S
Stylteralmaldo
Guest
As a CPA, I can appreciate this comment.
Having said that, it looks like GAAP is going by the wayside in favor of international standards. :bigyikes:
There’s a theological tie-in to this fact somehow.
- Status
As a CPA, I can appreciate this comment.
Having said that, it looks like GAAP is going by the wayside in favor of international standards. :bigyikes:
There’s a theological tie-in to this fact somehow.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
Thank you very much, that helps. Here are my stumbling blocks, perhaps you can address them
I don’t know the name of Cain’s wife. I don’t know what Jesus ate on his tenth birthday. But, I would never claim to know. It’s like when there’s a computer bug to fix. You think you know the cause, but each layer you peel steers you in a different direction. Mine is a totally controlled environment, there you have all information available if you take the bother - I don’t solve the problem until I achieve complete certainty. I’m always surprised at how many layers/ info is needed to be peeled before reaching absolute certainty. That’s why with so many missing pieces I’m so skeptical/biased.
In OP I thought we had to reconcile the zero to ten-billion cells, in 3 billion years - now you tell me we have to reconcile zero to ten-billion in only 550 million years?
From zero, then to one ameoba then to 10 billion brain cells working in complete harmony all in 550 million years? I promise to study those links you suggest from Phil Vaz, I will get back to you.
I will accept what you say about the simpler creatures being earlier. I am not an expert on dating, so I will accept that and zoom-in on how we know that occurred.
I didn’t intend my example of the development of the accounting app to be a parallel to evolution. Especially since it was completely developed by an intelligent life form.
An intelligent yet at times negligent intelligent life form.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
I know, I know - these accounting guys are cracking me up too!!
As a CPA, I can appreciate this comment.
Having said that, it looks like GAAP is going by the wayside in favor of international standards. :bigyikes:
There’s a theological tie-in to this fact somehow.
I work with that humor all day long and I still can’t get enough of it!
L
Lost_Found
Guest
oh yeah, the documentation. It’s all kept in that biiiiig binder over there, feel free to sift through it and try to make sense of it all. When you start to get that glazed-over look is when my mouth starts to smirk.
P
PhilVaz
Guest
<< Specially thanks to PhilVaz for all those links!! I will read them all and get back to you to explain the parts I don’t understand >>
Oh I don’t know if I can explain all that stuff. I was just pointing to papers and simulations I know that have modeled evolution mathematically. Of course there is also Richard Dawkins classic computer program written in Basic and Pascal from The Blind Watchmaker – known as the "Weasel" program (wikipedia article), see also his "Biomorphs" program. These are crude attempts at “evolution simulation.”
In the Weasel program, the phrase WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P becomes METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) in about 40+ generations. From Dawkins:
“The exact time taken by the computer to reach the target doesn’t matter. If you want to know, it completed the whole exercise for me, the first time, while I was out to lunch. It took about half an hour. (Computer enthusiasts may think this unduly slow. The reason is that the program was written in BASIC, a sort of computer baby-talk. When I rewrote it in Pascal, it took 11 seconds.) Computers are a bit faster at this kind of thing than monkeys, but the difference really isn’t significant. What matters is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection, and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the other procedure of single-step selection: about a million million million million million years. This is more than a million million million times as long as the universe has so far existed.” (Dawkins from The Blind Watchmaker)
So computers and math have been used to model evolution and natural selection. People have critiqued this by suggesting it is the intelligence of the programmer driving the evolution, but actually the algorithms themselves account for some “randomness” so it does mimic the random mutation part.
The AVIDA "Digital Life Platform" mentioned earlier (paper by Lenski, Pennock, et al) is lot more sophisticated.
And on the same topic, there is the new computer game just released by EA:
SPORE
Phil P
Oh I don’t know if I can explain all that stuff. I was just pointing to papers and simulations I know that have modeled evolution mathematically. Of course there is also Richard Dawkins classic computer program written in Basic and Pascal from The Blind Watchmaker – known as the "Weasel" program (wikipedia article), see also his "Biomorphs" program. These are crude attempts at “evolution simulation.”
