Fallacy of “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,”

How so?

The observed nested hierarchy only makes sense with evolution, as does exon/intron divergence, DNA phylogenies, atavisms, vestiges, and things like the recurrent laryngeal nerve. They only make sense in the light of evolution because only evolution can explain why we see these things and not other things.

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Even things designed by the same designer do not fall into a nested hierarchy. Picasso paintings do not fall into a nested hierarchy. There is absolutely no reason why we would predict that designs made by a single designer would fall into a nested hierarchy because designers are not limited to such a strict pattern of mixing and matching parts. The only reason we would predict a nested hierarchy is if life evolved from common ancestry.[quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:40, topic:36621”]
So there is no need to invoke ‘evolution’ to explain it. In fact, such invocation has consistently underestimated, and even often trivialized, the intimacy and complexity of any part of it. Consider just that for human musical perception:
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No one is trivializing complexity. Again, what are you on about when it comes to complexity?

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(C) random variation passed through selection which results in an increase in fitness.

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What is this record, and how is it miserable?

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Aren’t we beating a dead horse way more severely than his existential status would require?

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I assumed you noted that I said ‘cosmos’. That’s like a single automobile, only far more complex by involving, for the present example, a host of different kinds of animals that all must have some active relation. As a life-support system, the Earth is like a lone (and functioning) auto, in a junk yard full of random scrap metal. Only, unlike an auto, that Earth is a single, most efficient, system without gaps. The only gaps are those added post-completion. An auto does not actively care if your smash its wind shield, nor is its engine thereby immediately injured.

Yes, the ‘evolutionary’ idea provides, on the face of it, a plausible explanation. The problem is that that idea is merely the one that is least costly in terms of human neurocognition. In other words, that idea is the easiest for us to come by in terms of the human immediate practical understanding of a given part of the system itself. And that idea is even logically allowed only by the sheer complexity of that part: the full complexity is not seen, yet some of the main actions of that complexity are immediately known.

It is like knowing only (1) water flow, per turbine application, and (2) the action of magnetic repulsion to move something, and concluding that the latter is in every principle way exactly like the former in terms of application to turbines. ‘Perpetual’ motion turbines, made up of permanent magnets arranged just so, is the natural conclusion. But it’s wrong. Magnetic repulsion is not a single-ended flow-out. It’s a single cycle of curved force.

See my last reply to you, in which I invoked the plausibility-but-fallacy of ‘perpetual’ free-energy from a magnetic analogue to a water wheel. That is an analogy to ‘miserable’ that, every time evo’s have landed on a plausible explanation of certain details of how something in nature works, like DNA, they’ve always latter had to backtrack and start over because of a new, more complex set of evidence.

That’s just (B) with a plausible mechanism. That mechanism has not been determined to be the case: Every several years, the proposed mechanisms-of-the-mechanism have had to be radically revised.

In this analogy, species would be analogous to the parts found in an automobile. However, auto parts don’t fall into a nested hierarchy, either. Species do fall into a nested hierarchy.[quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:48, topic:36621”]
Yes, the ‘evolutionary’ idea provides, on the face of it, a plausible explanation. The problem is that that idea is merely the one that is least costly in terms of human neurocognition. In other words, that idea is the easiest for us to come by in terms of the human immediate practical understanding of a given part of the system itself. And that idea is even logically allowed only by the sheer complexity of that part: the full complexity is not seen, yet some of the main actions of that complexity are immediately known.
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The full complexity of an organism is seen, and those organisms fall into the nested hierarchy predicted by the theory of evolution.

Evolution is the best explanation because it predicts what we find. It has nothing to do with levels of complexity.[quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:48, topic:36621”]
It is like knowing only (1) water flow, per turbine application, and (2) the action of magnetic repulsion to move something, and concluding that the latter is in every principle way exactly like the former in terms of application to turbines. ‘Perpetual’ motion turbines, made up of permanent magnets arranged just so, is the natural conclusion. But it’s wrong. Magnetic repulsion is not a single-ended flow-out. It’s a single cycle of curved force.
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None of this is relevant to biology.

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Natural selection is an OBSERVED mechanism. We observe it all of the time in nature.

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When have scientists had to backtrack on DNA?

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Say what?!?

Of course there is branching of shared features in automobiles. Forget Toyota, Ford and Chevy -
you have to follow the right tree - group them by category and you will see buses don’t share much with sedans and with utility trucks, bikes, motorcycles, golf carts and wagons.

Yes, some nuts will be the same just as enzymes and proteins might be shared by various animals. Conversely, if a woman has 3 children and then she acquires HIV, her following 4 children will likely share HIV as well (mass production).

You must account for mass production being different than reproduction. But once you do this right, I don’t see any difference.

You can do the same with organisms: by color, weight, length, etc.

And no one can argue that a Volvo sedan should be categorized with a BMW sedan while a Volvo truck with a MAN truck.

Like I said, a human construct that is all in your head. Btw, Linnaeus started this classification way before the Darwinist theory and he wasn’t the first.

What selection? Who, How and Why would do this selection? What’s fitness? Is a muscular athlete that dies before having kids of an unknown heart disease fit? How fit are you? Who is more fit? You or your friend? This whole “natural selection” is pure hocus-pocus magic.

What kind of logic is this? Predict something you will find in the future, not something that you have already found. It’s very easy to come up with “just so” explanations.

Don’t be fooled by adaptations like skin color, beak size and pesticide or antibiotic resistance. These all revert when conditions change.

