Biased accounts of intelligent design

The point is, Intelligent Design has absolutely no support while the standard explanation is fully and completely supported. Intelligent Design is simply fantasy while evolution is supported by reality.

Oh I don't think the standard explanation is all that supported, I think it's mostly a tissue of "likely stories" that have little real evidentiary support, just a lot of seeming plausibility and little more than that. Just an elaborate delusion.

Yes Faith, we know that you think that.Yet once again, reality shows you are wrong.Science has tested evidence and ID has only fantasy.

Say it often enough and it will take on the veneer of truth. That's all that's happened in reality.

Faith, you know that is simply yet another example of you denying the facts and reality. If ID has anything more than fantasy please present the evidence and the means to test it.Edited by jar, : applinf spallin

My 2 cent worth: When the preponderance of evidence shows that known natural processes are fully capable of producing a certain result, that means that we don't need to add a supernatural process to explain it.For instance when we look at dog breeds and see variations in bone lengths, variations in skull sizes and shapes, we see that mutation and selection are fully capable of producing these results. When we look at the differences in chimpanzee to human bone lengths and skull sizes and shapes we see that these differences are less than those observed in dog breeds. The preponderance of evidence shows that natural processes of mutation and selection are therefore fully capable of producing these results and we don't need to add a supernatural process to explain it.Meanwhile you have never proved evolution is not possible, in spite of what you think. And science never does prove results (you should now this by now), just provides the best explanations for the observed evidence with known natural processes: what the preponderance of evidence shows. This explanation is subject to change when new information challenges the explanation (relativity vs Newton's gravity and the orbit of Mercury for example). No, it is an informed tentative conclusion based on the preponderance of evidence and the known natural processes. When we are dealing with subjective opinions, they can be as varied as the people with them, but when informed people reach the same tentative conclusion then they are basing it on the known evidence and the known natural processes.We know that mutations occur -- they are observed -- so the existence of mutations is FACT.We know that selection occurs -- it has been observed -- so the existence of selection as a process is FACT. Well I have discussed the eye design on Message 4 of the Silly Design thread ...... but to put it in perspective here to answer your question, what we have is a preponderance of evidence from different eyes of different stages/levels in development, each one fully functional for the critter involved, that show modification of existing parts from one stage to the next, modifications that we know can occur through mutation and selection. What we also have is nested hierarchies of different eye bearing species that show hereditary processes:

• all mammals have eyes with a fixed shape of the eyeball, a cornea that can be changed by muscles to focus on a retina with the optical nerve in front of the retina and causing a blind spot.
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• all cephalopods have eyes with fixed cornea and flexible eyeballs that can be changed by muscles to focus on the retina with the optical nerve behind the retina, so no blind spot.

What these two examples show is that

• the location of the optical nerve is arbitrary, one side or the other, and
• once selected it becomes the location for all descendants.

This is not design but happenstance. Design, imho, would mean that one system could be added to the other, creating an eye with zoom focus ability like zoom binoculars and zoom cameras (known design viewing systems). Human designers commonly add elements from one design to another. This has never been observed in species, as they are all confined in nested hierarchies without any traits shared across branches. Traits crossing branches to mix with different branches of species would invalidate evolution. This is what should be expected from design. This has not occurred. Fixed it for you ... your reference to "purely imagined sequences" is just an argument from incredulity rather than a refutation actually showing they could not occur. Such arguments are not scientific or informed. Interestingly it is what you have done repeatedly without regard for the preponderance of contrary evidence and in violation of numerous known natural processes.Again, when the preponderance of evidence shows that known natural processes are fully capable of producing a certain result, that means that we don't need to add any supernatural process/es to explain it.Enjoy

But if the "evidence" is just an imaginative reconstruction then you don't have a preponderance of evidence. You see no such thing. You see some of the range of variation built into the dog genome, period. You assume the "mutation and selection" formula, for which there is no evidence. First, nobody is talking about a supernatural process here, but all you have is two different species, chimp and human and no evidence whatever of relatedness between them. You don't have evidence of mutation and selection either, you simply assume that as well. All this is imagination and nothing else. A fair assessment of what I say above should at least suggest that you haven't proved it possible since you are referring to pure hypotheticals and not to actual evidence at all.

I don't know how you talk yourself into such a piece of hifalutin verbal puff. I'd laugh but that wouldn't be polite. Adherents to a shared delusion will come to the same conclusions too. Once you've got the idea that all these different designs from all over the taxonomic tree suggest a sequence of development all adherents to the theory/delusion will come up with the same explanation that therefore evolution from one to the next is possible. Based on nothing but an imaginative interpretation of the different designs as stages in development rather than different designs. Nobody has ever seen such a thing as a supposed stage developing into another stage, it's all mental "evidence," not real. Most indubitably. But beyond that all you've got is fanciful ideas about what mutations do. No problem with that one either. No you do not know that these different designs are stages in development, or that they show modification of any sort at all -- the ONLY evidence you have is of all these DIFFERENT eye types that are FULLY FUNCTIONAL for the creature that possesses them: all the rest is sheer imaginative puff. You KNOW no such thing, you suppose it, you imagine it, you assume it, you do not KNOW it and you haven't a shred of evidence for it. Everything you just wrote is sheer conjecture, not one word of actual fact in support of the conjecture. PLEASE DO NOT EVER PRESUME TO "FIX" ANYTHING I OR ANYONE ELSE WRITES. THERE IS ENOUGH CONFUSION AND MISUNDERSTANDING HERE WITHOUT INVENTING MORE. THEY ARE IN ACTUAL FACT PURELY IMAGINARY SEQUENCES THAT THEREFORE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC STANDING AS SUCH. I DON'T HAVE TO SHOW THEY "COULD NOT OCCUR," THE FACT THAT THEY ARE PURE MENTAL CONSTRUCTIONS IS ENOUGH TO SHOW THEY HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC STANDING WHATEVER. THEY HAVE NO ACTUAL GENETIC RELATIONSHIP WHATEVER, AND NOBODY HAS EVER DEMONSTRATED THAT ONE COULD EVOLVE INTO ANOTHER EVER. YOU HAVE NOTHING BUT IMAGINATIVE PUFF. And you have no idea what a bunch of hot air that is and nothing else.
\Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Gosh, could you be any less specific?Bugs all belong to the insect order Hemiptera, is that what you are talking about? There are approximately 80,000 described species of True Bugs (Hemiptera), but the several million other insect species of insects are NOT bugs.Which species of "bug" are you talking about?And what rotating part are you talking about?And can you document that there is "no known genetic relationship to another 'bug' that has some elements of the rotating part?"And what is the rotating part that you are talking about?I can rotate my arm in a manner that an object in my hand will move in a complete circle and so can every other primate. In fact, tens of thousands of other animals can rotate their limbs in a manner that that allows the end of the limb to travel in a circle or rotate. There are all sorts of different mechanisms that allow this movement in different organisms, so are you saying that is evidence of design and that they cannot be the results of evolution?What is it that makes the rotating part of your hypothetical "bug" more complex than any other rotating parts?This is a science forum. Posting vague bullshit about "bugs and rotating parts" does not add support to your argument.

Yeah I probably got it all wrong. It was some kind of creature with a rotating flagellum, maybe not even an insect, maybe a bacterium? Something Behe talked about anyway. I remember the drawing looking like a bug. What I recall is that it was claimed that since other varieties of the same creature had some of the parts though not the whole rotating apparatus that this was evidence that the rotating apparatus had evolved through all those other types now dubbed "stages," despite the fact that the other varieties had no known genetic relation to the one with the rotating flagellum.ABE: Yeah it's a bacterium, sorry. Here's a few seconds of a video demonstrating how it works:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEVq7jCT4kwEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then it's a good thing it isn't. This is your imaginary magic genome that does not exist. The genes specific to Great Danes and Bulldogs and Dachshunds do not exist in wild wolves or in other breeds. They are the product of accumulated mutations in each breed, selected over the years by people. Wrong. We've had this conversation before where lots of evidence was presented, which you ignored and continue to ignore.Sadly, for you, that doesn't make the evidence disappear. We know there are mutations from sequencing the genomes and we know that people selected for given traits that resulted from those mutations.

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Origins & Evolution Of The Domestic Dog

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The Grey Wolf is the one, the one that is the direct ancestor of our dogs, all of them, from teacup Chihuahuas to Great Danes, from Alaskan Malamutes to Arabian Salukis.

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Huskies’ ancestors were bred to endure ice-cold temperatures and long, draining, races in the snow. Whereas the Salukis, Arabian Greyhounds, were bred for speed so they could hunt quarry such as gazelles and hares. This is why, today, we have over 400 dog breeds that specialise at retrieving, pointing, hunting, pulling, swimming, pulling, searching, etc.

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Only today, the trend shifts from breeding dogs for a given purpose to breeding dogs for looks. It leads to a lot of severe medical conditions and it should be a matter of time before the authorities and international canine organisations become stricter about breeding standards.

