Refuting fallacious ID arguments and explaining randomness in biology for students

Darwinian evolution, you may recall from PS, was superseded in 1968.

news of darwinisms death have been greatly exaggerated

Oh I believe that Christianity is eminently reasonable, as is my faith. I think you have too much faith that ID is scientific.

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thatā€™s a claim you need to support

DĆ©jĆ  vu all over again. :grin:

I think youā€™d better provide a quotation, since something like 1.5% of the human genome codes for proteins. Roughly 10% is thought to have any effect on fitness or phenotype.

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From your Berkeley citationā€¦

the basic principles of evolution by natural selection and common ancestryā€¦

Indeed, those are still intact, but neutral drift and population genetics were never part of ā€˜Darwinian evolutionā€™.

Iā€™m not a fan of any method that interprets known inconsistencies between genome annotations as a signal of any process. As presented, it was not evidence for anything. (I told him a couple of minimal steps that needed to be taken before it was even worth considering.)

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Dude. No. People donā€™t think selection is the primary driving force anymore. Not that Darwin was wrong or that selection is unimportantā€¦

I think there is some uncharacteristic sloppy wording there on that websites part.

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Darwinism would predict that. The existence of junk is anti-Darwinian. I think you are mistaken there any way.

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Thanks. I donā€™t think this answers my question, though. Intelligence is not unexplainable by science. I donā€™t think science is able to identify irreducible complexity, either, (if it exists). So, it appears to me we are no further along.

A point that should be made regarding randomness and biology is that biological systems are extremely complicated esp at the molecular level, and in such systems random occurrences are more likely to be mistaken - i.e. they are not random but more likely opaque to analysis at the appropriate level.

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Randy, didnā€™t quite follow your thoughts here. Can I ask you, just to clarify, do you think that SETI is an ā€œunscientificā€ enterprise?

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Thanks. No, not at all. It isnā€™t unreasonable to find and identify what is more complex, or intelligent. However, science can, as far as I can tell, analyze intelligence into smaller parts. Itā€™s not irreducibly complex.

I can identify a complicated statue, and also geodons. Complexity is not evidence of something science canā€™t break down into irreducibly complex elements. SETI would not declare that the ultimate cause of something is an irreducibly complex intelligence.

Maybe Iā€™m not communicating well. Sorry!
Thanks for your discourse.

ID isnā€™t scientific. Given the premiss of incarnation, there is still no evidence of it.

SETI would not, to my knowledge, declare anything about the nature of an intelligence they found, but they would be able to recognize it as intelligent.

Besides, to my understanding, irreducible complexity would have nothing to do with SETIā€™s methodā€¦ there would be nothing they could examine that they could determine was or was not irreducible complexā€¦ only a recognized complexity in the radio signals?

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Thanks. I am sorryā€“I must have misunderstood the question, then. What is the relevance of SETI to ID, then?

Iā€™m going on a walk with the kids today soon (Iā€™m on vacation this week), so may not be able to respond till tonight. I hope you have a good day. Itā€™s a beautiful one in Michigan!

Only 1% of the human genome is made up of exons.

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I think @T_aquaticusā€™ point is that ID is essentially committing the same fallacy.

One ID argument I have heard many times is that the genetic changes from whale ancestors to whales happened too quickly to be explained by evolution. Meanwhile, ID posits that an intelligent design force is able to effectuate rapid genetic changes. Therefore, ID is the (allegedly) compelling explanation.

I also would distinguish quite sharply between Dawkinsā€™ argument for little-d design and IDā€™s argument for intelligent design. If I have read him correctly, Dawkins believes that the universe of design outcomes in the ordering of DNA bases is unmeasurably large. Therefore it is not possible to mathematically infer an Intelligent Design or Designer from one outcome or one set of outcomes.

I am quite sure that your imputation to Dawkins of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy is incorrect. That fallacy is based on two implicit assumptions: (1) only one desirable outcome is available out of all possible outcomes, and (2) the probability must be calculated as if the outcome had to be drawn from a set of independent random Bernoulli trials. Dawkins does not accept either of these assumptions.

Peace,
Chris

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If I am understanding it correctly, you used a data set that was artificially evolved and it fit a dependency graph. It would seem that evolution can produce the patterns Ewert claims are from design.