The model of intelligent design makes predictions, and is testable
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-predictions-does-intelligent-design-make-predictions-is-it-testable
Observation:
Intelligent agents can create complex information storage systems (hardware), encoded languages and instructions (software), as well as interconnected systems for data transmission and processing. This capability is empirically observed in human technologies such as computers, integrated circuits, automated production lines, communication networks, and factories. Intelligence can conceptualize, design, and build these systems from the ground up, including selecting materials, creating detailed blueprints, and assembling components in a precise manner to achieve intended functionality.
Hypothesis:
If natural biological systems exhibit similarities to human-engineered hardware and software systems, with integrated arrangements of numerous components, interconnected pathways analogous to electronic circuits, and tight subsystems serving distinct functions, it is evidence of an intelligent agency involved in their origin.
Experiment:
In-depth scientific investigations have revealed the presence of sophisticated information storage systems within living cells (genes), along with highly complex genetic and epigenetic codes and languages. The genetic code is remarkably optimized, surpassing millions of alternative configurations in its efficiency of information translation. This code is utilized in the decoding and translation process via ribosomes, following the encoding of information through RNA polymerase transcription and its transmission through messenger RNA. The system includes robust error-checking and correction mechanisms, employing up to 200 proteins to ensure accuracy. The genetic information directs the production of molecular machines (proteins) that form part of metabolic pathways (akin to factory assembly lines) and cellular compartments (organelles). These processes are powered by energy (ATP) produced by ATP synthase turbines, harnessing energy gradients. The result is a complex, self-replicating chemical factory within each living cell. The integrated complexity and mutual interdependence of these components suggest that they had to appear in a fully functional state, challenging the notion of a gradual, evolutionary-naturalistic development. This is particularly significant since these systems needed to be operational from the outset for life to commence and subsequently evolve and adapt.
Conclusion:
The theory of intelligent design remains the most plausible explanation until a more compelling, non-intelligent source for the observed complex information, molecular systems, and metabolic pathways can be provided. The most logical conclusion is that they are the result of an intelligent agent's actions in the past. Direct proof of these structures being created by an intelligent force is not necessarily required. The available evidence is sufficient to deduce an intelligent cause in the past, drawing on the principles of scientific observation and reasoning, and inferring the most plausible explanation based on the observed patterns and complexities.
Observation: Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, instantiating information storage devices like hard disks, and creating blueprints, instructional information, and codified descriptions of factories and machines. They also know how to instantiate information transmission machines, that encode, transmit, decode, or even translate that information, and subsequently, build factories that contain functional irreducibly complex machines made of multiple, integrated parts, and on top of that, assembly lines, where various machines are finely adjusted to each other, to produce useful end products, or intermediate products, that are later assembled in a system with higher functions. In our experience, such systems invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.
Hypothesis (Prediction): If structures in nature are found, that are analogous to hardware/software ( computers ) made by man, that direct the making of devices containing many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, and irreducible integrated systems and structures that perform specific functions, it is an indication that intelligence had to be present, instantiating these systems in the past.
Experiment: Scientific research has unraveled that cells host the densest possible data storage mechanisms ( genes), optimized genetic and epigenetic codes, and languages ( the genetic code is more optimal than a million alternatives in regards to the robustness of information translation, furthermore, we know of over 230 manufacturing, signaling, and regulatory codes, and languages, information transmission, that is encoding through RNA polymerase transcription, transmission through messenger RNA, and decoding/translation through ribosomes ( the entire process is monitored, error-checked, repaired when needed), creating molecular machines (proteins) and lining them up and ordering them into metabolic circuits ( analogous to factory production lines) and compartments ( organelles), creating irreducible self-replicating ( the epitome of engineering) chemical fabrics ( Cells ). Cells could not keep their basic functions without a minimum number of parts and complex inter-wined, integrated, and interdependent structures. That indicates these biological machines and pathways had to emerge fully operational, all at once. A stepwise manner is not possible.
Conclusion: Unless someone can falsify the prediction ( and actually, confirmation), and point out a superior, more case-adequate, non-intelligent source of high levels of instructional complex codified information, irreducible complex and interdependent molecular systems, and complex metabolic circuits and biosynthesis pathways instantiated through these genetic instructions, their origin is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent. We do not need direct observed empirical evidence of the instantiation of these structures through an intelligent agency. What is observed ( the evidence) is the path to the cause in the past. We can stick to inference to the best explanation.
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against the production of a feature by an undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Origins of reality cannot be explained through testing experiments of operational science, but one can extrapolate what we see today back to times that we cannot see today, and therefore these extrapolations cannot be confirmed via the empirical method. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes, not an accident, in other words, but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator. But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprints or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.
Steve Meyer, Signature in the cell:
Critics of intelligent design often argue that the theory cannot be tested, because it makes no predictions. The charge turns on a fundamental misunderstanding of how historical scientific theories are tested. Primarily, such testing is accomplished by comparing the explanatory power of competing hypotheses against already known facts. The theory of intelligent design, like other theories about the causes of past events, is testable, and has been tested, in just this way. That said, the theory of intelligent design also has predictive consequences. Since the design hypothesis makes claims about what caused life to arise, it has implications for what life should look like. Moreover, the explanatory framework that intelligent design provides leads to new research questions, some of which suggest specific predictions that are testable against observations or by laboratory experiments.
Some of these predictions can help adjudicate proposals that invoke either intelligent causes or materialistic mechanisms as explanations for various features of life or events in life’s history. Other predictions can help discriminate between competing ideas of how a designing intelligence influenced the history of life—for instance, between design hypotheses that affirm universal common ancestry and those that envision more discrete or discontinuous intelligent activity in the history of life. Indeed, depending upon how scientists envision intelligent design playing a role in the history of life, they may formulate different kinds of design hypotheses, each entailing different though testable predictions. Some predictions (those that discriminate the explanatory power of intelligent causes and materialistic mechanisms) will necessarily function as tests of the causal efficacy of mechanisms of evolutionary change. Since design hypotheses are often formulated as strong claims about intelligence as the best causal explanation of some particular phenomenon, these hypotheses entail counterclaims about the insufficiency of competing materialistic mechanisms. But such claims also entail predictions.
The claim that intelligent design constitutes the best explanation of particular informational features of organisms leads inevitably to the claim that other competing causal hypotheses will not demonstrate the power to produce these effects—just as they may not have done so to this point. Similarly, the claim that intelligent design constitutes the best explanation of the integrated or “irreducible complexity” of molecular machines entails a prediction about the insufficiency of competing materialistic causes for these systems. In addition to predictions about what future evidence will show about the causal powers of various processes, intelligent design also generates predictions about what we are likely to find in living systems as we investigate them. We have extensive experience-based knowledge of the kinds of strategies and systems that designing minds devise to solve various kinds of functional problems. We also know a lot about the kinds of phenomena that various natural causes produce. For this reason, the theory of intelligent design makes predictions about the kinds of features we are likely to find in living systems if they were in fact intelligently designed. Other types of predictions flow from considering the possibility that intelligence influenced, directed, or guided the history of life, either gradually or discretely. Various ID hypotheses generate different predictions about what, for example, the fossil record or phylogenetic studies should show.
Depending upon how ID theories conceive of the designing intelligence affecting the history of life over time and what other characteristics they attribute to this intelligence (such as benevolence, for example), design hypotheses may make specific claims about the causes of so-called dysteleology, or bad design. These claims may entail specific empirical predictions as well. Thus, intelligent-design hypotheses may generate several distinct types of predictions: predictions about causal powers, or lack thereof, of various mechanisms; predictions about the structure, organization, and functional logic of living systems; predictions about what evidence will show about the history of life; and predictions about the causes of putatively bad design. Consider a dozen or so ID-based predictions, each of which exemplifies one or more of these types. I start with two predictions directly relevant to testing the main arguments made in this book.
What are the characteristics of a scientific theory?
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment. In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
The scientific method requires Observation, Testing by experiment, and Verification.
Under these criteria, science has shown repeatedly by testing and empirical observation:
Life comes only from life. The emergence of the basic building blocks of life, and thereof, the use of them to store complex instructional information, and the make of complex molecular machines, and cell factories, is not possible. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Therefore, materialism is not true.
The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques, requires intelligence.
The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks require intelligence.
The product making only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction, requires intelligence for setup and implementation.
To create machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort, most probably require more intelligence, than human intelligence, and not none at all.
