Evidence for macro-evolution

[Guy Threepwood]

Quoting from someone else is not a good reply to a pertinent statment. Your entire argument hinges on it relying on both your religious beliefs, and also an argument from incredlity on your part.

Simply saying that it couldn't have been the biological process of evolution via natural selection that led to the life forms we see today is not showing your argument to be true. All it does is show that you don't agree with the theory of evolution and the science behind it. That's it.

I just think Raup summed it up as well as I could, it's not about whether evolution happened, but how it happened.

If a gambler plays 4 royal flushes in a row on a particular night, yes the probability of that event is apparently 1

The question remains; was it by chance, or did he cheat?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I just think Raup summed it up as well as I could, it's not about whether evolution happened, but how it happened.

If a gambler plays 4 royal flushes in a row on a particular night, yes the probability of that event is apparently 1

The question remains; was it by chance, or did he cheat?

Your analogy really falls flat since you can prove if a person cheated or not in poker. You cannot prove non-natural or supernatural causes had a hand in the evolution of life on earth since, by their very natura, the non-natural and supernatural do not leave evidence.

All we're stuck with for evolution is the natural evidence, and the natural evidence shows that evolution happened as per the theory of evolution.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It's a very pseudoscientific answer for sure.

Fred Hoyle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

[Hoyle] found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience, resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and can't be described in scientific terms"

Again the dismissive label doesn't tell us whether something is actually true or false, if anything 'pseudoscience' has a pretty good record in this area!

And if you want truth, here's truth: we have evidence that evolution occured, and we also have evidence that evolution occured through natural means, and we have no evidence that non-natural causes were behind it. Those are the scientific facts.

That's a statement of your belief rather than substantive evidence for it, and that's fine. It's exactly what I believed for most of my life, so I don't label it 'pseudoscience'

I think Darwinism is a very elegant, intuitive, satisfying explanation. But so was classical physics, the devil is in the details.

Anyway I must run for now if I don't answer today, but I appreciate the civil & thoughtful debate.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Fred Hoyle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

[Hoyle] found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience, resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and can't be described in scientific terms"

Again the dismissive label doesn't tell us whether something is actually true or false, if anything 'pseudoscience' has a pretty good record in this area!



That's a statement of your belief rather than substantive evidence for it, and that's fine. It's exactly what I believed for most of my life, so I don't label it 'pseudoscience'

I think Darwinism is a very elegant, intuitive, satisfying explanation. But so was classical physics, the devil is in the details.

Anyway I must run for now if I don't answer today, but I appreciate the civil & thoughtful debate.

Quoting other people shows nothing except that you can quote them. It does nothing to show anything you say to be right or wrong.

All you've done is how your own personal incredulity on the matter and try and say that is it.

 

[sesquiterpene]

In a sense it's not complicated. DNA represents digital information which requires precise sequences to describe biological form and function.

So we can objectively calculate the mathematical odds of particular genetic sequences arising by chance, in the same way we can calculate the odds of a chimp accidentally typing War & Peace, and it's not good. It's how we might discern for example, in a purely hypothetical case of course, that sequences in a certain virus were most likely written in through intelligent design in a lab, and not by accidental mutation in the wild.

By some calculations, if you multiplied the number of nanoseconds the universe has existed, by the number of elementary particles that constitute the universe, you don't have enough time and space, for enough singular events of any kind, to match the number of random tries it would take to create just one modest length new protein.

Still no calculations on your part. All I see is some furious hand-waving.

 

[Gene2memE]

Dawkins acknowledges the possibility that DNA was engineered by an alien civilization within our universe, and that this might overcome some of the problems with it's naturalistic origin. Is this an inherently religious/theological position?

No.

i.e. invoking creative input, is not necessarily a religious or theistic position, again depending on what subjective definitions we might have for 'religious' or 'scientific'

If it's the quote I'm thinking you're referring to, Dawkins was speaking in reference to a hypothetical posed to him about the origin of life on earth.

This hypothetical dealt with a variation of panspermia, known as directed panspermia. This proposes that life on earth is the result of the seeding of either macro-molecules or basic self-replicators.

Dawkins was being intellectually honest in that it's a POSSIBILITY that directed panspermia produced life of earth (or kick started the process that ended up producting earthly DNA). But, he wasn't proposing it as a solution to OoL research.

I think we can do away with either label and just ask what is least improbable- whatever the implications on either world view.

'I don't care if it's science or not science, I care if it's true or not true': Stephen Meyer, philosopher of science

I don't think Meyer is an honest interlocutor. I don't think Meyer really care's a whit about whether something is true.

He's been caught mischaracterising, misquoting and flat-out lying repeatedly. This it's very hard to credit anything he says as true.

Stephen Meyer's Bogus Information Theory

A couple of months ago, I finished a first reading of Stephen Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell . It was very slow going because ther...

recursed.blogspot.com

Meyer's Hopeless Monster

pandasthumb.org

Meyer's Hopeless Monster, Part II

pandasthumb.org

Meyer’s Mistake | The Skeptical Zone

 

[Yttrium]

I just think Raup summed it up as well as I could, it's not about whether evolution happened, but how it happened.

If a gambler plays 4 royal flushes in a row on a particular night, yes the probability of that event is apparently 1

The question remains; was it by chance, or did he cheat?

The probability of getting 4 royal flushes is certainly not 1. It's absurdly low.

But you're using a false analogy. With evolution, you'll come up with something. It doesn't matter what, as long as it can survive the conditions. If you draw a hand of cards, the particular combination of cards you drew is quite improbable. But you were guaranteed to come up with some combination. The probability of getting a hand with some combination is 1.

 

[sfs]

In a sense it's not complicated. DNA represents digital information which requires precise sequences to describe biological form and function.

I agree with @Warden_of_the_Storm that this is incorrect. (And yes, what you quoted Dawkins as saying is wrong.) DNA is not pure digital information. For example, protein-coding genes have a digital signal that tells the cell's machinery to stop, ending the protein. So far, completely digital. Sometimes, however, the machinery makes a mistake and keeps translating past the stop signal, generating a longer protein, something for which there is no digital signal. For some genes, the longer readthrough protein and the shorter protein are both functionally important and the organism needs both. That process is not digitally encoded -- its fundamentally stochastic.

That's a pretty small error, however. A bigger problem is with your statement is that DNA requires 'precise sequences' to function. In reality, a single protein (i.e. a specific sequence of amino acids) can be coded for in an immense number of ways, thanks to the redundancy of the genetic code, and the number of similar proteins that perform exactly the same function with a somewhat different string of amino acids is much larger still. And that's sticking with what is essentially the same protein. Now add in all of the unrelated proteins that could perform the same function with completely different amino acid sequences and you'll have a combinatorial explosion of possible sequences doing the same thing.

So it's already clear that you don't understand what it is that you were supposed to (and didn't) calculate. Your biggest misunderstanding is still to come, however...

So we can objectively calculate the mathematical odds of particular genetic sequences arising by chance

Here's your real problem: you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution does. Why would you calculate the odds of a particular sequence occurring by chance? Evolution isn't aiming at a particular sequence; it's not aiming for anything. What you have to do is calculate the probability that any possible mutation in a species (given the wide range of genetic variation already present) will produce any beneficial effect for the organism. That's in a different universe of probability than what you're talking about and it's what you have to calculate to support your original claim.

It's how we might discern for example, in a purely hypothetical case of course, that sequences in a certain virus were most likely written in through intelligent design in a lab, and not by accidental mutation in the wild.

But that's not something that we(*) can discern. What we can do is (a) look for distinctive markers that are produced by some known methods of manipulating viral genomes, and (b) look at related viruses to see whether similar sequences frequently evolve by chance in this kind of virus.

(*) Speaking as a geneticist who actually studies viral evolution for a living.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Your analogy really falls flat since you can prove if a person cheated or not in poker.

Not necessarily, just based on the event itself and the calculable odds, you know that it is not entirely impossible that he got extremely lucky.
But that does not make it the least improbable explanation.

You can only conclude chance if you can utterly rule out cheating to an impossible degree. We can't do that for creative input in biology either.

You cannot prove non-natural or supernatural causes had a hand in the evolution of life on earth since, by their very natura, the non-natural and supernatural do not leave evidence.

All we're stuck with for evolution is the natural evidence, and the natural evidence shows that evolution happened as per the theory of evolution.

Creative intelligence leaves fingerprints quite distinct from natural forces, which are objectively and scientifically verifiable:

Just ask a forensic scientist, or an archeologist, or an insurance fraud investigator.

If you find the Rosetta stone, and conclude it wasn't created by natural forces, is that a supernatural argument?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The probability of getting 4 royal flushes is certainly not 1. It's absurdly low.

But you're using a false analogy. With evolution, you'll come up with something. It doesn't matter what, as long as it can survive the conditions. If you draw a hand of cards, the particular combination of cards you drew is quite improbable. But you were guaranteed to come up with some combination. The probability of getting a hand with some combination is 1.

It brings up a good point.

It is true; the odds of being dealt 4 royal flushes in a row, are no more improbable than any other sequence of 20 cards, right?

They are all highly improbable to the same degree, so any result has to be equally improbable.

So if you work in the fraud dept at the casino, does this argument work? There is no need to suspect cheating because 4 royal flushes in a row are just as likely as anything else?

i.e. the reason that we know beyond reasonable doubt, that cheating happened, is not because of the long odds of random chance, but that the odds that something other than chance was involved, are far shorter- even if still highly improbable. Same principle applies to 'lucky' sequences of cards being spontaneously 'dealt' into DNA. Chance is not impossible, but that does not equate to least improbable.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Creative intelligence leaves fingerprints quite distinct from natural forces, which are objectively and scientifically verifiable:

Just ask a forensic scientist, or an archeologist, or an insurance fraud investigator.

If you find the Rosetta stone, and conclude it wasn't created by natural forces, is that a supernatural argument?

Show us one then. One that is not from any of the animals that humans have specifically bred to be as they are now. Show us on of these 'fingeprintts from Creative intelligence'.

 

[Yttrium]

It brings up a good point.

It is true; the odds of being dealt 4 royal flushes in a row, are no more improbable than any other sequence of 20 cards, right?

They're extremely improbable. You're missing the point.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I agree with @Warden_of_the_Storm that this is incorrect. (And yes, what you quoted Dawkins as saying is wrong.)

just to be clear, it was his quote- also writing "The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal."

DNA is not pure digital information. For example, protein-coding genes have a digital signal that tells the cell's machinery to stop, ending the protein. So far, completely digital.

yes, just like memory buffers in computer code, that information is digital.

Sometimes, however, the machinery makes a mistake

absolutely, the machinery, or medium that carries the digital information, is distinct from the information itself, and of course can corrupt the digital information

just as an old mechanical hard drive can wear out and begin to make mistakes

That's a pretty small error, however.

I do take your point, it would be more precise for Dawkins to say that the information stored in DNA is purely digital-
but I believe that was his intent.

A bigger problem is with your statement is that DNA requires 'precise sequences' to function. In reality, a single protein (i.e. a specific sequence of amino acids) can be coded for in an immense number of ways, thanks to the redundancy of the genetic code, and the number of similar proteins that perform exactly the same function with a somewhat different string of amino acids is much larger still. And that's sticking with what is essentially the same protein. Now add in all of the unrelated proteins that could perform the same function with completely different amino acid sequences and you'll have a combinatorial explosion of possible sequences doing the same thing.

What you're describing also conforms to Dawkins observation that 'The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like'.

The reason there is redundancy, is because there are only 4 nucleotides to describe 22 amino acids. This is done by grouping the nucleotides into groups of three called codons giving you 4x4x4 combinations.

Computer characters were encoded with a similar system, called ASCII, using 8 bits (I think 16 now) to describe each character. Also Unicode to give a much larger set of symbols

And yes, redundancy is possible since there are more combinations than things to describe

Duplicate characters in Unicode - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Unicode has a certain amount of duplication of characters. These are pairs of single Unicode code points that are canonically equivalent.

I take your point that on one hand, this would seem to allow more room for error, though in the larger context this is negligible (redundancy in Unicode doesn't really help a chimp to write war and peace accidentally)

But it does presents a very prominent problem regarding the addition of new volumes of genetic information as we talked about earlier in this thread.

Because yes, if you merely mutate a nucleotide, a point mutation, you have some chance that the codon will still read as it did.

But if you ADD a new nucleotide, aka an insertion mutation, this now throws off the frame reference for each proceeding codon,
which is why such insertion mutations are called nonsense mutations. They essentially scramble everything that follows. It's actually one of they key hurdles in macroevolution v microevolution-
adding something new rather than merely degrading what you have

Here's your real problem: you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution does. Why would you calculate the odds of a particular sequence occurring by chance? Evolution isn't aiming at a particular sequence; it's not aiming for anything. What you have to do is calculate the probability that any possible mutation in a species (given the wide range of genetic variation already present) will produce any beneficial effect for the organism.

Well no, that's a fundamental and very common misunderstanding about evolution, which we covered earlier in the thread, don't want to make this post too long, but in short:

There are many mutations that are entirely probable through random replication errors, whereby functionality of a protein is destroyed, providing a benefit. And this is generally what we see in micro-evolution.

e.g. A bear losing it's ability to produce pigment in it's fur, may certainly provide a benefit, in a niche environment at least.

But you see the problem; you cannot 'macro-evolve' a bacteria to a human being by merely breaking things in the bacteria..

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Show us one then. One that is not from any of the animals that humans have specifically bred to be as they are now. Show us on of these 'fingeprintts from Creative intelligence'.

You are looking at one right now.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

But you see the problem; you cannot 'macro-evolve' a bacteria to a human being by merely breaking things in the bacteria..

And yet, the evidence shows otherwise. We have evidence of simpler lifeforms and evidence of more complex lifeforms too, and we have evidence of evolution occuring, both in the fossil record and in extant species.

Therefor, by using simple logical deduction, we can conclude that evolution happened.

The onus is on you to show evidence for something other than evolution creating the extinct and extant lifeforms we have now.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

They're extremely improbable. You're missing the point.

Yes, cheating and chance are both improbable

point being; no matter how good your casino security is, cheating is less improbable than chance.

And that's with a security system actively trying to prevent such a thing. We know of no cosmological security force trying to prevent any dabbling with DNA. Apparently it's tricky enough to prevent here on Earth...

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

You are looking at one right now.

No, I'm not. Because a computer screen and computer code is not the same as biological evolution.

Honestly... no, I won't say what I was going to say since it would be against forum rules and be considered flaming.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

And yet, the evidence shows otherwise. We have evidence of simpler lifeforms and evidence of more complex lifeforms too, and we have evidence of evolution occuring, both in the fossil record and in extant species.

Therefor, by using simple logical deduction, we can conclude that evolution happened.

The onus is on you to show evidence for something other than evolution creating the extinct and extant lifeforms we have now.

Evolution if defined as merely change over time as David Raup put it, by which definition, you, I and Genesis all agree.

The bigger question is, how the change occurred.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No, I'm not. Because a computer screen and computer code is not the same as biological evolution.

Honestly... no, I won't say what I was going to say since it would be against forum rules and be considered flaming.

I have nothing against flamers, I think we're all very open here.

hierarchical digital information system,

Am I talking about your computer or DNA?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Evolution if defined as merely change over time as David Raup put it, by which definition, you, I and Genesis all agree.

The bigger question is, how the change occurred.

The how has been answered: evolution through natural selection.