New Oxygen research; pre-Ediacaran (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 20, 2016, 14:03 (3048 days ago) @ dhw


> DAVID: To me the Cambrian is a prime example of why your idea falls short. All of the complex organs we have (brain, heart, kidney, liver, hormones? arrived all at once, all highly complex, all requiring special planning and special coordination of processes. Simple Ediacarans planned that? No way.
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> dhw: The Cambrian is an astonishing event, but no matter what explanation we come up with, there has to be an inventive process and the cell communities must cooperate (special coordination of processes). ..... Since you believe your God can do whatever he wants to do, I really can't see why my explanation falls any shorter than yours. - Here is a fellow who uses information theory to say God dabbles: - http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-highly-engineered-transition-to-v... - "?a) The six proteins analyzed here all exhibit a huge informational jump between pre-vertebrates and vertebrates. The total functional informational novelty for just this small group of proteins is more than 6000 bits, with a mean of more than 1000 bits per protein.
?b) These proteins are probably crucial agents in a much more complex regulation network implied in neuron adhesion, endocytosis, migration, and in the end in the vast developmental process which makes individual neurons migrate to their specific individual locations in the vertebrate body plan.
?c) The above process is certainly much more complex than the six proteins we have considered, and implies other proteins and obviously many non coding elements. Our six proteins, therefore, can be considered as a tiny sample of the general complexity of the process, and of the informational novelty implied in the process itself.
?d) Moreover, the process regulating neuron migration is certainly strictly integrated, with so many agents working in a coordinated way. Therefore, there is obviously a strong element of irreducible complexity implied in the whole informational novelty of the vertebrate process, an element that we can only barely envisage, because we still understand too little.
?e) The neuron regulation process, of course, is only a part of the informational novelty implied in vertebrates, a small sample of a much more complex reality. For example, there is a lot of similar novelty implied in the workings of the immune system, of the cytokine signaling system, and so on.
?f) The jump described here is really a jump: there is no trace of intermediate forms which can explain that jump in all existing pre-vertebrates. Of course, neo darwinists can always dream of lost intermediates in extinct species. This is a free world.
?g) Are these 6000+ bits of functional information really functional? Yes, they are. Why? because they have been conserved for more than 400 million years. Remember, the transition we have considered happens between the first chordates and cartilaginous fish, and it can be traced to that range of time. And those 6000+ bits are bits of homology between cartilaginous fish and humans.
?h) How much is 6000 bits of functional information? It is really a lot! Remember, Dembski's Universal Probability Bound, taking in consideration the whole reasonable probabilistic resource of our whole universe from the Big Bang to now, is just 500 bits. 6000 bits correspond to a search space of 2^6000, IOWs about 10^2000, a number so big that we cannot even begin to visualize it. It's good to remind ourselves, from time to time, that we are dealing with exponential values.
?i) How great is the probability that 6000 bits of functional information can be generated in a window time of less than 100 million years, by some unguided process of RV + NS in six objects connected in an irreducibly complex system, even if RV were really helped by some NS in intermediates of which there is no trace? The answer is simple: practically non existent.
?j) Therefore, the tiny sample of six proteins that we have considered here, which is only a small part of a much bigger scenario, points with extreme strength to a definite design inference: - "The transition to vertebrates was a highly engineered process. The necessary functional information was added by design." - Comment: the whole article is very complex, but this summary is quite clear. It is all too complex except for mental planning. See especially his description of neuron organization in the embryology of the brain: (an excerpt) - "The migration of neurons along glial fibers from a germinal zone (GZ) to their final laminar positions is essential for morphogenesis of the developing brain, aberrations in this process are linked to profound neurodevelopmental and cognitive disorders. During this critical morphogenic movement, neurons must navigate complex migration paths, propelling their cell bodies through the dense cellular environment of the developing nervous system to their final destinations. It is not understood how neurons can successfully migrate along their glial guides through the myriad processes and cell bodies of neighboring neurons. Although much progress has been made in understanding the substrates (1-4), guidance mechanisms (5-7), cytoskeletal elements (8-10), and post-translational modifications (11-13) required for neuronal migration, we have yet to elucidate how neurons regulate their cellular interactions and adhesive specificity to follow the appropriate migratory pathways. "