What exactly is ID?

Hi Smooth Operator,You seem to be a bit lost. The question is why IDists claim it isn't possible to know anything about the designer or how he designed. Can you name any legitimate field of science that makes an analogous claim in the absence of supporting evidence? You can't, right? So where is the research demonstrating that the designer and the way he designed are things we cannot know?As an example, biologists take our knowledge of DNA and RNA from modern cells and apply it in attempts at unraveling the mystery of life's origin. Why can't IDists do something similar for the designer?--Percy

Hi Smooth Operator,Sorry for this second reply to the same message, but I was short of time last night, and the misconceptions and mistakes expressed in your email that I ignored but that prompted my comment about you being a bit lost aren't directly related to the main topic.But correcting them could help the discussion move forward, so here we go. If this is the question you truly meant to ask, then the answer is obvious. Almost all investigators into the origin of life are evolutionists, so the answer is that evolutionists do deal with the origin of life. And evolutionists on this board discuss abiogenesis all the time. Like right now.But I think the question you meant to ask is why evolution and abiogenesis are considered separate fields within biology. I think the main reason is because evolution deals with life processes that can be directly observed and about which we've developed a fair understanding, while abiogenesis deals with non-life processes that aren't at all well understood or even identified. You evidently lost track of the original question after I restated it in abbreviated form a couple times later in my post. The criticism of ID isn't that it doesn't know how the designer designed. The criticism is that ID claims it isn't possible to know how the designer designed.Not knowing something is the standard situation in science. This will be as true for abiogenesis as it is for ID. But abiogenesis researchers study the available evidence as they attempt to unravel the mystery, including the structure of DNA. Knowledge about DNA is essential because whatever processes took place in the early history of life, their end result obviously had to include DNA.ID researchers could do the same thing. They could take what we know about DNA to inform their studies of how the designer designed. But they don't do that. They just say, "This is irreducibly complex and has complex specified information, therefore it was designed and that's all we can know. Further investigation would be fruitless." Well, then how do mutations happen? By evolutionary processes? That kind of leaves ID with nothing to do, since without mutations no species can ever split off into a different species. Or do you believe that each species was an act of special creation, which is actually just your old time creationism. Yeah, well, but you're creating your own eclectic definition of ID that has nothing to do with how IDists like Behe and Dembski from the Discovery Institute define it. This is an artifact of your tendency to argue in whatever way is expedient at the time, rather than in a way that is both internally and externally consistent.For instance, following the Discovery Institute's guidance the Dover school board produced this fairly poor (because of its focus on the origin of life) but now well known definition: This is from the Discovery Institute's website (What Is Intelligent Design? | Intelligent Design): It would seem that the Discovery Institute disagrees with you that ID is nothing more than design detection that has no bearing on evolution.If you're going to insist on slicing and dicing arguments into individual sentences then you're going to continue losing the sense of the arguments being made. The central question is why IDists insist that we cannot know anything about the nature of the designer or how he designed. Sometimes I express this in shortened form and inquire about the identity of the designer, but it's the same question. I don't want to know that the designer was Frank Smith at 511 Main Street. I just want to know why IDists think it's impossible to know anything about the designer.Even evolutionists have no trouble taking the existence of a designer as a starting premise and reaching conclusions about him/her/it/them. Obviously the designer chose to design with biological materials. And he designed in a nested hierarchy (something I know you reject but which is acknowledged by the Discovery Institute who knows a bit more about ID than you do (heck, even evolutionists know more about ID than you do), see Testing the Orchard Model and the NCSE’s Claims of “Nested Patterns” Supporting a “Tree of Life” | Evolution News). And we know something about the location of the designer. He has to be on or somewhere near planet Earth.And so your misconceived example of the identity of the designer of the soccer ball completely misses the point. No one is asking you to identify a specific entity as the designer. But just as we can examine the soccer ball and determine the manufacturer, and we can then go the manufacturer and determine who or which team designed that soccer ball, and we can find references to soccer balls in history to find the origins of the first soccer balls. We're not looking for a specific individual, we're just trying to figure out as much as we can about the designers of the soccer ball. There are probably very old soccer balls hidden in attics and museums that would inform the investigation.But IDists insist that there's nothing we can know about the nature of the designer, which is just a smokescreen for the infinite regression that leads to God. And IDists like Dembski and Behe concede that they believe the designer is God. You're caught still maintaining the smokescreen after the jig is already up.Please, if you choose to reply, do not respond to individual sentences. My arguments span multiple sentences and paragraphs. Please respond to the arguments. If you quote more than two or three times from this message then you're missing the arguments and responding to sentences.--Percy

Hi Smooth Operator, One is your claim that cups and frying pans show the same patterns as evolution, in spite of the facts that (a) they are not breeding organisms, (b) they have no hereditary traits, and (c) there is no selection process that makes survival and breeding of one more likely to be passed on to later generations than the other.That is why it is a false analogy. Your assumption that it does represent evolution is one of your fantasies.Likewise, your claim that because we cannot absolutely positively know something that we therefore cannot infer anything is one of your logical fallacies. What contradiction? You yourself said "frying pans do not reproduce" and that is one of several reasons why it is a false analogy.There is no evidence of the change in hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation in response to ecological opportunity in the inanimate objects: they don't have hereditary traits, they do not have breeding populations, they do not have generations, they do not have ecological opportunities, they do not have selection mechanisms, so they cannot be analogous to organisms that do possess these elements of biological life.We also see evolution in living breeding populations today, including speciation events, and we can compare the trends and tendencies seen in the living world with the evidence we see in the fossil record. Here you are (intentionally?) confusing and conflating what we can know with absolute truth with what we can logically infer from the evidence. This is a logically false argument (what a surprise eh?).Is it logical to infer that the population of this species of fish (including the parents of this fish) produced no offspring? Or does your fantasy extend to propose instant de novo creation of individual fossils?Amazingly, it is not necessary to conclude whether or not this individual fish produced offspring to infer that the breeding population of the species it represents produced offspring. Curiously, this fish is, of itself, such strong evidence of this process of reproduction that one needs to posit some other totally unknown and unobserved process to "poof" the fish into existence without friends and relations. Once again, you are (intentionally?) confusing and conflating what we can know with absolute truth with what we can logically infer from the evidence. Curious how so much of your arguments depends on logical fallacies eh?Obviously one cannot show that two randomly chosen bones, presented devoid of any context or knowledge of where they came from, are related, but this does not mean that one cannot logically infer that fossils, found and cataloged with full context, in close proximity, with multitudinous homologies from level to level, and consistent geological stratigraphy, as in the case with Pelycodus, are related.And when the differences from level to level are less than the overall differences we see within the dog species (just for example), then it is not logical to claim that one cannot infer that they are related. Now you are equivocating. Small surprise. What you claimed was that it was as logical to infer that the deposit was made in 5 minutes, involving unrelated organisms in a catastrophic event, than to conclude that the pattern is due to evolution, hereditary relationships, and normal geological processes.Interestingly, it is the scientific evidence that shows that it happened over a
5 million year period:A Smooth Fossil Transition: Pelycodus

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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.

