@tubewatch59 What are you talking about? The world doesn't appear intelligently designed at all. Designed things stick out like a sore thumb. Nature has the overwhelming appearance of being just that - natural. Evolution, geology, and cosmology are all defined by natural, self-guiding processes. There's nothing in them that stands out as a product of intelligence.
I really do not get all the criticism about this video. It makes sense to me; his facts could all be wrong but the concept of relative rates of evolutionary is instructive. Please explain.
1:58 Considering the random nature of evolution,how many mice are needed to produce the first 100 elephants in 10000 years?
The unit of Darwin feels wrong because:
The rate of change depends on the range in which a feature varies within the same generation.It also depends on the reproductive cycle of the species. Big span of feature change and short cycle = faster evolution. Also need big populations to prevent extinction. Also the speed of environmental change is often a factor.
@gespilk That's why in the video they explain that you see varying speeds of evolution throughout the fossil record. Think of it like a highway. Where the highway is straight and there are no obstacles (ideal circumstances) you drive faster. When the circumstances are less ideal, you are slower.
A "kilometer" measurement doesn't become invalid just because you can drive faster or slower. A darwin is the same thing.
A = Feature or characteristic or aspect of organism at time t1.
B = Feature or characteristic or aspect of organism at time t0.
t1>t0>=0
t1-t0=1000000 years.
How do you define A and B? They could mean many,many things. Every characteristic, feature, aspect does change in its own way. It could be independent change or interdependent change. First of all, what is the definition of aspect or feature or characteristic as used in the unit of Darwin?
I'm not a biologist so it's not like I can give you specifics. I agree that they can mean many many things, at least in the way worded in this video. It is however, not intended to be an in depth explanation of how to calculate what a darwin is, just a quick overview of what a darwin is, and the rates seen in the fossil record.
I'm not sure if it would involve counting protein modifications and DNA, since evolution was being measured before all that was discovered.
I just found a more precise answer that might make more sense to you since you seem to be keen on mathematics.
Google "Evolution - Rates of evolution"
The second link should be a link from blackwell publishing and has a mathematic formula developped while studying horse teeth from the fossil record from the looks of it.
I'd link you myself but youtube doesn't like links. Worst case, if you can't find it, PM me and i'll link you.
I'll never understand why a model that includes both possibilities is so unthinkable....too many zealots on both sides I guess.
Hey just a thought...perhaps there is a god and evolution is merely a method he or she chose to use for life as we know it to grow..the fact that we can understand it doesn't change or identify its source.
In the end, science may eventually answer all the whats, hows, whens, and wheres....personally I hope it does......but it will never answer the whys. think about it.
"Why" is the causality question. Science does that well. It already asks the biggest question of all "Why there is something instead of nothing?" and there are some theories floating around that aim to answer it.
Causality is to me synonymous with how,not why. here's a bad analolgy - Finding the process by which the universe came into being is like finding the recipe for a meal on the table (say meatloaf for example). You can understand how each ingredient came into being and how they interacted to make the meal....you can even accept that the purpose of it all was to complete the meatloaf. "WHY" asks the question of how come its meatlof and not some other meal? a circular trap w/no answer.
Evidence that something happened in a specific way is evidence that it did not happen some other way. All of the evidence points to a natural process, while there is as much evidence for ID as there is for faeries flying out of my ass this moment.
Why even SUGGEST Intelligent Design? Why not suggest ass faeries?
Why suggest intelligent design? Because intelligence is the one known process that can achieve what would be a fantasy of improbability for a natural process to achieve. I guess you're into fantasy though, with your nature faeries flying out your behind.
The main question is: Why won't you infer intelligence? You actually would if it were anything else apart from origins. But since ID in origins smacks too much of a God, I guess you need to strongly react against such ideas.
@tubewatch59 Why must someone infer intelligence. We certainly could, one can suppose that some Kardashev 2nd or 3rd level polity engineered our star system or perhaps everything within say 4 light years to permit good long term habitable conditions , on an engineered planet, that we inhabit, but we simply have absolutely no evidence to suggest such a polity, nor do we - based on our increasing scientific knowledge need to invoke some poor god of the gaps analog.
Speaking of star systems, the fine tuning of physical constants rather strongly suggests (independantly of biology) that our whole universe was designed to make life possible at all. You say there isn't any such evidence, but I just gave you some. Now to argue that such isn't evidence, one then needs to argue that there is a whole landscape of other universes with pretty much random settings of physical constants such that in most of them, life cannot occur...
This argument (The Landscape - or - Multiverse) tries to explain that our universe is here by chance via vastly expanding the probabilistic resources. In one sense though, it still fails, because biology alone shows us (though many continue to believe in and write books talking up abiogenesis such as David Deamer) that even in a universe such as ours which is fine tuned to be hospitable to life, life still cannot form naturally because even here, it's still too improbable...
Now someone like Deamer (and many others) simply assert that it can, but we will see in about 10 to 20 years that their approaches (RNA world, or RNA world with pre-cellular vesciles, etc.) do not work either. And trhen other approaches will be suggested.
After 500 years of that, will ID still be denied by the majority? I doubt it. I'd say that within 30 to 50 years, the hardcore naturalists will die out, being replaced by those more willing to tolerate the odd ID inference.
Because until natural laws can explain how functional information can be selected from nonfunctional information in cases where natural selection is known to be inoperative for guiding evolution, then any explanation invoking natural laws, is depending on pure chance in situations known to be prohibitively improbable. ie. It's like trying to look for a tiny needle in a large haystack given 2 seconds. It ain't gonna happen.
Why did I say in "cases where natural selectiuon is known to be inoperative in guiding evolution"?
Because natural selection can only preserve what is ALREADY functional. That means that the solutions to biological problems aren't evolved BY natural selection. They are evolved by RANDOM MUTATIONS! Natural selection merely recognizes that if something ALREADY WORKS BETTER THAN SOMETHING ELSE, then it will tend to favour that better vriant in the population...
But I'd like you think think hard about that. Natural slection did not evolve that new and better variant. Random mutations did. And did they evolve better variants out of nonfunctioning precursors? Sometimes, but almost never. (That can only happen in very simple, rather non-specific cases of new function). But otherwise, in cases where better vriants arise, they arise out of random mutations to ALREADY EXISTING FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS. So they ARRIVED by chance.
The mother of all problems for abiogenesis AND for evolution - is the ARRIVAL OF THE FITTEST. Natural selection doesn't guide evolution towards the arrival of fitter systems from existing systems. Random mutations don't guide evolution either. They either serve up fitter systems - or they don't serve up fitter systems. The problem is that we now realize that random mutations are extremely limited in their capabilities to evolve new and fitter systems...
But isn't there proof that they do? Even in the lab? Sure, but as I said, it only happens for simple systems. And also in many lab experiements, they "cheat" nature by using intellignetly designed selection techniques to do what nature never could. For example they do so by purposefully looking for even the vaguest hints of a specific type of function (with fitness differentials completely invisible to natural selection) and amplify those, sometimes finding their solutions...
And even then, they're not ending up with more than fairly basic functions.
Since this level of selective amplification process is unknown in nature, one must then ask, how can random mutations manage to find the new functions (that are not merely trivial variations on already existing functions) that biology has "found" (if you insist they weren't designed) in the light of there being not enough probabilistic resources in nature?
It is often claimed that even if we don't know exactly how nature could perform some seemingly impossible task(or seemingly easy - as in the case of Deamer's book - or Potholer54's "abiogenesis made easy"! video) then that doesn't really matter, because in time we will discover how it is that it does.
Hmm, well sure, but until it is shown to be true, such an approach is opinion. What about before it is that such discoveries are made? Must we deny ID, and have faith in nature?
Denying ID because it "isn't natural" when there is no good explanatory case to be set forward (other than wishful speculations with little basis in fact) sounds a lot like you're telling me that ID isn't science because ID isn't natural, and that to be scientific something has to be natural. But intelligence is natural (we have it) so it comes down to processes involving some intelligence, and those without intelligence.
Does "supernatural" mean something involving design?
See, intelligent design inferences cannot tell you if something originated from God, humans, aliens, or purple people eaters. What they do discriminate fairly well is whether something originated via mindless natural processes, or instead, natural processes with the addition of some kind of planning. By the way, such planning can be built into an automated (and mindless) system that is a level removed from the intelligent source that created it. This is a form of technology.
@tubewatch59 I would even go so far as to say, it's not impossible to suggest that some starfaring ancient civilization didn't alter our DNA, or initiate the FoxP2 mutation in hominids, or something. But at our present technological understanding, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest anything other than perfectly natural - non-directed processes are at hand here.
The problem for naural cases, is that if natural causes created biology, they would have to have successfully found repeatedly, incredibly rare solutions to problems. These solutions are known to be so rare that we have no idea how nature could have found them. It's as if nature managed to find specifically marked atoms in our galaxy from a random search. If this happenned over and over again, based on what we know at the moment, a natural cause wouldn't be attributed...
But it is attributed anyway. Why is this? It seems to be a philosophical tendency to want to avoid inferring to a solution (intelligent design) that we know can fairly easily do the job, instead we pursue an unknown examples of a solution (natural causes) that is not known to be able to do such jobs.
It seems weird at first, but makes sense on realizing that most in the scientific establishment are deliberately choosing to ignore even a tentative design inference. But why?
But you don't seem to be like that. As you said, you are not totally against inferring at least some kinds of design, if you thought you saw some reasonable evidence for it. I take my hat off to you for that.
@tubewatch59 Don't get me wrong, the notion of a polity that can engineer an entire star system over billions of years, is a pretty incredible claim, an entity performing miracles, showing up and setting up office hours in downtown Jerusalem (or wherever) might "convince" billions, "on faith" with a large sign saying "God, Inquire within - miracles from 10-3",but that still doesn't do it. Incredible claims require incredible evidence, and to date, we have ABSOLUTELY none.
Biology itself is the incredible evidence in support of the incredible claim. We're finding out more and more about how incredible biology is. What you choose to believe exactly, concerning the designer is up to you, but the incredible evidence that is biology, points towards there being one.
@tubewatch59 That something is incredible is not evidence of anything. Evidence is something I can show, that I can repeat. Unfortunately for of those who would want to promote a deistic view of how the universe came to be, are in serious trouble, physics explains everything we can see in the observable universe, to a pretty high degree. Similarly evolution sufficiently describes the process of change in organisms that we observe in our environment.
Substitute irreducibly complex, and specified complexity. Life is incredible because such phenomena are pervasive within it, and defy a naturalistic explanation. Of course, the naturalists insist that there are naturalistic explanations, but the only ones they manage to come up with are for the cases that are of trivial complexity - ie. the proven evolution of a so called "complex system" comprised of all of 2 parts, and requiring just 2 or 3 changes at most to originate.
Acutally that a system is incredible is not evidence of anything. Physics sufficiently describes the observable universe. Evolution sufficiently describes the entire biome we have observed. Chemistry sufficiently describes all of the chemical reactions we have thus observed. If you found some large interstellar scale megastructures - we would have good evidence for some external polity of extreme power, but that again is not evidence of a God. Besides - which god would be right?
So why infer design? (Even if only tentatively until some natural explanation is discovered?)
Because intelligences are the only known source of sophisticated automated and irreducibly complex functional systems that have been observed. Inferences to natural origins are philsophical in basis now, not observationally based. God also is not observed (by most people). ID science cannot tell you about God. That's for religion. ID can point out likely cases of design.
@tubewatch59 I am not aware of any irreducibly complex systems...and neither are you. Irreducible complexity has never been demonstrated and more properly is demonstrably false - it was demonstrated as positively false more than 20 years before Dr. Behe proposed his conjecture by Dr. John Conway of Oxford/Princeton. At best Behe's work is intellectually lazy research, more probably and worse for all concerned, it's deliberately fraudulent,a cursory review of the facts leans towards the latter.
