What exactly is ID?

quote:

---

Do you have any siblings. If you do, what mechanism is responsible for your shared characteristics? Shared ancestry, is it not?

​

Do you really think that common ancestry is not possible? Really?

---

I'm talking about universal common ancestry. You know, the common ancestry of all life on Earth. You do know that bears and aligators do not and can not reproduce?

quote:

---

This is why ID is not scientific. Nothing can falsify it. 2 billion different species with no shared characteristics would also be consistent with magical poofing. A non-nested hierarchy would be consistent with magical poofing. Anything and everything is consistent with magical poofing.

---

This is where youa re wrong on 2 parts.1.) ID can be falsified. If an event is shown to be a producd of eiterh a natural law or chance, than ID is falsified.2.) ID has nothing to do with "poofing", whatever that is.

quote:

---

This is not so with evolution. The theory of evolution (a scientific theory) makes a risky prediction. It predicts that a nested hierarchy should exist among species that only participate in vertical genetic transfer (which is the case for metazoans). What do we see at the genetic level? An overwhelming signal for a nested hierarchy.

---

Except where we do not see a nested hierarchy. Did you read the article I quoted in my previosu post? A lot, and I do mean, a lot of speies do not fit the tree of life model you think they do. On the other had, I already told you, being consistent with something doesn't imply that this something is the cause.

quote:

---

How in the world do you think people determine that Rolex's are fakes? Or how old a pocket watch is? From these very things. It's not only possible it is done all of the time.

---

But it does not detect design. It presupposes design in the first palce. You already know a ROlex is designed. Now you just want to find out the mechanism.

quote:

---

Secondly, if I put two pocket watches in a box and come back 9 months later are there three pocket watches? No, there isn't. Watches don't reproduce. Life does.

---

If you put random atoms in that very same box, will they reproduce? No they won't. So why would you think a long time ago some atoms did just that and formed first life? But that's besides the point. How does reproduction have anyhting to do with design detection in the first place?

quote:

---

A designer could put feathers on a bat. There is nothing stopping it from happening. And yet, there is no feathered bats.

---

I know, why should there be?

quote:

---

Instead we see adaptations of a mammalian body type for flight without anything informing these adaptations from the bird lineage.

---

No you do not. You simply see, mammalian bodies that are able to fly. You have no idea of how that came about.

quote:

---

Again and again we see this pattern. There is no reason that we should see a nested hierarchy in metazoans if ID is true.

---

Except if it was designed that way.

quote:

---

It is the only pattern that evolution can produce with a lack of horizontal gene transfer.

---

You didn't even show that evolution is capeable of producing that in the first place! You can't ascribe an event to a cause that you do not know can even produce that cause.

quote:

---

Not for organisms that participate in HGT, no it doesn't. However, there is very little to no HGT observed among metazoans, and sure enough we see an overwhelming signal that is consistent with a nested hierarchy.

---

But those animals you speak of were supposed to have evolved from those earlier that did participate in a lot of HGT. So if evolution was true, the later ones should obviously not be forming a nested hierarchy.Furhtermore, the idea that HGT is responsible for the noncorrelated branches is not enough. Simply because even the higher taxa is shown to not conform to a tree of life as envisioned if it was a slow gradual descent.

quote:

---

Hillis (and others) may claim that this problem is only encountered when one tries to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of microorganisms, such as bacteria, which can swap genes through a process called horizontal gene transfer, thereby muddying any phylogenetic signal. But this objection doesn’t hold water because the tree of life is challenged even among higher organisms where such gene-swapping does not take place. As the article explains:

​

Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirtsalso known as tunicatesare lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another, Syvanen says.

---

A Primer on the Tree of Life | Discovery Institute

quote:

---

Using ID, can you explain why we don't see birds with three middle ear bones? Why we don't see mammals with feathers? Why we don't see whales with gills? Why we don't see penguins with hair? How does ID explain why we see one pattern out of the billions that are possible?

---

That's not what ID is about. But nevertheless. The explanation is simple. They were not designed that way. But can you tell me what exactly would falsify evolution? What animal, and which characteristics would falsify common descent?

quote:

---

How was this calculation made? More importantly, why limit this to a "bidirectional motor-driven propeller"? The function is motility. His calculations need to include all protein-protein interactions that could have led to a motility function.

---

The calculation can be found in the NFL. It doesn't matter what the function is. What matters is the pattern. Including all the possible patterns that would lead to motility is useless. We are trying to detect if a certain pattern was designed.

quote:

---

They pass on their entire genome? Really? You might want to think about that for a second. In sexually reproducing species only half the genome is passed on which means that a mixture of alleles is passed on. Therefore, different children from the same parents will have a different mixture of alleles.

---

Does the sperm, or does it not, contain the full genome fo the father? Regardless of how the gebnomes will later on mix.

quote:

---

Secondly, there are very good examples of a single nucleotide difference being selected for. The hemoglobin S allele is a perfect example. In the heterozygous state it confers malarial resistance. In the homozygous state it causins sickling of the RBC's. Therefore, it has both beneficial and detrimental attributes depending on the environment. In environments with endemic malaria the beneficial attributes in the heterozygous state outweigh it's detrimental attributes in the homozygous state. The exact opposite occurs in environments without endemic malaria. So what do we see when we look at the geographic distribution of the hemoglobin S allele and endemic malaria? They match. Populations in areas with endemic malaria have many more individuals with the allele than populations in areas without endemic malaria. This completely falsifies your claim.

---

And thus, you painfully missed my whole point. Natural selection did not pick the organism on the level of that nucleotide. It picked teh organims on the level of the whole genome. It just so happened that the whole genome was fit enough to get selected. There are lot's of other mutations it that very same genome. Some are beenficial, soem are not. On average, and overall it is more fit than the others in it's population, that is why it got selected. But natural selection did not select it based on that single nucleotide. If it did, why did all the other deleterious mutations get passed on also in that same organism?

quote:

---

You do know that chihuahuas and great danes can not reproduce.

---

Is it because of genetic differences or because of the difference in size? But that's not my point anyway. My point is that you don't simply assume genetically very distinct animals could reproduce int he past. You need some evidence for it.

quote:

---

And you never demonstrated why common ancestry is impossible, other than to just assert it. We do observe that common ancestry produces shared characteristics. We observe that all life shares arbitrary characteristics, such as tRNA's.