The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading, and repair mechanisms have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine requires an intelligent setup.
Complex production lines that depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning require intelligence.
Only intelligence is capable to create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
Objection: We have never observed a being of any capacity creating biological systems and life.
Answer: This is one of the most common demands of Atheists and mentioned as reason for unbelief until the burden of proof is met. All which such demand demonstrates is the lack of epistemological sophistication of the unbeliever. Usually, this challenge goes hand in hand with the claim that " There is no evidence of God's existence ". What they want to say however is, that there is no empirical proof. We can recognize the existence of a creator upon the effect: Creation. The imprints of intelligence are evidence of God's existence.
The (past) action or signature of an intelligent designer can be detected when we see :
- an object in nature very similar to human-made things
- something made based on mathematical principles
- systems and networks functioning based on logic gates
- something purposefully made for specific goals
- specified complexity, the instructional blueprint or a codified message
- irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artifacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
- order or orderly patterns
- hierarchically arranged systems of parts
- intelligence can create artifacts which use might be employed in different systems ( a wheel is used in cars and airplanes )
- Fine-tuning
- objective moral laws
Atheists err when asking for material evidence to prove God's existence
Question for an atheist. Are you a non-believer because you cannot see, hear or touch God? or is it for other reasons?
If it is because you cannot prove there is a God, I want to propose another question.
But first, try this out.
Say "I love tasty food," but don't actually try to physically make an effort to say it. Use your mind to say it.
Okay, what exactly did you just do and how is it that you can hear yourself so clearly in your own mind. There is an action (you saying the statement) and its existence is clear to you, but to us, that sentence that you just said "out loud" in your head doesn't exist to us.
Matter of fact I will ask you, right now, to prove to me that you just said, "I love tasty food," in your head.
Telling me you said that statement isn't showing me evidence as to its existence. Some of you may say, "Hey, well it is dumbass." Ok, I understand how that can be a compelling argument. Now let's consider that I may lie to you and tell you that I did say I love tasty food consciously, but I actually didn't. Well then, the physical act of telling someone you thought something isn't the most viable way of showing evidence as to what you actually thought. Therefore isn't proving anything.
To get to the point, I want to say that there are probably lots of things that don't physically exist in our world but have an existence. Just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
hopefully food for thought.
We can't see our thoughts and our minds. We can't see WiFi making your internetwork but it's there. You also can't see radio waves but they transmit. Not everything that exists is seen or sensed. We know God because we can test His Word and it's true. We know His voice and it guides us. We also many of us have had visions, speak in tongues and have seen Jesus heal. I would say I have more evidence for God and His Truth than anything I can trust in this world.
Many criticize that intelligent design is not science. But when ID is one of the possible mechanisms of origins, then we must be able to recognize and observe what constitutes an intelligently designed system - no matter if man-made, or encountered in nature. And based on that, make hypotheses, test them, and get positive or negative conclusions.
To use design as a basis for scientific predictions is compatible with the scientific process because it does exactly what science is supposed to do. It puts our theories and hypotheses out in the open to be discussed, to be supported by accumulating evidence or refuted by the evidence. Some may object to this, but if we are seeking for truth, why should we not do it? Intelligent design theory seeks evidence of design in nature. Intelligent design starts with observation in the natural world and tries to find out, how the origin of given phenomenon can be best explained. Since there are basically two possible mechanisms, design, and natural, unguided, random events, both should be considered and evaluated against each other.
The beginning of the universe requires a cause. The physical laws require a lawgiver. The fine-tuning of the universe requires a tuner. Life comes only from life. Establishing a code based information system, and coded Information which is complex and instructional/specified found in epigenetic systems and genes requires a Coder. Irreducible, interdependent molecular machines and biosynthetic and metabolic pathways and molecular production lines in biological systems point to an intelligent agent as the best explanation of their setup and origins.
Objection: It's not the job of science to investigate the supernatural.
Answer: There are basically two possible mechanisms that explain the origin of the natural world. An intelligent designer, through power, information input, wisdom, will, or natural, non-guided, non-intelligent mechanisms, that is random chance or physical necessity, long periods of time, mutation and natural selection, or self-organization of matter. Science is perfectly apt to find out if the natural world points to the requirement of intelligent action to set up the biological and biochemical systems we observe in nature. Intelligent Design theory does not pretend to explain how intelligence implemented the material world, nor who the designer is. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry.
Objection: Suppose a probe to the planet Mars found evidence of artifacts there that could only have been produced by an intelligent civilization. Would you expect the scientists who made that discovery to say "Well, we're not going to try figure out who might have produced them. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry"?
Answer: Of course, in that case, science would try to figure out about this civilization. That would however still not explain the ultimate cause of a) this civilization, and b) the cause of the universe as a whole.
Objection: You really need to take the time to define who this supreme being is before you can assert it actually exists.
Answer: No proponent of Intelligent design makes conclusive absolute assertions that an Intelligent Designer exists. One of the best solutions to handling the issue of evidence and arguments for God’s existence is to utilize what is called inference to the best explanation. The inference to the best explanation model takes into account the best available explanation in our whole range of experience and reflection. Since we as humans can’t observe God as a material object, one way to approach this issue is to look at the effects in the world and make rational inferences to the cause of the effect. Remember, the evidence is always evidence for (or against) something.
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2256-atheists-err-when-asking-for-material-evidence-to-prove-god-s-existence
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How to recognize intelligently made artifacts:
ok. Let us suppose, that you arrive with a colleague at a place, and there you find an object. You do not know who/what made it, but analyzing it, you observe that it was made of several interlocking parts in precise shapes with structural complementarity which functionally interacts together in a very precise fashion, like pieces of a puzzle or, in the more popular analogy, a lock and its key. Furthermore, you see a nameplate and several signs similar to the alphabet forming a sentence, but in an unknown code and language.
Now your colleague asks you: What do you think, how was this object made?
Upon your observation and analyzing the object, would you say, it was rather made by someone with intelligence, or it came to exist rather because of random natural forces, that is wind, rain, etc. ?
Question: God is a POSSIBLE explanation of why we exist.
How could you recognize that something in the natural world bears the signs or signature of design, or being created, rather than not?
Unbeliever: I don't assert design - that's you. I'm simply asking you to support your claim that a god 'designed' life.
Response: If you do not know how to recognize design in nature, it is like to ask a blind to appreciate the beauty of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
- The make of components of a complex system that are only useful in the completion of a much larger system and their orderly aggregation in a sequentially correct manner requires always external direction through intelligence. No exceptions are known. In other words: Intermediate sub-products have by its own no use of any sort unless they are correctly assembled in a larger system. Instructional complex information is required for to make these sub-products and parts, and know-how to mount them correctly in the right order and at the right place, and interconnected correctly in a larger system. Intelligence is required to find and recruit and select the right materials, and to form computer hardware, highly efficient information storage devices, software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, information retrieval, transmission, signaling, translation, machine parts with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into complex machines, production line complexes, autonomous robots with error check functions and repair mechanisms, electronic circuit - like networks, energy production factories, power generating plants, energy turbines, recycle mechanisms and methods, waste grinders and management, organized waste disposal mechanisms, and self-destruction when needed to reach a higher-end, and veritable micro-miniaturized factories where all before-mentioned systems and parts are required in order for that factory to be self- replicating, and being functional.
- The establishment of communication systems requires intelligence. Most signal relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind. The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them. Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design. Acts as an information processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware can only be set up all at once through intelligent input )
- Selecting the most optimal and efficient code information system and the ability to minimize the effects of errors requires intelligence.
Intelligence is required to create a system that uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language, which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assigns the code of one system to the code of another system.
- The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques, requires intelligence.
- The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks require intelligence.
- The product making only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction, requires intelligence for setup and implementation.
- To create machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort, most probably require more intelligence, than human intelligence, and not none at all.
- The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
- Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading, and repair mechanisms have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
- Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine requires an intelligent setup.
- Complex production lines that depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning require intelligence.
- Only intelligence is capable to create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent actions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-intelligently-made-artefacts
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Which of the following is better explained by design, rather than non-design?
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against the production of a feature by the undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Upon applying the above logic, how is the following better explained, by design, or non-design?
- Components of a complex system that are only useful in the completion of a much larger system and their orderly aggregation in a sequentially correct manner.
- Intermediate sub-products have by its own no use of any sort unless they are correctly assembled in a larger system.
