Further to the OP Munging ID it seems that there is still a significant amount of confusion as to whether ID could be, or even is, compatible with common descent… Moreover, Mike Behe has been quoted by Paul Nelson here at TSZ as one of the very few from among the Discovery Institute (DI) who “supports” common descent, common ancestry or descent with modification…
While I doubt we would be able to get Mike Behe to post at TSZ, for the reasons I have already mentioned in the moderation issues in the past, unless his book critics decide to post here and he would be provoked to respond, let’s just watch some of the videos where elaborates on those very issues:
Intelligent Design and Common Ancestry – Michael J. Behe, PhD
Another issue related to common ancestry is the that some members of DI, including Mike Behe and Ann Gauger apparently accept the possibility of “guided evolution”… which in my view would be an oxymoron…I must stress however that I have not seen any real details about that coming from either of them, so I don’t really know what they mean by “guided evolution”…Perhaps Behe’s upcoming book will provide us with some insight on the theme…Have they come to a similar conclusion Jonathan Wells has with the embryo development (cell differentiation) where the information beyond DNA would have to be added in the process? I don’t know at this point…
I have also mentioned it in the past that ID supporters, as well as logically thinking creationists, must accept some sort of “micro-evolution” or descent with modification within “kinds”…
The example of that type of evolution, or rather devolution, is the “evolution” of dogs from wolves by the breaking genes or the decreasing gene functions…
Other possible “evolutionary changes” leading to dog evolution from wolves could be compared to the antibiotic resistance evolution that had already existed in the some genomes before the antibiotics were even developed…
I’ve tried to keep as many distractions away from this OP as possible, as I had found that OPs that are complicated, or related to too many issues, get hijacked, or accomplish little…So, the dog “evolution” from wolves, I will leave for another OP…
I will try to contact Dr. Loening, who was my inspiration to investigate the “dog evolution” to see, if he’d be interested in writing an OP on the theme…
If not, I will try to gather more details needed for the OP, time permits…
‘Logically thinking creationists” as opposed to the others eh! Funny.
Yes doggies come from wolves but the better examples are people. Behold all the different species of humans. there must be a mechanism for this.
It must happen instant and without hurting people. so no selection on the better ones while the others die out.
the great answer is that no one watched these things. it was invisable therefore.
so why not the easy answer. WITHIN the genes is the hidden ability to switch bodyplans as needed if danger makes a threshold.
this ability is greater then mere genes. Its not good enough to say wolf genes changed into dog genes. there must be a greater agenda of the genetic change.
… logically thinking – and then a miracle happens – creationists?
“Guided evolution” would indeed be an oxymoron, if by “evolution” one means “a process operating with no guidance.”
But Mike Behe, Ann Gauger (at certain moments, anyway), and others who can’t be named, because their scientific careers are too young or vulnerable right now, don’t use “evolution” in that sense of “no possible guidance.” They mean simply an unbroken nexus of ancestor-descendant relationships. Every organism has at least one parent (another organism). The existence of such a nexus does not, however, preclude intelligent guidance.
Dog breeding or agricultural (artificial) selection provide helpful analogies. The origin of domesticated maize / corn from wild teosinte is well-documented. An ear of sweet corn looks nothing like wild teosinte — I certainly would never have never guessed on casual inspection that the two plants belong to the same genus (Zea) — yet they do, and the historical pathway of morphological transformation was likely guided by human choice. The same is true with canids, of course: that pug, and that Great Dane, are the consequence of intelligent guidance. Take a look some time at the diversity of form in the genus Brassica. Amazing, and largely the consequence of human selection (guidance).
Guided evolution has a distinguished intellectual lineage: Darwin’s correspondent at Harvard, Asa Gray; Darwin’s co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace; many 20th c. figures, most of whom would be lumped in with ID folks in 2019, if they were alive today. For several reasons, I don’t myself find guided evolution the best competitor on the theoretical playing field, but there should be no doubt that it’s a live ID possibility. Mike Behe is certainly willing to pay the price for endorsing it, suffering the scorn of his evolution-must-be-unguided colleagues.
Paul A Nelson,
The environment, whether including humans or not, surely guides evolution. The religious argument is whether there is a larger yet unseen guiding hand. ID’s argument appears to be you have found the hand. That cannot so far be supported by scientific enquiry.
Selection and drift are facts. Domesticated plants and animals demonstrate how quickly the morphology of a population can be transformed.
Behe doesn’t, to my knowledge, assert any intelligent guidance in selection. His thing is guided mutations.
The famous Edge. The statistally implausible double or triple mutation that leaps over viability barriers.
When have you ever heard an ID advocate say that? I certainly never have.
When I have heard, quite rightly, is that there is evidence that unguided alone can’t do it. And there is evidence that many systems appear to have an underlying ability to adapt themselves under many circumstances.
