BS: Intelpidity Design

Subject: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 01:54 PM

based on a question posed by a science teacher to the Southern Babtist president today on the DR show.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/intelpidity.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 03:56 PM

Donuel -

Although sometimes used as an intentional slur, "Babtist" is not the conventional spelling. It raises the question of whether the artist is more or less literate than they are - (less intelligent than they may be an extremely remote possibility, but they wouldn't know that.)

Intentional?

John

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 04:07 PM

John, I changed the whole thing right before your post.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 04:34 PM

Don, I heard that program. The Southern Leadership Convention guy wasn't listening to the AAAS scientist when he said "this isn't science and we don't do religion." He just kept pushing his web site. The trick of zealots is to try to sound reasonable and disguise their true purpose.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 04:42 PM

Asimov once said, "If technology is sufficiently advanced, it is indistinguishable from the supernatural".


imho there is no supernatural. Lets hope that all science and technology will be replaced with supernatural explanations.

.........

Customer: My toilet is overflowing !

plumber: Let us pray.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 05:01 PM

That wasn't Asimov, it was Clarke -- any technology sufficiently advanced will be indistinguishable from magic.

A great cartoon that epitomizes the incompatability of evolutionary study and faith-based assertions. The entire principle of science is to consult experience to determine theorems. That's why it supplanted faith back in Galileo's day.

If someone wants to seriously suggest intelligence as a factor, and not just individual organism intelligence leading to selective survival advantages, then they have to offer a hypothesis as to how this works and a method to consult experience, known as experimental design.

It is possible that there is such a thing as non-local intelligence, but where it is centered or how to describe it is anybody's guess. My best, wild-ass guess is that it is a composite matrix of individual viewpoints creating a shared "knowledge space", but that is not a scientific theorem. It works as well as the Old Testament, though!!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 07:40 PM

Maybe there is a holographic dimension of awareness
but it certainly should not be compared to or supplant the theory of evolution.

The religionists keep saying that Darwin proposed the evolution of the first viral/bacterial/single celled life form out of nothingness.
But he did not.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 04 Aug 05 - 08:51 PM

Sorry, Donuel, "the theory of evolution" has not been investigated by experiment. (reason for the quotes, later)

The meaning of the word "theory" is an attempt at a systematic, rational basis for understanding some phenomenon. Note the word "attempt". Thus, "the theory of mathematics", "the theory of tort law", "the theory of gravity", and so on. Along with the rest of science, such theories are always looked at as works in progress.

Evolution is an observed fact. Various species can, in retrospect, be observed to have changed over long periods of time. Equally, new species have emerged over time. The theory of it is an attempt at having a systematic understanding of what has been observed, and the process behind it. The particulars of evolution can only be observed in hindsight, and cannot be subjected to experimental test, despite what I suppose are millions of generations of fruitflies and flatworms and other such extremely short-lived species studied in the laboratory. As to origin of species, despite a lot of studies, a lot of inbreeding and cross-breeding and exposure to mutagens of various animals, large and small, science has never been able to create a new species (so far, at least). Strange variations, yes, but species, no. So the word "experiment" is a misnomer in this connection.

Now (as promised) the reason I put quotes around "the theory of evolution": There are many theories of evolution, the best known and to most minds the most convincing of which is that of Darwin. I suppose it would be possible to concoct some sort of intelligent design theory of evolution, too, but of course those who use those words usually aren't into rational explanation. Certainly I have never heard of any theoretical system of evolution by intelligent design being put forward. "Intelligent design" in relation to evolution, or cosmology, or whatever else, is (in my experience, at least) an exercise in obscurantism.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 08:42 AM

I would agree, however the numerous "hindsight" experiments including the evolution of moths in the UK throughout the industrial age to the present demonstrates an attempt of experimentaion.

Exactly what kind of experiment, hindsight or otherwise, can one conduct to prove intelligent design? Prayer? Concentrated opinion?

I think it was designed to be guaranteed unprovable.
Indeed some people have claimed the same for string theory.

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/intelpidity.jpg

Creationists might seek to outnumber evolutionists on the school board but that does not make them correct.

Science is not a democracy of rule by majority.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:04 AM

Uncle Dave said:

"science has never been able to create a new species "

That's because, quite simply, there's no such thing as a species in that sense. They are only observable by differences, and to call one thing a dog, say, and another a wolf, is simply a matter of convention. We are used to dogs and wolves being different species. Of course, an amoeba is different from an elephant, and scientists have not observed them interbreeding, but at the level of the dynamic process, you can't draw a line to say that variation has produced a new species.

In evolutionary terms, species are simply a snapshot of where we've got to as of now.

Some scientists claim the variation observed has been sufficient to warrant the name of new species:
One claim

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Pied Piper
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:20 AM

Found this a couple of days ago, it's fascinating, relevant and right up your street Amos.

Enjoy

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:40 AM

Pied Piper, THe author concentrates primarily on electrical dendrite and neuron communication/consciousness of cells.

That is like focusing only on our vision sense for communication.
Cells depend upon chemical communication to a great degree.
In a way one can say, cells smell as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:50 AM

"If someone wants to seriously suggest intelligence as a factor, and not just individual organism intelligence leading to selective survival advantages, then they have to offer a hypothesis as to how this works and a method to consult experience, known as experimental design."

Hey, I'm all for "burden of proof" and stuff, but what you are suggesting here is an unfair disadvantage to "ID". After all, science doesn't claim to know the means by which each jump is made in evolutionary progression, nor the impetus that caused each jump, yet it accepts as "fact" those jumps. There is just as strongly argued a case for "monsters" as there is for progressive adaptation -- maybe more. And that's not the only ambiguity even if you accept evolution as truth.

It's a goose and gander thingy. What's fair for one, y'know...

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 10:20 AM

"That's because, quite simply, there's no such thing as a species in that sense. They are only observable by differences, and to call one thing a dog, say, and another a wolf, is simply a matter of convention."

"I would agree, however the numerous "hindsight" experiments including the evolution of moths in the UK throughout the industrial age to the present demonstrates an attempt of experimentaion."

While many things might point to the jumps required for evolution, I don't believe that the two instances above do. In both cases above, all that is illustrated by observation is that the animals in question contained much more genetic material -- much more genetic possibility -- than was manifest at any one time. These merely point to the subtractive abilty of a species to adapt -- the changes illustrated by the moths, or by the differences in dogs, are all merely physical manifestations of genetic material already within the possiblity of the single species. No new genetic material was necessary for the change in manifestation -- both the moths and the dogs are fully capable of mixing back to a more "original" appearance by interbreeding. They are also capable of new, never-before-seen manifestations still "latent" within the same genetic material.

There is no evidence that the physical differences that we refer to in man as "race" are adaptations that will(would) lead to an evolutionary change. We are exactly the same species -- in fact, we are exactly the same race.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 10:25 AM

Analysis of DNA supports the theory of evolution. The other point is that good science cleaves to the explanation with the least complexity that also covers the obsevred data. All the research of the last ten years on how complex systems evolve seem to support the notion that they are arrived at when a simple set of elements and a small set of rules arrives at a critically large number of transactions.

The explanations which includes all known physical phenomena and from those elements can provide a complete explanation of the phenomena is more elegant and therefore preferable, as science, than that explanation which requires the introduction of additional elements, especially elements which cannot be tested.

Intelligent design as a general concept is interesting and has been argued since the 1800s -- it is not a new concept. But because it is often associated with monotheism -- NOT a necessary concomitant of the ingredient of intelligence and design -- it probably gets shorter shrift than it could. But the biggest problem with it -- as evidenced in Dawkins' popular books -- is that it ain't needed.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 10:43 AM

Even if (though?) I agree with the point you are making, Amos, there is still a certain arrogance of dismissal that science should not be making to questions that it claims to be answering empirically but is not.

Questions are not invalid just because:

1. They call into question a seemingly workable hypothesis

2. They are asked without an answer in mind (I mean, isn't that truer to "science" than to accept that only the right people have the right to ask the questions -- and that they must be asked with a pre-concieved acceptable answer?)

3. They cannot be answered. It is possible to ask a question that one does not know the answer to, but that still shows a fallacy in a currently held view. If you maintained that the reason the lights came on when you flipped a switch was because you prayed that they would come on, I would not be wrong in my questioning you -- even if I could not, properly, or in completeness, explain the principles of electricity. But that kind of dismissal of questioning is what the scientific community's response has, to date, been of "questions" such as the recently published papers on "Irreducible Complexity" -- a paper that concludes more about the accepted standards of current science than it concludes alternative possibility(s).

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:07 AM

"No new genetic material was necessary for the change in manifestation -- both the moths and the dogs are fully capable of mixing back to a more "original" appearance by interbreeding"

That's the point I was making. Speciation isn't a 'thing'- you can't draw a line and say 'now it's a new species'. It's a continuum. It's only when varieties have drifted apart so far that the differences are obvious that we call them different species. This usually happens because a population gets split, perhaps (a hypothetical example) by a climatic change that puts a desert between two groups of deer. They can't interbreed simply because they never meet: and as the ecosystems gradually diverge, adaptive variation accumulates, and different species result.

There's very little 'new' genetic material involved; I'm sure you know the cliche about humans sharing 99% or whatever the figure is of our DNA with chimps, and 83% with fruit flies, and about 60% with bacteria, even significant amounts with plants. You wouldn't claim that we were 'merely' variations of lugworms on that basis?

