*applause*

And as long as they don't try to base moral decisions and ideas about the nature of reality on such beliefs, in contexts where we do have a real empirical basis for understanding.

IOW, our empirically, scientifically gained understanding of reality, including of our own nature, must take precedence over wishful/intuitive/instinctive thinking.

Thankfully, despite justifiable concerns expressed by Sam Harris and others about the possibility of Collins' decisions in his role at the NIH being unduly affected by such beliefs, he appears to have maintained his scientific integrity.

 

I do respect him for his honesty and integrity to concede, but not for being blatantly irrational.

It just goes to show no matter the level of intelligence, it's still quite possible for humans to hold 2 completely incompatible views and standards.

 

 

These 'pseudosciences' just happen to keep most of us alive, many of us functional, and some of us (in America) filthy rich for enabling the previous collective acts. It isn't quite Voodoo, and it may not approach whatever metaphorical zen you may have in mind for Physics, but it does work. That quite a bit of theism creeps into these fields of study (Biblical references like crosses and snakes entwining a staff) is ultimately irrelevant. Theists work in and make opinions about physics- and paleontology-related professions, too.

Oh!! I am totally convinced now.  Just the other day, the transmission randomly copied and fell out of my car. It rolled across the garage floor, rolled over an old bike inner-tube and crashed into an old fan. (That was siting there because it had previously copied itself and I didn't need two fans inside.) The whole thing then spun around and became a hover-craft. It was awesome!!!!  I just have to keep a bunch of spare parts around and I can end up with anything. 

As long as those parts are really capable of copying themselves - you have machinery like that? Wow! - and you are prepared to set up an environment for them that will favour the thing you want, and wait for a million generations or so, maybe.

Consciously designed things like cars, car parts, and watches, etc, usually don't do that kind of thing. Only things which reproduce can evolve, and that would be an unnecessary complication in the design.That's one of the signs that life was NOT intelligently designed.

Evolution is much better at that kind of thing, although it tends to be very slow, because it can only make small changes at each point, and there are some things it can't do that a designer would find trivial, like swapping which side of the throat a nerve goes. Poor giraffes, stuck with a nerve which has to go all the way down its neck and back again, just because it originally formed in animals with no neck at all.

On the plus side, because it has a random element, it can find solutions which a conscious designer may not think of. This has been applied in computer-aided design - 'genetic algorithms' - which mimic the random mutation + non-random selection of evoltion to come up with novel 'designs'.

Nothing in evolution ever gave birth to something entirely different.

 

 

Bob, Thanks for answering before I even asked.    How does the biological system "set up an environment for them that will favour the thing [it] want[s]" or needs?

 

That's why  I said "Assuming the car could reproduce".  I think your logic here is circular. You assume it was not designed to reproduce, so then you use the fact that it reproduces as evidence that it wasn't designed?

 

 

 

But even given millions of generations as you stated above, each creating a new component, the assembly of any such system would have to happen with in a single cell, (over a very short span of time). I should wait for your next response, but where are the assembly instructions stored, and how would the assembly instructions of such a complicated system with pieces from different sectors get created at all?

True, but those applications are done under very controlled circumstances with limited variables.

But that is what they are saying. No flagelum becomes a flagelum.

 

Thanks for your responses.

Joe

 

It doesn't set up an environment for itself, that is the point of natural evolution, it adapts to the environment it 'finds itself' in.

My comment about setting up an environment was about what YOU would have to do if you wanted your self-copying machinery to evolve into something YOU wanted.

A car is clearly not designed to reproduce, so comments based on that 'analogy' are quite irrelevant.

Only molecules and systems which happened to be capable of reproducing - I pointed out in my next post that we already have experiments which are showing how this can happen - will perpetuate.

No 'design' required, just the possibility of molecules which can replicate, and enough time. Billions of years and billions (at least) of different planets, only needs to have happened once, so the odds are pretty good.

The assembly itself evolves, with bits being added and subtracted and being modified, as long as the assembly serves some function at each point, not necessarily anything to do with the ultimate function we see.

The genetic algorithms are indeed being selected for the intended function, but otherwise the mutations themselves are random. My main point is that randomness is the core of creativity, otherwise you are limited to designs which are clearly related to existing designs.

They are saying that something quite similar in structure to a flagellum, but not functioning as a flagellum, can become a flagellum by relatively small changes.

No dramatic or 'sudden' change in structure required.

Nowhere, repeat nowhere, does evolution involve sudden dramatic changes of structure. It would be able to 'solve' many quite unnecessarily messy aspects of our design if it could. These defects are evidence of the absence of an intelligent design process.

Technology isn't a good analogy. Fact is that misunderstanding of evolution is depicted in the scenario given. Evolution isn't like assembling a car from nothing. It's more like you've got a rock that's semi-spherical bouncing down a rubble strewn hill. Some of the gravel will get smushed into the rock, but most of it attaches briefly before being thrown aside. Some pieces of the rock will even chip off when colliding with other rocks.
At the bottom of the hill (though there isn't a bottom of the hill in evolution), the rock has picked up a few elements it didn't have before the roll, and lost a few others it did have. Its shape and size are no longer what they used to be, but it's still recognisable as the original rock when you look at it closely enough.

That's just it, there is no destiny or plan, it's just a compilation of elements.
Life didn't start with DNA, it started with self replicating molecules (the rock). DNA came later, when self replicating molecules combined with other elements. DNA is nothing more than a few chemicals that bonded to each other, much like how tape bonds paper together. The debris the rock collects and discards isn't planned, it was merely a result of the activity of rolling down the hill. If the rock had bounced here instead of there, there'd have been more iron instead of more copper.
If anything drives change, it is the environment around the rock, not the rock itself. The rock is changing as it rolls because the environment is impacting it. Not because the rock is trying to change.

Yeah, the crocoduck is like the epitome of misunderstanding evolution. Well, so was the banana, but coming from Comfort, it's not surprising that he's tied with himself for number 1 on the top 10 most idiotic caricatures of evolution.

Bob,

I apologize for the extreme delay in responding. Life get's in the way. I finally remembered to respond on a day that I actually have a few seconds to do so. So here it goes...

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Bob.   I read through this and saw nowhere that this was a self-replicating RNA strand. I was impressed that this RNA strand, such a short RNA strand, could accomplish... well, I really did not see where it said what the ribosome actually does other than the general statement of "catalyzing chemical reactions."

Bob, it's not that I don't understand probability, or that I did not consider your scenario. It is that your scenario is simply incorrect. What you describe is a "step-by-step", in your words, systematic approach to the validity of each nucleotide on a digit by digit basis. This only works in the movies and TV when the punk kid uses his home-made code breaker to by-pass some bank or CIA security, with each digit "locking in" as the correct one is found. This doesn't even work with real-life code-breakers because there is no way of knowing what each digit is until the door opens, when ALL the digits are found. There is no way of testing individual sections of the sequence, because you don't know what you're test against.

The same goes for an RNA sequence in the pre-biotic soup bowl. A random set of chemicals forms a sequence. Does it do anything useful, yes or no? Yes? Woohoo. No? Then it just floats around. Maybe random interactions change random bases in the sequence. Does it do anything now? No? Keep floating.  There is no mechanism for validating each base. There is no mechanism for constraining, or "locking-in" the "good" bases. There is no mechanism for randomly replacing the "bad" bases with the other three nucleotides to see if they work instead. There is no mechanism for your systematic step-by-step process. If you still think there is, then please explain, but in another thread, I think you have already agreed with me on this point.

(Sorry, for not grabbing the reference to the thread.)

This would go for chemicals in a puddle, even more so than for the reproduction process in an organism. Now in an organism, there is still no mechanism to check each base and try a different one in a 'bad' location. Changes get made to DNA through random mutations, not a "check-this to see if it works better" algorithm. If the random mutation manifests itself in some useful way to the organism, then the organism may have some advantage in producing more offspring and passing on that mutation. But now you have to account for how often mutations happen. What are the odds that another mutation would happen to that particular section of code, enhancing the mutation, as it is copied, relative to the billions of bases that organisms have. (Humans have about 3 billion base pairs.)





I do allow for more than one working sequence, but you have to account for the fact that there are far more non-working sequences. Say you have an assembly of magnets, that all line up to fit together to nicely to fit some function, and you take it apart and put the pieces in  a tub of water. Do you honestly think it is going to self assemble back into the working configuration? There are thousands of combinations where all the parts would just clump together on the bottom. The same goes for any biological structure that is assembled though chemical affinities.

 

I also read the article at http://www.creationtheory.org/Probability/Page03.xhtml, which was referenced in another thread and prompted me to get back here and respond to you. This is the same argument that you used above.

This is a blatant lie, or at least shows complete ignorance about that which he is expounding as an expert. The first one rolls ten random die. The second, which matches your scenario, rolls one die. It then uses intelligence to test if the right number came up. If not, it rolls again, and tests again until the 'right' number comes up. It then moves on to the next die. If you think that probability of random generation is too low unless this kind of system is used, then you have just made an excellent argument in favor of intelligent design. I say that because only intelligence can see 'potential' usefulness. Only intelligence can say whether each die, or each amino acid, is the 'right' one when the rest of the system is not in place yet. Natural selection works on usefulness, not 'potential usefulness'.


Thank you, and again I apologize for the delayed response. I will try not to let it languish so long this time.

Joe