Exposing the evolution theory. Part 2

Next, I thought evolution was supposed to be good at cleaning up things that don't work. With as old as the recurrent laryngeal nerve is supposed to have first developed, you would think that the all-powerful evolution would have corrected that badly working thing? If you assume evolution, the fact that the recurrent laryngeal nerve is conserved would point to it not being a 'bad design'.

You really don't know very much about evolution do you?

Evolution is not very good at cleaning up things that don't work perfectly. It is quite good at cleaning up things that are lethal, obviously. Evolution has to work with the features it has and if they are not lethal and still allow the organism to live and reproduce then they may be retained.

There are dozens of features (maybe hundreds) that have been pointed out as less than optimum design, but that are still retained. The vertebrate eye is a well known example when compared to cephalopod eye.

Evolution works at modifying existing features rather than inventing features that are completely new. It makes do with modifying what it has, sometimes for completely different functions, which is why we see features that appear to be less than optimum design.

See Silly Design Institute: Let's discuss BOTH sides of the Design Controversy...

For more details, I went reading some about how SETI is searching for radio signals; and how they know what to look for - what would be a radio signal produced by an alien civilisation

They're searching for very narrow band frequencies. They reckon a signal with a bandwidth of less than about 300 Hz would probably be from an alien civilisation. Why? Because we know of no natural source that produces such narrow bandwidths; but we do it all the time with communication signals.

I don't see any sophisticated technique to detect design here. They're just asking 'what's the difference between a radio signal produced by humans and a radio signal produced by known natural sources?'. Just as the archaeologists are asking 'what's the difference between rocks intentionally shaped by humans and rocks shaped by natural processes?'

I'm not seeing how this is applicable to organisms yet.

And yet neither you nor anyone else on that thread actually identifies any mis-characterizing or axioms that are not true. It is facile to make a criticism without substantiating it. I'd be happy to discuss it further on that thread if you actually have an argument.

Touchy! You ask me to look at a LONG thread from like 15 years ago and with 10 years of comments on it. Then when I simply state I have some issues with the premises, you castigate me for not immediately detailing them in a somewhat unrelated thread?

So sorry! If I have time, I'll go revisit it and comment. But you all have to realize that I only have time to respond with one or two posts per day, if I can at all in a day. I'm going to be much more selective on what I'm responding to, so if I am not up to your current point, you'll have to deal with it.

Where we have known examples of things created by humans to compare them to. We have no examples of anything created by an IDr to use for comparisons. Appealing to information theory has other problems, such as definition of information and ways to actually measure it.

You're making the same category error that Tangle is. You seem to think identifying who/what the designer is is important for design detection. But it is not. Design has common properties among the various artifacts, despite who/what did the designing. It is not important to identify the designer, just to identify whether or not a thing is designed.

Granted, most designed objects we identify are made by humans. But not all are, nor do they have to be. It is irrelevant.

If I found a nest in a tree, based on characteristics of that nest, I could realistically infer that it was designed. I would not have to know whether it was from a finch or an eagle, or a seagull. I wouldn't even have to say that a bird did it necessarily, a human could have made it. None of that information matters other than that I could identify it was made by a process other than random/natural (non-mind) means.

Same as for the SETI program. If someone actually received a patterned radio signal from a far off galaxy, would we have to discount it because a human didn't create it? Of course not. It doesn't matter what 'alien type' would have made the signal, we should be able to determine if it was actually from a mind or from some other non-intelligent natural source.

This fixation on living things is the same. Any designed thing should (obviously) be able to display the characteristics of design, and that thing would be distinct in some properties from non-designed things (again obviously). The only thing that is unique for humans in this endeavor is that we are the only available thing that is able to rationally identify the differences. But what designed a thing is a distinctly different question as to whether or not a thing is designed. ID aims to address only the latter.

And yet "microevolution" is the only mechanism of change used in the study of biology and evolution. I can walk across the room and I can walk from Maine to California: one is micro-trekking the other is macro trekking, but the process - putting one foot after the other, even if it is not on a direct path - is the same. This is demonstrable, has an empirical justification, and doesn't need ID to accomplish or justify it.

