Annoying creationists

[Dr Adequate]

I think kleinman's just pressing the buttons on his Lying Machine at random now.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Until then, here's a new image.

It's hard to imagine that somebody could be more dull and boring than Adequate but now we have found someone who is trying to imitate him. So which one of you two is OMG?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Ah yes, the gap theory of evolution, is there anyplace you don’t have a gap in your theory?

Is there a word for a non-sequitor following a non-sequitor following a non-sequitor? To what in the friggin' world are you responding? It has no relation, whatever, to anything that I wrote.

Ev does not evolve binding sites de novo according to Paul.

What is it that ev does?

HIV evolves resistance much more quickly if monotherapy is used.

The point being what? Once again, now for, I think, the fifth time, I haven't argued against this idea so I haven't the slighest idea why you repeat it. It has nothing whatever to do with the conversation.

It's also not always true.

The use of combination therapy for HIV is a good analogy to what ev shows.

No, it's not. As repeatedly emphasized --HIV triple therapy involves, by its definition more than three selection pressures since it must also include patient selection pressures including the rapid death of T cells and the potential death of the patient and the immune response.

But the bigger issues are these:

1. HIV triple therapy attacks one, or at most, two sites. For the most part we are talking about two different types of reverse transcriptase inhibitors and/or a protease inhibitor. There are not 16 different "binding sites" that must "find" the correct base. Instead, all that HIV must "do" is develop the correct strain that is not inhibited by the reverse transcriptase inhibitor and/or protease inhibitor by producing so many copies that one of them will have the proper mutation in it. For the most part we are talking about one, two, or possibly three point mutations that are selected (depends a bit on what triple therapy protocol is used). That is not what ev does. Most of the ev models that I have seen have required something on the order of 96 point mutations for convergence.

2. Ev models the development of information that is already pre-determined. Nature does not pre-determine what will or will not work in any particular situation (outside of determinism itself). There is no set goal in nature. If HIV arrives at a solution, then it arrives at a solution to the problem plaguing it -- triple therapy. If it doesn't, then it doesn't.

3. You specifically stated when I joined this thread that HIV triple therapy was the prime example of how three selection pressures in ev work; and that this proved that evolution was so slow that it could never happen. Yet you have been confronted with the actual evidence that resistance forms to triple therapy in short order. This would seem to prove that evolution is not stopped by three selection pressures but continues along quite nicely, thank you very much. You have tried to squirm out of this fact in various ways -- initially by pretending that I was the one pushing HIV triple therapy, then by pretending that ev predicted that triple therapy could not stop HIV from producing resistant strains (even though your original argument was that HIV could never produce resistant strains in short time periods).

I see no reason why I, or anyone else, should believe a word typed by your fingers.

Of course I have, and if you had read this thread, you would know what I have to say about it.

The only explanation I can find is that you think three selection pressures somehow, and magically, interferes with the process in the presence of longer genomes. Do you have a more formal explanation?

 

[T'ai Chi]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Here are the changes Unnamed made to ev:

Yes, he's taking into account the distances from valuation to threshold for all positions.

Why don’t you post a version of ev with these changes online so everyone can study the behavior of these changes?

That would be Unnamed's job.

He must have meant that only variations that support the theory of evolution should be investigated. Paul, I love it when you squirm.
...
Paul, Dr Schneider was quite clear what he intended ev to be used for when he said the following:

Variations of the program could be used to investigate how population size, genome length, number of sites, size of recognition regions, mutation rate, selective pressure, overlapping sites and other factors affect the evolution.

That statement suggests to you that he only wants the program to be used to investigate things that support evolution? All righty then.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ev does not evolve binding sites de novo according to Paul.

I would be happy to address this claim if you could first define what you mean by "evolving binding sites de novo."

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Who is claiming that a program disproves intelligent design? Certainly no one in this thread.

~~ Paul

 

[Apathia]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Hi Tai Chi!

