The evidence for design and a designer - AS OF 10/27, SUMMARY MESSAGES ONLY

So - a simple test for you:Does this line have specificity?
(pakaddandumaarmandudedanaadanpratiyogitaLakdikephalakshetrapeletakaatakdetakaatak)
If not, why not?Does this line have specificity?
(kaalloopehakeriklaaootjerleemarthwejiolramaheiuiresjghaxirhhalwlmfbaieiwwoeekalabonoad)
If not, why not?Edited by Panda, : clarity

I assert that what you really mean here is being wrong.

I have to say that doesn't seem a bad starting point although what you propose looks more like a way to measure the 'functional information' content of the genome rather than its complexity. The one big problem is that it calls for an inordinate amount of work to actually measure such a thing.I'm making a few assumptions.Firstly that by nucleotide sequences you actually mean nucleotides since variations at the single nucleotide level can influence fitness. Otherwise you need to specify some sort of sequence length, is a protein's coding sequence 1 unit? an exon? What about upstream regulatory elements? So I think the simplest approach is to look at single nucleotides.The next issue is how to measure this. In some bacteria, a strain of E. coli which does not contain plasmids for instance, we have a good chance of theroretically being able to change or delete every single nucleotide in the genome and then comparing the fitness of the new mutant strain against an unchanged original. Obviously the problem here is that this is a massive task with even the E. coli genome which is only 4.6 megabases in size. People have used systematic mutagenesis of to knock out specific protein coding genes for about half the E. coli genome, but to systematically modify every nucleotide and screen for fitness effects would be orders of magnitude more difficult.Excluding 'Junk DNA' is reaonable provided we can reliably identify it (another advantage of doing this in a bacterial system is that they have very little in terms of 'junk DNA'), viable mice have been produced with 3% of their genome deleted from putative 'Junk' regions (Nobrega et al., 2004). We might use cross species conservation as a criteria but Nobrega et al.'s data suggest this might be too conservative, in fact there is evidence that even many 'Ultraconserved' regions may be dispensible (Ahituv et al., 2007). Perhaps the best approach would be to mask out gene deserts and highly repetitive regions, though this could lead us to underestimate our final value.I think that your proposal for a measure, of functional infromation, is potentially possible but experimentally infeasible at the moment even in a simple system like E. coli.TTFN,WKP.S. Just to clarify, you are agreeing with JBR that your tree and arrow example was about someone mistakenly identifying the tree as a simple natural product compared to the arrow even though both were actually the result of intelligent design?Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Because we don't observe random mutations producing organisms with a better overall ability to survive. What we do observe is natural selection choosing pre-existing alleles within the populations to insure the survival of the population. With of course the exception of a very few examples within our very unique bacteria friends.But we never see novel new functions mutating in any multi-celled organisms. As Dennis pointed out already, we only observe harmful mutations occurring. Unless you want to count cycle cell anemia like some try to do, claiming it protects people in malaria infested areas helping them survive. But that's a clear case of curing the disease while killing the patient. That would be like claiming dwarfs are better suited to survive a sword fight because their normal sized opponents would swing way to high to strike them. Two of the most prominent men in the history of SETI, Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, were convinced that they would be detecting alien intelligence if they were to pick up a radio wave emitting a simple string of prime numbers. This involves the concept of detecting something specific standing out from all of the random but complex radio waves being transmitted from outer space. That was all I was referring to. Again, far from being "rubbish" the concepts are identical. But it is hilarious that somehow when the same concept gets applied to DNA, suddenly it is "NOT THE SAME."

There ya go...He was trying to recreate the conditions believed to exist in the "primordial soup" just like I said. "Out of the pool of goo came me and you." But if you don't care for that cliche I am willing to tone it down to "molecules to man." Either way still sounds like a fairy tail.

If it can happen in bacteria, please tell me what stops it from happening elsewhere.

