What exactly is ID?

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Well SETI isn't a field of science. It is using science to try to find some evidence of ET life, but It is in no way a "field" of science.

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Care to try again?

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Also, Percy has explained clearly why it doesn't work as an answer, but as always you refuse to even consider you might be wrong.

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If something is "using" science, than it's science.

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How does this put their origin and mechanism of insertion in doubt? If an ERV induces variation how does that discount their insertion through standard retroviral mechanisms?

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Where did I say it does? In some cases it might, but not in all cases. The fact that ERV regions that code for reproduction must have been present from the start, or the animal would not be able to reproduce, does mean it was there from the start. But not so for others.

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It relates to your use of magic to discount obvious conclusions.

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What magic?

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You have consistently shown that ID is not able to detect anything in biology. Therefore, I can only conclude that there is no intelligent design in biology, otherwise ID could explain these features.

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Non sequitur. Aren't you tiered of making logical fallacies? Wether ID can detect anything in biology or not, has nothing to do with explaining the patterns of characteristics we see.

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No, it is not. I am asking you to use ID to explain observations. That is what scientific hypotheses/theories do, they explain observations. The observation is that an ERV shared by all apes has more LTR divergence than an ERV shared by just humans and apes.

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Again, it's a non sequitur. ID is not supposed to explain that. Can General relativity explain that? Can quantum mechanics explain that? No, because they aren't even trying.

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Evolution can explain this. If common ancestry and evolution is true this is exactly what we should observe. You are saying that common ancestry is wrong. You are saying that ID explains things better. So how does ID explain this observation?

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You just keep making assertations. Why does evolution explain that? How? Where did you even show that evolution is able to produce something like that? You can't ascribe the explanatory power to a cause that has not demonstrated the ability to perform it. Do you, or do you not understand that?

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False. The random insertion of retroviruses is OBSERVED. It is an observation. Even an ERV rescued from the human genome (i.e. Phoenix) randomly inserts into the genome just like its modern counterparts.

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So once again you have to ignore observations to make ID work. That doesn't bode well.

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Okay, how do you know it's a randm insertation. Based on what exactly?

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How does that put the origin of the ERV in doubt? Can you please show us how it is impossible for an ERV that is produced by random insertion of a retrovirus into the germline CAN NOT result in a function in the lineage? How does function negate the very natural origin of these sequences?

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Hello? If the ERV was notht here from the start the sheep would not be able to reproduce.

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Based on what evidence? If they have degenerated then how do you explain the higher divergence in ERV's shared by all apes than in ERV's that are lineage specific or shared by just 2 species of ape? If they all degenerated from a set time in history then all of them should be equally distant, but they aren't.

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Based on the fact that some of them are useful. But some could have degenerated, not all of them.

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You stated that common ancestry is impossible. Are you retracting that statement?

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I said no such thing. I specifically said that we have no evidence of universal common ancestry. And that common ancestry of all dogs, or all cats, does not imply that dogs and cats had a common ancestro. Even less that all life has a universal common ancestor.

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I already told you what is stopping it. A drastic reduction in fitness. Such an organism would be selected against, strongly. Evolution can't go backwards. You might as well claim that gravity can make rivers flow uphill.

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No, that just means it's very unlikely. Not that it's not going to happen. Besides, how do you knwo there would be no beenfit to that. Surely evolving lungs out of gills would mean that there would be a drastic reduction in fitness too. But hey, you believe there wasn't.

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This forum is about ID. What does ID say?

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I'll tell you, but first, tell me did that non-standard code evolve or was it designed?

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No it is not. A bat with feathers would violate the nested hierarchy and would falsify the theory of evolution even though feathers would be a homologous structure shared by bats and ducks. Homology in and of itself does not indicate common ancestry or evolution. Not every pattern of homology will indicate evolution.

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Why!? You keep saying this but you don't explain why. Explain exactly why would this falsify evolution.

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There is only one pattern that will indicate evolution, and that happens to be the pattern we observe.

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Why? What's so special about it?

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Cars and frying pans do not fall into a nested hiearchy. You have just supported my argument. Designed things do not fall into a nested hierarchy.

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Why do you keep avoiding facts? Designed things, do fall into a nested hierarchy.

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Matryoshka dolls, also known as nesting dolls or russian dolls. Each doll is encompassed inside another until the smallest one is reached. This is the concept of nesting. When the concept is applied to sets, the resulting ordering is a nested hierarchy.

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Hierarchy - WikipediaHow long do you keep denying this fact?

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If they did then only one lineage of cars would have airbags.

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If that's the case than only one lineage of animals would have eyes. But that's not the case. But than you just take those animal that have the most similar eyes and call them one lineage and claim that they are a nested hierarchy. That's unfalsifiable. I could calim that only certain lineages of cars have airbags, only those that I pick and they than fall into a nested hierarchy.

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Only one lineage of frying pans would have teflon coating. This is not what we see. For example, we can find a Mazda and Chevy that have the same tires, but different engines. We can find two Mazdas that have the same engine, but different tires. There is no nested hierarchy even though there is homology. Do you understand the difference or not?

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And again. Fish have eyes, humans have eyes. But humans don't hve gills, like fish do. Therefore no nested hierarchy.

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Because bats were never birds.

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So what!? That's a total non sequitur. Neitehr were birds - birds, before they supposedly evolved to birds! So why couldn't bats evolve featehrs?

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For bats to evolve feathers you would need to give bats the same genetic background as the non-feathered ancestors of birds. It is impossible for a bat to have that genetic background. Not only that, but once the bats have this impossible to get genetic background they need to acquire the same random mutations in the same order, another near impossibility.