Plasticity, self-adapting systems, rapid adaptation, a catalogue of tools to manipulate the genome, those don’t seem to be likely results of a random mutation, natural selection paradigm. Each new discovery in biology shows more and more hints at a plan that directs animals towards survival, not one in which organisms fall accidentally into open sewer drains that just so happen to prevent them from getting run over by a speeding car.
phoodoo,
In other words, you’ve found the Guiding Hand.
Why not? Why don’t they “seem” that?
That would be natural selection itself. lol
petrushka: Behe doesn’t, to my knowledge, assert any intelligent guidance in selection. His thing is guided mutations.
Yes, and that’s why the analogies I gave (corn from teosinte, dog breeding) are only analogies, meant to illustrate how outcomes in a continuous lineage can be directionally biased by intelligence.
Trouble with Guiding Hand evolution is that it must keep working. One assumes it is only needed for deleterious traits.
How does one determine which “evolution” is guided and which evolution is not, based on what evidence?
Is the issue of “guided evolution” perhaps related to our idealistic view, or limited knowledge, of life based on DNA alone?
We’ve had several OPs on “guided mutations” including this one:
I have come across quantum mutations “directed” by quantum tunneling…
What’s the mechanism of directed mutations Behe believes in?
Artificial selection doesn’t involve any new genetic mutations being introduced from an external source. It’s merely humans using sexual selection to concentrate in a population desirable existing alleles.
How did your supernatural Designer physically manipulate matter to introduce the guided mutations as ID claims? Sooner or later the Designer is going to have to physically interact with atoms and molecules to manufacture the Designed genetic sequences. I’ve never seen an IDer address that major physical problem, ever.
Shouldn’t evidence be the arbitrator between the views?
I doubt very much that scientists of the caliber of Behe or Gauger would endorse a view without any evidence…
Of course, which is why I reject guided evolution. I think the evidence for profound discontinuities in the history of life is much stronger than for continuous lineages stemming from LUCA.
Isn’t “profound” discontinuities exactly what you would expect from a process of increasingly chronologically distant bifurcations of lineages of descent?
I’m talking with co-workers about this question right now. We need to model how aboriginal (i.e., primary or ab initio: possibly designed, possibly independently-evolving) discontinuities differ from branching so deep that all historical signal is lost. Sober and Steel (don’t have the reference at hand, sorry, but I can find it later) have argued that at deep enough distances, it becomes impossible to distinguish scenarios.
Paul A Nelson,
I think there is a legitimate argument to be made here. What nodes contain the discontinuities you are referring to? Two clear ones I can think of are the origin of the eukaryotic cell and the origin of multicellular organisms.
Good point!
I would like to see what evidence Behe and Gauger have that supports their views…
On the other hand in the article you’ve linked a while back, Craig Venter expressed his doubts about common ancestry… His experimental challenges made him believe in thousands of ancestors that don’t look that common to him…
Venter got stuck on prokaryotes… he found no way to “direct the evolution” of prokaryotes to eukaryotes with over $100 million budget per year to buy any expert in the field, including Nobel Prize winners..
The point I’m making in my last comment…Sorry Bill! I didn’t see your comment…
When you say “likely” does that mean you are leaving the possibility open? So it’s possible, right?
You (along with Walto) have already rejected what the concept of evidence is. So of course for you, there can never be evidence.
And by the same token, there can never be evidence for your theory. If you claim that bacteria is evidence for natural selection in action, well, we can say the same as you-its just “evolution of the gaps” because you don’t know. Maybe just luck. Maybe your eyes are fooling you. Why does it seem to you that the bacteria are evolving…yadda yadda.
Paul, what do you think about examples such as those by James Shapiro, which suggest that many systems do not use the typical random mutation, selection route of change-isn’t that in itself evidence?
and
Maybe all we can expect to see are footprints in the dirt. Aren’t these a type of footprint which represents evidence?
Its certainly just as valid as the conclusions drawn by evolutionists that they claim is evidence. Since neither side can provide you the proof in action, all both sides can do is offer appearances of.
Shapiro himself can say, well he still believes in a type of Darwinian evolution but so what, (maybe he feels his job requires him so say that)?
Adaptations, suntans, calluses, bones getting stronger when broken, the immune system, muscles getting bigger when stressed, tolerance levels increasing when pushed, more and more tolerance to mood altering drugs over time (the body is always finding ways to try to maintain its equilibrium) ….Footprints, footprints, everywhere we look we see footprints.
Unlike you I happen to be able to explain what evidence is. But I’d like to see you try first. Explain in your own words what evidence is. Impress me.
More from Shapiro:
How does one acknowledge this, but then still say, “Well, but its not guided.”?
What more would you expect to see if it is guided for pete’s sake?
Paul,
So nice to hear from you. There is an angle that Joe Deweese, myself, and Kirk Durston are working on.
