Do you know enough to dismiss expertise in biology geology …

Comment on The Basis of Biblical Credibility by Sean Pitman.

Do you know enough to dismiss expertise in biology geology or any other field of research or not? An honest scientist would have sufficient respect for the process to be intimately familiar with the original data and literature in that field before dismissing the prevailing paradigms by those that are.

I’ve read a bit about this topic over almost 20 years. However, I have not come across any argument, published or unpublished, which explains how random mutations and natural selection can tenably explain anything beyond very very low levels of functional complexity. And, now you seem to be telling me that you don’t personally know of any such published arguments or demonstrations either. After all, I’ve asked you to present such an argument or illustration or demonstration now for a couple of years and you’ve yet to present a single argument or paper along these lines – not one. You’ve told me to do PubMed searches and all, but you’ve failed to actually identify any single relevant paper or argument of any kind that addresses this fundamental question for Darwinism. What you seem to do is what everyone else seems to do – cite low level examples of evolution in action and then extrapolate to higher levels of evolution with the assumption of a linear relationship. When it is shown to you that your linear extrapolation models don’t represent actual reality (an exponential relationship), you have no explanation other than to try to argue that the concept of “levels of functional complexity” hasn’t been defined in literature (which is false) or to argue that some future discovery is sure to support your position (which isn’t scientific).

I am expert in only a small area of science and would accept in good faith consensus conclusions in others as closer to the truth than my facile understanding. This I have consistently done. If I want to disagree I would become familiar with the scientific literature clearly defined as the peer reviewed literature and that is what I expect of you. You claim the experts are wrong and I point you to what you have to address. It is totally irrelevant whether I am familiar with every piece of data since I am a very conventional scientist and physician who accepts both the accepted method and the canonical literature of medicine and science. I have never claimed to have sufficient expertise to discount these observations and conclusions. You do. It is not incumbent on me to compensate for your lack of intellectual rigour by thinking for you. I unfortunately cannot make you honestly address that data or the accepted methodology of science.

Are you saying that you simply accept the claims of experts without a personal understanding of how the Darwinian mechanism actually works at higher levels of functional complexity? – therefore it must work even if you personally do not understand how? If so, how is that any kind of challenge to anything I’ve presented? – besides to tell me that experts disagree with me for some reason that you personally don’t understand? Why do they disagree with me? You don’t seem to know. How is that helpful to me or anyone else who sincerely comes to you and asks you, personally, how random mutations and natural selection could possibly do what neo-Darwinians, like you, claim it did? If you don’t know the answer to this very basic question of Darwinism, why not just say so up front? Why even pretend that you know the answer when you really don’t?

I am clearly wasting my time and too much red ink here.

If you can’t tell me how the mechanism works, why even think to argue that I should accept something that you yourself admittedly don’t understand? – based only on the word of a bunch of experts? Why even waste your breath trying to convince anyone to accept something that you seem to only understand as a matter of faith in the bold claims of others?

I continue to pray for you and that your designs on honest scientists at Adventist Universities will indeed be thwarted

I appreciate that. I know that you are sincere and honest in your position, and that’s the most important thing in my book. My prayers are with you as well.

Sean Pitman Also Commented

The Basis of Biblical Credibility

Your argument that evolution cannot work because Paul Cameron or anyone else lacks a precise mechanism to overcome your declared barrier (1000 fairly specified amino acid residues) is based on the fallacy of ignorance.

Then I suppose SETI science, forensic science, and anthropology are all based on the “fallacy of ignorance” as well? – since these scientists can’t think of any mindless natural mechanism to explain certain types of radio signals, murder victims with certain unnatural features, or pieces of rock with artefactual features?

I’m sorry, but there is no fallacy with the argument for the detection of intelligent design behind various kinds of artefacts – like the origin of a highly symmetrical polished granite cube. It isn’t that these scientists are ignorant of how the phenomenon in question could have been produced by intelligent design. They know how the features they’re considering could have been produced by many different intelligently designed methods. What they don’t know is how the artefact in question could have been produced by any known mindless mechanism of nature. That, my friend, is the very basis of all sciences dealing with the detection of true artefacts of intelligent design.

The very same thing is true of the biomachines within living things that I’m presenting. Clearly, these machines very closely resemble machines that we know were produced by intelligent design. We known and understand how such machines could be produced by various means by intelligent design. What we don’t know is how they could be produced by any mindless natural mechanism this side of a practical eternity of time (i.e., trillions upon trillions of years). This means, of course, that the very best scientific conclusion, the theory with the best predictive power, is that any such biomachine was almost certainly produced by intelligent design.

Now, does the intelligent designer of these biomachines have to be God? No. Not at all. Omnipotence is not required to explain something like a bacterial flagellar motility system. However, even though omnipotence is not required to explain the origin of such machines (to include things like a wrist watch or a granite cube), intelligence of some kind is required.

Does this therefore mean that God did not make something just because God-like power is not required? No. God can make simple stuff just as easily as you and I can make simple stuff. If it just that a God-like creative power is not required to explain everything that God can make. For example, is it possible for God to make a loaf of bread? – the same type of loaf of bread that your mother can make? Sure it is.

It’s funny, don’t you think, that you don’t argue against SETI radio signals or highly symmetrical granite cubes as being anything other than obvious artefacts of intelligent design. Why then the double standard for biological machines that are even farther beyond any known mindless mechanism while being at least closely approximated the creative powers of known intelligent agents?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


The Basis of Biblical Credibility

You obviously can declare anything you want in terms mutation rates and how many SNP indels and genes were present in the 2 mythical pigs but how many can really be present in the original haplotypes. You have said before that copy number variation was not at all the basis for the genetic richness of the original 2.

I see no reason to argue for a significant difference in past mutation rates as compared to today’s rates. Consider that the pig genome is similar in size to the human genome, ~3 billion bases (haploid). The two pigs on the Ark could easily have had a 0.3% difference in genome sequences to start with (with regard to SNPs). Also, in each family line novel SNPs are produced in each generation for each individual at a fairly high rate (up to 100 per individual per generation). And, the generation time for pigs is ~1 year. A comparison between hundreds of pigs from different family lines, even within the same breeding population of average size, would yield a huge number of SNPs in very short order. So, I don’t see why this is an appeal to “magic”?

As far as “unique genes” are concerned, much of this can be explained by a loss of genetic information by one population vs. the other after the split. This is one of the reasons for the “hybrid vitality” already mentioned. Producing such hybrids gives the hybrid offspring access to genes that are missing from each separate gene pool, but were originally available in the ancestral gene pool.

Of course, the production of novel alleles is also a factor. And, in an average population, any beneficial allelic variation would become fixed in relatively short order.

The differences in indels is interesting, but I see no need to invoke magic to explain a few hundred thousand indels in a comparison of hundreds of pigs – especially since muticharacter mutations are quite common as well and would already have existed within the first pair on the Ark to begin with. For example, there are thought to be thousands of conversion mutations per individual in each generation. Combine this with what is generally assumed to be a high rate of inversions/translocations, ~10 duplications/insertions/deletions (changing up to 20 times the number bases that point mutations change per generation), and >100 satellite mutations, and you have yourself a very high overall mutation rate that adds up to many thousands of nucleotide changes per individual per generation.


The Basis of Biblical Credibility

“The discovery of the Cit + mutants in Lenski’s experiment has been a mote in the eye for those suggesting that major phenotypic innovations cannot be explained by micro-evolutionary (gradual) processes…

Do you know anything about the experiment where Lenski’s produced Cit+ E. coli bacteria?

What Lenski did was to grow E. coli under oxic conditions in citrate-rich media. E. coli bacteria are generally unable to use citrate under oxic conditions as a source of energy. However, they can use it under anoxic conditions. In other words, they already have the gene for citrase in their genome. It is just that it is normally turned off under oxic conditions. How is it turned off? Well, the promoter for the gene that transports citrate into the bacterium is not active under oxic conditions. So, all that needs to happen is to move the citrate transport gene close to a promoter that is actually active under oxic conditions. Once this is done, citrate will enter the bacterium and be used for energy.

And, this is exactly what happened. Nothing structurally new needed to be evolved. After about 31,000 generations, in a large population of bacteria, there was a single genetic mutation in a bacterium that ended up moving the citT gene and placing it under the control of a promoter (rnk) that is active under oxic conditions. The fact that just this single translocation mutation took so long to achieve should clue you in to how difficult it is to achieve even such low-level changes in function via random mutations. The protein product, however, remained the same – i.e., <500aa with no required amino acid changes to achieve a selectable effect. All that was required was to move a pre-existing gene close to a promoter to turn it on during oxic conditions. That's it. The protein itself didn't need to be changed for a useful advantage. Now, at this point, multiple copies of the gene were rapidly produced in some colonies. However, having just one copy was enough to produce a selectable advantage in the citrate-rich environment. It doesn't matter if there are 1 - 9 copies of the gene - the same function is realized to different levels - i.e., the cit+ function can exist, to a selectable degree, with just one copy of the gene producing the the very same protein. Additional "refinements" are easy once at least a minimum useful level of a particular type of function is realized - not a problem at all. Again, this "unicorn" of yours is a very low-level example of evolution in action where nothing structurally new was produced to achieve the function in question. The only thing that happened was a mutational move from one location to another within the genome. That's not a statistical problem for Darwinism at all...

Pubmed still does not have any reference to novel structure composed of 1000 amino acid residues. But indeed there is refence to uinicorns so your 100FSAAR is rarer than unicorns in the biomedical literature. Perhaps you should publish your obvservations.

Tell me, what is the minimum number of specifically arranged amino acids required to produce a rotary bacterial falgellar motility system? Is it possible to reduce it to less than 1000 specifically arranged residues? – without a complete loss of the motility function?

Again, the concept of functional complexity has been published and is well defined in literature, to include the minimum size requirement. I’ve already given you the references a couple times now.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.