A central tenet in evolutionary theory is that mutations occur randomly with respect to their value to an organism; selection then governs whether they are fixed in a population. This principle has been challenged by long-standing theoretical models predicting that selection could modulate the rate of mutation itself. However, our understanding of how the mutation rate varies between different sites within a genome has been hindered by technical difficulties in measuring it.
Next the paper introduces the new study, in which a new technical approach is used:
Here we present a study that overcomes previous limitations by combining phylogenetic and population genetic techniques.
And finally, the results are summarized. The first result is that if evolution is true, we must believe that the basic mutation varies by more than an order of magnitude in different bacteria:
Upon comparing 34 Escherichia coli genomes, we observe that the neutral mutation rate varies by more than an order of magnitude across 2,659 genes, with mutational hot and cold spots spanning several kilobases.
The next result is that, under evolution, the variation between different mutation rates must not be random, but rather must follow a rational pattern:
Importantly, the variation is not random: we detect a lower rate in highly expressed genes and in those undergoing stronger purifying selection.
And so, given evolution, we must conclude that evolution has optimized the mutation rate:
Our observations suggest that the mutation rate has been evolutionarily optimized to reduce the risk of deleterious mutations.
Of course there is no known mechanism that could do this:
Current knowledge of factors influencing the mutation rate—including transcription-coupled repair and context-dependent mutagenesis—do not explain these observations, indicating that additional mechanisms must be involved.
But evolutionists will think of something, no matter how speculative.
The findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution and the control of mutations.
These findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution? Well sure, if by that they mean how absurd are evolution truth claims. Evolutionists have been caught again. Round up the usual suspects.
Gee Cornelius, you were so busy crawling into the gutter with your photoshopping of an already despicable propaganda piece that you completely forgot to give us the "correct" interpretation of this new data.
ReplyDeleteHow will all your little Creationist groupies know what to believe if you don't hand feed them?
I don't even get the re-purposing of the image.
DeleteI wonder if Dr. Hunter knows research academics (including geneticists) were one of Ted Kaczynski's favorite targets?
I guess I don't get the message-abandon your research, or you might get a ticking package in the mail?
It is called a dog whistle,those who it is aimed at know what it means.
DeleteIt is called a dog whistle,those who it is aimed at know what it means.
DeleteAre you calling Thorton a dog? He sure showed up quickly. And he's usually the first to respond.
Your perception is equal to your reasoning, Louis
DeleteIn fairness, neither side is incapable of its use.
DeleteI wonder if Dr. Hunter knows research academics (including geneticists) were one of Ted Kaczynski's favorite targets?
DeleteHe probably didn't like the emerging techniques and technologies of the scientific dictatorship: A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[60] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.[60] Beginning at the age of sixteen, Kaczynski participated along with twenty-one other undergraduate students in the Harvard experiments, which have been described as "disturbing" and "ethically indefensible."
Note that the CIA and organizations closer to the top of the pyramid $cheme are ultimately controlled by members of secret societies.
I guess I don't get the message-abandon your research, or you might get a ticking package in the mail?
What message? I'm sure it's all explicable in terms of ignorant mechanisms emerging from the void. Isn't that what you've been taught?
Isn't it funny that evolutionists proposed the experiment, evolutionists did the research, evolutionists submitted the results for peer review, evolutionists suggested avenues for further studies, and evolutionists published the results for all to see?
ReplyDeleteAll the while the crack team of Creationist scientists sat on their duffs writing political propaganda and working on their photoshopping skills.
Guess which approach better produces useful results and earns more respect?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWhat I said in that censored post above is that evolutionists have something to prove. So they try harder. Problem is, fewer and fewer people are buying what they're selling. A crisis is looming, so they redouble their efforts.
DeleteIsn't it funny that evolutionists proposed the experiment, evolutionists did the research, evolutionists submitted the results for peer review, evolutionists suggested avenues for further studies, and evolutionists published the results for all to see?
DeleteIsn't it funny that you would be the first to seek to censor and eliminate the funding of anyone who didn't abide by the rules of the game given to you by those closer to the top of the pyramid $cheme of knowledge?
"Isn't it funny that evolutionists proposed the experiment, evolutionists did the research, evolutionists submitted the results for peer review, evolutionists suggested avenues for further studies, and evolutionists published the results for all to see?"
ReplyDeleteHilarious, actually. All that work by Evolutionists without ever producing actual evidence for Darwinian Evolution.
Step 1: assume Darwinian Evolution is true
Step 2: seek evidence in light of Step 1
Step 3: question the integrity and legitimacy of Step 1(as you can see, this step will never happen as Step 2 loops back ("goto") to Step 1)
Step 1 coupled with Step 2 is "science", but Step 3 is apparently not:
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.1
computerist29
DeleteHilarious, actually. All that work by Evolutionists without ever producing actual evidence for Darwinian Evolution.
This experiment wasn't done to produce evidence for Darwinian Evolution. That has already been established as factual by the combined results of a century's worth of research. This experiment was to examine the fine details of one specific mechanism.
Scientists don't have to do extra research to validate evolution any more that aerospace engineers have to prove heavier than air flight is possible with every new paper they produce. The fact that evolution has occurred simply hasn't been an issue in science for a hundred years.
Thorton said:
Delete"Scientists don't have to do extra research to validate evolution any more that aerospace engineers have to prove heavier than air flight is possible with every new paper they produce. The fact that evolution has occurred simply hasn't been an issue in science for a hundred years."
Geocentrists did the same, by centuries.
Good point Blas . And how did the geocentric model come to be replaced? By ID ? Don't you believe the Designer created the solar system? How much functional information is there is the solar system?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteBlas
DeleteThorton: "Scientists don't have to do extra research to validate evolution any more that aerospace engineers have to prove heavier than air flight is possible with every new paper they produce. The fact that evolution has occurred simply hasn't been an issue in science for a hundred years."
Geocentrists did the same, by centuries.
Geocentrism was replaced with a theory, heliocentrism, that better explained the empirical data in a more consistent and consilient manner, including making better predictions.
If you have an alternative to ToE that better explains the empirical data in a more consistent and consilient manner, including making better predictions, then by all means present it.
Back it up with positive evidence and science will listen.
What's that? No positive evidence for your idea? Too bad, come back later.
Blogger is making posts vanish again.
DeleteCan you look into this CH? Thanks,
ThortonMay 5, 2012 04:38 PM
Delete"Geocentrism was replaced with a theory, heliocentrism, that better explained the empirical data in a more consistent and consilient manner, including making better predictions."
But by centuries the geocentrist thought that were right like darwinists today Maybe worst for darwinists because they think evolution has enough evidence to call it a fact.
"What's that? No positive evidence for your idea? Too bad, come back later."
Do not worry I will satnd by reading.
Thorton:
DeleteBlogger is making posts vanish again.
Can you look into this CH? Thanks,
Wow, thx for the heads up. It blocked 8 valid posts in the last few days. Those should be posted now. I'll keep an eye on it ...
Darwinian evolution has postulated for many decades that 'random' mutations/variations, coupled with natural selection, are the primary driving force for the origination, and complexity, of all the amazing diversity of life we see on earth. Yet when mutations/variations are found, by evolutionists themselves, to be overwhelmingly 'non-random', instead of bringing falsification to one of Darwinian evolution's primary postulates, they say "The findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution"????
ReplyDeleteYes the 'important implication for our understanding' being that neo-Darwinian evolution is now found to be completely false of the grandiose claims it has been making for random mutations! It is simply a scientific felony to be in such blatant denial of direct empirical evidence that falsifies a primary tenet of your own hypothesis. Indeed evidence that the neo-Darwinists own hands have wrought!
Oh brother.
ReplyDeleteAfter all that conviction of mutations equals everything NOW they suggest or are forced to see the mutation mechanism as itself a evolved thing with fixed species.
Oh brother.
They don't know the mechanisms behind the species of mechanisms that say are there but thats okay.
I see in this a weakness that is being noticed about the unlikelyness of mutationism to explain nature.
This is funny.
These findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution? Well sure, if by that they mean how absurd are evolution truth claims. Evolutionists have been caught again. Round up the usual suspects.
ReplyDeleteThis reads like a rather strained attempt to discredit evolution, to say the least.
The editor of Nature summarises the paper rather nicely, I'd say:
By combining phylogenetic and population-genetic techniques, Nicholas Luscombe and colleagues provide evidence in Escherichia coli that the mutation rate is optimized to reduce the risk of deleterious mutations, rather than to promote adaptive mutations in genes under strong positive selection. Importantly, these observations cannot be explained by current knowledge of factors that influence the mutation rate, indicating that further mechanisms must be involved.
In other words, the paper provides further evidence, if any were needed, for a number of the basic components of the process of evolution:
a) mutations occur in the genome
b) mutations are random with respect to the fitness of the organism
c) mutations affect the organism in ways which can be beneficial, neutral or detrimental to the fitness of the organism.
Since there are many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right, we would expect to see a higher incidence of harmful rather than helpful mutations, which is what is observed.
The obvious danger from this is that there is a good chance that uncontrolled accumulation of deleterious mutations will have catastrophic consequences for the organism. So one that manages to evolve a mechanism for limiting the damage will greatly improve its chances of surviving to pass on its improved genetic payload. This paper reports evidence of such a mechanism in action.
The next question to be answered is how does this mechanism work. We should also bear in mind that an as yet unanswered question is not necessarily evidence of a critical failing of a theory but is better viewed as a challenge to further research. The fact that science has not yet found an answer does not mean that there is no answer to be found.
Off course!Evolution is like God. It can "optimize" a ramdom process!
DeleteCan you explain how can you optimize a ramdom process? If you can affect varaibles that control a process then it is not anymore "ramdom". Just as hypotesis of scientific work, Shouldn´t the "scientist" of the paper explore the hypotesis of mutation be designed to happened at a specified rate?
related notes: Here is a list of 'non-random' mechanisms which confer antibiotic resistance:
DeleteAntibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave (4 million year old) Microbiome - April 2012
Excerpt: 'Antibiotic resistance is manifested through a number of different mechanisms including target alteration, control of drug influx and efflux, and through highly efficient enzyme-mediated inactivation. Resistance can emerge relatively quickly in the case of some mutations in target genes and there is evidence that antibiotics themselves can promote such mutations [43], [44], [45], [46]; however, resistance to most antibiotics occurs through the aegis of extremely efficient enzymes, efflux proteins and other transport systems that often are highly specialized towards specific antibiotic molecules.'
