02 Jan 15
Originally posted by Proper KnobNo I agree, I can be as nasty as you, more so if I'm in a bad mood.
What about -
'I urge you to start using you [sic] own brain and thinking things through'
'You are blind and will remain so'
Do you think those quotes from you are a little belittling and petty?
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by KellyJayYes, yes. Have you considered how natural selection influences (directs, if you like) which mutations are likely to remain in the population? No one is disputing that harmful mutations can occur.
I've read several links.
The point I have been making is still valid as far as I'm concern.
If it can mutate once and the mutations are not being directed it can either
go back or change into something else later. Nothing is safe.
02 Jan 15
4 edits
Originally posted by KellyJayLenski, here we go, with an analogy.
No I accused you of jumping into a discussion and attempt to change it into
something no one was talking about that had nothing to do with what we
were discussing.
I read up on Lenski, trying to get some answers from you. NOT accusing
you of anything I've only just started, and I have every faith in you that
you'll answer as you can.
Imagine the ecoli is living in a house. There is food in the house, so the ecoli can survive and reproduce. But there is also a pantry with more food inside it, way more food than there is in the house normally. The only problem, is that the door is locked and the ecoli doesn't have a key. To get the key to open the door requires the ecoli to undergo a point mutation, it's DNA needs to change, or in other terms a 'beneficial mutation' needs occur.
At the start of the experiment Lenski changed the DNA of 6 batches of the ecoli so they had the key to the door and could open the pantry. The other 6 batches remained in their natural state with no key and no access to the pantry.
What happened was that over the course of the experiment, 30,000 or so generations in, one particular strain of ecoli which didn't have the key managed to open the door to the pantry. Subsequently as a result of this the team were able to go back through the ancestral strains of this particular strain and examine it's genome to find out how exactly it managed to open the door to the pantry. In short, it was a series beneficial mutations guided by natural selection.
This is a 5 part series looking at what happened in much more detail.
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-1
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by Proper KnobI'm trying to follow along, Lenski changed the DNA and later it was useful?
Lenski, here we go, with an analogy.
Imagine the ecoli is living in a house. There is food in the house, so the ecoli can survive and reproduce. But there is also a pantry with more food inside it, way more food than there is in the house normally. The only problem, is that the door is locked and the ecoli doesn't have a key. To get the key to open th ...[text shortened]... ed in much more detail.
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-1
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by KellyJayThere are about 20,000 genes and over 3 million base pairs in the human genome [1]. Human genomes vary by about 0.1% between individuals. There's a 4% difference between us and bonobos. If the rate of mutation were high enough that a point mutation had a good chance of being reversed by the same random process that created the mutation in the first place then we'd get vast numbers of mutations all along the genome every generation and progeny would effectively be different species from their parents.
So you are saying if it is so high life couldn't happen, and we know that is
not true because life happen?
Any mutation is a dangerous thing for the host cell. Something like 2/3 of human pregnancies spontaneously terminate at the ball-of-cells stage because of biochemical incompatibilities [2]. The bulk of mutations are deleterious, so the rate of mutation has to be low enough that organisms can exist at all.
This discussion (or at least the part of it I've read 😛) seems to have focused on asexual reproduction. Sex is a game changer as far as evolution is concerned since the presence of two copies of each chromosome means that faulty genes can be tolerated in one chromosome as it's counterpart in the other chromosome can do all the work. Meiosis becomes important as different combinations of the genes can be tried with each generation. All multi-cellular organisms (as far as I know) are sexually reproducing, so I don't think a discussion of the potential for evolution to explain the diversity of life currently abounding can ignore it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome
[2] I can't remember where I heard this so you're entitled to dispute it.
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02 Jan 15
Originally posted by Proper KnobQuestion: was strain exposed to citrate in an aerobic condition (the "locked up food" ) prior to and during its "useful" change?
No. That Lenski changed the DNA is irrelevant.
The change occurred in a strain which Lenski hadn't altered.
This gets to the point of whether the presence of citrate in an aerobic condition somehow "caused" the change. I would hypothesize that the heritable change would occur independently of whether the "food" was present. If not harmful, it would merely ride along and be fortuitously beneficial when a food it could eat showed up. Of course if it were present, the benefit (relative population growth) would begin to accrue immediately.
02 Jan 15
Thread title: The design argument
Maybe it would help if ID was being correctly defined. ID isn't a science, it's a tool that can be used by science. Falsification is also a tool used by science, and neither of those tools are foolproof. They can both be correctly or incorrectly applied. But even when they are both correctly applied there is no 100% guarantee of absolute proof.