As for humans, yes, we are all one species. One race, the human race. It's quite possible that speciation would have occurred eventually had we remained in separate groups (say Eurasia, the Americas, Australia) for a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years more, but the variation that did occur in the 40000 years ors so since the human diaspora was fairly minor. Not really surprising; some species remain stable for millions of years. Homo sapiens(ish) seems to be adapted for many different habitats- perhaps because our main adaptation is to change the habitat to suit ourselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:30 AM

"but the variation that did occur in the 40000 years ors so since the human diaspora was fairly minor."

I'm not trying to be argumentative, really I'm not, but "fairly minor" is, from my understanding, a "fairly major" overstatement.

There has been no variation.

I can say this with a certainly borne of having been shouted down in derision by a scientist friend (prof at Notre Dame) for having made the same statement about "fairly minor" changes as manifested by what we call "races". According to him, there are NO differences in races. This assertion (no races) is further backed up by the somewhat recent spate of articles in National Geographic and USA Today and parallel stories carried on "NOVA" and covered in depth on NPR. I could probably link to the stories if backed against the wall, but, given my lazy nature, I'd rather not have to. *BG*

And, again, relative to my point - even if the races, or the dogs, or the moths represented adaptation -- it is clearly NOT the kind of adaptation necessary for evolution to occur. For one thing, again, the "adaptation" illustrated by those examples is merely a choice, forced on the species by environment, and chosen by survival, of manifestaions of genetic possibilities already possible for that species. The species, in those cases, did not develop new genetic material in order to deal with an environmental change. Only those of the species who manifested the necessary manifestations survived, and because they did, their progeny, more probable to carry the same manifestations, began to appear as the survivor -- BUT -- even so, the manifestations did not "erase" the genetic material that would cause the manifestation(s) that was(were) not necessary for survival. Each of those species is still only one generation away from manifesting the old appearance.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:51 AM

PP:

Many thanks for that fascinating link. I am particularly bemused by the authors arguments on behalf of "distributed" cellular consciousness which he calls democratic polyzoism. I think, in biological terms, there is a lot of merit in it. But I think it is an incomplete model.

It could appear that your cell phone was supporting a similar polyzooic ability to originate stories and explanations. This would be better than trying to pin down "a single 'me' cell" component which was driving all the others. But there is an error -- almost the inverse of the Watchful Watchmaker error -- in mis-identifying the scope of the system such that significant components and interactions are left out of the explanation.

John: I think any question should be askable, even the unanswerable ones; but obviously those more based on the cumulative wisdom of a specialized field will be of interest to those in that field. Senior physicists are more interested in questions raised by their peers than by, say, freshmen who haven't done the legwork necessary to know what to question. Questions have to also be meaningful in the context they are asked. Posing the question "How do you KNOW the whole of existence was not brought about in seven earthly days" is not a meaningful question in this sense of the word. Too many extraneous premsies embedded into it.

The problem of intentionality in form is, I think, a real problem. The individual organism does intend to survive, and the toolmaker must intend the tool before he can bring it out of the stone or wood. These may be different kinds of intention or different orders of qualia. But one of the reasons the ID crowd has difficulty is that they couple their proposition of theproblem of intentionality in forms with their prefabricated answer of some sort of deus in machina, which obliviates the rationale pretended by the question.

I think the kinds of questions posed by the link PP pointed to -- about how consciousness works and where -- are part of this complex of things we do not understand fully. For example, most studies in consciousness focus on perception, rather than the projected consciosuenss that describes intent. But it is obvious that life above a minimal level is not wholly passive, nor wholly reactive, nor wholly intentional but a combination of all these in degrees.
It perceives, it reacts, and it intends. And, occasionally, it reasons! Tadaaa!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:54 AM

Paul Burke told us:

Some scientists claim the variation observed has been sufficient to warrant the name of new species,

and provided a link in "proof". But the article reached by the link says:

the insects are in the early stages of diverging into separate species.

That's not a new species, nor does it make a claim that there is one. It's merely a guess that a new species may develop.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:59 AM

But speciation is a continuim as mentioned. Few people would argue that lions and tigers are NOT seperate species. And normally the definition of species is that they will not breed with each other - or if they breed the offspring are infertile.

However, lines and tigers not only will breed together (even under "wild" conditions this has been known to occur) and the offspring are fertile. Both recipricol crosses.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 12:18 PM

Donuel said, in part:

however the numerous "hindsight" experiments including the evolution of moths in the UK throughout the industrial age to the present demonstrates an attempt of experimentaion.

and also:

Exactly what kind of experiment, hindsight or otherwise, can one conduct to prove intelligent design?

Both of these statements display a misunderstanding of what the word "experiment" means. You are talking about retrospective studies, which are fine as far as they go, but not experiments.

Of course I agree that if the second statement is modified to say:

Exactly what kind of study or experiment can one conduct to prove intelligent design?

The answer is "none".

And I certainly agree that "intelligent design" is "intelligently designed" to be unprovable. That's why I used the word "obscurantism" in one of my earlier posts.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MudGuard
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 12:32 PM

Sorry to interrupt - but my bad English needs some improvement.

I can't find the word "intelpidity" in any dictionary - could someone please explain to a non-native-English-speaker, please?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 12:40 PM

But, Amos, here's what I hear you saying...

On the one hand, you argue from the extreme (the freshman question) when that doesn't characterize all who are asking the questions. And by your defense of such "science" (that which is allowed to exclude and disqualify questions by caprice) sounds too much like the kind of christianity (or religion) that neither you nor I would accept as "scientific" -- that being the kind of religion soley supported by "circular reasoning (logic)". Incidentally, circular logic is a warning sign of possible faulty thinking, but does not dismiss reality - reality is self-supporting in the long run. But I digress...

On the other hand, in your second paragraph (addressed to me) you seem to imply that ID's answer to what you call "the problem of intentionality" is a religious one. That's demonstrably not true.

Yet, you simultaneously seem to imply that science has no problem "getting around" the necessity for "the problem of intentionality". That's demonstrably untrue as well. No matter how much drift we may be able to deduce from apparently close but changed species, we have not, as yet, empirically nailed down the cause or mechanism for the assumed change.

You leave the impression that is the ID crowd that has a problem with "intentionality", when it is quite the reverse.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 12:40 PM

I *think* it's a made-up term combining "intellectual" with "stupidity"

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 12:40 PM

I'm feel sure it's a coinage from "intelligence" and "intrepidity", although it might be making a bow to "serendipity".

In any case, it's not clear enough nor enlightening enough (as the best new coinages can be), in my opinion, to catch on and become a part of the language.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 02:21 PM

John:

1. My point about the quality of questions is just that those who have 'done the math' are more interested in talking to those who have also. I did not mean to imply that all questions are so disqualified or even that they should be. Nor did I mean that such disqualification was capricious. Just based on the context of the dialogue.

2. " ID's answer to what you call "the problem of intentionality" is a religious one. That's demonstrably not true".

Some proponents of Intelligent Design argue that there must therefore be a single-source Intentional Designer, or Watching Watchmaker, to play on Dawkins' title. This gets very close to religous assertion, in my view. The fact that consciousness -- and therefore intelligence -- is not understood fully means that neither grand scheme -- the one asserting no design exists, the other asserting it must exist and is intelligent -- can really be argued conclusively. The main point I was making about consciousness discussions is that too much emphasis is placed on perception and too little on intentionality, which to my mind is the more interesting flip side of consciousness.

3. "You simultaneously seem to imply that science has no problem "getting around" the necessity for "the problem of intentionality". "

Well, as far as I know, the Blind Watchmaker (no design) school leaves intentionality out of the picture, aside from the individual organism's intention to achieve survival. That is their view of the minimal inclusion necessary to explain the larger copmplexity, and it is quite elegant. I think it leaves gaps in understanding that are important, but I am a neophyte in the subject. I haven't even read Darwin in the original. I am studying two of Dawkins' books right now, enjoying them greatly. There is a lot of careful thought and well-arrayed factual discussion in them which is giving me much to chew over.

I think there is a great deal more to consciousness than even complex neuronic wave equations can reveal, but so far that is just a semi-eddicated opinion.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MudGuard
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 03:08 PM

Thanks Dave and Mario.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 03:37 PM

Well, I am sure it is coined from the collusion of "Intelligent" (as in ID) and "Stupidity".


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 03:52 PM

"stupigent" would sound too much like "stupid gent", whereas, "intelpidity" sounds like a poorly designed computer processor.

"Intelpidity Inside"

"Intelpidity" led to the Iraq war.

"Intepidity" lacks the knowledge to become either hot or cold.

"Intarpidity" is when you set up your tent wrong and it leaks.

"Intarpitity" refers to the extinction of dinosaurs.

"Intelpudditity" is artificial intelligence available in vanilla, chocolate, butterscotch, or tapioca. Nobody chooses the tapioca -- that's intelligence.

"Intorpitdity" is being both dumb and slow.

"IntelPDiddy" displays, to impress you, his hands -- the backs of them facing you with the fingers pointing down and splayed and waving up and down.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 04:20 PM

"Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a possible 2008 presidential contender who faces a tough re-election fight next year in Pennsylvania, said intelligent design, which is backed by many religious conservatives, lacked scientific credibility and should not be taught in science classes.

Bush told reporters from Texas on Monday that "both sides" in the debate over intelligent design and evolution should be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about."

"I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested," Santorum, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, told National Public Radio. "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."

Evangelical Christians have launched campaigns in at least 18 states to make public schools teach intelligent design alongside Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that nature is so complex that it could not have occurred by random natural selection, as held by Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution, and so must be the work of an unnamed "intelligent cause.""

