Intelligent Design - theory, examples, implications

[Tormod]

This is the only portion of this post I will be responding to.

You can find interesting evidence in the following books:

1) "Signature of God", by Grant Jeffrey

2) "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist", by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek

3) "Evidence that demands a verdict" by John McDowell

4) "Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel

 

First of all, evidence is not found in books so all you can present us with are others' interpretations of the ID views of nature.

 

In fact, if you obtain #2 and decide you don't like it,(cost about $10-11 new) send it to me and I will send you a check for $10. Tormod, I make the same offer to you. You have my word.

 

How about this: I'll send you a copy of Williams' "Plan and Purpose in Nature" and you send me a copy of "I don't have enough faith". Then we both write up a review of each other's book and publish it here. Game for the challenge?

 

Amazon.com: Plan and Purpose In Nature (Science Masters): George C. Williams: Books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0297816462/104-9216288-9754320

 

Edit: I just ordered the "Not enough faith" so I suggest you pick up "Plan and Purpose in Nature" if you take up my challenge.

[TeleMad]

I used the following quote:

Dr. John Stevens make the following comparison in an article in Byte magazine back in 1985,

 

“To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations one hundred times and would take at least several minutes of processing time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways it would take a minimum of a hundred years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times every second.”

 

Do you address how natural law could account for non-linear differential equations? No, you respond with something like the common structures or chemical components of the eye. Again, correlation is not causation.

 

So is your case for ID the following?

 

In whatever year that quote is from, a single supercomputer could perform the calculations needed to simulate the nerve cells of the eye, but with the speeds available in that day, it would take a century to do so. Therefore, God created the eye.

 

I fail to see how the conclusion follows from the (probably outdated) facts.

 

 

By the way, did you know that even today's supercomputers cannot predict the weather even a week in advance? Does that mean that weather is not a natural phenomenon but that God creates it?

[TeleMad]

The real question is where did the information come from for the first DNA, or what is the origin of the information found in DNA? And because Darwinian and natural science explanations can’t explain it, that is why we can’t just toss out the possibility of Intelligent Design.

 

But the origin of DNA (actually RNA) is not evolution, that's abiogenesis.

 

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DISCUSS...EVOLUTION OR ABIOGENESIS? Pick one.

[TeleMad]

Francis Hitching wrote a fascinating book entitled “The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin went wrong”. In it he showed some evidence for the genetic code having built-in safeguards and controls that limited genetic variations as part of a system to preserve the integrity of each species. ...

 

Who is Francis Hitching?

 

Research on Hitching turned up the following: Hitching is basically a sensational TV script writer and has no scientific credentials. In The Neck of the Giraffe he claimed to be a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, but an inquiry to that institute said he was not. He implied in the "Acknowledgements" of The Neck of the Giraffe that paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had helped in the writing of the book, but upon inquiry Gould said he did not know him and had no information about him. Hitching also implied that his book had been endorsed by Richard Dawkins, but upon inquiry Dawkins stated: "I know nothing at all about Francis Hitching. If you are uncovering the fact that he is a charlatan, good for you. His book, The Neck of the Giraffe, is one of the silliest and most ignorant I have read for years."

 

Hitching believes in the paranormal and has written on Mayan pyramid energy and for some "In Search Of..." episodes on BBC television.

(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hitching.html)

[jp3089]

But the origin of DNA (actually RNA) is not evolution, that's abiogenesis.

 

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DISCUSS...EVOLUTION OR ABIOGENESIS? Pick one.

I don't know a lot about abiogenesis. I'm interested in learning about it, though. Can you fill me in a bit? Maybe just a summary of abiogenesis.

 

-jp

[C1ay]

I don't know a lot about abiogenesis. I'm interested in learning about it, though. Can you fill me in a bit? Maybe just a summary of abiogenesis.

 

-jp

 

Try Wikipedia for a start. Abiogenesis

[TeleMad]

I don't know a lot about abiogenesis. I'm interested in learning about it, though. Can you fill me in a bit? Maybe just a summary of abiogenesis.

 

-jp

 

Here's a combinat of something from my personal notes as well as some stuff I just added for this post.