On my desk right now, I have a beautiful, raw, uncut amethyst crystal.
(I like crystals, wear them for vanity, and have even done woo things with them.)
Say we make a program modeling crystal formation. It models how crystals can come about naturallly without the tinkering of some conscious being.
But my XGF, who loves Elves, might say that Elves do it. They shape these wonders. Such mathematical order and beauty can't come from a blind natural process.
She can rightly point out that our computer model doesn't prove Elves don't do it.
And she night go on to say that the computer model itself is the work of Elves, because it couldn't be the result of a natural process, and the minds that wrote the code couldn't be the result of a natural process.

But Elves? Ha! Ha! We know better.
Nature was programed to produce some kinds of order.

Your assumption is that wherever there is order, it is the result of conscious artifice by a sentiant being.
Have you ever considered that nature is a self-ordering process?
This is especially appearant in biological systems.
One aspect of this is described in Natural Selection.

Of course you are free to maintain the philosphical positon that there is a Master Programmer. Computer models that show how a natural process can account for the results, and that these programs were written by sentient beings doesn't say anything of great substance for or against.

But you might want to consider whether a transcendent Master Programmer is really necessary. Consider that's it's quite posible that the natural world is a self-adaptive, self-programing system.

It's another philosophical position. And it might not be to your taste.

Personally, I don't find it robbing the Sacred from nature, but putting it back in where it belongs. Call it the "Tao."

 

[articulett]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Oddly enough...unintelligent naturally selected DNA does just that.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

No, but many people have explained to you how an intelligently designed program can prove the concept of evolution.

If you're just here to do a kleinman, and drool and drivel about your ignorance of concepts which you've had carefully explained to you ... then you've come to the right thread, This is the place where halfwit creationists pretend that their ignorance is a point in their favor --- and kleinman hasn't given us any new laughs lately.

It's your turn.

 

[Yahzi]

I think kleinman's just pressing the buttons on his Lying Machine at random now.

Now?

 

[Dr Adequate]

OK, for a long time.

But I had underestimated how slimy creationist slime could be.

He actually programmed a computer to lie to us so that he wouldn't have to think about the lies he's telling. He just presses a button and a computer lies for him.

It ... it baffles the imagination.

 

[kjkent1]

Let’s see if I can help you with the word serious. Try the word “earnest” instead of “serious”. Dr Schneider has made an earnest application of the mathematics of mutation and selection while you have made earnestly silly application of the string cheese theory to mutation and selection.

littleman, if you find string theory silly, take it up with Dr. Susskind.

When considering other mutation mechanisms, the question is whether these other mutation mechanisms will significantly alter the behavior of the mathematics of mutation and selection process. I don’t believe it will for several reasons. Point mutations are the least destructive of mutations as well as the most common type of mutation. They don’t cause frame shifts which alter large numbers of codons. If you think that other mutation mechanism will somehow accelerate the mutation selection process, feel free to prove this. With respects to Dr Schneider’s selection scheme, it is very forgiving. What I mean by this is that you don’t have the possibility of extinction. The weight factors are not tied to survival of a creature. There are many examples of single mutations which cause the death of the creature with that mutation, yet ev does not have this effect. Including these types of features in the model would only slow evolution more so. In addition, how would you formulate the selection process that would evolve a gene de novo? There is no such selection process.

littleman, no one cares what you believe. We are waiting for you to prove your theory. Until you do, you are the supreme whiner in this thread.

That’s an easy one. Introduce whatever feature you want in the model and see whether you can speed up evolution sufficiently and prove your case. Since ev is already showing that it is the multiple selection conditions which slow the evolution process, the changes you advocate will not alter the fundamental mathematics already revealed.

Same ****, different words. We are waiting for you to prove your case. Schneider has already proved his.

Everybody has biases. The question is whether I am drawing my conclusion based on these biases or am I drawing my conclusions based on the results from ev and the numerous real examples which show that multiple selection pressures slow evolution.

You're drawing your conclusions based on a version of the program which does not model anything close to the reality of variations in the evolutionary process. So, your conclusions are pure conjecture.

