Annoying creationists

[Soapy Sam]

Fair enough Sam. I again will state my position. Dr Schneider has written a computer simulation of random point mutations and natural selection. He has used information theory in order to derive this model. I believe that Dr Schneider’s mathematical model is a plausible simulation of this phenomenon. However, Dr Schneider used totally unrealistic input parameters in his single published case which gave a totally unrealistic rate of information gain by random point mutation and natural selection. Dr Schneider used this rate of information gain to estimate the amount of time it would take to evolve a human genome. When you use realistic parameters in his model, the rate of information gain by random point mutation and natural selection becomes so profoundly slow that not only do you lack the time to evolve a human genome, this model calls into question whether any fundamental gene or gene control system can evolve on a realistic length genome.

Sam, this is not a trivial debate. It requires knowledge of genetics, molecular biology, information theory (thermodynamics), probability theory and computer simulations. In addition, this debate is carried on in a highly charged political environment. But people on this forum are so friendly, it is a joy to carry on a discussion like this on this forum.

Thank you for that synopsis. The situation seems clear.

Life, showing evidence of common origins and long evolution, through an extensive fossil record, abounds.
A computer model of how life might have evolved, suggests this is either possible in the time available, or not possible, depending on input assumptions.

I agree the discussion is non trivial, but the conclusion seems simple enough.
If a model of reality is inadequate to explain reality, we need to fix the model, not reality.

If the second set of inputs are indeed more reasonable, then the program may be missing one or more accelerating effects, probably due to forced evolution due to competition, or major changes of evolutionary style , such as occurs with the replacement of the Ediacarans, or at the so-called Eocambrian "explosion".

It seems unrealistic to expect any model which simply tallies accumulations of point mutations in a single genome or phenotype, tested by a filter algorithm ,to model evolution as a whole.
It may model one, or several of many contributing processes.

Each change to every genome in existence affects the evolution of every other genome in existence, to a lesser or greater extent. In closely competing genomes the effect of a single improvement on genome A may far outweigh the effects of many accumulated mutations on genome B, because phenotypes A and B are either competing, or cooperating. What happens to creature A increases or decreases pressure on creature B., whether or not they share species (a meaningless distinction in early times anyway.) By the time we are looking at a tangled bank, the combinatorial feedback , I expect, will be beyond the power of any computer in existence today. We are into protein folding complexity levels.
.
No organism evolves in isolation and at present no computer can meaningfully simulate the interactions of whole ecosystems. We can't yet build a computer capable of solving a simple combinatorial travelling salesman problem.
We clearly cannot model the evolution of a planetary ecosystem- and any attempt to "evolve" a single genome in isolation is meaningless. Things don't evolve in isolation.

The mysteries of evolution and abiogenesis will be solved in the field, not in a computer.

 

[hammegk]

...the program may be missing one or more accelerating effects, probably due to forced evolution due to competition,

Is this effect now common consensus even among micro-biologists? That is, environmental pressure does increase mutation rates?

or major changes of evolutionary style , such as occurs with the replacement of the Ediacarans, or at the so-called Eocambrian "explosion".

Could you be a bit more specific? Or is 'evolutionary style' what your next comments are meant to address?

It seems unrealistic to expect any model which simply tallies accumulations of point mutations in a single genome or phenotype, tested by a filter algorithm ,to model evolution as a whole.
It may model one, or several of many contributing processes.

Seems reasonable.

Each change to every genome in existence affects the evolution of every other genome in existence, to a lesser or greater extent. In closely competing genomes the effect of a single improvement on genome A may far outweigh the effects of many accumulated mutations on genome B, because phenotypes A and B are either competing, or cooperating. What happens to creature A increases or decreases pressure on creature B., whether or not they share species (a meaningless distinction in early times anyway.) By the time we are looking at a tangled bank, the combinatorial feedback , I expect, will be beyond the power of any computer in existence today. We are into protein folding complexity levels.

And now you've moved to arm-waving with a just so story. Sorry.

