E_muse

Indeed, but neither does poor spelling automatically mean that someone is stupid, uneducated or unworthy of having their ideas taken into consideration.

Kosh is asking, 'Why bother to debate with someone who spells like this?' which could give the impression that poor spelling ability automatically discounts someone's ideas and makes them not worth debating with.

It doesn't actually encourage debate.

Eudaemon

Here's a good anti-second-law-nonsense argument that's been going around on talk.origins lately.

Even a creationist should be able to agree that the process of reproduction and growth of any particular organism does not violate thermodynamics...the fact is, it's observed, so it can't. All the "organization", "complexity", what have you, of that organism has been constructed out of organic raw material. If 90% of all life was destroyed by some catastrophic event, but favorable conditions returned afterward, the biosphere would be able to regenerate itself without violating any physical principles.

Now, the only thing that evolution adds to this is that, sometimes, reproduction is not perfect. A copying error in DNA occurs that results in an individual having an allele of some gene that did not exist in the parent(s). This has also been observed, so it also can not violate thermodynamics. That individual goes through the very same process of growth that all other life does.

Where, then, is the violation?

-JP

sk8bloke22

hmm...kinda a result. he hasnt been able to respond to my responce on the eye. but he still positive that thermodynamics is a violated by the 2nd law.

"well, i have eased up the matters abit. U say that evolution of a human from a flat worm and my calculation is insane, well why? how about evolution of a human from a prokaryote, and this value of 400 years is the lowest value possible, because if according to evolution we started as a prokaryote, it would take even more than that, it could reach to up to 3700 years. That is due to the very low amount of numbers of a specie.
Secondly, i never said natural selection is not possible. However evolutionists have made such a big deal out of it, that they think any thing is possible with it. It is possible that a stronger specie may come from a mutation and survive, but if the original specie was already surviving, why would the new specie be the only one to be sustained. To me, having a better specie is something possible, but it would never cause the sequence of events to run from a simple bacteria to a human being. Moreover, it is even less likly to occur that there is a mutation in a specie that would affect it in any way. Let me ask u, do u think that any mutation would make an effect, do u know that most of the DNA of the human being simply does not give code into a protien, it only forms an intron which is then degraded, and if u want a specific value, it is 95% of our dna not coding. Why do u guys think of such.
Thirdly, to tell u the truth, entropy will always be against the evolutionary theory, entropy is used to sustain a chemical reaction to some extent. It is true that a reaction can occur in an open system which would decrease entropy by increasing in some other place, but this only plausable to some extent only for a limited sequence of reactions, entropy cannot decrease for ever, and it can never cause a complex reaction as what is happening in the human being, that is because at some point, entropy will be so low that even a huge energy would never make it any lower, thus it will go the other way round and will start to increase in entropy once again.
Last but not least, do u people realise what u r trying to prove to me, u r trying to say that the energy of the sun, lightning, formed this whole world, instead of a powerfull god. This simply sounds to me like when u say that the whole human civilization is not created by humans thinking brain, but by a bunch of ants that slowly tried to organise every thing over a billion years. What seems more logical to u.
Ah i forgut one thing, what did u say about the creation of the universe. If the universe is a closed system, then energy would not be created nor destroyed within it, secondly all solid matter within this universe is a condensed form of energy, so matter cannot be created nor destroyed, so do u think that this universe was created by itself through another process of evolution, at least when i believe in god, i believe that there is a creator to this universe, please give me a reply about this."

E_muse

Hello sk8bloke22

Firstly, it is good to see this debate going and I was interested by your thread about the eye. I shall come on to comment about this in a moment.

I'm not sure whether you are aware, but Richard Dawkins develops a similar arguement in his book The Blind Watchmaker in chapter 3, Accumulating Small Change but takes it much further. I shall quote from this in my response to you. This is not in an attempt to argue from authority but demonstrate that I am not simply arguing from my own opinion.

To simply state 'You're arguing from authority' can also seem like an avoidance strategy at times. The fact that I use the quote of an authority in a subject does not invalidate the statement. It is more helpful, to me at least, if people critique those who are being quoted.

I also have the annoying habit of asking lots of questions! This is because I like people to think things through and not have ideas dictated to them. I always think that solutions mean so much more when people have been able to think it through for themselves where possible.

