In an earlier post I showed that ID is not anti-evolution. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/intelligent-design-is-not-anti-evolution-2/
So is ID is not anti-evolution then what is being debated?
Evolution has several meanings. The meanings of evolution, from Darwinism, Design and Public Education:
- Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature
- Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population
- Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
- The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
- Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
- “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms. see Coyne- https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/natural-selection-and-evolution-material-blind-mindless-and-purposeless/
The debate isn’t as black & white as saying it is evo #6 against IDists, Creationists and theistic evolutionists. However it is obvious that evo #6 is what is being debated.
(Theistic evolutionists are a different breed. They don’t seem to acknowledge that evo #6 is what is being taught in our public school system. And therefore don’t appear to understand the issue. The TE’s I have debated with tell me that humans were an intended outcome of the evolutionary process, which is OK for evo #5 but defies evo #6. IOW TE’s are closet IDists.)
Creationists go with 1-4 (above), with the change in 4 being built-in responses to environmental cues or organism direction as the primary mechanism, for allele frequency change, culled by various selection processes (as well as random effects/ events/ choice of not to mate/ unable to find a mate). The secondary mechanism would be random variations or mutations culled by similar processes. IOW life’s diversity evolved from the originally Created Kind, humans included. Science should therefore be the tool/ process with which we determine what those kinds were.
With Creation vs. “Evolution #6” the 4 main debating points are clear:
1) The starting point of the evolutionary process. (What was (were) the founding population(s)?)
2) The phenotypic & morphological plasticity allowed/ extent the evolutionary process can take a population (do limits exist?).
3) The apparent direction the evolutionary process took to form the history of life. (ie from “simpler” bacteria-like organisms to complex metazoans)
4) The mechanism for the evolutionary process.
With ID vs. Evo #6 it is mainly about the mechanism- IDists go with evolution 1-5, with the Creation change to 4 plus the following caveat in 5: Life’s diversity was brought about via the intent of a design. The initial conditions, parameters, resources and goal was pre-programmed as part of an evolutionary algorithm designed to bring forth complex metazoans, as well as leave behind the more “simple” viruses, prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes.
IDists understand that if life didn’t arise from non-living matter via some blind watchmaker-type process, there is no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose solely due to those type of processes (point 1 up top).
What does the data say? Well there isn’t any data that demonstrates bacteria can “evolve” into anything but bacteria. Therefore anyone who accepts evolution 5 or 6 has some splaining to do. Preferably splainations with scientific merit.
Throwing time at an issue does not splain anything:
If one desires to extrapolate small changes into large changes by simply adding time, one requires independent evidence to justify this move. The problem is that we really don’t know how evolution occurs. And when talking about the evolution of the mammalian middle ear bones, we should not forget that we are still basically in the dark in trying to explain how both a mammalian and reptilian zygote actually develops the middle ear and jaw bones, respectively. Without this knowledge, attempts to explain such a transition as a function of a series of small, incremental changes stretched across time are rooted in ignorance. That is, we don’t truly understand neither the process of development nor the process of evolution and without such knowledge, there is no reason to think we are on safe ground when employing (1).
Attempts to justify this move by appealing to the use of (1) in astronomy and geology fail because biotic complexity differs in both structure and formation.
One may assume (1) to explain evolutionary change as a working hypothesis, but we should keep in mind that large changes in evolution are basically a “black box” and a series of small incremental changes may play only a trivial, fine-tuning role in any transition (there is no evidence to think otherwise). What’s more, bacteria, as the predominant life forms on this planet, which have experience the most evolution of all life forms, tell us clearly that (1) need not apply to biological evolution.
In the end, appeals to small change + deep time are embraced merely as a matter of convenience, as it happens to be the primary way we can think about evolution at a time when we are just starting to come to grips with it. As we begin to better understand the process of evolution, I predict (1) will one day be viewed as a quaint understanding that served mostly to highlight just how much we didn’t understand evolution.- Mike Gene
However Father Time, Mother Nature and some still unknown natural process does make for an interesting trinity…
You do realize that the dembski is a unit of error, don’t you?
No, you probably don’t.
Elizabeth is compassionate and forgiving. Far more Christian than those folks at Uncommon Descent who still won’t let Joe participate there.
The alleged distinction between the OoL and evolution is imaginary.
But that isn’t the point Patrick. If something is intelligently designed to reproduce then you have entered the realm of IDE. That is because how the reproduction originated dictates how the change will occur, accidently or by design.
How life originated dictates how it will evolve. As if an intelligent designer is going to go through all of the trouble to produce living organisms and a suitable place only to have it all wiped away by slight changes.
OTOH if blind and mindless processes produced living organisms then ID is a non-starter and blind watchmaker evolution is the only game in town.
So Patrick you san say there is a distinction all you want but that is only a distraction and far from the truth.
The vast majority of GAs that are not goal-oriented targeted searches are examples of evolution without design, just as we observe in the biological world.
Can you point some out and show how they model blind and mindless processes producing irreducibly complex structures?
You do realize that your link isn’t an authority on the subject- don’t you?
No, you probably don’t
You’ve been provided with links to things like Avida many times. You have never understood how those defeat your argument and apparently you never will.
Patrick,
I’ll just PeaRoast this here:
Classic Joe fibs:
“Yes I have programmed and used GAs to find solutions to encryption issues.”
“Name ONE GA expert here- besides me (yes I have used and written them) ”
“Look at it this way- Star Trek: Next generation- Lt Data was able to rewire his neuro networks due to the algorithms INSIDE OF HIM”
“My IQ is only 150.”
“Yes, my IQ is much higher than fat Felsenstein’s”
“The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand.”
“Who the fuck are you to say there is no point of keeping track of the LKN?”
“Ya see, as I have said before, designing agencies, successful designing agencies anyway, usually do have the capabilities to design what it is they are designing.”
” Anyone who is aware of my physical condition (Thanks Iraq) knows I cannot jump up & down.”
“That doesn’t count the experiments I conduct in my basement. Some labs would be jealous of the equipment I house & use there.
For example I now know that ticks are more attracted to watermelon rinds then they are to orange peels or orange slices. I also know that dragonflies play.”
“The same place I have lived for years.
If you want to visit me I can be found at 550 Main St in Keene, NH. Just ask for Joe G.”
“Junk DNA has been abandoned ”
Richie, that was quite the childish post there. You must be very upset. Too bad you can’t show that any of those is a fib. And I am OK with that.
Frankie,
Everyone knows (including you) they’re all fibs. And I’m fine with that. Seem relevant as you’re getting GAs wrong again. They’re beyond you. Some things are just too difficult for some people. ID Leader! 😛
I have responded to AVIDA- many others have too. AVIDA doesn’t defeat any arguments of ID:
Evolution by Intelligent Design: A Response to Lenski et al.
I especially like Lenski’s admission:
Patrick,
The effects of low-impact mutations in digital organisms
Chase W. Nelson and John C. Sanford
Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 2011, 8:9 | doi:10.1186/1742-4682-8-9
Abstract:
Background: Avida is a computer program that performs evolution experiments with digital organisms. Previous work has used the program to study the evolutionary origin of complex features, namely logic operations, but has consistently used extremely large mutational fitness effects. The present study uses Avida to better understand the role of low-impact mutations in evolution.
Results:
When mutational fitness effects were approximately 0.075 or less, no new logic operations evolved, and those that had previously evolved were lost. When fitness effects were approximately 0.2, only half of the operations evolved, reflecting a threshold for selection breakdown. In contrast, when Avida’s default fitness effects were used, all operations routinely evolved to high frequencies and fitness increased by an average of 20 million in only 10,000 generations.
Conclusions:
Avidian organisms evolve new logic operations only when mutations producing them are assigned high-impact fitness effects. Furthermore, purifying selection cannot protect operations with low-impact benefits from mutational deterioration. These results suggest that selection breaks down for low-impact mutations below a certain fitness effect, the selection threshold. Experiments using biologically relevant parameter settings show the tendency for increasing genetic load to lead to loss of biological functionality. An understanding of such genetic deterioration is relevant to human disease, and may be applicable to the control of pathogens by use of lethal mutagenesis.
LoL! As predicted Richie cannot support its spewage and doubles-down. The meltdown of epic proportions.
I will have to check into the possibility of suing you for slander, cupcake
Is that before or after you sue your school district for teaching evolution like you claimed you were going to do?
Internet Tough Guy FrankenJoe runs from the OP questions again. What a coward.
Is Patrick spreading nonsense about Avida again? I guess he tired of spreading nonsense about ev.
Patrick,
Wes Elsberry, febble and myself were discussing AVIDA over on after the bar closes- Wes said AVIDA is NOT a genetic algorithm. Go figure- it’s in the thread about me
PRATT #21
Wait just a minute! You mean there are simpler functions built in by design that “just happened” to provide foundations to build more complex functions by design, just like evolution?
What more evidence do we need that evolution is designed?
Awesome. Have the lawyer go to 550 Main St in Keene, NH and ask for Joe G.
Well, Mung, if you’d care to demonstrate some competence in the area of GAs in general, Avida and ev in particular, or just about anything, really, I’d be happy to read what you have to write.
By the way, do you ever realize what you’re doing when you defend people like Frankie and Sal? Do you have to take a lot of showers?
LoL! Mung isn’t defending anything- he is refuting you. Which is easy.
