Horse and Donkey
Dwib
that are "nearly" different species but not quite.
Horses and Donkies can breed and produce offspring (Mules) but these
offspring are sterile.
It's like Horses and Donkies had a common ancestor XX thousand years ago
but, for some reason (some barrier?), proto-Horse and proto-Donkey stopped
breeding and their DNA started diverging. At present time, Horse and Donkey
can still breed but their offspring are sterile. Sometime in the future,
neo-Horse and neo-Donkey will have changed such that even offspring are
impossible and they can truly be called different species.
So, how my reasoning?
Dwib
Beautiful and Damned
the definition of this word is somewhat arbitrary (a human prejudice
that produces all sorts of unproductive debate).
Since they cannot produce fertile offspring, by most definitions, they
are separate species already.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
for more.
r norman
wrote:
Close, but no points. The barrier you suggest between horse and
donkey (proto or not) is simply "hybrid sterility".
Producing sterile offspring is quite sufficient to separate species.
There are even more indirect cases of "hybrid breakdown" where the
hybrids are fertile but the problem develops in later generations.
One might imagine that further behavioral and ecological and
morphological changes will develop in both the horse and the donkey
line so that they will not naturally even attempt to breed. Though
truthfully I don't know how much of mule production is natural mating
between horse and donkey and how much is artificially induced. That
is, do wild donkeys and wild horses typically mate under natural
conditions?
John Harshman
I'm sure that will happen. But they are already different species.
Complete genetic isolation is not necessary. If it were, we would
recognize only one species of duck instead of 150.
Bobby D. Bryant
That's pretty much what I've read. (I may have even read it here!)
AIUI, interfertility between species is probabilistic, with the
probability of course depending on how much the two species have
diverged.
--
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
Noone Inparticular
Others have answered your question with specific reference to hybrid
sterility. I'd like to point out that crosses between two species can
be fertile, but we can still be justified in calling the parents
members of different species.
It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
*can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
See the distinction?
Seanpit
maff
Bobby D. Bryant
> It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
> *can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
>
> See the distinction?
That still needs a bit of refinement. E.g., the tigers in the New
York Zoo don't breed with the tigers in the New Deli Zoo, but that
alone doesn't make them different species.
Would it be correct to say "It's because they *can* and *don't" ?
John Harshman
> You may be interested in the following discussion:
>
> http://www.detectingdesign.com/donkeyshorsesmules.html
>
I'm interested in some of it. For example, this sentence:
"Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
What led you to that conclusion?
Other than that, the very first paragraph contains one of your most
basic and persistent misunderstandings:
"Much is made of DNA or protein sequence analysis as a way of
determining evolutionary ancestry. Branching phylogenetic trees are
based on such sequence analysis and are used to suggest various
evolutionary relationships between different creatures on the "Tree of
Life." Even so called "pseudogenes" are often used to show supposed
evolutionary relationships. However, although sequence analysis is
interesting by itself and may in fact say a lot about common ancestry,
such analysis does not necessarily favor the theory of common descent in
many cases. Certain differences between the DNA sequences of various
creatures can easily be explained by the mindless naturalistic processes
of random mutation and natural selection while other differences cannot
be so easily explained."
Once again you confuse common descent (which is easily inferred) with
the mechanisms, whether natural or, conceivably, in part supernatural,
that caused changes along the way. You don't have to know everything
about the process to know its result. Again, if you have an explanation
other than common descent that fits the data remotely as well, let's see
it. And no, "common design" is not an explanation.
One other sentence strucks me. Perhaps it's a few years old?
" More information is needed that details the types of genetic
differences that exist between humans and chimps. "
Have you read this?:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html
explainer
Dwib wrote:
> I wonder if the Horse and the Donkey are an example of two types of animals
> that are "nearly" different species but not quite.
>
> Horses and Donkies can breed and produce offspring (Mules) but these
> offspring are sterile.
Actually a horse crossed with a donkey produces either a mule or a
hinney, depending on which sex of each participates:
donkey jack (male) X horse mare (female) => mule (jack or jennet)
horse stud (male) X donkey jennet (female) => hinney (jack or jennet)
It's called a hybrid. Darwin speaks to this in Origin of Species.
Look at:
http://www.imh.org/imh/bw/mule.html#term
One wonders, however, whether there would be an occurrance of a fertile
offspring?
faux....@gmail.com
There is a section in there about 1 in a million mules not being
sterile.
The last one I heard about was in Brazil but according to google there
has been at least one in China recently.
Gary Bohn
news:dllpna$68p$2...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu:
We are talking about a general population not individuals.
However, given time and a lack of gene flow between the population at
New Delhi and the population at New York, they may well diverge into
different species that would not interbreed even if given the
opportunity. This will not happen because zoos do what they can to
'share' genes with other zoos.
Species is all about gene flow.
--
Gary Bohn
Science rationally modifies a theory to fit evidence, creationism
emotionally modifies evidence to fit a specific interpretation of the
bible.
John Wilkins
> bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu (Bobby D. Bryant) wrote in
> news:dllpna$68p$2...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu:
>
>
>>On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, "Noone Inparticular" <unre...@hotmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
>>>*can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
>>>
>>>See the distinction?
>>
>>That still needs a bit of refinement. E.g., the tigers in the New
>>York Zoo don't breed with the tigers in the New Deli Zoo, but that
>>alone doesn't make them different species.
>>
>>Would it be correct to say "It's because they *can* and *don't" ?
>>
>
>
> We are talking about a general population not individuals.
>
> However, given time and a lack of gene flow between the population at
> New Delhi and the population at New York, they may well diverge into
> different species that would not interbreed even if given the
> opportunity. This will not happen because zoos do what they can to
> 'share' genes with other zoos.
>
> Species is all about gene flow.
>
likelihood* of gene flow in most cases...
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: evolvethought.blogspot.com
"Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other
hypothesis in natural science." Tractatus 4.1122
Mr Who
"Dwib" <dwib...@geocities.com> wrote in message
news:dllk1a$2b4$1...@home.itg.ti.com...
I also remember reading about interbreeding between horses and zebras.
Seems that a horse stallion can not reproduce with a zebra mare but a male
zebra can breed with a horse mare. I am no expert, but seems to be a good
example of divergence of species in progress to me. Try a Google search on
"zorse" for more information.
Mr. Who
an...@sci.sci
> offspring are sterile.
Yes, that's the present-day evidence.
> It's like Horses and Donkies had a common ancestor XX thousand years ago
> but, for some reason (some barrier?), proto-Horse and proto-Donkey stopped
> breeding and their DNA started diverging.
Your hypothesis shows that you have good understanding of evolution and
speciation events (which are usually spread over time, not an instant).
With only the present-day evidence, your hypothesis is the same that I
would come up with. Now we need to check additional evidence, namely
fossil evidence, to determine whether that hypothesis is correct or
not. So here's a question to Wilkins, my library assistant:
Are there sufficient fossils of ancestors of horses and donkeys by
which we can determine approximately how long ago they were a single
interbreeding species? Did they undergo allopatric or sympatric separation?
.
Mitchell Coffey
wrote:
>Gary Bohn wrote:
>> bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu (Bobby D. Bryant) wrote in
>> news:dllpna$68p$2...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu:
>>
>>
>>>On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, "Noone Inparticular" <unre...@hotmail.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
>>>>*can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
>>>>
>>>>See the distinction?
>>>
>>>That still needs a bit of refinement. E.g., the tigers in the New
>>>York Zoo don't breed with the tigers in the New Deli Zoo, but that
>>>alone doesn't make them different species.
>>>
>>>Would it be correct to say "It's because they *can* and *don't" ?
>>>
>>
>>
>> We are talking about a general population not individuals.
>>
>> However, given time and a lack of gene flow between the population at
>> New Delhi and the population at New York, they may well diverge into
>> different species that would not interbreed even if given the
>> opportunity. This will not happen because zoos do what they can to
>> 'share' genes with other zoos.
>>
>> Species is all about gene flow.
>>
>Well, to be correct, *sexual* species are all about *reduced frequency or
>likelihood* of gene flow in most cases...
The reason the IDers are so successful, relative to the material that
they have to work with, is that, lacking any requirement for accuracy
and rigor, their sentences can be said aloud five times in rapid
succession.
Mitchell
an...@sci.sci
I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
that compound sentence.
I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
.
Ash
http://www.lovelongears.com/faq.html
which suggests they are a 1 in a million, though I doubt that is
statistically accurate. I says that if the male parent of the second
generation is usually a horse, the offspring will be 100% horse - the
mule mother does not pass on the donkey chromosomes in these cases,
though there are cases where this is mixed
John Wilkins
>
Check out the Horse Evolution FAQ by Kathleen Hunt.
John Wilkins
>
The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
experimental work yourself...
John Wilkins
Ron O
The evil red menace did some experiments in the 1960's using artificial
insemination. There was a post with references within the last couple
of years, but I can't recall the thread. I don't know how many cases
of successful artificial insemination of chimps have occurred, but
these guys claimed that they failed to get chimps pregnant with human
semen. My guess is that they probably failed with chimp semen too, or
they didn't even try the control experiment, but that would be par for
the kind of guys that would do such an experiment. Who would donate
their semen to an experiment like that?
Ron Okimoto
Mitchell Coffey
wrote:
Or at least you do. You're by no means the worst, though. Larry
Moran would gladly choose a factually precise, logically exact and
terminology consistent explication over a clever turn of phrase any
day. I, fortunately, have my values right.
(Nice use of equivocation as a humorous form, by the way.)
Mitchell
chris.li...@gmail.com
> On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, "Noone Inparticular" <unre...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
> > *can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
> >
> > See the distinction?
>
> That still needs a bit of refinement. E.g., the tigers in the New
> York Zoo don't breed with the tigers in the New Deli Zoo, but that
> alone doesn't make them different species.
The tigers in the Central Park zoo are a pretty staid group, but I
wouldn't put it past that wild and crazy bunch in the Bronx Zoo.
But-- tigers in the New Deli Zoo? Did they go there for the hoagies?
Chris
Mitchell Coffey
wrote:
>an...@sci.sci wrote:
>>>"Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
>>
>>
>> I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
>> that compound sentence.
>>
>> I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
>> that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
>> yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
>> chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
>> ..
>>
>The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
>experimental work yourself...
It could be worse.
Golly, Mitchell, how could it *possibly* be worse?!
Well, John, I knew you'd exhibit concern. Be thankful our subjunctive
concern is sterile offspring. Were non-sterile offspring even
imaginable, the nations of the world would have to put the entire
Australian continent under quarantine, as well as all off-lying,
notoriously sheep-producing island-states, and the English would have
to rebuild Hadrian's Wall.
Also, the Falklands War would have been fought in vain.
Mitchell
Walter Bushell
Mitchell Coffey <mdotcoffeyats...@giganews.com> wrote:
Hopefully something like "Twenty years at hard labor: Twenty years at
hard labor: Twenty years at hard labor:Twenty years at hard labor:
Twenty years at hard labor".
--
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any
charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his
peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totali-
tarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -- W. Churchill, Nov 21, 1943
chris.li...@gmail.com
> an...@sci.sci wrote:
> >>"Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
> >
> >
> > I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
> > that compound sentence.
> >
> > I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
> > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
> > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
> > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
> > ..
> >
> The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
> experimental work yourself...
Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
for that...
Chris
Ye Old One
enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>Try a Google search on
>"zorse" for more information.
>
>Mr. Who
Gary Bohn
news:dlm0jg$2r3s$1...@bunyip2.cc.uq.edu.au:
> Gary Bohn wrote:
>> bdbr...@mail.utexas.edu (Bobby D. Bryant) wrote in
>> news:dllpna$68p$2...@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu:
>>
>>
>>>On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, "Noone Inparticular" <unre...@hotmail.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>It isn't that two groups of animals are called species because they
>>>>*can't* interbreed. It's because they *don't*.
>>>>
>>>>See the distinction?
>>>
>>>That still needs a bit of refinement. E.g., the tigers in the New
>>>York Zoo don't breed with the tigers in the New Deli Zoo, but that
>>>alone doesn't make them different species.
>>>
>>>Would it be correct to say "It's because they *can* and *don't" ?
>>>
>>
>>
>> We are talking about a general population not individuals.
>>
>> However, given time and a lack of gene flow between the population at
>> New Delhi and the population at New York, they may well diverge into
>> different species that would not interbreed even if given the
>> opportunity. This will not happen because zoos do what they can to
>> 'share' genes with other zoos.
>>
>> Species is all about gene flow.
>>
> Well, to be correct, *sexual* species are all about *reduced frequency
> or likelihood* of gene flow in most cases...
>
I knew I would be corrected by somebody. Thanks for the input.
I do note that some in biology consider ring species to not instantiate
separate species because of the high probability of gene flow through
the linking subspecies. These same biologists claim that remove of a
couple of the linking subspecies would then place the two overlapping
end subspecies firmly in the realm of two separate species. I have used
this definition for a while (with the addition of a few greenish warbler
subspecies names).
Whenever I start talking about probability of gene flow, the
creationists jump on the tentative language with a big "Aha! Science has
no idea what a species is therefore evolution is false!". Its much
easier just to explain it in terms they are more likely to understand
(They need their reassurances of 'fact' and 'proof'). It has been hard
enough to get away from the definition of speciation as the inability to
produce nonsterile hybrids with a sister species.
Gary Bohn
news:j0mtn1laq5tkk996f...@4ax.com:
That is exactly why refutations, indeed simple communication, have to
fit within the same constrictions. Any explanation I give to an IDist,
unless truly provoked, could be used for the traditional 30 second sound
bite. Their attention span is short normally, but shortened even further
because they generally 'latch' on to something in the explanation they
think they can refute and ignore the remainder of any extended
explanation. (Remember they can only read at the same rate as they can
speak).
Note: I have yet to meet an IDist who is interested in a non-sexual
species. Short coming?
Gary Bohn
Gary Bohn
news:proto-AA02FC....@reader2.panix.com:
I know we are discussing IDists specifically, but other creationists use
similar tactics. The creationists I've encountered would consider
thinking to be hard labour. I doubt any of them could sustain it for 20
years.
Damn, have I become jaded.
Gary Bohn
news:1132407857....@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Ron, some men will donate semen at the drop of a hat.
Walter Bushell
"chris.li...@gmail.com" <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
Seanpit
John Harshman wrote:
> Once again you confuse common descent (which is easily inferred) with
> the mechanisms, whether natural or, conceivably, in part supernatural,
> that caused changes along the way. You don't have to know everything
> about the process to know its result. Again, if you have an explanation
> other than common descent that fits the data remotely as well, let's see
> it. And no, "common design" is not an explanation.
Obviously the origin of all life forms was indeed common. You believe
that the most likely explanation is common descent via mindless
non-directed evolutionary processes. Well, the statistical problems
with the mechanism for such mindless common descent are overwhelming.
These problems disappear when you consider common design and a viable
option - which it most certaintly is.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
John Harshman
You just did it again. This confusion of yours is so basic you don't
even notice it, even when you're responding to an explicit statement of
how you are confused. Common descent doesn't mean just "common origin".
It actually does mean common descent. Nor does it imply mindless
non-directed evolutionary processes; that's another question entirely.
