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Author Topic:   What exactly is ID?
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 1051 of 1273 (547150)
02-16-2010 6:28 PM
Reply to: Message 1039 by Smooth Operator
02-16-2010 12:44 PM


Re: CSI & Genetic Entropy discussions
quote:
Yet I specifically said that I'm only talking about known functions.
You also specifically said all functions and argued that we could infer the loss of all function from the loss of the known function.
quote:
Since bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller consists of 4 parts, whose individual probability is 10^5, multiplying that up leads us to 10^20. This is as previously stated teh complexity of teh pattern. And int eh same time the relevant specificational resources for specifying the pattern in question. So it's both, just as I've been saying all along.
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*).
quote:
Explain the logic behind saying that getting 6 with one die is less complex than getting 1.000.000 6s with 1.000.000 dice. And than in turn sayignt that getting a 50 protein flagellum is NOT less complex than getting a 1.000.000 protein flagellum.
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).
quote:
Why? What's wrong with the calculation found in NFL?
It doesn't use a valid specification and it ignores relevant information.
quote:
No we do not. We need only one. In this case the 50 protein one. If we were interested in the million protein one, we would calculate only his probability.
It doesn't matter which noise it is. It's still noise and it's not averaging out. Any noise is bad. Some will scale with fitness some will not. And the noise that is not scaling increases genetic entropy.
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".
quote:
Take a look at this article. It specifically talks about large sexually reproducing organisms. Which as you can see are also in danger of mutational meltdown. Note however that the authors are only concerned with reproductive fitness. They do not take into account that genetic entropy is building up becasue of deterioration of genetic information. They are only concerned with reproductive fitness itself. Yet, they show that large populations can also go extinct.
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.
quote:
Where does it say that?
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:
I KNOW! The point is that while reporducing, the parents DO NOT pick and choose which nucleotides they will pass on to their offspring !
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)
quote:
...the offspring is the mix of those two genomes. Therefore, natural selection selects on the level of the genome. Not on the level of the single nucleotide. Which means that even if a certain individual has beneficial mutations, the deleterious that he might also have, go right to the offspring thogether with the beneficial ones. Natural seelction can not select out individual deleterious nucleotides.
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.
quote:
Exacept that CSI is a fine measure.
CSI is a binary measure (either something is CSI or it isn't) which makes it a poor choice. And it can't be measured for any gene which makes it a totally useless choice.
quote:
Anyone who claims that 50 protein flagellum is the same in complexity as a 1.000.000 protein falgellum can't understand CSI, nor Shannon information for that matter. Even in Shannon information those two are distinct.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1039 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-16-2010 12:44 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1054 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-18-2010 6:10 PM PaulK has replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 1052 of 1273 (547361)
02-18-2010 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1047 by Taq
02-16-2010 1:20 PM


Re: Numbers
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?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1047 by Taq, posted 02-16-2010 1:20 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1057 by Percy, posted 02-20-2010 5:08 AM Smooth Operator has replied
 Message 1109 by Taq, posted 02-26-2010 2:02 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 1053 of 1273 (547362)
02-18-2010 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 1049 by Nuggin
02-16-2010 1:50 PM


Re: Argument from Douchbaggery Example
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1049 by Nuggin, posted 02-16-2010 1:50 PM Nuggin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1055 by Nuggin, posted 02-18-2010 6:24 PM Smooth Operator has not replied

Smooth Operator
Member (Idle past 5113 days)
Posts: 630
Joined: 07-24-2009


Message 1054 of 1273 (547363)
02-18-2010 6:10 PM
Reply to: Message 1051 by PaulK
02-16-2010 6:28 PM


Re: CSI & Genetic Entropy discussions
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1051 by PaulK, posted 02-16-2010 6:28 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1056 by PaulK, posted 02-18-2010 7:13 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Nuggin
Member (Idle past 2492 days)
Posts: 2965
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Joined: 08-09-2005


Message 1055 of 1273 (547365)
02-18-2010 6:24 PM
Reply to: Message 1053 by Smooth Operator
02-18-2010 6:09 PM