- Instructional complex information is required to make these sub-products and parts, to mount them correctly in the right order and at the right place, and interconnected correctly in a larger system.
- The making of computer hardware, and highly efficient information storage devices.
- Creating software, based on a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint.
- Information retrieval, transmission, signaling, and translation
- The make of machine parts with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into complex machines, production line complexes, autonomous robots with error check functions and repair mechanisms, electronic circuit - like networks, energy production factories, power generating plants, energy turbines, recycle mechanisms and methods, waste grinders and management, organized waste disposal mechanisms, and self-destruction when needed to reach a higher-end and veritable micro-miniaturized factories where all before-mentioned systems and parts are required in order for that factory to be self- replicating, and being functional.
- Establishment of advanced communication systems. Signal relay stations. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” A transmitter and receiver system made of physical materials, with a functional purpose, performing an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them, acting as information processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware )
- Selecting the most optimal and efficient code information system and the ability to minimize the effects of errors.
- A system that uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language, which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assign the code of one system to the code of another system.
- The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques.
- The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks known.
- The implementation of a product making system, only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction.
- Creating machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort.
- The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems.
- Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading and repair mechanisms.
- Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine.
- Complex production lines which depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning.
- Create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
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In order to make design predictions, it must be established what can be recognized as design in nature - Something having the PROPERTIES that we might attribute to that of an intelligently designed system:
( Following requirements which consist in an insurmountable problem for unguided naturalistic processes are met ) :
1) IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX. The requirement and existence of individual parts of a biological system which are indispensable to keep the basic function of a system, which has no survival advantage or functional purpose on their own, nor in an intermediate evolutionary stage. ( biologically useful or significant genetic sequences )
2) The ability to find and recruit and select the right materials, and to form molecules with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into tissues, organs, and organ systems in a highly complex, functional, specified, correct, spatial order.
Making the individual parts and materials available at the same construction site, perhaps not simultaneously but certainly, at the time they are needed.
Coordinating and instruct the assembly of the parts in just the right way: even if all of the parts of a system are available at the right time, it is clear that the majority of ways of assembling them will be non-functional or irrelevant.
The parts must have the right size, form, and material, and must be mutually compatible, that is, ‘well-matched’ and capable of properly ‘interacting’: even if subsystems or parts are put together in the right order, they also need to interface correctly. The individual parts will be held together and connected in the right manner through various different mechanisms, like fine-tuned covalent and non-covalent bonds, electrostatic forces, cell junctions, etc.
3) Establishment of communication systems. Most signal relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind. The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them. Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design. Acts as an informational processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware can only be set up all at once through intelligent input )
4) Selecting the most optimal and efficient genetic code and the ability to minimize the effects of errors.
5) A system which uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language ( the universal genetic code) which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assign the right triplet code to the right amino acids
6) The appearance of highly complex dependencies thus giving the appearance of Implicit intelligence (although not intelligent itself, indicates an origin involving intelligence.. )
7 Use of molecular machinery on a scale and complexity which mankind has never IMAGINED possible - all with the appearance of exact purpose, intent, function, and dependencies
8 exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory genes controlling gene expression - conceptually the same as a logical software layer controlling the underlying system.
9) another layer of complex 3 Dimensional control and access, and adaptation to the environment: Epigenetics
10) Implicit built-in ERROR checking from the get-go: reducing mutations to a minimal
11) Advanced inbuilt repair mechanisms which are essential for the proper function of certain biological systems and proteins right from the start.
12) Precise optimization and fine-tuning of biological, chemical, biochemical and physical systems.
13) Display the DESIGN of complex software, designed to adapt and EVOLVE in a very controlled and careful way - while at the same time minimizing mutations. A system designed to EVOLVE and SURVIVE. (gene splicing )
14) The ability to provide precise instruction and coding for the development of biological systems.
15) Something which as well as exhibiting all of the above, also has no conceptual way of coming into existence through naturalistic means, or something whose existence and origins appear to defy all known scientific understanding. Something which requires the application of a lot of FAITH and IMAGINATION of some theories to describe its origins through natural means alone.
16) So the application of COMMON SENSE and inference, from observations from the world around us (information processing systems) might indicate to us certain things having these above PROPERTIES, would fall into the category of things that have been DESIGNED.
17) One of the most intelligent concepts in the known universe is the concept of Evolution itself.
Proponents of evolution frequently argue that intelligent design is not science since it doesn't make predictions. Following a list of predictions made by intelligent design, and the confirmation:
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-confirmation-of-intelligent-design-predictions
Predictions in biology:
- High instructive coded information content will be found throughout the genome, in " junk DNA", and the epigenome– (already proven)
- The non-adequacy of the DNA-centric view to explain biodiversity. Proven. We know that Membrane targets and patterns, Cytoskeletal arrays, Centrosomes, Ion channels, Sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code), Gene regulatory networks, the Splicing Code, the Metabolic Code, the Signal Transduction Codes, the Signal Integration Codes, the Histone Code, the Tubulin Code the Sugar Code and the Glycomic Code define morphology, development, cell and body shape. Basically, macroevolution ( the origin of morphological novelties ) is a falsified prediction, while ID is confirmed.
- Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and an undeniable fact. Ken Millers rebuttal is not a compelling refutation )
- Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – ( well known)
- Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – ( proven)
- The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
- Few or no intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another. There are none so far.
- Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)
- Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
- So-called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
- Few mutations will end up being beneficial in the long run – (already proven)
- Genetic entropy will be found to cancel our most if any beneficial mutations
In astronomy/astrophysics
- an increase (and not a decrease), as science progresses, in the number of finely-tuned parameters pertinent to the laws and constants of physics
Predictions in Paleontology
- The observed pattern of the fossil record whereby morphological disparity precedes diversity.
- Saltational, or abrupt, the appearance of new life forms without transitional precursors.
Knock out experiments and tests provide empirical evidence that the flagellum is irreducibly complex, as Scott Minnich testified at the Dover process:
Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added
We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can't swim. Now, to confirm that that's the only part that we've affected, you know, is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild-type and reintroduce it by the mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy of the gene. One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, but a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition, the system is irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.
(Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added)
High prescriptive information content will be found throughout the genome – (already proven)
Laws of chemistry and physics, which follow exact statistical, thermodynamic, and spatial laws, are totally inadequate for generating complex functional information or those systems that process that information using prescriptive algorithmic information". The organization requires control, which requires formalism as a reality. Each protein is currently the result of the execution of a real computer program running on the genetic operating system.
http://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2110-what-might-be-a-protocells-minimal-requirement-of-parts
Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and no K. Millers poor rebuttal is no refutation at all)
High information content machine-like irreducibly complex and interdependent structures, of which photosynthesis, the eye, the human body, nitrogenase, the ribosome, the cell, rubisco, photosystem II, the oxygen-evolving complex etc. are prime examples, are commonly found in nature.
Since Evolution is unable to provide an advantage of adaptation in each evolutionary step and is unable to select it, 1) Darwinism’s prediction is falsified; 2) Design’s prediction is confirmed.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2166-a-list-of-irreducible-complex-systems
Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – (already known)
"A record of pre-Cambrian animal life, it appears, simply does not exist. Why this lamentable blank? Various theories have been proposed; none is too satisfactory. It has been suggested, for example, that all the Pre-Cambrian sediments were deposited on continental areas, and the absence of fossils in them is due to the fact that all the older animals were sea dwellers. But that all these older sediments were continental is a theory which opposes, without proof, everything we know of deposition in later times. Again, it is suggested that the Pre-Cambrian seas were poor in calcium carbonate, necessary for the production of preservable skeletons; but this is not supported by geochemical evidence. Yet again, it is argued that even though conditions were amenable to the formation of fossilizable skeletal parts, the various phyla only began to use these possibilities at the dawn of the Cambrian. But it is, a priori, hard to believe that the varied types present in the early Cambrian would all have, so to speak, decided to put on armor simultaneously. And, once again, it has been argued that the whole evolution of multicellular animals took place with great rapidity in late Pre-Cambrian times, so that a relatively short gap in rock deposition would account for the absence of any record of their rise. Perhaps; but the known evolutionary rate in most groups from the Cambrian on is a relatively leisurely one, and it is hard to convince oneself that a sudden major burst of evolutionary advance would be so promptly followed by a marked 'slowdown'. All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the Pre-Cambrian riddle."
