Why can't anyone see this, its like a great delusion.

[bhsmte]

ID proponents recognized that with the advances in molecular biology, science alone can soundly make the case that life was designed. Do you really want to stand on a political decision to determine your science? If the judge in the Dover case declared Boyle's law was not science, would you accept his verdict? You accept the word of a politically appointed judge over the facts of science. That's telling.

Notice I'm making my argument based on the facts, on science. You appeal to authority, politics and slanted journalism, not to science.

Speaking of science, how can evolution add new proteins, Speedwell? Thousands of genes have to be added to get from a simple organism to Man. Let's ignore the meandering and misdirection that any random process would do and consider an optimal case.

Let's start with something like S. cerevisiae, which I mentioned earlier, with its less than 7000 genes. To get to man, with our more than 20,000 genes, you have to add more than 13,000 genes. How long did that take? Let's allow four billion years, very generous. Even if evolution went straight from there to here, that's less than 308,000 years per gene.

Can you come up with a path to add the information for a gene in only 308,000 years? In the example I proposed, it couldn't be done in a trillion trillion trillion trillion years.

Look at my math. Where am I wrong? Specifically.

During Dr. Behe's testimony during the Dover trial under oath, he had to admit (and I am sure it was painful), that if ID was considered science, than astrology would also be considered science.

 

[KenJackson]

If the facts before him compelled him to that decision, then I would accept it to the degree it was borne out by actual science.

You would allow science to influence your acceptance of my hypothetical case, but you don't allow science to influence your acceptance of ID. It's as I figured.

You are wrong where these creationist calculations are generally wrong: you assume a flat probability space.

Is a "flat probability space" the same as a uniform distribution? Show me some math, Speedwell.

Maybe you're tempted to say natural selection improves the odds by filtering out incorrect protein attempts before they're complete. But to do that, there would need to be a mechanism to distinguish incorrect-and-incomplete proteins from correct-but-incomplete proteins. Unfortunately, there's no way to do that because incomplete proteins don't perform any valuable function even if they're totally correct so far.

 

[Speedwell]

You would allow science to influence your acceptance of my hypothetical case, but you don't allow science to influence your acceptance of ID. It's as I figured.

That's because ID is not science. It doesn't meet the basic epistemological standards of science. All you've got is the claim that evolution can't work. Even if you could support that claim it wouldn't be enough.

Is a "flat probability space" the same as a uniform distribution? Show me some math, Speedwell.

No, it's the assumption that all possible combinations are equally likely to form.

Maybe you're tempted to say natural selection improves the odds by filtering out incorrect protein attempts before they're complete. But to do that, there would need to be a mechanism to distinguish incorrect-and-incomplete proteins from correct-but-incomplete proteins. Unfortunately, there's no way to do that because incomplete proteins don't perform any valuable function even if they're totally correct so far.

No, I'm not even tempted to buy into your ridiculous straw man.

 

[Job 33:6]

During Dr. Behe's testimony during the Dover trial under oath, he had to admit (and I am sure it was painful), that if ID was considered science, than astrology would also be considered science.

The interesting thing about Behe is that he actually supports common descent, by his own words. Which presumably means, ape to man. However, he just believes that it was done Intelligently, rather than through a blind process. Which I think is interesting.

 

[Job 33:6]

You would allow science to influence your acceptance of my hypothetical case, but you don't allow science to influence your acceptance of ID. It's as I figured.



Is a "flat probability space" the same as a uniform distribution? Show me some math, Speedwell.

Maybe you're tempted to say natural selection improves the odds by filtering out incorrect protein attempts before they're complete. But to do that, there would need to be a mechanism to distinguish incorrect-and-incomplete proteins from correct-but-incomplete proteins. Unfortunately, there's no way to do that because incomplete proteins don't perform any valuable function even if they're totally correct so far.

Natural selection is typically referred to something that refers to morphological benefits and detriments, ie the faster zebra survives, therefore, it is the morphologically slow that are eaten and the morphologically fast that are selected. So, natural selection would be filtering out the inefficient, versus the efficient. And of course morphology would be a product of gene sequences and the proteins they produce.

 

[KenJackson]

Is a "flat probability space" the same as a uniform distribution? Show me some math, Speedwell.

No, it's the assumption that all possible combinations are equally likely to form.

Excellent! Now we're getting somewhere. Show me more. What is likely and what isn't? Does natural selection play a roll? How does natural selection select?

 

[KenJackson]

Natural selection is typically referred to something that refers to morphological benefits and detriments, ie the faster zebra survives, therefore, it is the morphologically slow that are eaten and the morphologically fast that are selected. So, natural selection would be filtering out the inefficient, versus the efficient. And of course morphology would be a product of gene sequences and the proteins they produce.

Yes, that's my understanding too. And some have even said that a gene for an unused protein would be removed because the organism has to use up some energy to uselessly express it, so organisms without it would be more efficient.

So how are new genes added?

 

[Job 33:6]

Yes, that's my understanding too. And some have even said that a gene for an unused protein would be removed because the organism has to use up some energy to uselessly express it, so organisms without it would be more efficient.

So how are new genes added?

Well, the typical response is, you have your gene with its particular base pairs, and one way you might have another gene added to the genome, is you have a duplication

 

[KenJackson]

Well, the typical response is, you have your gene with its particular base pairs, and one way you might have another gene added to the genome, is you have a duplication

OK, good. Now we have some new base pairs in place, though this gene is the same as the original, not the new one we need. With no other information we can guess that only one in twenty amino acids will be correct for the completely new gene we need, assuming it's the right length.

Any suggestion I could make to get from here to the correct amino acids will sound directed. How can we add a new gene that performs a specific function, that is, a new specific gene?

 

[Speedwell]

Excellent! Now we're getting somewhere. Show me more. What is likely and what isn't?

I'ts all basic organic chemistry--some compounds are more likely to form than others.

 

[Speedwell]

Yes, that's my understanding too. And some have even said that a gene for an unused protein would be removed because the organism has to use up some energy to uselessly express it, so organisms without it would be more efficient.

In order to have that happen, some individuals would have to be born without the gene, and the absence of it would have to confer some survival advantage. Otherwise it will just hang around.

 

[USincognito]

No. In recent years, science has revealed evolution to be wrong, so we're challenging it.

What a fascinating claim. One for which there is no support, but fascinating nonetheless.

 

[USincognito]

I support evolution and an old earth. However I draw the line, as you seem to be doing, at the creation of the first cell. To spontaneously form a cell membrane with the necessary organelles for replication - thats incredulous given that nowhere in nature have we ever witnessed such an event occurring since studies in this area began. Its possible but, for me does create some doubts and that intelligent design may be part of the story.

1. That's not what current models for abiogenesis propose.
2. The majority of life on earth is prokaryotic and thus does not have organelles.
3. Prokaryotes reproduce just fine mostly by fission.

 

[USincognito]

But it's worse. Natural selection removes features that don't work. Partial proteins don't work. You can't keep building a partial protein for generations because natural selection will delete it even if it's totally correct though incomplete.

Natural selection doesn't work at the molecular level like that.

You have to have a lot of blind faith in evolution to believe it.

This claim never ceases to amuse. Your ID talk is nice and all, but evolution begins with extant life the reproduces and passes on genetic material to offspring. We have an enormous amount of evidence supporting it from the fossil record, biogeograpy, vestigial structures and atavisms, anatomical homology, molecular vestiges, genetics, etc.

There is no "blind faith" required when you have that that much evidence.

 

[USincognito]

Since evolution is usually spoken of with NO SPECIFICS, I decided to address ONE SPECIFIC THING. The mechanism I proposed is hokey, but then the whole of evolution is hokey. I even allowed a non-stop trillion mutations per second to give evolution a fighting chance.

Globins are proteins. Humans and all other terrestrial tetrapods have 4 different hemoglobin genes. They are the result of gene and genome duplication events deep in the history of vertebrate evolution. Here are four different papers that discuss this finding.
2005
Two Rounds of Whole Genome Duplication in the Ancestral Vertebrate
2007
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/9/1982.short
2011
Whole-Genome Duplications Spurred the Functional Diversification of the Globin Gene Superfamily in Vertebrates | Molecular Biology and Evolution | Oxford Academic
2013
Gene duplication, genome duplication, and the functional diversification of vertebrate globins - ScienceDirect

S. cerevisiae is a simple eukaryotic organism with less than 7,000 genes. Man has over 20,000 genes. Did man evolve from a simple organism like this yeast? If so, thousands of new genes had to come into existence somehow by Darwin's "numerous, successive, slight modifications".

So how about it? Can you back up some of that arrogance with a plausible explanation of how new proteins (or more specifically, new genes) come to be?

Mutations cause changes to existing genes. Gene, chromosome and whole genome duplication provide extra copies of genes upon which mutation can happen. In humans, ARGAP11B is a duplicated and mutated gene that gave Homo a more dense neocortex. SRGAP2C is another duplicated and mutated gene that gave Homo more dendrite connections.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6229/1465
https://www.nature.com/news/human-brain-shaped-by-duplicate-genes-1.10584

As far as "man" evolving from a simple organism like yeast, yes. Humans, and all animals, are more closely related to fungi than we are to plants bacteria or archaea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16151185

 

[Rivga]

OK, good. Now we have some new base pairs in place, though this gene is the same as the original, not the new one we need. With no other information we can guess that only one in twenty amino acids will be correct for the completely new gene we need, assuming it's the right length.

Any suggestion I could make to get from here to the correct amino acids will sound directed. How can we add a new gene that performs a specific function, that is, a new specific gene?

You already seem to know about point mutations, small edits to the gene that are able to modify the type of protein the gene builds. But it is not enough to produce the variety of genes we now see.

As KomatiiteBif says Duplication is just one way that DNA can change significantly enough to produce new Genes.

So essentially when a gene is replicating errors can occur, part of the DNA sequence is copied twice producing a repetition. So you can see this better I will make up a pattern:

QWERTYUIOP ---> duplication error happen repeating the ERT section to become ---> QWERTERTYUIOP

Then couple this with some points mutation and new genes.


Throw in natural selection, as explained by Darwin, to sort out what is a positive change to what is a negative change.

This is not only a plausible explination but an witnessed in a lab one too. I once date a girl who had witnessed this in her lab, she said that not only was they able to witness this but they are able to sort of reverse engineer the effect to confirm evolution. So using my silly sequence above she could be presented with QWERTERTYUIOP, then identify the duplication effect and identify that the creature it evolved from had QWERTYUIOP sequence. As they are able to assign traits to certain sequences of DNA they'd be able to state what the animal it evolved from was like. This again can be tested against evolution pathways we already know to see if it is accurate.

So again using my silly sequence, they could state that the ERT effect on the sequence is would give the animal bigger ears. So they can look at the fossils evidence to see that they are correct the ancestor has smaller ears.

 

[Rivga]

It is also very important to note that you done need to understand DNA to have a solid knowledge of evolution. DNA is the cherry on top, without DNA The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would still be one of the strongest scientific theories.

Comparative anatomy
Embryology & Development
Fossil record
Species distribution
Evolution observed
Predictive power of evolution
Nested Hierarchies of traits

(I feel I am missing one or two)

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

...So how about it? Can you back up some of that arrogance with a plausible explanation of how new proteins (or more specifically, new genes) come to be?

That would be the evolutionary side of molecular genetics, a scientific field in its own right.

Genes code for proteins, so new proteins are generated when genes are modified - see Molecular Evolution.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

In order to have that happen, some individuals would have to be born without the gene, and the absence of it would have to confer some survival advantage. Otherwise it will just hang around.

Such a gene would be unlikely to disappear altogether; if it was only a slight selective disadvantage, it would most likely become non-functional through random mutation.

 

[Speedwell]

Such a gene would be unlikely to disappear altogether; if it was only a slight selective disadvantage, it would most likely become non-functional through random mutation.

Eactly so. The point is, that natural selection only acts on morphology. I'm not sure that Ken quite gets that.