Bait And Switch (Intuition, Part Deux)

I would like to point out that our “intuition” about the earth being the center of the universe may not have been that far off the mark:

In 1610, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilee (1564-1642) verified Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s (1473-1543) heliocentric theory. The heliocentric theory was hotly debated at the time, for it proposed a revolutionary idea for the 1600’s stating all the planets revolved around the sun. Many people at the time had simply presumed everything in the universe revolved around the earth (geocentric theory), since from their very limited perspective everything did seem to be revolving around the earth. As well the geocentric theory seemed to agree with their religious sensibilities of being made in God’s image, though the Bible never actually states the earth is the “center” of the universe.

Job 26:7
“He stretches the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing”

Galileo had improved upon the recently invented telescope. With this improved telescope he observed many strange things about the solar system. This included the phases of Venus as she revolved around the sun and the fact Jupiter had her own satellites (moons) which revolved around her. Thus, Galileo wrote and spoke about what had become obvious to him; the planets do indeed revolve around the sun. Man was seemingly cast down from his special place in the grand scheme of things for the earth beneath his feet no longer appeared to be the “center of the universe” and was now seemingly reduced to an insignificant speck of dust in the vast ocean of space.

Of special note: In what I consider an absolutely fascinating discovery; Space itself was created in the Big Bang and continues to “expand equally in all places” i.e. The universe is not expanding “into” anything outside of itself. Thus from a 3-dimensional perspective, any particular “material” spot in the universe is to be considered just as “center of the universe” as any other particular spot in the universe is to be considered “center of the universe”.

There Is No Three-Dimensional Center To This Universe – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_7Ta5igSEc

Where is the centre of the universe?:
Excerpt: There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/.....entre.html

So in a holistic sense, from what we now know to be true from 4-Dimensional space-time cosmology, and from other facts revealed later on in this paper, everything in the entire universe can be found to be “centered” on the earth, since there is no true 3-D material center to this universe. In fact, depending on how much relative importance can be found in a single person, the whole universe could truthfully be said to be revolving around, or to be “centered on”, a single person. Thus, much contrary to the mediocrity of earth and of humans, brought about by the heliocentric discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus, this finding of a “4-dimensional space-time” for our universe is in fact very comforting to Theistic postulations in general, and even lends very strong support of plausibility to the main tenet of Christianity which holds Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God.

Matthew 28:18
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and upon earth.”

As well, I find the fact this seemingly insignificant earth is found to revolve around the much more massive sun to be reflective of our true spiritual condition. In regards to God’s “kingdom of light”, are we not to keep in mind our lives are to be guided by the much higher purpose which is tied to our future in God’s “kingdom of light”? Are we not to avoid placing too much emphasis on what this world has to offer, since it is so much more insignificant than what heaven has to offer?

Sara Groves – You Are The Sun – Music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foz25j0r2rM

Louie Giglio – How Great Is Our God – Part 2 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfNiZrt5FjU

Psalm 8: 3-4
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have
ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him?

Are you guys using intuition?

I would be cautious about claiming that the universe *is* any particular abstract mathematical structure. It is true that you can model certain aspects of it as a 4-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold, but in the end it’s a math trick—”spacetime” is simply an incoherent concept.

Glad you are back Gil

Mr Lock,

Are you guys using intuition?

The real question is ‘are you using intuition provisionally?’

Herb states:
“but in the end it’s a math trick—”spacetime” is simply an incoherent concept.”

No Herb, the Cosmic Background Radiation is coming at us equally from all directions, thus we know for an absolute fact that space is expanding equally from all points in space. The only thing that is incoherent about the “higher dimensionality” of spacetime is that it radically challenges our false 3-D “materialistic” construct we have put in place for the universe.

Your representation of evolution and extant fossils is simply false, and your understanding of evolution is extremely faulty.

“No Herb, the Cosmic Background Radiation is coming at us equally from all directions, thus we know for an absolute fact that space is expanding equally from all points in space. The only thing that is incoherent about the “higher dimensionality” of spacetime is that it radically challenges our false 3-D “materialistic” construct we have put in place for the universe.”

Don’t confuse facts with explantions of observed facts. All we really know for a fact about CBR is that it is comming at us equally from all directions. Any explanation of it’s origin is a theory. It may or may not be a good theory – that is beside the point. You need to keep clear what is observed and what is inferred.

Anthony09,
Who is your comment directed at? Evolutionists Or IDists?

Well Stephen,
Seeing as General Relativity, Special Relativity and many other lines of evidence have firmly established the “Big Bang” and 4D spacetime cosmology, I feel rather comfortable with my inference, and feel it is up to whomever wants to defend the false 3-D materialistic construct, that was actually the ultimate basis of the “mediocrity” principle brought about by Copernicus to do so with empirical evidence, until they do so I stand firmly behind my assertions!

Here’s another oberved fact: The universe looks much the same in every direction. This means either 1. We are at (or near) the center of the universe, or 2. The universe has no center. Since some people would rather hang themselves than admit No1 as a posability, that left them with the hypersphere (or similar extradimentional shape) as the only viable model for the universe. Please correct me if you know of any other finite centerless models. (infinite universe models lead to logical absurdities)

Maybe I’m missing something, but if space is expanding everywhere and in all directions, why are physical objects — including our bodies not flying apart?

Like ink dots on the surface of an expanding balloon perhaps? I believe the usual answer is that other forces (such as gravity) are counteracting this.
However, I would be interested to hear from others who have investgated more than I.

Van,
As Stephen pointed out, other forces conteract this in “local” environment, but eventually the “flying apart” which is wrought by the finely tuned accelerated expansion of the universe by “dark energy” will ultimately win out:

Big Rip
Excerpt: The Big Rip is a cosmological hypothesis first published in 2003, about the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, are progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future. Theoretically, the scale factor of the universe becomes infinite at a finite time in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

Romans 8:18-21
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

also of note:

Fine Tuning Of Dark Energy and Mass of the Universe – Hugh Ross – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B0t4zSzhjg

van (13),

“Maybe I’m missing something, but if space is expanding everywhere and in all directions, why are physical objects — including our bodies not flying apart?”

They are. It’s just that the effect is not apparent at very small distances and only becomes apparent at extremely large distances – millions of light years. That’s because it’s cumulative – the further appart two objects are the faster they are moving away from each other. That is the basis of Hubble’s law (velocity = H x distance, where H is the Hubble constant).

The Hubble constant is measured in units of kilometres per second per megaparsec (1 megaparsec = 3.26 million light years), with a value of about 70. Hence an object thaat distance away – such as Andromeda galaxy – is moving away from us at about 70km/s due to expansion of the universe (plus a much higher velocity component due to gravitational attraction between galaxies in the Local Group).

On the other hand, an object at 3 billion light years is moving away at a speed of about 70,000 km/s due to expansion, which is about one quarter of the velocity of light and swamps any speeds due to gravitational attraction.

Conversely, at the much smaller distances between bits of our bodies, and atoms, the effect is negligible. But if the theory is ccorrect, it is happening throughout the universe including at these very small distances.

More “what good is half an eye” nonsense, topped off with creationist maths and a seeming admission of your own ignorance (note the common root with “ignore”) of the evidence for evolution.

Why is it that when you people claim that evolution is impossible, you always happen to neglect to consider the actual process of evolution?

Tajimas, to answer your question:

Because a straw man is much easier to beat up than a real man.

“Why is it that when you people claim that evolution is impossible, you always happen to neglect to consider the actual process of evolution?”

Here is a typical ill informed comment meant to disparage. All the eyes were available in the Cambrian n an nothing evolved since. There was no predecessor to the Cambrian so the various versions of eyes just poofed out of no where. An informed person would have taken that into account.

“Because a straw man is much easier to beat up than a real man.”

Another ill informed comment meant to disparage. The question is what is the real strawman and what is real.

All the cosmology I have seen says that individual galaxies are not expanding but the distance between them are. But if the galaxies are close to each other then the gravity of each attracts and overcomes the expansion and they eventually will merge. In a couple billion years our galaxy will merge with Andromeda.

Tajimas D,

1- Half an eye is no good if it takes 100% of an eye to gain functionality.

Vision systems do not function until they are 100% complete.

2- ID is NOT an argument against “evolution”.

ID is an argument against the blind watchmaker thesis

3- There isn’t any data which demonstrates mutations can accumulate in such a way as to give rise to new protein machinery and new body plans.

bornagain77,

First, let me clarify that I’m not defending the Newtonian view, which posits absolute space and universal time. I’m just saying that 4-D spacetime presents enormously difficult philosophical problems which haven’t been addressed or even acknowledged by physicists.

For example, consider your own worldline in “spacetime”. It determines your location for all time, and furthermore, it is immutable (nothing changes in spacetime). This is a real problem for those who believe in free will.

Regarding the Big Bang, I would just quote Berlinski:

Hubble’s Law embodies a general hypothesis of Big Bang cosmology—namely, that the universe is expanding—and while the law cannot be established by observation, observation can establish that it may be false. A statistically responsible body of contravening evidence has revealed something more than an incidental defect. Indifference to its implications amounts to a decision to place Big Bang cosmology beyond rational inquiry.

(my bolding)

I would like to throw a wrench into this discussion. As we are discussing the big bang, we are not using simple intuition any more, but we are using informed intuition. Based upon the information of the big bang, our intuition is recalibrated.

With the neo-Darwinian question the same thing happens. We consider the theory, we let the theory inform our intuition. Do we then find that there should be an explosion of phyla in the distant past, followed by a protracted period where new philum are never produced? I don’t. When I put a neo-Darwinian hat on, when I let neo-Darwinism inform my intuition, I do not suddenly arrive at the evidence. In fact, after applying everything I know about the theory — horizontal gene transfer, punctuated equilibrium, molecular clocks, genetic drift etc., etc. I still am unable to intuit the data that shows up in biology and biological history.

Gil,

The Theistic Evolutionists have an answer for this. Their main premise is that God works through secondary causes and one would never be able to pinpoint where or maybe even how God caused the changes. Some claim the changes came through quantum events.

Now I do not defend the TE’s and their reasoning and it interesting to see what machinations they go through to justify their beliefs. They would be equally critically of those who support ID.

The problem with Darwinian mechanisms is that it does not leave a forensic trail at least not in the building process. I believe Behe and others used the concept of an “Arms War” vs. a “trench warfare.” One builds and one tears down. There is no evidence in the fossil or genomic record of the Arms War but there is plenty of evidence for the trench warfare. So yes we do see gradualism but not in the direction they want.

If there were an Arms War scenario we would see all the steps or most of the steps in the process. But we do not see this. We do not see any steps. We do see lots of deterioration and sometimes this deterioration has a selective benefit.

So we get what Will Provine said and that is that the naturalists have to have faith. Yes he used the term faith to describe that it “must” have happened in the long term.

Just to add to my (16), I’ve just done a quick calculation which suggests that, if Hubble’s law holds good at small distances, two points a metre apart will be about (10 to the power of minus-25) metres further apart after one year due to the expansion of the universe – that’s about 10 billion billionths of a metre.

Not much to worry about, for the first few billion years anyway.

Herb quoted:
“Indifference to its implications amounts to a decision to place Big Bang cosmology beyond rational inquiry.”

Are you trying to say there is solid empirical evidence against the Big Bang?

Well the Big Bang model is verified by, and has successfully predicted, several lines of empirical evidence that we now have and I know of no solid empirical evidence against the Big Bang, which has withstood our discoveries. If you know of any please list them/it.

Evidence against the oscillating universe- Michael Strauss – video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A9G8k02vpI

Evidence For Flat Universe Reported By Boomerang Project
http://www.lbl.gov/ScienceArti.....-flat.html

Here is one site that is by no means in depth in its analysis of Big bang evidence:

Evidence Supporting the Big Bang
http://www.astronomynotes.com/cosmolgy/s7.htm

I am particularly drawn to the fact that “spacetime” is shown to have an “absolute original in the Big Bang… I mean think about it, how in the world is the “physical entity” of space and/or time going to be Created unless it is created by a entity which is completely transcendent of that space and/or time? Surely this argues strongly for the eternal Judeo-Christian God of the Bible!

Einstein’s general relativity equation has now been extended to confirm not only did matter and energy have a beginning, but space-time also had a beginning in the Big Bang. i.e. The Big Bang was an absolute origin of space-time, matter-energy, and as such demands a cause which transcends space-time, matter-energy.

“Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past.” (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) – 1970 – http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html

As well, as I somewhat pointed out earlier, This expansion of space/time of the universe is tied directly to the second law and is corroborated by this:

The Physics of the Small and Large: What is the Bridge Between Them? Roger Penrose
Excerpt: “The time-asymmetry is fundamentally connected to with the Second Law of Thermodynamics: indeed, the extraordinarily special nature (to a greater precision than about 1 in 10^10^123, in terms of phase-space volume) can be identified as the “source” of the Second Law (Entropy).”
http://www.pul.it/irafs/CD%20I.....enrose.pdf

This 1 in 10^10^123 number, for the initial state of entropy for the universe, also lends strong support for “highly specified infinite information” creating the universe since;

“Gain in entropy always means loss of information, and nothing more.”
Gilbert Newton Lewis

All of which supports this:

Scientific Evidence For God Creating The Universe – 2008 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQhO906v0VM

Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh
Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) — Concept 2. is used by Bennett, et al. Recall that they infer that since an infinite amount of information is required to specify a qubit, an infinite amount of information must be transferred to teleport.
http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/fa.....lPSA2K.pdf

bornagain77,

Herb quoted:
“Indifference to its implications amounts to a decision to place Big Bang cosmology beyond rational inquiry.”

Are you trying to say there is solid empirical evidence against the Big Bang?

I’m not saying there is evidence disconfirming the Big Bang, rather the evidence in favor of it is very shaky. I. E. Segal says “By normal standards of scientific due process, the results of [Big Bang] cosmology are illusory”.

Nevertheless, we are dealing with a fixed dogma here—there is no point in questioning it, since it must be true, according to the high priests of cosmology. As Berlinski says,

Like Darwin’s theory of evolution, Big Bang cosmology has undergone a curious social process in which a scientific theory is promoted to secular myth.

Anthony09:

Your representation of evolution and extant fossils is simply false, and your understanding of evolution is extremely faulty.

This comment should be directed at yourself. Unless of course you’re going to present something called “proof”, or at least some evidence that you’re understanding of the structureless smörgåsbord called the “modern synthesis”, or “neo Darwinism”, is deeper than that of Gil’s or whoever it was your uninformed comment was directed at.

Tajimas:

Why is it that when you people claim that evolution is impossible, you always happen to neglect to consider the actual process of evolution?

You don’t understand what’s being discussed, but merely imagine that you do.

1) By the

“actual process of evolution”

you mean what exactly?

2) The actual process, as far as micro evolution goes is accepted by all, including the most hard line creationists.

If you think you can gratuitously extrapolate micro into macro you’re breaking a fundamental rule of science.

3) Since there is zero evidence for macro evolution, except in the imaginations of the Darwinian fairy talers, you’re standing on very shaky and slippery grounds.

4) “Blind faith” that macro is merely an extension of micro, is what makes Darwinists so hypocritical when claiming that ID is faith based.

5) Genetic entropy alone is enough to prove that neo Darwinism’s mechanisms are not only insufficient, but contrary to any such macro development.

6) Worse, no Darwinist has ever been able to explain the existence of complex coded information in bio systems.

Code, by definition, implies intelligence. There is no such thing as meaningful, coded information without intelligence.

Yet DNA is code – mathematically identical to that of human language. (Yockey)

So before you go off, as usual, on a tantrum complaining of IDists not understanding evolution (Darwins simple idea), maybe you should learn the basics.

It’s always amusing to watch you chase your tails though.

A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner.

Gil, I am not sure you are justified in passing such judgements. After all, if Darwinists are not allowed to comment on the efficacy of the design of the laryngeal nerve, we shouldn’t engage in the same value judgements they are decried for making.

bornagain77,

A quick footnote to my previous post: I’m concerned that we IDers might be guilty of “selective hyposkepticism” (with apologies to KF) when it comes to cosmological theories vs. Darwinism. For example, when it was found that their theories predicted the existence of more matter than was observed, cosmologists invented dark matter and dark energy to make up the difference. 96% of the universe supposedly consists of this stuff which no one has ever seen! We accuse the Darwinists of grafting ad hoc assumptions onto their theories, but they’ve got nothing on the cosmologists, that’s for sure!

I think it’s clear that we tend to give the cosmologists a free pass since the Big Bang vaguely resembles Creation as described in the bible. It’s time we held everyone to the same standard, IMHO.

Gil,

A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons.

you are wrong, there are many feathered dinosaurs. here’s an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinonychus

Gil:

So, the Darwinian argument essentially goes as follows: Because human intuition is sometimes wrong, we can ignore intuition, basic reasoning, historical evidence, and the lack of empirical evidence — but only in the case of the claims of the creative power of the Darwinian mechanism.

Can you point me to the Darwinians who are making this argument so I can try to set them straight?

This is classic bait-and-switch con-artistry: Intuition can be wrong, therefore evidence, the lack thereof, and logic can be ignored or assumed to be wrong as well.

That certainly is con-artistry. If you tell me who these con artists are, I’ll join you in fighting them.

Khan @30,

I find this quote from your article to be quite ironic, especially after having carefully examined the pictures of the bones themselves without the artistic renditions.

No feathers have ever been found in association with fossils of Deinonychus. Nonetheless, the evidence suggests that the Dromaeosauridae, including Deinonychus, had feathers.

Talk about counter-intuitive.

And another one:

Because of its extremely bird-like anatomy and close relationship to other dromaeosaurids, paleontologists hypothesize that Deinonychus was probably covered in feathers.

Hmmm… sounds more like creative license at it’s best yet again within the world of paleontology.

PaulN,
you’re right, not the best example. take your pick from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaurs

Herb,
Dark Energy and Dark Matter, though they are not rigidly defined to any known “material” basis, are “REQUIRED” to explain REAL observational data.

REPORT OF THE DARK ENERGY TASK FORCE

The abstract of the September 2006 Report of the Dark Energy Task Force (which, “was established by the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee [AAAC] and the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel [HEPAP] as a joint sub-committee to advise the Department of Energy, the NASA, and the National Science Foundation on future dark energy research”) says: “Dark energy appears to be the dominant component of the physical Universe, yet there is no persuasive theoretical explanation for its existence or magnitude. The acceleration of the Universe is, along with dark matter, the observed phenomenon that most directly demonstrates that our (materialistic) theories of fundamental particles and gravity are either incorrect or incomplete. Most experts believe that nothing short of a revolution in our understanding of fundamental physics will be required to achieve a full understanding of the cosmic acceleration. For these reasons, the nature of dark energy ranks among the very most compelling of all outstanding problems in physical science. These circumstances demand an ambitious observational program to determine the dark energy properties as well as possible.”
http://jdem.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs.....report.pdf

The Discovery of Dark Matter – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSgxk5gHMHo

Hugh Ross – Dark Energy; Halos Of Exotic Dark Matter; And Earth’s Extremely Privileged Position – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=280Mt0AdIjo

Hubble Discovers Ring of Dark Matter – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRdUq2egXQY

Study Sheds Light On Dark Energy – video
http://dsc.discovery.com/video.....energy.htm

i.e. For example in the term Dark Energy we know for a fact something is making the universe expand in such a finely tuned coordinated way, we just do not know exactly what that “something” is. Dark Energy is just the name they have given this mysterious entity which is causing the universe to expand. Dr. Hugh Ross has made it clear that the Bible has numerous references which “predicted” that God Himself was “stretching the heavens”.

Psalm 104:2 “he stretches out the heavens like a tent”

And I believe a strong case can be made for that observation of Hugh Ross:

Reflection on the quantum teleportation experiment:

That a photon would actually be destroyed upon the teleportation of its “infinite” information to another photon is a direct controlled violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Thus, this is a direct empirical validation for the primary tenet of the Law of Conservation of Information (i.e. information cannot be created or destroyed). This conclusion is warranted because information exercises direct dominion of energy, which cannot be created or destroyed by any known material means, yet a photon of energy is destroyed by this transcendent means. Thus, this experiment provides a direct line of logic that transcendent information cannot be created or destroyed. Clearly anything that exercises dominion of the fundamental entity of this physical universe, energy, must of necessity possess the same, as well as greater, qualities. i.e. All information that can exist, for all past, present and future events of energy, already must exist. Another line of evidence, corroborating the primary tenet of the Law of Conservation of Information, is the required mathematical definition for infinite information needed to correctly specify the reality of a photon qubit (Armond Duwell).
The fact that quantum teleportation shows an exact “location dominion”, of a photon of energy by “a specified truth of infinite information”, satisfies a major requirement for the entity needed to explain the missing Dark Matter. The needed transcendent explanation would have to dominate energy in a very similar “specified location” fashion, as is demonstrated by the infinite information of quantum teleportation, to satisfy what is needed to explain the missing dark matter. Moreover, the fact that simple quantum entanglement shows “coordinated universal control” of a entangled photon of energy, by transcendent information, satisfies a major requirement for the entity which must explain the missing Dark Energy. i.e. The transcendent entity, needed to explain Dark Energy, must explain why the entire space of the universe is expanding in such a finely-tuned, coordinated, degree, and would have to employ a mechanism of control very similar to what we witness in the quantum entanglement experiment. Thus “infinite transcendent information” provides a coherent picture of universal control, and specificity, that could possibly unify all of physics upon further elucidation. It very well may be possible to elucidate, mathematically, the overall pattern God has chosen to implement infinite information in this universe.

“I discovered that nature was constructed in a wonderful way, and our task is to find out its mathematical structure”
Albert Einstein

Further reflections on the “infinite transcendent information” framework:

Mass becomes infinite at the speed of light, thus mass will never go the speed of light. As well, distance in direction of travel will shrink to zero for mass at the speed of light (i.e. the mass would disappear from our sight if it could go the speed of light.). For us to hypothetically travel at the speed of light, in this universe, only gets us to first base as far as quantum teleportation is concerned. That is to say, traveling at the speed of light only gets us to the place where time, as we understand it, comes to complete stop for light, i.e. gets us to the eternal, “past and future folding into now”, framework/dimension of time. This “eternal” inference for light is warranted because light is not “frozen within time” yet it is shown that time does not pass for light.

“I’ve just developed a new theory of eternity.”
Albert Einstein

Also, hypothetically traveling at the speed of light in this universe would be instantaneous travel for the person going at the speed of light. This is because time does not pass for them, but, and this is a big but; this “timeless” travel is still not instantaneous and transcendent to our temporal framework/dimension of time, i.e. Speed of light travel, to our temporal frame of reference, is still not completely transcendent of our framework since light appears to take time to travel from our perspective. In information teleportation the “time not passing”, eternal, framework is not only achieved in the speed of light framework/dimension, but also in our temporal framework/dimension. That is to say, the instantaneous teleportation/travel of information is instantaneous to both the temporal and speed of light frameworks/dimensions, not just the speed of light framework. Information teleportation/travel is not limited by time, nor space, in any way, shape or form, in any frame of reference, as light is seemingly limited to us. Thus “pure information” is shown to be timeless (eternal) and completely transcendent of all material frameworks/dimensions. Moreover, concluding from all lines of evidence we have now examined; transcendent, eternal, infinite information is indeed real and the framework in which it inhabits is the primary reality (highest dimension) that can exist, (in so far as our limited perception of a primary reality, highest dimension, can be discerned). Logic also dictates “a decision” must have been made, by the “transcendent, eternal, infinite information” from the primary timeless reality it inhabits, in order to purposely create a temporal reality with highly specified, irreducible complex, parameters from infinite possibilities in the proper sequential order. Thus this infinite transcendent information, which is the primary reality of our reality, is shown to be alive. The restriction imposed by our physical limitations of us ever accessing complete infinite information to our temporal physical framework/dimension does not detract, in any way, from the primacy and dominion of the infinite, eternal, transcendent, information framework/dimension that is now established by the quantum teleportation experiment as the primary reality of our reality. Of note: All of this evidence meshes extremely well with the theistic postulation of God being infinite and perfect in knowledge.