Yet an irreducible system requiring only 2 or 3 parts, that can also form with merely a few changes (such as "Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation - Science Vol. 312 no. 5770 pp. 97-101) is an example of an irreducibly simple system (IS) not an irreducibly complex system (IC).
It's the complexity as well as the irreducibility in IC systems that makes them infeasible for Darwinian evolution. If we just have an IS system, it's more likely to evolve.
Why so? Because irreducibility of function, causes the required evolutionary pathway to be indirect, not direct. In a direct Darwinian pathway, the function that natural selection is refining ALREADY EXISTS and may be able to track the changing environmental conditions (co-evolution) provided that random mutations can supply such changes as may be able to cause a definite fitness change for the better. This can then be favoured by natural selection in the species...
However for a functionally irreducible system (this applies to both (IS) and (IC) systems) there is at the start, either no existing function that natural selection can select for or against the changes that arise, or else the functions that the components of the "yet to be formed" irreducibly functional systems that do exist already have, are different functions from what will be the eventual function that emerges when the irreducibly complex system has managed to evolve...
In such cases where the initial functions must change, and the final function is yet to emerge, the direct Darwinian process of natural selection (either favouring or deprecating the random changes that arise depending on the fitness changes in existing functions) is not relevant anymore to the evolution of the yet to be emerged irreducible function. It is only of relevance to the already existing functions - in the direct Darwinian sense...
This is a very important point, because it means that even though the direct Darwinian evolution that is continuously taking place on the already existing functions of the componenets in the "as yet to be evolved" irreducible system, are not random (unless their evolution is ineffective / inefficient), nevertheless, the evolution that is of relevance to achieving the emergence of the eventual "irreducible system function" is completely random with respect to such an outcome...
You'll have a different way of stating the same thing. You'll be realizing that evolution isn't trying to get to any kind of a solution, it just happens. There is no endpoint goal. Correct!
However, the wrong assumption is usually then substituted. It is assumed that even though evolution doesn't look for solutions, it is assumed that it manaes to find those solutions, regardless.
"Regardless" being key. With NO REGARD to the situation, we then ASSUME evolution worked.
This is pretty bald question begging. The catch is that just sometimes, in simple enough cases, evolution just might manage to work even when it is evolving some irreducible function.
It works in low specificity (IS) cases, since there are few components involved. When the function is also nonspecific (tolerating many changes to the components), then the number of functionally relevant combinations isn't prohibitively large. Thus an IS may "emerge" in the available time.
The point is, such indirect Darwinian examples of the evolution of simple irreducible systems, evolved via random emergence. It's completely unguided, until it has already emerged, and then provided the new function (some new function arising out of some combination of it's components) is useful, ONLY THEN is it's continued evolution, nonrandom (more or less).
But for simple enough systems, evolution may well have the probabilistic resources to find such novel functions...
On the other hand, what about Behe's example? The flagellum is not some two or three part combination with a wide tolerance to variations, is it. You simply can't compare simple two part examples, with 40 part systems with highly specific functionality. In this case (the flagellum) we even have muliple irreducibly complex systems. The 10 part transporter, which also tightly integrated into the highly specific motor protein assembly, and the rest of what makes up the flagellum.
You were talking about being deliberately fraudulent? It's fraudulent to equivocate between a simple 2 or 3 part system, and draw the same origins conclusions with systems comprising 40 parts (bacterial flagella) or hundreds of parts (the eukaryotic flagellua).
Behe wasn't being lazy! Lazy science, is to avoid rocking the boat, and to go with the flow. Behe started out as a convinced evolutionist. He's pointed out an interesting and unresolved problem of origins in biology.
@tubewatch59 You can stop harping on it, I'm not attacking Dr. Behe's conjecture is manifestly false, it is not a scientific argument. That we do not currently understand the morphological specifics is not my concern. Dr. Behe's idea fails at a far more simple mile-post. Basic testability. It is not testable - nice idea - totally unprovable.
Furthermore, Dr. Conway's emergent complexity "develops" highly complex self-replicating "organisms" , even variations of a complete Turing machine.
That's a bit like saying that the idea that one person could not win 40 lotteries in a row, is unproveable, and thus unscientific. (Provided the person isn't somehow "cheating" of course).
Not in any way is that idea unscientfic.
If we found a case where a person won 2 lotteries in a row, would that disprove the notion that someone couldn't win 50 lotteries? Someone COULD win 50 lotteries, but not often enough to be practically observeable.
@tubewatch59 That someone wins the lottery repeatedly is an indication of cheating. But you are confused, there is no analogy here, in that evolution is not random, creatures do not "Random" into a pair of wings, or a beak, phylogenic development is usually very gradual, and dramatic only when the result of bottle-necking / population collapse, again common natural phenomenon.
Behe's IC is basically saying that since we do have IC systems of 40 and hundreds of parts (and that's just at the subcellular level) - Behe is raising the red flag - claiming that something is cheating here! Just the same as we'd all infer that a person who won 40 lotteries in a row was cheating (and expect some pretty strong evidence to be able to disprove that notion) so also, Behe is calling "design" which is "cheating" in the lottery analogy. Nothing unscientific about it.
To be TRUE, at all - in any way - Dr. Behe's conjecture would have to prove that emergence / evolution COULDN'T produce any such structure. High-complexity structures should not (if his theory was true) be able to form in any system - naturally. That's clearly observable. So Dr. Behe is the guy on the hook here. I like remembering that when he posed his theory it was so counter-scientific, his peers, worked to have him fired and there is still talk of removing his professional credentials.
What Behe's idea would have to demonstrate, is what I was explaining earlier.
IC predicts that irreducible (but simple) systems, will be able to emerge from time to time. It predicts that as the number of components in the irreducible system increases, the occurence of such spontaneous origins of such systems will also decrease, such that they emerge exponentially less often.
I tried to look up Dr, Conway's work. Couldn't find much about it. Can you elaborate?
@tubewatch59 As it happens - yes Dr. Behe was deliberately fraudulent or at the very least intentionally sloppy with his basic research and fundamental proposal - which is - by it's very nature - unscientific. I can perform a test - i.e.; evolve a change in an organism, and force a bacterium to evolve a particular way under a particular circumstance in a particular environment. I cannot similarly test "god" to come down from on high and test his processes and methods of genetic manipulation.
@tubewatch59 But the best part is that graduate students - with a grudge - have already done a great deal of fundamental research in protienomics , epigenomics and protien synthesis to refute / resolve the questions surrounding Dr. Behe's "evidence". This happened before when the "missing" fossil gaps were "proof" we did not evolve from monkeys. 30 years later , and with hyper-accurate genetic analysis developed in part to disprove pseudo-science shows clearly,we are just one variant of primate.
Like I said, these "refutations of IC" never manage to come through with anything close to refuting IC. They at best come up with examples of (in most cases - hypothesized, not actual) evolution of IS systems. IC systems are claimed to have evolved, but the only supporting evidence is usually fairly vague homologies which show rather little. Even Lenski's experiement, didn't show the evolution of a system, but the activation of an already existing system from a trivial change.
Fossil gaps are still prime evidence of the lack of macroevolution. How are they not? Why can we so easily classify most fossils? Why is there so much stasis? It's because the fossil evidence demonstrates that essential forms are fixed, but they're subject to trivial changes, such as size, shape and some other features. They demonstrate what our modern experiments also show, that the form of an organism is plastic in superficial ways, but doggedly fixed in it's essentials.
@tubewatch59 the NIH has cataloged over 3000 examples of speciation / macro-evolution - for your review. Fossil-gaps were a salient argument - 50 years ago, genetics however buried that argument, in 1957.
@tubewatch59 So while I appreciate the opportunity to put forth in this forum, however it's very much over. From an unrelated branch of science - Mathematics, comes the opposition KILLER that evolution isn't just - real - and observable - and testable - it's become mathematically provable.
So the DEBATE - is OVER - & creationism / intelligent design - is a bankrupt idea told like fairy tales to evangelicals or the willfully ignorant to make some ideological points, but it's not valid.
While it is fairly easy to make pronouncements about how mathematics proves evolution, and shows that the debate is over, were we to actually line up this evidence and examine it in some detail, it wouldn't even be close to supporting what you're saying it does. The debate isn't over until it's over. Unresolved problems such as IC don't go away. So far, arguments "fatal to ID", usually in fact support the things IDists are saying on second glance. And so the debate goes on...
@tubewatch59 But the debate IS over - consult Melanie Mitchel - U/Michigan/Santa Fe Institute , John Conway, Princeton University, you can even "play" the mathematical model, it's called "the game of life", Dr. Conway knew EXACTLY what he had discovered - in 1970. Have fun, I hope you enjoy the game, but your pretensions to science were disproven long before they were ever proposed. Had Dr. Behe done research (or cared to), he would have discovered Dr. Conway, or any of a number of others work.
I know that "the lesson is over" and you don't wish to discuss this anymore, but seriously, the game of life??? What on earth about that, makes you think that the major objections to evolution have been dealt with in this kind of a simulation?
@tubewatch59 A. There are no major objections to evolutionary systems, they are factual and incredibly well founded with scientifically valid means. What the GOL is about is specifically destroying the idea that specified complexity cannot arise spontaneously. With a trivial set of rules, Conway's game demonstrates orders of complexity and self-organization and mechanistic process that stem from a simple chaotic set of conditions MATHEMATICALLY disproving intelligent designs' central thesis.
GOL shows us nothing new. Systems can arise commensurate with their causes. Given a system with simple rules, one expects (and gets) simple outcomes. However in the GOL one my see some level of complexity not apparent from the simple rules, because much of the complexity is hidden in various layers. For example, want something to be copied in a game like this? Then a "simple rule" dictates that the copy shall take place...
For example, in something like GOL, one can state an apparently very "simple rule" dictating when or when not replication takes place. Or it may have a simple rule stating that the digital organisms can combine sexually according to a combination of either parents traits etc. But are such rules (that can be stated in a sentence) really simple? Not at all. Look at all of the underlying code for the program. Look at all of the underlying code to write the OS.
Look at all of the underlying functional complexity in the electrical circuit forming the computer on which the OS runs on which the compiler runs on which perpares the GOL code for execution!
Now consider the functional complexity inherent in the many companies and engineers plans that built the computer and the operating systems. Look at all the knowledge that went into achieving such technology over many many many years?
@tubewatch59 It wasn't even designed to refute intelligent design , but give an example of how seemingly "impossibly" complex machines - up to and INCLUDING a full Turing machine, can arise from a system with very simple rules. Similar "games" such as Unnatural Selection, Alife, Avian and others, use evolutionary principles to evolve a whole variety of behaviors and processes - entirely with simple genetic crossover algorithms - again - modeled on simple Darwinian evolution, all of it provable.
"but (the GOL) give(s) an example of how seemingly "impossibly" complex machines - up to and INCLUDING a full Turing machine, can arise from a system with very simple rules."
No it doesn't. The GOL rules take advantage of some of that vast built-in functionality. The simple rules you refer to are extremely high level summary of many layers of detailed functionality which must first exist before GOL can.
There's no basis for thinking we're seeing genuine "emergence" here!
But if one were to genuinely model a Darwinian algorithm such that it's careful not to incorporate features that need to first get there via Darwinian evolution, not by the dictates of "simple rules" that are in reality extraordinarily sophisticated compartments for hidden complexity - THEN you will see just how limited evolutionry algorithms are when they are simulated the way the must occur in nature. When fudging of the system cannot take place. There's no free lunch in GA's.
You claim that certain similarities and differences, along with the IDEA of macroevolution, demonstrate beyond all shadow of a doubt that evolution took place. Yet we look at the same evidence and use it to show beyond all shadow of our doubts, that some designer (which designr you pick is your affair, but I believe it's the God of the Bible) must have created all these examples of life.
We both see the SAME evidence through DIFFERENT worldviews.
