First let me say that I am not an ID advocate (polar opposite) but the questions you have have straight forward answers.
quote:I would like to know what is really ID.
Its a political movement originally created by lawyers and marginally scientifically literate people to mask creationism from legal sanction in the public school systems. It is claimed the be a theory with scientific standing that should be taught in schools on an equal footing with "alternative theories". There is no substantiation whatsoever for this claim as will be made clear in the answers that follow.
The closest thing to a position that ID takes is "there is evidence of design in nature". This is supported by the claim that there are existing mechanisms in nature that are "irreducibly complex" (which directly means that they could not have evolved from prior forms.)
Anyone versed in basic scientific philosophy understands immediately that this is not science. Its an attempt to sound like science via a meta-discussion of science. The existence of evidence for something is not itself science -- that's just partial *support* for what really is science. Furthermore, *positive* evidence is not what constitutes modern science -- surviving a lot of *negative* tests is what constitutes modern science (aka "falsifiability".)
Furthermore proving that something cannot have been evolved or reduced has no way of being satisfied from a scientific point of view (unless they start violating other basic laws of physics, like conservation of energy, in which case yes you could throw out evolution and a lot of other things too -- there are "free energy" people who have plenty of mechanical examples, which will be submitted to scientific review "real soon now"). Because even in ideal cases, it could never be differentiated from organisms that we just don't yet know how they evolved (but nevertheless did).
For any thing to be considered a scientific theory it must present resultant principles which are falsifiable. ID presents no such thing. When challenged on this ID advocate Stephen Meyer claimed that if the entire tree of life is definitively and exhaustively proven to be evolved, then ID would be falsified. This is what I call "you fail at science". The word falsifiable contains the word "ABLE" in it for a reason. The whole point of being falsifiable is to challenge the world to test the theory over and over in many many uncontrolled configurations and to challenge it with very similar theories which might attempt to explain observations more clearly. The validity of a scientific theory is measured precisely by the amount/quality of independent negative testing it has endured (unscathed of course).
quote:By that, I mean for ID: -what is the age of the earth?
ID is not a theory and has no basic scientific principles. That means it has no ability or capacity to predict anything. For example, suggesting that earth is a nearly perfect sphere might satisfy their position that that looks like design, but it doesn't tell us didly squat about any other properites of the earth, nor does it make any predictions. No age of the earth could be inconsistent with ID (even 2 seconds old works, because a creator could create designed memories and other world state).
quote:-what did the designer create? (species? genus? familiy?)
The ID adage only tells us that things look like they are designed. The inference that there was a designer is intrinsically flawed, as it specifically ignores any other explanation for why things look designed (like the fact that the *lookers* are pattern seeking entities who, in modern times, tend to see a lot of human-designed things around them, and have an ability and tendency to extrapolate).
But worse yet, even if we were to give them their flawed inference that there was a designer, we still can't tell the difference between things that coincidentally look designed but aren't versus those things that truly are. That's what it means to be untestable. So at the very best (for IDers) one can only specify candidates for things that might be designed by a designer.
The ID advocate Michael Behe at one point has suggested that the Bacteria Flagellum, and the blood clotting mechanism were such candidates. Both were supposedly examples of irreducible complexity. Unfortunately for IDers the first was shown to be obviously evolved, and the second is known to be reducible in literature that predates Behe's claim.
The ID idea does not give you a way of knowing that any particular example is truly an example of what they are talking about or not. Each example, at best, is a tentative example just waiting to be shown to be reducible or evolved.
quote:-when did he create life?
You are anthropomorphisizing the creator. While all IDers do this internally, they don't do so publically. So limiting to their claims of what ID is, there is no "he" who created/designed. Just a "designer" for which something like a gender might not apply.
But again, clearly, ID has no way of pinning down a date for something. There are no principles or evidence that could be built from knowing that something was designed that could tell you when it was designed. The designer didn't date its work. ID could at best have to accept geological and fossil evidence, which puts it out of the scope of ID.
quote:-I would also like to know if possible, what are the observations that lead to your answers.
I don't know of any surviving examples. They have often put forward the mouse-trap, as an analogy as if that was good enough, and ignore the fact that mouse traps are neither alive nor self-reproducing, or that small wood planks can be used for making matchsticks or that springs can be used as door hinges or that metal wire could be used for coat hangers.
quote:Of course feel free to give more detail if you have them. I ask because most IDers say ID is a theory so it would be nice to know what we are talking about before arguing about the evidence.
Well we wouldn't want to over-burden them by forcing them to repeat what they have already written. So a summary of the peer reviewed scientific papers with citations of which journals they were published in would be plenty sufficient. (I know of none.)
quote:All talks about evidence or evolution (like ID says this because evo can't explain it) SHOULD BE TAKEN TO ANOTHER thread.
One does not need to discuss evolution to know what ID is all about. However, I don't understand why discussion of evidence should be sanctioned.
Hi LucyTheApe, my name is Paul, and I am also an ape just like you.
quote:The age of the earth, as far as I am concerned is 6000 years or so. I understand however that there are theistic evolutionists. Theistic evolutionists take into account long ages and can include the ridiculus theory of biological evolution.
So do you think the age of the earth depends on what your opinion or position on the matter is? Do you think it depends on what theistic evolutionists opinion on the matter is? Do you think it depends on my opinion on the matter?
Do you think there could possibly be a different standard, or alternate way of knowing the age of the earth, that isn't dependent on someone's opinion?
quote:The Creator created all Kinds.
I have heard this before, but I don't know what it means. I would ask you to elaborate, but I am not sure that would get us anywhere. When Kent Hovind says this he claims that wolves and dogs are two different "kinds", but he doesn't seem to realize that you can interbreed (some of) them.
So you have to understand that a statement like that has very little meaning, as it does not survive even the most obvous scrutiny without needing further clarification.
You see, stating a position like this, is no better than saying that you like the color green. Its just your opinion, and we can all see that, but we can't follow it up with any sensible rational discourse based on that statement.
Its not just that scientifically literate people disagree with that statement -- its that that statement cannot be made meaningful enough even to have a substantive discussion about it.
quote:He created life in the beginning, male and female too.
Are you aware that single celled organisms don't have male and female?
quote:The evidence that I can refer to is all around us.
When you have conclusions that are not backed by analysis, or accountable to the dynamics of reality, then of course, you can claim anything is evidence for them.
But that's not how evidence works. A mechanism, law or explanation is proposed, then you take evidence to test that mechanism. The idea of the test is that some kinds of evidence could show the mechanism, law or explanation to be false and some could show it to be true. The problem is that for your claims no matter what the state of the evidence is, you can just say it is evidence for your claim. So again we have no path for a rational discourse on the matter.
If you put forward claims that cannot be tested, then you will not be taken seriously. You, by your own choosing, are ending the discussion before its even begun. And the value of your discourse will be assessed commensurately.
As I stated in my Message 728, here is the thunderf00t video on Pharyngula (I didn't know the same video was also on P.Z.'s blog)
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people -Carl Sagan
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -Carl Sagan
quote:Interesting articles, thank you. So given that you are presenting these articles as reliable sources, why should we not accept their further information on the differential effects of population size on deleterious mutation accumulation?
(Although, I note, neither of those articles supports your assertion about build up of genetic entropy)
The articles talk about the accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations. Accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations equal increase in genetic entropy. Which means, that yes, the article is talking about the increase in genetic entropy.
quote:We can still know how many will accumulate in a single genetic line (because E. coli is asexual), that number is at least 7000 - more than one mutation per gene. Why aren't they suffering huge consequences from this problem?
Every species is suffering. The mutations are accumulating. Just not as fast as you think. It takes a long time for a population to go extinct.
Re: Genetic Entropy[quote]On the 649th post of this thread you refer to a link that m
quote:But the only deleterious mutations are a problem to the organism and when these are lethal they are weeded out by natural selection.