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Let's sse... umm... no. Convergent evolution. Ring any bells? Genetically different animals yet have the same features. They simply converged. They are genetically differnet yet have the same feature. If you think it's not possible due to low probability, than tell me does htat mean that evolution has limits?

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So your only recourse now is to put words in my mouth in order to discount my arguments? That's dishonesty at its acme. Why don't you find an ostrich with teats and then see how I react. Or why don't you give us the ID explanation of why we don't see a single species with teats and feathers. Care to explain?

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Do you, or do you not accept tht eyes evolved many times?

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Secondly, the vertebrate eye evolved once. The insect eye evolved once. The cephalopod eye evolved once. These are lineage specific adaptations. They have lineage specific anatomy, histology, and development. The only thing that ties them together is their end function. You might as well try to claim that the insect leg, bear leg, and squid leg are also homologous because you can call them legs.

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Just becasue you call them LINEAGE SPECIFIC ADAPTATIONS doesn't mean anything! I don't care how you call them. The fact is they evolved over and over again. So if they evolved over and over again, than why wouldn't bats evolve feathers!?

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What is being said is that the tool is too crude to resolve branches that are very close together. You might as well claim that binoculars don't work because they can not resolve separate stars in the Andromeda galaxy.

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I coul also claim that the tool is too crude and that is why it shows a nested hierarchy where there actually is none. Just like looking at mirage at a distance. You come closer and than you noticce it's not really there.

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It's not the equipment. It's the lack of data. Modern species represent a tiny fraction of the species that have existed. Using their genomes as a phylogenetic tool will not be able to resolve branches of extinct species that branched very close to one another due to the missing data. What it can give us is a cruder, larger picture, and it does that quite well.

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Two things.1.) If this is true. Than any claim of a unifying tree are dead. Because you yourself agree that the data is crappy. And thus can't be used to support anything. If it can't be used to show that the tree doesn't exist, than it even can be used to show that it does exist.2.) This is not about the missing animals. It's about those we have. The fact that 35% of data was simply thrown out to make a nested hierarchy means there is not a lack of data, but that it simply doesn't fit. They are throwing out data that doesn't fit. They aren't lacking any.

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Please show how all known kachina dolls fall into a single nested hiearchy. Please compare the characteristics of each kachina doll population and show how they fall into a single nested hierarchy.

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BTW, the ability of something to physically fit inside another is not a nested hierarchy.

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LOL? Yes it is. Only certain dolls fit the order. You can't put a larger doll into a smaller one. You can put a smaller one into a larger one, but if it's not the correct one, you can't fit them all in. There is a specific, and only one way to fit them all in. This is a nested hierarchy.

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The individual is meaningless in terms of evolution. If all we look at is the individual then we have to remove two of the important mechanisms in evolution: differential reproductive success and competition between organisms. If an individual has two offspring, what does that mean? What if that individual has 100 offspring, what does that mean? How can we make heads or tails of what the individual means without comparing the individual WITH THE REST OF THE POPULATION?

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I never said we won't compare what is going on in the population. But the fact is that evolution is supposed to be going on on the molecular level. So, let's look at what's going on on that level, in one individual. How he get's evaluated and selected or not.

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You tell us? Why call it design when you have shown that ID can not explain any observations in biology?

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Depends on what observations you are talking about. ID never claimed to to explain anythign you ascribed to it.

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That was my question. Why should we or shouldn't we? What does ID predict as to the existence of fish with fur, mammals with gills, birds with teats, bats with feathers, etc.?

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Why do you keep asking me that? ID doesn't predict anything about that.

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Why do we only see the combination of features predicted by the theory of evolution?

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You keep saying that. But you never say why. Why does evolution predict things we observe. Please explain in detail.

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The problem is that scientists can use the characteristics of the radio signal to reverse engineer the mechanisms that the alien race used to create the design. From the strength of the signal and the frequency one can derive the types of coils used, as one example. One can infer the mechanism of design from looking at the design. IDer's can't or won't do this.

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You need to find a new example.

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You have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, you do not who is sending the signal. If they could do that, than they wouldn't have mistaken pulsars for aliens. Regardless, of that. That still doesn't bring you to a designer. Even if they did find a radio signal. They can't know who is sending it.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

Are you daft? Based on just the presence of a signal and the way it is modulated we'd know their minimal level of technological achievement. and based on the direction we'd know where in the sky they were. Based on the content of the signal we'd know whatever they care to tell us, maybe that they have two heads and three legs. If they tell us the original frequency of the signal then we'd know their motion relative to us, and if it reached cosmological levels of red shift then we'd know they're outside our galactic group.SETI does not hold as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to learn anything about an extra terrestrial intelligence whose signal they eventually detect. If they're ever successful they expect to find out a great deal about them.This is in stark contrast to ID, which unlike any other field within science and in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to know something, specifically, anything about the designer.Care to try again? Can you name any other field within science that in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that there's something we cannot know?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.Edited by Percy, : Clarify.

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Nope, why would I say that?

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I don't know why you said it, but you did and even admitted to doing so, not so many posts ago. And by past form you will admit to saying it again and insist that it is correct next...

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I know, and now, I'm asking you what if they were differnet but of the same size N.

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Perhaps you can go back to my earlier posts where I discussed the point only to be cut off by your insistence that you were using the same proteins...

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You very well know that this is a pure assertation. Nobody knows what preceded what. So if we are going to accept the idea that something came first, than one of them came by chance, by your logic. So which one was it?

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The current scientific view is that RNA life preceded DNA life, and this view has been accpeted for some time now.

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Thank you. So it's an inverse logarithmic relation. Fine. So do you now accept that complexity and probability have an inverse logarithmic relation?

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I haven't changed my mind on the relationship between Dembski's complexity and probabiity.

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Saying that the Sun will rise tommorow is NOT, I repeat, it is NOT a wild guess! It's an inference, with which you would agree on. And it's based on an assumption!