---

The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkin's first big-seller, addresses this issue carefully and well, and I recommend it to anyone trying to comprehend this issue and why it was put to bed over 100 years ago, let alone at the Scopes Trial.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 04:31 PM

Proponents of intelligent design argue that nature is so complex that it could not have occurred by random natural selection, as held by Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution, and so must be the work of an unnamed "intelligent cause.""

I submit that the above paragraph is sufficient unto itself as "teaching intelligent design" - and that if such a paragraph were included in the curriculum it would satisfy any legal requirement to "teach intelligent design"

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 05:17 PM

Gee, MMario, I'm sure the that the proponents of ID wouldn't mind your dismissing of any explanations as to what the nature of the complexity is, and the problems that Darwinian evolution does not adequately answer. Great solution on your part!

It is not science to say "I don't know, but I still conclude "this", even though "that" is both unanswerable and casts doubt on the ultimate conclusion that I desire". That's as religious as any religion.

I see many pitfalls with attempting to teach something as "intelligent design" -- something that, by its very nature is not a free-standing systematized theory, but is rather, by its very nature merely asking that science be forced to answer some good questions that it would rather ignore. But they are good questions. And I bristle at least equally at the patronizing, dismissive, insular way that "science" is avoiding rather than facing the questions, as I bristle at the notion of religion in the public classroom.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 06:34 PM

John:

I don't think any scientist has the right to be condescending, or even dismissive. But those who want to cut a new path in the history of scientific modeling are reiterating material that was thoroughly hashed in Darwin's time, and has been re-hashed repeatedly, and they repeating this history because they haven't studied thematerial of its past incarnations.

The argument that intelligent design is obvious in the intricacy and genius of life-forms and is a necessary part of any explanation of such harmonious complexity, was raised in Darwin's era by Paley and was the subject of multiple books. It has been thrashed out. It is also one of the topics of The Blind Watchmaker as discussed above. Here's an excerpt from a review which says it better than I can:

"One of the most famous arguments of the creationist theory of the universe is that of the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley: Just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. But as Richard Dawkins demonstrates in this brilliant and eloquent riposte to the Argument from Design, the analogy is false. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially nonrandom process that Darwin discovered—has no purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature at all, it is the blind watchmaker.

Patiently and lucidly, Dawkins identifies those aspects of the theory of evolution that people find hard to believe and removes the barriers to credibility one by one...."

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 07:10 PM

Amos and Dave:

Thank you for being around to correct Donuel's well intentioned but woefully inadequate addressing of this important topic.

Evolution is an observed fact. It's the 'theory' behind it that is being mercilessly attacked by folk who know less than nothing. The fact that Donuel is attacking the unknowledgeable on the 'fundy' side does not detract from his ignorance on the Darwinian side and he weakens that case when he posts with his poor quotes and ill conceived 'pinions.

In another thread I'll go Darwinian on his a$$.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 08:28 PM

I think, Guest, that it is unfair of you to attack any individual by name while refusing top have one of your own. I also think that Donuel's cartoon is excellent in SPITE of whatever formal information it may lack about Darwinian theory. I have no idea why you choose top target someone who is participating in a civil conversation with uncivil and threatening remarks, but kindly get back to the discourse at hand which is not about how right you are, or how wrong anyone else is, but an exchange of ideas.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 08:36 PM

You have all mostly sidestepped the concept of 'Emergent Behaviour' - the intellectual counter to the 'Watchmaker' theory.

Read "Escher, Godel & Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid"

by Douglas Hoffstedder - Pulitzer Prize winning book

for an explanation (among many other things) about emergent behaviour.

Briefly, when chatting to his Computing Geek friends complaining about certain Computer multitasking Timesharing OSes only being able to accept a certain number of users before bogging down and becoming too slow to use...

"The critical number of users is 5"

"So why don't you go inside the OS and edit the number?"

"Ha! Ha! Emergent Behaviour!"

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:08 PM

Obviously the watchmaker analogy falls short. It is, after all, an analogy.

To dismiss the questions raised by ID on the basis that a hundred-year-old analogy fails to adequately explain the questions, is no more sound logic than is the dependence upon an analogy as the only basis for belief.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 09:26 PM

Science has definitively nailed down the answer as 'Emergent Behaviour'.

Of course, you can only understand the Emergent Behaviour in a particular system by learning more about the internals of the particular system involved. For instance, in the computer one, it's the startup, shutdown, and run time overheads, as well as the I/O throughput, memory and CPU speed and access times interacting...

Just running around with like a chook with your head cut off chanting 'Emergent Behaviour' without doing the scientific research into the system itself is not a Scientific approach, it's just another Religious Belief...

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 10:15 PM

It is true I understand the politics of this subject better than the academic foundation of species differenciation, genetics, micro biology and more. I am in the debt of people like John and Dave and Amos and others for patiely
explaining important concepts.

As for GUEST he is perfectly consistent. Since 2000 his personal opinion of my contributions has been one of disdain. Thats fine by me. His opinions about the course of action after 9-11 has been as disasterous as I predicted. But it was the course that was taken and not my judicial approach so he got it right although it was wrong.
But he is OK in my book for being steadfast even if we agree on nothing else.

Stupidigent Design may have been a better title.
LMAO on the variations of the term intellpidity.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 10:20 PM

John H:

The problem I was responding to was the resurrection of that old analogy. Unless I just imagined it!

The notion of emergent behaviour if I understand it aright, Robin, is comparable to the emergence of complex systems which I described above. I think it is facetious to tell anyone to read Godel, Escher, Bach -- Hofsteder is NOT readily readable.

From Answers.com:

"Emergence is the process of complex pattern formation from simpler rules. This can be a dynamic process (occurring over time), such as the evolution of the human brain over thousands of successive generations; or emergence can happen over disparate size scales, such as the interactions between a macroscopic number of neurons producing a human brain capable of thought (even though the constituent neurons are not themselves conscious). For a phenomenon to be termed emergent it should generally be unexpected and unpredictable from a lower level description. Usually the phenomenon does not exist at all or only in trace amounts at the very lowest level. Thus, a straightforward phenomenon such as the probability of finding a raisin in a slice of cake growing with the portion-size does not generally require a theory of emergence to explain. It may however be profitable to consider the emergence of the texture of the cake as a relatively complex result of the baking process and the mixture of ingredients.

There is no consensus amongst scientists as to how much emergence should be relied upon as an explanation. It does not appear possible to unambiguously decide whether a phenomenon should be classified as emergent, and even in the cases where classification is agreed upon it rarely helps to explain the phenomena in any deep way. In fact, calling a phenomenon emergent is sometimes used in lieu of any better explanation.



The Principle of Emergence

Emergent properties

An emergent behaviour or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective. The property itself is often unpredictable and unprecedented, and represents a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities. The shape and behaviour of a flock of birds or school of fish are good examples.

One reason why emergent behaviour occurs is that the number of interactions between components of a system increases combinatorially with the number of components, thus potentially allowing for many new and subtle types of behaviour to emerge. For example, the possible interactions between groups of molecules grows enormously with the number of molecules such that it is impossible for a computer to even count the number of arrangements for a system as small as 20 molecules."

Just so we all are using the same vocabulary here!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 05 - 11:50 PM

Getting back to the critical question of a good scientific explanation: necessary and sufficient -- the big question is whether the notion of Intelligent Design in any cosmic sense is necessary to account for observed phenomena. I thin the general thrust of ID is to call for it as a competing theory to Darwinian natural selection.

The argument against that is that it is wholly unnecessary if you take into account the constraints of evolution.

First, it is not random change that brings about evolution. The same sort of "ordering" from basic physical process, for example, that sometimes makes big rocks on a beach all gather in one band and tiny ones in another -- a non-random result -- is present in thousands of ways in life's interactions.

Secondly this sort of crude sieving of factors is not simplistic, in that an ordinary organism in its search to survive is involved in thousands of such forces every day.

Thirdly, the results of these many influences of ordering are not single-step. They are cumulative. The difference inherent in this one point is one of orders of magnitude--if changes are preserved on some sort of merit, or some sort of ideal to be approached (this is where ID gets its kicks just like the old Social Darwinists did) then the rate of change in that direction is millions of time more advanced than if every change is a single step with no additional force selecting some as preferable to others and passing those selections down the line to the next iteration. Evolutionary modifications are TINY but they are CUMULATIVE.

Finally there is no need, given these factors, for any more "guidance". "ideal", "goal", or "design" than just that reproductive success and success in surviving be slightly better. That's all that is needed to account for the complexity, harmony and adaptation of all our millions of life forms. There is no reason either to assume that evolution is progressive, culminating in proud fat white people, NOR that it is prescriptive (steered to a longer term goal by external direction).

I think this is the basic perspective a biologist would present, and it seems to me that it does indeed obviate the need for intercession or design of any kind, other than the intelligence of the individual organism in seeking to survive better. Maybe even not that.

Arguably more intelligence would accelerate the emergence of more survival behaviors, but they in turn might well be dependent on the number of perceptics a given organism can manage biologically.

This leaves out spiritual questions almost completely. Possibly not a good idea in the long run, but acceptable for a discussion about science 21st century style.



A





.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:39 AM

An entertaining bit from an e-list:

On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 06:00:07PM -0600, David Farber wrote:

> But advocates of intelligent design also claim support from
> scientists.
> The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank in Seattle that is
> the leading proponent for intelligent design, said it had compiled a
> list of more than 400 scientists, including 70 biologists, who are
> skeptical about evolution.
>
> "The fact is that a significant number of scientists are extremely
> skeptical that Darwinian evolution can explain the origins of life,"
> John West, associate director of the organization's Center for Science
> and Culture, said in a prepared statement.
>

What puts the lie to this number is that Discovery Institute still can't
catch up with Project Steve, where scientists named Steve (estimated to
be around 1% of the population) have signed a statement in defense of
evolution and opposition to creationism in science classes. Checking the
Steve-o-Meter (see link in FAQ), Project Steve has 580 scientists to its
name.

