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Author Topic:   Evidence of design .... ?
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 1 of 52 (30683)
01-30-2003 8:15 AM


Would someone care to list the evidences for design in
biological systems ?
Peter Borger seems to be hooked on:
1) Genetic redundancies.
These are genes which, if knocked out, do not affect the
viability of the organism (i.e. it is not fatal to not have
them).
His claim seems to be something like, that if there is no difference
in rate of change in such genes compared to necessary genes
then NS selection cannot be happening and so design must be the
solution.
I would suggest that::
i) Genes which can be modified or de-activated without killing
the organism would be necessary for evolution to work.
ii) Selection, and so rates of change is not about the gene
and whether it makes an organism viable, but about its fitness
to the environment in which it finds itself.
iii) If other genes on the same chromosome are selected for
that will have an impact on change rates for all genes in that
chromosome.
My conclusion::
Genetic redundancies do not provide sufficient or necessary evidence
of design.
2) Non-random mutations
PB suggests that mutations are not random, and so there is only
the illusion of common descent within the different genomes
studied by bioogists.
I say that the non-randomness that PB relates is not non-random
in the sense of the when and why a mutation becomes fixed in
a population, but might indicate the presence of a repair
mechanism at work which could mitigate the negative effects of
mutations should they occur.
In any case if the end result 'looks like common descent', then
common descent is an equally likely explanation as any other,
and so PB has effectively restated the argument that::
common design is indistinguishable from common descent.
My concusion::
It is not sufficient evidence of design.
Are there other design evidences that anyone would care to put
forward?
Complexity doesn't count, because it has no relation to design.
A hammer is designed, but hardly complex.
IC has also been put forward -- there are other threads on that,
but it basically comes down to an inability to believe that
certain biological features could have developed over time.
I guess what I am after is a reference list of design evidences
so that we can start a more focussed discussion on the subject.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by David unfamous, posted 01-30-2003 8:54 AM Peter has replied
 Message 6 by Syamsu, posted 06-24-2003 3:51 PM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 3 of 52 (32005)
02-12-2003 1:51 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by David unfamous
01-30-2003 8:54 AM


.... and then there's always alternate function, too ...

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Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by MrHambre, posted 06-24-2003 12:54 PM Peter has seen this message but not replied
 Message 21 by DBlevins, posted 06-28-2003 3:07 AM Peter has seen this message but not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 12 of 52 (44113)
06-25-2003 8:17 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Syamsu
06-24-2003 3:51 PM


It states nothing of the kind.
Certain physical properties of the universe exist,
and it is likely that adaptations that take advantage
of them will develop.
It is by no means certain, however ... and certainly does
not suggest that they were designed into the universe.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Syamsu, posted 06-24-2003 3:51 PM Syamsu has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Number_ 19, posted 06-26-2003 5:35 AM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 16 of 52 (44302)
06-26-2003 7:05 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Number_ 19
06-26-2003 5:35 AM


In case you weren't joking .... no-one says that's how
evolution of the eye (or anything else for that matter)
happened.
Do a web-search and you will doubtless find several
suggestions for how the eye could have developed.

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 Message 13 by Number_ 19, posted 06-26-2003 5:35 AM Number_ 19 has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 31 of 52 (44673)
06-30-2003 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by King Crimson
06-29-2003 10:58 AM


quote:
The body of my car is incredibly weak. The most common speed limit I encounter is 35 mph. Yet if I hit a telephone pole at this speed, my car does not bounce off it. It folds, pops, and crumbles.
Depending on how old your car is, it may be designed to
behave in this way to protect the passengers and drivers
(by absorbing the brunt of the impact)... quite a good feature
over-all.

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 Message 23 by King Crimson, posted 06-29-2003 10:58 AM King Crimson has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 32 of 52 (44674)
06-30-2003 9:54 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by MrHambre
06-28-2003 10:34 AM


I'd have to agree, since logically if you know how
a designer would do it, you can rule out things as
wouldn'ts if its not what the designer would do.
If you see what I mean.

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 Message 22 by MrHambre, posted 06-28-2003 10:34 AM MrHambre has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 33 of 52 (44676)
06-30-2003 10:00 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by King Crimson
06-29-2003 12:38 PM


quote:
Then again, I suppose what constitutes a flaw depends on one’s idealistic expectations.
Not entirely, no.
Take the combined opening of the air and food passage
in humans. One would not expect this arrangement, which
has no advantage, to appear in an intelligent design...and
many other animals do not have this arrangement.
I don't think it is too idealistic to expect a designer to
ensure that two necessary functions do not have a common
mode failure ... and even more importantly that a fault in
one essential system doesn't cause a separate, independent
essential system to also fail.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by King Crimson, posted 06-29-2003 12:38 PM King Crimson has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by King Crimson, posted 06-30-2003 12:27 PM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 37 of 52 (44709)
06-30-2003 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by King Crimson
06-30-2003 12:27 PM


