Andre: “PCD stops unguided evolution in its tracks”

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UD commenter Andre has a bad case of PCD OCD.

PCD stands for “programmed cell death”. Andre is convinced that it is the death knell not only of cells, but of modern evolutionary theory. He has been spamming the “bomb” thread at UD in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade us of this. (112 mentions of PCD in that thread, but no intelligible argument from Andre.)

Rich suggested that we set up a thread for him here, which I think is a great idea.

Here you go, Andre.  Tell us why PCD is an unguided evolution killer, and be prepared to learn why it is not.

343 thoughts on “Andre: “PCD stops unguided evolution in its tracks””

  1. the bystander: No. I still can’t imagine

    I imagine you know that the argument from incredulity is the oldest and weakest kind of argument against scientific discoveries.

  2. bystander @ UD

    Well over at TSZ, they now agree Evolution is not a random process. Of course they won’t say it is guided. They are a bit confused as to what to say.

    Nice strawman. Perhaps you can provide a quote from an evolutionary biologist that evolution is a totally random process.

    If not, the honest thing to do is withdraw your statement.

  3. petrushka: I imagine you know that the argument from incredulity is the oldest and weakest kind of argument against scientific discoveries.

    You are too late to the party. As explained earlier in the thread , I represent a person of average intellect who can understand limits of random process in the context of PCD .We are not discussing discoveries here.

  4. There’s what evolutionary biologists actually say, and then there’s what ID supporters hear.

    What evolutionary biologists actually say:

    When it is said that mutation or variation is random, the statement simply means that there is no correlation between the production of new genotypes and the adaptational needs of an organism in a given environment.(Mayr)

    and

    There is no physical mechanism (either inside organisms or outside of them) that detects which mutations would be beneficial and causes those mutations to occur. (Sober).

    [Both quotes from Plantinga 2011, pp. 11-12.]

    What ID supporters hear, I can scarcely begin to conjecture.

    As for “foul-mouthed zealots” at TSZ, I suppose he means me. I certainly am a zealot (for my own views, which have convinced exactly no one), and I am certainly foul-mouthed (especially when my cats wake me up at 6 am on a weekend because the food bowls are mysteriously and inexcusably empty).

  5. the bystander: You are too late to the party. As explained earlier in the thread , I represent a person of average intellect who can understand limits of random process in the context of PCD .We are not discussing discoveries here.

    Intellect has nothing to do with it. One could have average intellect and not understand French or Russian.

  6. If you understand then you can explain what those limits are. You don’t get a gold star without showing your work.

    the bystander: You are too late to the party. As explained earlier in the thread , I represent a person of average intellect who can understand limits of random process in the context of PCD.

  7. the bystander:
    -Many lineages on the tree of life exhibit stasis (don’t change at all in million years ) (or) Lineages can change quickly (or) slowly.
    -Character change can happen in a single direction (or) it can reverse itself by gaining and then losing segments.
    -Changes can occur within a single lineage (or) across several lineages
    -Particular lineage may undergo unusually frequent lineage-splitting (or) a lineage may have unusually low rate of lineage-splitting
    -Extinction can be a frequent (or) rare event within a lineage, (or) it can occur simultaneously across many lineages (mass extinction)
    From Evolution101
    Does it help anyone at all ? Is this a theory ? If the compass keeps spinning in every direction, what’s the use of the compass ?

    I’m curious: don’t those sort of non-directional results suggest a non-teleological process? I mean, what kind of an intelligent designer would fart around like that? What would be the point?

  8. Alan Fox: Playing devil’s advocate, whilst PCD is essential in multicellular organisms, one could wonder about the “chicken and egg” where multicellularity needs PCD as a precursor and how can PCD have evolved in a unicellular situation?

    PCD, in a slightly different form, exists in protozoans. They will reproduce by fission for only so many generations and then senesce and die unless they undergo a meiotic event.

  11. walto: I’m curious: don’t those sort of non-directional results suggest a non-teleological process?I mean, what kind of an intelligent designer would fart around like that?What would be the point?

