intelligence creates intelligence

[John Cuthber]

Just a thought.

Mankind has, for years, tried to make things that are intelligent (artificial intelligence systems etc.) and so far we have things that are roughly as bright as an insect.

 

Also, while our children are generally intelligent, we can't really claim responsibility for that.

It's perfectly possible that a woman gets pregnant and then falls into a coma. In the meantime the father dies, and yet 9 months on the baby is born and has perfectly normal intelligence with no deliberate contribution from the parents.

 

I therefore conclude that the original premise of this thread, that "Intelligence creates intelligence" is factually incorrect and so there's no need to answer it.

 

On the other hand that does lead to the question "Where does intelligence come from?" to which the answer seems to be "We don't know- but it need not be something intelligent".

[Monsters from the ID]

Most of the rest of what you just said I'd agree with. I just wanted to comment on these sections:

 

I didn't mean it as any scientific commentary, with any sort of satire there is an amount of straw-manning being done. But what I was implying, I probably should have said it, is that there is a lot of dodging in those aspects such as the age of the world, dinosaurs, etc. Perhaps there are many who say "well this might be a mentioning of that type of animal" but how I could do that with literally any story. I could read H.P. Lovecraft and say Cthulhu was probably a giant squid and his 'wings' were just the fins on top of the head seen from afar. Just like the argument that in the Noah Ark story the 'giants' people were breeding with that angered God could have been Neanderthals and the flood is just talking about their extinction. Well it could make sense but that doesn't mean it's true.

 

 

Yes, I think a lot of dodging does go on. But that's easy for me to say because even though my academic experience is extremely limited (one measely pass level BSc in physics) I have at least thought these issues through somewhat. For those with no science training, they likely dodge these kinds of subjects because they feel inadequate to discuss them.

 

I do believe that if you're talking strictly ID, then sometimes dodging certain questions is justified, since there's little point discussing non-science in a science discussion. But other times, people might just want to know what you're thinking. If that involves discussing a defence of Biblical ideas, better to just come straight out and admit what ones ideas are on a subject, rather than pretending to think otherwise or avoid the subject. But on doing that, one may run into a problem. It's easy to admit belief on topics such as those in which one feels they have the weight of evidence behind them. But what if one has beliefs that for example, are religiously motivated, and yet seem to be opposed by the weight or majority of evidence? (Though perhaps not all of the evidence.) Better to just admit what one believes in. But in such cases you have to also be prepared to admit, that such beliefs are simply that - BELIEFS! Not verified science. But why would anyone choose to believe in something that is opposed by known science? Generally it's because of reasons of philosophical or religious beliefs or commitments. One may want very much to believe in something, yet the weight of evidence is against you in that particular thing. In my case it is the wish to believe in the young age of the earth as stated in scripture. In other peoples cases, it is something like a belief in abiogenesis, which is requird by the philsophy of naturalism. Now of course, future science may change the current weight of the evidence, but at the present time, the weight of the evidence (though not ALL of the evidence) is against those two ideas. We just have to admit that despite what we'd like to believe, the current scientific evidence is leaning generally against those two ideas. It's not wrong to believe in YEC or in abiogenesis, as long as you make it clear to anyone asking you, that the current science is (as a whole) against you in taking on such beliefs. And don't try to pass off that which isn't supported by science, as if it was. But having said that one can always point out any evidence that does support their position and try to make a case for it.

 

 

As I have said before anyone who is willing to strictly test the hypotheses brought about is more than welcome to do so, but to be scientific they must publish results including negative ones. If their results are positive and attempts to replicate repeatedly fail they need to stop saying it is because people they are being 'silenced' by the scientific community. If they fail to verify their hypothesis they must be willing to change their ideas. In my experience none of these have been done.

 

Sure. I used to believe in a particular creationist idea, but someone demonstrated that it was highly unlikely to be true based on a certain logical argument. I HATED to admit it, but they were right. Until such problems are done away with, it really wasn't tenable to continue to believe in that idea anymore, so I eventually changed my mind on it. Sometimes it has to be done.

 

I'll discuss your longer and earlier post tomorrow. Good evening.

[Monsters from the ID]

Why would it stop at one level. I am saying that it is the logical step that if intelligence is necessary to build intelligence then you run into the loop. Give me a logical reason to stop at a single level.

 

 

I think it's because you take things one step at a time. If we didn't pursue certain avenues of investigation because we thought there may be problems, then we'd not pursue many areas that perhaps we should be. For example, with SETI research, they're doing pretty much the same thing. Looking for a signal that at present has no natural explanation. They don't refuse to consider the idea just because of the "who designed the designer" paradox. SETI ID is falsifiable too (as is ID with origins) because if they found a certain radio (or gravitational wave or whatever) that they believed had no natural explanation, and then inferred it was due to an intellignet civilization, then even though it would be hard to know that for sure, we could at least falsify it by later on discovering that a natural explanation does exist after all. In fact that happenned some time back when pulsar signals were first discovered. At firs tscientists believed they had found evidence of intellignece somewhere else and dubbed the signals LGM (little green men) but then they realized that it was caused by a rotating neutron star that was sweeping out a signal as it rapidly rotated. So this shows that ID has one of the hallmarks of genuine science, which is falsifiability. No one I know of continues to ascribe pulsar signals to alien civilizations, because even though they "might" be due to aliens, we don't need that as an explanation because there is a feasible natural explanation.

 

What if pulsar signals (or some pulsar signals) really were due to aliens? Well, ascribing such genuinely intelligently derived signals to natural causes is called a FALSE NEGATIVE. And guess what? No one in ID worries about false negatives (unless there is some valid evidence that is being overlooked, for example a pulsar signal being used as a carrier wave for some higher level information perhaps. But generally, an ID false negative is just ignored because as long as a natural explanation exists for some phenomena, then it's not scientific to hold out the hope that perhaps it is due to intelligence after all.

 

Along the lines of what we already discussed (is the designer hiding or not) if a designer does something using intelligence that is indistinguishable from something natural, then there is no scientific way to determine the difference. Therefore no one cares about or pursues investigation into potential false negatives. What IDists do care about is a FALSE POSITIVE. A false positive is the ascribing of intelligence to something that turns out to be natural after all (like LGM's and pulsars).

 

So if something is inferred to be due to intelligence and then turn out not to be, it becomes an ID false positive and thus ID is considered falsified for that particular phenomena.

 

 

 

 

Take a watch, the common example, we have never seen a watch be created without intervention of ourselves nor do we have any indication that it would happen naturally. The difference is we do have natural explanations for pretty much all the things that ID tries to explain. What, exactly, are some examples of things that need this designer for an explanation since they are so obvious?

 

 

Well, plenty of things, but apart from the origin of life (the "big one" - where did the information come from to kick off the self replciation process and all of the other processes neccessary such as energy sources, error correction, etc.) Then there are things like the origin of new functional protein folds and especially protein machines that consist of several integrated proteins all working together to achieve some function of a higher order. The origin of the coding system for DNA including all of the protein machinery. The origin of the first cell is related to abiogenesis, but also to the evolution of protein machinery as well, because it's now known that in order to sustain life, at least a couple of hundred proteins are required. Irreducible complexity is a big part of all this. It seems the first cell was also irreducibly complex. The well known "bacterial flagellum" is just one example of hundreds of leser known irreducibly complex machines. We can discuss IC later in detail because most naturalists consider that IC is a "dead in the water" ID argument, yet I will argue that they are seriously mistaken in believing that to be the case.

 

 

So you are saying that natural laws are not enough to explain the origins of life? Have you read any papers on abiogenesis?

 

I haven't actually read a paper on abiogenesis though I have read an essay by Leslie Orgell. But even Dawkins admits that nobody knows how the first life started. The problems to be overcome are profound, mostly consisting of how to account for the large amounts of information required to specify for self replication andall of the supporting chemistry that would be required for life. There are plenty of "just so" stories as to how it might possibly have taken place, but so far all that we truly know is that we need man years of effort on the part of origin of life experts in order to synthesize any kind of self reproducing molecular chemistry. Intersting work, but at the moment not relevant to natural processes. Likewise, it's interesting that in some conditions RNA molecules may be able to form naturally, but without the information specification that is required for function, it isn't very helpful. It's a bit like trying to say that we're making progress in understanding how a skyscraper came to be naturally because we can now account for the origin of single bricks and wooden planks. Nothing wrong with first steps, but at present they're not really making a lot of progress relative to the problem at hand.

 

 

If ID is like engineering why are so many animals, including ourselves, so badly engineered? Any human engineer could design a better spine so we don't have the back problems associated with a single column spine. Why do we have remains of a post anal tail, like all good chordates, yet have no use for a tail?

 

I would dispute many examples of supposed bad design. We can discuss the supposedly back to front eye (an why it's actually a good design). We can discuss the recurrent laryngeal nerve which supposedly takes a completely uneccessary detour. I will show why it isn't uneccessary. Hint - it makes many additional branching neerve connections to other organs all along the supposedly uneccessary detour. A fact it seems was overlooked by most people who have repeated that argument. Most denied that the RLN nerves (there are two of them) connected to anything else along their "detour path" until it was proven to them from quotes taken from the Grey's anatomy book. I haven't heard of the spine argument yet.

 

Remember also that when we talk about something being optimal, or compromised, we need to remember that when a system is optimized for a set of conditions, it is usually highly non-optimal for sets of conditions outside of a narrow range. A "compromised" design may seem to function "less optimally" but that only is in reference to that narrow "sweet spot" range. For most other conditions encountered, the compromised design is going to be far better suited to the conditions. Consider a race car. It's optimized for racing, yet it's pretty terrible for driving to work or going shopping with. I believe many of the supposed weaknesses and charges of poor design are because people are looking at a wisely designed compromise (so that it will be a useful system over a wide range of different operating conditions) and then cherry picking what they don't like about a system to cobble together a "poor design" argument. You get what I mean?

 

 

 

You are mistaken, are assume the only explanations are ID and evolution. What about spontaneous generation? If evolution were proven to be wrong why would we not assume that animals spontaneously arise from inorganic material?

 

Spontaneous generation has pretty much been disproven scientifically. It ws the original naturalistic explanation for life until it was shown that initial life is always needed to obtain subsequent life. Spontaneous generation is ultimately what abiogenesis is! But more sophisticated knowledge is now to hand. Yet the perceived problems are greater because of our greater knowledge. Evolution was accepted because it was thought that Darwin had finally elucidated a plausible mechanism to explain biology.

 

But my point was that evolution and spontaneous generation are both mindless natural processes. I should have used the term naturalism instead of evolution. How can naturalism be falsified? It can't be. Because even though we can disprove one natural explanation, another one can always be proposed. How can we ever disprove all possible natural explanations? We'll never run out of possible explanations. Yet all the while, we do know that while we are scratching around trying to solve seemingly impossible problems (trying to find a natural explanation for something like abiogenesis), orthodox science is saying that we cannot even tentatively infer intelligence bcause that is out of bounds. But why? It's only out of bounds because it doesn't agree with the assumption of naturalism. But are we to accept naturalism by faith in all cases? I don't see any good reason to think that. Because of that, naturalism is not ultimately scientific, because it is a philsophical foundational axiom that many believe science must work within. Yet no genuine reasons are given as to why that must be the case! And once you accept naturalism as dogma, it actually becomes impossible to notice design. That can't be a good thing.

 

And it certainly wasn't the case in earlier days. Much great scientific progress was made thanks to many scientists who did not subscribe to the idea that anything beyond mindless natural processes must be thrown out for the sake of preserving science. Most of those earlier scientists were creationists! The claim that good scientific work is incompatible with a belief in creationism is refuted by those pioneers such as Newton and many many others. One could argue the same way in reverse. Many atheistic scientists have also produced excellent scientific research. As for those earlier creationists, they were motivated to study science in many cases because they were intrigued by the idea that they could (by using logic and reason) deduce the orderly and logical laws that they believed God had set in motion. Their belief in God was a big part of their motivation for their scientific study of natural laws. It wasn't a roadblock for science as is sometimes claimed nowadays.

[Ringer]

I think it's because you take things one step at a time. If we didn't pursue certain avenues of investigation because we thought there may be problems, then we'd not pursue many areas that perhaps we should be. For example, with SETI research, they're doing pretty much the same thing. Looking for a signal that at present has no natural explanation. They don't refuse to consider the idea just because of the "who designed the designer" paradox. SETI ID is falsifiable too (as is ID with origins) because if they found a certain radio (or gravitational wave or whatever) that they believed had no natural explanation, and then inferred it was due to an intellignet civilization, then even though it would be hard to know that for sure, we could at least falsify it by later on discovering that a natural explanation does exist after all. In fact that happenned some time back when pulsar signals were first discovered. At firs tscientists believed they had found evidence of intellignece somewhere else and dubbed the signals LGM (little green men) but then they realized that it was caused by a rotating neutron star that was sweeping out a signal as it rapidly rotated. So this shows that ID has one of the hallmarks of genuine science, which is falsifiability. No one I know of continues to ascribe pulsar signals to alien civilizations, because even though they "might" be due to aliens, we don't need that as an explanation because there is a feasible natural explanation.

 

What if pulsar signals (or some pulsar signals) really were due to aliens? Well, ascribing such genuinely intelligently derived signals to natural causes is called a FALSE NEGATIVE. And guess what? No one in ID worries about false negatives (unless there is some valid evidence that is being overlooked, for example a pulsar signal being used as a carrier wave for some higher level information perhaps. But generally, an ID false negative is just ignored because as long as a natural explanation exists for some phenomena, then it's not scientific to hold out the hope that perhaps it is due to intelligence after all.

 

Along the lines of what we already discussed (is the designer hiding or not) if a designer does something using intelligence that is indistinguishable from something natural, then there is no scientific way to determine the difference. Therefore no one cares about or pursues investigation into potential false negatives. What IDists do care about is a FALSE POSITIVE. A false positive is the ascribing of intelligence to something that turns out to be natural after all (like LGM's and pulsars).

 

So if something is inferred to be due to intelligence and then turn out not to be, it becomes an ID false positive and thus ID is considered falsified for that particular phenomena.

 

You're saying that ID should be the default setting as an explanation but refuse to say why it should be that way. Almost everything that has been identified as ID has been proven not to be so and there is no reason to default to unexplainable. If anything, because of all the times ID has been falsified, the default should be naturalistic. Until there is evidence for ID there is no reason to use ID as a default.

 

You still haven't said why it would logically stop at a single designer, which is what ID would have to explain since its would premise is life and intelligence needs intelligence to exist. You don't make a hypothesis and ignore the difficulties of the hypothesis with, "let's not think about that because it could cause problems with our ideas."

 

 

 

Well, plenty of things, but apart from the origin of life (the "big one" - where did the information come from to kick off the self replciation process and all of the other processes neccessary such as energy sources, error correction, etc.) Then there are things like the origin of new functional protein folds and especially protein machines that consist of several integrated proteins all working together to achieve some function of a higher order. The origin of the coding system for DNA including all of the protein machinery. The origin of the first cell is related to abiogenesis, but also to the evolution of protein machinery as well, because it's now known that in order to sustain life, at least a couple of hundred proteins are required. Irreducible complexity is a big part of all this. It seems the first cell was also irreducibly complex. The well known "bacterial flagellum" is just one example of hundreds of leser known irreducibly complex machines. We can discuss IC later in detail because most naturalists consider that IC is a "dead in the water" ID argument, yet I will argue that they are seriously mistaken in believing that to be the case.

 

What information? All the 'information' in an organism is organic compounds. Its not some mystical component that hasn't been explained, organic compounds built from elements that have been observed and explained. Why is it you believe that the origin of organic compounds is impossible? Please read;

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/

 

I haven't actually read a paper on abiogenesis though I have read an essay by Leslie Orgell. But even Dawkins admits that nobody knows how the first life started. The problems to be overcome are profound, mostly consisting of how to account for the large amounts of information required to specify for self replication andall of the supporting chemistry that would be required for life. There are plenty of "just so" stories as to how it might possibly have taken place, but so far all that we truly know is that we need man years of effort on the part of origin of life experts in order to synthesize any kind of self reproducing molecular chemistry. Intersting work, but at the moment not relevant to natural processes. Likewise, it's interesting that in some conditions RNA molecules may be able to form naturally, but without the information specification that is required for function, it isn't very helpful. It's a bit like trying to say that we're making progress in understanding how a skyscraper came to be naturally because we can now account for the origin of single bricks and wooden planks. Nothing wrong with first steps, but at present they're not really making a lot of progress relative to the problem at hand.

 

It doesn't matter if nobody knows how the first life started, because that's not what you are arguing. It is totally different than saying that it is impossible. Your arguing that life as we know it couldn't possible just come in to being and I completely agree, as do most other scientists I have ever heard of. But the problem is that's not what is believed to have happened naturally, that is what spontaneous generation is by the way, but that is what ID and creationism believes. There are two problems, early Earth was virtually nothing like it is today and the first replicating life forms didn't necessarily look anything like a simple organism today.

 

 

I would dispute many examples of supposed bad design. We can discuss the supposedly back to front eye (an why it's actually a good design). We can discuss the recurrent laryngeal nerve which supposedly takes a completely uneccessary detour. I will show why it isn't uneccessary. Hint - it makes many additional branching neerve connections to other organs all along the supposedly uneccessary detour. A fact it seems was overlooked by most people who have repeated that argument. Most denied that the RLN nerves (there are two of them) connected to anything else along their "detour path" until it was proven to them from quotes taken from the Grey's anatomy book. I haven't heard of the spine argument yet.

 

Remember also that when we talk about something being optimal, or compromised, we need to remember that when a system is optimized for a set of conditions, it is usually highly non-optimal for sets of conditions outside of a narrow range. A "compromised" design may seem to function "less optimally" but that only is in reference to that narrow "sweet spot" range. For most other conditions encountered, the compromised design is going to be far better suited to the conditions. Consider a race car. It's optimized for racing, yet it's pretty terrible for driving to work or going shopping with. I believe many of the supposed weaknesses and charges of poor design are because people are looking at a wisely designed compromise (so that it will be a useful system over a wide range of different operating conditions) and then cherry picking what they don't like about a system to cobble together a "poor design" argument. You get what I mean?

 

Then what about eyes that aren't back to front? What about the urethra going through the prostate? Here's a little list that has a few, but not by any means all, little curiosities that I would like to hear explained through ID; http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html

 

 

Spontaneous generation has pretty much been disproven scientifically. It ws the original naturalistic explanation for life until it was shown that initial life is always needed to obtain subsequent life. Spontaneous generation is ultimately what abiogenesis is! But more sophisticated knowledge is now to hand. Yet the perceived problems are greater because of our greater knowledge. Evolution was accepted because it was thought that Darwin had finally elucidated a plausible mechanism to explain biology.

 

But my point was that evolution and spontaneous generation are both mindless natural processes. I should have used the term naturalism instead of evolution. How can naturalism be falsified? It can't be. Because even though we can disprove one natural explanation, another one can always be proposed. How can we ever disprove all possible natural explanations? We'll never run out of possible explanations. Yet all the while, we do know that while we are scratching around trying to solve seemingly impossible problems (trying to find a natural explanation for something like abiogenesis), orthodox science is saying that we cannot even tentatively infer intelligence bcause that is out of bounds. But why? It's only out of bounds because it doesn't agree with the assumption of naturalism. But are we to accept naturalism by faith in all cases? I don't see any good reason to think that. Because of that, naturalism is not ultimately scientific, because it is a philsophical foundational axiom that many believe science must work within. Yet no genuine reasons are given as to why that must be the case! And once you accept naturalism as dogma, it actually becomes impossible to notice design. That can't be a good thing.

 

And it certainly wasn't the case in earlier days. Much great scientific progress was made thanks to many scientists who did not subscribe to the idea that anything beyond mindless natural processes must be thrown out for the sake of preserving science. Most of those earlier scientists were creationists! The claim that good scientific work is incompatible with a belief in creationism is refuted by those pioneers such as Newton and many many others. One could argue the same way in reverse. Many atheistic scientists have also produced excellent scientific research. As for those earlier creationists, they were motivated to study science in many cases because they were intrigued by the idea that they could (by using logic and reason) deduce the orderly and logical laws that they believed God had set in motion. Their belief in God was a big part of their motivation for their scientific study of natural laws. It wasn't a roadblock for science as is sometimes claimed nowadays.

 

 

I don't think there is a scientific paper out there that says, "Oh, by the way god doesn't exist." Science can neither prove nor disprove god so it doesn't talk about it. If you say pure naturalism cannot be falsified you admit that ID is useless because it tries to falsify naturalism.

 

You are not supposed to accept anything as faith in science other than the people who did the experiments did their job right, and if they didn't it'll be pointed out sooner or later. Even that shouldn't really be totally accepted because the results must be replicated. The way you use faith implies lack of evidence, but there is no lack of naturalistic explanations or evidence for the ones that are accepted. The difference between your faith and scientific faith is we will change our ideas if there is enough evidence to prove them wrong. As soon as there is good evidence for the supernatural overall outlook will change.

 

Those scientists went with the evidence of the times. Science is also not incompatible with belief in god, I don't know why you would think it is. There are some that say it is, but there are far more that don't believe that in the least bit. There are still many scientists who believe in god. The reason good science is incompatible with Creationism, not god, is because it ignores the vast amounts of evidence we now have against it. Those Creationists didn't have knowledge of nuclear reaction to maintain the temperature of the Earth, understanding of plate tectonics to explain similar animals in places far away from each other, etc.

 

Please also provide some evidence for ID because at the moment you are only arguing you beliefs without providing evidence for anything. Show my studies why natural explanations aren't enough, with evidence, to explain these things. Show me studies that have any evidence helping your claims. If you can't do that this entire conversation is useless because I am arguing evidence and you are arguing belief.

[Monsters from the ID]

Also, while our children are generally intelligent, we can't really claim responsibility for that.

It's perfectly possible that a woman gets pregnant and then falls into a coma. In the meantime the father dies, and yet 9 months on the baby is born and has perfectly normal intelligence with no deliberate contribution from the parents.

 

I therefore conclude that the original premise of this thread, that "Intelligence creates intelligence" is factually incorrect and so there's no need to answer it.

 

 

I'd disagree with your conclusion, yet agree with one of your other points.

 

You said that while our children are generally intelligent we can't really claim responsibility for that. I totally agree. In fact some would argue that the process whereby we manage to start off the process of having children is a process requiring next to no intelligence.

 

It's because of that fact that your statements about the mother being in a coma and the father being dead - yet the child is still born as intelligent are kind of irrelevant. The issue is - where did the fully automatic process of having intelligent children - that requires next to no intelligence on the part of the users (the parents) originate from?

 

So the claim that intelligence begets intelligence is about where the reproduction process (which is technology well beyond that of human comprehension in all of it's details at the present time) originate from? Mindless natural processes? Or an intelligence capable of engineering something like that? I'd go with the latter.

 

You're saying that ID should be the default setting as an explanation but refuse to say why it should be that way. Almost everything that has been identified as ID has been proven not to be so and there is no reason to default to unexplainable. If anything, because of all the times ID has been falsified, the default should be naturalistic. Until there is evidence for ID there is no reason to use ID as a default.

 

 

ID as the default explanation for everything? I didn't intend to say that. In fact I'd look at all natural explanations first that we know of. However before too long we will have realized that with current knowledge natural explanations don't explain all that exists. (I'll provide some actual evidence of that soon). So at that point, after initial natural explanations have been proposed and have either failed, or look very weak, we are then entitled to assume that intelligent design is a possibility. Not to do so is to put naturalism into the unfalsifiable category. (ie. no explanation is permitted if it does not use mindless natural processes). At that point we have left science and descended into a naturalist dogma. Better to provisionally accept an ID explanation than do that - until a natural explanation does come along.

 

 

You still haven't said why it would logically stop at a single designer, which is what ID would have to explain since its would premise is life and intelligence needs intelligence to exist. You don't make a hypothesis and ignore the difficulties of the hypothesis with, "let's not think about that because it could cause problems with our ideas."

 

 

Because all we need to determine is whether or not a phenomena was likely designed, or not, to one level. Neither have you explained why we need to go to all levels. We don't know enough about the designer to consider his origins (or even if he has any). While I admit that my limitations of investigation exist and that they stop me from going beyond a single design inference, you must admit that SETI scientists also are prepared to make such an ID inference without throwing up their hands and saying that SETI must be abandoned since we cannot account for more than a single designer of a radio signal! So why do they push ahead with SETI instead of stopping and abandoning the whole idea that signals from space could be determined to be of intelligent origin? If it's good enough for them, I'll take it as being good enough for me.

 

 

 

What information? All the 'information' in an organism is organic compounds. Its not some mystical component that hasn't been explained, organic compounds built from elements that have been observed and explained. Why is it you believe that the origin of organic compounds is impossible? Please read;

http://www.talkorigi.../faqs/abioprob/

 

 

What information? The information encoded in it's organic compounds that enables it to perform functions! And indeed it has not been explained. Not many sequences will get the job done compared to the number that won't. That ratio of nonfunctional to functional sequences in biology is huge. I'm a bit short on time so I'll continue this argument later, but here is an initial something to read on this topic of beneficial vs. nonbeneficial or neutral sequences:

 

The steppingstone problem

[Monsters from the ID]

What information? All the 'information' in an organism is organic compounds. Its not some mystical component that hasn't been explained, organic compounds built from elements that have been observed and explained. Why is it you believe that the origin of organic compounds is impossible? Please read;

http://www.talkorigi.../faqs/abioprob/

 

The origin of organic compounds aren't the main issue. The problem is where did the information in the sequences come from. And how did it manage to organize into a system that not only self replicates, but manages to stay protected and retain fidelity in the reproduction process. Without fidelity any ability to reproduce will be rapidly lost. In addition the claim that early life was much simpler than it is now makes one wonder how any such simpler early life that somehow managed to appear, was able to exist for more than a few minutes, and be lost again for millions of more years until the next fleeting occurence of self replication? In addition, replicators of the short lengths (and thus feasible probabilities of emergence) in Musgraves article require preformed sequenced templates to be available for replication! That's a pretty artificial condition. We're not talking about assemby of long polymers from individual monomers here. To do that, not only would we need a ready supply of those, but a lot of supporting machinery that simply wouldn't be in existence before life in it's current sophisticated form was present. The claim is always made that early life was much simpler than it is now. I predict that as knowledge increases, it will become apparent that as is often the case, life has an irreducibly complex sophistication threshold in order for it to survive. It needs to be able to protect and maintain itself in many many ways in order to survive the abiotic environment. Oil bubbles containing hypothesized self sustaining "simple" self replicartors don't fit the requirements of reality. Interfering cross reactions in the impure real world environments would bring such processes to a halt and break them up. What about energy production and storage? There are a whole host of problems that need to be solved beforehand if life is to be feasible and sustained for any length of time. Of course, there's going to be a lot of side benefits to chemistry and chemical engineering gained from continued investigation into possible origin of life scenarios, but don't imagine that there aren't any fundamental difficulties with this scenario.

 

 

Then what about eyes that aren't back to front?

 

They're simpler and used in organisms that don't require the extreme cooling capabilities and longetivity that the inverted retina provides. Basically the reversed retina enables the light cells to be cooled easily and worn out receptors to be removed into the bloodstream rather than into the eye fluid. Any visual clarity problems are solved via the existence of special cells which act like optical light fibres to conduct light through the maze of blood vessels. In addition this arrangement enhances clarity by absorbing scattered light more effectively than sensors in the front. But it is energetically very costly and is uneccessary in many creatures not having all of these requirements.

 

 

What about the urethra going through the prostate?

 

 

Many organs can start to fail in various ways. Not surprising given that death is inevitable for all creatures. Yet the prostate design in one article (written by evolutionists) was described so: "Unfortunately, the prostate's BRILLIANT WRAP-AROUND STRUCTURE WITH DUAL-PURPOSE CORE TUBING can become a liability if the prostate swells or enlarges." Once again, many people cherry pick the particular things that they don't like, while mostly ignoring the cleverness that certainly was apparent to the author of that article.

