Where did the laws of nature come from?

Gracchus · Feb 10, 2016

Durrett and Schmidt found that to obtain only two specific mutations via Darwinian evolution "for humans with a much smaller effective population size, this type of change would take > 100 million years."

You are missing the point. The point is that evolution does not require "specific mutations". Evolution is not working toward some pre-determined goal. Selection works on all mutations and eliminates some. Sometimes it eliminates whole species or whole clades of higher taxa. What is left is obviously not of optimal design. It is just good enough, and may not be good enough tomorrow. Existing species are not the result of some purpose, they are merely the survivors.

I know that you want to believe that evolution (or God) had you as a goal. But wishful thinking leads to confirmation bias, and that leads to sloppy reasoning and erroneous conclusions.

:wave:

stevevw · Feb 11, 2016

The Cadet said:
No, actually, looking over Darwin's work you will find no such claims to a necessarily non-teleological nature. Evolution News and Views seems to be crafting a strawman both of what the intelligent design movement proposes (it ain't theistic evolution) and what evolution actually is

It doesn't state that its theistic evolution so you haven't read the article properly. It doesn't state what evolution is either. It was drawing from the logic of what an atheists Doctor said ID was and how it compared to evolution.

The modern theory rejects claims of teleology because there's no evidence for such claims, and no well-established way to detect "design". But it is by no means a core element of the theory. Whether these decisions are "guided" by some outside intelligence or not is about as relevant to the theory of evolution as whether or not aspirin is merely an offering to the headache fairy is relevant to the modern medical evidence behind Aspirin.

The article doesn't hat evolution has teleology in it. In fact the article agrees that evolution isn't guided by anything teleological. It is saying that an argument made by an atheists made the distinction between the two about evolution not being associated with purposeful design and ID being the opposite. So if each were proven right then logically one would falsify the other.

Evolution News and Views can always be counted on to provide a completely inaccurate picture of the science.

It wasn't talking about anything scientific but a logical argument about two opposite beliefs. Even so if they mentioned something about science doesn't automatically mean they are wrong like you are trying to imply by association. That is a logical fallacy in itself.

You want some things that will refute the modern theory of evolution in whole or in large part

Finding some hard limit on natural genetic variation that prevents speciation

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How does this disprove evolution.Species has more than one meaning according to evolution and you cant pin down what it actually means. The line for it is very blurred. Darwin himself called species just large variety within the same type of animal. So having many different species of bats doesn't mean those bats are going to turn into another different shaped animal. They are all still bats and look like bats. A lack of sexual reproduction viability doesn't mean that an animal is turning into another shaped one.
Finding fossil bunnies in Cambrian rock layers

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Some say thats already been done. The only problem is that evolutionists have new ways of blending any contradictions into the theory so that they no longer are contradictions. IE convergent evolution, making new species out of fossil finds that are out of place even if they look exactly like the ones that were in a completely different layer, continually adjusting and expanding the time periods so that nothing ever is out of place and everything fits into the sequence they want. Creating ghost trees, and making living fossils out any living creatures that are exactly the same as ones millions of years old. Evolution over the years has built up a record according to what they claim makes the very theory that want so its never wrong.
A dog giving birth to a cat

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Thats not how it works. But a dog will give birth to a dog and a cat will give birth to a cat. A dog wont eventually turn into a whale though. The fossil records lack transitions to prove this and the transitions that evolution claims are open to interpretation. They pick out the ones they like that will show similar features and ignore the ones that show that each animal didn't morph from each other. The tree of life also show many contradictions. Unrelated animals share similar features and genes and supposed closely related animals have different genetics. But all animals irregardless of evolution have similarities because they are made from the same blueprints. So design can account for what we see as well.
Finding a crocoduck

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This is just an old idea that is so outdated. Even evolution supporters disagree what is a transitional and what is normal variation within the same types of animals. Evolution has been found to misinterpret what they see on many occasions.

None of these have anything to do with intelligent design. You don't prove a theory wrong by proving another theory right, because that's not how science works. You cannot prove a theory right, you can only support it and have it not be proven wrong. A theory must be disprovable by observations.

Yes they do. Evolutionists use to say that life was very simple. That most of the DNA was junk to prove this. Then they found that most of the junk is functional. The more function we find in the DNA the more explanation they have to find as to what that function is for. It could be that this vast function was and is something that has been used throughout time for animals to use to turn on and off features they can use for different situations. So it could be that there was a vast amount of pre existing genetic info created that was used from the beginning rather than having to mutate new info from a random chance process that is basically an error in what was already good.

