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(July 17, 2014 at 10:32 am)SteveII Wrote: Jenny--No, I am not proposing God mutated them. I was merely pointing out that in the presence of *possible evidence* that we do not all have a common decent, that that conclusion is not even considered. This seems to happen time and time again. Pieces of evidence that call into question the common decent hypothesis are given elaborate theories to bolster the original hypothesis. This merely perpetuates the idea that common decent is true and ALL the science points that way--and then the cycle repeats.
What you call "bolstering," a normal person would call "learning." Again, evolution is a done deal: we've literally seen it happening. There's no argument here, no debate: evolution happens, and we've known that it happens for a long long time. It's a fact, and the reason why the ideas change around evolution instead of replacing it is the same reason why we don't discard gravity every time some new phenomena relating to it is discovered. Gravity itself doesn't go away just because there's an unknown; one doesn't discard facts that are literally observable, whenever something new comes up.
Quote:My point is that scientist are not trying to falsify the hypothesis of common ancestor. They have already accepted it as true (which I think is bias). When theist scientist (that don't have this bias) gather up all the questions in one place, they are labeled at best, crackpots.
Because "questions" aren't the issue. If you pile together a bunch of unanswered questions and then expect them to put a scientific theory into question, you're committing a series of argument from ignorance fallacies. What you need is contradictory evidence; you know, one of the many things that would falsify common ancestry? You'd need a better explanation, not just a bunch of questions. Poking holes in something doesn't make a competing idea any more strong.
All you're doing is trying to divide by zero in an attempt to reach a positive number.
Quote:1. Fossil record for intermediate forms. You have to drink a lot of coolaid to make the claim that the fossil record proves common decent. It could just as easily be used to prove the opposite.
Only if you're being arbitrarily skeptical, for no reason other than a predrawn conclusion. Again, who am I likely to trust: some guy who has proven he doesn't understand science very well, or biologists and paleontologists who have spent their lives studying this stuff?
Quote:2. Genetics has wiped out the old "Tree of Life". Since different genes tell a different evolutionary story, it must be a web.
Would you prefer that they learned new things about genes, and then didn't change the models to match? What is it you actually want, here? If the models had stayed the same they would be incorrect, and you would be sitting here crowing about how scientists are using old, incorrect models.
Quote:3. "Convergent Evolution". The odds of an organism developing a new useful feature is at the very least exceptional. To have the same or similar features evolve in parallel is simply staggering.
Similar selection pressures yield similar results, what's so mind boggling about that? All it demonstrates is that certain mutations are highly advantageous within specific parameters. But please, do tell us all how you calculated the probabilities for your odds, here.
Not that it'd matter, because "it's improbable!" would just make this an argument from personal incredulity. Do you know anything about logical fallacies, here?
Quote:4. No vestigial organs or other features. Shouldn't we see all kinds of useless parts in all kinds of organisms on their way out?
We do. The appendix, little toe, human spinal nerves, and so on. They're there, and your response, that the list is getting smaller, doesn't mean the list has vanished, and doesn't mean you just get to assume that every other piece has a purpose. That's profoundly dishonest, to bring that up as an argument and then define every counterargument out of the group by fiat.
Quote:5. I know this get's into the origin of life issue, but we now know the cell is one of the most complicated things on the planet.
Not really. Especially not compared to things made of cells. You didn't really think this through, did you?
Oh, and again: "It's complicated!" is an argument from personal incredulity. That you think it's too complex to arise naturally doesn't mean it didn't, it just means you're easily amazed.
Quote:6. GRNs are so complicated yet necessary for complex life. Chicken or the egg?
Argument from ignorance: "I don't know how it could happen, therefore god."
Quote:7. The ongoing net effect of random mutations is actually degrading functionality in human genetics.
Every human being is born with sixty mutations, so if this is true- whatever it even means- then it's clearly not having an undue effect. Oh, and this is an appeal to consequences: an undesirable effect doesn't mean the cause doesn't exist. It just means the effect is undesirable.
Quote:8. Mathematical improbability of enough time.
What the fuck does that even mean?
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(July 17, 2014 at 10:32 am)SteveII Wrote: Jenny--No, I am not proposing God mutated them. I was merely pointing out that in the presence of *possible evidence* that we do not all have a common decent, that that conclusion is not even considered. This seems to happen time and time again. Pieces of evidence that call into question the common decent hypothesis are given elaborate theories to bolster the original hypothesis. This merely perpetuates the idea that common decent is true and ALL the science points that way--and then the cycle repeats.
What you call "bolstering," a normal person would call "learning." Again, evolution is a done deal: we've literally seen it happening. There's no argument here, no debate: evolution happens, and we've known that it happens for a long long time. It's a fact, and the reason why the ideas change around evolution instead of replacing it is the same reason why we don't discard gravity every time some new phenomena relating to it is discovered. Gravity itself doesn't go away just because there's an unknown; one doesn't discard facts that are literally observable, whenever something new comes up.
Quote:My point is that scientist are not trying to falsify the hypothesis of common ancestor. They have already accepted it as true (which I think is bias). When theist scientist (that don't have this bias) gather up all the questions in one place, they are labeled at best, crackpots.
Because "questions" aren't the issue. If you pile together a bunch of unanswered questions and then expect them to put a scientific theory into question, you're committing a series of argument from ignorance fallacies. What you need is contradictory evidence; you know, one of the many things that would falsify common ancestry? You'd need a better explanation, not just a bunch of questions. Poking holes in something doesn't make a competing idea any more strong.
All you're doing is trying to divide by zero in an attempt to reach a positive number.
Quote:1. Fossil record for intermediate forms. You have to drink a lot of coolaid to make the claim that the fossil record proves common decent. It could just as easily be used to prove the opposite.
Only if you're being arbitrarily skeptical, for no reason other than a predrawn conclusion. Again, who am I likely to trust: some guy who has proven he doesn't understand science very well, or biologists and paleontologists who have spent their lives studying this stuff?
Quote:2. Genetics has wiped out the old "Tree of Life". Since different genes tell a different evolutionary story, it must be a web.
Would you prefer that they learned new things about genes, and then didn't change the models to match? What is it you actually want, here? If the models had stayed the same they would be incorrect, and you would be sitting here crowing about how scientists are using old, incorrect models.
Quote:3. "Convergent Evolution". The odds of an organism developing a new useful feature is at the very least exceptional. To have the same or similar features evolve in parallel is simply staggering.
Similar selection pressures yield similar results, what's so mind boggling about that? All it demonstrates is that certain mutations are highly advantageous within specific parameters. But please, do tell us all how you calculated the probabilities for your odds, here.
Not that it'd matter, because "it's improbable!" would just make this an argument from personal incredulity. Do you know anything about logical fallacies, here?
Quote:4. No vestigial organs or other features. Shouldn't we see all kinds of useless parts in all kinds of organisms on their way out?
We do. The appendix, little toe, human spinal nerves, and so on. They're there, and your response, that the list is getting smaller, doesn't mean the list has vanished, and doesn't mean you just get to assume that every other piece has a purpose. That's profoundly dishonest, to bring that up as an argument and then define every counterargument out of the group by fiat.
Quote:5. I know this get's into the origin of life issue, but we now know the cell is one of the most complicated things on the planet.
Not really. Especially not compared to things made of cells. You didn't really think this through, did you?
Oh, and again: "It's complicated!" is an argument from personal incredulity. That you think it's too complex to arise naturally doesn't mean it didn't, it just means you're easily amazed.
Quote:6. GRNs are so complicated yet necessary for complex life. Chicken or the egg?
Argument from ignorance: "I don't know how it could happen, therefore god."
Quote:7. The ongoing net effect of random mutations is actually degrading functionality in human genetics.
Every human being is born with sixty mutations, so if this is true- whatever it even means- then it's clearly not having an undue effect. Oh, and this is an appeal to consequences: an undesirable effect doesn't mean the cause doesn't exist. It just means the effect is undesirable.
Quote:8. Mathematical improbability of enough time.
What the fuck does that even mean?
Well you definitely said it more succintly than I did, heh.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
(July 17, 2014 at 1:28 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Hehehe, you gotta be quick Biblio, I hover over creatard arguments like a buzzard. Guess I just can't resist the smell of a fresh carcass. It's probably vestigial.