Romer Alfred S. [late Professor of Zoology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University], "The Procession of Life," The World Publishing Co: Cleveland OH, 1968, pp.19-20.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1701-does-fossil-record-support-the-evolution-model-of-gradual-and-small-changes
Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – (already proven)
The argument of the highly similar DNA sequences
1. If functionally unconstrained yet highly similar DNA sequences were found in different species, then evolution would be false.
2. In fact, the DNA sequences are extremely similar and even identical in different species.
3. There is currently “no known mechanism or function that would account for this level of conservation at the observed evolutionary distances.”
4. Since some of these sequences are found across a wide range of different species, the sequences, and whatever selective forces preserved them, must have been present very early in history.
5. On the other hand, many of these sequences point to evolution’s nemesis, lineage-specific biology.
6. Highly similar DNA sequences in different species are a proof of the same intelligent designer using a similar genetic pattern to design different species. All men call him God.
7. God exists.
The insect eye and the vertebrate eye are two examples of structures said to be analogous ( Analogous structures are similar or resembling in certain respects, e.g. in function or in appearance but not in evolutionary origin or developmental origin. An example is wings of a butterfly and wings of a hummingbird are analogous.) . However, they can be shown to both be based on the expression of the Pax-6 gene , and it is probable that the vertebrate and insect (and cephalopod) eyes are the modified descendants of a basic metazoan photoreceptive cell that was regulated by Pax-6.
Research at the molecular level has failed to demonstrate the expected correspondence between gene product changes and the organismal changes predicted by evolution.
Evolution by DNA mutations 'is largely uncoupled from morphological evolution'
Some regulatory genes that have similar DNA sequences are found to regulate similar structures in different phyla where those structures are thought to have "evolved" independently. These homologous genes that regulate analogous structures might encourage the Darwinist to reconsider whether those structures might actually be homologous due to common ancestry. However, in consideration of the evidence that different phyla do not have common ancestors, these "homologies of process" are better explained as evidence of intelligent design, where the designer reused the same control mechanism for the development of similar structures in unrelated organisms.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2191-the-developmental-genetic-toolkit-and-the-molecular-homologyanalogy-paradox
The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
When all sorts of peripheral genetic elements were discovered, evolutionary geneticists referred to them as “junk DNA” on the assumption that they were nothing but useless remnants left over from evolutionary predecessors. Come to find out, these regulatory elements are the key to cellular health and development, as well as the primary link to disease when not operating properly.
The massive store of apparently unused DNA components in every cell, which Richard Dawkins, incredibly, once dismissed as “99% junk”, now appears to hold multiple layers of subtle logic which are only beginning to be unraveled, with serious and long-lasting implications.
An article in the 7 September 2012 issue of Science was titled "ENCODE project writes a eulogy for junk DNA". "This week, 30 research papers... sound the death knell for the idea that our DNA is mostly littered with useless bases. A decade-long project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), has found that 80% of the human genome serves some purpose". "The ENCODE effort has revealed that a gene's regulation is far more complex than previously thought, being influenced by multiple stretches of regulatory DNA located both near and far from the gene itself and by strands of RNA not translated into proteins, so-called noncoding RNA."--
During my time at Discovery Institute, we have also seen some of ID’s longstanding scientific predictions spectacularly fulfilled. Exhibit A: The ENCODE project’s discovery of widespread function for non-coding DNA. Again, since the late 1990s I’d been hearing ID-critics say “junk DNA refutes ID.” At that time, my rejoinder was “We haven’t even studied this ‘dark matter of the genome’ enough to know what it does. Let’s just wait and see.” Well, we’ve been waiting and now we’ve seen: ID was correct all along. Early indications of this mass-functionality first came to light in 2007 when ENCODE published its preliminary results suggesting that a great portion of our DNA is transcribed into RNA. But in 2012 ENCODE published its main results, showing that over 80 percent of the genome gives strong evidence of function. Papers uncovering specific functions for specific “junk” genetic elements continue to pour forth.
Pennisi, Elizabeth. 7 September 2012. Science, Vol. 337, pp. 1159-1161.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/01/01/is-the-discovery-institute-falling-apart/#comment-1286343
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1812-junk-dna-has-function?highlight=junk+dna
Few intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another – there are none so far. Most of the claimed ancestors will be shown to have serious problems – already historically proven
Michael Denton stated:
“It is still, as it was in Darwin's day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today
anthropologist Edmund Ronald Leach stated:
“ Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so
One of the most famous proponents of evolution was the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But Gould admitted,
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection, we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1693-transitional-fossils
Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)
At least four excision repair pathways exist to repair single stranded DNA damage:
Nucleotide excision repair (NER)
Base excision repair (BER)
DNA mismatch repair (MMR)
Repair through alkyltransferase-like proteins (ATLs)
Natural selection cannot act without accurate replication, yet the protein machinery for the level of accuracy required is itself built by the very genetic code it is designed to protect. Thats a catch22 situation. It would have been challenging enough to explain accurate transcription and translation alone by natural means, but as consequence of UV radiation, it would have quickly been destroyed through the accumulation of errors. So accurate replication and proofreading are required for the origin of life. How on earth could proofreading enzymes emerge, especially with this degree of fidelity, when they depend on the very information that they are designed to protect? Think about it.... This is one more prima facie example of chicken and egg situation. What is the alternative explanation to design? Proofreading DNA by chance? And a complex suite of translation machinery without a designer?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2043-dna-repair?highlight=repair
Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
The genome has traditionally been treated as a Read-Only Memory (ROM) subject to change by copying errors and accidents. In this review, I propose that we need to change that perspective and understand the genome as an intricately formatted Read-Write (RW) data storage system constantly subject to cellular modifications and inscriptions. Cells operate under changing conditions and are continually modifying themselves by genome inscriptions. These inscriptions occur over three distinct time-scales (cell reproduction, multicellular development and evolutionary change) and involve a variety of different processes at each time scale (forming nucleoprotein complexes, epigenetic formatting and changes in DNA sequence structure). Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole-genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.
http://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1476-how-life-changes-itself-the-read-write-rw-genome?highlight=genome
So-called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that the widespread occurrence of vestigial organs -- organs that may have once had a function but are now useless -- is evidence against creation. "On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur." But such organs, he argued, are readily explained by his theory: "On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained."
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-predictions-does-intelligent-design-make-predictions-is-it-testable
Observation:
Intelligent agents can create complex information storage systems (hardware), encoded languages and instructions (software), as well as interconnected systems for data transmission and processing. This capability is empirically observed in human technologies such as computers, integrated circuits, automated production lines, communication networks, and factories. Intelligence can conceptualize, design, and build these systems from the ground up, including selecting materials, creating detailed blueprints, and assembling components in a precise manner to achieve intended functionality.
Hypothesis:
If natural biological systems exhibit similarities to human-engineered hardware and software systems, with integrated arrangements of numerous components, interconnected pathways analogous to electronic circuits, and tight subsystems serving distinct functions, it is evidence of an intelligent agency involved in their origin.
Experiment:
In-depth scientific investigations have revealed the presence of sophisticated information storage systems within living cells (genes), along with highly complex genetic and epigenetic codes and languages. The genetic code is remarkably optimized, surpassing millions of alternative configurations in its efficiency of information translation. This code is utilized in the decoding and translation process via ribosomes, following the encoding of information through RNA polymerase transcription and its transmission through messenger RNA. The system includes robust error-checking and correction mechanisms, employing up to 200 proteins to ensure accuracy. The genetic information directs the production of molecular machines (proteins) that form part of metabolic pathways (akin to factory assembly lines) and cellular compartments (organelles). These processes are powered by energy (ATP) produced by ATP synthase turbines, harnessing energy gradients. The result is a complex, self-replicating chemical factory within each living cell. The integrated complexity and mutual interdependence of these components suggest that they had to appear in a fully functional state, challenging the notion of a gradual, evolutionary-naturalistic development. This is particularly significant since these systems needed to be operational from the outset for life to commence and subsequently evolve and adapt.
Conclusion:
The theory of intelligent design remains the most plausible explanation until a more compelling, non-intelligent source for the observed complex information, molecular systems, and metabolic pathways can be provided. The most logical conclusion is that they are the result of an intelligent agent's actions in the past. Direct proof of these structures being created by an intelligent force is not necessarily required. The available evidence is sufficient to deduce an intelligent cause in the past, drawing on the principles of scientific observation and reasoning, and inferring the most plausible explanation based on the observed patterns and complexities.
