Biological evolution: Are origins important?

NEILUNREAL

Over the years, I've studied and thought about evolution from most angles:
biological, theological, mathematical and philosophical. This thread (among
other things) got me musing about evolution, mathematics, and computer
science -- while thinking about the creation/evolution debate, and I came up
with these thoughts. I'm in a somewhat unique position with regard to the
creation/evolution debate in that my faith doesn't fear reductionism, and my
intellect doesn't reject metaphysics -- I'm willing to go where science
leads, because my faith doesn't require scientific validation.
The parts in brackets are more-or-less tautological statements that both
creationists and evolutionists will find true. The un-bracketed parts are
my own musings on the future of evolution as a science.

[I think one thing both sides can agree on is that evolution is one of two
things: either 1) evolution is not only the greatest scientific discovery
ever made, it is possibly the greatest scientific discovery any intelligent
life can ever make; or 2) evolution is the greatest case of fraud and
self-delusion which has ever occurred or has ever been postulated to have
occurred.]

One of the problems with evolution to this point is that it is poorly
understood in a theoretical sense. I don't mean that no theories exist, or
that current biological theories are unsound. What I mean is that no
unifying structure of mathematical theory yet exists for the concept of
evolution in a pure sense (i.e. variation, selection, mutation over time)*.
Computers are only just now making the development of such a body of theory
possible (e.g. the work of Stuart Kauffman, John Holland and others). Only
when this unifying structure is in place is anything resembling a science of
"Intelligent Design" possible. Currently, ID presumes to assert what we
cannot know before we even have the vaguest outline about what we can know.

[In the end, from a scientific standpoint, the theory will provide the
"proof in the pudding." Evolution will be mathematically proven to be
either inevitable or else impossible. Or if possible within limits, those
limits will be known.]

In the past evolution has been presented as sort of flowing along
continuously -- mostly continual minor changes in the genome, accumulating
to produce larger changes in entire populations. In actuality, genomic
changes to a population are more like quantum events, and probably follow
some sort of steeply declining curve where minor changes are much more
frequent than major changes (e.g. "the polar bears" vs. "the bears"). The
basic mathematical structure of the changes may be the same at all levels
(like a fractal), but it may not be. In addition, the curves are really a
set of interacting functions at several levels: for example genomic mutation
vs. phenotypic success, ecological interaction between populations, external
environmental factors, etc.

[In other words, whatever we finally decide about evolution, only the barest
outline of the theory will be accessible to non-scientists.]

"Evolution" is not a force, it's a name we give to an emergent process that
is made of lots of real events of varying magnitude. There may be a
teleology operating within evolution itself (i.e. some larger direction or
pattern), but it's too early to say. There may exist a teleology outside of
evolution, but questions about metaphysics are now (and may always be)
outside the realm of science. I don't see how science can definitively
answer questions about the absolute. After all, God could have created by
fiat a world which looks as if evolution had occurred; on the other hand,
the grossest observable teleology could just be a really lucky quantum
accident. Belief is still a matter for individual minds.

In short and on-topic, I think the study of evolution is important because
it's just getting ready to make the jump from being more like old-fashioned
natural history to being more like physics. In the coming decades,
evolutionary biologists and theoreticians might not seem like such an
obscure breed after all.

-Neil

p.s. Froggie wrote "James Watson…" There's a new book out by Dr. Watson
titled: Genes, Girls, and Gamow : After the Double Helix. I haven't
yet read it, but I attended a lecture Dr. Watson gave on the same topic; it
was a riot -- he's flat-out one of the most entertaining speakers I've ever
heard. But then, I'm a huge fan of Gamow.

* "Variation followed by selection." is too broad by anyone's standards. It
reminds me of Woody Allen's summary of War and Peace: "It involves
Russia

 

HELEN

Some points here:

1. There is a difference between what men THOUGHT might be from the hand
of God (lightning, for instance) and what GOD has said He did directly
(creation and life). This should be recognized. In other words, to
say that because man once thought lightning was magical or directly from
God and then found out it wasn’t and then to use that line as a response
regarding abiogenesis is to say that God’s word is no more trustworthy
than man’s. To me that is heresy.

2. Patrick asked for ‘actual data’ that abiogenesis is impossible.
Straw man request. One cannot prove a universal negative and he knows
it.

3. To believe what the Bible says about creation is NOT a “God of the
gaps” argument. This also is – at the very least – a straw man
argument. There is no gap concerned with taking God’s Word as true and
then looking for natural causes in other cases not directly mentioned by
Him.

4. I had an interesting phone conversation with Nigel Crompton, (Ph.D.,
D.Sc., at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland) a couple of days
ago and I was asking about these telomeres Pat keeps talking about.
Sever interesting facts were brought to my attention:
-- a. telemeres and/or their sections appear to be incorporated into a
number of species in the middle of chromosomes.
-- b. they may have a function there we are not yet aware of
-- c. Telomeres on the ends of chromosomes are shaped like loops and
appear to be some kind of ‘storage bin’ for proteins
-- d. He does not know the shape of the telomeres which are incorporated
into the chromosome lengths and are not on the ends.

Therefore I think it is safe to say that far from being evidence of a
human-ape relationship, these ‘fused’ telomeres might just as easily be
something which have a reason and a purpose to be there which we are
simply not aware of yet.

