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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
 Posted - 04/19/2008 : 6:02:39 PM
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EricB, let's go through a simplified scenario:
- - gene gets mutated a puppy has wings
- - this mutation doesn't immediately kill the puppy due to some metabolic imbalance or getting stuck in the birth canal with wings
- - puppy born (and boy is he cute w/four legs and two wings)
- - puppy has wings but no software to use wings
- - useless wings slow puppy down so that he doesn't get food and starves
- - okay puppy doesn't starve lives to doghood and finds a mate (it's like every geeks dream)
- - gene doesn't get passed down and mutation dies right there
- - okay mutation gets passed down until we have lots of four legged winged dogs running because they still can't fly
- - suddenly another mutation pops up that allows the dogs to actually fly or even glide and we have to hope the trait gets passed down
Time, chance, and natural selection can't hide the improbability of the scenario. Darwinism made some sense when science only saw cells as blobs of matter and information theory didn't exist. Now you have the chicken and the egg problem. Also you supposedly have things like eyes evolving separately multiple times. Which means these mutations popped up several times in different species. At some point the improbabilities of these things mean the theory is wrong and not that it just needs adjusted again. It's like the astronomers who had the sun going around the earth and had complex adjustments to explain mistakes in their theory.
- Si desea pulse 2 para español, encontrar un país diferente. - |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 06:25:43 AM
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quote:
gene gets mutated a puppy has wings
- this mutation doesn't immediately kill the puppy due to some metabolic imbalance or getting stuck in the birth canal with wings
- puppy born (and boy is he cute w/four legs and two wings)
- puppy has wings but no software to use wings
- useless wings slow puppy down so that he doesn't get food and starves
- okay puppy doesn't starve lives to doghood and finds a mate (it's like every geeks dream)
- gene doesn't get passed down and mutation dies right there
- okay mutation gets passed down until we have lots of four legged winged dogs running because they still can't fly
- suddenly another mutation pops up that allows the dogs to actually fly or even glide and we have to hope the trait gets passed down
Um, that't not how evolution by natural selection works. This is what get's my ire. If you want to critique a theory at least understand what the theory actual says. So, how would a dog evolve to fly?
First of all, why did you ignore my post on the evolution of other animals with wings? As I said it is not necessary for an animal to evolve a whole new set of appendages to fly only to modify pre-existing ones. How could dog fly? Well, a lot of factors need to happen but it is not impossible. So:
A small dog (it would have to be small as a larger animal would have trouble evolving flight) is born with some extra skin flaps on his legs. It's neutral mutation neither helping nor harming it so it survives to produce offspring.
In the meantime the environment is changing and food on the ground is becoming harder harder to come by but there is plenty in the trees so all of these small dogs (including the ones with the extra skin flaps) have to start climbing to get at food. So the environment exerts pressure for the dogs to produce offspring who can climb. And, guess what, suddently, for the smallest of the dogs who have them, the skin flaps come in handy. They can go from tree to tree without having to go to the ground. Initially it may start out as merely jumping but with evironmental pressure now favoring those dogs with skin flaps so offspring who have larger flaps have an advantage over the ones with smaller flaps and ones with no flaps at all. So you might have a small dog that may look something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_squirrel
It would take a pretty long period of time to get to even this point, but with the enviroment now favoring small dogs with skin flaps other evironmental changes over the next few 100,000 years or so could result in dogs that are capable of powered flight. They might look something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_bat
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 07:03:01 AM
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"This is where the discussion delves into a comparison of worldviews. What you are describing is a materialistic (i.e. material is all there is) worldview which in the end is self-refuting.
Let me just conclude by saying that allowing that someone, supernatural or not, created us as some point in time is not going to bring science to a halt. It was moving along quite well before evolution popped up"
Science is a tool for explaining the natural world. It is not a "world view." I can be a "world view" and some make it such but does not have to be one (see the links I made to famous paleontologists who are also Christian). Science as a tool works on the assumption that the world can be explained by natural phenomona and by natural laws. Also theories must based on evidence, you can't ask scientist to accept a theory that has no evidence (such a proposition would not merit the name "theory" or even "hypothesis" probably just a "cunjecture"). Since you can't have a scientific theory without any evidence how would one posit a supernatural (who by definintion is unabservable) being who can break the laws of nature on whim? That would be a chaotic universe and science wouldn't work in a chaotic universe. With an invisible and undetectable being able to intervene at every instant to fiddle with the laws of nature one could not really posit anything with any degree of confidence.
That is science the tool. Question everything all the time (which is also happening with evolution theory no matter what Ben Stein says). Theories must be supported by evidence or they must be abandoned. Over the last 3 centuries this method has shown that it works. The evidence is all around us. Why would we want to change it now? Micheal Behe himself acknowedged that we would have to redefine what science is in order to accept ID as science. So should we expand the definitionscience to include astrology, alchemy, phrenology and assorted New Age fluff? They would all love that as they could posit all sorts of conjectures without any evidence and rise in the public sphere and given equal time to nuclear physicists and molecular biologists. Unlike the humanities and social sciences Science has to date resisted the post-modernization of its field. Acceptance if ID would end that.