Ahh, but if you want to analogize your micro-trekking and macro-trekking to evolution, they are very different animals.

For one, evolution doesn't have a target. When you start from a point in your room, you cannot specify ahead of time a successful journey target, even if such a successful journey would take you to the other end of the room. Same applies to a trek across the US. You could not pre-specify that getting to CA from Maine is a successful trip, even if that happens to be true.

So how would trekking across your room work? I'll just make some general assumptions. The 'target' spot is 12 feet away and an area 3 ft diameter circle. A single stride would be 3 feet. Now you start your trek. From a a safe point in your room, you take a stride....in what direction? It would be random. Say we limit direction to degrees, so you can take a stride in 1 of 360 directions. Your 'success' target is initially at about a 14 degree angle, so your best directional stride is a 1 in 25 chance or so. If we make that an average for a 'good' direction for all strides, and assume you take one stride a second for 24 hours a day, you are still looking at about finding your target on average about once every 4.5 days. If you want to plead keeping any initial step in the 'target' direction (or any other direction for that matter), you would have to justify that without pre-defining the target as the actual success target.

But it is readily conceivable that you could hit that target. Of course, you're only going 12 feet and we're assuming a nice smooth landscape.

Now apply the same principles to making 5,422,560 strides. (Portland ME to Los Angeles CA). That's your optimal route too. If you had an intelligently picked target and an intelligently designed route, you could do it in about 63 days if you all you did was walk. But evolution doesn't allow that sort of intelligence. Even if we allowed (via intelligence and planning or some other justification) that you could rely on hitting the islands of 'success' along the way (of the most direct route) comparable to your success in the room, it would still take you about 5.5K years to make the trip. Ahh, but wait, you'd be dead. Oh well.
To arrive at a point that could be considered a successful journey in your room in your lifetime is a much easier proposition that trekking 3081 miles and it being a successful journey, according to evolution's rules.

Unfortunately, the numbers for macro-evolution appear to be much worse than your trekking across the US.

And yet we have evidence of evolution producing such systems. Not one such system proposed by IDolgists has stood up to testing. See Irreducible Complexity, Information Loss and Barry Hall's experiments for an example where a purported irreducibly complex function evolved.

Operative word is "purported" Turns out it isn't all that impressive as to evolving IC.https://www.discovery.org/a/441/
I listed some of the systems proposed by ID in another thread. You mean those haven't stood up to testing? Really?!? Where?

Please define what you mean by a "new body plan" so that we may discuss this further and be on the same page. As far as I can see all quadrupeds have the same body plan with modification via microevolution, and we can see it's origin in Tiktaalik. This does not seem to be a real problem for evolution for the development of diversity in the biological world. ... Again, please define what you mean by a "(new) regulatory network so that we can discuss this further and be on the same page.

Body plans comprise the specific arrangements of specialized organs and tissues.
For networks, things like developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) that control the timing and expression of pre-existing genes during animal development.

And Tiktaalik isn't such a great example anymore, since tetrapod tracks were discovered that are 20 million years older than Tiktaalik.

Can you provide and example of an instance where evolution is not up to the task?

Again, I'm the one maintaining that evolution hasn't done this. So me providing and example is proving a negative. You please provide a documented example of where it has (a positive).

The BIG problem for ID is nested hierarchies: Why do modified features in the evolution of species fall into nested hierarchies if design is involved? As a designer myself I can say that design elements are frequently borrowed from one system to another, which would show up in cross-fertilization from one line of descent to another and not in nested hierarchies.

No, design elements would not have to be done via cross-fertilization. Unless you are assuming evolution is the method, there is no reason why that would have to be so.

For instance the eye. Mammal eyes use a lens that can be flexed to change the focal length to make images focus on a fixed retina. The Cephalopod eyes use a fixed lens and a flexible eye/retina to change the position of the retina to put images in focus. A design eye could combine these two mechanisms to make a zoom lens eye that could see microscopic items (bacteria) and telescopic items (planets) with equal clarity, but such an eye does not exist in any biological species known.

