Over on Uncommon Descent, one of the IDiots (Granville Sewell) confesses his ignorance and asks for help [Jean Rostand on Evolution].It is becoming harder and harder to find Darwinists willing to make a serious attempt to defend their theory, and explain how it could account for the complexity of life, they are almost entirely in attack mode. Their three main arguments are 1) ID is not science 2) ID is not science and 3) ID is not science. I believe ID is science, but I can understand the concern many have about it being taught in science classrooms, so I would like to propose a compromise. How about we simply "have the courage to recognise that we know nothing of the mechanism" of evolution, and leave it at that? Each student can decide for himself/herself what the most likely explanation might be.Maybe I can help. I'm not a Darwinist but I do know a thing or two about the important mechanisms of evolution.
In natural selection the frequency of an allele increases in the population because the presence of the allele confers a selective advantage on the individual who carries it. This individual will survive and reproduce more frequently than individuals possessing the other allele of the gene in question. Over many generations the beneficial allele has a higher than normal probability of becoming fixed in the population
In random genetic drift an allele will increase in frequency due to chance alone and not because it confers a selective benefit. In most cases the allele will be nearly neutral with respect to its phenotype. Over a long period of time, these non-selected alleles will become fixed relative to other similar alleles in the genome.
There are many other things that you need to learn about evolution, Granville, but these two important concepts will do for now. Good descriptions of these mechanisms are easy to find on the internet. I'm surprised that you've never heard of them before. I guess that's why you're an IDiot.
52 comments :
Oh, do please let each student decide for himself what the correct explanation should be. Then the students can teach the teachers. Which should be fun, because with many students, there will be many versions of the correct explanation. I guess the reason we have schools is to teach that there are always two, and only two, equally valid explanations for anything.
The first thing Granville needs to learn is that evolutionary theory has advanced enormously in 50 years. Thanks to molecular biology, just a few years away when Rostand published, we know a lot about actual mechanisms of evolutionary change.
What Granville seems to be blissfully unaware of is that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists are busy doing science, endeavouring to increase our understanding of evolutionary history. They couldn't give a monkeys what people like Sewell think.
Sewell betrays a common antievolutionary idiom - "we don't know = God did it!".
Of course, with Sewell, this means that God is involved in everything. One of his more amusing rants has to do with the second law, and it involves argumentation that essentially rules out the separation of oil from water without divine intervention. I don't think we need to be taking Sewell (and the UD sycophants) very seriously, when this is the result of their thinking.
The lovely ad-hominem followed by a couple of red-herrings, certainly Larry Moron can do better than that.
While Lightweight Larry plugs his ears and repeats his dogmatic pronouncements, and worships at the alter of Darwin, there are credible scientists admitting that they don't have all the answers and that design is a plausible explanation for at least some of the mechanisms contained in living organisms.
Actually, my ad-hominems are not serious. I like Larry. I'm just disappointed in his behavior and trying to make a point.
Larry, thanks for showing once again why the theory of evolution is under such fire.
Natural selection and random mutations have *never* been seen creating genetic codes, biological machines,etc.
If you think they have, gives us testable evidence for that,
sergio says,
Larry, thanks for showing once again why the theory of evolution is under such fire.
I just gave you a simple summary of the two most important mechanisms of evolutionary theory. What part of them is under fire?
Natural selection and random mutations have *never* been seen creating genetic codes, biological machines,etc.
Hmmm .... I see what the problem is. You don't know the difference between evolutionary theory and the history of life on Earth, do you?
Don't be too upset. Ignorance is curable. All you have to do is read up on evolution and you won't be an IDiot.
I'm not going to hold my breath.
The fate of competing beneficial mutations in an asexual population (Philip J. Gerrish & Richard E. Lenski)
"Clonal interference is not the only dynamic that inhibits the progression of beneficialmutations to fixation in an asexual population.Asimilar inhibition may be caused by Muller’s ratchet (Muller, 1964; Haigh, 1978), in which deleterious mutations will tend to accumulate in small asexual populations. As shown by Manning and Thompson (1984) and by Peck (1994), the fate of a beneficial mutation is determined as much by the selective disadvantage of any deleterious mutations with which it is linked as by its own selective advantage."
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/1998,%20Genetica,%20Gerrish%20&%20Lenski.pdf
Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? (Thomas Bataillon)
Abstract
......It is argued that, although most if not all mutations detected in mutation accumulation experiments are deleterious, the question of the rate of favourable mutations (and their effects) is still a matter for debate.
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v84/n5/full/6887270a.html
High Frequency of Cryptic Deleterious Mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans ( Esther K. Davies, Andrew D. Peters, Peter D. Keightley)
"In fitness assays, only about 4 percent of the deleterious mutations fixed in each line were detectable. The remaining 96 percent, though cryptic, are significant for mutation load...the presence of a large class of mildly deleterious mutations can never be ruled out. "
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/285/5434/1748
” Bergman (2004) has studied the topic of beneficial mutations. Among other things, he did a simple literature search via Biological Abstracts and Medline. He found 453,732 “mutation” hits, but among these only 186 mentioned the word “beneficial” (about 4 in 10,000). When those 186 references were reviewed, almost all the presumed “beneficial mutations” were only beneficial in a very narrow sense- but each mutation consistently involved loss of function changes-hence loss of information.”
