Bauh4us

The only "evidence" for creationism that I have ever heard is some story about carbon dating being flawed and dating some bones of a dog that had been dead for about four months as being "millions of years old". The person (this was on a morning radio program called Steve and DC, I think DC was the one telling the story) then said that since those bones were millions of years old, that meant that all carbon dating was wrong and that the world was only like 5k years old. This completely proved creationism in his mind.

I remain unconvinced.

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Livia Regina

I have heard of that. The only thing it proves to my mind is that carbon dating isn't perfect.

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1010011010

Some basic guidelines are that like R groups can be substituted for like R groups. Acid for acid, alkaline for alkaline, polar for polar, non-polar for non-polar. Even in very highly specific sections of the sequence (like the bit that actually makes up the active site), the protein may still exhibit the desired enzymatic function (though not necessarily under the same conditions or at the same reaction rates as the correct sequence) despite substitutions.

In any event, cells don't search sequence space by randomly dehydrating amino acids and seeing if the folded result does anything useful. Slight mutations alter the function of existing proteins, resulting in families of proteins with similar sequences (though not always similar functions). So you might say that some very specific activity is very rare... but the sequence that we find in living things is very similar to another protein with a generalized function. So we get the majority of the correct sequence through incrememental improvement in a different protein. And then the change from this final optimized sequence (for a different function) is only a small step from this other very specific function which appeared to be improbable.Carbon dating tops out at around 50K years ago. It's not that it becomes increasingly inaccurate past 50K (though it does get less accurate the older you go), but just that, analytically speaking, a sample that was "millions of years old" would be indistinguishable from one that was 60K. So the story is flawed on its facts... no lab would carbon date something at millions of years.
The TalkOrigins List of Creationist Claims contains a bunch of carbon dating stuff in the CD section.

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Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

mo42

The problem with this is that at the beginnings of life, you had no cells to synthesize proteins, and no "incremental improvement". This *is* a case where you'd be randomly hydrolyzing amino acids together, in order to possibly get something which can help get ribose to kickstart a possible way to start everything off from the primordial soup.

A specific protein would be required to synthesize ribose from formaldehyde or other sources, and to make sure it is synthesized to the correct epimer in order to possibly get some kind of RNA. Then you've got odds on random RNA being formed that is capable of catalyzing its own replication. And so forth.

Futhermore, the origins of multicellular life and specialization of cells for specific purposes (food absorption, movement, etc) is one monster of a jump for life to make. Amoebas to jellyfish... I'm having trouble imagining the steps involved in that jump. A couple of amoebas stuck together wouldn't really have a natural advantage. If the genetic material between them was somehow unevenly split, and one side was consequently better at something than the other side, they still wouldn't have the same genome, and replication of the 2-celled organism would be a doozy.

If it can be shown that at some points in evolutionary theory that natural evolution is unreasonable, it therefore follows that Intelligent Design theory *is* reasonable by process of elimination.

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Fibrosa

So what's the mechanism? Where's the actual science here? You say that a small amount of kinetic force can bring molecules together, so what's the mechanism of this action?

How can we tell that an intelligent being has done this? What sort of fashion and through what processes can this occur? Does the intelligent designer go in and tinker with all creature or just some? Why?

Where's the actual positive evidence of this occuring?


This isn't actually your argument, is it? I mean, you might have written it out yourself and what not, but you didn't actually come up with it did you?

I ask because I encountered a very similar argument a few weeks ago, on another board and I remember thinking at the time that these numbers would have been too astounding for the supporters of abiogenesis to ignore. I then realized that you are skipping a bunch of steps in assuming that you just jump from non-life to a more complex type of life required.

Then I went on to talkorigins and found this: which I think is very relevant to the discussion.

In any event, I have to agree with the author's conclusion:

Tell me what you think about the article.

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D'oh!

mo42

Actually, I *did* come up with it myself. Well, not the ribose part, that I knew from my biochemistry classes. But figuring out how ribose could be synthesized, that I thought of myself.




The article does seem to poke holes in many of my large arguments, but it does make some exaggerated claims.

One thing I noticed was the self-replicating protein sequences that they mentioned were only marginally "self replicating". The Ghadiri protein is really only capable of catalyzing a reaction to bind together two 16 peptide chains that are already existant in a sequence that resembles itself, so it is not capable of real replication.