    I wouldn’t know .I have no interest in teleology.

  12. william_spearshake: PCD, in a slightly different form, exists in protozoans. They will reproduce by fission for only so many generations and then senesce and die unless they undergo a meiotic event.

    Are you saying you know what half a PCD is good for?

  13. william_spearshake: PCD, in a slightly different form, exists in protozoans. They will reproduce by fission for only so many generations and then senesce and die unless they undergo a meiotic event.

    Yes, I’ve been reading up on it. There certainly seems to be a plausible evolutionary pathway right from E. coli on.

  14. Alan Fox: Yes, I’ve been reading up on it. There certainly seems to be a plausible evolutionary pathway right from E. coli on.

    Most genes were invented by single celled organisms, so it would be no surprise to find that those organisms that evolved the need or capability for PCD would be those capable of evolving further into multi-celled organisms.

  15. Alan Fox,

    Sorry, I overlooked you wrote “protozoans”. I wrote this at UD which I hope makes the same point.

    1) PCD in multicellular organisms is an essential element in growth and development. It is uncontroversial as soma cells are not the vehicles for inheritance. Hence this not an issue for evolution and a fruitful are of research especially in the fight against cancer and auto-immune disease.

    This is not in any way a problem for evolutionary theory.

    2) PCD in single-celled eukaryotes might be perceived an issue until you consider the idea of kin selection. In a population of related organisms, the genetic traits are carried by all the individuals, so apparent “altruism” can ensure survival of the genetic information in other related individuals.

    A plausible pathway, at least.

    3) PCD in prokaryotes is interesting. That it exists is in one way a plus for evolution as it suggests deep roots for the process but also opens the question of how such a system could evolve. Here is a recent paper looking at E. coli. I quote:

    Here we report that E. coli has at least two genetically programmed death pathways. One of them is the EDF-mazEF-mediated pathway that was previously described: it is triggered by various stressful conditions [14],[16],[24],[25],[28]. It leads to the death of most of the bacterial population and to the continued survival of a small subpopulation [27]. We have suggested that the EDF-mazEF-mediated death of most of the population permits the survival of the small subpopulation that will become a nucleus for the renewed population when conditions are no longer stressful [27]. Thus, we assume that mazEF-mediated cell death is actually an altruistic mechanism for bacterial survival under stressful conditions. The small subpopulation of surviving cells will depend on the death of the majority of the population, both for signal molecules and for the nutrients released by the dead cells.

    The point being that E. coli populations can be clones so again the death of individual cells benefiting the survival of the same genes in other cells means it is heritable. The aspect that I thought might be most problematic is in fact less so.

  17. Alan Fox: r

    Any time a creationist says he can’t imagine an evolutionary pathway — for example, gpuccio’s protein domains or kariosfocus’ isolated isolated islands of function — just say the magic words: “what good is half an eye.”

    If you look, there will always be half an eye. That’s the lesson of Thornton and Lenski. If you do the work, there will be a pathway.

  18. The sophisticated intelligent design position, circa 2014, has become:

    “I’ll grant you that autocatalytic networks can spontaneously self-assemble, and I’ll grant you that semi-permeable membranes can spontaneously self-assemble, but combining the two into an autopoietic system requires supernatural intervention!”

    Exactly why this is the case, however, is never made entirely clear.

  19. Alan:

    Describing someone you are hoping to join you in a discussion “an ungrateful little twerp” is counter-productive and makes you seem insincere, in my view. I commented on the same lines at UD.

    I replied here.

  20. Alan:

    Describing someone you are hoping to join you in a discussion “an ungrateful little twerp” is counter-productive and makes you seem insincere, in my view.

    keiths:

    Insincere about what?

    OMagain:

    I’d guess about wanting a serious discussion. However given Andre’s comments I’d not diverge from your opinion of him that much myself…

    Alan apparently didn’t notice that my offer was quite sincere:

    Andre,

    Your very own thread at The Skeptical Zone:

    Andre: “PCD stops unguided evolution in its tracks”

    In the unlikely event that your argument survives over there, you can bring it back here.

