"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

J C wrote: »

Quantum mechanics operates at the atomic and sub-atomic levels ... and while some living processes operate at these levels ... genetic information is stored and utilised at higher molecular and macroscopic levels in DNA and other cellular machines.

Atoms are component in molecules ... (why wouldn't they be?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_in_molecules

J C wrote: »

Quantum mechanics operates at the atomic and sub-atomic levels ... and while some living processes operate at these levels ... genetic information is stored and utilised at higher molecular and macroscopic levels in DNA and other cellular machines.

go read stephen hawkings the grand design.... i've given it to housemates with no scientific training and they've enjoyed the read and have understood a lot of it! i've read a few books on the subject and it was by far the best read... for content go to in search of Schroedingers cat, and then Schroedingers kittens.

the point is that classical mechanics(couldn't think of a better word) only hold true for larger things, while quantum mechanics holds true for all things, and after a lot of modification the theorys can be proven by any test we can come up with... so if you play the statistics game again then consider this... without the implications of quantum mechanics being taken into account, accuracy and hence validity is abandoned!

and thank you oldrnwisr that was a great post on the last page! i really can't see JC beginning to challenge it!

Sarky wrote: »

He'll disagree without providing any reason beyond the CFSI that has already been disproven, ignore calls to go into any sort of real detail, and claim victory.

In other words, he'll lie and hide from the truth again.

man if I had a penny for every time you've called shenanigans on this chap..... well i might be able to buy a pint anyway!

can you set an auto response to go off any time JC posts in this thread?

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Apologies, JC, I missed this post the first time round.

No problem.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

No, JC, there is a theory of biogenesis, not a law. I have already explained the difference to you so I'm not going to repeat myself.

A scientific law is a physically observable phenomenon that has a logical explanation that never been observationally invalidated. On this basis biogenesis is a biological Law. A scientific Law is basically an observationally validated theory of long and impeccable standing.
If a scientific law is ever observed to be broken, it ceases to be either a Law or a theory.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Even though Darwin had already addressed Pasteur's idea in a letter to Joseph Hooker in 1871, the real black swan event for Pastuer's biogenesis idea was the Miller-Urey experiment. What Pasteur suffered from in his formation of biogenesis was what Arthur C. Clarke called a failure of imagination. Pasteur was wrong but science had not sufficiently advanced in his lifetime to demonstrate this. It has now.

Miller-Urey was indeed a 'ground-breaking' experiment that demonstrated that Amino Acids could be formed spontaneously, which is an important prerequisite for any theory of Abiogenesis. It was pretty 'heady' stuff at the time, that promised a lot ... but eventually delivered little more than what was originally found by Miller-Urey ... and such is often what happens in science!!!
It turns out that the big problem isn't the production of Amino Acids and other 'building blocks' of living systems ... the real problem is where the assembly instructions came from to assemble them into coherent living systems that in turn are coherently co-ordinated into living cells.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

In any case, it doesn't matter whether Miller-Urey was right about abiogenesis or whether life originated on earth through directed panspermia or some other unknown mechanism. None of this is relevant to a discussion on evolution in the same way that cosmogony is not relevant to a discussion on cosmology.

... the mechanism that originally created/produced life is important for a holistic approach to the 'origins' question. In any event, many of the same issues that arise in relation to Spontaneous Abiogenesis are also issues for Spontaneous Evolution. I accept that Evolution has NS to 'help' it along, while Abiogenesis doesn't have it ... but, as I keep saying, the big issue for Evolution is how the CFSI, that NS selects was spontaneoulsy produced in the first place.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Mutation is a random process. However, natural selection acting on mutations is a deterministic process, see the difference.

