A nice, specific request: name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
The argument has long been highly asymmetric. Scientist find a gene, and what do they do? Figure out what it does, and dig into the databases to find its relatives within that organism or in other species. Creationists claim genes can’t be created without the intervention of a designer, and what do they do? Nothing.
oh please please please let it be Luskin who answers.
Gene Construction Confirms Creation
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*
Don’t you wish your M.S. had an asterisk?
Here’s a Gene that has shown no signs of evolving:
Eugene F. Chaffin, professor of physics at Bob Jones University.
Maybe they can come up with an answer before June 9.
Grill the ID Scientist, 9 June 2009, University of Pittsburgh
No fair! Now you want facts? When is god-di-it ever going to be good enough for you people.”
Logical inference” my ass…
So do they duck the challenge completely or actually make an attempt and get refuted? I don’t think we’ll be hearing back from the Discovery Institute.
I think the DI’s real challenge is accepting reality.
#4
Sweet! Almost the whole gang!
Has nothing to do with this thread, but I wanted to report that the Hauser kid is going to get actual cancer treatment under a judge’s orders.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hEYZV56pCa-jEce4SqgGInTCiwGwD986PO500
They’ve already tried this with other biological parts – the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting in certain mamals – I bet they’ll through a few genes at the challenge.
Geeeee, I’m holding my breath… Not!
The coments on YouTube should be fun to read.
Cue Jeopardy music please.
Anyone? Anyone?
I think it’s good, but of course the “more sophisticated” ones would say that they show evolution, only it required the assistance of a designer. Which is bollocks, since the only reason we can definitively state that genes evolved is because they don’t show design, and they do demonstrate known unintelligent mechanisms.
Why isn’t the challenge to find a single mark of design in a gene? They’ll argue endlessly about genes not being evolved, ORFans and the like. The onus for evidence should be placed on them.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Here is a fun comment left on YouTube:
TheFallibleFiend
The unfathomably vast repertoire of talent represented in the elite scientists of the Discovery Institute was considering condescending to a response; however, after carefully re-evaluating our position, they have decided that so thoroughly refuting user “c0nc0rdance” would eliminate the need for faith. Also, they regret to inform you that their dog ate their homework.
As soon as I saw this video, I knew it would quickly make its way to Pharyngula. Of course not only will they not be able to do this, they’ll claim that the rules are fixed and that things ruled out by the challenge still constitute teleologic information (assuming that they don’t just ignore it).
shouldn’t be too hard. they only have to go back about 6000 years. surely there must be something. woolly mammoth perhaps? oh wait, those weren’t mentioned in the book.
Hmmmmm, this Brian Thomas M.S.* is serious stuff! His master supercherie is in biotechnology, from an unknown university. But he teaches science at university level!!! What university, shall you ask ?Dallas Baptist University, of course!
Honestly, this is a dumb “challenge.” Here’s my retort: Show me one feature of any car that doesn’t show evidence that it evolved from something on an earlier car.
Oops! You can’t do it! Because even though cars are designed, they still use common parts.
Oh and by the way, I do not believe in ID. I understand evolution just fine, thank you. But here’s where you and I differ: I understand that a debate is like a chess match. You don’t make a move without first considering what your opponent is going to do. You made this blog post thinking, “har har I’ve stumped those ID-iots not!!11” but what actually happened is that you walked into a little trap. If you had tried this at a debate, you would have been shot down with a comment like the one I just made, and it would have appeared that the ID person won.
So my advice to you is, in the future, put a little more thought into your blog posts. This “challenge” is easy to refute.
This argument is similar to what I’ve been asking for years. If there is no common descent, why on Earth is it that, when we compare protein sequences from disparate species, we can use the points of dissimilarity to infer a phylogenetic structure?
What possible reason would there be for edit distance to translate so neatly into the same general phylogenetic structure when different genes are used, if there isn’t an actual historical phylogeny underlying the evolutionary paths?
If random mutations of proteins had been happening among species with no common ancestors, any phylogenetic analysis would just produce useless noise.
I can already hear the “similar genes, similar designer” argument coming.
eric said:”Here’s my retort: Show me one feature of any car that doesn’t show evidence that it evolved from something on an earlier car.
Oops! You can’t do it! Because even though cars are designed, they still use common parts.”
Seat belts. Please show us that seat belts are evolved from some proto seat belt. Perhaps a fan belt? An elongation from a seat “thumb”?
Original research from that lot?
They think ‘double blind’ is when one leads another.
@18
Maybe because your wrong use of the word “evolve” ?
#18
1) That avoids answering the question (actually this is a good prediction of what the ID side generally does)
2) Echoing what t_p_hamilton said, you have sudden appearance of new structures in cars over the course of history – seat belts, air bags, etc., just watch Fog of War – because they are designed, they didn’t evolve; no phylogenetic trees
eric claims to understand evolution but continually spouts stuff that proves he doesn’t…get a new hobby, eric.
Eric, you haven’t answered PZ’s request, All you’ve proved is the existence of autoworkers and people like Henry Ford. Guess what? We don’t deny their existence.
sure, if you compare apples to oranges… why not bring cosmology into your argument to muddy the waters even more?
if you only need to convince the gullible, just say Goddidit, and be done with your argument.
@eric
You are not understanding the logic involved. PZ is asking for a gene where there is no evidence of evolution. You say that car parts exist with no evidence of evolution and also, cars were designed.
So what? We know cars are designed.
If genes are not the product of evolution, then surely it should be simple enough to find one gene that supports this hypothesis. Right? After all, if the argument was “cars are a product of evolution”, then citing the car parts that were designed would work for your argument. Right?
It’s a bit ridiculous to say that genes are not the result of evolution, and then, when every single gene is considered, it looks like it is the result of evolution. Surely if this non-evolution theory is supposed to hold water, there ought to be at least one gene, among the thousands of genes out there, that supports their hypothesis instead of supporting the evolutionary hypothesis.
From what “evolved” the very first car ? First plane ? First computer ? First hut ? First beer ? Firearm?
Eric… cars don’t reproduce sexually, so your analogy sucks.
Eric… cars don’t reproduce sexually, so your analogy sucks.
sonic hedgehog
…nevermind, I thought you wanted a gene name that shows no signs of etc.
Discovery Institute will always be standing over science’s shoulder waiting to misinterpret data. No matter what you scientists do, they will be ready.
I notice they talk about the fruit fly ‘kind’. Not being a Biblical scholar, I’m always confused by such talk. Into which baramin does the fruit fly ‘kind’ fall: the ‘fruit’ baramin, or the ‘fly’ baramin.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with all this genetic bullshit. Here’s a challenge for ID that should be right up their alley, as it should involve nothing more than some biblical exegesis and faith: the ‘finch’ baramin, likely due to God’s displeasure at Darwin’s evilness, contains a number of things that godless evolutionists seem to think are not true finches, but instead may belong to the tanager baramin, the Hawaiian honeycreeper baramin, the bunting baramin, and the American sparrow baramin, just to name a few.
Please use the information gained from ID research to resolve this, as the evolutionary relationships between these animals is clearly imaginary.
Is that Thunderfoot speaking at the end?
That sir or madam is a dumb retort.
Do you really think that you are the first person to make this argument? Do a search on Paley and then hang your head in shame when you discover how many times his watchmaker analogy has been flushed down the proverbial scientific toilet.
We know about cars, we can show they are designed, we can talk to the designers, we know what tools are used and where cars are made. Not even a clever retort.
On Brian Thomas’s website he states: “Consequently, despite the capable but ignored refutations of deep time offered by geologists and theologians in the nineteenth century, the entire twentieth century was marked by a general acceptance of the theory.”
I am curious as to what “capable refutations” were made by theologians.
do ORFans fit the bill?
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=308850
The upcoming panel at my alma mater (Pitt) appears to be there to discuss challenges regarding the life sciences. Thus my curiousity that it is going to be moderated by a physicist…
And I’d ask the poster in #18 to find the evolutionary automobile precursor of the rear view mirror.
– Kurt
Reginald -> Someone has to go to that Grill The ID Scientist event. Now Snoke (of Behe & Snoke fame) will be vetting the guest list, but surely they can’t stack their audience that much, can they?
If nothing else, the stacking would be newsworthy :)
eric –
did you just start that post at #18 with the word “honestly”?
I do not think it means what you think it means.
eric #18:
Also, GPS meters. There were no precursor GPS meters in cars that only showed latitude, or longitude, or whatever.
Also, tires. Wheels may have “evolved” from percursors, but the first wheel to be placed on the first car was already fully formed.
Also, steering wheel. Same as wheels. Part was added to the first car fully formed.
Also, windshield wipers, seats, brakes, internal combustion engine, automatic windows, turn signal, brake lights, etc.
All these parts did evolve from precursors used in other applications, and the older ones changed later, but all were added for the first time to a car fully formed.
Your argument relies on a symmetry of argument that is fallacious. Since evolution is a natural process that proceeds according to natural law, it will occur, automatically, on its own, unless something deliberately stops it. So, in any given designed object, there will be parts that show evidence of evolution. This is a given unless the designer has deliberately and fanatically frozen his design in total statis from the moment of its conception.
On the other hand, a single instance of a designed feature in any object, biological or otherwise, PROVES the existence of a designer (though it DOES NOT disprove evolution. Both processes can occur concurrently, after all.)
So in fact the IDiots have it rather easy. They just need to find one, ONE, only ONE feature in the entire panoply of biological adaptions in the ENTIRE biosphere over the ENTIRE history of life on earth, and they will have proven that their designer exists. That they can’t do even this says something about them.
It’s not the best challenge, but everything on cars came from someplace other than cars. That’s because cars have not always existed.
Although you seem not to be very well educated (or something…), I’m even yet surprised that you come up with such an idiotic statement as the one above. Autos are constantly taking in inventions from other areas. And do you really suppose that quite novel ideas don’t show up as well? One could, I suppose, always consider human invention to be evolutionary to some extent (we don’t think outside of our knowledge of current design), but any evolution of human design also incorporates, well, design.
We have leaps in understanding, we design from first principles (the steam engine owes a lot to first principles, little to a chain of evolutionary design), and designs are not at all restricted to the line of previous automobiles.
The challenge isn’t all that good, but your criticisms of it are piffle.
And they use many part which are not common at all. Or do you think that a Rolls, a Yugo, and a Porsche all use the same parts? Many of the parts are held in common, but you pay more, you get more, and expensive luxury cars are vastly different from expensive sports cars.
This is one reason, Eric, why no one cares about your moronic beliefs in categories and the like. It leads only to ridiculous thinking about the real world, in which “categories” are not absolute, but are understood as existing for our convenience.
You have to be a pretty bad thinker to suppose that auto design evolution is more than superficially akin to biological evolution, although such bad thinking is rampant among the ignorant. To use Behe’s terms, biological evolution (“darwinism” to him) is restricted to “physical precursors,” while design can use “conceptual precursors.” While that does not exhaust the differences, such a distinction is good enough to test whether or not biology is evolved or was designed.
Biology is lacking in “mere conceptual precursors,” and is constrained by its reliance upon “physical precursors.” Even Behe knows that, which is why he drops the issue in later writing.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
I would also add that the IDiots haven’t even dared to try. Which says something even more profound about them and their supposed “theory”.
Oh, what an excellent and devastating riposte! Because we all know that the Intelligent Designer (who can’t be named due to Edwards v. Aguillard, but we all know who He is, wink, wink) made improved copies of His earlier inferior designs, and copied the innovations of His competitors. Ooh wait, I can’t acknowledge that He has competitors due to Commandment number 1.
Bigger question for the DI: provide a testable mechanism through which an “intelligent agency” influences biochemical reactions.
#29:
There’s only one reasonable possibility: a-auto-genesis!
I meant the first steam engines, of course, since the later ones could be considered to be evolutionary in a way.
Although, the steam turbine is one of those leaps that is very unlike what we see in biology, not at all being a modification of the steam piston.
To put it in a way that I have previously, no designer would modify a leg into a wing, or at least he’d be rather stupid to do so. Yet evolution was constrained in the case of birds to doing just that, since it can only modify what came before, and nothing but the forelimbs of dinosaurs had the dimensions, motor power, and structures that could be modified into wings (assuming that the hind limbs were going to be used for perching).
And what do we see? Bird wings are indeed modified dinosaur forelimbs. A designer might begin either with first principles, or with pterosaur wings (if he’s not as bright as, say, god is said to be) in order to come up with bird wings. Evolution predicts in that case that forelimbs would be modified into wings, so it passes, and ID fails.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
That physicist is a very poor choice for moderator, since he is co-author of an ID paper with Behe. So much for any pretense of impartiality. And go figure why an astrophysicist and a biochemist would be publishing a paper on population genetics in a journal specializing in structural biology and peptide chemistry.
Critique of Behe and Snoke Available
Eric, despite being a moron, does manage to score a goal. An own goal, that is. Remember waaayyy back in the late 1970’s when cup holders suddenly started to appear in cars? The point is that they, being designed, can MAKE a sudden appearance, out of thin air, abruptly, and without the need for earlier homologous forms in older models.
Eric, you should consider registering for a critical thinking course in a college near you, in order to learn how to think for yourself without regurgitating unoriginal and long-discredited/discarded lines of “reasoning” . Use your head for something besides a hat rack, in other words.
Eric @ 18,
Maybe maybe not:
I’VE GOT IT. This could shock evolutionary biology to the core:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_(band)
Clearly a product of intelligent design. ;-)
I predict that PZ will be posting about this on May 15th next year… and the following year… and five years from now… etc. etc. etc.
I smell a gallop:
“They were ALL designed!”
“Number 000001 wasn’t”
“Well, doofus, check 000002, for godssake!”
“Number 000002 wasn’t”
“You want ME do do all the work? Try 000003”
Throws up hands.
But here’s where you and I differ: I understand that a debate is like a chess match.
Where you differ, eric, is that you imagine you’re a better chess player than Kasparov without ever actually playing him in a game to test your claim. Your move here is like responding to Kasparov’s 1 e4 with Nh6 and saying “Ha! Kasparov did not anticipate that I had a countermove; it would appear that I have won!”
See, eric, there’s this process called “invention”, and these inventions are recorded in things called “patents”. If we compare a modern car to a Model-T, we will find numerous features that didn’t exist in the Model-T, and we can identify the moment at which they first appeared, fully functional and integrated, with no precursors. You lose.
#@$$#@ typepad. #57 is me.
also, to Eric’s point @18
Using a mechanical example can help people better understand a biological process, but it can’t be used to refute a biological process.. no more than you can use music to refute a biological process.
The trouble is, I don’t think any of these IDiots can name a gene—any gene at all. They don’t seem to understand how genetics works; they don’t really talk about genes, but instead use vague, undefined terms like “information” and “kinds”.
#18, summarized version:
“Some biological species are similar to other biological species.
Some cars are similar to other cars.
Cars are created by an intelligent designer.
Therefore, biological species are created by an intelligent designer.”
