Soft tissue recovered from an early Cretaceous dinosaur – test of evolution theories?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 23, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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Soft tissue recovered from an early Cretaceous dinosaur

What if many are indistinguishable from modern lizards? Would that be like fossil rabbits in the Cambrian?

Johan Lindgren et al explain the process in “Microspectroscopic Evidence of Cretaceous Bone Proteins”:

The fossil record is capable of exceptional preservation and occasionally labile and decay-prone tissues, such as skin and melanosomes (color-bearing organelles), are preserved as phosphatized remains or organic residues with a high degree of morphological fidelity [1], [2]. Yet, whether multimillion-year-old fossils harbor original organic components remains controversial [3], [4], and, if they do, a positive identification of these biomolecules is required.

[ … ]

Here, we present the results from a broad array of biochemical and molecular analyses of fibrous bone tissues isolated from an exceptionally preserved 70 Ma mosasaur (a Cretaceous marine lizard [7]) humerus (IRSNB 1624; Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique) referred to the genus Prognathodon from the early Maastrichtian Ciply Phosphatic Chalk of Belgium. Specifically, we employ synchrotron radiation-based infrared microspectroscopy (IR) because this technique provides information on complex organic molecules in selected microstructures [8], [9].

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Comments

Well Clive, if we start with a very simple model ...Mung_{July 28, 2011
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Eiizabeth Liddle, ---You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents? Umm, according to your theory of evolution everything that has ever lived came from the same ancestors. So, please explain to me, how the wasp, banana tree, polar bear and sea urchin resemble each other, and what their common parents were.Clive Hayden_{July 24, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle, Are you going to answer me about the common parents of the wasp, banana tree, polar bear and sea urchin?Clive Hayden_{July 24, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
As for the “overwhelming evidence” not for common descent (which I think is pretty overwhelming, especially given the substantial consilience between genetically and anatomically derived phylogenies), but for Darwinian adaptation, that also seems to be pretty subtantial to me, and I would say that: 1. Field studies 2. Lab studies 3. Computational studies 4. Logic!
So you've at least heard of it then.Mung_{July 24, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
However, I would plead, in mitigation, that I never did not “get it”. It was actually my point!
Simply amazing. So you knew all along that you were not actually making an argument, because if you had been making an argument, your argument would have been question-beggingly circular? And that is why when I first asserted that you had engaged in a non-sequitur and asked you to you clarify you repondeded:
You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents?
And when I said, not without begging the question you promptly agreed with me and all that followed never actually happened. And when I wrote in that very same post:
But that is not science, nor does imagination suffice in place of a logical argument.
It immediately occurred to you that I thought you were making an argument and expected you to employ logic if you were going to do so and you made it immediately clear that you weren't actually making an argument. In some alternative universe, perhaps. But that's not what happened in this one.Mung_{July 24, 2011
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SCheesman: Nice to talk to you to! And thanks for your admirably clear (a lot clearer than mine, clearly, heh) response:
Elizabeth: I think I can summarize best by reducing everything to a couple of starting points: 1) Only intelligence can introduce substantial information into biological systems. 2)Once information is present, it can only degrade or reduce over time, genetic entropy. This leads to all the conclusions I talked about above. Complicating factors include the fact that not all information “injected” need necessarily be expressed from the start, and considerable effort has likely been expended to ensure that the effects of genetic entropy are minimized over time. These starting points lead to a range of predictions in opposition to normal Darwinian evolution, a few of which I have related above. Thanks for the discussion! Perhaps we can chat on another thread sometime soon.