Where are the beneficial mutations Larry?
Larry, thanks for showing once again why the theory of evolution is under such fire.
I just gave you a simple summary of the two most important mechanisms of evolutionary theory. What part of them is under fire?
What is under fire is the belief that those mechanisms can produce the genetic complexity and funcionality we see in the biosphere. Natural selection and random mutations are real observable events. However, as far as the evidence goes, none of those mechanisms is able to do what darwinists claim it can.
Natural selection and random mutations have *never* been seen creating genetic codes, biological machines,etc.
Hmmm .... I see what the problem is. You don't know the difference between evolutionary theory and the history of life on Earth, do you?
The evolutionary worldview was suposed to explain the history of life, but, according to the evidence, it is insuficient.
Don't be too upset. Ignorance is curable. All you have to do is read up on evolution and you won't be an IDiot.
I have read about the evolutionary phylosophy.
Sergio, you're confused. As Larry mentioned, "You don't know the difference between evolutionary theory and the history of life on Earth". You need to understand that the mechanisms that made self replicating systems and the mechanisms that create variation or make speciation possible are both independent from each other.
You're saying "Natural selection and random mutations have *never* been seen creating genetic codes, biological machines,etc."
I agree entirely, but nobody ever said that "natural selection and random mutations" is supposed to produce nucleic acids, biological machines. Only stupid people are saying that.
First, you need genetic code to exist for mutations to happen. That's the first sign of stupidity. If biologists were really saying what you think, that would illogical. How would mutations produce genetic code? IDiocy.
Biologists are saying that genetic drift and natural selection and mutations are the mechanisms that make speciation possible or happen.
You obviously haven't read enough evolutionary biology if you're calling it a "philosophy".
- Adrian from Panama
>but nobody ever said that "natural >selection and random mutations" is >supposed to produce nucleic acids, >biological machines.
Actually most theories on how DNA could
have originally started involve some
sort of natural selection and random mutations to get from simple beginnings to the current complicated mechanisms used by all known life.
e.g. there might have been well natural
selection in the "RNA world" before
DNA and perhaps even before that
at some simpler chemical level.
But to be fair science is not quite
sure yet how this exactly happened
(and if it didn't happen multiple
times etc.)
But that is not really what darwinism
is all about. It is describing how
life once it existed changed into the
wide variety of species alive today.
Gosh, bornagain goes into his quote mine, digs up a few quotes taken completely out of context from papers
that he clearly couldn't understand, and wow . . . he overturns 150 years of solid science. Brilliant!
Very impressive.
Larry, why did you waste your time getting a Ph.D. when all you had to do was consult bornagain and Sergio?
They have all the answers, right there in the Wholly Babble.
You guys really have no clue what, or Whom, you are dealing with.
It is easily demonstrated mathematically that the entire universe does not even begin to come close to being old enough, nor large enough, to accidentally generate just one small but precisely sequenced 100 amino acid protein (out of the over one million interdependent protein molecules of longer sequences that would be required to match the sequences of their particular protein types) in that very first living bacteria. If any combinations of the 20 L-amino acids that are used in constructing proteins are equally possible, then there are (20^100) =1.3 x 10^130 possible amino acid sequences in proteins being composed of 100 amino acids. This impossibility, of finding even one “required” specifically sequenced protein, would still be true even if amino acids had a tendency to chemically bond with each other, which they don’t despite over fifty years of experimentation trying to get amino acids to bond naturally (The odds of a single 100 amino acid protein overcoming the impossibilities of chemical bonding and forming spontaneously have been calculated at less than 1 in 10^125 (Meyer, Evidence for Design, pg. 75)). The staggering impossibility found for the universe ever generating a “required” specifically sequenced 100 amino acid protein by accident would still be true even if we allowed that the entire universe, all 10^80 sub-atomic particles of it, were nothing but groups of 100 freely bonding amino acids, and we then tried a trillion unique combinations per second for all those 100 amino acid groups for 100 billion years! Even after 100 billion years of trying a trillion unique combinations per second, we still would have made only one billion, trillionth of the entire total combinations possible for a 100 amino acid protein during that 100 billion years of trying! Even a child knows you cannot put any piece of a puzzle anywhere in a puzzle. You must have the required piece in the required place! The simplest forms of life ever found on earth are exceedingly far more complicated jigsaw puzzles than any of the puzzles man has ever made. Yet to believe a naturalistic theory we would have to believe that this tremendously complex puzzle of millions of precisely shaped, and placed, protein molecules “just happened” to overcome the impossible hurdles of chemical bonding and probability and put itself together into the sheer wonder of immense complexity that we find in the cell.
Instead of us just looking at the probability of a single protein molecule occurring (a solar system full of blind men solving the Rubik’s Cube simultaneously), let’s also look at the complexity that goes into crafting the shape of just one protein molecule. Complexity will give us a better indication if a protein molecule is, indeed, the handi-work of an infinitely powerful Creator.
In the year 2000 IBM announced the development of a new super-computer, called Blue Gene, that is 500 times faster than any supercomputer built up until that time. It took 4-5 years to build. Blue Gene stands about six feet high, and occupies a floor space of 40 feet by 40 feet. It cost $100 million to build. It was built specifically to better enable computer simulations of molecular biology. The computer performs one quadrillion (one million billion) computations per second. Despite its speed, it is estimated it will take one entire year for it to analyze the mechanism by which JUST ONE “simple” protein will fold onto itself from its one-dimensional starting point to its final three-dimensional shape.
