It may seem strange that insects need to measure their altitude. Can they not just “tell” how high they are? If I am on an escalator it is immediately obvious to me that I am moving to higher altitudes. Do insects not have such a simple, built-in, sense?
Such built-in sensing capabilities that we have, such as sensing when we are moving upward, are actually not simple. They merely seem so because we are not aware of the sophisticated measurement and processing systems at work behind the scenes. They are seamlessly built-in to our thinking so it seems to us that we can just “tell” how high we are.
Many insects determine their altitude by measuring how fast the ground appears to be moving beneath them. Of course the ground speed does not vary with altitude. What varies with altitude is the angular rate of a vector from the insect to a fixed object on the ground.
This angular rate also depends on the airspeed of the insect, whether it is turning and the wind. So inferring the insect’s altitude is a complicated task involving several measurements and sophisticated processing.
But the fly uses a different method entirely. Experiments involving a virtual reality arena, in which the fly not only can be tracked but its environment can be controlled, reveal that Drosophila maintains its altitude by monitoring objects around it rather than looking down at the ground.
Once again, we find different, unique solutions in biology. With evolution we must believe that completely different solutions just happen to arise (No, natural selection did not create them—selection only kills off the useless designs. According to evolution, biological variation, such as caused by mutations, is not guided by need. These fantastic designs just happened to arise—every mutation involved was a lucky shot that knew nothing of how crucial it was.)
And of course these different solutions are phenomenally complex. Beyond sophmoric just-so stories evolutionists have no idea how insects were so lucky. And yet, in the face of such ignorance, evolutionists dogmatically insist their idea is a fact. Religion drives science, and it matters.
Interesting post. What is interesting is that if you run the numbers on the almost infinite diversity of complex systems in biology compared to the known rate of mutations (assuming that those mutations may be able to produce macro evolution over a long period of time) the time required for the full diversity we see today is completely incongruent with the evolutionists' time frame of the history of biology.
ReplyDeleteBrace yourself for the standard 'this is just an argument from incredulity!' evolutionary apologetic...
ReplyDeleteBrandon Pope:
ReplyDelete"What is interesting is that if you run the numbers [snip] completely incongruent with the evolutionists' time frame of the history of biology."
What would be really interesting, and even more surprising, is you showing us those calculations. Let us learn.
This is where the unthinking Darwinists chime in with their ubiquitous - and perfectly erroneous - "argument from incredulity!" rebuttal. Oops Bryan beat me to it!
ReplyDeleteStatistical mechanics is not something they have ever understood as having profound implications in biology.
The numbers are always so astronomically against them that Darwinism should have dropped off the science map a century ago. Yet, they will merely blind themselves and yell, "Math and engineering don't matter!" and then go on and on and on trying to explain by chance and necessity what cannot be explained by chance and necessity and that they do not understand.
Sad. But this is not even hard.
Design is so obvious its intuitive, so denial of reality becomes their modus operandi
As a former flight instructor, I can tell you that altitude, direction, orientation, movement and velocity detection are anything but simple and knowledge of engineering and math is required to make devices that can determine any of them.
Troy:
ReplyDelete"What would be really interesting, and even more surprising, is you showing us those calculations. Let us learn."
Fair enough. I don't have any record of those kinds of calculations here with me. A professor of mine who specialized in analyzing the odds of evolution and time it would take for this type diversity to emerge were staggering when he discussed them with me about a year ago. I need to email him and get some literature I suppose.
Regardless, without specific numbers it can be assumed that Darwinian evolution might have taken a few billion years to proceed to this point. However, the fossil record simply does not support such a long evolutionary process. Of course there are Darwinian arguments against this, and ID counter arguments, so they don't end up getting you very far. Such findings as the decay of the Earth's magnetic field, helium levels, the moon's trajectory, abrupt gaps and "evolutionary" leaps in the fossil record, etc. are some examples of that age the earth in a way that allows insufficient time for definitional Darwinian evolution to have occurred without outside intelligent influence.
Gary,
ReplyDelete"As a former flight instructor,I can tell you that altitude, direction, orientation, movement and velocity detection are anything but simple and knowledge of engineering and math is required to make devices that can determine any of them"
to take the analogy further, intelligence is required to make sense of the readings from those devices. this was part of your job as a former flight instructor. so are you saying that a fruit fly is as intelligent as you?
"Brace yourself for the standard 'this is just an argument from incredulity!' evolutionary apologetic..."
ReplyDeleteIt seems that you are now at least able to recognize when this type of argument is being made. The next step is trying to understand why it's not considered a logically valid form of reasoning.
"so are you saying that a fruit fly is as intelligent as you?"
ReplyDeleteI think this is some flawed logic here. There is a different between the ability to intelligently understand measurements as Gary (hopefully) did, and the ability to react to measurements.
For example, if I walk up to an stove top that is set to 10 and red hot there are a few things I can intelligently understand about the situation. I can understand the setting on the knob, I can understand how the mechanism for generating that heat works, I can understand heat itself and how it effects the air molecules in around the oven as well as how it would effect my hand if I were to place it on the hot stove. There are many things I can intelligently surmise about the stove top being on. Therefore I would not put my hand on the stove, or if I did by accident I would remove it immediately and understand why it hurts.
Contrast that to if my nephew (age 3) were to walk up to the stove and place his hand on the stove top. His intelligence is far below my own regarding all of the things I described above, however he has the ability to sense the heat just the same and he would take little time in removing his hand from the stove.
We both reacted to the heat the same way, however, there is a difference in my intelligent understand the heat and his ability to react to it.
Brandon wrote:
ReplyDelete"Regardless, without specific numbers it can be assumed that Darwinian evolution might have taken a few billion years to proceed to this point."
Even if you think life emerged 4 billion or more years ago, for purposes of the OP on insect flight you can limit the time period to 540 million years ago. Now, Nilsson and Pelger's model for eye evolution only needed 500,000 years (generations) to evolve a sophisticated eye, so you could slow things down by a factor of 2,700 from their assumptions and still arrive at the same point today.
