What exactly is ID?

Wow. You're right. Smooth Operator must have had his head up his ass when he suggested that the fact that we exist out of all the possible Universes is proof that there is a Designer.Thank God you were here to show us how bad Smooth Operator's arguments are.Please share your information with Smooth Operator. I think it would be a great insight to him to know exactly how wrong you think he is. Tell me, SO, how would you falsify this statement: "The designer designed it that way for unknowable reasons."You are claiming that there is a non-demoninational Wizard who is unknowable and who's motives are unknowable. You are claiming that what you see as "order" is evidence that this Wizard shot his non-demoninational magic eye beams out and created this order.However, since you ADMIT that you don't know who or what the Wizard is, you can't possibly know WHAT the Wizard is planning.How do you know that DISORDER is not ALSO created by the Wizard?You don't know the extent of his power or motive, you don't have any means by with to detect either.So. If I present you with something and say: "See, the Designer designed this to be this way" HOW would you prove me wrong?Before you go into probabilities and whatnot, remember, the Designer could have Designed it to look as though it didn't match your math.And, if you CAN'T prove me wrong, then doesn't your claim explain EVERYTHING and therefore (by your own rules) NOTHING? Nope. YOU brought it up. I was PERFECTLY happy talking about our Universe when you decided to whip out the old multiverse argument to prove the Non-Denominational wizard must exist.Now you've done an excellent job of demonstrating for us why you are wrong. Nope. "The Wizard wizarded it to be like that."Describe an experiment which can disprove that statement.

Smooth, let's start fresh. Right now your posts and responses to them are exceedingly long and cover minor side arguments.I am unclear as to your argument:Are you suggesting that mutation over time causes genetic entropy which ultimately results in extinction?Yes or no?If no, please explain.
If yes, please explain why this hasn't happened.

Here I go again posting in hostile territory. I don't think your point doesn't necessarily demolishes the whole argument. Before I continue, let's look at this starting from the following position. One can be an intelligent design advocate or a naturalistic evolutionist looking at the same piece of datum and yet both come to vastly different conclusions. The datum is the same, so why the difference? It relates to the fact that one does not merely examine facts but chooses which facts to examine, and into what worldview cubicle the facts will be placed. This is philosophy, not empirical science. from Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness CenterGenetic entropy is occurring in lab experiments correct? Of course is a closed system and the earth is an open system. Therefore, the open system is preventing genetic entropy correct?Here is where I come in. I am starting to get the impression that natural selection is to inexact to build on mutations at the level of genetic sequences where mutations occur. Evolution occurs at the biochemical level.What is it about an open system that keeps genetic entropy from melting down genetic information????? I suspect no Darwinist knows the answer.If there is an answer then, I would suspect it is some sort of energy from the open system. If it is natural, it should be testable. Could it be that the intelligent designer knows what to do in order to keep entropy abated in the long term???We don't know do we?Edited by traderdrew, : No reason given.

Not necessarily. There could easily be a false dichotomy in the selection of closed vs. open system as the cause. Mutations occur at the biochemical level. Natural selection just selects which are the more successful based on which survive to reproduce the most effectively. That is what we call evolution--the change in the genome from generation to generation. I'll leave the reason for the lack of a meltdown to the biologists.I have just been pointing out that we've had 3.5 billion years with no sign of this meltdown yet, and casting doubt on the whole concept on that basis.

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

I've heard this argument from many (most if not all) creationists.This is ONLY correct if you assume that you will NEVER EVER learn another thing about anything.If you and I have a limited data set and trying and evaluate it, our opinions can be different looking at the same data. I'll use numbers for clarity.Let's say we have a number sequence: "1,2,3..."The question is: "how did we get this sequence?"It could be simply adding 1 to each number.
It could also be starting adding the two previous numbers together.Given what we HAVE, we can not accurately predict what the next number will be.The Creationist says "it's going up by one each time"
The Scientist says "the number is going up by adding the two previous numbers.There is NO WAY to tell for certain who is correct. It's a stalemate.UNTIL, that is, there is ADDITIONAL information collected.BOTH of these claims make predictions about what the future will bring. The Creationist predicts the next three numbers will be "4,5,6". The scientist predicts the next number will be "5, 8, 13".Once we get the next set of numbers we can confirm accurate predictions and/or throw out wrong predictions.The same thing that applies with these numbers applies in the real world with Creationism and Evolution.Both make predictions about future data. For 150 years now, evolution has been right about it's predictions and Creationism has been wrong.ONE mistake is sufficient for us to throw out claim. Creationism hasn't gotten a single prediction right.So, what gives? Why are you clinging to something which fails at every test? This is an example of what I was talking about a few posts up. "How do you know it wasn't designed to look exactly like it wasn't designed?"Not valid argument.

