I pointed out that this is not how evolution works. In some cases, you can easily show that two enzymes with different specificities can evolve from a common ancestor that could carry out both reactions. Such enzymes are said to be "promiscuous."
Here's Ann Gauger's latest post: In Explaining Proteins (and Life), Here's What Matters Most. She says ...
So now, let's address enzyme evolution and the divergence of enzymes to produce related families and superfamilies. Larry Moran says that modern enzymes evolved by specializing from a promiscuous ancestor. As evidence, he says modern enzymes can sometimes catalyze reactions with several substrates (the chemicals they bind to and change), and that it is possible to shift these enzymes to favor one substrate over another. He gives several examples or provides links to them.So, what's the problem?
Here's another place where he and I agree. Promiscuous enzymes can be shifted with just a few mutations to a new reaction specificity, provided the capacity for the reaction already exists in the starting enzyme, and each step is small and selectable. They can evolve easily, because they can already carry out the reaction in question. Larry Moran's description of the process is actually quite good, despite the digs he takes at us.
It strikes me that Larry Moran would know we agree with him on these points if he had read our papers.
Turns out that changing one related enzyme into another with a different specificity wasn't the goal of her experiment. Here's what she was really trying to do ...
The Big ProblemNow I get it (not). What she and Doug Axe were really trying to do was to intelligently design an entirely new enzyme.
Here's the big problem -- the arrival of novelty.
Novelty or innovation means the appearance of something not already present. It's the opposite of promiscuity. So a way to create novelty is absolutely essential to explain modern cells, as I will demonstrate.
...
Here's the heart of the matter. Promiscuity cannot solve the problem of novelty. Mutation, natural selection, and drift cannot drive the creation of novelty of all those new protein folds. That's what Doug Axe and I have been testing all along, from Doug Axe's 2004 paper to this most recent one. Based on our experiments, the problem of how innovation originates remains unsolved.
They failed.
Therefore Intelligent Design Creationism is falsified.
That seems logical to me.
Wrong. This just means when ID-processes can't create a new enzym certainly blind processes cannot. Thus evolution falsified..
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't follow at all. It is well known that evolutionary processes can create designs no human designer could even concieve of:
Deletehttp://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
By the way, brilliant logic there. ID failed, therefore evolution is false. You must be taking your critical thinking classes from Joyce Meyer.
DeleteWho said ID failed? Don't compare human with God who knows all about enzyms. ID in the lab shows evolution is false.
DeleteI like your sincerity, Topgoosz. ID = Goddunnit. No need to explain anything. A magic puff of smoke just makes things happen.
Delete@Mikkel -That doesn't follow at all. It is well known that evolutionary processes can create designs no human designer could even concieve of: -
DeleteNo intelligent designer? Who designed the machine/software? And NS cannot create complex systems. It only works with data/information what's available. So. the amount of ones and zeros are still the same. Variation is the keyword. Fits perfectly the biblical account.
@Piotr.. It's just a matter of common sense. Life is too short,.... as the bible predicted... nothing is unattainable for man.. except creating life.
DeleteIt's like one of those bad dreams where you're in front of a crowd and realise you're not wearing your cheap tuxedo.
DeleteTop:
Delete"nothing is unattainable for man.. except creating life."
Seems to me your mother and father were quite capable of doing that.
"It's just a matter of common sense."
*Your* common sense, luckily humanity as a whole has gone further than *your* obviously midievil common sense.
Obviously if you write a simulation to mimick the evolutionary process, that simulation is necessarily designed. But the results of the simulation are not, they are the result of the process, not something that has been designed.
DeleteWell geez Mikkel,
DeleteThat's like saying 'Obviously if you design DNA, RNA, and proteins, the resulting organism is designed. BUT, BUT....some of the results of the organisms's processes...say moth feathers sometimes being white, then sometimes black is not designed".
Sooooo......Life is designed but some of the results of its processes are sometimes not actually designed.
Hmmm, I like that. Concise and to the point. Finally, finally!!!
Mikkel, you will definitely get credit for the citation, the footnote, the reference.
Congrats!!!!!
Ah well, I pretty much predicted this is what she'd say. Here is what I wrote in comment 13 on the "Enz Spec' thread:
ReplyDeleteIf I were in charge of propaganda for the DI my argument would be this:
'Yes enzymes are promiscuous, but the alternate substates they can use have only trivial differences: one 4C sugar versus another 4C sugar. This doenst come close to explaining the huge diversity in enzymes we see in the biosphere'
My counterargument would be this
1. There are a few cases where an enyzme can have a very different substrate ( though I cant think of any examples) and many enzymes are assayed using subtrates that difer substantially from their normal substrate
2. Analysis of the teritiary structure of many enzymes suggest that there have been many transitions in catalysis. Axe and Gauger work to attempt to retrace the evolution of an enzyme could have never worked because they ignored a key finding from Thornton's lab: there are 'molecular ratchets' which would prevent selection from evolving previously existing enzymes.
3. Evidence from many areas: ribozyme evolution, abzymes, de novo designed proteins, IDPs suggest that the big complex streamlined protiens we see now are not necessary for workable catalysis
4. Ignoring the origin of proteins, the evidence for the recent evolution of enzymes is enough to suggest that a great deal of change can occur in living systems by natural mechanisms. No designer is required.
Comments/criticisms?
What evidence for the recent evolution of enzymes?
DeleteOh, Jesus, do we have to keep copying the novel enzyme function list over and over and over!? Pest, go off to TalkOrigins and search for their page on the topic. If you can accurately paraphrase what TO says in your own words, I'll add my own list of novel functions.
DeleteBut first you creationists have to prove you can understand sentences written in human languages. So paraphrase TO in your own words, and I'll copy the novel enzyme function list-- for the 900th time.
Oh, Jesus? Are you prayin to Jesus?
Deletethe amount of ones and zeros are still the same.... Fits perfectly the biblical account.
DeleteIn the Beginning were the Ones and Zeros....
lanlog's key contribution here is......
Deletethe work is 'suggestive' of....the results are 'suggestive' of......
in that case ID is in good hands.
The evidence is overwhelmingly 'suggestive' of design.
All that unguided stuff happens once all the designed stuff is put in place.
So much for the power of darwinian 'unguidedness'.
Gauger: "Based on our experiments, the problem of how innovation originates remains unsolved."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ann that her and Axe have not solved this problem. They (Gauger and Axe 2011) have confirmed that evolution isn't a conscious process that picks specific proteins and makes them evolve into specific other proteins. Then again, it might not have been too much to assume as much.
Anyway, nice to read a evolution biologist admits that what happens in a lab is in fact Intelligent design.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, nice to read a evolution biologist admits that what happens in a lab is in fact Intelligent design.
DeleteCertainly it is with badly designed experiments by people who deliberately misunderstand evolution.
Pete - is that you?
Delete"Anyway, nice to read a evolution biologist admits that what happens in a lab is in fact Intelligent design."
ReplyDeleteAhhh, the ID logic. Evolution isn't true because we can't creat life, or we can't change one enzyme to another. But if we actually succeeded, they would argue that it is proof of ID.
But if the experiment fails, it is NOT proof that Intelligent Design is UNable to create enzyme functions.
DeleteIn short:
1. If experiment is successful, the lab experiment was intelligently designed all along, thereby proving intelligence is necessary to make this, any, and ALL protein functions. Therefore, God did it. Ban gay marriage and abolish capital gains tax.
2. If experiment fails, it was actually testing evolution, which proves evolution cannot make ANY new protein functions. Therefore, God did it. Ban gay marriage, abolish capital gains tax.
Also note:
1. If experiment succeeds, human intelligence is a good analogy for invisible Middle Eastern war deity. If humans can create something successfully, that confirms "Goddunit", since humans are a good stand-in for God.
2. If experiment fails, divine intelligence is not analogous to human intelligence. If humans cannot create something, that cannot falsify "Goddunit." Because God's ways are mysterioso and God's mind is infinite and not at all like ours.
Or as Pest puts it, Who said ID failed? Don't compare human with God who knows all about enzyms. ID in the lab shows evolution is false.
DeleteQuick! Into the Fortress of Non-Falsifiability!
Top is one of those frothing from the mouth, fire and brimstone religious fanatics. The type who'd be weilding pitchfork and torch hunting down all heathens who don't agree with his view, Spanish inquisition style.
DeleteHis nick, if you translate it to English would be: top guy (Dutch: top goozer, abreviated to top gooz).
This gives you some insight into his thinking, into his warped logic defending ID, into his hatred of science and Darwin in particular. His (haha) quest is defending the big guy up stairs, who he seems to have identified himself with using a nick like top guy.
And Diogenes, top ain't one of quests puppets. There's no need to point top to science sites like TO, it's the source of all evil. You don't need to discuss science with top, he ignores everything which doesn't fit into his midievil world view.
You don't debate science with top, you focus on his warped logic (oh top expects a play by play recreation of every fossil leading to human or else evolution can't have happend, so Top tell us who are your 75th grandfather or 120th grandmother in line from Adam and Eve, or else you don't exist).
That's when the double standard kicks in, like when all of a sudden 'peer review' wasn't the source of all evil because Bio-complexity uses peer review to screen submitted papers too.
Top's MO on the Dutch forum is exactly the same he does here, come in screaming and frothing 'give proof of ...' and let the evilutionists show proof. Regardless of what is posted, he's then posts a follow up like 'tornado/ 747' schitck or the '0101' bit.
Bio-complexity uses peer review...
DeleteWith the young-Earth creationist Matti Leisola as the Editior-in-Chief and Douglas Axe as the Managing Editor of Bio-Complexity, I suppose the main objective of the peer review procedure is to screen the contributions for consistency with the Bible.
Here is an example of a single amino acid change that completely changes the reaction performed by an enzyme, not "merely" its substrate specify http://doi.org/xpw
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned in one of the older threads Dr. Gauger wasn't happy either when she actually found some novelty because natural processes just did not create the innovation she wanted.
ReplyDeleteNot a new enzyme but rather show a new enzyme couldn't be created because a new attribute (novelty) couldn't be created in a old enzyme and thus with selection become a new one.
ReplyDeleteIts just saying important new info can't be created for selection to work on.
"I pointed out that this is not how evolution works."
ReplyDeleteBut it also could, even if evolution promiscuous enzymes may be more prevalent. There is this study where they identify two enzymes in bacteria which differ by only nine amino acids (over 475), and they have totally different reactions (Atrazine chlorohydrolase, EC:3.8.1.8 and Melamine deaminase, EC:3.5.4.n3) :
Melamine Deaminase and Atrazine Chlorohydrolase: 98 Percent Identical but Functionally Different
http://jb.asm.org/content/183/8/2405.long
They conclude by:
"It has been estimated that only 10% of the amino acid differences between species are driven by positive selection (28) and that relatively few substitutions that lead to amino acid replacements are accepted and maintained (23). This suggests that the evolutionary divergence of melamine deaminase and AtzA occurred relatively recently and under conditions of strong selective pressure."