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And it's got nothing to do with the point we are arguing.

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You got your analogy wrong. Infering that the Sun will rise tommorow is a generalized case of principle of insufficient reason.

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Except that we could base it on induction or on an understanding of the dynamics of the Earth and it's relation to the Sun. Rather than assigning equal probabilities to all possible outcomes we know that it is highly unlikely that the Earth will stop spinning unless a drastic and improbably event occurs (conservation of angular momentum tells us it can't "just happen").

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The article clearly says that PoIR is use not because we DO know something, but because we DON'T know something! We use it because, in this case, we do not precisely know the mechanical laws that govern the dice!

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And the article omits to mention the important things that we do know, that justify assigning equal probabilities to the six faces of the die.

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I said materialism rules out intelligence.

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Which is both false and irrelevant to the original claim that methodological naturalism did not consider intelligent causes. Forensics work uses methodological naturalism - it does not consider demons or miracles - but it certainly allows for human action.

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1.) I didn't say BB itself. But the CAUSE of BB. The cause is obviously outside our universe.

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2.) As I said, unter the multiverse hypothesis, our nature is just one of many natures. And any one of them is by definition supernatural becasue it's outside our nature.

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3.) If you claim that our universe is just a part of the whole nature, than this is an unfalsifiable claim, thus not science. Becasue that emans that everything is nature, and thus nothing is nature. Eitehr soemthing is, or isn't nature.

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You said: The "big bang" not"the cause of the Big Bang. And you would still be wrong if you HAD said "the cause of the Big Bang".Your point 2 is also wrong.And I am not sure what the hell your point 3 is supposed to mean. Definitions aren't meant to be falsifiable.

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Which is why I ddin't use KC for the probability, obviously.

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You don't use Kolmogorov complexity for probability because it isn't a probability. But then I suppose I shouldn't expect somebody who thinks that "50 proteins" is a probability to understand that.The point is that Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of complexity. And one which is rather better than Dembski's odd definition - and more accepted in the statistics community.

Exactly, except ID's position is that is impossible IN PRINCIPLE to do designer detection. THAT is why the analogy to SETI is a false analogy.

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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

I see a lot of assertions and zero evidence. Can you show any evidence that the ancestors of modern mammals required these ERV sequences in order to reproduce? Any at all? The magical poofing of retroviral insertions into genomes by your supposed intelligent designer. We are talking about patterns of characteristics IN BIOLOGY. ID is incapable of explaining these patterns, as you have already shown. Therefore, I can only conclude that there is no ID in biology. When a retrovirus inserts into a genome the flanking LTR's are identical. This is due to the mechanism of retroviral insertion. If the retroviral becomes part of the genome, that is becomes endoegenized, then mutations will accumulate in these LTR's over time. More importantly, different mutations will accumulate in each of the LTR's. This will cause the LTR's to diverge in sequence over time. More time equals more divergence.By applying the theory of evolution you can determine when these ERV's were inserted. The patterns of orthology tell us this. If all apes have the same ERV at the same location in their genome then this insertion had to occur in the common ancestor of all apes. If an ERV is found in just humans and chimps then this insertion had to occur in the common ancestor just humans and chimps, a much more recent ancestor. Therefore, you should see more LTR divergence in ERV's shared by all apes than in an ERV shared by just humans and chimps. This is exactly what we see. LTR divergence matches the insertion time established by orthology. You can read more HERE Technologies | The world's #1 location platform.

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Third, sequence divergence between the LTRs at the ends of a given provirus provides an important and unique source of phylogenetic information. The LTRs are created during reverse transcription to regenerate cis-acting elements required for integration and transcription. Because of the mechanism of reverse transcription, the two LTRs must be identical at the time of integration, even if they differed in the precursor provirus (Fig. ​(Fig.11A). Over time, they will diverge in sequence because of substitutions, insertions, and deletions acquired during cellular DNA replication.

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So how does ID explain this? Any answers? Please show that this was so for all of the ancestors of modern sheep. From observing retroviruses inserting into genomes. Here is a really good paper showing a genomic map of the insertions for hundreds and thousands of HIV, MLV, and ASLV retroviral insertions conducted in the lab:Retroviral DNA Integration: ASLV, HIV, and MLV Show Distinct Target Site Preferences - PMCAs I showed earlier, an HERV-K (Human-ERV) was rebuilt from the human genome. It too showed this same pattern of random insertion:Identification of an infectious progenitor for the multiple-copy HERV-K human endogenous retroelements - PMCSo modern retroviruses are observed to insert randomly. Reconstructed ancient retroviruses insert randomly as well. Shared codon usage, shared genetic systems, and shared metabolic pathways is the evidence. That is unless you can show a physical law that requires ATG to code for methionine. Otherwise we will have to conclude that the relationship between DNA codon and amino acid is an arbitrary one. Lungs didn't evolve from gills. There are even MODERN species with both a lung and gills. They are called lungfish. This didn't require a reduction in fitness since it didn't require the destruction of gills while the lungs evolved. A complete remake of the genetic pathways would require a complete destruction of all proteins. You would have to start over from an extremely simple replicator, possibly an RNA replicator. There is no way that this RNA replicator could compete with life that had already been evolving for quite some time.Like I said, you might as well expect rivers to flow uphill for 5,000 feet. A bat with feathers would falsify evolution because the genes for feathers can not move from the bird lineage to the mammal lineage through the mechanisms of evolution. However, a designer could easily move genes back and forth between birds and mammals.So I will ask again. Why, if ID is true, don't we see bats with feathers? A mother with a baby in her womb is not a nested hierarchy, and neither are Matryoshka dolls. A turducken is not a nested hierarchy. A twinky with creme filling is not a nested hierarchy. A nested hierarchy is not something physically put inside of another thing. What is so hard to understand here? Only one lineage of animal does have vertebrate eyes. The vertebrate lineage. Only one lineage of animals has the cephalopod eye. The cephalopod lineage. These are not homologous eyes. The airbags in different makes and brands of cars ARE homologous. Airbags in different makes and brands are often made by the same company. They ARE lineage specific adaptions, just as we would expect from evolution. Then do it. Show me a bat with DNA sequence that is more like a birds than it is to another mammal. And those features are only superficially similar. They are not homologous. The leg of the insect, bear, and squid are perfect examples. They can all be called legs, but they are not homologous. The same for the eye of the insect, the eye of the cephalopod, and the eye of the bear. These are different solutions for the same function.Using the bat and the bird, we could look at their wings as a very good example of this. Superficially, we can call them both wings. This simply refers to their function. They are superficially alike in that they projections outward from the lateral midline and involve the forelimbs. That is where the similarities end. The bird wing is an airfoil type wing with a reduction in phalanges and an air surface produced by the upper arm and lower arm bones in the front and feathers making up the rest of the airfoil surface. In the bat the majority of the wing is made up of the phalanges with a skin membrane stretched between the phalanges. They are not homologous by any stretch of the imagination. Because mutations can not jump between lineages. However, there is no such restriction for a designer. So I ask again, why don't bats have feathers? Why don't ostriches have teats? What was stopping a designer from mixing and matching design units just as human designers do? You can't determine what is being selected for or against by looking at a single individual, as I have already explained. We know exactly the technology being used is. We can know from the modulation, strength of the signal, and frequency the type of coils, voltages, and amperages being used. We can learn a lot about the designers by looking at their radio signals. This is completely different than IDers whose only goal seems to be ignorance.