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034953
Revisiting the Central Dogma in the 21st Century - James A. Shapiro - 2009
Excerpt (Page 12): Underlying the central dogma and conventional views of genome evolution was the idea that the genome is a stable structure that changes rarely and accidentally by chemical fluctuations (106) or replication errors. This view has had to change with the realization that maintenance of genome stability is an active cellular function and the discovery of numerous dedicated biochemical systems for restructuring DNA molecules.(107–110) Genetic change is almost always the result of cellular action on the genome. These natural processes are analogous to human genetic engineering,,, (Page 14) Genome change arises as a consequence of natural genetic engineering, not from accidents. Replication errors and DNA damage are subject to cell surveillance and correction. When DNA damage correction does produce novel genetic structures, natural genetic engineering functions, such as mutator polymerases and nonhomologous end-joining complexes, are involved. Realizing that DNA change is a biochemical process means that it is subject to regulation like other cellular activities. Thus, we expect to see genome change occurring in response to different stimuli (Table 1) and operating nonrandomly throughout the genome, guided by various types of intermolecular contacts (Table 1 of Ref. 112).
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro2009.AnnNYAcadSciMS.RevisitingCentral%20Dogma.pdf
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deleterelated notes:
DeleteAntibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave (4 million year old) Microbiome - April 2012
Excerpt: 'Antibiotic resistance is manifested through a number of different mechanisms including target alteration, control of drug influx and efflux, and through highly efficient enzyme-mediated inactivation. Resistance can emerge relatively quickly in the case of some mutations in target genes and there is evidence that antibiotics themselves can promote such mutations [43], [44], [45], [46]; however, resistance to most antibiotics occurs through the aegis of extremely efficient enzymes, efflux proteins and other transport systems that often are highly specialized towards specific antibiotic molecules.'
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034953
Revisiting the Central Dogma in the 21st Century - James A. Shapiro - 2009
Excerpt (Page 12): Underlying the central dogma and conventional views of genome evolution was the idea that the genome is a stable structure that changes rarely and accidentally by chemical fluctuations (106) or replication errors. This view has had to change with the realization that maintenance of genome stability is an active cellular function and the discovery of numerous dedicated biochemical systems for restructuring DNA molecules.(107–110) Genetic change is almost always the result of cellular action on the genome. These natural processes are analogous to human genetic engineering,,, (Page 14) Genome change arises as a consequence of natural genetic engineering, not from accidents. Replication errors and DNA damage are subject to cell surveillance and correction. When DNA damage correction does produce novel genetic structures, natural genetic engineering functions, such as mutator polymerases and nonhomologous end-joining complexes, are involved. Realizing that DNA change is a biochemical process means that it is subject to regulation like other cellular activities. Thus, we expect to see genome change occurring in response to different stimuli (Table 1) and operating nonrandomly throughout the genome, guided by various types of intermolecular contacts (Table 1 of Ref. 112).
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro2009.AnnNYAcadSciMS.RevisitingCentral%20Dogma.pdf
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deleterelated notes:
DeleteAntibiotic Resistance Is Prevalent in an Isolated Cave (4 million year old) Microbiome - April 2012
Excerpt: 'Antibiotic resistance is manifested through a number of different mechanisms including target alteration, control of drug influx and efflux, and through highly efficient enzyme-mediated inactivation. Resistance can emerge relatively quickly in the case of some mutations in target genes and there is evidence that antibiotics themselves can promote such mutations [43], [44], [45], [46]; however, resistance to most antibiotics occurs through the aegis of extremely efficient enzymes, efflux proteins and other transport systems that often are highly specialized towards specific antibiotic molecules.'
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034953
Revisiting the Central Dogma in the 21st Century - James A. Shapiro - 2009
Excerpt (Page 12): Underlying the central dogma and conventional views of genome evolution was the idea that the genome is a stable structure that changes rarely and accidentally by chemical fluctuations (106) or replication errors. This view has had to change with the realization that maintenance of genome stability is an active cellular function and the discovery of numerous dedicated biochemical systems for restructuring DNA molecules.(107–110) Genetic change is almost always the result of cellular action on the genome. These natural processes are analogous to human genetic engineering,,, (Page 14) Genome change arises as a consequence of natural genetic engineering, not from accidents. ,,, Thus, we expect to see genome change occurring in response to different stimuli (Table 1) and operating nonrandomly throughout the genome, guided by various types of intermolecular contacts (Table 1 of Ref. 112).
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro2009.AnnNYAcadSciMS.RevisitingCentral%20Dogma.pdf
Although Dr. Shapiro has delivered a devastating critique against neo-Darwininian evolution with his elucidation of the fact that the vast majority of changes in the genome are the result of 'non-random natural genetic engineering', he still, amazingly, holds to the neo-Darwinian paradigm because of a process called 'domain shuffling'. A process that he believes can generate new functional proteins. What Shapiro fails to realize is that Doug Axe's work on the rarity of proteins is focused exactly on the rarity of individual protein domains/folds themselves. Doug Axe addresses James Shapiro's mistaken disagreement with Intelligent Design here:
DeleteOn Protein Origins, Getting to the Root of Our Disagreement with James Shapiro - Doug Axe - January 2012
Excerpt: I know of many processes that people talk about as though they can do the job of inventing new proteins (and of many papers that have resulted from such talk), but when these ideas are pushed to the point of demonstration, they all seem to retreat into the realm of the theoretical.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/01/on_protein_orig055471.html
Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681
Blas May 5, 2012 05:38 AM
Delete[...]
Can you explain how can you optimize a ramdom process? If you can affect varaibles that control a process then it is not anymore "ramdom".
Mutations are considered random only with respect to any evolutionary function or 'purpose'. The rate at which mutations occur varies according to location in the genome. It's well-known now, as this paper points out, that there are particular hotspots where mutations happen much more frequently than elsewhere. Although a few of these mutations are going to be beneficial, many more are going to be harmful so it would be advantageous to the organism to have some way of curbing dangerously high rates of mutation. This paper is arguing that they have evidence pointing to a currently unknown mechanism which does this. Whether that counts as optimization is a question of semantics.
Just as hypotesis of scientific work, Shouldn´t the "scientist" of the paper explore the hypotesis of mutation be designed to happened at a specified rate?
I imagine these researchers already have their hands full with what they are doing - so what about all these scientists who actually support Intelligent Design. How about asking them why aren't investigating these sort of questions, why they aren't doing something constructive rather than just being armchair critics of evolution.
Ian H Spedding said:
DeleteMutations are considered random only with respect to any evolutionary function or 'purpose'.
How do you know that? If there is an unknow mechanism, you cannot rule out the purpose?
"Whether that counts as optimization is a question of semantics."
Every knowledege is all about semantics.
"I imagine these researchers already have their hands full with what they are doing"
To me seems they were ruling out of time for get a publication in order to qualify for next grant.So they moved the magic wand of darwinism. May be ID supporter are armchair critics, but this "scientist" are helping them in his job.
Ian:
DeleteIn other words, the paper provides further evidence, if any were needed, for a number of the basic components of the process of evolution:
a) mutations occur in the genome
b) mutations are random with respect to the fitness of the organism
c) mutations affect the organism in ways which can be beneficial, neutral or detrimental to the fitness of the organism.
Regarding (b), you are correct that that is a "basic component" of evolutionary thought. It was the basic tenet of neoDarwinism, and continues to be commonly held, even though it has been clearly falsified.
Those evolutionists who have finally acknowledged the awkward, but unavoidable, fact have to say that evolution constructed mechanisms to direct mutations. It's absurd.
How did the optimizer get optimized before being destroyed by deleterious mutations? How did the optimizer evolve since organisms were surviving without it perfectly well for eons before it showed up?
DeleteUh, never mind.
Blas
DeleteCan you explain how can you optimize a ramdom process? If you can affect varaibles that control a process then it is not anymore "ramdom".
Sure. You use a feedback loop. A good example is the cruise control in your car. As you drive across country the uphills and downhills you come to are random. But the feedback loop adjusts the non-random variables (fuel flow, engine rpms) to keep your speed at the optimal level.
Evolution is a feedback loop that tracks environmental changes and drives organisms toward an optimal fitness level. It's not a big surprise that the rate of mutation can be variable and can be optimized by the process too.
Bad exampla Thorton, the process that move the car is not at all ramdom, you know exactly the parameters like torque curve of the engine, curve of fuel comsumption etc, you fix a parameter like speed and the algoritms make the rest.
DeleteBut just for the sake of the discussion take this example. You mean that evolution has a goal? It goes toward the "optimal fitness"? How got the matter that goal? and then evolution has to end. When the maximun achivable fitness level is reached evolution will stop. How do you know it is not already reached?
Blas May 5, 2012 11:38 AM
DeleteIan H Spedding said:
Mutations are considered random only with respect to any evolutionary function or 'purpose'.
How do you know that? If there is an unknow mechanism, you cannot rule out the purpose?
No, you cannot absolutely rule out purpose but if there is no evidence for a designer and no advantage to assuming the existence of one, why bother?
Ian H Spedding said:
Delete"No, you cannot absolutely rule out purpose but if there is no evidence for a designer and no advantage to assuming the existence of one, why bother?"
And evolutionists says that faith is science stopping!
Knowing the mechanism by why live evolved and fine the life purpose is not important!
Cornelius Hunter May 5, 2012 11:45 AM
Delete[...]
Regarding (b), you are correct that that is a "basic component" of evolutionary thought. It was the basic tenet of neoDarwinism, and continues to be commonly held, even though it has been clearly falsified.
I disagree. Each mutation that happens is random with respect to evolutionary fitness. Most are largely neutral in effect. Of the remainder, the majority are harmful but a few are beneficial. There is no evidence of a guiding hand selecting which mutation is to occur and where. The research reported in this paper has found evidence that implies that there is some kind of mutational rate-limiter over and above known error-correction mechanisms, nothing more.
Louis Savain May 5, 2012 11:55 AM
DeleteHow did the optimizer get optimized before being destroyed by deleterious mutations?
Maybe it just got lucky but since the "optimizer" has yet to be located and analyzed we have no way of knowing if could be described as optimal
How did the optimizer evolve since organisms were surviving without it perfectly well for eons before it showed up?
How do you know organisms were survivng without it perfectly well for eons before it showed up? Maybe it showed up relatively early. Maybe organisms without it were just hanging on by the skin of their teeth until the lucky ones with the rate-limiter came along and then they quietly went extinct.
Uh, never mind.
Probably a good idea.
Blas
DeleteBad exampla Thorton, the process that move the car is not at all ramdom, you know exactly the parameters like torque curve of the engine, curve of fuel comsumption etc, you fix a parameter like speed and the algoritms make the rest.
No Blas, you don't know the specific values for any of those parameters ahead of time. They are all variable depending on the random gradient of the hill you're on. The process isn't random just like evolution isn't random, but they both have random components.
