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Author Topic:   Creationist questions from a creationist
mark24
Member (Idle past 5196 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 31 of 56 (48067)
07-30-2003 3:36 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:29 PM


DGE,
But I find it hard to imagine
Here we go again......!
Read Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins. It's cheap, in print, & easily read. It also contains an excellent chapter on eye evolution.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by DoesGodExist, posted 07-30-2003 3:29 PM DoesGodExist has replied

Replies to this message:
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zephyr
Member (Idle past 4551 days)
Posts: 821
From: FOB Taji, Iraq
Joined: 04-22-2003


Message 32 of 56 (48068)
07-30-2003 3:37 PM
Reply to: Message 27 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:25 PM


I found it. Dr. Tazimus Maximus posted the info here:
http://EvC Forum: Where is the evidence for evolution? -->EvC Forum: Where is the evidence for evolution?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by DoesGodExist, posted 07-30-2003 3:25 PM DoesGodExist has replied

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mark24
Member (Idle past 5196 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 33 of 56 (48069)
07-30-2003 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:34 PM


DGE,
What I understood by IC was that all the component have to be assembled, or unified for it to work, and at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You are wrong.
See message 10 re Mammalian middle ears bones. Three independent lines of evidence point to them having evolved, four if you include cladistics.
It is not implicit in the definition of IC, that IC cannot evolve. Thornhill & Ussery describe four possible pathways for IC evolution & they define it in the same way as Behe. Creationists claim, without evidence, that IC cannot evolve, they're just a little weak on supporting evidence, that's all.
I can't find any example right now....like the blood clotting (seems to me the best example right now...)
Doolittle has provided a plausible pathway for blood clotting evolution. If it's "plausible", it's not "impossible", is it?
But so what if you did find an IC structure that no plausible pathway existed? This is still not evidence that IC evolution is impossible.
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
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DoesGodExist
Inactive Member


Message 34 of 56 (48070)
07-30-2003 3:45 PM
Reply to: Message 29 by mark24
07-30-2003 3:34 PM


quote:
In disbelieving that this occurs, you are shutting your mind to evidence, & substituting your incredulity.
who told you about my incredulity, I'm not as clever and with much knowledge as you, what i'm trying is weigh the pros and cons, but he problem is that i only get feedback from evolutionists, I thought there were creationists, maybe they don't want to discuss it...I'm very open to what you're saying, and you know much about the subject.
And what Behe also said is that Hall's experiment was made in a laboratory, with intelligent people directing it and making sure everything go well, and would certainly have never occured in the wild.
But please don't be so rude, I have many things to learn. I'm testing every possibilities.

This message is a reply to:
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DoesGodExist
Inactive Member


Message 35 of 56 (48071)
07-30-2003 3:47 PM
Reply to: Message 31 by mark24
07-30-2003 3:36 PM


I will

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Replies to this message:
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DoesGodExist
Inactive Member


Message 36 of 56 (48072)
07-30-2003 3:47 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by zephyr
07-30-2003 3:37 PM


Thanx zephyr!

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mark24
Member (Idle past 5196 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 37 of 56 (48073)
07-30-2003 3:55 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:45 PM


DGE,
And what Behe also said is that Hall's experiment was made in a laboratory, with intelligent people directing it and making sure everything go well, and would certainly have never occured in the wild.
This is precicely where Behe is being disingenuous. No one was making the bacteria mutate, no one was forcing changes at particular places, & no one was forcing bacteria to die at the expense of others. This IS random mutation & natural selection in action. It most certainly could have happened in the wild. What about the Flavobacterium that evolved the ability to digest nylon oligomers in a pond whilst no one was looking?
But please don't be so rude, I have many things to learn. I'm testing every possibilities. ....who told you about my incredulity,
I'm not being rude, you have stated a few times phrases like, "I don't believe it", this is where I gain my insight into your incredulity. I understand you are French, perhaps you misunderstand the meaning of the word "incredulity"?
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by DoesGodExist, posted 07-30-2003 3:45 PM DoesGodExist has not replied

Replies to this message:
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zephyr
Member (Idle past 4551 days)
Posts: 821
From: FOB Taji, Iraq
Joined: 04-22-2003


Message 38 of 56 (48074)
07-30-2003 4:07 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by mark24
07-30-2003 3:55 PM


quote:
This is precicely where Behe is being disingenuous. No one was making the bacteria mutate, no one was forcing changes at particular places, & no one was forcing bacteria to die at the expense of others. This IS random mutation & natural selection in action. It most certainly could have happened in the wild.
Exactly. It's purposely muddy thinking - implying that being near intelligence makes bacteria mutate differently, or makes the competition somehow artificial. Design advocates seem to make logical stretches like that quite often. Just keep in mind that imperfect replication is a known, undeniable attribute of DNA, and that bringing bacteria from the wild does not make it somehow more likely that they will mutate. The orderly lab environment in this experiment was intended to eliminate uncertainty from the results, not to cause mutations or select for desirable ones.

