Darwinism? Tcha... You Know What? Uh-uh!

[catatonic]

Hobbit, your flagellum argument is highly respectable, but also wrong. The reason half the scientists like it and half don't is because half understand a very complicated principle that the other half, including the Darwin's Black Box author don't. In fact it is so complicated that I won't bother trying.

It's pretty well recognized that in any system of formal logic, there will be statements provable, unprovable, and unknown. The ability to lessen the unknown and find more of the provable and unprovable is based on a threshhold. Everyone's mind represents a code, complicated by the fact we influence each other's code, that has a threshhold of ability to solve problems. These scientists waving the flagellum argument like flagellum in the evolution of evolution are below this threshhold. It is also a really high threshhold.

It is like the low threshhold in understanding statistical correlation necessary to take global warming science and global warming reccommendations out of the unknown. Without meeting this threshhold, none of your thinking is relevant.

 

[MissileMan]

This post will likely reveal the limitations on my intelligence for the first time, but I'm glad to post it

Stephen R. Covey is a man who takes principles in the Book of Mormon and passes them off very successfully to the secular world who don't know that they aren't his ideas. Stephen C. Moyer's is the guy who wrote this paper and now lives at a Christian University which doesn't exactly woo scientists.

Here are the major observations I would make of the fossil record. Feel free to edit or add.
1. It is always in increasing order of complexity
2. Identical fossils exist at similar times in differing places.
3. Differences in time, space, features, and equilibrium of fossils are found in the record.
4. Progressions in microevolution are exhibited spatially.

Now we make hypotheses of at least one mind and tests it. Best to start out with the simplest hypothesis first... could our minds themselves explain this. We would still need a mechanism for how minds like ours could do it, but lets answer the question first. Increasing in complexity is just what humans do in inventing. The computers we've used to chat on message boards is the answer right in front of us. A mind could make breakthroughs in genetic engineering, just like there was a recent huge breakthrough in transistors.

Would our minds make the fossil record this way? I took the first example to mind, amphibians and reptiles. A 3-chambered heart is probably no harder to make then a 2-chambered heart, and the skin is nothing new. But the nervous system is much more advanced and could have been beyond current science beforehand. In the equilibrium of fossils there are a few missing links which could have been prototypes to ensure for a desired equilibrium (we desire equilibrium in companies). This is all testable once you allow for hypotheses from both.

How about the geological time scale? This is exactly what Meyer's starts off with - the Cambrian explosion. Our knowledge of how complete the fossil record should be, along with a sudden explosion in many species preceeded by and followed by a long lull, is what to test. I believe this is better explained by a mind, as our nature is to make sudden rapid changes sometimes, and it could be a new mind on the scene reverse engineering existing organisms, than by chance, as when we use computer code evolution there's nothing drastic ever because its not allowed for.

Microevolution vs. Macroevolution. Small changes like a foot adapting to different climate can be built into the organism. Yet for macroevolution, you need to explain the evolution of novel genes. This is clearly the most important part of the debate, as both papers I showed you go to great lengths to exaggerate. Meyer's would have the lazy person believe that any change in a sequence immediately kills the organism and the organism would have to die countless times before a desired change can have an effect on whether the organism can be more fit. The other paper's authors give the impression that all the relevant nucleotides are side by side and one change of any of them will produce a brand new species. The truth is in the middle which is exactly why I made the third link to the 180+ papers (and 600 scientists rejecting evolution at the start of this paper is more than these 180 papers) where proposals to how novel useful genes evolve are attempted. In all the papers I didn't have to pay for and hence all the papers I looked at, there was not a single mutational method with a greater probability of making a novel useful gene than the simple one nucleotide mutating at the time. No mathematical calculation has ever been done in support of evolution of new genes, except by Meyer's against it. This is where evolution breaks apart and intelligent design must be given full attention. This is where I draw the line in the sand and say, "Who's with me and who's against me (and who doesn't have a clue)?" The fact novel genes are found is eons away from accounting for it with a probability calculation on known ways genes get wrecked. You may say, hey, we haven't yet learned the mutational technique. The more randomness you rule out, the more directed it is and the more a mind was likely at play in designing how the mutation would occur. Novel genes are more easily explained by a mind just taking an organism when nobody's watching to a laboratory and tweaking it.

I've drawn the line to where I think evolution breaks down. However Meyer's won't stop there, and the counter-paper doesn't even cover any of it. He points out that no matter how simple it would be to turn one DNA strand into a very different strand, DNA itself is quite limited. DNA does not change the cellular skeleton when cells reproduce, making an interspecies explanation impossible from anything Darwin suggested. Not only can you not change cell types from DNA changes, but egg cells are rigid as well in dictating what types of organism can develop no matter what the DNA says. Moyer's goes on and on, pointing to the absurdity of changing ever higher structures like tissues, organs, and finally organism.

