How Do They Know That?
The
Los Angeles Times is now
reporting that those fantastic gears discovered in the planthopper nymph are “the first known example of working gears that evolved in a living being.” The
Times does not explain how they know the gears evolved, nor does it explain how the gears evolved. It is an interesting question because, as anyone who has worked with gears knows, the design space is huge and it contains only a relatively few workable designs. For instance, imagine if the gears were just slightly farther apart. The gears would not mesh and the whole design would not work. On the other hand, if the gears were just slightly closer together, the gears would collide and freeze up. If the spacing between the cogs was too thin or the cogs were too wide, again the gears would collide and freeze up. If the cogs were too thin or if their material not sufficiently strong, then the cogs would break under the load they carry.
The list goes on and on. The design is fine-tuned. Any number of changes renders it non functional, and there is no sign of a gradual path of increasing functionality leading from the absence of this gearing system to the design that we observe.
Even the researchers who discovered this gearing system admitted to its complexity when they concluded that it is not wise to underestimate evolution. That seems to be a good caution, but as Karl Popper would say, it demonstrates how difficult it is to falsify evolution if fantastic, unexpected, designs are simply labeled as products of evolution with no supporting evidence.
I don't see any gears. Looks more like a rabbit in the Cambrian to me.
ReplyDelete"OOOOOH!!!! IT'S SO COMPLEX!!!! THAT MEANS GAWDDIDIT!!!!"
ReplyDeleteYou guys are such children.
When I was a child, I rode a horse named Popper.
DeleteYes, tt's a fascinating discovery.
ReplyDeleteIt comes from research in evolutionary biology not intelligent design.
No, they don't have the evolutionary pathway that led to the "gears". They've only just discovered the "gears" themselves.
The lack of an evolutionary pathway does not mean that the gears must, therefore, have been designed.
The lack of an evolutionary pathway for these "gears" does not mean that finches beaks have stopped changing shape.
The lack of an evolutionary pathway for these "gears" does not mean that peppered moths have stopped changing color.
The lack of an evolutionary pathway for these "gears" does not mean that microbes no longer become resistant to antibiotics.
The lack of an evolutionary pathway for these "gears" does not mean that certain microbes have stopped eating nylon waste products.
Et cetera.
Et cetera.
Thorton:
ReplyDelete"OOOOOH!!!! IT'S SO COMPLEX!!!! THAT MEANS GAWDDIDIT!!!!"
Yep. Way better than believing that DIRTDIDIT!!!!
You guys are such children.
I'd rather be a child than a gutless coward who's ready to compromise his integrity because of his fear and hatred of organized religion. So now he wants to impose his own chicken crap, DIRTDIDIT religion on the rest of us.
What a bunch of pathetic superstitious dirt worshippers. The most important prerequisites to knowledge and understanding are honesty and courage. Grow some gonads, godammit.
Spedding:
ReplyDeleteIt comes from research in evolutionary biology not intelligent design.
Wow. Talk about a bunch of gutless morons. How did belief in evolutionary biology help make this discovery, pray tell?
Read the paper. This certainly didn't some out of an ID lab.
DeleteIf there is such a thing
Don't beat around the bush, Spedding. Answer the effing question or put a sock in it.
DeleteAlmost all of modern science came from Christianity, from people who believed that the entire universe was created by a great power or powers. It started with with great thinkers like Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal and many others. They all believe that life on earth was created. Did that stop them from being among some of the greatest scientists that ever lived. Even today, in the face of relentless persecution, many biologists only feign to believe in Darwinian evolution and yet they still do great science. Many only pay lip service to evolution in order to safeguard their careers.
Like all great lies, Darwinian evolution has a kernel of truth in it. Otherwise it would have been discarded long ago. DE postulates that life is organized hierarchically, hence the tree of life. This is true but nobody needs the theory of evolution to tell us that living organisms can be categorized hierarchically. This is obvious to any casual observer of nature. Indeed, all languages have special vocabularies that are used to classify animals and plants into different species and subspecies. Besides, a hierarchical tree structure is precisely the type of structure one expects from complex intelligent designs carried over a long period of time. My point is that the tree of life is useful but so what? It does not prove evolution. In fact, it disproves it, as seen below.
In their cowardly zeal to exclude design and designers from the picture, evolutionists stupidly insisted that the hierarchy had to be strictly nested on account of common descent. In other words, the lateral transfer of genetic material between distant species has always been expressly forbidden by the theory. Unfortunately for evolutionists, experimental reports of late have not just falsified that stupid prediction of their little theory at the genetic level, they are trampling it underfoot.
The inconvenient truth is that lateral inheritance (genetic convergence) is the unmistakable calling card of intelligent designers. Read it and weep.
LOL.
Louis Savain
DeleteThe inconvenient truth is that lateral inheritance (genetic convergence) is the unmistakable calling card of intelligent designers.
Convergent evolution has nothing to do with lateral gene transfer. They are two completely different phenomena.
Read it and weep.
If anyone weeps it will be tears of laughter.
Convergent evolution has nothing to do with lateral gene transfer. They are two completely different phenomena.
