Darwin re-visited

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

And this portion... is at odds with Moon's assertion that lateral gene transfer somehow resulted in a "merging" of life into a single common tree.

Informative post, G, but I don't know what point you were trying to make.

Bio

No, the lateral transfers i was talking about occurred in the beginning of life when life was simple and differences much less pronounced than today. Once real species came about lateral gene transfers slowed down considerably and it occurs most often between closely related microbes. But as the chart shows they still occur at a rate higher than most people thought. You originally said you thought it was a rare event.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

You guys are really fixated. I have said nothing about ID in my discourses. Moon offered Behe's nomenclature of "front loading" in a post a while back, and I used that for his convenience (instead of my "precoding" or "proscribed speciation". You might recall (or maybe not) that my core argument is statistical, in that the probability of an enzyme system of 6 enzymes occurring is still on the order of 1 in 10^1000. Every other enzyme system you add would incrementally increase the number. That is, if a life form needs the Kreb's cycle AND the urea cycle AND beta oxidation, the probabilistic assessment (even with a large number of favorable assumptions) come out to 1 in 10^3000. No one (not ever here) has offered a data-driven counterpoint, other than to say "oh, that old creationist argument".

This is NOT a creationist argument. It is a DATA problem!!!!!!

I am discussing data, not ideology. This thread's constant reversion to debunking irrelevant straw men is really distracting.

Bio

Nice attempt at a dodge, but you are very obviously religiously motivated. You haven't quoted any scientists or posted any actual science to support your position. All you have is questions. The same as the rest of the ID crowd. Just like you, the Discovery Institute is yet to publish any of the promised supporting data in the past three years since you have been pretending evolution didn't happen on this forum. Got any actual science?

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

You guys are really fixated. I have said nothing about ID in my discourses. Moon offered Behe's nomenclature of "front loading" in a post a while back, and I used that for his convenience (instead of my "precoding" or "proscribed speciation". You might recall (or maybe not) that my core argument is statistical, in that the probability of an enzyme system of 6 enzymes occurring is still on the order of 1 in 10^1000. Every other enzyme system you add would incrementally increase the number. That is, if a life form needs the Kreb's cycle AND the urea cycle AND beta oxidation, the probabilistic assessment (even with a large number of favorable assumptions) come out to 1 in 10^3000. No one (not ever here) has offered a data-driven counterpoint, other than to say "oh, that old creationist argument".

This is NOT a creationist argument. It is a DATA problem!!!!!!

I am discussing data, not ideology. This thread's constant reversion to debunking irrelevant straw men is really distracting.

Bio

Your fixation of assuming a preloaded code and then saying no intelligence is required to preload that data is disingenuous and you know it. If it is indeed there then it had to be preloaded by some intelligence. Your idea answers nothing, it just raises more unanswerable questions. Your argument is weak, it has no supporters other than creationists/ID'ers. Not to mention there is absolutely no evidence for it. I for one no longer believe you are serious about any of this after the dishonesty you have shown in other threads.

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

Making things up and just asking silly questions is not good science or debate. Would it have hurt you to try google?

This lack of courtesy is what ruins this site.

1) I don't think there is anything silly in my position. I held to pretty much the standard dogma for speciation for most of my career. I changed my mind because of the data.

2) the anti-theist bent of this site (and this thread) is remarkably derogatory. It clouds your ability to engage in discussion about relevant data.

3) It is true that I don't spend HOURS researching every item in every post. I don't expect posters to read every item in every post of mine either. I don't attack them for missing something.

Maybe I will come back in a couple years and try again.

Bio

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

Your fixation of assuming a preloaded code and then saying no intelligence is required to preload that data is disingenuous and you know it.

I MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT KNOW IT. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST TAKE THE FACTS AS THEY SIT?????

You have the fixation, not me.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

You guys are really fixated. I have said nothing about ID in my discourses. Moon offered Behe's nomenclature of "front loading" in a post a while back, and I used that for his convenience (instead of my "precoding" or "proscribed speciation". You might recall (or maybe not) that my core argument is statistical, in that the probability of an enzyme system of 6 enzymes occurring is still on the order of 1 in 10^1000. Every other enzyme system you add would incrementally increase the number. That is, if a life form needs the Kreb's cycle AND the urea cycle AND beta oxidation, the probabilistic assessment (even with a large number of favorable assumptions) come out to 1 in 10^3000. No one (not ever here) has offered a data-driven counterpoint, other than to say "oh, that old creationist argument".

This is NOT a creationist argument. It is a DATA problem!!!!!!

I am discussing data, not ideology. This thread's constant reversion to debunking irrelevant straw men is really distracting.

Bio

Yes, and this was rejected as the same old silly creationist arguments:
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations

Do you have any credible citations for you claims?

Originally Posted by Biochemist

But it gets worse. The standard counterpoint by the speciation-by-mutation crowd is that the majority of the steps in the process are not really random.

Obviously.

But if they are not really random, exactly how non-random are they? If the extant biochemical state (or series of historical states) is such that it can alter the probability of a random event from 1 in 10^3000 down to say 1 in 10^100 or 1 in 10^3 or 1 in 10, where would we bite the bullet and suggest that the probability for a particular outcome was "front loaded"?

That whole "speciation-by-mutation crowd" actually publishes papers:

THE EVOLUTION OF F1 POSTZYGOTIC INCOMPATIBILITIES IN BIRDS
Abstract.—We analyzed the rate at which postzygotic incompatibilities accumulate in birds. Our purposes were to assess the role of intrinsic F1 hybrid infertility and inviability in the speciation process, and to compare rates of loss of fertility and viability between the sexes. Among our sample more than half the crosses between species in the same genus produce fertile hybrids. Complete loss of F1 hybrid fertility takes on the order of millions of years. Loss of F1 hybrid viability occurs over longer timescales than fertility: some viable hybrids have been produced between taxa that appear to have been separated for more than 55 my. There is strong support for Haldane's rule, with very few examples where the male has lower fitness than the female. However, in contrast to Drosophila, fertility of the homogametic sex in the F1 appears to be lost before viability of the heterogametic sex in the F1. We conclude that the time span of loss of intrinsic hybrid fertility and viability is often, but not always, longer than the time to speciation. Premating isolation is an important mechanism maintaining reproductive isolation in birds. In addition, other factors causing postzygotic reproductive isolation such as ecological causes of hybrid unfitness, reduced mating success of hybrids, and genetic incompatibilities in the F2s and backcrosses may often be involved in the speciation process.

SEXUAL ISOLATION EVOLVES FASTER THAN HYBRID INVIABILITY IN A DIVERSE AND SEXUALLY DIMORPHIC GENUS OF FISH (PERCIDAE: ETHEOSTOMA)
Abstract.Theory predicts that sexual (or behavioral) isolation will be the first form of reproductive isolation to evolve in lineages characterized by sexual selection. Here I directly compare the rate of evolution of sexual isolation with that of hybrid inviability in a diverse and sexually dimorphic genus of freshwater fish. The magnitude of both sexual isolation and hybrid inviability were quantified for multiple pairs of allopatric species. Rates of evolution were inferred by comparing genetic distances of these species pairs with the magnitude of each form of reproductive isolation: the slope of the regression of genetic distance on the magnitude of reproductive isolation represents the rate of evolution. Of the two forms of isolation, the magnitude of sexual isolation exhibited the steeper slope of regression, indicating that sexual isolation will tend to evolve to completion earlier than hybrid inviability, strictly as a by-product of evolution in geographically isolated populations. Additional evidence from the literature is used to qualitatively compare rates of evolution of sexual isolation with that of other forms of reproductive isolation. Preliminary comparisons support the prediction that sexual isolation will evolve more rapidly than other forms. Because Etheostoma is characterized by striking sexual dimorphism, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that sexual selection for exaggerated mate-recognition characters causes the relatively rapid evolution of sexual isolation.