@tubewatch59 Here ends the lesson. This is not about your god, you may choose to believe whatever you want. But if I'm in the position to hire a scientist, I need a real one & have every reason to economically exclude you. Follow the lead of the Amish - leave the worldly concerns apart, go be devout, but your "belief" is traitorous - at best, impeding the national economic / scientific / industrial discussion adding no value and embarrassing well intentioned conscientiously religious believers.
Your objections to us, are for the most part against things that cannot be tested. Denying that God exists because He cannot be tested in the laboratory, is merely the pointing out of a limitation of science. It doesn't address the truth of the matter. On the other hand, most of our objections against naturalistic origins, are based on testable objections relating to the physical world, ie. what natural laws can or cannot achieve.
While on the surface that might appear to reinforce the notion that naturalism is falsifiable, and that ID is not, think again. To falsify ID, one doesn't need to demonstrate the existence of a designer. One merely needs to show (without reference to the designer) that such a designer is not neccessary.
Showing the sufficiency of natural laws to be able to originate life, will falsify ID as such. But the naturalistic enterprise has consistenly failed to be able to do so.
@tubewatch59 I'm GLAD you mentioned abiogenisis - thank you - here again lies the very dead corpse of creationism. Current research has shown AT LEAST two and possibly 3 entirely natural methods of transitioning from inorganic chemosynthesis of macroprotiens of available compounds found both on ancient Earth, in space, & on earth presently that allow for & ultimately can produce self-replicating RNA structures.
Research available at Rensselaer Poly, and Texas A&M - for your review.
Well... you're telling me that there are not just one, but quite possibly many naturalistic possibilities that may explain the emergence of life from non-life. It's also known as "an embarrassment of riches". It's a term often used to put the rosiest glow on an embarassing situation where just about any lead is followed up, as none of the former leads have yielded anything worthwhile.
But the solution is "just around the corner..." Right?
@tubewatch59 I don't think you understand, I wasn't describing future experiments. These were completed experiments - new human knowledge. These were 3 separate sets of experiments, conducted over the last several years. They are testable - facts. The three methods were discovered as variations on the basic theme, in the process of confirmation the original experiment.
Humans, know of at least 2 confirmed, & probably the 3rd method is still being researched.
Anything in the realm of abiogenesis research that we creationists would have to take as a serious challenge to our views on the subject, hasn't yet happenned. Nothing that's been uncovered so far has come even close to finding a naturalistic explanation as to how life first formed. You're falling for the "embarrasment of riches" hype. What I have heard of is two experiments of note...
The first had to do with the engineering of two "self replicating" RNA ribozymes. Two were made and they interacted with each other to replicate each other. But - what was being replicated were the two subunits of the ribozymes. Each of these subunits was itself a long complex chain, specifically designed to do this task of zipping each other up. It's great chemistry! But it's not relevant to what could have taken place naturally on a prebiotic earth. It's an example of ID.
The other was an experiment that successfully manage to produce RNA monomers in a "somewhat" natural environment. This one reminds me a little of the Urey Miller experiment which managed to produce some amino acids. After that experiment, most sciency types went nuts in proclaiming that the origin of life had been solved. But of course, it hadn't even come close. Similrly, the fact that some RNA monomers can form in nature, isn't really any more relevant to OOL either...
It's not hard to see why thats the case. All of these experiments fail to deal with the fundamental question involved - where did the functional information to setup biotic chemistry come from?
In the first experiment, that functional information is present (to a limited extent) but of course, we know it came from the many man years of effort that went into designing those ribozymes. So they've proven that intelligent design does work, but that isn't really the point, right?
In the 2nd experiment, where the RNA monomers were kinda-sorta shown to be able to form naturally, the elephant in the room is that RNA monomers, minus the information to form the functional sequences to enable self replication (and that means replication from RNA monomers, not replication from a few complex designed subunits) is also irrelevant to abiogenesis.
As someone said, that's a bit like trying to explain Bach's music, in terms of the natual availability of ink! :-)
These experiments are great! A good thing for chemistry, and they'll have spin off uses in industry and nano-engineering, etc. I'm just saying that so far as abiogenesis is concerned, they're baby steps that are a long way from showing anything much in terms of what can be expected to have occurred under natual prebiotic conditions. One day, it's likely that chemical "life" will even be engineered from scratch, but that too will be another example of ID. Not abiogenesis.
@tubewatch59 The point is that it's no longer "mystical" it's known. We might never know for certain the particulars of the transition from lifelessness to life on Earth. But we now know it does not necessitate outside intervention, and that's the point. Furthermore, it implies that pretty much anywhere there are analogous environmental condition, life can arise.
Why use the word "mystical". While I consider God to be an absolutely mysterious entity, the idea God created life, while grand and awe inspiring, isn't exactly what I'd call mystical. It's more along the lines of engineering. Creationists and IDists wouldn't say that very simple life (ie. pre-bioticstyle replication chemistry) was totally beyond human engineering. Though engineering life much beyond that, is well beyond our capabilities, at least for a very long time to come.
So while life from nonlife can certainly be engineered and isn't mystical in that sense, the evidence shows that life probably couldn't have come about without any deliberate engineering = ID. You're wrong in saying that we now know it does not require outside intervention. That is complete hype that is unsupported by the evidence. It's what naturalists need to be true, and what they believe is true. It's logic. IF naturalism is true, then life must have come about naturally.
@tubewatch59 So now that we're done here - again. Have a nice day. I suggest a book .... may I suggest "On Origin of Species" or perhaps Father Gregor Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization", and may I add that no less than the Catholic Church itself - sponsored Mendel's research & work or more relevantly "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems" - John Holland.
But with majority support in the scientific community, support in the media and univercities, all that needs to be done (though it's getting that much more difficult over time as the evidence of the sophistication of nature keeps on mounting) is to claim that solutions to these unsolved problems of naturalism are not only certain, but are "just around the corner" as I keep on hearing with regards to abiogenesis, for instance. (Though that is a different issue to macroevolution.)
As the numbers of parts increase - and they're all required to form the system function - then the likelihood that evolution will be able to hit upon those combinations of possible arrangements that all happen to integrate into an irreducibly complex function, drop exponentially compared to cases with just a few parts.
One can of course deny design, but if one does, they have (without realizing it) had to shovel lot's of "probability magic" under the carpet. It's now a belief.
@tubewatch59 It might be nice to suggest that this is an argument coming from biological circles - however it ISN'T. This isn't about evolution - per se, it's about complex systems analysis - and more specifically dynamic systems analysis. This is a well established branch of mathematics, developed in the 1960's and 1970's.
Not only does it support the notion that evolution can happen. It is the primary area of mathematics responsible for what is commonly known as emergence.
Given the rates of travel on earth via snails, ants, human walking, running and road transport, we judge that the transportation speeds observed, demonstrate that there is more than enough time to reach the moon. Even a small ant could reach the moon in about 2500 years & humans could walk there much faster.
But - we can't get to the moon by walking! We require spacrcraft. Measured land transport speeds aren't applicable to such journeys.
If evolving a new trait cobbled together from bits or assemblies of other existing traits, then evolution will decrease in permitted rate to a glacially slow crawl.
In other words, evolution rates aren't linear.
It depends on what has to be evolved. Simple changes can evolve rapidly. Complex systems may not be able to evolve at all. Or else - at rates so slow, that the time available in the universe becomes the limiting factor long before such systems could be expected to emerge.
It depends on the kinds of changes taking place. If a given functional system (or character / trait) already exists, it will in most cases be possible to introduce many trivial variations, most of which will not be harmful to the organism. So the rate of evolution (over a short distance of character configuration space) will be fairly high.
But if evolving a related but somewhat different character, then the permitted rate will slow down considerably due to Natural selection conservation.
It's not really as simple as that though. The rate of evolution is set by the availablitity of neutral or beneficial intermediates when mutations take place.
eg. If for a particular character, many of the mutation caused changes result in no significant loss of existing beneficial function, then selection will permit the evolution to occur at a high rate.
But small observed changes involving large rate Darwin measures, cannot be simply extrapolated to more distant character changes...
Religion is just like santa claus, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. It is stories and fantasy. Wake up were adults now. Just because you don't believe in god doesn't mean your evil, it just means your brave enough to live your life without a "safety net". There is no heaven. All that money you donate to the church is gone now, same with the money I spent on beer, drugs, and sex, only I had a better time rofl.....
A belief such as yours (neo enlightenment worldview) could be argued to be just like santa claus as well. If science could explain everything via natural causes, then you may have a point. But since it cannot do so, then what you're telling us is that you don't believe anything beyond nature is required. But it's not different to a belief in santa, because both beliefs can't be falsified. It's a framework through which you choose to view the world. But it's not really science.
Even though naturalism (your enlightenment worldview / philosophy) can't be falsified, if science really could explain everything by invoking natural laws, then you wouldn't need to bother falsifying the idea, since it would have already moved from the realm of an idea to being an observed fact. Just like the idea of the existence of God isn't science either (because how can that be falsified?). But if we ever meet God, then the need to falsify His existence becomes irrelevant.
We humans started out with just one pair, Adam and Eve, and today we are about six billions of us on this planet. It must have been a very long time for all this "evolution" don't you think?
Darwins? Let's do some math on that. They say humans and chimps diverged about 6 million years ago. At 20 years per generation that's only a measly 300,000 generations from something less than a chimp to human beings. Yeah right.
Except our ancestors probably reproduced around the age of ten like a modern chimp, meaning it's more like ~400,000 generations ago. 300,000 and 400,000 are massive numbers either way.
Also, change happens rather quickly in respect to many characteristics; one only need look at the racial spectrum of humans to realise that.
@NormanAngle Even at 400,000 generations it's not realistic. This is MASSIVE amount of changes in only that few generations. Compare that to the population size and reproduction cycles of bacteria. If random mutation and natural selection can move that fast, in that few of organisms, then we should see new forms of bacteria appear every week and old bacteria constantly going extinct. And the racial spectrum? All those traits already exist in the human genome. No mutations needed, just selection.
@thewordofgod2010 New bacteria show up all the time. That's why every year there's a new flu shot, the old flu evelved and became immune to the last shot.
@GnarlyNewEngland The flu is a virus not a bacteria, huge difference. And the only thing that changes is the strain of the same virus, it's not a new virus. Just like when you gain an immunity you are not a new organism. However, bacteria can change very slightly over time. But this is because there are literally trillions and trillions of bacteria reproducing around the world all the time. The number of primates that have lived through all time is a tiny fraction of a single day for bacteria.
@thewordofgod2010 Shoot, that is seriously my bad. I wasn't thinking. I'm very sorry about my false information. I'm also sorry that I can't really form a better argument right now, and perhaps you could ask a biologist to explain it better. I agree with evolution because almost the entire scientific community does, and I believe they know what they're talking about.
@GnarlyNewEngland I know a lot about biology, I've studied this subject extensively. I've debated Ph.Ds on this subject and have been shocked at their inability to counter even my most basic arguments. Don't put your faith in biologists, put your faith in God. You didn't evolve from pond scum millions of years ago. Seriously.
@thewordofgod2010 Nah..i wont put my faith in god. When i pray he never seems to be home. Ive come to 3 conclusions.
1.There is no god. (Science damn you)
2.God is indifferent to the human struggle. (In which case the Deist's got it right)
3.God does indeed care about us, and wants to help us but for whatever unexplained reason he/she/it can't intervene. If thats so than why call him God, our maker/creator yes, but not God.
So in short i trust nobody, ANYTHING is possible for our genesis.
@ArmanCortez1 The error in your thinking is that you believe God is a magic Genie that grants three wishes or something. God does not jump at our command. However, God does keep His promises, in his own time frame. For example he promised Abraham a son from his wife Sarah, but didn't deliver on the promise until Abraham and Sarah were very old. They gave up on God and Abraham had a son with his wife's maid attempting to "help God." We do the same thing, doubt God and try to fill in the blanks.