Yes, I know Nilsson and Pelger modeled a vertebrate ey, not an insect eye.
Brandon,
ReplyDelete"We both reacted to the heat the same way, however, there is a difference in my intelligent understand the heat and his ability to react to it. "
so you are saying your nephew is using unintelligent processes to respond to stimuli, and implying that drosophila do the same when responding to altitude, etc. so unintelligent processes can result in seemingly intelligent acts?
Gary:
ReplyDelete"Statistical mechanics is not something they have ever understood as having profound implications in biology."
I'm pretty sure you know next to nothing about statistical mechanics. In contrast, evolutionary biologists that specialize in mathematical modelling (and there are thousands, including myself) are quite familiar with techniques from statistical mechanics, such as partition functions, fokker-planck equations, etc. That is because a population of genotypes can be modeled as collection of particles with diffusion representing genetic drift and mutation, reactions corresponding to natural selection.
David vun Kannon:
ReplyDelete===
Yes, I know Nilsson and Pelger modeled a vertebrate ey, not an insect eye.
===
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/06/when-evidence-for-evolution-is-actually.html
Gary said...
ReplyDeleteStatistical mechanics is not something they have ever understood as having profound implications in biology.
The numbers are always so astronomically against them that Darwinism should have dropped off the science map a century ago. Yet, they will merely blind themselves and yell, "Math and engineering don't matter!" and then go on and on and on trying to explain by chance and necessity what cannot be explained by chance and necessity and that they do not understand.
Ah, good old Gary. The IDiot who's always crowing about the probabilities from statistical mechanics disprove ToE, but who cowardly runs away every time he's asked to provide those calculations.
This another fart and dart from you Gary? Or will you finally grow a set and provide some numbers to back up the bluster?
"so you are saying your nephew is using unintelligent processes to respond to stimuli, and implying that drosophila do the same when responding to altitude, etc. so unintelligent processes can result in seemingly intelligent acts?"
ReplyDeleteThat is one way to look at it (although it is not addressing the point I was making). The act of removing ones hand from the fire, as it were, is a reflex. It is built in biologically from a complex process of information turned animate.
The point was that there is a spectrum of intelligence, and that there is a difference in a fly's ability to know altitude and a human's ability to understand it. It really isn't even an ID argument. Gary's intelligence is not that he is able to know the altitude by reading it off an instrument panel, just as mine is not in my innate reflex to pull my hand from a hot surface. Intelligence comes from the understanding of why those actions are significant and why they occur.
In terms of my nephew's "unintelligent processes [resulted] in seemingly intelligent acts." The reason that act seems intelligent is because it has its origin in intelligence. Just like all complex biological processes, information is the source of intelligence processes (like reaction to a burning stove), and the only source of information is intelligence. At least in this universe.
Dr. Cornelius is once again treating us to an Answers-In-Genesis type Ken Hamite argument: "The woodpecker's bill is so complex, it could not possibly have evolved!"
ReplyDeleteThat's why I call this kind of argument the Peckerhead argument. The hope is that you can disprove evolution by finding some really complicated biological system, and persuading people that, intuitively, "We all know" (WAK) that could never evolve.
Science 101. You can't disprove a scientific theory, except by asking: what specific predictions does it make? Do they differ from the observation?
For the twenty millionth time, Cornelius, evolution is COMPARATIVE theory. You can't make any predictions from it (to falsify or confirm) without first doing a COMPARISON of the structure in question between many different species. That is, try to construct a unique phylogenetic tree.
That's the first step in any evolutionary analysis (not the last though), and since you haven't done that-- you haven't compared Drosophila's altitude-sensing apparatus to the sensory apparati(?) of other insects or arthropods-- you haven't constructed a phylogenetic tree of sensory apparati-- therefore, you can't prove or disprove evolution with this line of argument.
Let's recall how evolutionary analysis works. Comparison of apes immediately tells us chimps & bonobos are closest to us, gorillas less close, orangutans even farther, etc. Therefore, our immediate ancestors should have
A. smaller brain than human
B. bigger brain than gorilla
C. no tail
D. longer arms than human
E. less robust than gorilla
yadda yadda.
But mere phylogenetic tree construction alone doesn't tell us everything, like at what point did our ancestors get bipedal? You don't know from the tree, you have to dig up the fossil.
Anyway they did, and Australopithecus confirms A B C D E. We win.
Cornelius' Peckerhead argument, as with Ken Ham's "WAK the woodpecker bill is too complex to have evolved!" is irrelevant to evolution, one way or the other.
It's like pointing at an asteroid in the sky and saying, "WE ALL KNOW that asteroid could not have gotten to that sky-quadrant following Newton's theory!"
Please Cornelius, in the future, refrain from this Ken Ham-level ignorance. I could get this from AIG. You're wasting our time.
Scientific failure drives creationism, but it doesn't matter. No one thinks the DI are scientists anyway.
"Nilsson and Pelger's model for eye evolution only needed 500,000 years (generations) to evolve a sophisticated eye"
ReplyDeleteI like this model. I also find it funny that 500,000 years is considered to be a short time frame for evolution. Lets say the Earth was ready for life to form 3 billion years ago (just for the sake of argument). So for something like the eye of the insect, a complex system sure, but not necessarily the most complex we are aware of, it took 500,000 years (according to this model) for this feature to evolve from its simplest form to the modern day version. Now, you said "generations" but lets be clear of what generations we are talking about here. A common fly will live around 3 weeks on average. They will also produce around 500 eggs in a 3-4 day period. Not all of those survive but many do and they go on to reproduce as well. So, 500,000 years in terms of fly generations is about 8.6*10^6 generations each of which produces tons of offspring.
For organisms that reproduce in this way, they have a large pool of genetic mutations that could proliferate into useful function. Over the course of time, however, the method of reproduction of higher life forms has changed significantly. Lifespan has increased, reproduction decreased, generation gaps significantly increased. Yet, in evolutionary time, things seem to have evolved rather steadily if not increasing fast as time went on.
