Polanyi wrote:

Information is a METAPHOR used to describe DNA sequences. You still haven't learned this after several threads.

Genes are not analogous to messages; genes are messages. Genes are literal programs. They are sent from a source by a transmitter through a channel (Fig. ​(Fig.3)3Figure 3) within the context of a viable cell.

This quote says the exact opposite of what you were previously claiming.

Genes are linear, digital, cybernetic sequences. They are meaningful, pragmatic, physically instantiated recipes.
One of the requirements of any semantic/semiotic system is that the selection of alphanumeric characters/units be "arbitrary"[47]. This implies that they must be contingent and independent of causal determinism. Pattee [72-74] and Rocha [58] refer to this arbitrariness of sequencing as being "dynamically inert." "Arbitrary" does not mean in this context "random," but rather "unconstrained by necessity.

Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information
David L Abel1 and Jack T Trevors
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1208958/

Polanyi, seriously, this says the exact opposite of what you were previously saying. It says that information IS reducible to physical objects.

Rumraket wrote:

Polanyi wrote:

Information is a METAPHOR used to describe DNA sequences. You still haven't learned this after several threads.

Genes are not analogous to messages; genes are messages. Genes are literal programs. They are sent from a source by a transmitter through a channel (Fig. ​(Fig.3)3Figure 3) within the context of a viable cell.

Genes are linear, digital, cybernetic sequences. They are meaningful, pragmatic, physically instantiated recipes.
One of the requirements of any semantic/semiotic system is that the selection of alphanumeric characters/units be "arbitrary"[47]. This implies that they must be contingent and independent of causal determinism. Pattee [72-74] and Rocha [58] refer to this arbitrariness of sequencing as being "dynamically inert." "Arbitrary" does not mean in this context "random," but rather "unconstrained by necessity.

Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information
David L Abel1 and Jack T Trevors
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1208958/

Ahh, David L Abel, the creationist who likes to cite himself whenever possible. As usual we have a paper consisting entirely of non-evidentially supported, non-laboratory confirmed, pure fabrication.

Yep.

Also not suprising is the fact that among others, David L Abel has felt qualified to produce papers completely ruling out even the possiblity of abiogenesis(again in the complete absense of laboratory research or field observations), and casting doubt on the entirety of science, purely on the basis of propability calculations.
For some weird reason, I don't trust the conclusions of this man... maybe it's because science seems to constantly produce useful results. One has to ask oneself, why is that?

Polanyi wrote:

And then, you claim it's just an honest mistake. Yep, just an honest little mistake, could happen to anybody.

If I was accusing of evolutionists saying x, what would be the point if I made up x[this would have been a straw man]?

It actually helps my argument that you actually located the evolutionist who said x.

Yes, Johan, it helps your argument - and I'm willing to help your argument, because I'm a fair and honest person. I don't keep my secret knowledge to myself.

Now, what was the point of deprived your old friend Dudley of the specific credit for the specific sentences he created, which you remembered were such a perfect example that you wanted to use them in your argument ?

Why did you steal the credit from your friend Dudley ?

Why have you never once said you were sorry and promised not to do it again, when you get caught stealing other peoples' words ? Why do you always have an excuse ? Why is it that, once it's just an honest mistake, once it's because you didn't want to be linked to Dembski's creationism, once it's because you knew I could google it in a moment anyway ... always excuses, never apologies, never reforming yourself ? What do you get out of it ?

I know you're smart enough to do better.

I'm hitting my bunk now, can't be bothered sitting up waiting for responses to questions from Johan all night.

Remember, everyone, a naturalistic explanation is simply a gap we have yet to fill with a design explanation... by default.

Polanyi wrote:

And then, you claim it's just an honest mistake. Yep, just an honest little mistake, could happen to anybody.

If I was accusing of evolutionists saying x, what would be the point if I made up x[this would have been a straw man]?

It actually helps my argument that you actually located the evolutionist who said x.

It helps your case that it turns out your claim is based on a facebook comment? How?

Oh dear. Look what's happened. Polanyi has actually bothered to address one of my posts. This is going to be fun.

Let's take a look at this shall we?

Polanyi wrote:@Calilasseia

I mean this in all sincerity

You dare to talk about sincerity after being caught with your pants down posting quote ines? Please, pull the other one, it's got bells on.

Polanyi wrote:I don’t understand why you get so mad when I use the term “evolutionist” or “Darwinist”

Try because, as I have repeatedly told you, it's a dishonest discoursive elision deployed by creationists for specious apologetic purposes. Allow me to educate you directly, since you couldn't be bothered going to the thread in which I explain this in detail.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". Why do I say this? Simple. Because the word has become thoroughly debased through creationist abuse thereof, and in my view, deserves to be struck from the language forever. For those who need the requisite education, there exist evolutionary biologists, namely the scientific professionals who devote decades of their lives to understanding the biosphere and conducting research into appropriate biological phenomena, and those outside that specialist professional remit who accept the reality-based, evidence-based case that they present in their peer reviewed scientific papers for their postulates. The word "evolutionist" is a discoursive elision, erected by creationists for a very specific and utterly mendacious purpose, namely to suggest that valid evolutionary science is a "doctrine", and that those who accept its postulates do so merely as a priori "assumptions". This is manifestly false, as anyone who has actually read the peer reviewed scientific literature is eminently well placed to understand. The idea that there exists some sort of "symmetry" between valid, evidence-based, reality-based science (evolutionary biology) and assertion-laden, mythology-based doctrine (creationism) is FALSE. Evolutionary biology, like every other branch of science, tests assertions and presuppositions to destruction, which is why creationism was tossed into the bin 150 years ago. When creationists can provide methodologically rigorous empirical tests of their assertions, the critical thinkers will sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, with respect to this canard, does the acceptance of the scientifically educated individuals on this board, of the current scientific paradigm for gravity make them "gravitationists"? Does their acceptance of the evidence supporting the germ theory of disease make them "microbists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of Maxwell's Equations make them "electromagnetists"? Does their acceptance of of the validity of the work of Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Dirac and a dozen others in the relevant field make them "quantumists"? Does their acceptance of the validity of the astrophysical model for star formation and the processes that take place inside stars make them "stellarists"? If you are unable to see the absurdity inherent in this, then you are in no position to tell people here that professional scientists have got it wrong, whilst ignorant Bronze Age nomads writing mythology 3,000 years ago got it right.

While we're at it, let's deal with the duplicitous side salad known as "Darwinist". The critical thinkers here know why this particular discoursive elision is erected, and the reason is related to the above. Basically, "Darwinist" is erected for the specific purpose of suggesting that the only reason people accept evolution is because they bow uncritically to Darwin as an authority figure. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, droolingly encephalitic drivel of a particularly suppurating order. Let's provide a much needed education once and for all here.

Darwin is regarded as historically important because he founded the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology, and in the process, converted biology from a cataloguing exercise into a proper empirical science. The reason Darwin is considered important is NOT because he is regarded uncritically as an "authority figure" - the critical thinkers leave this sort of starry-eyed gazing to followers of the likes of William Lane Craig. Darwin is regarded as important because he was the first person to pay serious attention to reality with respect to the biosphere, with respect to the business of determining mechanisms for its development, and the first to engage in diligent intellectual labour for the purpose of establishing that reality supported his postulates with respect to the biosphere. In other words, instead of sitting around accepting uncritically mythological blind assertion, he got off his arse, rolled up his sleeves, did the hard work, put in the long hours performing the research and gathering the real world data, then spent long hours determining what would falsify his ideas and determining in a rigorous manner that no such falsification existed. For those who are unaware of this, the requisite labour swallowed up twenty years of his life, which is par for the course for a scientist introducing a new paradigm to the world. THAT is why he is regarded as important, because he expended colossal amounts of labour ensuring that REALITY supported his ideas. That's the ONLY reason ANY scientist acquires a reputation for being a towering contributor to the field, because said scientist toils unceasingly for many years, in some cases whole decades, ensuring that his ideas are supported by reality in a methodologically rigorous fashion.

Additionally, just in case this idea hasn't crossed the mind of any creationist posting here, evolutionary biology has moved on in the 150 years since Darwin, and whilst his historical role is rightly recognised, the critical thinkers have also recognised that more recent developments have taken place that would leave Darwin's eyes out on stalks if he were around to see them. The contributors to the field after Darwin are numerous, and include individuals who contributed to the development of other branches of science making advances in evolutionary theory possible. Individuals such as Ronald Fisher, who developed the mathematical tools required to make sense of vast swathes of biological data (heard of analysis of variance? Fisher invented it), or Theodosius Dobzhansky, who combined theoretical imagination with empirical rigour, and who, amongst other developments, provided science with a documented instance of speciation in the laboratory. Other seminal contributors included Müller (who trashed Behe's nonsense six decades before Behe was born), E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, Motoo Kimura, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, J. B. S. Haldane, Richard Lewontin, Sewall Wright, Jerry Coyne, Carl Woese, Kenneth Miller, and they're just the ones I can list off the top of my head. Pick up any half-decent collection of scientific papers from the past 100 years, and dozens more names can be added to that list.

