Stuu: If it looks like design
Then there was probably a designer.
Well you might know about some folks who have got themselves into trouble for making that claim. The Intelligent Design crowd, for example, decided there was irreducible complexity, and that was a sure-fire way to tell there is a designer. But they turned out to be wrong about the bacterial flagellum, their poster child example, and in the end were turfed out of court on their ears.
Should we believe that, because the puddle is this shape and the hole it fits into is exactly the same shape, therefore they were designed for one another? That is exactly the case with biological evolution: like the puddle, actually we are formed by the effects of our environment. It might look like design, but it's not. I know that doesn't account for the first cell, but it accounts for the illusion of design in species alive today.
To be honest, I don't really know what I mean when I write 'the illusion of design'. I guess it's a vague sense of something having the kind of complexity that could only be planned. But like so many other illusions that fool us, that's only my designer brain reading all sorts into it. But you seem to be claiming that you know what design should look like. You might like to share what you mean by this. Would it be more convincing to see examples that don't look designed but are? There is probably a lot of sculpture in that category!
Occam's razor, and all...
Goddidit, or a designer did it, is not a more efficient explanation. At this stage it's not
even an explanation. Creation scientists must still be working on that, right? In any case, the 'design' looks exactly like what you would expect from natural selection. It's a bodge job that works surprisingly well given how thrown-together it is.
Kludge is a good word for it. The Occam's razor explanation is natural selection, given the lack of any other explanation.
Stuu: It's not the optimum design
No one claimed that the design was optimum at the current time. The claim is that God designed things perfectly, and that He also provided a way to renew the biological systems so that they would run at or near 100% efficiency, but that since that time they have been subjected to thousands of years of decay and degradation.
The hummingbird's fantastic capacity for precisely-controlled flight doesn't make it look to me like there has been degradation. It looks more like 'keep doing that or die out'. Why are there still hummingbirds if there has been degradation? In other words, what predictions does this degradation principle make, and why does it not appear to apply to complex, finely-honed instinctive adaptations that are do-or-die for so many species?
Stuu: I'm sure you understand that Leviticus 11:13-19 is wrong: bats are not birds.
This is a historian's fallacy.
Not sure what you mean by that. Which historian got what wrong?
Easy [on octopus retinal wiring]. Because octopi live in the ocian, where it's generally darker, and are not subject to bright flashes of light on a regular basis, whereas humans are.
If you were to shine a flashlight into an octopus's eyes, it would be blinded for a few hours, but because such a thing will rarely happen, the fast healing is not needed. Do the same to a human, and while it may temporarily blind the person, within a few minutes, their eyes will have healed and they will be able to see again.
Octopi do not need that functionality, thus the different (and not "backwards" that evolutionists (such as yourself) like to claim it is) design between the two types of eyes.
So why do fish, living in the same environment as octopi, have retinas wired the same way as ours?
I don't know. Probably won't until I can ask God after I die or after I'm raptured, whichever comes first.
Ruptured? Oh, raptured. Maybe only some people will be ruptured.
I acknowledge your honesty about this. I have many
don't knows myself. I do wish others here would show the same honesty when they claim there is a good argument in 'common design'. There clearly isn't.
[The flood was all about] wiping the slate because man was so wicked.
Stuu: Did that not fix the problem?
Which problem? Please be more specific.
Given the scale of slaughter involved, what was actually solved by the flood? Was wickedness expunged from the face of the earth?
RE: the other thread, Do you think that we (RD and I and others) wouldn't be the same if you did so with the provided lists?
I don't know. I see you as victims of creationist rhetoric more than perpetrators. I think the nature of the Gish Gallop is a problem for creationists to consider as it is their psychological technique. I don't see much of real scientists using it to convince others, and that is all it is, a rhetorical psychological trick to sway those perhaps unable to see what is being laid on them
Could [the plantaris muscle] have any other possible function? or is that the only function that it has?
None of us can say categorically whether it has no function. But, since we are fans of Occam's razor, the most parsimonious explanation is that what is used in one closely related species for a known function is no longer needed for survival to reproduce. Actually, how else would you explain its apparent uselessness and what seems to be slow disappearance from our anatomy?
