cypress

That post had nothing to do with conservation of energy. It merely stated that conservation of energy energy was part of Dembski's excuse for not proving his 'law' of conservation of information and then Cap'n give one reason why that copout is a load of bollocks-that the conservation of energy has been proven time and time again while conservation of information has not; one concept has been proven ad nausium whilst the other is false. Your post seems to indicate one of two possibilities: you are trying to distract the discussion down a rabbit hole to avoid facing the idea that your argument is mathematically unsound and misrepresents information theory OR you have trouble reading. Based on previous experience with you, neither would surprise me.

 

So, here we have it again:

 

Why did you REALLY ignore this post?

Because I don't see how presence or absence of conservation of information and its parallel to conservation of energy has any bearing on probability theory in this discussion of information theory. Perhaps you or Capt'n or Swansont can describe the relevance. Until then I see no reason to address it. I am sorry that you have difficulty recognizing that it was Capt'n who brought in this red herring he calls conservation of information without demonstrating relevance. If you would be so kind as to demonstrate the relevance I will address the question.

With thermodynamic systems, you can do this with the importation of energy (not material), which is part of the second law. There is no corresponding law that applies to information.

How would the presumed absence of a conservation of information law lead us to conclude that information theory is not constrained by probability considerations alone to conform to the laws of probability theory as expressed by entropy (an application of probability)? Without an answer to this, does your point have any merit? How so?

I can't help but notice that this post has been completely ignored.

Yes, I am speaking of entropy and the laws derived from probability theory. Conservation of energy does not figure into this discussion, so I see no need to address it.

 

"Seem incapable?" There is no law that supports this.

Yes seems incapable in the same sense that physical processes seem incapable of drivinng thermodynamic energy states to less propable configurations without an imported source of material that is currently in a low probability state.

And therein you have a problem. Physics tells us that there must be warming from an increase in CO2, there is no way around that.

I see several ways this could arise. One is that temperature data contains measurement and compilation uncertainties, another is that as the researchers note, there is considerable uncertainty in the data used to estimate total sun energy flux reaching earth, a third is that there is coupling between the ocean oscillation effects and sun effects though the two data and results sets for the studies seem to indicate it is minimal since the two don't seem to have any strong correlation.

What this all might demonstrate is that the negative feedbacks are far stronger than we thought.

 

By this I mean that if we can add up the positive forcings and get a number higher than the actual increase in temps, then the only logical explanation is that negative feedbacks have cancelled some of the warming. Which would mean that the net effect of feedbacks is negative and not positive.

yes it could be negative feedbacks as well. There is active research going on in this area.

Well I have briefly addressed this problem of speculation in my previous posts in this thread. But we can just know glimpses of how it might have happened right now. My linkAtleast this shows that it is not just a mere imagination of things. evo-devo is a new field and it is wrong to make conclusions on it just yet.

Not all reasearchers are like that the link above gives a complete description of the current status with out making any absurd conclusions.

 

There is nothing wrong in being optimistic as long as he does not make absurd conclusions. No one would propose a hypothesis and say "it may not work". It this optimism which has helped all of us to progress in science. The hypothesis can be under testification.

It's an 11 year old article and overly optimistic quote that is incorrect about the mechanism and impact of altering high level developmental controls. It is generally not a good approach to use incorrect information to argue your point.

I think current molecular clock studies shows that some multi component structures are under fuctional constraints and have not changed much since millions of years. So how can you observe the changes on an observation scale of 80 years when the molecule complexes have'nt changed for millions of years.

One would generally not investigate static systems in order to try to explain change. Experiments indicate that mutative adaptations occur quickly when environmental change is introduced but while these adaptive changes seem to work to alter present function, they don't seem to act on the molecular systems that are precursors to novel function. The single exception being one and two step mutations to single protein systems such as enzymes. The vast majority of cell functional components are multiple molecular protein systems of ten to hundreds of coordinated, coherent well fitted parts, and controls to manage construction, function and maintenance.

I have not said that accumulation of detrimental mutations will lead to positive selection by natural selection in producing new functions. I said that natural selection can effectively select existing bad gene complex by creating new functional relationships between these gene complexes and the environment and there by turning the bad gene into good gene.

But you have not offered a real example of accumulated mutations (of four or greater steps) leading to new function

What your talking is preadaptation, evolution by NS not only provides adaptations to existing functions but it can produce new functions through positive selection of single protein components.

My link

Another example of mutations to enzymes. But I have granted these. Can you show that mutations to single component systems scale to the multistep mutations required for the vast majority of functional molecular systems at the cell level? One does not show that a particular tree is a cherry tree by pointing to the apples growing on it.

I plead you to make an open analysis on that before coming to any other conclusions. I have a strange feeling that you might ignore this.

I'm still investigating this article and will comment later.

Lets make it clear, adaptations to existing function are observed and validated and also it is observed and validated that evolution by NS is excellent at producing new functions through positive selection of single component proteins.

Not excellent at producing new functional enzymes. The enzymes produced are generally very inefficient by comparison to most others. Functional enzymes are required for adaptation to changing environments as one of their functions is to break down chemicals that could otherwise be toxic. It is a weak argument to describe this as novel function in the sense I mean as all enzymes have the same basic function to act as catalysts.