Observation: Intelligent agents act frequently with an end goal in mind, instantiating information storage devices like hard disks, and creating blueprints, instructional information, and codified descriptions of factories and machines. They also know how to instantiate information transmission machines, that encode, transmit, decode, or even translate that information, and subsequently, build factories that contain functional irreducibly complex machines made of multiple, integrated parts, and on top of that, assembly lines, where various machines are finely adjusted to each other, to produce useful end products, or intermediate products, that are later assembled in a system with higher functions. In our experience, such systems invariably originate from an intelligent source. No exception.
Hypothesis (Prediction): If structures in nature are found, that are analogous to hardware/software ( computers ) made by man, that direct the making of devices containing many parts arranged in intricate patterns, metabolic pathways similar to electronic circuits, and irreducible integrated systems and structures that perform specific functions, it is an indication that intelligence had to be present, instantiating these systems in the past.
Experiment: Scientific research has unraveled that cells host the densest possible data storage mechanisms ( genes), optimized genetic and epigenetic codes, and languages ( the genetic code is more optimal than a million alternatives in regards to the robustness of information translation, furthermore, we know of over 230 manufacturing, signaling, and regulatory codes, and languages, information transmission, that is encoding through RNA polymerase transcription, transmission through messenger RNA, and decoding/translation through ribosomes ( the entire process is monitored, error-checked, repaired when needed), creating molecular machines (proteins) and lining them up and ordering them into metabolic circuits ( analogous to factory production lines) and compartments ( organelles), creating irreducible self-replicating ( the epitome of engineering) chemical fabrics ( Cells ). Cells could not keep their basic functions without a minimum number of parts and complex inter-wined, integrated, and interdependent structures. That indicates these biological machines and pathways had to emerge fully operational, all at once. A stepwise manner is not possible.
Conclusion: Unless someone can falsify the prediction ( and actually, confirmation), and point out a superior, more case-adequate, non-intelligent source of high levels of instructional complex codified information, irreducible complex and interdependent molecular systems, and complex metabolic circuits and biosynthesis pathways instantiated through these genetic instructions, their origin is best explained by the action of an intelligent agent. We do not need direct observed empirical evidence of the instantiation of these structures through an intelligent agency. What is observed ( the evidence) is the path to the cause in the past. We can stick to inference to the best explanation.
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against the production of a feature by an undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Origins of reality cannot be explained through testing experiments of operational science, but one can extrapolate what we see today back to times that we cannot see today, and therefore these extrapolations cannot be confirmed via the empirical method. As anyone who has watched TV's Crime Scene Investigation knows, scientific investigation of a set of data (the data at the scene of a man's death) may lead to the conclusion that the event that produced the data (the death) was not the product of natural causes, not an accident, in other words, but was the product of an intelligence a perpetrator. But of course, the data at the crime scene usually can't tell us very much about that intelligence. If the data includes fingerprints or DNA that produces a match when cross-checked against other data fingerprints or DNA banks it might lead to the identification of an individual. But even so, the tools of natural science are useless to determine the I.Q. of the intelligence, the efficiency vs. the emotionalism of the intelligence, or the motive of the intelligence. That data, analyzed by only the tools of natural science, often cannot permit the investigator to construct a theory of why the perpetrator acted. Sherlock Holmes can use chemistry to figure out that an intelligence a person did the act that killed the victim, even if he can't use chemistry to figure out that the person who did it was Professor Moriarty, or to figure out why Moriarty did the crime. Same when we observe the natural world. It gives us hints about how it could have been created. We do not need to present the act of creation to infer creationism / Intelligent design.
Steve Meyer, Signature in the cell:
Critics of intelligent design often argue that the theory cannot be tested, because it makes no predictions. The charge turns on a fundamental misunderstanding of how historical scientific theories are tested. Primarily, such testing is accomplished by comparing the explanatory power of competing hypotheses against already known facts. The theory of intelligent design, like other theories about the causes of past events, is testable, and has been tested, in just this way. That said, the theory of intelligent design also has predictive consequences. Since the design hypothesis makes claims about what caused life to arise, it has implications for what life should look like. Moreover, the explanatory framework that intelligent design provides leads to new research questions, some of which suggest specific predictions that are testable against observations or by laboratory experiments.
Some of these predictions can help adjudicate proposals that invoke either intelligent causes or materialistic mechanisms as explanations for various features of life or events in life’s history. Other predictions can help discriminate between competing ideas of how a designing intelligence influenced the history of life—for instance, between design hypotheses that affirm universal common ancestry and those that envision more discrete or discontinuous intelligent activity in the history of life. Indeed, depending upon how scientists envision intelligent design playing a role in the history of life, they may formulate different kinds of design hypotheses, each entailing different though testable predictions. Some predictions (those that discriminate the explanatory power of intelligent causes and materialistic mechanisms) will necessarily function as tests of the causal efficacy of mechanisms of evolutionary change. Since design hypotheses are often formulated as strong claims about intelligence as the best causal explanation of some particular phenomenon, these hypotheses entail counterclaims about the insufficiency of competing materialistic mechanisms. But such claims also entail predictions.
The claim that intelligent design constitutes the best explanation of particular informational features of organisms leads inevitably to the claim that other competing causal hypotheses will not demonstrate the power to produce these effects—just as they may not have done so to this point. Similarly, the claim that intelligent design constitutes the best explanation of the integrated or “irreducible complexity” of molecular machines entails a prediction about the insufficiency of competing materialistic causes for these systems. In addition to predictions about what future evidence will show about the causal powers of various processes, intelligent design also generates predictions about what we are likely to find in living systems as we investigate them. We have extensive experience-based knowledge of the kinds of strategies and systems that designing minds devise to solve various kinds of functional problems. We also know a lot about the kinds of phenomena that various natural causes produce. For this reason, the theory of intelligent design makes predictions about the kinds of features we are likely to find in living systems if they were in fact intelligently designed. Other types of predictions flow from considering the possibility that intelligence influenced, directed, or guided the history of life, either gradually or discretely. Various ID hypotheses generate different predictions about what, for example, the fossil record or phylogenetic studies should show.
Depending upon how ID theories conceive of the designing intelligence affecting the history of life over time and what other characteristics they attribute to this intelligence (such as benevolence, for example), design hypotheses may make specific claims about the causes of so-called dysteleology, or bad design. These claims may entail specific empirical predictions as well. Thus, intelligent-design hypotheses may generate several distinct types of predictions: predictions about causal powers, or lack thereof, of various mechanisms; predictions about the structure, organization, and functional logic of living systems; predictions about what evidence will show about the history of life; and predictions about the causes of putatively bad design. Consider a dozen or so ID-based predictions, each of which exemplifies one or more of these types. I start with two predictions directly relevant to testing the main arguments made in this book.
What are the characteristics of a scientific theory?
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled conditions in an experiment. In circumstances not amenable to experimental testing, theories are evaluated through principles of abductive reasoning. Established scientific theories have withstood rigorous scrutiny and embody scientific knowledge.
The scientific method requires Observation, Testing by experiment, and Verification.
Under these criteria, science has shown repeatedly by testing and empirical observation:
Life comes only from life. The emergence of the basic building blocks of life, and thereof, the use of them to store complex instructional information, and the make of complex molecular machines, and cell factories, is not possible. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Therefore, materialism is not true.
The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques, requires intelligence.
The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks require intelligence.
The product making only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction, requires intelligence for setup and implementation.
To create machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort, most probably require more intelligence, than human intelligence, and not none at all.
The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading, and repair mechanisms have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine requires an intelligent setup.
Complex production lines that depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning require intelligence.
Only intelligence is capable to create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
Objection: We have never observed a being of any capacity creating biological systems and life.
Answer: This is one of the most common demands of Atheists and mentioned as reason for unbelief until the burden of proof is met. All which such demand demonstrates is the lack of epistemological sophistication of the unbeliever. Usually, this challenge goes hand in hand with the claim that " There is no evidence of God's existence ". What they want to say however is, that there is no empirical proof. We can recognize the existence of a creator upon the effect: Creation. The imprints of intelligence are evidence of God's existence.
The (past) action or signature of an intelligent designer can be detected when we see :
- an object in nature very similar to human-made things
- something made based on mathematical principles
- systems and networks functioning based on logic gates
- something purposefully made for specific goals
- specified complexity, the instructional blueprint or a codified message
- irreducible complex and interdependent systems or artifacts composed of several interlocked, well-matched parts contributing to a higher end of a complex system that would be useful only in the completion of that much larger system.