I doubt this. If it was viable, I'm not sure why we don't have human inventions that do this. Any design has to take into account certain trade-offs. You can't do everything equally well at the same time or via the same mechanisms.

Wookie writes: If I found a nest in a tree, based on characteristics of that nest, I could realistically infer that it was designed.I would not have to know whether it was from a finch or an eagle, or a seagull. I wouldn't even have to say that a bird did it necessarily, a human could have made it. None of that information matters other than that I could identify it was made by a process other than random/natural (non-mind) means.

Mankind has never seen anything like this bundle of twigs before. But it's made out of twigs and it's in a tree so obviously the tree made it. Exactly how is a mystery; just like the tree. Let's worship the tree, just in case.

It sure looks like lightening is designed, somebody up there is bloody angry, let's call him Zeus (Greek), Thor (Norse), Perun (Slavic), Indra (Hindu), Shago (Yaroba), Santeria (Africa), Candomble (Brazil).

Wow, look at those crystals, they're all slightly different but they all have the same basic geometry. Somebody had to have real intelligence and a plan to make those.

Category error my arse. Unless we know what design looks like we can not infer a designer. If we study your nest on anything but a superficial level we can work out what it is and what it does, because we can see what made it and why. To leap to the assumption that the tree (or god) did it is the grievous error.

Like your nest, we have all the evidence we need to demonstrate that a designer is not necessary for life and rock formations.

So produce your designer and prove us wrong.

At Coyne and Polar Bears: Why You Should Never Rely on Incompetent Reviewers Behe posts table S7 from Liu, S., et al. 2014. Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears. Cell 157:785-794 to prove that all mutations are harmful, which he claims he proved in Darwin's Descent.

Except that Behe never makes the assertion (bolded) that ALL mutations are harmful. So your premise is wrong, which makes your argument invalid.

Whoops, you're right ; he didn't claim that all mutations are harmful.

But I stand behind my accusation of lying. He claims to have presented the "relevant part" of the table. The entire table is relevant. As Nathan Lents wrote at Darwin Devolves: Behe Gets Polar Bear Evolution Very WrongDarwin Devolves: Behe Gets Polar Bear Evolution Very Wrong:

quote:

---

First of all, as shown in Table 1 of the paper, APOB harbors the second most strongly-selected set of variants, not the first, but we can let that one slide....

quote:

---

{Behe} They determined that the mutations were very likely to be damaging -that is, likely to degrade or destroy the function of the protein the gene codes for..

---

Some of them, possibly. Definitely not all of them or even most of them, as I’ll soon explain....

The two columns that Behe cut off contain the results of a different algorithm for predicting the effect of the mutations. You will notice that this algorithm makes different predictions for many of the mutations, describing many more of them as “benign” and many more of them “possibly” rather than “probably” damaging....

In Behe’s defense, he doesn’t explicitly say that he’s presenting the whole Table. So he isn’t lying exactly. Instead, he says that he is presenting “the relevant information” from the Table. I find this deeply misleading. This whole discussion is about the nature of adaptive mutations in the evolution of species and Behe’s arguments is that most of them are damaging. By presenting only the mutations that are predicted to fit that argument, he is intentionally leaving out evidence that is contrary to his position.

After all, what is the purpose of showing the chart at all? To show that some mutations that drove polar bear evolution are damaging? He didn’t need a chart to make that point and no one would argue with that. I suspect that if the unaltered Table S7 gave the impression that the overwhelming number of adaptive mutations were damaging, Behe would have shown the whole thing.

In reality, Table S7 does not give that impression at all, and so he slices it up with surgical precision so that he can present “the relevant information,” that is, the information that appears to support his position. And, at least when it comes to APOB, even the selectively edited information probably doesn’t support his position either, regardless of what the predictive algorithm says, as I (and the study’s authors!) explain above.