The introduction to Project Steve is here:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_project_steve_2_16_2003.asp

The directory of links about the project is here:
http://www.ncseweb.org/article.asp?category=18


This argument by numbers demonstrates that what the creationists are
doing is not science despite their protestations. Real science is about
testing facts, not signing loyalty oaths. No matter how many theocrats
want material on creationism, the flat earth, or the heavenly spheres
tought in science classes, it's still not science.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:41 AM

Followed by:

"More importantly, where have we failed as educators? It is all too easy
to blame all of this on the Christian Right or fundamentalists. But if
the surveys are right and around 50% of Americans do not accept
evolution, then 50% of Americans do not accept geology, physics,
archeology and a host of other sciences. Most of these people are high
school graduates and a good number have college degrees. What kind of
science education did they have? Evolution is somewhat abstract in the
sense that you can not see or feel it; rocks, however, are not. Strata
are visible to all.

Most of these people have had science in high school or college.
However, if someone tells them that it is all nonsense and the world was
created 5000 years ago, they believe it. One has to wonder about the
quality of science education in this country.

Given Bush's latest statement one also has to wonder about the quality
of science education at Andover and Yale."

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:31 AM

"America is a brainwashed country - by Religion and Consumerism, also a Religion."

Amos

I had tried to read EGB for ages, but kept on having difficulty getting my head around it. One day my doctor sent me home with a mixture of good stuff including noradrenalin for my inner ear infection. One drop on a sugar cube was anormal dose... I then had no trouble reading it... I even spent 3 hours chatting to an ant colony on the back wall of the house until my Mum insisted that I go and lie down again... Oh, I understand it clearly now!

I'm NOT making this up!

Robin

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 09:34 AM

My friend, the professor, tells me that he takes no greater joy in teaching than disabusing young fundamentalists of their creationist notions. But even he laughingly tells me that, though it is vigorously hypothesized as such, there is no evidence that an organism's wanting or needing to change genetic material actually causes the necessary change for survival or evolution.

Besides, the problem is deeper than just whether order ever comes out of seeming random. That is not arguable. The problem is that many orders have to be in place for the survival of other randoms, were they to come into order.

It's not just whether rocks can show a pattern when strewn on a beach -- heck, ever look at mackerel clouds? (though, even IF I grant you that order can be found in seeming random -- if you were to take that grouping of rocks that seems to be in order/pattern on the beach, and actually measure the pattern you would disqualify ALMOST every one of the patterns as actually being random when compared to the kind of tolerances necessary for a pattern to be an actual pattern -- a pattern that would actually be analogous to the kinds of order necessary for the kinds of complexity found in life) The question is in how many randoms have to be in order in order for the kind of complexity that we're obviously observing in life to have occurred.

Couple that with the inability to demonstrate how an organism can "choose" to change its genetic makeup -- chose to "become" more complex -- in order to survive environmental change and now you're getting closer to the complexity of the issue.

You are offering a watchmaker's tale of your own. The solution suggested cannot be demonstrated unless within a closed, controlled system (just as the failings of the watchmaker analogy)

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 10:00 AM

A scientist may have an opinion such as ID but an opinion is not science.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 11:32 AM

I don't think there's any choice in these things, John -- that's a straw man. I think the organism's choices have a lot to do with his success in surviving and his success in reproducing.   Not in changing his organic structure. Certainly not by intellectual choice. There me be a level of raw intent which can do so, but I am not involving that issue with this thread.

The point is that an organism is in a matrix of forces (including those of his own reactions to those forces) and small changes in the organism come about as a result. Dawkins mentions, for example, species of moths which have changed color and become deeper brown since the advent of the industrial age, as a trivial example.

The occasional order of clouds is a good example of non-cumulative (even though cumulus) change. The critical ingredient of cumulative change, that is brought forward in the next generation, is missing.

The difference between "merely random" and adaptive change relevant to survival coupled with the difference between single-step change and cumulative change makes the difference between a complex change taking tens or hundreds of generations versus the same change taking millions of millions of generations.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 11:48 AM

...and they are not empirically provable (at least at this point), and they are necessary advancements in complexity that are demanded before necessary advancements in complexity before necessary advancements in complexity -- all taking place in an interdependant chain of events wherein one cannot happen before another without lacking the environment being in place to sustain the changes.

And again, the moth thingy doesn't work -- it did not alter genetically. The latter moths were exactly the same moths genetically as the former moths -- all that change was the manifestation of color -- a manifestation that was present in ALL the moths, dark and light. When the lighter ones died off because the were no longer camoflauged against the now darkening buildings, only the darker moths survived (were not eaten) so darker moths bred with darker moths, making darker progeny -- but the progeny was still genetically identical -- it was not a new species. The survival did not require the moth to "adjust" genetically to the changing environment. If it had needed to adjust genetically in order to survive, it would not have survived. It only survived because it already had the possiblity to be either dark or light. That's no different than the fact that we can be blonde, brunette, redhead. If we needed to change to survive, we could either die our hair or breed accordingly.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 11:51 AM

I believe it was Lamarck who posited a "theory of evolution" whereby he explained (as an example) the giraffe's long neck, by saying that the species saw tender leaves higher than the animals could reach, and that will made the succeeding generations have longer necks.

This is one of the other theories of evolution I mentioned in a post early on in this thread.

Incidentally, George Bernard Shaw was a believer in Lamarckian evolution, and used it as a premise for his play (fascinating reading, by the way) Back to Methuselah.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 12:09 PM

The giraffe example is largely bogus, and Lamarckian theories of the transmission of acquired traits has been pretty well thrown out of court.

Speaking of court, here is a wonderful blow-by-blow account of The Scopes Trial including profiles of the two oratorical giants, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who spearheaded the opposing sides.

The trial was serious, the rhetoric was serious, but the results were not: it was overturned on a minor technicality and dismissed by the state's higher ground. It never noticed the constitutional issues. But it is of great historical interest.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 12:33 PM

Ummmm... In the article that Pied Piper pointed at Amos (or pointed Amos at, depending on your perspective), am I the only one that noticed...

1. The individual signals passing from neurone to neurone are not bound together, whether as elements of information or physically.
2. Within a single cell, binding in terms of bringing together of information is potentially feasible. A physical substrate may also be available.
3. It is therefore proposed that a bound conscious experience is a property of an individual cell, not a group of cells. Since it is unlikely that one specific neurone is conscious, it is suggested that every neurone has a version of our consciousness, or at least some form of sentience.
5. However absurd this may seem it is consistent with the available evidence; arguably the only explanation that is. It probably does not alter the way we should expect to experience the world, but may help to explain the ways we seem to differ from digital computers and some of the paradoxes seen in mental illness. It predicts non-digital features of intracellular computation, for which there is already evidence, and which should be open to further experimental exploration.

"One, Two, Three, FIVE??!!

Interesting thread, guys, but... ummmm... the mathematicians reckon that all science (& presumably religion too) comes down to numbers, don't they? 0/10 for observation & I don't want to be anywhere near you lot if someone hands you the Holy Hand Grenade to chuck (never mind the fact that rabbit will have time to eat the lot of you before you finish arguing out who's entitled to chuck the bloody thing...)!

;-)

R

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:41 PM

I think your talking Monty Python..must ber...cuz I can't follow it!! LOL What does "0/10 for observation" really mean, R?

:)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:37 PM

The Washington Post overs some thoughts on Bush's remarks in an article entitled "But Is It Intelligent?".

Good question.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST,Peyter Woodruff
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:42 PM

I was a Baptist untill I got science.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 09:00 PM

The giraffe example is discredited because there is no demonstrated mechanism whereby the actions during life can be shown to affect the DNA in the germ cells. However, some things in life can affect the germ cells (the ones in the ovaries/sperm) - just ask Vietnam Vets about Agent Orange.

It is now believed that speciation did proceed in leaps and bounds rather than just by 'creep' - the periodic wide-scale extinctions allowed exploitation by different organisms due to opening up of opportunities for slightly differing organisms to proliferate.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 11:14 PM

Amos quite accurately told us:

The giraffe example is largely bogus, and Lamarckian theories of the transmission of acquired traits has been pretty well thrown out of court.

Yes, it's been thrown out of court, long since, but the point is that, while not taken seriously by almost anyone today, it was at one time. And that was the point I tried to make, that to say "the theory of evolution" is not meaningful. Lamarck is only one of the various theories that have been put forward. One should refer to "Darwinian theory of evolution".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 06:47 AM

"It is now believed that speciation did proceed in leaps and bounds rather than just by 'creep'"

This is what I said further back in the thread. The "jumps" are sometimes referred to as "monsters".

"- the periodic wide-scale extinctions allowed exploitation by different organisms due to opening up of opportunities for slightly differing organisms to proliferate."

How does the extinction of one make any difference? The giraffe may have more opportunity to survive if one of its preditors goes extinct, or if one of its competitors for food goes extinct, but that goes absolutely nowhere in still explaining how he got his long neck.

If what you are saying is that the two events (the monster giraffe and the extinction of his competitor) happened by random chance simultaneously, well, that's yet another small example of what I was saying about the necessary complexity that must be in place for simple advancement to occur. In other words, it isn't correct to explain evolution, at any level, without acknowledging that the order/timing of the "jump" is as important as the "jump" itself.