Re: Argument from Douchbaggery Example
No, you are. You are constantly citing example of things that _YOU_ don't understand but which OTHER PEOPLE DO understand.
Explain the difference.
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.
How do you CONCLUSIVELY determine that a certain piece of rock is not a product of wind and erosion? How do you do that?
Because wind erosion effects certain rocks in certain ways. Again, your limited knowledge of the natural world completely derails the conversation.
This is not a lie. It's a valid question.
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.
How do you tell if it really is X, or if it just looks that way
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.
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.
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.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1053 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-18-2010 6:09 PM Smooth Operator has not replied

PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 1056 of 1273 (547369)
02-18-2010 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 1054 by Smooth Operator
02-18-2010 6:10 PM


Re: CSI & Genetic Entropy discussions
quote:
No, I said that we can say it lost all functions becasue we don't know of any other.
Which is what I said. And it's wrong - and you know it's wrong.
quote:
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.
Of course that isn't true. You can't work out the probabilities just from the number of proteins.
quote:
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.
I'm not inventing anything. I'm just pointing out that there can be factors that you simply haven't taken into account.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Explain everything in full detail!
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 ?
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Quote the relevant part and explain in detail why it supports your view. You know, like I've been doing all along.
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.
quote:
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.
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..
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Of course it can. The fact that you don't accept it is not my fault.
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1054 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-18-2010 6:10 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1070 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-21-2010 5:09 PM PaulK has not replied
 Message 1071 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-21-2010 5:10 PM PaulK has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1057 of 1273 (547563)
02-20-2010 5:08 AM
Reply to: Message 1052 by Smooth Operator
02-18-2010 6:09 PM


Re: Numbers
Smooth Operator writes:
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.
This exchange between you and Taq began with your claim that there's no evidence for universal common ancestry. 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?
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?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1052 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-18-2010 6:09 PM Smooth Operator has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1072 by Smooth Operator, posted 02-21-2010 5:11 PM Percy has replied

Brad H
Member (Idle past 4954 days)
Posts: 81
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 1058 of 1273 (547643)
02-21-2010 4:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1019 by Coyote
02-12-2010 12:21 PM


Re: A practical application of ID
So what you are saying is that there was no change from one to the next? It sounds like you are saying that each skull represents a created kind. If so, that is not an ID explanation. That is a biblical explanation. Don't you have an ID explanation?
First let me clarify that I am not the poster child for Intelligent Design, and every thing I say is not going to be strictly from the "ID players manual" (if there is such a thing). Nothing I say will contradict ID, but I have made it clear that I am a Young Earth Creationist. Therefore most of what I say will have been filtered through that particular point of view. So let me attempt to get this point across again. From my YEC point of view, I do not understand why you think there needs to be an ID explanation for the skulls? They are not evidence for anything, specially genetic change, therefore why do you want an ID explanation?
Secondly I should point out that (as far as I know) Intelligent Design scientists do not study paleontology. That's because ID is the theory that biological organisms exhibit all the tell tale signs of being intelligently designed, which would mean the theory does not directly address fossils. That would be like asking big bang proponents to explain why honey bees die after they sting. I am sure that someone in the big bang camp, who knows something about entomology, could easily answer that question but it is not related to the big bang. Likewise fossils are not directly related to ID. Except if you are trying to present them in a supposed progression and claiming that they are evidence of human development. but then you would have to prove that they are evidence of human progression before it would become necessary for ID to explain that progression. But if it can be easily demonstrated they are not in any way evidence of human development then no explanation is required. And no I am not saying there was no change, what I am saying is that there is no evidence of "human" change.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1019 by Coyote, posted 02-12-2010 12:21 PM Coyote has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1067 by Coyote, posted 02-21-2010 12:01 PM Brad H has not replied

Brad H
Member (Idle past 4954 days)
Posts: 81
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 1059 of 1273 (547644)
02-21-2010 4:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1020 by Percy
02-12-2010 1:41 PM