Huh? Are you of the conviction that amino acid are human? You didn't say that, you said "To me, the very notion of "Out from the pool of goo, came me and you," is the real fairy tail here.". You didn;t even mention any conditions that existed in the "primordials soup", nor can anything that came out of that soup be said to be human. Exactly, nobody thinks that. So why do you pretend like we do think that? Nobody believes humans sprang from "molecules" either. Insofar of course that all living things are made of molecules. So if you mean that, since everything is made from molecules, humans being born is "molecules to man", I agree, if not, then nobody thinks what you are proposing. Could that be a reason why nobody thinks that happened?

Because bacteria are so small, making migration not very practical, bacteria have a definite biological need to rapidly adapt to ever changing environments and food sources. The most prominent way that they appear to have been designed to do this, is through plasmid mutations. This is highly significant when you realize that plasmids are mostly only found in bacteria and hardly no other organisms.And no, I don't at all deny that some bacteria have had beneficial mutations take place within the chromosomal DNA. But I think the exact mechanism is controversial because some results suggest a directed mutation specifically enabling adaptation to the environment. A conclusion which is drawn in part by the fact that the mutation rate occurred at a much higher rate than random mutations could produce.And even though most of these chromosomal mutations involves certain environmental conditions that make these mutations phenotypically beneficial, they frequently eliminate or reduce pre-existing cellular systems and functions. Therefore they require the prior existence of the targeted cellular systems, rather than providing a genetic mechanism that accounts for the origin of biological systems or functions.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, so rather than attempting a correction I'll just provide some information.There are many different types of mutations, ranging from simple nucleotide substitutions through gene and chromosome duplication/deletion and virus insertions. Independent of whether a mutation is beneficial, neutral or deleterious, the probability of the different of mutation types varies widely. Even the probability of mutations of the same type varies widely, as evidenced by mutational hot spots.--Percy

Is the wire arrangement in this antenna complex?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

Does the wire arrangement in this antenna have what you call purpose or specificity?

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

​

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

​

It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

​

...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

That depends what you mean by 'overall ability to survive'.This sounds like a weasilly caveat to get around the fact that there are many examples of random mutations which produce organisms with a better ability to survive in a particular environment. Without testing an organism in every conceivable environmental situation it is hard to characterise any change as improving its overall ability to survive. You mean as Dennis claimed. There is plenty of direct evidence for de novo beneficial mutations having occurred in experimental lines of multi-celled organisms, such as Drosophila (Azad et al., 2010), C. elegans (Estes and Lynch, 2003) and Arabidopsis (Shaw and Chang, 2006).If you were prepared to accept population genetic evidence there are plenty of apparently beneficial mutations around in human(Rip et al., 2006; Trecarichi et al. 2006), although I suspect you might ascribe these to already existing created or intelligently designed variants. I say apparently because we haven't had the chance to observe the population genetics of these mutations for long enough in humans to be able to make definitive measurements of fitness. Clearly it isn't laways since the alleles are still extant. Be that as it may there are other much milder haemoglobin variants that offer protection from malaria such as HbC (Modiano et al., 2001). Fine, where is the simple string of prime numbers in DNA? Except for the ways that the SETI member I linked to says they are different and the lack of prime numbers in DNA.TTFN,WK

You're preaching to the choir, DA. If you read the context of Nuggin's message, my statement was a response to Nuggins who's statement implied that there were undisputed creationist/ID points here at EvC town.This is what Nuggins posted: Nuggins here is implying that I must cite an undisputed point and for it to be considered verified by opponents of different ideological premises in order for it to be valid. No?

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

The point of my question was that your "impossible number", 10⁴⁵ is a pretty small number when you consider the number of molecules available and the amount of time available for interactions between them.Far from "impossible", the reaction is virtually inevitable.

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"It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English...." -- Joseppi

No, Bluescat. The illogical point he/she was making is that in order for me to justify my claim, shown points must be verified and undisputed by his/her ideological constituency here at EvC town. Edited by Buzsaw, : emphasise by color

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.