"Blue Gene's final product, due in four or five years, will be able to "fold" a protein made of 300 amino acids, but that job will take an entire year of full-time computing." Paul Horn, senior vice president of IBM research, September 21, 2000
http://www.news.com/2100-1001-233954.html
bornagain77 asks,
Where are the beneficial mutations Larry?
Holy cow! Those references were amazing. I had no idea that beneficial mutations didn't exist.
None of the Darwinists ever told me about that.
Thanks for opening my eyes to the truth, I'm
... bornagain 07
sergio says,
Natural selection and random mutations are real observable events.
You know that and I know that but obviously Granville Sewell didn't know that.
He said that scientists should have the courage to say that they know nothing about the mechanisms of evolution.
I hope you tried to correct his ignorance.
However, as far as the evidence goes, none of those mechanisms is able to do what darwinists claim it can.
Really? Doesn't natural selection explain drug resistant bacteria, the change in colors of peppered moths, and the prevalence of sickle cell allele in Africa?
BTW, have you learned the difference between evolutionary theory and the unique history of life? You still seem a bit confused to me.
I think standing genetic variation, whose primary source is mutation, has a quite well-documented effect on phenotypic variation. To think this has no evolutionary correspondence is to think of evolution as if only immediately adaptive mutations count, which is logically incorrect, and empirically incorrect since genetic drift and non-adaptive evolution is well-documented.
I guess the inability to see mutation as a source of evolutionary change is like the inability to connect the dots when observing fossil taxa that document an evolutionary transition (such as the origin of birds form dinosaurs) . Ideologically-provoked miopia. With a bent for the supernatural!
Importantly, current evolutionary biology realizes that mutation is not the only source of phenotypic variation; the environment (phenotypic plasticity) also affects phenotyoic variation, AND adaptation. Adaptation by phenotypic plasticty can indeed be easily documented, and it indeed facilitates evolutionary transitions.
anonymous says,
It is easily demonstrated mathematically that the entire universe does not even begin to come close to being old enough, nor large enough, to accidentally generate just one small but precisely sequenced 100 amino acid protein ...
I know I shouldn't try to talk sense to an idiot but, what the heck, it's Sunday night and there's nothing good on television.
Here's one important thing for you to think about.
Imagine that you are playing bridge with four other IDiots. Look at the hands you were dealt. What's the probability that those particular hands would be dealt at that particular time?
i think you'll find that the probability is very, very, low. But it happened, didn't it?
You are making the same mistake in doing your protein calculations. You can't calculate probabilities after the fact.
Any given protein might, in fact, be as improbable as a bridge hand but some protein evolved and it happened to be that one. You have no idea how many different proteins could have evolved instead of that one.
Just as any combination of thirteen cards will work as a bridge hand, it is likely that millions and millions of different proteins could do the jobs of present day proteins. As a matter of fact, we know this is true since the sequence of any particular protein is often different in different species. Since there are millions of species it follows that there are millions of variants of that protein that work just fine.
Functional isolation of classes of proteins.
What makes matters much worse for naturalists is that naturalists try to assert that proteins of one function can easily mutate into other proteins of completely different functions by pure chance. Yet once again the empirical evidence we now have betrays the naturalists. Individual proteins have been experimentally proven to quickly lose their function in the cell with random point mutations. What are the odds of any functional protein in a cell mutating into any other functional folded protein, of very questionable value, by pure chance?
“From actual experimental results it can easily be calculated that the odds of finding a folded protein (by random point mutations to an existing protein) are about 1 in 10 to the 65 power (Sauer, MIT). To put this fantastic number in perspective imagine that someone hid a grain of sand, marked with a tiny 'X', somewhere in the Sahara Desert. After wandering blindfolded for several years in the desert you reach down, pick up a grain of sand, take off your blindfold, and find it has a tiny 'X'. Suspicious, you give the grain of sand to someone to hide again, again you wander blindfolded into the desert, bend down, and the grain you pick up again has an 'X'. A third time you repeat this action and a third time you find the marked grain. The odds of finding that marked grain of sand in the Sahara Desert three times in a row are about the same as finding one new functional protein structure (from chance transmutation of an existing functional protein structure). Rather than accept the result as a lucky coincidence, most people would be certain that the game had been fixed.” Michael J. Behe, The Weekly Standard, June 7, 1999, Experimental Support for Regarding Functional Classes of Proteins to be Highly Isolated from Each Other
“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed - along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering)
Your whole philosophy is foolish:
There are two prevailing philosophies vying for the right to be called the truth in man's perception of reality. These two prevailing philosophies are Theism and Materialism. Materialism is sometimes called philosophical naturalism and, to a lesser degree, is often even conflated with methodological naturalism. Materialism is the current hypothesis entrenched over science as the dom^inant hypothesis guiding scientists. Materialism asserts that everything that exists arose from chance acting on an material basis which has always existed. Whereas, Theism asserts everything that exists arose from the purposeful will of the spirit of Almighty God who has always existed in a timeless eternity. A hypothesis in science is suppose to give proper guidance to scientists and make, somewhat, accurate predictions. In this primary endeavor, for a hypothesis, Materialism has failed miserably.
