We had a 5000 comment discussion on it a TSZ comparing it to common design. I agree almost everyone believes some common descent is real the debate is how much. You and I had an interesting discussion there whether Mac computers formed a nested hierarchy.
This is problematic as neither is a good candidates for generating functional information. Evolution required mountains of FI. Without a tested mechanism to generate FI do you really have a coherent theory?
Add to this a minority group of scientists support ID or conscious intelligence as a mechanism and some scientists support Natural genetic engineering as a mechanism.
I agreed with you that hierarchies are human constructs. Nevertheless, the phylogenetic tree falls into place very easily, and fits several independent ways of organizing a tree.
Many critics of Darwinism still agree with common descent – for example Behe and Denton.
Sorry, but those “functional information” arguments are sleight of hand parlor tricks.
Evolution itself could be viewed as natural genetic engineering. I’m not opposed to the idea that intelligence is involved. But I disagree with the insistence that it must be conscious intelligence. The behavior of biological populations is already intelligence enough.
From my perspective, information is abstract. To say that there is information in biological systems, is to say that we ascribe information to those systems.
The ID proponents seem to take information to be a natural kind. That already seems dubious. They want to argue about the source of new information. But when I look at how they apply their arguments, they are really talking about what is already well explained, though in other terms, within evolutionary biology. So I see it as introducing unnecessary terminology in order to obfuscate.
Evidence this will work? 2 million years of human evolution in Lenski experiment with enormous populations and no new enzymes. This is a failed hypothesis.
The problem is there is no evidence that these mechanisms alone can organize DNA to create function in either enzymes or anything else.
Why in world would sustainable random changes to a long functional sequence cause anything good on its own whatever the environment. This is a failed concept without any support.
This is the right math. The problem is that bacterial genetics and genomes and selection is very little like human evolution. You are making a category error.
Joshua,
If you reject the scientific aspect of IDs claims… this continued slogging about on of PROVING vs. DISPROVING the ID position… would seem to work against your efforts to seek trust.
Shouldn’t you set up a folder for threads on this ID dispute and allow the rest of your folders to ficus on the issue of Genealogical Adam?
Every time you start making progress on GA, all someone has to de-rail those discussions is start posting: “But what about ID?”
In the world of Christians, the ID claims are either already accepted … or only relevant to those battling out the topic in the realm of politics.
I agree with George here, you are giving ID too much credibility. Look at its track record. It has always been creationism (religion) disguised as science. Now, it seems that some members of DI are coming out and saying that ID is a form of Christian creationism. Well that is been known since Dover and the Wedge Document. But still ID is not science. And to elevate it to that level, is taking away from the discussion of what is factual and real evolutionary science.
A genetic change can allow the organism to survive – perhaps even thrive – in a slightly different niche. But if you only examine the original population, you won’t notice that. Most of the change will only be visible when you look at the population that has split off to exploit that slightly different niche.
The problem is the change is to a sequence. A highly structured order of nucleotides which function is much smaller the total sequence space by any known measurement. Basic statistics is going to hurt you unless the change is deterministic.