In a recent thread here at TSZ the question was raised as to whether naturalism is comfortable with highly typical events. My answer to that question was quite so. Exhibit: the appendix.
Although it is widely viewed as a vestigial organ with little known function, recent research suggests that the appendix may serve an important purpose. In particular, it may serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria. Several other mammal species also have an appendix, and studying how it evolved and functions in these species may shed light on this mysterious organ in humans.
But wait. There’s more…
Heather F. Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, is currently studying the evolution of the appendix across mammals. Dr. Smith’s international research team gathered data on the presence or absence of the appendix and other gastrointestinal and environmental traits for 533 mammal species. They mapped the data onto a phylogeny (genetic tree) to track how the appendix has evolved through mammalian evolution, and to try to determine why some species have an appendix while others don’t.
They discovered that the appendix has evolved independently in several mammal lineages, over 30 separate times, and almost never disappears from a lineage once it has appeared.
Evolved independently over 30 separate times! Now that’s right up there in miracle territory if you ask me. I mean, what are the odds!?
For those who have access to this paper, do they really explain how the appendix evolved 30 or more times?
Of course, I’d also love to hear from all the fans of the miraculous powers of evolution just how they think it came to pass that the appendix evolved 30 independent times.
Source:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109162333.htm
Look, if you can’t say how do blind and mindless processes account for regulatory networks, then just admit it. Otherwise everything we know about the process says it requires knowing what, when and how/ how much to regulate.
Oh wow, you just told me! You do realize that ID is not anti-evolution, right? And the debate is whether or not the source of the variation is accidental/ errors/ mistakes vs some sort of design like “built-in responses to environmental cues”/ Dr Spetner’s non-random evolutionary hypothesis.
Sure we say “It looks designed” and then we check it out. And when we do we notice that you and yours have absolutely nothing to explain it.
So we have the fact it looks designed and nothing else can explain it (yet). And you have nothing but your bluff, bluster and a total lack of understanding what you are trying to argue against.
That’s why you’re an ID-Creationist.
Nothing except the last 150+ years of positive evidence supporting evolutionary theory. But that’s OK FrankenJoe, no one here expects you to know any of this biological science stuff.
How did your Magic Designer know what, when and how/ how much to regulate?
What mechanism did your Magic Designer use to physically manipulate matter to manufacture the “design”? When was the “design” done?
There is a long piece of moss hanging from a tree limb in my back yard. It must be designed because every time the wind blows it knows exactly when and how much to point in the direction the wind is moving. Right FrankenJoe?
Thank you for fulfilling my prediction, adapa:
And you have nothing but your bluff, bluster and a total lack of understanding what you are trying to argue against.
150 years of blah, blah, blah. Not quite science. Still can’t explain the evolution of vision systems by means of natural selection, drift or any other materialistic process. Heck meiosis is beyond explanation for blind watchmaker evolution.
150 years and no one uses it- blind watchmaker evolution- for anything. And yes, blind watchmaker evolution is the correct label:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/natural-selection-and-evolution-material-blind-mindless-and-purposeless/
Too bad it isn’t a scientific position
As opposed to your theory which says every time the wind blows a new thinking being is accidentally created.
yea, but you see, it wasn’t always that way. Before some networks had no clue what to do, but those networks got weeded out by natural selection. Only the networks that knew what they needed to do exactly correctly survived.
Its just that simple really.
Seems amazing sure, but if you had an infinite number of universes, not really surprising actually.
Natural selection is testable, and has been tested countless times.
And here you are whining about skepticism and lack of detail, LMFAO. Can’t you see what’s happening here? We have some attempts to explain the mammalian appendices using real world data, they could be vestigial or the result of convergent evolution, involving different selective pressures or lack thereof. Do you see anybody claiming to KNOW the answer? Can you identify who is actually looking for answers and enough details to find proper explanations? Hint: not IDiots.
All you have is the same old retarded projection game, but there’s a huge difference between admitting that you don’t have enough data to draw a conclusion while you try hard to collect it, vs declaring that you’re not interested in it at all as IDiots do.
And stop picking bits and pieces of the posts you’re replying to while ignoring most of the relevant answers just because you don’t have an argument for those. It makes you look bad. It’s not the first time and I suspect it won’t be the last
Frankie,
So you want me to argue with your deceased glove puppet Mayr? Mayr who accepted evolution – NS, common descent and all? Mayr who you disagree with profoundly? This tactic is the go-to strategy for the tongue-tied Creationist. “I can’t pursue an argument in my own words, here’s someone I think [mistakenly] agrees with me”.
Copy-paste-click. There, evolutionist! What a fucking yawn.
Frankie,
Creationist, ‘checking it out’ … “Yep, … yep, it definitely looks designed”. 🙂
But who actually says we don’t need any details? Didn’t you yourself link a paper in the OP where researchers actively tried to get at the details?
It’s just projection. Mung needs no details for his position, and assumes everyone else is the same.
phoodoo,
Yeah! Go phoodoo! ‘Cos if evolutionism were true, everything would have an appendix. Because selective advantage, like the wind, must be always constant and from the same direction. Explain the east wind, evolutionists! How come it’s sometimes calm?” Huh? Huh?
Meantime, God looked at the appendix, and saw that it was good. “Think I’ll stuff a few elsewhere. But not everywhere, ‘cos not everyone needs one”. He said, to no-one in particular.
Allan Miller,
Remember when evolutionists used to claim that appendixes were vestiges?
Oh, the story you guys can spin.
phoodoo,
You think data should not be allowed to influence opinion, then?
Nonetheless, it is not a given that all the appendixes in the study are currently functional. Several species are polymorphic for the appendix.
I think he does think that, yes. After all their opinion is based on an unchanging book from thousands of years ago.
LOL! Poor old FrankenJoe. Stuck endlessly repeating his handful of IDiot talking points. “Your side has no evidence!!” “There is no theory of evolution!!” “ID isn’t anti-evolution!!” “Design is a mechanism!!” “Designed to evolve, evolve by design!!”
11 years since Kitzmiller all the IDiots have come up with is more empty slogans. Great for impressing the mouth-breathing Fundies, a waste of oxygen to everyone else.
And evos just say “it evolved”, without even knowing if it could. Over 150 years of research and you aren’t any closer to demonstrating natural selection can produce vision systems than Darwin was.
No, Allan, you wouldn’t stand a chance against a dead person. Heck you can’t even grasp the fact the genetic code is a real code. It’s just a waste of time debating with you. However I will continue to point out your bald assertions and lack of a testable methodology to support your claims.
Look Allan, I used Mayr for the reason provided. That you have an innate inability to read my posts reflects poorly upon you, not me
And your position cannot account for any of those species. So what is your point?
Alan Fox “I see nothing! Nothing!”
Allan Miller,
You missed this, Allan:
Common design is not it cuz you say so? Really? So what do you mean by “Common Descent”? And I already said Common Design doesn’t explain all of the similarities.
I would think that given recombination that over the illions of form transforming generations genetic signals should be scrambled- why would we see such similarity given CHANGE is what made all of the difference?
Define your terms, Allan. I have asked you several times and you have refused to do so. And then face reality- you the heavy endorser of recombination doesn’t seem to grasp the implications of the process.
Yes, 11 years since Ktzmiller and evos don’t understand that the evo experts had to lie, misrepresent and bluff their way through the trial. Reality wasn’t impressed and IC still remains an unsolved problem for blind watchmaker evolution.
Well, to be completely honest, I don’t know if the appendix looks designed or not.
Just wondering how you separate fact from fiction. Was it ever a fact that the human appendix is a vestigial organ?
But it must have evolved. 40 times! I’m just trying to understand the reasoning.
It’s there, therefore it evolved. It’s there, therefore it must be functional, therefore it evolved. Therefore junk DNA must be functional. Where is the logic?
Where is the skepticism?
Natural selection explains how, if some organisms leave more offspring than others, and those organisms exhibit some heritable trait that the other organisms in the population lack, the frequency of that trait will increase in the population.
That’s what natural selection explains. You can test that all you like.
Because it doesn’t explain where those traits come from, and it doesn’t explain why those traits contribute to increased number of offspring. For that you need yet more theories.
Mung,
It only took you your next response to do it again, pathetic
Or at least hypotheses:
In science, a statement of a possible explanation for some natural phenomenon. A hypothesis is tested by drawing conclusions from it; if observation and experimentation show a conclusion to be false, the hypothesis must be false
How might one test whether it was designed 40 times?
dazz:
Bluff called- Please tell us how to test the claim that natural selection produced vision systems-or at least tell us what it has been tested doing.
There was only one sentence in your post worth responding to.
Why would it need to be designed more than once?
And yet you lost.
God’s logic. Or his fancy. Or his mistake.
Who are we to question the design motives of the almighty?
No, OMagain, neither myself nor ID was affected by the decision. IC structures remained as unexplainable via blind and mindless processes the day after the trial as they were before the trial started.
The only thing that lost was the truth
You can’t. The best you can do is show a designer wasn’t required. But you can’t even do that
Designer working by the piece
Can you show a designer was required?
Already have
PRATT!
Link please
Prove it or retract it.
Look, Alan I already know that your position cannot explain it. Add to that the fact it has a specification. That is the recipe for the design inference- eliminate chance and necessity and find a specification. Biological function is a specification.
We already know that your position cannot explain it. Add to that the fact it has a specification. That is the recipe for the design inference- eliminate chance and necessity and find a specification. Biological function is a specification.
Perhaps but if lack of mechanism disqualifies evolution your lack of mechanism of how the design was implemented would disqualify your position as well. Well trod ground.However you said you have shown that a intelligent designer is required not just a possible explanation.
I assume specification requires intelligence, therefore intelligent designer. Care to elaborate the logic?
Wrong- with ID the design detection comes first and besides design is a mechanism
Why do you have to assume? Specification only implies intelligence when chance and necessity have been ruled out.
Mung,
It was Darwin’s opinion that it was. I don’t have a strong opinion either way. Do you? What’s it based on?
If, as seems to be the case from the data, appendixes are both gained and lost, and in some species polymorphic, then in some species somewhere, it is probable*** that it went through, or is in, the stage of being vestigial. I wouldn’t rule that out from being the case for ours.
I dunno. First I heard of this was last Friday. Now I’m supposed to give you all the answers. Instant expertise on everything is kind of a Creationist thing.
*** No, I haven’t crunched the numbers …
Mung,
What’s to be skeptical of? On the scale of things, changing the invagination of the gut seems pretty trivial. The fact that some species are polymorphic suggests that this is not under the control of a massive number of genes. If a benefit arises from having an increased invagination, then it seems reasonable to suppose that this benefit would drive evolution. More than once. 40 times? Yeah, why not? If organisms have them because they need them, on Design, the exact same need can drive their evolution by selection, surely? Assuming there is a pathway, which is no worse an assumption than Bloke In Sky With DNA Manipulation Powers.
Frankie,
Mayr would have been be perfectly capable of grasping that increasing the frequency of one allele, by any means, inevitably decreases the frequency of the remainder. And vice versa. You, it seems, are not. That you think Mayr supports your contention shows a certain lack of grasp of the material.