Similarity => common creator ?

termina · #1 by **termina** » Apr 30, 2013 9:21 pm

Hi there!

As far as common descent is concerned, the argument from physical and genetic similarity often appears in EvolutionVSCreation discussions, however creationists promptly answer this argument by saying it may also point to a common Designer.

How could we refute their claim?

Animavore · #2 by **Animavore** » Apr 30, 2013 9:31 pm

The biggest problem I can think of this is one of probability, which creationists love if they think it supports them but ignore when it goes against them. Now hopefully someone will go into this better than I can but inside our DNA are lots of retroviral markers. These are places in the genome where a virus has entered into and become part of our genetic code. It basically happens when a species is culled by a viral plague with the survivors, due to random mutations, inherit the virus as it enters their genome. It's reckoned that we are almost 50% virus.

So here's the problem for creationists assertion of "common design". Within the genome of humans and chimps there are lots of viral markers in the exact same spots of the genome. The odds of this happening just once in our long chain of code are pretty massive but happening in many different areas, the same virus, same place, the odds multiply. Then we look at the other apes and they also have viral markers in the same place, though not as many as us and chimps due to splitting longer ago, but still an awful lot. And of course in all ape species there are unique viral markers which they inherited after they split.

And, also of course, this happens in many groups within the animal kingdom. Similar species having more similar markers then groups further removed. Common desing may explain similar genomes but not similar viral marker placings.

I'm not doing this justice but hopefully it'll prompt some one more knowledgable.

Shrunk · #3 by **Shrunk** » Apr 30, 2013 9:36 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbh1P6DW5I[/youtube]

Animavore · #4 by **Animavore** » Apr 30, 2013 9:39 pm

Ah, ERVs, that's what they're called. Cheers, Shrunk :cheers:

CdesignProponentsist · #5 by **CdesignProponentsist** » Apr 30, 2013 9:40 pm

termina wrote:Hi there!

As far as common descent is concerned, the argument from physical and genetic similarity often appears in EvolutionVSCreation discussions, however creationists promptly answer this argument by saying it may also point to a common Designer.

How could we refute their claim?

You can't.

All you can do is provide the mountainous fucking load of evidence for a common origin and let them continue to ignore it.

CdesignProponentsist · #6 by **CdesignProponentsist** » Apr 30, 2013 9:47 pm

There is this though. The laryngeal nerve shows how nature had to resort to VERY bad fucking design because it couldn't re-route an important nerve bundle around a main artery near the heart. Originally in fish where it ran a straight line through the arterial loop to the neck and gills it was perfectly efficient. As we evolved we grew longer necks. The nerve is now problematic because of its sheer length that it has to run, especially in long necked animals. In a giraffe it runs from the head all the way down to the heart then back up to the larynx.

If there was a designer, he suddenly turned fucking retarded when he made the laryngeal nerve.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0[/youtube]

epepke · #7 by **epepke** » Apr 30, 2013 9:48 pm

termina wrote:Hi there!

As far as common descent is concerned, the argument from physical and genetic similarity often appears in EvolutionVSCreation discussions, however creationists promptly answer this argument by saying it may also point to a common Designer.

How could we refute their claim?

We can't, effectively.

Of course, they'll use the same mechanism to explain diversity.

Eyes evolved at least 20 times. Some of the engineering is good, and some is crap. Mammals, like us, got the crap.

Animavore · #8 by **Animavore** » Apr 30, 2013 9:51 pm

I love the comments on the above video.

Evolution is NOT real! There is A God who made all of us and made this earth. I will pray for all of you and hope you will come to know God.

As the maker of this video, I'm disappointed that you would seemingly assume that I do not believe in God.

I am a Christian. I personally believe that the scientific theory of evolution is an accurate description of the process that God used to create life on Earth, including human beings.

The reason that evolution is seen as contrary to belief in God is because some Christians apparently worship their personal interpretation of the Bible rather than the God the claim to believe in.

How sad.

MrFungus420 · #9 by **MrFungus420** » May 01, 2013 12:55 am

termina wrote:Hi there!

As far as common descent is concerned, the argument from physical and genetic similarity often appears in EvolutionVSCreation discussions, however creationists promptly answer this argument by saying it may also point to a common Designer.

How could we refute their claim?

It can't be refuted.

No matter what you present, they can always say that it is the way that God decides to do it.

They don't understand (well, among the things that they don't understand) that for evidence to support an idea, it must be a requirement of that idea, not just something that can be made compatible with it.

Common Descent requires things like the genetic and physical similarities. The "Common Designer" idea is not contradicted by those similarities, but they are not something that is required by a "Common Designer"; they could be present or absent and both situations are compatible with the "Common Designer".

