Stephen Meyer: The DNA Enigma

[Numerous]

"This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.

The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA
molecule acquire this precise sequencing that allows it to direct
these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
which is the question of the origin of life itself....

When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
life."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbluTDb1Nfs&feature=related

[jillery]

You claimed to have properly disqualified chance and necessity as
explanations to the origin of information, but you failed to check out
ID, and let it win by default. This is what's called a false
trichotomy.

[Ron O]

What are the guys that ran the teach ID scam doing to further our
understanding? Meyer was obviously lying in the last quote that you
put up with his religious denials so what good is putting up this lame
junk? Is anything coming out of their efforts? Denial doesn't
accomplish very much. What is their alternative and how are they
trying to determine if it is any type of alternative at all?

What happened to all the IDiot rubes that believed these guys that
they had the ID science to teach in the public schools (They even
tried to run the bait and switch on the Dover rubes). You can go to
the Discovery Institute web site and see that they continue to claim
that they have the scientific theory of ID to teach in the public
schools. So where is the ID science? Why don't they apply the ID
science to this issue and accomplish something? Where have they ever
added to our understanding of nature? 100% failure of their type of
ID notions is just that, 100%. Demonstrate otherwise and then explain
why the wonderful ID science isn't being put forward whenever they
have to come up with the ID science to teach, and instead run the bait
and switch on any rube stupid and ignorant enough to have believed
them. Why do they not even mention ID as part of any controversy in
their switch scam that they give the rubes instead of any ID science?

Ron Okimoto

[John Harshman]

Numerous wrote:
>
> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.

Thanks for spending a whole paragraph telling everyone what you aren't
talking about. That's very helpful, though it seems a highly incomplete
list, as you aren't talking about spaghetti or watermelon either.

> The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
> Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
> origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA
> molecule acquire this precise sequencing that allows it to direct
> these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
> closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
> which is the question of the origin of life itself....

Could we have a definition of "information" here? Because there is no
problem explaining its origin under the usual definition. Any increase
in length, for example, is an increase in information. What you really
mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
mutation.

> When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
> on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
> infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
> each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
> shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
> be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
> life."

Better look again. So who exactly is "Numerous"? Stephen Meyer, quoting
himself? Or just a fan?

[Kalkidas]

Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
seems more akin to "something, something...the force".

[pnyikos]

On Jul 18, 9:32�am, Numerous <numer...@address.invalid> wrote:
> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
>
> The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
> Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
> origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA
> molecule acquire this precise sequencing that allows it to direct
> these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
> closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
> which is the question of the origin of life itself....

The standard explanation is that RNA came first, and by a process
resembling natural selection, certain RNA enzymes called "ribozymes"
evolved to reverse transcribe other RNA molecules into DNA.

As to where RNA came from, that's still a stumbling block because of
the huge amounts of phosphorus-containing-organic-compounds "backbone"
that seems so hard to come by in prebiotic synthesis. As world-class
biochemist Leslie Orgel and his coauthor put it:


Scientists interested in the origins of life seem to
divide neatly into two classes. The first, usually
but not always molecular biologists, believe that
RNA must have been the first replicating molecule
and that chemists are exaggerating the difficulty
of nucleotide synthesis. ... The second group
of scientists is much more pessimistic. They believe
that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on
the primitive earth would have been a near miracle.
(The authors subscribe to this latter view). Time
will tell which is correct.
--G. F. Joyce and Leslie E. Orgel, "Prospects
for understanding the origin of the RNA
world," in: _The RNA World_, ed. R. F.
Gesteland and J. F. Atkins, Cold Spring
Harbor Press, 1993, p. 19.

Never at a loss for ideas, Orgel came up with the idea of PNA as a
precursor of RNA. Unfortunately, I have not kept up with the
literature on this; I haven't even had the time to check out the
references in the Wikipedia entry for the late Leslie Orgel.

> When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
> on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
> infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
> each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
> shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
> be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
> life."
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbluTDb1Nfs&feature=related

The "empirical" in this last paragraph is a joke. It will take
centuries for us to be anywhere near having the empirical information
to judge on this matter one way or the other.

As for "theoretical", I think the ideas of Dembski on this matter are
too one-dimensional, too pat, too unleavened by constructive
criticism. Meyer is just the communicator of these ideas, AFAIK.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Attila]

Another problem with all this noise is what do you do for an encore? What
would the content of an ID course be? Are we studying the nature of the
designer? Either it's an attempted refutation of science: (negative and only
reactive) or it's a badly done rehash of the bits of science that don't
conflict with superstition. Can you indicate would be a possible research
project in your intelligent design paradigm?..... deathly silence........

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:33:49 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub>:

Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
authority to your pronouncements.

Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
ignorance, isn't especially compelling.

<snip>
--

Bob C.

"Evidence confirming an observation is
evidence that the observation is wrong."
- McNameless

[John Harshman]

But it is an explanation, and according to the ordinary meaning, unless
you think that "natural selection" and "random mutation" are as lacking
in reality as the Force. We know that this known process can increase
adaptation; there are plenty of cases in the literature.

Face it; you were just mimicking my paragraph mindlessly, but you
weren't making any point.

[Kalkidas]

Invoking "natural selection acting on random mutation" doesn't explain
"how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do" any more than
"something, something...the force" does.

It's like saying that Newton's laws acting on random massive particles
"explains" how automobiles came to have all the functions they have.

>
> Face it; you were just mimicking my paragraph mindlessly, but you
> weren't making any point.

Sorry, but I never do anything "mindlessly".

[RAM]

Another Dunning-Kruger data point.

[wiki trix]

Nope. Not even close. How would "Newton's laws acting on random
massive particles" involve the three components of evolution:
inheritance of characteristics, random change, and natural selection?
Newton's laws are about mechanics. Darwin's theory is about evolution.
Now, technological innovation of cars over the last 100 years would be
evolution.

[John Harshman]

Repeating a previous claim isn't an argument.

> It's like saying that Newton's laws acting on random massive particles
> "explains" how automobiles came to have all the functions they have.

But that doesn't explain automobiles, while selection & mutation explain
adaptation. Sure, you have to discuss the specifics of each individual
case, but it's more like saying that the responses of engineers to
public needs explain the functions of automobiles. To my mind, that's a
legitimate though general explanation.

>> Face it; you were just mimicking my paragraph mindlessly, but you
>> weren't making any point.
>
> Sorry, but I never do anything "mindlessly".

Matter of opinion. And perhaps of degree.

[Steven L.]

A theory that's intrigued me, is that the earliest self-replicating
molecules weren't structures of nucleic acids at all, but stacks of
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

Unlike the difficulty of spontaneous synthesis of nucleic acids, PAHs
are already known to be common in the universe, could possibly have
fallen to earth from outer space or formed some other way--and don't
require phosphorus. By varying the molecular structure of the PAHs, you
could spell out a genetic code.

Interestingly, the spacing between PAHs in a stack of them, is about the
same as the spacing between nucleotides in RNA. That hints at the
possibility that PAH stacks were earlier self-replicating molecules,
which later on acted as a substrate on which nucleotides assembled to
form RNA. Eventually, the RNA-based life forms may have driven the
older PAH-based life forms to extinction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis


BTW, in Sagan's book/movie "Cosmos," he speculated about an
extraterrestrial civilization of aliens whose genome was "polycyclic
sulfonyl halides" instead of DNA. Yep, that could work.



--
Steven L.

[Steven L.]

That's why much of abiogenesis is hypotheses rather than theories.



-- Steven L.

[Kalkidas]

Adaptation? Where did that come from? You claimed to offer an
explanation for "how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they
do". Equating "the origin of DNA functions" with "adaptation" seems a
bit off.

Sure, you have to discuss the specifics of each individual
> case, but it's more like saying that the responses of engineers to
> public needs explain the functions of automobiles. To my mind, that's a
> legitimate though general explanation.

I think "natural selection acting on random mutations" is more analogous
to "Newton's laws acting on random massive particles" than it is to "the
responses of engineers to public needs". Or are you becoming more
sympathetic to intelligent design hypotheses?

[Kalkidas]

Yes, I just wish Harshman would admit it.

[UC]

It is my opinion that the secret is so obvious that nobody has thought
of it.

[jillery]

Why? How would it affect your argument in any way?

[pnyikos]

On Jul 18, 5:08�pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:33:49 -0700, the following appeared
> in talk.origins, posted by Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub>:
>
>
>
>
>
> >On 7/18/2012 7:29 AM, John Harshman wrote:

> >> What you really
> >> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
> >> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
> >> mutation.

Not from the beginning of DNA, when I believe there were no protein
enzymes to speak of, and ribozymes doing reverse transcription
"invented" DNA. See my own reply to the original post to this thread.

I wonder whether reverse transcription was a "hopeful monster" having
nothing to do with natural selection acting on random mutation.

> >Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
> >usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
> >seems more akin to "something, something...the force".
>
> Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
> clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
> necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
> meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
> together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
> authority to your pronouncements.

Your insulting comments are a poor substitute for validating what
Harshman wrote. Do you at least have some documentation to show that
Kalkidas doesn't understand these excruciatingly elementary concepts?
[Hint: what he wrote above does NOT qualify.]

Speaking of insulting comments, I have yet to see a satisfactory
documentation from you or anyone else for the sweeping claims you made
about UC on one of the shards of the "transitional" thread:


[nyikos:]
> >What is it with you that makes you think Humpty Dumpty's attitude
> >towards words now is to be adopted by everyone?

[Casanova:]
> That would seem to be actually UC's attitude, since both he
> and Humpty assert their (nonexistent) individual prerogative
> to define word usage.

[nyikos:]
I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, but after seeing torrents of
outrageous misrepresentations of my positions over the years, and
also
of Behe's positions, I must insist on documentation before I buy
this.

> >Oh. Wait. That's not what you are advocating, is it?

> Nope.


> >So what ARE you advocating?


> I'm not "advocating" anything; I'm simply noting, as are
> many here, that UC's assertion that usage change must
> somehow be "approved" (apparently by him, but in any case
> definitely *not* by actual change in usage) before being
> "right", is incorrect.

I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, but...[continue as above].

> And the fact that he airily waves
> away examples of usage changes, even going so far as to deny
> etymological references which show beyond doubt that he's
> wrong, and to attempt repeatedly to claim that the current
> (supposed, but unreferenced) definition of "computer" has
> always been the definition despite specific contradiction of
> that claim in those etymological references, fails to do
> much to advance his agenda.

...see above...
==================== end of excerpt
from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ad6810df10ffb28c

>
> Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
> ignorance, isn't especially compelling.

All arguments can be construed as arguments from incredulity. Paul
Gans even wrote something that could be construed as saying that
atheism and agnosticism are based on arguments from incredulity.

I believe he misspoke, but his words have taken on a life of their
own.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 18, 10:25�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:

>�You can go to

> the Discovery Institute web site and see that they continue to claim
> that they have the scientific theory of ID to teach in the public
> schools.

The people you are addressing cannot do that, because the website
doesn't say they have something suitable for teaching on the public
school level as an alternative to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Only
you, of all people here, has ever claimed that the website says that.

The only argument you've ever given for the website saying that is
your libel that I am a liar, and insane, for not agreeing that the
website says that.

But what it actually says is that if a teacher wants to teach ID [s]he
has a constitutional right to do so.

You spent thousands of lines emphasizing that they do NOT have
teaching material to compete with the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and
puked all over me for not immediately kowtowing to the Phillip Johnson
statement to that effect. I endorsed it many times, but because I
didn't do it on YOUR timetable, you heaped all kinds of insults on me,
and outright libel about me being a liar.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 18, 10:29�am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Numerous wrote:
>
> > "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
> > science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
> > The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
> > Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
> > the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
> > least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
> > and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
> > is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
> > information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
> > the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
>
> Thanks for spending a whole paragraph telling everyone what you aren't
> talking about. That's very helpful, though it seems a highly incomplete
> list, as you aren't talking about spaghetti or watermelon either.

Thanks for letting us know that you think DNA is no more important
than spaghetti and watermelon. :-)

> What you really
> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
> mutation.

You forgot genetic drift, and hopeful monsters. Do you have any
persuasive argument for the first DNA polymerase and the first reverse
transcriptase NOT being hopeful monsters?

Feel free to assume that the first DNA polymerase and the first
reverse trascriptase were ribozymes if that will help your case.

"We have seen exaptation work on the living things around us" is NOT a
persuasive argument.

[pnyikos]

I'm working towards one (see below) but it would have to be on the
university level, bringing together such diverse topics as
biochemisty, space travel, stellar evolution, and preservation of
organisms near absolute zero.

> Are we studying the nature of the
> designer?

I have three alternative sub-hypotheses for the designers, none of
which involve beings of above human intelligence, and only a slightly
more advanced technology (easily attainable within a thousand, perhaps
a hundred years by us).

> Either it's an attempted refutation of science: (negative and only
> reactive) or it's a badly done rehash of the bits of science that don't
> conflict with superstition.