William Paley (1763 - 1805) first introduced the arguement from design as an arguement for the existence of God prior to Darwin's Origins in his book Natural Theology It is this which contained the famous 'watchmaker arguement'.

It is important to note that in his book, Dawkins treats Paley with respect and suggests that Paley did his best with the information he had available to him at the time. Dawkins even suggests that he doubts whether he himself could have been an etheist prior to Origins. People base their beliefs on what they are able to know at the time and it is important to remember this.

To quote Dawkins:

This would suggest that belief in ID at one level is not entirely baseless or stupid. Most people are not able to examine biological entities to the same level which scientists can. To label believers as 'dumb' or 'stupid' isn't fair IMO.

To emphaise this, Dawkins goes further:

Why should the idea of blind evolution prove such a surprise if the absence of ID is so obvious?

Certainly I can agree here! Dawkins doesn't limit this to the eye saying:

Living things is a wide umbrella which covers many varities of life. Dawkins would also include Haemoglobin in his arguements - and does!

But evolution does involve a random element - random mutation.

Without random mutation life would have remained static in the most simple form possible or simply died out. The theory of evolution depends upon random mutation.

I would describe life as the accumulated result of random biological events. True, they are selected for survival, but then life is the product of selected random biological events.

If natural selection chooses a particular randomly occuring trait for survival, how does this stop the trait being random?

Even with natural selection, without random mutation life could not have progressed beyond the most basic and simple forms of life.

Dawkin's own comments emphasise this further:

Transformations here is random mutation.

Following Dawkin's line of reasoning, life appeared by chance and develops as a result of random biological events which are selected for survival.

It appears to me that chance and random events are the backbone of evolutionary theory. I therefore find it hard to take Dawkins seriously when he states:

Natural selection, may be quintessentially non random but the events which it is choosing from are not and without these natural selection would be able to do nothing. Natural selection results in the cumulative selection of random events.

How can forms of life then be described as being non random or not the product of chance when chance brought life into being in the first place (meaning, without chance no form of life could exist - including us) and are a result of cumulative random events (without random mutation life couldn't become more complex and couldn't exist in its present form)?

Of course, from an atheistic perspective it could also be argued that the processes of natural selection must themselves be the product of chance events because the universe is a chance event. Natural selection is therefore one chance event working on another - looking at the bigger picture.

Dawkins' comments seem to be an attempt to work around people's incredulity with regard to chance happenings in order to give his ideas credence.

Should a theory be judged on its believability?

Yes, I'm interested in that too! I wear glasses!!

Firstly, my eyes are not fully functioning and never have been. What I would confidently tell you is that I prefer having eyes which do not function properly than being blind!

Poor eyesight is better than no eyesight.

On to the other parts of your arguement.

Fish eyes are adequate to the survival of the fish in which we find them.. and the same goes for any other creature.

Can any quality such as sight be described as underdeveloped and fully functioning at the same time? Does simpler automatically mean underdeveloped?

But presumably the ability to pass on genetic data to offspring is also the result of a random mutation too.

Any 'trait', whilst helpful, is also a random occurence. It is a random occurence which is allowed to persist.

Let's say that I throw a dice which rolls under my fridge and I cannot be bothered to move it.

A couple of years (?!) later I'm redecorating my kitchen and have to move the fridge. Under there I find a really dusty dice showing a six.

Now the laws of physics which governed the way in which the dice fell 'selected' a six which I can now see for the first time.

Now, just because the laws of physics selected a six for my dice and have held it in that position for two years doesn't mean that the result I'm looking at is non-random or not the result of chance does it?

What we have is a random occurence held in stasis by non random forces. Equally, this is what we see in living things if the theory of evolution is correct. Random events which are allowed to persist.

It seems absurd to me when people attempt to argue that living things couldn't have come about by chance when defending evolution. It seems equally absurd to say that living things are non-random in an attempt to make evolution seem more plausible because every part of what a living thing is, is the product of chance and random mutation.

Chance brought life out of non living matter and every complexification which has occured since is only the result of random mutations.

Just because these events are 'held in position' by certain laws doesn't stop them being random outcomes surely?

This simply seems to be playing with words.