«...provided the capacity for the reaction already exists in the starting enzyme...» - I guess that's with this part that Gauger is now "concerned". But non-perfected/ low functionality can arise at least parcially "by chance" (without selection) (1). And, as Paul McBride said:
ReplyDeleteGauger: "Based on our experiments, the problem of how innovation originates remains unsolved."
"They (Gauger and Axe 2011) have confirmed that evolution isn't a conscious process that picks specific proteins and makes them evolve into specific other proteins.» They didn't test anything similar to evolution.
1. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v37/n1/abs/ng1482.html
I guess Ann Gauger forgot about the time a novel function involved in her own laboratory, without her or any other "intelligent" agent trying to create it. Unfortunately for Ann, the internet never forgets:
ReplyDeletehttp://americanloons.blogspot.ca/2011/01/140-ann-gauger.html
Classic... I also note that she has (thankfully) stopped ranting (i.e., lying) about human evolution. For the time being, anyway.
DeleteWhy is no one talking about exon shuffling by transposons and the resulting domain accretion? Larry, can you write a piece on that topic please?
ReplyDeleteThere is no correlation between exons and protein domains except in a few specialized cases. Exon shuffling is not a major source of new proteins. There are a few well-known examples but not enough to justify making a generalization.
DeleteThe evidence that different proteins with the same fold (domain?) share a common ancestor in the absence of significant sequence similarity is very weak. Is that what you were referring to?
I based my question on the presentation of exon shuffling in Watson et al., Mol. Biol. of the Gene, 7th edition, 2014, pp 497-500. In part, they say "[T]he borders between exons and introns within a given gene often coincide with the boundaries between domains... within the protein encoded by that gene. That is, it seems that each exon very often encodes an independently folding unit of protein (often corresponding to an independent function)." They then go on to give a number of examples. Is this a case of geneticists wanting to see a general pattern of a rare gene-based phenomenon while protein biochemists (who know more, in this case) know better?
DeleteWatson et al. are wrong. It is not true that exons "often" encode distinctive protein domains. That idea—as a general rule—was abandoned 25 years ago. There are a few examples of exons encoding a domain but they are definitely the exception and not the rule.
DeleteThanks very much, Larry. I've unlearned something today, and that's often much more valuable than learning something new. Cheers!
DeleteLarry, your statement, true or not, does not contradict Watson et al.
DeleteYou say: It is not true that exons "often" encode distinctive protein domains.
But Watson et al., as quoted bypliny [is this pliny the In Between?] say: "[T]he borders between exons and introns within a given gene often coincide with the boundaries between domains... within the protein encoded by that gene.
These statements are not exactly contradictory. An exon in principle could encode multiple domains with the border between the exon and the intron being the boundary between domains.
Watson et al. further say: "That is, it seems that each exon very often encodes an independently folding unit of protein (often corresponding to an independent function)." I would disagree with the independent function part. The "independently folding unit of protein" part should not be interpreted to mean one domain (or it's wrong) but if it were interpreted to mean several domains, it would not contradict Larry's assertion.
@Diogenes
DeleteThe original idea was that exons correspond to protein domains and this was connected to the hypothesis that introns arose early in evolution. It suggested that early gene evolution was facilitated by exon shuffling.
By the mid-1990s it became apparent that neither of these ideas was tenable. Some introns are ancient but most appear to be recent insertions at random positions within the gene. Still, old ideas die hard and many biologists are still looking for an adaptive explanation of introns and intron positions.
An example of such an adaptionist program is the paper by Liu an Grigoriev in 2005 [Protein domains correlate strongly with exons in multiple eukaryotic genomes – evidence of exon shuffling?]. They decided to check and see whether there was a strong correlation between exons and domains.
There isn't. This didn't deter them so they went further and looked at domain borders to see if introns were preferentially inserting at positions within the gene corresponding to the codons that coded for short loops and disordered regions of structure connecting domains. Since it's hard to identify these borders, they picked a six amino acid window corresponding to 18 nucleotides.
Any intron insertion into this region constituted an intron in a domain border.
They looked at nine species. Let's take Drosophila as an example since it has fewer introns. They looked at 7086 genes and identified 14,128 "domains." I put "domains" in quotation marks since you can't really identify a domain unless you have a structure. I don't know what criteria they used.
I don't know how many single domain proteins there are in Drosophila but presumably there are quite a few. The data suggests that a typical multidomain protein might have three domains. That will give rise to two domain borders within the gene where introns might insert.
There are 27,3985 introns. If there were always an intron at a domain border then we might expect about 14,000 "hits" if domain borders were always marked by an intron.
Lui and Grigoriev found 1300 introns in border regions. In order to judge whether this is significant, you have to calculate how many you would find if introns were intserted randomly randomly throughout the gene. The answer is 950.
The different between 1300 and 950 (=350) represents the number of insertions within domain borders that exceed the predictions based on chance alone. That's 350 introns in 7086 genes and 14,128 domains.
The authors conclude that introns are preferentially found at domain borders
Watson et al. agree. Watson et al. are strong supporters of exon shuffling as an important mode of evolution and they believe that structurally similar folds/domains are homologous even in the absence of sequence similarity. Thus, according to those authors, the evidence of domain shuffling in the evolution of be proteins is pervasive. They are quite happy to promote any evidence they can find suggesting that introns are early and exons define protein domains.
Larry – I am very confused. You said:
DeleteThe original idea was that exons correspond to protein domains and this was connected to the hypothesis that introns arose early in evolution. It suggested that early gene evolution was facilitated by exon shuffling.
By the mid-1990s it became apparent that neither of these ideas was tenable.
Oh dear, that is exactly what I teach my students – harking all the way back to exons/introns in Archaea.
Here are examples of what I am talking about:
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v11/n5/full/nrg2776.html
http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/12/11/1321.full.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3205564/
I even teach that cell differentiation is concomitant with differential exon shuffling for example one tissue’s intron is another tissues exon. (I am thinking human brain-specific snoRNAs for example)
Surely new proteins are in fact generated by gene duplication and exon shuffling - how could they not?!
… even though each exon may not correspond to a defined “protein domain” as biochemists understand the word.
What am I getting wrong?
There are example of new genes that have been formed by exon shuffling but a few examples don't make a generality.
DeleteThere are genuine examples of alternative splicing but the important question is whether it's common or rare.
What am I getting wrong?
You probably aren't letting students know that there's a lot of controversy over the evolutionary importance of exon shuffling and the significance of alternative splicing.
Ann Gauger "moved goalposts" according to Larry... Too bad Larry did not provide any experimental evidence to support his claims... I guess it is coming soon... Like the "the answers to the big questions" Larry promised me... They are coming... we just don't know when...
ReplyDeleteI personally find Larry and the like evolutionists amusing…
ReplyDelete1. Here is why: when Axe in 2004 and then Axe and Gauger recently published papers based on ACTUAL LAB EXPERIMENTS about the limitation of evolution of protein folds due to lack of time in the existence of the Earth to accomplish such a task (there is no enough time to do it), all I read on this blog ( and I will find proof for that soon) that Larry’s undergrads are preforming the same experiments that disprove the above mentioned claims and they are publishing the results…Well, I’m pretty sure that I have asked Larry more than once to provide the experimental evidence for such experiments and nothing came…
2. When it became obvious that the so-called “experimental data” will not be available… I noticed the increased attacks on Axe and Gauger’s work that they actually didn’t perform their experiments with the ancestral enzymes that had magical powers of promiscuity…What they were trying to say is that in the old days enzymes performed better but the new generation of enzymes is just lazy…
3. Axe and Gauger presented evidence that reconstruction of the enzymes to their ancestral state doesn’t answer the question either…
One can comper this situation to a promiscuous girl…Even if she has unprotected sex every day… she can only give birth once every 9 months… Same with the ancestral enzymes… Larry calls Gauger’s last post as “Moving the goalposts”… I can easily call it an act of THE LAST DESPERATION on the part of Larry and evolution… they are both sinking with the beautifully painted ship… but they continue to paint the ship and patch up the holes to make it look good…
4. This brings me to point 4; some of you may remember how Dive-skins (Dawkins) explained to the kids on the national TV why we can’t make monkeys evolve into humans…something like that… Dive-skins argument was that the ancestor that the humans have evolved from is no longer around, therefore we should not expect to see any monkeys today to evolve into humans… When Dive-skins was asked about what happened to the intermediates between the human ancestor and humans, he said that we (humans) must have killed them all… The have disposed of very important evidence... whatta luck...
No matter whether evolution is true or not... even if all the evidence is against it… It has to be TRUE because the alternative is not acceptable… not to the believers of Neo-Darwinism who have so much to lose…
«Here is why: when Axe in 2004 and then Axe and Gauger recently published papers based on ACTUAL LAB EXPERIMENTS about the limitation of evolution of protein folds due to lack of time in the existence of the Earth to accomplish such a task (there is no enough time to do it), all I read on this blog ( and I will find proof for that soon) that Larry’s undergrads are preforming the same experiments that disprove the above mentioned claims and they are publishing the results…Well, I’m pretty sure that I have asked Larry more than once to provide the experimental evidence for such experiments and nothing came…» Although I didn't read all the paper (only the abstract, because I have much more to do than read creationist crap), I guess that they calculated the time for the emergency of seven *pre-specified* mutations (probably something like Durret and Schmidt did in their 2008 study (Durrett, R & Schmidt, D. 2008. Genetics 180: 1501-1509). There are a lot of genes with multiple sites in the human genome, so... seven mutations are not so hard to emerge. And they presuppose that those specific mutations really need to be "those" mutations. I guess it's because specified that much will help them "demonstrate" how improbable the emergence of that function or something similar that would do at the time it evolved... but what they calculated was just the probability of that specific group of mutations arising. This was a clever manipulation to narrow the "target", lowering the probability.
DeleteI also noticed that they were kind of vague until now (on purpose?) about that " innovations" thing.
«This brings me to point 4; some of you may remember how Dive-skins (Dawkins)» Really mature... And yes, Dawkins did a good job explaining that because some creationists still think that monkeys shold be evolving into humans... Yeah, that's right.
Creationists are so stupidly funny...
Maria Teodósio
Corrections: - specifying that much, not "specified that much"
Delete- (…) but what they calculated was just the probability of that specific group of mutations arising. This was a clever manipulation to narrow the "target", lowering the probability, *to generalize erroneously after*.
Maria Teodósio
"And they presuppose that those specific mutations really need to be "those" mutations." - or at least that only that specific function would do, and so calculated the probability of its emergence, estimating that seven mutations are necessary. But the logic is the same. And, by the way, in real life, the proteins were "cousins". One didn't evolve into the other.
