What is an ID proponent's basis of comparison? (edited)

This is a variation of the question I have repeatedly asked that never gets answered:Is there anything that happens on its own or is god required for everything?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew writes:

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According to information I got from Michael Behe

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Um, you do realize that every single example of "irreducible complexity" that Behe has ever come up with has been shown to be not only reducible but actually evolved?Every single one.Behe simply refuses to examine the literature when it comes to finding evidence that goes against his claims. In the recent Dover trial, he made the claim that nobody has ever done a study on biochemical evolution.So the prosecution started pulling out papers and stacking them up in front of him on the witness stand until they rose so high that Behe had to stop the proceedings because he could no longer see over the stack of papers in front of him that he had claimed did not exist.

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Just binding two proteins together would be around one chance in 10 to the 20th power.

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Assuming an all-in-one-go scheme, perhaps.Biochemistry doesn't work that way.Suppose I have a standard deck of 52 cards and I draw one.What is the probability of me having drawn the Ace of Spades?
What if we knew that I had drawn a black card?
What if we knew that I had drawn a Spade?
What if we knew that I had draw an Ace?Too, chemical reactions do not just result in random chemicals. When I take a mole of oxygen gas and two moles of hydrogen gas, mix them together at STP, and spark the mixture, why is it I never get a flask full of hydrogen peroxide with trace amounts of water? Why do I always get a flask full of water with trace amounts of hydronium? Why is that when I want to produce hydrogen peroxide, I need to follow another chemical reaction and not just assume that hydrogen and oxygen will combine any old way I want?

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Sure there are Darwinian models but do those models conceal any problems along the way?

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Well, then I wouldn't get on board a Boeing 777 if I were you. It was created by a computer using evolutionary methods, not by humans designing it. By your logic, these planes should be falling out of the sky.Why is it they manage to fly despite having been evolved, not designed?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator writes:

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The information is already in the genome. The mechanisms that the cell has helps the cell adapt.

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But the E. coli experiment I have often described here proves that to be false. If what you say is true, then the entire lawn should act as one: Either the entire lawn survives or the entire lawn dies. Because the entire lawn is descended from a single ancestor. Any genetic "information" in the lawn is present in all of them for the only source of "information" was from that single ancestor.Therefore, either the entire lawn is immune to T4 phage or the entire lawn is susceptible and dies.Instead, what we see is that while much of the lawn dies, some colonies remain alive.Therefore, new information must be in the colonies that survived.Your claim of no information necessarily means that if one can do it, then all of them can do it. But instead, we see that some can and some can't.Therefore, new information must be present.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew responds to me:

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I have seen the pilus model for evolving a flagellum but it conceals at least one "major" problem plus other problems described by Michael Dembski.

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No, it doesn't. As was shown in the Dover trial, these claims of "problems" and "irreducibility" have been shown to be false. Not only are the structures reducible, we've actually found the evolutionary pathways by which they appeared.Behe would know this if he ever bothered to do a survey of the literature before making his proclamations that such things have "never been studied," but he doesn't.

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So you expect me to go through the transcripts of the Dover trial in order to refute or agree with you?

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Sorta. That is, what I expect is for you to do your homework before making delcarations about what has or has not been discovered. Evolutionary biology is a huge field and discoveries are being made all the time. If you haven't bothered to look into the publications, read the journals, done the research, any claims that there are "problems" or that something "cannot be explained" are foolish at best.

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So what you are saying from your chemistry lesson is that biochemistry works with what it is there.

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Is there something special about being inside a phospholipid bilayer that makes chemistry behave differently?

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But you see with protein bonding, oil and hydrogen bonds have to arranged in sequence with their counterparts in the other proteins as well as having the correct shapes.

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So? Are you saying that there is something going on inside the cell that isn't chemistry? There is something about being wrapped inside a phospholipid bilayer that changes the valence on oxygen?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator responds to me:

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No, becasue that information was copied.

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Irrelevant. Whether or not the information was copied has nothing to do with why some of the bacteria live and some of the bacteria die despite all the bacteria being descended from a single ancestor.By your claim that no new information can ever be created, all the bacteria necessarily behave in exactly the same way. If one die, then all die. If one lives, then all live. No exceptions.But we see exceptions. Some of the bacteria live and some die.Thus, our premise must be false: New information necessarily was created.

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Resistance is acquired by loss of information.