Common design does not produce nested hierarchies. You have never been
able to account for this. Your attempts have been (if I can remember):
1. Created functional adaptations force a nested hierarchy.
2. This nested hierarchy is an illusion and doesn't really exist.
Neither one holds water. Do you have any more?
Friar Broccoli
>
> You just did it again. This confusion of yours is so basic you don't
> even notice it, even when you're responding to an explicit statement of
> how you are confused. Common descent doesn't mean just "common origin".
> It actually does mean common descent.
Sorry if I'm screwing up the natural flow of this conversation/debate,
but I've been
trying (passively) to figure out the meaning of "common descent". When
I saw
your comments above, I Googled the definition and got one hit:
Definitions of "common descent" on the Web:
"A group of organisms is said to have common descent if they have a
common
ancestor. In biology, the theory of universal common descent proposes
that all
organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral
gene
pool.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent"
So when you refer to "common descent" what additional meaning
element is added over and above "common ancestor" or "common origin"?
Thanks;
Friar Broccoli
Robert Keith Elias, Quebec, Canada Email: EliasRK (of) gmail * com
Best programmer's & all purpose text editor: http://www.semware.com
--------- I consider ALL arguments in support of my views ---------
Ron O
Common descent is just simply decent with modification. Species come
from existing species. This works until you get to the original
lifeform. Then it becomes a question of abiogenesis. We don't know
how many original lifeforms there were. We are still stuck with
Darwins assumption of a few or even one. All extant lifeforms share
the universal genetic code, and so are related to the organism that had
this code, but there hasn't been a simple linear descent. Horizontal
transfers are common among prokaryotes, and eukaryotes got infusions of
very different prokaryotic genes when they acquired mitochondria and
chloroplasts. We have the genes of the prokaryotic ancestor of the
mitochondria in our nuclear genomes due to the transfer of those genes
from the mitochondria to the nucleus over time. So the genes in our
genome have at least two ancient links to the lifeform that developed
the universal code. It isn't a simple linear descent, but a fusion
that happened at some time in the past when eukaryotes were evolving.
We can tell that some of our genes are more closely related to purple
sulfer bacteria (the apparent ancestral mitochondrial source) than
other genes.
In the human lineage the last time that two fairly different lineages
could have combined was in our chordate ancestor of all existing
vertebrates. This common vertebrate ancestor may have been an
amphidiploid or allotetraploid. Two different species cross, but their
chromosomes are not compatible enough to form a viable hybrid. The
chromosomes double and you get two sets of each genome. The vertebrate
common ancestor was essentially a tetraploid (two complete sets of
genes, or 4 instead of the usual diploid two). More closely related
species like chimps and humans, or horses and donkeys may have crossed
and shared genes more recently, but this would have been about the last
opportunity for two dissimilar species to have combined in our lineage
to make major deviations in the lineages where our genes come from.
Ron Okimoto
John Harshman
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>
>>You just did it again. This confusion of yours is so basic you don't
>>even notice it, even when you're responding to an explicit statement of
>>how you are confused. Common descent doesn't mean just "common origin".
>>It actually does mean common descent.
>
>
> Sorry if I'm screwing up the natural flow of this conversation/debate,
> but I've been
> trying (passively) to figure out the meaning of "common descent". When
> I saw
> your comments above, I Googled the definition and got one hit:
>
> Definitions of "common descent" on the Web:
>
> "A group of organisms is said to have common descent if they have a
> common
> ancestor. In biology, the theory of universal common descent proposes
> that all
> organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral
> gene
> pool.
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent"
>
> So when you refer to "common descent" what additional meaning
> element is added over and above "common ancestor" or "common origin"?
None. But when Sean says "common origin" that's not what he means. He
means some common cause. Could be descent or just the same designer. In
other words, it's a weasel term to avoid saying "separate creation".
Mark Isaak
wrote:
>In article <1132418389.2...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> "chris.li...@gmail.com" <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> John Wilkins wrote:
>> > an...@sci.sci wrote:
>> > >>"Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
>> > > that compound sentence.
>> > >
>> > > I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
>> > > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
>> > > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
>> > > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
>> > > ..
>> > >
>> > The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
>> > experimental work yourself...
>>
>> Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
>> for that...
>
>Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
>rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
Dana Tweedy
"Mark Isaak" <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote in message
news:btb1o15atd4fjlh48...@4ax.com...
snip
>>> > The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
>>> > experimental work yourself...
>>>
>>> Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
>>> for that...
>>
>>Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
>>rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
>
> But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
At the very least, you'd end up looking very sheepish.
DJT
John Wilkins
B Richardson
ISTM that common descent isn't a how or why but a what. There is
nested hierarchy retrievable via a number of means, the how and
why it exists is where you argue about mechanisms.
hersheyhv
Seanpit wrote:
> John Harshman wrote:
>
> > Once again you confuse common descent (which is easily inferred) with
> > the mechanisms, whether natural or, conceivably, in part supernatural,
> > that caused changes along the way. You don't have to know everything
> > about the process to know its result. Again, if you have an explanation
> > other than common descent that fits the data remotely as well, let's see
> > it. And no, "common design" is not an explanation.
>
> Obviously the origin of all life forms was indeed common. You believe
> that the most likely explanation is common descent via mindless
> non-directed evolutionary processes.
Actually, I propose that common descent is due to mindless random
mutation producing variation and mindless *selection* by which, in a
very goal-oriented way, we observe highly biased selection favoring
variants that have greater reproductive success in a local environment.
Selection by the environment, although as mindless as the chemistry
that oxidizes iron, is not "non-directed" or "random". But, then, even
neutral drift has one of two possible terminal goals (in a two variant
system).
> Well, the statistical problems
> with the mechanism for such mindless common descent are overwhelming.
I agree that the odds against *your* particular mindless process
actually working are very poor. But since that isn't the mechanism
that evolution proposes, your calculations are utterly worthless wrt
anything in the real world.
The *real* question to ask is if the amount of selectively neutral
changes (and for an organism like humans, almost all its DNA is
selectively neutral) that differentiate, say, chimps and humans, is
compatible with the rate of mutation and the combined time since
separation from an ancestor. Since there is no selection, it is
basically only time and mutation rate that determine the expected
frequency of change at neutral sites. If the amount of observed change
can effectively be accounted for by neutral drift alone (say within an
order of magnitude, although actual values are generally much better
than that), then any differences that are due to *positive* selection
for a new variant, can easily be accommodated by the data, since
variants under positive selection go to fixation much faster than the
rate of fixation of selectively neutral variants. Needless to say, all
the difference between humans and chimps can be accommodated by not
even proposing selection, but only neutral fixation. In fact, the
amount of difference in these two species is slightly *less* than would
be expected if there were no selective changes involved at all and all
DNA were selectively neutral. This merely shows that most selection is
conservative rather than directional. Nonetheless the entire amount of
difference in DNA sequence between humans and chimps (or pretty much
any two species for which there is an independent estimate of when
divergence occurred) can be accounted for by neutral drift alone,
without even invoking selection. That doesn't mean that selection
didn't happen. It's faster rate just doesn't need to be invoked.
> These problems disappear when you consider common design and a viable
> option - which it most certaintly is.
Common design with random fixation of unimportant differences that
indicate long time frames since divergence? The only way that works is
if one assumes the "designer" made these changes to deceive us. But if
you like the idea of a deceiver-designer...Hey. Go for it.
>
> Sean Pitman
> www.DetectingDesign.com
an...@sci.sci
> > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
> > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
> > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
> experimental work yourself...
OK. You write up the grant proposal, and I'll manage the lab work.
Then you write up the results and you can have your name first on the report.
.
John Wilkins
>
I'm not holding the chimp down, no way. You have to work that out for yourself...
chris.li...@gmail.com
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
> > "Mark Isaak" <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote in message
> > news:btb1o15atd4fjlh48...@4ax.com...
> > snip
> >
> >
> >>>>>The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
> >>>>>experimental work yourself...
> >>>>
> >>>>Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
> >>>>for that...
> >>>
> >>>Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
> >>>rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
> >>
> >>But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
> >
> >
> > At the very least, you'd end up looking very sheepish.
> >
> Just don't let them get your goat, or dog you, then.
But don't go blowing a big horn for yourself either.
Chris
John Wilkins
> John Wilkins wrote:
>
>>Dana Tweedy wrote:
>>
>>>"Mark Isaak" <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote in message
>>>news:btb1o15atd4fjlh48...@4ax.com...
>>>snip
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>>The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
>>>>>>>experimental work yourself...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
>>>>>>for that...
>>>>>
>>>>>Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
>>>>>rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
>>>>
>>>>But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
>>>
>>>
>>>At the very least, you'd end up looking very sheepish.
>>>
>>
>>Just don't let them get your goat, or dog you, then.
>
>
> But don't go blowing a big horn for yourself either.
>
Paul J Gans
>an...@sci.sci wrote:
>>>>I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
>>>>that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
>>>>yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
>>>>chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
>>>
>>>The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
>>>experimental work yourself...
>>
>>
>> OK. You write up the grant proposal, and I'll manage the lab work.
>> Then you write up the results and you can have your name first on the report.
>> ..
>>
>I'm not holding the chimp down, no way. You have to work that out for yourself...
I'm sure we'd have to hold one of them, but which one?
---- Paul J. Gans
Sverker Johansson
> an...@sci.sci wrote:
> > > "Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
> >
> > I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
> > that compound sentence.
> >
> > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
> > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
> > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
>
> The evil red menace did some experiments in the 1960's using artificial
> insemination. There was a post with references within the last couple
> of years, but I can't recall the thread.
I posted that a while ago. Here is the original thread:
http://groups.google.se/group/talk.origins/msg/7925d77aced061da?dmode=source&hl=en
and here's the reference:
Rossiianov, K. (2002). Beyond Species: Ilya Ivanov and His
Experiments on Cross-Breeding Humans with Anthropoid Apes.
Science in Context 15:277-316
But the experiments took place in the 1920s, not the 1960s.
> I don't know how many cases
> of successful artificial insemination of chimps have occurred, but
> these guys claimed that they failed to get chimps pregnant with human
> semen. My guess is that they probably failed with chimp semen too, or
> they didn't even try the control experiment, but that would be par for
> the kind of guys that would do such an experiment.
It was tried in both directions (though with orang semen rather than
chimp).
> Who would donate
> their semen to an experiment like that?
Don't you think getting female volunteers (of either species)
might be a tiny little bit trickier?
--
Best regards,
Sverker Johansson
-----------------------------
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of
punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein
------------------------------
Walter Bushell
Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:05:14 -0500, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com>
> wrote:
>
> >In article <1132418389.2...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> > "chris.li...@gmail.com" <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> John Wilkins wrote:
> >> > an...@sci.sci wrote:
> >> > >>"Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
> >> > > that compound sentence.
> >> > >
> >> > > I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
> >> > > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
> >> > > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
> >> > > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
> >> > > ..
> >> > >
> >> > The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
> >> > experimental work yourself...
> >>
> >> Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
> >> for that...
> >
> >Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
> >rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
>
> But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
>
They'll pay extra for that.
Walter Bushell
"chris.li...@gmail.com" <chris.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> John Wilkins wrote:
> > Dana Tweedy wrote:
> > > "Mark Isaak" <eci...@earthlinkNOSPAM.next> wrote in message
> > > news:btb1o15atd4fjlh48...@4ax.com...
> > > snip
> > >
> > >
> > >>>>>The literature is unaccountably sparse. You'll just have to do the
> > >>>>>experimental work yourself...
> > >>>>
> > >>>>Ewe would be ramming your head into a brick wall trying to get funding
> > >>>>for that...
> > >>>
> > >>>Not at all, several small movie producers would be all over you for film
> > >>>rights if you did the fertilization naturally.
> > >>
> > >>But you might have to go on the lamb after that.
> > >
> > >
> > > At the very least, you'd end up looking very sheepish.
> > >
> > Just don't let them get your goat, or dog you, then.
>
> But don't go blowing a big horn for yourself either.
>
> Chris
>
No you let the bonobo blow the big horn.
Ron O
Sverker Johansson wrote:
> Ron O wrote:
> > an...@sci.sci wrote:
> > > > "Horses and donkeys can interbreed, while humans and chimps cannot."
> > >
> > > I'd like to see the experimental evidence to support the second half of
> > > that compound sentence.
> > >
> > > I've heard lots of reports of Australian human men and female sheep
> > > that have done a very large amount of sexual activity but not once
> > > yielded even a sterile offsping. But I'm not aware of any such
> > > chimp/human experiments, in either direction. Inquiring minds w.t.k.
> > > .
> >
> > The evil red menace did some experiments in the 1960's using artificial
> > insemination. There was a post with references within the last couple
> > of years, but I can't recall the thread.
>
> I posted that a while ago. Here is the original thread:
> http://groups.google.se/group/talk.origins/msg/7925d77aced061da?dmode=source&hl=en
> and here's the reference:
> Rossiianov, K. (2002). Beyond Species: Ilya Ivanov and His
> Experiments on Cross-Breeding Humans with Anthropoid Apes.
> Science in Context 15:277-316
>
> But the experiments took place in the 1920s, not the 1960s.
1920's? The first successful artificial insemination of a cow was in
the 1940's. Did they even know that chimp females had to be in estrus
to be fertile?
Ron Okimoto
Sverker Johansson
There are many weird aspects of this experiment. I suggest reading
the full story in that article. It is not obvious that the experiment
actually tells us very much about interfertility between ape species.
[snip]
Seanpit
B Richardson wrote:
> ISTM that common descent isn't a how or why but a what. There is
> nested hierarchy retrievable via a number of means, the how and
> why it exists is where you argue about mechanisms.
The understanding of mechanism plays a big part in determining if the
patterns that we see are actually the result of common descent verses
common design. Clearly they are the result of some common origin. A
common origin could be either common descent from a common ancestor or
it could be common design by a common designer. Which one is it?
This is where mechanism comes into play. Which mechanism is most
capable of explaining what we see? Is one or the other machanism
incapable of explaining what we see?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
John Harshman
"Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
seeing. It's not an explanation at all. The question is whether you have
a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
Von R. Smith
Seanpit wrote:
> B Richardson wrote:
>
> > ISTM that common descent isn't a how or why but a what. There is
> > nested hierarchy retrievable via a number of means, the how and
> > why it exists is where you argue about mechanisms.
>
> The understanding of mechanism plays a big part in determining if the
> patterns that we see are actually the result of common descent verses
> common design. Clearly they are the result of some common origin. A
> common origin could be either common descent from a common ancestor or
> it could be common design by a common designer. Which one is it?
Simply saying that two things have a common origin (or designer) does
absolutely nothing to predict, or explain, the consistent nested
hierarchy. A history of descent from a common ancestry, with gradual,
local modification of each lineage, does, regardless of the mechanism
employed to work those modifications.
"Common designer" for example, does not tell us whether whales will be
genetically closer to manatees than to giraffes. In fact, if we
suppose that the designer worked in any way like known designers do, we
might expect more similarties between the two marine mammals that
aren't shared by a whale and a giraffe. But that isn't what we
observe: whales are more closely related to giraffes than to manatees,
or dugongs, or seals, or any other non-cetacean aquatic mammal you
might name.
