Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

Do you agree with Nei? He simplified the discussion to one topic.

How does new information enter the genome randomly to result in macro evolution?

Why can't you respond to each of my points I made about your post systematically one at a time like I did for yours?

You throw out a whole lot of as if they are the explanation describing how random mutations can be the driver behind the macroevolutionn from simple to to very complex organisms.

Sometimes one should give an explanation of how the information you have read supports the the point your trying to make.

Could you give me an explanation of how each piece of evidence you provided supports you argument?

If, the intelligence in ID is part of nature and working through nature, it is working from a bottom up approach. It is a bottom up approach because, it is reacting to the environment to come up with a solution to overcome death it is detecting as a result of natural selection, by introducing new information through DNA mutations. How much more bottom up can you get?



I can't comment on whether the intelligence guiding the evolution of biological organisms is the same as the one guiding climate change or, whether climate is be guided at all. I don't think it matters for this discussion.

I worked for a manufacturer of equipment and we were always trying to guess the market and react fast enough to stay alive by staying one step ahead of the market and the competition. The evolution of the information describing the structure of our end products had a lot of similarities with the evolution of DNA and the end products of biological evolution.

They might be qualified and working, but they are not bringing forth a very believable argument that agrees with the data we are observing in science as far as periods of time, and overcoming Behe's ingenious but flawed propositions of it all being in the DNA at the beginning and just being triggered by environmental changes. They seem to have a problem with a designer that appears to be reacting to the environment and learning as it goes which, is what the evidence seems to be pushing them to do.

The evolution of Homo sapiens is the proof.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens

Its easy to say as if it were self-evident but it was NEVER self -evident , it became falsified evidence for one of Behe's signature areas (blood clotting as a cascade of 26 enzymes all in existence ). Irreducible complexity was never really tested before because the entire modern ID "movement" was less than 15 years old when Dover was tried and before that, noone really bothered too much with Darwins Black Box. Blood clotting was taken back to only 3 enzymes in copper based "blood" of arthropods that wre living fossils.

n I ont agree with muh o what Nei says .Ive been talking with you pretty much rmble mouthed as Id be discussing with someone with whom had assured me that hes read much of the paleogenetics and molecular chemistry literature, as well as having read Carroll (Im not sure you mentioned Steve Gould, Sanger,Mayr, Kimura,Behe (and numbers of the ID proponents like Demski, Meyer, Cold Springs Harbor Symposia proceedings (various years). I dont agree with you, I feel that most of what I said was easily understood and approachable.Your disbelief of the sources of genomic variability is very easily disposed by searching out things like phylogenetic trees and look at the families and genera of living organisms and their compliments of identical genes and the specific genes they contain as compared to their stratigraphic locations in their fossil record , or, in the case of species like monkeys, you can see where color sensitivity evolved in Old world monkeys but was absent in new world monkeys except for Howlers.(were e see that color sensitivity eveloped twice . We dont have any DNA but in a number of fossil species such as Asian marsupial " cats" (nimravids), and the American true cat (Smilodon) saber toothedness was evolved about 30 million years apart as a convergent feature.

Im going to a conference and then we are heading up to Maine for leaf peeping season and scallop eating. Ill be back before the end of October > Were hoping that the storm will keep off shore

You

You are correct in assuming that most 'scientists' are too engrossed in their paradigms to stop and think about 'the bigger picture'. But that is not the case for 'philosophers of science'or those scientists who write in that genre. At that level of analysis even the constancy of so called 'universal constants' is questioned on the basis of empirical evidence (Sheldrake for example) and the relationship between 'observer and observed', i.e. empiricism itself, comes under scrutiny (Bohr, Heisenberg, Maturana, Von Foerster, etc). A related issue is the status of mathematical models which some (like you) take to be pre-existing 'Platonic forms' independent of humanity, while others (Lakoff for example) say they originate from human 'bodily metaphors'.
My own position one of scepticism about any claims of 'ultimate reality'. Science is about 'prediction and control', no more and no less, and not about 'getting closer to the (mythical) Truth'. Whether that activity will remain 'useful' to our species only the future will tell, if of course we have one ! And that is the only thought which I claim to have in common with some religionists.
APOLOGIES FOR CURTAILED POST ABOVE.

Why don't you agree with Most of what nie says heis one of the most respected bio geneticists in the world. You provide a lot of opinions about the information we are discussing but you never provide an argument as to why it supports your position.

I really have read a lot of what you told me to read. All of these documents are showing that there are very complex patterns in nature and things are usually more complex than we initially thought. Every time you present evidence to me you present something that either is evidence of more complex city, or more programming especially when it comes to DNA and microbiology. All of the evidence you proud voted for me in your last post could support ID just as easily as random mutations. You never gave an explanation of why it supports your position better than it supports mine, Except to state that I don't understand your position without an explanation because I am not smart enough. Could you show me that you're smart enough to provide an explanation?