Re: Numbers
That's wrong. Dead wrong. Replying with a message that manages to make a few correct statements doesn't make your error correct.
I see... glad we cleared that one up. Note to self... replying with what is correct does not make you correct. Got it!
Congratulations, but those messages weren't addressed to me. Your replies to me have been remarkably evidence free.
That's nice and all but Percy your comment was, "why don't you surprise US and finally support something you say with actual evidence." Note the word US clearly demarcates the fact that you did not originally mean "just you."
What this is saying that ID believes there's too much information in our genome for it to have happened naturally.
Actually not too "much" but rather too "specific." But I do admit that I foolishly played into your "too much" game.
So is that why ID thinks there's too much information in our genome to have occurred naturally, because the Earth is too young and there wasn't enough time?
No ID does not really address the quantity but rather the complexity, and the specificity of the information. ID does not address the age of the Earth. My remarks are purely from a YEC perspective and do not reflect ID, as ID is not about the age of anything.
And again trying to bring this discussion back to the topic, what is the ID explanation for the evidence we have of life's history on earth, such as the genetic and fossil records?
Again ID only says that complex specified information has only been observed coming from an intelligent source, and that csi can be observed in the DNA of all living organisms. There is nothing in there about explaining the fossil record. As far as the genetic record goes, there has never been anything observed in biology which could explain how csi in DNA could have formed by natural processes.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1020 by Percy, posted 02-12-2010 1:41 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1062 by cavediver, posted 02-21-2010 5:09 AM Brad H has replied
 Message 1065 by Percy, posted 02-21-2010 9:39 AM Brad H has not replied

Brad H
Member (Idle past 4954 days)
Posts: 81
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 1060 of 1273 (547645)
02-21-2010 4:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1023 by Taq
02-12-2010 3:04 PM


