Creationism v. Intelligent Design v. Evolution

[rossum]

There is only one way to meet the requirement that I put forth.

Yes, which was my point. In real biology and in real abiogenesis there is not one way to meet the requirement but many different ways to meet the requirement.

Your calculations are correct for the case of a single requirement, but that makes those same calculations useless for the purposes of illustrating abiogenesis. There are many different ways to be a living organism, not just one way. If your calculation does not allow for the presence of many different possible targets then that calculation does not reflect reality.

rossum

 

[Al_Moritz]

Yes, which was my point. In real biology and in real abiogenesis there is not one way to meet the requirement but many different ways to meet the requirement.

Your calculations are correct for the case of a single requirement, but that makes those same calculations useless for the purposes of illustrating abiogenesis. There are many different ways to be a living organism, not just one way. If your calculation does not allow for the presence of many different possible targets then that calculation does not reflect reality.

rossum

True.

 

[vz71]

Yes, which was my point. In real biology and in real abiogenesis there is not one way to meet the requirement but many different ways to meet the requirement.

In fact, they have not even found one way for abiogenesis to occur.
There are plenty of theories, but life from lifelessness simply has not been found.
For all of the various ways to build the DNA or RNA, it still stays dead.

I should revise the scenario.
You order the cards, I’ll add 52 more and shuffle.
Then we will see if the order you specified appears.

 

[rossum]

In fact, they have not even found one way for abiogenesis to occur.
There are plenty of theories, but life from lifelessness simply has not been found.
For all of the various ways to build the DNA or RNA, it still stays dead.

For all the various ways to build RNA there are some which are chemically active as ligases. See Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences. That is the gleam of the beginning of life right there, derived from random RNA sequences. Scientists are working on the problem. How many ID experiments are there showing the Designer designing RNA ligases?

I should revise the scenario.
You order the cards, I’ll add 52 more and shuffle.
Then we will see if the order you specified appears.

Your scenario has no relation to abiogenesis. You have failed to calculate the number of available targets, all you have done is to calculate the number of possible places an arrow may end up. You are not in a position yet to calculate the probability an arrow will hit one of the targets.

I suggest you concentrate of looking for ways to calculate the number of possible targets there are to be hit. How many RNA sequences make a ligase and how many don’t? Experiments show that the chances of getting a good ligase are far better than your calculation shows. Reality shows that your calculation is not relevant to the actual situation.

rossum

 

[vz71]

For all the various ways to build RNA there are some which are chemically active as ligases. See Structurally complex and highly active RNA ligases derived from random RNA sequences. That is the gleam of the beginning of life right there, derived from random RNA sequences.

“That is the gleam of the beginning of life…”
In other words, it is dead. They have not brought about a live anything from any type of experiment.
Worse yet, we do not even know if we are headed in the right direction.
The illusive target of life from lifelessness is one that we know so little about that we cannot say if we are any closer now then we were 10 years ago.

Your scenario has no relation to abiogenesis. You have failed to calculate the number of available targets, all you have done is to calculate the number of possible places an arrow may end up. You are not in a position yet to calculate the probability an arrow will hit one of the targets.

True. In fact we do not even know if the target is possible to hit.
Life from lifelessness is still something that science has not been able to crack.
And we do not know if it can be at all.
For all of the wonderful probabilities that people claim, the fact of the matter is that they are applying probabilities to something that they have not even determined is possible.

I suggest you concentrate of looking for ways to calculate the number of possible targets there are to be hit. How many RNA sequences make a ligase and how many don’t? Experiments show that the chances of getting a good ligase are far better than your calculation shows. Reality shows that your calculation is not relevant to the actual situation.

Reality shows the probability of life from lifelessness to be 0.
My card deck shows likewise, 0 chance of your getting the order of the cards right.

 

[kaid100]

Sorry I’m an atheist and voted “Evolution” before seeing it was intended for Catholics only.

 

[buffalo]

The problem you now have is that you do not know how many targets you are shooting at. How many ways are there to make a very primitive living organism? We know that there are at the very least twelve billion different ways to make a human being (we each could have been of the opposite sex). Yockey (1992) calculated that there were 2.3 x 10^93 different ways to make a working Cytochrome C. You are not shooting at a single target.