I think I've provided sufficient evidence to show just that random mutations probably are in capable of providing the new net information necessary for at macro evolution to happen . Would it help to provide evidence to you in a systematic Way so that a reasonable person could agree that that evidence is describing a specific person or thing as the designer?

Its not a case of 'being smart'. Its a case of analysing what would constitute a 'satisfactory explanation'. If you have read Pross, as suggested, then you will know that he claims that the only satisfactory explanations are 'reductionist' ones, i.e. those able to predict what occurs in a system as a function of its component parts. That leads to him to an abiogenetic 'explanation' of genetic transmission, and also a definition of 'complexity' as a 'survival advantage' in terms of evolutionary theory.
Now I am not saying I subscribe to this particular view of 'the life process' more than some others, but I do think his attempt is in the 'right' epistemological direction.
BTW, I thought I had dealt with the concept of 'evidence' being 'in the eye of a beholder' (or less figuratively 'in the light of a specific paradigm'). Pross provides plenty in support of his position, but we need to consider that unlike Al Khalili for example, there is no inclusion of quantum factors which are an even more fundamental level of reductionism. Nor should we forget the 'counter intuitive' nature of such factors with respect to the word 'satisfactory'.
I suggest you keep up your reading of the literature without being too optimistic for any completely satisfactory explanations. But hopefully you will understand that ID is an ad hoc cop out for those incapable of, or reluctant to attempt further epistemological analysis. So seeking 'evidence'of a designer' is ultimately equivalent to pointing at 'existence' as 'evidence for God'.

being respected doesnt men youre always Right.
Im not enthralled with his documenting so many phylogenetic trees based on what is often dubious data. They want to be the "first guys out with something new"(Why did you ignore my comments re "trees" as based on evidence?
With CRSPR cas, Id seen the obvious use of the technique to verify phylogenetic trees before we publish in the afterglow . Dr Behe is just as eminent a scientist (whose main point of hypotheses may be all wet).

Gotta go catch a plane to Magog. Be back around the 15th but Ill keep up with short spurts in the pm whenever I can rent a car with Wifi or our hotels and aprtment is linked with High speed wireless. (Maine still aint a "silicon mountain"-even though most all of the rocks are leucocrats)

see y all

Ive read Behe's work and while he has mentioned the pre-existence of genomic information as a possible solution (as also suggested by some mainstream evolutionists), that was far from being the central core of his work. If he is wrong about that conjecture it by no means negates everything in his work. Einstein was initially wrong about the static universe; do we throw all his work out because of that?

As farmer has pointed out, there is not one source of genetic mutation. The possibility of micro evolution is inherent in the design of DNA based life forms. We know that; the question is where that design came from and if that design is capable of what we are calling macro evolution. And by that, I mean the emergence of complete new body plans as happened in the Cambrian.

I'm kind of mystified by what you mean by "they seem to have a problem with a designer who reacts to the environment". If I were 'them' I'd say - If 'he' is intelligent enough to design DNA based life, he/it would certainly be able to see the necessity of that life being adaptable enough to accommodate environmental change (or do the job himself).

Have fun and enjoy the leaf show. It's almost over here so I'm heading out too. I miss this place already.

PS: you need to get yourself a tablet with cellular Internet capability.

. Why not. You are easily understood, and I enjoy your explanations why you believe something. His article in Discovery is short and easy to comment on. I would like to read your explanation of where you think he went wrong, and what do you provide as alternative in your words. I read these articles and don't understand how they support the position that random mutations can be the driver behind macro evolution. Everything you use as supportive evidence shows us that there is more complexity going on in the world than we first thought. The origins of that extra complexity, makes it even harder to explain how random mutations provided the initial information for that complexity (especially in biogenetics and molecular biology) to occur.

. Proof of what? Could you explain how that is proof that random mutations can provide the new information for macroevolution to occur. I think you provide excellent proof that macroevolution happened and, was guided by natural selection determining which new information that was added to the genetic code lead to greater fitness. Can you show me some proof that random mutations are a better explanation than ID for the source of the new information needed for macroevolution to happen.

And as I pointed out all mutations are random even if the complexity established in DNA and molecular biology is confining the random mutations within preset bounds. But even those preset bounds that are guiding evolution at its later stages had to be established by individual random changes or mutations at an earlier stage. Which is what you said here: Why did they all happen at the earlier stage? They are random. If they provided a structure to DNA so that random changes can provide the information necessary macroevolution later in the process, isn't that evidence of planning rather than random.I should have said he reacts and lives intamately in the biology of the environment. The fossil record (especially when it comes to animals) seems to point towards an intelligence similar to us. Someone working within a somewhat unpredictable environment, and learning as they go. Young earth creationists seem to ignore the process that there is a lot of evidence that preceding species in the evolutionary process were building blocks for the next and were their actual parents. I believe the evidence is in the design of the PAX 6 molecule. It looks like that would be the place where the designer did his work in guiding the mutations of DNA in the act of sexual reproduction by manipulating proteins in a way similar to how our thoughts manipulate proteins in the molecules of our mind.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "guiding the mutations of DNA in the act of sexual reproduction by manipulating proteins"?

