jay pettitt on 12/3/2006 at 17:45
...Well I tried.
Let me see. There are three illustrations representing the tree of life as shown in the fossil record. Darwin's Smooth, Gould's Punctuated and a third simplified morphology.
Fascinating stuff. But I've got to ask: ...and your point is?
nickolae on 12/3/2006 at 17:48
no, the article. Read what the guy is saying.
d0om on 12/3/2006 at 17:51
(
http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/cd5c9b4a4ac591911c48498d3473c31d/misc/smoothtree.gif)
its a .gif file you linked to. No article.
I did decide to try reading some stuff from the root of the site: (
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1136)
There are so many factual errors on that page it is ridiculous.
Example1:
Quote:
intelligent design theorist Stephen C. Meyer notes, "in all cases where we know the causal origin of 'high information content,' experience has shown that intelligent design played a causal role."
This is clearly wrong. "High information content" is obtained very easily by the wind blowing sand grains into complex patterns. There is no intelligent design in this process and yet highly complex arrangements of sand grains is achieved resulting in a high information count.
Example2:
Quote:
Table 1. Ways Designers Act When Designing (Observations):
(1) Take many parts and arrange them in highly specified and complex patterns which perform a specific function.
(2) Rapidly infuse any amounts of genetic information into the biosphere, including large amounts, such that at times rapid morphological or genetic changes could occur in populations.
(3) 'Re-use parts' over-and-over in different types of organisms (design upon a common blueprint).
(4) Be said to typically NOT create completely functionless objects or parts (although we may sometimes think something is functionless, but not realize its true function).
Take (1). Now if you mix phospholipids and water and shake you obtain many small liposomes. These are essentially cell-structures which have the membrane bi-layer (which spontaneous forms in water by entropic driving force.) The parts are arranged specifically to form a complex pattern. But there is no design involved.
(2) Doesn't appear to make any sense.
Now look at (3), evolution and natural selection will re-use parts over and over and over again as it is much more likley to have a gene duplicated in a copying event than to randomly create the same one again. But this website is purporting that this is evidence for ID?
The website is just so ridiculouse its hard to know what to make of it. These people are putting in so much effort to convince themselves that God actively tinkered with the gentic makeup of life throughout history? It all seems so pointless.
nickolae on 12/3/2006 at 18:11
Your sand anaolgy is totally off-base. Comparing wind blowing grains of sand to a logical system of information is absurd. It's wind blowing sand in waves, not DNA. Wind blowing sand is random, DNA is libraries of information.
From the IDEA page
1) How can a theory be unfalsifiable, and therefore supposedly unscientific, and yet be falsified by scientific evidence? and
2) Does evolution itself qualify as a scientific theory which can be falsified by scientific evidence?
Table 3. Predictions of Descent
1. High information content machine-like irreducibly complex structures will NOT be found.9, 27, 31, 32, 33
2. Forms will appear in the fossil record as a gradual progression with transitional series.34
3. Genes and functional parts will reflect those inherited through ancestry, and are only shared by related organisms.
4. The genetic code discarded genetic baggage code or functionless "junk DNA".
A recent study of the primate "family tree" found that the morphological evidence is irreconcilable with the molecular data, as a review article reported, "no matter how the computer analysis was run, the molecular and morphological trees could not be made to match."15 There are also conflicts between the alleged ancestry of whales, depending on if evolutionists look at molecules or morphology.15, 18 In fact, classifying the different types of whales within their own monophyletic group has proven difficult, as some toothed sperm whales seem to be more genetically similar to baleen whales.16, 17 Finally, another study found that traditional "family trees" for reptiles based off of morphology differ sharply than those based upon DNA similarity.20
d0om on 12/3/2006 at 18:30
DNA is just a string of polymerised bases and phosphor-sugar linkages. The information required to describe it is comparable than the information required to describe the patterns of sand formed in a desert by wind. The locations of all the sand grains is highly complicated and requires a huge ammount of information to store.
Think how much a computer slows down when rendering compicated particle effects? There is a lot of information in the arrangement of sand.
Quote:
1) How can a theory be unfalsifiable, and therefore supposedly unscientific, and yet be falsified by scientific evidence?
If its unfalisfiable its not scientific. If it is ALLREADY falsified then it might be scientific but its not correct. I fail to see how claiming ID is false helps your case.
Quote:
2) Does evolution itself qualify as a scientific theory which can be falsified by scientific evidence?
It can be falsified by scientific evidence: we just haven't found any yet. As a silly example:a Babel fish, that would disprove evolution.
Quote:
A recent study of the primate "family tree" found that the morphological evidence is irreconcilable with the molecular data, as a review article reported, "no matter how the computer analysis was run, the molecular and morphological trees could not be made to match."
So using DNA creates better family trees than just looking and guessing based on physical traits? How is this even relevent?
How can ID explain the differing codon code? All life currently uses a DNA->Protein mapping code. This is mostly the same, but is different for some bacteria and yeast. Surely if all life was designed the code would be the same for all life?
jay pettitt on 12/3/2006 at 18:35
I've got a funny feeling that article won't stand up to much peer review. I'm a gardener rather than an evolutionary biologist and I certainly found a few holes.
The article relies on irreducible complexity for example. Yet so far alleged examples of irreducibly complex system in the natural world has been shown to be reduceable in peer review.
Apparently the fossil record doesn't show transition species. Yet there are numerous and increasing discoveries of transitional species in the fossil record. That and of course the fossil record at best only displays incomplete snapshots of life on earth. Hence Gould's punctuated tree of life is an attempt to refine the illustration what is observed in the fossil record - rather than a statement that specification is punctuated. There is no assumption from evolution that we should find complete anything in the fossil record.
Seeing as Darwin's theory takes great pride in suggesting that most all life on earth shares a common ancestory the idea that if finding common DNA in different species is a best prescribed to designed systems is best described as twaddle.
Controversy over Junk DNA I know little of, so I'll refer you to a random thing off the (
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/) Internets (section 5)
After all that I really don't have much gripe with the article's conclusion. If you want to appeal to Intelligent Design for answers then knock yourself out.
ilweran on 12/3/2006 at 20:21
Quote Posted by d0om
As far as I know there aren't any crazy Jews running around spouting creationism or ID. And they actually wrote the book of genesis themselves.
Why on Earth did some American Christians decide that to reinterpret everything and deny scientific evidence?
Apparently the Jews recognised Genesis as being symbolic of something beyond human comprehension and were a bit perplexed when early Christians started taking it literally. At least that's what I read somewhere.
On evolution I would suggest 'The Ancestors Tale' by Richard Dawkins. I find his atheism annoying- I am religious, but not Christian- but I found this book answered most of the difficulties I had with evolution.
One thing I found interesting, and very obvious after I'd read it, is that if we had a 100% complete fossil record it would be impossible to label species because the changes are so gradual. This seems to make 'missing links' a bit of a red herring.
Nicker on 12/3/2006 at 21:03
Quote Posted by nickolae
no, the article. Read what the guy is saying.
How about you read what is being said for a change?
Anyway. What are you doing posting this when you have some theological homework do do. Remember? Proving that YOUR creation myth is the WINNAR \o/
You gotta love the intellectual dishonesty of it all. Creationists hang on the minutest detail of evolutionary theory, waiting to pounce on any apparent weakness and declare the whole thing a farce. They demand impossibly exacting proofs from science but in return offer only a book of myths, fantasy tales and dubious histories. I guess holding Europe in artificial ignorance for 1500 years wasn't enough for them.
