1. Evolution or Design? Duons

Have you ever tried writing palindromes? How about writing phrases that can be read the same way in either direction? Here are some examples:
A man, a plan, a canal: Panama
Live not on evil
Was it a car or a cat I saw
These sentences were no doubt designed…
Can you imagine writing a book that can be read forwards and backwards containing 2 different stories that made sense? Not an easy task…

Watch the video and pay special attention to the following examples:

  1. Alternative splicing of RNA that produces multiple proteins from one gene
  2. Duons – Overlapping sequences that code for both protein expression and transcription factor binding sites simultaneously
  3. Dual coding genes in which one sequence is read in multiple frames to produce completely different protein

The magnitude of the dual coding problem in DNA would be the equivalent of writing a novel that could be read in either forward over reverse directions making two different stories both of which made sense…

And don’t forget that according to Darwinists the dual coding in DNA simply evolved, right?

403 thoughts on “1. Evolution or Design? Duons

  1. colewd: So should we put out a press release the famous “eclipse experiment” is not an experiment after all.

    No, because people who aren’t idiots already know that or will learn it if they have some need to, while idiots will just blither on.

    Glen Davidson

  2. colewd:
    DNA_Jock,

    So the design inference is valid.

    It’s just as valid as claiming “MAGIC!” and just as scientific. 100% bullshit and completely useless, but technically valid.

  3. colewd:
    John Harshman,

    So we have a hypothesis that explains itself because there is no possible alternative.

    There’s the bullshit of ID summarized in a single sentence. ID only offers the false dichotomy “if evolution can’t explain life’s diversity to my satisfaction then ID wins by default.”

    How did you determine there’s no possible alternatives unless you’re omnipotent and possess perfect knowledge yourself?

  4. colewd: So we have a hypothesis that explains itself because there is no possible alternative.

    The absolutely crucial first step would be to show that your hypothesis is possible at all, by finding evidence that an adequate creator existed at the OOL, or whatever poof you’re claiming.

    I don’t mean logically possible, as that is neither here nor there. Was it possible at the place and time?

    Without evidence that it was possible, you have nothing worth considering. And you don’t have an inkling of such evidence, nor do you have the decency to try to find any prior to claiming that it happened.

    Glen Davidson

  5. colewd

    It makes sense of the observation of the cell and its ability to turn information into work. As I said to John you can test if random change and selection can change “me thinks it is a weasel” into another coherent sentence by random change and so far it fails every time.

    That’s a rather interesting assertion: “so far it fails every time”. I suspect that you haven’t tried very many times.

    [snip]
    The prediction I would make with design is that cellular mechanisms are consistent across cell types. My experience with this is cellular control being managed by destruction mechanisms which control the amount of cell cycle proteins in the nucleus and whether cell division occurs.

    Wow, “consistent”. That leaves a LOT of wiggle room. And what do you mean by “cell types” — within an organism, or across species? As I predicted, that’s a post-diction.
    Evolution would predict that such mechanisms would be similar across taxons, but vary in a, y’know, hierarchical manner, so your “prediction” does not distinguish between the competing theories.
    I did laugh at your choice of cyclins as an example of a conserved mechanism, though. You’re wrong.
    I also laughed at your weasel assertion; are you trying to tell me that your random change and selection program never found

    he thinks it is a weasel”

    ?
    It’s a bleeding neighbour!

  6. DNA_Jock,

    That’s a rather interesting assertion: “so far it fails every time”. I suspect that you haven’t tried very many times.

    Ive tried it enough to show that if you define function as a coherent english sentence of 24 characters, random search will not find function in a reasonable amount of time with generations changing every few seconds.

    Wow, “consistent”. That leaves a LOT of wiggle room. And what do you mean by “cell types” — within an organism, or across species? As I predicted, that’s a post-diction.
    Evolution would predict that such mechanisms would be similar across taxons, but vary in a, y’know, hierarchical manner, so your “prediction” does not distinguish between the competing theories.
    I did laugh at your choice of cyclins as an example of a conserved mechanism, though. You’re wrong.
    I also laughed at your weasel assertion; are you trying to tell me that your random change and selection program never found

    What supports design over evolution is that even though we have incurred massive changes to DNA sequences and morphology since the first single celled life we have not had changes in functional methods. I am seeing this well beyond the transcription translation mechanism.

    I was not talking about cyclins but the cellular control of one of their mission critical transcription factors. The method of control is the same as for vascular growth in the cell.

    I also laughed at your weasel assertion; are you trying to tell me that your random change and selection program never found

    “he thinks it is a weasel”

    If the search success changes from a specific target to any coherent 24 character english sentence then yes you will probably spend the rest of your life waiting for this to happen given a generation time of 2 seconds.

  7. colewd: if you define function as a coherent english sentence of 24 characters

    Coherence in the English language can be had for far fewer than 24 characters. Indeed, English has words as short as a single letter.

  8. What supports design over evolution is that even though we have incurred massive changes to DNA sequences and morphology since the first single celled life we have not had changes in functional methods. I am seeing this well beyond the transcription translation mechanism.

    And what creationist/IDist said that would be the case, prior to it being found to be so?

    I know that you like to claim what exists would be designed, but you neither can come up with any sort of appropriate reason why this is the case, nor can you provide evidence of anyone who made the claim prior to its discovery.

    Of course you don’t even have a meaningful notion of what design even means. How could you? You’re doing everything piecemeal, like IDists/creationists normally do, trying to fit everything into your prior beliefs. Theoretical thought is rather foreign to you, as is obvious from all of your lame objections to evolutionary theory.

    Glen Davidson

  9. GlenDavidson,

    Theoretical thought is rather foreign to you, as is obvious from all of your lame objections to evolutionary theory.

    General relativity makes sense to me Darwinian evolution does not.

  10. colewd: I was not talking about cyclins but the cellular control of one of their mission critical transcription factors. The method of control is the same as for vascular growth in the cell.

    Say what? “Vascular growth in the cell”. Total word salad, Bill.

    I also laughed at your weasel assertion; are you trying to tell me that your random change and selection program never found

    “he thinks it is a weasel”

    If the search success changes from a specific target to any coherent 24 character english sentence then yes you will probably spend the rest of your life waiting for this to happen given a generation time of 2 seconds.

    24? Math not your strong suit, I guess. Dawkins had 23 letters and five spaces for a 27^28 search space. Your version has 23 letters and six spaces, for a 27^29 search space. Your introduction of an extra space after “ME” into the original weasel phrase results in one of the 754 nearest neighbours being a “coherent English sentence”.
    Remember, your claims were:

    Run the Weasel program, start with the original sentence, “me thinks it is like a weasel”, put it on random search, and select any coherent english sentence that is finds. You will observe that it quickly breaks down the sequence and never returns a coherent sentence.

    and

    As I said to John you can test if random change and selection can change “me thinks it is a weasel” into another coherent sentence by random change and so far it fails every time.

    Not if one (or two, heh) of the 754 nearest neighbours happens to be a coherent sentence.
    You cannot even manage to construct a strawman without shooting yourself in the foot.

  11. colewd: If the search success changes from a specific target to any coherent 24 (sic) character english sentence then yes you will probably spend the rest of your life waiting for this to happen given a generation time of 2 seconds.

    Methinks it is like a teasel.

    Of course, given random slicing and dicing (recombination), many coherent English words and phrases can evolve over time.

  12. colewd:
    General relativity makes sense to me Darwinian evolution does not.

    OK. Let’s start there. What’s Darwinian evolution according to what you know?

    Here it means the part about natural selection. So, the interplay between individual phenotypes and the environment. Selection from the variability among organisms.

    Given that, and assuming that you mean the very same thing that I mean by “Darwinian evolution,”:

    1. Do you agree that there’s variability between organisms even within a species?
    2. Do you agree that such variability might mean that some individuals might be better suited for a given environment than other individuals?
    3. Do you agree that such individuals would have a higher probability of surviving?

    If so for all of the above, then you have nothing against Darwinian evolution thus far. (We can examine these further afterwards.)

    So, please make sure you first tell me if we understand Darwinian evolution the same way. After that, you can go on with these three questions. Once we solve those, we can continue to figure out where your problem with Darwinian evolution (or evolution in general), might lie.

    What do you say?

  13. DNA_Jock,

    Say what? “Vascular growth in the cell”. Total word salad, Bill.

    How do you describe the process the cell goes through to eliminate a condition of hypoxia? Word salad. Can I call you John Harshman Jr.

    Not if one (or two, heh) of the 754 nearest neighbours happens to be a coherent sentence.

    What do you think happens with 10,100 and1000 generations of random change?

  14. colewd:
    GlenDavidson,

    Of course you don’t even have a meaningful notion of what design even means.

    What does design mean?

    See?

    I’ll give you a hint. It means something different from observed evolutionary processes, and its results are rather different, too.

    If you can ever understand that, then you might begin to consider what design itself means, rather than merely asserting that design produced the patterns and absurdly-derived structures of a kind that no known designer has produced.

    Glen Davidson

  15. GlenDavidson,

    I’ll give you a hint. It means something different from observed evolutionary processes, and its results are rather different, too.

    What observed evolutionary processes?

  16. Zachriel,

    Of course, given random slicing and dicing (recombination), many coherent English words and phrases can evolve over time.

    Sure. You can get all kinds of sentences with intelligent direction.

  17. colewd:
    One, two and three are fine with a few minor modifications that don’t affect my skepticism.

    I didn’t expect them to affect your skepticism. I’m giving you the tools to make your case properly, and to check if your problem is really that it doesn’t make sense. So far it seems to make sense to you, which means that maybe your problem in more on the details. But remember, Darwin proposed his theory based on these observable and undeniable facts! Variability, not everything survives to reproductions, some individuals have a higher chance of surviving because of their particular characteristics.

    What minor modifications? After that we can go on for more details.

    (You could tell me where your beef might be, but I suspect that’d derail the examination process.)

  18. colewd: How do describe the process the cell goes through to eliminate a condition of hypoxia? Word salad. Can I call you John Harshman Jr.

    If you think it is just John being implacable, you are wrong. The stuff you type is definitely word salad.

    I will take a wild guess and assume you mean angiogenesis.

  19. colewd,

    Remember that Darwin proposed his theory based on these observable and undeniable facts. Variability within populations, not everything survives to reproduction, some individuals have a higher chance of surviving because of their particular characteristics.

    So far so good. Now for more details. Do you agree that, with time, the differential in reproductive success might modify the aspect of a population from the original population? That, because some characteristics were better for survival to reproduction those characteristics might become more prevalent in the population as a whole?

  20. GlenDavidson,

    You know, the ones that you’re told and that you still ask for repeatedly because you can’t make convincing arguments.

    No Glen. I want to see if you can make the case that the processes in your mind are both observed and evolutionary. To support this claim you need to show that you have observed them during evolution.

  21. colewd:
    GlenDavidson,

    No Glen.I want to see if you can make the case that the processes in your mind are both observed and evolutionary.To support this claim you need to show that you have observed them during evolution.

    After you:

    The absolutely crucial first step would be to show that your hypothesis is possible at all, by finding evidence that an adequate creator existed at the OOL, or whatever poof you’re claiming.

    I don’t mean logically possible, as that is neither here nor there. Was it possible at the place and time?

    Without evidence that it was possible, you have nothing worth considering. And you don’t have an inkling of such evidence, nor do you have the decency to try to find any prior to claiming that it happened.

    Give me a meaningful answer for once, rather than attempting to turn the tables with your ignorant questions.

    I’m not playing your games. Start dealing with these issues with a modicum of decency, and quit with the tendentious questions with which you pretend an interest in the facts that you actually lack.

    Glen Davidson

  22. Entropy,

    So far so good. Now for more details. Do you agree that, with time, the differential in reproductive success might modify the aspect of a population from the original population?

    I agree that the stronger genetics (more suited to the environment ) will become a larger segment of the population until there is a change in the environment.

  23. colewd: Sure. You can get all kinds of sentences with intelligent direction.

    We were referring to random recombination, not intelligent direction. In any case, didn’t you indicate that getting to any other English sentence from ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’ by random point mutation would “probably spend the rest of your life waiting for this to happen”. That wasn’t correct, was it?

    Methinks it is like a teasel.

  24. After all this time, Bill still can’t tell the difference between the theory of common descent and the theory of natural selection. To him, it’s all mushed into “evolution”, which he contrasts with “design” as opposing unitary (perhaps perfectly simple?) hypotheses. It’s really impossible to talk to Bill. That and the word salad.

    Corneel: I will take a wild guess and assume you mean angiogenesis.

    That can’t be it, because he said “in the cell”.

  25. GlenDavidson,

    I’m not playing your games. Start dealing with these issues with a modicum of decency, and quit with the tendentious questions with which you pretend an interest in the facts that you actually lack.

    We can engage again when you are willing to support your claims. You want to compare design to observed evolutionary processes and you cannot name the processes and support when they are observed to create evolutionary change.

    One day you going to wake up and realize you rely on a theory built on circular reasoning.

  26. Zachriel,

    We were referring to random recombination, not intelligent direction. In any case, didn’t you indicate that getting to any other English sentence from ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’ by random point mutation would “probably spend the rest of your life waiting for this to happen”. That wasn’t correct, was it?

    Don’t think you made a random change. Yes, with serendipity you can see something functional with a few changes just like evolution but if you make 10, 100, 1000 random changes you will get garbage that remains garbage.

  27. colewd: Don’t think you made a random change.Yes, with serendipity you can see something functional with a few changes just like evolution but if you make 10, 100, 1000 random changes you will get garbage that remains garbage.

    You said, with random point mutation, it would take a lifetime to run across another coherent English sentence. That wasn’t correct, was it?

    Seconds in a human lifetime ≈ 2 billion

  28. colewd:
    GlenDavidson,

    We can engage again when you are willing to support your claims.You want to compare design to observed evolutionary processes and you cannot name the processes and support when they are observed to create evolutionary change.

    One day you going to wake up and realize you rely on a theory built on circular reasoning.

    I realize that you’re trying to shift away from your inability to handle either design as it actually exists or evolutionary theory.

    Is nothing too low for you? Is the God you pretend to serve happy with your dissembling and false accusations?

    Glen Davidson

  29. Corneel,

    If you think it is just John being implacable, you are wrong. The stuff you type is definitely word salad.

    I will take a wild guess and assume you mean angiogenesis.

    Thats right, have you heard of the VEGF receptor? Do you know what the V stands for? I used vascular as a term because we were discussing a subject which is ultimately down regulation of the VEGF receptor.

    Sometimes it is word salad and he did make a valid point earlier where I mixed up data and hypothesis by trying to speak in his language but other times it is because John is not familiar with the subject. If he was polite he would ask me to clarify.

  30. GlenDavidson,

    I realize that you’re trying to shift away from your inability to handle either design as it actually exists or evolutionary theory by this projection.

    No Glen. I am asking you to support your claims. Until you do the subject is not worth discussing.

  31. Zachriel,

    You said, with random point mutation, it would take a lifetime to run across another coherent English sentence. That wasn’t correct, was it?

    Seconds in a human lifetime ≈ 2 billion

    You dropped the word probably and now you have created a strawman. You may find a sentence early in the mutational process but with few additional mutations the sentence will start to break down into meaningless garbage.

  32. colewd: You dropped the word probably and now you have created a strawman.

    Perhaps we misunderstood your claim. This is what we thought you meant: Start with a sequence “Methinks it is like a weasel”. From a population of such sequences, mutate them randomly, keeping those that still form a coherent sentence (ETA that is, eliminating as unfit those that do not form a coherent sentence), repeating the process until a novel coherent sequence occurs.