The card order I require is one which places an Ace of Hearts somewhere before a King of Clubs. You will find that it is not difficult to shuffle a double pack to meet my requirement.

As well as specifying the total number of all possible outcomes, you also need to specify the number of ways there are to meet the requirement. You cannot just assume that there is only one single way to meet the requirement.

rossum

I know you guys will spit this out because you choke on anything ID - but Ann Guager discusses the targets here:

Evolving Enzymes and Testing Darwin’s Theory With Ann Gauger
[idthefuture.com/play_button.gif](http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2011-05-12T15_53_07-07_00) [**Click here to listen.**](http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2011-05-12T15_53_07-07_00)

 

[Militus_Sanctus]

Voting was closed, but I would vote for Evolution.

ID is a made up thing by creationists to try and recieve some validity for their opinoins, but it was an EPIC FAIL, especially after they were busted on the whole wedge document thing.: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document the truth is out there, though most of them want to hide and pretend otherwise.

I really don’t get it, and I don’t see why this is even an issue, one covers the physical natural world, and the other covers the supernatural, they are mutually exclusive. Because I follow the known evidence and data of evolution, has no bearing on my faith.

 

[buffalo]

Voting was closed, but I would vote for Evolution.

ID is a made up thing by creationists to try and recieve some validity for their opinoins, but it was an EPIC FAIL, especially after they were busted on the whole wedge document thing.: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_document the truth is out there, though most of them want to hide and pretend otherwise.

I really don’t get it, and I don’t see why this is even an issue, one covers the physical natural world, and the other covers the supernatural, they are mutually exclusive. Because I follow the known evidence and data of evolution, has no bearing on my faith.

The Wedge Doc or Kitzmiller really have no bearing on ID the science. Follow the latest discussions and you will see there is much more to it.

Start here - Does design exist?

Yes

Is it detectable?

Yes

Can we formulize it?

They think so and are trying to do just that.

 

[ricmat]

No, but buffalo’s post said nothing about choice. I was merely showing that fantastically improbable things can and do happen. The situation is more subtle than buffalo implied.

rossum

It is not fantastically improbable that one of the possible outcomes came out.

In fact, it is required that one of the possible outcomes came out.

I think you are confused.

 

[ricmat]

And we have already established that this is irrelevant since it is wide scientific consensus now that RNA stood at the beginning of life and not proteins. But some people do not pay attention and are not willing to learn.

Scientific consensus on almost everything is different than it was in the past. Unfortunately, many scientists are not willing to learn this.

.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Scientific consensus on almost everything is different than it was in the past. Unfortunately, many scientists are not willing to learn this.

A typical excuse of people who are not willing to contemplate inconvenient facts that might disturb their worldview.

 

[ricmat]

A typical excuse of people who are not willing to contemplate inconvenient facts that might disturb their worldview.

Look at history, friend.

So you’re unwilling to read something that hasn’t been peer reviewed (you said so in a previous post).

You fit the description exactly.

 

[Militus_Sanctus]

The Wedge Doc or Kitzmiller really have no bearing on ID the science. Follow the latest discussions and you will see there is much more to it.

Start here - Does design exist?

Yes

Is it detectable?

Yes

Can we formulize it?

They think so and are trying to do just that.

It is not science and we will never take the pseudo-ID-science as anything more than the fiction that it is. That is the simple truth of the matter.

ricmat:

Scientific consensus on almost everything is different than it was in the past. Unfortunately, many scientists are not willing to learn this.

so what? that is how it goes. when new data becomes available, the stance changes, that is how it works.

 

[buffalo]

It is not science and we will never take the pseudo-ID-science as anything more than the fiction that it is. That is the simple truth of the matter.

.

Your claim is design is not empirically detectable?

 

[ricmat]

so what? that is how it goes. when new data becomes available, the stance changes, that is how it works.

Yes, but it only works if the scientists involved have an open mind. Scientists need to learn to have an open mind.