    The fact that Andre is a twerp doesn’t change that. He is still welcome to comment here. As I said at UD:

    What’s great about TSZ is not that every commenter likes (or pretends to like) every other commenter. We don’t. It’s that everyone is welcome to comment there regardless of who does or doesn’t like them, or what they believe. Open discussion takes precedence over personal affinities or animosities.

    Only the infantile Joe has squandered this privilege, by posting links to porn.

    Andre has been a nuisance in this thread, and his refusal to comment at TSZ is silly. Nevertheless, he is more than welcome to comment there.

  21. One wonders why Andre is enamored of PCD in particular, rather than some other instance of biological complexity. It seems that he thinks there is something paradoxical about PCD.

    He asks:

    how did unguided processes build it, if the very nature of PCD is to guard against unguided processes?

    It’s unclear why he thinks that an unguided process cannot thwart other unguided processes. It happens all the time.

  22. I rather enjoy Andre’s dramatic shifts in prose style, sometimes Gallienesque sentence fragments, othertimes (comment 1203):

    Apoptosis is regarded as a carefully regulated energy-dependent process, characterized by specific morphological and biochemical features in which caspase activation plays a central role. Although many of the key apoptotic proteins that are activated or inactivated in the apoptotic pathways have been identified, the molecular mechanisms of action or activation of these proteins are not fully understood and are the focus of continued research. The importance of understanding the mechanistic machinery of apoptosis is vital because programmed cell death is a component of both health and disease, being initiated by various physiologic and pathologic stimuli.

    That sounds quite articula….wait a sec
    (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117903/)
    [No quotation marks or citation in the original.]
    That makes more sense.
    I’m imagining a young ba77, discovering ctrl-C, ctrl-V …

    On topic:
    Evidently, multicellularity is not a pre-requisite for PCD.I would argue that neither is PCD a pre-requisite for multicellularity. I suspect a slime mold-like organism could get by without PCD. Whether any do so, I know not.

  23. so OMagain means…….wait for it….wait for it…..

    Then it must be true if OMagain can imagine it.

    See OMagain imagines emergence as this mysterious, ‘can’t put a finger on it’ phenomena that obviously exists since…well…you know….we are here….and it happened….so there…that’s evidence fer ya…..

    but to be sure…. that merky, mysterious, ‘can’t put a finger on it’ phenomenon is in no way intelligent…and of course in no way is it like humans…even though its author…you know, nature….did most likely, probably do that emergent thing in addition to that human intelligence thing….

    but come on now…nature?? intelligent…get outta here….I Omagain can’t imagine it to be this way….therefore

    IT IS NOT.

    Now we all understand the foundation of evolution.

    IF YOU, the onlooker can imagine evolution in an anthropic way without it actually being so…..just a convenient rhetorical tool is all…well then…it exists in that anthropic-not way, you see….

    …and we leave it to future generations to interpret the complicated cracks in the bones…

    LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    OMagain: Then it must not be true, if *you* can’t imagine it.

    lol.

  24. Steve: Then it must be true if OMagain can imagine it.

    I can imagine a process of differential reproduction producing generations that differ from the previous one only slightly. In fact I’ve written programs that do that exact thing, albeit not on the scale of biology.

    I guess you find it easier to imagine that a billion+ year old designer did something, sometime, somehow.

    Each to their own. I won’t hold your opinion against you, but you don’t get to call it science unopposed while I’m in the same room…

  25. Steve: but come on now…nature?? intelligent…get outta here….I Omagain can’t imagine it to be this way….therefore

    Why should I imagine when it appears you can supply the ID facts that will remove it from the realm of imagination and into fact.

    Simply explain how PCD was Intelligently Designed, when where and how, then your explanation becomes *the* explanation, if it indeed explains better then the alternatives and demonstrably so.

  27. Steve:

    It would be nice to see how you explain “early MCO’s cells into somatic and germ cells” from an ID point of view.