5. Pat’s argument regarding the growth of a seedling into a giant
redwood being the same as one class of vertebrates evolving into another
is one of the most mis-matched similes I have ever seen. The seed comes
from a redwood tree, it sprouts like a redwood tree, and it continues
growing like a redwood tree. We see large redwood trees giving the same
kind of seed which then sprouts in the same fashion. The only part we
do not live long enough to see is the full extent of the growth of this
SAME redwood tree. But see see them both larger and smaller on both
sides of this same one we are watching, and so we KNOW what to expect.

One class of vertebrates changing to another is entirely and absolutely
different. We do not know how it happens. We have never seen it. It
requires a total change in type which is not evident from anything we
can see happening today. This has nothing at all to do with watching a
seedling grow unless Pat wants us to believe that the redwood changes
type inbetween when it is a seedling and when it is mature…

6. Shuanr – I think what you are thinking of as origins and what John
Paul is thinking of as origins might be different. Unless I am
mistaken, John Paul is referring to ultimate origins – where did a virus
itself come from in the first place? What chemicals and interactions
determined this thing? Whereas you are, and quite correctly, saying
that the origin of the virus which affects humans seems to be tracked
back to monkeys and that this is important.

7. Mr. Ben – what man can design in the way of computers and
computerized machines is not the sort of evolution that needs to be
addressed. First of all, machines are, and will be, intentionally
designed to do what they do, and anything accidental will be considered
a breakdown or, at the least, a negative. Conversely, evolution in
biology makes the claim that nothing was designed to happen and that a
series of accidents (mutations) turned out to add, in the long run, a
great deal more specified complexity and meaningful information to
biological systems. This is pretty far removed from programmed computer
models.

8. Perhaps you did not realize what your last sentence said: ”…it
will be obvious to anyone that biological organisms were designed the
same way.” (you were referring to man-made systems here]. Not only
were biological systems designed, but the more we know about them, the
more it is becoming apparent that there is far more going on than we can
attribute to simple molecular interactions (I have some quotes regarding
this from Dr. Franklin Harold in the “intelligent design” thread).

9. As long as this mention of ‘design’ is here, allow me to respond to
Pat’s frequent claim that the universe and/or life is not designed
because God does not work in incremental steps. That is another totally
false argument. We have to work incrementally because we are subject to
time. God invented time and is not subject to it, so His design had no
need to be incremental. And the fact that this world, and life in
particular, shows not only incredible and intelligent design but
irreducibly complex design in many areas is becoming more evident the
deeper we go with our knowledge.

10. To Froggie: You extrapolated from a pencil dropping to a planetary
system as being the same as extrapolating from variation to changes in
basic morphology. I don’t think this is correct. As I mentioned to
Pearl, you can change eye color forever (variation) without changing the
eye itself. You can alter bacteria forever without getting anything
other than bacteria. There is a rather vast gulf between variation and
gross morphological changes which is only bridged by the imagination of
evolutionists.

11. The fact that HIV remains identifiably HIV means all we are getting
is variation, not the sort of evolution which will change it into
something else. Again, there is a gulf. In addition, I believe the
variation we are seeing here is not in the RNA itself but in the protein
coat and a specific folding.

12. Speciation may be variation + natural selection. I have no problem
with that. But variation, with or without natural selection does not
produce new gross morphological features, which is the hallmark of the
type of evolution which I and other creationists dispute. Therefore
your using simple variation to try to explain evolution to others is not
really the straight stuff. Variation over millions of years is still
only variation. The term itself implies that the mean is there and
there are simply some differences in its expression. Legs come in long,
short, fat, skinny, hairy, ‘naked’, healthy, crippled, etc. etc. But
they are still recognized as legs. Wings come in big, small, fast,
slow, etc. etc., but are still recognized as wings. Varieties of each.
But to change from a leg to a wing, or vice versa, requires a lot more
than simple variation!

13. As far as what makes us human, it is not a matter of religion
producing an answer, but of God Himself producing the answer.

14. I think you are mistaking observations with judgment calls,
Froggie. Even supposing evolution to be true, the fact that we may be
violent because apes are violent would simply be an observation. The
morality is different and cannot be explained so simply. WHY would we
object to our own violence on purely moral terms? This is the crux of
the morality issue.

15. The fact that we can analyze ourselves IS important – I agree with
you there, froggie. But why is it important? If it were important for
physical survival then surely other ‘developed’ species would also have
this. But they don’t. Only us. The least “well-developed” in so many
ways, such as eyesight, hearing, musculature, instincts, etc. Why us?
Chimps recognize themselves in a mirror, fine. They do not analyze
their own conduct. The two are quite different. By the way, birds such
as parrots can also recognize themselves in mirrors…

16. OK, forget WHY we might have social ills. Why do we CALL them that?

17. You said, “evolutionary theory makes no moral statements.” Yes it
does. It states that there is no reason for absolute morality and that
in itself is a moral statement promoting relative morality, which is
only a cute name for opinions – in which case there is no morality at
all for it is then the strongest which can impose their ideas on any
they dominate: otherwise known as “might makes right.”

18. You then stated, “ If a population has evolved, it has done one
thing and one thing only: improved its reproductive success by adapting
to its environment.” It seems that we humans have not done that at
all! As a matter of fact we have destroyed a good part of our
environment by trying to make it adapt to not just us, but to our
aspirations and goals for ourselves. Where did the concept of
aspirations and goals come from evolutionarily, by the way?

