Posted on 06/08/2009 4:41:47 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Biomimicry: why the world is full of intelligent design
Forget human ingenuity - the best source of ideas for cutting-edge technology might be in nature, according to experts in 'biomimicry'
We humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology – but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 million years. Now, the way that geckoes climb walls, or hummingbirds hover, is at the centre of a burgeoning industry: biomimicry, the science of "reverse-engineering" clever ideas from the natural world....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Good. Let's see the empirical evidence for evolution.
"If you make an assertion you need to have the evidence to support it."
OK, let's see it.
"I also noticed that you failed to address my question."
Where is that empirical evidence for evolution?
"Avoiding the difficult questions seems to be a common creationist tactic, that and name-calling. But I guess one must play to ones strengths."
Let's see your empirical evidence for evolution and then we can talk.
No fallacies now.
In the Evo-mind naturalistic miracles are assumed, and only increase their faith and awe in Darwin’s materialist creation myth.
Of course, the odds are the same for ANY particular order of 52 cards. So unless one sees that ONE particular configuration as special, there’s no reason to view getting that particular order after a shuffle as “lucky”.
Excellent article.
There are lots of inventions and innovations in todays world that mimmick nature.
Velcro, Fannypacks/purses, tooth/hair brush, all inspired by what mankind has noticed in nature.
You cannot calculate odds for 'ANY particular order' because that involves division by zero. In order to calculate odds, there must be the possibility of not obtaining 'ANY particular order' (chances against) and we know that there are zero chances of not obtaining an order. Division by zero is undefined.
Now, if you are talking probabilities, the probability of 'ANY particular order' is equal to 1 because any order will do. This again is of no use to your argument.
It is the fallacy of equivocation to equate 'ANY particular order' with a specified order. I'm sorry but you fell into logical fallacy in your defense of naturalism.
Can you defend naturalism without falling into logical fallacy?
You misread my post.
The math that AndrewC did for the deck being “in order with aces to kings for each suit and the suits in club, diamonds, hearts and spades sequence” will work equally as well as for any other specified order. (I used the word “particular”, but apparently you like “specified” better.)
The protein deck is not reshuffled from scratch at each shuffle. Beneficial iterations are saved and built upon.
You, of course, know this. You have probably heard it a hundred times before. You know the right answer yet you continue to disingenuously to keep repeating your false proposition. Why?
You misread my answer.
The math for calculating the odds for 'any specified order' may be the same, but 'any specified order' is meaningless when applied to naturalism. You don't have 'any specified order' in naturalism, either for life or for the physical properties of the universe. You have 'a specified order', AndrewC's case.
It is still the fallacy of equivocation to equate 'any specified order' with a biological amino acid sequence or a set of physical properties for the universe because only one specified order will do. Not any specified order.
IOW, what you wrote might have been a mathematically-accurate statement but mathematically-accurate statements don't necessarily equate to reality. The fact that 2+2=4 (a mathematically-accurate statement) does not support naturalism or specified biological proteins unless you commit logical fallacy.
Now, you either committed a logical fallacy or you posted a response that is meaningless wrt the debate.
No, they didn't. They're talking, not about Intelligent Design....rather intelligent design. As in, intelligent people designing things that mimic nature...nothing more. Comprehension is key.
...then credit evolution
Evolution was mentioned once....referring to the Namibian fog-basking beetle. The other examples of cool nature stuff designers are using as a template for their designs.....well...evolution wasn't mentioned at all for the others.
“The math for calculating the odds for ‘any specified order’ may be the same, but ‘any specified order’ is meaningless when applied to naturalism.”
—I didn’t realize I was defending “naturalism”.
“It is still the fallacy of equivocation to equate ‘any specified order’ with a biological amino acid sequence or a set of physical properties for the universe because only one specified order will do.”
—What do you based the assertion on that “that only one specified order will do”? Unless you can base that on something, you are committing the fallacy of thinking that because that’s the way things are that that’s the way they HAVE to be. As I mentioned in my first response “unless one sees that ONE particular configuration as special, there’s no reason to view getting that particular order after a shuffle as “lucky””.
Every life form on the planet has a different DNA sequence than every other life form.
I didn't realize you were defending creation.
"—What do you based the assertion on that “that only one specified order will do”?"
Science demonstrates that specified order is ubiquitous in the physical laws of the universe and in life.
"Unless you can base that on something, you are committing the fallacy of thinking that because that’s the way things are that that’s the way they HAVE to be."
Feel free to propose sets of universal physical laws other than the ones we observe and explain how they would support life. Feel free to propose random, racemic amino-acid chains and explain how those support life. We observe specified order throughout the physical laws of universe and in life.