DeleteMaria Teodósio
I also wrote quite a bit regarding their later work (Gauger and Axe 2011) back in 2011/2012:
DeleteThe Discovery Institute's Ann Gauger
Axe and Gauger respond in tandem
Was that the paper in which they were trying to get a specific result? Or was the one ion which she claimed that only protein coding sequence was used in phylogenetic studies? I can't keep their whining lunacy straight anymore.
DeleteOh, I forgot about that! One time Gauger claimed that in human-chimp DNA comparisons, only protein-coding DNA was used! 2% of the whole.
DeleteSuch basic level blunders, expressed with extraordinary certainty and self-confidence, do not even embarrass anti-evolutionists; despite such blunders they plow on, calling themselves scientists and authorities whose bizarre counterfactual emissions constitute a scientific "controversy."
MissyAtheist32,
DeleteI always enjoy how evolutionists are able to come up with tons of excuses and zero scientific evidence for their lousy claims... Ever since logically thinking people have begun asking questions and demanding evidence... all of the sudden evolution has stopped for some reason... Monkeys don't evolve into super monkeys... they don't drop their tails and run to schools to learn to speak at least one word... Human kind is not evolving into superhuman... quite contrary... With the accumulation of so many mutations should we be flying by now at least... or be able to develop new functions by now..? By now the way I see it I should have evolved at least a lump of meat that should be sticking out of my body.... what it would be in 600 million years a third hand to use the cellphone while I'm driving...
But some evolutionists wonder if the accumulation of mutations (whichever you wish) is causing human genome to deteriorate and by the same token prevent evolution...
OK Missy, you probably don't know it yet... but if you do... just keep it to yourself...
For evolution.. the real one... not minimal change in birds beak or d..k...for one kind of animal to develop into another kind the changes would have to take place within the cell...the embryo, at the very molecular level...
The body plans are soooo different... so unique... so mind boggling... only a devoted Darwinists can be so blind not to see it...
Congrats... You have just joined the club of "deliberately blind" ... people... possibly...
Quest, Quest... it seems you have missed the year 2005 altogether? Let me refresh your memory:
Deletehttp://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science#4._Whether_ID_is_Science
We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are:
(1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
(2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980's; and
(3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.
If you read the judges closing statements you find lots of references to 'no evidence in favor of ID', 'negative arguments against evolution, don't count as evidence in favor of ID, 'many peer reviewed scientific papers with evidence in favor of evolution' and the failed attempts of Prof. Behe to forward blod clotting, the flagellum and immune system as IC. In each case there's evolutionary evidence how these so-called IC systems could have arisen without a super natural being waving a wand and *poof*.
Ed,
DeleteI think the there is no lower level of disgrace to what the so-called science can drop to than the levels of courts to enforce it's believes without providing evidence...
To me... whoever mentions the Dover case as proof of evolution deserves a medal of honor... from a Dollar Store...I mean... how can I argue against a moron judge who has not idea about evolution or the origins of life...? How...?
Ed,
DeleteThe next level of evolutionary terror is teach your Darwinian s..t in private and orthodox religious schools... somehow... I think you can accomplish that... Too bad for the evidence... but you never had one in the first place so it will be just a swap; substituting one set of beliefs for another...
Quest: «Monkeys don't evolve into super monkeys... they don't drop their tails and run to schools to learn to speak at least one word.»
DeleteApparently (taking into account that you were here, typing this), at least one of them has learned a few things, but not enough to understand what he criticizes.
At least one of the monkeys got out of the zoo and tried to join humans at some university... but I think there are more mutant monkeys out there... see Ann Gauger and the all ID movement for instance...
DeleteQuest, quest, quest... do try to read and understand the court transscripts and judges closing arguments next time before responding.
DeleteIt was the ID movement looking for a court case, and it was the ID movement who got their asses handed back to them due to lack of evidence in favor of ID and massive evidence in favor of evolution. ID was given ample time and space to present their stuff, but they utterly failed every single time to come up with conclusive evidence.
And why would a judge be debated with? Does a judge need to kill someone first before he can rule on a murder case? No, a judge needs to weigh the evidence pro and contra and he needs to base a ruling on facts and evidence.
But, I understand, it's back to insults again quest? Dunning Kruger effect kicking in?
Ed,
DeleteWhy should I read this s..t....? Do you think that court ruling... even the supreme court ruling....is going to change my mind about the theory that has no foundation-the origins of life first- and has no evidence for the claims...?
Give me one evidence/experimental reason to change my beliefs...
I know very well what you can produce.. nothing...so come up with some real stuff and not the usual evolutionary bulls..t "...what if.." or in other words... what if evolution could preforms this miracle.... or other....
Missy35,
DeleteIf you have already made up your mind about your beliefs... why are you here...? Are you trying to challenge your gods... ?
BTW: At least Gauger and Axe preformed some experiments that you obviously don't like the results of... I mean... That is natural... I have never met an evolutionists who after making his/her mind what he/she is going to believe in... changed his/her mind... It is true that it works both ways but we're supposed to be different here... on this blog.. Larry and his disciples have agreed to say the truth, nothing but the truth... so help them Darwin..
Amen...!!!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteQuest:"Larry’s undergrads are preforming the same experiments that disprove the above mentioned claims and they are publishing the results"
I remember that
Quest: I can easily call it an act of THE LAST DESPERATION on the part of Larry and evolution…
- This is so true and lame. Practically professor Moran admits that he cannot explain the origin of novelty
"Here's the heart of the matter. Promiscuity cannot solve the problem of novelty. Mutation, natural selection, and drift cannot drive the creation of novelty of all those new protein folds."
It's not a secret that I love professor Behe. He and Mr Denton were the first darwinists to admit the theory was in crisis and showed that all evolutionists got is nothing.
But I love professor Moran and his disciples even more because every time they confirm that professor Behe is right all they got is nothing. It's so much fun reading this blog.
Yah, boo and sucks, appears to be the substance of your post.
Delete«Quest: I can easily call it an act of THE LAST DESPERATION on the part of Larry and evolution…
Delete- This is so true and lame. Practically professor Moran admits that he cannot explain the origin of novelty» - Lame? This creationist hasn't been looking in the mirror lately, isn't that true? At least professor Moran does know something about the subject and even more, he does work on the field of molecular evolution. So... what about you? what do you lnow about this? (I mean, what courses did you pass that provided you knowledge about it? Did you ever work on a biochemistry or molecular biology lab at least?
Maria Teodósio
Unknown,
DeleteI'm with you all the way... Behe, Denton and especially Wells have opened my eyes wider on the problem of evolution being more religious; based on faith rather than on science... The breaking point came when I questioned my university professor on the origin of multicellular organisms and endosymbiosis... He thru some papers on me and said: "never question science if you have not done you homework! " I took the papers home and read them at least 8-10 times and since there was no internet then, I went to the library to find out the details... The first article I got on the issue made the point at the end of the summary: "...No laboratory experiments have confirmed this phenomenon...(endosymbiosis) It must have been sheer lack... " I guess they didn't want to use the word "miracle" in the scientific paper... But when you look at the so-called scientific evidence of evolution, there are scientifically unexplained miracles on every step that evolution should have experimental evidence for... It is quiet the opposite... they claim to have evidence because that is what they were taught to believe and that is what they want to believe... the rest is just pure garbage...
Unknown sez: "This is so true and lame. Practically professor Moran admits that he cannot explain the origin of novelty"
DeleteWhat codswollop; desperate falsification of facts from the losers of Dover. There is no definition of "novelty" which has these two properties: 1. evolution has not been observed to produce it; or it is not accessible within one or two mutations; and 2. is logically required by pathways leading to modern organisms.
When you point this out creationists usually shift the goalposts: "We've never seen evolution evolve a cow that can travel faster than the speed of light or teleport itself!" Total shifting of goalposts; this is a definition of novelty which fails criterion 2, is logically required by pathways leading to modern organisms, because there is no reason why any living organism would be required to pass through an intermediate stage where it can teleport itself or go faster than light, violate the laws of physics, etc.
Evolution only needs to explain the novelties that exist today in living organisms or in the ancestral forms that are required to exist by inferred evolutionary pathways. By that criterion, there is no kind of "novelty" that has not been already observed to evolve in the lab or in the wild.
So anti-evolutionists just dishonestly equivocate, switching between two or three or more different definitions of novelty. If some definition of "novelty" gets gored by the horn of criterion 1, that is it has already been observed to evolve, the creationists evades 1 by switching to another definition that might evade 1 but gets gored upon the horn of 2, that is, is not required by necessarily inferred pathways leading to living species.
When the second definition is gored upon the horn of 2, they switch back to a definition that evades 2 but gets gored upon the horn of 1. And back and forth.
Now I could ask "Unknown" what's his definition of "Novelty"? But I know from experience that IDcreationists like Behe, Wells, Arrington, "Unknown", etc. never, ever answer questions which expose the false premises behind their claims and assertions. I'm done asking rhetorical questions and I'm done asking IDcreationists to define their terms. I know they'll never answer because anti-evolution in all forms is a massive fraud.
"Evolution only needs to explain the novelties that exist today in living organisms or in the ancestral forms that are required to exist by inferred evolutionary pathways. By that criterion, there is no kind of "novelty" that has not been already observed to evolve in the lab or in the wild."
Deletewhat was the last common ancestor of Kbl2 and BioF2. What were the ancestors up to their last common ancestor? Can you show at least the last three of each?
Open letter to Ann Gauger and Doug Axe please.
By the way the goalpost is evolution from bacteria to human. What you have shown so far is exactly nothing.
Again, cowardly "Unknown" demands that scientists write an "Open Letter" to religious ideologues. Note that as I predicted Unknown did not define "novelty" nor answer my questions. Why? Because IDers need to dishonestly equivocate. Word games don't cure cancer.
DeleteI have already shut "Unknown" up by topping his demand for an "Open Letter" to nutjobs and instead offering to debate Behe face to face, but I'll throw in Axe and Gauger too-- three against one, no prob-- and they can bring along Dembski, Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind or any anti-evolutionist they can find who's not in prison. Two conditions: all negotiations are in public, and ENV must have an open comment policy forevermore.
That usually makes "Unknown" run away.
Oh what was your definition of "novelty" again?
MissAhieist32,
DeleteI have to believe that you are new on this blog...or one of previous misses here who has no guts to write under her previous nick...
Nevertheless... I have never questioned Larry's knowledge per say...There is no doubt that he does have bio/chem knowledge.. Whoever questions that would hear my grievance too...
BTW: I also, on many occasions, praised Larry for his unorthodoxy of his teaching methods and being more open to the ID/Creationist points of view and for allowing students to see both sides of the issue... If you need evidence, I'm sure that even my guardian angel Dino-gene can confirm that... However...that is not the point...
