Discussing Romans 1:20 scientifically

Peter Rankin

02:23

@lupe Seems like viruses are a different animal, though, so to speak, but I'll have to check about bacteria. Not sure Sanford's model would predict collapse after only 4-6k years of modern decay rates (per YEC timescales). I think the bigger animals are collapsing per inbreeding and diminished gene pool, not just genetic"rust," if I remember his model correctly.

Matthew

02:38

@PeterRankin "Diminished gene pool" is exactly what real genetics produce. Most CD models require small populations to be able to diverge and rapidly differentiate, then rise to become brand new species, then thrive for hundreds of thousands of years. Real observation, however (not just speculation or computer modeling) suggests that the conditions supposed to result in new species actually result in extinct species.

Peter Rankin

@Matthew Good point.

lupe

08:22

@PeterRankin so, there's the long-term e-coli evolution experiment, in which the population didn't collapse, but in fact gained the ability to metabolize a new substrate, for bacteria.

And I know you'd like to dismiss viruses, but the same rules of inheritance and mutation apply, with the caveat that recombination is rare. That, if anything, should make the "degeneracy problem" worse, as there's no easy way to shed negative mutations.

So, with Sanford's model, I'd argue it doesn't match up to reality - bacteria should be getting less fit, viruses should be getting less fit, as they have many, many orders of magnitude more numbers than us, and many, many orders of magnitude more mutations than us (and bacterial replication is more error prone than ours)

And there's simply not a good way to account for this in that model

terdon

09:15

@lupe Could you point me to a paper on that, please? Are you saying that the same amino acid can alter protein folding depending on which synonymous codon was used to code for that amino acid?

lupe

@terdon I skim read this one, but am not convinced it goes that far, on a re-read pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1232867

just that it argues the triplet code affects the folding

and that mRNA mediates folding

wait, here's the one! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5662057

and a review herehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283623004953

terdon

09:30

@lupe oooh! That's cool, thanks!

lupe

@terdon I think the caveat is that it's unclear how much this happens in reality

terdon

@lupe Oh sure, I imagine not very often, but I was curious as to which mechanism could allow it to happen at all. I actually now remember a friend of mine who works on the effect of the relative abundance of the various synonymous codons and how it varies across different species and he had told me something about the rate of translation being affected. I had no idea it could also affect folding though. Neat!

lupe

10:23

@PeterRankin So, we've got bigger mutation problems if we're assuming YEC timescales, which is simply that speeding up radioactive decay to account for the timescale would give all animals the sort of radiation doses normally associated with irritating russian dissidents

@PeterRankin It'd also set off continous atomic explosions, starlight would cook the planet, and dozens of other cataclasmically world ending events. So if we're arguing the 4-6K year time scale, we're in the world of fantasy.

terdon

@PeterRankin This is part of the confusion, I think. There is no effort, NS isn't a process that has a finite amount of energy that it applies towards "fixing good" or "removing bad". That's like saying that a rock placed in a stream is exerting power to choose whether to redirect this molecule of water toward the left or the right hand side.

Mutations occur and then they may or may not affect the chances of reproduction. If they do, then over the generations, that effect can affect the relative frequency of that mutation in the population. If a mutation does not affect the chances of reproduction, it isn't selected for or against. None of this requires any kind of active process.

Peter Rankin

12:24

@lupe I may need to look into e. coli more, but is it the case that the ability to digest citrate is not actually "new" with e. coli, but occurs "in the wild" occasionally already? And so these experiments may have simply been bringing out that latent ability? (Sort of like) the mutation allowing some of us to digest lactose as adults?

As for viruses, I don't really consider those the same. But for instance, covid became "more fit" by becoming less deadly, and viruses tend to do that, as I understand it. So its "potency" was reduced. I do believe that we can see beneficial mutations which increase fitness by wrecking things (e.g. blind cave fish). But doesn't evolution need to explain how eyes came to be in the first place, and not how they can be destroyed for expedience?