There you go question begging again. Please stop assuming that which you are trying to prove, or at least word your statements to that effect.
Are you asking for corroborating evidence that our ancestors were tree-dwelling?
Thank you for conceding my point, because "changed function" still fits my positioni of "changed or reduced function."
So how would a creationist be able to claim that something is an exquisite design, and all that kind of rhetoric one often gets, if some of the designs weren't for the original function? Are you saying that a degraded original designed function becomes a great design for something else? At that point the design concept can't mean anything, can it?
Since my position is that disease and degraded organs are the result of decay from perfection, and not part of the original design, this isn't an issue for me.
Well those who aren't born with an appendix would seem to be the lucky ones then, wouldn't they. Is it an evolutionary process by which some have escaped this example of decay? The model of a god building in a timebomb in most human abdomens is consistent with the model of a god building in flood chambers under the hydroplates. You know, just in case humans need killing.
Unreasonable hypothesis? If so, why?
You seem to keep forgetting that "disease" fits my position far better than it does yours.
Why do we have an immune system, if disease is the result of this decay you claim? Why would we need disease defences at all? Have we evolved that during the decay period?
Please show us the original spines that you seem to think you have that support your claim.
Look at the spine of any vertibrate that doesn't belong to an animal that stands upright for long periods of time, which is pretty much all the others.
"Synthetic materials" Think about that for a bit, and then explain why you think that such materials would easily be able to be created in a human (or other creature's) body.
Well, your challenge wasn't about using existing materials, it was about how we could design better. You seem to now be putting a limitation on how I might suggest that would be achieved. Would you also put a limitation on your god in the same way? Is your god capable of using what we currently call synthetic materials or not? Would you be critical of your god if it used cartilage for the rest of the body, but had enzymes that produced nylon or some similar polyamide for the discs of the lower back? I don't think you would. Why did your god not use nylon, as a possible better material? Is there a limitation on the materials your god can make in a biological context?
Are you asking for corroborating evidence that human ancestors didn't walk upright?
Maybe it's due to having sex and bearing children....Just a thought...
Do you imagine that rates of back problems differ in different groups of people, say celibates or those with no children, or both?
Natural selection CANNOT SEE, let alone choose, which genes are selected
Well there is a way for natural selection to 'see' genes past reproductive age, and that is since grandparents play an important role in raising children, and probably always have done, the genomes of successful offspring will contain the genes that allow grandparents to survive long enough to be helpful. I don't know how that would apply to back problems exactly.
And to top that off, I'll just quote David Gelertner: [T]o help create a brand new form of organism, a mutation must affect a gene that does its job early and controls the expression of other genes that come into play later on as the organism grows. But mutations to these early-acting "strategic" genes, which create the big body-plan changes required by macro-evolution, seem to be invariably fatal... Evidently there are a total of no examples in the literature of mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal.
He would be right about body plan changes. All animals who have ancestry in the tetrapods have four limbs. What those limbs have been adapted to do as legs, wings or flippers, or adapted down until they're externally invisible, is the rest of the story. And that would be why divergence into different body plans is very early, back in the Cambrian, and divergence from the first tetrapods (as my example goes) from about 390 million years ago happened in fish. Any 'attempt' by a modern mutation to give us an extra pair of arms would almost certainly not make it past even the first phase of foetal development. There are many things which evolution predicts will not happen, and fundamental body plan changes across the population is one of them. Can I ask what point you were wishing to make about this quote?
Rather, I'm simply acknowledging that actions have consequences. Adam and Eve's actions had far-reaching consequences.
Would an explanation of the biological impossibility of the Adam and Eve model, linked to evidence, be the kind of evidence (unambiguous as it is) which you said would cause you to change your mind? If yes, then I will lay it out for you.