---

1.) I never said it was impossible, I simply said we have no evidence for it. And since we have no evidence for it. We are not going to go out into nature, and claim that animals represent an instance of universal common descent, since we didn't show it to be true.2.) Yes, we observe that with animals that can reproduce. You can't simply assert that a long time ago, crocodiles and bears came from a common ancestor that was able to reproduce. You simply have no evidence for that.

quote:

---

1) Since new information is produced by mutations, and mutations occur by chance, then ID is falsified.

​

2) ID has always been about magical poofing.

---

1.) Ummm.... no. That's not how you falsify a design hypothesis. You have to eitehr show that an event is highly probable, ie. a result of the law of nature, or that it was produced by chance. And as for mutations creating new information, it could be true, depending on how you define information.2.) Where does it say that?

quote:

---

And in those species we see horizontal genetic transfer. In species where we do not observe HGT we observe a nested hierarchy, exactly as we would expect. This applies to the vast majority of metazoans.

---

Ummm... no agian. Teh second article I quoted in my previous post related specifically to this objection. We do not observe nested hierarchies even in higher taxa. Please read my posts more carefully. Besides, even if we did, so what? That's not evidnece for universal common descent. That's evidence that you put a bunch of animals in a group, based on their similarity. That's all.

quote:

---

You have just rejected your own potential falsification. We observe natural processes producing a nested hierarchy. We observe a nested hierarchy in life.

---

1.) How did I do that? I never said that a nested hierarchy diproves or does not disprove design.And no, we do not see a nested hierarchy in living organisms. It's a myth. There is a certain amount of nestedness. That's true. Especially on a phenotypic level. But on a molecular level, it's a bush, not a tree of life.Please note some of the newest scientific data that do not agree with your position. These results show that even closely related specie like humans gorillas and chimps do not form a neat nested hierarchy, but rather a bush. If such bushes happen in such closely related species than anything thought to be even firther related is a total assumption, nothing more.

quote:

---

The gorilla/chimp/human tree (5—8 million years ago). Whereas genomic analyses have shown that at the species level, chimpanzees are humans' closest relatives [24], many of the genes and genomic segments examined have followed different evolutionary paths [24—26]. Specifically, analyses of almost 100 genes (under two different optimality criteria) show that ~55% of genes support a human-chimpanzee clade, 40% are evenly split among the two alternative topologies, with the remaining genes being uninformative [25,26] (Figure 2A). Similarly, whereas 76% of PICs from a genome-scale survey support a human—chimpanzee clade, 24% of PICs disagree

---

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/infooi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040352

quote:

---

Once HGT stops there will be a nested hierarchy.

---

Where has this been observed?

quote:

---

Why weren't birds designed with three middle ear bones?

---

Why weren't all cars designed with airbags? This is not something that ID investigates. A designer can choose whatever he want's for it's design. Just because there isn't something in design that you want there to be, that doesn't mean there is no design whatsoever.

quote:

---

Why weren't bats designed with feathers?

---

Why don't all planes have jet engines? See above.

quote:

---

What was preventing this designer from swapping design units between different vertebrate species?

---

What prevented the designers of all different computers to simply swap the architecture?

quote:

---

Why is the pattern of homology exactly what we would expect to see from evolutionary events?

---

You nevr observed universal common descent. So you do not know how one would look like.There is no such a thing as a homology that ONLY conforms to evolution. There is homology, paralogy, orthology, ohnology, xenology and gametology. All these explanations cover all possible patterns. Similar structure coded with same genes, different structures coded for by different genes, different structures coded for by similar genes, similar genes coded for by different genees etc...So since all bases are covered, meaning, evolution has answers for all possible patterns, it makes common descent unfalsifiable. You can't falsify common descent because any pattern of genes can be explained by the same mechanism. Therefore it's unfalsifiable, ie. not a good scientific explanation.An animal, living or fossilized, that would falsify evolution would be an animal with a single lower jaw bone, three middle ear bones, and feathers. Another would be an animal with gills and hair. What was stopping this supposed designer from producing these animals?[/quote]

quote:

---

So how many possible patterns are there and how was that determined?

---

There are 10^20 possible patterns that describe the flagellum. This is even talked about in this very topic.

quote:

---

Frankly, I don't see how such a calculation can be done since it is nearly impossible to know which combinations of which protein sequences will result in any type of motility system.

---

I know you don't that's why you shouldn't bother me anymore. Just because YOU don't see how something could have been done, that doesn't mean it's impossible. And as I said earlier, we are not concerned with motility, but with a pattern.

quote:

---

No, it contains half the father's genome. It's a haploid cell. Get thee to a biology book and learn about meiosis.

---

Does the genome contain it's full content before it's converted into a gamete?

quote:

---

Then please explain why the map of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) matches so perfectly with the map of malaria distribution.

---

Who know. Could be lot's of reasons. Some of the reasons include natural selection and genetic drift. But that does nto mean that natural selection selects on the level of a nucleotide. That's just plain stupid. Explain to me how can the natural seelction see if a single nucleotide is deleterious or not. What is teh mechanism for this insight?

quote:

---

No, you are. You are constantly citing example of things that _YOU_ don't understand but which OTHER PEOPLE DO understand.

​

No, two knives are not going to make the same cut as a pair of scissors. We know this because we have access to knives, paper and scissors and we can run tests on these different kinds of MECHANISMS.

---

Explain the difference.

quote:

---

You _DON'T_ have access to Jew Magic, therefore you can not run tests on Jew Magic, therefore you can not determine if something was or was not created by Jew Magic.

---

Neither am I claimign that I'm doing that. Or that I want to do it.

quote:

---

Because _AGAIN_ we KNOW the mechanism of wind and we know the mechanism of erosion. We also KNOW the mechanism of flintnapping.

​

We can look at the RESULTS and determine CONCLUSIVELY the mechanism which was used to CREATE those results.

​

YOU are claiming that you can look at the RESULTS and conclude things WITHOUT A MECHANISM. Which is _IMPOSSIBLE_!

​

You CAN NOT determine that something was made unless you can determine HOW something is made.

---

How? How do you CONCLUSIVELY determine that a certain piece of rock is not a product of wind and erosion? How do you do that?

quote:

---

So, your ENTIRE ARGUMENT is based on a lie.

​

You KNOW this is a lie.
I KNOW this is a lie.
Everyone reading this thread KNOWS this is a lie.

​

Who EXACTLY are you trying to convince?!

​

When you are __LYING__ it means that EVEN YOU don't believe the bullshit you are selling.

