First they ignore you...

With the Darwinists on the run, ID should be the new scientific paradim very soon. Then we can wear our bacterial flagelum t-shirts and ball caps with pride.

royfitzrobert,

Your comments seem limited to off topic comments and Bible references. While not against the rules per se I'd like to ask you to keep on topic and provide interesting information for the discussions at hand.

Yes, point taken, I must apologize because I've often referred to bible stories where more secular arguments might have been appropriate.

I personally found Roy's bible quotes instructive and relevant to the main article, but I do suppose that they are off-topic and may wrongly give the impression that ID is somehow linked to Christianity via YEC or OEC studies. This of course would be a blatantly wrong impression, utterly ungrounded in fact or reason, but nevertheless the sort of weak association that desperate Evolutionists would exploit in order to score a point against us.

It's probably also worth noting that since (as TroutMac explained) Evolution is an unproven religious theory, when comparing religions it is often best to compare the two religions to see which ultimately passes the common-sense test. That is a typical comparative study.

For example if I said "The Bible says X, but Darwin alleges Y", and suppose X sounded sensible and Y was absurd then this would be a valid comparison of religions. One of the best ways we can criticize neo-Darwinism is by showing that it is an inferior disproven religion. I wonder if my fellow OE bloggers agree?

I also think that sometimes a biblical quote is the most relevant wisdom for the moment; say for example I wished to refute the "materialist assumption", that the only phenomena worth studying are non-theistic phenomena, then would I be justified in using a bible quotation to help make my point? I think you will agree with me that the the carefully selected Bible quotes of Dr. Philip Johnson (founder of the Discovery Institute) make for very persuasive arguments against Darwinism and materialistic philosophy.

I just don't know how to be as persuasive without the wisdom and well-worded arguments of the Bible?

Finally, please accept my apologies in advance if you feel I have over-stepped the rules. I really enjoy OE as a forum for healthy scientific debate. I've really learnt a great deal from Patric, TroutMac, SChen24 and the other regular bloggers at OE.com!

Helena

Helena wrote:
"For example if I said "The Bible says X, but Darwin alleges Y", and suppose X sounded sensible and Y was absurd then this would be a valid comparison of religions."

First of all, understand where I come from here… I am a Bible-believing Christian who tilts strongly toward the young Earth view. I also accept micro-evoution as established truth. Finch's beaks change size over time and under certain circumstances. I get that. But, the finches don't become lizards. Or hippos. Macro-evolution is absolute bunk.

Now, as to your hypothetical, I think we have to step back and look at this from a neutral perspective for second… The universe exists. Animals exist. In a sense I think it's hard to imagine any explanation of the orgins that wouldn't boggle our minds in some fashion. No matter what, it's gonna be a brain-blender. So let's just understand that from the get go.

I understand why folks scoff at the existence of God… that idea does seem absurd at first glance. You said "Suppose X sounded sensible and Y was absurd" well, I'm saying that both sound absurd from a neutral standpoint. Either way, something of great complexity is being created out of nothing. One way just takes longer.

But of course if you look and think carefully about these issues, it quickly becomes apparent that the strict materialist view is the one that is absurd because it is circular. But here's the point… (and I'm not bashing the Bible here) you don't need the Bible (and you shouldn't need the Bible) to show how ridiculous and preposterous a materialist solution for the origin of "material" is. The materialists have themselves fooled into thinking that they are the "logical" ones, the "rational" ones. And yet it's very easy to demonstrate to them how utterly irrational and illogical it is to suggest that the origin of matter and energy could ever be explained by reference to matter and energy. And you don't need Bible verses to do it.

Now, the idea of an eternal God or otherwise unembodied designer might seem absurd as well, but only if someone assumes that they already know everything there is to know about reality. Only if they assume they know there cannot be such a thing. But the truth is, not even they will claim omniscience. In light of that, when you compare the two ideas apart from the Bible, the unembodied designer idea really is the most rational of the two… and it's not even a close race!

Materialism, as an explanation of origins, is a non-starter. And you don't need to quote Bible verses to show that. When you do, you are perceived (wrong though it may be) as someone who has put their brain in neutral.

The Bible is useful for many things. But these people give the Bible no credibility from the start (a mistake, I'll grant you) and so quoting the Bible means nothing to them. You've gotta appeal to them on their terms.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

I believe that God does act within nature and that Darwinian evolution is the result. In many ways ID's strategy offers an apologetic hope to believing Christians

Jai

Jai wrote:
"I believe that God does act within nature and that Darwinian evolution is the result."

It should be pointed out that, strictly speaking, Darwinian evolution requires itself to be unguided… it is a blind, purposeless natural process. If God used it for a purpose, then it wasn't "Darwinian" evolution.

Another response to this would have to be, "Why should we believe God used Darwinian evolution when there is no evidence to support Darwinian evolution?"

But before anyone attempts to answer that question, let me get more specific about what I mean by "Darwinian evolution": Call it Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism or what have you, this generally refers to the idea that all life present on the Earth has a common ancestor… a tiny, simple, single-celled organism. I accept that evolution happens… finch's beaks change size and shape to some limited extent over time. I have no problem with evolution in that specific sense, and that is well-supported by evidence. But the idea that a finch could, via the same process, become a giant purple snorklewhacker is not supported by any real evidence. It's only assumed to be true by virtue of the fact that finch's beaks change shape a little.

Another thing to say is that if it's possible that God used Darwinian evolution, then Darwinian evolution cannot be science. After all, ID is rejected as "science" because the designer might be God. I would think that standard would cut both ways, wouldn't you?

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

First of all, understand where I come from here… I am a Bible-believing Christian who tilts strongly toward the young Earth view. I also accept micro-evoution as established truth. Finch's beaks change size over time and under certain circumstances. I get that. But, the finches don't become lizards. Or hippos. Macro-evolution is absolute bunk.

I am not sure if this is off-topic or not, so feel free to delete it if it is. But, I have always been confused about about micro vs macro. I think that micro is changes within a species, like beak size. And macroevolution is the process of forming new species. Right? What I don't understand is that there are estimates of around 300,000 plant species and well over a million animal species. They all couldn't have survived from the antediluvian era, so there must be some new species formed since then. Isn't that just macro-evolution?

Troutmac said "there is no evidence to support Darwinian evolution"

That's a bold statement! It might be the case that you've read nothing that convinced you, but that does not mean what you read was not evidence!

TroutMac said "After all, ID is rejected as "science" because the designer might be God. I would think that standard would cut both ways, wouldn't you?"

there are only two options for what "designer" could possibly mean: either a natural agent or God. The first option ultimately relies on the very theory, Darwinian evolution, that you maintain does not happen and the second option is a theological claim. As such, can it be called science in the same way materialistic science is called science because of it's ability (eg) to create complex objects like Apple Macintosh computers?

ViCreeves wrote:
"That's a bold statement! It might be the case that you've read nothing that convinced you, but that does not mean what you read was not evidence!"

It's not bold at all if you understood how I qualified it. I said that by "Darwinian evolution" I meant specifically "macro-evolution", which essentially refers to a simpler organism developing into a more complex organism. These are the kinds of changes that require an increase in genetic information. I was very clear that there are many observable, documentable examples of "micro-evolution"… things like finch beaks that change size or resistance to antibodies and that I didn't dispute those at all. But those are examples (micro-evolution) don't require an increase in genetic information.

Also, I said "real" evidence, meaning hard, empirical evidence that didn't rely just on a certain interpretation of the evidence. For example, you might claim that similarities in skeletal structures is "evidence" for macro-evolution. Okay, it might be… but that could also be interpreted as evidence for Intelligent Design and that the Designer chose to use similar design themes among different organisms. We know, after all, that intelligent designers do such things, so we would expect to find similar structures (homology) under an ID paradigm. So homology doesn't count as "real" or "hard" evidence for macro-evolution because it can be interpreted in two different ways. It's not clear at all that those various organisms actually do share a common ancestor.