Re: Numbers
All X are Y.
Y.
Therefore X.
That is a logical fallacy no matter how it is dressed up with rhetoric. You are committing this fallacy. There is no two ways about it. You argument can also be shown to beg the question. This is where the conclusion is found in the premise.
All known complexity is due to intelligent design.
Life is complex.
Therefore, life is designed.
The conclusion and first premise are the same..
I am not sure I follow you here Taq. Do you mean to say: If all X are also Y, Therefore all X ARE Y?
If that is what you mean to say then that would not be a logical fallacy. It would however be an overstatement of the facts if it was not known that all X are also Y. If line one were to read that all observed X are Y (however some unobserved X remain), then the second line should state that thus far it is reasonable to conclude that all X are Y based on all observations. Such a statement is not illogical, and allows for the possibility of being proven wrong at a later time. This is how all scientific theories are formed and no one ever considers them to be "logical fallacies." In case you were not aware, scientists still call the theory of gravity a theory, because they are leaving open the possibility that an exception could come along and disprove the theory.
Actually I would say it is you who are committing a logical fallacy here by confusing two different logical premises. I can demonstrate what I mean with an analogy using the old shuffle the cups and ball game. One ball is observed being placed under one of (in this case) eight identical cups and then all the cups get shuffled. But we know from the start that a ball exists under one of the cups and therefore after turning over 6 cups and only coming up with empties, yet we still know that at least one cup has a ball under it. In this case we know that the above logic is false because if all overturned X (cups) are observed Y (empty), we still know (with foreknowledge) that at least one cup is hiding the ball, and therefore all X is already known to NOT be Y (at least once, even though the condition is still yet undiscovered).
But in a second situation we have eight cups and no idea what is under any of them from the start. If after we turn over 6 cups and find no balls under any, we can logically conclude that the remaining 2 are likely empty and also have no balls under them. That is not saying that we know for sure that this is the case, that is only making a conclusion based on what has been observed. We have observed what condition exists with 75% of the evidence, and that condition exists 100% of the time thus far. Had we observed even one cup out of the 6 over turned cups to not be empty then the conclusion would have no logical basis.
So then under the first logical deduction we started with the "foreknowledge" of a condition of what was under at least one of the cups, but in the second form of logical deduction we start with absolutely no knowledge of what is under the cups. In the case of the first living organisms, you are starting with "assumed" foreknowledge that life must have formed by random unguided processes and therefore just because we have not found "a ball under a cup" one must exist. That is actually the logical fallacy when no known condition exists to suggest that there ever was "a ball."
I am not saying for absolute certainty that first life had to have consisted of the kind of complex specificity we observe today, but what I am saying is that from the kind of fossils observed to be left by life that existed more than 75% of earths entire age ago, are the same kinds of fossils left by 100% of the type of complex specified life we observe today. Or put another way, a good tracker can conclude with confident certainty what type of animal made a certain type of foot print in the mud. He does not know with absolute certainty that no other kind of animal could make that foot print, but since in the whole of human experience only one form of animal has been observed making that type of print, his conclusion is warranted.
There are about 6 billion different DNA combinations living right now that produce a human. 6 billion. That's not specific at all. Add to that the billions of species that have lived through time. There is no specificity. There is what works and what doesn't.
Actually when you count all the different "allele" combinations available, the numbers are staggeringly much higher. One organism often carries with it two alleles of the same gene. When organisms reproduce, their offspring receive one member of each pair of their chromosomes from each of their parents the two members of each pair, are the same genes, but are often different alleles. This means that the potential for variety in their offspring is great. So even in humans where two parents differ by only one allele in each of their 23 chromosomes, that would mean that the mother draws from a set of more than 8,400,000 different ones, and the same goes for the father. That makes the combined potential of variety of offspring more than 70 trillion. More than plenty for natural selection to work with in the existing gene pool to insure survival. But that does not mean that our genetic make up is not incredibly specific to our particular species. And the same argument applies for all the species.
What we do observe is that genomes change in every generation.
We observe changes occur only within the existing gene pool.
That's not what SETI is looking for. SETI is looking for a narrowband radiowave signal. That's it. They are looking for a radio transmitter within the clutter of broadband radio signals produced by stars and celestial objects. They are not looking for strings of prime numbers.
I think you are mistaken Taq. Here's a link to a letter written to and a response from SETI. As you can see, prime numbers are obviously the key in the search for ETI. But the really funny thing about all of this is you managed to dodge the glaring answer to my question by side tracking the point here. Your original question implied that in order for ID proponents to concluded an intelligence was the cause of life, they would have had to observed an intelligence create a life. My point in bringing up SETI, was that you do not require the same standard for searching for ETI. The truth of the matter is that intelligence is detected through the same means in the search for ID as it is in the search for ETI, and that's the glaring fact you want to dodge at all cost.
Those fingerprints do not indicate the DNA sequence of their genome nor their intracellular organization. As for Mars, do you really think that if they do find stromatolite-like deposits on Mars that they will conclude that organisms with DNA identical to modern Earth algae produced those deposits?
I think that is exactly what those who believed the fossils were from Mars thought. They looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, and so they thought they were formed by a duck (figuratively speaking of course). If they found fossils of birds on Mars, why wouldn't they think that the birds were every bit as complex as the ones we have on Earth?
Where was this progression indicated? Here is the picture again:
Yes, as I said, I've seen the picture. And here again is the accompanying link where the picture originates from with clear implied progression. But that is not even the point. Apart from just randomly attacking evolution as you suggest, I clearly and concisely demonstrated that there is no evidence that these skulls are related and especially not all human. Thus there is no "changes" in DNA for ID proponents to explain.
The relationship between codon and amino acid is arbitrary. To the microbiologist this is a huge clue, a clue that indicates shared ancestry.
And to other microbiologists, shared similarity between (how did you put it) "very dissimilar" life forms could also be a clue to a common designer rather than a common ancestor. I mean there is a reason why all wheels are round. This fact does not in any way imply that all modes of transportation which employ the wheel are related, only that round wheels happen to be the best design for "rolling."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1023 by Taq, posted 02-12-2010 3:04 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1064 by lyx2no, posted 02-21-2010 8:51 AM Brad H has not replied
 Message 1087 by Taq, posted 02-24-2010 1:33 PM Brad H has not replied