@thewordofgod2010 And your proof about the Abraham Sarah story is where? Oh yeah the bible,because we all know the bible is 100% true(sarcasm). By the way how do you know Yahweh/Jesus is the TRUE god(don't say the bible, its circular logic) maybe not one but many gods made us. Maybe it is named the great Ugimachu and he thinks this false Yahweh the humans have come up with is cute,or maybe a FUTURE religion will nail it. The possibilities are numerous though none are 100% provable at this point.
@thewordofgod2010 You should watch a video on youtube called "Betting on Infinity". NO, im not saying you should become atheist are something(i may or may not be atheist depending on your personal definition of atheism and religion) but i consider myself agnostic, which really I see as the best stance on god or gods. Please don't send me no bible verses( i have one and read it often thank you very much). But at least see where IM coming from.
@ArmanCortez1 You read your bible often? That's good. Did you know that Jonah is a prophecy of Jesus Christ? Jonah sacrifices himself to save his shipmates from the wrath of God and is in the belly of a fish for three days and nights and is alive again. Also, Abraham and Isaac is a similar prophecy, same for Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua etc. Jesus said ALL the scripture testify of him! They do. The very stories themselves are prophecies of Jesus Christ. Read your bible again with that in mind.
@thewordofgod2010 By saying "The very stories themselves are prophecies of Jesus Christ" your affirming my believe that you are using CIRCULAR REASONING. The Bible is true because God in the Bible says so, and God and Jesus are real because the Bible says they are. Give me an OUTSIDE VERIFIABLE SOURCE to prove the Bible. None of the stories in the Bible have been proven by anything else BUT the Bible itself. Give me a real argument not a logical fallacy.
@ArmanCortez1 It would be circular reasoning if the bible was one book. The fact is the bible is a library of book bound together AFTER-THE-FACT. The bible is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 different authors over THOUSANDS of years. So unless you are using only one book in the collection to verify itself it's not circular at all.
@thewordofgod2010 Just because its 66 books doesn't mean squat. And you said it yourself, they were written AFTER THE FACT. Which means the stuff that is written about Jesus (and company) means that it was NOT first hand account, which is even worse for trying to verify if something is true or not. I already knew they were many books in one, but that really doesn't mean nothing to me, because unlike what many Christians say, they do INDEED contradict each other.
@ArmanCortez1 Every event in history is written after-the-fact. So what's your point on that? I was merely pointing out the books were collected into a single volume after-the-fact. Therefore, we logically know there wasn't some conspiracy to create the bible and make all these stories point to Christ.
Try watching Lee Strobel "A Case For Christ." Lee is a former atheist. Here is a trailer: watch?v=jLt_85lMMaU
@breadcrumpsman id say more accurately that being able to explain an event by natural means DOESNT disprove the existance of god, it disproves the accuracy of religious doctrine.
This is interesting since Darwin never came up with mathematical concepts for HIS theory of evolution, just other theories that built off of his theory. Evolution vs Religion wont be the only thing forever, someone will discover something new, and then that concept will be thrown in the long scale debate.
If you look at the evolution of us humans over the past 4 million years... i wonder how dinosaurs would look like today if they weren't extinct 65 million years ago.
@Blacklemon67 When I was in "Nam tons and tons of junk was drooped into the South China Sea. If the enviro-wackos saw what I saw they would go banannas. I 'm talking,trucks,jeeps,tanks, etc. Depot junk.
@fluffydanny no the junk is swept around in the sea, it doesn't just sit there (well, large peices do like tires and boats) but the smaller peices get picked up by the current and into this large area of sea where all the currents collide. Search Great Pacific Garbage Patch for more :C
I am saying that Man has nothing to do with the carbon in the air. The Earth is a living plant and cures its self. anything else is a crock. Rain cleans the air,cold weather,etc.,etc.
@fluffydanny derp. I said the ocean currents + bacterial decomposers. Also if the trashmen weren't there the garbage you put out would eventually decay (after 20+ years if there's plastic and much much longer for metal)
Evolution is not something to be believed in. You do not BELIEVE IN gravity. Gravity is merely a fact of life, whether you believe in it or not. Disbelieve it all you want, and try to jump off a building. Reality will teach you the error of your ways.
Evolution does not require your belief, only your understanding. Like gravity, it's true whether you believe it or not.
It's not been demonsated. In the lab microevolution has been, but molecules to man evo. hasn't. Therefore it remains a belief at this time. Though it's possible that RM & NS is falsifiable, there will always be SOME kind of evolution (different to RM & NS) that could be proposed. It isn't possible to falsify all conceivable kinds of evolution. So the idea of naturalism (incorporating any proposed kinds of evolution) isn't falsifiable either. Thus it's a philosophy, not science.
@tubewatch59 You know what else has never been demonstrated in a lab? Childhood to adulthood. Nobody in history has ever put an infant in a laboratory and proven, conclusively, with evidence, that they can follow the progress of that individual's development from birth to adulthood.
Take a look at your baby pictures. Can you show me the significant changes between you then and you now? And can you explain to me how you changed so radically? Babies are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from adults, right?
The principle is exactly the same. You did not simply wake up one morning to realize that you had gone from a six month old infant to a six year old child, or to a twelve year old one, or to a twenty year old man (if you are that yet).
There was no great dramatic change, was there? No, there were small, incremental, barely noticed changes over time. If you tried to keep track day by day, you could only find tiny, almost inconsequential changes.
That's what fossils are, essentially; baby pictures, photos of what different species used to look like.
Incremental changes add up over time. Take the teacup poodle. Does it look like a wolf? Well we can prove it evolved from one.
Exactly what part of this process are you objecting to? What part of the human body do you not believe could have evolved? Every single organ we have has some precursor in the animal kingdom.
There is nothing so unique about humans that we couldnt have evolved.
Now as for the scientific consensus, I have a little surprise for you.
There are more historians who do deny the holocaust ever happened than there are biologists who reject evolution.
There IS NO CONTROVERSY. Evolution has MORE EVIDENCE behind it than Gravity, and is a better understood phenomenon. Change Over Time Equals Evolution. It's a very simple formula, which works, because it's true. Change over time is cumulative. it builds up, and becomes more and more significant the longer it works
The part of the process I'm referring to is (essentially) the concept as you layed it out that gradual incremental changes account for all thats needed in biology.
What you are stating (more or less) is the validity of the direct Darwinian pathway. I'd agree with you. But whereas in principle direct Darwinian pathways do work (and thus evolution IS seen to work in the laboratory), what evolution cannot do (or I should say, finds it very difficult to do) is use indirect pathways.
@tubewatch59 It seems here as though what you're really arguing about is simply the timescale itself, or possibly a misunderstanding with regards to organism scale.
You addressed the 'walking a marathon' argument by taking it to the moon, which is simply ridiculous, because your analogy artificially inserts an impassable obstacle which does not exist in nature.
In large, well developed multi-cellular organisms, fundamental systems tend not to change fundamentally once they have been developed.
However, that does not say that those functions could not have evolved in the first place. Prior to their development, the organism was simpler, and had other means of solving a particular problem.
Fundamental changes in form and function occur at smaller scales, with shorter generation gaps, where a few cells here or there can swiftly take on a novel function, or even develop into a completely new organ.
The larger an organism gets, the less feasible this becomes, but still not impossible.
As for your DDP and IDP argument, it is simply a red herring, I'm afraid. There is no real distinction, in evolutionary terms. There is no direct path toward anything. A change occurs, and if it's either neutral or beneficial, it gets passed on. This is dependent on the environment.
IDP and DDP are basically just another way of adding an impassable barrier through language, like micro and macro-evolution. Neither is a real evolutionary concept, they are differentiated only by time scale.
All organs, all systems, all functions are the result of changing or co-opting an existing function. Some, like Nylonase, may have occurred in the past, and resulted in the complete extinction of the organism which developed it, because at the time there was no nylon and therefor the enzyme was useless, and the negative effect it had on 'normal' enzyme production resulted in the organism being out-competed by healthier strains.
In a changed environment, however, Nylonase turned out to be good.
Fundamentally, your argument and mine differ because you place artificial limitations upon Evolution, for whatever reason.
Perhaps instead of notre dame, it would be more helpful for you to consider Mount Everest. Huge, tall, beautiful, and made up of accreted stone over many many hundreds of millions of years. It wasn't created as a mountain, perfect and fully formed. First it was bedrock, building up with the incremental addition of layer upon layer of particles, and then upturned violently.
Take, for example, the spleen, which is a relatively recently evolved organ. There are many, many animal organisms which lack a spleen and do just fine. The spleen is found only in vertebrates, and even then not in all of them. The organ is recent enough that there is actually a medical condition called Heterotaxy which can cause a person to be born WITHOUT ONE, or with several small 'proto-spleens'. Yet despite a slightly increased risk of infection, these people are born normally and survive.
The spleen is a perfect example of a complex organ which, while important, is not essential to life functions, and subject to mutation and co-option.
However, this kind of evolution is very rare, because usually when an organ becomes specialized, it remains specialized, because the body tends to conserve functioning systems.
The kind of radical changes you're talking about with IDP occurs mostly in single-celled organisms or very very small multicellular ones, which can change more rapidly.
To use your terminology, though, I suppose in the end, human evolution must fundamentally break down mostly into DDP. In the last five hundred million years, there have been no major changes in the vertebrate body that would constitute an organ system 'breaking' its function in favor of a new one.
There is no function, no feature in humans which does not have an analog somewhere else among vertebrates. Humans and pigs have essentially the same biology, once you get past the obvious differences.
some sweet info here
khijasmith 6 hours ago
Cool Video, Thanks for shared
directorygod 1 month ago
Good, now lets measure how fast all these animals die, and compare.
Death has no concern with how fit you are, apparently. Damn nature.
knowwaie 3 months ago
Ever seen a smurf? I haven't either, yet I have "FAITH" they exist, and some book I read said they were real.
suddenrushsarge 5 months ago
Comment removed
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 What are you talking about? The world doesn't appear intelligently designed at all. Designed things stick out like a sore thumb. Nature has the overwhelming appearance of being just that - natural. Evolution, geology, and cosmology are all defined by natural, self-guiding processes. There's nothing in them that stands out as a product of intelligence.
taicleis 5 months ago
Umm, this is the 21st century, what kind of retard still believes in creation?
IcarusTouma 6 months ago
I really do not get all the criticism about this video. It makes sense to me; his facts could all be wrong but the concept of relative rates of evolutionary is instructive. Please explain.
Rioarri 6 months ago
1:58 Considering the random nature of evolution,how many mice are needed to produce the first 100 elephants in 10000 years?
The unit of Darwin feels wrong because:
The rate of change depends on the range in which a feature varies within the same generation.It also depends on the reproductive cycle of the species. Big span of feature change and short cycle = faster evolution. Also need big populations to prevent extinction. Also the speed of environmental change is often a factor.
gespilk 6 months ago
@gespilk That's why in the video they explain that you see varying speeds of evolution throughout the fossil record. Think of it like a highway. Where the highway is straight and there are no obstacles (ideal circumstances) you drive faster. When the circumstances are less ideal, you are slower.
A "kilometer" measurement doesn't become invalid just because you can drive faster or slower. A darwin is the same thing.
TheBroncoTrip 6 months ago
@TheBroncoTrip
1 Darwin = A/B = 2.7
A = Feature or characteristic or aspect of organism at time t1.
B = Feature or characteristic or aspect of organism at time t0.
t1>t0>=0
t1-t0=1000000 years.
How do you define A and B? They could mean many,many things. Every characteristic, feature, aspect does change in its own way. It could be independent change or interdependent change. First of all, what is the definition of aspect or feature or characteristic as used in the unit of Darwin?
gespilk 6 months ago
I'm not a biologist so it's not like I can give you specifics. I agree that they can mean many many things, at least in the way worded in this video. It is however, not intended to be an in depth explanation of how to calculate what a darwin is, just a quick overview of what a darwin is, and the rates seen in the fossil record.