How many times do folks laugh in derision at the Genesis creation account because, they contend, the events occur out of order for survival to have occurred?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:13 AM

How does the extinction of one make any difference? The giraffe may have more opportunity to survive if one of its preditors goes extinct, or if one of its competitors for food goes extinct, but that goes absolutely nowhere in still explaining how he got his long neck.

I'm sorry, John, but that is beginning to sound like wilful ignorance. Darwin's theory certainly provide an explanation for it. It may well be an explanation you disagree with, and there are alternative views on whether it was feeding pressure or sexual pressure that was the main selecting factor (for example), and there may be things that you believe Darwin's theory cannot explain, but claiming that the three requirements he identified - variation in individuals, differential rates of offspring and inherited traits (which we now identify as genetic inheritance) - are not able to explain how a giraffe got his a long neck just weakens your case. Indeed, since I understand ID draws heavily on the claim of 'irreducable complexity' I wonder what you see as irreducably complex in the case of the giraffe's neck?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:42 AM

Perhaps you didn't read my next paragraph before you responded to the one you highlighted?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 08:38 AM

I can assure you, John, I try to read all of any post I respond to!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 09:13 AM

There is a big difference between asserting that something did change and explaining how it "achieved" the change. Too often the lack of the latter is obfuscated by the apparent simplicity of the former.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 09:23 AM

I took a friend to a Pat Donohue concert one evening. I am a HUGE fan of Donohue and I enjoy taking friends to concerts to share the wonderful but somewhat obscure music that I love so much.

While driving home I was still basking in my amazement at Donohue's skills (as well as his musicality). In particular, I was expressing disbelief at the man's ability to keep a tremolo going with his middle finger on the B & E strings, while simultaneously playing a melody with his thumb.

"How does he DO that?!!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, he just keeps a tremolo going with his middle finger on the B & E strings, while simultaneously playing a melody with his thumb." answered my friend.

The explaination was so simple that my friend couldn't grasp my amazement at the skill. Didn't I get it?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 10:01 AM

Genesis is patently absurd if taken literally. THAT much at least was made clear in the Scopes trial, in the infamous dialogue when Darrow put his opposing lawyer, WIlliam Jennings Bryan. on the stand and forced him to testify as a biblical expert.

I don't know about monsters -- the chances of that many genes changing all at once is pretty slim. The model that makes sense to me is gradual cumulative change which is continuously vectored toward workability by ordinary survival pressures. I'd like to see an explication of this notion of sudden large change speciation.

Re wide-scale extinctions, one difference it made, for example, when the dinosaur families collapsed was that several species were able to shift from nocturnal to diurnal operations. One result of this was the recovery of the third cone structure in the eye in some cases where it had been bred out through generations of nocturnal living. Dawkins discusses this in "The Ancestor's Tale".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 05:38 PM

I don't know about monsters -- the chances of that many genes changing all at once is pretty slim. The model that makes sense to me is gradual cumulative change which is continuously vectored toward workability by ordinary survival pressures. I'd like to see an explication of this notion of sudden large change speciation.


Sudden is a relative term in this context. Based on the fossil record, which does not support continuous change, the prevailing opinion is that species change in relatively short periods of time and then remain stable for relatively long periods of time. Short means tens to hundreds of thousands of years while long means millions to tens of millions of years.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 06:41 PM

Thanks, B&J. I think it is possible that a lot of small changes can approach and finally hit a point where a new order of complexity emerges which shapes up as a different species.

I'll have to mull that over, but it is consistent with the general theory of complex systems and emergent complexityy as I understand it. Which is very partially!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:36 PM

I've little doubt that someone much more learned than myself will shoot me down in flames, but why should not evolution be the rational, practical, scientific method by which Intelligent Design is achieved?

DT

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 08:21 PM

It is - if you are omnscient about Physics & Chemistry.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 10:41 PM

The proponents of intelligent design do not deny that evolution exists. They claim that evolution cannot account for certain aspects of life as we know it such as the initial creation of life or the development of certain complicated attributes of life such as eyes, because gradual development of these attributes would not be advantageous to survival. They conclude, therefore, that only intelligent design can account for these attributes.

Instead of saying we don't know how these things happened, they assert that our collective ignorance is evidence of God's existance. Religion has always been used to explain that which we cannot account for by scienctific knowledge. In fact, that might be a good definition of religion.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 11:19 PM

Not of my religion!! LOL Eyes are frequently used as a "too complex for Darwinism" examples, but I demur. Seems to me the basic mechanisms above could account for the transition from a single twitching light-sensitive cell, to the whole tri- or tera-color sensitive rod and cone arrangement used by mammals today. But as I say I am still chewing this whole thing over. I used to feel strongly that the random chance model was preposterous for the very reason you cite, but Dawkins has made it clear that I was misunderstanding the theory.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 06:57 AM

Consider a sloping board with many twisting intesecting groves. You drop a marble at a random place at the top of the board.


The Scientist says that you can predict, if you understand the system of tracks, and how friction and other things affect how the marble moves, where the exit point will be in relation to the entrypoint.


The Religious believer says "Only God Knows!"

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 07:19 AM

Eyes are the easy ones. Everything follows once you admit that being able to sense light at all is better than not being able to sense it. Just a cell that tells you if light is on or off would help to get an animal to where the plants are photosynthesising and making food.

And that better eyes are subject to selection.. my uncorrected vision would probably lead to my deselection quite rapidly 'in the wild'. I wouldn't have had the chance to pass on my myopia to my daughter (the Boy seems to have skipped it, good for him).

But an important thing to remember is that evolution doesn't have a definite or preferred outcome- it didn't HAVE to be us, it's just that, having evolved the way we have, we can talk about it- perhaps the first organisms on this planet to be able to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 08:27 AM

Paul has the rights of it! There is no organ which cannot be conceived of as a series of tiny changes, each improving the chances. The only constraint on outcome is that if it doesn't work, it tends to get un-selected through reduced survival or less successful reproduction.

Onepoint that often gets overlooked is that many things are not binary variables but continuous -- a tiny bit of light sensitivity is a tiny bit better than none, and each tiny bit of increase also better. The real world is full of gradient values and continuous variables which our slower minds try to stuff into black or white judgments.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:13 AM

except that you can not demonstrate empirically, the mechanism by which something becomes more complex. Did the one photosensitive cell WANT to become an eye?

And when that question is asked, the answer offered is that the animal that HAD the eye was the one that continued to procreate -- ignoring the initial question of HOW did it get the complex eye in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:38 AM

It didn't likely get the complex eye in the first place; that's the point.

It got one cell that sensed light in the first place, but it gave some early multicell critter a bit more orientation to find food or more likely photons. Through a thousand million generations -- which is the right order of magnitude, according to Dawkins in Watchmaker a series of small changes -- many of which can still be found in organisms today -- produced a gradually improved compound of light-processing cells. The complexity is the results of a few simple constraints and a few elements vectored by only two factors: survival and procreative success.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:51 AM

I understand the impasse. I just don't think that "because it happened" is a very satisfactory answer. *BG*

survival means that either, 1. there was an organism of diverse genetic material, and survival dictated which direction the organism went from the options available within that diverse genetic material (a "subtractive" process), or 2. the organism had to achieve the change in anticipation of the need to survive an environmental change.

procreative success, of course, demands that the change (now without the impetus for change having been described) has already occurred so that future generations may inherit the change.

The "monster" is not, as you suggest, a large-scale change. It is merely a meaningful change. It doesn't necessarily demand multiple changes in genetic make-up. It only requires meaningful change in the genetic makeup.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:54 AM

...maybe "useful" would be better than "meaningful".

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Grab
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 10:21 AM

I've little doubt that someone much more learned than myself will shoot me down in flames, but why should not evolution be the rational, practical, scientific method by which Intelligent Design is achieved?

That's a thoroughly reasonable approach which is exactly the reasoning that the late Pope John Paul applied. IIRC he said something like, "The Bible teaches us how to live, not how life came to exist." An article in the NewScientist suggested that a God who could create a self-sustaining, infinitely-changing universe that ran by itself is far more worthy of worship than a God who's bodged a universe together so badly that it requires continuous modification in order to work! :-)

If you take the old argument of the eye as evidence for ID, you have to accept that the Intelligent Designer did a really stupendously shit job of designing stuff, given that the majority of humans need glasses to see correctly. In other words, the Intelligent Designer is *less* skilled at design than humans! Worthy of worship...? The ID club have abandoned the eye as an example of ID, bcos it's too easy to debunk it with even basic biology skills. They've not given up, they've just gone onto more obscure areas of biology to find their examples. Their arguments are not any better though (and are being debunked by experts in those areas), but it's easier for them to hoodwink the unsuspecting in high scientific flimflam than to use examples that we all have experience of.

I don't have a problem with ID being taught - so long as it's *only* taught in religious studies class. It can share a lesson with the Hindu belief in a flat world riding on the backs of four giant elephants and supported on a turtle, the Genesis view that the world is a giant bubble with water above and water below (the water above is naturally the source of rain), the murderous Greek and Viking creation myths, and so on.

