Evolution and the myth of "scientific consensus"

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bhsmte

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evolution is a concept, not a theory.
darwinism and others are the theories that attempt to explain this concept.
god is also a concept, and so far has eluded any type of theory to explain it.

when you start looking at the complexities of the biological cell, you get the distinct feeling that this thing was designed.
i would assume that a great many scientists also get this impression.
so why don't they just say so?
the answer to that is simple, take a good look at some of the threads here.
you either take the evolution route or you are berated, ostracized, and accused of being a bible thumping god believing creationist.

so help me, and beat me with a hammer for saying it, i'm beginning to believe that evolution will not be solved until you take intelligence into the equation.
the recent discovery of epigenetics combined with the placebo effect has prompted me to say that.
living organisms apparently have some kind of "will" to change what they are.
this is a scientific fact and it cannot be dismissed.

Maybe these scientists don't just say so because;

They can find no evidence of design

There is no scientific definition of design

There is not test to determine design is present, that is falsifiable

Maybe their understanding of evolution is such, that they believe the most likely answer, are the mechanisms of evolution.
 
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bhsmte

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I asked for a citation. You provided an analogy. That is not a citation. That you never reach the goalposts is not because they are moving. ^_^

Behe has his own broad definition of a scientific theory, that also fits astrology and he is an ID dude. Maybe ID folks, just like really broad definitions, so everything they like can be fit in and this would include analogies as qualifying as citations.
 
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Davian

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We can explain what we see in nature by intelligently designed mathematics we have designed to explain that design we see in nature, indicating beyond any mere comparison that it too must be designed.

We do not use random mathematical operators to arrive at the end results, but numbers and formula in an exact mathematically designed sequence in an attempt to mimic what we observe in nature. A sequence that if randomly changed in any way - leads always to results not consistent with observations.
I do not dispute that what we perceive as design may arise from the underlying physics and chemistry of thing; the burden lies with you to demonstrate this supposed "intelligence" that you allege to be responsible for that. You have failed to do so.
 
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Oncedeceived

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Here's a quite useful model for how the flagellum could have evolved:

First let me say Cadet that I do appreciate you presenting evidence for one molecular system and showing scientific explanation rather than making clear assertions and ad hominem attacks or mocking in response to my posts. Thank you.

The video begins by misrepresenting what ID is all about which is never good, making strawman positions so you can shoot them down easily.


Each step introduces or takes away one protein or set of ancestral proteins already known to the bacterium, and each step has a clear advantage for the organism. It's not proven, but it does show a clear way the flagellum could have evolved, step by step. Which is where this sort of falls apart:

There is no reason for claiming these ancestral proteins and systems explain how something else evolved when those have not been explained themselves. It only pushes back the need to explain them and how they arose. It also makes assumptions about common ancestral elements when the only reason for doing so is that scientists who discovered the similarity between the export apparatus and F1-F0 ATP synthase speculated that the two motors must share a common evolutionary origin. The sole basis for this speculation is the structural and mechanistic similarity of the motors. If not for this similarity, there would be no reason to think that the export apparatus and the F1-F0 ATP synthase evolved from a common ancestral protein complex. We know from human design that designers use the same type of structures and mechanisms in different designs.

Which is all well and good when you consider it in one direction (system designed -> system has methods that resemble those by human engineers), but doesn't work at all when you necessarily consider the other direction (system has methods that resemble those by human engineers -> system designed).

It is interesting that you said that considering that a new branch in Science is doing just that. scientists in this new area of Systems Biology exploring systems by reverse engineering. Rather than looking at life systems from the bottom-up they are now looking at them from top down and being very successful. Engineering itself implies design and reverse engineering reinforces the design significance in life forms.
Systems Biology: The Role of Engineering in the Reverse Engineering of Biological Signaling
Pablo A. Iglesias
Author information ► Article notes ► Copyright and License information ►
Go to:

Abstract
One of the principle tasks of systems biology has been the reverse engineering of signaling networks. Because of the striking similarities to engineering systems, a number of analysis and design tools from engineering disciplines have been used in this process. This review looks at several examples including the analysis of homeostasis using control theory, the attenuation of noise using signal processing, statistical inference and the use of information theory to understand both binary decision systems and the response of eukaryotic chemotactic cells.