I do see the difference and I agree with your description of both processes. The problem is that a random process is mathematically incapable of producing Complex Specified Functional Information and Design due to the effectively infinite non-functional combinatorial space that surrounds functional information and design combinations.
Because NS is a deterministic process it is indeed capable of remarkable achievements when it is applied to diverse CFSI ... but the truism of 'rubbish in ... rubbish out' applies ... and all random processes are observed to degrade complex functional specified information ... and such degredation cannot be reversed by a selection process.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

You're really not keeping up with this at all, are you JC? OK, let's do this in baby steps. The deletion of a gene or part thereof, does not necessarily lead to a loss in genetic information. The processes of gene duplication and gene deletion both contribute to an increase in the variation in the population. Since it is this variation which is what natural selection acts upon, an isolated incidence of gene deletion can and does lead to an overall increase in information and complexity.

... it can lead to an increase in (disfunctional) diversity (which mutations cleary exhibit) ... but not functionality.The case of the CCR5-Δ32 deletion obliterates the CCR5 chemokine and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–1 coreceptor on lymphoid cells ... and it has the positive result that the people possessing this mutation are resistant to HIV ... but it is achieved by a deletion that results in a loss of functionality i.e. a loss of the CCRS chemokine and the (HIV)–1 coreceptor.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

It's all explained here:

Evolution of biological complexity

an important paper that I cannot do justice to tonight ... with your indulgence, can I return to it when we have fully addressed the paper currently under discussion?

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I note at this point, that the above link and the others that I have posted come from peer-reviewed sources, something you haven't managed to reciprocate in support of your CFSI claims.

... Dembski's paper was peer reviewed ... but I don't think that getting into a 'blame game' about who peer reviews what is going to get us anywhere.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I have addressed the "loss" issue above, but I would like to point out that evolution is directionless. It's not a ladder, more like a treadmill. We're not some pinnacle of evolution. There is no "uphill" toward mankind, nor is there a "downhill" from your creation claim.

... this is true ... and indeed all observed 'evolution' by NS does have a tendency to 'go around in circles' ... and often returns to where it started ... if the environment changes back to where it started. For example, the famous grey to black population transition amongst the Peppered Moths in England ... has now been reversed with the Clean Air Acts reducing the black grime in the environment which has favoured the resurgence of the grey moth variety. However, this is not what 'Pondkind to Mankind' Evolution claims to have happened ... it claims that single-celled primitive Pondkind did spontaneously move 'uphill' in complexity and functionality to become Man ... so we would expect that such a spontaneous CFSI 'trajectory' would still be evident somewhere along this putative line today ... but you seem to be saying that it is like a 'treadmill' i.e. moving allright ... but fundamentally remaining where it has started.
BTW the abundant presence of death, disease and species extinctions does indicate a pronounced 'downhill' momentum ... that is only stopped from 'freefall' by the cellular 'autocorrection' mechanisms that ameloriate the worst excesses that mutagenesis would otherwise cause.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Have you not watched Unbreakable? I'm sure that sufferers of Osteogenesis Imperfecta would love to understand the mechanism by which this particular mutation causes incredibly dense bones. As would people suffering from osteoporosis I imagine.

The mechanism would appear to offer the potential for improved therapies for people suffering from low bone density conditions ... and research is well merited on this issue. Its a bit like somebody suffering from elevated blood iron levels that are causing disease symptoms ... could provide 'super blood' to somebody suffering from low blood iron levels ... what is useless, or even a problem, in one situation could be therapeutic in another context ... but they are both indicative of mutation losses in the blood iron control mechanisms in both people

oldrnwisr wrote: »

As for the disease-causing mutations comment, you will find that disease resistance mutations and disease inducing mutations are often two sides of the same coin. In some cases like the sickle-cell anaemia/malaria resistance, the cause is nothing more than population mechanics. Sharon Moalem has an excellent treatment of this in his book Survival of the Sickest.

... both types of mutation are observed to result in a 'downhill' loss of functionality.

I'll address the rest of your thoughtful and insightful posting tomorrow evening, God willing.

[-0-] wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo

The female version of JC.

... more like the Creationist version of Miriam O'Callaghan!!!:)

-0- wrote:

createWHORE!

Nuthatch.

Poor Prof Dawkins didn't have a chance ... he was 'on the back foot' ... from the get go as Wendy literally dominated his every move and destroyed his every argument.
Wendy is a very articulate woman who clearly won the debate 'hands down'.:)

... and when you see an 'ordinary' American woman do this to somebody of the eminence of Prof Dawkins ... this isn't due to the relative abilities of the two people involved (Prof Dawkins clearly has the better training and scientific experience) ... yet he was countered on his every point ... so it is mostly due to the validity of their respective arguments.

J C wrote: »

A scientific law is a physically observable phenomenon that has a logical explanation that never been observationally invalidated. On this basis biogenesis is a biological Law. A scientific Law is basically an observationally validated theory of long and impeccable standing.
If a scientific law is ever observed to be broken, it ceases to be either a Law or a theory.

No, JC, you still don't seem to understand a law. A scientific law is a simple and concise statement which states a fact or facts which are readily observable. A law must be simple, true, universal and absolute. A theory on the other hand is explanatory and encompasses laws and experimental observations.
Secondly, you are misrepresenting what Pasteur stated when he said "omne vivum ex vivo (all life from life)". Before the advent of optical microscopy, there was no way to study how bacteria and other micro-organisms came to be. It was a widely held idea that they sprang to life fully formed, an idea which stretched back to Ancient Greece. Pasteur's work showed that bacteria did not appear fully formed through spontaneous generation but came from earlier forms of life. So what Pasteur, really did was disprove a common creationist claim.
In any case, I have already pointed out that abiogenesis is irrelevant. The topic under discussion is evolution, the adaptation of life to its environment, not how it began in the first place. Leave the strawmen at home.

J C wrote: »

Miller-Urey was indeed a 'ground-breaking' experiment that demonstrated that Amino Acids could be formed spontaneously, which is an important prerequisite for any theory of Abiogenesis. It was pretty 'heady' stuff at the time, that promised a lot ... but eventually delivered little more than what was originally found by Miller-Urey ... and such is often what happens in science!!!
It turns out that the big problem isn't the production of Amino Acids and other 'building blocks' of living systems ... the real problem is where the assembly instructions came from to assemble them into coherent living systems that in turn are coherently co-ordinated into living cells.

First of all, it's not fair to say that Miller's work lead to very little. A lot of research has been done since Miller's original experiment by changing the parameters Miller used. Here are some sample papers of the further research that has been carried out:

1. Chang, S., D. DesMarais, R. Mack, S. L. Miller, and G. E. Strathearn. 1983. Prebiotic organic syntheses and the origin of life. In: Schopf, J. W., ed., Earth's Earliest Biosphere: Its Origin and Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 53-92.
2. Miller, S. L. 1987. Which organic compounds could have occurred on the prebiotic earth? Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 52: 17-27.
3. Schlesinger, G. and S. L. Miller. 1983. Prebiotic synthesis in atmospheres containing CH4, CO, and CO2. I. Amino acids. Journal of Molecular Evolution 19: 376-382.
4. Stribling, R. and S. L. Miller. 1987. Energy yields for hydrogen cyanide and formaldehyde syntheses: the HCN and amino acid concentrations in the primitive ocean. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 17: 261-273.
5. Tian, F., O. B. Toon, A. A. Pavlov and H. De Sterck. 2005. A hydrogen-rich early Earth atmosphere. Science 308: 1014-1017. See also: Chyba, C. F. 2005. Rethinking Earth's early atmosphere. Science 308: 962-963.

Secondly, there are multiple competing hypotheses regarding the development from amino acids to protocells but there are few with substantial evidentiary support. However, this is the creationist problem isn't it. Just because the scientific answer is "I don't know" doesn't mean you can insert your own particular deity into the gap without demonstrating why this is the case.

J C wrote: »

... the mechanism that originally created/produced life is important for a holistic approach to the 'origins' question. In any event, many of the same issues that arise in relation to Spontaneous Abiogenesis are also issues for Spontaneous Evolution. I accept that Evolution has NS to 'help' it along, while Abiogenesis doesn't have it ... but, as I keep saying, the big issue for Evolution is how the CFSI, that NS selects was spontaneoulsy produced in the first place.

