“Fish” is a paraphyletic group while Sarcopterygii is monophyletic. This is often the case with colloquial and scientific groupings.
We already have other evidence which firmly establishes common ancestry between humans and fish, such as all of the transitional fossils and the genetic evidence. While we may not know every tiny detail of how every feature evolved in every lineage, there is still more than enough evidence to draw a conclusion.
Inferences are based on observations.
“Normative” is apparently Sal’s word of the day.
You’re accepted in the elite 10% to the extent you’ve supported my conclusions. You’re the best John Harshman, and I have no hesitation to let you teach classes in my school.
That may sound surprising, but I think I have responsibility to let college level students hear the other side. I don’t want them ever saying, “Sal, what you taught was a lie by omission.” It’s surprising that a reaction I get for both ex-creationists and ex-Darwinists was, “I was angry, I felt like I was lied to.” I hear that the most from ex-Creationists, however on occasion I’ve heard that from ex-Darwinists like Michael Behe and others.
Giving access to the other side’s view is a core value of mine an educational (not Church) setting. In a church, the members have already agreed to gather because they share the same viewpoint. I don’t run schools like churches.
So, seriously, if you want to raise a scholarly objection, I welcome it in a university context.
You have a school?
First you’re going to have to explain what your claims are before I can object to them.
I teach a creation forum to 13,000 member evangelical megachurch. I will promote an online component that is a university format where opposing views can be heard and are welcome if they meet reasonable standards. Because of your scholarly background you immediately qualify for what I call “reasonable standards.” Say what you want. I trust your integrity and conscience. People can disagree, and one party can surely be mistaken, but I respect someone who has studied the matter in detail and speaks from thier conscience what they believe to be true – it doesn’t mean that they’re right, but if I feel they believe they are right, and are making honest mistakes, I let them speak. If however, I get wind they know what they say is false, and actively concoct something they KNOW is false, they will have to get tossed. But that situation is rare…
The online component will be “the school” that I mention, lectures and essay will be linked to. Right now it is informal, and I’m working on making it a little more formal and expanding out the online. Of course, I can’t pay you, since I don’t charge the students, and even if I did, I’d use the money to cover admin and marketing fees, since I would insist a lot of content would be Creative Common License. If you want to charge a fee for students to take your classes, I might be able to work something out, but you may or may not get more of an audience. That is your choice. You could offer freebies, and then charge for other content.
I think in the 2019-2020 year, I expect about 40 registrants. It will be a small school for starters. Maybe that’s too small for you to trifle with, but you’re invited nonetheless. You strike me as someone with a conscience, and I value that immensely.
First you’re going to have to explain what your claims are before I can object to them.
When I get them up online, I’ll alert you somehow. Right now, the material is disorganized and sitting around in fragments. I’ll have something more cohesive and modularized.
So is a tornado.
Think about it. Countless bajillions of water molecules and other constituents can each have many, many different orientations and relationships with other molecules, but somehow they end up working with the other bajillions of molecules to form a large, organized, irreducible complex system. The total number of possible interactions of all these molecules exceed the capabilities of most calculators, but somehow they find the precise combination to create these unique systems. Like the DNA in Tan’s “lesson”, tornadoes are statistical miracles.
The reason Random Brownian motion is remediated is the organization of the cell that allows it to be useful much like a windmill, wind turbine or even sailing ships are able to utilize random wind currents to useful ends (like manufacture and/or transportation).
But those designs in cells require highly specialized and unlikely designs to utilize or remdiate the othewise damaging effects of random Brownian Motion. On example is Zinc Finger proteins that utilize Random Brownian motion to bump it around till it hits something with appropriate binding specificity and affinity.
EDIT: 10:32 EST some word choice
Please alert me by posting your actual claims here, not by giving me a link to some web site.
I’ll try, but some of the material is like 10-minutes long and in videos, and the text 1-3 pages at least. I might summarize it. I’ll try my best. I want your feed back for all the viewers to see. And to the extent I think you are right, I’ll make an appropriate retraction. I wouldn’t want to teach falsehood in class. Thanks for you willingness to engage the issues.
