What exactly is ID?

Hi Smooth Operator,I think some people have their own ideas about what constitutes reasonable argumentation, and convincing them that their arguments aren't reasonable is rarely possible. Making bald comparisons with things like how we know that the Rosetta stone wasn't carved with lasers or isn't just a rock someone dug up in their back yard and carved ancient characters into isn't reasonable in my view. If you think Nuggin is overstating his level of confidence in some viewpoint then argue the evidence with him. Other approaches in the science forums will just draw the attention of moderators like myself.Normally explaining what you think constitutes rational argument to someone who disagrees with you is a fruitless exercise, so I'm not going to try. But my goal is to have a website I can be proud of, and that means that when someone reads a thread in the science forums they more often say, "Now here's a well structured scientific discussion," rather than, "Why are they letting this ridiculous argument run on and on?"I've done my part by removing disruptive elements like Dr Adequate from this forum and by attempting to focus discussion on the topic. Now you do your part by bringing some scientific evidence and argumentation.Please, no replies to this message in this thread. Anyone who feels they are having problems in a discussion should post to Report discussion problems here: No.2.Edited by Admin, : Grammar.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Lol, Congrats, you got the most posts! You've made all those posts & made nothing clear except your own ignorance. Whose wasting their time? The admin is right this thread is going nowhere.

Let's be clear what has been happening in case anyone isn't following along.My position:
Design is only design if you can determine FACTUALLY that the object was MADE not naturally formed. The _ONLY_ way to determine this is if you know the mechanism used to create the object.My example: Circles can be created by design or by nature. Unless you know how the circle was made, you can not determine if it is an example of design.Smooth's position:
Since magic is undetectable, we can attribute magic as the mechanism of design for any and all objects and can't be proven wrong.His example: The Rosetta stone was created magically by laser wielding Ancient Egyptians randomly shooting lasers in all directions.He asks us to extend this fantasy to all of "Creation" citing Jew Magic as an undeniable source of everything we see around us.When pressed to proof, his "argument" devolves into:
"How do you know, were you there?"Nearly 1,000 messages on this board, and that's as far as he's gotten."It could have been magic, you don't know. You weren't there."A 5 year old would hang his head in shame over that sort of argument.Really truly pathetic.

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?

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Materialistic ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted. The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic worldview, but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry, leading to incorrect and unsupported conclusions about biological and cosmological origins. At the same time, intelligent design (ID) offers a promising scientific alternative to materialistic theories of biological and cosmological evolution an alternative that is finding increasing theoretical and empirical support. Hence, ID needs to be vigorously developed as a scientific, intellectual, and cultural project.

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I saw this quoted in another thread and thought it pertinent to this one - it comes from About – Uncommon Descent.This is very interesting. It makes clear that ID aims to counter materialism. But that can only be the case if the designer is assumed a-priori to be non-material. This is not a scientific starting point. It's clear therfore that ID is not scientific.It's also a very interesting example of what confirmation bias does to people's thinking. 'Corrupted', 'illegitimate' - these are the words of people who hate the fact that science does not need God to explain the universe. Unfortunately for them, this is how things are.I'm assuming that this website has some status in the ID community. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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In fact we know that you didn't mean that. But we can agree that the only functin actually tested for was lost.

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Since you can't read my mind, you do not know what I meant. Anyway, it doesn't matter to me what you call this loss. the loss of all functions, the loss of all known functions, or loss of one tested functions. It's irrelevant. What was tested for was lost, yes, let's agree on that and let's move on.

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D is not used as an abbreviation for D*. It is used as an abbreviation for (D,*). They are not the same thing.

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I agree.

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As you can clearly see the pattern is (D,*). D is a description (not an event). D* is the event described. And D is sometimes used as a shorthand for (D,*) - but never for D*.

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Yup, I agree. Therefore, (D,*) = "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.

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You only have to look at it to see that that is wrong. It is D* (with no bolding). Therefore * is being applied to the description D.

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Description as in descriptive language, or a pattern? Which one do you have in mind?

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It makes perfect sense, and I already explained why. If we use the specification "more heads than tails" for a given run of coin tosses we want the probability of getting any of the sequences that fit that specification. We don't want the probability of that particular sequence.

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Okay, but if you take the amount of throws as the compllexity of the event, say 10, than it is obvious that all those events are equally probable.this does NOT, however apply to the flagellum that has 50 proteins, and the one that has 1.000.000 proteins. Becasue it is harder for the more complex one to match the pattern. Therefore, we do the calculation separately.