Brad H
Member (Idle past 4954 days)
Posts: 81
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 1061 of 1273 (547646)
02-21-2010 4:54 AM
Reply to: Message 1035 by RAZD
02-13-2010 3:40 PM


Re: the walkingstick problem - either "information" increases or it is irrelevant
This is just more conflict avoidance behavior. Sorry, I don't do your homework for you. I have given you the available information on the web, and if this is not sufficient for you, then the onus is on you to look up the source document in your local library.
Wow, I haven't seen the "I don't do your homework for you" response in a long while. I should point out to all that what you are actually saying is: "Evolution is true because of the evidence of walkingstick gene mutation, but I am not going to prove the gene mutation really took place, that's on you." Sorry my poker friend, I call. You say you have a full house, so now its your job to show me your cards. Your abstract is not evidence for anything. Note the below quote.
quote: "The evolution of wheels was the central adaptation allowing people to escape predators, exploit scattered resources, and disperse into new niches, resulting in radiations into vast numbers of wheeled automobiles. Despite the presumed evolutionary advantages associated with full-sized wheels, nearly all automobiles have many partially wheeled or wheelless lineages, and some entire orders are secondarily wheelless, with about 5% of extant types being roller less. Thousands of independent transitions from a wheel form to wheelless form, have occurred during the course of automobile evolution; however, an evolutionary reversal from a wheelless to a volant form has never been demonstrated clearly for any auto lineage. Such a reversal is considered highly unlikely because complex interactions between barrings, axles, brakes and wheel bushings are required to accommodate controlled rolling. Here we show that automobiles diversified as wheels were derived secondarily, perhaps on many occasions. These results suggest that 're-evolution' of the wheel has had an unrecognized role in auto diversification."
I used almost verbatim the exact same language in the above quote as you did in yours. My tale sounds silly only because you and I both know that wheels were designed and not evolved. If I seriously wanted to make a case proving that all wheels were related by common ancestry, then it would fall upon me to provide at least one link to a full paper that provides evidence to that fact. Just a silly abstract doesn't cut it. And its no more your place to try and search for evidence that wheels are related than it is mine to search for similar evidence on walking sticks. If you are going to bring the argument to the table then you are required to support it. Not me.
The difference between "pond scum" and "people" is that there are different arrangements of those same four basic DNA elements, so either these differences are not "new" information or insertion of any of the four basic DNA elements into a strand of DNA can produce "new" information ...
Yes, and a stop sign uses 4 of the same 26 letters that can be found in Darwin's book, Origin of Species. But obviously a lot of new information must be added to the four letters STOP to convert it to an intelligible book. Amoebas to amphibians evolution requires information that codes for eyes, limbs, reproductive organs, brains, lungs, blood vessels, etc... to be added. That is what I am talking about that we do not observe. Biology should show this process taking place at least in some small way. Its not just the adding of more letters, but the very specific arranging of the letters, that needs to be explained as well.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1035 by RAZD, posted 02-13-2010 3:40 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1068 by RAZD, posted 02-21-2010 3:03 PM Brad H has not replied
 Message 1069 by RAZD, posted 02-21-2010 3:39 PM Brad H has not replied

cavediver
Member (Idle past 3643 days)
Posts: 4129
From: UK
Joined: 06-16-2005


Message 1062 of 1273 (547648)
02-21-2010 5:09 AM
Reply to: Message 1059 by Brad H
02-21-2010 4:54 AM


Re: Numbers
Again ID only says that complex specified information has only been observed coming from an intelligent source
Given that the word "intelligent" has such a loose definition, surely what you mean to say is that CSI has only been observed coming from a human? So, what you are suggesting is that as you think that biological systems exhibit csi, a human (or humans) must have been involved in their design?
If you don't mean to conflate "intelligent source" with human, can you give evidenced examples of non-human intelligent sources?
Furthermore, we still have all these at-best extremely loosely defined terms such as "complex", "specified" and "information". Can you give various examples of things designed by humans that exhibit csi, and show us the algorithm by which we determine that they do indeed exhibit csi. Then can you show us the same algorithm demonstrating other human designes that do not exhibit csi?
I'm sure that you will agree that without the above, we all just throwing unspecified terms around and talking nonsense.
Thanks