​

If you ACTUALLY believed it, you WOULDN'T NEED TO LIE.

---

This is not a lie. It's a valid question. Please explain, without presupposing design, if teh Rosetta stone was designed.Simply knowing the mechanism of shisling rocks is not going to help you. Because you do not know if the Rosetta stone is chisled rock in the first place. How do you tell if it really is chisled rock, or if it just looks that way, but in reality is just a product of wind, water and erosion over long periods of time?

quote:

---

The problem is that the rest of the world isn't nearly as stupid as you are. We do in fact understand HOW things are made.

​

Just because YOU can't put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together doesn't make it "Jew Magic!"

---

Am I getting to you again? Why do you keep coming back if you are so angry?Anyway... A design inference is always done by a subject that does NOT, and I repeat, does NOT know if an event in question is designed. If the subject did know it, the whole purpose of design inference would be null and void, thus pointless. You need a subject who does not know how an event originated to perform a design inference.

quote:

---

You also specifically said all functions and argued that we could infer the loss of all function from the loss of the known function.

---

No, I said that we can say it lost all functions becasue we don't know of any other.

quote:

---

I's the specificational resources which Dembski also for some reason calls the complexity of the pattern. The point of calling it the specificational resources is because it is a more meaningful name so you won't confuse it with anything relevant to the probability of matching the specification (the probability of D*).

---

It's not FOR SOME REASON!!!! It's because that are the specificational resources that are able to specify the pattern of said complexity!

quote:

---

The logic was explained. THe two cases are simply not comparable - not least because in the case of the dice we know how to calculate the probability. We don't for the two hypothetical flagella and there could be aspects which make the one with 1,000,000 proteins more likely than the one with 50 (which would depend on things like the proteins).

---

NO! Proteins are proteins. The proteins are identical. 50 proteins is LESS, and ALWAYS LESS than 1.000.000 proteins. Therefore, the 50 protein flagellum is LESS complex than a 1.000.000 protein flagellum. Therefore, a 50 protein flagellum is MORE probable than a 1.000.000 flagellum.You do NOT get to invent some additional ideas that would increase the probability of the 1.000.000 protein flagellum. They consist of identical proteins. Therefore, one is less probable than the other.This is thoroughly explained in Dembski's newest article "Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason and Conservation of Information in Computer Search". Where he explains that if we have no prior knowledge about the search space, we impose the unifom probability distribution. Anything else is going to lead us to even worse results. So if we know that a certain kind of protein has a probability of forming P, than 50 of those will have the probability of forming at P/50. And it logically follows that anywhere else in that same searchs pace the probability of forming 1.000.000 of those same proteins will be P/1.000.000.

quote:

---

An underlying foundation of COI is Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason1(PrOIR) which imposes of a uniform distribution on a search space in the absence of all prior knowledge about the search target or the search space structure. The assumption is conserved under mapping. If the probability of finding a target in a search space is p, then the problem of finding the target in any subset of the search space is p. More generally, all some-to-many mappings of a uniform search space result in a new search space where the chance of doing better than p is 50-50. Consequently the chance of doing worse is 50-50. This result can be viewed as a confirming property of COI. To properly assess the significance of the COI for search, one must completely identify the precise sources of information that affect search performance.

---

http://marksmannet.com/...RINTS/2009_BernoullisPrinciple.pdf

quote:

---

It doesn't use a valid specification and it ignores relevant information.

---

Explain everything in full detail!

quote:

---

It may not matter to you what the material you quote actually says, but it does to anyone honestly interested in understanding the issues. This other noise IS the "genetic entropy".

---

Genetic entropy is the deterioration of the information in the genome over time. As I have quoted Sanford already. Stop inventing your own notions of what genetic entropy is. The noise is one of the causes, whereever it comes from.

quote:

---

Congratulations on finding one paper that actually supports your point - to a degree. A definite step up on using papers that contradict your claims. Of course it is purely theoretical - and published in a physics journal - and still presented only as a possibility depending on the parameters. It is still not the inevitability that you claim.

---

My claim is that it can happen in large populations. You claimed that it CERTAINLY CAN NOT. Iwas right. You were wrong. And since I was right. We can extrapolate the empirical resultsfrom other experiments that show genetic meltdown to higher sexually reproducing populations. If you disagree, explain why in detail.

quote:

---

Did you not read that it is specifically dealing with the problems faced by a fragmented population ? Did you not read that it says that fragmentation lowers the effective population size ? Do you not understand that it is effective population size that matters ?

---

Quote the relevant part and explain in detail why it supports your view. You know, like I've been doing all along.

quote:

---

So you didn't mean what you said and what you did mean was a complete irrelevance. (Here's a hint random mixing of the parental genomes supports my point)

---

No, it does not support you. For two resons.1.) Genetic recombination DOES NOT EQUAL natural seelction. We are talking about if natural selection selects on the level of the nucleotide.2.) Genetic recombination is random. Therefore it does not pick out the deleterious mutations. It could pick them out. But it can just as well pick out the beneficial ones an leave the deleterious ones.

quote:

---

Of course I never made reference to single nucleotides (or do you not know about genes or chromosomes ?) The fact is that in a typical sexually reproducing species the whole genome will appear in very few individuals, and so it will not have much of an opportunity to be selected. It would take an extreme case to have much impact. However, genes are usually passed on intact (and genes on the same chromosome have a tendency to stick together). So genes are better as a unit of selection because they can spread more widely in the population and persist over the generations.

---

And this is exactly why genetic entropy happens. Because of linkage. A lot of genes are physically linked. They get inherited in blocks. So if one gene has a beneficial mutation, and another has a deleterious one, the deleterious one goes together to the offspring!And again, this has nothing to do with natural selection selectin on either on the level of a single nucleotide, or a gene, or a chromosome. It still evaluates the whole genome, and than seelcts.

quote:

---

CSI is a binary measure (either something is CSI or it isn't) which makes it a poor choice.

---

All inforamtion that we measure is binary. Yes, something is either CSI or it's not. But you can still have 400, 500, 1000, or 10.000 bits of CSI.

quote:

---

And it can't be measured for any gene which makes it a totally useless choice.

---

Of course it can. The fact that you don't accept it is not my fault.

quote:

---

Since Dembski's "complexity" is a probability measure which does not depend purely on length anyone who claims that any flagellum based on 1,00,000 proteins MUST be more complex than any flagellum based on 50 doesn't know what they are talking about. ANd Shannon information isn't even relevant to that.