Except that we've been over this already, and none of this would disprove design. It'd be trivial for an all-power designer to design a being with junk DNA, to design a series of beings that appear to be precursors to other species, to design every species completely differently, or to design things without irreducible complexity. None of this would actually falsify the hypothesis.

It would make sense that all the necessary instructions for all life was around very earlier on. We see complexity in life from the very beginning. Even micro life is very complex. The Cambrian period showed all the major body parts coming from nowhere. All micro life could share genetic info and all life came from micro life. So it makes sense that all life has access to a lot of genetic info from the beginning. A creator doesn't have to create every single living thing in one go. But they can create the instructions and code for that life from the beginning and all life can use that as time goes on. This seems to fit what we see better than evolution does. Trying to give a process that basically is damage to life more creative power than it has takes faith itself.

I've mostly avoided talking about the parts of your responses that deal with theoretical physics for a few reasons:

I know very little about the field

I've heard that there's some rather problematic things going on, and a lot of scientists are disappointed in them, so I'm not about to say that there's nothing there

Bad science in one field does not somehow excuse bad science in another, so it's not really helping your case anyways

Despite that, I feel the need to chime in here and say, no, our consciousness does not control reality. This is a complete misunderstanding of what "observer effect" actually means and implies, typically pushed by woo-peddlers who want us to believe that our consciousness is necessarily non-physical. There is nothing about it that demands the observer be conscious. And regardless of whether you've heard of the guy or accept his work, this is just good advice anyways: Deepak Chopra is not a quantum physicist. He's a walking joke.

Yet mainstream science uses the same sort of ideas for explaining what they see. Without appealing to far out ideas they wouldn't have anything else to use. They own conclusions are taking things to a place where people are coming to these conclusions. So if there's anyone to blame it is main stream science.

The Cadet · Feb 11, 2016

stevevw said:
It is saying that an argument made by an atheists made the distinction between the two about evolution not being associated with purposeful design and ID being the opposite. So if each were proven right then logically one would falsify the other.

Great. Then that argument is bad, and should be discarded. It certainly has no place in a discussion of the science behind evolution, and that doesn't somehow make EN&V's article valid.

stevevw said:
How does this disprove evolution.

Because, to put it bluntly, if there is such a hard limit, you can't get from small, rat-like mammals to a massive variety of mammals of different shapes or sizes. If there is such a hard limit on mutations, if there really is a point that limits a species's adaptation, then the entire tree of life is necessarily false.

stevevw said:
Some say thats already been done.

Citation needed.

stevevw said:
The only problem is that evolutionists have new ways of blending any contradictions into the theory so that they no longer are contradictions.

"It's a conspiracy!" No, I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

stevevw said:
making living fossils out any living creatures that are exactly the same as ones millions of years old

...Really? Do you really not understand the concept of a living fossil? In the case of animals that are well-adapted to their environment, nature will select for "more of the same", because any change is likely to be deleterious. Animals in environments that don't change greatly over long periods of times (such as, say, the open ocean) that are well-adapted to their environment are likely to end up as "living fossils". Why would they adapt in radically different ways? Their environment is stable and they are well-adapted to it.

stevevw said:
They pick out the ones they like that will show similar features and ignore the ones that show that each animal didn't morph from each other.

Citation needed.

stevevw said:
The tree of life also show many contradictions.

Citation needed.

stevevw said:
Then they found that most of the junk is functional.

Only in the sense of "the junk in my garage is functional; its function is taking up space in my garage". ENCODE took a very broad definition of what "functional" is supposed to mean, one that doesn't really help your case.

stevevw said:
The Cambrian period showed all the major body parts coming from nowhere.

A lack of extremely ancient fossil evidence from soft-bodied organisms does not show "all the major body parts coming from nowhere".

stevevw · Feb 11, 2016

Gracchus said:
You are missing the point. The point is that evolution does not require "specific mutations". Evolution is not working toward some pre-determined goal. Selection works on all mutations and eliminates some. Sometimes it eliminates whole species or whole clades of higher taxa. What is left is obviously not of optimal design. It is just good enough, and may not be good enough tomorrow. Existing species are not the result of some purpose, they are merely the survivors.

I know that you want to believe that evolution (or God) had you as a goal. But wishful thinking leads to confirmation bias, and that leads to sloppy reasoning and erroneous conclusions.

