Daniel Smith
Posts: 970
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (Henry J @ Nov. 22 2008,19:23) |
Life is sometimes messy, yes. Matching heirarchies are expected when inter-species DNA transfer is not significant. If life was engineered they wouldn't be expected at all. |
If life was engineered to evolve from a universal genome, such would indeed be expected.
| Quote | | Variations are caused by mutation, DNA swapping, recombination, plus some other processes, plus differential success of some variations over others, when these processes are repeated over huge numbers of generations, can cause adaptations that sometimes develop into new traits. |
Can you name one trait for which you can say that science has a good handle on how evolution formed it?
| Quote | It's a case of scientists trying to understand what is there; of course they're not going to predict the existence of the thing that they're studying; if it wasn't there already they wouldn't be studying it in the first place. Sheesh.
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If such wasn't already known, it's formation might not be predictable. How is that supposed to reduce confidence in any of the conclusions that scientists have reached? |
I'm asking how a natural mechanism build complex organization. Your answer seems to be "I don't know - but it could".
| Quote | | That would depend on how much detail one insists on being given; those who dislike the conclusions can always fall back on demanding an unrealistic level of detail. |
Define "an unrealistic level of detail" please. When does detail become too much to ask?
| Quote | | Besides which, the alleged "alternatives" haven't provided a detailed explanation for anything - "designed" isn't an explanation; it's a claim that some agency was responsible. That by itself doesn't even contradict current theory until at least some detail is provided about either the designer(s), his/her/its/their motives, the engineer(s) that implemented it, the methods used, the limitations of those methods, the materials used, the timetable, the goal, or preferably some combination of those. |
None of that is required to deduce that something is designed. All that is required is a level of organization that is beyond the capabilities of nature. We could go to another planet and - knowing nothing of "the designer(s), his/her/its/their motives, the engineer(s) that implemented it, the methods used, the limitations of those methods, the materials used, the timetable, the goal, or preferably some combination of those", could deduce design from an artifact if it was organized beyond the capabilities of nature. Strawman.
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Well, then go find a significant proto-organ that preceeded a later functional organ, without ever having been of any use. Preferably (for your model, that is) one that isn't visibly related to something else. |
Schindewolf showed that horses began developing toes more fit for the plains before their environment changed. Berg showed that some transplanted cattle adopted the size, shape and coloring of local cattle - quickly. There is research showing that transplanted finches changed beak shapes within 25 years. There are other examples. None of these show a proto-organ which was of no use, but they show that rapid evolutionary change from one state to another does not require mutations and long time frames. IOW, adaptations are "waiting in the wings".
| Quote | | That's more contingent than accident. For predators that hunt in packs, some shapes work better for that than other shapes, so variations closer to those shapes are likely to accumulate. At this point, evolution would predict convergence of outward shape of separate species engaging in very similar lifestyles (i.e., in equavalent niches). Ergo, current theory explains (it can't predict something that's already known) that some marsupials developed shapes similar to those of some placentals. (Cetacians and fish are another analogous example of the same principle.) |
I'm not convinced.
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Your conclusion doesn't follow. Migrations can happen without need of being planned, indeed a world with no migrations would be even more in need of explanation than one with them. Also, establishing that something was planned requires details about agency, motive, method, timetable, etc. |
Who said anything about migrations?
| Quote | | What the heck does "types were advantageous" mean? Per current theory, species proliferate as niches (lifestyles) become available. If a whole bunch of dominant species die out, those niches are then available to whatever is still around that's able to use them. So again, establishing any "planning" behind that requires some details that are actually explained by the premise that the thing was planned. |
Do you realize how easily all multicellular life could have been wiped out by either rapid environmental changes or imbalance in nature? Why hasn't one type of organisms taken over the world? Why haven't we ended up back at square one - ever? The fact that life always seem to have just the right combination to flourish and maintain balance on this planet is evidence of planning.
| Quote | | Quote | | Quote | | Yes. A feature that is necessary for survival had to have evolved from something that didn't used to be essential; that follows from the current theory. |
"Had to have"? Are you admitting that an essential feature cannot evolve? |
Please read the entire sentence to which you are responding. |
I did. You said "A feature that is necessary for survival had to have evolved from something that didn't used to be essential", implying that once a feature is "necessary" it will not evolve any more. "Had to have" is the key. Necessary features "had to have" evolved from unnecessary ones. Necessary features then, are a dead end for evolution - hence they cannot evolve anymore.
| Quote | | Quote | | you: * Mathematical patterns useful for information integrity and transmission will be found in the genetic code. |
| Quote | | me: Could be, but without something more specific than that, I don't think it can be distinguished from current theory. |
| Quote | | you: Why would the current theory predict any of this - other than that it's already known to exist? |
Your "answer" does not address what was said. |
Why would the current theory predict that mathematical patterns useful for information integrity and transmission would be found?
| Quote | | Overlooking that "repeating patterns of evlution" is by itself too vague to mean anything, current theory is not based on "accidental mechanisms". Mutations and recombinations (among other things) continuously increase variety; selection processes remove the less successful of those varieties. Mutations are individually random, but there's a huge number of them every generation in any large population, so aside from genetic drift the result is contingent, which is neither random nor accidental. (Besides, "accident" usually means an unplanned result of a planned action, which doesn't apply to events that weren't planned to start with.) |
The problem is that - unless each mutation in itself is useful and selected - you're having to wait for the correct combination of mutations to occur. It's still random until you've got something advantageous to select.
It used to be thought that was easy. It's not.
| Quote | | Quote | | Efficiency - saves space. Integrity - multiple uses of the same section of coding insures retention of that code. Ability - most human designers would do this but probably can't figure out how - it is extremely difficult - God doesn't have that trouble. Now explain again, why would natural forces be predicted to come up with this? |
One can't predict what has already been observed. Although, if saving space was the criteria, seems like our genome could be a lot smaller. Multiple use - if it works adequately, natural selection would retain it. Multiple uses of a section would seem to discourage furthur evolution of that section even if changing one of the uses would be advantageous due to some environmental change; seems like that could be either advantageous or detrimental depending on circumstance. | Quote | | If it's truly preparatory, it would be retained, if it's a leftover, it could mutate into anything. The truth is we have no idea which explanation applies to which sequence. |
No, if there's a mechanism present to preserve it, it would be retained. The only mechanism presently known to preserve over geologic time scales is natural selection, and that only works on sequences that are expressed and which make a difference to reproductive success of the species. |
Which is why it is incapable of accounting for most evolution. Show me a pathway for the evolution of any feature where every intermediate step is advantageous for reproduction.
| Quote | | Quote | | you: * Frame shifting will be found to be a more common mechanism for sudden evolutionary change than previously thought. |
| Quote | | Me: Why? How does that follow logically from the premise that the DNA was deliberately engineered? |
| Quote | | You: It follows from A) embedded coding and B) preparatory coding. |
No, that doesn't logically follow. Something doing preparatory coding might use that method, although an explicit on/off switch would probably be safer. Course, all of this "preparatory" stuff depends on having something in there to preserve DNA that isn't as yet expressed. If a mechanism of that sort were present in cells, seems to me it should have been found already, while scientists were studying the mechanisms that they have found.
| Quote | | Prescribed evolution posits that genome reshuffling is the basis of evolution (see Dr. John Davison's papers). From that it follows that genomes will be a lot like shuffled decks of cards which then modified themselves for new features. Saltational evolution. |
Reshuffling? Such as genes getting moved around on a chromosome, or from one chromosome to another, or chromosomes getting split or fused together? Events of those sorts are types of mutations. That doesn't imply what I guess you mean by "saltational". As for "modified themselves for new features", that looks to me like a poetic way of saying "repeated cycles of variation plus selection producing adaptations". As for seeing Dr. John Davison's papers, no thank you. I've looked at his "manifesto" before; lots of assumptions, little support for them.
| Quote | | My argument is based on God's intelligence - NOT his supernatural powers. |
I'm not sure how one can separate those two. Intelligence by itself can't do anything; some method of manipulation is necessary as well. But that aside, the premise that an intelligent God is responsible for the universe doesn't in itself say that evolution (or abiogenesis for that matter) didn't proceed via natural processes. You're throwing in an ad-hoc assumption that God wouldn't do things the way science is concluding that they happened. (By ad-hoc, I mean it doesn't follow from the primary assumption.) Ergo, your argument is not based on God's anything; it's based on your assumption that evolution science is somehow wrong in some basic way.
In addition, if "preparatory coding" doesn't involve supernatural something, then it requires so far undetected natural mechanism for the preservation of the coding, which is itself also so far undetected. A mechanism that could do that should have left traces that should have been noticed already, if it existed.
Not to mention (although I have probably mentioned it above) that the front loading hypothesis does not explain the prevalence of matching nested heirarchies. In the simplest interpretation of front loading, species would grab whichever unexpressed feature would best suit their current situation. So to reconcile that with the observed hierarchies, it would also be necessary to posit some rather complex mechanism to prevent species from going outside thier "intended" phylogenic group when activating one of those stored sections of code.
Scientists do have an aversion to positing a bunch of thus far unobserved mechanisms in the absence of a problem that would be solved by that positing, or a prediction from other theories that those mechanisms should be there (a.k.a. Occam's razor).
Henry |
The truth is the current theory is powerless when it comes to explaining how any feature evolved - except in the most general sense. It's like the face on Mars only in reverse: organisms look as if they evolved via accidents and selection from a distance, but get closer and the appearance of accidental evolution fades away. So, even though science is not really searching for other mechanisms involved in evolution, the evidence is forcing them to consider such things. Darwin's theory has already been falsified - since it relied on minute variations - and now we are learning that much larger, dare I say "saltational" mechanisms are in play. It's only a matter of time before science finds how it all ties together (and it won't be random).
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"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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