1. Materialism did not predict the big bang (neither did it predict the creation of time). Yet Theism always said the universe was created (as well as always saying that time was created).
2. Materialism did not predict a sub-atomic (quantum) world that blatantly defies our concepts of time and space. Yet Theism always said the universe is the craftsmanship of God who is not limited by time or space.
3. Materialism did not predict the fact that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light, as revealed by Einstein's special theory of relativity. Yet Theism always said that God exists in a timeless eternity.
4. Materialism did not predict the stunning precision for the underlying universal constants for the universe, found in the Anthropic Principle, which allows life as we know it to be possible. Yet Theism always said God laid the foundation of the universe, so the stunning, unchanging, clockwork precision found for the various universal constants is not at all unexpected for Theism.
5. Materialism predicted that complex life in this universe should be fairly common. Yet statistical analysis of the many required parameters that enable complex life to be possible on earth reveals that the earth is extremely unique in its ability to support complex life in this universe. Theism would have expected the earth to be extremely unique in this universe in its ability to support complex life.
6. Materialism did not predict the fact that the DNA code is, according to Bill Gates, far, far more advanced than any computer code ever written by man. Yet Theism would have naturally expected this level of complexity in the DNA code.
7. Materialism presumed a extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA, which is not the case at all. Yet Theism would have naturally presumed such a high if not, what most likely is, complete negative mutation rate to an organism’s DNA.
8. Materialism presumed a very simple first life form. Yet the simplest life ever found on Earth is, according to Geneticist Michael Denton PhD., far more complex than any machine man has made through concerted effort. Yet Theism would have naturally expected this level of complexity for the “simplest” life on earth.
9. Materialism predicted that it took a very long time for life to develop on earth. Yet we find evidence for “complex” photo-synthetic life in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth (Minik T. Rosing and Robert Frei, “U-Rich Archaean Sea-Floor Sediments from Greenland—Indications of >3700 Ma Oxygenic Photosynthesis", Earth and Planetary Science Letters 6907 (2003): 1-8) Theism would have naturally expected this sudden appearance of life on earth.
10. Materialism predicted the gradual unfolding of life to be self-evident in the fossil record. The Cambrian Explosion, by itself, destroys this myth. Yet Theism would have naturally expected such sudden appearance of the many different and completely unique fossils in the Cambrian explosion.
11. Materialism predicted that there should be numerous transitional fossils found in the fossil record. Yet fossils are characterized by sudden appearance in the fossil record and overall stability as long as they stay in the fossil record. There is not one clear example of unambiguous transition between major species out of millions of collected fossils. Theism would have naturally expected fossils to suddenly appear in the fossil record with stability afterwards as well as no evidence of transmutation into radically new forms.
12. Materialism predicts animal speciation should happen on a somewhat constant basis on earth. Yet man himself is the last scientifically accepted fossil to suddenly appear in the fossil record. Theism would have predicted that man himself was the last fossil to suddenly appear in the fossil record.
As well, Christianity was crucial to the birth of science itself:
Christianity and the Birth of Science by Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D
http://www.ldolphin.org/bumbulis/
I could probably go a lot further for the evidence is extensive and crushing against the Materialistic philosophy. As stated before, an overriding hypothesis in science, such as Materialism currently is, is suppose to give correct guidance to scientists. Materialism has failed miserably in its predictive power for science. The hypothesis with the strongest predictive power in science is "suppose" to be the prevailing philosophy of science. That philosophy should be Theism. Why this shift in science has not yet occurred is a mystery that needs to be remedied to enable new, and potentially wonderful, breakthroughs in science.
Word salad.
nn,
"most theories on how DNA could
have originally started involve some sort of natural selection and random mutations"
I kind of get where your coming from. I agree that mutations occur in "genetic code" but we can't suggest that the nucleotide bases that make up or DNA were brought about by mutations (a mechanism that brings about variation of "genetic code").
I agree that mutations and natural selection brought about more "complexity", but let's make the distinction between the mechanisms that brought about DNA and the mechanisms that make speciation happen.
e.g. there might have been well natural selection in the "RNA world" before DNA and perhaps even before that at some simpler chemical level.
I agree.
"In random genetic drift an allele *will* increase in frequency due to chance alone and not because it confers a selective benefit. In most cases the allele will be nearly neutral with respect to its phenotype. Over a long period of time, these non-selected alleles *will* become fixed relative to other similar alleles in the genome."
Sorry to nit pick here, but... a more accurate definition: "In random genetic drift an allele *MAY* increase in frequency due to chance alone and not because it confers a selective benefit. ... Over a long period of time, these non-selected alleles *MAY* become fixed relative to other similar alleles in the genome."
IOW, if it is neutral, it might become fixed by chance, although the odds are more heavily in favor of the WT allele. Indeed, in most sexually-replicating species, an individual with a neutral mutation typically won't even survive to reach reproductive maturity.
[Sorry to interrupt the conversation with the IDiot creationist zealots. Carry on...]
Supernaturalism, that doesn't predict anything specific lol. It's "anything goes". Miracle here, miracle there. All I can say is that I really doubt your references.