And the evidence shows there isn't enough of that just good enough out there to justify the theory that has been created. Evolution is given more creative power than it has. The time factor is way beyond what could produce the vast complex variety we see in what has ever lived and what is living now. It would require a multitude of mutations that would produce positive beneficial mutations that make better and fitter life. The fact is from the evidence of test mutations are mainly bad or so slight they are not selected for on their own. When added together the evidence shows they dont really add up to much either.
Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723
The diminishing returns of beneficial mutations
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21636771

Loudmouth · Feb 11, 2016

stevevw said:
And the evidence shows there isn't enough of that just good enough out there to justify the theory that has been created. Evolution is given more creative power than it has. The time factor is way beyond what could produce the vast complex variety we see in what has ever lived and what is living now. It would require a multitude of mutations that would produce positive beneficial mutations that make better and fitter life. The fact is from the evidence of test mutations are mainly bad or so slight they are not selected for on their own. When added together the evidence shows they dont really add up to much either.
Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723
The diminishing returns of beneficial mutations
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21636771

The odds of winning the Powerball lottery is about 1 in 150 million. People win the lottery all of the time. How do you explain that?

stevevw · Feb 11, 2016

Loudmouth said:
The odds of winning the Powerball lottery is about 1 in 150 million. People win the lottery all of the time. How do you explain that?

Yeah but thats asking a bit much and you maybe focusing on the wrong outcomes. There is also millions upon millions who lose. Besides its not just about odds. Its also about demonstrated processes that just dont show that winning style.

Loudmouth · Feb 11, 2016

stevevw said:
Yeah but thats asking a bit much and you maybe focusing on the wrong outcomes. There is also millions upon millions who lose.

DING DING DING DING DING!!!!!!

You have finally figured it out. With adaptations, you are only focusing on the winners. You are ignoring all of the adaptations that didn't happen.

Besides its not just about odds. Its also about demonstrated processes that just dont show that winning style.

Where has intelligent design produced a single demonstrable mechanism?

KCfromNC · Feb 11, 2016

stevevw said:
I have already posted papers and links to biologists and scientists from mainstream sources such as Nature, phys.org, plos.org, pnas.org, witpress ect

And as several of us have shown, those sources don't seem to have the same reservations about evolution that you attribute to them. That's quite interesting.

Besides if I did post support from a biologists from a site connected to ID or creation

You should buy yourself a lottery ticket, since those are few and far between. Wonder what that is, given your claim that the evidence and science supports creationism and all.

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

If you really believe this, why are you posting links to published research?

Many mainstream scientists dont have to believe in creationism or ID to support evidence showing design in nature. If they are honest and look at the evidence then the evidence will show this regardless of what religious or non religious affiliation they have.

The huge majority of scientists are lying and you're the one who has figured out the truth? You know, there's a conspiracy theory subforum here.

So one expert is questioning another expert.

No. Your expert is saying something that's the exact opposite of what you claimed he did. That goes to either your understanding or credibility.

And heres another expert questioning Lynches appraisals and says he also gets it wrong.

But since most published research findings are wrong, who cares? Right?

stevevw · Feb 12, 2016

Loudmouth said:
DING DING DING DING DING!!!!!!

You have finally figured it out. With adaptations, you are only focusing on the winners. You are ignoring all of the adaptations that didn't happen.

No I think your ignoring all the adaptations that didn't happen. If there are so many successful adaptations that have created all the life that has ever existed and exists now which would be millions and millions of small successful adaptations there would have to be 10 times as many unsuccessful adaptations that we would see evidence for all over the place. There would have to have been many sick and deformed features and creatures all over the place. But we dont, all we see is good working creatures who seem to be fine.

Where has intelligent design produced a single demonstrable mechanism?

If a mechanism looks designed and acts like its designed then maybe its designed. Evolution cannot explain the level of design we see in life. So if it has such a high level of design that is the demonstration in itself. Afterall when you see a computer with highly coded programs demonstrating its ability to operate you dont question the design and ask for a demonstration. You just know its designed and is the product of an intelligent designer.

The Cadet · Feb 12, 2016

stevevw said:
If there are so many successful adaptations that have created all the life that has ever existed and exists now which would be millions and millions of small successful adaptations there would have to be 10 times as many unsuccessful adaptations that we would see evidence for all over the place. There would have to have been many sick and deformed features and creatures all over the place.

Let's say you're born into a deer herd and, due to a mutation, one of your legs is way shorter than the others. What happens to you? Are you likely to pass on your genes? No. You get eaten by wolves. Negative adaptations get filtered out of the populace through natural selection. Is this the first time you've heard of the concept? Maybe you should learn something about evolution before criticizing it. Just a thought.

stevevw said:
If a mechanism looks designed

Please provide an objective metric for determining whether something "looks designed".

stevevw said:
Evolution cannot explain the level of design we see in life.

...Okay, given that you don't seem to understand that natural selection weeds negative mutations out of the population, I really think you should stand back for a moment and be very careful about what you say Evolution "cannot explain". Maybe, just maybe, the multitude of evolutionary biologists who work in the field know more about it than you do?

Loudmouth · Feb 12, 2016

stevevw said:
No I think your ignoring all the adaptations that didn't happen.

No, I think you are. You are the one focusing on just a single adaptation, and then saying it shouldn't happen because the odds are against it.

If there are so many successful adaptations that have created all the life that has ever existed and exists now which would be millions and millions of small successful adaptations there would have to be 10 times as many unsuccessful adaptations that we would see evidence for all over the place. There would have to have been many sick and deformed features and creatures all over the place. But we dont, all we see is good working creatures who seem to be fine.

Why would there have to be sick and deformed creatures? Even in Behe's examples, the initial mutation is neutral.

Evolution cannot explain the level of design we see in life.

Evidence please.

stevevw · Feb 12, 2016

The Cadet said:
Let's say you're born into a deer herd and, due to a mutation, one of your legs is way shorter than the others. What happens to you? Are you likely to pass on your genes? No. You get eaten by wolves. Negative adaptations get filtered out of the populace through natural selection. Is this the first time you've heard of the concept? Maybe you should learn something about evolution before criticizing it. Just a thought.

No I understand natural selection. But a shorter leg is obvious plus this doesn't mean that a deer is going to turn into a bear or something. Plus under most circumstances the shorter leg is a deformity and deformities dont lead to more complex and fitter creatures. Most mutations are very slight and dont get selected and when mutations add up to a so called benefit its normally comes at a cost to fitness and therefore over the long run doesn't lead to better living things. Bacteria that become anti antibiotic resistant do it because they actually also lose some function and info that they already had not gain some. There is some evidence for limited evolution but not for what evolution claims. Evolution takes what is limited and makes it into something that has great creative power by assumption and without any evidence.

Please provide an objective metric for determining whether something "looks designed"

There are many papers on design. When it comes to design we have to determine what is designed from what may produce what seems designed through a random naturalistic process. Design has high levels of information ie (functionality, complexity and specificity). When information theorists speak about one set of "information", it is described as a systematic ordering and grouping of parts with "specified complexity" which is non-random, "aperiodic" (not repetitious) , and it performs a useful function (it is FCS Information). So its no good giving specific examples of design without a detailed explanation for it. So here are a couple of papers which will explain how design is calculated and works in life.

This paper will explain and show how all of life and existence has elements of engineering in it and that the information for this didn't come from a naturalistic process and was intentionally madeand that this is from a non material nature.
The Coherence Of An Engineered World
From the very large aspects of the universe (i.e. big bang cosmology and galactic and stellar evolution) to the very small aspects (i.e. the fitness of the chemical elements and the coding of DNA for life), the cosmos is so readily and profitably reverse-engineered by scientists and engineers as to make a compelling argument that it was engineered in the first place. The linking of extraordinarily complex, but stable functional structures with the production of value provides the strong impression of a calculating intentionality, which is able to operate in a transcendent fashion.
http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-ecology-and-the-environment/114/19279

Here is a paper showing design in a living things (specified functional complexity) which occurs throughout nature and how a natural process cannot explain or account for how this came about.
Evidence Of Design In Bird Feathers And Avian Respiration
http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/dne-volumes/4/2/399

...Okay, given that you don't seem to understand that natural selection weeds negative mutations out of the population, I really think you should stand back for a moment and be very careful about what you say Evolution "cannot explain". Maybe, just maybe, the multitude of evolutionary biologists who work in the field know more about it than you do?

I do understand how natural selection works. But I think you and others give it too much ability. It cannot account for a lot of what is seen in nature which seems to point to non adaptive processes for change. The info for life was already there and there are preset ways in which living things can adapt. Environments are not always the driving force for change and living things have more ability to change their environments. Mutations are limited and basically cause a loss of fitness overall so natural selection has little to choose from to account for the great complexity and variety we see in life. I have posted this info before.

stevevw · Feb 12, 2016

Loudmouth said:
No, I think you are. You are the one focusing on just a single adaptation, and then saying it shouldn't happen because the odds are against it.

No its the accumulated adaptions needed that require beneficial mutations that is the unbelievable part. To account for all of live that has ever lived and lives now that has been successful would require so many beneficial mutations that there wouldn't be enough time in all of existence. A successful adaptation for a simple function takes multiple mutations working together and this has been shown to be very unlikely. But this is just for s simple function which may be one tiny past of a complete feature. That complete feature is only one tiny past of a complete living thing. Without pre existing info this is impossible to create from random mutations. The evidence also shows that most mutations are slightly deleterious. Even beneficial mutations working together add up to a fitness cost. There is no evidence for the ability and power that evolution gives mutations and natural selection. It is based on a limited ability and given way more creative power than has been verified.
Negative epistasis between beneficial mutations in an evolving bacterial population.
Many studies have found that epistasis is widespread, but they have rarely considered beneficial mutations. We analyzed the effects of epistasis on fitness for the first five mutations to fix in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. These data support models in which negative epistasis contributes to declining rates of adaptation over time.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21636772

Why would there have to be sick and deformed creatures? Even in Behe's examples, the initial mutation is neutral.

on their own a small effect of a single nuclear-tide change isn't much no matter how it is added. But these small changes dont do anything towards evolutionary change on their own. But added together they still add up to a fitness cost whether they were beneficial or neutral. The accumulation of negative mutations has greater affect on anything and will be the dominating factor in the long run.
Robustness–epistasis link shapes the fitness landscape of a randomly drifting protein
These findings, supported by FoldX stability computations of the mutational effects6, prompt a new model in which the mutational robustness (or neutrality) observed in proteins, and other biological systems, is due primarily to a stability margin, or threshold, that buffers the deleterious physico-chemical effects of mutations on fitness. Threshold robustness is inherently epistatic—once the stability threshold is exhausted, the deleterious effects of mutations become fully pronounced, thereby making proteins far less robust than generally assumed.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7121/full/nature05385.html

Evidence please.

As you claim it doesn't wouldn't it be better for you to prove that then for me to prove a negative. Even if I did I am sure it would be shot down on those grounds.

stevevw · Feb 13, 2016

KCfromNC said:
And as several of us have shown, those sources don't seem to have the same reservations about evolution that you attribute to them. That's quite interesting.

If I use some support for supporters of evolution well of course they are still going to believe that evolution is correct. Often it is to what extent it is true. Most people including myself believe there is some evolution at work. Otherwise how do we account for the different dog breeds or the different beaks on Darwin's finches. But that does mean that those finches came from dinos or that the dogs are going to turn into rabbits or something. Supporters of evolution bring up valid points which dont make sense within the evolution debate. Some of these question the core beliefs of the theory. Sometimes this is the best evidence to use from the people who believe in the theory but begin to question some of it validity.

Of course you may home in on what agrees with your beliefs and then fob off any disagreement as just small detail that doesn't affect the theory itself. But as I have shown some do affect the central beliefs if true. I guess you could say the science isn't settled yet on some of the main aspects of evolution. Just as Darwin didn't know anything about genetics and now this is pulling down his tree of life he made many other new discoveries are doing the same.

You should buy yourself a lottery ticket, since those are few and far between. Wonder what that is, given your claim that the evidence and science supports creationism and all.

I havnt said anything about creationism and whether I support their beliefs. We are talking about design in life and that is a topic for many areas of study including the non religious areas of engineering and genetics. All of the evidence is based in the science.

If you really believe this, why are you posting links to published research?

Because it takes more than just posting something from a site and believing that its right without checking it with other sites. When several say the same thing you can be more confident. The ironic thing is some who complain about anything connected to religious sites that may have some scientific evidence will also believe anything a scientists says without checking it. So it works both ways. But anyone would think science sites are never wrong because they quote " are always seeking the truth and self correcting because thats what science does".

The huge majority of scientists are lying and you're the one who has figured out the truth? You know, there's a conspiracy theory subforum here.

You are polarizing the debate. There are many mainstream scientists who dont support the Darwinain version of things.

No. Your expert is saying something that's the exact opposite of what you claimed he did. That goes to either your understanding or credibility.

No he is questioning an aspect of the evolutionary process and that is why I posted it. Yes he may support evolution overall but that is not why I used that article. He questioned an important part of how cell can evolve into complexity when the evidence showed that the process didn't show that and tended towards conservation and even reduction in complexity.. Lynch states this in another of his papers to make it clear where what he is saying about this particular aspect. He believes that natural selection may not be the sole driving force for evolution or even play much of a role. That the evidence shows that non adaptive forces maybe more responsible.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
Michael Lynch
"What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8597.full

But I noticed you didn't mention the other expert underneath that link who also disagreed with Lynch about his assessment of Behe. Maybe you are the one who is being selective. At least I am willing to use supporters of evolution to point out the issues with some of the aspects of evolution.

But since most published research findings are wrong, who cares? Right?

Fair enough.

Hoghead1 · Feb 13, 2016

There is evidence, Stevewv, that finches may have evolved from dinosaurs, as the latter had feathers. That is well established. Next you talked abut a dog turning into a rabbit. How about a fox turning into a dog? The longitudinal Russian study has shown very promising results.

The Cadet · Feb 13, 2016

stevevw said:
Most mutations are very slight and dont get selected

It doesn't take much to have a reproductive advantage. CDK007 ran a simulation on this where even an extremely minor benefit led to a drastic shift in the population over time:

stevevw said:
when mutations add up to a so called benefit its normally comes at a cost to fitness and therefore over the long run doesn't lead to better living things

Yeah, this is just total nonsense. I'm sorry, but you offer no citation on this one, and it's a very bizarre claim to make.

stevevw said:
Design has high levels of information

As a former Comp-Sci student, I feel the need to point out that one of two things has happened here:
- you've picked a very poor term, as "information" already has formal definitions in mathematics and computer science
- you're essentially appealing to platonism

stevevw said:
functionality, complexity and specificity

Blah blah blah.

You cite various papers by WIT, but the fact remains that none of this has had any substantial impact within the scientific community. ID has not taken off; in fact, it's crashed and burned, to an almost absurd point. Even if these articles can be said to have passed the first round of peer review (which is questionable; WIT Press has been criticized for subverting the process), it hasn't made it into the scientific literature as a whole. How do I know this? According to Google Scholar, the former has been cited a whopping 11 times, most of which are articles talking not about science, but about religious faith, and the rest of which are from the "usual suspects" of intelligent design such as Luskin and Meyers. The latter has been cited... Never. Zero times. It hasn't ever been cited in a scientific paper. Given that this should be a fairly significant paper, you'd think it would get more attention. But no, apparently nobody considered it worth their time. Maybe because it's utter garbage?

This entire edifice of "specified complexity" has been put through the shredder more times than I can count. Dembski's ideas have been thoroughly repudiated within the scientific community. The reason it hasn't caught on is because it's nonsense.

And of course, nothing about this does anything to change the most basic problem: intelligent design is unfalsifiable, and therefore worthless.

stevevw · Feb 13, 2016

The Cadet said:
It doesn't take much to have a reproductive advantage. CDK007 ran a simulation on this where even an extremely minor benefit led to a drastic shift in the population over time:

I've seen this video and similar articles several times before. It all sounds good and makes sense on paper or in this case in a video. Something that sticks out is going to be recognized and eliminated. It also works for positive selection and not just elimination. Something with bright colors gains an reproductive attraction with its mate. It doesn't work out the way it is pictured in reality. Natural selection is limited and wont lead to one type of creature becoming another. Its fine for weeding out the weak maintaining the status qua. But it isn't going to those animals into a completely different one.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected. Major contributions of horizontal gene transfer and diverse selfish genetic elements to genome evolution undermine the Tree of Life concept. An adequate depiction of evolution requires the more complex concept of a network or ‘forest’ of life. There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non-adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2651812/

The idea that mutations and natural selection has been responsible for all of life being created from a single ancestor has not been verified by the science. Just because you have a nice video with an explanation doesn't mean that's the evidence in itself. Scientists can explain all sorts of things like in the quantum world but that doesn't mean that the description is also proving how it all happened. Darwin came up with a great idea but he didn't have access to all the info we have today. He couldn't have known about the genetic info we know about today. He speculated about animals gradually changing through evolution and it wasn't until 100 years after his idea that Bernard Kettlewell came along with the so called evidence for it with the peppered moth changing colors because of the industrial pollution in early England discoloring the tree the moth lived on.

But that still isn't evidence as creatures have the ability to change things like color in their genetics anyway.There is evidence that mutations and natural selection are limited and are not the major driving forces fro change as I have posted several times before. Tests show it is limited and bacteria are still bacteria even though they have an ability to change within their type. Breeders and cultivators have realized this with artificial selection. There are limits that cannot be crossed. When they are it brings a fitness cost as we see in crops and animals breeding that also inherit disease, sickness, or other consequences from playing around with the genetics.

“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA,

Yeah, this is just total nonsense. I'm sorry, but you offer no citation on this one, and it's a very bizarre claim to make.

So the papers I linked dont relate to this. Even beneficial mutations can add up to a fitness cost when added together. Gains in a bacteria function came at the cost of losing another function of what was already good. Most if not all mutations are slightly negative if not harmful and a cost to fitness in the long run. I have posted papers on this several times. To say that this is nonsense or a bizarre claim seems like you are ignoring them.

Diminishing returns epistasis among beneficial mutations decelerates adaptation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21636771
Negative Epistasis Between Beneficial Mutations in an Evolving Bacterial Population
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1193

Blah blah blah.

So as a comp sci student you disagree with fully qualified experts in the field.

You cite various papers by WIT, but the fact remains that none of this has had any substantial impact within the scientific community. ID has not taken off; in fact, it's crashed and burned, to an almost absurd point. Even if these articles can be said to have passed the first round of peer review (which is questionable; WIT Press has been criticized for subverting the process), it hasn't made it into the scientific literature as a whole. How do I know this? According to Google Scholar, the former has been cited a whopping 11 times, most of which are articles talking not about science, but about religious faith, and the rest of which are from the "usual suspects" of intelligent design such as Luskin and Meyers. The latter has been cited... Never. Zero times. It hasn't ever been cited in a scientific paper. Given that this should be a fairly significant paper, you'd think it would get more attention. But no, apparently nobody considered it worth their time. Maybe because it's utter garbage?

So attack the source rather than the content. Witpress are not associated with any religion. They primarily post engineering papers. But still I have posted papers from other mainstream sources which talk about similar things.

This entire edifice of "specified complexity" has been put through the shredder more times than I can count. Dembski's ideas have been thoroughly repudiated within the scientific community. The reason it hasn't caught on is because it's nonsense.

And Dembreski and others have come back and answered those criticisms. These papers and rebuttals go back a long way and much has been discovered since then. There are other papers which are similar and there are even mainstream articles which more or less agree with this. This area is growing all the time. You may not recognize it in the mainstream as design in life because you wont look for it. But like I said many papers in mainstream work is more or less talking along these lines. They just name it as something else without the evidence. If you notice mainstream science is acknowledging more design in nature but is claiming it is nature itself that is responsible for it with really explaining how that can be. So the acknowledgement of design is there its just a case of how it came about.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/jeffrey-shallit/

And of course, nothing about this does anything to change the most basic problem: intelligent design is unfalsifiable, and therefore worthless.

So attack the source rather than the content. You make a lot of assumptions and base your conclusions of logical fallacies. To assess that witpress is irrelevant based on your judgements that the scientific research is all false based on some mention of religion is ridiculous. It is known in the higher echelons of the scientific community that even the mere mention of religion and it sets off reactions of all sorts. Witpress is not associated with any religion and just because it includes some journals that delve into the design side of things doesn't make it irrelevant. They primarily post engineering papers and some of these include design in life concepts. But still I have posted papers from other mainstream sources which talk about similar things.

Some of those other papers talk about the genetic info for life having to have been around from a very early point in time to account for the complexity of early life. To early to have gradually evolved. Others talk about the variety and complexity of life being to great for evolution to have accounted for it. These papers are from mainstream sites and mainstream scientists. But it seems strange that you home in on anything you can to undermine what is being said. If you can cause some doubt about 1 source then maybe you can about the everything.

Here are a couple of the mainstream papers I was talking about which I think I have already posted. They speak about design in life but dont specifically go into ID or creationism. But they do bring up some challenging things about how life was preset and the instructions for all life was around very earlier on and seem to be something that is beyond a random naturalistic process.

This paper talks about the genetic info for all life was already around before the Cambrian explosion. The code for making all of life's structures can be switched on in some living things and lays dormant in others. So its not a case of everything being completely mutated into existence. The info is there ready to be used. This makes more sense in the light of the evidence we see today in that many creatures obtain genetic info from non adaptive driving sources like HGT, genomics, developmental biology and endosymbiosis.
Universal genome in the origin of metazoa: thoughts about evolution.
This model has two major predictions, first that a significant fraction of genetic information in lower taxons must be functionally useless but becomes useful in higher taxons, and second that one should be able to turn on in lower taxons some of the complex latent developmental programs, e.g., a program of eye development or antibody synthesis in sea urchin.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17660714
The following paper talks about the building blocks for life are preset and are a unique finely tuned set of 3D shapes that make up all life. The can be viewed as natural structures like the laws of physics.
The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law.
The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12419661
Heres a paper directly on design from a mainstream source for good measure.
The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662469/

The Cadet · Feb 14, 2016

I'm sorry steve, I'm going to have to bow out of this one. The responses are getting longer and longer, and I lack the expertise to really address the arguments. But a few things...

stevevw said:
bacteria are still bacteria

I'm not sure what you expect; this is like saying "Sure, that Ambulocetus evolved into a Whale, but animals are still animals!" Bacteria comprise most of the tree of life and have far more diversity than the entire kingdom of animalia.

stevevw said:
“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA,

I find it hard to believe that this quote is not taken out of context, because that would imply that Frank-Kamenetski doesn't know what gene duplication is or how it works, and that was a discovery made 27 years before he published this book.

stevevw said:
So as a comp sci student you disagree with fully qualified experts in the field.

In what universe does any expert in biology refer to specified functional complexity? When is it ever used outside the creationist literature? Dembski is not a qualified expert in evolutionary biology. He's a mathematician who makes his field look bad. This research is garbage. If it wasn't, it would have found some purchase in the target audience. Instead, it's been refuted and repudiated by essentially everyone in the field, and remains a fringe idea with virtually no backing.

stevevw said:
So attack the source rather than the content.

Imagine for a moment that the flat earth movement stumped up some real research cash, and spent a whole lot of time and effort producing complicated mathematical ideas and downright impenetrable research, and claimed on the basis of that that the earth was flat. Sure, they're wrong, and everyone in the scientific community knows they're wrong, but the research is so impenetrable and hard to understand that it essentially gets to win by virtue of verbosity.

That's kind of where I'm at with intelligent design. This research is nonsense. Say what you will about it passing peer review, but like most creationist papers, it goes absolutely nowhere, because nobody takes it seriously. This is why it's important to check how often an article is cited, particularly if it's published in a low-impact or obscure journal, particularly if it presents claims that are extraordinary. It can tell you whether or not the research is actually important. And these articles? Well, I'm sorry, not a single scientist in 7 years found the research in the wing design paper important enough to cite.

I lack the expertise to critique the papers on their merit. The good news is, the scientific community already has.

stevevw · Feb 14, 2016

The Cadet said:
I'm sorry steve, I'm going to have to bow out of this one. The responses are getting longer and longer, and I lack the expertise to really address the arguments. But a few things...

I'm not sure what you expect; this is like saying "Sure, that Ambulocetus evolved into a Whale, but animals are still animals!" Bacteria comprise most of the tree of life and have far more diversity than the entire kingdom of animalia.

I find it hard to believe that this quote is not taken out of context, because that would imply that Frank-Kamenetski doesn't know what gene duplication is or how it works, and that was a discovery made 27 years before he published this book.

In what universe does any expert in biology refer to specified functional complexity? When is it ever used outside the creationist literature? Dembski is not a qualified expert in evolutionary biology. He's a mathematician who makes his field look bad. This research is garbage. If it wasn't, it would have found some purchase in the target audience. Instead, it's been refuted and repudiated by essentially everyone in the field, and remains a fringe idea with virtually no backing.

Imagine for a moment that the flat earth movement stumped up some real research cash, and spent a whole lot of time and effort producing complicated mathematical ideas and downright impenetrable research, and claimed on the basis of that that the earth was flat. Sure, they're wrong, and everyone in the scientific community knows they're wrong, but the research is so impenetrable and hard to understand that it essentially gets to win by virtue of verbosity.

That's kind of where I'm at with intelligent design. This research is nonsense. Say what you will about it passing peer review, but like most creationist papers, it goes absolutely nowhere, because nobody takes it seriously. This is why it's important to check how often an article is cited, particularly if it's published in a low-impact or obscure journal, particularly if it presents claims that are extraordinary. It can tell you whether or not the research is actually important. And these articles? Well, I'm sorry, not a single scientist in 7 years found the research in the wing design paper important enough to cite.

I lack the expertise to critique the papers on their merit. The good news is, the scientific community already has.

I dont expect mainstream science to ever embrace ID or anything religious. Its going to be against their kind of views and so they are going to reject it even if it had something valid to say. But as I said their own side is slowly coming up with results that more or less step into the same area as design but they just call it something else. Eventually they will begin to find that there is design in life and that the consensus of opinion will slowly change.

So in the meantime what about the papers I have posted particularly at the end of the post that are from main stream sources by main stream scientists and have nothing to do with ID or creationism that speak about these things. Do they pass the test of acceptance for consideration.

stevevw · Feb 14, 2016

Hoghead1 said:
There is evidence, Stevewv, that finches may have evolved from dinosaurs, as the latter had feathers. That is well established. Next you talked abut a dog turning into a rabbit. How about a fox turning into a dog? The longitudinal Russian study has shown very promising results.

So let me ask you this. As a believer in God how do you think he created life. The thread is about where did the laws of nature come from. This is similar to where did the code of life come from. Did they come from some process that could self create itself as a world view states without a God. or did God have something to do with it. If God was the creator or as some may say the intelligent agent behind things then how do you think He did it.

Where did the laws of nature come from?

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