Annoying creationists

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ev shows that when known measured values for mutation rates and known measured genome lengths are used, ...

But, of course, other parameters are not known.

... the number of generations required to evolve only 16 binding sites because huge, far too large to support the theory of macroevolution by random point mutations and natural selection.

There is no Theory of Macroevolution by Random Point Mutations and Natural Selection," except in your cache of imaginary theories.

Which parameters am I setting that no biologist would agree with?

The hell with parameters, you're making up a theory that no biologist would agree with.

Well why don’t you do this series and put yourself out of this misery and show my arguments to be wrong? Why is it that every time you call me a liar, you never post my quote where I’m lying?

I posted the entire quote:

Feel free to extrapolate, but be prepared to verify your extrapolation. We both know that the reason why you won’t run a larger genome in this series is that you will encounter your Rcapacity problem. You can be such a sneak sometimes.

My estimate for the time to compute 1 generation for the 2 meg population case on my 2.8GHz computer was between 20-30 minutes using the Pascal version. Perhaps you can use Delphi’s suggestion to increase the memory for your Java version in order to run this case but the memory requirement is going to be about 600Mbytes.

It's a lot higher than that. I'm repeating the 1 million population run now using the Pascal version.

I didn’t say extrapolation was allowed, just be prepared to prove your extrapolations are accurate. For example, 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.

Or your extrapolation that something prevents the generation count from decreasing as the population increases? Just be prepared to prove your extrapolations are accurate.

~~ Paul

 

[joobz]

Joozb, in order to support your downy feather soft theory of evolution, you have to speculate on the existence of extremely high mutation rate at the early stages of life formation, some type of unique environmental conditions that no longer exist or are not reproducible in the laboratory and chemical reactions that are anything but likely to occur.

Ev shows that when known measured values for mutation rates and known measured genome lengths are used, the number of generations required to evolve only 16 binding sites because huge, far too large to support the theory of macroevolution by random point mutations and natural selection. So joozb, feel free to dream of unknown tiny 256 base pair genomes that can reproduce even when subjected to unrealistically high mutation rates as they evolve to generate all the genes and genetic control systems in the cells in your brain that allow you to come up with these wacky ideas

Joozb, I don’t think your anything is possible argument for abiogenesis and if it sounds good to you it must be true qualifies as well documented research.

thank you for once again recylcing your missquoted claims. and allow me to state once again. I've never, nor have i ever, said anything goes. You wish to beat that strawman to death. feel free, but that has no effect on reality. Like most of your argument, you wish to ignore reality.

I am stating without any doubt what-so-ever that your use of mutation rate and genome lengths are artificial. Even if you get numbers from literature, the basis for assuming they are applicable are just wrong. You are simple wrong.

I was showing that even point mutation rate is dependant upon environmental conditions. We do not know what the precisely what the conditions were. If you can provide that information, you would strengthen your argument. But that isn't the case. Even at one moment of our modern environment, there exists locational differences in the enviornment that will change mutation rate. Again, your average is just wrong. Your populations are wrong. Your genome lengths are wrong.

 

[Yahzi]

.

Yay! Woohoo!

The little panicking guys are back!



(Oh come on... it's as least as productive as half the posts in this thread. )

 

[John Hewitt]

From a cursory and rather superficial comparison, I'd agree. However, the dogmatic views in evolution tend to arise from multiple interations of challenge, analysis, and review of the evidence. When a solid argument against a theory comes along in science, it may take some proof and effort, but it will change. So far, this has failed to happen. And the fact that molecular biology strengthens evolutionary theory means that the challenges must be well stated and very strong.

Yes, in many ways I must agree with you. As judged across the domains of comparative anatomy and protein and nucleic acid sequence evolution is a fact.

However, there are other observational data sets and, as has been previously observed, one can spend a lifetime in biological research without using evolutionary theory at all. For example, most of my research was in molecular biology and I am not at all comfortable with Dawkins' claims. He is certainly a good writer, almost mesmerizing, but claiming that the gene is the foundation of evolutionary theory cannot be right.

Consider Popper's work, for example. He was less good as a writer but an excellent logician. At first he rejected evolutionary theory as vacuous because the given explanations were a posteriori rationalizations. In the end, he did accept that evolution made real predictions about relationships between species - sequence data is hard to argue with. Unfortunate, Popper stopped arguing the point but there are many other observational data sets in biology about which evolution still does not make any prediction. Despite evolution's supposed status as the foundation of all biological science, in those areas it really does seem vacuously consistent with any observation.