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Warren
Inactive Member


Message 39 of 56 (48082)
07-30-2003 5:17 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:47 PM


IC
Mark24<< It is not implicit in the definition of IC, that IC cannot evolve. >>
Warren<< Correct. That's why no ID theorist makes the claim that IC systems can't evolve.>>
Mark24<< Thornhill & Ussery describe four possible pathways for IC evolution & they define it in the same way as Behe. Creationists claim, without evidence, that IC cannot evolve, they're just a little weak on supporting evidence, that's all.>>
Warren<< Thornhill & Ussery describe four possible evolutionary pathways. Two direct pathways and two indirect pathways. Their paper shows that the two direct evolutionary pathways can't produce IC systems. It is these two direct pathways that ID theorists claim can't produce IC systems. They do not assert that evolution of IC systems via indrect means is impossible. The two pathways ruled out by Thornhill & Ussery happen to be the pathways we have the most evidence for. The other two pathways rely on pure chance. Now no ID theorist is going to claim that it's absolutely impossible for an IC system to arise by chance, however, Darwinian theory is supposedly more than merely invoking chance. Dawkins says:
"...To this day, and in quarters where they should know better, Darwinism is widely regarded as a theory of 'chance'. It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck."
But the two evolutionary pathways that Thornhill & Ussery describe as capable of producing IC systems amount to nothing more than chance, luck, coincidence etc. One of these is co-option. Mike Gene notes :
"Co-option is the most commonly cited circuitous means to generate an IC system. Bur this really isn't Darwinian evolution (i.e. step by step changes captured by selection.) It is essentially a return to raw coincidence to account for apparent design. The brilliance of Darwin was to minimize the role of chance in apparent design. But once we turn to the co-option explanation, we leave this explanatory appeal behind, as chance reasserts itself into a place of prominence.... and just as it was not convincing in pre-Darwinian days, it is not convincing today."
Despite all the expressed incredulity that is so common among Behe's critics, he has indeed contributed to science by forcing scientists like Thornhill & Ussery to classify routes of evolution thus showing that 50% of the possible routes can't generate IC machines. This is progress. Without Behe, for example, many would probably still think that classic evidence of random mutation & natural selection allows us to think the bacterial flagellum evolved by the same mechanism.>>
[This message has been edited by Warren, 07-30-2003]

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Replies to this message:
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 Message 43 by mark24, posted 07-30-2003 6:44 PM Warren has not replied
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 40 of 56 (48084)
07-30-2003 5:29 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:29 PM


But I find it hard to imagine such a thing as the formation of an eye or any organs, via pure random and natural selection.
Well, let me kind of walk you through a potential evolutionary pathway for the evolution of the eye.
The most basic eye is a patch of light-sensitive cells somewhere on the organisms body. That lets it tell the difference between light and dark, and even get an idea when objects are close. So it's advantagous to have such a patch. Now, set the patch in a kind of bowl-shaped depression - now, the "eye" can distinguish direction of light. What an improvement! Deepen the depression until it's actually a cavity with a small hole at the top and a big patch of light-sensing cells lining the bottom (a primitive retina). Now it starts to work like a pinhole camera. As the pinhole gets smaller and smaller, the organism discovers that a drop of water on the hole has immense utility as a lens. The organism's decendants get so adapted to drops of water sitting on their pinhole eyes that they develop membranes over the drop to hold it in place. Now we're really cooking. Muscles around the edge of the lens allow it to change focal length, and as the light-sensitive cells specialize, they adapt into several different types, each sensing a different aspect of light. The rest of the way to the human eye is pretty simple, after that.
As you can see you can get a great eye with small improvements over time.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 41 of 56 (48085)
07-30-2003 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:34 PM


What I understood by IC was that all the component have to be assembled, or unified for it to work, and at the same time. Correct me if I'm wrong.
But how would you determine that an organ was IC after the fact? Especially if there's components of the organ that can be removed with minimal effect to the organ.
And the function of organs doesn't always remain the same over evolutionary time scales. For instance the lungs you have were originally swim bladders in our fishy ancestors.
It's a common aphorism of the IC crowd to ask "What's the use of half a lung?" The rebuttal is, of course, "That depends on which half."

