A Comprehensive Theory of Intelligent Design

Conversation
42

I specifically said that the fourth form of design flaws comprises sinister designs, in which organisms are designed in a way that seem to only bring harm and degeneration upon that organism or to other organisms. GULO was not designed only to bring harm NOR was it originally designed to bring harm.

Like what?

NO, I was just responding to your question:

Another important problem for your test is that it operates on the premise that the designer did not use common descent to generate all extant biodiversity, so we have to ask how you know that premise is true?

No, it has everything to do with it. Just read the next thing…

According to Gert Korthof in his book Why Intelligent Design Fails,

"Common descent of life means that all life on Earth is physically, historically, and genetically connected. Common descent of life means that life is one unbroken chain of ancestors and descendants. Common descent of life means that every organism inherited all its genes from the previous generation (with slight modifications). And that includes irreducibly complex systems. Every supernatural intervention is a violation of common descent, because it means that a new irreducibly complex system in the first individual showing it was not inherited from its parents. It would be unjustified to say, ‘I inherited all my chromosomes from my parents, except an irreducibly complex system on chromosome X, which has a supernatural origin.’

Common Descent: It’s All or Nothing (updated chapter) (wasdarwinwrong.com)

Addressed above

Hubert P. Yockey:

“It is important to understand that we are not reasoning by analogy. The sequence hypothesis [that the exact order of symbols records the information] applies directly to the protein and the genetic text as well as to written language and therefore the treatment is mathematically identical.”

Self Organization Origin of Life Scenarios and Information Theory, Journal of Theoretical Biology , Vol. 91 (1):16

Now, somebody on here named Roy brought up this quote from another source and accused me of misrepresented him, as a result:

FTE is wrong: “the mathematical treatment of these biological message texts” is NOT “identical to that of human written language.”

However, he is the one that actually misrepresented or misinterpreted him (or maybe he misinterpreted my argument) because Hubert clarified what he meant by this and it does not negate what I said or my argument. The statement on page 15 of FTE’s brief that,

"This suggested how to quantify the patterns characteristic of intelligence with a vastly greater precision and level of confidence than before,” is wrong for the following reasons:

  1. Information theory measures information completely without regard to meaning when
    it is applied to language and completely without regard to specificity when it is applied to
    proteins.

  2. Only the measurement of information in the genome and the transcription of
    information from DNA to RNA to protein are mathematically identical to the
    measurement of information and the transcription of written language.

  3. In information theory, measurement and transcription have nothing to do with meaning
    or “patterns of intelligence.”

The number 2 is what I was referring to.

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That’s not how it went down. As I was researching the idea of whether God can truly be a scientific hypothesis awhile ago, I wrote a paper and have not really done much with it academically speaking ever since. I just recently started to get serious about it again. As far as the misquote is concerned, I will just tell you what I told Michael. I am not worried about whether I make mistakes or not but I care about getting the mistakes right, which was why I decided not to fully proofread my entire article before I sent it here. Instead, I was ultimately more focused on trying to make a larger point, as a NON-expert, to get expert advice on the issues that are fundamental to my overall case.

My real expertise is an apologetics. I know how to defend and make the case for God from a scientific standpoint, BUT I only know enough to make the overall case.

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Incoherent. It isn’t just that it’s not specific enough. Is a “sequencing difference” different from a sequence difference? How are differences “based on how they are expressed”? How can non-coding sequences be “expressed in the regulatory genes”?

I have no clue about what this means.

All vestigial features in all species? But at least that one is coherent.

No clue about this one either.

That one has actually been shown wrong, so it isn’t clear why you put it in.

Not a term I know. Could you explain?

Also, you need to explain why any of these are predictions of common design as opposed to common descent.

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45

We don’t have GULO, we have GULOP and you explicitly said that finding design flaws in today’s organisms would falsify your common design hypothesis. GULOP is a design flaw, therefore your hypothesis is falsified.

That means you did not understand my comment and went ahead to create a strawman version of my argument. The designer could have created the first cells, then allowed them to evolve, producing all extant biodiversity from those earliest cells. That’s what I meant and it had nothing to do with the origin of life or viruses. Your common design model precludes this possibility, but how do you know the designer didn’t do this?

No, you conflated common descent with natural selection. Read your own words:

Common descent is a consequence of speciation, and speciation may occur with or without natural selection.

I’d really advise you get acquainted with basic evolutionary biology to prevent you from making this sort of mistakes.

You didn’t address anything. You are still deeply confused.

I tire of constantly reminding you of your claims. This is what you said:

That part I boldened is the baseless assertion. How do you know we are made in the image of God?

Are ribosomes made in the image of God, since they recognize the digital information stored in the codons in the mRNA transcripts that bind to them.

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46

You need to learn how to meet the standards of coherent English sentences before worrying about the standards of science. Every single one of those “predictions” falls into the category of Not Even Wrong.

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47

I don’t see how that would justify using hearsay to cite a document you hadn’t read.

Again, I don’t see how citing a document via hearsay that you hadn’t read can credibly be described as a mistake that could be corrected by proofreading.

Is using hearsay to cite (and blatantly misrepresent) a paper you’ve never read considered to be ethical in apologetics? I would think that those ethical considerations would apply to all fields.

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48

Actually, I never said this. I just copy and pasted something that was said or suggested by other researchers.

If we find evidence of E.coli evolving biochemical machinery to metabolize citrate within Lenski’s experiment, then this would falsify it because it would show how evolution could have been an unguided process.

No, it has everything to do with the origin of life or viruses to explain my point as to why this designer did not use a Universal common descent model. Life or viruses are irreducibly complex and require divine intervention according to experiments. More importantly, viruses cannot propagate without a host or intelligence NOR can it force the host to evolve further without an intelligence. For these reasons, it would require the designer to create more viruses to create bacteria from clay surfaces within the deep-sea vents AND force those bacteria to evolve further from other created viruses. As a result, this would require multiple origins.

No, you are just misrepresenting what I was ultimately trying to convey with my argument. Again, I was referring to UNIVERSAL common descent. The common design model includes a limited version of common descent, as I told you before.

I specifically said, that we SEEM to be uniquely made in the image of this designer. I made this inference based on previous experiments and observations, which I laid out at the start of this topic.

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Here is what I meant…

Paraphrasing: The placement of an optic nerve in the human eye has been argued to be flawed when compared to that in the octopus eye because it results in a minor blind spot in our visual field, which does not occur in the octopus eye. However, the different placement of the optic nerve in humans versus cephalopods is actually because of the need for a larger supply of high-acuity vision in warm-blooded animals (Kröger & Biehlmaier, 2009).

“Surprisingly at first sight, the retinal neurons are located between the lens and the light-sensitive parts of the photoreceptors. The tissue scatters some light, which leads to loss of light and image blur. The inverted retina has, therefore, long been regarded as inferior. Here, we provide evidence that the inverted retina actually is a superior space-saving solution, especially in small eyes. The inverted retina has most likely facilitated the evolution of image-forming eyes in vertebrates, and it still benefits especially small and highly visual species.”

Space-saving advantage of an inverted retina - ScienceDirect

E coli bacteria did not evolve biochemical machinery to metabolize citrate within Lenski’s experiment but already had that instilled within those organisms.

Paraphrasing:

In animals, injury can lead to long-lasting distress, whereby frequent exposure to pain-producing stimuli causes a progressively amplified response well after the injury has healed. This phenomenon has been referred to as “nociceptive sensitization.” Biomedical researchers have long viewed nociceptive sensitization as maladaptive because, in humans, it is associated with anxiety (Crook et al., 2014). However, Crook et al. (2014) studied nociceptive sensitizations in squids and concluded that heightened sensitivity to pain helps these creatures evade predation. Squids are an outstanding laboratory model because they undertake a precise sequence of defensive behaviors when threatened by a predator. For instance, when endangered, squids fully recovered from a previous injury reacted sooner than those that had not been injured. Conversely, the previously injured squids exhibited a slower response to predatory threats when the scientists used anesthetic to block the pain immediately after injury, thus preventing nociceptive sensitization. Since nociceptive sensitization is pervasive, it likely serves a similar benefit among other animals, as well. Thus, these results indicate that pain (or suffering) plays a key role in enhancing the survival of animals following an injury and recovery.

Nociceptive sensitization reduces predation risk - PubMed (nih.gov)

I explained this already. The theory suggests that a Universal common designer formed the first life and the anatomical structures of multicellular life separately from the physical-chemical world and continues to maintain these structures by ensuring that the organism’s distinctive shape, control, arrangement of body parts, DNA, etc. generate traits that fit the environments it occupies to survive, reproduce, and fill the biosphere.