- order or orderly patterns
- hierarchically arranged systems of parts
- intelligence can create artifacts which use might be employed in different systems ( a wheel is used in cars and airplanes )
- Fine-tuning
- objective moral laws
Atheists err when asking for material evidence to prove God's existence
Question for an atheist. Are you a non-believer because you cannot see, hear or touch God? or is it for other reasons?
If it is because you cannot prove there is a God, I want to propose another question.
But first, try this out.
Say "I love tasty food," but don't actually try to physically make an effort to say it. Use your mind to say it.
Okay, what exactly did you just do and how is it that you can hear yourself so clearly in your own mind. There is an action (you saying the statement) and its existence is clear to you, but to us, that sentence that you just said "out loud" in your head doesn't exist to us.
Matter of fact I will ask you, right now, to prove to me that you just said, "I love tasty food," in your head.
Telling me you said that statement isn't showing me evidence as to its existence. Some of you may say, "Hey, well it is dumbass." Ok, I understand how that can be a compelling argument. Now let's consider that I may lie to you and tell you that I did say I love tasty food consciously, but I actually didn't. Well then, the physical act of telling someone you thought something isn't the most viable way of showing evidence as to what you actually thought. Therefore isn't proving anything.
To get to the point, I want to say that there are probably lots of things that don't physically exist in our world but have an existence. Just because you can't prove something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
hopefully food for thought.
We can't see our thoughts and our minds. We can't see WiFi making your internetwork but it's there. You also can't see radio waves but they transmit. Not everything that exists is seen or sensed. We know God because we can test His Word and it's true. We know His voice and it guides us. We also many of us have had visions, speak in tongues and have seen Jesus heal. I would say I have more evidence for God and His Truth than anything I can trust in this world.
Many criticize that intelligent design is not science. But when ID is one of the possible mechanisms of origins, then we must be able to recognize and observe what constitutes an intelligently designed system - no matter if man-made, or encountered in nature. And based on that, make hypotheses, test them, and get positive or negative conclusions.
To use design as a basis for scientific predictions is compatible with the scientific process because it does exactly what science is supposed to do. It puts our theories and hypotheses out in the open to be discussed, to be supported by accumulating evidence or refuted by the evidence. Some may object to this, but if we are seeking for truth, why should we not do it? Intelligent design theory seeks evidence of design in nature. Intelligent design starts with observation in the natural world and tries to find out, how the origin of given phenomenon can be best explained. Since there are basically two possible mechanisms, design, and natural, unguided, random events, both should be considered and evaluated against each other.
The beginning of the universe requires a cause. The physical laws require a lawgiver. The fine-tuning of the universe requires a tuner. Life comes only from life. Establishing a code based information system, and coded Information which is complex and instructional/specified found in epigenetic systems and genes requires a Coder. Irreducible, interdependent molecular machines and biosynthetic and metabolic pathways and molecular production lines in biological systems point to an intelligent agent as the best explanation of their setup and origins.
Objection: It's not the job of science to investigate the supernatural.
Answer: There are basically two possible mechanisms that explain the origin of the natural world. An intelligent designer, through power, information input, wisdom, will, or natural, non-guided, non-intelligent mechanisms, that is random chance or physical necessity, long periods of time, mutation and natural selection, or self-organization of matter. Science is perfectly apt to find out if the natural world points to the requirement of intelligent action to set up the biological and biochemical systems we observe in nature. Intelligent Design theory does not pretend to explain how intelligence implemented the material world, nor who the designer is. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry.
Objection: Suppose a probe to the planet Mars found evidence of artifacts there that could only have been produced by an intelligent civilization. Would you expect the scientists who made that discovery to say "Well, we're not going to try figure out who might have produced them. That belongs to the realm of philosophic and theological inquiry"?
Answer: Of course, in that case, science would try to figure out about this civilization. That would however still not explain the ultimate cause of a) this civilization, and b) the cause of the universe as a whole.
Objection: You really need to take the time to define who this supreme being is before you can assert it actually exists.
Answer: No proponent of Intelligent design makes conclusive absolute assertions that an Intelligent Designer exists. One of the best solutions to handling the issue of evidence and arguments for God’s existence is to utilize what is called inference to the best explanation. The inference to the best explanation model takes into account the best available explanation in our whole range of experience and reflection. Since we as humans can’t observe God as a material object, one way to approach this issue is to look at the effects in the world and make rational inferences to the cause of the effect. Remember, the evidence is always evidence for (or against) something.
http://reasonandscience.heavenforum.org/t2256-atheists-err-when-asking-for-material-evidence-to-prove-god-s-existence
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How to recognize intelligently made artifacts:
ok. Let us suppose, that you arrive with a colleague at a place, and there you find an object. You do not know who/what made it, but analyzing it, you observe that it was made of several interlocking parts in precise shapes with structural complementarity which functionally interacts together in a very precise fashion, like pieces of a puzzle or, in the more popular analogy, a lock and its key. Furthermore, you see a nameplate and several signs similar to the alphabet forming a sentence, but in an unknown code and language.
Now your colleague asks you: What do you think, how was this object made?
Upon your observation and analyzing the object, would you say, it was rather made by someone with intelligence, or it came to exist rather because of random natural forces, that is wind, rain, etc. ?
Question: God is a POSSIBLE explanation of why we exist.
How could you recognize that something in the natural world bears the signs or signature of design, or being created, rather than not?
Unbeliever: I don't assert design - that's you. I'm simply asking you to support your claim that a god 'designed' life.
Response: If you do not know how to recognize design in nature, it is like to ask a blind to appreciate the beauty of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
- The make of components of a complex system that are only useful in the completion of a much larger system and their orderly aggregation in a sequentially correct manner requires always external direction through intelligence. No exceptions are known. In other words: Intermediate sub-products have by its own no use of any sort unless they are correctly assembled in a larger system. Instructional complex information is required for to make these sub-products and parts, and know-how to mount them correctly in the right order and at the right place, and interconnected correctly in a larger system. Intelligence is required to find and recruit and select the right materials, and to form computer hardware, highly efficient information storage devices, software, a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint, information retrieval, transmission, signaling, translation, machine parts with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into complex machines, production line complexes, autonomous robots with error check functions and repair mechanisms, electronic circuit - like networks, energy production factories, power generating plants, energy turbines, recycle mechanisms and methods, waste grinders and management, organized waste disposal mechanisms, and self-destruction when needed to reach a higher-end, and veritable micro-miniaturized factories where all before-mentioned systems and parts are required in order for that factory to be self- replicating, and being functional.
- The establishment of communication systems requires intelligence. Most signal relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind. The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them. Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design. Acts as an information processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware can only be set up all at once through intelligent input )
- Selecting the most optimal and efficient code information system and the ability to minimize the effects of errors requires intelligence.
Intelligence is required to create a system that uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language, which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assigns the code of one system to the code of another system.
- The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques, requires intelligence.
- The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks require intelligence.
- The product making only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction, requires intelligence for setup and implementation.
- To create machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort, most probably require more intelligence, than human intelligence, and not none at all.
- The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
- Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading, and repair mechanisms have only been observed to be set up by intelligence.
- Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine requires an intelligent setup.
- Complex production lines that depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning require intelligence.
- Only intelligence is capable to create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent actions
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-intelligently-made-artefacts
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Which of the following is better explained by design, rather than non-design?
Design can be tested using scientific logic. How? Upon the logic of mutual exclusion, design and non-design are mutually exclusive (it was one or the other) so we can use eliminative logic: if non-design is highly improbable, then design is highly probable. Thus, the evidence against non-design (against the production of a feature by the undirected natural process) is evidence for design. And vice versa. The evaluative status of non-design (and thus design) can be decreased or increased by observable empirical evidence, so a theory of design is empirically responsive and is testable.
Upon applying the above logic, how is the following better explained, by design, or non-design?
- Components of a complex system that are only useful in the completion of a much larger system and their orderly aggregation in a sequentially correct manner.
- Intermediate sub-products have by its own no use of any sort unless they are correctly assembled in a larger system.
- Instructional complex information is required to make these sub-products and parts, to mount them correctly in the right order and at the right place, and interconnected correctly in a larger system.
- The making of computer hardware, and highly efficient information storage devices.