Correspondence between sexual isolation and allozyme differentiation: a test in the salamander Desmognathus ochrophaeus ? PNAS
Ethological reproductive isolation and genetic divergence across 26 protein loci were measured among populations of the salamander Desmognathus ochrophaeus in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Levels of ethological isolation varied from none to complete and were statistically significant for all but two pairings between populations inhabiting different mountain ranges. When geographic and genetic distances were treated as independent variables in multiple correlation analyses, they accounted for about half the variance in levels of ethological isolation. When genetic distance is held constant, the remaining relationship between ethological isolation and geographic distance is still statistically significant. When geographic distance is held constant, the remaining relationship between genetic distance and levels of ethological isolation is nonsignificant, as is the relationship between geographic distance and genetic distance when ethological isolation is held constant. Ethological isolation and genetic divergence evidently both reflect the gradual divergence of allopatric populations, but genetic distance is a poor predictor of ethological isolation in these salamanders.

Patterns of Speciation in Drosophila

Speciation in Drosophila: From Phenotypes to Molecules
Study of the genetics of speciation—and especially of the genetics of intrinsic postzygotic isolation—has enjoyed remarkable progress over the last 2 decades. Indeed progress has been so rapid that one might be tempted to ask if the genetics of postzygotic isolation is now wrapped up. Here we argue that the genetics of speciation is far from complete. In particular, we review 2 topics where recent work has revealed major surprises: 1) the role of meiotic drive in hybrid sterility and 2) the role of gene transposition in speciation. These surprises, and others like them, suggest that evolutionary biologists may understand less about the genetic basis of speciation than seemed likely a few years ago.

more:
patterns of postzygotic isolation - Google Search

And you ignored this in a previous post, full issue on "Genetics of Speciation" in the journal Heredity:
Heredity-The Genetics of Speciation

Care to offer alternative explanations for any of this?

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by Moontanman

Your idea answers nothing

Not true: It addresses the apparent incongruity of the 3 billion years from life to mammal, when the statistical probability is in the range of 1 in 10^3000

Originally Posted by Moon

, it just raises more unanswerable questions.

Unanswerable? How? They are just different questions. That is how science works.

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

Nice attempt at a dodge, but you are very obviously religiously motivated.

How can something that is factually not true be obvious?

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

Maybe I will come back in a couple years and try again.

Bio

Go with God Bio,

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Biochemist

How can something that is factually not true be obvious?

I think this post was clear enough the first time:

Originally Posted by Galapagos

And you also stated that people who think "aliens did it" would like your beliefs:

Without getting into what the orders of magnitude of complexity you would have to be talking about in order for genetically engineering space-traveling aliens to have existed 3.8 million years ago, the only group I can think of who are crazy enough to believe this would be the adherents of the UFO religion Raelism:

You are lying. You are very obviously a proponent of Intelligent Design.
Here is a post by you from March of 2008, for example, both claiming that ID is science(it is not, and the court systems and major scientific organizations regard it as religious pseudoscience/junk science), and discussing the work of Michael Behe:

There is no evidence that the majority of non-coding DNA is functional(from Larry Moran's blog, junk in the human genome):

The fact that a fugu fish requires a genome only 1/8th our size(with only 1/3 of that 1/8th functional), a species of onion requires five times as much non coding DNA as humans do, and why some species of onion have genomes ten times as large as some others implies much of it is in fact junk(according to the scientists. this is not my opinion as a hypographer).
I quote the Onion Test once more:

So your explanation for the vast variation in genome sizes(and amounts of non-coding DNA) is that if you (an intentional agent) were to Intelligently Design life, you would "front-load"(as suggested by dispenser of religious and confirmed pseudoscience, Michael Behe) , then start "winnowing down" until you reached your goal.


Feel free to address any of the posts by T Ryan Gregory(he says hes welcoming comments, but also notes that most ID people probably aren't interested in any real science) if you still want to carry on with this:
Genomicron: An opportunity for ID to be scientific.
Genomicron: Junk DNA and ID redux.