You asked me if I have ever been in a lab... or worked a biochemistry or molecular biology lab...
Well, my dear predetermined atheists... all I can say that if I hadn't been to a lab... that makes all those experimental lab experts posting on this blog even more lame...
I may have disclosed some personal matters on this blog in the past... but I'm gland nobody remembers that... and we shall leave it at such... ;-)
MissAthieist32,
DeleteHere is your first challenge for a determined and devoted atheo/hellvolutionist:
As you know enzymes are needed to produce ATP. However, energy from ATP is needed to produce enzymes. However, DNA is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA.....
To make things worst... proteins can be made only by a cell, but a cell can be made only with specific proteins.... So, how is this ALL possible in view of evolutionary religion...?
Don't rush with the answers... I know you have them ALL... Just like Larry promised me.... Oh... well.. sooner or later your are both ....
BTW: I have 9 more questions for you even if you fail the first...
BTW_2: I actually liked the feel of the lab coat... I did... I made me feel important for some reason....
MissyAtheo32,
DeleteWhile you are reviewing your notes on other issues.... I'm gonna have to drive the nail into the coffin... I was told that by evoluoathists:
Here is a statement based on an experimental evidence of evolutions of prokaryotic cells into eukaryotic cells:
"Lateral gene transfer would explain how eukaryotes that supposedly evolved from an archaeal cell obtained so many bacterial genes important to metabolism: the eukaryotes picked up the genes from bacteria and kept those that proved useful. It would likewise explain how various archaea came to possess genes usually found in bacteria. Some molecular phylogenetic theorists—among them, Mitchell L. Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and Russell F. Doolittle (my very distant relative) of the University of California at San Diego—have also invoked lateral gene transfer to explain a longstanding mystery. Many eukaryotic genes turn out to be unlike those of any known archaea or bacteria; they seem to have come from nowhere"
"....Many eukaryotic genes turn out to be unlike those of any known archaea or bacteria; they seem to have come from nowhere..."
They must have come from somewhere... but the somewhere is what makes some people nervous... obviously....
Pest: "Have you lost your mind...? You require "Unknown" to provide you with the definition of novelty...? "
DeleteThis shows exactly what we're up against. We present example after example of proteins observed evolving new functions. Then ID proponents pretend as if they didn't hear anything we said, and they demand we present evidence of evolution producing "novelty", pretending like we didn't just do that. But if you make the mistake of asking them to define what they would accept as "novelty", they never will, but will switch to insults and name-calling, as Pest does above.
So never ask them to define their terms. Simply state directly that their claims are gobbledygook because they have not defined their essential terms, and they will never define their terms because anti-evolution is a fraud. A fraud and that's all.
I wasn't replying to you. I was replying to unknown. And yes, I'm more or less new here (well, a while ago, I left a comment, and the name was the same as my signature).
DeleteBy the way, if you didn't notice by my signature, Maria and I are the same person.
DeleteMaria Teodósio
Wells helped you see that evolution is "religious"? REALLY? Jon Wells, the draft dodging Moonie, who only got a PhD in biology (taking him 10+ years and producing only 2 multi-authored papers) because 'Father' Moon told him to so that he could "destroy" Darwin, helped YOU see that evolution is "religious"??? What a joke.
DeleteIt's the REVEREND Jonathan Wells, as he went to divinity school, and his infamous essay "Why I Went For My Second Ph.D." was originally titled "Sermons of Reverend Wells."
DeleteHis reason for getting a second Ph.D., as most of us know, is that Jesus appeared to him in the flesh, in the form of an elderly Korean cult leader, who ordered him to get some letters so he could destroy Darwinism. Also prayer, by why he needs to pray to God when Jesus himself appears before him in the body of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, I don't know. And since Moon is Jesus returned to Earth, and I guess omniscient, can't someone ask him what's the cure for cancer?
Dino-gene,
DeleteLol
Is this actually true what you wrote about Wells...? Or you making it up because you "love him so much" for exposing lies of Darwinism...?
MissAtheist32,
DeleteSorry, I just realized you weren't responding to my post...
My questions still stand though... or you are going to use my mistake as an excuse to answer them and pretend the problems with Darwinism don't exist....
Dino-gene,
DeleteYou are not doing it right....
Present generally accepted definition of novelty to Unknown ... not the one that is convenient to Darwinism and you.. and then present experimental evidence that evolution can lead to novelty and not by destroying function by breaking genes....
Quest,
Delete«As you know enzymes are needed to produce ATP. However, energy from ATP is needed to produce enzymes. However, DNA is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA.....
To make things worst... proteins can be made only by a cell, but a cell can be made only with specific proteins.... So, how is this ALL possible in view of evolutionary religion...?» I don't know any "evolutionary religion". If you mean something different, then ask the question again, making the necessary changes.
Maria Teodósio
Quest, you're out of date when you use "However, DNA is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA....." as an argument against the formation of cells by natural processes. RNA and polypeptides (short protein bits) can assemble under some conditions. RNA can catalyze its own replication and the formation of proteins, even the formation of DNA.
DeleteBarbara, I'm sure you will be shocked - shocked! - to learn Quest has had facts verified by measurement, experiment, etc., cited to him previously on all sorts of topics, and this has utterly failed to change anything he says.
DeleteJudmarc, Oh, I know. I suppose the real reason I reply is just that arguing can be fun (Quest's real motivation for posting here, too, I'm sure). But I try to justify the replies as providing some information to those who read the comments and don't know quite why or if Quest is wrong. However, the time and attention I can spend clearing things up is obviously much less than Quest can spend creating the fog.
DeletePest: "Is this actually true what you wrote about Wells...? Or you making it up because you "love him so much" for exposing lies of Darwinism...?"
DeleteOh, it's true. Let's look at the current version of his infamous document "Darwinism: Why I Went For a Second Ph.D.". The current subtitle is "Words of the Wells Family."
Now let's go to one of the best sites on the internet for exposing Intelligent Design-- the Wayback Machine, which archives old version of websites.
The original version of "Darwinism: Why I Went For a Second Ph.D.", archived at the Wayback Machine, had the original subtitle "Unification Sermons and Talks by Reverend Wells", where "Unification" of course refers to Rev. Sun Myung Moon's cult, which reveres him as Jesus returned to Earth.
The earliest Wayback archive of this page is 22 Jan. 2000; the subtitle changed, removing "Sermons" and "Reverend", sometime between 3 Oct. and 7 Dec. 2003, as shown by the archives.
2003 is a significant year for Intelligent Design, as that's the year that IDers started systematically expunging or concealing all their previous written works which had defined Intelligent as explicitly creationist, theistic, supernatural and Christian, starting from Scripture. After 2003, IDers began claiming that ID had never been creationism, never been about the supernatural, never been religious, and had always started with scientific "evidence" and had never started from Scripture.
Just prior to 2003, Phillip Johnson had lately been running around quoting the Bible and saying that ID was based on the Bible and started with Scripture and the Bible said women should be subjugated, blah blah-- but 2003 was the year he went into retirement and Stephen Meyer basically took over as head theorist and propagandist.
A few other key ID documents were doctored around that time and the doctoring is ongoing, so I suspect, but cannot prove, that there was an internal power struggle (possibly between Phillip Johnson vs. Stephen Meyer, but I can't prove it) and presumably an internal decision was made both to redefine Intelligent Design as "starting from science, not scripture" and to conceal all older documents saying the reverse.
Let's looks at Reverend Wells' "Sermon" from 2000, "Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D". Note how he keeps saying "theology", "theology":
DeleteAt the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father's [Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s] many talks to us... He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity...
Father's [Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle…
After this is a bunch of gobbledygook about how DNA has practically nothing to do with determining the anatomy of an animal or plant; Wells has long argued that the science of genetics should be thrown out because DNA doesn't do anything. He also falsely asserts that all phyla appear fully formed at the same time in Cambrian explosion. Then he attacks his fellow Christian theologians for not being creationist enough:
Anyone who criticizes it ["Darwinism"] and defends classical theology is considered to be acting in bad taste…
...I am one of a growing number of highly-educated and articulate critics of Darwinism, located in universities all over North America, who stay in touch via the internet and occasionally join forces at academic conferences. These critics include embryologists, paleontologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, medical doctors, philosophers, and even lawyers. Unfortunately, the North American science-and-religion establishment has largely turned a deaf ear to these critics, preferring instead to abandon classical theology and embrace metaphysical materialism and moral relativism. [The original version of "Darwinism: Why I Went For a Second Ph.D.", archived at Wayback Machine, original subtitle "Unification Sermons and Talks by Reverend Wells", Jonathan Wells, about 2000]
Oops, looks like I screwed up my hyperlinks to Reverend Wells' sermon. Trying again: here is the original version of "Darwinism: Why I Went For a Second Ph.D.", archived at Wayback Machine, original subtitle "Unification Sermons and Talks by Reverend Wells".
DeleteAnd if you enjoy examples of ID doctoring documents to conceal that their hypothesis was defined by them as supernatural and religious, you can further take a gander at another tasty morsel archived at the Wayback Machine. Here is the original home page of the Discovery Institute, circa 1996, saying that ID is "re-opening the case for the supernatural." What a blast form the internet past, with its 1990's style gifs and everything. This cannot be stressed strongly enough because post-2003 IDers would mostly claim that ID did not claim to detect the supernatural and that this was a false accusation from the Darwinists. But in 1996 they wrote on their homepage, in an early version of what later became the "Wedge Document":
Yet today new developments in biology, physics, and artificial intelligence are raising serious doubts about scientific materialism and re-opening the case for the supernatural.
As I said, this is an early version of the infamous "Wedge Document." Let's compare the 1996 home page of the Discovery Institute against the Wedge Document from 1998 [PDF]; the Wedge Doc is in italics:
"This rigid scientific materialism infected all other areas of human knowledge, laying the foundations for much of modern psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. [This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.]
Yet today new developments in biology, physics, and artificial intelligence are raising serious doubts about scientific materialism and re-opening the case for the supernatural. […the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature.]"
So by 1998 the word "supernatural" was (mostly) out, and by 2003 the word "theistic" would follow it into Winston Smith's document shredder and history eraser.
By 2005, during the Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, the pro-Intelligent Design side was furious that the plaintiffs invited Prof. Barbara Forrest as an expert witness, since she had written a book on the history of ID including many damning religious blurts from the ID proponents themselves. So the DI and the Thomas More Law Center sought to squelch not just Forrest's expert testimony, but also to totally exclude all the documents written by ID proponents that Forrest had cited, meaning, almost all pro-ID document written pre-2003 by ID proponents themselves. The wanted to censor themselves! Here's their petition to the judge:
Delete"[Pro-ID side] Defendants Dover Area School District... hereby move this Court to exclude the testimony and expert reports, including the data upon which thay are based, of Barbara Forrest, Ph.D...