---

It depends on lenght and only on lenght. It's the full CSI that depends on lenght and the specification.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

quote:

---

The difference is that OTHER PEOPLE are a lot smarter than you and have actually taken the time to learn a little something about what they are discussing.

​

Your extremely limited understanding of science, logic and, frankly, honesty, puts you at a severe disadvantage when dealing with the real world.

​

Your limitations are NOT the limit of other people's knowledge. The fact that you need me to explain that to you is pretty damn telling.

---

Believe it or not, this is the exact way I would describe you. Wow, what a coincidence. Or is it... design?

quote:

---

Because wind erosion effects certain rocks in certain ways. Again, your limited knowledge of the natural world completely derails the conversation.

---

I know that they affect them in certain ways. My question is, how do you know, that BY CHANCE, wind, water and erosion, didn't leave the marks just like those that people would leave when modeling stones? How do you know that chance was not the cause?

quote:

---

No. It's a statement. You are STATING that the Rosetta stone was created naturally (or via Jew Magic) and YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT TRUE.

​

Therefore you are LYING.

​

You are DISHONEST.

​

And YOU KNOW you are lying.

​

Which means you KNOW you've LOST the DEBATE. Because there's NO REASON to lie if you think you are winning.

---

I know that the Rosetta Stone was designed. That is, I don't concluseively know. But I infer design. By MY method.The question is, how do YOU know? What is your method of design detection? How does your method tell you that the Rosetta stone was designed? HOW!?

quote:

---

That is the argument from douchbaggery.

​

How do _YOU_ know that it was actually Jew Magic and not something that happens to be EXACTLY LIKE Jew Magic but technically is not?

​

How do _YOU_ know that when you are typing a letter the computer is sending the message to the forum and not simply presenting a completely random sequence of letters which happen to follow a milisecond behind the exact buttons you happen to be pushing even though it's technically not related?

​

How do _YOU_ know that YOU know anything rather than it just being a trick to make you THINK you KNOW something that you only think you know because you don't know that you know what is not known without the trick of knowing who knows how you know it?

​

IT's all BULLSHIT.

​

That ENTIRE FORM OF ARGUMENT is an acknowledgement that you have LOST THE DEBATE.

---

Yeah, this is out of your league... But never mind, I'll keep having fun with you becasue it makes me laugh...You see, you are totally clueless about what the argument is. You have never heard about a thing called the hypothesis testing. Or in this case the statistical hypothesis testing, which is used to falsify the chance hypothesis.A standard method is called the Fisher method.

quote:

---

A statistical hypothesis test is a method of making statistical decisions using experimental data. In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. The phrase "test of significance" was coined by Ronald Fisher:

---

Statistical hypothesis testing - WikipediaThe point of this method is to tell apart designed events from chance events. The fact that you think that my question is an "argument from douchbaggery" shows you should keep quiet about this. But, please do keep embarrassing yourself. Again, you need a method that is going to tell you if something was designed or not. To do that, you have to reliably remove the posibility that a chance had any cause in bringing about the event in question.Dembski's design detecting method is a generalization of Fisher's method. Which is widely used in... well... EVERYWHERE! And you would have know that if you read NFL, or actually had the faintest idea about what we are talking about.So once again, just for you. Tell me, what is your method of design detection? What is your method of hypothesis testing? How do you falsify the chance hypothesis? Does any of this ring a bell? Nope? Didn't think so...

quote:

---

And the design inference you are using comes from Dembski who admits to being a fundamentalist Christian who believes in the literal truth of the Bible.

---

Your point is? Nevermind, you have no points.

quote:

---

So, since he KNEW about the BIBLE before he did his design inference, the KNEW that it was designed. Therefore, BY YOUR OWN STATEMENT ABOVE, the inference is NULL AND VOID.

​

You lose. Again. For the 12th time.

---

Wrong. ID does not and can not point to the Bible, or any other book. Dembski said that many time. His personal belief has nothing to do with his science.But let me turn this around on you...You're an atheistic fundamentalist. Your starting position is that life is not designed. So you coclude that life is not designed, even before you made any experiments? How could you?

quote:

---

Which is what I said. And it's wrong - and you know it's wrong.

---

For this to be wrong, we would have to invent new unknown functions. Why would we want to do that?

quote:

---

Of course that isn't true. You can't work out the probabilities just from the number of proteins.

---

Uh, yes you can. That's liek saying you can't work out the probabilites of what number you are going to get just from the number of dice you have. Yes you can.

quote:

---

I'm not inventing anything. I'm just pointing out that there can be factors that you simply haven't taken into account.

---

YES I KNOW! There can be an invisible pink unicorn playing with proteins when we are not looking!!!! There can be a light blue invisible unicorn magicaly increasing the probability of the flagellum forming every time the amount of protein reaches 1.000.000. There can even ba a green witch that adds wings to the flagellum when we are not looking, and takes them off every time we look.SO THE HELL WHAT!?If you have no evidence for any of that, you don't get to include those things in the calculation. If we had it your way, NO SINGLE STATISTICAL CALCULATION COULD EVER be performed. How do you know that some magic doesn't influence a coin thrown in Germany to fall heads 75% more than tails? How do you know this is not the case? You don't. But if you have no evidence for such a thing you don't even consider it. And you go with what you have.

quote:

---

Obviously you don't know what you are talking about. We aren't talking about the design of search algorithms, we are talking about calculating the actual probabilities.

---

LOL! The algorithms are used to search a sequece space. They are the ones that increase the probability of an event to occure. The point of the article is that when we are calculating a probability in any point in teh search space, we are supposed to use uniform probability unless we have knowledge otherwise. And since we don't, we go with uniform probability. Meaning that, results of throwing 1 die is less complex than throwing 5 dice, and a 50 protein flagellum has a higher probability than a 1.000.000 protein flagellum. Anything else is plain lunacy.

quote:

---

It seems clear enough. Dembski's method requires the calculation of the probability of meeting the specification (the probability of D*). Dembski didn't do that. What more is there to say ?

---

That what did he do?

quote:

---

Since the "noise" IS the "genetic entropy" it can''t be a cause of it. This is what happens when you don't care about understanding the material you are quoting.

