Networking guy has proof of ID

[RandFan]

Originally posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos
I love the random mutation generator. Ooh, I'm convinced!

You know, we could actually calculate the number of mutations for a sentence to likely change to something meaningful. I'm not a statistician but I have seen such examples including an estimate for the complete works of Shakespeare from the infinite monkey theorem. In other words we don't need an infinite set of numbers that would likely yield such an arrangement.

 

[Roboramma]

I don't see one mutation at a time being able to give a fish lungs, much less become a frog. These sorts of structures require many genes working in concert. A single mutation wouldn't suffice. So for fish to become frog there must be some kind of "All together, lads!" principle that causes a radical, rapid change to occur in the fish.

First off, I don't think this addresses the points I made in my post. But I'll ignore that for now.
Why exactly can you not see one mutation at a time causing a fish to evolve into an organism with lungs in the right environment, with the right selection pressures? Do you think that just because you can't see the exact sequence of mutations none could possibly do to effect that evolution one mutation at a time?

It seems not that difficult to imagine a sequence of mutations and adaptations that could lead a change from swim bladder to lung.

I think the point that you miss is that evolution doesn't happen all in one dirrection. It isn't necessary for a swim bladder to evolve "toward" a lung in a dirrect line. Rather there might be many other steps - none having anything to do with breathing air - along the way that the evolution of fish passes through before the right circumstances, selective pressures, and maybe 'preadaptations' come together to evolve what we could concider a lung.

Evolution follows a zigzag course through time.

 

[SezMe]

I don't see one mutation at a time being able to give a fish lungs, much less become a frog.

OK, but that says more about your "vision" than it does about evolutionary theory. That you cannot see it is totally irrelevant.

This is the same point that Roboramma made, but in different words.

The issue revolves around the evidence we have for evolution. It does not revolve around your vision problems.

 

[fishbob]

I don't see one mutation at a time being able to give a fish lungs, much less become a frog. These sorts of structures require many genes working in concert. A single mutation wouldn't suffice. So for fish to become frog there must be some kind of "All together, lads!" principle that causes a radical, rapid change to occur in the fish.

Your disagreement with evolution starts with the phrase "I don't see . . . ".

Might help if you learned a little about the subject you don't understand before you form an opinion about it. Otherwise, this is a fine example of an argument from ignorance.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Ahh, ye olde strawman about fruit fly experiments:

Decades of research were conducted in the early 20th century, bombarding fruit flies and moths with radiation in hope of mutating their DNA and producing improved creatures. These experiments were a total failure – there were no observed improvements – only weak, sickly, deformed fruit flies.

The goal of mutation experemnts wit hfruit flys were not conducted to build a better fruit-fly, they were conducted to map genes. The fruit fly has only four cromosomes, is easy to keep, and has a short reproductive cycle, making it an ideal object for this kind of research.

However, as noted, better fruit flies did occur. For instance, a black version has been made. In the normal habitat of fruit flies, that is not an advantage, but you can easily imagine a scenario where black fruit flies had an advantage.

CplFerro: Please explain how you can accept "microevolution" but not macroevolution? Where do you put the limit? How do you define a species?

Also please explain how you can accept that small mutational steps can occur, but not that they can add up to a big change.

If you can take one step on the staircase, then why should you not be able to climb the entire flight?

Hans

 

[Robin]

I don't disagree with Mr. Perry, though I dislike his emphasis on "information" and cybernetics. That type of thinking leads to its own problems in equating humans with computers.

I wouldn't let that worry you. His grasp on communications theory and information theory seem as shaky as his grasp on the theory of evolution.

 

[Ohmer]

I don't see one mutation at a time being able to give a fish lungs, much less become a frog. These sorts of structures require many genes working in concert. A single mutation wouldn't suffice. So for fish to become frog there must be some kind of "All together, lads!" principle that causes a radical, rapid change to occur in the fish.

Vertibrate Evolution

You can skip to "Lobe-finned fishes" To see a brief description of how fish became Amphibians. No rapid, radical change needed.

 

[Beleth]

there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information.

This is usually referred to as the "law of conservation of information".

Which doesn't exist.

No recognized theory of information (i.e., the statistical theory of Shannon et al, and the algorithmic theory of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and Solomonoff) has a law of conservation of information.

Even if there were a law of conservation of information, it would not necessarily invalidate evolution. Information is transferred from the environment to organisms by natural selection and other processes.


(Blatantly cut-and-pasted from CI010 of the Index of Creationist Claims.)

 

[Beleth]

I don't think it can account for the great differences between species (eye from eyelessness, fish into frog), much less than for how life originated.

This is Claim CB301, "the eye is too complex to have evolved".

Darwin himself proposed intermediate stages, all of which exist in animals alive today, that explain how an eye can evolve from a photosensitive cell.

So yes, evolution can account for great differences between species.

 

[Robin]

This is usually referred to as the "law of conservation of information".