Since they are required by Common Descent but not by a "Common Designer", they are evidence for Common Descent, but not for a "Common Designer".

halucigenia · **#10** by **halucigenia** » May 01, 2013 7:47 am

termina wrote:How could we refute their claim?

Not an outright refutation; Simply ask them how the design hypothesis could be falsified. If they reply that it can't be falsified and use this as their trump card - you are going to have to explain that they don't understand the importance of potential falsification of hypotheses. :roll:

Often they don't get the point that an hypothesis must be potentially falsifiable for it to be a valid one and they usually just assert that the designer could have designed it that way to any suggestion that it was not designed, thus simply reasserting un-falsifiability, If they come up with anything, let us know. :thumbup:

Evolving · **#11** by **Evolving** » May 01, 2013 10:08 am

I find this thought, from the Wiki article on Occam's Razor, an enlightening analogy to the supernaturalist approach:

Put another way, any new, and even more complex theory can still possibly be true. For example: If an individual makes supernatural claims that Leprechauns were responsible for breaking a vase, the simpler explanation would be that he is mistaken, but ongoing ad-hoc justifications (e.g. "And, that's not me on film, they tampered with that too") successfully prevent outright falsification. This endless supply of elaborate competing explanations, called saving hypotheses, cannot be ruled out – but by using Occam's Razor.

Rumraket · **#12** by **Rumraket** » May 01, 2013 10:51 am

termina wrote:Hi there!

As far as common descent is concerned, the argument from physical and genetic similarity often appears in EvolutionVSCreation discussions, however creationists promptly answer this argument by saying it may also point to a common Designer.

How could we refute their claim?

It cannot be refuted(a designer could have designed every imaginable pattern, that means no pattern can be said to not be "what the designer wanted"), it can only be shown to be an unfalsifiable faith-statement that renders the works of their designer identical to the predictions of evolution.

Common design - common designer is a bit of a misnomer, because it's not just that there are "similarities" between living organisms. It's that the similarities form a nested hierarchy, and that this nested hierarchy is consonant with the predictions of evolutionary theory. In contrast, the "design" hypothesis predicts no specific pattern or arrangement of features or genomes a priori, this excuse they make is arrived at entirely ad-hoc. A designer COULD have re-used old genes and limbs/organans in his new creations. But even if he did that, we still wouldn't expect to get a nested hierarchy.
So this is where creationsits respond that this is simply how he chose to make his designs. We can't know the will or thoughts of the designer they say.

But if you want to really flesh out how ridculous that statement is, here's how I've done it before:

Rumraket wrote:A look into the mind of the designer of the nested hierarchy: "Common design - common designer(forming sets within sets within sets)".

What are the odds that, even if you as a "designer" sits down and thinks "I'm going to reuse some of my older designs", inadvertently produces a nested hierarchy, into which every species on the planet fits, both genetically, morphologically(and temporally in the fossil record)?

What are the odds that your designer sat down and designed this specific pattern?

Here's a small insight into it's train of thought:

Oh, I'm going to design a bacteria with a genome like this(the first genome!).
Oh, I want to design another organism, re-using some of my bacteria designs(the "common designs"-argument), so it looks like this new organism genetically and morphologically mostly derives from the first one.

Oh, I'm going to design a 3rd organism, this time re-using designs from the 2nd organism, so it looks like it mostly derives from the 2nd one.

Oh, I'm going to design a 4th organisms, this time re-using designs from the 3rd, so it looks like it mostly derives from the 4th one.

Oh, I'm also, intermittently, going to go back and re-tweak my previous creations, so that it looks like they each independently changed since I first created them.

Not only am I going to do this, mysterious designer as I am, I'm going to do it in such a way that the degree of change it looks like they underwent, is directly proportional to how old their time of divergence will look like if calculated(and extrapolated from the fossil record). Haha, take that - future humans whom I'm going to create at some point too!

Anyway, back to business, creating a 5th organism, this time re-using designs from the 4th, so that it looks like it mostly derives from the 4th one.

Oh, I just got a brilliant idea! I'm going to go back to the first organism I designed, and then derive a whole new "branch" from it. But I'm not going to be deriving this branch from the original genome I first created, no, I'm going to change it slightly so it looks like that first genome evolved for a time before this new "divergence" happened, THEN I'm going to make the new branch. There, perfect!

Oh, I just got another brilliant idea. In addition to the intermittent return to tweaking the genomes of previously designed organisms, I'm going to do the exact same I just did to the first lineage: Intermittently derive more independent branches off of each of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. etc. linages I created, using the same hilariously illogical method I just used to create a branch off of the 1st one. Brilliant!

And I'm going to do this for millions and millions and millions of species. And to top it all off I'm going to kill them all in teh-flud, burying them in the millions in seemingly temporal order matching with morphological sequence, so that it just so happens to look like they changed over a very long timescale.

I wonder what the odds of me creating and designing life, exactly using this method is? I wonder if it even makes sense to postulate that anything would do "design" like this? Hmmm.

Nevermind that, I'm going to need a hell and someone to send there anyway. What better way than to decieve all the smartypants thinking persons?

I submit that if you can convince yourself that your designer operated like this, then you're either insane, deluded or infinitely gullible. Regardless, it would be irrational to believe it.

natselrox · **#13** by **natselrox** » May 01, 2013 10:57 am

And then there are different designs to structures that do the same thing (inverted retinal neurons in octopuses and humans). An intelligent creator, having hit upon an efficient design, would have stuck to it.

halucigenia · **#14** by **halucigenia** » May 01, 2013 2:22 pm

natselrox wrote:And then there are different designs to structures that do the same thing (inverted retinal neurons in octopuses and humans). An intelligent creator, having hit upon an efficient design, would have stuck to it.

Octopi do not have inverted retinal neurons, humans (vertibrates) do. That’s usually the point about bringing them up in arguing against the design stance.
Did you mean to say inverted retinal neurons in humans compared to octopuses?

Anyway, to add to Rumrakets argument from perverse design. If the designer did do it this way why were they constrained to do it this way? What are the constraints on common design that would mean that if common design were true then that had to be the outcome; That common design fit’s this hierarchical structure that can be perfectly well explained by the constraints on evolving organisms.
Does the designer conform to these constraints because they have to , or are they just avin’ a larf?

Because if they were not constrained to do it that way then we are back to special pleading and un-falsifiability.

natselrox · **#15** by **natselrox** » May 01, 2013 5:07 pm

halucigenia wrote:
natselrox wrote:And then there are different designs to structures that do the same thing (inverted retinal neurons in octopuses and humans). An intelligent creator, having hit upon an efficient design, would have stuck to it.

Octopi do not have inverted retinal neurons, humans (vertibrates) do. That’s usually the point about bringing them up in arguing against the design stance.
Did you mean to say inverted retinal neurons in humans compared to octopuses?

That's what I meant. Octopuses (Octopi/Octopodes?) have the more efficient design. Why not use that in humans? Any intelligent creator would, especially if she's known to use the same design in diff. organisms (which is the argument here).

Rumraket · **#16** by **Rumraket** » May 01, 2013 5:19 pm

natselrox wrote:And then there are different designs to structures that do the same thing (inverted retinal neurons in octopuses and humans). An intelligent creator, having hit upon an efficient design, would have stuck to it.

Yes that's a strong point. The designer having seemingly already designed various both molecular and macroscopic structures, whether membrane transport proteins or eyes etc. Why suddenly make an entirely new one in a different species, instead of actually re-using an earlier version?
Eyes evolved independently multiple times, why didn't the designer just derive all eyes off off the same basic version, like he (as these people must believe) did with for example the Ribosome?

natselrox · **#17** by **natselrox** » May 01, 2013 5:26 pm

This debate is absolutely redundant in countries where the creationist lobby isn't as strong as the one in the US. What a bunch of retards.

Arcanyn · **#18** by **Arcanyn** » May 01, 2013 5:36 pm

Simple solution to the multiple design problem. Multiple designs point to multiple designers. One of them invents something, and since divine copyright law forbids their rivals from directly copying the design, they're forced to invent something similar on their own, which is often an inferior product. For many traits, each designer will create their own different version, hence explaining those cases where things seem to be of different design - because they are.

Of course, most creationists won't like that solution, because nobody ever learns 'new' things about the supernatural by observing the world - you never hear anyone say 'wow, this demonstrates that the nature of our gods is different to what we thought' upon observing something about the world which clashes with prior beliefs about the supernatural. They instead start with an entrenched idea of exactly how they want the supernatural to be, and no subsequent observation will be allowed to disprove even the most minor of minor details, because it's all a matter of holding a belief they really want to be true, and expecting the universe to obey.

CdesignProponentsist · **#19** by **CdesignProponentsist** » May 01, 2013 5:49 pm

natselrox wrote:This debate is absolutely redundant in countries where the creationist lobby isn't as strong as the one in the US. What a bunch of retards.

I'm of the mindset that you still learn something even when debating retards. I just wish they were foreign retards

natselrox · **#20** by **natselrox** » May 01, 2013 5:52 pm

CdesignProponentsist wrote:
natselrox wrote:This debate is absolutely redundant in countries where the creationist lobby isn't as strong as the one in the US. What a bunch of retards.

I'm of the mindset that you still learn something even when debating retards. I just wish they were foreign retards

So true.

I've learned a lot about evolution over here in these forums, thanks to the creationism/evolution debate in the USA. :grin:

Similarity => common creator ?

Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Re: Similarity => common creator ?

Who is online