In the Weasel program, the phrase WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P becomes METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) in about 40+ generations. From Dawkins:
“The exact time taken by the computer to reach the target doesn’t matter. If you want to know, it completed the whole exercise for me, the first time, while I was out to lunch. It took about half an hour. (Computer enthusiasts may think this unduly slow. The reason is that the program was written in BASIC, a sort of computer baby-talk. When I rewrote it in Pascal, it took 11 seconds.) Computers are a bit faster at this kind of thing than monkeys, but the difference really isn’t significant. What matters is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection, and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the other procedure of single-step selection: about a million million million million million years. This is more than a million million million times as long as the universe has so far existed.” (Dawkins from The Blind Watchmaker)
So computers and math have been used to model evolution and natural selection. People have critiqued this by suggesting it is the intelligence of the programmer driving the evolution, but actually the algorithms themselves account for some “randomness” so it does mimic the random mutation part.
The AVIDA "Digital Life Platform" mentioned earlier (paper by Lenski, Pennock, et al) is lot more sophisticated.
And on the same topic, there is the new computer game just released by EA:
SPORE
Phil P
R
reggieM
Guest
The more that is discovered (one example, “junk DNA” which proved to be not “junk” at all but rather to have incredibly complex functions), the more layers need to be peeled. So, we don’t get closer to clear evolutionary paths but much farther away. Supposedly a few fossils will explain bio-chemical modifications which cannot even be understood outside of their evolutionary paths.
Here’s a pretty simple story with some numbers and layers to work with:
So, we not only have to reconcile the ten billion cells, but also the 3 billion DNA letters and the coding sequences that go along with them in every cell. No wonder Mr. Rogoutsos said it was “almost depressing”. This is going to be a difficult balance sheet to reconcile. Forget about predictions, we can see scientists “confounded” just trying to explain what is there. Evolutionists were spectacularly wrong about “junk DNA” also, as the story shows. ID theory actually predicted that those parts of the genome were not junk left-overs from evolutionary randomness.
That’s a good point. We have to reconcile those cells in that sort a period of time. Additionally, we are not given parameters to figure out how long it takes mutations to create new cells and new information from non-information. If it takes 1 billion years to create one cell, then we probably won’t have enough time in a 550 million year time span.In OP I thought we had to reconcile the zero to ten-billion cells, in 3 billion years - now you tell me we have to reconcile zero to ten-billion in only 550 million years?
But again, evolutionists do not help us with the mathematics that we need here since we have no probabilities to work from (e.g. they could say: “it’s a one in 300 billion chance that a mutation will place the right letter in the right DNA string at the right time”). If we had that, at least we could begin to figure out how much time we’ll need for modern day apes to evolve into humans.
Well, for your sake, I wouldn’t want you to tell your boss that your accounting calculations are as precise and certain as evolutionary theory is.I didn’t intend my example of the development of the accounting app to be a parallel to evolution. Especially since it was completely developed by an intelligent life form.
R
redneck22
Guest
This is good scientific, observable, testable evidence for the change in an animal that can be called “evolution” but reality is its just change and change in the wrong direction for what “evolution” is touted to be. Evolution is the explanation of how microbes became man via massive increases in information, but all the scientific tests only show degenration, loss, swaping of existing information etc.I am also an accountant. I also need to see things tie to 0.
I also don’t ‘get’ evolution.
My husband is a researcher at a major University. He has a PhD in microbiology and genetics.
He doesn’t ‘get’ why it’s so important to tie to 0.
But he can blow your mind away on evolution.
What I’m saying is, what YOU try to reconcile in your head, he and I try to reconcile over the dinner table.
I ask him ALL the time ‘So, EVERY dog I see, is from the gray wolf?’
‘Yes’
‘The pit bull?’
‘Yes’
‘The poodle?’
‘Yes’
‘The Chihuahua? Certainly not the chihuahua?’
‘Yes, even the chihuahua’
‘All from the gray wolf?’
‘Yes’
‘But, how?!?!?’
And he explains it again.
And it still boggles my mind.
I mean, domesticated dogs were FORCED evolution - we KNOW what happened because WE MADE it happen. And I still don’t get it
The Wolf was the ancestor of the domesticated dog and has all the genomic information the poodles and pit bulls have, but these domesticated dogs have had their genomic information striped down and specialised via selective breeding. They are runt mutants of the original.
