The Golden Calf of Evolution is on Fire…

NoDNC.com report ^ | August 23, 2005

[Dimensio]

Evolution defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I stopped here. Anyone who pulls the 2nd LoT as an argument against evolution is either fundamentally ignorant of science, in which case nothing that they say can be trusted, or shamelessly lying, in which case nothing that they can be trusted.

[.cnI redruM]

So there is evidence supporting evolution. Now, can anyone explain it well enough to predict future evolutionary behavior, given stimuli to respond to?

[Moral Hazard]

"If life just miraculously appeared from inanimate objects and chemicals by chance... then it should be really easy to duplicate that feat in a lab...."

Give me a hundred billion galaxies with a hundred billion solar systems each, and give the planets in each several billion years and I expect I'll be able to show you one where life occurs through natural processes.

[longshadow]

Thanks for showing me what may be the most incredibly ignorant article ever posted on this website.

It's just this sort of mindless screed that that brings to mind Wolfgang Pauli's famous quote:

"It's so bad it's not even wrong."

[Dimensio]

Anthony Flew, the guru of dogmatic atheism, was at least honest enough to follow the socratic path and go where the strongest evidence leads: Design by an intelligent mind.

Antony Flew, a philosopher (not a scientist), fell into argument from ignorance and said that an intelligent agent "might" have been responsible for the initial start of the universe. He has not, in any way, however, rejected the theory of evolution.

[King Prout]

see my #40 (?)

order abounds in the open system.

all neo-creo/ID arguments are rooted in argumentum ad incredulum, which is in turn rooted in intransigent, obstinate, deliberate adamantine ignorance.

[.cnI redruM]

No, but since neither side of this debate can either

a) Mathematically represent what happened

or

b) Mathematically model what will happen next according to their specified theories, given a set of environmental stimuli,

I'd say the journey isn't complete on explaining how living things change over generations.

[PatrickHenry]

I've been reading the Good Book and I don't see any way around it. I'm going flat-earth! Here's just a few of the verses that have persuaded me:

1st Samuel:
2:8 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD's, and he hath set the world upon them.

2nd Samuel:
22:8 Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth.
22:16 And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered, at the rebuking of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

Isaiah:
11:12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Psalms, 74:17
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter.

Psalms, 102:25
Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.

Psalms, 104:5
Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be re-moved for ever.

Proverbs:
8:29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth.

Job, 38:4
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
38:6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

Matthew 4:8
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

Luke 4:5
And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

For further information: The Flat Earth Society.

[Natty Boh III]

If life just miraculously appeared from inanimate objects and chemicals by chance... then it should be really easy to duplicate that feat in a lab.... oh you can't ? didn't think so.

Hasn't happened yet, but they are working on it....

http://134.147.93.66/bmcmyp/Data/PACE/Public

[Ichneumon]

Another way of looking at that would be to think of a deck of cards, carefully shuffled and thrown high in the air. With the expectation that eventually an “accident” would happen which would cause all 52 cards in the deck, to fall in perfect order, and perfectly aligned. [FN2]

Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs

And for a taste of just how *much* evolution can speed up things over purely random processes like the one you *incorrectly* try to use as an analogy for evolutionary processes, here's an older post of mine:

Or are you one of those who insist that a room full of monkeys with keyboards can write the complete works of Shakespeare?

In theory? Yes they can, if you're willing to wait long enough (where "enough" is an amount of time that boggles the imagination). In practice (by simple random output)? No they can't.

But they can do it pretty quickly and easily if a replication and selection process is involved.

You wanted to see a calculation, so let's do one.

Consider the Shakespeare phrase, "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me." That's 109 characters (including spaces and punctuation). Upper and lower case letters, plus digits and puntuaction, make up a pool of about 70 different characters. This means that the odds of producing the Shakespeare phrase in one random trial is 1 out of 70¹⁰⁹, or 1 in 1,305,227,939,201,292,014, 528,313,176,276,968,928,001, 249,110,077,400,839,115,038, 451,821,150,802,274,449,576, 205,527,736,070,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

Needless to say, that's a big number. It's so huge that if every atom in the universe (about 10⁸⁰ of them) were a computer capable of making a billion (1,000,000,000) random trials per second, the expected time required to produce the above line from Shakespeare would be 2,585,011,097,170,911,314,802,759,827,024,569,612,393, 783,728,161,759,843,736,212,615,624,189,581,658,716,078, 309,043,891,309 times the expected lifespan of the universe. That's close enough to "never" in my book.

But that's for *purely* random production process. How much do you think an evolutionary process could cut down that figure? Knock a few zeros off the end, maybe?

Well let's try it. Using an evolutionary process, which couples random variation with replication and selection and *nothing* else, the above Shakespeare phrase can be produced on a *single* computer (mine), using a breeding population of 1024 character strings in a whopping... 15 seconds (using this applet):

Generation: 0
Tries <= 1024
Best Critter: "xSeOSEpc3Lm6rnRWnpFYL?QEDY7a67XlfRoJ0e8Len'X'1u'BhdrNqSNaXr7kVjondNozkf2CH9d96SaI?'f43M.CUGJ5XHbqfeR.UJP'tgNP"
Score (0 is best) 101

Generation: 100
Tries <= 26624
Best Critter: "vf,ioV c3RKlooioifBFQXh, PeHTskof!oJ0e,Lrn'X'1u BhkchESNaXr kVjo dNozpanSI div1Qwi8h taQ,jswMkk,us1S'ugYtmm7."
Score (0 is best) 72

[...]

Generation: 1115
Tries <= 286464
Best Critter: "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me."
Score (0 is best) 0

Checked 286464 critters in 15 seconds == 19097 tries/sec.

Hmm, 15 seconds is a hell of a lot faster than zillions of times the lifespan of the universe, isn't it? Evolution sped things up (compared to a purely random process) by a factor of more than 10¹⁹⁵ -- that's a "1" followed by a hundred and ninety-five zeros, or: 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Lesson: Even simple evolutionary processes are *incredibly* more efficient and effective than simple randomness alone. Evolution can *easily* accomplish things which would be *impossibly* improbable by purely random means.

[Dimensio]

And yet the best you'll get from a creationist in response to the plethora of information that you provide will be along the lines of "Oh yeah?" and "How appropriate. You fight like a cow."

[js1138]

:)

[PatrickHenry]

You gotta see this thread!

[longshadow]

"Festival of the CAPITILIZATION CLOWN" placemarker

[balrog666]

Take your meds before your head explodes.

[Moral Hazard]

"No, but since neither side of this debate can either

a) Mathematically represent what happened

or

b) Mathematically model what will happen next according to their specified theories, given a set of environmental stimuli,

I'd say the journey isn't complete on explaining how living things change over generations."

A has already been done.
B is very difficult to do because not only is the problem extremely complicated, but there are inputs that aren't biological in origin that we don't know about. Understand that we can't even effectively model the effects of gravity for more than 2 objects. That doesn't exactly refute the theory of gravity, does it?

[King Prout]

ok, I deserved that... so i won't bill you for the monitor cleanup

[tortoise]

So there is evidence supporting evolution. Now, can anyone explain it well enough to predict future evolutionary behavior, given stimuli to respond to?

Yes. Evolutionary systems are well-described in general systems theory in mathematics. The properties of evolutionary systems in the abstract are well understood and that model of system dynamics can be completely parameterized in biology with ease. Sometimes I think there is a perception that there is something fundamentally unsound about the concept of evolution, as though it is not a deeply rooted mathematical consequence of system dynamics. Even if evolution is not the primary driver of speciation, it is still a perfectly valid model.

Given that biological evolution is an instance of a general mathematical system dynamic, one can make predictions as detailed as the parameteric data for the given system one has. In practice, there is some uncertainty because our knowledge of the system we live in is incomplete or approximated, leading to only crude parameterization of the mathematical model.

[PatrickHenry]

Those who find the lead article of this thread impressive will also enjoy these:

The Geocentric Bible web site. The Association for Biblical Astronomy.
TimeCube.
Jack Chick's "Big Daddy?" Basic biology text for creationists.
Flat Earth Society Creationists' geography materials.
The Young Earth. Creationists' geology.
Evidence for a Young Sun . Creationists' astronomy.
NASA Fakes Moon Landing! Creationist istory.

[shuckmaster]

If I understand you correctly, you're bragging that ignorance and crackpot charlatanism appears to be on a slight momentum roll!?