Intelligent Reasoning

Promoting, advancing and defending Intelligent Design via data, logic and Intelligent Reasoning and exposing the alleged theory of evolution as the nonsense it is. I also educate evotards about ID and the alleged theory of evolution one tard at a time and sometimes in groups

Monday, October 31, 2011

Kevin R. McCarthy Blows Another Gasket and Has to Censor Science!

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Yup good ole scientopia guest blog- CORRECTION KEVIN WAS DOING ALL THE CENSORING- needs to censor comments that demonstrate their guest bloggers are full of shit.

Case in point- Kevin R. McCarthy thinks that digital organisms fit the requirements of being alive (they don't) and he points to Avida, of all things, to support his claim.

1- Avida "organisms" are far too simple to be considered anything like a biological organism

2- Avida organisms "evolve" via unreasonable parameters:


The effects of low-impact mutations in digital organisms

Chase W. Nelson and John C. Sanford

Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 2011, 8:9 | doi:10.1186/1742-4682-8-9

Abstract:

Background: Avida is a computer program that performs evolution experiments with digital organisms. Previous work has used the program to study the evolutionary origin of complex features, namely logic operations, but has consistently used extremely large mutational fitness effects. The present study uses Avida to better understand the role of low-impact mutations in evolution.

Results:

When mutational fitness effects were approximately 0.075 or less, no new logic operations evolved, and those that had previously evolved were lost. When fitness effects were approximately 0.2, only half of the operations evolved, reflecting a threshold for selection breakdown. In contrast, when Avida's default fitness effects were used, all operations routinely evolved to high frequencies and fitness increased by an average of 20 million in only 10,000 generations.


Conclusions:

Avidian organisms evolve new logic operations only when mutations producing them are assigned high-impact fitness effects. Furthermore, purifying selection cannot protect operations with low-impact benefits from mutational deterioration. These results suggest that selection breaks down for low-impact mutations below a certain fitness effect, the selection threshold. Experiments using biologically relevant parameter settings show the tendency for increasing genetic load to lead to loss of biological functionality. An understanding of such genetic deterioration is relevant to human disease, and may be applicable to the control of pathogens by use of lethal mutagenesis.

Yet when I posted this kevin had it deleted- TWICE.

As if I needed more evidence that Kevin R. McCarthy is a low-life, lying loser.

Guess what Kevin? If our confrontation does go to trial I will have a full archive to call on for evidence against you. Thanks...


I just put it here- that seems to be the relevant thread. We will see how long it stays....

Kevin R. McCarthy- Lying Like a Little Bitch AGAIN!

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This never gets old- Kevin R. McCarthy, known liar and loser for science is lying again.

This time Kevin sez:
It is not a place for your strawmen, your argument from authority, and your arguments from ignorance

Yet he never supports that tripe. His comment before that was all lies:

Yes Joe, misinformation about evolution like some of the things YOU have said like:

Evolution is totally random/chance
there are no transitional fossils
evolution denies God (or a designer)
Evolution is just a theory
x can't evolve because its too complex
etc. etc. etc.

But this thread isn't about evolution. In fact, not a single post I have made here is about evolution, I would appreciate you staying on topic.

Yet HE brought up evolution in the post I commented on! Not only that his accusations are lies.

So it doesn't matter where he posts, Kevin R. McCarthy is mothing but a piece-of-shit liar.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Natural Selection is Really Insignificant

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Oooops, so sorry evotards-> natural selection is impotent:
The explanation that best fits the data tells us that >99% of all evolutionary change is due to random genetic drift and not natural selection.

Very few evotards understand evolution well enough to appreciate that.

And taht means their position boils down to sheer dumb luck.

Yeah baby...

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution- Revisited- AGAIN!

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EvoTards are such a clueless lot. They have to make shit up because they don't have anything real to support their position. They HAVE TO tell people ID is anti-evolution even though they cannot support the claim.

So here it is AGAIN- Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution:

Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution

In order to have a discussion about whether or not Intelligent Design is anti-evolution or not we must first define “evolution”. Fortunately there are resources available that do just that.

