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Author | Topic: Micro v. Macro Creationist Challenge | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
aristotle Junior Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 16 Joined: |
That's not quite what he asked in Message 1. He actually asked: Show us a single genetic difference between the human and chimp genome that could not have been produced by known microevolutionary processes in either the chimp or human lineages. eg - compare the genomes and show which differences could not occur through mutations of the type observed in organisms today. Do you see the difference? Noted, but the poster cannot prove that the genetic differences were the produced by ME processes, any more than I can prove they were not.
That's a lot of genetic changes and a fair proportion of them are documented by historical observation in recent (geoplogical) years. If we compared the skeletons of those dogs to one another, would we see more or less variation than see here: Ok, but those dogs were selectively bred, those homonids were not."I have learned from my own embarrassing experience how easy it is to concoct remarkably persuasive Darwinian explanations that evaporate on closer inspection." - Daniel Dennet
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JonF Member (Idle past 197 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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That asked, the chances of the mutations required between human and primate, occurring in the right gene and often enough in the population to change the genome of the entire species, are next to naught. Ordinary old lottery fallacy. The chances of you winning the lottery are next to naught. The chances of somebody winning the lottery are pretty high. Similarly, the chances of evolution producing one pre-specified result are next to naught, but the chances of evolution producing something viable are nearly 1.
By themselves, random base substitutions, and deletions, resulting in beneficial changes to the organism, do not occur frequently enough. Show your calculations or references. Edited by JonF, : No reason given. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Noted, but the poster cannot prove that the genetic differences were the produced by ME processes, any more than I can prove they were not. Again the question was not whether they were but whether they could be. In other words look at the types of mutations that we observe and show that there is something different that could not occur via one of the known types of mutations.
Ok, but those dogs were selectively bred, those homonids were not. A distinction without a difference. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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aristotle Junior Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 16 Joined: |
Similarly, the chances of evolution producing one pre-specified result are next to naught, but the chances of evolution producing something viable are nearly 1. The problem is that the 'result' that you claim evolution produces, is always 'pre-specified', because it is incredibly complex and cannot function without all it's parts. Michael Behe in his book 'Darwin's Black Box' states, for example, "You can’t start with a signal sequence and have a protein go a little way towards the lysosome, add a signalreceptor protein, go a little further, and so forth. It’s all or nothing." He concludes that "it is extremely implausiblethat components used for other purposes fortuitously adapted to new roles in a complex system." Show your calculations or references. "Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then () , or one chance out of 10 . The number 10 , if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200- component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion,trillion, trillion!" - Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. The Mathematical Impossibility Of Evolution | The Institute for Creation Research"I have learned from my own embarrassing experience how easy it is to concoct remarkably persuasive Darwinian explanations that evaporate on closer inspection." - Daniel Dennet
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JonF Member (Idle past 197 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
The problem is that the 'result' that you claim evolution produces, is always 'pre-specified', because it is incredibly complex and cannot function without all it's part Nope. You are confusing "specified complexity" (which in itself is meaningless) with "specified result". By "pre-specified" we mean the nature of the organism produced. Evolution has no goal. Evolution didn't "try" to evolve humans. It could have produced an essentially uncountable number of other organisms, some more complex than humans and some less complex. When calculating probability you must take all possibilities into account, not just the one possibility that happened. If you flip a trillion fair coins, you will get some number of heads and some number of tails. The probability of getting those two numbers is essentially zero. And yet you got them. Because the probability of some pair of numbers is one. (And next you have to account for the effect of selection). Complexity is not a problem. "Irreducible complexity" is not a problem. Evolution can produce and has produced such things.
"Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then () , or one chance out of 10 . The number 10 , if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200- component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion!" - Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. Yep, standard creationist straw man. And the lottery fallacy again. Evolution does not require any number of successive successful mutations. Evolution has trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of attempts, almost all of which are deleterious or have no effect. Winning the lottery is almost impossible, but we won the evolutionary lottery once and that's enough. For example, Behe calculated that it would take 20,000 years for a bacterial population to evolve a novel protein, starting with a population of one billion. He actually published that. Many people pointed out that his calculation was reasonable (but overly simplistic) except for the starting population. There are about 100,000,000,000,000,000 bacteria per tone of soil on the Earth. Re-run the calculation again and a novel protein is almost guaranteed to emerge in 20,000 years. See Behe Disproves Irreducible Complexity
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
"Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then () , or one chance out of 10 . The number 10 , if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200- component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion!" - Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. http://www.icr.org/...e/mathematical-impossibility-evolution Curiously math is incapable of affecting reality, it can only model it, and when the model and reality disagree it is the model that is faulty.
quote: Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2135 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
"Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then () , or one chance out of 10 . The number 10 , if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200- component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion!" - Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. But you and Henry Morris are wrong. Check this out: Making Genetic Networks Operate Robustly: Unintelligent Non-design Suffices, by Professor Garrett Odell (online lecture): Abstract: Mathematical computer models of two ancient and famous genetic networks act early in embryos of many different species to determine the body plan. Models revealed these networks to be astonishingly robust, despite their 'unintelligent design.' This examines the use of mathematical models to shed light on how biological, pattern-forming gene networks operate and how thoughtless, haphazard, non-design produces networks whose robustness seems inspired, begging the question what else unintelligent non-design might be capable of.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge. Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein In the name of diversity, college student demands to be kept in ignorance of the culture that made diversity a value--StultisTheFool It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1 "Multiculturalism" demands that the US be tolerant of everything except its own past, culture, traditions, and identity. Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other points of view--William F. Buckley Jr.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9514 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.8
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Aristotle writes: Again, I ask you how you can ask me to show that mutations were not the cause of our evolution, when you can't prove that they did? It's quite easy, the scientific concensus is that humans evolved from earlier organisms and that a major factor in that, as in all evolutionary processes, is mutation. Mutation has been observed and we find genetic differences between our ourselves and our ape cousins that have been caused by mutation so we form a conlusion. So over to you - tell the world's scientists we're they went wrong.
Again you pigeonhole me as a creationist, it shows your extremely narrow view. Forgive me, it's just that I've never met anyone arguing against evolution that is not also a creationist. I note that you're not denying that you are one though?
I don't know how old the earth is
Why not, science does? I'm think that you're walking like a duck, quacking like a duck and also ducking and diving like a duck - well you know the rest... But do put me right.
and I'm certainly not as arrogant as evolutionists to think that I know how life was created. No evolutionist knows how life was created - or even if it was created at all, so you're in good company here at least. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Aristotle writes: Do you truly think it fair expecting creationists to prove the changes were not the result of mutations, when you can't prove that they were? (for this thread I am going to use the word "prove" in the form of "prove beyond a reasonable doubt") Creationists are the ones who are claiming that mutations can't produce the biodiversity we see today, so it is incumbent on them to show that these differences could not be produced by mutations. As to proving that these were caused by mutations, this proof is found in the divergence rates of exons and introns/junk DNA. The removal of deleterious mutations in functional DNA is the proof that these were random mutations.
That asked, the chances of the mutations required between human and primate, occurring in the right gene and often enough in the population to change the genome of the entire species, are next to naught. You are drawing the bulls eye around the arrow. Let's use the lottery as an example. Lets say that the odds of winning are 1 in 100 million. For each lottery 100 million tickets are bought by 100 million people. For each lottery there is 1 winner. The winners of those lotteries are Frank, Susan, Mark, and Joanne. What are the odds that those specific four people would win? That would be 100 million to the 4th power, or 1 in 1000000000000000000000000. Therefore, it shouldn't have happened, right? And yet, even with those odds, it is nearly assured that 4 people would win. When something happens the odds of it happening are 1 in 1. There is no "right place" for those mutations to occur. There are only the mutations that did occur. There are nearly an infinite number of species that could have evolved, but only a handful of species did evolve. This is just the same as the millions and millions of losers with just a handful of winners for the lottery. What you are leaving out of your calculations is all of the species that didn't evolve.
By themselves, random base substitutions, and deletions, resulting in beneficial changes to the organism, do not occur frequently enough. Let's see your math.