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Curiously, I'll trust the evidence over your opinion that is based on denial, fantasy and logical fallacies, especially when you have no evidence for a single element of your claims. I can link you to the original PDF from Gingrich if you are interested.What you said was that it is not logical to infer that they are related, and then set up some imaginary scenarios based on fantasy and denial that have nothing to do with the evidence, and claim that they are equally logical conclusions. They aren't, because your proposed scenario is not supported by any evidence, while the evidence of hereditary relationships is supported by the evidence.Fascinatingly, your scenario cannot explain how the fossils come to be sorted in the specific layers and not jumbled together in one mixed bag (as is the case when we do find evidence of a catastrophic flooding event) or all laid out in one horizontal layer (as is the case when we do find evidence of a catastrophic burial event). So in addition to a lack of evidence for a catastrophic event, you have no mechanism to cause rapid layer formation AND the sorted pattern of the fossils. No, that is another logical fallacy: Everything within the A circle = B but not everything within the B circle =A.http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/affirm.htm

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Any argument of the following form is invalid:

If A then B
B
Therefore, A

Examples:
1. If I am in Calgary, then I am in Alberta. I am in Alberta, thus, I am in Calgary. (Of course, even though the premises are true, I might be in Edmonton, Alberta.)

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(ps note that it is IF ... THEN ..., not IF ... THAN ... )Because it is a logical fallacy it cannot be a fact.Because any logical conclusion can be false it cannot be a fact.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : subtitle

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Hi Smooth Operator, I'm separating this out from the other posts. "This" being related to the actual old age of the earth, the previous context being The explanation is fairly simple.Halos form around radioactive material in certain types of rock.The halos form a characteristic pattern for each radioactive decay chain for the material in question.The pattern is based on the alpha decay energy for the decay of the different isotopes in the decay chain.The four basic decay chains for the radoactive elements are found atDecay chain - WikipediaFor halo formation only the alpha decay events are important (beta decay does not affect halo formation). Note that each alpha decay event in each of the four different chains is unique, and this is important because the diameter of the halo formed for each isotope is related to the alpha energy of that isotopes decay event and the density of the rock where the halo is formed.Radiometric Dating

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At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.

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The reason it takes a long time is that it takes many decay events to build a halo, as each decay event only makes a point, so it takes many decay events to build a visible halo.So we have these conditions:

1. each alpha decay event has a specific energy that is unique to the isotope that decays,
2. each decay event only causes a single point on the halo,
3. how far the alpha particle can travel in a type of rock before it causes a point on the halo is related to the energy of the particle and the density of the rock,
4. it takes many decay events to make a visible halo.

In order to have sufficient decay events to form a halo for a radioactive isotope with a long half-life a very long time, "hundreds of millions of years", needs to pass.This is a 238U halo: (original image provided by Gentry at Evidence for Earth's Instant Creation - Polonium Halos in Granite and Coal - Earth Science Associates)This is the 238U decay chain: You will note that the top alpha decay event listed is 238U with a half life of ~4.5 billion years, (with the next two being 234U with a half life of ~245 thousand years and 230Th with a half life of ~75 thousand years).Simply put, this means that a long time needs to pass before you have enough decay events to form the halos.Or you need a lot of the 238U atoms to have enough atoms decay in shorter time periods, however to have this occur in significantly less time, the particle quickly becomes too large to form a clear halo. *Or you assume (by some unknown magical process that has no evidence for it) that the rate of decay was significantly different in the past.Which gets us to the fun part:The alpha particle decay energy is related to the half-life of the radioactive isotope.If you change the rate of decay, so that the halos could form in a shorter time period, then you also change the alpha particle energy.If you change the alpha particle energy, then you change the diameter of the halo formed by the decay for that particle.The evidence shows no variation in the diameter of the halos, so it is logical to infer that there was no change to the decay rates during the time that the halos formed.Thus it is logical to infer that "several hundred million years to form" the evidence that you see in the picture above have indeed occurred.Enjoy.* the mathRemember the decay curve is exponential: Nt=No*(1/2)^{^(t/hl)}To have the same (No-Nt) decay events in 10 thousand years as would occur in 200 million years you need No to be ~20,000 times as big as the particle seen in the picture above:Noa-Nta = Noa-Noa(1/2)^{^(200e6/4.468e9)} = 0.03055078NoaNob-Ntb = Nob-Nob(1/2)^{^(10e3/4.468e9)} = 0.00000155NobAnd Nob/Noa = 0.03055078/0.00000155 = 19,693

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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.

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Please do explain how do you know that.

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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.

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Neither can evolution explain the origin of life, so? The goal of ID is not to explain orthology or homology, but to detect design.

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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.

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Or, a better explanation is that ERVs inserted themseleves there because they were designed to do so. You see, there are things liek mutational hotspots. Some parts of genome mutate more than others. So it would be reasonable that teh ERVs were designed to insert themselves there, and not in some other place.

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Common ancestry is the only thing that can explain shared metabolic pathways and shared genetic systems.

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You didn't even show that universal common descent is possible. You first have to demonstrate that an explanation has the paower to perform an event you are trying to explain. You didn't even demonstrate that universal common descent can do that, so there is no reason to believe that common descent was the cause.You do realize that everything we see could have just poofed into existane 3 minutes ago in the state we see it now? This explanation is quite compatible with what we observe, yet nobody would reasonably propose it. Why? Because we have no evidence for it.

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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.

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Why? If evolution evolved one genetic code, why not another?

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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.

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And this is precisely why CD fails. It's not falisifiable. This is the problem. You claim that homology implies nested hierarchy, which means CD. Than you claim that homoplasy implies noise in the nested hierarchy, which also means CD. Basicly whay you are saying is that an event A and the event which is NOT A, implies the same thing. That's like saying that it will either rain (A), or it will not rain (~A) tommorow. Since you predicted one thing and it's opposite, you predicted both, and thus said nothing. This is an unfalisifiable statement. Homology together with homoplasy is unfalsifiable. Because when you find homology you conclude CD, yet when you find it's opposite, you infer noise, and thus conclude CD. This is unfalsifiable.

