So your an Athiest

[downbeatplumb]

If life was "intelligently designed" whales would have gills.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I don't think there are vestigial organs. Most of the time a structure with an unknown function will be labeled as a vestige by evolutionists, only to have its function discovered later. Although I would agree that the idea of vestigial organs is biologically possible, because we know that biological information degrades in function rapidly if it isn't under selective pressure (aka  fish that live in underwater caves losing their eyesight). But that fits well within the constraints of biological change that is possible still with the top-down view of biological life. Degradation of the genetic code information is demonstrable, but improving it is not.

You clearly haven't taken Invertebrate Zoology or Comparative Anatomy yet (I'm assuming you dissected the cadaver in Anatomy & Physiology), if you think that. We dissected simultaneously a shark and a cat, and looked at organs that were barely developed in one that were fully developed in the other, and ones which were fully functional in the shark which had become vestigal in the cat. The fact that both evolved from ancestors who handed down those genes, to be used in different ways as needed, is obvious. But I think that's where you're making your error-- you're seeing only the modern versions, and evolution over a very short timescale, and taking that as your only basis of comparison.

Vestigal organs do indeed exist, even if they still have a function. An example is the wing of an ostrich. Obviously, the ostrich is descended from smaller birds which still had flight capacity-- the wings still grow, but can no longer serve their primary function. Yes, they're still used for balance and for cooling, but it's not necessary that this bird have wings as part of the design, if made "from scratch" by a Designer. Kangaroos, which did not evolve from birds, manage just fine without that form of balance and cooling, for instance, as a bipedal creature. The wings are therefore vestiges (look it up) of a functional system from before, which no longer serves the purpose for which it originally evolved-- they are vestigial.

If you look at the evolution of whales, from fossils of semi-aquatic land creatures into modern whales, you can clearly see the slow vanishing of the hind legs into the vestiges that remain, now inside the body. The genes didn't "go away", they simply Naturally Selected for gene variants which were the smallest, as those proto-whales were the better swimmers.

---

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As for the "impossible" to develop new information in the genome, I think you're seriously stretching. If/when you take Invertebrate Zoology, you will be able to see still-existing creatures that represent each stage of the development of increasing complexity that eventually led to the notochords and to us. It's a common misconception that life is a "rising ladder", dating back to Aristotle, and that life is trying to evolve "up", with more-advanced/complex forms replacing older ones; more commonly, the new group that branches off does not replace its ancestors but becomes their cousins, and only good old-fashioned extinction determines whether or not the original group disappears... many ancient types of creature still exist in our oceans, and show a clear transition from simple life to complex, adding systems along the way, from the deuterostome system of embryonic development to digestive tracts to nephridic systems to neural nets/systems, etc.

Also, common ancestry is clearly shown in our DNA, even if you're not looking at active DNA sections (exons) which produce visible phenotypes. If you look at the ~95% of our DNA which is inactive (and thus not altered by Natural Selection pressures), yet still passed down intact to each new generation, you can clearly see "scars"/markers which indicate common heritage between us and the chimpanzees, for instance. You can do this for all nearly-related species (if too much time goes by, even the slow rate of point mutations will eventually "static" over the similar bits), comparing what the phenotypic traits tell us makes them related by inference with actual, physical and mathematical proof that they are related. DNA markers should have disproved the Theory of Evolution completely, after the Polymerase Chain Reaction came out in 1985 and rapid scanning became available in the mid-90s, but it didn't; it instead independently confirmed everything we had discovered by other means. There can be no serious question that evolution and common ancestry are facts.

Why, then, are we more intelligent than the chimpanzees, our near-cousins? Simple: we evolved a more-complex version of the gene that allows for intelligence.

http://www.livescience.com/49960-human-b...found.html

If you open your eyes and look, there are numerous examples of what you're claiming doesn't happen. It may seem unlikely, but it's an observed reality. That's why Darwin famously said that his ideas would sound incredible to people, until they went on to consider the things he had actually observed... and the observation has expanded greatly since his time, with more research and better technology. Despite the propaganda from the Intelligent Design crowd, their ideas simply hold no merit.

