What exactly is ID?

Really? From the Discovery Institute themselves:"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."'The Wedge' Document - Intelligent Design exposed | libcom.orgRead the whole thing, and then tell us with a straight face that the ID movement has nothing to do with replacing science with their view of christianity. And remember, this was an internal memo at the Discovery Institute.

And your point is? Humans mimic many things that occur naturally. They claim no such thing. DNA sequences can sustain many changes without affecting protein function. On the flip side, a single mutation can change the protein's function drastically, a single mutation can produce a functional protein from a previously non-functioning DNA sequence, etc. All of these have been observed.Again, you are specifying after the fact. You are telling us about how improbable the order of the cards are after the shuffle. You are telling us that lotteries have to be designed so that specific people can win. You are drawing the bull's eye around the bullet hole.

The difference is the evidence. An argument from authority lends credence to an argument by citing the expertise of the person making the argument. This is different than peer review where the conclusions are based on empirical evidence, not expertise.

Quite right. If we define "scientist" as someone who does science then there are no ID scientists. No ID scientists = No ID science.To be a bit more specific, no ID scientist is using ID to predict protein function for unannotated gene sequences. No ID scientist is using fossil data to do . . . well . . . anything. No ID scientist is using ID for comparative genomics in order to discern the cause of population changes in human pathogens.What needs to be focused on is how science works. It is hypothesis first, test hypothesis second, and described in text books third. They want to jump straight to step three. That's not how it works.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Two problems here. First, the appendix is not unique to mankind. The same structure is found at the end of the caecum in many, many species (most of which are stricty herbivorous). The human vermiform appendix is a rudimentary version of the caecum.Second, the function that the appendix performs in humans is a secondary, rudimentary function compared to the same structure in other species. In other species it is a vital component for digesting plant material. In humans, it is not. In fact, people are born without an appendix all of the time and they suffer no consequences from it. Even more, the death rate of untreated appendicitis is much higher than the health benefits it affords.What you are arguing for is that a broken tv is not actually broken because you can tie a rope to it and use it for as a boat anchor. Sorry, but if the tv doesn't produce a picture its broken. The human vermiform appendix does not aid in the digestion of plant material. It is broken. It is even worse than broken. It is a serious health risk.

That would require understanding our argument to begin with. Vestigial does not mean without function. Vestigial means serving a rudimentary or secondary function compared to the same feature in a different species. This definition fits the human appendix to a T. Then the squid eye is poorly designed.Let me ask you this. If you were designing a digital camera would you pass the wires for the photoreceptors in front of the the photoreceptors? Is that a smart choice?

Because it is an unavoidable situation. Those that do not have the instinct nor the ability to survive and reproduce don't. Those that do have the instinct to survive and reproduce do. How can the results of this process be anything other than a bunch of species who have survival instincts and a drive to reproduce?As for ID, I guess it depends on the designer in question. There are a whole range of designers that people have put forth over the years. At one end we have the deist type god who started the universe and then walked away from it. Then there is the long list of interactive gods who are worried about everything from masturbation to what type of cloth you are wearing. Take your pick.

Who is reading DNA, RNA and proteins? I can. The claims of specified information are being made after the fact. It is the same as claiming that a lottery had to be specified for a specific winner. Citation? From what I have read RNA may be all you need. No protein needed.Also, to make any of these calculations you need to know what is required for the simplest replicator possible. No one knows this. Therefore, any probabilities are pure speculation. It is analogous to calculating the odds of a lottery without even knowing how many balls are in the hopper. As I have already shown that bacteria produce these mutations in the absence of selection. Bacteria produce mutations which confer antibiotic resistance in the absence of antibiotics. The same for phage resistance. The mutations that bacteria produce are random with respect to fitness. There is nothing in the bacterial genome that allows it to produce specific mutations in response to specific environmental cues.The fact of the matter is that a frame shift mutation resulted in a novel enzyme. If that is not new information then what is?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

You have confused two concepts: baseless assertions and logical justifications. The claim that these bacteria were designed to evolve is a baseless assertion meant to lessen the impact of observed increases of information through evolutionary mechanisms. You are affirming the consequent. That is a logical fallacy. So we should see billions of years of evolution occur in a heartbeat? Really?Not only that, but you are also missing another important factor: the original genome. Every species we see today is the result of billions of years of evolution. Every one of them. We can't expect them to revert to a more primitive and less fit genome and then evolve fitness once again just to make you accept a theory. There is no going backwards.As an analogy, in order to accept the idea that modern human technology evolved from stone age technology you need to see a single generation of Europeans revert to stone age technology and then invent 5,000 years worth of technology right in front of your eyes. Does that really sound like a realistic critique?