“An illusion can never go faster than the speed limit of reality”
Akiane – Child Prodigy – Artwork homepage – music video

As a side light to this, leading quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger has followed in John Archibald Wheeler’s footsteps (1911-2008) by insisting reality, at its most foundational level, is “information”.

Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe?
Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Anton Zeilinger – a leading expert in quantum teleportation:

Thus Herb, On a whole I feel very comfortable with the state of cosmology, and the use of the Terms Dark Matter and Dark Energy, right now

GIl,

We find long periods of stasis, and the emergence of fully developed creatures with entirely new and innovative capabilities.

this is also wrong, and you are not the only one to be confused about this (jerry, I’m looking right at you). There are abundant transitional fossils between major novel morphologies (think of the jawbone-to-earbone transition). Gould’s punctuated equilibria (which I’m assuming you’re referring to) was about small, species-level changes in the fossil record, not major transitions.

Khan @34,

I’m sorry, but I’m still failing to see anything that remotely represents feathers in those fossils except for in the archaeopteryx and maybe even the microraptor. However, I find more than anything that the illustrations do a great job of filling in what is not really there for the rest.

PaulN,

a microraptor is exactly what Gil said didn’t exist in the fossil record.

Khan

Birds: Designed or Evolved? – Prof. Andy McIntosh – video
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/birds.xml

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links – June 2009
Excerpt: “one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs,“ Ruben said. “However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link,,, “The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.” —-”For one thing, birds are found (many millions of years) earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from,” Ruben said. “That’s a pretty serious problem,”…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....092055.htm

Is this a anomaly of birds or is this pattern consistent throughout the fossil record?

Ancient Fossils That Evolutionists Don’t Want You To See – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLzqDLZoufQ

THE FOSSILS IN THE CREATION MUSEUM – 1000’s of pictures of ancient “living” fossils that have not changed for millions of years:
http://www.fossil-museum.com/f.....p;limit=30

Fossil Record – No Transitional Fossils – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ZlcrumE2s

“The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find’ over and over again’ not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.”
Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager

“A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth’s geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin’s hypothetical intermediate variants – instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.”
Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki

“There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps.”
Professor of paleontology – Glasgow University, T. Neville George

“Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? … The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record.” Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin’s Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

“The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be …. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin’s time … so Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated”.
David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History

Why is this evidence so “counter intuitive” for the dogmatic evolutionists expect?

Will they accept any answer besides an evolutionary one? If not why not?

bornagain77,

First, thanks for the thoughtful post.

For example in the term Dark Energy we know for a fact something is making the universe expand in such a finely tuned coordinated way, we just do not know exactly what that “something” is. Dark Energy is just the name they have given this mysterious entity which is causing the universe to expand.

I would somewhat agree with this statement—it seems to me the term “Dark Energy” is basically a placeholder for some hypothetical entity about which we know nothing. I found the following snippet from a Scientific American article which expresses this point better than I can:

The universe around us is not what it appears to be. The stars make up less than 1 percent of its mass; all the loose gas and other forms of ordinary matter, less than 5 percent. The motions of this visible material reveal that it is mere flotsam on an unseen sea of unknown material. We know little about that sea. The terms we use to describe its components, “dark matter” and “dark energy,” serve mainly as expressions of our ignorance.

(my emphasis on the last sentence).

My question basically is, would we let the Darwinists get away with this sort of thing? I would say that the evos’ claims that the development of life occurred through natural processes seem rather modest compared with that of the cosmologists’. Let’s be clear here—the cosmologists are making authoritative statements about a universe of which 96% is invisible to them. I’m sure they’re all very bright people, but some skepticism is in order here.

Khan,

a microraptor is exactly what Gil said didn’t exist in the fossil record.

Here’s what Gil said:

A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons.

The feathers touted on the microraptor from just about every source I’ve come accross so far has depicted the feathers as being fully developed and functional (As in this dinosaur had full flying capabilities)- not developmental. I believe the point Gil was trying to make was in the incapability for half-formed parts to function properly and the consequent detrimental effect they would have on the survival of an organism. And he’s right given what he said. Half formed wings on the arms of a lizard would hinder the transport methods for such an animal.

You gave an example of something that is believed to have fully formed and functional body plans.

I don’t see the microraptor as being a transitional form for the same reason I don’t see a platypus as being transitional.

PaulN,
is gliding the same thing as flying to you? and all accounts also point out that microraptor would be a lousy flyer.

It had been proposed by Chinese scientists that the animal glided and probably lived in trees, pointing to the fact that wings anchored to the feet of Microraptor would have hindered their ability to run on the ground..

sounds very similar to

A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner.

so do we really

find no such creatures in the fossil record

?

ps PaulN,
if you want an example of proto-feathers, see here:
http://www.amnh.org/science/pa.....nosaur.php

Intuition plays also crucial role in biology. It was Goethe who underlined such an approach. Professor Ruppert Riedl (1925-2005) stressed that the whole areas of morphology and systematics are based on “intuition”. There is no scientific method systematics can safely use. Sometimes homologous organs have different genetic background and vice-versa etc…

Another scietists who put great value on intuition was proffesor of botany Wilhelm Troll (1897-1978)- proponent of German Idealistic Morphology . More on my blog about him.

http://cadra.wordpress.com/

Well Herb,
It is funny, but the solution to both of the questions: What is Dark Energy? and What is causing the sudden appearance of fossils in the fossil record? Is answered by the same empirically verifiable entity of specified transcendent information. i.e. we can verify the existence of specified transcendent information through various experiments, and show that it is foundational to “reality” and has qualities of dominion that would be required of it in order to do both things. The big but in all this is that we cannot “tell” the verifiable entity of transcendent information “when” to infuse original information into life or the cosmos for that matter. Yet since transcendent information is the ONLY known entity capable of explaining what is required to be explained from the evidence, then the inference to transcendent information is overwhelming reasonable to make. And this fact will remain a truth unless someone can overturn it in the scientific method, Yet I do not see this happening since It is very hard to imagine any entity whatsoever which can be more foundational to reality that transcendent information which is not limited by time or space in any way shape or fashion as far as we can tell.

I’d be very curious to observe the natural selection that took place as these tree-dwelling microraptors learned to glide between trees. Which mutated first – the behavior of jumping off of trees, or the ability to control their glide? How many microraptors were selected against by either falling to their deaths or landing on the ground where they couldn’t run?

I just re-read this:

It had been proposed by Chinese scientists that the animal glided and probably lived in trees…

Proposed? I forgot that even suggestions can be cited as evidence.

Khan,

You’ll never convince them.

They’ll say, there’s no use in a half-eye. Yet, in reality, there’s a huge advantage. Any light sensitive cell gives an advantage over blind competitors.

http://blog.taragana.com/n/sin.....es-123692/

They’ll say, what good are half developed wings, completely ignoring birds that don’t fly.

They’ll say, things are irreducibly complex while completing ignoring simple, logical similarities between different species.

Khan<
This following video shows just how shallow your evidence is for proto-feathers:

The Dino-bird Controversy
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/dinobird.xml

After I watched the video Khan, I realized just how desperate evolutionists are to squeeze any trivial piece of questionable evidence into their dogmatism so as to make it work on paper… Evolution truly is a shining example of pseudo-science at its ittelectually dishonest best!

the_napkin
of course not, but it’s fun to show that we have tons of hard-earned data and theory while they have nothing but sarcastic comments from the peanut gallery and youtube links.

BA^77, thanks for proving my point
what are the odds? <1 in 10^150?

I believe what you have is called an Overwhelming Mountain of Evidence (TM). Chinese scientists wonder out loud if it lived in trees and flew? Good enough – throw it on the pile!
Someone imagines a narrative of how eyes evolved, a little light on the details? That’s evidence! Throw it on the pile!
No wonder it gets bigger every day.

I like how it said, “Optimal design of birds is consistent with creation.”

That meaning? Birds are designed to have feathers and fly?

What about penguins? They have wings and small feathers but can’t fly. Are you going to tell me penguins are not related? Or did

What about ostriches/emus? They look like birds, run really really fast, and have sharp claws on their back feet. WEIRD! Just like that raptor I saw in Jurassic Park.

Khan,

A quotation from G.K. Chesterton: “Doubts About Darwinism” on evolution of horns and wings:

It is very far from obvious that the first rudimentary suggestion of a horn, the first faint thickening which might lead through countless generations to the growth of a horn, would be of any particular use as a horn.

And we must suppose, on the Darwinian hypothesis, that the hornless animal reached his horn through unthinkable gradations of what were, for all practical purposes, hornless animal.

Why should one rhinoceros be so benevolent a Futurist as to start an improvement that could only help some much later rhinoceros to survive? And why on earth should its mere foreshadowing help the earlier rhinoceros to survive?

This thesis can only explain variations when they discreetly refrain from varying very much. To the real riddles that arrest the eye, it has no answer that can satisfy the intelligence.

For any child or man with his eyes open, I imagine, there is no creature that really calls for an answer, like a living riddle, so clearly as the bat.

But if you will call up the Darwinian vision, of thousands of intermediary creatures with webbed feet that are not yet wings, their survival will seem incredible.

A mouse can run, and survive; and a flitter-mouse can fly, and survive.

But a creature that cannot yet fly, and can no longer run, ought obviously to have perished, by the very Darwinian doctrine which has to assume that he survived.

Scott,

Chinese scientists wonder out loud if it lived in trees and flew? Good enough – throw it on the pile!

you’re not showing much understanding of the scientific process. do you really think the quotation from wikipedia captures the process and evidence that led them to propose this? why not at least read the original article:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6921/full/nature01342.html

and thanks to you for proving my point again.

Khan,

is gliding the same thing as flying to you?

Not at all. But according to this:

Microraptor – the dinosaur that flew like a biplane

Some scientists believe they flew like biplanes.

Also, true protofeathers (the fluffy stuff you see growing on baby birds) or even fully developed feathers on a T-rex would be considerably less detrimental to movement given the actual mass of the creature.

Furthermore, it’s not unusual to find creatures with specialized equipment according to their specific environments. Gil is right in saying that they would have been lousy fliers and runners, however this does not preclude the option that they could have lived in trees or some other situational elevated environment. If the microraptor was a ground dweller, then of course you wouldn’t expect to see any in the fossil record. If anything I see this catering to specific design than I do toward a stepwise process, especially when you consider how the raptors would have to transition from living on the ground to living in trees- as the timing for the development of feathered flight/gliding capabilities would have to happen almost instantly alongside the adoption of an elevated habitat.

Oh, I see that Scott Andrews elaborated on my point before I could make it. Thanks Scott.

Frankly Khan,
I don’t care if you want to believe in a lie, all I care is that you try to come on this site and present shady evidence as absolute fact. You clearly are not a scientist, though you may imagine yourself as such, and frankly you make me sick with your grand sweeping statements for evolution on such crappy evidence. If you want to be scientific then “semi-prove” evolution empirically by passing the fitness test. You would then falsify the what appears to be the true principle for biology: Genetic Entropy (though this still would leave you with a cloud of Theistic evolution to deal with)

I find the principle of Genetic Entropy to be the true principle for biological adaptations which directly contradicts unguided Darwinian evolution. As well, unlike Darwinian evolution which can claim no primary principles in science to rests its foundation on, Genetic Entropy can rests its foundation in science directly on the twin pillars of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and on the Law of Conservation Of Information(LCI). The first phase of Genetic Entropy, any life-form will go through, holds all sub-speciation adaptations away from a parent species, which increase fitness/survivability to a new environment for the sub-species, will always come at a cost of the functional information in the parent species genome. This is, for the vast majority of times, measurable as loss of genetic diversity in genomes. This phase of Genetic Entropy is verified, in one line of evidence, by the fact all population genetics’ studies show a consistent loss of genetic diversity from a parent species for all sub-species that have adapted away, (Maciej Giertych). This fact is also well testified to by plant breeders and animal breeders who know there are strict limits to the amount of variability you can expect when breeding for any particular genetic trait. The second line of evidence, this phase of the principle of Genetic Entropy is being rigorously obeyed, is found in the fact the “Fitness Test” against a parent species of bacteria has never been violated by any sub-species bacteria of a parent bacteria.

For a broad outline of the “Fitness test”, required to be passed to show a violation of the principle of Genetic Entropy, please see this following video and article:

Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – “The Fitness Test” – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE

Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria – 2008
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....-drugstore

This “fitness test” fairly conclusively demonstrates “optimal information” is encoded onto a “parent” bacteria by God, and has not been added to by any “teleological” methods in the beneficial adaptations of the sub-species of bacteria. Thus the inference to Genetic Entropy, i.e. that God has not specifically moved within nature in a teleological manner to increase the functional information of a genome once He has created the parent species genome, still holds as true for the principle of Genetic Entropy.

Though I am surely no expert on the math of LCI, and may be in error as to how strict the limit for conserved information now is, it seems readily apparent to me, even with Dembski’s and Mark’s strict definition of LCI in place, to conclusively demonstrate God has moved within nature, in a teleological manner to provide the sub-species with additional functional information over the “optimal” genome of the parent species, the “fitness test” must still be passed by the sub-species against the parent species. If the fitness test is shown to be passed, then the new molecular function, which provides the more robust survivability for the sub-species, must be calculated to its additional Functional Information Bits (Fits) it gained in the beneficial adaptation, and then be found to be greater than 140 Fits of functional information. 140 Fits is what has now been generously set by Kirk Durston as the maximum limit of Functional Information which can reasonably be expected to be generated by totally natural processes over the entire age of the universe. This fitness test, and calculation, must be done to rigorously establish materialistic processes did not generate the functional information (Fits), and to rigorously establish teleological processes were indeed involved in the increase of Functional Complexity of the beneficially adapted sub-species. The second and final phase of Genetic Entropy, outlined by John Sanford in his book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, is when “slightly detrimental” mutations, which are far below the power of natural selection to remove from a genome, slowly build up in a species/kind over long periods of time and lead to Genetic Meltdown.
The first effect to be noticed, for the Genetic Entropy principle, is the loss of morphological variability of individual sub-species of a kind. This loss of morphological variability first takes place for the extended lineages of sub-species within a kind, and increases with time, and then gradually works in to the more ancient lineages of the kind, as the “mutational load” slowly builds up over time (A Cambrian Peak in Morphological Variation Within Trilobite Species; Webster). The final phase, of Genetic Entropy, is when the entire spectrum of the species of a kind slowly start to succumb to “Genetic Meltdown”, and to go extinct in the fossil record. The occurs because the mutational load, of the slowly accumulating “slightly detrimental mutations” in the genomes, becomes too great for each individual species of the kind to bear. From repeated radiations from ancient lineages in the fossil record, and current adaptive radiation studies, The ancient lineages of a kind appear to have the most “robust genomes” and are thus most resistant to “Genetic Meltdown”. All this consistent evidence makes perfect sense from the Genetic Entropy standpoint, in that Genetic Entropy holds God created each parent kind with a “optimal genome” for all future sub-speciation events.—- My overwhelming intuition, from all the evidence I’ve seen so far, and from Theology, is this; Once God creates a parent kind, the parent kind is encoded with “optimal information” for the specific purpose to which God has created the kind to exist, and God has chosen, in His infinite wisdom, to strictly limit the extent to which He will act within nature to “evolve” the sub-species of the parent kind to greater heights of functional complexity. Thus the Biblically compatible principle of Genetic Entropy is found to be in harmony with the second law of thermodynamics and with the formal proof of the Law Of Conservation of Information which has now been elucidated by Dr. William Dembski and Dr. Robert Marks. -

etc…etc.. Khan ….. until you pass the fitness test and show a gain of functional information, you are just blowing hot air.

Khan:
The authors themselves admit they only offer a suggestion. Apparently even they didn’t consider the evidence conclusive. That’s okay – they have you to put the cart before the horse and turn their suggestion into reality.
I think we all know how skeptical you can be of suggestions based on evidence when they don’t suit your ideology. But this one works for you, so you’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Scott,

–Someone imagines a narrative of how eyes evolved, a little light on the details?

Here’s some detail on some of the simplest, single celled organisms that lo and behold detect light.

http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tiet.....r_text.htm

PaulN,
do we then agree that there are fossils of dinosaurs with proto-feathers on their forelimbs?

Scott,
I didn’t present it as fact. what makes you think I did?

Khan:
Your post at 42 seemed to be in response to questions over whether such transitionals existed.
But if that wasn’t the point then I’ll chalk that up to my not reading carefully enough.

Napkin @58.
I’m sure there are many simple creatures that detect light without eyes. Plants grow toward sunlight. I don’t see the connection – conversationally or otherwise.

Scott,
nope, I was just showing that an example of what Gil said didn’t exist does. however, as PaulN pointed out, they weren’t proto-feathers. so I showed an example in the next post of a dinosaur with proto-feathers.

A new Chinese specimen indicates that ‘protofeathers’ in the Early Cretaceous theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx are degraded collagen fibres
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis.....3.full.pdf

excerpt from paper:
Alleged primitive feathers or protofeathers in the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx have potentially profound
implications concerning feathermorphogenesis, evolution of flight, dinosaur physiology and perhaps even the
origin of birds, yet their existence has never been adequately documented. We report on a new specimen
of Sinosauropteryx which shows that the integumental structures proposed as protofeathers are the remains of
structural fibres that provide toughness. The preservation in the proximal tail area reveals an architecture of
closely associated bands offibres parallel to the tail’s long axis, which originate fromthe skin. In adjacentmore
exposed areas, the fibres are short, fragmented and disorganized. Fibres preserved dorsal to the neck and back
and in the distal part of the tail are the remains of a stiffening system of a frill, peripheral to the body and
extending fromthe head to the tip of the tail.These findings are confirmed in the holotype Sinosauropteryx and
NIGP 127587. The fibres show a striking similarity to the structure and levels of organization of dermal
collagen. The proposal that these fibres are protofeathers is dismissed.

BA^77
do you have a youtube link to that paper? all kidding aside, please follow the link at 46 and see that it was about Dilong. that’s a completely different Baramin than Sinosaupteryx

bornagain77,

It is funny, but the solution to both of the questions: What is Dark Energy? and What is causing the sudden appearance of fossils in the fossil record? Is answered by the same empirically verifiable entity of specified transcendent information. i.e. we can verify the existence of specified transcendent information through various experiments, and show that it is foundational to “reality” and has qualities of dominion that would be required of it in order to do both things.

I definitely agree on the importance of Specified Transcendent Information, but it seems to me the cosmologists and the Darwinists have made exactly the same amount of progress toward understanding it: none, to be exact. In fact, I would wager that if you were to take a poll, you would find that very few if any had even heard of the concept.

Until the cosmologists get on board with STI, I’m going to take a wait-and-see attitude.

Khan,
You really have no clue do you?

I’m not so sure that these features are “far too long to be collagen fibers”. It seems at least plausible to me that the reason why these fibers were not preserved around the feet and hands is because they were likely structural to projections like dorsal frills and other supported skin assemblages. The same thing goes for the Dilong fossil “proto-feathers”.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=.....=firefox-a

Of note from the article:

Storrs Olson, the curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, has been a vocal critic of the theory that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs. “The whole notion of feathered dinosaurs is a myth that has been created by ideologues bent on perpetuating the birds-are-dinosaurs theory in the face of all contrary evidence,” he said.

National Geographic magazine and other media have heavily publicized stories about feathered dinosaurs. But contrarian views struggle to get heard, Feduccia said.

“One of the primary arguments used to deflect our view is that we are a fringe group,” he said. “But if science operates by a majority view, we’re in serious trouble. “We are dealing here basically with a faith-based science where the contrarian view is silenced to a large extent by the popular press,” he added.

All the eyes poofed into existence during the Cambrian. No eyes evolved since. If these little guys with eye sensitive spots were the precursor of the eye, why didn’t it lead to further eyes?

Just a question.

And another question, why don’t any plants have eyes since as someone said they are photosensitive? Now don’t tell me that potatoes have eyes.

BA^77,
the branched nature of the fossilized filaments are consistent with feathers, not collagen fibers:

http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....02855.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....200a0.html

they have also done biochemical assays on another feathered dinosaur, Shuvuuia, and shown that they have only beta-keratin, which is the primary component of modern feathers. collagen fibers would have collagen.

for jerry, 80 million years equals a poof, even when modeling has shown that an eye could evolve in a few hundred thousand years:

http://rspb.royalsocietypublis.....56/1345/53

yes, i know, it’s only a model with a lot of assumptions. please feel free to present any kind of evidence supporting your hypothesis, or even your hypothesis itself.

Khan,
Please read the papers I cite before you spout nonsense, I will not correct your every blatant mistake!

“As far as the ?-keratin argument goes, ?-keratin is generally found in reptilian skin (in the stratum corneum to supply both rigidity and water-proofing) as well as the claws, beaks, and feathers of birds. I really don’t see how this is some sort of distinguishing feature – to distinguish between a collagen-based frill and feather-like structures.”

We could go round and round but the point is you are not even practicing empirical science nor are you being fair with the evidence,,,,ANY evidence no matter how far fetched is accepted by you without so much as a ripple of doubt to as the sufficiency of natural processes to produce these structures which are far more rich in information content than what man can produce. Yet when staggering evidence is presented to the contrary that evolution can’t produce this level of information, all this is just ignored by you as if it means nothing…I would call you retarded but as I have noted before, I actually respect people with mental handicaps and the struggle they have to deal with in this life, whereas you Sir have earned zero respect from me.

BA^77,
if you can’t understand why showing that feather-like structures don’t have any collagen in them is pretty good evidence that they aren’t made of collagen, then I’m sorry.

Read this real slowly Khan,

“As far as the beta-keratin argument goes, beta-keratin is generally found in reptilian skin (in the stratum corneum to supply both rigidity and water-proofing) as well as the claws, beaks, and FEATHERS of birds. I really don’t see how this is some sort of distinguishing feature – to distinguish between a collagen-based frill and feather-like structures.”

BA^77
please explain to me, in your own words, your argument here. are you still arguing that the proto-feathers were actually collagen (71)?

Khan, Think about what you are trying to establish;

You are trying to rigorously establish some hypothesized fuzz, which is in itself very argumentative as to actually being fuzz, is the beginning of feathers by saying it is proven so by beta-keratin analysis, yet when I show that beta-karatin is found elsewhere:

(“As far as the beta-keratin argument goes, beta-keratin is generally found in reptilian skin (in the stratum corneum to supply both rigidity and water-proofing)

This is ignored by you,,,you have done nothing in this case except to show your ability to be severely prejudiced to whatever evidence is presented…I’ve seen the same thing over and over and over again by evolutionists….ANY evidence no matter how dubious is accepted without any self critical analysis, and then when refuted it is quickly forgotten and another piece of crap evidence is offered in its place by the evolutionists…YOU are NOT practicing science khan,,,you are trying to protect you dogmatic belief in evolution no matter how much evidence you have to ignore…Frankly I will not waste my time with you and find it surprising that others on UD have the patience to deal with such shoddy methodology day in and day out.

I love this quote:

Storrs Olson, the curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, has been a vocal critic of the theory that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs. “The whole notion of feathered dinosaurs is a myth that has been created by ideologues bent on perpetuating the birds-are-dinosaurs theory in the face of all contrary evidence,” he said.

BA^77,
so you are no longer arguing that the protofeathers are made of collagen. the problem with your new argument (lots of things like reptile skin have beta-keratin) is that reptile skin also has alpha keratin. feathers are the only integumentary structure composed solely of beta-keratin. and the Shuvuuia protofeathers had only beta keratin.

i’m not saying this is proof that they were feathers. but these data in combination with their branched structure are strong evidence that they were, AND strong evidence against the alternatives.

but perhaps i’m talking to an empty chair now that you’ve taken your ball and gone home.

Storrs can believe whatever he wants. but the data are not on his side, and he hasn’t published a single paper containing evidence to support his opinion.

I’ll add a bit here: controversy rages among evolutionists over how feathers originated. “Fundamentalist fervor,” “vitriolic name-calling,” and “paleontological passion” pervade the debate, states the magazine Science News. One evolutionary biologist, who organized a symposium on feather evolution, confessed: “I never dreamed that any scientific matter could possibly generate such bad personal behavior and such bitterness.”