Let's do the same exercise with a sea urchin, vis-a-vis a sea anemone
and a giraffe. Again, to which organism would you expect the sea
urchin to be genetically closer, based on the notion of a common
designer?
>
> This is where mechanism comes into play. Which mechanism is most
> capable of explaining what we see? Is one or the other machanism
> incapable of explaining what we see?
I suppose that depends on whether "because it's magic, that's why"
counts as a mechanism.
John Harshman
One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
Seanpit
John Harshman wrote:
> One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
> confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
> that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
> observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
> always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
> and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design. The
only way to detect intelligent design is to show that no
non-intelligent process is reasonably capable of achieving a given
phenomenon. Once you do this, intelligent design is the only viable
option. Without natural selection there is no common descent. They are
intimately tied together.
Therefore, if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate as a
mechanism to explain what we see in living things, then this certainly
would be evidence in favor of separate creation. You may argue that
the creation could have occurred over time, but that would not be
common descent. That would simply be slow creation. There's a big
difference.
Beyond this, it is perfectly reasonable for an intelligent design of an
vast ecosystem that needs to interact intimately to be set up in a
nested hierarchical pattern. Why not have a "mammal theme" and put
mammals everywhere - in the air, on the land, in the water? Why not
have an reptile theme and do the same thing? - or an avian theme? I
know I'd probably do it that way if I were to try and design such a
system. It only makes creative sense. Humans do create such patterns
all the time via design - nested patterns.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
John Harshman wrote:
> "Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
> anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
> seeing.
That's true.
> It's not an explanation at all.
That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
that it is not detectable. It is. It is often the best explaination
for a given phenomenon - one which you yourself would agree in many
cases. Forensic science is based on the detection of ID. So is the
detection of cheating in Las Vegas. What if some government official
kept winning the California Lottery. How long would you accept this
without wondering about ID?
> The question is whether you have
> a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
> makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
Von R. Smith wrote:
> Simply saying that two things have a common origin (or designer) does
> absolutely nothing to predict, or explain, the consistent nested
> hierarchy.
Sure it does. ID can easily and quite reasonably explain nested
patterns. Human creations often show such nested hierarchies.
> A history of descent from a common ancestry, with gradual,
> local modification of each lineage, does, regardless of the mechanism
> employed to work those modifications.
Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
can equally explain nested patterns. Therefore, nested patters do not
support one position over the other.
> "Common designer" for example, does not tell us whether whales will be
> genetically closer to manatees than to giraffes. In fact, if we
> suppose that the designer worked in any way like known designers do, we
> might expect more similarties between the two marine mammals that
> aren't shared by a whale and a giraffe.
Not necessarily. Besides, different phylogenetic markers often result
in different trees. They are often in disagreement. Current animal and
plant classification models are fairly subjective in how they are set
up. Scientists had hoped that the newer science of molecular biology
would provide more objectivity to classification systems. It was hoped
that comparisons of the nucleotides of DNA or RNA sequences or of amino
acid sequences in proteins would yield more consistent results that
could be used to classify organisms with a high degree of accuracy.
However, according to an article in the January 1998 issue of Science:
"Animal relationships derived from these new molecular data sometimes
are very different from those implied by older, classical evaluations
of morphology. Reconciling these differences is a central challenge for
evolutionary biologists at present. Growing evidence suggests that
phylogenies of animal phyla constructed by the analysis of 18S rRNA
sequences may not be as accurate as originally thought. Inaccuracies
may occur in molecular phylogenies for a variety of reasons.
Prior to analysis, the sequences of corresponding genes from each
animal must be placed in register (aligned) with each other so that
homologous sites within each sequence can be compared. However,
sequence divergences may be sufficiently large that unambiguous
alignments cannot be achieved, and different alignments may lead to
different inferred relationships. Additionally, the data are often
sufficiently noisy that there may be a lack of strong statistical
support for important groupings."
The article then discusses a figure detailed similarities and
differences in 18s rRNA sequences which show that mollusks (scallops)
are more closely related to deuterostomes (sea urchins) than arthropods
(brine shrimp). Of course, this is not too surprising. Intuitively, a
scallop seems more like a sea urchin than a shrimp. So, the 82%
correlation between the scallop and sea urchin is not surprising.
However, in this light it is surprising is that a tarantula (also an
arthropod) has a 92% correlation with the scallop. Here we have two
different arthropods, a shrimp and an tarantula. How can a scallop be
much more related to one type of arthropod and much less related to the
other type of arthropod? This troubling thought led the authors of the
Science article to remark:
"Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or
tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred
relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap support
(percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether current
models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate to successfully
compensate for long branch attraction between the animal phyla. Without
knowing the correct tree ahead of time, this question will be hard to
answer. However, current models of DNA substitution usually fit the
data poorly . . ."
There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly
used phylogenic tracing genes and proteins. For example, mammalian and
amphibian "luteinizing hormone - releasing hormone" (LHRH) is
identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different
type of LHRH. Are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than
to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees.
Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular
situation.
Calcitonin (lowers blood calcium levels in animals) is another protein
commonly used to determine phylogenies. Interestingly though humans
differ from pigs by 18 of 32 amino acids, but by only 15 of 32 amino
acids from the salmon. Are we therefore more closely related to fish
than to other mammals like the pig?
Humans and horses, both being placental mammals, are presumed to have
shared a common ancestor with each other more recently than they shared
a common ancestor with a kangaroo (a marsupial). So the evolutionist
would expect the cytochrome c of a human to be more similar to that of
a horse than to that of a kangaroo. Yet, the cytochrome c of the human
varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in 10 places from
that of a kangaroo.
Such discrepancies between traditional phylogenies and those based on
cytochrome c are well known. Ayala commented that:
"The cytochrome c phylogeny disagrees with the traditional one in
several instances, including the following: the chicken appears to be
related more closely to the penguin than to ducks and pigeons; the
turtle, a reptile, appears to be related more closely to birds than to
the rattlesnake, and man and monkeys diverge from the mammals before
the marsupial kangaroo separates from the placental mammals."
> But that isn't what we
> observe: whales are more closely related to giraffes than to manatees,
> or dugongs, or seals, or any other non-cetacean aquatic mammal you
> might name.
Again, nested hierarchies are not at all inconsistent with deliberate
design when they are found in nature or anywhere else. Human creations
are often nested.
> Let's do the same exercise with a sea urchin, vis-a-vis a sea anemone
> and a giraffe. Again, to which organism would you expect the sea
> urchin to be genetically closer, based on the notion of a common
> designer?
See above . . .
> > This is where mechanism comes into play. Which mechanism is most
> > capable of explaining what we see? Is one or the other machanism
> > incapable of explaining what we see?
>
> I suppose that depends on whether "because it's magic, that's why"
> counts as a mechanism.
If you think the creations of intelligent activities, like airplanes,
cars, computers, skyscrapers, et cetera are the result of magic . . .
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Ernest Major
Seanpit <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> writes
>
>Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
>can equally explain nested patterns. Therefore, nested patters do not
>support one position over the other.
>
then the observation is usually taken as supporting the first theory;
otherwise one finds oneself sinking into the tarpit of epistemological
nihilism.
--
alias Ernest Major
--
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Friar Broccoli
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>> "Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
>> anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
>> seeing.
>
> That's true.
>
>> It's not an explanation at all.
>
> That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything
> doesn't mean that it is not detectable. It is. It is often
> the best explaination for a given phenomenon - one which you
> yourself would agree in many cases. Forensic science is based
> on the detection of ID. So is the detection of cheating in
> Las Vegas. What if some government official kept winning the
> California Lottery. How long would you accept this without
> wondering about ID?
I flattered myself that you had read my post on the
flagellum. If your using this argument, I guess I deluded
myself. Anyway:
In that post I pointed out that if all the bacteria living today
(10^30 of them) where entered in a lottery where the chances of
winning were 1 in 100,000,000 then there would be
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^22) winners. Don't you
think that provides for rather a lot of blind chance?
>>
>> The question is whether you have
>> a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
>> makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
>
> ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
> given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
The "non-ID explanation" is the natural selection of the best
elements of a *LOT* of blind chance. Magic is not an
explanation, at least not a scientific one.
Cordially;
mur...@tntech.edu
Seanpit wrote:
> John Harshman wrote:
>
> > One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
> > confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
> > that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
> > observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
> > always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
> > and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>
> Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
> other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
"Intellligent design" is not a mechanism. Repeating this does not make
it true.
---DPM
[snip]
Friar Broccoli
> John Harshman wrote:
>
> > One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
> > confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
> > that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
> > observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
> > always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
> > and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>
> Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
> other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
Self-evidently false since you yourself espouse UNintelligent Design
by a god who couldn't get it right the first time, or the next, or ...
and as a result of all this blind fumbling we finally ended up with
something that looks exactly like natural selection.
What's wrong with a real God who knew what He wanted and used
natural selection to get there?
Von R. Smith
Seanpit wrote:
> Von R. Smith wrote:
>
> > Simply saying that two things have a common origin (or designer) does
> > absolutely nothing to predict, or explain, the consistent nested
> > hierarchy.
>
> Sure it does. ID can easily and quite reasonably explain nested
> patterns.
Sean does not understand the difference between explaining and merely
accomodating.
> Human creations often show such nested hierarchies.
How often? Could you give us some examples?
>
> > A history of descent from a common ancestry, with gradual,
> > local modification of each lineage, does, regardless of the mechanism
> > employed to work those modifications.
>
> Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
> can equally explain nested patterns.
How? What is the explanation, Sean?
> Therefore, nested patters do not
> support one position over the other.
One can always play the game of "well, God could have made things that
way, too, if He wanted to". It doesn't mean that the evidence actually
supports your proposal.
>
> > "Common designer" for example, does not tell us whether whales will be
> > genetically closer to manatees than to giraffes. In fact, if we
> > suppose that the designer worked in any way like known designers do, we
> > might expect more similarties between the two marine mammals that
> > aren't shared by a whale and a giraffe.
>
> Not necessarily. Besides, different phylogenetic markers often result
> in different trees. They are often in disagreement. Current animal and
> plant classification models are fairly subjective in how they are set
> up.
I took the liberty of inserting some spaces in this paragraph here
because I want to highlight the section of text below:
> Scientists had hoped that the newer science of molecular biology
> would provide more objectivity to classification systems. It was hoped
> that comparisons of the nucleotides of DNA or RNA sequences or of amino
> acid sequences in proteins would yield more consistent results that
> could be used to classify organisms with a high degree of accuracy.
> However, according to an article in the January 1998 issue of Science:
Notice how Sean is framing the issue here. Anyone reading this would
get the impression that the quote below will be from an article casting
doubt upon the validity of molecular phylogenies in general. Now on to
the quoted text of the article:
>
> "Animal relationships derived from these new molecular data sometimes
> are very different from those implied by older, classical evaluations
> of morphology. Reconciling these differences is a central challenge for
> evolutionary biologists at present. Growing evidence suggests that
> phylogenies of animal phyla constructed by the analysis of 18S rRNA
> sequences may not be as accurate as originally thought. Inaccuracies
> may occur in molecular phylogenies for a variety of reasons.
> Prior to analysis, the sequences of corresponding genes from each
> animal must be placed in register (aligned) with each other so that
> homologous sites within each sequence can be compared. However,
> sequence divergences may be sufficiently large that unambiguous
> alignments cannot be achieved, and different alignments may lead to
> different inferred relationships. Additionally, the data are often
> sufficiently noisy that there may be a lack of strong statistical
> support for important groupings."
It turns out that what the article is actually discussing is an attempt
to analyze a specific type of sequence in order to shed light on
pre-Cambrian divergences. The authors note, in particular, that
alignment procedures usually used in phylogenetic comparisons may not
always work when comparing sequences that are too divergent. They are
suggesting that the problem here is particular to the kind of study
they did, not a failing common to molecular phylogenies in general.
>
> The article then discusses a figure detailed similarities and
> differences in 18s rRNA sequences which show that mollusks (scallops)
> are more closely related to deuterostomes (sea urchins) than arthropods
> (brine shrimp). Of course, this is not too surprising. Intuitively, a
> scallop seems more like a sea urchin than a shrimp. So, the 82%
> correlation between the scallop and sea urchin is not surprising.
> However, in this light it is surprising is that a tarantula (also an
> arthropod) has a 92% correlation with the scallop. Here we have two
> different arthropods, a shrimp and an tarantula. How can a scallop be
> much more related to one type of arthropod and much less related to the
> other type of arthropod?
Note that Sean's intuitive expectations are not really congruent with
the expectations of mainstream science. He thinks that we should
expect a greater similarity between an echinoderm and a mollusc, when
in fact, one expects molluscs and arthropods to be more similar, as
they are generally believed to have a more recent common ancestor with
one another (the most common proposal is that mollusca and arthropoda
diverged from a clade called Ecdysozoa) than with any deuterostomes.
The actual surprise in the study is not the relative closeness of
tarantulas to scallops (which one expects), but the relative distance
of the brine shrimp.
I should also point out that Sean's earlier version of his intuitions,
posted in an earlier draft of the essay quoted above, was even more
explicit in its complete misconstrual of the point; instead of the last
three sentences above (starting with: "However, in this light...") we
had this:
quote:
However, it is surprising is that a tarantula has a 92%
correlation with the scallop. It does not seem reasonable that a
scallop should be more closely related to a hairy, land-dwelling
spider than to a sea urchin.
end quote
Again, it is completely reasonable that two organisms derived from
Ecdysozoa (assuming that proposed clade reaches consensus approval) are
more closely related than are a mollusc and an echinoderm. Sean's
intuitions on this point ain't so hot.
> This troubling thought led the authors of the
> Science article to remark:
>
> "Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or
> tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred
> relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap support
> (percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether current
> models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate to successfully
> compensate for long branch attraction between the animal phyla. Without
> knowing the correct tree ahead of time, this question will be hard to
> answer. However, current models of DNA substitution usually fit the
> data poorly . . ."
And, once again, the authors are emphasizing that the problems in the
study are particular to 18S rRNA.
>
> There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly
> used phylogenic tracing genes and proteins. For example, mammalian and
> amphibian "luteinizing hormone - releasing hormone" (LHRH) is
> identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different
> type of LHRH. Are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than
> to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees.
> Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular
> situation.
...which is why you don't attach too much importance to a single
phylogeny based on one gene.
>
> Calcitonin (lowers blood calcium levels in animals) is another protein
> commonly used to determine phylogenies. Interestingly though humans
> differ from pigs by 18 of 32 amino acids, but by only 15 of 32 amino
> acids from the salmon. Are we therefore more closely related to fish
> than to other mammals like the pig?
>
> Humans and horses, both being placental mammals, are presumed to have
> shared a common ancestor with each other more recently than they shared
> a common ancestor with a kangaroo (a marsupial). So the evolutionist
> would expect the cytochrome c of a human to be more similar to that of
> a horse than to that of a kangaroo. Yet, the cytochrome c of the human
> varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in 10 places from
> that of a kangaroo.
>
> Such discrepancies between traditional phylogenies and those based on
> cytochrome c are well known. Ayala commented that:
>
> "The cytochrome c phylogeny disagrees with the traditional one in
> several instances, including the following: the chicken appears to be
> related more closely to the penguin than to ducks and pigeons; the
> turtle, a reptile, appears to be related more closely to birds than to
> the rattlesnake, and man and monkeys diverge from the mammals before
> the marsupial kangaroo separates from the placental mammals."