19. I did not say that reproductive success was what it was all about.
You did. Therefore, by YOUR standards I am more fit than you. Forget
the fact that I was kicked by a horse and could only produce one live
child. Forget the fact that I have to take enough medications for
chemical factory in the evening. Forget the fact that I have an
artificial knee, no spleen, half a pancreas, no appendix, no internal
female organs, and other problems requiring surgeries in the next year.
By your definition I am more fit. I happen to disagree with you,
actually. I think you are much more fit than I am!

20. You made a good point about needing to beware of the variations you
get in the labs due to mutations. However, let me sing my song again:
the viruses remain viruses, the bacteria remain bacteria, and the lab
mice remain mice. What you are worrying about, then is not evolution,
but the effects of simple variations on your work. If you were actually
getting morphological evolution in your lab, you would be trumpeting it
to the world and be in line, I am sure, for a Nobel Prize!

21. I’m glad you had a good biology teacher. I would like to think
that, by those standards (that you went into a field of biology) I was
also one, as several of my ex-students are now in training in
universities for work in various fields relating to biology, including
medicine and veterinary work. And they all knew I was a YEC…

22. I wish, oh how I wish, you were right when you say that “trying to
refute a theory is exactly how science works.” Here we are trying to
refute the theory of evolution itself and ….sigh…. Or my husband’s
work with the speed of light, the redshift, etc.

23. And, finally, you asked me how I would feel about all the different
creation stories being taught in a science classroom. That is a straw
man, froggie. I have never even asked for ANY creation ‘story’ to be
taught in ANY science classroom. I am more than happy with simply
teaching the challenges to evolution in terms of science and just
mentioning that there are many scientists who, as a result, consider
SOME TYPE of creation to be a viable alternative. That is all that is
needed. No creation narratives of ANY kind should be in a science
classroom! But then, I feel that way about the evolution stories, too,
depending as they do on a combination of imagination and absolute faith
in the ability of naturalistic processes in a material world to
accomplish all that we see in life.

Take care,
Helen

 

MR.BEN

John Paul Said:

That’s all fine and dandy Mr. Ben, but what does it have to do with the
importance of origins to biological evolution? That is the topic of this
thread, not whether or not evolutionary processes can be observed and
whether or not studying & understanding evolutionary processes are of
any importance.

Mr. Ben Replied:

Creationists want to supress all aspects of evolution in schools, including
supressing any information wich might lead an individual to come to that
conclusion on his own. In particular, I am talking about the insistence
that evolution can not produce new information. This is directly refuted
by the use of evolution in engineering. In order to maintain this fiction,
creationists are compelled to attempt to supress the fact that evolutionary
algorithms actually work, and they are indispensable in solving certain
complex engineering problems. This is an unintended negative side effect of
insisting on supernatural origins, but it will have a devastating effect on
our manufacturing and engineering if it is continued.

This is similar to how the Lamarkian theory of evolution was supported
by the ideology of communism in the early Soviet Union. Since all
biologists were forced to accept the pronouncements of Lysenko, no
real progress in biology was made during this period, and the Soviet
Union fell behind.

Ideological or religious supression of valuble scientific and engineering
knowledge can never be justified.

John Paul Said:

What we will find (and are finding) is that evolutionary processes can only
refine an existing design but can’t design anything from scratch.

Mr. Ben Replied:

That is false.

Evolutionary processes regularly design from scratch given only a substrate
of replication, mutation, and selection.

Jon Paul Said:

So Mr. Ben, what difference would it make if life was Created, Intelligently
Designed or arose via purely natural processes? (And that the evolutionary
process took over from there) Do you think it would affect the industries
you mentioned?

Mr. Ben Replied:

If the biological origins of life on earth were not posited to have arisen from
evolution, we would not know about evolutionary algorithms, and would not
be able to use them today. Evolutionary design is directly derivative of
Darwin's theory of evolution, and would not exist without it.

So yes, I would say that our present theory of origins certainly did have
a great deal to do with presenting us with a whole brand new way of
solving very difficult problems that we would not have had otherwise.

John Paul Said:

Do you think it would affect research? To me the benefits of looking
at life as a product of intentional design has many benefits over looking
at life as a result of purely natural processes.

Mr. Ben Replied:

Yes, it would affect research, as you would take away the tools that
would make the research possible. Complex systems like these
are impossible to be effectively intelligently designed. That's why e
volutionary algorithms are used in the first place.

John Paul Said:

More often than not, intentionally designed objects have form, function and purpose. If that is the case with intentionally designed biochemical systems, once we look it that way, it should be much easier to figure out what those are

Mr. Ben Replied:

Evolutionary design also has form, function, and purpose. That is
where these structures come from.. from feedback in iterative
processes. This is irrelevant as to why teaching about how evolution
works is important however.

Helen Said:

Mr. Ben – what man can design in the way of computers and
computerized machines is not the sort of evolution that needs to be
addressed. First of all, machines are, and will be, intentionally
designed to do what they do, and anything accidental will be considered
a breakdown or, at the least, a negative. Conversely, evolution in
biology makes the claim that nothing was designed to happen and that a
series of accidents (mutations) turned out to add, in the long run, a
great deal more specified complexity and meaningful information to
biological systems. This is pretty far removed from programmed computer
models.

