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| Author | Topic: Why complex form requires an Intelligent Designer | |||||||||||||||||||
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days)  Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Thx for the quote assist. Put it down to enlightened self-interest.
To say those three are the same is not true. I make 3 dimensional models and I have modeled many items that have similar appearing forms and they are not coded the same. Each of these bones is distinctly and spacially different just as the parts on a model car differ from a real car. To assert what you have is to overlook a huge mechanical and coding difference. Now impress me with an argument that relates to the discussion. Your 3D models are not the same as the real object, thus your analogy is false from the start. What you need to consider is what you need to change to make a model 1% bigger. Both models are virtually identical and the only difference is scale, and a little scale is easy. The three femurs are all real objects. Functionally they are similar, structurally they are similar, topologically they are similar, biologically they are similar. There is a difference due to the cube/square problem - body mass relates to the cube of a dimension and the strength of bones relates to the square (cross-section area), so bones will be thicker in bigger more massive organisms, but topologically they are virtually identical. I can map one femur to the others and morph them back and forth with relatively few changes. The internal structure is even simpler, as it is basically repetitions of basic building blocks, and a lot of the change can be accomplished by changing cell size ... which matches observations btw. You are mistaking quantity of change for quality of change. The DNA that codes for the amino acids that build the bones is the same basic set in all three organisms, the sequence they are employed in the formation of the organism's fetal development is also similar. No great change needed to get from one to the other. In fact many of these genes could be swapped between organisms and there would be no difference to the overall development of the organism. IIRC this has actually been done, but one of the geneticists here would have to corroborate that.
Well in this case it is used as the "wow, I never realized that 3 dimensional form could be so diverse" information part. It should open up a bit of understanding. 3 dimensional form is not a simple thing to construct nor is it easy to create functional mechanical form much less rearrange its structure. In other words you wanted to impress your audience with excessively profligate barrage of technical sounding mathematical verbiage, to awe them with a visual image avalanche of impressively irrelevant intellectual concepts, and to side track them from the real issue at hand, the slight difference between one femur and another ... or in other words: baffle them with BS.
My point was not for anyone to envision substituting anything. My point was that with an infinite set of possible forms it would be impossible for random mutation to code for a selectable mechanically functional form. I am arguing from the bottom up. But an infinite set of possible all the possible forms in the universe is totally irrelevant to the change from one femur to another from one generation to another. This is a straw man fallacy and building on it you are basically arguing that something irrelevant is impossible. Sorry to say, but no matter how impossible you make your argument from incredulity appear it is still irrelevant to the question of evolution of femur size in organisms. You are arguing from a false bottom and throwing logical fallacy after logical fallacy at it. In the human population about 90% of all adult males are between 5'-6" and 6'-2" -- a 10% variation in natural occurring size within the population. This shows 'natural' variation within a population Also the average size of humans has increased in several countries in recent years - certainly within recorded history. This shows change over time. All of these differences include variations in the sizes of the femurs of the individuals -- without needing to consider any extraneous shapes and configurations. All you need is an envelope of +/-5% around the surface of an "average" femur to define the boundaries of the femurs in 90% of the human adult male population. Even that overstates the amount of variation needed within the population as proportions would not be significantly different. Topologically they are the same.
What you are doing without realizing it is making a blanket statement. This from the person that incredulously sticks impossible straw men into the argument.  At least my "blanket statement" is based on reality.
By saying "adapted" you have completely black boxed the question of "how" mechanically the adaptation occured. Actually I was using the terminology that applies and that describes the process of "how" ... specifically the later of:
quote:From Adapt Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com Organisms become adapted to the environment through natural selection of existing variations within populations, some are better adapted than others. But the overall change from generation to generation to generation is adaptation to fit the selection pressures as best as a species variations allow.
