Comment: Stepwise evolutionary pathways to ... flying pigs?

Ultimately it is of course irrelevant why Bechly and Behe believe whatever they do. Either a design-inference is well-justified or it is not, entirely independently of who believes in it and what convinced them.

The interesting point here is not what Bechly and Behe believe per se but how they get convince by ID arguments when they first were very confortable with the neodarwinian narrative.

Statistically, it seems that it is. But it’s not an absolute protection of course, especially when the religious belief only engages the intellect as opposed to the whole person with her heart and soul. I think I read that Bechly said that he belongs to the first category.

No, what’s interesting is the evidence and arguments. Not the underlying psychology of religious believers. The appeal to “look at how these guys were convinced” is what you do when you have bad evidence and arguments.

You always do this when your blatantly irrational appeals to “look at these gears/ATP synthase” inferences fail. It’s like you’re following some sort of script.

The laundry-list of conversion stories is as old as time. Anyone can do this. We could cite innumerable examples of believers who got convinced by the evidence for evolution to reach opposite conclusions from the one you seek. It’s a waste of time. It seems to function entirely as a cushion for people already in the fold.

While on that topic, are you going to return to the challenge I put to you?

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My appeal to look at how these guys were convinced was to show, in response to @Puck_Mendelssohn post at 162, that it is simply not true that ID proponents have necessarily always been committed to their current beliefs. That’s all. So it’s a complete mystery for me to understand where you got the idea that that’s what I do when I have bad evidence and arguments.

I disagree with you that the design inference for the gears in grasshopper or ATP synthase is irrational. And because I am very confidant of the validity of these inferences, I don’t need to do what you falsely imagine I do to make my case.

Just out of curiosity. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that the entirety of the universe with all of its minutia might in principle be, in fact, the product of design. In your opinion, what would be an instance where the design inference is irrational? What would a non-designed thing look like, if not like anything that actually exists in our universe?

It has been debunked how? Do you think Lynch debunked it?

The nested hierarchy claim only reveals a pattern of the data. It does not show how new genes are generated by reproduction.

A pattern uniquely predicted by the only candidate theory of biodiversity, which of course makes no claim about the origin of new genes. However: Are you willing to insist at this point still, that no experimentally confirmed mechanisms that produce novel genes have been presented to you?

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I have not gone through about half the Notch 2 sequences and have found 2 substitution in humans vs mice that are deleterious in humans.

There are 8 more where a different substitution was deleterious.

What do we do with this? If we look at human unique genes what do we compare them to?

Yes, I do.

As IDers are always explaining, you don’t have to know how something happens to know that it happens. The nested hierarchy shows that new genes appear (and old genes disappear) over time in a branching tree of descent. And again notice, which you ignored, that paralogous genes and pseudogenes show that it happens too; they even show some of how it happens.

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Mostly, we compare them to their paralogs in humans and/or their orthologs in other species. Either of these may be pseudogenes or other non-genic sequences.

He made the assumption that all protein substitutions are neutral. This is inconsistent with the data. He also ran the simulation with only 2 substitutions. Also keep in mind that the simulations were bacteria with very large populations and very fast reproductive rates. Lynch never addressed how this extrapolates to vertebrates as Behe did.

The nested hierarchy shows a pattern of gene similarities and differences that approximate a tree pattern. Appear and disappear is a not something the data is showing.

Nope. He in fact incorporated a rate of inactivating substitution into his model.

Nope. He tried a number of effective population sizes, the lowest being 10^3.

That’s exactly what it shows. And again, which you keep ignoring, there’s other evidence, including paralogous genes and pseudogenes.

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Presumably you mean “now” instead of “not.” If you are telling the truth, I’m impressed.

Let’s go through the specific evidence together. I am very skeptical your summary.

Again, let’s do them individually. I’m not sure why you think that’s something worth noting.

We go through them INDIVIDUALLY.

I’m still waiting for you to list 20 of these genes allegedly unique to humans. Make no assumptions, Bill.

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It’s not a claim.

Can you be more specific ie what is the rate he incorporated?

True but the rapid replication was obviously not varied.

Only if you assume common descent is true. If you take into account separate creation nothing appears and disappears.

The deleterious mutations in humans are on amino acid 814 I to V substitution and 858 T to S substitution. These same substitutions are on the mouse sequence. If you look at uniprot for notch 2 human you can get a table that shows substitutions that have been observed and those that are linked to health problems.

BTW I got this method from your discussion on myosin 7.

Let’s get an agreed tentative hypothesis here before we jump into this. I have done an initial search and have not yet found comparative paralogs.