The thing is, Dawkins and his friends notwithstanding, science can neither prove nor disprove the existance of God (which is what both IDers and athiest want to do with it). I simple don't see the problem.
If course one should be free to critique materialism as a philosophy but you should do that in the proper place, a philosophy department under the philoshophy of science. I'm sure there will be plenty "darwinists" who would join you in that critique.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Asta Kask
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Sweden
263 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 07:07:01 AM
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Originally posted by Terrahawk
In the end Shaw's theory comes down to that you get complex, unpredictable behavior from simple rules interacting with one another. However, that doesn't explain how you get a coherent DNA strand that interacts with the necessary biological components to create a self-replicating cell. Constantly run a magnet over your HD and no matter how long you try, you will never end up with the Gettysburg Address unless it was there to start with. Information Theory is all about limiting chaos (or random/additional factors) because chaos disrupts useful creation and transmission of data. Although it may seem like it sometimes, Microsoft doesn't try to create operating systems that allow chaos.
I suggest you read the Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins writes a program that mimics natural selection, selecting for likeness to "Methinks it's like a weasel." By spawning mutated copies and selection, a completely random string gets to the sentence in 40 generations.
The Gettysburg address is 54 times longer, so it will take more generations, but I would be very surprised if the number of generations were more than 5 000. If someone who understands evolution wishes to write the program and test it, it would be interesting.
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
Time doesn't matter it the process is inherently impossible. Hoyle's tornado and 737 illustration comes to mind. That's why Hoyle proposed life starting somewhere else.
But Hoyle's tornado misses the very point of evolution. He has left out the selection process!
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
The problem with it is that whole new species appear without any predecessors. That's why Gould proposed his theory of punctuated equilibrium.
No, he proposed it to explain why the fossil record was patchy. And they don't appear without any predecessors. We have fossils and traces from before the Cambrian explosion, but they are very rare. The reason is that hard parts evolved during the "explosion." No hard parts means that fossils become much rarer.
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
This is where the discussion delves into a comparison of worldviews. What you are describing is a materialistic (i.e. material is all there is) worldview which in the end is self-refuting.
Nope. This is Ken Miller's and Francis Collin's standpoint, and they are both believing Christians.
quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
Let me just conclude by saying that allowing that someone, supernatural or not, created us as some point in time is not going to bring science to a halt. It was moving along quite well before evolution popped up.
First of all, if someone who is not supernatural created us then you have only moved the problem one step. Second, if someone who is supernatural created us, then all questions stop there. You can still investigate other things, but you limit yourself enormously.
Here's an example of what we now know, based on evolution:
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk[/url]
Without the theory of evolution, we wouldn't even have looked, would we?
Intelligent Design is an attempt to reintroduce Creationism into public schools ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document[/url]). This is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. Anyone who values the U.S. Constitution should reject the teaching of ID.
I would also like to point out that scientists are free to criticize Darwin. Many people do - people like Joan Roughgarden (Stanford University), Lynn Margulis (Massachusetts University), and William Provine (Cornell University). None of these scientists have been expelled, or shunned, or persecuted. Why? Because they do good science.
- Who is John Galt? - |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 07:15:41 AM
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Terrahawk, you should check out Evolutionary Development. It's a fairy new field that explores the evolution of body plans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo-devo
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 07:28:52 AM
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Oh, and while Ernst Haeckel may have come up with the original idea the modern theory has little do do with him. Creationists love to talk about him for some reason.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 09:52:17 AM
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I don't think an IDer would find this narrative disturbing at all. ID doesn't dispute natural selection and mutation which is what you described. ID disputes that NS and mutation are sufficient to explain things like DNA, eyesight, gender, the Cambrian explosion, new body structures (wings, etc), etc.
You didn't answer my question though. How would an IDer explain the how and why of the narrative I described. Macroevolution by natural selection explains it rather simply. It is the story of two lineages of vertebrates evolving in reaction to changes in the enviromnent. Since we are talking of animals of roughly equal complexity your information theory caveat is moot. There were three main innovations in the Triassic, upright posture and bipedalism (dinosaurs and crocodilians), flight (pterosaurs) and the mammalian middle ear. None of these innovations involve adding information, they all simply modified pre-existing features. We even have a good fossil record of the tranformation of the basal synapsid jaw joint into the mammalian middle ear including a skull in a transitional stage with two jaw joints on each side.