Smooth Operator,

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If that's the case than only one lineage of animals would have eyes. But that's not the case. But than you just take those animal that have the most similar eyes and call them one lineage and claim that they are a nested hierarchy. That's unfalsifiable. I could calim that only certain lineages of cars have airbags, only those that I pick and they than fall into a nested hierarchy.

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The point of doing phylogenetic trees is that you use multiple characters. Of course, if you use one characteristic of anything, or a few, you can probably generate something that looks like a nested hierarchy for it.So, if you use say 20 characteristics of cars, you're going to get a confusing picture because there is extensive 'horizontal gene transfer' between models and manufacturers. A clear nested pattern will not emerge.However, if we use 20 characteristics of living creatures, we find that almost always they happen to fall naturally into a hierarchy. And that different trees constructed via different methods give very similar hierarchies.This is why we think metazoan life falls into a nested hierarchy.

Once again, Smooth Operator, we see an inability to deal with the facts in a reasonable manner.Is this stupidity, ignorance, delusion or maliciousness? Hard to say, could be a combination. The concepts are simple. Which they can not possibly do, for the simple reason that they cannot reproduce. An evolutionary pattern is based on reproduction and the descent of hereditary traits, and multiple lines of evidence, not on ad hoc similarities complied by a person on a computer.Convergent evolution is not an evolutionary pattern, as it does not show direct descent from common ancestors, it shows analogous features that have evolved independently of homologous features.Your cups and frying pans are only based on superficial analogous features, and thus cannot be similar to the treed structure of homologous features in a hereditary lineage.If you cannot (or refuse to) understand this simple point then you are incapable (by choice or by ability) of understanding evolution. Except that the structure of cups and frying pans does not exist in the real world or anywhere outside your imaginary ad hoc assemblage. No body else would come up with the same pattern you did by taking random pictures off the internet. Scientists, on the other hand, would (will and have) come up with the same pattern/s of hereditary descent in nested hierarchies due to the multiple lines of evidence that are available.All you made clear was an inability to grasp a simple point: reproduction in breeding populations produces variations in the following generations, we see this pattern in the world around us, and we see this same pattern in the fossil record. Thus what we see in the world around us explains what we see in the fossil record.Your pots and pans are missing several elements that are part of the picture when it comes to Pelycodus, as an example.The most critical is context in time and space. Being an ad hoc arbitrary compilation of pictures there is no context in time and space of where the individual components were taken from.With Pelycodus you have location in a geographical location that does not vary, and you have a time-line from top to bottom that delineates lineage from older at the bottom to younger at the top.At each level you have fossils of organisms that are the product of reproduction, that had ancestral parents, and they have similarities to the fossils below that show a homologous pattern in their skeletons. This is the same pattern that we see in living populations. It is therefore logical to infer that they are both of the same hereditary lineage and that the lower level is older, ancestral, to the upper level. This holds for every layer in the whole matrix from top to bottom.You cannot infer such a pattern from pots and pans because you have no logical basis to infer hereditary lineage, and you have no context placing them in proximity in time and space. Because the reality is not as simple as your little diagram. In one case you have multiple lines of evidence pointing towards a conclusion, while in the other you have no lines of evidence pointing to any conclusion, because of that simple little difference your analogy fails to represent reality, just your delusion/s. Curiously that does not even begin to answer the question of how the layers of fossils show the evidence of hereditary lineage.Fascinatingly, what I said was that when you have burials by catastrophic events that you do not end up with the pattern seen with Pelycodus, not that such layers are not formed by catastrophic events. Providing examples of catastrophic events that provide multiple layers formed in rapid fashion fails to provide the evidence of burial of animals in discrete layers that are sorted in the manner seen with Pelycodus: they are generally all lumped and jumbled. A linear equation and a polynomial equation can have the same values of y for given a given x, but one or more points in common does not mean that the curves are identical or that one is analogous to the other.Here you are equivocating between such simple equalities and actual identities.If, and ONLY If A ≡ B Then and ONLY then does B ≡ AObviously, for the average reader anyway, your pots and pans are not equivalent to hereditary lineages in living breeding organisms, so you cannot have A ≡ B, and your analogy fails as a result -- because you have parts of B ≠ A ... the parts that apply to living breeding reproducing populations of organisms, the parts that apply to evolution.In one case the pattern seen is arranged in nature due to natural processes, while in the other case the pattern is arranged in your computer by ad hoc selection of images, images unrelated in time and space, images devoid of any context. Sorry, no, you are still confused between assumptions made and conclusions that follow. Mathematics in general and logic in particular are based on assumptions, and these assumptions can be false. As a result the conclusions can always be false.What you have stated here is one of the beginning assumptions, on which further conclusions can be based. It is taken as (assumed to be) fact for the purpose of the argument, but it is still just an intellectual construction and not fact.In logic there are no conclusions that do not rest on assumptions.Asserting otherwise does not make it any more valid than before, as your point has been invalidated, and you should know that any logical statement that has been invalidated is falsified, not fact.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : englss, clrty.