I'm not sure if it would involve counting protein modifications and DNA, since evolution was being measured before all that was discovered.
TheBroncoTrip 6 months ago
I just found a more precise answer that might make more sense to you since you seem to be keen on mathematics.
Google "Evolution - Rates of evolution"
The second link should be a link from blackwell publishing and has a mathematic formula developped while studying horse teeth from the fossil record from the looks of it.
I'd link you myself but youtube doesn't like links. Worst case, if you can't find it, PM me and i'll link you.
TheBroncoTrip 6 months ago
Comment removed
gespilk 6 months ago
I'll never understand why a model that includes both possibilities is so unthinkable....too many zealots on both sides I guess.
Hey just a thought...perhaps there is a god and evolution is merely a method he or she chose to use for life as we know it to grow..the fact that we can understand it doesn't change or identify its source.
In the end, science may eventually answer all the whats, hows, whens, and wheres....personally I hope it does......but it will never answer the whys. think about it.
dbf421 6 months ago
@dbf421
"Why" is the causality question. Science does that well. It already asks the biggest question of all "Why there is something instead of nothing?" and there are some theories floating around that aim to answer it.
gespilk 6 months ago
@gespilk
Causality is to me synonymous with how,not why. here's a bad analolgy - Finding the process by which the universe came into being is like finding the recipe for a meal on the table (say meatloaf for example). You can understand how each ingredient came into being and how they interacted to make the meal....you can even accept that the purpose of it all was to complete the meatloaf. "WHY" asks the question of how come its meatlof and not some other meal? a circular trap w/no answer.
dbf421 6 months ago
@tubewatch59
Evidence that something happened in a specific way is evidence that it did not happen some other way. All of the evidence points to a natural process, while there is as much evidence for ID as there is for faeries flying out of my ass this moment.
Why even SUGGEST Intelligent Design? Why not suggest ass faeries?
taicleis 7 months ago 6
@taicleis
Why suggest intelligent design? Because intelligence is the one known process that can achieve what would be a fantasy of improbability for a natural process to achieve. I guess you're into fantasy though, with your nature faeries flying out your behind.
The main question is: Why won't you infer intelligence? You actually would if it were anything else apart from origins. But since ID in origins smacks too much of a God, I guess you need to strongly react against such ideas.
tubewatch59 6 months ago
@tubewatch59 Why must someone infer intelligence. We certainly could, one can suppose that some Kardashev 2nd or 3rd level polity engineered our star system or perhaps everything within say 4 light years to permit good long term habitable conditions , on an engineered planet, that we inhabit, but we simply have absolutely no evidence to suggest such a polity, nor do we - based on our increasing scientific knowledge need to invoke some poor god of the gaps analog.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Speaking of star systems, the fine tuning of physical constants rather strongly suggests (independantly of biology) that our whole universe was designed to make life possible at all. You say there isn't any such evidence, but I just gave you some. Now to argue that such isn't evidence, one then needs to argue that there is a whole landscape of other universes with pretty much random settings of physical constants such that in most of them, life cannot occur...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
This argument (The Landscape - or - Multiverse) tries to explain that our universe is here by chance via vastly expanding the probabilistic resources. In one sense though, it still fails, because biology alone shows us (though many continue to believe in and write books talking up abiogenesis such as David Deamer) that even in a universe such as ours which is fine tuned to be hospitable to life, life still cannot form naturally because even here, it's still too improbable...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Now someone like Deamer (and many others) simply assert that it can, but we will see in about 10 to 20 years that their approaches (RNA world, or RNA world with pre-cellular vesciles, etc.) do not work either. And trhen other approaches will be suggested.
After 500 years of that, will ID still be denied by the majority? I doubt it. I'd say that within 30 to 50 years, the hardcore naturalists will die out, being replaced by those more willing to tolerate the odd ID inference.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But why should we infer ID in the first place?
Because until natural laws can explain how functional information can be selected from nonfunctional information in cases where natural selection is known to be inoperative for guiding evolution, then any explanation invoking natural laws, is depending on pure chance in situations known to be prohibitively improbable. ie. It's like trying to look for a tiny needle in a large haystack given 2 seconds. It ain't gonna happen.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Why did I say in "cases where natural selectiuon is known to be inoperative in guiding evolution"?
Because natural selection can only preserve what is ALREADY functional. That means that the solutions to biological problems aren't evolved BY natural selection. They are evolved by RANDOM MUTATIONS! Natural selection merely recognizes that if something ALREADY WORKS BETTER THAN SOMETHING ELSE, then it will tend to favour that better vriant in the population...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But I'd like you think think hard about that. Natural slection did not evolve that new and better variant. Random mutations did. And did they evolve better variants out of nonfunctioning precursors? Sometimes, but almost never. (That can only happen in very simple, rather non-specific cases of new function). But otherwise, in cases where better vriants arise, they arise out of random mutations to ALREADY EXISTING FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS. So they ARRIVED by chance.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The mother of all problems for abiogenesis AND for evolution - is the ARRIVAL OF THE FITTEST. Natural selection doesn't guide evolution towards the arrival of fitter systems from existing systems. Random mutations don't guide evolution either. They either serve up fitter systems - or they don't serve up fitter systems. The problem is that we now realize that random mutations are extremely limited in their capabilities to evolve new and fitter systems...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But isn't there proof that they do? Even in the lab? Sure, but as I said, it only happens for simple systems. And also in many lab experiements, they "cheat" nature by using intellignetly designed selection techniques to do what nature never could. For example they do so by purposefully looking for even the vaguest hints of a specific type of function (with fitness differentials completely invisible to natural selection) and amplify those, sometimes finding their solutions...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
And even then, they're not ending up with more than fairly basic functions.
Since this level of selective amplification process is unknown in nature, one must then ask, how can random mutations manage to find the new functions (that are not merely trivial variations on already existing functions) that biology has "found" (if you insist they weren't designed) in the light of there being not enough probabilistic resources in nature?
There is no good explanation of how!
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
It is often claimed that even if we don't know exactly how nature could perform some seemingly impossible task(or seemingly easy - as in the case of Deamer's book - or Potholer54's "abiogenesis made easy"! video) then that doesn't really matter, because in time we will discover how it is that it does.
Hmm, well sure, but until it is shown to be true, such an approach is opinion. What about before it is that such discoveries are made? Must we deny ID, and have faith in nature?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Denying ID because it "isn't natural" when there is no good explanatory case to be set forward (other than wishful speculations with little basis in fact) sounds a lot like you're telling me that ID isn't science because ID isn't natural, and that to be scientific something has to be natural. But intelligence is natural (we have it) so it comes down to processes involving some intelligence, and those without intelligence.
Does "supernatural" mean something involving design?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
See, intelligent design inferences cannot tell you if something originated from God, humans, aliens, or purple people eaters. What they do discriminate fairly well is whether something originated via mindless natural processes, or instead, natural processes with the addition of some kind of planning. By the way, such planning can be built into an automated (and mindless) system that is a level removed from the intelligent source that created it. This is a form of technology.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 I would even go so far as to say, it's not impossible to suggest that some starfaring ancient civilization didn't alter our DNA, or initiate the FoxP2 mutation in hominids, or something. But at our present technological understanding, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest anything other than perfectly natural - non-directed processes are at hand here.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The problem for naural cases, is that if natural causes created biology, they would have to have successfully found repeatedly, incredibly rare solutions to problems. These solutions are known to be so rare that we have no idea how nature could have found them. It's as if nature managed to find specifically marked atoms in our galaxy from a random search. If this happenned over and over again, based on what we know at the moment, a natural cause wouldn't be attributed...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But it is attributed anyway. Why is this? It seems to be a philosophical tendency to want to avoid inferring to a solution (intelligent design) that we know can fairly easily do the job, instead we pursue an unknown examples of a solution (natural causes) that is not known to be able to do such jobs.
It seems weird at first, but makes sense on realizing that most in the scientific establishment are deliberately choosing to ignore even a tentative design inference. But why?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But you don't seem to be like that. As you said, you are not totally against inferring at least some kinds of design, if you thought you saw some reasonable evidence for it. I take my hat off to you for that.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 Don't get me wrong, the notion of a polity that can engineer an entire star system over billions of years, is a pretty incredible claim, an entity performing miracles, showing up and setting up office hours in downtown Jerusalem (or wherever) might "convince" billions, "on faith" with a large sign saying "God, Inquire within - miracles from 10-3",but that still doesn't do it. Incredible claims require incredible evidence, and to date, we have ABSOLUTELY none.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Biology itself is the incredible evidence in support of the incredible claim. We're finding out more and more about how incredible biology is. What you choose to believe exactly, concerning the designer is up to you, but the incredible evidence that is biology, points towards there being one.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 That something is incredible is not evidence of anything. Evidence is something I can show, that I can repeat. Unfortunately for of those who would want to promote a deistic view of how the universe came to be, are in serious trouble, physics explains everything we can see in the observable universe, to a pretty high degree. Similarly evolution sufficiently describes the process of change in organisms that we observe in our environment.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Substitute irreducibly complex, and specified complexity. Life is incredible because such phenomena are pervasive within it, and defy a naturalistic explanation. Of course, the naturalists insist that there are naturalistic explanations, but the only ones they manage to come up with are for the cases that are of trivial complexity - ie. the proven evolution of a so called "complex system" comprised of all of 2 parts, and requiring just 2 or 3 changes at most to originate.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
Acutally that a system is incredible is not evidence of anything. Physics sufficiently describes the observable universe. Evolution sufficiently describes the entire biome we have observed. Chemistry sufficiently describes all of the chemical reactions we have thus observed. If you found some large interstellar scale megastructures - we would have good evidence for some external polity of extreme power, but that again is not evidence of a God. Besides - which god would be right?
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59
So why infer design? (Even if only tentatively until some natural explanation is discovered?)
Because intelligences are the only known source of sophisticated automated and irreducibly complex functional systems that have been observed. Inferences to natural origins are philsophical in basis now, not observationally based. God also is not observed (by most people). ID science cannot tell you about God. That's for religion. ID can point out likely cases of design.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 I am not aware of any irreducibly complex systems...and neither are you. Irreducible complexity has never been demonstrated and more properly is demonstrably false - it was demonstrated as positively false more than 20 years before Dr. Behe proposed his conjecture by Dr. John Conway of Oxford/Princeton. At best Behe's work is intellectually lazy research, more probably and worse for all concerned, it's deliberately fraudulent,a cursory review of the facts leans towards the latter.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Yet an irreducible system requiring only 2 or 3 parts, that can also form with merely a few changes (such as "Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation - Science Vol. 312 no. 5770 pp. 97-101) is an example of an irreducibly simple system (IS) not an irreducibly complex system (IC).
It's the complexity as well as the irreducibility in IC systems that makes them infeasible for Darwinian evolution. If we just have an IS system, it's more likely to evolve.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Why so? Because irreducibility of function, causes the required evolutionary pathway to be indirect, not direct. In a direct Darwinian pathway, the function that natural selection is refining ALREADY EXISTS and may be able to track the changing environmental conditions (co-evolution) provided that random mutations can supply such changes as may be able to cause a definite fitness change for the better. This can then be favoured by natural selection in the species...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
However for a functionally irreducible system (this applies to both (IS) and (IC) systems) there is at the start, either no existing function that natural selection can select for or against the changes that arise, or else the functions that the components of the "yet to be formed" irreducibly functional systems that do exist already have, are different functions from what will be the eventual function that emerges when the irreducibly complex system has managed to evolve...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
In such cases where the initial functions must change, and the final function is yet to emerge, the direct Darwinian process of natural selection (either favouring or deprecating the random changes that arise depending on the fitness changes in existing functions) is not relevant anymore to the evolution of the yet to be emerged irreducible function. It is only of relevance to the already existing functions - in the direct Darwinian sense...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
This is a very important point, because it means that even though the direct Darwinian evolution that is continuously taking place on the already existing functions of the componenets in the "as yet to be evolved" irreducible system, are not random (unless their evolution is ineffective / inefficient), nevertheless, the evolution that is of relevance to achieving the emergence of the eventual "irreducible system function" is completely random with respect to such an outcome...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
You'll have a different way of stating the same thing. You'll be realizing that evolution isn't trying to get to any kind of a solution, it just happens. There is no endpoint goal. Correct!
