Language- Evolution By Design

-
Alan "Chumley" Fox is so clueless that he thinks evolution and design are mutually exclusive. Well that is to be expected seeing that he thinks evolutionary and genetic algorithms are examples of Darwinian evolution. Clueless indeed. But anyway...

Chumley has a new post over on the septic zone titled Language: evolution or design. Yet is it clear that humans are designers. Humans created language and it has evolved due to artificial selection.

That is an example of evolution by design.

Zachriel, Proud to be a Pathological Liar

-
Yes, this is not news- all who know Zachriel knows it is a liar and scientifically illiterate.
 Now Zachriel sez:

ID hasn't gone away just because the scientific evidence supports the Theory of Evolution.

That is because there isn't any evidence to support the alleged theory of evolution. No one can even produce testable hypotheses for unguided/ blind watchmaker evolution. That means it is outside of science.

But I could be wrong- please produce a testable hypothesis for unguided/ blind watchmaker evolution producing ATP synthase and I will post a huge apology to Zachriel.


ID is based on three premises and the inference that follows (DeWolf et al., Darwinism, Design and Public Education, pg. 92):

1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.

2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.

3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.

4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.

Those are the core concepts of ID and to falsify Intelligent Design all one has to do is demonstrate that natural selection can produce irreducibly complex biological systems.

Picking on ID is not positive evidence for evolutionism, blind watchmaker evolution.

Intelligent Design- What do the words mean?

-
It is sad, but true, that there are anti-IDists that are so angry at the world that they have difficulty with the simple aspects of understanding their opponents. Take the words "Intelligent Design" for example. They just can't figure out what it means nor what it claims even though it has been spelled out such that grade school kids get it.

William Dembski says it all in Intelligent Design is NOT Optimal Design:

But why then place the adjective "intelligent" in front of the noun "design"? Doesn't design already include the idea of intelligent agency, so that juxtaposing the two becomes an exercise in redundancy? Not at all. Intelligent design needs to be distinguished from apparent design on the one hand and optimal design on the other. Apparent design looks designed but really isn't. Optimal design is perfect design and hence cannot exist except in an idealized realm (sometimes called a "Platonic heaven"). Apparent and optimal design empty design of all practical significance. 

...

Within biology, intelligent design holds that a designing intelligence is indispensable for explaining the specified complexity of living systems. Nevertheless, taken strictly as a scientific theory, intelligent design refuses to speculate about the nature of this designing intelligence. Whereas optimal design demands a perfectionistic, anal-retentive designer who has to get everything just right, intelligent design fits our ordinary experience of design, which is always conditioned by the needs of a situation and therefore always falls short of some idealized global optimum.  

Obviously, in that context, design would mean: (scroll down to design noun- full definition of design)

5 a :  an underlying scheme that governs functioning, developing, or unfolding :  pattern, motif design

6 :  the arrangement of elements or details in a product or work of art

And taken together Intelligent Design would relate to all the definitions of design that are telic in nature.

It is the same with the word "information". When IDists use it all of a sudden our opponents start having tardgasms even though our use of the word is the ordinary everyday use.

If evoTARDs are that clueless that they can't use a dictionary to figure out word usage, there is no way they can understand science.

Evidence That Kevin R. McCarthy is an Ignorant Ass

-
The following is Kevin's test for ID . I will explain why it is total bullshit and I have explained it to Kevin, several times. That means he chooses to be a douche-bag asshole. Kevin writes:

I have suggested (several times) comparing a DNA sequence or protein sequence that is known to be designed (because a human designed it) and a totally random sequence of a similar length.

And I have explained to you why that is total bullshit. For one ID does not claim to be able to detect design from random. And CONTEXT is important. DNA exists in living organisms. We observe DNA and we observe that it is involved in processes required for living organisms to live and reproduce.

In this way, design principles could at least be compared between totally random and totally designed.

That is a strawman. ID is about what is designed and what nature,operating freely, can produce, ie blind and undirected processes. And doesn't your position say it can determine random from designed? I believe it does. Strange Kevin always forgets to mention that.

Now, ID proponents have said that this doesn't work because there must also be "specification". And one is left to wonder how that is quantified. All of the ID proponents I've read about this (including some commentors on this blog) have said that, for all practical purposes, specification is "it looks designed for a purpose".

Wrong again, moron. Crick is the one who gave us biological information-

Information means here the precise determination of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or on amino acid residues in the protein.  Sir Francis Crick in "Central Dogma"

Leslie Orgel gave us specified complexity:

In brief, living organisms are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals are usually taken as the prototypes of simple well-specified structures, because they consist of a very large number of identical molecules packed together in a uniform way. Lumps of granite or random mixtures of polymers are examples of structures that are complex but not specified. The crystals fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; the mixtures of polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity.

Kevin's ignorance runs deep.

What these proponents completely fail to realize is that evolution produces results that are extremely similar (in many cases superior) to designed systems.

What Kevin fails to realize is that he is equivocating. Only Intelligent Design evolution produces results that are similar to or better than human designed systems. IOW they are designed systems.

So, the ID proponents really must talk about the actual intelligence, because evolution is shown to be a designer of some note, including novel systems and irreducibly complex systems.

Unguided evolution has never designed anything. Natural selection is not a designer nor a designer mimic.

So, back to your question, I would propose that if an ID proponent could describe a method, usable by anyone, by which they could correctly choose between designed and random at a better than 50% rate (although, it should be expected to be closer to 90%).

There are tried and true design detection techniques that are used to determine nature operating freely from agency activity. That is what ID is about. The problem is Kevin doesn't have any clue and doesn't care.

Then we could compare systems that were designed (again, by humans) and evolved. If they could consistently determine the difference between evolved and designed systems at that same rate (again, using some presently non-existent ID principles), then I would be willing to admit that there is something to ID principles.

Systems that evolve by design are designed systems. And ID is not anti-evolution. Kevin is so retarded, so set against reality, that he refuses to grasp what ID is even though he has been told many times.

Not only has no ever even attempted this, I have posited to several mathematicians that such a test is fundamentally impossible and they have tentatively agreed with me. Without a rigorous mathematical proof, there's no way to be sure, but it seems highly unlikely.

It is a bullshit test devised by a totally ignorant asshole. What do you expect? 

Through statistical measurement of large groups of numbers, there might be a way to tell random strings from designed strings, but that's not an ID principle.

Actually it is an ID principle. As I said, Kevin's ignorance runs deep.

And only a cowardly liar would say that we claim:

"If we defeat evolution, then design wins be default."

ID has plenty of positive evidence. Unfortunately Kevin doesn't know anything about evidence.

Take THAT Al Gore- Polar Bear Facts Kick Al's Big Butt

-
What is Al Gore going to do? This reprort just exposes him as a bigger butt-head than already perceived.

First a little introduction for the author:

Dr Susan Crockford is an evolutionary biologist and an expert on polar bear evolution. She has been working for 35 years in archaeozoology, paleozoology and forensic zoology and is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She is the author of Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species. 

Now the article-

Ten Good Reasons Not To Worry About Polar Bears (and one very good reason to still worry)

Looks like over-hunting was the reason for the population decline. That and a lack of food due to thicker ice. Now hunting is regulated and the populations are recovering. And climate change had absolutely NOTHING to do with it.

The one reason to still be very worried about polar bears- they will kill you and eat you.

Reliable Methodology for Detecting Design

-
Well first you have to eliminate necessity and chance as possible causes of what you are investigating.

The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ' s Black Box: "Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.” That is the positive case.

We do not need to know who the designer was to do any of that.

What good is a design inference? For one it tells us that necessity and chance were not up to the task. It tells us that some agency was responsible and therefor any causal story of the object/ structure/ event has to reference that fact. And guess what? It matters to any investigation how what is being investigated came to be the way it is.

IDists have determined that living organisms are designed because they meet the above criteria. IDists have determined the subsystems inside of living organisms are designed because they meet the above criteria.

Heck the anti-ID assholes don't even have a methodology to determine if blind and unguided processes can produce a living organism nor the subsystems. So what do they do? Attack ID with their ignorant spewage and lies.

For example Kevin McCarthy is full of ignorance and lies- read it for yourself- every "point" he tries to make has been answered. But Kevin will never know because he chooses to be willfully ignorant- Yes, You Must Have a Designer.

Strange that when all it takes to get rid of ID is to actually stand up and present positive evidence for blind and unguided processes we get bullshit ignorance instead.

Look Kevin, attacking ID will NEVER produce positive evidence for your lame position. Never.

The design inference is based on our knowledge of cause and effect relationships. For centuries that knowledge has helped us detect design in the absence of a designer.

So to sum it all up- Yes we have detected design in living organisms, living organisms themselves and in the universe. OTOH dickheads like Kevin don't even have a methodology for testing the claims of their position. They are totally ignorant of science- they must be to be in their position thinking that sheer dumb luck is a scientific PoV.

Kevin R. McCarthy is Scientifically Illiterate

-
Kevin has a new post he titled Smilodon’s Retreat to Anti-Science Proponents. It starts with:

I am a lover of science and a skeptic. I work very hard to promoted science, reason, and logic. In return, I am harassed, threatened, called a multitude of names and promoted on websites that specialize in sending out anti-science trolls. All because I disagree with someone’s pet notions.

Unfortunately Kevin has proven time and again that he doesn't know what science is. And seeing that he accepts materialism and evolutionism that also proves that he isn't a skeptic. And the treason you are attacked is because you spew lies and nonsense wrt other peoples' positions. It isn't for merely disagreeing- grow up.

The problem is with you, Kevin. You spew shit out of your ass and think it is science or refutes what we say. And when we point out what your position actually posits you call us liars and strawmen makers- even after we present references to support our claims! You are nothing but an ignorant asshole and obviously you are proud of it.

Science does indeed support Intelligent Design. Science also supports that natural causes, like the Sun's output, have more effects on our climate than what we are doing. OTOH science does not support that differing accumulations of genetic accidents produced the diversity of life starting from some prokaryotic-like organisms.

Also we know nothing will convince you that you are wrong, Kevin. However we will continue to point out your many flaws in your posts.

There aren't any peer-reviewed papers that support evolutionism. If there were Kevin would just present them. Ooops, Kevin doesn't even understand what evolutionism posits- and that is pathetic. No one even uses evolutionism- it is a useless heuristic.

So the bottom line is Kevin is a clueless ass who loves to spew.

Kevin R. McCarthy is a Retarded Liar

-
Kevin has been trying to review Steve Meyer's "Darwin's Doubt". However, like a child he appears to read a sentence and then respond to it, making it a slow effort. Not only that he has totally fucked up just about everything he has read. Now he is throwing hiisy fits because. like a child, he is unable to grasp science and unable to understand what Meyer said, even though he quotes him. For example Meyer wrote:

Sometimes similarity appears between species where it cannot be explained by inheritance from a common ancestor (e.g., the similar forelimbs on moles and mole crickets) and, at the very least, there are other possible explanations for sequence similarity.

Got that? Similarity NOT DUE TO A COMMON ANCESTOR.

So what does Kevin the retard say about it:

I have to repeat this. No one, except for creationists whose goal is to confuse rather than educate, thinks that the shovel-like shapes of mole and mole cricket forelimbs are due to common ancestry.

What a dumbass. Meyer's point was about similarities not due common ancestry. Kevin, being an ignorant asshole on an agenda- to confuse rather than educate- is too stupid to grasp that point.

Then Meyer also says that a common design can also explain similarities. Kevin exposes his scientific illiteracy asking about the designer and such, not realizing that with science all of that comes after design has beeen detected. He also sez that no one has produced positive evidence for ID, which is a lie. The problem is Kevin doesn't know what evidence is nor how to assess it if he did know.

But anyway Meyer makes the point that there are other known causes of similarity, Kevin ends up agreeing with him, but somehow Meyer is stupid and wrong.

Darwinian Evolution on a Chip?

-
EvoTARDs are so clueless that they just go by whatever is in the title of a paper without any regards to the content. Case in point Darwinian Evolution on a Chip. The title is just right for evoTARDs, however the content demonstrates that Darwinian evolution wasn't present.

For one RNAs do not reproduce. The RNAs in question were reproduced artificially. That is not Darwinian.

The final evolved enzyme contained a set of 11 mutations that conferred a 90-fold improvement in substrate utilization, coinciding with the applied selective pressure.

Wait, Darwinian evolution isn't like that- it doesn't respond to the environment.

So yes, change did happen but was it Darwinian? And why does all change have to be Darwinian evolution? Why are biologists so full of Darwin that they can't understand that there can be evolution without Darwin/ neo-darwinism?

It's as if these guys have bought the strawman of the fixity of species, including RNAs.

And in the end the RNA ligase was still an RNA ligase, albeit an improved RNA ligase wrt that artificial environment.

CO2 and Global Warming

-
Yes CO2 is a greenhouse gas. However wrt the Earth CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are measured in parts per MILLION. And there isn't any evidence that demonstrates the Earth is so sensitive to CO2 that increases in parts per MILLION can change the climate.

I doubt anyone can demonstrate that a 100 ppm increase can add more than 0.1 degree F to the global temperature if all else stays equal (which we know it does not). There are just too many factors wrt weather and climate to say one of those factors is the key (well the Sun would be one factor that could be the key).

Look, before 1880 the Earth was cold. Not cold enough for an ice age but cold enough that normally unfrozen rivers, froze. The American Revolution was fought in such a colder clime. It wasn't a nice place to live in.

Now the Earth is recovering from that and it is less than 2 degrees F warmer now than it was in 1880- well it all depends on where you are because the warming is really a regional thing. What does that mean? Well last year the contintental US was colder than usual while the East (Europe and Asia) was warmer than usual. Global warming allegedly did that. But most likely it was just changing weather patterns that did it. "Yeah but the changing weather pattern is due to global warming"- possibly but it still produces regional warming, not global.

If CO2 concentrations were as powerful as the alarmists say then global temperatures should be climbing every year and we should never have a year coldeer than the one before it. Yet that is exactly what we have- CO2 continues to rise but the global temp does not-> it still fluctuates, sometimes knocking off half of the alleged warming in one year!

CO2, measured in parts per million is not the issue. Real pollution is.

Nicholass J. Matzke- Still Cluless

-
Nick responds:

What do you think Meyer's rhetoric about "assume a gene" means?? It means that Meyer thinks evolutionary biologists are just making stuff up when they conclude that two different genes with similar sequences descend from a common ancestral gene via gene duplication + mutational divergence. If he accepts that these processes are real, then his "assume a gene" rhetoric doesn't make any sense.

Context is important Nick. It all depends on what genes in what species. There isn't any science behind saying all similar genes arose via gene duplication and subsequent diverging mutations, especially when there are other mechanisms to explain the similarity.

So only in certain cases does Meyer think that evolutionary biologists are making stuff up. People can accept that gene duplications coupled with diverging mutations can occur without believing that all similar genes arose that way.

IOW, Nick, you are just an ignorant ass and apparently proud of it.

Nicholass J. Matzke is Lying Again

-
Nick just shut up- you are an asshole. Nick spews:

The ID movement has basically been trying to pretend and gene duplication + divergence etc doesn't exist since the moment they adopted the information in DNA = ID argument in the 1980s.

It is very telling that Nick the dick doesn't provide a reference for this spewage. That is because it is a lie.

Both IDists and Creationists have known about gene duplications for decades. The argument is how was it determined that gene duplication followed by function altering mutations is a chance event. Nick sure as hell can't say.

The problem for unguided evolution doing that with duplicated genes is highlighted in Waiting for Two Mutations- there just isn't enough time to duplicate and alter all the genes evos say arose that way.

So the problems are they cannot show that gene duplications are chance events- they don't have a methodology for doing so because all they have are bald declarations. They don't have enough time to get a duplicated gene changed and integrated into the system. And unless the duplicates are in the developmental genes, it has no way to change the organism in the ways evolutionism requires.

ETA

Common design explains the appearance of duplicated genes in different types of species. We have actual experience taking parts from one machine and slightly modified it for a similar use in another. We have also taken a part and used it in different applications without modifying the part.

Larry Moran, Obsessed with Junk DNA and Pissing in the Wind

-
For some reason Larry Moran is obsessed with what he considers to be junk DNA.  Some of that could be because some IDists have said there should be little to none. IMHO ID doesn't say anything about it. ID is not about optimal design.

That said, given a design scenario we mere humans have no idea what DNA's entire repertoire is. We aren't in any position to say what is and isn't junk because we have no idea how it all really works. Heck given a design scenario even I can think of possible uses for what Larry thinks is junk- information storage, structural considerations, future considerations and data headers/ markers.

But that isn't even the point. We will gladly grant that Larry's unguided evolution can produce junk DNA. But we await Larry showing us that unguided evolution can produce DNA with functional sequence complexity (Crick's biological information) in the first place. We also await Larry's testable model for unguided evolution producing anything of note, ie something we could use to see if it is up to the task at hand-> the diversity of life from some allegedly much simpler beginnings.

Sure unguided evolution is great at breaking things and it could even be a good junk collector. What else do you have, Larry?

The more Larry Moran talks about unguided evolution, the more impotent it sounds.

What Cowardly Kevin McCarthy will Never Do

-
Kevin the coward McCarthy thinks he is writing a scathing review of Meyer's "Darwin's Doubt". Yet it is a given that very few people will ever read it and Meyer definitely won't. Kevin is too much of a coward to actually try to bring it to Meyer's attention.

All Kevin is doing is posting to the choir. I started responding to Kevin's bullshit filled diatribe then figured why even bother with someone who is so illiterate and ignorant? Kevin is just a coward who prevents real responses on his blog to his nonsense.

The sad part is that Meyer had a debate with a scientist about the book and said scientist made it clear that Meyer's book had good scholarship. Yet Kevin the nobody sez otherwise. Too bad for Kevin that he can't produce any evidence for unguided evolution getting beyond the given starting point of prokaryotes. That alone should send up red flags wrt his "review". It's as if Kevin is retarded when it comes to science.

Kevin, you can find as many alleged mistakes with Meyer as you want, it will never help you support your unsupportable position. Only actual evidence will do that and yours doesn't have any. Heck Kevin is so stupid and willfully ignorant that he doesn't know what ID posits nor does he understand what evolutionism posits. And he is fine with that.

So how about it Kevin? Do you have the sack to actually bring your bullshit review to the attention of the author or will you remain an ignored ignoramus?