---

WTF are you talkibng about!?!? Noise is NOT the geentic entropy!!! Are you insane!? I gave youa quote from Sanford himself. Here I'll do it again.

quote:

---

Genetic entropy - This is a fundamental biological principle. Apart from intelligent intervention, the functional genomic information within free-living organisms (excluding viruses) must decrease. Like all other aspects of the world we live in, the "natural vector" within the biological realm is degeneration, with disorder consistently increasing over time.

​

Page 217.

---

STOP EVADING THE FACTS!

quote:

---

Selection Interference - The phenomenon where selection for one trait in a population confounds the selection for another trait in the same population.

​

Page 223.

---

This is noise. This is the noise that makes selection less than 100% effective, which is one of the causes of genetic entropy.Again, STOP inventing your own definitions. And stop evading facts! If you think I'm making this up than go buy the book yourself!

quote:

---

Well no. I've never argued that it couldn't under some theoretical conditions be a problem for a large effective population. If you're prepared to accept that it might possibly, in theory, be a problem for some large populations - and no more, then we can close this down.

---

You were constantly saying that it's NOT a problem for large populations. Obviously it is. Anyway, this isn't my main argument however you look at it. I simply used genetic entropy tto show you that evolution does not work. Why?Because if life originated in a form of abiogenesis, the initial population of ONE, would obviously be a small population. Whatever would that hypothetical thing be it wouldn't last long. And even if it did develop few replicated instances of itself, being that it's still a small population, it would be killed by genetic entropy. So however you look at it, if you agree that genetic entropy destroies small populations, than it's obvious that those small populations would never even have the chance to become large in the first place. Let alone evolve into something else! That's my main argument. That darwinian evolution is not suited for increasing biological complexity.

quote:

---

Well, no. Usually the material you quote DOESN'T support you.

​

But really you are missing the whole point of the paper. It 's arguing that conservationists need to try to avoid letting a population fragment because that can significantly increase the risk of extinction. If extinction was inevitable anyway, and the fragmentation of the metapopulation was not relevant there wouldn't be any point in the paper at all.

---

Once more, with style. Please, would you be so kind, to point out the lines in the article that support your position?

quote:

---

Both "reasons" are completely bogus and have nothing to do with my argument. I suggest that you go back and read it again since you obviously didn't understand it..

---

What's wrong with my arguments?

quote:

---

As I have pointed out, this is incorrect. Using the genome as the unit as selection is simply silly for the reasons I have already given.

---

You gave no reason whatsoever! You simply asserted it! How in the world are you going to tell me that natural selection PICKS OUT THE DELETERIOUS MUTATIONS ONE BY ONE FROM THE GEONOME!!?!? This is not sane!

quote:

---

Strictly speaking, you can't. As I said CSI is binary - either something is CSI or it isn't. You can have bits of information or even specified information but not CSI, because the C is the probability bound. Anything over the bound is Complex, anything under it is not. And that's all there is to it.

---

And the morte compelx something is, the more bits it has. Therefore, you can have 400, 500 or 1000 etc... bits of CSI. But not 300.

quote:

---

Of course it can't be done and it hasn't been done. That's why you can't come up with a valid example.

---

You simpy say that my valid examples are not calculated the way they should be and that's your whole argument.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

quote:

---

This exchange between you and Taq began with your claim that there's no evidence for universal common ancestry.

---

No. It started by him saying that there is evindece for common ancestry in post no. 997.EvC Forum: Message Peek

quote:

---

At one point you supported your claim by saying that "bears and alligators do not and can not reproduce." It seems that it is your impression that universal common ancestry cannot be true unless distinct species can reproduce with each other. Rest assured that this is not an implication of universal common ancestry. Do you have any objections not based upon this or other misunderstandings and lack of knowledge?

---

It seems you are the one not understanding my argument. I never said that distant species should reproduce if CD is true. I simply said that they have never been seen to reproduce. So why should we BELIEVE that they once could? Based on what evidence? I haven't seen any.He claims that CD is consistent with the idea that those animals long ago could reproduce and that they lost that ability over time as they became more distant. So? The fact that they can't reproduce is alo consistent with the idea that they NEVER could reproduce in the first place!So which one shall we prefer?

quote:

---

If ID is only design detection and is not a theory with explanatory and predictive power, then why are you arguing against universal common descent in a thread about the definition of ID?

---

Because he brought it up.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

quote:

---

I'm sure everyone is puzzled why you're asking for evidence for something that no one has ever claimed happens. Distant species should never reproduce with each other, and no one on either side of the discussion believes that they should. Common ancestry is not a claim that distant species should be able to reproduce.

---

Neither did I ask for that evidence. I asked for the evidence that they ONCE, a LONG TIME AGO, could have reproduced. Not now, a long time ago, when they hypothetically could.

quote:

---

Common ancestry is an interpretation of the fossil and genetic records that indicate that species that are now distant were once the same species.

---

It's an interpretation based on no evidence. I could also say that I interpret the fossil record and the genetic record to have formed 3 minutes ago from nothing in just this state that we currently observe. My explanation is consistent with observation. But is it an acceptable theory? No, it's not. Why? Because I have ZERO evidnece for something like that. Just as you have ZERO evidence that very distant species today could have reproduced a long time ago.

quote:

---

Organisms of the common ancestral species could most certaintly reproduce because they were of the same species.

---

Uh, where's the evidence? A horse, and a polar bear. You claim that they were once related. OK, where's the evidence?

quote:

---

That bears and alligators share a common ancestor is not a claim that long, long ago in the depths of time bears and alligators could reproduce. As you trace bear and alligator evolution back through time the predecessor species become more and more similar until finally they are the same species. That ancestral species is neither bear nor alligator but something very different from both.

---

Is this a story, a just so story, or is this supported by some kind of evidence? Can you show me a hypothetical ancestor of those two species? How did he look like?

quote:

---

But it seems that this discussion of common ancestry is irrelevant. I thought you were discussing it because you thought it had something to do with ID, but it turns out you're discussing it only because "he brought it up." If you think ID has no bearing on common ancestry, then the next time someone brings it up just tell them that it's not relevant to the topic.

---

No, it's fine by me. I like the discussion to be as broad as possible. However, ID is clearly compatible with CD. Michael Behe accepts both ID and CD. So no, there is no problem in accepting both.Edited by Smooth Operator, : No reason given.

quote:

---

Distinct species have never reproduced. That has never been part of the Theory of Evolution.

---

Even when they were one species a long time ago?

quote:

---

Common descent with modification does not imply that, once diverged, distinct species could reunite into one. Once diverged, they can never reunite. Never ever.