If feathers clearly evolved, why should discussions of the process become so vitriolic?

“Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”

Yet, evolutionary theory teaches that feathers must be the result of gradual, cumulative change in earlier skin outgrowths.

Moreover, “feathers could not have evolved without some plausible adaptive value in all of the intermediate steps,” says the Manual. To put it simply, even in theory, evolution could not produce a feather unless each step in a long series of random, inheritable changes in feather structure significantly improved the animal’s chances for survival. Even many evolutionists find it a stretch of the imagination that something as complex and functionally perfect as a feather could arise in such a way.

And consider Khan’s parting shot at 82: “Storrs can believe whatever he wants.”

So to a layperson like myself, which group(s) or scientist(s) should I believe? The ones that toe the party line or the ones who follow the evidence or, better yet, come up with new ideas?

And here’s my two cents on intuition: Intuition has been more formally defined as “knowledge that comes to a person without any conscious remembering or reasoning.” Intuition, it seems, involves a kind of leap—straight from seeing a problem to knowing its solution. Suddenly, we just know an answer or comprehend a situation. That does not mean, though, that intuition is the same thing as an impulse or a desire.

But investigation usually shows that intuitions are based on experience, particularly the experience of individuals with great sensitivity.” The individual builds up “a storehouse of memories and impressions,” the Encyclopedia argues, from which the mind may draw a “sudden impression [called] an intuition, or ‘hunch.’”

This is why laypeople like myself reject the idea of macroevolution. We intuitively know that all things did not develop from a bowl of primordial soup. We know that if something appears designed (like a bird’s feather), and we have prior experience with things being designed (like airplane wings), it’s generally a good idea to assume that this feather is, in fact, designed.

“80 million years equals a poof”

What 80 million years? It was 5 to 10 million years and we have no evidence that it was even that long. And there was nothing before it so as of today it looks like a “poof.” Maybe future digs will show something else.

“even when modeling has shown that an eye could evolve in a few hundred thousand years”

But none have appeared in 540 million years since. I wonder why. Maybe the designer was through with eyes. On to something else. Goes to show that computer modeling maybe out to lunch some times.

Khan tells us an old tale, one never too tired to be resubmitted.

” even when modeling has shown that an eye could evolve in a few hundred thousand years”

Nilsson and Pelgar again?

From our friend, the agnostic skeptic David Berlinski…

Whatever the merits of computer simulation, however, they are beside the point in assessing Nilsson and Pelger’s work. In its six pages, their paper contains no mention of the words “computer” or “simulation.” There are no footnotes indicating that a computer simulation of their work exists, and their bibliography makes no reference to any work containing such a simulation.

Curious about this point, I wrote to Dan-Erik Nilsson in the late summer of 2001. “Dear David,” he wrote back courteously and at once,

“You are right that my article with Pelger is not based on computer simulation of eye evolution. I do not know of anyone else who [has] successfully tried to make such a simulation either. But we are currently working on it. To make it behave like real evolution is not a simple task. At present our model does produce eyes gradually on the screen, but it does not look pretty, and the genetic algorithms need a fair amount of work before the model will be useful. But we are working on it, and it looks both promising and exciting.”

These are explicit words, and they are the words of the paper’s senior author. I urge readers to keep them in mind as we return to the luckless physicist Matt Young. In my COMMENTARY essay of last December, I quoted these remarks by Mr. Young:

“Creationists used to argue that … there was not enough time for an eye to develop. A computer simulation by Dan-Erik Nilsson and Susanne Pelger gave the lie to that claim.”

These, too, are forthright words, but as I have just shown, they are false: Nilsson and Pelger’s paper contains no computer simulation, and no computer simulation has been forthcoming from them in all the years since its initial publication. Sheer carelessness, perhaps? But now, in responding to my COMMENTARY article, Matt Young has redoubled his misreading and proportionately augmented his indignation. The full text of his remarks appears in last month’s COMMENTARY; here are the relevant passages:

“In describing the paper by Nilsson and Pelger … I wrote that they had performed a computer simulation of the development of the eye. I did not write, as Mr. Berlinski suggests, that they used nothing more than random variation and natural selection, and I know of no reference that says they did…… The paper by Nilsson and Pelger is a sophisticated simulation that even includes quantum noise it is not, contrary to Mr. Berlinski’s assertion, a back-of-the-envelope calculation. It begins with a flat, light-sensitive patch, which they allow to become concave in increments of 1 percent, calculating the visual acuity along the way. When some other mechanism will improve acuity faster, they allow, at various stages, the formation of a graded-index lens and an iris, and then optimize the focus. Unless Nilsson and Pelger performed the calculations in closed form or by hand, theirs was, as I wrote, a “computer simulation.” Computer-aided simulation might have been a slightly better description, but not enough to justify Mr. Berlinski’s sarcasm at my expense…”

And here is my familiar refrain: there is no simulation, “sophisticated” or otherwise, in Nilsson and Pelger’s paper, and their work rests on no such simulation; on this point, Nilsson and I are in complete agreement. Moreover, Nilsson and Pelger do not calculate the visual acuity” of any structure, and certainly not over the full 1,829 steps of their sequence. They suggest that various calculations have been made, but they do not show how they were made or tell us where they might be found. At the very best, they have made such calculations for a handful of data points, and then joined those points by a continuous curve.

This is the exact paper Khan has thoughfully provided to us…and so it goes.

- – - – - -

By the way, the question is not the value of “half an eye”.

It is that the entire visual system including all support functions must be in place before it can serve as a selectable advantage.

So not only did chance genetic events cause a “light sensitive patch” to appear from other tissues, but at the same time those same chance events caused a means for such a light sensitive patch to emit some type of response to light, and also a neural pathway to get that response from the patch to some other part of the organism where decisions could be made. And then those same chance events formed some means in that part of the organism to recieve that response to light coming in from the patch, and also coordinated some means to understand what that signal meant and what it should so in response to it.

Oh, and during all of this, those new tissues and features will need to be supplied with energy, regulated, and maintenanced.

It should be no problem.

It’s a pity that the discussion on feathers has generated more heat than light. However, I think the following points are fairly clear:

(1) Feathers are exquisitely complex structures. Their origin demands a detailed explanation. Vague explanations are satisfactory only when the possibility of the events postulated is not in doubt.

(2) We don’t known when feathers originated, or how many times.

(3) We don’t know which dinosaurs had feathers. It seems some did, but we’re not sure.

(4) Despite the strong suggestive similarities between theropod dinosaurs and birds, we still don’t know how dinosaurs are related to birds. We should keep an open mind – and look for saome dinosaur DNA which might resolve the matter once and for all.

To firmly correct khan’s claim for proof:

The beta-keratin (without alpha-keratin) was found in Shuvuuia deserti. At least some are arguing that Shuvuuia deserti “belongs to a group of primitive, flightless birds.”
http://www.amnh.org/exhibition.....s/ex2.html

As with Caudipteryx, Shuvia deserti is classified as a maniraptor. Maniraptorians are considered by some scientists to be birds, not reptiles or dinosaurs. Stephen Czerkas and Larry Martin have concluded that Caudipteryx (and Shuvuuia deserti as well as all maniraptors) is not a theropod dinosaur at all. They believe that Caudipteryx, like all maniraptorans, is a flightless bird.

So khan in reality has nothing but unsubstantiated conjecture, on what is very flimsy evidence in the first place, to try to make his case for bird evolution.

Clearly this is not the practice of rigorous science! Evolutionists clearly must rely on this sort of shady evidence which is so easily refuted upon cursory examination because they have nothing of rigor which can withstand scrutiny..It truly is pseudo-science at its intellectually dishonest best.

counterintuitive quote:

Due to their evolutionary preconception that Lucy was a bipedal precursor to our genus Homo, they call this plain evidence that Lucy knuckled-walked “counterintuitive.” They suggest the possibility that “the locomotor repertoire of A. afarensis included forms of bipedalism, climbing and knuckle-walking.” This is a tenuous proposal, however, as knuckle-walking is obviously very different from bipedal locomotion. Collard and Aiello suggest avoiding the “counterintuitive” evidence that Lucy climbed and knuckle-walked by discarding it as unused “primitive retentions” from her ancestors.—
—”We were sent a cast of the Lucy skeleton, and I was asked to assemble it for display,” remembers Peter Schmid, a paleontologist at the Anthropological Institute in Zurich. … “When I started to put [Lucy’s] skeleton together, I expected it to look human,” Schmid continues “Everyone had talked about Lucy as being very modern, very human, so I was surprised by what I saw.”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2......html#more

Khan,

You continually speak of hypotheses yet you cannot provide one that supports your position.

That seems a little strange…

Abone Khan links to the oft refuted paper- A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve-

Too bad neither of the authors even knows if any amount of mutational accumulation can allow for a vison system to evolve in a population that never had one.

That is the problem- there isn’t any scientific/ genetic data to support the evolutionists’ position.

BA^77:
Birds are in the Class Aves.
Shuvuuia is in the Class Sauropsida.

any more questions about whether it was a bird or not?

They are both in the Phylum Chordata, I’ll give you that.

Khan,

What is the scientific data which demonstrates that feathers can evolve from a population that never had any?

Joseph,what makes you think I’m arguing that? all I’m trying to do is correct GIl’s post, which stated that no “lizards with protofeathers” had been found in the fossil record. in fact, dinosaurs with proto-feathers have been found. that’s it.

Khan,
This evidence, and biased classification, you have presented on UD is far from conclusive, yet you treat it as such. Why is this?

“maniraptorians are considered by some scientists to be birds, not reptiles or dinosaurs. As you yourself have noted, Stephen Czerkas and Larry Martin have concluded that Caudipteryx (and Shuvuuia deserti as well as all maniraptors) is not a theropod dinosaur at all. They believe that Caudipteryx, like all maniraptorans, is a flightless bird, and that birds evolved from non–dinosaurian archosaurs.”

and again:

Closer analysis enabled a researcher at the American Museum to realize the unidentified 1923 creature was also Shuvvuia. Recently, a new specimen of this birdlike animal was found with fibers that are chemically and structurally identical to modern feathers. Scientists now think that this feathered animal belongs to a group of primitive, flightless birds.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=.....=firefox-a

You need a lot, lot, more clear evidence than the obfuscation of classification you have presented to make your case, especially since many who are very knowledgeable of the integrated complexity and “perfection” of the feather consider its origination “miraculous”

“Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”

Yet you seem to delight in being very ambiguous in your science khan…Why is this? Why should your ambiguity carry any weight at all? You have yet to “come into the light” and demonstrate evolution empirically. Care to list any examples?

The malaria parasite, due to its comparatively enormous population size, has in 1 year more mutation/duplication/selection events than all mammal lineages have had in the entire +100 million years they have been in the fossil record. Moreover, since single cell organisms and viruses replicate, and mutate/duplicate, far more quickly than multi-cellular life-forms can, scientists can do experiments on single celled organisms and viruses to see what we can actually expect to happen over millions of years for mammals with far smaller population sizes.

Malaria and AIDS are among the largest real world tests that can be performed to see if evolutionary presumptions are true.

“Indeed, the work on malaria and AIDS demonstrates that after all possible unintelligent processes in the cell–both ones we’ve discovered so far and ones we haven’t–at best extremely limited benefit, since no such process was able to do much of anything. It’s critical to notice that no artificial limitations were placed on the kinds of mutations or processes the microorganisms could undergo in nature. Nothing–neither point mutation, deletion, insertion, gene duplication, transposition, genome duplication, self-organization nor any other process yet undiscovered–was of much use.” Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pg. 162 Swine Flu, Viruses, and the Edge of Evolution
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2....._edge.html

A review of The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael J. Behe
The numbers of Plasmodium and HIV in the last 50 years greatly exceeds the total number of mammals since their supposed evolutionary origin (several hundred million years ago), yet little has been achieved by evolution. This suggests that mammals could have “invented” little in their time frame. Behe: ‘Our experience with HIV gives good reason to think that Darwinism doesn’t do much—even with billions of years and all the cells in that world at its disposal’ (p. 155).
http://creation.com/review-mic.....-evolution

Again khan why will you ignore this clear empirical evidence I presented and rationalize it away as meaningless, then turn around and present very ambiguous evidence, which is far from conclusive, and demand that we accept it as proof for evolution?
Why is it so important for you to believe that you were the product of blind purposeless processes? I would think that a sane person would find the fact that he was created, and that death is not the “end of the line”, to be a very joyous thing to consider! Yet you treat it as if it would be the most horrible thing in the world to find that we were actually created,,,For the life of me I can understand neither your shoddy science nor your philosophical basis for “running from God”.

Berlinski’s misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Nilsson and Peleger’s paper is epic. Nilsson evicerates him here:
http://www.talkreason.org/arti.....d.cfm#lund
Highlights:

Berlinski thinks the response R is a measure of visual acuity:

His essay starts with an attempt to describe the original paper, Nilsson and Pelger (1994). Apart from a mix up in sequence chronology and some minor peculiarities, the only major flaw is his misunderstanding of the response R, which he quotes as a measure of visual acuity. It is not, and the original paper does not say so. This is the first serious mistake and it gets worse in the remainder of the essay.

Berlinski claims important information is missing in the paper when it isn’t:

Berlinski’s next move is to list important information, which he claims is missing in the original paper. At regular intervals he repeats the phrase: “they do not say”. But all the necessary information is there. Given only 800 words to respond, I cannot reply individually to every point here, but two examples will do: Berlinski claims that there is no unit for morphological change and that we do not explain how we arrive at a sum of 1829 steps of 1%. Explanations to both are given on page 56 of the original paper, starting with the bottom line of the left column. He further claims that we do not explain how morphological change relates to improvements in visual acuity, although most of pages 54 through 56, including graphs and legends of Figures 1 and 3 deals with exactly that, in great detail.

Berlinski basically doesn’t understand that the references section in a scientific paper is there for a good reason:

He continues for the rest of his essay on other issues where he believes he has detected logical flaws. He is not right in a single case, and instead reveals an insufficient background in visual optics, sampling theory, basic evolutionary theory, and more. Nor does he seem to have read the key references such as Warrant and McIntyre (1993), Falconer (1989) or Futuyma (1986). Without such knowledge I understand that it is hard to grasp the details of the Nilsson and Pelger paper, but it is standard scientific practice not to repeat lengthy reasoning when a short reference can be given.

Berlinski doesn’t even understand basic definitions and terms used in the paper (a common problem with amateur biologists):

But there is more to Berlinski’s misconception of our paper. He has a problem with definitions. “Morphological change” becomes “biological change”. Spatial resolution (visual acuity) becomes sensitivity of vision. He does not distinguish between selection and intensity of selection. He is obviously confused between the 1% steps which we use as a unit of measure for morphological change, and the 0.005% change per generation which is our conservative estimate of evolutionary rate.

Berlinski is ignorant of basic population genetics:

Later in the essay, he attempts a peculiar probability argument with random substitutions of letters. He does not realize that his example implies a single individual in the population, and then there can of course be no selection at all. Again, he badly needs to read Falconer’s standard work (1989).

Berlinski doesn’ t even read the figures and the accompanying explanatory text provided in the paper:

Contrary to Berlinski’s claim, we calculate the spatial resolution (visual acuity) for all parts of our eye evolution sequence. The functions in Figure 1 display the results. These plots are computer generated, using small increments. Values and units are given on the axes of the plots, and procedures are explained in the legend. The underlying theory is explained in the main text, including the important Equation 1 and a reference to Warrant and McIntyre (1993) where this theory is derived. Yet, Berlinski insists that “Nilsson and Pelger do not calculate the visual acuity of any structure”. It would be much simpler for Berlinski if he went just a tiny step further and denied the existence of our paper altogether.

Berlinski hasn’t earned the right to be taken seriously:

Had these and all his other points been unfortunate misunderstandings, I would have been only too happy to help, but I get the distinct impression they are deliberate attempts to eliminate uncomfortable scientific results. Why does Berlinski not read up on the necessary scientific background? Why does he so obviously misquote our paper? Why has he never asked me for the calculation details he claims to want so badly? It is simply impossible to take Berlinski seriously.

Even a broken clock tells the time correctly twice a day (my emphasis):

Berlinski is right on one point only: my paper with Pelger has been incorrectly quoted as containing a computer simulation of eye evolution. I have not considered this to be very serious, because a simulation would be a mere automation of the logic in our paper. A complete simulation is thus of moderate scientific interest, although it would be useful from an educational point of view.

“they are deliberate attempts to eliminate uncomfortable scientific results. ”

But still the changes in the Nilsson and Peleger paper never happened. It is just speculation or else we would be inundated with the case history not a model.

Hmmm,, John Sanford agrees with Berlinski 100%. I wonder do you think John Sanford is ignorant on genetics as well?

It is also extremely interesting to note, the principle of Genetic Entropy lends itself very well to mathematical analysis by computer simulation:

“No human investigation can be called true science without passing through mathematical tests.”
Leonardo Da Vinci

Using Computer Simulation to Understand Mutation Accumulation Dynamics and Genetic Load:
excerpt: We apply a biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program to study human mutation accumulation under a wide-range of circumstances. Using realistic estimates for the relevant biological parameters, we investigate the rate of mutation accumulation, the distribution of the fitness effects of the accumulating mutations, and the overall effect on mean genotypic fitness. Our numerical simulations consistently show that deleterious mutations accumulate linearly across a large portion of the relevant parameter space.
http://bioinformatics.cau.edu......aproof.pdf
MENDEL’S ACCOUNTANT: J. SANFORD†, J. BAUMGARDNER‡, W. BREWER§, P. GIBSON¶, AND W. REMINE
http://mendelsaccount.sourceforge.net
http://www.scpe.org/vols/vol08/no2/SCPE_8_2_02.pdf

Whereas, evolution has no rigorous mathematical foundation with which we can rigorously analyze it in any computer simulation:

Accounting for Variations – Dr. David Berlinski: – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW2GkDkimkE

EV Ware: Dissection of a Digital Organism
excerpt: Ev purports to show “how life gains information.” Specifically “that biological information… can rapidly appear in genetic control systems subjected to replication, mutation and selection.” (We show that) It is the active information introduced by the computer programmer and not the evolutionary program that reduced the difficulty of the problem to a manageable level.
http://www.evoinfo.org/Resources/EvWare/index.html

Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? Kondrashov A.S.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/.....4/art00167

The Frailty of the Darwinian Hypothesis
“The net effect of genetic drift in such (vertebrate) populations is “to encourage the fixation of mildly deleterious mutations and discourage the promotion of beneficial mutations,”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2......html#more

High genomic deleterious mutation rates in hominids
Excerpt: Furthermore, the level of selective constraint in hominid protein-coding sequences is atypically (unusually) low. A large number of slightly deleterious mutations may therefore have become fixed in hominid lineages.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....344a0.html

DW,

This has been covered to the enth degree. Repeatedly.

Anyone wanting to see the original critique (and the actual core of Berlinski’s issue with the paper), the follow-up responses from the evolution consortium, and Berlinski’s ultimate reply, may do so here.

http://www.discovery.org/scrip.....mp;id=1509

Such exchanges are often painted this way. Cut it short to make it appear your side had the last word, and call it an ‘evisceration’ or ‘debunking.’ (Those words sound so final, so victorious.) Disregard the part where the other side offers a counterargument.

Upright,

I’m aware of Berlinski’s reply to Nilsson. An exam-ple of its basic incompetence can be found seen in his complaint that teh reference to Snyder’s work was invalid because it dealt with arthropod compound eyes, not vertebrate eyes. Apparently, Berlinski thinks the biophysics behind one facet of a compound eye is different than the biophysics of one vertebrate eye. It’s not– they both have lenses that focus light on sensitive tissue. The principles and relationships of the parts are the same. It’s this kind of incompetent nonsense that reduces Berlinksi’s complaints to little more than petulant bawling about Nilsson and Pelger’s failure to spoon-feed him a basic understanding of the subject at hand. As Nilsson pointed out, had Berlinski actually asked him for further calculation data detail or clarification, he would have been glad to do so. Perhaps Berlinski could then have found a legitimate reason to criticise the paper’s model- even published a paper pointing out its flaws.

But he didn’t.

Odd, after all that the elephant in the corner remains.

One would think if you could just tar and feather Berlinski, no one would notice the flaws of a paper whose senior author characterizes as “not based on computer simulation of eye evolution” and “the genetic algorithms need a fair amount of work before the model will be useful” after its publication and consequent heralding by the minions as a final word on the matter.

Now, would you like to debate the evidence for ID or is this line of exchange safe and satisfactory?

.

I don’t get it,,,Did the evolutionists finally demostrate something empirically,,,did they actually evolve a eye? Did they even actually evolve a eye-spot for that matter…Did they even pass the simple fitness test for bacteria?

Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – “The Fitness Test” – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE

Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria – 2008
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....-drugstore

Oh,,I guess that would be too much to ask for actual evidence… So we can just take their “unbiased” word for it in some hoodwinked simulation… Have you evolutionists completely gone off the deep end? How in the world can you guys come on this site a spout such tripe as if it is going to stand up to rigor?

The elephant in the corner is more akin to “Mr Big” in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.

That a materialist would view the intractable evidence for ID as a villain is a rich irony indeed.

The Nilsson and Peleger’s paper is irrelevant because it doesn’t have any genetic data to support the premise.

“Evidence”(?) for the evolution of the vision system

Andrea Bottaro said the following over at the panda’s thumb:

Eyes are formed via long and complex developmental genetic networks/cascades, which we are only beginning to understand, and of which Pax6/eyeless (the gene in question, in mammals and Drosophila, respectively) merely constitutes one of the initial elements.

IOW the only evidence for the evolution of the vision system is that we have observed varying degrees of complexity in living organisms, from simple light sensitive spots on unicellular organisms to the vision system of more complex metazoans, and we “know” that the first population(s) of living organisms didn’t have either. Therefore the vision system “evolved”.

Isn’t evolutionary “science” great!

I say the above because if Dr Bottaro is correct then we really have no idea whether or not the vision system could have evolved from a population or populations that did not have one.

Khan,

I almost forgot that you don’t want to take a stand but think you can argue against ID, which appears to be a topic you don’t understand.

Joseph,
it is pointless to argue with you because you keep repeating the same thing over and over again. to you, nothing but mutation-by-mutation analyses will do, so why would I even bother talking about fossils? just to hear you repeat the same vague unanswerable questions again?it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Khan,

You don’t have a position from which to argue.

All you have are flase accusations and nonsense.

For example I have already stated that I don’t need a mutation-by-mutation analysis.

However you do need something, and you don’t have anything.

IOW you don’t have any evidence that an accumulation of genetic accidents can do the things required.

You want to talk about fossils then explain why the vast majority of the fossil record (>95%) does not support universal common descent.

Fossil interpretation is very subjective and without any genetic data to support the interpretation it amounts to “I wouldn’t have seen it if I didn’t already believe it”.

So to sum up:

Khan doesn’t have anything but he can distract from that fact by alledging other people are the problem.

As for being vague, if it wasn’t for its vagueness the theory of evolution wouldn’t have anything.

BTW Khan, did you know there is as much scientific data that demonstrates that bacteria are derived from euks as there is that euk mitochondria are derived from proks?

IOW all you do is post the same ole tired and refuted nonsense and you think that is doing something.

Joseph,

BTW Khan, did you know there is as much scientific data that demonstrates that bacteria are derived from euks as there is that euk mitochondria are derived from proks?

this is the problem. you think one study showing one result is as good as 1000 showing the opposite, in 100 different ways. same thing with the theropod origin of birds (for BA^77).

anyway, here’s a semi-current review of the evolution of feathers including the genetic aspect.

http://www.yale.edu/eeb/prum/pdf/Prum_2005_MDE.pdf

Khan,,why didn’t you wait til later on this evening to spin your Darwinian Fairy Tale,,I could of gone to bed afterwards LOL,,,Alas you say feathers evolved by some genetic hocus pocus but,,

“Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”
Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function.

Need I remind you that if you are going to use genetic similarity as evidence then you must withstand rigor?

