Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
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.
If only you would apply such stringent evidentiary requirements to your biblical beliefs perhaps we could have more meaningful discussions.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
quote: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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We SEE ervs being formed now in Koalas as an infectious strain endogenises We SEE that ervs resemble virus genes in various kinds of virus groups We SEE that 8-9% of our genome is occupied by these viral remnants, degraded to various extents. We SEE that the sequences of many of these ervs do not appear to be under selective control, and correlate with other measures of species divergence. We SEE that some of these genes have functions, eg syncytin, but that most don't appear to We now see that non-retroviruses can also be endogenised - and interestingly, the first ones to have been found are viruses where the virus genetic material is often located very close to the host DNA.
We are expected to believe that the best way God could have thought of to control genes is to used mashed up and degraded copies of viruses.
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
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?
No one is saying that direct ancestry can be proven. What we are saying is that fossil species should have a mixture of characteristics in keeping with the pattern predicted by evolution. As a rough example, we should see fossils with a mixture of basal ape and human characteristics. We should NOT see fossils with a mixture of ape and avian features. The fact that we only see the mixture of characteristics predicted by the theory of evolution tells us that the theory is on the right track.
So what mixture of characteristics does ID predict? Should we or should we not see a mixture of avian and mammal features, and why? Can you tell us?
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.
This model predicts that I should not see a frying pan with toothpicks in it, correct? So if I find a frying pan with toothpicks in it then I can conclude that they didn't evolve. See how evolution is falsifiable? We do not claim that things evolved because they are similar. It is the PATTERN of similarity that points to evolution.
Also, are you saying that we should NOT see transitional fossils if evolution is true?
We SEE ervs being formed now in Koalas as an infectious strain endogenises We SEE that ervs resemble virus genes in various kinds of virus groups We SEE that 8-9% of our genome is occupied by these viral remnants, degraded to various extents. We SEE that the sequences of many of these ervs do not appear to be under selective control, and correlate with other measures of species divergence. We SEE that some of these genes have functions, eg syncytin, but that most don't appear to
We can even go one further. We can pull an ERV out of the human genome and make it into a retrovirus, and then observe how it behaves.
quote:Genome Res. 2006 Dec;16(12):1548-56. Epub 2006 Oct 31.
Identification of an infectious progenitor for the multiple-copy HERV-K human endogenous retroelements. Dewannieux M, Harper F, Richaud A, Letzelter C, Ribet D, Pierron G, Heidmann T.
Unit des Rtrovirus Endognes et Elments Rtrodes des Eucaryotes Suprieurs, UMR 8122 CNRS, Institut Gustave Roussy, 94805 Villejuif Cedex, France.
Human Endogenous Retroviruses are expected to be the remnants of ancestral infections of primates by active retroviruses that have thereafter been transmitted in a Mendelian fashion. Here, we derived in silico the sequence of the putative ancestral "progenitor" element of one of the most recently amplified family - the HERV-K family - and constructed it. This element, Phoenix, produces viral particles that disclose all of the structural and functional properties of a bona-fide retrovirus, can infect mammalian, including human, cells, and integrate with the exact signature of the presently found endogenous HERV-K progeny. We also show that this element amplifies via an extracellular pathway involving reinfection, at variance with the non-LTR-retrotransposons (LINEs, SINEs) or LTR-retrotransposons, thus recapitulating ex vivo the molecular events responsible for its dissemination in the host genomes. We also show that in vitro recombinations among present-day human HERV-K (also known as ERVK) loci can similarly generate functional HERV-K elements, indicating that human cells still have the potential to produce infectious retroviruses.
If it quacks like a retrovirus, walks like a retrovirus, and flies like a retrovirus it's a . . . magically inserted piece of DNA performed by an unevidenced magical designer. At least, that's what the ID people are trying to argue. Perhaps they could make millions of dollars as defense attorneys arguing that fingerprints found at the scene of the crime are actually the product of Leprechauns.