I understand evolution just fine
And yet you get it completely wrong. Did you even watch the video, especially the first part, with Meyer talking about digitals codes? The challenge is to show that some gene did not evolve, not some feature, so your idiotic “retort” is, besides being so obviously wrong on its own merits, completely disanalogous. If we take all the programs running car-making robots in a car factory as loosely analogous to DNA, the challenge would be to find functions or objects or some other unit of code that were novel, that had not been cobbled together from pre-existing units. Anyone who has any familiarity with programming knows that, while there’s a lot of cobbling, programmers are constantly introducing new functions, objects, even whole modules and packages.
The idea of public challenges is an excellent vehicle for ridicule.
As an atheist, I would like to see an annual large-scale festival, based on a challenge of the Abrahamic God to show himself.
Just like Punxsutawney Phil, it could be a grand media event when Yahway/Jesus/Allah doesn’t show up yet again.
Every year, we could ask Him to perform a small public miracle, so that we may be converted and stop all the evil that atheists do that has caused Him, according to the overtly pious, to spend a lot of time and energy smiting us out of wrath.
Heck, it would be a great opportunity for Him to do his smiting all at once, since so many of us could be so conveniently gathered in one place.
#18, summarized version
Let’s be fair (and show more reasoning ability than eric does). eric is saying that the inability to meet the challenge wouldn’t prove anything because the challenge can’t be met even if applied to things we know are designed. That’s a perfectly valid form of argument. The problem is that the claim is stupid and wrong — it’s trivial to meet eric’s challenge, so he has actually destroyed his own position.
Do ORFans fit the bill
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/93ef19a39010a794?dmode=source
Every year, we could ask Him to perform a small public miracle
For many, putting the face of Jesus on a piece of pastry counts.
The worst problem with this “challenge” is that it is exactly as asymmetric as ever. Instead of demanding evidence for design, it’s a demand for a gene that didn’t evolve.
We know why they ignore demands for evidence, of course, because they have none. That is no excuse whatsoever to cease from demanding some actual evidence in favor of their idea, instead of accepting their false dichotomy of “no evolution = design.”
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Oh, is that why? I thought it was because they were too busy doing cutting edge research.
Could it be that creationist/ID folks and their religious bretheren lack a basic understanding of the immensity of time? It seems to me that they just can’t fathom terms like “millions of years”. Seriously, just wrapping one’s own head around the vast ocean of time it takes for most evolutionary processes is en exercise in itself, let alone following the processes themselves. We all know it’s true, we see the evidence around us every day, but some people seem to be unable to make that leap of logic, that we are not the center of all things, the world does not revolve around “humans”, and it didn’t all happen in the last 10,000 years. When faced with mountains of evidence, their brain shuts down and they go the easy route – belief in some magical sky fairy.
I’ll bet my 2 cents that they bravely turn and run away.
Gingerbaker @63 – Good idea. Any day but April 1st, then we’d be charged with not being serious about wanting gawd to show up.
People who live in ass houses shouldn’t throw ones, eric.
The Shithead Institute uses the word designer when they mean magic fairy, and they use the word designed when they mean magically created. We shouldn’t use their terminology because it’s dishonest. They believe in magic and pro-science people should call it that.
So the Asshole Institute is a proponent of magical creation (not intelligent design). They believe in fairies (not designers).
I’d like to throw the Discovery Institute another challenge: name something which has been designed by “intelligence.”
Intelligence alone — nothing physical involved, meaning that, if it can be traced to a brain, then it doesn’t count. That would probably go a long way towards giving credibility to their ‘theory. I, for one, would be excited to see their answer(s).
It would also be convenient for some asshole who thought he was doing the work of god to smite us. And then hailed as an example of god’s work.
God helps those who help themselves, you know.
Disco Institute response.
Eric @18
>>> name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
I doubt the creationistas have any idea what the condition
of this challenge mean.
My challenge for the creationist is even simpler:
One of the defining aspects of science is that it makes predictions and is falsifiable.
1) What evidence would have to exist for you to believe that Creationism/ID has been falsified?
2) What experiment can be done which would show an outcome that is unambiguously caused by ID?
Let’s start with the easy ones first. If they can’t even answer this then we’re spinning our wheels waiting for them to provide a genetic proof.
@t_p_hamilton: “Please show us that seat belts are evolved from some proto seat belt.”
For decades, cargo was strapped down. The seat belt is merely an application of that principle to people instead of cargo.
@James F: “That avoids answering the question”
No, it’s actually great answer. The answer is: when a lot of things are designed (cars, in this case) you should expect to see elements reused, only slightly changed. The answer is: the fact that every part of your car is an improvement from some earlier car is not proof that cars evolved, and the fact that you aren’t able to point to a part of your car that doesn’t show “evidence of evolution” is not proof that car designers don’t exist. — in exactly the same way, the inability to find a gene that doesn’t show evidence of evolution is not proof that gene designers don’t exist.
“Echoing what t_p_hamilton said, you have sudden appearance of new structures in cars over the course of history”
No, you don’t. Give up now, I’ve had this argument before. You aren’t going to win this one.
“air bags” – secondary restraint systems evolved from primary restraint systems and from other forms of cushioning in the car. Air bags are NOT evidence that car designers exist.
“no phylogenetic trees” – sure there are. We’d just need to make one. We would hypothesize that all trucks descended from a common ancestor, and all cars from a different ancestor and so on.
@recovering catholic: “eric claims to understand evolution but continually spouts stuff” – continually? In my first post on this website? Obviously you’re just angry that I’ve made a good point, angry that you aren’t able to articulate an intelligent response, and just lashing out.
@RickD: “You say that car parts exist with no evidence of evolution” – That’s the exact opposite of what I said. Please read my post very carefully. It is NOT possible to find a car part that was obviously designed. Car parts apparently evolved from simpler parts on earlier cars. The inability to find such a part is not proof that cars evolved, it’s simply proof that designers use and reuse what works.
Similarly, the “challenge” to find a gene will turn up no such genes. This is not proof that there is no designer. This is obvious to me, even though I accept the truth of evolution. To me, this challenge is just a ridiculous straw man.
Eric #18 wrote:
Why use a “car” analogy? Show me one feature of anything — sand dunes, snow flakes, a volcano — which doesn’t show evidence that it came from something similar, but earlier. If we can’t do it, then it’s all designed. Everything. It doesn’t have to be living, does it? Just continuous within nature.
“no phylogenetic trees” – sure there are. We’d just need to make one. We would hypothesize that all trucks descended from a common ancestor, and all cars from a different ancestor and so on.
This is comically ignorant. Do you think phylogenetic trees are arbitrary? You can’t just “make” a nested heirarchy. It either exists or it doesn’t. Car models do not show evidence of a nested heirarchy.
Give up now, I’ve had this argument before. You aren’t going to win this one.
Well, that’s that then. You heard the man. He’s right. I mean, he said so. Can’t argue with that.
@BdN: “From what “evolved” the very first car”
This is a question of autogenesis. Evolution is not about auto-genesis. What do you say to creationists who demand to know what the first cell evolved from?
@Jason: “cars don’t reproduce sexually, so your analogy sucks.”
LOL! Really? Seriously guys, I’m kind of embarrassed by BdN and Jason’s responses. Please, do me a favor and stay off my side. Learn from what I said – that a debate is like a chess match. Don’t open your mouth unless you can predict what your opponent is going to say and you have a response ready to go. Cars don’t reproduce sexually? Well guess what, neither do bacteria and they manage to evolve just fine.
Seriously, I promise you, I know more about evolution than you do, and I’m here trying to help you to see the ridiculousness of this argument. Just say “thank you” and leave it at that. Don’t embarrass yourself with replies that I can hit out of the park.
lol, “cars don’t reproduce sexually so that proves they were designed.” wow. Just, wow.
Something akin to protobionts.
Yawn, first Eric is theist, and now he is supporting DI with DI type logic. What next? Channeling banned trolls?
The inability to find a toyshop at the North Pole is not proof that Santa Claus does not exist, either.
Parsimony. You might have heard of it.
Car parts are obviously designed because the natural process that creates them is the evident actions of human beings.
Exactly, Sastra.
A thought on the ‘obviously designed’ argument made by cdesign proponentsists wherein they point to something like a chair and ask “When you look at that chair, you don’t doubt someone made it” and then they somehow expand that claim to all things. In other words, Paley’s Watch or Newton’s Orrery (the latter being another example of the Christian commitment to truth, which is to say little to none at all.)
One of the ways in which this argument fails is that the conclusion invalidates the premise. In this case, the conclusion is ‘all things are designed’, but the premise makes use of the word ‘design’ as describing a class of objects distinct from non-designed things (note that they always point to chairs and watches and radios as examples of undoubtedly designed things, never rocks and reefs and river deltas.) If it is indeed true that all things are designed, then there is no class of things that one could point to and say ‘someone made this’ in any meaningful way, because chairs and rocks and volcanoes are all designed.
That’s a pretty disingenuous response, because cars do not reproduce themselves at all.
Sheesh.
The whole point is that cars only exist at all because humans make them.
If I’m wrong, let me know where we can find an SUV splitting itself into two Volkswagens.
@Rev. BigDumbChimp: “his watchmaker analogy has been flushed down the proverbial scientific toilet”
I did NOT make the watchmaker analogy. The author of this “challenge” made the watchmaker analogy and I flushed it down the proverbial scientific toilet.
Hypothesis: X was designed. Prediction: Components of X will NOT show evidence of evolution. Test (or challenge in this case): Find a component of X that does NOT show evidence of evolution.
That is faulty logic. It makes sense to you when X is a living creature because you start out disagreeing with the hypothesis. I’m trying to help you to understand why it’s faulty logic by substituting in cars for X. With cars as X, we see that the prediction does not follow from the hypothesis, meaning that this is a straw man.
@nothing’s sacred: “See, eric, there’s this process called “invention”, and these inventions are recorded in things called “patents”. If we compare a modern car to a Model-T, we will find numerous features that didn’t exist in the Model-T, and we can identify the moment at which they first appeared, fully functional and integrated, with no precursors. You lose.”
No you can’t, or you would easily provide such examples. Consider this, wings evolved from limbs covered with decorative feathers. Neither feathers nor limbs were new, but wings were new. Similarly, antilock brakes “evolved” from disc brakes and computer control systems. Neither of those things were new – not new to cars I mean. So just because someone patented antilock brakes (and just because some ancient dinosaur had wings) that does not mean that wings or antilock brakes were necessarily designed. You lose.
@Newfie: “no more than you can use music to refute a biological process.”
I agree. However, I am NOT refuting a biological process. I showed that PZ Myers’ challenge doesn’t even refute music, let alone a biological process.
Is it really that hard to understand? If someone makes a blog post that argues against ID but uses faulty logic, shouldn’t we helpfully point out that faulty logic??
Why do your first five or so comments on a thread here have to be so over-the-top arrogant before you can settle down to a reasonable tone and discuss matters? This “I know more than you so don’t argue” act is just transparently compensatory. For what shortcoming I will not venture a guess, but you might give it some thought. You most assuredly do not know more about evolution than many here, though you may know more about it than some here. Anyway, nobody’s impressed by obvious bluster.
On the reproduction issue, yes, it was a mistake for Jason to say “sexually,” but that’s nitpicking when the basic idea is sound, so you at best fouled it out of play: a strike, not a home run. Evolution by natural selection is just what happens when imperfect replicators multiply in finite surrounds. You can’t stop it from happening; it is a necessary consequence of those conditions. We observe it happening in nature, and we observe that every living organism has parents, or a parent population in the case of non-sexually reproducing organisms. As far as we know, that parent-offspring chain goes all the way back to a LUCA, and no ‘extra’ mechanism is required for the evolved forms we see to exist in their present forms. ID essentially posits that there is a break in that chain somewhere in the past. ID ‘researchers’ should theoretically be able to show evidence of that break. One way to do that would be to answer this challenge.
@Owlmirror: “That’s a pretty disingenuous response, because cars do not reproduce themselves at all.”
No, it’s a response to exactly what the guy said. Blame him for not understanding evolution.
“The whole point is that cars only exist at all because humans make them.”
Exactly. This is why I use them to illustrate why PZ Myers’ challenge is ridiculous. I we cannot even meet his challenge for something we KNOW was designed, then it is a poor challenge.
Is this really so difficult for you to understand??
And if you understood evolution, you would know that saying “wings were new” is not a phrase that works like you want it to do. One may say it, indeed, but of course it’s every bit as proper to say that “bird wings are just modified legs.”
What you don’t grasp is that it is not similar. Or, at best, it’s only slightly similar. Even you put “evolved” into scare quotes, apparently recognizing that you’re writing nonsense. The fact is that the mechanism of thought and design is vastly different from the mechanisms of biological evolution, but you’re constantly trying to use the word “evolution” to claim that they’re virtually the same thing.
And it is exactly that mistake that the IDiots make, hence you are only reiterating the IDiots’ arguments, not countering them.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
We think you are an illogical over-pedantic under intellectualized troll. Now, answer your own question.
the other option is say, “we can’t prove original design, but we believe it to be so, because we can’t fathom it any other way.”
and you are left with belief itself for evidence, and keep looking for evidence to back your belief, instead of believing in the evidence. And that’s all that the DI is, people looking for evidence to back up their belief… and then using faulty logic.
Isn’t it very easy to find a gene that has no sign of evolutionary origin? There’s a whole buttload of garbage out there, not to mention parts that just benign additions – since all it takes is a next generation that doesn’t reproduce less than the previous, right?
@Glen Davidson: “the mechanism of thought and design is vastly different from the mechanisms of biological evolution,”
I’m aware that the mechanisms are different. However, the resulting phenotypes/car parts are sufficiently similar as to make the PZ’s challenge a straw man argument.
“but you’re constantly trying to use the word “evolution” to claim that they’re virtually the same thing.”
Here is the blog post that I’m responding to: A nice, specific request: name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
And my point, that you guys have a hard time following, is that we can’t even point to a car part that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin. Therefore, we shouldn’t expect to be able to point to a wing or an eye that shows no such signs. My point is that his argument is flawed.
The proof of evolution (and the proof that cars are designed) comes from an understanding of the process – an understanding that is obtained through fossils and genetics – NOT (I repeat, NOT) by finding attributes (of cars or living things) that “show no signs of an evolutionary origin”
That’s why it’s disingenuous: It responds to his exact words, but ignores the larger point of individual reproduction.
And you’re still not getting it. Speaking of the evolution of artifacts is an analogy. While it uses the same word, and might well lead to semantic confusion with biological evolution, the analogy is not perfect, and is more specifically inappropriate, precisely because artifacts and organisms have entirely different modes of reproduction. Artifacts cannot reproduce or even exist independently of humans within a specific culture; organisms do indeed exist — and reproduce — independently.
Is this really so difficult for you to understand??
sure, it’s about as easy as giving the answer to: 1 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 to infinity… it’s pretty hard to see that small… just as it is to predict milliseconds after the Big Bang… and then we go beyond human knowledge.
we can’t even point to a car part that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin
You’re using “evolutionary origin” as a synonym for “precursor. any precursor at all, defined as such, if necessary, completely arbitrarily.” As exemplified by your proposing a cargo-restraint as a precursor to the seatbelt.