Things don't evolve in isolation.

Except the times isolation has been nominated as playing a good part.

The mysteries of evolution and abiogenesis will be solved in the field,

Or not ...

not in a computer.

Agreement again.

 

[joobz]

And now you've moved to arm-waving with a just so story. Sorry.

I don't completely understand this type of criticism. I respect the point of grounding everyone with the fact that we are unlikely to know exactly the way life started. But you are equating a mechanistic hypothesis whose individual parts should be testable to theories that have absolutely no grounding in reality. While most likely wrong, it is less sort of wrong than the "poof" hypothesis.

 

[joobz]

That's Beleth's, actually.

I just stole it.

Oh,thanks for the correction.
Sorry about that Beleth!
I liked your "Throwing Rocks" analogy.

 

[hammegk]

I don't completely understand this type of criticism. I respect the point of grounding everyone with the fact that we are unlikely to know exactly the way life started. But you are equating a mechanistic hypothesis whose individual parts should be testable to theories that have absolutely no grounding in reality.

You see testability where I see nothing but more arm-waving, ever.

While most likely wrong, it is less sort of wrong than the "poof" hypothesis.

It's back to 'intent' rather than pure randomness. Do you think chem's periodic table is a result of randomness?

 

[joobz]

You see testability where I see nothing but more arm-waving, ever.

why the "ever"? do you believe that we can never have a working model of evolution? of abiogenesis?

It's back to 'intent' rather than pure randomness. Do you think chem's periodic table is a result of randomness?

Why is it intent vs. randomness? Randomness can be a driving mechanism but have non random results (you've heard this before). Diffusion for instance. But would you claim diffusion is an intential event?

 

[articulett]

We could manufacture a spore life form through nanotechnology and let it evolve before Hammy's eyes and he would be incapable of seeing it. All the scientists in the world could agree (as they do on evolution) that we've pretty much narrowed down the specifics of the primordial ooze and life, but he'd still call it arm waving and say "nyah, nyah, you'll never know--me and my intelligent designer are keeping it a mystery"...

But you have to admire his tenacity and inability to allow the tiniest shred of evidence to mar his faith that" we don't know what we actually do know--and that he knows all about that which he hasn't a clue.

What was Steve Weinberg saying about that crazy old aunt...

 

[cyborg]

Do you think chem's periodic table is a result of randomness?

No. It's a result of human design. Chemicals couldn't give a frell about the periodic chemical.

 

[John Hewitt]

You complain about conceptual construction, but you don't understand the difference between aliens and gods?

No, you are confusing me with those Star Trek episodes in which aliens behave as Gods.
I simply said that Gods and aliens might both be capable of inputting intelligent design into "daughter" organisms. So, if you believe directed panspermia is a reasonable theory for the origin of life on earth, you should have no problem with the idea of looking for evidence of intelligent design in earthly organisms.

 

[John Hewitt]

it is obvious you must have some type of selection process to accelerate the random formation of molecules for abiogenesis. If you don’t have a selection process and consider this as a simple probability problem, you will be wiped out by the mathematics. Consider the case of a self replicating protein that is 32 amino acids long. The chance of forming such a protein by purely random processes is 1 in 40^32./

OK, so we all know you think evolution is impossible by any reasonable probablistic measurement.

And, yet, life exists in overwhelming numbers and diversity. Sort of like the fact that people routinely play Powerball(r) knowing that the probability of any individual winning is a practical nullity. Nevertheless, someone eventually wins and it happens quite a few times every year.

I presume that your alternative theory is that all life on Earth is the product of instantaneous materialization by application of the divine will of an almighty and limitless creator?

This is not sarcasm on my part. I'm trying to understand why you think the above theory is more scientific than the one you seek to discredit.

Or, is it just your faith which leads you to the alternative conclusion?

I would think Kleinman's estimate for the probability of gene like objects emerging by chance is, if anything, a great overestimate. For example, it rather generously assumes that there are only 20 amino acids in the prebiotic soup - you could easily defend even smaller values which would argue that life as we know it would not happen by chance anywhere in the universe, ever.
And even if this lottery came up - would this chance organism be adapted to its environment?