Because your arguments are based on fantasy, false analogies, logical fallacies, your personal opinions and your assumption/s that your personal worldview is an accurate representation of the reality, all the while refusing to validate it against reality.
If anyone needs any proof of this they can just read your latest post and realize that you are claiming that it is possible for cups to breed and produce offspring with hereditary variation, and that because of this logical fallacy (which you seem to regard as a "fact" in your fantasy world), that it is not logical to conclude that this diagram represents successive generations of related organisms:
And further, you appear to be claiming that we cannot even logically conclude that fossil bones at the same level can be related.
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.
Curiously, in the real world, paleontologists can and due tell whether female bones show the effects of childbearing. Once again your opinion is at odds with reality.
Essentially your behavior is just as I predicted, when I said (Message 1129):
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.
It appears you have chosen clinical delusion.
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.
Curiously, this just proves that your opinion is indeed incapable of affecting reality. Logical conclusions are not facts, they are constructs, and they can only be valid if (a) the premises are valid, and (b) the construction is valid. Even if the conclusions are valid they do not become fact.
This statement of yours:
Message 1127: 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!
... is not a fact, nor is it a valid logical conclusion, it is an assumption that you have made based on your opinion about reality. Your opinion is not fact, and any conclusion based on it is not, cannot be, fact.
Just for comparison on what reasonable conclusions that can be reached from the evidence,
you look at the diagram above and say that one cannot reasonably infer that a single bone is related to another fossil bone at any level.
I look at the diagram above and say that 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.
you look at the diagram above and say that one could assume that the layers were laid down in "5 minutes of rapid layer deposition due to a catastrophe" ... without any evidence of such catastrophe.
I look at the diagram above and say that one can assume deposition of layers seen in the diagram occurred in the same manner that we see such layers being deposited today, because there is no evidence of any catastrophe in the data, and no known catastrophe that could produce the same results sorted by layer and arranged by phenotypic groups.
Here we have you inconsistently claiming that (a) you cannot form any logical conclusions from the evidence available, but that (b) you can form a logical conclusion from a lack of evidence.
By comparison, in both cases I've claimed that you can form reasonable, valid and logical conclusions that are consistent with the evidence.
quote:compared to the hundreds of million years
Such long time spans actually existed?
The evidence from uranium halos show that this is a reasonable, valid and logical conclusion from the evidence.
The lack of curiosity exhibited by the ID community concerning the designer and his design techniques is very strange. Somehow, knowing nothing about the designer or his techniques, you're nonetheless certain that learning anything about either one is impossible.
Things that actually happen leave behind evidence. We can examine DNA of different species and figure out the structure of the nested hierarchy of relatedness. Why can't IDists examine DNA and figure out how the designer designed? Doesn't the nature and position and timing and effects of a mutation tell us anything about how the designer put that mutation there?
There are some things in nature we cannot know. For example, we can't simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle, but there are mountains of research demonstrating that this is something we cannot know.
So where are the mountains of research demonstrating that the designer and the way he designed are things we cannot know?
You can insist all you like that these are things impossible to know, but without a foundation of research demonstrating that this is so it sounds like a claim intended to deflect attention away from the infinite regression that can only end at God thereby demonstrating the religious nature of ID.
Moreover, this unevidenced claim about the designer and the way he designed is unlike anything in science. Darwin didn't say about evolution that it's impossible to know how nature evolved adaptations. Geneticists didn't say it's impossible to know how genomes are changed over time.
IDists individually and as a group can dig in their heels and maintain this claim if they like, but it's just too-obvious flim-flam from the perspective of science. Like the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz you're commanding, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," when that's precisely where everyone should be directing their attention.
quote:Oh, it seems that you can communicate after all...
What exactly have we been doing for the last few hundred posts?
quote:In other words your attempt to imply that you DIDN'T argue for it was a an attempt to deceive.