Now for a scientific theory to have practical value it must explain the data were have better then the theory it is contesting. So, since they reject macroevolution via natural selection how would an IDist explain the how and why of the faunal changes I described in the earlier post? They must not only show why their explanation is better for the narrative as a whole but for each stage. How did these creatures evolve? Did the creator design them individually each step of the way because of environmental changes? If so just how did they originate? Did they just pop into existence from nothing or did the creator transform them form earlier creatures? How did he do this? In other words, what is the mechanism for the changes we see and why is the ID mechanism a better explanation than natural selection?
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 1:06:25 PM
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If you stopped the average person on the street, and you asked them to make a convincing argument for Evolution as the only possible explaination for the world as we know it, could they do it? My guess is they'd just repeat some information that they vaguely remember from biology class. The average person probably has a very elementary knowledge of the actual mechanics of evolution, and accepts evolution "on faith"; The Authorities give some scraps of info and a chart showing Amoebas, Apes, Troglodytes and Humans marching in single file, and that's good enough for the general population.
My point is that people accept "science" like they would a religion; they may not understand (or know)the specifics of a particular theory but they "know" it's true because The Scientist says it's true. It's socially acceptable for someone to laugh at someone who believes in I.D., and call them a knuckle-dragging moron, but many people who'd be doing the laughing might be guilty of a "Faith-based" belief in Evolution.
I'm not aligned with any particular religion, but I don't dismiss the possibility that some outside force may have influenced the developement of life on earth. I'm definitely not an expert on Evolution (Yes, I'm one of the goofballs who got my meager knowledge from public school and PBS programs), but what I know about it doesn't give me the confidence to say "Yep, that's 100% EXACTLY the way it happened!".
Rob |
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TheFoywonder
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
833 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 2:07:36 PM
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Every review I've read of Ben Stein's documentary says it's less interested in making a case for ID and more interested in playing up the sob stories of ID proponents who've been ostracized by the scientific community. Do we really need a movie to point out that there are evolutionary scientists and atheists out there every bit as militant in their beliefs as their most strident religious counterparts? People can be arrogant jerks? Who'd have thunk it? I thought that went without question. Heck, you could make a similar documentary about how scientists that research Bigfoot have gotten the same treatment. Then again, I doubt such a Bigfoot documentary would feature scenes of the documentary's host visiting Darwin's grave while ominous music plays and comparisons to Hitler are made.
Now Playing in Foyeurism at Foywonder.com: NEVER BACK DOWN - Much like the martial arts, the film's messages are also mixed
Plus: B-WARE THE BLOG is alive at http://www.livejournal.com/users/foywonder |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 3:16:10 PM
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Well, I've been staying out of this but what the hey; I'll add my two hundredths of a dollar. First up, I'm an agnostic who strongly doubts the existence of any god, and if there is one I would tend to think it's of the Deistic type. Richard Dawkins would call me an atheist probably. Second, I believe evolution and I disbelieve any type of ID or Creationist explanation for our origin. Third, I believe Ben Stein is an extremely intelligent and genuinely decent person, he's just wearing blinders when it comes to a few subjects. I agree with him about many things. I disagree strongly on a few others and they are pretty much all invariably tied to religion as far as I can remember. I haven't seen the film and I haven't read any detailed reviews so my comments are based on what impressions I have from cursory glances at people talking about it (I haven't even bothered reading this thread to any exacting degree).
That said, while I obviously am not receptive to the film's pro ID slant, I feel I might well be swayed by its contention that there is a certain orthodoxy in the Halls Of Learning to certain ideas and that scientists and especially teachers are not always as impartial and receptive to objectivity as they make themselves out to be. That he chooses a bad (IMO) subject to try and make the case does not in and of itself invalidate the idea. I, for instance, might agree if he had chosen global warming and man's impact as a part of it as the focus of the film and not some religious argument.
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
Edited by - Sardu on 04/20/2008 3:21:37 PM |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 3:20:41 PM
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Oh and one more thing- once again the Jabootu forum should get the Internet Legion Of Decency Award (created just this minute, by me) for non-inflammatory good-spirited respectful discussion of one of the most contentious subjects in all web-dom. Yay us! *g*
"Meeting you makes me want to be a real noodle cook"
--Tampopo |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 3:38:37 PM
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Well, I'd imagine that creatures that can withstand such senses battering onslaughts like FREDDY GOT FINGERED and walk away with their intellect intact would have a highly developed level of tolerance.
Rob |
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Paul LoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 4:13:34 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Asta Kask
I suggest you read the Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins writes a program that mimics natural selection, selecting for likeness to "Methinks it's like a weasel." By spawning mutated copies and selection, a completely random string gets to the sentence in 40 generations.