A classic example of ID propaganda that turns out to be unsupportable in reality can be found in the transcript of the Kitzmiller case, where Dr. Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box author) was busted on his contentions during cross-examination, showing that his ideas were based on suppositions that cannot be backed up, and on ignoring the proofs of the very things he claimed were not possible in nature. Just because someone has a PhD next to their name doesn't mean they're practicing good science.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Behe

[Redbeard The Pink]

I don't think there are vestigial organs. Most of the time a structure with an unknown function will be labeled as a vestige by evolutionists, only to have its function discovered later. Although I would agree that the idea of vestigial organs is biologically possible, because we know that biological information degrades in function rapidly if it isn't under selective pressure (aka  fish that live in underwater caves losing their eyesight). But that fits well within the constraints of biological change that is possible still with the top-down view of biological life. Degradation of the genetic code information is demonstrable, but improving it is not.

Ummm...ok?


You're welcome to think that, I guess...you're just wrong, is all. There are definitely vestigial parts on animals.


I realize I said "useless" before, but that's probably not the best description. Many vestigial parts do still manage to serve some function or another. A part being vestigial doesn't mean it's necessarily totally useless; it just means it isn't currently used for the same function as before, and usually it means the newer function is slightly less vital than the old one.


For instance, many snakes have vestigial legs inside their bodies near their mating parts, and sometimes those legs have protruding claws. Those claws sometimes have just enough mobility to grasp another snake's scales while they're mating, making it less likely the mate will slither away and more likely that the snake with the claws will finish trying to reproduce. If you look at the fossil record, though, that's not what those were originally for. Those used to be legs, and they didn't used to be all shrunk up and dysfunctional like that, hence they are vestigial limbs.


Emus also have a vestigial limb, and this thing really is totally useless. You see, the emu has a single arm. Attached to that arm is a single claw. Attached that arm and that claw are...no muscles. That's right, they can't even move the damn thing. It contains no organs, it has no mobility, it doesn't help them hunt or navigate terrain...literally all it does is flop around and run the risk of injury and/or infection.


As for "improving" the genetic code: there is no improving it. There is no objective better or worse when it comes to genetics. There is only the environment, and what survives in it. The only way for an organism to hypothetically "improve" itself would be for it to become better suited to its conditions (making it more likely to survive and reproduce), and the fossil record as well as microbiology both show us that yes, this happens all the time. Humans, for instance, have adapted so well to conditions on Earth that we've practically overrun the place, clinging to even the scantest of resources in the most difficult of terrains and still managing to survive.

[GrandizerII]

Parameters that can be eventually met in a universe like this.

Yeah, but the fact that a universe like this even exists is unlikely if we are just going on random chance.

You know this, how?

[AAA]

I don't think there are vestigial organs. Most of the time a structure with an unknown function will be labeled as a vestige by evolutionists, only to have its function discovered later. Although I would agree that the idea of vestigial organs is biologically possible, because we know that biological information degrades in function rapidly if it isn't under selective pressure (aka  fish that live in underwater caves losing their eyesight). But that fits well within the constraints of biological change that is possible still with the top-down view of biological life. Degradation of the genetic code information is demonstrable, but improving it is not.

You clearly haven't taken Invertebrate Zoology or Comparative Anatomy yet (I'm assuming you dissected the cadaver in Anatomy & Physiology), if you think that. We dissected simultaneously a shark and a cat, and looked at organs that were barely developed in one that were fully developed in the other, and ones which were fully functional in the shark which had become vestigal in the cat. The fact that both evolved from ancestors who handed down those genes, to be used in different ways as needed, is obvious. But I think that's where you're making your error-- you're seeing only the modern versions, and evolution over a very short timescale, and taking that as your only basis of comparison.

Vestigal organs do indeed exist, even if they still have a function. An example is the wing of an ostrich. Obviously, the ostrich is descended from smaller birds which still had flight capacity-- the wings still grow, but can no longer serve their primary function. Yes, they're still used for balance and for cooling, but it's not necessary that this bird have wings as part of the design, if made "from scratch" by a Designer. Kangaroos, which did not evolve from birds, manage just fine without that form of balance and cooling, for instance, as a bipedal creature. The wings are therefore vestiges (look it up) of a functional system from before, which no longer serves the purpose for which it originally evolved-- they are vestigial.

