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Jay Ray Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 16 2006,15:32    Quote My take is exceedingly taoist. Oh, good. Note, any relation to Taoism in my approach to life is reality based, not mystical.  Some of those Taoists "back in the day" took a wrong turn, I understand.  No, my view is more world-as-integrated, self organized system, and not necessarily self aware or "thinking" in any sense of the word. Quote If the Tao is so infinite that it cannot even be called one, how is it to make plans? The Tao is the void of Buddhism. To become one, requires some self-consciousness. Now you have two. The duality of two and nonduality make three. Anyway, I'd like to see a good explanation of that passage. From a great power station, you need stepdown units to get structured work done. In the Christian trinity, you have the Source, the Uncreated Energies, and the Organizing Force, which is supposed to be the real creator of this world. I like my names better, don't you? Its been awhile since I've browsed the Tao Te Ching.  I'll have to look into this before I make any meaningful comment.  My reading of the Tao Te Ching always took notions of intention as allegorical and anthropomorphic, if not outright bad translation.  I will say, without looking, that if Lao Tzu's early, pre-scientific intuitions about the workings of nature were mostly pretty good, I think he crosses the line by attributing self-conciousness.   Quote Jehovah is a misanthropic doody head. And an imposter. I don't care who hears me say it. Quote There's more analysis than that. I hope you'll look through my previous post to Chris; I excerpted some of the better and more interesting parts of a very detailed set of 5 essays on the evolution of the flagellum. Oh, and just because it looks designed doesn't mean it wasn't, either. Behe on the stand in Dover, repeated this phrase like a mantra:  "The purposeful arrangement of parts..."  All the rest is just an elaboration of this phrase.  Over and over we hear from IDers that, "The laws of physics are suspiciously well-suited to support life.  Given all the possibilities, it's unlikely to happen that way by chance.  Ergo, design."  The purposeful arrangment of the universe.  On smaller scales, that same perception is given equal attention.  I know the ID camp likes to look close.  Some also like to peel back and conceptualize the universe as a whole.  At any scale, the IDer perceives that probabilty can't account for the object under scrutiny, thus that "the purposeful arrangement of parts" is the only conclusion.  So the point isn't so much one of focus, but of perception.  Like my creative friend, the thought of being alone in the vast universe and ultimately responsible for ourselves scares most of them.  So whenever they perceive something, its through a lens of a (supposedly wiser) external guidance.  I say the ID perception is clouded by emotion. Quote Well, they are Christians. Are you saying that they think method is off-limits? Yes.  But not only Christians.  No IDer has laid out an explanatory sequence of steps which shows a design event, and it never will.  They can't.  ID only points and says "it looks designed, so it must be."   They never say how this supposed design was turned into mechanism, an actual thing that we can observe.  The oily truth of the matter is that ID can't do that, because that would require us to first know the mind and methods of god.  Which is obviously not anything any science can get a grip on.  ID has built in limits, which keep it squarely out of science and in the realm of religion.   Evolution, on the other hand, provides a sensible process.  The universe is a process, and integral to any explanation of aspects of the universe will be process.  That's the whole point of addition to the card analogy I made: sticky laws inform the process.  Without them, you just have labels. Quote Plenty of people have and have had trouble with Darwin's theory without being YECs! I could go through my books, and I should, to present some of them, or perhaps I can just look around and lift some things from the net. But I can't do it now, cause I spent so much time already. All of these people have one thing in common:  they use weak, incomplete and logically unsound arguments based on processless probability to justify their emotional attachment to an external, eternal creative conciousness. "Poppa, please turn on the light!  Its scary in the dark!" Quote I really didn't mean to quantify how much was left to chance as I don't know. I can't form an opinion about the quantum reality as I don't understand it very well and I think some false claims have been made about particles arising without cause. I admit the quantum world is strange.  As has been said, if you think you understand quantum behavior, you don't understand quantum behavior.  I think phrasing it in that way is a bit of an intentional exaggeration with the express intent to highlight the strangeness of things at that level.    It reminds us that the ways in which our notions of reality have been shaped by our common sense experience at the macro-scale do not necessarily always apply.  QED is one of the most accurate and mathematecally rigorous scientific discliplines we've ever put our minds to.  IDers will have a tough time working this into any description of a design event.  Not without a generous dollop of "poof!".  But of course, we won't see a description like that, for reasons already mentioned. Quote And philosopically, the question of freedom versus determinism is a very difficult one. I suspect both operate but I can't begin to defend that. And how does the randomness of quantum particles affect evolution theory? Two huge ideas probably best served by threads of their own.  I guess the short answer to the link between quantum mechanics and evolution is the same link as chemistry, just at a lower level.  It could be fun exploring in more detail. Quote Well no, I don't define the unfolding too tightly. A general plan, yes. The laws of quantum physics, I suspect, work the way they do because reality requires it. Sub-planck length reality, I think, is already another dimension. My little thought. Has anyone else thought about this? One of the basic points of science is to define things more tightly and tightly with careful study.  Maybe we never quite define things "perfectly", but science is the search for ever more accurate descriptions.  Intuition and creativity can provide powerful guidance about what to look for and where we might find it, but its not enough to just say "it feels like this" and leave it at that.  Science takes the next step and says, "Well, let's see if I'm right!" In regards to "Planck length reality", any response would be based upon how you define dimension.     Quote Because, by golly, it would be a sad place without our intelligence to understand and admire it all. We may not be the end-product, either. But we're getting close. In my opinion, it's all about consciousness, so far as any goal type of thing. Do you see the tautology in this idea?   Why is conciousness necessary? Because without it, the universe would suck. Why would it suck? Because there is no conciousness. You're right about one thing, though. Humanity is not the end "product".  There is more to come. Quote Not sure where the love without care came from. Because I said the love was impersonal? I may have read something into your original phrase which was unintended.  You said The question, does God care about us, is another nonquestion because there is no need to ask it, and ... God's love is universal and impersonal. Talking about emotions is the ultimate in subjectivity, so clearly we may have different opinions of the emotion of love.  I personally think that love necessarily  implies caring.  Care, or passion for the object of one's love (however vaguely or broadly you define "object") can no more be absent from that love than blue can be absent from purple.  But that's about the emotion of love itself, not whether the universe feels loves or care or any emotion whatsoever.  I guess I'm just a stickler for consistancy. Quote I'm saying that a life force and love energy are just the state of its being. Totally unsupported.  Love energy?  Is that what a mood ring measures? Quote Why thanks, but I am not a scientist and i cannot do it. Anyway, the banned JAD at least gave it a shot. It does help if the data supports the conclusion.  ID goes so far beyond the data its impossible to distinguish it from religion or philosophy. Quote But what I was specifically alluding to was that pure material reductionism is an inadequate explanation of the cosmos. This may turn out to be accurate.  But to date, nobody has demonstrated a replacement. There is plenty of speculation, however.  I'm afraid that 'love energy' or universal, eternal designing conciousness as a sort of emotional concious correllary to the cosmic background radiation just doesn't wash. Quote Well, I mentioned complexity, and you answer that nature just does what it does. That sounds like not wanting to look to close, being easily satisfied with surface explanations. Explanation, take three.  My point is that attributing meaning or plan to nature's course is premature.  These feelings or intuitions about nature are human imprints.  Which is not to say that this paints them as bad.  Just that its helpful to recognize that they are based upon human emotions and desires, rather than anything inherent in nature itself.  How this is evidence that I do not look close, I don't know.  If anything, I'd say that its evidence that I know at least one limit to my knowledge. Quote You seemed to think that I was disparaging nature because it doesn't compose symphonies (it does, through us) and I explained that I was not and you even posted my explanation, yet still seem to think I was. The passivity of matter is its perfection. For the record, I don't think you're disparaging nature.  Quite the contrary.  I think you respect nature, even love it.  See the first four sentences in my previous paragraph for what I'm trying to say here. Quote Abiogenesis is not the place to start. Abiogenesis really hasn't got off the ground. Better to stick to problems with homology and the fossil record and that sort of thing. I think there are enough practicing scientists in the world to justify basic research into abiogenesis.  Why not?  Would it disappoint you if science proved a definative, mechanistic, non-concious origin of life? Quote The god-verse is not a supervisor, because if he was, he could also act directly. The Tao JUST IS. My view of the Tao is that it is a poetic, artful, pre-scientific explanation regarding the flow of energy, shaping interactions of matter to produce complexity.  Lao Tzu recognized that we interfere with this flow at our peril. Quote I suppose my views might be somewhat Hindu. Mostly from hinduism I take advaita. But they do have some notions of advanced states of being in which there is only a very subtle separation left between them and God. Everyone and everything has always existed, in one form or another. I don't know why I should know how they were created but they ought to exist. It doesn't make sense to have such a gap between our type of being and god. One of my favorite things about Hinduism is the doctrine of maya, which states that the universe that we perceive is confusing and largely illusory.  Thus, we have issues.  The solution they propose is to gradually peel away the filters until you see the universe for what it really is. Only then does one recognize that there is no difference between one's self and "god".  But here is my favorite part.  One of the filters that will be peeled away during this process is Hinduism itself.  The idea of god is part of the illusion.  Its like Buddhism in this regard, except with a lot of fanciful creatures and dressing.  But if you follow the path set out by either technique, one of the things you realize is that the dressing up, the tales and parables, the myths around which the religion is built, and even the technique toward enlightenment itself, are all illusions.  Universe as game.  I get a kick out of that. Quote Oh, yeah, I missed that. Of course they exist. I wasn't sure what i said to bring that on...we were discussing sticky laws, and we agreed there might be more we don't know about to add to the ones we have. Phew.  For a minute there I thought you went totally off the deep end.  Sorry about the confusion.  But I have to ask... what did you mean by this:   --As for creationists refusing to acknowledge sticky laws, first, we haven't really found them yet (but we might).-- ?

