We have way more than enough evidence to convince scientifically literate people. Of course nothing will ever sway the views of Creationists who didn’t use evidence to reach their GODDIDIT belief in the first place.
Is your claim that there are some instances where there is not enough evidence for that case that natural process generate functional information and arrange parts for a functional purpose -
or is your claim much more sweeping, as in there is not one single instance in the entirety of biology where natural process generate functional information and arrange parts for a functional purpose?
Only by design, certainly not by splitting coffee randomly.
I do not intend to make a sweeping statement.
I think that natural process can copy functional information. Creating information de novo is another issue and I am not sure here. The closest I know of is that adaptive immune system yet you can make a case that it is getting its information from the antigen of foreign intruding body.
Then why do you keep referring to gpuccio’s method that measures the copying of functional information?
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Okay. I can see that being absolutely unable to answer me, you chose the insult. Everyone uses whatever weapons they can.
Is this what you really think?
Are you seriously having a hard time making sense of the observation that more closely related species’ gene sequences are more similar to each other, than to other species considerably more distantly related to them?
Do you seriously think this is some sort of inexplicable mystery on evolution?
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Yes. gpuccio’s method measures the fixed mutations that have accumulated in a gene as it was copied from a common ancestor in different lineages.
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Are you seriously asking why, if evolution is true, homologous proteins will be more similar between humans and fish compared to between humans and what you call “pre-vertebrates”?
Do really need this explained to you?
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No. But we can take routine and consistent observations as facts, and use those as the basis for other work.
Well, we can “agree to disagree” as to whether a proposition about causes is a fact. However, this will not change the fact that you are obviously wrong.
What a strange thing to say! I didn’t claim it was “probable” to evolve any one of the many thousands of different bacterial flagella. What I do know is that computing a probability of that sort would require understanding the initial conditions (genomic, environmental and ecological) to a level of detail now completely inaccessible, and then understanding the genomic and biochemical issues to a level of detail now completely impossible, and then being able to unfold a massive, many, many-layered probability problem while computing the outcome of every possible mutation in each and every lineage and then working out the population genetics, taking into account such things as lateral gene transfer along the way.
Why does nobody do this? Because it is a silly question. There is no reason – you have certainly given none at all – to regard the evolution of any one type of bacterial flagellum, much less all of the many flagella, as particularly difficult. Nor does anyone have any use for the number. As I have said: if you think it’s important, go calculate it. You will find that it cannot be done in any fashion.
Ah. I see. By “calculation” you mean your own assertion. Okay. Well, then, I will say that the probability they will NOT be designed is “extremely high, because we know of no case of a flagellum being designed.”
Seriously: if this is the level at which you engage a discussion about empirical knowledge versus philosophical proof, you do NOT want to go down the philosophical rabbit hole. The point is that empirically things do not get “proven” because there is always some observation which would change the picture. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about as close to “proven” as you can get in science – but ONE perpetual motion machine that really works will show that it is false.
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On that philosophical note: I have been rather surprised, when dropping in and observing discussions among Biblical literalists, to find that there are quite a few people who seem dead certain that God would never use any sort of “unplanned” process to create things. They find the idea that “God used evolution” completely unacceptable because, I guess, it is an offense against the manner in which they imagine God acting in the world. While you and I might disagree about the application of the expression “poof-magic!” to describe divine action, we might agree that it describes what these people want pretty well.
Now, what puzzles me in their views is this: people like this tend to be believers in a God who is fully omniscient, to the extent that he knows the future. That, it seems to me, has always been the source of some interesting theological problems to which I have never seen a good answer, but it seems to me also that it would precisely SOLVE this problem of theirs. If God is omniscient in such a complete sense, then “using evolution” is not throwing the dice and using some indeterminate force to do whatever turns out to happen, but is in fact an action where God knows the consequences of setting the process in motion – and if that’s so, then God may as well get to those consequences any way he likes.