…Defendants respectfully asks this Court to grant their motion and preclude Plaintiffs from using or introducing into evidence at trial the testimony and expert reports of Barbara Forrest, Ph.D., and the data upon which the testimony and reports are based." [Cover Letter from TMLC to Judge Jones to squelch Prof. Forrest's testimony and all pro-ID documents she wanted to cite]
Yep, they wanted to censor their own pro-ID writings! Har har har! I wonder why!?
Dion-gene,
DeleteI'm not sure why you wrote all this stuff...? Do you believe that throwing mud at Wells is going to fill the gaps to the questions I have asked you in the past...? I don't care what Wells' religion or any other stuff is... I may not even agree with some stuff... I read his Icons of Evolution and up until today most of them still stand strong... Why don't you attack that ... Well.. I forgot... You can't... unless you ask for a definition first...
Wearing pink-evolutionary shades doesn't help does it ...? They were specifically DESINGNED FOR MORONS...LMAO...
I read his Icons of Evolution
DeleteIt should have been entitled Straw Men of Evolution.
Barbara,
DeleteThank you so much for answering my question...
Finally... I guarantee you that you have not embarrassed yourself by doing so... Larry and Dino-gene will support you alllllllllllll the way...
Our own Barbara has found the link to the irreducible complexity of the cell:
"Quest, you're out of date when you use "However, DNA is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA....." as an argument against the formation of cells by natural processes. RNA and polypeptides (short protein bits) can assemble under some conditions. RNA can catalyze its own replication and the formation of proteins, even the formation of DNA. "
I'm not going to recommend our hard working Barbara for the Nobel Prize just yet... but I propose that her own brothers in the faith judge her findings... The big suspects are out; they have too much to lose to embarrass themselves ...Maybe a bet will do it...? Barbara, Jurshmac and the rest of supported of Barbara's huge finding send $100 to Larry... so do I... but whoever provides evidence for this "reasoning" (just to encourage more money) collects it all... I sure that Dino-gene will put in at least $1000... the rest maybe $100 or so... let us see..
Gąsiorowski,
DeleteLet see your scientific and experimental evidence for your claims against Wells' 10 icons of evolution...You don't have many.. so let's see what else you can do... Support your claim now... I mean it... now... or else..
Sorry, Pest, I've run out of troll treats.
DeleteSorry Quest, but I could not accept the Nobel prize or even the monetary prize you suggest. It's not my idea. (Once I learned about it I thought, "Of course! I should have thought of that!" but I never would have.) It's not all that new, either. You follow all things evolutionary so closely, I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it.
Deletequesty the clown drooled: "Do you believe that throwing mud at Wells is going to fill the gaps to the questions I have asked you in the past...?"
DeleteThat's pretty funny coming from the troll who constantly throws mud and avoids answering questions.
Hey Quest, Chicken run was on TV this weekend... This quote from the movie, made me think of you... Can you imagine it? Somewhere on this planet someone actually thought of you while watching a movie... The quote made me smile, and reminded me of you... It also sparked my memory: how's the chicken experiment coming along? Either, your attempt at proving Lamarckism, or the one where we ask you to recreate a biblical miracle, genesis 30:39.
DeleteOh yeah the quote:
"They're *chickens*, you dolt. Apart from you, they're the most stupid creatures on this planet."
I could see Mrs. Quest standing in front of you, screaming:
"They're *chickens*, you dolt. Apart from you, they're the most stupid creatures on this planet."
Support your claim now... I mean it... now... or else..
Delete...else I will throw more ellipses at you!
"We've never seen evolution evolve a cow that can travel faster than the speed of light or teleport itself!"
DeleteDiogenes: How would you know? Moo - and by the time you turn around, I'll be gone! (Or, with FTL travel, maybe it's that I already was gone, before I got there?)
"I've posted one example of duplicated genes caught in the act of diverging [Evolution of a New Enzyme]. In another case, you have the related enzymes lactate dehydrogenase and malate dehydrogenase that catalyze different reactions but you can convert lactate dehydrogenase to malate dehydrogenase by changing only one amino acid [The Evolution of Enzymes from Promiscuous Precursors]."
ReplyDeleteSo you can step on a stone near the shore and you conclude that you can safely cross the ocean by random walk.
Professor Moran I ask a hundred times What is your best you can demonstrate by random errors?
further questions: what was the last common ancestor of Kbl2 and BioF2. What were the ancestors up to their last common ancestor? Can you show at least the last three of each?
"you can easily show that two enzymes with different specificities can evolve from a common ancestor that could carry out both reactions. Such enzymes are said to be "promiscuous."
Great. What were the ancestors of the common ancestors? More promiscuous enzymes? What was the first enzyme? The most promiscuous which could do all possible reactions?
..anything. What is your best you can demonstrate by random errors? Need I remind you that you are professor of evolutionary biology paid by the public to teach evolution?
"Great. What were the ancestors of the common ancestors? More promiscuous enzymes?"
DeleteUp to a point, yes. There is evidence that a significant majority (over 70%) of all known enzyme functions (>30.000 different functions) can be traced to a relatively small set 276 superfamilies. See: Exploring the Evolution of Novel Enzyme Functions within Structurally Defined Protein Superfamilies
"What was the first enzyme?
We don't know and we aren't required to know in order to show that evolution can, in point of fact, produce a lot of different enzyme chemistry from promiscous ancestors. How those primordial ancestral folds came to exist in the first place is an interesting question to be sure, and we don't know (maybe not yet, at least). It's a question related to the origin of life, not whether evolution can find novel enzyme functions.
Rum Ventologist,
DeleteIf there is not origins of life in the vents.. or anywhere else... what is your argument worth...? Do you really think you can logically and realistically wave away the origins, as if it was a fly and then pretend that unguided evolution had to have happened or you are screwed.....
"Up to a point, yes. There is evidence that a significant majority (over 70%) of all known enzyme functions (>30.000 different functions) can be traced to a relatively small set 276 superfamilies."
DeleteSo it shouldn't be a problem answering the questions.what was the last common ancestor of Kbl2 and BioF2. What were the ancestors up to their last common ancestor? Can you show at least the last three of each?
@Unknown "So it shouldn't be a problem answering the questions.what was the last common ancestor of Kbl2 and BioF2."
DeleteThat does not logically follow at all. I gave a reference that shows that a significant portions of all enzyme functions can be traced to a small set of superfamilies, that doesn't mean this can be done for every enzyme.
The reason these two enzymes were picked by Gauger, deliberately, was their very low sequence similarity. When we don't have sufficient sequence similarity, we cannot reconstruct their common ancestor. That's why her test is idiotic, because Kb12 did not evolve from BioF2 or vice versa.
You did not evolve from your cousin, you share a common ancestor. We can show this genetically even through we cannot genetically reconstruct you and your cousin's ancestor merely by looking at your genes, because data is missing.
Too bad no one can even coherently explain the arrival of the ancestral enzyme, proteins or any other components needed to be present first at the same time for their "evolution" to take place... everyone just assumes it had to have happened somehow... just nobody has any idea how....
DeleteQuest,
DeleteThe thing is... You presuppose that all "needed to be present first at the same time for their "evolution" to take place" and that's the problem with your reasoning in general. If your questions are gonna be all like this, or if you're gonna make weird references to "evolutionary religions" or whatever, I won't bother to answer. I think I wouldn't anyway, because I come here because and when I'm bored and I think it would bore me even more.
Maria Teodósio
MissAtheist, since you are new around here, you may not be acquainted with the cast of, uh, characters.
DeleteSo far as we can tell, Quest is a Dutchman who got hit in the head by a windmill. His comments are often "WTF!?" incoherent and repetitive, so no one here feels much obligatation to respond to them-- many times we tried answering his "I'm just askin' a question" queries, it just leads you down the rabbit hole into the psychedelic dimension of the religious imagination. So please don't feel obligated to respond to his questions. No one else here does, and Larry has a policy that feeding the trolls is forbidden.
Since you are a student of psychology (the only psychologist among us), I must ask: Do you study abnormal psychology? And are you looking for a thesis topic?
If so, Quest must be of some use after all.
«And are you looking for a thesis topic?» Not yet. But I see now that Quest is a fine specimen for a case study of narcissistic personality disorder that may be comorbid with OCD.
DeleteMaria Magdalena Teodosio,
DeleteAre psychologists in your advanced country allowed to provide diagnosis for patients...? How about students...? Are they allowed to diagnose...?
I have hired a few psychologists for my former company in the past... they do great housekeeping jobs for my offices... they cook great bacalao con patatas fritas... I'm pretty sure...you will be doing the same soon... Congratulations...!!!
MissAtheist: if we give him a lobotomy, how much will his IQ increase?
DeleteWell... I think it would at most reach 75 (low average, bordering the capacity to function with autonomy). From retarded to low average... that's a good start.
DeleteJust for the record, my own personal opinion: I greatly dislike seeing the "R word" or any other reference to mental (dis)ability tossed around as an insult.
DeleteIt's a fact. Not just an insult. Creationists are at least selectively retarded - it's like they block their intelligence (if they have it) when they are learning about certain subjects (like evolution): http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2Fs12052-014-0024-1#page-1
Delete«I greatly dislike seeing the "R word" or any other reference to mental (dis)ability tossed around as an insult.» - And I presume it doesn't bother you (at least not equally) that someone's nationallity was (indirectly) tossed around as an insult.
DeleteSelectively *ignorant* I think is a far better way to put it, since ignorance is voluntary and "retarded" is assuredly not. (If the latter is even still considered proper current terminology - is it?)
DeleteRegarding nationality: (1) Oh please. "Hey, you didn't call X out for being an a**hole, just me!" is supposed to be a snappy comeback? (2) Think about it - Quest is being deliberately provocative because he's got nothing else, i.e., he's being a troll. If I were to get on him for his reprehensible conduct, he'd eat it up like candy and come back for more. So as regards Quest, I'm not feeding the troll. I think considerably more of you, and hope that my expression of an objection might have the desired effect on someone who from all indications is well capable of learning and change.
I understand Judmarc's point about the R-word.
DeleteWe're only kidding. We wouldn't really operate on Quest's brain. We know the damage is irreversible, and they don't make scalpels small enough.
«Selectively *ignorant* I think is a far better way to put it, since ignorance is voluntary and "retarded" is assuredly not.» - Ok. You have a point, if we consider that "retarded" *only* refers to what level of intelligence we are born with/ what intellectual limits do we have from birth (and no, it's not proper terminology). In this case, their capacities just are (probably) not being used because of their weird beliefs in weird gods. And here you have a point too: «If I were to get on him for his reprehensible conduct, he'd eat it up like candy and come back for more. So as regards Quest, I'm not feeding the troll.»
DeleteI think you are being unfair, judmarc. Unless there's a post that I've missed, the word that you dislike so much was introduced to the discussion by Diogenes, so it's not at all obvious to me how it justified an insult about Maria's nationality -- suggesting that people like her are only good for cleaning offices and cooking. (He seems to have the nationality wrong, anyway, unless he thinks they speak Spanish in Portugal).
DeleteAthel sez: "the word that you dislike so much was introduced to the discussion by Diogenes"
DeleteD pleads innocent to that one. Suggest you re-read.
Here is a thread at Sensuous Curmudgeon where I discussed the R-word and discouraged its use.
DeleteThat's done, and yes, you're right. You only implied what Maria put into words.
DeleteAthel, you're possibly correct about being unfair - I hadn't bothered to look back at first use. Please note, though, I simply said I disliked the use of the term and did not refer to a particular individual. In any case, it appears Maria is OK at this point (and my apologies if any offense was given).
DeleteOf course the insult was unjustified - full agreement there. Didn't raise it myself for non-troll-feeding reasons, as noted previously.
Re "...he thinks they speak Spanish in Portugal:" :-D
ReplyDeleteMassive Genetic Study Confirms Birds Arose in "Big Bang"-Type of "Explosion"
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/massive_genetic092001.html
The evidence for intelligent design just keeps getting stronger. It's long been known that the Cambrian explosion isn't the only explosion of organisms in the fossil record. There's also something of a fish explosion, an angiosperm explosion, and a mammal explosion. Paleontologists have even cited a "bird explosion," with major bird groups appearing in a short time period.
Now, a massive genetic study published in Science has confirmed the fossil evidence that birds arose explosively. According to an article titled, "Rapid bird evolution after the age of dinosaurs unprecedented":
Another news article calls it a "'Big Bang' of bird evolution" and one of the technical papers uses the same language:
Paleobiological and molecular evidence suggests that such "big bang" radiations occurred for neoavian birds (e.g., songbirds, parrots, pigeons, and others) and placental mammals, representing 95% of extant avian and mammalian species, after the Cretaceous to Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event about 66 million years ago (Ma).
The fundamental problem is this: They are finding data that doesn't fit a treelike pattern. But they aren't going to reject common ancestry. They're just going to appeal to ad hoc explanations whenever necessary to explain why the data doesn't fit a tree. Convergent or "independent" evolution is just one of the mechanisms they invoke.
If you ignore the conflicts between different trees, and appeal to "massive protein-coding sequence convergence and high levels of incomplete lineage sorting," then you can construct a tree -- regardless of the fact that much of the data doesn't fit a treelike pattern. Indeed, this study reveals other evidence that contradicts the tree of life. More on that in a subsequent post.
Why do you think Professor Moran's blog is a landfill where you can dump whole truckloads of rubbish from EnV? A link would be enough, with a few words of commentary showing what your opinion is, but of course not a single word above is yours, and your real business is trolling and spamming, not having opinions.
DeleteIf Casey Luskin wants people to discuss his sophomoric ravings, let him enable comments on EnV. This stuff isn't worth pasting all about town.
So ... they use phylogenetic analysis (based upon common descent) and uncover rapid diversification. Which is evidence for ID!
DeleteAND ... phylogenetic methods are suspect, because there is incongruent data! Heh heh. Casey wins again. The paternity test reveals conclusively that my client is not the father ... (another day, another case) ... paternity testing is notoriously unreliable, Your Honor.
Of course the data fit a treelike pattern. The very study you reference finds a treelike pattern, for the most part identical to what we had found previously, though with a lot of the bits that had previously been unresolved now much clearer. If the data aren't treelike, how did they just happen to match the conclusions of earlier studies?
DeleteSpeaking of clarity, would you care to explain your alternative to common descent? Were these birds separately created out of nothing? If so, which ones, when?
Harshman: "Of course the data fit a treelike pattern. The very study you reference finds a treelike pattern, for the most part identical to what we had found previously, though with a lot of the bits that had previously been unresolved now much clearer. If the data aren't treelike, how did they just happen to match the conclusions of earlier studies?"
DeleteWhat? You mean lawyer Luskin has egregiously misrepresented the facts about a published scientific paper, and smeared upon it the icing of his self-contradictory logic? But that's never happened before, except for the 499 other times.
How is it again that "the evidence for Intelligent Design keeps getting stronger"? Oh right... lying.
Please explain to me again how lawyer Luskin's rich inner life of the imagination is "more evidence for intelligent design." Do you even understand how any theory is supported by any evidence?
The difference between "lawyer" and "liar" is so subtle that a point mutation can transform the one into the other. Sometimes a lawyer turns out to be a liar with a trace of an Irish accent.
Delete"The evidence for intelligent design just keeps getting stronger."
DeleteGood question, I've yet to see even a single piece. Things you think evolutionary theory have a hard time explaining, regardless of whether that is correct, is not automatically evidence for ID.
God of the gaps is and remains a fallacy.
The difference between "lawyer" and "liar" is so subtle that a point mutation can transform the one into the other.
DeleteSome of us (lawyers) are actually concerned about properly understanding reality, Piotr. :-)
Yes, I see Casey Luskin has "discovered" that rapid diversification events follow great extinctions. Gosh, who knew?
Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. It wasn't aimed against lawyers in general. Suffice it to say that one of my sisters is a lawyer and my daughter is a law student.
DeleteAnd you haven't disowned her?
DeleteNow that's what I call tolerant.
Her brother studies biology. I'm all for diversity.
Delete"Unknown" is most probably Abortion Ambulance Chaser Barry Arrington. Look what Unknown did here: he just cited a paper on bird systematics as proof of Intelligent Design... on a blog frequented by John Harshman, who, unlike lawyer Casey Luskin (Unknown's source), is an actual expert on bird systematics. That goes beyond chutzpah, it's just stupid and Dunning-Kruger effect out of control-- and it's the kind of thing Arrington does.
DeleteRecall all the times he got into comical arguments about math and information theory with Jeff Shallit, a real professor of information theory. He face-plants, contradicts himself, face-plants some more-- and never learns.
So copying and pasting a lawyer's distortions of a paper on bird systematics to argue with an expert on bird systematics, if it doesn't PROVE that Unknown is Arrington, it certainly increases the Bayesian likelihood thereof.
Oddly enough, Mr. Unknown seems to have abandoned this particular line of argument. Cut'n'paste seems to be the whole of his repertoire.
Delete«The evidence for intelligent design just keeps getting stronger.» How is that so? What I see here is people (creationists) trying to disprove evolution, but no one even trying to demonstrate that there is a designer.
ReplyDeleteMaria Teodósio
On the contrary....Larry,
ReplyDeleteAnn does not show that evolution is not possible. She is simply clarifying that your position is actually pretty friggin' weak.
Regardless of your ability to show that two enzymes 'could have' descended from a common ancestor, the elephant in the room is its limited effect.
So a common ancestor could catalyze two reactions, Then the daughter enzymes could catalyze one of these two.
Then what?
The plausibility that descent with modification explains anything is weak. If anything, you have just explained devolution, not evolution.
THAT'S the point, Larry.
Glad we got it settled that Ann Gauger's work does not establish what she and all the IDiot acolytes kept insisting. The tune has certainly changed it seems. Forget moving the goalposts, looks like the IDiots are moving the entire stadium and deporting the players.
DeleteTo me, it looks more like Gauger is proving her incompetence and desire to twist, distort, misrepresent, and lie to prop up her failed and useless ideology. I exchanged emails with her a year or so ago, and got her to admit that she had erred in one of her claims. She later sent me a link to a new essay she had written, stating that she had clarified the error and asked for my feedback. The essay, in fact, used the same erroneous claims. This is how these people (and their mindless supporters) operate.
DeleteSteve,
DeleteYou should really avoid making these kinds of comments until you understood what you're talking about. None of Larry's was about "devolution." Enzymes are generally promiscuous, only their catalysis is much better towards one reaction than for another. When enzymes specialize it mostly means that they evolve much better affinity for some reactions and thus catalyze that much better than before. It's not a matter of a simple "choice" where the enzyme disregards something it use to like in order to work only on one of several choices. It is actual changes in affinity and reaction speeds from often quite poor to very good.
But enzymes are rarely perfect specializers because such kind of specialization is very hard to accomplish. You need to understand physics and chemistry, then catalysis and biochemistry before you could understand why this is so. Once you learn these subjects, evolution of enzyme catalysis becomes understandable, and falling prey of creationist/ID propaganda becomes quite hard.
Maria, ID has demonstrated unequivocally that life is designed. What nature does, Man is only just beginning to understand. Nature has already discovered each and every design principle we know of. and has plenty more up its sleeve.
ReplyDeleteThat nature designs in not controversial. Its just that some folks cant wrap their brain around an entity without a brain designing anything.
Well, at least with nature, you have something to look at, even if you cant find its brain.
Old men with beards sitting on a throne is old, boring imagery anyway.
But if you must have an image to go with the thought, trees and wind and spinning things and the magic emotional imprint from natures awesomeness oughta do fine.
For the time being anyway, until you find the source of the brains.
Steve boasted: "ID has demonstrated unequivocally that life is designed."
DeleteActually, you IDiot-creationists have only demonstrated that you are willfully, dishonest, narcissistic, reality denying, religious zealots who will employ virtually any ruse in your theocratic agenda to ruin science and education, stifle and indoctrinate children and other vulnerable people, control public policies, and force your nightmarish beliefs and ridiculous rituals into everyone's life whether they like it or not.
Yeah, I choked on that too: "ID has demonstrated unequivocally that life is designed."
DeleteNow I could ask Steve by what definition of "design" he can demonstrate:
1. "Design" cannot be created by observed evolutionary processes
2.. "Design" is present in living organisms
But you know ID proponents will never give one definition; they equivocate between definitions that either fail 1 or those that fail 2.
Then they'll start burbling about Mona Lisa, Mt. Rushmore and Shakespearean sonnets. Right. Strangely, they never present any evidence that human DNA encodes Shakespearean sonnets or George Washington's $%#! stone head.
Could one of you guys define "design" for me? Could you tell me how to detect it? How can I distinguish the designed from the non-designed?
ReplyDeleteI ask because all I can find out about "design" looks like nothing but criticism of the theory of evolution. It looks like nothing but pseudo-scientific blather.
When i ask creationists for actual evidence FOR creation, I am invariably responded to in the following ways:
Delete1. not responded to at all
2. given bible verses
3. given assertions about Darwin being mentally ill/a liar/a rich kid/etc.
4. given a list of 'evils' supposedly traced to evolutionary thought
5. some nitpicky distortions of science, followed by claims that evolution is wrong
6. contrived probability claims (never any actual calculations, just claims)
7. the garbage that the likes of Luskin spews.
They truly have nothing.