But that is an example of watch design, not blind watchmaking. The information is front-loaded, and every generation is evaluated in terms of progress towards an eventual desired outcome ("Methinks it's like a weasel"), with similarities retained and differences discarded. So sure, the example uses an evolutionary process as the manufacturing method, but the watchmaker isn't blindfolded; the process was simply designed to evolve the sentence "Methinks it's like a weasel." If an intelligent agent didn't alter the program, it would never and could never produce "Methinks it's like a genetically modified weasel" or "Methinks it's like a black-striped weasel."
quote:
The Gettysburg address is 54 times longer, so it will take more generations, but I would be very surprised if the number of generations were more than 5 000. If someone who understands evolution wishes to write the program and test it, it would be interesting.
About ten years ago, I wrote a simple random coin-flipping simulation, to see how long of a predetermined arbitrary sequence of Heads/Tails I could replicate in a finite number of tries (3 billion). (A "try" was defined as a sequence up to the first non-matching coin, not an individual flip.) I never got past 24 (i.e. overcame odds of 2^24).
If you didn't know the formula for the Gettysburg address in advance and were mutating in the dark, so to speak, that would be more akin to what we're talking about here. To resemble biological history, not only would a series of mutations have to progress from a starting point towards the text of the Gettysburg address, but they would have to do it without knowing the Gettysburg address until they arrived at it, each change would have to survive against some odds of not being valuable enough on its own merits *at that time* to be retained by natural selection, each change would have to deal with the probability of the trait not being passed on, of the offspring with the gene surviving to reproduce, etc. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that the deeper we analyze the real scenario, the steeper the climb up Mount Improbable becomes ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_Mount_Improbable[/url]).
On the other hand, I do find cellular automata (e.g. the "Game of Life", [url]http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html[/url]) interesting, and to whatever extent blind assembly of complex, functioning systems is possible, I think that sort of example is probably more illuminating and debate-worthy as an analog to progressive genetic change with survival consequences.
Lastly, I'm aware of the point many make about the Design idea being the end of science, or of scientific inquiry into biological origins. In light of that point, I would like to ask two questions: (1) If you assumed for the sake of argument that life (or some aspect of it) *was* in fact designed or shaped by intelligence -- by whatever process -- how could science discover that fact? If it were true, would science be incapable of forensically determining it, and thus only be capable of leading us to erroneous conclusions? (2) If scientists were examining an engineered bioweapon trying to determine what it was, would it be possible for them, *scientifically*, to make the determination that the organism was designed? ...to make an educated guess?
Oh, and I second Sardu's comment about the character of this board. I am constantly amazed at the ability of this board's denizens to discuss highly controversial subjects cordially. Way to go, people!
"...What are you people doing in my corpse hatch?" |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 5:35:47 PM
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Yep, that's 100% EXACTLY the way it happened
Most respectable scientists wouldn't say that either. Science is provisional, each theory is only as good as the evidence that it is trying to explain. If any anyone want to convince anyone of another theory it must explain the evidence better than the theory is challenging.
In regard to the "orthodoxy" angle. One thing that science has over humanities and social sciences is that to get a point of view accepted it must be backed by actual evidence. If you don't have the evidence it won't make it through the hazing that any new theory must go through. ID is just one of probably thousands of ideas that didn't pass muster. There's little of that Po-Mo relativism in the hard sciences ... yet. It would be ironic if it was utimately a conservative movement that got it through the door.
Also the idea in Expelled that scientists form some sort of rigid collective is ridiculous. Scientists are as egostitical as any lawyers or politicians. Anyone who shot down natural selection would be recognized as one of the most famous scientists on the past century (sorry Behe doesn't make the cut). It would be that big. I can't imagine anyone passing that up just to keep the orthodox collective going. Just look at scientist at action. Do you really think these guys are part of some cabal to keep the Discovery Institute down?
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/nm/index.html
One last thing. In the Expelled movie I read that they show Soviet footage to demonstrate the evils that "darwinism" can lead. That's really below the belt. If fact Stalin dismissed "darwinism" as "bourgeois science." Supporting it got you sent to the gulag. Lyshenko was the way to go.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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Ericb
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
648 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2008 : 5:46:42 PM
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quote:
(1) If you assumed for the sake of argument that life (or some aspect of it) *was* in fact designed or shaped by intelligence -- by whatever process -- how could science discover that fact? If it were true, would science be incapable of forensically determining it, and thus only be capable of leading us to erroneous conclusions?
I think this is what I was trying to get across with my Permian/Triassic example. I was trying to find out at which point one could say that a designer could be determined to intervene in the evolutionary process. But really, how could we ever know that? Wouldn't you just push things to the point where the same things would be happening except in one case one believed that a designer made the crucial mutation while the another believes that it was random? In any event I don't think the history of life on the planet absolutely rules out some kind of creator/deity/thing. In terms of "design" though our life seems to resemble a jazz improvisation rather than a classical symphony. So God is probably more John Coltrane than Beethoven.
"I reserve the right to look as well as be boring." - Robert Fripp |
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