Yes I hope so. It's good to see such clearly expressed premises, complete with potential predictions. I don't actually think your premises are correct, however :) But that's not a problem - I find it a huge relief to drill down to the level at which there is a clear disagreement, especially if it comes with a means of testing who is right! Specifically: 1) I don't think that "only intelligence can introduce substantial information into biological systems", if, by "intelligence" we mean intentional intelligent agents. I do think that some non-intentional systems exhibit some features of "intelligence" and replication with modification + natural selection ("rm+ns") is one of them. 2) I agree that information can degrade, but I don't think it can only degrade. I think it can refresh and update too, and that, again, is is what "rm+ns" does. Cheers LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{July 24, 2011
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It's progress in communication, certainly, Mung. And yet another reminder to me to try to Mung-proof my posts before posting. However, I would plead, in mitigation, that I never did not "get it". It was actually my point! But badly expressed, I willingly concede. Must try harder.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 24, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
But it’s not a syllogism – if it were it would be circular, because the very reason we infer that Cambrian ancestry for the rabbit is because of similarities between the rabbit and certain Cambrian critters, namely ones with (the beginnings of) vertebrae!
YES! You get it! Congratulations! I was beginning to lose hope. You asked:
You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents?
I responded:
Not without begging the question.
Do you now understand my response?
Mung, I’ve had enough of being lawyered. This is a blog, not a PhD viva, and if I make ambiguous or apparently contradictory statements, or if my statements don’t make sense, I’m happy to be asked to clarify or support my position, even to retract it if you can persuade me that it is wrong.
That's all I did Elizabeth, was ask you to clarify and support your statement, because as written it did not make sense. It took all this to get there, but I think you at least now finally understand why.
I would ask you do me the basic respect of trying to see what I might be saying before insisting that I am saying something you think I am saying and which you think is wrong/dishonest/irrational.
I did see what you said. It was irrational. So I invited you to correct or modify it. In reviewing what you wrote you finally came to understand the problem with what you wrote. If stated as an argument it would become circular and thus beg the question. That's progress. I hope.Mung_{July 24, 2011
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Elizabeth: I think I can summarize best by reducing everything to a couple of starting points: 1) Only intelligence can introduce substantial information into biological systems. 2)Once information is present, it can only degrade or reduce over time, genetic entropy. This leads to all the conclusions I talked about above. Complicating factors include the fact that not all information "injected" need necessarily be expressed from the start, and considerable effort has likely been expended to ensure that the effects of genetic entropy are minimized over time. These starting points lead to a range of predictions in opposition to normal Darwinian evolution, a few of which I have related above. Thanks for the discussion! Perhaps we can chat on another thread sometime soon.SCheesman_{July 24, 2011
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GR, 9 above: Serious point. (Cf Vid here and paper here. {I mention the issue here in the IOSE as a part of the question of assigning a timeline, and how we should evaluate its credibility for ourselves. Let's just say it is not by accident that the just linked is a follow on to a discussion of the cosmological evidence, starting from the HR diagram and the inferences suggested by star clusters.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{July 24, 2011
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Mung:
Elizabeth Liddle:I mean, you haven’t even quoted me correctly You say this, and yet you provide no evidence whatsoever that it is true. Where in this thread have I misquoted you? Here are my posts in this thread that contain quotes of what you have written: “Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities.” post #7 That is a direct quote from your post @6: Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities. You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents? post #11 That is a direct quote from your post @10: You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents? Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities. A simple repost of the same text I quoted in my post #7 copied and pasted directly from your post @6. I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent. post #16 That is a direct quote from your post @15: I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent. That’s the sum total of where I have quoted you in this thread, and each of them was a simple copy/paste. How on earth in good conscience can you accuse me of misquoting you? Your claim is spurious and unwarranted. It has no basis in fact. I can only hope that you did not intend that anyone here actually believe it to be true.
You appeared to me to attribute to me:
CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
Which I did not write. I see now that in fact these are your own words, presented as part of what you provided as a rephrasing of what I had written, as an argument:
PREMISE: evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
Which you then proceed to critique as a logical argument, even though it was not presented as such, and is not, in fact, a paraphrase of what a wrote. I hope what I actually wrote is now clear to you. I apologise for failing to note that you were not attributing the your words to me. Mung @21
So Elizabeth, let’s start from the basics. You stated the following:
…evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals)
Do you agree that this is what you in fact wrote in your post @5? Do you dispute that it is a premise in an argument?
