Kitzmiller, the Universe, and Everything

Not so rare. Thousands of new genes over geological time scales is likely a vast underestimate.

Also, it wasn’t existing exons. It was portions of the maize mitochondria genome that were not protein-coding.

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I don’t have the references at hand, but I know that when this topic came up on an Amazon thread, David Levin (cell biologist at Boston University) pointed to numerous references that showed that we have many examples of functional genes arising de novo from noncoding sequence. Coupled with Dennis Venema’s piece some time back on BioLogos about how we now understand that protein folding needn’t produce perfectly stable folds in order to result in functional proteins, that doesn’t leave the Douglas Axe line of argument looking very healthy.

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@colewd is referring to this essay.

(Update in edit - maybe this link is better…)

Again you are changing the argument. You are having to add “by supernatural entities”. What we know exists are observations that mind can account for. A complex sequence is an example.

Creationism in general trying to fit science with the Bible. ID is not.

If you like, but the problem is that you’ve still got it wrong. What you claim to know exists are observations that ONLY a non-human mind having the power to manipulate matter at molecular levels can account for. You have no such observations.

But, just as in your example above: you need something which only a paranormal actor can account for. Since the place one finds paranormal actors of the sort that wouldn’t result in the whole donor base of the DI shrieking in horror and abandoning it is in the Christian religion, that’s the Christian god.

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Thanks. I was thinking of some others – will have to dig a bit. I was surprised, because I had assumed, as the creationists do, that de novo genes from noncoding sequence were so improbable as to be almost impossible. That, it turns out, is very, very far from the truth.

LOL! Here comes the Bill tap dance…

Bill “There are no new genes being created by evolution!”

Science: “Here’s an example of a de novo gene”

Bill: “But’s that’s just one gene. You need a thousand!”

Never mind that nature had 3.5 billion years to produce Bill’s “another 1000”. :roll_eyes:

Bill never met a piece of evidence he wouldn’t hand wave away.

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We have a test for the selected mechanism using humans as the test bed. You need to support your claim by more than your own assertions. You need to show that using a human mind to test the mechanism does not test the hypothesis. Nothing in the scientific method I am aware of supports your assertion.

At this point I think our positions are clear and the argument is getting redundant.

ID-Creationism is 100% about trying to squeeze the Christian God back into science classes. We know it, you know it. Don’t debase yourself further by denying it.

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Bill still face plants on basic logic. Showing humans can design and manufacture things in NO WAY supports the idea a disembodied mind designed biological life.

Bill doesn’t care one iota if his arguments are fallacious. Do you Bill?

Which only highlights your abject ignorance of all things scientific.

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A human mind can also think about a planet orbiting the sun.

Does that mean “mind” causes planets to orbit the sun, not gravity?

Not really. No organism analogous in any relevant respect to humans is known to have existed for the first 4 billion years of the planet’s history, and organisms of vaguely analogous sorts, from a cognitive perspective, start with Pikaia and its ilk, so the idea that humans can be used as a proxy for “whatever sort of entity I can possibly imagine existing in the distant past” is very strange.

It’s not a good idea to start talking to yourself in mid-post. For a moment I thought you meant me!

Does using a wrench to test the hypothesis that an airplane can fly work? Does using a 747 to test the hypothesis that a wrench can turn a bolt work? What you have here is an analogy between something about which much is known and something about which nothing is known. It results in the type of argument which persuades those who advance it, and nobody else.

Analogy is not evidence; it is just a form of argumentation which gains weight and force as you demonstrate that the two things in the analogy are so very completely alike in all relevant respects that the analogy is persuasive. If I show that a 7/8" wrench can turn a 7/8" bolt, but I have never turned a 1" bolt using a 1" wrench, I can nonetheless make an extremely strong argument by analogy that the answer to the one question is likely to be the answer to the other. I cannot empirically answer the question without getting that 1" bolt and 1" wrench, but the analogy is so compelling that few would really doubt it.

What you have is an analogy between a human mind and something which you only imagine (that is to say, which you cannot empirically demonstrate) existing, and which you would, if you follow most of your fellow travelers on this, declare to be inscrutable, ineffable and mysterious. That is like an analogy between a wrench and an object of an unknown type that may or may not have been made by a creature utterly unlike us that may or may not live on another planet. You cannot demonstrate the similarity of the two things in ANY relevant respect, or even show that the one thing exists at all. To then declare that because machines can be designed by humans, therefore things which are nothing like machines can be designed by a force unknown about which nothing can be said is not even the beginning of a proper argument by analogy. There is no demonstrable similarity between real human beings and the postulated mysterious force; but the strength of the argument (and it is only an argument, not evidence as such) depends precisely upon the extent to which you can demonstrate that similarity and show that there are few or no relevant dissimilarities.

Again: if you would stop alternating between talking to me and talking to you, it really would help the clarity of the discussion.