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...the event that needs to have small probability to eliminate chance is not E, but D*.

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I agree. E is irrelevant. D* is what we are looking for. In this case, D* is the flagellum consisting of 50 proteins. And it's complexity is 10^2954.

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The target event is D* (that is the whole point of the specification - to define the target). So if we want to calculate the probability of hitting the target we want the probability of D*. And that is what we need to infer design:

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Yes, I totally agree. But you also have to compare how hard is it for that complexity of the event that mathces the pattern, that is, the event D*, to hit the patternt D*. And you have to make sure that it's more than 1/2. Check out the chapter "The magic number 1/2" on the page 190. It explains that you have to use botht eh complexity of the pattern and the event that matches that pattern and compare them to see if it's over or under the number 1/2.

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S(T) is available specificational resources. p(T|H) would be the probability of meeting the specification (i.e. p(D*|H)). Here's what it says about T (p18)

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Listen, we have already established that S(T) is actually the complexity of the pattern (D,*) which is 10^20.

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Moreover, given a natural language (English) lexicon with 100,000 (= 10^5) basic concepts (which is supremely generous given that no English speaker is known to have so extensive a basic vocabulary), we estimated the complexity of this pattern at approximately ϕ S(T) = 10^20 (for efiniteness, let’s say S here is me; any native English speaker with a some of
knowledge of biology and the flagellum would do).

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Yup. S(T) is the complexity of the pattern. The pattern is "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20. We already established that. Let's not go over this again.And yes, P(T|H) would be P(D*|H), which is the event that matches the above mentioned pattern. D* in this case is the 50 proteins large flagellum, whose complexity is 10^2954.

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Wrong again. On the basis of this specification, neither would be CSI since there are less than 300 bits of specified information.

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The one with 500 bits would be CSI, becasue you need 400 bits in order for an event to qualify as CSI.

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Yes, I do know. It is supposedly a probability set so low that we cannot expect a single specified event of this probability to occur in the lifetime of the universe. Unspecified events - and more importantly sequences of events = of arbitrarily low probability can and will occur. That is why Dembski says (TDI p165):

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Great. Tell me, how to we than use UPB, when we want to infer design.

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And of course your argument was completely wrong. How can increases in fitness fail to offset decreases in fitness ? Genetic entropy is about reducing fitness, beneficial mutations increase fitness.

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Again, you are nto specific enough. You are dancing around the point. Don't do that. Which fitness are you talking about? Reproductive fitness? Yes, it can be increased by benficial mutations. Beneficial mutations like sickle cell that increase reproductive fitness in Africa, yet int eh same time reduce geentic information.

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If you really listened to them you would know that they didn't agree with you. Firstly Kondrashov say that (effective) population size is important. That is what Ne is. Secondly Kondrashov does not say anything about beneficial mutations contributing to genetic entropy. He is (correctly) talking about the accumulation of mildly deleterious mutations.

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My points are as follows:1.) You are wrong.2.) Size is important, becasue the larger the population size, there is less of an increase of genetic entropy.3.) I never said he said anything about beenficial mutations increasing genetic entropy. I said that he said that you can't just invoke beneficial mutations to reduce geentic entropy. And he said just that. Read his last statement. It says this:

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This paradox cannot be resolved by invoking beneficial mutations or environmental fluctuations.

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See? You can't invoke beenficial mutations to save the population and remove genetic entropy.

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The only point regarding beneficial mutations is that they are not sufficient to offset the problem.

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So no, the professional clearly doesn't agree with you.

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LOL. But that was my point! My point is, as stated above, that you CAN NOT simply invoke beneficial mutations to remove genetic entropy! And Kondrashov said just that. And even you said so, right? You agree with me that this is true?If so, than it seem that the professionals do agree with me after all.

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In other words you think that your interpretation of an analogy dictates Sanford's meaning ?
You're going to need to do better than that if you want to claim that Sanford is talking about anything other than the same accumulation of deleterious mutations that the Kondrashov paper refers to. None of your other quotes offer any support for your position either. In fact it seems like you are actually avoiding any quote that would clearly state what Sanford means.

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Actually I quoted the parts where he says that genetic entropy is about the reduction of genetic information. And now I'm going to quote the part where he said that beneficial mutations degrade the genome also.

