Denyse O’Leary quotes Steve Meyer’s question:
Why, he [Agassiz] asked, does the fossil record always happen to be incomplete at the nodes connecting major branches of Darwin’s tree of life, but rarely—in the parlance of modern paleontology—at the “terminal branches” representing the major already known groups of organisms?…
Was there any easy answer to Agassiz’s argument? If so, beyond his stated willingness to wait for future fossil discoveries, Darwin didn’t offer one.
and responds:
And no one else has either.
Oh, yes, they have, Denyse. That’s what what punk eek was. But it also falls readily out of any simulation – you see rapid diversification into a new niche at a node, and thus few exemplars, followed by an increasingly gradual approach to a static optimum, and thus lots of exemplars. But I present an even more graphic response: when you chop down a tree, and saw it up into logs for your fire, what proportion of your logs include a node?
Indeed; let’s see.
Bluff and bluster is NOT working for you. There people here who actually know some things you don’t.
Here is a little exercise for you that you should have learned to do using only high school science and mathematics. I suspect it is way over your head.
Scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram-sized masses separated by distances on the order of a meter. Calculate the energies of interaction among such masses in units of joules and also in units of megatons of TNT. Add to this the fact that protons, electrons, and molecules obey the rules of quantum mechanics.
In the light of the answers you obtained above, justify the ID/creationist’s use of Hoyle’s “tornado-in-a-junkyard” argument against the probability of assembly of the complex molecules of life. Justify why junkyard parts and other inert objects – such as Scrabble letters, dice, and coins – can be used by ID/creationists as stand-ins for the behaviors of atoms and molecules.
Simple stuff; but I suspect you have no clue how to do it and will avoid like the plague demonstrating any basic knowledge of science at even the high school level because of the simple fact that you have no such basic knowledge.
You overuse the term “ad hominem” as a persecution ploy.
Pointing out profound ignorance delivered with an air of pretentious erudition is not an ad hominem. It’s a warning that you are making a complete fool of yourself. Take it as a warning and stop doubling down on your “experience” in debating “Darwinists.” You have no clue what you are talking about.
No, it was surprising to them that that much of extant biochemistry could be reduced through common descent to such a small set of ancestral protein folds. As in – evolution was even better than they had dared to anticipate.
Let me summarize some of the things that make PaV look like a rookie.
First the Darwin quote, which Pav thinks is obviously wrong, but which is demonstrably correct. Was there no evolution before the Silurian?
Second, the post hoc fallacy, in which he argues that because some organisms survived a series of mass extinctions, they were obviously designed to survive those events.
Third, the complete ignorance of pre-Christian science. What does he think the word “renaissance” means? Why did a thousand years elapse from the Roman adoption of Christianity until the flowering of empiricism?
Whale evolution didn’t happen? Really?
Modern protein coding genes have been around since the beginning of life. None of them evolved. Really?
But the “genes” in the eumetazoan are fully-formed “eukaryotic” genes, one that is used in the formation of digits, so arguing about “steps” isn’t going to cut it. I don’t believe in Mt. Improbability, you know.
Let’s see: without cytochrome C, cells CANNOT DUPLICATE; but we know that cytochrome C came about by “reshuffling” what was there before. Can you please explain this utter lack of logic?
I understand now. Since NS knew that one day a protein would be needed for animal limb formation, it decided that it would include it in the “common ancestor” of those animals, placing it in organism that had no appendages.
Sarcasm aside, the scenario you portray is one in which so-called “evolution” has not added anything, but simply used something in a different way. However, by extension, if this were to be universalized, then there would be no need for new genes, and there would be all that any organism needed to become anything else it would like to become. The logical question, then, is why didn’t all of this happen sooner?
Both.
There are still plenty of adaptationists around who think the entire genome is functional. They still come up with endless ad-hoc rationalizations and think they’re vindicated when another tenth of a thousandth of a percent of the genome is found to be functional.
Same goes for ID proponents of course.
PaV,
It’s not a ‘prediction.’ Obviously it is a “retrodiction.’
And it’s a prediction, because most life forms that exist today will become extinct in the future. Now that we can sequence the whole genome, we will be able to record the non-front loaded species and start to catalog the genes that are ‘failures’, working backwards to determine what must be pre-loaded. In turn we can use that information to predict which species will survive. That is, if your prediction is accurate.
See, that right there is your problem. Explain how ID explains those genes. You can’t even begin to speculate on the possibility of an answer for that.
In which case he was correct, the Cambriam precedes the Silurian. Didn’t you read Meyers new book? He talks a lot about all this diversity existing already in the early to middle Cambriam.
No, what I’m telling you is that when we’re talking about constructing hypotheses for the origin of life, it would seem pertinent for you as someone who I expect wants to offer constructive criticism(?), to have arguments against those hypotheses, instead of arguments against strawmen.
