In the Roger Scruton on altruism thread, some commenters have expressed confusion over the evolutionary explanation of altruism in ants. If workers and soldiers leave no offspring, then how does their altruistic behavior get selected for?
The answer is simple but somewhat counterintuitive. The genes for altruistic behavior are present in both the workers/soldiers and in their parents. Self-sacrificing behavior in the workers and soldiers is bad for their copies of these genes, but it promotes the survival and proliferation of the copies contained in the queen and in her store of sperm. As long as there is a net reproductive benefit to the genes, such altruistic behaviors can be maintained in the population.
Selfish genes, altruistic individuals.
Let’s dedicate this thread to a discussion of other counterintuitive evolutionary truths. Here are some of my favorites:
1. The classic example of sickle-cell trait in humans. Why is a disease-causing mutation maintained in a human population? Shouldn’t selection eliminate the mutants? Not in this case, because only the unfortunate folks who have two copies of the allele get the disease. People with one copy of the allele don’t get the disease, but they do receive a benefit: improved resistance to malaria. In effect, the people with the disease are paying for the improved health of the people with only one copy of the mutation.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
2. In utero cannibalism in sharks:
Shark embryos cannibalize their littermates in the womb, with the largest embryo eating all but one of its siblings.
Now, researchers know why: It’s part of a struggle for paternity in utero, where babies of different fathers compete to be born.
The researchers, who detailed their findings today (April 30) in the journal Biology Letters, analyzed shark embryos found in sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) at various stages of gestation and found that the later in pregnancy, the more likely the remaining shark embryos had just one father.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
3. Genetic conflict between parents and offspring. Here’s a great example from a 1993 paper by David Haig:
Pregnancy has commonly been viewed as a cooperative interaction between a mother and her fetus. The effects of natural selection on genes expressed in fetuses, however, may be opposed by the effects of natural selection on genes expressed in mothers. In this sense, a genetic conflict can be said to exist between maternal and fetal genes. Fetal genes will be selected to increase the transfer of nutrients to their fetus, and maternal genes will be selected to limit transfers in excess of some maternal optimum. Thus a process of evolutionary escalation is predicted in which fetal actions are opposed by maternal countermeasures. The phenomenon of genomic imprinting means that a similar conflict exists within fetal cells between genes that are expressed when maternally derived, and genes that are expressed when paternally derived.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
Can readers think of other counterintuitive evolutionary truths?
Addendum
4. Mutant organism loses its innate capacity to reproduce and becomes a great evolutionary success. Can anyone guess which organism(s) I’m thinking of?
phoodoo,
LOL. Who started it?
phoodoo,
Never mind all that phoodoo – why is the epigenetic inheritance you linked a problem for evolutionary theory?
It does if one is trying to understand what Lamarck’s theory was. whether it invoked supernatural forces. I’m quoting Lamarck’s description of his own theory, not some personal account of his views on religion. I’m surprised to see that phoodoo doesn’t get this.
Anyway, why isn’t phoodoo answering Alan Miller’s question?
Joe Felsenstein,
No Joe, Lamarckism is NOT the same as Lamarck’s original ideas, any more than Darwinian evolution is the same as Darwini’s original ideas. Darwin didn’t surmise about random mutations, but that is certainly what people refer to when they say Darwinian evolution today. Lamarckism is about the idea that events learned in one’s lifetime get passed on genetically to one’s offspring. Lamarck could never have know enough about biology in his day to explain much about how or why.
And so the answer to Allan’s question should be pretty obvious (and of course you all know this), if life develops through learned and practiced behaviors during one’s lifetime, and then is passed on genetically, Darwinism is dead-you no longer get to clutch the “random” component of mutations which are so crucial to your belief that life is totally unguided and accidental.
The second part of the problem, which I have already explained VERY clearly, is that there is no way to account for an epigenetic system arising through random small mutations. Just because Allan brushed that off by saying, well, we don’t need to know how it started, its here now so never mind, DOES NOT mean the problem just goes away- like a monkey covering its eyes.
There is absolutely no way of making a logical case for unguided mechanisms constructing such a system that doesn’t even show itself until EVERYTHING in the organism is complete.