The problem is the validation of complex multistep evolutionary pathways for the production of multi component structures. The theory is yet to develop a model for how protein-protein interactions can change conformations in time to create new functions for the organism.

Yes, tis has been a known problem for 30 or more years now.

Yes saying that evolution by NS is a fact and it accounts for all diversity will be an oversimplified statement. Yes evolution by NS is a fact in explaining the origin of new functions in the form of single component proteins but fails to explain origin of multicomponent structures due to their complexity and this will take time to fix it.

Not due to the complexity of the task, but because in molecular biological experimentation, it simply does not happen by the known evolutionary processes. Other processes should be investigated as a means to fix this weakness.

Then your argument of all mutations are unfavorable is also not a fact. Lets allow both of these hypothesis to be tested at the floor test and which ever is testified will turn out to be a fact.

In the case of salmonella bacterium investigated it appears that all mutations were unfavorable. If it turns out that all adaptations to environment are at face value, unfavorable, then evolution should require an ever changing environment to lead the process of evolution. The environment does not seem to be ever changing though instead it seems to be cyclical indicating that evolution should oscillate but return to the same place over and over. Observations indicate this is the case.

Well in order to accept these alternative explanations you have to convince the scientific community that it can be testified.

As educated responsible citizens of the world we should not allow false belief systems to spread across our society. The current scientific enquiry is the best enquiry we have in that matter even though it may not answer all questions.

The current scientific process has blind spots that guarantee certain lines of investigations won't occur. I don't think that is "best".

No gaps can be filled the fact that these testified models can be used to create various technological uses in various fields of science shows that our models do describe the phenomena accurately as we see it.

Evolutionary theory does not seem to have much technological use. Modern medicine exclusively proceeds on the assumption that all biological systems have functional purpose and these systems are deconstructed through reverse engineering. the evolutionary narrative is a gloss that not particularly useful in this process.

The ability to modify structures through intelligence does'nt explain anything about how those complex strucutes arosed in the first place and account for diversity.

It indicates that design is capable of generating the complex structures from scratch also. Soon Genetic engineers will demonstrate novel complex structures from scratch. Design is outpacing the evolution narrative by miles and miles and I suspect that if evolutionary biologists don't throw in the towel and begin to look for more capable processes, the race will soon be so lopsided, funding for the search may shift to design.

In my previous post, half of the 0.8 C apparent warming since 1850 was attributed to natural oscillations in ocean patterns likely due to solar system influencers. This article estimates the range of natural warming due to sun influences from 1850-2000 between 0.20 and 0.58 degrees C. If we take the low value, I now have even the low end (most aggressive) of my claim covered. If I take the mid range I have all 0.8 in apparent warming since 1850 accounted for by natural causes.

Scafetta, N., 2009. Empirical analysis of the solar contribution to global mean air surface temperature change. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 71, 1916-1923.

Introspection is hardly an objective method for gathering data.

 

What laws of information theory are violated? AFAIK, there is no "second law," as in thermodynamics, which would preclude increases in information.

Just as probability theory predicts that systems undergoing influence from physical only processes will over time migrate to a state with the highest probability distribution, so too would information under the influence of physical only processes. Thus thermodynamic systems relying on physical processes to transfer energy seem incapable of reducing the total system probability distribution to a state that is significantly less probable. Likewise physical systems seem incapable of generating significant amounts of new information.

Edtharan's appeal to influences beyond the boundary of earth to import low probability states does not apply to my example unless he is able to identify the external source humans use to import information from beyond this planet or beyond ones mind for that matter.

Perhaps you can offer an example of a physical system without use of a mind and without import of information that is observed generating new information beyond what is predicted by probability and information theory.

Biological diversity only "lacks a validated explanation" in your view (and others), who generally apply a different set of standards to one aspect of science than to others.

Standards for science apply equally to all branches. The theory must make reference to observable processes currently in operation. The processes must be demonstrated repeatably to be capable of generating the results claimed by the theory and not some watered down set of results that don't scale up.

No, the ideological ship is still in port. Do you really want to baldly assert that creationism doesn't exist now, much less claim that it did not exist in the 20th century?

Since you admit that creationist ideology is and has influenced science for some time, it is quite clear that my metaphor is correct (all sides bring their bias into science). Beginning in the 1600's and then accelerating in the 1800's and 1900's, the materialists have added their creation narrative and it too has been heavily influencing science. More honest materialists even admit this. Here is what geneticist Richard Lewontin said about this:

‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen"

Lewontin, Richard, "Billions and Billions of Demons", The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

More recently, social tinkerers, primarily in the early 1900's and continuing today, also influence science to promote political and social policy.

(Also, if introspection were to reveal some "inherent" morals, that would just as well support the evolutionary morality hypothesis)

By making this claim you seem to be contradicting swansont's observation that physical law is amoral.

You can't complain about models and also claim "red herring" when someone brings up ones that work well.

 

Simplified models contain errors, by definition. You have contradicted yourself.