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Incorrect. Because you can rerun this experiment by taking one of the K-4 bacteria and letting it be the sole ancestor to the lawn. When you re-infect the lawn with T4 phage, we find not that the lawn survives but rather that the lawn starts to die.Now, this time it's the phage that has mutated to T4h.We can keep this up, having the two continually mutate to change to the new environemtn. By your logic, we should eventually wind up with nothing as all that "information" gets lost. But it doesn't. The bacteria and phage keep surviving, keep changing.How can they do that if they keep "losing information"?Some simple questions:Which has more information: A or AB?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AA?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew responds to me:

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I see a lot of huffing and puffing from you about Behe but no real evidence so far.

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Huh? I've given you specific examples. Every single example Behe has ever put forward as an example of "irreducible complexity" has been shown to be not only reducible but we have found evolutionary pathways for them. From the blood clot cascade the flagellum. Every single one has been shown to be evolved. In his books, he boasts that nobody has ever studied these things when all it takes is a tiny amount of searching in PubMed to find that he's talking out of his ass. For the blood clot cascade alone, there were literally hundreds of papers on the biochemical evolution of it that he claimed didn't exist when he wrote Darwin's Black Box. Why don't you know this. If you're going to bring Behe up, why don't you know what he's said?I am not here to do your homework for you. If you're going to put forward Behe as someone to pay attention to, then you're going to have to know what it is that he's claiming. I can't make you read his argument. You have to do that for yourself.

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The reason why I was skeptical that your statement of whoever it was who threw down the publications or journals that refute Behe's irreducible complex arguments, is that is a friggin courtroom and I don't know who you are.

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Did you bother to look it up? Are you incapable of doing your own homework? This is hardly some rare, isolated case that only legal buffs would have ever heard of. It made the national news. And I don't want you taking my word for it. I want you to learn about it on your own.

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I really have some studying up to do. So I would rather see some evidence rather than participate in a dragged on useless debate.

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Then go do your homework. We'll still be here when you come back.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator responds to me:

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No, some live and some die because come confer resistance for an example.

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But if your claim of "no new information" is true, then they all have the same genetic profile. Therefore, they should either all die or all live. With no new "information" to confer resistance, then the entire lawn necessarily behaves as one as they are all descended from a single ancestor.So since the the lawn is not behaving as a single unit, since only some live and some die, the premise that no new "information" has been introduced is proven false.

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But this resistance is aquired by degradation of existing information. Not by an increase.

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Incorrect. Because you can repeat the process by taking the new, resistant bacteria, isolating a single bacterium, and having it reproduce to form a lawn and re-infecting the lawn with T4 phage. By your logic, with no new "information" to confer infectivity, the entire lawn should survive. Instead, we find plaques starting to form.Now, this can't possibly be a case of the bacterium reverting to wild-type. If there were a bacterium that had reverted, it would be infected by T4 and die, but it is surrounded by the immune bacteria who would reproduce and fill in the gap.So it clearly isn't the bacteria that evolved but rather the phage.But by your logic, since all this is "loss of information," how on earth is anything still alive?

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All resistances have been aquired by loss of information.

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Kevin Anderson? Creation Research Society Quarterly? Those are your references? At any rate, your reference doesn't actually support the claim. The antibiotics disrupt cellular activity via a certain pathway. The bacteria acquire mutations that allow them to reproduce without using that pathway. That isn't "loss of information."And for further evidence, the process by which bacteria become resistant to ciproflaxacin (one of the antibiotics in your source) is by actually creating new genes with an altered amino acid sequence such that the ciproflaxacin doesn't bond well to the topoisomerase anymore.Where is this "loss of information" you are crowing about?

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Simple. Because the mutatins deform their receptors to different antibiotics in differnt way.

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But you can keep running the experiment over and over, having the two continually change their genes to maintain the standoff. If this were the result of "loss of information" as you keep claiming, then eventually there wouldn't be anything left in either genome.So since the bacteria and phage are still around and have just as big a genome as they always have, where did the "loss of information" go?

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Some simple questions:

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Which has more information: A or AB?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AA?

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Depends by which definition of information.

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Use any one you want. For those three comparisons, which one has more "information"?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator responds to me:

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No, that's simply not the case. There are billions of ways a genome can mutate.

