I love those moving goal posts. The question I was addressing is the
creation of information in the genome. In fact, Schneider's examples
start with zero information IIRC. So we seem to accept the fact that
evolutionary processes can generate additional information, even
though we disagree as to how life arose.
ID has been moving back the goalposts in time ever since science
started to take apart its claims, now we are back to a designer who
seeded his creation at the beginning of time.
The work by Lenski, Adami, Schneider is important because it lays to
rest the myth that natural processes cannot generate information in
the genome. If indeed Darwinian theory is correct then the origin of
information is quite consistent.
ID typically relies on inflated probabilities to argue that a
particular outcome could not have happened but as others have argued
as well, that may very well be a strawman argument.
Your 'accomplishments of ID' are clearly based upon the typical
creationist argument. Fine, it helps understand that ID is indeed
creationism in a thin disguise, since ID itself has done virtually
nothing in this area, stiffles research (what ID research really can
be pointed to in the last 10-15 years?).
Let's remember the foundation of ID is that ID is defined to be the
set theoretic complement of regularity and chance. From there ID
cannot argue other than accept our ignorance.
Yes, ID has confused its followers by irrelevant probability
calculations which ignore both logic, common sense and science.
If that's the best ID has to offer then indeed it is scientifically vacuous.
When will ID take a real evolutionary pathway and calculate its
probabilities? It ofcourse cannot do this and all it can do is provide
silly calculations of 200 genes arisen by pure chance, a pathway which
science has already rejected. And yet, there is the RNA world, and
pre-RNA world which is being explored right now. ID remains virtually
silent on these issues, exactly because the RNA world, as with the DNA
world can be found to be exquisitely accessible to evolutionary
processes.
In the interest of helping fellow Christians avoid St Augustine's
concerns, I am willing to discuss in more detail such processes as
neutral evolution, gene duplication, preferential attachment etc,
processes which play an important role in evolvability, robustness.
Scale free networks can be found everywhere one looks, evolutionary
science explains them.
May I ask in any of the so called areas of ID success, how ID explains
the data? Of course it refuses to do so. Their best quote mined
example is the Cambrian explosion, and yet we see sufficient evidence
that Darwinian processes may indeed have played a role, even here.
Although ID has typically quote mined Valentine as if he considers the
Cambrian explosion to be anti-Darwinian, in his latest book Valentine
is clear that he does not consider the Cambrian explosion to be
unexplained by Darwinian processes.
Again, ID has done a major disservice, by adopting the creationist
arguments about the Cambrian explosion, based on faith. After all, God
created kinds, immutable and thus the evidence has to be sculpted to
match these 'predictions'. The problem with ID is however that it
rejects identifying these necessary 'arguments' and remains
scientifically vacuous. At least creation science has made
'predictions' that were quickly falsified, such as the age of the
earth, the creation of separate species, the hominid evolution and
more.
Paul seems to believe that ID is a logical progression of creationism,
and I would agree, however by refusing to constrain the designer, ID
is even less scientifically relevant since unlike creation science,
which is merely wrong it most of its claims, ID is scientifically
vacuous.
If you disagree, explain how you believe ID moves from the set
theoretic complement of chance and regularity to scientifically
relevant claims?
Surely you jest when you consider ID's strawmen claim that
multiplication of small probabilities make an event more unlikely as
scientifically enlightening?
ID at best is nothing more than the same old probability argument, but
even more problematic because ID accepts regularities AND chance but
in their calculations it consistently ignores regularities.
> What has ID given science? This is a brief list of what it has explained for me.
> For me ID has provided statistical support for the following
>
> 1. Some of the gaps in the fossil record which may be real not just missing (which I fully accept as ancient - I'm not a YEC)
ID has done nothing in this area but make the typical creationist
claim, in spite of the evidence.
> 2. How the first cell could overcome chemical thermodynamics and that normally would drive macromolecules to break up outside cells.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 3. How you could get 200 genes in one place at one time for a first cell when 199 of them could not function until the last one was in place.
>
ID has done nothing in this area other than arguing a strawman.
> 4. Why so many of our "ancestors" seem to be side branches and dead ends - they could have been surrogates for the next species. I call it Zygote Theory. God added or altered genes, possibly at the zygote stage leaving the rest of the genes in place. A new species (male and female) was birthed that could be cared for by the existing species until it could live on it's own. see http://zygotetheory.wordpress.com/ for more details.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 5. The fossil record seems to show jumps and then stasis instead of gradual transitions because there were sudden infusions of information.
ID has done nothing in this area. In fact, this portrayal of the
fossil record is woefully inadequate.
> 6. How the incredible odds of getting useful genes by chance could be overcome
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 7. Why there was an explosion of forms in the Cambrian (not that there can't be earlier life forms or prototypes)
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 8. Why some forms (ie sharks etc) have remained remarkably stable when mutation and drift could have dispensed with them long ago - they could be lucky.
ID has done nothing in this area. Surely you understand how
evolutionary processes explain this?
> 9. How so many millions of complex, seemingly irreducibly complex structure and chemical pathways could appear when they seem impossible to work up to step by step. I wondered why the bacterial flagellum was the best we could do for design but that's just Behe's expertise - there are actually millions of what appear to me to be irreducibly complex structures or behaviors, etc. see Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can't Explain: Books: by Geoffrey Simmons - I can imagine solutions to some of the problems but that's all it is : imagination - we don't have fossils or living intermediates for most of the irreducibly complex structures.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 10. How so many chicken or the egg relationships got started - like DNA needing enzymes to replicate and make proteins but the enzymes need the DNA to build them.