As for genetic insertions and recombinations, while occurring fairly often, aren't random processes like mutations, but are functions inherent in the genome. You need to back up this assertion as well. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Aristotle writes: Again, I ask you how you can ask me to show that mutations were not the cause of our evolution, when you can't prove that they did? Creationists are the ones claiming that these differences could not be produced by mutations, so I am asking them to prove it.
I don't know how old the earth is, and I'm certainly not as arrogant as evolutionists to think that I know how life was created. Abiogenesis is not evolution, and the origin of life is not he topic of this thread.
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Aristotle writes: The problem is that the 'result' that you claim evolution produces, is always 'pre-specified', because it is incredibly complex and cannot function without all it's parts. Michael Behe in his book 'Darwin's Black Box' states, for example, How does this apply to the chimp and human genomes? What human features are there that differ from chimps and require multiple parts that are without function except as part of the whole?
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Taq Member Posts: 10085 Joined: Member Rating: 5.1 |
Aristotle writes: Noted, but the poster cannot prove that the genetic differences were the produced by ME processes, any more than I can prove they were not. If you can not prove that these differences were not produced by mutations, then why do creationists claim that they could not be produced by mutations?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1434 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... because it is incredibly complex and cannot function without all it's parts. Michael Behe in his book 'Darwin's Black Box' states, for example, Do you realize that his "irreducible complexity" claim has been falsified?
quote: Then there is also Irreducible Complexity, Information Loss and Barry Hall's experiments quote: Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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There is another interesting aspect to all this complexity talk. Something that any professional designer (eg, an engineer) could tell you: Complexity is a designer's worst enemy and spells doom for the design.
Most of the life cycle of a design lies in the maintenance phase. That is where bugs get fixed and features get added. When a design becomes overly complex (eg, "irreducibly complex"), then maintenance becomes extremely difficult if not impossible. Therefore, the amount of complexity in a design can be used to measure how badly designed it is. However, it turns out that complexity is an expected feature of a design that has evolved. Evolutionary processes and methods naturally generate complexity. Many engineers, especially software engineers, have accidentally employed evolutionary processes -- primarily in the "copy something that performs one function and modify it to perform a slightly different function" manner -- and they have learned from bitter experience that the result is a near-exponential growth of complexity in the overall design. The complexity of that "evolved" design increases to the point that hardly anybody can figure out anymore just exactly how it works. And the code has become so intertwined that a very simple change in one place can cause catastrophic changes in totally unrelated parts of the code. Hence this photo of a t-shirt in an engineer's office:
Complexity is anathema to design. More formally, there have been experiments using evolutionary processes to "evolve" useful designs. In some, there are extra parts that don't do anything, basically "vestigial remains" in the more classical sense (to short-circuit standard creationist quips, I mean parts that serve no purpose at all, not parts that still serve some kind of purpose, just not the primary purpose it used to serve). But in some experiments, they ended up with a highly complex, "irreducibly complex" even, design which would have been impossible for any human designer to have created. The one I remember is evolving the design of a particular kind of amplifier using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Now, in my professional work for over 25 years, most of our designs included an FPGA -- before that, the US Air Force had trained me in 1977 as an electronic computer systems repairman (AFSC 305x4 -- USAF uses a different designation now), so I do have some understanding of digital electronics (eg, in one civilian job, the electrical engineer only knew analog electronics, so he consulted with me, the software engineer, regularly about digital electronics). Basically, an FPGA is an array of logic circuits which you can program by loading into it a file that tells each element in that array what kind of logic circuit it is (eg, AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate (AKA "inverter"), flip-flop) and exactly how it is connected to all the other elements in that array. I have no direct experience with that, since it's the electrical engineers who work directly with FPGAs (my only involvement is that they define read and write ports into that FPGA that my software then communicates with to control it and to read its status. I also learned a few things about electronics, both analog and digital, in Air Force tech school. The supposed dichotomy between analog and digital electronics is purely artificial. All electronics is analog. What digital electronics chooses to do is to define only two narrow voltage ranges as valid. Depending on the actual logic definitions (a very salient point in the Data Systems Technician Chief Petty Officer advancement exams, one which it took me a second time to finally figure out), you have two and only two binary values, 0 and 1, both represented by a rather narrow range of voltages. What about the voltages between them? My Air Force training called that "The Forbidden Zone", meaning that those are voltage levels that have no real digital meaning and should never happen -- AKA "ambiguious", which is death to digital. So now back to this experiment. They were using this one FPGA. And they were "evolving" a programming file to download into this FPGA so that they could then evaluate its performance as an amplifier of whatever type they were shooting for -- obviously, their measure of fitness was how well it performed. The result of this experiment was an FPGA that functioned well as the kind of amplifier they were seeking Funny things about that design:
OK, so here's a bugaboo that electrical engineers have to deal with all the time. It is never just pure electronics. Every wire contains some internal resistance. In addition, every wire contains some inductive reactance (ie, you pass a current through a wire, it's going to generate a magnetic field). And everywhere that any two wires come close enough to each other, such as in an inductive coil, you also have some capacitance. You thought that biology was messy? Try some time to get down to the lowest levels of electrical nitty-gritty (actually, electronics is still orders of magnitude less messy than biology is). Despite all the quality control we can throw at it, the production of digital circuits still includes some variances. So long as you take these circuits and use them in the prescribed manner (eg, digitally), none of those variances will ever mean anything, will make no difference whatsoever. But the moment you open those minute variances up for exploitation (as in those experiments), then all bets are off! The thing about that FPGA design is that it naturally, with absolutely no intelligent intervention whatsoever (since what human could have possibly worked out all those analog operations of the digital circuits of the FPGA), created a working design that was "irreducibly complex." Therefore, complexity, even "irreducible complexity", is the natural product of evolution. Not of "design".
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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JonF writes:
"Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then () , or one chance out of 10 . The number 10 , if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200- component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, Show your calculations or references.trillion, trillion!" - Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. However, such a probability model does not describe what happens in evolution, which renders such creationist probability arguments moot and completely irrelevant. Creationists' probability arguments serve no purpose other than to deceive their audience. Evolution doesn't work on a single individual, but rather on a population of individuals. Thus, instead of a single path, evolution uses multiple parallel paths. Thus the probability of a step (AKA "a generation") succeeding would be expressed by a calculation like P=1-(1-p)s, where p is the probability of success and s is the size of the population. That is to say, what is the probability that at least one individual in the population succeeds, which is the inverse (ie, q=1-p) of the probability of every single member of the population failing. So in a population of 1000 where the probability of success is 0.5, that means the probability of failure is 1-0.5 = 0.5. The probability of every individual failing is then 0.51000 = 9.3310-302. The probability of at least one individual succeeding is then 1-9.3310-302 = 1 approx. A probability of 1 is dead certainty. Let's change the values a bit: let p=0.01 and s = 100. q = 1-p = 0.99. qs = 0.366 . 1 - 0.366 = 0.634. Since others have named Morris' faulty argument as a lottery argument, let's look at the probabilities in a lottery. In California's Super Lotto Plus, five numbers are drawn from 47 and then one super-number is drawn from 27 balls. The probability of winning is 1 in 1,533,939 or 6.51910-7. Let's assume that every person in Calfornia buys one lottery ticket, which amounts to 41,416,353 tickets. We already know how unlikely it is for a given person to win, but what is the probability that somebody will win? Well the probability that a person will lose, q = 1-p = 0.99999935 (virtual certainty). The probability that 41,416,353 people will all lose, q41,416,353, is 1.879510-12, fairly small. So subtract from 1 to get the probability that somebody will win and you get 0.999999999998120, virtual dead certainty. If it's a slow half-week and only a million tickets are sold, then the probability that someone will win drops to 0.478. About 50/50, but still fairly likely, unlike the odds of a specific person winning. The object lesson here is that when you try to use math to prove or disprove something, you must develop a math model that accurately describes that something. We know from experience that the probability of a creationist constructing an accurate mathematical model of evolution is virtually zero. Edited by dwise1, : Added 1,000,000 ticket case. Edited by dwise1, : Added "the probability of a creationist constructing an accurate mathematical model of evolution"
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