What exactly is ID?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This is why we think metazoan life falls into a nested hierarchy.

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Yes, because you discard the cases where they don't fall into the nested hierarchy. How hard is to produce a nested hierarchy in that way? Not very...

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Which they can not possibly do, for the simple reason that they cannot reproduce.

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Non sequitur. Them not being able to reproduce has nothing to do witht hem showing a certain pattern. They do show a gradualy changing pattern.

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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.

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Again, this is a non sequitur. Has nothing to do with how those traits are passed on. The point is that they either exist or do nto exist. And they exist in both cases.

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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.

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How do you tell the difference between an analogous structure and a homologous one? And why is one better than the other? And how can you tell which features show direct descent and which do not?

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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.

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If you cannot (or refuse to) understand this simple point then you are incapable (by choice or by ability) of understanding evolution.

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But they do show a tree-like structure. The only reason you refuse to accept it is becasue you calim that I used wrong traits. But you didn't explain why they are wrong.

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Except that the structure of cups and frying pans does not exist in the real world or anywhere outside your imaginary ad hoc assemblage.

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What does that even mean? Where is the tree of life in the real world? Do anmals stack up to form a tree of life in the real world? No. People took notes and assembled it on a piece of paper.

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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.

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Except when they don't. If you have been paying any attention you would have seen in this here topic that 35% of data has to be discarded to form a mammalian nested hierarchy.

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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.

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When did I say we don't observe all that int he real world?

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Your pots and pans are missing several elements that are part of the picture when it comes to Pelycodus, as an example.

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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.

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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.

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This is obviously wrong, since you don't know the ages of those layers int eh first place. You do not know which animals is the ancestor of which animal. So you lack the hereditary and time component as well.

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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.

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Non sequitur. Their similarity is not evidece that they are related. It's evidence that they are similar not related.

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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.

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Neither have you got the time component. And I don't have to have the hereditary component. You have one only for specific species. Different speices do not reproduce, so we have no reason to assume they ever could.

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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.

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And what evidence might those be my fine sir?

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Curiously that does not even begin to answer the question of how the layers of fossils show the evidence of hereditary lineage.

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They don't. You assume they do. You assume their similarity is due to heredity. An assumption nothing more.

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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.

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And how is your example of different than any other? How exactly are the animals neatly packaged in your example?

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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.

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Which is I never claimed. So why bring it up?

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Here you are equivocating between such simple equalities and actual identities.

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No. If I remember correctly, and I do, you are the one who was equivocating between an "equality" and an "implication".

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If, and ONLY If A ≡ B Then and ONLY then does B ≡ A

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And you get the same results as saying that IF A = B THEN B = A.

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Obviously, 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.

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But I neevr claimed that I'm applying them on a hereditary basis. And it's a non sequitur to claim that I can't compare them because one reproduces and the other doesen't.In one case you have animals that reproduce. In other you have pans that don't. They both show the same pattern of similarity. In one case one implies common descent, in other it doesn't. That's a contradiction. The fact that one doesn't reproduce is what actually show why this is a contradiction. Because it shows that such a pattern can be constructed without heredity.

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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.

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No, both things are arranged ona computer. Tehre exists no such a thing in real life. Let me show you. This is a PICTURE! DO you understand that? Does your brain realize that? Can you realize that? It's a PICTURE made on a COMPUTER! Animals are not arranged like that in real life. They don't hover one over the other in real life. It's a PICTURE made on a COMPUTER!

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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.

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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.

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In logic there are no conclusions that do not rest on assumptions.

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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.

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Two things. I'm talking about pure logic. Not assuming some physical things. Second. How is 1+1=2 wrong?

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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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You didn't understand the article. I'll show you the technologfy that this experiment was based on.

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The atomic electrons in an alpha emitter also influence the decay rate. In Th 230 , for example, these electrons generate a constant potential which extends to the nuclear surface, decreasing the height and width of the Coulomb barrier.

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The present invention is based upon the fact that the decay rate of radioactive materials can be accelerated or enhanced and thereby be controlled by a stimulus, such as an applied electrostatic potential. This potential, for instance, is incorporated into the quantum mechanical tunneling equation for the transmission coefficient T*T by including an additional potential energy V a 2eφ.