None of 1..4 cannot be accomodated by a design that doesn't
have a single point of failure.
Your calculations are also way off.
13 incidents over a year resulted in fatalities, that does
not tell us about unreported events or near-misses that have
been averted by 'operator intervention'.
Even then we have 13 incidents of failure in 8790 hours
which is 1.5 X 10E-3 failures per hour.
Safety critical systems designed by people have an allowable
failure rate of 10E-9 per hour, even military applications
are only allowed 10E-8 per hour ... and non-critical automotive
failures are acceptable at 10E-7 per hour.
And your 13 was only in one state.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by King Crimson, posted 06-30-2003 12:27 PM King Crimson has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by King Crimson, posted 07-01-2003 9:27 AM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 39 of 52 (44775)
07-01-2003 11:15 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by King Crimson
07-01-2003 9:27 AM


I'm not sure that I said there was 'no advantage' to the
design, what I have said is that if a human design team were
working on a similar problem that this design would have been
rejected via the safety analysis.
If humans engaged in design actively seek to elliminate
common mode failures, and the human body has common mode
failures in what way is there evidence for design?
It's not about suggesting that ID == BestD at all.
ID postulates that organisms exist due to an intelligent designer's
interventions. To find suitable evidence of design we can look
to existing designed systems and see if there are similarities
between biological systems and what we would expect to find
in an intellgently designed system.
One feature of safety critical system design is safety analysis
to identify potential failure modes and mitigate them. A further
aspect of such analysis is the ellimination of common mode
failures (especially in independent, critical sub-systems).
Human bodies do not appear to have undergone any kind of design
review process or safety analysis because there are features
present that even a human designer at our level of technology
would reject.
We are left with two possibilities (and sub-variants of)
1) The designer was not very good.
2) There was no intelligence behind the design.
1..5 do not outweigh the dis-advantage. The disadvantage in
this case can lead to catastrophic system failure (i.e. death)
none of the advantages you mention can possibly outweigh that.
It's not about finding corrections for the sub-optimal ... it's
about looking at known intelligent design processes and seeing
if the human-solution appears to be designed based upon what we
know of how we design things.
You may not feel that failures per hour has much meaning ...
the entire systems and safety community would tend to disagree
since this is a probabalistic measure of failure in use
in all human engineering.
In a safety critical system ANY catastrophic failures that are
due to the design are intollerable. That's why failure rates
are set at 10E-9.
Mis-use is not a mitigation either. The people who choke do so
during an 'intended' (if human's were designed) function of the
system. That the system can normally operate in a way that disrupts another safety critical system is NOT evidence that design effort has been put in.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by King Crimson, posted 07-01-2003 9:27 AM King Crimson has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 43 of 52 (44817)
07-02-2003 3:12 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by King Crimson
07-01-2003 5:51 PM


