me. A debate precisely because people do not agree. So it's fine if you don't agree with me. What I actually said is that if you attackl logic itslef, you are not arguing with me anymore, you are arguing with logic. Se your debate with me is over, youa re now debating logic itself. Which is totally inappropriate. Why is that so? Well, please do let me explain.
You see, in order to have a debate we have got to agree on something. And those are basicl rules we are going to follow while debating. If we are going to have a scientific debate, than we should agree that we are going to follow the rules of science. Those are not under the debate, otehr ideas within science are, but not the base of science itself. Yet, you are doing just that. You are attacking the base of how we are doing science. Like I said, this is inappropriate at this moment. That's not the issue at hand.
What I have problem with are 2 things. First your unwillingness to accept teh principle of insufficient reason. Which is not something that is under debate, but a rule we should follow. If you attack it, you are not debating me. You are not debating Dembski. You are than debating the whole statistical community. Which is not what we are supposed to do.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for turning over methods that do not work. I like to do so myself. But everything has it's time and place. And just to show you that I'm all for it, I'll give you my example of criticising base rules of science.
For an example. I criticize maethodological naturalism. Which is fine to do. Why? Because it's not a fine method to be adhered to while doing science. Methodological naturalism claims that we should only include materialistic causes while considering causes for events we are investigating. This is clearly false, since we do not know that matter is all there is. Since we do not know that, there is no reason to artificially impose borders on what we can, and can't use as an explanation. We should be opet to all explanation.
This is a valid criticism. Because in order to limit a possible source of explanations, you first have to know that something else is not responsible for the event in question. If you don't know it's not responsible, you can't say that it can't be used as an explanation.
Now, you see, your are not doing the same thing. In order to give a valid criticism of a philosophical viewpoint, like a materialistic one, you have to either of 2 things.
1.) Either show that what the method is claiming to do, can not do. 2.) Or show that you have a better method.
Which is what I did. Simply by saying that ID provides an intelligent cause and increases the amount of answers we have while doing science, is presenting a better method than methodological naturalism. I provided a better method, with more possible solutions.
What you did, with the principle of insufficient reason is the following. Yous imply said that there could be soem unknown factors so we can't use that matehod. Basicly what you are saying is that it's not perfect. Claiming that the method does not do what it's supposed to. This is point 1 of those two I mentioned. This is a false criticism. Because the method did not claim to be perfect in the first place. Statistics are about approximation. And that is what the method claims to do - it approximates.
Second, you didn't say that you have a better method, and you didn't provide a better one. So as far as I can see, we are supposed to use this method because you have nothing to replace it. It's not perfect, it's not claiming to be, but it works. And that's why we are sticking with it.
Let me give you a generalized example of teh use of this method, that I'm sure you'll agree with.
Looking at the Sun, we see it goes around the Earth every 24 hours. We know it did so every single day for past few thousand years at least. We know that because we saw it. It's a fact. And from this fact, we produced a description of natural laws that claim that Sun is going to continue doing so in the future. You see now, this is called an inference. This is a part of the scientific reasoning. We infer things from past events. We no not know for sure the Sun will rise up. Maybe, tomorrow it will stop in the middle of the day, and start jumping up and down for 5 minutes, and that keep going as nothign had happened. And will do so for another few thousand years.
So you see, in this case, we would rewrite our laws and we would than for a law of motion of the Sun that claims that Sun goes around the Earth for few thousand of years, and that starts jumping up and down for 5 minutes and than continues for another few thousand years to orbit the Earth.
Yes, we could be wrong. Sun could do exactly that tommorow. But tell me, is it reasonable to thik that it's going to? IS it reasonable that tommorow is going to do something else? No it's not. That is why we say that in absence of prior knowledge we use unifom probability. And in this case, we infer, we do not know for sure, but we infer that the Sun is going to do the same thing tommorw, as it has been doing for at lease few thousands of years. But a much higher probability is that tommorow is not going to be different that the last few thousands of years. So the beast reasonable thing to infer is that it's not going to be any different. Why do we do this? Because it's the best method we have. And it works. So untill we have a better method, we arte sticking with this one. It's not perfect. It's not supposed to be. It's good, it works and that's all we want.
I'm sure that you awould agree with this inference. And what bugs me, is when you claimed that this same inference can not be used which calculating the difference in probability between 50 and 1.000.000 proteins. If you with one use of the method, I'm sure you have to agree with the other instance. If not, than those are double standards. Which are not something we want.
The second thign where you went wrong, is when you not only stopped debating me, not only stopped debating Dembski, not only stopped debating the whole statistical community, but you attacked logic itself. This, is not what we are supposed to do in a debate. We must agree that we are going to use the same logic. Science presupposes logic. You can't do science without logic. And when you say that probability is nto inversely proportional to complexity, you are attacking logic itself.
Let me try to show you where you went wrong.
Let's say that our targetwhile flipping coins is all heads. Heads are marked with H, tails with T. So basicly this is what we have. As you can clearly see, as the number of coins increase, the number of sides increase. The complexity also increases. Complexity in this case are all the sides that landed. The probability decreases. Therefore it's inversely proportional to complexity.
Here we have all possible patterns we can have. This here list shows you what ptterns certain complexities can express. 1 coin has a complexity of 1, it's either H or T. Two coins have a complexity of 2, they express either HH, HT, TH or TT. And so on...
This here is the inversely proporitional relationship between complexity and probability. I think that you would agree that when the complexity is increasing, the probability is decreasing.
1 - 1/2 2 - 1/4 3 - 1/8 4 - 1/16
And this is what you denied for the last few posts. You CAN NOT deny this. this is basic logic. Science can't work without basic logic. It presupposes logic. So when you disagree with something so basic as this. You are not arguing agains me, Dembski, thw hole of statistical community, but you are arguing agains logic itslef. And I would honestly pay to see you win that. In other words, it can't be done.
So please, don't claim I said I won't communicate unless you agree with me. I simply said that our debate is over, and that you are now debating logic, not me. I'm still here, we can go on if you like. I never said I don't want to. But please be reasonable.
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
quote:Hi Smooth Operator,
Yo...
quote:Thanks for confirming that you are simply unreasonable when it comes to understanding reality. I'll just hit the high points.
Wait, what? i'm unreasonable? Why?
quote:It isn't. The descendants have become different species. That's what happens over long periods of time, such as the span of time between the common ancestor between alligators and bears to the present.
But this is the problem. You dont' know that. You assume that. I know that it was supposed to have happened a long time ago, so we have no video tape showing us what happened. I know that. So I'm not asking you for that. But what I am asking you for is evidence that such things as aligators and bears being one speices and than splitting off. What's the evidence that this is even possible? What is teh evidence today, from which we can extrapolate in the past? Simply having assumptions that it can and it did happen is not evidnece. I need observable evidence.
quote:Nothing, but what they reproduce are their current species, not the original species. All the individuals in the population have evolved into a different species that continues to be a breeding population, but it is not the same as the ancestor population.
Okay, so how do you know this is what happeend with polar bears and horses?
quote:Curiously, your opinion is completely unable to affect reality in any way.
Excuse me, but no. I can't just let you go on this one. I was not unreasonable. I didn't express my opinion. I stated a FACT. A pure logical FACT. If you disagree with it, than fine, you should say why it's invalid, but don't say that logical facts are my opinion. They surely are not. It's like saying that 1+1=2 is my opinion. It's not, it's a fact.
quote:Below is an example of the type of evidence used by reasonable people to come to reasonable conclusions about reality:
Let me please dissect your whole post and show you how you went from a fact to an assumption. Maybe you can't notice it when you are doing these leaps, but I'll show you when they happen.
quote:Here, not only do we see that the ancestral population had no trouble interbreeding among their members, and that the daughter species at the top are now reproductively isolated, but we also see the level by level transition from the ancestral forms to the derived forms.
We also see that each level reproduces, but that at the top there are no more Pelycodus ralstoni being produced by that reproduction. This in only 5 million years, compared to the hundreds of million years between the common ancestor to bears and alligators and these animals today.
This is your full quote. Let me now start slicing it up, and we'll ses where we end up. Okay?
But before we do so, please do let me remind you what's the difference between evidence and assumptions.
EVIDENCE - Observable facts which can be seen and studied.
ASSUMPTION - ideas about things and objects that are not known to be true.
quote:Here, not only do we see that the ancestral population
False. You see, you didn't even finish the statement you already made an assumption, and presented it as a fact. You do not know which bone in the ground is the ancestor of any other bone in the ground.
This is a fossil bone A.
