Posted on 02/26/2005 4:45:01 PM PST by DannyTN
OUTSTANDING Article. Thank you for posting it. While ID may not be creationism, creationism is a major subset of ID. A "Prime Mover" type creator who did not intervene after the original creation might not be a "creationist" form of ID, but about all other subsets of ID involve various types of Creationism (Creator continued to intervene after the intiial formation of the universe.)
I noticed that the evos have yet to respond to any substantive points made in the post. Their rebuttal seems to be personal insult and complaint that the "review" process was not good enough. I imagine that is what Dan Rather and crew think about Freeper stuff when we bust them for propagating trash too. In this case, evolutionists are the establishment Dan Rathers and IDers are the Freepers.
This is therefore the beginning (not the end) of the review process for ID. Perhaps one day the scientific community will be convinced that ID is worthwhile.An encouraging comment, but we are off to a rough start to say the least.
An almost delusional encouragement on your part, considering the review went on to say the following.
Only through this route — convincing the scientific community, a route already taken by plate tectonics, endosymbiosis, and other revolutionary scientific ideas — can ID earn a legitimate place in textbooks.Plate tectonics and endosymbiosis offered something that ID does not: real explanatory power. They were genuine advances in our understanding.
Meyer's paper is clearly not the vehicle to do the same for ID. Its failure to present a case for ID at all is telling. It devoted all of its space to taking mostly invalid potshots at evolution. ID is only the UNevolution theory, the theory that, whatever did happen, it couldn't have evolved.
ID needs a story that works. The people who hide behind this front indeed have a story, but they can't tell it because it doesn't work. ID is a Trojan Horse that doesn't fool anyone.
I don't understand why counting is meaningless in this instance. It seems to me the first step in trying to explain any phenomenon is to attempt to describe, measure and quantify that phenomenon.
You not understanding doesn't help you. The review went on to explain that mainstream science has found measures of relatedness it likes better for cladistic analysis. Taxa are hopelessly arbitrary, precisely because evolution HAS happened and every possible shade of relatedness is out there somewhere.
Meyers does talk about the Cambrian and whether it was long or short but eventually dismisses it as irrelevant, because you just can't get here from there for the reasons in the rest of his paper.
Meyer's conclusions on the Cambrian are deliberately misinformed and naive. I noticed the same myself in an earlier paper.
Panda's thumb makes the case that soft bodied animals were not preserved. But there was a recent scientific article published that said that the soft bodied animals were in fact preserved and that the fossil record is reliable in this regard. I believe Meyer's references that article too.
There are a very few Cambrian sites which show soft-bodied preservation. Panda's Thumb is not disputing that. There are almost no Precambrian sites with soft-bodied preservation.
As for CSI, Panda's Thumb is not fussing. I'm not going to try to explain it again if you don't get their version. I'll just say it don't mean a thing until somebody besides Dembski can say what the hell it is and everybody knows a consistent formula for it.
Without reviewing the papers cited by Panda's thumb, I doubt seriously that "new genes" evolved.
I doubt seriously that your doubts will ever have any impact on my doubts that anything else happened.
Dr. Steinberg claims that it was reviewed by three biologists. It was not reviewed by an associate editor but rather by Steinberg, editor in chief, and that was not an unusual practice at that journal.
No papers were normally consulted with the council, however Steinberg does claim to have consulted one member of the council who agreed with it's publication.
This statement was eventually release as a result of the outcry from evolutionists.
Like evolution can give us a consistent formula.
Checked your Morton's Demon lately?
Oh really? Cite five examples. If you can't, then you've just exposed yourself as willing to shoot off at the mouth without substantiation.
Evolution moved beyond "mere hypothesis" over a century ago. Are you sure you know what in the hell you're talking about?
Because there can. I've seen it happen. And the processes are well understood.
I marvel at that kind of faith.
It doesn't take "faith", it takes knowledge, understanding of the relevant processes, and a familiarity with the evidence. This is probably why the average creationist has trouble with it.
I wish I could muster that much faith. :)
I submit that your problem is that you can't muster the knowledge.
I suggest that you retract this utter lie.
