Boston Marathon explosions......

[One Brow]

They are not yet completely gone ( althought there are individuals who are born without wisdom teeth already) but it is inevitable that they will disappear completely ( you are expecting it to be complete in few thousand years only?? Patience my friend! ).

No, it isn't. It possession of them doesn't have a major impact on reproductive fitness, they would be around for as long as there are humans.

Please don't rely on fictional movies for examples of evolution.

 

[One Brow]

Wow, it has evolved into a Darwiniac on Darwiniac debate purely by accident.

This is about what's true, not about unity. I'd rather correct AKMVP or Siromar and allow an untruth to stand (even one the supposedly favors me), and I hope they would do me the same honor.

 

[One Brow]

Questions posed to you: How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism?

Are you saying that the appendix was intelligently designed to kill the host system?

Seriously, in any population very few people are killed by a burst appendix. The selective pressure is minimal.

Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away?

Why should it?

So “natural selection” is negative force.

When a sculptor takes a hammer and chisel to a chunk of marble, they are removing pieces of marble, so sculpting is a negative force. We nonetheless recognize that such sculpting is a creative effort, and the something is there that was not before.

So what is your answer to the first question? How do you account for the appendix in the first place?

ID theory says “intelligence/nature” is a positive force to create the appendix in the first place.
But then again they don’t assume it was vestigial from “hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago.”
They assume it was designed for a purpose.

"Vestigial" refers to something that used to have a purpose, but no longer serves that purpose (it may serve other purposes, or none). Thus, the very act of describing the appendix as vestigial recognizes that it once served a purpose.

 

[One Brow]

You culties don't even have the same doctine. You must follow separate prophets.

Resolving different interpretations is part of the fun. Unlike those who follow actual prophets, though, we have methods of seeing who is right via research and experimentation.

AKMVP thinks “natural selection” is a negative force acting on accidentally evolved systems.

One Brow thinks “natural selection” is a positive force acting on some mysterious MET mechanisms.

I think it's both. You can create by selective removal. Nor are the mechanisms mysterious, many are well known. In service of a different argument, the post below lists a few.

https://lifetheuniverseandonebrow.blogspot.com/2009/03/repostenhanced-probability-and-18.html

The ironic thing is that One Brow is an ID theorist disguised as an METer.

I can see no reason why you so think.

 

[MVP]

No, it isn't. It possession of them doesn't have a major impact on reproductive fitness, they would be around for as long as there are humans.

There are numerous people who have never develop wisdom teeth - it is thought to be due to PAX9 gene which is responsible for dental development and for example in indigenous mexicans wisdom teeth are absent almost at 100% rate.
Reproductive fitness is difficult to apply to humans as we depend on culture way more then on biology. Ugly, disabled and sick people reproduce at pretty much the same rate compared to very fit, healthy and beautiful ones. Are they best for reproduction of human species? No, but we are not in Sparta anymore.

 

[One Brow]

You know how I address whether Dembski is competent or not? I look at his fat *** resume:

The dude has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago.

That's the equivalent of completing an apprenticeship. Dembski has very few published papers in the literature, none of them are well-cited. It's not because of his beliefs; last i heard over three-fourths of mathematicians in the US were God-believers.

He has held Nation Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

Smart and hard-working, I agree with.

He started up a research center at Baylor University to test theories of design in the universe.

He was asked to leave because his ideas were to religion-centered for Baylor, a Baptist university.

Not one Darwiniac (9 biologists) on the committee to review his work were qualified to assess it but the apes decided to abolish his research center anyhow.

Again, Baylor is a Baptist university.

I will post Dembski's own explanation of CSI(complex specified information) since I'm not sure you trusted your own intelligence enough to read his explanation rather than trusting "experts" to make your judgements for you.

I've read it many times.

One bad statement:
For an example in the same spirit consider that there is no more information in two copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet than in a single copy.

If the two copies are in separate storage locations, true. However, there is no way to measure information where this is true if you tack on one copy Hamlet behind another in the same text. Dembski presents only the former case in his dismissal of the concept.

I could go on, but many others, including those with expertise, already have.

 

[One Brow]

So, I wonder if he thinks humans with higher IQ are more evolved, or equally evolved than those with less IQ? Most Darwiniacs of the eugenic variety would say stupid people are less fit and babies aren't fit enough.

The brain is extremely plastic. IQ is much less inherited than it is picked up socially and culturally.

 

[One Brow]

There are about 250,000 species that have been identified in the fossil record and over a million that exist today. Even if every species in the fossil record has gone extinct(they haven’t) we still have 80% of species that are still alive. Where do you Darwiniacs get your “facts?”

Are you saying every species should be fossilized? Are you saying that fossils are the only form of acceptable evidence? I'm not sure of your point here.

MET gets its fact from thousands of experiments and other methods of research performed every year, of which only a small percentage use fossils.

Out of your atheist-driven assumptions that “innumerable varieties” existed in the transitional species. Why do you make this assumption? Because you must have “innumerable varieties” of transitional species to make your theory/story true.

No, because every animal is different from every other animal. Two cats in the same litter are no more alike that two humans from the same parents. Whether you accept MET or not, innumerable varieties inescapably exist.

 

[One Brow]

OK, you lost me on that last post...

I'm not completely sure of her point, but it seems to be that if we don't have direct evidence for a specific type of organism, we don't have any evidence at all. My reponse is that we have a great deal of indirect evidence.

 

[One Brow]

Ugly, disabled and sick people reproduce at pretty much the same rate compared to very fit, healthy and beautiful ones. Are they best for reproduction of human species? No, but we are not in Sparta anymore.

The correct answer is yes, they are. The more diverse humans are, the better our continued chances for survival. That's a fairly inescapable lesson from evolution.

 

[Gameface]

The correct answer is yes, they are. The more diverse humans are, the better our continued chances for survival. That's a fairly inescapable lesson from evolution.

Right, if we can support the population more genetic diversity is better than less, even if we don't currently see any benefit in some of the traits being carried on.

 

[Siro]

Right, if we can support the population more genetic diversity is better than less, even if we don't currently see any benefit in some of the traits being carried on.

Of course. But humans in general lack genetic diversity compared to almost every other species. So the main benefit (recessive gene suppression) is probably diluted once the population of an area reaches a certain threshold in numbers and ethnic diversity.

The shocking genetic similarity between different human groups is typically explained by a near-extinction event a few tens of thousands of years ago.