1) if I take away the reactants, there's less output; hence, less entropy change per enzyme molecule per time.
You are so confused. Less output does not mean a change in the output distribution. (If there is no output at all, then the output distribution cannot be calculated, but that's irrelevant.)
Does it therefore have "less information"? If so, where is the information, in the reactants or in the enzyme?
I actually wrote a note in my previous message stating the obvious fact that measuring the output distribution will tell you the minimum specified complexity of the enzyme (e.g. if you remove some of the source elements then the measured value will be less than the enzyme's actual value), but I removed the note for two reasons before posting the message:
a) I wanted to make it as simple as possible for you, since you seem to have a really hard time grasping anything, and
b) it was in the text I linked to, and I even quoted it in an earlier message ("[...] the information content of the enzyme itself is at least the maximum information gained in transforming the substrate distribution into the product distribution").
2) similarly, if I lower the temperature or change the pH of the environment, to reduce the reaction rate [...]
More of the same confusion on your part. The reaction rate does not change the output distribution. (It's true that the reaction of some elements isn't linearly proportional to the reaction of some others with respect to changes in the environment, but that just means it must be considered in the output distribution measurements. This was probably not what you meant, though, but only the reaction rate. Anyway, both are irrelevant.)
3) Entropy is an extensive quantity, proportional to the size of the system.
The entropy of a constant relative distribution is constant. Read any book on information theory if you're confused. Or you might want to just check out the wikipedia entry on the topic.
4) If the enzyme keeps reacting for a long period of time[...]
Again, the time is irrelevant.
A quantity you call "specified complexity" which depends [on external factors] doesn't seem to say much about the actual genetic content of the organism
I hope this message has shown you that specified complexity does not depend on external factors as you described.
Once again you've misunderstood it, and again you assume that you've understood it correctly and it must be everyone else who aren't making sense.
If the enzyme returns to the same state, it has the same entropy, because the entropy of the enzyme is a function of the state.
If you by "the state of an enzyme" refer to the enzyme's characteristics (and thus the information it contains) then you are correct. I assume you do mean that, and in that case what you said is obviously correct, and your implying that I (and Spetner) doesn't realize this just shows how extremely biased you are. Not only are you copiously biased, you also can't read, but let me anyway quote Spetner for you once more: "Fortunately, for my purposes, I need only consider the change in the information in an enzyme caused by a mutation."
I don't know if I can make it any more simple than it already is, but I'll try:
Some particular genetic sequence causes an enzyme to be constructed. Let's call this enzyme A. A mutation occurs in that genetic sequence. The mutated sequence causes a similar, but not equivalent, enzyme to be constructed. Let's call this enzyme B. If A in this case is more specific with which of the substrates it will "react with" than B then A is said to have more(/higher?) specified complexity. This can be measured by measuring the difference between the entropy of the input substrate distribution and the entropy of the product distribution. Let's say the entropy of the input distribution is a certain value (e.g. log n <=> each element is equally probable). If A has more(/higher?) specified complexity than B then A will cause an output distribution with a lower entropy (i.e. some output elements are less probable and some are more probable) than what B would cause. The extreme would be 0 (i.e. one output element has the probability 1 and the others 0), which would mean no randomness at all.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I inadvertently mislead you in my earlier message by talking about the entropy difference of the enzymes when I should have said the entropy difference of the output distributions of the enzymes. (These can, but don't have to, be equivalent, so it would probably have been better of me to use "specified complexity" instead of "entropy" regarding the enzymes.)
REALITY makes it so, I'm just reporting it. If you don't comprehend REALITY, that is your problem not mine. If you can't realize meaningless bullshit, that's your loss.
Once again you are trying to bullshit your way through things. I cannot fathom how anyone would be so stupid that he would think that another person would actually fall for bullshit like that when said for the 10th time although he didn't the 9 previous times.
Or maybe I should start making the same kind of non-arguments as you do: You are ignorant of facts. You're too stupid to understand that NDT is based on fluff and just-so stories. Reality shows that IDT is correct. If you don't comprehend reality, that's your problem. If you can't realize fluff and just-so stories, that's your loss. (Bear in mind that this is not how I really think. I think this kind of talk is just fluff, bullshitting and/or nonsense.)
The entropy change due to enzyme action is simple physical chemistry.
Sigh.. There is no entropy change due to enzyme action when you include the enzyme itself, since the information that the product distribution has gained is of course already present in the enzyme! (Hence: "[...] the information content of the enzyme itself is at least the maximum information gained in transforming the substrate distribution into the product distribution".)
The relevant entropy difference is between two such enzymes of which one has mutated.