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1059 by Brad H, posted 02-21-2010 4:54 AM Brad H has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1063 by Brad H, posted 02-21-2010 8:26 AM cavediver has replied

Brad H
Member (Idle past 4954 days)
Posts: 81
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 1063 of 1273 (547651)
02-21-2010 8:26 AM
Reply to: Message 1062 by cavediver
02-21-2010 5:09 AM


Re: Numbers
Given that the word "intelligent" has such a loose definition, surely what you mean to say is that CSI has only been observed coming from a human? So, what you are suggesting is that as you think that biological systems exhibit csi, a human (or humans) must have been involved in their design?
As I am frequently so fond of pointing out, our friends at the SETI institute don't seem to put such a requirement on intelligence. While it is true that the highest levels of csi, so far, have only been observed coming from humans as the source, it is not true that humans are the only observed source of csi. A simple birds nest with its circular bowl shape and also lined with soft feathers, would never be considered to have been formed by random processes. Likewise the clicks, squeaks, and chirps of a dolphin have a very complex and specific language signature that carries information that means something to the sender as well as the receiver.
Also I would point out that the more intelligent the entity, the more complex and specific the information has been observed to be. Since we have not even begun to scratch the surface of fully comprehending the complexity of the DNA molecule, (based on observation) such a sophisticated code can be concluded to have originated from a highly intelligent source. One that is much more intelligent than humans.
As for your request on calculating information, we have to recognize that there are many different forms of information, but not all information is complex and not all information is specific. We can use Shannon theory to calculate the complexity of information, but we can not use it to determine specificity. The random letters "gbdxuvms," calculate to carry much more complexity than do the two letters "hi," but those two letters are much more specific and mean more to us than the other eight letters do. And the word "glorious" carries an equal amount of complex information as those random eight letters, but it is also a much more specific. Specificity requires that both the sender and the receiver recognize a signal to mean something. When I first heard the word "blepo," it bore no specific meaning to me because I don't speak Greek. But to someone who does, it means to see. Like with the dolphin signals, we recognize that both complex and specific signals (information) require purpose and intent (intelligence). The more complex and specific the signals are, the more intelligent the source must be. We recognize that the arrangement of nucleotides in the DNA molecule is complex. Even evolutionist Richard Dawkins agrees that the amount of information in the DNA of a single celled amoeba is greater than 1000 sets of encyclopedias. However most microbiologists also recognize that not only is it very complex, but it is also very specific.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1062 by cavediver, posted 02-21-2010 5:09 AM cavediver has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1066 by cavediver, posted 02-21-2010 10:24 AM Brad H has not replied

lyx2no
Member (Idle past 4716 days)
Posts: 1277
From: A vast, undifferentiated plane.
Joined: 02-28-2008


Message 1064 of 1273 (547653)
02-21-2010 8:51 AM
Reply to: Message 1060 by Brad H
02-21-2010 4:54 AM


Re: Numbers
Taq writes:
All X are Y.
Y.
Therefore X.
That is a logical fallacy no matter how it is dressed up with rhetoric.
BH writes:
I am not sure I follow you here Taq. Do you mean to say: If all X are also Y, Therefore all X ARE Y?
If that is what you mean to say then that would not be a logical fallacy.
All puppies are dogs. A dog is therefore a puppy. Sounds like a logical fallacy to me.