You should go back and read context I was responding. Bascule was responding to my complaint that GCM's are inaccurate, contain known errors and significant relevant omissions and except for the data sets that were used to train the models, don't reproduce historical trends. When I called out the issue that climate scientists are unable to produce a balanced energy budget he made the ridiculous statement that it was "

Simplified models contain intentional simplifications by definition. Errors are incorrect results attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention. GCM's are erroneous. They produce incorrect results except on the data runs they trained on.

Those who claim that these models only produce good output when anthropogenic GHG forcing is included fail to point out that it is only over the trained data that they do so. They do not produce good results over historical periods of similar global temperature changes with or without the forcing correlations indicating that the model is missing causal inputs. When they remove a factor with correlated effects (like GHG feedbacks) but fail to retrain the model with more significant causal factors (like long term ocean oscillations and cloud cover feedbacks) it produces poor results over the trained data as expected. To suggest this is significant insults thinking people. Here is a summary of problems associated with over-reliance on climate models.

I will be more inclined to take GCM's seriously if known causal factors were included and the models reproduced good results over any usable historical data set.

Here is an article that puts our current temperature trend into better perspective.

A sample paragraph:

"During the Ice Ages the average temperatures were 8-10oC lower than the current ones, the sea levels were 120-130 m lower and much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered by an ice pack up to 4 km thick, down to the 40oN parallel (the latitude of nowadays New York). During the interglacials the average temperatures reached 4-6oC and the sea levels 3-6 m above the current ones. Our own interglacial the Holocene, which started 11,500-11,700 years ago, had average temperatures up to 4oC and sea levels up to 3 m above the current ones between 5,000-6,000 years ago (Middle Holocene)."

When these models are able to explain the variations described by this article I will agree they have merit.

 

The null hypothesis being that man has no effect on the climate system? Semi-skillful reconstruction of the historical climate necessarily includes anthropgenic forcings. Excluding them does not lead to a successful reconstruction.

Historical temperature proxies indicate that in the previous 200,000 years global temperatures have been 6 C warmer and 10 C colder than today. Do these reconstructions using anthropogenic forcing give a successful reconstruction of these variations? Why not? How about the little Ice age of the 1600's?

What you patronizingly refer to as the "designers presupposing" radiative forcings is typically known in science as a "hypothesis"

Actually it is known as conformational bias.

They have a model of it, albeit an inaccurate one. The radiative imbalances are model inputs, to be certain, and they don't compute to an "energy budget", but they can compare the model outputs to satellite data and see if they sync up, and see if the radiative imbalances as predicted by the model measure empirical satellite data. And for the most part, they do! I actually worked with two climate research groups, one measuring sea surface temperatures via satellite and another which was comparing the empirical SST measurements to their GCM outputs. And believe it or not, for the most part they match up!

Yes models again.....

No model is "free of errors". That's what makes it a model. Models aren't perfect. The standard model isn't perfect. It's a simplification of a complex underlying system based on the best available evidence. The standard model cannot explain what particles will do under relativistic conditions. Does that make it wrong, or not useful? No, it just means that relativity hasn't yet been incorporated into our picture of quantum mechanics.

I use models in engineering work daily. Simplified models approximate reality but are valid. Models that contain errors produce incorrect results and are invalid and not useful.

And please don't bandy around the term "red herring" when I make analogies to quantum mechanics. Both climate science and quantum mechanics work off of models which are incomplete pictures of the physical systems they are trying to model. Just because the picture is incomplete does not undermine the usefulness of the models these sciences have respectively created.

There is a difference between being incomplete and being wrong. When I run a validated engineering model over historical data, it reproduces the trend with similar accuracy regardless of the age of the data or patterns. Running climate models over periods of historically large variations in climatic temperatures break the models. I call those kinds of models invalid.

Excuses excuses. There are many people with a lot of money who would like to see real scientific evidence that the scientific perspective on climate change is wrong. The energy lobby has a vested interest in undermining the scientific consensus and the money to put forth towards true science which undermines the consensus viewpoint on climate change, much like the cigarette lobby had a lot of money to fund scientific research into how cigarettes don't cause lung cancer.

Can you identify any significant funding for development of GCM's by scientists skeptical of AGW? I can't. Also your generalization is false, I work for a large multinational oil company that does takes the viewpoint that GHG's are a threat to the environment.

However, in the case of climate change they haven't even managed to do that. As a complex nonlinear dynamical system, if you are able to reproduce the historical record based on temperature proxies, that pretty much tells you you're on to something.

But if you simply reproduce the short historical record that the model were used to train on you have simply deluded yourself. Reproducing the trends from 1890-1945 and 1975 to 2000 and very little else is not particularly impressive. Let's see how they do with 900-1800.

My suggestion is to truly research the issue, abandon your confirmation bias that climate scientists are wrong and truly dig into the scientific case for anthropogenically-forced climate change.

I have, and I find nothing to suggest there is a case for anything more than about 0.2C of warming unaccounted for.

Since we do not appear to be amoral (we "invented" morals), feel free to give examples of humans violating physical law.