This is inconsistent with what we would expect. In terms of humans, this same time period is only 1.6*10^4 generations. So as animals continued to evolve, they would have had fewer opportunities to get things right as time went on, yet diversification only sped up. Curious.
Secondly, lets say again that the earth was "life-ready" for life for the last 3 billion years. If an organ as simple (biologically) as the insect eye (it's complex, but not compared to other organs we know of) took 500,000 years to evolve. It can be assumed that many of these complex systems would have to wait in line, if you will, for their usefulness to be apparent (for example feathers will do you no good unless you have an arm with the right kind of bone for flight). In terms of the evolutionary history on this planet, that leaves you about 8000 sets of 500,000 years to get this done, and if many of these features are taking that long to produce themselves you are going to run out of time quickly. 8000 complex systems is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast diversity on Earth, and there is no reason things would progress any faster because evolution has no need for it to.
The flip side to "the argument from incredulity" is "the argument from credulity". Darwinists are willing to believe anything, provided it is vaguely consistenmt with their theory of mutation and selection.
ReplyDelete"The flip side to "the argument from incredulity" is "the argument from credulity". Darwinists are willing to believe anything, provided it is vaguely consistent with their theory of mutation and selection."
ReplyDeleteI just thought that this statement bares repeating.
Also, in terms of the "anything but intelligence" theory-grasping of evolutionary biologists, "vaguely consistent" is a very generous choice of words for the types of illogical non-scientific statements faith in Darwinism regularly induces.
Hi Dr Hunter!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to your previous blog entry. Its pretty sad that you don't understand building and testing models as part of the scientific enterprise. Which is something Zachriel called you on in the very first response to that OP. Same old, same old.
nanobot74 said...
ReplyDeleteso are you saying that a fruit fly is as intelligent as you?
=======================
No, he was trying to tell you how complex it is!
Hi Brandon! You said:
ReplyDelete"So as animals continued to evolve, they would have had fewer opportunities to get things right as time went on, yet diversification only sped up. Curious."
I'd be interested to see your references for evolution speeding up. The only such ramp up I can think of relates to the discovery of sex. Other changes in number of species or higher taxa mostly happen around new niches opening up (as in after a meteor strike) which isn't evolution speeding up.
I agree that humans are relatively longlived, which is why we get outmaneuvered by bacteria, malaria, and flu viruses. But you can't generalize from our situation, since we are a very atypical species.
"It can be assumed that many of these complex systems would have to wait in line, if you will, for their usefulness to be apparent (for example feathers will do you no good unless you have an arm with the right kind of bone for flight)."
If I recall the paper correctly, Nilsson and Pelger do actually assume only kind of change happens in each generation - they don't allow for multiple things to change at once. This is sort fighting with one hand tied behind your back, since contra your assumption, populations are testing changes in parallel all the time. You're further assuming exaptation doesn't exist, that feathers are only good for flying. But they can also keep the body warm and perform sexual signalling. Which came first? The point here is that any of them could have first, and then feathers are available to be recruited for some other job.
"In terms of the evolutionary history on this planet, that leaves you about 8000 sets of 500,000 years to get this done, and if many of these features are taking that long to produce themselves you are going to run out of time quickly."
The opposite is true. Allowing features to evolve in parallel over 8,000 cycles of innovation, I definitely should have zoom lens eyeballs and fiber optic nerves! And sharks should have lasers on their foreheads!!1! Nilsson and Pelger is fodder for an evolution critic to ask "Well if that is the case, why is evolution so slow?" The answer is that evolution really does run up to local optima in adaptive landcapes and then get stuck there, at the _local_ limit of physics and chemistry.
"8000 complex systems is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast diversity on Earth,..."
Even in your analysis where each species only gets 8000 complex things (not 8000 cycles of complex things evolving in parallel), each species can get a different 8000 compared to the next species. Diversity is not a challenge. But stop to try to count the number of complex systems you really have in your body. You only have about 250 cell types. Each cell has the same basic biochemistry. 8000 complex things covers a lot of ground!
David vun Kanno,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. Three things.
1. It does cover a lot of ground. I guess the question is how much ground needs to be covered? Is 8000 mutational cycles sufficient for all of the diversity of life on this planet? I venture to say that the firm answer is that it does not. Sure all of the types of cells have the same basic biochemistry, but their implementation can be vastly differentiated. When this level of differentiation is found in the same organism, then the level of diversification you find across different species, especially species of different Phyla, is enormous.
2. "we are a very atypical species."
We are atypical in many ways, but we are not so atypical in others. If there is a spectrum of life cycle lengths and reproduction speed, are humans so atypical? Take the class of mammals for example (a fairly large class with a lot of diversity). In terms of the original comparison to the life cycle of flies, or even to a more extremem extent, some bacteria, higher lifeforms like mammals are far more skewed towards the human side of things than the extremely short bacterial life cycle or fly life cycle that is more conducive to evolutionary change by blind chance and natural selection.
A conservative estimate of all the mammals in existence puts their average reproduction generation at two years. That is a full 70,000x longer than the average Ecoli bacteria's generation (time between division given adequate nutrition). You find this same process as you develop into more and more complex organisms across the map. As these systems get bigger and more complex, their generational period slows, their mutations are more heavily scrutinized by internal mechanisms, and their propensity for change is lessened to the point that only minor changes (like the beaks of Darwin's Galapagos birds) are plausible by natural selection.
In essence, evolution by natural selection (the push towards fitter and more complex organisms) foils the theory itself. As the the theory is put under higher demands the further along you go down the timeline, its own creations are slowing it down, not allowing the progression needed to end up where we are today.
3. To get around this, you need information in place to direct this process in a way that can get around the sheer mathematical improbability. That information, fortunately enough, is found in DNA. Neo-Darwinian theory has absolutely no scientifically credible evidence for how that information, the information needed for the diversity we observe today, to have evolved in an undirected fashion.
There is one theory that has an explanation. As Science has always been meant to be the study of truth, (lets remember that methodological naturalism is a relatively new development) why not consider it. What has happened is that science has become ill. When science is health, it seeks to discover truth and follow the evidence where it leads to further our understanding of the world around us. What we have today is not healthy science, at least not in biology. Biology has become the study of things that prove Darwinian evolution is a fact.
4. (I know I said three but I just though of this). "Allowing features to evolve in parallel" This would really help. If things could all be happening in parallel and the evolutionary changes could be knocked out in groups, then the time limits on evolution wouldn't be as much of a problem (though they would still be somewhat of a problem). However, that is not the case. Once you reach multicellular organization, too many systems are interconnected and rely on each other for function. This means that systems can't just go on evolving in parallel at their very own pace. Many of these parts must be present at the exactly same time and place to form the complexity we see today.
Hi Brandon,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the response. You wrote:
"As these systems get bigger and more complex, their generational period slows, their mutations are more heavily scrutinized by internal mechanisms, and their propensity for change is lessened to the point that only minor changes (like the beaks of Darwin's Galapagos birds) are plausible by natural selection."
I think that is correct. The whole lesson of Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" is how much has stayed the same for the last couple of hundred million years! All of tetrapod evolution has just been tinkering around the edges of a set of proteins and developmental programs that are really ancient. As your analysis using evolutionary assumptions shows, we are stuck with this old stuff because our chances to change it have slowed down as our bodies grew bigger.
"However, that is not the case. Once you reach multicellular organization, too many systems are interconnected and rely on each other for function."
Thankfully, that isn't quite the case. The eye and the liver are pretty much independent systems, and can vary in parallel (for example).
I know that the following limps because it is not natural selection but to get the whole evolution thing a little bit out of the shadow of impossibility look at dogs. There are big once, small once, very small once, and very big once of all shapes and colors. There is the Great Dane and also the Chihuahua. They all evolved from wolves of some sort simply through humans selecting for particular trades. We know this because we did it. Depending on which trades were selected, the outcomes are completely different. Speciation takes place if they no longer can naturally mate and produce viable offspring. I don’t know if it is possible to let a Great Dane naturally mate with a Chihuahua and get them to produce viable offspring. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is very unlikely. So, I would say that there is even at least something already going on toward speciation. If we can facilitate this, why should this not be possible through natural selection? We can even see it in nature. Species can change if they are under selection pressure. Different selection pressures have the outcome that a species will change in different directions depending on which trade gives them the best chance of survival. It is not just mutation that facilitates this, but also all sorts of other mechanism which lead to phenotypic variability within a species and with this to a variability of the chance of survival in different environments. It is correct that Darwin didn’t get the whole story. Today we know much more about all this. One important thing is that there is a difference between genotype and phenotype. There are also different alleles of genes. Some are dominant others are recessive. The recessive once can be carried on even if they would not alow survival. However, if the environment changes and such recessive gene does now allow survival, a change of the species is possible in no-time. Also, there are genes that facilitate that two individuals with the same genotype can have totally different phenotypes depending on environmental conditions. There are different alleles of those genes that allow such phenotypic plasticity so that some individuals show more plasticity than others. This can be, depending on the environment, beneficial or detrimental. Again, natural selection will lead to the survival of the fittest and depending on the environment, one or the other will be selected for and so on and on and on. There is so much more to the story than simply mutation. It is complex, totally fascinating, and it is real. What is the problem with it?
ReplyDeleteBrandon, Doublee,
ReplyDeleteTo help out our discussion of Nilsson and Pelger, on the drive home tonight I worked out the following developmental sketch of building an eye from a very basic starting point, a cell at the tip of a nerve, just touching the outer skin of a developing animal. I hope you like it!
OK, lets try to build an eye!
As a target our eye will be a ball of cells, roughly sperical, about 1,000 cells in radius. A ball of cells that size is just under 2^32 cells (4 gigacells, FWIW). The surface area of one hemisphere (about 6 and a quarter megacells) will be the retina.
Starting from one 'stem cell', we would have to double the cells 32 times. Since we can count up to 32 in 5 bits, we can use 5 cell signals to handle growing the ball of cells.
In addition we want to keep track of where we started (the tip of a nerve, lets say), so we nned another signal to create a gradient from the nerve ending to the surface of the body. We'll also want a gradient that goes from the center of the ball outwards.
The stem cells can differentiate into pigment cells, opsin cells, or crystallin cells.
After 32 doublings, the back hemisphere surface of the ball expresses the dark pigment (and recruits some blood vessels and more nerve endings). The pigment layer prevents light from entering the eye from the back, which might happen if the rest of the animal's body is thin or transparent.
The next inward layer of cells from these pigment cells differeniates into opsin loaded retinal cells that will transduce the light entering the eye from the front.
The lens forms at the far end of the gradient that began at the nerve ending.
Once the lens, retina, and pigment layer have formed, the rest of the cells in the interior of the ball get the signal to die, and thus form the clear ocular fluid.
So the basic substance of the eye can be made with less than a dozen signals and a stem cell that can differentiate into three daughter types, each of which specializes in producing one of three proteins.
The nerves that attach to the retina also need to be patterned. A very simple pattern can be created with two gradients (up-down, and left-right), but you could also overlay that with a counter based gradient. With 10 signals, we can count up to 1,000 (2^10 = 1024). We'll need 20 signals then, 10 for each axis. These same signals can get reused in the brain, where we will lay out a pattern of nerves that matches the pattern at the back of the retina, and makes the transduced image available to the rest of the brain for further processing.
That is a brief sketch. It assumes the genetic signalling and protein making functions are already available, what is really evolving is the developmental network.
It is not 500,000 years. Look up the paper.
ReplyDeleteIt would take less than 364000 years for a camera eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch. The first fossil evidence of animals with eyes dates back to the early Cambrian, roughly 550 Ma ago The time passed since then is enough for eyes to evolve more than 1500 times!
Now, recalculate eye evolvement for drosophila to get at least the math right assuming a live cycle of 6 weeks.
This would give 41.208 years for an eye to evolve from an eye patch
UPS, something got lost here. It would take less than 364000 generations!! That means for an organism with a life cycle of 1 year it would take 364000 years. Now the recalculation makes sense
ReplyDelete"That's why I call this kind of argument the Peckerhead argument. The hope is that you can disprove evolution by finding some really complicated biological system, and persuading people that, intuitively, "We all know" (WAK) that could never evolve."