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Peer review please. Sorry, but the DiscoTute is infamous for pulling quotes way out of context.

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No problem.

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Three observations generally hold true across metazoan datasets that indicate the pervasive influence of homoplasy at these evolutionary depths. First, a large fraction of single genes produce phylogenies of poor quality. For example, Wolf and colleagues [9] omitted 35% of single genes from their data matrix, because those genes produced phylogenies at odds with conventional wisdom (Figure 2D). Second, in all studies, a large fraction of charactersgenes, PICs or RGCsdisagree with the optimal phylogeny, indicating the existence of serious conflict in the DNA record. For example, the majority of PICs conflict with the optimal topology in the Dopazo and Dopazo study [10]. Third, the conflict among these and other studies in metazoan phylogenetics [11,12] is occurring at very high taxonomic levelsabove or at the phylum level.

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http://www.plosbiology.org/article/infooi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0040352The author says the following:1.) Results are cherry picked to conform to the standard phylogeny. When results are at odds, they are simply rejected. Thus to make a certain group of metozoans fit another, 35% of data was excluded.2.) A vast amount of characteristics in a certains tudy has shown to be at odds. Including genes, PICs and RGCs.3.) This problem is pervasive and is happening in the metozoan population, above the phylum taxa. Therefroe, you got a big problem.

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These are subspecies. This is variation WITHIN a species.

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Yes, and they don't fit, now if they don't fit the standard picture, why in teh world would you think that at the level above subspecies would be consistent?

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I keep saying that metazoans fall into a nested hierarchy, and then you quote a paper that deals with fungi. Go figure.

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I'm just saying...

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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.

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I'm not talking about the population. I'm talking about the individual. When the individual is evaluated, is his entire genome evaluated overall, or is his every gene evaluated one by one by natural selection?

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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?

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As I said above. This is unfalsifiable. If a trait is homologous, you will calim that it had an origin from a single lineage. Now, if you claim it's analogous, you will claim that it simply evolved from more than one lineage. This is unfalsifiable.

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Really? That's your argument? You put words in my mouth and consider that an answer? How dishonest is that?

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What's dishonest about it?

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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?

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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?

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So what if it is only found there? What does that mean except that is found there?

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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?

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Yes. Because if humans did evolve from ape-like ancestors, they could have gained and lost any imaginable traits. With enough time, they would look nothing like their ancestors. What would stop people from evolving wings right now? And after some time losing them?

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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.

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No it's not. You would than call it an analogous structure. It's not falsifiable.

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So what is stopping a designer from putting a toothpick in a frying pan? Care to explain?

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Only himself.

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No, it isn't. Life could have shared similarities that didn't fall into a nested hierarchy.

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And it does have that. You yourself say it's called hooplasy.

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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.

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Tell me the difference.

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That's a lie, as I have already shown.

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Why exactly are you accusing me of lying? It's one thing to claim I'm wrong, but another that I'm lying.

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A bird with a mammalian middle ear would falsify evolution.

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Why? Explain why in detail.

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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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Because they weren't designed that way.

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"Evolutionists" do deal with the origin of life, they just don't use the theory of evolution to do so.

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This means that evolution can't explain the origin of life.

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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.

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Um... no. That's not what ID is about. It's simply aout detecting design. If you refuse to accept that, than I can't help you.

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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?

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That's because I'm trying to demonstrate a logical fallacy you are making. There is no such an ID explanation. Just as there is no evolutionary explanation for the origin of life?

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His identity is "an Adidas employee".

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That's not an identity. Imagine if we were int eh court of law, and you say: "Your honor, I solved the case! The killer is an Adidas employee!" Excuse, is the judge supposed to punish the whole company? That's in NOT an identity. Something that explicitly identifies a single person is the identity, or a group is the identity. Something like, first, last name and address.

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The big "Adidas" on the front kind of gives it away.

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Umm... no it doesn't. How do you know it's not a forgery? You do know that there are people who do these things and sell them cheaply? You don't know if that is a product from the Adidas company.

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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.

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Such as?

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So where are these same ID explanations for how life was made?

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These? What these are you talking about? You explained nothing. The only thing we can infer is that the ball was designed.

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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.

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If a fish can lose and gain any charateristic, than no characteristic is a good prediction. Becasue you don't know if it's going to lose it or gain it.

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Does the fish have a mixture of fish and mammalian features? Nope. Evolution passes.

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Yes it does. Fish have eyes, humans have eyes.Besides, what are fish characteristics, and what are mammalian characteristics?

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Can you tell us, using ID, what mixtures of characteristics we should not see in fossils and why?

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ID makes no predictions about that.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

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You implied it, as is perfectly obvious.

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I implied what?

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But they don't.

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Oh, but I know that very well. It is you who is claiming that they evolved, thus they formed by the exact probability as with random chance.[quoteEven 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.][/quote]Is the sequence dictated by itself? No it's not. The gene is the sequence, and the sequence is the gene. It can't direct itself.

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Simple things can be improbable, too.

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For instance?

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I didn't. I denied that the relationship was inversely proportional - and your list proves me correct.

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Please define the words "proportional" and "inversely proportional".And now tell me does this list show you proportional relationship, or inversely proportional relationship.1 - 60
10 - 6
15 - 4
30 - 2
45 - 1 1/3
60 - 1http://intermath.coe.uga.edu/topics/nmcncept/ratios/a22.htm

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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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Fine, than please do give me a better method. I'm waiting. If you don't have it, we'll keep using mine.

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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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Wrong! It precisely says that based on us NOT KNOWING THE LAWS OF MECHANICS IN FULL, we infer uniform probability.Yes it would and it's used like that. Why do you keep denying that? I already showed you this.

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A symmetric die has n faces, arbitrarily labeled from 1 to n. Ordinary cubical dice have n = 6 faces, although symmetric dice with different numbers of faces can be constructed; see dice. We assume that the die must land on one face or another, and there are no other possible outcomes. Applying the principle of indifference, we assign each of the possible outcomes a probability of 1/n.

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As with coins, it is assumed that the initial conditions of throwing the dice are not known with enough precision to predict the outcome according to the laws of mechanics. Dice are typically thrown so as to bounce on a table or other surface. This interaction makes prediction of the outcome much more difficult.