But just for the sake of the discussion take this example. You mean that evolution has a goal? It goes toward the "optimal fitness"? How got the matter that goal?
It's an inherent property of the process, How do rocks always "know" how to roll to the bottom of the hill?
and then evolution has to end. When the maximun achivable fitness level is reached evolution will stop. How do you know it is not already reached?
It won't end, it will only fluctuate around a position of relative stability as long as the environment doesn't change. But the environment does change, continuously, and at different rates. Evolution tracks the rate the environment changes. If the environment changes too rapidly or too drastically (say an asteroid impact), then the tracking loop can't keep up and the species goes extinct.
Blas May 5, 2012 03:28 PM
Delete[...]
And evolutionists says that faith is science stopping!
Not all evolutionists believe faith is science-stopping but there is good evidence that fundamentalist believers are intolerant of anything, including science, which contradicts their preferred dogma and would put a stop to it if they could.
As I have said before: religion drives science from the classroom and it matters.
Knowing the mechanism by why live evolved and fine the life purpose is not important!
If there is a designer then its purpose would be important but first science needs a good reason to assume there is one.
Ian:
DeleteCH: Regarding (b), you are correct that that is a "basic component" of evolutionary thought. It was the basic tenet of neoDarwinism, and continues to be commonly held, even though it has been clearly falsified.
Ian: I disagree. Each mutation that happens is random with respect to evolutionary fitness. Most are largely neutral in effect. Of the remainder, the majority are harmful but a few are beneficial. There is no evidence of a guiding hand selecting which mutation is to occur and where. The research reported in this paper has found evidence that implies that there is some kind of mutational rate-limiter over and above known error-correction mechanisms, nothing more.
No Ian, you are simply providing yet another great example of how evolution harms science. It's dogma has gone viral and doesn't allow the scientific facts to get out.
Cornelius Hunter
DeleteNo Ian, you are simply providing yet another great example of how evolution harms science. It's dogma has gone viral and doesn't allow the scientific facts to get out.
What scientific facts weren't allowed to get out CH? Please be specific.
If these mystery scientific facts weren't allowed to get out, how did you learn about them?
Thorton said:
Delete"No Blas, you don't know the specific values for any of those parameters ahead of time. They are all variable depending on the random gradient of the hill you're on. The process isn't random just like evolution isn't random, but they both have random components."
This examples makes me feel that darwinists have problems understanding reality.
You have all the parmeters of the car engine and gearbox. You know your car is going to go straight, downhill and uphill. You know how this will affect your car and how the car needs to react. Then you program the car to react when the condition of the street changes. The only thing ramdom for the car is the path you are going to take.
If this is an example of controlling a ramdom process like evolution controls the speed of mutations in different pieces of the genoma. Evolutions it is not darwinistic, because evolution is programmed to react at the changes of the enviroment. Then mutation are not ramdom to the needs.
"It's an inherent property of the process, How do rocks always "know" how to roll to the bottom of the hill?"
So according to ToE life is compelled to the "optimal fitness" like the rocks roll downhill by the gravity force?
Are eucaryotics form of life more fit to the enviroment than procaryots? Are multicellular organisms better fitted to the enviroment than unicelullar organisms? Are sexual reproductive organisms better fitted that asexual reproductive organisms?
Are a hairless, bipedal,bigbrain dancing, illuded of free will primate more fitted to the enviroment than an ape or a chimpanzee?
And in the other way, why this force do not change that bad designd like the jiraffe´s laryngeal nerve or pandas thumb?
"But the environment does change, continuously, and at different rates. Evolution tracks the rate the environment changes."
Enviroments does change, but not so drastically to explain the appearence of all the forms of life. We have actual living forms that are the alost the same since his appearence. some of them since the Cambrian . The force "move to the optimal fitness" do not caused any change on them no matter the enviroment changed.
Ian H Spedding said:
Delete"Mutations are considered random only with respect to any evolutionary function or 'purpose'."
Me: "How do you know that? If there is an unknow mechanism, you cannot rule out the purpose?"
Ian H Spedding said:
"No, you cannot absolutely rule out purpose but if there is no evidence for a designer and no advantage to assuming the existence of one, why bother?"
"If there is a designer then its purpose would be important but first science needs a good reason to assume there is one."
So as you do not know the mechanism how life control the rate of mutation cannot rule out purpose but you are not going to hypotesis of purpose, that would be important, because you do not have a good reason to assume a designer.
How would you find a good reason to assume a designer if you discard in advance the hypotesis of purpose?
Is this good science?
Blas
DeleteYou have all the parmeters of the car engine and gearbox. You know your car is going to go straight, downhill and uphill. You know how this will affect your car and how the car needs to react. Then you program the car to react when the condition of the street changes. The only thing ramdom for the car is the path you are going to take.
Wrong. You really don't have the faintest clue as to how feedback loops work, do you?
Are eucaryotics form of life more fit to the enviroment than procaryots? Are multicellular organisms better fitted to the enviroment than unicelullar organisms? Are sexual reproductive organisms better fitted that asexual reproductive organisms? Are a hairless, bipedal,bigbrain dancing, illuded of free will primate more fitted to the enviroment than an ape or a chimpanzee?
They are all sufficiently fit for their current environment.
And in the other way, why this force do not change that bad designd like the jiraffe´s laryngeal nerve or pandas thumb?
Because evolutionary fitness describes the animals' overall reproductive potential, not individual pieces. You don't have the faintest clue about evolutionary biology either.
We have actual living forms that are the alost the same since his appearence. some of them since the Cambrian . The force "move to the optimal fitness" do not caused any change on them no matter the enviroment changed.
More empty Creationist drivel. We know of animals like horseshoe crabs whose external morphology has changed little. We *don't* know if their genetic make up, breeding habits, mating habits, diet, etc. have changed. We also don't know the specifics, only generalities, about how their environments may have changed over time.
Thorton said
Delete"Wrong. You really don't have the faintest clue as to how feedback loops work, do you?"
May be I´m wrong can you enlight me plase?
"They are all sufficiently fit for their current environment."
But you said that there is a "force" that look like a goal to life to move toward the "best fitted". Are each of that steps best fitted to the enviroment than his descents?
"Because evolutionary fitness describes the animals' overall reproductive potential, not individual pieces. You don't have the faintest clue about evolutionary biology either."
Seems evolutionary biology is only for initiated people. It is important to learn how to use void expressions like optimal fitness, overall reproductive potential,sufficiently fit ...
"More empty Creationist drivel. We know of animals like horseshoe crabs whose external morphology has changed little. We *don't* know if their genetic make up, breeding habits, mating habits, diet, etc. have changed. We also don't know the specifics, only generalities, about how their environments may have changed over time."
More evolutionist make up. Some species need to evolve in other life forms to survive others just adjust diet and mating habits and live eons in a changing world.
Another question on this. As far as I know since more than 20 millions of years the ony new species appeared are primates. Didn`t change the enviroment of the other species since then?
Oh yes, they changed his diet and mating habits to survive.
Ho hum. To use an example from physics, Brownian motion can have a higher or lower rate, depending on the temperature. The hotter, the faster. It's still random motion.
ReplyDeleteAnd back to biology, if genes control various processes in an organism, wouldn't we expect that some mutations might affect the mutation rate? In fact, some evolutionary biologists even predicted that. And Hunter wants to turn this into evidence against evolution?
Some days, he reminds me of Baghdad Bob.
Yes,because the evidence is against it. The designer's hand is what is clear.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteBut you cannot affect the brownian motion of a fraction of the particles, unless you isolate them and make differential changes of the temperature and that it is not ramdom.
ReplyDeleteBlas, you have just described temperature variations in the atmosphere. They happen of course. Look at a US temperature map.
DeleteThat distribution it is not ramdom. It depends on the quantity of energy the air receive from the sun, no matter also there are other factors you can predict that the closer to the equator the higher will be the temperatures, the more energy from the sun you receive higher will be.
DeleteIt is not entirely random, but it does contain a random component. The nonlinear nature of hydrodynamics makes the atmosphere a chaotic system (in the technical sense of the word). That is why it is impossible to make reliable weather forecasts farther than 10 days in advance.
DeleteSame with evolution. There is a random, unpredictable component to it, and there is a nonrandom component, too.
oleg said:
Delete"Same with evolution. There is a random, unpredictable component to it, and there is a nonrandom component, too."
Ok, I understand then that you according with the paper are saying "evolution" control the number of mutation by chunk of genoma but cannot control wich kind of mutation will happen there.
But if it is true, the whole process it is not ramdom any more, "evolution" can increase the number of mutation when it is needed and given enough time the right mutation will happen.
Cornelius,
ReplyDeleteRegarding your Photoshop creation at the top of the article, do you really wish to be associated with the Heartland Institute? Think twice. Before their main occupation changed to lobbying against climate studies, they lobbied on behalf of tobacco companies. They lost that war, they will lose this one as well.
Even the Heartland folks had the good sense to pull their Kaczynski ads when lots of people, on both sides of the aisle, found such tactics disgusting. Will you follow their example and pull your silly picture?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Sorry Oleg wrong, Heartland accomplished exactly what it desired,it got them attention and they can play victim of liberal media censorship, there already is an email asking for donations. And they can play the other side too,the withdrawal is proof they wish to be honest brokers in the debate on climate change. Again they can play victim if their opponents cite this ad as proof of Heartland dishonesty.The base will eat this up.
ReplyDeleteThe base might eat it, but Heartland's sponsors take notice.
DeleteAll the more reason to tap into the smaller non corporate donors. Pressure has resulted in a loss of high profile companies support,the last thing the Koch Brothers want to do is spend their own money.
DeleteI wonder what conservative readers of this blog think of Hunter's Photoshop skills.
ReplyDeleteFor some context of that picture, read this article in yesterday's Guardian: Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSorry Smith, some readers don't have a problem believing that Darwin is in some way responsible for the Holocaust,the Unabomber is small potatoes.
Delete??
DeleteI must have had a post that was eaten by blogger. I don't recall it though, especially mentioning holocausts.
No,unless perhaps in the multiverse. I overstated my claim. When considering What Would Smith Do I revised it and deleted the original ill considered remark. The " sorry smith " remained due to laziness to write a third post. Sorry for any confusion and disorientation
DeleteGreen elephants.
DeleteAs Eugen always says" And may the force be with you and yours"
DeleteThe Nature study "finding" is ANOTHER step away from Occam's Razor. Like Ptolemaic Astronomy, the more complicated an explanation for a phenomenon, the LESS likely it is to be true. Each new more and more complicated "finding" such as this one that "sheds light on evolution" is the exact equivalent of the development of another complicated Ptolemaic epicycle complete with the self-same emotional investment and political and religious commitment that accompanied Ptolemaic astronomy in the age before Galileo.