ReplyDeleteThe problem is for evolutionists is not only that creationists and ID proponents have offered challenges to various evolutionary theories, it that's evolutionists have yet to offer believable explanations comparable to those in other scientific disciplines.
One doesn't have to accept ID or creation in order to see evolutionists haven't made logical arguments comparable to arguments used to support REAL scientific theories like electro magnetism or statistical mechanics or quantum mechanics.
To quote Jerry Coyne, "In science's pecking order evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics." Amen!
OK, use an internet search, search for scientific articles about speciation or anything that "claims" to show evolution in action. This includes anything that shows changes in species over time. Read the articles, and convince yourself that there is no evidence for that evoltuion is not real. Do the real thing and not just go with everything others say. Just pick some articles. If there is anything that you can't read just ask me I can lead you to scientific books and other scientific resources where you can find explanations so that you are not dependent on just going with what I say. Be curious, ask questions, be open for new ideas and be fair to what scientists can or can not prove. We do not know everything, correct, but we do know enough to show that evolution happens using the scientific method. There are tons of matetial out there to study. Do it just for fun it is exciting, fascinating, and realy interesting.
ReplyDeleteSomething that is a bit off track. Just to make sure that my interpretations are correct. I am not quite sure that I understand particular terms correctly. (English is not my first larguage and I am not used to the mindset of the US, so there might be some misunderstanding going on)
ReplyDeleteWhat is an Evolutionist?
What is an Evolutionary Biologist?
What are their goals, what are they doing, what are their methods in the eyes of the public within the US? For me it is a bit confusing and I think that I have some misperceptions. I would like to get that sorted out.
Salvador:
ReplyDelete"One doesn't have to accept ID or creation in order to see evolutionists haven't made logical arguments comparable to arguments used to support REAL scientific theories like electro magnetism or statistical mechanics or quantum mechanics."
An elementary error, Sal. Scientific theories are not supported by logical arguments but by empirical evidence. You seem to confuse science with apologetics.
How's that physics degree coming?
"An elementary error, Sal. Scientific theories are not supported by logical arguments but by empirical evidence."
ReplyDeleteThis is false. 'Empirical evidence' doesn't speak for itself--it must be interpreted, which requires logical argumentation.
give me a scientific paper that talks about evolution and then tell me what is you think is wrong with it. I will read it and we will talk about it. How is that for a plan? Then we don't just use hand waving like arguments, but can talk about concrete failures of scientists if they actually do exist. This is the chance for you to get questions answered which naturally arise if a non-scientists tries to read one of those highly scientific articles unfortunately only those can understand who had high level college Biology courses. This always bothers me but it is really difficult to write such articles because the Journals have word limitations so that it is impossible to start at low level and then still gets all the info in that in required to give enough evidence for current results.
ReplyDeleteBryan:
ReplyDelete"This is false. 'Empirical evidence' doesn't speak for itself--it must be interpreted, which requires logical argumentation."
If you mean that raw data usually undergoes statistical analysis, sure. But the results of such analyses still qualify as empirical evidence, and a set of hypotheses doesn't become a theory until supported by plenty of such evidence. No amount of logical argumentation can substitute for evidence as support. At least not in science.
Or, if that's not what you had in mind, perhaps you could enlighten us with an apropos example of "interpretation" of empirical evidence.
Salvador wrote:
ReplyDeleteThe problem is for evolutionists is not only that creationists and ID proponents have offered challenges to various evolutionary theories, it that's evolutionists have yet to offer believable explanations comparable to those in other scientific disciplines.
First, science continually challenges existing theories. This is how science works. In fact, evolutionarily theory has been challenged for over 150 years.
As such, your claim that challenges from creationists and IDists represent some kind of unique problem for evolution indicates you do not know how science works, or that you think you have a solution to the problem of induction.
Second, the problem is that you lack a way to differentiate between good explanations and bad explanations. Especially when they conflict with your religious beliefs.
Bryan,
ReplyDeleteWhat is the logical argument for why over 95% of all intelligently designed species have gone extinct?
What is the logical argument as to why an intelligent designer would intentionally route the laryngeal nerve as seen in the following video?
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2010/06/richard_dawkins_21.html
I am sad, nobody is brave enough to actually picking a real paper to talk about so the hand haveing would finaly stop. But maybe this is the purpose of the whole thing....
ReplyDeleteScott said...
ReplyDeleteBryan,
What is the logical argument for why over 95% of all intelligently designed species have gone extinct?
What is the logical argument as to why an intelligent designer would intentionally route the laryngeal nerve as seen in the following video?
I'd just like the IDC crowd here to explain the logic for why the Intelligent Designer set up predator/prey relationships at all. Why design certain species of animal (gazelles, antelopes) with great speed to avoid being eaten, then turn around and design other species (lions, crocodiles) with all the tools to kill and eat the first species every chance they get? Why would a designer create caterpillars, then design a species of parasitic wasp that burrows into the caterpillars and eats them alive from the inside out?
Anyone? Are there multiple designers competing against each other?
emil said...
ReplyDeleteI am sad, nobody is brave enough to actually picking a real paper to talk about so the hand haveing would finaly stop. But maybe this is the purpose of the whole thing....
Why would you expect Intelligent Design Creationism pushers to actually read scientific papers when IDC isn't about science? Taking time to actually understand what they're blithering about would only show down the steady stream of empty rhetoric that is their only output.
I actually don't expect them to do so, but I would be happy to be wrong and to bet surprised. Much like I don't mind, as a researcher to get surprised and to figure out that my hypothesis is wrong. I prooved myself so many times wrong the last two years, you have no idea.... The final outcome though was always highly productive.
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess I am, by accident, collecting evidence for that all this is truely just retorical bla bla about Evolution doesn't provide evidence. I mean, show me where exactly. Put the finger onto it. It seems like they just can't. OH MAN
Brandon wrote:
ReplyDelete"Is 8000 mutational cycles sufficient for all of the diversity of life on this planet?"