These poor relatives of the wolf have inherent health problems due to their specialisation and reduction of their genome and will never go back to being wolves. The information is lost. Also if let in the wild they wouldn’t last long.
This supports the Genesis account of creation and all we can observe is loss ever since.
.
W
Wirraway
Guest
is there a particular point you’re trying to make?
you can’t possibly be saying that a gray wolf makes a better retriever than a golden retriever, or are you?
R
rossum
Guest
Correct, evolution is defined as the change in the genomes of a population over time.
False. Random mutation and natural selection can be seen a a process of copying information from the environment into the genomes of organisms living in that environment. For example, the arctic environment contains the information “white things are difficult to see against a snowy background”. This information has been copied into the genomes of many animals living in the arctic - they have white fur.
Great Danes are hardly to be called “runts”.
False. If all evolution is a loss of information then the organsims with the least information are the most evolved organsism, since they have lost the most information. We have more information in our DNA so we are the least evolved; bacteria have the least information on their DNA so they are the most evolved on your scheme. Where are bacteria mentioned in the Genesis account?
rossum
R
rossum
Guest
Science does not give complete certainty. Every scientific result has error bars on it, there is always a small allowed percentage of error in the value. All scientific theories are provisional until a better theory is found. Newton’s gravitation was an excellent theory but it was replaced by Einstein’s theory because Einstein got better results for large masses. Einstein’s theory is also provisional because it does not deal properly with very small distances - we need a theory of quantum gravity for that.
550 million years ago we had some very complex working cells, though none of them were in brains. Shortly after that we had working nerve cells in jellyfish; still no brains but the first step to a brain is a working nerve cell. Some animals (chordates) developed a set of nerves running along their back (we call it our spinal cord). The head end of this cord began to get bigger to produce the first primitive brain - see Lancelet (aka amphioxus). Once the initial simple brain was present then larger brains developed over time. This was a massively parallel process; in each generation there were millions, possibly billions, of brains all competing for resources. Only the better brains were able to pass on their DNA to future generations. Every single one of your ancestors succeeded in reproducting - not one failure. If even one of them had failed then you would not be here now. All the not good enough variants have been eliminated over time. We are all descended from a very long line of winners.
Not “complete harmony”, just “good enough harmony”. We still have things like migraines or epilepsy where our brains do not operate in “complete harmony”. In order to reproduce you do not have to be perfect, good enough will do.
rossum
G
GailMac
Guest
Zero sum? Switch to metric!
Peace,
Gail
Peace,
Gail
R
rossum
Guest
L
Lost_Found
Guest
If this is all fact, then it is to be shown mathematically with an equation. Please provide the mutation rates and natural selection rates to support your claim, the transformation of 1 cell to 10 billion cells working in complete harmony through random mutation and natural selection. I accept the fossil record because it is observable. You are speculating on the process. You have no information on this, so you have created your own “god of gaps”.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
Thank you for the thoughtful response:thumbsup: I checked out the weasel program. Its shortcoming is as Dawkins admits, that the end result is targeted at each step. This renders the program completely useless, little more than a toy. It does not even approach explaining the transformation from 1 cell to 10 billion cells working in complete harmony in 550 million years.<< Specially thanks to PhilVaz for all those links!! I will read them all and get back to you to explain the parts I don’t understand >>
Oh I don’t know if I can explain all that stuff. I was just pointing to papers and simulations I know that have modeled evolution mathematically. Of course there is also Richard Dawkins classic computer program written in Basic and Pascal from The Blind Watchmaker – known as the "Weasel" program (wikipedia article), see also his "Biomorphs" program. These are crude attempts at “evolution simulation.”
