When I told you that was a strawman, and repeatedly pointed you to obvious refutations of your premise, I was expecting you to infer that neither I nor anyone else believes that. Good luck with your research. You will not learn anything if you approach the topic with a strawman as your starting point.
Don’t take it personally. And you don’t need to apologize for anything either. Some people get a little touchy because of their past frustrating experiences with ID-proponents.
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Do you really think a single mutation will cause legs to grow longer? Or maybe its is a whole array of changes designed carefully and implemented partially in response to the environment? I actually want to understand you guys and your thinking. If I’m wrong, I’m open to being corrected. You definitely got me on my being overly strict in my example. I have some reading to do per Stephen, et al. Thanks for your patience. I have some work to do, but I’ll be back.
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Thanks Steve. I’ll read it soon. By the way, has anyone in this group reviewed the new ID Book, “Theistic Evolution?” Remember, I’m reading both sides. The most interesting part of this effort is to see the response by the other sides. It’s often very revealing. Also, I’m taking your criticism about my SE ideas as a strawman seriously, and am trying to see how it applies. Not seeing it yet, but still thinking about it. Speaking of logical fallacies, how is your quote below not “begging the question.” More later…
Do you mean the book edited by Moreland? It was discussed in this thread
My take is it sets up a strawman version of EC and then knocks it down. There have been several threads with discussions with Ann Gauger and Richard Buggs among others. So we do get the ID folks giving us their sides here.
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I’ve been pretty specific about the strawman, and so have a few others, so you might be the only one who can’t see how it applies. But let me try one more time. The strawman that is hindering your ability to understand evolution is your apparent belief that a change (mutation) in a single protein will create a systemwide disruption that requires simultaneous changes in hundreds or thousands of other proteins. You have maintained this strawman through at least 3 rounds of response. Here is where you most recently erected it:
when you have high degrees of dependency among sub-systems (proteins), and one changes without commensurate changes in those other sub-systems that depend on it, the larger system-of-systems that depends on all of them will begin to fail. Expecting commensurate changes to all the other sub-systems randomly gives me serious pause.
Your flawed premise is that changes within subsystems cannot be accommodated by the larger network. You then make your error quite a bit worse by claiming that evolutionary biologists actually believe that genetic change over time involves “commensurate changes to all the other sub-systems randomly.”
Your premises are false. They require no further discussion because they’re ridiculous. Worse, in this case, it seems you are projecting false beliefs onto me and others. Because there is no other way you could believe this:
First, it’s your job to explain why this is “begging the question,” but you needn’t bother. For me to have begged the question, I would have had to assume something that is incorporated into the question or problem I was addressing. What I did was straightforward and has been echoed by others here. I simply took your premise (that a single change in a protein will cause widespread failure) and applied it to what we actually know. I chose the simplest case I could, but we know a whole lot more detail about mutations and genetic diversity. The case was this: if your premise is true, then protein-coding mutations should make it almost impossible to reproduce. Why? Because they happen, regularly. They’re not some theoretical idea floating in the brains of people without engineering degrees. We measure them on vast scales. No one who understands the slightest bit about genetic diversity, including protein diversity, would ever begin with the premise you begin with.
So, let’s recap. You have now induced me to reply multiple times to a silly strawman that was barely worthy of a single response. And you have labeled a simple refutation by me a “fallacy”, inducing me to explain why it obviously is not. It’s obvious I need help (at least on weekends) budgeting my leisure time, but perhaps you will understand my claim now that you are obligated to show evidence that you are trying to understand the very VERY basic principles that we are discussing. I’m much more interested in talking about control systems and design and their evolution, which is an extremely interesting topic (Andreas Wagner is one important voice in that research field) than I am in explaining rudimentary principles of basic biology to people who start their comments with condescending giggles about ideas they don’t remotely understand.
Yes, absolutely – that kind of phenotypic effect is completely standard in biology.
No, it can’t be a whole array of correlated changes. This kind of mutation is part of the within-species genetic variation that we’ve been talking about. If only a whole array of correlated changes could be successful, then the whole thing would fall apart after the first generation, since different genetic variants are inherited independently.
This is one example of a kind of robustness to variation. Robustness is necessary not only for evolution, but simply for the successful development of each organism. Something as complex as leg development has to be able to handle variation in each of the components because genetics doesn’t provide precise blueprints of something like bone length; lots of variation will occur between particular organisms even without any genetic variation.
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@Raymond_Isbell Perhaps this take on your idea will help you to see what you are missing.
The sub-systems in each person are the results of their unique DNA. The DNA is the blueprint/specification (I really don’t like this analogy) used to build the sub-system.
When off spring are formed their DNA is the result of the joining of the DNA from both parents. This DNA is again unique. Now in the vast majority of time the results of this new, unique DNA is a healthy, bouncing baby person.
Could you, as a SE expert, build two different and unique systems that are both fully functional and then take a random mixture of the sub-systems and have the resulting system-of-systems also be a fully functional, unique system? BTW, this mixture might be missing some of the sub-systems, might have non-functional sub-systems, or even contain duplicates of some of the sub-systems.
Also every person born has a limited number of mutations (bad specs) and yet the person is normally fully functional.
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Thanks Bill. You used an acronym I don’t recognize: EC. Does it mean Evolutionary Creation? I’m still trying to find out what you guys actually believe. I know that Hugh Ross embraces the Big Bang Theory, and I’m sure ya’ll have an argument to counter the charge that it violates at least one physical law (1st Law of Thermo). I would love to read any exchanges you’ve had with critics on the big bang. If however, you don’t have an issue with the Big Bang being outside EC, then disregard.
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Yes. EC=Evolutionary Creation which is preferred for various reasons over TE, theistic evolution.
Most EC proponents accept mainstream scientific consensus, which would include Big Bang cosmology, standard geologic ages, and evolution as the best model explaining the diversity of life. Where EC people have the most intramural debate is probably “what to do with Adam and Eve” “how does God’s sovereignty work with freedom in nature” and “how did the first life originate-miracle or ‘natural’ events.”
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Start here.
There are more sources on the Resources page.
The argument is usually the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and as an Engineer you should be aware of why that law wouldn’t apply.
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@pevaquark Do you remember any good Big Bang threads from the past, or any good resources on this? I looked, but most of the ones I found you have to wade through quite a bit to get to informative parts.
Let me try to explain my quandary over your charge that I’m using a strawman. First, it’s a deceptive tactic used to discredit another’s position. Second, it’s a substitution of the main postulate with another that is easy to discredit. My intention in introducing the SE discussion was not to discredit Evolution, but to understand how Evolution can work when it APPEARS to violate some fundamental tenets of SE that are proven and widely accepted by rocket scientists like myself. My explanation of SE was correct, but it also implied a rigidity that clearly clashes with Evolution as you guys know it. It was never intended as a substitute to be used to discredit your beliefs. Rather it was introduced so you could understand my perspective and could help me navigate toward an understanding of Evolution that you have. You have done a good job in leading to that understanding. though you’re a bit grumpy and seem to take my inquiry as a personal attack on your beliefs. I’m not attacking anyone, and have not intention of doing so. I just want to understand your thinking. Seeing how the SE paradigm is interpreted within an evolutionary framework is helpful in guiding me to an understanding of your views. So in my view, it wasn’t and still isn’t a strawman.
Regarding my question about you “begging the question” when you claim that every time an animal has offspring, it proves me wrong, i.e., that the SE concept that requires coordinated change across all the components that contribute to that function. You’re assuming that you are correct (SE principals are not needed) to prove you are correct. You claim that every time an animal gives birth, it proves me wrong. Maybe I’m not smart enough to follow your logic, but it sounds like the fallacy, i.e., you’re right because you’re right.
Notwithstanding, I’m learning from you guys and it’s helping me better understand your thinking which is my goal. And I’m enjoying it. Most of all, I appreciate your patience. Who knows, you may in the end win me over to EC.
Thanks. I’m drowning in things to read. I’m glad it snowed in DC. Shoveling snow gave my brain a break. It’s hurting right now.
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Thanks. Looks like just the kind of thing that I need to read.
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Regarding God’s sovereignty and freedom of nature including man’s, take a look at Molinism. Use of it with some modifications I’ve made, has helped to understand God’s sovereignty, man’s free will, and God’s ability to control history down to the minutest details. Makes perfect sense to me.
I take it that by SE you mean software engineering?
Did you have any thoughts on my previous post about the subject? As I said, you’re looking at it through the lens of traditional software methodologies such as waterfall, change management, ITBM and so on, and I think that’s where you’re going wrong. Evolution, as these guys are describing it, has more in common with modern agile methodologies (continuous delivery, canary builds, phoenix servers, microservices, etc) than with traditional waterfall methodologies used by rocket scientists.
Thanks Bill. SE often incorporates redundancy to reduce risk so yes, we can build all the “diversity” you’re seeing in the cell into any system we choose. The trade-off is cost, schedule, complexity (which make it difficult and costly to maintain), and performance. One of the things that I think you guys are overlooking in my challenges is that I state up-front that all the subsystems are interdependent. Think of today’s software which is often open for reuse. Accessing it is easy because the owner publishes an Application Programming Interface (API). This tells users of the software how to gain access and use the internal functionality of that software. If the owner changes his code (randomly or by design) and doesn’t update the API, users will find problems when they try to integrate that software into their software if they use the old API.
No, SE - Systems Engineering