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So? If you were to sequence every single bacterium in the lawn, you'd find mutations all over the place. That's the entire point: New "information" is being created. Despite the fact that all of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor, the genetic sequence of the descendants is not the same as that of the ancestor.At least one of those bits of new "information" provides resistance to T4 phage. That's why most of the lawn dies but some colonies survive. If we go with your claim that "no new information" is created, then either every single bacterium is capable of fending off T4 phage or none of them are capable of doing so and thus the entire lawn necessarily reacts as one.Since the lawn does not react as a single unit, since some bacteria die while others live, your premise of "no new information" is necessarily proven untrue.

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Didn't I already respond to this?

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No. If there is this continual "loss of information," how on earth is anything still alive?

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Yes, it is a loss of information, since the pathway has become non functional.

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That isn't a loss of "information," though. At the very least, it is a neutral shift in the genetic sequence.There is an experiment you can run with removing the lactose operon from E. coli. This is the gene that allows them to be able to digest lactose. Under similar processes as the T4 phage experiment (take one, let it grow to a lawn, letting the generations pile up the mutations in the genome), they eventually regain the ability to digest lactose.How is that not "new information"? They literally did not have any ability to digest lactose. If you had fed them only lactose, they would have died. So why is it that the descendants of these bacteria are able to do something that their ancestors can't? If your claim of "no new information" is true, then the lactose operon is always and forever gone because it was specifically and deliberately removed from the genome.So where did this new operon that can digest lactose come from? A miracle?

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Which has more information: A or AB?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AA?

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1.) In Shannons case AB, in Gitt's case AB
2.) Both the same in any case.
3.) In Shannon's case AA, in Gitt's case both the same.

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So if I start with a genetic sequence of A and we see a duplication event so that we have AA and then we see a mutation event so that we have AB, how is that not an "increase in information"?According to your description of Gitt saying that A and AA have the same "information" and that A and B have the same "information," then this process that involves two actions that don't by themselves create new "information" actually creates new "information" since we started with A and we ended with AB which, according to your own description, is new "information."By your description of Shannon, the new "information" step happened at the duplication stage.So I have to ask you: Where is your justification of "no new information" when we have directly observed processes that result in what you claim is "new information"?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew writes:

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Although it could raise another point, why would someone decide to leave the outcome of this trial hinging on one person to make?

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Because the creationists, unable to document their claims in the arena of science where papers are written, subjected to peer review, and has other scientists try to replicate the results, decided to go the way of the courts. All it takes is one judge to say, "Creationism should be taught in science class," for them to claim victory.They can't justify their claims scientifically, so they try to get it declared valid by fiat.This is the basis for my solution regarding what should be taught in class:Every year, we do a survey of the literature to see what has been published regarding biology. We look for the breakdown of which papers are in support of evolutionary theory and which papers are in support of creationist claims. We then break down the time spent on biological diversity to that standard: If 70% of the papers advocate evolution while 30% advocate creationism, then that's the breakdown we do.The reason why no creationist will ever agree to this, of course, is that there are no papers that advocate creationism in the literature. This is precisely why Behe published his book regarding "irreducible complexity" in the popular press, not the scientific literature: He couldn't get it past peer review.Because they can't manage to have their claims survive scrutiny by scientists, they try to get other authority figures such as the courts to declare them true by fiat.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Wounded King writes:

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I was trying to leave Rrhain some wiggle room since he was saying it was creationist taking things to the courts.

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Depends upon which instance you're talking about. Indeed, they have gone off to the school boards, but they have also gone to courts ("balanced treatment" and all that).For example, John E. Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District, (1994) 37 F. 3rd 517: Ruling that a teacher's right to freedom of religion was not violated by the district's requirement that evolution be taught in biology class.There's also Rodney LeVake v Independent School District 656, et al. (Order Granting Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment and Memorandum, Court File Nr. CX-99-793, District Court for the Third Judicial District of the State of Minnesota [2000]). This case had the teacher claiming discrimination when the school district found his teaching "evidence both for and against the theory" was not part of the curriculum and his religious freedom was not being violated.So yes, the creationists have moved to the school boards which has resulted in lawsuits originated by those supporting science over religion, but it has also gone the other way with creationists trying to claim that their religious freedom is being trampled by restricting science class to science instruction.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

traderdrew writes:

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I think he should require (not necessarily demand) that Darwinism needs to be explained on a biochemical level.