@NonlinOrg

I think you are missing the point here. Yes, we can put autos into nested hierarchies. But automotive nested hierarchies do not correlate to “similar origins”, “similar histories” and common “components” the way that genetically-driven “Nested Hierarchies” do.

@T_aquaticus will have no problem explaining the differences to you. The question is will you understand the explanation?

Let’s look at this animal example again:

When molecular comparisons are made for each “bucket” or “nest”, we generally see genetic “imperfections” or “novelties” passed “upstream” [for the purpose of this discussion, we will have to use the term Upstream, instead of the more intuitive Downstream, simply because the chart has been arranged in the reverse order, with currently existing life forms at the top of the image, instead of at the bottom of the image].

When there are observable fossilized attributes in animals from middle layers of rock, these attributes are typically passed on (if passed on at all) to the animal groups with fossils in the more recent layers of rock. You don’t find fish fins popping up on rabbits. But you might find genetically-based vitamin difficiencies being passed on, just like the human problem with vitamins can be found in some closely related primate groups.

When we do find a category of problem popping up in unrelated (or "lesser-related) animal groups, it is frequently a problem produced by a completely different set of genes. See how that could help explain why Common Descenty is seen as a logical outcome of Evolution?

In the auomotive version of a chart like this, we could easily find “retro elements” from older successful models being “revived” in newer models to make statements in style, or to re-capture a wave of nostaligia. And such retro-attributes may well be made of completely new materials, or with new manufacturing techniques.

In the animal world, the traits that are passed on are being produced with very few changes in the genetic machinery that makes them.

Are you following this logic, NonLin?

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@NonlinOrg

Reading your objections is like listening to my son explain to me that objects with darker colors fall faster than objects with brighter, lighter colors.

“Fitness” is calculated on “averages”. There is “noise” in every system, and there is nothing noiser than the wilderness. But like anything else, even noise can be quantified and compared.

Typically fitness is calculated as “the number of offspring (directly and indirectly) produced by sub-groups representing various categories of traits.”

The mathematics can be applied to just one trait, or a combination of two traits, or any other measurable trait.

How do we know? We know just by looking at the fast-forward photography of microscopic bacteria!

Remember this ?

How many times are you going to bombast your audience with your rejection of something as obvious as Natural Selection? There are even Creationist institutions that recognize the validity of Natural Selection. There objections are not based on Natural Selection being meaningless - - but on the issue of Time - - with 6000 years of Earth’s history being impossibly short of Natural Selection to create new species, let alone new Phyla of creatures.

Are you accusing these Creationist groups of being lunatics because they concede the validity of Natural Selection?

Only 8 days ago I wrote this (to you!!!) in the thread linked above:

“Please do not repeat the same error by claiming natural selection is meaningless.”
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This youtube video includes schematic lines clearly showing how “natural selection” has obliterated colony after colony, while the surviving populations are the sources of new innovation for surviving the next higher concentrations of anti-biotics!

Watch the video linked below:
.

Please take a nap and sleep on it…

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Don’t be fooled by geological features like mountains, oceans, and canyons. These all revert when conditions change. :laughing:

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@NonlinOrg

I thought I’d help you out by showing how evolutionary “nested hierarchies” can be applied to dead-ends… to extinctions of populations that were not able to “adapt to their environment” quickly enough …

The survivors are the ones who pass on the distinctive history of their genetic adaptations to future generations.

And sometimes there are genetic double-crosses!

One population produces a variation that allows them to prosper in a newly changed environment. But in the process, there may have been a genetic variant exploited that is geared more for the “sprint”, rather than the “marathon”.

Suddenly, the neighboring populations that was struggling with mid-level toxic levels ends up having the genetic equipment perfectly suited to jump past the most toxic of all the environments …

While the population that looked like it solved the problem of the day (a few hours back) - - suddenly finds that it doesn’t have what it takes to make it all the way to the highest concentrations of deadly toxin.

That’s a technical impossibility. And sweeping predictions in regard to DNA, such as that of exons and introns, have had to be scrapped in the face of new evidence. You cannot tell me that all such predictions were accurate, because I know they weren’t. And as for sweeping generalizations of the character of the evo track record, the Drake Equation is a perfect example.

@Daniel_Pech,

What I see is you playing “semantic gotcha” with @T_aquaticus to an exquisite hair-fine degree.

You truncate his sentence “the full complexity of an organism is seen…” before he relates it to Nested Hierarchies. I don’t think @T_aquaticus is asserting that E.very S.ingle C.omplexity of an organism is being revealed… only that enough of the complexity is being revealed to show predictions being satisfied and explaining the trajectory of Evolutionary Theory.

What are your alternatives to Evolution?

I’ve lost track of whether you are a disaffected scientist? A YEC? An alchemical wizard?

If you are a YEC, then all these diversions are understandable.

But if you are reaching into a black bag to explain the science of speciation more effectively than Evolutionary principles generally discussed here, I’m all eyes. It’s time to pull your hand out of the black bag and show us what you have brought!

Flea flicking is not really helpful in these discussions … so I’m hoping you have something material and substantive to offer that would justify this torrture you are putting your audience through.

Your turn, Daniel.

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  1. What predictions in regard to DNA are you referring to?
  2. How are exons and introns related to those scrapped predictions?
  3. What is the new evidence that is doing the scrapping?
  4. What do you know about predictions related to DNA that are inaccurate?
  5. What is the Drake equation?
  6. What is the Drake equation a perfect example of?
  7. How is the Drake equation related to DNA?

I’m probably wasting my time, but I’m taking a shot and hoping you might answer some of these questions specifically.

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