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Method for enhancing alpha decay in radioactive materials - Altran Corporation

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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.

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The problem is that this article is bogus. It is made up fantasy not science.

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Here we see phaque science at it's most despicable -- pretending to be real to fool gullible people.

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Okay, let's take it one subject at a time. You claim that my article is wrong. Please explain exactly why.

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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.

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No, no they do not. They say that accelerated decay happened. Just like we see today. Physics stay the same.

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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.

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Quote me exactly what they were saying. And what's wrong with it?

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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.

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This is actually a theoretical model. Which is says so in the title.

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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.

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What are you talking about? What slight of hand are you talking about?

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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.

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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.

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Here's a clue that this is bogus fantasy wish fulfilling writing rather than a logical conclusion based on facts:

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As I said earlier, the physics don't change. Our knowledge about it does. Nuclear decay rates can vary even today, there is nothing new about that. We don't have to change the laws of physics for that to happen.

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Do you know why? The quote is complete - what is missing?

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What is missing?

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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.

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Hmm... no, I don't think so. Actually you have responded to everything except the most important part. I don't know why you went to all the trouble doing so, and than not responding to the most important part.Even if all I showed you was wrong, that wouldn't mean that Uranium 238 halos were evidence for an old Earth. Uranium halos are not evidence for an old Earth because they are based on two assumptions you don't know anythign about.So let's take it step by step...1.) Half life of U238.
2.) Halo itself.1.) As I said earlier, we do know accelerated alpha decay happens even today. Does that mean that the physics change? No, it simply means that the decay rates chages. So, my point is that you claim that U238 half-life is 4.5 billion years. Okay fine. How do you know that? Where has this been shown to be true. I'll tell you where. NOWHERE! You don't know that. You assume that. And since you don't know it, you don't know that it took 4.5 billion years to make ANY U238 halo. Even if, I repeat, even if, there was no accelerated alpha decay. You still wouldn't have any evidence for an old Earth. Why? Well because you don't know the half-life of the U238 to begin with. You never saw it form. You didn't, nor did anyone else I presume, stand there for 4.5 billion years and observe the U238 halo form. Since you never observe it form, you don't know it's half-life.2.) And the second assumption, which is even worse. Is the assumption that the U238 halo was produced by a constand decay rate. And than you turn and say that since it was constant decy, it had constant energy, thus a specific halo was formed that can only be produced by constant energy. That circular logic. Since you don't know by what energy strenght was that halo formed, you don't know if it was formed by constant decay, and of course constant energy. And you don't know that, because you never saw a U238 halo form, and what energy it took to form the said halo, that you never saw form int he first place.In conclusion...a.) You don't know the half-life of Uranium 238.
b.) You don't know what energy and decay rates it takes to form a Uranium 238 halo.
c.) For any Uranium 238 halo you see, you don't know if it was formed by a constant rate of decay and energy, because you never observed them form in the first place.
d.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos do not have to be 4.5 billion years old.
e.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos do not have to be produced by constant decay rate and energy strenght.
f.) Therefore Uranium 238 halos are not evidence for an old Earth.
g.) Therefore go back to the drawing board.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

So we don't get a 20 page reply/response I'll be brief.You are wrong.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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What exactly would be the correct answer than?

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The correct answer would be that we can't tell if it would lose all functionality or not.

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Look, it doesn't matter if they are the same or not.

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It was important enough to you when you insisted on it.

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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.

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Not necessarily. When dealing with identical units it doesn't matter which one goes into which slot.

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In any case, you need more information. Therefore, probability of them forming by chance decreases.

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That is entirely the wrong way around. You can't use your guesses about information to argue the probability.

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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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RNA life doesn't need proteins at all. Therefore the synthesis and use of proteins is likely the product of evolution, based on the chemical properties of existing RNA rather than pure chance. Thus your claim that a protein "must" have formed by pure chance is refuted. That's how it helps me.

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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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You actually suggest that the fact that you have proven that my position was correct and your position wrong is a reason why I shoulod change MY mind ?I suppose this explains why so much of what you say is wrong.

