In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design?

Bray: "Look at the Fundamentalists get their panties in a wad as someone points out the biggest hole in evolution. How did it start. You used to say it was a primordial soup..."

Geological evidence suggests it took nearly four billion years of evolution, from the simplest organic molecules until the great Cambrian Explosion of multicellular critters.
So no scientific theory can reduce four billion years to a few simple sentences of explanation.

But organic chemicals which replicate themselves imperfectly under certain conditions seem a pretty promising place to start looking.

You opponents of evolution really don't seem to appreciate the complexity and what I'll call the majesty that God's design presents.

Help me out here, you are calling people who are pro-ID opponents of evolution because they don’t appreciate the complexity and design from a Creator?

Bray: "None of them are of a transitory animal which there should be billions..."

Sorry, but every fossil, every individual without exception is "transitory" between its ancestors and descendants.
You, bray, are "transitory" -- because of a small number of mostly harmless mutations, you are individually unlike your parents, or your children, if any.

The average number of DNA mutations per individual is on the order of dozens, perhaps 100 per generation.
Multiply those times a million generations, and you accumulate enough changes that separated populations can no longer interbreed.
And that, by definition, is called "speciation".

Of course, fossils alone can't tell which species were "parents," and which "child".
But DNA analysis tells a lot about how closely related today's species are, and when their common ancestors lived.

Oh please, that is the most ridiculous dodge ever. We have not seen or have evidence of a single mutated animal that changed species. They may mutate, but there is no evidence of an actual change of animal species.

Iffinegan: "Yes. That is my point."

Looked to me like you accused abiogenesis of being a form of "vitalism". Is that not the case?

My point here is that hand waving is easy and fun, except of course when it’s done to you, right?

‘Looked to me like you accused abiogenesis of being a form of “vitalism”. Is that not the case?”

Actually yes.

The idea that evolutionists push that the actual origin of life is not part of evolution, that somehow life occurred, abiogenesis, and then evolution by natural selection did it’s magic is a type of vitalism.

It’s in fact all chemistry subject to selection.

The supposedly hardcore materialists don’t even understand their own philosophy.

—

I’m not sure what hand waving you referred to.

tophat9000: "You’re saying basically that an animal could randomly sprout fully functional wings just because....."

I read nothing of the sort into Ha Ha's post, so why are you inventing arguments for Ha Ha?

Current thinking on bird evolution begins with feathered dinosaurs, feathers intended, as in today's chicks, to keep the beasts warm.
Large feathers on a small critter in a windy day could help it jump further, avoiding a predator, or catching its lunch.

Once you have airborne dinos, then every small improvement in flying gives them an advantage, and hence more natural selection.

I think that's the point Ha Ha made, and don't "get" why you wish to distort it?

roamer_1: "Darwin was wrong, but at least he listed his errata - That is what science does... or used to do anyway... "

Darwin was certainly not wrong, except in the sense that he knew nothing of genetics, much less DNA analysis.
But his basic theory has been confirmed innumerable times: 1) descent with modifications (mutations) and 2) natural selection ("survival of the fittest") accumulating small changes over many generations can result in separated populations which no longer interbreed and are therefore classified as different species.

Darwin produced no theories regarding origin of life on Earth, but merely speculated on something possibly growing within a "primordial soup".
Today there are several working hypotheses on origin of life, none strongly confirmed, but Darwin's basic evolution idea is considered as much fact as theory.

Bray: "Ok, so you Darwinists don’t know how life began, but it just magically began and then the theory exists
Do you even realize what a huge hole to your theory that is?"

No "hole", not even a little one, because evolution theory does not address origin of life.
It merely observes and confirms that all living things, without exception, experience 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection, and that over long periods of time, these can lead separated populations of the same species to change enough that we classify them as different species.

Bray: "Name one transitory animal that shows an evolution from one species to another.
You can’t even though there should be billions and billions of examples throughout the millions of years of earth."

In fact, every individual, without exception is "transitory" between its ancestors and descendants, if any.
So every fossil, without exception is a "transitory fossil", and can be fitted on a "tree of life" which shows possible ancestors and potential descendants.