This is a fossil bone B.
You can not, I repeat, you CAN NOT, show me that the bone A is ancestral to the bone B. You can not show me that the bone A had ANY offspring. Do you understand that? Are you capable of understanding that? Can your brain process the information that I'm giving you? Can you comprehend the idea that the individual who was composed a long time ago of bone A could possibly have been sterile? Thus having no possibility of having any offspring.
So, in short, you don't know that any fossil you find in the ground had any offspring. And you can't point to another fossil and show me that that fossil is it's offspring. You can show me no evidence of that. You can ASSUME, but you can't show me any evidence. And I asked you for evidence, not assumptions.
But let's go on now...
quote:had no trouble interbreeding among their members
You don't know that. You simply see a bone in the ground. Maybe those individuals all died before any of them reproduced. You are simply assuming that they reproduced. Again, conflating evidence for assumptions.
quote:and that the daughter species
Again, false. Daughter species? How do you know they are daughter species? Where is the evidence? Where is the observeble evidence that a bone you found in the grand had any offspring? How do you know those species you are calling daughter species are offspring of those that you are claimng had the offspring? How do you know they are related? Do you know it? Do you have evidence? Or do you simply assuming it.
Listen, a picture is not evidence. Bones in the ground themselves are not the evidence. They are facts of bones in the ground. How you interpret them is another thing. But for any interpretation, you need observable evidence.
quote:at the top are now reproductively isolated
How do you know they are NOW reproductively isolated? Maybe they always were? Is it possible that they were always reproductively isolated?
quote:but we also see the level by level transition from the ancestral forms to the derived forms.
NO! No we do not SEE theat! What's wrong with you! You are imposing that action on the pattern you found!
What we SEE is a bunch of bones in the ground! Nothing more! Anything else is an ASSUMPTION without evidence. Claiming that animals on the bottom are ancestors of animals on the top is an ASSUMPTION! A baseless assumption!
Now let me give you some facts.
You have no obervable evidence that animals on the bottom were not sterile. You have no obervable evidence that animals on the bottom were had any offspring. You have no obervable evidence that animals on the top are offspring of the animals on the bottom. You have no obervable evidence that animals on the top and the animals on the bottom EVER EVEN MET! You have not evidence that the observed pattern is a pattern of transition from the animals on the bottom to the animals on teh top. You don't have any evidence that any of those animals even died there!
The only facts we have is that we have a bunch of bones in teh ground. And now we can do some scientific extrapolation. Since animals live today. They could ahve lived in the past. They also get buried by dirt and get fossilised. Layers of ground get worked up and down.
So the only thing we can infer from this. Is that some animals lived in the past and than died. Before they decomposed they got buried by dirt, and got fossilised. MAyb some died before some later. Maybe those that are on the top died before. You see, layers can get reworked by earthquakes. Maybe some animals of those never even met. And they lived pretty much far away from others. But due to reworking they were found very close. So basicly this is all that we can reasonably infer.
And to say that it's reasonable to say that we can actually SHOW, you actually claimed we can SEE, that animals on the bottom are the ancestors of animals on teh top, is pretty much insane. We certainly can't SEE that.
quote:We also see that each level reproduces
No, we do not SEE that! Where do you SEE that! Show me the part of the picture where you SEE that!
quote:but that at the top there are no more Pelycodus ralstoni being produced by that reproduction.
Maybe becasue they were neevr produced by that reproduction, but by reproduction of other Pelycodus ralstoni?
quote:This in only 5 million years
Or 5 minutes of rapid layer deposition due to a catastrophe?
quote:compared to the hundreds of million years
Such long time spans actually existed?
quote:between the common ancestor to bears and alligators and these animals today.
For which you have no evidence. Simply assumptions.
As you can clearly see, yes, you can actually SEE this, you confused assumptions with evidence. You confised ideas that are not known to be true, with observable facts. I asked you for one, you gave me another. When we do such thing, we get pretty wrong results.
quote:Except that it is much more than simple similarity - more than the similarity between sugar gliders and flying squirrels for instance (that you find curiously compelling) - rather it is based on a preponderance of homological identity. A fossil that is 90% homologically identical to a previous fossil is more than just similar.