In the Weasel program, the phrase WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P becomes METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL (from Shakespeare’s Hamlet) in about 40+ generations. From Dawkins:
“The exact time taken by the computer to reach the target doesn’t matter. If you want to know, it completed the whole exercise for me, the first time, while I was out to lunch. It took about half an hour. (Computer enthusiasts may think this unduly slow. The reason is that the program was written in BASIC, a sort of computer baby-talk. When I rewrote it in Pascal, it took 11 seconds.) Computers are a bit faster at this kind of thing than monkeys, but the difference really isn’t significant. What matters is the difference between the time taken by cumulative selection, and the time which the same computer, working flat out at the same rate, would take to reach the target phrase if it were forced to use the other procedure of single-step selection: about a million million million million million years. This is more than a million million million times as long as the universe has so far existed.” (Dawkins from The Blind Watchmaker)
So computers and math have been used to model evolution and natural selection. People have critiqued this by suggesting it is the intelligence of the programmer driving the evolution, but actually the algorithms themselves account for some “randomness” so it does mimic the random mutation part.
The AVIDA "Digital Life Platform" mentioned earlier (paper by Lenski, Pennock, et al) is lot more sophisticated.
And on the same topic, there is the new computer game just released by EA:
SPORE
Phil P
I am beginning to understand that this has not been done. You are all answering my initial question.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
The more that is discovered (one example, “junk DNA” which proved to be not “junk” at all but rather to have incredibly complex functions), the more layers need to be peeled. So, we don’t get closer to clear evolutionary paths but much farther away. Supposedly a few fossils will explain bio-chemical modifications which cannot even be understood outside of their evolutionary paths.
Here’s a pretty simple story with some numbers and layers to work with:
So, we not only have to reconcile the ten billion cells, but also the 3 billion DNA letters and the coding sequences that go along with them in every cell. No wonder Mr. Rogoutsos said it was “almost depressing”. This is going to be a difficult balance sheet to reconcile. Forget about predictions, we can see scientists “confounded” just trying to explain what is there. Evolutionists were spectacularly wrong about “junk DNA” also, as the story shows. ID theory actually predicted that those parts of the genome were not junk left-overs from evolutionary randomness.
That’s a good point. We have to reconcile those cells in that sort a period of time. Additionally, we are not given parameters to figure out how long it takes mutations to create new cells and new information from non-information. If it takes 1 billion years to create one cell, then we probably won’t have enough time in a 550 million year time span.
But again, evolutionists do not help us with the mathematics that we need here since we have no probabilities to work from (e.g. they could say: “it’s a one in 300 billion chance that a mutation will place the right letter in the right DNA string at the right time”). If we had that, at least we could begin to figure out how much time we’ll need for modern day apes to evolve into humans.
Well, for your sake, I wouldn’t want you to tell your boss that your accounting calculations are as precise and certain as evolutionary theory is.
Thanks ReggieM… So it’s far, far, far more change than the 1 cell to 10 billion cell that I first thought. Much more to reconcile. I guess the other boys forgot to tell us that. I could imagine their tax returns.
I agree that to understand a system it’s preferable to reconstruct, not deconstruct. In our analogy, the programmer before me lacked experience. He didn’t properly test individual models before assembling them together. This is the sign of inexperience in each and every trade/craft. He envisions the end-product without appreciating the complexity to get there. So the experienced programmer builds a tiny module, tests it COMPLETELY – not just thoroughly! - by cross-checking the math totals, and then adds it to the other modules – as opposed to testing the entire system after the modules have been combined; you’re plugging leaks that spring up everywhere when you start your analysis with the end product. However in both the app analogy, and in the case of the fossil record it seems to be all there was to start with, the end product. With the DNA analysis there’s a discouraging amount of info, but at least it sounds more like a reconstructive approach - until that layer needs to be de-constructed.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
But it should be vetted to other disciplines, they have something to offer too. For example. The accounting 101 college textbook is titled “Accounting, the basis for business decisions”. Then the accountant spends his/her entire carreer studying data, and how people use information to process and make decisions. To do this the accountant must also become an expert on objectivity. These are skills which can be used when looking at the fossil record. The scientist need not fear other disciplines.
R
rossum
Guest
Only if we have complete and correct information to put into the equation - GIGO.
That depends on what species you are talking about. The mutation rate in eukaryotes is in generally 10[sup]-4[/sup] to 10[sup]-6[/sup] mutations per base pair per generation, and for bacteria the rate is around 10[sup]-8[/sup] per base pair per generation. (Source: Wikipedia)
The rate of natural selection is driven by the degree of matching between the organism and its environment. In order to supply the data you want I require a detailed description of every environment in which any of our ancestors ever lived. You are asking for the name of Cain’s wife here.
