DescentBB

Posted: **Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:50 pm**

I was wondering today on the way to work, how does the theory of evolution deal with plants? Where did they come from if \"live\" was started in \"goo\" and remained in the water until the progression lead to super fish or whatever they call it?

This would seem to indicate that matter DE-evolved back down to plants. I'm sure there is explanation for it, just never heard one. .. even in school.

Posted: **Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:58 pm**

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1980/5/80.05.01.x.html wrote:V. The Diversity of Plant Life The Major Divisions of Plants

In this section the major divisions of plants and the basic characteristics of each type of plant will be listed. Some comparisons will be made between extinct species and present day forms. But first, some mention should be made of our understanding of the origin of life on earth and the major events which must have taken place prior to the arrival of the land plants. The oldest known life consists of forms of bacteria, blue-green algae, and green algae, all of which probably resided in salt water environments. Earlier this summer an announcement was made of the 1977 discovery of the oldest known biological life. U.C.L.A. paleobotanist J. William Schopf and an international team of scientists had delayed announcement of the find for three years, while extensive tests were run on these filaments of cells to determine their age, chemical makeup and microscopic appearance. The studies convinced the group that this cellular life existed little more than one billion years after the earth’s formation. The findings also suggest that a period of organic evolution took place much closer to the origins of the planet than previously realized. The 3.5 billion year old cells are near-identical in appearance to some present day bacteria, and more primitive forms must have preceded them.

Much additional evidence of life from approximately half a billion to three billion years ago has been gathered in the past 15 years, most notably by Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard and by Schopf. The 3.2 billion year old chert of the Fig Tree formation in Transvaal, South Africa contains spherical microfassils named Eobacterium. Chert (a flintlike or quartz-like rock) from the Gunflint formation in western Ontario, dated to 2.0 billion years ago, contains filamentous structures resembling present day blue-green algae. This is believed to be early evidence of photosynthetic activity. These above-mentioned microfossils were found chiefly during the examination of stromatolytes, dome-shaped layered deposits of material found in various regions of the world, which are a type of organosedimentary structure. The stromatolytes were formed by the action of early life. They are the indirect evidence of early life, rather than consisting entirely of fossilized life. They do, as mentioned, contain some actual remnants of life. Stromatolytes are comparable in form to the algal mats produced under certain conditions today.

Bacteria and blue-green algae have a prokaryotic organization. Their cells lack true nuclei, because of the absence of a nuclear membrane. The cellular unit of plants and animals is the more advanced eukaryotic cell, in which nuclear material is set off from the cytoplasm of the cell by a nuclear membrane. Eukaryotic cells first appear in the fossil record in the 0.5 billion year old Bitter Springs charts, also in Australia’s Northern Territory. These cells are evidently photosynthetic and they most closely resemble the green algae. The eukaryotic organization achieved 500 million years ago led to rapid evolution of multicellularity in plants and animals, and most significantly to life on land. By 400 million years ago a number of distinct plant types had begun to appear. Since then each group has experienced diversification and varying degrees of success. There have been dominant plant types throughout this time, and there have been a number of extinctions. Some of these developments are listed below.

Posted: **Mon Oct 23, 2006 3:08 pm**

Evolution does NOT presume a line that looks like:

single cell -> multiple cell -> little fish -> big fish -> land animals -> plants.

It presumes a tree that looks like this. The \"root\" (procaryotes) is just below and to the right of the brown circle (viruses). The green branch is plants; the red and virtually everything else on the left half of the image is the animal kingdom. Fish and early \"land-walking fish things\" appear on the red branch right before it splits into a big tree towards the upper left of the image.

Posted: **Mon Oct 23, 2006 4:20 pm**

This is a bit off-topic, but I've been wondering, nonetheless:

Lothar, what exactly is your view concerning origins? I know that you used to be in line with the Creationist train of thought, but I seem to recall you studied evolution in depth or something similar. Additionally, you and Drakona don't seem to think that ID holds much water, but I may be off a bit.

Posted: **Mon Oct 23, 2006 5:20 pm**

My exact view is that we need to continue to examine the evidence.

I find the genetic evidence mostly matches up with evolutionary theory. It's not perfect, but just looking at the DNA sequences and the sort of similarities and differences between them gives you some idea that these species are related. (My primary area of study was evolutionary genetics and phylogenies.) There's more to look at, of course, but so far the evidence gives a fair bit of credibility to the theory.

6-day / young earth creationism doesn't hold any water whatsoever. Neither does \"gap theory\", which holds that there's a long period of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and that Genesis 1:2 is describing a re-creation of the earth.

Old earth creationism, especially of the \"a few special creation events with evolution interspersed\" variety, seems to fit the evidence OK as well. There are some changes (first life, the formation of the nucleus, the shift to multicellular organisms) where there doesn't seem to be much evidence or any good argument for how it happened, so the OEC and evolution crowds can both yell at each other until they're blue in the face and not make any progress.