The information aspect of this is huge. There is absolutely no evidence of natural processes spontaneously producing the complex specified information we find in living systems. It doesn't exist, period. No one can account for the origin of this information… all anyone can do is describe how that information gets changed. Well, obviously changing information is not the same as creating information.

Micro-evolution is not disputed for many reasons, one of which is that it doesn't require the production of additional information. It's actually just the result of a re-shuffling of existing information. So that's no mysterious at all.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Hi,
When you said "changing information is not the same as creating information" that got me thinking about mechanisms for this change.
wikipedia.org==Genetic_recombination
I found this quote
But since recombination does not respect reading frame boundaries, from time to time it will bring together parts of differing alleles, resulting in the production of a novel allele

I guess novel means new in this situation (after all, there's only 26 letters in the alphabet and new books come out all the time! :))
So I'd have to disagree with you there on that basis.

I take your point about homology - you could interpret most things you dig up as designers whim if you so choose unless somebody was around to record it. I suppose really the question is then what test would disprove the designer? Can such a test be devised, if only in theory? If not, does that not prove something?

royfitzrobert wrote:
"They all couldn't have survived from the antediluvian era, so there must be some new species formed since then. Isn't that just macro-evolution?"

Different ID proponents might have different takes on this… ultimately I'm not sure we can know exactly where each species came from and when each species "arrived". But if you're willing to accept what I'll admit is my own personal speculation as a layperson, here's how I think it fits together:

To get a picture of what might be possible via "micro-evolution" as opposed to "macro-evolution", just look at breeds of dogs. Different dog breeds were arrived at through artificial, or intelligent, selection as opposed to natural selection. Human-directed, goal-oriented. All dogs derive from one generic dog species. One genome, one set of genetic information. But purposefuly re-combining of that genome along different lines produced different breeds. And just look at the variety that's possible! Different sizes, different proportions, colors, behaviors, etc. But notice that through all of that, we still have dogs. None of those lines gave us dogs with, for example, wings. They all are recognizable as dogs. And, some breeds cannot even survive and perpetuate themselves without human intervention… release them in the wild and they would likely be 'selected out' by natural selection.

Well, natural selection has the same sort of "potential" within a certain 'kind' or species that artificial selection does… but since it's not intelligently guided, I would expect that generally it wouldn't reach that same potential. Get the right animals (by chance) isolated together for a period of time, the interbreeding could produce a different species that, though it may have different proportions or coloring or whatever, is still unmistakably a certain "kind" of animal. Look at sea gulls, for example. They all follow the same basic body plan, same basic features. They are gulls. But some are bigger than others, coloring varies between species, and the different species are, with some overlap no doubt, found in different regions.

Now this is all just illustrative… and it certainly wouldn't answer all questions, but it seems to me that this fits rather well with a global flood and the Ark of Noah. The ark would not have had to accommodate all of the species currently extant (the Bible actually says kinds, but we don't know how that relates to our present taxonomy) but would only have had to accommodate animals from each "kind" or "body plan" if you prefer. Then after the flood, those kinds would propogate and through natural selection over time, diverge into the many different species we see today.

How plants fits into all this is a whole different ball game. And I'm also curious about fish… there are some good questions to be asked there that I don't have an answer for. But I don't assume there aren't answers.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

TroutMac said "fits rather well with a global flood and the Ark of Noah"

Something i've always wondered since I heard about the flood at school was if the flood water was salty or fresh? If it was fresh, we'd kill off the saltwater fish and visa versa. Yet there are both kinds around today?

