IAP Political Forum

Selection Spurred Recent Evolution, Researchers Say
 
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: December 11, 2007

Researchers analyzing variation in the human genome have concluded that human evolution accelerated enormously in the last 40,000 years under the force of natural selection.

The finding contradicts a widely held assumption that human evolution came to a halt 10,000 years ago or even 50,000 years ago. Some evolutionary psychologists, for example, assume that the mind has not evolved since the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.

But other experts expressed reservations about the new report, saying it is interesting but more work needs to be done.

The new survey — led by Robert K. Moyzis of the University of California, Irvine, and Henry C. Harpending of the University of Utah — developed a method of spotting human genes that have become more common through being favored by natural selection. They say that some 7 percent of human genes bear the signature of natural selection.

By dating the time that each of the genes came under selection, they have found that the rate of human evolution was fairly steady until about 50,000 years ago and then accelerated up until 10,000 years ago, they report in the current issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The high rate of selection has probably continued to the present day, Dr. Moyzis said, but current data are not adequate to pick up recent selection.

The brisk rate of human selection occurred for two reasons, Dr. Moyzis’ team says. One was that the population started to grow, first in Africa and then in the rest of the world after the first modern humans left Africa. The larger size of the population meant that there were more mutations for natural selection to work on. The second reason for the accelerated evolution was that the expanding human populations in Africa and Eurasia were encountering climates and diseases to which they had to adapt genetically. The extra mutations in their growing populations allowed them to do so.

Dr. Moyzis said it was widely assumed that once people developed culture, they protected themselves from the environment and from the forces of natural selection. But people also had to adapt to the environments that their culture created, and the new analysis shows that evolution continued even faster than before.

The researchers took their data from the HapMap project, a survey designed by the National Institutes of Health to look at sites of common variation in the human genome and to help identify the genes responsible for common diseases. The HapMap data, generated by analyzing the genomes of people from Africa, East Asia and Europe, has also been a trove for people studying human evolutionary history.

David Reich, a population geneticist at the Harvard Medical School, said the new report was “a very interesting and exciting hypothesis” but that the authors had not ruled out other explanations of the data. The power of their test for selected genes falls off in looking both at more ancient and more recent events, he said, so the overall picture might not be correct.

Similar reservations were expressed by Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago.

“My feeling is that they haven’t been cautious enough,” he said. “This paper will probably stimulate others to study this question.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/science/11gene.html?ref=science

Current and recent issues of PNAS don't seem to have papers by these two authors or something with a similar title.

I found these:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/search?fulltext=Robert+K.+Moyzis+&submit.x=8&submit.y=11

Are you talking about the specific research? I just assumed you would need a subscription to view it. Hold on.


edit: Here:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/1/309?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Harpending+Moyzis&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

The first one is probably the right one. I wonder why this paper (from last year) has been mentioned in several media these days. The 2006 paper mentions 1.6% of genes under recent selection, I would like to see where did the new 7% come from.

The articles seem to confirm that modest alterations in non critical and begnine areas of protein structures proceed roughly in proportion to those predicted by mutation rates, and genetic drift.  Still billions and billions of times too slow to account for observed diversity when we look at the critical alterations required to define new functional proteins with different spacial and binding site configurations.  The article conveniently leaves this fact out.  The articles confirm what we already know about the limited capability of evolutionary processes but does nothing to show how evolution might account for the kind of changes required to change an ape into a human.

An article that discusses this predicament fairly well is by Gavrilets, in 2004 "Fitness landscapes and the origin of species", published by Priceton University Press.

At what rate does observed evolutionary processes create new protein function require to define a new species and new structures?  Experimental evidence answers this quesion and the answer is that it doesn't get far and  Theoretical Biology shows us why.  This article provides an explanation for why that is.  Orr shows that mutation of a single gene is likely to take on average two steps along a prospective pathway before getting stuck, unable to proceed because the next steps are detrimental.