Do you not understand the meaning of the term "parallel," Brandon?
Are you one of those goofballs who views evolution as a ladder instead of a tree or bush? Note that this view is independent of whether you accept evolutionary theory or not.
Salvador,
ReplyDelete"One doesn't have to accept ID or creation in order to see evolutionists haven't made logical arguments comparable to arguments used to support REAL scientific theories like electro magnetism or statistical mechanics or quantum mechanics."
Please, Please, I beg you. Give me an example where scientists failed to back up a claim they made in a scientific paper not sufficient enough in your oppinion. And explain me why. Sorry, I just can't give up. I know I am talking against a wall. Well, I am used to that I have teens... Its the same deal they are convinced that they know everything but actually there is absolute no foundation.
OK, last call. If nobody picks a primary resarch paper within the next few days and points out where exactly the mistake is in the oppinion of the ICD crowd, I think I will start the Journal Club. I realy wanted to avoid this because then everybody will start screeming at me that I picked my top canidate for doing such thing....
ReplyDeleteEmil, the IDiots aren't scientists and won't read your papers. This blog is always the same Nuremberg Rally, hating on the scientists, conspiracy theories, creationist just-so stories and ignorance about information theory.
ReplyDeleteIDiot: For evolution to be true, X must happen. But X has never been observed.
Scientist [e.g. NickM or SteveC]: Here are 3 published scientific papers where X was observed. Could you at least read one paper? Pleeease?
IDiot: Scientists are militant atheists! For evolution to be true, Y must happen. But Y has never been observed.
Scientist: Here are 4 published scientific papers where Y was observed. Could you at least read the abstracts from? Pleeease? The abstracts are short, I promise.
IDiot: Population genetics disproves evolution!
Scientist: To show population genetics is consistent with evolution, here's a cutting-edge paper published in... 1940... [sigh]
IDiot: Information theory disproves evolution!
Scientist: To show information theory is consistent with evolution, here's a cutting-edge paper published in... 1970... [double sigh]
IDiot: Haldane's dilemma! Scientists have never addressed that! It's cutting edge. Scientists are dumb as a box of rocks!
Scientist: 1970 paper
IDiot: Statistical mechanics disproves evolution! I'm smarter than Einstein!
Scientist: OK, what's the logic behind that? Have you got a published paper demonstrating that? Could you write down an equation showing how statistical mechanics disproves evolution?
IDiot: Atheists believe in the crocoduck! You believe beautiful children are just retarded fish-frogs! I'm smarter than Watson and Crick!
Gary- "Statistical mechanics is not something they have ever understood as having profound implications in biology."
ReplyDeleteLook IDiot, I'm not even going to ask you for the equation behind that. You'll never cough up the equation. You just fart and dart, as Thorton said. When we ask you to explain the fart, you'll dart.
But as for stat mech: they're scientists. They know more stat mech than you, moron. All molecular biologists know stat mech at some level and THEY ALL KNOW MORE THAN YOU. They have to to understand protein folding, protein-substrate binding, and esp. molecular dynamics.
AND THEY HAVE TO APPLY IT! YOU DON'!
Again we see, ID and creationism are just about egomania.
ID, creationism, UFOlogy, crop circle-ology, Bible Code, are all pseudoscientific attempts at "detecting invisble intelligences who behave in irrational ways and are thus unpredictable."
And all these invisible intelligence-based pseudosciences have as one of their main theses: "I'm smarter than all the world's scientists!"
What next? You pour contempt on the world's scientists because you can do long division, and you say none of the world's scientists can divide?
Brandon Pope:
ReplyDelete...information is the source of intelligence processes (like reaction to a burning stove), and the only source of information is intelligence...
...Neo-Darwinian theory has absolutely no scientifically credible evidence for how that information, the information needed for the diversity we observe today, to have evolved in an undirected fashion.
You know nothing about information theory. Seriously, nothing. Information is routinely produced by natural processes--indeed, just about all particle interactions.
In REAL information theory (not Dembski's river of unproven metaphysical assertions), i.e. Claude Shannon's information theory, there are two relevant quantities: uncertainity, and mutual information.
Mutual information is the reduction of uncertainty in property X given that you know Y. It is a measure of the CORRELATION of X and Y.
If X is correlated with Y, then X encodes information about X, and vice versa. Got it?
So natural processes create REAL INFORMATION all the time.
The size of a footprint on the beach encodes information about the size of the foot that made it.
The bubbles trapped in arctic ice contain information about the ancient climate when the air bubble was trapped (because the ratio of isotopes in air is correlated with temperature.)
So to repeat: no intelligence needed to create REAL information, in Shannon's theory.
As for how evolution produces information, HOW MANY TIMES do we have to tell you to read Schneider's paper on the ev algorithm?
ALL natural processes produce information. In the specific example of evolution, the basic process is: random mutation, natural selection differentially amplifies the beneficial mutations and de-amplifies the detrimental mutations; another random mutation; repeat, repeat...
The mutation step introduces NO information. The natural selection step introduces a CORRELATION between the advantageousness of the mutant allele, and the proportion of individuals in a population with the beneficial allele. The "information" in the genome is this correlation. Read Schneider's ev paper.
How many times do we have to say this before IDiots Listen!?
Please note that Brandon Pope seems to get his "science" for the age of the Earth from the dumbest Young Earth creationists--- looks like Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham and jailbird Kent Hovind to me.
ReplyDelete>> Such findings as the decay of the Earth's magnetic field, helium levels, the moon's trajectory, abrupt gaps and "evolutionary" leaps in the fossil record, etc. are some examples of that age the earth in a way that allows insufficient time for definitional Darwinian evolution to have occurred without outside intelligent influence. <<
Apparently Young Earth creationist Bible-science for the age of the Earth.
The "Earth's decaying magnetic field" argument refers to the creatard arguments that said magnetic field decays exponentially, so you estimate the age of the earth by assuming B0 halves every 5000 years or so, and looking back in time, B0 must double for each 5000 years you go back; in which case merely 200,000 years ago, B0 would be strong enough to pull the fillings out of your teeth.
