Re: New falsifiable proposal/prediction of design

> That's not entirely true. I've said that evolution cannot get from point
> A to point B because a barrier exists between the two. So I *have*
> loosely defined the barrier as somewhere between two known points -
> between chimp and human, rat and bat, single cell and multi cellular, etc.
>
> So if I bet you $10 that you can't get from point A to point B (or vice
> versa), that would be a legitimate bet - since point A and point B *are*
> defined. In fact, the *exact* location of the barrier can not be defined
> without experimentation. My proposal is that one will *always* be found
> between the two points.

Are you asking biologists to recreate the evolution that lead from A to
B? This would most certainly be impossible. Chaos theory won't allow
it. It's like replaying weather patterns in a simulator, you're going
to get a different result every time, and the result becomes
drastically more different the longer the simulation is expected to
run.

If we take A and evolve it into C, which isn't B, but most certainly
isn't A anymore, does that satisfy your bet? In order for A to become
B, we would have to know exactly what selective pressures to apply to A
at each stage of its evolution to B. Furthermore, we would have to hope
against hope that A actually did the same mutation/speciation to get to
the next step in its march towards B.

Take the bacterial flagellum for example. Assume that evolutionists are
right, that it evolved from something else (like a type III secretory
system). Now, if biologists wanted to recreate this evolution from
scratch (a bacetria with no protruding structures) it would have to be
done as so:

(Forgive me, biologists, I'm butchering the steps here. Just go with
the idea)

1.) Evolve an active transport system that takes waste products and
dumps them outside the cell, and protrudes through the cell membrane.

2.) Evolve the transport system into a larger secretory system,
eventually building a type III secretory system.

3.) Pressure the bacetria to favor mobility, and hope that the type III
system is able to change its existing parts into a flagellum for
mobility.

The problems with doing this should be aparent. You have to know each
step of the way. You have to know exactly how to promote each step of
the way. And there is no garuntee that even with the right selective
pressure at the right time, that the organism will develop the same
strategy to cope with the selective pressure. It might find a new
pathway, which ruins your ability to turn A into B. The best you can
hope for is C, which *sort* of looks like B.

Now maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement. If when you say get from
A to B you simply mean: "Get the organism A to change so it can now do
B", that's a good bet. Betting that you can't evolve a bacteria with
mobility is a *more* fair bet than betting you can't evolve a
flagellum. But even then you're talking about compressing a process
that SHOULD take thousands if not millions if not tens of millions of
years to accomplish into a workable experiment.

And what about viruses? They are the fastest mutating of all life forms
(we'll call them life forms for now). If you can evolve a virus into a
completely new form, does that satisfy your bet of turning A into B? If
you say no, because they are not complex enough, you're creating a
problem. Viruses work on the scale of tens of years. Chimps work on the
scale of millions of years. Both are following the same rules of
selective pressure and mutation. If one is testable, and confirms
evolutionary theory, it makes sense that the other should follow. If
you claim there is a barrier, you probably have to FIND it. You can't
just sit back and say "well until you can figure out how to compress 2
million years of evolution down into 2 years, I still maintain that
this complex organism can't evolve". Well, you can, but it's a terribly
weak argument.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Disproving ID - proving how badly they understand evolution
    ... 10,000 generations, and see if a flagellum, or any ... This sums up how badly ID understands evolution. ... point is that, in order to evolve something like this, evolution needs ... apply selective pressure on them favoring ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Cell cooperation: score one for complex system theory
    ... titled "Animal Cell Differentiation Patterns Suppress Somatic ... Such "somatic" evolution among ... to threaten the integrity of the organism. ... The individual does not evolve - more likely the individual ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Cell cooperation: score one for complex system theory
    ... titled "Animal Cell Differentiation Patterns Suppress Somatic ... Such "somatic" evolution among ... The individual does not evolve - more likely the individual ... organisms or a disfunction. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Kevin Myers and Darwin
    ... Abiogenesis has been reproduced in a lab. ... When people say that "abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution", ... something cannot evolve if it doesn't already exist. ... the logical conclusion* of ToE is that everything started with a single cell ...
    (soc.culture.irish)
  • Re: New falsifiable proposal/prediction of design
    ... I've said that evolution cannot get from point ... >>>between chimp and human, rat and bat, single cell and multi cellular, etc. ... >> If we take A and evolve it into C, which isn't B, but most certainly ... >> strategy to cope with the selective pressure. ...
    (talk.origins)