---

Why not? have you ever heard of convergent evolution? Where totally distinct species converge to look very similar? If evolution was true, than I can see no problem in distinct species converging an becoming exactly alike and reproducing again. What exactly is stoping two distinct species from reproducing again?But this is besides the point. I never said that they should reproduce again. I simply said that they can't do it now, and unless we have evidence that they once could we are not going to simply assume that they could.

quote:

---

That is not the claim of Common Descent. If you back far enough, the ancestors of bears were very different and back even further, they weren't even mammals. And the alligator's ancestors weren't alligators either. If you go back far enough in your time machine, eventually you find some primitive animal whose descendants began to slowly divide into isolated reproductive groups, and eventually one of the paths down these isolated branches led eventually to bears and, among the many others paths of divergence, one of them led eventually to alligators. This primitive animal is the common ancestor, but it is not a bear and it is not an alligator. When this primitive animal was alive, there were no such things as bears and alligators.

---

Great story! Now all you need to do is show me the evidence! Now, you didn't just make that story up in your head right as we speak, now did you? You do have the evidence, right?

quote:

---

Indeed, observing a bear and an alligator reproduce viable offspring would FALSIFY the Theory of Evolution.

---

Why?

quote:

---

Now, despite your claim that reproductive inability is also consistent with a past that never occurred, it has no value to the argument of CD, which has never been falsified to date, after 150 years of increasingly more accurate scientific investigation. Every single verified study has supported nested hierarchy with it's evidence.

---

Neitehr has CD any value to the theory that everything was created in it's present state 3 minutes ago. And this awesome theory has also never been falsified.Unlike the nested hierarchy of all life. You must be new here. Please observe the following links I already shown few days ago.

quote:

---

Hillis (and others) may claim that this problem is only encountered when one tries to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of microorganisms, such as bacteria, which can swap genes through a process called horizontal gene transfer, thereby muddying any phylogenetic signal. But this objection doesn’t hold water because the tree of life is challenged even among higher organisms where such gene-swapping does not take place. As the article explains:

​

Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirtsalso known as tunicatesare lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another, Syvanen says.

---

A Primer on the Tree of Life | Discovery Institute

quote:

---

The gorilla/chimp/human tree (5—8 million years ago). Whereas genomic analyses have shown that at the species level, chimpanzees are humans' closest relatives [24], many of the genes and genomic segments examined have followed different evolutionary paths [24—26]. Specifically, analyses of almost 100 genes (under two different optimality criteria) show that ~55% of genes support a human-chimpanzee clade, 40% are evenly split among the two alternative topologies, with the remaining genes being uninformative [25,26] (Figure 2A). Similarly, whereas 76% of PICs from a genome-scale survey support a human—chimpanzee clade, 24% of PICs disagree

---

http://www.plosbiology.org/...i/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040352

quote:

---

For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life, says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality, says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.

​

...

​

The problems began in the early 1990s when it became possible to sequence actual bacterial and archaeal genes rather than just RNA. Everybody expected these DNA sequences to confirm the RNA tree, and sometimes they did but, crucially, sometimes they did not. RNA, for example, might suggest that species A was more closely related to species B than species C, but a tree made from DNA would suggest the reverse.

​

...

​

Conventionally, sea squirtsalso known as tunicatesare lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another, Syvanen says.

​

...

​

For example, pro-evolution textbooks often tout the Cytochrome C phylogenetic tree as allegedly matching and confirming the traditional phylogeny of many animal groups. This is said to bolster the case for common descent. However, evolutionists cherry pick this example and rarely talk about the Cytochrome B tree, which has striking differences from the classical animal phylogeny. As one article in Trends in Ecology and Evolution stated: the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene implied...an absurd phylogeny of mammals, regardless of the method of tree construction. Cats and whales fell within primates, grouping with simians (monkeys and apes) and strepsirhines (lemurs, bush-babies and lorises) to the exclusion of tarsiers. Cytochrome b is probably the most commonly sequenced gene in vertebrates, making this surprising result even more disconcerting.

---

A Primer on the Tree of Life

quote:

---

Here at EvC Forum we try to keep discussion on-topic. You've been given a lot of leeway in this thread, please don't abuse it.

---

No problem sir, I always follow the rules!

quote:

---

According to you ID is a method of design detection with no broader implications or predictive ability.

---

I never said that. ID can be used in may other sciences to detect possible instance of design.

quote:

---

Unless you have something to add to that I think you're done.

---

Please note that other people on this very same thread are talking about CD also, not just me. This whole thread has been very broad. And it seems people are having a very good time.

quote:

---

No, it must merely be possible that there are unknown functions. Since that *is* possible it is not valid to infer that loss of the one function tested for is loss of all function in every case.

---

By ALL i mean ALL KNOWN functions. Since it had ONE KNOWN function. You don't get to invent new functions that we do not know of. If you don't know about them, don't make them up. We are talking only about what we do know about.

quote:

---

No, it isn't like that at all. We know how to do the calculation for dice. We don't know how to do the calculation for completely unspecified proteins - because it can't be done without more information.

---

We are talking about IDENTICAL proteins. Do you, or do you not understand that? IDENTICAL proteins. There are just more of them. The same thing with dice. Same dice, just more of them.

quote:

---

I was thinking more of evolutionary relationships between the proteins - with each other and with other proteins in the organism or that might be acquired by the organism - and the lengths of the proteins. 1,000,000 slightly different proteins might be more probable than 50 hugely long proteins, all completely unrelated to each other and anything else . I could probably think of more factors if you actually bothered to show the calculations.

---

Again. IDENTICAL proteins.

quote:

---

And in the example we are considering, which algorithms would they be ?

---

Isn't it obvious!? The darwinian evolution.

quote:

---

In other words you take the article as support for your position that we shouldn't bother trying to do things right, we should just do them your way. Unfortunately he is talking about the performance of search algorithms, not the calculation of probabilities in a specific case.

---

Please, bear with me.Okay. Look, yes he is talking about search algorithms. His previous article was called: "Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success". But this new article is the foundation for the previous one. Get it? The COI that he is addressing in this new article is short for Conservation of Information.In his previous article Dembski is tryign to show that on average all search algorithms perform equally well over all search spaces. But for this to be true, you have to have uniform probability.

quote:

---

More generally, all some-to-many mappings of a uniform search
space result in a new search space where the chance of doing
better than p is 50-50. Consequently the chance of doing worse
is 50-50. This result can be viewed as a confirming property of
COI.