I'm also not totally sure if the word "materialism" describes a method in which people predict things that make sense, have explanatory power, rather than explain things with magic.
As anyone knows, the theistic view does not really explain the origin of the universe but merely remits it to a pre-existing god. During most of the history of science, the predominant theistic science did not imagine anything like the big bang at all; They imagined the world was formed in current shape, as is, and fairly unchanging: directly reflecting the plans and wisdom of god.
Quite different from acknowledging 15 billion years of cosmic expansion from some very hot spot; a REAL starting point for the universe, a narration of its history, and an ongoing process. This is good stuff. Quite beyond six days of "poof" acts
If anything, the big bang theory has allowed considerable scientific discussion where only supernatural explanations existed.
In fact, many theologians are as pissed at the big bang as much as they are to the evolutionary theory and consider both to be "aberrations" and "materialistic science".
As anyone knows, the theistic view does not really explain the origin of the universe but merely remits it to a pre-existing god. During most of the history of science, the predominant theistic science did not imagine anything like the big bang at all; They imagined the world was formed in current shape, as is, and fairly unchanging: directly reflecting the plans and wisdom of god.
Quite different from acknowledging 15 billion years of cosmic expansion from some very hot spot; a REAL starting point for the universe, a narration of its history, and an ongoing process. This is good stuff. Quite beyond six days of "poof" acts
If anything, the big bang theory has allowed considerable scientific discussion where only supernatural explanations existed.
In fact, many theologians are as pissed at the big bang as much as they are to the evolutionary theory and consider both to be "aberrations" and "materialistic science".
The atheistic view doesn't provide an explanation for the origin of the universe either. Where did matter and energy come from? What are the origin of the natural laws? While it is correct that theistic view doesn't provide and explanation of say, God, neither does the atheistic view provide an explanation of matter, energy, and the universe itself.
I heard that the big bang was accused of being a Christian theory before because it postulated a beginning to the universe as written in the Bible.
The "atheistic view" is merely the premise that sky fairies don't exist; it is not an attempt to explain anything. Our attempts to explain things are known as "science". Science works by actually trying to find stuff out, rather than by doing what religion does- making shit up to cover gaps in current knowledge. Our trolls are obviously quite unfamiliar with the idea of regarding incomplete knowledge as a stimulus to future work rather than as a scandal to be covered up by confabulation. Which is to say, they don't get the whole idea of science. Their religious indoctrination has unfitted them to grasp it.
anonymous says,
What makes matters much worse for naturalists is that naturalists try to assert that proteins of one function can easily mutate into other proteins of completely different functions by pure chance.
There are quite a few examples of that sort of evolution. One of the examples that's discussed in most textbooks is lactate dehydrogenase and malate dehydrogenase. These two enzymes catalyze different reactions but the proteins are clearly homologous as judged by sequence and structure.
One of them (probably lactate dehydrogenase) is the primitive enzyme and the other, malate dehydrogenase, evolved from it.
Individual proteins have been experimentally proven to quickly lose their function in the cell with random point mutations. What are the odds of any functional protein in a cell mutating into any other functional folded protein, of very questionable value, by pure chance?
In order to demonstrate that malate dehydrogenase (MDH) could evolve from lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), scientists set out to change the amino acids of LDH, one at a time. It turns out that a single change from a glutamine at position 102 to arginine is all it takes to convert lactate dehydrogenase to the different enzyme, malate dehydrogenase.
The problem with IDiots is that they don't know what they're talking about when they talk science.
But that's why we call them IDiots in the first place.
"Really? Doesn't natural selection explain drug resistant bacteria, the change in colors of peppered moths, and the prevalence of sickle cell allele in Africa?"
No IDer claims denies the power of natural selection in microevolution. What we deny is that 2 of these examples ppl often pick up, show nothing that can support macroevolution.
In terms of creating new information 2 of the above scenarios do not prevail. The peppered moth one has shown to be false [http://www.discovery.org/a/1263], besides no new genomic information has been added (there was a black and white population before, and after there still is a black and white population ie no change). Perhaps what we do see is in fact the opposite, loss of the black color allele if anything!
For sickle cell (we won't go into all the disadvantages of it...) a B6 val -> glutamine change is hardly addition of new genomic information. Macroevolution will not happen this way (ie substitution vs addition)
As for Drug resistant bacteria others have argued it far better than I have (cf. Behe) so I'll let that be (too much time to argue it).
If you change a pattern so that your survival chances go up, you have gained information in my own humble opinion. It doesn't matter if they're existing colors, organizing the colors is in itself an important feat. If I make a word out of scrabble pieces, information has been added. Material hasn't- they're still scrabble pieces- but information clearly has. Instead of a scrabble player, however, biological creatures leech their information from the environment via natural selection.
Also, "macroevolution". There's no difference, in principle, between micro and macro evolution. In a few years, bacteria add some junk and become antibiotic resistant, HIV evolves VPU, and so on. If you add extra cells and extra functions one by one by the exact same process, it is theoretically possible to come up with almost anything.
And that's biology 101. Trying to argue that antibiotic resistance isn't really a gain of information or machinery is vapid and substanceless.
There's no difference, in principle, between micro and macro evolution.
I happen to suspect this is likely to be true, but you may soon discover that our esteemed host begs to differ...
