A thread for ID proponents to explain their alternative theory for biological phenomena.
Allan Miller has written an article on sex, proposing an evolutionary explanation for why almost all Eukaryota indulge in sex. In response to comments from evolution skeptics questioning his explanation, he challenges them:
OK, you ID types, what’s the Design explanation for sex? You need to explain why all eukaryotes have genes that are involved in meiosis, though some never actually perform meiosis, and in some, the genes are ‘broken’. And you need to explain the taxonomic distribution of asexuality – absent in mammals and birds, but increasingly found as one descends your imagined scala naturae – though intermittent sex remains the norm, even in single celled organisms.
Why? What purpose does it serve that is common to single celled protists and our favourite organism, the chimp? Why wasn’t everything designed to just reproduce asexually?
In response, commenter phoodoo writes:
Why are there legs? Wouldn’t it be better if we just moved like water? Why ten fingers instead of thirty? Why skin? Evolution doesn’t answer these questions any better or worse than ID.
Now, for evolution to have a better or worse explanation than ID, there must be an explanation for sex according to the theory of “Intelligent Design”.
I don’t know of any Intelligent Design theory that attempts to explain biological observations such as sexual reproduction. So I invite those who do know of such a theory to correct my ignorance.
How does the theory of Intelligent Design explain sex?
PS: please feel free to use this thread as a peanut gallery WRT Allan’s article.
The chapter gives an evolutionary explanation for sexual selection and dimorphism. Not really the same subject as Allan’s piece on why sex.
Not in that chapter.
😅
There is always hope to explain evolution in real time, such as evolutionary pressures for oral or anal sex practices…
1. Could these evolutionary pressures lead to the development of reproductive organs in the mouth or rectum?
2. Or, could these evolutionary pressures lead to asexual reproduction?
Could the experts in population genetics crunch the numbers and let us know what evolutionary predictions would be?
And there are “camps” within ID. Is there any chance at all that folks here will stop treating ID as if it’s a monolithic unity of belief about diverse topics?
In the book Why Evolution is True by author Jerry Coyne, in the chapter How Sex Drives Evolution there is a section with the heading Why Sex? in which he specifically discusses .”the cost of sex” in terms of a gene for parthenogenesis and a gene for sexual reproduction.
So perhaps a lay person who reads popular science books could be forgiven when such an esteemed evolution evangelist such as Jerry Coyne writes using such false and misleading terms.
It’s on page 155 Alan, in the paperback. Not sure how you missed it. I honestly hope it was just an oversight on your part and not deliberate.
Perhaps if there is no “gene for sexual reproduction” there is also no “cost of sex” in search of an explanation.
No, because the evolutionist camp is huge while the ID camp is tiny. Even when claiming to have a big tent, the ID cult still only attracts the cult-minded in one particular corner of the world.
If you know what the purpose of life is, don’t you owe it to all us ignorant evolutionists to TELL US WHAT IT IS?
Jerry Coyne is speaking about a hypothetical situation to make a point about the evolution of sex, he’s not saying there really IS just one gene for sex.
He’s literally saying: “Suppose that there was a gene in humans whose normal form led to sexual reproduction, but whose mutant form led a human female to reproduce parthenogenetically”.
He then goes on to detail what would follow should this be the case, in order to illustrate a point, not to declare or even suggest that sex owes to just one gene.
Some times the lay reader is required to be able to think and consider a thought experiment without becoming distracted about the particular details thought up to illustrate the point.
Rumraket, you seem to have missed the point, perhaps because it was two-fold.
1. Coyne propagates the myth that there are “genes for” traits.
2. If there is no “gene for parthenogenesis” and no “gene for sexual reproduction” then his entire point regarding the cost of sex is just so much meaningless blather. There is a “cost of sex” just because of the way he posed the problem.
I have no idea why you would think that I was arguing that Coyne actually believes such genes exist. Tell me though that his argument doesn’t rest on their theoretical existence. Oh, never mind, you’ve already admitted that.
That’s not a myth, there ARE genes for traits.
The myth is that there is one gene for a complex trait. Like one gene for making hair, for example. And that it contributes to nothing else but making hair. It is that overly simplistic thinking that is the myth, not that traits are due to genes.
And no, Coyne isn’t propagating it by making a simple hypothetical to illustrate a point about the two-fold cost of sex. Whether sex owes to one or multiple genes the point would remain, it is just easier to consider the hypothetical case of one for illustrative purposes.
phoodoo seems to think, if thinking is the appropriate word, that if a single gene has effects on more than one trait, every mutattion will have an effect in all of those traits.
Then phodoo also seems to think, if thinking is the appropriate word, that if several genes have effects in one trait, the all of them have to get mutations before there’s any beneficial variation in the trait.
It’s a nothing-or-all, all-or-nothing, view.
It is not simply evolutionists who push that viewpoint. When phoodoo says that I don’t understand ID, it certainly comes across as a critique of my inability to understand a monolithic school of thought, rather than my inability to keep up with the many and varied beliefs of its adherents.
Mung,
That certainly might come across as a commission of the fallacy. There are other implications there regarding misapplied gene-level thinking, which, as I explain in my Torley-length OP, promotes a false expectation regarding the evolution of secondary asexuality (ie, asexuals with sexual ancestors).
However … it is theoretically possible for a single locus to control the sex/asex switch in an ancestrally sexual species. If in ‘asex’ mode, then it really is a ‘gene for asexuality’. But while not in ‘asex’ mode, that doesn’t make it a ‘gene for sex’.
There is no “evolving”, remember? It’s a mechanism for keeping populations homogeneous.
Actually. “pathetic level of bullshit”.
WTF did you read and didn’t understand?!? A better mechanism for the complex organisms, and a basic one for the less complex ones? What is the difficulty you’re facing in understanding something as basic as this? WTF?!?
What’s this incoherent nonsense?
Every gene has exactly one function.
That function is to do whatever it is that the gene does.
That the way we divide up into functions is different from the way the gene does it — how can that possibly be of any importance?
Yes there is, and your brainless assertions otherwise have failed to establish your false conclusion.
The Ya Boo Sucks gambit. Wounded, I am.
Excitable little chap, aren’t you? You’re saying that sex is a mechanism to keep populations ‘homogeneous’. Whereas greater homogeneity is in fact observed among clonal (clue’s in the name) populations. ‘Clonal’ being a synonym of ‘asexual’, here.
Let’s think of somebody whose job is arranging flowers. So he places a flower (or a vase of flowers) at one place. And he looks at the overall effect. Then he tries another place, and looks at the overall effect. Finally, he selects which one he thinks will work best.
Has he built before selecting? Or was his selecting part of his planning on how to build?
Are you nuts? This whole topic is “intelligent design explains sex? That is the presumption. WTF is wrong with you?!?
You’re wrong. Asexual individuals would go into myriad different directions without HGT. Which is not as good for homogeneity than sexual mixing. Think about it. When does sexual reproduction go wrong? When they inbreed like the Pharaohs or the Hapsburgs. Which is like what? It’s like clonal reproduction.
So clonal reproduction is like inbreeding, but leads to greater variety than outcrossing? You might like to consider which way your wagon is headed, there.
Every flower has exactly one function. That function is to do whatever it is that the flower does.
It predicts you will endlessly avoid the topic of the post.
Are you a drooling idiot? The question is rhetorical.
That is the question, and it appears the answer is no because no such explanation has been offered.
I am able to see right through all your nonsensical assertions, that’s what’s “wrong” with me.
So you believe life is purposeless? Interesting? Are you against laws that make murder a crime?
phoodoo,
Instead of avoiding the question, why not answer it?
Fair Witness:
keiths,
Well, first I need to know if we agree or disagree right?
So how about you, is life purposeless or not purposeless? I have already given my opinion, its not purposeless. So what about you?
I am not sure. I think there MAY be a purpose to life, but apparently only YOU know what it is for sure, so I need you to tell me and set me on the right track.
Would you leave a person teetering on the precipice, when you could tell them something that could save them?
Fair Witness,
Well, let’s suss it out, why do you think there MAY be a purpose?
Because other people seem to think so, and I have an open mind.
Fair Witness,
Are those other people theists or non-theists?
Both. Some are theists, some are not.
Fair Witness,
I can’t answer for the atheists. Maybe Keiths can help us.
I would only expect you to answer for YOU.
Sorry. Thought you were talking to me.
phoodoo,
No. To answer the question you only need to answer the question.
The only purpose I see is the one we make for ourselves through our desires and intentions.
The idea of a purpose for something is just that, an idea in your head about something. You are thinking something, an object, a process, an entity, is for something else, in the sense that you or someone intends for that object, entity, or process, to achieve some goal.
Take a screwdriver that someone made. Does it have a purpose? Yes, in the mind of the one who made it. It is not somehow part of the screwdriver.
In that sense, all there needs to be for human life to have a purpose, is for a human to have intentions, to have some desires or goals they want to achieve.
But you seem to be saying there is another higher, or truer purpose but what we make for ourselves. If so, what is that, how do you know that, and what is it that makes it our “true” purpose?
Nice dodge, coward.
The summary seems to be that phoodoo knows there’s a purpose for life, can explain why there’s a purpose for life, but doesn’t know what that purpose is.
The purpose of life, is life.
Or the Hokey Pokey
“ You put your head in
You put your head out
Put your head in
And bang it all about
Do the hokey pokey
And turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about”
Faith
Faith in God? And do you think that you are assigned this purpose by God?
How do you know that is the purpose of life, and what is it that makes that be the purpose of life?
“Faith” is the answer people give when they don’t have a good answer.
Of course, unless that includes Allan Miller with his new evolutionary mechanism of bathing and nourishing leading to the evolution of sex…😉
The purpose of life without hope, or faith, is actually waiting for death…😒
There is actually no purpose in anything we do, travel or learn anything, unless we can preserve it…
If the supply of a commodity becomes endless, it quickly becomes worthless.
Pardon?!
You would like me to explain the topic of the original post by Allan Miller?
Just why would I do that?
Allan Miller has already admitted it was a loaded question….
What would you like to do exactly?
Try to persuade Allan Miller to change his mind?
Oh, boy! I had no idea there are losers like you at TSZ…
Congrats! 😉
Oh, OK then, purple.
Because ANY answer other than faith must be a good answer.
Of course, I am playing silly Keith’s logic.
No one is actually claiming Keith’s logic is good logic. Are they?
Go on, where does it say that? You haven’t followed it, have you?