No. Almost all mutations increase geentic entropy. Including beneficial ones. And no, natural selection does not weed them out effectively, because there is noise that interferes with the selection. Please read about it in my previous post I really do not want to repeat myself over and over again.
quote:The increase in 'entropy' in the genes of the organism means more possible combinations/states and thus more variation, not less.
Using the correct definition of entropy as number of states within a system means that genetic entropy is a good thing for variation: increase in entropy; means increase in states; means more variation; means reduced vulnerability to environmental change.
No, wrong, becasue not all states are equal. Not all genetic sequences have biological meaning. Which means that not all sequence will be biologically functional. When a certain sequence mutates too much, it loses it's function. That is becasue relevant biological sequences are an island of functionality in a sea of meaninglessness.
Than what are we doing? I know I'm not. But it seems you are by trying to say that the enzyme didn't lose all it's functions. We onlyknow of the one it had and it lost it.
quote:That's illogical. Why can't you just admit that we don't know ?
I'm talking about the know functions. We know for that one it had. And as I said, it lost it. So we know how much you have to mutate that enzyme for it to lose the function we knew about.
quote:And nobody has challenged that. So all it means is that you have put a lot of effort into arguing against a fact that you say doesn't matter. Well, why bother ? Why not just accept it and move on ?
No, I was arguing from the start that this experiment shows how many mutations does it take for an average enzyme to lose it's known function.
quote:So what you are saying is that it makes no sense to follow the method because you think that it might give a result you don't want.
You have to include ALL possible "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propellers" because all of them fit the specification "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propellers". Because for a specification D, D* is EVERY possible thing that is delimited by D. That is how it is defined. That is the point of using a specification, to find the specified information. The specification D tells us ONLY that the event is in D*. So the probability of THAT happening is the probability we use for the specified information.
They are all included in the number 10^20. Nothing else gets added. If you think about the other number, the one that describes the event E, in this case 50 proteins, than no. It makes no sense to include anything else. Becasue as I said earlier, some pattern that describes a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" might be less than 400 bits, and some other more than 1.000.000 bits. So it's obvious that they are different cases of design, or non-design because they a different probability of arising by chance.
quote:As I have already shown it is the probability of D*, not E, that matters - according to Dembski himself. The Design Inference p165.
D* is 10^20.
quote:If most of that is unspecified information, it can be ignored. That's the Design Inference - low probability, unspecified results are attributed to chance.
But what if it's not? What if it is a GIANT flagellum that consists of 1.000.000 bits? What than?
quote:As I said, if you want me to help, you need to give me the details of your original calculation - I need them to help you. Obviously your failure to do so is a mere oversight - since you have no reason to stall. (But don't worry - you still get to do the work).
I simply took away 20% from 10˘2954.
quote:As I said, Dembski is using a correction factor, based on the number of concepts in the specification. More concepts means using a higher number. (And you will note that your 10^120 figure doesn't show up in either quote. It isn't in the immediate context either.)
Do I have to quote every single letter? The figure 10^120 is mentioned after the quote. If youa ctually read the whole paper you wouldn't be even mentioning that.
quote:This is why we don't attribute pulsar signals to design. If we ignored the existence of the pulsar, and only considered pure chance as an explanation for the regular signal pulses we would have to conclude that the regularity of the signal was very unlikely and - inevitably - the sequence of pulses would soon qualify as CSI. If we followed your reasoning we would then conclude that the pulsar had the same "CSI" you calculated and conclude that the signal and the pulsar were designed. But we don't do that. We follow the thinking that I've outlined. We start by working out if the existence of pulsars is likely - and when we decide they are, then that is all we need to attribute the signal to natural causes. The pulsar which produces the signal is "simpler" than the signal would be - if you ignore the existence of the pulsar in calculating the probability of the signal.
Of course not. Pulsars do not correspond to any independently given pattern. Therefore, they are not designed. Now, if they were pulsing and givign out coded messages, like for an example a cure for cancer in Morse code. Now that would eb design.
quote:If it isn't unusual to have a mutation that is strongly beneficial to individuals heterozygous for the allele and very strongly deleterious to those that are homozygous why not produce a few common examples ? Remember to provide evidence that this really is the case.