quote:
You did claim there was no advantage to the system and that is what I replied to.
My apologies, I shall be more careful with my wording.
quote:
Actually, I added another above (make it five). I suppose we could conceivably accommodate all these changes, such that we keep the advantages and drop the disadvantage.
Whether such a creature would truly be better off is, in the end,
only a speculation.
The problem comes when we add in all the other flaws that
are supposed to be corrected. When we put all the corrections in place, it’s not clear such an entity would be a
better version of a human being.
As far as we know, you may have just created a whole
new series of problems (that could be considered flaws).
I'm not really talking about running through and correcting
the flaws. I'm talking about analysing the 'human body design'
to find indications of intelligence behind that design.
One aspect of engineering design approaches is safety analysis,
and since there are safety critical functions within the
human body one would expect an 'intelligent designer' to have
analysed his/her/its design to remove design features that could
operate to disrupt these safety critical functions.
quote:
Then you need to first hash this out with MrHambre, who tells me that you guys are trying to establish is whether this arrangement has advantages over and above all other conceivable designs. Otherwise, we have multiple moving goalposts around here.
Mr Hambre may have a slightly different view to myself. You are
responding to me within this post, however.
IFF your IDer is the christian God, then Mr.Hambre is correct.
Why would an omniscient, omnipotent God create anything that
could be improved upon (and even would such a God be able to
create something sub-optimal)?
quote:
Here, you first need to hash this out with NosyNed. He tells us that we can’t take this approach because the analogy between things humans design and natural things is totally off base.
I'm not comparing manufactured items with biological systems.
I am applying what I know about human design approaches to the
human body. If those design approaches indicate that a human
design team would not have allowed something into the design
then the case for intelligence is lessened.
quote:
The question that matters is the cost of eliminating any particular design feature, as this often whole unit. In this case, the failure rate of the trachea/esophagus junction is not clearly serious enough to justify a complete overhaul of the
system, given that any particular individual is highly unlikely to die from aspiration (as the data show).
The 'cost' depends on the value you place on a human life, and in
this case cannot be great since other animals have systems
which effectively prevent this problem.
quote:
Not at all. Until you design a humanoid body that lacks the design flaw, but is no worse in any other way, your conclusions are rooted in raw speculation.
No, they are rooted in analysis (if somewhat limited in scope).
The identification of something that would be considered a
design flaw is sufficient to make comment on the intelligent design
effort put in.
The more serious the flaw, the lower the intelligence level
of the designer or the lower effort placed in design review.
quote:
One could argue that the designer does not
appear to be very good, but then we don’t have anything solid to move this beyond the level of appearance. Sorry, but a failure rate of 2.6 E-10 is not bad design.
Your missing the point.
These failures are CAUSED by a design feature.
quote:
This is a matter of opinion. The advantages I cite impart a day-by-day increase in the quality of life that is shared by all members of the human species...
So a car with brakes designed such that
when they fail they cause the steering to turn
90 degrees clockwise would be OK so long as the stereo was neat
and it only happened 13 times a year?
quote:
I’d also be careful about making death a problem. At some point, all organisms will die, meaning at some point a design decision will be made that allows for the potential for catastrophic system
failure to occur. Unless, of course, you demand immortality from design.
And I'd be careful about bringing this up to support ID.
What is the basic function of animal death? That is why
Do organisms need to die? Or reproduce for that matter.
... in the above I meant 'premature death' though. I have to
admit, and I have already promised to try to be more careful
with my wording.
quote:
It’s not a question of feelings. Your numbers would mean that I should have a life expectancy of 28 days. Clearly, something is wrong with the way you analyze this. Thinking in terms of swallowing
events is a superior approach.
Failures per hour is a probablistic boundary value which
designs must gaurantee to meet in order to be considered
safe.
Safety analysis processes have defined boundaries for this
for different categories of system. For safety critical
systems this is 1E-9 per hour.
It's the way its done.
Your method is inferior as it is based upon an unsupported
assumption about the number of swallows per day, and incomplete
'choking' data.
My value is based upon your data for catastrophic events.
quote:
I suppose this would be relevant if we swallowed 10 E9 times/hour. But if we assume 100 swallows/day, that’s only about 4/hour. A failure rate of 1E-9 is needlessly excessive.
Tell that to the parents of those kids ...
1E-9 is the failure rate figure that airliners are designed
to ... at no-expense spared. It seems your view on whether or
not it is worth it is not that of the engineering community.
Perhaps the IDer just doesn't care.
quote:
I don’t agree. I once got lazy and used a chainsaw to saw away the roots of a bunch of large shrubs. I sawed through the dirt(it worked), but I eventually gunked up the chainsaw. I didn’t attribute its failure to flawed design.
You are quite correct ... it is not a designed flaw because the
chain saw is not designed to cut soil.
The arrangement we are discussion IS designed to swallow food,
and to allow air in/out of the lungs.
When people choke the throat is not (in general) being put to
inapproriate use.
quote:
I am not arguing that the system (or human body) is designed. I’m pointing out that you have failed to establish that the trachea/esophagus junction is a design flaw (beyond the level of it looks flawed). If I did think the system/body was designed, I would find your argument unconvincing.
I've actually applied a certain level of analysis to the
issue.
1) Breathing is a safety critical function.
2) Eating is a mission critical function.
... I've just realised something.
In terms of swallowing failure rate you may well be correct
to say that the rate is acceptable. (2) is mission critical
and if you fail to do it it doesn't have immediate negative
consequences ... only continued failure will be a problem.
(1) on the other hand is safety critical and a failure of as
little as a couple of minutes can be catastrophic. This
feature should be designed more rigorously.
The problem (and I have pointed this out) is that there
is a causative chain of failure.
A failure is sub-system (2) CAUSES a failure in sub-system (1).
It is this that suggests low intelligence in the design.
[Edited to change 10E-9 to 1E-9 ... got my notation mixed
up there ... sorry!!!]
[This message has been edited by Peter, 07-02-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by King Crimson, posted 07-01-2003 5:51 PM King Crimson has not replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 47 of 52 (44936)
07-03-2003 6:44 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by MrHambre
07-02-2003 6:44 PM


Re: The ID Shell Game
RE 1):
They also fail to mention that things like mousetraps
didn't get invented from scratch over night ... or that
the technologies for the common modern mousetrap were not
originally invented purely for use in a mousetrap but
were seen to be useful for that end product.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by MrHambre, posted 07-02-2003 6:44 PM MrHambre has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 48 by MrHambre, posted 07-03-2003 12:10 PM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 49 of 52 (45032)
07-04-2003 4:33 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by MrHambre
07-03-2003 12:10 PM


Even more mundanely ... I don't believe that springs
were created with mousetraps in mind, rather someone tried
a sping loaded mousetrap, and found that it worked quite well
so they made some more ... that sounds quite natural selectioney
for a mechanical analogy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by MrHambre, posted 07-03-2003 12:10 PM MrHambre has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 50 by Rrhain, posted 07-04-2003 7:03 PM Peter has replied

  
Peter
Member (Idle past 1479 days)
Posts: 2161
From: Cambridgeshire, UK.
Joined: 02-05-2002


Message 52 of 52 (45300)
07-07-2003 12:27 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by Rrhain
07-04-2003 7:03 PM


quote:
So does this mean that we can now say that even "intelligent design" uses evolution?
Careful, you might kick off a whole new branch of 'Science'
.... 'Intelligent Evolution'!!!!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by Rrhain, posted 07-04-2003 7:03 PM Rrhain has not replied

  
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