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CASE 1. - Dice

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a.) 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.

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CASE 2. - Sun

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a.) 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.

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As you can see this is the same thing.

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The question is, of course, about the reasons why we assign uniform probability. Something that goes completely unmentioned in either case.In case 2 we DO know the mechanics underlying the movement (the rotation of the Earth) we understand how this may be changed (and that it does change my small amounts over time) and that it is difficult to change to a significant degree.And if you don't know that muich then you had better retake high school physics.

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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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Since the Sun has very little to do with the Earth's rotation and we don't exactly need to know a lot about that to realise that significantly affecting it is a massive task (conservation of angular momentum plus decent estimates of the Earth's shape, diameter and mass will do) then your point is daft. Especially when it completely ignores the point you are supposedly discussing - there is no mention of uniform probability in it at all.

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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.

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The same as WHAT ? Non-uniiform motion ?

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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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And what we know about the dice justifies the use of uniform probabilities. Not ignorance.

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

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No, you said:

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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?

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2.) Umm... Why?

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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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Your question in 1) is unanswerable since we do not even know if our universe is all there is or if it is embedded in a larger naturak reality.Your point 2) is wrong because the multiverse is considered part of nature. The only difference between it and our universe is that the study must rest on theoretical study since it is not directly accessible (i.e. it IS "governed by natural law" and therefore natural).3) Claiming that there may be more to nature does not entail that everything is natural. Your assertion is simply illogical and fallacious.

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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.

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No, I fully understand that that is Dembski's measure of complexity. What you fail to grasp is that it does not even agree with your intuitive ideas of complexity - let alone more widely accepted measures like Kolmogorov complexity.

Hi Smooth Operator,You seem to be having trouble understanding the question. It's irrelevant what you believe about SETI. It's what SETI believes about SETI that counts.So I repeat the question yet again: Can you name any other field within science that in the absence of evidence holds as a fundamental premise that there is something it isn't possible to know.I hesitate to clarify because it seems that the more words that are written the more opportunity it affords you to veer off the path of rationality, but ID holds that it isn't possible to know anything about the designer. It is ID, not me, saying things like this from Of Pandas and People: So can you name any other field within science that makes an equivalent claim? Note once again that an affirmative response to this question must involve what this scientific field says about itself, not what you say about it.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Improve clarity - probably pointless, I know.Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

Hi Smooth Operator,I'm surprised by this response. Have you checked your PM inbox lately, or is the Messaging link blinking every 10 seconds with a non-zero integer between parentheses?Please, no response in this thread.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I think its funny that you began by claiming that you came to ID by following the science and are not an apologetic creationist. But whenever science says something against your position, you bring undue doubt in the form of they couldn't 'really know that', or 'actually see it', or whatever. But then when you find some fake science-looking paper from ICR, you jump and leach on it with out any doubt whatsoever.You're not following the science, and you behave just like a creationist.But we all knew this the day you showed up. Its just taken a while for your true colors to show.

Hi Theodoric, It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, and transparent a denial of reality.Not only to post something that does not say what he claims, but then to try to argue that it does say what he claims. Another display of his stunning inability to deal with reality.Enjoy.

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Are you sure about this SO? What would keep the animals from hovering over each other just as shown? You haven't been everywhere and seen everything, have you. You don't know if there is a tower of wolfs wondering around out there, do you. Can you PROVE this type of juxtaposition cannot happen in the real world?What makes you think this is a PICTURE instead of, maybe, a drawing. Can you PROVE it was done on a computer and not, maybe, a litho-type unit? Can you tell us what type of COMPUTER this was supposedly done on? Was it an Intel or an AMD, maybe a Motorola processor? What speed was it running?You cannot know with certainty, can you. Therefore it could be true, couldn't it.

Hi Smooth Operator, still struggling with reality? Please refer to this paper for the details of what this paper is based on and don't try to change the topic to something else. It is rather explicit:

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The study was designed to investigate the physical and chemical durability of the waste form after exposure to 238Pu alpha decay. The alpha-decay dose at the end of the four year study was approximately 1.0 1018 decays/gram of material.

