10 Categories of Evidence For ID

I thought this was very interesting.What you basically described here is natural selection. You start from a state and modify it randomly (i.e. flipping the coins). You then choose which a subset of the state to fix and modify the non fixed subset randomly. Repeat.Are you advocating that ID is actually equivalent to Intelligent Selection? If so, how would we distinguish this from Natural Selection where environmental pressures are the factors "deciding" which new random state is fit?

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

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Function does not necessarily imply intelligence.
In this study, the spontaneous evolution of a radio is described. The researchers used a simulated evolutionary process in which the fitness of an electronic circuit as an oscillator was selected for.

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The surprising thing was that one of the solutions emerging out of this trial was a radio circuit that picked up AM signals and used them as output for the oscillator function. This is an example of function evolving without intelligence prompting it.

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Ok. I read that paper but was not clear on how you are using it to bring an argument. Now I will read your post, examine each of your comments and add my input.

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Comment: this precludes the ID counterargument that the experimenters themselves are the intelligence behind the design. If they themselves don't know how the evolved circuits work, their intelligence cannot be responsible for the design, even if their intelligence is involved in setting up the experiment.

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Well, if I understand this, do note that they entered this experiment with a preset goal: "The motivation was to evolve an oscillator of a precise frequency without using capacitors." And note that they achieved that goal: "From 20 runs, 10 resulted in successful oscillation, attaining the target frequency within 1% and with minimum amplitude of 100 mV."Further note that there are all kinds of designed equipment in this experiment and as such this could represent nothing we would find in nature that I can grasp.

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In other words: an unexpected and unconventional way of producing an oscillating signal had been "invented" by a mindless process of evolution.

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How does anyone know this when you openly state above: "If they themselves don't know how the evolved circuits work, their intelligence cannot be responsible for the design..." And yet they conclude that the signal was "invented" by a mindless process of evolution? They could know this if they don't even understand it how it's working? There may be a perfectly good reason for this just not understood. In any case, no conclusions can be drawn at this point.

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Note: "The evolutionary process had utilised...", as if it were intelligent. But the evolutionary process is a mindless one. It just looks like it's intelligent. That's what I think is the core problem with ID: ID-ists interpret what they see in nature as the product of genuine intelligence, whereas we can see from this simulation that the process of evolution is capable of fooling us.

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Well, be careful here. I can pick up an AM signal with nothing more than a lemon and a copper penny. What does this show in nature? You are going to have to go light-years further than this to show anything at all. Electrical waves are not similar to genomes. Radio signals are not similar to evolving populations of organisms. If you are to show evolution with anything resembling a biological system, I would suggest we stay in biology. Have you guys simply given up doing this in biology and moving on?

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The definition of the word 'function' cannot be used as conclusive evidence, because there are also uses of 'function' that do not directly imply intelligence example

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This doesn't mean anything. We can look up anything in another dictionary, pick definition 3, 6 or 8 and come up with a different definition because words can have more than one meanings and most do.The fact is that I like the definitions I used because they better support my case. Here is a rehash of another post: Yet, it's true I have defined it as having a link to intelligence because it is intelligence that must conceive it. Think of this series of functions: a motor turns a drive shaft which turns a wheel which gets me down the road. If we logically analyze this, what possible thing in nature could reason out this function and form it? Get down to the simplest function found in nature and it will always be the same logic. The concept of function is reason, not law.

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In the last quote, the bold sentence exemplifies a use of the word 'function' that does not imply intelligence as a causative factor.

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Why sure. I could scheme a definition of any word that twists its meaning. But you cannot state that cold weather being a function of the terrain is anything close to the way I'm using the word. In fact, to me, it is not even proper English because cold weather does not function. It's either cold or hot and that's it.

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Stating it that way suggests that evolutionists propose there is a goal in evolution, and that along the path toward that goal, there exist unfinished organisms.

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That is not the case, it's a distortion of evolutionist ideas. Each individual organism is a complete, "fully formed" example of its species in its own point in time. Species do evolve, but not "into their macroscopic forms", Darwin never proposed that.
Evolution doesn't predict the a priori existence, for example, of an ideal horse that unfinished proto-horse species gradually morph into. Rather, it's the other way around: the modern horse happens to be one of the forms that proto-horse species have evolved into, but things could easily have gone in a different direction, and we might never have had the pleasure of riding these magnificent animals.