I think you can do much better if you base evolution on data, instead of genes. Then you can get a chemical selective process and have a chance of evolving genes.

 

[hammegk]

why the "ever"? do you believe that we can never have a working model of evolution? of abiogenesis?

At the 'why' level, never. At the 'how' level we may come close.

Evolution is already a 'working model'; we just don't know how or why.

And you are one of the few evolutionarians I've run across here who are willing to note that bio-evolution is actually a subset of abiogenesis.

Why is it intent vs. randomness? Randomness can be a driving mechanism but have non random results (you've heard this before). Diffusion for instance. But would you claim diffusion is an intential event?

Diffusion is an obviously random event.

BTW, you forgot to provide your thinking on the randomness of the chemical elements.

We could manufacture a spore life form through nanotechnology and let it evolve before Hammy's eyes and he would be incapable of seeing it.

Yeah,I seldom find cases of monkey see, monkey do impressive, which is what that feat would be.

All the scientists in the world could agree (as they do on evolution) that we've pretty much narrowed down the specifics of the primordial ooze and life, but he'd still call it arm waving and say "nyah, nyah, you'll never know--me and my intelligent designer are keeping it a mystery"...

Yeah, all agree "we've pretty much narrowed down the specifics"; i.e the arm-waving sounds impressive to those who believe rote learning and regurgitation represents thought and understanding.

But you have to admire his tenacity and inability to allow the tiniest shred of evidence to mar his faith that" we don't know what we actually do know--and that he knows all about that which he hasn't a clue.

What was Steve Weinberg saying about that crazy old aunt...

Aww, I don't think you are that old, articulett.

 

[kjkent1]

I think you can do much better if you base evolution on data, instead of genes. Then you can get a chemical selective process and have a chance of evolving genes.

So, as a practical matter how would you change EV to accomodate your theoretical model?

Maybe you should consider discussing your theory with Dr. Schneider. He's probably one of the few people who would be likely to understand the hypothesis.

 

[joobz]

At the 'why' level, never. At the 'how' level we may come close.

Well, why implies there is some meaning when that doesn't need to be true at all. I hope there is, but...

Evolution is already a 'working model'; we just don't know how or why.

And you are one of the few evolutionarians I've run across here who are willing to note that bio-evolution is actually a subset of abiogenesis.

I guess it's my own simple version of events. But I don't see them as being unrelated. It's like believeing in newtonian mechanics but not quantum. We don't know how abiogenesis occured, but it isn't a huge leap to assume that some form of evolutionary selection was involved in abiogenesis. While I never thought of it in those terms, I can see how one could call bio-evolution a subset of abiogenesis. But being a subset doesn't make it any less real. It just means we've learned one very important, mechanistic part of the story.

Diffusion is an obviously random event.

BTW, you forgot to provide your thinking on the randomness of the chemical elements.

Ok, now that I understand how you are terming random, then yes the periodic table is a logically imposed order onto the random association of nuclear groupings. The only part that makes this random less random than diffusion is the discrete form of groups (mass changes between elements are integers due to the discrete addition of proton/neutrons)

Yeah, all agree "we've pretty much narrowed down the specifics"; i.e the arm-waving sounds impressive to those who believe rote learning and regurgitation represents thought and understanding.

Again, I do not understand this critique of armwaving...
All hypotheses start as a wave of an arm. It's what is done to study it that is important. If you are critiquing evolutionary researchers for speculating without at least developing some experiments to test these theories, than you are right to do so. However, if you are critiquing a general audience for not conducting their own field experiments, that's a bit excessive. Most do not have the time/resources/qualifications to test these theories, but that doesn't mean they should be prevented from the discussions.

I know that most here would change their views as new data was to be presented. Does that still make it an armwaving argument? What is the alternative? To not speculate at all?

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Why don’t you contact Dr Schneider (email omitted) and see whether he would be interested in running his model on your super computer. If he is, I’ll write up a proposal for your marketing people.

Well, for one , I've already read Mark Twain. ;-)

I could certainly contact Dr. Schneider (and I just may do this), but this begs the question: why haven't you already done this? The only way that this gets interesting enough for media attention is if two well-respected intellectual foes can agree on the conditions of the experiment. This is a battle of creation vs. evolution -- nothing less, and that's how I'd want to advertise it to the press.

I don't actually know if you're a well-respected intellectual foe or not. You seem to be pretty good at advancing your position, and you and Dr. Schneider have already communicated -- apparently with some regularity.

So, what's your reluctance to contact Schneider?

You need to do your homework. You can start by reading this thread carefully. If you had you would have seen this post.

This gauntlet was thrown on the ground on 2005 May 15.

Notice that, since creatioinists stop complaining when defeated, the most extremely difficult part of the challenge above is "do a scientific test of your own ideas"!

Dr Schneider and all you other evolutionarians let it be known that the gauntlet is taken up officially on 2006 November 28. So Dr Schneider, come out from hiding under your blanket and stop making other evolutionarians defend your superficial analysis of ev.

I contacted Dr Schneider by email and he refused my acceptance of his challenge.

Once you finish reading this thread, go to the Evolutionisdead website, and read the following two threads on the Information Theory forum:
Dr Tom Schneider, ev programand Molecular information theory and the Ev program threads.

Life, showing evidence of common origins and long evolution, through an extensive fossil record, abounds.
A computer model of how life might have evolved, suggests this is either possible in the time available, or not possible, depending on input assumptions.

I agree the discussion is non trivial, but the conclusion seems simple enough.
If a model of reality is inadequate to explain reality, we need to fix the model, not reality.

I don’t question the reality of the evidence; I question the evolutionist interpretation of the evidence.

Don’t you think Paul or Dr Schneider would correct the model if they could?

it is obvious you must have some type of selection process to accelerate the random formation of molecules for abiogenesis. If you don’t have a selection process and consider this as a simple probability problem, you will be wiped out by the mathematics. Consider the case of a self replicating protein that is 32 amino acids long. The chance of forming such a protein by purely random processes is 1 in 40^32.

I would think Kleinman's estimate for the probability of gene like objects emerging by chance is, if anything, a great overestimate. For example, it rather generously assumes that there are only 20 amino acids in the prebiotic soup - you could easily defend even smaller values which would argue that life as we know it would not happen by chance anywhere in the universe, ever.
And even if this lottery came up - would this chance organism be adapted to its environment?

I think you can do much better if you base evolution on data, instead of genes. Then you can get a chemical selective process and have a chance of evolving genes.

John, if anything my estimate is a great underestimate. There are more than 20 amino acids. There are L and R stereoisomers of the 20 amino acids found in living things. Since the vast majority of amino acids in living things are composed of L amino acids that gives you 40 amino acids that can randomly combine only half of which are found in living things. If you add all the possible non-biologic amino acids to this prebiotic soup and all the other molecules that would be combining in this chemical soup, your probabilities would be much smaller for forming a functional gene purely by random chemical reactions. Without some type of selection process in this prebiotic soup, you are working against impossible odds. Even with a selection process, Dr Schneider’s model shows how profoundly slow this process is. You have the same mathematical problem if you propose the RNA world.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Do you think chem's periodic table is a result of randomness?

What? Are you suggesting that any patterns we find in nature, and then make laws to describe, must have a mysterious design behind them?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If you add all the possible non-biologic amino acids to this prebiotic soup and all the other molecules that would be combining in this chemical soup, your probabilities would be much smaller for forming a functional gene purely by random chemical reactions. Without some type of selection process in this prebiotic soup, you are working against impossible odds.

We agree! Alert the media!

Even with a selection process, Dr Schneider’s model shows how profoundly slow this process is.

Of course, you have absolutely no idea whether this is true, even if it were true about the process that Ev does model.

~~ Paul

 

[kjkent1]

You need to do your homework. You can start by reading this thread carefully. If you had you would have seen this post.
I contacted Dr Schneider by email and he refused my acceptance of his challenge.

Once you finish reading this thread, go to the Evolutionists website, and read the following two threads on the Information Theory forum: (links omitted) threads.

OK, Professor Kleinman, I've done my homework now (and, I've pasted a gold star in the "Wednesday" calendar box displayed on the refrigerator, too). ;-)

I'm in no position to argue the science of your contentions. I wish that weren't the case, but my math/science education stopped with first year calculus and that was 20 years ago.

However, I am a pretty good judge of what it takes to get someone to a bargaining table in the mood to negotiate. And my observation is that your communication skills show a distinct lack of diplomacy.

A person who "wants" a fight, almost always gets his/her wish. If you really wanted to get Dr. Schneider's attention, you will stop "throwing down" the "gauntlet," because that's pretty much like telling your opponent that you find him a complete moron and that you are available at his convenience to beat him into submission.

And, my comment here is irrespective of the fact that Dr. Schneider may have used a similar phrase to describe his own challenge. Just because your opponent "may" have a chip on his shoulder, doesn't mean that you should immediately strike out to knock it off.

That's how arms get broken and wars start. However, in the end most of the combatants are dead or seriously injured, rather than better educated (although admittedly the scientists are usually safe in some bunker building more sophisticated weapons to continue the unending cycle).

Now, since I personally have no dog in this fight, other than a distinct amateur interest in the evolution v. design debate, when you write to me in a condescending tone, I just shrug it off. But, I'm trained to do that (i.e., unless/until I see a legally actionable claim with a positive property or liberty expectation) -- whereas the other scientists with whom you are jousting do not. Instead, they get defensive, and the conversation devolves into a lot of people shouting but no one doing much listening.

So, if your true goal is to actually get your opponent to concede that his science is deficient, then you should consider an approach that's a little more conciliatory.

On the other hand, if you prefer to be merely annoying, then just keep on with your current Don Quixote approach, and I can pretty much guarantee that your argument will remain right here on the Internet, and relatively unnoticed.

 

[John Hewitt]

John, if anything my estimate is a great underestimate. There are more than 20 amino acids. There are L and R stereoisomers of the 20 amino acids found in living things. Since the vast majority of amino acids in living things are composed of L amino acids that gives you 40 amino acids that can randomly combine only half of which are found in living things. If you add all the possible non-biologic amino acids to this prebiotic soup and all the other molecules that would be combining in this chemical soup, your probabilities would be much smaller for forming a functional gene purely by random chemical reactions. Without some type of selection process in this prebiotic soup, you are working against impossible odds. Even with a selection process, Dr Schneider’s model shows how profoundly slow this process is. You have the same mathematical problem if you propose the RNA world.

Yes, I'm sorry, I do realise the real probability is much lower. I misspoke myself. I should have said that the number on that negative exponential was much higher.

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

Do you think chem's periodic table is a result of randomness?

What? Are you suggesting that any patterns we find in nature, and then make laws to describe, must have a mysterious design behind them?

What? Are you suggesting that any patterns we find in nature, and then make laws to describe, don’t have any mysterious design behind them?

If you add all the possible non-biologic amino acids to this prebiotic soup and all the other molecules that would be combining in this chemical soup, your probabilities would be much smaller for forming a functional gene purely by random chemical reactions. Without some type of selection process in this prebiotic soup, you are working against impossible odds.

We agree! Alert the media!

Don’t forget to tell the media that there is no known selection process that would reduce these impossible odds.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

What? Are you suggesting that any patterns we find in nature, and then make laws to describe, don’t have any mysterious design behind them?

Yes, I am. If there is no reason to propose a mysterious designer, then there is no reason to propose it.

Don’t forget to tell the media that there is no known selection process that would reduce these impossible odds.

Hey media! We don't understand abiogenesis yet. Shocking, no?

~~ Paul