Now, real science: The Earth's dipole field is decaying, but it isn't decaying exponentially. Creatards only look at the dipole field, ignore the quadrupole field etc. which are increasing. Even if B0 is decaying now, we know B0 didn't increase exponentially in the past; it OSCILLATED, as we know from magnetization in ancient lava flows.
By "helium levels" Pope is presumably referring to the creatard RATE project's measurements of helium diffusion, which idiotically ignored cracks in the rocks, through which helium might escape, and TRULY idiotically assumed a constant temperature for the rock even when buried far beneath the Earth's crust and got super-heated. (Also ignores the super-heating that would result from THEIR OWN creatard theory that during Noah's flood, all continental plates skated around faster than Apollo Ono, which would have cooked Noah's family.)
By "the moon's trajectory", Pope presumably means the creatard argument that the Moon is getting farther away from the Earth, and X millions year ago it would be much closer. This ignored that the slowing of the Moon's period is due to energy sucked away by tidal motion on Earth, which is currently at resonance and WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN when the Moon was closer several million years ago.
Seriously, Brandon, where DID you get your science from? Answers in Genesis? Tell the truth.
Diagones,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. This summary saved me quite some time I think. It fits exactly my expectations.
What must it be to be a ID and read this. If the roles would be switched then I would vigerously disagree and then show that those presumptions are wrong and that I can do much better.
Needless to say that there is little chance that this will happen. I just wonder if this is due to a difference in Phenotype or Genotype? And how did this evolve? Would be interesting to examine this from an Evolutionary standpoint. Maybe even some speciation already occured? What do you think?
I got here by accident (actually not quite, but never mind). My duty was to read all this crap. At some point I just couldn't help myself and had to say something....
ReplyDeleteWell I don't have much experience with all this.
Something that jumpt into my face is that obviously IDiots have realy no idea how Science works. So, here is a Science 101 introduction quick course.
Before one publishes a scientific paper, this paper must go through several peerreviews. If you believe it or not, those are usually very harsh because nobody wants something out there that is not OK. It would harm the whole field of Science and nobody wants that. Yes, sometimes a bad paper slips through but at least the good Journals make sure that only stuff is published that is rock solid. Usually the reviewers are the big guys in the field and they will catch mistakes. Once a paper is final (at least in big Journals) there is probably no question that was not aske and then integrated into the paper in some way. The greatest fear of a Scientist is that after the paper is published somebody could come up with a question that would make the paper look like garbage and they do everything they can to avoid this - believe me.
It is a world of its own, driven by curiosity, questions, constructive critisism, and a desire of finding answers that is gooooogle times stronger than wanting to be right. It is a world that might be completely alient and unbelievable to you but, it does exist and it is beautiful bejond any imaginagion. I invite you to come and take a look, but please leave your weapons behind because they are not neccesary and do harm to this world. This is my love letter to science and how I practice it.
Emil, I agree with everything you wrote. Your description of "How Science Really Works" is beautiful and accurate.
ReplyDeleteBut, they won't believe you. They think science, as an institution, is a Stalinist dictatorship run by atheists. William Dembski and Jonathan Wells of the DI explicitly call it "Stalinist." They say scientists are genuinely stupid, and "religious" (atheist) fanatics, blinded by atheism, blah blah.
One of the main appeals of creationism, and many other pseudosciences, is the lure of believing you know more about EVERY science than all scientists-- you know more about astrophysics than those "atheist" astrophysicists, you know more about genetics than those "atheists" geneticists, and on and on and on, for every single science. All of them.
How can they think such a thing?
They usually prove the stupidity of scientists by using what I call "SAFI" arguments-- "Scientists Are Freaking Idiots!" A SAFI argument alleges that there exists some kind of OBVIOUS contradiction or paradox that scientists won't even admit exists! The dumber, the better. Such as: "If man evolved from monkeys, than why do monkeys still exist?" or "The 2nd. law of thermodynamics says entropy cannot decrease, so how can complex animals evolve" or Haldane's dilemma, etc. Of course, these "paradoxes" are easily refuted if you know any math.
The creationists love hearing that scientists have supposedly overlooked some freaking obvious contradiction. You see the appeal? If scientists have overlooked some really, really obvious "contradiction" (like entropy decrease), that means scientists are idiots and/or blinded by militant atheism.
Thus, any preacher, shyster lawyer, philosopher, or pathological liar of the DI can think himself smarter than ALL THE WORLD'S SCIENTISTS-- and thus, the preacher, shyster lawyer, philosopher, or pathological liar can know more about science than every scientist in the world WITHOUT KNOWING ANY SCIENTIFIC DATA AT ALL, OR DOING ANY RESEARCH.
Data? They don't need no stinkin' data!
Anyway Emil, nice to meet you.
diagones, I know. You know what, it doesn’t even make me angry. What it makes me is really really sad because they never get to experience the beauty of arealy good, fruitful, and refreshing conversation. They just miss out on so much beauty. Its really sad.
ReplyDeleteOK, for those who wonder what I am taking about. Compare the conversation pattern outlined by Diagones with this one:
Scientist 1: Hi how is it going. I did read you paper. I liked it but it seems like that there are a lot questions still to be answered.
Scientist 2: Yes, you are so right. I am working on that right now but I got stuck because…
Scientist 1: You know what, while I was reading the paper I was thinking……
Scientist 2: OH, What? I didn’t get that. What do you mean?
Scientist 1: You know……
Scientist 2: OH, I get it. You know what, that’s a good point. I totally missed that.
Scientist 1: OH, and there is another thing it is……
Scientist 2: Well, this was actually answered in the paper. We showed that……
Scientist 1: Oh yes, that was the part I didn’t quite understand. Can you explain me that.
Scientist 2: You see that is……….. Sorry, I guess we should have explained it a bit better.
Scientist 1: Now it makes sense. But what is with that……
And so on and on and on
Isn't that soooo much enoyable and better for the soul?
stupid dyslexia. I ment to write:
ReplyDeleteIsn’t that so much enjoyable and better for the soul?
emil, you are so right. It takes training to understand science, and when you understand it, you can appreciate its beauty.