Which doesn't exist.

No recognized theory of information (i.e., the statistical theory of Shannon et al, and the algorithmic theory of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and Solomonoff) has a law of conservation of information.

Even if there were a law of conservation of information, it would not necessarily invalidate evolution. Information is transferred from the environment to organisms by natural selection and other processes.


(Blatantly cut-and-pasted from CI010 of the Index of Creationist Claims.)

The LCI is an invention of William Dembski's. And yet even he seems to believe that natural processes can produce a small amount of information.

But I can't quite understand how he works out that they can't produce large amounts of information. If a given natural process can produce a small amount of information then stringing together a bunch of such natural processes would surely produce lots of information.

 

[CplFerro]

Thanks, but that site is all presupposition. Lungfish are lungfish. It doesn't say how they got the lungs. I'll wager that fully-functional lungs are not a single-mutation development. It's that entire multi-mutational package that's needed, and needed at once. One-tenth of a lung doesn't help anything.

Black fruit flies remain fruit flies. That's just a species bouncing around within a preset mould, like an albino rabbit prospering in the snow.

The jump from fish to frog is macroevolution, and that requires multiple mutations operating together all at once.

I'm sure you all have faith in a "staircase" phenomenon, but I don't. Evolutionary science is still at the stage of medicine postulating the four humours in the body and bleeding people. There are hidden principles involved unaccounted for, that would make the case for it airtight, but scientists stuck thinking about "information theory" will never find it.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

and that requires multiple mutations operating together all at once

No. This requires speciation (right word?). We're not talking mutations here. You are though. You have a lot of assumptions that need to be dispelled. You have a lot of learning.

Learn some terms:

http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/1122glossary2.html

http://www.csub.edu/~ghurlburt/370EvolLec.html

Speciation. Speciation is the formation of new species

Just because an organism has lungs doesn't mean that it "mutated" from a form without lungs.

Traits have been acquired through generations. Successful generations take over resources of a generation that was not as well adapted to whatever change that made the next generations more successful. Thus, you will not see much of transition forms. A mutation may have been involved at one point, but it would have had to be beneficial and selected for. Most traits are selected for and developed whether or not there is a mutation involved. You can be tall, because of "tall genes" and not need a mutation for your progeny to be even taller if you choose an even taller mate. You would need a mutation to get purple progeny though. The reason evolution takes so long is because it is a build up of traits over generations to get a new species.

9) Which model of speciation results in the most rapid origin of new species? A) Darwinian model. B) Gradualism. C) Wallace model. D)Punctuated equilibrium model. E) Mendels model.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~gbirchar/303/exam3.htm

Answer me that, and we can discuss this further.

You can use this resource, or this resource.

*Hint: There were feet before there were lungs.

Causes of speciation can be the next lesson?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Beleth said:
Even if there were a law of conservation of information, it would not necessarily invalidate evolution. Information is transferred from the environment to organisms by natural selection and other processes.

Bravo! This is the answer when someone asks "Who snuck the information into the organism/simulation?"

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

CplFerro said:
The jump from fish to frog is macroevolution, and that requires multiple mutations operating together all at once.

Or, as the Romans used to say:

The jump from stones to arch is macroconstruction, and that requires multiple construction steps operating together all at once.

~~ Paul

 

[Zep]

Real live example of a fish living out of water: the mudskipper.

Like all fish, the mudskipper breathes with its feathery gills. It moves water over them with its gill covers, and absorbs oxygen from the water into its blood. Before climbing out of the swamp, the Mudskipper fills its large gill chambers with water. These act like oxygen tanks, keeping the fish's blood supplied with oxygen while it is on land. Mudskippers can breathe through their skin as well.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~thebobo/phy.htm

So, you were saying about the evolution of lungs...??

 

[Beleth]

Thanks, but that site is all presupposition. Lungfish are lungfish. It doesn't say how they got the lungs. I'll wager that fully-functional lungs are not a single-mutation development.

This is Claim CB920, "The evolution of new body parts has never been observed."

What exactly is a new body part? Most evolutionary changes are changes to existing structures, not additions de novo. We have transitional sequences showing the evolutionary transition of fins to legs, plus some understanding of the genetic changes involved (Zimmer 1998, 57-85). Do legs qualify as a new body part?

(Refutation truncated, and another refutation not included here, so as to avoid violating Rule 4.)

It's that entire multi-mutational package that's needed, and needed at once. One-tenth of a lung doesn't help anything.

This is Claim CB921, "New structures would be useless until fully developed."

"Fully developed" is not well defined. Human eyes do not have the acuity of hawks, the dark sight ability of owls, the color discrimination of some fish, or the bee's ability to see in ultraviolet. With so much more potential possible for the human eye, how can one claim that our own eyes are fully developed?

(A second refutation not included here.)

Also see Claim CB921.1, "What use is half an eye?", and Claim CB921.2, "What use is half a wing?".

