?
250 thoughts on “What was the most significant scientific development in Intelligent Design in 2018?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Allan Miller,
George Montañez and his attempt to unify various FIASCOs deserves an OP of its own.
Allan Miller,
Amazing that none of the evolution preachers have come here to brag about their accomplishments in 2018.
Given that evolution is taught at public universities it must consist of more then mere preaching for that to be allowable in America, right? So you are demonstrably wrong there.
And anyway this thread is about IDists and their accomplishments in 2018. And so far all you have done is attempt to demonstrate yet again your personal misunderstandings of what is not on topic on this thread, evolution.
I don’t know if there’s a gene for every behavior, you tell me – did the designer make it so? How did the designer code the behaviour for dog pissing? When did it do it?
According to who, you? Your opinion counts for much less then you think it does.
And anyway, if ID is tying, why are you an IDist? The logical thing to do is wait and see which one pulls ahead, right?
You are hardly following the evidence where it leads by deciding what the truth is when the two options are, in your own words, in a dead heat.
You are suffering from what you accuse others of, allowing your preexisting ideology to drive your worldview. Despite there being no compelling evidence for ID, according to you, over evolution, you are an IDist.
So don’t talk about others following the evidence where it leads. Don’t talk about groups of atheists only inviting atheists to conferences where they all agree on the conclusions they will draw in advance. In fact that’s demonstrable projection.
That’s you that is.
Also, ever considered the idea that they can read for comprehension and would not offer such comments, as you have done, regarding evolution given that that is not what this thread is about? It’s the opposite in many ways of what this thread is about.
I mean, if you find that amazing then I wonder about how you were raised. But then you walk in and smear shit everywhere and I stop wondering, and start knowing.
Personally, my favorite, most significant scientific development in Intelligent Design in 2018 was the revelation that scientists opposed to ID, like Professor Nathan Lents, can detect design… as long as they believe the design is bad or has errors, just like the supposed bad design of the human eye…
Unfortunately, when the “bad design” turns out to be an optimal performance design, just like in case of the human eye, when it was proven that the human eye can detect a single photon, the same scientists who were able to detect the supposed bad design, now have a problem with detecting the same design as designed just because there are design flaws in it…
This very fact tells me that scientists have no problem detecting design as long as that design can’t be connected with the Designer….
How about ANY scientific development, EVER.
What’s that in evolutionary terms? Speculations without ever even planning to experimentally testing them?
Yeah. Astonishing.
OMagain,
Its taught in universities, billions more dollars are spent on it, thousands more more people trying unlock its secret, and STILL you got nothing? Can’t even tell us how dogs learn to pee?
How much more money you need?
The supernaturals worldview already has all the evidence in front of you that you need. Some people just refuse to look- because one day they promise they are going to find some answer.
I gather that you have tattooed Romans 1:20 on your forearm, and printed verses from 1 Corinthians 13 on your toilet paper.
Psst….hey phoodoo…Ghostbusters wasn’t a documentary.
And supernaturalism can? Okay, then how do they learn to pee? God did it? How much money will you need to find out?
It’s suddenly become the most vital question of the modern age. And if it’s solved, there are a few million … uh … ‘kinds’ with a few thousand traits each to go at, in the ages-old
geneticsevolution-can’t-explain-this game.I have built a Design Detector. It’s a 6 sided cube with the word ‘Design’ scrawled on 5 faces, and ‘sometimes it’s OK to say we don’t know’ on the 6th. I set it to work on the dog question. It said ‘Design’, though my results await – ahem – peer review.
They’re TNTC.
Yes, this needs to be looked at. It strikes me that the more central issue is not whether various definitions of CSI can be reconciled, as Montañez has argued he has done, but a later step. Given any one of his forms of CSI, how can you show that natural selection and other ordinary evolutionary processes cannot put CSI into the genomes of a population of organisms.
This has to be shown for forms of CSI where the specification is some component of fitness, or fitness itself. It also has to be shown for ASC and in addition shown for those variants of CSI that conservation of ASC implies conservation of adaptedness. Showing that organisms cannot become substantially better-adapted by evolutionary processes seems to be the basic goal of all assertions about CSI made by advocates of Design.
I have been meaning, gradually, to address these issues with posts here and/or posts at Panda’s Thumb. The basic issue would not be the details of George Montañez’s reconciliation of definitions of CSI, but what they all imply about ability of the population to become substantially better-adapted.
Anyone actually following ID rather than just trolling would know that.
Not that you have actually read it, mind you.
If by innate you mean inherited, well, sure.
Argument from Ignorance.
I mean behaviour patterns that could not have been learned. Spider hatchlings are a neat example.
It’s progress.
And what if we discover the purpose of every gene, and dogs knowing how to mark their territory, or snakes knowing how to constrict something isn’t found in any gene? What do we conclude then?
Indeed. We don’t know how innate behaviour is stored. My argument is if we look at what progeny physically inherit from parents, we might find out something. Hormones and pheromones influence behaviour and I won’t be surprised if they play a major role.
phoodoo,
Look elsewhere.
That it isn’t genetically determined. I mean you basically described the conclusion. If we discover it isn’t genetic, then that is our conclusion: It isn’t genetic.
We do for some things. There are fruit flies that have mating dances stored in particular genes expressed only in particular neuronal circuits. It has been shown that particular mutations in those genes, and expression of those genes in those particular neurons, is responsible for making male flies perform mating dances that attract females.
Rumraket,
Cool. Makes sense to keep looking at genes then.
That would be an interesting case of “evolution” in the original sense of the word. An unrolling. Kind of like the expression of a cellular automaton.
Now, for the IDist, explain how that code is designed.
No problem for an omniscient being, but then, the Paley designer is assumed to be like a watchmaker, and watchmakers would have trouble with this kind of design.
Ironically, there’s quite a lot of research studying the genes involved in various dog behaviors such as “pointing” in hunting dogs, “water rescue” in Newfies and “flank sucking” (I kid you not) in Dobermans. But until our dear friend is able to wrap his brain around pleiotropy there’s little point in going there.
Meanwhile, I have to repeat myself:
What if a situation that has not actually occurred occurs? We include it in our explanatory framework. It’s data. But only when it occurs.
For now, it seems absurd to argue that no behaviour is genetically transmitted. Not mating, locomotion, swallowing, escaping danger, panting, breaking out of an egg, hibernating, stimulating the parent for food … nothing. Argument from ignorance, indeed.
It is obvious, a crappy design which requires constant attention by the operator to get dogs to pee on fire hydrants.
DNA_Jock,
There’s also a whole bunch of work on heritability of human traits, esp. through twin studies. But it’s not DNA, of course, but something mysterious, at its root. Don’t care what it is, as long as it’s not DNA!
Allan Miller,
Allan,
Human traits are heritable thanks to the vital essence that is passed down from parents to child. Yeeesh!
Studying the specific genes involved in dog behaviors is already politically fraught: when Elaine Ostrander first presented her proposal for the dog behavior genome project, she was attacked from both sides: people who wanted her to look at aggression (rather than pointing and water rescue) on the one hand, and on the other hand people claiming that her research could lead to genetic discrimination against people with ‘bad behavior’ genes.
She oh-so-patiently explained that THAT was why she had chosen specifically DOG behaviors…
So, looking for specific genes associated with specific human behaviors (aggression, criminality, addiction etc.) is something of an ethical minefield.
Well, once he gives signs of understanding pleiotropy, someone will challenge him to learn about the genetic regulatory network. It’s a slippery slope, so he’d better stick to the Plateau of Incredulity.
After Darwinists explain how the code evolved from a simpler code…
All we need is the scientific evidence how the code evolved from say.. doublet stage and what organisms still use it?
Darwinists do believe that the code evolved, don’t they? Because if a code appeared out of the blue and optimal, some could think it was designed…
Let’s listen to excuses now…🤣
Maybe you should help your Darwin buddies to come up with some math how the genetic code evolved? You know, how evolution searched for the optimal code we see now?
It just hit me! You can’t, because you’ve already committed yourself to Evolution is not search.
Bummer! It was such a good idea… 🤣
So a accidental random mutation once caused a fruit fly to start a mating dance. And instead of other flies thinking, “What the hell is going on with Super over there, has he lost his marbles, shaking around like that”, what happened was the female flies thought that guy is phly! And thus he had a mating advantage, and produced other disco flies. It was also fortunate that the epigene can control it, so that it only affects some neurons, and likewise that when they got the random mutation, they knew when and where to use it, so they didn’t start attempting their fly move, when escaping a horsetail.
THIS is the fucking retarded theory that your side expects science students to swallow (since they also got that fortunate accident) without thinking.
If that’s not laughable….you never got a sense of humor mutation.
Why, do you claim biologists understand pleitropy? What kind of trial and error system arouse that could properly arrange which genes shares which traits? Its just haphazard? And it caused a selection advantage that worked?
Even you don’t believe this ridiculous theory. Its not like you have sucker tattooed in devil fonts across your buttocks or anything, right?
J-Mac,
Again? That’s, like, the 10th time this week.
phoodoo,
What is it then? If not genetic, what?
As I explained (with breathtaking clarity!) the ‘optimal’ code (not quite, but not quite random either) arose by gradual filling-in of STOP codons and subdivisions of less specific 4-fold and 2-fold degenerate sites, biased towards chemically conservative substitutions which inevitably give a code with chemically similar neighbourhoods, giving some protection from site-specific misread.
DNA_Jock,
We have 2 dogs from working breeds – Labrador and Border Collie. Their distinct behaviours are quite striking – never worked, but their movements and habits in play are so characteristic of their respective working cousins. The Lab quarters the ground sniffing madly; the Collie drops low and ‘herds’ in distinctive fashion. Characteristics breeders have favoured over hundreds of years when choosing who gets to have offspring. But not, in any way, genetically based … !
I am not even suggesting its not genetic based.
What I am saying is it is not the BS random mutation confers some minute advantage over 100s of thousands of years, and then slowly everyone has it nonsense theory.
So many of your new scientific discoveries about epigenetics and multiple use of genes, and genes that only affect somethings sometimes, when its opportune…they make no sense from the silly random, useful quackery.
😀
Perhaps it really did start with a single mutation, but to really know a lot more work would have to be done on the genes responsible for effectuating this behavior in flies.
I think their behavior is more instinctive than it involves deliberate reasoning.
The epigene controls it? I think you need some basic gene expression lessons phoodoo.
What does that even mean? Mutations happen, they have the effects they do. Nobody needs to “know where to use them”.
If you get a mutation that changes how a particular protein interacts with light, such that you now have blue instead of brown eyes, do you think this requires some sort of rational understanding on your part to take effect? Did you “learn” to “control” when to have your eye color? What you’re saying is completely nonsensical.
Maybe some of them did. We don’t see them around though, why?
I agree your personal understanding of genetics is a retarded theory. I recommend actual genetics.
Once again I have to agree, your personal view of genetics and evolution is both retarded and laughable.
Of course, I went to school and got an actual education in real molecular and cell biology and actively employ this knowledge in medical and biological research. And it’s really weird how these principles I was taught in school really works in the lab using living cells.
Because there is evidence that they do?
That question is formulated in such a way it doesn’t make sense. Are you asking how genes come to have pleiotropic effects through evolution?
Well since you understand neither basic genetics or even the principle of natural selection, should we assume that you have “gimp” tatooed in crayon-font on your forehead?
The mating dance never worked for me.
When we know, then we’ll know. Until then, we don’t know.
Probably a good thing, fruit flies are notoriously fickle.