However, the wrong assumption is usually then substituted. It is assumed that even though evolution doesn't look for solutions, it is assumed that it manaes to find those solutions, regardless.
"Regardless" being key. With NO REGARD to the situation, we then ASSUME evolution worked.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
This is pretty bald question begging. The catch is that just sometimes, in simple enough cases, evolution just might manage to work even when it is evolving some irreducible function.
It works in low specificity (IS) cases, since there are few components involved. When the function is also nonspecific (tolerating many changes to the components), then the number of functionally relevant combinations isn't prohibitively large. Thus an IS may "emerge" in the available time.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The point is, such indirect Darwinian examples of the evolution of simple irreducible systems, evolved via random emergence. It's completely unguided, until it has already emerged, and then provided the new function (some new function arising out of some combination of it's components) is useful, ONLY THEN is it's continued evolution, nonrandom (more or less).
But for simple enough systems, evolution may well have the probabilistic resources to find such novel functions...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
On the other hand, what about Behe's example? The flagellum is not some two or three part combination with a wide tolerance to variations, is it. You simply can't compare simple two part examples, with 40 part systems with highly specific functionality. In this case (the flagellum) we even have muliple irreducibly complex systems. The 10 part transporter, which also tightly integrated into the highly specific motor protein assembly, and the rest of what makes up the flagellum.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
You were talking about being deliberately fraudulent? It's fraudulent to equivocate between a simple 2 or 3 part system, and draw the same origins conclusions with systems comprising 40 parts (bacterial flagella) or hundreds of parts (the eukaryotic flagellua).
Behe wasn't being lazy! Lazy science, is to avoid rocking the boat, and to go with the flow. Behe started out as a convinced evolutionist. He's pointed out an interesting and unresolved problem of origins in biology.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 You can stop harping on it, I'm not attacking Dr. Behe's conjecture is manifestly false, it is not a scientific argument. That we do not currently understand the morphological specifics is not my concern. Dr. Behe's idea fails at a far more simple mile-post. Basic testability. It is not testable - nice idea - totally unprovable.
Furthermore, Dr. Conway's emergent complexity "develops" highly complex self-replicating "organisms" , even variations of a complete Turing machine.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
IC is totally unproveable?
That's a bit like saying that the idea that one person could not win 40 lotteries in a row, is unproveable, and thus unscientific. (Provided the person isn't somehow "cheating" of course).
Not in any way is that idea unscientfic.
If we found a case where a person won 2 lotteries in a row, would that disprove the notion that someone couldn't win 50 lotteries? Someone COULD win 50 lotteries, but not often enough to be practically observeable.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 That someone wins the lottery repeatedly is an indication of cheating. But you are confused, there is no analogy here, in that evolution is not random, creatures do not "Random" into a pair of wings, or a beak, phylogenic development is usually very gradual, and dramatic only when the result of bottle-necking / population collapse, again common natural phenomenon.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Behe's IC is basically saying that since we do have IC systems of 40 and hundreds of parts (and that's just at the subcellular level) - Behe is raising the red flag - claiming that something is cheating here! Just the same as we'd all infer that a person who won 40 lotteries in a row was cheating (and expect some pretty strong evidence to be able to disprove that notion) so also, Behe is calling "design" which is "cheating" in the lottery analogy. Nothing unscientific about it.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
To be TRUE, at all - in any way - Dr. Behe's conjecture would have to prove that emergence / evolution COULDN'T produce any such structure. High-complexity structures should not (if his theory was true) be able to form in any system - naturally. That's clearly observable. So Dr. Behe is the guy on the hook here. I like remembering that when he posed his theory it was so counter-scientific, his peers, worked to have him fired and there is still talk of removing his professional credentials.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
What Behe's idea would have to demonstrate, is what I was explaining earlier.
IC predicts that irreducible (but simple) systems, will be able to emerge from time to time. It predicts that as the number of components in the irreducible system increases, the occurence of such spontaneous origins of such systems will also decrease, such that they emerge exponentially less often.
I tried to look up Dr, Conway's work. Couldn't find much about it. Can you elaborate?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 As it happens - yes Dr. Behe was deliberately fraudulent or at the very least intentionally sloppy with his basic research and fundamental proposal - which is - by it's very nature - unscientific. I can perform a test - i.e.; evolve a change in an organism, and force a bacterium to evolve a particular way under a particular circumstance in a particular environment. I cannot similarly test "god" to come down from on high and test his processes and methods of genetic manipulation.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 But the best part is that graduate students - with a grudge - have already done a great deal of fundamental research in protienomics , epigenomics and protien synthesis to refute / resolve the questions surrounding Dr. Behe's "evidence". This happened before when the "missing" fossil gaps were "proof" we did not evolve from monkeys. 30 years later , and with hyper-accurate genetic analysis developed in part to disprove pseudo-science shows clearly,we are just one variant of primate.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Like I said, these "refutations of IC" never manage to come through with anything close to refuting IC. They at best come up with examples of (in most cases - hypothesized, not actual) evolution of IS systems. IC systems are claimed to have evolved, but the only supporting evidence is usually fairly vague homologies which show rather little. Even Lenski's experiement, didn't show the evolution of a system, but the activation of an already existing system from a trivial change.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Fossil gaps are still prime evidence of the lack of macroevolution. How are they not? Why can we so easily classify most fossils? Why is there so much stasis? It's because the fossil evidence demonstrates that essential forms are fixed, but they're subject to trivial changes, such as size, shape and some other features. They demonstrate what our modern experiments also show, that the form of an organism is plastic in superficial ways, but doggedly fixed in it's essentials.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 the NIH has cataloged over 3000 examples of speciation / macro-evolution - for your review. Fossil-gaps were a salient argument - 50 years ago, genetics however buried that argument, in 1957.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 So while I appreciate the opportunity to put forth in this forum, however it's very much over. From an unrelated branch of science - Mathematics, comes the opposition KILLER that evolution isn't just - real - and observable - and testable - it's become mathematically provable.
So the DEBATE - is OVER - & creationism / intelligent design - is a bankrupt idea told like fairy tales to evangelicals or the willfully ignorant to make some ideological points, but it's not valid.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
While it is fairly easy to make pronouncements about how mathematics proves evolution, and shows that the debate is over, were we to actually line up this evidence and examine it in some detail, it wouldn't even be close to supporting what you're saying it does. The debate isn't over until it's over. Unresolved problems such as IC don't go away. So far, arguments "fatal to ID", usually in fact support the things IDists are saying on second glance. And so the debate goes on...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 But the debate IS over - consult Melanie Mitchel - U/Michigan/Santa Fe Institute , John Conway, Princeton University, you can even "play" the mathematical model, it's called "the game of life", Dr. Conway knew EXACTLY what he had discovered - in 1970. Have fun, I hope you enjoy the game, but your pretensions to science were disproven long before they were ever proposed. Had Dr. Behe done research (or cared to), he would have discovered Dr. Conway, or any of a number of others work.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The game of life?
I know that "the lesson is over" and you don't wish to discuss this anymore, but seriously, the game of life??? What on earth about that, makes you think that the major objections to evolution have been dealt with in this kind of a simulation?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 A. There are no major objections to evolutionary systems, they are factual and incredibly well founded with scientifically valid means. What the GOL is about is specifically destroying the idea that specified complexity cannot arise spontaneously. With a trivial set of rules, Conway's game demonstrates orders of complexity and self-organization and mechanistic process that stem from a simple chaotic set of conditions MATHEMATICALLY disproving intelligent designs' central thesis.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
GOL shows us nothing new. Systems can arise commensurate with their causes. Given a system with simple rules, one expects (and gets) simple outcomes. However in the GOL one my see some level of complexity not apparent from the simple rules, because much of the complexity is hidden in various layers. For example, want something to be copied in a game like this? Then a "simple rule" dictates that the copy shall take place...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
For example, in something like GOL, one can state an apparently very "simple rule" dictating when or when not replication takes place. Or it may have a simple rule stating that the digital organisms can combine sexually according to a combination of either parents traits etc. But are such rules (that can be stated in a sentence) really simple? Not at all. Look at all of the underlying code for the program. Look at all of the underlying code to write the OS.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Look at all of the underlying functional complexity in the electrical circuit forming the computer on which the OS runs on which the compiler runs on which perpares the GOL code for execution!
Now consider the functional complexity inherent in the many companies and engineers plans that built the computer and the operating systems. Look at all the knowledge that went into achieving such technology over many many many years?
Have you ever considered that hidden complexity?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 It wasn't even designed to refute intelligent design , but give an example of how seemingly "impossibly" complex machines - up to and INCLUDING a full Turing machine, can arise from a system with very simple rules. Similar "games" such as Unnatural Selection, Alife, Avian and others, use evolutionary principles to evolve a whole variety of behaviors and processes - entirely with simple genetic crossover algorithms - again - modeled on simple Darwinian evolution, all of it provable.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
"but (the GOL) give(s) an example of how seemingly "impossibly" complex machines - up to and INCLUDING a full Turing machine, can arise from a system with very simple rules."
No it doesn't. The GOL rules take advantage of some of that vast built-in functionality. The simple rules you refer to are extremely high level summary of many layers of detailed functionality which must first exist before GOL can.
There's no basis for thinking we're seeing genuine "emergence" here!
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But if one were to genuinely model a Darwinian algorithm such that it's careful not to incorporate features that need to first get there via Darwinian evolution, not by the dictates of "simple rules" that are in reality extraordinarily sophisticated compartments for hidden complexity - THEN you will see just how limited evolutionry algorithms are when they are simulated the way the must occur in nature. When fudging of the system cannot take place. There's no free lunch in GA's.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 Avian and Mitchel's basic work cover this pretty thoroughly - we at least agree there is no free lunch - just time and change.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Here's where we're similar.
You claim that certain similarities and differences, along with the IDEA of macroevolution, demonstrate beyond all shadow of a doubt that evolution took place. Yet we look at the same evidence and use it to show beyond all shadow of our doubts, that some designer (which designr you pick is your affair, but I believe it's the God of the Bible) must have created all these examples of life.
We both see the SAME evidence through DIFFERENT worldviews.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 Here ends the lesson. This is not about your god, you may choose to believe whatever you want. But if I'm in the position to hire a scientist, I need a real one & have every reason to economically exclude you. Follow the lead of the Amish - leave the worldly concerns apart, go be devout, but your "belief" is traitorous - at best, impeding the national economic / scientific / industrial discussion adding no value and embarrassing well intentioned conscientiously religious believers.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Here's where we are different.
Your objections to us, are for the most part against things that cannot be tested. Denying that God exists because He cannot be tested in the laboratory, is merely the pointing out of a limitation of science. It doesn't address the truth of the matter. On the other hand, most of our objections against naturalistic origins, are based on testable objections relating to the physical world, ie. what natural laws can or cannot achieve.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
While on the surface that might appear to reinforce the notion that naturalism is falsifiable, and that ID is not, think again. To falsify ID, one doesn't need to demonstrate the existence of a designer. One merely needs to show (without reference to the designer) that such a designer is not neccessary.
