The Golden Calf of Evolution is on Fire…

NoDNC.com report ^ | August 23, 2005

[VadeRetro]

Meant to reply to this.

Trash science like this and you may well be toe-to-toe with scimitars. Kept up on your fencing lessons?

I like the Indy Jones theory of how to handle scimitar experts.

[VadeRetro]

I hope enough people read that post. It's more than some people want to know about why the evidence is compelling.

[Natty Boh III]

Working from my admittedly hazy recollection of high school statistics and an Excel spreadsheet, I think the chances of throwing a deck of cards in the air and having it come down in order is 1 in (52x51x50x49....x1) or 8.07^67. Seems like a small chance. But then compare it to the number of chances there are in the natural world. Say you have a bacterium that divides once a day. Each division is like throwing the genetic deck of cards in the air. So first you have 1 bacterium, then you have 2, then 4, then 8 and so on. After a year, you have 3.8^109 bacteria -- that's way bigger than the 1 in 8.07^67 chance of getting the cards in order. In other words, even though the chances of getting the cards in order is so small, you will have so many bacteria that one of them is almost guaranteed to have the genetic cards in order. Even if you assume mutations only occur once in every trillion tosses of the genetic cards, it still seems like the chances of getting the generic cards in order is almost 100%.

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Good, honest start, but look at your underlying ASSUMPTION here that bacterium were even actually AVAILABLE to REPRODUCE to begin with. HOW AND WHERE did they develop the mechanisms to be able to reproduce at all? Why didn't they all DIE before the first "accident" that made it possible for them to reproduce occurred? Look at the assumptions that have to be made to support evolutionary THEORY... Consider all of the AMAZING things that had to happen over, and over, and over again... At least with a POWERBALL lottery, I think the mathematical odds of me winning it with 6 numbers, 3 or 4 CONSECUTIVE TIMES would be better than ONE time of having the 52 cards all fall PERFECTLY and stack up neatly. By your own math, the PROBABILITY of the 52 cards happening just ONCE approaches zero probability. THEN stack all of these amazing miracles on top of each other, for all of those MILLIONS of supposed "accidental improvements" and all of the diversity of species and it becomes MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to have evolution. Then again, just the DNA strand itself, with its encoded instructions demonstrates that evolution is mathematically impossible.

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OK, I take your point. I went back to my trust Excel spreadsheet and tried it again. This time I assume that each cycle, 1/4 of the existing bacteria die before reproducing (from predation, lack of space/resources or infeasible genetic combinations from the mutations). This time I get 2.49x10^74 bacteria (somebody with better math skills can redo the calculation if they want). But 2.49x10^74 bacteria is still so large that it almost guarantees a 100% chance that the genetic cards would land in order. Even when I redo the assumption that mutations only happen once in every trillion reproductions, you still get a 100% chance. Again, if you have a better grasp of stats than I do and you see that I made a mistake, I'd be grateful if you could point it out, but otherwise the conclusion seems clear to me. You are right that the chances of random mutations that are "just so" are quite small, but the chances are actually quite good when compared to the sheer number of opportunities in the natural world through the normal process of reproduction.

[flevit]

I suggest you look up the word "Idiom"

"pillars of society"
"sunrise"

[Stark_GOP]

Nah, they're to busy sharpening their swords and calling people idiots to consult a dictionary.

[longshadow]

I'll pulmonary comments for the rest of the evening.

We breathlessly await your return....

[Gumlegs]

That was a remarkably clear and informative post. Thank you.

[Coyoteman]

I'll pulmonary comments for the rest of the evening.

We breathlessly await your return....

One more cup of coffee and aorta be ready to resume.

[VadeRetro]

I'm not making a display. I'm asking genuine questions and generally getting insulted for asking them. Trying to pin down the evolutionary arguments presented is like trying to squeeze jello.

Let me remind the lurkers that you are waving your alleged inability to get evolutionary arguments as a wave-away for post 661 by Ichneumon. Your introductory statement: "Ichneumons stunning post on transitionals is deeply flawed."

Out of all that post, you have myopically focussed upon the supposed deep flaw represented by Caudipteryx being later than Archaeopteryx, together with Feduccia's rather eccentric theories.

Your concerns on that point have been addressed directly. You don't have a valid point. But even if the anomaly was real, it wouldn't explain anything about why we have parallel evidence for reptiles becoming mammals, or land animals becoming whales, or fish eventually becoming elephants, and why molecular evidence points to the same phylogenetic relationships we get from morphology and the fossil record. The inadequacy of your mumbles in the post to which I responded needs no further comment from me.

One last point on the lameness of citing Feduccia.

Picking and choosing authorities

In advertisements for movies, it is usually taken for granted that the studios only quote positive reviews. This kind of Madison Avenue tactic is not a legitimate means of establishing the nature of reality. One cannot just pick the expert whose opinion is convenient for the point one is trying to make while ignoring credible expert opinion to the contrary. This is especially the case when the quoted authority is in the minority among his fellow experts. There might be a very good reason why the authority's views are in the minority. If a writer argues by hand-picking only the experts convenient to him, then that writer has committed the "argument from authority" fallacy. Antievolutionists do this routinely.

• Alan Feduccia who opposes the idea that birds are descended from dinosaurs and instead argues that birds are descended from non-dinosaur archosaurs (a taxon that includes dinosaurs) is often quoted by evolution deniers. Feduccia is a qualified scientist and should not be just dismissed, but his views are in an extreme minority within the scientific community. It is simply bad reasoning for the evolution deniers to use Feduccia's writing disagreeing with conventional ideas of bird evolution while ignoring the many experts that disagree with him.

  "Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?"¹ quotes Feduccia on Archaeopteryx:

  Was Archaeopteryx a feathered dinosaur? Dr. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, said: "Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that."

  Notice the author is citing Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There is no mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. Feduccia's peers in the field of bird evolution are "authorities" too. In short this creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument from authority." It is also very inconsistent. Feduccia also says that evolution occurs, so if this argument is to be followed to its logical conclusion, this creationist must accept the evolution of birds from non-birds! One could also cite many more authorities that say birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs. This is why one should not pick and choose authorities. If Feduccia does turn out to be correct and his views become established within the scientific community, then the evolution deniers will probably become fond of quoting what Kevin Padian and other proponents of birds being descended from dinosaurs had to say about Feduccia's views.

Quotations and Misquotations: Why What Antievolutionists Quote is Not Valid Evidence Against Evolution

[tallhappy]

Hopefully you can learn a bit from your mistakes.

Trust your initial instincts

I'm not making mistakes nor deceiving anyone.

What mistakes are you referring to? If they are mistaken then they should be corrected.

[narby]

Still pumping that persecution complex, eh?

Without researching the issue, I seem to remember that Columbus' crew were terrified of falling off the edge of the earth. Irregardless of what Aquinas and Augustine thought, the common Christian *culture*, which dominated that time period, thought the earth was flat.

Intelligent Christian thinkers today, such as Francis S. Collins of the Human Genome project and John Paul II have no problem reconciling evolution and the Bible. But like in the middle ages, it's the red neck know nothings in the Bible Belt who don't get it and refuse to listen.

[tallhappy]

You are a very dishonest person.

Still you admitted and acknowldged viral insertsion is not random as you claimed You have recognized that insertion and selection can result in highly specific integration events.

What I'd say is stop trying to think everyone is out to get you and deceive you.

Cut the attitude and you might get somewhere.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

If you knew anything about biology you'd not be wasting time on this side show.

Et tu, tallhappy!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I'm bookmarking this thread just for your posts.

Very nice!

[narby]

Very good rebuttal. Tallhappy is toast.

My one question is why did he perpetrate the misinformation?

It's hard to conclude that it wasn't deliberate. And if deliberate, then why?

Perhaps he's a genuine professional IDer, looking to sap more donation money for the Discovery Institute or another non-profit.

As the environmental advocacy community of Sierra Club, Greenpeas etc. have demonstrated, there's lots of money out there. And the Christian community has remarkably few national non-profits living off it. So the pickings are ripe for those dishonest enough to separate Christians from their money in return for emotional issues confronted.

[VadeRetro]

Greenpeas etc. ...

Hippie sticker: "Imagine whirled peas!"

[tallhappy]

"...the total number of injected transduced cells — 92 x 106 and 133 x 106 for patients P4 and P5, respectively..."

So it's not actually "3 of only 9 integrations", as tallhappy falsely claims, since just *two* out of the nine total patients had TWO HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE MILLION retrovirus-treated cells pumped into their bodies...

You are actually funny in your misunderstanding. Retrovirus treated is not necessarily the same as virally integrated, not all integrated will be of relevance in the treatment (analagous to an evolutionary insertion that occurs long term).

After transplanting 100 million vector exposed cells )random exposure) in 11 patients, 9 patients had functional integrations and of the 9 three had integrations at the LMO2 locus

That's very non-random.

Recall as I pointed out that specificity of integration involves the initial molecular events related to the DNA recombination event and subsequent cellular selction processes.

[narby]

Trust your initial instincts

My initial instincts were that you were a desperate lawyer picking at the only issue with any traction at all.

At best, the information you presented appeared to conflict with Ichneumon's. And my initial instinct was that even assuming ERVs inserted at a single site, the evidence still showed common ancestry.

But even the insertion pattern found in primates and humans made no sense vs. your point. If ERVs always inserted at the same point, then the species distribution of ERVs would be random vs. the species divergence. And/or all related species would have all "hot spots" in their genomes occupied by ERVs.

I was giving you plenty of benefit of the doubt on this, even though I wasn't convinced on your point from the beginning.

[js1138]

So if I spray an area, blindfolded, with a machine gun, and three people are hit, I can say the bullets were nonrandom because all of the effective bullets hit people.

[VadeRetro]

Still you admitted and acknowldged viral insertsion is not random as you claimed

There comes a time to realize things have been explained and people can see. You went past it.

You needed people to think viruses reliably go for specific sites. That and only that make it easy to accept what we see from molecular studies as other than common descent.

You introduced data that not all sites have the same odds of being picked for insertion. Then you went "Tah-dah!"

That looked bad.

You're still going "Tah-dah!" You've jumped the shark.