 

 

Scientists have yet to explain how the interdependence of DNA, RNA, and proteins arose. DNA contains linear sequences of nucleotides called genes, which are transcribed into RNA. Some of the RNA molecules (messenger RNA) are then translated into proteins with the help of two other types of RNA molecules (ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA). No problem is encountered until it is shown that:

 

(1) DNA needs proteins to replicate - DNA polymerases, DNA helicases, SSBP (single-stranded binding proteins), DNA gyrase, and DNA ligase are all proteins.

 

(2) Proteins need DNA to specify the ordering of their constituent amino acids – without DNA, there is no information for making proteins.

 

Here’s the paradox: without proteins, replication of DNA cannot occur; and, without DNA, proteins cannot be coded. How could either function properly without the other?

 

One of the main current theories is that ribozymes (catalytic RNA molecules) preceded both DNA and proteins. These ribozymes presumably carried out both the storing of genetic information and their own replication – the so-called RNA World. Only later did DNA and proteins evolve (to provide more stability in storing genetic information, and to segregate the information-bearing molecules from the work-performing molecules, respectively)

 

At least 4 pieces of evidence suggest that RNA preceded DNA.

 

“1. The synthesis of deoxyribonucleotides in the cells of all living organisms is carried out by reduction of preexisting ribonucleotides and catalyzed by a specific enzyme.

 

2. It is known that protein synthesis can sometimes take place without DNA, but never in the absence of RNA.

 

3. ATP, not a deoxyadenosine triphosphate, plays a central role in the cell as an energy carrier.

 

4. Catalytic cofactors such as NAD, NADP, FAD, and coenzyme A are conjugated molecules

containing adenosine, not a deoxyadenosine moeity.”

(Noam Lahav, Biogenesis: Theories of Life’s Origins, Oxford University Press, 1999, p183)

 

However, the proposal that RNA was the first informational macromolecule has many problems to surmount (enantiomeric cross inhibition, activating nucleotides and getting them to hook up in the proper orientation, avoding side reactions with other compounds, short half life for many components of RNA, different conditions needed to form the nitrogenous bases than the ribose sugar, etc.). Considering the numerous problems facing the RNA World proper, scientists are now proposing the existence of a precursor molecule to RNA, such as PNA (peptide nucleic acid). Perhaps PNA (and not RNA) was the first self-replicator, and it later gained some advantage by evolving into RNA. Other molecules such as TNA have also been proposed. Besides problems of how self-replicating information would be faithfully transfered from one molecule type to another, there is also the fact that, unlike RNA, neither PNA nor TNA are not found in extant organisms, thus violating what Christian de Duve has called a rule of congruence.

 

Some hypotheses put proteins as coming before nucleic acids, but these proposals have several problems. First, since proteins are much better catalysts than nucleic acids, how would this scenario account for there being catalytic RNAs? In the RNA World theory, all catalysts were once RNA but over time many were replaced by the better ones made of protein as they arose. Second, proteins can't replicate in the simple manner that nucleic acids can. A double-stranded nucleic acid can, in simple terms, just split apart with each half strand's nucleotides then serving as an informational blueprint for the construction of its missing half by use of the standard base pairing rules. But proteins are made amino acid monomers and they don't form standard base pairing rules. So you can't have a double-stranded protein, with each strand being complementary to the other, that can simply unzip and then have each half serve as a template for the formation of its missing partner.

 

Some hypotheses have metabolism forming first. But Leslie Orgel - a leader in OOL (origin of life) research for the past several decades - says there is no reason to expect closed metabolic cycles to form in the absence of the enzymatic components being encoded by some means (for example, by RNA).

[Lolic]

First of all, evidence is not found in books so all you can present us with are others' interpretations of the ID views of nature.

 

How about this: I'll send you a copy of Williams' "Plan and Purpose in Nature" and you send me a copy of "I don't have enough faith". Then we both write up a review of each other's book and publish it here. Game for the challenge?

Great idea. I'll order it and gladly read it.

Could you explain the first sentence more, I want to undrestand you point and I don't think I am following you. thank you!

[Lolic]

So is your case for ID the following?

In whatever year that quote is from, a single supercomputer could perform the calculations needed to simulate the nerve cells of the eye, but with the speeds available in that day, it would take a century to do so. Therefore, God created the eye.

No I wouldn't say it like that. Not at all.

you may believe that mutation and selection can account for biological mechanisms that have the following characteristics, I don't believe it can. "To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations one hundred times...."

 

If mutation and natural selection were so powerful why don't we randomly mutate software code, see if it works better, keep the mutation if it does, remove it if it doesn't? Instead we pay good money for people with minds to apply intelligence, and organize information to orderly create and improve digital software codes - which are similar to DNA.

 

These mutations in biological systems not only have to account for the new structure, but the assembly instructions to build it, and factor in the proper systems integration issues with other systems. I think this is implying intelligence to natural forces and is not justified.

 

We've dipped into the fossil record many times and not found the transitional fossils that would prove it. After thousands and thousands of samples, sooner or later one needs to say the evidence is not here. Someone may still decide to believe it, but the evidence after thousands of tries is not there.

 

Because it is far fetched for me to beleive that natural forces would exhibit intellignece, and the evidence does not support it, I therefore choose not to believe it. I think this follows logic and the evidence. The only rational alternative I now of for the origination of the information in DNA and the complexity we see in biological systems is that an intelligent designer was involved.

 

I would be interested in your view of how DNA originated.

[Buffy]

"To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations one hundred times...."

 

If mutation and natural selection were so powerful why don't we randomly mutate software code, see if it works better, keep the mutation if it does, remove it if it doesn't? Instead we pay good money for people with minds to apply intelligence, and organize information to orderly create and improve digital software codes - which are similar to DNA.

Actually, this is only a problem if you try to use old fashioned declarative processing using traditional vonNeumann architectures. In artificial intelligence, we've been building neural networks for years to do image processing: it learns using evolutionary techniques via random mutation! And it works amazingly well and can even be faster than than the human brain. Its primary weakness to date has been the need to coordinate the pattern recognition with a large enough database to disambiguate complex forground and background images in visual image recognition. Its also being used quite effectively though by the NSA and CIA to monitor voice traffic for suspicious words and phrases.

 

[Tormod: apologies for the earlier off topic post! I made the mistaken assumption that the topic had transmogrified on to the religion issue. I'll try to lead more appropriately in the future...]

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Tormod]

Great idea. I'll order it and gladly read it.

Could you explain the first sentence more, I want to undrestand you point and I don't think I am following you. thank you!

 

Yeah, that was a bit loose...I really meant to write that books may only show us what others think. For anything to be considered proof it must still follow the scientific requirements for proof. So we still need to evaluate what is written and try to understand how the authors reach their conclusions, so that we don't accept things for proof that do no stand up to scrutiny.

 

Hope this clears up my stand on that...

 

(Had problems sleeping last night so I sat up and wrote some posts while half-awake...)

[Fishteacher73]

Years, years, years.....Every one seems to want to speak of evolution in terms of years. (It does seem to have taken quite a few years) but I think the best way to look at all the possiblities aside from saying that life's been at it for about 3.85 billion years would to look at generations. Between generations is when adaption occurs. Some bacteria can have a thousand or so generations in just a very short period of time (A day or so). At each of these reproductive events is when something could happen. You also have trillions of organisms doing this. Each event then is an opportunity for the random mutation to have occured.

 

Yes the chances of winning the lottery my be one in a million, but if there are a few million tickets out there, than it would be a good bet to say that someone should win it. And people do.

 

So if the probablity is put into perspective...(Lets look at the math involved for hemoglobin)

 

Considering alternate linear arrangements of these amino acids indicates that there are about 10 to the 650th power permutations possible, but only one of them is hemoglobin.

(The actual number is 7.4 x 10 to the 654th. Some of the amino acid positions may be "neutral," like spaces, which are less significant. in which case the specificity would reduce to 7.9 x 10 to the 503rd.)

 

 

Hemoglobin shows very good evidence of being skillfully designed.

 

You have 1*10^13 organisms dividing 10*10^3 times a day.. That would mean you would have 1*10^16 chances a day for the specific random mutaion to occur. You have this occuring in many different species as well (probably a few thousand if not more, of just bacteria). We have had a couple billion years of this before eukaryotic life showed up.

[bumab]

Fishteacher is right, what is important is the generational time. There's an ecology equation, which I can't find right now, that models the speciation time of various organisms. It's based on the time between generations, and has been shown to be true on the fossil record. Essentially, this means mammals take forever to speciate, whereas bacteria can do it almost overnight. It fits the timeline of all species evolving through common decent pretty well.

[TeleMad]

No I wouldn't say it like that. Not at all.

you may believe that mutation and selection can account for biological mechanisms that have the following characteristics, I don't believe it can. "To simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous non-linear differential equations one hundred times...."

 

You argument still seems to boil down to what is often called an argument from incredulity: X is so complex I don't believe it could have occurred naturally. In fact, every one of your arguments I can remember so far are not based on evidence of ID, but your opinion that evolution couldn't account for X.

 

Anyway, you ignored my comment that even today's supercomputers can't model the weather accurately for a week. So does that mean God creates the weather on Earth, not natural forces?

 

 

Lolic: If mutation and natural selection were so powerful why don't we randomly mutate software code, see if it works better, keep the mutation if it does, remove it if it doesn't?

 

We do...they're called genetic algorithms. In addition to software, we've even made hardware evolve.

 

Lolic: Instead we pay good money for people with minds to apply intelligence, and organize information to orderly create and improve digital software codes - which are similar to DNA.

 

Yeah, because we want the results yesterday. If we have 4 billion years and billions of computers running genetic algorithms, they could eventually produce a whole plethora of exceedingly complex results.

 

Lolic: These mutations in biological systems not only have to account for the new structure, but the assembly instructions to build it,...

 

No. All the mutations have to explain is the assembly instructions. The instructions instruct the cells in building the structure. It's not like a eye evolves anatomically separately and then the instructions to create it get written back into DNA.

 

Lolic: We've dipped into the fossil record many times and not found the transitional fossils that would prove it.

 

That seems to be more the fault of your lack of knowledge of the fossil record.

[TeleMad]

I've mentioned this more than once Lolic and you either ignore it or change the subject. I'll give you one more chance.

 

You asserted that the eye is irreducibly complex. Well..

 

1) In Darwin's Black Box, Behe NEVER says that the eye is IC.

 

2) According to Behe's statements in Darwin's Black Box, the eye does NOT fit his definition of IC.

 

 

Therefore, unless you can show convincingly that the eye is IC, it is not.

 

If you fail to respond ... yet again ... on this we will take your refusal to support your position as an indication that you in fact can't (which seems to be the case based on the 2 above points I made).

[Lolic]

You asserted that the eye is irreducibly complex. Well..

Please help my poor failing memory (perhaps it hasn't evolved far enough!!). I recall discussing what I consider a fantastic design that I do not believe mutation can account for. Please direct me to where I mentioned IC with the eye.

 

Would your point be that I made a mistake or that irreducible complexity is not relevant?

while I wouldn't want to try it without the optic nerve, perhaps I wouldn't miss a rod or cone too much. :P Built in redundancy on those parts....good design!

 

Since the concept is what is important, and not my possible mistake, here is a link that has more info on the topic. http://www.arn.org/behe/mb_ic.htm

Because if there is something that is IC.... :eek:

 

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42600

Smithsonian in uproar over intelligent-design article

Museum researcher's career threatened after he published favorable piece :)

"– contends supporters of Darwin's theory cannot explain how so many different animal types sprang into existence during the relatively short period of Earth history known as the Cambrian explosion.

He argues the Darwinian mechanism would require more time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated, and intelligent design offers a better explanation."

 

You guys play hardball! :eek:

[Lolic]

No. All the mutations have to explain is the assembly instructions. The instructions instruct the cells in building the structure. It's not like a eye evolves anatomically separately and then the instructions to create it get written back into DNA.

Let's see, wouldn't you need instructions to make parts, instructions to assembly them in the proper order, instructions to transport the parts for the assembly, molecular machines to assembly the parts, what have I left out? That's a good bit of integrated information. (wonder if there is any payroll or accounting being done in those factories?) :eek:

 

Are you retired or a lobbiest? You seem to have great quantities of time to defend your faith. I struggle to find the time. Will you take me up on my money back guarantee on the book? How often do you get a deal like that? And I won't report it to the Smithsonian "thought police". :eek: