Not there Bill. That’s you trying to make the evidence fit your already decided upon conclusion.
Nope, not how it works. Explanations need to be falsifiable.
Subjective opinions make for poor evidence. Appearance of design is a subjective opinion, not an empirical and objective measure.
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If you can show matter creating the functional information we observe you falsify it as an immediate conclusion for the origin and evolution in life. This is what science should be doing. Whats interesting is the wall we are hitting where no intermediate explanation is in sight.
How does that disprove your omnipotent Deity using its unlimited power to secretly manipulate the matter?
Sorry Bill but your supernatural claims are not falsifiable and not scientific.
Ever since my ninth-grade gym class, I have always believed that there are exactly 2 designers for each human.
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Hi John,
You encouraged readers to look at some actual evidence instead of just haggling. It seems like a good idea to me, but I don’t know enough about Group I catalytic introns to understand how they relate to the issue being discussed. Could you elaborate for a n00b like me?
Thanks,
Chris
Sure. Since RNAs can splice themselves, Bill’s point is moot. Even if most modern RNA splicing is mediated by proteins, that could easily have been layered on later, with the RNAs losing their initial catalytic ability.
Does that help?
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This is a pretty good article on the origin of the spliceosome from self-splicing introns:
Vosseberg J, Snel B. Domestication of self-splicing introns during eukaryogenesis: the rise of the complex spliceosomal machinery. Biol Direct. 2017 Dec 1;12(1):30. DOI:10.1186/s13062-017-0201-6
There are many interesting references given in that article also, for example on spliceosomal diversity. There are simple protozoan parasites known with as few as 27 introns in their entire genomes, and highly simplified spliceosomes with only ~35 proteins. It is pretty clear that the spliceosome has in fact evolved to become more complex in some lineages, having grown from a conserved core of about 60 proteins in the last eukaryotic common ancestor, to about 100 proteins in yeast, and over 200 proteins in mammals. While in other lineages like protozoan parasites it has shrunk in terms of the number of proteins and RNAs.
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You can’t measure functional information, so that is not a falsification.
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I think the correct statement is that we cannot measure it accurately at this point. @Art has been writing since 2004 about scientists trying to empirically measure it in specific proteins. As we get more knowledge of how the cell functions the accuracy of that measurement will improve. The challenge is finding a mechanism that can produce it in large quantities.
High levels of preservation beyond what is expected by neutral mutations indicates functional constraint.
That’s a distinction without a difference. You can’t measure functional information, so you need a new falsification.
As already explained, that is easily achieved through negative selection.
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This is a false statement. You are leading with you chin making statements based on ignorance.
Why is negative selection occurring?
My irony meter just exploded.
I started a thread on that very subject. Perhaps you could make some comments over there.
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The problem T is you are trying to prove a negative with your statement. This is a classic creationist mistake. Saying it is difficult to measure accurately is sufficient.
That’s your whole argument, that natural mechanisms can not produce functional information, therefore design.
No it is not my argument. My argument is the mechanisms of matter are not powerful enough to explain what we are observing where mind can explain it. I watched people try to model matter as an adequate mechanism over the last 30 years and so far there is no sufficient mechanism to support this hypothesis. I am not saying it is impossible I am simply saying it has not been demonstrated to date.
That is a negative argument you have yet to support.
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I have supported it. You don’t have a model that can build a complex sequence without the sequence as the target. Dawkins needed a target to build a sequence containing about 90 bits of functional information.
Yet another bare assertion with no evidence to support it.
Argument from ignorance and a shift in the burden of proof.
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