Posted on 02/17/2005 3:10:32 PM PST by DannyTN
Sad little know-nothing, you-can't-make-me-see science, theirs.
Apparently you are confused about the theory of radioactive decay. Each half-life, half of the remaining will decay away still leaving half. It will never totally decay away.
The common ancestors of humans and chimpanzees looked a lot more like chimps than they do humans, or than humans look like chimps. Yes, A is a modern chimp. B is an australopithecine. You are supposed to notice they look a lot alike.
Did you really not understand that? You just made a point of seemingly not understanding that. You're willing to play that dumb and then claim you have a superior science to the accumulated knowledge of the last 146 years. You'll thus excuse me if I check out another thread without giving the rest of your post the detailed going-over it doesn't deserve anyway.
NO!! This misrepresents Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm. Contrary to the author's claim, Dawkins's "weasel" example does *NOT* "lock in" any letter which happens to get "lucky". Instead, a "fitness function" merely grades each attempt on how *many* letters it happens to have right, PERIOD. It's like a game of "warmer, colder". Nonetheless, even without any direct feedback on which letters are correct in which positions, the evolutionary process *still* arrives at the target string in an incredibly short period of time. This models how evolution shapes proteins by merely "grading" (via natural selection) those organisms which are better or worse on a survival basis (imagine nature "saying", warmer, warmer, colder... as individuals vary in a population, where "warmer" means you survive and reproduce more effectively, and "colder" can mean you die early).
For a taste of just how *much* evolution can speed up things over purely random 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: 0Hmm, 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.
Tries <= 1024
Best Critter: "xSeOSEpc3Lm6rnRWnpFYL?QEDY7a67XlfRoJ0e8Len'X'1u'BhdrNqSNaXr7kVjondNozkf2CH9d96SaI?'f43M.CUGJ5XHbqfeR.UJP'tgNP"
Score (0 is best) 101Generation: 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) 0Checked 286464 critters in 15 seconds == 19097 tries/sec.
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.
It's represented as transitionals.
Putting up fossils that are known not to be ancestral to man, in hopes of showing a larger transitional list is intellectually dishonest.
Putting up fossils that are somewhat similar doesn't prove common descent. The same could be expected from common design.
I'll grant you that primate skeletons look a like. But that proves nothing. Show us the transitionals. Pull out the fossils from your slide that are known even by evolutionists not to be ancestral to man and lets see what you have left.
"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): "
I LIKE THIS VERY MUCH. Can I download this so I can play with it?
Question: As far as evolution is concerned what natural mechanism would account for keeping the "Scorer" Happy?
I like the math example, thank you, but I wonder in the case of DNA, has a function been found that acts like the feedback in this numerical example? I mean if a correct enzyme needs 20-30 base pairs correct, what mechanism causes a replicating cell to proceed in the direction that eventually will synthesize the enzyme? that its mutation program is on the right track?
We know there's no DNA in 99.999 percent of fossils. We thus know we can never prove conclusively from fossil evidence alone that thing B is absolutely positively the perfectly direct descendant of thing A. No one has ever pretended to you any differently and this is explained to you anew on every thread.
The above doesn't mean it means nothing when you find a series of things morphing like perfectly designed movie frames from thing A to thing B and on through thing Z. Obviously, it's a clue to the overall direction of that branch of the tree of life. You have to be an idiot not to understand it, or a liar to claim you don't.
What is dishonest is to call for evidence, claiming it to be missing, when you're never going to accept any such thing and you've already thrown out a mountain of such in a pile behind you. You're lying about your intentions and what you're willing to see.
The quotes are accurate
What makes you so sure they're accurate? You cribbed them verbatim from this web page, along with the commentary. The only part of your post which originated from you was the last three words.
Question: As far as evolution is concerned what natural mechanism would account for keeping the "Scorer" Happy?
Actually I can think of one, but there must be more.
How about certain "tries" cause your construct to degrade or fall apart? There will be no "memory" of the error, however, unless Alamo-Girl can find one in there.
Then show up later remembering nothing.
To the lurkers, Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record. Says it all, and lots of nice examples. It has been posted to DannyTN times without number. Not one concept within informs his posts. Not one. Ever.
Creation Science is showing up tomorrow just as ignorant as you were ten years ago. Creation Science is an oxymoron.
Depletion is a common scientific term for radioactive elements. It means for all practical purposes it's gone.
In 90,000 years with a half life of 5700 for Carbon 14, You have 16 half lives so 0.5 raised to the 16th power results in 1/65000 of what you started with at the end of 90,000 years. However no fossil could be found that has as little as 1/1000 of the modern value.
One of the BIG ASSUMPTIONS for Carbon dating is that the modern value is only 1 out of every trillion or so carbon atoms is a Carbon 14. Therefore if the ratio was more or less in the past our dating can be way off. Say if the original ratio was 1 to ever 10 trillion atoms, then our assumption that the modern value was valid in the past, would give dates that are almost twice as old as real.
Carbon-14's half life is 5700 years. Based on current values 1 in a trillion carbon atoms are Carbon 14. BIG ASSUMPTION is that ratio was the same thousands of years ago.
If pigs had wings ...
You'd swear those wings evolved, without any proof at all.
Hee hee.
Yet God knows the future of people who have free will. It is not a deterministic system, because we have a choice. It is not a choice that is forced on us. But rather it is a choice that we are held accountable for.
2)According to the laws of Quantum mechanics, the spin of a particle (to give one example) cannot be known before it is measured, not even by God. Therefore it is impossible for anyone, even God, to know the future.
Then we either don't understand the law completely or we are applying the law wrong. God can and has repeatedly demonstrated knowledge of the future.
It is entirely possible, even likely that the creator of the universe, understands what is possible and what is not possible in this universe, much better than we do.
If that is the same program I've seen before, it is invalid as it correlates a pseudo-random selection to the known content of a position and then fixes it and moves onward to the next position. That is not random by any definition or stretch of the imagination.
A much better test of "happenstance" in evolution would be to digitize Hamlet and then kick off a random number (string of numbers) generator and tally the iterations required to come up with Hamlet by happenstance.
Of course you could reduce Hamlet to a number from its digitization series of numbers and then compute the number of processor iterations required to arrive at that number on the same processor used above. This would be a baseline.
Or you could lay down the pure happenstance insistence and take up the information theory approach to computing the evolution of biological information: Evolution of Biological Information
There was a math teacher that was explaining that if you put all the boys on one side of the room and all the girls on the other, and every minute divided the distance between them by two, theoretically they'd never meet. But for all practical purposes the game would be over in less than 10 minutes.
The big point here is that we don't throw our math books out the window because we find a situation that one particular model doesnt' apply. I can give you lots of cases that everyone uses the evolutionary model, and others where we all use the creation model. Ultimate truth is known to our Creator. The rest of us have realize we don't know everything.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.