I'm sure will posit random mutation and natural selection. This would be the standard reply, but it still does not truly address the question mechanically. You need to be able to explain the mechanics of how something works before you posit the results optainable by it. Denial won't make it go away either. Evolution is change in species over time. Within every population of every organism there is variation in size and structure, and in each generation these variations are a little different. The variations are due to differences in genetics and environment, and the variations that are due to genetic changes - mutations - get passed to the next generation depending on how useful/harmful they are. Basic mutation and natural selection eh? We saw above where there is a natural 10% variation in height in the human population. There is similar variation in size in all organisms. And there is similar variation in bone structure in all vertebrates. To get from a 1/2" shrew size to a 6'-6" sauropod size - a 156 fold increase - with a limit of 1% change per generation - well within the natural variation limits - will only take:where n = generations ... and n = 507.5 generations. Child's play in terms of evolution time. Even if the organism generation was 100 years long that would be less time than has transpired since the K-T boundary at the end of the age of dinosaurs (including sauropods). Using a more likely generation length of 20 years (generation not life span eh?) this works out to a paltry 10,150.1 years - back to the time when agriculture was being developed by Homo sapiens. A drop in the bucket compared to the length of time life has existed on this earth. Thus to say that this kind of change is impossible is incredibly naive. At best. Of course we also have in the fossil record the changes in size of mammals since the K-T boundary, from an animal the size of a ?average? dog up to the now extinct Mammoth and back to the going extinct African Elephant, so we have fossil evidence of similar changes in the same kind of time span even though the evolution of large land animals is not necessary. And the kicker is, that within each generation the femur will be a femur that is relatively indistinguishable from the femurs of previous generations, gradually adding diameter as needed for the increased demand for strength due to body size. Adaptation. As a curious note, one hypothesis for the Cyclops of greek myth is that they found fossils of mammoths and thought they were giant people with one big eye where the hole for the trunk is in the skull (the eye sockets being small in elephants and elephants being unknown in ancient greece). That would show that they did not think the femur of the mammoth was significantly different from a human femur eh?
A bit of assumption on the evolved part. Backed up by fossil evidence, backed up by genetic evidence, backed up by observations of actual evolution speciation events and mountains of related data and not a bit of contradictory evidence or invalidation. Meanwhile you assume in your conclusion something that nobody has seen, felt, smelled, heard, tasted, weighed, tested or sensed in any way.
DNA controls every aspect of integrated growth. It is called controlled for a reason. There are genetic controllers for everything and as I pointed out there are 14 separate genes that code for the shape of the femur alone. Yes, which is why we have no birth defects, no "Siamese" twins, no spontaneous abortions, no still-births, no infant mortalities from sever internal complications. That is why all adult males are exactly 5'-10" tall to the nearest decimal of a millimeter. Obviously from the above examples things are NOT controlled as much as you think they are. There is variation around an average for every population for every generation, and the average value changes over time.
Since shape can be anything how does random mutation find the specific limited functional form combinations in a sea of infinite possibilities? Because femurs are femurs from generation to generation, and cannot become planet sized oblate spheroids in any one generation: your premise is false and based on a false concept. You are wrong because you started with a fallacy
Further how do you at the same time control its growth/formation rate within the organism. Every bone cell is positionally controllled by the DNA we observe today so the question to answer is how you can accurately change the genetically controlled cellular positions when you are talking about millions to billions of cells that require accurate positioning of each of them to "adapt" to different form. The argument from incredulity again eh? Gosh, how do billions of atoms arrange themselves into a human being? The process is called growth. Fetal development is fairly well documented, not just for humans but for pigs and chickens and fish and thousands of other organisms. It happens over time with each generation making essentially the same pattern over and over while adding in some new variations on a theme and subtracting others, so that generations change gradually from previous ones.
As was noted this is a very general essay but, as also noted we can get as involved as needed. As you will further note I have done just that in my reply above. Lets cut to the chase: all you have added is more erroneous material, assertion and logical fallacies. Your essay is not "general" it is simply wrong. It is logically invalid. It is false. You can complicate the invalid, false and wrong information all you want, but it won't make it any more valid, correct or right.
Not quite. I do not find evolution's proposed system incredulus. I find it impossible from a mechanical standpoint. Thus I don't argue from what I don't know or understand. I know system mechanics inside and out, I have 21 years as a mechanical engineer for experience. I know what it takes to create mechanically functional form. Now on top of an argument from incredulity we have an argument from authority. Surprising as it may sound I already pegged you for an ME that was ~43 years old (2006-1963), so you are not telling me anything that is new. Surprising as it may sound, I am totally unimpressed by this information. Surprising as it may sound I am less impressed that you think mentioning it is relevant to or validation for the argument. What is your training in biology? genetics? fetal development? ecology? evolution? -- these are the areas you are discussing and your ME degree and 21 years of experience are totally irrelevant to this discussion.
Your opinions have been addressed above. When you are ready to delve into the mechanics of the process so that you can disprove my essay then I will be ready to respond. An assertion does not die based on the opinion about it, it dies by the evidence and logic. Since my essay deals strictly with the mechanics of form then it is within the realm of science proper. No, they have been dodged and danced around. I don't need to "delve into the mechanics of the process" that does not relate to reality. Your argument is falsified, it is invalid, you are, quite simply, wrong. When you are ready to learn about the real world, start asking questions.
Agnosticism serves me well in this regard. And that is why you concluded that a 'designer' had to be invoked? Tell me about the fish you caught. Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : expanded calculation with 20 year generation we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Welcome back KBC1963, I expect you are beginning to feel rather overwhelmed by the responses you have generated, so I will try to compile this and keep it brief (famous last words).
Message 126 There is more to this than simple existence. If as you assert the bone cell (osteoblast) simply comes into existence, then it could simply continue to be made for the life of the organism. No, that is not what I am saying, what I said was that "When the first bone cell evolved the DNA of the organism involved the necessary code for that cell. That is all that is necessary. " What you had claimed was that "... when the first bone cell would have been caused by the genome it would have had the possibility to code for production of an infinite amount ... " It's a bit of a chicken and egg question eh? But in this case we are pretty sure that the DNA change comes first, and we are also pretty darn sure that mutations don't code for just any much less than infinite shape a mechanical engineer can think of, but is pretty specifically limited to variations on a theme for existing features and that anything else would likely be lethal.
Simply saying they just came into existence overlooks a lot of mechanical control that must be in place or the cell will simply act according to its own makeup. You have a big thing about this "mechanical control" issue don't you? It's false. The control on mutation is very simple: if it is neutral (makes no significant change) it survives in the population genome, if it is beneficial (makes a slight change than enhances either survivability or reproduction) it increases in the population genome, and if it is too different it kill the organism. Over 75% of human zygotes don't make it past the first two weeks. By the time you get to birth of a "normal" infant (not too many changes) that's down to somewhere around 10% and even then there are childhood diseases that kill humans before they reach reproductive age. That's a lot of errors being discarded eh? If you need to have a "mechanical engineer" term for it you can use feed-back correction loops. Doesn't matter what you call it - that is how it operates. Unworkable variations don't survive or breed.
Next thing to consider is what advantage does one or even a few of these cells in no coordinated structure provide for the organism to make it selectable by natural selection? What makes you assume there is no coordinated structure involved? Do you think bones just happened with no precursor structures? Are you really that ignorant of the evolutionary history of this planet?
Actually you don't get to play the 3.5myo card because bone first appeared: The first vertebrates appeared about 500 million years ago in the Cambrian Period (just after the so-called "Cambrian explosion" of Metazonan diversity). It appears so, because you are conflating "bony shell" with the bone of a standard femur (that is built up from the blastocysts you mentioned (this is the logical fallacy of equivocation).
osteoblast a mononucleate cell that produces osteoid... ...which build bone Osteoblasts also... ...store calcium in the matrix osteoblasts also secrete enzymes that facilitate mineral deposition within osteoid matrices. Actual bone, as you outline above - what is used in modern vertebrates - is quite different from the bony material of the ostracoderms. It is an evolutionary adaptation from the class of "bony fish" - osteichthyans - that first evolved this bone material we use. From Vertebrate Evolution I - Chordates and the Evolution of the Craniata (written for an introductory course in the topic):
quote: And yes, I do get to "play" the 3.5 billion (not million - we had hominids 3.5 million years ago) year card, because life is a continual chain of development, each link dependent on the one before evolving to provide the basis for what evolution has in store for it. The bony shell of the ostracoderms could not evolve into being on their own, they depended on previous species to provide the basic materials they developed further with their own mutations and selections. Just as the true bony fish evolved from cartilaginous fish - Condrichthyes - where the definition is that they lack an ossified bony skeleton (ie - what we call bone). The cartilaginous fish evolved through a series of stages from ostracoderms, and these are all much more recent than the Cambrian "explosion" -- but they could not have happened without it, or the life that preceded it, or the first life on record, some 3.5 billion years ago I get to "play" it because it shows a continuous development of feature after feature in simple steps from one celled life to the multicellular land tromping masses we know today.. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, has no excuse for taking so long to do so little -- unless evolution is the way in which the design is accomplished, in which case evolution is still the valid mechanism. Note what else it says about "bony fish" here:
quote: Again, building on preexisting features with modification and selection. Lungs don't just happen either.