Bullshit.Let's look at the oft cited example of arrowheads. We can determine from the evidence how they were made. We can find the quarries where the flint was harvested. We can find shards of flint in these same quarries that were produced during their manufacture. We can even find discarded arrowheads that were thrown out because they were manufactured incorrectly. There are even university level classes that teach students HOW these arrowheads were made, and this knowledge was derived from the evidence found in these ancient quarries and from arrowheads themselves.Part of detecting design is determing HOW something is made.

You are assuming the conclusion. You first need to demonstrate that it did originate from an intelligent source before you can speak of it as fact. I have already shown that it is impossible to calculate any probabilities where it concerns abiogenesis. You first need to know what the simplest replicator is, how many possible replicators are possible, and how many "tries" there were. Do you have any of this?Here, let's try this on for size. I have a huge box full of tiles. You reach in and pull out a tile that has the number 42 on it. From this information alone, what are the odds that you would have pulled out a tile with the number 42 on it? Transposases are incapable of detecting what is and is not beneficial to the organism. "We report findings from an experiment designed to test the effects of environmental variability on the adaptation and divergence of replicate populations of E. coli. A total of 42 populations evolved for 2000 generations in 7 environmental regimes that differed in the number, identity, and presentation of the limiting carbon source. Regimes were organized in two sets, having the sugars glucose and maltose singly and in combination, or glucose and lactose singly and in combination. Combinations of sugars were presented either simultaneously or as temporally fluctuating resource regimes. This design allowed us to compare the effect of resource identity and presentation on the evolutionary trajectories followed by replicate populations. After 2000 generations of evolution, the fitness of all populations had increased relative to the common ancestor, but to different extents."
sourceThere you go. Increased fitness over 2,000 generations.

Can you back any of this up? Research in the field of the RNA World Hypothesis have shown that you don't need proteins to have enzymatic activity. RNA molecules can carry out these reactions. So right off the bat it is wrong to state that you MUST have proteins. Secondly, others have shown that proteins can and do form abiotically. Thirdly, why are 200 proteins necessary? You never seem to support this with anything, and has already been shown RNA can replace proteins.

We do have those traces. They are in our genomes. We share tRNA's and other features and these are signals consistent with shared ancestry. An examination of the watch will tell you how it was made. Close examination of the gears can tell you if they were forged or cast. You can examine the connections between metal parts to see if they were soddered, and using different techniques you may even be able to tell when it was soddered and where it was soddered. You can use isotope analysis to determine which batch of alloys was used to make different parts. You can even use the composition of different dyes and materials to determine it's place and time of origin. Of course, it would be even easier to look at the maker's mark. Folders from a single project can be found in different trees within the nested hierarchy resulting in a violation. Computer files are not arranged in a nested hierarchy by shared commonalities. You are just as likely to find a Word file in all lineages or scattered here and there. Computer files do not fall into a nested hierarchy, and there is no reason that they should. Life DOES fall into a nested hierarchy, and design can not explain this (or rather, design does not predict any pattern of homology). Evolution can explain this pattern of homology.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

You are assuming the antecedent. This is a logical fallacy:All X are YY, therefore X.We can use an example. All priests are catholic. Mary is a catholic, therefore she is a priest. This is the same mistake you are committing. When has an ID proponent observed this supposed designer producing new life in the present? As I have shown, they don't give us an idea. They are merely biased assumptions dressed up in math. Organisms that are the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution are not considered to be representative of the first life. That is just ridiculous. Sorry, but you have taken a long walk off a short pier with this one. Some are hypothesizing that the first life didn't have proteins at all. And this is exactly the problem here. We don't know how many combinations of chemicals will result in life. We don't know what the simplest replicator possible is. We don't know a lot, and yet you want to spit out probabilities based on this ignorance. Sorry, but it doesn't compute. We have no idea how similar those organisms were to modern life. None at all, other than they were single celled organisms that produced specific geologic structures. That's it. Again, you are jumping to conclusions based on very shaky assumptions.

You will notice that you never attempted to answer the question."How does ID explain the progression seen in these images if it is not by new additions or changes in the genome?"You were asked about ID, not evolution. So why did you write such a large post about evolution? What is the ID explanation for this series, and what experiments can we run to test this explanation?