Learned 2 things then. I had to google 'goose and gander'
I like how the meaning seems to focus on both parties being guilty of the same thing, while stuff like 'an eye for an eye' has a cause (you did this) and effect (so it's okay for me to do the same) thing going on.
The ENCODE project was roundly criticized for its definitions of what is junk. Make sure you read not only the article that supports your position, but the ones that poke holes in it. And I think it was already mentioned that 20% are still junk.
(July 17, 2014 at 12:43 pm)Minimalist Wrote: What are the mathematical improbabilities of a being who exists outside of space and time and who just poofed everything into existence one day for shits and giggles?
Sometimes you people amaze me with your inability to consider your statements.
Okay, I should not bring up the probability issue (even if it part of the body of legit scientific inquiry) because you have no answer to it so and are therefore tempted to resort to juvenile responses like what are the odds of God existing. Noted.
Nice way to try to dodge the point, jesus freak but the question remains....unanswered as these things usually do with your type.
I think that when a book is 'left up to interpretation' as to its validity, we can pretty much safely assume it's bunk.
Actual math, science and history texts are not 'left up to interpretation.' Because they are based on FACTS. lol
If you hand the Bible to 1000 different people, religious and/or otherwise, you will get 1000 different 'interpretations' as to how to view it. What to take literally...etc. etc.
It's up to interpretation because it's a manmade invention, nothing more or less. I don't need to go into the various passages ''disproving'' this or that. For the person I would be retorting against no doubt will reply with...''well, that's left up to interpretation.'' lol
Regarding probability and enough time for common decent, I have read some articles.
"There's plenty of time for evolution," by Herbert S. Wilf and Warren J. Ewens, a biologist and a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania was written as a rebuttal to those that say there was not enough time. "Our purpose here is to analyze this process, and our conclusion is that when one takes account of the role of natural selection in a reasonable way, there has been ample time for the evolution that we observe to have taken place." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/1...7.abstract
However, it seems that the Wilf and Ewens model is too simplistic. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/pee...67421.html is an article about the paper addressing the above study. The article quotes the source paper in several places (citation below)
"Wilf and Ewens argue in a recent paper that there is plenty of time for evolution to occur. They base this claim on a mathematical model in which beneficial mutations accumulate simultaneously and independently, thus allowing changes that require a large number of mutations to evolve over comparatively short time periods. Because changes evolve independently and in parallel rather than sequentially, their model scales logarithmically rather than exponentially. This approach does not accurately reflect biological evolution, however, for two main reasons. First, within their model are implicit information sources, including the equivalent of a highly informed oracle that prophesies when a mutation is "correct," thus accelerating the search by the evolutionary process. Natural selection, in contrast, does not have access to information about future benefits of a particular mutation, or where in the global fitness landscape a particular mutation is relative to a particular target. It can only assess mutations based on their current effect on fitness in the local fitness landscape. Thus the presence of this oracle makes their model radically different from a real biological search through fitness space. Wilf and Ewens also make unrealistic biological assumptions that, in effect, simplify the search. They assume no epistasis between beneficial mutations, no linkage between loci, and an unrealistic population size and base mutation rate, thus increasing the pool of beneficial mutations to be searched. They neglect the effects of genetic drift on the probability of fixation and the negative effects of simultaneously accumulating deleterious mutations. Finally, in their model they represent each genetic locus as a single letter. By doing so, they ignore the enormous sequence complexity of actual genetic loci (typically hundreds or thousands of nucleotides long), and vastly oversimplify the search for functional variants. In similar fashion, they assume that each evolutionary "advance" requires a change to just one locus, despite the clear evidence that most biological functions are the product of multiple gene products working together. Ignoring these biological realities infuses considerable active information into their model and eases the model's evolutionary process.
Further down...
"In addition to the overwhelming problems mentioned above, the search algorithm they have chosen is unrealistic. Wilf and Ewens assume that the fitness landscape is smooth, with each beneficial mutation trending upward additively. This is not the case in biology. ...Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that real fitness landscapes have many local fitness optima surrounded by fitness deserts. If it takes more than several mutations to move from one peak to another, adaptation can become stalled on a local peak, with no way to move from one small fitness peak to a higher one. Because natural selection is blind and without foresight, it cannot tell which particular mutations are leading to an unrealized goal of maximal fitness (in this case a target phrase) some distance away in the adaptive landscape. It can only assess the relative local fitness of variants in the population."
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Ann K. Gauger, Robert J. Marks II, "Time and Information in Evolution," BIO-Complexity, Volume 2012 (4).
@Esquilax - you are right, poking holes in a theory is not proof of the competing theory. I am merely addressing the universal opinion here that common decent is a fact.
(July 21, 2014 at 2:23 pm)SteveII Wrote: Regarding probability and enough time for common decent, I have read some articles.
"There's plenty of time for evolution," by Herbert S. Wilf and Warren J. Ewens, a biologist and a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania was written as a rebuttal to those that say there was not enough time. "Our purpose here is to analyze this process, and our conclusion is that when one takes account of the role of natural selection in a reasonable way, there has been ample time for the evolution that we observe to have taken place." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/1...7.abstract
However, it seems that the Wilf and Ewens model is too simplistic. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/pee...67421.html is an article about the paper addressing the above study. The article quotes the source paper in several places (citation below)
"Wilf and Ewens argue in a recent paper that there is plenty of time for evolution to occur. They base this claim on a mathematical model in which beneficial mutations accumulate simultaneously and independently, thus allowing changes that require a large number of mutations to evolve over comparatively short time periods. Because changes evolve independently and in parallel rather than sequentially, their model scales logarithmically rather than exponentially. This approach does not accurately reflect biological evolution, however, for two main reasons. First, within their model are implicit information sources, including the equivalent of a highly informed oracle that prophesies when a mutation is "correct," thus accelerating the search by the evolutionary process. Natural selection, in contrast, does not have access to information about future benefits of a particular mutation, or where in the global fitness landscape a particular mutation is relative to a particular target. It can only assess mutations based on their current effect on fitness in the local fitness landscape. Thus the presence of this oracle makes their model radically different from a real biological search through fitness space. Wilf and Ewens also make unrealistic biological assumptions that, in effect, simplify the search. They assume no epistasis between beneficial mutations, no linkage between loci, and an unrealistic population size and base mutation rate, thus increasing the pool of beneficial mutations to be searched. They neglect the effects of genetic drift on the probability of fixation and the negative effects of simultaneously accumulating deleterious mutations. Finally, in their model they represent each genetic locus as a single letter. By doing so, they ignore the enormous sequence complexity of actual genetic loci (typically hundreds or thousands of nucleotides long), and vastly oversimplify the search for functional variants. In similar fashion, they assume that each evolutionary "advance" requires a change to just one locus, despite the clear evidence that most biological functions are the product of multiple gene products working together. Ignoring these biological realities infuses considerable active information into their model and eases the model's evolutionary process.
Further down...
"In addition to the overwhelming problems mentioned above, the search algorithm they have chosen is unrealistic. Wilf and Ewens assume that the fitness landscape is smooth, with each beneficial mutation trending upward additively. This is not the case in biology. ...Indeed, there is much evidence to suggest that real fitness landscapes have many local fitness optima surrounded by fitness deserts. If it takes more than several mutations to move from one peak to another, adaptation can become stalled on a local peak, with no way to move from one small fitness peak to a higher one. Because natural selection is blind and without foresight, it cannot tell which particular mutations are leading to an unrealized goal of maximal fitness (in this case a target phrase) some distance away in the adaptive landscape. It can only assess the relative local fitness of variants in the population."
Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Ann K. Gauger, Robert J. Marks II, "Time and Information in Evolution," BIO-Complexity, Volume 2012 (4).
@Esquilax - you are right, poking holes in a theory is not proof of the competing theory. I am merely addressing the universal opinion here that common decent is a fact.
Steve, you still seem to not understand why you need to stop quoting articles from creationist websites if you want any sort of scientific discussion. As we've made painstakingly clear, those kinds of sites are anything but scientific. You can see the differences in just the way their websites are set up.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