But if we apply the light to the best known empirical example of genetic similarity used by evolutionists to support their dubious claims of “goo to you” the evidence evaporates rather quickly:

Most materialists are adamant Darwinian evolution is proven true when we look at the supposed 98.8% genetic similarity between chimps and man. Though suggestive, the gene similarity, even if true, is not nearly good enough to be considered conclusive scientific proof. Primarily this “lack of conclusiveness” is due to concerns with the second law of thermodynamics and with the Law of Conservation of Information. But of more pressing concern, body plans are not even encoded in the DNA code in the first place. This inability of body plans to be reduced directly to the DNA code is clearly shown by Cortical Inheritance.

Cortical Inheritance: The Crushing Critique Against Genetic Reductionism – Arthur Jones – video Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JzQ8ingdNY

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1bAX93zQ5o

This inability for the DNA code to account for body plans is also clearly shown by extensive mutation studies to the DNA of different organisms which show “exceedingly rare” major morphological effects from mutations to the DNA code. Darwin’s Theory –

Fruit Flies and Morphology – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJTIwRY0bs

If all that wasn’t enough, the Human Genome Project really put the last nail in the coffin for “Genetic Reductionism”: DNA: The Alphabet of Life – David Klinghoffer Excerpt: But all this is trivial compared to the largely unheralded insight gained from the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003. The insight is disturbing. It is that while DNA codes for the cell’s building blocks, the information needed to build the rest of the creature is seemingly, in large measure, absent. ,,,The physically encoded information to form that mouse, as opposed to that fly, isn’t there. Instead, “It is as if the ‘idea’ of the fly (or any other organism) must somehow permeate the genome that gives rise to it.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2....._life.html

Thus the 98.8% similarity derived from the DNA code, to the body plans of chimps and man, is purely imaginary, since it is clearly shown that the overriding “architectural plan” of the body is not even encoded in the DNA in the first place. Of more clarity though, this “98.8% similarity evidence” is derived by materialists from a very biased methodology of presuming that the 1.5% of the genome, which directly codes for proteins, has complete precedence of consideration over the other remaining 98.5% of the genome which does not directly code for proteins. Yet even when considering just this 1.5% of the genome that codes for proteins, we find that the proteins, which are directly coded by that 1.5% of the genome, are shown to differ by a huge 80% difference between chimps and man.

Chimps are not like humans – May 2004 Excerpt: the International Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 Consortium reports that 83% of chimpanzee chromosome 22 proteins are different from their human counterparts,,, The results reported this week showed that “83% of the genes have changed between the human and the chimpanzee—only 17% are identical—so that means that the impression that comes from the 1.2% [sequence] difference is [misleading]. In the case of protein structures, it has a big effect,” Sakaki said. http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/news/0405/119.htm

Eighty percent of proteins are different between humans and chimpanzees; Gene; Volume 346, 14 February 2005: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15716009

A recent, more accurate, human/chimp genome comparison study, by Richard Buggs in 2008, has found the true genome similarity between chimps and man fell to slightly below 70%! Why is this study ignored since the ENCODE study has now implicated 100% high level functionality across the entire human genome? Finding compelling evidence that implicates 100% high level functionality across the entire genome clearly shows the similarity is not to be limited to the very biased “only 1.5% of the genome” studies of materialists. Chimpanzee? 10-10-2008 – Dr Richard Buggs – research geneticist at the University of Florida …Therefore the total similarity of the genomes could be below 70%. http://www.refdag.nl/artikel/1.....anzee.html The chimpanzee is found to have a 12% larger genome than humans. Thus, at first glance it would seem the chimpanzee is more evolved than us, but this discrepancy is no anomaly of just chimps/humans. This disparity of genome sizes is found throughout life. There is no logical “evolutionary” progression to be found for the amount of DNA in less complex animals to the DNA found in more complex animals. In fact the genome sizes are known to vary widely between Kinds/Species and this mystery is known as the c-value enigma:

But alas khan,
you don’t ever provide any empirical evidence,,, whereas I have test after test after test to back up my claims for genetic entropy constraints on all “kinds’ that were created by God on earth.

Since you were so nice to provide me a darwinian fairy tale to read before bedtime Khan, the least I can do is let you see the latest video I loaded on youtube:

Human Evolution – Bones Of Contention – Dr. Marc Surtees
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu-i2dKilSQ

Khan:

you think one study showing one result is as good as 1000 showing the opposite, in 100 different ways.

More bald accusations.

You must be very proud of yourself for getting to tell other people their position.

Joseph,
Ok, then show me one other paper (besides the one you always link to) showing evidence that bacteria are derived from euks.

Hey Khan,
How about explaining this piece of evidence:

We now have concrete evidence for life suddenly appearing on earth, as soon as water appeared on the earth, in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth.

Scientific Evidence For The First Life On Earth – video
http://science.discovery.com/v.....dence.html

Dr. Hugh Ross – Origin Of Life Paradox – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHEl9PZW4hc

Materialists have tried to get around this crushing evidence for the sudden appearance of life by suggesting life could originate in extreme conditions. Yet they are betrayed again by empirical evidence:

Refutation Of Hyperthermophile Origin Of Life scenario
Excerpt: While life, if appropriately designed, can survive under extreme physical and chemical conditions, it cannot originate under those conditions. High temperatures are especially catastrophic for evolutionary models. The higher the temperature climbs, the shorter the half-life for all the crucial building block molecules,,,
http://www.reasons.org/LateHea.....iginofLife

Gil @ 121:

Here is what I would like to know: To the best of my knowledge, there are only two copies of my Masters thesis — one in my personal library and one in the library archives at Washington State University.

How did this end up on the Internet?

http://openlibrary.org/b/OL167…..pe%CC%81ry

There is a “History” tab that indicates that Open Library uses a bot to retrieve MARC (machine readable cataloguing) entries. Your thesis catalog entry was retrieved from Washington State on 9/25/08.

The apparent cover image is the same for all Open Library entries (i.e. isn’t a scan.)

Click on “View MARC” for more. Using the suggested curl command at the OS X terminal returns:

00855nam a2200265r 45000010009000000050017000090080041000260350017000670400023000841000031001072450112001382600010002503000014002605020049002745040027003235900054003506000045004049070025004499020011004749980026004859070015005119400011005269450026005379450026005632972286219950727074552.4 s1977 wau b 000 0bfre d aWSU000601934 aWaPScWaOLNdWaOLN1 aDodgen, Gilbert K.,d1950-10aAntonine de Saint-Exupéry :ble vol, le risque, et l’homme dans le monde moderne /cby Gilbert K. Dodgen. c1977. avi, 42 l. aThesis (M.A.) – Washington State University. aBibliography: leaf 42. aWSU:”Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures”.10aSaint-Exupéry, Antoine de,d1900-1944. a.b1902664xbmultic- a000818 b2c950717dmeaf-g0 a.b1902664x lWClWH lwhs aWSU F6 1977 D6 lwc aWSU F6 1977 D6

(I gather WordPress doesn’t wrap long strings.)

It may be that the bot retrieved the entry from the Library of Congress, which in turn received it from Washington State.

(”Data comes from Amazon, Library of Congress, and users like you.”)

Gil,

I used to do research in a couple different areas and would get doctoral dissertations and master’s thesis from a couple different places. They would catalog them both and if the title seemed appropriate I would buy them. So I ended up with some obscure master’s thesis’ and dissertations in my possession since they were listed on the net.

This was prior to google and at the beginning when search engines were just forming. So I assume there are more elaborate and thorough mechanisms for finding these documents now. For some if they sell a dissertation or thesis, the author is supposed to get a small cut.

[from OP:]

Intuition suggests that step-by-tiny-step Darwinian gradualism could not have happened, because the intermediates would not be viable. A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons.

Just a layman’s informal take on the subject:

As is pointed out in the link “Evolution of the Morphological Innovations of Feathers” provided by Khan, down feathers are feathers lacking barbules at the tips. So we see that an “incomplete” feather is very adept at the function of insulation. Add one small ingredient to this “incomplete” feather and it becomes adept at a completely different function.

As someone has already pointed out in this thread [55], there are an endless array of flightless birds in existence today. And there is an endless array of feather types among such birds having nothing to do with flight. Some of them have “feathers” lacking everything but the central quill. Consider the bizarre dinosaur-like “bird” the cassowary.

What is revealing to me is the following: The consensus in evolutionary biology is that wings did not evolve originally for the purpose of flight. However there is also a consensus that today’s flightless birds evolved from birds with the ability to fly. This would seem to indicate an intellectual honesty at the core of evolutionary thought, as how convenient would it be to conclude that today’s flightless birds were the original birds, given that the theory is that feather’s were not originally used for flight.

But on the subject of partial functionality, consider a recipe instruction “add two eggs”. Is such an instruction worthless on its own? Now take some random complete recipe and throw the instruction “add two eggs” into it. Is it a given that such an instruction will ruin it? Isn’t there some small percentage of recipes where such an addition might in fact be an interesting improvement, (even though possibly taking the recipe in a radically different direction) And as far as the preservation and propagation of such a new instruction in a recipe, what if it were a misprint in a book gone to the publisher, but people liked it anyway?

And to BA77, those in academia arguing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs believe that both dinosaurs and birds evolved from an earlier ancestor.

To me, God would be intrinsic in the concept of what is viable.

Just a few quotes from the link mentioned above:

The tubular feather germ creates an appendage that can grow out of and emerge from the skin without actually increasing the size of the skin itself. With the evolution of periodic pulp caps, the tubular epidermal appendage can continue to grow without continued expansion of the dermal pulp. This proliferative capacity of tubular organization likely provided the first, initial selection advantage to the first feathers and led to the evolutionary fixation and proliferation of these structures around the body…

How has the tubular organization of the feather germ and follicle contributed to the evolution of innovation in feather diversity? Like the tubular bauplan of the ancestral, triploblastic, bilaterian metazoan, the tubular organization of the feather germ has fostered the evolution of morphological diversity and innovation by providing multiple axes over which differentiation can be organized, and morphogenesis can occur (Fig. 3)…

A striking feature of feather morphology is the hierarchical modularity of feather components and their development (Prum and Dyck, 2003). Morphological modules are serially homologous (or homonomous) replicate morphological entities within the phenotype (Raff, ’96). Recently, mor- phological modularity has been causally associated with the evolutionary origin of diversity because modular components provide opportunities for independence, covariation, and interaction among modules (Mu¨ller and Wagner, ’91; Raff, ’96). Independence of modules provides opportunities for diversification among replicate entities within the phenotype…

This hierarchical modularity spoken of above would also seem to be apparent in words and sentences of human langauages, so that if functionality is defined as a valid english word for example, you can start with the valid english word ‘a’ and adding one or two letters randomly at a time and only preserving valid english words, get extremely long valid english words in very short order. (The game of Scrabble is dependent on this principle). Similarly longer and longer valid english phrases and sentences can be built up by randomly adding words to a phrase and only preserving what is valid in English.)

But to return to the original quote regarding intuition – Intuition would seem to suggest that complex artifacts would emerge gradually from simpler forms, Not arise instantaneously with literally no precursors at all.

JT stated after much hypothesizing about how a feather “could have” arisen:

,
“Intuition would seem to suggest that complex artifacts would emerge gradually from simpler forms, Not arise instantaneously with literally no precursors at all.”

Yet we have this hard empirical evidence:

“Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”

Thus you have failed to provide any actual evidence that the feather evolved,,,But once again only quoted from a grand fairy tale about how it “could have” arisen…

This is science this is not Dr. Seuss:

As far as your intuition goes, the Big Bang saw the “very sudden” appearance of all time-space, matter-energy in this universe, which was semi-immediately constrained by highly irreducibly complex and “transcendent” parameters,,,Would you call this counter-intuitive? And since we know for a certain fact, at least as far as certainty can now be grasped in science, that the entire universe appeared very suddenly, why should we regard the sudden appearance of the higher taxonomic classifications of life to be such an anomaly of science when sudden appearance is what we in fact witness in the fossil record for higher taxa,,,with the Cambrian Explosion being a prime example of this pattern?
Should we continue to deny the hard facts clearly presented by the fossil record by appealing to fairy tales, as you have done, or should we not more properly start to ask the tough questions which true science is not afraid to ask?

BA77:
This insulting well-poisoning type of discourse of yours – merely labelling things as fairy tales, invoking Dr. Suess, etc – I didn’t address you that way. Speaking of which, what do you have to say in response to the fact that you previously in this thread invoked all these experts who don’t believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, never once mentioning these same people believe birds and dinosaurs evolved from an earlier common ancestor. As far as the fossil record – I am not an expert on that. There seems to have been others who have addressed that in this thread. But we know there are intermediate states of feather development in prenatal and juvenile birds. Does the fossil record indicate that these intermediate states of feather development existed in the past? If not, does that mean that juvenile and prenatal birds don’t have a different form of feather from adults (if no fossil record of juvenile feathers exist). And also we know there are primitive states of feathers in many modern birds (birds with feathers lacking crucial components of flight feathers.) Does the fossil record not indicate these existed in the past either? The original subject was intution as Gil Dodgen conceived it, and in his intuition apparently, we should expect fully formed complex flight feathers to appear instantaneously with no precursors whatsoever. And my point is, that that is not the intuition at all of many many reasonable people.

JT,
Take my response how you want, Frankly I find your practice of science ludicrous and will state the plain fact of that since that is the way it truly is. You did not, and still haven’t cited any credible empirics. You have appealed to Juvenile and prenatal birds? Are you serious? Do you draw this line of reasoning from the thoroughly discredited Haeckel Embryo drawings? Then you point to “degraded” feathers of modern birds, when we know that many birds have appeared “perfect” in the fossil record and then, through a process fully in compliance with Genetic entropy, lost the ability to fly… yet this is ignored by you… That the investigators, who adamantly contest the dino-bird link, would appeal to an earlier common ancestor only pushes the problem “under the rug” without providing any actual concrete evidence for us to investigate. That you would appeal to their “authority” in the matter as experts while ignoring the actual evidence they have blatantly ignored is despicable science on yours and their part. Yet you completely agree with their shoddy methodology because of your preconceived philosophical bias that it must be so because it is so “intuitive” to you that Darwinism “MUST” be true…Excuse me Sir but the fossils are far from conducive to your intuition. As is the Big Bang!

BA^77:

That the investigators, who adamantly contest the dino-bird link, would appeal to an earlier common ancestor only pushes the problem “under the rug” without providing any actual concrete evidence for us to investigate

for once, I agree with you. this is one of the many reasons why the anti-bird-theropod folks are not taken seriously. see here for an example:

http://www.bioone.org/doi/full.....2.0.CO%3B2

A highlight quotation:

By offering no testable alternative to the theropod origin of birds and maintaining that the origin of birds is potentially unsolvable, Feduccia and
other critics of the theropod hypothesis of avian origins reject science itself. One-sided rejections of the theropod origin reflect not on thehypothesis, but on intellectual weaknesses of the critiques.

Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well..

Khan, I am surprised we agreed at all,,LOL,,,
I have already outlined the test to falsify genetic entropy and semi-validate evolution ,but will do so again,,,

For a broad outline of the “Fitness test”, required to be passed to show a violation of the principle of Genetic Entropy, please see this following video and article:

Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – “The Fitness Test” – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE

Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria – 2008
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....-drugstore

This “fitness test” fairly conclusively demonstrates “optimal information” is encoded onto a “parent” bacteria by God, and has not been added to by any “teleological” methods in the beneficial adaptations of the sub-species of bacteria. Thus the inference to Genetic Entropy, i.e. that God has not specifically moved within nature in a teleological manner to increase the functional information of a genome once He has created the parent species genome, still holds as true for the principle of Genetic Entropy.

Though I am surely no expert on the math of LCI, and may be in error as to how strict the limit for conserved information now is, it seems readily apparent to me, even with Dembski’s and Mark’s strict definition of LCI in place, to conclusively demonstrate God has moved within nature, in a teleological manner to provide the sub-species with additional functional information over the “optimal” genome of the parent species, the “fitness test” must still be passed by the sub-species against the parent species. If the fitness test is shown to be passed, then the new molecular function, which provides the more robust survivability for the sub-species, must be calculated to its additional Functional Information Bits (Fits) it gained in the beneficial adaptation, and then be found to be greater than 140 Fits of functional information. 140 Fits is what has now been generously set by Kirk Durston as the maximum limit of Functional Information which can reasonably be expected to be generated by totally natural processes over the entire age of the universe. This fitness test, and calculation, must be done to rigorously establish materialistic processes did not generate the functional information (Fits), and to rigorously establish teleological processes were indeed involved in the increase of Functional Complexity of the beneficially adapted sub-species.

This might help you:

It has now been demonstrated Irreducible Complexity can be mathematically quantified as functional information bits(Fits).

Functional information and the emergence of bio-complexity:
Robert M. Hazen, Patrick L. Griffin, James M. Carothers, and Jack W. Szostak:
Abstract: Complex emergent systems of many interacting components, including complex biological systems, have the potential to perform quantifiable functions. Accordingly, we define ‘functional information,’ I(Ex), as a measure of system complexity. For a given system and function, x (e.g., a folded RNA sequence that binds to GTP), and degree of function, Ex (e.g., the RNA-GTP binding energy), I(Ex)= -log2 [F(Ex)], where F(Ex) is the fraction of all possible configurations of the system that possess a degree of function > Ex. Functional information, which we illustrate with letter sequences, artificial life, and biopolymers, thus represents the probability that an arbitrary configuration of a system will achieve a specific function to a specified degree. In each case we observe evidence for several distinct solutions with different maximum degrees of function, features that lead to steps in plots of information versus degree of functions.
http://genetics.mgh.harvard.ed.....S_2007.pdf

Mathematically Defining Functional Information In Molecular Biology – Kirk Durston – short video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUeCgTN7pOo

Entire Durston Video:
http://www.seraphmedia.org.uk/ID.xml

Khan,

Why a paper from 2002 when more recent data refute the premise of theropod to bird evolution?

Khan,

“Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well..”

How so, exactly?

Joseph,
that paper does nothing of the sort. All it does is show that dinosaurs couldn’t have had air sacs that functioned in exactly the same way as birds. not many people (outside of National Geographic staff writers) were claiming this, as you can see here:

http://www.plosone.org/article.....ne.0003303

We are inclined to support the latter, more conservative interpretation that pleurocoels in nonavian dinosaurs are a product of paraxial cervical air sacs and provide, at best, ambiguous evidence for intrathoracic ventilatory air sacs.

they’re just saying that theropods probably had air sacs, but how they were used is unclear. this is a very minor argument in favor of theropod ancestry, so refuting it is no big deal. the protofeathers, feathers, furcula, hollow bones, incubation behavior, etc etc of theropods provide a very large body of evidence that they were bird ancestors.

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links – June 2009
—-”For one thing, birds are found (many millions of years) earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from,” Ruben said. “That’s a pretty serious problem,”…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....092055.htm

“Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”

Though Khan (con) severely downplays the lungs of Birds this following video shows his just how misguided his lack of concern is:

No Beneficial Mutations – Not By Chance – Evolution: Theory In Crisis
Michael Denton – Lee Spetner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZYguRuzn0

BA^77
first quotation: he’s wrong.

Birds: Jurassic
Theropods: Triassic

Second quotation:
that was from 1998. since then we’ve had numerous discoveries showing the stepwise evolution of feathers. we have already discussed this

JT,

I personally have never delved into details of feather morphology or the genetics supporting them. So I have no way to weigh in intelligently on the discussion. It could be that feathers are really a simple variation genetically of another phenotype characteristic or they may be complex adaptations. I Have no idea. Also the presence of feathers may be a minor factor in flight compared to wing design, bone structure, and neurological development. I have no real basis for estimating all the factors necessary for bird flight.

I just want to comment on the allusion to language. Language change does take the pattern hypothesized by Darwin but it has two big problems to be used as a model of biological evolution.

First, it is a characteristic of intelligent activity and is often used as one of the basis for the differentiation of humans from lower animals. Even though word and phrase changes may seem random, they are implemented by human activity and as such it is hardly an activity that is not designed. While a grunt here or a whistle there may be due to happenstance, their survival has to do with a form of design by their end users as to their usefulness. The acceptance had a goal recognized by the users.

Second, there is no identifiable unit of inheritance. It is a group of individuals and while they do change and the changes are often the result of an environment, there is no organized form of heredity even if one could point to a possible natural selection going on in certain instances. It is a Lamarckian system and in the 4 Dimension of Evolution, culture and the communication of information (the method of heridity) in a culture is passed on by Lamarckian processes. Use it or lose it and what the parent develops and finds useful it directly passed on to not only the offspring but fellow individuals of the culture.

So language and culture do evolve but they do not do so based on any method that is applicable to biological evolution. Specifically there is no formal process of heredity. The lesson to be learned is that not all forms of change are similar in process.

Khan,
So you think evolutionists are to be trusted?

Dino Fossils Generate Overblown Claims 06/18/2009
June 18, 2009 — A picture of colorfully-plumed dinosaurs graces an article on National Geographic, but were feathers found with the fossil? No; the article said, “Primitive feathers may have covered the dinosaur’s body, but there is no direct evidence for that, noted [James] Clark, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society” (which also owns National Geographic News). The feathers are apparently completely imaginary. National Geographic has been caught doing this before (see 06/13/2007 and 04/10/2006), inventing feathers out of thin air.

I guess national Geographic could care less about evidence,,,,So do you work for them Khan?

http://crev.info/

Did This Dino Have Bird Breath? 09/29/2008
Sept 29, 2008 — Birds are the only vertebrates with a unique one-way, flow-through breathing system that includes hollow bones. Their unique respiratory system is part of the set of features that allows flying with its need for rapid metabolism. Science news outlets are clucking wildly about another putative missing link between dinosaurs and birds: “Meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system,” announced PhysOrg, for instance. Does the evidence fly?
The original paper in PLoS ONE is much more subdued.1 Paul Sereno and team found an allosaur-like dinosaur with more hollow bones than usual, which they interpreted to be associated with air sacs. Air sacs are a feature of the avian lung system, but not the only feature; nor is this the first dinosaur fossil with “pneumatized” (hollow, air-filled) bone. The big sauropods like Diplodocus had them. Opinions differ on what function they served in the dinosaurs: thermal regulation, weight reduction, balance and other functions are possibilities unrelated to respiration.
Sereno’s team has been examining this fossil for 12 years. In short, they found more of hollow bones than usual in this dinosaur, some in the thoracic region. Using this evidence as a launching pad for speculation, they devised a four-stage hypothesis on how the avian lung might have evolved. They did not claim that this dinosaur had a bird-like breathing system, despite the headlines.
The following excerpts from the paper give a feel for the conservative tone of the authors about their find:

* Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave a record of their presence.
* Principal findings: We describe a new predatory dinosaur from Upper Cretaceous rocks in Argentina, Aerosteon riocoloradensis gen. et sp. nov., that exhibits extreme pneumatization of skeletal bone, including pneumatic hollowing of the furcula and ilium. In living birds, these two bones are pneumatized by diverticulae of air sacs (clavicular, abdominal) that are involved in pulmonary ventilation. We also describe several pneumatized gastralia (“stomach ribs”), which suggest that diverticulae of the air sac system were present in surface tissues of the thorax.
* The advent of avian unidirectional lung ventilation is not possible to pinpoint, as osteological correlates have yet to be identified for uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation.
* The origin and evolution of avian air sacs may have been driven by one or more of the following three factors: flow-through lung ventilation, locomotory balance, and/or thermal regulation.
* As a result of an extraordinary level of pneumatization, as well as the excellent state of preservation of much of the axial column and girdles, Aerosteon helps to constrain hypotheses for the evolution of avian-style respiration.
* The capacity of the cervical air sacs to invade centra to form invaginated pleurocoels may have evolved independently in sauropodomorphs (sauropods) and basal theropods and appears to have been lost several times within theropods.
* The osteological or logical correlates needed to support some of these inferences have been poorly articulated, which may explain the wide range of opinions on when intrathoracic air sacs like those in birds first evolved and how these relate to ventilatory patterns.
* Based on the osteological correlates we have assembled (Table 4), we would argue, first, that until we can show evidence of the presence of at least one avian ventilatory air sac (besides the non-ventilatory cervical air sac), it is problematic to infer the presence of flow-through ventilation or a rigid, dorsally-attached lung. Second, we know of no osteological correlates in the gastral cuirass that would justify the inference of abdominal air sacs. Potential kinesis of the gastral cuirass and an accessory role in aspiration breathing potentially characterizes many amniotes besides nonavian dinosaurs. The absence of gastralia in crown birds or in any extant bipeds also hinders functional inferences. And third, it is not well established that abdominal air sacs were either first to evolve or are functionally critical to unidirectional ventilation.
* Avian lung ventilation is driven by muscles that expand and contract thoracic volume by deforming the ribcage and rocking a large bony sternum. Basal maniraptorans have many of the features associated with this ventilatory mechanism including a large ossified sternum, ossified sternal ribs, uncinate processes a deepened coracoid that contacts the sternum along a synovial hinge joint. By contrast Aerosteon and the abelisaurid Majungasaurus lack these features. Does that mean that maniraptorans had evolved unidirectional lung ventilation? Or does it indicate only that the maniraptoran ribcage functioned in aspiration breathing more like that in avians? We do not know of any osteological correlates that are specifically tied to uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved.
* The factors driving the origin and evolution of the functional capacity of avian air sacs and lung ventilation remain poorly known and tested.