 

What about tortioned gastropods? Interesting! But given that they rely on moisture conservation so heavily, and that they secrete mostly insoluble uric acid as well as water (free from the mostly insoluble uric acid), it seems to me that such an arrangement would promote survival by having another source of water to hand in the vicinity of the head and feeding apparatus of the creature, rather than it being wasted by being expelled out of the back. Being "weird" doesn't really count for too much I shouldn't think. The fact that such poorly designed creatures are in abundance tends to argue against the viewpoint that such tortioned arrangements are doing those creatures too much in the way of harm. We see both kinds of creatures (tortioned and non-tortioned) are able to exist rather well.

 

The Panda's thumb, while often criticized as being another example of poor design that no designer would ever engineer, is nevertheless not appearing to hamper the dexterity of the Panda one bit in stripping bamboo. Many have remarked how easily and efficiently Panda's are able to do this. Perhaps we should ask a Panda what they think of their paws?

 

There is however a class of what has often been regarded as "poor designs" that could in the creationist viewpoint) be regarded as degenerations of the original designs. And I guess we'd have to admit that these degenerations are examples of evolution in action.

 

Flightless birds would be an example of that. As well as blind cave dwelling fish that have the information present to make eyes but have suffered mutations that prevent the eyes from forming. Some (though not all) pseudogenes would also fit into this category.

 

Tail like appendeces are used (in humans) in order to anchor muscles. Just because we have no tails of any length, should a designer take away a useful anchor point. Why would he do that? To be neat?

 

Much of that article comments more on similarities than design flaws. In some ways I tend to partly agree with them, because while they see similarities as pointing to common descent, we'd see such similarities as indicative of common designs and the re-use of ideas. So called "convergent evolution" is a rather extreme case of what look far more like common design ideas being executed in different ways, than it resembles evolution that happenned for some reason (usually attributed to similar environments) to converge to creatures that often look or perform in astonishingly similar ways, yet without any close enough phylogenetic relationships.

 

In any case we creationists do support the notion of limited evolution, and degeneration which will often evolve due to the fact that certain degenerative conditions and loss of functional information can actually be selectively advantages in certain nich environments.

 

 

 

If you say pure naturalism cannot be falsified you admit that ID is useless because it tries to falsify naturalism.

 

I'm supporting the notion that naturalism can sometimes be falsified (by likelihoods) by ID. But many naturalists act as if ID must be excluded from science altogether. Thus it is they who are attempting to put naturalism into the unfalsifiablke category. But by acting that way, they are removing naturalism from the domain of science and into the domain of unfalsifiable dogma. ID is diffeent because it can be falsified by showing a natural phenomena that is up to the task at hand. Evolution gained widespread acceptance in it's day because back then it seemed to many scientiststo be a sufficent natural explanation. But now having learned a lot more in the interim (especially in regards to molecular biology) it is now philosophical inertia that is driving the continued acceptance of evolution more than the actual evidence. When I say evolution here, I am not talking about observed evolution, but the notion of inferred evolution = common descent from a single or group of one celled ancestral lifeforms.

 

 

You are not supposed to accept anything as faith in science other than the people who did the experiments did their job right, and if they didn't it'll be pointed out sooner or later. Even that shouldn't really be totally accepted because the results must be replicated.

 

Yes.

 

 

The way you use faith implies lack of evidence, but there is no lack of naturalistic explanations or evidence for the ones that are accepted.

 

There really are many difficulties for mindless natural processes in beig able to account for biology. We'll be going over them in time. Irreducible complexity for instance is a major hurdle for naturalism. Reports of IC's death are highly exaggerated!!

 

 

The difference between your faith and scientific faith is we will change our ideas if there is enough evidence to prove them wrong. As soon as there is good evidence for the supernatural overall outlook will change.

 

 

I think that is an overly idealistic view of the way most scientists think. Especially when the implications are as political and cultural as they are when it comes to support for the notion that something like a God might actually exist. Most people including scientists (though not all of them) cling tightly to their chosen beliefs. The history of science shows that rather dramatically. What you're talking about typically happens over time, as in "when the old guard die out" after which a paradigm shift is more easily achieved.

[rigney]

Ringers post #23 with the "Standup Guy" says it all. Life rising from a petri dish or cloning is a avalid reason to believe in science without question. What bothers me most is, once ingrained; neither side, either science or religion want to even peek across the chasm dividing them.

[John Cuthber]

"So the claim that intelligence begets intelligence is about where the reproduction process (which is technology well beyond that of human comprehension in all of it's details at the present time) originate from? Mindless natural processes? Or an intelligence capable of engineering something like that? I'd go with the latter."

That's an argument from incredulity.

There is an observed mechanism by which mindless natural processes can do things like this. On the other hand there is no evidence for the existence of the "intelligence" which you postulate.

 

"Any visual clarity problems are solved via the existence of special cells which act like optical light fibres to conduct light through the maze of blood vessels."

Could you point them out for me please?

Here's a diagram.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray881.png

[Moontanman]

Ringers post #23 with the "Standup Guy" says it all. Life rising from a petri dish or cloning is a avalid reason to believe in science without question. What bothers me most is, once ingrained; neither side, either science or religion want to even peek across the chasm dividing them.

 

 

The chasm dividing them is an artificial one created by biblical literalists who cannot understand that the bible doesn't have to be absolute truth for god to exist. For them it's either God creating with out evolution or evolution with out god, they are simply worshiping a book instead of the idea of god, i would call it idolatry.

 

There really are many difficulties for mindless natural processes in beig able to account for biology. We'll be going over them in time. Irreducible complexity for instance is a major hurdle for naturalism. Reports of IC's death are highly exaggerated!!

 

 

I so look forward to debating this with you, I would love to read of just one instance of actual Irreducible Complexity, just one is all I want, I await your reply with baited breath....

Edited June 26, 2011 by Moontanman

[Ringer]

ID as the default explanation for everything? I didn't intend to say that. In fact I'd look at all natural explanations first that we know of. However before too long we will have realized that with current knowledge natural explanations don't explain all that exists. (I'll provide some actual evidence of that soon). So at that point, after initial natural explanations have been proposed and have either failed, or look very weak, we are then entitled to assume that intelligent design is a possibility. Not to do so is to put naturalism into the unfalsifiable category. (ie. no explanation is permitted if it does not use mindless natural processes). At that point we have left science and descended into a naturalist dogma. Better to provisionally accept an ID explanation than do that - until a natural explanation does come along.

 

Well, I will wait for your evidence. You still haven't provided an answer as to way we should do this though. There's no reason to think that just because we can't explain something now we never will be able to; because every time someone in history has thought that something is impossible to explain it still gets explained. So why would we accept that we can't explain it?

 

The biggest problem I have with this is that you are saying we should accept an explanation that there is absolutely no evidence for. That's what I mean by default, something to go to when nothing else comes about. No scientist should support teaching things to people with literally no evidence to support it just because we have falsified other hypothesis.

 

 

 

 

Because all we need to determine is whether or not a phenomena was likely designed, or not, to one level. Neither have you explained why we need to go to all levels. We don't know enough about the designer to consider his origins (or even if he has any). While I admit that my limitations of investigation exist and that they stop me from going beyond a single design inference, you must admit that SETI scientists also are prepared to make such an ID inference without throwing up their hands and saying that SETI must be abandoned since we cannot account for more than a single designer of a radio signal! So why do they push ahead with SETI instead of stopping and abandoning the whole idea that signals from space could be determined to be of intelligent origin? If it's good enough for them, I'll take it as being good enough for me.

 

Because if intelligence is required for intelligence to come about the first intelligence must have come about from intelligence. If this is not the case you must accept that intelligence is not required. ID proposes that there is a designer because they don't believe natural processes can explain life and intelligence, but they then refuse to explain where this designer may have come from and why it doesn't follow the rules put forth by IDers. I am not saying not to search for a designer, but logical consistency is a must. If I'm not mistaken SETI searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence, not some sort of designer. I don't see anywhere on their website that they talk anything about design, only about extra-terrestrial intelligence and the search of such.

 

 

 

 

 

What information? The information encoded in it's organic compounds that enables it to perform functions! And indeed it has not been explained. Not many sequences will get the job done compared to the number that won't. That ratio of nonfunctional to functional sequences in biology is huge. I'm a bit short on time so I'll continue this argument later, but here is an initial something to read on this topic of beneficial vs. nonbeneficial or neutral sequences:

 

The steppingstone problem

 

 

 

 

The origin of organic compounds aren't the main issue. The problem is where did the information in the sequences come from. And how did it manage to organize into a system that not only self replicates, but manages to stay protected and retain fidelity in the reproduction process. Without fidelity any ability to reproduce will be rapidly lost. In addition the claim that early life was much simpler than it is now makes one wonder how any such simpler early life that somehow managed to appear, was able to exist for more than a few minutes, and be lost again for millions of more years until the next fleeting occurence of self replication? In addition, replicators of the short lengths (and thus feasible probabilities of emergence) in Musgraves article require preformed sequenced templates to be available for replication! That's a pretty artificial condition. We're not talking about assemby of long polymers from individual monomers here. To do that, not only would we need a ready supply of those, but a lot of supporting machinery that simply wouldn't be in existence before life in it's current sophisticated form was present. The claim is always made that early life was much simpler than it is now. I predict that as knowledge increases, it will become apparent that as is often the case, life has an irreducibly complex sophistication threshold in order for it to survive. It needs to be able to protect and maintain itself in many many ways in order to survive the abiotic environment. Oil bubbles containing hypothesized self sustaining "simple" self replicartors don't fit the requirements of reality. Interfering cross reactions in the impure real world environments would bring such processes to a halt and break them up. What about energy production and storage? There are a whole host of problems that need to be solved beforehand if life is to be feasible and sustained for any length of time. Of course, there's going to be a lot of side benefits to chemistry and chemical engineering gained from continued investigation into possible origin of life scenarios, but don't imagine that there aren't any fundamental difficulties with this scenario.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

http://www.mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-labs/scholey/journal%20papers/Ricardo-Szostak-SA2009.pdf

 

I'm not going to go into everything that's wrong about your link because I'm feeling a bit lazy, but my main question is how does this prove a designer instead of, say, replicating compounds that were on a planet with different atmosphere that created this life, frozen in an asteroid and brought to Earth?

 

Earth was in no way how it is now when the first replicating organisms formed, so comparing Earth, or living compounds, to how they are now is intellectually dishonest.

 

 

They're simpler and used in organisms that don't require the extreme cooling capabilities and longetivity that the inverted retina provides. Basically the reversed retina enables the light cells to be cooled easily and worn out receptors to be removed into the bloodstream rather than into the eye fluid. Any visual clarity problems are solved via the existence of special cells which act like optical light fibres to conduct light through the maze of blood vessels. In addition this arrangement enhances clarity by absorbing scattered light more effectively than sensors in the front. But it is energetically very costly and is uneccessary in many creatures not having all of these requirements.

 

What extreme cooling capabilities in what animals are you referring? What worn out receptors? The photoreceptors are nerves just like any other and don't just become worn out and replaced. Not to mention apes use their eyes more than most other animals and would be greatly improved by being able to more efficiently absorb scattered light. Why would a designer choose reversed retina in us?

 

Just saying that both have their uses is not good enough to explain a design in certain animals. You would have to explain why a designer would choose that design for each animal and why it is better in that animal that all the other choices. After all that is the least an engineering company would have to do when pitching a design.

 

 

 

Many organs can start to fail in various ways. Not surprising given that death is inevitable for all creatures. Yet the prostate design in one article (written by evolutionists) was described so: "Unfortunately, the prostate's BRILLIANT WRAP-AROUND STRUCTURE WITH DUAL-PURPOSE CORE TUBING can become a liability if the prostate swells or enlarges." Once again, many people cherry pick the particular things that they don't like, while mostly ignoring the cleverness that certainly was apparent to the author of that article.

 

Please link to that article so I can read it and respond to it in kind. Apparently you don't know that what I was pointing out was the bladder flowing straight through the prostrate thus causing problems with urination and infection. Not the prostates build of itself.

 

 

What about tortioned gastropods? Interesting! But given that they rely on moisture conservation so heavily, and that they secrete mostly insoluble uric acid as well as water (free from the mostly insoluble uric acid), it seems to me that such an arrangement would promote survival by having another source of water to hand in the vicinity of the head and feeding apparatus of the creature, rather than it being wasted by being expelled out of the back. Being "weird" doesn't really count for too much I shouldn't think. The fact that such poorly designed creatures are in abundance tends to argue against the viewpoint that such tortioned arrangements are doing those creatures too much in the way of harm. We see both kinds of creatures (tortioned and non-tortioned) are able to exist rather well.

 

The Panda's thumb, while often criticized as being another example of poor design that no designer would ever engineer, is nevertheless not appearing to hamper the dexterity of the Panda one bit in stripping bamboo. Many have remarked how easily and efficiently Panda's are able to do this. Perhaps we should ask a Panda what they think of their paws?

 

There is however a class of what has often been regarded as "poor designs" that could in the creationist viewpoint) be regarded as degenerations of the original designs. And I guess we'd have to admit that these degenerations are examples of evolution in action.

 

Flightless birds would be an example of that. As well as blind cave dwelling fish that have the information present to make eyes but have suffered mutations that prevent the eyes from forming. Some (though not all) pseudogenes would also fit into this category.

 

Tail like appendeces are used (in humans) in order to anchor muscles. Just because we have no tails of any length, should a designer take away a useful anchor point. Why would he do that? To be neat?

 

Much of that article comments more on similarities than design flaws. In some ways I tend to partly agree with them, because while they see similarities as pointing to common descent, we'd see such similarities as indicative of common designs and the re-use of ideas. So called "convergent evolution" is a rather extreme case of what look far more like common design ideas being executed in different ways, than it resembles evolution that happenned for some reason (usually attributed to similar environments) to converge to creatures that often look or perform in astonishingly similar ways, yet without any close enough phylogenetic relationships.

 

In any case we creationists do support the notion of limited evolution, and degeneration which will often evolve due to the fact that certain degenerative conditions and loss of functional information can actually be selectively advantages in certain nich environments.

 

We are not arguing that these things work and allow a species to survive, sounds an awful lot like evolution, but whether these things were designed. All of these things are easily explained in evolution but poorly explained with notions they were designed because they could be designed much better with better functionality. Like the pandas thumb that could be so much better designed by our, by IDers stand point, limited and ignorant engineers. Also your flightless bird example assumes that birds, and their feathers, were made to fly, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There is much more evidence that feathers were first used as insulation and just happened to be useful in flying, so would you consider flying birds a degeneration of archaeopteryx?