No it isn't. To repeat myself, abiogenesis is NOT relevant to a discussion on evolution. Whether the origin of life was a Miller-type scenario or directed panspermia or deep sea vent theory or even divine spark, none of this has any bearing on evolution. Evolution can and does lead to increased information as I have already shown. If you want to see this purely as the result of the addition of genetic information on an individual basis then why don't you have a read of these (I don't have hyperlinks for them at the moment):

• Francis, J.E., & Hansche, P.E. (1972) Directed evolution of metabolic pathways in microbial populations. I. Modification of the acid phosphatase pH optimum in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 70: 59-73.
• Francis, J.E., & Hansche, P.E. (1973) Directed evolution of metabolic pathways in microbial populations. II. A repeatable adaptation in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 74:259-265.
• Hansche, P.E. (1975) Gene duplication as a mechanism of genetic adaptation in Saccharaomyces cervisiae. Genetics, 79: 661-674.
• Papadopoulos, D., Schneider, D., Meier-Eiss, J., Arber, W., Lenski, R. E., Blot, M. (1999). Genomic evolution during a 10,000-generation
  experiment with bacteria. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 96: 3807-3812
• Brown CJ, Todd KM, Rosenzweig RF (1998) Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment. Mol Biol Evol 1998 Aug;15(8):931-42 Nature 387, 708 - 713 (1997)
• Hartley, B.S. (1984), Experimental evolution of ribitol dehydrogenase. In R.P. Mortlock (ed.), "Microorganisms as Model Systems for Studying Evolution" (pp. 23 - 54) Plenum, New York.

J C wrote: »

I do see the difference and I agree with your description of both processes. The problem is that a random process is mathematically incapable of producing Complex Specified Functional Information and Design due to the effectively infinite non-functional combinatorial space that surrounds functional information and design combinations.
Because NS is a deterministic process it is indeed capable of remarkable achievements when it is applied to diverse CFSI ... but the truism of 'rubbish in ... rubbish out' applies ... and all random processes are observed to degrade complex functional specified information ... and such degredation cannot be reversed by a selection process.

I'm starting to get weary of this broken record CFSI/CFSD crap, JC. You do know what assuming the conclusion is don't you. Unless you're going to come out and demonstrate that complex specified design/information is valid then drop it.

J C wrote: »

... it can lead to an increase in (disfunctional) diversity (which mutations cleary exhibit) ... but not functionality.The case of the CCR5-Δ32 deletion obliterates the CCR5 chemokine and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–1 coreceptor on lymphoid cells ... and it has the positive result that the people possessing this mutation are resistant to HIV ... but it is achieved by a deletion that results in a loss of functionality i.e. a loss of the CCRS chemokine and the (HIV)–1 coreceptor.

And you keep calling yourself a scientist. Scientists, with the exception of doctors, do not usually refer to dysfunction. A change in function is just that, a change in function. You're committing a naturalistic fallacy here. Just because something is a certain way, doesn't mean it ought to be a certain way. You can't class something as dysfunction, scientifically, because the change in original function may lead to an entirely new function through selection. This is something that is found up and down the literature.

J C wrote: »

an important paper that I cannot do justice to tonight ... with your indulgence, can I return to it when we have fully addressed the paper currently under discussion?

By all means, I'll be here.

J C wrote: »

... Dembski's paper was peer reviewed ... but I don't think that getting into a 'blame game' about who peer reviews what is going to get us anywhere.

What paper? I have already posted a link to Dembski's own CV and the lone peer-reviewed paper he has published which has nothing to do with biology. If you're referring to Dembski's claim about "The Design Inference" being peer-reviewed, while it is technically correct it doesn't add any weight to his claims. First of all, a book is not subjected to the same level of peer review as a paper. A 200-page book might come back with 5 pages of notes while a 10-page paper can come back with just as much if not more. Secondly, The Design Inference was reviewed by philosophers not biologists and so any review is unlikely to highlight the flaws in Dembski's reasoning.

J C wrote: »

However, this is not what 'Pondkind to Mankind' Evolution claims to have happened ... it claims that single-celled primitive Pondkind did spontaneously move 'uphill' in complexity and functionality to become Man ... so we would expect that such a spontaneous CFSI 'trajectory' would still be evident somewhere along this putative line today

Again with the strawmen. Cite an example of evolutionary biologists claiming that evolution is a ladder upward toward mankind or retract your statement above.

J C wrote: »

The mechanism would appear to offer the potential for improved therapies for people suffering from low bone density conditions ... and research is well merited on this issue. Its a bit like somebody suffering from elevated blood iron levels that are causing disease symptoms ... could provide 'super blood' to somebody suffering from low blood iron levels ... what is useless, or even a problem, in one situation could be therapeutic in another context ... but they are both indicative of mutation losses in the blood iron control mechanisms in both people

You're not very good at analogy, are you? There is no comparison between iron levels and bone density. On the one hand, low bone density tends to cause signifcant health problems, while high bone density doesn't. Iron levels on the other hand causes health problems at both ends of the spectrum with anaemia at one end and haemochromatosis on the other.

To continue my previous thread regarding Dembski...

Problem 3 - Mathematics

Mathematics is not Bill Dembski's friend. Despite being a mathematician, it is from this field that some of the strongest criticism of Dembski's work has come, particularly in relation to Dembski's "Law of Conservation of Information" which is mathematically unsound.

The summary of Dembski's "argument" is given on page 62 of "No Free Lunch":

“Given a reference class of possibilities, a chance hypothesis H, a
probability measure induced by H and defined on (i.e., P(·|H)),
and an event/sample E from W; a rejection function f is detachable from E if and only if a subject possesses background knowledge K that is conditionally independent of E (i.e., P(E|H&K) = P(E|H)) and such that K explicitly and univocally identifies the function f. Any rejection region R of the form T = {! 2 |f(!)} or T = {! 2 |f(!) } is then said to be detachable from E as well. Furthermore, R is then called a specification of E, and E is said to be specified.”

OK, I've just realised that this is not going to be possible on boards because of the level of mathematical operators required. Instead, please have a look at this link which covers in detail, the reasons why the above stated argument is deeply flawed.

On Dembski's Law of Conservation of Information

Instead of spelling out the math mistakes here, I am going to provide three simples lessons about probability which you, JC, and Dembski sorely need.

1. Let us assume that we are playing a game of cards. Each player gets dealt a hand of 5 cards. Now we will assume that there are six players at this particular game. Therefore thirty cards will be dealt. The first card dealt is the Ace of Hearts. The chance of this is 1/52. The next card is the four of clubs. The chance of this card being dealt is 1/51. So the probability that the first two cards to be dealt are the Ace of Hearts AND the four of clubs is (1/52) x (1/51) or (1/2652). Now let us deal the rest of the cards. The full sequence having been dealt, we can say that the chance of that specific sequence being dealt is (1/52) x (1/51) x (1/50) etc. so that the chance of dealing the entire sequence is approximately 7x10^46. You would conclude that such an event would be extremely unlikely to occur. Yet it did occur. You just dealt the cards in that pattern. So the actual probability of that sequence is 1. Thus, there is no value in attempting to determine the probability of an event which has already occurred.
2. In this second scenario, we are going to deal all of the cards. The initial conditions are still the same, just that this time the chance of the final sequence being dealt is 1 in 8x10^67. In this scenario, we have again calculated the chances of this specific sequence of cards being dealt. However, since 52 cards were going to be dealt anyway, all that you have done is calculated the odds of one specific sequence. The odds of any sequence of 52 cards is again 1. This is particularly relevant since bogus probability calculations pop up in creationist claims about the chances of a protein or similar compound forming by chance. Leaving aside, for the moment, that chance is irrelevant to a process not governed by it, all that these creationists have done is calculate the probability of one specific mechanism between A and B.
3. A nice short, easy one to finish on. This is particularly relevant to Dembski since he makes this mistake time and again. Let's suppose that I give you a deck of cards and ask you to pick one at random. The chances of that card being, say, the eight of diamonds is 1/52. Now, instead let's suppose that I asked you to reach into a black box and pull out a card. What are the chances that that card is the eight of diamonds? The short answer is it's indeterminate. You, in this case, have no idea how many cards are in the box, which is a necessary piece of information. It could be 1/4 or 1/400. This is the mistake made by Dembski and others. You need to know what the available range of values to choose from is in order to determine probability. In the cases commonly quoted like the bacterial flagellum, this value range is not just unknown but unknowable given our current scientific understanding. So any calculation of its probability is meaningless.