"As I mentioned in my first response “unless one sees that ONE particular configuration as special, there’s no reason to view getting that particular order after a shuffle as “lucky””."
Which we see in everything from the physical laws of the universe to individual amino-acid sequences in proteins. Absolutely everything we observe wrt life is 'lucky'.
Just... wow... I see that we'll have to add "basic probability calculations" to the long list of things that anti-evos can't do at even a basic high-school level without saying things that are just completely wrong, goofy, and fallacious.
Why don't you leave the topic to the folks who actually understand it, like the aveage high school student? When you say laughable stuff like this, you're clearly way out of your depth.
Now, if you are talking probabilities, the probability of 'ANY particular order' is equal to 1 because any order will do. This again is of no use to your argument.
Sigh. Reading comprehension is your friend.
It is the fallacy of equivocation to equate 'ANY particular order' with a specified order. I'm sorry but you fell into logical fallacy in your defense of naturalism.
Are you *really* this clueless, or are you just playing childish word games in order to have a really cheap excuse to disingenuously insult him for saying something sensible? Neither option inspires confidence in you or your side of the discussion.
Can you defend naturalism without falling into logical fallacy?
He just did. Can you attack it without engaging in puerile antics that make a fool of yourself?
If you're wondering why you anti-science guys get laughed off the stage, it's because of behavior like this.
Using that argument implies that there is nothing special about DNA sequences that produce life versus those that don't. Ridiculous argument.
“I didn’t realize you were defending creation.”
—Why would this discussion necessitate defending either?
“Feel free to propose sets of universal physical laws other than the ones we observe and explain how they would support life.”
—I have no idea how many other sets of laws may produce life, do you?
“Feel free to propose random, racemic amino-acid chains and explain how those support life. We observe specified order throughout the physical laws of universe and in life.”
—I couldn’t tell how the vast majority of known proteins support life. I could produce a random string of amino acids, but neither I nor you would have a clue as to whether it may be useful to life or not. We don’t all produce the same proteins - each of us produce variations of proteins, and other species produce other variations and other completely different proteins.
This is why all the arguments about the odds of *A* particular protein forming are silly and irrelevant. None of us have any idea how many “useful” proteins could potentially exist, or what the odds are of producing such a protein.
“Using that argument implies that there is nothing special about DNA sequences that produce life versus those that don’t. Ridiculous argument.”
—No, it implies no such thing. Obviously the configurations that work for life ARE special - but how many special? What percentage? I have no idea, and neither does anyone else - which is why the deck of cards analogy fails.
Science demonstrates that specified order is ubiquitous in the physical laws of the universe and in life.
That's nice. Now would you care to actually answer the question that was asked?
Oh, wait, I know why you dodged it with a lame non-answer -- it's because the assertion that "only one specified order will do" IS BLATANTLY FALSE and thus can't be defended.
Anyone with even a basic knowledge of biology (which as we've seen leaves out the vast majority of anti-evos) knows that vast numbers of protein sequences are functionally equivalent, it's not like nature has to hit upon *one* single possible sequence or else nothing works right.
This is how different species manage to survive just fine even though most have *different* protein sequences than other species for basic functional proteins. The cytochrome-c sequence in fish for example differs from mammalian cytochrome-c by about 13%, for example, and yet still functions just fine. There is not only ONE cytochrome-c sequence that works, there are a VAST number that work.
The claim that "only one specified order will do" IS DEMONSTRABLY WRONG, and yet anti-science yahoos keep trying to pretend that this is the case, as in the idiotic "deck of cards" analysis presented by AndrewC in this thread. Sure, the odds of ONE given sequence of the deck of cards is very remote, but THAT'S NOT HOW BIOLOGY WORKS, so his analysis is a straw man fallacy of the highest order. Biology is very flexible, vast numbers of alternative sequences are functionally equivalent, and even more greatly vast numbers are partially functionally equivalent (and thus a basis for evolutionary refinement).
Yockey for example showed in 1977 that 3.8 x 10^61 proteins of length 100 are functionally equivalent to cytochrome-c. Are the anti-evo people 32 years behind on their reading, or are they just very dishonestly pretending that this isn't the case when they leave this factor out when making grossly fallacious "probability arguments" that (by leaving out key facts) *falsely* make it appear that evolution is unlikely? Please explain.
Furthermore, the laughable "deck of cards" post by AndrewC also leaves out other key features of actual biological evolution, which makes his analogy completely invalid as any kind of accurate analogy to evolution. 1. There's only a single deck of cards in his goofy example -- in biology there are vast numbers of simultaneous "card decks"; in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, there is not only ONE organism/genome in the world. 2. The deck gets completely reshuffled in each "trial" in his laughable example -- in biology, in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, the genome does not get completely reshuffled every generation. 3. The deck does not get replicated (i.e. have children) in his childishly simplistic analogy -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, genomes in nature replicate and this is a key point in the evolutionary refinement of genomes. 4. The deck is not subject to selection in AndrewC's silly post -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, biological genomes are "tested" against nature and the ones that are a better "fit" to their environment survive more often to reproduce while the poorer matches tend to get weeded out and eliminated. 5. As previously mentioned, AndrewC's fallacious post left out the fact that vast numbers of arrangements are still the "right" answer -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, life on Earth works just fine despite countless sequence differences between species in the basic proteins of life.
Any attempted analogy to evolution must include these features (and more) in order to be any kind of meaningful comparison to actual evolution, but AndrewC left them all out. His analogy was childishly inadequate. Perhaps he should leave analysis of evolution to those who actually know anything about it and how it works. Watching anti-evos attempt to analyze evolution is like watching pigeons try to play chess. They crap on the board, knock the pieces over, then fly back to their flock to declare that they won the game.
This is why the anti-evos keep getting laughed at -- they think that something they came up on their lunch break without having a good knowledge of the field is going to be accurate and devastating to 150+ years of research in evolutionary biology, *and* is going to be something that all the scientists in the field never once thought of already, much less examined and tested in their field of study and already resolved. The hubris is mind-boggling, and more than a bit funny.
Many people on the anti-evo side fail to take into account why a process which includes variation, reproduction, and selection is very different from mere card-shuffling, and is capable of much more.
If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison.
The weasel word beneficial. "Non-beneficial" iterations are also saved. I stated I did not accept the "velcro" concept.(due to serendipity). I clearly stated that. That is not disingenuous and the calculation nevertheless describe the universe being discussed. And that is just a 52 item sequence(of course there are 52 different cards and only 21 AA).
Okay let us calculate a particular protein sequence of 52 AA. That calculation involves a universe of 2152. That is 52*log(21) expressed in Log10 which is 68.7554033. That is compared to the shuffled deck which is log(8.06581752) + 67 = 67.9066484. Now tell me how many proteins are useful, realizing that the tertiary structure is what makes the proteins useful.
The protein deck is not reshuffled from scratch at each shuffle. Beneficial iterations are saved and built upon.
You, of course, know this. You have probably heard it a hundred times before. You know the right answer yet you continue to disingenuously to keep repeating your false proposition. Why?
You know exactly why he does it. So do I. So does everyone else who watches him in action. Likewise for anyone who watched the antics of the anti-evolution squad as a whole.
They are not interested in accuracy, facts, or honesty.
The following is from a post by "dwise1" at the evcforums discussion site. (Follow the link to read his whole post: http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/Threads.cgi?action=tmi&f=12&t=553):
I didn't really realize that they're only concerned with convincing people until a discussion long ago in another forum. A creationist tried to use the sea-salt claim and we explained to him fully why it's wrong. The funny thing, though, was that, even though he was a strict YEC who believed that the earth could be no older than 10,000 years, here he was arguing that the earth was several millions of years old. I pointed that contradiction out to him and it didn't bother him a bit. He was perfectly happy with an earth that was several millions of years old, "just so long as it's not BILLIONS of years old like science says!".From my 30+ years of watching these people in action, this guy has it exactly right. The anti-evolutionists are all about undermining science itself, as well as public confidence in it. They are indeed, in every sense of the term, anti-science.That's when I finally got it! They're not trying to prove creation, but rather they just want to prove science to be wrong. About anything. That's why they'll even make claims that have absolutely nothing to do with evolution or the age of the earth (eg, to role of refrigerants in depleting the ozone layer); from a strict creation/evolution perspective, that just doesn't make any sense at all, but from the perspective of proving science to be wrong it does make sense. And they don't even have to actually prove science wrong, just so long as they can cast enough doubt.
Why do that? Well, if science is seen as threatening your faith, then destroy science. OK, not all of science; even the staunchest creationist loves his flush toilet too much. Just disable the parts that you think are a threat. And if you can't do that, then poke holes somewhere else just so you can reach the conclusion that those threatening parts could also be wrong, thus allowing you to pick and choose those parts of science that you want to accept, just as you do with the Bible.
Name it. Start here... There are 21 sequences of all single amino acids. Are any of them useful? There are 21 * 20 sequences consisting of length 51 single AA with one odd on the end. Are any of them useful? Move the odd AA in on each of those again resulting in 21*20 sequences. Are any of those useful? So on and so forth.
Gee what brought you in out of the woods? Anyway coming from someone who has yet to show me a working cubic function generator after claiming that he could build it is rather humorous. Despite your assertions the numbers do mean something. That is why living things die.
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