But I never said that. I said that I argued for it, and why. Please stop misrepresenting my position.
quote: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.
I'm talking about proteins themselves forming by chance. As for the sequence. The DNA that gets translated to RNA maps nucleic acids to amino acids which are supposed to fold into proteins. Obviously, you will need more RNA for more proteins.
quote: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.
What's the difference?
quote: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. )
As one gets smaller -log2(x) the other gets larger. Why are you denying this?
quote: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.
I never said they do. Neither is the principle of insuficcient reason Dembski's idea. And yes, the statistical community does accept it.
quote: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.
quote:And thirdly the entire statistics community know that simply assigning equal probabilities to different outcomes without knowledge is NOT reliable.
False. When you apply equal probability to dice, you are making an assumption and using the principle of insufficient reason. So yes, they do use it.
quote: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.
Neither did I say that it says that they are false. But they limit what science can and can not investigate. Explanations are supposed to be materialistic. Which means that an intelligence can not be an answer. If you don't know that the intelligence isn't an answer in the first place, you can't say that you can't say it is. It's a logical fallacy, because a non-material cause could be the right answer. So if I open the investigation to more possible solutions I'm doing the right thing.
quote: (Your "criticism" also doesn't address the other pragmatic reason for using methodological naturalism - it has been hugely successful).
Newton's description of gravity did very well also. But it also had to be replaced. Being correct in some instances doesn't mean you are always correct. Science is supposed to be improving itself constantly.
quote: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.
Currently we are tolking about events. It's the patterns that are described by Kolmogorov complexity.
quote: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).
Probability of an event can not increase if you increase complexity.
quote: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.
They didn't evolve it. They had it from the start.
quote:We observe these organisms participitating in HGT. That would seem to be a pretty big hint.
True. But it could still be that they simply do not share a common ancestor, right?
quote: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.
Go here. The nested hierarchy for metazoans.
I see, you are totally clueless about what I'm saying. There is no single constant nested hierarchy.
What you provided was instances of nested hierarchy for certain genes. That is a fact. Those instances exist. But what you seem to not understand is that for a full nested hierarchy to be true, >>> ALL <<< genes need to form a nested hierarchy. Not just few of them.
I repeat, yes some genes do form a consistent nested hierarchy. But not ALL do. Therefore, there is no nested hierarchy for all metatoans.
Here is an 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.
See? Genes like Cytochrome C are always use to show a nested hierarchy within mammals. And yes, it shows a nested hierarchy. But guess what. The cytochrome B does not. It does not for a nested hierarchy that conforms to the one that is formed by morphology. Cats and whales are included in primates if we go by the cytochrome b. This is obviously false, which means there is no such a thing as a full nested hierarchy of all metozoans.
[quotePeer 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.][/quote]Here is a nice one. The cytochrome b analisys didn't form a group that was expected genetically. It rather formed a group that was spread out geographically.
quote:Although the cytochrome b phylogeny did not match subspecific classification of the populations, it did yield geographically proximate groups.
quote:In contrast analyses with RPB2 and mtSSU sequences placed Tulasnella at the base of the cantharelloid clade. Our attempt to reconstruct a ‘‘supertree’’ from tree topologies resulting from separate analyses that avoided phylogenetic reconstruction problems associated with missing data and/or unalignable sequences proved unsuccessful.
And another one claiming that a "supertree" could not be constructed for all teh tested species. Tulasnella did not conform to a morphologic grouping.
quote:Trees inferred from independent genes display levels of topological incongruence that far exceed that seen in previous data sets analyzed with these species tree methods. We identify differences in phylogenetic results between inference methods that incorporate gene tree incongruence.
And one more saying that differneces are bigger than expected, and do not conform to how species are ordered.
quote:At the individual level, you are right. However, due to sexual recombination individual alleles are selected for at the level of the population.