Mr. Ben Replied:

This has noothing to do with what I was talking about. I was actually
talking about using evolution to design all sorts of objects, not computers
Evolution is the only way to optimally and efficiently design objects which
require solving NP hard multivariable problems.

Evolution produces designes through iterative trial and error, and this
has proved quite useful to engineers when trying to solve these sorts
of difficult engineering problems. Without the ability of evolution to
provide 'specified' complexity, and unqiue designs froms scratch, these
problems could not be effectively solved.

This is why knowing how evolution works, and how it can be used in
engineering is so vitally important.

Helen Said:

Perhaps you did not realize what your last sentence said: ”…it
will be obvious to anyone that biological organisms were designed the
same way.” (you were referring to man-made systems here]. Not only
were biological systems designed, but the more we know about them, the
more it is becoming apparent that there is far more going on than we can
attribute to simple molecular interactions (I have some quotes regarding
this from Dr. Franklin Harold in the “intelligent design” thread).

Mr. Ben Replied:

Experience with evolutionary design gives you quite a bit of insight on
how it works, and what it produces looks like. When you use evolution
to design objects, they have certain characteristic attributes which are
easy to recognize in other objects. Some of these attributes are vestigital
structures, jury rigged design, and organic optimization patterns. These
are unmistakable hallmarks of evolutionary design in engineering,and they
just happen to match up to what we find in biological organisms as well.

 

JOHN PAUL

John Paul:
What was the discovery you made? That they are both atheists? Do you think that helped them make their discovery? No one said atheists can’t make scientific discoveries.

I was aware they discovered the double helix, but I was unaware they discovered how it originated.

Also I understand Crick’s theory on DNA’s position in determining traits. Which according to the following article suffered a major blow by last February’s announcement of the HGP (Human Genome Project):

UNRAVELING THE DNA MYTH

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm

froggie:
The advantage of theorizing anything is that the theory might be
correct.

John Paul:
So what is wrong with theorizing an Intelligent Designer? It may be correct. The same goes for a Special Creation.

John Paul:
Truthfully I am talking about origins- origins of life, origins of procaryotes, origins of eucaryotes, origins of multi-cellularity, etc. I am trying to figure out how theorizing these origins has any relevant effect.

froggie:
Sure, you can accept microevolution, but not macroevolution.

John Paul:
That’s hard to say. If we use the definitions of both as found on talk origins, I would be forced to accept macro-evolution.

the above from: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html

However if we use the definition offered up at True Origins:

the above from: http://www.trueorigin.org/glossary.asp

The difference in the two becomes more apparent.

This is part of the problem, finding definitions we can agree on.

Binomial nomenclature is a man-made classification system. It may or may not have any relevance to the actual hierarchy of life. The point being to use it in a definition (as talk origins does) is misleading. Why? Because the Created Kind may or may not fit in with this man-made classification system. Also each organisms’ Created Kind ancestor could be at a different level (according to today’s classification system) than the next. That is why, although far from perfect, the True Origins’ definition better fits what Creationists accept and don’t accept.

froggie:
Equally, you can believe that gravity is what causes your pencil to drop to the floor,
but disbelieve that gravity holds the solar system together. That's fine,
if you only want to study pencil dropping. But if you ever want to
speculate about a larger system, you are going to be in trouble.

John Paul:
And what if some day we discover the solar system is held together by magnetic forces and not gravity?

froggie:
You see, the same processes that evolved to give the Pima Indians that
thrifty gene are the same processes which caused humans to evolve
from other primates. Random mutation and natural selection. One is just on
a larger scale.

John Paul:
That’s what evolutionists want us to believe. But just because I can walk from Boston to LA doesn’t mean I can walk from Boston to Tokyo. Just because I can stack pennies 100 high doesn’t mean I can stack them millions high. Limits exist in just about any (maybe even all) physical endeavor(s). Why isn’t it OK to theorize those limits also exist in biological organisms?

Extrapolating From Small Changes:

http://www.idthink.net/tel/change/index.php

God Bless,

John Paul

 

THE BARBARIAN

There is a difference between what men THOUGHT might be from the hand of
God (lightning, for instance) and what GOD has said He did directly
(creation and life).

Actually, God says that he created life indirectly. He says he created the
Earth, and the earth and waters brought forth life. Gen. 1:20 and Gen.
1:24, I think. Perhaps some might make the argument that God is speaking
figuratively, and not literally here. I would be interested in hearing how
that could be interpreted allegorically to mean that God created things
directly, rather than indirectly, as He says.

Patrick asked for "actual data" that abiogenesis is impossible.
Straw man request. One cannot prove a universal negative and he knows
it.

I asked for evidence, not "proof", which is impossible in science. My
request was for John Paul to support his allegation that we can rule out
abiogenesis. I asked him to substantiate that claim. As you noted, he
cannot.

To believe what the Bible says about creation is NOT a "God of the
gaps" argument.

Correct. The "God of the gaps" argument was John Paul's idea that since we
didn't know how some things began, we could assume God did it.

I had an interesting phone conversation with Nigel Crompton, (Ph.D.,
D.Sc., at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland) a couple of days
ago and I was asking about these telomeres Pat keeps talking about.
Sever interesting facts were brought to my attention:

a. telemeres and/or their sections appear to be incorporated into a
number of species in the middle of chromosomes.

