Now I'm sure you are aware I'm joking around, but if you stop and think about what I'm writing you'll see that you can't win against my position. If a 747 doesn't form, I've given myself a nice out: God didn't will it.

If one does form I win also. God willed it. No matter what, I win and you lose.

Same thing with ID or any other "theory" that postulates and relies on a supernatural entity to do all the heavy lifting. The supernatural entity explains everything and hence nothing. Real science makes predictions that can be shown to be wrong--i.e., falsified or at least called into doubt.

Evolutionary theory works this way. I highly recommend you read some of the stuff about Margulis' work. You don't have to delve into the nitty gritty advanced stuff, just some of the stuff written for laypeople such as you and me. Evolutionary theory will adopt non-neodarwinian processes that are based on natural processes and have the data to support them.

All the rest of this is just verbal fencing. The problem is you have a spork and I have a rapier. For example, the problem with the tornado example is that it misrepresents the underlying evolutionary processes proposed by neodarwinian theory. Those processes are gradual and take a very long time. Hence the tornado-747 analogy is so faulty it isn't even funny.

Basically the tornado-747 analogy wants the entire object to spring into being fully formed in one fell swoop. If this actually happened in biological terms (i.e., a new species arising suddenly and fully formed from no ancestor) then that would be evidence for creationism, not evolutionary theory.

Creationists use variants of this analogy. For example, Dembski's paper on Searching Large Spaces posits "one true protein" that has to be found by a "darwinian" process. The problem is as follows:

Evolutionary processes don't care about any given protein. It doesn't search for a target.

Behe and Snoke used it in their paper as well. Sure, the probability for many biological structures is extremely small. But since evolutionary processes aren't trying to find those specific "targets" these "small probabilities" really don't mean much. Think of it this way.

I flip a coin 1000 times. I get a random sequence of heads and tails. The probability of obtaining that sequence is 2^-1000. That is a very small number. What you and other creationists do, Floyd, is to insist that the initial sequence is the only valid sequence. Hence since nobody is likely to get that sequence we must invoke the supernatural or interference by an "intelligent agency". But evolutionary theory doesn't care what the sequence is. If we could go back 500 million years ago and start it all over in a huge do-over we probably wouldn't get mankind, but we'd likely get something....or even maybe nothing. That is what evolutionary theory posits. Hence your tornado-747 stories are not even relevant.

steve; tornados are guided as well by the laws of physics , are they not?

Well are you sure? Maybe it is God. Describe a step-by-step description of how tornados form. Oh and any single gap will be proof that God forms tornados.

So based on this divine intervention in regards to tornados...would it be all that shocking that a tornado in a junkyard produces a 747?

I hate to throw some cold water on your persecution complex, but you haven't been banned AFAIK.

As for the rest of your post, it is just what I'd expect from one of Dembski's lickspittles.

Well then. Let me pay you an even higher compliment. You're a real dumbass!

LOL

Postscript:

Ah, I see I've been banned. I'll add this site to all the others that banned me. Thanks. It's an honor.

One of the things I mentioned to commenters in this post is that sometimes probability theory (and also statistics) can lead to counter-intuitive results. One example is Simpson's Paradox. Simpson's Paradox is when the reversal of direction of a comp...

You need a better science background, Steve. I’d change the subject if I were you.

Coming from you DaveScot and what I've seen of your posting at Dembski's blog this is a compliment.

Floyd,

The tornado example is wrong because it does not accurately represent the probabilities in evolutionary theory. I know you weren't meaning it literally, but using that chestnut to say, "Hey, these things are amazing unlikely...so unlikely nobody with an open mind would believe it." But as I've said and so has Boris, the claims of extremely low probability are false and based on a mischaracterization of the relevant probabilities and processes.

RJN,

Otherwise, nice post. I will add that one of the legs of the ID stool is the great improbability of the way our physics, and our solar system are set up for life. And chemistry: The exquisite capabilities, and complexities; the just so strong force, and the just so weak force, and the shells of electrons. These are so suspicious, to someone like me; it is all so incredibly improbable. And, the math says so too.

Actually, the math says exactly the opposite when looked at from a probabilistic stand point. Jefferys and Ikeda have a very nice and simple proof that learning that the universe is "fine tuned" as you note should actually increase our probability that the universe is guided by natural laws, or at best have no impact.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but that is sometimes the case with probability theory. To this day people still don't believe the Monty Hall problem, and lets not get started on Simpson's Paradox.

Otherwise, nice post. I will add that one of the legs of the ID stool is the great improbability of the way our physics, and our solar system are set up for life. And chemistry: The exquisite capabilities, and complexities; the just so strong force, and the just so weak force, and the shells of electrons. These are so suspicious, to someone like me; it is all so incredibly improbable. And, the math says so too.

By the way, regarding the objection that no new species, cell types, organs, etc. have been observed to emerge in the wild: I'd like to know, how it is that anyone can be so certain? Even today, there are many species in the world (especially of insects) that have yet to be discovered. If a new species of field mice evolves somewhere, when it is discovered it would simply be classified as a new species; nobody would know that it only became a separate species 20 years ago...

As for the question of why hasn't there been evolution in the lab, I'd think the answer is obvious. What utility would there be in spending years of effort and who knows what amounts of resources on an experiment that offers no practical value? Macroevolution is simply not controversial enough among the experts to warrant such a mammoth undertaking. Mutations, on the other hand, are routinely isolated in laboratories and bred into useful subpopulations -- mostly for human disease modelling. These days, we have everything from narcoleptic dogs to super-healing mice -- and that is even without any deliberate genetic engineering.

Consider plant species, too. Do you think wheat can interbreed with its original wild ancestor? I don't think so. And the same is true of other ancient agricultural staples such as corn, for example. All of these species were "domesticated" by humans who selected for certain favorable traits over the span of just 10 thousand years or so. Dogs, another example of domestication, do not interbreed with wolves (at least, not in the wild.) They may not have radically different organs, but they sure have radically different behavior (and that signifies some major alterations to the most complex organ in existence -- the brain.)

Of course these days, with whole-genome sequencing techniques rapidly advancing, it becomes possible to actually date the speciation events by counting the dissimilar SNP's (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) in the genomes of two related species, which are known to occur at an approximately constant rate over time -- thus providing a handy molecular clock that has been proven to correlate well with fossil evidence.

Incidentally, evolution.berkeley.edu is a good intro site to brush up on the basics as well as dispel any misconceptions.