What exactly is ID?

Hi Razd
You're right, No they weren't "there" before, but they were somewhere before. What we are looking for is the addition of information that did not previously exist. Lets face it, if we wanted to get from pond scum to pandas, we would need the addition of a lot of "new" information into the DNA. Insertion mutations just don't explain that. First I want to point out that for some reason your link didn't work for me. But secondly I would like to point out that you are making the leap from observed DNA mutations to phenotype changes with the assumption that the one is the cause of the other, without (I presume) observable evidence. I mean unless you can provide a link to a scientific paper where a study was done in which the Phasmatodea were bred and observed spawning a population with wings, and then a later population without, etc...and also in which the DNA of each population was carefully studied and shown to have changed, then you really have no argument.But since you brought up insect wings, I wonder if you have ever considered the metamorphosis of insects like the butterfly? Complex enzymes literally digest the caterpillar in the crysalis. It becomes a "soup" of disjointed tissue and cells but within four days it emerges a fully developed winged butterfly. No current knowledge of chemistry, physics, genetics, or molecular biology can account for or even begin to guess at what "natural" causes produced this process.

Well I thought that by demonstrating the point that one phone number has a specific purpose while the other does not, would show an obvious significance. Or how about we try a little experiment. I will look up the phone number, in the phone book, to the nearest movie theater in my home town and call it to get movie times and listings, and you just dial a number at random to try and get movie times and listings in your home town. We will both agree on only dialing seven digits (which carry equal amounts of information). And we will see which one of us gets the desired results. Just in case this experiment is not scientific enough for you, we can repeat it 100 times and see if the results are repeatably the same.

Hi again Traderdrew,
I'm not sure how much you know about Shannon theory, so forgive me if I cover what you already know or over simplify, but the amount of complex information is measured by what the lowest reducible component is. For example the number 123123123123, is not as complex as 8675309, even though it is expressed with more digits. And that is because after the first three digits, it only repeats itself. Things like crystals are only repetitive information which is not near as complex as say the amount of information found in the DNA of a single celled amoeba (which Dawkins says is greater than 1000 volumes of Encyclopedias BTW). Correct. And correct again in your assessment that this appears to be a "design" feature in bacteria. I think though, you may have overlooked the significance of the fact that the changes only occur in the plasmids and not the chromosomes. This is remarkable because plasmids mostly only occur in bacteria. I realize that bacteria are biologists favorite "lab rat" because they reproduce so quickly and many generations can be studied within a single experiment, but if their basic characteristics are not similar to the most of the rest of the living world, then I seriously question drawing an evolutionary conclusion based on bacteria.Unfortunately I am unable to watch utube vids at work so I will have to reserve another time to watch it. However I will comment that I am quite fond of Meyer's work and am currently reading his book that you refered to (only on chapter 5).Thanks again for your comments.
Brad

I'm guessing its the same 1-800 number I gave Nuggin )Seriously though, you proved my point for me. Once you "thought" of a number it then became more functional for this exercise then all other seven digit numbers. In fact no other numbers except that one you were thinking of would have fit the criteria for being "the number you were thinking of."

Lets get real here Raz, if I copied and pasted material here, obtained from another web site and I used your logic that they were all brand new letters that only exist here for the first time, how long do you think I would last before I got booted for plagiarism? A copy of something does not explain its origination. Yes and how many thousands of years do you suppose that rocks and sticks have existed? But if you flew over an island and saw rocks and sticks arranged in a pattern of three dots, three dashes, and then three dots, the significance would not be in the fact that you observed sticks and rocks, but rather in the fact that they were arranged to spell out SOS in Morris code. And that is the point here. Nucleotides are arranged to effect the proteins in such a way that an eye is built, or fingers and finger nails, or a beating heart. Biological machinery transmitting building information to other biological machines. Not only that they are capable of self replication and adaptation to various environmental changes. "Copied" information does NOT explain where the original came from. Actually yes Raz, I am. But I am not stating that they always happen without genetic changes. There are actually a number of mechanisms that can bring about changes in a populations traits. However what I am stating is that I have never heard of a phenotype changing as a result of "observed" added (new) information to the chromosomal DNA. And that is the only thing (as far as biological evidence goes) that can convince any reasonably minded skeptic of universal common decent. But on the other hand, on this thread we are discussing ID. Intelligent design proponents suggests that information in the DNA code of all living organisms is highly complex and highly specified. Thus far in all of the history of the human experience we have only observed this kind of csi formed by intelligent causes and therefore we conclude that the csi observed in DNA must also have an intelligent cause. (PERIOD) No Bible verses, no God or gods, no Aliens, and no "MAGIC WIZARDS" mentioned in deriving that conclusion.