Orr, H. A., 2003, A minimum on the mean number of steps taken in adaptive walks, Journal of Theoretical Biology 220
 
  The evidence suggests the rate is billions of billions times too slow.  These studies you have provided are simply confusing the two issues.

And in 2005 Orr was shown to be wrong:



Try to keep up with the science, RF, not the Creationist literature.

Orr's article describes several situations and makes several points on this topic.  Rosenberg's refinement makes my point stronger since he claims the minimum average is even faster that Orr's claim thus indicating that evolutionary processes are theoretically likely to get stuck sooner in a prospective pathway.

No, no, no........here's one (http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html).


So you don't find the apparent progression of the hominid fossil record a little....odd?

Aw, that's a low blow and unfair and you know it!  How dare you confuse the issue with the multiple lines of evidence!  You are supposed to ignore anything that doesn't have to do with his Argument from Improbability. Can't you see he's trying to create a reason not to believe science? ;D

Explain to me exactly what alterations occured, where the proteins were derived from and what binding sites were created and at what rate.  Then we can see if this example is proceeding fast enough to account for observed diversity or not.  If it does in erv's then we can ask how that relates to eukaryotes.  I and anxious to hear your explanation.


The fossils tell us nothing about how they were generated and what relationships may exist.  They only tell us that these particular configurations existed a one time or another.  I do not dispute diversity.  Fossils demonstrate diversity.  I am wondering how evolutionary processes account for the diversity we admit.

That may be disturbing news to the cladists.


One time or another? I believe the timing is fairly specific. I imagine if you had credible problems with the dating of the geologic column you would have brought that up by now.


So if these fossils represent different "kinds" at different times you have no objection to the concept of change through time? Can common descent be far behind?


So is everyone else. That's why they do the work. I'm pretty sure it would be evident by now if modern biology was totally on the wrong track. But if you have a viable alternative to descent with modification, let's hear it.

Nothing?

RF, how are we supposed to interpret this in any other way than you are a Young Earth Creationist? You are "Dr." Kent "Dino" Hovind, Jr.

So, I imagine that the scraps of parchment that have a few verses of the Bible tell us nothing about how they were generated or what relationships may exist.  Since the earliest complete Bible is centuries after the fact, and you are negating dating, how can you recreate the "fossil" record of your Bible so that it makes sense.

Do you see the double standard you have set for yourself?

If you only take a fossil as a single point, then you must take each scrap of parchment as a single point and not extrapolate/infer as to whether they were part of a larger piece, or relationship.

Came across this. Maybe the scientists on the board will find it interesting.

http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html

Perhaps you can tell us what specifically the fossils tell us about how they were created?

 The fossils don't provide any information about gentics or developmental control or biological processes.  All they tell us is that a one time in the past a particular organism had a general configuration the generally looks similar to other organisms from similar or different time periods.


First off, encoded deterministic information and written languages are not chance or constrained chance events. When we see the same (not similar, the same) content and context, we are justified in drawing a direct relationship between them.  When we find fossils that are the same (not similar) we can make a similar inference.

However as the differences stack up we should infer relationships in either case if we know of a process that accounts for the differences and all the conditions this process requires are met.  Genetic engineers have demonstrated that design can account for many differences observed in the fossil record but evolutionary processes have failed to demonstrate that it is capable of such large observed differences.  So if you want to argue that the fossil record provides a glimpse into the history of design of the range of diversity capable, you may well be on solid ground.  If you wish to use the fossil record for the history of materialistic progressions one must first demonstrate that evolutionary processes are capable of the diversity you are assigning to it.

Rf, this is why I worry about you.  The fossil record doesn't JUST tell us that "an organism had a particular configuration".  This is so blatantly a lie or misrepresentation that I wonder if you even care what you say.

The fossil record tells us that organisms gained in size and complexity over time, are millions of years old and had certain configurations at certain times and not others.

For you to ignore the implications shows that you are trying to be ignorant.

