There was a time when people believed the moon craters were the product of intelligent design because they were so perfectly round “they must have been made by intelligent creatures living on the moon”. That idea was falsified. If hypothetically someone had said back then, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) made the moon craters”, the claim would have been falsifiable, but it really doesn’t make a positive case for the FSM, doesn’t make the FSM directly testable, doesn’t make the FSM science. Substitute the word “ID” instead for “FSM”, and one will see why I think even though ID is falsifiable, I don’t think ID has a positive case, and I don’t think ID is directly testable, and I don’t think ID is science at least for things like biology.
I accept stonehenge was intelligently designed because I’ve seen humans make similar artifacts. The case of design in life is a different matter because we have not seen a designer of such qualifications directly. If we saw God or some UFO sending flames down from the sky with a great voice and turning a rock into a living human, then I would consider ID a positive case at that point. For now there is no positive case, but a case based on some level of belief. One might redefine science to allow ID to be defined as science, but I prefer not to promote ID as science. I’m OK with calling ID science for man-made things, but not for God-made things, unless God shows up and gives us a visual demonstration.
NOTES:
Johannes Kepler
The invention of the telescope led scientists to ponder alien civilization. In the early 1600s, astronomer Johannes Kepler believed that because the moon’s craters were perfectly round, they must have been made by intelligent creatures.
Is Anybody Out There?
Thank you for the paper, but there is unfortunately confusion here and a confusion that is shared by IDists and creationists even pioneers of genetic entropy theory (entropy is misnomer, but creationist literature is stuck with it thanks to Duane Gish).
A beneficial feature could be easily be in the form of a damaged gene or function. I use the word “damaged” in the engineering sense since Dawkins insists on the Blindwatchmaker making things look engineered.
As pointed out in the paper co-authored by Lenski regarding the Black Queen hypothesis, a beneficial feature could easily be one where a functional features is disabled by mutation and then this disabled function is favored by selection.
Kimura’s math will apply to these situations, but since the S coefficient can be positive for damaged complexity (like a tape worm losing a digestive tract), there is no guarantee complexity will be automatically favored by selection.
I’ve tried to point out, the physical evidence suggest selection favors simplicity, not complexity — the problem is symbolized by the Peacock’s tail and why it made Darwin sick. Natural selection in terms of the way it really works vs. the way Darwin and Dawkins imagine it works, is more reductive than it is cumulative, and I include species extinction as the ultimate reduction.
Hil-ar-ious.
Not true, it can go extinct. Gould was wrong, I’m right. 🙂
When will your book be coming out?
When will your book be coming out?
I’m just going to put that here, next to this:
Heh.
I’m thinking I was wrong to compare Sal to the Time cube guy.
That guy was pretty clever.
I’m thinking Sal’s claim to be smarter than Gould is one of those cryptic statements that can be read as sarcasm or humor, but which reflects his actual beliefs.
So much the worse for Sal.
stcordova,
Your problem with using this quote is that this merely finds the likely distance you have to go back to find just one individual to whom we are all related. This is a long way from showing that this individual (and their partner) were the only humans on erets, nor the only ones to leave descendants.
From the same article: “The MRCA of everyone alive could have co-existed with a large human population, each of whom either has no living descendants or is an ancestor of only some of the people alive today. Therefore, the existence of an MRCA does not imply the existence of a population bottleneck, let alone a “first couple”.”
The evidence is against you. There is far too much genetic variation to account for descent from 2 individuals at that remove, given reasonable mutation rates. And it does not jibe with estimates of mitochondrial Eve/Y chromosome Adam (the coalescents of these non-recombining loci, which still leaves the coalescence of the rest of the genome unaccounted) at >60,000 years.
Now you’re just being a Poe to see who will bite right? I mean, that’s silly-wacky even for you.
For instance, where’s the evidence that ANY species has gone extinct due to simplification/genetic damage? And how could one even posit such given that we have BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of thriving ultra simple species still around? In addition, where’s the evidence of species regression into simplicity in the fossil record?
Where in the world do you come up with this stuff?
stcordova,
None at all, but then there is no particular need that it should be.
If you pick examples in which simplicity is favoured, your expectation will naturally appear supported. I’m not sure how much of a general study you have made or seen relating to the relative metric of ‘complexity’ or ‘simplicity’ as distributed between mutations that become common in the world at large.
Sexual selection, and the tail appears to me to be more complex than the alternative, so it doesn’t seem a great symbol for a wide-reaching general principle on either count.
Don’t you mean “Natural selection in terms of the way I imagine it works vs. the way Darwin and Dawkins imagine it works …”?