Seriously, man, you have a really bad comprehension disability. You can't understand what a discussion is about, you can't understand logical reasoning, you apparently can't understand the point of pretty much anything. But that's not the problem. Your main problem is that you seem to think you've understood it all, when it's evident that you haven't. Like some sort of inverted Socrates (you know, "[...] I know that I know nothing"). Really, it's OK to have a flawed understanding of something, but it's really stupid to be convinced that one's understanding of something must necessarily be the correct one.
Maybe it's that you're so convinced that any IDT proponent isn't making any sense that when you can't make sense of something such a person says you're convinced that it in fact doesn't make sense. Such a misunderstanding would of course feed itself until you've become convinced that all IDT proponents are complete nutcases.
The only possible physical argument [...] THERE IS NO ARGUMENT [...]
I suggest you take a minute or two to analyze how and why you made such bold statements and far-reaching conclusions that you did, based on a simple misunderstanding of which entropy H denotes.
You know, I have found that life is much easier if I don't care who was correct first as long as we get closer to the truth. Never let prejudice (nor pride) get in the way.
FIND A BOOK WRITTEN BY SCIENTISTS (not a dumbed-down textbook) ON EVOLUTION. OPEN IT. READ IT. YOU WILL FIND THE ANSWER THERE.
All books I've seen (not including dumbed-down ones or ones written by I.D.ers/creationists) on evolution that touches the issue presupposes NDT being correct and only tries to discern how it happened. From such a position it is logically impossible to come to the conclusion that NDT is wrong, even if it is wrong. If NDT in fact is wrong, the closest one could get to the truth would be that some facts are wrong or that some interpretations are wrong or inadequate. All of these have happened (but note that I'm aware of the fact that this doesn't prove that NDT is wrong).
In spite of using a very narrow definition of "science", geneticist Richard Lewontin is much more honest than the average evolutionist, as indicated by the following quote from him:
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Either you're desperately trying to change the subject or you're seeing something I'm not. I said that a short introduction to measuring specified complexity could be found in the "Information Content of Proteins" section of the text I linked to. It appears to me that you completely ignored that section, instead changing the subject to parts of that discussion irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is whether specified complexity can be measured or not. Either you're making huge logical jumps or you're just trying to bullshit your (shifting) point through.
To me it seems that you in general make the following (or similar) invalid reasoning: NDT is correct. NDT and arguments against NDT are mutually exclusive. Therefore arguments against NDT are wrong. I.D.ers show arguments against NDT. Since the arguments are, as shown, wrong I.D.ers are wrong (and idiots for not noticing/admitting it). Thus it's been shown that there are no valid arguments against NDT. Thus NDT is correct.
EVEN IF you choose some arbitrary definition that allows you to measure the "semantic characteristics" in a sample or instance of DNA
Now you're confused again (or maybe I should say "still"). "Semantic characteristics" of information is not something that can be measured (in much the same way you can't measure "MP3" in "MP3 player"). It just denotes that information is measured as specified complexity instead of the more commonly (at least in comp.sci.) used definition of complexity by improbability (by Claude Shannon).
If you want to know how to measure the amount of specified complexity I suggest you go to that library of yours and look for some books on information theory. Or if you want a short introduction you could read the discussion under "Information Content of Proteins"here.
And then you could start providing something to back up your claims that all the arguments I've told I.D.ers have are invalid. Or perhaps you'd like to comment my original comment that AeroIllini was talking out of his ass when he claimed that irreducible complexity doesn't exist?
And then you could read a few books on I.D. so that you would actually know what you're talking about. And if you read those I.D. books, and still think NDT (=neo-darwinian theory) has something meaningful to say, you just haven't understood I.D., or you just want to believe in the NDT because I.D. bothers you in some psychological way.
GO TO THE LIBRARY. FIND A BOOK WRITTEN BY SCIENTISTS (not a dumbed-down textbook) ON EVOLUTION. OPEN IT. READ IT. YOU WILL FIND THE ANSWER THERE.
In my experience, all evolution books containing arguments by I.D.ers are dumbed down and contains only straw man refutations. If you know of an exception then say so, but to imply that any "book written by scientists on evolution" contains arguments by I.D.ers is simply ignorant.
Since you appear to be completely incapable of comprehending a discussion I'll break some of it down for you:
I said that "AFAIK most scientists agree that information in DNA has semantic characteristics", and then I listed five more arguments by I.D.ers.
You then said I was ignorant of the facts. You didn't provide anything back it up.
I then said that "if some fact is missing or incorrect you are welcome to show the real facts".
Instead of showing any real facts you then instead started spewing out irrelevant shit about 1+1=3 and naturalists' fact-collecting, as if that was in some way related to the arguments by I.D.ers that use the very same facts.