ReplyDeleteReal progress in evolutionary "science" is simply NOT happening. Such "discoveries" (inventions) as this one from the Nature study just muddies the water further, darkens the subject further and stands further in the way of real science. NOTHING in this Nature study hypotheses can be tested or proven or disproven. THIS stuff is just fantastical nonsense make believe that "must" be true because we "know" God wouldn't have done it any other way. With each new "finding", evolutionists grimly plod further and further away from reality (and sanity) along a path of delusion and denial.
It's sad really. Talk about the "dark ages".... One day, Darwinism will take its rightful place not only with Ptolemaic Astronomy, but also astrology, alchemy, and perpetual motion machinery, as well as snake oil and prime real estate just off the Florida coast.
Darwinism has and continues to be a huge loss of time, money and human resources.
Everything should be kept as simple as possible,but no simpler .. AE,
DeleteA Unseen,Unverifiable, Designer while simple has no explanatory power. Thus fails the test of the Razor.
Red Reader May 5, 2012 11:13 AM
DeleteThe Nature study "finding" is ANOTHER step away from Occam's Razor. Like Ptolemaic Astronomy, the more complicated an explanation for a phenomenon, the LESS likely it is to be true.
Not necessarily. We prefer explanations that are simple and elegant but that is a human preference. Life, as evolutionary biologists are discovering almost daily, is immensely complex. Any comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon, even at its simplest, is likely to be complex as well.
As for Occam's Razor, that, like the Pirates Code in Pirates of the Caribbean, is more of a guideline.
Real progress in evolutionary "science" is simply NOT happening.
You will find that there are biologists, who are pursuing fruitful lines of research within the framework of the theory of evolution, who beg to differ.
NOTHING in this Nature study hypotheses can be tested or proven or disproven.
You mean this study that found evidence to support the hypothesis that there is a mechanism other than known error-correction mechanisms which is limiting the rate of mutations in the genome?
THIS stuff is just fantastical nonsense make believe that "must" be true because we "know" God wouldn't have done it any other way.
As far as I can see, the authors make no such argument in this paper.
Darwinism has and continues to be a huge loss of time, money and human resources.
That depends on what you mean by "Darwinism". Charles Darwin's original work, while seminal, is now mostly a part of history. The theory and the science have moved on a long way since 1859 As for it being a huge waste of resources, I refer you back to my previous point "there are biologists, who are pursuing fruitful lines of research within the framework of the theory of evolution, who beg to differ".
velikovskys:
DeleteA Unseen,Unverifiable, Designer while simple has no explanatory power. Thus fails the test of the Razor.
The discovery of horizontal genes (or portions thereof) in the tree of life is incontrovertible proof of design in biology. These lateral designs are popping up everywhere but the Darwinistas, like the Jedi in the Star Wars fiction, would rather have faith in a superstitious force called "convergent evolution" to explain how distant branches of the TOL share complex identical genetic information that could not have been inherited via common descent.
Conclusion: Evolutionists practice voodoo science and use the force of law to unilaterally impose their religious belief system on the populace. They are the science stoppers. They are the anti-science religionists. This should not be allowed in a free democratic society.
So, why wouldn't these adaptations be incontrovertible proof that said designer was well adapted to at adapting things? And therefore was itself designed?
DeleteAnd, surely, if there was a designer that was well adapted in adapting designers to adapt things, then this would be incontrovertible proof that said designer must have been well adapted by some other designer, etc.
Right? If not, why?
Scott, your fixation (who designed the designer and who designed the designer's designer?) is irrelevant to the incontrovertible proof that life on earth was designed. This is what is being discussed here. Stick to the topic.
DeleteIrrelevant? But being well adapted *is* feature of biological systems you're referring to. For example...
DeleteLouis: The discovery of horizontal genes (or portions thereof) in the tree of life is incontrovertible proof of design in biology.
Horizontal genes in any particular sequence are an adaptation of raw materials, are they not? Furthermore, are they not well adapted? That is, does the sequence not result in features the solve a particular problem, such as mediating the rate of mutations?
So, what your'e appealing to here is a problem, such as the mediation mutations, and a well adapted sequence that results in solving that particular problem.
But designers solve problems, do they not? And that means that said designer would need to be well adapted to solve the problem of how to design things. Right?
Perhaps you're suggesting that design isn't a problem to be solved. However, if that were the case, then designing space craft that could go to Mars in less than a week wouldn't be a problem to be solved. Nor would designing a drug that could cure cancer. Yet, none of these designs exist. So it would seem design is indeed a problem.
Or perhaps you're suggesting that designers are not well adapted to design things?
However, we start out as fertilized eggs, which are not well adapted to design anything. It's only after raw materials are adapted according to the instructions in our genomes that we have physical bodies with the necessary physicality necessary to design things. And, even then, our brains become further adapted to design things through skills such as writing, drawing, etc.
In fact, each and every designer that we've observed design anything has become well adapted to design things. Wouldn't that be incontrovertible proof that designers are well adapted to design things, and therefor themselves need a designer, etc?
In other words, a designer that "just was", already well adapted at designing things, serves no explanatory purpose. This is because one could more economically state that organisms "just appeared" already well adapted to solve specific problems.
Scott:
DeleteSo, what your'e appealing to here is a problem, such as the mediation mutations, and a well adapted sequence that results in solving that particular problem.
No. What I am appealing to here is that identical DNA sequences are found in unrelated organisms. There is no way for common descent to account for this. Therefore, living organisms must have been designed. That's all.
Everything else you're bringing to the discussion is irrelevant to my point. Sorry.
Louis: No. What I am appealing to here is that identical DNA sequences are found in unrelated organisms. There is no way for common descent to account for this. Therefore, living organisms must have been designed. That's all.
DeleteExcept, common decent isn't the only proposed evolutionary mechanism of creating non-explanatory knowledge.
So, if you're not appealing to a sequence being well adapted, then you're appealing to a straw man of evolutionary theory?
Except, common decent isn't the only proposed evolutionary mechanism of creating non-explanatory knowledge.
DeleteEvolutionists can propose a mountain of speculative mechanisms and so can everybody else. But is it science? I don't think so.
Louis Savain
DeleteEvolutionists can propose a mountain of speculative mechanisms and so can everybody else. But is it science? I don't think so.
We've tested and empirically demonstrated the actual genetic mechanisms of evolution Louis.
What mechanisms for design and manufacture have you Creationists even proposed, let alone tested and validated?
Thorton:
DeleteWe've tested and empirically demonstrated the actual genetic mechanisms of evolution Louis.
No you haven't. Hunters and farmers have known about adaptation thousands of years before you people showed up. Adaptation is not Darwinian evolution. Evolution, in the public's mind, is the idea that all life forms descended directly (via natural reproduction) from one or two primitive organisms. You have not shown this to be true. In fact, the actual evidence proves otherwise. Common descent is pure superstition and is being increasingly falsified by the genetic record.
What mechanisms for design and manufacture have you Creationists even proposed, let alone tested and validated?
I don't know about others but I propose a specific prediction for intelligent design, one which can be tested right now via computational biology. I propose that distant organisms in the TOL will be found to share complex and identical DNA sequences which could not have been obtained via common descent or via your convergence nonsense.
Scott: Except, common decent isn't the only proposed evolutionary mechanism of creating non-explanatory knowledge.
DeleteLouis: Evolutionists can propose a mountain of speculative mechanisms and so can everybody else. But is it science? I don't think so.
Except science isn't limited to mere speculation. That would just be conjecture without refutation.
You might find this hard to believe, but science doesn't come grinding to a halt because you're bound and determined to remain ignorant about how we make progress.
Louis: Evolution, in the public's mind, is the idea that all life forms descended directly (via natural reproduction) from one or two primitive organisms. You have not shown this to be true. In fact, the actual evidence proves otherwise. Common descent is pure superstition and is being increasingly falsified by the genetic record.
DeleteI stand corrected.
You will find this hard to believe, but science doesn't come grinding to a halt because you're bound and determined to remain ignorant about how we make progress.
Louis: I don't know about others but I propose a specific prediction for intelligent design, one which can be tested right now via computational biology.
And this prediction is based on what, exactly?
In other words, what is the underlying hard to vary explanation behind your prediction? Please be specific.
But, of course, you ignored the point. Design in living systems is evident and not illusory. Evolutionism's progressively more complicated explanations have "explanatory power" but so what? Ptolemaic astronomy had "explanatory power". Such "explanatory power" is useless because it is NO standard of coherence with reality.
ReplyDeleteIt is also evident the sun and stars move thru the sky,the earth an unmoving platform.
DeleteRed,
DeleteI'm under no illusion that knowledge is present in the genome, as adaptations only take place when the requisite knowledge of how to perform them are present. The question is: what is the origin of this knowledge?
That some designer "just was", complete with this knowledge of how to build the biosphere, already present, serves no explanatory purpose. This is because one could more economically state that organisms "just appeared" with the knowledge of how to build themselves already present.
On the other hand, evolutionary theory does have an explanation this knowledge. And it does fit into our explanation for how knowledge in general is created.
In other words, it's not that evolution doesn't take into account how designers create knowledge. In fact, it's very much the opposite. ID proponents do not take into account our best explanation of how knowledge is created. Rather, they assume the origin of knowledge is irrational, supernatural or completely absent.
However, none of these assumptions show any coherence with reality.
The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis - January 2012
ReplyDeleteExcerpt: We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/845x02v03g3t7002/
corny the godbot said: "Remember how evolutionists said random mutations created all the species?"
ReplyDeleteCitation please. Show me where evolutionists said that.
What is your detailed, scientific alternative to the ToE? Are you going to run from that question like you have so many times before?
Why are you and the other god zombies using computers, and all the other stuff science has made available? Since you hate science so much I would think that you would all be living in caves and eating dirt. Why aren't you living on the imaginary manna from heaven that your imaginary god provides you.
Show the world that you don't need science. Go ahead, give up everything that science has ever figured out and provided. You're not two-faced, ungrateful cowards, are you?
Ya know, you and Kaczynski look and are a lot alike.
By the way, corny, you're still violating your own rule with all that 'derision' aimed at evolutionists.
ReplyDeleteSince genetics is the topic of this post Cornelius graces with the image of a madman, let us consider what that madman thought about genetics:
ReplyDelete"Being a victim of an insane bomber is not the best way to gain recognition
in your field.
Fortunately for Charles J. Epstein, his fame did not depend on that tragic moment in 1993 when he was badly injured by a mail bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the notorious "Unabomber," who admitted mailing as many as 15 bombs in a crusade against modern technology, killing three men and injuring 29.
Epstein, who was then professor of biochemistry and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, suffered internal injuries, loss of several fingers and partial loss of hearing. Kaczynski is serving life in prison.