You would need to show that extinction was due to increasing simplicity, ‘engineering deterioration’ or some such. Not an easy task for an extinct species. Most recent extinctions appear to be caused by us screwing with habitats or more direct impact, and nothing to do with NS, positive or negative.
I’d like to see Sal go head to head with CharlieM.
Maybe we could have a Sal vs Charlie thread.
I vote ‘yay’ on that suggestion. I’ll even make the popcorn!
It is kind of interesting how creationists of varying stripes can quote-mine 50 year old ideas and draw opposite conclusions.
We could have a tag team thread.
In one corner we could have the genetic entropists: Sal and his allies.
In the other corner we could have the designed evolutionists. CharlieM and Frankie, et al.
We could have multiple corners. Gpuccio could represent the punctuated diddlers.
We could have multiple dimensions. OEC vs YEC. Front loading vs diddling.
Looks like a cube. We could call it the Bio-Cube.
petrushka,
Unfortunately, the various creationist factions don’t argue with each other. Wouldn’t want to shrink the Big Tent, after all. You’d need to run a man-in-the-middle attack on them. As a known evilutionist, post some of Sal’s stuff in response to a CharlieM-type at one of the creationist blogs, then respond to Sal here with whatever you get back. As long as they all think they’re attacking someone outside the tent you can keep it going.
I recommend heavy quote-mining.
to be fair, I think you are at least partially wrong about Sal. He does attack other ID positions.
Not usually face-to-face, but he does present his own position as incompatible with other ID positions. Occasionally face to face.
The issue isn’t genetic deterioration (because of poor copying of DNA) leading to extinction, it is genetic deterioration of function period.
Other things happen that finish off a species before its genes are so functionless they can’t reproduce.
But even in the case of extinction, in many cases that is the result of natural selection, not despite of it.
As far as evidence, when a species population is so small and on the brink, it may not even be noticed to exist, and when it is that weak, usually something else will finish it off, not its ability to not breed.
Examples?
Perhaps this is a new category of evidence: evidence-free evidence.
Fer instance? Could you design an experiment that demonstrates this in human timescales?
The nice thing about knowing you are on someone peoples ignore list is that you know you’ll get a better quality answer, on average, then if you were not 🙂
Fine. Where’s the evidence for this?
Fine. Where’s the evidence for species decline due to “genetic deterioration” prior to whatever extinction event pushes said species over the edge. Let’s use Hotshoe’s two examples: got any evidence that either the passenger pigeon or the western black rhino suffered from some “genetic deterioration” before man wiped them out?
How so?
Fine, but where’s the evidence that shows a decline due to genetics before the brink?
Take the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Assuming you attribute it’s decline to “genetic deterioration”, what evidence is there to compare the impact of genetic “damage” to…say…habitat loss, and in particular, breeding site loss, prior to its extinction*?
* Yeah…I know…the jury is still out on this one, but I don’t think anyone will argue that it’s passed the brink.
I provided at several papers already, do you want me to repeat myself? The used the term “reductive evolution”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_size
Therefore YEC!
The implication being, of course, that those papers contain evidence that shows a decline due to genetics before the brink.
Allan,
I withdraw the MCRA argument in light of your comment, the MCRA doesn’t support the point I was attempting to make. Thank you for pointing out my error and providing a skeptical and critical analysis of what I posted.
However, the Abraham Modal Haplotype does lend credence to what I was trying to show, and I must point out you didn’t refute that issue.
No I do not since showing that natural selection decreases complexity through genetic deterioration was the goal of the genetic deterioration argument.
Showing that natural selection eliminates species is another argument that isn’t the same as the genetic deterioration argument — it is the argument of “elimination of species by means natural selection”.
So there are a few issues:
1. genetic deterioration by insufficiently available purifying selection
2. genetic deterioration by natural selection when selection favors functionally damaged features over functional ones (like digestive tracts in tape worms). This might be termed “reductive selection” to contrast it with the hypothesized but not well demonstrated “cumulative selection”.
3. extinction of species (and hence elimination of complexity) by natural selection
The loss of complexity in the biosphere because of these issues seems so much greater than any gain of complexity witnessed in the biosphere by any supposed natural cumulative selection. Hence it seems the net natural direction of what actually happens because of selection and in the absence of sufficient purifying selection seems to be toward simplicity and reduction, not more complexity and accumulation (via cumulative selection).
This casts serious doubt on any insinuation that increase in complexity is the natural course of natural selection, hence the way Darwin and Dawkins describe the inevitable product of natural selection is anything but natural. They have represented what is imaginary as natural and real.