Yes, I agree. A fossils that is more than 90% similar to another is more than just similar. It's 90% similar! But what else is there to say?
quote:In the above example we see that there are many individuals at one level that could belong to the level above or the level below, and that it is only the ones at the end of the spectrum of change in the direction of the overall trend that lie just outside the parameters of the previous population, but within the parameters of the next. We know that they are related to the rest of their level population, and hence can readily conclude relation to the previous generation.
1.) Yeah tehy could belong there. What exactly would an animal have to look like if it didn't belong there?
2.) What are these parameters that show you a trent of transition?
3.) How do we know they are related? Based on tehir similarity? No, we don't, we only know they are similar based on their similarity!
4.) But since you can't even show that any single of those animals had any offspirng, or even could have them, you can't coclude that one generation was related to another.
quote:IMHO, any person who claims that ancestry cannot be logically and rationally inferred from evidence like this is not just smoking ignorance, but holding firmly onto delusion.
Okay, let me turn this logic on you.
Here you go. This is the evolution of frying pans from metal cups. The transition from one to the other is obvious. This is a FACT. They are related becasue they are similar. Our evidence for their relatedness is their similarity. Do you, or do you not agree with me. If yes, than fine. If no, explan what you did differently with showing me evidence for relatedness of distinct animals. But are you going to be so delusional and deny the relationship!?
quote:Right. But then you deny that ID has anything at all to say about a designer:
Yes, exactly.
quote:The question I've been seeking an answer to for lo these many messages is very simple: If ID has nothing to say about a designer, how can it say that "design without a designer" is impossible. Isn't that saying something about the designer?
It isn't. It's saying something about design. It's not saying that the designer is either: good, bad, tall short, blond brown, 4 legged etc...
It's saying that design is a product of a designing intelligence. It says that you can't have design without a designing intelligence, whicever it was, whatever it was doing, however well it designed.
It's saying nothing about the designer, but about design that can't exists without an intelligence.
quote:There are plenty of threads already dedicated to these subjects. For example, here is a thread dealing with the ERV evidence:
thread
There are also numerous peer reviewed papers that discuss this evidence, one of which is here:
"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
How does ID explain orthologous ERV's? How does ID explain the correlation between time since common ancestry and LTR divergence? How does ID explain the nested hierarchy produced by a comparison of orthologous ERV's?
ERVs are widespread through all species. Ther are functional sequences whose operation is to modify the genome itself and adapt the individual to teh environment.
quote:Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are believed to be the selfish remnants of ancient RNA viruses that invaded the cells of organisms millions of years ago and now merely free-ride the genome in order to be replicated. This selfish gene thinking still dominates the public scene, but well-informed biologists know that the view among researchers is rapidly changing. Increasingly, ancient RNA viruses and their remnants are being thought of as having played (and still do) a significant role in protein evolution, gene structure, and transcriptional regulation. As argued in part 3 of this series of articles, ERVs may be the executors of genetic variation, and qualify as specifically designed variation-inducing genetic elements (VIGEs) responsible for variation in higher organisms.
quote:Obsolete for all life? Yes, due to horizontal gene transfer among prokaryotes and basal eukaryotes.
How do you know it's due to HGT? How do you know, it's simply because they aren't related?
quote:Obsolete for metazoans? No, due to the lack of horizontal gene transfer among metazoans. So how do you explain the nested hierarchy found among metazoans? Can you answer this or not? Can ID explain this?
The answer is that that there is no nested hierarchy. Just because you can't accept that is not my problem. Your objection was already dealt with. HIgher taxa also do not conform to a nested hierarchy. And your objection that HGT is the cause is falsified.
quote:Likewise, leading evolutionary bioinformatics specialist W. Ford Doolittle explains, Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.4 Hillis (and others) may claim that this problem is only encountered when one tries to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of microorganisms, such as bacteria, which can swap genes through a process called horizontal gene transfer, thereby muddying any phylogenetic signal. But this objection doesn’t hold water because the tree of life is challenged even among higher organisms where such gene-swapping does not take place. As the article explains:
Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirtsalso known as tunicatesare lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another, Syvanen says.
Even among higher organisms, [t]he problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories, leading Syvanen to say, regarding the relationships of these higher groups, We’ve just annihilated the tree of life. This directly contradicts Hillis’ claim that there is overwhelming agreement correspondence as you go from protein to protein, DNA sequence to DNA sequence.