True. Chromosome fusion is not limited to humans or primates. We see it
happen in other species. I don't see your point.

b. they may have a function there we are not yet aware of

Or maybe they don't. But they are still telomeres, and they are still the
result of chromosome fusion.

c. Telomeres on the ends of chromosomes are shaped like loops and
appear to be some kind of "storage bin" for proteins

Could be. But they are still telomeres, and they still indicated chromosome
fusion when found in the middle of a chromosome.

d. He does not know the shape of the telomeres which are incorporated
into the chromosome lengths and are not on the ends.

There is abundant literature on this. Here's a site with some references he
could check:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

Notice the comparison of the human and corresponding ape chromosomes. The
chimp and human match up is essentially identical. You might also check the
literature cited for more information.

Therefore I think it is safe to say that far from being evidence of a
human-ape relationship, these "fused" telomeres might just as easily be
something which have a reason and a purpose to be there which we are
simply not aware of yet.

We can only go with the evidence. And, as you will see when you take a look
at the evidence, it compelling.

One class of vertebrates changing to another is entirely and absolutely
different. We do not know how it happens.

We know precisely how it happens. Let's take the reptile/mammal transition:

1. Skull
a. Lower jaw shows a progressive reduction in the bones other than the
dentary, greatly strengthening it. In advanced therapsids, there are two
joints in place, and eventually, only the dentary joint is retained. The
reduced bones are gradually incorporated into the otic capsule. At the same
time, more efficient teeth evolve to make use of this stronger jaw, and the
temporal fossa is increased in size. The coronoid process of the dentary
takes advantage of that to provide a greater surface for enlarged
muscles,which are repositioned to form the larger masseter and temporalis
muscles. A stronger, more powerful jaw combines with more efficient teeth
to permit longer, more complete mastication of food, and more efficient use
of resources. At the same time, a bony shelf grows across the roof of the
mouth to form a secondary palate that permits eating and breathing at the
same time. This further increases the advantage of more efficient jaws.
Finally, the three ossicles of the ear have a considerable mechanical
advantage in detecting sound.

2. Postcranial.
The thoractic ribs become smaller and smaller until they disappear. During
this time, the primary mechanism of breathing shifts from the ribs to a
muscular diaphragm. A simpler, more efficient shoulder girdle evolves, the
knees are rotated forward and elbows back, and the ankle joint is
strengthened and give a "extension" to permit a mechanical advantage in
running. The pelvis is simplified and strengthened.

All this happenes over a very long time, in a remarkable series of animals
that span the difference between today's reptiles and mammals.

Now, no one has ever seen it all happening, but fortunately, the fossil
record is abundant in therapsids and early mammals, so we know how it
happens.

 

JOHN PAUL

Mr. Ben Replied:
Creationists want to suppress all aspects of evolution in schools, including
suppressing any information which might lead an individual to come to that
conclusion on his own. [/B]

John Paul:
That is just not so. Creationists would love to have the facts and the evidence presented- all of it, and then let the students decide. It’s the evolutionists that want to continue the unabated pushing of their dogma. It’s evolutionists that don’t want to offer the students a choice. Nice try though.

For example, I would love to see the following article discussed in biology class:

Unraveling the DNA Myth:

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm

But I have a feeling information of this type will continue to be suppressed and not presented in a science classroom.

Mr. Ben:
In particular, I am talking about the insistence that evolution can not produce new information.

John Paul:
Maybe it can. There just isn’t any evidence for that in biological organisms. Do you understand the difference?

As Dr. Spetner puts it:

Mr. Ben:
This is directly refuted by the use of evolution in engineering.

John Paul:
From what I have read and seen, evolution in engineering is merely the refining of an already existing design, achieved by a designed ‘evolutionary algorithm’. Evolution in engineering requires things to be in place before it can work- just what Creationists say about life. Go figure.

Mr. Ben:
In order to maintain this fiction, creationists are compelled to attempt to supress the fact that evolutionary algorithms actually work, and they are indispensable in solving certain
complex engineering problems.

John Paul:
Please reference where Creationists state that EAs can’t or don’t work. What is obvious is that they require a pre-existing condition to work. In Pat’s example if you take away the FPGA (a designed item) the EA won’t work. Or if you keep the FPGA and take away the external power supply or supporting circuitry (both designed items), it won’t work. But if you have the proper setup, the proper EA may help in refining a design.

Mr. Ben:
This is an unintended negative side effect of insisting on supernatural origins, but it will have a devastating effect on our manufacturing and engineering if it is continued.

John Paul:
Baseless assertion. I take it you are still bummed that there is no evidence that life could have originated via purely natural processes. Oh well, live with it or show us that purely natural processes can account for life. Hasn’t been done yet so I am sure a Nobel prize would await the person who did so. Also if your work gets published you would be awarded the $1.35 million dollar prize:

The Origin of Life Prize-

http://www.us.net/life/

Notice how it still goes uncollected.

Mr. Ben:
This is similar to how the Lamarkian theory of evolution was supported
by the ideology of communism in the early Soviet Union. Since all
biologists were forced to accept the pronouncements of Lysenko, no
real progress in biology was made during this period, and the Soviet
Union fell behind.

John Paul:
Lamarkism was refuted long ago. ID and Special Creation haven’t been refuted.

And what does this have to do with origins?

Mr. Ben:
Ideological or religious suppression of valuable scientific and engineering
knowledge can never be justified.