A single mutation can affect a very large number of cells, for example polydactyly: http://midwestrocklobster.com/011007/avatar_lg.jpg
As I have pointed out, the cells of the human brain are not in “complete harmony”, they are reasonably good harmony. Migraines and epilepsy would not occur is the brain cells all operated in “complete harmony”. If you are not going to bother to read my posts, then there is not much point in my posting.
I am not speculating on the process. We can observe random mutations here and now. We can observe natural selection here and now. These two processes are not “speculation” but can be observed here and now, just like fossils. From current observations we can make resonable inferrences. I have never observed a live non-avian dinosaur, but it is a reasonable inference from the observed fossils that there were once live non-avian dinosaurs. Avian dinosaurs are readily observable which is another strand of evidence tending to confirm the inference.
We observe that brain development is controlled by genes. We observe that genes mutate. We observe that animal populations tend to increase to utilise all available resources. We observe that more offspring are made than are required for simply the replacement of their parent/s. We observe that there is competition for resources, and that hence there must be natural selection involving the size and complexity of an animal’s brain.
What observable, and mathematically proven, alternative do you have?
rossum
P
PhilVaz
Guest
LostFound << It does not even approach explaining the transformation from 1 cell to 10 billion cells working in complete harmony in 550 million years.
I am beginning to understand that this has not been done. You are all answering my initial question. >>
Actually what you are asking for does happen naturally when a baby is born. And it happens in only 9 months. From 1 cell to a human brain with billions of cells. We can call the whole birth process a miracle, but the natural means how this happens are pretty well known.
Phil P
I am beginning to understand that this has not been done. You are all answering my initial question. >>
Actually what you are asking for does happen naturally when a baby is born. And it happens in only 9 months. From 1 cell to a human brain with billions of cells. We can call the whole birth process a miracle, but the natural means how this happens are pretty well known.
Phil P
R
reggieM
Guest
Yes, I can imagine their tax returns – a bit of fuzzy math to say the least.Here’s another example of what evolutionists forgot to tell us while explaining the “certainty” of Darwinian theory.
Here’s developmental biologist Stuart Kauffman in an interview in March of this year:
Those numbers would certainly be difficult to reconcile in my bookkeeping. It’s like evolutionists are a little internet start-up firm with a $2 million a year annual budget and the CEO decides they need some acquisitions – they’ll start by buying Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. When their accounting firm explains that they don’t have the working capital to finance billions in investments – the internet start-up promply fires the accountants and looks for another firm that can “work the numbers” for them and “make it happen”.
Ok, so you need 10 to the 7,000th capability but you only have 10 to the 80th in the entire universe?
Don’t worry – evolution happens all the time. It’s not a big deal. We don’t need to look at the mathematics anyway. The fossils we found are enough to explain it all.
Yes, I think you’ve been given the best answer that they’ve got. In other words, they’re far, far, far (put 10 billion more “far’s” there) from explaining it.
But they’re really good at bluffing and acting like there are no real problems here.
Maybe a team of software engineers can design, build and test some software that replicates how random natural processes create new information out of nothing.
L
Lost_Found
Guest
Phil. Again thank you for the links, I appreciate the info you bring forward. I have learned a lot here. I’m sorry but I don’t accept the analogy of the baby. All of the human baby’s necessary code is perfectly in place right there at conception or thereabouts. That code was not in place 550 million years ago. Not a valid analogy. They are not equal, period. Similarly a petrie dish with one cell multiplying to a billion cells would not be a valid analogy.
When I first posted, I somewhat naively thought maybe some mathematicians had done some significant work here. You know what shocked me, even disgusted me? It was the Weasel program. That changed my tone completely. It’s nothing more than a random letter generator, a 28 character string, and at each roll of the dice, it compares each character to the target character. If it matches, it focuses on the remaining unmatched characters. It’s like the coder couldn’t get the results he wanted naturally so he juiced the app. I had heard the Dawkins name before and said, “if this is one of the leading proponents, and this is all he’s got, to explain my one to ten billion reconciliation, I’m OUT”.
- Status