Intelligent design (evidence)

I don't understand the whole homology thing. Apparently there are species of very similar physiologies that do not share a recent common lineage? I think Berlinski mentions the Australian & N. American wolves as examples... Morphic resonance perhaps?
 
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1473
"What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities. All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed. ... The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories."1
--Leading 20th Century Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1232
Stephen Jay Gould explains:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."4
...
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."5

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1481
Looking higher up the tree, a recent study published in Science tried to construct a phylogeny of animal relationships but concluded that “[d]espite the amount of data and breadth of taxa analyzed, relationships among most [animal] phyla remained unresolved.”6 Likewise, Carl Woese, a pioneer of evolutionary molecular systematics, observed that these problems extend well beyond the base of the tree of life: “Phylogenetic incongruities [conflicts] can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.”7

http://www.discovery.org/a/14251

As Professor of Neurosurgery Michael Egnor insightfully said in response to one evolutionary biologist:
[G]ene duplication is, presumably, not to be taken too seriously. If you count copies as new information, you must have a hard time with plagiarism in your classes. All that the miscreant students would have to say is 'It's just like gene duplication. Plagiarism is new information- you said so on your blog!'16
...
Biologist Austin Hughes warns that most inferences of positive selection are based upon questionable statistical analyses of genes:
A major hindrance to progress has been confusion regarding the role of positive (Darwinian) selection, i.e., natural selection favoring adaptive mutations. In particular, problems have arisen from the widespread use of certain poorly conceived statistical methods to test for positive selection. Thousands of papers are published every year claiming evidence of adaptive evolution on the basis of computational analyses alone, with no evidence whatsoever regarding the phenotypic effects of allegedly adaptive mutations. … Contrary to a widespread impression, natural selection does not leave any unambiguous ‘‘signature’’ on the genome, certainly not one that is still detectable after tens or hundreds of millions of years. To biologists schooled in Neo-Darwinian thought processes, it is virtually axiomatic that any adaptive change must have been fixed as a result of natural selection. But it is important to remember that reality can be more complicated than simplistic textbook scenarios. … In recent years the literature of evolutionary biology has been glutted with extravagant claims of positive selection on the basis of computational analyses alone ... This vast outpouring of pseudo-Darwinian hype has been genuinely harmful to the credibility of evolutionary biology as a science.19

I could go on and on. Evolutionist themselves admit the evidence for evolution isn't. Look down through the links here if you are interested:
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1510

more here
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_id
 
Of course there are going to be many refutations of Meyers. What does that say? Evolutionary biologists defend their position with an insanity that's rarely seen anywhere else. They are all crazy.
 
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/838
After seeing difficulties faced by the origin of life, perhaps this is why over 20 years ago, the noted scientist who discovered the structure of DNA, Francis Crick, said:
"The origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going."38
...
Klaus Dose said the following about the state of OOL research:
"More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance. New lines of thinking and experimentation must be tried."47

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/top_five_probl067431.html
Have modern theorists explained how this crucial bridge from inert nonliving chemicals to self-replicating molecular systems took place? Not at all. In fact, even Stanley Miller readily admitted the difficulty of explaining this in Discover Magazine:
Even Miller throws up his hands at certain aspects of it. The first step, making the monomers, that's easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That's very easy, he says, the sarcasm fairly dripping. Just like it's easy to make money in the stock market -- all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it's done.12
...
Frank Salisbury explained the problem in a paper in American Biology Teacher:
It's nice to talk about replicating DNA molecules arising in a soupy sea, but in modern cells this replication requires the presence of suitable enzymes. ... [T]he link between DNA and the enzyme is a highly complex one, involving RNA and an enzyme for its synthesis on a DNA template; ribosomes; enzymes to activate the amino acids; and transfer-RNA molecules. ... How, in the absence of the final enzyme, could selection act upon DNA and all the mechanisms for replicating it? It's as though everything must happen at once: the entire system must come into being as one unit, or it is worthless. There may well be ways out of this dilemma, but I don't see them at the moment.19
...
As two theorists observed in a 2004 article in Cell Biology International:
The nucleotide sequence is also meaningless without a conceptual translative scheme and physical "hardware" capabilities. Ribosomes, tRNAs, aminoacyl tRNA synthetases, and amino acids are all hardware components of the Shannon message "receiver." But the instructions for this machinery is itself coded in DNA and executed by protein "workers" produced by that machinery. Without the machinery and protein workers, the message cannot be received and understood. And without genetic instruction, the machinery cannot be assembled.20
...
Harvard chemist George Whitesides was given the Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. During his acceptance speech, he offered this stark analysis, reprinted in the respected journal Chemical and Engineering News:
The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth. How? I have no idea.21
...

As Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles said, promissory materialism is superstition. Materialism is the god of the gaps argument.
 
I can't name any researchers off the top of my head. I don't have a strong opinion on evolution either way, but I'm most inclined to side with the outliers on any given topic, because nonconformity is cool. Although, you now have me doing my research. I'm gonna start with Jim's pieces up there.
Note the sources of those articles:
  • Anonymous
Oh wait, that's it! Even I assumed that there would be additional sources among those links.

~~ Paul
 
Of course there are going to be many refutations of Meyers. What does that say? Evolutionary biologists defend their position with an insanity that's rarely seen anywhere else. They are all crazy.
Right, whereas the intelligent design community has no sacred ideology whatsoever.

If you're gonna simply assume that the scientific community is biased, why bother doing any research at all? It's kind of a big fat farce, isn't it?

~~ Paul
 
I don't understand the whole homology thing. Apparently there are species of very similar physiologies that do not share a recent common lineage? I think Berlinski mentions the Australian & N. American wolves as examples... Morphic resonance perhaps?
Australian wolves? Are you talking about the extinct marsupial thylacine?

~~ Paul
 
Ah good, now Jim has additional links to the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center and the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. Good to get some variety.

~~ Paul
 
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/838


http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/top_five_probl067431.html


As Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles said, promissory materialism is superstition. Materialism is the god of the gaps argument.
It is very easy to make a strong barrier between chemistry and biology. In reality, the borders are very indistinct. Adam Rutherford's book "Creation" is an excellent read for those with an open mind (reviewed here).

Of course, for some, there are strong motivations to erect strong barriers between chemistry and biology. Those walls represent the last line of protection to their ideologies.
 
It is very easy to make a strong barrier between chemistry and biology. In reality, the borders are very indistinct. Adam Rutherford's book "Creation" is an excellent read for those with an open mind (reviewed here).

Of course, for some, there are strong motivations to erect strong barriers between chemistry and biology. Those walls represent the last line of protection to their ideologies.

I think I agree with you but I'm not sure how that relates to my post you quoted. The problem is not that biology is something special. The problem is that the rates of chemical reactions under the conditions believed to exist on earth in the past do not permit biological molecules to form. It is our knowledge of chemistry that tells us life is prohibitively improbable.
 
I think I agree with you but I'm not sure how that relates to my post you quoted. The problem is not that biology is something special. The problem is that the rates of chemical reactions under the conditions believed to exist on earth in the past do not permit biological molecules to form. It is our knowledge of chemistry that tells us life is prohibitively improbable.
Others, including Rutherford, disagree. I'm also interested in your less improbable scenario? ;)
 
Others, including Rutherford, disagree. I'm also interested in your less improbable scenario? ;)

I explained that above...

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/04/materialism-cannot-explain-origin-of.html
However, we know there is a phenomenon that can create semiotic and cybernetic systems that would otherwise have no chance of arising through natural processes. This phenomenon is intelligence. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the genetic code was created by an intelligence. This is not a "god of the gaps" argument. It is the same mode of logic, "like phenomena have like causes"8, whereby the measurement of gravity on earth leads to the conclusion that gravity causes the planets to orbit the sun. It is the same mode of logic used by many early naturalists, such as geologist Charles Lyell, to explain phenomena that occurred in the remote past by identifying causes known to be effective in the present time. Additionally, you don't need evidence of who the intelligence was to make this supposition. If a NASA space craft found machinery on Mars, we would not think that the machinery arose naturally just because there were no Martians around who could have made it. The existence of machinery that could not arise naturally is sufficient to conclude the existence of an intelligent maker.

However, the belief that naturalism can explain something that current science says is impossible is a "god of the gaps" argument. Our current understanding of chemistry and the conditions on the early earth says there is no good natural explanation for the origin of life and the genetic code.1 To disregard science and maintain faith in naturalism is a "god of the gaps" argument. To paraphrase the Nobel prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles: Promissory materialism is superstition.9


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-cosmological-argument-for.html
Darwin believed that to understand an event that happened in the remote past you should identify a cause that is known in the present time to be capable of causing the same type of event. By this reasoning, one arrives at the conclusion that the genetic code, genetic information, the control systems that regulate processes in the cell, and cellular machinery are best explained by intelligent design. This is because the only known process by which codes, information, control systems, and machines arise in the present time are through the action of intelligent human beings.
 
This interview gives a good introduction to the book:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/adam-rutherfords-creation-science-t-13-07-31/

His rejection of 'primordial soup' and discussion of 'White Smokers/Krebs cycle' is where it gets interesting....

I have no idea how you can be sure of the various 'conditions' present in our corner of the universe 3.9 billion years ago. We didn't even know about 'White Smokers' a handful of years ago.

I fully expect your reply to contain the word 'promissory' or similar. However, we can continue to study the subject of early biochemistry or we can say that there's no need, and just give due deferential credit to 'Intelligence' (your links). Honestly Jim, which strikes you as the most academically satisfying?
 
Why does anyone use the word "promissory" to describe one line of investigation when he has no other line of investigation? Someone has to explain this to me.

~~ Paul
 
"However, we know there is a phenomenon that can create semiotic and cybernetic systems that would otherwise have no chance of arising through natural processes."

Could I see a proof, please? Or at least an sketch of one?

~~ Paul
 
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