I do accept that as a way to increase the concentration of that kind of protein once it exists, since it'll just take the random 16-chains resembling itself and putting them together. However, the lack of calculations of how these amino acids are synthesized and the statements of "a fair number of efficent peptide ligases (about 1 x 10^31) could be produced in a under a year" definitely raised my eyebrow, since synthesis of peptide bonds is not particularly favorable in an aqueous environment without catalysts.

This led me to search out other articles, and I came across this one:

http://origins.swau.edu/papers/life/...k/default.html

Which brings up a variety of points that I had not previously considered.

Some of the major points it brings up include: the probably lack of a reducing atmosphere for the earth, which prevents the formation of amino acids and other organic compounds; the actual equilibrium constant for peptide bond formation under the conditions far more favorable than those thought to exist by evolutionary biologists in the primordial soup (it is so unfavorable that 100-amino acid chains would exist at a concentration of 10^-338; chains of length 32 would have a concentration of less than 1 molecule per universe); and the problems of L-amino and R-amino acids in a mix producing non-funtional proteins; and the debunking of various experiments.

Tell me what you think of the site that I found.

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Fibrosa

So how would you identify a group of designed lifeforms? I mean, according to you, it's not like there are any non-designed lifeforms, right?

Also, your 'test' wouldn't reveal a designer, as you'd have to assume the task and assume that the life form didn't just evolve inline with that task.

What's an appearance of being designed? How can we tell if something isn't designed?

Finally why do certain organisms get designed and others don't? What's the mechanism for all this design?


Can it even be done? I don't think so. The ID proponents aren't actually contributing to the body of scientific knowledge. I don't think they actually care, as all ID is, is a front for the 'wedge strategy'.

Only through disingenious rhetoric. They don't *actually* give birth to more watches which is precisely why the analogy fails.

This actually hurts ID's case, if this analogy held up to begin with. Check out some of the creatures on this page.

It doesn't matter though, that's not the flawed part of the analogy. The flawed part is that animals come from other animals, via birth. They do not get made in a factory. Additionally descent with modification via the mechanism of natural selection is a more parismonious explanation (and it has evidence in favor of it).

Actually we do. The fact of the matter is not that evolution is against an appearance of design, that's subjective anyway, it's against the claim that organisms actually needed a designer. That's why you can't just point to something and say it was designed.

The eye looks designed, but throughout nature we can see other organisms with less complex eyes and as a matter of fact, our retinas are upside down, which goes against the designer idea.

The point is that it's not just reasonable to assume design because we have a natural explanation for it, this is again why the watchmaker argument fails. Not to mention the fact that snowflakes are quite complex, yet you don't see IDers saying they were designed (they came about via natural forces, or do you think they are designed?).

Me and the majority of scientists (tens of thousands) claim this, yes. What is an 'evolutionary design process'?

The modern ID argument is an argument from ignorance. There isn't any positive evidence on ID's side, all they do, as I've said, is point to a place where biologists don't currently know the evolutionary history and say 'there's where design happened!'.

Watches don't evolve, unless you are using a non-biological definition for evolution-but if so, you are being disingenious.

No, it's not complete, nor does it need to be and nor is it realistic to expect it to be complete since fossilization is incredibly rare. Also, what do you mean by the genetic record?

Um.... How would they be designed then? You mean the original watch, perhaps? If so, then your argument isn't against evolution, it's against abiogenesis.

Meaning what, that you don't accept ID?

And how exactly would they do this?

Again you make a non analogious comparison. Additionally, computer virus are complete, retroviral inserts aren't. Furthermore, once again, computers don't give birth to computers.

I don't follow that logic, I'm following your logic. But again, your analogy starts from the knowledge that cars are designed. You apply this to organisms and you are assuming your conclusion.

So what design clues do we have for organisms? What mechanism is there?

Why would they? Basically what you are admitting to is that there is no way that design could be false. It just is.

If you are going to do that, why bother calling it scientific? Why bother with all the trying to discredit evolution?

Why not just say I believe because I believe?

I already knew that. It's 'magic' or 'goblins' or 'aliens' or 'God' or whatever other means to stop science from progressing.