As for the reading of Genesis 1, check out this old post.

As for ID, I like the idea of detecting intelligences. But, the methods are still in their infancy and generally untested, so it's complete superstition to expect them to give any useful results when applied to as complex a topic as biology. We need to spend more time applying ID concepts to things like textual interpretation before we can even begin to apply those concepts to origins.

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:54 am**

In case your asking Lothar indicates an interest, I'll include my view too. It's pretty simple though: I haven't yet encountered a theory of origins well enough supported to persuade me that it's correct.

I was raised a young-earth creationist, but discarded that view very quickly when I first started studying origins seriously. I spent some time as an old-earth creationist of the day-age variety, but I have since discarded that view for Biblical literary reasons: I think it does violence to Genesis 1. Progressive creationism (not founded in Genesis 1) fits some of the evidence okay, but it doesn't handle properly-defined homologies very well.

On the other hand, I have never been able to take evolution -- in the theistic or non-theistic variety -- very seriously, and not for theological reasons, but for evidential ones. It just flies too much in the face of my mathematical & systems engineering intuition. Say what you will about deep time and coevolving fitness landscapes and what have you... systems like that don't just arise. They just don't. All the explanations I've heard of how they could arise sound to me like BS at the end of the day. Systems wind down. They never wind up. This is virtually axiomatic for me - at any rate, it would take a *lot* of evidence to overcome.

I am officially of no opinion on the physical process by which life and the universe arose. If I had to take a guess here and now, I'd say that God continuously, abruptly, creatively, miraculously modified some species to become others. Hopeful monster theistic evolution, if you will. But I've got no evidence for that. It's just that so far I'm persuaded that purely ex nihilo creation doesn't work, and pure evolution *really* doesn't work. I got nothin' else. (It would not surprise me, given how very little we know about what really makes biological systems tick, if the knowledge to satisfactorily piece together what happened did not arise during my lifetime.)

I don't view Genesis 1 as having a part to play in the whole discussion. I don't view the passage as necessarily implying anything more than that God is the ultimate creator -- the original intender, the architect -- of life. And that I already knew.

ID is an oddball view in the whole discussion. It isn't so much a theory as a single statement that divides theories--like old earth/young earth. A single criterion which any theory can incorporate or reject.

I have very mixed feelings about the validity of ID. In its present state, it really isn't solid. It's built on very dense mathematical and philosophical framework that... if you wade through all the symbols and actually do the math, doesn't work. Doesn't add up. I'm not saying that because I read it somewhere, either. I bought the research-level book; I did the homework; I did the math. It doesn't work. And they have since stopped even trying on that front: the arguments have gotten less rigorous, the methodology more nebulous.

The movement survives on two things: first and lesser, people that want it to succeed. But second and greater, the source of my mixed feelings - it's really hard to shake the feeling that, for all that, they have a point. Biological stuff *does* look designed. It looks reallyreallyreally designed. Compared, on technological terms, with our technology, it makes a laughingstock of our greatest teams of engineers. Surely that counts for something?

Well, until somebody can give a rigorous argument that it does, it doesn't. But I'm following the subject very closely, because I find the more general question interesting: *can* you detect design in a scientifically rigorous way? If so, how is it done? What makes it solid or shaky, does it *really* work?

I don't think the ID community has answered those questions well, if at all. And they aren't really making the attempt anymore, and for that I lose respect for them. And the application to origins in the mean time is reckless and shaky, and so I don't trust them enough to work with them. And yet... I can't shake the feeling that, for all that, they've got a point.

But that's a sideshow, really. It doesn't matter to me whether design is detectable in origins (though I'll be pleased if it is), because I already know God made everything. Whether you can tell or not is... interesting, but not that crucial. And either way, it only bears on the subject of actual origins in a tangential way for me: at most, if everything ID hopes to achieve turns out to work, it eliminates purely naturalistic selection from the possible lineup of theories. Meh. While I am obligated to always remain intellectually open to any theory, that's the one in the bunch that I never really could take that seriously.

----------

It is worth noting that Lothar's expertise is in evolutionary genetics, while mine (inasmuch as I have one on this topic) is in ID. So we speak from slightly different viewpoints.

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:14 am**

It's also worth nothing that another area of Drakona's expertise is in systems engineering. That is, large-scale design of really big impressive technological systems (military aircraft). So when she says \"systems like that don't just arise\", she's speaking from the experience of having hundreds of genius engineers, working on the foundation of thousands of genius engineers of the past, struggling to make a system far less impressive than even a single-celled organism.

And, it's also worth noting another area of my expertise is in Dynamical Systems. That is, looking at the behaviors that arise out of simple laws: how complex the behaviors get (in some cases, you get \"Chaos\" in the mathematical sense), how much they change if you tweak the laws a little bit, and so on.