ViCreeves wrote:
"I guess novel means new in this situation (after all, there's only 26 letters in the alphabet and new books come out all the time! :))
So I'd have to disagree with you there on that basis."

Any "re-combination" is not production of new genetic information. It's all in the name… "re-combine". The information was already there, it just got tweaked a little. Re-shuffled. The result of the 'tweak' might be "new" in the sense that it's a different 'version' of that information, but it's not new information in the sense that it could build entirely new sets of organs and new body plans. There's still no account, in that context, for how the information that got 'tweaked' came about.

I like to think of it this way…think of DNA as a set of blueprints, like for a building of some sort. On the one hand, you've got blueprints for a simple "organism"… let's make it a storage shed. One room, a pair of doors, a roof, etc. Pretty simply. Maybe one page is all it takes to describe how that shed is built. Now, compare that to blueprints for a 4 bedroom house. Now you've got multiple rooms, a bunch more doors, plumbing (that's a whole new system there… the shed didn't need plumbing) and electrical (also a whole new system), windows, insulation, etc. This might be a 20 page set of blueprints. The question is, how are you going to get all the new information that describes how the 4-bedroom house is built from JUST the information for the storage shed? Never happen.

That's what macro-evolution requires. That new information has to come from somewhere, and we know one thing about this kind of information: It can only be produced by intelligence.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

ViCreeves wrote:
"Something i've always wondered since I heard about the flood at school was if the flood water was salty or fresh? If it was fresh, we'd kill off the saltwater fish and visa versa. Yet there are both kinds around today?"

Yes, I wonder exactly the same thing. I don't know the answer and I think it's an excellent question.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

TroutMac said "The question is, how are you going to get all the new information that describes how the 4-bedroom house is built from JUST the information for the storage shed? Never happen."

I suppose the obvious answer is very slowly, in small incremental steps over very long periods of time? And the usefullness of the blueprint analogy is somewhat flawed by the realization that blueprints do not reproduce and therefore natural selection cannot operate.
If you accept micro evolution, what stops it becoming macro evolution over billions and billions of years?

ViCreeves wrote:
"I suppose the obvious answer is very slowly, in small incremental steps over very long periods of time?"

Well, of course, that's the standard story. But it doesn't work. This recombination never increases information content. In fact, it tends to decrease it, and this is what we would expect from the laws of thermodynamics.

Besides which, how are you going to account for the large amounts of information that had to appear suddenly in the first single celled organism? That organism cannot be any simpler. It needs all that genetic information to describe its function. Where did that come from? There's nothing simpler on the other side to draw from.

This information thing is key… Darwinists dance around it all day long, pretending that they have an answer. But their answers just don't get it done. Their answers all rely on the pre-existence of this information so that it can be re-shuffled. Sorry, but that just doesn't answer the question.

I agree my analogy isn't perfect, but it illustrates what is meant by increase of information as it relates to an increase in complexity.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Now this is all just illustrative… and it certainly wouldn't answer all questions, but it seems to me that this fits rather well with a global flood and the Ark of Noah. The ark would not have had to accommodate all of the species currently extant (the Bible actually says kinds, but we don't know how that relates to our present taxonomy) but would only have had to accommodate animals from each "kind" or "body plan" if you prefer. Then after the flood, those kinds would propogate and through natural selection over time, diverge into the many different species we see today.

Maybe I am just dense, but this isn't sinking in. The ark wasn't that big. It couldn't have held many kinds. Even if it could hold ten thousand kinds, we still need to get to one million species in 4000 years. I read somewhere else on this site that someone doubts macroevolution because no one has ever observed it create a new species. So, we have to get to a million in way less than 4000 years. We rightfully criticize the Darwinists for claiming that we can get to over a million species in billions of years. But we are saying that it happened in a fraction of that time? That is like mega-evolution. They say that science is often counter intuitive. Maybe this is one of those cases. I guess I'll need to think on it a while.