Talk about irreducible complexity, times 1000!
Allan’s shrugs of not caring about details are no substitute for a fundamental crucial understanding of why life exists as it does. Anyone with an open mind, who looks at it closely can see that life is destined to exist, it is not some stupid accident happening over and over. I detest the laziness of your thought.
There is absolutely no way of making a logical case for unguided mechanisms
Neither Lamarck nor “Lamarckism” depends on any “guide.” Both are anti-design. They depend only on habit or disuse.
What about a slightly simpler system then that?
No?
What about a slightly simpler system then that?
No?
What about a slightly simpler system then that?
etc etc.
But that’s wrong, as has already been explained. So why do you keep repeating it if a way has already been explained to you?
OMagain,
A simpler system that tells an organism what stage to develop a heart, what stage to develop lungs, then a brain, where they should go, how many days they should grow, when to stop growing, that tell a cell if it should become a tongue or skin, that controls where on the body they form….
Yea right, sounds logical, just make it simple.
walto,
I contend that you have not thought about this long. Only accidental copying errors is able to rule out a planned design to exist. If life sees obstacles, and finds solutions to those obstacles through experience, you have a teleological system-the death of Darwin.
Actually what is even simpler is “it was designed”.
You can answer any question with that.
Yet something that explains everything explains nothing.
Why don’t you pick a thing (eyes, heart, whatever) and we can start a thread about how evolution currently explains it’s origin?
Then you can start a thread about how ID explains the same thing, and we’ll compare and contrast the explanations and see how we do?
Out of interest, is there such a thing as a fair die?
No, ‘doo.
A simpler system that allows cells to differentiate: to react differently to different environments. That is what we’re after here. Heart, longs, etc are way down the line. This has been explained. You start at the basis.
I contend from the above that you have not spoken English long.
A couple things about this second (more coherent) remark. First, as we’ve seen Darwin himself was hedgy on this matter. So let’s say Wallace, who was more definitive or Huxley–or–as you’ve said–the general resultant “random variation only” picture of Darwinism. Second, as a number of people have said, that early absolutism is no longer part of current biological theories of evolution. So, if you are claiming that the “random variation only” picture is not precisely true, current evolutionary science agrees with you.
Finally, and this was the point of my post above, that revision to the earlier Wallace/Huxley absolutism doesn’t yet indicate even Lamarckian teology–nevermind “Design.” I don’t know if it’s even clear that the epigenetic effects have to be beneficial. But even if that were the case, and you could infer some kind of gauzy Lamarckianism from them, you still wouldn’t be able to show anything about EXTERNAL design. As shown above, Lamarckian “teleology” doesn’t support “design” of the type you’re looking for at all–it is expressly opposed to it.
To sum up: You can’t get Lamarckism from a failure of absolute randomness, and even if you could, you can’t get the kind of design you assert the universe displays from from Lamarckianism anyhow. Thus, epigenetics provides you nothing whatever without the addition of some pretty gross fallacies.
phoodoo,
Life evidently does not develop through ‘learned and practiced behaviours’. For every putative ‘epigenetic’ transmission, each transient at best, there are many thousands of permanent genetic transmissions, with absolutely no connection to events in the organisms’ lives. One swallow does not make a summer.
Darwinism [sic] does not depend upon mutations being ‘random’ (in your rather eccentric use of the term, presumably close to ‘uncorrelated with need’). Since Darwin (Peace Be Unto Him) himself believed that use/disuse could play a part in generating variation, that is clearly true. Of course what you call ‘Darwinism’ may not be a theory that owes anything to Charles Darwin (rendering the overuse of this term in Creationist circles somewhat risible). But there it is, a simple counter-argument to your case. ‘neo’-Darwinism has the benefit of abundant evidence that mutation is random (stochastic) and uncorrelated with need, and that use-disuse is not a significant principle in nature.
Nonetheless, the origin of variation, and the subsequent fate of that variation under differential reproduction in a population, are two different things. Evolution simply requires that there be heritable variation and differential reproduction. If some of it were environmentally conditioned and then permanently stored, so bleeding what? This would not render evolution untrue, or Creationism better supported.