Then up to this point you've refused to provide anything to back up any of your accusations.
You blabber about "loss of information" in evolution which is a MEANINGLESS PHRASE, as I have said before.
As I've said before, if you disagree that the information in DNA has semantic characteristics, or if you disagree that the human DNA contains information not present in the pre-life earth, then you are welcome to make your case. Just saying so doesn't make it so, although you seem to believe it does.
Haeckel's embryo drawings are hardly some crucial link in evolutionary theory that, if disproven, take down the entire structure.
You say that as if I had claimed something along those lines when I in fact haven't. Isn't broad text comprehension abilities a requirement for getting a Ph.D. in that uni of yours? It sure is at mine.
At the very basic level, evolution by natural selection is *almost* at the level of a mathematical theorem; heritable variation causing variation in reproductive success (given the environment) + reproductive capacity much larger than the ability of the environment to sustain it = evolution of population toward increased "fitness" for the environment.
Nobody denies this. However, all observed cases where the amount of information changes involves the loss of information (e.g. when bacteria become more resistant to penicillin when its penicillinase-regulating gene breaks). That's not evolution in the "goo-to-you" sense, which would require a shitload of increases of information.
Besides, everyone that has ever been involved in AI knows the unfortunate fact that few fitness landscapes (="fitness" plotted in an N-dimensional coordinate system where the "up" dimension denotes "fitness" and the rest N-1 are the relevant variables) are shaped like pyramids. Instead they have many local maximums, and the (natural) selection tries its utmost to stay in one, working against finding the global maximum.
[blah blah] speciation.
Speciation as such is irrelevant. Lock a bunch of cats into a confined space and you have a new species by definition, since they are incapable of breeding with cats outside that space.
Besides, even you must be aware of the fact that creationists firmly believe that e.g. all feline species have "evolved" from only a few specimens.
You want evidence for evolution? Go to the fucking science library at a university, you dumbshit, instead of asking some guy named "OOGG_THE_CAVEMAN" to do the work for you.
Once again you display a remarkable incapability to comprehend simple written text. My English isn't the best (after all, it's only my third language), but I'm quite certain that the following quote shouldn't be interpreted as me (indirectly) asking you to provide proof of evolution: "[...] claims there are factual and logical errors but doesn't provide anything what so ever to back it up, even when being asked to do so several times".
some nutcases continue to make many of the same arguments that were made decades ago
Are you perhaps refering to the evolution-supporting text books that up to this day continues to contain fraudulent data, such as Haeckel's embryo drawings that were shown to be incorrect over a decade ago?
And, along the way, I've got a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university.
If that indeed was true (which I doubt), what does it say of that Ivy League university when they gave a Ph.D. to someone who claims there are factual and logical errors but doesn't provide anything what so ever to back it up, even when being asked to do so several times? And one who doesn't even know what a discussion he is participating in is about.
No, wait, maybe you're an I.D.er who tries to give evolutionists a bad name by pretending to be a really moronic one. At least that's more plausible than being just an idiot trying to yank people's chains, considering how little time and effort you get me to spend when you don't provide any substantial arguments.
More bullshit. You still haven't shown a single statement of mine to be wrong. Now you don't even tell which statements you think are incorrect. Are you by any chance a 13 year old brat that have watched a few documentaries on TV and now think you've figured everything out? That's how you come across. (Actually I would think you were a troll if you weren't so bad at trolling.)
Again you are trying to bullshit. If some fact is missing or incorrect you are welcome to show the real facts. Nobody will ever believe your "you are wrong"-type pseudo-arguments.
They don't have an information argument, for the Nth time.
For the Nth, yes they do. AFAIK most scientists agree that information in DNA has semantic characteristics. If you can show that this is not the case (or how it has arisen) then do, but don't say just "you're wrong".
Here are some other arguments they have:
Irreducible complexity. (I already touched this issue. AeroIllini claimed there is no such thing, and he is simply dead wrong which he rightfully admitted.)
Apparent design. (Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences, cryptanalysis, SETI, etc. The same methods are used to determine design in nature.)
Abrupt appearance of fossil phyla.
The fine tuning of the universe.
Evolution has never been observed. (In fact, not even successful simulations have been made. (And no, the overly simplistic and inaccurate simulations that Dawkins tout do not count.))
You have not stated a coherent objection; instead you said something like "information surely increases, when they have not observed such a thing."
AeroIllini implied that I.D.ers include a supernatural cause in the equation for no logical reason, and I showed an example that invalidates his claim. Also, to clarify, I did not claim that information increases.
There is no need for "information" in any rigorous sense to increase in biological evolution, and certainly not in any way that would violate physical laws of entropy.