Keywords: control engineering, information theory, signal processing, statistical inference, homeostasis
Go to:
1. Introduction
Though no two researchers are likely to agree on a definition of systems biology, there is no doubt that an important aspect is the way that it integrates research from an array of disciplines by combining novel experimental and computational tools. The various engineering disciplines have contributed many tools that facilitate experimentation, computation and data processing. Equally important is the role that our understanding of the engineering design process can have in deciphering biological systems. Issues such as modularity, robustness, optimality, tradeoffs, and physical constraints are dealt with every day in engineering design, and a large number of theoretical tools have been developed to facilitate this process. In studying biology, it is important to understand that these tradeoffs and constraints also arise and hence must be dealt with [1,2].
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972675/

See, the issue here is falsification. How would we tell that any given complex system was not designed? I'd posit it's trivially possible for a system put together with no intelligence behind it to resemble a human invention. Case in point: the above model of the flagellum. There's no intelligence necessary for that model to be correct. Even if the flagellum didn't actually evolve like that, the fact that it could have and you see it as an example of this shows that there's a clear problem.[/Quote]
You are making the claim that ID can't be falsified but you are pointing out in doing so that evolution can't be. If we can hypothesize any ol' pathway that "could have happened" evolution can be said to be able to do anything. You admit that the BF is put together in such a way as to resemble human invention. (although you denied this earlier) You claim that intelligence was not necessary for the BF without providing evidence that evolution alone could produce it, but instead provide a speculative explanation that uses subsystems that require as much explanation as does the BF but that is left as a given.

Signaling mechanisms are ostensibly useful for biological systems. It makes perfect sense that they would be present even with no design as they offer a distinct survival advantage.
General speculation.

Back-up systems are often a result of the bottom-up approach, as we see beautifully in bacterial chemotaxis. Again, nothing here necessarily separates a designed system from a non-designed system, because according to the evidence we have, systems like these did come about naturally, with no design involved, and while we cannot turn the clock back and observe their evolution in action, we can easily model hypothetical pathways by which they could have evolved. This shows that they need not be designed, which poses a serious problem for your criteria. Again, it comes down to you asserting design, not demonstrating it.

System Biology is actually looking at this top-down and having great success. Evolution alone has not shown that these back up systems came about without design. It is hardly practical to claim that evolution can do it but have no evidence to show it and then claim that design (which shows in its very existence) is only an assertion. Pot Kettle Black.

The bacterial flagellum looks like a well-designed helicopter rotor to you and probably quite a few others. And yet, piece by piece, natural processes could have formed it. How do we distinguish this?
Yes, it looks like a well-designed helicopter rotor and few would disagree. Piece by piece and step by step are all hypothetical and speculation and fail to explain how subsystems evolved to make up the BF.

You mean like Richard Dawkins, who is quoted as saying:



[...]
what? I don't see Dawkins quote.

...Which means earlier in the thread you were clearly misquoting him.
I took the quote directly from his book.

It is intuitive to believe that complex biological systems were designed. Just like it is intuitive to believe that euclidean geometry is correct, that our memories are always accurate, and that single particles cannot act as waves. At least three of those completely intuitive assertions are totally wrong. The fourth? Well, unless you can provide strong evidence, beyond "it looks like a human design, ergo it is designed"... I'm sorry, but there's just nowhere to go with this argument. We're stuck. Without showing either a clear hallmark of design with no known naturalistic mechanism for something arising, or showing us the designer, there's no way to reasonably assert design.

Science has been wrong as well many times. Claiming that evolution did it when using speculation and subsystems (that lack evolutionary explanation as well) means that evolution is unfalsifiable and does nothing to eliminate design.
 
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Oncedeceived

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That is your assertion. Now, show it to be the case.
It is your assertion that material mechanisms that are devoid of intelligence and design produced your intelligence. Intelligence that is not inherent in a mindless process. Then you claim I am making an assertion...:)
 
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Oncedeceived

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Successfully tested, falsifiable theories supported by objective evidence. Is this news to you?
So what successfully tested, falsifiable part of the theory supported by objective evidence provides that the appearance of design is an illusion?

No wait, the fact that life forms appear to have been designed for a purpose has been successfully tested and is objective evidence in accordance to the function and structure of biological systems.
 
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Justatruthseeker

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Please review my previous post, I had to edit it due to a problem with the begin and ending quotes. It is now fixed. Please comment on that post. I am not disagreeing with anything but your terminology. UNDERSTAND?

But it is the terminology that is incorrect. Species are not observed to evolve into other species through mutation. Species are observed to remain the same species, while breeds or infraspecific taxa within the species vary. Scientific consensus agrees that dogs and cats are merely different breeds of the same species. They then refuse to apply this to the fossil record, instead labeling everything as different species. The evidence is overwhelming, and the evidence does not support evolution through mutation in the slightest. It supports breed mating with breed producing new breeds within the species through recombination of genes and recessive and dominant traits.

My terminology is common in scientific circles that deal with plant and animal husbandry. In the relevant fields being discussed, breeds is the correct terminology. These are the scientists that deal with variation within groups in actual reproduction, and they choose not to use your wanted terminology because it implies actions and processes not observed.

These are the fields that had a virtual unlimited budget in mutational research in every single country, all of which have abandoned mutational research as a viable form of producing new genes. I will have to accept the terminology of those who work in the actual field of reproduction whether you agree with it or not. That you disagree just shows you do not fully understand why they have chosen to use the terminology they do. Because they understand how reproduction works, and understand variation only happens between breeds within the same species.

Infraspecific taxa you refuse for some reason to consider, even if the science you claim supports you told you that local conditions causing variation merely makes an animal Infraspecific taxa of the parent species. Instead evolutionists want to argue that finches that interbreed and produce fertile offspring are separate species, refusing to correct their incorrect terminology. I agree incorrect terminology is being used, by the supporters of evolution!
 
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Davian

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Simply not true. The claim was the appearance of design in life forms is an illusion. Did you forget?
lol. You are so desperate for the burden to be on someone else, you missed that the claim of "illusion" does not require support; that some see "design" in [whatever] is not in dispute.
So what successfully tested, falsifiable part of the theory supported by objective evidence provides that the appearance of design is an illusion?
I am not claiming that the appearance of design is only appearance in nature. The burden is on those that claim it is more than illusion. That would be you. But you don't ever meet that burden, do you?
No wait, the fact that life forms appear to have been designed for a purpose has been successfully tested and is objective evidence in accordance to the function and structure of biological systems.
Tell us how you objectively measure and test for "appearance" of design. What units of measurement do you use?
 
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The Cadet

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First let me say Cadet that I do appreciate you presenting evidence for one molecular system and showing scientific explanation rather than making clear assertions and ad hominem attacks or mocking in response to my posts. Thank you.

The video begins by misrepresenting what ID is all about which is never good, making strawman positions so you can shoot them down easily.

Not really. The argument has "evolved", but at the time it pretty much was as simple as "The flagellum could not possibly have evolved, therefore it required an intelligent designer". Which was proven completely wrong. That wasn't the full extent of ID, obviously, but it was the full extent of its discussion of the flagellum to my knowledge.

There is no reason for claiming these ancestral proteins and systems explain how something else evolved when those have not been explained themselves.

Do we know the mass of Pluto? No. Do we have to know that to reasonably conclude that Newton's laws of gravitation apply to it the same way they do to everything else? No. Would we be justified in claiming that it is just as reasonable to believe that Pluto's mass is the same as a cement cinder block, and that G is just somehow stronger for it? No. Would we be justified in claiming that it's just as reasonable to believe that Pluto's mass is the same as a cement cinder block, and that some as of yet unknown supernatural entity is constantly correcting its orbit? I'll leave this one up to the reader as an exercise.

Look, in nature, what we see is, from top to bottom, systems that only make sense in the light of evolution. We see a pattern of genetic, morphological, and embryological descent all forming a coherent, cohesive nested hierarchy (

It only pushes back the need to explain them and how they arose. It also makes assumptions about common ancestral elements when the only reason for doing so is that scientists who discovered the similarity between the export apparatus and F1-F0 ATP synthase speculated that the two motors must share a common evolutionary origin. The sole basis for this speculation is the structural and mechanistic similarity of the motors.

Actually, it's that they're structurally the same proteins, produced by the same genes. This is a sure-fire sign of descent with modification - the modification of existing proteins used elsewhere in the organism. There's not a step here that could not be accomplished via evolution, and that is the point.

If not for this similarity, there would be no reason to think that the export apparatus and the F1-F0 ATP synthase evolved from a common ancestral protein complex. We know from human design that designers use the same type of structures and mechanisms in different designs.

You really need to go read my latest thread on how we detect design, and maybe read some Dawkins.

It is interesting that you said that considering that a new branch in Science is doing just that. scientists in this new area of Systems Biology exploring systems by reverse engineering. Rather than looking at life systems from the bottom-up they are now looking at them from top down and being very successful. Engineering itself implies design and reverse engineering reinforces the design significance in life forms.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Biological Systems is trying to do. Yeah, there's engineering involved - they're trying to manipulate the organisms to produce specific results! This does not somehow go on to demonstrate that all previous changes, or even all changes of a similar nature were engineered! I wonder - how many of the people writing these paper deny common descent? I can tell you right now that this guy doesn't:

Systems Biology: The Role of Engineering in the Reverse Engineering of Biological Signaling
Pablo A. Iglesias

Here's another paper by Iglesias: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25346418

These people don't reject common descent or descent with modification. They, like members of every other field of biology, use it as a model and a tool on a constant basis.

You are making the claim that ID can't be falsified but you are pointing out in doing so that evolution can't be. If we can hypothesize any ol' pathway that "could have happened" evolution can be said to be able to do anything.

And now, a short list of falsification criteria for evolution:
  • a complex biological system for which no useful intermediate or homologous genetic structure can be found
  • A creature showing atavisms that were not useful for any previous ancestor, for example a fish with unused mammary glands.
  • Fossil bunnies in the Cambrian
  • A crocoduck
  • A pegasus
  • A tit with [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]
  • A lack of convergence between genotype and phenotype
And so on, and so forth. There are a lot of situations that could falsify the theory! It makes a lot of predictions, and like any theory that makes predictions, if those predictions turn out wrong, it shows the theory to be wrong in some aspect.


You admit that the BF is put together in such a way as to resemble human invention.

I honestly don't care if I thought it was, it does nothing to further the argument of design, as we do not determine design simply by looking at it. For what it's worth, human inventions do not typically use proteins homologous to the structure to design microscopic machines. They also typically don't very nicely into a nested hierarchy.

You claim that intelligence was not necessary for the BF without providing evidence that evolution alone could produce it

That is the entire purpose of that model - showing how, through intermediate steps and random mutations, this could have happened. That's the model is there for. Its sheer existence shows that the bacterial flagellum could have evolved. No step requires anything natural processes couldn't craft. Whether the model is correct is another question entirely, but one that doesn't matter for the sake of this argument. What the model does is ground the discussion firmly in the natural, making it clear that there was no need to invoke the supernatural.

what? I don't see Dawkins quote.

The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings and wagon-wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes, and solar systems). Mount Rushmore belonged firmly in the second category until the sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved it into the first. Charles Darwin moved in the other direction. He discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics — the laws according to which things “just happen” — could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion. To such people, if a heart (or an eye or a bacterial flagellum) looks designed, that’s proof enough that it is designed.​

I took the quote directly from his book.

And in doing so, you ignored both the context and the author's actual position.
 
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Oncedeceived

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lol. You are so desperate for the burden to be on someone else, you missed that the claim of "illusion" does not require support; that some see "design" in [whatever] is not in dispute.
Richard Dawkins makes a positive claim...the appearance of design in living things is an illusion. I don't understand why you feel that the claim of illusion does not require support. The claim of illusion is stating that the design we see in living forms is a wrong impression, is a false belief or deceptive. The appearance as you have admitted is not in dispute, therefore it is Richard Dawkin's positive claim which has the burden. If you and others agree, it is upon you to show that this appearance is in some way false, deceptive or a wrong impression.
I am not claiming that the appearance of design is only appearance in nature. The burden is on those that claim it is more than illusion. That would be you. But you don't ever meet that burden, do you?
The appearance is there as all admit, so that means that it shows design if one wishes to claim that the appearance is wrong it is incumbent upon them to support that claim.
Tell us how you objectively measure and test for "appearance" of design. What units of measurement do you use?
I told you that we understand when we see human design. We from experience, see how humans design and can make predictions on what we should see in biological life forms if intelligent design has produced them. See my earlier post. Here are some predictions that ID makes.

1. We should see natural structures that exhibit specified complex patterns that produce a specified function.
2. We should see biological systems and forms suddenly appear in the fossil record without similar precursors.
3. We should see systems and features and functions re-used in different and unrelated organisms.
4. We should see efficient and optimal features that show planning (back up safety features) and purpose of function.
5. Systems should be reverse engineered to determine from the function back to how that goal was met.
 
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Davian

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Richard Dawkins makes a positive claim...the appearance of design in living things is an illusion. I don't understand why you feel that the claim of illusion does not require support. The claim of illusion is stating that the design we see in living forms is a wrong impression, is a false belief or deceptive. The appearance as you have admitted is not in dispute, therefore it is Richard Dawkin's positive claim which has the burden. If you and others agree, it is upon you to show that this appearance is in some way false, deceptive or a wrong impression.

The appearance is there as all admit, so that means that it shows design if one wishes to claim that the appearance is wrong it is incumbent upon them to support that claim.
No, he is not making a positive claim, he is being descriptive - he is doing science. He is saying that we do not observe evidence for actual design, and by this it means that what we perceive is an illusion - unless someone can prove otherwise.

You are asking him to prove a negative, to prove that something isn't there. That would not be intellectually honest, would it?
I told you that we understand when we see human design. We from experience, see how humans design and can make predictions on what we should see in biological life forms if intelligent design has produced them. See my earlier post. Here are some predictions that ID makes.

1. We should see natural structures that exhibit specified complex patterns that produce a specified function.
2. We should see biological systems and forms suddenly appear in the fossil record without similar precursors.
3. We should see systems and features and functions re-used in different and unrelated organisms.
4. We should see efficient and optimal features that show planning (back up safety features) and purpose of function.
5. Systems should be reverse engineered to determine from the function back to how that goal was met.
Do you have anything testable, falsifiable, that is not also evidence for natural processes?
 
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