Actually, we’ve invited @kirk here and are clarifying with him precisely where he went wrong in that citation. You are welcome to follow along.
No Bill, evolution isn’t assumed. Evolution is the conclusion based on ALL the huge amount of consilient evidence gathered over centuries from dozens of independent scientific disciplines.
Every new paper with new details we find doesn’t have to go back and justify the centuries of work which came before. New work is added to the collected body of knowledge. That’s how all science works, not just evolution.
You have not supported this claim yet as far as I can tell.
Yes, he has assumed Evolution here for an eye evolving 40 times. Do you have evidence an eye evolved once. What evidence do you have? All I have seen is stories without attention to the cellular complexity involved.
The feedback from natural selection does make the improbable more probable.
For a simple example, consider the game of 5 card poker. The probability of being dealt a royal straight flush (RSF) is 1/649,740 = 0.00015%. Now suppose you are playing draw poker where you’re allowed to discard and redraw up to three times. The probability of ending up with a RSF is still small but definitely better due to the discard/redraw feedback. Now suppose you are allowed to discard and redraw (with reshuffle) as many times as you’d like. Under those rules the probability of acquiring a RSF asymptotically approaches 1.0
The thing is evolution has been “discarding and redrawing” through natural selection for over 3.5 billion years. If you want to claim an extant protein is too improbable to form naturally (a common ID claim) then your calculations have to take into account all those millions upon millions of generation with the feedback from selection included. Also don’t fall prey to the lottery fallacy, where the probability of any one specific protein forming means the probability of ANY functioning protein forming is equally small.
Please, let’s not hear the usual ID distraction "but poker discards involve INTELLIGENT DESIGN!!!. Deal with the point made.
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(sigh) No Bill, it’s only “assumed” in that evolution been empirically confirmed enough to be considered scientific fact. Don’t confuse the fact evolution has occurred with the theory of evolution which explains the empirically confirmed fact.
Do you really believe this? You have really bought into the evolutionary dogma. Best of luck to you.
Bill it’s a fact the planet is approx 4.5 billion years old
It’s a fact life has been here on the planet changing and diversifying for over 3.8 billion years and quite possibly longer
It’s a fact multicellular life has been on the planet at least 2 billion years and possibly longer.
It’s a fact the patterns in the fossil record show an unambiguous record of branching nested hierarchies over that deep time.
It’s a fact the fossil record shows 5 major mass extinction events in the last 500 million years and a subsequent re-radiation of different species after each one.
It’s a fact the phylogenetic tree created from the genetic record of extant life matches the one formed independently from the fossil record to well over 99.9% congruity.
All those facts and many others lead to the factual conclusion evolution happened. Whether it happened through natural causes or through invisible ID pixies manipulating mutations doesn’t change the evidence for the fact evolution happened.
First multicellular life is about 600 million years old.
Second Dan is assuming eyes evolved through natural processes.
Wrong again
Oldest Multicellular Life Revealed In Detail
" The record for the oldest multicellular life was broken, nay smashed, four years ago with the finding of 2.1 billion year old fossils in Gabon. Understandably, the finders raced to publish before the fossils had been fully described, but a more revealing portrait has now been made public.
Publishing in PloS One a team led by Professor Abderrazak El Albani of the Institut de chimie des milieux et matériaux in Poitiers reveal considerable diversity. The lifeforms are variously circular, elongated and lobed, with some smooth and others folded or knobby. The largest are 17cm across."
He didn’t specify the processes. He just pointed out the fact they evolved multiple times.
Consequently, as the PloS paper notes, “Reports of Paleoproterozoic macrofossils tend to be controversial, and considerable uncertainty persists about the nature of such remains.”
Not a Fact Tim. Please be familiar with papers you cite.
Perhaps. 
Are you disputing my claim that natural selection is thought to make the improbable less improbable?
Should we split this of into a new topic or continue to discus here?
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LOL! Whatever Bill. If you hand-waved away scientific evidence any harder you’d get airborne. 
The feedback provided by natural selection does make the improbable less improbable. I just showed you how right above.
Now were up to two false claims. 3 strikes and your out
Then stop making false claims or asserting scientific conclusions are wrong just because you personally don’t understand them.
Thats 3 Tim
I was returning to the thread to respond to Joshua and my question to him was for the purpose of clarifying his position so I woudn’t argue against a straw-man.
I know full well what “cumulative selection” is thought able to accomplish, and how it is used in probabilistic arguments for evolution. Now if only this were the right thread for that. 
I agree that’s 3 times you’ve made false claims based on your scientific illiteracy. You really need to do something about that.
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Argument from authority is appropriate when based on actual knowledge, rather than the say-so of someone knowledgeable. I have the appropriate education and experience to understand statistical theory (MS Stats, didn’t finish the Post-hole Digger but had the classes, 20 years experience in Biostatistics Consulting). I’ve given you adequate information to investigate the basis of statistical theory, maximum likelihood, likelihood ratios, and Bayesian inference. You are an engineer, yes(?), so you should have the math to understand at some of this. If you think I am lying, then you should find your own statistical expert and ask them about it. Until then, I assure you I giving my interpretation as a professional statistician.
The topic here is probability and how it is often misused by some proponents of Intelligent Design. Perhaps you should start a new topic for your question?
LOL @ Adductive!
[quote] adductive
ADJECTIVE
- 1 Characterized by the bringing of something into or towards another; (originally and chiefly Theology) characterized by the bringing of the body of Christ into the bread during the Eucharist (by substitution rather than annihilation). historical in later use.
[/quote]
I’m pretty sure you meant abductive. Bayesian statistics are abductive, because we can assign probabilities (with certain restrictions). Frequentist statistics are similar, but don’t assign probabilities to estimates and inferences.
Search is math, and the question I am discussing is math.
Leaping to assertions about an unstated alternative hypothesis is bad math with respect to the established theory of statistical inference. Define your hypothesis, evaluate the same data as the hypothesis you would like to test, and compare the likelihoods.
{Leaping to assertions about an unstated alternative hypothesis when the basis for that hypothesis has not been established to exist, and has not been defined in any testable manner, is bad inference by any standard. ID presumes a Designer must exist, and is the only alternative possible}**
** Not a statistical opinion, but a logical one.
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