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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MrHambre
Member (Idle past 1393 days)
Posts: 1495
From: Framingham, MA, USA
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 42 of 56 (48088)
07-30-2003 6:05 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by Warren
07-30-2003 5:17 PM


More Nonsense
quote:
Without Behe, for example, many would probably still think that classic evidence of random mutation & natural selection allows us to think the bacterial flagellum evolved by the same mechanism.
Oh yes, of course, Behe has contributed so much to our contemporary concept of scientific inquiry. He has demonstrated quite convincingly that mousetraps don't evolve. Apart from that decisive victory, we see nothing whatsoever.
Welcome back, Warren. Ready to post a hypothesis here: EvC Forum: The Hypothesis of ID ..... ??????or are you just going to play the IDC shell game one more time?
[edited to fix link]
------------------
En la tierra de ciegos, el tuerco es el Rey.
[This message has been edited by MrHambre, 07-30-2003]

This message is a reply to:
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mark24
Member (Idle past 5196 days)
Posts: 3857
From: UK
Joined: 12-01-2001


Message 43 of 56 (48090)
07-30-2003 6:44 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by Warren
07-30-2003 5:17 PM


Re: IC
Warren,
Do you have any empirical evidence, other than your non-sequitur that co-option isn't Darwinian, or relies on such unlikely chances as to be unable to account for IC systems in nature?
Don't you ever get bored quoting Mike Genes unsupported incredulity?
It is essentially a return to raw coincidence to account for apparent design. The brilliance of Darwin was to minimize the role of chance in apparent design. But once we turn to the co-option explanation, we leave this explanatory appeal behind, as chance reasserts itself into a place of prominence....
The functional unit that is the mammalian middle ear, described by the malleus , incus, & stapes is an IC unit. The function is to transmit vibration from the outer to inner ear. Remove one bone & the whole unit fails. By both Behe's & Thornhill & Ussery's definition, it is IC.
That the mammalian middle ear evolved from reptilian jaw & skull components is not in scientific doubt. It is supported by the fossil record, mammalian embryology, phylogenetic analyses, & cladistic analyses. Was it "raw coincidence" that the angular & articular bones abutted the dentary? If you like, but such a claim of "raw coincidence" in no way dimishes the explanatory power of co-option, especially as it is in this case so well supported evidentially. It's this sort of inappropriate linguistic extention (bullshit) that I find so unpardonable from twats like Mike Gene. You've lapped it up, you must have, you've quoted this passage twice that I know about. You seem to think that denigrating such an evidentially supported theory with cries of, "raw coincidence", actually counts as something evidentially, or even theoretically, come to that, as something that counts against IC evolution. It's like saying that rivers existed before bridges is "raw coincidence". It is a meaningless term, & signifies nothing. "Raw coincidence" does not = incredibly unlikely. If you think it does, then show it. Perhaps Mike Gene already has, in which case feel free to cut n paste away.
You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck."
Excellent. You show your working, & I'll show your flawed assumptions. Deal?
Mark
------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.
[This message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2003]

This message is a reply to:
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DC85
Member (Idle past 380 days)
Posts: 876
From: Richmond, Virginia USA
Joined: 05-06-2003


Message 44 of 56 (48117)
07-31-2003 1:55 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by DoesGodExist
07-30-2003 3:45 PM


quote:
but he problem is that i only get feedback from evolutionists, I thought there were creationists, maybe they don't want to discuss it...
there aren't many regular creationists here. the Reason for this is Because 9.9999999...... times out of 10 we can find an Answer for their arguments. most times if a creationist can not Answer what we ask them they won't continue. so Who has the better argument? creationists just don't stick around too long sigh........

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 45 of 56 (48130)
07-31-2003 3:56 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by Warren
07-30-2003 5:17 PM


Re: IC
Of course Mike Gene uses stramwn. Cooption usually usues systems or subsystems which evolved for other purposes - as in the Krebs cycle.
To claim that there is a significant chance element either ignores that or relies heavily on hindsight, failing to consider the fact that evolution uses what is there - and if that were different then we would not see an absence of cooption but DIFFERENT examples of cooption.

This message is a reply to:
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