I don’t understand this argument. Do we invite Holocaust deniers into history classes? Do we invite flat Earthers into Earth Science classes? Do we invite alchemists into chemistry classes? Do we invite homeopathy experts into medical schools?
It is the responsibility of universities to teach good science, not appease a tiny population of people who believe in poorly supported or outright falsified scientific ideas.
Every arrangement of matter is highly unlikely. That’s the part you don’t seem to understand.
12 posts were split to a new topic: Is Evolutionary Biology a “Soft” Science?
Every arrangement of matter is highly unlikely.
I didn’t say otherwise.
That’s the part you don’t seem to understand.
No, I’m afraid your understanding of statistics and statistical mechanical concepts is really BAD. The law of large numbers shows some macrostates are more likely than other macrostates (borrowing language from statistical mechanics) because some macrostates can be achived by a plentitude of microstates, whereas some macrostates are achivieved by a few or even one microstate. Such is the case of amino acid homochirality in forming Alpha helices which are necessary for stable and usable protein structures.
I would teach your characterization to the students but it’s wrong. But, well if you want me to pass on your comments to them, I will request you stop being anonymous.
EDIT: changed micro to macro, I can’t see my entire comment in the preview
The problem is that you pretend as if what does evolve is the only macrostate that could evolve. This is where your probabilities go astray. It is the Sharpshooter fallacy.
Plenty of macrostates could evolve just as a set of 500 fair coins could evolve to 100% heads or 100% tails, but achieving those macrostates is highly improbable.
If you came across a table of fair coins 100% heads, you would not use the argument that there are many possible macrostates (501 to be exact, in terms of percent heads), therefore we should not view the 100% heads macrosate as evidence of non-random behavior.
The bionomial distribution will define the probability of each macrostate, and 100% heads is astronomically remote, wherease approximate 50% heads (plus or minus 3 standard deviations) is pretty accessible.
@stcordova, you did not address the issue I raise - that tornadoes are what you are calling statistical miracles.
Also, your understanding go the physical chemistry in living cells, and of the ways ZFPs work, is pretty poor, IMO. You seem be confusing diffusion with Brownian motion. That doesn’t make any sense to me.
When you have biological reproduction, they are nearly guaranteed. You will be guaranteed an extremely unlike sequence of heads and tails by the very act of flipping a coin 500 times.
Can you show us a single mutation that separates humans and other ape species that meets the kind of probabilities you are talking about? Can you show us a single example of a mutation that has happened between generations that rises to the level of improbability that you are talking about?
Thanks for your reply, however, see here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/brownian-diffusion
Particle diffusion (Brownian motion) occurs because particles suspended in a liquid or gas are bombarded by the molecules in these fluids causing the particles to move in a random fashion
I think your comment is in error.
When you have biological reproduction, they are nearly guaranteed.
That’s because of the architecture of the cell that overcomes the natural tendency (as in Gibbs free energy) for the heterochiral/racemic state through a process of metabolism and highly specific construction of the cell. Without a cell, the chances of random behavior are unlikely to be remediated.
A robot can get 100% fair coins heads because it has energy and machinery to overcome the effects of random flips. The machinery of the cell does a lot of NET re-orientation of molecules that would otherwise be randomly oriented. One example in biology is the metabolic pathway in plants that can digest D-amino acids created by bacterial soil. But that is not a random pathway, that is a by a complex biochemical machine.
ZFPs are not particles.
The last slide from this chemistry class at Stanford treat proteins in terms of Browian motion:
and
Protein association events are ubiquitous in biological sys- sional encounter (3). The determination of whether a
tems. Some protein associations and subsequent responses are reaction or response is diffusion controlled is clearly diffusion controlled in vivo. Hence, it is important to be able to crucial to protein design studies. compute bimolecular diffusional association rates for proteins. Recently, there has been quite a dramatic increase The Brownian dynamics simulation methodology may be used to in the number of experimental measurements of the simulate protein–protein encounter, compute association rates, kinetics of protein–protein interactions (4). This is in and examine their dependence on protein mutation and the na- part due to the recent availability of instruments based ture of the physical environment (e.g., as a function of ionic on surface plasmon resonance (4, 5), which, in princi- strength or viscosity).