Unintelligent design (recurrent laryngeal nerve)

Hi Big Al,I've been reading along in this thread, and at first it seemed like you'd forgotten your train of thought, which is fine, happens to all of us when discussion threads get long, but now with this latest post which is just a copy of WK's post that you're responding to with a "BUMP" at the end, I'm no longer able to make any sense of what you're doing. Were you attempting to quote WK and accidentally posted before you were done?--Percy

Hi Al,Unlike Huntard, I'm not so sure CS was being sarcastic, and in fact I think he's correct. The nerve conduction rate in mammals can be very rapid, but it isn't instantaneous. A common conduction rate is 30 meters/seconds, so if a giraffe's laryngeal nerve is 3 meters long then it takes .1 seconds in each direction. That would be .1 second to tell a muscle to contract, and another .1 second to tell it to stop. A giraffe would realize he's bitten his tongue as quickly as a dog, but that extra .1 second before stopping is plenty of time to cause serious pain and damage.There's even a survival component of the giraffe's long laryngeal nerve. Even though the nerves path from brain to chest and back up to the head have a fair amount of covering by skin and flesh, their great length means increased likelihood of otherwise non-fatal injuries damaging the nerves, thereby preventing the giraffe from eating and in effect killing it.The evolutionary hypothesis: Imperfect genetic copying during reproduction observed throughout all life is responsible for speciation and the resulting diversity. The route of the laryngeal nerve is an artifact of evolutionary history left over from ancient evolutionary ancestors whose brain was much, much closer to the plumbing around their heart.The design hypothesis is: It was designed that way for reasons unknown through a never-observed process by a never-observed being or beings.Once again, we have the morphological evidence, we have the process evidence, we have the evolutionary historical evidence, we have a scientific consensus across all nationalities, races and religions, we win. To get back in the race you have to find evidence outside Biblical stories so you can begin convincing those who take real world evidence seriously.--Percy

There's an important comment to be made about this meta-discussion, and that's that it's important to be able to support your claims with real world evidence. Hopefully Coyote would provide evidence upon request, and hopefully you'd do the same. I think the point Coyote is trying to make is that if you find the evidence for evolution unpersuasive, how is it that you're persuaded by a hypothesis that has even less evidence?--Percy

slevesque writes: ​ And I could ask him back, that if he finds the evidence for Design unpersuasive, how is it that he is persuaded by a hypothesis that has even less evidence?

This sounds a lot like knee jerk, "Oh yeah, well so are you," rather than something that you really believe. But if you do really believe what you just said then the difference of opinion is at the very fundamental level of how one assesses evidence. Design fails the evidence test at the very first level of consideration because it postulates a never-before observed process by a never-before observed entity. Evolution postulates observed and well studied processes still occurring before our very eyes in the here and now and which is completely consistent with life just going about its business of living and reproducing one generation after another.The value of your ideas isn't how strongly you're convinced by them, but rather by the power of your evidence to persuade others. Consensus develops in science when a phenomenon has been observed and studied to the point where its implications are apparent to a preponderance of scientists. You yourself may be personally convinced by secondary levels of what you consider evidence for design in vestigial organs and junk DNA, but it not only isn't persuasive to those who give precedence to real-world data, it doesn't even look like evidence to them.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Spelling.

slevesque writes: ​ I predict that the indirect route of the RLN will be found to have a function and therefore be advantageous compared to the direct route.

Yeah, well, this is the route chosen by a lot of IDists. First argue that the evidence supports design, then when that position becomes untenable argue that evidence will eventually be uncovered that supports design.If design were a real theory then, just like evolution, you would be able to construct scenarios based on evidence for what really happened in the past. If IDists were conducting real science then they would be seeking to create a theory founded upon evidence that can produce predictions and be used to interpret the evidence to reconstruct the history of life. Instead they focus on a public relations program intended to convince a public that lacks scientific knowledge and judgement.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