Fair enough, I admit that I've been rushed and a tad frustrated.

Fair enough, I accept your criticism.

The problem is, with ID, where can we go? Seriously for a minute here; The problem with ID is that you can't use it, even if it's true. We use genetic engineering, sure, but that's not based on "ID".

You see, even if ID were true, I don't see how you'd ever get off the ground with it, what it's applications are or anything like that.

Does not compute. What do you mean?

Not right now, in any event. The problem is, ID 'scientists' aren't doing it either. What they are doing is combing the scientific research and then commenting on them. IIRC Behe just got a paper published-it still needs to be reviewed (IIRC), but it doesn't support ID. IIRC, it has a speculative sentence and that's about it.

DNA, fossils, shared retroviral inserts with our closest relatives, etc, etc. For instance, with mice, we have traded the gene for the eye with a flies gene for an eye and the transplant worked-ie, the mouse eye grew normally. Why would this be the case for ID?

Heh, no, not actually. Not all Christians are creationists-especially not world wide. It's only within the united states that they make up such a large group.

I'd say the majority of people who accept evolution are either christian or they are some other type of theist.

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D'oh!

1010011010

You would identify groups of designed lifeforms by nothing that they share the same telltales (not yet) discovered in groups of objects known to be designed. Basically the exact same process by which we identify groups of evolved lifeforms.Since its purpose isn't to reveal a designer, this is not a terribly valid point.To the first question, it hasn't been determined. We'd have to look at a lot of designed objects and see if there was anything characteristic about having been designed. To the second question, assuming we've accomplished the first task, a non-designed object would be one that did not have any of the telltale characteristics of design.Currently: Intelligent Design isn't science. It isn't falsifiable. It is impossible to say "This organism is designed" and "This organism is not designed"... so it's a bit premature to ask why one is and one isn't when you can't even tell which is which.

Also, the mechanism question is for later work... it's not actually relevant to whether or not there is design evident. It's kind of like the way you can look at genetic sequence data and trace out how the similarity shows that two organisms are related (dolphins and slime mold, for example), but have no mechanism for how a common ancestor can give rise to the two different organisms.It can certainly be done. I agree that it probably wouldn't succeed (both in establishing a rigorous standard of evidence for design and in identifying evidence for design in living things). However, it has not been attempted, to my knowledge. In part because real scientists dismiss ID as the next big steaming pile from the Creationists, and the Creationists know they have a good track record by not actually turning their doctrine into falsifiable science.What being pointed out is that even concious design processes often have evolutionary features. Inventions are not so much created of whole cloth as made from incremental improvements (and combinations) of existing technologies. Bell Labs could have come up with psychoacoustic audio compression (E.G. MP3) and P2P file sharing back in the 1950s... but what would have been the point without the technology (fast personal computers, widespread internet access) to make it useful?
We see the same sorts of things in the fossil record. What good is an oxygen consuming metabolism if you evolve it before photosynthetic algae fill the atmosphere with it?

