Re: Seanpit, ID and complexity

On Oct 13, 6:55 am, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 12, 9:07 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Oct 12, 4:06 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 12, 2:20 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

The fact that RF is an Atheist and that Sean is a Theist could very
well explain his opinion, however. Sean accepts microevolution, common
ancestry, random mutation and I assume natural selection.

Ray, could you define the following terms and tell us exactly why you
think (using empirical evidence to support your position) each of them
actually does not exist in nature?

Two part question.

microevolution

Definition (D): Continuous slight beneficial change produced by
unguided material causation.

Piss poor definition.  It is obvious that you are merely making this
definition up out of your fevered imagination.


Your ignorance explains your belief.

Microevolution can be defined as evolution (specifically and testably
defined, in this case, as a change in mean allele frequencies) within
a species.

"Continuous slight beneficial change produced by unguided material
causation."

Your rendering then creates a new question: what is the definition of
evolution? My rendering does not. Evolution was accepted in 1859 as a
*continuous* process of slight-slow change. Dawkins 1986 laboriously
confirms. Species, in 1859, were suddenly seen as possessing the
*potential* to change. Accumulation of *these* changes, as the story
goes, results in speciation. These changes must be beneficial. The
acceptance of nature as reflecting adaptation, and the goal to explain
this phenomena, supports change to be beneficial (or "good" as Darwin
called it, 1859:84).

This evolutionary change in mean allele frequencies can be
either due to chance alone (neutral drift) or by environmental changes
that alter the selective pressures on different allele combinations
(aka, natural selection).


Evolution is not a change in gene frequencies. The same cannot be
falsified. Evolution, as proposed by Darwin, is deduced to have
happened after it allegedly occurs based on various lines of evidence.
Evolution is an interpretation of evidence; it says the similarities
between species is real, that they derive from one another (horizontal
causation).

Much genetic change can occur without a species changing in observed
macro-reality:

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/e5e4749e2582f710

Note that this definition, unlike yours, makes clear how one can
actually determine if "microevolution" can or has happened.  

The above link and its data falsifies your contention.

You look
at a species over time and observe if there is time-directed change in
1) the frequency of different alleles that have no selective benefit
or 2) the frequency of different alleles that have changed because of
an environmental change.  Frequencies of alleles in a population are
quite measurable (in small populations) or estimateable (in large
ones).  Moreover, one can set up experimental situations where one
either varies the environment or doesn't and follow whether or not
allele frequency changes occur as predicted.

Falsity (F): The appearance of design and organized complexity seen in
every aspect of nature corresponds directly to Divine power-causation
and not unguided material causation.

The *appearance* of design is not sufficient to distinguish that
something was manufactured by an outside agency.  Neither is, by
itself, organized complexity.


Design logically indicates that it was produced by a Designer. So does
OC. If similarity logically indicates evolution to have occurred then
you are accepting the same logic used to conclude that design =
Designer. Rejection of the latter is then based solely on the
restrictions of your Materialism-Naturalism philosophy. But the
evidence plainly supports the existence of a Designer.

Additional empirical evidence
includes sudden appearance of species in the geological crust of the
earth enduring in a state of changelessness, abrupt disappearance,
absence of descendants.

But the pattern *is* a pattern of massive change over time.

Counterfactual interpretation. Gould 2002 calls the pattern I
described "literal signal." It exists. To interpret said phenomena as
evidence of an antithetic concept (= evolution) is, once again, based
on the requirements of your interpretive philosophy. But the evidence,
at face value, says the exact opposite (= special creation).

This is why both Creationism and Evolutionism are interpretations of
the same scientific evidence.

Geological layers can be identified by the different suite of fossils
they contain (a fact that oil companies take full advantage of).  By
the very definition of "species" via the morphological definition one
must use with fossils, any fossil found that is identified as "species
x" must, of necessity, be very similar to other fossils called
"species x".  In fact, the changes that *do* occur in fossils that
have an extensive record causes paleontologists to either be "lumpers"
or "splitters" wrt whether a new fossil find is a different species
from an earlier similar fossil or a different species.

common ancestry

D: horizontal connectedness of **species** via unguided material
causation ("horizontal" includes branching viewpoint).

Uh, Ray.  You seem to be confusing "vertical" and "horizontal".
"Horizontal" is used for cases of transfer that are not due to the
vertical branching process that produces the bush.  Mitochondria
(horizontal transfer of a bacterial genome) and cross-species plasmid
transfer are examples of horizontal transfer.  If you are going to
present this argument as part of your "magnus opus" against evolution,
I would suggest you correct this before you put it into print.


Your comments plainly indicate that you did not understand what I said
or you lost track of the context.

I contrasted the main difference between Creationism (= vertical-
Divine casuation, God-did-it) and Darwinism (= horizontal-unguided
material causation, Evolution-did-it).


F: Based on the appearance of design & organized complexity seen in
each species the same corresponds to vertical-Divine causation.

Isn't this the same meaningless drivel you claimed provided evidence
against microevolution?  You still haven't provided a mechanism for
distinguishing between the hypothesized natural processes that can
produce the "appearance of design & organized complexity" and those
that *were* produced by some outside intelligent agent.

random mutation

D: Darwinian voodoo taking the place of Mind.

I would define "random mutation" as the idea that "permanent changes
in the sequence of the genetic material" occurs at random wrt the need
for that mutation.  Randomness, in this case, can be determined as a
rate of mutational sequence change that is unaffected by the need for
that mutation.  The rate can be changed by the presence or absence of
'mutagens', but cannot be changed by the 'need' for that mutation.

This is a simple mathematically determinable genetic test.  And, with
the possible exception of a very few sites where mutation has been
'domesticated' and 'localized', experimental tests (starting with the
Luria/Delbruck experiments in the 1940s) have demonstrated that
mutation is random in the sense described.

F: Dembski 1999 says if specified or organized complexity is the
result then the same is caused by [I]ntelligence and not antonymic
phenomena (randomness). Of course all scholars agree that organized
complexity exists (Dawkins 1986).

But all the experiments and scientific literature says that mutational
change of genome sequence is random wrt need.  [There may be some rare
exceptions, like the a to alpha yeast mating type switch.]

natural selection

D: unguided material causation, the main, but not the exclusive cause
of evolutionary change.

Notice that word "selection"?  It means that, *when* natural selection
is the cause of change (or conservation; one should never forget that
most natural selection is for conservation of sequence and function
and not for change) in allele frequencies, the change is "guided".  It
is "guided" by features of the local environment and not by an outside
intelligent agent, but it is still guided.

Natural selection can be defined as the relative differential
reproductive success of different *phenotypes* in a local
environment.  [Natural selection that has evolutionary implications
requires that the *phenotype* have a hereditary or *genotypic*
component that affects the phenotype.] This definition is
experimentally testable.

F: Nature and each species are directly comparable to a watch (but the
former, beyond all computation, exceeds a watch in organized
complexity, Paley 1802). Watches (= species) correspond directly to
the power of an invisible Watchmaker. Based on these condensed facts,
Michael Behe, in "Black Box," says no one has ever answered Paley 1802
much less refuted him. Of course I completely agree. Therefore this
analogy of nature by Paley obliterates any notion of unguided material
causation existing in nature.

How does this *test* whether or not "natural selection" occurs?  Paley
clearly thought that "natural selection" occurred.  Michael Behe
thinks that "natural selection" occurs.  All you are doing is
presenting an analogy and asserting that a watch is directly the same
in its mode of manufacture as a worm is.  Even simple observation
should disabuse you of the idea that worms are produced in worm
factories or in Swiss jeweleries by an outside manufacturer.  Have you
never heard of reproduction?  Were you home-schooled in sex ed?  Yet
it is precisely at this point where you want the analogy between worms
and watches to be identical.

My definitions of these terms are much, much, much clearer and
accurate than yours, and, unlike you, I have pointed out how one can
(and, of course, it *has* been done) test the ideas experimentally and
by observation of nature. [Except for common descent, which you
botched so badly as to be 90 degrees off -- unable to distinguish
horizontal from vertical -- a problem you will need to fix before one
can even talk about how to test whether common descent is or is not
consistent with the empirical evidence in a predictive sense.  And
whether your alternative explanation actually makes any predictions.]





There is
nothing creationistic about these facts.

I certainly agree that they are all "facts", if by that you mean that
they are so well supported by empirical evidence that one would have
to be a deluded fool to claim that they don't exist in nature.  But,
since creationism by a supernatural entity can perform that 'creation'
by whatever mechanism he chooses, it certainly makes sense that the
mechanism he used would be consistent with these "facts" rather than
inconsistent with them.

Non-sequitur.

My comment was directed at Sean, who apparently is considered a
Creationist. His acceptance of said evolution factS refutes the belief
that he is a Creationist.

All of the former were
originally accepted on the basis of being caused by unguided material
causation (= absence of Guide).

I think that should be *apparent* absence of a Guide and *apparently*
unguided material causation.  Just like how God, if he exists, works
through the *apparently* unguided material causation we call
'gravity'.  Denial of 'gravity', of course, is a cause of 'levity'.

[snip]

The point is that Sean is anything but a liar. He is, in my opinion,
genuinely confused.

Which, of course, could be why is a lying.  But you are assuming that
your lies are better lies than Sean's lies, because your lies are
bigger and deny things like the (as far as we can tell) randomness of
mutation that even Sean cannot swallow.  Which merely means that even
Sean has a tenuous grasp on empirical reality that you lack.

Howard has suddenly stopped debating or discussing and strayed away
from the issues of my post that he is supposed to reply to.

There were issues in your post?

His
parting shot of endorsing Sean

Endorsed by saying that he is slightly less of an intellectual
disaster ...

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