But since the fossils themselves and indeed the entire record does not provide any deductive information about which fossils if any are related and how they are related, this gain supposed gain in complexity is primarily presupposed but also consistent with what we observe in all designed systems.  Everything designed of lasting utility has progresses in complexity over time too.


Your problem is that you assume I ignore such things.  The reality is that I see the progression and I see the uncertanties and I see the alternatives.  You fit the evidence into your prior commitement to materialism.

I notice you ignore the comparison to the Bible. It is an apt comparison, but you delete it because you can't handle it. I'm sure you will claim that it isn't relevent, but it is. We are talking about methodology.

You have a fossil record of your Bible, but you feel comfortable making connecions from one to the next.

You fit the evidence to suit your presupposition.

Is this a joke? It is not presupposed that they have gained in complexity, it is objectively shown. It WAS presupposed that God made everything for thousands of years - back when people were ignorant.

And as for "lasting utility". BS. You are making another one of your famous RF assertions.  Many things that are designed often get less complex and more refined.  But, since you are basing your assertion on ID, I am going to assume that you are using the ID terms which basically mean that you can call something more complex whether it is more complex or less complex - its your crazy Creationism creeping in again.

I addressed it in post 13 here.  Have a look at the prior page.

http://www.itsallpolitics.com/forum/index.php?topic=1166.msg29325#msg29325

The age of the geologic column of sedimentary rock (the only rock fossils are found) is presupposed, and age of the rock is further inferred by the fossils found in them complex fossils are presumed younger than simple fossils and so forth.  This is how fossil aging accrued.  It may well be correct, I do not say it is not, but it is circular and presupposed.  It is accepted because it fits the narrative and gives consistent results when new fossils are found so there is no justified reason to overturn it.  To say it is objectively shown is incorrect.



Perhaps I was precocious to say "everything" but I cannot think of anything of lasting utility that has gotten simpler in everyway (plan, construct, use, etc.)


No this makes no sense whatsoever.  I can't figure out what you are trying to say.  I know of no ID definition that has less complex things more complex and so on.

Ok, Mr. Hovind, whatever you want to believe. ::)

C'mon. The index fossils could be different colored popsicle sticks for all anyone knew when the first principles of superposition were being developed. It was the global relationships that mattered and the progression is well documented. It was a source of controversy among the original geologists as to whether fossils were the remains of organisms at all. The age depended on position, not complexity. Add the independent verification by radiometric dating of bracketted igneous and metamorphic intrusions and the timing becomes even more clear. It's as objective as anything gets.

What coherent explanation for this phenomenon can ID offer?

Precocious? Precocious? Up to the "p's" in the dictionary, are we? Try again. "Premature" perhaps?

So, we agree the reason is the limit of your imagination that you make this argument? An Argument from Personal Incredulity?

This is the problem that ID'ists have, they haven't defined things enough to know what they are talking about.

Take Water purification.  It once took many chemicals and process to clean water of impurities, but then enter reverse-osmosis which only takes forcing water through a filter. But RF may argue that the filter is more complex, but the filter isn't. It is technologically advanced, but not complex - the holes are smaller than impurities - thats it.

Before, you'd have to boil and treat the water and still not get pure water.

RF, then might say that water purifying isn't biological (it can be), or that it isn't a sytem (it is), or is designed (it is, which addresses his point).

So, then he might say that the technology that led to its development is complex. True, but we are addressing his point that he knows of nothing that has become less complex through design.


There are many other examples of technology simplifying things.

No, on the contrary, our inability to provide even one actual example is better explained by suggesting there is no example.


By nearly every measure (and we only need one measure to falsify barney's example), membrane purification is far more complex than evaporation/distillation.  The problem with definitions is yours.



As I said, I don't know of any.

Nope, filtering the size of things is much less complex than boiling (and all that goes into the chemical process of fire) in one chamber, allowing it to cool in another.

