The feedback comes from the effect the environment has on the phenotype which allows the phenotype to reproduce and create a modified genotype. Evolution 101 Bill. You really should be embarrassed at how many times you need such basics explained to you.
(facepalm) It’s been empirically observed Bill. You been shown papers dozens of times. Remember evolution by gene duplication and subsequent mutations to the copy? Please, for everyone’s sake try something besides knee-jerk denial.
I sorry time this is motherhood and apple pie. Again I ask until you have a new functional protein how does random change get selected for? Until you have a new protein there is nothing to select for.
What has been empirically observed? How did you measure an increase in information?
The ancestral precursors to the extant protein are selected for. That’s Evolution 101 too Bill. You’re really making yourself look like a classic ID-Creationist today. ![]()
Is your claim that all proteins come from ancestral proteins and not from non coding DNA?
It’s already been given to you. The proteins involved contain a phylogenetic signal which is evidence that they were brought about by evolution.
Is it your claim natural processes can never add new information to a genome?
Bill’s in denial / sea lion mode until people get too frustrated with him and the thread gets locked. It’s his go-to defense when cornered.
I asked for a sensible argument ![]()
That’s what you got.
Since when is a supernatural deity magically poofing DNA into being a sensible argument?
It’s the 747 arguments again, and we’ve all been down this road before. Human design motors (or airplane) do not reproduce themselves. BUT, if we allow humans as part of the motor (or airplane) biology (maybe Mech-ology?) then we have the means of reproduction, then we see LOTS of trial and errors solutions, and a sort of evolution from the simple to the complex.
If we could compile of the historical documents describing the construction of motors we would have far more than 100k lines of code - we have no such document, and yet no one suggests the tiny motors that make our cell phones vibrate are of supernatural origin.
Take my Worf, Please!
colewd: I see. We have to supply “sensible arguments” for the evolution of every character in every species, and if we leave out even one bristle on the belly of a mite that lives on mugworts, you get to argue that we have failed? Meanwhile ID advocates repeatedly say that it is somehow proven that CSI (or enough FI) cannot possibly arise by ordinary evolutionary processes, even though they have not got any kind of proof that works.
Some have made this claim of a sort of ability to prove a negative. Behe claims that it is a powerful challenge for the Darwinian mechanism which I think is more sensible.
But the way you get there is by analogy. You say that some non-living designed things have an unquantifiable, but definitely akin to the Infanta’s eyes ( bluer than the Stone of Galveston!) amount of FI. You reason from that that if we find a living thing with over 500 FI, it must have been designed. But this is merely a weak analogy between things which are both complex, but very differently complex. It does not bear on design any more than Functional Neck Length (which CAN be calculated for designed things!) does.
Well, as nobody says that that’s how it works, who cares? It isn’t a blind random search. Everyone agrees that if you throw a bunch of DNA into a blender and run it for sixty seconds, you’re not going to get a Kangaroo out of it. Everyone agrees that you could do that for thousands of years and never come remotely close. But everyone also agrees that that’s not how evolution works.
But what you are missing, of course, is any reason at all to believe that any of these things are designed. You are using an analogy to things KNOWN to be designed, and you are assuming that the complexity of those things is analogous to the complexity of the things you wish to declare are designed.
Scientific principles do not work in this way. If it’s 1800, and I’m a naturalist exploring the western United States, studying bears, I will find several ursid species. I will note that all of them eat meat. Nothing wrong so far. Then I formulate Puck’s Law: all ursids eat meat. Puck’s Law fits all known data points.
Then I get on a boat to China, and I find a panda. Is the panda wrong, or is Puck’s Law wrong? You cannot make a “law” that says that everything with more than 1500 milliLuskins of some measured abstract property is designed – even if, as with my bear example, this fits ALL data points of which you know – and then conclude that this is true for something you don’t know the origin of. Every last thing that has more that 1500 milliLuskins is a test of the law; the law is not a test of them.
These shortcuts don’t work. What you have is an argument by analogy. You have no way to demonstrate the claim that everything with more than X amount of FI is designed.
This sort of fells like subtle support for the design argument.
Well, you know, if you can get The Designer to send you a copy of the original specification documents for the Western Gray Squirrel, that will indeed support design. Get his (or should I say “His”) address, too, as some of us have questions.
What I find interesting is that if God is truly transcendent and ineffable, then the scientific method is unlikely to find a way to investigate him—let alone ask for blueprints. Yes, the last time I checked, there had been no breakthroughs in inventing TranscendenceDetectors™. That would surely make the scientific determination of that Designer’s designs all the more difficult. How do we know if that Designer’s designs—that is, the designs of a omniscient and omnipotent creator—have much in common with the designs of other intelligent agents?
I’m actually fine with scientists working out a Comprehensive Theory of Intelligent Design and publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal. But until they do, ID seems to be just a lot of philosophy applied to scientific topics. If ID proponents have made breakthroughs I have somehow missed, I hope someone will tell me how I can apply the Theory of Intelligent Design to any object X so as to determine whether it was designed. That could a really handy thing to be able to do in fields like archaeology where it is sometimes difficult to determine if some object was produced intentionally by a designer (i.e., someone who lived in the past) versus chemical/physical/geological processes.
I think that DNA and the mechanism for producing proteins is strong evidence of design and therefore Gods actions. We may eventually find a comprehensive sequence producing mechanism in the cell which would push Gods direct actions down the road. I agree with you the cellular design argument is new and slowly maturing.