DeleteSince convergent evolution is an outright lie (repeating it does not make it true), I think it's a little stretch to call it a phenomenon. GE has never been observed in nature. My point, which apparently blew far above your little pointy head, was this: what you morons are calling convergent evolution without evidence is really lateral gene transfer. And the kind of lateral transfers that is needed for a function as complex as echolocation is something that can only be done by one or more intelligent designers.
Why, oh why are evolutionists so stupid?
Louis Savain
DeleteSince convergent evolution is an outright lie (repeating it does not make it true), I think it's a little stretch to call it a phenomenon. GE has never been observed in nature.
List of examples of convergent evolution
(wipes away tears of laughter). :D
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DeleteThorton:
DeleteList of examples of convergent evolution
Wow. I'm definitely talking to a moron. Stating that similarities in distant species are the result of convergent evolution is not evidence that evolution can randomly converge to the exact identical genetic code segments more than once. Bats and whales did not evolve the same exact codes independently. Only dumb dirt worshippers like you believe that crap like this is science. It's religious superstition.
louis ignorantly asserted:
Delete"Almost all of modern science came from Christianity..."
Wrong. Totally wrong. NO science ever came "from Christianity", or any other religion. There's a HUGE difference between "from Christianity" and from some people who were christians (or believers in other religions).
Oh, and "modern science" comes from modern scientists.
"How did belief in evolutionary biology help make this discovery, pray tell?"
ReplyDeleteI'll respond to this reword of your question:
How did acceptance of evolutionary biology help make this discovery?
A good way to answer that question is to ask this question:
How much progress was made in understanding biology before Darwin proposed his theory and before there was acceptance of it by more and more scientists?
louis, let's see you or your fellow sky daddy pushers try to show that religious kooks like you have or ever had anything or everything figured out about biology or anything else in reality using only religious faith, prayer, sacrificing goats, thumping bibles, bitching about evolution and evolutionary theory, sacrificing people, drinking heysooses blood, speaking in tongues, living inside a fish, selling crosses at a dollar store, going to church, singing hymms, preaching, proselytizing, brainwashing kids, pushing your god-did-it crap on the internet and elsewhere, and just all around believing in ridiculous, impossible religious fairy tales INSTEAD of using scientific methods.
louis puked:
ReplyDelete"What a bunch of pathetic superstitious dirt worshippers."
Hey louis, what does the bible say that adam was made from?
"The most important prerequisites to knowledge and understanding are honesty and courage. Grow some gonads, godammit."
Why don't you go say that at UD, ENV, and every other ID-creationist site that is packed with lies and doesn't allow any comments or deletes, blocks, and/or bans most or all people who submit questioning or refuting comments? You're not afraid to, are you?
By the way, how much courage does it take to be a submissive puppet for an imaginary sky daddy?
By the way, how much courage does it take to be a submissive puppet for an imaginary sky daddy?
DeleteLOL. This is both funny and demonic. I admit it's a beauty. I tell you what though, Truthy. It takes a lot more courage than willingly performing felatio on Satan, that's for sure. LOL.
Such a fine example of a christian you are, louis. Seriously.
DeleteLouis: "What a bunch of pathetic superstitious dirt worshippers."
DeleteHumm... Louis, how did you conclude that I, let alone anyone else, worship dirt?
Could it be something like this?
- Louis thinks God designed biological organisms
- Louis worships God
- Evolutionary theory intersects with Louis' belief about the origin of biological organisms
- Louis thinks "evolutionists" must also worship what ever plays the same role that God play in his belief of the origin of biological organisms
- ?????
- Therefore, Louis thinks "evolutionists" worship dirt?
The last part simply is a huge leap, so why don't you fill in the gap.
Twt "Such a fine example of a christian you are, louis. Seriously.
DeleteHey Twt, I don't think Louis is a Christian either. I don't think a man who has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit would speak in such a vulgar way on this message board.
CH: It is an interesting question because, as anyone who has worked with gears knows, the design space is huge and it contains only a relatively few workable designs.
ReplyDeleteFrom this NPR article…
The teeth of these natural gears don't look quite like man-made versions. The vast majority of man-made gears follow the same precise pattern, one proposed more than 200 years ago by Leonhard Euler.
[..]
Euler wrote dozens of books on mathematics, but still found some spare time to fiddle with gears. He figured out that an infinite number of cog shapes could be used in machines, but Euler settled on one that could be easily constructed by contemporary tools. That shape (seen below, next to Euler's portrait) is still used in most machines today.
So, it's not that there are "only a relatively few workable designs", but "only a relatively few workable designs" that were efficiently and cheaply manufactured by human designers.
Again, yet another misrepresentation within the first three sentences. Go figure.
Evolutionist say that this working design which is duplicated every time one of these is born has to be a product of evolution because they do not want to concede to the existence of God. Why? Because admit that there is a God and then we all become responsible to God, which means we can't do what we like. That means restrictions and taking away liberty which is a part of democracy. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity which is the bedrock of Western thinking.
ReplyDeleteWe also erode the reputation of thousands of scientists, and who wants that? Rather believe a lie so we can be proud and do what we want.
