Most British scientists: Richard Dawkins' work misrepresents science

Real or Photoshop? Tyrannogrub maybe?

 

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It was presented to me only minutes before I posted but so far I think it may be real.
Google.. Big head caterpillar.
If real it could be used against ID and evolution.
Alex

 

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No such implausibility was demonstrated. Only complexity. Not a single relevant probability for any relevant proposed path was even estimated.

If he was correct, he ruled out one kind of evolutionary path. Several thousand to go - just involving proteins. Then there's the acids, the clays - - - -

Along the way of his argument, btw, I couldn't help noticing that Pelzer apparently declared the durability of the protein complexes in my woodpile to be impossible. I think he is overlooking something. What do you think?

And in that way it resembles a typical product of evolution, rather than design.

Except for their apparent product, of course - the evolved and complex self-replicating thingys that could not have come into existence without them. And of course the various examples of rudimentary versions of such thingys - RNA molecules, certain clays, protein complexes, even mineral crystals and things like snowflakes - that surround us every day. And at least three obvious explanations for their absence now: they would be food, immediately; their circumstances of formation no longer exist; we don't know what they are, so they might be right in front of us and we can't recognize them.

Which is considerably more suggestive than we have for the comparatively unfounded notion that there was an Intelligent Designer involved, that we can't see now. The relevant circumstances of that do seen to still exist, there seems to be no particular reason to suppose if it were still around it would be eaten or otherwise disposed of, it's hard to imagine it being hidden for long, nothing much looks as though it were designed, everything seems to be able to have come into existence without it, there are no rudimentary versions around to make the big one plausible, and so forth. Nothing to suggest there ever was one.

So why bring it up? Especially in a thread about Dawkins's supposed unpopularity.

 

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http://www.treehugger.com/natural-s...ooks-like-snake-hemeroplanes-triptolemus.html
No further comment needed!

 

Nonsense you simply twist the story to suit your agenda.

You think probability estimates were needed? Must have fallen asleep early on while watching it.

Really? Fancy ones that don't involve highly specific peptide linear polymerization sequences? Maillard reactions wrecking that general pathway well before such can be characterized as proteins?

'The acids'? What? As for the clays, you mean Cairns-Smith clay template hypothesis? Maybe you forgot he covered that and even showed a short vid of one experiment that unsurprisingly stripped the precursor soup from solution - the constituents being rapidly bound and immobilized on the clay surfaces. Nothing exciting that area has ever materialized afaik.

Taking a recycle trip back to a much earlier exchange of posts, I think it's a case of horses for courses. The environment Peltzer was concerned with iirc was an aqueous one and the particular and relevant partially hydrated protein complexes e.g. vital enzymes would indeed degrade in short order unprotected by the cellular environment. Your sparsely distributed otherwise unspecified protein complexes are nicely desiccated and cradled within a dry and tightly structured cellulose/lignin matrix. Chalk and cheese doesn't even begin to describe the contrast.

You keep it up so don't complain there. Everything that passage is sheer opinion. Nothing worth commenting on. Except - that snowflakes bit is quaint. And gets one into the jingle bells ho ho ho spirit in a crass commercial silly season way I guess. At least for many 'A-fundie derivative' types in the Northern hemisphere.

 

Thanks I have been busy.
Alex

 

Obviously it's you that has twisted along with your hero creationist friend Peltzer. Abiogenisis stands as confirmed as does evolution; Peltzer stands as a quack and a certified loony, along with his unscientific religiously inspired ID fairy tale.

Actually no, scientific deductions based on current knowledge is what it is, along with the certainty that we are here, and that being the evidence to fully support abiogenisis and of course the fact of evolution.
In realty the "opinion" tag, fits with those impressionables, that push the unscientific opinion/s such as ghosts, goblins, Aliens and IDer's as per yourself and river.

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Obviously going way back specifically shows that it's actually yourself that has taken up the cudgel for a crusade in support of god botherers in general, that believe they can deride and rubbish scientific knowledge and fact, that has pushed any reasonable need for any and all magical deities into near oblivion.

 

I am off topic but ...
I have been thinking and simple matters (which often cause the most complex investigation) come up.
There seems a tendency for "things" to group. From atoms and molecules and carried on thru to fish schoolings, bird flocks and humans in cities.
Also replication.
Nothing to add but that's all that I will be thinking about today.
Alex

 

No. And this is a key fact: only the complexity was demonstrated. The implausibility was simply assumed, as a consequence of the complexity. This is the bishop's watch, eyeball, flying wing, and blood clotting mechanism "argument", one more time, with feeling.

Yep. Something more than the handwaving, for sure.

Yep. There's a million of them. And they aren't all fancy, and the clear likelihood is that most of them are currently unknown.

1) That's not how you presented his conclusions - you claimed Pelzer had shown that suitable peptides could not persist in any natural environment.
2) With this newly restricted set of assumptions, his argument is almost irrelevant in a discussion of abiogenesis - as noted before. It certainly has little, if any, bearing on the plausibility or probability of it - it's marginally relevant to a single small set of evolutionary paths nobody has fully described, and that would be it.

Contrast with what? His claims of impossibility need reconsideration, and careful restriction to exactly and only the circumstances in which they are valid - they certainly don't apply to abiogenesis in general. Along the way, consider the peat bog, sand pile, and other collections of persistent peptide complexes we know about even in a world full of living consumers searching them out.

And then recognize that the planet-sized and enormously varied potential launching pad for abiogenesis has not been remotely addressed.

It's several opinions, every one backed by reasoning from evidence. Which ones do you disagree with, and why?

 

How so? A great many animals have evolved mimicry; it is selected for.

 

I think it, the big head grub, was a con job but your point is entirely valid.
Alex

 

Add to that deep insight the observation that nails rust, paint flakes off and fades, and in general Murphy's Law is a pretty strong one.

 

I'm sick and tired of a game you never seem to sick and tire of. Must be off.

 

It's you playing games, and you have been playing them since your certified loony Peltzer video.
And of course another baseless crazy assumption of yours earlier, re Dawkins debating Peltzer....OK, he appears to be your hero; why not suggest it to him. I'll put my money and house on Dawkins, as well as any of the authors of the many links and papers I have given.

 

That thing looked like some kind of a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar (big heads with eyespots are common among them), but I didn't recognize the species, and the gap between the back claspers and the prolegs was really wide for a swallowtail, so I did an amateur net search - how about this one: http://caterpillar-eyespots.blogspot.com/2011/11/pink-underwing-moth-phyllodes.html

 

I would not add those myself.
Alex

 

Thanks for looking into the matter.
Alex

 

That guy's website has some thread-digression relevant paragraphs on it, also - here's a couple on how a researcher gets a handle on the selection pressures that actually influenced a trait, in a specific case:
http://caterpillar-eyespots.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-do-you-figure-out-why-species.html

 

Thank you very interesting.
Alex

 

Totally agree! Amazing actually.