I'm doen providing anythign for you anymore. My point stands, that mutation is, like almost any other, beneficial in some environments, and deleterious in others. That's how natural selection works.
quote:I don't know. But since your argument doesn't work unless they are, it is only fair to give you the opportunity to make a case for it.
Obviously you don't know. They are not correlated, they interfere with the geentic selection. Non-genetic traits also get evaluated by natural selection. So since the individual gets evaluated overall, than the genetic traits are just a portion of what gets evaluated. And therefore, positive selection for beneficial mutations and agains deleterious mutations suffers from noise.
quote:And without the correlation - without a systematic bias - it will go the other way and reinforce selection just as often. That is the point. In a large population, noise averages out. That's statistics for you.
But not 100%. Genetic traits are just a small portion of what gets evaluated. You would ahve to have an infinitely large population size for natural selection to be 100% efficient. But you don't have that. Therefore, mutations accumulate.
quote:Except that it didn't deteriorate. It optimised itself by losing a lot of unnecessary junk. Instead of going into extinction, it was such a great success that it drove it's rivals into extinction. It beat genetic entropy.
Stop dodging my question. How is this RNA chain, or any other supposed to evolve into a human in 3.6 billion years if it keeps getting shorter!?
Re: funny thing happened on the way to nirvana ...
quote:I ALREADY provided you with a quote AND a link to Dembski SPECIFICALLY stating that it's Creationism (including ADAM and EVE).
If you are going to lie, try and do it to someone who hasn't already provided you with the evidence you are denying, you stand a better chance.
Dembski is a Christian. So what? That has nothing to do with ID. A person can accept ID with or without being a Christian. Dembski is a Christian, again, so what?
quote:Fantastic. So, give us an example OTHER THAN the one you are claiming it works for so we can CHECK your methods.
What, APART FROM CREATIONISM, does your claim work for? Remember, you are the one claiming that we don't need to know the mechanism, so please give us an example where the mechanism is unknown.
The one I gave you is good enough. If youd o not like it, calling it "CREATIONISM" is not going to help you.
quote:So let me get this straight. Simple unicellular organisms are the acme of evolution while multicellular metazoans are just a degraded version of these unicellular organisms. Is that correct?
No, evolution doesn't work on anything. Short RNA chains could have never evolved into anything more complex because they always keep getting shorter. I already discussed Spiegelman monster in my previous posts, please look them up.
quote:But we observe evolution occuring and we do not observe what you define as new information. Obviously, evolution does not require this "new information" in order for it to proceed. You have argued your way out of the debate.
Well than, we obviously have a differnet definition of evolution. What is your definition anyway?
quote:I am assuming nothing. I make a prediction. I predict that if a gene descended from a common ancestor that a phylogenetic comparison should produce a nested hierarchy consistent with the morphological trees. As I have already shown the GFP gene in Glofish causes them to fail this test. We are testing FOR common ancestry, not assuming it.
But you do understand that you are simply assuming that one fish can actually evolve into another? Maybe it can I don't know. Let's say it can, so what? Maybe those genes were designed that way. Just becasue they for a nested hierarchy doesn't mean they evolved.
Re: funny thing happened on the way to nirvana ...
Dembski is a Christian. So what? That has nothing to do with ID.
ID is a Christian political movement created because the term "creationism" wasn't winning court cases.
The Discovery Institute and the "cDesign Proponentsists" that work with it, including Dembski, are actively pushing a Creationist agenda.
They've even published the Wedge Document which OUTLINES their strategy.
They are all Creationists.
A person can accept ID with or without being a Christian.
Find me some prominent ID proponents who are not Christian. People who are published and recognized in the field. Not "My cousin Larry". Real people.
The one I gave you is good enough.
And round and round we go.
No. It's not. You know it's not. I've explained to you why it is not. You've commented on my explanations.
You CAN NOT check something against itself for verification.