I’m an atheist with respect to the Blindwatchmaker. Formally speaking there could be another naturalistic explanation, but Blindwatchmaker I view as a myth based on first principles and actual field observations of how nature actually behaves.
For which of these issues do you plan to provide evidence? One or more well documented examples?
Sal: I can prove that bumblebees cannot possibly fly.
Skeptic: But Sal, you need only look to see them flying around.
Sal: And, since I showed this can’t be natural, we are witnessing a Divine miracle in action, which only proves what I’ve believed all along!
(For bumblebees, substitute all complex life forms, in their various millions.)
For starters I cited Lenski’s paper on the black queen hypothesis. The tape worm digestive tract is example of selection favoring functional loss. I’ve mentioned already for about the 3rd time.
“The tape worm digestive tract is example of selection favoring functional loss.” There, I’ve mentioned it for the 4th time.
“The tape worm digestive tract is example of selection favoring functional loss.” There, I’ve mentioned it for the 5th time.
“The tape worm digestive tract is example of selection favoring functional loss.” There, I’ve mentioned it for the 6th time.
…..
As far as natural selection eliminating species, even hotshoe_ on provided evidence we’re in what is called the sixth great extinction. Irrespective of how one interprets the fossil record, we’re seeing extinction now because in the struggle for existence humans are taking over environmental resources and killing off other species — bwahaha! Elimination and extinction of species by means of natural selection.
With respect to the insufficiency of purifying selection, it is predicted by interpreting Kimura’s equation. If loss has already occurred via Muller’s ratchet, it won’t be recovered. The Y-Chromosome is an example of loss due to lack of purifying selection. I provided a paper above on that.
So explain why are you suggesting I didn’t provide evidence when I did, several times.
Over what period of time did this happen?
I guess I’m not following this very well. Selection does not seem to be favoring loss of necessary function, nor deterioration of necessary function. Selection is supposed to deselect redundant structures or structures no longer required.
When a species loses unnecessary function in adapting to a new niche, this is hardly degeneration of the genome.
And if one species inadvertently harms or eliminates another species by modifying habitat, how can this be considered genetic deterioration of either species?
You seemed to be implying that, given time, species will gradually lose, I don’t know, vitality or whatever, due to genetic deterioration. But your examples are of species succeeding or failing on entirely unrelated grounds.
stcordova,
Not proven as a general principle. Kimura’s formulas are relevant here, though previously you seemed to be saying that was not what you were talking about.
I don’t think you can derive any robust principles applicable to organisms that don’t live inside others from dynamics in those that do. Relaxation of selection will rapidly lead to loss, especially if coupled to a cost of retention. Where selection is not relaxed, the ‘reductive’ principle does not apply.
I think that’s a slightly confusing usage of ‘natural selection’, and a very doubtful usage of ‘complexity’.
If humans indirectly cause a habitat to disappear – say, Arctic sea ice – and with it kill polar bears, it does not seem like NS to me. It’s more like an asteroid; the biological origin of the threat is irrelevant, and there is no differential reproduction involved in causal change of ‘allele’ frequencies (alleles here being entire human and polar bear genomes). To take another example: photosynthesisers increased in number, increasing atmospheric oxygen, and anaerobes decreased due to it. This was not NS in my book.
As to extinction being relevant to organismal complexity, I don’t get that at all.
The common thread of all this is that you are trying to derive general evolutionary principles from special, often very restricted, cases.
And as I and others have pointed out, loss of a function is not a “reduction” in anything. What evidence do you have that demonstrates that ANY species that has lost a function was somehow damaged or “less fit”? I even asked about specific species we know have lost functions, but I’ve not seen an answer. So I’ll ask again: whales lost the function of their hind limbs. Is this an example of “genome damage”? Are whales “less fit” and sliding towards extinction because of this loss of function (as compared to their predecessors?
I’ve just coined the term “excilience”, the opposite of consilience, to denote the way creationist and ID evidence harmonizes. Perhaps an OP would be fun.
Here’s the issue Sal: no one who studies evolution disputes or denies that species lose functionality; loss of function is a vital biological cost-saving measure and makes perfect sense within the NS framework. What you’ve yet to provide evidence for, however, is how “loss of function = “decrease in complexity” or even how it could be considered “deterioration”. That makes no sense and isn’t supported by any of the quotes or links you’ve provided.
So, what makes you think that loss of a function equates to loss of complexity? How are you measuring “complexity” and, in this context, its overall reduction?
As an example, I’ll ask a third time: cetaceans lost their hind limbs. Are they therefore less complex than their ancestors and heading towards extinction?