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I understand there is no goal in evolution. That was not my point. The fossil record is an accurate record of around 80% of the earth's biotic history. If creatures evolved the way Darwin suggested, do you really think there would be no evidence in the fossil record of one species evolving into another? Somewhere? Anywhere??

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How is that direct evidence for intelligent design? It is only direct evidence for the fact that, sometimes, new species seem to crop up in a relatively short span of time. How this happens cannot be deduced directly from the fossil record. It could easily be surmised that aliens arrive here every so often with a spaceship load of new animals they picked up somewhere and dump on earth. How would you determine which is to be preferred: ID or alien Noahs? In the absence of direct evidence for either theory, evolutionists discard both, unless and until such evidence is found.

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And if the aliens arrived, then the system is designed by aliens. Why do you think life on earth could not be seeded by aliens? You do know there is a branch of ID called panspermia consisting of such notables in science as Francis Crick and Fred Hoyle who actively preach this notion, don't you? You see, there are only so many options here. Either life was designed or it wasn't. There is no 'it was kind of designed' out there.If higher organisms (Eukaryotes) evolved, we would expect to see some evidence of this in the record. My brand of ID sees the most probable option of origins as design in forms close to what organisms are today. And we would expect to see this in the record if it were true and this is exactly what we see. Look no further than the Cambrian explosion.

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The scientific method now requires a test to find out if the prediction is borne out. What test does ID propose? This is an honest question that deserves an honest answer. In fact, many evolutionists think the answer is long overdue.

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You mean like it does with common descent? Anyhow, ID does not propose the tests, biology does and tests have been done:"When DNA is synthesized in the lab, the two strands are separated and new bases are added to the 3' end-thus DNA is assembled from the 5' to 3' end. DNA cannot be synthesized from scratch. A short piece of DNA, called a primer, is required for the reaction to begin. Primers are designed such that they are able to bind to the target DNA, the binding of which is the initiator for DNA synthesis."http://bioteach.ubc.ca/Bioinformatics/GenomeProjects/Well gee. Intelligent designers in the lab have tried to synthesize these complex molecules from scratch and have not succeeded. Surely we can weigh this fact, compare it with the fact that no one has ever seen it form in nature outside an organism and draw a hypothesis from this.This is science. people, not religion. Have I said this enough, yet?

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I am no molecular biologist, but I would surmise that it is possible that the binding of ribose to other large organic molecules alters the chemical properties of the constituent parts and might thus lend some form of 'protection' against denaturisation. Encapsulation of ribose in vesicles of lipids might provide a similar effect. But I think I'd better let the real molecular biologists deal with this one, I just gave it a shot.

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I'll take that the way it was intended and leave it alone.

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I will not repeat the evolutionist arguments from the thread you mentioned, but I would note that on the one hand you say that "energy, guided by intelligence, is added into the system to stabilize it", whereas on the other hand you say that the human genome devolves, i.e. isn't stable. Aren't these contradictory claims?

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And again: how is this direct evidence for intelligent design? How does the fact that things get worse over time directly say anything about how things got to be in the first place?

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I don't see how they are contradictory. And It is direct evidence for intelligent design because it supports a tenet of intelligent design: "loose" information will tend to degrade over time (become more disorganized) rather than evolve with complexity.Try this experiment sometimes, I have. Take a class of 5th graders. Write a three or four sentence poem on a piece of paper but don't show it to anyone. Whisper it to the first student, then have her pass it to the next student in a whisper, then when it reaches the last student, have him write what he heard on the board. Then write the original poem on the board.The information will likely have degraded to the point it is nonsensical to the original information.But add work into the system to stabilize it and see what happens. Have a student walk around the room with the original (the work) and correct each student (the intelligence) and this will stabilize this information.There is a concept in physics called Maxwell's Demon which translates the same concept into physical hypothesis. I'm just ratcheting it up a notch.