So, I regret that Popper did not stick to his guns. Interestingly, what Popper did do, when he accepted evolution, was to assert that his own epistemology was itself evolutionary. He had a point - one can make a good case but there are no genes in epistemology. Hence, even his later position remains a challenge to conventional evolutionary theory.

Such thinking is, in part, what leads to my own, "data" based approach to evolutionary theory, which you may wish to look at.

 

[drkitten]

Consider Popper's work, for example. He was less good as a writer but an excellent logician. At first he rejected evolutionary theory as vacuous because the given explanations were a posteriori rationalizations. In the end, he did accept that evolution made real predictions about relationships between species - sequence data is hard to argue with. Unfortunate, Popper stopped arguing the point but there are many other observational data sets in biology about which evolution still does not make any prediction. Despite evolution's supposed status as the foundation of all biological science, in those areas it really does seem vacuously consistent with any observation.

Of course. That's because many observations and experiments do not test evolutionary theory directly. In a similar way, if I travel to a far-off land to find interesting new species of beetles, I have high confidence that whatever beetle specimens I find will attract all other similarly-shaped beetles in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This attraction is consistent with any observation I as a biologist might make.

Is this because Newton's laws of gravity are vacuous? Of course not.

It is instead because I am working within such a restricted context, and the set of solutions that a sane scientist would consider is so small, that we do not expect a test of Newtonian gravity to arise from the differences between beetle species.

Similarly, I would expect that whatever beetle I find will remain at rest until acted upon by a force, at which point it would accelerate in the direction of the force at a rate given by the force divided by the mass of the beetle.

The reason that Popper stopped arguing the point is because he was intelligent enough to realize that he was wrong.

 

[John Hewitt]

Of course. That's because many observations and experiments do not test evolutionary theory directly. In a similar way, if I travel to a far-off land to find interesting new species of beetles, I have high confidence that whatever beetle specimens I find will attract all other similarly-shaped beetles in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This attraction is consistent with any observation I as a biologist might make.
Is this because Newton's laws of gravity are vacuous? Of course not.
It is instead because I am working within such a restricted context, and the set of solutions that a sane scientist would consider is so small, that we do not expect a test of Newtonian gravity to arise from the differences between beetle species.
Similarly, I would expect that whatever beetle I find will remain at rest until acted upon by a force, at which point it would accelerate in the direction of the force at a rate given by the force divided by the mass of the beetle.
The reason that Popper stopped arguing the point is because he was intelligent enough to realize that he was wrong.

I did not discuss Newton, Newton's laws or the flight of beetles.

My point was that both the early and the later Popper represented, from their different viewpoints, legitimate challenges to conventional evolutionary theory.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Ev shows that when known measured values for mutation rates and known measured genome lengths are used, ...

But, of course, other parameters are not known.

Which parameters do you want to know on the evolutionary landscape?

... the number of generations required to evolve only 16 binding sites because huge, far too large to support the theory of macroevolution by random point mutations and natural selection.

There is no Theory of Macroevolution by Random Point Mutations and Natural Selection," except in your cache of imaginary theories.

Oh no! I meant to say “becomes” huge not “because” huge. I think I’m reading too many of joozb posts. I am becoming grammatically challenged. Paul, I know that macroevolution is imaginary.

Which parameters am I setting that no biologist would agree with?

The hell with parameters, you're making up a theory that no biologist would agree with.

I can’t help it if the entire field of biology has been overtaken by mass hysteria. In a few years, sociologist will be studying this phenomenon and wondering how such a thing could happen to so many people with so many letters after their names. I think this is all very interesting, a little strange but interesting none the less.

Well why don’t you do this series and put yourself out of this misery and show my arguments to be wrong? Why is it that every time you call me a liar, you never post my quote where I’m lying?

I posted the entire quote:

Feel free to extrapolate, but be prepared to verify your extrapolation. We both know that the reason why you won’t run a larger genome in this series is that you will encounter your Rcapacity problem. You can be such a sneak sometimes.

You think I would stoop so low to call you a sneak when you really aren’t? So why would you post one of your curve fits for a series of points when you know that the next point in the series would not even converge? So now you are a disingenuous sneak. I guess that makes me a dishonest liar. Hey joozb, does the grammatical rule of double negatives apply here?

My estimate for the time to compute 1 generation for the 2 meg population case on my 2.8GHz computer was between 20-30 minutes using the Pascal version. Perhaps you can use Delphi’s suggestion to increase the memory for your Java version in order to run this case but the memory requirement is going to be about 600Mbytes.

It's a lot higher than that. I'm repeating the 1 million population run now using the Pascal version.