    Or anything else…

  28. the bystander:

    Does it help anyone at all ? Is this a theory ? If the compass keeps spinning in every direction, what’s the use of the compass ?

    I have a similar doubt with ID. Nobody has ever showed me how to use it to explain any biological feature. What good is it for?

  29. Guillermoe: Nobody has ever showed me how to use it to explain any biological feature

    You’ll be waiting some time for that I suspect. On the other hand, if you want an ill-informed critique of something barely understood then you won’t have to wait long at all for that! 🙂

  30. I like Steve’s writings. He tears your arguments to bits, and you don’t even notice.

    He makes guys like Omagin and Gullermoe say, explain it from an ID point of view. They write this without realizing that what they are saying is, well, just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point.

    And Joe Felsenstein acts like the problem of why the system exists is irrelevant , it just is. One giant broom to sweep the entire mess right under the rug.

  32. phoodoo: I like Steve’s writings.

    I’m not surprised.

    phoodoo: He tears your arguments to bits, and you don’t even notice.

    Could you link to that? I must have missed it.

    phoodoo: He makes guys like Omagin and Gullermoe say, explain it from an ID point of view.

    Again, I missed that.

    phoodoo: They write this without realizing that what they are saying is, well, just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point.

    Unlike, say, ID which explains everything.

    phoodoo: And Joe Felsenstein acts like the problem of why the system exists is irrelevant , it just is.

    Could you explain why the system exists from an ID point of view? No? Thought not.

    phoodoo: One giant broom to sweep the entire mess right under the rug.

    You genuinely think you are really saying something insightful, don’t you?

  33. phoodoo:

    He makes guys like Omagin and Gullermoe say, explain it from an ID point of view.They write this without realizing that what they are saying is, well, just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point.

    Nice.. Let’s see:

    “They write this without realizing that what they are saying is, well [WHAT?], just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point.”

    What we are saying is WHAT?

    Because we are not saying ” just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point”. That is something you say. So, didn’t you forget to finish your phrase?

    Nice argument: what you, phoodoo, are saying is, well, anyway the case is that you are wrong.

    However, this is interesting: ” just because evolutionists don’t have a fucking clue how it happens, that doesn’t mean you have a point”.

    Right!! Our point is not that we have no clue about how ID could actually explain things. Our point is that YOU, phoodoo, and people like you, questioning evolution and defending ID or creationism or whatever, have no clue about how ID could actually explain things.

    That’s our point and it’s a very good one: until someone defending ID can actually explain anything with ID, the fact that nobody is able to explain anything with ID is a major point against it.

  34. the bystander:
    Quantum ‘woo’ is what biologists call QM cause they have no clue what it is. They can’t even begin to understand Bra-kets and vectors. I suspect most have no clue how to workwith matrix.

    As a biologist who understand quantum mechanics, I am amused. Also bemused, by the suggestion that QM would provide any help in understanding the origin of apoptosis.

  35. Steve Schaffner: Also bemused, by the suggestion that QM would provide any help in understanding the origin of apoptosis.

    It should be noted that “quantum woo” is not used to describe quantum mechanics, but the claim “according to quantum mechanics god did magic and life appeared”.

  36. Guillermoe: It should be noted that “quantum woo” is not used to describe quantum mechanics, butthe claim “according to quantum mechanics god did magic and life appeared”.

    Steve Schaffner: As a biologist who understand quantum mechanics, I am amused. Also bemused, by the suggestion that QM would provide any help in understanding the origin of apoptosis.

    To be precise, I referred to PCD pathway
    Here’s my full comment:

    Missing ? There is nothing missing except an explanation of how PCD pathway ‘emerged’ by random ‘unguided’ process. If you are happy with ‘emerged’ as an explanation, so be it.

    I didn’t expect anything else from you except your amusement and bemusement.
    What more can I expect from people who call QM Quantum “woo” ?

  37. the bystander: What more can I expect from people who call QM Quantum “woo” ?

    It’s “woo” because you can’t be specific about what it is that is missing and adding in some “quantum stuff” is basically saying “add magic”.