Showing the sufficiency of natural laws to be able to originate life, will falsify ID as such. But the naturalistic enterprise has consistenly failed to be able to do so.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 I'm GLAD you mentioned abiogenisis - thank you - here again lies the very dead corpse of creationism. Current research has shown AT LEAST two and possibly 3 entirely natural methods of transitioning from inorganic chemosynthesis of macroprotiens of available compounds found both on ancient Earth, in space, & on earth presently that allow for & ultimately can produce self-replicating RNA structures.
Research available at Rensselaer Poly, and Texas A&M - for your review.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Abiogenesis!
Well... you're telling me that there are not just one, but quite possibly many naturalistic possibilities that may explain the emergence of life from non-life. It's also known as "an embarrassment of riches". It's a term often used to put the rosiest glow on an embarassing situation where just about any lead is followed up, as none of the former leads have yielded anything worthwhile.
But the solution is "just around the corner..." Right?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
Comment removed
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 I don't think you understand, I wasn't describing future experiments. These were completed experiments - new human knowledge. These were 3 separate sets of experiments, conducted over the last several years. They are testable - facts. The three methods were discovered as variations on the basic theme, in the process of confirmation the original experiment.
Humans, know of at least 2 confirmed, & probably the 3rd method is still being researched.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Anything in the realm of abiogenesis research that we creationists would have to take as a serious challenge to our views on the subject, hasn't yet happenned. Nothing that's been uncovered so far has come even close to finding a naturalistic explanation as to how life first formed. You're falling for the "embarrasment of riches" hype. What I have heard of is two experiments of note...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The first had to do with the engineering of two "self replicating" RNA ribozymes. Two were made and they interacted with each other to replicate each other. But - what was being replicated were the two subunits of the ribozymes. Each of these subunits was itself a long complex chain, specifically designed to do this task of zipping each other up. It's great chemistry! But it's not relevant to what could have taken place naturally on a prebiotic earth. It's an example of ID.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
The other was an experiment that successfully manage to produce RNA monomers in a "somewhat" natural environment. This one reminds me a little of the Urey Miller experiment which managed to produce some amino acids. After that experiment, most sciency types went nuts in proclaiming that the origin of life had been solved. But of course, it hadn't even come close. Similrly, the fact that some RNA monomers can form in nature, isn't really any more relevant to OOL either...
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
It's not hard to see why thats the case. All of these experiments fail to deal with the fundamental question involved - where did the functional information to setup biotic chemistry come from?
In the first experiment, that functional information is present (to a limited extent) but of course, we know it came from the many man years of effort that went into designing those ribozymes. So they've proven that intelligent design does work, but that isn't really the point, right?
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
In the 2nd experiment, where the RNA monomers were kinda-sorta shown to be able to form naturally, the elephant in the room is that RNA monomers, minus the information to form the functional sequences to enable self replication (and that means replication from RNA monomers, not replication from a few complex designed subunits) is also irrelevant to abiogenesis.
As someone said, that's a bit like trying to explain Bach's music, in terms of the natual availability of ink! :-)
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
These experiments are great! A good thing for chemistry, and they'll have spin off uses in industry and nano-engineering, etc. I'm just saying that so far as abiogenesis is concerned, they're baby steps that are a long way from showing anything much in terms of what can be expected to have occurred under natual prebiotic conditions. One day, it's likely that chemical "life" will even be engineered from scratch, but that too will be another example of ID. Not abiogenesis.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 The point is that it's no longer "mystical" it's known. We might never know for certain the particulars of the transition from lifelessness to life on Earth. But we now know it does not necessitate outside intervention, and that's the point. Furthermore, it implies that pretty much anywhere there are analogous environmental condition, life can arise.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
Why use the word "mystical". While I consider God to be an absolutely mysterious entity, the idea God created life, while grand and awe inspiring, isn't exactly what I'd call mystical. It's more along the lines of engineering. Creationists and IDists wouldn't say that very simple life (ie. pre-bioticstyle replication chemistry) was totally beyond human engineering. Though engineering life much beyond that, is well beyond our capabilities, at least for a very long time to come.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
So while life from nonlife can certainly be engineered and isn't mystical in that sense, the evidence shows that life probably couldn't have come about without any deliberate engineering = ID. You're wrong in saying that we now know it does not require outside intervention. That is complete hype that is unsupported by the evidence. It's what naturalists need to be true, and what they believe is true. It's logic. IF naturalism is true, then life must have come about naturally.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
Comment removed
proadmin1 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 So now that we're done here - again. Have a nice day. I suggest a book .... may I suggest "On Origin of Species" or perhaps Father Gregor Mendel's "Experiments in Plant Hybridization", and may I add that no less than the Catholic Church itself - sponsored Mendel's research & work or more relevantly "Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems" - John Holland.
proadmin1 5 months ago
@proadmin1
But with majority support in the scientific community, support in the media and univercities, all that needs to be done (though it's getting that much more difficult over time as the evidence of the sophistication of nature keeps on mounting) is to claim that solutions to these unsolved problems of naturalism are not only certain, but are "just around the corner" as I keep on hearing with regards to abiogenesis, for instance. (Though that is a different issue to macroevolution.)
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@proadmin1
As the numbers of parts increase - and they're all required to form the system function - then the likelihood that evolution will be able to hit upon those combinations of possible arrangements that all happen to integrate into an irreducibly complex function, drop exponentially compared to cases with just a few parts.
One can of course deny design, but if one does, they have (without realizing it) had to shovel lot's of "probability magic" under the carpet. It's now a belief.
tubewatch59 5 months ago
@tubewatch59 It might be nice to suggest that this is an argument coming from biological circles - however it ISN'T. This isn't about evolution - per se, it's about complex systems analysis - and more specifically dynamic systems analysis. This is a well established branch of mathematics, developed in the 1960's and 1970's.
Not only does it support the notion that evolution can happen. It is the primary area of mathematics responsible for what is commonly known as emergence.
proadmin1 5 months ago
In one sense, you're saying something like this:
Given the rates of travel on earth via snails, ants, human walking, running and road transport, we judge that the transportation speeds observed, demonstrate that there is more than enough time to reach the moon. Even a small ant could reach the moon in about 2500 years & humans could walk there much faster.
But - we can't get to the moon by walking! We require spacrcraft. Measured land transport speeds aren't applicable to such journeys.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
If evolving a new trait cobbled together from bits or assemblies of other existing traits, then evolution will decrease in permitted rate to a glacially slow crawl.
In other words, evolution rates aren't linear.
It depends on what has to be evolved. Simple changes can evolve rapidly. Complex systems may not be able to evolve at all. Or else - at rates so slow, that the time available in the universe becomes the limiting factor long before such systems could be expected to emerge.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
It depends on the kinds of changes taking place. If a given functional system (or character / trait) already exists, it will in most cases be possible to introduce many trivial variations, most of which will not be harmful to the organism. So the rate of evolution (over a short distance of character configuration space) will be fairly high.
But if evolving a related but somewhat different character, then the permitted rate will slow down considerably due to Natural selection conservation.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
It's not really as simple as that though. The rate of evolution is set by the availablitity of neutral or beneficial intermediates when mutations take place.
eg. If for a particular character, many of the mutation caused changes result in no significant loss of existing beneficial function, then selection will permit the evolution to occur at a high rate.
But small observed changes involving large rate Darwin measures, cannot be simply extrapolated to more distant character changes...
tubewatch59 8 months ago
Religion is just like santa claus, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny. It is stories and fantasy. Wake up were adults now. Just because you don't believe in god doesn't mean your evil, it just means your brave enough to live your life without a "safety net". There is no heaven. All that money you donate to the church is gone now, same with the money I spent on beer, drugs, and sex, only I had a better time rofl.....
ricktbdgc 8 months ago
@ricktbdgc
A belief such as yours (neo enlightenment worldview) could be argued to be just like santa claus as well. If science could explain everything via natural causes, then you may have a point. But since it cannot do so, then what you're telling us is that you don't believe anything beyond nature is required. But it's not different to a belief in santa, because both beliefs can't be falsified. It's a framework through which you choose to view the world. But it's not really science.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
@ricktbdgc
Even though naturalism (your enlightenment worldview / philosophy) can't be falsified, if science really could explain everything by invoking natural laws, then you wouldn't need to bother falsifying the idea, since it would have already moved from the realm of an idea to being an observed fact. Just like the idea of the existence of God isn't science either (because how can that be falsified?). But if we ever meet God, then the need to falsify His existence becomes irrelevant.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
Religion should have no bother with science because one to the other is total bullshit.
paintballgundown8 8 months ago
but where are the transitional fossils? *chuckle chuckle*
mamushi72sai5575 9 months ago
We humans started out with just one pair, Adam and Eve, and today we are about six billions of us on this planet. It must have been a very long time for all this "evolution" don't you think?
MeX2004 10 months ago
@MeX2004
humans didnt start out as adam and eve. The bible is fictional.
mcpencil 9 months ago
Darwins? Let's do some math on that. They say humans and chimps diverged about 6 million years ago. At 20 years per generation that's only a measly 300,000 generations from something less than a chimp to human beings. Yeah right.
thewordofgod2010 10 months ago
@thewordofgod2010
Except our ancestors probably reproduced around the age of ten like a modern chimp, meaning it's more like ~400,000 generations ago. 300,000 and 400,000 are massive numbers either way.
Also, change happens rather quickly in respect to many characteristics; one only need look at the racial spectrum of humans to realise that.
NormanAngle 9 months ago
@NormanAngle Even at 400,000 generations it's not realistic. This is MASSIVE amount of changes in only that few generations. Compare that to the population size and reproduction cycles of bacteria. If random mutation and natural selection can move that fast, in that few of organisms, then we should see new forms of bacteria appear every week and old bacteria constantly going extinct. And the racial spectrum? All those traits already exist in the human genome. No mutations needed, just selection.
thewordofgod2010 9 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 New bacteria show up all the time. That's why every year there's a new flu shot, the old flu evelved and became immune to the last shot.
GnarlyNewEngland 9 months ago
@GnarlyNewEngland The flu is a virus not a bacteria, huge difference. And the only thing that changes is the strain of the same virus, it's not a new virus. Just like when you gain an immunity you are not a new organism. However, bacteria can change very slightly over time. But this is because there are literally trillions and trillions of bacteria reproducing around the world all the time. The number of primates that have lived through all time is a tiny fraction of a single day for bacteria.
thewordofgod2010 9 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 Shoot, that is seriously my bad. I wasn't thinking. I'm very sorry about my false information. I'm also sorry that I can't really form a better argument right now, and perhaps you could ask a biologist to explain it better. I agree with evolution because almost the entire scientific community does, and I believe they know what they're talking about.
GnarlyNewEngland 9 months ago
@GnarlyNewEngland I know a lot about biology, I've studied this subject extensively. I've debated Ph.Ds on this subject and have been shocked at their inability to counter even my most basic arguments. Don't put your faith in biologists, put your faith in God. You didn't evolve from pond scum millions of years ago. Seriously.
thewordofgod2010 9 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 Nah..i wont put my faith in god. When i pray he never seems to be home. Ive come to 3 conclusions.
1.There is no god. (Science damn you)
2.God is indifferent to the human struggle. (In which case the Deist's got it right)
3.God does indeed care about us, and wants to help us but for whatever unexplained reason he/she/it can't intervene. If thats so than why call him God, our maker/creator yes, but not God.
So in short i trust nobody, ANYTHING is possible for our genesis.
ArmanCortez1 9 months ago
@ArmanCortez1 The error in your thinking is that you believe God is a magic Genie that grants three wishes or something. God does not jump at our command. However, God does keep His promises, in his own time frame. For example he promised Abraham a son from his wife Sarah, but didn't deliver on the promise until Abraham and Sarah were very old. They gave up on God and Abraham had a son with his wife's maid attempting to "help God." We do the same thing, doubt God and try to fill in the blanks.
thewordofgod2010 8 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 And your proof about the Abraham Sarah story is where? Oh yeah the bible,because we all know the bible is 100% true(sarcasm). By the way how do you know Yahweh/Jesus is the TRUE god(don't say the bible, its circular logic) maybe not one but many gods made us. Maybe it is named the great Ugimachu and he thinks this false Yahweh the humans have come up with is cute,or maybe a FUTURE religion will nail it. The possibilities are numerous though none are 100% provable at this point.
ArmanCortez1 8 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 You should watch a video on youtube called "Betting on Infinity". NO, im not saying you should become atheist are something(i may or may not be atheist depending on your personal definition of atheism and religion) but i consider myself agnostic, which really I see as the best stance on god or gods. Please don't send me no bible verses( i have one and read it often thank you very much). But at least see where IM coming from.
Former christian, now secular agnostic skeptic.
ArmanCortez1 8 months ago
@ArmanCortez1 You read your bible often? That's good. Did you know that Jonah is a prophecy of Jesus Christ? Jonah sacrifices himself to save his shipmates from the wrath of God and is in the belly of a fish for three days and nights and is alive again. Also, Abraham and Isaac is a similar prophecy, same for Joseph in Egypt, Moses, Joshua etc. Jesus said ALL the scripture testify of him! They do. The very stories themselves are prophecies of Jesus Christ. Read your bible again with that in mind.
thewordofgod2010 8 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 By saying "The very stories themselves are prophecies of Jesus Christ" your affirming my believe that you are using CIRCULAR REASONING. The Bible is true because God in the Bible says so, and God and Jesus are real because the Bible says they are. Give me an OUTSIDE VERIFIABLE SOURCE to prove the Bible. None of the stories in the Bible have been proven by anything else BUT the Bible itself. Give me a real argument not a logical fallacy.
ArmanCortez1 8 months ago
@ArmanCortez1 It would be circular reasoning if the bible was one book. The fact is the bible is a library of book bound together AFTER-THE-FACT. The bible is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 different authors over THOUSANDS of years. So unless you are using only one book in the collection to verify itself it's not circular at all.
thewordofgod2010 8 months ago
@thewordofgod2010 Just because its 66 books doesn't mean squat. And you said it yourself, they were written AFTER THE FACT. Which means the stuff that is written about Jesus (and company) means that it was NOT first hand account, which is even worse for trying to verify if something is true or not. I already knew they were many books in one, but that really doesn't mean nothing to me, because unlike what many Christians say, they do INDEED contradict each other.
ArmanCortez1 8 months ago
@ArmanCortez1 Every event in history is written after-the-fact. So what's your point on that? I was merely pointing out the books were collected into a single volume after-the-fact. Therefore, we logically know there wasn't some conspiracy to create the bible and make all these stories point to Christ.
Try watching Lee Strobel "A Case For Christ." Lee is a former atheist. Here is a trailer: watch?v=jLt_85lMMaU
thewordofgod2010 8 months ago
a very simple thing that i have to illustrate to the all black minded evolutionists
the old fashioned pagan collapsed hoax does not deny the presence of the creator
there are much shit in some ignorant teen atheists minds who watch tv too much
breadcrumpsman 1 year ago
@breadcrumpsman id say more accurately that being able to explain an event by natural means DOESNT disprove the existance of god, it disproves the accuracy of religious doctrine.
elgostine 11 months ago
This is interesting since Darwin never came up with mathematical concepts for HIS theory of evolution, just other theories that built off of his theory. Evolution vs Religion wont be the only thing forever, someone will discover something new, and then that concept will be thrown in the long scale debate.
migmob27 1 year ago
If you look at the evolution of us humans over the past 4 million years... i wonder how dinosaurs would look like today if they weren't extinct 65 million years ago.
Cuenca20 1 year ago
@Cuenca20 They'd probably look like birds.
Look it up ;)
PureInertia 1 year ago
"transform a mouse in to an elephant ?" Shouldnt that be completely impossible? Or are you speaking figuratively?
Korkzor 1 year ago
They mean to play the evolutionary chain that led from rodent mammal ancestors to the elephants and their contemporaries.
1RadicalOne 1 year ago
@Korkzor No, it's quite possible and the reverse has actually occurred. When you see the massive dinosaurs having shrunk to the birds of today.
PSNLanceManley 1 year ago
This may sound stupid but,the ocean floor has not been cleaned since the beginning of time.
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny no, the ocean floor gets upturned every eight years from the currents and biological activity
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 When I was in "Nam tons and tons of junk was drooped into the South China Sea. If the enviro-wackos saw what I saw they would go banannas. I 'm talking,trucks,jeeps,tanks, etc. Depot junk.
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny no the junk is swept around in the sea, it doesn't just sit there (well, large peices do like tires and boats) but the smaller peices get picked up by the current and into this large area of sea where all the currents collide. Search Great Pacific Garbage Patch for more :C
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 Do you know what bubbles up from the ocean?
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny methane?
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 Carbon dioxcite
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny Ugg. No it's not carbon dioxide, it's methane
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 Dieing seaweed,rust.
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny wtf are you saying?!
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
I am saying that Man has nothing to do with the carbon in the air. The Earth is a living plant and cures its self. anything else is a crock. Rain cleans the air,cold weather,etc.,etc.
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny what
the
fuck.
When a human ignites a hydrocarbon what is produced?
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 Same thing but,it is not for ever as radiation. arain shower and it is gone. Too many people have the Gore syndrom.
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny Am, am I being trolled?
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
@Blacklemon67 No, you are being educated. think about it. The trashman pickets your trash once a week but, who cleans the ocean floor? Mer-maids?
fluffydanny 1 year ago
@fluffydanny derp. I said the ocean currents + bacterial decomposers. Also if the trashmen weren't there the garbage you put out would eventually decay (after 20+ years if there's plastic and much much longer for metal)
Blacklemon67 1 year ago
Evolution is not something to be believed in. You do not BELIEVE IN gravity. Gravity is merely a fact of life, whether you believe in it or not. Disbelieve it all you want, and try to jump off a building. Reality will teach you the error of your ways.
Evolution does not require your belief, only your understanding. Like gravity, it's true whether you believe it or not.
Etimos 1 year ago 4
@Etimos
It's not been demonsated. In the lab microevolution has been, but molecules to man evo. hasn't. Therefore it remains a belief at this time. Though it's possible that RM & NS is falsifiable, there will always be SOME kind of evolution (different to RM & NS) that could be proposed. It isn't possible to falsify all conceivable kinds of evolution. So the idea of naturalism (incorporating any proposed kinds of evolution) isn't falsifiable either. Thus it's a philosophy, not science.
tubewatch59 8 months ago
@tubewatch59 You know what else has never been demonstrated in a lab? Childhood to adulthood. Nobody in history has ever put an infant in a laboratory and proven, conclusively, with evidence, that they can follow the progress of that individual's development from birth to adulthood.
Take a look at your baby pictures. Can you show me the significant changes between you then and you now? And can you explain to me how you changed so radically? Babies are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from adults, right?
Etimos 8 months ago
The principle is exactly the same. You did not simply wake up one morning to realize that you had gone from a six month old infant to a six year old child, or to a twelve year old one, or to a twenty year old man (if you are that yet).
There was no great dramatic change, was there? No, there were small, incremental, barely noticed changes over time. If you tried to keep track day by day, you could only find tiny, almost inconsequential changes.
But look back in time to your baby pictures.
Etimos 8 months ago
That's what fossils are, essentially; baby pictures, photos of what different species used to look like.
Incremental changes add up over time. Take the teacup poodle. Does it look like a wolf? Well we can prove it evolved from one.
Exactly what part of this process are you objecting to? What part of the human body do you not believe could have evolved? Every single organ we have has some precursor in the animal kingdom.
There is nothing so unique about humans that we couldnt have evolved.
Etimos 8 months ago
Now as for the scientific consensus, I have a little surprise for you.
There are more historians who do deny the holocaust ever happened than there are biologists who reject evolution.
There IS NO CONTROVERSY. Evolution has MORE EVIDENCE behind it than Gravity, and is a better understood phenomenon. Change Over Time Equals Evolution. It's a very simple formula, which works, because it's true. Change over time is cumulative. it builds up, and becomes more and more significant the longer it works
Etimos 8 months ago
@Etimos
The part of the process I'm referring to is (essentially) the concept as you layed it out that gradual incremental changes account for all thats needed in biology.
What you are stating (more or less) is the validity of the direct Darwinian pathway. I'd agree with you. But whereas in principle direct Darwinian pathways do work (and thus evolution IS seen to work in the laboratory), what evolution cannot do (or I should say, finds it very difficult to do) is use indirect pathways.
tubewatch59 7 months ago
@tubewatch59 It seems here as though what you're really arguing about is simply the timescale itself, or possibly a misunderstanding with regards to organism scale.
You addressed the 'walking a marathon' argument by taking it to the moon, which is simply ridiculous, because your analogy artificially inserts an impassable obstacle which does not exist in nature.
In large, well developed multi-cellular organisms, fundamental systems tend not to change fundamentally once they have been developed.
Etimos 7 months ago
However, that does not say that those functions could not have evolved in the first place. Prior to their development, the organism was simpler, and had other means of solving a particular problem.
Fundamental changes in form and function occur at smaller scales, with shorter generation gaps, where a few cells here or there can swiftly take on a novel function, or even develop into a completely new organ.
The larger an organism gets, the less feasible this becomes, but still not impossible.
Etimos 7 months ago
As for your DDP and IDP argument, it is simply a red herring, I'm afraid. There is no real distinction, in evolutionary terms. There is no direct path toward anything. A change occurs, and if it's either neutral or beneficial, it gets passed on. This is dependent on the environment.
IDP and DDP are basically just another way of adding an impassable barrier through language, like micro and macro-evolution. Neither is a real evolutionary concept, they are differentiated only by time scale.
Etimos 7 months ago
All organs, all systems, all functions are the result of changing or co-opting an existing function. Some, like Nylonase, may have occurred in the past, and resulted in the complete extinction of the organism which developed it, because at the time there was no nylon and therefor the enzyme was useless, and the negative effect it had on 'normal' enzyme production resulted in the organism being out-competed by healthier strains.
In a changed environment, however, Nylonase turned out to be good.
Etimos 7 months ago
Fundamentally, your argument and mine differ because you place artificial limitations upon Evolution, for whatever reason.
Perhaps instead of notre dame, it would be more helpful for you to consider Mount Everest. Huge, tall, beautiful, and made up of accreted stone over many many hundreds of millions of years. It wasn't created as a mountain, perfect and fully formed. First it was bedrock, building up with the incremental addition of layer upon layer of particles, and then upturned violently.
Etimos 7 months ago
Take, for example, the spleen, which is a relatively recently evolved organ. There are many, many animal organisms which lack a spleen and do just fine. The spleen is found only in vertebrates, and even then not in all of them. The organ is recent enough that there is actually a medical condition called Heterotaxy which can cause a person to be born WITHOUT ONE, or with several small 'proto-spleens'. Yet despite a slightly increased risk of infection, these people are born normally and survive.
Etimos 7 months ago
The spleen is a perfect example of a complex organ which, while important, is not essential to life functions, and subject to mutation and co-option.
However, this kind of evolution is very rare, because usually when an organ becomes specialized, it remains specialized, because the body tends to conserve functioning systems.
The kind of radical changes you're talking about with IDP occurs mostly in single-celled organisms or very very small multicellular ones, which can change more rapidly.
Etimos 7 months ago
To use your terminology, though, I suppose in the end, human evolution must fundamentally break down mostly into DDP. In the last five hundred million years, there have been no major changes in the vertebrate body that would constitute an organ system 'breaking' its function in favor of a new one.
There is no function, no feature in humans which does not have an analog somewhere else among vertebrates. Humans and pigs have essentially the same biology, once you get past the obvious differences.
Etimos 7 months ago