 

 

Also the idea of convergent evolution has been experimentally shown, how would you test common design?

 

 

 

I'm supporting the notion that naturalism can sometimes be falsified (by likelihoods) by ID. But many naturalists act as if ID must be excluded from science altogether. Thus it is they who are attempting to put naturalism into the unfalsifiablke category. But by acting that way, they are removing naturalism from the domain of science and into the domain of unfalsifiable dogma. ID is diffeent because it can be falsified by showing a natural phenomena that is up to the task at hand. Evolution gained widespread acceptance in it's day because back then it seemed to many scientiststo be a sufficent natural explanation. But now having learned a lot more in the interim (especially in regards to molecular biology) it is now philosophical inertia that is driving the continued acceptance of evolution more than the actual evidence. When I say evolution here, I am not talking about observed evolution, but the notion of inferred evolution = common descent from a single or group of one celled ancestral lifeforms.

 

 

What can evolution not explain, abiogenesis is not an avenue of evolution so that isn't part of this particular argument. For ID to gain acceptance in the biology community you must both disprove the competing theory and provide evidence for yours. I haven't seen ID do anything to disprove evolution through experiments instead of just saying it's impossible or providing evidence for design that doesn't have an easy counter example.

 

 

So you don't believe something single celled can become multicelled? What do you think of this? Even though this a some problems with yeast because it used to be multicelled, but you say you are a creationist so that shouldn't bother you since it couldn't have had enough time to evolve from multicelled to single celled. Also how do you explain being here since we used to be two single cells in two separate bodies.

 

 

 

 

There really are many difficulties for mindless natural processes in beig able to account for biology. We'll be going over them in time. Irreducible complexity for instance is a major hurdle for naturalism. Reports of IC's death are highly exaggerated!!

 

Please, please, please, please start providing examples and evidence

 

 

I think that is an overly idealistic view of the way most scientists think. Especially when the implications are as political and cultural as they are when it comes to support for the notion that something like a God might actually exist. Most people including scientists (though not all of them) cling tightly to their chosen beliefs. The history of science shows that rather dramatically. What you're talking about typically happens over time, as in "when the old guard die out" after which a paradigm shift is more easily achieved.

 

Yes many scientists can't get over their own pet theories, but I'm not talking about individuals. How does this under mind my statement? The old will die out and wrong ideas will change, but they still change.

[Monsters from the ID]

"So the claim that intelligence begets intelligence is about where the reproduction process (which is technology well beyond that of human comprehension in all of it's details at the present time) originate from? Mindless natural processes? Or an intelligence capable of engineering something like that? I'd go with the latter."

 

That's an argument from incredulity.

 

There is an observed mechanism by which mindless natural processes can do things like this. On the other hand there is no evidence for the existence of the "intelligence" which you postulate.

 

Are you referring to random mutations and natural selection as being the observed mechanism? I'll assume yes. If not you can fill me in on what it is.

 

It has been observed to do some things for sure. But it's a bit of a stretch to always think it can do what is often claimed of it. All of that (what I'll refer to as inferred evolution) seems to have been mostly inferred via indirect evidence, and deduction from the naturalistic paradigm, not just from observation. And fair enough, we have to cut some slack to RM & NS as the general idea is that the process must take a very long time to act. So we can't neccessarily expect to see things such as new multiple protein machines evolving in the laboratory. But even so, there are some good reasons to suspect that such a mechanism is limited enough in what it is capable of achieving, that some of the claims made of it may be suspect. That is why I am justifiably incredulous (non believing / skeptical) about such claims. I'm not saying it does nothing at all. I'm not even saying it isn't able to create new information. I'm just claiming it isn't able to do all that much (ie. it can't create very much functional information), which agrees well with direct observations that are scaled up. Don't blame the mechanism, blame the system that led to the overhyped claims about that mechanism. The mechanism is what it is. As for the indirect evidence supporting such claims? That has to be thrashed out separately as well. But taking what we observe of RM & NS and attempting to scale it up (as Behe specifically did in his book "The Edge of Evolution" (and also in a paper with Snoke about the amount of time taken for multiple specified mutations to occur)) shows it's limitations are very likely not going to allow it to achieve what many imagine it has, even in billions of years and with populations in the dozens of digits. That mechanism is fighting an exponential divergence between what might be able to happen in theory, and the kind of time periods it would likely take for such things to happen.

 

 

"Any visual clarity problems are solved via the existence of special cells which act like optical light fibres to conduct light through the maze of blood vessels."

Could you point them out for me please?

Here's a diagram.

http://en.wikipedia....ile:Gray881.png

 

They're the same cells, but you get the gist of the optical transmission better in this (idealized) diagram of the Muller glial cells.

 

This is the abstract of the PNAS paper referenced in the diagram: Müller cells are living optical fibers in the vertebrate retina

Here is another article in a newspaper about this discovery: Living optical fibres found in the eye

 

 

The abstract for that paper says:

 

Although biological cells are mostly transparent, they are phase objects that differ in shape and refractive index. Any image that is projected through layers of randomly oriented cells will normally be distorted by refraction, reflection, and scattering. Counterintuitively, the retina of the vertebrate eye is inverted with respect to its optical function and light must pass through several tissue layers before reaching the light-detecting photoreceptor cells. Here we report on the specific optical properties of glial cells present in the retina, which might contribute to optimize this apparently unfavorable situation. We investigated intact retinal tissue and individual Müller cells, which are radial glial cells spanning the entire retinal thickness. Müller cells have an extended funnel shape, a higher refractive index than their surrounding tissue, and are oriented along the direction of light propagation. Transmission and reflection confocal microscopy of retinal tissue in vitro and in vivo showed that these cells provide a low-scattering passage for light from the retinal surface to the photoreceptor cells. Using a modified dual-beam laser trap we could also demonstrate that individual Müller cells act as optical fibers. Furthermore, their parallel array in the retina is reminiscent of fiberoptic plates used for low-distortion image transfer. Thus, Müller cells seem to mediate the image transfer through the vertebrate retina with minimal distortion and low loss. This finding elucidates a fundamental feature of the inverted retina as an optical system and ascribes a new function to glial cells.

 

I so look forward to debating this with you, I would love to read of just one instance of actual Irreducible Complexity, just one is all I want, I await your reply with baited breath....

 

Uh oh!

 

How about something totally unexpected - the 3 stone arch!! Betcha' can't explain THAT Technological Terror of IC in terms of mindless natural processes!!!!!

 

But seriously, how about the rotary flagellum? It's already been discussed to death, so we'll have a bit more fact and less speculation to go on. We creationists claim it's irreducibly complex. A pretty good example of such a system. I'd also say that many, perhaps even most biological protein machines are also IC, but I'm not enough of a biology guy to say too much about those. But Behe points out in "The Edge of Evolution" that the eukaryotic flagellum is a far greater example of irreducible complexity than the rotary version is, but I guess we should stick with that.

 

But I must say, that for some time I have seen you in Mad Magazine sir, and I'm very pleased to meet you. I didn't know you were an evolutionist, but what, me worry?

Anyhow, perhaps you can tell me why you think that IC either doesn't exist in biology, or is irrelevant to evolution. Do you claim that IC doesn't exist period? I mean, do you allow that IC exists in nonbiological systems, such as the internal combustion engine for example? We can discuss that also as an example of what IC means in general. Because I claim it is a phenomena of a system that potentially might exist in any kind of systems, not just biological ones.

 

Note also that Muller's "interlocking complexity" would be a special case of IC. That would be a certain kind of IC which is capable of being built up gradually via the Mullerian 2 step process. However one could not assume that all examples of IC must belong to the "interlocking complexity" subset of IC systems. Well, one could infer that must be what has taken place in biological evolution of course, but then one would have to justify that position somehow.

 

Anyhow, what do you reckon?

 

Well, I will wait for your evidence. You still haven't provided an answer as to way we should do this though. There's no reason to think that just because we can't explain something now we never will be able to; because every time someone in history has thought that something is impossible to explain it still gets explained. So why would we accept that we can't explain it?

 

Because good science has to be one step above just believing that mindless natural processes are the catch all explanation for everything. We simply don't know that to be true. Certainly not for phenomena such as life, though it is very likely true for many other phenomena. You know, they just might even be the explanation for everything, but perhaps they are not. Science cannot just take such things on faith. The fact that biology has been unearthing such high levels of sophistication in the last few decades just might indicate that science is pointing us away from mindless natural processes.

 

Why do you say that ID has no evidence? What you mean I think is that it has no direct evidence. But it has plenty of indirect evidence. After all, if ID is true, then mindless natural processes must be unable to do some things, right? And whether ID is correct or not, we still know that mindless natural processes must be unable to do certain things! I mean, no one as far as I'm aware is saying that mindless natural processes are capable of doing anything.

 

So if MNP are insufficient, then one of the predictions of ID (a rather obvious one) is that we will be unable to find MNP to explain certain phenomena for which ID is implicated.

 

Now I take it you perhaps say that being unable to find any MNP's capable of performing certain tasks is still not evidence for iD. Right? But what you are then saying is that as long as you have no direct observations of ID (observations of the designer designing) then you must reject it on scientific grounds. Is that what you're saying?

 

Now what about if we reverse the siutation. Why should anyone believe that MNP is capable of originating certain phenomena, when we have no direct (observed) evidence of it taking place, but only indirect evidence (ie. the appearance in the fossil record of lifeforms, or via DNA similarities etc.) by which their evolution is indirectly inferred? We can take that further with abiogenesis. About the only indirect evidence that can take place is provided by some mostly irrelevant facts of chemistry, and the claim that since we're here, we must have been abiogenesisized into existence (and evolved from there into what we are now).

 

You know, I'm just saying that you have to be even handed in your approach.

 

 

The biggest problem I have with this is that you are saying we should accept an explanation that there is absolutely no evidence for. That's what I mean by default, something to go to when nothing else comes about. No scientist should support teaching things to people with literally no evidence to support it just because we have falsified other hypothesis.

 

To be consistent you would have to require that science teach neither ID nor MNP as the likely explanation for certain phenomena. Would you be happy with such a hardline approach? I would. I wouldn't mind if science had a policy of saying basically - for certain phenomena science cannot decide (base on insufficent evidence) as to whether certain phenomena have originated via MNP or via ID.

 

And then it would be up to individuals to decide for themselves what they wanted to make of that.

 

Would you support such a policy?

 

 

Because if intelligence is required for intelligence to come about the first intelligence must have come about from intelligence. If this is not the case you must accept that intelligence is not required.

 

Not quite true in all cases, though it seems obviously true for most cases.

 

Because what we're talking about is the ID calim that says this: intelligence is required to ORIGINATE intelligence, or a sophisticated phenomena such as biological life.

 

So what case wouldn't the ID claim apply to?

 

The case for which the first cause intelligence DODN'T HAVE ANY ORIGIN that needed to be explained! (One can also apply that to MNP with the universe).

 

In fact some of the resistance (highly emotive resistance by some fairly presitigious scientists) to the initial acceptance of the Big Bang theory was due to the realization that by promoting the big bang ideas, they would have to give up the notion that they had available to their worldview an infinite amount of time for MNP to be able to act and thus potentially do almost any conceivable thing within this universe. And even now there is a continuing resistance to the big bang from many scientists. I'm not talking about creationists, but about atheists who see evidence that they claim refutes the big bang viewpoint.

 

But at least for now, the orthodox view is that this universe has had around 14 billion years in order for MNP to put together what we see around us.

 

ID proposes that there is a designer because they don't believe natural processes can explain life and intelligence, but they then refuse to explain where this designer may have come from and why it doesn't follow the rules put forth by IDers. I am not saying not to search for a designer, but logical consistency is a must.

 

Hmm! If something was eternal, whether it be an eternal mindless natural p[henomena, or an eternal intelligence, then such a thing did not originate, and thus itself requires no ID inference to be applied to it.

 

It's up to you to decide whether that eternal something was MNP or an intelligence. The problem for naturalism is that we have studied MNP and so far we see that whether it is eternal or not, it does have limitations that prevent it from originating things.

 

What we have not done is study the proposed designer to see if it has any problems with originating things. But we do know that if such an intelligence exists, then it is likely greater than we are, and thus likely is able to originate phenomena such as life.

 

But a lot of this is way outside of what science can tell us for sure, right? It's up to you to decide to ignore the ID issue, and maybe even oppose it as well, or whether to give it serious consideration. The evidence for ID is all indirect. Yet still, we know that intelligence does provide a better explanation for these kinds of phenomena, in fact it provides the only explanation that is feasible.

 

But it requires a certain amount of faith in the unproveable. But then again, so does your viewpoint. You do have faith in nature, even though you do not have any proof that it can do such things.

 

It's up to you to decide these things for yourself.

 

If I'm not mistaken SETI searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence, not some sort of designer. I don't see anywhere on their website that they talk anything about design, only about extra-terrestrial intelligence and the search of such.

 

In essense it's the same thing. It's an intelligence designing signals which scientists don't accept could have originated naturally.

 

 

I can't get through your whle post now, but you wanted some anti-naturalistic evidence. Here's a link to some heavy reading - creationist biology on protein evolution and the flagellum.

 

The evolution of the flagellum

[Moontanman]

Are you referring to random mutations and natural selection as being the observed mechanism? I'll assume yes. If not you can fill me in on what it is.

 

I could but because you have already started out with a straw man argument that ignores most of what modern evolutionary theory really says i will just let you keep digging that hole.

 

 

 

How about something totally unexpected - the 3 stone arch!! Betcha' can't explain THAT Technological Terror of IC in terms of mindless natural processes!!!!!

 

lets see an example of it, I bet you are incorrect.

 

But seriously, how about the rotary flagellum? It's already been discussed to death, so we'll have a bit more fact and less speculation to go on. We creationists claim it's irreducibly complex. A pretty good example of such a system. I'd also say that many, perhaps even most biological protein machines are also IC, but I'm not enough of a biology guy to say too much about those. But Behe points out in "The Edge of Evolution" that the eukaryotic flagellum is a far greater example of irreducible complexity than the rotary version is, but I guess we should stick with that.