And while you're at it, can you tell me why the creationists seem to have no qualms about continuously bearing false witness?
If your case is so good, why do you have to keep lying about it?
Now that some adult supervision is here, I can retire for the evening.
http://www.fsteiger.com/thermo3.html
A Brief Explanation of Thermodynamics
Creationists promote the falsehood that the second law of thermodynamics does not permit entropy to spontaneously decrease, and therefore evolution could not have happened. According to creationists, entropy can only increase, resulting in a "universal decay" of any and all systems. However, the mathematical laws of thermodynamics make it perfectly clear: it is possible for the entropy of a system to spontaneously decrease, providing the over-all entropy of the system's surroundings increases to a greater degree.
Thermodynamics deals in a quantitative manner with the relationship between heat and work. Because of this, its known applications must necessarily be limited to man-made devices and chemical changes for which heat and work parameters can be established. These parameters have been established for a number of biochemical reactions, but this information has not resulted in the general ability to determine the thermodynamics of cell growth in living organisms. Creationists take advantage of this situation by postulating a pseudo science explanation for the obvious flaw in their argument: if all systems can only go in the direction of universal decay, then how can one explain the growth of living things, which is just the opposite of universal decay? Creationist propaganda postulates, with no scientific justification whatever, an "energy conversion mechanism" for living things that "overcomes" the laws of thermodynamics. However, in the case of the evolution of living things, this "energy conversion mechanism" is strangely absent!
The controversy can be summed up as follows:
Creationist: The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy can only increase, resulting in a universal decay of all systems.
Evolutionist: But the mathematical laws of thermodynamics state very clearly that entropy can spontaneously decrease!
Creationist: Well, that is technically true for inorganic systems, but it doesn't apply to living systems.
Evolutionist: So you're saying that entropy can not spontaneously decrease for living systems? Doesn't that mean that living things can only undergo universal decay? How then do you explain the fact they grow and reproduce?
Creationist: Well, we believe that there is a special "energy conversion mechanism" that allows living systems to overcome the laws of thermodynamics.
Evolutionist: First you said the laws of thermodynamics were universal, and now you say they are not. Please explain the discrepancy.
Creationist: God can do anything He pleases.
The only actual mathematical relationship between entropy and probability is based on the probability of distribution of molecules in a hypothetical "ideal gas." Creationists state that because a flame can not "unburn," its combustion must always result in a 100% increase in entropy. That statement is false, and not supported by the laws of thermodynamics. For example, the Servel gas powered refrigerators operate with a gas flame and no moving parts to produce an entropy decrease in the interior.
Most thermodynamic equations represent a change in the properties of a system when it is changed in some manner. Some examples of change are: (1) A chemical reaction between two interacting systems, as hydrogen and oxygen combining to form water; (2) Absorption of heat by a system, as when heat flows into a house during the summer; (3) Absorption of work by a system, as when air is pumped into a tank; (4) Work done by a system, as when air under pressure runs an air motor. When these kinds of changes take place, there is change in the properties of the system. A mixture of two gases becomes a liquid; the temperature of the house interior rises; the density and pressure of the air changes. Changes in properties of a system are indicated mathematically by the Greek letter capital delta: . The symbol indicates an increase or decrease of the quantity immediately following.
The fundamental definition of the second law of thermodynamics is given by the following equation:
S = q/T (1)
Where: q = heat absorbed by the system
T = absolute temperature
S = entropy content of the system
S = a change in the entropy content S
If the system does work, or has work done upon it, then:
E = q - w (2)
Where: w = work done by the system
E = energy content of the system
E = change in energy content
We can substitute equation (1) into equation (2) and obtain:
E = TS - w (3)
The above equations are based on constant temperature conditions. Thermodynamics is not limited to constant temperature conditions, but it is outside the scope of the present application to discuss the effect of temperature variation.
Although equation (2) is valid for any process, equation (3) is valid for reversible processes only. (reversible and irreversible processes will be defined later) In other words, for any process involving a work effect, q = TS only when the process is reversible. However, for a simple heat flow between a system and its surroundings (no work involved), q = TS even when the process is not reversible.
