Life, The Universe, And Everything

[BuddyFerris]

Buddy said in Dear Believer,

"Yet still, there are mysteries whose simplest likely cause points to a design which cannot be achieved within this universe by random mutation and natural selection."

 

What is meant by this statement Buddy?

 

Oooh, good one. Looks like my memory is full and leaking. OK, keep me honest. That'll keep me from having to remember everything I've said, thereby freeing up the few remaining brain cells for witty replies.

 

I assume the question is a rhetorical wrapper for sarcasm again, right? My discernment for innuendo is unimpressive, so you may have to append a tongue-in-cheek emoticon to tip me off.

 

Dano!

Nice to hear your voice whatever. Glad to see you made the trip; I'd hate to have to start over.

 

Shall we lay again the foundation and premise?

Buddy is an old, educated, rational, generally reasonable, non-hallucinatory, engineer who has seen an angel. Twice.

Buddy is therefore a too old, uneducated, irrational, unreasonable, hallucinating, engineer who has succumbed to suggestion and mass stupidity. He falls into the category with superstitious natives, mediocre magicians, tarot card readers, and the easily deceived. Or not.

 

Buddy

[freeman]

Buddy,

I found a forum that is discussing the bad math of creationsism. Click here.

 

Sample line, "When the environment suddenly changes in a way that is hostile, the mutation rate of bacteria increases beyond what would normally be healthy; this gives them to ability to "find" solutions to the environmental change that put them into danger."

 

This throws your statistical data out the window!

 

Here is an excellent article, from PBS.org, on the evolution of the eye from lightsesitive cells is a few thousand years. Quote, "only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch."

 

There are thousands of sites, articles and books to debunk your mathamatical calculations, if you are just willing to open your eyes and especially open your mind.

[freeman]

One more thing, in my life, I have seen two UFO's! Please do not read into this statement for it does not imply what some might think. I did not see extraterrestrial vehicles in the sky, but only something that I (and the people I was with) could not identify! It would take an enormous leap of faith to make a claim that it was aliens in the driver seat. I would rather go through life saying, "I don't know" than to state something as fact, when there is no proof! Maybe the pilots were angles!?

[Grandpa Harley]

Actually, the computer you're working on relies on statistics... especially if it uses CMOS or you use pen flash drives, since both rely on quantum tunnelling, which isn't 'exact' but 'only' a statistical likely hood of happening. Transistors only work 'statisitically' since they rely on quantum effects, and all of quantum theory works by statistical probability... Yet we expect flash drives to save, CMOS to store and hard drives to write and read... and they do. But only *most* of the time. The universe is a collection of probabilities... some related, some not.

[Ouroboros]

I still don't understand why low probability would equal no probability. That seems like faulty logic to me.

 

Good observation. Drug resistance is real and occurrs naturally. Break it down a bit; you're trying to guess the combination to a lock which is a thousand numbers long, and the numbers have to be in right order. It's a sloppy lock, so you can make a lot of substitutions but one particular slot has to be filled exactly right. Chance of guessing right and getting the lock open on the first try; one in a thousand. If two slots are required to be correct? One in a million. If you tried one combination per minute, etc., etc.

I don't think that is the same kind of permutation. Basically are you saying that the combination of genes for the bacteria to be resistant is thousand proteins long? How long DNA does this bacteria have?

 

I think the permutation for this is more like a thousand locks with a few combinations, and each unlocked lock give you a little something. Or even better, it's like a billion boxes with locks, and for each box unlocked there is a treat, and for beneficial treats that combinations stays, until you have a thousand open boxes that give you an even higher better gene to provide better help for survival.

 

Low probability isn't a problem. One in a million million is low. Problems arise when the same person has to hit that powerball every time without a miss. In order to be believable, it has to be reasonable. The difficulty is that the required attempts exceed the time and sample set available to pull it off.

Same thing, you look at it as the gene has to evolve to a fully complete set. This resistance gene is more like different people are hitting the powerball at different times without a miss, and not necessarily in a row either. Or how many home runs have there been in baseballs history (with different people, and different games)?

 

For this particular bacteria, do we have today any other medicine to treat this? Or is there any other new medicine on its way to be developed? Why doesn't this bacteria have a inherited resistance to that medicine yet?

 

Drug resistance in single-cell bacteria is a good illustration. It's natural selection at its' best. A couple of amino acid changes are required to offset the effects of a drug. A few billion trillion creatures are required for random mutation to hit on drug resistance; natural selection gives that one a boost and it replicates ahead of the rest as a drug resistant strain.

 

Now consider the number of amino acid changes required to become a multi-celled creature, a swimmer, a carnivore, an amphibian, etc. The changes require more creature generations than the earth has produced. The size of the sample set required exceeds the historic population. By a lot. It's a problem for science; we'll know more as the years pass.

Intuitively I don't see a problem with it at all, and maybe that's my problem, that I never can explain why I can see how evolution really works. But actually, I really don't feel or see this to be a problem.

 

I only poke at the issue because the reaction I get will be reasoned or unreasoned; I keep hoping for a reasoned response. Yours was OK, by the way. You might easily have web-searched for an answer not your own and fired it off here. Thanks,

Actually no. I didn't search for it. If I do, I usually give the link to the website with the argument. When I search, I do so because I don't remember details or facts, but generally I will argue only from my own reasoning. I have been arguing these things several times before, but it's hard to get through the religious shell.

 

You do know that genetic algorithms have been tested in technology, where the procedure to control equipment got "genes" (parameters, output), it evolves through random mutations, reproduce by mutual exchange of genes, and survives based on best resulting output. Now, it works. Actually it works better than polynomial formulas. And if you look at the results, the chances of the formula to be so efficient is also extremely low, but yet it works.

[Grandpa Harley]

Freeman,

 

A valid point. Mutation is a function of environmental stress on an organism - over population, alien incomer, temperature change by more than 3C av., ambient light change, lack or change of food plants/prey... and the fossil record show this.

[Ouroboros]

Actually, the computer you're working on relies on statistics... especially if it uses CMOS or you use pen flash drives, since both rely on quantum tunnelling, which isn't 'exact' but 'only' a statistical likely hood of happening. Transistors only work 'statisitically' since they rely on quantum effects, and all of quantum theory works by statistical probability... Yet we expect flash drives to save, CMOS to store and hard drives to write and read... and they do. But only *most* of the time. The universe is a collection of probabilities... some related, some not.

And broadband routers for the backbone of the internet uses genetic algorithms to eastablish better traffic patters for the pages we're are looking at. And GA works because it is based on that frigging impossible probability ideas from evolution. *gah* If it didn't work, our downloads of pages right now would be at the speed of a split speed analog modem.

[Grandpa Harley]

Yup... like all good theories, it predicts things... ID doesn't predict squat, it's entirely reactive, trying to explain waht's gone before, and giving nothing that's predictive in the model to test... e

[Ouroboros]

A valid point. Mutation is a function of environmental stress on an organism - over population, alien incomer, temperature change by more than 3C av., ambient light change, lack or change of food plants/prey... and the fossil record show this.

Right.

 

Natural selection works as one of those strainers (or colanders). If you have a pile of sand, and you strain it through this thing, some sand will fall through the holes, and some will not. And if you have a constant supply of new sand with new shapes, you will get many different kinds of shaped grains of sand.

[webmdave]

Shall we lay again the foundation and premise?

Buddy is an old, educated, rational, generally reasonable, non-hallucinatory, engineer who has seen an angel. Twice.

Buddy is therefore a too old, uneducated, irrational, unreasonable, hallucinating, engineer who has succumbed to suggestion and mass stupidity. He falls into the category with superstitious natives, mediocre magicians, tarot card readers, and the easily deceived. Or not.

 

Buddy

 

For the third, fourth or fifth time, Buddy. What did these angels look like? Can you please describe what you saw? The word "angels" means nothing to me. I have no picture in my mind as to what you think you saw, or why you interpretted what you saw as an "angel."

 

As stated above, when I hear that someone has seen a UFO, I might start envisioning little green men. Unless the story teller gives more detail, I'm left to my imagination, which in the case mentioned above would have been in complete error.

 

Please explain what you saw.

 

Thanks.

[Ouroboros]

Yup... like all good theories, it predicts things... ID doesn't predict squat, it's entirely reactive, trying to explain waht's gone before, and giving nothing that's predictive in the model to test... e

Very true.

 

Evolution : descriptive and predictive power

 

ID: no descriptive and no predictive power.

 

Who wins the science contest, and which idea actually HELP people today?

 

The ideas of evolution and how genes mutate and build new resistance is crucial for the industry of medicine today. Without that knowledge and acceptance of how it works it would be useless. Denying Evolution in biology and medicine is like a Christian denying the existence of the Jews. It's a core concept and necessary, and if Evolution is false, then our soceity have wasted some 100 years on inventing things, that actually works, but based on false premises... and that doesn't make sense at all.

[alanh]

Buddy

 

What I keep trying to tell you is THERE IS NO STATISTICAL DIFFICULTY with the theory of evolution. I guess I didn't make myself clear: my figures are are way LESS conservative than yours: an average mutation rate of 1 in 10^8 per gene means most mutations will occur WAY MORE FREQUENTLY than in the example of P. falciparum. In addition, mutations can occur simultaneously and be related, which means we can't just add the probability of one mutation to the probability of another mutation and call it a day. If the theory of evolution is too improbable to be valid don't you think that biologists, especially the religious ones, would have figured that out by now?

 

I think the core issue here is that you don't like randomness at work in biology, which is fine by me. No one is saying evolution is a random process. It has, for all intents and purposes, a random element which is mutation. It might be possible to fully explain a mutation event using quantum mechanics, but the complexity would be overwhelming, as one would have to map out the behavior of every subatomic particle involved, and we have Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to contend with. It appears E. coli can increase its mutation rate in response to a lack of food, that is a non-random process. Certain genes are more likely to mutate than others, that is a non-random process. Evolution occurs in a tree shape, that is a non-random process. Mutation increases in the presence of ionizing radiation, that is a non-random process. As I mentioned before, leaving aside the issue of probability, you still have to explain the fossil record, why there are so many similarities between species, why we have vestigial organs, why we are seeing new species develop, and so on. All of these are not just evidence of random phenomena.

[Ouroboros]

What I keep trying to tell you is THERE IS NO STATISTICAL DIFFICULTY with the theory of evolution. I guess I didn't make myself clear: my figures are are way LESS conservative than yours: an average mutation rate of 1 in 10^8 per gene means most mutations will occur WAY MORE FREQUENTLY than in the example of P. falciparum. In addition, mutations can occur simultaneously and be related, which means we can't just add the probability of one mutation to the probability of another mutation and call it a day.

I was thinking about that a moment ago. I can see that the fault people make in these arguments is exactly that. They calculate the probability as a single event instead of multiple, parallel events, that eventually merge together in a final event where the final result can be observed.

 

Probability changes with consecutive events. That's something you can see with the famous game show problem this lady mathematician came out with a few years ago, and most people don't get.

 

If the theory of evolution is too improbable to be valid don't you think that biologists, especially the religious ones, would have figured that out by now?

Didn't you know? They're in on it. They're part of the Evil Darwinian Conspiracy.

 

I think the core issue here is that you don't like randomness at work in biology, which is fine by me. No one is saying evolution is a random process. It has, for all intents and purposes, a random element which is mutation. It might be possible to fully explain a mutation event using quantum mechanics, but the complexity would be overwhelming, as one would have to map out the behavior of every subatomic particle involved, and we have Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to contend with. It appears E. coli can increase its mutation rate in response to a lack of food, that is a non-random process. Certain genes are more likely to mutate than others, that is a non-random process. Evolution occurs in a tree shape, that is a non-random process. Mutation increases in the presence of ionizing radiation, that is a non-random process. As I mentioned before, leaving aside the issue of probability, you still have to explain the fossil record, why there are so many similarities between species, why we have vestigial organs, why we are seeing new species develop, and so on. All of these are not just evidence of random phenomena.

And there's one thing he's forgetting too. When Noah took his little boat out for a ride, did he fill it with all billions of species, or only the "kinds" (as they call it)? All billions of species won't fit, so it must have been pairs from a lower level, maybe genus, maybe family or maybe as low as domain, well if that's the case, then how did we get all the variations of species? Did God create them after the flood, or did they evolve?

 

Usually when I ask that question I get the answer that "micro evolution" is true, but not "macro". If that is the case, call this genetic alteration of this bacterium a micro event and the whole probability issues is of no concern anymore. But if the Creationist claims that God created all the species after the flood, then what was the purpose of the Arc?

[freeman]

Given that the earth is ~4.5 billion years old, the first several hundred million years were very hostile to life. Under these exterme conditions, mutations would have been occurring at a very rapid rate. Even when complex organisms (reptiles and mammals as an example) appeared, the earth was still undergoing disruptive changes. These changes in environment would produce mutations which then would lead to adaptation and eventually evolution at a very fast rate to ensure survival of the organisms. Again, the mutations could be occurring at each allele for a given gene in the entire DNA. There are three common causes of mutation in DNA. 1) Point Mutations 2) Frameshift Mutations & 3) Mutagens.

The most common mutagen to early organisms was UV Radiation. This mutagen would not be selective to which gene it would affect. All genes were equally affected by UV Radiation. Given that the world was in constant turmoil, no wonder the vast majority of the evolutionary process occurred in the past over a period of ~4 billion years.

Currently a driving force in our current evolution as humans has been the invention of "tools". This can be seen in the size and function of the brain. Also, our physical appearance has changed over the last several thousand years and continues today.

 

Must carry on later...

[Ouroboros]

And there's one thing he's forgetting too. When Noah took his little boat out for a ride, did he fill it with all billions of species, or only the "kinds" (as they call it)? All billions of species won't fit, so it must have been pairs from a lower level, maybe genus, maybe family or maybe as low as domain, well if that's the case, then how did we get all the variations of species? Did God create them after the flood, or did they evolve?

Oops. I mean higher levels of taxa. But still the argument holds.

 

If Noah only took a sample from the set of variations, like dogs, then where did the Poodle gene come from, or the Dalmatian gene? If humans were breeding dogs to create them, still it requires mutated genes. I never heard about any genetic laboratory used the last 5000 years where the dog DNA was manually manipulated to get the breeds, but rather these variations occurred naturally (and randomly) and were selected by humans (non randomly).

 

The problem with the Noah's ark evolution is that all the species we have today had to evolve from a small sub-set only some odd thousand years ago, hence the Creationists have to believe in a very rapid evolution, and likely much faster than science or even probability allows. In the end, the one that stands with mathematical impossibility is the Creationist, and not the "Evolutionist".

 

--edit--

 

Another problem is how the heck can they use DNA for "fingerprinting" suspects if no changes occur? Basically should we release all convicted criminals who is there because of DNA evidence? (sarcasm) Everyone in the world got the same genetic print, so why bother anymore... right?(/sarcasm)

[alanh]

Han

 

Good point about Noah's Ark. Of course one can always explain the problems away with "god did it," but it seems to me Noah would have had to build a second ark just to carry enough feed for 2 elephants for 40 days - one would need something like 16,000 pounds of feed for 1 elephant, based on what they get in a zoo setting. The problem with micro / macro evolution is where is the dividing line? If creationists are going to accept "micro" but reject "macro" evolution there needs to be a well-defined means to distinguish the two, which obviously there is not.

[Ouroboros]

Alanh,

 

I agree. The flood story containst hundreds of problems, but I find it so amusing that "Floodists" don't see that evolution has to work for the flood to be true. And not only work, but work overtime beyond the numbers and facts scienctists can see. Basically, scientist believe in a normal progression of evolution (slow pace, with some exceptions), while the Creationist hast o believe in Evolution on speed! So who's the believer beyond all mathematical odds then?

 

And macro/micro is just a viewpoint. Like you said, where's the dividing line? It's like stratosphere, troposhpere or mesosphere. Exactly at what thousands of an inch do you have the dividing lines between them? Or when does a temperature becomes hot? And where's the line between hot and cold? Is it based on your pain or my pain? Or did someone establish the exact Fahrenheit?