I guess it's easy to convince yourself that your approach echoes Darwin's if you make things up. The fossil evidence has always supported evolution, from the sparse amount available in Darwin's day right up through the ever-growing mountains of fossil evidence available today. You may be misremembering what Darwin actually wrote in Origins when he predicted that future fossil discoveries should reveal increasing numbers of transitional fossils, which turned out to be the case. Or you may be thinking of Darwin's concern about the lack of very, very old fossils, which of course have since been found in copious numbers.At no time did Darwin postulate a mechanism for which he had no evidence and predict that evidence for it would be uncovered in the future. That's the tack you're taking in this thread.When people have the evidence they talk about the evidence. When they don't then they turn requests for evidence into discussions about excuses for why there's no evidence. That's why after a couple hundred years the theory of design hasn't advanced at all. Just find a genetic bottleneck 4350 years old (or whatever number of years ago you like), or find flood evidence, or find an ancient lab where creatures were designed and implemented, or ancient global transportations systems, or evidence of whatever you think design requires, but find at least one little shred of evidence.--Percy

Based upon evidence he had for evolution, Darwin made specific predictions about future fossil finds. But first, unlike Darwin, you have no evidence.And second, Darwin made a specific prediction, that transitional fossils would be found. You didn't make any prediction about what evidence would be found. You just expressed a hope that someday evidence supporting your idea would be found. That's not a prediciton.Here's a prediction for you. I predict evidence supporting evolution will be found, and that it will be greater than the amount found for ID by a factor approaching infinity.Because you have no evidence of ID you have no idea how it works and so you can make no predictions about what evidence might be found. Like I was telling you before, evidence of something real would allow you to make specific predictions about what we'll find in the future and to construct evidence based reconstructions of natural history. The fact that you can't make specific predictions and that you have no idea how ID ever happened is fairly screaming at you that you're just kidding yourself that you have evidence. If you can't support what you're saying then you should perhaps consider dropping this for now because it is driving the thread off-topic and into issues of scientific evidence and method.--Percy

Are you seriously asking how much research serious scientists have conducted investigating your religious beliefs?Don't you think maybe those who are proponents of the idea and who are bonky enough to consider as science religious ideas not even based on their religious book but at least three times removed should be coming up with the funding money and conducting or paying someone to conduct the research? Maybe they could divert some of the money from their "Teach the Controversy" campaign into research. Hey, now there's a novel thought - do the research first, then teach about it.--Percy

Remove the "religious" modifier if you like, it is of no consequence to the point I made and that you ignored. The issue is why serious scientists should investigate someone else's ideas, especially those of a group that has never produced any of their own original research, whose hypotheses are not based upon any known evidence except that "it is all around us," and whose more candid members freely concede that the ideas they claim are science are actually based upon revelation from the Bible rather than evidence from the natural world.Richard Feynman once said that the easiest person to fool is yourself, and you've managed to fool yourself that your ideas are based upon evidence. Real evidence would point research in certain directions that would make possible predictions about what should be discovered in the future and reconstructions of what happened in the past. That you can make neither predictions nor reconstructions says volumes. Just listen to yourself: "Future evidence will prove me right."That you have no evidence couldn't be more obvious. Go ahead, try to make a specific prediction, just fill in the blank: "The principles of ID when applied to the RLN indicate that future research should find ________."Or try to make a historical reconstruction: "The principles of ID when applied to the evidence about _________ (describe a specific set of evidence) tell us that the designer was _______ (describe some physical characteristic of the designer)."But you can't do either one, and that's because you have no real evidence. I'm sure you feel to the core that there's evidence supporting your beliefs, but real world evidence can't be ignored. Real world evidence has the ability to force consensus because real world implications are compelling. That there's no consensus about anything in either the YEC or ID communities (beyond "evolution bad, God good") is due to the lack of evidence.So when are ID scientists going to start investigating their hypotheses about the RLN, and will they be publishing their results in peer reviewed scientific journals, the ones where people who actually discover things publish?But I think my most important point relevant to this thread is that if you have no evidence to present for your position then it might be best to consider dropping this for now, because it's taking us way off topic. If you could support your position about the RLN then we'd be talking about that evidence, but since you can't do that it leaves you posting about meta-topics.--Percy

Hi Slevesque,I wasn't originally going to reply to this, but it provides such a good example of how people fool themselves that I changed my mind. This is a great example of a false premise:

1. Only an intelligence can created coded information.
2. DNA is coded information.
3. DNA was created by an intelligence.

Of course, your premise that only an intelligence can create coded information is plainly false. A person taking notes in a lab book while making observations is not creating information. The information was created in the natural world. The person taking notes is only translating the information from one coding system to another.Here's an example to make clear the point. You look out the window and see that it is raining. Where did the information come from? It didn't come from you, right? If you'd been in your basement instead of your study you'd have no idea that it was raining, so the information must have come not from you but from mother nature just going about her business.This is important: Everything that happens creates information.Here's another example. Let's say someone gives you an E. coli bacteria and asks you to analyze its DNA. You do so and in your report conclude that the particular sequence of nucleotides in the DNA must have been specified by a designer.Someone now points out that that particular E. coli was the result of a lengthy lab experiment of thousands of generations, and that we know that some of the examples of design in your report were actually the result of natural mutation and selection that had been observed and documented. Since obviously the original E. coli that began the experiment had ancestors that experienced mutations s (even though undocumented, you must concede this must be true), then just as obviously the strong conviction immediately arises that your other examples of design arose by the same mechanism of mutation and selection.Where is your evidence for design now?What you have to realize is that your words aren't really meant for us but for yourself. Those words are what you write in order to create within yourself a state of mind where you believe you've actually demonstrated evidence for design. What your words are unable to do is lead anyone else to the same state of mind, and there's a reason for that: your words don't lead to the conclusions you think they do. We judge how right we are by how many people see the same implications from real world evidence that we ourselves see. If you had real world evidence that pointed to design then it couldn't be ignored, because those who have the most accurate real world views will make all the advances and discoveries.So guess who's making all the advances and discoveries? It isn't YEC's, and it isn't IDists. In fact, the supposed "evidence" of both sides is so uncompelling that even with the shared religious convictions YEC's can't convince IDists over to their side, and IDists can't convince YEC's over to theirs. Yet members of both groups come to sites like this one believing they have compelling evidence for science. Very weird.--Percy

I can sense that there is a million dollars in gold doubloons buried 10 feet beneath your backyard. I have no evidence supporting this idea, but I think it would be worth your while to explore it, Al. After all, it's a million dollars.What's that? You're not going to look into this cockamamie idea? Gee, Al, why not?You know what I think? I think that if I really and truly am sure that there's a million dollars buried in your backyard that I should travel to your home and offer you a hundred thousand dollars to let me dig in your background. Gee, Al, why do you think I'm not doing that?So with that prelude out of the way, the question you should be asking, Al, is why IDists aren't doing research into their own cockamamie ideas if they really and truly believe that their ideas have merit? Gee, Al, what a great idea, dampen vibration by routing the nerve right by the source of the biggest thumping vibration in the whole body, the heart.--Percy

Hi Al,Getting back on topic and working from the available evidence, what do the principles of ID tell you that ID scientists should be looking for regarding the RLN?What reconstructions of the design and implementation process do the principles and evidence allow you to make?What does the evidence tell you about the designer himself, and how does it help you find evidence of the designer?--Percy

Hi Al,I think what people are trying to get you to see is that your analogy to wiring across a doorway doesn't match the RLN very well. In your analogy, what is it about the path from the larynx to the brain that is analogous to a doorway such that a route down the neck around the aorta and back is required?--Percy

I think you've misread what people are saying. People understand there could be circumstances requiring less than direct nerve pathways. What people are saying to you is that they can see no such circumstances with regard to the RLN pathway, and when they ask you what such circumstances might be they get answers like this: Divine whim is your answer? Does this answer sound like science to you?What is actually being asked is what do the principles of ID tell you that ID scientists should be looking for regarding the RLN? Is your answer really that there's nothing they should be looking for, because the designer could do it any which way he wanted?So if you try to be a bit more scientific about it, what reconstructions of the design and implementation process do the principles and evidence allow you to make?What does the evidence tell you about the designer himself, and how does it help you find evidence of the designer?--Percy

Independent of what constitutes good science, the fact is we just see no evidence for your ideas, and we also think the person advocating a position should be providing the "examples and possibilities." If you're interested in a discussion about what constitutes good science then we should do that over in one of the Is It Science? threads, but not here.But here in this thread it would be marvelously on topic if you just provided us examples of good science by telling us what the principles of ID tell you that ID scientists should be looking for regarding the RLN? What reconstructions of the design and implementation process do the principles and evidence allow you to make? What does the evidence tell you about the designer himself, and how does it help you find evidence of the designer?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Reference correct forum for discussions about the nature of science.