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Principle of indifference - Wikipedia

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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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When I say methodological naturalism, I mean the today's version of implied materialim. Since intelligence is non-material, than intelligence can't be an explanation.

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However, abandoning a successful strategy to return to a failed alternative is hardly an improvement.

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Failed? Failed how? Return? Return how? It's not failed, and it's still in use.For instance in cosmology. You do know that by definition the idea of Big Bang and multiverse are not naturalistic because they imply something outside of nature, thus are by definition supernatural. It's just that there are certain people who would like to impose artificial constraints on scientific fields such as biology to adhere strictly to materialism and methodological naturalism.

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The Caputo case was both. A protein is both, Your examples are both. They are not so distinct.

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False on all three accounts. KC has nothing to do with Shannon. My example had on algorithmic compression. Where did I use it? Nowhere. I only used Shannon's method to calculate the complexity from the probability, not KC method.

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Which is why I am correct to say that the length of the sequence does not dictate the complexity.

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Wrong. What I said means that it doesn't increase because it decreases! It can't do both in the same time. It decreases, that's why it's inversely proportional.

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You seem to be a bit lost. The question is why IDists claim it isn't possible to know anything about the designer or how he designed. Can you name any legitimate field of science that makes an analogous claim in the absence of supporting evidence? You can't, right? So where is the research demonstrating that the designer and the way he designed are things we cannot know?

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SETI. They never claimed to know the identity of extraterestrials from whose signals they would infer design.

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As an example, biologists take our knowledge of DNA and RNA from modern cells and apply it in attempts at unraveling the mystery of life's origin. Why can't IDists do something similar for the designer?

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Because design des not get you to a designer. There is no such a method that would get you from a design to a designer.

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If this is the question you truly meant to ask, then the answer is obvious. Almost all investigators into the origin of life are evolutionists, so the answer is that evolutionists do deal with the origin of life. And evolutionists on this board discuss abiogenesis all the time. Like right now.

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But I think the question you meant to ask is why evolution and abiogenesis are considered separate fields within biology. I think the main reason is because evolution deals with life processes that can be directly observed and about which we've developed a fair understanding, while abiogenesis deals with non-life processes that aren't at all well understood or even identified.

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Exactly. They are two different fields of science. Just liek detecting design and detecting the designer would be.

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You evidently lost track of the original question after I restated it in abbreviated form a couple times later in my post. The criticism of ID isn't that it doesn't know how the designer designed. The criticism is that ID claims it isn't possible to know how the designer designed.

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Fromt eh design itself. Because we have no such method. That is why your criticism is flawed. ID doesn't even try to do that.

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Not knowing something is the standard situation in science. This will be as true for abiogenesis as it is for ID. But abiogenesis researchers study the available evidence as they attempt to unravel the mystery, including the structure of DNA. Knowledge about DNA is essential because whatever processes took place in the early history of life, their end result obviously had to include DNA.

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ID researchers could do the same thing. They could take what we know about DNA to inform their studies of how the designer designed. But they don't do that. They just say, "This is irreducibly complex and has complex specified information, therefore it was designed and that's all we can know. Further investigation would be fruitless."

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Than scientists who study abiogenesis should alos deal with geology, math, electronics etc... Yet they don't. Why? Because it's not their job. Their job is to research abiogenesis, and not anything else.The same goes for ID, their research is based on detecting design, and nothign else. If you are so interested in the identity of the designer, than go and form a new branch of science that deals with that.

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Well, then how do mutations happen? By evolutionary processes? That kind of leaves ID with nothing to do, since without mutations no species can ever split off into a different species. Or do you believe that each species was an act of special creation, which is actually just your old time creationism.

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LOL, what? mmutations happen by evolutionary mechanisms? no, you have it wrong. Evolution presupposes mutations. Mutations are the evolutionary mechanism, not the other way around.Even if all life is the product of random mutations acted on by natural selection, that still doesn't mean that there is no place for ID. The question still remains where did the information, that was put in the genomes of living organisms, originally come from. Not that I think that happened. I personally think that design was implemented somewhere around the level of genera or family level. Not that taxonomy is able to accurately classify animals in the first place, but it's an approximation.

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Yeah, well, but you're creating your own eclectic definition of ID that has nothing to do with how IDists like Behe and Dembski from the Discovery Institute define it. This is an artifact of your tendency to argue in whatever way is expedient at the time, rather than in a way that is both internally and externally consistent.

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I define ID just like Dembski does.For instance, following the Discovery Institute's guidance the Dover school board produced this fairly poor (because of its focus on the origin of life) but now well known definition:[/quote]You are confusing the science of ID, and the theory of ID. ID is the science of design detection. If design is detected in a certain object, than we have a theory. We can have a theory of biological design, or of cosmic design etc... Like the fine tuning argument.Intelligent Design Network – Seeking Objectivity in Origins Science

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In a broader sense, Intelligent Design is simply the science of design detection -- how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose.

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This is simply a science of intellignet design.

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The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.

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This is the theory of ID in biology.

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It would seem that the Discovery Institute disagrees with you that ID is nothing more than design detection that has no bearing on evolution.

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No it doesn't. It claims that the theory of ID in biology claims that certain features are best explained by design. Since design was detected in living organisms, and evolutionary theory directly contradicts ID, it's obviously that the theroy of ID is in direct conflict with the darwinian explanation, which claims that there is such a thing as a design without a designer.This has nothing to do with the science of ID itself. This is basicly applied ID you are talking about. The same can go for things we see in cosmology, archeology data encryption etc...

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If you're going to insist on slicing and dicing arguments into individual sentences then you're going to continue losing the sense of the arguments being made. The central question is why IDists insist that we cannot know anything about the nature of the designer or how he designed. Sometimes I express this in shortened form and inquire about the identity of the designer, but it's the same question. I don't want to know that the designer was Frank Smith at 511 Main Street. I just want to know why IDists think it's impossible to know anything about the designer.

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Because there is no such a method. If you have one, please do present it.

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Even evolutionists have no trouble taking the existence of a designer as a starting premise and reaching conclusions about him/her/it/them. Obviously the designer chose to design with biological materials. And he designed in a nested hierarchy (something I know you reject but which is acknowledged by the Discovery Institute who knows a bit more about ID than you do (heck, even evolutionists know more about ID than you do), see http://www.evolutionnews.org/...g_the_orchard_model_and.html). And we know something about the location of the designer. He has to be on or somewhere near planet Earth.

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The articel actually goes against the view that there is one single nested hierarchy. The article agrees with me. I'm also claimeing that you can create few nested hierarchies with some genes, but than in turn not with others. The article says the same thing.

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And so your misconceived example of the identity of the designer of the soccer ball completely misses the point. No one is asking you to identify a specific entity as the designer. But just as we can examine the soccer ball and determine the manufacturer, and we can then go the manufacturer and determine who or which team designed that soccer ball, and we can find references to soccer balls in history to find the origins of the first soccer balls. We're not looking for a specific individual, we're just trying to figure out as much as we can about the designers of the soccer ball. There are probably very old soccer balls hidden in attics and museums that would inform the investigation.

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The problem in this case is that we have no such things. How do you intend to ind anything about the designer apart from the living organisms themselves? WHo are you going to visit to ask about the designer?Oh, and no, you can't determine teh manufacturer from the ball. Maybe it's a cheap forgery for the black market.

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But IDists insist that there's nothing we can know about the nature of the designer, which is just a smokescreen for the infinite regression that leads to God. And IDists like Dembski and Behe concede that they believe the designer is God. You're caught still maintaining the smokescreen after the jig is already up.

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Please, if you choose to reply, do not respond to individual sentences. My arguments span multiple sentences and paragraphs. Please respond to the arguments. If you quote more than two or three times from this message then you're missing the arguments and responding to sentences.

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1.) Who claimed there is no way we can know anything about the designer?2.) What smokescreen are you talking about?3.) What infinite regress are you talking about?4.) What jig are you talking about? Have people like Dembski and Behe ever claimed that they didn't believe the designer was the God of the Bible? Did I ever claim they denied it? Did I specifically say that that is actually what they believed? Did I also not say that their personal belief has nothing to do with their science?

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One is your claim that cups and frying pans show the same patterns as evolution

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Which they do.

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in spite of the facts that (a) they are not breeding organisms, (b) they have no hereditary traits, and (c) there is no selection process that makes survival and breeding of one more likely to be passed on to later generations than the other.

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Which is true, and has NOTHING, and I do mean NOTHING whatsoever to do with the fact that they exhibit those patterns.My point war rather that in spite not having all those traits, they still exhibit a pattern of similarity. Which means that a pattern of similarity can exist apart from common descent and evolution.

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That is why it is a false analogy.

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Umm... no. It's a valid analogy, you just didn't get it.Your point was to show that such similarities are due to CD. My point was to show that they exist apart from CD. I made that quite clear.

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Your assumption that it does represent evolution is one of your fantasies.

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You misunderstood me. It DOESN'T represent evolution. That's the point. It just looks that way. It has the same pattern of similarity you claim the animals have. And therefore, you infer CD. Yet I have shown you that the same pattern can be found which is not due to CD.

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Likewise, your claim that because we cannot absolutely positively know something that we therefore cannot infer anything is one of your logical fallacies.

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Which is something I never said. Why do you keep misrepresenting me? I specificaly said that since we can't observe something, we should infer something about it from present evidece that we can observe. And I said it few posts ago.

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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.

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EvC Forum: Message PeekI said that. I specifically said that if we don't know that soemthing actually happened, than we should infer it. I never said we can't infer it. Please, tell me why do you keep misrepresenting me?

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What contradiction?

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This contradiction. In one case you claim that similarity implies CD. In another case you say that similarity does not imply CD. You have a contradiction. You have a variable A (similarity) that in one instance (animals) produces B (common descent), and in another instance (frying pans), this same variable produces ~B (not-B). Therefore, you have a contradiction.Either it does imply it, or it doesn't. If it does than that would mean that similarity between frying pans means they evolved. Since this isn't ture. That also means that their similarity does not imply that they evolved. And since their similaritydoes not imply they evolved, neither does animal's similarity imply they evolved.

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You yourself said "frying pans do not reproduce" and that is one of several reasons why it is a false analogy.

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It's not a false analogy. A false analogy is when you compare something that can not be compared. I compared the patternt of similarity between your picture, and my picutre. There is no reason I can't do that. Frying pans not being able to reproduce is no reason why I can't compare them.

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There is no evidence of the change in hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation in response to ecological opportunity in the inanimate objects: they don't have hereditary traits, they do not have breeding populations, they do not have generations, they do not have ecological opportunities, they do not have selection mechanisms, so they cannot be analogous to organisms that do possess these elements of biological life.

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But they are not the topic at hand. Their similarity is. And they are both similar. Plus, even if I were to agree with you, the ability that the animals have, still does not imply CD.

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We also see evolution in living breeding populations today, including speciation events, and we can compare the trends and tendencies seen in the living world with the evidence we see in the fossil record.

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1.) For starters, define evolution.2.) Speciation simply means that one population does not interbreed with the other anymore. This does not imply that polar bears and horses are related.3.) The fossil record is a buch of bones in teh dirt. You can't infer evolution form it, because you don't know that any of those animals are related.

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Here you are (intentionally?) confusing and conflating what we can know with absolute truth with what we can logically infer from the evidence. This is a logically false argument (what a surprise eh?).

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I simply asked you, do you knwo if the fish had any offspring.

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Is it logical to infer that the population of this species of fish (including the parents of this fish) produced no offspring? Or does your fantasy extend to propose instant de novo creation of individual fossils?

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I'd go wit the extrapolation that these fish had probably had offspring. Since we see fish today have the same thing.

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Once again, you are (intentionally?) confusing and conflating what we can know with absolute truth with what we can logically infer from the evidence. Curious how so much of your arguments depends on logical fallacies eh?

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I simply asked you a question. Where is the fallacy?

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Obviously one cannot show that two randomly chosen bones, presented devoid of any context or knowledge of where they came from, are related, but this does not mean that one cannot logically infer that fossils, found and cataloged with full context, in close proximity, with multitudinous homologies from level to level, and consistent geological stratigraphy, as in the case with Pelycodus, are related.

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Well fine than! Please than do exactly that. Explain how you would show me that two fossils are related on your picture you presented.

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And when the differences from level to level are less than the overall differences we see within the dog species (just for example), then it is not logical to claim that one cannot infer that they are related.

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You don't know how different they are. ou simply see their fossils. You don't see their DNA. Animals can be very similar compared to their morphology, but genetically very different. So no interbreeding could take place.

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Now you are equivocating. Small surprise. What you claimed was that it was as logical to infer that the deposit was made in 5 minutes, involving unrelated organisms in a catastrophic event, than to conclude that the pattern is due to evolution, hereditary relationships, and normal geological processes.

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No. I never said that. I said that it could have happened. Not that it did happen in 5 minutes.

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Interestingly, it is the scientific evidence that shows that it happened over a
5 million year period:

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What? Which part of that link actually showed us it happened in 5 million years?

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Curiously, I'll trust the evidence over your opinion that is based on denial, fantasy and logical fallacies, especially when you have no evidence for a single element of your claims. I can link you to the original PDF from Gingrich if you are interested.

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What I would like is you to quote me where it says that that fossil record happened in 5 million years. And please quote the explanation of how they came up with that number.

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What you said was that it is not logical to infer that they are related, and then set up some imaginary scenarios based on fantasy and denial that have nothing to do with the evidence, and claim that they are equally logical conclusions. They aren't, because your proposed scenario is not supported by any evidence, while the evidence of hereditary relationships is supported by the evidence.

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Those animals simply got burried by a catastrophe? What's so fantastic about that? Layers and fossils form that way. Here is an example of Mt. St. Helens. It's layers formed in just that fashion.http://www.creationism.org/articles/nelson1.htm

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1. Mountain rearranged beyond recognition in 9 Hrs. .... A powerful earthquake at 8:32 am. on May 18, caused the north slope to plunge into the valleys below, releasing the pressure within with a lateral, northward, fan-shaped explosion. This initial eight minute blast destroyed 230 square miles of forest.

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It all happened in 9 hours. Where is the problem here? Why couldn't your picture be the product of the same kind of an event?

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Fascinatingly, your scenario cannot explain how the fossils come to be sorted in the specific layers and not jumbled together in one mixed bag (as is the case when we do find evidence of a catastrophic flooding event) or all laid out in one horizontal layer (as is the case when we do find evidence of a catastrophic burial event).

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What? Excuse me, they are all jumbled up. I don't see them all neatly in one package. How exactly did you come to the conclusion that they are arranged in some neat order?

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So in addition to a lack of evidence for a catastrophic event, you have no mechanism to cause rapid layer formation AND the sorted pattern of the fossils.

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We infer past events. We can not present observable evidence for past events. Where is your evidence that it happened in 5 million years?

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No, that is another logical fallacy:

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Everything within the A circle = B but not everything within the B circle =A.

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Wrong. This is not what I said.I said that: IF A = B THEN B = A. Which is true. You did not present that.What you made is a set and proper subset. The difference between a subset and a proper subset is that a subset may imply that A = B and B = A, yet a proper subset implies that A ⊂ B and B ⊃ A. Thus we have that A ≠ B and B ≠ A. That is what you presented. Yet that is nto what I said. Please note the difference.The first case is what you presented. where we have A being the proper subset of B. The second case is what I presented where A is the subset of B and B is the subset of A. Thus making them both equal. Thus A = B and B = A is ture. Thus my logical fact IF A = B THEN B = A stands.In your example, it never stands tha either A = B, or that B = A. They are always unequal. You simply confused = and →.I didn't say: IF A → B THEN B → A.
I said that: IF A = B THEN B = A.There is a difference between a subset and a proper subset. Please do learn them.Subset - Wikipedia
Proper Subset -- from Wolfram MathWorld

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(ps note that it is IF ... THEN ..., not IF ... THAN ... )

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Since you ahve shown a lack of knowledge in math and logic, I would suggest to you to rather be more concerned with math and logic, and not to be so preoccupied with my spelling.

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Because it is a logical fallacy it cannot be a fact.

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It's not a logical fallacy, you don't know the difference between an equality and and implication, and the difference between a subset and a proper subset.So now that you have thoroughly discredited yourself, as far as logic is concerned, please do tell me, why do you feel you can tell me, if my statements are logical fallacies or not? I mean, If you made a logical fallacy that was not so elementary, than I wouldn't mind so much. But this was an elementary mistake. So there is absolutely no way you are qualified to be telling me that my statements are logical fallacies. So, why did you feel that you should judge me in the first place? Please try and stay consistent and not judge the logic of my arguments in the future.

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Because any logical conclusion can be false it cannot be a fact.

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But a logical statement is a fact. It is a logical fact. A pure logical statement is a fact. IF A = A THEN A ≠ ~A. This is a logical fact. It's called the law of identity and it means that if something is itself than it is itself and not something that is not itself.

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Hi Smooth Operator, I'm separating this out from the other posts.

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"This" being related to the actual old age of the earth, the previous context being

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No problem. I like everything in one post so I'm putting it back together. Feel free to split them back again.

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You will note that the top alpha decay event listed is 238U with a half life of ~4.5 billion years, (with the next two being 234U with a half life of ~245 thousand years and 230Th with a half life of ~75 thousand years).

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Simply put, this means that a long time needs to pass before you have enough decay events to form the halos.

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You claim that U238 has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. Can you tell me who counted it for that long?

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Or you assume (by some unknown magical process that has no evidence for it) that the rate of decay was significantly different in the past.

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Well here we have evidece that rates of decay can change.

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An accelerated alpha-decay damage study of a glass-bonded sodalite ceramic waste form has been completed recently. The study was designed to investigate the physical and chemical durability of the waste form after exposure to 238Pu alpha decay. The alpha-decay dose at the end of the four year study was approximately 1.0 1018 decays/gram of material.

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http://www.astm.org/JOURNALS/JAI/PAGES/JAI12421.htm

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If you change the rate of decay, so that the halos could form in a shorter time period, then you also change the alpha particle energy.

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No, not always so. It can also be changed without changing the energy of the particle.

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Sudden change in the number of nodes. The harmonic oscillator wave function for well depths of 58 MeV (a) and 54 MeV (b). The x-axis is the radial coordinate of the alpha particle, T = ρ/(2η), where ρ and η are defined in
Green & Lee (1955). Figure 2a shows the harmonic oscillator wave function for a well depth of 58 MeV. Figure 2b shows what happens when the well depth is changed to 54 MeV, without changing the alpha particle energy.

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http://static.icr.org/...erated-Decay-Theoretical-Models.pdf

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If you change the alpha particle energy, then you change the diameter of the halo formed by the decay for that particle.

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The evidence shows no variation in the diameter of the halos, so it is logical to infer that there was no change to the decay rates during the time that the halos formed.

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Thus it is logical to infer that "several hundred million years to form" the evidence that you see in the picture above have indeed occurred.