If they were guided intelligently, TI (the intelligence) could have used any number of mechanisms - but 'in the act'? Pretty narrow window eh? : )

My favorite is the 'golden BB', a precisely aimed cosmic ray that breaks the rack, sinks all the striped balls with the 8 ball last in the corner pocket (called before the shot of course). This has the distinct advantage over your mechanism of not requiring the parties to be screwing while TI is at work.

Just kidding, I have no idea.

Yea. I don't get it. ID can't be tested, and nor can anyone produce evidence for the creator. Besides all that, homo sapiens are a rather young species on this planet. Most of us see it as the result of evolution. Nobody has been able to produce evidence to the contrary.

For the benefit of anybody who may have missed this previously...


A proof or disproof is a kind of a transaction. There is no such thing as absolutely proving or disproving something; there is only such a thing as proving or disproving something to SOMEBODY'S satisfaction. If the party of the second part is too thick or too ideologically committed to some other way of viewing reality, then the best proof in the world will fall flat and fail.

In the case of evolution, what you have is a theory which has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly disproved over a period of many decades now via a number of independent lines reasoning and yet the adherents go on with it as if nothing had happened and, in fact, demand that the doctrine be taught in public schools at public expense and that no other theory of origins even ever be mentioned in public schools, and attempt to enforce all of that via political power plays and lawsuits.

At that point, it is clear enough that no disproof or combination of disproofs would ever suffice, that the doctrine is in fact unfalsifiable and that Carl popper's criteria for a pseudoscience is in fact met.

Once again for anybody who may have missed this earlier:





The educated lay person is not aware of how overwhelmingly evolution has been debunked over the last century.

The following is a minimal list of entire categories of evidence disproving evolution:

The decades-long experiments with fruit flies beginning in the early 1900s. Those tests were intended to demonstrate macroevolution; the failure of those tests was so unambiguous that a number of prominent scientists disavowed evolution at the time.

The discovery of the DNA/RNA info codes (information codes do not just sort of happen...)

The fact that the info code explained the failure of the fruit-fly experiments (the whole thing is driven by information and the only info there ever was in that picture was the info for a fruit fly...)

The discovery of bio-electrical machinery within 1-celled animals.

The question of irreducible complexity.

The Haldane Dilemma. That is, the gigantic spaces of time it would take to spread any genetic change through an entire herd of animals.

The increasingly massive evidence of a recent age for dinosaurs. This includes soft tissue being found in dinosaur remains, good radiocarbon dates for dinosaur remains (blind tests at the University of Georgia's dating lab), and native American petroglyphs clearly showing known dinosaur types.

The fact that the Haldane dilemma and the recent findings related to dinosaurs amount to a sort of a time sandwich (evolutionites need quadrillions of years and only have a few tens of thousands).

The dna analysis eliminating neanderthals and thus all other hominids as plausible human ancestors.

The total lack of intermediate fossils where the theory demands that the bulk of all fossils be clear intermediate types. "Punctuated Equilibria" in fact amounts to an attempt to get around both the Haldane dilemma and the lack of intermediate fossils, but has an entirely new set of overwhelming problems of its own...

The question of genetic entropy.

The obvious evidence of design in nature.

The arguments arising from pure probability and combinatoric considerations.


Here's what I mean when I use the term "combinatoric considerations"...

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, the specialized system which allows flight feathers to pivot so as to open on upstrokes and close to trap air on downstrokes (like a venetian blind), a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

I ask you: What could be stupider than that?


Fruit flies breed new generations every few days. Running a continuous decades-long experiment on fruit flies will involve more generations of fruit flies than there have ever been of anything resembling humans on Earth. Evolution is supposed to be driven by random mutation and natural selection; they subjected those flies to everything in the world known to cause mutations and recombined the mutants every possible way, and all they ever got was fruit flies.

Richard Goldschmidt wrote the results of all of that up in 1940, noting that it was then obvious enough that no combination of mutation and selection could ever produce a new kind of animal.

There is no excuse for evolution to ever have been taught in schools after 1940.

Nobody with brains or talent is defending evolutionism any more; evolution is being defended by academic dead wood and by yuppie scientist wannabes and posers.

Such comedy, but it is so flat. You won't make it to the big stage by just being contra-reality! Need some better punch lines