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The sensitivity of this observational network is such that even if only one mutation out of a million unambiguously creates new information (apart from fine-tuning), the literature would be owerflowing with reports of this happening. Yet I am not convinced there is one crystal-clear example of a known mutation which unambiguously created information. There are certainly many mutations which have been described as beneficial, but most of these mutations have not created information, but rather have destroyed it. For illustration some of us (like me) would view a broken car alarm as "beneficial". However, such random changes, although they might be found to be "desirable", still represent a breakdown and not the creation of a new functional feature. Information decreases. This is the actual case, for example, in chromosomal mutations that lead to antibiotic resistance in bacteria, cell functions are routinely lost. The resistant bacterium has not evolved. In fact it has digressed genetically and is defective.

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John C. Sanford - "Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of The Genome" page 17.

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There you go. He said that beneficial mutations casue degradation of information int he genome. Oh, and please stop accusing me of lying.

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Of course the issue here is not chance "making things worse" the question here is whether the "noise" interfering with selection tends to even out over large numbers. The first sentence of the Kondrashov abstract referred to above clearly indicates the importance of population size in controlling deleterious mutations. Listen to the professionals. They agree with me, you know. So your argument makes no sense and the conclusion is contradicted by a reference you yourself put forward.

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Chance is very important becasue it casues the loss of information in the first place.And what Kondrashov said supports me, not you. He said that large population sizes reduce teh increase of genetic entropy, but they do nto completely remove it. And also, he said that you can't remove genetic entropy simply by invoking beneficial mutations.

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That paper contradicts you. It explicitly points out the importance of population size. Your only quote relating to infinite populations only states that there is a balance point that can be more easily calculated given an infinite population,.

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How does it contradict me. Tell me exactly how does this paper contradict me?The papaer said that the balance can be reached when we have an infinite population. And it NEVER EVER mentioned any calculation. It plainly says that it's about an equilibrium that exists when the population has an infinite amount of individuals. Stop inventing words.

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That is just assertion. Remember to listen to the professionals. They agree with me, you know.

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No, it's not. It's primary school math. Either something decreases, increases, or is in perfect equilibrium. There is no fourth choice.So, either the mutations increase, as they always do, or they are removed totally if you have a perfect selection, or they are in equilibrium if you have an infinite population. You DO NOT have perfect selection, and you DO NOT have an infinite population. Therefore, they increase.

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No, you haven't. In fact you said that you didn't need the numbers, And you were wrong.

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Maybe you missed them. Let me repost them again. Here you go:Let's say that 50 is the threshold to genetic meltdown. The population starts out with 0 mutations.00 - start
05 - Less than 100% efficiency
08 - Less than 100% efficiency
15 - Less than 100% efficiency
00 - 100 % efficiency09 - Less than 100% efficiency
17 - Less than 100% efficiency
25 - Less than 100% efficiency
00 - 100 % efficiencyAs you can see, the dynamic equilibrium is maintained by natural selectiona times working below 100% and at some times at 100%. At some times, mutations accumulate, but than, natural seelction removes all of them. And this is how the population keep on going. But his is not possible.A more realistic model is this, where natural selection works at less than 100%, and at other times at almost 100% and almost all mutations are removed. But soem stay00 - start
04 - Less than 100% efficiency
07 - Less than 100% efficiency
11 - Less than 100% efficiency
02 - Almost 100% efficiency08 - Less than 100% efficiency
10 - Less than 100% efficiency
15 - Less than 100% efficiency
17 - Less than 100% efficiency
05 - Almost 100% efficiency09 - Less than 100% efficiency
15 - Less than 100% efficiency
22 - Less than 100% efficiency
26 - Less than 100% efficiency
31 - Less than 100% efficiency
11 - Almost 100% efficiency15 - Less than 100% efficiency
24 - Less than 100% efficiency
28 - Less than 100% efficiency
31 - Less than 100% efficiency
14 - Almost 100% efficiency18 - Less than 100% efficiency
22 - Less than 100% efficiency
28 - Less than 100% efficiency
32 - Less than 100% efficiency
39 - Less than 100% efficiency
15 - Almost 100% efficiency20 - Less than 100% efficiency
29 - Less than 100% efficiency
34 - Less than 100% efficiency
38 - Less than 100% efficiency
41 - Less than 100% efficiency
17 - Almost 100% efficiency20 - Less than 100% efficiency
25 - Less than 100% efficiency
31 - Less than 100% efficiency
38 - Less than 100% efficiency
44 - Less than 100% efficiency
50 - meltdownThis is the more realistic model where at times natural seelction works in removing almost all mutations. But some stay and over time accumulate. And on average this leads to the genetic meltdown.