Premise, a claim that is a reason for, or an objection against, some other claim as part of an argument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....guation%29 In logic, an argument is a set of one or more declarative sentences (or “propositions”) known as the premises along with another declarative sentence (or “proposition”) known as the conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise Then you went on to say: …then we would certainly expect to see some similarities. Do you agree that this is also what you in fact wrote in your post @5? Do you dispute that the word then can legitimately be replaced by the word therefore? http://thesaurus.com/browse/then So then what do you find objectionable about the following? therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. Do you dispute that it is a conclusion in an argument? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning I can’t believe I am having to walk a PhD scientist through these steps. Wow. Just wow.
Mung. I have explained what I was saying. I was not presenting a tight logical argument, and what I said could probably have been better worded, but I think SCheesman understood what I meant. In any case I have since clarified. I'll make my original point conce more, better worded: SCheesman had said:
That is where the reference to the cambrian rabbit has relevance; if we should ever recover soft-tissue samples from many of the cambrian-era phyla, then would it reveal that in fact there is much less “distance” between such creatures and a modern-day rabbit?
And my somewhat ineptly worded point was simply that some precambrian critters are posited to be ancestral to the modern-day rabbit (namely vertebrates) so obviously the "distance" between the modern rabbit and those vertebarates will be less than between the modern rabbit and pre-cambrian critters not ancestral to the rabbit. But it's not a syllogism - if it were it would be circular, because the very reason we infer that Cambrian ancestry for the rabbit is because of similarities between the rabbit and certain Cambrian critters, namely ones with (the beginnings of) vertebrae! Mung, I've had enough of being lawyered. This is a blog, not a PhD viva, and if I make ambiguous or apparently contradictory statements, or if my statements don't make sense, I'm happy to be asked to clarify or support my position, even to retract it if you can persuade me that it is wrong. But you respond to a lot of my posts, and, from my PoV (obviously biased, as all PoVs are), it looks to me as though your motivation in reading my post is primarily to try catch me out, to expose me as a liar, an incompetent or a fool. I don't lie; I'm reasonably competent although make no claims to infallibility; and I'm not a fool. I would ask you do me the basic respect of trying to see what I might be saying before insisting that I am saying something you think I am saying and which you think is wrong/dishonest/irrational. When people come from very different positions on a topic there are bound to be misunderstandings. I have hugely enjoyed being given the opportunity here to find out more about what people here actually think vis a vis ID. I suggest conversations with you might be more productive were you to return the favour. I don't ask for agreement, obviously, but I do ask, respectfully, that you attempt to bridge at least part of the distance between us from your side. And taking words from my posts out of context, regardless of their relevance to the topic or to the conversation, and subjecting them to close textual analysis isn't, I suggest, helpful, particularly when accompanied by scoffing and/or accusations of dishonesty.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 24, 2011
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Hi Elizabeth, Thank you for your post. I have some predictions about the mosasaurs' cell tissue that I'd like to share with you. First, I'd like to clarify my background assumptions. Like you, I accept common descent. I think that the arguments relating to nested hierarchies put forward by Dr. Douglas Theobald are very persuasive. See this link: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#nested_hierarchy On the other hand, I am equally impressed by the evidence marshaled by ID proponents that the various distinct cell types that we find in organisms could not have evolved by a Darwinian stepwise process. Each cell type is quite distinct from the other types in its group. For instance, the cells of the mammary, lacrimal and ceruminous glands share the property of being specialized for secretion through ducts (exocrine secretion), but the substances they secrete are very different: milk, tears and ear wax respectively. In his book, The Edge of Evolution (Free Press, 2007), Professor Michael Behe argues that the gene regulatory network that is required to specify each cell type is irreducibly complex. There is an old Chinese proverb that a picture is worth a thousand words, and it's certainly true in this case. Readers who want to see what a gene regulatory network looks like for a tissue type called endomesoderm, in simple sea urchins, can click here . It's well worth having a look at. The resemblance to a logic circuit is striking, and the impression of design overwhelming. Behe estimates that the number of protein factors involved in the gene regulatory network for each cell type is about ten, and argues that it appears to be irreducibly complex. On the basis of scientific observations of a very large number of mutations in Nature (especially in the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the HIV virus and the bacterium Escherichia coli), Behe calculates that during the history of life on earth, Darwinian evolution would be unable to generate a system with more than three inter-dependent components. Behe concludes that the cell types that characterize a class of organisms are very likely to be designed (ibid., pp. 198-199). The key point here is that if classes are characterized by their own unique cell types, then classes do have sharply defined boundaries, after all. It seems that Aristotle's essentialism is true at the level of the class, if not the species. (Personally I'd say that natural kinds correspond to families or superfamilies, but that's another story.) Mosasaurs are thought to have evolved from monitor lizards, according to the article in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaur#Phylogeny Monitor lizards show enormous variation in size, according to this article here: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/varanus.html Additionally, there's a correlation between an organism's size and the number of cell types it has, according to a paper by Megan McCarthy and Brian Enquist (Evolutionary Ecology Research, 2005, 7:681-696) entitled "Organismal size, metabolism and the evolution of complexity in metazoans" (available online). Finally, mosasaurs were very large creatures, reaching up to 17 metres long, according to the Wikipedia article. So here's what I'd predict. (1) The tissues recovered from fossil mosasaurs should contain all of the cell types that are found in the monitor lizards that they evolved from, in the Cretaceous. Since these lizards were probably large monitor lizards, and since I can think of no obvious reason (from an ID perspective) why the larger monitor lizards alive today should have more cell types than their large-bodied ancestors, then I'd predict that mosasaurs should have all of the cell types that are found in today's larger monitor lizards, plus a few extra ones, to cater for their specialized lifestyles as marine creatures. (2) I'd also predict that if fossil soft tissues are ever found for monitor lizards, they should contain only tissues that are found in today's monitor lizards. However, the bigger ones should contain more cell types in their bodies than the smaller ones. Well, that's a start, anyway.vjtorley_{July 23, 2011
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Hi Mung,
You commit what I call “the Creationist Fallacy.” You confuse what actually is the case with what might possibly be the case if we were to assume that evolution is true and can in fact mimic perfectly all that a designer might accomplish.
What is being confused in my stating that evolutionists claim that everything that has ever lived evolved from a single cell?Clive Hayden_{July 23, 2011
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Hi Clive, You commit what I call "the Creationist Fallacy." You confuse what actually is the case with what might possibly be the case if we were to assume that evolution is true and can in fact mimic perfectly all that a designer might accomplish.Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
OK. I’m still not quite sure why the Cambrian is supposed to be the beginning of things (yes, I know there was an “explosion” but why shouldn’t that have been from preexisting populations? We know of biota that predate the Cambrian.
According to the evidence we have, except for a very few exceptions. The Cambrian IS the beginning of all things. The vast majority of creatures in the Cambrian have no identifiable ancestor. So, until they show up, I'm sticking to the Cambrian as the beginning.
why would we not posit non-fossilised not-fully formed eyes as precursors
Posit all you want. There is no actual evidence of such. Most of the other "systems" don't (and wouldn't) leave fossil evidence, by their soft-tissue nature. The eye, being an external body part does. It's difficult to find precursors to trilobite eyes because there are none; at least that's the fossil evidence, unless you can show me I'm wrong (and I'm quite ready to admit my mistakes).
Are you anticipating DNA?
Well, DNA does not appear to be the whole story in development, but certainly I am speaking of changes in it and whatever other processes turn out to be involved in development and inheritance of traits. I can't recall the details, but weren't tests done on flies trapped in amber that determined them to be much "fitter" than the same species found today? That sort of thing. Off to bed... I'll look at the rest of the questions tomorrow.SCheesman_{July 23, 2011
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Mung, I know what evolutionary theory claims, one cell evolved into everything that has ever lived. I only picked four of those creatures and asked for their particular lineage going from the present backwards into history to the Cambrian or whatever time you'd like, so we can actually see that they all had the same great great grandparents. Clive Hayden_{July 23, 2011
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Clive, Evolutionary theory holds that there was a common ancestor to the wasp, banana tree, polar bear and sea urchin in the Cambrian. Therefore, we should not be at all surprised to find that these organisms share some features in common.Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle,
I’m not going to attempt to present the evidence for common descent here – it’s widely available and I’m sure you’ve made your own evaluation.