So, anyone who wants to be regarded as an extremely low-grade chew toy here only has to erect the "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" canard, and they will guarantee this end result.

Does this explain why I regard your use of these terms with scorn, derision and disgust?

Now DROP THEM from here on. Or else I will regard you with even more scorn, derision and disgust than I already do, and given your repeated instances of discoursive criminality in your drive-by threads, in many of which you are little more than a human Xerox machine for the professional liars for doctrine, the magnitude of my scorn, derision and disgust is enormous.

Polanyi wrote:Dawkins considers himself a “Darwinist”, that is he believes the Darwinian mechanism is sufficient to explain the complexity and diversity of life.

First of all, anyone who has read my voluminous output on the original Richard Dawkins Forums will know that I strongly disagreed with Dawkins' use of this term as a self-description, for the reasons I have cited above. Secondly, Dawkins doesn't "believe" that evolutionary mechanisms are sufficeint to explain the diversity of the biosphere, he regards the evidence from observational reality to be massively supportive of evolutionary theory, and therefore regards "belief" as superfluous to requirements and irrelevant. Do I have to bitchslap you with yet more papers containing relevant empirical tests and verification of evolutionary postulates in order to establish this principle?

Polanyi wrote:A creationist is a person who believes in the literal interpretation of religious texts regarding origins.

Oh, you purport to be in a position to lecture me with respect to elementary facts, whilst being oblivious to numerous important ones yourself? Where have we seen this level of hubris before? Oh, that's right, it's a well-documented part of the supernaturalist aetiology. Such as your monstroously arrogant posturing earlier, as being in a position to lecture us on so-called "evolutionist hypocrisy" AFTER having been caught with your pants down engaging in quote mining. The mere fact that you, and other creationists, have to resort to discoursive malfeasance of this sort in order to peddle your snake-oil doctrine is wonderfully informative.

Polanyi wrote:An intelligent design proponents [sic]

I'll allow myself a little bit of laughter here. If you want to know why I'm laughing, look up "cdesign proponentsists". Even the professional liars for doctrine couldn't be bothered proof-reading their material properly, and provided us with a "transitional fossil" linking creationism with ID at the Dover Trial.

Polanyi wrote:is a person who believes there are patterns in nature that are best explained as the product of intelligence, not an undirected process like natural selection acting on random mutations.

And, as the Wedge Strategy Document informs us, a document that IDists themselves published, the ONLY candidate they ever consider for the role of the purported "intelligent designer" is the magic man of a particular species of Bronze Age mythology, specifically the very same mythology that creationists adhere to. Once again, I'm reminded of "cdesign proponentsists".

Plus, since the hard evidence from observational reality is that many of the phenomena asserted by IDists to be "poster children" for their nonsense are in fact perfectly explicable in evolutionary terms. Indeed, Behe had his arse cheeks handed to him on a silver platter, stir fried in rationalist napalm and sautéd in a reality based hoy sin sauce at the Dover Trial, when he asserted that not only did evolutionary biology have no answer to the purported "problems" posed by the blood clotting cascade, but that it never would arrive at an answer. He was then shown fifty-eight peer reviewed scientific papers and nine university textbooks containing the very answer he said would never exist whilst under cross-examination. Likewise, the bacterial flagellum, far from being the poster child for ID, has turned out, surprise, surprise, to be merely another example of evolutionary bricolage. But then Hermann Joseph Müller told evolutionary biologists that Behe's canards were canards way back in 1918, long before Behe was even born.

The only reason "intelligent design" was ever erected was because creationists were running into the legal buffers of the Establishment Clause with respect to trying to force their mythology into science classes where it didn't belong, and consequently, looked for various devious means of trying to skirt round that provision of the Constitution. Indeed, another poster, Robert Byers, has been erecting fatuous, specious and lame pseudo-arguments in another thread aimed at trying to secure a special. privileged status for his mythology. If creationists hadn't run into the legal buffers with respect to their mythology, ID would never have been dreamed up. It's nothing more than a political tool for trying to evade the legal provisions for separation of church and state in the USA, and the only reason scientists take time out from real reesearch to deal with this is because duplicitous creationists take advantage of their large funds and political connections to keep the zombie of their dead doctrine walking the political arena. Those scientists don't regard ID as serious science, it's merely political lobbying and skulduggery on behalf of mythology.

Polanyi wrote:I don’t like it if you call me a creationist because I am not one, because I don’t believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis

Oh really? Then perhaps you can tell us all exactly what you do believe. Preferably in plain English instead of apologetic gobbledegook. Capale of doing this, are you?

Polanyi wrote:[and I believe it’s wrong to reject evolution because of a specific interpretation of religions texts]

So why are you adopting tactics straight out of the creationist playbook? You are aware that arch-charlatan Henry Morris, who was effectively the father of modern American corporate creationism, wrote a how-to manual on quote mining?

Polanyi wrote:however if you believe in Darwin’s mechanism

Once again, your use of the word "believe" here is telling. What part of "when hard evidence from observational reality is available to support a postulate, belief is superfluous to requirements and irrelevant" do you not understand?

I accept the validity of Darwin's mechanism because it has been demonstrated empirically time and time again to work. Indeed, serious research and development money is being spent harnessing evolution in the laboratory to produce valuable biotechnology products. Funny how no creationist or IDist ideas are attracting that funding, but then how does one apply "Magic Man did it" in the laboratory?

Polanyi wrote:I don’t understand why you should get mad if I call you a Darwinist?

See the explanation above. I don't adhere to a "doctrine", I accept the validity of postulates that are supported by evidence from observational reality. Learn this lesson quickly.

Polanyi wrote:

Plus, given that some organismal features are manifestly broken and manifestly have no function, such as the broken gene for gulonolactase in humans, which renders us incapable of synthesising vitamin C (the pseudogene in question is useless), or the atrophied eyes of Astyanaxc mexicanus cave fishes, any apologetic attempt to hand-wave away these as evidence for evolution, especially as these features are useful to scientists from the standpoint of molecular phylogeny, will simply result in those of us who paid attention in science classes pointing and laughing at your apologetic excrement. Care to tell us why your magic man left Pax6 genes for eye formation in blind cave fishes?

It’s sure is strange, we have nearly the complete gene to synthesize vitamin C, yet natural selection doesn’t seem to be able to kick start this gene back to life?

Congratulations on parading your manifest ignorance of basic biology once more.

What part of "broken genes persist when they are not selected against" do you not understand?

The reason this pseudogene has persisted in hominid lineages is because the existence of dietary supplies of vitamin C in sufficient quantities rendered the relevant mutations non-critical. The gene was in effect surplus to requirements for our lineage, because sufficient dietary sources of vitamin C existed to supply the missing vitamin C that was no longer being synthesised. The same applies to guinea pigs, which is why they have a broken vitamin C gene. But, and here's the important part, guinea pigs have the gene broken in a different place. Whereas humans have a broken copy of the gene whose break is shared with other hominid apes. Now, the idea that we happen to share this break with other apes coincidentally, despite being purportedly "separate creations", is a non-starter, whereas the idea that we inherited the same break from a common ancestor makes eminent sense. You do understand inheritance, don't you?

Polanyi wrote:I would have expected this to be child’s play compared to what evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ....

Polanyi wrote:claimed natural selection has achieved in the past, why the limit here?]

Try because the relevant function is not selected for. We don't need it because we have sufficient dietary sources of vitamin C to make up the deficit. Just as is the case with guinea pigs. If that deficit had been serious, it would have been selected against, courtesy of those possessing it dying and failing to produce descendants. What part of death do you not understand?

You purport to be in a position to lecture people here about your fantasy magic "intelligence", people who include tenured professional scientists, yet are so ignorant of basic biological realities that you can't work this out from first principles? But then this is what we've all come to expect from propagandists for magic entities.

Polanyi wrote:How are blind cavefish evidence for evolution[Darwin’s theory of evolution]?

You really have to ask this? Wow, your ignorance of basic biology really is terminal.

Okay, since you need the baby steps, here goes.

A population of fish reside on the surface, and are subject to the usual exposure to light during daytime. In such an environment, eyes are useful. Because in an environment where light is present, eyes provide organisms with an additional means of detecting food and predators.