@terdon True, NS is not "smart" or "active" of course, but the point is that it's supposed to be a part of the engine for evolution (mutations + natural selection). I.e., it's supposed to explain how eyes and ears and wings and lungs came to be. And when we measure how much it can actually do, it just falls up far short of that. I'm simply using metaphorical language as a shorthand to get the point across more easily.

terdon

@PeterRankin The problem is that we cannot really use metaphorical language. This is a complex theory that is usually attacked by people who do not have a clear understanding of it. Hell, I've been working in the field for more than 20 years and I don't have a clear understanding of it.

For some reason, people seem to feel that laypeople are qualified to have well founded opinions on one of the most complex and (sorry) evolving scientific theories we have. Nobody thinks it is reasonable to opine on quantum mechanics without understanding the underlying mathematics, but everyone seems to think they understand what is really an equally complex theory because they had some lessons in school a few decades ago.

Which is essentially why the only people who doubt this theory are a small, mostly US-based group of coreligionists with a vested interest in disproving it because they feel it contradicts their faith.

Note how people like Matthew keep insisting that biologists have some sort of agenda to disprove God when the truth is that most of us don't really care one way or another, and certainly don't set up to disprove what, to many of us, is just (again, sorry, but this is a very common position) a quaint and outdated superstition with no relevance to their lives.

Creationism and ID are not taken seriously by any practicing scientists outside the creationist or ID communities and that isn't because of bias, but because the arguments just don't add up. Every time I have looked into the work of ID scientists, it is clear that they don't really understand what they are doing.

For a recent example:

in Discussion between Dcleve and Matthew, 20 hours ago, by terdon

For what it's worth, I had a look at the Jeansen Testing the Predictions of the Young-Earth Y Chromosome paper, which cites a previous work by the same author. I admit I stopped reading when I read the following paragraph which shows the authors simply do not understand what they are doing:

in Discussion between Dcleve and Matthew, 20 hours ago, by terdon

> Because of the pairing of the Y chromosome with the X chromosome, the Y chromosome exists in an effectively haploid state. Consequently, to calculate sequence coverage for the Y chromosome, we took the reported whole-genome sequencing coverage and divided it by 2.

in Discussion between Dcleve and Matthew, 20 hours ago, by terdon

That is nonsense! You cannot divide the average coverage of the entire genome in two and assume that this is the average coverage of a specific region. Never mind that this also ignores the pseudoautosomal regions of chrY, the whole premise is deeply flawed.

in Discussion between Dcleve and Matthew, 20 hours ago, by terdon

This also shows they simply do not understand how sequencing works and how coverage is calculated. Which renders the entire analysis pointless. Even if we ignore the fact that they (literally) tried to extrapolate values by taking a screenshot of a figure and analyzing that:

in Discussion between Dcleve and Matthew, 20 hours ago, by terdon

> We extracted the father-son SNV differences from the Figure 4c Y chromosome tree of Maretty et al. (2017) as follows: First, a screenshot was taken from the published pdf containing Figure 4c, and the screenshot included the associated scale bar of “50 mutations” (see Supplemental fig. 1). (The raw sequence data for the Y chromosomes is restricted access.) After electronically expanding the screenshot to a large size (while keeping the proportions constant), we located the 17 pairs with the shortest distances between them, to identify the 17 father-son pairs.

And this has been my constant experience. Each and every time I have delved into the scientific work presented by such folks, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Now, if they stop trying to use scientific methods to prove a non-scientific (i.e. not testable) hypothesis (that of an invisible and undetectable god), then I have no quarrel with them whatsoever. I can no more conclusively prove the non-existence of god than they can prove the existence of one.

But when they do bad science, that's just bad science.

I mean seriously, they got their data by enlarging a screenshot of a paper!

Peter Rankin

12:46

@terdon The concept that evolution is extremely complex, counter-intuitive, or "messy" is something I've heard before. They certainly don't present it that way to students, though. (And you may well disagree with how they present it.) And the "pop evolution literature" often doesn't, either. They make it seem like an obvious thing.