Since equation (3) applies only to reversible processes, special symbols are assigned to the work term w to indicate that the work is performed reversibly. Ordinarily, changes take place under the constant pressure of the atmosphere, and the work term w must include the work against atmospheric pressure (or assisted by the pressure of the atmosphere). This atmospheric work term is designated by PV.
where: P = atmospheric pressure
V = change in volume
The difference between the total reversible work term and the atmospheric pressure work term is designated as a change in G, the Gibbs free energy content:
w - PV = -G (5)
The minus sign in front of G indicates that when work is done, the free energy content of the system is reduced.
Combining equations (3) and (5), we obtain:
E = TS + G - PV (6)
The sum of the terms E + PV is designated as the enthalpy H. So equation (6) becomes:
G = H - TS (7)
Definitions of reversible and irreversible processes.
As stated previously, the above equations apply to reversible processes. A reversible process is one in which proceeds in such a manner that every step is characterized by a state of balance, in which the process could be reversed by an infinitesimal change in conditions. The concept of reversibility is used as a mathematical tool to develop fundamental thermodynamic relationships, and is very useful in that respect. Nevertheless, no real process is reversible, as that would require infinitesimal temperature differentials and friction losses, and infinite time. Therefore the free energy change G can not actually be completely utilized experimentally. Nevertheless, it can be readily measured experimentally; one procedure is to determine the emf of a voltaic cell under conditions of zero current flow.
All actual processes are therefore "irreversible."
"Irreversible," as used in thermodynamics does NOT mean that the process can not necessarily be reversed by one means or another. It simply means that under the existing conditions it will not spontaneously reverse itself.
Entropy S, internal energy E, and enthalpy H, like pressure, temperature, and volume are "state functions." They depend only on the present condition of the system. Thus the change in entropy in going from state A to state B is always the same, regardless of the path by which the change took place. The change in the entropy of a system in going from state A to state B is the same, regardless of whether or not the process was reversible. However, the overall change of the entropy of a system plus its surroundings will vary in accordance with the degree of irreversibility.
In calculating the change of entropy, it is generally necessary to determine the amount of heat q absorbed (or evolved, if there is a decrease in entropy) when the process takes place reversibly. In some cases the change in entropy accompanying a process will be the same, regardless of whether or not the process is reversible or irreversible. This is the case when there is no work energy that could be transferred as a consequence of the change. An example of this would be the heat transfer when a hot stone is dropped into a bucket of cold water.
A clear distinction must be made between the entropy change of a system and the overall entropy change of a system and its surroundings. In a reversible process the entropy change in a system due to the action of the surroundings is equal and opposite in sign to the entropy change of the surroundings. Therefore the overall net entropy change is zero. In an irreversible process the entropy change in the surroundings is not equal to the entropy change in the system. Therefore the overall net entropy change is greater than zero.
In many cases the entropy change in a system is calculated on a theoretical basis as the entropy change in the surroundings for a reversible process, even though such a process can not actually be carried out experimentally. In other words, the concept of reversibility is a mathematical tool. All real processes are irreversible, although in some cases they may be a very close approximation to reversible processes.
G can be determined by direct measurement of the emf of a voltaic cell. It can also be calculated from absolute entropy values obtained from measurements of heat capacity versus absolute temperature. The mathematics of thermodynamics permits the calculation of the effect of pressure and temperature on values of S, H and G. The theoretical maximum potential for useful work is represented by G. When the value of G calculated from equation (10) is negative, the change can occur, although the use of a catalyst may be necessary to make it happen. Note that it is not always necessary for heat to evolve for a change to occur spontaneously. H can be zero or even less than zero.
When H is zero, equation (10) becomes:
G = -TS
An example of H equal to zero is the free expansion of a perfect gas. The internal energy of the gas is unchanged on free expansion, and no P-V work is done. In this case there is an entropy change even though there is no energy flow. If the same change takes reversibly, with no heat flow (adiabatic conditions), the work output is equal to G. G is the same in either case, except that in the reversible process it represents the work actually obtained, while in the irreversible free expansion process it represents the work that could have been obtained.
Substantiate this claim, retract it, or admit that you're lying again.
It is hypothesis, and in my opinion a hypothesis that has been adequately falsified by the fossil record.
That's because, as you have demonstrated countless times on this thread, you have an incredible amount of ignorance and misinformation about what the fossil record is really like. Frankly, I'm getting tired of you arrogantly repeating nonsense. You're like a liberal fan of Michasel Moore.
Shuffling Cards: Foster's first feat of mathematical statistics produces the figure of:
1 in 8.066 x 1067 This is the chance of getting a specific arrangement of cards by spontaneous ordering. Now, a deck of cards is not a good model for natural selection because it is a strict set of 52 items that can never vary or increase, whereas in nature the number of available materials and the way they can be arranged is all but unlimited, so you could get, say, a deck of 52 aces of spades in nature, but you cannot simulate this in a deck of cards where only 4 different aces exist, and no more.
Consequently, all we can do is show the effect of some simple selection rule on successive shufflings of a deck of cards. On page 39 Foster looks at the odds of a deck shuffling into a complete sequence from high card to low, i.e. from the Ace of Spades down to the Two of Clubs. To simulate 'natural selection,' you need to account in some way for reproduction, mutation, and selection. For example, we could use a shuffling rule such that if the top two cards ever turn up in the right sequence they get to 'live' by reproducing themselves, and these are thus removed from the deck to begin adding up toward the final result. This simulates the link 'reproducing' itself and all other links being 'selected' out of the gene pool and reshuffled (i.e. killed by the hostile environment, to which only certain organizations are suitable). Then, whenever the shuffled deck turns up the next two cards in the right order, granting a greater survival advantage, they attach to the previous two and the sequence grows, and the rest are killed and the deck is shuffled again. The former will represent beneficial mutation, the latter harmful mutation. With only these simple rules, how many shuffles will it take to produce the outcome Foster wants?
The odds of getting exactly two cards in the right order depends upon the Law of Permutations:
1 / (nPr) = 1 / (n! / (n-r)!) And since:
52P2 = 52!/(52-2)! It follows that the odds are 1 in 2652, or 00.038%.
The odds of getting another shuffle with the right top two cards would then be:
1 / 50P2 = 1 / (50! / (50-2)!) = 1 / 2450 And so forth. The odds get better as the deck thins out. But let's cheat for Foster, and pretend the odds remain 1 in 2652 with every draw, as if the shuffled part of the deck were to refill itself with an endless supply of useless jokers. Even with these odds stacked against us (this produces a probability even worse than Foster's of reaching Foster's sequence in 26 straight draws: i.e. about 1 in ten to the ninetieth power), time is our friend. Because we are relying not on random assembly, but slow and methodical assembly over time, the more times we reshuffle, the less time it takes to reach our goal.
In fact, there is more than a 97% chance that we will reach Foster's sequence in only 100,000 shuffles, which means:
105 shuffles In contrast to Foster's prediction of:
1068 shuffles This is calculated using sophisticated math perhaps beyond Foster's ken, although the details can be found in Mario Triola's Elementary Statistics (5th ed., 1993), pp. 250-6. I will remind you, I am referring to an introductory statistics textbook! This is not something only experts know. This is a method taught in the very first semester of statistical mathematics. The odds can be precisely determined using the binomial equation, solved for all necessary values, but the laws of normal probability distribution allow us to arrive at a reliable estimate with much less work. If you want to see why we would prefer the easy estimate, I will show you what the binomial equation looks like:
P(x) = n! * px * q(n-x) / (n-x)! * x! Where x is the number of successes needed (in our case at least 26), n is the number of tries (I have arbitrarily chosen 100,000 tries), p is the chance of any one try being a success (as we already have figured, this is 0.00038), and q is the chance of any one try being a failure (i.e. based on the Law of Complementarity, this is 1 minus 0.00038, or 0.99962). To really press this home, the '!' symbol means 'factorial,' or the value of the number given times every whole number between that and zero (i.e. 6! equals 6*5*4*3*2*1, or 720). To calculate the odds, we would have to solve for P(x) for every value of x between 26 and 100,000. Since no one wants to work through such a monstrous equation nearly a hundred thousand times over, much less calculate the factorials of numbers in the tens of thousands, we will go the easy route.
If we charted all the possible results of this equation on a graph, including the results for all values below 26 as well as above, they would form a bell curve, with a mean value in the center equal to n*p, or 100,000*0.00038, which equals 38. This means that the most probable number of successes in 100,000 tries will be 38. We only need 26, but we are dealing with whole numbers, and so 26 is really the whole range from 25.5 to 26.5 (we will not bother with this distinction in the future, since it becomes insignificant when n exceeds 1000). The difference between 25.5 and 38 then gives us what is called a z-score, and that z-score tells us (via any standard z-score table) the probability of getting any value between the two (in actual fact, this equals the area under the graph, where the z-score equals the value along the x-axis). Since 38 is in the middle of the graph, the odds of getting any number of successes from 38 to 100,000 is a flat 50%. We will add that to the odds of getting any number of successes from 25.5 to 38 to arrive at a good estimate of the odds of getting any number of successes of 26 or more. The z-score equals (x-m)/s, where x is the minimum needed result (25.5), m is the average result (38), and s is the 'standard deviation,' which equals the square root of the product of n (100,000), p (0.00038), and q (0.99962). Doing the math, we get a z-score of -2.02. On any z-score table, this reveals a final result of 47.83%. Added to 50%, we get a 97.83% chance of getting at least 26 successes (which is all we need to complete Foster's sequence) after 100,000 shuffles. Indeed, the chances only begin to drop below 50% when you have fewer shuffles than 68,000.
How might this translate into biological terms? We can assume that each shuffle represents a mutation, and each successful shuffle a beneficial mutation. To show what this means in terms of a population of organisms, if we assume that only 1 in 5 billion births suffers a mutation, and that each generation consists of only 1 billion births, then there will be only one mutation every 5 generations. But if there is one generation every hour (as there would be in any colony of bacteria), then it will only take 57 years to produce Foster's sequence! That is because there is about a 98% chance that it will be produced after 100,000 mutations, and if there is a mutation every five hours, that works out to 57 years. Now, we have chosen what is perhaps an unfairly high chance of beneficial mutation in this example, because we are limited by the awkward fiction of a deck of cards. But it should already be clear that the sort of math needed to actually get anywhere on this problem is far more complicated than what Foster uses, and the results are quite different. We have also assumed that only one arrangement of cards has survival benefits----in reality, and in the information space of DNA genomes, the number of viable and advantageous sequences of genes is incalculable and could very well be nearly infinite, and the range will differ for every different environment.
Typing Monkeys: Foster claims, beginning on page 52, that a million monkeys typing 318 random words per minute for a million years could never produce Wordsworth's poem Daffodils, which Foster describes as a sequence of 159 letters (he ignores spaces and punctuation). His calculations are correct as far as determining the odds of this occurring purely by chance. But, as I've already pointed out, evolution does not occur purely by chance----it occurs as the result of natural selection. So let's factor in what Foster has left out: natural selection. As already noted, natural selection is the combined effect of three forces: replication, mutation, and selection. How might this be simulated with the monkeys and their typewriters?
Let us imagine that the monkeys are typing at computers which are simulating a process of natural selection. Each keystroke represents a mutation, and any incorrect keystroke represents an unviable mutation----a failure, a genome that is easily and quickly killed by the environment----whereas any three consecutive correct keystrokes represents a robust survivor (in this arbitrary analogy, the only kind of order that can survive----an unrealistic limitation, but applicable to our abstract case). The computer will automatically erase ('kill off') any incorrect generations, but let live any correct one. How long will it take for the monkeys, aided by this natural selection, to produce Daffodils?
I have chosen three-letter sets, instead of single letters or letter pairs, so as to simulate the reality that most mutations are fatal, and only a scant few beneficial----nevertheless, we see that this does not matter, because only the viable ones reproduce and multiply anyway. That is the beauty of natural selection. This rule produces a rate of viable mutation of only 1/17,576, or 0.006%, much lower than in the card deck example above. Foster does a more accurate job by accounting for the variable probability of the letters in the poem. I am assuming the same odds for every letter in the poem, which is not as exact, but it is a more than reasonable approximation, and this is necessary for what we have to do. Foster uses the figure of one million monkeys typing for one million years, for a grand sum of:
1.67 x 1020 keystrokes We'll make it even harder on ourselves. With that amount of work, if the conditions are assumed to be correct (i.e. if the computer is in fact selecting for Daffodils----i.e. if that and all its simpler ancestors are the only 'genomes' that can survive in our imaginary 'environment'), then success is actually guaranteed. So we'll stack the odds even more against us. What are the odds of one lone monkey, aided by natural selection, producing Daffodils after only 3 million keystrokes, or just one week of random typing according to Foster's generous assumptions? It will be easier to work in three-keystroke units, and with that in mind, using the same normal probability distribution as in the card deck example, we get the following values:
n = 1,000,000 triple-keystrokes
p = 0.00006 (the chance of three consecutive correct keystrokes)
q = 1 - p = 0.99994
m = n*p = 60
s = (n*p*q)0.5 = 7.75Now, if x = 53 (the number of correct triple-strokes needed to complete Daffodils), then z = (x-m)/s = -0.90, producing a percentage of 0.5 + 0.3159, or 81.59%. So, while Foster wants us to think that it will take a million monkeys an untold trillions of years to produce such a result, in fact, if we actually account for natural selection, it could take as little as one week for a single monkey! And this was assuming an even lower rate of beneficial mutation than in the card example above.
We might go further and solve another monkey problem dealt with by Foster, inherited from (supposedly) Huxley [1]: the claim, paraphrased on pages 54 and 55, that six monkeys randomly typing for 'millions and millions of years' would produce all the books in the British Museum. Now, this claim is, as stated, false, and Foster rightly demolishes the assumption. What Huxley apparently forgot to consider was that such a result is not likely to happen by chance, but it is likely given the operation of natural selection. How likely? Foster's assumptions are these:
- "In 1860 there were 700,000 books in the British Museum"
- We can estimate "9.8 x 10^9 lines of type in all the books"
- We can assume about "50 letters per line"
From this we can guess that the total number of correct keystrokes needed is about:
4.9 x 1011, or 1.63 x 1011 triple-strokes We will use exactly the same 'natural selection' simulation as above, only now with 6 monkeys typing for only nine million years, in all producing about:
8.55 x 1015 keystrokes, or 2.85 x 1015 triple-keystrokes So:
n = 2.85 x 1015 triple-keystrokes
p = 0.00006 (the chance of a correct triple-stroke)
q = 1 - p = 0.99994
m = n*p = 1.71 x 1011
s = (n*p*q)0.5 = 413,509Now, if x = 1.63 x 1011 (the number of correct triple-strokes needed), then z = (x-m)/s = -19,346.62. Now, a z-score of just -3.5 produces .4999, for a total probability of 99.99%. A z-score in the negative hundreds or thousands indicates a probability so near 100% that the odds are astronomical for the event not to happen! Now, if we give the monkeys a little over just eight million years, this score starts to reach and exceed a zero z-score, i.e. the odds begin to drop below 50%; and if we allow only seven million years, the odds become effectively zero. What does this mean? While randomly typing monkeys would be unlikely, as Foster says, to type even a single line from all the books in the British Museum, even given the life of the universe to type away, nevertheless those same six randomly-typing monkeys, when aided by natural selection, would be guaranteed to do it in only nine million years! In fact, we can be even more accurate than that: they would be virtually guaranteed to succeed some time between seven and nine million years, and probably neither sooner nor later.
I read it, I understood it, I'm underwhelmed.
I'm not going to waste my time rebutting the entire thing, but if you'd like to point out the one or two parts you feel are most supportive of ID, I'll explain what's wrong with them.
ID is a movement allied with the YEC'ers to discredit evolution.
2) Evolution is not a scientific law; it's a mere hypothesis.
ID is a hypothesis. Evolution is a theory.
Excellent. I've tried to express the same thing in words only, but your post is a keeper.
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