I have demonstrated why Dr Schneider improperly extrapolated the evolution of a human genome. You evolutionists refuse to acknowledge this. Instead, you look for ways to parse words to justify this type of unscientific approach. That said, Dr Schneider’s underlying simulation has properly captured the mathematics of mutation and selection. In particular, the effect of multiple selection pressures is properly revealed.

You will need to accurately model all of the known real evolutionary processes. Until then, all you've proved is that random point mutation, by itself is prettyt slow. Don't think anyone would argue with that conclusion.

That’s a bit of an understatement. Simply using a realistic mutation rate of 10^-6 instead of 1 mutation per 256 bases per generation in Dr Schneider’s published case makes his estimate of 1 billion years for the evolution of a human genome go to 4 trillion years. And what real living thing has a genome length of 256?

Using only point mutation and an extremely simple selective process. Since neither is a complete model of evolution, your numbers are pure conjecture.

Kjkent1, you can’t parse away this statement from the NAR paper...

I'm not parsing away anything. Given more sophisticated algorithms, ev's basic premise could be extended to show a more complete explanation of evolution. Without more sophisticated algorithms, ev proves information gain, which is what the paper sought to prove.

Only evolutionist cultists would end the discussion here. I have no objection to adding any feature to ev. Let’s see if it changes any of my conclusions.

Let's see you do some of the work to prove your theory. As it stands, Schneider's proven info gain, and you've proven random point mutation is slow. Your miles from proof that evolution is impossible.

My conclusions are unsubstantiated except for the results from ev and numerous real examples of these results.

Your "real examples" are all based on random point mutations and a simplistic selection algorithm. So, your examples are not real, therefore all of your conclusions are unsubstantiated.

Would you pass the red herring, string cheese and whine please.

Absolutely, littleman. You can have all you can digest. Personally, I think you need a "Reglan," because you just can't seem to digest reality.

 

[Dr Adequate]

It's hard to imagine that somebody could be more dull and boring than Adequate but now we have found someone who is trying to imitate him. So which one of you two is OMG?

If you are "bored" by requests that you should tell a new lie, then the solution is very much in your own hands. All you have to do is tell a new lie.

If you're too dumb to think of one yourself, you'll find plenty on any creationist website.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Do you suppose Dr. Kleinman is happy he's joined in this debate by such a brilliant mind?

It's seems a sound logical argument flies right through T'ai's mind as if it wasn't even there. Gee, maybe I'm on to something...

This discussion reminds me of the time someone complemented me on a t-shirt I was wearing that had pictures of fish on it. He asked if I went fishing, and I told him I didn't, but had a question that had been bugging me he might be able to answer. I asked him why, when someone creates a man-made pond not connected to another body of water, fish appear there after a few years. He said he thought god put them there . How nice. God is stocking man-made ponds. What a neat guy. Has anyone correlated the IQ of a typical creationist with that of a typical evolutionist?

 

[cyborg]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

You do realise of course that software engineering shows us that the most, THE MOST, used design technique is:

"Try it, if it works keep it, if not throw it away."

Which just blows friggin' great chunks in your nonsense.

 

[kjkent1]

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

What you describe is the fundamental purpose of ev: to show that information gain can arise from a randomly ordered system using the process of random mutation and natural selection.

And, since ev does, in fact show the above-stated result, the direct answer to your query is, "Yes: Dr. Thomas Schneider."

 

[Mr. Scott]

Annoying Music Composition

You do realise of course that software engineering shows us that the most, THE MOST, used design technique is:

"Try it, if it works keep it, if not throw it away."

Which just blows friggin' great chunks in your nonsense.

Well, a good programmer is supposed to adhere to top-down design principles that, if followed religiously , should result in error-free development.

However...

...your principle applies perfectly to how I compose, arrange, and play music.

When I used to travel with a music group, my co-performers sometimes commented that my musical inspiration must come from god . I knew it was nothing of the sort, because I could remember the process I went through in my head to create music -- sometimes every blessed detail. I try stuff, and if it doesn't sound good, I forget it. If it sounds good, I integrate it into the piece, or my style. After uncountable incremental improvements, the result is a style that moves some to feel certainty that I'm a conduit of god's musicianship. However, the trick even to that is easy! If I come up with something that inspires spiritual feelings, I remember, repeat, and embellish it. There's really nothing more to it. No divine intervention is needed. Indeed, I feel offended if people's god delusion takes away recognition for the hard work I, myself, am intensely aware I put into my playing.

Composing is particularly analogous to evolution. I've been taught a basic structure of music that can lead me to what is likely to sound good, which I follow. When my gut tells me it's getting a little conventional, I focus on the sections which sound dull and randomly try other patterns of notes. When I hit something that pleases my ears, I remember it and jot it down.

...and so on, and so forth. It's very common also to make mistakes of fingering or memory when I'm working on original compositions. When a wrong note sounds bad, I correct it. When a mistake sounds better than my original idea (and this happens frequently enough) I chuck the original note and replace it with the mistake. I've been aware for decades how analogous this is to Darwinian evolution -- survival of the fittest notes originated by point mutations.

...and it can happen quickly enough to make deadlines!

 

[cyborg]

Well, a good programmer is supposed to adhere to top-down design principles that, if followed religiously , should result in error-free development.

That is true. However the problem is that is also very difficult to achieve in reality. Big-up front design is basically incredibly difficult to achieve for all but the most trivial of problems.

As such we come to methodologies such as the test-driven development which basically tells us to do the above but in a more structured way. Namely construct a test that will show your code does what you want then try to pass the test. If that's not an example of a highly evolutionary design that uses tests as selective pressure and a highly iterative implementation cycle as generations then I don't know what is.

The simple fact is that our software is based on empirical principles simply because the Holy Grail of provable software is friggin' hard. We live with bugs because otherwise we wouldn't have a lot of the software we do...

As such design principles really at best tell us how to avoid creating bad programs but as of yet we haven't really got anything that tells us how to build programs that really do what we want perfectly. I am not sure that it's going to happen due to the aforementioned difficulty of software proving.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Ah yes, the gap theory of evolution, is there anyplace you don’t have a gap in your theory?

Is there a word for a non-sequitor following a non-sequitor following a non-sequitor? To what in the friggin' world are you responding? It has no relation, whatever, to anything that I wrote.

The biggest non-sequitor in this thread is the one evolutionist make. That non-sequitor is mutation and selection leads to the evolution of birds from reptiles. This is mathematically impossible.

Ev does not evolve binding sites de novo according to Paul.

What is it that ev does?

I thought you read Dr Schneider’s Ev Evolution of Biological Information and this thread. Here’s what Dr Schneider says that ev does:

A small population (n=64) of `organisms' was created, each of which consisted of G= 256 bases of nucleotide sequence chosen randomly, with equal probabilities, from an alphabet of 4 characters (a, c, g, t, Fig. 1). At any particular time in the history of a natural population, the size of a genome, G, and the number of required genetic control element binding sites, γ, are determined by previous history and current physiology respectively, so as a parameter for this simulation we chose γ=16 and the program arbitrarily chose the site locations, which are fixed for the duration of the run. The information required to locate γ sites in a genome of size G is Rfrequency = -log2(γ/G) = 4 bits per site, where γ/G is the frequency of sites [4,14].

A section of the genome is set aside by the program to encode the gene for a sequence recognizing `protein', represented by a weight matrix [15,7] consisting of a two-dimensional array of 4 by L = 6 integers. These integers are stored in the genome in twos complement notation, which allows for both negative and positive values. (In this notation, the negative of an integer is formed by taking the complement of all bits and adding 1.) By encoding A=00, C=01, G=10, and T=11 in a space of 5 bases, integers from -512 to +511 are stored in the genome. Generation of the weight matrix integers from the nucleotide sequence gene corresponds to translation and protein folding in natural systems. The weight matrix can evaluate any L base long sequence. Each base of the sequence selects the corresponding weight from the matrix and these weights are summed. If the sum is larger than a tolerance, also encoded in the genome, the sequence is `recognized' and this corresponds to a protein binding to DNA (Fig. 1). As mentioned above, the exact form of the recognition mechanism is immaterial because of the generality of information theory.
The weight matrix gene for an organism is translated and then every position of that organism's genome is evaluated by the matrix. The organism can make two kinds of `mistakes'. The first is for one of the γ binding locations to be missed (representing absence of genetic control) and the second is for one of the G - γ non-binding sites to be incorrectly recognized (representing wasteful binding of the recognizer). For simplicity these mistakes are counted as equivalent, since other schemes should give similar final results. The validity of this black/white model of binding sites comes from Shannon's channel capacity theorem, which allows for recognition with as few errors as necessary for survival [1,16,7].
The organisms are subjected to rounds of selection and mutation. First, the number of mistakes made by each organism in the population is determined. Then the half of the population making the least mistakes is allowed to replicate by having their genomes replace (`kill') the ones making more mistakes. (To preserve diversity, no replacement takes place if they are equal.) At every generation, each organism is subjected to one random point mutation in which the original base is obtained 1/4 of the time. For comparison, HIV-1 reverse transcriptase makes about one error every 2000-5000 bases incorporated, only 10 fold lower than this simulation [17].
When the program starts, the genomes all contain random sequence, and the information content of the binding sites, Rsequence, is close to zero. Remarkably, the cyclic mutation and selection process leads to an organism that makes no mistakes in only 704 generations (Fig. 2a). Although the sites can contain a maximum of 2L = 12 bits, the information content of the binding sites rises during this time until it oscillates around the predicted information content, Rfrequency = 4 bits, with Rsequence, = 3.983 ± 0.399 bits during the 1000 to 2000 generation interval (Fig. 2b). The expected standard deviation from small sample effects [4] is 0.297 bits, so about 55% of the variance ( 0.32/0.42) comes from the digital nature of the sequences. Sequence logos [5] of the binding sites show that distinct patterns appear during selection, and that these then drift (Fig. 3). When selective pressure is removed, the observed pattern atrophies (not shown, but Fig. 1 shows the organism with the fewest mistakes at generation 2000, after atrophy) and the information content drops back to zero (Fig. 2b). The information decays with a half-life of 61 generations.
The evolutionary steps can be understood by considering an intermediate situation, for example when all organisms are making 8 mistakes. Random mutations in a genome that lead to more mistakes will immediately cause the selective elimination of that organism. On the other hand, if one organism randomly `discovers' how to make 7 mistakes, it is guaranteed (in this simplistic model) to reproduce every generation, and therefore it exponentially overtakes the population. This roughly-sigmoidal rapid transition corresponds to (and the program was inspired by) the proposal that evolution proceeds by punctuated equilibrium [18,19], with noisy `active stasis' clearly visible from generation 705 to 2000 (Fig. 2b, Fig. 3).

I highlighted part of the text in blue so you can see that the gene already exists. As Paul said earlier, ev is not an example of de novo evolution of a gene.

HIV evolves resistance much more quickly if monotherapy is used.

The point being what? Once again, now for, I think, the fifth time, I haven't argued against this idea so I haven't the slighest idea why you repeat it. It has nothing whatever to do with the conversation.

It's also not always true.

I repeat this because it is a perfect example of how single selection pressures evolve much more quickly than multiple selection pressures, this is what the mathematics of ev shows and this is how mutation and selection works.

If you think multiple selection pressures evolve more quickly, you need to show us how this occurs and provide examples.

The use of combination therapy for HIV is a good analogy to what ev shows.

No, it's not. As repeatedly emphasized --HIV triple therapy involves, by its definition more than three selection pressures since it must also include patient selection pressures including the rapid death of T cells and the potential death of the patient and the immune response.

Why don’t you tell us how many people survive HIV for any length of time when the three selection pressures from antiretroviral medicines are not applied?