So it seems like the argument becomes, "Yeah, evolution doesn't make sense at an intuitive level, nor at a high-school biology level, but we should trust the experts: it does make sense if you study it for decades. (Well, sort of...)"

But in that case, it becomes a matter of faith, I think: Do we trust the evolutionary biology experts, or do we trust the word of God? If this be the case, the "average joe" cannot verify evolution on his own, because the reason and data he is capable of understanding is (seemingly, admittedly) counter to evolution, and only behind the curtain of greater complexity can he understand it.

It seems tautological to say, "Creationism/ID aren't taken seriously by those outside the creationist/ID communities." There are certainly good biologists, geologists, etc. who reject evolution or long ages (though I'll grant the majority subscribe to it).

terdon

@PeterRankin I do indeed :) I mean, everything is presented in a very simplified form to school students, fair enough.

@PeterRankin Not at all. I mean, to me it makes perfect sense at the intuitive level. To you it doesn't, which is fair enough, but then you need to delve into the nitty gritty details.

@PeterRankin I honestly don't think there are any at all, actually, but then we would need to define a "good" biologist and that's a whole separate kettle of fish.

But no, I am not suggesting we should use the silly argument from authority and that you should trust the "experts". Not at all. I am saying that if you really want to understand a complex scientific theory, then you should study it and not rely on what you were taught in school.

Peter Rankin

13:04

Well, I have read Coyne's Why Evolution Is True, as well as much of Dawkins' Ancestor's Tale I think it was, and other evolutionary sources. I think a lot of it can boil down to how one looks at the data (biases, etc.).

terdon

@PeterRankin it always can, yes.

lupe

13:28

@PeterRankin ability to digest citrate was not found in the strain of e-coli used. Other e-coli have citrate metabolism, but this one did not have the code for it before the experiment started. So it's a novel function in the experiment, that evolved during the experiment.

@PeterRankin I think to explain the complexity, it's useful to have a metaphor - my favorite is Conway's game of life, which if you haven't played with, it's an amazing piece of mathematical geekery

terdon

@lupe I think some of the confusion comes because a lot of ID literature makes a big deal about this idea of "novel" and how all evolution can do is shuffle existing things. I don't really understand the argument well, and I'm sure Matthew or Peter can explain it better, but it's something long the lines of "this cannot be novel because you are shuffling existing things and we need something completely new". For some reason, a novel configuration of the 4 bases doesn't qualify as new.

(and sorry for the multi-ping :( )

lupe

But, ok, in Conway's game, you have a grid of cells, like a piece of squared paper. Each cell has simple rules about how it interacts with its neighbors - cells live or die depending on the number of living cells they are surrounded by, under two they die, 3 they live or become alive, and over three they also die

incredibly simple, easy rules. And yet, it produces complex, bizarre, unpredictable dynamics, from crazy unstable rapidly expanding structures, to stable structures that oscillate, to structures that fire other structures in a steady stream

To me, that's evolution - easy rules, incredibly complex outcome of said rules, which is why it can be both easy to explain, and almost impossible to tease out the fine grained details of - it's an emergent system

terdon

this

lupe

It's also why I get frustrated at intelligent design, on a philosophical level - creatures are, as I've said, in my view often badly designed. But this emergent system that produces them is mathematically beautiful. If you're looking for the mind of God (which, I'm strictly agnostic), this shows a stunningly clever God, one which we can't hope to rival, forging infinite complexity out of two simple rules.

terdon

After having been present in the room watching a woman give birth, any residual idealism about "perfect design" I may have had went straight out the window. That is one badly designed system.

lupe

13:45

@terdon I'd also like an explanation of novel, I do hear it quoted often as "not truely novel" and that's a strange concept if the original organism can't do it

Peter Rankin

I'd have to look at the E. coli example in more depth to see if this applies, but other examples that are touted as examples of evolution would be better examples of recombination.

But some are mutations, like blind cave fish, or say, the ability for some adults to digest lactose. But as I understand it, the lactose example is simply a breaking of the "cutoff" switch that normally triggers with age; it doesn't give adults anything truly new (they always had the latent ability to digest lactose, it was simply turned off).