John Paul:
Then why do evolutionists keep doing this? What is the purpose in promoting only a materialistic naturalism PoV? That’s like limiting a homicide detective to working the living room and kitchen of a ten room house, when the alleged murder took place in one of the bedrooms.

Mr. Ben Replied:
That is false.

John Paul:
It is true and follows what we have observed.

Mr. Ben:
Evolutionary processes regularly design from scratch given only a substrate
of replication, mutation, and selection.

John Paul:
But replication isn’t a ‘given’. Looks like some initial conditions have to be met before the evolutionary process can get started. That can hardly be considered “designing from scratch”.

Mr. Ben Replied:
If the biological origins of life on earth were not posited to have arisen from
evolution, we would not know about evolutionary algorithms, and would not
be able to use them today.

John Paul:
Another baseless assertion. It is obvious from the engineering examples that EAs and origins are two separate entities. The EAs used in every engineering feat have all the initial conditions set and the designed EA has a distinct goal.

Seeing that life was Created and we do understand & use EAs, your point is moot. (I can make assertions too)

Mr. Ben:
Evolutionary design is directly derivative of Darwin's theory of evolution, and would not exist without it.

John Paul:
And yet another baseless assertion. If you are going to make such statements it would be nice if you backed them up with some substantiating evidence. At what point or how life originated has absolutely no effect on how we view, use or write EAs.

Mr. Ben:
So yes, I would say that our present theory of origins certainly did have
a great deal to do with presenting us with a whole brand new way of
solving very difficult problems that we would not have had otherwise.

John Paul:
You can say whatever you want. It is becoming more and more obvious that life did not originate via purely natural processes and that only life can beget life. (see the article I linked to above)

Mr. Ben Replied:
Yes, it would affect research, as you would take away the tools that
would make the research possible.

John Paul:
What research would it affect? Cancer research? How? Germ research? How? What tools would be taken away?

Mr. Ben:
Complex systems like these are impossible to be effectively intelligently designed.

John Paul:
Complex systems like what?

Mr. Ben:
That's why evolutionary algorithms are used in the first place.

John Paul:
And I take it you have the peer-reviewed article that states this is so?

Mr. Ben Replied:
Evolutionary design also has form, function, and purpose.

John Paul:
Please give us an indisputable example of evolutionary design that is not refining an already existing design. That way we would have something to discuss.

The ‘purpose’ you speak of, would that be to survive? If so that is a very general purpose and not the type of purpose I was talking about.

Mr. Ben:
That is where these structures come from.. from feedback in iterative
processes.

John Paul:
What structures? Do you mean arms, legs, eyes, the vision system, blood clotting cascade, nervous system, digestive system and every other part that makes up complex metazoans but are no where to be found in simpler single-celled organisms?

Mr. Ben:
This is irrelevant as to why teaching about how evolution
works is important however.

John Paul:
Evolution isn’t the debate. At the heart of the debate is at what point did the evolutionary process start and what is its extent. Which has nothing to do with whether or not EAs function or not.

Mr. Ben Replied:
This has nothing to do with what I was talking about. I was actually
talking about using evolution to design all sorts of objects, not computers
Evolution is the only way to optimally and efficiently design objects which
require solving NP hard multivariable problems.

John Paul:
Again please give us an indisputable item that evolution has designed from scratch.

Mr. Ben:
Evolution produces designes through iterative trial and error, and this
has proved quite useful to engineers when trying to solve these sorts
of difficult engineering problems.

John Paul:
Again you are confusing refining a design with designing from scratch.

Mr. Ben:
Without the ability of evolution to provide 'specified' complexity, and unqiue designs froms scratch, these problems could not be effectively solved.

John Paul:
Great, please provide an example of evolution providing specified complexity where it didn’t exist before.

Mr. Ben:
This is why knowing how evolution works, and how it can be used in
engineering is so vitally important.

John Paul:
There is a difference between knowing how evolution works and theorizing how it works. There is a difference in what we can observe and verify and what we infer based upon our worldview and can’t verify.

 

THE BARBARIAN

JOHN PAUL says:
John Paul:
Again please give us an indisputable item that evolution has designed from
scratch.

Evolution almost never does anything from scratch. It's almost always
reworking something else to a new purpose.

 

JOHN PAUL

From the top of page 2:

From Pat’s response to Helen:

John Paul:
By now it should be obvious that you did indeed ask for proof. Or did you mean prove in a different way?

As for substantiating my claim- read this:

Unraveling the DNA Myth:

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm

This statement caught my eye- “DNA did not create life; life created DNA”.

The more we find out about it the more it becomes obvious that only life begets life.

Genesis 1:20-27

[20] And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
[21] And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[22] And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
[23] And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
[24] And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
[25] And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

John Paul:
It seems pretty obvious to me that God Created organisms directly and separately. Let’s see- if thinking God designed is blasphemous, what is blatantly misrepresenting God’s Word?

John Paul:
Correction. That is not my position. I have made it clear that the argument of ’since there is no evidence life could have originated via purely natural processes’, is used in addition to the overwhelming evidence of intelligent design exhibited by living organisms. The overwhelming evidence for ID is the CSI (complex specified information) contained in a living cell, the IC of the cell (see above link), the IC of biochemical systems and the IC of reproduction (see link below).