Gralgrathor,
You call that a basic, a system that allows cells to differentiate? How pray tell does that start, do you have different kinds of cells first, or a system which can differentiate them first? What use are different kinds of cells, if there is nothing to control them? We are already 1000 steps down the line of complications we can’t explain, and we haven’t even begun to assemble anything.
And then later you want to let accidental mutations build a system to tell hearts and lungs where to go? What, through trial and error?
phoodoo,
Life has the fingerprints of unguided evolution all over it.
Why do you cling to ID when it doesn’t fit the facts?
Walto and Allan are making the same fatal error. Believing that you can have something besides random mutation as the driving force of life, and still not invoke teleology.
You can do all the obfuscating you like, but you still can’t cover up the undeniable truth, life either started and continued because of accidents, or it was destined to do so. When you try to hedge your bets by claiming, well, of course it started as just meaningless dust somehow replicating (already a ridiculous premise, since we never see it happening again) but then, somehow it organized itself so well, that it then CHANGED how it continued its trajectory to include (this is where you get to just throw any magic terms you want into your giant speculative soup called the modern synthesis) all of this wonderful systems that no longer need randomness, they can now be organized to develop.
And you guys call yourself skeptics? Ha.
No no, you are stretching belief way way past the breaking point when you expect anyone who is real to believe that meaningless copying errors, then jumped a gap into some other system of trajectory that you can’t even define.
Is life teleological or isn’t it (did it just happen by accident, and the accidents compound?) -you don’t get to keep sitting on the fence and saying, well, a little maybe, but not completely, I mean, could be, sort of, but not in the planned way, teleological in the unplanned way!! Yea, that’s it!
Life was so much easier for you when we knew so much less about the complexities of systems-struggling to call these complexities more results of accidents (and then saying the accidents have become non accidents) is so unseemly.
You can do all the obfuscating you like, but you still can’t cover up the undeniable truth, life either started and continued because of accidents, or it was destined to do so.
Shit man, nobody told me your position was UNDENIABLE. Cripes, that puts a whole new aura on everything. I’m definitely gonna have to rethink my obfuscations pronto.
Plus, I hate it when my errors are fatal. 🙁
Phoodoo, these are good questions. Although your use of the word “differentiate” might cause you problems – it has two distinct meanings: 1) to tell the difference between e.g. “differentiate between good and evil”, and 2) [in biology] to follow different developmental paths e.g. “the cells of the ectoderm then differentiate to form…”
My offer still stands, if you read some introductory texts, we can walk through them together and then move on to cell-type determination in unicellular eukaryotes. Have you ordered “A Genetic Switch” yet?
Much, much later. Billions of years later.
I just want to know one thing. Was this teleological non-accidental dust/speculative soup really awesomely meaningful LIFE thing more a matter of Zeus or of Hay Zeus?
DNA_Jock,
You sound more than willing to give up the idea of explaining how an epigenetic system would develop. Can’t say I blame you. Its the billions of years your escape hatch?
Let’s see, we need a big explosion, a few hundred million years for atoms to form, another 8 billion for the sun and earth, wait around three or four billions years for some magic dust to accidentally start copying, a couple more billion to get a cell wall, half a billion for it to somehow differentiate itself, give them a billion years to figure out how to become multi-cellular, now we need a billion or two to accidentally copy a epigentic system which control the entire development of complex life, after that the epigenetic system can become fixed so it doesn’t start fucking up and make us start all over, a few big meteor whacks in between, no problem, hit restart, have we gotten to the Cambrian yet?
Thankfully the Earth is what, 40 billion years old or so, because we still have a hell of lot of accidental mistakes to work out perfectly!
Excellent question!
Out of interest, what came first under the ID paradigm?
SPT-CL J0546-5345
Well, even when you put it like that it still sounds a whole lot more plausuable then this:
The problem is, I’m more then open to any explanation. Provide a better alternative to “randum magic dust“, and fame awaits. Given that you do not have a total mastery of all facts about the universe your claims that something could not have happened falls flat until you can rule it out via that total mastery of all the laws of nature. Sounds a bit like the EF, right? Heh.
And you don’t have to do that anyway, just provide some positive evidence that supports your alternative.