robindch wrote: »

Boards supports LaTeX. For example, to produce this:

[latex]x=\frac{-b + \sqrt {b^2-4ac}}{2a}[/latex]

...you enter this:[HTML][latex]x=\frac{-b + \sqrt {b^2-4ac}}{2a}[/latex][/HTML]Though I wouldn't bother wasting time doing while refuting Dumbski, since he's still at "pushing colored beads around in the sand" stage.

Thanks, for that Robin. For the moment, though, Tellgren's essay serves my purposes well enough although it might be necessary if the essay proves too challenging.

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

I am disappoint with the pitiful number of thanks oldrnwisr has for that post.
I learned from it. And learning is cool! /nerd
Herd some cats in here and get the number up!

Partly I think it's due to the fact that only gluttons for punishment are still reading this train wreck of a thread.

robindch wrote: »

Wendy Wright is perhaps the stupidest human being I've seen.

She is a walking, bleating warning concerning the dangers of stupidity. She produces and revels in the vast clouds of stupid which exude from her every stupid pore and with every stupid syllable. And the wall of stupid she has erected around her stupid views is as stupidly impenetrable as it is stupidly high.

In fact, she takes the concept of stupid to a whole new level -- her stupid views are so eye-rollingly, forehead-slappingly, arse-sphincter-clenchingly, thigh-wallopingly stupid that the word "stupid" don't even begin to convey how stupid they are. I have eaten pancakes with more common sense than her views, while sitting on stones which are not as stupid.

I have absolutely no idea how Dawkins managed to remain unfazed in the face of such a continual barrage of, well, stupid.

Crea-TORRR.

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Crea-TORRR.

I just love the way Wendy purrs ...just before she metaphorically 'moves in for the (debating) kill'!!!:)

koth wrote: »

That's twice in a row you've distorted/lied about what was said in the videos.

Dawkins was commenting on a society that existed on the priniciple of "survival of the fittest". It had nothing to do with evolution, he was talking about a type of society.

I distorted nothing ... there is an inherent contradiction in Prof Dawkins claim that if Darwinian Evolution happened, that this would be to the Glory of God ... and then denouncing a Darwinian Society (based on Evolutionary Principles) as a thoroughly nasty place!!!!
Prof Dawkins point in the interview was that Evolution and 'survival of the fittest' is a nasty competitive system involving death and disease in nature ... but that this doesn't alter the fact that if it exists we should accept that it does ... but we shouldn't construct our societies along its nasty principles.

Prof Dawkins logic is correct that if Evolution exists, the fact that it is nasty shouldn't stop us accepting that it exists and doing all within our power to not model our societies on it ... where his logic fails is when he recommends that Theists should consider a nasty system like Darwinian Evolution to be to the glory of a loving God.

koth wrote: »

There is no contradiction. You are deliberately distorting the nature of the conversation in attempt to gain a point for your side of the discussion.

There may be no contradiction if you believe that God is nasty ... but remember that Prof Dawkins is recommending Darwinian Evolution as the glory of God to Christians ... while simultaneously accepting that Darwinian Evolution is a such nasty system ... that he personally wouldn't apply it to any society that he would want to live in.