Now, a geological incident occurs, and as a consequence, some of those fish find themselves in a pool of water in a totally lightless cave. In such an environment, eyes are useless. They are surplus to requirements. So, fishes in such an environment can live without them, and rely upon such senses as olfactory senses, or the lateral line. It would therefore make more sense for a fish in such an environment to redirect the energy and resources required to build eyes, into developing those other senses instead. So, when a mutation arises in that population resulting in failure of eye development, that mutation becomes positively selectable in that environment, because the resources that would otherwise be used to build eyes are now available for something else, such as enhanced lateral line development. And, a detailed analysis of Astyanax mexicanus yields that this is indeed what has happened - the resources that would otherwise have gone into eye development are now channelled into enhanced lateral line and olfactory development, because those two senses are of far more use in a lightless cave.

When those fishes are analysed, we find that they possess copies of the genes that resulted in eye development in their surface dwelling ancestors (and which still work in present day surface dwelling descendants), but those genes are broken. The reason they are broken is that they code for a function that is superfluous to requirements, and an energy burden in a lightless environment. Therefore, when one or more mutations appear that dispense with that function, and free up that energy and resources for something else that IS of use in that environment, hey presto, the superfluous function disappears over multiple generations. Why bother keeping something that is no use?

But here's the rub. Why would any magic "designer" bother with leaving broken genes for eyes in those cave fishes in the first place? After all, the magic "designer" puportedly knew that these fishes were going to end up in caves anyway, so why not wave the magic wand and make them disappear? After all, those genes have a cost associated with their replication. Trouble is, it takes rather a lot of molecular mechanics to excise a complete gene, but then this wouldn't be a problem for any magic "intelligent" entity, would it? After all, any entity that could magically "design" complete living organisms could magically remove those genes wholesale. The fact that they are not removed wholesale, but still present, albeit with minor alterations breaking their original function, suggests that no "intelligence" was involved. And indeed, it is possible to determine the chemical interactions that produce this effect - the precise chemistry of numerous instances of mutagenesis has been documented in the scientific literature. We have evidence for the existence of the requisite testable natural processes, and NO evidence for any magic being involved. We know that mutations occur, thousands of such mutations are documented in the literature, and we know that environmental conditions and other organisms differentially determine the heritability of those mutations, because experiments have been performed to demonstrate this. Dobzhansky produced a paper way back in the 1940s reproducing the effects of selection in appropriate model organisms.

In fact, it is time to nail another fatuous canard at this juncture, the idea that selection is some 'magic process'. It isn't. "Selection" is simply the umbrella term used to describe all of the interactions in an ecosystem that have the effect of differentially influencing heritability of certain traits, be those interactions predation, mate choice, or even weather. In any population of living organisms, some will be better than others at avoiding predators, some will be better at finding food, some will be better at utilising their food resources efficiently, and those individuals will be the ones whose traits are disseminated most successfully to future generations. Differential heritability is an observed fact, and indeed, laboratory experiments can be performed to demonstrate this, such as Seehausen's experiments on differential mate choice in Lake Victoria Cichlids. Since some traits, and the genes associated with them, will be disseminated more successfully to future generations than others, the future genetic shape of the population will be determined by entirely natural forces.

What part of the above do you not understand?

Polanyi wrote:Or that we share a broken down gene evidence for evolution [Darwin’s theory of evolution], you are confusing evidence for common descent as evidence for the Darwinian mechanism.

Read the above. What part of "ecosystem forces shape the heredity of populations" do you not understand?

The whole point, as PZ Myers succinctly put it, is that predators, microbes, abundance or scarcity of food, ease or difficulty of obtaining food, the appearance of a new food source to capitalise upon, even weather, all shape population heredity. The only reason it took us five millennia to wake up to this basic observable fact is because we spent those five millennia wasting our time fantasising about magic entities. The mere fact that we were able to shape the heredity of crops and livestock simply by choosing which ones to breed from, and which ones to eat, should have pointed us at this basic fact millennia ago. Because that's how natural forces achieve the same result - predators choose which prey to eat, and which ones to leave because catching them is too much effort. Microbes choose which organisms to strike, and which ones to leave unaffected, because some have better immune systems. The weather chooses which organisms will survive and which won't in certain circumstances. Though once again, it is necessary to point out that the word "choose" here does NOT in any way embody the same intentionality on the part of those selecting influences that is manifested by humans, and is merely a linguistic convenience to avoid verbosity. One of the unfortunate aspects of human language is that it frequently embodies our particular brand of intentionality, and care needs to be taken to avoid projecting this unduly upon areas of the natural world for which there is no evidence of such intentionality, or any other. All that predators do is look for an easy meal, but by doing so, they determine which of the prey gets to breed and which doesn't. What part of this is so difficult to understand again?

Polanyi wrote:Evidence for common descent is not automatically evidence for Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations.

Actually, common descent plus modification IS the mechanism Darwin originally proposed for speciation, if you bother to pick up a biology textbook and learn some real biology instead of wasting your neurons with apologetic excrement. Do you need the baby steps with respect to this as well?

Polanyi wrote:

Papers that include the documentation of a population of these fishes that regained eyes courtesy of reverse mutations in the relevant genes,

Again, I don’t see why this proves evolution [Darwin’s theory of evolution], blind cave fish seem to regain sight once they are brought back out of the caves

Actually, the fish that regained their sight were NOT crossbreeds with sighted fish. Did you READ that paper? in particular, the part where the authors specifically state that they conclude, on the basis of the available genetic evidence, that the fish in the Caballo Boro karst window were genetically distinct from other sighted populations, and genetically much closer to the other blind fish from feeder stocks near the karst window?

And once again, when are you going to learn the distinction between [i]proof and evidential support? Why are supernaturalists and magic fetishists always ignorant of this?

Polanyi wrote:because once you crossbreed them they regain the information necessary to complete the genes from one another

Once again, if you bothered to read the paper properly, the Caballo Moro sighted fish were NOT crossbreeds with other sighted fish! For fuck's sake, do I have to bitchslap you with the whole fucking paper?

Polanyi wrote:evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ... duplicitous wankery ...

Polanyi wrote:think they use different genes to become blind

No, they don't "think" anything of the sort, if you bothered to read the fucking papers, they PRESENT EVIDENCE FOR THE UNDERLYING GENETICS. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand? If you don't understand this, then you need to go away and spend the next ten years learning about genetics. Did you bother to READ any of the ACTUAL EXPERIMENTS that some of those scientists performed in order to determine this, such as the differential expression of Pax6 and its effects upon lens formation and lens apoptosis?

Polanyi wrote:but this doesn’t make sense

It does to those of us who bothered to pay attention in science classes.

Once again, what part of "EXPERIMENTS were performed to determine the underlying genetics" do you not understand?

Polanyi wrote:they probably lost different parts of the gene which caused them to become blind.

Actually, what has been determined to have changed is the regulatory and signal transduction mechanism that governs Pax6 expression. As you would have learned if you had bothered to READ the fucking papers. This was determined by manipulating that expression under controlled conditions to determine the outcome. Once again, did you actually READ those fucking papers, or did you simply skim through them looking for quote minable snippets?

Polanyi wrote:I see this as evidence for design

Bollocks. You're assuming a predetermined conclusion, and trying to force-fit the evidence to apologetic excrement. How the fuck does broken genes that no longer perform the original function support the "design" assertion?

For that matter, you have NEVER ANSWERED the question I asked you repeatedly in other threads, namely WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE GENUINE EVIDENCE FOR "DESIGN"? Until you answer that question, all you have is a BLIND ASSERTION ABOUT "DESIGN".

Polanyi wrote:this is good evidence for robust design, this is a designer that designed organisms with the ability to interbreed and exchange biological information

Once again, THE CABALLO MORO KARST WINDOW FISHES WERE NOT CROSSBREEDS ...

Polanyi wrote:so that organs could be restored to functionality.

Oh, and you think it surprising that genes can be passed on to offspring? This doesn't involve fucking magic. It's chemistry on a large scale and nothing else.

Polanyi wrote:

Oh dear. You have to dredge up something from the 19th century that has been superseded by modern science for your apologetics?

I was making a point

No, you were engaging in specious apologetics. And the specious apologetics you were erecting included another quote mine that has since been exposed as such.

Polanyi wrote:evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ...

Polanyi wrote:use gap arguments too

Only when addressing duplicitous apologetics from fetishists for mythology and magic. Notice how no such arguments are needed in those scientific papers I cited when dealing with real scientific questions?

Polanyi wrote:its irrelevant when this evolutionist lived.

Bollocks. What part of "science has progressed since the 19th century" do you not understand?

Scientists have acquired knowledge on a vast scale since Haeckel's day. There are vast swathes of genetics and molecular biology that would astound him if he were alive today. Which means that whilst his contribution may be historically important, we've moved on. How about you doing the same, and learning about modern biology?