Thus we can pinpoint the age of the origin for the system. Prior to that age there was no bone thus no systems for controlling it. There was no step by step record to show how bone formed into mechanically functional shapes. They simply appear. You are also confusing the fossil record with the history of evolution on earth. The "appearance" of certain fossils does not mean they did not live before then, just that none have yet been found. Nor does the absence of bony fossils before the cambrian mean there were no precursors to bony shells, just that there is no fossil record of such. The cartilage of sharks does not fossilize well, so most fossil evidence of sharks is just the teeth, but that does not mean that their cartilaginous skeletons did not exist. The fact that this bony shell development is likely a definitive "punk-eek" feature also makes it unlikely that the source location (a) survived and (b) has been discovered yet (if it is findable).
So rather than simply provide blanket statements about all kinds of systems simply falling into place like domino's, how about we get a description of the mechanics of how it happened since you seem to have the understanding down to a "science". They may seem blanket statements to you because you do not understand how simple the mechanism is or because you are in denial about the evidence for it. Doesn't matter though, as the logic of the argument still exists and is not refuted by your comments. You also fail to refute the argument and thus failed to invalidate it.
Message 131 Show me any complex interactive mechanical system that can function continuously without control. Do you mean a human designed system that has operated for thousands of years without being fixed and tweaked and adjusted and modified? Of course there isn't one: we aren't capable of this yet. But we do make things that last and function longer than living individual organisms, so when we compare individual device to individual organism we can build things that last longer and operate better, even with our rudimentary ability. Or do you mean a natural systems that has operated for thousands of years? These do exist, we call them species. But (1) the "system" is made up of successive generations of many individuals that automatically replace previous generations as they wear out and fail, something no mechanical engineer designed system does, and (2) there are also many more species that have failed to update to the latest operating system and didn't download the latest anti-virus software, nor did they go in for the necessary maintenance checkups and oil changes to maintain their warrantee -- they are extinct, due to lack of control, whether continuous or otherwise. It isn't foolproof. This is a fact of life eh? Or do you mean life in general? Life that has existed in a state of continual adjustment and modification since the first life some 3.5 billion years ago, where the "system" is made up of successive generations of species that are made up of successive generations of individuals that automatically replace previous generations as they wear out and fail, something no mechanical engineer designed system does. Or do you mean the complex interactive system of planets, asteroids, meteors, comets, moons and an oblate spheroid shaped sun that has been quietly spinning away in multitudinous orbits for some 4.55 billion years? Or do you mean the complex interactive system of suns and solar systems and galaxies and everything else in this universe that has existed for 13.7 billion years? Your "complex interactive mechanical system" criteria is meaningless and irrelevant and has nothing to do with the ability of biological systems to reproduce, mutate and evolve over time.
I am not looking at an end product and asking anything. I observe functional mechanical form and ask what logical steps would result in functional form period. You gave an example, and in response you were given a very simple process by which the change from one femur to another is easily accomplished within the time-frame needed using the available "state of the art" materials at hand. This completely refutes your claim that it could not happen.
What advantage is one or even a few bone cells that produce unorganised bone formations? What resources would they use up continuously without controls and while awaiting for control to magically evolve what limits the cells contructive abilities? That doesn't really relate to what I said or the reality of evolutional history. It displays more your ignorance of evolution than any real problem.
Message 133 If its wrong then you must have the correct exact mechanical analysis of the formation proceedure. I am all ears to this information. Blanket terminology is a no-no BTW. So I will await to hear this evidence that flatly proves that I am incorrect. Logical arguements start from the beginning and define the specifics along the way and then draw a conclusion. I refer you to Message 27, as well as to the correction of your definition of straw man which is, btw, a straw man ( ). And no, I don't need to have the "correct exact mechanical analysis" to show that your concept is wrong, ALL I need to do is show that it is invalid because it used false premises and poor logical structure. That's been done.