Introspection indicates that morals are not invented but are instead inherent properties. That humans are able to generate a large quantity of information seems to be an exception to laws of information entropy.

Feel free to give an alternate validated causal coherent explanation for what we call evolution.

biological diversity currently lacks a validated explanation. Design though is a process currently in operation that does explain many more aspects of what it would take to generate diversity.

Quite. Of course, one must be careful not to let an ideological bias change the criteria for what is "causally adequate" (as compared to other areas of science)

Unfortunately this ship of ideological bias sailed prior to the 20th century.

Neither are you.

 

But, as I wrote, it doesn't matter. It is impossible to violate physical law; physical law is amoral. One cannot use it to justify an immoral act.

If humans and human behavior are the result of physical law then human behavior would necessarily be amoral.

The problem is that the two parts of this are not mutually exclusive. If we are to not constrain ourselves with a "commitment to materialism," than we should have to consider that we can design and program a computer that works by magic.

It is inability to provide a validated causally adequate coherent explanation and not a commitment to materialism that disallows magic.

The design and programming tell us what type of magic to implement for a particular problem. But invoking "design" does not sweep the "magic" part under the rug.

Computers and their function have full causally adequate explanations including design and front loaded functional, specified information that are not reducible to only material causes and physical law.

So why is nobody investigating magic as a basis for technology?

I suspect it is because most people prefer explanations that are causally adequate and logically coherent.

You'll have to better explain what you mean by "causes that transcend this universe," then. You brought it up by mentioning that methodological naturalism excludes transcendent causes, implying that transcendent causes are not "natural causes and events," which are under the purview of methodological naturalism.

Transcending entities would transcend (go beyond) our natural world which I take to be the universe. Those who speak of materialism and methodological naturalism speak of our material world.

To imply transcendent causes are not natural causes is to imply they are supernatural (by the definition of "supernatural") and that they exist outside natural law and the observable universe. Hence transcendent causes are not observable. (They may have effects in our observable universe, but the cause exists outside it.)

It makes more sense to me that a transcending agent that causes an effect in our universe would be detectable from within our universe when and after the effect occurs. If it is not detectable then we would not be able to tell the difference between it and an uncaused event or an event that occurred from nothing or a quantum event.

You contend that transcendent causes would be observable, but I do not see how this makes sense. Transcendent causes are, according to you, excluded by methodological naturalism, but if they're observable, they're not excluded. You need to explain transcendence more clearly.

It is according to many who use and defend the term methodological naturalism who seem to exclude potential transcending causes. If you argue observable effects and causes not originating in this universe are not excluded by your way of thinking, I can accept that. I see the term transcendence as a very clear term.

Furthermore, you still have not explained how to falsify a transcendent cause hypothesis. Your previous answer begged the question.

A hypothesis is falsified for example by invalidating predictions. If one shows that an event that is hypothesized to have a transcending cause actually has another cause then quite clearly the hypothesis is invalid. Clearer examples would require illustration of such a hypothesis. I currently don't hold to any such hypotheses but I do not reject the possibility of one. It seems from your previous statement that any transcending agent that causes an event in this universe whereby the cause was observable then a hypothesis covering the event and observable cause should be falsifiable.

I said it was the concept that was failing not the analogy.

 

 

An example

 

Suppose I hypothesize that transcendent causes sometimes cause particles to appear in our universe. Now, a transcendent cause can be any cause outside our universe, so for the sake of argument, let's assume there's another universe whose intelligent occupants are capable of influencing our universe, but we are unable to influence or detect them through any means. (If we could influence them or detect them, they'd by definition be part of our universe.)

 

snip ...

 

A transcendental hypothesis may be true, but it is impossible to know.

 

A footnote on validation and verifiability

 

It's an example but it seems incorrect because it presupposes that something or some effect that enters into our universe must be catagorized as part of our universe. This does not make sense. When I enter my automobile I do not become part of my car and yet I am detectable from within it.

One can also make the observation that animals reproducing after their own kind is a biblical argument, and the implication that speciation or hybridization does not occur or always results in an inferior result is not in accordance with evolution. So if this is supposed to be an argument based on evolution, Adolf did as well as an unsuccessful art student with no biology training could be expected to do. He failed.

 

The whole argument is fatally flawed. Evolution has its roots in other ideas and observations that predate it, so other arguments that use the same precursors are not necessarily based on evolution. And even if they were, it wouldn't matter. The application of the theory is incorrect and merely used as justification. As I have pointed out before, Archimedes' principle does not justify drowning and gravity does not justify pushing someone off of a cliff.

 

However, my insistence on having cypress answer the questions were not based solely on pointing this out. It was to underscore the pattern of dodging questions only to repeat the same talking points, because the actual answers are inconvenient to the argument. No, Darwin is not actually mentioned in the book, so the connection to evolution is tenuous. And no, computers do not operate on magic and people are not held down by invisible pink fairies, but to actually admit that would undercut the argument that the so-called "commitment to materialism" is a limitation of science. People don't waste their time trying to build computers based on magic, they build them based on quantum mechanics and E&M. But if cypress's contention is correct, it seems reasonable to ask why this is the case, and why biology is being singled out for exception to the precept about supernatural influence on nature.