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But that's just it: They have. They have done the very thing that Behe claims nobody has ever done. In his book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe claims that nobody has ever looked into the biochemical evolution of the blood clot cascade. He even quoted some researchers into it claiming that they had never done so.But if he had only done a simple check of the literature, he would have seen that not only has the question of the biochemistry of evolution been looked into, but the very people he quoted as having not done the work actually did what he claimed they hadn't. Literally thousands of papers on the biochemistry of evolution had been published at the time Behe came out with his treatise and literally tens of thousands have been written since then but Behe still claims that nobody has ever looked into it.This was the point of the stack of papers presented to him. He stated in open court that nobody had looked into it so the prosecutor started pulling out paper after paper Behe claimed didn't exist and stacked them up on the witness stand in front of Behe...until he had to eventually complain that he couldn't see over them anymore.Behe's request that more investigation be done, in and of itself, is reasonable.What is unreasonable is his continued refusal to acknowledge that his demand for evidence has been provided. Now, this hardly means that everything is known and there is no need to investigate further, but that is not Behe's argument. His claim is not that there is still more work to be done but rather that no work has been done at all.There is a difference between two mathematicians arguing over whether or not the six millionth digit of pi is a 2 and them arguing over whether or not pi is an integer.

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I don't believe it when someone tells me that Behe doesn't read the journals.

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So why does he continue to say that nobody has ever examined the question of the biochemical pathways of evolution?The cynic in me agrees that Behe has, indeed, read the literature...he's just lying about it.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator responds to me:

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I know it's not the same. That doesn't mean it's new information.

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But you can keep repeating this experiment and never stop. By your logic, eventually you'd run out of information. But since we can keep going indefinitely, how does that affect your argument?

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Again, you simply don't get it. New genes do not equal new information.

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?Didn't we establish that AB has more information than A? Therefore, how does going from A to AA to AB not equate to "new information"?

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Becasue the loss is gradual.

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So why is it we can keep repeating the process indefinitely? How can these bacteria possibly survive when all of their information has been lost?

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Nothing is perfectly neutral.

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Huh? A mutation that doesn't affect reproductive success isn't neutral?Just what is your definition of "neutral"?

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Yes, becasue they will use transposons to produce it again and again.

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Huh? If they have transposons, then they haven't lost anything. And the evolution of lactose tolerance after deletion doesn't involve transposons.Do you even know what a transposon is?

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Nope, it's a designed mechanism that does this.

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How can there be a mechanism when there is no gene to digest lactose to be found anywhere in the genome? It was deliberately removed. So are you saying god came down and consciously, deliberately, and purposefully put in a new lactose operon? It was a miracle?

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It has an algorithm that mutates the genome.

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Chemistry is a miracle? Because that's how mutations happen: No chemical reaction is ever perfect every single time. Are you saying that this was "designed" by god?

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Because that is biologicaly meaningless.

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Huh? Do you not understand how gene cascades form? Duplication and mutation such that the duplicated gene becomes a promotor for the original gene. By your own definition, that is an increase in information because we started with A and we ended with AB.Since you seem to be backing off, let's try it again:Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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No new functions are gained by just including one more nucleotide.

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Huh? First, why not? Frame shift mutations happen. Second, who was talking about a nucleotide? I was talking about genes.

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Gitt's information is not used for biological functions

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Then why did you bring it up? If you're going to use a definition of "information" that you are simply going to reject as inappropriate, why did you mention it?So let's try it again:Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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Becasue Shannon's definition of information can't be used for biological functions.

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Then why did you bring it up? If you're going to use a definition of "information" that you are simply going to reject as inappropriate, why did you mention it?So let's try it again:Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

Smooth Operator writes:

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No they didn't they had it all along. It just get's turned on when they need it.

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Incorrect. Because it only works when the two genes are present at the same time. Since one is a duplication and subsequent mutation of another gene, this means that they didn't have it all along. It was only after a gene was duplicated and mutated that the new information came along.Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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No, it doesn't that's an assumption based on the assumption that evolution is true.

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But the genetic clock shows that it did evolve.

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Similarity is not evidence for common ancestry.

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In and of itself, yes. But to think that it is only "similarity" that is the basis for the conclusion of duplication and mutation, then you really don't know anything about genetics.

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Actually it was always there.

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Incorrect. First, it wasn't there. Then, a gene was duplicated. Then, the gene mutated. Thus, new information appeared.Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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The enzymes still perform the same function, but now it's just fine tuned for current low temperature.

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Incorrect, because there are two enzymes where there used to be only one.Which has more information: A or AA?
Which has more information: A or B?
Which has more information: A or AB?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.