Sal suffers from the same Fundy delusion as Sanford. The belief that the genomes of all animals were created “perfect” 6000 years ago so that any change must be a degradation or loss. This is demonstrably false as evidenced by all the genomes we have sequenced of long dead animals like mammoths and even ancient humans. Just one more case of Morton’s Demon writ large.
The Black Queen hypothesis paper co-authored by lenski focused on endosymbionts. The Koonin paper went to great lengths to point out the phenomenon of reductive evolution is not restricted to endosymbionts but is substantially more widespread.
Additionally, not that people will want to give it much credence at TSZ, Michael Behe collected a painfully long list in a review paper published in a secular journal.
Coyne complains about the problem of generalizing results. I would counter then by complaining, then what lab results would Coyne prefer to generalize instead? At some point a scientific theory has to contend or be supported with direct empirical observation.
Here’s one such observation Sal. The “degrading” humans have increased our population from a few million to over 7.4 billion in just 2000 years. Our average life span has gone from 30 years to over 70. Of course most of that is due to our science and technology which makes it much easier to survive and live through things that were 100% fatal just a few centuries before.
Natural selection ensures the genome is in a place on the fitness landscape where it works good enough in its current environment. Well Sal, all that science and technology IS our current environment. Our genome isn’t degrading, it’s merely fitting our current environment.
Thank you for the skepticism and criticism. It’s fair game to object to my choice of words, such as the word “complexity”.
It would appear if I had chosen the word function, there would not be an objection to my claim of loss of function. So let’s use that phrase, “loss of function”.
If natural selection selects on average for loss of function rather than gain of function, then why should we expect selection to build organisms with more and more functions?
To go from a bacteria to a monarch butterfly entails adding many more functions, not the least of which are developmental mechanisms, probably the Eukaryotic archictecture (not well understood why Eukaryotic architecture necessary for multi cellularity, but that is a reasonable assumption), eyes, ears, magnetic sensing, magnetic GPS mapping, means of communicating magnetic maps to offspring, ability to go to chrysalis state, ability to fly, ability to walk, ability to digest different kinds of food in the Pupa state vs. the Winged state, etc. etc.
Dawkins illustrated his concept of selection adding more and more through a process of accumulation in the program WEASEL. Some call this cumulative selection.
I could just as well write a program called ANIHILATOR to demonstrate reductive selection and elimination of species vs. cumulative selection.
What ought to help settle which model is correct is lab and field observation.
One might legitimately object and say, “well this is what is happening in the present, it’s not relevant to the past.” To which I will say, then on what basis is Dawkins’ vision of cumulative selection as the primary mechanism of evolving large sets of functionality any where physically demonstrated except in his imagination? Imagination is fine, it may be true, but it shouldn’t be in the same category as direct observations and verified facts. One can accept Dawkins as right, but it would be on faith, not direct observation.
As I said, I’m an atheist with respect to Dawkins Blindwatchmaker. I think it is a myth of his own imagination, nothing that is actually real. There could be another naturalistic explanation (like multiverses, or who knows what else…), but I think it is better to be an atheist with respect to the Blindwatchmaker just like most are atheists with respect to square circles in Euclidean geometry.
I don’t think the issue is the use of the phrase, but rather the conclusions you are drawing from the studies. But whatever…
I’m not aware of any evidence to suggest that nature selects for loss of function more often than gain of function. My guess would be that the selection would go both directions equally, but I’ll defer to whatever research actually shows. The point is though, I’ve not seen any research supporting your premise.
I think your over extending the differentiation of functionality here. While I won’t dispute that monarchs have some more functionality than bacteria, I don’t think it’s as much as you seem to think it is. Bacteria, particularly modern bacteria, have many functional parts. They may be small and in some cases short time-frame actions, but they are not insignificant.
Be that as it may, I think your argument, in principle, if fine. If you can show that functionality loss exceeds functionality gain, I think science would have to question the current perspective on evolutionary theory. Personally, based on what I’ve worked on, I don’t think there’s an issue, but again, I have not seen research either way.
Quite so. I have to ask though, if you haven’t seen any lab or field observation on this, on what are you basing your argument?
I agree with your retort here, Sal, but I don’t think anyone is making the counter-argument above. Let me know if you find an example of someone doing that though.
Fair enough I suppose. From my perspective though, it seems the cumulative evidence for a blind watchmaker is just a little too strong.
I’ll have to rethink the way I conceptualized this part of my argument. Thank you for your criticism, I think it is a valid objection that I will force me to rework the weaknesses in what I said here. Thank you.
I wish to thank hotshoe_ for the discussion of the Sixth great extinction. I should have been quicker in acknowledging that contribution to the discussion.
A belated thank you, hotshoe_.
While you are rethinking, Sal, give some thought to the central weakness of “Darwin’s Doubt.
The Cambrian and beyond is not a history of new proteins. It is a history of regulatory mutations. Primarily.
FWIW, I don’t even own the book.
At this stage in my life much of my ID views are personal and from obscure sources (not the ID celebrities, except maybe Behe). I’ve rejected:
1. 2nd law of thermodynamics as evidence of ID
2. CSI v2 by Dembski as too hard too cumbersome and confusing to use
3. ID should be promoted as science ( I don’t think ID should be promoted as science)
there a long list of other stuff.
Right now, I’m trying to give priority in learning to fundamental science, not ID per se — bioinformatics, chemistry, cellular biology, etc. I keep kicking myself because I have an Organic Chem book by Klein sitting on the shelf. My physics and math stuff is starting to slide, and I need to keep practicing it. I tutored a college biology student recently in physics, and I could feel the cob webs starting to grow upstairs — not good.
I’ve probably have read more of Felsenstein and Kimura than I have of Meyer. I like Meyer, nothing personal against him.
I’m debating whether I should read Joe Felsenstein’s book on phylogeny. Though I don’t believe in macroevolutionary phylogenies, because I’m curious about things like the Cohen and Abraham Modal Haplotype, I might read Joe’s book because of that. Joe’s work on haplotypes was apparently central to those creationist-friendly haplotype investigations.
Why don’t you believe in macroevolutionary phylogenies? What makes you think those haplotype investigations are creationist-friendly?
Taxonomically Restricted Features (TRFs).
We look at say the 16S Ribosomal RNA or Cytocrhome-C (or whatever “conserved” gene is in vogue) and create a “phylogeny” that supposedly shows that all Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes have a common ancestor, that there exists a UCA (Universal Common Ancestor).
But then we have taxonomically restricted features. Eukaryotes have (Wiki):
At the molecular level eukaryotes have spiceosomes, sliceosomal introns, histones, etc. These aren’t minor modifications. They are TRFs.
We can organize forms hierarchically like the creationist Linnaeus did without having to use phylogenetic methods but instead base the hierarchy on TRFs.
How does one account for a TRF in a phylogeny except to say, “POOF”? Sure we can assume phylogeny and common descent, but it looks to me for common descent to work, it needs a few POOFs of TRFs along the way.
The literature has used the term “taxonomically restricted genes” (TRG), I prefer to use the term feature. There is some use of the word Orphan gene, and orphan genes are supposedly a subset of TRGs.
Seriously, I look at the transformation from prokaryote to eukaryote, and though not as big as the step from non-life to life, it still looks daunting. I personally don’t find it believable the transformation of prokaryotic forms to eukaryotic forms in small Darwinian steps is at all believable. Even Michael Lynch believes selection may have little to do with may eukaryotic features.
Ventner and Woese don’t think a lot of the features shared between the major domains: Bacteria (prokaryote), Archaea (prokaryote), Eukaryotes are necessarily the result of common descent. Woese thinks HGT is involved, Venter has said he thinks there is too much difference in some cases to invoke common descent.
To my mind, the evidence is that a population of bacteria naturally tends to stay a population a bacteria. I would never expect a bacteria to naturally have descendants like a giraffe, a bird, a monarch butterfly or Natalie Portman.
If UCA were true, something un-natural would have to happen to get a prokaryote to become a eukaryote. I find the Orchard model (many trees) vs. Darwin’s Tree of Life as being able to generate more accurate phylogenies, one just has to accept there is no universal tree, and that many of the similarities are just common designs that are part of special creation.
NOTES:
At some points the gaps are a bit too large.
Sure a 1,2,…..20% difference may not seem superficially large and therefore unbridgeable. But a 1% gap may be unbridgeable if it is not mechanically feasible to bridge it.
In the case of major TRFs (like spliceosomal introns, vertebrate livers), the gap is 100% !
I suppose if one were to force me into an evolutionary camp, I’d go with the Transformed Cladists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformed_cladistics
PS
Joe mentioned this play on his website. I don’t completely understand it, but I know it has some relevance to Cladistics and Hennig.
http://labs.eeb.utoronto.ca/murphy/rommy_II.html
So if a transformed cladist were to watch a baseball game, would he be prohibited from inferring that baseball has rules, or only disallowed to figure out what those rules could be?
Flint, your comment is way out in left field. 🙂
I’d say a triple, if not a home run.
Not incompatible with a hit to left field.
Sounded to me like you favored the practice of making no attempt to derive underlying causes from an observed pattern, on the grounds that these derivations might be incorrect. I’m not surprised that refusing to draw conclusions from observations has been largely discarded, nor that you find it attractive.
😉