So, Sean thinks that isolated data points from statistical populations
say something meaningful. That explains a great deal about how he
handles statistics elsewhere.
>
> > But that isn't what we
> > observe: whales are more closely related to giraffes than to manatees,
> > or dugongs, or seals, or any other non-cetacean aquatic mammal you
> > might name.
>
> Again, nested hierarchies are not at all inconsistent with deliberate
> design when they are found in nature or anywhere else. Human creations
> are often nested.
For example...?
>
> > Let's do the same exercise with a sea urchin, vis-a-vis a sea anemone
> > and a giraffe. Again, to which organism would you expect the sea
> > urchin to be genetically closer, based on the notion of a common
> > designer?
>
> See above . . .
I did. You didn't answer the question. Which one should be closer,
Sean?
chris.li...@gmail.com
I always get some buffoon in General Bio who asks if HIV jumped into
humans through interspecies sex. I direct them to any of several
websites
(http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/conservation/issues/as_pets.asp)
that describe just how strong chimps are (5-10x adult human strength!).
Then I point out the big teeth. Then I ask them to consider (1)just how
stupidly racist they're being, (2)how a chimp would feel about being
raped by someone of another species, and (3)just what the chimp's
response might be. I can't imagine there'd be much left of the would-be
rishathra artist.
Chris
John Harshman
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>
>>"Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
>>anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
>>seeing.
>
>
> That's true.
>
>
>>It's not an explanation at all.
>
>
> That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
> that it is not detectable. It is. It is often the best explaination
> for a given phenomenon - one which you yourself would agree in many
> cases.
Hold on a minute. You are conflating design (and manufacture) by humans
with design (etc.) by an omnipotent being who can do anything. That
omnipotence makes all the difference. Human design is *not* capable of
explaining anything, just certain things. Which is why it's capable of
explaining those certain things. If it explained everything, it too
would explain nothing.
> Forensic science is based on the detection of ID. So is the
> detection of cheating in Las Vegas. What if some government official
> kept winning the California Lottery. How long would you accept this
> without wondering about ID?
Human ID. Big difference.
>>The question is whether you have
>>a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
>>makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
>
> ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
> given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
Once more you are confusing common descent with natural selection. For
the life of me I can't understand why you are incapable of understanding
the independence of these concepts. If ID is a real explanation for
nested hierarchy, please tell me how.
John Harshman
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>
>>One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
>>confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
>>that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
>>observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
>>always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
>>and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>
>
> Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
> other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
Nonsense. There are many other existing mechanisms, and there are many
other proposed mechanisms. Check out Rupert Sheldrake, for example.
At any rate, your use of intelligent design here, as with your use of
evolution, conflates multiple independent hypothses. Just as common
descent is independent of natural selection, so separate creation is
independent of intelligent causation. That should be obvious, since I
can make theories that freely mix your conflated categories: theistic
evolution, which is (or can be) common descent mixed with intelligent
causation. This is really a simple concept, and I can't figure out why
you are incapable of understanding it.
> The
> only way to detect intelligent design is to show that no
> non-intelligent process is reasonably capable of achieving a given
> phenomenon. Once you do this, intelligent design is the only viable
> option.
Nonsense. The way we detect intelligent design is by seeing the signs of
such design, i.e. similarities with the ways in which humans design
things. And in order to rule out all non-intelligent processes, you
would have to be absolutely sure that you knew all about all
non-intelligent processes there were. How would you do that?
> Without natural selection there is no common descent. They are
> intimately tied together.
No they aren't. Why should they be? I can easily imagine a process like
this: common descent works just like science thinks it does, but all
mutations are caused directly by god's poking his finger into genomes.
Voila: common descent without natural selection.
> Therefore, if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate as a
> mechanism to explain what we see in living things, then this certainly
> would be evidence in favor of separate creation. You may argue that
> the creation could have occurred over time, but that would not be
> common descent. That would simply be slow creation. There's a big
> difference.
What exactly is the difference? What if the "creation" only involved
that direct causing of mutations? If you like, the same mutation could
be induced multiple times in the population.
> Beyond this, it is perfectly reasonable for an intelligent design of an
> vast ecosystem that needs to interact intimately to be set up in a
> nested hierarchical pattern.
No it isn't. That would be true only if ecosystems (or perhaps niches)
were themselves organized in a nested hierarchy, which they aren't. But
let's look at your examples.
> Why not have a "mammal theme" and put
> mammals everywhere - in the air, on the land, in the water?
But why should some mammals in the water be similar genetically to dogs,
some to elephants, and some to cows? Afraid the hierarchy doesn't fit
your little scheme.
> Why not
> have an reptile theme and do the same thing? - or an avian theme?
That's not a nested hierarchy. That's a collection of themes. And of
course some reptiles are more genetically (and anatomically, I might
add) like birds than like other reptiles. Again, your categories fail you.
> I
> know I'd probably do it that way if I were to try and design such a
> system. It only makes creative sense.
I'm afraid that's just armwaving. If you look at it in the least bit of
detail, as in the couple of examples you just gave, it all falls apart.
> Humans do create such patterns
> all the time via design - nested patterns.
No, they don't. Name them. I want a real, not arbitrary nested hierarchy
that doesn't depend on common descent with branching. Go to it.
BruceW
Seanpit wrote:
> That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
> that it is not detectable. It is. It is often the best explaination
> for a given phenomenon - one which you yourself would agree in many
> cases. Forensic science is based on the detection of ID. So is the
> detection of cheating in Las Vegas. What if some government official
> kept winning the California Lottery. How long would you accept this
> without wondering about ID?
>
> ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
> given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
Could you *please* avoid confusing Human ID with Other ID? No, they are
*not* the same.
Thank you.
-BruceW
B Richardson
>
> B Richardson wrote:
>
>> ISTM that common descent isn't a how or why but a what. There is
>> nested hierarchy retrievable via a number of means, the how and
>> why it exists is where you argue about mechanisms.
>
> The understanding of mechanism plays a big part in determining if the
> patterns that we see are actually the result of common descent verses
> common design. Clearly they are the result of some common origin. A
> common origin could be either common descent from a common ancestor or
> it could be common design by a common designer. Which one is it?
>
Constraints by heredity would be expected to leave flora and
fauna with features and functions that could clearly have been
done better. Is there any explanation for this in ID where better
designs were available for various functions or features but not
used? Substandard human designs are typically substandard because
of resource constraints, which aren't much like the constraints
of inheritance.
>
> This is where mechanism comes into play. Which mechanism is most
> capable of explaining what we see? Is one or the other machanism
> incapable of explaining what we see?
>
Substandard features could be explained by constraints due to
inheritance. The ID explanation for the same I don't know.
Seems that most cdesign proponentsists don't want to go there.
>
> Sean Pitman
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>
Seanpit
Von R. Smith wrote:
> Seanpit wrote:
> > Von R. Smith wrote:
> >
> > > Simply saying that two things have a common origin (or designer) does
> > > absolutely nothing to predict, or explain, the consistent nested
> > > hierarchy.
> >
> > Sure it does. ID can easily and quite reasonably explain nested
> > patterns.
>
> Sean does not understand the difference between explaining and merely
> accomodating.
Can you explain how you invent or design things?
> > Human creations often show such nested hierarchies.
>
> How often? Could you give us some examples?
The books on my bookshelf, cars, buildings, language systems, computer
codes and programs, etc. All these show nested patterns.
> > > A history of descent from a common ancestry, with gradual,
> > > local modification of each lineage, does, regardless of the mechanism
> > > employed to work those modifications.
> >
> > Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
> > can equally explain nested patterns.
>
> How? What is the explanation, Sean?
It is very reasonable to create an interacting system with the use of
nested patterns. Humans do it all the time.
> > Therefore, nested patters do not
> > support one position over the other.
>
> One can always play the game of "well, God could have made things that
> way, too, if He wanted to". It doesn't mean that the evidence actually
> supports your proposal.
It does if the only alternative has no adequate mechanism.
The point is that the ToE can accommodate anything regardless of nested
patterns or otherwise. Beyond this, the phylogenic problems are not
just with pre-Cambrian divergences.
The intuitions are not mine. They come from the authors of the Science
article.
> > This troubling thought led the authors of the
> > Science article to remark:
> >
> > "Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or
> > tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred
> > relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap support
> > (percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether current
> > models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate to successfully
> > compensate for long branch attraction between the animal phyla. Without
> > knowing the correct tree ahead of time, this question will be hard to
> > answer. However, current models of DNA substitution usually fit the
> > data poorly . . ."
>
> And, once again, the authors are emphasizing that the problems in the
> study are particular to 18S rRNA.
Exactly . . . and what do you think the above quoted paragraphs about
tarantulas and urchins and scallops were referring to?
> > There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly
> > used phylogenic tracing genes and proteins. For example, mammalian and
> > amphibian "luteinizing hormone - releasing hormone" (LHRH) is
> > identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different
> > type of LHRH. Are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than
> > to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees.
> > Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular
> > situation.
>
> ...which is why you don't attach too much importance to a single
> phylogeny based on one gene.
The point remains. It can very much depend upon what phylogenetic
marker you choose as to what tree of life you will assume.
> > Calcitonin (lowers blood calcium levels in animals) is another protein
> > commonly used to determine phylogenies. Interestingly though humans
> > differ from pigs by 18 of 32 amino acids, but by only 15 of 32 amino
> > acids from the salmon. Are we therefore more closely related to fish
> > than to other mammals like the pig?
> >
> > Humans and horses, both being placental mammals, are presumed to have
> > shared a common ancestor with each other more recently than they shared
> > a common ancestor with a kangaroo (a marsupial). So the evolutionist
> > would expect the cytochrome c of a human to be more similar to that of
> > a horse than to that of a kangaroo. Yet, the cytochrome c of the human
> > varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in 10 places from
> > that of a kangaroo.
> >
> > Such discrepancies between traditional phylogenies and those based on
> > cytochrome c are well known. Ayala commented that:
> >
> > "The cytochrome c phylogeny disagrees with the traditional one in
> > several instances, including the following: the chicken appears to be
> > related more closely to the penguin than to ducks and pigeons; the
> > turtle, a reptile, appears to be related more closely to birds than to
> > the rattlesnake, and man and monkeys diverge from the mammals before
> > the marsupial kangaroo separates from the placental mammals."
>
> So, Sean thinks that isolated data points from statistical populations
> say something meaningful. That explains a great deal about how he
> handles statistics elsewhere.
Come on now. Phylogenies simply aren't a slam-dunk even when it comes
to establishing nested hierarchies. They can actually disagree
depending upon what characteristic is chosen.
> > > But that isn't what we
> > > observe: whales are more closely related to giraffes than to manatees,
> > > or dugongs, or seals, or any other non-cetacean aquatic mammal you
> > > might name.
> >
> > Again, nested hierarchies are not at all inconsistent with deliberate
> > design when they are found in nature or anywhere else. Human creations
> > are often nested.
On top of this, it is good to note that whales used to be thought of as
evolving from mesonychids (hoofed carnivores). However, DNA analysis
was inconsistent with this notion based on morphologic analysis.
Because of the DNA analysis and additional morphologic discoveries,
whales are now thought to have evolved from artiodactyls instead. Of
course, artiodactyls are the same group in which giraffes are
classified. But, this is a rather new and fairly dramatic change to
the ToE. Oh, but wait, evolution can accommodate just about anything.
Forgive me. I forgot ; ) I mean really, if it were found that
additional DNA and morphologic features actually make whales more
closely related to dugong/manatee ancestors, then evolutionists really
would have no significant problem now would you?
So, you see, the ToE can explain everything just like ID can. It can
explain nesting and non-nesting. It can explain this tree or that tree
as the wind blows. Really then, it all boils down to mechanism. Does
the ToE have an adequate mechanism? ID certainly does, but does the
ToE?
> For example...?
See above . . .
> >
> > > Let's do the same exercise with a sea urchin, vis-a-vis a sea anemone
> > > and a giraffe. Again, to which organism would you expect the sea
> > > urchin to be genetically closer, based on the notion of a common
> > > designer?
> >
> > See above . . .
>
> I did. You didn't answer the question. Which one should be closer,
> Sean?
You don't understand. A common designer could make different aspects
of different types of creatures more or less similar at will. The ToE
can also accommodate more or less similarities without a problem. The
phylogenetic trees in the ToE change all the time and the ToE is never
doubted or fundamentally questioned. You see, mainstream scientists
who believe in the ToE are no better at making such predictions of
similarities based on this or that parameter ahead of time than are
those scientists who believe in ID.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
Ernest Major wrote:
> In message <1132792866.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
> Seanpit <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> writes
> >
> >Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
> >can equally explain nested patterns. Therefore, nested patters do not
> >support one position over the other.
> >
> If one theory predicts an observation, and another merely allows it,
> then the observation is usually taken as supporting the first theory;
> otherwise one finds oneself sinking into the tarpit of epistemological
> nihilism.
Well, the problem is that intelligently designed systems have a
tendency to show nested patterns. Of course, the theory of common
descent also predicts the creation of nested patterns. Given adequate
mechanisms for both, I myself would tend toward the notion of common
descent since there would be absolutely no way to support the notion of
ID to the exclusion of common descent. However, given that the
mechanism for common descent of certain types of functions and certain
types of variations in living things is not adequate, only ID is left
with an adequate mechanism to explain such high-level functional
differences.
Of course, not all creatures are different enough to go beyond the
mechanism that does work for common descent. Many differences are
easily explainable with the use of evolutionary mechanisms. However,
many key differences are not explainable using Darwinian mechanisms
alone - not even close. At this point, there is only one viable
alternative.
You see, you have to believe in the mechanism in order to believe in
the ToE. If the mechanisms fails, so does the ToE. If the ToE fails at
any point, in an overwhelming way of course, the only tenable option
one has left is what?
> alias Ernest Major
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
How are they different given the same intelligence level or greater?
How would you know?
> Thank you.
>
> -BruceW
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
Seanpit
John Harshman wrote:
> Seanpit wrote:
>
> > John Harshman wrote:
> >
> >
> >>One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
> >>confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
> >>that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
> >>observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
> >>always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
> >>and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
> >
> >
> > Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
> > other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
>
> Nonsense. There are many other existing mechanisms, and there are many
> other proposed mechanisms. Check out Rupert Sheldrake, for example.
Oh, please do explain to us how Rupert Sheldrake's theory of
"collective consciousness" or "morphologic resonance" works to create
novel functions at higher and higher levels of functional complexity.
I'd love to hear this presented as a workable alternative to the ToE.
> At any rate, your use of intelligent design here, as with your use of
> evolution, conflates multiple independent hypothses. Just as common
> descent is independent of natural selection, so separate creation is
> independent of intelligent causation. That should be obvious, since I
> can make theories that freely mix your conflated categories: theistic
> evolution, which is (or can be) common descent mixed with intelligent
> causation.
That's not true. Theistic evolution isn't evolution at all when it
comes to the theistic point of input. At that point it is strictly ID.