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In this article, by Ken Miller, irreducible complexity is shown to be a flawed concept. The paragon of IC, the flagellum, is seen to be reduced and still functioning:
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The most powerful rebuttals to the flagellum story, however, have not come from direct attempts to answer the critics of evolution. Rather, they have emerged from the steady progress of scientific work on the genes and proteins associated with the flagellum and other cellular structures. Such studies have now established that the entire premise by which this molecular machine has been advanced as an argument against evolution is wrong - the bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex. As we will see, the flagellum - the supreme example of the power of this new "science of design" - has failed its most basic scientific test. Remember the claim that "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional?" As the evidence has shown, nature is filled with examples of "precursors" to the flagellum that are indeed "missing a part," and yet are fully-functional. Functional enough, in some cases, to pose a serious threat to human life.

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Yep. Poor Ken tried with that article but just didn't get it done. Uncle Bill refuted him pretty good here.I do agree with Miller that there are homologous proteins in the protein exporting system and the type 3 secretory system but that doesn't show anything. There are homologous bricks in buildings but that does not suggest that one building evolved into the other. We find homology with genes, organs and all kinds of other structures. But what conclusions can be drawn from this? None, I'm afraid.

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Then follows a technical explanation of what is said in the quote above.
Another example from the same article deals with that other icon of IC, the vertebrate blood clotting system. This is a cascade of protein reactions which is claimed by IC not to function when even one of the many factors is missing.
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[...]the claim that every one of the components must be present for clotting to work is central to the "evidence" for design. One of those components, as these quotations indicate, is Factor XII, which initiates the cascade. Once again, however, a nasty little fact gets in the way of intelligent design theory. Dolphins lack Factor XII (Robinson, Kasting, and Aggeler 1969), and yet their blood clots perfectly well. How can this be if the clotting cascade is indeed irreducibly complex? It cannot, of course, and therefore the claim of irreducible complexity is wrong for this system as well.

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Ahh...I messed up the quotes, but you'll figure it out. Perhaps that is not an IC system to begin with? Who said this:"any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional?"This is taught nowhere in ID. IDists often find that when detractors begin to take apart an IC system and find it still functioning, it was never an IC system to begin with as in the above system. (and they knew that to begin with *wink*wink*)The very definition is a system that cannot be reduced beyond certain core parts and still function. Is it still functioning? Then that was not an IC system. Now I will give you some examples of an IC system you will NOT reduce and the system still function. You need to only consider those.

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Design Dynamics

My my, this thread really took off like a rocket!It's rather late here already, I just got home (a meeting took longer than expected) and only had time to skim through what has been said so far. I'll try to take some time tomorrow to answer. By then this thread will have grown a beard, no doubt, but anyway...

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

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It is understandable that IDists reject these programs, but the fact is that the modeling of natural processes via computer programs has a long history of success, from meteorology to particle physics to structural analysis to microchips and on and on. Evolution programs and genetic algorithm programs model the evolutionary process of descent with modification and natural selection, and they definitively show what is intuitively obvious anyway: information does not depend upon intelligence.

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Even the simplest of natural processes creates information. For example, the spectrum of light emitted by a star is encoded in its electromagnetic emissions. The star created this information. If we analyze and record the spectrum via spectroscopy all we're doing is translating information from one encoding to another. Human intelligence is not creating the information about the star's spectrum, only recording it. It does not take intelligence to create information.

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I probably agree with this more than I disagree with it, but there are limits.Information easily manipulates other information. I am information, I can sit down and write a computer program which is information and that program can spew out all kinds of information. So, I agree that information is useful to model information.The deal is that the electrons flowing through the motherboard are matter. Where you guys miss the boat is that if your computer programs REALLY created more information than it initially contained, it would violate the first law of thermodynamics or the law of conservation of matter in that energy can be changed, but never created nor destroyed.Do you really think one could get more information out of the Encyclopedia Britannica than it contains? I don't. I think the only way a program can build information is to use other information already in that program and program it to flow where one wants it to flow.

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This is the second time you've said this in this thread without offering any support.

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I can't support the negative because if something didn't happen there would be no evidence either way. You guys claim it happened, it will also be up to you to show it did.

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Finding mammals in Cambrian layers would falsify evolution.

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Why? We find all kind of things in the Cambrian where there is no evidence we find leading up to them. That doesn't falsify it and it's highly likely that finding one more would even if it were a mammal. You guys would just come up with a new story to explain it away.

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The basic process of evolution, descent with modification and natural selection, has been scientifically verified in the lab and wild both morphologically and genetically, and these experimental verifications are open to falsification. Evolution is testable and verifiable.

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Like what? Papers, please......

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The basic tenet of ID, as I understand it, is not that evolution is unscientific or impossible, but that it is insufficient as a theory explaining the diversity of life.

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Well, no. Had evolution happened the way people postulate I would think it would explain diversity just fine.

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The inherent problem with your version of ID is that it implicitly but inevitably invokes the supernatural. If it were really true that information can never arise via natural processes, then the first life in the universe could only have come about through supernatural means.

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No, not only the supernatural. Designers can create information without a problem. It's nature that cannot. I can go to a random number generator and make it spit out as much information as you want. Nature cannot

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Design Dynamics

Hey, Jazz:

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What you basically described here is natural selection. You start from a state and modify it randomly (i.e. flipping the coins). You then choose which a subset of the state to fix and modify the non fixed subset randomly. Repeat.

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Are you advocating that ID is actually equivalent to Intelligent Selection? If so, how would we distinguish this from Natural Selection where environmental pressures are the factors "deciding" which new random state is fit?

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No, because natural selection is not intelligent selection unless one wishes to view this from the perspective of the theistic evolutionist and then we have nature out and the supernatural in.If I observe a group of coins, intelligently select what I wish to keep and intelligently reject what I don't, that's design by intelligence: ID.NS doesn't work that way. The organism gets whatever environment it is in and that's the way it is. The next environment could conceivably remove everything the previous one caused. IOW, there is no constant selection toward anything in nature like there is with the coins.

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Design Dynamics

Of course they entered the experiment with a preset goal. The goal of the experiment was to follow a set of design constraints, and they are analogous to the constraints of the environment of a population. Without such constraints it wouldn't be a simulation of evolution.The goal of evolution is to provide a gene pool for the population that provides the best chance for its preservation. For example, a population will have constraints of temperature, food supply, predators and so on. This experiment had constraints of frequency and amplitude.In evolution, selection is performed by the environment. Those least fit for the environment produce the least offspring. In this genetic algorithm simulation, selection is performed by measuring which offspring came closest to the design goals. Those coming closest are selected to "reproduce". Offspring are "spawned" from each of the surviving designs, and random "mutations" are created in each offspring. Then the process is repeated.These genetic algorithms are simply modelled on the way evolution works by having a population of alternative designs play in an "environment", and selecting the ones that perform best to produce the next generation. There is no channel by which design information is being provided by the programmers. The experiment did not have the purpose of simulating nature. They were not trying to model evolution of simulated biological organisms in simulated environments. There are programs which do this, but that wasn't the purpose of this one. They were trying to assess the potential of a circuit design approach based upon the process of evolution. For actual life the raw materials are elements and compounds. In this experiment the analogous raw materials are design components like resisters, transisters, wires, diodes and so forth.--Percy

You're confusing matter and energy with information. Information is not governed by the laws of thermodynamics.Genetic algorithms can produce designs untouched by human minds. They do this by harnessing the evolutionary process in a design context. Random errors are created in a population of designs, oftentimes a simulation of sexual sharing of "genes" is employed, and the resulting "offspring" designs are assessed against the design goals. Those that measure up the best are selected to contribute to the next generation. If it helps you understand this, look at it as one member of the class of successive approximation approaches to problem solving. Just saying this indicates you don't yet understand how genetic algorithms work. Here's a brief and very simple example.Let us say we want to build a word guessing program using a genetic algorithm. We define the program's operational behavior from the point of view of the user like this:

1. Print "Please think of a word and I will guess it."
2. User types "OK".
3. Print "How many letters are in the word?"
4. User types in the number of letters.
5. Program prints out 10 guesses.
6. User types number of correct letters for each guess.
7. If none of the guesses were completely correct, program picks the top five guesses and allows each to produce two offspring, each different from the parent by only a single random letter, then program returns to step 5.
8. If one or more of the guesses is correct, print the word and "Thank you for playing!"