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Not really. Since you need about 4.5 billion years to actually make the halo, you have never observed it form int he first place. Therefore, you don't know if that particualr U238 halo that was formed by alpha decay, was formed by an accelerated or by a non-accelerated rate of decay.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

SETI doesn't proclaim the identity of extraterestrials to be out of bounds or out of the sphere of methodological naturalism. SETI is merely limited by technology and is not trying to redefine science like ID is. Big difference.

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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

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I implied what?

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That you hadn't tried to argue for loss of all function, instead of just the known function.

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Oh, but I know that very well. It is you who is claiming that they evolved, thus they formed by the exact probability as with random chance.

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And you are wrong as usual. The point is that the assembly of proteins is controlled by genes. So producing multiple copies of the same protein just requires using the same gene over and over again. Evolution doesn't enter into it.

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Is the sequence dictated by itself? No it's not. The gene is the sequence, and the sequence is the gene. It can't direct itself.

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The sequence of the protein is dictated by the gene. Thus proteins do not assemble by chance.

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Please define the words "proportional" and "inversely proportional".

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I defined proportional a couple of posts back. Two quantities a,b are proportional if there is a constant c, such that a = c.b for all values of b. THey are inversely proportional if a = c.1/b for all values of b.

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And now tell me does this list show you proportional relationship, or inversely proportional relationship.

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1 - 60
10 - 6
15 - 4
30 - 2
45 - 1 1/3
60 - 1

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That is an inverse proportional relationship.

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Fine, than please do give me a better method. I'm waiting. If you don't have it, we'll keep using mine.

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Either we find out what the real probabilities are or we admit that we can't do the calculation for lack of the correct figures.

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Wrong! It precisely says that based on us NOT KNOWING THE LAWS OF MECHANICS IN FULL, we infer uniform probability.

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In reality it's more to do with not knowing all the variables to an adequate precision - but also knowing that the die is a regular shape and that the mass should be evenly distributed. Even your quote points to the knowledge that the die is symmetrical,

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When I say methodological naturalism, I mean the today's version of implied materialim. Since intelligence is non-material, than intelligence can't be an explanation.

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Then you are criticising a strawman. The methodological naturalism of science only ignores the supernatural. Intelligence, whether animal, human or hypothetical extraterrestrial species is included within the natural.

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Failed? Failed how? Return? Return how? It's not failed, and it's still in use.

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I suppose that there are still people who attribute lightning, disease or earthquakes to supernatural beings, but these beliefs contribute nothing to our scientific understanding.

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For instance in cosmology. You do know that by definition the idea of Big Bang and multiverse are not naturalistic because they imply something outside of nature, thus are by definition supernatural. It's just that there are certain people who would like to impose artificial constraints on scientific fields such as biology to adhere strictly to materialism and methodological naturalism.

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In fact I know that the multiverse is entirely within nature and that scientific proposals for the cause of the Big Bang are likewise natural.

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False on all three accounts. KC has nothing to do with Shannon. My example had on algorithmic compression. Where did I use it? Nowhere. I only used Shannon's method to calculate the complexity from the probability, not KC method.

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So the fact that you didn't calculate the Kolmogorov complexity means that they are NOT sequences ? What a strange idea.

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Wrong. What I said means that it doesn't increase because it decreases! It can't do both in the same time. It decreases, that's why it's inversely proportional.

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Nevertheless the relevant probability is not dictated by the length of the sequence.

Because an ERV-K can be reconstructed into a retrovirus. It's called Phoenix.

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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.

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Dewannieux M, Harper F, Richaud A, Letzelter C, Ribet D, Pierron G, Heidmann T.

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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.

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PMID: 17077319 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

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These ERV's have the same features as retroviruses (e.g. LTR's, gag, pol, env), they can become infectious, their insertional biases match modern retroviruses, etc. It quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and flies like a duck but you want to tell us that it was magically poofed into the genome and isn't due to a retroviral insertion.What I do know is that if I am ever brought up on murder charges I want you in my jury. All my attorney needs to do is claim that fingerprints are not evidence. They are merely swirls of oil that were designed to capture dust floating through the air. Any DNA match of hair left at the crime scene is not evidence of me being at the crime scene. Oh no. It is just evidence that the DNA in my body and the DNA at the crime scene had a common creator. So the goal of ID is not to explain anything in biology? That's news.Can you answer the question or not? Why is there more LTR divergence in an ERV shared by all apes than in the LTR's of an ERV shared by just humans and chimps? Evolution can easily explain this, but it appears that ID once again is incapable of dealing with evidence in the world of biology. Why is it a better explanation, other than just asserting it? Why is it that every time we observe retroviruses inserting into a genome they insert randomly among billions of bases in the genome, even in genomes that are 100% identical? Why is it that up to 25% of cancers can be directly linked to a retroviral insertion into an oncogene in a somatic cell? Is that part of the design, giving people cancer? Just ask anyone who has siblings if common descent is possible. Because you would need to start over. That is a drastic reduction in fitness. You would need to reevolve EVERYTHING. You would need to reevolve tRNA's, ribosomes, polymerases, DNA binding proteins, on and on and on.On the flip side, there is nothing stopping a designer from starting from scratch. In fact, for an omnipotent and omniscient designer starting over takes just as much time and effort as copying previous designs. Completely false. Homology DOES NOT IMPLY A NESTED HIERARCHY. Automobiles share homology, but they do not fall into a nested hierarchy as we would expect from a design process. A nested hierarchy is a PATTERN OF HOMOLOGY, not homology itself.Secondly, if evolution is true and if life shares common ancestry then we should observe a nested hierarchy among lineages that did not participate in horizontal gene transfer. This is the TEST. So we should not find any fossils with feather impressions and three middle ear bones. We should not find living bats with feathers. We should not find an ostrich with mammary glands. An ostrich with mammary glands would share homologous structures with mammals, but this would break the nested hierarchy and would falsify common descent. Do you understand this or not? No, the measurement tool is crude. This is also what the author said:"Just as it would be futile to use radioisotopes with modest half lives to date ancient rocks, it appears unrealistic to expect conventional linear, homoplasy-sensitive sequences to reliably resolve series of events that transpired in a small fraction of deep time." I thought we were talking about evolution which occurs at the level of the population, not at the level of the individual. So you are saying that if evolution is true that the next generation of humans could look like winged dogs and nothing like apes? Am I getting this correctly? Let's look at the Glofish. This is a fish that carries and exact copy of the jellyfish GFP (green fluorescent protein) gene. This allows the fish to glow under UV light. This exact copy of the jellyfish GFP gene is not found in any other vertebrate fish. It is a clear violation of the nested hierarchy. Guess how it got there? Human designers. Humans have no problem moving genes between species and in clear violation of the nested hierarchy. Humans have no problem with getting mice to express human proteins in vivo. "Humanized" mice have been a huge advance in biomedical research. GM foods have been a big step forward in increasing yields and quality of product.So why do we see a nested hierarchy if design is true? Why don't we see ostriches with mammary glands? Why don't we see bats with feathers? You are begging the question. Fish have a two chambered heart and gills. Mammals have fur and a four chambered heart. So where is the fish with fur or the mammal with gills? Why don't we see these things if design is true? So let's summarize. ID can't explain ERV orthology, biogeography, the pattern of homology, the fossil record, and really anything else in biology. So why do you feel it necessary to come into a thread and discuss ID and biology since ID doesn't address anything in biology?