Today scientists estimate that a typical species lives around a million years before it either goes extinct, or changes into something recognizably a different species.
If we take today's figure of roughly 50,000 vertebrate species as typical, then in 500 million years since the Cambrian Explosion, we'd expect to see maybe 25 million vertebrate species rise & go extinct.
But after 150 years, we have fossils of a few thousand species at most = maybe one tenth of one percent of all species which ever lived.
This alone should provide adequate explanation for numerous gaps in the fossil record.

Bray: "It is a myth and a fraud to satisfy atheists that God does not exist."

And that is total, 100% rubbish.
You have no idea what you're talking about here, and should look elsewhere for evolution theory's "motives".

Bray: "So you cannot answer the question of where life began or the first mutation or any examples of one species evolving into another, but you know it’s true.
I admire your infinite faith."

But science is not about "faith", not ever.
It's about facts we know for sure, and hypotheses we use to explain them.
No hypothesis is ever accepted "on faith", but only as a result of strongly confirming data, after which we call it a "theory", such as the theory of evolution.

Evolution theory has been confirmed innumerable times and has never been seriously falsified, but that still does not make it a "belief" or "faith", because, it will be overturned if or when new data is discovered which proves it wrong.

That's how science works, but no such "proof" has been forthcoming, yet.

Boogieman: "Is the idea that a Creator couldn’t create the universe that we see in less than 10,000 years a limited notion of a Creator?"

Here's what's incomprehensible scientifically: a Creator who makes everything we see in just a few "days", but giving it all the appearance of being many billions of years old.
There's no rational explanation for that, so Occam's Razor tells us the better explanation is that the Universe is what it appears to be: many billions of years old.

Current thinking on bird evolution begins with feathered dinosaurs, feathers intended, as in today's chicks, to keep the beasts warm.

I have a question about what you wrote above. It would seem that there is some prime actor in that thinking. As if someone thought to give them feathers against the cold. What environmental pressure causes feathers?

Instead what would happen is a clutch of dinosaurs is born with one or some all suffering from the same genetic defect - feathers. This defect would be the cause of all kinds of problems without all the basic skills necessary to keep feathers clean. You could just imagine how messy feathers would be. So, the defect would have to include a secondary defect of knowing how to clean feathers. It might also need another third defect, some form of molting or shedding that worked in conjunction with the reptilian shedding of old skin, although I suppose that feathers with a strong quill and soft feathers might just allow skin to dry out and rub off. No matter what the defect of feathers would also be random. It would also be recessive.

By environmental chance this recessive trait comes during a time of reduced temperature. Allowing the few dinosaurs with featherlike defects (recessive) to survive at a marginally better rate than those with dominant traits. Over time the low temps increase the margin and a recessive trait becomes dominant in some subset of dinosaurs that are the forbears to modern birds. But, genetically how does that happen?

Recessive traits are largely debilitating or neutral, but the killer detail is that they are recessive. If I understand Mendelian genetics correctly, then it's really hard to randomly breed recessive genes, even with environmental pressure. Net, net, net extinction is the actual road when environmental pressures overwhelm a creatures ability to survive in that environment. It takes the mind of man to consciously breed in or out recessive traits and the results are most often a weakened domesticated creature/plant v. it's wild competitors. Dandelions v. domesticated roses comes to mind.

I just see this as a major flaw in the currently postulated Theory of Evolution. For the record I'm agnostic on the issue overall. I believe in God and the correct understanding of Genesis' Hebrew doesn't preclude very long times or activities between 'days'. Nor is methodology spelled out in creation, other than it is by God's power, which by definition is limitless or else he wouldn't be God.

I also accept as fundamental that science cannot rely on faith and that the scientific method is an effective means for discovering new physical truths. None of that threatens my belief system.

Boogieman: "...agree are the weak points: 1) That random mutations (or other random mechanics) can lead to the creation of new and useful genetic information, rather than simply jumbling around or destroying existing information."

For sake of discussion, let's assume the figure 100 "random" mutations per individual is correct -- it's not, but I don't have a better number handy.
Then, given the size of our genome -- 3 billion base-pairs -- and the percentage of non-coding (aka "junk DNA") of 98%, we can suppose that 98 of 100 mutations are harmless.
On average then, two mutations affect coding DNA, and those must almost inevitably be somewhat harmful.
This helps explain why in nature most offspring die before reaching adulthood.

But not always, so let's suppose that one in a thousand of such mutations actually improves its individual's chances of survival, and thus get passed on to future generations.
So a population of, say, 1,000,000 producing say, 100,000 offspring per year then might see 100 or so helpful mutations per year.
Over the course of, say, a million years, that's 100 million DNA changes, enough to make this breeding population a distinct species from its sister populations living elsewhere.

That is Darwin's theory today.

Boogeyman: "2) That there is no limit to the malleability of an organism’s genome, in the sense that, you could change a single-celled organism into a human being, if you simply have enough mutations and enough time."

But 4.5 billion years, no single-celled organism ever changed into a human, ever.
However, starting around 500 million years ago we see the first multicelled organisms, including primitive fish, and there's no reason to suppose those came from anything other than the single-celled critters which inhabited Earth for the better part of the preceding four billion years.

In short: it took life four billion years to evolve a fish, after which evolution seemed to procede much more quickly.

As for how "malleable" is life... well no bird or mammal ever became a fish, even though many birds and mammals do live in the water, like fish.
Yet they are still distinctly birds and mammals, and that surely illustrates the limitations on genetic "malleability".
Yes, evidence does show fish adapting to dry land, etc., but the time-scales were immense, and we don't see, for example, gills re-emerging when their descendants returned to sea.
Point is: there are definite limits to what DNA can produce naturally, especially in shorter time-scales.

Chew on this (I’m contemplating the implications):
Vestigial light (aka “background microwave radiation”) emitted near the Big Bang and just reaching us now has experienced _zero_ time along the trip. From that photon’s perspective, there is no distance from that early explosion to your eye. Firmly scientific, and firmly messing with the notion of mere days vs billions of years.

(I’m not saying the above disproves either side. Methinks it opens the possibility of rectifying the apparent differences. Until I can work out the implications, I’m holding that the universe is, in fact, billions of years old - and what we plainly see doesn’t fit in a 10,000 year Creationist (capital “C”) model.)

Boogeyman: "Yes, and ID doesn’t attempt to answer that question, but then again, evolution doesn’t attempt to answer where the first common ancestor organism came from, before all the modification, adaptation and variation happened."

Yes, basic evolution theory addresses only the observed facts of 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection, meaning it only applies once life has clearly started.

However, a number of hypotheses have been proposed for how life first arose on Earth, and those typically include the operation of evolution on non-living organic chemistry.
Indeed, they can begin with something called a self-replicating organic molecule, which replicates imperfectly thus from the very beginning allowing for natural selection of the best adapted molecules.

Thus evolution was likely closely involved, even before complex organic chemistry became very primitive "life".

Boogeyman: "Ok, consider that perhaps you start with only RNA as a primordial situation.
It’s still pretty useless unless it can replicate.
Which means the RNA, which has no intelligence, would have to somehow create a ribosome to manufacture the proteins that it needs to replicate itself?"

But of course, it didn't start with RNA, but natural chemistry vastly simpler.
If you are interested in the best explanation I've ever seen, then I'd recommend:

Addy Pross, "What is Life, how chemistry becomes biology"

Thanks.

TRD: "...evolutionary biology is about the dynamics of the biosphere.
The biosphere certainly, in all naturalistic accounts of the origin of currently extant life-forms, most assuredly preexists life as we know it."

No scientist is going to agree with explanations which anthropomorphize a pre-existing "biosphere" as the Intelligent Designer of life on Earth.
The only Intelligent Designer who can, and indeed must, exist is the Creator of the basic physics and chemistry of the Universe -- nothing lesser can serve the purpose, FRiends.

Boogieman: "Darwinists avoid that question by positing blind, unintelligent forces can produce complexity, but if you concede the need for a designer to produce complexity then you must be consistent and explain how the original complexity appeared without a designer, or you have an incomplete theory."

If you will focus your minds on the following, all such problems are resolved: the Universe is designed by its Creator to produce complexity.
Therefore, no complexity we see is accidental, random or unintended.

In the Darwin Debate, How Long Before the Tide Turns in Favor of Intelligent Design?

Casey Luskin January 19, 2015 4:36 PM | Permalink