Re the Lamarkian evolution theory, that was diametrically opposite to Darwin's view. Lamark said that you could "want" to achieve certain characteristics and thereby obtain them. That's clearly bollocks - if I jump off a cliff then I splat on the bottom, no matter how strongly I "want" to grow wings! Darwinian evolution says that if you don't get those characteristics then you're more likely to die (or to fail to reproduce, which is the same thing in the long run), so there doesn't need to be any formal strategy. So a long-necked giraffe gets more food than a dozen short-necked ones, and so it'll be the long-necked one who has the extra energy and strength when it comes to competing for females or surviving in a famine/drought. It's not the only solution though - elephants have evolved a different strategy for getting at high leaves (long nose instead of long neck).

science has never been able to create a new species

Define "species". Lions and tigers have been quoted, as have dogs and wolves. Lions and tigers clearly were not created by humans, but there are few people who would disagree that dogs have been bred from domesticated wolves. The range of dogs runs clean from tiny terriers and lapdogs at one end, up to huskies and mountain dogs at the other end which are physically almost indistinguishable from wolves. So mankind *has* created a new species in the domestic dog. This wasn't achieved by recent science, but by the application of science over a long period of time.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 01:49 PM

Note also, as a small addendum to what Graham said so well, that the number of generations from wolf to toy-poodle by effort of directed breeding is only perhaps a few hundred at the outside. Ot seems easy enough, multiplying the number of generations by thousands of millions, to expect ANY gene pattern that could survive to come about.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 01:57 PM

Bev & Jerry commented, in part:

Religion has always been used to explain that which we cannot account for by scienctific knowledge. In fact, that might be a good definition of religion.

That's what's been called "The god of the gaps"--and I tend to think it does happen just that way. But of course the inevitable result is that, as science gradually fills the gaps, the space available for a god to fill is less, and (in principle at least) you could get to the point where there's no gaps to fill.

Of course many of us, seeing that tendency, feel it reasonable to jump ahead and adopt that end state.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:00 PM

The other thing is that very MINOR changes in development can lead to LARGE changes in appearance.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:07 PM

That's Darwin's argument precisely. But, it doesn't leave much room for God except maybe to kick off the whole process. That's why Darwin has been attacked for 150 years.


On the other hand, if the process is entirely random, why is it that our arm, a horse's front leg, a bird's wing and a whale's fin, which have evolved to perform entirely different functions, all have the same bone structure?

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:07 PM

Grab said:

The range of dogs runs clean from tiny terriers and lapdogs at one end, up to huskies and mountain dogs at the other end which are physically almost indistinguishable from wolves. So mankind *has* created a new species in the domestic dog.

Seems to me your own first sentence above is in direct conflict with the second. Breeding has introduced great variations, but that whole range of "caninitude" from wolf to Pekingese are interbreedable (if there's such a word), so no new species.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:14 PM

A cartoon by Sidney Harris

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:22 PM

"..wolf to toy-poodle by effort of directed breeding is only perhaps a few hundred at the outside. Ot seems easy enough, multiplying the number of generations by thousands of millions, to expect ANY gene pattern that could survive to come about"

I hate to keep beating a dead horse (or dog as the case may be), but no evolution has occurred from wolf to toy poodle.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:25 PM

excellent!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:31 PM

well - there could be argument that speciation has occurred as among the canids there is a lot of possible crossbreeding in the naturally occuring species - most of which are also fertile. wolf/coyote; wolf/dog; coyote/dog; jackel/dog;

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:47 PM

Toy Poodle's and Huskies are just expressions of the different attributes available to "all" Wolves. If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!
If you are looking for an Intelegent Designer then you need to look at the rules of Phisics (Plank leingth, Speed of light, Atomic force of attraction) to see her (his) work.Personally I think TERRY PRAGIT got it right in his book "strata". God is alive and well and is displaying his sense of humour in making fossils for us to puzzle over!

P.S.
No intent to defame any deity is accepted by the author

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:50 PM

John:

Hundreds of dog breeds are gentically stable, transmit faithful copies and are dramatically different from their lupine ancestors in shape, ability, and behaviour.

Wherefore "no evolution", then?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:52 PM

"...wolf to Pekingese are interbreedable"

Just make VERY sure that the wolf is the female. I pity the poor pekinese that has to give birth to a pup as big as she is. yikes. *BG*

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:02 PM

They are all still dogs, Amos. They are all still dogs.

The slippery slope on which you are treading (I can't believe that you haven't thought of this -- you're too smart not to) is that you are usinig the very same thinking that racists have used to justify their sickness for a very long time -- that somehow the physical differences (that can be extreme), signify a meaningful difference in the species. They don't. The Caucasian and the Black and the Oriental, etc., are all the same thing. Exactly. there is no evidence that one of us is evolving away from the other...

...except potters. We are the master race.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:09 PM

LOL!!

Well, the DNA breeds true, but that makes no remark on the fallacy of human races. It simply says that THE human race is not a goal, or an end.

The changes I see happening have nothing to with human divisions, but I see differing tendencies in the ability to trace huge volumes of logic in those raised under the sign of the CRT.

I would submit anyone who argues that mankind are different species is failing to "get" the model. But that is not the same as saying "no evolution"...a lot of evolution occurs, I suppose, before you can draw a species line. With no implication of superiority; survival is relative to the conditions in which it occurs.

A

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:09 PM

actually dogs and wolves are classed as seperate species - and dogs contain many gene alleles not present in the wolf.

Both the following statements are provably false.

Toy Poodle's and Huskies are just expressions of the different attributes available to "all" Wolves

and

If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:15 PM

Both the following statements are provably false.

[...]

If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!

In fact, it's my understanding that you would end up with the perfect "feral dog" (referred to, I'm sure, in other literature by other names). And it's been described -- and it wouldn't be a wolf.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:24 PM

no - you wouldn't end up with a perfect feral dog - because by deliberate breeding man had kept and defined within various breeds of dogs mutated alleles not present in wolves or feral dogs. Domestic dogs also exhibit behavior patterns and tendencies NOT present in the wild that are have a strong genetic basis as well as one of training.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:32 PM

another point that is rerely raised by the "they are all dogs" people - there are known and provable problems when certain breeds of dogs are crossbred that can seriously effect internal organs, fertility, etc of the offspring. Oddly enough - the same sort of problems that occur when crossbreeding divergent species of other animals and very similar to problems seen with crossbreeding some species of plant.

In fact - these days the "cannot breed" is more applicable to GENUS lines rather then SPECIES, and doesn't hold true even there. less so in animals then in plants.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 04:04 PM

"alleles"

Wasn't that Superman's father (before the planet Krypton blew up)?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 04:40 PM

btw
In the US there is a $1 million fine for geneticly creating human chimera.

although there are plenty of donkey people and elephant people already.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:04 PM

John Hardly commented:

I hate to keep beating a dead horse (or dog as the case may be), but no evolution has occurred from wolf to toy poodle.

There's two ways I could read your comment, John. Do you mean that there's no evolution in that there's not a new species, or are you saying that from wolf to poodle is a step (or many steps) backward?

If the first, I agree with you.

If the second, I think you have a wrong handle on evolution. Evolution is not necessarily "forward" or for the better in some cosmic sense. It's change. Under Darwinian thought, it's change which makes the involved stream of life more able to survive and multiply in the conditions it faces.   The move to toy poodle doesn't make those dogs more able to survive in the wild or in some abstract sense, true, but it makes it possible for the involved dogs to survive in a particular environmental niche, namely some dog fanciers' homes.

A newly changed or mutated life form (maybe new species, maybe not) may indeed have painted itself into a corner, so to speak, so that subsequent changes are now fatal to what had been a viable life form under previous conditions. But that's part of the evolutionary process too.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:32 PM

It's the first.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 07:13 PM

Speciation is a somewhat arbitrary division in the flux of evolutionary change, I think. The test of non-reproduction is fine, but there's a lot more change going on short of that is is plainly evolutionary.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 04:46 AM

"except that you can not demonstrate empirically, the mechanism by which something becomes more complex. Did the one photosensitive cell WANT to become an eye?"

There's no need for any 'wanting'. It's a simple equation: modifications (mutations, if you like) occur. There is a very small, but positive, chance that the change will be beneficial. There is a much higher probability that it will be detrimental.

In the case of the eye, I'd say it's sort of obvious that, if you have already got one sensitive cell, having two or more would be an advantage- you have greater sensitivity. Having the sensitive cells recessed slightly is an advantage, as it adds directionality. Further recessing will lead (unsought-for) to the pinhole camera effect coming into play- the organism can now sort-of see shapes, and distinguish between, say, food and not- food (a predator?).

And all these 'eye' types are actually found in nature. Plus of course, the line that's developed a protective (transparent) skin over the pinhole- thickening that just 'happens' to be in the right place and you've got the start of the lens. And all these types are also found in nature.

The 'benefit' or 'detriment' is tested by competition. If the change is detrimental, it will tend to be selected out (NOTE: not immediately and magically zapped). If beneficial, it will tend to remain around, and according to the benefit accruing, will propogate through the population simply because its possessors have an advantage.

Note that the mutation occurs randomly, by chance (on the basis of the possible mutations of the existing genetic material). But the selection is anything but chance- it depends solely on the competitive advantage.

It's obviously difficult to 'prove' this experimentally on living organisms, we haven't got even a few hundred years in which to make observations. But computer simulations have been carried out in which, by following a few simple rules as outlined above, it can be shown that UNPLANNED complexity can grow from a simple starting point.

Someone else pointed out that the fossil record seems to show periods of stability, with relatively rapid speciation between. This model, much supported by the late Stephen Jay Gould, is quite understandable, if you view the periods of change as environmental changes, forcing organisms well adapted to the conditions previously, to test out the possibilities of their gene pool against the new conditions.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 06:11 AM

Most of that is still describing the "what". Only the "(mutations, if you like)" describes the "how". And one might still wish to know how the non-photosensitve cell chose to become photosensitive. And it's not just the odds of that, but the odds that the environment was also aptly developing to cause/allow the change. I understand that the change doesn't have to be beneficial -- it just has to be change that the environment proves out to be workable. Still, the complexity of the whole is MUCH greater than just whether one cell can change itself.