It doesn’t take very large populations and genome lengths to make the memory requirements and cpu times to become huge with ev. Remember the good old days when you had 256 base genomes and 1 mutation per 256 bases per generation mutation rates and when the run times were about 5 seconds? Those were the days when a superficial analysis of ev showed the theory of evolution was mathematically true.

I didn’t say extrapolation was allowed, just be prepared to prove your extrapolations are accurate. For example, 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.

Or your extrapolation that something prevents the generation count from decreasing as the population increases? Just be prepared to prove your extrapolations are accurate.

You have thrown down the gauntlet and I accept your challenge. May I suggest super computers at 10 paces?

 

[I less than three logic]

Kleinman, is there a reason you continuously misspell joobz name as joozb? This is not intended to address your little quibble here. I've noticed that you've done the same misspelling constantly for the last few posts. I was just wondering if it is intentional or a very consistent typo. If intentional, is it meant to mean something, because I'm not seeing it.

 

[drkitten]

My point was that both the early and the later Popper represented, from their different viewpoints, legitimate challenges to conventional evolutionary theory.

And, as usual, your "point" is wrong -- both factually inaccurate and philosphically incoherent.

I suppose I should give you points for consistency, though. Even a blind squirrel can normally find a nut once in a while, just by chance.

 

[fishbob]

What a bizarre question! Where do you think science comes from? The whole of the renaissance is an achievement of religion. The Greeks may have invented rationality but it was the Muslim philosophers who preserved it and Aquinas who identified reason with God's thought and so changed the face of Europe.
Alternatively, visit St. Peters in Rome, and see its achievements writ in stone.

Don't take too much credit. Religion happened to have liesure time and facilities. These resources were available as a result of amassed wealth, and the impetus to develop reason appears to be selfish (more knowledge = greater glory, etc). Looks like the plan to follow where reason led did not end up where religion had expected .

Oops. Too bad. That geni is not going back into the bottle.

 

[fishbob]

What you say is the creationist critique of evolution should be ignored because creationists don't believe in evolution.

100% wrong.

Creationist critique of evolution is empty, vapid, and illogical. What the creationists believe is not relevant.

The Creationist critiques of evolution I have seen are based either on ignorance or deceit. Or sometimes a combination of the two.

 

[joobz]

You have thrown down the gauntlet and I accept your challenge. May I suggest super computers at 10 paces?

You repeat your challenge, and I'll repeat why you are wrong.

Fine, Let it be known on this date, November 28th, 2006, You're challenge has been met and dissmissed.

the following links represent clear flaws in your argument against ev and why you are wrong.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2088334#post2088334
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2095267#post2095267
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2096792#post2096792
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2097589#post2097589
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2097776#post2097776
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2098215#post2098215
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2098611#post2098611
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2101691#post2101691
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2110843#post2110843
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2117943#post2117943
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2123175#post2123175
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2123221#post2123221
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2123432#post2123432


Please try again, but with a new hypothesis.
Evolution takes to long cause ev said so has been disproven.

You need a new argument.
Your's is broken, busted, destroyed, meaningless, useless, defunkt, ...

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Kleinman, is there a reason you continuously misspell joobz name as joozb? This is not intended to address your little quibble here. I've noticed that you've done the same misspelling constantly for the last few posts. I was just wondering if it is intentional or a very consistent typo. If intentional, is it meant to mean something, because I'm not seeing it

Nothing intentional meant here. I use macros and do a lot of cutting and pasting because the same points are raised over and over. I misspelled his name unintentionally in an earlier post and it just has been carried forward. Do I have you people so much on edge that you are looking for meaning in transposed letters? I am not trying to be that subtle. I see a striking contrast in the results from ev when you use the input parameters that Dr Schneider used in his published paper and the results you get when you use more realistic values in this model. If others including Paul did not see this, I don’t think this thread would still have any life in it. I don’t need to try to undermine joobz’s arguments about what were genome lengths and mutation rates 2 billion years ago by misspelling his name. If joobz wants to believe that there were life forms with genome lengths much small than exist today that could sustain mutation rates much higher than living things are able to now, he is free to believe this, however he has no scientific evidence to back this up. The mutation rates and genome lengths I have used in Dr Schneider’s model are far closer to the known, measured values. When those values are used in Dr Schneider’s model, the rate of information gain is millions of times slower than Dr Schneider’s case using an unrealistic genome length and mutation rate.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You think I would stoop so low to call you a sneak when you really aren’t? So why would you post one of your curve fits for a series of points when you know that the next point in the series would not even converge? So now you are a disingenuous sneak. I guess that makes me a dishonest liar. Hey joozb, does the grammatical rule of double negatives apply here?