After the fossil was described with its typical taxonomic details, the paper primarily contained a good deal of speculation on the origin of the avian lung system, with no firm conclusions. The authors discussed problems with all existing theories. The most optimistic claim they could make was stated as follows: “In sum, although we may never be able to sort out the most important factors behind the origin and evolution of the unique avian pulmonary system, discoveries such as Aerosteon provide clues that help to constrain the timing and circumstances when many of the fundamental features of avian respiration arose.” Such a statement merely assumes that avian respiration “arose” by evolution somehow. The “wide range of opinions” within the evolutionist community undermines the confident claims in the popular press. It also shows that non-evolutionary explanations for the unique system that enables birds to soar gracefully in the air were completely ignored.
For problems with bird lung evolution theories, see an article on CMI that reviewed Michael Denton’s use of the topic to argue against Darwinism in his classic book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. A diagram of the bird respiratory system is shown in the article. Carl Wieland on CMI (PDF file) also critiqued an earlier claim (2005) that hollow bones in some dinosaurs revealed an evolutionary link to the avian lung. 1. Sereno et al, “Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina,” Public Library of Science ONE, 09/30/2008, 3(9): e3303 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003303.

The bluffing about evolution in many science news reports is shameful. Search on Aerosteon and you will find examples, like this one on InTheNews.co.uk: “Dinosaurs: Breathed like birds. A carnivorous dinosaur with a bird-like breathing system has provided more evidence of the connection between the two groups of animals separated by millions of years.” The whole article is fluff. “Palaeontologists are now satisfied Aerosteon provides the evidence needed to seal the connection with birds,” it ends. One cannot bluff about fluff.
National Geographic must have panicked at our expose, so they cranked out a propaganda piece immediately announcing, “New Birdlike Dinosaur Found in Argentina.” They even put imaginary feathers on it: “The new dinosaur probably had feathers, but did not actually fly,” they said (cf. 06/13/2007). OK, so we went hunting for feathers in the original paper. “The fossil evidence for intrathoracic air sacs now closely overlaps that for feathers, which had evolved in coelurosaurian theropods most likely for heat retention.” That was the only mention of feathers. This appeal to imaginary feathers was followed by more storytelling in lieu of empirical evidence:

Air sacs may have initially been employed as an antagonist to feathers in theropod thermoregulation. Although this hypothesis has been criticized for lack of empirical evidence in living birds, air sacs have been implicated in avian heat transfer and/or evaporative heat loss, and Aerosteon and many other theropods had a body weight more than an order of magnitude greater than that for any living bird. A thermoregulatory role for the early evolution of air sacs in nonavian dinosaurs should not be ruled out without further evidence from nonvolant ratites.

Can you believe that? They invented imaginary feathers out of thin air for this big heavy meat-eater to compensate for imaginary air sacs that they presume existed near its hollow bones. So now their evolutionary magic produced two imaginary thermoregulatory systems competing with each other – what, for survival of the coolest?
For the fun of it, let’s grant them air sacs and even imagine with them a respiratory system that had some birdlike features; after all, any two vertebrates, like mice and camels, or frogs and penguins, are bound to have similarities as well as differences, depending on what you decide to focus on for the moment. Paul Sereno told National Geographic that the beast didn’t fly (obviously, unless you can imagine wings on a T. rex), so NG concluded, “even though this species was birdlike [sic], feathers and air sacs didn’t necessarily evolve for flight.” So their point is… ? All the hype about feathers was supposed to reinforce the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. They were practically ready to name this thing Tweety Rex, and now they seem to be telling us this beast evolved air sacs for a completely different function, about which no one is sure, and it was an evolutionary dead end anyway. Even NG’s accompanying slide show didn’t show feathers. The only suggestion of a birdlike respiratory system was in slide 2, where colored regions represent the imaginary air sacs in the thorax.

But excuse me, Mr. Scientist sir, did any of that soft air-sac material fossilize? “Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave a record of their presence.” Are you telling me there was no direct evidence for the air sacs in this dinosaur? “Some of its postcranial bones show pneumatic hollowing that can be linked to intrathoracic air sacs that are directly involved in lung ventilation.” They can be, you say, but how strong is the inference? “We do not know of any osteological correlates [fossil evidence] that are specifically tied to uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved.” But isn’t a unidirectional lung ventilation system the primary distinguishing feature in birds? Are you telling the court that this is all inference, not evidence?

The tale gets more speculative and implausible with each lawyer’s question. Darwin’s defense attorneys are sweating in their seats. NG quoted a colleague admitting, “It shows that evolution is not a chalk line—there are many dead ends.” Being interpreted, this means evolutionists can always concoct a story for any possible combination of data. (Chalk is erasable, you know.) We think a scientist who wants to feather his monster should produce the feathers in the fossil, not draw feathery dragons on the chalkboard and tell the press that it “probably had feathers.” Chalk lines are supposed to be snapped to a level that has been carefully measured. So he’s right; evolution is not a chalk line; it’s a crooked crack in the wall of a theory that is about to collapse. Don’t build to it.
We brought you extended quotes to illustrate the difference between original sources and the news media hype. The lesson: always check out the original data. The authors with the bones in their hand usually know better than to make any outlandish claims to their colleagues. In front of reporters, though, they lose restraint. Reporters go ape to praise Darwin. For example, Live Science, that perennial Darwin billboard, shouted Extra! Extra! “Bus-sized Dinosaur Breathed Like Birds. A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today’s birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.” That, in turn, got passed around to all the major news outlets as gospel truth. This is bad breath, not bird breath. The sound of flapping dino-feathers is only the pompons made of synthetic material manufactured for the Darwin Party cheerleaders.

http://crev.info/

BA^77

National Geographic is not a scientific publication.

Khan,

“Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well..”

How so, exactly?

So, can I assume your comment was a opportunistic convienence of sorts, and really didn’t have merit?

Khan.
Let me tell you how this is going to go,,, You will deny the abruptness of the fossil record and quote shady piece after shady piece of evidence and all this will be found to be inconclusive or even outright deceptive by UD bloggers…With me so far?

Finally you will be forced to deal with proving that functional information can be generated by natural means to support your assertions of evolution of increased complexity? Follow?…. You will fail to be able to do this… In fact you will fail to be able to pass even the simple fitness test that I outlined earlier…. Follow?…. You will ignore that you have no empirical basis to make your claims but you will continue to make unsustainable assertions because, for whatever misguided personal reason, you do not want it to be true that there may be a God…Follow?…I’m fairly certain you may have already realized your evidential deficiency, and if so I am just left wondering, have you ever looked into your heart and asked why it is so important for you to deny God exists? Of what possible benefit is it for you to cling to such shallow evidence, and even be deceptive about it, when at the base of your atheistic imperative there will be absolutely no pay off for you anyway?,,,, I guess what I am really trying to ask is,,,Have you gone completely off your rocker man?

Upright,

So, can I assume your comment was a opportunistic convienence of sorts, and really didn’t have merit?

no, i’m just having fun talking about feather evolution now, maybe i’ll get to it later.

BA^77
let me know when that starts happening, ok? do you have anything else to say about feathers?

BA^77,

have you ever looked into your heart and asked why it is so important for you to deny God exists

that sounds like a religious argument.. I thought only we evilutionists made those..

Since you have not conclusively made your case for feathers,,, but only by he said she said semantics maintain that you did,,,I take you to the next step and challenge you to demonstrate and increase of functional complexity at the molecular level so as to prove your assertion, in the lab, that evolution is true,,, Maybe Lenski’s e-coli would be a good place for you to start trying to make your case for functional information generation…

Because let’s face it Khan, this is science and until you can prove evolution in the lab all you have is conjecture anyway,,,,

Jerry [140]:

You were addressing the evolution of a language itself which was not my concern. What I meant was, consider a modern language in its extant form (not considering the history of its development). It posesses a “hierarchical modularity” which enables random changes to a word or sentence to result in some new word or sentence that is also meaningful. That was the aspect of language I was focussing on. The reference in the article to “hierarchical modularity” of feathers is what illicited the comparison by me.

My meaning was, you can start with ‘a’ and then continue a, app, apple apply, or alternatively a, am, amp, camp, camps, etc. Similarly with phrases – adding random words to the end of a phrase and only preserving what is valid in English can result in arbitarilty long but valid english sentences. So if you start with ‘The’, a huge percentage of words could legally follow it in English if one were chosen randomly. So suppose its The Cow. And the next word after cow also has huge numbers of meaningful possiblities: “will” “is” “ate” “behind” “in” “really” “sometimes” (etc.) So suppose the word randomly chosen is “sometimes”. So our phrase is now “The cow sometimes”. The random selection of the word “sometimes” has as it turns out somewhat restricted future words, but if the word randomly chosen had been “is” instead future word selection would be much less restricted.

Of course this exercize necessitates some “agent” as it were to say “Yes, that’s a valid english phrase” or “Yes, that’s a valid English Word”. after some random element is added to the end of a phrase or word. Presumably that requires some sort of “intelligence”. But if some random change to some genetic sequence takes place and by some rare happenstance it results in some functional phenotypic improvement for an animal, is not nature itself acting as this “agent” to say, “Yes that change is actually a functional improvement.”

(And to continue the exercise above – suppose some random sentences all with cows as a subject are strung together, could an “agent” say, “Yes that’s a meaningful paragraph about a cow.”)

But you were focussing on a different aspect of language, the actual evolution of a language. Whether such a process is more lamarckian than darwinian I would have to reflect more on. But it doesn’t seem to be designed. No one plans the sort of divergence in sound changes that takes place among languages or meaning changes as a set of words are confronted with a different environment and thus are put to new use.

Anyway, just wanted to respond.

Unsolicited opinion:

The first line of the “Evolution of the Genus Homo” paper illustrates the poverty of the fossil record in establishing human evolution:

Evolution of the Genus Homo – Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences – Tattersall, Schwartz, May 2009
Excerpt: “Definition of the genus Homo is almost as fraught as the definition of Homo sapiens. We look at the evidence for “early Homo,” finding little morphological basis for extending our genus to any of the 2.5–1.6-myr-old fossil forms assigned to “early Homo” or Homo habilis/rudolfensis.”
http://arjournals.annualreview.....208.100202

Though the authors of the preceding paper appear to be thoroughly mystified by the fossil record, they never seem to give up their blind faith in evolution despite the disparity they see first hand in the fossil record. In spite of their philosophical bias, I have to hand it to them for being fairly honest with the evidence though. I especially like how the authors draw out this following “what it means to be human” distinction in their paper:

“although Homo neanderthalensis had a large brain, it left no unequivocal evidence of the symbolic consciousness that makes our species unique.” — “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate.”

The authors try to find some evolutionary/materialistic reason for the extremely unique “information capacity” of humans, but of course they never find a coherent reason. Indeed why should we ever consider a process, which is incapable of ever generating complex functional information at even the most fundamental levels of molecular biology, to suddenly, magically, have the ability to generate a exceedingly complex brain which has the capacity to generate complex functional information? The authors never seem to consider the “spiritual angle” of why we would have such a unique capacity for “information processing”. Myself, I can think of a few very viable Theistic theories as to why humans have this extremely unique capacity to handle information. In fact, I am firmly persuaded we were purposely created by the spirit God for a personal relationship with God.

Genesis 3:8
And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…

John 1:1-1
In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Human Evolution? Big Bang of Language, Clothes, Tools and Art – Hugh Ross – audio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRNmiO6f_c4

This following study offers strong support of this observation that Humans are unique in this “advanced information” capacity:

Origin of Soulish Animals:

Excerpt: Bolhuis and Wynne contrast the cognitive capacities of birds and primates.,,, They also refer to an experiment demonstrating that “crows can also work out how to use one tool to obtain a second with which they can retrieve food, a skill that monkeys and apes struggle to master.” Evidently, certain bird species exhibit greater powers of the mind than do apes. http://www.reasons.org/OriginofSoulishAnimals

Even the lowly honey bee, is shown to have a capacity to communicate information to other bees. Thus this “reasoning from ability to manipulate rudimentary information” is fraught with difficulties for the materialist and/or evolutionist to make his case:

The Language Of Bees
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/he.....beess.html

It seems fair to say the most suggestive piece of evidence, a materialist has for the supposed evolution of humans, is the existence of the Neanderthal fossils themselves. In fact, even though the fossils are fairly distinct and have a fairly stable history throughout the entire time they are found in the fossil record, the Neanderthal fossils are so morphologically similar to humans that many special creationists have lumped them together with humans in their debates with materialists. Moreover, it is only possible to scientifically prove Neanderthals are truly distinct from humans, as a kind/species, by their genetic ‘mtDNA’ dissimilarity from humans:

NEANDERTHAL: NO RELATION By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence
Excerpt: “These results indicate that Neanderthals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to modern humans,” says Dr. Mark Stoneking, associate professor of anthropology at Penn State. “Neanderthals are not our ancestors.”—-”While the two species may have lived at the same time, Neanderthals did not contribute genetic material to modern humans,”
http://www.accessexcellence.or.....der797.php

Yet this mtDNA evidence, though at first seeming to help the materialist in his debates with the creationist, has actually turned completely against the materialist for the mtDNA turns out to be a second solid line of “stability” evidence, in support of the stable fossil record. The mtDNA evidence actually proves there was no evolution going on in Neanderthals, nor in humans, for as far back in time as we can extract and measure the mtDNA.

mtDNA Proves Humans And Neanderthals Did Not Evolve – Hugh Ross – audio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcPmJTyn4yw

Thus, the materialist is betrayed once again by even his most promising line of evidence for human evolution.

I have heard some fairly fanciful theological arguments as to exactly why God would create Neanderthals, none of which I find compelling. About the best reason anyone has given me as to why God would create such a morphologically similar, yet “spiritually” different, species from humans is this: “I guess God just likes variety”. Though that answer is almost certainly true in an overall sense, I can’t help but feel there is some larger purpose behind God creating Neanderthals. As far as the science goes though, Neanderthals have clearly differentiated the spiritual aspect of “What it means to be human” by their demonstrated lack of advanced information capacity, though being so morphologically similar to us.

Another interesting line of genetic evidence, which has recently come to light and which is extremely antagonistic to the materialist, is the Genetic Adam and Genetic Eve evidence. This genetic evidence strongly in its supports of the Biblical view of the sudden creation of man.

Human Evolution – Genetic Adam And Eve – Hugh Ross – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cfHsFtw02g

As well I think this song is knock out proof of the spiritual aspect of man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8B1ai25lUo

I’ve been following and scanning the conversation here and there, and I’m trying to figure out something — what is the intelligent-design-based physical model for the development of feathers, and how is it immune from the charge of being mere “speculation”?

Lex,

There isn’t a “speculation” for the model of feather development in the design hypothesis – thats the point.

Speculation (particularly the wild-assed variety) is the domain of the materialist with an ideological chip on his shoulder, who ignores the observable artifacts of design instatiated into all living things (feathered or not). In doing so, he/she must fit all explanations into a priori non-scientific conclusion that does not fit the evidence and hasn’t fit it since the 1950’s (at a minimum).

ID is about recognizing the observable evidence of design in the origin and functioning of living things.

The conversation, such as that between Khan and BA, is taking place because Khan refuses to address the evidence for ID on its face. In such an instance, arguing over the speculative origin of feathers is his “fun”.

ID proponents like BA regualrly expose the materialist’s assumptions; such are the breadcrumbs back to the aforementioned priori assumption that has lost its place in the actual evidence of living systems.

- – - – - – -

Now if you have grown tired of their argument and would like to address the evidence for ID on its face, then I am certain BA (and others, myself included) will be more than willing to have the discussion.

Lenoxus,

Your comment indicates that you do not understand the debate. ID has no problem with anything that happens according to natural laws or by chance. By using the term “model” it indicates that something is operating according to some system (usually the interaction of several physical processes) when the thing that ID is interested in is possibly a one time event and is an anomaly from on going natural laws. For example, our posts here are not subject to analysis by any model of physical laws. Social psychology may provide some models of human behavior based on consistent patterns in the past but these are not related to any physical laws especially since the intelligence in bird design may not be anything like us.

If it is a willful act by an intelligent agent then it could be a one time event and no model imaginable could describe it. In human activity we often use the term modus operandi to indicate repeated behavior by one or a group of humans. For the creation of a species, it is unlikely that this would follow such a pattern and if it did, then we are talking for birds, 150 million years ago. If at some time in the future we have genomic maps for a large number of bird species then one may start to understand just how birds could arise or how they evolved after they arose if their origin is in doubt. Are feathers an easy adaptation or are they so complex that it is unlikely they arose by chance. There are host of other similar issues.

ID is interested in origins and normal science is interested in origins too but it has a less successful track record for origins than for on going phenomena because by definition origins are infrequent events. The Grants who investigated the finches of the Galapagos said it would take 23 million years for a new bird species to arise. Hardly a frequent event such as a metal melting or the path of electricity in two different material substances or the orbits of the stars in a galaxy. Science is mainly interested in how natural laws operate repeatedly within certain boundary conditions that produce tangible results. No model will pick up a one time or an occasional pattern that long ago. Especially one that requires the information building that is required for life.

ID with its limited resources uses science to investigate origins and has essentially pointed out weaknesses in current models of evolutionary processes. Evolutionary processes work well to produce minor changes in species but seems to come up empty when investigating major changes. Why doesn’t the micro evolutionary processes that result in so many minor changes in species not work for the major changes even when given tens or hundreds of million years. The work of Behe and Dembski are geared towards this end as they investigate the limitations of the micro evolutionary processes based on the capabilities of life systems such as the binding properties of proteins or the number of functional proteins in a protein space.

To answer your question, is the ID answer speculative? Yes to some extent. There is no specific intelligence to point to. Certainly most will agree that humans will have the capability in the next century to create a cell from scratch so it does not seem to be beyond the capability of human efforts. But there is no known intelligence that was around 150 million years ago to design the original birds but the more that naturalistic methods run into probabilistic blocks, the more likely such an intelligence may have played a role. It may come down to an either or scenario. And if the “either” keeps getting eliminated then we can speculate who the “or” is.

Jerry Stated:
“Certainly most will agree that humans will have the capability in the next century to create a cell from scratch so it does not seem to be beyond the capability of human efforts.”

Well I guess I am not in the “most who agree” that man can do create life from scratch, with key emphasis being placed on “from scratch”;

In fact, It borders on “fantastically impossible” for man to generate “just one” novel protein “from scratch”.

It is fairly easily demonstrated, mathematically, the entire universe does not even begin to come close to being old enough, nor large enough, to accidentally generate just one small, but precisely sequenced, 100 amino acid protein in that very first living cell. If any combinations of the 20 L-amino acids, used in constructing proteins, are equally possible, then there are (20^100) =1.3 x 10^130 possible amino acid sequences in proteins being composed of 100 amino acids (Meyer). Thus there are more possible combinations for the amino acids in a single 100 amino acid protein than there are atomic particles in the entire universe (10^80).

Origin Of Life – Evolution vs. Probability – A Hard Look At The Cold Facts – John Walton – short video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIgQP4RwrqY

Yet amino acids don’t even have a tendency to chemically bond with each other, despite over fifty years of experimentation trying to get the amino acids to bond naturally. The odds of just one single 100 amino acid protein overcoming the impossibilities of chemical bonding and forming spontaneously have been calculated at less than 1 in 10^125 (Meyer, Evidence for Design, pg. 75).

Moreover, the limit to man’s ability to form a single synthetic amino acid chain (a protein), using all his intelligence and lab equipment, is currently severely constrained to about 70-100 amino acids:

Peptide synthesis
“typically peptides and proteins in the range of 70~100 amino acids are pushing the limits of synthetic accessibility. Synthetic difficulty also is sequence dependent; typically amyloid peptides and proteins are difficult to make.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peptide_synthesis

The staggering impossibility found for the universe ever accidentally generating a specifically sequenced 100 amino acid protein by accident would still be true even if we allowed that the entire universe, all 10^80 sub-atomic particles of it, were nothing but groups of 100 freely bonding amino acids, and we then tried a trillion unique combinations per second for all those 100 amino acid groups for 100 billion years. Even after 100 billion years of trying a trillion unique combinations per second, we still would have made only one billion, trillionth of the entire total combinations possible for a 100 amino acid protein during that 100 billion years of trying! On top of that, Doug Axe has shown only 1 in 10^64 to 1 in 10^77 of any amino acid sequences would form a actual “working domain”. The rest of the sequences would be totally useless. Even a child knows you cannot put any piece of a puzzle anywhere in a puzzle. You must have the required piece in the required place. The simplest forms of life ever found on earth are exceedingly far more complicated jigsaw puzzles than any of the puzzles man has ever made. Yet to believe the materialistic theory, a theory which is shown to have no foundation in reality in the first place, we would have to believe this tremendously complex puzzle of millions of precisely shaped, and placed, protein molecules “just so happened” to overcome the impossible hurdles of chemical bonding, and probability, and put itself together into the sheer wonder of immense complexity we find in the simplest cell.

Instead of us just looking at the probability of a single “simple” protein molecule occurring, (a solar system full of blind men solving the Rubik’s Cube simultaneously (Hoyle)), let’s also look at the complexity which goes into crafting the shape of just one protein molecule. Complexity will give us a better indication if a protein molecule is indeed the handi-work of an infinitely powerful Creator.

In the year 2000 IBM announced the development of a new super-computer, called Blue Gene, which was 500 times faster than any supercomputer built up until that time. It took 4-5 years to build. Blue Gene stands about six feet high, and occupies a floor space of 40 feet by 40 feet. It cost $100 million to build. It was built specifically to better enable computer simulations of molecular biology. The computer performs one quadrillion (one million billion) computations per second. Despite its speed, it was estimated to take one entire year for it to analyze the mechanism by which JUST ONE “simple” protein will fold onto itself from its one-dimensional starting point to its final three-dimensional shape.

“Blue Gene’s final product, due in four or five years, will be able to “fold” a protein made of 300 amino acids, but that job will take an entire year of full-time computing.” Paul Horn, senior vice president of IBM research, September 21, 2000
http://www.news.com/2100-1001-233954.html

Networking a few hundred thousand computers together has reduced the time to a few weeks for simulating the folding of a single protein molecule:

A Few Hundred Thousand Computers vs. A Single Protein Molecule – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loUb-9V3fzs

In real life, the protein folds into its final shape in a fraction of a second! The Blue Gene computer would have to operate at least 33 million times faster to accomplish what the protein does in a fraction of a second. This is the complexity found for JUST ONE “simple” protein molecule. Yet, evolution must account for the origination of far, far, more than just one specifically sequenced protein molecule:

A New Guide to Exploring the Protein Universe
“It is estimated, based on the total number of known life forms on Earth, that there are some 50 billion different types of proteins in existence today, and it is possible that the protein universe could hold many trillions more.”
Lynn Yarris Science@berkeleylab March 31, 2005

What makes matters much worse for the materialist is that he will try to assert proteins of one structure can easily mutate into other proteins, of a completely different structure, by pure chance. Yet once again the empirical evidence we now have brutally betrays the materialist. Individual proteins have been experimentally shown to quickly lose their structural integrity with random point mutations. What are the odds of any “functional protein domain” in a cell mutating into any other functional protein domain, of very questionable value, by pure chance?

Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds: Doug Axe:
Excerpt: Starting with a weakly functional sequence carrying this signature, clusters of ten side-chains within the fold are replaced randomly, within the boundaries of the signature, and tested for function. The prevalence of low-level function in four such experiments indicates that roughly one in 10^64 signature-consistent sequences forms a working domain. Combined with the estimated prevalence of plausible hydropathic patterns (for any fold) and of relevant folds for particular functions, this implies the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences. (of note: the universe only has 10^80 sub-atomic particles)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723

Axe Diagram for finding a functional protein domain out of all sequence space:
The y-axis can be seen as representing enzyme activity, and the x-axis represents all possible amino acid sequences. Enzymes sit at the peak of their fitness landscapes (Point A). There are extremely high levels of complex and specified information in proteins–informational sequences which point to intelligent design.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/axediagram.jpg

Experimental Support for Regarding Functional Classes of Proteins to be Highly Isolated from Each Other:
“From actual experimental results it can easily be calculated that the odds of finding a folded protein (by random point mutations to an existing protein) are about 1 in 10 to the 65 power (Sauer, MIT). To put this fantastic number in perspective imagine that someone hid a grain of sand, marked with a tiny ‘X’, somewhere in the Sahara Desert. After wandering blindfolded for several years in the desert you reach down, pick up a grain of sand, take off your blindfold, and find it has a tiny ‘X’. Suspicious, you give the grain of sand to someone to hide again, again you wander blindfolded into the desert, bend down, and the grain you pick up again has an ‘X’. A third time you repeat this action and a third time you find the marked grain. The odds of finding that marked grain of sand in the Sahara Desert three times in a row are about the same as finding one new functional protein structure (from chance transmutation of an existing functional protein structure). Rather than accept the result as a lucky coincidence, most people would be certain that the game had been fixed.” Michael J. Behe, The Weekly Standard, June 7, 1999

Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins – 2007:
Kirk K Durston, David KY Chiu, David L Abel, Jack T Trevors
In this paper, we provide a method to measure functional sequence complexity (in proteins).
Conclusion: This method successfully distinguishes between order, randomness, and biological function (for proteins).

etc…etc…

So I am very skeptical man will ever “life from scratch”.

Though I can assure you that if evolutionists mimic what has already been created in life and achieve self replication of some sort, they will jump up and down claiming they have “created life from scratch” much like their vastly overblown claims for RNA self-replication a few months back.

Mr Bornagain77,

Your mathematical argument has convinced me – convinced me that the game of bridge is impossible!

Jerry @ 153:

By using the term “model” it indicates that something is operating according to some system (usually the interaction of several physical processes) when the thing that ID is interested in is possibly a one time event and is an anomaly from on going natural laws…If it is a willful act by an intelligent agent then it could be a one time event and no model imaginable could describe it.

Jerry’s reply succinctly describes those characteristics of ID that render it incapable of becoming an empirical science.

ID’s assertion that an entirely unknown designer effected changes that are anomalous relative to natural laws and may be one-off events render “ID theory” incapable of generating empirical predictions. Simple as that.

“Jerry’s reply succinctly describes those characteristics of ID that render it incapable of becoming an empirical science.

ID’s assertion that an entirely unknown designer effected changes that are anomalous relative to natural laws and may be one-off events render “ID theory” incapable of generating empirical predictions. Simple as that.”

There is a lot of nonsense here. Are you looking for ID to be something like thermodynamics or the standard model? No ID will not become that at any time soon for the reasons I outlined but it does not mean it is not science which is what you would like to show. Your transparent efforts are more revealing of yourself than ID. Why cannot the anti ID person make a reasonable reply and instead of squealing with glee when they imagine they have found a weakness. They should try to clean up their own house first. But we know that is not possible because the mess is too incoherent that they must try and divert attention from it by imagining problems with the competition.

“To say that ID is not science” is absurd. That is tremendously different from the almost identical sentence which is “To say that ID is not a science” is absurd. There is only one letter difference between these two sentences but one tries to use the second to invalidate the first. And the second may yet become a possibility.

ID uses the tools of science, examines data in a systematic way, makes observations, makes predictions based on these observations, the laws of nature etc. ID operates within various branches of science such as evolutionary biology. ID uses it techniques to analyze and predict within evolutionary biology, cosmology, archaeology, anthropology, history, forensic science, cryptology etc to analyze and make predictions.

So we get the tiresome ID is not science argument because we do not know the designer rationale. Give me a break. Is this all that can be lodged against ID. We must have the name and address of the designer and if the designer had a Harvard degree or not and what did he/she do before they went to Harvard. And is the designer married and if so has he/she remained faithful and what percentage of the designer’s salary was given to charity. Or alternatively we must have the wreckage of the spaceship and the blueprints of the lab that created the first cell etc. All irrelevant nonsense.

No, ID is science and it operates in a lot of ways which is amazing given the resistance to it by the science community. The number of arguments against it by the science community and the outright hostility would normally be enough to squelch it all together but yet we have continued efforts. And here we have another lame attempt to do the same.

This way way back in the thread, but it left me with a question.
JT:

…we see that an “incomplete” feather is very adept at the function of insulation. Add one small ingredient to this “incomplete” feather and it becomes adept at a completely different function.

What is the one small ingredient, and what is the different function?

Nakashima tries to be cute with:

“Your mathematical argument has convinced me – convinced me that the game of bridge is impossible!”

Yet clearly if you remove intelligence from the equation bridge is impossible….

If you walked onto a beach and saw the effects of wind and waves playing a coherent game of bridge that you could follow, would you not claim that it was a “miracle” or would you just shrug your shoulders as if it was no big deal?,,,,Yet surely in random formation of the first living cell (10^40,000 Hoyle; 10^1018 Koonin) we have probabilities which make the probability of the wind and sea playing a game of bridge seem reasonable.

Hi jerry,
The Grants who investigated the finches of the Galapagos said it would take 23 million years for a new bird species to arise

Could you please provide us a refence for this claim? I’m pretty familiar with the Grant’s work, and I’ve never seen this claim before.

Diffaxial,

The fact that neither you nor anyone else can come up with a testable hypothesis for your anti-ID/ non-telic position pretty much proves it is incapable of becoming empirical science.

However ID is based on observations and experience AND it can be tested experimentally.

All the earmarks of being empirical.

Scott,

JT:

…we see that an “incomplete” feather is very adept at the function of insulation. Add one small ingredient to this “incomplete” feather and it becomes adept at a completely different function.

What is the one small ingredient, and what is the different function?

interlocking barbules branching from the main barbs. in this simple case the feather would now be an effective signal to conspecifics, as it would make a solid surface for light reflection. it would also allow air to flow more smoothly over the feather,and if the barbs/barbules become asymmetrically placed around the quill, it is a very effective airfoil. various arrangements of barbs and barbules are also used as sensory organs, “whiskers” for catching insects, etc.

Having looked at several diagrams, it appears that interlocking barbules would take several steps to evolve. Assuming (as the above post does) that we begin with no barbules, next barbules must be added. Then something resembling hooks must evolve. Then they must interlock. (The preening behavior which maintains the feathers is something else.)
That is not ‘adding one small ingredient.’

Joe @ 161:

The fact that neither you nor anyone else can come up with a testable hypothesis for your anti-ID/ non-telic position pretty much proves it is incapable of becoming empirical science.

There are countless articles documenting of empirical study of testable entailments of sophisticated models of selection such as following:

Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Volume 22, issue 1 (January 2009), p. 97-108

Experimental evidence that competition and habitat use shape the individual fitness surface

CALSBEEK, R.

Abstract
A key prediction made by theories of density-dependent competition is that resource overlap should increase the intensity of competition. By extension, we can predict that competition should lead to density-dependent natural selection. I studied natural selection on limb length and body size in a total of seven populations of Anolis sagrei over 3 years in the Bahamas. Experimental manipulations of population density on small off-shore cays revealed that the strength of natural selection on body size increased with density, suggesting that density-dependent intraspecific competition drives natural selection. At low density, reduced competition revealed significant selection on limb length driven by changes in perch diameter, indicating that selection favoured a match between morphology and habitat. The role habitat played in shaping selection was further illuminated by inter-annual changes in vegetation structure stemming from variation in precipitation among years. Thus, changes in both the intensity of competition across spatial replicates, and in resource availability through time, revealed changes in the targets of natural selection. Results provide empirical support for the long-standing hypothesis that density-dependent natural selection shapes the fitness surface of Greater Antilles anoles.

IOW, scientists doing science.

Nothing in ID resembles this activity. Jerry has kindly described the reasons for this.

Diffaxial @164:
It would appear that they have discovered microevolution, 21st century finch beaks.

Scott,

Then something resembling hooks must evolve. Then they must interlock.

you don’t need the hooks for the first function i mentioned (intraspecific signal). but you’re right, the barbules must evolve hooks (not sure why you think interlocking would be a separate step, since having the hooks would do this) and then, as i mentioned, become asymmetric. but each intermediate step has a viable function (hooked but asymmetric feathers are more water resistant). if you read the Prum paper I cited above, you’ll also see that there are potential genetic pathways for these transitions.

Mr Bornagain77,

Only ‘trying to be cute’?? I thought I had succeeded!

Actually, I was trying to be serious. How can any bridge hand have function? They are drawn randomly from such a large configuration space, it is impossible to believe, based on our warranted intuition, that they just happen to land on island of function. No, you have proven bridge to be impossible and I accept it.

I mentioned the hooks because barbules without hooks aren’t going to become barbules with hooks that interlock in one step. Just because things have hooks that doesn’t mean they interlock. That requires some precision. Tangling is a more likely initial outcome than precise interlocking.
I examined the referenced paper. I won’t bluff and claim to understand every technical detail. But upon repeated reading of certain key sections, it became apparent that many of the underlying premises on which the conclusions were built were speculative.
But at least there was an attempt to isolate the underlying mechanisms from observed morphological changes. Having done so, perhaps Prum will conceive of experiments to test his hypothesis. Until then, this appears to be a very complex and technical speculative narrative.

“Nothing in ID resembles this activity. Jerry has kindly described the reasons for this.”

This is micro evolution you presented and no big deal. ID has no problem with this as I pointed out to you before over a month ago and then which in response you ignorantly tried to mock me. The issue is over macro evolution so bringing up these studies is just an admission you do not have anything.

Actually the discussion of bird development is a serious attempt to get at something. Whether there is anything there or not or the mechanism identified is the issue.

Scott,
you might want to check this paper out for a postive test of the hypothesis:

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/33/11734.abstract

Scott, ps here’s another one:
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/4/951.abstract

If you think that bridge hands have no function then you have not played bridge for either money or master points. There are definitely islands of function between long stretches of endless ocean.

But determining what is function is not obvious at first. I was severely depressed when Victor Mollo died and found out there would be no more Bridge in the Menagerie. There have been attempts to continue on by others but only a real genius could find those islands of functionality

Diffaxial, try to make sense – and try to be consistent as well.

There are reams of information about what happens in cells today by looking at cells today.

- – - – - – -

1) Life began in a distant past.

2) Science has foundationally concluded that Life began by chance.

- – - – - – - -

Please answer:

What empirical lab results has science used confirm that Life began by chance?

What are the predictions of those lab results?

Khan:
It appears that, having observed the end product, the authors have conclusively identified the activator-inhibitors that control feather development. That fails to support Prum’s earlier speculations.

In essence, we’ve speculated that concrete caused skyscrapers to evolve, and validated it by demonstrating that concrete is poured wherever there is a skyscraper.

Scott,
what are you talking about? in the harris paper they have provided molecular mechanisms for shaping of down feathers and shown that these same mechanisms can shape flight feathers through the addition of a 2nd inhibitor and a gradient. then they show that this is congruent with fossil evidence of feather evolution (down before flight). of course it’s not complete but it is very compelling and consistent.

ps the Chuong paper then explicitly shows how the gradient hypothesized by Harris is generated.

Khan (con), The only one it is compelling to is the one who is philosophically committed to it being so,,,The paper goes no where near demonstrating how the information arose spontaneously, it only speculates that this is the way it did happen, whereas I could very well argue, with tons more empirics, that the process was actually a reverse of what was postulated, through the process of genetic entropy,,,which brings us back to you having to demonstrate the origination of functional information in the laboratory!

Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information – David L Abel and Jack T Trevors:
Excerpt: Genetic algorithms instruct sophisticated biological organization. Three qualitative kinds of sequence complexity exist: random (RSC), ordered (OSC), and functional (FSC). FSC alone provides algorithmic instruction…No empirical evidence exists of either RSC of OSC ever having produced a single instance of sophisticated biological organization…It is only in researching the pre-RNA world that the problem of single-stranded metabolically functional sequencing of ribonucleotides (or their analogs) becomes acute. And of course highly-ordered templated sequencing of RNA strands on natural surfaces such as clay offers no explanation for biofunctional sequencing. The question is never answered, “From what source did the template derive its functional information?” In fact, no empirical evidence has been presented of a naturally occurring inorganic template that contains anything more than combinatorial uncertainty. No bridge has been established between combinatorial uncertainty and utility of any kind.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g.....id=1208958

BA^77

whereas I could very well argue, with tons more empirics, that the process was actually a reverse of what was postulated, through the process of genetic entropy,

please do so.

The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel – Null Hypothesis For Information Generation – 2009

To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it:

“Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.”
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g.....id=2662469

“There is abundant evidence that most DNA sequences are poly-functional, and therefore are poly-constrained. This fact has been extensively demonstrated by Trifonov (1989). For example, most human coding sequences encode for two different RNAs, read in opposite directions i.e. Both DNA strands are transcribed ( Yelin et al., 2003). Some sequences encode for different proteins depending on where translation is initiated and where the reading frame begins (i.e. read-through proteins). Some sequences encode for different proteins based upon alternate mRNA splicing. Some sequences serve simultaneously for protein-encoding and also serve as internal transcriptional promoters. Some sequences encode for both a protein coding, and a protein-binding region. Alu elements and origins-of-replication can be found within functional promoters and within exons. Basically all DNA sequences are constrained by isochore requirements (regional GC content), “word” content (species-specific profiles of di-, tri-, and tetra-nucleotide frequencies), and nucleosome binding sites (i.e. All DNA must condense). Selective condensation is clearly implicated in gene regulation, and selective nucleosome binding is controlled by specific DNA sequence patterns – which must permeate the entire genome. Lastly, probably all sequences do what they do, even as they also affect general spacing and DNA-folding/architecture – which is clearly sequence dependent. To explain the incredible amount of information which must somehow be packed into the genome (given that extreme complexity of life), we really have to assume that there are even higher levels of organization and information encrypted within the genome. For example, there is another whole level of organization at the epigenetic level (Gibbs 2003). There also appears to be extensive sequence dependent three-dimensional organization within chromosomes and the whole nucleus (Manuelides, 1990; Gardiner, 1995; Flam, 1994). Trifonov (1989), has shown that probably all DNA sequences in the genome encrypt multiple “codes” (up to 12 codes).
(Dr. John Sanford; Genetic Entropy 2005)

The malaria parasite, due to its comparatively enormous population size, has in 1 year more mutation/duplication/selection events than all mammal lineages have had in the entire +100 million years they have been in the fossil record. Moreover, since single cell organisms and viruses replicate, and mutate/duplicate, far more quickly than multi-cellular life-forms can, scientists can do experiments on single celled organisms and viruses to see what we can actually expect to happen over millions of years for mammals with far smaller population sizes.

Malaria and AIDS are among the largest real world tests that can be performed to see if evolutionary presumptions are true.

“Indeed, the work on malaria and AIDS demonstrates that after all possible unintelligent processes in the cell–both ones we’ve discovered so far and ones we haven’t–at best extremely limited benefit, since no such process was able to do much of anything. It’s critical to notice that no artificial limitations were placed on the kinds of mutations or processes the microorganisms could undergo in nature. Nothing–neither point mutation, deletion, insertion, gene duplication, transposition, genome duplication, self-organization nor any other process yet undiscovered–was of much use.” Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pg. 162 Swine Flu, Viruses, and the Edge of Evolution
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2....._edge.html

A review of The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael J. Behe
The numbers of Plasmodium and HIV in the last 50 years greatly exceeds the total number of mammals since their supposed evolutionary origin (several hundred million years ago), yet little has been achieved by evolution. This suggests that mammals could have “invented” little in their time frame. Behe: ‘Our experience with HIV gives good reason to think that Darwinism doesn’t do much—even with billions of years and all the cells in that world at its disposal’ (p. 155).
http://creation.com/review-mic.....-evolution

“I have seen estimates of the incidence of the ratio of deleterious-to-beneficial mutations which range from one in one thousand up to one in one million. The best estimates seem to be one in one million (Gerrish and Lenski, 1998). The actual rate of beneficial mutations is so extremely low as to thwart any actual measurement (Bataillon, 2000, Elena et al, 1998). Therefore, I cannot …accurately represent how rare such beneficial mutations really are.” (J.C. Sanford; Genetic Entropy page 24) – 2005

Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? (Thomas Bataillon)
Abstract……It is argued that, although most if not all mutations detected in mutation accumulation experiments are deleterious, the question of the rate of favourable mutations (and their effects) is still a matter for debate.
http://www.nature.com/hdy/jour.....7270a.html

Distribution of fitness effects caused by random insertion mutations in Escherichia coli
Excerpt: At least 80% of the mutations had a significant negative effect on fitness, whereas none of the mutations had a significant positive effect. http://www.springerlink.com/co.....q5l0q3832/

High Frequency of Cryptic Deleterious Mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans ( Esther K. Davies, Andrew D. Peters, Peter D. Keightley)
“In fitness assays, only about 4 percent of the deleterious mutations fixed in each line were detectable. The remaining 96 percent, though cryptic, are significant for mutation load…the presence of a large class of mildly deleterious mutations can never be ruled out. ”
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...../5434/1748

“But in all the reading I’ve done in the life-sciences literature, I’ve never found a mutation that added information… All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it.”
Lee Spetner – Ph.D. Physics – MIT – (Not By Chance: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution)

“Bergman (2004) has studied the topic of beneficial mutations. Among other things, he did a simple literature search via Biological Abstracts and Medline. He found 453,732 “mutation” hits, but among these only 186 mentioned the word “beneficial” (about 4 in 10,000). When those 186 references were reviewed, almost all the presumed “beneficial mutations” were only beneficial in a very narrow sense- but each mutation consistently involved loss of function changes-hence loss of information.” Sanford: Genetic Entropy

“Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity change shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations leads to speciation.”
Lynn Margulis – Acquiring Genomes [2003], p. 29.

“But there is no evidence that DNA mutations can provide the sorts of variation needed for evolution… There is no evidence for beneficial mutations at the level of macroevolution, but there is also no evidence at the level of what is commonly regarded as microevolution.”
Jonathan Wells (PhD. – Molecular Biology)

“Of carefully studied mutations, most have been found to be harmful to organisms, and most of the remainder seem to have neither positive nor negative effect. Mutations that are actually beneficial are extraordinarily rare and involve insignificant changes. Mutations seem to be much more degenerative than constructive…” Kurt Wise, paleontologist (2002, p.163)

“The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the neo-Darwin theory is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.” Lee Spetner (Ph.D. Physics – MIT – Not By Chance)

“It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of naturally occurring mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them to be detrimental to the organisms in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation”
H.J. Muller (Received a Nobel Prize for his work on mutations to DNA)

“The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: a single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur …. There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it.” Pierre P. Grasse – past President of the French Academie des Sciences

“There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter” Dr. Werner Gitt, former director and Professor of Information Systems at the prestigious German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology

This following article refutes Lenski’s supposed evolution of the citrate ability for E-Coli:

Multiple Mutations Needed for E. Coli – Michael Behe
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/.....96N278Z93O

In fact, trying to narrow down an actual hard number for the “truly” beneficial mutation rate is what Dr. Behe did in this following book:

“The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism”
http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Evo.....0743296206

Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective:
“A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order.”
http://www.princeton.edu/main/...../60/95O56/

“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed – along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering)

Hopeful monsters,’ transposons, and the Metazoan radiation:
Excerpt: Viable mutations with major morphological or physiological effects are exceedingly rare and usually infertile; the chance of two identical rare mutant individuals arising in sufficient propinquity to produce offspring seems too small to consider as a significant evolutionary event. These problems of viable “hopeful monsters” render these explanations untenable.
Paleobiologists Douglas Erwin and James Valentine

Walter L. Bradley, Information, Entropy, and the Origin of Life:
Excerpt: He clarifies the distinction between configurational and thermal entropy, and shows why materialistic theories of chemical evolution have not explained the configurational entropy present in living systems, a feature of living systems that Bradley takes to be strong evidence of intelligent design. http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

Evolution’s Thermodynamic Failure
By Granville Sewell (Professor of Mathematics Texas University – El Paso)
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_a.....rt_id=9128

Mathematical refutation of the open system entropy argument used by evolutionists – by Kairosfocus
http://www.angelfire.com/pro/k.....tm#thermod

Law of Conservation of Information – William Dembski and Robert Marks
http://www.evoinfo.org/Publications/Life.html

“…but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have…”
Maciej Marian Giertych – Population Geneticist – member of the European Parliament – EXPELLED

Darwinism’s Last Stand? – Jonathan Wells
Excerpt: Despite the hype from Darwin’s followers, the evidence for his theory is underwhelming, at best. Natural selection—like artificial selection—can produce minor changes within existing species. But in the 150 years since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, no one has ever observed the origin of a new species by natural selection—much less the origin of new organs and body plans.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2......html#more

EXPELLED – Natural Selection And Genetic Mutations – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOWfmuJ-MdY

BA^77
i didn’t see feathers mentioned once in there. if you think feathers “devolved” could you explain why down feathers appear before flight feathers in the fossil record?

Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – “Fitness Test” – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE

Some bacterium spores, in salt crystals, dating back as far as 250 million years have been revived, had their DNA sequenced, and compared to their offspring of today (Vreeland RH, 2000 Nature). To the disbelieving shock of many scientists, both ancient and modern bacteria were found to have the almost same exact DNA sequence.

The Paradox of the “Ancient” Bacterium Which Contains “Modern” Protein-Coding Genes:
“Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.”
Heather Maughan*, C. William Birky Jr., Wayne L. Nicholson, William D. Rosenzweig§ and Russell H. Vreeland ;
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/...../19/9/1637

and this:

Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber
Dr. Cano and his former graduate student Dr. Monica K. Borucki said that they had found slight but significant differences between the DNA of the ancient, 25-40 million year old amber-sealed Bacillus sphaericus and that of its modern counterpart, (thus ruling out that it is a modern contaminant, yet at the same time confounding materialists, since the change is not nearly as great as evolution’s “genetic drift” theory requires.)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...../5213/1060

30-Million-Year Sleep: Germ Is Declared Alive
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f.....gewanted=2

In reply to a personal e-mail from myself, Dr. Cano commented on the “Fitness Test” I had asked him about:
Dr. Cano stated: “We performed such a test, a long time ago, using a panel of substrates (the old gram positive biolog panel) on B. sphaericus. From the results we surmised that the putative “ancient” B. sphaericus isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates. Additionally, we looked at the fatty acid profile and here, again, the profiles were similar but more diverse in the amber isolate.”:
Fitness test which compared the 30 million year old ancient bacteria to its modern day descendants, RJ Cano and MK Borucki

Thus, the most solid evidence available for the most ancient DNA scientists are able to find does not support evolution happening on the molecular level of bacteria. In fact, according to the fitness test of Dr. Cano, the change witnessed in bacteria conforms to the exact opposite, Genetic Entropy; a loss of functional information/complexity, since fewer substrates and fatty acids are utilized by the modern strains. Considering the intricate level of protein machinery it takes to utilize individual molecules within a substrate, we are talking an impressive loss of protein complexity, and thus loss of functional information, from the ancient amber sealed bacteria.