Defining “evolution”:
Finally, during the evolutionary synthesis, a consensus emerged: “Evolution is the change in properties of populations of organisms over time”- Ernst Mayr page 8 of “What Evolution Is”

Biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. The development, or ontogeny, of an individual organism is not considered evolution: individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are ‘heritable' via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that determine the different human blood types, to the alterations that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees, snapdragons, and humans.
Douglas J. Futuyma (1998) Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc. Sunderland MA p.4

Biological evolution refers to the cumulative changes that occur in a population over time. PBS series “Evolution” endorsed by the NCSE

Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations) UC Berkley

In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next.
Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

Evolution- in biology, the word means genetically based change in a line of descent over time.- Biology: Concepts and Applications Starr 5th edition 2003 page 10

Those are all accepted definitions of biological “evolution”. (Perhaps OgreMKV will present some definitions that differ from those. Most likely I will only comment on any differences if the differences are relevant.)

With biology, where-ever there is heritable genetic change there is evolution and where-ever you have offspring that are (genetically) different from the parent(s) you have descent with modification.

Next I will show what Intelligent Design says about biological evolution and people can see for themselves that Intelligent Design is not anti-evolution:

Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism
(MAY 2000)


Scott refers to me as an intelligent design "creationist," even though I clearly write in my book Darwin's Black Box (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think "evolution occurred, but was guided by God."- Dr Michael Behe

Dr Behe has repeatedly confirmed he is OK with common ancestry. And he has repeatedly made it clear that ID is an argument against materialistic evolution (see below), ie necessity and chance.

Then we have:

What is Intelligent Design and What is it Challenging?- a short video featuring Stephen C. Meyer on Intelligent Design. He also makes it clear that ID is not anti-evolution.

Next Dembski and Wells weigh in:


The theory of intelligent design (ID) neither requires nor excludes speciation- even speciation by Darwinian mechanisms. ID is sometimes confused with a static view of species, as though species were designed to be immutable. This is a conceptual possibility within ID, but it is not the only possibility. ID precludes neither significant variation within species nor the evolution of new species from earlier forms. Rather, it maintains that there are strict limits to the amount and quality of variations that material mechanisms such as natural selection and random genetic change can alone produce. At the same time, it holds that intelligence is fully capable of supplementing such mechanisms, interacting and influencing the material world, and thereby guiding it into certain physical states to the exclusion of others. To effect such guidance, intelligence must bring novel information to expression inside living forms. Exactly how this happens remains for now an open question, to be answered on the basis of scientific evidence. The point to note, however, is that intelligence can itself be a source of biological novelties that lead to macroevolutionary changes. In this way intelligent design is compatible with speciation. page 109 of "The Design of Life"

and

And that brings us to a true either-or. If the choice between common design and common ancestry is a false either-or, the choice between intelligent design and materialistic evolution is a true either-or. Materialistic evolution does not only embrace common ancestry; it also rejects any real design in the evolutionary process. Intelligent design, by contrast, contends that biological design is real and empirically detectable regardless of whether it occurs within an evolutionary process or in discrete independent stages. The verdict is not yet in, and proponents of intelligent design themselves hold differing views on the extent of the evolutionary interconnectedness of organisms, with some even accepting universal common ancestry (ie Darwin’s great tree of life).
Common ancestry in combination with common design can explain the similar features that arise in biology. The real question is whether common ancestry apart from common design- in other words, materialistic evolution- can do so. The evidence of biology increasingly demonstrates that it cannot.- Ibid page 142

And from one more pro-ID book:

Many assume that if common ancestry is true, then the only viable scientific position is Darwinian evolution- in which all organisms are descended from a common ancestor via random mutation and blind selection. Such an assumption is incorrect- Intelligent Design is not necessarily incompatible with common ancestry.- page 217 of “Intelligent Design 101”

That is just a sample of what the Intelligent Design leadership say about biological evolution- they are OK with it. And the following is from “Uncommon Descent”:

9] “Evolution” Proves that Intelligent Design is Wrong
The word “evolution” can mean different things. The simplest meaning is one of natural history of the appearance of different living forms. A stronger meaning implies common descent, in its universal form (all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor) or in partial form (particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor). “Evolution” is often defined as descent with modifications, or simply as changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.

None of those definitions can prove ID wrong, because none are in any way incompatible with it.

ID is a theory about the cause of genetic information, not about the modalities or the natural history of its appearance, and is in no way incompatible with many well known patterns of limited modification of that information usually defined as “microevolution.” ID affirms that design is the cause, or at least a main cause, of complex biological information. A theory which would indeed be alternative to ID, and therefore could prove it wrong, is any empirically well-supported “causal theory” which excludes design; in other words any theory that fits well with the evidence and could explain the presence or emergence of complex biological information through chance, necessity, any mix of the two, or any other scenario which does not include design. However, once we rule out “just-so stories” and the like, we will see that there is not today, nor has there ever been, such a theory. Furthermore, the only empirically well-supported source of functionally specific, complex information is: intelligence.
To sum it up: no definition of evolution is really incompatible with an ID scenario. Any causal theory of evolution which does not include design is obviously alternative to, and incompatible with, ID.

However, while many such theories have indeed been proposed, they are consistently wanting in the necessary degree of empirical support. By contrast, design is an empirically known source of the class of information – complex, specified information (CSI) — exhibited by complex biological systems.

They go on to say:

10] The Evidence for Common Descent is Incompatible with Intelligent Design
ID is a theory about the cause of complex biological information. Common descent (CD) is a theory about the modalities of implementation of that information. They are two separate theories about two different aspects of the problem, totally independent and totally compatible. In other words, one can affirm CD and ID, CD and Darwinian Evolution, or ID and not CD. However, if one believes in Darwinian Evolution, CD is a necessary implication.

CD theory exists in two forms, universal CD and partial CD. No one can deny that there are evidences for the theory of CD (such as ERVs, homologies and so on). That’s probably the reason why many IDists do accept CD. Others do not agree that those evidences are really convincing, or suggest that they may reflect in part common design. But ID theory, proper, has nothing to do with all that.
ID affirms that design is the key cause of complex biological information. The implementation of design can well be realized through common descent, that is through implementation of new information in existing biological beings. That can be done gradually or less gradually. All these are modalities of the implementation of information, and not causes of the information itself. ID theory is about causes.

And finally there is front loaded evolution (Mike Gene) and a prescribed evolutionary hypothesis (John Davison)- both are ID hypotheses pertaining to evolution.

Mutations are OK, differential reproduction is OK, horizontal gene transfer is OK. With Intelligent Design organisms are designed to evolve, ie they evolve by design. That is by “built-in responses to environmental cues” ala Dr Spetner’s “non-random evolution hypothesis” being the main process of adaptations.

As Dembski/ Wells said Intelligent design only has an issue with materialistic evolution- the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms. (Also known as the blind watchmaker thesis)

Intelligent Design is OK with all individuals in a population generally having the same number and types of genes and that those genes give rise to an array of traits and characteristics that characterize that population. It is OK with mutations that may result in two or more slightly different molecular forms of a gene- alleles- that influence a trait in different ways and that individuals of a population vary in the details of a trait when they inherit different combinations of alleles. ID is OK with any allele that may become more or less common in the population relative to other kinds at a gene locus, or it may disappear. And ID is OK with allele frequencies changing as a result of mutation, gene flow, genetic drift, natural and artificial selection, that mutation alone produces new alleles and gene flow, genetic drift, natural and artificial selection shuffle existing alleles into, through, or out of populations. IOW ID is OK with biological evolution. As Dr Behe et al., make very clear, it just argues about the mechanisms- basically design/ telic vs spontaneous/ stochastic.

Now we are left with the only way Intelligent Design can be considered anti-evolution is if and only if the only definition of evolution matches the definition provided for materialistic evolution. However I cannot find any source that states that is the case.

So the bottom line is Intelligent Design says “evolved, sure”. The questions are “evolved from what?” and “how did it evolve?”.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Dennis R. Venema is Confused, Misguided and Full of Shit

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That's right Dennis R. Venema is ooo freaking confused he is making himself into a fool and he doesn't even understand that he is doing so.

Who is Dennis R. Venema?

Dennis Venema is associate professor at Trinity Western University and a Senior Fellow with the BioLogos Foundation. He obtained his BSc and PhD in cell biology and genetics from the University of British Columbia.
His research interests include the genetics of tissue patterning in Drosophila, genetics education, and the interaction between evolutionary biology and Christian faith. Recently, he has authored a series of blog posts, discussing how information arises during evolution for the Biologos Foundation.
He and his family enjoy numerous outdoor activities that the Pacific coast
region has to offer.

He has been criticizing Stephen C. Meyer's "Signature in the Cell". However he has erected a strawman and criticized it. Meyer exposed his strawman and now Dennis has responded.

But when we read the response it is clear that Dennis is an imbecile as he misrepresents Meyer right off the bat. For example Dennis sez:
I find Meyer’s claim that biological evolution is irrelevant to the argument of Signature curious for several reasons.
The most important reason is that the basic argument of Signature requires that biological evolution be incapable of generating new information.

Wrong again you stupid freak. SitC is a book about biological ORIGIN, not biological evolution and Meyer even said that in his response to you. That means you are too stupid to understand anything and will just make up something and go ahead with your ignorant spewage.

Dennis goes on to say:
The strength of this argument depends on the assertion
that all information arises from intelligence.

Wrong again, asshole. What Meyer wrote and you quoted applies only to complex and specified information- that is Shannon information with a function/ meaning.

He follows that up with:
Note well: the argument requires that all information, in any form, be the result of intelligence, not just the information required for the origin of life.

Note well, Dennis, you are fucking clueless and perhaps close to being a complete imbecile. Shannon information does not require intelligence and Meyer never said nor implied it did. Quite the opposite and he says so right in the book you are criticizing! That tells me you didn't read the book.

Also Dennis, the argument is that blind, undirected physical processes cannot produce CSI and if you use biological organisms then you are begging the fucking question! Are you really that daft that you don't understand that?

In his conclusion Dennis confirms what I just said:
The reason for the paring down is obvious:
comparative genomics, experimental evolution, and developmental biology have shed too much light on the ability of biological evolution to generate
information.

1- Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution you moron

2- There isn't any evidemnce that the processes you speak of are blind, undirected chemical processes as you are starting with that which needs explaining in the first place!

To sum up Dennis R. Venema does not understand Intelligent Design and has absolutely no clue on what Intelligent Design claims.

Hopefully he is better at his profession then he is at criticizing other people's position.

Sunday, October 09, 2011

This "just" in...

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This "just" in, the world is 13,023 years old and will end on October 21, 2011.

Yeah baby...

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Pre-Biotic Natural Selection? So What?

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The anti-ID mob is trying to use their magical ratchet of natural selection on pre-biological stuff.

I say who cares? Natural selection is an oxymoron anyway- nature doesn't select. Natural selction is just a result of heirtable random variation- if it leads top differential reproduction you have natural selection.

So the anti-ID mod sez natural selection applies to the first replicators. So what? That doesn't help them as ns has never been a creative force, just an eliminative one- as in replicators that can't cut it get cut.

So go ahead, invoke pre-biotic natural selection. It just exposes the desperation of your position.

Thanks...

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

More Horseshit and The Origin of Life

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I give you horseshit and the origin of life:

OOL Discovery #1. All known life can be traced back to a single common ancestor which, compared to what most people think of as present-day life (i.e. plants and animals), was relatively simple – microscopic, single-celled, perhaps as complex as an average bacterium or perhaps somewhat less so.

Total unsupportable horseshit. There still isn't any evidence that a prokaryote can evolve into something other than a prokaryote, meaning the "trace" can't even get started.

OOL Discovery #2. The Last Common Ancestor itself was the product of evolution from an even simpler ancestor.

Question-begging fallacy.

OOL Discovery #3. DNA/RNA/protein-based life was preceded by something even simpler, an RNA world or at least an RNA-heavy world.

Of course your position requires that but there isn't any evidence for it so it could not be a "discovery".

OOL Discovery #4. The increasingly simple ancestors of modern life weren’t made out of just anything, they were made out of chemicals that just happen to be generated by plausible abiotic mechanisms found in early solar systems.

And more question-begging.

The moral of this story is evotards will just say anything but don't ask for evidence to support their claims.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Nicholas J. Matzke is a Total Asshole

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That's right, as if I needed to say it- Nicholas J. matzke, formewrly of the NCSE, is a total asshole. The following is my evidence:

Over on Telic Thoughts NickMatzke sez-
Venema, others at BioLogos, and other critics like me have been arguing that the most obvious huge crashing flaw with that is that there is at least one major nonintelligent source of information, namely evolution by multiple rounds of mutation and selection (where mutation includes gene duplication etc.).

Nice QUESTION-BEGGING RESPONSE YOU TOTAL ASSHOLE!

What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you really think your bullshit willful ignorance means something?

1- Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution

2- There isn't any evidence that gene duplications are Darwinian/ neo-darwinain processes

The moron goes on to say:
Thus the validity of Meyer's logical argument turns out to hang on whether or not evolution can produce new information, and this motivates a debate about whether or not it is reasonable to think that natural evolutionary processes can produce new genes.

Wrong again, asshole. Meyer even states it in his book- page 4-> "blind and undirected" processes. Ya see Nick, you are so much of an asshole you still think ID is anti-evolution even though Meyer himself says ID is OK with evolution- as do Behe, Dembski, Wells, et al.

So Nick, THAT is why the origin of life is so important. The ONLY way you can call on gene duplications to support your position is by demonstrating a living organism can arise from non-living matter via blind and undirected chemical processes. Until you do that you are just being a total asshole with your question-begging wussyness.