ReplyDeleteUninformed criticism is hurtful, not because it is criticism, but because it is uninformed.
emil,
ReplyDeleteI agree with the gist of your posts, but your imaginary conversation between scientists is a bit misleading. It's often a lot more nasty than that. Scientists are humans, have egos and often take critique personally. Watch one of those Hitler and reviewer #3 youtube movies...
troy,
ReplyDeleteSorry, I couldn't find the movies with the information you provided. I am helpless when it comes to using the internet other than for searching for articles… Its really bad. However, yes, scientists are humans and humans fail at times.
It also depends on the field of science. In my field it is very friendly. Almost all of my conversations actually follow this pattern. However, even if there is some failure at times, the overall goal is what is important.
What worries me is that I can't find anything that is even close to that anywhere in this blog.
It is, as Pedant said not the criticism. It is how it is done. There is a huge difference between uninformed criticism and constructive informed criticism. One facilitates tearing people apart and creates problems, the other facilitates bringing people together to solve problem. My goal is bringing people together not tearing them apart.
Each single person has the power of choosing how we (want to) treat others around us and with this what we (want to) create around us: a warm comfortable productive place, or nasty chaos.
My life philosophy is: even if the world around me is as nasty as it can gets, I feel that I failed if I let myself get carried away and do the same because I allowed myself to become part of nastiness instead of trying to stop it. It is all a matter of life philosophy.
Here is something I would like to share. It is a true story. One time at a gathering, I was sitting at a round table together with Jews, different affiliations of Moslems, and Christians. I don't know how this happened, but somehow we started to share stories and discovered that there was more that we had in common than there was that made us different. It was a life changing experience.
Emil, what country do you work in? I'm assuming not the US. In the US, political controversies get brutal. (Evolution vs. creationism is not a scientific controversy.)
ReplyDeleteAnd what is your field, specifically?
In order to cheer up the real scientists here, I'm going to insert Richard Feynman's description of what separates real sciences from "cargo cult science." (He mean ideas filled with fancy jargon words, not tested by experiment.)
"Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re [cargo cult scientists] missing. ... there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—- we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty... For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—- not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your result; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—- to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
...Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—- if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong-— to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it.. then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it."
["Cargo Cult Science" from "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" p.310-311]
This is not just what leads to good scientific theories. It's also what keeps scientists from killing each other.
I love it!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd, it is so much fun to actually do it.
Well, I am in the US but our lab as well as the field is pretty much a microcosmos of the whole world. It is a little field (which is the reason why I don't say which for privacy reasons) where there is not much money, fame, or a big carrier. Well, others might be able to use the results to make big money (this is why we are funded), but in this case the only thing we would get are a couple of good citations... I am perfectly happy with this. It is the perfect spot for everybody who is scientist by heart. Those sort of accumulate there by magic. I wonder why....:) I wish it would be everywhere like that - and this not just in Science.
However, maybe it could be at least serve as an inspiration...?
I never understood why Evolution vs. Creationism is such a big deal in the US. Maybe some time I will find an explanation for that. For me as well as probably for many others who can't understand the issue behind this whole thing, it is very hard to find out how to react when unintentionally being draged into such discussions. It just feels like a different universe - a realy nasty one.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteemil said: "I never understood why Evolution vs. Creationism is such a big deal in the US. Maybe some time I will find an explanation for that."
ReplyDeleteAt the core it's because evolution vs. creationism is a religious matter for many people in the U.S., and since religion is such a large component of American culture, this makes it a political matter as well. There are many politicians who wouldn't be caught dead admitting that the earth is more than 6,000 years old, even if they fully know better, or else their constituents would give them the boot immediately.
It's a religious matter because it directly contradicts an historical reading of the first part of Genesis, which many people still hold to. (I guess we didn't learn our lesson with Psalm 93:1 and geocentricity) I don't even think it's that most Christians reject evolution, it's just that the ones who do are very, very vocal about it. Since almost all of a creationist's theology is built up around things like biological death being a direct consequence of original sin, or the "Fall", they see evolution, and in most cases even an old earth, as a refutation as their entire belief system. That's why they'll deny evolution till their dying breath; their entire framework for understanding reality depends on evolution not being true. (Most don't realize that you can modify frameworks for understanding reality to fit reality quite easily) Now, most of them would make the same charge against people who accept evolution; that we are only accepting it because it is 'required' of our 'belief' system. They genuinely seem to not be able to acknowledge the fact that people of every belief system under the sun accept evolution on rational grounds; theists, deists, atheists, buddhist, hindus, you name it, thus immediately refuting the claim that 'worldview' has something to do with it in all cases. Eocene goes so far to label me an atheist, even though I've made it very clear on many occasions that I'm a devout Christian.
The problem is, as you can see with people like Eocene, is that once this narrow "I'm right no matter what the 'evidence' says, cause I got me the Bible on my side" mentality takes hold, there is (usually) no point in using reason or evidence to change their minds; Any evidence for evolution is either 'faked' in in some global conspiracy theory, or as Cornelius says, "interpreted through the lens of metaphysics." I myself was once afflicted with this confirmation bias (due to mostly to my YEC upbringing) And looking back on it, it seems rather odd. Creationists think that because they have the 'right' interpretation of scripture, (even though there are many, many, versions of the 'right' interpretation, even among creationists) they know more about biology than every biologist, more about physics than every physicist, more about geology than every geologists, more about genetics than every geneticist, etc. You'd think that holding that kind of belief while at the same time watching scientists proving their grasp of respective fields by producing things like space ships, maps of the human genome, new medicine, and things like that, would cause some sort of cognitive dissonance, but sadly (and frighteningly) it doesn't. They just look around wonder how all these moron scientist are even still employed. In some cases the delusion is so severe that they think that the world would be better off without science. Eocene attributes many of the world's ills to evolutionary biologists alone. I've seen many creationists make the snide rhetorical question: "what has science ever done for us?"