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My position:
Design is only design if you can determine FACTUALLY that the object was MADE not naturally formed. The _ONLY_ way to determine this is if you know the mechanism used to create the object.

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My example: Circles can be created by design or by nature. Unless you know how the circle was made, you can not determine if it is an example of design.

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And you can not know HOW it was made unless you saw it get made. Therefore, you have no method of design detection.

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Smooth's position:
Since magic is undetectable, we can attribute magic as the mechanism of design for any and all objects and can't be proven wrong.

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His example: The Rosetta stone was created magically by laser wielding Ancient Egyptians randomly shooting lasers in all directions.

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He asks us to extend this fantasy to all of "Creation" citing Jew Magic as an undeniable source of everything we see around us.

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Obviously this is not my position.My position is that intelligent agency can leave certain patterns that natural causes can not. The pattern in question has got to be both complex and specified. We know from our experience that when we find large amounts of specified complexity, that an intelligence has played a role. For example, in writing, sculptures, machines, or electronics. Those are all instance of design, therefore, of specified complexity.We have never observed natural causes produce such patterns, therefore, when we find such patterns in nature, we should not atribute them to natural causes, but to causes that are known to produce tehm. We than use the inference to the best explanation, and explain those patterns as instances of design, that is, a product of an intelligent agency. Becasue we know that such patterns can in all other cases be explained that way.

If you _honestly_ believed this you would never consume anything you did kill and prepare yourself. You would NEVER take medicine. You would NEVER ride in a car or heaven forbid a plane.This is the argument from douchbaggery. It is absolutely worthless. It is the last ditch effort of people who've been cornered and had their entire argument destroyed.Like Godwin's law, Nuggin's Law is quite simple:
"The longer you argue with a Creationist, the more likely it is that they will say 'How do you know? Were you there?'. At that point, the debate is over. They are out of ideas. You win." And that's retarded since you can not distinguish between what is naturally caused and what is not since you have NO MECHANISM. Those are all examples of things for which you have mechanisms.
They are also examples of things which are NON-living and NON-reproducing. How would you know? You can't identify what a "cause" is, therefore you can not determine what is "produced" by these unknowable "causes".No mechanism = no predictions about what the mechanism CAN or CAN NOT do. Translated: We thEn use the ASSUMPTIONS to the PREDETERMINED POLITICAL GOAL, and explain those patterns as THE WORK OF A JEW WIZARD.

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Since you can't read my mind, you do not know what I meant.

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If I have to read your mind to understand your posts there is no point in you posting anything.
The fact is that you have explicitly argued for the claim that ALL function was lost, not just the known function and from that we can conclude that that is really what you meant.

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Yup, I agree. Therefore, (D,*) = "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.

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"bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is just plain D. And neither it. not D*, nor (D,*) equal 10^20 which is the estimate of the specificational resources given a four-part concept.

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Description as in descriptive language, or a pattern? Which one do you have in mind?

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When I refer to the description, D, I do not mean the descriptive language D or the pattern (D,*). So the answer is that I mean neither.

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Okay, but if you take the amount of throws as the compllexity of the event, say 10, than it is obvious that all those events are equally probable.

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this does NOT, however apply to the flagellum that has 50 proteins, and the one that has 1.000.000 proteins. Becasue it is harder for the more complex one to match the pattern. Therefore, we do the calculation separately.

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I do not take the number of throws as the complexity of the event. And in fact it doesn't have much effect on the probability unless the number of throws is both even and low (the probability is 0.5 for any odd number of throws and the lowest probability is 0.25 for 2 throws - a difference of 1 bit in the extreme case).What is more the number of proteins in the flagellum is NOT a number of attempts. It is an unspecified detail of that particular "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller, just as the exact sequence of heads and tails is an unspecified detail in my coin-toss example.

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I agree. E is irrelevant. D* is what we are looking for. In this case, D* is the flagellum consisting of 50 proteins. And it's complexity is 10^2954.

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I thought that the specification was "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. There is no mention of 50 proteins there. D* - the specification considered as an event would be something like "getting a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller.
Either you are using some other specification you haven't mentioned (and one that smells of fabrication) or that isn't D*. Which is it ?

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Yes, I totally agree. But you also have to compare how hard is it for that complexity of the event that mathces the pattern, that is, the event D*, to hit the patternt D*. And you have to make sure that it's more than 1/2. Check out the chapter "The magic number 1/2" on the page 190. It explains that you have to use botht eh complexity of the pattern and the event that matches that pattern and compare them to see if it's over or under the number 1/2.