They didn’t. They both evolved from a shared common ancestor.
I just looked at his CV. You’re right, he’s a mathematician and a mechanical engineer, and he’s done work related to heat transfer, which, of course, involves thermodynamics. But it doesn’t look like he’s every taught thermodynamics. Thank you for pointing that out.
Yet, I don’t think we get anywhere by belittling people’s credentials. If you’re smart enough to get a Ph.D., then you should be taken seriously enough, even if wrong at times.
Richardthughes,
Are you saying the University system arose in Muslim countries? Is that your point?
Hoyle’s calculation has no relevance to the evolutionary process which includes ancestral stages and natural selection.
He’s simply calculating the odds of spontaneous emergence by chance. No process, no selection, just random assembly from dilution to fully formed protein.
This is not part of any suggested scenario for the origin of the first proteins, and it definitely isn’t how evolution works, so Hoyle’s calculation is irrelevant against why evolution can’t happen or why some proposed scenario for the origin of life couldn’t take place.
Of course scientists don’t believe that “proteins arose at random,” because that would be sheer foolishness on their part. Yet, without any known mechanism by which to explain the rise of such complex functions, they claim that some natural,. but as yet unknown, process must be responsible. Maybe it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster that brought it about. You see, it is a belief on the part of scientists that just dangles there, and then when we find living organisms that can do things that it would take an advanced computer system for us to mimic, this is attributed to the same unknown natural process. My credulity just can’t be stretched that far, I’m afraid.
When you say cells cannot duplicate without cytochrome C, surely you must mean modern extant cells which are critically dependent on it?
Otherwise it would be an absolutist claim that no cell of any kind whatsover could duplicate without cytochrome C, which would require you to have any and all knowledge about all possible kinds of cells in all possible circumstances and environments.
The Szostak lab has done quite a lot of work demonstrating primitive fatty acid vesicle growth and division with no cytochrome C. These are models for protocells, these are what some scientists suggest the first forms of life might have looked like. We still don’t yet know whether that is true of course, but nevertheless, they grow and divide without cytochrome C.
How cytochrome C originated we simply don’t know. But I don’t know of anyone who believes it emerged randomly through chance alone in some single grand synthesis event.
No it isn’t. No wonder things take you 9 years. My point is your thinking is clearly fallacious “Science arose from the midst of a Christian belief system” and counter-examples are easily found.
Actually they’re just trying to find out. Is there anything wrong with that?
There are many things that have been worked out in the history of science and technology for which we simply didn’t have any credible answers, sometimes for centuries on end. Sometimes deep insights come through sheer luck by accidental observation of a rare phenomenon in an experiment, other times through long laborious work.
We’re at the “don’t know” stage. You can stick to your defeatism if it’s that important to you. Me, I just say “don’t know, let’s try to find out?”.
PaV,
Science predates Christianity (see Babylonian Astronomy)
Pav, let me make sure I understand you. Modern cells have certain minimal requirements, and we know that modern genes evolved from similar precursors. Therefore the precursors were poofed into existence.
Is that your argument?
PaV,
So that’s a yes, then. ‘Yes, they are all stoopid atheistic conspirators’. All of them. An astrophysicist makes an ill-informed calculation based on the length of modern proteins, and molecular biologists merely believe he is wrong, with no basis in their biological knowledge and investigation whatsoever. And you side with Hoyle because … ? Because you too are an eyes-wide-open, isn’t-it-obvious, experts-know-bugger-all kind of guy, I guess.
PaV, would you like to get a helper or two from UD?
No, I´m aware that darwinists postulate also the FUCA, and as Allan Miller ssaid for the LUCA should be a full functional cell with all the system I described. It would be interesting si any darwinist can explain how a FUCA evolved in a LUCA.
Argument from ignorance we do not know then evolution is true.
And then ToE has no problem with the observation that the LUCA already has almost all the protein folds needed for the future development af the life forms. By chance 276 superfamilies of foldings that have the potential to evolve in the thousand of enzymes of the life were present at the begining of life. Which are the chances to get that set of proteins fold toghether?
I’m going to challenge you with the same exercise I gave to PaV. I would like to find out if ID/creationists outside the US are just as ignorant of basic high school level science as those in the US.
Scale up the charge-to-mass ratios of protons and electrons to kilogram-sized masses separated by distances on the order of a meter. Calculate the energies of interaction among such masses in units of joules and also in units of megatons of TNT. Add to this the fact that protons, electrons, and molecules obey the rules of quantum mechanics.
In the light of the answers you obtained above, justify the ID/creationist’s use of Hoyle’s “tornado-in-a-junkyard” argument against the probability of assembly of the complex molecules of life. Justify why junkyard parts and other inert objects – such as Scrabble letters, dice, and coins – can be used by ID/creationists as stand-ins for the behaviors of atoms and molecules.
There is a lot of accumulated basic knowledge and experience with the chemistry of complex molecules, including the molecules of life. It is this knowledge that points to the natural origins of the molecules of life.
ID/creationists in the US are not aware of any of this knowledge; most have not learned anything from even high school level science. It would be of some interest to find out if this is universally true about ID/creationists outside the US as well.
See if you can show PaV how to do the above exercise and use it to justify ID/creationist arguments against the evolution of complex molecules.
PaV,
You appear to be arguing against something I have not said. You seemingly insisted, by bringing up the anemones, that sequence commonality between distant twigs on the tree of life indicates a problem for Darwinism (sic), because it implies front-loading. Yet sequence commonality is entirely consistent with a non-interventionist history, regardless of the pace of any change through that history. If the proteins perform a function in the anemone, and in digit-bearing metazoans, it does not have to be the same function, but it’s very unlikely to identifiably persist from the ancestor of both if it did not perform any function.
I love a bit of bluster! Cytochrome C does not represent the totality of proteins. LUCA evidently had it, as do all her descendants. It is essential for all cells in the region of the Tree-of-all-real-DNA-sequences occupied by her and her descendants, as are many other proteins, but we cannot be certain whether it was essential in every ancestor back to the OoL. This is not front-loading, however. Cytochrome C is not the totality of proteins in all living organisms – it is that which (AIUI) front-loaders are trying to persuade us was front-loaded. If all you are saying is that modern proteins had ancestors, and some are common to all extant life, you aren’t saying anything new.
Don’t be silly. It’s your framework that invites teleology, not mine. Proteins fulfilling a current function in an organism can be duplicated and retooled to perform another. Looking back, one could, with heavy sarcasm, note that the precursor was just what was needed, almost as if NS had put it there for just that purpose.
Whenever it happened, you would wonder why it didnt happen some other time! There is no imperative to change anything. The idea of the organism having the potential to become “anything else it would like to become” is a fantasy. A genome can only change the genes it has. It can’t go everywhere in genetic space from where it is; paths are limited by viability and selection. There is a limit to the amount of change a genome can tolerate at once. Change too much at once and the result is meltdown. And there is a mechanistic restraint. Prokaryotes can rapidly explore local space, but even after 2 billion years of that, nothing much different emerged, because there are limits on the prokaryotic lifestyle. But something happened to change the rate. My money is an each-way bet on eukaryogenesis and recombinant eukaryotic sex.
Please, you that are able of all that atomic calculations, enlight me. How did originate the molecules of life?
PaV, re Sewell:
I (and many others) took him seriously enough to examine his arguments in detail. What I found were misunderstandings of basic concepts, fallacious reasoning, and other egregious errors.
See this for details.
I guess I have the answer to my question.
So you are also completely ignorant of the properties of complex molecules.
And it is also true that you also cannot do high school level calculations that reveal something about the nature of atomic and molecular interactions.
That is an interesting piece of information. Thank you for sharing it.
Explain? Sure, but it would be little more than pure speculation. The simple answer is that we just don’t know.
Blas,
The same way anything evolves into anything else – descent with modification ***. There is nothing magic about a nodal ancestor. LUCA was one of many cells alive in her day. If every organism on earth could follow its ancestry back, we would all find ourselves coalescing upon fewer and fewer ancestors. Logically, we must pass through a point at which the total number of ancestors is down to 1. That’s LUCA. But this does not mean that there was only one organism alive at that time. It just means only one has left descendants. She (asexual, but it seems a permissible conceit) was one of teeming trillions which themselves would have coalesced upon a LUCA still further back.
*** But of course, you want the detail!
No, why should it? Evolution merely explains how already existing life changes and diversifies over time. It does not explain how the oldest inferred life came to exist in the first place. That’s what that scientific field that studies the origin of life does. We simply don’t know (yet?).
Irrelevant for the same reason Hoyle’s calculation is irrelevant. It neglects incemental process and contingencies in favor of grand assembly by chance.
Pathetic levels of detail.
Levels of detail not available concerning the designer.
“My theory is: Quibles with your theory”
Must be nice.
While it is within the human spirit to inquire and to know, thus, the inquiry into the origins of life, though noble, is something I would consider to be like the Big Bang– singular in nature, and representing something where natural laws break down–and, so, not amenable to human explanations.
We need to know a whole lot more about biological life before this becomes a worthwhile area wherein to expend lots of thought and energy. I’m perfectly content to let it be a ‘niche industry’ for the time being.
Here’s Behe’s suggestion:
http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Puff_of_Smoke
I will stop being snarky with PaV just as soon as he tells me how Darwin was wrong concerning life prior to the Silurian, or provides a list, in pathetic detail, of the actions taken by the designer, and the times and places.
Since whales didn’t evolve, I assume PaV has some specific ideas about how and when they were poofed into existence, and why their genome seems to be related to hippos.
Okay PaV, I can respect that this is your viewpoint. Have a nice day and merry christmas!
Well, keiths, you might look toward the end of the thread you linked to and you’ll find some posts there that I wrote.
Do you remember: “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust you shall return.” When we die, the 2LofT takes over and we fall apart. This would mean that while we’re alive, the 2LofT would have to be obviated. Our basal metabolism does this “work” for us. Hence, life is an overcoming of the destructive “work” done by the 2LofT. It’s quite simple, really.
But, of course, you don’t want simplicity; you want your ideas to be correct–independent of whether or not they are truly correct or not. Or, at least, this is the human tendency.
Non-sequitur alert.
All science so far!
Allan:
I think this is a kind of “bluster” on your part, while it was not on my part.
Here is your position, and the position of Darwinists: Cytochrome C coming about in a completely random fashion is untenable. However, LUCA had it. Yet, we know that certain biochemical processes might be responsible for this.
Now, the above statement contradicts itself twice. And, yet, this is the kind of “answer” I’m supposed to swallow. Sorry. Not a chance.
Your “answers” are just the “same-old, same-old” Darwinian “just-so” stories.
Here’s one: the neck of the giraffe is as long as it is because its ancestors stretched for the leaves left on the taller branches. And, over time, their necks grew long.
Oh, sorry. That’s Lamarck! Here’s Darwin’s: the giraffe ancestors who had the longer necks had a better chance at survival than those with shorter necks. So, through NS, over time the giraffe’s neck got longer.
Which of those two “stories” should I accept. Both of them are good ones.
Gould wrote a rather famous essay on the giraffe’s neck. You didn’t read it.
Now, to all those who have attacked my intelligence, my learning, my logic, my honesty, etc., isn’t it a shame that I quoted a somewhat long section from the Origin of Species in which Darwin puts his theory on the chopping block. I, in one or two sentences–can’t remember now–pointed out that there were three reasons–obvious reasons–why Darwin was wrong, and therefore why his theory doesn’t make it beyond the putative “chopping block.”
Someone asked what these three “obvious” mistakes were (petrushka), but did not venture very far into any one of them. I rather suspect the reason is that were one of you Darwinists ready to “SEE” the mistakes, that would be admission that you understand now why Darwin was wrong. So, instead, you wait for me to point them out, so that you can then say that I’m NOT . . . . . . intelligent, learned, logical, honest, etc.
One of you (Thorton) addressed one of the three ways in which Darwin was wrong, pointing out that I really know nothing. But, of course, he wasn’t even aware that for Darwin the “Silurian” was equivalent to the “Cambrian” and not to what we know as the “Silurian.” Wise sages we have here, while the IDist is . . . . well, you know the program: fill in the blanks.
So, in the end: No scientific, logical analysis of what Darwin wrote and what we have found out since. Instead: beat the IDist over the head, again and again.* Why he doesn’t even have the learning of a “middle-school”-er. This is sad. And it’s not science.
I now bow my cap to you, and bid you my “adieu.”
* You’ll find in Ann Coulter’s book, Demonic, that liberals attack as a “mob.” Interesting, twelve people come at me rather than let just one person engage in substantive debate.
For a layman’s understanding of the status of giraffe research, this is a good start.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/01/why-do-giraffes-have-long-necks
But PaV would rather wallow in ignorance.
I’ve ventured far enough to point out that Darwin was correct. You are incapable of pointing out why Darwin was wrong for the simple reason that there is no way to do it.
If you could, you would pounce on it, but you can’t.
Tell us about Darwin’s error, PaV.
Show us your geometric logic.
PaV’s fighting retreat gets a golf clap: 3/10.
UD please send better.
“beat the IDist over the head, again and again.” – PaV
A simple pat on the head will do. I did this (symbolically) to John G. West right in the Discovery Institute; he wasn’t pleased in front of his ‘Movement’ peers. IDism is not a complex ideology, but rather simplistic, and easily charted for its roots, e.g. Thaxton’s engineering analogy, cdesign proponentsists, Wedge Strategy, etc.
IDists have got a whole lot of growing up to do if they really are ready to push back effectively and deliberately against the RWCE ‘creationism’ in which most of them were raised.
“Tell us about Darwin’s error[s].” – petrushka
You have proven time and again that you won’t allow yourself to listen, petrushka, even when evidence stares you in the face. And recently you told me that you don’t really care. So why should you care to read the article linked below?
Preprint for a Douglas Allchin paper in American Biology Teacher, 2009 (same Journal that published Dobzhansky’s theistic evolution: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense…” paper, 1973) Celebrating Darwin’s Error’s.
Will petrushka (and a whole whack of shy [won’t publically call themselves that] ‘Darwinists’ here) at least admit that Darwin made errors?
Yes, but…