First, I did not speak of invisible immaterial spirits. I spoke of minds producing books, “feigning no hypotheses” about the nature of such minds.
Second, cars do not write books, only intelligent agents do. You need to explain how they do that, if you are not a materialist (or even if you are, but I leave the latter to Rumraket and assign the non-materialist account to you).
The words of the book can be worked out entirely in the mind, and then set down physically later. So in a sense the book – the important part of the book, its contents – are the product of mind rather than matter. But of course I grant that a printed book requires physical actions. That is obvious. What you’re avoiding is that a rational mind can conceive of a book, and even of the exact order of words in the book, without ink or paper etc., whereas ink, paper, printing presses, etc., are completely powerless to produce any book without guidance by a mind.
I notice you have not directly answered my question about materialism. “Even if I am not a materialist…” is non-committal. Just to clarify, do you still deny being a materialist? And if so, does that mean that you allow the existence of realities that are not material? Can you give us some examples of such realities?
The point is that IDcreationists, including you, mislead by portraying evolution as happening to individual organisms.
Good grief. Genes are parts of huge molecules. Is that really the level of your knowledge?
Genes do not generate proteins. Genes are transcribed and translated.
Some genes don’t encode proteins, like the rRNAs that are peptidyl transferase, about which Meyer misinforms his readers. BTW, do you have an ID explanation for peptidyl transferase being a ribozyme? I’m pretty certain that none of the ID gurus have one either.
Yet peptidyl transferase is an incredibly important biological structure that is not a protein.
I don’t think that bacteria are our ancestors. Your continued misrepresentation of that is amazing. Do you just have some tape that plays in your head that supplies you with those stale straw men? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Phylogenetic_tree.svg
What about that figure suggests that scientists hypothesize that bacteria are the ancestors of animals?
Brains are made of matter. How can a mind exist without the physical substrate of a brain? Are you going to jump on Bill Cole’s “a disembodied mind did it!” bandwagon?
Yes, they are, and they are also composed of molecules – nucleotide bases etc. Have your forgotten your basic biochemistry?
Your usual pedantry, for which you were chastised many times by Christy on BioLogos. “Generate” is a word with a broad range of English meanings. You know what I meant. And I know what transcription and translation are – even taught them in a science and religion course, once, complete with diagrams.
Which does not falsify my claim that protein changes are necessary for evolution. So your mentioning this appears to be just to show off your technical knowledge, not to advance the discussion.
More pedantry. In fact, we had this discussion before, and John Harshman intervened to say that in a loose sense my expression was allowable. But some sort of one-celled creature; take your pick. It’s irrelevant to my point, so your attempt to catch me out in error on a non-essential point is your usual misdirection. You seem to have trouble carrying out a sustained discussion without descending into caviling, which slows things down. Maybe if you’d studied a bit more English and History and a bit less genetics, this would not be such a problem.
Of course that claim isn’t true; lots of evolution happens without protein changes. What you might mean is that the particular evolutionary changes you’re interested in (the camera eye, for example) require protein changes. But I would doubt even that. Almost all of eye evolution would likely be accounted for by changes to regulatory sequences, not proteins. You seem locked into a 1950s understanding of molecular evolution.
You missed the point, so I will have to explain in further detail. Please pay attention:
You claimed that, if I am not a materialist, I can “have no reason to deny that the molecules of the agents or their writing instruments are insufficient as explanations for the contents of the stories.”
This is a logical error on your part. Someone who is not a materialist can still conclude that no immaterial entities or processes are needed for an automobile to operate based on his knowledge of the structure and functioning of an automobile. This would not logically entail that he accept materialism.
Similarly, one can conclude that mental processes fully accounted for by material brain processes based on one’s understanding of neuroscience. Again, there is no logical entailment from this that one must therefore also accept materialism.
Does that help?
Good. Since it is now obvious to you, I should not have to explain further that the physical existence of the books of the New Testament cannot be fully accounted for by mental processes alone, and that one is as justified in demanding a molecule by molecule account of of these physical processes as you are in demanding one for the physical processes required for the evolution of the eye.
Both sets of data add to the case that the animals originated from the same source (common ancestor). The greater the similarity in gene types and protein types the higher the odds. If the DNA mutations are mostly synonymous then the genes with different sequences are coding for similar or possibly even the same protein sequences. This is additional evidence that the crocs came from the same ancestor.