Message 135 You are completely blanket terming every mechanical alteration. This is a black box assumption. Essentially saying "I don't know how it happened since I can't define it step by step so I'll just assume that it happened", "we are here right? so it must have happened that way" This does not invalidate the argument or in any way challenge the logical structure of the argument. The fact that this is your only reply to my numerous points and evidence and the invalidation of your arguments shows how weak your argument is. You are not addressing the substance of the arguments, but attacking the character, another logical fallacy. The evidence in fact shows that there are fish that can breath air and have gills, so assuming their existence is not imagining things to happen. We also have fossil evidence of similar fish and we have fossil evidence of transitional features, as listed in my post, that talk directly to the features in question evolving. This substantiates the argument. Denial of the evidence does not make it go away, nor does it invalidate it.
Curiously we only see functional formations in all fossils we don't ever see the step by step additions. Curiously this is demonstration of an abysmal understanding of evolution. Of course fossils are all fully functional organism. They were fully living organisms before they became fossils after all.
We also don't see the results of what should be the evolutionary mechanism which should be spitting out all the evolutionary rejects that would have to accompany any of the good mutations along the way. No we don't see the results of your straw man version of evolution because that is NOT what evolution predicts. Once again you base your argument on a false understanding of evolution, make a straw man and prove nothing.
Message 136 Except of course ID can posit failure as simply a variation within a specie type that does not fit the conditions for that variation so it ends. How long would a mechanical engineer last in your company with a 99% failure rate? Is that the kind of thing that you say "gosh I want to be like that when I grow up"? And the fact that you can make excuses for the failure of design does not mean that the concept is robust, rather it shows how weak the concept is because you have to make excuses for why it cannot explain the evidence that would be predicted by a robust concept. And the excuse you have to make means that there is no benefit to the concept - we can make predictions based on evolution and they will pan out, or we can make predictions based on KBC's ID concept and sometimes they work but most often they fail. That's good science eh?
How many variations of dog are there? And yet they are all still dogs. I thought your understanding of evolution was pretty bad before, this sure does not help that impression. Of course they "are still dogs" - dog is the common ancestor species and no matter how far and wide and novel they evolve they will still be on the branch of life labelled "dog" -- just as we are not just "Human" but "Hominid" and "Ape" and "Primate" and "Mammal" and "Vertebrate" and no matter how much we continue to evolve and change and develop through future ages we will still be "Human" and "Hominid" and "Ape" and "Primate" and "Mammal" and "Vertebrate" . This is what the tree of evolution and the theory of common ancestor MEANS. On the other hand there are no cross-fertilized features, where a feature developed on species {X} is much superior to the one developed on species {Y}, where a barely adequate designer would clearly be able to discern the benefits and then copy and paste the feature into species {Y}. There is no crossing of the branches as there would be if there were good design involved. It becomes increasingly evident that if a designer is actively in control of the development of species that it is incompetent, OR that the designer is NOT actively in control of development and is irrelevant.
... suppose we had a radical climate change and there was an ice age. most dog types would die but, not all. Thus a future investigator might see a multitude of dog breeds go extinct and yet dogs would still exist and still posess the ability to form those same extinct breeds again once the environment became more friendly again. No they would not evolve the same breeds again. At best they would evolve similar breeds, but some of the genes selected in the original breeding process would be lost with the extinct breeds. Again you are ignorant of how evolution, genetics, breeding, biology and life works. The DNA does not carry around a recipe box of breeds that can be pulled out and applied when wanted, there is no backup drive with archived blueprints, no master plan.
Just as we empirically observed in the peppered moths. The light colored ones never died off and when environment changed the numbers of light colored moths returned and they are still moths. Stunningly brilliant of you to notice that the Peppered moths issue is only about natural selection, not speciation or even mutation. They are also still insects etc etc etc ... still life on earth, but they are still typica and carbonaria varieties of Biston butelaria. Still think you have an argument? Enjoy. we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
yeah, and even if the evolve into some kind of giant squid like animal that crawls on land, eats elephants, and builds rocket ships they will still be forams ...
we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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