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Hi again Smooth Operator, trying to pull a fast one? Interestingly, the study attached has absolutely nothing to do with accelerated decay. Either you did not read the abstract or did not understand it. The subject addresses the damage to a proposed containing material for nuclear damage by accelerating the exposure of the material to the radioactive decay. This is their conclusion:

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The only significant measured change was an increase of the unit-cell lattice parameters of the plutonium oxide and sodalite phases of the material, but these were very small and did not lead to any loss of waste form durability.

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No change to any rate of radioactive decay of any of the materials in the study was noted.Color me surprised.Enjoy.

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You would think that sooner or later SO would quit posting crap he doesn't understand that is posted on websites that don't understand it.I can only think that he browses the fundie, flat earth, and geocentric, websites looking for key words so he can post responses here. It isn't like he is wrong just some of the time.Delusion is a scary thing ain't it.

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Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts

Hi again Smooth Operator, trying to pass off fantasy in place of reality again? Curiously, not only does this paper NOT demonstrate what you claim is actually true, but it doesn't even demonstrate what IT claims is actually true, just that one can fantasize about it in never never land.The problem is that this article is bogus. It is made up fantasy not science.Here we see phaque science at it's most despicable -- pretending to be real to fool gullible people.Amusingly, they started with the assumption that there is a young earth to explain, without providing any evidence for it being so:

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If the age of the earth is measured in thousands rather than billions of years, then how does one explain the isotopic abundances of, for example, uranium, as found in geological samples? If half lives have varied over earth history, then nuclear physics must be altered in some way, and the altered theories could lead to new explanations for the isotopic abundance variations with time (Chaffin, 2000b, 2001). If there has been accelerated decay at some points in earth history, it will be impossible to successfully explain the data without recognizing and modeling this fact. ...

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Then they conclude that physics must have been different at some time in the past to accommodate this young earth fantasy concept.Next they play with mathematics (which can be made to show anything) to pretend to demonstrate something, without having a single piece of empirical evidence to substantiate it.Fascinatingly, they do not show that there is in fact any variation in energy well levels in the real world, nor do they show (the critical part that you need) that this actually occurs without changing the overall decay energy.Note that changing the well depth means you are in effect changing the initial isotope that you are then calculating the alpha decay from. Just a little slight-of-hand bogus science from your typical creationist fraud factory.Here's their conclusion:

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A straightforward biblical interpretation does not rule out a period of accelerated decay early in creation week. Since life does not appear until some time on day three, the cessation of the accelerated decay at that point prevents life from receiving abnormally large radiation doses. The models presented depend on the compactification of extra dimensions, with the compactification being completed early in creation week. Other models may lead to accelerated decay at other points, for instance during the Fall of Genesis 3 or during the Flood of Noah, but it would seem that these other episodes would probably have to be explained using alternative models, and could not allow as much accelerated decay as could be accommodated early in creation week.

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Since God is the origin of physical principles, it would be wrong to state that He must act in a certain way. However, Scripture is a reliable record of His actual creation. The models considered here merely point out some unnecessary assumptions involved in interpreting radioactive decay: half lives may not have been constant.

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In other words, god-did-it, pull out the magic rabbit, but not a fact to be had to support a single word.And do they show how this magic increase in decay rate could actually occur? By changing the whole universe? Sorry, but somehow I missed the relevant evidence for such fantasy.Here's a clue that this is bogus fantasy wish fulfilling writing rather than a logical conclusion based on facts:

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Examples of constants which are no longer considered to have remained constant over the history of the universe are found in great quantity in recent physics literature. A common denominator of many of these examples is multidimensional string theory.

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Do you know why? The quote is complete - what is missing?Where is your skepticism for this (not good for toilet) paper?What this in effect proves is that the Uranium halos are evidence for an old earth, or else you need to turn physics inside out with magic to then produce fake evidence of an old earth, and that as a consequence your god is a joker, a jester, a prankster.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrtyEdited by RAZD, : ...

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Are you daft? Based on just the presence of a signal and the way it is modulated we'd know their minimal level of technological achievement.

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No we wouldn't, because you do not know what's producing the signal.

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and based on the direction we'd know where in the sky they were. Based on the content of the signal we'd know whatever they care to tell us, maybe that they have two heads and three legs.

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And how would you know the information was true or false? If they said that they had 3 heads, yet actually had ona 1. How would you know?

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If they tell us the original frequency of the signal then we'd know their motion relative to us, and if it reached cosmological levels of red shift then we'd know they're outside our galactic group.