Just sayin' y'know.

Your description, while well-laid-out, and perhaps even accurate, describes changes, the odds against which are still astronomical. I'm not saying we didn't beat those odds, I'm just saying that being able to describe a few million years in two paragraphs doesn't really scratch the itch of those really wishing to know the "how". And I have a certain sympathy for the skeptic.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 07:48 AM

"Most of that is still describing the "what". Only the "(mutations, if you like)" describes the "how". And one might still wish to know how the non-photosensitve cell chose to become photosensitive"

That's the point: no choice. It just happened. But having happened, it gave its possessor an advantage. It was photosensitive. It wasn't sensitive to magnetic or electric fields, to temperature, to the chemicals we feel as taste or smell, to pressure.... other cells (some, sadly, not in humans) did mutate in that way, and conferred the associated advantages on their owners.

You could sit down and list all the changes that didn't happen, perhaps because they are impossible, perhaps because they are possible but the chance mutation hasn't happened yet, or perhaps because it did happen, but its one and only carrier was just stepped on by me as I walked along the path outside.

I'll reiterate an important point: humans (or any other organism) didn't HAVE to be the outcome to date. They just were. If it were possible to rerun evolution from some earlier stage, it's perfectly possible that cogent organisms might never have developed. Or they might have been based on a different body plan (see Gould's Wonderful Life for some of the early body plans that did exist). In that case, they would have been talking about, say, crustaceans rather than mammals as the pinnacle of creation.

I'm certainly not saying that there are no mysteries- the greatest of which is why we (think we??) feel anything, why it seems to be ME that things are happening to. For my own part, I have no evidence about that; I just make the temporary assumption that feeling is a property of all sufficiently complex systems, a property of arranged matter.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Grab
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 07:57 AM

there's not a new species

In that you are in opposition to the entire biology establishment, who say that wolves and dogs *are* two different species. What do you know that they don't...? ;-)

Interbreeding used to be one of the tests for species difference. There are so many cases where this clearly isn't workable though (lion/tiger and horse/donkey, for example) that this was always open to dispute. DNA sequencing opened this up so that speciation can now be defined by genetic differences, regardless of physical similarity or ability to interbreed.

Only the "(mutations, if you like)" describes the "how".

Yep, and that's it. They happen so often that you often don't think about it - some potentially-advantageous human mutations are: being physically stronger than everyone else; being significantly taller or shorter; reaching puberty earlier or later; wider hips for child-bearing; predisposition to put on fat; etc. If you're a caveman and a random shuffle of the genetic cards pops up one of those, you're more likely to reproduce, and your offspring are then also more likely to have the same characteristics.

You say that the odds are astronomical. Well, I'll bet that if you picked maybe 20-30 friends of yours at random, some would be noticeably more muscular than others, some would be significantly taller or shorter than others, and some women would have significantly wider or narrower hips than others. "But this is normal", I hear you say. And so it is - but it's how this evolution thing works.

In pre-medical times, your thin-hipped women friends would almost certainly die in childbirth (and so would the baby), whereas large-hipped women could crank them out without problems. If the default is thin hips and most thin-hipped women die in childbirth, it only takes a random shuffle towards slightly wider hips and that woman and her offspring will be more likely to survive. Repeat the random shuffling, and wider hips will give more security in childbirth. You may care to observe that narrow hips and large birth size of babies are most common in Western societies where medical knowledge has prevented hip size being such a significant issue.

And one might still wish to know how the non-photosensitve cell chose to become photosensitive.

See, you're still using the word "chose". That's bogus - there's no choice. Did you choose your eye, hair and skin colour? Or did your hair follicle cells say "I'm going to decide to produce blonde/black/brown hair"? Or taking more extreme examples, do people choose to be blind or deaf from birth, or have sickle-cell anaemia? Of course not! So why do you call this a "choice"? It's random luck - sometimes the luck is good (if the random shuffle gets you a 250lb Arnie musculature) and sometimes the luck is bad (if the random shuffle gets you blind/deaf/mute).

Photosensitivity is a characteristic that many cells have - the issue is the extent to which they have it. Random chance will shuffle the amount of photosensitivity, and the prehistoric worms that roll a 12 get to detect a predator and dig into the earth to escape first. The prehistoric worms that roll a 2 can't detect the predator and get eaten.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 07:58 AM

Paul's points are spot on except for the issue of feeling which adds a whole different complex to the question.

Recommended: Hawkins, The Blind Watchmaker which presents all these issues well.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 08:30 AM

Graham,

I understand. I understand that "chose" is not the accurate word.

What I'm saying is that what it comes down to is that, upon asking, "well, just how did eyes evolve from nothing to these marvels that see black and white and color, focus, can cross or, in the case of Marty Feldman, can diverge?", The dismissive answer that is, itself, ignoring the immensity of becoming more complex, and the odds involved, is always something like...

"Photosensitivity is a characteristic that many cells have"

...an answer that acknowledges the "what" in order to minimize the immensity of the question "how?", which is answered quite simply, but emotionally unsatisfactorily, with...

"It mutated that way."

But I understand. Hard to believe that I understand and am as yet, not completely satisfied. But there you have it. I understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Pied Piper
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 09:04 AM

Thanks everyone for some really great posts on this thread.
Many biologically active molecules absorb light it's to do with the resonance of light with the energy of the electrons involved in the bonds. I know this is a "what" but since simple light absorbing organic compounds could very easily have been created by non-organic means in the Earths early history and have been detected in space.
These molecules don't choose to absorb certain frequencies of light it's just intrinsic to the nature of chemical bonds.
Now as regards the "astronomical" odds against life or eye's or brains evolving without Devine intervention, we live in an astronomically sized Universe that by definition must contain intelligent life to observe it, and is therefore self-selected.
Our job is to explain to ourselves "how" we got here, the "why" of some absolute cause can have no meaning.

Isn't it amazing I'm not Queen Victoria.

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 09:43 AM

Nothing astronomical about it. That would be the case if changes were single-step; but they are cumulative. It might be the case if nothing made any change better than any other, but the viability of every change is expressed inthe dynamics of survival and reproduction.

Given these constraints, the odds of evolution are far from astronomical; it is in fact inherent in the mechanism of particle-based life forms in a space-time continuum.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Grab
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 11:53 AM

Sure, it's not as satisfactory an answer as "God pointed his finger and it happened", in that we naturally look for a "story" context with a beginning and an end. The ID story is certainly more emotionally attractive than "it just happened with a lot of very small steps". That's part of the problem that scientists have, I guess - trying not to let "common sense" or "it just happens" influence them.

Eyes are a great subject though, because there's a complete range of eyes in the natural world. Earthworms can only detect light and dark, and they only use that to know which way to dig. Dogs are limited to close-range black-and-white. Humans are reasonably good but nothing special, in the classic "generalist" way that humans tend towards (although notice that most people now require some form of eye correction, possibly because there's no longer a disadvantage in having vision defects since the invention of glasses!). Birds get UV vision (which they share with insects), and eagles can see vast distances very clearly. We even have octopi and humans sharing a common eye structure, which could be used as evidence of the Designer reusing his designs, but is usually taken as an example of convergent evolution where the same evolutionary tendencies give the same results (like the similarity between sharks and dolphins).

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 12:13 PM

John Hardly told us, in part:

*** which is answered quite simply, but emotionally unsatisfactorily, ***

Ahhh, there is where the problem comes in: "emotionally unsatisfactory".   That is, "I don't want it to go that way, so I won't believe it."

This grows (seems to me) out of teleological thinking--trying to think about where an organism was, in effect, "trying to go".   That is a very seductive thought, and hard for many to avoid. Because we are, naturally, interested in "How did the world come to be as it is?" we anchor our thought, as it were, on the present--on the eye that focuses and sees color and works with another eye in binocular fashion, say, assuming that as an immutable, fixed end of the process--and then think about "How did the organism manage to get there?" But of course the organism did not manage, did not choose, did not intend to develop that kind of organ. But to give up that kind of thought is emotionally unsatisfactory, and we don't want to accept anything that doesn't answer the problem the way we set out to ask it.

The organism way back there was not trying to develop the modern eye, nor even a primitive eye. Indeed, it was not trying to do anything except find food and reproduce.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 12:27 PM

Yeah, what Dave and Grab said...

... coupled with the detail that we haven't even touched on the implications that the arts (being very involved in them) would imply on the questions -- both in nature and in depth.

I might also admit that when I wrote "emotionally" I knew it wasn't quite ... I dunno .... complete. I really meant "intellectually" as well. But I think that the term Grab used, "common sense", maybe says better what I meant.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 12:41 PM

Wal, I think what we're trying to do with the evolutionary model is account for changes in physical forms through time. And the issue is, given the demonstrated mechanics of genes, not of organisms, and given a simple model with a small set of rules based on genes' behaviours, can we account for what we find in evidence in the world? I think the answer is yes with qualifications. '

I do not believe there is no intentionality in the world, but I believe it is very misleading to try and locate a single source.

I do not believe the matrix of colliding and interacting intentionality in the world can be particularly quantified. I also do not think it is necessary to explain the evolution of life forms.

Lamarcke's case for intentional evolution by the organism doesn't hold much water. The fact is that we don't need to add any other ingredients into the model to explain bserved phenomena.

We should probably not ignore the existence of intent, and of creative postulates such as are behind live communciation, art, music and such, just because the evolution of body forms can be explained without adding it in.