Charles Epstein, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, a leading researcher in the field of human and medical genetics, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 77 and lived in Tiburon, Calif.
He is best known for his contributions to the field of Down syndrome research. Working with his wife, Lois Epstein, an expert on interferon, his research led to huge advancements in the world's understanding of Down syndrome and work toward treatments for the affliction.
He was a man of deep sensitivity. When asked by the parents of a child with Down syndrome what they should do with their new baby, he told them, "Love your child. Treat him or her as normally as possible and as a cherished member of the family. Do the best you can and try to take each day as it comes."
"He was a humanist who believed in the value of each and every human being," his family said."
http://articles.philly.com/2011-02-18/news/28553872_1_mail-bomb-charles-j-epstein-track-and-field
Thanks for that sobering reminder,
ReplyDeleteHeh, everybody and their grandmother thinks Heartland was off their collective rocker with the Unabomber ad.
ReplyDeleteHere is Anthony Watts of Watts Up With That:
That said, I’ll be blunt; I think Heartland’s billboard campaign is a huge misstep, and does nothing but piss people off and divide the debate further. IMHO it isn’t going to win any converts, and had they asked me I would have told them that it is a bad idea that will backfire on them.
Ross McKitrick was "appalled" by the ad.
Donna Laframboise has cancelled her appearance at the conference sponsored by Heartland.
Time for damage control, Cornelius. Your best bet would be to claim that you were drunk last night and have no recollection of doing this. Someone got access to your computer and played a joke on you.
Laframboise and Watts are political animals who worry about their public appeal. So is the Heartland Institute. So it makes sense that they might want to distance themselves from bad publicity.
DeleteThat being said, I think that those ads were brilliant. People who believe in evolution and man-made global warming are indeed a bunch of nuts or worse. Kinda like the PETA crowd, come to think of it.
There is no need for Cornelius to do any damage control. Stand your ground, Hunter and don't be afraid of your detractors. This is not a popularity contest.
My apologies,Oleg. It appears you are correct, it is still possible to go too far in today's atmosphere. In this case it will be nice to have my cynical self proved wrong.The real test is the pocketbook.
ReplyDeleteHowever,the fox news site is 4 to 1 favorable towards the ad. An outlier?
DeleteAlas not
DeleteHeartland statement:
This billboard was deliberately provocative, an attempt to turn the tables on the climate alarmists by using their own tactics but with the opposite message. We found it interesting that the ad seemed to evoke reactions more passionate than when leading alarmists compare climate realists to Nazis or declare they are imposing on our children a mass death sentence. We leave it to others to determine why that is.
victimhood x !000:
“Heartland has spent millions of dollars contributing to the real debate over climate change, and $200 for a one-day digital billboard. In return, we’ve been subjected to the most uncivil name-calling and disparagement you can possibly imagine from climate alarmists. The other side of the climate debate seems to be playing by different rules. This experiment produced further proof
CH: Those evolutionists who have finally acknowledged the awkward, but unavoidable, fact have to say that evolution constructed mechanisms to direct mutations. It's absurd.
ReplyDeleteFinally acknowledge? Awkward? Absurd? Exactly how is this any of these things?
First, any sort of DNA repair mechanism would limit mutation rates. This isn't anything new or recently acknowledged. This is merely more hand waving on your part. Nothing new here.
Second, in a comprehensible universe, if something isn't prohibited by the laws of physics, the only thing that would prevent it from occurring is the presence of the necessary knowledge of how. This includes limiting the rate of mutations in particular regions.
Of course, this really isn't in question, since an organism's genome contains the knowledge of how to repair DNA. Again, nothing new here. We again end up with the same question, which ID proponents simply do not explain: what is the origin of this knowledge?
With the "finally" and "awkward" part out of the way, there's the claim of absurdity.
Whether one would consider the creation of this knowledge by a non-explanatory means absurd would depend on how one explains the creation of knowledge in general. Or, if they think this sort of knowledge could be created at all. What's you explain for how we create knowledge? How do you explain it?
However, I don't think it's even on your radar for reasons that is obvious. Why is this?
Creationism, as well as the current crop of ID, suffers from the same flaw as all pre-enlightenment conceptions of human knowledge. In both cases, the origin of knowledge is irrational, supernatural or completely absent. As such, creationism is misleadingly named in that it's a means of denying that creation actually took place. And one of the implications of this denial is that the creation of knowledge by some other means would be absurd.
After all, how could evolution actually create this knowledge when when designer "just was", complete with the knowledge of how to build the biosphere, already present? That would be absurd!
God, having always been all knowing, would have always had the knowledge to build anything logically possible, including the every organism in the biosphere. And an abstract intelligent designer has no defined limitations, such as not always having known how to build every organism in the biosphere.
In other words, before you could consider this absurd, you must make specific assumptions regarding how knowledge is created, which you have yet to disclose or argue for. Otherwise, exactly why would this be absurd? Please be specific?
So, what's in contention here isn't that the genome contains the knowledge of how to modulate the rate of mutations as you'd like to portray. Rather, what's in contention here is the origin of this knowledge.
What you're attempting to do is push the problem of the origin of this knowledge into some explanation-less realm. However, this doesn't actually serve an explanatory purpose. All you've done is push the food around on your plate, then claimed to have ate it.
But no one is fooled. The question of the origin of this knowledge is still staring you in the face.
Scott: In other words, before you could consider this absurd, you must make specific assumptions regarding how knowledge is created, which you have yet to disclose or argue for. Otherwise, exactly why would this be absurd? Please be specific?
ReplyDeleteWhat do I mean by this?
Rarely does a few posts go by without someone trotting out the old argument that we couldn't comprehend anything unless some magic man existed who wanted us to comprehend in the first place. So, apparently, we create knowledge because "That's just what the designer must have wanted." The deals of how this works is irrational, supernatural or completely absent.
Sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it?
Scott: Whether one would consider the creation of this knowledge by a non-explanatory means absurd would depend on how one explains the creation of knowledge in general.
ReplyDeleteCornelius,
Why don't you start out by explaining how knowledge is created, then point out how evolutionary processes doesn't fit this explanation, and is therefore absurd. Please be specific.
Scott, you haven't been paying much attention lately or you would not make incorrect statements about evolutionary explanations. We have shown you specifics but you prefer to continue to ignore them. You refuse to discuss specifics but just repeat the same outdated mantra
ReplyDeleteThen I'll pose the question to you.
DeleteWhy don't you start out by explaining how knowledge is created, then point out how evolutionary processes doesn't fit this explanation, and is therefore absurd. Please be specific.
Wow, no retraction, no apology. I thought Dr. Hunter may have posted in haste. But now he has time to think it over.
ReplyDeleteI take it Dr. Hunter is proud of his post and this level of discourse.
I doubt the scientists and others who lost their limbs, hearing or lives share his sense of humor.
Amazing that the atheists here on Dr. Hunter's blog are falling all over themselves to defend the severely stretched just so story in the paper that was hatched to cover up the fact that true random variation, as is mandated in neo-Darwinism, has been severely compromised by this study (and other studies). And thus the atheists here on Dr. Hunter's blog (and in the paper) have completely failed to adhere to the moral imperative in science of openly, and honestly, facing the scientific evidence which dis-confirms one's hypothesis (scientific felony is a apt term!). Yet on the other hand, despite this gross lack of moral/scientific integrity on their part, the atheists here apparently feel no shame at all, in trying to divert attention away from this stunning failure for neo-Darwinism, in lecturing Dr. Hunter on his moral wrongness for posting a picture of the Unabomber. The blatant hypocrisy on their part is simply amazing. Moreover, what makes it even more incredible to believe is that atheists have no right whatsoever to lecture anyone on morals since they have no grounding for objective morality in their atheistic worldview. This whole episode is reminiscent of the moral hypocrisy that Richard Dawkins displayed when he, cowardly, refused to debate William Lane Craig, by saying that Dr. Craig supported infanticide:
ReplyDeleteRichard Dawkins Approves Infanticide, not William Lane Craig! (mirror: drcraigvideos)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmodkyJvhFo
further notes:
Cruel Logic – video
Description; A brilliant serial killer videotapes his debates with college faculty victims. The topic of his debate with his victim: His moral right to kill them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qd1LPRJLnI
The Knock-Down Argument Against Atheist Sam Harris' moral landscape argument – William Lane Craig – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_vAH2NIPc
Do you maybe want to back up and think about what you are saying here?
DeletePeople who don't share your beliefs don't even have the right to complain about the murder and maiming of innocent scientists.
Not even the right to raise an objection.
If a crime is committed against me, should 911 ask my beliefs before sending aid? "Sorry sir, you don't adhere to BA77's beliefs, so you have no right to complain about criminal actions against you."
This isn't hyperbole-it is what you said.
This is why our society is secular, even though it was founded by and run by predominantly religious people. It avoids divisive and destructive turf wars.
It doesn't take a huge stretch to say: I wouldn't like to be maimed or killed by a bomb, therefore I wouldn't like others to be. Therefore, the billboard isn't funny.
Godless societies don't wantonly murder each other. Get over it.
Godless societies don't wantonly murder each other.
DeleteReally???
The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide]
I BACKGROUND
2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide]
3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide
II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing
13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse
IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS
15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea
16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico
17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia”
This is, in reality, probably just a drop in the bucket. Who knows how many undocumented murders there were. It also doesn’t count all the millions of abortions from around the world.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Chairman MAO: Genocide Master
“…Many scholars and commentators have referenced my total of 174,000,000 for the democide (genocide and mass murder) of the last century. I’m now trying to get word out that I’ve had to make a major revision in my total due to two books. I’m now convinced that that Stalin exceeded Hitler in monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin….”
http://wadias.in/site/arzan/blog/chairman-mao-genocide-master/
"for, as we have just seen, the ways of national evolution, both in the past and in the present, are cruel, brutal, ruthless, and without mercy.,,, Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed."
Sir Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (1947), p. 15. (Note the year that this was written was shortly after the German 'master race' was defeated in World War II)
A pointless reply-
DeleteYou didn't answer my question: "If a crime is committed against me, should 911 ask my beliefs before sending aid? "
Do I have a right to complain, if my religious beliefs aren't the same as your's?
My point is that godless societies have codes of conduct. Many examples-look around. Or take a tribe like the Piraha:
http://ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/the-pirahae-people-who-define-happiness-without-god/
You're rebuttal is to list a number of cases where STATES murdered dissidents in repressive states and Civil wars. Oddly, in that list there are states fused with or tolerant of religion- Orthodox Eastern Church, Islam, Worship of Emperors as God, two Catholic States, and a Protestant one.