This means that the functional systems as a whole between organisms AND how you compare these fully functional systems between organisms to their respective environments would provide two very key differences between common design and common descent.

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I suspect that most of us would agree that this is a major problem with your approach.

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51

That isn’t an explanation of what you meant, which is still opaque. It’s unclear how your example of camera eyes relates to your claim, whatever it may be. Have you actually read Kröger & Biehlmaier 2009 or did you just look at the abstract?

What biochemical machinery are you referring to? Bacteria that couldn’t metabolize citrate gained that ability. Right?

Thanks. But I don’t see what that has to do with common descent vs. separate creation.

No, you just think you did. As I have mentioned previously, what you write is frequently gibberish that communicates nothing to the reader, even though it might sound just fine inside your head. But you already know what you mean, so you aren’t a good test of clarity. And in fact what follows is a fine example of just that sort of gibberish:

Believe me that there was nothing intelligible in either of those paragraphs.

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52

You can’t possibly know whether or not you (or I) misinterpreted Yockey, because you haven’t read the article you’re ‘quoting’ from. You are lying about your sources yet again.

You aren’t quoting from Yockey’s paper. You’re quoting from Charles Thaxton’s book chapter* that quote(mine)s Yockey’s paper, or from some later creationist/ID article that copied directly or indirectly from Thaxton’s book.

Why should anyone care what you say about Yockey’s work when it’s obvious that you haven’t actually read the paper you’re citing?

*This is from 2002, and is the earliest of this form of the quote that I can find **. It’s possible, but unlikely, that @Meerkat_SK5 is actually quoting from an earlier creationist/ID work that Thaxton copied.

** I admit I haven’t searched very hard. I can’t justify the effort.

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53

Hubert Yockey’s daughter posted on the Panda’s Thumb website shortly after he died to confirm her father was not an advocate of “Intelligent Design” and was misrepresented. As the PT archives are currently unsearchable for comments I can’t support my memory. @Joe_Felsenstein may have information on progress on that score.

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54

How delightful to see Yockey’s actual thoughts uncorrupted by quoteminers.

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Past posts at Panda’s Thumb are available back to the beginning, see the Archives tab on the front page of the site. Search capabilities do not work there, alas. You may be able to find posts (as opposed to comments) by doing a Google search or the equivalent, then using that to locate the post using its date and/or author. Panda’s Thumb is also archived at The Wayback Machine at archive.org.

Comments are another matter. The Disqus system used at PT for comments has comments back to March, 2016, when PT moved to using Github. Some comments on posts before that are archived at The Wayback Machine, generally the first and the last page of comments on a post. All the other earlier comments were saved, so they still exist, and are waiting for us to do the work of making them available through the PT Disqus commenting machinery.

I don’t know about Cynthia Yockey’s having posted at PT, but I do notice a statement she wrote about her father and Intelligent Design, on his website hubertpyockey.com

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56

I’m sorry but it appears you don’t really know what a scientific model is, and I’m afraid going forward appears like a waste of time. I’ll just highlight this funny oddity of your “universal common designer predictions”:

One has to wonder why a model of universal common design should predict what can or can’t evolve.

As opposed to conditions on the abyssal plain, or the upper atmosphere?

Ffs.

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57

Upon reflection, I realized that you may be right. So I have decided to revamp almost everything in a more clear and concise way.

WHAT IS THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF EVOLUTION?

Evolution by Natural Selection predictions:

The examples of supposed design flaws we would expect from a mindless cause come in four forms:

The first form encompasses suboptimal designs, which are optimized for their purpose but not completely optimized to exercise their full potential in achieving that purpose when compared to similar designs that show better optimization. The second form comprises bad designs, which are considered poorly made to achieve their recognized purpose.

The fundamental difference between a bad and a suboptimal design is that bad designs are designs considered not constructed well for a particular goal, while suboptimal designs are those considered not constructed well enough compared to other organisms or environments.

The third form includes useless designs; designs without function, which probably had function in the past. Finally, the fourth form comprises sinister designs, in which organisms are designed in a way that seem to only bring harm and degeneration upon that organism or to other organisms.

Evolution by Divine Intelligence predictions:

  1. We should find function from vestigial features within species that would allow species to either survive predation, reproduce, fit different environments, or maintain function from design decay effects of viruses and cancerous mutations.