“Evolutionary origin” doesn’t mean that, though. It means clear evidence of arising from a precursor via evolutionary mechanisms. By your usage, an insect wing is a precursor of a bat wing. But a bat wing evolved from a tetrapod (mammalian) fore-limb.
Eric, as usual your logic is faulty. Find your error yourself.
No, as generally genes show co-opted elements from existing genes. Completely novel ones, with no correlates in the same genome or genomes of related species would be the point of the challenge, as far as I know.
They won’t look for such genes. Remember they cater to people who don’t want to have to understand complex scientific evidence. They’ll just make up a story like they always do; like saying that God used patterns to keep things simple and consistent.
No, you are equivocating. There is evolution, and there is evolution, or more properly, there is biological evolution, cosmic evolution, design evolution, and others as well. The challenge, while poorly conceived, clearly does mean “no evidence for biological evolution” when it asks for a gene with “no evidence for evolution.”
And I would have preferred that he had said “no signs of biological evolutionary origin.” That such a meaning was meant should be obvious from the fact that he excluded genetically engineered genes, however, so again, you’re equivocating.
You’re having a hard time reading properly. The “challenge” is more ambiguous than it should be, but I wrote of the difference before you even showed up. From
post #13:
I thus complained about the challenge before you did, fwiw.
Like I said, that was prior to your post, so get off your high horse and quit making demonstrably false accusations.
And your “point” depends upon an equivocation of the various meanings of “evolution.”
Yes, that was the point I made before your first post here. Post #13 again:
I’m well aware of the faults in the challenge, but your equivocation of the meaning of the word “evolution” only detracts from the real problems.
Glen D
http://electricconsciousness.tripod.com
Fixed.
Just to correct myself before someone disingenuously misunderstands my point…
eric, you magnificent slut (cultural reference). You have the whole thing reversed.
The point of the blog post was that the IDiots could end the entire debate simply by finding one gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
They don’t need to argue, they don’t need to endlessly make long-winded, convoluted, arguments of dubious logic – they simply have to find one example and the grand edifice of evolutionary theory will come crashing down.
And they haven’t.
This does not disprove ID (as you correctly point out), it’s just making it blatantly obvious what they lack (i.e. a scrotum to hold the balls they wish they had).
No you can’t, or you would easily provide such examples.
It is not at all controversial that cars of today have features that weren’t in Model-T’s, a many of which have already been mentioned, and for you to deny it makes you look even more like a blithering idiot and a LIAR, not only for denying the obvious but because doing so doesn’t help the ID argument, it hurts it — if cars are designed, we should find novel features!
You have not only lost this debate, but you have identified yourself as a complete and utter jackass in the process by claiming that I can’t provide examples of features of modern cars that didn’t exist in Model-T’s, when even someone as stupid as you could mention many of them.
The proof of evolution (and the proof that cars are designed) comes from an understanding of the process – an understanding that is obtained through fossils and genetics – NOT (I repeat, NOT) by finding attributes (of cars or living things) that “show no signs of an evolutionary origin”
The challenge was to DISPROVE evolution, you complete failure at logic. Of course we know that one cannot PROVE evolution by showing that organisms have attributes have DON’T show signs of having evolved.
#65 Your post is fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of ORFans out there. and as I understood it, the challenge was to find one gene with no evolutionary precursor, which (as far as I can tell) is exactly what ORFans are.
I think that Eric has pretty good chops, but he’s playing to Mozart officianados with Chuck Berry riffs…
*crack another beer*
There are things in Model Ts that aren’t found in modern cars. Magnetos aren’t used in modern cars nor are belt drives.
I’m surprised people are still talking about it this deep in the thread, but the car example is easily dismissed because there is no mechanism by which cars can pass on their similar parts to their modern descendants, besides the intervention of intelligent agents. Information in biological structures, however, do have such a mechanism by which to evolve – heredity.
The only reason you think that’s good in the slightest is due to a total lack of imagination. Radios and GPS pretty much answers your challenge but you’re only considering standard consumer cars.
Cars exist that have hydrogen fuel cells, solar cells, surface to air missiles, .50 caliber machine guns and myriad other exotic items that just pop in fully formed.
Your inability to challenge yourself is not a compelling argument.
And my point, that you guys have a hard time following, is that we can’t even point to a car part that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
Since we have repeatedly pointed out how it is FALSE and based on LIES, we clearly have no trouble following it. But for arrogant gits like you, not agreeing with your claims, regardless of how stupid and obviously false they are, is an indication that someone isn’t following them.
Therefore, we shouldn’t expect to be able to point to a wing or an eye that shows no such signs.
We should if biological organisms are designed, just as we can point to numerous features of cars that show no signs of having evolved from previous features of cars. And again, the challenge regards genes, not features; even when features of cars look like modified versions of features in previous cars, the assembly instructions often bear no resemblance.
My point is that his argument is flawed.
No, that’s your claim. Your “point” is that, because it doesn’t hold for cars, we shouldn’t expect it to hold for organisms. It would be a good point if the premise weren’t so obviously false. You claim is that the argument of the challenge is flawed, but it’s your own argument that is flawed, badly.
the car example is easily dismissed because there is no mechanism by which cars can pass on their similar parts to their modern descendants, besides the intervention of intelligent agents. Information in biological structures, however, do have such a mechanism by which to evolve – heredity.
This is a non sequitur. eric isn’t the only one having trouble with logic here. The further the mechanism of evolution in cars is from the evolution of biological organisms, the better it would be for eric’s argument, because if we can’t even find non-evolved elements in such obviously designed things as cars, then what would it possibly show to not be able to find them in biological organisms? The problem isn’t that eric’s analogy is bad, it’s that his claims about cars are so utterly, absurdly, wrong — virtually every single feature of every single car mets the challenge, whereas no gene meets the challenge.
Eric you silly billy,
Yes there are parts on a car that you can find similar parts to on older cars BUT you can also find new parts, parts with out new predecessors, new inventions.
That is what is being asked for, a gene like that.
The point is that evolution has limits on what it can do a designer has no such limits.
Sure the claim of common genes common designer can be made but this misses the fundamental point, I evolution is true then ALL genes must show evidence of their evolution. They must all be ‘traceable’.
In the case of a designer then that constraint is absent.
@Owlmirror: “artifacts and organisms have entirely different modes of reproduction. Artifacts cannot reproduce or even exist independently of humans within a specific culture; organisms do indeed exist — and reproduce — independently.”
That’s true, but you seem to be saying that in order to explain why PZ’s challenge is a straw man, I must limit myself to things that are A: designed and B: reproduce independently of a designer. No such things exist. Will you allow me to hypothesize? Let’s imagine that we are discussing the Cylons from BSG (the metal ones, presumably, they reproduce themselves). Creationist Cylons say, “we were designed by humans.” The PZ Cylon says, “prove it by showing one line of code in our AI that doesn’t show signs of having evolved from previous AIs.”
No such lines of code exist, so therefore Cylons weren’t designed by humans? Well, that’s a faulty conclusion. So, the challenge itslef must have been faulty.
The thing is, I tried to explain this with cars, but you guys circle the wagons – you wont accept the possibility that you’re wrong, even from someone who otherwise agrees with you. You tell me I’m not allowed to explain this to you using cars, but you try to limit me in such a way that there’s no way at all that I can explain. So, I resort to hypothetical Cylons. Now you’ll tell me I’m not allowed to use hypotheticals. I don;t think you guys have particularly open minds.
@nothing’s sacred: “It is not at all controversial that cars of today have features that weren’t in Model-T’s, a many of which have already been mentioned, and for you to deny it makes you look even more like a blithering idiot and a LIAR”
Fail. I don’t deny it. You just aren’t following the conversation. I don’t deny it, it is the cornerstone of my argument. Cars today have features that weren’t present in Model-Ts. All of those features could be said to have descended from earlier cars.
You know what I think is happening here? It’s call groupthink. There’s a proposition X (in this case, evolution) and you fervently believe X. Someone puts forth a ridiculous “challenge” asking the DI to disprove X. And you love it. This guy is in your group and bluster like this fills your brain with the same reward chemicals that sports fans or jingoists get when they identify with their group – it’s the same chemicals that held your ancestors together in tight family groups, and holds chimpanzees in groups today.
And then I come along and say, “While X is true, this challenge is faultly logic.” And now, just like a chimpanzee or a sports fan, you see me as an outsider and you attack. You don’t think (if you did, you wouldn’t have made the idiot+LIAR claim) you just attack.
I realize that these territorial instincts served our ancestors well, but today they just lead to group think. Do us all a favor, take a step back, and use your frontal lobe instead of your r-complex.
I’m right. PZ’s challenge is a straw man.
There are things in Model Ts that aren’t found in modern cars.
True but not relevant. There are also genes and features of our predecessors that aren’t found in us, but that’s neither here nor there and tells us nothing about whether we are designed or evolved.
I don’t deny it.
You stupid blithering liar. You said I couldn’t give examples; that’s denial.
Cars today have features that weren’t present in Model-Ts. All of those features could be said to have descended from earlier cars.
You’re an incoherent fool. What a waste of time and space.
Oops for ‘I evolution is true’ read ‘if evolution is true’.
Actually the whole post reads badly, pls blame Woodfordes Nelsons Revenge, but hopefully you get the idea.
To add to my previous post, no such contradicting gene has yet been found, ooh I wonder why?
You know what I think is happening here? It’s call groupthink.
You know what I think is happening here? Someone is making a bad argument, and when he is shown this, he resorts to ad hominem attacks on the persons who are showing him.
Even if this were an example of groupthink, how does that bear on the question of who is actually right?
@eric
Are you professionally stupid, or just a talented amateur? You know what I think is happening here? It’s called denial. You put forth a ridiculous “challenge” and it gets knocked down. So you say “if I just ignore what people are saying, I’ll still be right”. Do us all a favor, take a step back, and use your frontal lobe instead of your ass.
Eric, the only person agreeing with you is you. That should tell you something. But last I heard, you were deaf…
Luskin routinely tackles the homology argument. He simply says that re-using components is a hallmark of intelligent design.
The arguments are lawyerly rather than scientific in tone. They ignore proportion, parsimony, and consilience. They can’t be falsified. They relegate god to a lazy inventor who won’t be bothered to find new solutions to any challenge. But Luskin can spew them without pausing for breath.
One of these days Luskin and crew will take a victory in court. Part of the blame will go to scientists who couldn’t bother to dissect the arguments the IDiots are actually making.
I wish an ID advocate would answer this. Just what did the designer do and how can we test for it? Without answering either of those questions, ID is nothing more than speculative conjecture. It takes making predictions and demonstrating mechanisms at play in order to demonstrate scientific validity, and as far as I can tell no ID advocate has done this. Until such time, ID is nothing more than rebranded creationism.
That should always tell you something, either the crowd is full of idiots or you are saying something idiotic. It’s a lot to expect a crowd of this nature to be all fools…
ngong, don’t worry about the DI ever taking a victory lap in a court trial. They don’t want to have to testify where they might be brought up on perjury…
I’m sure even if such a gene was found Darwinists plug their ears and claim “RandomMutationDunit!!!” and keep applying their “Darwin of the gaps” when every new gene is found
Someone is making a bad argument, and when he is shown this, he resorts to ad hominem attacks on the persons who are showing him.
Exactly. His most absurd argument is that, because he accepts evolution, we shouldn’t be disputing his grossly faulty logic. As I have noted before, being an atheist or an evolutionist is no guarantee that one is rational.
Once again, we can identify the moment at which various features of cars first appeared, fully functional and integrated, with no precursors. Thus eric is trivially wrong. And not only is he wrong, but his analogy makes the point of the challenge, since the same cannot be said for biological features or for genes.
If it’s going to be a “Darwin of the gaps” then natural selection has to play a part. Focusing on the randomness, Darwin wasn’t a mutationist!
“A nice, specific request: name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
All genes are related and share similar sequences.
BFD.
Proves nothing. The proof is in to organization of the proteins into structures, processes and systems.
Pray tell what exactly the fuel cell is descended from?
I’m sure even if such a gene was found Darwinists plug their ears and claim “RandomMutationDunit!!!” and keep applying their “Darwin of the gaps” when every new gene is found
Well, you could really show us up if you went ahead and found one.
(And if CreoGuy is a Poe … well, that’s the point of Poe’s Law.)
Bye-bye Charlie the dumb banned idiot. Write and submit your scientific paper or STFU.
@CJO: “You know what I think is happening here? Someone is making a bad argument, and when he is shown this, he resorts to ad hominem attacks on the persons who are showing him.”
Are you talking to me or to the people calling me an idiot and a liar? I can’t tell which.
And no, this isn’t a bad argument. It’s a great argument. Maybe you didn’t understand it the first time, here goes: someone puts forth a challenge, “name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.” along with the implied, “ha ha! the creationists wont be able to do that BECAUSE THEY ARE WRONG.”
Then I come along and point out that the creationists wont be able to do that, but it’s not because they’re wrong. And by way of example, I show that the following parallel challege, “name a part of a car that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin” also cannot be answers. But the fact that you can’t name such a part is not evidence that cars evolved. We know they were designed.
I hope that clears things up.
“Even if this were an example of groupthink, how does that bear on the question of who is actually right?”
It doesn’t. I’m right (that PZ’s challenge is a straw man) by virtue of having presented an equivalent challenge that “proves” that cars evolved.
The groupthink bit was simply to explain why you guys are so hostile to the idea that PZ posted a straw man argument. See, here’s the thing, if this were any other issue, and I showed up and illustrated some faulty thinking, you’d say, “oh ok, maybe so, let’s go have a beer.” or at the very least, “well, I disagree and here’s why…” The fact that you’re having an angry emotional response tells me that there’s a whole other area of your brain at work – the bit that causes group think. You want everyone here to nod their heads in agreement. Anyone who gets out of line is an “idiot.”
We have demonstrated mutation, natural selection, adaptation, and speciation both in the wild and labratory. So any scientific theory is of course going to be based on the mechanisms we know to exist.
ID on the other hand relies entirely on an unknown and untested mechanism that no IDer has been in a rush to change that. All we get is “it looks designed, therefore God did it.” Even when evolution has been shown to give the illusion of design using known mechanisms, even when the process of evolution has been used in engineering demonstrating that unguided processes can show design.
Evolution stays because evolution works at explaining life as we know it. Each new piece of evidence still fits into an evolutionary framework, and there is yet to be a discovery that could not be brought about by a combination of mutation and selection. And this is the whole purpose of this video – to show something that could not have been brought about by darwinian means. Isn’t that what ID is all about, about showing that evolutionary theory as it stands is inadequate and it has the power of explanation that evolution simply does not? Yet we don’t see the evidence to support this, all we do is get anti-Darwinian rhetoric and claims of design. Show the evidence for design that’s all we are asking.
Lots of people seem to have trouble with counterfactuals. The challenge is to show that genes aren’t all related and share similar sequences. That would prove something.
Yawn Eric, still wrong. Maybe you would seem smarter if you stopped defending yourself…
Are you talking to me or to the people calling me an idiot and a liar? I can’t tell which.
Calling someone an idiot or a liar isn’t an ad hominem fallacy. Claiming that the reason people disagree with you is because they are exercising groupthink is.