I may not have captured the precise idea they’re after, but perhaps you are familiar with it. Can you shed any light on WHY they do not think the idea of God “using evolution” to create things is acceptable?
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Human designed motors, watches, texts and many natural proteins all share at least one important feature, ie., their high FI content. Now, since …
- we have no evidence whatsoever that purely natural processes have ever produce high FI
- there are theoretical reasons for thinking that natural processes alone cannot produce high FI
…I think there is room for the doubt you are talking about.
How do you measure the FI content of a human designed electrical motor?
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What happens when you make billions of copies of the original information with each copy being slightly changed, and some of the changed copies happen to perform a function slightly better? Why doesn’t that count as a de novo information increase?
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But the difficulty of this problem is that you are not taking a natural attribute (e.g., mass) and making a generalization about it. You are instead taking a human-made descriptive term and making a generalization about it. “Functional information” is a pair of words crafted with the intention of sweeping in, say, both computers and bacteria, but the problem is that the complexity of a computer and the complexity of a bacterium are not the same thing.
One may draw inferences about something which is a real attribute of a physical thing, e.g., mass. But drawing inferences from a generalized abstract expression of what one thinks two very unlike things have in common is another matter; it’s a rhetorical, analogical form of reasoning at best, which really has no more force than the underlying analogy upon which it rests.
With no way to measure “FI,” it is very weak. But any method of measuring it will only tend to reinforce the point that it is a descriptive construct, created for the purpose of reasoning by analogy – NOT a property of things about which generalizations might be made.
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First of all we don’t know the actual FI content of most natural proteins, and I have to repeat T_aquaticus’ request for showing the FI content for things like motors and watches?
Of course, even if you could somehow come up with a way of calculating that, that still says nothing about evolution or the probability of functional proteins evolving.
We’ve had numerous recent threads and I’ve given you multiple references that show functional proteins appear to be likely enough in protein sequence space to evolve.
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By way of further illustration.
Functional Neck Length is a measure of any thing which has a neck length which enables some part of it to operate at a distance from some other part. My torque wrench has a high FNL, and was designed. Giraffes also have high FNL; ergo, giraffes were designed.
Is that a good argument? If not, why is it different from FI?
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How do you determine the FI content of human designed things?
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Bingo.
One must always be careful about generalizations but one or more of these explanations usually apply (and admittedly to differing degrees from person to person.) And for fear of any of these generalizations sounding unduly condescending instead of objectively descriptive, I will emphasize that long ago ALL of these generalizations applied to me:
(1) From an early age, many who have been raised in Christian homes and communities have been taught that evolution is a synonym for atheism. So the idea of God using something so “evil” is something simply out of the question. It can’t be considered. (“God has no fellowship with darkness” was never my excuse but I’ve certainly heard it from others.)
(2) Allegiance to what is assumed to be “the Christian position” creates a sense of undeniable duty. Tribalism is a powerful force. It was for me.
(3) As you already mentioned, a fierce devotion to Biblical literalism leads many to the conclusion that the Theory of Evolution defies and denies the Bible, a foundation of their faith. For many, this devotion was learned in an era when the emphasis on Biblical inerrancy was on steroids. That makes it all the harder to temper with possible flexibility in one’s hermeneutics.
Obviously, I have answered a slightly different question than what you asked—but that is intentional, because for my younger self (and many other people of similar positions and backgrounds) your question is overwhelmed by the underlying and very visceral contempt for what is consider the evil idea of evolution. (So the question you are asking is heard by many evolution-opponents as a much more “fundamental” [pun accidentally intended] question.) Furthermore, lots of people assume that any sort of “concession” to the power of evolutionary processes is dangerously letting the camel’s nose into the tent. That can be a frightening prospect—especially if it my demand a major rethinking of one’s assumptions about God, the Bible, and the God’s dealings with his creation. (And that will usually require considering that one’s long cherished assumptions might be wrong—and that the people one has long trusted within the Christian community might be wrong. That can be very hard work.)
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