 

So sad, i thought you were really going to tell me something new, that one is old,. easily debunked and has been for quite some time. If you want I can provide you with a video that illustrates this quite well. Ah! Here it is

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_360544&v=SdwTwNPyR9w&feature=iv

 

 

But I must say, that for some time I have seen you in Mad Magazine sir, and I'm very pleased to meet you. I didn't know you were an evolutionist, but what, me worry?

 

Well I got tired of my Mr Know it all avatar, it scared away the marks

 

Anyhow, perhaps you can tell me why you think that IC either doesn't exist in biology, or is irrelevant to evolution. Do you claim that IC doesn't exist period? I mean, do you allow that IC exists in nonbiological systems, such as the internal combustion engine for example? We can discuss that also as an example of what IC means in general. Because I claim it is a phenomena of a system that potentially might exist in any kind of systems, not just biological ones.

 

It has the potential to exist but an internal combustion engine is very poor example, they do not reproduce, mutate nor are they natural, so far no example of IC has been found in biological systems, decades ago some of the stuff seemed that way but fortunately we ignore the nay sayers and went on investigating instead of say god did it and that settles it...

 

Note also that Muller's "interlocking complexity" would be a special case of IC. That would be a certain kind of IC which is capable of being built up gradually via the Mullerian 2 step process. However one could not assume that all examples of IC must belong to the "interlocking complexity" subset of IC systems. Well, one could infer that must be what has taken place in biological evolution of course, but then one would have to justify that position somehow.

 

I'm still waitign for an example of IC, got any?

 

 

Anyhow, what do you reckon?

 

You don't understand biology or evolution.

 

 

 

 

Because good science has to be one step above just believing that mindless natural processes are the catch all explanation for everything. We simply don't know that to be true. Certainly not for phenomena such as life, though it is very likely true for many other phenomena. You know, they just might even be the explanation for everything, but perhaps they are not. Science cannot just take such things on faith. The fact that biology has been unearthing such high levels of sophistication in the last few decades just might indicate that science is pointing us away from mindless natural processes.

 

Science never takes anything on faith, faith is not part of the scientific process...

Edited June 28, 2011 by Moontanman

[Ringer]

Because good science has to be one step above just believing that mindless natural processes are the catch all explanation for everything. We simply don't know that to be true. Certainly not for phenomena such as life, though it is very likely true for many other phenomena. You know, they just might even be the explanation for everything, but perhaps they are not. Science cannot just take such things on faith. The fact that biology has been unearthing such high levels of sophistication in the last few decades just might indicate that science is pointing us away from mindless natural processes.

 

Why do you say that ID has no evidence? What you mean I think is that it has no direct evidence. But it has plenty of indirect evidence. After all, if ID is true, then mindless natural processes must be unable to do some things, right? And whether ID is correct or not, we still know that mindless natural processes must be unable to do certain things! I mean, no one as far as I'm aware is saying that mindless natural processes are capable of doing anything.

 

So if MNP are insufficient, then one of the predictions of ID (a rather obvious one) is that we will be unable to find MNP to explain certain phenomena for which ID is implicated.

 

Now I take it you perhaps say that being unable to find any MNP's capable of performing certain tasks is still not evidence for iD. Right? But what you are then saying is that as long as you have no direct observations of ID (observations of the designer designing) then you must reject it on scientific grounds. Is that what you're saying?

 

Now what about if we reverse the siutation. Why should anyone believe that MNP is capable of originating certain phenomena, when we have no direct (observed) evidence of it taking place, but only indirect evidence (ie. the appearance in the fossil record of lifeforms, or via DNA similarities etc.) by which their evolution is indirectly inferred? We can take that further with abiogenesis. About the only indirect evidence that can take place is provided by some mostly irrelevant facts of chemistry, and the claim that since we're here, we must have been abiogenesisized into existence (and evolved from there into what we are now).

 

You know, I'm just saying that you have to be even handed in your approach.

 

No any assumption we make should be based on subsequent evidence and experience. Based on this everything we have explained has been done so using completely natural processes. That's why we should assume natural processes, not because I feel like it. You still refuse to link all these amazing discoveries that have biologists scratching their heads that I don't know about and I can't understand why. That would be the easiest way to prove your point.

 

I didn't say ID has no direct evidence, I said it has no evidence and that is what I meant. People saying that something looks designed isn't evidence. Indirect evidence is fine, but they don't even have that. What evidence do they have, you still haven't given me any. When you start giving evidence for your side I'll really start a good debate with you, until then we are just going in circles. We do have indirect as well as direct evidence for evolution, so don't even start up with that crap.

 

 

 

To be consistent you would have to require that science teach neither ID nor MNP as the likely explanation for certain phenomena. Would you be happy with such a hardline approach? I would. I wouldn't mind if science had a policy of saying basically - for certain phenomena science cannot decide (base on insufficent evidence) as to whether certain phenomena have originated via MNP or via ID.

 

And then it would be up to individuals to decide for themselves what they wanted to make of that.

 

Would you support such a policy?

 

Sure, which is what they do. I've never seen a middle or highschool biology book talking about abiogensis, and since there is tons of evidence for evolution and none for ID it wouldn't change anything except make these 'critical thinking' laws illegal. Show me this indirect evidence you keep talking about.

 

 

Not quite true in all cases, though it seems obviously true for most cases.

 

Because what we're talking about is the ID calim that says this: intelligence is required to ORIGINATE intelligence, or a sophisticated phenomena such as biological life.

 

So what case wouldn't the ID claim apply to?

 

The case for which the first cause intelligence DODN'T HAVE ANY ORIGIN that needed to be explained! (One can also apply that to MNP with the universe).

 

The claim would apply to everything, that's why you would have to explain the other origin. Why, exactly, would you not need to explain the origin of the other intelligence?

 

 

 

In fact some of the resistance (highly emotive resistance by some fairly presitigious scientists) to the initial acceptance of the Big Bang theory was due to the realization that by promoting the big bang ideas, they would have to give up the notion that they had available to their worldview an infinite amount of time for MNP to be able to act and thus potentially do almost any conceivable thing within this universe. And even now there is a continuing resistance to the big bang from many scientists. I'm not talking about creationists, but about atheists who see evidence that they claim refutes the big bang viewpoint.

 

But at least for now, the orthodox view is that this universe has had around 14 billion years in order for MNP to put together what we see around us.

 

 

 

Hmm! If something was eternal, whether it be an eternal mindless natural p[henomena, or an eternal intelligence, then such a thing did not originate, and thus itself requires no ID inference to be applied to it.

 

It's up to you to decide whether that eternal something was MNP or an intelligence. The problem for naturalism is that we have studied MNP and so far we see that whether it is eternal or not, it does have limitations that prevent it from originating things.

 

What we have not done is study the proposed designer to see if it has any problems with originating things. But we do know that if such an intelligence exists, then it is likely greater than we are, and thus likely is able to originate phenomena such as life.

 

But a lot of this is way outside of what science can tell us for sure, right? It's up to you to decide to ignore the ID issue, and maybe even oppose it as well, or whether to give it serious consideration. The evidence for ID is all indirect. Yet still, we know that intelligence does provide a better explanation for these kinds of phenomena, in fact it provides the only explanation that is feasible.

 

But it requires a certain amount of faith in the unproveable. But then again, so does your viewpoint. You do have faith in nature, even though you do not have any proof that it can do such things.

 

It's up to you to decide these things for yourself.

 

You mean there are differing opinions in science? Heavens no! Of course there are scientists that believe this and believe that, all that really matters is the evidence. There are many things that are still unexplained, thankfully or we would all be useless, but that doesn't mean they are unexplanable. Things that are explained doesn't mean the explanations are entirely correct, or correct at all for that matter. All that matters is they explain what is observed to the best of current ability and make accurate predictions.

 

Again, please, please, please start providing the evidence you keep talking about.

 

 

In essense it's the same thing. It's an intelligence designing signals which scientists don't accept could have originated naturally.

 

It is in no way the same thing. Why would you assume the intelligence is not natural? Just because you want to?

 

 

I can't get through your whle post now, but you wanted some anti-naturalistic evidence. Here's a link to some heavy reading - creationist biology on protein evolution and the flagellum.

 

The evolution of the flagellum

 

 

The entire first part is based solely on an argument from incredulity, most of the rest of what I read is misunderstanding some of the ways things actually happen (I'll admit I didn't read it all). He doesn't give any evidence that the parts of the flagellum would actually be useless without some parts, you could do this by knocking out some proteins and not letting it develop fully although this would have other problems even if we know exactly what to knock out, only saying that he believes it do be so. But here are some further reading that could help understand why your link is wrong.

 

http://www.talkdesig.../flagellum.html

http://www.millerand...n2/article.html

 

 

In addition to moon's link watch this

[edit] I figured I say that I know he mentions one of these articles on his site and says the flagellum evolved after the proposed mechanism, but since he doesn't mention the exact evidence and I can't access the papers he cites I can't say with certainty that that is what they actually propose[/edit]

Edited June 29, 2011 by Ringer

[Monsters from the ID]

I could but because you have already started out with a straw man argument that ignores most of what modern evolutionary theory really says i will just let you keep digging that hole.

 

Well, I'd rather not waste time digging holes uneccessarily. Are you talking about facilitated variation perhaps?

 

 

lets see an example of it, I bet you are incorrect.

 

Don't worry about that. It was a joke. I thought you might be familiar with the 3 stone arch, which is said to be an example of "irreducible complexity" that is sometimes debunked by those wanting to point out that IC is no big deal. I could say that they're strawmanning the argument, but I really don't think they're intending to do that. The 3 stone arch does in fact have irreducible properties. By showing that such things can form regardless of irreducibility, some seem to honestly believe they have refuted IC.

 

The 3 stone arch (you may have a different name for it) is a arch (or bridge) that cannot function as a bridge unless all of the parts are in place. It cannot function with 1 or 2 stones. We're talking about an "archway" with two flattish topped boulders on the right and the left sides, with a large flattish slab stone on top forming a crude arch or bridge over some obstacle. It needs all 3 stones to be in place for it to function as a bridge. But of course, such bridges can and do originate naturally often enough due to rockfalls etc. So does the fact that such irreducibly complex structures are observed to form naturally reasonably often, refute the notion of irreducible complexity as a hurdle that evolution cannot cross?

 

It all depends on the sophistication of the system and the number of parts involved (the complexity). Because the 3 stone arch or bridge wasn't really what you'd call irreducibly complex after all. It did have the property of having irreducibility (all 3 of it's parts had to already be in place before the characteristic function could perform) but it also had the property of simplicity. It isn't usually a problem for nature to be able to originate something that is irreducible, as long as it is also simple. Call the 3 stone arch irreducibly simple (rather than irreducibly complex). With only 3 parts that have to be setup (and given that functional 3 stone bridges don't have to be built to exacting specifications) it's usually no very big deal for mindless natural processes to be able to put one together.

 

What is more relevant to origins is when we have a system that is not simple, has the property of irreduciblity and where it's parts need to be interfaced to pretty exact specifications. Simplicity in this case = few parts with low specification for the parts and the interfaces between them. Complexity in this case = many parts with high specifications for each part and high specifications for the interfaces between them. So in the 3 stone arch, the specification is low because many stones will fit the bill of what is useful, and the interfaces between the stones need not be precise (wobbles and poorly fitting stones are not much of a problem). The property of Irreducibility is as it was defined beforehand.

 

So what we claim is a problem for evolution (a problem not involving theoretical impossibility but involving practical infeasibility = it would take too long to originate) are irreducibly complex systems. Such as the rotary flagellum, the most well known example of such a system. In such a system we have a high specification for each of it's parts (functional proteins are exceedingly rare entities in their configuration sequence (meaning that out of all possible amino acid sequences, very few will fold into functional proteins) thus they are highly specified chemicals that need to be "found" from out of the larger number of nonfunctionally folded proteins. We also have a high specification for the interfaces between these proteins. They need to be a fairly precise structural and electrochemical fit in order to be able to cooperate functionally as they do. Consider as examples, the various cap proteins that are capable of placing the unfolding flagellar tail proteins into position (dancing on the top like a Barbie Doll ballerina!). The motor assembly which can convert an electric gradient into efficient high speed rotary motion, and also the protein transporter assembly (the T3SS) which is capable of unfolding proteins at the bottom, drawing their unfolded amino acid residues upwards alon a 2 nm wide pathway, and enabling them to refold at the top. Note also that the idea that a much cruder unrefined less optimal version of tsuch a machine would be able to function enough (and reliably enough) to be favourably selected for is also a bit of a nonsense. Not only is the function irreducible, but it's reliability and quality of function must also be above a certain threshold (irreducibkle quality and irreducible reliability) or else the organism would have little use for such a waste of energy as such a system would be. After all, pure Brownian movement is going to at least provide some motility. A system unable to have it's effects felt above the major background of brownian motion isn't going to be of much use. Poor function in such a system isn't going to be selected for, even if it managed to evolve in the first place.

 

 

So sad, i thought you were really going to tell me something new, that one is old,. easily debunked and has been for quite some time. If you want I can provide you with a video that illustrates this quite well. Ah! Here it is

 

http://www.youtube.c...yR9w&feature=iv

 

 

Hey, the flagellum is an oldie but a goodie! That video (a simplified version of Nick Matzke's take on flagellum evolution) appears to work quite feasibility to the casual evolution enthusiast, because the steps proposed don't address the complexity issues. (Those issues involving the required specification of the protein parts, and the requirements for highly specified interfaces between those parts.) Leave those out, and the story can be practically anything you can dream up or watch in a cartoon. It makes sense in the same way that morhing creatures in the movies make sense. But as Behe says, the devil is in the details. All that is required is a chain of usefully intermediate functions that serve as periodic waystations, in order to invoke natural selection. Each stage is functionally beneficial (is it not?) and thus natural selection will preserve it. Voila - the evolution of the flagellum made easy. But can you see the weakness of the presentation yet? It's in between each of the stages. No evaluation was made of how you'd ever manage to get from stage to stage. What would be able to guide the evolution from one functional stage, to the next stage? That is the unaddressed problem with this proposal. Natural selection can keep the evolution on track so that a particular stage would tend to conserve or improve it's function. But how do we manage to get from one function to the next? Guided evolution, or random evolution? As youtuber cdk007 always says, think about it. Two serious problems for such an evolutionary pathway have to do with 1. The extreme rarity of functional proteins within their potential sequence space. 2. The implications on natural selection of having changing functions (and the evolution of new functions) along the evolutionary trajectory. This causes evolution to diverge from a one function direct Darwinian pathway, into an indirect Darwinian pathway, where the system function changes into different ones over time as illustrated in that cdk007 video..

 

Well I got tired of my Mr Know it all avatar, it scared away the marks

 

You have good taste in avatars!

 

 

It has the potential to exist but an internal combustion engine is very poor example, they do not reproduce, mutate nor are they natural, so far no example of IC has been found in biological systems, decades ago some of the stuff seemed that way but fortunately we ignore the nay sayers and went on investigating instead of say god did it and that settles it...

 

Well, I just wanted to see if you agree that the basic idea of IC is valid. Whether or not an internal combustion engine translates poorly to biology is another issue. The internal combustioon engine does at least serve to illustrate what IC is apart from it's application to biology. It seems that for such a case you do seem to agree that such a thing exists.

 

But I guess IC's application (or lack of it) to biology is going to be the sticking point. I'd claim that most of the refutations of IC didn't succeed in refuting it, save for some trivial examples. Remember that the creationist claim isn't (or certainly shouldn't be) that the evolution of irreducibly complex systems is theoretically impossible. That's a bit of a hard claim to demonstrate. What we claim is that the evolution of IC systems is infeasible given the populations and the time available. I believe that may be one of the motivations for the multiverse hypothesis, though I believe most of the cosmologists haven't picked up on IC, but instead the fine tuning of physical constants argument. It's an inference akin in some ways to the ID inference, in that it in it's way deals with some of the limitations of resources of mindless natural processes by proposing a possible way around such limitations so that the anthropic principle becomes somewhat more than just an empty statement. And with no way to directly observe any of these other proposed universes. As in the case of ID (and as is often the case with evolution) all the evidence is neccessarily indirect.

 

One of the proponents of the multiverse once stated stated something like this: "If you don't want to believe in a God, you're going to need to believe in the multiverse". (I cannot remeber who said that, but it's in an article somewhere).

 

I looked for it, and found it. The quote is from this article: Science's alternative to an intelligent creator: the multiverse theory

 

A scientist called Bernard Carr (a cosmologist), commenting about whether many universes exist or not, said: "If there is only one universe, you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don't want God, you'd better have a multiverse."

 

 

Science never takes anything on faith, faith is not part of the scientific process...

 

 

True. But plenty of scientists decide to live by faith (not the results of science) in their chosen philosophy. They comfort themselves that they really aren't doing that by claiming to be following the "consensus view". That's in many cases, sciencespeak for "going with the flow". The science itself isn't the issue. It's how we interpret the results of scientific research and then try to fit those results into our chosen worldviews. Depending on what we believe we'll be reading rather diferent conclusions into the results.

 

But hey, I'm as guilty of that as you are. I just think that we might have some better arguments on our side (but that remains to be seen).

[Moontanman]

I am going to be busy most of the day Monster but so far all you have done is talk, no back up what so ever, just talk and deny, talk and deny, I'll be back later in the day, try to actually back up your arguments instead of just deny and talk. So far you have shown us nothing and your assertions about the flagellum is totally off base and i can provide evidence to show you are not refuting anything, the video pointed out very well the usefulness of the partial flagellum. you remind me of Andy of golden crocoduck fame. You get an answer and instead of digesting the answer you simply ignore the answer and ask the same questions again. That doesn't cut it here.

[Monsters from the ID]

I am going to be busy most of the day Monster but so far all you have done is talk, no back up what so ever, just talk and deny, talk and deny, I'll be back later in the day, try to actually back up your arguments instead of just deny and talk. So far you have shown us nothing and your assertions about the flagellum is totally off base and i can provide evidence to show you are not refuting anything, the video pointed out very well the usefulness of the partial flagellum. you remind me of Andy of golden crocoduck fame. You get an answer and instead of digesting the answer you simply ignore the answer and ask the same questions again. That doesn't cut it here.

 

 

What I have done is to lay out some of my case in general introductory terms. That would seem to be the normal way of doing things, wouldn't it? I mean, just because I haven't gone into all of the details and provided all supporting evidence at once, is that really a reason for you to start sounding so negative early on? I thought we were having a good chat with some initial statements. You had said that you were so looking forward to discussing irreducible complexity with me. Since you're likely about to refute the hell out of me, I thought you'd be kind of enjoying yourself a little more than you seem to be. We're not involved in anything all that crucial after all, just discussing origins on a science forum in a thread that few will ever read. I think you may have lost some perspective on that fact. As HAL 9000 once said: "Look, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over." Also, take your time. I have other replies to get to in any case, and I'll be busy all tomorrow and tomorrow night. There'll be plenty of time for this in due course. And I'm not a bit interested in "gotcha" statements. That's for juveniles. I'm just here to put forward my point of view and see if I can resist the refutations. I didn't even come onto this forum of my own accord. A member who shall remain anonymous asked me to join up, because he wanted to see real scientists show me where I was in error. OK? Talk to you later.

[Moontanman]

Early on? What are you waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ? IC of a machine does not equate with the idea of IC in a reproducing biological system with inherited variation. I am not upset, i would be fine if you just conceded the point and went on but simply dragging your argument out with nothing but the equivalent of he said she said and no evidence is not only annoying I am pretty sure it's against the rules here. You have claimed evidence of IC, if you have it, lets see it, put up or shut up is my motto.

 

The very idea of IC is saying god did it so there is no need to question any further and to say that scientists have faith in science is just silly, I was referring to the fact that faith has no place in science, it is not allowed in science. a scientist can have faith in anything he wants but if he asserts that faith as proof of anything then he is out of line and will be called on it by other scientists. Most scientists have some sort of religious faith but they are smart enough to understand that science is not based on or in faith in anything supernatural, only evidence counts and unlike religion which is indeed what IC is just like ID, science looks at the evidence and follows it where it leads, IC/ID looks at a conclusion and tries to shoe horn evidence to prove it. that is not how our First world civilization came to be and if we adopt the ID/IC method our First world civilization will stop progressing and digress into another dark age of superstition and ignorance.

 

Now if you do have have the means to show us wrong quite trying to lube us up and show it. The suspense is killing me I have about an hour before i start my day, go for it. But of course you cannot, you know it and I know it, so this is just a silly little dance that evidently amuses you in some way. IC/ID supposes a designer of some sort that very idea is totally unsupportable as the idea of a flat earth supported by a huge turtle, what supports the turtle? Well is it turtles all the way down? down to where? It make no sense what so ever...

[John Cuthber]

Thanks for the data on the optical fibres in the eye. I should have remembered Orgel's second rule.

Of course, it doesn't really prove a lot. Were Pringle cans invented to act as antennae for wi fi or were they invented for some other purpose, but subsequently found to act as wi fi links? Glial cells are usually "just structural" but it doesn't surprise me that evolution has co opted some of them. The basic form; a long thin cylinder, would be there as a structural component. To be tough it would have a lower water content and/ or a higher level of cross linking which would mean it had a higher refractive index. So to do it's structural job, it would be pretty well set up to act as a wave guide.

 

Any chance of an answer to my point that you seemed to be using the argument from personal incredulity?

[Ringer]

Since this wasn't addressed to me I wasn't going to respond but I thought I'd point some things out.

 

 

Hey, the flagellum is an oldie but a goodie! That video (a simplified version of Nick Matzke's take on flagellum evolution) appears to work quite feasibility to the casual evolution enthusiast, because the steps proposed don't address the complexity issues. (Those issues involving the required specification of the protein parts, and the requirements for highly specified interfaces between those parts.) Leave those out, and the story can be practically anything you can dream up or watch in a cartoon. It makes sense in the same way that morhing creatures in the movies make sense. But as Behe says, the devil is in the details. All that is required is a chain of usefully intermediate functions that serve as periodic waystations, in order to invoke natural selection. Each stage is functionally beneficial (is it not?) and thus natural selection will preserve it. Voila - the evolution of the flagellum made easy. But can you see the weakness of the presentation yet? It's in between each of the stages. No evaluation was made of how you'd ever manage to get from stage to stage. What would be able to guide the evolution from one functional stage, to the next stage? That is the unaddressed problem with this proposal. Natural selection can keep the evolution on track so that a particular stage would tend to conserve or improve it's function. But how do we manage to get from one function to the next? Guided evolution, or random evolution? As youtuber cdk007 always says, think about it. Two serious problems for such an evolutionary pathway have to do with 1. The extreme rarity of functional proteins within their potential sequence space. 2. The implications on natural selection of having changing functions (and the evolution of new functions) along the evolutionary trajectory. This causes evolution to diverge from a one function direct Darwinian pathway, into an indirect Darwinian pathway, where the system function changes into different ones over time as illustrated in that cdk007 video..

 

The steps addressed are all about the complexity issues. Just because things work the way they do now doesn't mean that's how they have always worked. The bones in our ear are a modification of an ancestral jaw bone. That doesn't mean the ancestral jaw bone was made to become a bone in our inner ear, it just happened to be useful for that function. None of the parts of the flaggellum needed to be in the same form as they are now, the same proteins can be used in a different way with a different functions. Not all things have to be functionally beneficial, some things may not have a function at a certain time and just don't become selected out, this is called genetic drift. Those can just hang out with doing nothing until another mutation renders them functionally beneficial or not and allows selection to start. So even if the mechanisms of a flagellum were not beneficial, as long as they didn't hamper the survival of their barriers it wouldn't be a problem because they can still reproduce as well as the competition. For something to be selected out it many times has to be inherently harmful in some way.

 

 

 

Well, I just wanted to see if you agree that the basic idea of IC is valid. Whether or not an internal combustion engine translates poorly to biology is another issue. The internal combustioon engine does at least serve to illustrate what IC is apart from it's application to biology. It seems that for such a case you do seem to agree that such a thing exists.

 

But I guess IC's application (or lack of it) to biology is going to be the sticking point. I'd claim that most of the refutations of IC didn't succeed in refuting it, save for some trivial examples. Remember that the creationist claim isn't (or certainly shouldn't be) that the evolution of irreducibly complex systems is theoretically impossible. That's a bit of a hard claim to demonstrate. What we claim is that the evolution of IC systems is infeasible given the populations and the time available. I believe that may be one of the motivations for the multiverse hypothesis, though I believe most of the cosmologists haven't picked up on IC, but instead the fine tuning of physical constants argument. It's an inference akin in some ways to the ID inference, in that it in it's way deals with some of the limitations of resources of mindless natural processes by proposing a possible way around such limitations so that the anthropic principle becomes somewhat more than just an empty statement. And with no way to directly observe any of these other proposed universes. As in the case of ID (and as is often the case with evolution) all the evidence is neccessarily indirect.

 

One of the proponents of the multiverse once stated stated something like this: "If you don't want to believe in a God, you're going to need to believe in the multiverse". (I cannot remeber who said that, but it's in an article somewhere).

 

I looked for it, and found it. The quote is from this article: Science's alternative to an intelligent creator: the multiverse theory

 

A scientist called Bernard Carr (a cosmologist), commenting about whether many universes exist or not, said: "If there is only one universe, you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don't want God, you'd better have a multiverse."

 

First, as we have been saying over and over, it doesn't matter what someone says, even if they have a Phd. What matters is the evidence. What evidence do they have that if the universe was made up of different fundamental rules and such that some sort of life wouldn't form. I'm sure even if there was another universe with radically different make-up and it had intelligent life there are some of them saying, "how do you explain our universe being perfectly made for use." Quite simply it's not, we are evolved from ancient ancestors who were made from this world. This world is made up of things in this universe. So we were made to form fit this universe, not the other way around. Asking what the chances are of something that happened is useless because by definition if something that has happened the chances of it happening are one.

 

 

 

True. But plenty of scientists decide to live by faith (not the results of science) in their chosen philosophy. They comfort themselves that they really aren't doing that by claiming to be following the "consensus view". That's in many cases, sciencespeak for "going with the flow". The science itself isn't the issue. It's how we interpret the results of scientific research and then try to fit those results into our chosen worldviews. Depending on what we believe we'll be reading rather diferent conclusions into the results.

 

But hey, I'm as guilty of that as you are. I just think that we might have some better arguments on our side (but that remains to be seen).

 

 

Scientists shouldn't fit the results to their worldview, that's called falsifying and it is frowned upon. The theories they propose should explain the evidence they see, not them explaining something then cherry picking evidence. That's the reason we have things like meta-studies to make sure that doesn't happen. People seeing different conclusions in the results is the reason the we have controls, peer-review, reproduction, etc. We can change controls to see what changes in the results to see if the data was interpreted properly. Peer-review to try to catch things before they are published and reproduction to make sure the results weren't falsified or something was messed up. Also, if another person has a better theory that can make more accurate predictions and explains the evidence that has been observed that is the 'worldview' science will have to end up taking to be able to continue to flourish.

[Monsters from the ID]

No any assumption we make should be based on subsequent evidence and experience. Based on this everything we have explained has been done so using completely natural processes. That's why we should assume natural processes, not because I feel like it. You still refuse to link all these amazing discoveries that have biologists scratching their heads that I don't know about and I can't understand why. That would be the easiest way to prove your point.

 

Some of that evidence demonstrating the difficulties with mindless natural processes are in that thread I posted earlier. The problem is it's a very long thread and in order to be able to get any further you'd need to have read it and be ready to dispute certain points.

 

However I can't really expect you to plough through all of that by yourself. So perhaps we can use that as a reference and I will sort of talk you through it. Then you can dispute certain points. Unfortunately we do have to do that at some point though, or else you'll be forever waiting for me to "present evidence that mindless natural processes have limitations of relevance to evolution and irreducible complexity", and I'll be forever telling you to "read all of that link".

 

 

I didn't say ID has no direct evidence, I said it has no evidence and that is what I meant. People saying that something looks designed isn't evidence. Indirect evidence is fine, but they don't even have that.

 

But before you can say that and have that kind of a statement taken seriously, you'd first have to have gone through the matters in that link on the difficulties of evolving IC machines (like the flagellum). I'm not ahving a go at you, but I note that you are saying repeatedly in this post that I haven't yet offered you any evidence, yet admitting that you haven't read that article in full. Now as I said I didn't really expect you to read all of that, because it is just too long. On the other hand, given that you've admitted that you haven't yet read it, I suggest you back off on the "lack of any evidence" claim for now - at least until we have gone over that article in a bit more depth.

 

 

The claim would apply to everything, that's why you would have to explain the other origin. Why, exactly, would you not need to explain the origin of the other intelligence?

 

It does apply to everything. An eternal mindless universe, and an eternal intelligence. For the same reason that people don't feel the need to explain an eternal universe or eternal energy. If something actually is eternal, it has no origin to be explained. Something after all had to be eternal. We just don't know anything about what exactly that eternal something was. We certainly do not know that whatever the eternal something was had to be simple. That idea is nothing more than a hunch based on being comfortable with the idea of simple going to complex. Something I may add that we never see occurring in mindless nature. But whether simple or complex, something must have been eternal. It is in fact impossible to get something out of nothing. The alternative, that something popped into existence from truly nothing at all (no energy, no laws - nothing) is an impossibility. That is far more illogical a belief, than the idea that something must have always existed.

 

 

It is in no way the same thing. Why would you assume the intelligence is not natural? Just because you want to?

 

How is it not the same thing? Explain your objection. A positive SETI inference is the acceptance that it is most likely that an intelligence manipulated laws so that a signal was produced which would most likely have not been able to happen as the result of mindless nature.

 

How is intelligence not natural? Because whenever I use the word natural I am referring to mindless natural processes. An intelligence (in a body) is not mindless nature. Mindles nature is natural laws with no intelligence. You claim that intelligence is derived from mindless nature, however that is not known. To assume that to be the case is begging the question that this thread is named after in any case.

 

 

The entire first part is based solely on an argument from incredulity, most of the rest of what I read is misunderstanding some of the ways things actually happen (I'll admit I didn't read it all).

 

He doesn't give any evidence that the parts of the flagellum would actually be useless without some parts, you could do this by knocking out some proteins and not letting it develop fully although this would have other problems even if we know exactly what to knock out, only saying that he believes it do be so.

 

As far as I know such kinds of knockout experiments on the flagellum have been carried out.

 

One thing Miller says in the youtube video that is weak, is that he claims that irreducible complexity was taken apart at the trial because of the discovery of the strong similarities between the T3SS and the flagellum assembly transportation system. The problem is that the T3SS momologue in the flagellum is all of 10 proteins. The flagellum is 40 to 50 (depending on the version). It's only been suggested that this is an evolutionary waypoint. How does that really defeat irreducible complexity? Miller doesn't say anything about how the T3SS could have formed (it is also very sophisticated in it's own right) nor about what took place from the 10th protein up to the 40th or 50th. Note that he says "that's not evidence, that's an argument". It is a starting point for later investigation perhaps. But such a conjecture which may be the basis for further studies isn't any basis for declaring that IC is a dead in the water concept!

 

IC (don't confuse IC with ID) makes the claim that the evolution of such multi-protein machines is very unlikely based on what we know about proteins and evolution, and the property of irreducible complexity as well. That has never been refuted. All that has happenned is that people like Matzke have proposed hypotheses that may be the basis for future work. But so far that is all there is. We are "incredulous" about such explanations of the possible evolutionary pathways they propose because we know of principles in the laws of nature that would make such evolutionary steps infeasible. You know these princiles too (very likely) but you haven't perhaps imagined they also applied to evolution.

 

What do I mean by infeasible? I mean it in this way. If you were in the middle of a very well constructed maze that was say 10km wide, then either you will be going around in circles and walking up blind alleys for a very very long time, or else you could walk out of it in say 12 hours. You really could walk out of it in 12 hours! (That is if the maze actually was built so that you could in fact get out of it). All you'd need to do is to take the correct path out. But is that very likely?

 

IC makes the claim that though you perhaps may be able to walk out of a large maze, in general you will not take the fastest route out. Yet such an argument does fall flat for a tiny maze, because the smaller the maze, the less it matters if you don't take the fastest way out. Right? But as the maze grows larger, the time taken to get out of it grows exponentially. Even though the time taken to walk straight out may only increase linearly.

 

It may be likely enough to happen once in a while for a 10km wide maze that you could find your way out by the fastest path, but most of the time, it will be much much longer before you'd ever get out of it. If such a maze was 1000km wide, is it feasible to think you'd ever manage to get out in 100 days? It would perhaps be possible, but far more unlikely than the likelihood of being able to find the right pathway out of the 10km wide maze.

 

Now I'll bet that you'll be saying that such examples have nothing to do with the way evolution works. For instance, "evolution isn't trying to get out of a maze". Is the problem completely unlike evolution? Evolution is searching (even though it does not plan or intend to be seraching) for ever more sophisticated function. It must be searching for and finding such functions or else we'd still be just an adapting crude single celled lifeform. One way evolution works is to randomly change DNA codons. It is possible to get from a starting functional protein to a novel functional protein without changing all that many codons for a small protein, perhaps only dozens of them. But say we need to change a certain 40 codons. We could change them in just 40 mutations. But how likely is that to actually happen? The possible number of changes (assuming we picked out all the correct 40 codons to change in the first place) is 4 to the 40th power ~= 1000000000000000000000000 possible codon changes.

 

However you might point out that "Evolution isn't aiming for any particulr protein target sequence or solution, so you can't "cheat" in the argument by working backwards."

 

I get your point, but we can show that proteins are in fact so very rare in sequience space that it doesn't matter that no particular target is being aimed at, because there are so few functional protein targets in existence in any case, that evolution is very unlikely to hit any of them. Put it this way, the smaller and simpler the changes needed, the more likely evolution is to succeed, but there comes a point where it gets too slow and never manages to find any "targets" due to the exponential slowing down of the process. Most of that is explained in some detail in the end of that article I referenced earlier.

 

So finding protein function is quite a lot like being in a maze. The outside represents a new higher level (or just new) protein function. The starting point represents the initial function. There are many possible paths. The maze example is a bit forgiving in another way, because we assume there actually is a way from the middle to the outside of the maze. What if there wasn't any such path? Think about it. The walls inside the maze represent the fitness barriers preventing a pathway directly to the higfher function that awaits. Is there a way through? Or not? (There is always a way out of the maze! You can fly out of it.) But evolution has to walk through it gradually and cannot fly out of it. Actually some larger nonpoint mutations could simulate jumping over many walls to a new location, but there is still no guarantee (if the maze wasn't intelligently designed to be solveable) that it is possible to even get out of it.

 

Not only that, but such a maze for evolution is also blind, and has no memories, which makes it harder still.

 

See, protein evolution isn't an easy thing to have happen. Proteins are very rare things. Only a small proportion of all possible amino acid sequences are capable of forming functional folds that would be useful in biology. How does evolution find them? Tell me if you know how.

 

In my next reply I will start going through that article.

 

I also need to go over the articles that you mentioned in detail, just as I suggested that we go over the article I referenced. Perhaps since I will be talking you through the other article, you can talk me through these articles when you have time too (don't worry about the youtube video though. I have already seen it and have commented on it above.

[Moontanman]

Some of that evidence demonstrating the difficulties with mindless natural processes are in that thread I posted earlier. The problem is it's a very long thread and in order to be able to get any further you'd need to have read it and be ready to dispute certain points.

 

However I can't really expect you to plough through all of that by yourself. So perhaps we can use that as a reference and I will sort of talk you through it. Then you can dispute certain points. Unfortunately we do have to do that at some point though, or else you'll be forever waiting for me to "present evidence that mindless natural processes have limitations of relevance to evolution and irreducible complexity", and I'll be forever telling you to "read all of that link".

 

 

 

 

But before you can say that and have that kind of a statement taken seriously, you'd first have to have gone through the matters in that link on the difficulties of evolving IC machines (like the flagellum). I'm not ahving a go at you, but I note that you are saying repeatedly in this post that I haven't yet offered you any evidence, yet admitting that you haven't read that article in full. Now as I said I didn't really expect you to read all of that, because it is just too long. On the other hand, given that you've admitted that you haven't yet read it, I suggest you back off on the "lack of any evidence" claim for now - at least until we have gone over that article in a bit more depth.

 

 

 

 

It does apply to everything. An eternal mindless universe, and an eternal intelligence. For the same reason that people don't feel the need to explain an eternal universe or eternal energy. If something actually is eternal, it has no origin to be explained. Something after all had to be eternal. We just don't know anything about what exactly that eternal something was. We certainly do not know that whatever the eternal something was had to be simple. That idea is nothing more than a hunch based on being comfortable with the idea of simple going to complex. Something I may add that we never see occurring in mindless nature. But whether simple or complex, something must have been eternal. It is in fact impossible to get something out of nothing. The alternative, that something popped into existence from truly nothing at all (no energy, no laws - nothing) is an impossibility. That is far more illogical a belief, than the idea that something must have always existed.

 

 

 

 

How is it not the same thing? Explain your objection. A positive SETI inference is the acceptance that it is most likely that an intelligence manipulated laws so that a signal was produced which would most likely have not been able to happen as the result of mindless nature.

 

How is intelligence not natural? Because whenever I use the word natural I am referring to mindless natural processes. An intelligence (in a body) is not mindless nature. Mindles nature is natural laws with no intelligence. You claim that intelligence is derived from mindless nature, however that is not known. To assume that to be the case is begging the question that this thread is named after in any case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As far as I know such kinds of knockout experiments on the flagellum have been carried out.

 

One thing Miller says in the youtube video that is weak, is that he claims that irreducible complexity was taken apart at the trial because of the discovery of the strong similarities between the T3SS and the flagellum assembly transportation system. The problem is that the T3SS momologue in the flagellum is all of 10 proteins. The flagellum is 40 to 50 (depending on the version). It's only been suggested that this is an evolutionary waypoint. How does that really defeat irreducible complexity? Miller doesn't say anything about how the T3SS could have formed (it is also very sophisticated in it's own right) nor about what took place from the 10th protein up to the 40th or 50th. Note that he says "that's not evidence, that's an argument". It is a starting point for later investigation perhaps. But such a conjecture which may be the basis for further studies isn't any basis for declaring that IC is a dead in the water concept!

 

IC (don't confuse IC with ID) makes the claim that the evolution of such multi-protein machines is very unlikely based on what we know about proteins and evolution, and the property of irreducible complexity as well. That has never been refuted. All that has happenned is that people like Matzke have proposed hypotheses that may be the basis for future work. But so far that is all there is. We are "incredulous" about such explanations of the possible evolutionary pathways they propose because we know of principles in the laws of nature that would make such evolutionary steps infeasible. You know these princiles too (very likely) but you haven't perhaps imagined they also applied to evolution.

 

What do I mean by infeasible? I mean it in this way. If you were in the middle of a very well constructed maze that was say 10km wide, then either you will be going around in circles and walking up blind alleys for a very very long time, or else you could walk out of it in say 12 hours. You really could walk out of it in 12 hours! (That is if the maze actually was built so that you could in fact get out of it). All you'd need to do is to take the correct path out. But is that very likely?

 

IC makes the claim that though you perhaps may be able to walk out of a large maze, in general you will not take the fastest route out. Yet such an argument does fall flat for a tiny maze, because the smaller the maze, the less it matters if you don't take the fastest way out. Right? But as the maze grows larger, the time taken to get out of it grows exponentially. Even though the time taken to walk straight out may only increase linearly.

 

It may be likely enough to happen once in a while for a 10km wide maze that you could find your way out by the fastest path, but most of the time, it will be much much longer before you'd ever get out of it. If such a maze was 1000km wide, is it feasible to think you'd ever manage to get out in 100 days? It would perhaps be possible, but far more unlikely than the likelihood of being able to find the right pathway out of the 10km wide maze.

 

Now I'll bet that you'll be saying that such examples have nothing to do with the way evolution works. For instance, "evolution isn't trying to get out of a maze". Is the problem completely unlike evolution? Evolution is searching (even though it does not plan or intend to be seraching) for ever more sophisticated function. It must be searching for and finding such functions or else we'd still be just an adapting crude single celled lifeform. One way evolution works is to randomly change DNA codons. It is possible to get from a starting functional protein to a novel functional protein without changing all that many codons for a small protein, perhaps only dozens of them. But say we need to change a certain 40 codons. We could change them in just 40 mutations. But how likely is that to actually happen? The possible number of changes (assuming we picked out all the correct 40 codons to change in the first place) is 4 to the 40th power ~= 1000000000000000000000000 possible codon changes.

 

However you might point out that "Evolution isn't aiming for any particulr protein target sequence or solution, so you can't "cheat" in the argument by working backwards."

 

I get your point, but we can show that proteins are in fact so very rare in sequience space that it doesn't matter that no particular target is being aimed at, because there are so few functional protein targets in existence in any case, that evolution is very unlikely to hit any of them. Put it this way, the smaller and simpler the changes needed, the more likely evolution is to succeed, but there comes a point where it gets too slow and never manages to find any "targets" due to the exponential slowing down of the process. Most of that is explained in some detail in the end of that article I referenced earlier.

 

So finding protein function is quite a lot like being in a maze. The outside represents a new higher level (or just new) protein function. The starting point represents the initial function. There are many possible paths. The maze example is a bit forgiving in another way, because we assume there actually is a way from the middle to the outside of the maze. What if there wasn't any such path? Think about it. The walls inside the maze represent the fitness barriers preventing a pathway directly to the higfher function that awaits. Is there a way through? Or not? (There is always a way out of the maze! You can fly out of it.) But evolution has to walk through it gradually and cannot fly out of it. Actually some larger nonpoint mutations could simulate jumping over many walls to a new location, but there is still no guarantee (if the maze wasn't intelligently designed to be solveable) that it is possible to even get out of it.

 

Not only that, but such a maze for evolution is also blind, and has no memories, which makes it harder still.

 

See, protein evolution isn't an easy thing to have happen. Proteins are very rare things. Only a small proportion of all possible amino acid sequences are capable of forming functional folds that would be useful in biology. How does evolution find them? Tell me if you know how.

 

In my next reply I will start going through that article.

 

I also need to go over the articles that you mentioned in detail, just as I suggested that we go over the article I referenced. Perhaps since I will be talking you through the other article, you can talk me through these articles when you have time too (don't worry about the youtube video though. I have already seen it and have commented on it above.