I think you are mistaking what I mean Percy. I know that the specificity is not Shannon theory, only the complexity is. Shannon theory can not measure specificity of information, only its "ability" to carry complex information. What I mean is that a phone number that connects me to my wife's cell phone is a specific 7 digit number. But according to Shannon's theory it carries the exact same measure of complexity as any 7 digit non repetitive number. But only one 7 digit number will connect me to my wife. That is where we are getting confused with the two different types of information. One type is complex and the other is specific. Together they are coined as csi. And csi is only observed in things with an intelligent source.

No I absolutely agree with that point right as stated above Grey. Yes all information is information regardless of an entity that can understand it. But not all possibilities of information produce specific functions, and that is the point that I am trying to make. Only those possibilities that are designed to be read and interpreted can produce a specific and useful function. Unless you are trying to argue that "functionality is only in the eyes of the beholder." But then you are getting into that "scary" philosophy where people start asking if they really exist or are they just part of someone else's elaborate imagination.

That's the way that complex specified information works Nuggin. Two entities agree on a "filter" and when the conditions are met to pass the filter then some function is performed. The precise meaning of the symbols or code are understood by both the transmitter and the receiver of the information. Edited by Brad H, : No reason given.

I meant functionality in the sense of usefulness. Yes of course specificity is "in the eye of the beholder." That is to say that both the receiver and the transmitter have predetermined which conditions when met are interpretable as a condition to act upon. But I think that what should be considered useful and what is not useful, though they do very some, are basically universal.

Hi Wounded King,
I've just spent the last couple of days going over the paper you linked to. I must say that I find it very fascinating. It really is the closest any have ever came so far to meeting the criteria I am looking for. But it is eerily similar to a paper of another study by Lenski, presented by a poster on another thread. And you're right, bacteria have always been a real "iffy" area for me. They seem to have a whole multitude of ways in which to adapt to their environment. And you do understand that us ID proponents can logically justify this to design features built into a very important group of organisms that don't have the luxury of moving to a new area like we do, when the going gets tuff. Your proposal of insects on the other hand is much more intriging and would be very convincing.Here is the major problem that I am having. I know that Evolution (or Universal Common Decent) theory doesn't say how life on Earth got started, but everyone does seem to agree that at some point in the past, all life was very primitive and probably can be traced back to only single celled organisms. Through millions of years of random mutations and natural selection, life is said to have evolved to the state with which we observe it today. ID theory, on the other hand, says that certain characteristics observed in all living organisms today, exhibit the appearance of structure and order on a scale that thus far we have only observed to originate from an intelligent cause. So if UCD is true then that means that over a long period of time a whole lot of DNA information has arisen. I'm sorry if it offends some when I say this (no offense intended) but we are literally talking "pond scum to people" evolution here. My problem is that we should not be "grasping" for observable evidence of this process in action. We should practically see it under every overturned rock and under every leaf. In other words it should be observed easily and often. Consider that for a single good mutation to survive in say a large population, of a two sex organism, it would have to overcome a large mathematical probability of being wiped out (about a 500 to 1 odds) before it could ever take over that population. It would have better odds in a smaller population, but it would also have a much greater risk of being wiped out with an entire "small" population. Plus we would have to factor in that since we are talking random mutations, 33% of the time we should also be getting neutral mutations, and 33% of the time we should be getting bad mutations. That of course would mean that only 33% of all mutations could be beneficial. But it would also seem to me that to go randomly monkeying around with the code of a program, that the odds of "accidentally" getting an improvement would be overwhelmingly small. To overcome these kinds of odds we would expect to see a mutation occurring almost in every single birth. Just this alone makes the whole theory very doubtful when compared to what is actually being observed. Also in multi-celled organisms, in order for a mutation to be beneficial, it would (most of the time) require several lucky random changes to occur consecutively. But none of this is a problem with ID as a source. The only problem is imagining who or what that source could be. Some try to argue that because we can not physically examine the source that we have no reason to conclude that there even is one. However this has never been a problem for archaeologists.