I still have to answer your particular questions. Common line of descent is just what we do. In our stories, philosophies, sciences, and models and versions of inventions and software, there is a common line of descent. The change in mitochondrial mutation has been used without a yardstick except the geological time scale to date these descensions. However modern species' measured mitochondrial mutation rates are totally incompatible with long term predictions. I will back this up with a paper if you challenge it. Hence this is another thing explained by intelligent design and not rigorously explained in evolution.

Germ Theory and Genetics require posts of their own.

Now to unviel the mechanism for intelligent design. Alien life is the simplest. Although the common alien encounter story can be discredited legitimately, the real question is again probability. I refer to the Drake equation and Fermi paradox. Yes, they calculate that it's too improbable for aliens to visit us out of how many planets can have alien life. But I think one of the coefficients in the product isn't write... how many planets are inhabitable. There's no refutation that aliens could have the technology to modify planets to make them inhabitable, hence a much smaller conceivable limit to how many planets could not be inhabited, and alien life on earth is completely plausible. I also think its the simplest explanation. You may say, hey, there is a difference between the sophistication to make a planet inhabitable and genetic engineering. But I could shrug this away by one group creating and allowing another group to do the genetic engineering, especially as the climate might still be more suitable to one group. The only problem I see in any of this is why did it take 3.5 billion years? That bothers me, and the best explanation I can give is that time is not constant. People extrapolated their view to say the earth was flat. Why should we extrapolate 3.5 billion years to say that time is constant? Again, this is why I say time is irrelevant to either side.

That's about the same quality as my original post.

To clarify...are you saying that you believe in alien creators whose skills evolved leading to more complex lifeforms over time?

 

[catatonic]

Yes. Also, different groups could have come along at different times and picked up where others left off.

 

[MissileMan]

Yes. Also, different groups could have come along at different times and picked up where others left off.

An interesting theory, but it brings up another question: How did those aliens come to exist?

 

[catatonic]

Germ theory and Genetics themselves are pretty hard to tackle!

Why create germs? Why use genetics?
A couple of hypotheses: to test system security before another mind takes over the design. Just to punish people felt to deserve it. To control development of species. To keep an equilibrium. To motivate us to study genetics. To keep us in confusion. To balance out our behavior.
preference of hosts is very difficult to test. Whether a mind would want to do this is also very difficult to test. Think I'll just leave all this alone.

Now Genetics is interesting because genetics and computer science are very similar. Geneticists who don't know computer science and computer scientists who don't know genetics come up with the exact same assembly language. I would love to get into this topic! Especially epistomology.

 

[catatonic]

An interesting theory, but it brings up another question: How did those aliens come to exist?

Thank you for bringing up this question responsibly, as some people just immediately discredit things with this question.

The answer it is irrelevant, as no matter what anyone suggests created anyone else, there is always the question of how this came about.

If God created the world, who created God?
If the big bang created everything, who created the big bang? Scientists are now suggesting that they can understand earlier events. Who created those events?
If we are alive, how was life created, especially since the more we know about ourselves, the more things aren't life and the less things are.
No matter what, there is always the question of prime cause.
If you can say there was no beginning, and there was no God, or there was always God, it's just as legitimate to say there was no beginning and there were always aliens, if not less, er more so. You would have to be more specific, and to do that, you would have to know the very nature of reality, which demands a very high threshhold of intelligence and I haven't tried hard enough to get there or I am incapable.

 

[catatonic]

Life has never been defined. Only what isn't life. Leaving no room for criticism.

 

[catatonic]

The truth of the matter is that we are taught a very vulgar expression, "The Universe", that leads to this misguided thinking.

Saying "The Universe" is very vulgar, because thinking about it as having an outside or an inside is a great time waster. All thinking "The Universe" will ever do is make someone misjudge its universality and waste a lot of their brain power. Universe has no limitation or boundary. Saying the Universe is all there is is just equally crude.

The best way to talk about Universe is to ignore the word and just talk about things.

 

[Said1]

Life has never been defined. Only what isn't life. Leaving no room for criticism.

Wow. Trippy.

 

[catatonic]

You are suggesting that aliens must have come from "outside Universe" while there is simply no such thing. The fact that life exists is enough to know.

 

[Said1]

You are suggesting that aliens must have come from "outside Universe" while there is simply no such thing. The fact that life exists is enough to know.

Who? Use the quote feature, bottom right....I think.

 

[catatonic]

Some people have suggested life is a feedback loop.

Who created feedback loops?

 

[catatonic]

An interesting theory, but it brings up another question: How did those aliens come to exist?

Nothing comes to exist. Everything is a specialized principle of Universe. I really should just say, "Everything is a specialized principle." That's it.

 

[dmp]

A point to consider. If you build a car today out of metal that is one hundred years old, would you expect radioisotopic dating to return a result of one-day old? There's no telling how long the lava that formed the dome sample had lingered beneath the surface before it was ejected and cooled.

interesting - but I don't think it works that way with dating rocks - read thru that link? essplayns it better than can I.