[Ouroboros]

If the answer is "goddidit", then I must ask the reason to why the author of Genesis didn't tell us about the second large Creation, after the flood. Or maybe the argument is that God is actively mutating the genes to create new species? Well, that I have no argument against, because how would we as observers know if a mutation is intentional or random? We wouldn't, and hence it is of no validity if evolution is guided by a higher power or not, our observations still fit. Mutations still occurs in such a view, and they seem to be random to us. Chaos functions does that. They seem random and chaotic but have an underlying structure (not to be confused with purpose). If God is mutating according to statistical probabilities, then God is nothing but a random event generator, and I can't see why "it" would require praise and worship.

 

--edit--

 

And Buddy, how do you explain ring species from a non-evolutionary viewpoint?

[dano]

That was "Freeman" who used the "rhetorical wrapper for sarcasm" NOT ME.

I don't question that there are mysteries that cant be explained, but it is only because we are only four and one half billion years along in our intellectual development.

 

Some things take a while!

Dano

[freeman]

Dano,

My mother taught me to speak my mind. Now she tells me that I am a sarcastic ass!

[Antlerman]

Han

 

Good point about Noah's Ark. Of course one can always explain the problems away with "god did it," but it seems to me Noah would have had to build a second ark just to carry enough feed for 2 elephants for 40 days - one would need something like 16,000 pounds of feed for 1 elephant, based on what they get in a zoo setting. The problem with micro / macro evolution is where is the dividing line? If creationists are going to accept "micro" but reject "macro" evolution there needs to be a well-defined means to distinguish the two, which obviously there is not.

Not that I feel particularly prone to putting ideas into heads of Creationists, but maybe there's a new scientific-sounding term they can hypothesis to explain this: Micro-Speciation. With a massive and instantaneous explosion of punctuated equilibria, the animals in one year period all gave birth to hyper-small versions of themselves, which then would fit neatly into their pens with ample room left over for the food and fresh water requirements for Noah and his family, in addition to the millions of species down in the hold of the ship.

 

After departing from the ark they grew to full size (Macro-Speciation) by drinking special water that flowed from a rock that Moses would later strike with a stick to give drink to the children of Israel (which of course led to him being banished from the promised land for not speaking to it instead, but that’s a different story). We know it happened quickly afterwards because they would not have been able to give birth to animals 10 ^20 times larger than themselves.

 

This is entirely possible, and does explain the complete lack of any evidence we might ever hope to find supporting it. It all boils down to faith, as God does not leave evidence anywhere. Scientists… they just don’t get it!

 

 

 

[alanh]

Damn Macro-Speciation, I want a midget rhinoceros.

[freeman]

Antlerman,

They already have a similar idea floating around!

"John Woodmorappe, author of the definitive Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, estimated that only about 15% of the animals on the ark would have been larger than a sheep. This figure does not take into account the possibility that God may have brought Noah “infant” animals, which can be significantly smaller than adult animals.

 

Not midgets, but infants!

[Antlerman]

Antlerman,

They already have a similar idea floating around!

"John Woodmorappe, author of the definitive Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, estimated that only about 15% of the animals on the ark would have been larger than a sheep. This figure does not take into account the possibility that God may have brought Noah “infant” animals, which can be significantly smaller than adult animals.

 

Not midgets, but infants!

Oh good god! So who nursed all the infants? Noah's wife? She must have been awfully sore after a couple months of feedings with all those claws and sharp teeth always at her chest! Furthermore, did the mommy animals all bring their infants to Noah's wife? Did they line up outside the door of the ark and willingly deposit their babies from their mouths into her hands, or did they calmly lay them at Noah's feet knowing that they were about to all be drowned by God?

 

But then again, since a human was capable of nursing a calf during their fantastic voyage, I suppose they could've recruited a special elephant to nurse little piglets, monkeys, horses, and aardvarks? This is probably what happened since an elephant's skin is a lot tougher than a human's and could withstand the nursing frenzy that would have been going on with all those motherless animals.

 

And they think the Theory of Evolution is unbelievable?

[Ouroboros]

Well, I'm sure Noah's wife would say something like this:

 

"Honey. I don't care if it's just an infant, but dragons are dragons and they spit fire. It hears really bad, dear. Please, let us leave them on land, just like we did with the T-rex."