All I would like to know is the lineage from ocean plankton to everything that has ever lived, if that's too much to ask, I'd like to know the common ancestries of the wasp, banana tree, polar bear and sea urchin. Thank you.Clive Hayden_{July 23, 2011
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So Elizabeth, let's start from the basics. You stated the following:
...evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals)
Do you agree that this is what you in fact wrote in your post @5? Do you dispute that it is a premise in an argument?
Premise, a claim that is a reason for, or an objection against, some other claim as part of an argument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise_%28disambiguation%29
In logic, an argument is a set of one or more declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premise Then you went on to say:
...then we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
Do you agree that this is also what you in fact wrote in your post @5? Do you dispute that the word then can legitimately be replaced by the word therefore? http://thesaurus.com/browse/then So then what do you find objectionable about the following? therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. Do you dispute that it is a conclusion in an argument? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deductive_reasoning I can't believe I am having to walk a PhD scientist through these steps. Wow. Just wow.Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Correction: That is a direct quote from your post @6: Should read: That is a direct quote from your post @5:Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle:
I mean, you haven’t even quoted me correctly
You say this, and yet you provide no evidence whatsoever that it is true. Where in this thread have I misquoted you? Here are my posts in this thread that contain quotes of what you have written: "Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities." post #7 That is a direct quote from your post @6:
Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents? post #11 That is a direct quote from your post @10:
You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents?
Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities. A simple repost of the same text I quoted in my post #7 copied and pasted directly from your post @6. I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent. post #16 That is a direct quote from your post @15:
I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent.
That's the sum total of where I have quoted you in this thread, and each of them was a simple copy/paste. How on earth in good conscience can you accuse me of misquoting you? Your claim is spurious and unwarranted. It has no basis in fact. I can only hope that you did not intend that anyone here actually believe it to be true.Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Mung:
Elizabeth Liddle
I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent.
Since when have I said anything in this thread about whether or not I think the evidence supports common descent?
You talked about "imaginary ancestors".
This is not about common descent. It’s about you stating a conclusion for which you lack sufficient grounds. I repeat: CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. You have given no reason whatsoever to accept the truth of this conclusion, and yet you apparently believe it to be true and wish for us to likewise accept that it is true. Based upon what logic and reasoning? This is not about evidence for common descent, it’s about logic and valid arguments.
Of course it's about common descent. The reason common descent is a hypothesis is because we can derive phylogenies, based on similarities between organisms, both extant and fossile, that indicate a family tree.
It is indeed next to impossible to find common ground with someone who cannot (or will not) reason from premises to conclusion.
Well, try thinking in terms of hypothesis testing instead. Common descent is a hypothesis. If the hypothesis is true, we should see lines of similarity running through lineages, and those lineages should branch. Twigs at the ends of the branches will show more similarity with their own ancestors than with non-ancestors. Because that's how the tree is derived from the first place.
An argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises entails the truth of its conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity For your conclusion you have only provided one single premise. How, pray tell, do you get from that one single premise to your conclusion? What is your reasoning? Seriously, is it really that difficult to follow what I have been saying? Is anyone else here confused about this?
Well, I think you are. I mean, you haven't even quoted me correctly, and you've totally missed the context. Not to mention the point. We seem to have difficulty understanding each other. It happens. I think we just have to accept that, and do our best. Peace LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth Liddle
I take it from the above that you don’t accept that the evidence supports common descent.
Since when have I said anything in this thread about whether or not I think the evidence supports common descent? This is not about common descent. It's about you stating a conclusion for which you lack sufficient grounds. I repeat: CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. You have given no reason whatsoever to accept the truth of this conclusion, and yet you apparently believe it to be true and wish for us to likewise accept that it is true. Based upon what logic and reasoning? This is not about evidence for common descent, it's about logic and valid arguments. It is indeed next to impossible to find common ground with someone who cannot (or will not) reason from premises to conclusion.
An argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises entails the truth of its conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity
For your conclusion you have only provided one single premise. How, pray tell, do you get from that one single premise to your conclusion? What is your reasoning? Seriously, is it really that difficult to follow what I have been saying? Is anyone else here confused about this?Mung_{July 23, 2011
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Mung:
Elizabeth, I asked for logic and reason. I asked you to explain how your conclusion follows from your one and only premise. And you give me this? You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents? Not without begging the question. But since we’re talking imaginary ancestors here, I don’t see any reason we can’t imagine whatever we like. But that is not science, nor does imagination suffice in place of a logical argument. Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities. ok, let me assist you in phrasing this as an actual argument. PREMISE: evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. Can you say non-sequitur? Non sequitur (Latin for “it does not follow”), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises.[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion can be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....28logic%29 Now, can you please tell us in the sweet name of all that is logical, reasonable, and rational, how your conclusion follows from your premise? HINT: IT DOESN’T!
Mung, we seem to have so little common ground that I'm not sure that there is actually any point in our attempting to discuss anything. I take it from the above that you don't accept that the evidence supports common descent. Fair enough, a number of people here don't, although it seems a number do, at least as far back as the Cambrian. I'm not going to attempt to present the evidence for common descent here - it's widely available and I'm sure you've made your own evaluation. What I was interested in discussingn with SCheesman was whether, given a common descent model, whether an ID hypothesis (either front-loading or "injection") would make different predictions from Darwinian theory regarding what we would expect to see if soft tissue residues could be found for a putative Cambrian ancestor of the rabbit (which would be a limbless fish-like early vertebrate). But you don't actually accept common descent as likely (as far as the Cambrian anyway), then I guess the issue is irrelevant to you.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth, I asked for logic and reason. I asked you to explain how your conclusion follows from your one and only premise. And you give me this?
You don’t see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents?
Not without begging the question. But since we're talking imaginary ancestors here, I don't see any reason we can't imagine whatever we like. But that is not science, nor does imagination suffice in place of a logical argument.
Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
ok, let me assist you in phrasing this as an actual argument. PREMISE: evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) CONCLUSION: therefore, we would certainly expect to see some similarities. Can you say non-sequitur?
Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises.[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion can be either true or false, but the argument is fallacious because there is a disconnection between the premise and the conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29
Now, can you please tell us in the sweet name of all that is logical, reasonable, and rational, how your conclusion follows from your premise? HINT: IT DOESN'T!Mung_{July 23, 2011
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RodW, If 'underlying similarity' counts as evidence for evolution why does 'underlying dissimilarity' not count as evidence against evolution??? notes: Genetic Discoveries Uproot Darwin's Tree Of Life https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1S5wXsukzkauD5YQLkQYuIMGL25I4fJrOUzJhONvBXe4 Why Darwin was wrong about the (genetic) tree of life: - 21 January 2009 Excerpt: Syvanen recently compared 2000 genes that are common to humans, frogs, sea squirts, sea urchins, fruit flies and nematodes. In theory, he should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. This was especially true of sea-squirt genes. Conventionally, sea squirts - also known as tunicates - are lumped together with frogs, humans and other vertebrates in the phylum Chordata, but the genes were sending mixed signals. Some genes did indeed cluster within the chordates, but others indicated that tunicates should be placed with sea urchins, which aren't chordates. "Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another," Syvanen says. ."We've just annihilated the tree of life. It's not a tree any more, it's a different topology entirely," says Syvanen. "What would Darwin have made of that?" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.600-why-darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.html I would like to point out that this, 'annihilation' of Darwin's genetic tree of life, article came out on the very day that Dr. Hillis, a self-proclaimed 'world leading expert' on the genetic tree of life, testified before the Texas State Board Of Education that the genetic tree of life overwhelmingly confirmed gradual Darwinian evolution. One could almost argue it was 'Intelligently Designed' for him to exposed as a fraud on that particular day of his testimony instead of just any other day of the year. ============== Evolution's Big Bang: “Yet, here is the real puzzle of the Cambrian Explosion for the theory of evolution. All the known phyla (large categories of biological classification), except one, first appear in the Cambrian period. There are no ancestors. There are no intermediates. Fossil experts used to think that the Cambrian lasted 75 million years.... Eventually the Cambrian was shortened to only 30 million years. If that wasn't bad enough, the time frame of the real work of bringing all these different creatures into existence was shortened to the first five to ten million years of the Cambrian. This is extraordinarily fast! Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould stated, "Fast is now a lot faster than we thought, and that is extraordinarily interesting." What an understatement! "Extraordinarily impossible" might be a better phrase! .... The differences between the creatures that suddenly appear in the Cambrian are enormous. In fact these differences are so large many of these animals are one of a kind. Nothing like them existed before and nothing like them has ever appeared again.” Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin, University of Illinois (B.S., zoology), North Texas State University (M.S., population genetics), University of Texas at Dallas (M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology). As for your theologically based argument that God could create any way he wanted to yet He chose a certain way that 'looks like' evolution (whatever that means), you seem to forget that God, being perfect, would create optimal solutions to design problems. Thus since optimal solutions are in many instances 'singular' solutions, then similarity would be expected for say the structure of DNA: 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) 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. http://www.reasons.org/biology/biochemical-design/fyi-id-dna-deciphering-design-genetic-code 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. https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/ode-to-the-code/4 As well there was a ‘optimality’ found for the 20 amino acid set used in the 'standard' Genetic code when the set was compared to 1 million randomly generated alternative amino acid sets; Does Life Use a Non-Random Set of Amino Acids? - Jonathan M. - April 2011 Excerpt: The authors compared the coverage of the standard alphabet of 20 amino acids for size, charge, and hydrophobicity with equivalent values calculated for a sample of 1 million alternative sets (each also comprising 20 members) drawn randomly from the pool of 50 plausible prebiotic candidates. The results? The authors noted that: "…the standard alphabet exhibits better coverage (i.e., greater breadth and greater evenness) than any random set for each of size, charge, and hydrophobicity, and for all combinations thereof." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/04/does_life_use_a_non-random_set045661.htmlbornagain77_{July 23, 2011
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SCheesman:
Elizabeth:
Are you assuming common descent here? It seems reasonable to me, at least as far as descent from the original phyla as found in the Cambrian…
OK. I'm still not quite sure why the Cambrian is supposed to be the beginning of things (yes, I know there was an "explosion" but why shouldn't that have been from preexisting populations? We know of biota that predate the Cambrian.
In which case, presumably you would have to posit that all genomes contain (or contained) in at least dormant form, every gene and every allele of that gene ever found in any descendent?
Again, that would be reasonable in a “front-loading” form of ID; the alternative is “injection as required over time”. I like the idea of front-loading better, perhaps with epi-genetic triggers bringing on major (built-in) changes.
OK. I'm pleased to have an actual postulated mechanism or two :) Testability is good.

Not quite sure why. Could you explain? [The trilobite eye] The eye is one of the few (only?) highly-sophisticated biological systems with an external body expression preserved in fossils; sort of a proxy for all the things we can’t see preserved. It was present from the very beginning (and appeared without any fossil forbears), as far as trilobites are concerned; it is not unreasonable to believe the same of any particular internal complex system you can name in today’s creatures (blood systems, hearing, immune systems etc.)
But it seems to me that you have provided the refutation of your own argument there - if fully formed eyes are one of the few "highly-sophisticated biological systesm...preserved in fossils" why would we not posit non-fossilised not-fully formed eyes as precursors? Especially as we have examples of living organisms with all kinds of eyes, some very primitive and unlikely to leave a fossil trace, had the equivalent been a precursor to trilobite eyes? "Fossil forebears" is not the same as "forebears". And in general, only eyes with some kind of carapace will leave a clear fossil record. Absence of evidence, in the fossil record, anyway, is not evidence of absence, especially when what is postulated is unlikely to leave a fossil trace. And, in any case, there is some evidence of at least proto-eyes in earlier Ediacaran organisms.