---

See? In any point in search space, the probability is the same. You can't just invent new probabilities. He is talkinga bout the probability is a subspace of the whole search space.

quote:

---

A completely bogus and irrelevant calculation.

---

Explain why.

quote:

---

In other words by giving a quote which doesn't include the word "noise" you think that you can show that a different quote didn't use the word "noise" to describe genetic entropy.

---

If in the definition of gentic entropy Sanford said that it's the loss of genetic information. He did not specifically say that geentic entropy is not noise. Why should he? He alo didn't say that genetic entropy is not a HOUSE, or a PLANE, or a BOAT! So by your logic if he didn't say that genetic entropy is not something, we assume it is?

quote:

---

No, that isn't obvious at all. Theoretical models aren't reality.

---

I know they are not. But we have FACTS. The facts that small populations die out because of genetic entropy. And we have models that show the same applies to large populations. Why should I not accept them. It's an extrapolation from FACTS. Why shouldn't I do that?

quote:

---

But it doesn't inevitably destroy even small populations. The cheetah population has suffered from a severe genetic bottleneck (at one point probably reduced to a single pregnant female). And subsequent hunting has made their problems worse. But they're still around.

---

And they are going to be for a very long time. Yet they have a LARGE, and I do mean LARGE amount of genetic information. Unlike ONE RNA chain somewhere in a pond. Genetic entropy would destroy it, and it would ahve never spread arond. NEVER. But let's use a bit of magic and say that it would.Let us make orselves insane and actually accept the idea that such a chain would actually survive and spread around. Okay, what than? What would have happened? What would darwinian evolution do? Make it more complex? Create new functions? No, it wouldn't. Genetic entropy would not allow that. We have no reason to suppose that it would. Do you have even the faintest, smallest bit of evidence, that is such pupulations of RNA chains, darwinian evolution can increase their functionality?No, you don't. And you very well know you don't. That's why my argument stands. This is basicly what I was saying from the start.

quote:

---

Would you like to explain the relevance of a fragmented metapopulation in the article if it does NOT make a species more vulnerable to mutational meltdown ?

---

It does make it more vulnerable. Did I ever say that it doesn't?

quote:

---

The fact that they dont address what I'm saying at all.

---

Okay than. Please do make a list of your arguments and I'll address them. Something like this:1.) I say that...
2.) And also...
3.) etc...

quote:

---

It's also not what I said. What I said is that the gene is a better choice for the "unit of selection" than the genome. And I gave reasons. Now if you want crazy we can take your assumption that the unit of selection must either be the whole genome or individual nucleotides. Anybody who knows about genes would know that that was wrong.

---

HOW!? HOW!? HOW!? How is a gene a better choice for a selection unit than a genome?Population genetics makes few assumptions to define the population as a gene pool. They claim that genes can be selected for. For this to be true the following assumptions have to be true. Non of them are. So the gene pool view of populations is wrong. Which means there is no selection on the level the gene.1.) No genetic linkage blocks.
2.) No epistasis.
3.) Infinite population size.
4.) Unlimited time for selection.
5.) Ability to select for an unlimited number of traits.ALL of these assumptions are false. Genes are connected in blocks. Nucleotides do interact. Population sizes are not unlimited, neither is the time for selection. And you can not select for unlimited number of traits at the same time. Under the multiplicative model, Sanford shows that considering the selection pressure of 25% (percent of the population that does not reproduce), the number oftraits you can select for is 300.

quote:

---

No, they are not bits of CSI, because CSI is having more bits than the threshold. That's what the "Complex" refers to (I know it's misleading but that's Dembski for you).

---

What?

quote:

---

Because your "valid examples" obviously aren't.

---

Yet you don't explain why...

quote:

---

When they were one species (the parent species) then they were not the distinct (daughter) species.

​

They become distinct species by becoming incapable of interbreeding.

---

Great. Can you tell me what actually happened for them not to be able to reproduce anymore?

quote:

---

Convergent evolution does not imply that they become genetically similar, only that the external traits are similar. Inside they are quite different.

​

Here we have a marsupial and a placental mammal that have converged on a common phenotype:

​

The sugar glider is genetically closer to the kangaroo than it is to the flying squirrel, and the flying squirrel is genetically closer to a bear than the sugar glider. Even their skull bones are different, the one being typical of placentals and the other being typical of marsupials.

​

Without the superficial external appearance, fossilized specimens would not be confused one with the other.

---

I agree that they are phenotipically different but genetically different. But tell me, if they became phenotipically similar. WHat would stop evolution, to also make them genetically similar. Actually, identical. What is this force that precludes evolution from doing that?

quote:

---

Which makes it simply irrelevant. The definition of species is reproductively isolated populations, so there is no point in saying they can't -- it is mundanely true.

---

Oh, but it very relevant. Because if 2 species can't reproduce now, how do you know that those species could have ever reproduced. Basicly, being one species that reproduced.

quote:

---

And as has been pointed out, the common ancestor is older than the species in question, and thus there never was a time when evolution would say that they could reproduce across species boundaries.

​

It is a very simple concept. Here is a simplified version:

​

| ancient reptilian ancestor
|
| common ancestor (reptilian)
/ \
/ \
/ \
therapsids | | still reptilian
/ \ / \
/ | | \
| | | \
/ \ | | |
mamaliforms / | | | / \ crocodilians
(still not (still not
mammals) alligators)

---

Okay, I get your point. Do you have evidence that this what you have shown, represents what happened with polar bears and chorses? Can you show me their common ancestor?

quote:

---

The Theropsids or "beast (mammal) faces" constitute an evolutionary lineage that developed a special opening, the synapsid arch, for attachment of jaw muscles, giving a superior bite and permitting adaptive radiation during the late Carboniferous. These basal forms evolved through the primitive pelycosaur stage, to the therapsids or mammal-like reptiles, and finally the mammals themselves. Pelycosaur, therapsid, and mammal represent three evolutionary grades in a single progressive evolutionary axis. The therapsids, as forms transitional between basal amniote and mammal, can be thought of as occupying the same evolutionary space as the dinosaurs, which are transitional between reptiles and birds, do.

---

This is the quote from your article.Let's look at the first statement: "The Theropsids or "beast (mammal) faces" constitute an evolutionary lineage that developed a special opening, the synapsid arch, for attachment of jaw muscles, giving a superior bite and permitting adaptive radiation during the late Carboniferous."Okay, they say that this particular species developed a special opening which later on allowed for a superior jaw. How do they know that? How exactly did they determine that happened?

quote:

---

And then to THERAPSIDA:
Palaeos: Page not found

​

You can follow the lineage down to CYNODONTIA
Palaeos: Page not found

​

and then MAMMALIFORMES
Palaeos: Page not found

​

then to MAMMALIA,
Palaeos: Page not found

​

and on to EUTHERIA,
Palaeos: Page not found

​

before coming to FERAE, unfortunately incomplete at this time
Palaeos: Page not found

​

So for more on FERAE go to
Ferae - Wikipedia

​

Then to CARNIVORA
Carnivora - Wikipedia

​

And finally to URSIDAE (FAMILY TAXON for all bears)
Bear - Wikipedia
Which is where your bear resides.

​

...

​

Now we go back to REPTILOMORPHA
Palaeos: Page not found

​

For ALLIGATOR ancestors go to ARCHOSAUROMORPHA:
Palaeos: Page not found

---

Can you please explain to me how do you know that all these animals are related?

quote:

---

REPTILOMORPHA
|
| |
SYNAPSIDA |
| |
THERAPSIDA ARCHOSAUROMORPHA
| |
CYNODONTIA |
| |
MAMMALIFORMES CROCODYLOMORPHA
| |
MAMMALIA |
| |
EUTHERIA CRODODYLIFORMES
| |
FERAE |
| CROCODYLIA
CARNIVORA |
| |
URSIDAE ALLIGATORIDAE

---

I have the same question about this graph also. How do you know that all those species are related. Do you know it? Do you have any evidence for it, or do you simply assume it?

quote:

---

Note that many intermediate forms have been omitted for simplicity. Note further that there are fossils of every one of these stages, known, documented, validated.

---

Speaking of the intermediate forms you presented. I would like to know, how do you tell a specimen is intermediate?

quote:

---

As any reasonable person can see, the relationship between bear and alligator is very distant, and occurred long before the ancestors of alligators and bears were even the beginning to form a family taxon. The ancestors were not bears nor alligators for most of the time since their common ancestor to the present.

---

Actually no. What any reasonable person can see, is that you have made a drawing. That is all. You wrote few names down, and connected tehm with lines. Now, you simply ASSUME they represent their descent. Do you know that, or do you simply assume that? Do you have any evidence for that?

quote:

---

By the time we had URSIDAE and ALLIGATORIDAE in existence their ability to reproduce would be no more likely than modern bears and alligators reproducing.

---

How do you know that they didn't exist from the start?

quote:

---

It would tend to invalidate common descent of hereditary lineages. Unfortunately, for you, this has not happened.

---

So you are sayign that if two different species would be able to reproduce, that are not the same species, that would invalidate common descent? What if it went even higher? What if two different genera reproduced? Surely this would be even worse? Does this falsify common descent?Look at the case of the beefalo. A simple bison (genus Bison), and a simple cow (genus Bos). Their offspring is fertile, and is called teh beefalo. What's up with that?Beefalo - Wikipedia

quote:

---

The common ancestor was a completely different species. You are in error when you use the word "they" as in "they were one species". At that time in the past, the "they" did not exist at all.

---

Yes, they were supposed to be one species. How do you know that? Can you show me any evidence for that?

quote:

---

You are making another error. Convergent evolution NEVER means genetic compatibility for producing viable offspring. The genes, being very different, will not allow it. You are being duped into thinking that because they look similar & occupy similar niches in their ecologies, that the species difference magically vanishes. But RAZD even shows you pictures....

---

You missed my point. My question is, why can convergent evolution not make 2 different species genetically similar? What is stopping evolution from doing so?

quote:

---

Yeah. It's called "Reading this forum completely along with it's references."

---

I don't have that much time on my hands. Why don't you just point me to some?

quote:

---

Because it would ruin the theory of common descent, you idiot.
Again, I suggest you read this forum in it's entirety.

---

Oh, and the theroy of common descent is the ultimate truth which can not be ruined? Thus we can't observe that right? What about the beefalo than?

quote:

---

Last Thursdayism is unfalsifiable, irrelevant and a childish squeaky toy that should never be used in an argument, even by such luminaries as Straggler himself.

---

The same goes for common descent. How do we falsify it?

quote:

---

Cite.

---

They were below the statement you responded to with this quote.

quote:

---

Look, dude, you can find anything on the internet - you can even find people who believe the sun goes around the earth (oops - off topic).

---

Yes,a nd you can also find people who say that they came from rocks 4.6 billion years ago. Your point is?

quote:

---

Your little paragraphs you quoted only show that the current picture of the situation has been getting better & better.

---

Exactly. We are getting more and more knowledge about the world around us. And the idea of a nested hierarchy of all life is a failed idea. It's not getting better and better, it's getting worse.

quote:

---

For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life, says Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France. A few years ago it looked as though the grail was within reach. But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality, says Bapteste. That bombshell has even persuaded some that our fundamental view of biology needs to change.

---

A Primer on the Tree of LifeDoes this sound like things are getting better and better for the nested hierarchy of all life? Are you seriously saying that this is BETTER!? If this means better to you, than I don't want to know what you consider as worse...

quote:

---

Things change and scientists accept new findings that change things. The underlying concept remains intact.

---

Umm... no. The articel clearly says that the whole idea about the tree of life should be discarded. If you have trouble reading than that's not my problem.

quote:

---

You are accusing a car built to be able to change direction of travel of actually changing direction of travel!!

---

No, I'm simply saying that it changed the direction. And that's fine by me...

quote:

---

You mean you never said those precise words? Of course not. But that is precisely what you said. This is from your Message 1031 where you tell me that ID not only does not explain or make any predictions about the history or life on Earth, but also that it is only about design detection:

---

That doesn't mean it doesn't make any predictions. You specifically asked me about the patterns of how life is distributed geologically on Earth. ID has nothing to say about that.

quote:

---

So your definition of ID is a way of detecting design in many fields of science that does not have any bearing on the theory of evolution generally or common ancestry specifically. Do I have that right?

---

Close. When we are talking about common descent and evolution we are talking about darwinian evolution. Which is supposed to remove the designer from the whole process. Which is impossible according to ID. Therefore, we must discuss evolution and common descent. Why? Because darwinism is the idea that we can have design without a designer. ID says the exact opposite. So if we are going to refute on or the other, we are supposed to discuss all the aspects of a theory we are trying to refute.