So if you’ve got something better then the ID re-write of Genesis 1, i.e. “the designer designed it” then I’ll stick with we need a big explosion, a few hundred million years for atoms to form, another 8 billion for the sun and earth, wait around three or four billions years for some magic dust to accidentally start copying, a couple more billion to get a cell wall, half a billion for it to somehow differentiate itself, as shit a description as it is.
phoodoo, What’s so fundamentally difficult about an ‘epigenetic’ system, as opposed to any other? Methylation of cytosine is an absolute doddle, for an enzyme. As is demethylation. They alternately mask and unmask transcription factor binding sites. Same goes for chromatin remodelling, or interfering RNAs.
You seem to think epigenetics is hard stuff, biologically speaking. It isn’t.
OMagain,
Well, one thing we can know, you need a heck of a lot less time if things happen on purpose, then if we have to wait around for lucky accidents every time we need to take another step, that is for darn sure.
How long would it take to climb Mount Everest if the only thing we were relying on was wild meteorites hitting us in the back occasionally at just the right angle to push us all the way up?
Indeed. So then the question becomes why did it take so long, with so many mis-steps(extinctions) and why are we utterly alone in the universe, despite having looked out across vast swathes of it? If you want to replace the only explanation we seem to have so far (hint hint) then those are the sorts of questions you’ll have to have answers to. Otherwise, in what sense have we advanced by replacing one thing that explains some things with something that explains nothing.
Then convince me. Where does the designer intervene and how do you know?
Why keep it a secret? What’s your alternative to lucky meteorites?
Allan Miller,
Oh yea, an epigenetic system is incredibly simple! Geez, all it has to do is tell a heart to be a heart instead of a toenail, piece of cake! Ok, and then attach that heart to a few tubes and some lungs, and shoot you are pretty much set. A few adrenal glands, an eye, Dawkins already told us how easy that is, just stuff it into a socket at the right time, not too early, not too late, just like porridge. Like cooking a cake without a recipe only much much easier.
Piece of piss, give Allan a challenge for crying out loud! No one can say you aren’t a tough skeptic.
Do you understand how complicated a simple single cell is Allan? And you accuse me of writing howlers. Holy shit.
OMagain,
Whenever anyone says, “Well, have you got a better idea? And their idea is, well, it was an accident, simple (just ask Allan how simple) , all I can do is laugh.
Heh. Trolling troll forgets how to troll. Try harder!
Actually I don’t know what your idea is. What is it?
Science does not have the answer to life, the universe and everything. There are lots of partial theories that cover quite a bit of ground, but no overarching answer that explains the totality of existence. I am open to any new or different idea that shows promise. Obviously (!) “Intelligent Design” theory doesn’t fall into that category but do you have some thoughts on alternatives to scientific enquiry and following the evidence? Possibly, you think this is not a worthwhile endeavour.
phoodoo,
Have you any evidence that epigenetic inheritance (as opposed to epigenetic switching in somatic cells) is responsible for the heart? There are two completely different issues under discussion here. You are confusing the two.
The fundamental principles of developmental epigenetics are, indeed, simple also, although there is no detailed step-by-step account of a particular system, and in detail development is very complex. But that (development) is NOT what was originally brought to the table by you. You were talking of epigenetic inheritance. So yes, I do accuse you of howlers, very fundamental ones. Holy, as you say, shit.
Darwin seems to accept Lamarck’s theory w/o substantive qualification.
Darwin conceived a “Lamarckian” system of inheritance, pangenesis.
The late-19th century Neo-Darwinian theorists gutted Darwin’s theory of its key Lamarckian components. Reducing Darwin’s theory to the indirect effect of conditions upon the process of random mutagenesis.
By “Lamarckism” I mean those very key propositions of Darwin (nee Lamarck) that the Neo-Darwinists excluded from the “synthesis”:
1) Acquired traits may be inherited
2) Use and disuse
3) Direct effects of the environment
That actually sounds like the intelligent design explanation you might be expected to provide, were you sufficiently endowed to give it.
Then presumably whatever created it is more complex then that cell? What was that thing that created the cell?
I admit it. You’ve won me over. You’ve convinced me all Allan’s explanations and everyone else’s are so much junk.
