Re: Seanpit, ID and complexity

On Oct 13, 7:34 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.

I said what I did because the definition was piss poor.

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?

I, in fact, did define evolution: "specifically and testably defined,
in this case, as a change in mean allele frequencies." That
definition is quite testable. A significant change in mean allele
frequencies is the sort of quantitative test that science does
particularly well.

My rendering does not. Evolution was accepted in 1859 as a
*continuous* process of slight-slow change. Dawkins 1986 laboriously
confirms.

I would say that evolution is an *inevitable* process of change that
is only slowed by the conservative nature of natural selection at some
loci. Given the reality of mutation, only conservative natural
selection can prevent evolution. And, even so, it can only do it
dynamically. That is, mutation occurs and selection selective and
detrimentally affects the reproductive success of individuals with
that mutation so that the frequency decreases or is eliminated.

Species, in 1859, were suddenly seen as possessing the
*potential* to change.

Even Paley recognized variation within a species. Are you claiming
that Paley was wrong and that there is NO variation at all within a
species? If you have genetic variation, you have the potential to
change allele frequencies.

Accumulation of *these* changes, as the story
goes, results in speciation.

At what point is there sufficient phenotypic difference to call
something, after 10,000 years of change, a new species compared to the
starting point? Bifurcating speciation can occur in the absence of
selection, but merely by the accumulation of enough change over time.

These changes must be beneficial.

Not really. Selectively neutral changes also occur, just more
slowly. The only mechanism that prevents *change* is conservative
natural selection. When selection produces *change* it is natural
selection, just not conserving selection.

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).

Specifically, in biology, a change is called "good" or "better" or
"beneficial" when it results in greater relative reproductive success
than the alternative. If you think that changes that cause disease,
early death, or failure to reproduce are "good", "better", or
"beneficial", you are certainly free to make that argument.

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.

Yes it is. At base, all evolutionary changes are ultimately due to
changes in allele (not gene) frequencies.

The same cannot be falsified.

You mean changes in allele frequencies could have been false, but
aren't. It could have been that mutations do not occur. It could
have been that the environment is indiscriminate wrt phenotypes it
would support. It could have been that phenotypes were not the result
of genotypes (and some aren't, which is why evolution only involves
the phenotypes are affected, to some degree, by hereditary factors).
Something that could have been false, but isn't, is exactly what
science requires of its hypotheses and theories.

Evolution, as proposed by Darwin, is deduced to have
happened after it allegedly occurs based on various lines of evidence.

That doesn't mean that evolution is not, at base, a change in allele
frequencies. And, since microevolution is defined as evolution within
a species, we need not concern ourselves with speciation processes and
events in discussing microevolution.

Evolution is an interpretation of evidence; it says the similarities
between species is real, that they derive from one another (horizontal
causation).

Vertical, Ray, vertical. It is hard to argue with someone who does
not know if he is standing up or lying down. Vertical transmission of
genetic information is transmission from one generation to the next to
the next to the next. Horizontal transmission of genetic information
is transmission of genetic information from one species to another in
the the same generation.

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

Microevolution, Ray, is evolution within a species.

http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_thread/thread/e5e4...

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.

The described change in the genome *is* evolution. It is
phenotypically, and probably selectively neutral, evolutionary
change. But the genome of the species has changed and the species has
evolved. There does not have to be a large *phenotypic* change for
evolution to have occurred. In fact, changes like those described in
the "best birds" above are what you would expect if evolution were
primarily a function of time and only secondarily one of phenotypic
change.

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.

Only if the object that appears to be designed was in fact
manufactured by an outside agent. For living things, you lack the
evidence that they are manufactured by an outside agent. In fact, it
is clear that living things imperfectly self-reproduce. There are
many objects that have the *appearance* of design that we know, as a
fact, are not designed and manufactured by outside agency but instead
are a consequence of natural processes. E.g., snowflakes.

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.

What evidence of manufacture by an outside agency do you have for
living things? Other than your repeated assertions, that is.

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).


How can the pattern of fossil species, which appear and disappear in a
time-ordered fashion in the different geologic layers, get interpreted
as a *single* event of special creation? Multiple creations,
possibly. But a *single* creation event? No way.

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

Not those that accept the Bible's claim of a single creation event.

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).

That is not how "horizontal" and "vertical" are used. You are simply
making up terms.

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

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read more »

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Seanpit, ID and complexity
    ... random mutation and I assume natural selection. ... think (using empirical evidence to support your position) each of them ... I, in fact, did define evolution: ... Even Paley recognized variation within a species. ...
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  • Re: Re: Evolution is not a fact
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  • Re: Seanpit, ID and complexity
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  • Re: Evolution is not a fact
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