That's how simple it is (naturally it can get much more complicated). In this case the user does the selecting himself. There's no mystery to genetic algorithms. There's no secret information from the programmers.Another way to think of it is like the game of hotter/colder, where you search for an object in the room that someone is thinking of while they give you feedback about whether or not you're getting warmer. You discard your movements that brought a "colder" response, and you continue with movements that brought a "warmer" response. In the same way, genetic algorithms continue building on a design that evaluates as "Better, though still not good enough", while discarding those that evaluate as "Worse" or "Better, but not as good as some others". Well put your mind at rest. You won't have to support a negative because quite obviously something happened. What the theory of evolution actually does is propose a mechanism to explain how it happened, i.e., why fossils appear in the order they do, why life's diversity is spread across the planet in the way it is, etc. The creatures of the Cambrian explosion tended to have soft-bodied ancestors that did not fossilize well, though predecessors are slowly being found. But a mammal in the Cambrian would require millions and millions of years of hard skeletoned ancestors that would have fossilized but didn't. A mammal in the Cambrian could not have come about through an evolutionary process. It would represent a serious problem for evolution. You've drifted off your original point. If you recall, in Message 22 you claimed that evolution wasn't testable or falsifiable. What I was saying in the portion you quoted was that this isn't the traditional objection of ID to evolution. Most IDists accept evolution as a valid scientific theory, Behe most prominent among them. Rejecting evolution because you believe it is unscientific makes you a rather unusual IDist. You've somehow missed the crucial (and obvious) implication. If your claim that information can not be created by natural processes but only only by intelligence is true, then the first intelligence in the universe had to have come about by supernatural means. That conclusion is inescapable. The theistic roots of your ID "theory" are painfully obvious to everyone but IDists.As I pointed out earlier, it does not take intelligence to create information. Every process in the universe creates information. When that information reaches one of our senses we can translate that information into another form, but we don't create it.--Percy

where?any one will do.This message has been edited by RAZD, 05*11*2005 11:00 PM

in reply to your #2 That there are records of gradual evolution is not the issue here, but the missuse of punk eek (and gratuitous quote mining of Gould and others while ignoring their explanations of the evidence they are commenting on). Unfortunately one of the best sites I had is no longer on the web (Gould was quoted as saying it was evidence of gradualism): such is the evolution of information Now. Dispersal of new species into a wider environment that they are adapted to is easily demonstrated: see Differential Dispersal Of Introduced Species (Re: Aspect of Punctuated Equilibrium) -- note the post is rather old and some of the links are broken (including two pictures), I'm sure a simple google will confirm the information listed if one is curious to pursue it.And there are plenty of evolutionary mechanisms to develop such species (with such little differences as are displayed by these examples and native fauna) in areas where fossils {have not been \ cannot be} found.Thus the problem is not the rapid appearance of any species. It is adequately explained by evolution: 50 years is a blink in evolutionary time don't you think?Again, this demonstrates why the hypothesis of intelligence fails to be required for this observed aspect of evolution.You are left with still having to demonstrate how the intelligent design occurs to start a species, and you have yet to demonstrate the 'devolution' of any species or the "just designed" stage of any species with a clear superiority to existing forms.Humans, for example, seeing as you have specifically stated that we are now devolved from an earlier "just created" form: where is (a) the evidence of that superior form and (b) the evidence of clear decline from that state to the present?This is the second time this has specifically been asked.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