Peering into Darwin’s Black Box: The cell division processes required for bacterial life

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od201/peeringdbb201.htm

So that we have this straight, ID in living organisms is first inferred by the CSI exhibited by (in) living organisms. It is supported by the apparent IC of life, many biochemical systems and reproduction.

Although the topic of IC has begun to be addressed, it has not been falsified. Not in any peer-reviewed journal anyway.

John Paul:
I can. It isn’t exclusive evidence for a common ancestor between humans and chimp. Sure if you wanted there to be a common ancestor , you may, counting on our ignorance of what the genetic code says or does, use this data to infer just that.

Why can’t the similarities that we observe in different organism’s genomes be the result of a Common Creator or Intelligent Designer? And how would theorizing that hurt our research capabilities?

As for the “transitional” story you told, is there any evidence that these changes were brought about by random mutations culled and directed by natural selection? Or do these fossils represent the phenotypical plasticity that we observe in living organisms today? Can we tell the difference between a phenotypical change and a heritable genotypical change that has phenotypical results, by looking at a fossil?

God Bless,

John Paul

 

THE BARBARIAN

JOHN PAUL (quoting Spetner)

Wrong. Here's that example I posted earlier about such a thing being
observed in E. Coli. It is precisely what Spetner declares cannot happen.
Notice that in a very short time, random mutations increased the specificity
of an enzyme for a substrate. This invalidates the central premise of
Spetner's book.

 

THE BARBARIAN

THE BARBARIAN, later:

JOHN PAUL:
By now it should be obvious that you did indeed ask for proof. Or did you
mean prove in a different way?

Yep. To a scientist, remember that data or evidence is never "proof". I
should have used another word. The point is, as Helen agreed, there is no
way to establish your assertion.

JOHN PAUL:
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/GE4/DNA-Myth-CommonerFeb02.htm
>
This statement caught my eye- DNA did not create life; life created
DNA.

Yep. Life almost certainly preceded DNA.

JOHN PAUL:
The more we find out about it the more it becomes obvious that only life
begets life.

I realize that you are a Muslim, and don't take the Bible as
authoritative, but I'm wondering if the Q'uran has anything to say about it.
Could you tell us about it?

THE BARBARIAN:

JOHN PAUL:
Gen. 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the
moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the
open firmament of heaven.

Gen. 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that
moveth,which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and
every vwinged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen. 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill
the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Gen. 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind:
and it was so.

Yep. It says that God created living things indirectly, by commanding the
earth and waters to do so. Good enough for me. Do Muslims think otherwise?

JOHN PAUL:
>It seems pretty obvious to me that God Created organisms directly and
>separately.

But you just cited scripture that says that He did it indirectly, and
collectively.

JOHN PAUL:
Let's see- if thinking God designed is blasphemous, what is blatantly
misrepresenting Gods Word?

ID, apparently.

THE BARBARIAN, Earlier:

 

JOHN PAUL

JOHN PAUL (quoting Spetner)

Pat:
Wrong. Here's that example I posted earlier about such
a thing being observed in E. Coli. It is precisely
what Spetner declares cannot happen.
Notice that in a very short time, random mutations
increased the specificity of an enzyme for a
substrate. This invalidates the central premise of
Spetner's book.

John Paul:
Are you talking about Hall's experiment? The one that
Hall uses to show directed mutations- which is
the premise behind Spetner's non-randomm evolutionary
hypothesis?!

Or are you talking about something else? Please
re-reference it. I would like to know how we know gene
duplication followed by random mutations is what did
the trick.

God Bless,

John Paul

 

DAVID PLAISTED

This is one topic that was left hanging from an early thread -- the
apparent fusion of two chromosomes to produce a human chromosome. This
is alleged as evidence of common ancestry.
How long does it take for two chromosomes to fuse? It could be that
humans as created had more chromosomes than now and that the fusion
occurred very early and spread to the whole population. The fusion
issue seems to be independent of the issue of common ancestry for
humans and apes.

Dave Plaisted

 

JOHN PAUL

John Paul:
You are a very good tap dancer. Bad when answering to
reality but good at tapping around it.
BTW, this is what Helen really stated:

Helen said there is no way to prove a negative. Why do
you keep misrepresenting what has been posted?

John Paul:
Did you even read the article? It also states life is
IC. IOW, life begets life.

Did you know there is $1.35 million for the person or
team proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the
spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature
sufficient to give rise to life.

Origins of Life Prize

http://www.us.net/life/

John Paul:
What does my religious beliefs have to do with the scientific evidence against life originating via purely natural processes? You also made a remark referring to a ‘moonie’ in one of your posts. Is that how it works? Can’t beat ‘em with data so divert attention.

As for the evidence, it confirms my belief that we are part of God’s Special Creation. As you can tell, with the Biblical account of life’s origins, there is much that science helps us fill in. Hence the term Creation Science. Science, the search for truth via our quest for knowledge, conducted under the premise that life’s origins, and starting diversity, were the direct result of Divine intervention.

John Paul:
Um, that is NOT what the Bible states Pat. Re-read verse 21.

John Paul:
What’s good enough for you- Reality or the twisted version of what the Bible states?

John Paul:
This Muslim knows you are twisting what the Bible states to suit your needs.