If you look at the evolution of whales, from fossils of semi-aquatic land creatures into modern whales, you can clearly see the slow vanishing of the hind legs into the vestiges that remain, now inside the body. The genes didn't "go away", they simply Naturally Selected for gene variants which were the smallest, as those proto-whales were the better swimmers.

---

---

As for the "impossible" to develop new information in the genome, I think you're seriously stretching. If/when you take Invertebrate Zoology, you will be able to see still-existing creatures that represent each stage of the development of increasing complexity that eventually led to the notochords and to us. It's a common misconception that life is a "rising ladder", dating back to Aristotle, and that life is trying to evolve "up", with more-advanced/complex forms replacing older ones; more commonly, the new group that branches off does not replace its ancestors but becomes their cousins, and only good old-fashioned extinction determines whether or not the original group disappears... many ancient types of creature still exist in our oceans, and show a clear transition from simple life to complex, adding systems along the way, from the deuterostome system of embryonic development to digestive tracts to nephridic systems to neural nets/systems, etc.

Also, common ancestry is clearly shown in our DNA, even if you're not looking at active DNA sections (exons) which produce visible phenotypes. If you look at the ~95% of our DNA which is inactive (and thus not altered by Natural Selection pressures), yet still passed down intact to each new generation, you can clearly see "scars"/markers which indicate common heritage between us and the chimpanzees, for instance. You can do this for all nearly-related species (if too much time goes by, even the slow rate of point mutations will eventually "static" over the similar bits), comparing what the phenotypic traits tell us makes them related by inference with actual, physical and mathematical proof that they are related. DNA markers should have disproved the Theory of Evolution completely, after the Polymerase Chain Reaction came out in 1985 and rapid scanning became available in the mid-90s, but it didn't; it instead independently confirmed everything we had discovered by other means. There can be no serious question that evolution and common ancestry are facts.

Why, then, are we more intelligent than the chimpanzees, our near-cousins? Simple: we evolved a more-complex version of the gene that allows for intelligence.

http://www.livescience.com/49960-human-b...found.html

If you open your eyes and look, there are numerous examples of what you're claiming doesn't happen. It may seem unlikely, but it's an observed reality. That's why Darwin famously said that his ideas would sound incredible to people, until they went on to consider the things he had actually observed... and the observation has expanded greatly since his time, with more research and better technology. Despite the propaganda from the Intelligent Design crowd, their ideas simply hold no merit.

A classic example of ID propaganda that turns out to be unsupportable in reality can be found in the transcript of the Kitzmiller case, where Dr. Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box author) was busted on his contentions during cross-examination, showing that his ideas were based on suppositions that cannot be backed up, and on ignoring the proofs of the very things he claimed were not possible in nature. Just because someone has a PhD next to their name doesn't mean they're practicing good science.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Behe

You are right, I have never taken comparative zoology as we do not offer it at my university. Maybe in grad school.  As for your picture of the whale evolution, don't you think you could take any organisms with similar phenotypes and put them in order of similarity and lead from anything to anything else? You could portray anything you want with those examples.

You talk about the 95% of DNA that is inactive. I'm sure you're just meaning that it doesn't code for proteins, because they are finding out that virtually all DNA has active functions (mostly regulatory code). The examples of DNA mapping supporting evolution is open to debate. It sometimes fits evolutionary predictions, but it sometimes doesn't. For example I have read that the Y-Chromosome sequences for the two do not fit evolutionary predictions, as they vary a lot. The evidence conflicts, which is very frustrating. When only one side of the evidence is shown, it shuts down scientific discussion and is dangerous to our progression.

I also agree that just having a PhD doesn't make you right, but I understand their arguments, and I hope you can understand why I am conflicted and hesitant to accept Darwinian evolution as it has been taught. There are just so many chicken or the egg problems that I don't think that I can just accept it. It is our job to critique the theory and look for its flaws. If I just accept the theory based on the fact that it accounts for some of the evidence, then we may miss a better explanation for life if it comes along. I'm offended that you say the intelligent design scientists are spreading propaganda, when all great advancements of science come from questioning the accepted theory. If all people questioning the accepted theories is labeled as crazy and unscientific, then no one will question anything, and science will grind to a halt.

[Esquilax]

Yes we do get back pains, but the reality is that our species takes very poor care of its body, so we can't blame all physiological problems that we encounter on our basal anatomy.

We can blame the ones I listed on our anatomy, though:it's just objectively true that our nerves in that area are better suited to the motion of the other great apes, and that there are superior nerve setups for bipedal motion that are not present in humans. Even a person in perfect physical health will still fall victim to the back problems I'm talking about with age, this is specifically a set of problems caused by the placement of the nerves, not the well being of the person.

 I'll make a prediction now that says that if we give our bodies proper nutrition and use all muscle groups on a regular basis, our bodies will regulate themselves remarkably well and take care of the problems it encounters.

Not these problems. People get paralyzed over this, through no fault of their own.

Also sometimes design must compromise. The idea is that you increase all the variables in a system to the highest point that they can be without decreasing the function of others. For example, you want to build the best ship possible. You could make it smaller and lighter and it would be faster. You could make it bigger and heavier to enable it to carry more. You could make it wider to make it rock less. You could improve its shape to make it sail more smoothly. You can only improve one variable so much before it starts to negatively affect the system as a whole. You could make the most optimal ship for all the variables, but you could still build a faster ship. Or a sturdier ship. You get the idea? I'm not saying that this is always the case in anatomy, but I believe it is true to an extent.

This isn't really relevant to these cases, though. Reverse-jointed knees wouldn't require any subtraction to our bodily fitness but would improve our susceptibility to arthritic conditions immediately. Simply adjusting the placement of the nerves in our spine would help with back problems without needing to alter the physical matter at all. Replacing our eyes with squid eyes would be much the same. This isn't a case of balancing pros and cons, it's a case of cons existing where they don't need to.

The giraffe thing is interesting. However, I have to ask if you have ever dissected a cadaver and looked its nervous system? I have, and take my word (or don't, idc) for it; you don't usually see nerves that don't branch off many times along the way. I'll make another prediction that it branches off several times to allow it to regulate multiple areas and a straight nerve from one location to the ending location would not allow it to regulate them.

Nope. In this case I'm talking about a specific nerve, the laryngeal nerve, which humans have too, that regulates all the musculature in the larynx. A ton of different animals have this, and in mammals, due to the way our head and necks are set up, the nerve sort of loops under the aortic arch lower down, descending from the brain into the chest cavity before rising back up to the larynx. In most mammals that's like a few inches of distance so it's not a problem, though it does demonstrate how stupidly the neck evolved, since such a nerve could easily just have had a detour directly down to the throat if it were designed, but since it evolved gradually in concert with the neck and the aortas, it just goes on a journey with them instead of doing the smart thing.

However, giraffes face no such problem, since their brain is in no way on the wrong side of the aortic arch, and there's no obstruction for it to pass through or around to get to the larynx. The nerve could make a couple inch journey to the larynx from the brain, but instead of just doing that, it takes a fifteen foot ride down the entirety of the neck, into the chest cavity, around the aortic arch, and then back up the neck and into the larynx. There is no benefit to this route, the nerve only does the one thing and is itself a branch nerve and not a stem for other nerves to branch off of... it just takes fifteen feet of wiring to do what three inches would do. What makes this worse is that there are other nerves already traveling down the neck for other purposes that it could have branched off of way earlier, and that its twin, the superior laryngeal nerve, actually does just take the inches long trip direct from brain to larynx, so it's not as if the designer didn't know that was possible. It just decided that on the left side, but not the right, that nerve needed to go down under the heart for no good reason.

Or maybe, in the giraffe's ancient, fishlike ancestor, that nerve pathway was totally direct, but as the neck evolved as its own structure, the nerve had to loop under the gradually lowering heart because it was caught on the wrong side?

This is already getting long, so I'll try to tackle the evolution thing quickly. I know the supposed mechanisms for evolution. I (and many PhD scientists) agree that these mechanisms are insufficient to produce the new information.

No PhD biologists, though. Nobody with a degree in the relevant field. Besides which, if you really want to play the scientist game, then I can do that, because acceptance of evolution among the scientific community hovers at around 97%, according to the Pew Research Center. So, your three percent of scientists versus my 97 percent: where you wanna put your money?

Moreover, "evolution can't explain X," is an argument from ignorance, and certainly not a reason to go on to accept the design hypothesis. No, you'd need positive evidence of that position, not just a willingness to poke holes in your opposition, as though mainstream science doesn't already acknowledge that it doesn't know everything yet.

It seems to reason that slight modifications could build up over time and lead to substantial changes, but the reality is that these random changes impair the function of proteins. There are many evidences that directly contradict evolution, but if I give one to you, you will likely say I'm arguing from ignorance and we will figure out later how it works.

I'll give you a hint: if I can literally observe a phenomena happen in a laboratory whenever I want to, then you'd better not just be asking me to believe that that phenomena doesn't exist just on the basis that it can't explain specific examples of things yet. If I can see it happening, then "it's not happening because you haven't explained this yet," is not a compelling argument. It's like arguing that gravity doesn't exist because we haven't figured out black holes yet. Gravity clearly does exist, and so does evolution. We haven't figured everything out yet, but science is probabilistic, not certainty based: we don't need absolutely every fact to establish that something does or does not happen.

Just a quick example, Rhizobacteria colonize the roots of legumes. the legumes have specific enzymes that escort the bacteria to their nodule. The legumes have another enzyme (I think it's leghemoglobin) that carry trace amounts of oxygen to the bacteria so that they can undergo metabolism and survive. The bacteria then take atmospheric nitrogen (N2, which if you know about chemistry its two triple bonded atoms, so it isn't easy to break) and convert it into usable nitrogen for the plant so that it can make nucleic acids and whatnot. Without this complex interaction between the two being spot on precise, then the nitrogen would not get fixed and the plants would die. How would the plants survive enough generations to slowly evolve this interaction when its absence leads to their inability to evolve?

Your mistake is in assuming that there would only be one evolutionary process going on at a time, when we know that's not the case. Off the top of my head, the legumes may have had the ability to produce its own nitrogen in the past, but upon the development of its symbiotic relationship with the bacteria that ability evolved out because it was no longer necessary and was a waste of energy due to its new symbiosis. The reverse could also be true, and frankly it's a much more parsimonious explanation because we can confirm that evolution does happen, and cannot do the same with design. The ID argument requires at least one more huge assumption not in evidence than the evolution one does, and the latter has the benefit of only relying on demonstrable phenomena to make its case.

 Information is not a term that I just made up, I think anyone who studies genetics recognizes that there is information in the DNA just as much as there is information in this sentence.

Sure, my contention though, is that we differ on how important information is to the overall process. I understand that information is a retroactive phenomena, imposed after the fact by pattern-seeking minds reviewing natural phenomena. You, on the other hand, seem to think of information as some inherent, vital, and objectively real quantity that organisms need to operate, rather than a label placed on conceptual things by minds.

As for the need for the increase in complexity, I don't know if there is a mainstream definition that says it, but surely you aren't denying that it needs to happen.

I absolutely am denying that, because evolution isn't some constant advancement in complexity: organisms evolve to lose structures they no longer need, or evolve new structures without an overall increase in complexity all the time. Whales used to have hands, for example, and you can still see the fingers in the bones of their flippers, but they lost them over time as they evolved to suit an aquatic environment. By all accounts, they lost complexity through evolution.

As for my definition of biological information, yeah it wasn't the best, but enzymes do attempt to accomplish a goal. Obviously they aren't doing it consciously or anything, but I think you can agree with the terminology if I say the goal of DNA polymerase is to replicate the genome. Maybe the word 'purpose' is better.

Purpose does work better, because now you aren't biasing the conversation toward design with your word choices. Purpose, incidentally, does not require a designer to exist, because purposes can be assigned to objects after they come into existence.

[The Grand Nudger]

If your going to take offense, AAA, with regards to comments made along the periphery of intelligent design...why don't you aim that offense towards the people who sold you that bs in the first place?  I'm not talking about the think tank that dreamt it up, mind you...but those who very directly communicated it to you.  Those who felt that it answered a question you had for them?  Those guys are assholes.

By all means, be offended. They think you're a simpleton. They count on it.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

This Week In Science:

https://richarddawkins.net/2015/12/this-...-29-dec-6/

Featuring the story of how new technology let us figure out why snakes lost their legs. (Spoiler Alert: It wasn't a curse in the Garden of Eden.)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...195113.htm