Not even remotely true.  The membrane material must be carefully chosen in light of every compound that is expected to be encountered to ensure that it will not be contaminated, plugged or destroyed.  significant preprocessing is required to remove impurities that would contaminate the membrane and then the membrane construction is many times more complicated than construction of a distillation mechanism.  Distillation is accomplished by material mechanisms alone in the weather and in dew formation on a daily basis.


Some aspects of reverse osmosis may appear to be simpler, but taken as a whole it is not.

We have design capable of dramatically improving on system function and increasing complexity (as measured for example by new information) but we don't observe that material processes are capable of making any dramatic increases in complexity or improving function or utility beyond what random chance is capable of explaining (which is precious little). 

Oh, but you are talking about making the membrane. I'd argue that creating the conditions to have a fire (the chemical process are complex), to make a vessel that has properties that won't burn or break but hold the water, to know all the chemical properties of the impurities to make sure they reach the right temperature to evaporate, etc.

So, you see how complexity is a tough nut and one that ID is unable to distinguish.

After all, the distillation still has components that are IC, wheras the osmosis filter doesn't.  Sorry, RF again you are trying to fit a scenario into your preconcieved idea.

No, complexity is quite objective.
Once again cloud formation is the simplest example of distillation. 


Your problem is you don't understand the components of a reverse osmosis filter and so you imagine it is simple.  The simplest functional general purpose RO filter has more components than the simplest general purpose water still and both are IC, both are designed.

Clouds weren't designed. You have once again moved the goal posts.  WE are talking about things designed.

A cloud is not a still.

Now your getting it. ::)

And Reverse Osmosis water purifiers are far more complex than water stills.  Both are designed.  Both are irreducibly complex.  Design has the capability of and often does dramatically increase complexity and information content (countless terabytes is now common) in designed systems of lasting utility.  There are zero examples of material processes doing the same beyond the capability of what blind search is capable of accomplishing (which is less than 500 bits of information).

This is the fundamental problem with your evolutionary narrative.  You have not shown how any materialistic process can or does accomplish what you claim for evolution.  Then when we observe evolutionary processes in action it confirms this problem.  Every observed example of evolution falls well below the 500 bit limit.  Observations confirm that evolution does not proceed fast enough and lacks the required processes that would enable it to generate new biological information to build new form and function.  Can you offer even one example of a materialistic process generating more than 500 bits of information?  NO.  Yet the presumed evolution of ape to man requires on the order of 300-600 megabytes of new information.  Design is quite capable of accomplishing this kind of change.  Direct observation of evolutionary processes strongly suggests that evolution is not, and the hard sciences of information theory chemistry and probability tells us why.

Repeat it enough and it becomes true, eh?

RF, we understand your zealous point, we disagree as does the science community.  Stop trying to convince yourself and us, do some research and convince them.

RF = proof that a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Here's something fun: http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/science/finding_life.cfm (http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/science/finding_life.cfm)

Its becoming absurd with RF.  Again he changes the topic just to get back to his mantra (Argument from Incredulity, Argument from Ignorance).

RF, you asked if something designed ever got less complex, not if it could or couldn't be designed, or whatever you are babbling about.

I think we can safely say that Specified Complexity is one of the hallmarks of ID.  Complexity is an idea in Information Theory, but SC is specific to ID.

Complexity can be measured, it has a formula and tells us a little bit about the amount of information in something.  It is an objective measure, and therefore tells us nothing of the information of, say, a sentence like "Methinks its a weasel". It can only tell you the odds of those particular letters coming up and how much information is in the sentence based on the odds of those characters.

In other words, "oahofwfu hos o asfaho" has equal information.

Not according to ID.  ID calls the first one SPECIFICALLY complex and then makes the jump to DNA and says it is a coded language that means something.


So, here is the challenge to any ID follower:  How much specified information is in DNA?  Not information (as according to Shannon) but the SC variety?

Since there whole "possibilty theory" rests on the specified information in things, we have a right to ask.