And by way of example, I show that the following parallel challege, “name a part of a car that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin” also cannot be answers.
And yet, oddly enough, it has been answered many times.
It’s not a straw-man argument, that’s the whole point. Nothing to do with groupthink at all (just look at Nothing’s Sacred to see that people don’t agree for the sake of agreeance.) Rather it’s that you are wrong about it being a straw-man. The whole point of ID is that it seeks to explain what current evolutionary theory cannot, yet there is not any concrete evidence to support this notion. This is what people are asking for, that IDers give evidence to support ID. Yet it’s the IDers who create straw-men against evolutionary theory and use this as their entire platform for argument.
If the IDers would do anything to demonstrate that there is something that was intelligently designed, then there would be a platform for which to promote the idea as science. And this is what it is asking for – it’s showing a trait that could not possibly be crafted by natural selection, thus demonstrating that ID has some scientific validity. No more “It looks designed, therefore Goddidit” this is the kind of argument that would demonstrate that notion. ID is a joke and the people who promote it are just looking for an intellectual justification to say Goddidit. ID has nothing, it predicts nothing, it is simply another vessel by which to attack evolutionary theory. Because an unguided process means that God didn’t do it, and we aren’t special anymore.
Actually Eric, you goofed.
Back in comment #18:
Which you’ve now converted in comment #133 to:
An entirely different stance.
We may have been more impressed if you’d started out with your second statement. (and BTW, that argument has been around since at least 1976).
Now, just admit your mistake and we will all think better of you.
*Troll food warning, not fit for rational consumption*
Marshall Nelson aka Charlie Wagner> We’re all eagerly awaiting your peer-reviewed research into this… You can start by explaining away your gross misunderstanding of how proteins and processes are or aren’t reducible to genetics, as demonstrated in your post.
Damn, talk about playing chess with a pigeon.
eric, obviously a contortionist by trade; otherwise he’d struggle to pat himself on the back quite so much, wrote:
What about the car radio someone mentioned upthread? I don’t seem to recall you showing how that evolved within the car.
@Alex Deam: “Pray tell what exactly the fuel cell is descended from?”
Early cars had lead-acid batteries, but these were used only to power the starter motor. As gasoline became more rare in the environment, natural selection favored cars with larger batteries that could actually propel the car over longer distances. The internal combustion engine became almost vestigial – we see that in species of car such as the Prius.
Anyway, and here’s an important lesson for you about evolution: evolution often repurposes older, or unneeded attributes. All of the individual parts of a fuel cell were present by the time of the Prius – in much the same way that all the individual parts of a flagellum were present in bacterial syringes. You have a fuel storage tank (from the ICE engine), an electrochemical conversion system (in the form of the battery) pipes and hoses from the tank to the engine, and a highly developed electrical system to distribute the power.
You’re trying to argue that a fuel cell is irreducibly complex, but in fact, it’s not that great of an evolutionary leap from a Prius to a fuel cell.
This is a point I was going to make, but I just noticed Glen D’s post @ #45. Has eric addressed it? Has he addressed ns’s points and the various examples offered in light of it? I don’t think so (witness: “For decades, cargo was strapped down. The seat belt is merely an application of that principle to people instead of cargo”).
@5keptical:”Back in comment #18: “evolved from something on an earlier car.” Which you’ve now converted in comment #133 to: “no signs of an evolutionary origin” An entirely different stance.”
Really? It’s entirely different?
“Now, just admit your mistake and we will all think better of you.”
OK, I admit my mistake. PZ’s challenge is a straw man because this parallel challenge also cannot be met: name a part of a car that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin.
Happy now?
@Wowbagger: “What about the car radio”
Earlier cars had simple electrical systems for things like turn signals and brake lights. Now, I can’t say for certain where the first transistor came from – it may well be a case of convergent evolution with televisions, but at some point, cars developed transistors, and evolution repurposed the existing electrical system for things like antenna and to provide DC power to the radio.
Eric, still wrong. Just give up.
Memes are different to genes, while there are similarities it doesn’t work on the exact principle. Genes can only modify what is there, memes can recombine. For instance, MP3 players in cars. The component of the MP3 player may be a gradual advance from components, but it did not do so in the car. The technology that evolved elsewhere was added to the car. Humans on the other hand will not suddenly aquire giant insect wings on our backs. Evolution doesn’t work like that. Thus the difference between memes and genes should be established and eric is arguing one giant straw man.
Earlier cars had simple electrical systems for things like turn signals and brake lights.
Right, turn signals and brake lights evolved into car radios.
Here’s what triggers my “r-complex”: BAD FAITH.
The whole car shows signs of a non-evolutionary origin. Cars can’t reproduce, so they have to be manufactured. Each component in the car has undergone memetic evolution, but that is different to genetic evolution. Memetic evolution can recombine, it can take two ideas in isolation and put them together. Your whole argument is one giant straw-man, yet you have the gall to say that it is PZ who is making one?!?
@SC, OM: “You have to be a pretty bad thinker to suppose that auto design evolution is more than superficially akin to biological evolution”
I do not think that. You know what else? I also do not think that a tank of water is anything more than superficially similar to the ocean. However, scientists can use such tanks to study waves and currents.
This is a pretty common attribute of a model. It doesn’t have to be exact. A thought experiment requires even less rigor. A locomotive is nothing like a rocket ship and can’t even break the sound barrier, let alone approach the speed of light, yet we can use the image of a train in a thought experiment to help us understand relativity.
So here’s a thought experiment: someone claims that cars are the products of biological evolution. Well obviously that’s not true. So you explain that cars are actually designed. The person fires back with a “challenge” for you to list even one attribute of a car that isn’t the product of evolution. You name radios and fuel cells, but it turns out, everything you think of comes from something simpler. That doesn’t prove that cars evolved, it simply proves that the challenge is faulty.
“although such bad thinking is rampant among the ignorant.”
Another ad hominem noted. If your position was on such firm ground, that wouldn’t be necessary.
Ok Eric, in comment #145 you’ve just passed over the line into Kwok country. Nice work.
Do you feel persecuted? Like no-one can begin to understand your theories? (What were those other crackpot indicators?) I leave you to the lions.
But we are all exhibiting group-think. It couldn’t be that he’s using a straw-man argument in order to demonstrate our group-think, he’s much to smart to be wrong…
You mean like calling the arguments here “groupthink”? Surely if your position was on such firm ground, that wouldn’t be necessary… ;)
But the fact that you can’t name such a part is not evidence that cars evolved. We know they were designed.
I hope that clears things up.
@Kel: “Cars can’t reproduce, so they have to be manufactured.”
Begging the question. For a site called scienceblogs, this place is a treasure trove of logical fallacies.
You’re arguing with someone who believes that cars do reproduce and are not manufactured. Of course, that’s false, and probably the best way to refute it would be to show pictures of the manufacturing plant. But before we get to that, the person with whom you’re having this argument issues this challenge: show me one attribute of a car that doesn’t show signs of having evolved.
You wont be able to do that. I can come up with some explanation for the evolution for everything in every car. So does that mean that you’re wrong – that cars DO evolve? No, it just means that the challenge is a straw man.
And your response is that cars can’t reproduce because they’re manufactured? Well, like I said, that’s begging the question.
Ah, but what about the first electrical systems? How can they have ‘evolved’? IIRC, the first steam-powered vehicles predate the capacity to store electricity; therefore it can’t be argued that electrical systems evolved within the car itself.
First, that is from a quotation from Glen D…from #45. As previously implied. You flaming moron.
Second, what you’re proposing, stupidly, is not a model or a thought experiment, but an analogous case which you wrongly believe shows up the challenge. Why would you expect scientifically-minded people, who do not throw around terms or concepts casually or loosely, to accept that you do?
Why don’t you attempt to defend your “case” against the points that Glen D made in that post?
What’s even more amazing is that we get electrical circuitry at all. How would that have come about from the earliest cars that don’t have electrical circuits at all? How then do we go from simple electrical circuitry to semi-conducters, to a car radio that can play CDs or decode MP3s? You simply cannot do so through evolutionary means. It would take a gross misunderstanding of how evolution works to stretch it to make this analogy in the first place. Cars simply cannot evolve, and even if they were self replicating there is no way to get from the Model T Ford to a Toyota Prius in simple sequential and cumulative steps. Cars have to be designed. QED
@18 eric – yes it might end the debate but only because it is so completely stupid and off base. dude, cars don’t evolve. they are not living things. the ideas for car designs might build upon each other and borrow from other ideas and other technologies to help lead to better cars, you might even be persuaded to imagine some direction towards perfection. but make a small leap and now you’re talking watchmaker, and implying a designer of things, and perhaps even of beings. you’re so far off that your argument id done before it got started.
crap.. post fail, sorry.
yes, Eric… every car part has in someway evolved, and each step had an intelligent designer along the way.. nobody is disputing that.
Nature is not intelligent, and doesn’t have a purpose.. it just “does”. To compare the two on the same footing takes the leaps and twist of mental acrobatics that you are attempting now, in your protest.
We’ve watched you attempt this Triple Axel 20 times now, and you keep starting from the wrong foot. It’s a triple loop.. calling it an Axel doesn’t make it so.
*I think that I need another beer, after that figure skating analogy*
@Kel: “You mean like calling the arguments here “groupthink””
Saying that you’re guilty of group think is hardly the same thing as calling someone an idiot. Group think is a process that you can, once you’re aware of it, guard against. Calling someone an idiot is a personal attack.
But look, you’re just proving my point. You react more strongly when I criticize “your group.” It’s just as I said; those brain systems that evolved to serve our ancestors are causing you to divide the world into “us” and “them” and you’re going to side with your in-group with a religious fervor.
Nothing to do with groupthink at all (just look at Nothing’s Sacred to see that people don’t agree for the sake of agreeance.)
Indeed, eric using me, of all people, as an indicator of “groupthink” further illustrates his bad faith. Hell, just in this thread I’m the one who has pointed out to others what eric’s argument is, why it’s of a valid form, and why “cars don’t reproduce” isn’t a valid counterargument, it just strengthens eric’s position — if we can’t find examples of non-evolution in cars, even though they don’t even reproduce, then it isn’t reasonable to ask anyone to find them in biological entities. The argument is logically valid, but it is stunningly unsound because the premise is so clearly false.
This is a point I was going to make, but I just noticed Glen D’s post @ #45. Has eric addressed it?
Just the opposite; he gives examples that more and more radically violate it, as with radios evolving from turn signals because both are electrical.
dmso74 #107:
Here is an excellent post on ORFans.
Of course, one is being insulting and the other is being dismissive of an argument. One of those is a logical fallacy and the other is not. I’d point out which one it is to you, but you know, you’re an idiot so you wouldn’t get it.
I’ve known lampposts that are more perceptive than this troll. Put him down already!
Just to reiterate what several people have said, this whole thing is absurd. eric wants to posit a case in which we have no evidence of design in cars, but of course we do have such evidence – mountains of it.
Of course, as has been shown, we would in fact be able to do that. But where the “before we get to that” is coming from I have no idea. It’s stupid. In the real world, the equivalent ID challenge would be to show a “feauture” of something for which there is overwhelming evidence of design to have arisen via evolution.
Is this really a strong enough condition of unambiguous design: no homology and specific function?
I don’t think I would accept that it was designed, even if it met this condition. I might accept that it is interesting, but there is plenty of chance for the homologues to no longer be around. Consider the genes for wasp toxins horizontally transfered from a virus that we recently discussed (or did we?):
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/02/13/parasitic-wasps-got-their-poison-from-an-ancient-virus/
These genes did not evolve within the wasp ancestral line, although they have presumably evolved since, in the myriad wasp species radiating from that original event. But what if one of those toxin genes didn’t have any surviving homologues, because that virus lineage went extinct? If we didn’t have viral evidence, it could be argued that these genes did not have known related gene that could be antecedents, although they have evolved since.
Was “plant or animal” specified with intent to exclude viruses? What if the only homologues are in viruses?
Eric:
You confuse biological evolution with the evolution of car design though they’re not comparable regarding how new features arise.
As to your request, you’ve been answered already: car radios, seatbelts etc all appeared fully formed across many model lines. Your proto-radio rationalisation is ludicrous.
I suppose you’d say the introduction of refrigerative air-conditioners to cars was based on opening the windows to let the air in! :)
Ok, I’ll give it my best shot.
and an insult to actual idiots, in this case.
/ how’d I do, Alex?
/DJ mode on
This one goes out to this whole thread.
What’s next on the playlist? Paging Janine!
Saying that you’re guilty of group think is hardly the same thing as calling someone an idiot.
Indeed; as I said, the former is an ad hominem fallacy and the latter isn’t.
Calling someone an idiot is a personal attack.
That has no bearing on whether it is true.
I can come up with some explanation for the evolution for everything in every car.
Yes, and you can come up with some explanation for why 1+1=3 and why the world is only 6000 years old. But that has no bearing on the challenge, which asks for genes that are unambiguously designed, and sets out criteria for determining that.
nothing sacred,
“Yes, and you can come up with some explanation for why 1+1=3 and why the world is only 6000 years old. But that has no bearing on the challenge, which asks for genes that are unambiguously designed, and sets out criteria for determining that.”
Sorry, those criteria are not good enough for me. See #167.
Okay, great. Explain how a car went from a simple exectrical system to one based on integrated circuits using sequential steps…
Maybe so, but models and thought experiments still have to apply to the real world, else they get thrown away. Your “thought experiment” clearly doesn’t apply to the real world, because cars don’t evolve! We’ve all seen them being constructed by “intelligent designers” (people).
That’s because it’s theoretically possible to accelerate a train close to the speed of light, but it’s not at all possible for cars to evolve. You have no mechanism for cars to evolve. On the other hand, a mechanism is available for living organisms to evolve: natural selection.
@Kel: “What’s even more amazing is that we get electrical circuitry at all. How would that have come about from the earliest cars that don’t have electrical circuits at all?”
Well, they were made of metal! They often had cables, like bicycle cables for various controls. I would guess that natural selection repurposed those wire cables as wire electrical systems.
“there is no way to get from the Model T Ford to a Toyota Prius in simple sequential and cumulative steps. Cars have to be designed. QED”
That is amusingly similar to what creationists say about evolution. “There’s no way to get from X to Y in cumulative steps” they say. But they’re wrong. In fact, as Dawkins says in The Blind Watchmaker (in the chapter with the computer-generated sticks), if you can’t see the path from one form to another, you simply aren’t considering enough intermediate forms. It really is that simple. I’m shocked that I have to explain it to you.
Cars do not, in fact, evolve in this way. But the observation that a Prius is different from a Model T is not evidence that both were designed.
I hope this leads to some actual scientific work from the Institute! I started tracking Discovery Institute discoveries on a web page ( http://www.defaithed.com/diddly ) but so far have nothing to post there. : (
Time for those “Senior Fellows” to spring into action!
Eric, you are still full of shit, and will remain full of shit until you drop your invalid car analogies. But the, what else is new. You aren’t as smart as your think you are. Get used to it.
But where the “before we get to that” is coming from I have no idea.
I’ve tried to explain this, but not very well.