So what is encoded in the DNA of living creatures? Most scientists, including evolutionists, do think it's information. Some say it's only order, but that doesn't invalidate my point that I.D.ers don't believe in a supernatural cause without any reason. And anyone familiar with I.D. (having read only evolutionists' distorted reproduction of I.D. arguments obviously doesn't count) knows that the information argument is not the only one they have that points to some supernatural cause.
Any argument to that effect would work equally well against the following truth:
"Two parents cannot combine to produce more than two (non-twin) children, because that would cause a net increase in information."
That not a truth at all. I have no idea why you would say it is. The genotype of children if no more an increase in net information than shaking a kaleidoscope is.
[...] you would have to clarify what you mean by "information" enough to distinguish between your statement and my reductio ad absurdam (sic)
Of course we would have to agree on the various definitions of words if we were actually having this debate, but we aren't. I'm simply trying to show that others have debated this (and thus all relevant definitions should be taken from those debates if they are needed/wanted).
Your objections against evolution have no substance.
My objections against evolution?!? Which objections would that be??? Apparently you don't even know what we are talking about! Your wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.
So you claim that you can refute what I said, but that you won't. And I'm supposed to believe that? OK, whatever you say. You're the man with The Truth(tm).
There are so many contradictions and logical fallacies in your post here that I am simply going to ignore most of it.
In debates evolutionists love to do elephant hurling like that, and if that doesn't work they go on to straw men and/or personal insults.
Since my post wasn't very long it wouldn't take you much effort to point out those "contradictions and logical fallacies" that you claim there were many of.
"In fact, the "God-of-the-gaps" theory is quite unscientific and illogical, and, contrary to what you seem believe, is widely unpopular among I.D.ers (and creationists), for exactly those reasons."
News flash: then these people don't believe in intelligent design, or creationism, for that matter.
Umm.. so you make your own definitions of "creationists" and "I.D.ers" such that they are unscientific and when pointed out that creationists and I.D.ers in general are scientific you say that such people aren't really "creationists" and "I.D.ers"? Again you are trying to bullshit and have no proofs what so ever. Or maybe you are just very, very confused. Some of the theistic evolutionists adhere to the god-of-the-gaps way of thinking, and sure, I agree that they could be classified as I.D.ers, but they are far from the average I.D.er (in my experience) and even further from creationists (which are I.D.ers, too). If you don't agree I could just as well start saying that evolutionists aren't scientists because they claim that phenotypic changes are propagated into the genotype. But that would be wrong since only lamarckist evolutionists think that.
If someone truly admits that they don't know why an evolutionary process happens[...]
Umm.. I'm assuming that when you speak of evolution you mean the "goo-to-you" kind (i.e. not simply variation and natural selection, both of which I.D.ers and creationists consider facts), so what kind of evolutionary process might it be of which you speak?
those who believe that intelligent design is science apparently know nothing about intelligent design.
So, if I.D.ers use scientific methodologies to study facts, what are they then if not scientists?
I would also encourage you to read this article [csicop.org] from the September 2001 issue of Skeptical Inquiry on the logical fallicies inherent in all intelligent design arguments, and how evidence of such a thing is currently non-existent.
Since when has the so called "sceptics" understood anything about any idea that isn't currently the consensus among the majority in a field? They are too busy patting themselves on their backs and coming up with cheap rhetoric like writing "con-cept" instead of "concept". Nevertheless, instead of name-calling, let me show you the fundamental error they made in the one section of that nonsense I did read.
Mr. Pigliucci has correctly understood that irreducible complexity means that step-by-step evolution won't work. But then he writes the following:
biochemical pathways are partly redundant [...] As a result of redundancy, mutations can knock down individual components of biochemical pathways without compromising the overall function-contrary to the expectations of irreducible complexity.
That is a prime example of a straw man refutal if there ever was one. That there is redundancy is obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with genetics. In his book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe certainly doesn't include examples where the lack of reduncancy would make the system irreducibly complex. Pigliucci describes a non-irreducibly complex system and correctly describes how it is not irreducibly complex. Well, duh!
I find it hard to believe that Pigliucci is so stupid that he actually doesn't see that what he refuted was a straw man. If this is correct then he deliberately tried to deceive the readers into thinking that Behe's arguments were refuted. Unfortunately that wouldn't be the first case.:-(
Why do people like you think they can bullshit their way through everything? Apparently the only contact with I.D. you've had is via people not familiar with I.D. Why don't you go read some of the I.D. litterature (or maybe some TJ articles if you want to include creationists among I.D.ers), and if you still think they don't use scientific methods I'm sure you'll have plenty of examples to back you up.
They attack strawmen, and ignore contrary evidence.