You are, of course, lying. So, apparently this "genetic entropy" does not prevent adaptive evolution. Good. And since it can be accompanied by an increase in fitness, it doesn't have to cause extinction as Sanford claims it would. Good.But in that case it hardly seems worth your while being wrong about genetic entropy at all. The whole point of making this mistake in the first place was that you could draw a false conclusion from it. If you have abandoned the false conclusion, what's the point of clinging to the false premise?It seems that you're now trying to parlay this into the usual creationist babble about information. Now if only you could quantify information, then your drivel would be sufficiently meaningful to prove it false. As it is, it's simply vacuous. You are, of course, lying. Could I advise you that in the future you should make your posts in the English language, where "everyone" means everyone. You are, of course, lying. You are, of course, lying.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Creationism does not work and it will never explain the natural world. Creationism is based on a "materialistic" interpretation of the bible in an attempt to fit it into the framework of a natural world. Remember Huntards post on the wedge document? Materialism and naturalism fails to explain how the universe operates.If someone has a problem Genesis and wishes to figure out its first chapters, I would suggest they employ new paradigms.

I'm afraid I've lost track of who's one which team.This makes it sound like you AREN'T a creationist, but the slant I got from the above post was that you were.Help clear it up.

But this is evidently untrue. An examination of creationist gibble as compared to science demonstrates that scientists look at data and creationists look at stuff that they've made up. Only when the population is sufficiently small, otherwise no. No and no. The lab experiments are no more closed than the Earth is --- obviously the bacteria get fed.What prevents genetic entropy is natural selection. And yet scientists observe the opposite. You see what I mean about creationists making stuff up?

IntroductionAs is well-known, the effects of genetic drift are more severe on smaller populations, in as much as a deleterious mutation is more likely to undergo fixation in a small population than in a large one.Intuitively this suggests that for a sufficiently small population, this will lead to a "genetic meltdown" in which the rate of fixation of deleterious mutations will take place faster than the situation can be remedied by beneficial ones, whereas in a sufficiently large population this will be averted (where what constitutes "sufficiently large" and "sufficiently small" depends on the rate of mutation and the relation between the effect on fitness of a mutation to its probability of occurring).This can be confirmed by computer simulation of mutation and selection. MethodsAn asexually reproducing population was simulated under an "infinite alleles" model, with the ratio of the probability of any two organisms reproducing being proportional to the ratio of their fitness.This simulation was continued for 1000 generations with populations of various sizes. Each population size was simulated 500 times, and the results presented below constitute the average results over the 500 trials: this avoids the possibility of inadvertently cherry-picking data (and also produces pleasantly smooth curves as output). ResultsIt was found that for any particular histogram relating the effect of mutations to their probability, then, so long as beneficial mutations exist at all, there is indeed a population size such that below it genetic meltdown will occur and above it it won't.The graph below, for example, shows the results under the following conditions:* At the start of the simulation, every organism is assigned a fitness of 100.* At each reproductive event, there is a 1 in 10 chance of a mutation affecting the fitness of the organism. (Neutral mutations may of course be neglected for the purposes of this simulation.)* If such a mutation takes place, it has a 4 in 5 chance of reducing fitness by 2.5, and a 1 in 5 chance of increasing fitness by the same amount.The results speak for themselves. ConclusionComputer simulations agree with experimental results showing that genetic meltdown does not take place when populations are sufficiently large.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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And how exactly can you do that without testing for it ?

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The same way Nobel discovered dynamite. You don't test for it because you don't know what you are looking for. It blows up in your face when you get it right.