Black fruit flies remain fruit flies. That's just a species bouncing around within a preset mould, like an albino rabbit prospering in the snow.

This is Claim CB910.1, "Fruit fly experiments produce only fruit flies."

Biological classification is hierarchical; when a new species evolves, it branches at the very lowermost level, and it remains part of all groups it is already in. Anything that evolves from a fruit fly, no matter how much it diverges, would still be classified as a fruit fly, a dipteran, an insect, an arthropod, an animal, and so forth.

(Two other refutations not included here.)

The jump from fish to frog is macroevolution, and that requires multiple mutations operating together all at once.

This is Claim CB901, "Macroevolution has never been observed."

The evidence for evolution does not depend, even a little, on observing macroevolution directly. There is a very great deal of other evidence (Theobald 2004; see also evolution proof).

(Four other refutations not included here.)

I'm sure you all have faith in a "staircase" phenomenon, but I don't. Evolutionary science is still at the stage of medicine postulating the four humours in the body and bleeding people.

Rather, it's your level of knowledge of evolutionary science that is still at the four-humour level. There is far, far more data and reasoning behind the hypotheses and theories than you apparently think there is.

There are hidden principles involved unaccounted for, that would make the case for it airtight, but scientists stuck thinking about "information theory" will never find it.

It's not the evolutionists who are stuck thinking about "information theory"; it's the creationists.

 

[SezMe]

Beleth's post is such a fine example of clear thinking, good writing and lack of ad hom that I have nominated it for post of the month.

Extremely well done, Beleth.

 

[Beleth]

But all I did was cut and paste...


Thanks, even though Roadtoad has August in the bag!

 

[Hawk one]

Beleth's post is such a fine example of clear thinking, good writing and lack of ad hom that I have nominated it for post of the month.

Extremely well done, Beleth.

Pfft, he's just following the trend I started in this post, and followed up with in this post.

Just kidding. It's rather how that list is such a convenient place to look that neither I nor Beleth are the first ones to make such use of it. Now will we be the last. Of course, CplFerro calls the site presupposed, which goes to show that he needs to learn the proper meaning of the word "presupposed". More on that later.

But his biggest problem is of course that most of his arguments can in fact be summed up as an argument of incredulity. Basically, he personally has problems with personally seeing how this and this could have evolved, so obviously it must have been designed. And then he thinks he's managed to overturn evolution all on its own, and doesn't ever bother reading more about it.

Which is so bloody typical of the creatonist crowd. They discover a problem, but then they don't try to actually research for the possible solutions! And invariably, as has already been shown several times in this thread alone, the real scientists then get stuck with the job of finding these possibilities. Then, once they can say that "Here is how X could have evolved", the creationist invariably just skips to "Then Y could not have evolved". And then Z, and then F, and then K, and so on. And since it's much easier just throwing such claims out in the air than to search for the facts behind them, it seems like evolution is losing ground (And in the sense of public recognition, it is. But in the sense of scientific research, it's stronger than ever. Just thought I should clarify the difference). If only once a creationist "scientist" could on its own manage to make some research about the evolution of the eye, or the lungfish, or the bombardier beetle, or whatever, then perhaps there could be a glimmer of honesty in them.

As for the creationist layman, there should always be a couple of questions that they should ask themselves whenever they "can't imagine" trait X to have evolved: "Am I really the first one to think about this? Amongst the thousands and thousands of bioligists around the world that has researched evolution for more than a century, has really none of them thought about this?" If CplFerro had asked these questions, and then done some research in the biology section of his local library, he'd quite probably notice how all of his claims have already been answered. Several of them have in fact been answered decades ago.

But he didn't. Instead, he is satisfied with the truly presupposed notion that there must have been a creator behind it. The same kind of presupposed notion that makes Answers in Genesis proclaim on their webpage that any findings to the contrary of their belief must somehow be wrong. The complete and utter anti-tesis of what science (be it biological, geological, chemical, etc) is about.

And finally, a request to CplFerro: If you want to promote ID, then you'd better come up with evidence that actually supports it. All you've brought so far is basically attacks on the theory of evolution. Guess what: Even if the today's theory is wrong, which by the way is currently less likely than the theory of gravity being wrong, that still doesn't mean there had to be a designer (or more). So we need scientific evidence for a designer - any kind of designer - before we can start treating it as a scientific theory. Until that happens, creationism's only chance of surviving as a concept is about keeping on lying and attacking evolution (or their strawman version of it).

So please, start giving us some proper evidence now. Don't give us stuff that's been refuted so many times already.

 

[Beleth]

Pfft, he's just following the trend I started in this post, and followed up with in this post.

Bah, my agenda is far more sinister than that.

What I'm really doing is insidiously promoting my friend's book, The Counter-Creationism Handbook. Soon you will all realize that No True Skeptic can live without one. Moo ha ha.