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So then we need to calculate the probability of D*. Which means that either you need a valid specification for the calculation you want to use, or you need to do the calculation for the specification we agreed - "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. Whichever you prefer.

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Listen, we have already established that S(T) is actually the complexity of the pattern (D,*) which is 10^20.

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It's the specificational resources, no matter what else Dembski or you call it.

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Yup. S(T) is the complexity of the pattern. The pattern is "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20. We already established that. Let's not go over this again.

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The pattern is not the specificational resources and the description is not the pattern - and it isn't the specificational resources either.

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And yes, P(T|H) would be P(D*|H), which is the event that matches the above mentioned pattern. D* in this case is the 50 proteins large flagellum, whose complexity is 10^2954.

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No, it wouldn't for reasons we've already gone into.

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The one with 500 bits would be CSI, becasue you need 400 bits in order for an event to qualify as CSI.

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Wrong, you need 400 bits of SPECIFIED information to be CSI. Unspecified events aren't CSI no matter how many bits of "complexity" they have.

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Great. Tell me, how to we than use UPB, when we want to infer design.

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To give the simple answer. You find a valid specification that includes the event. You calculate the probability of meeting the specification. If that probability is less than the UPB (2^-400) then you infer design.

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Again, you are nto specific enough. You are dancing around the point. Don't do that. Which fitness are you talking about? Reproductive fitness? Yes, it can be increased by benficial mutations. Beneficial mutations like sickle cell that increase reproductive fitness in Africa, yet int eh same time reduce geentic information.

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Of course we are talking about reproductive fitness. And since genetic entropy is about reproductive fitness and not some vague notion of "genetic information" fitness gains from beneficial mutations can and do counteract the fitness loss of deleterious mutations. Just how hard is that to understand ?

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1.) You are wrong.

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2.) Size is important, becasue the larger the population size, there is less of an increase of genetic entropy.

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3.) I never said he said anything about beenficial mutations increasing genetic entropy. I said that he said that you can't just invoke beneficial mutations to reduce geentic entropy. And he said just that. Read his last statement...

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1) What am I supposedly wrong about ?2) I am glad that you admit the importance of size, however you still have to deal with the fact that the experts do not think that genetic entropy is a problem for large populations. (All your quotes from experts deal with small populations)3) Kondrashov does not say that beneficial mutations play no role, simply that they are not sufficient to deal with the problem, given the numbers he is using for effective population size and mutation rate etc.

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LOL. But that was my point! My point is, as stated above, that you CAN NOT simply invoke beneficial mutations to remove genetic entropy! And Kondrashov said just that. And even you said so, right? You agree with me that this is true?

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My point was that beneficial mutations did play a role, and that your argument ignored that. Kondrashov does not deny that.

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Actually I quoted the parts where he says that genetic entropy is about the reduction of genetic information. And now I'm going to quote the part where he said that beneficial mutations degrade the genome also.

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Actually you didn't because not one of your quotes mentioned "genetic entropy" at all. They were just the old creationist "information loss" argument (which is best described as meaningless).The point is that "loss of information" without loss of fitness is not going to force a species into extinction. "Loss of information" with a gain of fitness is more likely to save a species from extinction.

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How does it contradict me. Tell me exactly how does this paper contradict me?

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The papaer said that the balance can be reached when we have an infinite population. And it NEVER EVER mentioned any calculation. It plainly says that it's about an equilibrium that exists when the population has an infinite amount of individuals. Stop inventing words.

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Because it explicitly states that the risk of extinction comes from the effect of fragmentation lowering the effective population size. It does NOT say that equilibrium can only be achieved with infinite population size, only that the equilibrium level is independent of the mutational effect with infinite populations size.And in fact they do calculate this equilibrium level in their work.
(Text for figure 3)

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No, it's not. It's primary school math. Either something decreases, increases, or is in perfect equilibrium. There is no fourth choice.

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So, either the mutations increase, as they always do, or they are removed totally if you have a perfect selection, or they are in equilibrium if you have an infinite population. You DO NOT have perfect selection, and you DO NOT have an infinite population. Therefore, they increase.

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Or they are in equilibrium with a finite population. You haven't offered anything to rule that out yet.

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Maybe you missed them. Let me repost them again. Here you go:
Let's say that 50 is the threshold to genetic meltdown. The population starts out with 0 mutations.