Ahem, already foretold:
As our detractors have demonstrated they are OK with their dogma. They even think it is the foundation of science
Team Joe and Mung!
Patrick,
Look at the pdf for AVIDA- http://www.cse.msu.edu/~ofria/pubs/2009AvidaIntro.pdf:
It goes on to explain that AVIDA is not a GA. But the point is the paper seems to support my claim about genetic algorithms.
Strange, that
And therefore what? Frankie is right about something? The thing you don’t get is that that is totally unimportant. But it matters to you I suppose. And your horizon is low.
https://www.mathworks.com/discovery/genetic-algorithm.html
wikipedia says- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm
Is metaheuristic too big of a word for you, Patrick?
From the genetic algorithm warehouse we have- http://geneticalgorithms.ai-depot.com/Tutorial/Overview.html
Perhaps you can find a reference that supports your claim and refutes mine. I can’t
It would seem that someone has to define what problem is being solved, what a potential solution looks like, what makes one potential solution more promising than another, and what qualifies as a good enough solution.
Evolution by design.
You might want to first learn the difference between slander and libel. Maybe Barry can help you.
Acartia is a genus of marine calanoid copepods. They are epipelagic, estuarine, zooplanktonic found throughout the oceans of the world, primarily in temperate regions.
It’s only fitting- we have Patrick as Patrick Star, Acartia as plankton, Richie as Sponge Bob, adapa as a sea jelly, Alan Fox as Mr Krabs, OMagain as Squidward Tentacles, with dazz as Gary 😎
Rather than quote mining from around the web, Frankie, I suggest you read Richard B. Hoppe’s response to Ewert about Avida. It addresses all of your nonsensical claims.
Beyond that, I see no benefit in responding to you on any topic. You have not demonstrated any ability to learn nor any desire to do so. Rant on.
It couldn’t possibly.
More like “design” by evolution.
LoL! What quote-mines, Patrick? I challenge you to support your claim.
I never said anything about Ewert. Does RBH contradict AVIDA’s creators and demonstrate that it is a GA?
Look, Patrick, you used AVIDA as an example of a genetic algorithm and it isn’t a genetic algorithm. It looks like you don’t have the ability to learn nor a desire to do so.
Patrick,
The following take-down of AVIDA is in peer-review:
The effects of low-impact mutations in digital organisms
Chase W. Nelson and John C. Sanford
Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 2011, 8:9 | doi:10.1186/1742-4682-8-9
RBH didn’t address it.
Of course not. Every time you do you get your ass handed to you. There isn’t any benefit to that- well except that perhaps you should strengthen your arguments and get a better understanding of what you are trying to say.
LoL! And yet I knew that AVIDA was not a GA and you didn’t. And when corrected you threw a hissy fit. That means you have just proven that you, Patrick, have not demonstrated any ability to learn nor any desire to do so.
Nice own goal
Google is a wonderful thing. You should try googling libel and slander.
FrankenJoe seems to have chickened out and is now avoiding all discussion of his OP turd bomb.
No surprises. The next time FrankenJoe honestly answers questions about his IDiot claims will be the first.
I don’t know if anyone else has looked back at the history of Joe’s OP. Ogrethe5th provides some links which support the contention that Joe’s OP is ripped off some earlier work of his* going back at least to 2006. I suggest anyone still wishing to try discussing Joe’s OP with him might profit from glancing in the comment sections of some earlier manifestations.
ETA *I’m not going there! 🙂
When is the debate due to start Joe?
Wow, talk about desperation. No one has tried to discuss the OP here. It’s as if you are afraid of something.
Everybody knows you don’t discuss things. You repeat PRATTs, insult and then claim victory.
Even the people who think of you as a chew-toy are bored of you.
LoL! The first link is Orgre choking on the fact that ID is not anti-evolution. The second is Ogre’s failed attempt at showing ID is anti-evolution. The third is a link to my showing that IDists agree with me that ID is not anti-evolution. And the 4th link is to my blog discussing evolution.
And Alan, I cannot rip-off my own work- talk about desperation. And not one link pertains to the topic at hand
Most people would try to avoid Mung.
They know their position is worse than religion. It’s worse than irrational.
Alan Fox accuses me of being an evolution skeptic but can’t explain himself, nor does he retract his comment.
Perhaps Alan is trying to make you look good by way of comparison.
Lulz
I don’t need Alan’s help in that regard 😎
cue maniacal laugh
BWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I have moved a post to guano. The rules, the rules.
You’ve said this before but I don’t make such an accusation. I mentioned you in a list of members that might want to disagree with remarks I made in a blog post. You tell me what you think on a particular issue and that’s fine. Do I take it that you are not skeptical about biological evolution, then? Your comments here tend to be ambiguous, gnomic and laconic, so it’s hard to know whether you have an opinion.