 

 

So far all you have done is give inappropriate denials from the stance of you simply denying it can happen, the idea that the flagellum is useless if you knock out a protein at random is not evidence of IC, the flagellum was built from simplicity to complexity, obviously if you eliminate part of the flagellum it will not operate, or depending on what part not operate as efficiently, but it is easy to see from the video how it evolved, evolution is not randomly trying solutions, that is a straw man argument. It has nothing to do with randomly trying solutions to a problem as you would in making your way through a maze. As I said before give us some evidence, not claims made from a river in Egypt. And yes IC is intimately connected with ID, you claiming it is not is the river in Egypt again. Show me evidence that something cannot evolve because it is too complex, not that something is so complex that if one part is randomly taken away it will not function that is not how evolution works, i suggest you do a little bit of research into evolution somewhere besides Conservative-pedia or what ever that pack of lies and misrepresentations is called.

 

So far I am not impressed by your models and I am very disappointed you have provided no evidence other than your disbelief...

 

BTW...

 

What I have done is to lay out some of my case in general introductory terms. That would seem to be the normal way of doing things, wouldn't it? I mean, just because I haven't gone into all of the details and provided all supporting evidence at once, is that really a reason for you to start sounding so negative early on?

 

Yes it is a reason to start sounding negative early on, what you are doing is trying to obfuscate the issue by simply dancing all around it but not addressing it, there is no need to soften us all up by a lengthy introduction, get to the point, most of us are very familiar with all the concepts you seem to be intent on explaining to us as though we are grade school children. Lets see some direct evidence of IC, it would be nice to see how you can separate out IC from ID but I fear that would only be an excuse for you to further delay the discussion by obfuscation again.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Moontanman

[Monsters from the ID]

Early on? What are you waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ?

 

I am waiting for that but regardless, you're probably have to end up waiting a little longer than you probably want to. I could post lots of links, but I don't like doing that willy nilly because firstly it means i'm putting the emphasis on you to read some long article that you likely don't have the time or interest to read in the first place, and secondly it means I am being lazy. But perhaps by summarizing such articles so we can go over them bit by bit is also going to be very long winded and take ages to get through. I don't know how to make this any kind of a fast exercise.

 

 

IC of a machine does not equate with the idea of IC in a reproducing biological system with inherited variation.

 

IC equates to individual systems that are typically complicated machines. By themselves these systems are not "alive" in themselves, but future versions of them can experience variations. Does that in any way disqualify the property of irreducible complexity from applying? I don't see how. Do you? In any case, we could likewise model nonliving human technological machines (like engines) as being "virtually alive" by stipulating that the factories that build them can also reproduce themselves, and that this process of reproduction involves errors that affect the factories in various ways. In fac the machne in question might be just a machne that the factory uses to maintain itself, or help itself to function.

 

 

I am not upset, i would be fine if you just conceded the point and went on but simply dragging your argument out with nothing but the equivalent of he said she said and no evidence is not only annoying I am pretty sure it's against the rules here. You have claimed evidence of IC, if you have it, lets see it, put up or shut up is my motto.

 

 

Maybe I just thought you were and overreacted.

 

Maybe I can send you a couple of links in the meantime. But on the other hand, what I said about Matzke's flagellar evolution pathway ought to be capable of being refuted. After all i did not merely "deny it all". I did explain in general terms why I disagreed with it. I gave some specific reasons. Perhaps you can counter what I said. Defend the idea. I don't believe what I said was all that mystifying. I more or less pointed out that the idea ignored the number of steps it would take between stages to get from the earlier stage to the next. There would be a large number of trial and error mutations that wouldn't work. Few would.

 

By the way we can put an upper limit on the number of mutations that could have ever taken place on earth in billions of years. Since we know the maximum possible number of mutations that could ever have taken place (or an allowance well in excess of it as a safety margin) then we can compare that number to the possible number of potential protein sequences that can exist for a certain length, and compare that with the number of functional protein sequences that exist within that potential sequence space.

 

Let me put it this way as an illustration.

 

You're a captibve in some stupid reality TV show, so you have to look for inane items. Therefore you must set out to find as many out of 100,000 gold rings as you can. They are spread throughout a city that is 20 miles wide. You then find out that you can only spend 1 minute searching for them. See a problem? If none of the rings happen to be within sight, you're search is going to fail. This is the kind of problem that evolution must deal with. Particulars to follow, but I'll send you a link.

 

The case against a Darwinian origin orf protein folds

 

 

The very idea of IC is saying god did it so there is no need to question any further and to say that scientists have faith in science is just silly.

 

A mischaracterization of the debate. You won't have gotten that idea by reading my posts. I think that research should continue at full pace. The more we learn, the better ID seems to fare.

 

... only evidence counts and unlike religion which is indeed what IC is just like ID, science looks at the evidence and follows it where it leads ...

 

Often the evidence doesn't count if it conflicts with your chosen worldview that has been renamed as the "consensus scientific view". If the evidence leads away from mindless natural processes it will be reinterpreted by such people until it does not. In such cases scientists who reject ID (and they usually are open about this) will not take the hint the evidence is giving them. That evidence is the lack of explanatory power to originate some phenomena via mndless natural processes. As Lewontin said: "our commitment to materialism is absolute ... we must not allow a divine foot in the door". I agree that religion and theological doctrines etc. obviously has no place in science, but the notion that some phenomena are best explained by intelligent design rather than by mindless natural processes certainly does belong.

 

 

IC/ID looks at a conclusion and tries to shoe horn evidence to prove it.

 

Happens all the time, and on both sides. It's going to happen whenever someone has a worldview. If your world view is materialistic and if you are committed absolutely to that way of interpreting the evidence, then no matter what the evidence was, it would be interpreted materialistically (due to mindless natural processes).

 

I can say though that ID doesn't lock itself into a fixed expectation the way hardcore materialism does. ID can always be falsified simply by demonstrating a materialistic process that gets the job done. The claim of ID (that certain processes are exceedingly unlikely o be able to happen save via the input of a designer) can and has been falsified many times. Mainly for spectacular natual phenomea such as thunder (which is cause by the mindless natural process of electricity - not Thor's hammer).

 

 

that is not how our First world civilization came to be and if we adopt the ID/IC method our First world civilization will stop progressing and digress into another dark age of superstition and ignorance.

 

Hmm? The scientific revolution began long before the majority of scientists defected from open creationism. In fact much of our first world civilization was based on a creationist viewpoint. In America there was a multiplicity of viewpoints - many theists, some deists and a few athiests.

 

 

Now if you do have have the means to show us wrong quite trying to lube us up and show it. The suspense is killing me I have about an hour before i start my day, go for it.

 

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it's going to take a while unfortunately.

 

Well is it turtles all the way down? down to where? It make no sense what so ever...

 

The evolutionary philosophy is (when looking back into the past) - Turtles all the way down! Looking back they go down into their beginnngs in an eternal ultrasimplicity. (Simple --> Sophisticated).

 

I'm a - Turtles all the way up, man myself. Turtles having descending from an eternal intelligent first cause. (Sophisticated --> Simple).

 

Pick which way your turtles are heading in the future. Down or up? I'm betting on down. The tendency towards a greater equilibrium / most probable states in the future seems to be saying that too. Them thar' turtles are headed on down to their final, most probable state of equilibrium (simplicity).

 

Thanks for the data on the optical fibres in the eye. I should have remembered Orgel's second rule.

Of course, it doesn't really prove a lot. Were Pringle cans invented to act as antennae for wi fi or were they invented for some other purpose, but subsequently found to act as wi fi links? Glial cells are usually "just structural" but it doesn't surprise me that evolution has co opted some of them. The basic form; a long thin cylinder, would be there as a structural component. To be tough it would have a lower water content and/ or a higher level of cross linking which would mean it had a higher refractive index. So to do it's structural job, it would be pretty well set up to act as a wave guide.

 

Ha! Depends on your point of (world)view!

 

I suppose we in the ID crowd don't agree with Orgell's rules. We think they're an atempt to "think natural" when the evidence might be leading towards another direction. But then again you haven't taken them on as dogma yourself. But many in the ID camp have a great posthumous respect for Orgell, as in his last or one of his last papers he basically cautioned OOL researchers to be realistic in their models, rather than being wildly optimistic. He ws never one of us, but he went down fighting for truth. That's pretty darn great in my books.

 

 

Any chance of an answer to my point that you seemed to be using the argument from personal incredulity?

 

Sure. I don't see a problem with that approach. It's skepticism by another name. Here's what I mean. It's not personal incredulity. It's incredulity based on scientific objections. I'llsendyou a lnk to a paper by ID's latest boy wonder, Doug Axe. He puts forward a number of raeasons as to why he finds that evolutionary explanations of protein evolution are unconvincing to him. I don't see the problem with being incredulous about some explanation if the proposal (about which one is being incredulous) has serious difficulties. Infact I have heard that term (argument from personal incredulity) also referred to as an argument from a lack of imagination. See what I eamn? In science I shouldn't think that imagination ought to be all that crucial. Or turn it around. What if some evolutionary scenarios were referred to as an argument from credulity? This has been defined as: "readiness or willingness to believe especially on slight or uncertain evidence." and other similar terms. I think that as long as incredulty is based on actual knowledge and research (not just on a hunch) then it should be (and is in other fields) quite a normal approach to take. I mean, what if a fellow submitting a paper for peer review, told his reviewers that they had better not make any arguments from personal incredulity when deciding to accept or reject his paper? No one would do that, but I'm trying to make a point.

 

I think that if we really did have convincing mindless natural explanations for origins that I was aware of, then I know what I'd be doing. Keeping my mouth shut about ID and creationsim. Like I did once before. Some time ago I started blathering away with simplistic (they were long out of date arguments that were poorly comprehended by myself) creationist comebacks to a fellow who knew his science. After he "took me to the woodshed", I recognized I was out of my depth. I figured I had better get serious about some catch up reading. I still have a lot of catching up to do, but was actually surprised that the problems for mindless natural processes do seem to be quite real.

 

The case against a Darwinian origin of protein folds

 

There are a lot of statements to the effect that even though we don't know how something could have taken place via mindles natural processes, we do know that science will solve such issues as it has solved all such prior issues. Sometimes at this point a statement to the effect that science (they're implying materialist science) is based on logic and reason, but creationism is based on fear and superstition. The point is, if one decides to accept that all explanations must ultimately point to mindless natural laws, as far as I can see, even though such a belief is clothed in impressive lingo, is it really anything more than a form a nature worship? I fear that such a viewpoint can lock one into a paradigm of dogma that would try to forcefit any evidence it came across as being evidence in support of materialism. There is a lot wrong with such a state of thinking.

 

I can say that the ID view (unless the designer in person is observed) is always going to be tentative - and always on the brink of falsification. I'm not talking about personal religious beliefs, but about a tentative ID inference that may stand or fall on the evidence. The ID claim for any phenomena can be falsified by showing that a mindless natural process can get the job done. This is sufficient to falsify the ID claim - the claim being that intelligent design was required to perform the task because of perceived difficulties (based on scientific research of the phenomena). Once a mindless natural process can be demonstrated to be able to carry out the task, then for that phenomena, ID is falsified. It also cuts both ways. If an error in understanding was made that elevated a natural explanation beyond what it could in reality do, then once the mistake is realized, the flaified ID inference may be able to return to tentaive acceptance.

 

I'd even be happy for science to just rule that the explanation is "unknown". People can make up their own minds about whether thy will personally accept an ID inference or not. I'm just against the presumption that, while lacking a feasible materialist cause for some phenomena, rules that whatever the explanation is, it is and must turn out to be a materialist one. And that an ID inference must be excluded. Here's the Orgell I disagree with - his first law is an example of the application of this kind of thinking. I see it as an agreement to accept a fallacy in support of a premise based on the notion that we all know the premise is true in any case, so why not let the odd fallacy or two slip in?

[Pincho Paxton]

Intelligence creates intelligence is a Paradox. Often, these paradox are the easy way out of figuring anything out. Last year there was a theory that a Universe creates a Universe... burned out? Relax the mind? Take the easy way out. Even the singularity is an easy way out. The truth is very simple... particles bump together in a way that works the same as a computer program. Binary is just 0,1. Binary can create many worlds. There is nothing to stop the Universe from behaving like a computer program by bumping particles together. Eventually it will accidentally create life.

[Moontanman]

The idea that evolution is something like wondering through a maze is totally off base, if you must use that analogy then it should be a group of people who explore the maze over many generations and tell each succeeding generation about the false turns so they won't make the same mistakes, reproduction with inherited variation is not like one individual doing anything. I read 800 words a minute give some links to read so I at least know where the stuff you are saying is coming from... right now it seems to be coming from your rectum....

[Monsters from the ID]

The idea that evolution is something like wondering through a maze is totally off base, if you must use that analogy then it should be a group of people who explore the maze over many generations and tell each succeeding generation about the false turns so they won't make the same mistakes, reproduction with inherited variation is not like one individual doing anything. I read 800 words a minute give some links to read so I at least know where the stuff you are saying is coming from... right now it seems to be coming from your rectum....

 

 

The maze analogy can apply to populations over many generations. Buta maze is just one way to look at it. It did come out of my rear end. Not bad considering!! Probably a much better analogy is something simpler. A large plane of fitness, composed of an ocean and islands. Islands that are above water represent usefully functional sequences of DNA, such as code for functional proteins. The plane consists of coordinates where each square represents the sequence space of the DNA stretch (of a particular length). This is many dimensional but compacting it down to 2D for the sequence and vertical for the fitness makes it easy to visualize.

 

So the highest point on the islands represent the best adaption sequences for that particular island (function). Once you go into the water you are now off function. Start on the island and walking around on it corresponds to mutations that may (or may not) alter the function. The fitness value for that particular environment makes you go up or down. Get too many mutations and you may walk off the island into the oean where you lose function altogether. You may even run into lethal function (a lethal mutation that kills the organism) which can be represented as sharks in the ocean. (or as lions and tigers and bears on the islands). Once in the ocean, since there isno function, then after a long enough period, that stretch of DNA may even get mutated as it's now dead weight as fars the organism is concerned and natural selection may allow it to be deleyed, as there is no reson to conserve such a sequence, since it just takes up energy and time to replicate it.

 

Now based on some calculations that aren't impossible to understand, it can be shown that for medium to large proteins, the islands are in groups that get more spread out and the oceans are huge. So how do we go island hopping for far flung islands?