ETC…ETC…ETC….

The point being is that you will not offer any solid empirics

Khan,,,
I disagree with you interpretation of the fossil record as do many reputable “fringe” scientists,,,thus the burden is on you to support the grand claims of Darwinism by conclusively proving functional information can be generated in the laboratory….Why should you not have to meet this minimum requirement for scientific integrity? Your methodology is a joke!!!

BA^77
disagreeing is one thing (everyone’s entitled to their opinion), but unless they or you can provide an empirical basis for those opinions, that’s all they are. saying feathers in one specimen are collagen doesn’t do it when there are many further examples, like this one from earlier this year:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/3/832.full

Not good enough for!

“Fundamentalist fervor,” “vitriolic name-calling,” and “paleontological passion” pervade the debate, states the magazine Science News. One evolutionary biologist, who organized a symposium on feather evolution, confessed: “I never dreamed that any scientific matter could possibly generate such bad personal behavior and such bitterness.”

Thus your position is far from resolved though you claim otherwise,,,and must I point out you are basing all of this on historical science!

you stated:

“unless they or you can provide an empirical basis for those opinions”

Thus for you to avoid hypocrisy in what you stated, and refute the sampling of mutational studies I provided (yet blatantly ignore) you must prove functional information can be generated in the laboratory….Why should you not have to meet this minimum requirement for scientific integrity?

Why must your highly biased take on the fossil record be given precedence over laboratory work?

As they say in football:
Put up or shut up!

Diffaxial,

If that, your response in comment 164, is the best you have then you don’t have anything.

Ya see what you posted in no way challenges ID and it doesn’t even challenge YEC.

IOW thank you for proving my point.

BA^77
thanks for the quotation from 2000

and must I point out you are basing all of this on historical science!

yes, evolution is a historical science.

Thus for you to avoid hypocrisy in what you stated, and refute the sampling of mutational studies I provided (yet blatantly ignore) you must prove functional information can be generated in the laboratory

how about functional proteins from random sequence libraries?

http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....715a0.html

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com.....2105003741

I pointed to Jerry’s description of ID, which includes the assertion that ID has no model, that design events may be one-off events (hence not amenable to regularity or prediction), and that nothing is known about the designer. These limitations obviously render ID incapable of making empirical predictions. Hence it lies outside the domain of science.

Joe asserted that evolutionary biology is also not a science, offers no testable hypotheses, and gives rise to no empirical research. (Even were this the case, it would have no bearing upon whether ID is a science. Hence the objection is irrelevant to the scientific status of ID.)

I provided one recent example (one of thousands) of a report of an evolutionary scientist operating from a model (something ID lacks) that makes specific empirical predictions (in the manner ID is incapable of generating), and his test of those predictions (tests of a kind ID researchers never conduct). Hence Joe’s statement is false, having been directly contradicted by reality.

The specific biological phenomenon modeled and empirically investigated has no bearing on the fact that an empirical investigation operating out of a theoretical model was conducted. Nor does ID’s willingness to acknowledge those findings (because they are “microevolutionary”.) Nor does it matter a whit whether this particular study has bearing on the OOL or other ultimate questions (obviously not the object of this particular investigator’s work), or whether or not the empirical investigation was conducted in a laboratory or in the field.

The fact remains that this study exemplifies the empirical test of a theoretical model within evolutionary biology, something that Joe claims doesn’t occur. The sort of study that is impossible within the framework of ID, due to the limitations Jerry has correctly identified.

Diffaxial,

Please consider reading a book or two on how historical sciences actually work.

Give it a shot.

Diff,

And before you head off to the library, please attend to the previous post directed to you:

1) Life began in a distant past.

2) Science has foundationally concluded that Life began by chance.

- – – – – – – -

Please answer:

What empirical lab results has science used confirm that Life began by chance?

What are the predictions of those lab results?

Khan (way back at 175)

in the harris paper they have provided molecular mechanisms for shaping of down feathers and shown that these same mechanisms can shape flight feathers through the addition of a 2nd inhibitor and a gradient.

All physical characteristics in all living things are shaped by something. Identifying parts of those processes is not the same as understanding their causes. Why were there down feathers and a mechanism for shaping them? Do a second inhibitor and gradient also add the barbules and hooklets?

It seems very optimistic to hope that these supposed tiny incremental changes would eventually add up to functional flying wings.

It also seems very optimistic to hope that changes would confer any meaningful selective advantage. The first specimen that evolves the beginning of a feather, or any of the successive steps – is it really that much less likely to get picked off by a predator, or that much more likely to find a mate?

These scenarios all seem to optimistically imagine a perfect scenario in which everything happens just as it must to produce a nonetheless unintended result.

Upright @ 199:

Please consider reading a book or two on how historical sciences actually work.

More rapid transport of goal posts hither and thither. To previous irrelevant objections (is microevolution, no bearing on OOL, no lab) we now add “not in the mold of an historical science” as hinted by Biped.

None of which have bearing on the fact that the study I cite specifies a model that gives rise to predictions (one of any number I can cite) and describes the empirical test of that model. Something ID cannot do and does not do, owing to the limitations Jerry aptly described.

Diffaxial,

ID is based on observation and experience.

ID can be objectively tested.

Also evolution is NOT being debated.

What I am saying is that you cannot, and have not, provided a testable hypothesis pertaining to non-telic processes.

And BTW how do you know what experiments IDists have and have not conducted?

I take it that it bothers you that your post that attempted to refute me did no such thing.

If you want to refute me then try posting something that is being debated.

For example if eyes/ vision systems were the result of non-telic processes what would one expect to see?

Diffaxial,

The only prediction ID cannot make is what any designer will design next.

I believe that is what Jerry was referring to.

However ID does make predictions- IC and CSI are two such predictions.

IOW ID predicts that some things will not be reducible to matter, energy, chance and necessity.

And IC and CSI are two such things.

But anyway:

The conclusion that something was designed can be made quite independently of knowledge of the designer. As a matter of procedure, the design must first be apprehended before there can be any further question about the designer. The inference to design can be held with all firmness that is possible in this world, without knowing anything about the designer.—Dr Behe

As a scientific research program, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such.- Wm. Dembski page 33 of The Design Revolution

Observation:

The Universe

Question

Is the universe the result of intentional design?

Prediction:

1) If the universe was the product of a common design then I would expect it to be governed by one (common) set of parameters.

2) If the universe were designed for scientific discovery then I would expect a strong correlation between habitability and measurability.

3) Also if the universe was designed for scientific discovery I would expect it to be comprehensible.

Test:

1) Try to determine if the same laws that apply every place on Earth also apply throughout the universe.

2) Try to determine the correlation between habitability and measurability.

3) Try to determine if the universe is comprehensible.

Potential falsification:

1) Observe that the universe is chaotic.

2) A- Find a place that is not habitable but offers at least as good of a platform to make scientific discoveries as Earth or B- Find a place that is inhabited but offers a poor platform from which to make scientific discoveries.

3) Observe that we cannot comprehend the universe, meaning A) what applies locally does not apply throughout or B) what applies in one scenario, even locally, cannot be used/ applied in any similar scenario, even locally.

Confirmation:

1) Tests conducted all over the globe, on the Moon and in space confirm that the same laws that apply here also apply throughout the universe.

2) All scientific data gathered to date confirm that habitability correlates with measurability.

3) “The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it is comprehensible.” Albert Einstein

Observation:

Living organisms

Question

Are living organisms the result of intentional design?

Prediction:

If living organisms were the result of intentional design then I would expect to see that living organisms are (and contain subsystems that are) irreducibly complex and/ or contain complex specified information. IOW I would expect to see an intricacy that is more than just a sum of chemical reactions (endothermic or exothermic).

Further I would expect to see command & control- a hierarchy of command & control would be a possibility.

Test:

Try to deduce the minimal functionality that a living organism. Try to determine if that minimal functionality is irreducibly complex and/or contains complex specified information. Also check to see if any subsystems are irreducibly complex and/ or contain complex specified information.

Potential falsification:

Observe that living organisms arise from non-living matter via a mixture of commonly-found-in-nature chemicals. Observe that while some systems “appear” to be irreducibly complex it can be demonstrated that they can indeed arise via purely stochastic processes such as culled genetic accidents. Also demonstrate that the apparent command & control can also be explained by endothermic and/or exothermic reactions.

Confirmation:

Living organisms are irreducibly complex and contain irreducibly complex subsystems. The information required to build and maintain a single-celled organism is both complex and specified.

Command & control is observed in single-celled organisms- the bacterial flagellum not only has to be configured correctly, indicating command & control over the assembly process, but it also has to function, indicating command & control over functionality.

Conclusion (scientific inference)

Both the universe and living organisms are the result of intention design.

Any future research can either confirm or refute this premise, which, for the biological side, was summed up in Darwinism, Design and Public Education page 92:

1. High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
2. Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
3. Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
4. Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.

Diffaxial,

Moving goalpost is not the issue. In fact, the very image (and your mention of it) is a conveinent distraction from the issue.

You are asking for empirical evidence for a historical event – without the slightest consideration of methodologies.

Think: Lyell, Whewell, Scriven, and Lipton.

- – - – - – - –

Now, Since science has fundamentally concluded that Life began by chance, what empirical lab results has science used to confirm their conclusion? If there are not any, then from a methodoligical standpoint, why not?

Also, what candidates are on the list of potential causes?

What I am saying is that you cannot, and have not, provided a testable hypothesis pertaining to non-telic processes.

I know what you are saying. It simply isn’t true.

In the above-cited instance, density-dependent competition, and the prediction that competition should lead to density-dependent natural selection, denote non-telic processes and the predictions that arise therefrom.

Further, the authors empirically tested predictions arising from their model of that non-telic process.

Therefore your statement is false.

The above cited instance is favorable to baraminology.

IOW what you say is false.

Try focusing on the arrival of the fittest, not their survival.

Well Khan,
For what it is worth in my limited experience, I looked at the paper:

Directed evolution of ATP binding proteins:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=.....=firefox-a

and was left wondering what new functional information did he produce,,,Though the paper seems to suggest that functional protein domains may be easier to find than Doug Axe suggested in his paper (10^77), The paper does not address the generation of functional information/complexity that we find in life i.e. no new irreducibly complex functions were cited, only new proteins with, what I believe was, an affinity to bind with ATP were found:

Evolution vs. ATP synthesis and DNA complexity
http://www.tangle.com/view_vid.....d8695ea146

As well in criticism of the paper,, The experiment was conducted “in vitro” (outside the cell) and the so called “evolution” of the protein was merely an improvement of efficiency of the so called “novel” proteins to bind to ATP, needless to say,,, This type of “evolution” would not be tolerated “in a living cell” for:

The Ribosome: Perfectionist Protein-maker Trashes Errors
Excerpt: The enzyme machine that translates a cell’s DNA code into the proteins of life is nothing if not an editorial perfectionist…the ribosome exerts far tighter quality control than anyone ever suspected over its precious protein products… To their further surprise, the ribosome lets go of error-laden proteins 10,000 times faster than it would normally release error-free proteins, a rate of destruction that Green says is “shocking” and reveals just how much of a stickler the ribosome is about high-fidelity protein synthesis.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....134529.htm

As well when we find a protein, and DNA, or protein machine, in a cell it is “optimal” already:

Bacterial Flagellum – A Sheer Wonder Of Intelligent Design – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNi0YXYadg0

Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls the Bacterial Flagellum “the most efficient machine in the universe.”

The flagellum has steadfastly resisted all attempts to elucidate its plausible origination by Darwinian processes, much less has anyone ever actually evolved a flagellum from scratch in the laboratory;

Genetic Entropy Refutation of Nick Matzke’s TTSS (type III secretion system) to Flagellum Evolutionary Narrative:
excerpt: …..Comparative genomic analysis show that flagellar genes have been differentially lost in endosymbiotic bacteria of insects. Only proteins involved in protein export within the flagella assembly pathway (type III secretion system and the basal-body) have been kept…
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/.....t/msn153v1

Bacterial Flagella – A Paradigm for Design – Scott Minnich – video
http://www.veritas.org/media/talks/92

Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III – Minnich and Meyer
Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely, irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering played a role the origin of the system.

Warning: Do NOT Mutate This Protein Complex: – June 2009
Excerpt: In each cell of your body there is a complex of 8 or more proteins bound together called the BBSome. This protein complex, discovered in 2007, should not be disturbed. Here’s what happens when it mutates: “A homozygous mutation in any BBSome subunit (except BBIP10) will make you blind, obese and deaf, will obliterate your sense of smell, will make you grow extra digits and toes and cause your kidneys to fail.”… the BBSome is “highly conserved” (i.e., unevolved) in all ciliated organisms from single-celled green algae to humans,…”

William Bialek – Professor Of Physics – Princeton University:
Excerpt: “A central theme in my research is an appreciation for how well things “work” in biological systems. It is, after all, some notion of functional behavior that distinguishes life from inanimate matter, and it is a challenge to quantify this functionality in a language that parallels our characterization of other physical systems. Strikingly, when we do this (and there are not so many cases where it has been done!), the performance of biological systems often approaches some limits set by basic physical principles. While it is popular to view biological mechanisms as an historical record of evolutionary and developmental compromises, these observations on functional performance point toward a very different view of life as having selected a set of near optimal mechanisms for its most crucial tasks.”

Biophysicist Hubert Yockey determined that natural selection would have to explore 1.40 x 10^70 different genetic codes to discover the optimal universal genetic code that is found in nature. The maximum amount of time available for it to originate is 6.3 x 10^15 seconds. Natural selection would have to evaluate roughly 10^55 codes per second to find the one that is optimal. Put simply, natural selection lacks the time necessary to find the optimal universal genetic code we find in nature. (Fazale Rana, —-The Cell’s Design – 2008 – page 177)

Here, we show that the universal genetic code can efficiently carry arbitrary parallel codes much better than the vast majority of other possible genetic codes…. the present findings support the view that protein-coding regions can carry abundant parallel codes.
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/17/4/405.full

The data compression of some stretches of human DNA is estimated to be up to 12 codes thick (Trifonov, 1989). (This is well beyond the complexity of any computer code ever written by man).
John Sanford – Genetic Entropy

Collective evolution and the genetic code – 2006:
Excerpt: The genetic code could well be optimized to a greater extent than anything else in biology and yet is generally regarded as the biological element least capable of evolving.

Ode to the Code Brian Hayes
The few variant codes known in protozoa and organelles are thought to be offshoots of the standard code, but there is no evidence that the changes to the codon table offer any adaptive advantage. In fact, Freeland, Knight, Landweber and Hurst found that the variants are inferior or at best equal to the standard code. It seems hard to account for these facts without retreating at least part of the way back to the frozen-accident theory, conceding that the code was subject to change only in a former age of miracles, which we’ll never see again in the modern world.

The coding system used for living beings is optimal from an engineering standpoint.
Werner Gitt, – In The Beginning Was Information – p. 95

Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.
Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Penguin, London, 1996, p. 188

Deciphering Design in the Genetic Code
Excerpt: When researchers calculated the error-minimization capacity of one million randomly generated genetic codes, they discovered that the error-minimization values formed a distribution where the naturally occurring genetic code’s capacity occurred outside the distribution. Researchers estimate the existence of 10 possible genetic codes possessing the same type and degree of redundancy as the universal genetic code. All of these codes fall within the error-minimization distribution. This finding means that of the 10 possible genetic codes, few, if any, have an error-minimization capacity that approaches the code found universally in nature.

DNA Optimized for Photostability
Excerpt: These nucleobases maximally absorb UV-radiation at the same wavelengths that are most effectively shielded by ozone. Moreover, the chemical structures of the nucleobases of DNA allow the UV-radiation to be efficiently radiated away after it has been absorbed, restricting the opportunity for damage.

“No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms’ genomes programmed?” – David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors, “Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information,” Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8

Thus khan, though the paper may be of interest for finding how many functional protein domains truly exist in reality,,,it clearly has not addressed the problem of functional information generation in which the protein would then form with other proteins to produce a new useful molecular function. It truly was a stretch for them to call this “evolution” by the way since it was not actually in a living cell i.e. They started with weakly binding “novel” proteins and increased the binding affinity, and then say “Wah La” we evolved something”.

This is similar to GA,,,but that is another matter…

A key prediction made by theories of density-dependent competition is that resource overlap should increase the intensity of competition.

Except where cooperation rules the day.

“The fact remains that this study exemplifies the empirical test of a theoretical model within evolutionary biology, something that Joe claims doesn’t occur. The sort of study that is impossible within the framework of ID, due to the limitations Jerry has correctly identified.”

You are running wild with a comment without trying to have a discussion on it. You want to disparage ID and that is your only objective. If you try to have a discussion you will learn something. But I suspect you already know it and just are blustering with nonsense. Both Dembski and Behe make predictions. Both Behe and Dembski use scientific methods to evaluate those predictions. One uses computer models and the other uses the analysis of genomic information. or protein interactions.

Now you can say it is bad research or the research has not gotten anywhere but you cannot say it is not making predictions or attempting to investigate the physical world.

Please cut out this nonsense about ID not making predictions or generating hypotheses.

No one is disputing micro evolution as a valid discipline. We are disputing macro evolution as a valid discipline and because of its lack of validity it should be removed from biology textbooks and biology curriculum in both the colleges and high schools. In college textbooks I could see it being referenced in a side bar as a speculative hypothesis that has no current backing.

Wait!!! Stop the presses I have headline news!!!!

The “great” prediction of natural selction:

Some organisms may outlive and out-reproduce others in the same population under certain circumstances.

Mr Joseph,

Yes, the E=mc^2 of evolution! If only population genetics had a similar inequality that fit on a t-shirt…

How bout this one nak,

“…but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have…”
Maciej Marian Giertych – Population Geneticist – member of the European Parliament – EXPELLED

Natural Selection, Genetic Mutations and Information – EXPELLED – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOWfmuJ-MdY

jerry:

Both Dembski and Behe make predictions. Both Behe and Dembski use scientific methods to evaluate those predictions.

I’m curious — what predictions has Dembski made and tested?

Jerry @ 210:

You are running wild with a comment without trying to have a discussion on it.

Running wild?

I’ve made two assertions on this thread.

– That your accurate description of intelligent design as lacking a model, as postulating one-off events that are anomalous relative to natural law, and as invoking an agent about which nothing is known neatly describes why ID isn’t, and can’t be, an empirical science.

- That Joseph’s assertion that “non-telic” evolutionary theories make no testable predictions is mistaken. That is blankly refuted by a paper describing a “non-telic” mechanism which gave rise to predictions that were subsequently tested.

If that is your idea of running wild, you must be a cheap date

UB @ 173 and 200:

What empirical lab results has science used confirm that Life began by chance?

What are the predictions of those lab results?

These questions aren’t remotely relevant to my assertions. Whether there are a thousand laboratory findings with bearing upon the natural origins of life, one, or none doesn’t change the fact that countless empirical studies similar to my exemplar above test predictions that arise from current “non telic” evolutionary models – models of the sort that Jerry correctly indicates ID does not and cannot generate.

You are incorrect to state that it is a “foundational conclusion” that life arose randomly. It is fair to say that it is an assumption (not a conclusion) that the origin of life is a natural phenomenon that has occurred without the intervention of an agent. I certainly assume that, but don’t claim to “know” that. No one knows how life originated, and therefore any postulated origin must remain speculative for the present. I do expect that state of affairs to change, although not in my lifetime.

Diffaxial states:

“It is fair to say that it is an assumption (not a conclusion) that the origin of life is a natural phenomenon that has occurred without the intervention of an agent. I certainly assume that, but don’t claim to “know” that.”

How reasonable is Diffaxial materialistic presumption?

Well lets subject Diffaxial’s materialism to rigorous scrutiny:

I’ve heard someone say, “Science is materialism.” Yet science clearly is not materialism. Materialism is a philosophy which makes the dogmatic assertion that only blind material processes generated everything around us, including ourselves. Materialism is thus in direct opposition to Theism which holds that God purposely created us in His image. Furthermore science, or more particularly the scientific method, in reality, only cares to relentlessly pursue the truth and could care less if the answer is a materialistic one or not. This is especially true in these questions of origins, since we are indeed questioning the materialistic philosophy itself. i.e. We are asking the scientific method to answer this very specific question, “Did God create us or did blind material processes create us?” When we realize this is the actual question we are seeking an answer to within the scientific method, then of course it is readily apparent we cannot impose strict materialistic answers onto the scientific method prior to investigation.
In fact when looking at the evidence in this light we find out many interesting things which scientists, who have been blinded by the philosophy of materialism, miss. This is because the materialistic and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several natural contradictory predictions about what evidence we will find. These predictions, and the evidence we have found, can be tested against one another within the scientific method.

For a quick overview here are a few:

1.Materialism predicted an eternal universe, Theism predicted a created universe. – Big Bang points to a creation event. -

2. Materialism predicted time had an infinite past, Theism predicted time had a creation – Time was created in the Big Bang. -

3. Materialism predicted space has always existed, Theism predicted space had a creation (Psalm 89:12) – Space was created in the Big Bang. -

4. Materialism predicted at the base of physical reality would be a solid indestructible material particle which rigidly obeyed the rules of time and space, Theism predicted the basis of this reality was created by a infinitely powerful and transcendent Being who is not limited by time and space – Quantum mechanics reveals a wave/particle duality for the basis of our reality which blatantly defies our concepts of time and space. -

5. Materialism predicted the rate at which time passed was constant everywhere in the universe, Theism predicted God is eternal and is outside of time – Special Relativity has shown that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light. -

6. Materialism predicted the universe did not have life in mind and life was ultimately an accident of time and chance. Theism predicted this universe was purposely created by God with man in mind – Every transcendent universal constant scientists can measure (93 so far) is exquisitely fine-tuned for carbon-based life to exist in this universe. -

7. Materialism predicted complex life in this universe should be fairly common. Theism predicted the earth is extremely unique in this universe – Statistical analysis of the hundreds of required parameters which enable complex life to be possible on earth gives strong indication the earth is extremely unique in this universe. -

8. Materialism predicted much of the DNA code was junk. Theism predicted we are fearfully and wonderfully made – ENCODE research into the DNA has revealed a “biological jungle deeper, denser, and more difficult to penetrate than anyone imagined.”. -

9. Materialism predicted a extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Theism predicted only God created life on earth – The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial mutations whatsoever. (M. Behe; JC Sanford) -

10. Materialism predicted a very simple first life form which accidentally came from “a warm little pond”. Theism predicted God created life – The simplest life ever found on Earth is far more complex than any machine man has made through concerted effort. (Michael Denton PhD) -

11. Materialism predicted it took a very long time for life to develop on earth. Theism predicted life to appear abruptly on earth after water appeared on earth (Genesis 1:10-11) – We find evidence for complex photo-synthetic life in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth -

12. Materialism predicted the gradual unfolding of life to be self-evident in the fossil record. Theism predicted complex and diverse life to appear abruptly in the seas in God’s fifth day of creation. – The Cambrian Explosion shows a sudden appearance of many different and completely unique fossils within a very short “geologic resolution time” in the Cambrian seas. -

13. Materialism predicted there should be numerous transitional fossils found in the fossil record, Theism predicted sudden appearance and rapid diversity within different kinds found in the fossil record – Fossils are consistently characterized by sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record, then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. -

14. Materialism predicted animal speciation should happen on a somewhat constant basis on earth. Theism predicted man was the last species created on earth – Man himself is the last generally accepted major fossil form to have suddenly appeared in the fossil record. -

As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the materialistic philosophy, from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both the materialistic philosophy and the Theistic philosophy, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. -

When looking at the evidence in this light, I would say that Diffaxial is clearly misguided in his materialistic assumption as far as these questions of origins are concerned.

bornagain77:
Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils

Even if there’s just one, logic dictates that such “transitionals” exist. Care to discuss H. erectus in depth?