Nonsense swansont. You are not the arbitrator of what Hitler meant by his words. You asked if Darwinian evolution was mentioned in Hitlers writing and it is. Whether or not Hitler's interpretation of Darwinian evolution 80 years ago matches your current viewpoint of it is not relevant. I provided as a reference an entire book that addresses this topic far more thoroughly than your opinion of what you think Hitler said. I did so to prevent this claim of yours that I dodge your trick questions.

I even answered the single relevant part of your computer question which is that computers do not run on magic instead they function because designers planned built and programmed them to function.

I did a quick read of some of your posts and am just looking for an overview of your position on evolutionary theory. Is it your postion that evoltionary theory is correct in some ways but insufficient to explain some things such as the amount of diversity we now see? If so, where would you guess the explanation lies?

Evolutionary processes adequately explain adaptation of existing form and function. This is established.

For example, is evolutionary theory simply not understood well enough yet, or is it something else?

It seems to be incomplete on how new form and function arose. I believe there must be other more capable processes involve in generation of new functional systems.

I apologize if I did not interpret your posts well. It seems obvious you have issues with evolutionary theory but I am not sure if you are suggesting alternatives or if you are simply pointing out weaknesses.

Few people are interested in discussing alternatives for long. It seems to be a short discussion because it is hard to debate with yourself. I find it more interesting and fruitful to correct misconceptions and accurately describe popular theories primarily because there is no shortage of people overselling popular ideas.

Fails to live up to the predictions? Are you actually claiming it wouldn't work?

That would be rather foolish. I am correcting those who improperly claim it is a fact that evolution accounts for observed diversity.

It is this big changes in the form of deformed organisms followed by slight fine tuning the structure through natural selection which gives them such adaptability so much that it looks like a perfect design solution for a specific problem to an external observer.

Do you have an validated example or is this imagination? Every attempt thus far to generate new form by this method has failed.

There can be favourable mutations. I quote "The achievement is a landmark in evolutionary biology, not only because it shows how new animal body plans could arise from a simple genetic mutation". This is contrary to your statement that all mutations are considered to be unfavourable to the organism.

I asked for an observed example and you offered speculation. It seems the author was overly optimistic. The references I provided describe the reality of where this field has (not) progressed eight years later.

Well I suppose definitely there is some difference between words "each and every" and "most" and between words "all" and "not very few". It is an established fact that most if not all mutations are unfavourable to an organism. But it is enough with one big rare slight mutation to provide a significant evolutionary advantage to an organism.

No it is not enough for just one slight mutation. New form requires multiple coordinated slight mutations, an uninterrupted stepwise evolutionary pathway of many mutations to be exact. In 80 plus years of looking for these pathways we have thousands of single step mutations, a small handful of two step mutations, fewer than five probable three step and zero greater than three steps. Perhaps you know of an observed multistep pathway greater than three steps. If evolution accounts for all observed diversity, we should by now be aware of thousands of examples of these multistep pathways in order for evolution to proceed in the allotted geologic time.

As for your question of how natural selection would select mutations that are detrimental. There are a few examples one example is the sickle cell anaemia in which an individual carrying two sickel cell genes have deformed RBC's and the individual will die from thrombosis. Now everyone can see this is a mutation that is detrimental but what's interesting is the next part this same sickel cell gene in an indivdual having only one sickel cell gene will be selected in a malaraial sensitive region because this deformed RBC's inhibit the malarial parasite to enter into it. If an individual has only one single sickel cell gene it does not affect the individual as it would have affected if he had two copies of the same gene.

Sickle cell trait is an advantage in an environment with Malaria so it is an example of how selection selects advantage even if the adaptation involves partial damage. It is an excellent example of how mutation which seems to damage function can provide adaptations to existing function. This is not an example of evolution leading to new function.

This shows how natural selection makes a completely bad gene into an amazingly good gene in a different environment.

The peppered moth is an another example of this situation.

Mutation and selection seem quite proficient at damaging function to defeat threats. These are adaptations of existing function that are examples of the single and double step mutations I previously spoke of that seem to go nowhere further than adapting existing function to environmental influences.

Here is a paper which I think you are in better position than me to analyze it. It provides a simple model to explain how protein-protein interactions can evolve using step by step mutations My link

I find no reason why using this model evolution by natural selection produce complex multi component protein structures with specific functions.

And also at the end of the same article they show how even the accumulation of neutral mutations may provide an evolutionary advantage to the organism later. These neutral variations may provide the raw material on which natural selection can act.

 

I quote from the same link "The evolutionary usefulness of accumulating neutral mutations preparing for saltatory changes is underlined by the recent discovery that a heat shock protein (hsp90) suppresses the phenotypic appearance of morphological mutations in Drosophila under normal conditions. By masking a hidden reservoir of genetic diversity this facilitates saltatory morphological changes upon environmental change ".

I'll have a another look at this article and perhaps comment later.

Ofcourse you don't make that claim but I just wanted to show how ignorance in this field can lead to such drastic conclusions and also misguideing the public or the layman by providing misinformation.

I find that researcher are also guilty of overselling their ideas and offering misguided conclusions. The paper on evolutionary development seems to be a good example of that. I've seen statistical analysis of peer reviewed and published research papers that indicate over 50% of the papers reach incorrect conclusions.

Are you claiming that evolution by natural selection only increases the efficiency of the existing novel forms but do not produce them in the first place?

To be precise, I am saying that experimental molecular biology indicates that adaptations to existing function are observed and validated but there are no observed cases of multistep evolutionary pathways to precursors required to produce new forms and new functions outside the rare cases of one or two mutations acting on single component systems such as enzymes. The vast majority of cell functions involve multiple components usually more than ten parts plus a host of control components.

We do know the state of affairs in this field. The gaps may be filled by biologists with in a decade or so there is no requirement for any alternative teleological assistence models right now.

We should be forthright about what is validated and what is not. Many on this site treat speculation about their favored explanations as fact just as you did with the researchers quote above. Some biologists may chose to explore material explanations while others may chose to explore other explanations. Why should we begrudge them of that?

No one has said "we advocate evolution as the explanation for how all observed diversity arosed". We do know the state of affairs in this field and we are open to any alternative scientific theory which addresses current problems in this field.

Many scientists are not open to alternative theories. Many on this site are close minded as well.

We are providing so many examples,analogies and models but nothing seems to satisfy you. It is fairly easy to point out loopholes but it takes some huge effort from biologists to fill these gaps.

Gaps are gaps. You can't fill gaps with analogies and models. Rather than trying to fill them with just so stories, it would be better to admit they are weaknesses in the theory so that the readers will have an accurate view of where the theory is strong and where it is weak.

I suppose in some other thread you have said that design is the process which provides complete explanation for all the observed diversity in geological time and also you have said that genetic engineers will create novel forms indicating the hand of design in this issue.

 

If this is the case why don't you provide a model for your design process? What is this design process? and why we have to give importance to this alternative version than to the current theory? Who were the designers before the genetic engineers?

I have noted that genetic engineers are progressing and are now far ahead of evolution in terms of explanatory power for observed diversity but I do not advocate that design is anything other than a rational alternative explanation with its own set of difficulties and weaknesses. I complain about speculation on the part of the evolutionary biologist so it would be silly for me to speculate about alternatives. I am happy to speak about what is known.

Still dodging, and there were two questions.

No. The references I offered answers your questions.

Science doesn't claim to have all the answers, and what you propose isn't science.

Science is not the pursuit of validated facts about our world?

1. Evolution has been observed, thus it is a fact.

The capability for known evolutionary processes to account for all biological diversity has not been observed. The capability of known evolutionary processes to generate known molecular precursors to new cell molecular function and new biological forms had not been observed. Only limited adaptation of existing function has been observed and I suspect this is not what you intend when you speak of evolution.

2. Define "design"

Planned for a role, purpose, or effect.

Hm. How would one validate the action of something that transcends this universe? If it is outside of this universe, it is outside of our known physical laws, and no experiment can determine the laws it operates under. (We cannot experiment outside of our own universe.)

Just because you are unable to conceive of a test for a probable cause does not mean it cannot now be or ever be validated. Should we eliminate causes that may occur to slowly to validate also, or should we look for alternative methods to validate them?

As a simple example, suppose I've determined that the action of some simple physical system exhibits the influence of a cause transcending this universe. It would be impossible to falsify this hypothesis.

I'm not sure this is true. Do you reject as unscientific the idea that something can be generated from nothing? Surely "nothingness" must transcend this universe since this universe is everywhere something. Do you reject the idea of multiple universes? How about multiverses? String Theory?

Should another scientist fail to find the influence, I can argue that the transcendent cause does not always occur, or that it hides itself when experimented upon. Should it recur, I have no reason to believe it is from outside this universe rather than an unknown cause inside our own universe.

QM uncertainty allows for the possibility of something from a quantum field. How would you discern spontaneous appearance of matter as caused by a quantum field verses a transcending cause? If one can't why should we accept one but reject the other?

In short: How is a transcendent cause falsifiable?

In the case of a claim for a transcendent cause for this universe one would falsify it by validating an alternate.

All of natural selection and evolution are random. The mutations in genotypes and then to phenotypes are completely random. The reason that natural fur colors match the surroundings is because, at one point, the mutation caused the fur to be a little bit more like the surroundings, giving that animal a better chance to survive and pass on that mutation.

 

The eye is the same way, small random mutations that built upon each other.

Adaptations such as fur color and beak length are established based on observation.

Not sure why you would Extend this to wholesale devlopment of an entire optical system like the eye. It is unconfirmed speculation and the scientific method does not accept speculation. I say this because experiments confirm that at the molecular level in cells, novel function of complex multipart systems like the optical system requires a mutitude new binding sites, protein shapes, expression controls, regulation controls, cell process controls, developmental controls and these functions are codependent. Thus far, experimental work has not been observed any instance of these precursor components being derived. In fact there are exactly zero examples of observed evolutionary pathways greater than 4 contiguous (uninterupted) steps involving mutations that lead to these precursor molecules.

It seems that even the slight small mutations can induce big changes over an entire population. This link shows how microevolution is coupled to macroevolution. It does'nt always have to be a series of small favorable mutations that accumulates over time to produce complex structures.My linkhttp://biology.ucsd.edu/news/article_020602.html

Follow on studies of evolutionary development indicate that while mutations of these kinds dramatically alter development of the organism, the result is either normal unaltered organisms, weakened and severely deformed organisms or dead organisms but never a changed functional organism.

Here is a previous discussion of this issue

Not necessarily. My previous link falsifies your statement and also there can be mutations that have a neutral effect on the organism.

I don't see how. Please point to where the link does so and describe it for me. Neutral mutations seem irrelevant since they offer no selection advantage.

I think you have come to your own conclusion by highlighting those points which suits your argument and completely ignoring other valid points. From your link it was stated that "doctoral candidate Peter Lind showed that most mutations reduced the rate of growth of bacteria by only 0.500 percent. No mutations completely disabled the function of the proteins, and very few had no impact at all." You have completely missed this point. Yes there may be some negative effects from the mRNA but it is left to natural selection to decide whether to keep it or eliminate it.

I don't see where I ignored any valid points. The word "most" was selected by the writer of the article. The research paper seems to indicate that all mutations investigated had a negative impact that was statistically equivalent. I don't see how the balance of your points are relevant. Please explain and show how natural selection would select mutations that are detrimental, as this is contrary to the premise.

Evolution works by cumulative selection i.e accumulation of good designs. If there are negative effects from a mutation then Natural selection will effectively filter it out unless those mutations are not dominant and does not affect the phenotype of the individual.

No mutations are positive or negative and bad or good by themselves it depends on the environment that they are interacting with. What is negative in one environment can be completely turn out to be positive in the other. So yes accumulation of negative impacts may be positive in some other environment which may even go on to fix this variation through out the population. So its definitely not counter to my model.

Please offer an example of a stepwise evolutionary pathway of 4 or more steps that proceeds as you described. In the 80 years that organisms have been observed in the process of adapting to environmental stress there should be countless examples, if what you describe is correct.

It seems that you are also not agreeing on the concept of common descent through modification. I earlier read from a creationist website how he was trying to falsify this concept by starting to compare individual genes which provide specific functions to an organism through out the animal kingdom and made statements like this gene is 45% similar between a horse and a cow and said that this gene was most similar between humans and chickens. So he asked how we can accept common descent.

I don't make this claim.

I think it is fair as long as you try to find loopholes that are their in the theory but its not fair to induce faith in something by completely ignoring a well established truth.

I'm not looking for loopholes, I am attempting to accurately portray the state of knowledge in this area. These are weaknesses in the theory and if we are discussing the merits of a theory we should also discuss the shortcomings. Why sugar coat it? Evolution nicely describes how organisms acquire adaptations but does not explain how novel form and function arises.

We don't need scientific reasoning to have faith in something. Let's not bring faith to the level of science

Those who advocate for evolution as the explanation for how all observed diversity arose are bringing in a mountain of faith. It is absolutely not supported by available evidence. Noting similarities in organisms does not explain how the differences occurred and it is the differences that need to be explained.

http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg/research/antenna.htm

 

The teleological information was "we need an antenna that has these performance characteristics, regardless of how weird it looks" and the algorithm was allowed to generate whatever designs it could. The success of the evolutionary algorithm in producing antenna designs more efficient and compact than the man-made designs is telling. How could design information be provided by the designers if they did not know how to achieve the performance the evolutionary algorithm achieved?

The article does not reveal the degree and amount of information that was inserted into this program that allowed it to optimize antenna performance. The article also does not mention that without the information front loaded into the algorithm by the designers the system does not find an optimum. The human designers were responsible for the success of this system. Some of the many kinds of information provided were clues to aid the algorithm in performing educated next steps.

Baloney. Analogies are often used because they are simple and make it easier to convey concepts. It is usually understood that there are shortcomings. This is no more than argument from ignorance.

The elaborations in my previous posts where I objected to the analogy describes why the analogy was not only weak but why the concept is failing to live up to the predictions made of it.

I can't help but note that you didn't actually answer the questions I asked.

The book provides quotes of Hitler's that add to and build on the quotes I previously offered establishing his commitment to evolution and Darwinian theory. If providing a source for the material you seek is not adequate, I am sorry to disappoint you.

It must require a commitment to something other than materialism, because as you've just agreed, materialism includes "intentional contingency and design" as options.

No I agreed Methodological naturalism can include intentional contingency and design.

Science in general has no commitment to materialism, only methodological naturalism. Do you believe science is correct in excluding explanations that involve supernatural designers or creators, because of methodological naturalism?

Science done correctly is a search for objective truth through citation to causally adequate explanations that can be validated. I believe that limiting explanation to methodological naturalism creates a potential blind spot whereby some truths may never be discovered. Causes that transcend this universe but act on this universe should be discoverable and if so should be able to be validated. This universe seems to have a cause that transcends it.

Alternatives to materialism includes allowing for teleological processes.

I see no harm in allowing for these possibilities. The advantage is that it eliminates this blind spot.

Please do answer my questions in post #112 about this commitment to materialism.

I believe I addressed this question in similar questions posed by others. Extending the observed processes the lead to adaptation today in organisms to say that these same processes account for all observed diversity when these processes are known to lack causal adequate explanatory power for the result that is being claimed requires a prior commitment.

Why should materialism exclude intentional contingency and intelligent cause? Materialism -- or, more accurately, methodological naturalism -- states that reliable knowledge of the universe can only be gained through reference to natural causes and events. It does not state that natural causes are the only possible causes, as that is metaphysical naturalism, and not part of the scientific method.

I'm not sure why many scientists exclude intentional contingency and design from the list of allowable modes of natural explanation. Those who exclude them from the list of possible explanations for biological diversity, instead claim evolution is a fact and that the only question is precisely how it proceeded. there are several poster here with this viewpoint.

An appeal to a designer is not supernatural in nature unless one requires the designer be supernatural. If the designer is not supernatural, why does materialism/naturalism matter here? A methodological naturalist has no philosophical reason to exclude a designer from his studies.

I tend to agree. Perhaps one of those posters I mentioned before can explain this behavior better. The fact that many do is why I characterized this as having a prior commitment to materialism and avoided using methodological naturalism.

are you trying to push a creationist agenda??

Is attempting to be accurate about what is known, what is conjecture, and what is wild speculation creationist?

What other option is there? You can't study metaphysical things, can you? And if you can, how then would they be different than the real ones?

A very god option would be not to jump to conclusions when the evidence is not there. One can certainly study and determine causality regardless of the source.

That we see it happen all the time. Can be observed in bacteria within reasonable time periods, they will specialize to whatever environment they are placed in.

We see populations adapt to scarcity of materials available in their environment as a necessity of the constraints imposed. Speculation is an optimization mechanism designed to effectively capitalize on the opportunities of abundance of choice not the necessity of limitations. Specialization does not seem to be an observable outcome of mutation and natural selection operating today.

So then you agree that a design efficient at destroying organics from a slurry (sewer treatment), would not particularly good at capturing them mostly intact (digestion)? Or are you trying to make an obviously false comparison between the two, "see how good sewer design is at destroying organics, must be a great way to capture organics"

Neither, a sewer plant is an example of the kind of design you falsely claimed designers would not employ. This is the point I am making.

Oh, please. It's an analogy, and that step represents fitness. It shows the power of simple feedback rules combined with random inputs.

That a better and more accurate analogy is not offered that does not make use of teleology demonstrates the weakness of of the power of natural process to generate efficient search routines.

The elaborations contained in my previous post address this.

Which is artificial selection, not natural.

If humans are nothing more than overachieving worms then what difference does it make that one organism uses teeth and claws to effect selection and another uses brains? Evolutionary theory holds that all observed diversity is accounted for within the theory and by this model, the actions of humans are part and parcel of observed diversity.

Those are Malthusian sentiments, and selective breeding predates the theory of evolution by thousands of years. Are Darwin, natural selection or biological evolution ever mentioned in Mein Kampf?

Hitler does address Darwinian theory, evolution, and the application of eugenics which was promoted by Darwin's followers. This book does a thorough job addressing your issue.

The so-called "commitment to materialism" is common to all of science. Do you think your computer works by magic? Are you kept from floating away by invisible pink fairies?

Nonsense, unless you begin with the prior commitment to materialism I articulated in my first response in this post. The search for intelligent life, and forensic science both admit intentional contingency and intelligent cause. Materialism I believe admits deterministic and random cause. My computer of course works because of the functional intelligence applied to designing, constructing, and programming it.

I'm sorry did you say "...why wouldn't all animals have the taste and ability to digest all sources of food energy?"

If so this is worrying. Mainly because you have failed to grasp a few fundamental concepts of biology and evolution!

Actually it was you who failed to understand the rhetorical nature of the question intended to illustrate that the speculations being bantered about here make certain assumptions about the power of natural selection to accomplish particular fantastic feats but then ignore failure to accomplish other similar feats including the one raised in my question.

A cat cannot SURVIVE without Taurine. It gets Taurine from animal tissue it eats. Its enzymes (Taurase i think) digest this. A cow for example does not have taurase to digest and synthesis energy and perpetuate its life through taurine, unlike a cat. A cat has a niche at killing animals and eating meat. A cow has a niche of eating grass and other cellulose rich products. They cannot eat the same things and survive.

Right they can't apparently because evolutionary processes does not generate those function in one organism even though it quite clearly does in others, yet some people here wildly speculate about all kinds of functions evolution does generate whenever one feels in need of an explanation. It is very clever.

And also to add, surely EVERYTHING can be determined through physical means? It's all just protons and electrons in different combinations and structures. But i know thats not what you meant. Even so its quite clear that physical things effect behavior and certain stimuli cause different reactions, like neurotransmitters travelling to different parts of the brain cause different reactions.

Unless I misunderstand you, I think that is what I meant. I do mean that physical laws do not explain and determine everything. Behavior, and functional information also are not reducible to particles.