I can't give you a newly manufactured ruler with a "1 foot" marking on it and have you VERIFY that it is 1 foot long by simply reading that it says "1 foot".
That's NOT verification.
Likewise, your "magic Creationism Equation" can not be used to VERIFY ITSELF as proof that the Jew Wizards Jew Beams are zipping around poofing everything into existence.
And you KNOW that I'm right.
That's why you are so busy ducking and dodging. If you thought that your explanation worked for other examples, you'd be trotting them out left and right.
But you aren't.
Instead you are hiding.
So here's the situation. You are wrong. You know you are wrong. I know you are wrong. Everyone reading the post knows you are wrong.
So, just admit you can't come up with any more examples cuz you're making it all up
Dembski is a Christian. So what? That has nothing to do with ID. A person can accept ID with or without being a Christian. Dembski is a Christian, again, so what?
ID was cooked up as a scheme to sneak Christianity, and in particular, Christian fundamentalism, back into the schools after the Edwards Supreme Court decision. The record is extremely clear on that.
ID has been pushed as a political movement nearly 100% by Christians.
The Discovery Institute, the single most prolific proponent of the modern ID movement, was caught out with their Wedge Document planning a dishonest scheme to push ID in the guise of science. A couple of relevant quotes:
"Wedge Strategy" writes:
We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. ...
Governing Goals
--To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies. --To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.
I, for one, would not like to have to do science as mandated by "Christian and theistic convictions" and enforced by some reincarnation of the Inquisition. But, that's exactly what the Dishonesty Institute is looking to promote here. Check out their funding for this ID nonsense; they have had some folks funding their efforts who want to have this country governed by biblical principles.
And that's what is behind the ID movement in the US.
No thanks. The Enlightenment showed us that we don't have to kowtow to the shamans any longer; there is no going back to those Dark Ages, as much as many fundamentalists would like to.
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
quote:
Than what are we doing? I know I'm not. But it seems you are by trying to say that the enzyme didn't lose all it's functions. We onlyknow of the one it had and it lost it.
I am saying that we DON'T KNOW if it lost all function. How hard is that to understand ?
quote:
No, I was arguing from the start that this experiment shows how many mutations does it take for an average enzyme to lose it's known function.
Hello! Nobody disagreed with that ! This argument is over whether we KNOW that it lost ALL function. And it seems that you concede that we don't, but you go on arguing and arguing about nothing.
quote:
They are all included in the number 10^20.
Wrong. The number 10^20 is the estimated number of 4-level concepts. It is Dembski's attempt to compensate for the fact that "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" is chosen in hindsight.
Here's the quote again:
For a less artificial example of specificational resources in action, imagine a dictionary of 100,000 (= 105) basic concepts. There are then 10^5 1-level concepts, 10^10 2-level concepts, 10^15 3- level concepts, and so on. If bidirectional, rotary, motor-driven, and propeller are basic concepts, then the molecular machine known as the bacterial flagellum can be characterized as a 4-level concept of the form bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. Now, there are approximately N = 10^20 concepts of level 4 or less, which therefore constitute the specificational resources relevant to characterizing the bacterial flagellum.
As you can see, it has nothing to do with considering other ways of forming a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller".
quote:
If you think about the other number, the one that describes the event E, in this case 50 proteins, than no. It makes no sense to include anything else. Becasue as I said earlier, some pattern that describes a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller" might be less than 400 bits, and some other more than 1.000.000 bits. So it's obvious that they are different cases of design, or non-design because they a different probability of arising by chance.
I have thought about it and it makes no sense to do anything else. As Dembski points out it is P(D*) that needs to be low to conclude design. And if you think about that (and remember the examples discussed before) that makes perfect sense - it makes no sense to use the probability of the exact event - and that is exactly what Dembski does in his handling of the Caputo case. Since D is "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller", we need the probability of getting a "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller".
quote:
D* is 10^20.
D* is D considered as an event. In this case that would be "a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller". 10^20 is Dembski's estimate of the number of 4-level concepts.
quote:
But what if it's not? What if it is a GIANT flagellum that consists of 1.000.000 bits? What than?