---

Jonf writes: WookieeB writes: No, the assertion that evolution can produce such things is what has not been demonstrated. I don't need to prove a negative. Show me how an IC object can be produced via unguided evolution. Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation (free registration required)

Nothing special here. They take an inferred ancestral protein, change two AA's to more closely match a modern version, and show that the binding capability is less strong. The item is not even IC.
Behe responds - https://www.discovery.org/a/3415/
Takeaway - the result was exceedingly modest and well within the boundaries that an intelligent design proponent like myself would ascribe to Darwinian processes.

In fact, the followup to that experiment An epistatic ratchet constrains the direction of glucocorticoid receptor evolution demonstrates the inability for NS to have it evolve the other way (making the binding function even stronger). This vindicates Behe's contentions in the Edge of Evolution

Also the many propoosed pathways such as Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum. Can you demonstrate any issues with that?

No, not really an issues with it, other than it is exactly what it describes itself as... a model. Nothing of the sort has been demonstrated though. The whole thing is a 'well maybe if this happened', hypothesizing, guesses, 'possibly'.... but no demonstrations. It's not that hard to come up with a plausibly sounding model for just about any situation. But providing demonstrable evidence is a different animal.

There are a log of debatable things in that paper, like whether the T3SS is older than, younger than, or a spin-off from some ancestor version compared to the flagellum FLi complex. Take the information however you want. All I would add is that now 16 years and counting, there isn't anything in the model that has been demonstrated.

So "complex specified information" is a synonym for "irreducibly complex"? Then why have two labels?

They are not the same thing, nor synonyms for each other. Thus.... two labels.
IC relates to a system made up of interacting parts that contribute to a acheive a function of the system. (More details in past posts)
CSI - is really a probability argument that has a more rigourous form to it than your average probability statement.

CSI relates to IC, but they are not the same things.

And we know of many ways IC can evolve and have at least one example.

Then show the way(s). Your example didnt work.

BTW evolution can and does produce Shannon information.

Perhaps, though you need to clarify what/how you mean this. But Shannon information is only related to one leg of CSI. It helps provide knowledge of the probabilities, but it isnt the only factor.

If you meant to show this by the link you included next....

Evolution of biological information

...then no. That link is all about a computer simulation, not actual biology. And as a simulation, active information was smuggled into the programming, making it a better example of ID than evolution.
A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information

If one cannot realistically estimate the probabilities, any discussion of the relevant information is likely to be bogus.

Regarding this and the link associated with it, you seem to misunderstand what complex and specified information. The link has Shallit arguing that all CSI is looking at is Shannon information and that the idea of specified complex infomation is unique to ID. For one, Shannon information is part of, but not only, what is being looked at. And the idea is not unique to ID, but has been referred to in literature, even before the recent ID movement got going.

As to your highlighted part, it's somewhat irrelevant, because we can realistically estimate the probabilities of Shannon information.

The item is not even IC.

Why not? What could be removed leaving a functional system? (Behe's pathetic attempt to ignore the fact it is part of a system notwithstanding.)

CSI relates to IC, but they are not the same things.

You were asked for a definition on CSI and you said IC.

How is IC defined and measured?

Your example didnt work.

That's what you and Behe claimed.

because we can realistically estimate the probabilities of Shannon information.

Really? Let's see a few examples. (BTW it's probability *distribution*, not probability.)

I'll try to be brief to keep this from exploding ...

Touchy! You ask me to look at a LONG thread from like 15 years ago and with 10 years of comments on it. Then when I simply state I have some issues with the premises, you castigate me for not immediately detailing them in a somewhat unrelated thread?

Sorry I only expected you to deal with the initial post, should have been more specific. What I see is that you seem to be having the "kaleidoscope problem" when you see design everywhere:

quote:

---

The search for the evidence of design must be done by those with the most capable trained "eyes" free of constrained perspectives - the most open and complete knowledge of the physical workings of the universe and all it contains ... matter, energy, life. Anything less will likely lead to mistakes or a lack of understanding to see the actual fingerprints of design.

Without as complete a base of knowledge as possible we could be looking at a watch with the mind of a frog, or we could be like a child, bemused by a kaleidoscope of pattern when there is none ... we could be unable to properly observe and evaluate the evidence before us.

---

Italics added for emphasis.

This fixation on living things is the same. Any designed thing should (obviously) be able to display the characteristics of design, and that thing would be distinct in some properties from non-designed things (again obviously). The only thing that is unique for humans in this endeavor is that we are the only available thing that is able to rationally identify the differences. But what designed a thing is a distinctly different question as to whether or not a thing is designed. ID aims to address only the latter.

Actually not obvious at all, as noted in the "kaleidoscope problem" -- if you are applying belief confirmation bias your results are biased. Observing known designs (from crow tools to whale bubble nets) involves knowing and understanding the sources of these designs, not in just looking at the end results, because there are no common design elements that say they are designed.

Ahh, but if you want to analogize your micro-trekking and macro-trekking to evolution, they are very different animals. For one, evolution doesn't have a target. When you start from a point in your room, you cannot specify ahead of time a successful journey target, even if such a successful journey would take you to the other end of the room. Same applies to a trek across the US. You could not pre-specify that getting to CA from Maine is a successful trip, even if that happens to be true.

The analogy is to show how one, macro, is just an accumulation of the other, micro, not to be a perfect analogy of evolution.

Evolution has been compared to a drunken walk, and yes it has no target, but it does build up to the point that species have recognizably changed (which is what scientific macro evolution is). This has been observed to occur and thus it is factual, and not some untested hypothesis.

Unfortunately, the numbers for macro-evolution appear to be much worse than your trekking across the US.

An assertion like this without substantiating evidence is worthless babble. What numbers? What paradigm are these numbers based on? How is it measured and quantified?

Operative word is "purported" Turns out it isn't all that impressive as to evolving IC.https://www.discovery.org/a/441/ I listed some of the systems proposed by ID in another thread. You mean those haven't stood up to testing? Really?!? Where?

Indeed, I know of no IDologist's purported IC system that stands up to testing for being incapable to evolve. Your link to respond has also been refuted by Kenneth Miller. Look further than confirmation bias sites.

Body plans comprise the specific arrangements of specialized organs and tissues. For networks, things like developmental gene regulatory networks (dGRNs) that control the timing and expression of pre-existing genes during animal development.

All easy for evolution to explain:

And Tiktaalik isn't such a great example anymore, since tetrapod tracks were discovered that are 20 million years older than Tiktaalik.

The timing is irrelevant, what is relevant is the development of the quadraped body plan from the fish body plan, which is why it is easy for evolution to explain new body plans without resorting to ID interaction/s.

No, design elements would not have to be done via cross-fertilization. Unless you are assuming evolution is the method, there is no reason why that would have to be so.

The issue is that such cross-fertilization would show definite design that would differentiate it from evolution: if you don't have any test that differentiates design from evolution then you have an unnecessary embellishment and not a testable differentiation hypothesis (see Occam's Razor), again with apparent confirmation bias and kaleidoscope eyes.

I doubt this. If it was viable, I'm not sure why we don't have human inventions that do this. ...

Actually we do have human inventions that do this, they are called zoom lenses for cameras and binoculars, which is why I use it as an example of a designed eye.

... Any design has to take into account certain trade-offs. You can't do everything equally well at the same time or via the same mechanisms.

Why not if design is involved?

Evolution exquisitely explains why each system is stuck within the nested hierarchy where they evolved, unable to cross-over to appear in an organism from a different nested hierarchy, and also why elements that are "good enough" are seen rather than optimized elements. Design should also seek to optimize rather than make do.

As mentioned by Tanypteryx (Message 286) you might also want to look at Silly Design Institute: Let's discuss BOTH sides of the Design Controversy... particularly Investigator: Eye's Silly Design for a different viewpoint.

Enjoy

Edited by RAZD, : .