It appears the “phyogenetic” trees, the hierarchical structures, when put through computational analysis may predict protein interactions and possible folds and structures and post translational modification targets.
Kirk Durston’s papers/PhD dissertation with 3 co-authors got a glowing review from Kirk’s dissertation committee and the senior proteomics guy on the dissertation committee said Kirk hit a gold mine!!!
Also, the evolutionists minimize the problem of post translational modifications. I’m analyzing TopoIsomerases IIs like Top2A and Top2B and the between- species post translational modifications are substantial. There are on the order of 100 residues out of 1700 residues on Top2A and Top2B that are PTM targets. The PTMs are different between species and are species specific and cell type specific.
Advocates of common descent view these residue differences as random but don’t appreciate the species specific effect it has for higher organisms like humans because lower organisms like yeast seem to tolerate residue changes so easily.
When individual residue changes were done on a seriously complex creature like an octopus, a single residue change on a glycosylation site resulted in blindness, yet that residue isn’t in any other creature!
The “tree like” patterns, imho, are actually optomized for human scientific discovery of biology. They’re mis-interpreted as a signal for common descent, but that is only because of the simplistic view that simple random mutation on a protein is an adequate explanation. They don’t tally all the attendant species specific, cell-type specific post translational modifications that the residue changes entail, and the PTMs are mind-boggling substantial.
We don’t even have a good accounting of the species specific/cell-type specific reconfiguration of protein cross links!
stcordova,
Just to interupt on a unrelated matter.
If my history is right did you not have a “blog’ thing on uncommon descent for a while? On it there was a article about greenland and its bedrock etc etc. I remember commenting on it. Where could i find this blog, the memory pof it, on the internet in order to find this article. its not on UD anywhere.
I have search the internet for the subject. Any help direction would be welcome.
That’s not at all an unusual sentiment expressed there of course. Similar exhibitions of religious madness is explicitly endorsed by many Christian philosophers and apologists. Here’s famous apologist and debater William Lane Craig in one of his books:
-Reasonable Faith, WLC (p. 36)
From Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, William Lane Craig, page 37.
As long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it. The corollary of that one is obvious. When reason is not a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should stop using it. And then do what… be unreasonable?
You should believe in something when you have been given no good reason to, and only many persuasive reaspons to disbelieve? Uhh no, then you really should not believe.
The mindset advocated in that book is nothing short of insane. But it is not at all unusual for religious extremists.
They’re shared in a pattern that is somewhat hierarchical, which optimizes scientific discovery. But where it breaks the hierarchy is also informative. But in no way are they identical between species, and some of them have severe phenotypic consequences.
In any case, random mutation might account for a residue change, it doesn’t account for cell-type specific species specific residue changes that are integrated with post translation modification.
As always, evolutionary biology is a simpleton’s conception of how biology works. It gets in the way of operational understanding. They just need to start butting out and stop trying to make themselves relevant because they’re becoming a nuissance — can we say ENCODE!
First off, can you keep your anti-religious sentiments of this OP?
Second of all, while most of your quotes are probably nonsense, science you so worship can’t always be explained by reason…
Can you reasonably explain effects before cause on subatomic level? How about human brain responding to a stimuli before the stimulation actually happens?
You explain the scientific phenomenon like that reasonably, then we can focus on the religious one… and let’s not try to fool ourselves: your science is full of assumptions based on faith… You just choose to ignore them…
Just like Rum I’m confused, Sal…
What do you think you can prove or disprove by your analysis?
God did it.
He conducted no such experiment.
stcordova,
No they don’t. They do, however recognise that they are mediated by enzymes showing the same hard-to-explain hierarchic pattern displayed by the modified proteins themselves.
Gosh!!!
That discovery being widespread and possibly universal common descent!
The simplistic view is entirely your own. The same patterns appear outside of exons, and in insertions, deletions, inversions and transpositions at multiple scales.
We? Creationists of course are busy elucidating these puzzles even as we speak. When they have a minute.
This OP and its thread nicely demonstrate that, although ID itself is perfectly compatible with common descent, many ID supporters are not.
What is ID incompatible with? What would falsify ID “theory”? What is “ID theory”? (Sorry, Paul 😉 )
I think you should clarify you mean (as I suspect you do) Young Earth Creationists. To be fair, at least some have had a genuine go to square their self-inflicted circle. Lizzie put a link in TSZ’s blogroll to Todd Wood’s blog
Todd Wood, I have a lot of time for. He’s an anomaly – ironically, since anomaly, not pattern, is all most Creationists seem able to see.
Ha! For a moment I’d thought you were going to suggest guided evolution… 😉
Maybe you should define what you mean by common descent ?