But that's AFTER natural selction is done selecting. I'm not talking about the unit of reproduction. I'm talking about the unit of selection. And by that I mean, what gets evaluated by natural selection to go and reproduce itself. It certainly isn't the individual gene, now is it?
quote: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.
But they are not found in one lineage of species where eyes exist. So whereever you find a discrepancy, you select the lineage where it is congruent and call those species one lineage. That's unfalsifiable. And why are we not supposed to find eyes in one lineage if ID is true?
quote:Can ID explain why every animal with a backbone also has an inverted retina?
If it didn't have that, what would that mean? Nothing absolutely nothing. You would simply pick some other characteristic and ask me the same question.
quote:What was stopping a designer from mixing a backbone and a forward facing retina in a single animal?
Nothing. But why would he have to do it?
quote: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.
You could have just admitted you didn't understand what was said.
quote: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.
No. It doesn't hit a wall. It declines, it doesn't stop. It can only stop with unrealistic assumptions like infinite population.
quote:No one is saying that direct ancestry can be proven. What we are saying is that fossil species should have a mixture of characteristics in keeping with the pattern predicted by evolution.
But evolution doesn't predict anything! You can't predict anything by evolution.
Let's say you have a fish. It can evolve to wak on the groun, and it can also evolve to fly. A creature on the ground can evolve to live under water, and it can also evolve to fly. An animal that flies can evolve to go under water, or to walk on the ground. By this reasoning, you have all the bases covered. So any pattern you find in the nature, you can asign it to evolution. Therefore it's unfalsifiable.
Even if it wasn't, you can't asign results to causes you don't know they are capable of performing. You never observed evolution of fish to mammals. Therefore, there is nothing to predict. Because you don't know it's even possible.
quote:As a rough example, we should see fossils with a mixture of basal ape and human characteristics.
Why? You do know that you just made that up. What are you basing your prediction on? Nothing. If a creature can evolve wings, than there is no reason there was a human-like creature that actually had wings but died-out.
quote:We should NOT see fossils with a mixture of ape and avian features.
WHY? You just made this up. You have no reason for this. If reptiles evolved into birds, than there is no reason why ape-like creatures couldn't alos.
quote:The fact that we only see the mixture of characteristics predicted by the theory of evolution tells us that the theory is on the right track.
No, it means it's unfalsifiable.
quote:So what mixture of characteristics does ID predict? Should we or should we not see a mixture of avian and mammal features, and why? Can you tell us?
ID doesn't deal with that.
quote:This model predicts that I should not see a frying pan with toothpicks in it, correct? So if I find a frying pan with toothpicks in it then I can conclude that they didn't evolve. See how evolution is falsifiable?
Wrong. A frying pan with a toothpick evolved independently. It does not falsify evolution. It's convergent evolution.
quote:We do not claim that things evolved because they are similar. It is the PATTERN of similarity that points to evolution.
So it's not similarity, it's the pattern of similarity. Yes, basicly, that's similarity. Which is not evidence for evolution. If ti is, than my picutre of frying pans evolving also has a pattern, which indicates a progresssion.
quote:Also, are you saying that we should NOT see transitional fossils if evolution is true?
Evolution predicts anything and thus it predicts nothing. Whatever we see is compatible with evolution.
Re: ancient common ancestors aren't around anymore to breed ... they died
quote: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.
Trust me, my tree rules.
quote:This is funny!
We SEE ervs being formed now in Koalas as an infectious strain endogenises We SEE that ervs resemble virus genes in various kinds of virus groups We SEE that 8-9% of our genome is occupied by these viral remnants, degraded to various extents. We SEE that the sequences of many of these ervs do not appear to be under selective control, and correlate with other measures of species divergence. We SEE that some of these genes have functions, eg syncytin, but that most don't appear to We now see that non-retroviruses can also be endogenised - and interestingly, the first ones to have been found are viruses where the virus genetic material is often located very close to the host DNA.
We are expected to believe that the best way God could have thought of to control genes is to used mashed up and degraded copies of viruses.
and this is science?
