Why I do not accept evolution part one

[Job 33:6]

I do agree, the abiogenesis problem is distinct from evolution, though difficult to entirely separate in terms of whether the process is ultimately driven by purpose or unguided mechanisms.

Also distinct is mutation at different parts of the hierarchy- e.g. control genes v the gene regulatory network.

It's a little like checking random options for a car's exterior paint v random dimensions for engine components

one level is specifically designed for variation, a useful part of any design- how could life otherwise survive in a dynamic environment?

Not sure if I see what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you agree with what I am saying. As if these analogies with probability are irrelevant with respect to proteins that already exist and thus have a much more likely chance of mutating into something functional.

It's a lot easier to change a paint job than to create a car from scratch, as you said. Much of evolution, particularly of vertebrates, is more analogous to changing of paint jobs than it is building a car from scratch.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

So what?

So there's not enough time for chance to work, 'billions of years' does not cover every improbability- far less a few million in some cases. Like waiting for 10 royal flushes in a row by chance, it's possible, it just ain't happening before the sun engulfs all the casinos on Earth!

The larger problem is the opposite, in the case of abiogenesis - in some cases you don't have a billion years to get from one chemical state to the next, you have a few days, before it decomposes

 

[Job 33:6]

Not sure if I see what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you agree with what I am saying. As if these analogies with probability are irrelevant with respect to proteins that already exist and thus have a much more likely chance of mutating into something functional.

It's a lot easier to change a paint job than to create a car from scratch, as you said. Much of evolution, particularly of vertebrates, is more analogous to changing of paint jobs than it is building a car from scratch.

And just to give an example, people have five fingers and toes, but so does a frog. So when we consider evolution from amphibians to reptiles to mammals, it's more of a case of taking those pre-existing five fingers and reshaping them, then it is making a hand from scratch.

A lot of evolution over the past 500 million years, is predominantly taking that which already exists and reshaping it.

 

[Job 33:6]

And just to give an example, people have five fingers and toes, but so does a frog. So when we consider evolution from amphibians to reptiles to mammals, it's more of a case of taking those pre-existing five fingers and reshaping them, then it is making a hand from scratch.

A lot of evolution over the past 500 million years, is predominantly taking that which already exists and reshaping it.

And further, on a genetic level, the human genome and genomes of most species predominantly are of duplicated genes. Over 30% of the human genome consists of just two literally only two, duplicated strands of DNA. So we aren't talking about an infinite number of changes. Often times we are looking at just one change that's been duplicated over and over again. And These variations between species aren't an infinite number of random changes, more so they are a few changes and duplications from pre-existing species. And even still, these changes also follow patterns as well, even aside from patterns created by natural selection. Some changes to morphology follow patterns related to evolutionary development. They really aren't truly random at all.

 

[pitabread]

So there's not enough time for chance to work, 'billions of years' does not cover every improbability- far less a few million in some cases. Like waiting for 10 royal flushes in a row by chance, it's possible, it just ain't happening before the sun engulfs all the casinos on Earth!

Nobody thinks that proteins, etc., formed strictly by pure chance though. Even basic chemistry is not strictly 'chance'.

Such probability calculations are just GIGO.

 

[Job 33:6]

And further, on a genetic level, the human genome and genomes of most species predominantly are of duplicated genes. Over 30% of the human genome consists of just two literally only two, duplicated strands of DNA. So we aren't talking about an infinite number of changes. Often times we are looking at just one change that's been duplicated over and over again. And These variations between species aren't an infinite number of random changes, more so they are a few changes and duplications from pre-existing species. And even still, these changes also follow patterns as well, even aside from patterns created by natural selection. Some changes to morphology follow patterns related to evolutionary development. They really aren't truly random at all.

And this makes more sense when we think about convergent evolution as well. An African gazelle taking a form that looks similar to a deer in North America. It isn't purely natural selection that brings these two species to look similar to one another. there are certain qualities of their genome that are more susceptible to change than others. It isn't purely random. Darwin never knew about DNA, the way we do in modern times. So in the strictest sense, most people accept a modern synthesis over purely original darwinian evolution. Just as people accept the theory of relativity as opposed to purely the original newtonian theory of gravity.

Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton were not wrong with their original proposals, but we can't assume that their original proposals match or encompass all that we know today.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Not sure if I see what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you agree with what I am saying. As if these analogies with probability are irrelevant with respect to proteins that already exist and thus have a much more likely chance of mutating into something functional.

okay sure- 'more' likely, as in slightly less absurdly improbable

It's a lot easier to change a paint job than to create a car from scratch, as you said. Much of evolution, particularly of vertebrates, is more analogous to changing of paint jobs than it is building a car from scratch.

likewise it sounds like we agree (but what fun is that! )

we can randomly alter text parameters here with a reasonable chance of a viable combination, because the options have already been constrained that way- that IS where random variation works, where it is specifically supported- eye color, hair length etc

Trying to write new software by the same process is inherently paradoxical- different process- not merely a smooth continuation of slight changes, trying to push the options too far just breaks the design(I think farmers tried to tell Darwin that a long time ago!)[/quote][/QUOTE]

 

[Job 33:6]

okay sure- 'more' likely, as in slightly less absurdly improbable



likewise it sounds like we agree (but what fun is that! )

we can randomly alter text parameters here with a reasonable chance of a viable combination, because the options have already been constrained that way- that IS where random variation works, where it is specifically supported- eye color, hair length etc

Trying to write new software by the same process is inherently paradoxical- different process- not merely a smooth continuation of slight changes, trying to push the options too far just breaks the design(I think farmers tried to tell Darwin that a long time ago!)

[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

Well yes, and you should understand that evolution in large part over the past 500 million years is alteration or has been alteration of sets of pre-existing parameters.

I gave the example above, a frog has five fingers and toes, and so does a human being. So in the evolution from amphibian to man, it's not purely random, but rather it's changes to that which already exists. It's changes to an overall recipe or instructions that already has taken shape.

The vast majority of discussions on evolution, from fish to amphibian or amphibian to reptile or reptile to a man, all are encompassed in this pre-existing set of parameters that are changing.

The only thing that really falls out of this realm of evolution, are discussions related to proterozoic changes in bacteria or abiogenesis.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Nobody thinks that proteins, etc., formed strictly by pure chance though. Even basic chemistry is not strictly 'chance'.

Such probability calculations are just GIGO.

I'm granting all the necessary physics and chemistry as a given, as the cards in the deck, just assembling the amino acids in the correct order is the 'royal flush' analogy here- and you can make entirely objective mathematical calculations on this, just as you could for monkeys typing War & Peace- not too likely to put it mildly

 

[Speedwell]

So there's not enough time for chance to work, 'billions of years' does not cover every improbability- far less a few million in some cases. Like waiting for 10 royal flushes in a row by chance, it's possible, it just ain't happening before the sun engulfs all the casinos on Earth!

The larger problem is the opposite, in the case of abiogenesis - in some cases you don't have a billion years to get from one chemical state to the next, you have a few days, before it decomposes

The probability you offer is nonsense. Simple probability is a fraction, the number of favorable outcomes divided by the number of probable outcomes. Such a calculation assumes that you know the number of favorable outcomes, which you do not, and that the possible outcomes are all equally likely, which is unsupportable when it comes to biochemistry. As pitabread says, GIGO.

But you are still dodging the issue. Showing that the theory of evolution doesn't work (if you could) does not demonstrate design.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Well yes, and you should understand that evolution in large part over the past 500 million years is alteration or has been alteration of sets of pre-existing parameters.

I gave the example above, a frog has five fingers and toes, and so does a human being. So in the evolution from amphibian to man, it's not purely random, but rather it's changes to that which already exists.

The vast majority of discussions on evolution, from fish to amphibian or amphibian to reptile or reptile to a man, all are encompassed in this pre-existing set of parameters that are changing.

The only thing that really falls out of this realm of evolution, are discussions related to proterozoic changes in bacteria or abiogenesis.

Of course, the more superficial the change, the less improbable it is by chance- the Cambrian explosion presents far more serious problems for Darwinian evolution than wolf to dog. But even this is questionable- as David Raup said "ironically we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time' meaning many assumptions based on superficial morphology have been proven wrong. Many examples of juveniles or deformities etc being mistaken as missing links

Not to say there was not common ancestry, just not by incremental improvements explicitly predicted and claimed by Darwinian theory

 

[Job 33:6]

I'm granting all the necessary physics and chemistry as a given, as the cards in the deck, just assembling the amino acids in the correct order is the 'royal flush' analogy here- and you can make entirely objective mathematical calculations on this, just as you could for monkeys typing War & Peace- not too likely to put it mildly

aside from the fact that monkeys can use sign language and can make sentences, I don't think that this is even a fair analogy.

I mentioned evolutionary development before, but the probability of a human being losing their pinky toe is greater than the probability that they lose their middle toe. It isn't purely random, there's this particular pattern in how species evolve over millions of years, that reflects a pre existing "recipe" of a sort, of their particular DNA.

I mentioned frogs having five fingers and toes just like a person. Well we can look at another example of a horse and its evolution. We see certain digits becoming fused in a particular order over time to become the modern horse from something which historically had five fingers and toes.

It isn't completely random that the pinky toe of the horse fuse to the main foot prior than the middle toe. The functional change that occurred in this case, was more of a product of a larger pre-existing genetic blue print, of a sort.

 

[Job 33:6]

@Guy Threepwood

I think you're missing what I'm saying. This just looks like a cheap shot at common descent.

The only thing you said that I think was value in this post, is that you recognize that "superficial changes" are more probable than purely random ones.

And I would say that a frog that has five fingers and toes, two eyes a nose and a mouth, and a human that also has five fingers and toes, two eyes a nose and a mouth, share "superficial" differences.

And I don't think that there is any insurmountable feat in question here because the same original body plan Is present throughout the whole process.

We aren't building a car from scratch, we're simply changing the shape of its outer shell. The difference between an amphibian like a frog and a man, isn't the difference between a space shuttle and a rock, it's the difference between a Mazda and a Toyota.

And I would say that these minor modifications of a pre-existing plan can account for evolution going back at least 600 million years.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The probability you offer is nonsense. Simple probability is a fraction, the number of favorable outcomes divided by the number of probable outcomes. Such a calculation assumes that you know the number of favorable outcomes, which you do not,

Kinda we do, just like letters in a book, DNA represents a symbol convention, a quaternary digital code, nonsense is always going to be infinitely more probable than meaning in any such information system

and that the possible outcomes are all equally likely, which is unsupportable when it comes to biochemistry. As pitabread says, GIGO.

that's shifting the odds 'we don't know that proteins are not somehow constrained to be miraculously functional'
exactly- by what mechanism?

But you are still dodging the issue. Showing that the theory of evolution doesn't work (if you could) does not demonstrate design.

I agree it's a false dichotomy, you don't necessarily need design, but you do need a pre-determination of some kind as opposed to blind luck- that does beg the question of where this determination comes from though.

Aside from that, creative intelligence leaves objective fingerprints, as used by forensic scientists and archeologists- deducing creative intelligence in the Rosetta Stone is not a 'supernatural' argument.
i.e. recognizing design is an argument in the affirmative, we DO know how such information systems are created, just not by chance.

 

[pitabread]

I'm granting all the necessary physics and chemistry as a given, as the cards in the deck, just assembling the amino acids in the correct order is the 'royal flush' analogy here- and you can make entirely objective mathematical calculations on this, just as you could for monkeys typing War & Peace- not too likely to put it mildly

My experience with such probabilities is that they don't actually taken into account a chemical/biochemical process. If we're dealing with a process occurring under specific conditions, such a assembly of amino acids or whatever may not be as much an improbability as an inevitability. Biochemistry itself is not strictly random.

As well, the probability space of viable outcomes isn't fully known. Using the deck of cards example, a royal flush isn't the only viable poker hand. There are numerous other viable poker hands that could result from a random draw. But unlike a deck of cards, we just don't know what that space fully looks like when it comes to viable organic molecules.

This is why probability calculations declaring the impossibility of natural formation of organic molecules aren't that useful.

(Not to mention the basic fact that post hoc probabilities are irrelevant to begin with. Once something has occurred, the probability of occurrence is 1.)

 

[Job 33:6]

My experience with such probabilities is that they don't actually taken into account a chemical/biochemical process. If we're dealing with a process occurring under specific conditions, such a assembly of amino acids or whatever may not be as much an improbability as an inevitability. Biochemistry itself is not strictly random.

As well, the probability space of viable outcomes isn't fully known. Using the deck of cards example, a royal flush isn't the only viable poker hand. There are numerous other viable poker hands that could result from a random draw. But unlike a deck of cards, we just don't know what that space fully looks like when it comes to viable organic molecules.

This is why probability calculations declaring the impossibility of natural formation of organic molecules aren't that useful.

And this is a pretty good comment as well. Because there are many viable and functional outcomes to the changes that we are looking at.

Now I have to get this quote,

The results of evolution are not the best possible world, But rather they are the best of possible worlds. This is a broken quote through Neil Shubin of Ernst Mayr.

 

[Speedwell]

Kinda we do, just like letters in a book, DNA represents a symbol convention, a quaternary digital code, nonsense is always going to be infinitely more probable than meaning in any such information system.

When did we change from "functional" to "meaningful," a term which has no scientific referent?

that's shifting the odds 'we don't know that proteins are not somehow constrained to be miraculously functional'
exactly- by what mechanism?

Not, "miraculous" just ordinary biochemistry. Under a given set of conditions, not all proteins are equally likely to form. Whether it makes nonsense of your argument or not, it certainly makes nonsense of your "probability" calculations.

I agree it's a false dichotomy, you don't necessarily need design, but you do need a pre-determination of some kind as opposed to blind luck- that does beg the question of where this determination comes from though.

Aside from that, creative intelligence leaves objective fingerprints, as used by forensic scientists and archeologists- deducing creative intelligence in the Rosetta Stone is not a 'supernatural' argument.
i.e. recognizing design is an argument in the affirmative, we DO know how such information systems are created, just not by chance.

Now all you have to do is explain how "design" is recognized.

 

[Strathos]

(Not to mention the basic fact that post hoc probabilities are irrelevant to begin with. Once something has occurred, the probability of occurrence is 1.)

I never really understood this argument. Creationists who make these probability arguments are saying that 'X happening via method Y is too improbable, therefore it must have happened via some other method'. So this objection really doesn't make sense.

If someone told a gambler in a casino who had won hundreds of times in a row that his results were too improbable and he must have been cheating, and then he said 'Actually, since it already happened, it had a 100% probability of happening', would that suddenly make it not suspicious?

I mean the probability arguments are wrong for other reasons, but not this one.

 

[BNR32FAN]

"Theories of creation" as you put it are not based on science. They are based on different interpretations of whatever religious dogma one is following.

This is one reason there are so many different and conflicting forms of creationism out there. Different people have different interpretations of different religious texts.



Science is ever correcting as we learn more about our universe. And in doing so, what we have learned that creation doesn't support a literal interpretation of 6-day creation per Genesis.

Does science support Christ’s resurrection?

 

[Job 33:6]

I think that a lot of this discussion is based around kind of a strange straw man of a sort.

A lot of the times, we hear opponents of evolution talk about a darwinian form of evolution that is purely random that is only modified by natural selection.

And maybe in the time of Darwin this might have been a view more commonly held.

But in modern times much has changed. There's a lot more awareness of pre-existing structures and patterns, that species evolve by. Species evolve in predictable patterns in some cases, simply because of a pre existing process, and completely independent of natural selection.

The old argument of a tornado going through a junkyard, just doesn't apply like it did 50 years ago. It's more like a gust of wind blowing over magnetic parts with a bunch of filters sorting them out as they blow.

The gust of wind being that randomness, but the magnetism and filters being these pre existing parameters that the pieces fall into. That often times, they must fall into.

And Darwin lives over 150 years ago, so there's just no way he would have had any familiarity with these patterns in fixation of mutations. He could only put his foot in the door for people in the future to continue opening. And with time, the door will simply continue opening.