  33. colewd:
    GlenDavidson,

    No Glen.I am asking you to support your claims.Until you do the subject is not worth discussing.

    Yes, support your claims for once.

    I asked you to do so, and you completely avoid your responsibility in this matter

    Of course there’s nothing new about your disgusting attempts to turn aside your responsibilities by demanding what you’ve been given repeatedly.

    Glen Davidson

  34. colewd: How do you describe the process the cell goes through to eliminate a condition of hypoxia? Word salad. Can I call you John Harshman Jr.

    “HIF (Hypoxia-inducible factor) induction”, perhaps.
    I’d be honored if you would call me John Harshman Jr.
    Although, John Harshman Sr. would be more accurate, as it happens.

    colewd: Thats right, have you heard of the VEGF receptor? Do you know what the V stands for? I used vascular as a term because we were discussing a subject which is ultimately down regulation of the VEGF receptor.

    Oh, I stand corrected. Now what you are trying to say makes even less sense. Are you saying that the (intracellular?) down-regulation of VEGFR expression in response to hypoxia is the “consistent mechanism” that you were alluding to? I’ll need to see a citation for that, because I don’t believe it happens.
    I’m sensing a Sal-Cordova-like deliberate vagueness in your use of language.

    How about you admit that you were wrong about random walks beginning at “Me[]thinks it is like a weasel”?

  35. DNA_Jock,

    How about you admit that you were wrong about random walks beginning at “Me[]thinks it is like a weasel”?

    Yes, you accurately corrected my claim.

  36. colewd: Yes, with serendipity you can see something functional with a few changes just like evolution but if you make 10, 100, 1000 random changes you will get garbage that remains garbage.

    What about if after each of those random changes we tested the change to see if fitness increased or decreased? And what about if we only “kept” the changes that increased fitness?

    Do you see where I’m going? Why are you so blind with regard to selection?

  37. John Harshman: Corneel: I will take a wild guess and assume you mean angiogenesis.

    That can’t be it, because he said “in the cell”.

    The thing about salad is it is all mixed up 😉

  38. colewd: Thats right, have you heard of the VEGF receptor? Do you know what the V stands for? I used vascular as a term because we were discussing a subject which is ultimately down regulation of the VEGF receptor.

    I haven’t heard of it, but I could look it up. It is a membrane-bound tyrosine kinase, not a transcription factor for “cellular control”. Could you explain what exactly that cellular mechanism is that screams DESIGN at you?

  39. colewd: I used vascular as a term because we were discussing a subject which is ultimately down regulation of the VEGF receptor.

    Ah, I see. You just sprinkle vaguely relevant words at random to compose sentences. Yes, that’s exactly what word salad is. A better program would be to design your sentences carefully to communicate a clear meaning. A stable genius like you ought to be capable of that, right?

  40. colewd,

    Sometimes it is word salad and he [John] did make a valid point earlier where I mixed up data and hypothesis by trying to speak in his language…

    His language is English, and your incompetence in your native tongue is a huge problem for those attempting to discuss things with you.

  41. colewd:
    GlenDavidson,

    General relativity makes sense to me Darwinian evolution does not.

    The problem lies with you then, not evolutionary theory. But we’ve known that since your first confused science-free posts.

  42. I’m willing to bet that Bill’s understanding of relativity is just as bad as that of evolution

  43. dazz:
    I’m willing to bet that Bill’s understanding of relativity is just as bad as that of evolution

    I think he just means that relativity isn’t against his religion.

    “It makes sense” = “Not in denial of it”

    Glen Davidson

  44. colewd:
    I agree that the stronger genetics (more suited to the environment ) will become a larger segment of the population until there is a change in the environment.

    Sure, but the question remains: do you agree that, with time, the population might look different to the original population due to the increment in such more-suited-for-the-environment genetics (plus whatever those more-suited-genetics might carry with them by happenstance association)?

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