It's amazing how often I've read evolutionists (or "fanboys" thereof) claim that I.D.ers and creationists are ignoring facts and not adhering to scientific standards and whatnot, and when asked for a few examples the only thing they say are a few strawmen of their own. But maybe you are the exception of the rule, so do you have some examples e.g. of ignored evidence?
Or, like you, they spout meaningless gibberish about "information theory" and thermodynamics.
Just because you're too thick to understand something doesn't mean it's meaningless.
Are you seriously trying to convince someone that Newton, Pascal, Pasteur, Kelvin, Kepler, Maxwell, Faraday etc. were not scientists?
Good scientists approach all problems without any presupposition.
Good scientists, such as the famous atheistic evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, right? Let me quote him for you: "Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology."
The reason why evolutionists don't try to argue that things are designed is that there is no testable hypothesis for that claim. If scientists can't test for it, then it can't fit into their theories. That's how science works.
Ah, so surely then evolution can be observed and repeated, right? Except that goo-to-you evolution has never been observed and never been repeated. Ah, but many (observable/repeatable) facts fit the evolutionary framework, right? Yes. And evolutionists use scientific methodologies to study these facts. Yes. However, both of these are equally true for I.D.ers, they also use scientific methodologies when they study the same facts, and most of it fits the I.D. framework equally well or better than it fits the evolutionary framework.
I.D.ers on the other hand, DO presuppose the existence of God. They have to, since their entire position of the origins of life is that it comes from God. They assume that from the start and then try to find gaps in the experimental data that would fit that conclusion.
No. First of all most of them don't presuppose the existence of God, but they do think that the evidence fits some creation hypothesis best. And second, like any other scientists they indeed search for gaps in experimental data, but only to fill those gaps.
In fact, the "God-of-the-gaps" theory is quite unscientific and illogical, and, contrary to what you seem believe, is widely unpopular among I.D.ers (and creationists), for exactly those reasons.
Without direct, testable, repeatable, measureable evidence, fitting God into a scientific explanation is nothing more than a leap of faith.
True, and that's why I.D.ers don't do that. E.g. they say that all evidence (and logical reasoning) show that the total amount of information in any closed system either stays the same or some is lost, and thus existing information has to have come from somewhere. Unlike creationists I.D.ers don't say they know what this "something" is. (Evolutionists, on the other hand, take a leap of faith when they say that information surely increases even though they have never observed such a thing.)
the big difference comes in when both scientists and I.D.ers figure out what to do next.
First of all, stop using dirty tactics such as implying that I.D.ers aren't scientists like that. Either write "evolutionists vs. I.D.ers" or "evolution scientists vs. I.D. scientists".
Both will use perfectly acceptable scientific methodologies when studying what might or might not be designed. One difference is that evolutionists more often than not simply presuppose that it is not designed, and that's not scientific.
[evolutionists] see gaps in the experimental evidence and start asking more questions. I.D.ers see gaps in the experimental evidence and fill them with God, without doing any more tests.
You are correct in that evolutionists and I.D.ers often have different points of view when studying things and when choosing where to concentrate furter studies. An I.D.er who says "this rock formation seems designed so I won't study it further" is just as wrong as the evolutionist who says "the appendix is just a vestigial structure from an evolutionary past so I won't study it further".
When you accuse I.D.ers of not investigating something deeply enough just keep in mind that the function of many organs remained unknown for a long time just because the consensus among evolutionists was that they were "leftovers" and unimportant. However, the old list of 180 vestigial structures of the human body has now shrunk to virtually none. E.g. when the Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology was released 10 years ago we could read the following of the once thought "vestigial" appendix: "The mucosa and submucosa of the appendix are dominated by lymphoid nodules, and its primary function is as an organ of the lymphatic system."
2. That there is a concept of "irreducible complexity."
No scientist ever subscribes to point 2. If they do, then they are a very poor scientist. It basically boils down to, "if we don't know how it happened, then God must have done it."
Like so many other morons on/. you have no idea what you're talking about. Irreducible complexity is not a complex matter at all. It boils down to: "the possibility for it to have happened is so close to zero that it's not realistic to think it has". The "irreducible" part denotes that there's more than one non-beneficial change involved, and therefore natural selection can't "pick" the changes one-by-one. There's nothing "unscientific" about the issue.
[The] only reason to think one component is useless without the rest is because you and Behe say so.
That is simply not true. Just look up any detailed texts about blood clotting, e.g. by B. & B.C. Furie or by T. Halkier.
There are several proposed models for the evolution of the eye and I imagine the same is true for blood clotting.