John Paul:
Wrong again Pat. Scripture clearly states God did Created life directly and separately. Here I will post it again. This time read the whole thing and please don’t edit what you don’t like:

Genesis Chapter 1, verses 20-31:

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, 1 Cor. 11.7 after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Mt. 19.4 • Mk. 10.6

28 And God blessed them, Gen. 5.1, 2 and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

John Paul:
No denying it. God was directly involved in a Special Creation. The water, air and earth just allowed God’s Special Creation to become abundant.

John Paul:
Maybe you missed this:
The Biologist:
http://www.creationequation.com/Archives/TheBiologist.htm

Sorry Pat but we observe it (ID) every time we look at the living cell. We find support for the non-natural origins of life every time we mix amino acids together and nothing happens. That tells us that there is much more to life than chemical reactions. Seeing that (chemicals) is all nature has to work with, it is a foregone conclusion that nature alone is incapable of bringing forth life without outside help from the Divine or other intelligent agent.

John Paul:
Actually the discoveries (supporting ID) are being made every day. Like I stated earlier, the only way to get around ID is to ignore it. Doing that is not objective and can hardly be called science. The patience is needed for the absolute proof that you apparently require that life could not arise via purely natural processes, even though you stated that life is the result of a process that God started (i.e. ID).

Also patience is required for the development of the theory based on the evidence & knowledge we now have. ID isn’t like teeth. Ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away. 200 years ago Paley had an idea. If only he had today’s technology.

John Paul:
This thread is about Biological evolution: Are origins important? and you keep bringing up other topics.

John Paul:
Pat, there aren’t any examples of CSI arising via purely natural processes. Nada, none, zip, zilch. Sure, once that we have CSI, evolutionary processes can refine it. Seeing that even the simplest life-forms exhibit CSI, how did it originate if not via purely natural processes?
Can you give us an indisputable example of CSI arising without the aid of an intelligent agent or God? I have asked this on other boards and all I received in response was huffing & puffing, but not one example.
The FPGA example you gave doesn’t do it. Too many parts had to be put into place by an intelligent agent. It does show the power of an EA with the proper parts to work with.

So if you want to believe that life started at some sort of ‘super-cell’ with all the basic genetic information required for the diversity of life and evolved from there, fine. ID has no problem with that. Abiogenesis just became a bigger obstacle if you still want to cling to materialistic naturalism though.

John Paul:
IC is falsifiable, it just hasn’t been falsified. Huge difference. To falsify IC all you have to do is show (not explain) that Darwinian step-by-step processes can account for all biochemical systems that exhibit IC. The challenge has been issued. Time to put up or shut up.

John Paul:
Please provide a reference to Philip Johnson making that claim.
And if God did do it that way, so what? Would you also debate with a software engineer that he/ she couldn’t use similar programs, spliced together, to make another program?

John Paul:
Are you now calling chromosome fusion a random mutation? If so, what is your justification for this? If chromosome fusion is not random, then it hardly qualifies as a mechanism of evolution in the neo-Darwinian mold.

This should be easy to test. Let’s take a chimp embryo, fuse the chromosomes and see if the resultant change gives us a human.

Also is there a better (or another) ‘picture’ (of the alleged chromosome match) than the one in the article you linked to?

John Paul:
How can it be false evidence when we have God’s Word? Oh, that’s right. If you twist and misrepresent the Word of God it would appear that God planted false evidence. But if we take God’s Word as it is, the evidence of a Special Creation is very clear.

John Paul:
That is exactly how I feel about your response to Scripture when it obviously states God was directly involved in a Special Creation- your response is too absurd to take seriously.

That life is the result of ID is obvious. What we should be doing now is figuring out who, what, why, when and how.

John Paul:
As usual you didn’t answer my question. Here’s more you can ignore- What mutation removed the nucleus from the RBCs? (the red blood cells of a mammal are nucleus free. The rbcs of reptiles have a nucleus) How do you think that was beneficial for the organism (mammals)? Do we even know what part of the genome codes for RBCs to have a nucleus? Do we know what cancels the nucleus of the RBCs but leaves the rest of the cells in the organism alone?

John Paul:
Johnston, T.D. and G. Gottlieb ,(1990).”Neophenogenesis: A developmental theory of phenotypic evolution,” Journal of Theoretical Biology vol. 147, pp. 471-495

Finch beak sizes. The form and shape of teeth is strongly influenced by diet. Bones are strongly influenced by the forces they are subjected to during growth. Snails that grow a thicker shell in the presence of crabs. Barnacles that grow bent over to protect themselves from snails. Domesticated dogs & cats are two more examples of phenotypical plasticity.

Jodan’s rule: Many species of fish tend to have more vertebrae when they live in cold water than do the same species living in warm water [Schreider, E., (1964). “Ecological rules, body-heat regulation, and human evolution,” Ecology, vol. 18, pp. 1-9 (from Not By Chance by Lee Spetner)

John Paul:
Let me guess. You’re not going to answer that question either, right?

John Paul:
Is there any evidence that these alleged changes in the fossil record were brought about by random mutations culled and directed by natural selection? Or is it just assumed that is the way it happened because it fits your worldview?

John Paul:
If they are so involved and occurred over eons of time, do you think we will ever know what the muational changes were and in what sequence, that brought life from there to here?
Because without that knowledge I can’t see any benefit at all to theorizing a purely natural origin of life over ID or Special Creation. Which brings us to:

Do you think that you will ever get around to discussing the topic of this thread?

God Bless,

John Paul

[ March 07, 2002, 06:57 PM: Message edited by: Administrator ]