I’m not sure about you, but I have found out that common descent means different things to different people…
I too believe that common descent is compatible with ID within “kinds”but incompatible with Darwinism-slow gradual changes over looooooong period of time…dog descent from wolf being the proof of common descent within “kind” and the contradiction of Darwinism-the contradiction of omnipotence of natural selection…for example…
J-Mac,
Name a ‘kind’. And indicate why you think the observable nested hierarchy extends beyond that boundary.
This article, by Eugene Koonin, is partly suggestive of the discontinuity pattern(s) I have in mind:
https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-2-21
Gunter Bechly has also been talking recently about a series of “explosions” in the history of life, with the Cambrian radiation as an exemplar. The challenge for ID is to tie these events to a coherent (consistent and testable) account of how we know that intelligence, rather than some unknown evolutionary process, is causally responsible. Unusually rapid evolution, coupled with the extinction or loss of historical signal (see Rumraket’s comment above in this thread) can mimic the apparent action of an intelligence.
This is certainly a live possibility in the Cambrian, where we only have a tiny handful of fossil sites covering tens of millions of years.
“I propose that most or all major evolutionary transitions that show the “explosive” pattern of emergence of new types of biological entities correspond to a boundary between two qualitatively distinct evolutionary phases. The first, inflationary phase is characterized by extremely rapid evolution driven by various processes of genetic information exchange, such as horizontal gene transfer, recombination, fusion, fission, and spread of mobile elements. These processes give rise to a vast diversity of forms from which the main classes of entities at the new level of complexity emerge independently, through a sampling process. In the second phase, evolution dramatically slows down, the respective process of genetic information exchange tapers off, and multiple lineages of the new type of entities emerge, each of them evolving in a tree-like fashion from that point on. This biphasic model of evolution incorporates the previously developed concepts of the emergence of protein folds by recombination of small structural units and origin of viruses and cells from a pre-cellular compartmentalized pool of recombining genetic elements. The model is extended to encompass other major transitions. It is proposed that bacterial and archaeal phyla emerged independently from two distinct populations of primordial cells that, originally, possessed leaky membranes, which made the cells prone to rampant gene exchange; and that the eukaryotic supergroups emerged through distinct, secondary endosymbiotic events (as opposed to the primary, mitochondrial endosymbiosis). This biphasic model of evolution is substantially analogous to the scenario of the origin of universes in the eternal inflation version of modern cosmology. Under this model, universes like ours emerge in the infinite multiverse when the eternal process of exponential expansion, known as inflation, ceases in a particular region as a result of false vacuum decay, a first order phase transition process. The result is the nucleation of a new universe, which is traditionally denoted Big Bang, although this scenario is radically different from the Big Bang of the traditional model of an expanding universe. Hence I denote the phase transitions at the end of each inflationary epoch in the history of life Biological Big Bangs (BBB)”.
Great catch, Paul! Darwinism is dead! 😁
The search for the new mechanism of evolution has begun…more explosive one…lol
The Evolutionary BigBang!
J-Mac,
Your haste to pounce upon a piece you find congenial to your worldview is at odds with your pretence to ‘follow the evidence’. Even if Koonin is right (he is hardly the sole authority), and half a dozen transitions qualify as ‘big bangs’, this does not mean that incremental evolution has no role anywhere – a laughable extrapolation. No doubt Koonin will be joining Venter as one of your glove puppets.
Paul A Nelson,
Paul, sometimes I feel Idists are a bit too deferential to the evolutionists side, sort of in the way politicians sometimes try to walk some kind of neutral ground that isn’t really genuine.
Like when they talk of finding evidence for the designer, exactly what do you think you are going to find, other than systems that obviously can’t evolve the way Darwinism claims? Cosmic blueprints printed in twenty languages aren’t going to rain down from the heavens, so what’s the best we can hope to find? Why do Idists need to be shy about saying, what exists already is well beyond the realm of random mutations. THAT is evidence of design! It may not be proof, but it sure is evidence.
I don’t see how that is any less valid then the paltry amount of evidence for the other side. Are they ever going to prove how life began and continues, and how things like consciousness arose? Of course not, they never will. And yet, far too many people are willing to give them a pass, because they can always say, well, some day…
You are never going to look into a microscope at DNA and see gold lettering saying signed by_______.
I don’t think the expectations for ID evidence have to surpass the evidence for evolution. Since all they really have is speculation, why is the bar so much higher for ID? I think that’s unreasonable.
There will never be a mechanism, which doesn’t include random mutations, which one can call unguided. Random mutations is the only thing which gives them an escape hatch. Without that, the default is certainly planned evolution. There is no apology needed for this obvious conclusion, despite how much it infuriates the materialists. Its logical.
J-Mac,
Particularly this:
Now this, you would dismiss as mere ‘speculation’ if it came within any other piece. I myself feel it is unnecessary; modern prokaryotes exchange genes cheerfully. But it’s funny that you swallow such speculation without batting an eyelid, when you like the general thrust of the piece.