It quite often seems that scientists absolutely insist that we believe that what they are saying is irrefutable Truth. If we don’t believe, then we are uninformed, knuckle dragging, idiotic Neanderthals. But wait!!! What we insisted that you believe yesterday, and ridiculed you for not believing, ignore that now because we’ve just discovered the Real Truth today. So today we insist that you believe this New Real Truth, and absolutely don’t believe yesterday’s Truth. And you’re an uninformed, knuckle dragging, idiotic Neanderthal if you don’t believe in this New Real Truth.

Right.

 

[rossum]

“That is the gleam of the beginning of life…”
In other words, it is dead. They have not brought about a live anything from any type of experiment.

It is indeed dead, but it is closer to being alive than anything the ID side has shown their designer to be capable of doing. Where is the ID experiment showing the ID designer assembling a strand of RNA? ID has nothing, not even a single strand, while science is making slow but steady progress. ID is being left further and further behind.

Worse yet, we do not even know if we are headed in the right direction.
The illusive target of life from lifelessness is one that we know so little about that we cannot say if we are any closer now then we were 10 years ago.

We can. We are definitely closer. Szostak’s work is just one of the reasons we can know we are closer.

True. In fact we do not even know if the target is possible to hit.

And there is your mistake: “the target”. It is not “the target” but “one of the many possible targets”. There is more than one way to make a primitive living organism, and abiogenesis only has to hit on one of them.

Life from lifelessness is still something that science has not been able to crack.

Which is classic God of the gaps, or in this case “Designer of the gaps”. Be very careful of fitting your designer into a gap in scientific knowledge; science has a way of closing such gaps. Remember that there used to be a whole set of “Thunder designers” called Zeus, Thor, Indra etc. Look what happened to them when science closed the thunder gap. Do you really want your designer to end up in the same position as Zeus or Thor?

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Yes, but it only works if the scientists involved have an open mind. Scientists need to learn to have an open mind.

It quite often seems that scientists absolutely insist that we believe that what they are saying is irrefutable Truth. If we don’t believe, then we are uninformed, knuckle dragging, idiotic Neanderthals. But wait!!! What we insisted that you believe yesterday, and ridiculed you for not believing, ignore that now because we’ve just discovered the Real Truth today. So today we insist that you believe this New Real Truth, and absolutely don’t believe yesterday’s Truth. And you’re an uninformed, knuckle dragging, idiotic Neanderthal if you don’t believe in this New Real Truth.

Right.

Put this side by side with the continuous teaching of truth by the Catholic Church and people still choose science. Go figure…

 

[rossum]

I know you guys will spit this out because you choke on anything ID - but Ann Guager discusses the targets here:

Evolving Enzymes and Testing Darwin’s Theory With Ann Gauger

Darwin’s theory does not cover abiogenesis at all, so I doubt if this would be relevant to abiogenesis. Darwin’s theory explains how the first primitive living organisms diversified into the multifarious species we see today. It does not explain how those first organisms originated.

Further, enzymes are not particularly relevant to abiogenesis. Enzymes are proteins and those come at the end of the process, probably after a long period of RNA-only development. It might be interesting to see what she has to say about ribozymes, the RNA equivalent of enzymes.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Does design exist?

Yes

Agreed.

Is it detectable?

Yes

In some cases. Even Dr Dembski agrees that it is not detectable in all cases; false negatives are possible.

Can we formulize it?

They think so and are trying to do just that.

Here we disagree. Have you been following the Mathgrrl threads on Uncommon Descent? ID proponents have very obviously failed to provide such a formulization despite repeated requests. Dembski’s CSI sounds fine at first but it is insufficiently rigorously defined to be actually calculable.

It is telling that we are not seeing papers from the ID people calculating the CSI of various known objects. What is the CSI of Cytochrome C for example? Would this not be a perfectly good ID research project for someone to undertake? I find it significant that in the years since Dr Dembski first proposed CSI as an indicator of design that there has only been one attempt to calculate it for any real object - Dembski’s own calculation for the bacterial flagellum.

rossum