- Creating software, based on a language using signs and codes like the alphabet, an instructional blueprint.
- Information retrieval, transmission, signaling, and translation
- The make of machine parts with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into complex machines, production line complexes, autonomous robots with error check functions and repair mechanisms, electronic circuit - like networks, energy production factories, power generating plants, energy turbines, recycle mechanisms and methods, waste grinders and management, organized waste disposal mechanisms, and self-destruction when needed to reach a higher-end and veritable micro-miniaturized factories where all before-mentioned systems and parts are required in order for that factory to be self- replicating, and being functional.
- Establishment of advanced communication systems. Signal relay stations. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” A transmitter and receiver system made of physical materials, with a functional purpose, performing an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them, acting as information processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware )
- Selecting the most optimal and efficient code information system and the ability to minimize the effects of errors.
- A system that uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language, which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assign the code of one system to the code of another system.
- The make of complicated, fast high-performance production systems, and technology with high robustness, flexibility, efficiency, and responsiveness, and quality-management techniques.
- The setup of 1,000–1,500 manufacturing proceedings in parallel by a series of operations and flow connections to reach a common end-goal, the most complex industry-like production networks known.
- The implementation of a product making system, only in response to actual demand, not in anticipation of forecast demand, thus preventing overproduction.
- Creating machines, production lines and factories that are more complex than man-made things of the sort.
- The organization of software exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory mechanisms - and control networks and systems.
- Error check and detection, inspection processes, quality assurance procedures, information error proofreading and repair mechanisms.
- Foolproofing, applying the key-lock principle to guarantee a proper fit between product and machine.
- Complex production lines which depend on precise optimization and fine-tuning.
- Create complex systems that are able to adapt to variating conditions.
All above systems are a pre-requisite of life and biological Cells and implemented in an extremely ordered, complex, efficient manner.
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In order to make design predictions, it must be established what can be recognized as design in nature - Something having the PROPERTIES that we might attribute to that of an intelligently designed system:
( Following requirements which consist in an insurmountable problem for unguided naturalistic processes are met ) :
1) IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX. The requirement and existence of individual parts of a biological system which are indispensable to keep the basic function of a system, which has no survival advantage or functional purpose on their own, nor in an intermediate evolutionary stage. ( biologically useful or significant genetic sequences )
2) The ability to find and recruit and select the right materials, and to form molecules with highly specific structures, which permit to form the aggregation into tissues, organs, and organ systems in a highly complex, functional, specified, correct, spatial order.
Making the individual parts and materials available at the same construction site, perhaps not simultaneously but certainly, at the time they are needed.
Coordinating and instruct the assembly of the parts in just the right way: even if all of the parts of a system are available at the right time, it is clear that the majority of ways of assembling them will be non-functional or irrelevant.
The parts must have the right size, form, and material, and must be mutually compatible, that is, ‘well-matched’ and capable of properly ‘interacting’: even if subsystems or parts are put together in the right order, they also need to interface correctly. The individual parts will be held together and connected in the right manner through various different mechanisms, like fine-tuned covalent and non-covalent bonds, electrostatic forces, cell junctions, etc.
3) Establishment of communication systems. Most signal relay stations we know about were intelligently designed. Signal without recognition is meaningless. Communication implies a signaling convention (a “coming together” or agreement in advance) that a given signal means or represents something: e.g., that S-O-S means “Send Help!” The transmitter and receiver can be made of non-sentient materials, but the functional purpose of the system always comes from a mind. The mind uses the material substances to perform an algorithm that is not itself a product of the materials or the blind forces acting on them. Signal sequences may be composed of mindless matter, but they are marks of a mind behind the intelligent design. Acts as an informational processing system ( the interaction of a software program and the hardware can only be set up all at once through intelligent input )
4) Selecting the most optimal and efficient genetic code and the ability to minimize the effects of errors.
5) A system which uses a cipher, translating instructions through one language ( the universal genetic code) which contains Statistics, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Apobetics, and assign the right triplet code to the right amino acids
6) The appearance of highly complex dependencies thus giving the appearance of Implicit intelligence (although not intelligent itself, indicates an origin involving intelligence.. )
7 Use of molecular machinery on a scale and complexity which mankind has never IMAGINED possible - all with the appearance of exact purpose, intent, function, and dependencies
8 exhibiting logical functional layers - regulatory genes controlling gene expression - conceptually the same as a logical software layer controlling the underlying system.
9) another layer of complex 3 Dimensional control and access, and adaptation to the environment: Epigenetics
10) Implicit built-in ERROR checking from the get-go: reducing mutations to a minimal
11) Advanced inbuilt repair mechanisms which are essential for the proper function of certain biological systems and proteins right from the start.
12) Precise optimization and fine-tuning of biological, chemical, biochemical and physical systems.
13) Display the DESIGN of complex software, designed to adapt and EVOLVE in a very controlled and careful way - while at the same time minimizing mutations. A system designed to EVOLVE and SURVIVE. (gene splicing )
14) The ability to provide precise instruction and coding for the development of biological systems.
15) Something which as well as exhibiting all of the above, also has no conceptual way of coming into existence through naturalistic means, or something whose existence and origins appear to defy all known scientific understanding. Something which requires the application of a lot of FAITH and IMAGINATION of some theories to describe its origins through natural means alone.
16) So the application of COMMON SENSE and inference, from observations from the world around us (information processing systems) might indicate to us certain things having these above PROPERTIES, would fall into the category of things that have been DESIGNED.
17) One of the most intelligent concepts in the known universe is the concept of Evolution itself.
Proponents of evolution frequently argue that intelligent design is not science since it doesn't make predictions. Following a list of predictions made by intelligent design, and the confirmation:
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1659-confirmation-of-intelligent-design-predictions
Predictions in biology:
- High instructive coded information content will be found throughout the genome, in " junk DNA", and the epigenome– (already proven)
- The non-adequacy of the DNA-centric view to explain biodiversity. Proven. We know that Membrane targets and patterns, Cytoskeletal arrays, Centrosomes, Ion channels, Sugar molecules on the exterior of cells (the sugar code), Gene regulatory networks, the Splicing Code, the Metabolic Code, the Signal Transduction Codes, the Signal Integration Codes, the Histone Code, the Tubulin Code the Sugar Code and the Glycomic Code define morphology, development, cell and body shape. Basically, macroevolution ( the origin of morphological novelties ) is a falsified prediction, while ID is confirmed.
- Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and an undeniable fact. Ken Millers rebuttal is not a compelling refutation )
- Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – ( well known)
- Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – ( proven)
- The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
- Few or no intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another. There are none so far.
- Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)
- Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
- So-called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
- Few mutations will end up being beneficial in the long run – (already proven)
- Genetic entropy will be found to cancel our most if any beneficial mutations
In astronomy/astrophysics
- an increase (and not a decrease), as science progresses, in the number of finely-tuned parameters pertinent to the laws and constants of physics
Predictions in Paleontology
- The observed pattern of the fossil record whereby morphological disparity precedes diversity.
- Saltational, or abrupt, the appearance of new life forms without transitional precursors.
Knock out experiments and tests provide empirical evidence that the flagellum is irreducibly complex, as Scott Minnich testified at the Dover process:
Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added
We have a mutation in a drive shaft protein or the U joint, and they can't swim. Now, to confirm that that's the only part that we've affected, you know, is that we can identify this mutation, clone the gene from the wild-type and reintroduce it by the mechanism of genetic complementation. So this is, these cells up here are derived from this mutant where we have complemented with a good copy of the gene. One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. Same thing over here. We put, knock out one part, but a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition, the system is irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.
(Kitzmiller Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich pgs. 99-108, Nov. 3, 2005, emphasis added)
High prescriptive information content will be found throughout the genome – (already proven)
Laws of chemistry and physics, which follow exact statistical, thermodynamic, and spatial laws, are totally inadequate for generating complex functional information or those systems that process that information using prescriptive algorithmic information". The organization requires control, which requires formalism as a reality. Each protein is currently the result of the execution of a real computer program running on the genetic operating system.
http://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2110-what-might-be-a-protocells-minimal-requirement-of-parts
Machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found – (already proven, and no K. Millers poor rebuttal is no refutation at all)
High information content machine-like irreducibly complex and interdependent structures, of which photosynthesis, the eye, the human body, nitrogenase, the ribosome, the cell, rubisco, photosystem II, the oxygen-evolving complex etc. are prime examples, are commonly found in nature.