It's my expertise in that area (ironically, combined with one of Dembski's arguments) that's led me to partly reject the idea that the universe as a whole has to be \"tweaked\" to an incredible level of precision in order to support life. The argument says a small change in any of the physical parameters of the universe (itself, essentially, a dynamical system) would result in not having life on earth, because life requires such a specific balance, so there must be a God who \"tweaked\" the universe. But many dynamical systems have robust behavior (we call it structual stability) -- you can tweak the parameters and the type of behavior doesn't change much, even though the specific details might change a lot. Depending on the exact nature of the universe, there might be a lot of physical constants we could change and get something \"life-ish\" out of it, even if we didn't get life as we know it. I still don't think we could change those constants very much (which is why I don't completely reject the argument), but probably more than people theorize.

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 3:25 pm**

Ah, interesting. That's what I was looking for. I'm not up to full-blown research, but any websites/books of interest would be appreciated.

Forgive me if I haven't clarified my views; I'm a Christian, but despite an overall apathy for science and mathematics (I am more of the philosophical/artistic persuasion), Origins has always drawn a great deal of interest for me.

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:44 pm**

Say what you will about deep time and coevolving fitness landscapes and what have you... systems like that don't just arise. They just don't. All the explanations I've heard of how they could arise sound to me like BS at the end of the day. Systems wind down. They never wind up. This is virtually axiomatic for me - at any rate, it would take a *lot* of evidence to overcome.

I hate to pick on little points, but you short-sold yourself here. Sure they can. Maybe you are tired? Why can't they? Do you have evidence to prove they didn't? It seems like you are putting too much stock in a hunch.

Also, why can't you view evolution as a continuation of the tendencies for systems to move towards disorder? (Entropy)

I know it sounds backwards because we are creating a 'thing' out of 'no discernable thing' from a human perspective, but if you view it from a varietal standpoint life and evolution has created the greatest variety of different types of things on earth. Instead of just a stale planet without much change, there is massive flux and new variety with every single birth.

It seems like a moot point to me Lothar whether or not God created evolution or whether evolution occured and god \"helped it\" or something like that. Either way, God is doing the creating here. Do you agree, that it doesn't really matter either way? Or do you think it matters?

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:32 pm**

Zuruck..... I'm going to have a cow...

Bee

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:52 pm**

Drakona wrote:On the other hand, I have never been able to take evolution -- in the theistic or non-theistic variety -- very seriously, and not for theological reasons, but for evidential ones. It just flies too much in the face of my mathematical & systems engineering intuition. Say what you will about deep time and coevolving fitness landscapes and what have you... systems like that don't just arise. They just don't. All the explanations I've heard of how they could arise sound to me like BS at the end of the day. Systems wind down. They never wind up. This is virtually axiomatic for me - at any rate, it would take a *lot* of evidence to overcome.

Just curious, but do you also feel this way about other simpler systems, such as solar systems (or even weather systems)? Could they emerge due to the working of natural forces and processes, or could they also never "wind up" without unnatural intervention?

Posted: **Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:53 pm**

/me runs for some hot water....

edit.

Merc, personally, I don't concider the solar system a simple system. While it may look simple, the physics involved maintaining it are extraordinarily complex.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:07 am**

Neither do I. Simpler, not simple.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:09 am**

hrm, The linage of plants is rather weak. Fungi pops out of no where (more or less) as do more complex trees. I realize this is an abreviated, illustrated version.

I've never really bought into evolution 100% even as a young kid. My mom got those Time/Life books way back and there was one whole book on this topic alone. When I saw they were creating entire skeletal structures our of 1/3 to 1/2 of a skull alone, I knew something was up.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:12 am**

Birdseye wrote:
Say what you will about deep time and coevolving fitness landscapes and what have you... systems like that don't just arise. They just don't. All the explanations I've heard of how they could arise sound to me like BS at the end of the day. Systems wind down. They never wind up. This is virtually axiomatic for me - at any rate, it would take a *lot* of evidence to overcome.
I hate to pick on little points...

I'm going to question the same passage because I don't think the point is "little". I'm no scientist, but entropy applies to closed thermodynamic systems, which does not include the plant and animal kingdom as a whole. The whole point is that life, by definition, absolutely winds up.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:17 am**

Palzon wrote:I'm no scientist, but entropy applies to closed thermodynamic systems, which does not include the plant and animal kingdom as a whole. The whole point is that life, by definition, absolutely winds up.

At the end the universe is a closed system. Any creation of order comes at the cost of increased entropy. You just don't see it easily in bigger systems.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:21 am**

Mercury wrote:Neither do I. Simpler, not simple.

I disagree even there. I don't think that it's simpler. It's not organic but that makes it no less complex. Remember that we are ourselves are a part of that system as well; and on a quantum level, that indeed makes a difference.