When someone looks at a structure on Mars that looks like a human head, they might infer from this it was intelligently designed. But there really isn't enough information in that image for ID to draw that inference. What appear to be human heads on Mount Rushmore on the other hand do have enough information for ID to draw from it an inference of intelligent design.
Exceptions can be sited to 'disprove' either rule. The Raven Paradox (falsification) can be sited as an exception that disproves that rule, but as anyone knows the exception proves the rule rather than disproves it. And the same can be said about ID unless it's being incorrectly applied. An inference of design can used (incorrectly) by alien life theorists if they point to a fuzzy image of what appears to be a human head (human?) on Mars... (humans on Mars?). Some have even said it resembles the head of former senator Ted Kennedy...
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by lemon limeHow would it be used as a tool by science? How does one distinguish the designed from the non-designed? What empirical predictions does ID make?
Thread title: The design argument
Maybe it would help if ID was being correctly defined. ID isn't [b]a science, it's a tool that can be used by science. Falsification is also a tool used by science, and neither of those tools are foolproof. They can both be correctly or incorrectly applied. But even when they are both correctly applied there ...[text shortened]... .. (humans on Mars?). Some have even said it resembles the head of former senator Ted Kennedy...[/b]
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by KazetNagorraWhat empirical predictions does ID make?
How would it be used as a tool by science? How does one distinguish the designed from the non-designed? What empirical predictions does ID make?
What empirical predictions does falsification make?
I didn't mean to imply a correct definition of ID would be helpful for everyone. I was thinking more in terms of it being helpful within the context of this debate.
02 Jan 15
Originally posted by lemon limeID is a theory, it proponents claim it is a scientific theory, but what it is not is a generalised tool available to scientists. It's either right or wrong. If it is right then its results can be used, if it is wrong they can't. Falsification can never produce a proof of a theory, only disproof.
Thread title: The design argument
Maybe it would help if ID was being correctly defined. ID isn't [b]a science, it's a tool that can be used by science. Falsification is also a tool used by science, and neither of those tools are foolproof. They can both be correctly or incorrectly applied. But even when they are both correctly applied there ...[text shortened]... .. (humans on Mars?). Some have even said it resembles the head of former senator Ted Kennedy...[/b]
I don't see what the Raven Paradox has to say about the reliability of falsification methods. The main point is that a green apple intuitively should not be evidence that all ravens are black, but because that statement is the same as the claim that all non-black things are non-ravens it should be regarded as evidence. My feeling about that paradox is that an apple is clearly not a candidate raven and a methodical search would restrict itself to birds, so that an instance of a white bird which turned out to be a dove could count towards evidence that all ravens are black. In fact any scientific study would restrict itself to populations of ravens and look for hatchlings that were non-black. The problem with the paradox is that it utterly ignores scientific method.
03 Jan 15
1 edit
Originally posted by DeepThoughtI agree with you about the so called Raven Paradox, and imo it falls short of being a true paradox. It looks more like a lot of unnecessary hair splitting. I only mentioned it to illustrate how fault can found with anything if you try hard enough.
ID is a theory, it proponents claim it is a scientific theory, but what it is not is a generalised tool available to scientists. It's either right or wrong. If it is right then its results can be used, if it is wrong they can't. Falsification can never produce a proof of a theory, only disproof.
I don't see what the Raven Paradox has to say about t ...[text shortened]... that were non-black. The problem with the paradox is that it utterly ignores scientific method.
Falsification can never produce a proof of a theory, only disproof.
Again I agree, but can it say anything about what we know of the Cambrian explosion, and how there doesn't appear to be any sign of new life forms or gradual divergence during the pre-Cambrian? Or is falsification forbidden from being a part of an examination of the fossil record?
I'm not as familiar with how falsification might be applied as you are, but I do know that ID is something other than a theory. Falsification could be called a theory too if no one wanted to acknowledge it as a tool of science... but that wouldn't be true either.
Whether you know it or not you make intelligent design inferences every day. We all do because it's an unavoidable part of the human psyche. Without the ability to distinguish between a real banana and fake wax one how could you avoid always biting into a fake banana? Have you ever wondered why the images on Mount Rushmore appear to be intelligently designed? And by the way, saying you know they were doesn't answer that question.
Whether you want to acknowledge it as a tool of science or not is irrelevant, because it's already being used... it's used all the time by archaeologists and forensics to distinguish between man made and natural causes. So you can choose to ignore it, but you can't actually avoid using it... it's the elephant in the room that some choose to ignore and pretend isn't there.