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Since you agree with me that the specification you are actually using is a fabrication it is obvious that we are NOT disagreeing on the definition. In fact all that is going on is that you are stubbornly insisting on using a definition you know to be a fabrication.

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I'm not agreeing with you. Obviously because teh description I'm using is detachable from the flagellum itself.

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What I said was missing was context, and that is entirely correct. An exact quote can still be missing context (and often is).

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So what exactly is missing there? Was that not the full definition?

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Quite frankly I have every reason to believe that that is not even possible. I don't believe that it would be possible even if you had examined all the other flagella where the structure is known.

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Further all the calculations you have talked about have been expressly based on the E Coli flagellum structure, and therefoe used a different specification.

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However, you deserve the opportunity to show that you have done the work. Please produce your working.

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I already did.

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No, your method did not include all of those sequences because I compared the numbers you gave. Your calculation was the equivalent of the second one in my example - effectively reducing the sequence length by 20% (the exponent was multiplied by 0.8).

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As I have shown this is clearly incorrect, and underestimates the number of sequences.

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I see no problem in that approach. If you do not agree, show me your number. And why it's supposed to be better.

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As I have pointed out the complexity belongs to the specification. (Naturally you cannot include any information outside of the specification as specified information !). Thus if the numbers come out differently you have done the calculations incorrectly.

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No it means we are talkign about 2 totally different instances of design. A flagellum that consists of 50 proteins, and a hypothetical one that consists of 5.000.000 proteins are two totally different pieces of design and should be calculated separately.

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Of course I can seperate the specification from the salt crystal. "face-centred cubic lattice" is a purely geometric description. And I don't have to look at any specific salt crystal to know that it will have that structure.

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But you can't describe a salt crystal based on that pattern. You need to be able to describe it.

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So you are saying that given the description "Selecting Democrats over Republicans 40 out of 41 times in ballots" you can work out the exact sequence of results ? Because if you aren't then it doesn't describe the event perfectly - it leaves out a detail.

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I can work out what event occured at teh end, and that's what's important.

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It would be easier to have a productive discussion if you would cease flip-flopping on this issue. If you want to look at the origins of the information that is used to grow the flagellum than you have to look at that - just looking at the final structure of the flagellum will not tell you nearly enough. If you don't want to look at that - as you said - then you will just have to accept that flagella grow, and you cannot ignore that fact.

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But we are not interested at how it grows. It's growth is not a regularity. Regularity is supposed to be a natural law. It's growth is also disputed to be produced by chance, and is therefore a questioned wether it was designed. But not now. Now we are only concerned with the flagellum.

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Since you haven't even offered a meaningful definition of this "degradation" let alone a valid reason to think that "almost all" mutations - including beneficial mutations "degrade" genetic information there doesn't seem to be much of an argument there.

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You know very well how it works. Sickle cell. You know very well what it does. Makes red blood cells less efficient at transporting oxygen by deforming them.

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It isn't supported by the quote - in fact the quote bases the claim of "invisibility" on an assumption of absolute neutrality, which is in agreement with my position.

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No, it's arguing that natural selection is not perfect. There is noise. And this noise interfeeres with the seelction.

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I have, and it tells me that you've got nothing. Even you can see that it makes no mention of genetic meltdown.

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Because it's not talking about the gentic meltdown!!! It's talking about nearly neutral mutations and how natural selection can't select them out.

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Wow. You're right. Smooth Operator must have had his head up his ass when he suggested that the fact that we exist out of all the possible Universes is proof that there is a Designer.

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Thank God you were here to show us how bad Smooth Operator's arguments are.

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Please share your information with Smooth Operator. I think it would be a great insight to him to know exactly how wrong you think he is.

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Who said that? I don't recall anyone saying that. What the hell are you talking about?

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Tell me, SO, how would you falsify this statement: "The designer designed it that way for unknowable reasons."

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You are claiming that there is a non-demoninational Wizard who is unknowable and who's motives are unknowable. You are claiming that what you see as "order" is evidence that this Wizard shot his non-demoninational magic eye beams out and created this order.

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However, since you ADMIT that you don't know who or what the Wizard is, you can't possibly know WHAT the Wizard is planning.

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How do you know that DISORDER is not ALSO created by the Wizard?

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You don't know the extent of his power or motive, you don't have any means by with to detect either.

