[continued from previous message]   
      
   >> not all that had to happen during the evolution back to an aquatic   
   >> lifestyle.  The new structures that needed to form like Baleen in the   
   >> place of teeth had to also evolve.  It wasn't just losing things like   
   >> teeth and hair.  The whale's tail had to bend and horizontal fluke's   
   >> had to evolve where nothing existed before.  Behe can't demonstrate   
   >> that these new structures did not evolve by Darwinian mechanisms   
   >> because he notes that Darwinian mechanisms were obviously working to   
   >> select for the broken genes.   
   >   
   > I tend to agree. Whether one considers whales to be designed or evolved,   
   > they are clearly highly suited to their environment such that   
   > progressive functional subtractions from an aquatic anscestor as a   
   > primary source of adpaptations is surely inadequate.   
   >   
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>> The nature and measurement of information seems slippery. As you   
   >>> mention, is it Kolmogorov complexity or Darwkin's "incomplete record   
   >>> of the historical environment", or something else?   
   >>   
   >> No matter how the ID perps have tried to measure information, nothing   
   >> has panned out for them.  At one time Dembski admitted that natural   
   >> selection could be the designer.  None of them have been able to   
   >> demonstrate that any of their examples of information could not have   
   >> evolved by descent with modification.  They aren't even dealing with   
   >> the information that they need to deal with when they lie about the   
   >> genetic code.  The information required for life is not in the genetic   
   >> code, but in the 3 dimensional structures created by the string of   
   >> amino acids produced using that code, and as the ID perps themselves   
   >> admit life has only had to explore a very small portion of possible   
   >> protein space in order to evolve the diversity that it has.  It is   
   >> just a fact that only a very small bit of protein space has had to be   
   >> tested in order to do everything that needs to be done.  This seems to   
   >> be due to the fact that the vast majority of protein genes have   
   >> evolved from existing protein genes, and that sequence has only had to   
   >> be changed a little in order to create the new function.  Your   
   >> adaptive immune system would not work by mutation and selection if   
   >> this was not the case.   
   >>   
   >> Ron Okimoto   
   >   
   > "Dembski admitted that natural selection could be the designer" - do you   
   > have reference for that?   
      
   It was after the bait and switch had started to go down and like   
   Dembski's claim that space aliens were the most scientific option for an   
   intelligent designer Dembski was trying to note that the ID perps were   
   not designating what the designer was (they were not claiming that it   
   had to be a supernatural god-like being), and he was just pointing out   
   that natural selection could result in functional designs.  My guess is   
   that it is a stupid enough admission of reality that it likely has made   
   it into one of the Wiki's on the subject.  It might even be in Dembski's   
   wiki.  He was making the point to claim that ID was science because they   
   were lying about who their designer was, and it did not have to be a   
   god.  All the ID perps would eventually admit that their designer was   
   the Biblical god, but they were and are still lying about what ID is to   
   them in order to keep using it as bait to fool the rubes.  They are only   
   fooling creationists like yourself that want to be lied to.   
      
   >   
   > The issue though is not what fraction of the possible protein space life   
   > has explored, but rather how explorable is it? E.g. is it sparse plains   
   > with occasional local maxima, or is it a rugged terrain of endless   
   > valleys and ridges? In either case, the maxima will be mostly   
   > undiscoverable to incremental search relying on incremental improvements   
   > each conferring survival advantage sufficient to drive the associated   
   > mutation to fixation in the population.   
      
   Your adaptive immune system would not work if the search parameters were   
   what you want them to be.  Biological evolution by descent with   
   modification works because the space that needs to be searched is   
   minimal and within what is possible.  Really, new antibodies that bind   
   specific antigens would not be routinely selected for by an immune   
   response if the search parameters were too distant from the existing   
   protein sequences.  If you look up the abzyme work where they use the   
   adaptive immune system to evolve new enzymatic activity you will find   
   that they have found that less than 10 changes in the antibody sequence   
   can produce the new enzymatic activity that was selected for.  It wasn't   
   just any enzymatic activity, but the one that they were selecting for.   
      
   The paper that you put up trying to claim that too many new genes needed   
   to be produced to evolve multicellular animals should have told you that   
   very little protein space seems to have been needed to be searched.   
   Those thousands of new genes evolved after a basic set of genes had   
   already evolved, and they evolved over a billion year period before the   
   Cambrian explosion.  The initial gene set had been evolving for over 2   
   billion years to produce that Eukaryotic gene set.  It looked like   
   nearly all the new genes that evolved within the billion year period   
   before the Cambrian explosion had evolved from an existing gene.  You   
   should have seen that in their tables of the origins of the new genes.   
      
   It just turns out that very little protein space has had to be tested to   
   get to where we are now.   
      
   >   
   > The way to and up countless Mount Improbables need to be largely smooth   
   > and monotonically increasing.   
      
   The mount improbables are only in your head.  What exists are just   
   additions to what had already existed.   
      
   >   
   > I realise too that this not a settled question, and in some instances a   
   > random polymer can be effecively to function, e.g. https://   
   > journals.plos.org/plosone/article?   
   > id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000096&utm_source=chatgpt.com   
      
   The likely reason that nearly all new genes have evolved from existing   
   genes is that just a random sequence of amino acids will fold up and   
   could have some function, but most random sequences do not efficiently   
   produce the same structure.  It can take time to fold up, and the   
   sequence might not fold up into the same structure every time.  De novo   
   coding sequence that produces a new protein has to go through a   
   selective process where the sequence needs to further evolve so that it   
   will efficiently fold up into its functional structure.  Genes that have   
   existed for billions of years already fold up efficiently, and it turns   
   out that just changing the sequence a little can produce a new function,   
   so we end up with related gene families.   
      
   There is even some stability issues with existing proteins, and   
   chaperone proteins have evolved to help them maintain the shape they   
   need to be in in order to function.   
      
   It is just how life has adapted to reality.   
      
   Ron Okimoto   
   >   
   >   
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>> ID posits a lawlike conservation of information, which I find   
   >>> intuitively appealing, but Dembski's efforts to formally define this   
   >>> have yet to land it seems.   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>>   
   >>   
   >   
      
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