Just so people don't think I'm making this up, this is the definition from the ID'iot's at ISCID:

http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Shannon_Information



So, how much SC is in DNA?  I want an objective number.

Does this 500 bit limit come from Dembski's Universal Probability Bound? If so, is this concept accepted by even a significant minority of statisticians? It seems to me that assigning a bit value to the genetic code and assessing information increases bases on coding for new proteins ignores the real world model. I'm not sure small changes in certain genes, particularly regulatory ones, wouldn't result in larger changes in the complexity of the phenotype which could be considered a whole other level of increased information. There is the whole other matter of potentiality, where there is a possible selective advantage to holding on to related non-fuctional genes rather than dumping them in a generation or two. How do you calculate those odds? But even at the limited level Dembski is referring to Tom Scneider thinks Dembski is full of it (http://www.ccrnp.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/horserace.html). Mutation and selection seem to be enough, letting alone adding the interplay of other major players like genetic drift.


Where'd this come from? Does this include modifications of existing genetic information? I like to think we're at the pinnacle of creation, too, but evidently the world has other ideas. Last I looked there wasn't a large difference in the size of our genome and the other apes. If size matters, the most complex creature that we know of is the trumpet lily. There are rats (http://www.genomesize.com/statistics.php?stats=mammals) with twice the genome we have. That's kind of depressing.

Another problem is that Information (in the Shannon sense) is not the same as what Dembski calls Specified Information (or SC).  Demsbki has not come up with a way to measure the subjective determination of "its looks designed".

YEs, it means that the Designer spent more time on Rats than humans. :-(

In cryptography the National Research Council has set 10^94 as the Universal Probability Bound to secure encryption schemes against random search attacks. For more information see, Kenneth Dam and Herbert Lin in "Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society", Washington National Press, 1996.


The genetic code is encoded deterministic information and is measured as such.


If so, we would a) recognize the resulting increase in new information and b) Observe these things occurring in the real world and in the lab.



Unless there is some mechanism shown to retain them we would go with observed mutation rates in non-functional sequences.



In experimentation and actual observation mutation and selection falls far short of "enough".  We observe that it occurs far to slowly and accomplishes far too little.


You are free to presume the new genetic information is modified from pre-existing information.

Then it seems like a stretch to apply it to DNA. You can set the parameters to calculate the probabilities involved in a decrytion search. You can't do the same thing with DNA. In a changing environment the potential functional target sequence is always unknown and you are already starting with a functional chemical code and you are not starting from scratch. There are too many complexities and unknowns to compare it to a brute force find and replace algorithm. I don't think the cryptographers see their Universal Probability Bound as applying to biological systems and I can't find any biologists that think it does, either.

Encoded is not the right word. How about self organized? It isn't all that deterministic either, considering the hit or miss transfer mechanism and the error prone copying system. Pretty sloppy for a code. Here is a quote by John Wilkins in the comment section of Shallits blog (http://recursed.blogspot.com/2006/03/nancy-pearcey-creationists-miss.html):

Jeff, I'm going to disagree with you on one point - DNA has no "information content as such. Our sequencing of DNA has information content because we can apply information metrics to it, but DNA itself is just a molecule that plays a particular crucial chemical role of catalysis in cells.

This is the distinction, if you like, between a UTM and a physical computer. You can't run a computer forever to see if a particular algorithm will halt. At best you can simulate it. UTMs are not physical things, and don't break down.

Likewise, DNA is not a sequence of symbols - it's a physical entity with structural as well as sequential properties, and our analyses of information content are just tools that may, or may not, give us abstract understanding of some of its properties in a given organism and environment.


Here's Shallit Himself:

Of course, Pearcey and Thaxton aren't really interested in the information content of sentences or leaf piles. Their goal is to demonstrate that life is too complex to have evolved through natural means. But since high information content can result from random events -- for example, mutation -- it is not surprising at all that DNA can be viewed as a string with high Kolmogorov information. In fact, as Greg Chaitin has observed, pretty much the only way to get large amounts of information in the mathematical sense is to either do a really long calculation, or to exploit a source of randomness. DNA's high information content is prima facie evidence it resulted, in part, from an essentially random process.