What do you want to propose instead? Is that such a surprising question? Your mission is obviously to win converts, you’ve won one.
So, please tell me the way of righteousness now that you have broken me down. Build me up again in the new way!
Heh, and to be honest, I can’t say I blame you. I mean, you are making absurd strawmen and then knocking them down.
It would hardly serve your purposes were you to come out and say what you actually believe would it?
phoodoo,
Yes, I do. Far too complex to have been designed.
Hi Rock
How’s things?
Darwin died in 1882. “Origin of Species” is not a religious text. Darwin had some great insights but the biological world has moved on.
Yeah, every time I hear “overlapping multiple layered codes” I laugh. I program for a living and it’s hard enough to understand what you’ve written yourself, despite breaking it down it pieces that are as likely as simple as they can possibly be and still be useful. The idea that a sufficiently advanced designer would see advantage in the layered code setup where changing one thing also changes N others is absurd, especially as they attempt to draw parallels from what we observe in the cell to currently available designers (i.e. us).
A process like evolution? Well, then i’d expect to see that sort of cross-linkage, as whatever worked at the moment became part of history and put constraints on later generations.
Particularly when the layers have antagonistic effects.
Yeah, I’ve seen that in code.
I do it every day! Just not on purpose 😛
That’s really the point here, I think. Arguments are futile–this is purely a psychological matter. One can either live with partial knowledge of why things are the way they are like an intelligent, non-omniscient being and maybe ask more questions and do more experiments to find out, or one can go blubbering into Church writhing in fear of death and meaningless where someone will calmly tell you, “It’s ok, don’t cry, there’s Zeus (and/or Hay Zeus): its (/their) existence takes care of everything. So you can go back to bed now and have sweet dreams.”
That is, one can live like a human being or a scared puppy. A site devoted to arguing with puppies is, IMHO, silly. One should just give them some nice blankies and rub their tummies.
OMagain,
Yep, I too am a code-monkey these days, and I don’t see how these engineers get their idea that Design can come up with such incredible interlocking complexities in their assumed ‘minimal system’.
And from my biochem background, I know it would not be a simple matter to maneouvre the various molecules into place without having them react until you want to. It’s not a 747. That is a shit analogy (one I see WJM still peddling furiously over at UD). The system has to start simply IMO. Modern examples aren’t simple, and we don’t know what a simple configuration would look like. But the ID-ers’ insistence that modern complexity demands a Designer doesn’t sit easy with what I know of designers or of chemistry. An entity just simply ‘knowing’ what a minimal configuration should look like, and being capable of bolting it together – preposterous notions, certainly no less so than the idea that Life can arise from chemistry.
Neither. You start with cells that are undifferentiated, and don’t have a mechanism for differentiation. Give them homeobox genes – or not, the principle is the same, although homeobox genes provide a useful lever for this kind of thing. Let them, over many generations, evolve to be primitive colony organisms, forming uniform clusters. Now further variation will at some point introduce a feature whereby cells in the outer layers of the colony develop differently than cells on the inside. This is elaborated upon, because it is useful: cells in clusters with such a differentiated outer layer will fare better than others. There. Now you have an organism with a kind of epidermis. Already you have more organs than you started with.
Darwin was a “theologian.” Ideas about theology inform Darwin’s theory of evolution. None of them original ideas. Darwin is not the author of a single idea about biological evolution or theology.
As I implied, his theory is largely Lamarckian–which is the theory of evolution most of his contemporaries accepted.
Kinda ironic that we are be arguing over the theological implications of a theory of evolution devised by… Creationists!
Well that would be yet another failure at reading comprehension on your part. “A Genetic Switch” describes, in molecular detail, how a pattern of gene expression can be stably transmitted from one cell to its many, many progeny, then suddenly and dramatically changed due to an environmental trigger. I am offering to help you educate yourself about these things, so that you will make fewer monumental howlers.
I quite understand that the prospect of learning a little bit of biology may fill you with fear, but I encourage you to be brave. You can do it!
Who is arguing over the theological implications of evolution? Not me! Anyone? Bueller?
What are the theological implications of evolution?
Beats me! Rock?
Dunno. Is there an unemployment office for gods?