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No, I didn't miss that. But it doesn't show anything because it begs the question. It simply assumes that less than 100% effectiveness equals accumulation (which is what it is supposed to show). However, even delayed (but certain) removal is less than 100% effectiveness, and you also need to count the loss of deleterious mutations due to drift. As I said, to deal with the issue you need real numbers, because they control the equilibrium level.

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.

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If I have to read your mind to understand your posts there is no point in you posting anything.
The fact is that you have explicitly argued for the claim that ALL function was lost, not just the known function and from that we can conclude that that is really what you meant.

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And I explained that that is becasue only one function was known to exist, and it was lost.

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"bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is just plain D. And neither it. not D*, nor (D,*) equal 10^20 which is the estimate of the specificational resources given a four-part concept.

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"bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is the four-part concept. It consists of 4 concepts, those four words. And since D is short for (D,*). Than "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = (D,*) = 10^20.

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When I refer to the description, D, I do not mean the descriptive language D or the pattern (D,*). So the answer is that I mean neither.

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There is no such thing as the description D. There is a pattern D.

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I do not take the number of throws as the complexity of the event. And in fact it doesn't have much effect on the probability unless the number of throws is both even and low (the probability is 0.5 for any odd number of throws and the lowest probability is 0.25 for 2 throws - a difference of 1 bit in the extreme case).

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What? Of course that's the complexity of the event. 2 throws are more complex than 1 throw. 10 throws are more complex than 2 throws.

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What is more the number of proteins in the flagellum is NOT a number of attempts. It is an unspecified detail of that particular "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller, just as the exact sequence of heads and tails is an unspecified detail in my coin-toss example.

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Unless it matchess the pattern.

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I thought that the specification was "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. There is no mention of 50 proteins there. D* - the specification considered as an event would be something like "getting a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller.
Either you are using some other specification you haven't mentioned (and one that smells of fabrication) or that isn't D*. Which is it ?

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Yes, I'm uing the same specification as always. And teh 50 proteins are mentioned in NFL.

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So then we need to calculate the probability of D*. Which means that either you need a valid specification for the calculation you want to use, or you need to do the calculation for the specification we agreed - "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller. Whichever you prefer.

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We already have everything.D = "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.
D* = 50 protein flagellum = 10^2954.

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It's the specificational resources, no matter what else Dembski or you call it.

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I'm sorry but it doesn't matter what I or you say. But it matter a lot what Dembski says. And he says it's hte complexity of the pattern.

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The pattern is not the specificational resources and the description is not the pattern - and it isn't the specificational resources either.

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Neitehr does Dembski talk about that. You are the one who is talking about it. I gave you a quote where he said that 10^20 is the complexity of the pattern.

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No, it wouldn't for reasons we've already gone into.

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The reason is that you simply don't agree.

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Wrong, you need 400 bits of SPECIFIED information to be CSI. Unspecified events aren't CSI no matter how many bits of "complexity" they have.

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Yes, I know that. I'm trying to explain to you that there is no combining going on.

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To give the simple answer. You find a valid specification that includes the event. You calculate the probability of meeting the specification. If that probability is less than the UPB (2^-400) then you infer design.

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Great! How do we find the probability of the event?

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Of course we are talking about reproductive fitness. And since genetic entropy is about reproductive fitness and not some vague notion of "genetic information" fitness gains from beneficial mutations can and do counteract the fitness loss of deleterious mutations. Just how hard is that to understand ?

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But you are wrong. Sanford said it's about degradation of genetic information. that can, but it does not in every case decrease reproductive fitness.

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1) What am I supposedly wrong about ?

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2) I am glad that you admit the importance of size, however you still have to deal with the fact that the experts do not think that genetic entropy is a problem for large populations. (All your quotes from experts deal with small populations)

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3) Kondrashov does not say that beneficial mutations play no role, simply that they are not sufficient to deal with the problem, given the numbers he is using for effective population size and mutation rate etc.

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1.) Almost everything.2.) I have ALWAYS said that larger sizes do help, but do not remove entropy completely. And no, I specifically showed you where it says that it's the problem for large populations as well. Once more.

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Here we have shown that accumulation of deleterious mutations may be a significant threat to large metapopulations and would be expected to exacerbate the effect of habitat loss or fragmentation on metapopulation viability. From a genetic perspective, a single large fragmented metapopulation is much more vulnerable to extinction than a panmictic population of the same overall number of individuals. Because the interaction between mutation accumulation and metapopulation demography is synergistic, an assessment of metapopulation viability based only on demographic forces is especially likely to underestimate the risk of extinction.

