Problems with evolution? Submit your questions.

Are all frogs vertebrates? Vertebrates have 5 digits because we all have the same ancestor who had 5 digits, correct? In most they develop the same way because that is the way the common ancestors developed? However in some they stopped developing in this way and started developing in a totally different way? Why did natural selection select for this what is the advantage to the frog to develop the same digits in a different way?I’m not saying that this is evidence for creation just that if you can use homology as proof of evolution than to be honest where there is differences in developmental pathways should be equally proof against evolution.

As your post seems to have nothing to do with mine, I don't know why you posted it as a reply to mine and quoted my entire post as a preface to it. That depends on how you're quantifying information, something which you have not yet said.One could count the number of real words in the sequence, but that would hardly serve as a general method for quantifying information. For example, DNA would be remarkably information-poor by that criterion. And yet Shannon's ideas have provided a useful tool for information scientists, whereas the ramblings of creationists have served only to confuse other creationists --- which is about as useful and necessary as spitting into the Atlantic.Now if you have a better idea for quantifying information, please tell us. I for one am all ears.

This is not the case. A random set of data would have a higher Shannon entropy than a structured one like an instruction manual. The structure of the language and potentially of the manual's format would mean that it would require less information to optimally convey than would a totally random sequence.Given that Shannon entropy is already used to identify genomic features in DNA (Stanley et al., 1999; Chen et al, 2005) it seems obtuse to pretend that it can't distinguish between random and structured strings.TTFN,WK

How about things that evolved? (And which would therefore be the product both of randomness and of natural law, but not of design.) Does it then follow that they would not have specified complexity?If they do, then specified complexity cannot be the hallmark of design. And if they don't then you'd have to find out if the genome was designed or evolved in order to find out if it has specified complexity. It doesn't seem to be a useful concept, as I have already illustrated. Let me illustrate it again.Dembski proposed specified complexity as a method of detecting design.Now, consider the following string: Does it have a designer? Well, apparently that boils down to the question of whether it has specified complexity. So, does it have specified complexity? Well, we can approach this question via Dembski's filter. Which requires me to find out ... oh, wait ... it requires me to find out if it was designed.If it's a designed message meaning "Meet me behind the old barn at midnight", it has specified complexity. If it was produced randomly by a series of coin-tosses, it doesn't.We can't use specified complexity as a criterion for discovering the history of a string if we have to know the history of the string in order to know whether it has specified complexity.---I note in your own post, the one to which I'm replying, you use "specified complexity" and "design" actually as synonyms. You write "Dembski purposes a filter to determine design or specified complexity", and, having been asked for a method for measuring specified complexity, you answer by proposing an eliminative method of detecting design.So where does this get us? Introducing a mere synonym for design into the discussion can shed no light on the issue, it can only confuse it. A cynic might suggest that this is why creationists do so.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

HUH?I'm sorry but I can't believe that even Dembski was silly enough to make such a statement.Why would what is left be the result of design? I think specific complexity exists only in the minds of the snake-oil salesmen.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi havoc. I see you have a range of rhetorical questions for me, to which you already know the answers. Let's take a look. Yes. No. Do you see any fish with limbs havoc? Fish are vertebrates too you know. I think you perhaps mean tetrapods.Most tetrapods have five digits on their limbs, yes. There are an awful lot that do not though. There are plenty who don't even have limbs. So what? More or less, yes. Yes. I have no idea. Perhaps it has something to do with "the ability of the limb to continue distal outgrowth and differentiation following removal of the distal ectoderm", as mentioned in the abstract of the study I cited (Hanken et al 2001).Why does it matter? Your original argument has already been shown to be hideously, embarrassingly, shockingly, terribly ignorant and wrong. You are now trying to move the goalposts again. Utter nonsense.The developmental processes of an obscure group of tree frogs are interesting enough, but they make no argument against evolution whatsoever. Comparing these unusual frogs with humans (as Sarfati does) is moronic. Humans are not descended from frogs. Not from any kind of frog, let alone tree frogs. Sarfati's comparison is completely pointless in the first instance, even if his claims about frog AERs were correct, which they are not.Sarfati claimed that all frogs lack the AER. This is totally false and Sarfati is a pitiful idiot. Most frogs do possess an AER, thus, Sarfati's argument is shown to be the steaming great pile of crap that we have come to expect from him. It is based upon an extraordinarily stupid and ignorant mistake.If I were you, I would tiptoe discretely away from this one. It's pure bullshit.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.Edited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

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On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

Then how do you know that it contains specified complexity if you can't even measure it? Then apply the filter to the DNA sequence I posted in the previous message and show me the results. I have yet to see specified complexity applied to DNA sequence in any meaningful way. So far, specified complexity seems to be irrelevant to biology.

You never demonstrated a correlation. You simply asserted one without presenting evidence to back it up.You claim that mutations can not increase information. When pressed to define "information" you moved to "specified complexity". When asked to measure the specified complexity of a DNA sequence you now claim that you can't do it. So how is it that you could claim that mutations can not increase information/SC when you can't even measure it to begin with?

Hi, Havoc. Reality check:The Theory of Evolution is expressly about changes and how they occur over time in populations of organisms. Logically, then, shouldn't ToE expect there to be differences between species and groups?Likewise, since ToE entails gradual divergence from common ancestors, doesn't this logically require that not everything changes at one time, and that, thus, some similarities between species should linger, even as the species diverge from one another?So, how could the dichotomous reasoning you employ here possibly make sense? Clearly, ToE expects both differences and similarities.The key here is the pattern of occurrence of similarities and differences.
The counterarguments you should be employing should be about conflicting patterns of occurrence of similarities and differences, not just about pointing out differences when evolutionists are talking about similarities, or vice versa.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

I think his problem is the other way round. According to his "filter" answer a mutation by definition does not produce specified complexity, because it's random. His problem would then be to demonstrate that the genome possesses any specified complexity.But there is a certain amount of ambiguity in the term, one which creationists play with to confuse themselves. Sometimes they talk as if it's a property of the sequence qua sequence, and sometimes as if it's a property of the history of the sequence. This allows them to forget that they haven't actually taken the necessary step of showing that there is any justifiable inference from the present properties of the sequence to their supposed properties of the history of the sequence; but while they have not established that link, they have established a different and factitious link, namely that they themselves are using the same word for both concepts.And it doesn't take much to confuse a creationist ...

This would seem to be a rather large problem in that it makes specified complexity irrelevant to biology. If a random mutation does result in a novel function that is beneficial to the organism it would not qualify as specified complexity. IOW, evolution can produce the biodiversity we see today without needing to increase specified complexity. Such is the consequence of starting with the conclusion. They start with the conclusion that the DNA they observe was designed, therefore any function produced by mutations in this sequence were not specified by the designer and therefore can not be specified complexity. They use definitions to exclude evolution from the process at the very start.

So all I have heard is that Dembski and Gitt are wrong. Do any of you purpose any other way of differentiating between random key strokes and the written English language?

You haven't even told us how they differentiate the English language from random key strokes. How do we measure this "specified complexity"?

No I was just pointing out an evolutionists insistance on homology as evidence for evolution was not warrantedEven Gavin Debeer said: You have to believe that the fleetingly unlikely event of just the right mutations led to for example 5 digits on vertebrate for limbs but then the mechanism was lost and regained in an entirely different way several times. To quote Dembski: Events of fleetingly small possibility do not occur by chance.Edited by havoc, : No reason given.

Can you differentiate the difference between the english language and random key strokes?