I've heard that argument myself, but I always come back with, "Well it didn't seem to be a science stopper in the past!" I mean many of today's technological scientific advancements are the direct results of men of faith. That would mean that not only were they IDers but they were also creationists. Included in that long list of history's great scientists are such names as Leonardo DeVinci -hailed by many to be the father of science, or the famous chemist and physicist Robert Boyl, or Isaac Newton, or Lewis Pasteur- developer of pasteurization, or the astronomer Yaohan Keplar, or Francis Bacon who came up with the scientific method, or mathematician Blaze Pascal, or geneticist Gregor Mendal, or electro magnetic physicist Michael Farad, and even Joseph Lister who invented antiseptic surgery. All men who believed in a supreme creator of the universe and life, and obviously all men who contributed greatly to science. Don't let evolutionists (and specially atheistic evolutionists) give you that bull that they hold the monopoly on good science.

Good point Taq. And if I saw the crude code for a computer program I might not recognize it as information either. Some foreign languages look like nothing but chicken scratch to me. "Better yet" my doctors hand writing looks like chicken scratch. But as long as the one who needs to read it can, then it is complex specified information. Interesting story. To bad that there isn't any empirical evidence to back it up. I mean how about that very first lotto winner. That's the luckiest SOB in the entire universe..."literally." First, one protein molecule has around one hundred amino acids and the probability of getting one protein molecule to generate from natural laws are equal to a blind man finding a marked grain of sand in the Sahara Desert 3 times in a row. And yet one protein molecule is not life. To get life you need about 200 of those protein molecules together. Second, we have the problem of the specificity of the amino acid sequences in a recognizable protein that are coded by the exact nucleotide arrangement in DNA. This is so specific that if any one of the nucleotides were out of order, the protein is rendered useless. Thirdly, if a cell needs only a few specific proteins out of an unimaginable number of possibilities that would have to have came together by chance, what possible explanation is there for how they were manufactured without the help of the DNA that could not have preceded them? And finally, after you factor in other technicalities such as essential enzymes and histones, the probability of generating even one small protein by random chance, easily surpasses the most liberal estimates of all the number of atoms available in the entire universe. Did you catch that? That means there aren't enough atoms in existence to equal the number of useless proteins manufactured in a random fashion before accidentally getting one useful variety. Most common estimates of the total number of atoms available in the entire universe are around 10 to the 80th, while most common estimates of the odds of generating one protein by unguided forces is one in 10 to the 130th.People who think this is plausible kind of remind me of a scene in the movie "Dumb and Dumber." Remember the scene where the character played by Jim Carey asks the girl (Mrs. Swanson), "What are the odds of you and me ever getting together?" Her reply was, "About a one in a million." And then he gets this huge grin and replies, "So you're saying we do have a chance?" People who say that the DNA code could have formed like a chain of lotto winners, cast their gaze right past the odds of a "gazillion" and focus right in on that "one" chance for life to form by unguided forces, and instantly respond with, "Oh, so you did say there was a chance." Yes we've met. As I have pointed out to Wounded King and others here, bacteria may be biologists favorite "lab rat" because of the convenience of being able to study several generations rather quickly, but they are really poor examples for use of evolution evidence. That's because, since they do not possess the ability to migrate to new environments when the environment they are in becomes hostile, they actually appear to be "designed" to mutate through use of many different mechanisms in order to adjust. Mechanisms not available to most other living systems. Case in point, your nylonase were able to metabolize nylon waste products through the loss of specificity of the enzymes on plasmids pOAD2 (in Flavobacterium sp. K172) and pNAD2 and pNAD6. Plasmids mostly only occur in bacteria. Bacteria may be fun to study, but they are nothing like us multi-celled, two sex, organisms.

How interesting. How does this work exactly? I mean if I live in a world were things increase through gradual loss, then my checking account should be as full as Donald Trump's by now. Oh...OK. Glad we got that all cleared up?

Hello Razd, I'm afraid that I missed Buzsaw's comment, but if it was something on the order of an extended hand of welcome...then I thank the both of you.Raz a lot of your comments I recently covered with Taq and Wounded King, so if you would, please glance over those and if there is something that you said in this post that I didn't address, please let me know. I'm just trying to save space on the thread. Also I wanted to thank you for the time and careful consideration and work you put into your post. A very instructive piece. Sure thing Raz. First, I couldn't tell by your post if the Nature article was citing any case study of an actual experiment done with Phasmatodea, or if it was entirely just another speculative story based on attempts to piece together the past. It did note some speculation in the portion that you quoted. (...wings were derived secondarily, "perhaps" on many occasions.) My emphasis added. My point of course is I was asking for an example of "observed" added new information to the DNA and not someone's surmising that that is what occurred. I have very good reason to doubt much of what evolutionary scientists claim about ages and dating processes and so therefore I don't think that these kinds of "piece meal" examples of the past are much help when trying to determine what was or was not in the DNA of an organism. (Note to all: I realize that last comment will spark a big fire storm, so before we get too carried away lets reserve that discussion for another thread lest we get called on the carpet again for getting off track.)With reply to your comment about what can cause certain adaptive traits such as wings to appear, disappear and reappear, I can think of a couple just off the top of my head. In HS my old biology teacher once explained that a group of flying beetles migrated to a small island. Strong winds would cause the flying beetles to keep getting knocked into the sea, however some offspring born with a genetic defect couldn't fly. The defect actually caused them to be able to survive in that environment and thrive. However any members born with ability to fly would continue to be blown out to sea and die. However if the species were thrust back into a main land environment, they would eventually revert back to the fliers being the dominant ones in the population. Another example of how these things work is the famous Peppered Moth that always gets brought up in these debates. Within any species there are often trillions of varieties of alleles that natural selection has to work with. When the trees bark were darkened by the industrial waste, the lighter colored moths were easily picked off by birds, and the darker moths became dominant. But when the government made all the factories clean up their act, the tree barks became light again and natural selection again took over and eliminated the dark moths and the lighter ones became dominant. In this case it was merely a manipulation of genes that already existed in the gene pool. The thing that's important to recognize is that these adaptations can only explain the survival of the species and not the existence of the species. I wasn't employing the used of a personal "opinion" or "denial" Raz, I was expressing a fact. The fact that I have not heard something. I phrased it that way because I would never be so arrogant as to suggest that I was a "know it all." So when I say I have never heard of something, I am merely leaving it open for the possibility that one of my opponents might actually have more information than I on that subject. And if that be the case I am welcoming them to enlighten me. I believe my above comment applies here as well Raz. I'm sorry Raz. You mean I haven't been clear on that? Ok well let me clarify---->BINGO<---- styles." Let me make sure you get this next comment Razd. This may be the most important thing I have said to you so far. Someone very wise once told me that it is impossible to know the truth unless you become a lover of the truth. What he meant by that is that unless you can look deep into your soul and know for certain that you will follow the truth where ever it takes you, even if that means completely abandoning all present pet beliefs and philosophies, you can never know what the truth is. In your pursuit of truth you may find you have to abandon religions, popular opinions, friends, and even risk losing close loved ones. When you can honestly say that you are there, then you can be free to follow the truth and find it. Let me assure you Raz that I am there. I will abandon creationism, I will abandon the Bible and Christianity if I am presented with facts that discount them. But let me warn you that I have made that statement for the last 20 years and no one has got the job done yet. (I say as I sit smug upon my heavenly Fathers lap.)