In matters such as these I think it would also be helpful to see the failures.

Imagine a monkey sitting at the keyboard and being allowed to type at random for x number of minutes. After some time the monkey is stopped and the resultant pages are printed.

Someone looks through the pages line by line until he or she reaches the first 'h'. This is cut out and stuck on a piece of paper. The person then continues to look from the hole in the paper until a 'e' is reached. Again, this is cut out and selected and placed next to the 'h' on a seperate piece of paper. This continues until the word 'hello' has been formed.

If we look at the letters we haven't selected we get an idea of the odds of the monkey typing the word but also the number of failures which are necessary for such an event to occur.

This is simply given to demonstrate that a random process will fail far more times than it succeeds. The question is then, what are the odds of a random process producing a helpful trait?

Dawkins states that, in real life, the probability of a gene mutating is often less than one in a million. This simply refers to mutation and says nothing about whether the result is helpful or not.

This simply brings us nearer to understanding the sorts of figures we are talking about here.

In The Blind Watchmaker, chapter 3, Richard Dawkins actually produces a computer program in an attempt to emulate such an event, albeit in a slightly different way.

Let's apply this to the model which you have suggested.

Firstly we write a pogram which needs to act upon random information which is fed to it. We could produce this random information ourselves by putting on a blindfold, sitting at the keyboard and typing away. We could find a helpful monkey! Easier, we could program a random letter generator into the program itself.

O.K, so our program is now producing random letters out of which we want to produce the word, 'hello'.

What type of selection process would we need?

Firstly the programmed selection process would need to be told which letters were 'viable', those being h,e,l,l and o. However, this is not enough. The process must also be 'told' the sequence in which it needs to accept these letters. For example, if the random letter generator produces an 'e' before an 'h', the letter must either be rejected at that stage or placed into its proper place in the sequence. Let's assume that an 'e' mutation is not possible until an 'h' has been produced and so on down the line.

Not so. He must also type them in the right sequence. e, l and o could all be typed before the h. It is true that the monkey only has to type the 'h' once in order to get it right but only after this does he need to press the 'e' only once more and so on.

According to the model I'm suggesting, 'e' isn't a possible mutation of the word until 'h' has been typed.

Mistyped letters at any stage might not simply represent unhelpful mutations but also genetic impossibilities.

Yes, but the 'h' is still a random event. Going back to an earlier arguement, it could hardly be described as a small part of the recipe could it?

To comment on this further - the selection process would have to be very tight indeed and be very rigorous in its selection.

Well, Richard Dawkins has stated that there is less than one in a million chance that a gene will mutate but this would have to be critiqued by an expert. He describes his random sentence generating program like this:

Well, I could imagine it but according to Dawkins, your imaginary thousands of mutations do not add up to real life, so this requires some rethinking or solid evidence from someone who can refute Dawkins's claim. At the moment he is the only authority I have to go on.

I disagree. Assuming that the word hello is the only word the monkey can type seems to me like assuming that the evolutionary path could only have led to one form of life.

If evolution occurs then simply this isn't true. As there can be many words, there are many forms of life.

Evolution doesn't follow a single track development. Man is not theorized to have developed from monkeys but monkeys and men have both evolved from a common ancestor. Evolution moves in branches.

Applying this to the computer model, could a selection process which would only allow the word 'hello' also be loose enough to allow the monkey to type 'fhigjkdswjfdioef'? Only if it was preprogrammed to only select this sequence of letters. They would be a carefully selected set of letters which give the appearance of randomness!

That's why Dawkins abandons the sentence program in place of his biomorph program instead, because true natural selection can't aim at anything.

The only way it could produce a sentence like this is if the selection process were removed after the 'hello' had been formed, or the constraints of it relaxed.

There is nothing to stop the monkey typing whatever he wants! Of course he can type any of them easily - that's never been in question. The question is, by what criteria is what he types allowed to survive or rather persist?

What method of natural selection are you applying to the last part of these other sentences? These seem a more probable outcome of monkey typing than 'hello' meaning that the selectors would need to allow for a greater scope of probability and be less rigorous in the selection process.

How can a selection process only allow 'hello' in one part of a sentence and yet allow 'fhigjkdswjfdioef' in another part of the same sentence? This seems to be moving from one level of probability to another.

I'd genuinely like to know which scientific authority you've got this from. I'll say it again for further clarification:

According to Dawkins, the probability of gene mutation is often less than one in a million. That's less than one mutation every million generations. Again, it would require an expert to critique Dawkins concerning this.

This only refers to the possibility of mutation and says nothing about whether these mutations are beneficial or not.

According to computer models, if we're trying to produce something meaningful out of a random process, the chances of failure far outweigh the the chances of success. Simply put - there are more ways of being dead than alive!

I would value your (or anyone else's) thoughts on this.

[ Edited to remove coding errors and add further detail ]

[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>

tronvillain

Kosh:
It would require you to be a little more specific as well, since "the probability of gene mutation is often less than one in a million" is to vague to really be useful.

Quetzal

E_Muse: Excellent thought piece. I appreciate the effort and intellect that went into it. Bravo!

However, there appears to be a very slight flaw in your argument. Mutations are random, agreed (although there are areas on the chromosome that have a much higher overall probability of having mutations passed on during replication simply because the cellular error-correcting mechanisms tend to ignore those parts). However, mutations are not the only factor to be considered, there are also gene recombinations, accidental duplications (polymorphism), etc. In addition, you have not taken into consideration sexual reproduction, where the genetic deck is resuffled every generation. These are all the factors on which natural selection operates. If we were required to wait for point mutations to cause change, we'd still be waiting and I wouldn't be typing this...

Another slight flaw in your argument concerning natural selection and our hypthetical monkey typing the word "hello". Your argument seems to miss the fact that the monkey is only required to get one letter right at a time - in each case having a 1 in 26 chance of getting it right - and the monkey is operating on all five letters simultaneously. Although the odds don't change for each letter, the time required (number of generations) to obtain "hello" is thereby substantially reduced. Since every successful "guess" is retained, whether it's the "h" in the first position or the second "l", the monkey very quickly arrives at saying hi.

A friend of mine provided an excellent example of how this works. With his permission, I will copy the relevant discussion here: footnote: [16] There’s about an 82% chance of a completely random guessing procedure getting it right within a thousand guesses. The “turn-over point,” at which the probability of getting all the letters right passes 50%, is 690 guesses.
(copyright Rob Bass, from <a href="http://www.geocities.com/amosapient/evol.html" target="_blank">"Creationists and Evolutionary Theory"</a>, reprinted with permission).

Again, excellent piece. I hope I've given you something to consider.

HRG

He abandons the WEASEL program, but for a different reason.

"True" natural selection definitely does aim at something: a local fitness optimum. Where this optimum (or other local optima) lies depends on the environment and may change over time - sometimes quite rapidly.

The WEASEL program differs only in two properties:
1) there is a single local optimum
2) which is explicitely known (and not only implicitely - as a solution to an optimization problems with such complexity and so many missing input data that it is effectively unsolvable).

Note that the WEASEL program looks for an optimum of a particular, extremely simple fitness function.

Peter Soderqvist

TO E MUSE

"EVOLUTION ALSO REFERS TO THE UNPROVEN BELIEF THAT RANDOM, UNDIRECTED FORCES PRODUCED A WORLD OF LIVING THINGS. "


Richard Dawkins: Where did this ridiculous idea come from that evolution has something to do with randomness? The theory of evolution by natural selection has a random element -- mutation - but by far the most important part of the theory of evolution is non-random: natural selection. Mutation is random. Mutation is the process whereby parent genes are changed, at random. Random in the sense of not directed toward improvement. Improvement comes about through natural selection, through the survival of that minority of genes which are good at helping bodies survive and reproduce. It is the non-random natural selection we are talking about when we talk about the directing force which propels evolution in the direction of increasing complexity, increasing elegance and increasing apparent design.
The statement that "evolution refers to the unproven belief that random undirected forces. . ." is not only unproven itself, it is stupid. No rational person could believe that random forces could produce a world of living things.