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There you go. It's talking about a large population.3.) And I never claimed that he said that! I claimed that he said what he said! And that is that beneficial mutations are not enough to remove genetic entropy! Which is what he said.

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My point was that beneficial mutations did play a role, and that your argument ignored that. Kondrashov does not deny that.

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And again, you are wrong. I never said that. Again, for the trillionth time. Beneficial mutations do play a role. But they are not enough. Do you understand me now? They are not enough to remove genetic entropy completely. It still increases. Kondrashov says so, do you agree with that or not?

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Actually you didn't because not one of your quotes mentioned "genetic entropy" at all. They were just the old creationist "information loss" argument (which is best described as meaningless).

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They do not have to mention it! The whole book is about genetic entropy! It doesn't have to be mentioned in every statement!

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The point is that "loss of information" without loss of fitness is not going to force a species into extinction. "Loss of information" with a gain of fitness is more likely to save a species from extinction.

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Wrong! Biological information is what performs all the biological functions. Without biological functions, living organisms can't do what they do. When they loose enough of the functions, they die! How can a non-functional lungs save a population from extinction?

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Because it explicitly states that the risk of extinction comes from the effect of fragmentation lowering the effective population size.

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That doesn't contradict me. It still means that only when the population is not fragmented, and is infinite in size, that equilibrium exists.

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It does NOT say that equilibrium can only be achieved with infinite population size, only that the equilibrium level is independent of the mutational effect with infinite populations size.

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And in fact they do calculate this equilibrium level in their work.

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Yes, which means that the mutations do not affect the population becasue it's infinite in size. So it can't go extinct.

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No, it's not. It's primary school math. Either something decreases, increases, or is in perfect equilibrium. There is no fourth choice.

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So, either the mutations increase, as they always do, or they are removed totally if you have a perfect selection, or they are in equilibrium if you have an infinite population. You DO NOT have perfect selection, and you DO NOT have an infinite population. Therefore, they increase.

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Or they are in equilibrium with a finite population. You haven't offered anything to rule that out yet.

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How would that happen. Explain how?

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No, I didn't miss that. But it doesn't show anything because it begs the question. It simply assumes that less than 100% effectiveness equals accumulation (which is what it is supposed to show). However, even delayed (but certain) removal is less than 100% effectiveness, and you also need to count the loss of deleterious mutations due to drift. As I said, to deal with the issue you need real numbers, because they control the equilibrium level.

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What's the fourth option!? There is eitehr equilibrium, increase, or decrease! What else is there?And the drift does not help you! The drift is random. And since there are more deleterious than beenficial mutations, while drift is in operation, as much deleterious mutations are lost, more will be accumulated. Becasue tehre is no selection to specifically remove them. On average, they will accumulate. Selection is invoked to remove them in the first place. If there was none, they would accumulate on their own.

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If you _honestly_ believed this you would never consume anything you did kill and prepare yourself. You would NEVER take medicine. You would NEVER ride in a car or heaven forbid a plane.

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This is the argument from douchbaggery. It is absolutely worthless. It is the last ditch effort of people who've been cornered and had their entire argument destroyed.

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Like Godwin's law, Nuggin's Law is quite simple:
"The longer you argue with a Creationist, the more likely it is that they will say 'How do you know? Were you there?'. At that point, the debate is over. They are out of ideas. You win."

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You can claim that you "won" as much as you like, but that does not make it so.If you found a piece of paper with writing on it on the road. How would you know that the what it was written on it was done by a typewriter or a printer? Obviously you wouldn't know. Yet you would still conclude it was designed. Therefore, you can't detect the mechanism of design, yet can infer design.

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And that's retarded since you can not distinguish between what is naturally caused and what is not since you have NO MECHANISM.

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I do not need a mechanism to tell me that Mounr Rushmore was designed. I do not even know what tools they used, and neitehr do you. You don't even know how many people worked there. And if you didn't know MR was designed. You would still infer design. Without knowing the mechanism.

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Those are all examples of things for which you have mechanisms.

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Great, how does that stop me from seeing their patterns, and infering from other objects, for which I do not know the mechanism, those same patterns? It doesn't.And no. Not al books or electronics, wer done by the same mechanism. Do you know, and can you explicitly tell me step by step rpocess of how a particular digital watch is made? NO YOU CAN'T!

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They are also examples of things which are NON-living and NON-reproducing.

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Which is irrelevant.

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How would you know? You can't identify what a "cause" is, therefore you can not determine what is "produced" by these unknowable "causes".

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No mechanism = no predictions about what the mechanism CAN or CAN NOT do.