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And that would be great! But that still doesn't tell you two things.1.) You don't know who the designer still is. You know what the signall thells you but you don't know if it's true or not.2.) You don't know where the designer is. You know where the signal is coming from, but you don't know if the designer of the signal is still there. Or, if he was there from the start. People sent the PIoneer satellite into outer space. If some alien picked up it's signal, would he be right to conclude that people actually made it there? No. It was made on Earth.

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SETI does not hold as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to learn anything about an extra terrestrial intelligence whose signal they eventually detect. If they're ever successful they expect to find out a great deal about them.

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This is in stark contrast to ID, which unlike any other field within science and in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that it isn't possible to know something, specifically, anything about the designer.

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Care to try again? Can you name any other field within science that in the absence of any evidence holds as a fundamental premise that there's something we cannot know?

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No. I would first like you to show me how would SETI know anything about the designer.

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I don't know why you said it, but you did and even admitted to doing so, not so many posts ago. And by past form you will admit to saying it again and insist that it is correct next...

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What exactly would be the correct answer than?

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Perhaps you can go back to my earlier posts where I discussed the point only to be cut off by your insistence that you were using the same proteins...

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Look, it doesn't matter if they are the same or not. Youwould still need more information in teh regulatory regions if there were more proteins even if they were similar. Because now you would need to coordinate more proteins. Thus, you would need more information to do so.And in the case of having the different proteins of teh same size, you would need more information in protein coding regions.In any case, you need more information. Therefore, probability of them forming by chance decreases.

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The current scientific view is that RNA life preceded DNA life, and this view has been accpeted for some time now.

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Fine. So the RNA is the one that formed by chance. How exactly does that help you?

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I haven't changed my mind on the relationship between Dembski's complexity and probabiity.

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Oh, I see, so in the light of facts, you still won't change your mind. So why are we even having this conversation? I clearly demonstrated an inverse relation between complexity and probability and you won't change your mind.

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And it's got nothing to do with the point we are arguing.

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Of course it does.CASE 1. - Dicea.) We don't know the mechanic underlying their movement.
b.) Based on this ignorance we assume that increasing the number of dice will change the probability in a predictable way.
c.) And that's how we infer the probability of dice throws.CASE 2. - Suna.) We don't know the mechanic underlying it's movement.
b.) Based ont his ignorace, we assume that increasing the time we observe the Sun rising and setting will continue in the predictable manner.
c.) And that's how we infer Sun's movement.As you can see this is the same thing.

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Except that we could base it on induction or on an understanding of the dynamics of the Earth and it's relation to the Sun.

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And you miss the point again. Yes that's the part we know. But it could be wrong. The point is that we don't know EXACTLY the mechanics underlying the dynamics between the Sun and the Earth. We could be wrong. In absence of knowledge about how things really work we ASSUME that they are going to work the way we observe them now.

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Rather than assigning equal probabilities to all possible outcomes we know that it is highly unlikely that the Earth will stop spinning unless a drastic and improbably event occurs (conservation of angular momentum tells us it can't "just happen").

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And again, this is where you make a false analogy. We do not asign the same probabilities to all outcomes like that. We asign the same probabilities to the uniform motion of the Sun.If we assume than one die has a probability of 1/6, than we assume that 2 dice have the probability of 1/36.In the case of the Sun, if we see it rising and setting today, we conclude that it's going to do so tommorow.In both cases we don't really know. But the change in the probability is the sae as in the movement of the Sun. They continue to change in the same way.

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And the article omits to mention the important things that we do know, that justify assigning equal probabilities to the six faces of the die.

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Wrong. You keep missing the point. It doesn't omit anything. We know something about the dice. Yes that's true, the point is we don't know if it's 100% true. And that's what we're ignorant off. And that's where teh PoIR comes in.

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Which is both false and irrelevant to the original claim that methodological naturalism did not consider intelligent causes. Forensics work uses methodological naturalism - it does not consider demons or miracles - but it certainly allows for human action.

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I said certain sciences, like biology imply materialism with methodological naturalism.

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The "big bang" not"the cause of the Big Bang. And you would still be wrong if you HAD said "the cause of the Big Bang".

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Your point 2 is also wrong.

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And I am not sure what the hell your point 3 is supposed to mean. Definitions aren't meant to be falsifiable.

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1.) It seems I was not precise enough. I emant the cause of BB. And no, I'm not wrong. Tell me where was teh cause of BB. Inside or outside of our universe?2.) Umm... Why?3.) It means that since nature is everything, than there is no sucha a thing as supernatural. Therefore, even God is a natural explanation.

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You don't use Kolmogorov complexity for probability because it isn't a probability. But then I suppose I shouldn't expect somebody who thinks that "50 proteins" is a probability to understand that.

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The point is that Kolmogorov complexity is a measure of complexity. And one which is rather better than Dembski's odd definition - and more accepted in the statistics community.

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The point you fail to understand is that complexity is the logarithmic inverse of probability. They are in certain cases equivalent.Imagine a safe with 1.000.000 combinations. And only one that opens the safe. The chances of opening the safe are 1/1.000.000. Now if you have a safe that has 500.000 combinations and only one opens the safe, the cahnce of you opening it is 1/500.000.So to sum up.[SAFE 1]Complexity - 1.000.000
Probability - 1/1.000.000[SAFE 2]Complexity - 500.000
Probability - 1/500.000When the complexity increases, the probability decreases. And in the same way when the complexity decreases the probability increases.

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Exactly, except ID's position is that is impossible IN PRINCIPLE to do designer detection. THAT is why the analogy to SETI is a false analogy.

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And how would you or SETI detect the designer. Please do tell.

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I see a lot of assertions and zero evidence. Can you show any evidence that the ancestors of modern mammals required these ERV sequences in order to reproduce? Any at all?

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You don't get it. The sheep themselves wouldn't be alive if they didn't have those sequences. So the sheep had to have them from the start. And as far as we know, the sheep are the ancestors of sheep.