Fred Hoyle, the eminent British astronomer who is less eminent in the field of biology, has likened the theory of evolution to the following metaphor: "it's like a tornado blowing through junk yard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. " His statement is a classic example of the erroneous belief that natural selection is nothing but a theory of chance. A 'Boeing 747' is the end product that any theory of life must explain. The riddle for any theory to answer is, "how do you get complicated, statistically improbable apparent design? " Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only known theory that can answer this riddle. It is also supported by a great deal of evidence. With his explanation Darwin, in effect, smears out the chance or "luck" factor. There is luck in the theory, but the luck is found in small steps. Each generational step in the evolutionary process is only a little bit different from the step before. These little bits of difference are not too great to come about by chance, by mutation. However if, after the accumulation of a sufficient number of these small steps (perhaps 100), one after the other, you've got something like an eye at the end of this process, it could not have come all of a sudden by chance. Each individual step could occur by chance, but all 100 steps together could not. All 100 steps are pieced together cumulatively by natural selection.

Another metaphor along these lines is of a bank robber who went into a bank and started fiddling with the combination lock on the safe. Theoretically the thief could fiddle with the lock and have the luck to open the safe. Of course you know in practice he couldn't do that. That's why your money is safe in the bank. But just suppose that every time you twiddled that knob and got a little bit closer to the correct number, a one dollar bill fell out of the safe. Then when you twiddled it another way and got a little closer still, another dollar fell out. You would very rapidly open the safe. It's like that with natural selection. Each step has a little bit of luck but when the steps are put together you end up with something that looks like a 'Boeing 747'.

A MESSAGE FROM THE ALABAMA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, answered by Richard Dawkins!

<a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/alabama/alabama.htm" target="_blank">http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/alabama/alabama.htm</a>

Soderqvist1: Fred Hoyle is a layman evolutionist!

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

E_muse

Well, to go for the exact quote:

First emphasis by Richard Dawkins, the rest are mine.

Perhaps I should have said that natural selection cannot aim at a long term goal.


It seems easier to say that local environmental factors will only allow certain chance mutations to remain viable. Certain environmental factors won't allow any lifeforms or mutations to remain viable though.

If the sun will eventually turn into a red giant how can we claim that the environment is 'aiming' at a local fitness optimum?

Dawkin's asserts that natural selection does not plan for the future and has no minds eye, so how can it be said to 'aim' for anything? Blind natural factors are not 'aiming' to keep anything alive.

Environmental factors could change, hypothetically at least, to such an extent that all life in that particular environment perishes. If natural selection is 'aiming at' a local fitness optium then under these hypothetical conditions it would have 'failed'.

It seems ridiculous to suggest that environmental factors are aiming to keep things alive.

I think that the term 'natural selection' is misleading but I shall use it for now until I have had more time to think

I would suggest that true natural selection can 'select' events which occur randomly but it cannot 'aim' at anything. Conditions in nature might randomly change themselves over time, making conditions hostile for lifeforms which once flourished. You've already said this.

The 'random' appearance of holes in the ozone layer causing global changes in climate and levels of radiation hostile to life might be one example.

The computer program has a uniform means of selection.. nature doesn't. Also, the computer model predicts that something will always survive. The very strictures placed upon the computer model selection process dictate that something must survive. This is not necessarity true of nature.

The computer program and the person who programs it 'wants' something to survive. Often living things have to fight against their environment to stay alive.

Perhaps this is another of the misleading elements of the program suggested by Dawkins but which he doesn't go on to explain.

[ Edited because I kept thinking of new things to say ]

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>

E_muse

Many thanks Morpho! Constructive feedback is always appreciated.

I freely admit that this is where my knowledge is sparce. I do not know what impact the situations you've stated would have on a biological entity. I'd like you (or anyone else) to tell me though

What I've argued is that the monkey would only need to press the 'h' once in order to get it right but could press 'e', 'l' or 'o' before pressing the 'h' and these would not be selected because the letters are required in sequence.

Please indulge me whilst I elaborate:

The 'hello' program was used as an analogy for the evolution of the eye.

Now, the modern human eye must be a viable random mutation of a pre-existent simpler eye which in turn is was a viable random mutation of a pre-existent eye... and so on.

What is important here is that the existence of each viable random mutation depends upon the existence of the eye which came before it.

Now back to our 'monkey'. Let's say that the world 'hello' represents a fully formed human eye.

Taking this further 'hell' could then be the fully formed eye's biological ancestor, 'hel' would be the ancestor of that one, 'he' would be the ancestor of that and so on right back to the most simple eye 'h'.

How could we 'represent' this in an easy to understand form. Our emulation must include this limitation factor that modern eyes require the existence of all the pre-existent eyes which came before them.

I think the best way to describe it is not through a computer program but using a toddler, 26 play bricks, the law of gravity and a selector (me)!! We'll ignore the fact that the toddler would get totally bored and crawl off!!

The best way of representing the interdependency of more complex forms on their biological forebears (I thought there were only three! Perhaps Goldilocks got it wrong! You can tell I'm thinking about my children can't you ) is to build them in a tower with 'h' at the bottom (the simplest form) building up to greater complexity, the 'o' being uppermost. Like this:

O
L
L
E
H
------- &lt;-Floor

In this model, the mutation of 'o' cannot occur until 'h', 'e' and both 'l's have mutated and so on to the bottom.

O.K. I ask the toddler to hand me a letter. He hands me a 's'. No, I don't want that. It is deselected. The child hands me an 'e'. I will need this after the 'h' but of course evolution can't work like this. It doesn't plan for the future. It is rejected.

The child hands me an 'h'. This is O.K and placed in position. The process is repeated until the child hands me an 'e'. This is now put in place on top of the previous brick. This represents increased complexification of the eye from 'h' to 'he'. 'he' is a more complex form (eye) than 'h'. Likewise 'hel' is a more complex form of 'h' and 'he' and so on. However, as the model shows, increased complexification cannot occur until something more basic exists. In terms of evolutionary biology, each new complexification must be the result of randomness, viable or 'allowed' and beneficial to survival.

The process continues until 'hel' is achieved. Remember this is not linear but in tower form. Each complexification cannot occur, each new letter cannot be selected until its predecessor is in place! The greatest level of complexification is reached when the 'o' is placed on top of the tower.

Probability is increased through cumulative selection, that is undeniable.

'e', 'l' and 'o' can all be selected before 'h' but I have labelled these as biological impossibilites.

If the addition of each new letter represents a beneficial mutation then your arguement seem to suggest mutations can occur whenever they like and are not sequential.

But, biologically speaking, a mutation cannot be 'retained' until its predecessor is in place. That's my whole point here.

Randomly forming a word is different from randomly forming an eye in this regard. A word can be put together any old way. Letters don't need to be picked in order.

Also, a word which is not fully formed might not make sense. However, applying the model biologically, each letter represents a primitive eye which becomes more complex as each letter is added.

[quote][b]More...

A friend of mine provided an excellent example of how this works. With his permission, I will copy the relevant discussion here:

But a 'success' in evolutionary terms is simply a beneficial random mutation. However, within biology, certain mutations can't take place until certain other mutations have occured. In other words, there is an interdependency.

The example above does not incorporate this necessary interdependency. If we're guessing a word, it doesn't matter which order the letters are revealed in. However, this isn't the case for evolution! That's the whole rub of the arguement. Certain mutations cannot occur lower down the evolutionary ladder. Certain letters can't 'appear' until others have. In my 'hello' model, the closeness of the letters geographically also represents closeness of eyes biologically.

So finally, to summarise, if 'hello' is a viable, complex eye, 'hell', 'hel', 'he' and 'h' must also be viable eyes but in lowering degrees of complexity. However, gradual increased biological complexification depends upon the existence of simpler things.

And I don't think the the model which I've suggested would contradict this. I'm simply trying to incorporate a necessary sequence.

But again, guessing a word does not require the letters being revealed in a certain sequence.

Let me give one more example:

Let's take my name - James.

Now, instead of representing increasingly complex eyes here, the letters in my name represent member of my family like so:

S = me!
E = my mother
M = my grandmother
A = my great grandmother
J = my great great grandmother

I'm NOT suggesting here that I am more complex than my parents although I know its true &lt;sigh&gt;.

Each individual in my family has been selected by nature and so my name represents five of the people who are the viable outcomes of natural processes and to whom I owe my existence.

If we were using this to represent natural selection it would be ridiculous to suggest that nature could select 's' or me, before it had selected the other members of my family. I am biologically dependent on those which nature has selected before it selected me.

Thanks again. Yes you certainly have.

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: E_muse ]</p>