Can you show me where I exactly asigned God as a cause here?
Anyway, the point is that those sequences have functions. They are there for a reason. They are not simply random infections.
quote:Because your arguments are based on fantasy, false analogies, logical fallacies, your personal opinions and your assumption/s that your personal worldview is an accurate representation of the reality, all the while refusing to validate it against reality.
Please name me those fantasies, false analogies, logical fallacies etc...
quote:If anyone needs any proof of this they can just read your latest post and realize that you are claiming that it is possible for cups to breed and produce offspring with hereditary variation, and that because of this logical fallacy (which you seem to regard as a "fact" in your fantasy world), that it is not logical to conclude that this diagram represents successive generations of related organisms:
You misunderstood me. My image was supposed to be irony. Obviously frying pans did not evolve from cups.
You are the one who claimed that similarity is evidence for evolution. I claimed that it's not. Than I made that picture and you said that it does not show evolution, because frying pans do not reproduce.
Now think about it for a minute.
Animals are similar. Frying pans and cups are similar. Animal similarity is evidence of their evolution. But, similarity of frying pans and cups is not evidence of their evolution.
We have a contradiction here.
What's teh contradiction? Well it seems that similarity is evidece for evolution in one case, but not in another. Obviously that means that similarity inself is not evidence for evolution.
So the point is, if similarity itself is not evidence for evolution, and we saw it's not in the case of frying pans, why would you think that it's evidence for animal evolution?
quote:And further, you appear to be claiming that we cannot even logically conclude that fossil bones at the same level can be related.
How would you do that? I showed you bones A and B in previous post. How would you show that they were related and or had offspring?
quote:Curiously, in the real world, paleontologists can and due tell whether female bones show the effects of childbearing. Once again your opinion is at odds with reality.
Did this fish have any offspring?
Did it's offspring live to reproduce?
quote:Curiously, this just proves that your opinion is indeed incapable of affecting reality. Logical conclusions are not facts, they are constructs, and they can only be valid if (a) the premises are valid, and (b) the construction is valid. Even if the conclusions are valid they do not become fact.
They are logical facts. For an example
IF A = B THAN B = A.
This is a logical fact.
quote:... is not a fact, nor is it a valid logical conclusion, it is an assumption that you have made based on your opinion about reality. Your opinion is not fact, and any conclusion based on it is not, cannot be, fact.
Than please do stop wasting my time, and show me where is the evidence that any of the fossils had any offspring.
quote:Just for comparison on what reasonable conclusions that can be reached from the evidence,
* you look at the diagram above and say that one cannot reasonably infer that a single bone is related to another fossil bone at any level. * I look at the diagram above and say that 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. * you look at the diagram above and say that one could assume that the layers were laid down in "5 minutes of rapid layer deposition due to a catastrophe" ... without any evidence of such catastrophe. * I look at the diagram above and say that one can assume deposition of layers seen in the diagram occurred in the same manner that we see such layers being deposited today, because there is no evidence of any catastrophe in the data, and no known catastrophe that could produce the same results sorted by layer and arranged by phenotypic groups.
1.) Exactly.
2.) That's becasue you don't know what you're talking about.
3.) I never said that it did form in 5 minutes. I said that it could have. That is also a possibility. Becasue that's how rapid layer deposition is brought about. It could have been in 10 minutes, 1 day, 100 days 1000 years, 5 million years, 20 million years etc... I never said that it actually happened in 5 minutes. Unlike you who said it did happen in 5 million years.
4.) This is were you go wrong. For the billionth time. We don't see such layers deposited over the period of 5 million years. You never had 5 million years to test that. Now, I'm not saying that it didn't happen. I'm jsut saying that you don't know.
Second. We do know that rapid deposition exists. We can't show any evidence of a catastrophe. There is no way to show that a deposition was slow or rapid. So you can't say that I need evidence for it. Becasue if I did, you would also need evidence that it was slow. Which you do not provide.