You are now a million miles away from where you were in space-time when you started reading this sentence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1060 by Brad H, posted 02-21-2010 4:54 AM Brad H has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1065 of 1273 (547655)
02-21-2010 9:39 AM
Reply to: Message 1059 by Brad H
02-21-2010 4:54 AM


Re: Numbers
Hi Brad H,
Before replying to your message I'd like to address some old business. Do you now understand what was wrong with your coin flip and writer analogies, the ones you presented in Message 1003?
We're actually discussing two different topics in this thread. One is clearly defining ID. The other is finding problems with the offered definitions of ID.
You and Smooth Operator have offered extremely similar definitions of ID. This is the one you just presented:
Brad H writes:
Again ID only says that complex specified information has only been observed coming from an intelligent source, and that csi can be observed in the DNA of all living organisms.
I think most would agree that the information in DNA is very complex and very specific, and I think I can provide a legitimate scientific definition of ID that even you'll agree with: ID is the hypothesis that the very complex and very specific information contained in DNA was designed by an intelligence.
ID is a very intriguing hypothesis, one worthy of scientific investigation. Problems only arise when IDists skip the "scientific investigation" part of science and try to skip forward to claims of validated theory by a public campaign of popular press books, presentations, and debates. I'm sure that many IDists, like yourself and Smooth Operator here in this thread, believe that ID had already been scientifically validated, but that can't possibly be true because there's no ID footprint in the scientific literature where the results of scientific investigation are reported so they can be vetted by peer review and replication. Paul Nelson, a fellow of the Discovery Institute, says this about ID:
Paul Nelson writes:
Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a real problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as irreducible complexity and specified complexitybut, as yet, no general theory of biological design.
I quote this to you because you yourself have just echoed this sentiment:
Brad H writes:
There is nothing in there about explaining the fossil record.
It's responses like yours and Paul Nelson's that causes scientists to just throw up their hands in exasperation and ask, "How can you claim to be science if your ideas have no testable real world implications?"
In the Who won this evolution/ID debate? thread I outline the criticisms Sternberg raised concerning whale evolution in a recent debate, but if whale evolution didn't happen the way evolutionary biologists and paleontologists think it did, then what really did happen?
The ID answer is that we can't know how the designer created and implemented his designs, and that would be a legitimate answer if there were any scientific research behind it, but is there?
Science does have to accept what has been shown to be impossible to know. For example, it has been scientifically demonstrated that we can't precisely know both a particle's momentum and position at the same time. The more precisely we measure one the less precisely we can measure the other. It has also been scientifically demonstrated that we can't know which spin an entangled particle will have when it is observed unless we first measure the spin of the other particle. There are mountains of technical literature describing the research establishing both these things that have been scientifically established that we cannot know.
So where are the mountains of technical literature establishing that we cannot scientifically know who the designer is and how he designed and implemented?
It seems that the situation is pretty much as Paul Nelson described, that you've got a "bag of intuitions" but no theory, no research program, and not really much legitimate research. All the topics that come up in ID discussions like complex specified complexity and irreducible complexity and so forth never appear in the scientific literature, but only in popular press books directed at the lay public.
Despite this lack of any research history people like Steve Meyer still claim that ID is real science, but it isn't the kind of science that scientists think is science because Meyer wants to abandon methodological naturalism so he can include mechanisms for which he has no evidence, which leaves you with, using Paul Nelson's word, "intuitions." Intuitions have a prominent history in guiding scientific research, but intuitions are not research.
As far as the genetic record goes, there has never been anything observed in biology which could explain how csi in DNA could have formed by natural processes.
Really? Say you have a few billion bacteria and all of them divide once. The new generation of bacteria should have millions of mutations, usually only zero, one or two per bacteria. No matter how you define CSI, do you see the inevitability that some of those mutations must represent an increase in CSI?
Please don't bother responding yet because I'm going to assume your answer is no and modify the example slightly. Let's assume that our bacterial population is descended from a single bacteria that has had its genome degraded through modification in the lab of a single nucleotide that left it unable to produce a beneficial (but not essential) protein. In ID terms the CSI of the bacteria has declined. Do you understand how easily the millions of mutations in the next generation might reverse that single nucleotide change in one of the offspring? And that there will be a new generation of bacteria several times every hour, making it not just likely that that nucleotide will eventually be reversed but inevitable? And that this process is entirely natural and is just the "descent with modification" part of evolution?
To paraphrase Pogo, "Evolution has found the designer and he is evolution."
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1059 by Brad H, posted 02-21-2010 4:54 AM Brad H has not replied

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