First of all, information (intelligently designed or not) is CONSTANTLY increasing in an entropic universe. When entropy causes a salt crystal to dissolve in water, do you think that there is more information about the position of Na/Cl ions in the rigidly ordered crystal (easily compressed information) or in randomly dissolved ions (impossibly compressed information)?Second of all, when you talk about DNA replication in the lab (sorry, I don't know how to use quotes), you are talking about PCR - polymerase chain reaction. In nature, the primers are not designed, but are synthesized according to the template DNA when replication occurs in the 5'->3' direction (since you used that quote, I assume you know what the above sentence means- if you don't, read about Okazaki fragments). And DNA can be synthesized from scratch in labs - that's how we make the designed primers.Furthermore, a supposedly "CSI" DNA fragment can be made without any other DNA - HIV replicates using RNA genomes that "reverse transcribe" into DNA. And RNA (ribozymes) is capable of catalytic functions (i.e, self-excising introns)- which means that it's not too much of a stretch to imagine self-replicating RNA. Since most ribozymes are less than 300 bases long, it is also not too much of a stretch to imagine that self-replicating RNA could have arose given that there was an entire planet to experiment upon. And that would be the definition of life - replication.But I actually, instead of the usual position where the evolutionist refutes the IDist argument, would like to take a different tack. I want you to explain something for me. Evolutionary theory supposes that any mutation that does not have a negative effect on the reproductive success of the organism in question will essentially be "ignored" by evolution and will persist or die out based upon its chromosomal proximity to positive/negative alleles or stochastically. ID theory supposes that everything about the organism is designed, so there is a reason for every base pair in the genome.Evolutionary theory can explain why there is a non-functional vitamin C synthesis gene in all primates (as an omnivore, the primate ancestor had sufficient vitamin C in their diet and the nonfunctional vitamin C gene allele became fixed stochastically/linkage to a separate successful gene allele). ID theory would state that there is some reason for the non-working vitamin C synthesis allele in all primates (which are coincidentally, said to be related by evolutionary theory). What exactly would this reason be? And if ID theory cannot answer this question, what exactly is the use of this theory?Evolutionary theory can posit that morphologically more "evolutionarily" related organisms will tend to have more similarities than differences in their genomes. ID theory cannot posit the same. An "intelligent designer" could have used any number of different genes to achieve nearly the same morphological outcome - the possibilities for genes are essentially infinite. With evolutionary theory, you can take certain things as "givens" (i.e, that mouse immunobiology is similar to human immunobiology, as we share a common ancestor). However, with ID theory, that cannot be said to be true, as the intelligent designer could have changed some essential feature between the mouse and the human. We cannot be sure of that until we understand EVERYTHING about mouse biology. Therefore, it would be unethical to try to translate findings about cancers in mice to clinical treatment for cancers in humans. It would essentially, according to ID theory, be experimenting on humans with no a priori understanding of the clinical situation (like the Nazis).However, all previous results from mouse studies have agreed with the (evolutionary) supposition that mouse/human biology is very similar, with the understanding that mice and humans are separated by 80 million years of evolution. Since ID theory is obviously a hindrance to mouse/human clinical translation (and nearly all other scientific fields of endeavour), what exact scientific benefit does it provide? With ID, you must reinvent the wheel (or the "wheel" that evolutionary theory describes) every time you study anything, because you can take nothing as an almost given (not even if evolutionary theory predicts it 99.9999% of the time).

Welcome to EvC, zyncod.When you are replying to a post please use the little green reply button on the lower right of the post you are replying to. This allows the original poster to be notified if they selected that option and makes it easier to follow the flow of conversation. When you want to know how something is done use the "peek" button that is right of the reply button. It will show you the text as entered.All features are explained in the (help) on the left of the window where you are posting (dBcodes On (Help))Thanks and enjoy your stay.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 05-12-2005 01:12 AM

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I think Jerry has already made it clear that he personally doesn't consider everything in the genome to be designed. Indeed one of his main arguments is that the genome has 'degraded' from an initial well designed state.TTFN,WK

i've heard similar examples alot. the problem is that you're starting with a design in mind to MATCH something to. even the shakespeare generator dawkins had did this. eveolution does not have anything to match itself to, only a set of rules on what it to survive and what is not to survive, and which is to do better than others.so a better example would programming in a set of basic root words, and checking it against the rules of grammar, and let it try to tell a story. and that would clearly demonstrate how different an evolutionary product is from a designed product. of course, the point wouldn't sound as cool, because the id'ers would still say "yeah but look at how perfect we are!" and we'd have to explain how we're like the evolutionary product next to shakespeare.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 05-12-2005 04:09 AM

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אָרַח

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No, I'm not saying that bacteria and viruses are the only organisms evolving, they are just among them. But I'm afraid I presented a study in the university thread done by evolutionary biologists that clearly show the human genome devolving for the last 6 million years, in fact I calculated it right down to the increasing entropy for each generation. Sorry.

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This does not make sense. Single cell organisms appear much much earlier in the fossil record than multicellular organisms. According to you, all genomes have been devolving since they sprung magically into existence by design. However, bacteria maintain streamlined genomes while at the same time continuing to evolve and acquire new traits. So from your concept of ID, bacteria and viruses are the supreme beings on earth..all hail lambda phage!Please point out in the paper you cited where they show any indication at all that the human genome has been devolving. Are you going to cling to this distortion or actually read the paper and concede that it does not support your point (or more honestly that you did not understand the paper)?

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Now when did I say I don't accept evolution? That would be pretty silly since I am an evolutionist. I accept the science of evolution, it is the pseudo-science of Darwinism I reject. And yes, I think I learned the difference between evolution and abiogenesis in about the 10th grade.

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Then it is extremely odd that you have several times conflated abiogenesis and evolution and have demonstrated some faily profound misunderstandings of evolutionary biology. This is not meant to be insulting but merely an observation. You telling me that you know abuot the science is not very compelling when you make very big mistakes involving the basics.

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Because we do not know that the precursor of life WAS RNA. We can surmise this, but we don't know it. All I said was that DNA is not formed outside an organism by nature. This DNA is formed by pre-programmed code, is it not? Then it was designed. Period. You cannot win this argument because I am right!

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First, a key part of science is tentativity...nobody knows anything for sure. But I digress, under some circumstances you can make DNA form...RNA certainly shows this property. The key issue for abiogenesis research is to find a set of conditions in which self replicating molecules can form and demonstrate the principle. If it is not exactly how it happened billions of years ago as one can surmise the conditions but cannot know them 100%. However, it is at least something that can be tested i.e. forming self replicting molecules under different environmental conditions...how exactly do you test for an intelligent thingamagigy suddenly designing replicators?

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Well gee. That's not some unique tenet of Darwinism, that's just common sense. I think everyone knew a long time before Darwin that a Chimp would be closer genotypically to a Gorilla than it would an apple.

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It is not common sense. It was not known until relatively recently how closely related chimps are to humans. It was a hypothesis that was tested and found to be supported by multiple independent lines of evidence i.e. a scientific hypothesis. If ID could do the same it would be science to...but it apparently cannot. In any case, if everything is designed by intelligence, why would there be any reason for chimps and humans to be genetically similar? First you don't define what the intelligent designer is and now you are already limiting how god..ahem, intelligent designer..does the designing?And why wouldnt every single meiotic event require design? If on the one hand you claim that natural causes cannot explain biodiversity at higher levels why do you believe they are sufficient to explain the generation of biodiversity even within a family i.e. why do you accept (assuming you do) the conclusions drawn from molecular forensics?

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Because it does not do so spontaneously, chemically speaking. That reaction is a non-spontaneous reaction that must be caused by something. In fact, it is caused by intellegent pre-programmed code in the long run. Do you disagree with this?

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I disagree with the intelligence part. Where is the intelligence in reproduction whether it be ameoba or human? Have you ever seen an intelligent piece of DNA?

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Well if you think that complex code can just poof from the dust spontaneously, then you need to tell Bill Gates to fire all those programmers and just take a walk through the desert ever now and then. Reckon he would run across LongHorn?

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And this is typical creationism...I do not think the genome arrived as is poof bang ex nihilo. I would expect that very simple replicators formed naturally and then grew more complex over time. One can see this even now in the lab with simple precursor replicators that can under selection form much more complex functions. Really, your logical thinking seems to be totally blinded by your religion.

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Hmmm....This is only a tenet of your faith. Faith can be defined as the belief in something where there is no evidence to support it, and you have no evidence at all to base this conclusion on.

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How do I not have evidence? Every single genetic study of every species from bacteria to humans demonstrates the vertical transmission (sometimes horizontally) of genes from parent to offspring. Multiple studies both within and among species (look up cichlids for example) support this in the form of population genetics i.e. changes in allele frequency over time aka evolution. Above you even said you believe in evolution...but here you claim you do not. In any event, given one can connect species phylogenetically using multiple characters both molecular and morphological, I see this as support for my position. It is no different than doing forensics, paternity tests, or tracking disease alleles in a population just at different time scales. I do not see spontaneous creation or intelligent intervention however. You must bring evidence that genetics suddenly stops and an intelligent agent intervenes..otherwise, I have no reason to assume that the natural processes acting now were not acting the same way in the past.

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Even cooler; you will find this in ID as well.

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Then please "find" this form me...what is the testable and falsifiable hypothesis of ID? I know why you are persistently avoiding this challenge..do you?

Well and good, but for the vitamin C gene to mutate in the exact same way and for this allele to become fixed in every primate species is a staggeringly improbable event. Either each primate species was designed with this non-workable gene, or they share a common ancestor with the mutated form of this gene.