Third, animals are not sorted by their phenotypic groups. They are simply sorted out. You are the one who is imposing that pattern on them. They are simply a bunch of bones in the ground.
quote:Here we have you inconsistently claiming that (a) you cannot form any logical conclusions from the evidence available, but that (b) you can form a logical conclusion from a lack of evidence.
How exactly did I do that?
quote:By comparison, in both cases I've claimed that you can form reasonable, valid and logical conclusions that are consistent with the evidence.
And you failed. Becasue you still didn't show how you can tell which bones in the ground you find are related.
quote:The evidence from uranium halos show that this is a reasonable, valid and logical conclusion from the evidence.
quote:The lack of curiosity exhibited by the ID community concerning the designer and his design techniques is very strange. Somehow, knowing nothing about the designer or his techniques, you're nonetheless certain that learning anything about either one is impossible.
No it's not becasue they simply don't deal with that. Why don't evolutionists deal with the origin of life?
quote:Things that actually happen leave behind evidence. We can examine DNA of different species and figure out the structure of the nested hierarchy of relatedness.
No, we can't. Not all genes for a nested hierarchy.
quote:Why can't IDists examine DNA and figure out how the designer designed?
Why can't evolutionists examine DNA and tell us how life came about?
quote:Doesn't the nature and position and timing and effects of a mutation tell us anything about how the designer put that mutation there?
Who said the designer puts the mutations there?
quote:So where are the mountains of research demonstrating that the designer and the way he designed are things we cannot know?
Why would there be such a thing? I never said that we possibly can't know. I'm simply saying that using the method of design detection, we can't know anything about the designer. If somebody invents a method for detecting the designer, and his identity, than we will know. But ID doesn't deal with that. And it doesn't claim that it has any method for that.
quote:You can insist all you like that these are things impossible to know, but without a foundation of research demonstrating that this is so it sounds like a claim intended to deflect attention away from the infinite regression that can only end at God thereby demonstrating the religious nature of ID.
But I never claimed that. I simply claimet that there is no method for doing that right now.
quote:Moreover, this unevidenced claim about the designer and the way he designed is unlike anything in science. Darwin didn't say about evolution that it's impossible to know how nature evolved adaptations. Geneticists didn't say it's impossible to know how genomes are changed over time.
Neitehr am I saying that it's impossible to know who the designer is. I'm simply saying ID has no method for doing that, neither is trying to produce one. It's only concerned with design detection.
quote:IDists individually and as a group can dig in their heels and maintain this claim if they like, but it's just too-obvious flim-flam from the perspective of science. Like the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz you're commanding, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," when that's precisely where everyone should be directing their attention.
Except, nobody is claiming that.
You think it's possible to detect the identity of the designer simply by looking at the design? Fine, if you have such a method, than show us.
They didn't evolve it. They had it from the start.
That is not what the evidence demonstrates. The evidence demonstrates that these sequences started out as a retrovirus that then inserted into the genome. That these DNA sequences acquired function after this event casts no doubt on their origin.
And as it stands, ID still can't explain orthology, divergence of LTR's, or divergence of overall ERV sequence between species. They somehow think that pointing to some function in some ERV's somehow makes the phylogenetic signal go away. It doesn't.
These are retroviruses that randomly inserted into these genomes. The only explanation for finding the same retroviral insertion at the same spot in two genomes is a single insertion in a common ancestor. The LTR divergence and overall ERV divergence back this up. Can ID explain why the long tandem repeats of an ERV are more divergent if the ERV is shared by all apes than in an ERV shared by just chimps and humans? No, it can't. Evolution can explain this, and it is predicted by the theory.
But it could still be that they simply do not share a common ancestor, right?
Common ancestry is the only thing that can explain shared metabolic pathways and shared genetic systems. If you found an organism that did not use the same codons or metabolic pathways I would happily admit that this organism does not share a common ancestor with the rest of known life.
I see, you are totally clueless about what I'm saying. There is no single constant nested hierarchy.
What you provided was instances of nested hierarchy for certain genes. That is a fact. Those instances exist. But what you seem to not understand is that for a full nested hierarchy to be true, >>> ALL <<< genes need to form a nested hierarchy. Not just few of them.
Actually, that's not true. What you are looking for is the signal. There will always be noise in any phylogenetic tree, especially given the vast distances between the existing branches. This is unavoidable due to the large distances between branches. This noise is called homoplasy. This is a well known effect that all geneticists are aware of. What geneticists look for is the overwhelming signal, and that overwhelming signal is a nested hierarchy.
Here is an 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.
Peer review please. Sorry, but the DiscoTute is infamous for pulling quotes way out of context.
Here is a nice one. The cytochrome b analisys didn't form a group that was expected genetically. It rather formed a group that was spread out geographically.
These are subspecies. This is variation WITHIN a species.
And another one claiming that a "supertree" could not be constructed for all teh tested species. Tulasnella did not conform to a morphologic grouping.
I keep saying that metazoans fall into a nested hierarchy, and then you quote a paper that deals with fungi. Go figure.
But that's AFTER natural selction is done selecting. I'm not talking about the unit of reproduction. I'm talking about the unit of selection. And by that I mean, what gets evaluated by natural selection to go and reproduce itself. It certainly isn't the individual gene, now is it?
Yes, after selection is done to the WHOLE POPULATION. In order for gene frequencies to change YOU NEED A POPULATION. That population will have a mixed genetic background. If a gene confers an advantage then that gene will be seen at a higher frequency for each generation IN THE POPULATION.
But they are not found in one lineage of species where eyes exist. So whereever you find a discrepancy, you select the lineage where it is congruent and call those species one lineage. That's unfalsifiable. And why are we not supposed to find eyes in one lineage if ID is true?
Each lineage has a different type of eye. Each lineage has a LINEAGE SPECIFIC EYE. You might as well cite insect wings and bat wings as homologous structures. These eyes are NOT homologous structures. They are analogous structures. The cephalopod eye and the vertebrate eye are not homologous. They are analogous. They us different ennervation, different developmental pathways, and different cell types in the retina. The only similarity is in their overall shape which is limited by function to begin with. Do you understand the difference? Are you also going to claim that an insect leg and a mammalian leg are homologous simply because you can call them both legs? Is that the length of your phylogenetic analyses, the ability of the English language to describe two structures?
Taq: Can ID explain why every animal with a backbone also has an inverted retina?
SO: If it didn't have that, what would that mean? Nothing absolutely nothing. You would simply pick some other characteristic and ask me the same question.
Really? That's your argument? You put words in my mouth and consider that an answer? How dishonest is that?
Imagine if you were a defense lawyer in a murder case. "Your Honor, if my client's fingerprints were NOT at the crime scene you would just invent some other evidence, so I call for the dismissal of the fingerprint evidence." Do you think that would work? Do you really believe that this is a rational or logical argument?
So I will ask again. How does ID explain the fact that an inverted retina is only found in animals with a backbone? Can you answer this or not? Or is this another item that ID is incapable of even approaching?
But evolution doesn't predict anything! You can't predict anything by evolution.
So you are saying that if humans evolved from a common ancestor with chimps that the theory does not predict that we should find a fossil with a mixture of human and basal ape features? Really? Are you really serious with this?
Wrong. A frying pan with a toothpick evolved independently. It does not falsify evolution. It's convergent evolution.
Convergent evolution does not produce homologous structures. A toothpick of the exact same nature in both lineages but not in the common ancestor would be a violation. It is falsifiable. So what is stopping a designer from putting a toothpick in a frying pan? Care to explain?
So it's not similarity, it's the pattern of similarity. Yes, basicly, that's similarity.