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Any undirected nautral cause. Any natural law. Never did tehy produce anything like people produce.

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Translated: We thEn use the ASSUMPTIONS to the PREDETERMINED POLITICAL GOAL, and explain those patterns as THE WORK OF A JEW WIZARD.

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No. What I said.

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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.

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Part of detecting design is determing HOW something is made.

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But it's not reliable. They could as well been planted there, and you couldn't tell. You have no method of detecting that. Wether planted later or not, the best explanation is that they were there from the start. And you have no mechanism to tell apart those which were put there later.

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And I explained that that is becasue only one function was known to exist, and it was lost.

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So much for letting it drop !Anyway, thanks for admitting that I was right about what you said , and that I did NOT need to read your mind.

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"bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is the four-part concept. It consists of 4 concepts, those four words. And since D is short for (D,*). Than "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = (D,*) = 10^20.

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Just because Dembski uses D sometimes to mean the D component of (D,*) and sometimes to mean (D.*) does not mean that they are the same thing. So, no, D does not equal (D,*). "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller is just D, not (D,*). And neither is equal to 10^20

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There is no such thing as the description D. There is a pattern D.

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Yes there is - it's the D in the pattern "(D,*)".

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What? Of course that's the complexity of the event. 2 throws are more complex than 1 throw. 10 throws are more complex than 2 throws.

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Do I need to remind you that we want the probability of D*, not the probability of the unspecified event ? Do I need to point out that this example proves exactly that ? Do I need to repeat that the probability of meeting the specification I gave - P(D*) - is at least 0.25 regardless of the number of throws ?

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Unless it matchess the pattern.

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Since we're talking about the details which AREN'T part of the pattern, they can't match it.

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Yes, I'm uing the same specification as always. And teh 50 proteins are mentioned in NFL.

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OK, then 50 proteins are NOT part of D*. D* is "getting a bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller - no mention of 50 proteins there. Whether it is mentioned in NFL doesn't matter if it isn't mentioned in the specification.

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We already have everything.
D = "bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller = 10^20.
D* = 50 protein flagellum = 10^2954.

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That doesn't even make sense. 10^20 considered as an event is 10^2954 ?

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I'm sorry but it doesn't matter what I or you say. But it matter a lot what Dembski says. And he says it's hte complexity of the pattern.

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Dembski also says that it's the specificational resources.

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Yes, I know that. I'm trying to explain to you that there is no combining going on.

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But the combining is to eliminate the unspecified information. So if you agree that we shouldn't count it then you have to agree with the combining.

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Great! How do we find the probability of the event?

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We don't want the probability of the event, just the probability of meeting the specification. And in the case of the flagellum I have no idea of how to calculate it. And neither does Dembski.

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But you are wrong. Sanford said it's about degradation of genetic information. that can, but it does not in every case decrease reproductive fitness.

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In that case can you quote him actually saying that ? Because you didn't.

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2.) I have ALWAYS said that larger sizes do help, but do not remove entropy completely. And no, I specifically showed you where it says that it's the problem for large populations as well. Once more.

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And it says that it is only a problem when fragmentation REDUCES the effective population.
Therefore it doesn't support you.

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And again, you are wrong. I never said that. Again, for the trillionth time. Beneficial mutations do play a role. But they are not enough. Do you understand me now?

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If you were agreeing with me all along, then why were you arguing ?

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They do not have to mention it! The whole book is about genetic entropy! It doesn't have to be mentioned in every statement!

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They do have to mention it if they are saying that this information loss IS genetic entropy.
Which is the point you were supposedly trying to argue.

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Wrong! Biological information is what performs all the biological functions. Without biological functions, living organisms can't do what they do. When they loose enough of the functions, they die! How can a non-functional lungs save a population from extinction?

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Which only covers "losses of information" that negatively impact fitness. Not those that increase fitness.

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That doesn't contradict me. It still means that only when the population is not fragmented, and is infinite in size, that equilibrium exists.

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It does contradict you because it makes it clear that the problem only exists for low effective populations sizes.

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How would that happen. Explain how?

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By selection and drift removing deleterious mutations from the population at the same rate as they arrive. Thus we have an equilibrium without selection being 100% effective.

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And the drift does not help you! The drift is random. And since there are more deleterious than beenficial mutations, while drift is in operation, as much deleterious mutations are lost, more will be accumulated

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Wrong. The more deleterious mutations in the population the faster drift will remove them. That is one of the factors that your "example" didn't take into account.