If it were true that we can’t find non-evolved features of clearly designed objects like cars, then failure to find non-evolved features would not be a good criterion for whether something is designed; the challenge would be pointless if it can’t be met for anything, designed or not. It would in a (tortured) sense be a “strawman argument” because surely IDers wouldn’t be claiming that they can find non-evolved features in biological organisms if “can’t find non-evolved features in X” were a tautology.
The problem is that this is contrary to fact at every step: we can find non-evolved features in cars, that is a good criterion for showing that something was designed, the challenge isn’t pointless because it can be met for designed artifacts, and it’s not a strawman argument because the IDiots claim that they can and have found non-evolved features in biological organisms — that’s the whole basis of ID.
No it’s not. The creationist argument is that you can’t get from the Jeep Cherokee to Toyota Prius in successive steps. I was talking about getting from the very first car to a modern car. The creationist argument is that you cannot go across (like a cat turning into a dog) but that’s not what I was doing. To make it evolutionary, I was saying you can’t get from the first mammal to man – something that you can do in evolution.
This is why the idiot word is being thrown at you, you simply have no clue. We did evolve from the earliest organisms and we can see that reflected in multiple lines of evidence. You said to apply that to cars and I did, and I found that you can’t get from the earliest car to a modern-day car in the way you can get from the earliest replicating organism to all modern life. For fucks sake eric, stop being an idiot.
I’m starting to suspect that eric didn’t even watch the video.
Damn, SC. That was one of the tunes that made me pick up the guitar.. thanks.
*old sigh*
Sorry, those criteria are not good enough for me.
Irrelevant. As with Randi, one wants to be fairly generous to the challengees.
Playlist two-fer
…and that’s a start!
Do they collide?
SC, Eric doesn’t even think. I coming to believe he is just a contrarian troll.
@Alex Deam: “it’s theoretically possible to accelerate a train close to the speed of light”
No, it’s not. You may be thinking of a rocket instead of a train. Regardless, the objection is immaterial. Even though it is not possible for a train to go the speed of light, the thought experiment has value.
Even though cars cannot actually evolve, the fact that there is no specific part of a car for which I can’t invent an evolution story, is not proof that they evolved. In just the same way, the fact that I can’t point to a specific gene that doesn’t show signs of evolution is not proof that they evolved.
Oh, they did evolve. We all know that. But this challenge is a straw man when applied to either genes or cars.
“but it’s not at all possible for cars to evolve.”
*sigh* really? That’s really the hang up here? I don’t believe it. I am convinced that any analogy I used to illustrate that PZ’s post is a straw man would receive exactly the same amount of angry replies because of group think.
But if you insist, let’s imagine that there is a race of intelligent computer programs. They periodically merge and copy their code bases, and sometimes there are random mutations. Assuming that, like the cars, I can’t point to any particular line of code and say for certain that it shows no signs of evolution, does that prove that the AI’s have no designer?
No, it does not. The whole line of reasoning that, “unless you can find this, you must be wrong” is faulty.
I’m disappointed that this is so controversial.
eric wrote:
And boom goes the vapid dynamite.
Some Canadianista Three part guitar harmony from the era.
Just to ram the point home further:
Model T Ford – first car. Would be the seed of any evolution of cars.
Toyota Prius – modern car. If evolved, it would have to evolve from ancestors that were descendants of the model T Ford.
The idea of common ancestry applies if you take a snapshot of a particular time. But say humans and neanderthals are both descendants of Homo Habilis. To say that there has to be a path between turning from a neanderthal to a human is silly as humans and neanderthals are seperate lineages. But their common ancestor homo habilis needs a lineage from that to homo sapien and neanderthals. Just as all modern cars today, be they a Prius or a Cherokee would have to have a common ancestor if evolution of cars were to be true. We should be able to get from an earlier model of cars that they both shared as a common ancestor to the points they are at now. If we accept in the analogy that the Model T Ford was the ancestor of all cars, then we accept that there has to be a path from Model T Ford to both the Prius and the Cherokee. Since it cannot be possible because of the ability to decode MP3s, then we can conclude that cars are designed.
But the observation that a Prius is different from a Model T is not evidence that both were designed.
Who was it who said “strawman argument”? I will say it again: that we can identify the moment at which features first appeared in cars, fully functional and integrated, with no precursors, is evidence of design. That you can “guess” that some feature was “repurposed” by some process not visible in the car’s physical evolution is irrelevant — or rather, you are actually attributing design by characterizing it that way.
Please don’t condescend. I think that post and my previous (which he continues to ignore) showed that I understand what eric’s trying to do, and why he is wrong. But my point – aside from this altogether – was that his counterexample is stupid, as it presumes a strange “before we get to this” for no reason. “Assume you’re fighting with a creationist with one intellectual hand, and the other evidentiary hand, tied behind your back.” This isn’t the situation for the creationists to whom the challenge is being issued – they have everything at their disposal.
@James F:
I’ve always wondered who that song was by. Cool, thanks.
@SC:
I actually predicted that the link you posted was going to be that. Such a good song!
Can I be greedy and get a few of choices?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdDNFJpil50
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjaCh5Akg6Q
I hope you guys get what the last one is referencing.
How is asking the Discovery Institute to find a gene that didn’t evolve a strawman? It’s a very logical thing to do when one asks for evidence of Intelligent Design: who on this planet could possibly think or say that asking for a specific piece of evidence is fallacious, besides the liars, morons and lying dupes in service to the Discovery Institute?
On the other hand, it’s extremely illogical to expect or even wait for a response from the Discovery Institute concerning a request for any sort of evidence.
Swing and a miss. You are going to have to argue that either the Model T Ford was not the evolutionary ancestor to modern cars, or concede that your analogy fails. In terms of car evolution, the Model T Ford and Prius have to either be evolutionary cousins in which case they share a common ancestor, or they have to be related to one another as ancestor / descendant in which case it needs to be shown that one can turn into the other through a sequence of steps.
Either way, you are going to have to demonstrate that there can be an evolution from the very first car to all other cars alive today (and all technology therein.) You are going to have to show through a series of steps either advantageous or neutral how a radio could come about in a car through electrical circuitry. You are going to have to show how the radio gained transistors through this same means. Then to show how you got IC chips into the radios, and finally getting those IC chips to decode a certain format of sound. This is a hell of a lot to explain, yet you say you can do it. So go ahead, I’m waiting.
You can invent a story for anything, even a magical one. The question is: are you bound in your “story” to any constraints related to what evolution actually means? If so, which? Please describe them, particularly in relation to the “conceptual” vs. “physical” precursors discussed above. Gah.
the fact that there is no specific part of a car for which I can’t invent an evolution story, is not proof that they evolved
No, the inability to find a gene for which an evolution story can’t be demonstrated is evidence of evolution and against design. demonstrated, not invented. The challenge lays out a priori objective criteria for such demonstration. You could challenge the criteria for “evolved” as too loose (AG challenges them as too restrictive, which is irrelevant for the purpose of challenge), but you don’t understand the issues well enough to do that, and you haven’t actually addressed the challenge itself at all. Your entire schtick is addressed to a tissueman.
Surely cup-holders evolved from a nasty mutation in the pull-out ashtray that resulted in a hole in the middle; this made it useless as an ashtray (not that most smokers would care) but exposed potential for a new ecological niche.
I’m really looking forward to see how you can explain the decoding of an audio codec in hardware.
The ash trays opened barely enough to put in ashes. The could never hold a cup. Read up on the facts.
The question is: are you bound in your “story” to any constraints related to what evolution actually means? If so, which? Please describe them
This is actually too generous to eric. He attacks the challenge, but the challenge lays out specific constraints that eric has never addressed. Rather, he blathers about turn signals “evolving” into car radios and he can “guess that natural selection repurposed those wire cables as wire electrical systems” — and he says “I understand evolution just fine, thank you”. LOL!
Sorry, I must be missing the law of physics which says that trains cannot ever get near the speed of light.
And what’s this obsession with rockets? You do realize that we have no rockets that go anywhere near the speed of light? But it’s still possible that a rocket could be accelerated to close to the speed of light. So if you accept that it’s possible for rockets to reach those speeds, then why not trains?
JamesF @163
Thank you for the post on ORFans, I’ve read it before and liked it. However, it points out that some ORFans do appear to be de novo functional genes with no clear evolutionary history. This is exactly what PZ is asking for, so it seems like it should be fairly simple for the DI to answer his challenge.
Yeah, that sounds about right. According to wikipedia the Benz was the first gasoline powered car, so that would be the common ancestor of both the Model T Ford and the Prius. It’s not to say that the Model T Ford couldn’t be an ancestor too, but for the sake of being generous to eric, let’s pretend that it was. So he needs to demonstrate that you can get from the Benz to both the Model T Ford and the Prius or the analogy fails. But like he said, he can invent an evolutionary story for everything.
It really depends on what you call a ‘car’. There were steam-powered road-going vehicles well before Mr Ford set up his production line.
eric’s been shown that even between the Model-T and the Prius there are dozens of wholly novel features; throwing in the steam-powered car makes his hole even deeper.
Dig up, eric!
Yup – therefore my post @ #181. :)
From a history of drink holders for cars By Henry Petroski:
They needed a designer (men), not evolved from previous designs. Auto analogy fails Eric. Surprise only to you…
Yup, this thread has been hijacked, regardless that Eric’s objections are stupid. Here you go, Eric: History of the automobile. Very evolutionary, indeed, and a match for biological evolution, where cars are just like organisms. Not.
I couldn’t even get through the whole video. 21 seconds, and I was overcome by the urge to commit grievous bodily injury upon my own person.
Please don’t condescend.
I intended no condescension. You said that you had no idea where something was coming from, and I took that to refer to something that I had made an attempt to explain where it was coming from (but had already been thinking I had been too circumspect). My apologies if you were referring to something else or if I took you too literally. It’s quite possible that you have demonstrated that you know or understand something but I failed to discern it — statements of mine that stem from such a failure do not amount to condescension. And I apologize if this comment seems condescending. While I do assume that a great deal is clear and obvious to you, I can’t know or assume that everything is.
I think the easiest way to deal with eric’s argument is to point at the MP3 players in cars. You can’t build an MP3 player in successive stages. MP3 is a coded format that requires a precise decoder so you can never go from one well-functioning component to one that will decode MP3s or even get from a component that does little to get to MP3 decoding in a series of stages. An MP3 decoder cannot be built by Darwinian means. Thus cars that have MP3 players cannot have evolved, and thus they were designed. Quantum ElectroDynamics.
Very funny, since Einsteins’s thought experiments on this involved…trains.
Whereas Eric’s logic is like an old crystal radio tuner, more often wrong than right, and with a lot of static…
eric @186
*ERIC!!!! It’s a freekin thought experiment for criminies sake! build yourself the biggest damn rocket you can imagine and put your damn train inside the payload capsule and launch that puppy till it is going at almost but not quite 299,792,458 m / s!!!! Yes you can!!!
Ehem, excuse me, its just that I have a kid whose name is Eric and sometimes I just want grab his scrawny neck and give it a really good shake!
I guess you could say this thread has been carjacked. to bring it back on track, here is a link to a paper describing ORFans, or ORFs with no homology to any other ORF in genomic databases. THey comprise about 20% of all ORFs in sequenced genomes. There is a huge number of ORFs with no known evolutionary history, and some of them appear to code for functional proteins. Can anyone explain how this does not answer the challenge posed by this post?
nope, it has mutated. and may, or may not evolve. or it could fall back to its origin. naturally.
You can’t build an MP3 player in successive stages.
I would be very careful with this sort of IC argument. It’s possible for sound sources and decoders to co-evolve, with decoders at some point able to handle multiple variants of MP3 and other formats, and then losing the ability to decode the others as those sources disappear from the environment. Of course, in reality there’s no sign in the “evolutionary” record of cars to show that such precursors every existed.
If you’d read all of my comments on the thread, offering a context for that comment, I’m surprised that you would fail to recognize my understanding of the arguments being made. In broader context, though, I understand. ;)
Alex Deam: “it’s theoretically possible to accelerate a train close to the speed of light”.
Railgun.
Accelerating anything of appreciable rest mass (“a train”) to near the SoL is possible in theory, but is so far from being possible in practice that it’s reasonable to term it impossible; accelerating anything with nonzero rest mass to the SoL is impossible if special relativity is correct.
Agreed, but not in a car. And while I was in the shower I thought of one way that eric could get around this problem.
Suppose car radios are not a core part of the car, but are their own entity by which forms a symbiotic relationship. That way car radios could evolve on their own as the car could as well, but having their own interaction. For the sake of argument let us imagine that MP3 was formed from a gradual algorithmic process whereby the format was built by evolving algorithms. That way a raw file could be gradually converted into an MP3 file by an evolutionary arms race. It is then the separate format of car radio would work with the car as a whole. This does get around the problem but it starts to get into a whole lot of assumptions. It would mean that car radios did not evolve on cars but are a peripheral interface. The analogy could be saved, but at a steep cost of improbability. And isn’t that what the argument for design is all about, that these are just too improbable to happen through a series of stages?
Sure you can. :D
Eric, you are really a boring troll.
You obviously do know cars don’t reproduce, and then demand to see as aspect of cars that doesn’t have the attributes of having evolved. OK, here’s the answer: seat, chassis, engine.
Human organs forms during the embryonic period using genetic codes. Those codes exist within all human cells. Evidence of having evolved is all over those codes: from pseudogenes to retrovirus gene corpses. Can you analyze a car seat and find some indication of its “ancestral roots”?
There are clear features in human anatomy that are clearly poorly made and the only reason they are the way they are is that they are inherited at such. We know that because we have seen how they form during the embryonic stage. From the blind spot in the eye to vagus nerve wrapping around the aorta. Will you please find a poor design in car chassis that is so because of the structure in its “ancestor car”?
What is interesting is your claim you understand evolution. Reality is, evolution is not the only thing you don’t have a clue of.
Maybe it’s been said already, but I understood the challenge to be an offering to the DI — an opportunity to present one, small, clear bit of evidence that supports their design theory better than it supports evolutionary theory. Which would be one more piece of evidence than they have to their record currently.
Eric is correct about one thing: failure to produce that evidence does not necessarily disprove their theory, it merely fails to support it. But that failure is pretty damning, since it should be trivial to find such evidence (a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin) if their theory were true.
It seems like Eric’s beef with the challenge is wrapped up in the idea that it fails to disprove ID. But that is not the point of the challenge, as far as I can tell.
Yup – therefore my post @ #181. :)
Which I hadn’t seen. Also, I had not seen, or had not read carefully, your #157, which I gather is what you referred to by “my previous (which he continues to ignore)”, and which does indeed show that you understood, and so I must have misunderstood your “I have no idea” — I probably took it too literally.
flaq,
Yes, the video should’ve been titled Invited!
That’s not how I would use the term “impossible”, especially in a discussion on theoretical physics.
And I know that “accelerating anything with nonzero rest mass to the SoL is impossible if special relativity is correct”, which is why I said, “I must be missing the law of physics which says that trains cannot ever get near the speed of light” and “it’s theoretically possible to accelerate a train close to the speed of light”.