2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes were compared. These species do not participate in HGT. Yet those 2000 genes do not match. They do not form a nested hierarchy. The article clerly says that this is does not only happen in lower taxa due to HGT. It happens everywhere.
quote:A bush doesn't have branches? That's news to me.
It does but it's intertwined.
quote:But she dissents from that view and attacks the dogmatism of evolutionary systematists, noting, Especially dogmatic are those molecular modelers of the ‘tree of life’ who, ignorant of alternative topologies (such as webs), don’t study ancestors.
You see, it's actually an intertwined bush. Basicly, not a branching tree, but an interconnected web. There is no such a thing as a branching molecular tree that conforms to a morphological one.
quote:If ID is true then we should see an orchard, trees that do not connect. That is not what we see.
Who said that that's what we should see if ID is true?
quote:Projection?
Show me an instance where is confused evidence with assumptions.
quote:What you seem to ignore is that the single hemoglobin S mutation has a lot to do with the survival of the individual in areas with malaria. This is why the frequency of the mutation is much higher in areas with endemic malaria.
When did I ignore that? Where did I ignore that? I totally agree with that idea. But what you keep ignoring is that still doesn't me the gene the unit of selection. Individual genes are not evaluated one by one under natural selection before they get passed on. The whole genome gets evaluated. Do you thing that if an organism had this mutation, and it was either sterila, or born with defective lungs and could breathe, or it was born a paraplegic, that it would pass on that beneficial mutation?
No, it wouldn't. Becasue overall his fitness is lower that the others are. Regardless of that beneficial mutation. And that is why it won't get passed on in this case. Becasue the whole genome gets evaluated before it's passed on.
quote:They are. Vertebrate eyes are only found in vertebrates. Cephalopod eyes are only found in cephalopods. Insect eyes are only found in insects.
Which means they are NOT found in one lineage. If there was a nested hierarchy that eyes would ahve evolved only once. You simply chopped up few lineages and said that they all evolved few times and claimed that within them it evolved onl once. Well that's unfalsifiable. Becasue if you found an instance of eyes evolving withing vertebrates once more, you would simply take a lower taxa and claim that within that lineage,, there is only one instance of eyes. That's unfalsifiable.
quote:That is not what your quote says. The common ancestor had feathers as did the descendants.
But they evolved independently, mayn times.
quote:This is why ID can not explain the nested hierarchy.
There is no nested hierarchy to explain.
quote:There is no reason we should observe one if ID is true, and yet we do.
What about Matryoshka dolls?
quote:However, a nested hierarchy is the only pattern that evolution can produce among species that do not participate in horizontal gene transfer.
When did you see evolution produce an nested hierarchy int eh first palce?
quote:Metazoans do not participate in horizontal gene transfer. What do we see? A nested hierarchy.
No we don't why do you keep making up this lie?
Here is a clear cut example.
quote:For example, pro-evolution textbooks often tout the Cytochrome C phylogenetic tree as allegedly matching and confirming the traditional phylogeny of many animal groups. This is said to bolster the case for common descent. However, evolutionists cherry pick this example and rarely talk about the Cytochrome B tree, which has striking differences from the classical animal phylogeny. As one article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution stated: the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene implied...an absurd phylogeny of mammals, regardless of the method of tree construction. Cats and whales fell within primates, grouping with simians (monkeys and apes) and strepsirhines (lemurs, bush-babies and lorises) to the exclusion of tarsiers. Cytochrome b is probably the most commonly sequenced gene in vertebrates, making this surprising result even more disconcerting.
The article claims that a nested hierarchy that implied nesting of cats and whales fell within primates, grouping with simians and strepsirhines to the exclusion of tarsiers. This is totally in opposition to what we see with cytochrome C, and totally opposed to a morphological grouping. Please stop claiming there is a nested hierarchy in higher taxa.
quote:ID can not explain why bats do not have feathers, why birds have a single middle ear bone, why fish have an inverted retina while squid do not.
They were designed that way.
quote:As you have shown, ID can not even explain biogeography.
Evolution can't explan the origin of life.
quote:Among metazoans there is a nested hierarchy. How does ID explain this?
Where is the evidence?
quote:So says the guy who didn't even understand meiosis.
