Oolon Colluphid

1. DNA is the material of inheritance. The patterns in it are passed down generations, with occasional mistakes.

2. If similarities are the result of a common designer, what do you make of different designs that achieve the same sort of thing? A different designer each, presumably. You want to propel yourself through water? A flat blade at the tail works well. Which god designed the horizontal flukes of cetaceans, and which the vertical ones of fish? You want to be sensitive to light? Which god made the mammalian eye, which the squid eye and which the insect eye?

3. I have mentioned some examples of your god’s wonderful designs to you before, in <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001481&p=" target="_blank">this thread</a>. Your replies were -- how can I put this charitably? -- somewhat comical. Let’s remind everyone of them:

... and so on. Nuff said?

Others can provide the technical. In layman's terms, from the sequences in the chromosomes, the ones that apparently fused have been identified. Chromosomes have easily identifiable end bits, to do with how they work during cell division. Lo and behold, the supposedly fused human ones have these end bits in the middle of the single, longer chromosome.

TTFN, Oolon

Douglas J. Bender

Oolon,

You said:


Thank you for the explanation. I was aware of all that, however.

I don't recall reading any "Designer Manual For Rules of Design" which said that a Designer could not use different designs to achieve the same sort of thing. I also don't recall reading any such "manual" which said that a Designer could not use similar designs across species. The point being that the "evidence" in the genes is completely explainable (based on what I have read so far) by a "Designer".

The same God Who loves variety, and Who has more than a merely "technical engineering" imagination.

Certainly not the god, "Ramanas". I would say it was the same God Who thunk up all the various creatures in the first place. Since when is a "creator" of anything required to stick within certain design "limits"?

Yes, I think that should be sufficient to show that Christianity quite reasonably explains away the "argument from imperfect design". And my replies, though perhaps comical to you, were quite reasonable, and quite adequately answered your points.

Well, I guess I would need to know more about the "end bits", and what they are and what they can be used for. A slightly more technical treatment than your (appreciated) explanation would probably be helpful.


In Christ,

Douglas

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

lpetrich

Which means that this hypothesis of a supposed "Designer" could account for ANYTHING. Yes, ANYTHING. Douglas J. Bender, where is the falsifiability in your hypothesis? What would make you think that some feature was NOT designed?

Descent with modification, a.k.a. evolution, is a much more natural explanation. Different "designs" would be invented in different lineages, and would persist because they would be too difficult to change once invented -- a common feature of many human designs, and a side effect of us being far from omnipotent.

Also, evolution explains biogeography very naturally. Why do oceanic islands have their own distinctive fauna -- fauna related to that of nearby landmasses? Why do the Galapagos Islands contain giant turtles but not giant rats? Why do only the Americas contain rattlesnakes and cactus plants, despite their ability to live elsewhere? Why do woodchucks live in Northern-Hemisphere continents and wombats in Australia?

And, O DJB, what makes you so sure that there are not more than one of them?

But this feature is universal in both groups, and has a simple explanation in evolution: an ancestral fish had sprouted vertical fins, and an ancestral cetacean had sprouted horizontal flukes -- and their descendants have faithfully preserved these features, because a changeover would interfere with their swimming ability.

Also, vertebrate eyes and squid eyes each have characteristic architectures -- one for vertebrates and one for squid. This includes the backwards retinas of vertebrates and the right-way retinas of squid. If some ancestral fish and some ancestral squid had developed eyes from light-sensitive spots, then their descendants would have faithfully preserved those designs,

At the expense of throwing away all falsifiability. Also, humanity has been in existence for only a small part of the Earth's history, and design imperfections and carnivores have been around for MUCH longer than our species.

HRG

Only if you call "the designer did it" (or "my cat did it last Thursday" or "the IPU sneezed it into existence") an explanation. Such pseudo-explanations could explain anything and thus explain nothing, as someone once said.

A real explanation should specify 1)a mechanism and 2) things that we will not observe - e.g. a bird beak on a mammalian body. A designer (of the ID type, i.e. with unlimited and unspecified powers) could do it; evolution cannot.

BTW, what about features which obviously work at cross-purposes (e.g. sonar in bats vs. anti-sonar in moths) ? Two designers, or one who wants to see who is smarter: he or he ?

Regards,
HRG.

Oolon Colluphid

Which, just to make it clear since that's a slightly technical term (we may be horrified at it, but the 'uninitiated' may just go "So?"), means 'At the expense of ever being able to tell if it's right or not'. No matter what the evidence, the idea can be made to fit it. Since you can never tell if it's right or wrong, it is worthless as an explanation.

Oolon

Douglas J. Bender

Oolon,


You said:
You don't see how this applies equally, in the case of "explaining" the similarities and differences in the "designs" of creatures, to both Evolution and a "Designer"? You realize I was rebutting your claim that the fact that there are both similarities and differences in the "design" of various creatures would imply either that there were several "Designers" or there were none.


In Christ,

Douglas

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

Douglas J. Bender

RufusAtticus,


I "believe in" kinds. And as I have the time, I will look at your "challenge" in that thread, though I don't want to "spread myself too thin", as I had done at one point in my previous sojourn here.


I had asked:
You responded:
I am saying that "similar designs" CAN BE the result of a common designer. And I am asking what is the "evidence" or "proof" that two dissimilarly designed "somethings" could not have, or would not have, been designed by the same designer.

Why should it? Can one architect come up with "dissimilar designs" for homes, and yet be known for a particular design?

That's an entirely separate issue than arguing from similarity or dissimilarity of design.

Are you equating "design" with a "niche"? Are you saying that if creatures are designed, they must fit into a clearly identifiable "niche" pattern? So what if a "Designer" wanted to create some mammals to be aquatic? Would you feel qualified to ask Him, "Hey, You realize this isn't following the acknowledged design pattern, don't You?"

And what "design sense" is it that they do not "fit" ("in toto")? One which we humans have, in an ad hoc fashion, come up with? Are there no examples of things in the fossil record which do not appear to "fit" the relationships implied by evolution? And just how "falsifiable" is evolution if it can account for, via the idea of "convergent evolution", similarly designed features which are clearly not related by "common descent"?


I had said:
You responded:
That's begging the question of whether those "sets of genes" are actually "ancient", and whether those genes have actually "evolved".

Well, that's quite an admission. I wonder how it is that it is possible to calculate the "ancient relationships" of a minority of genes, however.

Sounds to me like what is happening is that when some genes bear some similarity to each other, it is taken as evidence that they have "evolved slowly and preserved data pertaining to relationship" - but that would just be a circular argument. To say, "'Conserved' genes prove common descent", would be to ASSUME that similar genes have been "conserved" [i.e., in part that they have been around for a long time], and uses this assumption to assert the claim that therefore these genes are related by "common descent".


I had said:
You replied:
Nice try, but I do not have the attitude that I "know better than the geneticists and other scientists". I do believe that when it comes to understanding implications and evidence, I am not at a disadvantage to them.


You said, then quoted me, then replied:
What was that? Did you say, "MONTHS ago"? I thought you did. Now, why do you find it "rather funny" that I would ask for the "evidence" regarding chimp and human chromosomes in a bit more detail, considering that it has been apparently some "months" since I've possibly looked at that "evidence"?


In Christ,

Douglas

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

lpetrich

Human designers often have characteristic styles, which sometimes enables one to identify them.

DJB has a lot to learn about molecular evolution, it would seem. A reasonable designer would always use the same sequence for the same function; I'm extrapolating from my experience as a computer programmer. However, many genes, despite having the same function, have different sequences, and one can often construct a family tree from these differences -- a family tree that often closely agrees with family trees constructed using macroscopic-feature criteria, and which sometimes shows an approximately-constant rate of mutation accumulation over time.

This result has been a great success for evolutionary biology, and creationists are forced to come up with desperate, ad hoc hypotheses to account for it.

"Highly conserved" is an inference that comes from comparing sequences; some genes have sequences that are very similar across very different-looking species, though still not quite identical. It is inferred from this that the large majority of mutations of such genes are bad ones, producing poorly-functional protein or RNA sequences, meaning that only a tiny fraction of mutations survives. This tiny fraction would be because the protein/RNA sequence is highly constrained by its function, which is what is found when one looks more closely.

RufusAtticus

Douglas,

Yes, similar designs can be the result of a common designer. That being said, the next question is does this have anything to do with life on this planet. The short answer is "no." Proposing abstractly that "things" can be intelligently designed is far from showing that life is intelligently designed. Until you can demonstrate that life was designed intelligently, it is fruitless to debate on whether it has one or more designers.

Well, if similar designs are the result of a common designer, than the possibility must exist that dissimilar designs are not the result of a common designer. You appear to have not even addressed this possibility, but you should if you plan on continuing.

Of course, what other why is there to view design? Shouldn’t an intelligent designer be designing for the niche? What other thing is there to design for? You don’t design a submarine with out considering that it will go under water do you?

The point is that no intelligent designer would build a submarine using a tractor as the basis.

For one the relationships of organisms do not make sense if viewed as designed. (See above.) Secondly, there are too many features of organisms that do not make sense if viewed as designed. (Such as the vertebrate eye.)

Evolution doesn’t imply specific relationships. Evolution specifies that relationships exist, but it doesn’t demand that birds evolved from dinosaurs for example. The fossil record, genetic data, and morphological comparisons are used to determine actual relationships. So, no, there is not a single fossil that contradicts evolution.

Convergent evolution is not an ad hoc explanation but an observation. There are plenty of things that would falsify current evolutionary theory, such as proof that the earth is only 6000 years old, a time frame too short for evolution to account for the diversity of life on earth. Absolute, obvious, and abrupt barriers between taxa would disprove universal common descent.

They’re both.

Because they evolve slower: effective nucleotide substitution rate is low.

If you were actually more familiar with evolutionary biology, you would understand that this is not the case. Conserved genes are an observation not a definition. It is also observed that such genes have very constrained functions; they cannot very much without destroying the ability of the organism to compete. Such proteins were pretty much optimized hundreds of millions of years ago. This is not an assumption, but the result of decades of research and debate. Please get more familiar with the literature before stating what is assumed or not.

Really? Then what did you mean by “I believe that I, biological layman that I am, can discern valid and invalid science better than many or most trained and professional scientists?” You said this in the formal debate with Scigirl. Have you changed your mind since then?
Well, reread all of what Scigirl posted. She not only explained it in clear detail, but provided links to additional material.

-RvFvS

Daggah

If you make the claim that there's a designer, then you have the burden of proof, Douglas.

Well, take <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000407" target="_blank">cytochrome C</a> for instance. The majority of this protein sequence is unnecessary, and in fact, one can take the cytochrome c sequence of a human and replace the sequence (which is clearly different from a human) of a yeast with it with no discernable change. And yet, the similiarities and differences match evolutionary predictions incredibly well.

Furthermore, no, there currently are no examples of fossils that don't fit evolutionary theory. Evolution explains convergence quite well - obviously not every organism is going to take the same evolutionary path to achieve a given function (note that evolution is not with purpose). Convergent evolution is, in fact, powerful evidence FOR common descent, not against it.

The evidence for evolution is so literally overwhelming that the assumption is quite warranted.

It's quite simple, really, Douglas. Evolutionary theory makes the prediction that changes in DNA will be conserved. If we see examples of this in nature then this prediction has come true. It's not circular reasoning in the slightest. It's also a way that evolution could be potentially falsified: if the prediction is untrue then either the theory is wrong, or it's been misinterpreted.