Some hypothetic evolution of the eye is irrelevant. And yes, you imagine correctly. There are several just-so stories passed off as "proposed models" for the evolution of blood clotting, e.g. by R. Doolittle. I haven't seen any realistic ones, though.
Your argument hinges on this claim, which you have yet to demonstrate.
Sorry, I didn't realize this was something that needed explaining.
There are several components in the system, and the whole system is unusable unless each of the base components are present. In other words, natural selection is ineffective since individuals with 75% of the components have no advantage of those with none of the components. These base components are fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin and proaccelerin. (There are also many other factors that also have to be exactly right for this system to have non-fatal effects.)
I wholeheartedly recommend that you pick up a copy of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (ISBN 0-684-83493-6) if you want to know more about irreducible complexity.
Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology. - Stephen Jay Gould (Natural History 103(2):14)
Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. - Dr Scott Todd (Nature 410(6752):423)
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." - Richard Lewontin (New York Review (9 January 1997))
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a) I wanted to make it as simple as possible for you, since you seem to have a really hard time grasping anything, and
b) it was in the text I linked to, and I even quoted it in an earlier message ("[...] the information content of the enzyme itself is at least the maximum information gained in transforming the substrate distribution into the product distribution"). More of the same confusion on your part. The reaction rate does not change the output distribution. (It's true that the reaction of some elements isn't linearly proportional to the reaction of some others with respect to changes in the environment, but that just means it must be considered in the output distribution measurements. This was probably not what you meant, though, but only the reaction rate. Anyway, both are irrelevant.) The entropy of a constant relative distribution is constant. Read any book on information theory if you're confused. Or you might want to just check out the wikipedia entry on the topic. Again, the time is irrelevant. I hope this message has shown you that specified complexity does not depend on external factors as you described.
I don't know if I can make it any more simple than it already is, but I'll try:
Some particular genetic sequence causes an enzyme to be constructed. Let's call this enzyme A. A mutation occurs in that genetic sequence. The mutated sequence causes a similar, but not equivalent, enzyme to be constructed. Let's call this enzyme B. If A in this case is more specific with which of the substrates it will "react with" than B then A is said to have more(/higher?) specified complexity. This can be measured by measuring the difference between the entropy of the input substrate distribution and the entropy of the product distribution. Let's say the entropy of the input distribution is a certain value (e.g. log n <=> each element is equally probable). If A has more(/higher?) specified complexity than B then A will cause an output distribution with a lower entropy (i.e. some output elements are less probable and some are more probable) than what B would cause. The extreme would be 0 (i.e. one output element has the probability 1 and the others 0), which would mean no randomness at all.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I inadvertently mislead you in my earlier message by talking about the entropy difference of the enzymes when I should have said the entropy difference of the output distributions of the enzymes. (These can, but don't have to, be equivalent, so it would probably have been better of me to use "specified complexity" instead of "entropy" regarding the enzymes.)
Or maybe I should start making the same kind of non-arguments as you do:
Sigh.. There is no entropy change due to enzyme action when you include the enzyme itself, since the information that the product distribution has gained is of course already present in the enzyme! (Hence: "[...] the information content of the enzyme itself is at least the maximum information gained in transforming the substrate distribution into the product distribution".) The relevant entropy difference is between two such enzymes of which one has mutated.You are ignorant of facts. You're too stupid to understand that NDT is based on fluff and just-so stories. Reality shows that IDT is correct. If you don't comprehend reality, that's your problem. If you can't realize fluff and just-so stories, that's your loss.
(Bear in mind that this is not how I really think. I think this kind of talk is just fluff, bullshitting and/or nonsense.)
Seriously, man, you have a really bad comprehension disability. You can't understand what a discussion is about, you can't understand logical reasoning, you apparently can't understand the point of pretty much anything. But that's not the problem. Your main problem is that you seem to think you've understood it all, when it's evident that you haven't. Like some sort of inverted Socrates (you know, "[...] I know that I know nothing"). Really, it's OK to have a flawed understanding of something, but it's really stupid to be convinced that one's understanding of something must necessarily be the correct one.
Maybe it's that you're so convinced that any IDT proponent isn't making any sense that when you can't make sense of something such a person says you're convinced that it in fact doesn't make sense. Such a misunderstanding would of course feed itself until you've become convinced that all IDT proponents are complete nutcases.
I suggest you take a minute or two to analyze how and why you made such bold statements and far-reaching conclusions that you did, based on a simple misunderstanding of which entropy H denotes.You know, I have found that life is much easier if I don't care who was correct first as long as we get closer to the truth. Never let prejudice (nor pride) get in the way.
In spite of using a very narrow definition of "science", geneticist Richard Lewontin is much more honest than the average evolutionist, as indicated by the following quote from him:
To me it seems that you in general make the following (or similar) invalid reasoning:
NDT is correct. NDT and arguments against NDT are mutually exclusive. Therefore arguments against NDT are wrong. I.D.ers show arguments against NDT. Since the arguments are, as shown, wrong I.D.ers are wrong (and idiots for not noticing/admitting it). Thus it's been shown that there are no valid arguments against NDT. Thus NDT is correct.
If you want to know how to measure the amount of specified complexity I suggest you go to that library of yours and look for some books on information theory. Or if you want a short introduction you could read the discussion under "Information Content of Proteins" here.
And then you could start providing something to back up your claims that all the arguments I've told I.D.ers have are invalid. Or perhaps you'd like to comment my original comment that AeroIllini was talking out of his ass when he claimed that irreducible complexity doesn't exist?
And then you could read a few books on I.D. so that you would actually know what you're talking about. And if you read those I.D. books, and still think NDT (=neo-darwinian theory) has something meaningful to say, you just haven't understood I.D., or you just want to believe in the NDT because I.D. bothers you in some psychological way.
Since you appear to be completely incapable of comprehending a discussion I'll break some of it down for you:
- I said that "AFAIK most scientists agree that information in DNA has semantic characteristics", and then I listed five more arguments by I.D.ers.
- You then said I was ignorant of the facts. You didn't provide anything back it up.
- I then said that "if some fact is missing or incorrect you are welcome to show the real facts".
- Instead of showing any real facts you then instead started spewing out irrelevant shit about 1+1=3 and naturalists' fact-collecting, as if that was in some way related to the arguments by I.D.ers that use the very same facts.
- Then up to this point you've refused to provide anything to back up any of your accusations.
As I've said before, if you disagree that the information in DNA has semantic characteristics, or if you disagree that the human DNA contains information not present in the pre-life earth, then you are welcome to make your case. Just saying so doesn't make it so, although you seem to believe it does.Besides, everyone that has ever been involved in AI knows the unfortunate fact that few fitness landscapes (="fitness" plotted in an N-dimensional coordinate system where the "up" dimension denotes "fitness" and the rest N-1 are the relevant variables) are shaped like pyramids. Instead they have many local maximums, and the (natural) selection tries its utmost to stay in one, working against finding the global maximum.
Speciation as such is irrelevant. Lock a bunch of cats into a confined space and you have a new species by definition, since they are incapable of breeding with cats outside that space.Besides, even you must be aware of the fact that creationists firmly believe that e.g. all feline species have "evolved" from only a few specimens.
Once again you display a remarkable incapability to comprehend simple written text. My English isn't the best (after all, it's only my third language), but I'm quite certain that the following quote shouldn't be interpreted as me (indirectly) asking you to provide proof of evolution: "[...] claims there are factual and logical errors but doesn't provide anything what so ever to back it up, even when being asked to do so several times".For fraudulent data from closer to a decade ago consider the pictures of peppered moths resting on the bark of a tree.
No, wait, maybe you're an I.D.er who tries to give evolutionists a bad name by pretending to be a really moronic one. At least that's more plausible than being just an idiot trying to yank people's chains, considering how little time and effort you get me to spend when you don't provide any substantial arguments.
More bullshit. You still haven't shown a single statement of mine to be wrong. Now you don't even tell which statements you think are incorrect.
Are you by any chance a 13 year old brat that have watched a few documentaries on TV and now think you've figured everything out? That's how you come across. (Actually I would think you were a troll if you weren't so bad at trolling.)
Again you are trying to bullshit. If some fact is missing or incorrect you are welcome to show the real facts. Nobody will ever believe your "you are wrong"-type pseudo-arguments.
Here are some other arguments they have:
Irreducible complexity. (I already touched this issue. AeroIllini claimed there is no such thing, and he is simply dead wrong which he rightfully admitted.)
Apparent design. (Design detection is used in a number of scientific fields, including anthropology, forensic sciences, cryptanalysis, SETI, etc. The same methods are used to determine design in nature.)
Abrupt appearance of fossil phyla.
The fine tuning of the universe.
Evolution has never been observed. (In fact, not even successful simulations have been made. (And no, the overly simplistic and inaccurate simulations that Dawkins tout do not count.))
So you claim that you can refute what I said, but that you won't. And I'm supposed to believe that? OK, whatever you say. You're the man with The Truth(tm).
Since my post wasn't very long it wouldn't take you much effort to point out those "contradictions and logical fallacies" that you claim there were many of.
Umm.. so you make your own definitions of "creationists" and "I.D.ers" such that they are unscientific and when pointed out that creationists and I.D.ers in general are scientific you say that such people aren't really "creationists" and "I.D.ers"? Again you are trying to bullshit and have no proofs what so ever. Or maybe you are just very, very confused. Some of the theistic evolutionists adhere to the god-of-the-gaps way of thinking, and sure, I agree that they could be classified as I.D.ers, but they are far from the average I.D.er (in my experience) and even further from creationists (which are I.D.ers, too). If you don't agree I could just as well start saying that evolutionists aren't scientists because they claim that phenotypic changes are propagated into the genotype. But that would be wrong since only lamarckist evolutionists think that. Umm.. I'm assuming that when you speak of evolution you mean the "goo-to-you" kind (i.e. not simply variation and natural selection, both of which I.D.ers and creationists consider facts), so what kind of evolutionary process might it be of which you speak? So, if I.D.ers use scientific methodologies to study facts, what are they then if not scientists? Since when has the so called "sceptics" understood anything about any idea that isn't currently the consensus among the majority in a field? They are too busy patting themselves on their backs and coming up with cheap rhetoric like writing "con-cept" instead of "concept". Nevertheless, instead of name-calling, let me show you the fundamental error they made in the one section of that nonsense I did read.Mr. Pigliucci has correctly understood that irreducible complexity means that step-by-step evolution won't work. But then he writes the following:
That is a prime example of a straw man refutal if there ever was one. That there is redundancy is obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with genetics. In his book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe certainly doesn't include examples where the lack of reduncancy would make the system irreducibly complex. Pigliucci describes a non-irreducibly complex system and correctly describes how it is not irreducibly complex. Well, duh!I find it hard to believe that Pigliucci is so stupid that he actually doesn't see that what he refuted was a straw man. If this is correct then he deliberately tried to deceive the readers into thinking that Behe's arguments were refuted. Unfortunately that wouldn't be the first case. :-(
"Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective scientific method, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology." Ah, so surely then evolution can be observed and repeated, right? Except that goo-to-you evolution has never been observed and never been repeated. Ah, but many (observable/repeatable) facts fit the evolutionary framework, right? Yes. And evolutionists use scientific methodologies to study these facts. Yes. However, both of these are equally true for I.D.ers, they also use scientific methodologies when they study the same facts, and most of it fits the I.D. framework equally well or better than it fits the evolutionary framework. No. First of all most of them don't presuppose the existence of God, but they do think that the evidence fits some creation hypothesis best. And second, like any other scientists they indeed search for gaps in experimental data, but only to fill those gaps.
In fact, the "God-of-the-gaps" theory is quite unscientific and illogical, and, contrary to what you seem believe, is widely unpopular among I.D.ers (and creationists), for exactly those reasons.
True, and that's why I.D.ers don't do that. E.g. they say that all evidence (and logical reasoning) show that the total amount of information in any closed system either stays the same or some is lost, and thus existing information has to have come from somewhere. Unlike creationists I.D.ers don't say they know what this "something" is. (Evolutionists, on the other hand, take a leap of faith when they say that information surely increases even though they have never observed such a thing.)Both will use perfectly acceptable scientific methodologies when studying what might or might not be designed. One difference is that evolutionists more often than not simply presuppose that it is not designed, and that's not scientific.
You are correct in that evolutionists and I.D.ers often have different points of view when studying things and when choosing where to concentrate furter studies. An I.D.er who says "this rock formation seems designed so I won't study it further" is just as wrong as the evolutionist who says "the appendix is just a vestigial structure from an evolutionary past so I won't study it further".When you accuse I.D.ers of not investigating something deeply enough just keep in mind that the function of many organs remained unknown for a long time just because the consensus among evolutionists was that they were "leftovers" and unimportant. However, the old list of 180 vestigial structures of the human body has now shrunk to virtually none. E.g. when the Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology was released 10 years ago we could read the following of the once thought "vestigial" appendix:
"The mucosa and submucosa of the appendix are dominated by lymphoid nodules, and its primary function is as an organ of the lymphatic system."
- It's idiotic to make oneself suffer.
- There has been suffering in your life (and probably will be more).
- There is no suffering when one is dead.
- You have not ended your life.
- You are an idiot.
ipso-frickin'-facto.There are several components in the system, and the whole system is unusable unless each of the base components are present. In other words, natural selection is ineffective since individuals with 75% of the components have no advantage of those with none of the components. These base components are fibrinogen, Stuart factor, prothrombin and proaccelerin. (There are also many other factors that also have to be exactly right for this system to have non-fatal effects.)
I wholeheartedly recommend that you pick up a copy of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (ISBN 0-684-83493-6) if you want to know more about irreducible complexity.
Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. - Dr Scott Todd (Nature 410(6752):423)
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." - Richard Lewontin (New York Review (9 January 1997))