"They truly have nothing."
ReplyDeleteBut they do have Gordon Mullings, Barry Arrington, Joey, Louis and batshitinsane77. They are certainly worth the price of admission.
Do not use his real name! He shall only be referred to as HWSNBN (He Who Shall Not Be Named.) If you call him by his real name, he charges that you are threatening him, his wife and his endlessly-referenced "minor children" and then, we are informed, this is typical Darwinist behavior, to threaten his "minor children." All Darwinists threaten HWSNBN's "minor children." At Uncommon Descent, this allegation is far more common than any evidence for Intelligent Design.
DeleteThen he accuses you of having flown to his home (he lives on a volcanic island outside the US) and physically stalking him and his "minor children." Again, flying to remote volcanic islands to stalk the "minor children" of a mentally unstable Christian preacher is typical Darwinist behavior.
With arguments like these, clearly, ID has unequivocally demonstrated that life is designed.
I'm guessing (but she can correct me if necessary) that Maria Teodósio is the Associate Professor of that name at the University of the Algarve, with 69 publications in biology to her credit. I'm guessing also that that's 69 more than Quest, Unknown, etc. have when all added together.
ReplyDeleteHi. No, I'm not. I'm a psychology student (with some training in biomedical lab sciences, so I've had my share of molecular genetics courses, but I'm not a professional).
DeleteMaria Teodósio
Thanks for the correction. If you had the spirit of a creationist you'd just leave the error uncorrected.
DeleteIf she had the spirit of a creationist, she'd know the original "error" was in fact perfect, though we mere humans are incapable of fathoming just how.
ReplyDeleteCould one of you define design?
ReplyDeleteAre you asking this because you are unable detect design? Don't tell me you are not doing every day?
Every time you stare at the exquisite design features found in every living organism every living cell you ask where is the design? And you call me idiot and hypocrit and you are scientist.
Have you seen random errors create engines, motors, processors, factories, pumps,.... ?
Have you seen random errors create digital code, language that specify how to build a system?
Have you seen errors create communication network? Transportation traffic control?
Have you seen creating quality control that fixes errors in the code? This one blows my mind random errors create QC.
I have asked n times professor Moran and his disciples to show us the best they can demonstrate random errors can do. I will ask hundred times and we all know they ain't going to show because we all know the best they got is nothing.
Obfuscation, story telling and excuses that's all they got. And they are payed by us to teach this nothing .
They ask me to define novelty, if they had read Axe and Gauger paper they should know what they mean novelty is. Of course they know, this is just their tactic.
sez unknown: "Could one of you define design?
DeleteAre you asking this because you are unable detect design?"
No. We're asking this because boring, mundane, mainstream science has a perfectly usable methodology for detecting design; said methodology involves forming a testable hypothesis of how the thing-of-interest was manufactured; and ID-pushers are very insistent that they've got a different methodology for detecting design, a different methodology which is in no way dependent on anything resembling a hypothesis of manufacture. What, then, is that design-detection methodology which ID-pushers insist they've got? What, if anything, is detected by the methodology which ID-pushers insist they've got? Assuming, arguendo, that something labeled 'design' actually is detected by the methodology ID-pushers insist they've got: What, if anything, does that ID-detected 'design' have to do with 'design' as anybody else knows & understands it?
"Have you seen random errors create engines, motors, processors, factories, pumps, …?"
Have you seen a designer create engines, etc without a body of knowledge that was ultimately gained by trial-and-error, a body of knowledge which consists entirely of 'random errors' that turned out to be useful, and were therefore preserved on the basis of their usefulness?
Exactly as I predicted, Unknown refuses to define "novelty"-- indeed, he goes further and refuses to define "design" or any feature allegedly pointing to intelligent design.
DeleteAs I explained, the "Inference to Design" is all based on equivocation, on switching definitions between an inductive rule and a deductive conclusion. To be valid any defintion of "design" would at least have to simultaneously
1. Be something natural processes can never produce
2. Be present in living organisms
If a creationist starts out talking about "design" in living things, typically their first definition fails 1, i.e. it's something that can be produced by natural processes. If you point that out, they start burbling about Mt. Rushmore and Shakespearean sonnets, so they're switching to a new definition that fails 2: maybe it can't be made by natural processes, but it's not present in living organisms. There are no Shakespearean sonnets in DNA.
As I said before, I no longer ask IDiots to define anything. They won't define their terms because anti-evolution is a fraud.
Thus Unknown gives away the game:
They ask me to define novelty,
Stop right there. I specifically said that I do NOT ask IDiots to define "novelty" or anything else, because I know they won't answer, because anti-evolution is a fraud.
if they had read Axe and Gauger paper they should know what they mean novelty is. Of course they know, this is just their tactic.
Bullshit. No IDiot ever gves ONE definition of "design", or "information", or "irreducible complexity", etc. They either give no definition, of they give multiple defintions, so they can equivocate between definitions that fail 1 and those that fail 2.
In enzymology there's only one definition of "novelty" that matters. Every enzyme is assigned an EC number, a four digit code, by the Enzyme Commission. A change in EC number is typically considered a "novel" function. But we have seen new enzymes evolve that have different EC numbers than their ancestral form, so we've seen the evolution of novelty firsthand.
Thus, the anti-evolutionists must equivocate and switch to a different definition of "novelty."
Obviously the car as we know it today, is exactly like the first car designed and manufactured almost 200 years ago. This morning it took me 1 hour to get the steam engine up to pressure. My cart doesnt have a roof, so when I finally reached my destination I was soaking wet and freezing, it was pouring down and rather cold (4 degrees celsius) today.
DeleteWe (should) all know the trouble CPU builders have in keeping CPU hardware compatible with the first 386 CPU 's. Changing the ancient 386 architecture to a better one would mean killing compatibility with the OS and other bits of hardware. So, they were stuck with the 386 design, while working around it's limitations, with smaller die sizes, multi core CPU's, high clock speeds, but limited by the 386 initial design.
Hey Unknown:
ReplyDelete"Are you asking this because you are unable detect design?"
Perhaps you could point us to actual experimental data by Gauger, Axe et al where they demonstrate beyond a doubt their first design? ID has been around longer than NS, but I must have missed the CNN newflash that DI has uncovered their first divine design.
In 10 years Gaugerism will be the next target for religious fanatics, because she DARED to show that a divine design can be detected. The whole idea of a omnipresent deity, who interferes from the background can from then on be thrown into the bin. And it was done by a WOMAN!!
Obviously this will lead to Gaugerism being the evil of all evils to religious fanatics all over the world.
Enough musing, pray, do tell where Axe and Gauger have hidden their evidence for a divine design...
Did i miss this here... a followup from Ann Gauger on this subject?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/in_explaining_p091941.html
Here's the heart of the matter. Promiscuity cannot solve the problem of novelty. Mutation, natural selection, and drift cannot drive the creation of novelty of all those new protein folds. That's what Doug Axe and I have been testing all along, from Doug Axe's 2004 paper to this most recent one. Based on our experiments, the problem of how innovation originates remains unsolved.
Hey Ed, Define Design..
ReplyDeleteWhy should I define design? ID is your pet hypothesis, you must easily be able to define design.
DeleteA definition like 'look around you and wonder at gods work' isn't SMART enough. Because the first question which comes to my mind would be which god are we talking about?
Oh, and BTW a definition isn't the same as proof. Good luck.
"I specifically said that I do NOT ask IDiots to define "novelty" or anything else"
ReplyDeleteYou did ask me. I should call you a liar right now, but I let you read again your comments and correct your statement.
So what do we got here? more excuses. Haven't you realized by now that with your excuses you are only admitting your lack of evidence?
I understand that you prefer a definition of novelty which measures only trivial changes.
I asked you more than 10 times show us the best you've got random errors can do. You know very well that the best you've got is nothing.
Unknown writes:
Delete"Haven't you realized by now that with your excuses you are only admitting your lack of evidence?"
Perhaps you should read up on the 2005 Dover case, dear Unknown:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District/4:Whether_ID_Is_Science#Page_86_of_139
Interesting bits like:
In addition, Dr. Miller refuted Pandas’ claim that evolution cannot account for new genetic information and pointed to more than three dozen peer-reviewed scientific publications showing the origin of new genetic information by evolutionary processes. (1:133-36 (Miller); P-245).
Or you might like to try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District#Closing_arguments
In particular:
"We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …"
Do tell, where's the overwhelming evidence ID missed in 2005?
And uhh, what Gauger writes above is a violation of 3.
I asked you more than 10 times show us the best you've got random errors can do.
DeleteThompson's Gazelle. The Dandelion. The Pipistrelle. What's the best intelligently designed organism, in your view? No guessing.
Unknown never defined "design" or any of his other terms, exactly as I predicted. So he tries to bury that fact by going for the ad hominem: "You did ask me [to define design]. I should call you a liar right now, but I let you read again your comments and correct your statement."
DeleteOh did I, "Unknown"? Did I?
Just search this page for the word "fraud" and see what I wrote.
Me: "Now I could ask "Unknown" what's his definition of "Novelty"? But I know from experience that IDcreationists like Behe, Wells, Arrington, "Unknown", etc. never, ever answer questions which expose the false premises behind their claims and assertions. I'm done asking rhetorical questions and I'm done asking IDcreationists to define their terms. I know they'll never answer because anti-evolution in all forms is a massive fraud."
Me again: "So never ask them to define their terms. Simply state directly that their claims are gobbledygook because they have not defined their essential terms, and they will never define their terms because anti-evolution is a fraud. A fraud and that's all."
Me a third time: "As I said before, I no longer ask IDiots to define anything. They won't define their terms because anti-evolution is a fraud."
And exactly as I predicted, no anti-evolutionist trolls on this page have defined "design", "novelty", "information", etc. etc. If they say "Random blind chance can't make engines", (leaving aside for the moment that natural selection is not random blind chance), you can be sure they will never give one definition of "engine" (or whatever) but they will either give no definitions, or they will give two or more definitions, so they can equivocate. The "inference to design" is a fraud because the inductive step (major premise) always uses a different definition than the deductive step (minor premise). The equivocation may be in words like "information", "design", "novelty" etc. but it can be in other words like "engine", "motor", etc.
"Have you seen a designer create engines, etc without a body of knowledge that was ultimately gained by trial-and-error"
ReplyDeleteThe designer uses intelligence for directed (not random) trials , uses intelligence to plan to look ahead to invent.None of these random errors can do.The designer uses intelligence to interpret the body of knowledge.
LOL have you seen random errors using body of knowledge ?????????
First, all human designers gain information slowly over time by starting out ignorant and then interacting with the environment by material means.
DeleteSecond, all human designers employ trial and error and make random mistakes in the process of designing, because they start out with limited knowledge.
Thirdly, all human designers have material bodies and necessarily interact with the created (not merely designed) object by material means.