"We" (by "we" I mean them there scientists) do and we've been through this before. There was the duplication (an increase in information itself) and frame shift (with accompanying retention of original function) that led the functionally new nylase enzyme. If that's not enough there are 3.5 billion years worth of life forms encased in rock staring you right in the face. Are we to believe that each sequence of trilobites, or proto-therapods, or hominids, or cetaceans was tweaked at precisely the right time to mimic an evolutionary progression? What about the 99% extinction rate for species? Speaking as a life form on this planet, I got to say that is some pretty poor planning.

okay


Who are "we"? References outside the Discovery Institute, please.


Thanks. I was hoping I could. But that doesn't begin to address my point. Your statement implied that humans show a greater degree of complexity than the other apes. Is that what you meant to say? Does information in the genome have a one to one correspondence with expressed complexity? Do inactive genes mutated to form some new function count retroactively as complex specified information? Somebody needs to pull a piss test on this designer. He's been showing up to work drunk and getting things all snarled up. Nothing makes sense. How come a freaking flower gets 30 times as many base pairs in its genome than us, the spitting image of the Big D himself?

You can't find when you don't look.  It is not a stretch at all to apply the methods of probability to genetic studies.  Nearly ever evaluation in genetic and protein source research included concepts from probability.  Just like in cryptography and other probability studies, there are ways to manage uncertainties to get meaningful results.  protein function is far more closely related to shape and chemic affinities than to changing environments and one can evaluate the potential ratio of workable protein combinations based on these characteristics.  When one does this they find the entire range of potentially workable proteins and not just the ones that may be suitable for the more limited environmental conditions you describe.  Even here the ratio of workable to unworkable proteins is in the order of 10^-70 and higher.



All available evidence suggests that it is not self-organized, it seems silly to presume it is.


The error rate is less than 1 in 100,000,000 duplications and except for in the case of reproduction, the feedback redundancy and repair mechanisms drop that rate to very close to zero.  This is far fewer errors than human language.  It is far fewer failures than computer systems which have failure rates in the low millions.  Your quotes seem like prior commitments from people who are looking to explain the realities away.

The modest mutation rates seem like a clever way to introduce minor variation in non-critical systems to achieve a degree of differences from one individual to the next.  It clearly is quite proficient at this task.
 

This is not an example of a regulatory gene alteration.  You have not provided the evidence that shows that original function was retained (I asked for it twice, still nothing).  It fit well within the range of probabilities for single point mutations and it involved a single protein enzyme with no binding sites and no required interaction to other protein systems. 

This is an example of the kinds of things evolution can do and it fits well within the range of observed evolutionary processes which we have seen can accomplish one and two step processes (if you ever produce the data, this would be one of a few known two step processes) but we don't have even one example of a four step evolutionary pathway.  We have had an opportunity to observe 10^30 organisms in the 50 years of genetic studies by now and we still don't know of one four step evolutionary pathway.  In the mammalian line there are estimated to be fewer than 10^18 total organisms ever to have existed and yet the number of required evolutionary steps number in the billions and billions.  In the lab, the observed rates are coming in billions and billions and billions and billions of times too slowly to account for the diversity we observe.




No, more complexity overall in that it is different and unique.



Sure. but the odds of generating useful proteins from random non-expressed areas of the genome is astronomical given that the ratio of useful to useless proteins is 10^-70 or so as indicated by Axe in 2003.  It is the reality of these kinds of numbers that explain why evolutionary processes are quite proficient at the occasional point changes and two step processes but cannot accomplish the 10-20 step processes required to generate a useful new protein in a reasonable period of time.  HIV and other retroviruses even with huge mutation rates and fast replication rates would need billions and billions of years just to produce one new protein from a non-expressed area.