However honest, humble people can see with their eyes and think for themselves, instead of following the herd mentality of those who put their faith in human 'academic' research, which day after day produces fantastic, fictitious constructions of what happened in the past. It's a wonderful thing to have common sense (or is that now uncommon?).
Look gears. Hey that's a design. In order for there to be a design, there has to be a designer. Can simple chemicals create a complex working machine without any intellectual, living intervention? No. Therefore this is not a product of chance. This has to have been created by a designer.
So easy to understand, yet, read the evolutionist replies to this and other posts and see how chaotic and disordered their thinking is.
This should be common sense people.
commenzator
DeleteEvolutionist say that this working design which is duplicated every time one of these is born has to be a product of evolution because they do not want to concede to the existence of God.
Sorry, but that's 100% false. Scientists accept evolution as the cause because we have 150+ years of consilient positive evidence from hundreds of scientific disciplines that says evolution is a sufficient explanation. It has nothing to do with a God or Gods.
Look gears. Hey that's a design. In order for there to be a design, there has to be a designer.
Wrong again. Iterative feedback processes like evolution have been empirically demonstrated capable of producing complex features that meet all the criteria of 'designed'. There's a whole field of science - genetic algorithms- that works on the principle. There's no need for a conscious designer.
This should be common sense people.
One of the main benefits of science is that it minimizes our reliance on very fallible and often incorrect human "common sense".
> genetic algorithms
ReplyDeleteAll these type of genetics work off information. So where does this information come from?
As a coder I can state that I first need a goal, then I need to define a list of variables, plan out the sequence of my program, create routines for input & output & calculations, insert error checking routines, etc. None of this works if I don't have a compiler, if I the programmer don't exist, if there is no computer to run it on, there is no display or method of output, but most importantly there must be a language and interpretation of that code. There is a database of predefined info and then a set of running variables. We see that this type of system exists in all living creatures.
So the question is . . .
Where did this information come from?
Bird calls don't change. A dove coos like a dove cooed centuries ago. Birds migrate along fixed routes. The animal kingdom follow patterns that have been pre-programmed into them. And yet we are led to believe by evolutionists that all this order is a result of chance. That the precise and ordered information we find in creatures are the result of genetic algorithms that have mutated from a single celled creature.
BTW - by common sense I mean something so obvious that it cannot be denied, for example - I walk outside and see the sun in the sky, which means it's day. That can't be refuted. It's common sense.
commenzator
ReplyDeleteAll these type of genetics work off information. So where does this information come from?
In biology the raw information comes from genetic variations introduced each generation by both sexual recombination and imperfect genetic copying - gene duplication, point mutations, frame shifts, etc. The information that is retained in the gene pool is just the raw information that has passed through selection filtering. Genetic changes that hurt reproductive chances get filtered out, those that are neutral (the large majority) or beneficial get retained. Note that not ever deleterious mutation gets filtered out, not every beneficial one gets retained, but on average that is what happens.
The mechanisms of random variations filtered by selection causes the population's "information" to change slightly every generation. The entire process works as a feedback loop to track environmental changes. It tends to drive populations towards fitness local maxima. If the environment changes too quickly or too severely and the loop can't keep up, the population goes extinct. Sadly, we're seeing many examples first hand these days as human caused rapid climate change is happening just too fast for species to adapt.
We see that this type of system exists in all living creatures.
No, we don't see such a system at all. Using human computer code for biological genetic processes is only an analogy, and a poor one at that.
Bird calls don't change. A dove coos like a dove cooed centuries ago.
You know that exactly...how? You have a time machine?
The animal kingdom follow patterns that have been pre-programmed into them.
The large majority of extant species didn't even exist 10 million years ago.
And yet we are led to believe by evolutionists that all this order is a result of chance.
NO. Not by chance. By a non-random iterative feedback mechanism with chance only part of the process.
BTW - by common sense I mean something so obvious that it cannot be denied, for example - I walk outside and see the sun in the sky, which means it's day. That can't be refuted. It's common sense.
Oh, like it's "common sense" that the sun and moon revolve around a stationary Earth. :) The problem is what's "common sense" to an untrained layman is often glaringly wrong to science professionals who have studied and analyzed the data for decades.
Now we're way into the the middle of incomprehensible land.
ReplyDelete“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”
- - - Albert Einstein
commenzator
ReplyDeleteNow we're way into the the middle of incomprehensible land.
Tell me which part you didn't understand and I'll try to simplify it even further. However, there is a limit to how much the explanation can be dumbed down and still be reasonably correct.
“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”
- - - Albert Einstein
...or your target audience lacks knowledge of even the basic concepts.
Tell me first: do you honestly want to understand? I don't fancy wasting my time on someone not interested in learning.
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ReplyDeleteI've heard the claims that evolution is a fact, however what I don't hear is what would falsify it. It's a rigorous theory right so there should be some consensus?
ReplyDeleteLooks like commenzator was just another drive-by Creationist not interested in learning any actual science.
ReplyDeleteSadly that's the norm rather than the exception.