“hat your accurate description of intelligent design as lacking a model, as postulating one-off events that are anomalous relative to natural law, and as invoking an agent about which nothing is known neatly describes why ID isn’t, and can’t be, an empirical science.”

And I told you very clearly why it could and how you try to distort things. Because ID does not base its science on a model does not mean that it is not science. So your using my assessment of ID is non sequitur.

Capice?

BornAgain77 @ 277:

These predictions, and the evidence we have found, can be tested against one another within the scientific method…

Does theism predict recycling? Because this is about the 20th time I’ve seen this list in one form or another.

Jerry @ 218:

Capice?

What do you get when you cross a Godfather with a philosopher?

An offer you can’t understand.

Mr Bornagain77,

Expelled is not a peer reviewed journal, ne? Parlimentarian Giertych can publish such a theory if he has the evidence to back it up, otherwise it shows up in the crank aisle on YouTube.

Capisce?

Diffaxial,
If you have seen this list before, Then why have you clung to the materialistic philosophy when it is so vacuous of predictive power? I would think that a man would find it a very wonderful thing to see that God is vindicated in such fashion…Does materialism promise you anything besides a purposeless existence before you die? Why would anyone be attracted to such a horrid philosophy especially when the current evidence is crushing it? Myself I find the promises of God to be wonderful and of no comparison whatsoever to your philosophy. Maybe I am missing something,,,could you please explain why you are attracted to the lie of materialism?

Nakashima,

the entire spectrum of dog sub-species have been found to have less genetic diversity than the parent wolf species:

.. the mean sequence divergence in dogs, 2.06, was almost identical to the 2.10 (sequence divergence) found within wolves. (please note the sequence divergence is slightly smaller for the entire spectrum of dogs than for wolves)
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.o.....0/1/71.pdf

Biodiversity is essential for our existence:
Excerpt: Unfortunately, industrial agriculture has caused a dramatic reduction of genetic diversity within the animal and plant species typically used for food.

“We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations,” Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. “Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians.” Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University “La Sapienza,” Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.-

I wonder what Hitler would have thought of that study?

“When first cousins marry, their children have a reduction of life expectancy of nearly 10 years. Why is this? It is because inbreeding exposes the genetic mistakes within the genome (slightly detrimental recessive mutations) that have not yet had time to “come to the surface”. Inbreeding is like a sneak preview, or foreshadowing, of where we are going to be genetically as a whole as a species in the future. The reduced life expectancy of inbred children reflects the overall aging of the genome that has accumulated thus far, and reveals the hidden reservoir of genetic damage that have been accumulating in our genomes.”
Sanford; Genetic Entropy; page 147

This following study is interesting in that it shows the principle of Genetic Entropy being obeyed for the estimated 60,000 year old anatomically modern humans found in Australia:

Ancient DNA and the origin of modern humans: John H. Relethford
Excerpt: Adcock et al. (7) clearly demonstrate the actual extinction of an ancient mtDNA lineage belonging to an anatomically modern human, because this lineage is not found in living Australians. Although the fossil evidence provides evidence of the continuity of modern humans over the past 60,000 years,,,,

Natural Selection Reduces Genetic Information – No Beneficial Mutations – Spetner – Denton – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZYguRuzn0

Natural Selection Reduces Genetic Information – Dr. Georgia Purdom – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izPzEgRtPKI

Nak you can also answer the question of “why is it so important for you to deny God? Of what benefit is there in it for you? Do you think living a lie will give you more money or something?

evanescence – lies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxHP9-fEuRk

Mr Bornagain77,

Are you trying to support this quote:

“…but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have…”

with studies of artificially bred dogs and industrial agriculture??

It is a good thing evolution is more than just natural selection, isn’t it? If we didn’t have 47-odd sources of variation to overbalance selection, we’d still be slime molds!

Mr Bornagain77,

I was deeply religious for about 25 years of my life. I accepted Jesus into my heart in 1975. (Should I change my name to bornagain75?) I have no desire to deny God. It would be deeply satisfying and comforting to find the evidence that would let me glorify God. I haven’t seen it yet. I certainly have not seen it in the faux sciences of American Christianity, from Mary Baker Eddy to Henry Morris to William Dembski. As Alice B. Toklas famously said of Oakland, “There is no there, there.”

I personally do not see an affirmation and glorification of God in theologians making puerile Flash animations, school board members lying under oath, astronomers failing to do astronomy, molecular biologists failing to do molecular biology, or mathematicians failing to math, except in Jello.

Who is properly fulfilling the verse, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search it out.”? Neil Shubin. Francis Collins. Lynn Margulis.

But then, who’s talking about God, anyway? I don’t take His Name in vain by raising it on this blog. I’m here to have a good time, talking about ID, FSCI, FCSI and macroevolution. I’m not troubled by the religious origins or otherwise of evolution – I only believe in the change of allele frequencies over time, not evolution!

So chill out pilgrim. I won’t apologise for not fitting in your categories, just leave you with this wisdom – “Your Princess is in another castle!”

Nakashima-san:

An interesting remark (which is appreciated as a moment of self-disclosure), and an even more interesting list of individuals.

I would wonder about adding: Mother Theresa of Calcutta, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, Billy and Frank Graham, Charles G Finney, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas, to name a few. (In short, your list is a bit one-sided and emphasises one aspect of life: regardless of worldview or religious commitments, we all struggle with moral challenges. A list of “great” atheists of modern times and their misdeeds would be interesting indeed . . . )

Now, it so happens too that I have had occasion to correspond (somewhat of an exchange in fact on thermodynamics related matters) with the late Mr Morris. I found him a very honest and decent Christian gentleman. He may be wrong on his science (he now knows for sure one way or the other) but he was definitely not a poseur.

Similarly, while I have not had occasion to meet or personally correspond with Mr Dembski, I have taken a serious look at what he and others have had to say. They have a serious point; just, one that cuts across the line taken by the dominant school of thought in our day.

In particular, I find that the only credible, empirically supported explanation fro prescriptive and data descriptive codes and languages, algorithms using same, associated complex algorithmically functional information and machinery to physically instantiate and express such, is intelligence.

And, given the following excerpt from the most under-appreciated great historian of the C1, I do not usually expect that the thought that sways the future will be easily welcomed by the guardians of the intellectual status quo:

_______________

>> 19 . . . [the Stoics and Epicureans] took [Paul of Tarsus] and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” 21(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

24″The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times [= kairous . . . ] set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28′For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

29″Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill. 30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent [ = metanoiein]. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

32When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33At that, Paul left the Council. 34A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. >>
_________________

{ . . . ]

1 –> The Athenians, we observe, loved to entertain themselves intellectually — especially at the expense of those they despised or dismissed as their intellectual inferiors. [Note the significance of "spermologos."]

2 –> In his opening remarks, the man who embodied and synthesised the future — an Asiatic Jew, roman Citizen and Christian intellectual from a Greek city of learning — went straight for the critical flaw in the classical humanism embraced by the intellectual leaders of that time.

3 –> In so doing, he highlighted how for centuries, the proud guardians of the West’s intellectual heritage had to acknowledge through a public monument, their ignorance on the most important single point of knowledge: primary reality.

4 –> Instead of a foundation of ignorance, he put forward what was a novelty: the Prime Reality Himself is concerned enough to communicate with us, giving us a foundation on which we can soundly build; thus Paul exerted prophetic intellectual and cultural leadership.

5 –> And, the key communication from that day to now is this:

. . . Ac 17:30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.”

6 –> The call to metanoia is always a challenge: our attitudes, expectations, and thought are all under a microscope, and having been found sadly wanting [if we are honest with ourselves], need to be changed through a right-about turn.

7 –> And, in support of this call, the central warranting argument of the Christian message is offered: God’s standard of assessment is Jesus of Nazareth, and he has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead (with 500+ eyewitnesses). [Cf Craig's excellent summary here, this survey from the classic Catholic encyclopedia, and this Google book online survey.]

8 –> As a bit of a footnote, observe, that the central warranting argument is not about who made the world and us in it, but about a breaking into our history in a way that has been transforming for 2,000 years, despirte all the many failings of Christians and Christendom that can ever so often be gleefully listed as an excuse to look no further. (But the standard of behaviour is not struggling Peters who pull swords and try to strike off heads — Malchus ducked! — then as the impulse of bravery fades cower in the face of servant girls. If it were, there would be nothing remarkable there to face! Instead, we must see and reckon with that ever astonishing figure, Jesus.)

9 –> Of course, ever honest Luke is straight: Paul was literally laughed out of court. But, there is a name listed among the despised minority: Dionysius. If you glance at a map of Athens, you will see its significance — the road passing by the Areopagus (a limestone outcrop used as an ampitheatre; now bearing a bronze plaque of Paul’s speech) is named after Paul, and its continuation past the Acropolis is called after Dionysius.

10 –> In short, the future did not belong to the superstitious masses who thought the stories of the gods and demons were all equally true; nor tot he philosophers who sneered that hey were all equally false; nor to the politicians who cynically decided they were all equally useful. Instead, it belonged to the apostle and his message of the god who loved, gave and calls us to repentant faith and blessed hope and transformation in Christ.

____________

And so, we all have a choice or two to make.

GEM of TKI

PS: N T Wright’s discussion here is also worth a careful reading.

Excellent response kairosfocus,

Nakashima,
Though I will not argue for the resurrection at this moment, which I hold to have sufficient evidence, I will ask you a question of your materialistic philosophy,,”Exactly what constraint of materialism is going to prevent a Almighty Transcendent God from existing?”

Even evolutionary thinking cannot constrain Him:

“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” Alan Sandage (preeminent Astronomer)

The only other theory possible for the universe’s creation, other than a God-centered hypothesis, is some purposeless materialistic theory based on blind chance. Materialistic blind chance only escapes being completely crushed, by the overwhelming weight of evidence for design, by appealing to an infinity of other un-testable universes in which all other possibilities have been played out. Yet there is no hard physical evidence to support this blind chance conjecture. In fact, the “infinite multiverse” conjecture suffers from some very serious flaws of logic. For instance exactly which laws of physics, arising from which material basis, are telling all the other natural laws in physics what, how and when, to do the many precise unchanging things they do in these other universes? Plus, if an infinite number of other possible universes must exist in order to explain the fine tuning of this one, then why is it not also infinitely possible for a infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator to exist? I bet evolutionists will suddenly find a limit to what evolution is capable of doing when they realize that unconstrained possibility! Using the materialist same line of reasoning for an infinity of multiverses to explain the extreme fine-tuning of this one; if it is infinitely possible for God to exist then He, of 100% certainty, must exist no matter how small the probability is of His existence in one of these other infinity of universes, and since He certainly must exist, then all possibilities in all universes automatically become subject to Him since He is, by definition, All Powerful. To illustrate the absurdity of what the materialists now consider their cutting edge science: The materialistic conjecture of an infinity of universes to explain the fine tuning of this one also insures the 100% probability of the existence of Pink Unicorns no matter how small the probability is of them existing. In fact a infinity of universes insures the existence of an infinity of Pink Unicorns an infinite number of times. Thus it is self-evident the materialists have painted themselves into a inescapable corner of logical absurdities in trying to find an escape from the Theistic implications we are finding for the fine-tuning of this universe.

Considering Buying Into the Multiverse? Caveat Emptor
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....verse.html

Another escape from the theistic implications of the anthropic principle that materialists have postulated was a slightly constrained “string-theoretic” multiverse:

Baron Münchhausen and the Self-Creating Universe:
That the universe did not always exist is certain, even when multiverse scenarios are considered, since the mechanism of “eternal inflation” postulated to give rise to the multiverse is not eternal into the past (Borde, Guth& Vilenkin: Jan 2003)…..design inferences are epistemically warranted when specified information of a certain complexity (high improbability) is observed, quite independent of whether we have an explanation for the intelligence behind the design. Here’s a particularly telling example: Roger Penrose has calculated that the entropy of the big bang itself, in order to give rise to the life-permitting universe we observe, must be fine-tuned to one part in e10exp(123)?10^10exp(123). Such complex specified conditions do not arise by chance, even in a string-theoretic multiverse with 10^500 different configurations of laws and constants, so an intelligent cause may be inferred. What is more, since it is the big bang itself that is fine-tuned to this degree, the intelligence that explains it as an effect must be logically prior to it and independent of it – in short, an immaterial intelligence that transcends matter, energy and space-time. So much, then, for a personified universe engineering its own bio-friendliness: the universe is not a free lunch and the intelligence of which it gives evidence is not incipient within it.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....selfc.html

The following expert shows why the materialistic postulation of “string theory” is, for all intents and purposes of empirical science, a complete waste of time and energy:

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law:
Peter Woit, a PhD. in theoretical physics and a lecturer in mathematics at Columbia, points out—again and again—that string theory, despite its two decades of dominance, is just a hunch aspiring to be a theory. It hasn’t predicted anything, as theories are required to do, and its practitioners have become so desperate, says Woit, that they’re willing to redefine what doing science means in order to justify their labors.
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Even.....0465092756

Materialists also use to try to find a place for the blind chance of materialism to hide by proposing a universe which expands and contracts (recycles) infinitely. Even at first glance, the “recycling universe” conjecture suffers so many questions from the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) as to render it effectively implausible as a serious theory, but now the recycling universe conjecture has been totally crushed by the hard empirical evidence for a “flat” universe by the “BOOMERANG” experiment.

Evidence against the oscillating universe- Michael Strauss – video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A9G8k02vpI

Evidence For Flat Universe Reported By Boomerang Project
http://www.lbl.gov/ScienceArti.....-flat.html

A “flat universe”, which is actually another surprisingly finely-tuned “coincidence” of the universe, means this universe, left to its own present course of accelerating expansion due to “Dark Energy”, will continue to expand forever, thus fulfilling the thermodynamic equilibrium of the second law to its fullest extent (entropic “Heat Death” of the universe).

The Future of the Universe
excerpt: After all the black holes have evaporated, (and after all the ordinary matter made of protons has disintegrated, if protons are unstable), the universe will be nearly empty. Photons, neutrinos, electrons and positrons will fly from place to place, hardly ever encountering each other. It will be cold, and dark, and there is no known process which will ever change things. —- Not a happy ending.

http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/p.....uture.html

Psalm 102:25-27
Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.

Big Rip
Excerpt: The Big Rip is a cosmological hypothesis first published in 2003, about the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, are progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future. Theoretically, the scale factor of the universe becomes infinite at a finite time in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

Thermodynamic Argument Against Evolution – Thomas Kindell – video
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI1RiTOQ4do
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgzWMccWOe8
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQBjguaBueE

Romans 8:18-21
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

The only hard evidence there is, the stunning precision found in the universal constants, points overwhelmingly to intelligent design by an infinitely powerful Creator who originally established what the unchanging universal constants of physics could and would do during the creation of the universe. The hard evidence left no room for the blind chance of natural laws in this universe. Thus, materialism was forced into appealing to an infinity of un-testable universes for it was left with no footing in this universe. These developments in science make it seem like materialism was cast into the abyss of nothingness in so far as rationally explaining the fine-tuning of the universe.

Thus Nakashima as far as I am concerned you are without a reasonable excuse to cling to materialism as you do in your rejection of God.

Excellent response kairosfocus,

Nakashima,
Though I will not argue for the resurrection at this moment, which I hold to have sufficient evidence, nor will I expose your lie of some other variations being responsible for evolution at this moment, I will ask you a question of your materialistic philosophy,,”Exactly what constraint of materialism is going to prevent a Almighty Transcendent God from existing?”

Even evolutionary thinking cannot constrain Him:

“I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” Alan Sandage (preeminent Astronomer)

The only other theory possible for the universe’s creation, other than a God-centered hypothesis, is some purposeless materialistic theory based on blind chance. Materialistic blind chance only escapes being completely crushed, by the overwhelming weight of evidence for design, by appealing to an infinity of other un-testable universes in which all other possibilities have been played out. Yet there is no hard physical evidence to support this blind chance conjecture. In fact, the “infinite multiverse” conjecture suffers from some very serious flaws of logic. For instance exactly which laws of physics, arising from which material basis, are telling all the other natural laws in physics what, how and when, to do the many precise unchanging things they do in these other universes? Plus, if an infinite number of other possible universes must exist in order to explain the fine tuning of this one, then why is it not also infinitely possible for a infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator to exist? I bet evolutionists will suddenly find a limit to what evolution is capable of doing when they realize that unconstrained possibility! Using the materialist same line of reasoning for an infinity of multiverses to explain the extreme fine-tuning of this one; if it is infinitely possible for God to exist then He, of 100% certainty, must exist no matter how small the probability is of His existence in one of these other infinity of universes, and since He certainly must exist, then all possibilities in all universes automatically become subject to Him since He is, by definition, All Powerful. To illustrate the absurdity of what the materialists now consider their cutting edge science: The materialistic conjecture of an infinity of universes to explain the fine tuning of this one also insures the 100% probability of the existence of Pink Unicorns no matter how small the probability is of them existing. In fact a infinity of universes insures the existence of an infinity of Pink Unicorns an infinite number of times. Thus it is self-evident the materialists have painted themselves into a inescapable corner of logical absurdities in trying to find an escape from the Theistic implications we are finding for the fine-tuning of this universe.

Considering Buying Into the Multiverse? Caveat Emptor
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....verse.html

Another escape from the theistic implications of the anthropic principle that materialists have postulated was a slightly constrained “string-theoretic” multiverse:

Baron Münchhausen and the Self-Creating Universe:
That the universe did not always exist is certain, even when multiverse scenarios are considered, since the mechanism of “eternal inflation” postulated to give rise to the multiverse is not eternal into the past (Borde, Guth& Vilenkin: Jan 2003)…..design inferences are epistemically warranted when specified information of a certain complexity (high improbability) is observed, quite independent of whether we have an explanation for the intelligence behind the design. Here’s a particularly telling example: Roger Penrose has calculated that the entropy of the big bang itself, in order to give rise to the life-permitting universe we observe, must be fine-tuned to one part in e10exp(123)?10^10exp(123). Such complex specified conditions do not arise by chance, even in a string-theoretic multiverse with 10^500 different configurations of laws and constants, so an intelligent cause may be inferred. What is more, since it is the big bang itself that is fine-tuned to this degree, the intelligence that explains it as an effect must be logically prior to it and independent of it – in short, an immaterial intelligence that transcends matter, energy and space-time. So much, then, for a personified universe engineering its own bio-friendliness: the universe is not a free lunch and the intelligence of which it gives evidence is not incipient within it.

The following expert shows why the materialistic postulation of “string theory” is, for all intents and purposes of empirical science, a complete waste of time and energy:

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law:
Peter Woit, a PhD. in theoretical physics and a lecturer in mathematics at Columbia, points out—again and again—that string theory, despite its two decades of dominance, is just a hunch aspiring to be a theory. It hasn’t predicted anything, as theories are required to do, and its practitioners have become so desperate, says Woit, that they’re willing to redefine what doing science means in order to justify their labors.

Materialists also use to try to find a place for the blind chance of materialism to hide by proposing a universe which expands and contracts (recycles) infinitely. Even at first glance, the “recycling universe” conjecture suffers so many questions from the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) as to render it effectively implausible as a serious theory, but now the recycling universe conjecture has been totally crushed by the hard empirical evidence for a “flat” universe by the “BOOMERANG” experiment.

Evidence against the oscillating universe- Michael Strauss – video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A9G8k02vpI

Evidence For Flat Universe Reported By Boomerang Project
http://www.lbl.gov/ScienceArti.....-flat.html

A “flat universe”, which is actually another surprisingly finely-tuned “coincidence” of the universe, means this universe, left to its own present course of accelerating expansion due to “Dark Energy”, will continue to expand forever, thus fulfilling the thermodynamic equilibrium of the second law to its fullest extent (entropic “Heat Death” of the universe).

The Future of the Universe
excerpt: After all the black holes have evaporated, (and after all the ordinary matter made of protons has disintegrated, if protons are unstable), the universe will be nearly empty. Photons, neutrinos, electrons and positrons will fly from place to place, hardly ever encountering each other. It will be cold, and dark, and there is no known process which will ever change things. —- Not a happy ending.

Psalm 102:25-27
Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.

Big Rip
Excerpt: The Big Rip is a cosmological hypothesis first published in 2003, about the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the matter of universe, from stars and galaxies to atoms and subatomic particles, are progressively torn apart by the expansion of the universe at a certain time in the future. Theoretically, the scale factor of the universe becomes infinite at a finite time in the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip

Romans 8:18-21
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

The only hard evidence there is, the stunning precision found in the universal constants, points overwhelmingly to intelligent design by an infinitely powerful Creator who originally established what the unchanging universal constants of physics could and would do during the creation of the universe. The hard evidence left no room for the blind chance of natural laws in this universe. Thus, materialism was forced into appealing to an infinity of un-testable universes for it was left with no footing in this universe. These developments in science make it seem like materialism was cast into the abyss of nothingness in so far as rationally explaining the fine-tuning of the universe.

Thus Nakashima, as far as I am concerned, you are without a reasonable excuse to cling to materialism, as you are doing in your rejection of God.

Diff, who are you trying to kid with your post at 216? In it you say that my questions to you have no count with your assertions on this board. We’ll let’s look at you assertions and see if that is the case, or if, as I suspect, your objections are as contrived as they seem.

In your earlier post you quote Jerry saying:

By using the term “model” it indicates that something is operating according to some system (usually the interaction of several physical processes) when the thing that ID is interested in is possibly a one time event and is an anomaly from on going natural laws…If it is a willful act by an intelligent agent then it could be a one time event and no model imaginable could describe it.

To this you post a reply that has a rather familiar refrain: Oh, how delightful our world would be if that pesky ID could simply be kicked out of the club. Like a old and tired political stereotype from an era gone by; there is always an old fart who is pleased to bring it up.

You say: “Jerry’s reply succinctly describes those characteristics of ID that render it incapable of becoming an empirical science.”

Your meaning here is as clear as a bell: ID is not science. Your inspiring support for this claim comes directly from your comment: “ID’s assertion that an entirely unknown designer effected changes that are anomalous relative to natural laws and may be one-off events render “ID theory” incapable of generating empirical predictions. Simple as that.”

So lets us look at your reasoning before we examine my response.

Firstly, you say that ID makes an assertion that the identity of the designing agent is unknown. This is completely true, and it is true for a very important reason. There is nothing whatsoever in the evidence for design that gives even a hint of whom or what may have provided the design. The only thing that ID can discern from the physical evidence (using the correct methods of historical scientific investigation) is that an act of volitional agency is not only the best explanation, but the only explanation capable of producing what is observed at the molecular level of Life. You may take a clue on this point from Charles Lyell on the subject of explaining past events in the historical sciences. The subtitle of his master work is “By Reference to Causes Now in Operation”. In other words, agency is the only cause in operation today that we are empirically certain is “causally adequate” to explain what we observe. The largest body of observations in biology can be explained by the assumption that organisms can change over time, and that Life exist by virtue of selection at the level of information.

The fact you are uneasy when ID cannot name a designer is tantamount to you trying to write into the evidence something that is not there. Clearly you would like ID to posit a designer so you would have something to argue with, but sorry, that isn’t the job of science (and certainly isn’t a function of the evidence).

Secondly, you suggest that ID asserts a cause that is “anomalous relative to natural law” and may even be a “one-off” event. This is also true, but the direction of your comment is ignorant of the facts. The Big Bang is demonstrably “anomalous relative to natural law” and may even be a “one-off” event. Is the Big Bang science?

The argument in cosmic origins brewed for years, but in the end it was decided by the recognition of new evidence that we can see and verify today by causes operating as they exist today. This is the exact same position ID holds with the evidence. Your recognition of it is the variable here, but the evidence is intractable on its own terms. Material causes, as we observe them, cannot form a symbol system, and there are no physical properties that can cause the sequencing of nucleotides inside genetic information. The only cause as we observe it today, which is capable of producing the evidence, is the act of an agent. These things are not even in question.

Materialists often talk about being as certain as gravity, but I suspect that is only because they can’t count on the evidence. In any case, my response to your post was that you should try to make sense (and be con