I should have said “nitrogenous bases,” but, contrary to your assertion, the term “nucleotide base” is sometimes used, as, for example, in this online textbook:
“The hydrogen bonds between the complementary nucleotide bases (adenine-thymine; guanine-cytosine) form the rungs.”
And yes, I am aware of the tripartite structure of the nucleotide. But as always, your attempt to catch me out on a technical error is absurd, because the components of the nucleotides – the the sugar, the phosphate, the base – are also molecules. You have to understand molecules to understand genes.
Hypothetical. Nowhere near demonstrated. In any case, “the earliest steps” only accounts for a small part of evolution – are you saying that all the rest of evolution beyond the earliest steps could have taken place without a single protein change? Don’t be absurd.
I did not mean that every evolutionary change has to have an accompanying protein change. I meant that evolutionary change overall – from one-celled creatures up to all the variety we see – would not take place without protein changes. Sorry for the ambiguous phrasing.
Yes, I’m talking about major structural innovations in an organism.
“Would likely be” sounds speculative. Also, your remark seems to conflict with hundreds of angry claims by anti-ID writers that Axe etc. are completely wrong about how hard it is to get a new functional protein. Why would those anti-ID writers be so concerned to show that getting new functional proteins isn’t difficult, if they didn’t think that new functional proteins were important for evolution? You anti-ID folks need to get your act together, because you often argue in disharmony with each other.
This is not a subject you should be educating me on.
This is not a subject you should be educating me on, and you should consider whether I might have a point. No, similarity is not evidence of common descent. Nested hierarchy is evidence of common descent. We’ve been over this before, but you never learn anything.
No, doesn’t seem like that at all. That it is likely some structure owes mostly to regulatory evolution has no bearing on how “hard” it is to get a new functional protein.
I suspect we are not using the same definition of “materialism” and that we will get nowhere until we straighten it out. How do you define “materialism”?
I never suggested that the physical books (whether codex or scroll) could be accounted for by mental processes. It is the contents of the books that are accounted for by mental processes. What is not clear to me is whether you are asserting that a (hypothetically) complete physical/chemical understanding of the diet, the metabolism, the neurons in the brain, etc. of the Gospel writers can fully account for the the exact words that they wrote; that is, it is not clear to me whether you are asserting that in the end the Gospel writers had no choice regarding what they wrote, because it was all determined by material conditions. If you are asserting that, then I would call you a materialist. If you are not asserting that, then I would like to know what you are suggesting about how the Gospels (or for that matter, any books) were composed.
Obviously, if materialism (as I define it) is true, then it would be legitimate for you to ask me for a mechanistic account of why John wrote “In the beginning was the Word…” because I should in principle be able to account for his particular word-choices in terms of neuronal activity, and further back to things like metabolism and diet and so on. But if materialism (as I define it) is not true, then it would be impossible for me to give a mechanistic account of why John wrote what he wrote. So again, you have to define “materialism” for me. And don’t tell me to go look it up; I have scores of reference books here, and I’m aware that the term is used with different meanings, so I need your definition.
Then you’re wrong. There’s an extensive literature on changes in regulation producing changes in structure without any necessary changes in proteins. I see it’s already been pointed out that this has nothing to do with the ease of the evolution of new proteins. You only display your ignorance.
I have not denied that much may be owed to regulatory changes. But it’s extremely unlikely that no protein changes would be required over the vast course of macroevolution. And whatever your colleagues over in Scandinavia (or the Netherlands or wherever you live) might think, in North America the anti-ID lobby is very much invested in showing that protein evolution is relatively easy, and they would not argue that so vehemently if they did not think protein changes were necessary for evolution.
Yes, nobody here disputes that. But you said there seemed to be a conflict implied between these two statements:
Most molecular evolutionary change responsible for the evolution of eyes owes to regulatory changes, that is changes in the expression levels of genes.
Axe et al are wrong about how hard it is is to evolve a new functional protein.
There is no actual or implied conflict between those two statements.
I yield to your expertise however for the record I think you are being illogical in order to not add legitimacy to the creation position by getting them to agree with your hypothesis. I believe the additional data may help your conclusion.
From the creation perspective Crocs may come from the same created kind and therefor share a common ancestor.
I think the science will become a lot more interesting when both sides can work together to establish common ground. There is a lot of room for common ground if you put aside the ideological implications.