Hi Percy, I would agree with you in part, but not for the same reasons. My analogy fails in that most randomly dialed phone numbers, so long as they are dialed in a seven or ten digit form, will have the "effect" of reaching someone. And if nature really doesn't care who she calls then it would seem my analogy actually helps the other guys case better. But the really wild thing is that most "randomly dialed" mutations do not produce an acceptable effect. In fact their actually quite detrimental. So I would have agreed with you that most nucleotide choices are not specific, "if" they would have at least "dialed someone...anyone." But since most mutations are detrimental to the organism, and most nucleotide arrangements produce a very specific effect, they appear to be intentional in cause and formation.I bet at this point your probably thinking like one other poster put it, that its like looking at a long chain of lotto winners. But if that's the case then you have to explain the lottery of the universe. I mean you have to explain abiogenesis. How did the first organic life, form from non organic material? How did it form without DNA being in place to form it? If evolution is really like a big celestial shake of the scrabble board until a full sentence forms, then how does it keep the pieces that fall in the right place, there until all the rest fall into place? I mean wouldn't each shake continuously scrambling them all with each reproduction? And if there is some mechanism that knows which pieces to hold into place and which ones to discard, isn't that an intelligent source? Then there is the whole problem with explaining convergent evolution. That's where mother nature not only manages to get lucky and win the lottery once, but many times in a row. Don't forget concepts like electromagnetic forces, nuclear intensity, strength of gravity, mass of material, temperature, excitation of nuclei, and rate of expansion, speed of light, the centrifugal force of planetary movements, Jupiter's current orbit in relation to the Earth, the Earth's angle of axis in relation to the sun, Earth's 24 hour rotation, and a hundred and some other constants that need to be exactly as they are in order for there to be life. I'm not completely familiar with that particular argument Percy, but it kind of sounds like the "granny" rebuttal to me. Allow me to share it with you and see if it rings any bells. It goes like this: Grandma Jodi met Grandpa Richard at a dance in Nebraska City. They fell in love and had children, one of which was momma Laura. Momma Laura grew up and took a job working in a dress shop in down town Kansas City and she met Daddy Frank on a chance bus ride home from work one evening. They got married and had...me. I can look back at all that and think that it was pretty remarkable that I am here right now. If any one of the factors in that story were to be changed then I would not be here to have this conversation. But the fact that I am here to have this conversation means that all of those events did take place in just the right way. The argument goes on to say that if we were to try and calculate the odds of these events happening again, we would find that the odds are pretty impossible. If Grandma wouldn't have danced with Grandpa at that dance, or one of them were sick that night, or if Mom would have missed her bus that evening, or if she would have sat next to the fat woman instead of dad on the bus...etc...etc. The arguer will say, "Sure, its pretty lucky for me that it did all happen that way but in the grand scheme of things it really was not all that remarkable of an event." He will go on to argue that likewise, though all the events that make our existence here on earth seem pretty lucky for us, they too are not all that remarkable in the grand scheme of the universe. Does that about fit what you are conveying Percy?I'll be honest with you Percy, when I first heard the granny argument I was pretty taken back. I mean its pretty hard to argue agains that logic. It is a very good and logical argument against the appearance of fine tuning in the universe. After several days of thinking about this something dawned on me. Here is the answer (and in it were going to use 150 of your sharp shooters): The argument assumes that Grandma Jodi would have eventually met and married "someone" any ways and had children. But what if Granny, in her youth would have been condemned to die and would have been stood in front of a firing squad? And suppose there were one hundred fifty "well trained" marksmen on that squad. The Sergeant gives the order to take aim and then "FIRE!" If Granny would have died that day, then our objector would not be here today and he would therefore not find that too remarkable. In fact he couldn't find it remarkable because of the very fact that he is not here. But suppose all 150 trained marksmen missed Granny. Not only that, when she saw that she was still alive and unharmed, she turned and looked at the wall where she had been and saw a perfect outline of bullet holes in the shape of her body on the wall. Meaning that they had not only missed her, but they had perfectly and narrowly missed. So now our objector is here, and he is here specifically not because of random dumb luck. But he is here because of a truly unique event that consisted of one hundred and fifty precisely planned and calculated events working together. Had any one of the marksmen not intentionally missed Granny, then nothing else would have happened and the arguer who came up with the granny argument would not be here. Many of the laws of physics are balanced on a razors edge, without which would make it even impossible for the elements to exist especially carbon which is so necessary for life. When we start trying to explain away the solar system, we have to also explain how these laws of the universe were formed by natural unguided processes.Edited by Brad H, : No reason given.