What is the case against Evolution?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Seattle, Jun 15, 2019.

  1. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    In case you missed it totally, Padian covered fossil record - which has nothing to say about how a single celled bacterium could evolve an inherently complex secretory structure. And then cover the huge gap to a flagellum. The driving force for achieving both over countless mutations required in between? Mystery.

    Throwing that essentially unstructured wall-of-text article in last link, without highlighting anything germane to that issue of secretory structure -> flagellum, is typical and lazy and unacceptable. Instead, actually study Behe's critiques of the substance and irresponsible lying by both commission and omission of his critics - in the article you ignored first time, as also now.
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    The presence of gaps in a scientific explanation of something is not evidence of anything, supernatural or otherwise. It simply means we do not yet know everything.

    The reason for excluding God from scientific theories is just the application of the scientific method, i.e. the principle of methodological naturalism.

    If you or anyone else chooses to attribute gaps in understanding to God, that is fair enough as a statement of personal religious belief. But it is not science.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    We understand the maths, and because of that religions assert that universal mathematics are produced by conscious intent, because we can make sense of it.

    But the universal maths (variables and constants) were here long before man was even a hominid. Hominids are mathematical physical patterns, purely evolved via evolutionary processes.

    And most of evolutionary emphasis is on survival skills, from very early on.

    Here is the evolution of the flagellum, step by step.

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    https://www.newscientist.com/articl...e-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex/

    And if you want to see what the very fundamentals of the flagella are, check out micro-tubules.

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    Structures and Functions of Microtubules - Rice University

    And you'll find that when you study microtubules in detail a whole new world of possibilities opens up, including the complex structure of brains, consciousness, and ability for thought.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
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  7. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    OK but I maintain a close look at the various gap issues - prebiotic and neo-Darwinian biological ones - makes it clear they are not just non-trivial but imo fatal. Requiring great faith in unguided materialist chance processes to get anywhere useful in any time span available. Or notionally many orders of magnitude greater. Again that invitation - pick apart Behe's critique - if you can.
    Recall I hold to no religion. Logic and totality of evidence drives my conviction, not some 'sacred texts'. Science by excluding the possibility of the supernatural limits it's horizon, as stated elsewhere.
     
  8. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Scientists would be curious enough to try and reproduce supernatural things in experiments, in a lab, so why aren't there?
     
  9. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    How about - by definition they are limited to utilizing natural processes.
     
  10. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Note the caveat in NS article. Microtubules are made by already living organisms - that need them to function btw.
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    It was done during the Kitzmiller trial. That's why Behe lost, on the evidence. You are arguing a case that is already been debunked. Resurrection is not going to help. ID is fatally flawed, not in imagination but in hard reality.

    There is NO irreducible complexity in the universe.. All things within the universe consist of 3 sub-atomic particles.

    3 particles! No complexity of any kind. A simple fundamental self-assembly and gradual acquisition of more sets of particles created everything we see today.

    Unless you are prepared to assign an atom the property of irreducible complexity and not as a mathematically self-assembled pattern right from the very beginning, you cannot cherry-pick a fricking flagella as an example of irreducible complexity from an infinite set of natural patterns which are obviously not from irreducible complexity and present clear evidence of Darwinian evolution (mutation) and natural selection (a probability function), in the direction of greatest satisfaction.

    IMO, evolution is the universe itself learning to do things more efficiently. It's a deterministic mathematical processing of relative values and functions in accordance to certain fundamental universal laws and constants.
     
  12. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    :EDIT, wrong quote:

    But some definitions can change, can't they?
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    No, nooooo..... microtubules are purely chemical structures (cytoskeleton) that make a living organism....difference!

    Microtubules are natural chemical information processors, trillions of them! All consisting of two component chemicals. They are responsible for the internal processing of all external and internal sensory information. The are the scaffolding of living organisms, purely chemical.
    2 components!
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  14. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    4,695
    That in red was sort of the thinking in early to mid 1920's. Catch up. Refutation of IC was not at all established in that trial. A waste of time though to try and persuade you otherwise.
     
  15. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Nonsense. Cite any of your heroes of evolutionary biology who claim microtubules came before cellular life appeared. They are manufactured within and only within living cells.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    And how do you know the cell is alive?

    btw. Cell division is controlled by microtubules. No microtubules, no cell division, no life!
     
  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    It seems to me my post 42 has already done just exactly that, by pointing put that a gap in knowledge is not evidence for anything, least of all something that is excluded from consideration by the scientific method.

    I agree that exclusion of the supernatural from science is a limitation: nobody could logically deny that. But that exclusion is there for a good reason.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    That was my personal observation and has nothing to do with Kitzmiller at all.
    It was just a reminder of the fundamental simplicity of the universe. This simplicity is afforded by the mathematical functions (energetic, chemical, geometrical), which allow a universally applicable regularity and consistency of physical and chemical interactions.
    1920? Is this not current science?

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    Quarks, Leptons, Bosons
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle
     
  19. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    You wrote 'only 3 particles', NOT '3 families of particles'. Which categorization would still be wrong and/or inadequate. Either way it's irrelevant to the topic. And that YT vid on micrtubules, which seems partly valid and partly new age guff, makes a joke of your 'just 2 components'. Again, pointless arguing with you on such matters.
     
  20. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I think that it's a legitimate argument that presents a challenge for anyone who wants to argue an evolutionary origin for biological systems.

    My point in bringing it up was that in reference to the OP of this thread (whose subject line is "What is the Case Against Evolution"), I'm personally inclined to consider it one of "ID's" best arguments. That doesn't mean that I'm endorsing it, let alone that I'm persuaded by it. It's just one of their best arguments in my opinion.

    I suspect that's probably true, sometimes at least.

    Or at least argued by one set of attorneys at one particular court trial. The courtroom rhetoric may or may not have convinced a jury composed of laymen, but I prefer not to look to trials and court decisions for definitive answers to scientific and philosophical questions.

    The way that courts approach science isn't necessarily how scientists themselves approach it. I recommend Evidence Matters: Science, Proof and Truth in the Law by Susan Haack, 2014 Cambridge University Press, as an excellent discussion of the epistemology and philosophy of science implicit in US federal court procedure and precedent, including rules of evidence, exclusionary rules, expert testimony, the Supreme Court's perhaps excessive reliance on Popper in Daubert, various questions regarding causation (such as combining causes, causation vs correlation), science vs pseudoscience, statistics and probability in the court room, proponderance of the evidence, and much more.

    https://www.amazon.com/Evidence-Matters-Science-Proof-Context/dp/1107698340

    I agree. It's a conundrum in the sense that it presents a problem that evolutionary biologists will have to address in every case in which they encounter a complex system whose function is dependent on the interaction of a large collection of parts. I don't think that it's a persuasive argument for "ID", but I also think that it's a legitimate scientific issue that can't just be dismissed with snarky sarcasm and with the wave of an atheist's hand.

    Yes.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  21. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    No the argument was given in expert testimony by Ken Miller.

    To quote from the 2005 Kitzmiller judgement, " First, with regard to the bacterial flagellum, Dr. Miller pointed to peer- reviewed studies that identified a possible precursor to the bacterial flagellum, a subsystem that was fully functional, namely the Type-III Secretory System. (2:8- 20 (Miller); P-854.23-854.32)."

    The present day Wiki article on the subject has this to say:
    " At least 10 protein components of the bacterial flagellum share homologous proteins with the type three secretion system (TTSS),[32] hence one likely evolved from the other. Because the TTSS has a similar number of components as a flagellar apparatus (about 25 proteins), which one evolved first is difficult to determine. However, the flagellar system appears to involve more proteins overall, including various regulators and chaperones, hence it has been argued that flagella evolved from a TTSS. However, it has also been suggested[33] that the flagellum may have evolved first or the two structures evolved in parallel. Early single-cell organisms' need for motility(mobility) support that the more mobile flagella would be selected by evolution first,[33] but the TTSS evolving from the flagellum can be seen as 'reductive evolution', and receives no topological support from the phylogenetic trees.[34] The hypothesis that the two structures evolved separately from a common ancestor accounts for the protein similarities between the two structures, as well as their functional diversity.[35]

    Main articles: Intelligent design and Irreducible complexity
    Some authors have argued that flagella cannot have evolved, assuming that they can only function properly when all proteins are in place In other words, the flagellar apparatus is "irreducibly complex".[36] However, many proteins can be deleted or mutated and the flagellum still works, though sometimes at reduced efficiency.[37] In addition, the composition of flagella is surprisingly diverse across bacteria, with many proteins only found in some species, but not others.[38] Hence, the flagellar apparatus is clearly very flexible in evolutionary terms and perfectly able to lose or gain protein components. For instance, a number of mutations have been found that increase the motility of E. coli.[39] Additional evidence for the evolution of bacterial flagella includes the existence of vestigial flagella, intermediate forms of flagella and patterns of similarities among flagellar protein sequences, including the observation that almost all of the core flagellar proteins have known homologies with non-flagellar proteins.[32] Furthermore, several processes have been identified as playing important roles in flagellar evolution, including self-assembly of simple repeating subunits, gene duplication with subsequent divergence, recruitment of elements from other systems (‘molecular bricolage’) and recombination.[40]"

    As to your other comments, yes there is a lot of work to do, no doubt of it. Where the "snarky" comments come in, in my view understandably, is that the argument advanced by "irreducible complexity" is actually not that it is can be shown to be "irreducible", but merely that it has not, to date, been reduced. This is equivalent to pointing out that "this is a difficult problem", rather than "we have proved this problem has no natural solution".
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  22. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    In my opinion, there are basically three schools of thought though, when it comes to people who believe in ID. One, creationism, two, ''theistic evolution," and three, evolution but God was behind it.

    Many fundamentalists believe in the Old Testament's creationist story, and they absolutely deny evolution. Theistic evolution is a little different in that it allows a religious person to believe in evolution, yet God was still the designer of it. (and it allows one to not have to choose between their religion and science - by believing that science handles the biology of it, but God handles the spiritual aspect of creation) And finally, God being ''behind'' evolution simply means that a person can be spiritual, and accept ALL the details that science presents when it comes to the theory of evolution, but they simply believe a Creator was the designer.

    These ideas come from my own beliefs, and hearing about the beliefs of others and how they reconcile their understanding of evolution. When it comes to spiritual people like myself, we don't seek agreement; we just hope for understanding and respect. I respect an atheist's view to believe as he/she wishes, as well. If we can't somehow find common ground, then it'll be hard to work together for a common good.
     
  23. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I must admit that I can't see the difference between your second and third case. But certainly the orthodox Christian view of this would be something along those lines. I have come across a number of priests, for instance, who put forward the view that God created the universe and the principles by which it functions and that the evolution of both the cosmos and everything in it, including life and humanity, is a result of that, without the need to invoke supernatural tinkering (i.e. a temporary overturning of those natural principles).

    Some go so far as to suggest that God "upholds" the order in nature, whatever is meant by that. I think the point of that is to allow them to say that God is active in his creation, rather than just someone who set the machine up, started it and then sat back to eat popcorn while it all happened.
     

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