Basically, how do you differentiate between a evolutionary design process and real no shit evolution?That page is a call for theosophy. Since the identity of the design is irrelevant, a page saying "Ah-ha! Why would your omnibenevolent god design THESE?" has no application. You might as well ask why we have QWERTY keyboards. They made good design sense at the time...On the other hand, if we suppose for a moment that a standard of evidence is established for design, and that living things do show evidence of design... Then the pure evolution explanation, though simpler, is incomplete... so Occam's Razor cuts both ways.You can't point to something and say it was not designed either, at that point. There is no standard of evidence for design. There is no rigorous test for design... jsut a fuzzy "i know it when i see it." This does not necessarily have to be the case.Well, no, if the eye is not designed, then the eye does not look designed. To claim the eye looks like it's designed, but assert that it is not, is merely continued illustration for the fuzzy state of how "design" is identified.Design wouldn't be assumed. It would be no different from noting that living things show evidence of having evolved... and leaving the conclusion open. If living things show evidence of being designed... what does that mean?A design process that mimics descent with modification. Where subsequent technologies and innovations are based on the success of prior invention.
There isn't any negative evidence against ID either... because there can be no evidence either way. ID is not science and is not falsifiable. It does not necessarily have to be that way."Evolution" as a scientific term has its roots in chemistry, not biology... and before that is used in alchemy. Of course they don't mean the same thing when they say "hydrogen gas evolves" in a reaction... but biology doesn't have a monopoly on the term. Evolutionary algorithms are applied all sorts of places outside living systems.The pattern of genetic similarity present in all life on earth that allows a so-called family tree to be constructed showing how we all share common ancestry.It would depend on what the evidence shows. If evidence for design only appears at the lowest levels,(I.E highly conserved "lynchpins of life" style proteins) then abiogenesis would be the target. If it shows up at higher levels of classification, then the case would be different. There is no evidence, so there's nothing really to be said about how it might impact evolution.I agree with you that the current state of ID is that it's the newest "thin end of the wedge" brought to us by Creationists. I also think that if someone did bother to try being scientific about "design theory" they'd either never succeed in developing a standard of evidence or if they succeeded there, would show that living things are not designed. I don't agree that "design theory" is inherently unscientific.Exactly the same way they did it with evolution. Look at a bunch of designed things and figure out what charactersitics they have in common... and then look for those characteristics in other things. Then you say "Ah-ha, this thing has characterstics of design".If you have virus code that propagates by infecting a legitimate executable, so that the virus code is only executed with the host program, then you've got a 1-to-1 analogy to retroviral infection and reproduction. The virus example was brought up to give an example of designed technology that DOES reproduce. Hell, there are viruses designed to mutate and avoid anti-virus software. It may not be a perfect analogy, but it's pretty damn good. Incidentally, life sustaining planets don't give birth to more life sustaining planets... so I'm not sure what the point of your comment about computers was supposed to be.The process is the same where we take known (or simulated) examples of evolution to develop and idea of what evolution looks like. So when we see the same patterns of similarity, we can assume those patterns also are the result of evolution. It's still an assumption. To establish an equivalent standard of evidence for design, we have to begin with designed objects, see if we can rigorously define what design looks like, and then see if we can find it elsewhere (I.E. in living things).It has yet to be established what "design clues" we can look for. At this point, we're only concerned with the design... not how, or who, or what did the designing."Design theory" is not science. It has not been expressed in a sufficiently rigorous manner so that it actually makes claims that can be validated. It is not falsifiable. Evolution, OTOH, is falsifiable... it simply hasn't been falsified yet- just like all good theories.I'm not sure that I have called ID scientific. I have said there's nothing preventing ID from becoming scientific... other than the prejudice of scientists and the religious agenda of the current batch of ID proponents. If someone did seek to treat ID to a proper scientific methodology, whatever impact it had on evolution would be secondary.Because I don't believe living things are designed? The best means to stop science from progressing is to stop doing science. ID could be treated scientifically, and it would probably disproven (IMO). Though it's pretty much a waste of time, that would still be good science. A developed body of evidence conclusively proving that living things are not designed? That's useful. To leave things in their current semantic state? That's useful to the creationists.Wherever it takes us. It would probably spawn a number of applications in the quality assurance industry. It would tend to blur the line between engineering (which is practical) and designing (which is currently fairly artistic) by providing a solid structure for design. Alternatively, design would be used to refer to aesthetics, and the rest would all get included under engineering. It really depends on how useful design theory turns out to be.It formalizes the design process. Ergo, people can then take the formal design process, look at their particular in-house design departments, and streamline their operations. As it is, it's viewed as a creative/artistic process... so an amount of screwing around is accepted.Intelligent design is not science? Yes. Intelligent design cannot be science? No.Well, it's not like Darwin devoted all of his time to evolutionary biology, or Newton spent all his time working on calculus (Newton wasted a fair amount of time on Alchemy, come to think of it). Even so, it's a slow process, and the current batch of proponents are probably more interested in sounding convincing than in actually saying anything important... it's an age old tactic of creationists.Ever heard the phrase "Don't re-invent the wheel"? Designers commonly adapt proven concepts to the current task, rather than design something from scratch. Whether this is a valid comparison has not been shown, of course, so I'm just talking out my ass.

To lapse back into computer analogies... Library functions spring to mind. Ideally, you can replace a standard library with another, and all your programs will function the same as they did before, even if the specific algorithms the new library uses are different from the original library's.

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