@ Annyday
"If you change a pattern so that your survival chances go up, you have gained information in my own humble opinion...If I make a word out of scrabble pieces, information has been added."
In the case of the moths you have scrabble pieces "WHITE" and "BLACK"
After natural selection you have "WHITE" and "BLACK." What info has been added that hasn't been there?
This is crucial to argument for and against macroevolution, b/c microevolution can happen by modifying existing genomes and changing allelic frequencies.
For macroevolution, you need to materialize the scrabble pieces "G", "R", and "N" and than combine those with the existing "E" to make "GREEN." This is a much more difficult thing to achieve and qualitatively and quantitatively much more different than microevolution.
As you well know Larry your problems are not so easily dismissed since ID does not deny beneficial adaptations can occur at a cost of preexisting information, The problem is that you have to prove an upward beneficial flexibility of an entire living organism in order to generate the novel complex specified information that evolution is absolutely required to prove is true for evolution to even be considered viable in the first place.
Trying to find an actual "hard" number for the "truly" beneficial mutation rate is, in fact, what Dr. Behe tried to do in his book "The Edge of Evolution".
Dr. Behe states in Edge of Evolution on page 135.
Generating a single new cellular protein-protein binding site (in other words, generating a truly beneficial mutational event that would explain the generation of the complexity we see in life) is of the same order of difficulty or worse than the development of chloroquine resistance in the malarial parasite.
That order of difficulty is put at 10^20 replications (births) of the malarial parasite, by Dr. Behe.
Thus, the actual rate for "truly" beneficial mutations is far in excess of one-hundred-billion-billion mutational events.
Thus, this "one in a million" number, that is often bantered about for “truly” beneficial mutations by evolutionists, is actually far, far too generous for the evolutionists to be using for their hypothetical calculations.
In fact, from consistent findings such as these, it is increasingly apparent that Genetic Entropy is the overriding foundational rule for all of biology, with no exceptions at all, and that the belief in "truly" beneficial mutations is nothing more than wishful speculation on the naturalists part that has no foundation in empirical science whatsoever:
The foundational rule of Genetic Entropy for biology can be stated something like this:
All adaptations away from a parent species for a sub-species, which increase fitness to a particular environment, will always come at a loss of the original integrated complex information in the parent species genome.
Professional evolutionary biologists are hard-pressed to cite even one clear-cut example of evolution through a beneficial mutation to DNA that would violate the principle of genetic entropy. Although evolutionists try to claim the lactase persistence mutation as a lonely example of a beneficial mutation in humans, lactase persistence is actually a loss of a instruction in the genome to turn the lactase enzyme off, so the mutation clearly does not violate genetic entropy. Yet at the same time, the evidence for the detrimental nature of mutations in humans is clearly overwhelming, for doctors have already cited over 3500 mutational disorders (Dr. Gary Parker).
"Mutations" by Dr. Gary Parker
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch2-mutations.asp
Mutations: The Raw Material for Evolution?
http://www.icr.org/articles/print/3466/
“It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of naturally occurring mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them to be detrimental to the organisms in its job of surviving and reproducing, just as changes accidentally introduced into any artificial mechanism are predominantly harmful to its useful operation” H.J. Muller (Received a Nobel Prize for his work on mutations to DNA)
“The theory of gene duplication in its present form is unable to account for the origin of new genetic information” Ray Bohlin, (PhD. in molecular and cell biology)
“Evolution through random duplications”... While it sounds quite sophisticated and respectable, it does not withstand honest and critical assessment” John C. Sanford (PhD Genetics; inventor of the biolistic “gene gun” process! Holds over 25 patents! In addition to the gene gun, Sanford invented both pathgen derived resistance, and genetic immunization.)
Wow, the predestined idiot has never stopped to consider that biologists also study the SOURCES of the variation that is then subject to selection and drift. (And does the usual vague handwaving about some undefined concept of "information" into the bargain.) The arrogance of the terminally ignorant toward their betters never ceases to amaze me.
Hey A. Nonny Mouse- do you really think tossing up such a ridiculous word salad convinces people who have actual scientific training that you have any idea what you're babbling about?
I'm more than tired of the unpleasant "junior high" insults of you, and your guest, on your blog Larry, if you want to continue, what you started on Dembski's blog, I will be more than happy to see you "try" to defend your defenseless position over there.
Why, so Dembski can delete his comments? You people are funny.
Hi Larry,
"It is becoming harder and harder to find Darwinists willing to make a serious attempt to defend their theory, and explain how it could account for the complexity of life, they are almost entirely in attack mode..."
-Sewell
He asked for a serious attempt > you replied with adolescent sarcasm; he asked for a defense > you provided a restatement of the theory; he asked for an explanation of complexity > you spoke at 30,000 feet; he claimed that defenders of the standard orthodoxy are almost entirely in attack mode > you called him an "IDiot."
I’m sure this sort of stuff plays well when preaching to the choir. For those of us who may be more skeptically inclined however, I just thought I'd point out that you confirmed Sewell’s hypothesis in virtually every detail.
Thanks,
-sb
Jebus, go read a freaking textbook like Futuyma's instead of making an ass of yourself (and stop jabbering about "Darwinism- sure sign of an ignoramus. Darwin has been dead for a long time.) There is no scientific "challenge" against which to "defend" outside your fever dreams, and evolutionary biologists are normally too busy actually doing science to pay attention to IDiots.