 

[MissileMan]

interesting - but I don't think it works that way with dating rocks - read thru that link? essplayns it better than can I.

From your link "A good possibility is that solidification of magma does not reset the radioisotope clock to zero."

This was a "young-earther" trying to cast doubt on the results of isotopic dating who himself admits with the quote above that his assertion may lack any substance.

Gotta give the guy kudos for having the integrity to blow his own theory out of the water though.

 

[Hobbit]

Hobbit, your flagellum argument is highly respectable, but also wrong. The reason half the scientists like it and half don't is because half understand a very complicated principle that the other half, including the Darwin's Black Box author don't. In fact it is so complicated that I won't bother trying.

It's pretty well recognized that in any system of formal logic, there will be statements provable, unprovable, and unknown. The ability to lessen the unknown and find more of the provable and unprovable is based on a threshhold. Everyone's mind represents a code, complicated by the fact we influence each other's code, that has a threshhold of ability to solve problems. These scientists waving the flagellum argument like flagellum in the evolution of evolution are below this threshhold. It is also a really high threshhold.

It is like the low threshhold in understanding statistical correlation necessary to take global warming science and global warming reccommendations out of the unknown. Without meeting this threshhold, none of your thinking is relevant.

Care to break that down into layman's terms? I'm still a little woozy from my 10 hour day.

 

[catatonic]

That's just it. It's very difficult to break it down into layman's terms.

 

[Hobbit]

That's just it. It's very difficult to break it down into layman's terms.

I ain't buying it. Common sense would state that a flagellum missing one of it's moving parts won't work and that every part would have to have miraculously mutated simultaneously for evolution to work. Very smart people with Ph.Ds in biology, biochemistry, and physics have concluded the same thing. There has yet to be a published work directly challenging Behe's conclusions. That being said, I'm gonna need a little better than a bunch of nonsensical double-speak and a 'you wouldn't understand it' argument.

Edit: I reread the post, and I can boil it down really quick. Things are either provable, unprovable, and unknown. You then proceeded to use a bunch of fancy words to say that the flagellum example doesn't meet the requirements of a provable problem. And evolution does? In fact, the statement Darwin said to make it look like his theory was valid was that if you could ever find something that could not possibly have been created by random mutations, his theory would fall flat. Well, how certainly can you know anything? Some scientists...who were atheists (just to discount the tired old 'religious zealot' argument), calculated the odds that the basic chemicals required for organic life could have been created by random chance. The odds are 1 to 1*10^40,000 against. That's pretty slim. You know, life could have started when some alien overlord named Xenu slaughtered billions of people with hydrogen bombs on this planet, scattering their souls across this world (the claim made by scientology), but I seriously doubt it. Given the evidence over the past 50 years, either Darwinism has been proven untrue or it never will until we invent time travel.

 

[catatonic]

In layman's terms, these 40 flagellar proteins have probably all had different purposes, and could have been brought together through functional adaptations. In fact, many of these flagellar proteins have already been shown to serve different purposes in other places. The reason no published challenge has occurred is that it's too complex to deal with, like if I wanted to publish a paper on the whole human thought system from a psychology point of view, but the concepts all point to it being possible.

It's like epiphenomena, hard to deal with but easy to discount. Epiphenomena aren't well defined on the Internet. They are like metaphenomena, like what percentage of computer power is in use in the lab I'm in. It's like you have to account for everything to answer the question.

 

[Hobbit]

In layman's terms, these 40 flagellar proteins have probably all had different purposes, and could have been brought together through functional adaptations. In fact, many of these flagellar proteins have already been shown to serve different purposes in other places. The reason no published challenge has occurred is that it's too complex to deal with, like if I wanted to publish a paper on the whole human thought system from a psychology point of view, but the concepts all point to it being possible.

It's like epiphyphonemena, hard to deal with but easy to discount.

So, the evidence is there, but nobody's published it? I don't buy it. Every pro-Darwin publishment I've seen on the subject says that they serve some other purpose that must still be discovered. If anyone actually documented the seperate purposes that each protein serves that are advantageous and could have been brought together randomly, he'd get a Noble Prize and his stuff would be on the front page of the New York Times, just like everyone else ever purported to have 'proven' evolution. If there's evidence there, I want to see a source.

And if there's currently no evidence that the proteins serve other purposes, you're using Darwinism as a means of proving Darwinism, commonly known as circular logic.

The whole thing is also in complete defiance of Occum's Razor. These 'scientists' remind of the 'astronomers' from the early Rennaissance who kept trying to plot the paths of planets and stars under the assumption that the Earth was stationary, when throwing out that assumption is so much easier. Darwinists start with the assumption that everything must have happened randomly without any outside intervention, failing to account for the fact that the solution comes much more easily if you throw out that assumption, which is, as yet, unproven and even unsupported.