Fourthly, the more complex an artificial creation is, the more likely it is to be the product of many humans competing against each other and making mistakes along the way.
Thus, if there were a valid analogy between humans and spirits and spooks, as ID proponents claim, then we would conclude that:
1. Living things, since they are more complex than human artifacts, must be the products of many designers (with a population probably greatly exceeded the human population) competing against each other and making mistakes along the way.
2. The many designers of organisms have material bodies necessarily because they must interact with created matter by material means.
3. The many designers of organisms started out ignorant and gained information slowly over time by interacting with the environment by material means.
4. The many designers of organisms employ trial and error and make random mistakes in the process of designing, because they started out with limited knowledge.
Unless of course one is willing to acknowledge, first of all, that the allegation of an analogy between humans with material bodies and hypothetical spooks and spirits is an absurd and unsubstantiated analogy.
And secondly, that is an attempt at God of the Gaps logic, which logically is a combination of a logical disjunction and then a contradiction:
1. All complex stuff was made by humans,
2. Therefore all complex stuff was made by humans *OR SPOOKS*, [disjunction],
3. Organisms are complex stuff not made by humans [contradiction of 1],
4. Therefore organisms were made by spooks.
The combination of disjunction and contradiction can produce any conceivable conclusion. In philosophy, that's called "logical explosion" which leads to trivialism, meaning that all propositions along with their contradictions are made true. You can prove organisms were made by the Great Pumpkin the same way:
1. All complex stuff was made by humans,
2. Therefore all complex stuff was made by humans *OR THE GREAT PUMPKIN*, [disjunction],
3. Organisms are complex stuff not made by humans [contradiction of 1],
4. Therefore organisms were made by the Great Pumpkin.
Substitute whatever you like in place of "the Great Pumpkin", it works for anything. The IDiots just shoved in the Christian Trinity.
sez me, as quoted by unknown: "Have you seen a designer create engines, etc without a body of knowledge that was ultimately gained by trial-and-error"
Deletesez unknown, in their reply to what they quoted from me: "The designer uses intelligence for directed (not random) trials…"
Hold it, unknown. I specifically asked if you'd ever seen a designer create designs "without a body of knowledge that was ultimately gained by trial-and-error". You now say "The designer uses intelligence for directed (not random) trials", fine, but is this "designer" of yours working without a body of knowledge that was ultimately gained by trial-and-error?
"The designer uses intelligence to interpret the body of knowledge."
Ah… so this "designer" of yours does have the benefit of working with a pre-existing body of knowledge. This "designer" of yours is, therefore, not just deducing The Right Thing To Do from first principles and pure ratiocination; rather, this "designer" of yours is guided, to some degree, by a pre-existing body of knowledge. Cool.
Where did that pre-existing body of knowledge come from, unknown? I would hope you'd agree that that body of knowledge hasn't always been as large as it is today—that that pre-existing body of knowledge becomes smaller and smaller as one looks increasingly far back in time, and that, if one looks far enough back in time, one eventually reaches a point before any part of the aforementioned body of knowledge existed.
So… how was that body of knowledge acquired? Once a particular piece of information has been discovered, that piece of information can of course be used by any later "designer" who's aware of it. But how does any "designer" become aware of that piece of information in the first place? Surely there was, for any one Datum X, a first "designer" to become aware of that Datum X; so how did that first "designer" become aware of that Datum X? As best I can tell, that first "designer" couldn't have become aware of Datum X as a result of anything other than trial and error. If you disagree, perhaps you'd care to explain what alternative metholodogy, other than trial an error, which a "designer" might employ when discovering some datum that's new to them?
LOL have you seen random errors using body of knowledge ?????????
ReplyDeleteLOL have you heard the Thermos joke?????
First person: "When you put hot stuff in a Thermos, it stays hot. When you put cold stuff in, it stays cold."
Second person: "Yeah, so?"
First person: "How does it know?"
Diogenes:"Note that as I predicted Unknown did not define "novelty" nor answer my questions.
ReplyDelete.....
Oh what was your definition of "novelty" again?""
http://sandwalk.blogspot.ro/2014/12/ann-gauger-moves-goalposts.html?showComment=1418573980414&m=1#c9024858701046998305
Didn't I tell you to read your comments? Even a random search would have found your comment. From now on when you see me writing the word Liar you should know who am I referring to.
"But we have seen new enzymes evolve that have different EC numbers than their ancestral form, so we've seen the evolution of novelty firsthand."
Can you show us the best example of novelty by your definition? With open letter please . And sign with your new name.
Unknown, who is probably Arrington, links to this comment by me, but he doesn't want you to read my comment one comment directly above that, where I wrote: "Now I could ask "Unknown" what's his definition of "Novelty"? But I know from experience that IDcreationists like..."Unknown", etc. never, ever answer questions which expose the false premises behind their claims and assertions. I'm done asking rhetorical questions and I'm done asking IDcreationists to define their terms. I know they'll never answer because anti-evolution in all forms is a massive fraud."
DeleteAnd the comment after that I wrote, "That usually makes "Unknown" run away. Oh what was your definition of "novelty" again?", which was sarcasm, pointing out that IDiots never define their terms, but always evade. However, Arrington knows that in the comment above that I told him I don't ask IDiots to define their terms. Sarcasm has the opposite of its literal meaning. If I say to Arrington, "Wow, you're a genius" it doesn't literally mean I think he's a genius.
Unknowns' response increases the probability that he is Arrington. This childish name-calling and ad hominem attack is Arrington's style. Unknown has not yet used the words "Idiot" and "ignorant" which are Arrington's favorite words, but the likelihood is increasing.
Compare "Unknown" above to Arrington's style.
Unknown: "From now on when you see me writing the word Liar you should know who am I referring to."
The only other UDite who writes this way is Joe Gallien, but Joe cannot resist threats of violence and four-letter words.
Now here's Arrington's style.
"BTW, if you say the prominent Darwinists did not howl for years and years about junk DNA being a clincher for their theory, then you are either ignorant or a liar. I don’t know which you are."
[About the second banning of the most polite person ever at UD]: "[Elizabeth Liddle] was not banned merely for asking questions. Those who would say that she was are either idiots or liars, probably the latter."
"Do you seriously think I banned EL merely because she asked a tough question? If so, I agree; you are an idiot."
"When you make absurd statements (e.g., an ethicist does not make ethical judgments) you are either stupid or dishonest. You insist you are not dishonest. OK."
"WS [William Spearshake], it is still a lie; feel free to try to justify it if you like."
"It is closer to the truth that he [Prof. Jeff Shallit] is afraid to post here, because every time he comments on this subject he is made to look like a screaming idiot... That [Shallit's accurate description of information theory, the field of which he is a professor] is a sentence only a highly educated idiot could have written."
"Tin, you are a coward."
"Tin...You’ve been downgraded from “coward” to “pathetic sniveling coward.” We’re done." [Tin is then banned]
And so on, ad infinitum.
As I said before, the likelihood that Unknown is Arrington is increased greatly by the fact that he picked an argument about bird systematics with a real expert in bird systematics, John Harshman. That kind of face-plant is just like Arrington, who picks fights over information theory with Jeff Shallit, a professor who actually teaches information theory. This has led to many comical posts at Shallit's blog. Arrington likes to argue with real experts not over random subjects, but over the very field where their expertise vastly outstrips his.
DeleteWhile Arrington is not an expert at either taxonomy nor information theory, what is he an expert at? This will be fun, bear with me.
For one thing, he used his law degree as an abortion ambulance chaser.
The energetic Arrington is a sworn enemy of Planned Parenthood: He uses big billboards to solicit business from people "injured" by abortions. [Talking Trash: Supporters of Amendment 16 include a titillating coalition of Porn-again Christians and Denver bluebloods. Westword [Denver]. 1994.]
God I'd love to hear his radio ads from the 90's: 'Hello, I'm Barry Arrington. If you went to Planned Parenthood and begged them to terminate your pregnancy, call me and we'll make up an injury to sue them for.'
What else is he an expert in? Well, in the 1990's he was a crusader against free speech, pushing anti-porn laws:
Combative anti-abortion attorney Barry Arrington, also a Republican candidate for the District 20 state Senate seat, leads the charge for [anti-Pornography] Amendment 16, talking in detail about the horrors of bestiality and gerbil-jamming while accusing his opponents of "scare-mongering" about censorship. "A woman having oral sex with a dog and persons inserting small rodents into the rectum," he volunteers. "Don't tell me that's in the same category as Catcher in the Rye."
..For all their talk about protecting Colorado's women and children from hard-core pornography--Planned Parenthood's Reinisch recalls Arrington as particularly obsessed with "women and dogs"... [Ibid.]
Now Barry, I thought you ID proponents believed we should "teach both sides"? Doesn't it follow students should be taught "both sides" of gerbil-jamming?
OK, Arrington is not an expert at taxonomy, information theory, probability, paleontology, genetics, molecular biology, or anything relevant to evolution, but woman-on-dog he's got down. I defer to your greater expertise on that one, Barry.
Someone. Possibly Barry Arrington, asks
ReplyDeleteAre you asking this because you are unable detect design? Don't tell me you are not doing [sic] every day?
Yes, that is correct. I ask because I am unable to either define or detect design. Can you explain how to do those things?
Larry said:
ReplyDeleteYou probably aren't letting students know that there's a lot of controversy over the evolutionary importance of exon shuffling and the significance of alternative splicing
I believe there always will be more or less controversial, i.e. subjects about which there is not a 100% agreement between scientists. We are not at science's end like it was claimed IIRC ~100 years ago, there still is and will for a long time yet be plenty of fascinating stuff to be discovered and studied. Unfortunately, there never will be any news for IDiots, they already are and always will be at knowledges end.
Quest said:
.I always enjoy how evolutionists are able to come up with tons of excuses and zero scientific evidence for their lousy claims... Ever since logically thinking people have begun asking questions and demanding evidence... all of the sudden evolution has stopped for some reason... Monkeys don't evolve into super monkeys... they don't drop their tails and run to schools to learn to speak at least one word... Human kind is not evolving into superhuman... quite contrary... With the accumulation of so many mutations should we be flying by now at least... or be able to develop new functions by now..? By now the way I see it I should have evolved at least a lump of meat that should be sticking out of my body.... what it would be in 600 million years a third hand to use the cellphone while I'm driving...
If that is representative of his interpretation and understanding of evolution, responding is a 100% wasted effort. He's out of the game altogether, and I can only assume he isn't even just any run-of-the-mill IDiot but actually a true idiot.
Besides, all questions about how implementation of design has been accomplished over a tiem spane of 3 - 4 billion years of evolution (guided, or not) still remain unanswered. Unless goddidit (i.e. we haven't got a clue) still is the ultimalte anwer to any question you may ask.