Which part didn't I unedrstand?
quote:C'mon, lets see the math.
quote:Recall the following description of the bacterial flagellum given in section 6: bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. This description corresponds to a pattern T. Moreover, given a natural language (English) lexicon with 100,000 (= 105) basic concepts (which is supremely generous given that no English speaker is known to have so extensive a basic vocabulary), we estimated the complexity of this pattern at approximately ϕ S(T) = 1020
bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is the pattern in question. It's complexity is 10^20. How do we get this number? This is how.
quote:For a less artificial example of specificational resources in action, imagine a dictionary of 100,000 (= 105) basic concepts. There are then 105 1-level concepts, 1010 2-level concepts, 1015 3-level concepts, and so on. If bidirectional, rotary, motor-driven, and propeller are basic concepts, then the molecular machine known as the bacterial flagellum can be characterized as a 4-level concept of the form bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. Now, there are approximately N = 1020 concepts of level 4 or less, which therefore constitute the specificational resources relevant to characterizing the bacterial flagellum.
So now you tell me, where did Dembski claim that 10^20 has anything to o with 50 proteins of the flagellum?
quote:Yes it does select. It selects for penicillin resistant bacteria.
Explain how.
quote:The genetic data shows that negative selection slows down mutational meltdown even in large populations of asexually reproducing populations.
THANK YOU! That's what I've been saying all along. Natural seelction can slow down genetic entropy. Yes I know, I've been saying it all along. But it does not stop it. Unless you take into account unreasonable variables like infinite population, infinite time for selection or perfect selection. Since we have none of those. The only thing we have is natural seelction slowing down genetic entropy but NOT stopping it.
Oh, it seems that you can communicate after all...
quote:
Who ever said I didn't know? What I actually said, is that I did know, and I told you that I did know, and I told you why I said it.
In other words your attempt to imply that you DIDN'T argue for it was a an attempt to deceive.
quote:
Why are you switching the discussion to DNA now? From the start 'till now, we were talking about proteins not DNA. DNA is irrelevant. Besides, there is a differnece in DNA if it's going to code for 50 proteins or 1.000.000 proteins.
Since we're talking only about individual protein molecules with the same structure, the only difference would be in the regulatory regions. Good luck arguing that the version that leads to 1,000,000 copies is going to be less probable than the version which leads to only 50.
quote:
1.) Tell me the difference between Dembski's definition of complexity and the "normal" definition.
Dembski's definition is (to be generous to you) -log2 p where p is the probability. The ordinary definition is "complicated". Look up a dictionary if you really want to know more.
quote:
2.) You contradict yourself in one single statement. Saying that: "relation is not an inverse proportionality" and that right after that saying: "the complexity is proportional to the logarithm of the inverse probability" is a contradiction.
I suppose that this is the sort of mathematics we can expect from someone who thinks that a probability can be "50 proteins". But no, there is no contradiction because -log n is NOT proportional to 1/n. (Two variables, a and b, are proportional if there is a constant c such that for all values a = c.b. )
quote:
So if you agree that complexity is proportiional to inverse probability, than you also agree with what I said which is that complexity is inversely proportional to probability. WHich are two identical definitions.
Well I don't agree because logarithms don't preserve proportionality.
quote:
What I have problem with are 2 things. First your unwillingness to accept teh principle of insufficient reason. Which is not something that is under debate, but a rule we should follow. If you attack it, you are not debating me. You are not debating Dembski. You are than debating the whole statistical community. Which is not what we are supposed to do.
Firstly the entire statistics community does NOT accept Dembski's ideas. If they talk about complexity it is more likely to be Kolmogorov complexity which is a measure of compressibility of a sequence.
Secondly the entire statistics community know what proportionality is and what a logarithm is and therefore know that you're wrong to say that p is inversely proportional to -log p.
And thirdly the entire statistics community know that simply assigning equal probabilities to different outcomes without knowledge is NOT reliable.
quote:
This is a valid criticism. Because in order to limit a possible source of explanations, you first have to know that something else is not responsible for the event in question. If you don't know it's not responsible, you can't say that it can't be used as an explanation.
Except, of course, methodological naturalism doesn't say that supernatural explanations are false. It says that science isn't competent to investigate the supernatural. That's rather a big difference. (Your "criticism" also doesn't address the other pragmatic reason for using methodological naturalism - it has been hugely successful).
quote:
Let's say that our targetwhile flipping coins is all heads. Heads are marked with H, tails with T. So basicly this is what we have. As you can clearly see, as the number of coins increase, the number of sides increase. The complexity also increases. Complexity in this case are all the sides that landed. The probability decreases. Therefore it's inversely proportional to complexity.