Why badly? I've posted many megabytes on the hypothesis that
directed panspermists are responsible for life on earth, and that they
probably did some intelligent design on the organisms they sent, if
only the modest sort of genetic engineering suggested by Crick:

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981

The "senders" to which Crick refers are hypothetical directed
panspermists: intelligent creatures of almost 4 billion years
ago who sent microorganisms to earth, which according to the
hypothesis had an ocean rich in amino acids and various
other organic materials but no living things as yet. He developed
this hypothesis together with Leslie Orgel. The original
article in which they described this hypothesis is here:

Icarus 19 (1973) 341-346:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/SCBCCP.pdf

They didn't claim directed panspermia
is more likely or less likely than life arising here
spontaneously, precisely because neither of them knew,
nor does anyone living today know what the odds are.

>Can you indicate would be a possible research
> project in your intelligent design paradigm?.....

I can and have, but it's past my usual bedtime and so a rehash and
possible elaboration will have to wait for another day -- and some
show of interest from you.

[pnyikos]

Self-replicating molecules are a far cry from efficient replicators
like prokaryotes, which use a whole battery of enzymes and processes
to replicate themselves.

The big question is, are PAHs able to act as powerful enzymes the way
RNA and polypeptides in suitable form can?

> Unlike the difficulty of spontaneous synthesis of nucleic acids, PAHs
> are already known to be common in the universe, could possibly have
> fallen to earth from outer space or formed some other way--and don't
> require phosphorus. �By varying the molecular structure of the PAHs, you
> could spell out a genetic code.

Is there a place where this last bit is described in detail?

> Interestingly, the spacing between PAHs in a stack of them, is about the
> same as the spacing between nucleotides in RNA. �That hints at the
> possibility that PAH stacks were earlier self-replicating molecules,
> which later on acted as a substrate on which nucleotides assembled to
> form RNA.

But where did those nucleotides come from? AFAIK, there is no
generally recognized synthesis of nucleotides [not to be confused with
purines and pyrimidines] in prebiotic conditions, even after some 60
years of trying.

>�Eventually, the RNA-based life forms may have driven the

> older PAH-based life forms to extinction.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis
>
> BTW, in Sagan's book/movie "Cosmos," he speculated about an
> extraterrestrial civilization of aliens whose genome was "polycyclic
> sulfonyl halides" instead of DNA. �Yep, that could work.

Could it really? In that case, we have a fourth sub-hypothesis as to
what the directed panspermists might have been like. I'm already of
the opinion that this is how earth life began [see my reply to Attila]
and this might strengthen my case further.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

To you, perhaps. But what else is adaptation but the acquiring of
particular functions?

>> Sure, you have to discuss the specifics of each individual
>> case, but it's more like saying that the responses of engineers to
>> public needs explain the functions of automobiles. To my mind, that's a
>> legitimate though general explanation.
>
> I think "natural selection acting on random mutations" is more analogous
> to "Newton's laws acting on random massive particles" than it is to "the
> responses of engineers to public needs". Or are you becoming more
> sympathetic to intelligent design hypotheses?

No, but intelligent design, in the case of cars, is actually an
explanation if we talk about actual, known designers. You are focusing
on irrelevant features of the comparison (intelligent vs. undirected)
instead of the relevant ones (real, observed explanations vs. hopelessly
vague ones).

[John Harshman]

But "came to have the functions they do" isn't about abiogenesis, except
for a very few of the most basic functions, and even then we aren't
seeing them in anything like the form they would have been originally.

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> On Jul 18, 10:29 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> Numerous wrote:
>>
>>> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
>>> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
>>> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
>>> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
>>> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
>>> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
>>> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
>>> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
>>> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
>>> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
>> Thanks for spending a whole paragraph telling everyone what you aren't
>> talking about. That's very helpful, though it seems a highly incomplete
>> list, as you aren't talking about spaghetti or watermelon either.
>
> Thanks for letting us know that you think DNA is no more important
> than spaghetti and watermelon. :-)

Thanks for putting a smiley after an inane comment.

>> What you really
>> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
>> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
>> mutation.
>
> You forgot genetic drift, and hopeful monsters. Do you have any
> persuasive argument for the first DNA polymerase and the first reverse
> transcriptase NOT being hopeful monsters?

Not for you. The concept of hopeful monsters isn't all that coherent. It
would appear to refer to big changes that appear to be fairly adaptive
all in one mutation. And those are much less likely than smaller changes
that begin being only minimally adaptive and then are gradually refined.
Do you know of any real examples of hopeful monsters?

As for drift, it would appear to play only a very small part in
explaining function.

> Feel free to assume that the first DNA polymerase and the first
> reverse trascriptase were ribozymes if that will help your case.

Sure. Start with a ribozyme that does a poor job of making DNA; lots of
errors, slow. Now let it improve though selection. Was that a hopeful
monster?

> "We have seen exaptation work on the living things around us" is NOT a
> persuasive argument.

It shows that a phenomenon exists, which is one step in showing that it
works for the purpose at hand. You may claim that there is some barrier
that prevents exaptation from working in certain cases, of course. Do
you want to hypothesize such a barrier?

[pnyikos]

On Jul 18, 6:48�pm, Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub> wrote:

Nor do I. See my challenge to Harshman and my comments to Attila for
something you might like to wrap your mind around.

Peter Nyikos

[Ron O]

This is the same Peter Nyikos that lied about me taking the quote from
the official statement out of context, and then ran when I posted the
entire statement and asked what context he was talking about.

Here it is again. It may have been modified since the last time I put
it up.

Make up any story that you want to. Just remember that the "required"
part didn't show up until a couple of years after the Ohio bait and
switch.

Why is the "required" needed when it wasn't needed before?

They have added more about teaching more about evolution, but that
paragraph that you claimed that I took out of context is still there,
and it still says that they have the scientific theory of intelligent
design to teach to public school kids. Why you have to lie about
stupid junk like this is beyond me. You know what they claimed years
before they wrote this statement, and how the current statement is
just their way of dishonestly covering their butts.

If you are going to make a big deal about the changes that they have
made I can put up the old statement that you ran from.

http://www.discovery.org/a/3164

QUOTE:
Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching
of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is
nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific
theory of design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes
efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the
scientific debate over design in an objective and pedagogically
appropriate manner.
END QUOTE:

Even the ways that they have changed the rest of the statement should
tell you something about how bogus these guys are. You know what they
are advocating and were advocating, so why lie to yourself? Aren't
these guys still claiming that there is a scientific theory for some
teacher to voluntarily teach in the classroom? You no longer deny
that the ID perps claimed that they could teach ID in the public
schools, so why make this stupid denial? Are you going to start lying
about what you have already given up lying about? How sad is that?

Ron Okimoto

[Attila]

Thanks Peter. I blush to admit I was totally ignorant of panspermia. To be
honest I was referring to the ID promoted by the Discovery Institute so few
or none of my remarks may apply to the approach your are advocating. To
correct my ignorance I did a quick DuckDuckGo search but a large number of
hits seemed to involve the keyword "pseudoscience". Is this correct? I found
this link on the Biology Cabinet website:
http://www.biocab.org/Panspermia.html
Would this be a reasonable description of your theory? Thanks.

[jillery]

Attila, if you're going to discuss directed panspermia with Pnyikos,
try to remember the paragraph immediately below. It's a very
important point:

******************************

"They didn't claim directed panspermia
is more likely or less likely than life arising here
spontaneously, precisely because neither of them knew,
nor does anyone living today know what the odds are."

******************************

*Nobody* on Earth knows what the odds are of life arising
spontaneously anywhere.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:48:04 -0700, the following appeared

in talk.origins, posted by Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub>:

Then I applaud your expert simulation.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:45:20 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by UC
<uraniumc...@yahoo.com>:

>It is my opinion that the secret is so obvious that nobody has thought
>of it.

Ah, the UC revelation:

"Wait, everyone! Look! Three comes AFTER two, not before!"

[wiki trix]

On Jul 19, 1:07�pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:

How would you calculate the probability that a god would decide to
create life?

[Ray Martinez]

Harshman admits that he was using his own private definition of
adaptation.

Carry on...

Ray

[Kalkidas]

Well, if you see the phrase "came to have" as referring to a gradual
adaptive process over long time periods.....

But I interpreted "came to have" to simply mean "origin of", which could
be a process, but it could also be a single event, as in "how this shirt
came to have a coffee stain". Or it could be a process but not an
adaptive process, merely a growth process, as in "how an apple tree came
to have apples hanging on its branches".

Or it could be an intelligently designed system which undergoes
adaptation. Or an intelligently designed system that undergoes
adaptation within limits but also needs periodic adjustment from outside.

Etc....

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:53:34 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by pnyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

>On Jul 18, 5:08�pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
>> On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 10:33:49 -0700, the following appeared
>> in talk.origins, posted by Kalkidas <e...@joes.pub>:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >On 7/18/2012 7:29 AM, John Harshman wrote:
>
>> >> What you really
>> >> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
>> >> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
>> >> mutation.
>
>Not from the beginning of DNA, when I believe there were no protein
>enzymes to speak of, and ribozymes doing reverse transcription
>"invented" DNA. See my own reply to the original post to this thread.
>
>I wonder whether reverse transcription was a "hopeful monster" having
>nothing to do with natural selection acting on random mutation.
>
>> >Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
>> >usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
>> >seems more akin to "something, something...the force".
>>
>> Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
>> clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
>> necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
>> meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
>> together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
>> authority to your pronouncements.
>
>Your insulting comments are a poor substitute for validating what
>Harshman wrote.

Well, that's understandable, since I had no interest in
"validating what Harshman wrote"; such would be extremely
presumptive on my part, since he's a professional in the
field and I'm not. My comment solely addressed the post to
which I responded. And if you think that my noting his
ignorance was insulting...well, perhaps it was, at least in
form. Let me rephrase:

"Your lack of understanding of the subject of evolutionary
biology, which is apparent by your failure to realize that
both "natural selection" and "random mutation" are
well-understood in that field and do indeed provide an
explanation, indicates that you should do a bit of reading
on the subject before choosing to make unsupported
pronouncements regarding it."

Better?

> Do you at least have some documentation to show that
>Kalkidas doesn't understand these excruciatingly elementary concepts?
>[Hint: what he wrote above does NOT qualify.]

Oh, well then; since his own statements about the subject,
indicating that either he genuinely doesn't understand those
concepts or that he *chooses* to not understand them and the
concomitant fact that they *do* explain evolution (even, in
some views, the pre-biotic "evolution" of the chemical
compounds leading to life), aren't evidence regarding his
understanding *of* the subject there's no a lot to say, is
there?

>Speaking of insulting comments, I have yet to see a satisfactory
>documentation from you or anyone else for the sweeping claims you made
>about UC on one of the shards of the "transitional" thread:

Then you, as you've advised me in the past, need to read
back through the thread. Enjoy!

>[nyikos:]
>> >What is it with you that makes you think Humpty Dumpty's attitude
>> >towards words now is to be adopted by everyone?
>
>[Casanova:]
>> That would seem to be actually UC's attitude, since both he
>> and Humpty assert their (nonexistent) individual prerogative
>> to define word usage.
>
>[nyikos:]
>I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, but after seeing torrents of
>outrageous misrepresentations of my positions over the years, and
>also
>of Behe's positions, I must insist on documentation before I buy
>this.
>
>> >Oh. Wait. That's not what you are advocating, is it?
>
>> Nope.
>
>
>> >So what ARE you advocating?
>
>
>> I'm not "advocating" anything; I'm simply noting, as are
>> many here, that UC's assertion that usage change must
>> somehow be "approved" (apparently by him, but in any case
>> definitely *not* by actual change in usage) before being
>> "right", is incorrect.
>
>I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, but...[continue as above].

And I'd like to reassure you, but...[continue as above].

>> And the fact that he airily waves
>> away examples of usage changes, even going so far as to deny
>> etymological references which show beyond doubt that he's
>> wrong, and to attempt repeatedly to claim that the current
>> (supposed, but unreferenced) definition of "computer" has
>> always been the definition despite specific contradiction of
>> that claim in those etymological references, fails to do
>> much to advance his agenda.
>
>...see above...
>==================== end of excerpt
>from http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ad6810df10ffb28c
>
>
>>
>> Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
>> ignorance, isn't especially compelling.
>
>All arguments can be construed as arguments from incredulity.

I'm sure you're correct. Especially when the one advancing
the argument is prepared to ignore any evidence refuting the
argument.

> Paul
>Gans even wrote something that could be construed as saying that
>atheism and agnosticism are based on arguments from incredulity.

An argument from incredulity relies on incredulity; neither
logic nor evidence need apply.

>I believe he misspoke, but his words have taken on a life of their
>own.
>
>Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Why would you even try?

[John Harshman]

The relevant point, which you seem to be missing, is that very little of
the way things came to be as they are now has any necessary connection
to th origin of life. It only has such a connection if you think that
life, at its origin, was very much like current life. In other words,
you would have to be a fiat creationist of one sort or another. In
intelligently designed systems that undergo adaptation, for example, the
current state is related to the adaptation, not to the original design.

[J. J. Lodder]

Numerous <nume...@address.invalid> wrote:

> When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
> on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
> infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
> each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
> shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
> be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
> life."

Why should there be an enigma?
Our DNA contains a few Gb of information
(at best, most of it is gene-desert)
and it has taken a few billion years
to get it compiled into its present state.

So our DNA has been acquiring information
at about one bit/year, on average.