@ Predestined Blog
Adding information is where random mutation comes in. New data shows up, at first, as noise- random mutations. Let's pretend that a moth's coloring is entirely in two letters, B and W (for black and white). The closer a pattern gets to BWBWBWBW (ideal, complicated to properly form moth patterning), the less likely a given moth is to be eaten. The further it deviates from that sequence, the more likely it is to be eaten (a flat 5% gain for every letter out of sequence, let's say?). Our starting pattern will be simply BW.
Let's say that every generation, every B has a 5% chance of turning into a W and vice versa, and there is a flat 5% chance of a random extra letter tagging on at a randomly selected point in the sequence. This is added data, but it could be junk data.
Natural selection filters out junk data (or "noise"), leaving only information behind. If we start with a thousand moths with the sequence "BW", and each moth reproduces twice, and we factor in the random genetic drift and mortality rates, we should find ourselves with moths marked "BWBWBWBW" in a few hundred generations. From the random noise of mutations, extra genetic material and data is generated.
Genes are a few billion times more complex than that, as they are much longer and not in binary. However, the principle of adding information and patterns is the same. The environment kills off nonbeneficial mutations, and thus pulls data from random noise. Effectively, organisms import data about what is survivable from the environment over successive generations due to selective pressures like being eaten.
Does this scan, or no?
anonymous says,
Trying to find an actual "hard" number for the "truly" beneficial mutation rate is, in fact, what Dr. Behe tried to do in his book "The Edge of Evolution".
Right. It's difficult to get a firm number since there are so many possibilities and we can't assay for all of them.
What Behe does is focus on a few examples of specific beneficial mutations. He shows that these are well within the reach of standard evolutionary processes.
That's why he concluds chapter 4 with ...
Charles Darwin deserves a lot of credit. Although it had been proposed before him, he championed the idea of common descent and gathered a lot of evidence to support it. Despite some puzzles, much evidence from sequencing projects and other work points very strongly to common ancestry. Darwin alos proposed the concept of random variation/natural selection. Selection does explain a number of important details of life—including the development of sickle hemoglobin, drug and insecticide resistance, and cold tolerance in fish—where progress can come in tiny steps.
Since you are a fan of Behe, I assume you accept his evidence that successive beneficial alleles can be selected in fish to produce cold tolerance as described on p. 77. I assume you also accept his conclusion that humans and other apes share a common ancestor. Please confirm your acceptance of these fundamental scientific facts as well as the fact that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
Dr. Behe states in Edge of Evolution on page 135.
Generating a single new cellular protein-protein binding site (in other words, generating a truly beneficial mutational event that would explain the generation of the complexity we see in life) is of the same order of difficulty or worse than the development of chloroquine resistance in the malarial parasite.
That order of difficulty is put at 10^20 replications (births) of the malarial parasite, by Dr. Behe.
Thus, the actual rate for "truly" beneficial mutations is far in excess of one- hundred-billion- billion mutational events.
I agree with Behe that the simultaneous formation of a double mutant is an extremely rare event. It is not likely to happen.
I disagree with Behe's ridiculous claim that all protein-protein interactions had to evolve by jumps like that.
anonymous says,
I'm more than tired of the unpleasant "junior high" insults of you, and your guest, on your blog Larry, ...
I'm not responsible for others who comment on Sandwalk. If they want to elevate the IDiots to "junior high" status that's their business. I prefer to keep my insults at the kindergarten level where most IDiots have a outside chance of understanding them.
... if you want to continue, what you started on Dembski's blog, I will be more than happy to see you "try" to defend your defenseless position over there.
No problem. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.
It is a bit frustrating, however, to wait for "moderation" to take place before continuing a discussion. Are you the least bit puzzled by the fact that creationist blogs always censor their comments while science blogs usually don't?
It looks a lot like the creationist blogs have something to be afraid of, doesn't it?
(And don't give me any nonsense about scientists being insulting on creationist blogs. Have you read any of the IDiots who comment over there? They think all scientists are stupid, except Michael Behe. That's insulting—and irrational.)
@ annyday
Are we having a civil conversation?!?!*GASP*
I think we are talking over each other which frequently happens in the blogosphere... anyways I understand what you are saying, but I think for the specific example (color in moths) it is not that way per se.
What ppl are claiming is that some significant evolutionary event actually happened with the peppered moth experiment. What really happen is not a noise reduction that fined tuned color to bwbwbwbw, rather a allelic frequency change of existing forms from 50/50 Black/White to 80/20 or something...
My point was that,
There was no new information added. After all it wasn't the shades of color that provided a selective advantage, it was the pre-existing color that were in the population.
Other examples may suffice, but not this particular one (cf. Plasmids and antibiotics for example a trickier subject that I didn't want to argue on someone else's blog...)
Bring it over to my blog if you still want to prove me wrong.
PS Lots of Darwinist are now looking at other ways, Evo Devo or lateral gene transfers,DNA duplications, to show how information is added b/c they recognize modify existing genomes is not enough.
Steve Labonne:
The following quotations are from the Blind Watchmaker, as represented here: http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Books/blind.shtml
- “A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe, wherever life may be found.”