Examples: Evidence of non-random mutation rates suggests an evolutionary risk management strategy - PubMed (nih.gov)

Shanker Kalyana-Sundaram et al., “Expressed Pseudogenes in the Transcriptional Landscape of Human Cancers,” Cell 149 (June 22, 2012): 1622–34.

  1. We should find many more examples of designs that are optimized to fit a particular environment better than another organism from alleged suboptimal design flaws, which will show how certain species are ultimately unrelated types of organisms.

Examples: Space-saving advantage of an inverted retina - ScienceDirect

Evidence of a false thumb in a fossil carnivore clarifies the evolution of pandas - PubMed (nih.gov)

  1. We should find more trade-offs between conflicting design goals from allegedly bad designs.

Examples: An optimal bronchial tree may be dangerous | Nature

Glycolytic strategy as a tradeoff between energy yield and protein cost | PNAS

  1. We should find a positive function for sinister designs, in which organisms are designed in a way that seem to only bring harm and degeneration upon that organism or to other organisms.

Examples: Nociceptive sensitization reduces predation risk - PubMed (nih.gov)

Predator control of ecosystem nutrient dynamics - PubMed (nih.gov)

  1. We should find many more examples of Horizontal gene transfer happening among plants and animals.

Examples: Predators indirectly control vector-borne disease: linking predator-prey and host-pathogen models - PubMed (nih.gov)

The ecological significance of manipulative parasites - PubMed (nih.gov)

  1. We should find more examples of biological improvement among species after the extinction of other species rather than natural selection.

Examples: Elevated Extinction Rates as a Trigger for Diversification Rate Shifts: Early Amniotes as a Case Study | Scientific Reports (nature.com)

Mammalian phylogeny reveals recent diversification rate shifts (nih.gov)

  1. We should NOT find evidence of RNA molecules forming into RNA sequences within Miller-Urey experiments.

  2. We should NOT find evidence of E.coli evolving biochemical machinery to metabolize citrate within Lenski’s experiment.

  3. We should NOT find evidence of isolated groups evolving into distinct groups from natural selection within laboratory speciation experiments.[Not so sure about this prediction actually]

Remember, these are not competing models. Instead, its UNIVERSAL common design vs. common descent that is competing with each other.

Yes, but the positive change in that one population was merely a very modest alteration of a pre-existing function that only occurred because of the disruption of a repressor gene and its protein product rather than the generation of new genetic information

58

You make it seem like I’ve been deliberately doing this on a regular basis.

I can throw this right back at you. Is attacking somebody’s character rather than assuming the best intentions and giving people the benefit of the doubt considered to be ethical in molecular biologist?
There many users on this topic that have misrepresented my argument but I don’t assume they did intentionally. How come you are not worried about them?

Besides, I am not the one that supposedly misrepresented Jerry Coyne’s argument but Casey Luskin did. I say “supposedly” because it’s possible that he made mistake himself rather than intentionally misrepresented that argument.

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In what way? I’m using the singular. You seem to be avoiding addressing the ethical issue.

I’m not attacking your character in any way. I’m asking if you think that a particular ACTION is ethical. Your false claim that I am attacking your character and your attempt to throw this back at me suggests that you do not have the best intentions.

Because your arguments in this topic are incoherent and marred by things like this citation of document you never bothered to read, which turns out to be an egregious misrepresentation.

Note that there’s nothing personal in that observation.

Which you then misrepresented as your own. Was that ethical?

I don’t think “supposedly” is warranted given Luskin’s track record of misrepresentations.

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For instance, I am extremely new at peaceful science and have only created two topics that are only a week and a half a part. Before I came here, I was engaging atheists in the youtube comments for several years until I realized I needed to engage the right people and progress further.

My point is everything that you are objecting to is coming from those two topics I created and I can’t go back and edit despite being a newcomer.

I did not claim you did this but simply asked you a similar question. If you think it was making a false claim, then you are admitting that you made a false claim about me first when you say this…

I’m asking if you think that a particular ACTION is ethical.

My answer is No, BTW and I am willing to assume the same for you.

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Unfortunately, the last sentence of that article if ripe for quote mining by creationists.

Looking for the origin of life in physics and chemistry is like looking for the origin of literature in the chemistry of ink.

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