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So. If I present you with something and say: "See, the Designer designed this to be this way" HOW would you prove me wrong?

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Before you go into probabilities and whatnot, remember, the Designer could have Designed it to look as though it didn't match your math.

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And, if you CAN'T prove me wrong, then doesn't your claim explain EVERYTHING and therefore (by your own rules) NOTHING?

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If we know that that the event is due to naturl laws, than the design hypotehsis is falsified. An example would be snowflakes. If the event is not due to regularity, and we know that the event in question has a probability of occuring above 1:10^120, we say that the event is due to chance. Therefore, the design hypotehsis is falsified. An example would be any random hillside.These two methods help us falsify a design hypothesis for any event in question. Therefore, design is falsifiable.

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Nope. YOU brought it up. I was PERFECTLY happy talking about our Universe when you decided to whip out the old multiverse argument to prove the Non-Denominational wizard must exist.

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Now you've done an excellent job of demonstrating for us why you are wrong.

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I'm talking in general. The only way somebody will get around the Vertical NFL theorem and account for CSI with chance, is by invoking the multiverse.

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Nope. "The Wizard wizarded it to be like that."

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Describe an experiment which can disprove that statement.

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See above.

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Smooth, let's start fresh. Right now your posts and responses to them are exceedingly long and cover minor side arguments.

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I am unclear as to your argument:

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Are you suggesting that mutation over time causes genetic entropy which ultimately results in extinction?

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Yes or no?

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If no, please explain.
If yes, please explain why this hasn't happened.

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Yes. Why it hasn't happened? Well obviously we need more time for it to happen. Be happy that it didn't happen.

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You are, of course, lying.

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Nope.

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So, apparently this "genetic entropy" does not prevent adaptive evolution. Good. And since it can be accompanied by an increase in fitness, it doesn't have to cause extinction as Sanford claims it would. Good.

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But in that case it hardly seems worth your while being wrong about genetic entropy at all. The whole point of making this mistake in the first place was that you could draw a false conclusion from it. If you have abandoned the false conclusion, what's the point of clinging to the false premise?

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It seems that you're now trying to parlay this into the usual creationist babble about information. Now if only you could quantify information, then your drivel would be sufficiently meaningful to prove it false. As it is, it's simply vacuous.

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Wrong. Fitness is not proportionally corelated to biological functions. Which means that fitness can go up, and geentic information can go down, which again, pushes genetic entropy up. Thus leading to the genetic meltdown.And just a minute, are you saying that information is not quantifiable? Ummm, which definition of information?

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You are, of course, lying.

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Nope.

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Could I advise you that in the future you should make your posts in the English language, where "everyone" means everyone.

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In colloquial English, or any other language in the world, "everyone" doesn't usually mean 100% of world's population.

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You are, of course, lying.
You are, of course, lying.

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Mmm... nope.

How do you know the designer didn't just design the snowflakes to look like they occurred naturally instead of through design?You are inserting an infinitely powerful wizard with unknowable motives and unknowable mechanisms into the equation. There is NO objective way to determine what IS or IS NOT the result of his magic powers.A seemingly random clumps of rocks could have been designed to look random.It's IMPOSSIBLE to rule out anything. Especially through experimentation. Present to me an example of a "random hillside" which you can PROVE was NOT designed to be that way by the infinitely powerful, all seeing and undetectable designer.You can't. That's because he's UNDETECTABLE and his MOTIVES AND ABILITIES are COMPLETELY UNKNOWABLE. So, it hasn't happened in 3+ BILLION years. All evidence indicates an INCREASE in complexity. There are NO suitable examples of this claim in reality and you have no means of determining WHEN this alleged entropy will take place.Are you familiar with the expression: "There's no there there."?

It needs more than 3.5 billion years? Yawn!I won't wait up for this one, that's for sure!Seriously, if you're basing this "genetic entropy" on a literal interpretation of the bible you should start rethinking the whole idea.And if you're basing it on science, sorry to have to tell you but that "science" is based on a literal interpretation of the bible, not on scientific evidence.There is no other place to find this concept, nor several of the other religious beliefs you have tried to sell on these threads in the guise of science.And have you stopped responding to me because I continue to point this out?

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