Irreducible complication

Possibly what some might think is a backward step is actually not.

And it can be really hard to know.

And even if it IS a step backwards, if it doesn´t cause major problems, sometimes it stays around just from general inertia(that we know of at least).

That doesn´t invalidate evolution on a macro scale at all, as it is simply irrelevant.

Tenshinai wrote:And even if it IS a step backwards, if it doesn´t cause major problems, sometimes it stays around just from general inertia(that we know of at least).

That doesn´t invalidate evolution on a macro scale at all, as it is simply irrelevant.

Except, of course, that evolution never makes steps backwards.

The E wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:And even if it IS a step backwards, if it doesn´t cause major problems, sometimes it stays around just from general inertia(that we know of at least).

That doesn´t invalidate evolution on a macro scale at all, as it is simply irrelevant.

Except, of course, that evolution never makes steps backwards.

That was my point even if i forgot to specify it properly in that post.

Backwards as in becoming "worse".

Tenshinai wrote:

The E wrote:Except, of course, that evolution never makes steps backwards.

That was my point even if i forgot to specify it properly in that post.

Backwards as in becoming "worse".

If you look at the change locally, yes. On a wider scale not so much, as evolution essentially produces local optimisation. Incidentally, this is a pretty strong argument against an intelligent designer because there are quite a few rather stupid design details around in nature.

aairfccha wrote:If you look at the change locally, yes. On a wider scale not so much, as evolution essentially produces local optimisation. Incidentally, this is a pretty strong argument against an intelligent designer because there are quite a few rather stupid design details around in nature.

Yes. Evolution is essentially a search algorithm that produces local optimae with no inherent awareness of the big picture. Any given organism is the most optimal organism for its niche, with a small chance that a descendant of that organism will be even more optimal, but as soon as the definition for what's optimal changes, organisms lose viability fast.

On a different note: I would really like to hear you justify the Australian biosphere, DDHv.

aairfccha wrote: Incidentally, this is a pretty strong argument against an intelligent designer because there are quite a few rather stupid design details around in nature.

Exactly!

Also, evolution isn´t about optimisation, but about finding "traits" that works well enough for something to essentially stay alive.

Negative traits often disappear quickly, due to being too much of a burden to function, but some remain for various reasons.

The E wrote:snip

Here's the correct definition: Evolution is the process of change in living organisms over time. Devolution does not exist. End of story.

snip

If evolution is any change, in what way can the theory be tested? It has been written that any theory which cannot be falsified is not scientific.

Dr. Carl Werner, when in college, had a fellow student challenge his belief in evolution, stating four problems with it. Three of them were not in his area of competence. The fourth one kept bothering him - thirty years later, he decided to examine the evidence personally. His wife agreed to the trip, provided that everything was documented. (She may have been interested in using her photography skills, as well as enjoying the trips. ) They traveled over 100,000 miles during the investigation.

They spent years traveling to dig sites, museums, etc. asking questions, and documenting results, with photographs. I just found out, so have only read one of the books produced; "Living Fossils." If nothing else, the photographs are very enjoyable! It is interesting to find a number of fossils, not easily distinguishable from currently living organisms, which don't even have the same genera name. This should mean that they are different.


Of course, with fossils, it is not possible to apply the inter-fertility test as we can with living species.

In geology, we have many exposed oil well bores, outcrops, cores, cross sections, and seismic data for stratigraphic columns. The only place I know where these columns are being gathered into one data base and work on correlating them is being done is the column project of the Institute for Creation Research. There may be others - even with web searches, it is not possible to check out everything. IIRC, in "Unwillingly to School" by Pauline Ashwell, a device that allowed reading at speeds of multiple thousands of words per minute to become common was a critical part of the story. Yearn, yearn, sigh An anti-hypnosis feature of the device was a key part of the good story. (Astounding 1958)

Anyone who disparages those who disagree with any theory they accept and ignores work done by them is not going to easily see problems. That person will also miss much interesting reading.

I'm reminded of two places in one (or two) of Gordon Dickson's stories (don't remember which), where one character closes his eyes so he can honestly say he didn't see what he didn't want to see.

Worth reading: Schmidt, C. et al 2016. "The cryo-EM structure of a ribosome-Ski2-Ski3-Ski8 helicase complex" Science 354 (6318):1431>1433

A person who is certain that the theory they have been taught is correct has reverted to the pre Blaise Pascal method of determining what is known, relying on authorities. If you check the FDA's methods, you will see they rank probabilities, with the meta-analysis of multiple experiments and observations as the most probable, and hearsay as the least. When the procedure is followed the untested word of an authority is not accepted. Is this procedure always followed?

Rob Stadler's criteria for high confidence science make sense to me. I usually need to go over something several times to internalize it - this is my current project.

The E wrote:

aairfccha wrote:If you look at the change locally, yes. On a wider scale not so much, as evolution essentially produces local optimisation. Incidentally, this is a pretty strong argument against an intelligent designer because there are quite a few rather stupid design details around in nature.

There are also details spoken of as stupid which on closer examination were determined to be not at all stupid. Example: The "backward" positioning of the photo-receptor cells in mammalian eyes. I leave the discovery of why to the student.

Yes. Evolution is essentially a search algorithm that produces local optimae with no inherent awareness of the big picture. Any given organism is the most optimal organism for its niche, with a small chance that a descendant of that organism will be even more optimal, but as soon as the definition for what's optimal changes, organisms lose viability fast.

On a different note: I would really like to hear you justify the Australian biosphere, DDHv.

IMO: The ice age following the flood due to the warm oceans and the faster cooling continents, dropped the average sea level by hundreds of feet. This caused a number of land bridges to form, such as at the Bering Straits.
Check out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... years.html
I don't justify why the marsupials are so strongly represented there. If you aren't a snowflake on this subject, go to http://www.icr.org/, type in "Australia Marsupial" and hit enter. I've not yet read these articles; thank you for the suggestion. However, the land bridges can go a long way to explain how the animals could spread from the mountains of Ararat.

BTW, a creationist has suggested that the reason God was insistent on humans spreading from Babel in spite of their determination not to do so just might have been because the ending of the ice age also meant the ending of the land bridges, and He wanted humans across the major land masses.

Of course, we are told to be snowflakes who believe the commonly accepted authorities got it all right, right

DDHv wrote:If evolution is any change, in what way can the theory be tested? It has been written that any theory which cannot be falsified is not scientific.

It can be falsified. You just have to prove that the postulated mechanisms for it (i.e. mutation, recombination) cannot produce the postulated results.

Which you are, admittedly, trying very hard to do. But so far, all your arguments have been statistical rather than empirical; You were complaining earlier about the overreliance on what are essentially semantical arguments over empirical science, and the fact that you are not realizing how much you are guilty of this has been a constant source of amusement.

Dr. Carl Werner, when in college, had a fellow student challenge his belief in evolution, stating four problems with it. Three of them were not in his area of competence. The fourth one kept bothering him - thirty years later, he decided to examine the evidence personally. His wife agreed to the trip, provided that everything was documented. (She may have been interested in using her photography skills, as well as enjoying the trips. ) They traveled over 100,000 miles during the investigation.

They spent years traveling to dig sites, museums, etc. asking questions, and documenting results, with photographs. I just found out, so have only read one of the books produced; "Living Fossils." If nothing else, the photographs are very enjoyable! It is interesting to find a number of fossils, not easily distinguishable from currently living organisms, which don't even have the same genera name. This should mean that they are different.

And? Evolution predicts that change can happen, not that it must. The mechanism at play here is called "stabilizing selection", which occurs when an organism's niche is effectively unchanging over time.

Living fossils aren't a problem for evolution. They are explained perfectly by the theory and are even expected; the term itself goes back to Darwin, and he also managed to find a logically consistent explanation for them.

Of course, with fossils, it is not possible to apply the inter-fertility test as we can with living species.

In geology, we have many exposed oil well bores, outcrops, cores, cross sections, and seismic data for stratigraphic columns. The only place I know where these columns are being gathered into one data base and work on correlating them is being done is the column project of the Institute for Creation Research. There may be others - even with web searches, it is not possible to check out everything. IIRC, in "Unwillingly to School" by Pauline Ashwell, a device that allowed reading at speeds of multiple thousands of words per minute to become common was a critical part of the story. Yearn, yearn, sigh An anti-hypnosis feature of the device was a key part of the good story. (Astounding 1958)

And? Are you trying to make a point here? If so, what is it?

Anyone who disparages those who disagree with any theory they accept and ignores work done by them is not going to easily see problems. That person will also miss much interesting reading.

To be clear, I am not really disparaging you. I am disparaging the theories you use based on their logical inconsistency and their deferral of an explanation to a creator entity. If your theory devolves to "$DEITY did it", it's invalid in the absence of proof for the existence of said deity.

DDHv wrote:There are also details spoken of as stupid which on closer examination were determined to be not at all stupid. Example: The "backward" positioning of the photo-receptor cells in mammalian eyes. I leave the discovery of why to the student.

You are aware that the only people who would think this to be stupid are kids in first or second grade, right.

IMO: The ice age following the flood due to the warm oceans and the faster cooling continents, dropped the average sea level by hundreds of feet. This caused a number of land bridges to form, such as at the Bering Straits.
Check out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... years.html
I don't justify why the marsupials are so strongly represented there. If you aren't a snowflake on this subject, go to http://www.icr.org/, type in "Australia Marsupial" and hit enter. I've not yet read these articles; thank you for the suggestion. However, the land bridges can go a long way to explain how the animals could spread from the mountains of Ararat.

That's not a justification though, not in terms of the theoretical framework you've said you believe in. It works perfectly well within the framework of the accepted theory of Evolution, which states that isolated populations drift apart until they become separate species, but this is something you have specifically called out to be impossible (under the heading of macroevolution).

BTW, a creationist has suggested that the reason God was insistent on humans spreading from Babel in spite of their determination not to do so just might have been because the ending of the ice age also meant the ending of the land bridges, and He wanted humans across the major land masses.

Has said creationist also provided proof of the Tower of Babel being real?

Of course, we are told to be snowflakes who believe the commonly accepted authorities got it all right, right

You continue to not understand science.

The E wrote:Any given organism is the most optimal organism for its niche, with a small chance that a descendant of that organism will be even more optimal,

Yikes! Logically it is impossible to improve on the most optimal organism unless circumstances change. Besides, evolution is a "good enough" process which can lead to extreme optimisation and specialisation...

The E wrote:but as soon as the definition for what's optimal changes, organisms lose viability fast.

...the result of which, yes, can be an evolutionary trap, especially if the environment changes fast.