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There is absolutely no mention of accelerating the rate of decay by any mechanism:

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After four years of exposure to alpha decay, the investigation observed little alteration to the CWF. Specifically, the 238Pu-loaded CWF maintained its physical integrity, the density remained constant, no cracking or phase debonding was observed by microscopy, and the material's chemical durability did not change significantly over the duration of the study. 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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There is no mention of any change in the rate of decay of the plutonium. Now it seems, that not content with fabricating fantasy physics for yourself, you are fabricating what the researchers in the original paper you cited were using in their study of the effect of four years of (normal) plutonium decay on the proposed containment materials.There is no link between the paper Plutonium-238 Alpha-Decay Damage Study of A Glass-Bonded Sodalite Ceramic Waste Form, Journal of ASTM International (JAI) Volume 2, Issue 1 (January 2005) ISSN: 1546-962X Published Online: 3 January 2005 by Frank, SM, DiSanto, T, Goff, MK, Johnson, SG, Jue, J-F, Barber, TL, Noy, M, O'Holleran, TP, and Giglio, JJ and the invention of Barker that I could find.I did a little background check on this "invention" to see if I could find any mention of it. What I found was interesting ...Adept Alchemy (Robert Nelson): Cold Fusion Transmutations

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Adept Alchemy
Part II
Modern Arcana
Chapter 9
Cold Fusion
(1) Cold Fusion Transmutations
(2) Nuclear Waste Remediation
(3) References
...

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ooo it's cold fusion time?Andhttp://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf

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If nuclear reactions in LENR experiments are real and controllable, ...

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So far they have not been shown to produce any marketable result. Wonder why?I also found that this patent is about to expire: United States Patent 5,076,971 Barker Dec. 31, 1991, Method for enhancing alpha decay in radioactive materials,Inventors: Barker; William A. (Los Altos, CA). Assignee: Altran Corporation (Sunnyvale, CA). Appl. No.: 400,180, Filed: Aug. 28, 1989.This invention is 20 years old and has not been used for anything practical, nor has it been studied further.So much for the gay art of cloud riding.Now perhaps you could prove me wrong by citing the journal published information on the actual documented change in the rate of decay in plutonium from the Frank et al paper, but I won't hold my breath.And just for chuckles, even if your Barker invention is the real thing, what they would have done would have changee the energy of the alpha particles, thus still leaving you with the problem mentioned before:Change the decay rate and you change the alpha energy.
Change the alpha decay energy and you change the halo diameter.Aside from the problem of somehow pretending that a massive world wide Van de Graaff generator big enough to affect the whole world magically operates in a natural universe.Fantasy is like that.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : citation fix

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This is ridiculous, the wolves are clearly all lying down on a snowfield and the photo was taken from a helicopter, I admit it does look like it was photo-shopped afterwards.TTFN,WK

An excellent alternate explanation.The lines had me bothered. I could not come to a viable explanation for the lines. How did they get there if this is a PICTURE and not a drawing? If this is a stack of hovering woolifs walking around the lines would be invisible except under specific lighting and chemical conditions only brought out by photo processing. I found this rather weak. However, given the new Wounded King hypothesis I think we may have a reason for the lines. They are the path in the snow the woolifs left on their way to their designated positions.Since the numbers make no sense whatsoever we can just ignore them thus requiring no explanation.I like it. Thanks WK.Ain't science wonderful!Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

The numbers are where they peed in the snow, it just happens to look like numbers, because obviously woolifs can't write.

Hi Smooth Operator. I have it on good authority that 1+1=3, for large values of 1.See 0.99999~ = 1 ? for details. Don't worry, SO, some days I can't seem to get anything right either. Have a good one.

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"My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. J.B.S Haldane 1892-1964

This is just wrong. You're assuming the pee. You have no proof this is anything like woolif pee.Without any research, without any resources you make these fantastic assumptions. You just pull them out of your butt and expect us to buy into them.Show me one post of yours, just ONE, where you have ever backed your silly assumptions with any kind of evidence, some lengthy, comprehensive, scholarly treatment of a serious subject. And the first couple hundred you could point to, just on this board alone, don't count.