Origin of Cytochrome C

sorry but that paper doesnt answer my theoretical situation of two very different proteins and the chance to get them in a huge sequence space.

That’s right, it doesn’t. Because your theoretical situation is irrelevant. We don’t know that CYC would have to evolve through such a mechanism, so it is a distraction to the topic at hand to ponder how unlikely that might be.

It may be an interesting question to consider in it’s own right, whether two radically different protein folds with entirely different amino acid sequences, could functionally convert one into the other, it’s just that it isn’t known to be necessary for this to have occurred for any known protein to have evolved. At least not for CYC.

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Your claims require us to know what proteins were like in the past. We don’t have that information. Therefore, your claims are unsupported. You don’t get to replace the evidence you need with something you happen to have on hand that in no way supports the claim.

False. Your argument requires the premise that the proteins we see today had identical function in the past. You need to support that premise. Without such evidence your premise can be dismissed and your conclusion will lack support.

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why not? take any 2 completely different proteins and here you go. as far as i aware most of the proteins suppose to evolve from a common protein.

i actually refer to this above. even if we change function every step it will not change the big picture. so let me ask you the question i asked above: say that we have a sequence space of 10^100 possibilities. and say that we know that there are only about 2 functional sequences among this space that are coded for a completely different function and structure. do you think that in this case the chance to get a new function is high or very low?

Sure it will change the picture. If a protein served more than one function simultaneously then that removes the number of overall proteins that are required. If a protein served a different function in the past then it could have been selected for that function, countering the claim that these proteins had to emerge all at once with a given function. These hypothetical pathways exist, and they need to be ruled out before you claim there are no possible pathways.

That’s not the case for the proteins we are looking at.

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Very low. But this scenario is unrealistic to the point of being meaningless.

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Then you have simply been misinformed.

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a quote from above:

even if not what about the other proteins that are relevant to that scenario?

I don’t know of a single function in any cell that has only two possible sequences. Can you name one?

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Which scenario? The one you quoted, or the totally unrealistic one T-aquaticus was actually replying to?

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im talking about a theoretical scenario. according to that scenario there are only 2 possible functional sequences out of 10^100. do you think that under that scenario the chance to evolve a new function from another one is low or high?

Low.

How does that apply to actual biology?

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No, this is not our argument, for this would be an argument from ignorance. Our argument is more like this:

  1. No credible naturalistic scenario can account for some particular proteins that display certain characteristics such as high FI or IC.
  2. On the other hand, we know of one type of causes able to produce such characteristics, ie., intelligent causes.
  3. Therefore, these particular proteins are best explained by an intelligent cause than by naturalistic ones.

That’s just an opinion. Do you have any science backing it up?

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Thanks for aiming to clarify.

How is this not an argument from ignorance? In other words, you can’t explain it and it’s too hard to explain, move to step 2.

Definitely incorrect. We’ve never measured any supernatural entities piecing together proteins from scratch. What mechanisms would they use to do that? Even intelligent agents like ourselves can cobble together various DNA sequences or proteins to achieve certain functions, but we understand the mechanisms of how intelligent agents, i.e. humans, make various proteins. We have no evidence of any supernatural agent piecing together one… ever/period.

Now you might offer a technicality here and say “I didn’t say supernatural, I said intelligent…” but let’s not pretend your position isn’t really that God supernaturally popped these proteins together instantaneously.

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It’s a shame though that you don’t know the FI for any known protein. And IC is an expected outcome of evolution, not evidence against it.

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Point 1) is a premise, not an argument. So it cannot be an argument from ignorance.

Sorry but premise 2) is correct. It is a matter of fact that intelligent causes are able to produce sequences with high FI or objects that are irreducibility complex.

I have a question for you here. How do you explain the fine tuning of the universe?

All premises are arguments. If the premise is not supported, then the conclusion does not follow.

Humans are able to produce sequences with high FI. Anything beyond that would need evidence.

That would be a shift in the burden of proof. Even if no one else has an explanation, that doesn’t make your unsupported assertions true.

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G[quote=“T_aquaticus, post:131, topic:7829”]
All premises are arguments. If the premise is not supported, then the conclusion does not follow.
[/quote]

No. You confuse the part with the whole. A premise is a part of an argument, not the argument.

A premise is a claim, and being such it needs to be supported. You don’t get to make any claim you want and then say that you don’t have to evidence that claim because it is a premise. That’s not how logic works. Even more, your premise is a fallacy in itself and is correctly labelled as an argument from ignorance. Even if we had no known evolutionary pathway to produce IC systems that has no bearing on whether it evolved. 400 years ago we had no idea how lightning was produced, but that didn’t mean it had to be created by Thor. The lack of a natural explanation in no way evidences a supernatural explanation.

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