Did you know YOU can download and run SETI and help in the detection of extraterrestrial life? Does ID have anything where a layperson can detect design and know it is, in fact, designed?

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"On a personal note I think he's the greatest wrestler ever. He's better than Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George -- you name it."-The Hulkster on Nature Boy Ric Flair

Hi Smooth Operator,I'm beginning to wonder what bizarre defect in my psychological makeup is causing me to continue a dialog with you. You exhibit a cycle that gives no indication of diminishing, yet here I am, apparently poised to reply yet again while expecting something different to happen this time.The cycle is simple. Someone says something, and you either misinterpret it or throw in an unrelated red herring.So they reply and clarify, and you do it again.So they reply and clarify yet again, and you do it again.Let's take this little example here: I'm not sure what the problem is. Is it difficult for you to dissect arguments longer than one sentence?Boiling it down for clarity, I said: You reply: Clearly you didn't understand the question. I could clarify yet again, but until you help me understand how your response makes any sense in the context of the question there isn't any point to responding to this or anything in your message since it is full of equally puzzling malapropisms, but on the scale of concepts rather than words. It's like you're using something that feels like logical thinking to you but only to you.So I'll settle for simply restating my original point. Unlike any other field of science, without any evidence ID states a priori what it isn't possible to know, specifically, anything about the designer. Here's a quote from Of Pandas and People: Can you name any other field of science that holds an equivalent position as a basic tenet?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

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SETI doesn't proclaim the identity of extraterestrials to be out of bounds or out of the sphere of methodological naturalism. SETI is merely limited by technology and is not trying to redefine science like ID is. Big difference.

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What a non sequitur! What the hell does that have to do with anything?It's like me saying that a certain car is broken, yet you claim, no it's not because it's red!ID wanting to, or not wanting to redefine science, or adhering, or not adhering to methodological naturalism, has nothing to do with the fact that both ID and SETI, which is basicly a subset of ID, claim that you can't get for the design to the designer.

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That you hadn't tried to argue for loss of all function, instead of just the known function.

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Which is true.

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And you are wrong as usual. The point is that the assembly of proteins is controlled by genes. So producing multiple copies of the same protein just requires using the same gene over and over again. Evolution doesn't enter into it.

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What if they were different proteins of the same size N? Than they would be different, thus needing more DNA, but would have the same complexity. But since there would be more of them, the probability of them forming would be lower.

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The sequence of the protein is dictated by the gene. Thus proteins do not assemble by chance.

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According to you, one of them did. The proteins come from genes. Yet you need proteins to have a DNA replication. Since it would lead to an infinite regress to say this has been happening since forever, it's obvious that one came first. How? Well, you claim one came about by chance.

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I defined proportional a couple of posts back. Two quantities a,b are proportional if there is a constant c, such that a = c.b for all values of b. THey are inversely proportional if a = c.1/b for all values of b.

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Okay, and how would you define this equation. Proportionality (mathematics) - Wikipedia

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That is an inverse proportional relationship.

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Great. And what is this?1/2 - 1
1/4 - 2
1/8 - 3
1/16 - 4
1/32 - 5
1/64 - 6
1/128 - 7
1/256 - 8
1/512 - 9

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Either we find out what the real probabilities are or we admit that we can't do the calculation for lack of the correct figures.

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Which is a statement that you yourself do not agree with. You basicly want to stop science in its tracks. When science doesn't know something, it infers it. I don't know if you actually read what I wrote few posts ago, but I'll re post it now. Here it is...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 do 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 then 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 then write a law of motion of the Sun that claims that Sun goes around the Earth for few thousands of years, and then starts jumping up and down for 5 minutes and then 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 tommorow, as it has been doing for at least few thousands of years. But a much higher probability is that tommorow is not going to be different then 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.If you agree with this, than you also agree that assuming uniform probability in other instances is justified. If not, you have a contradiction.

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In reality it's more to do with not knowing all the variables to an adequate precision - but also knowing that the die is a regular shape and that the mass should be evenly distributed. Even your quote points to the knowledge that the die is symmetrical,

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You are missing the point. It's not about what we DO know, it's about what we DON'T know. And we DON'T know all the laws that govern the dice. We simply don't. And based on that LACK of knowledge, basicly our ignorance, we assume uniform probability. And it works.

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Then you are criticising a strawman. The methodological naturalism of science only ignores the supernatural. Intelligence, whether animal, human or hypothetical extraterrestrial species is included within the natural.

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It's not a strawman, because materialism is also implied today.

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In fact I know that the multiverse is entirely within nature and that scientific proposals for the cause of the Big Bang are likewise natural.

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No, by definition can not be. Our universe is the nature. Everything that is outside of it is supernatural. So by definition the multiverse and big bang are supernatural.In the case of the multiverse, you have a collection of universes. Our universe, our nature is just one universe of an infinity of other universes. Which means there is something else besides our nature. Thus this idea is supernatural.The same goes for the big bang. Either it caused itself, or it was caused by something else. It could not have caused itself because it would first have to exist to be able to cuse anything. So the only other option is that it was caused by something else. And this somethign else was outside of nature. Thus this idea itself is also supernatural.

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So the fact that you didn't calculate the Kolmogorov complexity means that they are NOT sequences ? What a strange idea.

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No, I simply said that KC is not used for the probability of events. Shannon information is used instead.CSI is basicly a mix of KC, SI and a generalized notion of Fisher's hypothesis testing.

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Nevertheless the relevant probability is not dictated by the length of the sequence.

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But it is by the amount of proteins.