I didn't post a curve fit for the mutation rate versus generations data, did I? Nor did I extrapolate in either direction, did I? I simply pointed out that, within a range that makes sense, the generations appear to be approximately linear in the mutation rate.

I guess you're not a liar. You just don't seem to pay attention.

It doesn’t take very large populations and genome lengths to make the memory requirements and cpu times to become huge with ev. Remember the good old days when you had 256 base genomes and 1 mutation per 256 bases per generation mutation rates and when the run times were about 5 seconds? Those were the days when a superficial analysis of ev showed the theory of evolution was mathematically true.

This is so convoluted I'm not sure what to call it. I guess it's "proof by enjoyment of fast simulations."

You have thrown down the gauntlet and I accept your challenge. May I suggest super computers at 10 paces?

I decline. You'll have to prove your extrapolations peacefully.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If joobz wants to believe that there were life forms with genome lengths much small than exist today that could sustain mutation rates much higher than living things are able to now, he is free to believe this, however he has no scientific evidence to back this up.

But, you see, if the genomes were a few orders of magnitude smaller, then the mutation rates didn't have to be higher. There is plenty of time for things to happen.

Now it seems obvious to me that early genomes were much smaller. Why? Because there is no way everything could evolve at once. First there had to be a few functions, then more, then a few more, and then duplications allowed the repertoire to expand significantly. I'd be willing to bet that there were no more than a couple hundred fundamental mechanisms from which the rest evolved by duplication and divergence.

You might as well accept this hypothesis, since you don't believe that anything important evolved anyway. So what the hell, why not?

I've run 92K genomes in 700K generations with a mutation rate of 1 mutation per 512 bases. If we slow the rate by a factor of 200, to 1 mutation per 100K bases, then the generations becomes about 140 million. Heck, let's say 300 million. No problem. And that was with an absurd population of 36.

~~ Paul

 

[I less than three logic]

Nothing intentional meant here. I use macros and do a lot of cutting and pasting because the same points are raised over and over. I misspelled his name unintentionally in an earlier post and it just has been carried forward. Do I have you people so much on edge that you are looking for meaning in transposed letters? I am not trying to be that subtle. I see a striking contrast in the results from ev when you use the input parameters that Dr Schneider used in his published paper and the results you get when you use more realistic values in this model. If others including Paul did not see this, I don’t think this thread would still have any life in it. I don’t need to try to undermine joobz’s arguments about what were genome lengths and mutation rates 2 billion years ago by misspelling his name. If joobz wants to believe that there were life forms with genome lengths much small than exist today that could sustain mutation rates much higher than living things are able to now, he is free to believe this, however he has no scientific evidence to back this up. The mutation rates and genome lengths I have used in Dr Schneider’s model are far closer to the known, measured values. When those values are used in Dr Schneider’s model, the rate of information gain is millions of times slower than Dr Schneider’s case using an unrealistic genome length and mutation rate.

No, as I said, my post had nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

Your frequent use of insults in place of argument was blatantly obvious even as I quickly skimmed through this thread. Thus, I thought the constant misspelling was some kind of insult as well; one that I didn’t understand. I thought that perhaps I was missing the joke. Since I like to consider my wit pretty sharp, I asked to make sure. Thank you for clearing that up for me though.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

All hail the great Pelagibacter ubique. Free living. Only 1,354 genes. A mere 1,308,506 base pairs. And there are an estimated [latex]$10^{28}$[/latex] of them in the oceans. No pseudogenes, extrachromosomal elements, transposons, or introns. You gotta love this little fella.

http://www.mbari.org/seminars/2005/spring2005/april15_giovannoni.htm

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

And just because it boggles the mind to look at it in this format, here is a list of every protein encoded by the P. ubique genome:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...d=Retrieve&dopt=Protein+Table&list_uids=18526

~~ Paul

 

[joobz]

Nothing intentional meant here. I use macros and do a lot of cutting and pasting because the same points are raised over and over.

I see now. Logical fallacy by macro.

 

[joobz]

All hail the great Pelagibacter ubique. Free living. Only 1,354 genes. A mere 1,308,506 base pairs. And there are an estimated

of them in the oceans. No pseudogenes, extrachromosomal elements, transposons, or introns. You gotta love this little fella.

http://www.mbari.org/seminars/2005/spring2005/april15_giovannoni.htm

~~ Paul

that is amazing. Life is astounding. thanks Paul!