Polanyi wrote:

You see, that's the whole point of science, namely to learn what REALITY is telling us, as opposed to accepting uncritically the blind assertions of 3,000 year old mythology and assuming that this contains all the answers.

But you decide what “reality” should be in advance

BLATANT AND BARE FACED LIE.

The only people who do this are fetishists for mythology and magic entities. Drop the specious projection, because it IS specious.

Polanyi wrote:this is the problem, you have decided that materialism/naturalism is true in advance

BOLLOCKS. DROP THE SPECIOUS ATTEMPT TO CHARACTERISE VALID SCIENCE AS ANOTHER MANIFESTATION OF APOLOGETICS, BECAUSE IT IS SPECIOUS, AND DISHONEST.

Scientists haven't decided anything of the sort "in advance", they've alighted upon the fact that testable natural processes MANIFESTLY WORK, whereas magic entities don't. Speaking of which, since when did any magic entities enjoy ANY evidential support whatsoever?

Polanyi wrote:and you will interpret all the evidence on the basis that materialism/naturalism is true.

This is duplicitous bullshit on your part. And this duplicitous bullshit was destroyed the last time you erected it. Indeed, I played a part in that destruction that you walked away from. Scientists accept the validity of testable natural processes because THEY HAVE BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO EXIST AND TO WORK. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?

Likewise, NO magic entities have ever been found to exist. What part of THIS elementary concept do you not understand?

Polanyi wrote:Regardless if reality respects materialism/naturalism or not.

Blatant reality inversion and projection on your part. Because YOU are the one asserting that some magic entity is needed to explain the biosphere, yet have NEVER provided ANY substantive evidence for this. All you have provided is blind assertions to the effect that this magic entity exists, and specious apologetics to the effect that science somehow supports your wishful thinking in this regard, when it manifestly doesn't. This isn't "interpretation", another duplicitous canard from the creationist playbook you routinely erect, this is observed fact.

Polanyi wrote:

Polanyi wrote:"even if we knew absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the Theory of Descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary[useless] organs."

Citation for this?

See Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation (New York: D. Appleton, 1876), 291.

Someone else has alighted upon the original German text and established that you erected another quote mine. Why am I not surprised in the least about this?

Polanyi wrote:

Adaptive Evolution Of Non-Coding DNA In Drosophila by Peter Andolfatto, Nature, 437: 1149-1152 (20th October 2005) [Full paper downloadable from here]

The Mammalian Transcriptome And The Function Of Non-Coding DNA Sequence by Svetlana A. Shabalina and Nikolay A. Spiridonov, Genome Biology, 5: 105 (25th March 2004) [Full paper downloadable from here]

The Role Of Non-Coding DNA Sequences In Transcription And Processing Of A Yeast tRNA by Gregory J. Raymond and Jerry D. Johnson, Nucleic Acids Research, 11(17): 5969-5988 (5th August 1983) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Highly Conserved Non-Coding Sequences Are Associated With Vertebrate Development by Adam Woolfe, Martin Goodson, Debbie K. Goode, Phil Snell, Gayle K. McEwen, Tanya Vavouri, Sarah F. Smith, Phil North, Heather Callaway, Krys Kelly, Klaudia Walter, Irina Abnizova, Walter Gilks, Yvonne J. K. Edwards, Julie E. Cooke and Greg Elgar, PLoS Biology, 3(1): e7 (January 2005) [Full paper downloadable from here]

The Non-Coding Air RNA Is Required For Silencing Autosomal Imprinted Genes by Frank Sleutels, Ronald Zwart and Denise P. Barlow, Nature, 415: 810-813 (14th February 2002) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Arrangement Of Coding And Non-Coding Sequences In The DNA Molecules Coding For rRNAs In Oxytricha sp. DNA Of Ciliated Protozoa. VII. by M. T. Swanton, A. F. Greslin and D. M. Prescott, Chromosoma, 77(2): 203-215 (1980)

Association Of Nucleoid Proteins With Coding And Non-Coding Segments Of The Escherichia coli Genome by David C. Grainger, Douglas Hurd, Martin D. Goldberg and Stephen J. W. Busby, Nucleic Acids Research, 34(16): 4642-4652 (8th September 2006) [Full paper downloadable from here]

Some of the fundamental research into non-coding DNA and possible function was performed back in the 1980s, as two of those citations clearly demonstrate. Which means that scientists have known about the existence of function for non-coding DNA for thirty years. And, once again, who found this out, and determined the functions that the relevant stretches of non-coding DNA possessed? Oh, that's right, it was EVOLUTONARY BIOLOGISTS WHO CONDUCTED THE HARD EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH TO DETERMINE THIS. Creationists just sat on the sidelines throwing stale apologetic marshmallows at them whilst they were doing all of this work.

These papers are fascinating stuff, notice the dates on many of these papers? (20th October 2005), (25th March 2004), (14th February 2002), (January 2005), (8th September 2006), this was long after ID scientists proposed that theses non-protein coding DNA/RNA will turn out to be functional.

Oh, you ignored the citations from 1980 and 1983 then? More duplicity on your part. Not to mention Debunk citing a paper from 1977 in which a function for non-coding DNA was proposed?

Oh, and there's no such thing as an "ID scientist". IDists practice apologetics, not science.

Polanyi wrote:Actually the first scientist to propose that non-protein coding DNA/RNA was functional was Barbara McClintock, this was in 1956

Once again, precise citation for this?

Polanyi wrote:this is the same Barbara who wrote:

"I feel that much of the work[by scientists] is done because one wants to impose an answer on it, They have the answer ready, and they [know what they] want the material to tell them."

Why do I smell another quote mine here? This might have something to do with the fact that you've been caught with your trousers down quote mining on at least two occasions in this thread alone.

Polanyi wrote:

You have it backwards, the way all creationists do. What actually happened, if you read the real scientific papers, is that scientists did not assume a priori that these DNA stretches somehow "must" have a function because mythology-based doctrine required it, instead they asked themselves the basic question "is it possible for these DNA stretches, currently not known to have function, to possess a function?" and then set about answering that question.

Prominent evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ...

Polanyi wrote:used “Junk DNA” as evidence for evolution.

And once again, citation for this?

Polanyi wrote:According to the Neo-Darwinian model the genomes of organisms are cobbled together over a long evolutionary history through a trial and error process of natural selection sifting the effects of random genetic errors. As a consequence, neo- Darwinism expects to find a lot of “junk” DNA, that is, DNA that serves no useful purpose but that is simply carried along for the ride because it is easier for cells to keep copying DNA that genetic errors render useless than to identify and eliminate such DNA from the genome. Not only was “junk DNA” used as positive evidence for evolution, “junk DNA” was used as evidence against ID.

Simplistic but not completely wrong.

Polanyi wrote:“For the genome is littered with dead genes. Huge wastes of DNA territory comprise a graveyard of discarded, superseded old genes (plus meaningless sequences of nonsense DNA that never functioned) with occasional islands of current, extant genes that are actually read by the translating machinery and turned into action. Dead, untranslated genes are called pseudogenes." Richard Dawkins, “Dawkins on Darwin,” published in TimesOnline, February 11, 2009.

And these entities exist. Your problem with this being what, precisely, apart from the fact that the demonstrated existence of these entities makes a mockery of your worthless apologetics?

Polanyi wrote:"From a design point of view, pseudogenes are indeed mistakes. So why are they there? Intelligent design cannot explain the presence of a nonfunctional pseudogene, unless it is willing to allow that the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, however, can explain them easily. Pseudogenes are nothing more than chance experiments in gene duplication that have failed, and they persist in the genome as evolutionary remnants of the past history of the b-globin genes."

Kenneth Miller, Life’s Grand Design, Technology Review, February-March 1994, Volume 97(2): pg. 24–32.

And once again, these entities exist. The "design" assertion has no explanation for them. No design assertionist has ever attempted to provide one. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, has a valid explanation for them, and a testable one. Put an organism in an environment where one or more of its genes are no longer required in order for it to function, and those genes will cease to be selected for, and will acquire nonsense mutations that will not be removed by selection. What mechanism does ID have for this, other than "Magic Man did it"?

Polanyi wrote:De Novo Origination Of A New Protein-Coding Gene In Saccharomyces cerevisiae by Jing Cai, Ruoping Zhao, Huifeng Jiang and Wen Wang, Genetics, 179: 487-496 (May 2008) [full paper downloadable from here]

Did you have to mangle my post? Is this another piece of deliberate duplicity on your part, fucking about with my post tags in order to make extra work for anyone responding to your duplicitous apologetic excrement? Particularly as I went to a lot of trouble to preview the post in question to make sure that all the post tags worked? And why have you removed the link to the paper I provided? Was using the "Quote" button too much hard work?