Unless, of course, you really believe that all humans are nothing more than their bodies, which I would argue is unjustified in light of non-particle phenomena such as understanding, actual perception (as distinguished from light-responses), and the ability to intend things.

A pure phyics-based biologist would argue (beyond his sphere of expertise) that these are just "emergent complex behaviors" deriving from the same small set of rules and elemts generating a much larger set of transactions until a new plateau of complex behavior emerges.

But believe that the "qualia"* argument kind of goes beyond those boundaries and interjects non-quantitative (and indeed non-quantifiable) components to the puzzle which are not accounted for.

A

*"Often referred to a "raw feels", qualia are those subjective, qualitative properties of mental states such as sensations and emotions—the "what it is like" to see red, feel pain, be angry. Such mental states are thought to have intrinsic qualitative features by which we identify them through introspection."

philosophy.wlu.edu/gregoryp/class/fall02/313/glossary.html

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 01:14 PM

BTW, I don't mean to be arguing with you, Dave and Grab. My comment was meant to commend you on your presentation of your POV -- even if, in the long run, I disagree in part with your conclusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Aug 05 - 01:30 PM

>>Most of these people have had science in high school or college.
However, if someone tells them that it is all nonsense and the world was created 5000 years ago, they believe it. One has to wonder about the quality of science education in this country.<<

One professor gathered his most intelligent pupils once and had an ordinary street magician come in and do a few tricks and then the students were to write the opinions about what they observed. About a quarter of them were convinced this man had some kind of special powers because he did a few tricks that I myself do at getherings to amuse people and I'm no magician.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Pied Piper
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 07:40 AM

Whilst it is clearly silly to think of organisms trying to evolve, we cannot deny that animals have goals and purposes, and these can be sophisticated and feedback into selection.
So in the case of otters evolving webbed feet and other features useful in an aquatic environment, which of the following scenarios is most likely
1 Otter ancestor mutates to have webbed feet and takes up fishing.
2 Otter ancestor being adaptable and inquisitive discovers fishing and subsequent selection of mutations make it a more efficient hunter in the water.

I would say number 2, the impetus of speciation being a physiological attribute (how much genetically determined I don't know)

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Grab
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 08:09 AM

Cheers John. It ain't arguing if it's still rational and reasoned. :-) I reckon about the best definition of who you are is how you think, so if you want to get to know someone (or show yourself) then you can't do much better than that...

FWIW, I ain't exactly an expert - I've just been subscribing to NewScientist for a while, so you kind of inhale a bit of background. That just gives a better standard of bullshitting, mainly. ;-)

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 08:46 AM

The Kansas Board of Education is expected to soon adopt revised science standards encouraging students to challenge aspects of the theory of evolution.

Board Chairman Steve Abrams told the Kansas City Star he expects the standards to be approved and sent to an education laboratory in Denver for review, with a final board vote likely in October.

A majority of the 26-member committee that drafted the standards objected last week to changes made this summer by conservatives on the board, the newspaper reported. The changes use "intelligent design-inspired language," and intelligent design has no scientific basis, the committee wrote in a reply to the board.

Aside from calling for a more critical look at evolution, the new language also changes the definition of science. The new definition no longer would limit explanations of the world to "natural" phenomena.

Supporters of the intelligent design theory insist some aspects of the universe are too complex to be explained by natural causes.

---

Wow -- talk about the camel's nose. Redefining science? Nature Plus? What's UP wid dat? I suspect in their highly compressed mental states they meant to say they would not limit science to physical phenomena, but the way they put is pouring Crisco on an already-slippery slope!

These people are of course eminently qualified to re-define science, I am sure.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 09:33 AM

" 1 Otter ancestor mutates to have webbed feet and takes up fishing.
2 Otter ancestor being adaptable and inquisitive discovers fishing and subsequent selection of mutations make it a more efficient hunter in the water."

3. Otter's ancestors are predators hunting for small mammals, insects, frogs, fish etc. on the shore of a swamp or lake. Shoreline increases in slope. Most individuals limit themselves largely to land. Others are forced by population pressure etc. (because the overall food supply has decreased) to hunt mostly in the water. Those that can swim survive. Those that can't die. The ones that survive pass on whatever genes enabled them to swim better than the others. There is now a split between the land based population and the swimmers, based on habitat. They tend to mate where they find others like them, i.e. around the water or on land, so the differentation between the gene pools is accentuated, the water dwellers now having a selective pressure to make them better swimmers- things like webbed feet, high capacity lungs etc. Eventually the populations drift so far apart that they are regarded as separate species.

So the drive is purely environmental, there's no need to assume pre- adaption or intentionality. I've no idea if this is really how otters developed, what are their nearest relations?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 09:45 AM

Dunno, but sounds like a darn good guess to me.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 09:53 AM

My qualia to the religious right's attempt to redefine science within public education is one of repugnance and disgust.

When I was in Jr High School in Vestal NY I did an essay on evolution that was heavily footnoted with sources from the Scientific American magazine. I was punished, censored, sent to the Principal's office and my parents were summoned. I wrote "Man and other animals..." The objection to what I had written was monumental. I was told Man was not an animal. I said "is Man a mammal?". Their arguments did not refer to scripture then but the school's animosity to evolution was clearly evident.

Three years later my high school was denied the "priviledge" of doing the senior play 'Inherit the Wind'.

I naievely believed that parochial rule would have lost the battle against science by the time I grew up.

The propoganda tool of putting the truth on the defensive, is a very effective and damaging weapon.

Will survival of the fittest determine the winner?
Few people can become scientists but vast swarms of the under educated can be a religious stupidigent designer.

Quality vs. quantity.
time will tell.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 09:54 AM

My friend the professor likes the (admittedly incomplete but apt) analogy that the environment is the "big fly-swatter of life". It's got a random mesh to it and when it comes down, only those things that fit between the holes survive. No intent. No watching for the swatter and scrambling for an opening in the mesh...

....in fact, as he points out, when we think we are scrambling for the openings in the mesh, we, through unintended consequences, merely change the mesh of the swatter.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 10:11 AM

near relatives of otters would be mink.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 10:28 AM

"near relatives of otters would be mink.

Who were obviously the first mammals on the planet to have evolved as snappy dressers. ...followed closely by the penguin.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 10:34 AM

Wow!! They discovered "dress for success"!!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 10:58 AM

The Krithians arrived on Earth a while back. They discovered a planet (obviously) devoid of intelligent life. But being the curious Krithians that they are, they set about trying to solve the mystery of how so many useful tools ended up on a planet with no intelligent life.

Their initial guesses included such theories as might conclude that intelligent life outside of Earth itself actually created the machinery, brought it to earth, and then left it behind when they left.

This was quickly disregarded as sensible because, they concluded, if there was an intelligent design to this machinery, then surely the designer would have created a different design and mechanism for each of the functions of the tools. Instead, whether the tool functioned on land or on sea or in the air, though the machines may have differed in appearance, they all shared the same basic technology and materials.

Realizing this, they began to develop a new theory: All of the machinery evolved from simple inanimate objects. That is why they are basically the same technologies – either internal combustion, electric, or nuclear (the Krithians pronounce it "NOO-kyoo-lur") – they're all basically the same concept. (Krithians have already developed beyond mechanical travel and can tele-transport for at least small distances).

And, as if the similarity in technologies weren't sufficient observable data upon which to conclude the evolution devoid of intelligent design, they also observed the evolution of species. It was so apparent, if not visually, then by the fact that they actually have names above their bumpers, that the automobile (they call them "the wheel-thingys". Though Krithians are highly developed in matters of transport, they are somewhat lacking in erudite nomeclature)

…anyway, they noticed that the automobiles had OBVIOUSLY evolved. They noted that some, like the Mustang and the Thunderbird had evolved steadily, though showed signs of throw-back genes that would still, from time to time, manifest themselves. They noticed that some automobiles went extinct as they were too ugly too survive. The Edsel, the AMC Pacer and Gremlin (and they couldn't help but note that the mutant throwback, the PT Crusier, appearing at least 75% genetically identical to the AMC Pacer, was probably doomed to the same fate) were all ill-equiped for the environmental change that taste was going to foist upon them unawares.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 11:41 AM

That's priceless, John!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 05 - 01:13 PM

An alternative theory that had by then been long since discarded as irrelvant, base don observations taken when the Terrans were still active, is that the Mustang, PT Cruiser, Edsel, F-150 WERE the dominant life forms, since so much of the environment seemed to be adapted to their welll-being. Occasionally, these life forms could be seen disgorging some sort of parasitic bipedal lower life form. It was speculated that these parasites might well have caused the long slow decline of the dominant life form by acting like a systemic virus, much like a tapeworm. Evidently, the relationship had a symbiotic vector to it, as it appears from the fossilized remains of the quadrocycles, as they were called, that the bipedal parasites went extinct near the same time as the quadrocycles did.

Some scientists speculate that a cataclysm such as a giant meteor may have been responsible for the death of the quadrocycles; but this is speculative. No-one knows exactly why they went extinct, unless the parasites were responsible. It appeared there food sources, Cornerus Shellus and Cornerus Mobilus, may have dried up for unknown reasons. The largest of the quadrocycles, Quadrocyclus Petrotankus was not among the fossil remains found around the usual hunting grounds for the Cornerus species, but from the evidence found at several sites it appears that the dying Quadrocyclus haunted the old hunting grounds in large numbers, long after there was no food to be found there.

Speculations on Terran Life Forms and their History
Wrkkmllzy Pshawbrquiz, Chief Kroicklean of Thrummix
Wrrux, Brunnxel and Phiqqulrstuv, Galactico, 5323