The probability of getting the exact sequence changes. However if we consider Kolmogorov complexity the complexity depends not on the probability of the sequence, but the sequence itself. Sequences displaying a regular pattern are less complex than those which do not - so the definition of complexity we use is important.
Even with Dembski's measure the relevant probability may not change - or it may even increase. That is because the relevant probability is the probability that the specification is met, not the probability of the exact sequence (as in Dembski's analysis of the Caputo case).
ERVs are widespread through all species. Ther are functional sequences whose operation is to modify the genome itself and adapt the individual to teh environment.
That does not put their origin in doubt, nor common ancestry in doubt. I don't see how ERV's evolving function puts evolution and common ancestry in doubt.
How do you know it's due to HGT? How do you know, it's simply because they aren't related?
We observe these organisms participitating in HGT. That would seem to be a pretty big hint.
The answer is that that there is no nested hierarchy.
That would be your fantasy world. In reality there is a nested hierarchy for metazoans. You continue to dodge this by conflating a lack of a nested hierarchy for all life when prokaryotes are included as a lack of any nested hierarchy for any group.
Likewise, leading evolutionary bioinformatics specialist W. Ford Doolittle explains, Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ . . .
Peer reviewed articles please. This is from "New Scientist" which can be horribly inaccurate, not to mention that this is pulled from the DiscoTute which is also known for bending quotes.
When did I ignore that? Where did I ignore that? I totally agree with that idea. But what you keep ignoring is that still doesn't me the gene the unit of selection. Individual genes are not evaluated one by one under natural selection before they get passed on. The whole genome gets evaluated.
At the individual level, you are right. However, due to sexual recombination individual alleles are selected for at the level of the population.
Which means they are NOT found in one lineage. If there was a nested hierarchy that eyes would ahve evolved only once.
They are found in the same lineage. That inverted retina type eye is found just in the vertebrate lineage. The forward facing retina eye is found in the cephalopod lineage. The compound eye is found in the arthropod lineage. These are lineage specific eyes, just as you would expect from evolution but not from ID.
Can ID explain why every animal with a backbone also has an inverted retina? What was stopping a designer from mixing a backbone and a forward facing retina in a single animal?
For a less artificial example of specificational resources in action, imagine a dictionary of 100,000 (= 105) basic concepts. There are then 105 1-level concepts, 1010 2-level concepts, 1015 3-level concepts, and so on. If bidirectional, rotary, motor-driven, and propeller are basic concepts, then the molecular machine known as the bacterial flagellum can be characterized as a 4-level concept of the form bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. Now, there are approximately N = 1020 concepts of level 4 or less, which therefore constitute the specificational resources relevant to characterizing the bacterial flagellum.
That's a bunch of woo. It has nothing to do with how flagella work, how they are constructed, how they differ from species to species, etc. This has nothing to do with biology at all. It's nothing more than word games.
THANK YOU! That's what I've been saying all along. Natural seelction can slow down genetic entropy. Yes I know, I've been saying it all along. But it does not stop it. Unless you take into account unreasonable variables like infinite population, infinite time for selection or perfect selection. Since we have none of those. The only thing we have is natural seelction slowing down genetic entropy but NOT stopping it.
What it shows is that genetic entropy hits a wall. There is a certain point where additional slightly deleterious mutations are strongly selected against, much more so than earlier in the lineage.
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
Hi So,
to generate a tree like this for real you need to do it systematically
- decide what the characters are you are analysing (it needs to be quite a few) - generate a tree using the right methodology
it would be interesting to see what happens!
My criticism of this tree is that you've been selective in terms of the kinds of 'vessel' that you're including, and I don't think you'd get the same result if you truly sampled the population of 'vessels' out there. You've chosen some that happen to fit into this tree structure. For example you've chosen silver coffee cups because they could conceivably lead to frying pans, not because they are representative of coffee cups. You've focussed on the 'metal' character of these items.
Plus this structure is incompatible with the 'dates' of the vessels in the real world. This model claims that frying pans evolved from silver coffee cups. Have you cross-checked that with the origin dates of silver coffee cups and frying pans? If your model is correct, that cross-reference should hold up. It won't.
Plus I don't think you've used enough characters in your analysis.
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