So what, specifically, would you predict that the soft tissue would show?
I would expect much what we see today, but perhaps (in light of genetic entropy) more a “super-set” of what we see today, indicating a loss, not gain of information over time. Darwinian evolution, I believe would expect the reverse, with the older forms showing less variation, and newer ones with innovations not found at all in the older.
Are you anticipating DNA? I think that is extremely unlikely. In the absence of DNA, what evidence would you expect to see of a "superset"? And, a superset of what? And "less variation" in what? Certainly we do see certain innovations only in younger fossils (limbs, for instance!) but given that the number of possible innovations is huge, it's the distribution of the innovations that lets us plot phylogenies rather than the variance itself.

What else do you think Cambrian vertebrates might show, and what would ID predict in terms of similarity that Darwinian evolution wouldn’t?
I think just what I noted above; that what we discover about the internals and “systems” information in ancient forms will tend to reduce the “distance” between the modern and ancient forms, reducing “macro-evolution” to developmental changes, and not changes in the underlying building blocks.
Not sure I understand this. In what sense would "macro-evolution" be reduced to "developmental changes"? And what do you see as the "underlying building blocks"? And what do you mean by "'systems' information"? Sorry to bombard you with questions, but this is interesting, as you've taken a brave (and necessary!) step here in making predictions! Because it seems to me that if ID is to demonstrate greater explanatory power than Darwinism, we have to find hypotheses where ID predicts one thing and Darwinism another. Then go out and find out which one is supported :) Important to get the predictions really clear, though.
Elizabeth Liddle_{July 23, 2011
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RodW:
If God ( or the IDer) created living things seperately
I believe it is you who misunderstands ID. ID is concerned about the origin of genetic information; beyond the fact that it requires intelligence to create, it is rather agnostic about exactly when and how it was created; whether through initial condidtions and fine-tuning, front-loading or, as called it above "injection"; whether at the phylum, order or species level is something that would be best to determine from the facts and evidence we find. ID is not incompatible with either old-earth or young-earth creationists; I think there's plenty of non-biological evidence to decide those issues.SCheesman_{July 23, 2011
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Mung:
Elizabeth Liddle:
Well, as evolutionary theory holds that at at least one cambrian critter was the ancestor of the modern rabbit (indeed a common ancestor all mammals) then we would certainly expect to see some similarities.
How in the good name of logic and reason does one follow from the other?
You don't see why an ancestor should have any similarities with his/her descendents?Elizabeth Liddle_{July 23, 2011
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Elizabeth:
Are you assuming common descent here?
It seems reasonable to me, at least as far as descent from the original phyla as found in the Cambrian...
In which case, presumably you would have to posit that all genomes contain (or contained) in at least dormant form, every gene and every allele of that gene ever found in any descendent?
Again, that would be reasonable in a "front-loading" form of ID; the alternative is "injection as required over time". I like the idea of front-loading better, perhaps with epi-genetic triggers bringing on major (built-in) changes.
Not quite sure why. Could you explain? [The trilobite eye]
The eye is one of the few (only?) highly-sophisticated biological systems with an external body expression preserved in fossils; sort of a proxy for all the things we can't see preserved. It was present from the very beginning (and appeared without any fossil forbears), as far as trilobites are concerned; it is not unreasonable to believe the same of any particular internal complex system you can name in today's creatures (blood systems, hearing, immune systems etc.)
So what, specifically, would you predict that the soft tissue would show?
I would expect much what we see today, but perhaps (in light of genetic entropy) more a "super-set" of what we see today, indicating a loss, not gain of information over time. Darwinian evolution, I believe would expect the reverse, with the older forms showing less variation, and newer ones with innovations not found at all in the older.
What else do you think Cambrian vertebrates might show, and what would ID predict in terms of similarity that Darwinian evolution wouldn’t?
I think just what I noted above; that what we discover about the internals and "systems" information in ancient forms will tend to reduce the "distance" between the modern and ancient forms, reducing "macro-evolution" to developmental changes, and not changes in the underlying building blocks.SCheesman_{July 23, 2011
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