- “The theory of punctuated equilibrium is a minor gloss on Darwinism, one which Darwin himself might well have approved if the issue had been discussed in his day.” (My emphasis)
Given your interest in people not making an ass of themselves, a good first step would be to forward your comments on to Richard Dawkins, encouraging him to “read a freaking textbook… and stop jabbering about ‘Darwinism’- sure sign of an ignoramus.” Make sure and point out that Darwin has been dead for “a long time,” since I’m sure he doesn’t know this.
Thanks,
-sb
Too bad you haven't actually read the book but have only had somebody feed those quotes to you, moron. Dawkins is using "Darwinism" as a term for a specific flavor of evolutionary theory (that's why Larry is so often at pains to point out that he is not a Darwinist), not, as you and other IDiots illiterately do, as a synonym for the entire field of evolutionary biology
First rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging..
Dembski has made a new post at UD: http://www.uncommondescent.com/off-topic/offtopic-the-amazing-paul-potts/
It's nothing directly to do with ID, except that Dembski is trying to use it as an object lesson not to judge a book by its color. Except that evidently Dembski not only can't distinguish between real science and psudeo-science, he can't distinguish between 'real' classical music and 'pop' classical music. The guy (Paul Potts) has a nice voice, but to anybody who knows even a little bit about opera will tell right away that he is untrained. More to the point there are probably hundreds of young classically-trained singers with much better voices, but who choose not to use a vehicle such as this to further their careers.
Sort of reminds me of the whole ID discussion - IDers are like the amateur singers who go on American/Pop Idol and want immediate recognition. Unlike the classically trained singers who have to slog for years, going from one audition or competition to another, attending master classes, taking bit parts before finally all that work plays off. Sound familiar?
Finally, Gil Dodgen offers the following comment:
"My standards are pretty high when it comes to classical music, and that was absolutely superb and moving. Isn’t the power of music interesting? Even without knowing what the words mean, this music brings tears to one’s eyes. I wonder what the evolutionary explanation for that is. Could it be that there isn’t one? Maybe we were just designed that way."
Sorry, Gil. Your standards for classical music are despicalbly low, but why should that surprise us - your standards for critical thinking and science are equally low!
Hi Steve,
It never ceases to amaze me that so many ideologues on both sides of this debate (and you fit in nicely here), when confronted with an issue or a question, grow fangs and reach for their list of epithets. In your case, if your view is really the slam-dunk that its proponents make it out to be, this really shouldn’t be necessary.
I suppose I’m still a little old-fashioned this way, but still believe that people who have an argument to make do so; people who don’t, resort to name-calling and straw-man assumptions (I have read Dawkins, actually, but as you might have guessed, find many of his arguments unconvincing) (and, BTW, the point of the quote was simply to illustrate that plenty of folks on both sides of the aisle use the term, which you seemed to have an issue with)
But I suspect there are a lot of issues there which I can't solve. Anyway, I have many better things to do than be puked on by you. Hope you guys enjoy your little mutual admiration society.
-sb
It's not "necessary", it's merely the most appropriate response for a scientist to make to people like you who pretend to knowledge of things of which they are manifestly ignorant. To pretend to debate you would be a fraud, since you would need to educate yourself massively before even beginning to be equipped to participate in a meaningful debate.
By the way, do you realize that Larry disagrees with many of Dawkins's arguments also (and I myself have some milder qualms about some of them)? The difference is that Larry is actually a biologist and has good scientific reasons for his disagreements, and that Larry's disagreements fall very comfortably WITHIN the accepted, well-established facts about evolution and do not come from a crackpot perspective like IDiocy. It's clear that you don't understand the difference, and your expectation of being taken seriously is mere effrontery.
The Predestined Blog says (referring to peppered moths),
There was no new information added. After all it wasn't the shades of color that provided a selective advantage, it was the pre-existing color that were in the population.
I don't understand your version of Intelligent Design Creationism. Are you saying that the alleles for both colors were poofed into existence when the designer created peppered moths? Why did he (making an assumption here) do that when he knew that it would be an immense struggle to preserve the dark alleles for several million years until human pollution made them viable?
Wouldn't it have been easier for God to just create some new information (dark allele) to preserve his moths in the face of industrial pollution?
If God just did it a couple of hundred years ago then that action is indistinguishable from the creation of new information by random mutation, right?
On the other hand, if God did it several million years ago then you have a real serious problem explaining how the dark allele was preserved for all that time. I'd like to hear your explanation—make sure it's consistent with real science.
BTW, The Predestined Blog, here are two little scientific facts that you need to incorporate into your Intelligent Design Creationist explanation.
1. There are no recorded instances of the dark form before 1800.
2. The dark allele is dominant and the light allele is recessive.
Good luck.
-sb writes: It never ceases to amaze me that so many ideologues on both sides of this debate (and you fit in nicely here), when confronted with an issue or a question, grow fangs and reach for their list of epithets.
Well, if you want to use the web rather than read the original literature or take a few courses, consider a visit to the talk.origins website or review about two decades of commentary in the talk.origins newsgroup. There is *nothing new* in the comments of ID proponents here that hasn't been discussed previously, multiple times and in numerous forums.
Larry said...
I'd like to hear your explanation—make sure it's consistent with real science.
So would I.
People who don't believe in evolution shoudl be given first generation antibiotics when they get ill.
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