No, it isn't. Life could have shared similarities that didn't fall into a nested hierarchy. In fact, humans do it all of the time in genetically modified organisms. If you can't distinguish between similarities and a pattern of similarities then you really can't make any arguments against evolution.
Evolution predicts anything and thus it predicts nothing.
That's a lie, as I have already shown. A bird with a mammalian middle ear would falsify evolution. According to ID, why don't we see a living of fossil species with feathers and three middle ear bones? Or is this another fact that ID can't explain?
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But I never said that. I said that I argued for it, and why. Please stop misrepresenting my position.
You implied it, as is perfectly obvious.
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I'm talking about proteins themselves forming by chance.
But they don't.
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As for the sequence. The DNA that gets translated to RNA maps nucleic acids to amino acids which are supposed to fold into proteins. Obviously, you will need more RNA for more proteins.
Even if you do (and I have to say that I am far from certain that is true) it still doesn't matter because the sequence is dictated by the gene.
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What's the difference?
Simple things can be improbable, too.
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As the complexity gets higher, the probability gets smaller. Why do you deny this?
I didn't. I denied that the relationship was inversely proportional - and your list proves me correct.
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I never said they do. Neither is the principle of insuficcient reason Dembski's idea. And yes, the statistical community does accept it.
Frequentists don't accept ANY probability based purely on a priori considerations. And nobody who understands probability theory thinks that you can get an accurate result just by assuming that the outcomes are equiprobable without information. It wouldn't even work for something as simple as the sum of two dice.
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False. When you apply equal probability to dice, you are making an assumption and using the principle of insufficient reason. So yes, they do use it.
Based on knowledge, not on ignorance. (And a fequentist would insist on rolling the die to be sure that it was fair).
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Neither did I say that it says that they are false. But they limit what science can and can not investigate. Explanations are supposed to be materialistic. Which means that an intelligence can not be an answer. If you don't know that the intelligence isn't an answer in the first place, you can't say that you can't say it is.
And you're wrong again. Methodological naturalism doesn't rule out intelligence at all. All it says is that science can't investigate the supernatural.
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Newton's description of gravity did very well also. But it also had to be replaced. Being correct in some instances doesn't mean you are always correct. Science is supposed to be improving itself constantly.
However, abandoning a successful strategy to return to a failed alternative is hardly an improvement.
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Currently we are tolking about events. It's the patterns that are described by Kolmogorov complexity.
The Caputo case was both. A protein is both, Your examples are both. They are not so distinct.
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Probability of an event can not increase if you increase complexity.
Which is why I am correct to say that the length of the sequence does not dictate the complexity.
No it's not becasue they simply don't deal with that. Why don't evolutionists deal with the origin of life?
"Evolutionists" do deal with the origin of life, they just don't use the theory of evolution to do so. IDists claim that biodiversity is due to intelligent design. Part of that biodiversity is biogeography. It is firmly in the wheelhouse of ID, and they refuse to explain it. Well, actually they could explain it, but then they would have to admit that magical poofing is the mechanism of choice.
Why can't evolutionists examine DNA and tell us how life came about?
Isn't it funny how ID supporters immediatly start talking about evolution when they are asked for an ID explanation? Can you give us the ID explanation or not?
Who designed this ball? What's his identity?
His identity is "an Adidas employee". The big "Adidas" on the front kind of gives it away. Even more, we can look at the holes in the seams to determine how they were made, look at the thread and deduce how it was made, and look at all of the materials and come to some very strong conclusioons as to the steps involved in constructing the ball. So where are these same ID explanations for how life was made?
We don't need to know if the fish had any offspring or even any ancestors in order to test the theory of evolution. What we need is the mixture of characteristics found in the fish, and those are quite apparent.
Does the fish have a mixture of fish and mammalian features? Nope. Evolution passes.
Can you tell us, using ID, what mixtures of characteristics we should not see in fossils and why?
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