Is anyone doing any genetic analysis to see if they can reconstruct the original kinds? That would go along way to bringing evolution down.

Can you define information? Everyone seems to have a different meaning and without understanding exactly what you mean, what you are writing doesn't make any sense. Thank you.

If you accept micro evolution, what stops it becoming macro evolution over billions and billions of years?

You might find this statement by professor Allen Macneill interesting:

Q: "Do the "engines of variation" (EvoDevo, etc) provide sufficient variation to move beyond microevolution to macroevolution."
A: This is indeed the central question. One of the central tenets of the "modern synthesis of evolutionary biology" as celebrated in 1959 was the idea that macroevolution and microevolution were essentially the same process. That is, macroevolution was simply microevolution extrapolated over deep evolutionary time, using the same mechanisms and with essentially the same effects. A half century of research into macroevolution has shown that this is probably not the case.

MacNeill then went onto elaborate on the more modern version of Darwinism including the mechanisms EvoDevo, HGT, reliance on homeotic genes, extensions to Endosymbiotic Theory, etc. The problem for Darwinists is that these proposed mechanisms are untested and have not been shown to be capable of producing macroevolution. MacNeill believes that further research will prove them to be up to the task but to put that into perspective:

“The history of organic life is undemonstrable; we cannot prove a whole lot in evolutionary biology, and our findings will always be hypothesis. There is one true evolutionary history of life, and whether we will actually ever know it is not likely. Most importantly, we have to think about questioning underlying assumptions, whether we are dealing with molecules or anything else.” Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, February 9, 2007

So essentially the Darwinism that was around during the beginning of the ID movement is dead. But it's hoped that a hodge-podge collection of various ideas, this Frankenstein, can be zapped and bring Darwinism back to life. But at the same time there are still many supporters of the old Darwinism, dead in its grave buried by the evidence. This is understandable since it's more reasonable than the new version and easier to comprehend. The supporters of the old Darwinism also tend to poke holes in the validity of these newer mechanisms.

To clarify, Darwinism is "dead" but that's in relation to the ability of creating novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans.** Darwinism is understood to encompass the notion of an unguided process involving no intelligence and that's where it has fallen short and thus is "dead". Evolutionary biology itself is far from dead. In fact, ID assumes many of these mechanisms are active in a limited fashion.

Intelligent design is a good explanation for a number of biochemical systems, but I should insert a word of caution. Intelligent design theory has to be seen in context: it does not try to explain everything. We live in a complex world where lots of different things can happen. When deciding how various rocks came to be shaped the way they are a geologist might consider a whole range of factors: rain, wind, the movement of glaciers, the activity of moss and lichens, volcanic action, nuclear explosions, asteroid impact, or the hand of a sculptor. The shape of one rock might have been determined primarily by one mechanism, the shape of another rock by another mechanism.

Similarly, evolutionary biologists have recognized that a number of factors might have affected the development of life: common descent, natural selection, migration, population size, founder effects (effects that may be due to the limited number of organisms that begin a new species), genetic drift (spread of “neutral,” nonselective mutations), gene flow (the incorporation of genes into a population from a separate population), linkage (occurrence of two genes on the same chromosome), and much more. The fact that some biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent does not mean that any of the other factors are not operative, common, or important.–Dr. Behe

** (I should note that some ID proponents sympathetic to EvoDevo believe that given an initial organism designed in a certain fashion [like a self-monitoring toolkit] might allow for hox genes to be a major component.)

royfitzrobert wrote:
"Maybe I am just dense, but this isn't sinking in. The ark wasn't that big."

I should first point out that ID doesn't specifically rely on a global flood. As far as ID is concerned, whether there was a global flood or not is not particularly relevant. Personally, I tend to believe there was a global flood. Also, ID proponents are not necessarily "young-Earthers", either. So many IDers wouldn't need, assuming it's even a problem, to address it one way or the other.

As to the size of the ark, I'm not sure what your idea of 'big' is… granted, it's a relative term. But given the dimensions specified in Genesis, The Ark measured 300x50x30 cubits (Genesis 6:15), which is about 140x23x13.5 metres or 459x75x44 feet, so its volume was 43,500 m3 (cubic metres) or 1.54 million cubic feet. This is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad box cars.

You can read more details here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/animals.asp

I'll try to answer the "information" question briefly. The other side loves to obfuscate this issue, and I suspect it's because they know how fatal it is to their naturalist presuppositions. When we say "information" can only be produced by intelligence, we're talking about a certain kind of information… indeed, information can have many meanings. In the context of DNA, just think of it as "instructions" and not merely "information". DNA is like an instruction manual for building and operating a living thing. Another way to think of DNA is to think of a CD-R disc loaded with, for example, autocad drawings of a machine. The code burned into that disc, when read by the software, reveals all the specifications of the machine. This is what DNA is. These specifications have meaning, and they describe something that is over and above the DNA molecule itself.

This is "complex specified information" or CSI. It's what you see when you see a large row of bushes and shrubs arranged and trimmed so as to spell the name of a town, for example. That topiary conveys information. Who would dare suggest such an arrangement would have come about by natural, unintelligent processes?

I hope that helps. And I hope I made it clear that I don't wish to burden the ID movement with having to defend a global flood… that's really not their concern. It's a bit off-topic for this forum.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Dembski has a nice little document that covers information and specification:

http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf

Unfortunately it requires a minimum education in mathematics in order to comprehend fully. As in, it's a bit dense. I'll see if I can find time to write a "short version".

No Troutmac, that doesn't help. You say that evolution cannot produce new information. But, as near as I can figure, you didn't provide a definition that could be measured. If an Darwinist claims that man evolved from monkeys, we should be able to measure the information in a man and a monkey and show that a man has more information, right?

Mario A. Lopez
Ciencia Alternativa

Good question, royfitzrobert.

If an Darwinist claims that man evolved from monkeys, we should be able to measure the information in a man and a monkey and show that a man has more information, right?

Chimpanzee Pan troglodytes
20,000-25,000 genes (same as human)

There are just 50 human genes with no known homolog in chimps. Of the protein-coding genes in the human and chimp genomes, one-third have identical sequences.

Mod Edit: More on that here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/uob-wim122006.php

Mouse Mus musculus
20,000-25,000 genes (same as human)

The average mouse gene is about 85% similar to its human homolog.

Zebrafish Danio rerio
25,000 genes

Scientists routinely transfer human genes into zebrafish and study their functions.

Fruitfly Drosophila Melanogaster
13,600 genes

Approximately 60% of known human disease genes have a counterpart in the fruit fly.

Roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans
19,100 genes

Earliest organism with a central nervous system. Shares about 21% of its genes with humans.

**The number of genes are very interesting, but notice that the information may differ from species to species, even when the same number of genes are found. Interesting eh?

Thank you, Patrick. My memory is hazy. Wasn't MacNeill the guy from Cornell posting at Uncommon Descent a while back? I didn't follow the conversation very well, but he sure didn't seem to be an ID supporter.

Mario, very interesting information. So the number of genes is part of the biology measure of information, but not all of it? What else is part of biological information? What you shared seems to indicate that humans and chimps are really closely related, and since we know that isn't true, there must be something else, right?

royfitzrobert wrote:
"No Troutmac, that doesn't help. You say that evolution cannot produce new information. But, as near as I can figure, you didn't provide a definition that could be measured."

I'm sure Patrick will give you the goods there… not only does he have a much more thorough understanding of the issue than I do, but in my definition I was trying not to get real technical with it.

royfitzrobert wrote:
"If an Darwinist claims that man evolved from monkeys, we should be able to measure the information in a man and a monkey and show that a man has more information, right?"

In your specific example, perhaps not. I'm going to reveal some basic ignorance here about the physiology of monkeys vs. that of humans, but I would say that if they all have similar body plans and the same organs (maybe they do, maybe they don't on the latter point) then I'd expect the information content of their genome to be very similar.

royfitzrobert wrote:
"So the number of genes is part of the biology measure of information, but not all of it? What else is part of biological information?"

This is a very good question. The answer seems like it would have to be very complicated… certainly the number of genes would have to figure into it in some way. Seems like the number of chromosomes is a factor as well. But it doesn't seem possible to really be able to answer the question fully until we have figured out what all the "non-coding" DNA actually codes for. It seeme to me like ultimately the final measurement would have to be in terms of "bytes" or some informational unit like that, and it appears to me that the relationship between number of genes, number of chromosomes, number of base pairs and number of bytes is probably not going to be linear.

royfitzrobert wrote:
"What [Mario] shared seems to indicate that humans and chimps are really closely related…"

See, I don't reach that conclusion. Darwinists do, but only because they're looking for it in those terms already. But it doesn't have to mean that at all. If DNA represents "instructions" for building a living organism (and both sides agree on this) then it follows that the information content would be similar between organisms that shared similar body plans. This conclusion seems to be valid from either an ID or a naturalist perspective, too. I'm not saying it cannot mean they're "related", I'm just saying that to conclude that merely on the basis that the information content is similar is, well, jumping to conclusions.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Mario A. Lopez
Ciencia Alternativa

First off, let me begin by stating clearly that I do NOT believe that the current data supports a common ancestry between humans and chimps. The gap between the Australopithecines and the genus Homo is enormous. Even the so-called "transitional" Homo Habilis has been fervently debated, and now vastly considered to be in the genus Australopithecus [see: Wood, B. and Collard, M., "The Human Genus," Science, 284:65-71 (1999) and Hawks, J., Hunley, K., Sang-Hee, L., Wolpoff, M., "Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Evolution," Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17(1):2-22 (2000)]

The sudden appearance of the genus Homo suggests that large amounts of information was infused into the biosphere. This is much like the picture we see with all of the higher taxonomic categories.

Moreover, there are many other factors involved that would require one to revise the current evolutionary paradigm (i.e. gradual vs. abrupt appearance of larger brain sizes) [see material on ASPM genes] (or Chromosomal fusion vs. gene duplication).

The similarities between chimps, humans, and mice, simply complicate things even further for an evolutionary scenario. Research now shows that there is more information in the genome than previously thought, and it has a lot to do with the 3D structure of proteins and their very specific folds. Furthermore, the amino acid sequence and its motion has also shed new light on the information content and its relation to function.

I think the more we uncover, the more complicated the picture gets.

I hope this helps.

If DNA represents "instructions" for building a living organism (and both sides agree on this) then it follows that the information content would be similar between organisms that shared similar body plans. This conclusion seems to be valid from either an ID or a naturalist perspective, too. I'm not saying it cannot mean they're "related", I'm just saying that to conclude that merely on the basis that the information content is similar is, well, jumping to conclusions.

Okay, I guess that makes sense. The question that comes up then is how someone can decide if species with very similar genetics are truly related or not. If the conclusion is valid from either an ID or Darwinian viewpoint, then there would seem to be some kind of way to help witness to the folks that are trying to decide which is right.

One approach would be to analyze creatures with similar features that are also physically isolated from each other. Then look for evidence of Designer Reuse or Front-loading. If the same information is being used in divergent lines that would be unexpected from a Darwinian viewpoint. Or at least weaving stories using HGT or convergent evolution would sound fairly lame.

Patrick, I suppose that would work in limited cases, like the wolves someone wrote about earlier. But I was more driving towards something to work in all cases, not just cases where animals look similar but are physically isolated. Man and monkeys both supposedly originated in the same area, so how do you test them?

Also, the idea of looking for reuse or frontloading is pretty cool. What are the signs of designer reuse that are distinct from what you would see in common descent?

When trying to interpret evidence for ID hypotheses we're likely to find evidence that is compatible with multiple views.

For example, chromosomal sex determination in the platypus was discovered to be a combination of mammal and bird systems. However, the platypus genome also features characteristics that are not present in other mammals, such as a complex translocation system.

This is a problem for Darwinists, since their historical narrative (Darwinian Common Descent) says that "birds are thought to have evolved from dinosaurs in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, and that mammals are thought to have evolved from a reptile-like group of animals called the therapsids in the Triassic about 220 million years ago. No competent evolutionist has ever claimed that platypuses are a link between birds and mammals." That's straight from TO.

For a while I've been musing what might happen if the genomes for animals not considered to be related were compared. My predication would be that we’d find evidence for front-loading, other scenarios, and information re-use in general. Originally I was looking into North American squirrels and Australian sugar gliders but a platypus will do.

For more examples, apparently spindle cell neurons have been discovered in whales, which otherwise (as far as I'm aware) have only been found in primates. And the eyeless, earless sea urchin has genes that in humans are involved in detecting sight and sound.

To quote:

"Spindle neurons probably first appeared in the common ancestor of hominids, humans and great apes about 15 million years ago, the researchers said — they are not seen in lesser apes or monkeys. In cetaceans they would have evolved earlier, possibly as early as 30 million years ago, the researchers said. Either the spindle neurons were only kept in the animals with the largest brains or they evolved several times independently."

Now all of sudden Darwinists are claiming even more convergent evolution. Whenever such features cannot be explained by Darwinian common descent the convergence card is played. But are we really seeing Darwinian common descent or are we imposing our own pattern upon a mosiac of life? Why not Designer Reuse or Universal Front-Loading? Notice I say "Darwinian common descent", since the universal front-loading scenario includes common descent and yet such patterns are not unexpected.

News related to Front-loading:

http://telicthoughts.com/category/front-loading/

Oh, and I still haven't found time to write a mini-blog on information and CSI. But I heard that Sal Cordova is already working on such an article. On top of that here is an easier to comprehend article written by Dembski:

http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm

I could not find a simple definition of what ID proponents mean by Front Loading. Can you provide one?

I'm just guessing, but is Front Loading the mechanism that bacteria can seemingly acquire immunity to antibiotics. Evolutionist theorists state that they are evolving to become immune to the substance that was once deadly.

I've heard a more plausible theory that the Intelligent Designer created the life-form with an innate immunity to all substances that he knew the organism would ever be likely to encounter. It merely takes some exposure to that substance to activate the immunity.

For example, every bacterium has the potential to be resistant to Penecilin, it just takes a few generations of time for the innate ability which has been front-loaded by the designer to be activated.

This kind of knowledge is likely to be a big advantage to ID. Instead of costly trial and error research to find new drugs we might be able to take advantage of front loading theory to go directly to a novel drug. Also if we find a drug for which the bacterial genome has not been front-loaded then we would have achieved a wonderful thing: An antibiotic which never causes resistance.

Thanks

"Front-loading is the idea that the first organisms were designed for future states and contingencies. Front-loading encompasses two related, yet logically distinct propositions. The first proposition is that life was designed to adapt to changing conditions, having been equipped with various mechanisms that facilitate evolution. The second proposition is that life was designed so as to make some specific event more likely, such as the evolution of multicellular organisms.

Rather than being an idea based strictly on the preservation of genetic information, front-loading explores dynamic processes such as extensibility, robustness, flexibility, modularity, constrained optimization, intrinsic control, prescribed information, compartmentalization, and pre-adaptation."

Front-loading can be combined with a single LUCA and multiple LUCA's of varying complexity. On a side note, the immune system and how it functions is described in an easy to comprehend fashion in Behe's Darwin's Black Box.

Mahatma Gandhi was not Prime Minister of India