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 11. If it is true ID has uncovered the secret of life that is no small feat and this does not mean research into HOW all of these mysteries could have been done has to stop - direct intervention may be the cause or we may yet find secondary causes God used, we can keep looking but we can't say we WILL find a secondary cause - that's metaphysical materialism.
>
Begging the question. For a Christian it may be tempting to endorse
the claims of ID but it behooves us to actually study the foundational
principles of ID and then see if the conclusions follow. They do not.
> 12 It explains how creatures can develop defenses to new offenses and how animals can mimic each other's appearance.
>
ID has done nothing in this area. In fact, evolutionary theory clearly
outcompetes ID here.
> 13. It solves the riddle of how malaria can't seem to overcome the sickle cell trait or even resistance to cold even though it can become resistant to some drugs. Drug resistance only takes one destructive mutation of a surface molecule - the other traits would take several coordinated genes forming and working together (huge probability barrier).
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 14. How both male and female can co evolve when almost any change in a species would usually make it unable or unwilling to be mated with.
>
ID has done nothing in this area. And evolutionary theory does explain
this 'conundrum'...
> 15. ID points out the vast number of different possible configurations of DNA and proteins.
>
Yes, ID is good about making strawmen arguments.
> 16. If life is as complex and improbable as ID has calculated then life may be rare, ET may not exist, even a single cell ET unless an IDer put life on other planets.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 17. It makes life, especially human life and intelligence even more precious in that the human brain may well be the most complex physical structure in the universe.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 18. ID confirms that particular patterns of DNA are so improbably that it is unlikely that the same gene would evolve twice thus the order of the bases in a gene can be used to identify relationships in nature. If genes were as easy to come by as some evolutionists think then who's to say the same sequence couldn't arise many times - but ID says the complex specific orders of DNA are too improbable to arise twice by pure chance.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 19 The improbability of specific complex orders of DNA arising by chance is what makes it possible to identify viruses by their genes - or to use DNA fingerprinting in identification of criminals. IF genes evolved easily you couldn't trust a DNA test.
ID has done nothing in this area. Surely you do understand DNA test don't you...
> 20. ID in the form of Zygote Theory explains how life could make the big jumps between major groups - such as from amphibian to reptile and yet still have many genes in common.
>
ID has done nothing in this area.
> 21. and in the non biological world the fine tuning of the universe seems to be more and more real and the "gap" is growing larger with each new discovery as ID would predict, not smaller as materialism would predict. (the fine tuning I have read includes the Big Bang which I accept as the best theory at present for origin of the universe)
>
>
> Other predictions
> 1. hominids would continue to look like dead end side branches as we learn more about their structures and genetics
> 2. hypothesies on the origin of life would continue to run into walls of probabilities to be overcome for the first cell to appear on it's own.
> 3. The probability barrier for the origin of functional genes and especially clusters of genes that work together will not be overcome by realistic computer programs or biochemistry.
> 4. More irreducibly complex structures and molecular pathways will be found as we learn more about life. Originally cells were thought to be little blobs of protoplasm - now they appear to be complex chemical nano machines.
>
> Paul Mason (ASA Member)
>
>
On 9/15/07, rpaulmason@juno.com <rpaulmason@juno.com> wrote:
> If I understand Adami and Schneider They make the same error Dawkins makes in the Blind Watchmaker. He skips over the main problem - how do you get the functional reproducing units (genes) in the first place. They are basically taking a bunch of ALREADY functioning units and putting selection pressure on them. But in DNA a triplet is not able to produce a functional protein, a selectable trait - you need hundreds of bases and there is the problem. There are so many alternate orders for a couple hundred bases for just ONE gene that it exceeds the upper limits of possibility - never mind at least 200 genes for the first cell and dozens to hundred for simple structures. The flagellum probably needs dozens of genes to code for the actual proteins that make it up and dozens more for its assembly.
>
> For a computer program to run a realistic test it would have to select a small number of useful orders from among many nonsense orders. The number of different orders for ONE gene that is about 300 bases long (tiny) is about 10 to the 180th. There have only been about 10 to the 110th events in all time. Thus a computer could not have time to test and find the good orders for ONE gene and one gene is usually not selectable for it must act in concert with hundreds of others (that have the same probability problems) to get a replicating unit. In fact if you had 10 to the 80th computers (one for every atom in the universe)randomly generating 10 billion genes a second for 20 billion years you would only have produced about 10 to the 110th orders(assuming no duplications). Your chances are still only 1 out of 10 to the 70th (subtract the exponents) of getting even if up to 1% of the orders were useful it would still be improbable to get one, and then you need another 199 that wo!
rk with it - harder than winning the lottery 200 times in a row!!!!
>
> Once you have useful genes that can work together THEN they can be shuffles and mixed and slightly mutated and reflect the selection pressure. Natural selection can only act on functional (respirating) replicating (reproducing) units (cells for a minimum).
>
> Natural selection explains the survival of the fittest but not the arrival of the fittest.
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Received on Sun Sep 16 12:30:09 2007
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