This may not be a great example, but a simple illustration might be a child using a leaf blower to propel his wagon. That's "novel" in a sense, but you can't reasonably extrapolate that all that far. At his current mental and physical capacities, there's no way he is capable of building a rocket to go to outer space. :)

@lupe You mention the computer "game of life"; do you have an accurate-to-reality computer simulation which demonstrates the ability of biology to evolve new traits, at least in concept? The ones I've seen have "rigged the system" in some ways that don't mirror the real world (e.g. Dawkins' computer program).

lupe

14:13

@PeterRankin I guess this depends on how much rigging of the system you're willing to tolerate. I'll look around.

Peter Rankin

Well, would you consider Dawkins's program to be tolerable conceptually at least? Because I have problems with his that we could hash out if you'd like.

Wyrsa

14:28

@terdon compared to what though? Badly designed in what sense? :)

(sorry if I'm butting in)

The problem I see with a general argument for "most animals are designed poorly" is that it is usually a narrow perspective due to an arbitrary standard.

For example, we can argue that humans are objectively poorly designed. We could have longer lifespans or not have a period of helplessness worse then that of other mammals.

But on the same side of that argument... caring for others, caring for children, community, etc... would be fundamentally different and more "reptilian" if we didn't have to care for our cute little defenseless offspring...

The one I don't understand well is koalas. Those poor things.

lupe

14:47

@PeterRankin going to have to look at this again, it's been a while since I've engaged with anything Dawkins related - but in general, my issues will be that, if it runs in a web browser, it's a toy model. My day job is taking researcher's code and making it run on massive scale, and that's often required to get nice results

Which makes sense, evolution works over massive scales

@Wyrsa It's less "are poorly designed" and more "contain stunning goofs that, given a competent human level designer, would have not been made" -for humans, the size of a baby's head vs the mother's pelvis is such that pregnancy, in the absence of modern medicine, is frequently painfully lethal. Wisdom teeth do not fit into our jaw, in many cases, which in the absence of dentistry is excruciating and occasionally lethal.

and our appendix, which, again, absence of modern medicine, randomly kills people. And don't get me started on spines, as I watch my cat curl himself into a ball from my special ergonomic chair

All of these are, like, human level design goofs - shouldn't an all knowing creator be better than this?

lupe

15:05

@PeterRankin ok, refreshed my brain on this, and Dawkin's Weasel? yeah, it's a mess. Not where I'd start, but it's taking me a bit of time to find one you might be able to run. SLiM is my go-to, but it's got a 857 page manual and runs on a cluster, because it lets you configure everything

terdon

@Wyrsa compared to a microwave, say. Have a little door that opens once gestation is complete. Don't require the mother to push the baby down a u-bend.

lupe

@terdon even just "actually accomodates the baby's head without risk of serious and fatal consequences" would be an improvement

terdon

@lupe Oh wow. As a former researcher turned software dev, turned manager, you have my sincere condoleces. Researchers tend to write seriously obscure, crappy code. I certainly used to.

@lupe indeed.

lupe

@terdon I like it. It works with the gremlin bit of my programming brain. I'm looking at shifting out of academia, and I'm worried about everything being shiney, and nicely documented

@terdon It's less "skill" and more "bloody mindedness" and "ability to ask really stupid questions, like 'did they supply the right config file in the their demo example'" that gets results

terdon

Believe me, I know.

I've been in industry for the past 8 to 9 years and look at the code I wrote during my post doc, code I was immensely proud of even, and I want to run away and hide :)

lupe

15:12

@terdon I take great joy in getting incoming Phd students to install and run the code of Phd students that have just left. It's partly just latent sadism, and partly a good training in what to document

terdon

Excellent training.

lupe

@PeterRankin but, also, feel free to hash out the issues with this one - mine are mostly that this is far to simple, and has a clear directional goal - which is fine, but doesn't really show off evolution

Wyrsa

@lupe Well, I mean couple questions here. What happens if the pelvis is wider? (afaik you get walking/running issues). What happens if the brain is smaller? (uh... this is obvious right?) The wisdom teeth I dunno what the deal is. Appendix is not useless, I forget what it does. But it sure seems like it doesn't do very much. And then spines... I mean we are not designed to be sitting. Human nature (hedonism) encourages sitting. I'm sitting right now even.

@terdon A "door" would expose the mother and womb to entry from parasites, bacteria, etc... the fact that there is an "loosely open hole" on most females in multiple species and they don't all just die is already insane to think about.

terdon

@Wyrsa Of course not. Marsupials have it and it's always open, why would having a door that only appears when gestation is finished be worse?

lupe

15:28

@Wyrsa so, appendix has a minor immunological function. Given that many people don't have them, and are fine, in balance it's a bad structure. It also could have a wider opening, at which point it wouldn't get inflammed or infected. Wisdom teeth make sense in primates with larger jaws, but not in humans - if you can explain it with a designer, I'd welcome the explaination

terdon

Also, why females? We all have open holes: ears, eyes, mouth, anus, the canal used to excrete urine.

Wyrsa

@terdon I don't know them all, not sure how akin the pouch would be compared to your suggestion. But okay.

lupe

And the problem with all of these is that they'd be unacceptable design tradeoffs for a human level engineer - your theory suggests someone well above our level. We should not be easily able to improve on this design, otherwise we're just dealing with a smart, powerful human.

Wyrsa

@lupe I think (but am not sure) that jaws are supposed to grow larger... teeth are insanely well designed, considering that they are basically rocks that get smashed together hundreds of times a day and remain intact.

@lupe that's another good point.

Also consider that the design humans have must be the best one for the entirety of our mortal existence.

Perhaps that minor immunological function was vital in ancient times... perhaps something that looks stupid right now is exactly what we need in 200 years.

Right now, a lot of things look "stupid" to put it bluntly.

But I don't have a perspective of "Eternity" to design for.

terdon

@Wyrsa why? I mean why would a good design need to be stable across the ages? Wouldn't the better design be the one that adapts and changes based on its environment?

Wyrsa

15:36

@terdon Don't we?

We literally terraform and adapt.

lupe

@Wyrsa so, the issue is that these bits of stupid design make sense in an evolutionary context. They're not lethal enough to be weeded out easily, so they stick around. But the alternate hypothesis is that a designer designed this - which suggests a free form manipulation of creatures we simply don't see.

terdon

@Wyrsa That's attempting to adapt our environment to fit us, not the other way around. I mean, as far as I am concerned, of course we adapt, that's kind of the whole point of natural selection, but you said that a good design "must be the best one for the entirety of our mortal existence."

Wyrsa

Well, I'm not as good as Matthew here who has a higher level of importance on this subject. For me this matter is an intellectual curiosity, because it is not related to salvation. :)

terdon

I am arguing that that would be a bad design, and a good one is one that changes and adapts so it is "perfect" for each fleeting "now".

lupe

@Wyrsa that's fine, you don't have to be an expert - but at least try and figure out why this might be - why would you see pieces of design that don't look competently made? My argument is that, well, evolution is the mechanism for variation in living organisms

And it, if you believe it's all kicked off by a god or just showed up naturally, supplies the best explaination for bad design

Wyrsa

15:41

One of my perspectives is that it is possible that God created through biological processes that we see now. This would require a more loose interpretation of Genesis (which Matthew will instantly jump on me for xD)

Ultimately I don't focus so much on the "how we are designed" aspect

I focus heavily on the ... well, how the **** would we exist without a creator? aspect

lupe

@Wyrsa sure - and I'd argue that's a view that meshes with what we see in the natural world (or at least isn't easily refutable)

Wyrsa

For me it is not really important if the species was directly created from dust and earth. Or if we evolved. Either of those two variations require God.

terdon

@lupe I think (with my apologies to Matthew if I am misrepresenting his views) the YEC answer to that is that they accept that evolution can give rise to small changes that can explain say the variation within species (I believe this is what they call "microevolution"), but they do not accept that the accumulation of these small changes can ever reach the threshold of a speciation event to "create" a new species (which they refer to as "macroevolution").

Wyrsa

@terdon I believe that is accurate. Not 100% either, but sounds right

lupe

@Wyrsa so, my argument here, from a Catholic cardinal, is this: You've got two pool players. One hits the ball, and as it breaks, the balls ricochet off each other, each one going, in order, into the pockets.

Wyrsa

15:46

Like as an analogy for what I said?

lupe

The second pool player hits the ball, and then goes round, sinking a ball with each shot. Who is the better pool player?

It's sort of a refution to Mathews' point of view. His requires a god who is the second pool player, constantly tinkering

Whereas evolution you can just set off, and it runs, and makes the creatures you want

terdon

@terdon I edited that: I had mistakenly written "small changes that can explain say the variation between species" were I meant within the same species.

Wyrsa

The issue I see Lupe is that your heading towards the "watchmaker" god.

although, I don't see why the creation couldn't have been "watchmaker" style until some point when God got involved again

If you listen to Jordan Peterson some, he has a mythological explaination for Genesis that doesn't require any religious aspect. A more scientific biological way to talk about the oldest stories we have

Like viewing the garden of eden story as the birth of consciousness, works well, and doesn't really take anything away from the religious side

Again, ultimately the religious person is going to (hopefully) focus on salvation (theology should help you towards salvation/God)

Matthew

@lupe Ugh. No, it didn't "gain the ability to metabolize a new substrate". It broke a regulatory gene that prevented metabolizing citrus in an aerobic environment.

@lupe Comments like "we're in the world of fantasy" show that you've already made up your mind without considering the evidence. We're talking about a supernatural event. In a sense, we are talking about a "world of fantasy". But you've already decided not to allow miracles.

@terdon Why, then, does just about every claim from the BB/CD/Uniformitarianism crowd fall apart under scrutiny? Why do so many of them use arguments that have been invalid for years?

lupe

16:09

@Matthew even if you believe them, miracles require you to rule out natural explanations first. Even the Catholics do it as a prerequisite to sainthood.

terdon

@Matthew Honestly? They don't. Those of YEC do, however, consistently. come on, we've been through this before you and I.

Oh no, hang on. What's BB/CD/Uniformitarianism?

I thought you meant mainstream biology

Matthew

@terdon By "four bases", do you mean base pairs? A bit flipping from zero to one is novel but uninteresting. A single change to a base pair or even a codon is certainly possible. Double changes have been observed. The problem is that coordinated double changes are extremely unlikely, so in order to get from any interesting A to B, you have to be able to get there with single mutations.

Any time getting from A to B requires three concurrent mutations (to avoid the organism being unable to reproduce), you're just plain doomed. In fact, even double mutations are impractical for multi-cellular organisms.

Wyrsa

@Matthew Like going from photo sensitive chemical reaction cells to an Eye?

Matthew

@lupe ...so if I have a pile of evidence that says accelerated decay happened... I'm supposed to say "no, it can't have happened, because it implies problems for which I don't currently see a naturalistic solution"?

lupe

@Matthew I linked to a paper further up showing slightly detrimental mutations as stepping stones to new functions. But, for important genes, you'd often see a duplication first

Matthew

16:14

@Wyrsa Among many, many examples.

terdon

@Matthew what do you mean? For example, the average human has ~5 million differences when compared to the reference human genome. And no, of course not by single mutations! That would be impossible! This is a cumulative process. And as I said, each of us already has ~5M such variants, never mind what goes on as we go down the generations.

lupe

@Matthew I'd be impressed if you do, because I've never seen any

Matthew

@lupe Right, gene duplication. Which rules out Natural Selection. Do you know the odds for finding a useful protein in a blind walk?

lupe

Can it come from a peer reviewed journal please?

Matthew

@lupe Depends. Is your definition of "peer reviewed" "approved by people that systematically suppress anything they don't agree with"?

lupe

16:16

@Matthew ah, there's the conspiracy theory

Matthew

@terdon ...and how many novel biological functions does the typical human have compared to "baseline"? Moreover, how many of those are due to new mutations?

@lupe It's not a conspiracy theory when it's demonstrably happened. Or are you going to tell me no "peer reviewed" journal has ever rejected a paper for suggesting that the established paradigm is wrong?

lupe

@Matthew I mean, I'm sure it happens - but mostly, it happens because said papers don't have decent methods. I've read through a lot of YEC research, and it's....mostly really bad.

Matthew

@lupe ...and I've run into lots of stuff from the other side that's rubbish. When it isn't outright fraudulent.

lupe

@Matthew apoA-I is a classic example of a new, beneficial mutation we've seen - Italian village, extreme resistance to hear disease and arterial plaque

Matthew

@lupe How many base-pair mutations did it require? Particularly, how many coordinated mutations did it require? And what does it actually do? Sickle-cell is a "beneficial" mutation, but what it actually does is break something.

lupe

16:25

@Matthew ok, so, estimates are that humans have roughly 150bp mutations, compared to their parents ( I think we talked about 100 earlier, but it looks like it's higher). Hold on, was typing just getting to apoA-l

apoA-l is a single AA change, true

Matthew

@lupe The problem with "bad design" arguments is that they're often straw men; they assume what we see now is exactly the same as what God Created initially, ignoring thousands of years of entropy (and perhaps one or more events of unusual radiation exposure) as well as deliberate "maladaptive" changes (e.g. pain in childbirth).

Wyrsa

@Matthew You see how this debate will not benefit your salvation or theirs? (old topic between me and Matthew)

I didn't get into that aspect of the bad design thing

I was trying to slowly get to the point of... "well, we certainly have no better comprehensive version of a human, that has less drawbacks"

Anyways, I'm not gonna spoil your fun. I'll be back later.

Matthew

@Wyrsa Wisdom teeth... something about diet and/or environment and/or recent genetic changes. I can try to find something more specific if anyone actually cares.

Wyrsa

I had similar responses, wisdom teeth are because we used to eat harder things and had bigger jaws... or something

lupe

@Wyrsa wait wait wait. Matthew is arguing for degeneration, you are arguing that there aren't any better versions of humans, which is it?

Wyrsa

16:36

we are seperate people :P

lupe

It's true, but it's contradictory - which theory here is right?

Wyrsa

@Lupe, I would say we definitely have some degeneration, but that an all knowing God would have accounted for many things that I cannot possibly know

For all I know that useless appendix is what we need to survive FTL travel through wormholes somehow

who knows xD

Matthew

@lupe Oh course we don't "see" design happening. It isn't happening now. This is the fundamental problem with uniformitarianism; it can't correctly explain "one-off" occurrences. No "constant tinkering". Closer, actually, to what you're arguing.

Wyrsa

But yes, I would agree with Matthew to a point that the original design of humans is "getting worse"

A lot of things are environmental as well though, I bet the US population would be less overweight if everything had less syrup in it.

Not really a grand argument for design or evolution. We get minor variations within the species based on our environment. (Because we adapt to it, but are unable to stop fundamental aspects of our biology)

Matthew

@terdon Actually, "between species" isn't entirely wrong. Unfortunately, "species" is a terrible delineation. Wolves, coyotes, dingoes, and domestic dogs are all the same Created Kind. They're also all capable of interbreeding, and there is far more variation within "domestic dogs" (one "species") than between all other canids.

lupe

16:40

@Matthew so why dinosaurs? It's a one off design event, and we have pre flood written records, that do not mention honking great lizards.

Wyrsa

Anyways, I did say I was heading out. Gonna review the C.SE main site and then head out for the day.

lupe

@Wyrsa fun arguing with you!

Byee!

@Matthew ahhh kinds, the theory I chose to ignore until it comes up with an actual consistent grouping. You've got to put your money where your mouth is on this kind of theory

@Matthew that's because we preserve mutations that would have died, and cultivate them, because they seem interesting to us

Matthew

@Wyrsa It one is determined to hate God, and to profess unbelief no matter the evidence, then I agree no debate will help. But I can show why God must exist. Either that is a potential "opening wedge", or additional evidence for Judgement, neither of which is a bad thing.

lupe

@Matthew I'm not fussed about God - I am fussed about the data being right. God I can take or leave, but I would like to know why he went to the effort of screwing with all of the radioactive decay constants so they show the same 4ish billion years old earth.

Matthew

@lupe Both. I think Wyrsa is arguing that most "bad design" isn't. I'm arguing that some "bad design" is in fact not design, but degradation. Both can be true. Wisdom teeth, for example, we would argue are good as designed, but are no longer operating as designed.

lupe

16:47

@Matthew but we have prehistoric human skeletons with heavily impacted, painful looking teeth. So they weren't working even before modern diets

Matthew

@lupe We don't? Last I checked we have records as late as the seventeenth, maybe even nineteenth century of "honking great lizards". Not to mention artistic depictions thereof.

lupe

@Matthew humans will eat anything, and yet, in all the middens and bone dumps we find, we don't fjnd dinosaur bones. They should be staggeringly common

Matthew

@lupe ...but how common were dinosaurs, by comparison? How many exotic bird bones are in said dumps? Reptile bones?

How do you know "dinosaur" wasn't taboo meat? Or just uncommonly disgusting?

@lupe Give me $1B, 100 biologists, and 10 years.

In general, "can they interbreed" is a good test. In most (but not all) cases, "kind" = "family".

@lupe I'm not disputing the why, just observing how arbitrary "species" is. Why are wolves and coyotes different species, for example? If you went just on features, they probably wouldn't be, while no sane person would lump mastiffs and chihuahuas together.

lupe

@Matthew we have prehistoric tortoise shell decorations, a lot of aboriginal archeological sites containing Moa and other massive bird bones, and dinosaurs seem to have been all over the place

Based on the fact that there's dinosaurs from

Oxford to china to Utah

This seems to be a decent distribution. Even if you argue they tasted bad, well, ok, but hunter gathers eat everything

Anyway, I've got to run too. Sorry, happy to debate ID, but YEC just requires too much of the flat earther conspiracy mindset for me

Matthew

17:09

@lupe Yes, they do seem to be all over, as just about every culture describes (and sometimes depicts) them. Why is that?

Matthew

17:25

@lupe I'm happy to debate ID. If I can convince you that a Designer exists, maybe I can convince you that the Designer is responsible for Christianity. If I can convince you of that, maybe you'll be more willing to believe that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them", and thus more receptive to the evidence that affirms this. 🙂

Peter Rankin

18:09

@lupe I have a couple main conceptual problems with Dawkins's simulation. (1) First, he has programmed each letter to "know where it's going" in isolation, so to speak; and so his "fitness" measure is completely unrealistic. It would be better if he judged fitness by a spell checker, or something to measure overall coherence of the phrase with each mutation.

(2) Second, I believe he has a 100% "kill rate" for less-fit output. It would be more realistic if the probability of selecting the more-fit phrase were proportional to its "fitness" by, e.g., spell check or something. I.e., a closer phrase being 5% more likely to survive to the next round as the less-fit phrase, and vice versa for deleterious mutations.

But if he made these changes, there would be other issues probably, but even so, it wouldn't be very impressive for evolution, to put it mildly. :) The "organism" would likely get stuck on a local fitness peak, unable to "come down" if natural selection is strong enough, and thus never able to reach the "goal" Dawkins has for it (or any real goal of significance, for that matter).

I.e., we can imagine a progression of coherent words by changing one letter each time, in some trivial cases: live -> love -> dove -> dive -> dire -> dirt -> etc. But when it comes to any sentence of any complexity, there is no path from one sentence to another that maintains coherence at each step. This is similar to the problem Meyer outlines, of each functional protein being extremely isolated in protein space (I think it's likely worse for proteins).

Transcript for

Discussing Romans 1:20 scientifically