Problems with evolution? Submit your questions.

How fortunate it is that science is not limited by the inability of creationists to think of things.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It is also the case that your failure to understand science does not constitute a valid critique of it.

Did you have a point, or are you just whining?

It's a fair bet that anyone being grossly and foolishly wrong about evolution is a creationist. However, if you will tell us that you are not a creationist, and what you are instead, then I shall believe you, because you are of course deluded when you pretend that I am dogmatic on this subject.

But this is not true. A counterexample would be the bones of the mammalian middle ear, the evolution of which is well-preserved in the fossil record.The fact that you can't now remove a part without wrecking the system is not even remotely connected to the question of whether it could have evolved gradually, since such gradualistic evolution does not have the sudden apparition of a part as its final step.It is this consideration that led Behe to admit that his argument was defective, as follows: "There is an asymmetry between my current definition of irreducible complexity and the task facing natural selection. I hope to repair this defect in future work." That was Behe in 2001. Don't hold your breath.

That's a good way to ignore the evidence. Well, not a good way, but probably about the best you can do.All those intermediate forms between basal theropods and modern birds ... yeah, that probably is the best you can come up with.But perhaps you could fill us in on the details of your delusion. In what way would it be "more art than science" to observe that (for example) Archaeopteryx has teeth and gastralia but no synsacrum or pygostyle? The aesthetic element to which you allude escapes me. And yet we can watch this happeneing. Are you denying the existence of mutations now?

To be precise, about seven million years' worth of difference, given the measured rate of mutation. Which fits nicely with the fossil evidence.If you enjoy hearing evolutionists "admitting" that the predictions of the theory of evolution are quantitatively correct, then stick around, you're going to love it here. If reciting creationist dogma magically made it true, then creationists would win arguments. But it does not, and merely announcing your inaccurate beliefs is not the same as arguing for them.We can watch genetic information being "brought back" by "chance and time"; for example in the Ames test, to name just one prominent example of reversion.But a man who refers to mutations as "mythical" will doubtless have no trouble ignoring the existence of reversion.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

So if it gains this ability, this is a gain of information, correct?

Well, this is not true. Paleontologists look at fossils; creationists, by and large, look at dumb lies that other creationists have written about fossils.

Gitt's writings are not "well thought out".He commits a number of howlers, but the most glaring and obvious is that he defines information as having an intelligent source --- which is pure sleight of hand, because it throws no light on the source of information in DNA, it just changes the question to whether there is any information in DNA in Gitt's sense of the word information.By analogy, if he belonged to a different religion he might redefine lightning as that which is produced when the thunder-god Thor brandishes his magic hammer Mjǫlnir. But that sheds no light on what actually produces lightning, it merely leaves us doubting that there is any such thing as lightning in Gitt's sense of the word lightning.What is required are some actual facts, not an end-run around the English language.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Your argument is flawed. The small-scale dynamics of water are different from its large-scale fluid dynamics, because at a small scale its viscosity becomes a much more important factor while inertia becomes negligible. You'd have to test the bacterium against something of a similar size.

As your post seems to have nothing to do with mine, I don't know why you posted it as a reply to mine and quoted my entire post as a preface to it. That depends on how you're quantifying information, something which you have not yet said.One could count the number of real words in the sequence, but that would hardly serve as a general method for quantifying information. For example, DNA would be remarkably information-poor by that criterion. And yet Shannon's ideas have provided a useful tool for information scientists, whereas the ramblings of creationists have served only to confuse other creationists --- which is about as useful and necessary as spitting into the Atlantic.Now if you have a better idea for quantifying information, please tell us. I for one am all ears.

How about things that evolved? (And which would therefore be the product both of randomness and of natural law, but not of design.) Does it then follow that they would not have specified complexity?If they do, then specified complexity cannot be the hallmark of design. And if they don't then you'd have to find out if the genome was designed or evolved in order to find out if it has specified complexity. It doesn't seem to be a useful concept, as I have already illustrated. Let me illustrate it again.Dembski proposed specified complexity as a method of detecting design.Now, consider the following string: Does it have a designer? Well, apparently that boils down to the question of whether it has specified complexity. So, does it have specified complexity? Well, we can approach this question via Dembski's filter. Which requires me to find out ... oh, wait ... it requires me to find out if it was designed.If it's a designed message meaning "Meet me behind the old barn at midnight", it has specified complexity. If it was produced randomly by a series of coin-tosses, it doesn't.We can't use specified complexity as a criterion for discovering the history of a string if we have to know the history of the string in order to know whether it has specified complexity.---I note in your own post, the one to which I'm replying, you use "specified complexity" and "design" actually as synonyms. You write "Dembski purposes a filter to determine design or specified complexity", and, having been asked for a method for measuring specified complexity, you answer by proposing an eliminative method of detecting design.So where does this get us? Introducing a mere synonym for design into the discussion can shed no light on the issue, it can only confuse it. A cynic might suggest that this is why creationists do so.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I think his problem is the other way round. According to his "filter" answer a mutation by definition does not produce specified complexity, because it's random. His problem would then be to demonstrate that the genome possesses any specified complexity.But there is a certain amount of ambiguity in the term, one which creationists play with to confuse themselves. Sometimes they talk as if it's a property of the sequence qua sequence, and sometimes as if it's a property of the history of the sequence. This allows them to forget that they haven't actually taken the necessary step of showing that there is any justifiable inference from the present properties of the sequence to their supposed properties of the history of the sequence; but while they have not established that link, they have established a different and factitious link, namely that they themselves are using the same word for both concepts.And it doesn't take much to confuse a creationist ...

Actually, you've also heard why. Knowing how to read English has always worked for me. But as I pointed out, this has no general application. In particular, I can't use this skill to distinguish between a DNA sequence that was designed, one that was evolved, and one that was produced by rolling four-sided dice.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.