Even I believe in certain types of evolution. However, this is not to
say that evolution and ID can be mixed. They are distinct from each
other in that ID can do things that evolution simply cannot do. When
this happens, there is NO evolution involved. It is all ID.
> This is really a simple concept, and I can't figure out why
> you are incapable of understanding it.
Oh, it is simple, but the other way round.
> > The
> > only way to detect intelligent design is to show that no
> > non-intelligent process is reasonably capable of achieving a given
> > phenomenon. Once you do this, intelligent design is the only viable
> > option.
>
> Nonsense. The way we detect intelligent design is by seeing the signs of
> such design, i.e. similarities with the ways in which humans design
> things.
That's not enough. Humans can design amorphous rocks. When you see one
of these you cannot assume ID because mindless causes can also create
the same type of amorphous look. The only way you can reasonably
assume human design is when the phenomenon in question clearly goes
beyond what any known mindless process can achieve.
> And in order to rule out all non-intelligent processes, you
> would have to be absolutely sure that you knew all about all
> non-intelligent processes there were. How would you do that?
You can have a very good idea given the weight of evidence of past
experiences. Though you can never be 100% sure, science doesn't require
this level of confidence before a theory gains good predictive/useful
value. When you know that no mindless process you know of has ever
gone past a certain level and you see a phenomenon that goes far beyond
this level, you can very reasonably entertain the hypothesis that this
phenomenon may not be the result of a mindless cause. This was clearly
true in famous examples such as the creation of crop circles in England
a few years back. These were clear examples of intelligent activity
since no known mindless cause has ever come close to producing such
intricate perfectly geometric creations in the medium of crops or
anything similar.
> > Without natural selection there is no common descent. They are
> > intimately tied together.
>
> No they aren't. Why should they be?
There is no other option for common descent aside from natural
selection. What other viable mechanism is there that could explain
common descent with modifications over time?
> I can easily imagine a process like
> this: common descent works just like science thinks it does, but all
> mutations are caused directly by god's poking his finger into genomes.
> Voila: common descent without natural selection.
That's not common descent via mindless mechanisms at all. That's slow
creation via ID. You see, without natural selection you were forced to
use ID in your example - proving my point. Without natural selection,
ID is the only viable option.
> > Therefore, if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate as a
> > mechanism to explain what we see in living things, then this certainly
> > would be evidence in favor of separate creation. You may argue that
> > the creation could have occurred over time, but that would not be
> > common descent. That would simply be slow creation. There's a big
> > difference.
>
> What exactly is the difference? What if the "creation" only involved
> that direct causing of mutations? If you like, the same mutation could
> be induced multiple times in the population.
If the direct causing of mutations was directed by intelligence toward
a desired goal, that's creation via ID. It is not common descent via
natural selection and random mutation. Without the evolutionary
mechanism as a viable option, the only thing left is ID. Even you
can't get away from this in your examples.
> > Beyond this, it is perfectly reasonable for an intelligent design of an
> > vast ecosystem that needs to interact intimately to be set up in a
> > nested hierarchical pattern.
>
> No it isn't. That would be true only if ecosystems (or perhaps niches)
> were themselves organized in a nested hierarchy, which they aren't. But
> let's look at your examples.
>
> > Why not have a "mammal theme" and put
> > mammals everywhere - in the air, on the land, in the water?
>
> But why should some mammals in the water be similar genetically to dogs,
> some to elephants, and some to cows? Afraid the hierarchy doesn't fit
> your little scheme.
Sure it does. There will always be more or less similarities to this
or that other type of creation. That's the nature of our urge to
classify things. Things can always be grouped or clustered into nice
little categories regardless of actual relationships. Some aspects will
be closer or farther away to this or that because they have to be.
Beyond this, a creative designer might want to try the extent of
various fundamental designs in different situations and/or
environments. I certainly try to do this myself if I were to create
such an interactive system.
> > Why not
> > have an reptile theme and do the same thing? - or an avian theme?
>
> That's not a nested hierarchy. That's a collection of themes. And of
> course some reptiles are more genetically (and anatomically, I might
> add) like birds than like other reptiles. Again, your categories fail you.
A collection of themes can be nested on many levels - even in human
designs.
> > I
> > know I'd probably do it that way if I were to try and design such a
> > system. It only makes creative sense.
>
> I'm afraid that's just armwaving. If you look at it in the least bit of
> detail, as in the couple of examples you just gave, it all falls apart.
Not true.
> > Humans do create such patterns
> > all the time via design - nested patterns.
>
> No, they don't. Name them. I want a real, not arbitrary nested hierarchy
> that doesn't depend on common descent with branching. Go to it.
I've already given you lists before and you said that these nested
patterns were because of limited resources. But, they are there. The
books on my bookshelf, cars, houses, language systems, computer codes,
programs, and systems, etc all show nested patterns.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
> Seanpit wrote:
> > John Harshman wrote:
> >
> > > One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
> > > confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
> > > that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
> > > observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
> > > always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
> > > and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>
> >
> > Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
> > other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
>
> Self-evidently false since you yourself espouse UNintelligent Design
> by a god who couldn't get it right the first time, or the next, or ...
Even if you are right about the Designer not getting it right the first
time, does this in itself rule out the notion that the Designer is
non-the-less intelligent? Do you get everything right the first time?
Are you intelligent?
> and as a result of all this blind fumbling we finally ended up with
> something that looks exactly like natural selection.
Actually, it doesn't look at all like natural selection since natural
selection has never done anything beyond very low levels of functional
complexity. What you call "blind fumbling" actually goes far beyond
what even the best of human intelligence has ever come close to
achieving and infinitely beyond what any mindless process has ever
done.
> What's wrong with a real God who knew what He wanted and used
> natural selection to get there?
The Designer of life on this planet did not use natural selection to
get there. That's the point. The Creator created distinct kinds
originally. Now, there certainly is variability programmed into this
creation and this variability is significantly affected by natural
selection - but not beyond very low levels of functional complexity.
>
> Cordially;
>
> Friar Broccoli
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
> On 23 Nov 2005 08:51:39 -0800, Seanpit wrote:
> >
> > B Richardson wrote:
> >
> >> ISTM that common descent isn't a how or why but a what. There is
> >> nested hierarchy retrievable via a number of means, the how and
> >> why it exists is where you argue about mechanisms.
> >
> > The understanding of mechanism plays a big part in determining if the
> > patterns that we see are actually the result of common descent verses
> > common design. Clearly they are the result of some common origin. A
> > common origin could be either common descent from a common ancestor or
> > it could be common design by a common designer. Which one is it?
> >
>
> Constraints by heredity would be expected to leave flora and
> fauna with features and functions that could clearly have been
> done better. Is there any explanation for this in ID where better
> designs were available for various functions or features but not
> used? Substandard human designs are typically substandard because
> of resource constraints, which aren't much like the constraints
> of inheritance.
Please list some of these substandard designs. I know about many of
these that are no longer considered substandard now that we know more
about how they work with the system as a whole. Many of what where
once thought to be "poor designs" are actually quite ingenious once one
learns more. The human retina is a classic example of a supposed
design flaw that turns out to be ideally suited for human needs. You
can read more about my take on this whole design flaw argument at:
http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/humaneye.html
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
B Richardson
Have you considered that there also may be a flip side to
that coin, that is something thought to be ideally suited
turns out not to be once one learns more?
>
> http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/humaneye.html
>
How about the problem of detachment that many people face.
Is this good design? Is there something about haveing a spine
that makes the inverted retina preferable? Goose bumps are
no doubt good for mammals with enough fur to take advantage
of them, but no so good for us yet we get them from the same
stimuli. Plantaris muscle is obviously good for most of the
primates, but surely not quite so high up on the "good" scale
for us.
Whether out of choice or necessity, design wrt to living
things seems have the same constraints as heredity, do you
disagree?
Seanpit
John Harshman wrote:
> Seanpit wrote:
>
> > John Harshman wrote:
> >
> >
> >>"Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
> >>anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
> >>seeing.
> >
> > That's true.
> >
> >>It's not an explanation at all.
> >
> > That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
> > that it is not detectable. It is. It is often the best explaination
> > for a given phenomenon - one which you yourself would agree in many
> > cases.
>
> Hold on a minute. You are conflating design (and manufacture) by humans
> with design (etc.) by an omnipotent being who can do anything. That
> omnipotence makes all the difference. Human design is *not* capable of
> explaining anything, just certain things. Which is why it's capable of
> explaining those certain things. If it explained everything, it too
> would explain nothing.
So, what cannot be explained by human-level intelligence is somehow
within the realm of mindless nature? - which is capable of explaining
everything? You see, you evolutionists also believe in an omnipotent
power in the form of mindless Nature who somehow has the ability to
create all the we see around and even within each one of us. Somehow
you think the mindless is more creative than the mindful.
The fact of the matter is that the theory of ID doesn't say that the
Designer of Life is omnipotent. It doesn't say anything like this at
all. As far as ID Theory goes, the Designer could be anyone with a
high level of intelligence. Even human level intelligence can do a lot
of things that we see in living things. We are learning a lot more
these days about how to manipulate the very codes of life itself on
higher and higher levels.
You don't detect high-level intelligence by knowing the limitations of
the intelligent agent or agents, but by knowing the limitations of
non-intelligent processes that don't even come close to producing a
given phenomenon. If you go to a alien planet and find an spacecraft
or a city or even a perfectly carved granite cube, you can easily
propose intelligent design even if the objects look nothing like what
we have created here on Earth.
> > Forensic science is based on the detection of ID. So is the
> > detection of cheating in Las Vegas. What if some government official
> > kept winning the California Lottery. How long would you accept this
> > without wondering about ID?
>
> Human ID. Big difference.
Not at all. There is no fundamental difference. The only difference is
in degree. Just because someone is smarter than you and can make
better stuff than you doesn't mean that the stuff that they make cannot
be recognized as requiring a great deal of intelligence. To suggest
that one must conclude a mindless process in such a situation actually
comes across as a bit humerous to me.
> >>The question is whether you have
> >>a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
> >>makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
> >
> > ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
> > given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
>
> Once more you are confusing common descent with natural selection.
Once more you are erroneously trying to separate common descent from
random mutation and natural selection. You just can't do this. To
avoid the conclusion of the involvement of ID, the notion of common
descent, by definition, requires a mindless mechanism such as random
mutation and natural selection over time. There just is no other
viable mindless mechanism. As soon as you start using ID as part of
the theory, at that point, it is no longer common descent, but
independent creation of something that would not exist without ID.
> For
> the life of me I can't understand why you are incapable of understanding
> the independence of these concepts.
Interesting, isn't it, that in your own explanation of how these
concepts could be independent you yourself use ID.
> If ID is a real explanation for
> nested hierarchy, please tell me how.
ID can and often does created nested patterns.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
> > So when you refer to "common descent" what additional meaning
> > element is added over and above "common ancestor" or "common origin"?
>
> None. But when Sean says "common origin" that's not what he means. He
> means some common cause. Could be descent or just the same designer. In
> other words, it's a weasel term to avoid saying "separate creation".
How is a common cause different from a common origin? If your
ancestors "originated from the hand of God" and the dog in the
neighbor's yard also "originated from the hand of God" do you not both
have your ultimate origin from a common source? For argument's sake,
if your ancestors were indeed created separately in this manner, can
you say then that you and the dog share a common ancestor or any common
pathway of descent? Not if you were actually created independently -
right? However, you could truthfully say that you share a common
origin - given the notion that the same designer created you both.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
John Harshman
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>>Seanpit wrote:
>>
>>
>>>John Harshman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
>>>>confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
>>>>that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
>>>>observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
>>>>always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
>>>>and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>>>
>>>
>>>Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
>>>other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
>>
>>Nonsense. There are many other existing mechanisms, and there are many
>>other proposed mechanisms. Check out Rupert Sheldrake, for example.
>
>
> Oh, please do explain to us how Rupert Sheldrake's theory of
> "collective consciousness" or "morphologic resonance" works to create
> novel functions at higher and higher levels of functional complexity.
> I'd love to hear this presented as a workable alternative to the ToE.
It's not a workable alternative. It doesn't exist in the real world. The
point is that it's a proposed mechanism that is neither natural
selection nor intelligent design, and we could imagine it to be true. We
can't rule it out a priori.
>>At any rate, your use of intelligent design here, as with your use of
>>evolution, conflates multiple independent hypothses. Just as common
>>descent is independent of natural selection, so separate creation is
>>independent of intelligent causation. That should be obvious, since I
>>can make theories that freely mix your conflated categories: theistic
>>evolution, which is (or can be) common descent mixed with intelligent
>>causation.
>
> That's not true. Theistic evolution isn't evolution at all when it
> comes to the theistic point of input. At that point it is strictly ID.
Your confusion here relies on your belief that evolution and ID are
mutually exclusive. They are not.
> Even I believe in certain types of evolution. However, this is not to
> say that evolution and ID can be mixed. They are distinct from each
> other in that ID can do things that evolution simply cannot do. When
> this happens, there is NO evolution involved. It is all ID.
Again, the confusion. ID can do things evolution can't, because ID could
mean anything at all, from Last Thursdayism through a deist intervention
in the Big Bang and not since. My point is that we can imagine many
versions of ID that are 100% compatible with common descent. (Or with
any other feature of evolutionary theory that you like.)
Your problem seems to be that you equate evolution with evolution by
natural processes only, especially natural selection, and you equate ID
with fiat creation of species (or "kinds", whatever that means) from
nothing. Then you suppose that those two restricted meanings are polar
opposites and are the only possible theories there could be.
>> This is really a simple concept, and I can't figure out why
>>you are incapable of understanding it.
>
> Oh, it is simple, but the other way round.
I still can't figure it out.
>>>The
>>>only way to detect intelligent design is to show that no
>>>non-intelligent process is reasonably capable of achieving a given
>>>phenomenon. Once you do this, intelligent design is the only viable
>>>option.
>>
>>Nonsense. The way we detect intelligent design is by seeing the signs of
>>such design, i.e. similarities with the ways in which humans design
>>things.
>
> That's not enough. Humans can design amorphous rocks. When you see one
> of these you cannot assume ID because mindless causes can also create
> the same type of amorphous look. The only way you can reasonably
> assume human design is when the phenomenon in question clearly goes
> beyond what any known mindless process can achieve.
Of course human design could counterfeit natural processes, and in that
case we could never detect it. Irrelevant.
>>And in order to rule out all non-intelligent processes, you
>>would have to be absolutely sure that you knew all about all
>>non-intelligent processes there were. How would you do that?
>
> You can have a very good idea given the weight of evidence of past
> experiences. Though you can never be 100% sure, science doesn't require
> this level of confidence before a theory gains good predictive/useful
> value. When you know that no mindless process you know of has ever
> gone past a certain level and you see a phenomenon that goes far beyond
> this level, you can very reasonably entertain the hypothesis that this
> phenomenon may not be the result of a mindless cause. This was clearly
> true in famous examples such as the creation of crop circles in England
> a few years back. These were clear examples of intelligent activity
> since no known mindless cause has ever come close to producing such
> intricate perfectly geometric creations in the medium of crops or
> anything similar.
We couldn't infer that unless we knew that humans were capable of
producing such forms. At any rate, all this is entirely peripheral, not
to say irrelevant, to my point. I'm arguing for common descent, not for
evolution entirely by natural processes.
>>>Without natural selection there is no common descent. They are
>>>intimately tied together.
>>
>>No they aren't. Why should they be?
>
> There is no other option for common descent aside from natural
> selection. What other viable mechanism is there that could explain
> common descent with modifications over time?
What's wrong with divine causation of key mutations? How about I suppose
that for every important neutral gap of large expanse, god either causes
multiple simultaneous mutations or has previously created convenient
stepping stones, islands of selective advantage, at intervals all the
way across?
>>I can easily imagine a process like
>>this: common descent works just like science thinks it does, but all
>>mutations are caused directly by god's poking his finger into genomes.
>>Voila: common descent without natural selection.
>
> That's not common descent via mindless mechanisms at all.
You got it. Common descent doesn't require the assumption of mindless
mechanisms. If mindless mechanisms are not sufficient, that doesn't say
anything about whether common descent actually works.
> That's slow
> creation via ID.
Yes, but it's also common descent, isn't it? Under that scenario, each
organism is the descendant of a prior organism (or pair of organisms)
all the way back to the first cell. I don't know what else you would
call it than common descent. It's common descent with ID, which you seem
to think is a contradiction, yet there it is.
> You see, without natural selection you were forced to
> use ID in your example - proving my point. Without natural selection,
> ID is the only viable option.
No, I wasn't forced to use ID. I could have used some other form of
magic, like some unknown vitalist tendency toward order and complexity,
or whatever. But why not pick your favorite method? I don't care whether
ID is the only viable option, because I'm not arguing about mechanism
here. I'm arguing that ID and common descent are not incompatible. You
think they are only because you have defined common descent as excluding
all supernatural intervention. There is no sensible reason to do that,
and if you do then we're only arguing about really dumb semantics.
>>>Therefore, if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate as a
>>>mechanism to explain what we see in living things, then this certainly
>>>would be evidence in favor of separate creation. You may argue that
>>>the creation could have occurred over time, but that would not be
>>>common descent. That would simply be slow creation. There's a big
>>>difference.
>>
>>What exactly is the difference? What if the "creation" only involved
>>that direct causing of mutations? If you like, the same mutation could
>>be induced multiple times in the population.
>
> If the direct causing of mutations was directed by intelligence toward
> a desired goal, that's creation via ID. It is not common descent via
> natural selection and random mutation. Without the evolutionary
> mechanism as a viable option, the only thing left is ID. Even you
> can't get away from this in your examples.
I could if I wanted to, but that's not my goal. What I'm talking about
is common descent, period. It could be common descent by natural
selection and random mutation, and it could be common descent by ID, and
it could be common descent by some other mechanism. It's still common
descent as long as it involves organisms all being descended from a
common ancestor.
Why won't you call common descent with ID by the name of "common
descent"? It's almost as if you're afraid of the words, as if they're
Satanic to you. They're just words used to describe a pattern of
ancestry and descent. Nothing weird about them. If they apply, we can
apply them. Common descent with changes caused by ID is still common
descent.
>>>Beyond this, it is perfectly reasonable for an intelligent design of an
>>>vast ecosystem that needs to interact intimately to be set up in a
>>>nested hierarchical pattern.
>>
>>No it isn't. That would be true only if ecosystems (or perhaps niches)
>>were themselves organized in a nested hierarchy, which they aren't. But
>>let's look at your examples.
>>
>>>Why not have a "mammal theme" and put
>>>mammals everywhere - in the air, on the land, in the water?
>>
>>But why should some mammals in the water be similar genetically to dogs,
>>some to elephants, and some to cows? Afraid the hierarchy doesn't fit
>>your little scheme.
>
> Sure it does. There will always be more or less similarities to this
> or that other type of creation. That's the nature of our urge to
> classify things. Things can always be grouped or clustered into nice
> little categories regardless of actual relationships. Some aspects will
> be closer or farther away to this or that because they have to be.
Ah, this is your alternative option whenever your first option is
challenged. And whenever your alternative option is challenged, you flip
back to the first one. That way you never have to actually confront
objections to either option. To recap, here are your two options:
1. The nested hierarchy exists because ecological niches are arranged in
a nested hierarchy.
2. The nested hierarchy doesn't really exist, and is an arbitrary
construct of our minds.
Here you are retreating to option 2 when option 1 is shown not to work.
But option 2 is nonsense as well. We recover the same hierarchy, with
those same 3 separate groups of sea mammals (4 if you count sea otters),
no matter what characters we look at, no matter what genes. That
hierarchy is in no way arbitrary or at all open to human choice. It
exists objectively, and it contradicts your ecological explanation.
> Beyond this, a creative designer might want to try the extent of
> various fundamental designs in different situations and/or
> environments. I certainly try to do this myself if I were to create
> such an interactive system.
This is option 3:
3. The designer can do whatever he wants to, so we could expect to see
anything at all.
But of course that's no option either. Why should the designer, who can
do anything, limit himself to a nested hierarchy that nicely
counterfeits exactly what we woudl expect from common descent? If he's
trying out all the variations of his designs, why no flying rodents? Why
no mammals with more than 7 cervical vertebrae? Why no insects with
internal skeletons or lungs? Etc.
And of course, why should the nested hierarchy extend to functionless
similarities, such as the silent sites of exons or the sequences of introns?
>>>Why not
>>>have an reptile theme and do the same thing? - or an avian theme?
>>
>>That's not a nested hierarchy. That's a collection of themes. And of
>>course some reptiles are more genetically (and anatomically, I might
>>add) like birds than like other reptiles. Again, your categories fail you.
>
> A collection of themes can be nested on many levels - even in human
> designs.
Why would we expect such a thing rather than any other form of
organization? Why isn't classification just as likely to be quinarian as
hierarchical?
>>>I
>>>know I'd probably do it that way if I were to try and design such a
>>>system. It only makes creative sense.
>>
>>I'm afraid that's just armwaving. If you look at it in the least bit of
>>detail, as in the couple of examples you just gave, it all falls apart.
>
> Not true.
Perhaps, but your defense in the examples was to abandon the notion of
objective hierarchy and appeal to arbitrariness. If that's not falling
apart, I don't know what is.
>>>Humans do create such patterns
>>>all the time via design - nested patterns.
>>
>>No, they don't. Name them. I want a real, not arbitrary nested hierarchy
>>that doesn't depend on common descent with branching. Go to it.
>
> I've already given you lists before and you said that these nested
> patterns were because of limited resources. But, they are there. The
> books on my bookshelf, cars, houses, language systems, computer codes,
> programs, and systems, etc all show nested patterns.
None of those are actually nested hierarchies. Some of them partially
resemble nested hierarchies, like the cars. But the degree to which they
do is a form of inheritance, i.e. when designing next year's Ford
Taurus, the designers start with last year's Taurus. They try to use as
many common parts as they can, to make manufacturing cheaper. And when a
new technology comes along, they incorporate it into new models even if
it was first used in a Toyota. The result is quite different from a
nested hierarchy, and the hierarchical features do result from
limitations that an omnipotent creator just doesn't have. Now if you
would like to postulate a creator with limited powers and resources, we
could consider your arguments further. Do you want to do that?
Seanpit
> Have you considered that there also may be a flip side to
> that coin, that is something thought to be ideally suited
> turns out not to be once one learns more?
>
> >
> > http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/humaneye.html
> >
>
> How about the problem of detachment that many people face.
> Is this good design? Is there something about haveing a spine
> that makes the inverted retina preferable? Goose bumps are
> no doubt good for mammals with enough fur to take advantage
> of them, but no so good for us yet we get them from the same
> stimuli. Plantaris muscle is obviously good for most of the
> primates, but surely not quite so high up on the "good" scale
> for us.
>
> Whether out of choice or necessity, design wrt to living
> things seems have the same constraints as heredity, do you
> disagree?
I'd say, until you can create something equivalent or better to the
systems of function you are judging, that it is quite arrogant to say
that you know they aren't designed up to par. Beyond this, I say again
that even what you might call a poor design is not evidence against
intelligent activity. I can still detect high-level intelligence in
created systems that are not how I personally would have done things.
As far as some of your specific examples of "bad" or "vestigial"
design, you didn't read my paper on the retina, did you? As far as
goosebumps go, some human races are much hairier than others and would
actually be benefited in a cold environment from erector muscles
attached to their hairs. The insulation benefits don't take much as
the erect hairs help to trap air and keep it from circulating as much
right next to the body. This results in decreased heat loss. There is
a noticeable difference even with little hair. If you don't believe
me, try doing an experiment where you shave one arm and leave the other
with hair on it. Then expose both to a cold environment with a slight
breeze. The one without the hair will get measurable colder. The
ability to make goosebumps only accentuates this advantage - even more
so for those with thicker hair. Beyond this, those people with erector
pilus muscle problems tend to loose their hair. It seems that this
muscle is involved in the heath of the hair itself.
As far as the plantaris muscle, its existence in humans is supportive,
to be sure, and little loss in human function is sustained if it is
lost. However, this does not mean that it is necessarily an
evolutionary left over. Good designs always have a little bit of
redundancy built in and good designers often use maintenance of design
when designing different things with similar functional needs.
These design flaw arguments are interesting though, mostly in how they
keep disappearing over time. The list of supposed design flaws used to
be quite long just 100 years ago. Now a significant percentage of
these have turned out to have selectably beneficial functions. No
longer do doctors remove tonsils or the appendix on a routine basis
"just because". No longer is the coccyx thought to be vestigial. Etc.
In short, this design flaw argument is the weakest argument against ID.
I'm sure you and your friends can do better.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Von R. Smith
Seanpit wrote:
> Von R. Smith wrote:
> > Seanpit wrote:
> > > Von R. Smith wrote:
> > >
> > > > Simply saying that two things have a common origin (or designer) does
> > > > absolutely nothing to predict, or explain, the consistent nested
> > > > hierarchy.
> > >
> > > Sure it does. ID can easily and quite reasonably explain nested
> > > patterns.
> >
> > Sean does not understand the difference between explaining and merely
> > accomodating.
>
> Can you explain how you invent or design things?
Straying off topic, are we? We were discussing an explanation for the
nested hierarchy.
>
> > > Human creations often show such nested hierarchies.
> >
> > How often? Could you give us some examples?
>
> The books on my bookshelf, cars, buildings, language systems, computer
> codes and programs, etc. All these show nested patterns.
Cars and books no more form a consistent nested hierarchy than do Zoe's
sweaters. Perhaps you would care to present the nested hierarchy of
the books on your bookshelf?
Languages are descended from modification from common ancestors without
the benefit of somebody designing them (nobody designed the first or
second Germanic sound shifts, or Verner's law). Ditto computer codes.
So they should form nested hiearchies. And they do, at least to a
greater extent They are not consciously designed, in spite of efforts
to rationalize and language-plan them after the fact.
>
> > > > A history of descent from a common ancestry, with gradual,
> > > > local modification of each lineage, does, regardless of the mechanism
> > > > employed to work those modifications.
> > >
> > > Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
> > > can equally explain nested patterns.
> >
> > How? What is the explanation, Sean?
>
> It is very reasonable to create an interacting system with the use of
> nested patterns. Humans do it all the time.
>
> > > Therefore, nested patters do not
> > > support one position over the other.
> >
> > One can always play the game of "well, God could have made things that
> > way, too, if He wanted to". It doesn't mean that the evidence actually
> > supports your proposal.
>
> It does if the only alternative has no adequate mechanism.
And what, exactly, is the adequate mechanism of intelligent design?
Or are you helping yourself to the assumption that intelligent
designers have magical powers and are not beholden upon physical
mechanisms both to manufacture their artifacts, and to make them work?
That was certainly not the authors' point, nor does their article
support such a point, which is what is what we are discussing here.
And notice how Sean tries to have it both ways here: on one hand,
molecular phylogenies are supposed to present some sort of problem for
evolution; on the other, ToE can accomodate anything. Both statements
cannot be true. But I am sure that he can clear this up.
I seriously doubt that. Can you show me where the authors indicated
that they expected a scallop to be closer to a sea urchin than to a
brine shrimp?
>
> > > This troubling thought led the authors of the
> > > Science article to remark:
> > >
> > > "Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or
> > > tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred
> > > relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap support
> > > (percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether current
> > > models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate to successfully
> > > compensate for long branch attraction between the animal phyla. Without
> > > knowing the correct tree ahead of time, this question will be hard to
> > > answer. However, current models of DNA substitution usually fit the
> > > data poorly . . ."
> >
> > And, once again, the authors are emphasizing that the problems in the
> > study are particular to 18S rRNA.
>
> Exactly . . . and what do you think the above quoted paragraphs about
> tarantulas and urchins and scallops were referring to?
Well, according to your lead-in, they are supposed to be referring to a
general problem with molecular phylogenies. But I don't see that here.
>
> > > There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly
> > > used phylogenic tracing genes and proteins. For example, mammalian and
> > > amphibian "luteinizing hormone - releasing hormone" (LHRH) is
> > > identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different
> > > type of LHRH. Are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than
> > > to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees.
> > > Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular
> > > situation.
> >
> > ...which is why you don't attach too much importance to a single
> > phylogeny based on one gene.
>
> The point remains. It can very much depend upon what phylogenetic
> marker you choose as to what tree of life you will assume.
Trees are not assumed. They fall directly out of the mathematical
analysis.
But they agree to a statistically significant degree that cannot be
imputed to chance. You have presented no problem or discrepancy that
cannot reasonably be attributed to random error. If I am correct about
this, than molecular phylogenies that use a suite of markers rather
than just a single one will tend to reduce those anomalies, and produce
fewer anomalies. What would your prediction be?
I did. You didn't give an example, you merely re-stated your
assertion.
>
> > >
> > > > Let's do the same exercise with a sea urchin, vis-a-vis a sea anemone
> > > > and a giraffe. Again, to which organism would you expect the sea
> > > > urchin to be genetically closer, based on the notion of a common
> > > > designer?
> > >
> > > See above . . .
> >
> > I did. You didn't answer the question. Which one should be closer,
> > Sean?
>
> You don't understand. A common designer could make different aspects
> of different types of creatures more or less similar at will. The ToE
> can also accommodate more or less similarities without a problem.
> The
> phylogenetic trees in the ToE change all the time and the ToE is never
> doubted or fundamentally questioned. You see, mainstream scientists
> who believe in the ToE are no better at making such predictions of
> similarities based on this or that parameter ahead of time than are
> those scientists who believe in ID.
The answer you were looking for is: "I have no idea how to predict
which one might be more similar."
And notice how Sean uses the "small amounts of uncertainty equals great
gobs of uncertainty" argument. Because not all phylogenetic trees
agree 100%, there arent really any phylogenetic relationships to
address. Because not all phylogenetic trees agree 100% in the
evolutionary relationships they suggest, evolutionary biologists are no
better at making predictions than IDers, who as Sean has just
demonstrated cannot make any predictions at all, not even wrong ones.
an...@sci.sci
A theory must do more than that. It must also prohibit what we do *not*
see. Any explanatory theory must say what typically can/might happen or
does happen, and what cannot happen or should be exceedingly rare. For
example, a law of thermodynamics says that heat usually flows from hot
places to cold places, and is exceedingly unlikely to ever flow in the
reverse direction. We see heat flowing hot-to-cold, but never
cold-to-hot, which validates both halves of the theory.
A theory that just says "anything can happen" is worthless, because in
the absense of any theory whatsoever we already have such indifference
to what can or cannot happen. In terms of Shannon's information theory,
if we have a set of all possible messages (restricted to some alphabet,
which in science would corresponding to all possible readings of some
instrument we're using for measuring evidence), then with no a priori
theory that restricts messages, we have no idea what message we might
receive, and any message whatsoever (within that restricted alphabet)
is equally "reasonable". Then if we posit some theory, we expecte that
theory to predict that some messages are much more likely than others.
If a theory simply repeats that anything can happen, all messages are
equally likely, that's not any useful theory.
> Is one or the other machanism incapable of explaining what we see?
Darwin's theory says that we'd expect to see a preponderance of
geographic/temporal relationships whereby the earlier species begats
the later species which is only slightly different, mostly in
superficial late-development features, not in early-development gross
changes. Darwin's theory says that species are pretty much separate,
whereby features are inherited down the begatting line of descent, not
in random mixtures from otherwise unrelated species. In the case of
horizontal gene transfer, so-far the theory says only a small part of
the genome is transferred in this way.
Darwin's theory says we expect *not* to see haphazard patterns whereby
a species in Australia inherits primarily from three earlier species,
one in North America, one in Europe, and one from a deepsea vent
community. Also we expect *not* to see such a chimera from species that
appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. For example, we don't
expect to see a cross between a pterosaur and a trilobyte to suddenly
appear in 15 million BC, because both parent species went extinct long
before that. Also Darwin's theory says we'd never see an advanced form
of life that has *no* earler similar forms whatsoever, except in very
early layers of sediment where there simply aren't enough earlier
fossils of any type to get any definitive information one way or the
other.
The fossil record indeed matches Darwin's theory, both in what sorts of
old/new relationships are commonly present and what sorts of
relationships are never seen and the absence of recent life with no
apparent ancestors whatsoever.
The theory that some supernatural power with infinite capability made
all life per His own design, with no constraints as to heridity or
descent or natural means, says "anything whatsoever can happen", and
provides no restriction as to anything not happening, so it's worthless
as a theory. It's basically the same as not having any theory at all.
Now suppose we posit that there's some supernatural power that has very limited
capability. This power survives for billions of years, but can do only
little tinkering here and there in subtle areas such as making tiny changes
to DNA here and there, and is incapable of transporting full living beings
or large segments of DNA more than a few hundred miles per million years,
and is incapable of preserving old DNA from ancient organisms and transplanting
it into new organisms millions of years later. All transplants must be
local in both space and time, and all de novo creation of DNA sequences
must be very small. Well the fossil record does indeed seem to match
that theory, just about as well as it matches Darwin's theory, so the
two are indistinguishable in explanatory power, both what is explained
and what is prohibited. But Darwin's theory is simpler, just natural
stuff with no super power, and in laboratory experiments we've observed
Darwinian random-mutation and natural-selection happening, with no
evidence of any outside force tampering with our experiments, so
Darwin's theory seems better than the intelligent but limited-power
tinkerer theory.
If the IDiots want to posit that it most definitely wasn't the God of
the Bible that did the tinkering, but rather a very limited being as
described in the previous paragraph, I wouldn't mind that theory being
presented for consideration. Would Behe go along with that? (No!!!!!)
.
B Richardson
> B Richardson wrote:
>
>> Have you considered that there also may be a flip side to
>> that coin, that is something thought to be ideally suited
>> turns out not to be once one learns more?
>>
>> >
>> > http://naturalselection.0catch.com/Files/humaneye.html
>> >
>>
>> How about the problem of detachment that many people face.
>> Is this good design? Is there something about haveing a spine
>> that makes the inverted retina preferable? Goose bumps are
>> no doubt good for mammals with enough fur to take advantage
>> of them, but no so good for us yet we get them from the same
>> stimuli. Plantaris muscle is obviously good for most of the
>> primates, but surely not quite so high up on the "good" scale
>> for us.
>>
>> Whether out of choice or necessity, design wrt to living
>> things seems have the same constraints as heredity, do you
>> disagree?
>
> I'd say, until you can create something equivalent or better to the
> systems of function you are judging, that it is quite arrogant to say
> that you know they aren't designed up to par.
Can't say that I could design something better than wisdom teeth,
I would have simply omitted them. Mine were impacted and
had to be surgically removed. Without modern surgical techniques
this would have most likely led to abcess, and possibly lethal
infection. I most certainly would have routed the laryngeal
nerve differently. Regrowing of amputated limbs is on the wish
list. I think I probably would have omitted the appendix too, and
placed some lymphatic tissue elswhere in the intestine. I think
I would have taken some HLC alleles from livestock, thats where
the killers seem to be coming from.
Back to my point, out of choice or necessity design seems to
have the same constraints as inheritance. Conceding design for
arguments sake, it could be that it was the very best design
possible given constraints or choices, but it sure looks like
what common descent would produce.
> Beyond this, I say again
> that even what you might call a poor design is not evidence against
> intelligent activity. I can still detect high-level intelligence in
> created systems that are not how I personally would have done things.
> As far as some of your specific examples of "bad" or "vestigial"
> design, you didn't read my paper on the retina, did you?
Sure did. I see what appear to criticisms of how the eye couldn't
come from scratch. I see nothing to address common descent. Argue
if you wish that it couldn't come from scratch, are vertebrate eyes
similar but differ in a manner expected to be produced by descent with
modification?
> As far as
> goosebumps go, some human races are much hairier than others and would
> actually be benefited in a cold environment from erector muscles
> attached to their hairs. The insulation benefits don't take much as
> the erect hairs help to trap air and keep it from circulating as much
> right next to the body. This results in decreased heat loss. There is
> a noticeable difference even with little hair. If you don't believe
> me, try doing an experiment where you shave one arm and leave the other
> with hair on it. Then expose both to a cold environment with a slight
> breeze. The one without the hair will get measurable colder. The
> ability to make goosebumps only accentuates this advantage - even more
> so for those with thicker hair.
I don't know, I think unless you are really hairy increasing the
surface area of the skin just makes the problem worse. How it
feels may simply be a sensory issue (ever cut the wiskers off of
a cat?). Its not just the cold response either. The flight or fight
response causes goosebumps too. Certainly if it is an advantage
it is more so for hairier individuals, but I don't see that
supportive of the point you're trying to make.
> Beyond this, those people with erector
> pilus muscle problems tend to loose their hair. It seems that this
> muscle is involved in the heath of the hair itself.
>
Interesting. Maybe if I can get lots of goosebumps and keep
them in shape I can prevent or delay baldness.
>
> As far as the plantaris muscle, its existence in humans is supportive,
> to be sure, and little loss in human function is sustained if it is
> lost. However, this does not mean that it is necessarily an
> evolutionary left over.
Well, were really talking common descent here. How do you tell
that if the design was copied, or if we simply inherited it
but with a blessing? If the design was copied it was done
so in a manner consistant with inheritance.
> Good designs always have a little bit of
> redundancy built in and good designers often use maintenance of design
> when designing different things with similar functional needs.
> These design flaw arguments are interesting though, mostly in how they
> keep disappearing over time. The list of supposed design flaws used to
> be quite long just 100 years ago. Now a significant percentage of
> these have turned out to have selectably beneficial functions. No
> longer do doctors remove tonsils or the appendix on a routine basis
> "just because". No longer is the coccyx thought to be vestigial. Etc.
>
But in a clade do all these perform the same function well, or
have some of them been co-opted for other uses?
>
>
> In short, this design flaw argument is the weakest argument against ID.
> I'm sure you and your friends can do better.
>
There's plenty of examples where better designs were available.
There certainly is some type of constraint on the designs, and
this constraint is suspiciously consistant with descent.
>
> Sean Pitman
> www.DetectingDesign.com
>
Mark Isaak
<seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>John Harshman wrote:
>
>> "Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
>> anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
>> seeing.
>
>That's true.
Actually, it is not, at least not if you are referring to a moral and
sane designer. Life shows great variety in styles and multiple
cross-purposes. None of that is compatible with a single deliberate
designer. If life is designed, then the evidence shows conclusively
that the deisgner was not a monotheistic god. And yes, we should
teach that in science classes. Students need to know what sort of
consequences such ideas have.
>> It's not an explanation at all.
>
>That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
>that it is not detectable. It is.
Then why do IDists shy away from the implications of detecting it?
Almost all promoters of ID follow a religion which is manifestly in
opposition to ID.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
Mark Isaak
<seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>
>John Harshman wrote:
>
>> One more thing: though I get tired of noting this, Sean has once again
>> confused common descent with natural selection. His theory seems to be
>> that if natural selection can be shown to be inadequate to explain
>> observed differences between species (i.e., those "neutral gaps" he's
>> always on about) then this is somehow evidence against common descent
>> and in favor of separate creation. No, it isn't.
>
>Ah . . . I hear this all the time. The problem is that there is no
>other mechanism besides natural selection or intelligent design.
and genetic drift and Lamarckianism and preformation and surely many
others.
>The only way to detect intelligent design is to show that no
>non-intelligent process is reasonably capable of achieving a given
>phenomenon.
Actually, that is a sure way *not* to detect design. It is impossible
to show that no non-intelligent process can produce a phenomenon.
To detect design, you must look for the characteristics of design, not
the absense of some other small number of mechanisms. What you are
finding is holes in your own understanding. That is not design, and
it certainly is not intelligent.
John Harshman
Exactly. "Common origin" covers both separate creation and common
descent, and so says absolutely nothing relevant to the question at
hand. It avoids the question through ambiguity. I was attempting to
disambiguate.
John Harshman
> John Harshman wrote:
>
>>Seanpit wrote:
>>
>>
>>>John Harshman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>"Common design" is of course capable of "explaining" anything we see,
>>>>anything we don't see, or anything we could imagine seeing or not
>>>>seeing.
>>>
>>>That's true.
>>>
>>>
>>>>It's not an explanation at all.
>>>
>>>That's not true. Just because ID can explain everything doesn't mean
>>>that it is not detectable. It is. It is often the best explaination
>>>for a given phenomenon - one which you yourself would agree in many
>>>cases.
>>
>>Hold on a minute. You are conflating design (and manufacture) by humans
>>with design (etc.) by an omnipotent being who can do anything. That
>>omnipotence makes all the difference. Human design is *not* capable of
>>explaining anything, just certain things. Which is why it's capable of
>>explaining those certain things. If it explained everything, it too
>>would explain nothing.
>
>
> So, what cannot be explained by human-level intelligence is somehow
> within the realm of mindless nature? - which is capable of explaining
> everything?
Nope. I make no such claim.
> You see, you evolutionists also believe in an omnipotent
> power in the form of mindless Nature who somehow has the ability to
> create all the we see around and even within each one of us. Somehow
> you think the mindless is more creative than the mindful.
Nope. I make no such claim.
> The fact of the matter is that the theory of ID doesn't say that the
> Designer of Life is omnipotent. It doesn't say anything like this at
> all. As far as ID Theory goes, the Designer could be anyone with a
> high level of intelligence. Even human level intelligence can do a lot
> of things that we see in living things. We are learning a lot more
> these days about how to manipulate the very codes of life itself on
> higher and higher levels.
Yes, ID is careful never to specify what it's talking about, or to make
its creator subject to examination. But if you will recall, we got into
this by having you explain the reason for nested hierarchy. That
explanation doesn't just *allow* a limited designer, it *requires* one.
But you are clearly unwilling to follow the implications of your own
reasoning.
> You don't detect high-level intelligence by knowing the limitations of
> the intelligent agent or agents, but by knowing the limitations of
> non-intelligent processes that don't even come close to producing a
> given phenomenon. If you go to a alien planet and find an spacecraft
> or a city or even a perfectly carved granite cube, you can easily
> propose intelligent design even if the objects look nothing like what
> we have created here on Earth.
I doubt it. If they didn't look something like what we have created, we
wouldn't recognize them as products. I am, however, not very interested
in the question of inteligent design. What I'm interested in is common
descent vs. separate creation, and almost everything you say is
irrelevant to this question.
>>>Forensic science is based on the detection of ID. So is the
>>>detection of cheating in Las Vegas. What if some government official
>>>kept winning the California Lottery. How long would you accept this
>>>without wondering about ID?
>>
>>Human ID. Big difference.
>
> Not at all. There is no fundamental difference. The only difference is
> in degree. Just because someone is smarter than you and can make
> better stuff than you doesn't mean that the stuff that they make cannot
> be recognized as requiring a great deal of intelligence. To suggest
> that one must conclude a mindless process in such a situation actually
> comes across as a bit humerous to me.
I make no such claim.
>>>>The question is whether you have
>>>>a real explanation of nested hierarchy, other than common descent, that
>>>>makes any sense. If so, I haven't seen it.
>>>
>>>ID *is* a real explanation that makes plenty of sense - especially
>>>given the lack of a non-ID mechansim.
>>
>>Once more you are confusing common descent with natural selection.
>
> Once more you are erroneously trying to separate common descent from
> random mutation and natural selection. You just can't do this. To
> avoid the conclusion of the involvement of ID, the notion of common
> descent, by definition, requires a mindless mechanism such as random
> mutation and natural selection over time.
I have never said that common descent must avoid involvement of ID.
> There just is no other
> viable mindless mechanism. As soon as you start using ID as part of
> the theory, at that point, it is no longer common descent, but
> independent creation of something that would not exist without ID.
You are disposing of common descent by defining it in an odd way. Nobody
says that common descent involving intelligence isn't common descent,
except you. Tell me, are different varieties of apples related through
common descent, despite the intelligence of human plant breeders? Or
were the appple varieties created separately?
>>For
>>the life of me I can't understand why you are incapable of understanding
>>the independence of these concepts.
>
> Interesting, isn't it, that in your own explanation of how these
> concepts could be independent you yourself use ID.
The reason should be obvious. I'm trying to show that ID and common
descent are not incompatible. What better way than to explain a theory
that combines them?
>>If ID is a real explanation for
>>nested hierarchy, please tell me how.
>
> ID can and often does created nested patterns.
Show me a nested hierarchy created in this way that doesn't gain its
nesting from a form of common descent.
Ernest Major
R. Smith <trak...@gmail.com> writes
>
>>
>> There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly
>> used phylogenic tracing genes and proteins. For example, mammalian and
>> amphibian "luteinizing hormone - releasing hormone" (LHRH) is
>> identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different
>> type of LHRH. Are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than
>> to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees.
>> Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular
>> situation.
>
>...which is why you don't attach too much importance to a single
>phylogeny based on one gene.
>
Particularly since this data is incorrect; the original workers were
misled by paralogy.
<URL:http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/328028
feb7c83228/770380cca6eb158e?lnk=st&q=gonadotropin+group%3Atalk.origins>
--
alias Ernest Major
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.4/175 - Release Date: 18/11/2005
B Richardson
>
> Ernest Major wrote:
>> In message <1132792866.0...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
>> Seanpit <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> writes
>> >
>> >Yep - both independent creation with the use of ID and common ancestry
>> >can equally explain nested patterns. Therefore, nested patters do not
>> >support one position over the other.
>> >
>> If one theory predicts an observation, and another merely allows it,
>> then the observation is usually taken as supporting the first theory;
>> otherwise one finds oneself sinking into the tarpit of epistemological
>> nihilism.
>
> Well, the problem is that intelligently designed systems have a
> tendency to show nested patterns.
Only superficially. In any kind of comprehensive evaluation you
get networks as opposed to branching trees.
> Of course, the theory of common
> descent also predicts the creation of nested patterns. Given adequate
> mechanisms for both, I myself would tend toward the notion of common
> descent since there would be absolutely no way to support the notion of
> ID to the exclusion of common descent. However, given that the
> mechanism for common descent of certain types of functions and certain
> types of variations in living things is not adequate, only ID is left
> with an adequate mechanism to explain such high-level functional
> differences.
>
Common descent doesn't require the mechanism to be identified per se.
Its an end result that doesn't strictly require natural selection.
Controlled breeding experiments or nucleotide fairies could produce
the same.
>
> Of course, not all creatures are different enough to go beyond the
> mechanism that does work for common descent. Many differences are
> easily explainable with the use of evolutionary mechanisms. However,
> many key differences are not explainable using Darwinian mechanisms
> alone - not even close. At this point, there is only one viable
> alternative.
But where lies what isn't explainable using Darwinian mechanisms?
Would it be inside a group like artiodactyla? How about outside
artiodactyla but within the mammals? Is phylogeny due to design a
seamless extension of phylogeny due to descent?
>
> You see, you have to believe in the mechanism in order to believe in
> the ToE. If the mechanisms fails, so does the ToE. If the ToE fails at
> any point, in an overwhelming way of course, the only tenable option
> one has left is what?
>
Nucleotide fairies.
Von R. Smith
Seanpit wrote:
> Von R. Smith wrote:
> > Seanpit wrote:
> > > Von R. Smith wrote:
a follow-up here
<snip>
> On top of this, it is good to note that whales used to be thought of as
> evolving from mesonychids (hoofed carnivores). However, DNA analysis
> was inconsistent with this notion based on morphologic analysis.
> Because of the DNA analysis and additional morphologic discoveries,
> whales are now thought to have evolved from artiodactyls instead. Of
> course, artiodactyls are the same group in which giraffes are
> classified. But, this is a rather new and fairly dramatic change to
> the ToE. Oh, but wait, evolution can accommodate just about anything.
> Forgive me. I forgot ; )
Sean, of course, does not tell you that mesonychids were also
ungulates, and that artiodactyls are generally believed to be their
closest living relatives. In fact, one would *still* expect whales to
be genetically closer to artiodactyls, such as giraffes, than to any
other living clade, even were they descended from mesonychids. So for
the purposes of my question earlier, the prediction, far from
undergoing "a rather new and fairly dramatic change", remains exactly
the same: whales will stil be closer to giraffes than they are to
dugongs/manatees. And AIUI it wasn't primarily DNA or morphological
studies of whales that weighed the discussion in favor of the
artiodactyl hypothesis; it was the discovery of more complete Pakicetus
fossils, which showed that Pakicetus, originally believed on the basis
of incomplete evidence to be a mesonychid, was actually a primitive
artiodactyl.
> I mean really, if it were found that
> additional DNA and morphologic features actually make whales more
> closely related to dugong/manatee ancestors, then evolutionists really
> would have no significant problem now would you?
>
> So, you see, the ToE can explain everything just like ID can. It can
> explain nesting and non-nesting. It can explain this tree or that tree
> as the wind blows. Really then, it all boils down to mechanism. Does
> the ToE have an adequate mechanism? ID certainly does, but does the
> ToE?
I see no reason to entertain your question here until you've answered
mine: Based on ID, do you expect whales to be genetically more similar
to manatees/dugongs, or to giraffes?
There are basically three possible answers:
1) manatees/dugongs
2) giraffes
3) equal or inconclusive degree of similarity
You will have answered my question when you tell me which of the three
you expect, and what your basis is for that answer.
So which one is it?
<snip>
>
> You don't understand. A common designer could make different aspects
> of different types of creatures more or less similar at will. The ToE
> can also accommodate more or less similarities without a problem.
Only to a degree. Your suggestions that the accuracy and flexibility
of ToE predictions and the vacuous claims of ID are somehow equivalent
only if you fail completely to distinguish between adjusting a
prediction and completely abandoning one in favor of a completely
different hypothesis.
> The
> phylogenetic trees in the ToE change all the time and the ToE is never
> doubted or fundamentally questioned.
The basic outline of the tree has not really changed at all, Sean.
There is an important distinction between difference in detail and
disagreement about basics.
> You see, mainstream scientists
> who believe in the ToE are no better at making such predictions of
> similarities based on this or that parameter ahead of time than are
> those scientists who believe in ID.
That is not true. No proponent of separate creation ever predicted
that there would be *any* evidence connecting whales with *any*
particular terrestrial mammal group. In fact, most Creationists like
Gish scoffed at such an idea, and some are still in denial about it.
On the other hand, the proposal that whales were descended from a
primitive ungulate was proposed more than one hundred years ago, and
turned out to be correct. Reassigning whale ancestors from mesonychids
to primitive artiodactyls is not the sort of radical change you are
implying that it is; the two groups are very closely allied.
Suggesting that the two proposals are comparable in their ability to
make accurate predictions is laughable.
B Richardson
With human ID somebody somewhere has, or at least did have, detailed
knowledge of the how and why it was done. Clocks, motors and such
look like things that humans design, and detailed or at least plausible
information about how it was done is accessible. Rabbits on the other
hand replicate by natural processes so it would seem every rabbit
currently extant is the result of such. Rabbits just don't look like
things humans design.
Seanpit
B Richardson wrote:
> Common descent doesn't require the mechanism to be identified per se.
> Its an end result that doesn't strictly require natural selection.
> Controlled breeding experiments or nucleotide fairies could produce
> the same.
Outside of ID, common descent does require random mutation and natural
selection. Controlled breeding experiments are not evolution in that
nothing new is added to the gene pool with the use of Mendelian
variation alone and they are the result of common descent. The use of
"nucleotide fairies" involved the use of ID, which just proves my
point.
>
> >
> > Of course, not all creatures are different enough to go beyond the
> > mechanism that does work for common descent. Many differences are
> > easily explainable with the use of evolutionary mechanisms. However,
> > many key differences are not explainable using Darwinian mechanisms
> > alone - not even close. At this point, there is only one viable
> > alternative.
>
> But where lies what isn't explainable using Darwinian mechanisms?
> Would it be inside a group like artiodactyla? How about outside
> artiodactyla but within the mammals? Is phylogeny due to design a
> seamless extension of phylogeny due to descent?
Every living thing has systems of function within itself that simply
cannot be evolved with the use of random mutation and function-based
selection. That's where Darwinian mechanisms fail miserably beyond
very low levels of functional complexity. Specifically, those
functions that require more than a few hundred fairly specified
residues to achieve minimum selectability never evolve in real time and
those that require just a few thousand would never evolve even given
trillions of years of average time.
> > You see, you have to believe in the mechanism in order to believe in
> > the ToE. If the mechanisms fails, so does the ToE. If the ToE fails at
> > any point, in an overwhelming way of course, the only tenable option
> > one has left is what?
>
> Nucleotide fairies.
You've just employed ID to solve the problem - my point exactly.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
B Richardson wrote:
> >> Could you *please* avoid confusing Human ID with Other ID? No, they are
> >> *not* the same.
> >
> > How are they different given the same intelligence level or greater?
> > How would you know?
>
> With human ID somebody somewhere has, or at least did have, detailed
> knowledge of the how and why it was done.
That's not true. Take the crop circles in England, for example. When
they first came out, no one had any idea who made them or why.
However, they still were obviously designed with the use of fairly
high-level intelligence. The same thing can be said if you visited an
alien planet and found a perfectly symmetrical granite cube with
perfectly carved circles in the face of each square on the cube. You
would have no idea who made it or why, but it would be quite clear that
it was intelligently designed.
> Clocks, motors and such
> look like things that humans design, and detailed or at least plausible
> information about how it was done is accessible.
Humans have also been known to design things that do not look designed
- like amorphous rocks. Why do these creations not look designed when
they were in fact designed? Because, they also look like things
mindless processes can create as well. That's the only way to detect
the involvement of ID over non-ID processes - by knowing the limits of
non-ID processes.
> Rabbits on the other
> hand replicate by natural processes so it would seem every rabbit
> currently extant is the result of such. Rabbits just don't look like
> things humans design.
But rabbits and other such mechanical machines do look like things
humans design. What if we humans made self-replicating robots that
reproduce in a way that is "natural" to them? Would it be impossible
for anyone to tell that their ultimate origin was in fact the result of
ID - even if their original creators had since vanished from the
planet? Well, perhaps for evolutionists it would be, but come on now .
. .
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Seanpit
Ah, but "common origin" can be separated from the "different origins".
If two different creators created two different things independently,
then it would no doubt be clear that they do not share a common origin.
Living things are all similar enough so that it is quite clear that
they all share some sort of common origin. We both agree on this
point. It is quite clear that is what I was trying to say in my
original statement.
Obviously you believe that this "sort" of common origin is the result
of common descent. Certainly it could be, but I think you fail to
consider that it may not be. This "sort" of common origin could also
be the result of independent creation of at least main categories of
interdependent "kinds" of creatures. It is actually quite reasonable
for a very intelligent creator of a whole interdependent ecosystem to
create in a nested pattern with variations and sub-variations and
sub-subvariations etc. on certain main themes. A classic example of
humans doing this comes in the form of computer system software, like
MS-Windows operating systems. Beyond this, it is both clearly possible
and quite reasonable to create a system like this. It is ingenious
actually - very cleaver and beautifully creative. While common descent
could also give rise to such a pattern of creativity, it simply is not
the only way or even the most likely way given the lack of an adequate
evolutionary mechanism.
Oh, but you argue that intelligence could have been evolved over time
and that this is common descent with intelligent modification over
time, which would also result in the same pattern. I'm fine with that.
My only point, at this point, is to show that ID is required to
produce the degree of variability at high levels of functional
complexity that we see in living things. The nested patterns that we
see do not overcome this requirement for ID.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
John Harshman
This is not necessarily true. There could be multiple creators working
from some kind of common framework -- perhaps an agreement of
convenience. In fact the multiple creator idea accounts for some
otherwise puzzling phenomena. You can't rule it out so easily.
> Obviously you believe that this "sort" of common origin is the result
> of common descent. Certainly it could be, but I think you fail to
> consider that it may not be. This "sort" of common origin could also
> be the result of independent creation of at least main categories of
> interdependent "kinds" of creatures.
OK, let's look at that idea. What main categories are you talking about?
> It is actually quite reasonable
> for a very intelligent creator of a whole interdependent ecosystem to
> create in a nested pattern with variations and sub-variations and
> sub-subvariations etc. on certain main themes.
Just saying that doesn't provide any evidence.
> A classic example of
> humans doing this comes in the form of computer system software, like
> MS-Windows operating systems.
MS-Windows operating systems do not form a nested hierarchy. If you
think they do, what is it? (I don't know how you would determine that
anyway, since the code is secret.)
> Beyond this, it is both clearly possible
> and quite reasonable to create a system like this. It is ingenious
> actually - very cleaver and beautifully creative. While common descent
> could also give rise to such a pattern of creativity, it simply is not
> the only way or even the most likely way given the lack of an adequate
> evolutionary mechanism.
Repeating the assertion is not an argument, nor is telling me how clever
it is. And once again you have confused common descent with natural
selection.
> Oh, but you argue that intelligence could have been evolved over time
> and that this is common descent with intelligent modification over
> time, which would also result in the same pattern. I'm fine with that.
That's fortunate. So why are you resisting this obvious explanation of
the data so strongly? You have no other explanation. You have never
progressed beyond vague statements about separate creation of nested
hierarchies being "quite intelligent" or "beautifully creative" or
ecologically necessary, none of which survive close examination. Why not
just accept common descent?
> My only point, at this point, is to show that ID is required to
> produce the degree of variability at high levels of functional
> complexity that we see in living things. The nested patterns that we
> see do not overcome this requirement for ID.
I don't agree with you, but I don't care either. You have your
obsessions, and I have mine. Mine is common descent. If we can agree
that no other hypothesis fits the data, that's all I want here.
John Harshman
> B Richardson wrote:
>
>
>>Common descent doesn't require the mechanism to be identified per se.
>>Its an end result that doesn't strictly require natural selection.
>>Controlled breeding experiments or nucleotide fairies could produce
>>the same.
>
>
> Outside of ID, common descent does require random mutation and natural
> selection.
Wrong on two counts. First, nobody said "outside of ID". The definition
of common descent does not include a proviso that it's "outside of ID".
Second, you could easily have common descent by entirely natural
processes with no selection at all. That wouldn't explain some observed
features of organisms (adaptations, in particular), but that too isn't
part of the definition.
> Controlled breeding experiments are not evolution in that
> nothing new is added to the gene pool with the use of Mendelian
> variation alone and they are the result of common descent.
They are evolution, since evolution doesn't require additions to the
gene pool. And of course controlled breeding frequently does make use of
new mutations. However, you are missing the point, which is that
controlled breeding is both ID and common descent, disproving your
claims that they are incompatible.
> The use of
> "nucleotide fairies" involved the use of ID, which just proves my
> point.
That proves nothing except that ID and common descent are compatible. I
believe you have now, finally, agreed to that in another post. So you
can dispense with all your arguments that the insufficiency of natural
selection (alleged) disproves common descent.
>>>Of course, not all creatures are different enough to go beyond the
>>>mechanism that does work for common descent. Many differences are
>>>easily explainable with the use of evolutionary mechanisms. However,
>>>many key differences are not explainable using Darwinian mechanisms
>>>alone - not even close. At this point, there is only one viable
>>>alternative.
>>
>>But where lies what isn't explainable using Darwinian mechanisms?
>>Would it be inside a group like artiodactyla? How about outside
>>artiodactyla but within the mammals? Is phylogeny due to design a
>>seamless extension of phylogeny due to descent?
>
>
> Every living thing has systems of function within itself that simply
> cannot be evolved with the use of random mutation and function-based
> selection. That's where Darwinian mechanisms fail miserably beyond
> very low levels of functional complexity. Specifically, those
> functions that require more than a few hundred fairly specified
> residues to achieve minimum selectability never evolve in real time and
> those that require just a few thousand would never evolve even given
> trillions of years of average time.
>
>
>>>You see, you have to believe in the mechanism in order to believe in
>>>the ToE. If the mechanisms fails, so does the ToE. If the ToE fails at
>>>any point, in an overwhelming way of course, the only tenable option
>>>one has left is what?
>>
>>Nucleotide fairies.
>
> You've just employed ID to solve the problem - my point exactly.
Sorry, not your point. He could have said "effects of use and disuse" or
"the vital principle" or "morphogenetic fields" too. Intelligence is not
the only alternative hypothesis of mechanism, certainly not logically
and certainly not historically. But the point, which you keep missing,
is that it doesn't matter. Common descent as a hypothesis stands or
falls on its own evidence, and the mechanism of change is irrelevant.