1. HIV triple therapy attacks one, or at most, two sites. For the most part we are talking about two different types of reverse transcriptase inhibitors and/or a protease inhibitor. There are not 16 different "binding sites" that must "find" the correct base. Instead, all that HIV must "do" is develop the correct strain that is not inhibited by the reverse transcriptase inhibitor and/or protease inhibitor by producing so many copies that one of them will have the proper mutation in it. For the most part we are talking about one, two, or possibly three point mutations that are selected (depends a bit on what triple therapy protocol is used). That is not what ev does. Most of the ev models that I have seen have required something on the order of 96 point mutations for convergence.

Why don’t you tell us how many loci must evolve for HIV to have resistance to three drugs?

2. Ev models the development of information that is already pre-determined. Nature does not pre-determine what will or will not work in any particular situation (outside of determinism itself). There is no set goal in nature. If HIV arrives at a solution, then it arrives at a solution to the problem plaguing it -- triple therapy. If it doesn't, then it doesn't.

This is one of the stranger arguments you evolutionary cultists have come up with. You contradict yourselves with this argument. The set goal in the theory of evolution is survival of the fittest. That is what natural selection does. You then turn around and say there is no goal in nature. Which is it? No set goal or survival of the fittest?

Let me remind you of what Dr Schneider has said about ev:

An advantage of the ev model over previous evolutionary models, such as biomorphs [20], Avida [21], and Tierra [22], is that it starts with a completely random genome, and no further intervention is required.

The only set goal is satisfying the three selection conditions and this goes profoundly slow when realistic genome lengths and mutation rates are used.

3. You specifically stated when I joined this thread that HIV triple therapy was the prime example of how three selection pressures in ev work; and that this proved that evolution was so slow that it could never happen. Yet you have been confronted with the actual evidence that resistance forms to triple therapy in short order. This would seem to prove that evolution is not stopped by three selection pressures but continues along quite nicely, thank you very much. You have tried to squirm out of this fact in various ways -- initially by pretending that I was the one pushing HIV triple therapy, then by pretending that ev predicted that triple therapy could not stop HIV from producing resistant strains (even though your original argument was that HIV could never produce resistant strains in short time periods).

If you mean “first” when you use the word “prime” then HIV is my “prime” example of how multiple selection pressures slows evolution. However there are numerous other examples which are just as valid as this case. These examples include multiple drug therapy for the treatment of TB in order to prevent the emergence of resistant strains of this bacteria, the rapid emergence of resistance in HIV and TB when monotherapy is used, combination pesticides to prevent evolution of resistant strains, combination herbicides to prevent the evolution of resistant strains, combination rodenticides to prevent the evolution of resistant strains and combination cancer therapy to prevent the evolution of resistant strains. Each of these is real examples of what ev shows with its three selection pressures. That is multiple selection pressures slow the evolutionary process. This is a mathematical and demonstrated real fact. Now perhaps you would tell us what that selection pressure is that would evolve reptiles into birds? Pretty please?

I see no reason why I, or anyone else, should believe a word typed by your fingers.

You can believe it because I have the data from a peer reviewed and published mathematical model of random point mutation and natural selection and numerous real examples of this mathematics.

Of course I have, and if you had read this thread, you would know what I have to say about it.

The only explanation I can find is that you think three selection pressures somehow, and magically, interferes with the process in the presence of longer genomes. Do you have a more formal explanation?

You didn’t read far enough back in the threads but let’s see if you can reason this out by asking you a question. What changes in the ev model when you lengthen the genome while keeping all other parameters constant?

Here are the changes Unnamed made to ev:

Yes, he's taking into account the distances from valuation to threshold for all positions.

What relationship to reality does this have?

Why don’t you post a version of ev with these changes online so everyone can study the behavior of these changes?

That would be Unnamed's job.

It seems Unnamed has abandoned the discussion after this last exchange:

In addition, there is no selection process for a partially completed gene.

I don't think that's true, but if it were, then my change would be meaningless.

He must have meant that only variations that support the theory of evolution should be investigated. Paul, I love it when you squirm.
...
Paul, Dr Schneider was quite clear what he intended ev to be used for when he said the following:

Variations of the program could be used to investigate how population size, genome length, number of sites, size of recognition regions, mutation rate, selective pressure, overlapping sites and other factors affect the evolution.

That statement suggests to you that he only wants the program to be used to investigate things that support evolution? All righty then.

I don’t think that at all. kjkent1, Ichneumonwasp and numerous other evolutionists attempt to suggest that Dr Schneider’s only purpose for ev was to show how information gain occurs by mutation and selection and nothing more than that. It is clear by the above statement, which was not Dr Schneider’s intention.

Ev does not evolve binding sites de novo according to Paul.

I would be happy to address this claim if you could first define what you mean by "evolving binding sites de novo."

De novo = from the beginning. I’ve started using this terminology again since Mr Scott used a reference from Nature that includes this.

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Who is claiming that a program disproves intelligent design? Certainly no one in this thread.

Now Paul, don’t get into a tizzy. Just because ev shows that the theory of evolution is mathematically impossible doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try to prove intelligent design mathematically impossible. Why don’t you prove that it is mathematically impossible for intelligent scientists to do recombinant DNA?

Has anyone worked out how an intelligently designed program can possibly disprove the concept of intelligent design yet?

Oddly enough...unintelligent naturally selected DNA does just that.

Articulett, I must have missed your description of the selection pressure that would evolve a gene de novo. Could you repeat it again for us?

Let’s see if I can help you with the word serious. Try the word “earnest” instead of “serious”. Dr Schneider has made an earnest application of the mathematics of mutation and selection while you have made earnestly silly application of the string cheese theory to mutation and selection.

littleman, if you find string theory silly, take it up with Dr. Susskind.

You posted the concept on this thread. So why not defend what you post?

When considering other mutation mechanisms, the question is whether these other mutation mechanisms will significantly alter the behavior of the mathematics of mutation and selection process. I don’t believe it will for several reasons. Point mutations are the least destructive of mutations as well as the most common type of mutation. They don’t cause frame shifts which alter large numbers of codons. If you think that other mutation mechanism will somehow accelerate the mutation selection process, feel free to prove this. With respects to Dr Schneider’s selection scheme, it is very forgiving. What I mean by this is that you don’t have the possibility of extinction. The weight factors are not tied to survival of a creature. There are many examples of single mutations which cause the death of the creature with that mutation, yet ev does not have this effect. Including these types of features in the model would only slow evolution more so. In addition, how would you formulate the selection process that would evolve a gene de novo? There is no such selection process.

littleman, no one cares what you believe. We are waiting for you to prove your theory. Until you do, you are the supreme whiner in this thread.

The proof is out there. Multiple selection pressures slow evolution, ev shows this, numerous real examples shows this. I’ll keep whining this until it gets through your prejudiced and biased mind.

That’s an easy one. Introduce whatever feature you want in the model and see whether you can speed up evolution sufficiently and prove your case. Since ev is already showing that it is the multiple selection conditions which slow the evolution process, the changes you advocate will not alter the fundamental mathematics already revealed.

Same ****, different words. We are waiting for you to prove your case. Schneider has already proved his.

Are you talking about Dr Schneider’s extrapolation that a human genome could evolve in a billion years based on the rate of information acquisition on a 256 base genome and a mutation rate of 1 mutation per 256 bases per generation. Which one of the 10^500 alternative universes did this happen in?

Everybody has biases. The question is whether I am drawing my conclusion based on these biases or am I drawing my conclusions based on the results from ev and the numerous real examples which show that multiple selection pressures slow evolution.

You're drawing your conclusions based on a version of the program which does not model anything close to the reality of variations in the evolutionary process. So, your conclusions are pure conjecture.

If you don’t think the model is anything close to reality then why don’t you correct it to prove your point? I have already shown how ev’s three selection conditions parallels what happens in reality with numerous different real examples, and you, well you have shown us string cheese.

I have demonstrated why Dr Schneider improperly extrapolated the evolution of a human genome. You evolutionists refuse to acknowledge this. Instead, you look for ways to parse words to justify this type of unscientific approach. That said, Dr Schneider’s underlying simulation has properly captured the mathematics of mutation and selection. In particular, the effect of multiple selection pressures is properly revealed.

You will need to accurately model all of the known real evolutionary processes. Until then, all you've proved is that random point mutation, by itself is prettyt slow. Don't think anyone would argue with that conclusion.

It is not the random point mutations that make the theory of evolution slow, it is the multiple selection pressures which slow the process, of course, that is just in the alternative universe that we live in. Do you think that the real example of combination therapy slowing the evolution of resistant strains of HIV is limited to point mutations? How about combination therapy of TB in order to slow the evolution of resistant strains of this bacterium? Is this case limited to random point mutations? How about combination pesticides, combination herbicides, combination rodenticides and combination cancer therapy, are these cases limited to random point mutations? It isn’t the type of mutation which slows the evolution process, it is multiple selection pressures which slow this process.

That’s a bit of an understatement. Simply using a realistic mutation rate of 10^-6 instead of 1 mutation per 256 bases per generation in Dr Schneider’s published case makes his estimate of 1 billion years for the evolution of a human genome go to 4 trillion years. And what real living thing has a genome length of 256?

Using only point mutation and an extremely simple selective process. Since neither is a complete model of evolution, your numbers are pure conjecture.

The numerous real examples of how multiple selection pressures work is not conjecture; they are nails in the coffin for the theory of evolution. It is just handy to have a mathematical model of mutation and selection to drive those nails in.

Kjkent1, you can’t parse away this statement from the NAR paper...

I'm not parsing away anything. Given more sophisticated algorithms, ev's basic premise could be extended to show a more complete explanation of evolution. Without more sophisticated algorithms, ev proves information gain, which is what the paper sought to prove.

It could but it won’t. The effect of multiple selection pressures will not disappear no matter how sophisticated you make your algorithm. Ev shows the important mathematical principle that crushes the theory of evolution. That is that multiple selection pressures slow the mutation and selection process profoundly. Add that to the fact you don’t have a selection pressure to evolve a gene de novo and you don’t have a selection pressure that would evolve a reptile into a bird makes the theory of evolution the biggest fraud to hit the scientific community since the flat earth theory.

Only evolutionist cultists would end the discussion here. I have no objection to adding any feature to ev. Let’s see if it changes any of my conclusions.

Let's see you do some of the work to prove your theory. As it stands, Schneider's proven info gain, and you've proven random point mutation is slow. Your miles from proof that evolution is impossible.

I have done some work; I did what Dr Schneider suggested to do in his paper. I studied what happens to his model of mutation and selection when you vary the parameters. What it shows is that the theory of evolution is mathematically impossible. Of course there are numerous real examples which demonstrate what ev shows and why the theory of evolution is mathematically impossible.

My conclusions are unsubstantiated except for the results from ev and numerous real examples of these results.

Your "real examples" are all based on random point mutations and a simplistic selection algorithm. So, your examples are not real, therefore all of your conclusions are unsubstantiated.

Really, what limits the numerous real examples to random point mutations?

Would you pass the red herring, string cheese and whine please.

Absolutely, littleman. You can have all you can digest. Personally, I think you need a "Reglan," because you just can't seem to digest reality.

Would you like to have an Irish wake for the theory of evolution?

Do you suppose Dr. Kleinman is happy he's joined in this debate by such a brilliant mind?

Mr Scott, I don’t mind if a pussycat joins this debate.

You do realise of course that software engineering shows us that the most, THE MOST, used design technique is:

"Try it, if it works keep it, if not throw it away."

Which just blows friggin' great chunks in your nonsense.

What a minute, isn’t this the cruft theory of evolution?

What you describe is the fundamental purpose of ev: to show that information gain can arise from a randomly ordered system using the process of random mutation and natural selection.

Now don’t forget the other fundamental purpose of ev: that is to annoy evolutionists.