* A (Thankfully) Picky Ovum
: She's preferentially receptive to gametes that offer good copies of its own corrupted reproductive genes... Research shows that if the egg (ovum) has corrupted copies of its reproductive genes, it attempts to select a sperm with
good copies of those degraded genes. So the ovum apparently can discern, out of about 20,000 genes scattered among billions of nucleotides, whether or not a sperm possesses a good version of one of its own damaged reproductive genes. (The genome modifies its expression in three dimensions based on the temporal needs of the cell or even of the entire organism. So RSR expects that the X and Y chromosomes will have manipulated their contents to insure that those relevant reproductive genes will not be deeply buried within but will be readily available on their surfaces.) This astounding ability to screen the sperm for good genes is consistent with other examples of extremely robust reproductive quality control design features. So the ovum prefers and admits the sperm with the healthier genes. Wow. Here at RSR we predict that this ability (like countless other biological functions and pieces of biological information) is not being controlled by genetic information within the DNA molecule itself but by some kind of "epigenetic" process. And, as California listener Randy Hayes often says, "How'd
that evolve?" For, after all, unlike with genetic mutations, textbook neo-Darwinism doesn't even
have a mechanism for explaining modifications to the exceedingly abundant and varied forms of non-genetic biological information.
Well, this is potentially an exciting discovery, I'm sure you agree. So, here's what we do: we wait for a published review, one that contains a metaanalysis of many such studies, weighted according to sample sizes and other quality measures, and see if the results are reproducible and statistically significant on a larger scale. We also expect, at that point, at least some plausible speculation on how this happens epigenetically through the effects of identified locations on the genome, or through histones or methylation, or expression of other coding sections.
So, since the first mouse testicular cancer study was done by the researcher, Joe Nadeau, in 2005, what reviews have been published in sperm selection by eggs since then?
An alternative response would be to join Mr. Enyart in dismissing the usual caution due to claims made in new papers and thrown that caution to the wind, using it as the basis for declaring it a problem for the neo-Darwinian synthesis. At least three problems with that. First, there are many possible epigenetic effects that might be related to this effect, if it is an effect at all, but Mr. Enyart has gone with one that has 'X and Y chromosomes' displaying 'reproductive genes' (whatever he means by that) 'on their surfaces'. The surface of what? What will be displayed? The actual genes themselves? Will it be the Y chromosome displayed on the surface of the egg? Or both the X and Y chromosome?! Hopefully anyone reading here paid enough attention to science in school to know what's wrong with that. If he had read about this work in any detail, he would have noted that the researchers don't have anything like this proposed mechanism in mind.
Second, how has Mr. Enyart established that this is a problem for neo-Darwinian science? Since there is a significant amount of heritable epigenetics that
is spelled out on the DNA, then obviously mutation is one mechanism proposed for altering it. There is no explanation for his strawman mechanism, because, well, it's not a possible mechanism.
Thirdly, if this is such a significant effect, what does Mr. Enyart think of the Mendelian basis of genetic counseling? Does he believe that geneticists should just tell prospective parents that their kids will be fine because the egg cell will know which sperms to avoid? This would be nonsense, because we know that very many genetic conditions conform pretty much perfectly to Mendelian inheritance. Perhaps Mr. Enyart means to include only certain genetic conditions. Which ones? He doesn't say.
And he calls this Real Science Radio? Hilarious.
That's a theology question. Pretty sure you're not interested in that discussion. I'm more than happy to tell you, but only if you say you're interested.
I am very interested. Please tell, or redirect me to a more relevant thread if it should be under discussion elsewhere.
Please quote me where I said the engineering was malicious. Otherwise retract your false claim.
Well, you will appreciate that it is not me who is claiming it is engineering we are observing except in the sense of what natural selection does, which on evidence is both amazing and slapdash, and there is no problem of evil for the non-believer: there is no intent in evolution so there is no way for it to be malicious. We can't expect consideration from something that doesn't have foresight.
Here, actually, I am supposing on your behalf and asking why the 'design' appears to be so poor and so brutal in so many respects. Does the design not reflect the attitude of the designer? Can you tell when something is designed by an engineer that cares?
Apparently some snakes even had legs.
Yes indeed. Are they the ones that escaped the crawling punishment? If so, how did they do that, and was it the flood that got them all in the end? Is it a forgiving god that insisted Noah invite snakes onboard the ark?
See above Gelertner quote.
Yes. He is right about what he wrote. I don't think, though, he he was writing on the topic of the accumulating power of natural selection to concentrate up the beneficial mutations and eliminate the deleterious ones.
Stuart