Since Evolution is unable to provide an advantage of adaptation in each evolutionary step and is unable to select it, 1) Darwinism’s prediction is falsified; 2) Design’s prediction is confirmed.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2166-a-list-of-irreducible-complex-systems
Forms will be found in the fossil record that appears suddenly and without any precursors – (already known)
"A record of pre-Cambrian animal life, it appears, simply does not exist. Why this lamentable blank? Various theories have been proposed; none is too satisfactory. It has been suggested, for example, that all the Pre-Cambrian sediments were deposited on continental areas, and the absence of fossils in them is due to the fact that all the older animals were sea dwellers. But that all these older sediments were continental is a theory which opposes, without proof, everything we know of deposition in later times. Again, it is suggested that the Pre-Cambrian seas were poor in calcium carbonate, necessary for the production of preservable skeletons; but this is not supported by geochemical evidence. Yet again, it is argued that even though conditions were amenable to the formation of fossilizable skeletal parts, the various phyla only began to use these possibilities at the dawn of the Cambrian. But it is, a priori, hard to believe that the varied types present in the early Cambrian would all have, so to speak, decided to put on armor simultaneously. And, once again, it has been argued that the whole evolution of multicellular animals took place with great rapidity in late Pre-Cambrian times, so that a relatively short gap in rock deposition would account for the absence of any record of their rise. Perhaps; but the known evolutionary rate in most groups from the Cambrian on is a relatively leisurely one, and it is hard to convince oneself that a sudden major burst of evolutionary advance would be so promptly followed by a marked 'slowdown'. All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the Pre-Cambrian riddle."
Romer Alfred S. [late Professor of Zoology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University], "The Procession of Life," The World Publishing Co: Cleveland OH, 1968, pp.19-20.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1701-does-fossil-record-support-the-evolution-model-of-gradual-and-small-changes
Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms – (already proven)
The argument of the highly similar DNA sequences
1. If functionally unconstrained yet highly similar DNA sequences were found in different species, then evolution would be false.
2. In fact, the DNA sequences are extremely similar and even identical in different species.
3. There is currently “no known mechanism or function that would account for this level of conservation at the observed evolutionary distances.”
4. Since some of these sequences are found across a wide range of different species, the sequences, and whatever selective forces preserved them, must have been present very early in history.
5. On the other hand, many of these sequences point to evolution’s nemesis, lineage-specific biology.
6. Highly similar DNA sequences in different species are a proof of the same intelligent designer using a similar genetic pattern to design different species. All men call him God.
7. God exists.
The insect eye and the vertebrate eye are two examples of structures said to be analogous ( Analogous structures are similar or resembling in certain respects, e.g. in function or in appearance but not in evolutionary origin or developmental origin. An example is wings of a butterfly and wings of a hummingbird are analogous.) . However, they can be shown to both be based on the expression of the Pax-6 gene , and it is probable that the vertebrate and insect (and cephalopod) eyes are the modified descendants of a basic metazoan photoreceptive cell that was regulated by Pax-6.
Research at the molecular level has failed to demonstrate the expected correspondence between gene product changes and the organismal changes predicted by evolution.
Evolution by DNA mutations 'is largely uncoupled from morphological evolution'
Some regulatory genes that have similar DNA sequences are found to regulate similar structures in different phyla where those structures are thought to have "evolved" independently. These homologous genes that regulate analogous structures might encourage the Darwinist to reconsider whether those structures might actually be homologous due to common ancestry. However, in consideration of the evidence that different phyla do not have common ancestors, these "homologies of process" are better explained as evidence of intelligent design, where the designer reused the same control mechanism for the development of similar structures in unrelated organisms.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2191-the-developmental-genetic-toolkit-and-the-molecular-homologyanalogy-paradox
The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless “junk DNA” – (being proven over & over today)
When all sorts of peripheral genetic elements were discovered, evolutionary geneticists referred to them as “junk DNA” on the assumption that they were nothing but useless remnants left over from evolutionary predecessors. Come to find out, these regulatory elements are the key to cellular health and development, as well as the primary link to disease when not operating properly.
The massive store of apparently unused DNA components in every cell, which Richard Dawkins, incredibly, once dismissed as “99% junk”, now appears to hold multiple layers of subtle logic which are only beginning to be unraveled, with serious and long-lasting implications.
An article in the 7 September 2012 issue of Science was titled "ENCODE project writes a eulogy for junk DNA". "This week, 30 research papers... sound the death knell for the idea that our DNA is mostly littered with useless bases. A decade-long project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE), has found that 80% of the human genome serves some purpose". "The ENCODE effort has revealed that a gene's regulation is far more complex than previously thought, being influenced by multiple stretches of regulatory DNA located both near and far from the gene itself and by strands of RNA not translated into proteins, so-called noncoding RNA."--
During my time at Discovery Institute, we have also seen some of ID’s longstanding scientific predictions spectacularly fulfilled. Exhibit A: The ENCODE project’s discovery of widespread function for non-coding DNA. Again, since the late 1990s I’d been hearing ID-critics say “junk DNA refutes ID.” At that time, my rejoinder was “We haven’t even studied this ‘dark matter of the genome’ enough to know what it does. Let’s just wait and see.” Well, we’ve been waiting and now we’ve seen: ID was correct all along. Early indications of this mass-functionality first came to light in 2007 when ENCODE published its preliminary results suggesting that a great portion of our DNA is transcribed into RNA. But in 2012 ENCODE published its main results, showing that over 80 percent of the genome gives strong evidence of function. Papers uncovering specific functions for specific “junk” genetic elements continue to pour forth.
Pennisi, Elizabeth. 7 September 2012. Science, Vol. 337, pp. 1159-1161.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/01/01/is-the-discovery-institute-falling-apart/#comment-1286343
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1812-junk-dna-has-function?highlight=junk+dna
Few intermediate forms will found giving a clear and gradual pathway from one family to another – there are none so far. Most of the claimed ancestors will be shown to have serious problems – already historically proven
Michael Denton stated:
“It is still, as it was in Darwin's day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today
anthropologist Edmund Ronald Leach stated:
“ Missing links in the sequence of fossil evidence were a worry to Darwin. He felt sure they would eventually turn up, but they are still missing and seem likely to remain so
One of the most famous proponents of evolution was the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But Gould admitted,
"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection, we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1693-transitional-fossils
Mechanisms for error detection and correction will be abundant within the genome of all organisms – (already proven)
At least four excision repair pathways exist to repair single stranded DNA damage:
Nucleotide excision repair (NER)
Base excision repair (BER)
DNA mismatch repair (MMR)
Repair through alkyltransferase-like proteins (ATLs)
Natural selection cannot act without accurate replication, yet the protein machinery for the level of accuracy required is itself built by the very genetic code it is designed to protect. Thats a catch22 situation. It would have been challenging enough to explain accurate transcription and translation alone by natural means, but as consequence of UV radiation, it would have quickly been destroyed through the accumulation of errors. So accurate replication and proofreading are required for the origin of life. How on earth could proofreading enzymes emerge, especially with this degree of fidelity, when they depend on the very information that they are designed to protect? Think about it.... This is one more prima facie example of chicken and egg situation. What is the alternative explanation to design? Proofreading DNA by chance? And a complex suite of translation machinery without a designer?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2043-dna-repair?highlight=repair
Mechanisms for *non-random* adaptations, coherent with environmental pressures, will be found (already found)
The genome has traditionally been treated as a Read-Only Memory (ROM) subject to change by copying errors and accidents. In this review, I propose that we need to change that perspective and understand the genome as an intricately formatted Read-Write (RW) data storage system constantly subject to cellular modifications and inscriptions. Cells operate under changing conditions and are continually modifying themselves by genome inscriptions. These inscriptions occur over three distinct time-scales (cell reproduction, multicellular development and evolutionary change) and involve a variety of different processes at each time scale (forming nucleoprotein complexes, epigenetic formatting and changes in DNA sequence structure). Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole-genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.
http://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1476-how-life-changes-itself-the-read-write-rw-genome?highlight=genome
So-called vestigial organs will be found to have specific purpose and usefulness – (already proven)
Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that the widespread occurrence of vestigial organs -- organs that may have once had a function but are now useless -- is evidence against creation. "On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur." But such organs, he argued, are readily explained by his theory: "On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the old doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated in accordance with the views here explained."
Last edited by Otangelo on Wed Mar 13, 2024 12:32 pm; edited 117 times in total
