Re: Sean loses interest

Seanpit wrote:
On Oct 21, 11:15 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Sean Pitman seems to have lost interest in replying to my posts. This
happens every so often, and I generally attribute it to his having
painted himself into a corner. And so I interpret it this time.

Of course you wouldn't consider that responding to 20+ page posts of
yours where you present your endless just-so stories without any
actual genetic backing is an exercise in futility that simply doesn't
interest me anymore . . .

No, I wouldn't.

Let's see. We have "Nilsson & Pelger's eye-evolution 'model', in which I
show how he's mischaracterized that often-cited paper.

I seem to have missed the part where your assertions overlapping
ranges of expression of each proposed steppingstone is actually a
reality. You don't seem to understand that going from a flat light-
sensitive spot to even a slightly concaved disk isn't easy. Such a
change would require the unified arrangement of many light sensitive
cells. This unified activity of so many different cells would require
more than just a handful of specific mutations. Beyond this, it just
doesn't happen. There isn't any such example in nature or even under
experimental conditions beyond just-so story assumptions.

You are the one mischaracterizing the Nilsson Pelger paper - not me.

I merely point out that the functions involved in determining acuity (and on that assumption, fitness) are continuous. There are no "stepping stones". A 1% change was chosen arbitrarily, for convenience. Smaller changes could have been picked. And in fact small changes in shape happen all the time as a result of genetic variation. Your notion of "unified arrangement of many light sensitive cells" just shows how ignorant you are of how development works.

And there's "Chromosomes and Pyramids", in which he believes in an old
earth without being to point to any evidence of its age,

I've already explained this to you several times now. I think that
the planet itself is likely to be quite old indeed based on non-
radiometric measures of the age of the universe and extrapolations of
stellar and planetary evolution. Do such estimates produce a specific
age? Nope. I don't think that is possible. But, they do suggest
that the age is likely to be quite old - probably at least several
billion years old.

And I have explained to you that this is nonsense. None of this tells us that the earth is several billion years old. At best, you can say that the sun and earth are old enough for the sun to have entered the main sequence, and not old enough to have left it. This doesn't require billions of years at all.

And of course you reject radiometric dating only because it gives us answers you don't like.

But let's accept this several billion year old planet. What happened during the existence of the earth prior to a few thousand years ago? Do we have any rocks from that time (by "time" I refer to all but a negligible fraction of earth's history)? How would we tell?

proposes that
we should invoke ID only when there is no natural explanation but
rejects common descent even though he agrees there is a natural
explanation for the nested hierarchy of life,

Rather, I point out to you that the involvement of ID in key aspects
of the ToL requires that one have additional evidence to support the
theory of common descent beyond the pattern itself.

You make that claim, but provide no reasons why it should be true. In fact your own attempted analogies argue otherwise, and you yourself raised a generaly principle that contradicts our claim.

And of course there is additional evidence. There's the biogeographic distribution of species, which is clearly non-random with respect to phylogeny, including the convergent evolution of similar adaptations on isolated continents. There's the correspondence of phylogeny with the order of appearances in the fossil record. There is the fact that there's an order of appearance at all. As you have so nicely shown, there is the evolution of similar adaptations by independent recruitment of paralogous genes. There's the match between mitochondrial and nuclear trees. Quite a bit, really, but it's all just gravy; we could infer common descent quite well without any of it.

You do in fact
use your interpretation of the fossil record to support your CD
theory. If the evidence for a young fossil record became overwhelming
to you, there would be no way you could accept the CD theory for even
the NHP of the ToL. In other words, the CD theory requires more
information than just the pattern itself when ID is known to be
involved.

Not true at all. If it were shown that life were young, that would just mean that evolution and speciation would have to proceed at ridiculously high rates until just before we were able to notice, and then slow down by many orders of magnitude. Silly, yes. But less silly than explaining nested hierarchy by the whim of a creator.

Fortunately we are not forced into any such ridiculous theories, because there is abundant evidence that life is very old. Darwin rightly held out against Kelvin's attempts to limit the age of the world, until radioactivity resolved the apparent contradiction.

and is unable to explain
paralogous origins of genes of similar function.

I really don't know what you're talking about here?

What else is new? I'm talking about the reptilian and platypus toxins. If you will recall, I predicted their phylogenetic relationships on the basis of the theory of common descent, and so have tested the theory. I asked how common design can explain this, but you haven't answered.

Are there only two, or did I miss some? Never mind, those will do.

Whatever. I'm just not as interested anymore with your ideas since
I've already heard them and gone over them with you many times. Other
topics are more interesting to me right now . . . sorry.

I notice that you do seem to lose interest whenever you find yourself in a big enough hole. Just wanted to point that out.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sean loses interest
    ... please do present your evidence. ... written on to make it into real life testing much less demonstration. ... radiometric measures of the age of the universe and extrapolations ... of stellar and planetary evolution. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Sean loses interest
    ... If I'm so ignorant produce a real life example that goes beyond just- ... please do present your evidence. ... earth without being to point to any evidence of its age, ... stellar and planetary evolution. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution Supported by the Bible?
    ... in different species it is supporting evidence for evolution. ... from the same designer, rather than of having common descent. ...
    (uk.religion.christian)
  • Re: Sean loses interest
    ... The evidence is simple, that there is genetic variation in the shapes of all manner of body parts. ... And it does appear that human genetic variation, no evolution required, is up to the task of providing examples of what you're looking for. ... earth without being to point to any evidence of its age, ... theory of common descent beyond the pattern itself. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Can any evolutionist produce the "overwhelming" evidence of evolutionary
    ... decade to receive the overwhelming evidence)? ... Harshman's approach to evolution is seen in his request. ... similarity, what Darwin called "affinity," once it is shown and/or ... It is evidence, however, that Darwin understood common descent BEFORE he worked out the process that produces it. ...
    (talk.origins)