Henry J Posts: 5787 Joined: Mar. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 16 2006,17:36    Re "I guess the short answer to the link between quantum mechanics and evolution is the same link as chemistry, just at a lower level." Or chemistry is sort of between the other two. (Sort of like an intermediate?) Re "Why is conciousness necessary? Because without it, the universe would suck." Ah, a new theory of gravity! Henry

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,08:18    GCT, Quote I'm seriously evaluating whether it is worth my time to engage Avo anymore.  It's amazing how I can come up with an argument that refutes her position, only to have her spit it back to me later on as if it is her argument and somehow strengthens her position. I promise you GCT, you have not given me any great new insights. as I already asked, if you think this has occurred, please show how it did. Use the quote feature, show the thread of you said, I said. Only then can I figure out where you went wrong. The only thing I recall as far as me changing my tune at all, is that you have insisted that ToE is less unfriendly than I had thought to the possibility of God, which if true is fine. Seven Popes, I don't know why in he11 you think the quesiton of the origin of homosexuality has anything to do with what we're discussing here or with my opinions. I have known at least 3 families in which there were gay guys that were large, with many brothers. And more than one gay in the family. I have been sure for many, many years that being homosexual is congenital for at least a reasonably high percentage. I'd like to know more about the causes of lesbianism. As usual, being women, it will probably be more complex.

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,19:54    Chris, What is Nick Matzke's essay on the flagellum? My critique was of Miller's essay. As for partial motility, it sounds good but Mike Gene's essay made the point that a weak form of the flagellum wouldn't be able to overcome Brownian motion. This brings up something I wonder about however. All around us, we see beautifully adapted things, yet we envision a time when there were barely motile flagella and 7% wings. Wouldn't that be a funny world, if we could go back in time? You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible. And to the best of my layman's comprehension ability, the plausibility is seriously called into question by an essay series like Mike Gene's. Russell made some snide remark about my cutting and pasting his essay, chock full of technical detail. How odd. He's the one with the PhD, not me. I certainly have had to give up on trying to reading research articles that are just too dry and over my head, but the stuff I pasted here was both germane to what we are discussing, and I have to tell you that I found it pretty fascinating reading. I'd truly like to get some actual responses to the points in MG's essay. Quote But the point is that IC says in principle if you remove a part and the system ceases to function, then that part could have not been added by evolution, and this is not true. You can hope that it isn't true, but so far as I know, there just isn't any knowledge of how it could occur, it is just assumed to occur. MG's entire essay, and it is in 5 parts, deals with the problems that would be encountered. I'd really like to see a good answer to it. So I didn't get a clear answer on the chromosome question. Apparently if there are different chromosome numbers, hybridization is possible, as in horse and donkey. But hybrids aren't viable. And I am wondering how the chromosome number change happens in the first place. If there is a fusion of two, it must occur during one meiosis. How does a chromosome know how to fuse itself with another and come out with a beautiful and coherent result? Quote CSI in my opinion in its current form is completely unapplicable to biological systems due to a number of factors, including its definition of complexity, specification and information, and the current impossibility of calculating the probability that the flagellum evolved naturaly. Well that seems like an awfully quick dismissal of some good ideas. You might quibble a bit about definitions of information, but just to throw the whole thing out.And yours is one of the most calm and reasonable voices! Of course we cannot calculate the possibility of the flagellum evolving, we can only pick it apart and get a feel for the problems and the odds.  One thing I have noticed that bugs me a lot. Everyone prefers to read the arguments of their own side and finds the other side's tedious somehow. I am no exception. GCT, Quote You lack imagination.  If there is a god, there is no logical imperative that this god is anything more than an observer.We could still have arisen through chance or "not-god" processes. What is this "great question of causation?" It's not about imagination. the great question of causation is how to account for the existence of anything. There is absolutely no way within your linear paradigm to account for the existence of matter. Something fundamentally other is going on. In order to get the label of God the being must deserve it. If there is an eternally existent being - then this being has already transcended the linear paradigm. And if this being had nothing to do with matter, then matter has also transcended the linear paradigm. yet matter cannot do so because matter cannot cause itself. And if matter has transcended the linear paradigm, then it is also worthy to be called God. Then we have two uncaused entitites in the universe, utterly different from one another. There cannot be multiple uncaused causes to existence. Quote There is no logical imperative that this god be about love. Perhaps not, but if God is about love, there is a logical reason why. And that reason is that as the one and only possible source of existence, all things have emerged from and are part of that God. Therefore, all is self. And self always loves itself. Quote Now, simply because there is a mutually exclusive set of god or not god does not mean that the universe would be significantly different with or without god. Of course it does. But you envision a kind of God which I think is untenable. You think I'm saying the universe will appear different if there is a God, but I rather think that the perception of God is not easy or obvious, and that the world won't look any different. The perception of God is of a different order. I guess the simplest analogy is that of a dog whistle. The dog can hear things outside your range. The perception of God is outside the range you are used to. ID doesn't say God can be scientifically proven. ID says it can be shown that beyond reasonable doubt that some systems could not have brung themselves into existence. Whether we can ever test for god or not god I don't know, but ID might be indirect evidence. But I don't consider it good indirect evidence, because lesser beings than God might have done the designing. Now, you have said that because we can't test for God we can't say whether things were planned. You want evidence for god to be first. Well, it might not happen that way. And I don't see why you should it expect it to. Many discoveries, most perhaps, were found circumstantially first. Pluto comes to mind. I really do appreciate your insistence that the term "unplanned and unguided" really means that evolution theory has no position on the matter of whether it was guided and planned or not, I'm just sort of surprised that this is so well hidden. i wonder why it wasn't put into the text books that way. Russell, You say nothing in MG's essay does anything to advance the case that it is IC. Can you elaborate? I have not dismissed Mayr as simplistic, I said that what I had read so far was. For a different audience, he might not be. You know, it is true that no one seems to know much about Mike Gene, who wants it that way for some reason, but what has that to do with what s/he writes about the flagellum? Alan, And what is Mumbo Jumbo about, and why did you recommend it? Seven Popes, Which seven popes are you promoting? Quote What about 6 percent of a simian tail?  Some humans do develop these at birth, and all of us carry the bones for a vestigial tail. All of us carry the bones? I dug around and found this from a creationist site: All true tails have bones in them that are a posterior extension of the vertebral column. Also, all true tails have muscles associated with their vertebrae which permit some movement of the tail. Ledley conceded that there has never been a single documented case of an animal tail lacking these distinctive features, nor has there been a single case of a human caudal appendage having any of these features. Most modern biology textbooks give the erroneous impression that the human coccyx has no real function other than to remind us of the "inescapable fact" of evolution. In fact, the coccyx has some very important functions. Several muscles converge from the ring-like arrangement of the pelvic (hip) bones to anchor on the coccyx, forming a bowl-shaped muscular floor of the pelvis called the pelvic diaphragm. The incurved coccyx with its attached pelvic diaphragm keeps the many organs in our abdominal cavity from literally falling through between our legs. Some of the pelvic diaphragm muscles are also important in controlling the elimination of waste from our body through the rectum. But i suppose the purpose of your question is to scare me that we might have vestigal tail genes. I don't know or care if we do. Neither chimps nor gorillas have tails, so I suppose it must be a real throwback, some 20 million years! Sanctum, Quote I have two older brothers. Is this your way of coming out?

Sanctum Posts: 88 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,20:43    Very good continued work here, Avocationist. I know you are teasing, but as I am a pretend name on a website it would be rather impossible to "come out" here - presuming I was ever in.

Jay Ray Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,22:17    Avo et al, I'm a little busy these days to do the amount of reading it would require to address all of Mike Gene's points, but I can at least start where Mike Gene started.  Maybe someone else who cares can take up the next part while I study for finals.     MG asks why a modern bacteria moves in straight runs and tumbles of 3-4 seconds, rather than heading straight for a food source. He later states that the tumbling is a result of brownian motion, likening it to a boat in a tropical storm. Well, first, I'm not aware of any evidence that a bacteria actually senses food from a distance.  They lack vision, that's for sure.  Do they have surface sensors which detect tiny particles that are emitted or break off of a food source?  Possibly.  Depends on the nature of the particle sensed.  But even if so, can they follow the trail back to the source?  Not that I know of.  Following a trail requires a certain amount of memory that I don't believe they are capable of.  Do they sense heat or light? Maybe...  I think they are too small and simple for complex sensing or behavior at this level.  As far as I know, a bacteria only knows food if it manages to physically come in contact with it. Then, compare bacteria to other critters of similar size.  As far as I know, antibodies don't behave like they "sense" invaders until they touch it. It takes physical contact. Until that, they are just going with the flow.  Amoeba don't zero in on food.  In the absence of food, they ooze around randomly until they touch food.  Then they try to eat it.  Ever watch rotifers under a microscope?  These guys are very big compared to a bacteria.  They have a head, a grasping tail, a mid section, an actual mouth.  On either side of a rotifers mouth are what look like a swiftly spinning discs, whose edges are lined with cilia.  The spinning disc thingys create a sucking current into the rotifers maw.  Anything in that current will be potential food for the rotifer.  But they don't have any nervous system to speak of.   They too just sorta squirm around randomly until they accidentally suck up a particle small enough to fit into its mouth, food or not.  If they are very lucky, they run into a whole mess of food particles, several times the rotifers size.  It eats for awhile, then maybe it wanders away.  Yet even after wandering away, it sucks in anything it can.  Critters at this scale don't seem to exhibit either sensation at a distance, memory to know food if they saw it, or any particular ability to "head for" anything at all.  It seems to be pure luck.  Good thing there is plenty of food to go around.  These are all reasons why they don't head straight for a food source, and it has nothing to do with brownian motion. Next, I'm not so sure that the tumbling is a result of brownian motion.  I'm inclined to think that the biggest reason bacteria tumble is because they aren't particularly hydrodynamic.  When in motion, they have little recourse toward stability.  They are kinda hot dog shaped--not the best shape for steady motion in any medium.  Nor do they have any horizontal or vertical stabilizers--fins, for example.  They have no steering mechanism to speak of.  There is just (sometimes) that rotating flagella.  The bacterium turns it on, it builds up a bit of momentum, then instability sets in--perhaps in part by brownian motion and minute currents in the water, but more so by its lack of guidance features--and so it tumbles.  The tumbling is a product of its unsteadiness.   But that doesn't matter anyway, because the bacteria wasn't aiming for anywhere specifically.  If there is no food HERE, it powers up the flagella and moves on.  Food is generally plentiful, so staggering about from place to place is adequate to its meager needs.  Eventually, perhaps often quite quickly, it finds what it needs.   Evolutionarily speaking, imagine an early bacteria without a full flagella, but rather just a small pilum, or perhaps several pila, being tossed about in the fluid.  Its easy to see how jutting spikes will grant that bacteria a greater ability to bind to a surface.  I'm hard pressed to say which I'd prefer--a flagellum might help me to move away from a foodless location, but pila would help me to stick once I happened to bump into some.  Tough choice.  I guess either is better than nothing.  But how about both?

jeannot Posts: 1201 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,22:50    I'm going to answer some of your questions Avocationist. Quote Chris, .... All around us, we see beautifully adapted things, yet we envision a time when there were barely motile flagella and 7% wings. Wouldn't that be a funny world, if we could go back in time? You can see a funny world now. What you think is perfectly adapted could also be seen as imperfections. Talking about wings, have a look : http://www.nature.ca/calendar/images/m_marmota_monax_p186_250.jpg Does it have completely formed wings? Is it perferctly adapted? Well nobody can tell. If it comes to disappear, as too many species do nowadays, that means it wasn't so well adapted afer all. Adaptation is relative, the environment (Nature if you want) selects the working forms, that doesn't means they are perfect. Quote You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible. Protein coevolution is a well known phenomenon in phylogenetics. A mutation occuring in one subunit of a protein complex is followed by mutations in the other subunits. This pattern of evolution can be detected nowadays. Here is an article I just got after googling "protein coevolution" http://rana.lbl.gov/papers/Fraser_PNAS_2004.pdf Quote So I didn't get a clear answer on the chromosome question. Apparently if there are different chromosome numbers, hybridization is possible, as in horse and donkey. But hybrids aren't viable. That's not always the case. AFAIK, within some species (the mouse, I think) you can have different karyotypes between reproducing individuals. It even happens in humans. IIRC, there is a case where one chromosome 21 is fused with one chromosome 15. After the "digestion" of the separate 21th chromosome in the gametogeneis or meiosis, the zygote can inherit from one parent, the fused chromosome (15-21) with no separate chromosome 21, and a normal gamete from its other parent. Thus, the zygote gets a odd number of chromosomes (only on chromosome in the 21st pair + one fused chromosome in the 15th pair) but the child will be completely viable and normal. You can imagine that in one population, this fused chromosome becomes dominant (for some reasons), resulting in a human population having 44 chromosomes. Quote And I am wondering how the chromosome number change happens in the first place. If there is a fusion of two, it must occur during one meiosis. I'm not sure that it has to occur there. It could occur somewhere in the gametogenesis. Quote How does a chromosome know how to fuse itself with another and come out with a beautiful and coherent result? Beautiful... it happens to be viable that's all. If it doesn't work it's lethal. Nobody can claim that the chromosome fusion in Homo sapiens has anything to do with our adaptation. I'm leaving the religious questions to others.

Alan Fox Posts: 1556 Joined: Aug. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 18 2006,23:15    Quote Alan, And what is Mumbo Jumbo about, and why did you recommend it? Mumbo-Jumbo is a book my daughter recently left with me to read. It covers a lot of the background to how ideas of today have roots in the past. Wheen is "not a fundamentalist. But I'm an admirer of what you might call 'Enlightenment values' though they go way beyond the Enlightenment). Things like scientific empiricism, the separation of church and state, the waning of absolutism and tyranny, yes, I cling to those." It is also very funny. I recommended it as I thought you might enjoy it. It proves the old adage "there is nothing new under the sun". I realise now why some regular posters get irritated with newbies (I include myself here) who repeat questions and ideas which have been raised many times before. It must feel like playing "Whack-a-mole" sometimes. Also to Corkscrew if he's lurking. I noticed you mention Lysenko-ism in one of your posts. Have you read "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" by Marina Lewycka? Another very funny book, but with some poignant insight into what the political and personal life was like in 1930's Ukraine.

Chris Hyland Posts: 705 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,05:11    Quote Mike Gene's essay made the point that a weak form of the flagellum wouldn't be able to overcome Brownian motion. Again I havent read Mike Genes essay, but again experts in the field say that partial motion is better than no motion at all. A hevent read Ken Millers essay either, his point seems to be that if you go by a strict definition of IC, then the existance of the type III system means it isn't. The fact that IC attacks a staw man anyway makes this irellevant. Quote Do they have surface sensors which detect tiny particles that are emitted or break off of a food source? The flagellum operates intermitantly so the bacteria move around randomy, obviously in most cases this would confer some advantage. Ecoli has chemical sensors, which set of a signalling cascade when they sense nutrients, which makes the flagellum spin less regularly, therefore it is more likely to move toward the food source. Quote You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible. This is a well studied phenomenon. As I said I dont know if it applies to the flagellum but it does apply to other complex systems. Quote You can hope that it isn't true, but so far as I know, there just isn't any knowledge of how it could occur Again it is well studied in other systems, it might not apply to the flagellum I don't know. I dont really know that much about the flagellum, I imagine Mike Genes essay makes many specific points that I wouldnt be able to attempt to answer without doing a lot of research. I can only answer the charge that in principle a complex containing multiple proteins that are essential to function could not have evolved. It is possible no one has a clear idea of how the flagellum evolved, I'm not sure how this in any way supports the assumption that it was designed. Our view of evolution may change drastically, there may be other factors that we haven't considered, self-organization is a promising example, that are as important as natural selection. Maybe there are currently unknown laws of nature that dictate to some extent how evolution has played out. Maybe evolution is finished. The point is Dembski, Behe et al claim to have positive empirical evidence of design, that is what the whole debate is about. Surprisingly different chromosome structure can hybridize and produce viable offspring. As I said it is likely that humand and chimp chromosomes could hybridize, however the differences in gene expression during development would kill any embryo. Regarding my view point, I read no free lunch and darwins black box, and several essayss at the discovery institute before I'd even heard of the NCSE or pandas thumb or talk origins. My objections to CSI are not to how his method works in principle, but how he applies it to biological systems, at the very best he can say it has a low probability of evolving in the same way that someone has a low probability of winnig the lottery. What gets me irate about it again is based on the fact that this is presented as positive evidence of design in life. I am even willing to give Dembski the benefit of the doubt and say that it may be possible to detect design without knowing about the designer. He might even be right, the point is he hasn't even started to prove it yet, but claims he has and that he has put another nail in the coffin of 'Darwinism'.

qetzal Posts: 311 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,05:54    Avocationist: Quote You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible. And to the best of my layman's comprehension ability, the plausibility is seriously called into question by an essay series like Mike Gene's. I believe we know for a fact that this kind of co-evolution is not only plausible, it really happens. Jeannot gave you one link, and a search phrase to use if you want more info. Mike Gene's essays only call into question whether the flagellum can be adequately explained by 'undirected' mechansims such as co-evolution. I freely admit I'm not in a position to refute all of his points. This isn't really my area. But consider: Mike Gene is doing what many ID proponents do. He's selecting one particular system and saying, "This system is way too complex to have evolved without intelligent guidance." In doing so, he in no way refutes non-directed evolution in general. At best, he can only claim that we don't know enough at present to adequately explain how the flagellum might have evolved. But he presumably wants to take that a step further, and claim there is no way in principle that the flagellum could have evolved without intelligent intervention. That step isn't supported by evidence. Let's suppose he's right - that currently understood evolutionary mechanisms cannot explain the flagellum. What does that tell us? Only that some other mechanism must have been involved. It doesn't prove that said mechanism must be intelligently guided. Quote You can hope that it isn't true, but so far as I know, there just isn't any knowledge of how it could occur, it is just assumed to occur. Again, I think this is mistaken. I think it's well known that it can occur. The question is whether such mechanisms are adequate to explain specific examples like the flagellum. Quote Of course we cannot calculate the possibility of the flagellum evolving, we can only pick it apart and get a feel for the problems and the odds. I agree. But even if our feeling is that the odds are too long in light of known mechanisms, that only suggests there are probably additional unknown mechanisms. It does not mean that intelligent guidance is the only reasonable answer. And here's where the testing thing comes into play. If there's a way to test for intelligent guidance, then we can scientifically ask if it was involved. If there's no way to test for it, we're stuck, scientifically speaking. I have no problem with people who believe an intelligence was/is involved. I have a problem with people who claim that we can scientifically conclude such is the case, based entirely on negative data. Quote So I didn't get a clear answer on the chromosome question. Apparently if there are different chromosome numbers, hybridization is possible, as in horse and donkey. But hybrids aren't viable. And I am wondering how the chromosome number change happens in the first place. If there is a fusion of two, it must occur during one meiosis. How does a chromosome know how to fuse itself with another and come out with a beautiful and coherent result? For an extreme example of chromosome rearrangement in a human, who is still fertile, see Pharyngula's Life will find a way. Also, please note that a chromosome does not "know how to fuse itself with another." Sometimes it just happens. And, as Pharyngula's essay shows, the result needn't bee particularly beautiful or coherent. It's interesting that you would even ask how a chromosome "knows" something. I think that reflects your basic assumption that such things must be purposeful and directed. That's not the scientific view, however. As best we can tell, things like that just happen. If the result is advantageous for the organism, that organism will probably leave more offspring than others of its species, increasing the frequency of that trait in the next generation. If it's disadvantageous, the opposite is more likely. There's no scientific evidence of purpose. Quote ID doesn't say God can be scientifically proven. ID says it can be shown that beyond reasonable doubt that some systems could not have brung themselves into existence. Whether we can ever test for god or not god I don't know, but ID might be indirect evidence. But I don't consider it good indirect evidence, because lesser beings than God might have done the designing. ID may not claim proof of God, but it does claim the ability to prove intelligent intervention in life. It just doesn't live up to that claim. Jay Ray: I think your speculations on bacterial locomotion are incorrect. The Wikipedia entry on Chemotaxis gives details. Basically, the frequency and duration of straight-line swimming versus tumbling is related to whether the bacterium is moving towards (or away from) an attractive (or repellant) chemical, such as food (or toxin). It's a simple yet impressive system, and it's not hard to see how such a useful behavior could evolve without any external guidance.

Alan Fox Posts: 1556 Joined: Aug. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,05:54    Quote Ecoli has chemical sensors, which set of a signalling cascade when they sense nutrients, which makes the flagellum spin less regularly, therefore it is more likely to move toward the food source. This is not quite right, the movements are random and the increase or decrease in nutrient concentration causes a "tumble" and movement in a new random direction. The bacterium has no "steering" option, only to rotate its flagellum/a in a clockwise or anticlockwise  direction, producing a "tumble" or random linear movement. To quote from this article, which is not too technical: Quote The motor runs either clockwise (CW), as seen by an observer standing on the outside of the cell looking down at the hook, or counterclockwise (CCW), with protons continuing to flow from the outside to the inside of the cell. Switching direction involves the proteins FliG, M, and N. In a cell wild type for chemotaxis, CW and CCW modes alternate (with exponentially distributed waiting times). When the motors turn CW, the flagellar filaments work independently, and the cell body moves erratically with little net displacement; the cell is then said to "tumble". When the motors turn CCW, the filaments rotate in parallel in a bundle that pushes the cell body steadily forward, and the cell is said to "run". The two modes alternate. The cell runs and tumbles, executing a three-dimensional random walk. When different flagellar motors in the same cell are studied under conditions in which they cannot interact mechanically, they change directions independently. Yet, when a flagellar bundle drives the cell forward, all of the motors have to rotate CCW. The events that bring about this coordination are not yet understood. The mean run interval is about 1 s, whereas the mean tumble interval is only about 0.1 s. Both of the times are exponentially distributed. Although the change in angle generated by a tumble is approximately random, there is a slight forward bias. When, by chance, a cell moves up a spatial gradient of a chemical attractant or down a spatial gradient of a chemical repellent, runs are extended. When, by chance, it moves the other way, runs revert to the length observed in the absence of a gradient. Thus, the bias in the random walk that enables cells to move up or down gradients is positive. Finally, the behavioral response is temporal, not spatial. E. coli does not determine whether there is more attractant, say, in front than behind; rather, it determines whether the concentration increases when it moves in a particular direction.* Studies of impulsive stimuli indicate that a cell compares the concentration observed over the past 1 s with the concentration observed over the previous 3 s and responds to the difference. *my emphasis.

Jay Ray Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,07:20    Interesting.  Thanks for the links and for the corrections.  That's slighty more sophisticated than I imagined.  The bit about chemical gradients makes sense.  I wonder what accounts for its ability to "remember" chemical density up to 3 seconds ago and make a comparison to the present.

Alan Fox Posts: 1556 Joined: Aug. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,07:24    The private doesn't know the answer, sgt., but the private will find the answer, sgt..

Chris Hyland Posts: 705 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,08:19    Thanks for the correction, most of my knowledge on the subject comes from a couple of seminars I went to over a year ago, so its a little sketchy.

Henry J Posts: 5787 Joined: Mar. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,11:36    Re "How does a chromosome know how to fuse itself with another and come out with a beautiful and coherent result?" My take on it: Not seeing descendants from fusion events that produced incoherent results doesn't mean they didn't happen - it means if it happened, they died without leaving descendants. Henry

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,12:24    Henry, Quote A question here - in what way would 7% of a wing differ from simply an arm? Soren Lovtrup, professional biologist in Sweden, said "...the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous."2 Well known evolutionist vertebrate paleontologist Robert Carroll asked if the gradual processes of microevolution can evolve complex structures: "Can changes in individual characters, such as the relative frequency of genes for light and dark wing color in moths adapting to industrial pollution, simply be multiplied over time to account for the origin of moths and butterflies within insects, the origin of insects from primitive arthropods, or the origin of arthropods from among primitive multicellular organisms? How can we explain the gradual evolution of entirely new structures, like the wings of bats, birds, and butterflies, when the function of a partially evolved wing is almost impossible to conceive?"10 Feuccia and Martin believe birds evolved from reptiles but not dinosaurs (I didn't know there was a difference): It's biophysically impossible to evolve flight from such large bipeds with foreshortened forelimbs and heavy, balancing tails," exactly the wrong anatomy for flight. (15) There is also very strong evidence from the forelimb structures that dinosaurs could not have been the ancestors of birds. A team led by Feduccia studied bird embryos under a microscope, and published their study in the journal Science." (16) Their findings were reported as follows: New research shows that birds lack the embryonic thumb that dinosaurs had, suggesting that it is "almost impossible" for the species to be closely related. (17) Most of the rest from chapter 9 of Denton's Crisis According to Denton, who critiques Gerhard Heilman's book The Origin of Birds, his 'scheme is highly speculative. He attempts no rigorous mathematical aerodynamic approach, which would give estimates of wing area, body weight, and lift at the various stages to show that his frayed scaled aerofoil would work and that the transition to gliding, and from gliding to powered flight was at least feasible...there are serious doubts about the feasibility of the transition from gliding to powered flight. ...the physical adaptations for powered flying are in opposition to those of gliding flight. The aerofoil of a glider is usually a membrane attached to the body...which extends out to the fore and hind limbs. In the case of a powered flying, lift and thrust are usually generated by surfaces such as the wings and tail, which are some distance from the main mass of the animal." The arboreal (trees down) theory is also considered implausible by Ostrom on the grounds that all birds, including Archae, exhibit anatomical features which seem to preclude them from having descended from arboreal climbing ancestors: 'The critical point is that in order to fly, the animal first had to be able to climb. However, according to the design of modern birds, (including archae) that skill may not have been part of the repertoire of primitive birds or their ancestors.' Problems in getting airborne from running include loss of thrust when the hind feet get off the ground, not overcome by the primitive enlarged scale "wings" and therefore would not be selected. Remarking that the running, bipedal insectivore leaping after prey scenario is somewhat plausible, Denton nonetheless says that  "no known animal regularly catches flying insects by leaping after them...nearly all insectivorous vertebrate species take their prey on the ground. Only the most skilled flyers, the bats and a few birds, are able to capture insects in the air." The Mexican roadrunner is fast, never leaps, and can barely fly, so Denton thinks the niche envisaged for proto-avis is not very attractive. "Altho many variants of both the arboreal and cursorial theories have been proposed over the past century, to date no overall scheme has ever been developed which has not seemed impausible to some degree to a significant number of authorities...and there are a host of more specific problems, such as...the difficulty of explaining the origin of the feather. "The central difficulty with all gradual schemes for the evolution of the feather is that any aerofoil will only work if the feathers are strong, capable of resisting deformation and capable of forming an impervious vane. Moreover, there has to be a sufficient surface area to achieve the requisite degree of lift. " Per Heilman, the original impervious vane which supported these pre-avian species as they glided was a set of 'longish scales developing along the posterior edge of the forearms and the side edes of the flattened tail'     and then, 'By the friction of the air the outer edges became frayed, the fraying gradually chaning into still longer horny processes which in the course of time became more feather like.' But Denton says, "it is difficult to understand what the adaptive value of frayed scales would be to a gliding organism, when any degree of fraying would make the saales pervious to air, thereby decreasing their surface area and lift capacity...all gliding organisms present an unbroken surface to the air...it would seem reasonable that selection for gliding would always tend  to... decrease the tendency to fray. Apparently Ostram envisages the forelimnbs evolving into an insect-catching net, but Denton points out that it is difficult to envisage a net catcher turning into an impervious aerofoil, because a net must be pervious to air. And, "It is not easy to see how an impervious reptiles scale could be converted gradually into an impervious feather without passing thru a frayed scale intermediate which would be weak, easily deforemed, and still quite permeable to air.  It is true a feather is basically a frayed scale - a mass of keratin filaments - but...the filaments are ordered in an amazingly complex way to achieve the tightly intertwined structure of the feather. Take away the exquistite coaadaptation of the components,..hooks and barbules, the precisely parallel arrangement of the barbs on the shaft and all that is left is a soft pliable structure utterly unsuitable (to flight). ...it seems impossible that any transitional feather-like structure could possess even to a slight degree the crucial peroperties. In the words of Barbara Stahl, in Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, "how they arose initially, presumbly from reptires scales, defies analysis." Jeanno- Thanks for the cute pic. As mentioned above and below, gliders are in a different track from winged fliers: A gliding stage is not intermediate between a land animal and a flier. Gliders either have even longer wings than fliers (compare a glider's wingspan with an airplane's, or the wingspan of birds like the albatross which spend much time gliding), or have a wide membrane which is quite different from a wing (note the shape of a hang-glider or a flying squirrel). Flapping flight also requires highly controlled muscle movements to achieve flight, which in turn requires that the brain has the program for these movements. Ultimately, this requires new genetic information that a non-flying creature lacks And last but not least: (how can I resist?) Do they not see the birds suspended in mid-air up in the sky? Nothing holds them there except God. There are certainly Signs in that for people who believe. (Qur’an, 16:79)

dhogaza Posts: 525 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,12:57    "Remarking that the running, bipedal insectivore leaping after prey scenario is somewhat plausible, Denton nonetheless says that  "no known animal regularly catches flying insects by leaping after them" Poorwill catch insects by perching quietly on the ground at night (their legs are too weak for them to stand) and leaping up (powered by their wings) and snatching them as they fly by. Looks like Denton doesn't know guano about birds.

Henry J Posts: 5787 Joined: Mar. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,14:03    Re "Soren Lovtrup, professional biologist in Sweden, said "...the reasons for rejecting Darwin's proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous."" Well, if series of small steps is ruled out, that leaves only one huge step, which seems to me to be enormously less likely. And since complex life forms exist, that means picking the less unlikely of two very unlikelies. Besides, how does one know that the intermediate stages don't work? You'd have to rule out every possible sequence to know that. Re "when the function of a partially evolved wing is almost impossible to conceive?"" But, an arm is already a partially evolved wing. An arm with a large surface area is moreso. Besides which "that's inconceivable" isn't a valid argument - otherwise much of physics would have been thrown out before it got started. Re "Feuccia and Martin believe birds evolved from reptiles but not dinosaurs (I didn't know there was a difference):" Interesting. Sure there's a difference; dinosaur is one branch of reptile. The articles I've read on that indicate that birds are closer to some dinosaurs than others, and if so then dino to bird is the more likely. Re "It's biophysically impossible to evolve flight from such large bipeds with foreshortened forelimbs and heavy, balancing tails,"" Well yeah, if one starts with the large two legged dinosaurs. So I'd infer that birds evolved from the small species of whichever group they evolved from. As for feathers, I gather that feathers were found on species that aren't birds, which implies they originated earlier than birds. So my take on that is that flight feathers evolved from feathers that had been in use for something else, rather than directly from scales (which seems to be the scenario being considered in your quoted article). Henry

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 19 2006,16:31    Jay Ray, Please don't think you have to be mystical to be a Taoist. Taoism is pretty free. Even those lines from Tao Te Ching that seem a bit conscious - "Heaven regards the people as straw men" don't really seem literal. The purposeful arrangement of parts, the well-arranged universe, the information encoded in the DNA, Hubert Yockey speaking on origin of life, calls life an axiom and  unsolvable within science. It begins to add up. Now, following this, you state that the person who comes to a teleological view is afraid of being alone in the universe. But I agree about the responsibility avoision. This is a major theme with me. In my opinion religious people just don't get it. We are indeed responsible. God isn't going to step in and make people be good. Especially if there isn't a personal God, but mainly for other reasons. Quote No IDer has laid out an explanatory sequence of steps which shows a design event, and it never will.  They can't. Maybe not. But certainly not now. It's back to the drawing board if ID is right. But you assume we cannot reverse engineer God's handiwork. I say why not. If it is a nuts & bolts kind of design, why not? We don't know how much of the mind and methods of God we can unravel. Look how much we have unraveled already in physics and biology. Quote Evolution, on the other hand, provides a sensible process. Except it doesn't know almost anything really interesting. Why do you say designists will have a tough time working QED into a design event?   Quote One of the basic points of science is to define things more tightly and tightly with careful study. True enough. This was in response to my saying I don't define frontloading as requiring  more than a general outline, although it could also be very specific. I talked to a Catholic who thinks that God did something at the big bang that resulted in a totally deterministic universe, such that if you roll some dice right now, it was set from the beginning. And I was about to reply that would be terribly boring, when I realized that it wouldn't. Quote In regards to "Planck length reality", any response would be based upon how you define dimension. I hear tell of infinite dimensions. I don't know what they're talking about. I mean an actual physical dimension that is upholding the reality that you and I are in right now. Quote Do you see the tautology in this idea?   Why is consciousness necessary? Because without it, the universe would suck. Why would it suck? Because there is no conciousness. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a tautology. Quote I personally think that love necessarily  implies caring.  Care, or passion for the object of one's love (however vaguely or broadly you define "object") can no more be absent from that love than blue can be absent from purple.  But that's about the emotion of love itself, not whether the universe feels loves or care or any emotion whatsoever.  I guess I'm just a stickler for consistancy. What if you love every human being equally. Does that mean you don't care for them? In fact, that personal passion you speak of is almost totally dependent upon the supposed 'giver' of love getting a reward in return. Remove that reward and the love goes with it. A love that is conditional is not real. Quote Totally unsupported.  Love energy? You have to be a mystic to know about these things. Quote ID goes so far beyond the data its impossible to distinguish it from religion or philosophy. And I think the same of Darwinism. Quote But what I was specifically alluding to was that pure material reductionism is an inadequate explanation of the cosmos. This may turn out to be accurate.  But to date, nobody has demonstrated a replacement. A replacement for what? You speak as thought materialistic reductionism has an explanation for the cosmos. Quote I think there are enough practicing scientists in the world to justify basic research into abiogenesis.  Why not? They have been doing research for decades, and Harvard has pledged money to reinvigorate it. What I meant was that we should not discuss abiogenesis in our arguments because there isn't much to defend.   Quote Would it disappoint you if science proved a definative, mechanistic, non-concious origin of life? I think it would, but I don't expect it anytime soon. Quote My view of the Tao is that it is a poetic, artful, pre-scientific explanation regarding the flow of energy, shaping interactions of matter to produce complexity.  Lao Tzu recognized that we interfere with this flow at our peril. I think he was describing enlightenment. Quote One of my favorite things about Hinduism is the doctrine of maya, which states that the universe that we perceive is confusing and largely illusory.  Thus, we have issues.  The solution they propose is to gradually peel away the filters until you see the universe for what it really is. Only then does one recognize that there is no difference between one's self and "god".  But here is my favorite part.  One of the filters that will be peeled away during this process is Hinduism itself.  The idea of god is part of the illusion.  Its like Buddhism in this regard, except with a lot of fanciful creatures and dressing.  But if you follow the path set out by either technique, one of the things you realize is that the dressing up, the tales and parables, the myths around which the religion is built, and even the technique toward enlightenment itself, are all illusions.  Universe as game.  I get a kick out of that. Yes, it is true that for the rare traveller who embarks upon the pathless land, they must jettison everything, including their religion and its confines. Christianity, Islam, are particularly good at discouraging this truth. Even Islam, through its sufis, is more open about it. I think the philosopher Kierkegaard figured it out. It's simple really. No description on this side of the gateless gate can ever capture the true nature of Reality for those who have not yet encountered it. Therefore, as you get a bit closer you come up against moments where you either let go and enter unknown territory, or you hang back and wait to be guided, which will never happen. You must go it alone. That is why it is important for religion to stop teaching people to be children. The gateless gate is a zennish expression for enlightenment. Krishnamurti said, "Truth is a pathless land." Quote That's the whole point of addition to the card analogy I made: sticky laws inform the process.  Without them, you just have labels. But I have to ask... what did you mean by this:   --As for creationists refusing to acknowledge sticky laws, first, we haven't really found them yet (but we might).-- I thought we had agreed that a way out of the improbability mess, or at least a partial way of reducing the improbability, is if we find more sticky laws than the ones we already know about. If we don't find more, improbability stands: Hoyle, Sir Fred, The Intelligent Universe (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983), 256 pp. "If there were a basic principle of matter which somehow drove organic systems toward life, its existence should easily be demonstrable in the laboratory. One could, for instance, take a swimming bath to represent the primordial soup. Fill it with any chemicals of a non-biological nature you please. Pump any gases over it, or through it, you please, and shine any kind of radiation on it that takes your fancy. Let the experiment proceed for a year and see how many of those 2,000 enzymes [proteins produced by living cells] have appeared in the bath. I will give the answer, and so save the time and trouble and expense of actually doing the experiment. You would find nothing at all, except possibly for a tarry sludge composed of amino acids and other simple organic chemicals. How can I be so confident of this statement? Well, if it were otherwise, the experiment would long since have been done and would be well-known and famous throughout the world. The cost of it would be trivial compared to the cost of landing a man on the Moon." pp. 20-21 "In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth." p. 23

Chris Hyland Posts: 705 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 20 2006,00:50    Quote The purposeful arrangement of parts, the well-arranged universe, the information encoded in the DNA, Hubert Yockey speaking on origin of life, calls life an axiom and  unsolvable within science. It begins to add up. Add up to what? purpoesful arrangement of parts is a tautology. Hubert Yockey said intelligence is not required and that intelligent design is rubbish. If the universe was not 'well aranged' and we saw life then maybe that would be a better argument for intelligence. The fact still remains that there is no positive evidence for an intelligent cause in evolution. Quote we should not discuss abiogenesis in our arguments because there isn't much to defend.   True, that doesn't mean it was designed though. Quote Except it doesn't know almost anything really interesting. I think most scientists would disagree with you.

GCT Posts: 1001 Joined: Aug. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 20 2006,03:04    Quote (avocationist @ Mar. 19 2006,01:54) I promise you GCT, you have not given me any great new insights. I'm not surprised.  You seem impervious to education on things that you've already made an a priori judgement about. Quote as I already asked, if you think this has occurred, please show how it did. Use the quote feature, show the thread of you said, I said. Only then can I figure out where you went wrong. Yes, it obviously must be where I went wrong, right?  One quick example, which I've already pointed out is where you chided me with the knowledge that one can believe in god and accept evolution, even though I had already used it to counter your arguments that ToE is atheistic.  Of course, then you still turn around and insist that Miller must be an IDist since he believes in god.  And, you continue to make comments about "materialistic reductionism" which say to me that you have not changed your position at all.  It is disingenuous of you to act this way. Quote The only thing I recall as far as me changing my tune at all, is that you have insisted that ToE is less unfriendly than I had thought to the possibility of God, which if true is fine. If true?  You chided me with it after I used it to counter your assertion that ToE is atheistic.  You are really too much. Quote It's not about imagination. the great question of causation is how to account for the existence of anything. There is absolutely no way within your linear paradigm to account for the existence of matter. Something fundamentally other is going on. In order to get the label of God the being must deserve it. If there is an eternally existent being - then this being has already transcended the linear paradigm. And if this being had nothing to do with matter, then matter has also transcended the linear paradigm. yet matter cannot do so because matter cannot cause itself. And if matter has transcended the linear paradigm, then it is also worthy to be called God. Then we have two uncaused entitites in the universe, utterly different from one another. There cannot be multiple uncaused causes to existence. This is so wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. Which "linear paradigm" are you talking about that is "mine"? Why can I not account for the existence of matter? What must a god do to be "deserving" of the label and why is it necessary? Do you even understand what it is you are talking about when you talk about things causing one another?  Who's talking about multiple uncaused causes to the universe?  And, once again, perhaps you might want to figure out what it is you are talking about when it comes to causality. Quote Perhaps not, but if God is about love, there is a logical reason why. And that reason is that as the one and only possible source of existence, all things have emerged from and are part of that God. Therefore, all is self. And self always loves itself. So, I can assume that you love all of yourself unconditionally?  You don't wish you were a little smarter or better looking or anything else?  What you wrote here is claptrap.  You've made an a priori commitment to a notion of a loving god, and now you can't imagine one that isn't loving, so you make poor arguments as to why it should be so. Quote Of course it does. But you envision a kind of God which I think is untenable. You think I'm saying the universe will appear different if there is a God, but I rather think that the perception of God is not easy or obvious, and that the world won't look any different. The perception of God is of a different order. I guess the simplest analogy is that of a dog whistle. The dog can hear things outside your range. The perception of God is outside the range you are used to. You bring empty philosophical ramblings that have no verification and act like they are true because YOU said so, and then finish with a crude snipe at me, nice.  Just because you think it is untenable does not make it so, just like with ToE.  Just because you have personal incredulity does not mean ToE is false. Also, you have yet to demonstrate how you have the knowledge of the possible outcomes of the universe given god or no god in order to make the determination that a universe with a god is fundamentally different, let alone better. Quote ID doesn't say God can be scientifically proven. ID says it can be shown that beyond reasonable doubt that some systems could not have brung themselves into existence. Then, they are wasting their time.  Even if systems could not have brought themselves into existence by any means we currently know, it would not lend evidence to design.  Sorry, but it's not either one or the other.  The insistence that it is one or the other is called setting up a false dichotomy, but you wouldn't engage in logical fallacy, would you? Of course, if it wasn't god, then who was it?  Who could have designed "certain features of the universe" or "brought matter into existence" if not god?  You arguments are so transparent that I'd be embarrassed to make them if I were you. Quote Whether we can ever test for god or not god I don't know, but ID might be indirect evidence. But I don't consider it good indirect evidence, because lesser beings than God might have done the designing. Oh really?  How do you find "indirect evidence" for god through science?  Hint, you can't.  But, if you figure out a way, I'll nominate you (or anyone else who can do it) for an immediate Nobel prize in any field you wish. Quote Now, you have said that because we can't test for God we can't say whether things were planned. You want evidence for god to be first. Well, it might not happen that way. And I don't see why you should it expect it to. Many discoveries, most perhaps, were found circumstantially first. Pluto comes to mind. I really do appreciate your insistence that the term "unplanned and unguided" really means that evolution theory has no position on the matter of whether it was guided and planned or not, I'm just sort of surprised that this is so well hidden. i wonder why it wasn't put into the text books that way. And, without presupposing god, how will you find that "evidence" for god?  Good luck.  As I said above, I'll do all I can to hook you up with a Nobel if you can do it. And, as to the text books, perhaps you should read them.  Most of them have a section about science in general, which if read goes over most of what we've described and would help the reader to understand the context of the statements.  Some of the text books even go into explanation of the statement, gasp!

Seven Popes Posts: 190 Joined: Mar. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 20 2006,04:01    Avo stated:   Quote I don't know why in #$%@ you think the quesiton of the origin of homosexuality has anything to do with what we're discussing here or with my opinions. Avo, why did you use profanity? You know that it's in poor taste, and against the rules (you clever boots! using ones instead of the letter L! Quote I have known at least 3 families in which there were gay guys that were large, with many brothers. That's true, I suppose.  I have also met large homosexuals. Your point is? Quote Which seven popes are you promoting? The ones mentioned in Dantes Inferno Quote Neither chimps nor gorillas have tails, so I suppose it must be a real throwback, some 20 million years! Remember, common  ancestor. -------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.

PuckSR Posts: 314 Joined: Nov. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 20 2006,18:13    Sorry ive been absent from this "interesting" discussion. Im a University student....and therefore was enjoying my spring break.... Avo- These nice people have spent a great deal of time discussing ID and Evolution with you.  They have pointed out several logical fallacies with your position and they have admired your general civility in these discussions. You seem to miss a few point, and i would like to clarify them 1)  Your personal insight into the "likelihood" of scientific theory is completely meaningless.  Evolution's insight into the likelihood of God is completely meaningless.  It doesn't change a darn thing.   2)  There is no way to "prove" God...there is no way to claim that the "evidence" points towards God.  All you can claim is that YOU think that God exists..... 3)   Just because something is IC....doesn't mean that it couldnt evolve.  IC is the most meaningless statement that ID has. i.e.  A motorcycle evolved from a bicycle.  However a motorcycle is IC....even though it is comprised of several pieces that clearly can exist without the motorcycle...such as wheels, motor, transmission, lights, etc....they dont however function independently of the motorcycle...so the motorcycle is still IC. So according to Behe....a modern motorcycle was simply designed from scratch by an engineer.  It couldn't have evolved from a lesser motorcycle...because that motorcycle wouldnt function very well...it couldnt have evolved from a bicycle because its too perfectly designed. 4)You use an incredible array of subjective words.  Your favorite word seems to be "improbable".  Im going to attempt an explanation The moon:  long ago several rather strange theories explaining the moon existed.  Some people thought it was a giant star, some thought it was a rock, others thought that it was made of cheese.  Until we landed on the moon...we didnt know who was right...but we generally dismissed the people who thought the moon was made out of cheese.  Why?  Was their theory more improbable than any of the others?  No! We dismissed it because they couldnt explain how or why the moon would be made out of cheese....they couldn't even explain why they thought it might be made out of cheese....it just made more sense to them than to think it was a giant rock. You think ID makes more sense than evolution...but we dont dismiss ID because it seems improbable to Scientists...we dismiss it because it doesn't do anything...it just claims the "moon is made out of cheese" 5)  Intelligent Design is not Deism....Intelligent Design cannot believe in a Deistic entity...front-loading is a Deistic idea....ID is a theistic idea.  If ID is Deistic...then it believes in evolution...which it doesnt 6)  You make way too many assumptions about the nature of God.  If God doesnt exist....we could still have souls and reincarnation.  Heck...Im not going to laundry list it all for you....but quit assigning your conceived God to a God that can be proposed by rational reasoning....its just absurd.  Your God is based on a lot more than rationalism... 7)  Quit using that tired old line about Darwinism being just as religious as ID.  Evolution looks at evidence....millions of fossils and billions of living organisms....and proposes an explanation..the explanation does not defy the known natural laws...the explanation seems to be applicable to almost all of the evidence.  It makes absolutely no direct theological or philosophical suggestions.  It may have theological/philosophical implications for you....but that is completely beside the point.  ID, on the other hand, observes the data...comes to the same conclusion(that life is designed) but then goes to great lengths to try and explain the nature of the designer...explanations that are completely beyond the data. **Evolutionists believe in design too, just design by Selection algorithms***

Jay Ray Posts: 92 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 21 2006,02:54    Quote Please don't think you have to be mystical to be a Taoist. I professed my association freely and without prompting. Quote Taoism is pretty free. Ayup.  That's one of the things I like about it. Quote Even those lines from Tao Te Ching that seem a bit conscious - "Heaven regards the people as straw men" don't really seem literal. I didn't think they were literal, myself.  I can't blame the guy for using language like that, though.  It's iron age eastern poetry, presented as words to the wise for the ruling class.  He used words they were familiar with. Quote The purposeful arrangement of parts, the well-arranged universe, the information encoded in the DNA, Hubert Yockey speaking on origin of life, calls life an axiom and  unsolvable within science. It begins to add up. I sure do hope there is some kind of an afterlife.  I'd place a wager that in a half-dozen generations or so we nail it.  Assuming we make it that far... Quote ...you state that the person who comes to a teleological view is afraid of being alone in the universe. Yep.  I stand by that.  Call it fear, call it discomfort, call it whatever you want.  Any way you slice it, IDers feel that without some kind of external conciousness, they would be cut loose and cast adrift.  You personally (and probably most eastern leaning mystics) have a different balance of fears than the more western "personal god" style IDers, but it all adds up to the same sum.  I say its generally fear of the unknown, fear of freedom and fear of responsibility. Quote Maybe not. But certainly not now. It's back to the drawing board if ID is right. But you assume we cannot reverse engineer God's handiwork. I say why not. If it is a nuts & bolts kind of design, why not? We don't know how much of the mind and methods of God we can unravel. Look how much we have unraveled already in physics and biology. Yes, just look.  Its been "back to the drawing board" since the enlightenment--for the ID/creationists.  Long before that, actually.  Some of the pre-Socratics were tremendously astute and observent.  We figured out that, "Hey!  This whole science thing really works!  Wow!  Look, it isn't Zeus that makes lightning but electrical imbalances!  It isn't angels pushing the planets around, its these weird things called gravity and momentum!  Wow, look how far space goes!   It isn't just a big sphere with holes poked in it!  And look, there are these old bones layed down in predictable layers that show definate patterns though time leading right up to today!  By gosh, thats, thats, evolution!" Every time we turn around, science seems to be explaining the mysterious in purely non-mystical terms, and it works.  That's the trend.  I see no reason that it won't continue this way.  I find this invigorating.   Quote Why do you say designists will have a tough time working QED into a design event? A few basic reasons. ID can't make up its mind.  ID isn't religious, but oh wait, it is.  ID says "god did it" but then how can they ever know the mind and methods of god?  ID admits this when it says that it just infers design, and doesn't speak to method.  If it can't speak to method, QED never even enters the picture.  Nor does any process whatsoever.  And QED is nothing if not process and pattern. Furthermore, QED is to a large extent random.  And it's also "sticky".  We know that IDC doesn't acknowledge sticky laws.  Assuming they ever do grow a pair and fess up to things like gravity, the nuclear and electroweak forces, then the next obvious question is... what the #### kind of engineer/architect/designer would design an intricate and sophisticated system like, oh, any living creature EVER, and rely on randomness to shape the machine? Not that I look at biology as a machine.  That's an ID canard.  The point is that IDC can't reconcile intricate "irreducibly complex" design with randomness.  They envision perfection.  They want and expect to see deliberate constructions.  What do you think the purposeful arrangement of parts means? Quote ...I don't define frontloading as requiring  more than a general outline, although it could also be very specific. I talked to a Catholic who thinks that God did something at the big bang that resulted in a totally deterministic universe, such that if you roll some dice right now, it was set from the beginning. And I was about to reply that would be terribly boring, when I realized that it wouldn't. That's not unlike chaos theory.  From the initial conditions arise infinite variability, constrained only by the history of the process and the initial conditions themselves. Quote I hear tell of infinite dimensions. I don't know what they're talking about. I mean an actual physical dimension that is upholding the reality that you and I are in right now. I haven't heard about infinite dimensions.  Some versions of the string hypothesis derive up to 26 dimensions, IIRC.  I have also heard some speculation about infinite universes--an outgrowth of QED.  I don't place any stock in it.  No evidence, and no compelling intuition to ground me in that direction.  It's fun to contemplate for a few minutes, but soon enough I tire.  I would rather contemplate something real. Quote There is absolutely nothing wrong with a tautology. Hehe.  Alrighty. Quote What if you love every human being equally. Does that mean you don't care for them? I'm with Neitzche on this one.  If you love everyone equally, then you spread it too thin.  It gets watery and loses something along the way.  But then I'm a mere human.  You never know what god can do, right? Quote In fact, that personal passion you speak of is almost totally dependent upon the supposed 'giver' of love getting a reward in return. Remove that reward and the love goes with it. A love that is conditional is not real. I can honestly say I've only loved one person in my life, and it was not reciprocated.  No rewards.  Too bad for me.  I still love her unconditionally.  Everyone else?  Eh, some of em are pretty cool. Quote You have to be a mystic to know about these things. You have to be a mystic to feel these things.  Emotions are not the same as knowledge.  Two different spheres. Quote ID goes so far beyond the data its impossible to distinguish it from religion or philosophy. And I think the same of Darwinism. Strictly speaking, science takes no stand one way or another on the existance of any kind of god.  Strictly speaking, this is because there is no data, no evidence, no tests that can be worked out. Not so strictly speaking, and I speak for myself and myself alone, I don't believe there is an external, eternal conciousness.  But many scientists do.  Yes, even those. Quote A replacement for what? You speak as thought materialistic reductionism has an explanation for the cosmos. I'm giving you some ground here.  I'm saying that maybe someday IDC will provide definative proof of their beloved architect.  I'd be tickled pink if they did.  Meanwhile they have provided none, zero, nada, zilch.  They never have, in all their millenia of intellectual domination.  So I'm putting my two bits in with what seems to be working. Quote They have been doing research for decades, and Harvard has pledged money to reinvigorate it. What I meant was that we should not discuss abiogenesis in our arguments because there isn't much to defend. I don't remember bringing it up.  Somebody else keeps falling back to, "you can't explain the origin of life.  You can't explain the origin of the cosmos."  It ain't me. Like I said, half a dozen generations or so.  I could be wrong. Quote I think he was describing enlightenment. He talks about that, too. Quote No description on this side of the gateless gate can ever capture the true nature of Reality for those who have not yet encountered it. Therefore, as you get a bit closer you come up against moments where you either let go and enter unknown territory, or you hang back and wait to be guided, which will never happen. You must go it alone. That is why it is important for religion to stop teaching people to be children. I really dig the eastern approach.  Its too bad the western approach is spreading its slimy tendrils all over the planet.  Really screwing up the balance. Quote I thought we had agreed that a way out of the improbability mess, or at least a partial way of reducing the improbability, is if we find more sticky laws than the ones we already know about. If we don't find more, improbability stands: Ah. Well, yes and no.  Miscommunication.  I believe I said we might find more.  In fact, now that I think about it, I would even bet that we do.  But then again we might not.  In any case, science seems pretty close to something very basic and very primal.   The pieces of the puzzle very much seem to me to be mostly fallen into place.   Given the sticky laws we already do know, improbability as an argument for god works even less than it did for Paley and all the theologians before him. Quote Hoyle, Sir Fred, The Intelligent Universe (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983), 256 pp. "Hi I'm Fred Hoyle and I'm a pissed off physicist.  Abiogenesis is improbable jibber jabber jibber jabber, biologists are morons blah blah blah, oh did I mention I've been knighted? wallawallawalla." pp. 20-21 Yech.  Hoyle.  Isn't the the guy that believes that life actually came to earth from outer space?  The "sperm everywhere" hypothesis?  Is this quote meant as some kind of favorable argument for improbability?  His attack on abiogenesis is weak, and suffers from most of the same weaknesses as your run of the mill creationists version. Quote "In short there is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an organic soup here on the Earth." p. 23 Right.  Sperm everywhere.  So then it began in outer space.  There is no difference, really.  It began someplace, somehow.  Hoyle may not want to believe that it happened here, but he just displaces the issue to another location.  And I might add without actually making any attempt whatsoever to answer it.  What a wimp.  All IDers can do is complain.   I'm incensed.  A number of us spent a long ass time responding to your questions about the flagellum and Mike Gene's essay.  Not a single word from you about any of it.  Its as if we were talking to the hand.  And then the other hand comes around and tries to change the subject, except its the same complaints from a different angle.  Not fun.

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 21 2006,08:09    Jay Ray, I am going thru the posts in order. I am currently needing to respond to Jeannot post #94. some of your comments on flagellar motility were answered by somebody. I have to go to work now but will probably be able to spend a couple of hours   tonight. I'll go throught he posts I already answered and see if I missed something important about the flagellum. I spent a lot of hours reading Millers paper and Dembski's response, and I got comments from one person that showed the person didn't even realize what paper I was talking about. I got comments saying that Miller had solved the dilemma or proposed a solution, when he did no such thing.

avocationist Posts: 173 Joined: Feb. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 21 2006,20:56    Chris said, Quote One point though is that I was at a conference last year where several people who are experts demonstrated that partial motility is better than no motility at all, so Im going to have to take their word for it. Mike Gene's point wasn't to debate whether some motility would be good. On the face of it, why not. What he said was that a flagellum couldn't be significantly weaker than it is because it wouldn't overcome turbulance. ] Oh, heck, now I see I did already respond to this. I am trying to figure out why Jay Ray says I ignored feedback. Quote I have already pointed out what i think problems with IC are. If I understand correctly, you think that the proteins can co-evolve. But just saying you think it can be done doesn't seem to get to the heart of the problems with it. Yet two people say they have read Behe's book and aren't impressed. you were one of them. I am a bit stumped by this. I know you have probably already stated it, but why do you consider IC to be attacking a straw man? Quote You speak of parts A, B, and C evolving together, so that the subsequent removal of one part would of course cause nonfunction. But all this is speculation until we can understand systems closely enough to know if it is plausible. This is a well studied phenomenon. As I said I dont know if it applies to the flagellum but it does apply to other complex systems. You say it is well studied. Yet Behe's chapter on blood clotting comes to mind, and it is way beyond A, B, C. I wonder where somebody has laid out for my reading level how such things have been adequately studied. Quote It is possible no one has a clear idea of how the flagellum evolved, I'm not sure how this in any way supports the assumption that it was designed. I guess I find myself asking, in light of what I have read not only about the flagellum but the complexity of the cell and DNA and replication and so forth, at what point might a design inference become rational? What would it take? To me the construction of these things seems so very like something we would do that I tend to actually find it difficult to envision the Absolute, Infinite God doing it. It looks like the handiwork of a being more like us. Quote Our view of evolution may change drastically, there may be other factors that we haven't considered, self-organization is a promising example, that are as important as natural selection. Maybe there are currently unknown laws of nature that dictate to some extent how evolution has played out And really, to some extent that is all I ask for. Someone once said I was not really clear about my position on evolution, and I answered that at the very least, random mutations just wasn't adequate. There has to be at least one more major factor that we have not discovered, similar to the way that Darwin had not discovered genes. But if we end up finding these sticky laws and self-organizational principles, it is going to look like a grand, intelligently set-up scheme anyway. Quote My objections to CSI are not to how his method works in principle, but how he applies it to biological systems, at the very best he can say it has a low probability of evolving in the same way that someone has a low probability of winnig the lottery. Yet even if this is true, if the probability is ineed low but that Dembski takes it as more proof than it is, how does this translate into ID being a laughing stock? As for me, I don't have a problem with a low probability event from time to time. I have a problem with evolution seeming to require a steady diet of them. Jeanno, Quote You can see a funny world now. What you think is perfectly adapted could also be seen as imperfections. And you show me a picture of a perfectly adapted squirrel. You think the squirrel is on the way to wings? What I am asking is, isn't life in a different stage now than some millions of years ago? Wouldn't it be funny to see what humans looked like when they were anatomically awkward, between true upright walkers and knuckle walkers. Pelvis not quite right, arms a bit long but short for  knuckle walking, back not quite straight. Don't you suppose that the reason the little proto-bird with its 27% of a wing still managed to catch insects is because the insects themselves were also in an awkward stage? It's not so important if your olfactory sense is poorly developed if your prey hasn't got long enough legs to run away anyway. About the article on protein evolution. At least it wasn't all that long, but I couldn't really get the gist of it. I did try. How would you summarize it? Quote Nobody can claim that the chromosome fusion in Homo sapiens has anything to do with our adaptation. Perhaps by this you mean that the changes and adaptations could have been brought about without a chromosome number change? Alan, Yes, I do value enlightenment values. Questzal, Hi. I didn't answer a previous post of yours because it was logical and while I didn't agree, I didn't see holes. Quote But consider: Mike Gene is doing what many ID proponents do. He's selecting one particular system and saying, "This system is way too complex to have evolved without intelligent guidance." In doing so, he in no way refutes non-directed evolution in general. At best, he can only claim that we don't know enough at present to adequately explain how the flagellum might have evolved. But he presumably wants to take that a step further, and claim there is no way in principle that the flagellum could have evolved without intelligent intervention. But if we are to get down to the nitty gritty, we must select one system at a time to examine. I don't know that MG is trying to refute non-directed evolution in general. I think that of all IDists, he is one of the closest to belief in mainstream evolution and he may very well think that it does occur in much the way it is proposed to. That would make him a designer-as-tinkerer IDist I guess, but I really don't understand his thought well enough to say. Now, you say that if we don't know how something evolved, the only reasonble conclusion is to assume that our present knowledge is insufficient to explain how. But it is more than just a lack of knowledge of how. It is a thing which gives every indication of being utterly outside of the capability of anything we know about nature's processes and quite readily recognizable as just the sort of thing a purposeful intelligence might set out to accomplish. Quote Let's suppose he's right - that currently understood evolutionary mechanisms cannot explain the flagellum. What does that tell us? Only that some other mechanism must have been involved. Must? Well, yeah, and one of those other mechanisms might have been purposeful design. But if you say that unintelligent processes must have been involved, then you are saying that your mind is made up and will not take in any contrary information. Quote But even if our feeling is that the odds are too long in light of known mechanisms, that only suggests there are probably additional unknown mechanisms. It does not mean that intelligent guidance is the only reasonable answer. I agree, but neither is it an unreasonable answer. Quote If there's a way to test for intelligent guidance, then we can scientifically ask if it was involved. I find the arguments about information persuasive. Quote I have no problem with people who believe an intelligence was/is involved. I have a problem with people who claim that we can scientifically conclude such is the case, based entirely on negative data. At some point if intelligence was indeed involved, we must surely be able to discern the difference between what an intelligence can do versus lack of same. And CSI or even IC, those are not negative data. Negative data about Darwinism is lack of gradations in the fossil record, lack of precursors, lack of ability to show positive mutations leading to new species, lack of plausible pathways to new organs like wings. Quote It's interesting that you would even ask how a chromosome "knows" something. I think that reflects your basic assumption that such things must be purposeful and directed. No, I didn't mean anything by it. Dhogaza, Quote Poorwill catch insects by perching quietly on the ground at night (their legs are too weak for them to stand) and leaping up (powered by their wings) and snatching them as they fly by. Looks like Denton doesn't know guano about birds. Oh my, you have just totally wiped out everything Denton spent several pages on. Those must be powerful wings it has. I give this maybe half credit - it catches insects while remaining stationary, but then leaps. Actually, the niche he was describing did not involve a creature with legs too weak to stand. It involved a four-limbed runner who runs after prey on its hind legs.

Henry J Posts: 5787 Joined: Mar. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 22 2006,07:28    Re "at what point might a design inference become rational? What would it take?" My guess would be describe a verifiable repeatedly observed pattern in the data that's actually explained by a conjecture that something deliberately engineered something - i.e., a pattern that's way more likely if deliberate engineering is true, than it is if evolutionary processes are what did it. Re "As for me, I don't have a problem with a low probability event from time to time. I have a problem with evolution seeming to require a steady diet of them." Hmm. My guess is that any particular evolutionary event probably is improbable to some degree. But the important question isn't the improbability of a particular solution - rather it's the probability of some solution being reached. Re "Wouldn't it be funny to see what humans looked like when they were anatomically awkward, between true upright walkers and knuckle walkers." Isn't that what chimpanzees are now? Henry

jeannot Posts: 1201 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 22 2006,07:38    Quote Jeannot, And you show me a picture of a perfectly adapted squirrel. You imply that there is no room for further adaptation in this species (provided its environment remains the same). Could you prove it? Quote You think the squirrel is on the way to wings? Not particularly. Quote What I am asking is, isn't life in a different stage now than some millions of years ago? Sure it is, and it continues to evolve. Quote Wouldn't it be funny to see what humans looked like when they were anatomically awkward, between true upright walkers and knuckle walkers. Pelvis not quite right, arms a bit long but short for  knuckle walking, back not quite straight. Look at walruses. They're rather awkward on the ground, and they don't swim very well compared to dolphins. Do you find them funny (I do)? Quote Don't you suppose that the reason the little proto-bird with its 27% of a wing still managed to catch insects is because the insects themselves were also in an awkward stage? Maybe. At this time, insects were not selected for their ability to escape flying predators like birds. Quote It's not so important if your olfactory sense is poorly developed if your prey hasn't got long enough legs to run away anyway. You can detect a pray using your olfaction, event if it can't run fast. What's your point? Avo, From this post, you seem to embrace the theory of evolution.

improvius Posts: 807 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 22 2006,08:57    Quote (Henry J @ Mar. 22 2006,13:28) Re "As for me, I don't have a problem with a low probability event from time to time. I have a problem with evolution seeming to require a steady diet of them." Hmm. My guess is that any particular evolutionary event probably is improbable to some degree. But the important question isn't the improbability of a particular solution - rather it's the probability of some solution being reached. I always think of trees as a good example of this.  Take any grown tree, and imagine its 3-dimensional outline, including branches, bark, leaves, roots, and all.  Now try to figure out the odds of a given seed growing into that exact outline at that exact spot.  I'd imagine they would look astronomically low.  And yet, there's the tree!  Against all odds, it has managed to fill that exact outline at that exact spot.  Surely something as improbable as this must be evidence of a designer, right? -------------- Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37) Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.

Henry J Posts: 5787 Joined: Mar. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Mar. 22 2006,09:35    Especially if there's a treehouse somewhere in its branches...

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