RobertC, you ask, '"If a crime is committed against me, should 911 ask my beliefs before sending aid?" No, but I believe objective morals exist in the first place whereas you do not. My question to you, which you did not answer, or cannot answer, is why do atheists act as if objective morals exist when in reality they cannot ground them?
Deletei.e. what is your objective moral basis for complaining that Hitler, Stalin, or Moa, or anybody else such as Islamic fanatics, or sadistic killers are wrong? You simply are incoherent in your argument. You desperately, much like Dawkins, want to proclaim what is morally right and wrong, and condemn 'evil' Christians for being wrong, but as a moral relativist, who believes morals are merely subjective, you simply don't have the moral resource to declare what is right or wrong! The painting yourself in a corner effect of all this is what I call 'the moral dilemma of atheists';
Can Darwinists Condemn Hitler and Remain Consistent with Their Darwinism? - Richard Weikart -October 27, 2011
Excerpt: However, I have spoken with intelligent Darwinists who admit point-blank that they do not have any grounds to condemn Hitler, so I am not just making this up. Many evolutionists believe that since evolution explains the origin of morality -- as Darwin himself argued -- then there is no objective morality.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/can_darwinists_condemn_hitler052331.html
ba77: Yet on the other hand, despite this gross lack of moral/scientific integrity on their part, the atheists here apparently feel no shame at all, in trying to divert attention away from this stunning failure for neo-Darwinism, in lecturing Dr. Hunter on his moral wrongness for posting a picture of the Unabomber. The blatant hypocrisy on their part is simply amazing.
ReplyDeleteWhat blatant hypocrisy? Have I ever smeared creationists by associating them with, I dunno, Hitler? I don't think so. You failure to unequivocally condemn Hunter's sleazy tactics is a reflection on your own character, Phil.
Have you no decency, guys?
Morally indigent, yet morally adrift in a sea of moral relativism oleg? What a sad plight! oleg you must accept that nothing really matters in your atheistic worldview and thus it is completely senseless for you to be morally shocked at anything. Just chant, over and over, morality is a illusion, morality is a illusion.
DeleteApocalypitca - Nothing Else Matters -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSMXMv0noY4
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSo, Phil, if evolutionary biology is basically Nazism, shouldn't the next logical step be to put all evolutionary biologists in jail?
ReplyDeleteI am not asking you to describe how things look from my perspective, Phil. I am asking for yours. Should evolutionists be jailed for being so close to the Nazis? Come on, show the courage of your convictions.
ReplyDeleteoleg, I'll answer your question as soon as you ground objective morality in the atheistic worldview which was my original complaint in the first place!
DeletePhil,
DeleteSince I am an atheist, and thus devil's spawn, my opinion does not matter anyway, whether it is grounded or not.
With this out of the way, now tell us whether evolutionists should be jailed. You seem strangely unable to answer this simple question. Come on, don't be shy.
Oleg,
DeleteQED
BA,
DeleteThe belief in objective morality precludes the relativism which you are engaged in. What Oleg believes or does not believe has no influence on what is objectively morally correct. Either insinuating that people who honestly believe in evolutionary theory are in some way comparable,therefore probably in many ways, to a psychopathic killer is wrong or it is not.
Or is politics above morality?
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 08:19 AM
Deleteoleg, I'll answer your question as soon as you ground objective morality in the atheistic worldview which was my original complaint in the first place!
If there is no such thing as objective morality - which is an incoherent concept in my view - then there is nothing to ground.
translation: blah blah blah,,, I can't ground objective morality, blah,,blah,, blah,,,
DeleteHave the courage to say what you think, Phil. Or get the hell out.
DeleteBorn,
DeleteFor the sake of argument, let's assume there is some objective morality.
Now, the question is, how might you have obtained the knowledge of what is or is not objectively, morally right and wrong?
In other words, it's unclear how you're in any better situation that Oleg if you do not have exhaustive, knowledge of objective morality, should it exist.
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 09:19 AM
Deletetranslation: blah blah blah,,, I can't ground objective morality, blah,,blah,, blah,,,
No, mistranslation.
I deny the existence of any objective morality so, in my view, there is nothing to ground.
You believe there is such a thing.
Okay, explain what you mean by "objective" in this case, preferably in your own words.
Richard Dawkins on the Moral Argument for God by William Lane Craig - video
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3I2QGpucs
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 12:46 PM
DeleteRichard Dawkins on the Moral Argument for God by William Lane Craig - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f3I2QGpucs
I already know what Craig says. I asked to hear it in your words.
So you refuse to listen to the words of a leading philosopher in America, (perhaps among the leading philosophers in the world), which are concise words as to the moral argument for God, but you will listen to my words on the moral argument for God??? Do you also have any swamp land you would like me to buy??? But then again in your view of morals there is nothing really objectively wrong with selling swamp land is there?
Deletebornagain77 May 6, 2012 03:13 PM
DeleteSo you refuse to listen to the words of a leading philosopher in America, (perhaps among the leading philosophers in the world), which are concise words as to the moral argument for God, but you will listen to my words on the moral argument for God??? Do you also have any swamp land you would like me to buy??? But then again in your view of morals there is nothing really objectively wrong with selling swamp land is there?
Actually, there is nothing wrong with selling swamp land per se. There would be something wrong with trying to sell it if you weren't the owner or you pretended it was something other than swamp land.
As for the Craig video, I've already seen it. What I wanted to know was which of his arguments you found persuasive.
And once again I want to know why do you find things morally offensive if you do not believe in objective morality?
DeleteAgain, for the sake of argument, let's assume objective morality does exist. Perhaps you can explain how you know the things you find offensive actually aligns with what is actually objectively morally wrong.
DeleteFor example, wouldn't that require you to have exhaustive knowledge of this supposed objective morality? How does that work? Please be specific.
BTW: this is what I mean when I say, the central flaw in creationism is the same flaw of, pre-enlightenment, authoritative account of how we, as human beings, create knowledge, in that this account is either irrational, supernatural or completely absent. In fact, in some cases, it's the exact same account: some being, "just was", complete with the knowledge of how to build the biosphere, already present, along with rules of morality, human behavior, etc.
Specifically, it's unclear how you're in any better situation that Oleg unless you can somehow "justify" how you know what is objectively morally wrong.
Nor do I expect you to disappoint, in that your explanation will either be irrational, supernatural or you will not give one at all (completely absent.)
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 05:36 PM
DeleteAnd once again I want to know why do you find things morally offensive if you do not believe in objective morality?
Because they offend against my personal - and subjective - moral code. Just as things offend against your moral code. The only difference between you and me is that you are claiming your God's authority for your beliefs as if that somehow makes them objective, except that it doesn't. Why should a god's moral preferences be any less subjective than yours or mine?
Why should a god's moral preferences be any less subjective than yours or mine?
DeleteBecause God by His very nature is good, and unchanging, and is indeed the source of all that is good.
Mark 10:19
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.'
Malachi 3:6
"For I, the LORD, do not change;,,
What Atheists Just Don't Get / Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0zU2jqVv6c
Perhaps the ontological argument on a 'maximally great Being' will help you understand how it is impossible for that which is not good to exist in God:
The Ontological Argument (The Introduction) - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQPRqHZRP68
this following video refines the Ontological argument into a proof that, because of the characteristic of ‘maximally great love’, God must exist in more than one person:
The Ontological Argument for the Triune God - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVYXog8NUg
BA: Because God by His very nature is good, and unchanging, and is indeed the source of all that is good.
DeleteAnd you know this how?
In other words, the claim that God is perfectly good is an idea that should be subject to criticism. And it's based on the same sort of pre-enlightenment conception of human knowledge that you appeal to in regards to evolutionary theory. However, you simply cannot see it as such.
For example, what if God is perfectly evil, but only allows good so we would know that the absence of goodness is when he eventually takes it away from us?
Surely, you'd recognize this as an idea to be criticized, right?
How is your claim that God is perfectly good any less of an idea that should be subject to criticism?
Scott welcome to the ontological argument!
DeleteGod Is Not Dead Yet – William Lane Craig – Page 4
The ontological argument. Anselm’s famous argument has been reformulated and defended by Alvin Plantinga, Robert Maydole, Brian Leftow, and others. God, Anselm observes, is by definition the greatest being conceivable. If you could conceive of anything greater than God, then that would be God. Thus, God is the greatest conceivable being, a maximally great being. So what would such a being be like? He would be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and he would exist in every logically possible world. But then we can argue:
1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
7. Therefore, God exists.
Now it might be a surprise to learn that steps 2–7 of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God’s existence is even possible, then he must exist. So the whole question is: Is God’s existence possible? The atheist has to maintain that it’s impossible that God exists. He has to say that the concept of God is incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. But the problem is that the concept of God just doesn’t appear to be incoherent in that way. The idea of a being which is all-powerful, all knowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent. And so long as God’s existence is even possible, it follows that God must exist.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=4
The funny thing with the ontological argument for a 'maximally great Being' is that atheists have unwittingly conceded the necessary premise for the argument when they desperately appealed to a infinite multiverse to 'explain away' the extreme fine-tuning of the universe!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletebornagain77 May 6, 2012 07:54 AM
ReplyDeleteWell oleg, Hitler and Christianity?? Let's see if the smear sticks?
Yes, let's see.
Germany was predominantly Catholic and Lutheran. Here we have the founder of the Lutheran church, Martin Luther himself, continuing a strong European tradition of ani-Semitism, in these choice excerpts from his charming little oeuvre unashamedly entitled On Jews and their Lies:
I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them. I would not have believed that a Christian could be duped by the Jews into taking their exile and wretchedness upon himself. However, the devil is the god of the world, and wherever God's word is absent he has an easy task, not only with the weak but also with the strong. May God help us. Amen.
[...]
Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.
[...]
Alas, it cannot be anything but the terrible wrath of God which permits anyone to sink into such abysmal, devilish, hellish, insane baseness, envy, and arrogance. If I were to avenge myself on the devil himself I should be unable to wish him such evil and misfortune as God's wrath inflicts on the Jews, compelling them to lie and to blaspheme so monstrously, in violation of their own conscience.
[...]
Accordingly, it must and dare not be considered a trifling matter but a most serious one to seek counsel against this and to save our souls from the Jews, that is, from the devil and from eternal death. My advice, as I said earlier, is:
First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire...
Second, that all their books-- their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible-- be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted...
Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country...
Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it...
And this had no influence on Hitler and his cronies? Let's hear what a few Nazi functionaries had to say.
(Continued)
(Continued)
ReplyDeleteFor example we have Walter Buch described as "the head of the Nazi Party court":
When Luther turned his attention to the Jews, after he completed his translation of the Bible, he left behind "on the Jews and their Lies" for posterity.
Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held.... From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds.
or Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust:
Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance.... I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp
or Hans Schemm, Bavarian Minister of Education and Culture
His engagement against the decomposing Jewish spirit is clearly evident not only from his writing against the Jews; his life too was idealistically, philosophically antisemitic. Now we Germans of today have the duty to recognize and acknowledge this.
I do not believe that Christians, as a whole, supported or approved of the Nazis and their works and there weresome notable figures who actively opposed them at great personal risk. But there is also evidence that the Nazis drew inspiration and justification from Luther's views. Does that damn the whole of Christendom? No, of course, it doesn't but neither can Luther's views and the European tradition of which they were a part be denied.
Shoot oleg that connection between Darwin and Hitler is cemented together.
When I was a Christian, I believed that the Ninth Commandment bound us to witness to the whole truth, not just the bits that suit our political or religious purpose. I don't doubt that Darwin's theory and the eugenics movement had some influence on Nazi thinking. Was it necessary to the rise of Nazism, was it as influential as Luther's views? No, nowhere near, and trying to discredit the theory of evolution on the basis of a very tenuous connection between Darwin and Hitler is straight propaganda not truth.
And as a atheist, who does not believe in a objective moral standard, how do you declare what Hitler did as wrong? He simply had different tastes than you have according to your worldview of subjective morality!
ReplyDeleteor for that matter how do you declare what Luther did was wrong?
ReplyDeleteCornelius Hunter
ReplyDeleteNo Ian, you are simply providing yet another great example of how evolution harms science. It's dogma has gone viral and doesn't allow the scientific facts to get out.
T: What scientific facts weren't allowed to get out CH? Please be specific.
If these mystery scientific facts weren't allowed to get out, how did you learn about them?
I don't want this to get lost.
CH, please tell us which scientific facts weren't allowed to get out, and how it is you came to know about them.
Thorton this is slightly off topic but perhaps you can help:
ReplyDeleteThe evidence for the detrimental nature of mutations in humans is overwhelming for scientists have already cited over 100,000 mutational disorders.
Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design - Pg. 57 By John C. Avise
Excerpt: "Another compilation of gene lesions responsible for inherited diseases is the web-based Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD). Recent versions of HGMD describe more than 75,000 different disease causing mutations identified to date in Homo-sapiens."
I went to the mutation database website cited by John Avise and found:
HGMD®: Now celebrating our 100,000 mutation milestone!
http://www.hgmd.org/
I really question their use of the word 'celebrating'. (Of note, recently someone with a sense of decency has now removed the word 'celebrating')
But Thorton, the problem I have is where is the comparable list of 100,000 BENEFICIAL mutations for human beings??? Do you see my dilemma Thorton? I mean if neo-Darwinism is truly true, as you vehemently, angrily, hold it to be, then where in blue blazes are all the beneficial mutations to counterbalance the spread of all these thousands upon thousands of slightly detrimental mutations??? Something is terribly amiss here Thorton!!
BA,
DeleteAre you trying to make Thorton's head explode?
bornagain77: But Thorton, the problem I have is where is the comparable list of 100,000 BENEFICIAL mutations for human beings???
DeleteThe other 6,399,900,000 bases. (Not really, as a lot of them have no positive value, but you get the point.)
but you get the point,
Deleteno actually I don't:
Genetic Entropy - Dr. John Sanford - Evolution vs. Reality
https://vimeo.com/35088933
Experimental evolution, loss-of-function mutations, and “the first rule of adaptive evolution” - Michael J. Behe - December 2010
Excerpt: In this paper, I review molecular changes underlying some adaptations, with a particular emphasis on evolutionary experiments with microbes conducted over the past four decades. I show that by far the most common adaptive changes seen in those examples are due to the loss or modification of a pre-existing molecular function, and I discuss the possible reasons for the prominence of such mutations.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/656902
Epistasis between Beneficial Mutations - July 2011
Excerpt: We found that epistatic interactions between beneficial mutations were all antagonistic—the effects of the double mutations were less than the sums of the effects of their component single mutations. We found a number of cases of decompensatory interactions, an extreme form of antagonistic epistasis in which the second mutation is actually deleterious in the presence of the first. In the vast majority of cases, recombination uniting two beneficial mutations into the same genome would not be favored by selection, as the recombinant could not outcompete its constituent single mutations.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/epigenetics/darwins-beneficial-mutations-do-not-benefit-each-other/
Mutations : when benefits level off - June 2011 - (Lenski's e-coli after 50,000 generations)
Excerpt: After having identified the first five beneficial mutations combined successively and spontaneously in the bacterial population, the scientists generated, from the ancestral bacterial strain, 32 mutant strains exhibiting all of the possible combinations of each of these five mutations. They then noted that the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually.
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1867.htm?theme1=7
New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows "Overwhelmingly Negative" Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution - Casey Luskin June 8, 2011
Excerpt: In essence, these studies found that there is a fitness cost to becoming more fit. As mutations increase, bacteria faced barriers to the amount they could continue to evolve. If this kind of evidence doesn't run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does?
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/new_research_on_epistatic_inte047151.html
But I thought the point of this post was that mutations weren't so random after all . So if the bad ones are so prevalent, then we are designed to maximize the harmful ones? Bad design,survival wise ,no.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteSo in your view of science it is of no importance to the neo-Darwinian framework that all random mutations that we know to the molecular level are detrimental to a greater or lesser extent, but what is important to your way of thinking is that neo-Darwinism is safe from falsification because no Designer would allow detrimental mutations in his design? That is simply ludicrous thinking in science,,, we are dealing with scientific evidence. We are not debating Theology. If you want to argue what God would and would not do, and why there is 'natural evil' in the world why don't you look up articles or read books on Theodicy instead of demanding that your theological concerns take precedence over empirical evidence in science!
Deletenote:
Seeing Past Darwin II: James A. Shapiro - James Barham - May 2012
Excerpt: Much in our culture depends upon the public’s being made aware that Darwinian theory as standardly interpreted is intellectually bankrupt.(2) And little that I have encountered communicates this fact so well as the work of James A. Shapiro.
http://www.thebestschools.org/bestschoolsblog/2012/05/03/darwin-ii-james-a-shapiro/
I never mentioned God,BA. Isn't the whole proof of design that evolution is incorrect? If the point of this research is somehow mutations are damped down proves that mutations aren't random according to need,then your research which shows that mutations are mostly bad or neutral. Then this damping is not maximizing the beneficial very well,right? Not very optimal.
DeleteAs a rule,I would expect a designer to try to eliminate that which killed his design,unless this is some kind of demolition derby
And Vel, you claim that you 'never mentioned God' and then proceed to offer another theological argument. Are you mad?
DeleteNope I didn't, if a non divine designer creates a design of a car which in the course of a year, 200 blow up out of 6,000,000, it is not theological to see that as bad design. Same with deleterious mutations, since ID speaks not of the designer, a design which allows a vast greater quantity of bad than good if judging by human design standards is subpar.
DeleteNow if you are unable to consider a designer other than the Christain God,OK. But I personally am agnostic on the nature of the designer except I might not want to go across a bridge that he designed.
Vel,
Delete'it is not theological to see that as bad design',
so WA LA, instead of actual empirical evidence for Darwinism all you need to do is to say that God would not design biological systems that way and then claim that the theological claim that you just made for how God should design biological systems is not really a theological claim??? Gotcha!!! Thanks for that deep Darwinian insight. I would not have believed a human could be reduced to such incoherency unless I had seen it myself!
Look in the mirror anytime would suffice....
DeleteStill up for more? You seem to be laboring under the assumption that God is the designer. Is it possible that He is not,even in theory?
Could not cipher wa la, got it now, voila
DeleteQuantum Evidence for a Theistic Universe
Deletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1agaJIWjPWHs5vtMx5SkpaMPbantoP471k0lNBUXg0Xo/edit
Then again if you don't like that you can opt for the schizophrenia of 10^500 versions of you if you want :)
Nice little fort you have,BA. Design is recognizable because it has the hallmarks of human design. Therefore judging what a hypothetical designer might do. This would be what God would do in your case.
DeleteHowever if one looks at the actual design of the organism,any critique is fobidden because since you assume the designer is God, one is arguing what God would do.
So design theory is not religious if you support it( teach it in schools), but religious if you oppose it. Nice
Vel, and yet you still have ZERO empirical evidence for Darwinism. And are saturated in Theologically based arguments for Darwinism. Go Figure. And more to the point these Theologically based arguments are already taught in school as if they were science.
Delete"Proselytizing for Darwin's God in the Classroom" (The Hypocrisy of Evolutionists (John G. West): John G. West - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEajEwzYwHg
So Vel if you really want to keep all religion out of science classes as you say you do, then you should resolutely demand that the Theologically based theory of Darwinism be removed from immediately. Then you would at least not be so hypocritical in your stance on ID!
In fact Vel, If you removed all the sophomoric theologically based arguments from Darwin's original book 'Origin of Species', how persuasive do you think it really would have been?
DeleteCharles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species - May 2011
Excerpt: Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation):
1. Human begins are not justfied in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind.
2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern.
3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the 'simplest mode' to accomplish the functions of these structures.
4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part's function.
5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms.
6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter.
7. God directly created the first 'primordial' life.
8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life.
9. A 'distant' God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering.
10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html
It is the supreme court ,BA, that has ruled the creationism teaching is unconstitutional. So you concede ID is religious ?
DeleteWhat religion is evolutionary theory,same as astrophysics,geology?
Vel, so its OK in your book to teach a Theologically based theory (Darwinism) in science class? A 'theory' of science which has ZERO substantiating empirical evidence?? But makes Theologically based claims in science class?,,, Who said anything about teaching creationism in science class?,, I'm talking about getting a religiously based theory (Darwinism) out of science class!!!
DeleteFrom Philosopher to Science Writer: The Dissemination of Evolutionary Thought - May 2011
Excerpt: The powerful theory of evolution hangs on this framework of thought that mandates naturalism. The science is weak but the metaphysics are strong. This is the key to understanding evolutionary thought. The weak arguments are scientific and the strong arguments, though filled with empirical observation and scientific jargon, are metaphysical. The stronger the argument, the more theological or philosophical.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/05/from-philosopher-to-science-writer.html
Where's the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit
Do you want to remind me again how God would not allow a 100% detrimental 'random' mutation rate so as to make your case for Darwinism?
Gee,how could someone figure out that killing millions of people isn't like liking chocolate ice cream more than vanilla?
ReplyDeleteMaybe a personal desire not to be killed by a psychopath, no matter he much he wants to kill me. And figuring the best way to do that is not let him kill anyone else.
How about if Hilter believed God told him to kill people, is he moral?