Not at all an implausibe rate,
given the populations involved.
Infering intelligent design on this basis
(applying Hanlon's Razor)
is wishful thinking at best,

Jan

[Rolf]

"pnyikos" <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:d657beba-3ccc-4100...@e7g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...

So what are the origins of the directed panspermists, and the origins of the
originators of the originators of the origins of the directed panspermists
or something like that, or is there something I fail to understand?



> Peter Nyikos
>

[Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-origins@moderators.isc.org]

One always does, according to several different papers on the subject.

If you want to talk about gods and sound smart, consult a theologist.

[pnyikos]

I am interspersing some comments about earlier stages in this echange
between Harshman and Kalkidas.

On Jul 19, 12:30�am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> Kalkidas wrote:
> > On 7/18/2012 4:54 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> >> Kalkidas wrote:
> >>> On 7/18/2012 2:57 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> Kalkidas wrote:
> >>>>> On 7/18/2012 7:29 AM, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>>>> Numerous wrote:

> >>>>>>> The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
> >>>>>>> Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
> >>>>>>> origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA
> >>>>>>> molecule acquire this precise sequencing

Note the word "precise" before "sequencing."

> >>>>>>> that allows it to direct
> >>>>>>> these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
> >>>>>>> closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
> >>>>>>> which is the question of the origin of life itself....
>
> >>>>>> Could we have a definition of "information" here? Because there is no
> >>>>>> problem explaining its origin under the usual definition.

There is the matter of quality in addition to quantity, John. Who was
it that originated the concept of "specified complexity"? One thing is
for sure: it predates Dembski's use of the word.

> >>>>>> Any increase
> >>>>>> in length, for example, is an increase in information.

Very low level information, as you point out:

> >>>>>> What you really
> >>>>>> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions
> >>>>>> they do.
> >>>>>> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on
> >>>>>> random
> >>>>>> mutation.

Absent details, this is the Darwin of the Gaps "explanation."

This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:

"Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/
could/
are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."

[Kalkidas:]

> >>>>> Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
> >>>>> usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
> >>>>> seems more akin to "something, something...the force".

Yes, see above.

> >>>> But it is an explanation, and according to the ordinary meaning, unless
> >>>> you think that "natural selection" and "random mutation" are as lacking
> >>>> in reality as the Force. We know that this known process can increase
> >>>> adaptation; there are plenty of cases in the literature.

Sure, but you haven't even begun to show that these processes account
for DNA.

> >>> Invoking "natural selection acting on random mutation" doesn't explain
> >>> "how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do" any more
> >>> than "something, something...the force" does.
>
> >> Repeating a previous claim isn't an argument.

"Darwin of the Gaps" isn't an argument either, since it is the
previous claim of untold numbers of people posting to talk.origins and
writing in the popular literature.

> >>> It's like saying that Newton's laws acting on random massive particles
> >>> "explains" how automobiles came to have all the functions they have.
>
> >> But that doesn't explain automobiles, while selection & mutation explain
> >> adaptation.
>
> > Adaptation? Where did that come from? You claimed to offer an
> > explanation for "how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they
> > do". Equating "the origin of DNA functions" with "adaptation" seems a
> > bit off.
>
> To you, perhaps. But what else is adaptation but the acquiring of
> particular functions?

"adaptation" means simply "becoming more fit than the rivals" and is
hence just a Darwin of the Gaps argument.

> >> Sure, you have to discuss the specifics of each individual
> >> case, but it's more like saying that the responses of engineers to
> >> public needs explain the functions of automobiles. To my mind, that's a
> >> legitimate though general explanation.
>
> > I think "natural selection acting on random mutations" is more analogous
> > to "Newton's laws acting on random massive particles" than it is to "the
> > responses of engineers to public needs". Or are you becoming more
> > sympathetic to intelligent design hypotheses?
>
> No, but intelligent design, in the case of cars, is actually an
> explanation if we talk about actual, known designers.

You sure know how to stack the deck in your favor, John, smuggling in
"actual, known" when there is no knowledge whatsoever of specific
processes that gave rise to DNA. At our stage of knowledge, "hopeful
monsters" is as good an explanation as your exaptation of "Darwin of
the Gaps" to abiogenesis.

>You are focusing
> on irrelevant features of the comparison (intelligent vs. undirected)
> instead of the relevant ones (real, observed explanations vs. hopelessly
> vague ones).

You are being hopelessly vague yourself, John. At least I have
several worked out hypotheses as to how directed panspermia (my main
hypothesis) might have happened.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Not just those: functions that were precursors of present functions,
in protocells.

They are legitimate objects of speculation and mystery as long as you
cling to your "Exaptor of the Gaps" pseudo-explanation for how these
ancestral functions came to be.

> and even then we aren't
> seeing them in anything like the form they would have been originally.

That just moves the enigma further back.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 19, 12:38�am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Jul 18, 10:29 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> Numerous wrote:
>
> >>> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
> >>> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
> >>> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
> >>> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
> >>> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
> >>> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
> >>> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
> >>> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
> >>> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
> >>> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
> >> Thanks for spending a whole paragraph telling everyone what you aren't
> >> talking about. That's very helpful, though it seems a highly incomplete
> >> list, as you aren't talking about spaghetti or watermelon either.
>
> > Thanks for letting us know that you think DNA is no more important
> > than spaghetti and watermelon. �:-)
>
> Thanks for putting a smiley after an inane comment.

The underlying message remains: YOUR comment was inane. I was just
taking it one step further.

> >> What you really
> >> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
> >> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
> >> mutation.
>
> > You forgot genetic drift, and hopeful monsters. �Do you have any
> > persuasive argument for the first DNA polymerase and the first reverse
> > transcriptase NOT being hopeful monsters?
>
> Not for you. The concept of hopeful monsters isn't all that coherent. It
> would appear to refer to big changes that appear to be fairly adaptive
> all in one mutation.

Yup. These changes did not only "appear to be fairly adaptive", they
were spectacularly adaptive, and what's more, they laid the ground for
an enormous expansion of adaptation.

>And those are much less likely than smaller changes
> that begin being only minimally adaptive and then are gradually refined.

My point precisely: I think the awesome changes that brought about the
factors I mentioned (also transcriptase, another essential player in
the enormous expansion of adaptation) happen less than once in a
galaxy, on the average.

> Do you know of any real examples of hopeful monsters?

The lung structure of birds, with its continuous breathing as opposed
to all the dead-end sacs we mammals have, might be one of them.

> As for drift, it would appear to play only a very small part in
> explaining function.
>
> > Feel free to assume that the first DNA polymerase and the first
> > reverse trascriptase were ribozymes if that will help your case.
>
> Sure. Start with a ribozyme that does a poor job of making DNA; lots of
> errors, slow.

And then there is a devastating feedback loop once the ribozyme itself
is incorporated into DNA with all its errors.

>Now let it improve though selection.

You are forgetting about inheritance. Lots of errors, and traits do
not survive to the next generation.

> Was that a hopeful monster?

More like a hopeless monster.

> > "We have seen exaptation work on the living things around us" is NOT a
> > persuasive argument.
>
> It shows that a phenomenon exists, which is one step in showing that it
> works for the purpose at hand.

We have far more evidence that intelligent design exists. And hopeful
monsters are always theoretically possible, even if individual
candidates like the lungs of birds, the tongue attachments of
woodpeckers, and certain cheek pouches of rodents don't pan out.

>You may claim that there is some barrier
> that prevents exaptation from working in certain cases, of course. Do
> you want to hypothesize such a barrier?

No, sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 19, 12:57�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
> On Jul 18, 10:41�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jul 18, 10:25�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > >�You can go to
> > > the Discovery Institute web site and see that they continue to claim
> > > that they have the scientific theory of ID to teach in the public
> > > schools.
>
> > The people you are addressing cannot do that, because the website
> > doesn't say they have something suitable for teaching on the public
> > school level as an alternative to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. � Only
> > you, of all people here, has ever claimed that the website says that.
>
> > The only argument you've ever given for the website saying that is
> > your libel that I am a liar, and insane, for not agreeing that the
> > website says that.

The truth of the following statement by me is borne out by the quote
Ron O has provided at the end.

> > But what it actually says is that if a teacher wants to teach ID [s]he
> > has a constitutional right to do so.

Ron O does not deny anything in the following paragraph, perhaps
because there are so many participants on this thread.

> > You spent thousands of lines emphasizing that they do NOT have
> > teaching material to compete with the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and
> > puked all over me for not immediately kowtowing to the Phillip Johnson
> > statement to that effect. �I endorsed it many times, but because I
> > didn't do it on YOUR timetable, you heaped all kinds of insults on me,
> > and outright libel about me being a liar.
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> This is the same Peter Nyikos that lied about me taking the quote from
> the official statement out of context,

That was no lie. I immediately quoted something from the same
webpage which had far more to do with the whole context of your cherry-
picked quote, than the quote itself.

I never lie on the Internet, and none of your broken record routine
about me lying about this and that can change that fact.

>and then ran when I posted the
> entire statement and asked what context he was talking about.

I had seen the entire statement earlier, having read the website all
the way through, and it added nothing to the fact that you had cherry-
picked it from a webpage where the only explicit recommendations to
public school teachers had to do with what you call "the switch scam".

What you call "the switch scam", as though there could be a switch
without bait, was the recommendation to lecture to students about the
weaknesses of Darwinian explanations of evolution.

> Here it is again. �It may have been modified since the last time I put
> it up.

[snip to get to the point]

> that
> paragraph that you claimed that I took out of context is still there,
> and it still says that they have the scientific theory of intelligent
> design to teach to public school kids.

Thanks for posting it below, so that people can see that it says
nothing at all about *them* having any curriculum ready.

�>Why you have to lie about

> stupid junk like this is beyond me. �You know what they claimed years
> before they wrote this statement,

"they" was two or three people, and then came the notorious "Wedge
Document" which merely talked about plans five years down the road --
a wildly overoptimistic plan, as anyone with an ounce of sense and
knowledge of evolution could have told them.

> http://www.discovery.org/a/3164
>
> QUOTE:
> Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching
> of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is
> nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific
> theory of design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes
> efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the
> scientific debate over design in an objective and pedagogically
> appropriate manner.
> END QUOTE:

There is nothing here about the DI itself having the intelligent
design in a form ready for teaching in the public schools. This whole
paragraph, written after the Dover decision, is a reply to people who
read far more into what Judge Jones wrote as far as the
constitutionality of things is concerned. The judge forbade the
teaching of Intelligent Design AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO evolution. And
the fact that evolution has taken place is not something the DI people
wish to challenge.

> Even the ways that they have changed the rest of the statement should
> tell you something about how bogus these guys are.

On the contrary, it tells me how bogus the many guys are who read more
into what Judge Jones actually ordered than he actually did.

Have you been guilty of this in the past?

>You know what they
> are advocating and were advocating, so why lie to yourself?

I'm not lying at all. I'm giving a balanced account.

>�Aren't

> these guys still claiming that there is a scientific theory for some
> teacher to voluntarily teach in the classroom?

We've been through this: there are many non-DI resources such a
teacher could use to indirectly promote that idea, like a certain film
of the mid-50's that had nothing to do with the DI.

>�You no longer deny

> that the ID perps claimed that they could teach ID in the public
> schools,

Three naive ID eager beavers, writing well before the Dover decision,
are a far cry from the whole DI.

> so why make this stupid denial? �Are you going to start lying
> about what you have already given up lying about? �How sad is that?

"Are you going to start beating your wife after having already given
up beating your wife? How sad is that?"

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> I am interspersing some comments about earlier stages in this echange
> between Harshman and Kalkidas.
>
> On Jul 19, 12:30 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> Kalkidas wrote:
>>> On 7/18/2012 4:54 PM, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> Kalkidas wrote:
>>>>> On 7/18/2012 2:57 PM, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>> Kalkidas wrote:
>>>>>>> On 7/18/2012 7:29 AM, John Harshman wrote:
>>>>>>>> Numerous wrote:
>
>>>>>>>>> The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
>>>>>>>>> Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
>>>>>>>>> origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA
>>>>>>>>> molecule acquire this precise sequencing
>
> Note the word "precise" before "sequencing."

OK, I noted it. Why?

>>>>>>>>> that allows it to direct
>>>>>>>>> these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
>>>>>>>>> closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
>>>>>>>>> which is the question of the origin of life itself....
>>>>>>>> Could we have a definition of "information" here? Because there is no
>>>>>>>> problem explaining its origin under the usual definition.
>
> There is the matter of quality in addition to quantity, John. Who was
> it that originated the concept of "specified complexity"? One thing is
> for sure: it predates Dembski's use of the word.

Sure. Please define the sort of "information" you want in such a way
that it can be measured and studied. Is that what the author was talking
about?

>>>>>>>> Any increase
>>>>>>>> in length, for example, is an increase in information.
>
> Very low level information, as you point out:

Is it information or isn't it? If it is, shouldn't the author be using
some other word to get at what he really means?

>>>>>>>> What you really
>>>>>>>> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions
>>>>>>>> they do.
>>>>>>>> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on
>>>>>>>> random
>>>>>>>> mutation.
>
> Absent details, this is the Darwin of the Gaps "explanation."

I believe I'm going to ignore anything you say about "___ of the gaps"
as so much empty posturing.

> This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
> naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
>
> "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/
> could/
> are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
> couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
>
> [Kalkidas:]
>>>>>>> Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
>>>>>>> usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
>>>>>>> seems more akin to "something, something...the force".
>
> Yes, see above.
>
>>>>>> But it is an explanation, and according to the ordinary meaning, unless
>>>>>> you think that "natural selection" and "random mutation" are as lacking
>>>>>> in reality as the Force. We know that this known process can increase
>>>>>> adaptation; there are plenty of cases in the literature.
>
> Sure, but you haven't even begun to show that these processes account
> for DNA.

The author was apparently not talking about accounting for DNA, but for
the "precise sequencing" of that DNA, i.e. the particular DNA sequence
that a particular bit of DNA has.

As the remainder of this reply seems to consist solely of 1)
misinterpreting the subject as the origin of DNA itself rather than the
origin of specific sequences and 2) "___ of the gaps" blather, I'm
snipping it.

[John Harshman]

I know you hate this sort of comparison, but you will have to live with
that: you sound just like the creationists who claim we can't have
evidence for evolution unless we can explain the origin of life.

[pnyikos]

You should have done a search for "directed panspermia."

> I found
> this link on the Biology Cabinet website:

http://www.biocab.org/Panspermia.html

> Would this be a reasonable description of your theory?

Absolutely not. Until recently, in fact, I used my own spelling
"panspermy" so that it would be less easy to confuse with the
completely different theory of Arrhenius, Hoyle, and Wickramasinghe,
which the website you give is all about. Note that there is no mention
of Crick or Orgel in this site you found.

If you want to know about my theory, what I wrote above, and the
article in *Icarus* that I linked, is a good place to start.

> Thanks.

You are welcome. By the way, the site is not fair to the "undirected"
panspermists. Look at this excerpt:

"Do not permit that Lovelock, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe deceive you,
and do not deceive yourself: aligned with the panspermists reports,
cosmic ancestry hypothesis has been associated intimately with faith,
philosophy and religion. For them, a mysterious power exists that is
dedicated to "disseminate" the life through the universe. See how they
had hidden it, but now they are unveiling their real intention."

This is completely false as far as the atheist Hoyle is concerned, and
I doubt that the other two fit the description.

The whole website is the ramblings of a committed "Mother Earth did
it" partisan. Even his language is strangely archaic: the above gives
a whiff of it, as does the following quaint comment: "Does not
panspermia smell to Creationism?"

[pnyikos]

On Jul 19, 2:37�pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 19:53:34 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by pnyikos

> <nyik...@bellsouth.net>:

The "explanation" is just the old "Darwin of the Gaps" gambit.

This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:

"Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/
could/
are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."

>indicates that you should do a bit of reading
> on the subject before choosing to make unsupported
> pronouncements regarding it."
>
> Better?

No. His pronouncement is no more unsupproted than the DotG comment of
John's.

> > �Do you at least have some documentation to show that

> >Kalkidas doesn't understand these excruciatingly elementary concepts?
> >[Hint: what he wrote above does NOT qualify.]
>
> Oh, well then; since his own statements about the subject,
> indicating that either he genuinely doesn't understand those
> concepts or that he *chooses* to not understand them and the
> concomitant fact that they *do* explain evolution (even, in
> some views, the pre-biotic "evolution" of the chemical
> compounds leading to life),

...sound like objections to "Darwin of the Gaps" arguments without
even *alleged* concrete evidence to back them up.

>aren't evidence regarding his
> understanding *of* the subject there's no a lot to say, is
> there?

From what I've seen, you might not understand them any better than he
does.

I should add that I've seen almost nothing by Kalkidas, just as I saw
almost nothing of UC until I got involved in the two splinter threads
focused on the legitimate uses of the word "ape."

> >Speaking of insulting comments, I have yet to see a satisfactory
> >documentation from you or anyone else for the sweeping claims you made
> >about UC on one of the shards of the "transitional" thread:
>
> Then you, as you've advised me in the past, need to read
> back through the thread. Enjoy!

A thousand posts, with nothing to guide me?

Don't forget, you are a faithful team player who can count on dozens
of people to badger me to provide things I've provided umpteen times.
Has anyone ever challenged you to stand and deliver like I did? I
doubt it.

> >[nyikos:]
> >> >What is it with you that makes you think Humpty Dumpty's attitude
> >> >towards words now is to be adopted by everyone?
>
> >[Casanova:]
> >> That would seem to be actually UC's attitude, since both he
> >> and Humpty assert their (nonexistent) individual prerogative
> >> to define word usage.
>
> >[nyikos:]
> >I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, �but after seeing torrents of
> >outrageous misrepresentations of my positions over the years, and
> >also
> >of Behe's positions, I must insist on documentation before I buy
> >this.
>

Have YOU ever been subjected to torrents of misrepresentations of your
views, with no one to lift a finger on your behalf? I doubt it.

Yet that is what I am up against, on a massive scale.

> >> >Oh. �Wait. �That's not what you are advocating, is it?
>
> >> Nope.
>
> >> >So what ARE you advocating?
>
> >> I'm not "advocating" anything; I'm simply noting, as are
> >> many here, that UC's assertion that usage change must
> >> somehow be "approved" (apparently by him, but in any case
> >> definitely *not* by actual change in usage) before being
> >> "right", is incorrect.
>
> >I'd like to trust you on this, Bob, but...[continue as above].
>
> And I'd like to reassure you, but...[continue as above].

Actions speak louder than words. Your cop-out leads to the obvious
conclusion that reassuring me is NOT something you'd like to do.

In fact, it leads me to suspect that you stretched the truth about UC,
and that, like countless other "do your own research" wise guys, are
sending me looking through a huge haystack for nonexistent needles.

> >> And the fact that he airily waves
> >> away examples of usage changes, even going so far as to deny
> >> etymological references which show beyond doubt that he's
> >> wrong, and to attempt repeatedly to claim that the current
> >> (supposed, but unreferenced) definition of "computer" has
> >> always been the definition despite specific contradiction of
> >> that claim in those etymological references, fails to do
> >> much to advance his agenda.
>
> >...see above...
> >==================== end of excerpt

> >fromhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/ad6810df10ffb28c

>
> >> Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
> >> ignorance, isn't especially compelling.
>
> >All arguments can be construed as arguments from incredulity.
>
> I'm sure you're correct. Especially when the one advancing
> the argument is prepared to ignore any evidence refuting the
> argument.

And since you provide no evidence refuting the suspicion that you
stretched the truth about UC beyond reason, you are no better than the
conveniently unidentified people of whom you are speaking.

> > �Paul

> >Gans even wrote something that could be construed as saying that
> >atheism and agnosticism are based on arguments from incredulity.
>
> An argument from incredulity relies on incredulity; neither
> logic nor evidence need apply.

And even when I produce huge amounts of airtight reasoning, I am
accused of it, all of which shows that "need apply" is a whitewash of
the cold realities of talk.origins.

Your standard .sig below is at the opposite extreme from your
whitewash, but not much further removed from the true attitude of
anti-ID zealots.

> >I believe he misspoke, but his words have taken on a life of their
> >own.

> "Evidence confirming an observation is
> evidence that the observation is wrong."
> � � � � � � � � � � � � � - McNameless

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

Bingo! I've been trying to tell you as much about your "Exaptor of
the Gaps" approach, where you keep talking about present day
exaptations as evidence that sophisticated protein enzymes arose by
exaptation before the origin of life as we know it.

> It only has such a connection if you think that
> life, at its origin, was very much like current life.

All we have to go on in the way of direct evidence is microfossils
which could be of prokaryotes very similar to some of the ones we have
today. All the rest is speculation.

> In other words,
> you would have to be a fiat creationist of one sort or another.

Not where the origin of DNA, and its increasing sophistication to the
level of the most primitive prokaryote are concerned. Even that level
is marvelously intricate, chock full of meaningful "information."

> In
> intelligently designed systems that undergo adaptation, for example, the
> current state is related to the adaptation, not to the original design.

I've been trying to make this point for a long time: according to my
"Throomian" sub-hypothesis, their design of the the unicellular
organisms they sent to earth was a gradual adaptation, protein enzyme
by protein enzyme, of the naturally occurring organisms they began
with, whose enzymes were RNA-based, just like the cells of the
designers themselves.

[pnyikos]

On Jul 20, 5:23�am, nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:

> Numerous <numer...@address.invalid> wrote:
> > When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
> > on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
> > infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
> > each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
> > shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
> > be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
> > life."
>
> Why should there be an enigma?
> Our DNA contains a few Gb of information
> (at best, most of it is gene-desert)
> and it has taken a few billion years
> to get it compiled into its present state.

Not in prokaryotes, except for some routine modifications.

> So our DNA has been acquiring information
> at about one bit/year, on average.
>
> Not at all an implausibe rate,
> given the populations involved.
> Infering intelligent design on this basis
> (applying Hanlon's Razor)
> is wishful thinking at best,

I infer it very differently, at a stage that predates "the few billion
years" of which you speak. I've consistently done this ever since I
first got interested in intelligent design, back in 1997. I have no
seriious problem with evolution by natural selection from the first
prokaryote, and no problem at all for our evolution from the most
primitive metazoans.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 20, 3:07锟絧m, "Rolf" <rolf.aalb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message

> > But where did those nucleotides come from? 锟紸FAIK, there is no

> > generally recognized synthesis of nucleotides [not to be confused with
> > purines and pyrimidines] in prebiotic conditions, even after some 60
> > years of trying.
>
> >> Eventually, the RNA-based life forms may have driven the
> >> older PAH-based life forms to extinction.
>
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis
>
> >> BTW, in Sagan's book/movie "Cosmos," he speculated about an
> >> extraterrestrial civilization of aliens whose genome was "polycyclic
> >> sulfonyl halides" instead of DNA. Yep, that could work.
>

> > Could it really? 锟絀n that case, we have a fourth sub-hypothesis as to
> > what the directed panspermists might have been like. 锟絀'm already of

> > the opinion that this is how earth life began [see my reply to Attila]
> > and this might strengthen my case further.
>
> So what are the origins of the directed panspermists,

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asks me this question. I
might even be able to collect a few dollars from you, given your hit
and run tactics.

And the answer is always the same: they were the lucky descendants of
an organism that emerged from a once-in-a-galaxy, perhaps once in a
googol of universes, chance abiogenesis event right on their own
planet.

> and the origins of the
> originators of the originators of the origins of the directed panspermists
> or something like that, or is there something I fail to understand?

Absolutely. And now I expect you to suddenly decide you aren't
interested in directed panspermia, and to disappear from this thread,
just like you did a couple of months ago, and then to return on
another thread, asking the same questions that you asked just now.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

On Jul 20, 9:15�am, "Robert Carnegie: Fnord: cc talk-

I never tried to calculate, merely saying that I think the probability
is less than 1%, but not venturing any further than that.

> If you want to talk about gods and sound smart, consult a theologist.

The correct spelling is "theologian."

There are some atheistic theologians, by the way. In fact, I
sometimes suspect that the majority of Roman Catholic theologians are
atheists, the way so many of them base their esteem for fellow
theologians on how innovative they are, rather than on whether their
teaching can be harmonized with anything resembling traditional
theism.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

I believe you will do this because I do it only when you are guilty of
empty posturing, as above, and wish not to confront the fact that you
are guilty of it.

You remind me of the portrayal of God in the play/TV movie
"Steambath." In one memorable scene "God" hid his face in panic when
one of the characters held a mirror up to it.

I suppose the author of the play was allegorizing well known behavior
of human beings, though I never could figure out what point he was
trying to make about the character who said he was God.

> > This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
> > naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
>
> > "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. �The __________ that did/
> > could/
> > are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
> > couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
>
> > [Kalkidas:]
> >>>>>>> Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
> >>>>>>> usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
> >>>>>>> seems more akin to "something, something...the force".
>
> > Yes, see above.
>
> >>>>>> But it is an explanation, and according to the ordinary meaning, unless
> >>>>>> you think that "natural selection" and "random mutation" are as lacking
> >>>>>> in reality as the Force. We know that this known process can increase
> >>>>>> adaptation; there are plenty of cases in the literature.
>
> > Sure, but you haven't even begun to show that these processes account
> > for DNA.
>
> The author was apparently not talking about accounting for DNA, but for
> the "precise sequencing" of that DNA, i.e. the particular DNA sequence
> that a particular bit of DNA has.

To me the excerpt seems far more general than that.

Myers would be making a silly, trivial point if he didn't have the
entire genome of at least a primitive prokaryote in mind.

> As the remainder of this reply seems to consist solely of 1)
> misinterpreting the subject as the origin of DNA itself rather than the
> origin of specific sequences and 2) "___ of the gaps" blather, I'm
> snipping it.

You are hanging a lot of evasive behavior on a mere interpretation,
which you haven't made explicit until now, and for which you have
given no argument.

Peter Nyikos

[pnyikos]

What have you been smoking? "That just moves the enigma further back"
is the language of anti-creationists and anti-directed-panspermists.

People like yourself, in other words. I used today for the first time,
ever.

> who claim we can't have
> evidence for evolution unless we can explain the origin of life.

You are their mirror image: you act as though no one can refute
abiogenesis without refuting evolution.

I love the grand panorama of evolution that unfolds in the fossil
record, and have no problem with that.

And until 1996 I also loved the idea of life originating here on earth
spontaneously.

That was the year in which I read two books that totally changed my
outlook. One was, paradoxically, _Vital Dust_ by Christian deDuve,
Nobel Laureate biochemist. He was firmly convinced that life arises
naturally and
easily in the cosmos, on any planet where conditions are as good as
they were on early earth.

But I noticed something very strange about that book. For several
chapters he painstakingly took us to the development of something
like an aminoacyl-tRNA. Then, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, he jumped to a description of the protein
translation mechanism, with its ribosomes, its mRNA, tRNA, and
aa-tRNA-synthetases. I had never read the details of protein
translation before and I saw some very key vulnerabilities in the
process which de Duve completely glossed over.

That, coupled with the colossal jump, made me highly receptive to
_Life Itself_, by another Nobel Laureate biochemist,
Francis Crick, in which he emphasized that no one knows how
likely or unlikely life is to arise. Therefore, he took seriously the
possiblility that it was sent to earth by a technological civilization
that arose ca. 4 billion years ago, in the form of prokaryotes. He
also considered the possibility that they sent primitive eukaryotes,
but wrote that this was less likely because "prokaryotes travel
farther." He even proposed a rudimentary form of "Intelligent
Design":

The senders could well have developed wholly new strains of
microorganisms, specially designed to cope with prebiotic
conditions, though whether it would have been better to try to
combine all the desirable properties within one single type
of organism or to send many different organisms is not
completely clear.
--Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, _Life Itself_
Simon and Schuster, 1981

Peter Nyikos

[Attila]

Thanks for the clarification. Whatever its merits or lack thereof, directed
panspermia has the admirable trait of getting up the noses of the happy-
clappy set. They are not happy campers at all. I'll continue reading.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 09:52:29 -0700 (PDT), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by pnyikos

<nyi...@bellsouth.net>:

OK, your opinion is noted.

>> > �Do you at least have some documentation to show that
>> >Kalkidas doesn't understand these excruciatingly elementary concepts?
>> >[Hint: what he wrote above does NOT qualify.]
>>
>> Oh, well then; since his own statements about the subject,
>> indicating that either he genuinely doesn't understand those
>> concepts or that he *chooses* to not understand them and the
>> concomitant fact that they *do* explain evolution (even, in
>> some views, the pre-biotic "evolution" of the chemical
>> compounds leading to life),
>
>...sound like objections to "Darwin of the Gaps" arguments without
>even *alleged* concrete evidence to back them up.
>
>>aren't evidence regarding his
>> understanding *of* the subject there's no a lot to say, is
>> there?
>
>From what I've seen, you might not understand them any better than he
>does.

As I commented to him, what you imagine you've seen has no
real effect on reality.

>I should add that I've seen almost nothing by Kalkidas, just as I saw
>almost nothing of UC until I got involved in the two splinter threads
>focused on the legitimate uses of the word "ape."

So your contention that he understands evolutionary theory
is essentially based only on what he posted, which post
clearly indicated he did *not* understand?

OK.

>> >Speaking of insulting comments, I have yet to see a satisfactory
>> >documentation from you or anyone else for the sweeping claims you made
>> >about UC on one of the shards of the "transitional" thread:
>>
>> Then you, as you've advised me in the past, need to read
>> back through the thread. Enjoy!
>
>A thousand posts, with nothing to guide me?

Sure; it's the same advice you gave me, as I said.

"Hoist".
"Petard"

>Don't forget, you are a faithful team player who can count on dozens
>of people to badger me to provide things I've provided umpteen times.
>Has anyone ever challenged you to stand and deliver like I did? I
>doubt it.

And you would be incorrect.

And I'm through here...

--

Bob C.

[J. J. Lodder]

Agreed, if you want to restrict it to Eigen's information paradox
you still have a gap to put a god in.

Enjoy it while it lasts,

Jan

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> On Jul 20, 12:20 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Jul 19, 12:31 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> Kalkidas wrote:
>>>>> On 7/18/2012 5:33 PM, Steven L. wrote:
>>>>>> That's why much of abiogenesis is hypotheses rather than theories.
>>>>> Yes, I just wish Harshman would admit it.
>>>> But "came to have the functions they do" isn't about abiogenesis, except
>>>> for a very few of the most basic functions,
>>> Not just those: functions that were precursors of present functions,
>>> in protocells.
>>> They are legitimate objects of speculation and mystery as long as you
>>> cling to your "Exaptor of the Gaps" pseudo-explanation for how these
>>> ancestral functions came to be.
>>>> and even then we aren't
>>>> seeing them in anything like the form they would have been originally.
>>> That just moves the enigma further back.
>> I know you hate this sort of comparison, but you will have to live with
>> that: you sound just like the creationists
>
> What have you been smoking? "That just moves the enigma further back"
> is the language of anti-creationists and anti-directed-panspermists.
>
> People like yourself, in other words. I used today for the first time,
> ever.

We're talking, apparently, about different enigmas. You're talking about
the origin of life. I am not. I'm talking about how the genomes of
organisms have the sequences they have today, as it seems to me Meyer
was. For almost all of that, the origin of life is not very relevant.

>> who claim we can't have
>> evidence for evolution unless we can explain the origin of life.
>
> You are their mirror image: you act as though no one can refute
> abiogenesis without refuting evolution.

We weren't talking about abiogenesis. You're changing the subject.

> I love the grand panorama of evolution that unfolds in the fossil
> record, and have no problem with that.

I know that. Which is why I was pointing out the apparent paradox.

[details of your intellectual biography snipped]

We aren't talking about the origin of life here.

[John Harshman]

You are taking my point backwards, and it doesn't work backwards.

>> It only has such a connection if you think that
>> life, at its origin, was very much like current life.
>
> All we have to go on in the way of direct evidence is microfossils
> which could be of prokaryotes very similar to some of the ones we have
> today. All the rest is speculation.

Not entirely. The fossil record certainly has very little to say about
the origin of life. But there are those few hints "fossilized" in the
genomes and metabolisms of extant organisms.

>> In other words,
>> you would have to be a fiat creationist of one sort or another.
>
> Not where the origin of DNA, and its increasing sophistication to the
> level of the most primitive prokaryote are concerned. Even that level
> is marvelously intricate, chock full of meaningful "information."

None of which is being discussed here.

>> In
>> intelligently designed systems that undergo adaptation, for example, the
>> current state is related to the adaptation, not to the original design.
>
> I've been trying to make this point for a long time: according to my
> "Throomian" sub-hypothesis, their design of the the unicellular
> organisms they sent to earth was a gradual adaptation, protein enzyme
> by protein enzyme, of the naturally occurring organisms they began
> with, whose enzymes were RNA-based, just like the cells of the
> designers themselves.

That point seems to have nothing to do with my point.

[John Harshman]

Uh-oh. Reading my mind again. I've warned you before that you aren't
good at it.

> You remind me of the portrayal of God in the play/TV movie
> "Steambath." In one memorable scene "God" hid his face in panic when
> one of the characters held a mirror up to it.
>
> I suppose the author of the play was allegorizing well known behavior
> of human beings, though I never could figure out what point he was
> trying to make about the character who said he was God.

What do you mean "said he was God"? He really was God.

>>> This is the default, one-size-fits-all, totally unfalsifiable
>>> naturalistic explanation for any and all biological phenomena:
>>> "Well, it's natural selection, y'know. The __________ that did/
>>> could/
>>> are __________ had a survival advantage over the ones that didn't/
>>> couldn't/weren't and so they are the ones we see today."
>>> [Kalkidas:]
>>>>>>>>> Could we have a definition of "explanation" here? Because under the
>>>>>>>>> usual definition what you just gave is not an "explanation" at all. It
>>>>>>>>> seems more akin to "something, something...the force".
>>> Yes, see above.
>>>>>>>> But it is an explanation, and according to the ordinary meaning, unless
>>>>>>>> you think that "natural selection" and "random mutation" are as lacking
>>>>>>>> in reality as the Force. We know that this known process can increase
>>>>>>>> adaptation; there are plenty of cases in the literature.
>>> Sure, but you haven't even begun to show that these processes account
>>> for DNA.
>> The author was apparently not talking about accounting for DNA, but for
>> the "precise sequencing" of that DNA, i.e. the particular DNA sequence
>> that a particular bit of DNA has.
>
> To me the excerpt seems far more general than that.
>
> Myers would be making a silly, trivial point if he didn't have the
> entire genome of at least a primitive prokaryote in mind.

That's of course your opinion, because you imagine that the other IDers
are similar in most respects to you. But Meyer denies that all but the
most minor sorts of evolution happen. He denies that humans and apes are
related to each other. He's a creationist. To him, How the sequences
came to be the way they are and the origin of life are pretty much the
same thing, because "kinds" were created pretty much as we see them.

Why are you consistently incapable of spelling Stephen Meyer's name
correctly? It's P. Z. Myers who is supposed to be the object of that
problem.

>> As the remainder of this reply seems to consist solely of 1)
>> misinterpreting the subject as the origin of DNA itself rather than the
>> origin of specific sequences and 2) "___ of the gaps" blather, I'm
>> snipping it.
>
> You are hanging a lot of evasive behavior on a mere interpretation,
> which you haven't made explicit until now, and for which you have
> given no argument.

So what do you think "precise sequencing" means, then? Note that he
specifically says that the origin of life is a different though related
question. And how do you think information originates?

[John Harshman]

pnyikos wrote:
> On Jul 19, 12:38 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> On Jul 18, 10:29 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>>>> Numerous wrote:
>>>>> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
>>>>> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
>>>>> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
>>>>> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
>>>>> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
>>>>> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
>>>>> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
>>>>> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
>>>>> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
>>>>> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
>>>> Thanks for spending a whole paragraph telling everyone what you aren't
>>>> talking about. That's very helpful, though it seems a highly incomplete
>>>> list, as you aren't talking about spaghetti or watermelon either.
>>> Thanks for letting us know that you think DNA is no more important
>>> than spaghetti and watermelon. :-)
>> Thanks for putting a smiley after an inane comment.
>
> The underlying message remains: YOUR comment was inane. I was just
> taking it one step further.

You do seem fond of the "He hit me first" defense.

>>>> What you really
>>>> mean to ask is how DNA sequences came to have all the functions they do.
>>>> We have an explanation for that too: natural selection acting on random
>>>> mutation.
>>> You forgot genetic drift, and hopeful monsters. Do you have any
>>> persuasive argument for the first DNA polymerase and the first reverse
>>> transcriptase NOT being hopeful monsters?
>> Not for you. The concept of hopeful monsters isn't all that coherent. It
>> would appear to refer to big changes that appear to be fairly adaptive
>> all in one mutation.
>
> Yup. These changes did not only "appear to be fairly adaptive", they
> were spectacularly adaptive, and what's more, they laid the ground for
> an enormous expansion of adaptation.

You seem to be assuming that such a thing actually happened. I was
merely trying to elucidate the general meaning of the concept.

>> And those are much less likely than smaller changes
>> that begin being only minimally adaptive and then are gradually refined.
>
> My point precisely: I think the awesome changes that brought about the
> factors I mentioned (also transcriptase, another essential player in
> the enormous expansion of adaptation) happen less than once in a
> galaxy, on the average.

You keep saying "my point precisely" and then entirely garbling my
point. I'm saying that one could explain the things that hopeful
monsters are usually introduced to explain by the scenario I mention.

>> Do you know of any real examples of hopeful monsters?
>
> The lung structure of birds, with its continuous breathing as opposed
> to all the dead-end sacs we mammals have, might be one of them.

That seems highly unlikely to have arisen through a hopeful monster. I
would suggest that it more likely arose gradually through small,
adaptive changes to existing structure.

>> As for drift, it would appear to play only a very small part in
>> explaining function.
>>
>>> Feel free to assume that the first DNA polymerase and the first
>>> reverse trascriptase were ribozymes if that will help your case.
>> Sure. Start with a ribozyme that does a poor job of making DNA; lots of
>> errors, slow.
>
> And then there is a devastating feedback loop once the ribozyme itself
> is incorporated into DNA with all its errors.

No, it just means that the deleterious mutation rate is high. If the
replication rate is high enough, the organism can cope.

>> Now let it improve though selection.
>
> You are forgetting about inheritance. Lots of errors, and traits do
> not survive to the next generation.

Sure they do. Just with a high mutation rate. And any improvements that
reduced the mutation rate would be strongly selected, eh?

>> Was that a hopeful monster?
>
> More like a hopeless monster.
>
>>> "We have seen exaptation work on the living things around us" is NOT a
>>> persuasive argument.
>> It shows that a phenomenon exists, which is one step in showing that it
>> works for the purpose at hand.
>
> We have far more evidence that intelligent design exists.

Not in life, we don't.

> And hopeful
> monsters are always theoretically possible, even if individual
> candidates like the lungs of birds, the tongue attachments of
> woodpeckers, and certain cheek pouches of rodents don't pan out.

Sure. Theoretically possible, but we have no good evidence that they're
important in evolution, or even have ever occurred.

So again: we have evidence that exaptation do explain at least some
features of evolution, no evidence that hopeful monsters or ID explain any.

>> You may claim that there is some barrier
>> that prevents exaptation from working in certain cases, of course. Do
>> you want to hypothesize such a barrier?
>
> No, sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.

It seems you do. What is so different about early life that makes
exaptation fail to operate?

[rossum]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:32:11 +0200, Numerous
<nume...@address.invalid> wrote:

>When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
>on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
>infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
>each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
>shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
>be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
>life."

Where does the information in DNA come from? It is *copied* into DNA
from the environment. Random mutations produce a number of different
options. Those options which better match the environment are
preferentially selected.

For example, a snowy environment contains the information, "white
things are difficult to see against a snowy background". This
information is copied into the DNA of animals living the the Arctic,
so we get white Polar Bears.

Dr Meyer did not consider copying as a source, hence his argument
fails.

rossum

[Nashton]

On 12-07-18 11:25 AM, Ron O wrote:

> On Jul 18, 8:32 am, Numerous <numer...@address.invalid> wrote:
>> "This has raised some deep and profound questions in another area of
>> science, and I call the questions surrounding this "The DNA Enigma".
>> The DNA Enigma is not the structure of the DNA molecule. Watson and
>> Crick did a wonderful job on elucidating that. The DNA Enigma is not
>> the mystery of where biological information resides. We know where at
>> least a lot of the biological information resides and that is in DNA
>> and RNA....So the DNA Enigma is not where the information resides, it
>> is not the structure of DNA. The DNA ENigma is not even what the
>> information does; the animation just showed, in scetch at least, what
>> the information in DNA does and how it directs protein synthesis.
>>

>> The DNA Enigma instead concerns the question of origins. The DNA
>> Enigma is about the origin of information, and this mystery of the
>> origin of information: where did it come from, how did the DNA

>> molecule acquire this precise sequencing that allows it to direct

>> these mechanical operations. That is the key question, and it is
>> closely related to and at the heart of another question in science
>> which is the question of the origin of life itself....
>>

>> When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
>> on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
>> infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
>> each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
>> shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
>> be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
>> life."
>>

>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbluTDb1Nfs&feature=related
>
> What are the guys that ran the teach ID scam doing to further our
> understanding?


What has science done to advance our understanding of the origins of life?

More conjecture?

[Nashton]

On 12-07-18 6:08 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:

>
> Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
> clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
> necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
> meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
> together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
> authority to your pronouncements.
>

> Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
> ignorance, isn't especially compelling.
>

> <snip>
>

Oh will you shut up already with your arguments from incredulity.
is that all you can post?

[Ron O]

More than people like you had Meyer have ever done by all their
naysaying noncontributions.

The origin of life research is among the most difficult scientific
topics. There is no doubt that it is among the weakest of scientific
endeavors, but that doesn't mean that it is not so much better than
"God did it" or lying about some designer did it when you mean that
God did it that it is just stupid to even put up your stupid non
argument. Who found out that proteinaceous shells could form
spontaneously? Who demonstrated that lipid bilayers could form
spontaneously if you just have lipids in water? Who discovered that
clays and minerals could have catalytic activity? Who discovered RNA
ribozymes? Who discovered that there are organic moleculses like
amino acids in comets and meteorites and just in space dust by their
spectral signatures? Etc. By this measure what has Meyer
contributed? What has any of the ID perps or scientific creationists
contributed?

Ron Okimoto

[rossum]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 07:05:08 -0300, Nashton <na...@na.ca> wrote:

>What has science done to advance our understanding of the origins of life?

Science has shown how to form amino acids in the conditions of an
early Earth. YEC's have never shown God creating amino acids in any
sort of of conditions. Science 1 : YEC 0

Science has shown how to form pyrimidines in the conditions of an
early Earth. YEC's have never shown God creating pyrimidines in any
sort of of conditions. Science 2 : YEC 0

Science hasshown how to form purines in the conditions of an early
Earth. YEC's have never shown God creating purines in any sort of of
conditions. Science 3 : YEC 0

>
>More conjecture?
Show us your experiment where God creates an amino acid, a pyrimidine
or a purine. Science has the results YEC has nothing.

rossum

[Roger Shrubber]

Your answer is utter nonsense.

The term information is being bounced around such that there
seems to be examples of more or less information present in
different DNA sequences. Give me a formula for calculating
that information and I will readily show where the information
comes from.

Transcending the obvious path of obfuscation to get to
the answer, the energy required to synthesize DNA exceeds
the energy present as "information" in the sequence.
The ultimate source of that energy is overwhelmingly
photosynthetic right now, but other sources of chemical
energy exist.

A secondary issue exists with the relative stability
of some exemplars of "information". That is a different
issue to the source of that information. The relative
stability is a function of interaction with the environment.

[Nashton]

Your insults aside, did you answer the question?

>
> The origin of life research is among the most difficult scientific
> topics.

Relevance to my question, please?

> There is no doubt that it is among the weakest of scientific
> endeavors, but that doesn't mean that it is not so much better than
> "God did it" or lying about some designer did it when you mean that
> God did it that it is just stupid to even put up your stupid non
> argument.

How does Godidit prevent us from elucidating the mechanism?
And if evidence points to a designer, how is that lying? Can you say
double standard?
Evidence that points to common decent, that doesn't even predict nested
hierarchy has become the mantra of the cheerleaders. When evidence
points towards a Creator, everyone becomes a liar and loses all integrity.

> Who found out that proteinaceous shells could form
> spontaneously?

The good people that studied the matter?

> Who demonstrated that lipid bilayers could form
> spontaneously if you just have lipids in water? Who discovered that
> clays and minerals could have catalytic activity? Who discovered RNA
> ribozymes? Who discovered that there are organic moleculses like
> amino acids in comets and meteorites and just in space dust by their
> spectral signatures? Etc. By this measure what has Meyer
> contributed? What has any of the ID perps or scientific creationists
> contributed?

Are we discussing the contribution of theists, or is this just another
one of your spiels?

>
> Ron Okimoto
>

[Nashton]

Show us how your baby steps have contributed anything but conjecture?


>
> rossum
>

[Ron O]

On Jul 20, 10:46�am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> On Jul 19, 12:57�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > On Jul 18, 10:41�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Jul 18, 10:25�am, Ron O <rokim...@cox.net> wrote:
>
> > > >�You can go to
> > > > the Discovery Institute web site and see that they continue to claim
> > > > that they have the scientific theory of ID to teach in the public
> > > > schools.
>
> > > The people you are addressing cannot do that, because the website
> > > doesn't say they have something suitable for teaching on the public
> > > school level as an alternative to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. � Only
> > > you, of all people here, has ever claimed that the website says that.
>
> > > The only argument you've ever given for the website saying that is
> > > your libel that I am a liar, and insane, for not agreeing that the
> > > website says that.
>
> The truth of the following statement by me is borne out by the quote
> Ron O has provided at the end.

This is another post that Nyikos should self evaluate instead of run
from. How many posts are you running from? Why do you do junk like
this instead of demonstrate that you are not the liar? By your own
projection you call what you do habitual lying. When you aren't being
kind to yourself you call it pathological lying. This is the guy that
keeps telling the lie that he has never lied on the internet. Nyikos
has some weird definition of lying so that he can never lie, but
others can lie and he can't even meet his own standards. Nyikos can
go back to the most recent example of him digging up some weird thing
that I was supposed to have lied about. The dasterdly deed was
supposed to be me lying about his answer to the alien question, and in
multiple posts making that stupid claim he had to quote a partial
sentence, taken out of the context that he knew it existed in. The
sad thing is that we were never talking about what his answer to that
question was, but the discussion was about how he had dodged the issue
of his being a creationist by answering that question instead of
addressing the issue that he had made an issue. So how was I lying
and Nyikos never lies? Wasn't he lying and misusing that quote to do
it? If what I did was a lie Nyikos would obviously have a boat load
of lies on the internet let alone the lies like he is trying to get
away with in the post below. Really, Nyikos has to manufacture
supposed lies by me in order to project his own bogus behavior onto
me. Who had the insane logic? Who was the Dirty debater? Who was
running from dozens of post (by his own definition of running) when he
started a stupid thread to claim that I was running from a single post
from a bogus thread started by a troll? Did I even know that, that
post existed to run from it? Don't you wish that you had that excuse
for all the posts that you are actually running from? Who eventually
ran from that thread and from the responses to that bogus post in the
bogus troll thread. Running by your own definition of running?

Nyikos knows that I can put up the links to his bogus behavior and all
he can do is what he does below. Lie and run.

Nyikos can review how he treated the quote under discussion. How many
times did he ignore the quote, snip it out and run, leave the quote
in, but just make inane statements about it and not address what it
meant, and finally lie about me taking that quote out of context? Why
did Nyikos start lying about the quote instead of run from it or
prevaricate about it? Nyikos was caught lying about me not making a
rebuttal to his Insane logic thread. There was no doubt that I
rebutted his stupid and dishonest post, and no doubt that he ran from
the rebuttal. He tried to rebut the rebuttal twice (after claiming
that it was not a rebuttal) but could only get through a single
paragraph of my rebuttal when I had rebutted every Nykosian lie in
that post. So Nyikos was pushed to lie about something that he could
not bring himself to lie about before. For what reason? To try to
cover his dishonesty about something else. If he wants to lie about
his bogus behavior he knows that I can put up the posts of him doing
that. He can go back to the posts where he lied about me taking that
quote out of context and where I posted the whole statement and asked
him for the context that he was talking about and demonstrate that he
had any type of reasonable argument and that he did not run from what
he had done. You won't see him do that because he is lying about it.
Lying about never lying on the internet is so bogus that it is just
lying about lying.

What else is Nyikos lying and prevaricating about in his bogus
response below? Nyikos knows, but he has to be the pathological
liar. Look at this thread. Who is being quoted? Stephen Meyer the
ID perp that has been the director of the Discovery Institute's ID
scam division since it started. What does Nyikos prevaricate about?
"They" (the few identified as authors of the evidence Nyikos is in
denial about) included Meyer as the first author of the journal
article that Nyikos finally found convincing that stated that the ID
perps claimed to be able to teach the nonexistent science of
intelligent design in the public schools. In that article they
claimed to have the ID science and that it could be taught in the
public schools. Nyikos could no longer deny reality. He would have
come to his senses much earlier because the same group of ID perp
authors published a whole book on teaching ID in the public schools
that year and I had given him that information 4 or 5 months before,
but he had lied about never getting that information when I had
presented it multiple times, could show that Nyikos had responded to
one of those posts with that evidence, but had snipped out the
evidence and run from it etc.. Never lying on the internet?

The staff or other unknown fellows of the Discovery Institute were
involved in writing most of the other evidence that I put up. What
was I claiming? I do not know how many of the ID perps at the
Discovery Institute were responsible for or agreed with the Wedge
document. How many signed up under the original mission statement?
Who wrote the propagands pamphlet that resulted in you lying about the
quote in the Scottish verdict thread that you started? These were
general statements issued by the Discovery Institute as a whole.

What is the Discovery Institute most known for doing? Who used to
claim that ID was their business? Besides Meyer and Wells who went to
Ohio to run the bait and switch? Wasn't the president of the
Discovery Institute and half a dozen others at the Ohio bait and
switch? I even put up the quote claiming that Wells didn't just claim
that ID could be taught, but that there was enough science to make it
manditory that ID be taught in the Ohio public schools. The pathetic
nature of this Nyikosian denial is just stupid. There is no doubt
that the ID perps ran the teach ID scam. It is what they are most
known for. There is no doubt that they claimed to be able to teach
the junk in the public schools because it turned out that ID was just
swapped out for creationism in Pandas and People that was supposed to
solve the problem of having something to teach in the public schools,
and who was involved in writing Pandas and People? Behe admits to
writing some of it (though he was not credited) and Meyer wrote the
Teachers notes. Thaxton edited the book and Kenyon was the primary
author. All of them fellows of the Discovery Institute. With Meyer
being the director of the ID scam wing since it started.

Who doctored this quote:
QUOTE:
Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools?
No. Science teachers have the right to teach science.
Since ID is a legitimate scientific theory, it should be
constitutional to discuss in science classrooms
and it should not be banned from schools. If a
science teacher wants to voluntarily discuss ID,
she should have the academic freedom to do so.
END QUOTE:

Who removed the "Has ID Been Banned from Public Schools? No." part of
this quote and claimed that the the ID perps were not claiming to be
able to teach the junk in the public schools? Why would Nyikos doctor
the quote like that and make that bogus claim? What are you claiming
below?

So Nyikos go through this post argument by bogus argument and self
evaluate it. Remember that I can just go back to the actual posts and
present the quotes and links that you run from. Heck, you should
present the links and quotes that demonstrate that you are the bogus
one as atonement. Don't just lie about the junk and run, but
demonstrate that your lies could be credible. You know that I have
repeatedly put up the links and quotes demonstrating what I claim, but
why should I keep doing that when you just run away and lie about it
like this?

Just face the reality that what you claim does not exist except in
some Nyikosian delusion and then look in the mirror and lie about you
never lying on the internet.

Nyikos needs to self evaluate this post and his other bogus posts
posted after his last stupidity in the By their Fruits Feb tread. At
some point he has to stop lying to himself about non existent
technical knockdowns and hammer blows that never appear and face
reality.

Who is the guy that can't face reality and has to lie about someone
else to other posters behind their backs? Face what you have done,
don't just lie to yourself about it. I don't want to keep
encountering your lies and delusions. It is time to put up or shut
up. Where are the additional knock downs that you promised to get to
a couple of weeks ago. Didn't you claim that they were coming 10
months ago? Where are the hammer blows that you claimed months ago
that you can deliver? What was the last hammer blow? Who was caught
making junk up? You are just pathetic.

Ron Okimoto

>
> > > But what it actually says is that if a teacher wants to teach ID [s]he
> > > has a constitutional right to do so.
>
> Ron O does not deny anything in the following paragraph, perhaps
> because there are so many participants on this thread.
>
> > > You spent thousands of lines emphasizing that they do NOT have
> > > teaching material to compete with the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and
> > > puked all over me for not immediately kowtowing to the Phillip Johnson
> > > statement to that effect. �I endorsed it many times, but because I
> > > didn't do it on YOUR timetable, you heaped all kinds of insults on me,
> > > and outright libel about me being a liar.
>
> > > Peter Nyikos
>
> > This is the same Peter Nyikos that lied about me taking the quote from
> > the official statement out of context,
>
> That was no lie. �I immediately �quoted something from the same
> webpage which had far more to do with the whole context of your cherry-
> picked quote, than the quote itself.
>
> I never lie on the Internet, and none of your broken record routine
> about me lying about this and that can change that fact.
>
> >and then ran when I posted the
> > entire statement and asked what context he was talking about.
>
> I had seen the entire statement earlier, having read the website all
> the way through, and it added nothing to the fact that you had cherry-
> picked it from a webpage where the only explicit recommendations �to
> public school teachers had to do with what you call "the switch scam".
>
> What you call "the switch scam", as though there could be a switch
> without bait, was the recommendation to lecture to students about the
> weaknesses of Darwinian explanations of evolution.
>
> > Here it is again. �It may have been modified since the last time I put
> > it up.
>
> [snip to get to the point]
>
> > that
> > paragraph that you claimed that I took out of context is still there,
> > and it still says that they have the scientific theory of intelligent
> > design to teach to public school kids.
>
> Thanks for posting it below, so that people can see that it says
> nothing at all about *them* having any curriculum ready.
>
> �>Why you have to lie about
>
> > stupid junk like this is beyond me. �You know what they claimed years
> > before they wrote this statement,
>
> "they" was two or three people, and then came the notorious �"Wedge
> Document" which merely talked about plans five years down the road --
> a wildly overoptimistic plan, as anyone with an ounce of sense and
> knowledge of evolution could have told them.
>
> >http://www.discovery.org/a/3164
>
> > QUOTE:
> > Although Discovery Institute does not advocate requiring the teaching
> > of intelligent design in public schools, it does believe there is
> > nothing unconstitutional about voluntarily discussing the scientific
> > theory of design in the classroom. In addition, the Institute opposes
> > efforts to persecute individual teachers who may wish to discuss the
> > scientific debate over design in an objective and pedagogically
> > appropriate manner.
> > END QUOTE:
>
> There is nothing here about the DI itself �having the intelligent
> design in a form ready for teaching in the public schools. �This whole
> paragraph, written after the Dover decision, is a reply to people who
> read far more into what Judge Jones wrote as far as the
> constitutionality of things is concerned. �The judge forbade the
> teaching of Intelligent Design AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO evolution. �And
> the fact that evolution has taken place is not something the DI people
> wish to challenge.
>
> > Even the ways that they have changed the rest of the statement should
> > tell you something about how bogus these guys are.
>
> On the contrary, it tells me how bogus the many guys are who read more
> into what Judge Jones actually ordered than he actually did.
>
> Have you been guilty of this in the past?
>
> >You know what they
> > are advocating and were advocating, so why lie to yourself?
>
> I'm not lying at all. �I'm giving a balanced account.
>
> >�Aren't
> > these guys still claiming that there is a scientific theory for some
> > teacher to voluntarily teach in the classroom?
>
> We've been through this: there are many non-DI resources such a
> teacher could use to indirectly promote that idea, like a certain film
> of the mid-50's that had nothing to do with the DI.
>
> >�You no longer deny
> > that the ID perps claimed that they could teach ID in the public
> > schools,
>
> Three naive ID eager beavers, writing well before the Dover decision,
> are a far cry from the whole DI.
>
> > so why make this stupid denial? �Are you going to start lying
> > about what you have already given up lying about? �How sad is that?
>
> "Are you going to start beating your wife after having already given
> up beating your wife? �How sad is that?"
>
> Peter Nyikos

[jillery]

Oopsie, Bob hit a sore spot.

[Ron O]

Why is it not relevant? How lame can you get?

>
> > �There is no doubt that it is among the weakest of scientific

> > endeavors, but that doesn't mean that it is not so much better than
> > "God did it" or lying about some designer did it when you mean that
> > God did it that it is just stupid to even put up your stupid non
> > argument.
>
> How does Godidit prevent us from elucidating the mechanism?
> And if evidence points to a designer, how is that lying? Can you say
> double standard?
> Evidence that points to common decent, that doesn't even predict nested
> hierarchy has become the mantra of the cheerleaders. When evidence
> points towards a Creator, everyone becomes a liar and loses all integrity.

Godidit does not prevent anyone from elucidating anything. It is just
a fact that the current crop of deniers like yourself and contributed
nothing but naysaying in the face of that fact.

>
> > Who found out that proteinaceous shells could form
> > spontaneously?
>
> The good people that studied the matter?

What were you claiming in your first post?

>
> > Who demonstrated that lipid bilayers could form
> > spontaneously if you just have lipids in water? �Who discovered that
> > clays and minerals could have catalytic activity? �Who discovered RNA
> > ribozymes? �Who discovered that there are organic moleculses like
> > amino acids in comets and meteorites and just in space dust by their
> > spectral signatures? �Etc. �By this measure what has Meyer
> > contributed? �What has any of the ID perps or scientific creationists
> > contributed?
>
> Are we discussing the contribution of theists, or is this just another
> one of your spiels?

NashT, I don't believe that you can be this stupid. These are
contributions to the Origins of life science. None of it has been
contributed by the creationist naysayers.

What was you initial claim and how are you in denial about reality?
Are you really this stupid or just pretending?

Ron Okimoto

>
> > Ron Okimoto

[wiki trix]

The odd thing is that arguments from incredulity are most common among
the most credulous. Needs a new name.

[rossum]

Conjecture? Bwahahahahah! We have actual test tubes with actual
chemicals in them. YECs have empty test tubes, and are still waiting
for their deity to poof some chemicals into them.

YEC has empty test tubes. Science has test tubes with chemicals in
them. Science has taken some steps. YEC has taken none. Where are
the YEC amino acids? The YEC purines? The YEC pyrimidines?

Science has them, YEC doesn't. It is YEC which is left with nothing
but conjecture.

rossum

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 08:21:27 -0300, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Nashton <na...@na.ca>:

>On 12-07-18 6:08 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>
>>
>> Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
>> clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
>> necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
>> meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
>> together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
>> authority to your pronouncements.
>>
>> Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
>> ignorance, isn't especially compelling.

>Oh will you shut up already with your arguments from incredulity.
>is that all you can post?

Nope; I post a lot more, as can be seen in the text you
failed to snip. And in other threads and posts. Unlike you.

Oh, and the answer (I'd hate to seem rude) to your request
is "No".

HACCL.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 10:48:32 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

*And* got an actual "two-liner" from Nashie, rather than his
usual one-liner. No actual refutation, of course, but that's
come to be expected of Nashie; all he usually does is ask
somewhat inane questions and ignore the replies. I feel
honored.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 08:57:25 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by wiki trix
<wiki...@gmail.com>:

Point.

How about the "Nashie" in honor of one of its most prolific
proponents?

[UC]

Did you know that 'gullible' was left out of the most recent Webster's
Collegiate?

[Kalkidas]

Reading comprehension isn't Bob's strong suit.

[wiki trix]

On Jul 21, 2:04�pm, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off> wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 08:57:25 -0700 (PDT), the following
> appeared in talk.origins, posted by wiki trix

> <wikit...@gmail.com>:

>
>
>
>
>
> >On Jul 21, 7:21�am, Nashton <n...@na.ca> wrote:
> >> On 12-07-18 6:08 PM, Bob Casanova wrote:
>
> >> > Perhaps it should be noted, solely as a matter of
> >> > clarification, that what something "seems" to you is not
> >> > necessarily related to what "is", and your ignorance of the
> >> > meaning of "natural selection" and of "random mutation",
> >> > together with your rejection of evidence, doesn't confer
> >> > authority to your pronouncements.
>
> >> > Short form: Argument from incredulity, like argument from
> >> > ignorance, isn't especially compelling.
>
> >> > <snip>
>
> >> Oh will you shut up already with your arguments from incredulity.
> >> is that all you can post?
>
> >The odd thing is that arguments from incredulity are most common among
> >the most credulous. Needs a new name.
>
> Point.
>
> How about the "Nashie" in honor of one of its most prolific
> proponents?

I like it. From now on we should all use the term "Argument from
Nashie" rather than "Argument from Ignorance" or "Argument from
Incredulity".

[wiki trix]

I have a lack of evidence to the contrary at the moment, so what you
say must be true.

[Nashton]

Meyrs is talking about how DNA came to be, not about how alleged
adaptations gave the DNA of various extant organisms their genotype.
And...you know it.

Darwin of the Gaps is as falsifiable as God, the spaghetti monster and
most importantly, your world view of origins, that has no connection to
what is known through biochemistry or studying the genome.

Injecting into the discussion your opinion (and you have every right to
it) that life, when it began, either by a deliberate Creator or
happenstance (more suitable to the atheist's worldview), was vastly
different enough to the form of current life is just another side of the
Darwin of the Gaps coin.

The ToE, does nothing to prove that life began because of the interplay
of extreme environmental factors and cheerleaders, who have everything
invested in it, will swear that it doesn't need to.
Unless someone pokes them with the fact that a Creator God would be a
far less involved explanation and would even please Occam and his razor.

[Nashton]

On 12-07-20 6:04 PM, John Harshman wrote:
> pnyikos wrote:

Meyrs was. So either you misunderstood what he wrote, which is crystal
clear or need to read for comprehension before rolling out the
evocheerleader defense in the future.

[Glenn]

"wiki trix" <wiki...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6bb51565-3835-4bef...@tu6g2000pbc.googlegroups.com...

Making farting sounds would have been funnier.

[UC]

Nyuk nyuk nyuk....

[John Harshman]

No, I don't know it. If that was his intended question, he is stating it
very, very badly. What does "precise sequencing" mean to *you*?

> Darwin of the Gaps is as falsifiable as God, the spaghetti monster and
> most importantly, your world view of origins, that has no connection to
> what is known through biochemistry or studying the genome.

How would you possibly know that? You have never shown any knowledge of
either.

> Injecting into the discussion your opinion (and you have every right to
> it) that life, when it began, either by a deliberate Creator or
> happenstance (more suitable to the atheist's worldview), was vastly
> different enough to the form of current life is just another side of the
> Darwin of the Gaps coin.

That isn't my opinion. It's my speculation buttressed by a meager
complement of facts. Please take the trouble to learn my opinion before
critiquing it.

> The ToE, does nothing to prove that life began because of the interplay
> of extreme environmental factors and cheerleaders, who have everything
> invested in it, will swear that it doesn't need to.

You should watch your commas. I was all set to agree with you that life
began because of interplaying cheerleaders. But in fact the theory of
evolution has very little to say about the origin of life, except that
if we assume life began naturally, something like evolution presumably
took hold fairly early on.

> Unless someone pokes them with the fact that a Creator God would be a
> far less involved explanation and would even please Occam and his razor.

So is god the simplest explanation for anything? Don't see it. God is a
very complex being, if he exists at all. That there is no evidence for
his existence is a point against him. And the assumption of a cause that
could have done anything, no matter how seemingly impossible, strikes me
as the least parsimonious cause one could come up with.

[John Harshman]

The name is Meyer. Why is that so difficult? And you seem to like
cheerleaders lately. Is it the short skirts or the pompoms?

[jillery]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:03:28 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

I'm so envious!

[jillery]

And there are posters who have no suit. They're just Jokers.

[jillery]

Does this mean you think we can't use that word anymore?

[Glenn]

"jillery" <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:725m08dh5o3fagel8...@4ax.com...

Boring baiting.

[Paul J Gans]

rossum <ross...@coldmail.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:32:11 +0200, Numerous
><nume...@address.invalid> wrote:

>>When I look at the attempts to explain the origin of information based
>>on chance, based on necessity, based on the combination of the two, I
>>infer that intelligent design provides the best explanation because
>>each of these other forms of explanation have [in this lecture] been
>>shown for various reasons, either empirical, theoretical, or both, to
>>be incapable to produce the information necessary to create the first
>>life."

>Where does the information in DNA come from? It is *copied* into DNA
>from the environment. Random mutations produce a number of different
>options. Those options which better match the environment are
>preferentially selected.

>For example, a snowy environment contains the information, "white
>things are difficult to see against a snowy background". This
>information is copied into the DNA of animals living the the Arctic,
>so we get white Polar Bears.

>Dr Meyer did not consider copying as a source, hence his argument
>fails.

The entire question of "information" and what it means in
biochemistry is fraught with difficulty. The major difficulty
is that there are many definitions of "information" and authors
rarely make clear which is which.

The information discussed in information theory contains at least
two people, the "sender" and the "receiver". A string of bits
is also involved. Both sender and receiver have to agree as
to the meaning of certain combinations of bits or no information
can be transferred at all.

Put another way, one person's random string of bits is another
person's encoded secret message. A third person can't tell which
is which.

Biochemistry contains lots of different kinds of information.
For example, in water, the angle between the hydrogen nuclei
in the molecule is fixed in an unperturbed molecule and is
exactly the same for all such molecules.

Where is this information encoded? In DNA, RNA, a textbook,
or what.

This may seem confusing, but if one wants to discuss "information"
one has to be especially clear as to what definition one is using
and exactly what constitutes that information.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[zweib...@ymail.com]

On Wednesday, July 18, 2012 5:16:29 PM UTC-7, Steven L. wrote:
>
> A theory that&#39;s intrigued me, is that the earliest self-replicating
> molecules weren&#39;t structures of nucleic acids at all, but stacks of
> polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
>
> Unlike the difficulty of spontaneous synthesis of nucleic acids, PAHs
> are already known to be common in the universe, could possibly have
> fallen to earth from outer space or formed some other way--and don&#39;t
> require phosphorus. By varying the molecular structure of the PAHs, you
> could spell out a genetic code.
>
> Interestingly, the spacing between PAHs in a stack of them, is about the
> same as the spacing between nucleotides in RNA. That hints at the
> possibility that PAH stacks were earlier self-replicating molecules,
> which later on acted as a substrate on which nucleotides assembled to
> form RNA. Eventually, the RNA-based life forms may have driven the
> older PAH-based life forms to extinction.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAH_world_hypothesis
>
>
> BTW, in Sagan&#39;s book/movie &quot;Cosmos,&quot; he speculated about an
> extraterrestrial civilization of aliens whose genome was &quot;polycyclic
> sulfonyl halides&quot; instead of DNA. Yep, that could work.
>

Let's just boil this projectile diarrhea down to its essence, shall we, sir?

"Could possibly ... could spell out ... hints at the possibility ... may have ... he speculated ... yep, that could work."

What a waste of electrons. You might as well believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[Nashton]

Hence, you're reading what you want to read.

>
>> Darwin of the Gaps is as falsifiable as God, the spaghetti monster and
>> most importantly, your world view of origins, that has no connection
>> to what is known through biochemistry or studying the genome.
>
> How would you possibly know that? You have never shown any knowledge of
> either.

LOL
Far from being an expert, I do know a thing or two ;)

>
>> Injecting into the discussion your opinion (and you have every right
>> to it) that life, when it began, either by a deliberate Creator or
>> happenstance (more suitable to the atheist's worldview), was vastly
>> different enough to the form of current life is just another side of
>> the Darwin of the Gaps coin.
>
> That isn't my opinion. It's my speculation buttressed by a meager
> complement of facts. Please take the trouble to learn my opinion before
> critiquing it.

So are you expressing your desire to distance yourself from this opinion
or do you think there are sufficient facts to support abiogenesis?

>
>> The ToE, does nothing to prove that life began because of the
>> interplay of extreme environmental factors and cheerleaders, who have
>> everything invested in it, will swear that it doesn't need to.
>
> You should watch your commas. I was all set to agree with you that life
> began because of interplaying cheerleaders. But in fact the theory of
> evolution has very little to say about the origin of life, except that
> if we assume life began naturally, something like evolution presumably
> took hold fairly early on.

And yet, here you are.

>
>> Unless someone pokes them with the fact that a Creator God would be a
>> far less involved explanation and would even please Occam and his razor.
>
> So is god the simplest explanation for anything? Don't see it.

That is because your worldview is not similar to mine.

> God is a
> very complex being, if he exists at all.

So you now believe in God or don't you? No wonder you're having a
difficult time understanding what Meyrs wrote.

> That there is no evidence for
> his existence is a point against him.

Do you seriously think that it will be possible to prove the existence
of God through experimentation?

> And the assumption of a cause that
> could have done anything, no matter how seemingly impossible, strikes me
> as the least parsimonious cause one could come up with.

So the fact that he created beings such as humans is a small feat to you?

What arrogance!

[Walter Bushell]

In article <juf7qk$frf$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:

> This may seem confusing, but if one wants to discuss "information"
> one has to be especially clear as to what definition one is using
> and exactly what constitutes that information.

Unless one wants to argue by equivocation.

--
This space unintentionally left blank.

[John Harshman]

So why didn't you answer hte question?

>>> Darwin of the Gaps is as falsifiable as God, the spaghetti monster and
>>> most importantly, your world view of origins, that has no connection
>>> to what is known through biochemistry or studying the genome.
>>
>> How would you possibly know that? You have never shown any knowledge of
>> either.
>
> LOL
> Far from being an expert, I do know a thing or two ;)

You have never shown signs of knowing anything.

>>> Injecting into the discussion your opinion (and you have every right
>>> to it) that life, when it began, either by a deliberate Creator or
>>> happenstance (more suitable to the atheist's worldview), was vastly
>>> different enough to the form of current life is just another side of
>>> the Darwin of the Gaps coin.
>>
>> That isn't my opinion. It's my speculation buttressed by a meager
>> complement of facts. Please take the trouble to learn my opinion before
>> critiquing it.
>
> So are you expressing your desire to distance yourself from this opinion
> or do you think there are sufficient facts to support abiogenesis?

That isn't a well-formed question. We don't know how life arose. We have
some clues, on which we can base ideas. However, the probability that
god was involved can be estimated as being less than or equal to the
probability that god exists, and this probability is quite low.

>>> The ToE, does nothing to prove that life began because of the
>>> interplay of extreme environmental factors and cheerleaders, who have
>>> everything invested in it, will swear that it doesn't need to.
>>
>> You should watch your commas. I was all set to agree with you that life
>> began because of interplaying cheerleaders. But in fact the theory of
>> evolution has very little to say about the origin of life, except that
>> if we assume life began naturally, something like evolution presumably
>> took hold fairly early on.
>
> And yet, here you are.

And unfortunately for all of us, so are you. Did you have a point?

>>> Unless someone pokes them with the fact that a Creator God would be a
>>> far less involved explanation and would even please Occam and his razor.
>>
>> So is god the simplest explanation for anything? Don't see it.
>
> That is because your worldview is not similar to mine.

Agreed. For which I am heartily glad. Your worldview is pathological.

>> God is a
>> very complex being, if he exists at all.
>
> So you now believe in God or don't you? No wonder you're having a
> difficult time understanding what Meyrs wrote.

A unicorn has a horn, if it exists at all. Happy now?

>> That there is no evidence for
>> his existence is a point against him.
>
> Do you seriously think that it will be possible to prove the existence
> of God through experimentation?

If god existed, there would presumably be evidence. "Proof" is a poor
word to use in science.

>> And the assumption of a cause that
>> could have done anything, no matter how seemingly impossible, strikes me
>> as the least parsimonious cause one could come up with.
>
> So the fact that he created beings such as humans is a small feat to you?
>
> What arrogance!

Sorry, but that was so incoherent I couldn't come up with a response.
The creation of humans would be a fairly large feat. What does that have
to do with anything?

[Nashton]

Which is relevant how, exactly?
This is about you and many others in here cheerleading for a supposed
branch of science in which you have a vested interest in advocating.

>
>>>> Darwin of the Gaps is as falsifiable as God, the spaghetti monster and
>>>> most importantly, your world view of origins, that has no connection
>>>> to what is known through biochemistry or studying the genome.
>>>
>>> How would you possibly know that? You have never shown any knowledge of
>>> either.
>>
>> LOL
>> Far from being an expert, I do know a thing or two ;)
>
> You have never shown signs of knowing anything.

You must be some piss-poor teacher if you think that you can make
pronouncements on my competency in the sciences through what I post on
an ng, especially when I'm on the the other side of the debate.

OTOH, you have shown to not even be fully capable of reading fro
comprehension.

>
>>>> Injecting into the discussion your opinion (and you have every right
>>>> to it) that life, when it began, either by a deliberate Creator or
>>>> happenstance (more suitable to the atheist's worldview), was vastly
>>>> different enough to the form of current life is just another side of
>>>> the Darwin of the Gaps coin.
>>>
>>> That isn't my opinion. It's my speculation buttressed by a meager
>>> complement of facts. Please take the trouble to learn my opinion before
>>> critiquing it.
>>
>> So are you expressing your desire to distance yourself from this
>> opinion or do you think there are sufficient facts to support
>> abiogenesis?
>
> That isn't a well-formed question. We don't know how life arose. We have
> some clues, on which we can base ideas.

Ideas, eh?

> However, the probability that
> god was involved can be estimated as being less than or equal to the
> probability that god exists, and this probability is quite low.

It can be estimated, eh? I've never seen God in any of the sciences I
have studied through the years.

What in heaven's name are you blabbering about?

>
>>>> The ToE, does nothing to prove that life began because of the
>>>> interplay of extreme environmental factors and cheerleaders, who have
>>>> everything invested in it, will swear that it doesn't need to.
>>>
>>> You should watch your commas. I was all set to agree with you that life
>>> began because of interplaying cheerleaders. But in fact the theory of
>>> evolution has very little to say about the origin of life, except that
>>> if we assume life began naturally, something like evolution presumably
>>> took hold fairly early on.
>>
>> And yet, here you are.
>
> And unfortunately for all of us, so are you. Did you have a point?

And yet, here you are again you arrogant little man.
I did have a point and you must have missed it, just as you missed Meyrs
point that...everyone has grasped except you.

>
>>>> Unless someone pokes them with the fact that a Creator God would be a
>>>> far less involved explanation and would even please Occam and his
>>>> razor.
>>>
>>> So is god the simplest explanation for anything? Don't see it.
>>
>> That is because your worldview is not similar to mine.
>
> Agreed. For which I am heartily glad. Your worldview is pathological.

You're a legend in your own arrogant mind, John.

Because some insignificant PhD in one of the 10s of thousands of Unis in
the world thinks it is? You're really not that special, John. I'm
willing to bet you wasted your youth and didn't make the grade to get
into a professional school.

I didn't ;)

I parse data on a daily basis and apply the science for the benefit of
mankind while you waste your time advocating some silly fairy tale.

>>> God is a
>>> very complex being, if he exists at all.
>>
>> So you now believe in God or don't you? No wonder you're having a
>> difficult time understanding what Meyrs wrote.
>
> A unicorn has a horn, if it exists at all. Happy now?

I don't believe in unicorns, Harshman.

>
>>> That there is no evidence for
>>> his existence is a point against him.
>>
>> Do you seriously think that it will be possible to prove the existence
>> of God through experimentation?
>
> If god existed, there would presumably be evidence. "Proof" is a poor
> word to use in science.

And yet the evidence is abundant. Just based on a different worldview
with different axioms than yours.

>
>>> And the assumption of a cause that
>>> could have done anything, no matter how seemingly impossible, strikes me
>>> as the least parsimonious cause one could come up with.
>>
>> So the fact that he created beings such as humans is a small feat to you?
>>
>> What arrogance!
>
> Sorry, but that was so incoherent I couldn't come up with a response.

Of course you couldn't. By stating that He could have done anything in
that context, you are implying that what He did do wasn't enough.

> The creation of humans would be a fairly large feat. What does that have
> to do with anything?

See above.

John, you probably intimidate the hell out of your little minions. As
far as I'm concerned, you're just another Dawkins lite armed with
nothing but a huge chip on his shoulder and hot air.

It ain't pretty.


>

[Nashton]

On 12-07-21 11:48 AM, Ron O wrote:
> On Jul 21, 8:33 am, Nashton <n...@na.ca> wrote:
>> On 12-07-21 9:39 AM, Ron O wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>

>> The good people that studied the matter?
>
> What were you claiming in your first post?
>
>>
>>> Who demonstrated that lipid bilayers could form
>>> spontaneously if you just have lipids in water? Who discovered that
>>> clays and minerals could have catalytic activity? Who discovered RNA
>>> ribozymes? Who discovered that there are organic moleculses like
>>> amino acids in comets and meteorites and just in space dust by their
>>> spectral signatures? Etc. By this measure what has Meyer
>>> contributed? What has any of the ID perps or scientific creationists
>>> contributed?
>>
>> Are we discussing the contribution of theists, or is this just another
>> one of your spiels?
>
> NashT, I don't believe that you can be this stupid. These are
> contributions to the Origins of life science. None of it has been
> contributed by the creationist naysayers.
>
> What was you initial claim and how are you in denial about reality?
> Are you really this stupid or just pretending?
>
> Ron Okimoto
>
>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>
>

I really never thought anyone can ever have a rational discussion with
you. You have mental problems. really, get them checked out. There are
good folks that could help you.