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The magical poofing of retroviral insertions into genomes by your supposed intelligent designer.

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Why is that considered magical? Have you never heard of genetic engineering?

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We are talking about patterns of characteristics IN BIOLOGY. ID is incapable of explaining these patterns, as you have already shown. Therefore, I can only conclude that there is no ID in biology.

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Which is a logical fallacy. Since ID was not supposed to explain those patterns in the first place.

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When a retrovirus inserts into a genome the flanking LTR's are identical. This is due to the mechanism of retroviral insertion. If the retroviral becomes part of the genome, that is becomes endoegenized, then mutations will accumulate in these LTR's over time. More importantly, different mutations will accumulate in each of the LTR's. This will cause the LTR's to diverge in sequence over time. More time equals more divergence.

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Why? You simply assume that. There is no reason for there to be more divergence.For instance. In the case of the Coelacanth, it's supposed fossil dated about 400 million years shows it to be the same as today. Therefore, no divergence took place according to you.Also the genetic analysis of supposed 250 million year old bacteria showed them to be the same as today's bacteria. So according to your logic, no divergence took place.Coelacanth - Wikipedia
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1375505.stm

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By applying the theory of evolution you can determine when these ERV's were inserted. The patterns of orthology tell us this.

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No, this doesn't tell you anything. You assume it's caused by evolution in teh first place.

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If all apes have the same ERV at the same location in their genome then this insertion had to occur in the common ancestor of all apes. If an ERV is found in just humans and chimps then this insertion had to occur in the common ancestor just humans and chimps, a much more recent ancestor. Therefore, you should see more LTR divergence in ERV's shared by all apes than in an ERV shared by just humans and chimps. This is exactly what we see. LTR divergence matches the insertion time established by orthology.

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Which is what you would assume. But you don't know that apes and humans had a common ancestor in the first place. And since time does not equal divergence as we saw from the examples above, we can't predict anything. You can't use evolution to predict anything. Because divergence is not always caused by time. And also you first have to demonstrate that humans and chimps could ever had a common ancestor to begin with.

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So how does ID explain this? Any answers?

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Why would ID need to explain that?Anyway, just to show you how wrong you are, take a look at this. You, for some misterious reason, calim that similarity is produced by common ancestry. And that insertations, either by ERVs, transposons, or any other mutation is random. Which is false. Take a look at how SINES and LINES are densest in the region where mammalian Alus are rarest. This is a clear case of non random retrotransposons at work. Second thing that we have are are the rat and mouse chromosome 10. Gene frequencies correspond one to the other as you can clearly see. But the problem is, this is happening in taxon-specific elements. They are not related to each other. Meaning that they did not diverge one from another. So the conclusion is that you can have similarity without common ancestry.http://ai.stanford.edu/...m/Publications/2004_RAT_Genome.pdfAnd now on to ERVs. You have been claiming for some time now that they are inserted at random. This is also demonstrably false. A clear case of insertion hotspots was found for human ERV sequences.

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Retroviral DNA integration occurs throughout the genome; however, local hot spots exist where a strong preference for certain sites over others are seen, and more global preferences associated with genes have been reported.

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Just a moment...There are even more finding, that certain ERV sequences do not model the standard phylogenetic tree. So if some ERV are found to be in the same places as in other animals, just like in humans we should NOT assume common ancestry, precisely because we are sure to find some insertions that do not share the same place. And according to you this wouldn't falsify common descent. By the same logic shared insertions do not support it either.

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However, precise details of the nature of the evolutionary separation of the lineage leading to humans from those leading to the African great apes have remained uncertain. The unique insertion sites of endogenous retroviruses, like those of other transposable genetic elements, should be useful for resolving phylogenetic relationships among closely related species. We identified a human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) provirus that is present at the orthologous position in the gorilla and chimpanzee genomes, but not in the human genome. Humans contain an intact preintegration site at this locus. These observations provide very strong evidence that, for some fraction of the genome, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas are more closely related to each other than they are to humans.

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A HERV-K provirus in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, but not humans: Current Biology

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Please show that this was so for all of the ancestors of modern sheep.

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I don't have to. The sheep would not be able to reporduce. We are talking about sheep, not about their ancestors. I don't care what happened to their ancestors. What we are talking about now is sheep. And as far as we know, their ancestors were always sheep.

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From observing retroviruses inserting into genomes. Here is a really good paper showing a genomic map of the insertions for hundreds and thousands of HIV, MLV, and ASLV retroviral insertions conducted in the lab:

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Retroviral DNA Integration: ASLV, HIV, and MLV Show Distinct Target Site Preferences - PMC...

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As I showed earlier, an HERV-K (Human-ERV) was rebuilt from the human genome. It too showed this same pattern of random insertion:

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Identification of an infectious progenitor for the multiple-copy HERV-K human endogenous retroelements - PMC...

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So modern retroviruses are observed to insert randomly. Reconstructed ancient retroviruses insert randomly as well.

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You must be joking!? No, really, is this a joke? Did you even read your own source? Did you?The article talks about non-random insertions! It clearly sayt that there ae specific sites that ERVs have preference to more than others. Here are some of the examples.Okay first of all, the damn title of the article is "DISTINCT TARGET SITE PREFERENCES"

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Effects of gene activity on integration targeting were assessed by transcriptional profiling of infected cells. Integration by HIV vectors, analyzed in two primary cell types and several cell lines, strongly favored active genes. An analysis of the effects of tissue-specific transcription showed that it resulted in tissue-specific integration targeting by HIV, though the effect was quantitatively modest. Chromosomal regions rich in expressed genes were favored for HIV integration, but these regions were found to be interleaved with unfavorable regions at CpG islands. MLV vectors showed a strong bias in favor of integration near transcription start sites, as reported previously. ASLV vectors showed only a weak preference for active genes and no preference for transcription start regions. Thus, each of the three retroviruses studied showed unique integration site preferences, suggesting that virus-specific binding of integration complexes to chromatin features likely guides site selection.

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How could you have missed any of that?

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Shared codon usage, shared genetic systems, and shared metabolic pathways is the evidence.

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No it's not! This is evidence for shared codon usage, shared genetic systems, and shared metabolic pathways. Nothign else. You are just assuming that this similarity is also the evidence for universal common descent. How do you know it is? Where is the evidence for universal common descent?

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That is unless you can show a physical law that requires ATG to code for methionine. Otherwise we will have to conclude that the relationship between DNA codon and amino acid is an arbitrary one.

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There is no such a law. And that's precisely why such things are not a product of natural laws. So they either came about by chance or design. So which is it?

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Lungs didn't evolve from gills. There are even MODERN species with both a lung and gills. They are called lungfish. This didn't require a reduction in fitness since it didn't require the destruction of gills while the lungs evolved. A complete remake of the genetic pathways would require a complete destruction of all proteins. You would have to start over from an extremely simple replicator, possibly an RNA replicator. There is no way that this RNA replicator could compete with life that had already been evolving for quite some time.

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Like I said, you might as well expect rivers to flow uphill for 5,000 feet.

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I never said that they would start from beginning. But liek in my link, I showed you that some sequences code for different actions in different animals. So it would start slowly and gradualy one codon at a time. There is no reason evolution wouldn't be able to do that.

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A bat with feathers would falsify evolution because the genes for feathers can not move from the bird lineage to the mammal lineage through the mechanisms of evolution. However, a designer could easily move genes back and forth between birds and mammals.

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Why not? Not only that, but why couldn't the bat evolve feathers independently?

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So I will ask again. Why, if ID is true, don't we see bats with feathers?

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Why should we? Has ID ever predicted that? You do know that a designer can practically make any pattern come about? Does that mean that we should actually see any possible pattern? You do know that there are actually more patterns than there are atoms in teh universe? So how could we observe them all?

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A mother with a baby in her womb is not a nested hierarchy, and neither are Matryoshka dolls. A turducken is not a nested hierarchy. A twinky with creme filling is not a nested hierarchy. A nested hierarchy is not something physically put inside of another thing. What is so hard to understand here?

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Please don't argue with facts. Matryoshka dolls are a nested hierarchy. Not because they are one inside the other. I never said that. They are a nested hierarchy because they follow a certain patternt. You have only one distinct pattern to assemble them all.They could have been designed to stand on top of one another. But they weren't. The fact that they were designed to be placed one inside the other is a choice and is irrelevant. The relevant point is that there is only one specific pattern in which you can make them conform to their designed position being inside one another. And that's why they are a nested hierarchy. This is an example of how shapes fall into a nested hierarchy. The same as the dolls do. The reverse does not follow. By that I mean that "shape" is not a subset of "square" and neither is "doll 4" subset of "doll 1".

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Only one lineage of animal does have vertebrate eyes. The vertebrate lineage. Only one lineage of animals has the cephalopod eye. The cephalopod lineage. These are not homologous eyes.

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And you simply defiend them to be one lineage. You picked a specific group of eyes to be called "mammalian", and the otehr group to be called "cephaloplod". If you look at all eyes, without those arbitrary definitions, you would have more eyes in one lineage. So what gives you the right to redefine animals like that?

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The airbags in different makes and brands of cars ARE homologous. Airbags in different makes and brands are often made by the same company.

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Not always, so they are not always homologous.

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They ARE lineage specific adaptions, just as we would expect from evolution.

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Why would we expect that from evolution?

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Then do it. Show me a bat with DNA sequence that is more like a birds than it is to another mammal.

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This is a logical fallacy. It's like asking me to show you a rock that is smaller than an atom. It can't be done. No bat is more like birds than a mammal, because if it was it wouldn't be called a mammal. It would be called a bird.

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And those features are only superficially similar. They are not homologous. The leg of the insect, bear, and squid are perfect examples. They can all be called legs, but they are not homologous. The same for the eye of the insect, the eye of the cephalopod, and the eye of the bear. These are different solutions for the same function.

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Using the bat and the bird, we could look at their wings as a very good example of this. Superficially, we can call them both wings. This simply refers to their function. They are superficially alike in that they projections outward from the lateral midline and involve the forelimbs. That is where the similarities end. The bird wing is an airfoil type wing with a reduction in phalanges and an air surface produced by the upper arm and lower arm bones in the front and feathers making up the rest of the airfoil surface. In the bat the majority of the wing is made up of the phalanges with a skin membrane stretched between the phalanges. They are not homologous by any stretch of the imagination.

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Convergent evolution could still make that according to you. And how do you determine what is homologous and what is not? Based on what traits?

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Because mutations can not jump between lineages.

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I'm not asking them to. I'm simply asking why would they be able to evolve independently?

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However, there is no such restriction for a designer. So I ask again, why don't bats have feathers? Why don't ostriches have teats? What was stopping a designer from mixing and matching design units just as human designers do?

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Fish have eyes, humans have eyes. Enough mixing for you?

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You can't determine what is being selected for or against by looking at a single individual, as I have already explained.

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If you can't do it for an individual, than how would you be able to do so for 1.000.000 individuals?

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We know exactly the technology being used is. We can know from the modulation, strength of the signal, and frequency the type of coils, voltages, and amperages being used. We can learn a lot about the designers by looking at their radio signals. This is completely different than IDers whose only goal seems to be ignorance.

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No you don't know any of that. Where has SETI team claimed to know any of that? And how would you know any of that? Give me some examples!Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.