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 12:40 PM
ReplyDeleteAnd as a atheist, who does not believe in a objective moral standard, how do you declare what Hitler did as wrong? He simply had different tastes than you have according to your worldview of subjective morality!
You're trying to change the subject.
We're discussing whether or not the is any justification for the accusation that the Nazis were inspired by Darwinism. Do I assume from this evasiveness that you accept my argument that it is unjustified?
As for this question of subjective morality, it is not a question of taste in spite of Craig's superficial arguments. If you want to understand it, start with asking what morality actually does. If you look at it, in general terms, the function of moral codes is to regulate how we behave towards each other in society.
Let's take a specific example, one that is often brought up against subjectivists. If there is no objective morality, so the argument goes, what is to prevent a man going out and "spreading his seed" by raping any woman that takes his fancy? The answer is very simple. What - or, rather, who - will stop our potential rapist are all the women who would prefer not to be raped and all the men who would take a very dim view of their, mothers, wives or daughters being raped. They would stop the rapist - and probably permanently if they got the chance.
In my view, all this stems from the Golden Rule, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and its obverse, do not do to others what you would not like done to you. That is all the foundation you need for a good moral code. And before you jump up and claim it for Christianity, there is evidence that it has emerged in many cultures before during and after Christianity that were entirely uninfluenced by it. Christianity may have adopted it but it did not invent it.
OK by invoking the golden rule you are declaring that objective moral values and duties do exist independently of humans. And thus concede the necessary premise at step 2 to make the moral argument for God's existence complete:
ReplyDelete1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
notes:
By objective values and duties, one means values and duties that are valid and binding independent of human opinion. A good many atheists and theists alike concur with premise (1). For given a naturalistic worldview, human beings are just animals, and activity that we count as murder, torture, and rape is natural and morally neutral in the animal kingdom. Moreover, if there is no one to command or prohibit certain actions, how can we have moral obligations or prohibitions?
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html?start=4
Something tells me that you all of the sudden find that moral values and duties are not objective :)
I don't believe Ian will concede the golden rule is objective in the way you mean it,Better work on it more
ReplyDeleteHi, do you do hot chocolate with marshmallows here?
ReplyDeleteIn season only. Root beer floats this time of year,
DeleteZachriel: but you get the point,
ReplyDeletebornagin77: no actually I don't
The regurgitation of citations didn't appear to add anything or explain why you didn't understand the point. To answer your concern, every organism is the accumulation of all the evolutionary changes that they inherited from their ancestors. Every organism is a mutant.
Says who? You and other atheists??? Pardon me If I don't take your word for that to be the way unfathomed levels of integrated information happened. Perhaps you would care to regurgitate some empirical evidence that clearly demonstrates, for all to see, that complex functional information can be generated by purely material processes?
DeleteThe Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency - Dr David L. Abel - November 2010
Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.”
http://www-qa.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Insufficiency.html
bornagain77: You and other atheists???
DeleteNot that it's relevant, but we're not an atheist.
bornagain77: Pardon me If I don't take your word for that to be the way unfathomed levels of integrated information happened.
You asked a question, and we answered it. What you do with the information is up to you. Of interest is that you earliest cited an article that concerns epistasis between beneficial mutations. You do understand that for there to be epistasis between beneficial mutations, there has to be beneficial mutations?
Zach, you and who else is we? All I see is a lone blogger lost in the nether world of the end of a post who can't even reason properly, yet has the audacity to make audacious truth claims with no citation to their validity!
DeletePhil, what on earth makes you think that the writings of the retired veterinarian (Abel) on "physicodynamics" make any sense whatsoever?
DeleteSince the null hypothesis's make no sense and Abel has no clue what he is talking about then it should be very easy for you to falsify any of these following null hypothesis for information generation by purely material, neo-Darwinian, processes. Please falsify by citation to the direct peer-reviewed empirical evidence that shows purely material, neo-Darwinian, processes generating complex, highly integrated, functional information:
DeleteThree subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information - Abel, Trevors
Excerpt: Three qualitative kinds of sequence complexity exist: random (RSC), ordered (OSC), and functional (FSC).,,, Shannon information theory measures the relative degrees of RSC and OSC. Shannon information theory cannot measure FSC. FSC is invariably associated with all forms of complex biofunction, including biochemical pathways, cycles, positive and negative feedback regulation, and homeostatic metabolism. The algorithmic programming of FSC, not merely its aperiodicity, accounts for biological organization. No empirical evidence exists of either RSC of OSC ever having produced a single instance of sophisticated biological organization. Organization invariably manifests FSC rather than successive random events (RSC) or low-informational self-ordering phenomena (OSC).,,,
Testable hypotheses about FSC
What testable empirical hypotheses can we make about FSC that might allow us to identify when FSC exists? In any of the following null hypotheses [137], demonstrating a single exception would allow falsification. We invite assistance in the falsification of any of the following null hypotheses:
Null hypothesis #1
Stochastic ensembles of physical units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function.
Null hypothesis #2
Dynamically-ordered sequences of individual physical units (physicality patterned by natural law causation) cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function.
Null hypothesis #3
Statistically weighted means (e.g., increased availability of certain units in the polymerization environment) giving rise to patterned (compressible) sequences of units cannot program algorithmic/cybernetic function.
Null hypothesis #4
Computationally successful configurable switches cannot be set by chance, necessity, or any combination of the two, even over large periods of time.
We repeat that a single incident of nontrivial algorithmic programming success achieved without selection for fitness at the decision-node programming level would falsify any of these null hypotheses. This renders each of these hypotheses scientifically testable. We offer the prediction that none of these four hypotheses will be falsified.
http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29
How do you falsify gibberish? It is not even wrong!
DeleteHere, falsify this: fdhjsk09w8e7ruiljkpw03#@%
LOL
Feynman famously explained that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong. Abel's "null hypothesis" is totally in that class. It is so vague that one can't make head or tali of what he is saying.
Deleteoleg, let's make it real clear for you. Purely material processes will never create functional information. Falsification would look something like neo-Darwinian processes creating a molecular machine from scratch:
Deletei.e. In spite of the fact of finding highly sophisticated molecular machines permeating the simplest of bacterial life, there are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of even one such machine or system.
"There are no detailed Darwinian accounts for the evolution of any fundamental biochemical or cellular system only a variety of wishful speculations. It is remarkable that Darwinism is accepted as a satisfactory explanation of such a vast subject."
James Shapiro - Molecular Biologist
The following expert doesn't even hide his very unscientific preconceived philosophical bias against intelligent design,,,
‘We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity,,,
Yet at the same time the same expert readily admits that neo-Darwinism has ZERO evidence for the chance and necessity of material processes producing any cellular system whatsoever,,,
,,,we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.’
Franklin M. Harold,* 2001. The way of the cell: molecules, organisms and the order of life, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 205.
*Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Colorado State University, USA
Michael Behe - No Scientific Literature For Evolution of Any Irreducibly Complex Molecular Machines
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5302950/
“The response I have received from repeating Behe's claim about the evolutionary literature, which simply brings out the point being made implicitly by many others, such as Chris Dutton and so on, is that I obviously have not read the right books. There are, I am sure, evolutionists who have described how the transitions in question could have occurred.” And he continues, “When I ask in which books I can find these discussions, however, I either get no answer or else some titles that, upon examination, do not, in fact, contain the promised accounts. That such accounts exist seems to be something that is widely known, but I have yet to encounter anyone who knows where they exist.”
David Ray Griffin - retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology
Thanks for the link,Oleg.
Deleteoleg as to "you cannot prove a vague theory wrong" Gotcha:
Delete‘Before you can ask ‘Is Darwinian theory correct or not?’, You have to ask the preliminary question ‘Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?’. That’s a very different question. One of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is ‘Man, that thing is just a mess. It’s like looking into a room full of smoke.’ Nothing in the theory is precisely, clearly, carefully defined or delineated. It lacks all of the rigor one expects from mathematical physics, and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we’re talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology.’
David Berlinski
Science and Pseudoscience – Imre Lakatos
“nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific” – Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, , quote as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LpGd3smTV1RwmEXC25IAEKMjiypBl5VJq9ssfv4JgeM/edit
Whereas, in contrast to there being no identifiable falsification criteria for neo-Darwinism (at least no identifiable falsification criteria that neo-Darwinists will accept), here is a rough outline of the clear falsification criteria for Intelligent Design:
Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A
Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government....
ReplyDeleteGiven the associations of the ruling class with the pyramid $chemes typical to secret societies and so on it's not exactly a form of sterile atheism. I'd suggest to you that those at the top often don't even believe the memes and creation myths that they give to the scientists they own. For instance, the Masons who catalyzed the French revolution based on a mythology of enlightenment based on "pure reason" actually believe in a Great Architect and engaged in "dirty rituals" of the occult and so on. Those closer to the top have always known that it doesn't all fit into a test tube.
To answer your concern, every organism is the accumulation of all the evolutionary changes that they inherited from their ancestors...
ReplyDeleteIf everything is explicable in terms of past events then I wonder what is happening here and now?
There is still space in the way that you are imagining things about the past to observe biology here and now, correct?
mynym: If everything is explicable in terms of past events then I wonder what is happening here and now?
ReplyDeleteA unique combination of genes.
Zachriel, welcome back. Things were busy while you were out and not getting any better for the complete failure of the evolutionists prediction of an objective nested hierarchy (except when it isn't). The ellipse popped.
ReplyDeletehttp://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/04/you-wont-believe-this-one-even.html
bornagain77 May 6, 2012 07:16 PM
ReplyDeleteOK by invoking the golden rule you are declaring that objective moral values and duties do exist independently of humans.
As velikovskys predicted I deny "the necessary premise at step 2" that the golden rule is objective. The fact that something like it exists in many cultures suggests that all people have certain basic interests, regardless of cultural differences. It is a consensus view, nothing more.
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Not so. Objective reality is assumed to be such because its existence does not depend on whether we are aware of it or whether we exist at all. By the same token, objective moral values would exist whether or not we do - or God does. If the existence of moral values depends on God's then they cannot be objective.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Asserted but not demonstrated.
But from whence does this 'consensus view' of objective morals arise and what makes them binding to humans and not other animals?
ReplyDeleteI really would like you to clarify the basis of objective morality:
ReplyDeleteEvolutionism says rape is as natural as the leopard's spots:
"Just as the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck are the result of aeons of past Darwinian selection, so also is rape." -- Randy Thronhill and Criag Palmer
It says about the same about murder
"over the eons of human evolution murder was so surprisingly beneficial in the intense game of reproductive competition" -- David Buss
and
“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.” -- William Provine
and
"No inherent moral or ethical laws exist, nor are there absolute guiding principles for human society. The universe cares nothing for us and we have no ultimate meaning in life." -- William Provine