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:30 pm**

The evo of plants is a massive topic; fortunately there is beaucoup stuff on the web, e.g. -

http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/~sa ... ol3060.htm

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/un ... .01.x.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/search.html
the “Observed Instances of Speciation” link has a lot of useful info regarding the idea of ‘species’ in general

**edit
oops. forgot to mention use the search term 'plant evolution' (or 'evolution of plants') to pull up the 200+ hits at talkorigin, including the link on speciation.
**

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC250.html

http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/plantEvolution.shtml

http://curriculum.calstatela.edu/course ... les8r.html

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/9/4535.pdf

http://www.palaeos.com/Plants/default.htm

etcetcetc ...

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:57 pm**

o.0 wow! thanks!

Posted: **Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:25 pm**

What Bee? I'm staying out of the evolution circle jerk this time

Posted: **Fri Oct 27, 2006 1:30 am**

Birds, Palz, Mercury - since you all asked - here's my fuller opinion on 'systems winding up', and why I find the idea of evolution so implausible.

-------

A 'system', in the sense I meant it above, is an integrated set of pieces functioning together to accomplish something none of the individual pieces can provide. A whole which serves a unifying purpose.

Systems - especially complex systems - are hard to build, and usually require engineers. It isn't hard to see why: the overall purpose is hard to achieve without a lot of foresight. There are tolerences and interfaces and interactions and modes of operation. You don't just throw some parts together and wind up with an internal combustion engine--the idea is laughable. A system of that character will not function without a lot of parts and pieces specially engineered to serve it.

Systems get factorially harder to build as they get linearly bigger (unless you have some really good architecture in place). The reason is that the pieces interact - every piece that changes has to be changed in correspondence with every piece it touches. You want to add a feature to a car? Mounting a roof rack is easy. Adding a couple cylinders to the engine is *hard*. Imagine how many parts you'd have to change!

Anyone who's ever worked on large systems has seen this effect. Anyone who's ever worked on truly large pieces of software knows about it. Large systems -- even when intelligently engineered -- often collapse under their own complexity. Bugs arise, and fixing them creates more bugs; obscure parts of the system stop working as their requirements degrade and starting assumptions become invalid. It's like trying to swim out of a tar pit. Only solid planning, engineering discipline, and sound architecture can save a system.

A modest increase in the complexity of a system requires an overabundant compensation in engineering skill and intelligence to complete successfully.

Big systems hard. I know this. Systems and software engineering background; just take it as a starting assumption. Trying to talk me out of this would be like trying to talk me out of circle-strafing as a valid FPS tactic. Slides good. Big systems hard.

That's what I know from my engineering background. Now on to math:

Deep time isn't that deep, probabilistically speaking. Not that billions and billions of years isn't a long time, just that it isn't long enough to do anything interesting. The reason is simple: probabilities grow exponentially with linear increases in complexity. Trillions of years aren't a lot of time on a logarithmic scale.

If you are drawing scrabble tiles and looking for a given three letter word, the odds of its coming up on any given three-letter draw are (1/26)^3. Butchering the math (because I can't be bothered to do it right now - I should go to bed), you might expect it to turn up in five hours. If you're looking for a four letter word? Expect to spend most of a week. A given five letter word? Six months.

You know those folks that say, \"an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of typewriters over an infinite amount of time will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare\" ? Eventually, yes, they will. What those folks don't appreciate is just *how* eventually that is.

Every fundamental particle in the universe, \"attempting\" an operation once as fast as it can change state, for the history of the universe... might produce the first verse or so to \"Amazing Grace\". And then again it might not.

Exponents. Grow. Fast.

That's what I know from my math background (well, okay - software contributes).

The last bit is biology, and I'll readily admit that I don't have a biology background to speak of. But I know enough -

Life is self-replicating. Life heals itself. It seeks out fuel sources. It carries information at the genetic and memetic levels - information about survival, about social behavior, about self-reconstruction. Life constructs specialized materials for its purposes at the molecular level. Life is adaptive. Life is hardy - despite millions of years subjected to changing environments, competitions, and what have you... these same plants and animals are *still* *here* and *still* *functioning*.

Put that in your systems engineering pipe and smoke it.

The fact is, biology embarrasses technology. I don't even know it that well, but just what little I know and what little I understand...

Life evidences a fiendish complexity and integration. To the degree that when drug companies want to know what effect a drug will have on a system, they need to test it on animals - because the human body is so incredibly complex they otherwise don't know. These systems are literally beyond the reach of our analysis. Supercomplex.

-----------------------

Three axioms for you, then. Nature is full of complex systems. Complex systems are hard to produce. Even easy things are hard to produce by chance.

That's the core of my skeptecism right there. I'd like to think it isn't totally naive skeptecism. I've heard a lot of arguments about how complex systems arise, and I have never found them persuasive. I guess if you want me to give an opinion on them I can, but it's late (ask and I will, I guess).

I don't doubt evolution's ability to modify, to specialize, to adapt, perhaps even to separate species. What I doubt is its ability to create genuinely new systems.

You don't know how much information is inherent in a system until you've had to write requirements for the pieces. The piston shall be so long. It shall withstand this degree of vibration. Its interaction with these other parts shall proceed along these mechanical lines. Pages, and pages, and pages of documentation and decisions -- all for a system that isn't that big.

That information is present in any system. Either someone coordinates that the nuts fit the screws, or they fit by chance. And coordinating it takes an awful lot of paper, even for systems that aren't that big.

When folks tell stories about how evolution could build a system by co-opting this piece, creating that one, modifying a third, and so forth, I just don't believe it. Systems don't work that way. It's not that easy.

And then - here's the really bizarre claim - the idea that introducing random changes into a large, integrated system could produce systemic changes and improvements. That just makes me laugh. If it could -- even if over a trillion trillion years it could -- the next change is going to take a trillion trillion TRILLION years. Cuz complex systems are like that.

Random changes to systems don't improve them -- in fact, accumulated neutral changes to systems break them. Add enough no-op lines to your code, enough bug-cancel-bug lines, and you'll break it irrevocably eventually. Tiny changes eat up engineering tolerences, gum up delicate pieces, eventually drag the whole thing down. Untouched software rots. Unmaintained systems decay - with astonishing rapidity.

Systems wind down.

They never wind up.

--------------------------------

Mercury - I don't consider the solar or weather systems true 'systems' in the engineering sense I meant it above. True, these are complex systems derived from simple rules, but they do not have the characteristics of true systems as I think of them - overriding purpose, nontrivial integration among pieces, systemic architecture.

Sometimes interesting patterns emerge from simple rules. I consider this completely unrelated to the claim that entire novel systems could emerge where there was nothing before.

Palzon - My skeptecism doesn't really rely on entropy as far as I know, or if it does I'm unaware of it. Truth be told, it's been forever since I understood entropy well enough to even judge that (if I ever did).

Birdseye - \"Also, why can't you view evolution as a continuation of the tendencies for systems to move towards disorder?\" I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. I do view biology as moving toward disorder in the long run: Creatures go extinct, never to return. Certainly much faster than new creatures arise. Lineages are lost; only poor races are left of once-rich gene pools. On the extreme view, I expect that eventually everything will die - the system will wind down. Even if the physics-heat-death-of-the-universe thing didn't come into play. The system will wind down because that's what systems do.

Also Birdseye - \"if you view it from a varietal standpoint life and evolution has created the greatest variety of different types of things on earth\". I'm also not quite sure what you're getting at here. I think you mean to exhibit the perpetual newness of birth, the increasing variety due to breeding, as examples of novelty? I don't see those things as generating true novelty, but as recombining existing novelty. If I've missed your point, state it again.

Posted: **Sat Oct 28, 2006 10:37 am**

Drak,

Perhaps you have already, but if not I would recommend you read Ken Miller's \"Finding Darwin's God\", especially Chapter 5 - God The Mechanic, as a starting point. There Miller deals with a number of examples that Behe considers to be irreducibly complex; the flagellum, cytochrome c oxidase pump, and blood clotting, referencing Russell Doolittle's work on some of the relevent proteins. Some possibilities may start to become a little more palatable to your skepticism.

Posted: **Sat Oct 28, 2006 10:42 am**

dissent wrote:Drak,

Perhaps you have already, but if not I would recommend you read Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God", especially Chapter 5 - God The Mechanic, as a starting point. There Miller deals with a number of examples that Behe considers to be irreducibly complex; the flagellum, cytochrome c oxidase pump, and blood clotting, referencing Russell Doolittle's work on some of the relevent proteins. Some possibilities may start to become a little more palatable to your skepticism.

From the looks of her post, I would think that this book would support her arguments that life couldn't be developed randomly.

Posted: **Sat Oct 28, 2006 5:10 pm**

From my reading of Miller's book, I would disagree.

At any rate, if the argument is that life would not probably not have developed randomly, then I might even agree. Especially considering that natural selection is most assuredly not a random process. However, I think we need to be clear about whether we are discussing abiogenesis (the origins of life from non-life) or evolution (as in descent with modification).

Posted: **Sat Oct 28, 2006 8:42 pm**

Drakona wrote:Palzon - My skeptecism doesn't really rely on entropy as far as I know, or if it does I'm unaware of it. Truth be told, it's been forever since I understood entropy well enough to even judge that (if I ever did).

Entropy is really an energy theory. Basically, energy goes from a usable (ordered) state to an unusable (disordered) state. Practically, this happens in the form of conversion from x form into heat. No system out there is 100% efficient- so you end up using less energy than there was potentially available to be used. In a thermodynamic system, you have energy going in, and energy and entropy going out. I'm not sure how this can be applied to evolution, though. I think many people will take your theory about deterioration of systems and call it entropy- which it is not (apparently it could be called information entropy). That's probably where Palz. is getting it from.

Furthermore, if you view earth from an energy standpoint, it isn't a closed system at all, so while entropy is constantly being created on earth, energy is constantly being added to the system as well. So, it isn't fair to say that the earth is loosing energy. It is fair to say that the universe is eventually going to run out of energy usable energy, but that's not going to happen for a very long time.

Drak, I'd like to know how you handle theories about infinite numbers of parallel universes. I know quantum theory deals with this a little bit. If all possible permutations of all interactions are represented in the existing set of universes, then life evolving, becomes inevitable. Think of it as a branch system- each time an interaction occurs, a new branch (universe) is created to represent each possible outcome. Do you view this as science or philosophy? Why?

Posted: **Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:34 pm**

You know those folks that say, \"an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of typewriters over an infinite amount of time will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare\" ? Eventually, yes, they will. What those folks don't appreciate is just *how* eventually that is.

Problem is, neither of knows if either side's math is right. Maybe enough time has passed, maybe it hasn't. You really have no way of knowing how accurate your probability calculations are.

And then - here's the really bizarre claim - the idea that introducing random changes into a large, integrated system could produce systemic changes and improvements. That just makes me laugh. If it could -- even if over a trillion trillion years it could -- the next change is going to take a trillion trillion TRILLION years. Cuz complex systems are like that.

I'm sorry, I do not accept the notion just because \"complex systems are like that\". you haven't produced any evidence other than speculations based upon your mathmatics and systems backgroundss. Again, your maths may just be wrong. You haven't really proved anything, you've just made an educated guess.

Birdseye - \"Also, why can't you view evolution as a continuation of the tendencies for systems to move towards disorder?\" I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. I do view biology as moving toward disorder in the long run: Creatures go extinct, never to return. Certainly much faster than new creatures arise. Lineages are lost; only poor races are left of once-rich gene pools. On the extreme view, I expect that eventually everything will die - the system will wind down. Even if the physics-heat-death-of-the-universe thing didn't come into play. The system will wind down because that's what systems do.

I'm confused. How are these new creatures arising? Is god just creating them and they appear on earth suddenly?

Evolution to me just seems to fall right into place with the only universal principle I can find - change.

Also Birdseye - \"if you view it from a varietal standpoint life and evolution has created the greatest variety of different types of things on earth\". I'm also not quite sure what you're getting at here. I think you mean to exhibit the perpetual newness of birth, the increasing variety due to breeding, as examples of novelty? I don't see those things as generating true novelty, but as recombining existing novelty. If I've missed your point, state it again.

Each organism is a unique combination of genetic structure. Think of it from a \"selfish gene\" viewpoint.

Posted: **Tue Oct 31, 2006 9:55 pm**

Hi Drakona, thanks for the reply. In the first bit, you talked about how overall systems require foresight. I think there was foresight behind the universe, and that's why it's so capable of giving rise to other complex systems. I'm a Christian, as you know, and I think God knew what he wanted and created a universe that would bring that about. He wanted an earth that could bring forth life, so he made it (or, created a universe that could bring forth an earth that could bring forth life). While it may be incredible that our universe is so capable, I don't find that to be a compelling argument against evolution.

I'm perplexed by the rest of your post. I know you've looked into evolution quite a bit. I know Lothar knows quite a bit about it. And yet, you make very basic mistakes like implying that since random errors are inevitably bad in computer code, biological systems would similarly degenerate from random changes. They don't. We know they don't because each of us has a few dozen \"errors\" in our code that we didn't inherit, and yet most of us are doing just fine (in spite of us also carrying a few dozen mutations we did inherit from our direct parents, and a few more from our grandparents, etc.).

DNA is not designed the way car manufacturers and computer programmers design things: it isn't all neatly coded with most every piece being necessary so that any small error is likely to break something. And, while untouched software may rot, DNA is typically housed inside creatures that reproduce. Those organisms that degenerate to a critical degree are less likely to successfully reproduce, and as a result, even if random mutations are degenerate far more often than not, the less degenerate ones are non-randomly selected to be more prevalent in the future. This doesn't happen with cars or computer code. Natural selection filters genetic variation in a way that it is not at all analogous to drawing Scrabble tiles or monkeys on typewriters. Those monkeys and Scrabble players don't have a feedback system, while evolution does. You're viewing biology through the lens of really, really bad analogies, and it's no wonder it doesn't make sense through that lens.

But, let's get past the analogies. You said that \"Systems get factorially harder to build as they get linearly bigger\". You described how that means they get very rigid so that making substantial changes to the core of the system is difficult. Rather than dispute this through math, let's look at reality. How did humans, knowing nothing about how to program cows, manage to breed cows whose milk-producing system is so much better (for us) than it was before human intervention? Or what about what we've done (probably unwittingly at first) with the egg-producing system in chickens? Or, what about the wool-producing system in sheep that appears to be an entirely artificially-selected trait? How did we manage to breed animals with coats of wool, especially at times when DNA was not even known? It really seems as though these systems have the potential to adapt and even become more complex based on selection pressure, as these examples resulting from the more extreme pressure of human selection show.

Why are models of mutation and natural selection able to produce integrated sets of pieces functioning together to accomplish something none of the individual pieces can provide? Here's one example: Creatures From Primordial Silicon. The article is a bit sensationalistic, but that aside, the data seems to contradict your mathematical claims.

Now, perhaps I misunderstood your post. While at some points you seemed to connect what you said about complex systems and probability to evolution, at other times you seemed to apply it to the plausibility of evolution itself coming about. You did add the parenthetical statement \"unless you have some really good architecture in place\". Maybe you just meant that the emergence of creatures that could evolve -- the emergence of the architecture that lends itself so well to evolution -- is itself amazing. In that case, this isn't a reason to find evolution itself implausible, and I covered my take on that inference in my first paragraph.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2006 2:56 am**

In reference to some of the comments above:

Many of the \"errors\" in our genetic codes are, in engineering terms, within tolerance and I would say, that while \"different\" by definition, not different enough to considered \"wrong\". Also, the fact that we get our dna half/half from our parents, this in most cases causes the error to be over-ridden by the correct code from the other parent. ie color blindness. It is only when the \"error\" cannot be tolerated that harm or death results.

As to cows and chickens, we simply cross-bred to enhance the qualities that we wanted. But in doing so, we didn't enhance the existing dna, we simply strained (bred) out (over time) the traits that we didn't want. This is specialization.

eg The przewalski's horse is considered to be the last remaining \"wild\" horse and to be the type of horse that all current domestic breeds originated from. Years of cross-breeding and specialisation inbreeding has allowed us to now have all the different types of horses that we have. We have thinned the dna traits to create special purpose animals for our advantage, but you now couldn't breed a shetland pony out of a clydesdale without re introducing the shetland strain of genes. The przewalski horse on the other hand is considered to still have all of these trait possibilities still in its genes which is one of the reasons why its find caused such exitement.

Posted: **Wed Nov 01, 2006 1:40 pm**

Many edits later: I got a \"General Error: Could not insert new word matches\" each time I tried to respond. I found out that the offending words were \"however\", \"horse\" and \"different\". I've kludged my post into submission.

re: Weyrman's first paragraph
DNA recombination does not override mutations. If the mutation was not detrimental enough to prevent the parent from reproducing, it has a 50% chance (generally speaking) of getting passed on to their children. (Edit: Passed on but not necessarily expressed. How recently a gene was mutated has no bearing on whether it leads to a recessive trait. Mutations can also lead to a dominant trait that only requires a single copy to manifest itself, so recessiveness is not a way to specifically override mutations.)

re: second paragraph
We didn't enhance the DNA. The DNA had variations in it caused by many sources, including mutations, and over time our selection within that DNA pool led to animals that better fit the attributes we valued. We did not strain a chicken out of a pheasant, because a pheasant does not contain all the genetic information or traits of a chicken. We modified some pheasants over time to make chickens, taking advantage of mutations along the way that furthered our goals. Human selection can cause animals to have defects that would normally be weeded out through natural selection, but it is not simply straining out traits we don't want to leave the traits we do.

re: third paragraph
I haven't heard of this type of horse, but if it is a less specialized horse, it will not contain all the mutations that were selected in the various other breeds of horses. Some traits may not have required new mutations and may just have been variability within the existing genetic material, but other traits would. This horse would be easier to breed in other directions than other breeds, but you could not breed a genetic match of another breed from a przewalski horse. Even selecting for the same traits would sometimes lead to them coming about through different genetic pathways.

Posted: **Mon Nov 06, 2006 3:46 pm**

probably the most interested i've been in drak replying for awhile.

Posted: **Tue Nov 07, 2006 1:37 pm**

Lothar wrote:As for the reading of Genesis 1, check out this old post.

Interesting. My thoughts are along the same lines, though a bit different regarding some details. A while back I wrote a fairly short essay about how I approach the Bible and creation. It deals more with the "big picture" and doesn't go into much detail about Genesis, and for Genesis 1 it mainly states what I don't think it is.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 2:26 am**

Drakona wrote:Birds, Palz, Mercury - since you all asked - here's my fuller opinion on 'systems winding up', and why I find the idea of evolution so implausible.

Sorry for the ressurection, but I just came along the following two paragraphs while reading The God Delusion. I would recommend that book to anyone interested in this topic. Draw your own conclusions.

p121 wrote:Creationists 'logic' is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore a designer must have done it. And science's answer to this faulty logic is also always the same. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer ? Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested. And it is not only a workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power.

What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, where chance and design both fail at the starting gate ? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance. It is these end products that form the subjects of the creationist's wearingsomely recycled argument. The creationist completetly misses the point, because he (women should for once not mind being excluded by the pronoun) insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability as a single, one-off event. He doesn't understand the power of accumulation.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:22 am**

I've never found the \"Who designed the designer\" question really that impressive. I mean, if everything else pointed to a supernatural designer, I'd definitely be willing to let that one slide, because any reason we would have to suspect that such a supernatural designer was designed would only be based upon observation about our universe, not the designer's. Of course, by the same token, I think that this would make detecting the designer's design incredibly difficult, if not impossible, as well.

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 7:50 pm**

Grendel wrote:
Drakona wrote:Birds, Palz, Mercury - since you all asked - here's my fuller opinion on 'systems winding up', and why I find the idea of evolution so implausible.
Sorry for the ressurection, but I just came along the following two paragraphs while reading The God Delusion. I would recommend that book to anyone interested in this topic. Draw your own conclusions.

p121 wrote:Creationists 'logic' is always the same. Some natural phenomenon is too statistically improbable, too complex, too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to have come into existence by chance. Design is the only alternative to chance that the authors can imagine. Therefore a designer must have done it. And science's answer to this faulty logic is also always the same. Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative. Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer ? Chance and design both fail as solutions to the problem of statistical improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other one regresses to it. Natural selection is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested. And it is not only a workable solution, it is a solution of stunning elegance and power.

What is it that makes natural selection succeed as a solution to the problem of improbability, where chance and design both fail at the starting gate ? The answer is that natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance. It is these end products that form the subjects of the creationist's wearingsomely recycled argument. The creationist completetly misses the point, because he (women should for once not mind being excluded by the pronoun) insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability as a single, one-off event. He doesn't understand the power of accumulation.

Irreducible complexity poses a problem for accumulation, though. I am not a biologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I know all life takes place within a cell. Viruses are questionable as to whether they are alive, but even then their life-like functions take place within a cell wall.

Now, a cell wall needs a nucleus to manufacture the proteins to maintain it, so it could not evolve on its own. And the nucleus needs the wall to maintain its integrity for life operations. Neither one functions on its own, so we have a conundrum... which came first, the nucleus or the cell wall?

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:29 pm**

Jeff250 wrote:I've never found the "Who designed the designer" question really that impressive. I mean, if everything else pointed to a supernatural designer, I'd definitely be willing to let that one slide, because any reason we would have to suspect that such a supernatural designer was designed would only be based upon observation about our universe, not the designer's. Of course, by the same token, I think that this would make detecting the designer's design incredibly difficult, if not impossible, as well.

The question "who designed the designer" is important since its existence is deducted from the assumption that nothing complex can be build by something less complex. By this logic the designer must have come into existence by an even more complex designer etc. ad infinum..

Paul wrote:Irreducible complexity poses a problem for accumulation, though. I am not a biologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I know all life takes place within a cell. Viruses are questionable as to whether they are alive, but even then their life-like functions take place within a cell wall.

Now, a cell wall needs a nucleus to manufacture the proteins to maintain it, so it could not evolve on its own. And the nucleus needs the wall to maintain its integrity for life operations. Neither one functions on its own, so we have a conundrum... which came first, the nucleus or the cell wall?

Irreducable complexity doesn't pose a problem at all. I'd suggest reading the book, RD talks about that in detail as well. It boils down to that no irreducible complex organ has been identified to date (biologist or logic could always show how it evolved.) Finding one has been tried very hard over the centuries, including cells and cellular mechanisms. In your example, the wall came 1st since "older" cells don't have a nucleus.

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 9:18 pm**

Grendel wrote:The question "who designed the designer" is important since its existence is deducted from the assumption that nothing complex can be build by something less complex. By this logic the designer must have come into existence by an even more complex designer etc. ad infinum..

I'm fairly sure that when somebody is making a claim like "nothing complex can be built from something less complex," you can append on "in this universe" and have the statement's meaning completely preserved.

Posted: **Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:17 am**

Kinda convienent to change the rules to fit the theory. That doesn't make it a fact, it's completely hypothetical. Falls right along this line:

One side can be wrong wrote:If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case get it out of the science classroom and send it back into the church, where it belongs.

The rest of the article is worth reading as well BTW.

Posted: **Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:30 am**

Paul wrote:Irreducible complexity poses a problem for accumulation, though. I am not a biologist, so maybe I'm wrong, but as far as I know all life takes place within a cell. Viruses are questionable as to whether they are alive, but even then their life-like functions take place within a cell wall.

Now, a cell wall needs a nucleus to manufacture the proteins to maintain it, so it could not evolve on its own. And the nucleus needs the wall to maintain its integrity for life operations. Neither one functions on its own, so we have a conundrum... which came first, the nucleus or the cell wall?

The nucleus, as evidence points to proteins/amino acids forming the basis of life.

Posted: **Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:50 am**

Cell evolution puzzle wrote:Prokaryotic cells, such as bacteria, are relatively simple and have no nuclei.

It is believed they evolved first then absorbed other prokaryotes and became eukaryotes - complex cells that have nuclei and structures like the energy-producing mitochondria.

Article, more background

Posted: **Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:10 am**

Grendel wrote:If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case get it out of the science classroom and send it back into the church, where it belongs.

I don't believe that ID is a legitimate scientific theory.

DescentBB

An Evolution Question

An Evolution Question