GETTING redundant? ID arguments have been invariably vacuous, redundant and of no value for decades now. I should hate to think you were only getting to see the redundance now.

As you have convinced essentially nobody, anywhere, who actually studies living things, you need to re-evaluate. You need to understand that scientists are not likely to be persuaded by bad analogies to unknown forces. You need evidence bearing upon the design and manufacture of living things in accord with your claims.

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Have you followed the discussion between @Joe_Felsenstein, Tom English and Eric Holloway at TSZ?

I presume you mean the exchanges where EricMH does not explain why the alleged conservation of ASC has anything to do with showing why we can use CSI to infer design. And when called on this, says only that we should publish in BIO-Complexity and then they might agree. We’ve laid out our arguments in detail, and also asked why their argument is alleged to show something. (For example, if there are peaks in a fitness surface that can be climbed, that is described as showing that there “active information” present. But no argument is presented by them to show that this can only happen because of Design, rather than just ordinary boring properties of physics.) So far no justification from Eric.

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One example of an extremely stable fold is the prion protein, which kills organisms. The functional conformation of the same protein is much less stable.

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No, this is your hypothesis. You need to show that using a human mind does test the mechanism.

But as has been pointed out 10 to the power of whatever is at the end of induction, mind is not a mechanism.

Using human minds as a test bed, what artifacts do we find? Not any CPU’s, those come from silicon foundries built by highly skilled trades and technicians. No novels from Charles Dickens, all we have are manuscripts he wrote, and writing is done by hand. The Pulitzer prize winner I dreamt up in the shower, you will never read it because in my mind it remains. Not the Mona Lisa; also by hand, right? Even in studying brain physiology, the data we have is built by physiological electric signals and chemical signatures, so in the end, human minds as a test bed draws a blank. Now human physical activity, on the other hand, that’s another story. That is why, if we see an aqueduct, we ask, who built it; the activity of building is the mechanism, why it is there instead of not there.

This might sound like an perfinicky distinction, but then we are dealing with an illegitimate conflation. Consider an industrial process plant. The control system, “mind”, does nothing apart from the valves and actuators, those are what actually perform the action on the process. It is not proper to refer to the controller as a mechanism.

So designed artifacts do not at all show human mind as a mechanism, only human physical activity. But ID skirts past the actual mechanism, to draw a parallel (or whatever else one wishes to call the strained logic), to mind as an abstraction to account for what they perceive as design in nature. Now, in classic apologetics, creation was attributed to the miraculous, or supernatural, intervention of God. You could have a big argument as to the reality and nature of miracles, but the concept of God acting on nature was the mechanism. God created, God spoke, God made; these are verbs of action. So whatever mind is, human or divine, it is not a mechanism.

So why does ID talk of mind, instead of activity or miracles? After all, using abiogenesis for instance, you could say, - hey, there is no way that all the complexity for life could have arisen on its own, so God made it - and there are those who would contest that, but they know what you are talking about. Or you could say, - hey, there is design, and people are a test bed for mind, so mind is the mechanism - and you have brought nothing new or substantial, but really, only obfuscated and muddled the conversation. To what purpose? One can only note that miracle definitely involves religious overtones, which have constitutional implications which extend to well prior to Dover.

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as i said i want to be in focus (also english isnt my native) so lets talk about my main claim and after that we will go to the other claims if you want.

ok. so i gave you gears as such evidence and the flagellum is a second one (its basically a spinning motor). you are saying that gears arent the result of design. but as far as we know every gears we know about are the product of design and we never seen how gears can evolve naturally. you believe that they can but we have no proof for that. just a theory. so we here in a situation when gears and motors (a motor with a self replicating system) need design (a fact) vs a belief that they dont need.

im not sure i understand the question. why not? maybe they will change their mind?

Very poor logic. We have never seen an intelligent agent create those particular gears, so it cannot be said that “every gears we know about are the product of design.” They aren’t, as far as you know. And there were no “designers” around when those gears first appeared, as far as anyone knows.

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@scd

Do you go to a Jewish Reformed blog to argue about the doctrine of the Trinity?

My point is that Peaceful Science is devoted to explaining how Scientists should be able to embrace Christianity WHILE EMBRACING EVOLUTION!

But you arrive here - - not only ignoring that position completely - - but completely unwilling to accept the reality that God using Evolution actually answers your repetitive challenge that Evolution can ever be used to explain the rise of living creatures on Earth.

CC: @swamidass

ok but this is a belief, not a fact. you assume that some gears can evolve naturally. that is the problematic point.

first: i never said that evolution is impossible. i do saying that a natural explanation for the existence of living things is impossible. second: if there are problems with evolution i dont see why not to discuss about them. after all we always see here arguments from behe, axe and others and many atheists also write here about natural explanations for the existence of nature.

Since human minds can’t (currently) generate ‘new body plans’ in organisms, your test bed has failed. High time to put this argument to bed (pun intended).