Polanyi wrote:Cai et al, 2008 wrote:Origination of new genes is an important mechanism generating genetic novelties during the evolution of an organism. Processes of creating new genes using preexisting genes as the raw materials are well characterized, such as exon shuffling, gene duplication, retroposition, gene fusion, and fission. However, the process of how a new gene is de novo created from noncoding sequence is largely unknown. On the basis of genome comparison among yeast species, we have identified a newde novo protein-coding gene, BSC4 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The BSC4 gene has an open reading frame (ORF) encoding a 132-aminoacid-long peptide, while there is no homologous ORF in all the sequenced genomes of other fungal species, including its closely related species such as S. paradoxus and S. mikatae. The functional protein-coding feature of the BSC4 gene in S. cerevisiae[/]i is supported by population genetics, expression, proteomics, and synthetic lethal data. The evidence suggests that BSC4 may be involved in the DNA repair pathway during the stationary phase of S. cerevisiae and contribute to the robustness of S. cerevisiae[/i], when shifted to a nutrient-poor environment. Because the corresponding noncoding sequences in S. paradoxus, S. mikatae, and S. bayanus also transcribe, we propose that a new de novo protein-coding gene may have evolved from a previously expressed noncoding sequence.

Oh look. A paper that covers the experimental evidence for the appearance of a new gene from a previously non-coding region. Looks like those "evolutionists", as you duplicitously describe the evolutionary biologists who do more laboratory work in a day than creationists do in their entire lives, know rather more about non-coding DNA than you think.

Fascinating paper, however there is only one problem: it falsifies an evolutionary prediction.[/quote]

And which one would that be? Only it's strange that the authors of the paper failed to notice this, assuming of course that your assertion is anything other than a rectally extracted blind assertion of course, because if there's one thing scientists dream of, it's alighting upon evidence that a paradigm needs to be revised, because this is the stuff that Nobel Prizes are made of. Funny how this hasn't become headline news since the paper was published. Which might have a lot to do with the fact that you've pulled this assertion out of your rectal passage.

Polanyi wrote:Novel genes appearing in such a short time completely falsified a fundamental evolutionary prediction.

Oh really? And what purported "prediction" of evolutionary theory was that?

Polanyi wrote:This was never expected by evolutionists.

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ...drop the "evolutionist" bullshit.

Oh, you think de novo gene production was never expected by any biologists? You really are ignorant of real biology, aren't you? I have a raft of papers on de novo gene origination. Here's some citations for you to chew on:

Extensive De Novo Genomic Variation In Rice Introduced By Introgression From Wild Rice (Zizania latifolia Griseb.) by Yong-Ming Wang, Zhen-Ying dong, Zhoing-Juan Zhang, Xiu-Yun Lin, Ye Shen, Daowei Zhou and Bao Liu, Genetics, 170: 1945-1956 (August 2005) [full paper downloadable from here]

Novel Genes Derived From Noncoding DNA In Drosophila melanogaster Are Frequently X-Linked And Exhibit Testis-based Expression by Mia T. Levine, Corbin D. Jones, Andrew D. Kern, Heather A. Lindfors and David J. Begun, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 103(26): 9935-9939 (27th June 2006) [full paper downloadable from here]

Evidence For De Novo Evolution Of Testis-Expressed Genes In The Drosophila yakuba/Drosophila erecta Clade by David J. Begun, Heather A. Lindfors, Andrew D. Kern and Corbin D. Jones, Genetics, 176: 1131-1137 (June 2007) [full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution Of Enzymes For The Metabolism Of New Chemical Inputs Into The Environment by Lawrence P. Wackett, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 279(40): 41259-41264 (1st October 2004) [full paper downloadable from here]

Evolution Of Hydra, A Recently Evolved Testis-Expressed Gene With Nine Alternative First Exons In Drosophila melanogaster by Shou-Tao Chen, Hsin-Chien Cheng, Daniel A. Barbash and Hsiao-Pei Yang, PLoS Genetics, 3(7): 1131-1143 (July 2007) [full paper downloadable from her]

Recently Evolved Genes Identified From Drosophila yakuba And D. erecta Accessory Gland Expressed Sequence Tags by David J. Begun, Heather A. Lindfors, Melissa E. Thompson and Alisha K. Holloway, Genetics, 172: 1675-1681 (March 2006) [full paper downloadable from here]

I can assure you they're not the only ones.

Polanyi wrote:You see because similar species are thought to share a relatively recent common ancestor, they are assumed to have not had much time to evolve differences between them.

So what? Dobzhansky produced a speciation event in his laboratory in just five years back in 1971. You think anyone who actually paid attention to what biologists actually postulate, and to the actual research, is surprised about this?

Polanyi wrote:That explains why they are similar, and it also predicts that such species do not have significant differences.

They have sufficient differences to be no longer interfertile. That's how a species is defined, in case you hadn't worked this out.

Polanyi wrote:Their genome differences should be minor.

And why is de novo gene origination of one gene out of 6,275 yeast genes a problem in this respect?

Polanyi wrote:This is because evolution is limited by the rate at which genetic variations can appear and subsequently spread throughout the respective lineages.

Once again, why is this a problem? Particularly in an organism with a fast generational turnaround? You do realise that yeasts are single celled organisms with a generational turnaround of around 100 minutes? Which means that 14 generations arise in a single day? During a year, that's around 5,200 generations. Plenty of scope for mutations to appear in a yeast strain in that time, and that's the generational turnaround for the haploid reproductive stage only. Saccharomyces cerevisiae can also undergo diploid reproduction involving a meiotic stage, which results in four daughter cells being produced, which adds to the scope for mutations to be introduced. Indeed, the combination of fast generational turnaround, two different reproductive modes, ease of culture and handling within the laboratory, and ease with which key life cycle stages can be observed, is one of the reasons it's a model organism for research.

Once again, you really do need to learn some basic biology.

Polanyi wrote:For instance, consider two species which are supposed to share a common ancestor dating back only a few millions of years, such as the human and chimp. Evolution expected that such cousin species would have quite similar genes. There would be no new genes evolved in such a brief time period.

Blind assertion, and wrong.

For one, humans and chimps have acquired new retroviral insertions in their genomes since divergence, over and above the ones they inherited from their common ancestor. Oh, and retroviral insertions are another problem for the blind assertions about "design". Why would your magic "designer" insert retroviral sequences into the genomes of purportedly "separately designed" organisms in exactly the pattern that would be expected to arise as a result of those retroviral insertions having been inherited from common ancestors? Is your magic "designer" deceitful as well as incompetent?

Plus, evolutionary theory has never postulated that organisms would never acquire new genes. Never heard of gene duplication? It's a well documented phenomenon. It was the basis for the appearance of antifreeze glycoproteins in Antarctic Notothenioid fishes. And before you erect apologetic excrement about that, I can bitchslap you with the papers again. Basically, a gene can be duplicated, so that two copies exist. One copy continues to operate normally, and continues to be selected for, whilst the duplicate copy is free to acquire mutations, and sometimes, become a completely new gene. Which is what happened with the Notothenioids - a trypsinogen gene was duplicated, the duplicate copy acquired mutations, and the mutated copy coded for a glycoprotein that provided protection against freezing in Antarctic waters, thus allowing the fishes to move into an entirely new ecosystem and proliferate.

Indeed, duplication of an entire genome in a diploid organism to produce a tetraploid organism has been documented in the scientific literature. Hyla chrysocelis is a diploid tree frog. Hyla versicolor is a tetraploid tree frog, whose genome consists of two whole copies of the ancestral Hyla chrysocelis genome. Polyploidisation is frequently observed in plants, though much less often in animals, but instances of this exist, and have been known about for a century. Primula kewensis is an example of a polyploid speciation event in plants that was documented at the turn of the century, with an extensive paper on its genetics written in 1927:

The Genetic Behaviour Of Primula kewensis by Caroline Pellew, Molecular & General Genetics, 45(1): 402-403 (December 1927)

Also, see this PDF.

Once again, you really need to learn some basic biology, as well as learning what evolutionary theory actually postulates.

Polanyi wrote:Indeed, for decades evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ...

Polanyi wrote:have cited minor genetic differences between such allied species as powerful evidence for evolution.[1][2][3][4][5]

References:

[1.]Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 50.
[2.] Thomas H. Jukes, “Molecular evidence for evolution,?in Laurie R. Godfrey (ed), Scientists Confront Creationism, (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1983), 120.
[3.]Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 35.
[4.]Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 20.
[5.]G. Johnson, P. Raven, Biology (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2004) 287.

You've already had this particular piece of plagiarism exposed. You couldn't even be bothered to erect your own apologetics, you had to steal someone else's. The above list of references allowed your plagiarism to be tracked down. Oh, and just for the record, Dembski is a charlatan.

Polanyi wrote:It is not controversial that de novo genes were not predicted by the new synthesis.

And your citation to support this blind assertion is what, precisely, given that de novo gene origination is very definitely part of the Modern Synthesis?

Polanyi wrote:This ties in nicely with my other thread about evolving predictions

Oh, you mean that other thread where you regurgitated apologetic faeces by the tanker load, only to have it all napalmed by reality?

Polanyi wrote:evolution never predicted Orphan genes

Once again, your citation to support this assertion? Only I can think of two mechanisms for their appearance from first principles - one, de novo origination as in the case of BSC4 in yeasts above, and two, extinction of lineages containing the homologues. Now if I can work this out from first principles, I'm sure evolutionary biologists can think of several other possibilities.

Polanyi wrote:and yet, now evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ... drop it ...

Polanyi wrote:want to claim this is evidence for evolution

Once again, citation to support this assertion?

Polanyi wrote:when evolutionists

Yawn, yawn, yawn, yawn ... drop it ...

Polanyi wrote:predicted the opposite

Citation to suppor this assertion?

Polanyi wrote:which is it?

Well since we only have your blind assertions to this effect, I'm going to wait until I alight upon a proper scientific source documenting this. Not least because you have demonstrated that you are wholly untrustworthy, being not only a duplicitous purveyor of quote mines, but a plagiarist.

Polanyi wrote:

Actually, the broque monstrosity that is gene transcription alone is such a bureaucrratic mess that no genuinely "intelligent" entity would come up with such a process.

I hope you are walking around with a scepter in your hand when you make religious claims like this?

This isn't a "religious claim". If you knew anything about this process in depth, you'd know it was a baroque monstrosity. Genuinely intelligent entities tend to opt for simplicity and elegance. Something that the mathematician whose name you've borrowed would happily explain to you if he were alive.

Polanyi wrote:How on earth do you know how a designer would design things and how he wouldn’t?

Once again, genuinely intelligent entities opt for simplicity and elegance, not baroque bureaucracy. That mathematician would happily tell you the same if he were alive, and would cite examples of mathematical proofs illustrating this principle in action.

Polanyi wrote:Do you have knowledge about God

I don't regard this entity as existing, therefore your question is null and void. What I do postulate, and indeed, your favourite mathematician would also postulate, is that genuinely intelligent entities opt for simplicity and elegance.

Polanyi wrote:that you received via divine revelation?

I didn't need any "divine revelation", I leave that to deluded supernaturalists. All I needed was to recognise that genuinely intelligent entities opt for simplicity and elegance. Your favourite mathematician would tell you the same. Indeed, having spent time as a mathematics undergraduate, I'm well aware that the best proofs are those that are simple, elegant, encapsulate elegant concepts succinctly, and unify previously disparate branches of the discipline. Perhaps you should start actually reading some of Michael Polanyi's output in the field of mathematics, which is, after all, where his expertise lay.

Polanyi wrote:

Oh, and scientists have once again published numerous papers on the subject of the evolution of the transcription process, which I can bitchslap you with if need be, of which those multiple papers on the evolvability of the genetic code in my collection are just a part.

It’s their job to publish paper and use the evolution word wherever they can, they receive grants for that.

Drop the specious apologetic attempt to characterise valid science as a branch of apologetics, simply because it doesn't genuflect before whatever masturbation fantasy you happen to think governs the operation of reality. This tiresomely familiar creationist duplicity simply makes you look even more dishonest.

Polanyi wrote:

In other words, the two papers, taken together, provide not only a mechanism for the formation of the universe using a pre-Big-Bang physics that is consistent with the known physics of our universe, but also provides a means of testing experimentally whether or not the conclusions of the authors are correct, namely by analysing the spectrum of gravitational waves passing through the universe.... Therefore we have a real world phenomenon to observe that will provide an answer as to whether Turok et al have alighted upon a consistent mechanism that is in accord with observational reality for the formation of the known universe, a mechanism moreover that allows the formation of other, causally separated universes and which may even, in the fullness of time, allow us to experimentally form new universes via laboratory means.

Since this mechanism permits multiple variations upon the theme, it provides a theoretical underpinning for the multiverse hypothesis, and if the forthcoming experimental tests yield agreement with the authors' findings, then once again, your magic man isn't needed.

I’m gonna skip right to this part

In other words, the meat of the papers was too much for you. Quelle surprise.

Polanyi wrote:if materialism is true [which is the politically correct position in mainstream physics, and which these scientists obviously believe is true]

Yawn. Drop the specious attempt to characterise valid science as a branch of apologetics, it's tiresome, boring and dishonest.

Polanyi wrote:than the universe as it is

Since when did you or any other fetishist for magic entities look at the universe as it actually is? You assert that fantastic magic entities are needed to prop it up, despite the fact that every scientific paper ever published has no need of them.

Polanyi wrote:will have to be able to explain itself, one way or another, meaning they will have to invoke multiple universes.

Once again, drop the specious "science is a branch of apologetics" bullshit ...

Polanyi wrote:However, there are a couple of problems with multiverse:

Oh really? There are far fewer problems with that, than there are with invisible magic men ...

Polanyi wrote:1)mutliverse doesn’t solve the problem of this finely tuned universe, it merely shifts the problem up one level. The "universe generator" itself would be governed by a complex set of physical laws that allow it to produce the universes. It stands to reason, therefore, that if these laws were slightly different the generator probably would not be able to produce any universes, let alone a universe that could sustain life.

Oh dear.

Well if this wasn't the case, we wouldn't be here discussing it, would we? Once again, we are here because the laws of physics permit this. Why is this such a problem? Oh, that's right, you need to have a magic man running things in order to stroke your desire to be "special".

Polanyi wrote:2)"imagining multiple physical universes or infinite time does not solve the problem of the origin of formal (non physical) biocybernetics and biosemiosis using a linear digital representational symbol system."-David Abel-Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 2009,6:27doi:10.1186/1742-4682-6-27

This waffle is supposed to mean what, precisely?

Polanyi wrote:Even if multiple physical cosmoses existed, it is a logically sound deduction that linear digital genetic instructions using a representational material symbol system (MSS) [63] cannot be programmed by the chance and/or fixed laws of physicodynamics 27-29,32,33,36-39,64,65]. This fact is not only true of the physical universe, but would be just as true in any imagined physical multiverse. Physicality cannot generate non physical Prescriptive Information (PI) [29].

Oh dear, it's the "information is a magic non-physical entity" bullshit. Already schooled you on that one. Turing, Shannon, Chaitin and Kolmogorov all say that this is horseshit, and provide rigorous analyses to back this up.

Polanyi wrote:Physicodynamics cannot practice formalisms (The Cybernetic Cut) [27,34].

Word salad. "Blah blah blah information is magic blah blah blah". Pathetic. The CPU on the motherboard of your computer refutes this bullshit on its own, let alone any biological system. And as a former programmer coding in 80x86 assembly language, I happen to know a thing or two about this. Indeed, there exists theorem proving software to run on the PC architecture (among others), called Isabelle. I suggest you look it up. It's quite a clever package.

Polanyi wrote:http://www.tbiomed.com/content/6/1/27

That reads like Alan Sokal's piss-take on post-modernism.

Oh, and Polanyi, learn to use the quote function competently. I'm tired of having to disentangle your mangling of other people's properly formatted posts, which in this case added an extra and wholly unnecessary 40 minutes to my workload. Assuming of course that this isn't yet more of your deliberate and wilful duplicity, which I for one happen to suspect.

Calilasseia wrote:That reads like Alan Sokal's piss-take on post-modernism.

Which I just have to share with everybody else here, because it was probably the greatest smack-down ever in academia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/soka ... efile.html

Here's Dawkins' take on the matter:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html

So still no reply to my post regarding archaeopteryx? Why am I not surprised? Oh, and I see you got caught plagiarizing again, for shame! I may not be the brightest person on this forum but at least my posts are all my own work and if I quote someone else's work, I give them their due credit. In fact, I always put it between quote tags so that in the unlikely event that I forget to put the source at least everyone knows it's not my work.

Polanyi wrote:

The thing is that not only is it unexplained by ID, it directly contradicts ID.

Many things that we did not properly understand use to contradict ID, non-protein coding DNA/RNA, the "poor backward design" of the human eye, the panda's thumb, and this list goes on. The laryngeal nerve is just the most recent member to join this list, and it won't be long, before science will have an answer for this too, as to why this design is not as poor as we might think.

Wow. That's ALL you managed to get out of my posts? Your evasion has already been noted many times here and has, in fact, become expected behavior. What about the part where I asked for an objectively testable model of ID? You know, one that explains HOW things are designed, how we can test for said design, and has applicability? You know, like a real scientific theory does?

Now, to address your response: you haven't actually demonstrated that the panda's thumb, the human eye, and non-protein coding are designed; you merely brushed it off asserting that they are and expected us to swallow it. Well, I'm not swallowing it. Give me evidence that each of those is designed. Oh, and again, "it has some sort of use" =/= "it was designed".

Polyani
Before I read your posts I can predict several things that will be common in them:
The word "evolutionists" will be used
Science will be misrepresented
Quotemines will be present
Sources will appear as your own but will actually be someone elses

Are deceptions and lies the only tools you have in making your arguements?

Running from threads by starting other threads. Pathetic.

Polanyi wrote:Gap arguments: what the layman should know.
by Johan

The typical evolutionist line looks something like this:

There is no such thing as an "evolutionist". This has been explained to you time and time and time and time again.

Why do you feel it necessary to use such a dishonest term?

Polanyi wrote:"If you look at the list of "explained" vs "unexplained" phenomenon, you will find that the ratio of the two changes with time. Or in other words, the number of phenomenon that have a naturalistic explanation in 2010 is vastly higher than what it was in 1810, which is vastly higher than 1710, etc."

No. That is not what the God-of-the-Gaps is. Not even close.

GotG is looking at something that is unknown, saying that it can never be known, and declaring "therefore, God-did-it".

It is looking for gaps in our knowledge and trying to say that God is the only possible way to fill those gaps.

What you are misrepresenting as GotG is part of an argument against GotG, but not as you presented it.

Virtually everything that we understand used to be attributed to a god. It has failed in every single instance. Invoking a god as an explanation has NEVER withstood scrutiny, has NEVER turned out to be the correct explanation. Invoking a god has failed as an explanation 100% of the time.

Polanyi wrote:Now many people are mislead by this rhetoric.

It's a strawman, not rhetoric. What you have presented is not the GotG.

Polanyi wrote:A couple of things we should understand about gap arguments in science:

There is no "gaps argument" in science.

There are predictions of theories. For example, if the Theory of Evolution is correct, we should find that supposedly "irreducibly complex" structures have precursors. So far, every such example of something that is supposedly irreducibly complex has had such precursors. So far, that is a successful prediction of the ToE.

Polanyi wrote:a)Gaps arguments are totally legit and common science practice even to this day. In fact Darwin used gap arguments in origin of species, gaps which according to Darwin could not be filled by creation, which he argued could only be filled by evolution and was therefore proof for evolution.

No. That was a prediction of evolution, not a gaps argument.

And, unless you can supply the source for what you claim Darwin has said, and the context in which he said it, I have no problem discounting it as a probable quote-mine.

Polanyi wrote:b) Typically evolutionists always point out that theist gaps have been debunked, yet so were many Darwinists gaps arguments, consider the number of organs that were considered useless at the turn of this century? (useless because we didn’t understand their purpose, and evidence for evolution because “useless organs were inexplicable if creation was true” to borrow a phrase from Darwin)

More than 80 organs were considered non-functional, Darwin-of-the-gaps have suffered significantly to the point where the word "vestigial" has even changed meaning. Darwinists use darwin-of-the-gaps arguments all the time, if we don't know a function, Darwinists use their ignorance as evidence that it's "poor design" and therefore that it’s evidence for evolution.

No.

The point that is made is that the ToE can explain why we have poorly designed features whereas invoking God explains precisely nothing in any meaningful way.

Polanyi wrote:Consider the following gap argument,

Why?

Polanyi wrote:Ernst Haeckel writes[1]

"even if we knew absolutely nothing of the other phenomena of development, we should be obliged to believe in the truth of the Theory of Descent, solely on the ground of the existence of rudimentary[useless] organs."

And, again, without context, I have no problem dismissing this as a probable quote-mine.

Polanyi wrote:More examples of gap arguments used by evolutionists include things like examples of "poor design" or "junk DNA", because evolutionists cannot understand the function or purpose of non-protein coding regions of DNA it is assumed there is no function,

No, it isn't. 50-100 years ago it was. That is not what is now understood.

You are arguing against something that is decades out of date.

Polanyi wrote:this gap in our knowledge is then used as positive evidence for evolution because "no intelligent designer would make so many mistakes, but evolution explains it beautifully".

And the ToE does explain it.

Polanyi wrote:c) through scientific paradigms old ground is sometimes lost, and old gaps are reopened again.

Yes, that is true.

That is one of the great things about the scientific method...it is a self-correcting process.

Polanyi wrote:d) the most serious gaps in favor of design are rather recent,

Again, showing that you don't understand the scientific method and how theories come about.

A theory must be supported by evidence. Gaps support nothing.

Polanyi wrote:it's because of science, that we now understand how finely tuned the laws of physics really are. Consider the following statement from the foreword to a 2006 book by Leonard Susskind, a leading string theorist[2]:

An argument from authority, another fallacy. It is a fallacy because you are using the opinion of a theoretical physicist in a discussion about a biological theory.

Besides, your source is an organization that starts with the assumption that there is a god, and that god is the god of the Bible. That is the filter through which they operate...God first, facts and evidence second.

One of the requirements for someone to be a member of the ASA is agreeing to their statement of faith. If you do not accept their statement of faith (which includes accepting the authority of the Bible, agreeing with the Nicene and Apostle's creeds and believing that God created the universe), then you cannot be a member.

Animavore wrote:

Polanyi wrote:Bwian,

I was making a point, evolutionists have this optimistic distorted view where gaps in favor of the God hypothesis are shrinking all the time as our understanding of the natural world grows.

How are gaps in favour of the God hypothesis? The biggest gap being a complete lack of evidence for said being.
Anyway, I thought you originally claimed that ID wasn't about God? Trip yourself up much?

Give him a break.

It can be difficult to keep your story straight when you are making shit up...

Blitzkrebs wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:That reads like Alan Sokal's piss-take on post-modernism.

Which I just have to share with everybody else here, because it was probably the greatest smack-down ever in academia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/soka ... efile.html

Here's Dawkins' take on the matter:

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html

I like the way Dawkins describes Sokal's smackdown ... "a carefully crafted parody of postmodern metatwaddle" ...

I note also, from reading other contributions in this thread, that this Abel character is apparently known for being [1] a creationist, [2] a manic self-publicist, and [3] knowing bugger all about biology. From what I can see, his talent for self-publicity is several orders of magnitude greater than his command of genuine science, and given that I have only just learned about him, that talent cannot be that great. But then I have a habit of sticking to reading real science papers, instead of wasting time with the fulminatingly bubotic and suppuratingly cankerous cortical faeces that people like this vomit forth, whilst pretending that their apologetic eructations constitute a "contribution to science". The fact that Polanyi thinks that this individual is saying something meaningful, merely tells me that Polanyi has even less familiarity with any good quality basic science textbooks than I have with the finer points of playing the Outer Mongolian nose flute. I could probably train my tropical fish to generate word salad of this ilk, though they would probably want a LOT of bribing to do so, as my tropical fish have more sense than to indulge in wankery of this sort by their own volition.

But then, creationists and postmodernists share one essential characteristic. Namely, that they think that all they have to do is erect the right word salad with respect to their wishful thinking, and reality will somehow magically rearrange itself to conform thereto. Just as postmodernists ignore reality and instead, think that the world conforms to whatever nebulous and miasmatic brand of wishful thinking tickles their particular ideological erogenous zones, creationists likewise ignore reality and think instead that the world must necessarily conform to the strictures of their doctrine. Indeed, arch-charlatan Henry Morris, the father of modern American corporate creationism, openly admitted this in one of his tiresome, turgid and tacky little screeds. Though he did not use these exact words, the principle that Henry Morris espoused in the ideological belch in question was that when reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right. Hardly surprising, given such a world view, that enthusiasts for fantasy magic entities have to resort to discoursive criminality on a large scale in order to peddle their ontological snake oil.

However, I am minded to make the following observation as a result of reading several recent threads here in C&ID. Whilst many here regard Robert Byers as an extreme irritant, and almost certainly harbour many dark thoughts about him and his particular brand of propagandising for the ideological masturbation fantasy that is creationism, at least Byers' output is all his own work. However it may make one bristle to do this, one has to give Byers credit for displaying at least that basic level of honesty, even if the content of his posts happens to be, as repeatedly demonstrated, a tissue of lies and fabrications that are not even internally self-consistent from one day to the next. Polanyi has demonstrated, with his above quote mines and instances of blatant plagiarism, that he is beneath Byers in this respect, and if I were in a similar position, I would not want this to become public knowledge on a globally accessible forum.

All of the above demonstrates of course that a reworking of the words of Hannah Arendt is apposite here. One can be honest, one can be intelligent, one can be a creationist, but one cannot simultaneously be all three. The evidence supporting this is overwhelming.

Polanyi wrote:@Lizard King

Once again, ID is not falsifiable, it cannot make testable predictions about future discoveries,

We hear this claim all the time, yet we also hear that ID-based concepts like IC are refuted, which is it? Refuted? or Untestable? Evolutionists cannot have their cake and eat it.

So? Who is trying to do that?

ID is the proposition that complex things are designed by a god an intelligence. It does not make any predictions. It gives nothing that can be falsified.

Irreducible complexity is a specific claim about a specific structure. It is the proposition that the structure (ability, process, whatever) cannot have a possible natural explanation. Every example that has been presented as being IC has been demonstrated to have a possible natural explanation. The very existence of a possible explanation is enough to refute the claim that there is no possible explanation.

Polanyi wrote:

and even if we ignore the fact that observable reality shows little to no signs of design at all, it still leaves us with one simple but very important question: Who designed the designer?

SETI is the search for signals best explained as the product of intelligence, the source of this signal is irrelevant, SETI cares about explaining the signal as best as we can. ID is in exactly the same boat, ID cares about x, is x best explained by intelligence? Or an undirected material process? Regardless of the answer to these questions, they are scientific questions nonetheless.

Sorry, wrong.

SETI is based on several knowns. We know that intelligent life exists on this planet. We know that other planets exist. SETI is the attempt to see if we can detect signs of intelligent life (something that we know exists) that may be on other planets (something that we know exists).
SETI is searching for evidence. When it finds a signal, every effort is made to determine its origin.

ID is just that since things are complex and look designed, they must have been designed. And it stops there.

Polanyi wrote:

Could you answer this, Polanyi? If everything that exists was designed, then obviously the designer himself (herself?) was designed, or else he wouldn't exist. So who designed him? Welcome to infinite regression

...

This really depends on the source of design, is the designer a transcendent personal eternal immaterial God? Our question "who designed God?" is only logical and applicable if God was created at some point or if God was a physical material entity, Christian theology doesn't hold that God was created at any point, nor that God is a material being composed of parts.

I can define the components (matter and energy) of the universe as eternal and uncreated. Everything that exists always has existed and always will exist in some form. The Big Bang was an event beyond which we cannot see, not the literal creation of everything.

Polanyi wrote:All explanations come to an end, the only difference is, for you they end in physicality, something physical was eternal or came into existence by itself,

Wrong.

What caused the Big Bang? I don't know. At this point, nobody does. We may never know.

YOU are the one claiming to have the knowledge. Yet you can offer absolutely nothing in support of your story. You can offer absolutely nothing as evidence that what you claim to know about the origin of the universe is correct (or even possible).

Polanyi wrote:for the theist this end is an immaterial God.

And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for lightning.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for plagues.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for drought.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for flood.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for starvation.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for good crops.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for sickness.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for health.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for miscarriages.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for healthy births.
And a few centuries ago, the theist would have given that same explanation for...well, damn near everything.

Your assertion that God made everything is no different than an ancient Greek asserting that Zeus made lightning.

Polanyi wrote:

And another question for you, Polayni: Where is your (by this I mean you and your fellow creationists and ID supporters) ambition, your curiosity?

Oh we care about science, meaning how things work, and what their function is, ID proponents have argued all along that "Junk DNA" will turn out to be functional, that is because they view organisms and genomes as the product of intelligence, if you view an organism as a designed entity, you will expect as much functionality as possible. Evolutionary presuppositions here discourages us to search for function, instead we stop and label anything "junk" that we don't understand the function of. Evolutionary presuppositions kills scientific curiosity.

No. Junk DNA is a term used to describe stretches of non-coding DNA (DNA that does not directly code for making proteins).

"Dr. Susumu Ohno, writing in the Brookhaven Symposium on Biology in 1972 in the article "So Much ‘Junk DNA" in our Genome’ is credited with originating the term. But his paper was focused "mainly on the fossilized genes, called pseudo genes, that are strewn like tombstones throughout our DNA. But as the term caught on in the 1980’s, its meaning was extended to all non- coding sequences, the vast stretches of DNA that are not genes and do not produce proteins" (about 95% of the genome)"
http://www.genomicglossaries.com/content/DNA.asp

Polanyi wrote:

Don't you want to find out how the world works? Does not the mystery of the unknown strike you with awe and invokes in you the desire to investigate, to explain, to learn?

Oh absolutely, the only difference is, I don't start off with the answers in advance like you do,

Complete bullshit.

How did the universe come into existence?
"Science": We don't know, let's try to figure it out.
You: God did it.

How did life come about?
S: We don't know, let's try to figure it out.
Y: God did it.

Why do we have such a diversity of life?
S: The evidence leads to the conclusion that it is due to evolution. Every single piece of relevant evidence supports this conclusion.
Y: God did it.

Polanyi wrote:I don't say, everything in the natural world, has to be reducible to blind material causes, because naturalism is true, or because "science is limited to material causation". I have more respect for reality than that.

No, you don't.

You reject that which disagrees with your preconceived answer.

Polanyi wrote:

If there are things that cannot yet be explained, scientists ask questions and seek to find the answer

.

The problem is, when we assume certain metaphysical presuppositions, the questions that count as "scientific" become constrained, if we assume naturalism is true or has to be true, then you can no longer ask questions such as, "could x evolve via blind material processes?" "if x was designed, how would we tell?", "is pattern x, better explained by intelligence?"

So you have a problem with examining the evidence and basing your conclusions on that.

Because, part of your problem is that your "explanation" lacks any sort of mechanism. Your "explanation" proposes a "what" without giving any "how".

How does an immaterial intelligence create something like a bacterial flagellum?
How does an immaterial intelligence create life?
How does an immaterial intelligence create the universe?

Polanyi wrote:

You, on the other hand (again, you and your fellow ID-guys) just sit there, answering every single question with the same answer. How did this came to be? Oh, it's designed. Why does this organ work the way it does? Right, because the designer made it work. How come there are marsupials in Australia and not in Africa or Europe? Oh, of course, because the designer put them there.

When Germans captured the Russian T34, they didn't just sit there, and said "oh well, we can go home now, no need to figure out how this thing works, since we know the-Russians-made-it".

Which is what ID does. That is exactly what you are doing. "God did it", there's no reason to look any farther.

Again, you are proposing a "what" without any type of "how".

Polanyi wrote:No, it's because the Germans viewed the tank as the product of design that they were encouraged to study it in great detail.

Bullshit. They knew the Russians made it.

And again, this is not analogous to ID in any way. ID would have been perfectly happy to stop at saying the Russians made it.

On the whole, I must say that this reminds me of Behe in the Kitzmiller trial declaring that there was no possible evolutionary pathway for the bacterial flagellum and then being presented with stacks of books and papers all outlining exactly what Behe said did not, and could not, exist..

***EDIT***

My apologies, I misremembered. It was the blood clotting cascade, not the flagellum.

Thanks, Cali.

Calilasseia wrote:Indeed, Behe had his arse cheeks handed to him on a silver platter, stir fried in rationalist napalm and sautéd in a reality based hoy sin sauce at the Dover Trial, when he asserted that not only did evolutionary biology have no answer to the purported "problems" posed by the blood clotting cascade, but that it never would arrive at an answer. He was then shown fifty-eight peer reviewed scientific papers and nine university textbooks containing the very answer he said would never exist whilst under cross-examination.

Polanyi wrote:This is why evolutionists are such hypocrites, blast theists all the time for relying on "Gap arguments", when you are happy to do the same without blinking.

And this further demonstrates your ignorance.

What about theists who accept evolution? Dr. Ken Miller comes to mind, evolutionary biologist and Catholic.

This is precisely why people continually point out to you that "evolutionism" and "evolutionist" are dishonest terms.

You can't even use them consistently. Sometimes you use them to mean one who accepts evolution, other times you use them to mean an atheist.

So, i guess the question is; are you going to be honest from now on, or are you going to continue to lie by using those terms?

Polanyi wrote:Darkchilde,

And third, but not last, you still have not presented a source for the Haeckel quote

Do you think that I will make up quotes?

Yes. And dishonestly take real quotes out of context.

Polanyi wrote:

You see I believe we got here through struggle and battle and now we as a species rest on the verge of a unknowably wonderous future, because we deserved it. You believe that we were gifted this position and that cheapens everything we are.

At least you are honest, you want evolution to be true, and I get that.

oh for the love of your fictional god, nice way to put words in eddie's mouth

FFS Johan, nobody here believes in evolution, we accept it. If you can provide a better theory with evidence we are all ears. In stead you steal other people's work and present it as your own.