I just have to laugh at how RF accuses others of trying to explain away things when he is the one trying to defend a pseudoscience.

[quote[The modest mutation rates seem like a clever way to introduce minor variation in non-critical systems to achieve a degree of differences from one individual to the next.  It clearly is quite proficient at this task.[/quote]

This one was funny.  One of the biggest reasons "god" is the most prolific abortionist is because of mutations in the genes.  But I guess when you think the soul is the only thing critical, I suppose everything else is non-critical - even life itself.

Are you basing this on one paper from Axe?

From  Meyer's Hopeless Monster (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Meyer.cfm):

Meyer alleges that Axe (2004) proves that, "the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10^77." But Axe's actual conclusion is that the number is "in the range of one in 10^77 to one in 10^53" (Axe 2004, p. 16). Meyer only reports the lowest extreme. One in 10^53 is still a small number, but Meyer apparently didn't feel comfortable mentioning those 24 orders of magnitude to his reader. A full discussion of Axe (2004) will have to appear elsewhere, but it is worth noting that Axe himself discusses at length the fact that the results one gets in estimating the density of functional sequences depend heavily on methods and assumptions. Axe uses a fairly restricted "target" in his study, which gives a low number, but studies that just take random sequences and assay them just for function -- which Meyer repeatedly insists is all that matters in biology -- produce larger numbers (Axe 2004, pp. 1-2). [2]



That was based on a personal email correspondence with Ian Musgrave who works in that area. I figured if anyone would know it would be him.  You can believe me or not.  At any rate, it is still better supported than any of the assertions you have made. Here's another paper to chew on (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12868607?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum).


Again I ask you to support these assertions. You toss a lot of numbers around based on extremely limited and unsubstantiated work, if you're basing it on anything at all. You ignore the overwhelming body of evidence. You can't keep dancing around the fossil record.


So "different" and "unique" are subsets of complex specified information? I like to think that I'm different and unique, too but I really doubt whether those ideas could be quantified enough to be part of a scientific theory.


Wrong again. Abbie Smith handed Behe his ass (http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html) regarding this topic. Of course, she's a real live HIV researcher so maybe she's blinded by excessive knowlege of HIV evolutionary processes.

 


Are you basing this on one paper from Axe?

From Meyer's Hopeless Monster (http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Meyer.cfm):

Meyer alleges that Axe (2004) proves that, "the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10^77." But Axe's actual conclusion is that the number is "in the range of one in 10^77 to one in 10^53" (Axe 2004, p. 16). Meyer only reports the lowest extreme. One in 10^53 is still a small number, but Meyer apparently didn't feel comfortable mentioning those 24 orders of magnitude to his reader. A full discussion of Axe (2004) will have to appear elsewhere, but it is worth noting that Axe himself discusses at length the fact that the results one gets in estimating the density of functional sequences depend heavily on methods and assumptions. Axe uses a fairly restricted "target" in his study, which gives a low number, but studies that just take random sequences and assay them just for function -- which Meyer repeatedly insists is all that matters in biology -- produce larger numbers (Axe 2004, pp. 1-2). [2]



That was based on a personal email correspondence with Ian Musgrave who works in that area. I figured if anyone would know it would be him. You can believe me or not. At any rate, it is still better supported than any of the assertions you have made. Here's another paper to chew on (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12868607?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum).


Again I ask you to support these assertions. You toss a lot of numbers around based on extremely limited and unsubstantiated work, if you're basing it on anything at all. You ignore the overwhelming body of evidence. You can't keep dancing around the fossil record.


So "different" and "unique" are subsets of complex specified information? I like to think that I'm different and unique, too but I really doubt whether those ideas could be quantified enough to be part of a scientific theory.


Wrong again. Abbie Smith handed Behe his butt  (http://endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-behe-please-allow-me-to.html) regarding this topic. Of course, she's a real live HIV researcher so maybe she's blinded by excessive knowlege of HIV evolutionary processes.