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That image shows a nested hierarchy of dog breeds and wolves from their common ancestors based on the breed genomes -- the differences in genes due to mutations.We also know from breeding silver foxes and selecting for less aggressive behavior that dog like traits appeared. If it's not a natural process then it must be a supernatural process, by definition. With due respect, Faith, this too has been discussed before, and your position is ludicrous when you consider all trilobites to be one species but Chimps and Humans to be totally unrelated. Except that again we do have the evidence, especially in the mutation visible in chromosome 2. Your refusal to accept this evidence is, again, based solely on your opinion and opinion is not fact.Here is a link that discusses the similarities in reference to ID (to relate this back to the topic):

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Chromosome Fusion: Chance or Design?

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For the last few weeks I have been corresponding with someone about intelligent design (ID). More specifically, we have been chatting about why humans have 46 chromosomes and most of the great apes have 48.

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To me, this is great evidence for evolution. Why? Because if you look at the chromosomes closely, you can see that human chromosome 2 is really just a fusion of two great ape chromosomes.

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Human and chimpanzee chromosomes are very similar. Note that human chromosome 2 is very similar to a fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes.

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The idea is that a few million years ago, a common human-chimpanzee ancestor of ours had two of his or her chromosomes fused together. This sort of thing happens all the time even today. Around 1 in 1000 live births has one of these kinds of fusions.

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Then, probably through chance, this ancestor with the fused chromosomes went on to found the human race. Now people have 46 chromosomes and chimpanzees have 48.

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An alternative explanation is that the designers fused the two chromosomes together when they created humans. The idea would be that the designer wouldn’t create every plant, animal, bacteria, and virus from scratch—why reinvent the wheel every time? Instead the designers would mix and match parts that worked.

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The difficulty with this idea is that there is no obvious advantage to having 46 chromosomes instead of 48. What matters is our DNA, not how it happens to be packaged.

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Also, when you look at the fusion point, you can see that the DNA isn’t exactly what you would expect if a fusion happened in the last 10,000 or even 100,000 years. The results look more like an event that happened millions of years ago.

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The ends of a chromosome have a defined sequence of DNA repeats called a telomere. The DNA at the fusion point looks very similar to a string of telomeres (as we would expect from a fusion) but it isn’t perfect. This is just what you would expect if the fusion happened millions of years ago. Because our DNA gets changed a little all of the time.

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These DNA changes at the fusion point do not fit with ID if they don’t serve a purpose. Otherwise, why put them there? ...

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Evolution from a common ancestor written in DNA. We see a similar pattern between Horses, Donkeys and Zebras, complete with different number of chromosomes. Again, this is part of the preponderance of evidence. ... that your ideas are pure imagination unhinged from evidence, and bear no relationship to science. Other than the actual evidence actually used to actually show that, actually, humans and chimps are actually very closely related.Denial of the evidence does not make it go away.But the point made is that there is more variation in bone lengths and skull size and shape between dog breeds -- which we KNOW evolved -- than there is between bone length and skull size and shape between chimps and humans.We can also look at the hominid skulls posted in Message 28 and see the gradation in skull size and shape over time. Similar comparisons can be (and have been) made of full skeletons. Evolution from generation to generation adding up to more and more differences between these branches over time.Enjoy

Curiously, I choose not to reply to your Message 68 that is pure opinion and devoid of any actual evidence based argument that refutes the points I made.Enjoy

They would definitely NOT exist in other breeds because the whole method of getting a breed is the ELIMINATION of the genetic material for other breeds. As for their existence in wild wolves what do you thihnk you are looking at? Today's wolves can't be the ancestor of all dogs because they'd already have lost all the genetic material for all those breeds down the millennia. The current wolf is not the ancestor of all dogs. Only the original wolf would have all the genetic material for all the breeds and today's wolf would have lost it, making today's wolf just a breed like all the others. Pure assumption based on the false statement above; not a shred of evidence.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes I know that was your point but it's just a false assumption that there should be a greater difference between chimp and human bones. Why should there be? Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are correct that the current wolf is not the common ancestor wolf, but that is the only thing you have right.Again this response is based on your completely unevidenced purely imaginary opinion without a shred value to actual science. We've been over this before, and your insistence on ignoring contrary evidence is well known and noted.It is also a false conclusion not made from evidence, as we KNOW that mutations have added to the genetic material and resulted in new species. You've been shown the evidence and you deny it. That doesn't make the evidence go away nor does it in any way refute or even challenge my post. Show your evidence. You. don't. have. any. AND you have been shown that your imaginary system is incapable of producing new species (see Population Dynamics - the math behind the evolution of species): It is highly amusing that you claim actual evidence based conclusions are "Pure assumption based on the false statement ...; not a shred of evidence." when that perfectly characterizes your arguments/opinions.Please note that you are dragging this conversation off topic, as you always do, and try to refrain from further distraction.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .