A lot has been argued about Irreducible Complexity. Here is a proposed solution to the conundrum.
- Darwin’s call to challengers is absurd. In The Origin of Species (1859), he wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.” This is NOT how science works! You do not get to formulate whatever fantastic theory you please that then stands until someone disproves it in the exact manner you specify. Instead, it is your duty to prove your claims. This case shows that, when the foregone conclusions fit the religious views of its proponents, the scientific rigor is often cast aside.
- Ignorance cuts both ways. Irreducible Complexity was called the “argument from personal incredulity” or “argument from ignorance”. This is indeed correct. And because of this, Irreducible Complexity is flawed… as are all arguments for “evolution”… given an argument from ignorance asserts that “a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false [“evolution”] or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true [irreducible complexity]”. Evolutionists (Darwin’s quote in particular) err by claiming the unknown supports “evolution”. We certainly do not know the origin of the eye, much less have seen any eye “evolve”. Yet a just-so story of eye “evolution” has been put together by imaginarily linking disparate optical sensors designs. Therefore, if Irreducible Complexity is a bad argument, so is “evolution” itself.
- Michael Behe engages in a game rigged against him. There are many and much better ways to show “evolution” impossible. Irreducible complexity is an argument against imagination. And imagination always wins because it is infinite. But the game is further rigged. When Michael Behe used the mousetrap as an illustrative example of this concept, Kenneth R. Miller challenged him by observing he can use the mousetrap components to make a spitball launcher (catapult), a tie clip, key chain, clipboard, tooth pick. Yet, by “nonfunctional”, Behe does not mean that the precursor cannot serve any function – a mousetrap missing its spring can still act as a paperweight. It just cannot serve the specific function (catching mice) by means of the same mechanism (a spring-loaded hammer slamming down upon the mouse). A function is obviously not the same as a specific
- Asymmetry improves Behe’s argument. Degradation to new function is much easier done than buildup to new function. If you have an optimized mousetrap and need an ad-hoc catapult / tie clip / key chain / clipboard / tooth pick, all you need is to remove some parts. That’s almost instantaneous and effortlessly. But if you have an optimized catapult / tie clip / key chain / clipboard / tooth pick, you need a lot of engineering to make an ad-hoc mouse trap out of those. Even if you have them all at once which is impossible in real life. Why optimized? Because that’s what “natural selection” creates… presumably. This doesn’t prove Irreducible Complexity, however. Because, as shown, the argument is flawed and the game is rigged.
- The impossible changeover further improves Behe’s argument. The “evolution” model demands continuous improvement every generation and a slow, multigenerational incremental process. Or as Darwin put it: “numerous, successive, slight modifications “. However, this cannot be done when changing function as the old function must degrade well before the new function is developed. Manufacturing changeover works because it is done within a fraction of a generation. Still, the process is interrupted and the system goes through a loss of function during the changeover. Generally, an inventory is built up in anticipation while extra resources are thrown in long before and after the actual changeover to limit the impact. If extra resources were not available, or an inventory buildup were not possible, or organizational capability were lost in a long process (who would stick around for decades even paid for idleness?), then the enterprise would not survive (extinction event in biology). The mousetrap example fits perfectly. Once it starts to be dismantled and before the catapult / tie clip / key chain / clipboard / tooth pick becomes functional, for a while, the system has no function whatsoever. This time would actually be multigenerational in real life biologic systems that, being functionless, would go extinct and thus never get to the other side (the new function). Now take the bacterial flagellar motor, and the bacterial injectisome. If either one “evolved” into the other, at some point one function would be lost before the other would become available, thus leaving the bacteria without either function, and thus at a competitive disadvantage to the original. The “innovator” would go extinct before having a chance to compete. And having both systems functional at the same time before renouncing the old one wouldn’t work because real life resources are limited as opposed to infinite when imagined. And how would – whichever came first – have happened from scratch is, once again, left to imagination.
- Are “phlogiston” and “ether” teaching us anything? Let’s compare and contrast. “Phlogiston” and “ether” were bad theories like “evolution” that were eventually abandoned. Which is exactly what will happen to “evolution” too. They were disproved by whatever means possible, not by a prescribed method proposed by their proponents as Darwin’s. They were tested against the claims and implication of those theories and were found lacking. In the case of ether, by their own supporters, Michelson and Morley. In the same manner, we can test the positive claims of “evolution” from “gradualism” to “fitness”, “divergence of character”, “natural selection”, etc. And all fail. So there is no need to follow Darwin’s guidance on how to disprove his theory especially when febrile imagination is the only support offered in a rigged game.
Links:
https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/MillerID-Collapse.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
https://www.gotquestions.org/irreducible-complexity.html
Don’t quit your day job.
OMagain,
Do you realize “directed evolution” is 100% Intelligent Design (in this case, farming to be more precise and prosaic) and 0% “evolution”?
Also, you’re forgetful? It has been discussed: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/chemistry-nobel-for-directed-evolution-2018/
Let’s say some evil genius devises a protocol for selecting certain individuals in a breeding program, and rejecting those lacking the desired characteristic. This is surely Intelligent Design, right?
But let’s say our evil genius delegates the actual selecting to some moron who follows directions but has no idea why. Is that still Intelligent Design?
Next, let’s say the moron doesn’t get it right, and starts selecting for something else by mistake. Still Intelligent Design? And let’s say the moron dies, but the organisms continue to select themselves according to some pattern. Is this still Intelligent Design?
In other words, how much intelligence must be removed from the exact same process before it’s no longer intelligent?
To put it another way, evolution might be the Intelligent Designer’s most powerful tool to achieve Its goals.
Flint,
Speaking for God, I can assure you that He is mightily ticked off that so many people can’t see the efficacy of what He considers to be one of His Best Ideas.
Allan Miller,
He tells me He’s pretty chuffed about gravity too.
Flint,
Allan Miller,
DNA_Jock,
You blasphemers!!!! Do you really think that The Intelligent Designer would just give it a start and then leave it to Newton and Darwin??!!
No!!!! The Intelligent Designer has to do everything Herself, with Her Own Divine Fingers, because Nonlin commanded it so!!!!
No
Why do you address Flint? The offending comment came from Nonlin:
If memory serves, this point of view is shared quite broadly among ID proponents. I believe gpuccio made a similar point about the Keefe & Szostak and Hayashi studies.
No, it didn’t at all. Nonlin didn’t say selective breeding was directed evolution-because what is providing the variation? Not the selection. Evolutionists always want to conflate these two as if they are the same thing. Its a constant struggle to get them to keep the two concepts separate.
Flint said it, not nonlin.
Sure, it’s evolutionists that want to conflate the random mutation and the directional selection part.
Anyway, in the case of Nonlin it is quite trivial to demonstrate that you are wrong. He repeatedly has claimed selection to be impossible without intelligent guidance. From his magnus opus:
To be fair, Nonlin claims a lot of things, many of which are contradicting each other. But I am pretty sure that many IDists are in the habit of claiming artificial selection and experimental evolution as instances of intelligent design.
Corneel,
It’s but one more example of Nonlin’s problems with metaphors. If the metaphor doesn’t fit perfectly then the phenomena doesn’t happen. Here the metaphor being “selection” in “natural selection”. You know, Nonlin asks “who’s selecting? Haha!” When told it’s a metaphor/simile/analogy, Nonlin laughs hysterically and triumphantly, as if that demolished evolutionary theory, rather than displayed Nonlin’s incompetence in dealing with concepts and their referents.
Let me put it this way: AI is not Intelligence. And it will never be. It is a “hammer” in the hands of its creators.
Don’t. You’re not qualified.
Darwin doesn’t belong next to Newton.
Such as…?
Entropy,
Little monkey is going nuts again. Quick, someone toss him the peanut butter.
And let me put it this way, what value do you expect others to put on your opinions? Let me suggest not much (I’m being kind) as your opinions are unsupported. Engage, Nonlin! Otherwise you can just as well address the public from your own blog.
Nonlin.org,
I suggest that you’re mentally immature, and you go into temper tantrums.
🤣
But temper-tantrum-prone Nonlin is qualified! (What does that say about Nonlin’s god?)
🤣
It’s a question of authority. Remove a brick from that wall, let in some light, look around at reality, begin to wonder… It’s the slippery slope, the cliff edge, the end of the comfort blanket. Never open that box!
Mixing metaphors – it’s what language is for!
Nonlin.org,
Ah, an argument from authority! That’s funny.
Don’t worry, your name is going on the list. The biggest crime of all – punishable by an eternity of teeth-gnashing, wailing, etc – is not believing. You’ll believe your ass off by the time we’ve finished with you, right, God?
That’s not just Nonlin. There seems to be a lot of confusion about the distinction between creating a selection regime, actually selecting breeding individuals and tailoring genomes to create some predetermined phenotype.
But it is evolutionists that are conflating stuff, of course.
Let me put it this way: It happens quite a lot.
You have more pressing matters to attend to, Nonlin. You haven’t engaged with Flint’s question yet. You haven’t really engaged with anyone at all, for that matter.
I am ALWAYS presenting evidence, not “opinions”. Only what I can back up with evidence. Which is ironic because you see as facts that which is the purest mythology presented by Darwin&Co. But – statistical fact – I will not cure your blindness.
Baseless too?
You don’t know how arguments from authority work?!? Hint: this is not it.
Interesting. Explain.
You provide no answer. Instead, you link to a keyword search?!? Wow!
Flint got an answer. Maybe not an elaborated one. He’s free to ask for clarifications. You’re free to ask for clarifications too. What’s not clear to you?
Good grief!
Selective breeding has been something humans have been doing for millennia (and it’s not exclusive to humans) by choosing individuals with desired traits and breeding from them.
Genetic engineering is deleting, modifying or adding genes directly. This is mainly involved micro-organisms and plants to date, with higher organisms only involving cell cultures.
What is not yet happening is design of genes from scratch. We do not yet have the tools to predict the phenotypic effect of a novel sequence without synthesizing it and trying it.
There’s a lot of transgenic mice too.
I don’t think there’s a bright line distinction: the more we learn about structure-function relationships, the more ‘adventurous’ our designs can become. Today, we are pretty comfortable with our ability to predict the effect of linking domain X to domain Y. We can also predict the effect of many substitutions within, say, a DNA recognition motif.
You are correct that today this is still mix-and-match of things we already know work. But even when our knowledge is far advanced beyond today’s ignorance, we wouldn’t really be designing genes “from scratch”. We’d be using all the knowledge gained about structure-function to make proteins ‘to order’. And we’d probably still be a little bit relieved when our design functions as intended…
DNA_Jock,
Being out of the game (not ever in it, rather) for many years, I’m not sure what you are referring to here. More details or a link would be greatly appreciated.
What I meant about the current limits of genetic engineering is that I don’t believe we are capable of taking a phenotypic trait, deciding to modify or “improve” it and then designing (in the sense of writing down a sequence to code for the necessary proteins and regulators) a genotype to bring about that phenotype change. Maybe the breakthrough is on the horizon.
Oh, I misunderstood! Yes, if we are talking about achieving some requested phenotypic goal, then we are a long, long way away from that. For most requests. For such a made-to-order facility to be generally applicable would require a near *complete* understanding of the organism in question.
For my comment re “domain X + domain Y”, I was thinking of various chimeric protein systems that are often used in research (e.g. yeast two-hybrid system) or hooking a trafficking signal to another protein, but a more topical example would be the chimeric antigen receptors, which are causing much excitement as cancer therapies. Bi-specific antibodies would qualify technically, but that would be cheating on my part…
True, but I also distinguished between setting up a selection regime and manually selecting breeding individuals. What you are describing is what happens in for example choosing aesthetically pleasing colour variants in pets. But a lot of the changes in domesticated plants and animals have been introduced unwittingly by exposing populations to a distinct environment, e.g. cold adaptation in Icelandic horses. This is also what happens in experimental evolution, such as Lenski’s long-term evolution experiment. In those cases, the actual selecting is not performed by the breeder / researcher.
It’s not clear to me what your “answer” has to do with Flint’s question. Why on earth did you bring up AI?
Corneel,
I was making a distinction between selecting phenotypes (animal and plant breeding) and working with genotypes (genetic engineering).
Jack SzostakRichard Lenski* himself said he regarded the (excellent and admirable) LTEE as an experiment in natural selection as flasks are randomly sampled, no bias from the experimenter.*ETA Oops. Mixing my scientists.
Indeed. The distinction between natural and artificial selection is a bit, well, artificial.
I look on it as a pedagogical device, no more.
For completeness’s sake, in between selecting phenotypes (breeding, nature) and editing genotypes (genetic engineering) there is selecting genotypes (pre-implantation diagnosis).
The problem is a combination of illiteracy and eisegesis.
Bullshit. For a clear example, your “abiogenesis is decay-going-backwards” is an indefensible claim. All you have offered is your angry yelling that it is so, no matter how many times we show you that no single scientist has designed any experiments related to abiogenesis as a reverse-decay setup. Maybe you regard your mere claims as “evidence”, but then you should not be surprised that we reject them, since our definition doesn’t contemplate the angry claims of an illiterate buffoon like yourself as evidence. You’re alone on that one.
Talk about irony. Someone who believes in a magical being in the sky calling scientific understanding “mythology.” You shot yourself in the foot again Nonlin.
Double irony dose! We cannot cure your blindness for as long as you remain mentally childish. If you truly wanted to “cure” our “blindness,” you’d be able to clarify and reason with us. All you’re able to do is insist that you’re right by the magical power of your word, no matter how obviously wrong you are shown to be. You just cannot have a conversation Nonlin. You don’t even try. How do you expect to convince anybody if all you have is angry gestures, childish insults, and tantrums?
You’re not here to try and convince anybody, you’re trying to bully us into submission. However, besides being grown ups, at least I, don’t have the slightest respect for you, and your tantrums might be feared by your mother, but not by me. