Comment on EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN by Sean Pitman.
On an Atoday blog:
http://www.atoday.com/content/educate-truth-perhaps-elaborate-spoof-turned-ugly#comment-7633
Prof. Kent wrote:
I certainly agree that these systems are not at the highest level of evolution, but while evolutionists believe these nevertheless highly complex systems evolved over millions of years, you insist that they evolved in less than 6,000 years. That’s pretty extreme to sweep under the carpet.
Not when you’re talking about front-loaded information…
You then go on to describe the evolution of these systems as “degeneration.” Pardon me, but I have to ask–after a hearty laugh–from what did they “degenerate” from? When I look at the head of a rattlesnake, everything I see, from the enormous venom glands to the moveable, hollow, hypodermic needle-like fangs, appears to be designed to kill. Did a cluster of secretory cells in the oral cavity “degenerate” by dramatically increasing in size to synthesize and store copious quantities of unique (found nowhere else) toxins? Did muscles in the vicinity “degenerate” by enlarging considerably so as to be capable of compressing the gland and expel the venom? Did the gland further “degenerate” by forming an elongated duct that traverses the roof of the mouth to the fangs, which in turn presumably “degenerated” from simple and otherwise ordinary teeth to become spectacularly large and hollow? (Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, the venom gland of some snakes extends beyond the head and well into the body!) What about the heat-sensing facial pits? The these “degenerate” from dimples in the middle of the cheek, to become massive, gaping holes from which special nerve endings “degenerated” as they formed lengthy and novel connections to the visual regions of the brain? Wow! That’s some spectacular degeneration!
I didn’t say that everything was “degenerative”. What I said was that all of the basic structures were already there and were either modified by degenerative or Mendelian-style variation for the most part.
The hollow or grooved teeth were already there and may have been used to inject digestive juices into the original diet for these reptiles – fruits or the like. Who knows? Elongating a duct is easy to achieve since it isn’t the production of something qualitatively new. The basic form was already there. The same is true of the modification of musculature size and the specialization of heat-sensing organs (which were already there to begin with) via Mendelian-style variation of information that was front-loaded in the beginning.
How can I be so sure of this? Because, there is a clearly demonstrable exponential decline of the evolutionary mechanism of RM/NS when it comes to what we can observe of real evolutionary change in action. Real evolutionary change only occurs on very low levels of functional complexity, stalling out, exponentially, well before the 1000 fsaar is reached.
This real life observation is backed up by statistical analysis of sequence space that demonstrates the very same exponential decline in the ratio of potentially viable/beneficial vs. non-beneficial sequences with each step up the ladder of functional complexity.
Next, you declare that these remarkable changes are well below “the 1000 fsaar level of complexity.” Of course, no one can really argue with this point since you are employing concepts and terms that you have invented out of thin air, which have never been published. Only YOU know what you are talking about. It’s like me saying, “Of course, fellow Adventists, I can cite for you many examples in which animals have evolved more then 43.7 Lego units of complexity.” Lego units, you ask? “C’mon, people, you can trust me; I know what I’m talking about – wink, wink!”
The concept of functional complexity that I’m talking about has been published. For example, Hazen et. al. define functional complexity as follows:
* n: the number of letters in the sequence.
* Ex: the degree of function x of that sequence.Therefore, Ex is a measure of the effectiveness of the message ininvoking a particular response.
* M(Ex): the total number of different letter sequences that will achieve the desired function, in this case, the threshold degree of response, Ex. The functional information, I(Ex), for a system that achieves a degree of function, Ex, for sequences of exactly n letters is therefore:
o I(Ex) = -log2 [M(Ex)/C^n]
o where C = number of possible characters per position
What is also interesting is that Hazen et. al. go on to not that, “In every system, the fraction of configurations, F(Ex), capable of achieving a specified degree of function will generally decrease with increasing Ex.” And, according to their own formulas, this decrease is an exponential decrease with each linear increase in Ex.
Now, they do try to explain how RM/NS can move up to higher and higher levels, but, unfortunately in their paper, they only deal with very very low levels of functional complexity of no more than a few dozen aa residues.
Robert M. Hazen, Patrick L. Griffin, James M. Carothers, and Jack W. Szostak, Functional information and the emergence of biocomplexity, 8581|PNAS|May 15, 2007|Vol. 104|suppl. 1
Your final comment further amused me: “There simply are no such observed examples of evolution “in action” in literature – period.” This argument is disingenious at two levels. First, to invoke the necessity of something from the literature to support your claims pretty much disqualifies everything you’ve said up to this point (in particular your Fsaar Side cartoon). Second, no one has lived long enough (thousands to millions of years) to observe the complex changes that have taken place, which, um, you yourself believe in nonetheless.
There are many examples of evolution in observable action in literature. What is interesting about these examples is that they are all very low level examples, producing no novel systems of function that require more than a few hundred fairly specified amino acid residue positions at minimum. What is even more interesting about these examples is their pattern of production. They demonstrate an exponential decline in evolvability, over a given span of time, with increasing complexity.
This pattern interested me and caused me to sit down and do some statistical calculations based on the ratio of potentially beneficial vs. non-beneficial sequences in sequences space. According to what is currently known about sequence space the odds strongly suggest that there is an exponential decline in this ratio as well with each step up the ladder of functional complexity (as defined above). This also means that there will be an exponential increase in the average time required for RM/NS to achieve success at each higher level of functional complexity.
The math shows that at the 1000 fsaar level the average time needed to achieve success is in the trillions upon trillions of years.
This isn’t a very high level of functional complexity when it comes to what we see in all living things. The 1000 fsaar level is still a very very low level. However, when it comes to the potential of the evolutionary mechanism, it is statistically unreachable.
So, given that the evolutionary mechanism cannot be tested in a demonstrable manner to be likely responsible for higher levels of functional complexity, and given that the calculated statistical odds are also in agreement with this observation, your conclusions that the mechanism of RM/NS is the best “scientific” conclusion isn’t true. This isn’t the best scientific conclusion for the origin of life and its diversity beyond very low levels of functional complexity at all. There really is no science behind this story beyond just-so story telling. That’s it.
Surprised as I was when I first discovered this reality, this is the fact of the situation.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
Um, I think the evolutionists are the ones who informed us about ice ages.
You’re mistaken. Evolutionists were not the first ones to propose ice age theories – theories which were around well before Darwin published Origins in 1859.
For example, Andrew Ure (1778-1857) was one of the top chemists of his day with an international reputation as a meticulous scientist, a prolific writer and an effective teacher. But he was also one of those brilliantly versatile men of science in the early 19th century. In 1829 he published A New System of Geology in which he proposed some new theoretical ideas for the reconstruction of earth history, one of which was one of the earliest conceptions of an ice age, which he speculated would have resulted from the Flood. One of the author’s he quoted was Jens Esmark (1763-1839)
Jens Esmark also argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages well before Darwin. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in the Earth’s orbit. Adding to Esmark’s work, Bernhardi, in a 1932 paper, speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate zones around the globe.
http://creation.com/british-scriptural-geologists-in-the-first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century-part-4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Esmark
They have given us more information about ice ages than creationists have and nothing, I repeat nothing, is going to change that. They have no problem with ice ages whatsoever.
They have no problem with ice ages, true. But, they do have a definite problem with the idea of very rapid, even catastrophically sudden, formation and regression. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that scientists began to realize that glacial melts can happen many times more rapidly than they tought possible just 10 years ago – to include the melting of Greenland’s ice-cap as well as the Antarctic ice. No one thought that such rapid melting could ever happen as rapidly as it is taking place today.
www.DetectingDesign.com/AncientIce.html
What is it with Adventists suddenly talking a lot about Las Vegas, card games, houses of cards, gambling and betting? I’m bewildered.
It is often a very good way to get important statistical concepts across to those people who don’t usually deal with numbers and the scientific usefulness of statistical odds analysis… like you ; )
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So…ice ages are scientifically impossible and therefore could only result from a global supernatural flood. The arctic seas became hot which caused very high precipitation. Then an extreme cold spell came along that made an iceberg out of high elevations and high altitudes, decreased the ocean sea level and dried out the Mediterranean basin. I assume these explanations fit within the 1000 gsaar threshold (geologically supportable argumentative age reasoning) of explanatory complexity
Ice ages are not scientifically impossible. They are certainly consistent with a global catastrophe that involved massive volcanic activity. And, massive meteor impacts may indeed have provided the sudden release of the huge quantities of energy needed to produce the initial catastrophe on a global scale. Also, it is well-known that ice ages would indeed reduce ocean levels quite dramatically – easily below the level needed to maintain water in the Mediterranean basin (which is known to have been dry during the last major ice age).
I fail to see what it is about this scenario that you find so “complex” and unbelievable given the starting premise of a sudden massive release of energy on this planet?… What would you expect to happen? Orderly weather as usual? The whole surface of the planet was broken up by the massive impact that set the whole catastrophe in motion… the aftershocks of which we are still feeling to this day.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So did the mammoths dies of cold or starvation? Maybe it wasn’t the intolerable cold, perhaps it was too much snowfall that spoiled access to the vegetation they depended on. Unless most or all of the fossils had identifiable food in their mouths or stomachs (I have heard that some did), how could one possibly know?
It really doesn’t matter if they died directly because of the cold or indirectly because of starvation (though I favor the former idea). Either way, the evidence suggests that they, along with millions of other types of animals, died out very suddenly in line with a sudden global cold snap. That’s the key point here. The cold snap would result in a rapid decrease in the ocean’s water level, resulting in an opportunity to dry out the Mediterranean basin…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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