    Can you be specific?

  38. OMagain: Can you be specific?

    You want me to work out the Hilbert space and density matrix of the pathway and then figure out how it might help in resolving the origin ? Can’t your biologists who ‘understands’ ( probably saw a YouTube video for 30 minutes) QM – and is amused and bemused – do that ?

  39. the bystander:

    To be precise, I referred toPCD pathway
    Here’s my full comment:

    Missing ? There is nothing missing except an explanation of how PCD pathway ‘emerged’ by random ‘unguided’ process. If you are happy with ‘emerged’ as an explanation, so be it.

    And where are quantum mechanics involved in that comment?

  40. Guillermoe: And where are quantum mechanics involved in that comment?

    You don’t even know what we were talking about ? Go back to ‘Older Comments ‘ and check

  41. OMagain: It’s “woo” because you can’t be specific about what it is that is missing and adding in some “quantum stuff” is basically saying “add magic”.
    Can you be specific?

    Quantum woo is invoking quantum theory as a magical incantation, instead of presenting the math.

  42. the bystander: You don’t even know what we were talking about ? Go back to ‘Older Comments ‘ and check

    I did. The comment where you talked about QM was another one, where you were talking about going further than evolution; like QM, for instance.

    I agree with OMagain. I never saw anyone make a rational explanation of biological features explained by ToE with QM. If you are not referring to quantum woo, show us how you use QM to go beyond the theory of evolution (making sense, of course).

  43. the bystander: You want me to work out the Hilbert space and density matrix of the pathway and then figure out how it might help in resolving the origin? Can’t your biologists who ‘understands’ ( probably saw a YouTube video for 30 minutes) QM – and is amused and bemused – do that ?

    That means you can’t? Then what were you talking about exactly when you mention using physics, chemistry and QM to go beyond evolution?

  44. petrushka: Quantum woo is invoking quantum theory as a magical incantation, instead of presenting the math.

    Presenting the math ? You think QM is drawing red and green balls from a bag math?

  45. the bystander: Presenting the math ? You think QM is drawing red and green balls from a bag math?

    Quantum woo is invoking QM as a magical incantation without showing your math.

  46. the bystander: Presenting the math ? You think QM is drawing red and green balls from a bag math?

    Yes, quantum woo is invoking QM as a magical incantation presenting inadequate math.

  47. the bystander: You want me to work out the Hilbert space and density matrix of the pathway and then figure out how it might help in resolving the origin?

    Wnell, that would be nice — as would anything you did, anything at all, that indicated you had a physically meaningful reason for introducing QM into the discussion.

    Can’t your biologists who ‘understands’ ( probably saw a YouTube video for 30 minutes) QM – and is amused and bemused – do that ?

    Nonsense — I watched the full 60 minute version. Couldn’t you be bothered to watch the whole thing?

  48. Ha ! Sorry TSZians your resident biologist is clueless. I thought he could atleast ‘understand’.
    No I wouldn’t work out and ‘show the maths’ because it takes hours to work out. Why should I bother?
    Whether you want to go beyond ToE or not by enlisting a evo friendly physicist who understands QM is your call.

  49. the bystander:
    Ha ! Sorry TSZians your resident biologist is clueless. I thought he could atleast ‘understand’.
    No I wouldn’t work out and ‘show the maths’ because it takes hours to work out. Why should I bother?
    Whether you want to go beyond ToE or not by enlisting a evo friendly physicist who understands QM is your call.

    And that “evo friendly physicist who understands QM” would be who?

    Anyway, you know Occam’s razor, right? You claim you can go beyond ToE with QM without evidence, then we can dismiss your claim without evidence.

  50. Guillermoe: And that “evo friendly physicist who understands QM” would be who?

    Anyway, you know Occam’s razor, right? You claim you can go beyond ToE with QM without evidence, then we can dismiss your claim without evidence.

    Evo friendly would be Dr.Krauss -who else ?
    Of course you can dismiss my claim – it’s your prerogative.

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