In that case it won't contribute much to P(D*). That would be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of the mathematics. Very unlikely events that fall within the specification won't contribute much to the probability of meeting the specification. And 1,000,000 bits is a probability of 2^-1000,000 - very, very unlikely.
quote:
I simply took away 20% from 10˘2954.
I think that you mean that you took 20% away from the exponent. Because taking 20% away from 10^2954 gets you 8*10^2953. Yes, I already worked out that that was how you applied the 20%. And if you remember I showed exactly why that was wrong. That's not the calculation I need to know. I need to know how you got the figure of 10^2954 in the first place.
quote:
Do I have to quote every single letter? The figure 10^120 is mentioned after the quote. If youa ctually read the whole paper you wouldn't be even mentioning that.
Actually you should quote the relevant stuff. The figure 10^120 is just another way of presenting Dembski's universal probability bound (in this case reduced to 400 bits).
quote:
Of course not. Pulsars do not correspond to any independently given pattern.
The pulsar signal does. It's a regular series of pulses. It's certainly not random. A lighthouse produces much the same sort of signal.
quote:
I'm doen providing anythign for you anymore. My point stands, that mutation is, like almost any other, beneficial in some environments, and deleterious in others. That's how natural selection works.
In other words you choose to dodge the issue. I said that the sickle-cell allele was unusual as a beneficial mutation because it is only beneficial in the heterozygous state, while being deleterious in the homozygous state. If you want to argue otherwise you have to produce evidence that that is not unusual. Arguing that it is normal in some other respects simply ignores my point.
quote:
Obviously you don't know. They are not correlated, they interfere with the geentic selection. Non-genetic traits also get evaluated by natural selection. So since the individual gets evaluated overall, than the genetic traits are just a portion of what gets evaluated. And therefore, positive selection for beneficial mutations and agains deleterious mutations suffers from noise.
As I said, it is your argument that would benefit from the existence of the correlation. If we are simply dealing with "noise" then the larger the population, the less effect it has. This is why genetic entropy is only a real problem for small populations.
quote:
ut not 100%. Genetic traits are just a small portion of what gets evaluated. You would ahve to have an infinitely large population size for natural selection to be 100% efficient. But you don't have that. Therefore, mutations accumulate.
Natural selection doesn't have to be anything like 100% efficient to prevent genetic entropy. All it has to do is to maintain a balance where the average fitness is held at a high enough level to maintain the population. If the population is adequately fit, and the rate at deleterious alleles are lost is the same as the rate at which they enter the population then they aren't accumulating. If you want to prove that genetic entropy is inevitable on theoretical grounds you are going to have to crunch the numbers and find out where that balance point is.
quote:
Stop dodging my question. How is this RNA chain, or any other supposed to evolve into a human in 3.6 billion years if it keeps getting shorter!?
I already told you that I do not intend to add another separate topic to this discussion. You've seen Admin ask for focus, and suggest narrowing posts down to a single topic. We're already discussing two topics. I decline to add a third.
Re: Genetic Entropy[quote]On the 649th post of this thread you refer to a link that m
Yes it does because most bad mutations are fatal.
If by 'bad' you mean the same thing as deleterious then I would suggest you are wrong. There is certainly plenty of scope for lethal mutations, or mutations leading to reproductive sterility, but there is an even greater spectrum of more mildly deleterious effects as a result of mutation. There is also the fact that many mutations which may be fatal in homozygotes are merely detrimental, or even neutral, in heterozygotes.
Most studies suggest that the highest proportion of mutations lie in the 'nearly neutral' region, where they only have small beneficial or deleterious effects.
Certainly these studies may underestimate the spontaneous rate of embryonic lethal mutations if they are performed on an extant populations genetic makeup, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that most deleterious mutations are so severe as to be lethal. I might even go so far as to suggest that given the robust nature of many genetic networks this may even be true for entire gene deletions/ nulls, though I admit I don't have any solid numbers to back that up.
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