Nothing can disprove ID, that’s why it was described as a religion rather than a scientific hypothesis. Even if they say at best it’s an equal alternative to evolution – that evolution can explain it all but they think that their idea works just as well, they still don’t have evidence for the mechanisms they claim are at work. But this is not what the DI are doing, they are claiming that evolution is inadequate to explain certain things which they say God is a better mechanism. Their whole argument is “Evolution can’t explain X” yet they haven’t substantiated a single X yet. It’s all rhetoric an assertions, and if they were able to be pursuaded by evidence then this argument would have died a long time ago.
The DI is there to stay, the best we can do is to keep highlighting the inadequacy of the movement to explain what evolution cannot, i.e. get them to put their money where their mouth is. We keep being generous and showing them how they can be killers of evolution, yet they don’t do that. It’s all stuck in theorising (in the colloquial sense of the term) with no real evidential support. If they are going to jump the gun and speak out before the evidence is there to support them, then what makes us think they’ll ever listen to reason?
No, Eric’s real beef is that he has been roughed up a bit trying to prove god philosophically (we don’t buy his sophistry), so he trying to gain some credibility with today’s inanity. However, he is using the type of logic as he used for the philosophical god, so he is going down again…
Is this the same eric?
If you’d read all of my comments on the thread, offering a context for that comment, I’m surprised that you would fail to recognize my understanding of the arguments being made.
See my #224. You made two references to Glenn’s #45, in #144 and #157. Having seen the former, I think I passed over #157, not realizing it was a different post.
In broader context, though, I understand. ;)
Thanks. :-)
Sure you can. :D
All I ask is that you allow me not to, without feeling insulted.
And Emmet, even if I accept that it’s “so far from being possible in practice that it’s reasonable to term it impossible”, that still doesn’t let Eric off the hook, since how do you explain that he thinks that:
Just like trains, there are no rockets that travel near the speed of light. The possibility of trains travelling at near the speed of light is not appreciably less than the possibility of rockets doing that.
Yes. Thanks. And no problem. Also my (really, credit to Glen D) #144, which led to eric’s response and then my #157.
Benefit of the doubt is your friend when dealing with…friends.
:)
Is this the same eric?
I don’t think so; the other capitalizes his name. This one is a AGW skeptic but not a godbot, I think.
Interesting point…
Arrogant, thinking he is smarter than us.–Check
Can’t acknowledge he is wrong.–Check
Changes goalposts every post.–Check
Either him or his brother.
I’m sceptical that it’s the same person. Different posting styles, though that may be down to it being a different topic. In short, I have no idea so I’ll wait for further evidence before making up my mind.
Benefit of the doubt is your friend when dealing with…friends.
In this case, I already had the idea that I hadn’t spelled out my point clearly and wanted to do so, so I took your “I have no idea” as an opportunity to do that — I was focused on that agenda. I understand how, given what you already had written and that it was directed to you, it felt condescending.
I don’t think so. There should be something here making anyone named Eric or Jason develop a more elaborate moniker. It’s very confusing.
?
I’ll bow to NS, Kel, or anyone else as to which Eric it is. We’ve had a few in the last year.
Lets not forget “Anonymous”.
?
And by “?” I mean: I think both comments referred to the sorts of constraints and need for clarity that Glen D was getting at in #45 (and you and I were elsewhere). Both were dealing with eric’s argument on its own terms.
But it was those terms I was questioning in the later comment. His argument is wrong at its own level of abstraction, as you’ve made clear, and stupid and wrong at a lesser level of abstraction. No need to accept his, as far as I can tell.
One can make a fairly convincing case that the car’s wheel (or any macroscopic wheel), with freely spinning axle, is an irreducibly complex system that could not arise from stepwise changes from a simpler “ancestor”.
Human designs are full of wheels. It’s an idea that gets reused over and over, chimerized, copied, modified, etc.
But as far as I know there is not a single example of a macroscopic wheel-axle assembly in living organisms. The closest we get are organisms that roll by balling up the entire body, like tumble weed, or certain plant seeds that spin in the wind like helicopter blades, or some species of spiders that curl themselves into balls to roll down slopes.
(Microscopic wheels, like bacterial flagella, are completely different of course, since and entirely different set of physics and chemistry laws come into play at that level).
It might not ultimately hold up to rigorous testing, but the fact that nature has not been able to produce a freely spinning wheel/axle as a part of an organism, despite any number of ecosystems where having a wheel/axle would undoubtedly have been a very advantageous adaption, while human designers came up with this idea very early, and currently use it in almost everything they make that moves, is a pretty strong indication that it can’t evolve, and that lifeforms were not designed.
Has the Discovery Institute discovered anything relating to their claims of ID since they were founded? Anything?Therefore, I expect them to find nothing relating to genetics and specific gawd-equences for this challenge.
@SC
I understand the point about constraints and how eric repeatedly violates them in his attempt to defend his argument, but that’s separate from what his argument is for, something you mentioned in #157 but not in #144, except indirectly with reference to “ns’s points” — I was actually going to ask for clarification as to what exactly you meant, but never got around to it.
In #191 you write
But my point – aside from this altogether – was that his counterexample is stupid, as it presumes a strange “before we get to this” for no reason.
I’m not sure I’m understanding you correctly here, but it appears to me that you’re taking “we” to mean us as supporters of evolution, whereas I took eric to be speaking as an advocate for Creationists, saying that before we get to pose our challenge, they get to disarm it with his analogy. That would be the reason — the reason of defenders of Creationism, not our reason. As you say, the Creationists have everything at their disposal, bu eric seems bent on sparing them the embarrassment of failing even so.
That you had provided examples, and that he had not adequately addressed them given the significant points that had been presented in the thread. Indirectly – OK.
I was referring to his #155 (this, that – bleh :)):
In #79 he claimed that #18 was his “first post on this website”.
Just one more person making bad arguments under the moniker ‘Eric’.
Nerd of Redhead #238
Praline: Hello. I would like to buy a fish license, please.
Postal clerk: A what?
Praline: A license for my pet fish, Eric.
Clerk: How do you know my name is Eric?
Praline: No, no, no, no! My fish’s name is Eric. Eric the fish. He’s an halibut.
Clerk: He’s a what?
Praline: He is…an halibut.
Clerk: You’ve got a pet halibut?
Praline: Yes, I chose him out of thousands. I didn’t like the others, they were all too flat.
Clerk: You’re a loony.
Praline: I am not a loony! Why should I be tarred with the epithet “loony” merely because I have a pet halibut? I’ve heard tell that Sir Gerald Nabarro has a pet prawn called Simon, and you wouldn’t call Sir Gerald a loony, would you? Furthermore, Dawn Palethorpe, the lady show jumper, had a clam called Sir Stafford, after the late chancellor. Alan Bullock has two pikes, both called Norman, and the late, great Marcel Proust had an ‘addock! If you’re calling the author of À la recherche du temps perdu a loony, I shall have to ask you to step outside!
Indeed, the more I read this, the more bizarre and jumbled it sounds. What evidence can be admitted in eric’s hypothetical, and on what basis?
stupid and wrong at a lesser level of abstraction. No need to accept his, as far as I can tell.
Again, I’m not certain I’m understanding you, but I thought I spelled out in #179, with “If it were true”, why one must take arguments of that form seriously. Suppose the challenge actually were eric’s strawman version — to find a feature of a biological organism for which we couldn’t make up some random story of how it had been “repurposed” from some other feature. Then it would make some sense to point out that one could just as well make up such stories about features of cars, so failing the challenge shows nothing. But perhaps your point is that it would be silly to bother doing that since such a challenge would be ridiculous on its face — a Creationist could simply point out that it’s a pointless challenge that proves nothing because one can always make up some sort of story, no matter how absurd (as eric has demonstrated). I don’t know, because I’m not clear as to which lesser level of abstraction you’re referring to and/or I’ve missed what you’re saying makes his argument stupid and wrong at that level.
Anyway, I’m tired and burnt out on this and regret that I’ve yet again wasted way too much time and energy on some troll’s foolishness. Glenn made an excellent distinction between between physical and conceptual evolution, and we probably cold have left it at that.
I was referring to his #155 (this, that – bleh :)):
Ok, rereading that I got mixed up about it. But it seems like you are, or were, reading it wrong, because you referred to “the equivalent ID challenge”, but eric wasn’t swapping evolutionists and IDists, he was swapping cars for biological organisms. In his scenario, we are car-creationists debating car-evolutionists, and before we get to show them pictures of the car creation plant, they (the evolutionists) issue the challenge of demonstrating that some car feature wasn’t designed — there is no “ID challenge” in this scenario. I would say that the stupid thing about “before we get to that” is that, if we’ve got pictures of the damn car plant, just show them anyway. Your bold in #244 suggests you’re making the same point, and your comment about “everything available” makes sense in that light, so it doesn’t matter if one or both of us got the inversions in eric’s analogies mixed up, we’re at the same bottom line. :-)
issue the challenge of demonstrating that some car feature
wasn’t designeddidn’t evolveSigh. My brain convolutions are too tired to handle all the convolutions of this discussion.
Hmm. eric’s counterexample, on its own terms, is problematic in several ways: it doesn’t define what it means by important terms and fails to deal with processes in time. Importantly, it fails to address key arguments, of which Glen D’s @ #45 is one. Examples have been provided that he claims cannot be provided. He’s wrong.
But to accept his argument more broadly is to accept his premise – that there is a “before we get to that.” But why? There’s no “before we get to that” when dealing with creationists or otherwise. We all have the same evidence at our disposal. There’s no reason why, in his “equivalent” example, scientists should have to avoid pointing to evidence of design. The challenge was issued in the real world. Challenges to the challenge should also be real-world exercises.
Sure, I agree. But what do you mean by “can’t find non-evolved features”? We have plenty of evidence for nonevolved features (and evidence of design) in cars. I just see no reason to accept eric’s limiting evidentiary conditions here.
Yeah, I get this, and I regretted that remark as soon as I posted it. There’s a point there, but I didn’t express it clearly. I’m sorry if that was the source of the confusion.
Yup! :)
*Hear that, IDiots?
What evidence can be admitted in eric’s hypothetical, and on what basis?
Well, we’ve got to insist that “having evolved” means physical evolution, not the arbitrary conceptual relationships that he who claims to “understand evolution just fine, thank you” has blabbered about. Then all the evidence of discontinuities among automobiles over time, the numerous features that show up, fully functional, with no precursors, the reappearance of old features that had disappeared, the jumping of features from one automobile brand to another … these and many more aspects of cars would serve as evidence that cars are not the products of evolution. Oh, and the video of cars being assembled in plants and design teams working out all the details …
It was more a question to eric, love (I tend not to address fools directly for a number of reasons). Of course we agree! (But a good spelling out of what’s involved. :))
But what do you mean by “can’t find non-evolved features”?
As in the way creationists can’t find any non-evolved features in biological organisms.
We have plenty of evidence for nonevolved features (and evidence of design) in cars.
Certainly. I said “If it were true”, but of course it isn’t.
I just see no reason to accept eric’s limiting evidentiary conditions here.
If the challenge were as eric seems to imagine it, to find features for which there is no possible just-so story, then the challenge would be unfair because that’s an impossible task when you’re up against someone like eric for whom there’s an evolutionary story that goes from turn signals to radios. But only that challenge would be unfair. It would still be fair to ask for explicit evidence of design and there would be no reason why IDiots couldn’t provide it if they had any. So his “before we get there” is ridiculous on his own terms: so what if the challenge is unfair (of course, it isn’t really), show us something else. But eric is a silly fellow on many levels.
It was more a question to eric, love (I tend not to address fools directly for a number of reasons). Of course we agree! (But a good spelling out of what’s involved. :))
Me happy. Goodnight. :-)
Crossposting sucks.
Sweet dreams, ns.
Let me just start off by saying I’m an artist, not a biologist, and have only been an atheist for a year. I’m discovering science for the first time now, and it’s really pretty awesome. So forgive me if I goof.
But after thinking about it for a bit, I think Eric is correct here. I mean, we all know cars are designed and that they aren’t alive, and they aren’t subject to natural selection, blah blah.
That’s not the point though. Any clever person can name a part of a car and make the argument that it evolved, even an MP3 player.
For instance, the MP3 player is like a virus that has become fully integrated wholesale into the modern car’s “genome” ala parasitic wasps (anyone check out “In the Womb on the National Geographic Channel?). Or you could simply say we don’t have all the “transitional fossils” yet.
This is not to give credence to ID, which as so many have pointed out is a religion not a hypothesis, because it cannot be tested.
Anyways, my two cents.
It might not ultimately hold up to rigorous testing, but the fact that nature has not been able to produce a freely spinning wheel/axle as a part of an organism, despite any number of ecosystems where having a wheel/axle would undoubtedly have been a very advantageous adaption, while human designers came up with this idea very early, and currently use it in almost everything they make that moves, is a pretty strong indication that it can’t evolve, and that lifeforms were not designed.
I think Dawkins has a discussion about this in one of his books talking about how it would be theoretically possible for an organism to evolve wheels, but I can’t remember which one.
Anyways, more complex things than wheels have evolved for goodness sake! Like the nervous system, muscles etc. etc. You guys sound like creationists! It’s a strawman argument.
The challenge to the Discovery Institute should have been to prove the Earth is 10,000 years old.
So which of you evolutionists will abandon the theory if such a gene is found?
The MP3 player is an impossibility in the analogy as you can’t modify the raw materials of a ye olde car to get an MP3 decoder. Transistors were not invented until 1947, ICs not until the 1950s. Yet both of these are vital in order to decode MP3s, even if the most generous hypothetical was made, the practical impossibilities of having a sequence of neutral or advantagous adaptations from the earliest cars to the modern ones makes any explanation without design seem absurd.
Yet this is precisely the challenge to ID, to show components that should not be there. It’s not enough to say “It looks designed so it is designed” but “it looks designed and the extreme implausibility of having this sequence come together even through a series of successive steps demonstrates that design is a better option.” If ID were to focus on that latter comment and demonstrate that there are patterns out there that do not built on modification of a base, that are complex yet are so obscure from the rest of components that it would have trouble being explained by evolutionary means, then there would be a case for ID. But as yet, they don’t even have that.
This is not about finding a smoking gun, rather accumulating evidence. ID has no evidence period, it has a few unfalsifiable conjectures, a couple of scientists with reputable qualifications, and a great PR machine. When it comes to actual evidence though, their tactic of – look, darwinism can’t explain X therefore Goddidit didn’t hold. It didn’t hold for the flagellum, it didn’t hold for the immune system, it didn’t hold for irreducible complexity period. They were looking for a smoking gun before checking to see whether they had the basic facts right.
One gene? No. But this isn’t about finding a smoking gun, something that all these “evolution slayers” seem to forget. Life evolved, that has been demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt. How it evolved is another matter, so finding a gene like this would give credence to a notion that there is an external force playing with DNA. But you need to be able to explain the fossil record, pseudogenes, vestigial organs, etc. as well. Think of it like finding a gun used in a murder at someone’s house yet the man was live on national TV at the time the murder took place. Would you immediately think of him as guilty even if all other evidence doesn’t point to him as the killer?
Any clever person can name a part of a car and make the argument that it evolved, even an MP3 player.
Wrong. A clever person would realize the problem: “that it evolved” doesn’t mean simply “had a precursor, of some sort, at some time, via any number of arbitrarily defined thresholds of ‘relatedness’ or ‘precursority.'” Despite his protests, eric’s whole line of faulty reasoning really does buy into an essential creationist belief: that an evolutionary narrative is a Just-so-story by definition and that any number of equally (im)plausible and equally contrived narratives could be applied to a given adaptation or character. It’s an utterly dishonest premise. The inevitable excesses aside, the weight of evidence for biological evolution, what we know about the specific mechanisms it entails and the outcomes at which it arrives, impose serious constraints on such hypotheses.
So would you then embrace both evolution and intelligent design?
With a single piece of evidence? We already have intelligent design now. We are taking genes from one species and placing them in another. We are playing the role of selector too and have been for about 15,000 years. Dogs are intelligently designed wolves.
But as for a higher power manipulating life, it would take more than one piece of evidence to convince me. Just look at horizontal gene transfer, it doesn’t fit the Darwinian model for life, yet it doesn’t mean that there is a higher power behind it. This is why a single piece of evidence is not enough, it takes a lot of evidence and trying to understand the mechanisms involved. ID would get credence from finding such a structure, but it would not be a smoking gun – nor should we expect it to be.
Wrong. A clever person would realize the problem: “that it evolved” doesn’t mean simply “had a precursor, of some sort, at some time, via any number of arbitrarily defined thresholds of ‘relatedness’ or ‘precursority.'”
I didn’t say it would be a convincing argument, or that it would be testable, but simply that one could make it. The car analogy can only go so far, because of its inherent abusrdity.
Anyways, more complex things than wheels have evolved for goodness sake!
The question isn’t complexity per se (another creationist premise you don’t seem to notice you’ve accepted). A wheel is a physiological problem when you’re building the kind of protein-based machines DNA is, with tissues in need of steady flow of nutrients, and “working parts” for the most part housed within some kind of integument. These considerations are macro, of course, and ‘dissolve’ at cellular scales, where we see rotary-analog structures like the famous flagellum, but a wheel doesn’t do much good in a fluid envirunment, much less at a scale where said fluid is less like molasses and more like wet cement.
Complexity is easy for evolution. Exploiting good foresight-driven design principles like reducing friction to a minimum (the function of a wheel) are nigh impossible.
Kel, I am sure you are familiar with the concept of polymorphism from a computer programming perspective. Would unlikely polymorphisms of an existing gene make you wonder if those modifications were intelligently designed?
The question isn’t complexity per se (another creationist premise you don’t seem to notice you’ve accepted).
What creationist premise have I not seemed to noticed that I’ve accepted?
And by the way, I located an article that Dawkins wrote about wheels and evolution, and naturally I was completely incorrect about everything that he said. You can read it here: http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1996-11-24wheels.shtml
Eric, what strange ideas you have. You may be able to invent a story about the history of each piece of a car but what does that have to do with evolution? Humans have been inventing stories for a very long time and (some of them) are quite good at it.
If cars shared common ancestry and had evolved via mutation and natural selection, we might expect to find that only cars with diesel engines had leather upholstery (and they always did), or that cars that run on ethanol have round blue headlights but all the others have yellow headlights. What the challenge is asking for is to find a blue headlight attached to a car with a diesel engine.
Actually, as has been pointed out to you, since the challenge is for a gene we should be talking about the instructions for building a car. But since the tree produced from comparative anatomy and genetics are in agreement, I think my analogy is a fair one.
Do you think if you built a phylogenetic tree from the textual differences (not just the differences as subjectively interpreted by you) between design documents for rear-view mirrors that you would find they matched tree produced by examining engine type (or any other feature)?
You claim to accept evolution (by which I assume you mean common descent), but you don’t seem to understand the evidence for it. Maybe you accept it on faith — but that is really unnecessary.
Let’s suppose that an intelligent force was tinkering with DNA for the purpose of evolving a higher life form, wouldn’t horizontal gene transfer be the way to go.
It would make me wonder, but the greater question would be how such modifications come about in nature. Remember what the question asked was “would one abandon evolution” to which I think not. There is just too much evidence for evolution to abandon it. But as for the mechanisms involved, if such structures were to occur then they require explanation. If they cannot be built by our current understandings of mechanisms then it would point to an unknown mechanism at play…
But that mechanism is not automatically going to be an intelligent agent. This is the folly of the creationist movement, it’s an entire movement dedicated to intellectualising the words “God did it.” Can’t explain X? God did it. Oh we have an explanation for X now, but you can’t explain Y so God did it. ID for it to be counted as science needs to be more rigorous than that. For starters it needs to drop it’s blanket coverage from evolution happened but God put together a couple of components to God made all life 6000 years ago (the ID movement covers all that and more – not very scientific) and work alongside other evidences such as the old earth, old universe and common ancestry. Second it needs to predict structures and lines of evidence that shouldn’t be able to be built by other hypothesises or theories. And finally, it needs to change as more evidence comes to light.
A good theory is a malleable theory, evolutionary theory is very different to what it was in 1859 and that is a good thing. A theory that explains everything explains nothing, so it is vitally important to get bogged down into specifics, and nothing does this better than making set predictions that cannot be explained any other way. But to get back to the question at hand, ID should never be a God of the gaps argument, that is not how science works. So finding a single structure that can’t be explained by current evolutionary theory is no reason to invoke God. So one piece of evidence would not lead me to concluding Intelligent Design. But it would show that Intelligent Design is an idea to keep an eye on.
In all honesty though, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Because ID was created as a way of undermining the teaching of evolution, it exists because the supreme court in 1987 forbid creation science from being taught. It’s not a scientific revolution, it’s a rebranding of religion in order to sneak past the church / state barrier. To give as much concession to the idea as possible despite the nefarious purpose of ID, there are plausible ways of demonstrating such a notion and this is what the video seems to be about. i.e. put your money where your mouth is. ID is intellectualising “goddidit” and as such will never get anywhere. Demonstrate otherwise.
It may be so. But we have a mechanism for horizontal gene transfer that requires no higher power. In that case, what is the point of appealing to a higher power? It’s nothing more than a god of the gaps argument.
Kel, you know it would be quite a leap of faith to go from evidence of intelligent design to an endorsement of a particular religion. You know I wouldn’t do it.
What if the human race was infected by a bacteria that killed all males but also allowed females to reproduce without the assistance of a male?
Would you suspect that bacteria of being intelligently designed?
In that situation I’d be dead so I wouldn’t suspect anything ;)
But if something of that ilk came about, I would be suspicious. But suppose it was genetically tested and found to be simply a few mutations away from another common bacteria. Then there could be no case made for an intelligent designer at play. That to me is what separates conjecture from science, and why the mantra “if it looks designed, then it is designed” of the ID movement is infantile.
Being sceptical, being suspicious, these are good characteristics. Having suspician of evolution has driven much research, and I think that is the main benefit of the religious backlash against evolution, it has fuelled research into the matter. Of course in that situation I would not only be suspicious but extremely sceptical of evolution’s capacity to do something like that.
Well it could be that the intelligence that designed that bacteria was not all knowing and made several tries before getting it right.
You might find this interesting.
That’s pretty awesome actually. Though I’m sure you realise the difference between sex in the insect kingdom and in mammals. Remember that there are fish and lizards who can reproduce asexually, but as for mammals…
It’s past midnight over here in Seattle and I have to start early tomorrow. So good night. Also I would like to thank PZ for sending some 350 people to my blog the other day.
You’re in Seattle? Have you toured the DI yet?
[quote]Maybe they can come up with an answer before June 9.
Grill the ID Scientist, 9 June 2009, University of Pittsburgh[/quote]
I wonder if PZ Myers would be expelled again if he applied for a seat.
Wow.
I come to this site every day but don’t often post mainly due to the fact that my lack of education renders me reticent, but I can’t help but say Eric:
This is the futility of arguing with a creationist. The constant lying, shifting, misrepresenting, false premises and wild assertions, all done with an air of self-satisfaction and self congratulation. And then they take the barb in the tone of their challengers (after you’ve flogged for the thousandth time a horse that’s been dead for 2 centuries) to be some sort simple, thoughtless contempt of their position, rather than what it is: frustration at having to deal with the same bullshit over and over again. Exasperation.
I. Me. Not my group, just me:
I. AM. EXASPERATED!
Holy shit, man.
Holy shit.
I went and did some reading on Parthenogenesis. After reading about what experiments they have done on the matter and what information is out there, I wouldn’t be so sceptical on such a virus evolving. It sounded way more incredulous than what the process actually entails, which is why I find it foolish to jump to conclusions on sensationalism.
/me sits back and waits, remembers not to hold my breath. :)
This should be fun. Will they even try to answer this?
Chaps and chapettes, we appear to have missed a classic, behold the words of Eric,
‘Cars don’t reproduce sexually? Well guess what, neither do bacteria and they manage to evolve just fine.’
There you have it bacteria don’t reproduce sexually, well yes Eric they do. Not like we do sure, no meiosis for instance but they do have the naughty, in many ways.
Of course there are organisms that only reproduce asexually and yes they evolve but of course cars don’t reproduce at all. I just wanted to point out that you don’t know anywhere near as much as your smugness would indicate.
BTW Your whole car analogy is flawed, when we talk of showing that a gene evolved from a precursor it is not just a case of saying ‘look it is similar’. By looking at sequences and understanding the mechanisms of mutation you can pinpoint the exact changes and explain how they happened. This can not be done for a car. You can point to the cd player and say it evolved from tape player BUT you can not explain how, there is no mechanism for the transition.
You need to read up on genetics and learn about how much is now know, how much of the mechanism is understood and what it means to trace a gene’s heritage. To reiterate it is so much more than just saying gene x is like gene y so it evolved from it.
This is the most ridiculous argument I have heard in a long time. Are we seriously arguing about whether there is evidence of ID on a car? Eric, come on mate get a grip, you are blatantly ignoring any of the examples that you can’t refute. Those you do refute them you do so with little understanding of car design or evolution. You brag about how much you know about evolution, expect us to take your word for it but show no evidence of it in your arguments.
Seatbelts to take one example, have something called an emergency locking retractor, this is what makes the seatbelt lock into place when the car stops abruptly. It was designed precisely for this purpose and specifically to fit into a moving vehicle, it did not evolve, some clever bloke sat down and designed it for it’s use.
It may well be that belts and reels have been used in other applications but evolution does not work by taking an ear from a bat and a leg from a camel and then mixing them together to make a whole new animal. Not only are you showing a complete misunderstanding of the evolutionary process you are also showing a complete misunderstanding of the mechanical process and process of invention as well.
I don’t often post on here but this ridiculous argument has infuriated me.
If you thought I was defending Eric, irremediably stupid and irredeemably ignorant as he is, you misunderstood my intention. Your “I must’ve missed the law of physics” thing just caught my eye.
I skimmed this thread from work earlier,but didnt reallt read it properly.
eric way upthread:
Apart from the fact that the sentence I marked in Italic doesnt even make any sense in terms of evolution,because common ancestor =|= common parts,clearly none of you left-wing librul fagots has ever worked at Mercedes-Benz !!
Common parts,are you shitting me? At Mercedes? There is a whole industry out there making parts for Mercedes,and we’re not sharing them with Opel or Ford or anyone else.
And aint no funny random mutation or recombination schnickschnack driving the “evolution” of our cars,but superb german engineering skills !
:-)
Eric’s sanctimonious bullshit is really starting to get on my nerves. Seriously.
I don’t know what it is. It might be his self belief that he is right, regardless of what anyone says. It could be his attempt to describe the members and our thought processes without actually knowing *any* of us. Hell, it might just be because, for some weird reason, I really hate the name ‘Eric’ as it reminds me of a person who believes that their intellect is greater than everybody else (as was witnessed when he claimed that he knew “more about evolution” than everybody in this thread…I mean, c’mon, you’re posting in a scientific thread and you believe that you are smarter than all of us?!)!
Has the Discovery Institute discovered anything relating to their claims of ID since they were founded? Anything?Therefore, I expect them to find nothing relating to genetics and specific gawd-sequences for this challenge.
Randy, just show hard physical evidence for your creator. Something like an eternally burning bush. Until then, you just believe in a creator without hard physical evidence, which is not how science operates, and will never operate.
#65 Your post is fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of ORFans out there. and as I understood it, the challenge was to find one gene with no evolutionary precursor, which (as far as I can tell) is exactly what ORFans are.
The phrasing was “no signs of an evolutionary origin”, which is not the same as “no evolutionary precursor”. Be that as it may, pointing at a gene lacking homologs is heading in the right direction. (Which would restrict the scope to singleton ORFans.) But one of the points that you were intended to have understood is that a lack of known homologs does not equate to a lack of homologs.
I grabbed at those two taxa at random, because a catastrophic flood, that produces massive tidal pulses and tsunamis and the like, shouldn’t be preferentially sorting the animals and plants that it transports around and buries (except that good specimens of fragile stuff should always be rare in such deposits). So it’s really not unreasonable to expect that the extremely fossiliferous Morrison Formation, if it’s a catastrophic flood deposit, might well contain at least one fossil of a modern bird (even if it’s just a broken leg bone). And since we’ve been scouring this unit for more than a hundred years, looking for fossil anything, it’s really pretty reasonable to expect that we might well have found at least one modern form of something. I don’t think I’m placing an undue burden on the flood hypothesis here.
But okay, you don’t think that it’s fair to burden the Morrison with fossils of modern birds, because bird fossils are rare in general. Whereas I don’t agree with your issue, for a number of reasons, I’ll throw you a (bird) bone.
How about deposits that contain lots and lots of fossil birds? What about, for example, the ?Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous sequences in the Sihetun-Jianshangou area of northeastern China?
http://dinosaurs.nhm.org/staff/pdf/1999Chiappe_et_al.pdf
These deposits are absolutely famous for their record of early birds (as well as numerous other components of a diverse floral and faunal assemblage). Literally hundreds (possibly thousands if you were to include all discovered bird fossils) of specimens of numerous bird taxa are known from localities in this region. Birds were apparently here, including some rather small ones. Why are all of the bird taxa here extinct? Where are the modern bird forms? If modern birds were, as you continue to insist, alive at the same time as all of these extinct birds, then why the heck have these deposits not turned up a single modern form? Why are all of the birds herein extinct? How did the flood sort these birds in this way? And why did all of these birds that are recorded in these sequences, just happen to go extinct sometime after the flood and before we started hunting for them? That really doesn’t speak too highly of Noah’s efforts.
Wrong thread, obviously. I was previewing herein because of the newfound sluggishness of SB. Hit submit instead of copying.
Evolution predicts that genetic material is passed down and produce the same functions in related organisms.
Without a change in sequence, explain in detail how ‘evolution’ miraculously changes these functions in supposedly related organisms:
(PhysOrg.com) — When evolution has lucked into efficient solutions for life’s most fundamental problems, it adopts them as invaluable family heirlooms, passing them down as one species evolves into another. So it was reasonable to expect that a key regulator of embryonic development — a strand of RNA that shepherds stem cells through the process of differentiation — might play the same role in all vertebrates, from fish to people. New research, however, has shown that when it comes to microRNAs, what works for one animal may not work the same way in another.
Researchers at The Rockefeller University looked at the role of a family of microRNAs in the African clawed frog embryo and human embryonic stem cells, comparing their findings with earlier ones in fish, and found that although the genes for these microRNAs were identical across the three species, their function was not.
“The naďve assumption is that if we understand what these microRNAs do in a fish or in the frog, we can extrapolate to humans,” says Ali H. Brivanlou, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Vertebrate Embryology. “This study shows that this assumption is flawed when it comes to microRNAs.”
“Although the microRNAs are evolutionarily conserved, their target changes across species. These are genetic tools that nature has invented, much like the screwdriver, to build different things for different species,” Brivanlou says.
http://www.physorg.com/news161613204.html
There are NO specific and exclusive predictions that hold true for common descent, but you can choose to believe in it anyway …
‘Just don’t teach your nonsense as science.
http://whoisyourcreator.com/common_descent.html
alias @ #292
watching the video, all they ask for is a gene with no currently known homologues that serves a specific function. this sounds like singleton ORFans. your point about “known” vs “any” homologues is well taken but we have to stick to what we currently know. I’m no ID supporter, but I’m going to do some digging and see what I come up with.
“who is your creator” @ 295:
Quite leaving aside the fact that evolution requires no such thing as stated in your first sentence, try this analogy on (on the chance that you know about information and/or computers): try running a program written in something like Matlab (or a newer Python, or something) in a close homologue like Scilab (or an older Python, or something – version 0.1).
Did it run all right? Get the exact output you expected? Perhaps so. Now change the version number, or mix up the program a tiny bit, perhaps by a transcription error. It may run the same in both compilers… or it may not. You’ve put the same genetic material in two different environments, and expected the outcome to be the same for each environment, regardless of history, endianess, memory space, and so on.
It’s a bit like the game of Postoffice. People can get fed exactly the same input, but their processing can differ enough that what gets passed on may be the same, slightly different, or vastly different than what gets fed in.
If you think that people in the evolutionary biology (or even anthropology, computer science, complexity) fields are claiming this, then you’re sorely misinformed.
watching the video, all they ask for is a gene with no currently known homologues that serves a specific function. this sounds like singleton ORFans. your point about “known” vs “any” homologues is well taken but we have to stick to what we currently know. I’m no ID supporter, but I’m going to do some digging and see what I come up with.
They ask for a gene which shows evidence of design. An absence of known homologues doesn’t really cut it as evidence of design. (I think that the challenge could have been clearer, but my reading is that the presence of homologues would be offered as evidence against a gene being designed; i.e. that the absence of homologues is a necessary but not sufficient condition.)
It’s not clear what characteristics the DI would offer as indicating design – we know that irreducible complexity (e.g. a gene in which all domains are essential) doesn’t qualify.
No, I wouldn’t call such a person clever. No reasonable argument can be made for “cars evolved”, because as you say, “we all know cars are designed”. How do we know this? Because we’ve seen them being designed. We can walk into any car factory, and watch the cars being “intelligently designed”. That’s evidence that the cars were designed and didn’t evolve.
Except pseudogenes, morpholigicxal features, similarities in DNA, difference between species as seen through genetic drift on inactive parts of the genome, a fossil record showing many transitional forms, the biogeographic distribution of life, observed instances of speciation, observed variation through artifical selection, the embryological development of organisms, ERV markers, sequenced neanderthal DNA, fossils such as Tiktaalik and Archaeopteryx…
yes there is nothing specific or exclusive that shows common ancestry. Those ERV markers that sit in exactly the same place on both the human and champanzee genome, those were just chance. And that fused chromosome pair in the Human Genome that shows all the markings of two chimpanzee genome pair – that demonstrates nothing. And all those fossils that show the gradual evolution of man, those fossils of upright apes with a gradual increasing brain – those aren’t really real but put there by the devil. And those transition cetaceans? Or the transitional equines? or the transitional mammals (from synapsids)? or the transitional forms between dinosaurs and birds – or dinosaurs with protofeathers… shit, none of that applies. The true answer is Goddidit, and as to how the answer is “read your bible you moron!” Otherwise you’re going to hell. That’s what matters, God did it out of magic dirt or you’ll suffer in hell for all eternity from following all the evidence to the contrary… after all, science doesn’t work in proof so “beyond all reasonable doubt” is just slang for “i’m a heretic, I deserve to be eternally tortured”
Since this a patently false statement, everything you say past that point is considered a lie. Welcome to science.
Often a gene will duplicate, and one of the genes will modify into a new purpose. This has been seen again and again if you just look at the evidence. But then, that would actually require you to do real science…
Who is you creator, either show physical evidence for your imaginary deity, evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural, origin, or just STFU. Failure to respond with the proper evidence, or just go away, means you are talking out of your ass.
No, I wouldn’t call such a person clever. No reasonable argument can be made for “cars evolved”
The person making the argument wouldn’t be reasonable, but I would call them clever if they were successful in drawing an analogy between the “evolution” of a car part and a comparable mechanism in nature.
having thought about it for more than a second, the analogy DOES break down, even if we didn’t have access to the manufacturing plants or could talk to the designers.
Here are 6 ORFans (i.e. ORFS with no known homologues)and potential functions in Mimivirus:
R843,L374,L834, R277,L759,L529
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/115
of course I don’t think they were designed, but they pass the two tests the video-makers said they would use.
If this elusive ID theory is going to replace the current theory of evolution, we need to know how it will explain and describe… evolution.
It got so boring that I stopped reading somewhere around comment 220. It gets interesting afterward, but I don’t have time to finish reading now. So, just so much:
Making an analogy is one thing, but Eric isn’t doing that here. He’s arguing that he can make an argument that cars literally evolved, just like living organisms. While I think we can all accept that such an argument can be made, it’s completely unreasonable because it fails massively on Occam’s Razor. Since we can observe cars being “intelligently designed”, then he would have to come up with an incredibly convoluted explanation of why our observations don’t show what we think they show. So, since it’s not reasonable to accept such arguments, then it’s not reasonable to take Eric’s proposition that this challenge is a straw man.
Argh, sorry. I was adding to comment 293, which doesn’t even belong on this thread. Let that be a lesson for what happens when people comment on a thread without having read all of it!!!
I wonder where Eric the Genius went. Maybe he saw some cars mating and is now looking for the inheritance pattern in their offspring. I am sure he is going to come up with clear examples of how rear view mirrors evolve.
Know any good car porn, Eric?
And by the way, my creator is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Just got back from the new star trek film, and wow, I gotta say the lightbulb just turned on and I see what #18 eric is talking about. Can someone explain to me why the romulans, vulcans, klingons, humans and all the other species look pretty much the same as if they were all “designed” by the same “creator”?
You people are confused. Cars do indeed evolve.
Both organisms and cars change gradually over time. Engineering itself is an evolutionary process. The reason airbags and sunroofs can appear fully-formed in the next model is because they may go several phases of design & prototyping.
The 1st sketch of a new car design never works perfectly, and today’s requirements are much more difficult to meet with unique designs.
Memetic and Genetic evolution are different. While ideas change over time and are cumulative, memes aren’t restricted by what has come before. You couldn’t evolve an old car into a modern day car because there is no way to make ICs. But with evolution, we are limited by the genetic blueprints of our ancestors. You are only ever going to have ACTG to work with.
You people are confused.
Make sweeping generalities much? You’re an arrogant and silly person who either hasn’t read through the comments or hasn’t comprehended them, because the issue of cars evolving and how that differs from the evolution of biological organisms has been discussed at length and with nuance. See #45 in particular.
several phases of design
Uh, exactly. The “evolution” of cars is a result of design efforts that take place elsewhere, whereas the evolution of biological organisms can be found entirely in the changes in the populations of organisms themselves.
Product evolution != biological evolution
You and eric are equivocating.
He’s arguing that he can make an argument that cars literally evolved, just like living organisms.
Not really. He’s arguing that the proposed challenge is “dumb”, “easy to refute”, etc. It’s a particularly stupid argument because he appears not to have even watched the video; he shows no sign of understanding the challenge and never points out any problem with it. Rather, he addresses a strawman (at best) version of the challenge, taking it as a challenge to find some biological feature for which there is no arbitrarily fanciful just-so story about how it might have an “evolutionary origin” in some other feature — like his proposal that car radios might have an “evolutionary origin” in turn signals. Of course that’s not the challenge at all. All of this has been discussed here at length, and people are just wasting their time if they don’t bother to read the previous comments.
You and eric are equivocating.
More than that, they are attacking an absurd strawman in a very foolish way. Let’s accept their broad definition of evolution as change over time. Why then tell us that cars do indeed evolve (change over time)? One would have to be very confused (or intellectually dishonest) to think that anyone is denying that. We all accept that cars change over time. But what does that have to do with the challenge, which is in terms of protein identity, and specific and unique function? Nothing at all. Regardless of how one defines “evolve”, we can find numerous features of cars (or assembly instructions for cars, which is a more accurate analogy) that could meet an analogous challenge for cars. If one keeps in mind just what it is that eric claimed in #18 is “dumb” and “easy to refute”, it’s easy to see just how very deeply ignorant and foolish his “argument” is.
Yet he kept (keeps?) putting it forward. I’ll never understand.
So which of you evolutionists will abandon the theory if such a gene is found?
A valid question is, which of you stimpys will abandon the non-theory of intelligent design if none is? The challenge asks for some evidence, any evidence, of a non-evolved gene. Given the massive evidence that we already have for evolved genes, a single such instance would certainly demand explanation, but it would be premature to abandon the ToE because of it.
Yet he kept (keeps?) putting it forward. I’ll never understand.
See SC’s #181. eric’s only post after that was 3 minutes later (in which he idiotically claimed that only rockets, but not trains, can theoretically approach the speed of light). Who knows, maybe he read her comment, watched the video, realized what a fool he had been, and slipped off silently.
Given that Stimpy denies common descent, I don’t think that anything we can show him will change his mind.
And now, for this evening’s first musical interlude:
I guess you could say this thread has been carjacked. to bring it back on track, here is a link to a paper describing ORFans, or ORFs with no homology to any other ORF in genomic databases. THey comprise about 20% of all ORFs in sequenced genomes. There is a huge number of ORFs with no known evolutionary history, and some of them appear to code for functional proteins. Can anyone explain how this does not answer the challenge posed by this post?
The link was missing, but I predict that the paper was several years old. The high percentage of ORFans reported in early papers on the subject was an artefact of sparse taxonomic sampling.
zpmorgan 313:
“Cars do indeed evolve”
Indeed they do. Along a pseudo-Lamarckian pathway where the “giraffe” says to the other one, “Is this stretching far enough for you”? Then the other giraffe says, “Yep, that’s far enough, that looks good, make sure you measure the length you had to stretch, and let’s build it the next one that way”.
Yeah. SELECTION is ALWAYS involved. Always HAS been. (Even with an “Intelligent Designer”, curiously enough).
The trick is how to SEE that selection can ALSO be accomplished by natural processes BEFORE any foolish “giraffes” come loping into the picture (evolved via NATURAL cumulative selection, of course) who then may have an insatiable desire to prescribe how “best” to proceed with the “new model” giraffes…
And tell all the other giraffes about a “super-giraffe” (you know, kind of like a Henry Ford giraffe) who no giraffe ever actually sees, but is behind ALL “improvements” due to neck-stretching exercises.
Because, you know, He’s got an awfully long neck too and He made every giraffe to look just like Him. So they can play with neck-stretching…but not TOO long, or Super-Giraffe might get jealous and smight them.
That’s about the “size” of the religious mind. All stretching, no thinking.
1- Creationists do NOT make the claim that new genes cannot created without the intervention of a designer.
2- Can any evolutionist demonstrate that a gene can arise in a scenario in which no genes existed? IOW from scratch without agency involvement.
I ask because all you guys have to do is start supporting your position and ID would go away.
Joe G, evolution has a million or so papers in the peer reviewed scientific literature uniformly backing evolution, either directly or indirectly. The fault isn’t with the evidence, but with the presuppositions the creobots keep repeating over and over without bothering to even look at the scientific evidence or show any real evidence of their own.
Your #2 is abiogenesis, which is not part of evolution. And science is working on it.
There are millions of scientific papers that support evolutionary theory, experiment after experiment and even when new branches of biology have come to light evolution has remained. ID will not go away upon evidence, the evidence is already there. ID is a religious movement and exists external to the scientific validity of evolutionary theory. To say otherwise is to either be ignorant or dishonest. Though Lying For Jesus is what creationists do best…
#326
Yes they do.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/kouznetsov.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB121.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB150.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/icr-visit/linke.html
And so on, and so on….
Lying for Jesus is still lying Joe G. Quit it, it shouldn’t be that the side claiming moral highground is the one willing to deceive others.
I rather doubt this, and have to ask what the hell would qualify as support to you?
I’m still trying to imagine why eric@18’s argument is an argument for anything. it’s been troubling me. I think he’s saying that if there had been a “Designer”, then there is nothing preventing It from reusing pieces parts amongst its designs, and so these pieces parts might have the appearance of having evolved whereas the thing itself was a wholly new creation. I’m still not sure I follow his argument by analogy, and I feel most arguments by analogy are false, but I think he was trying to make a point, no matter how unskilled he was at presenting it.
I almost agree with Eric, but I draw a different conclusion.
The “evolution” of cars is not so much of an analogy as a very loose metaphor for evolution. However, cars are designed and life, we suspect, is not.
What Eric has pointed out is not a failure of evolution, or of C0ncordance’s argument, but a failure of ID. C0ncordance’s argument addresses the specific angle on ID called IC. If something is irreducibly complex, then there should be something in the genome that would indicate that – some kind of a big leap that would give us pause to think “Wow! You really can’t get there from here.”
OTOH, what Eric points out is that, “Well, heck, a designer might have done it that way, too!” And he is exactly right! This is why ID is fundamentally not science – and will never be science – no matter what you observe (IC or not IC) – one can always say, “Well, that’s just the way the designer decided to do things.”
Intelligent Design Creationism hasn’t got anything intelligent or useful to add to the conversation about origins – human or otherwise.
“I ask because all you guys have to do is start supporting your position and ID would go away.”
Blow it out your ass, Joe. Science has been supporting it’s conclusions on evolution for the last 150 years. If you want to be one of the ignorant, great. There are certainly a lot of you out there.
When is ID going to start supporting it’s conclusions? Does it even have any conclusions, other than “goddidit”? Bring just one piece of evidence that proves that the ID movement is anything but a bullshit PR game to christianize the public school system….
Grrrr. Nothing pisses me off like these Liars for Jesus™. Disgusting.
This seems like a reasonable test for creationist to me. (Though I might ask those who study molecular sequences if there any caveats needed.)
There is no reason why God could not create truly unique enzymes unrelated to what exists in other creatures. Truly new things simply appear in designed objects all the time. That complex structure in biology always seem to be related to other biological structures should be surprising to a creationist.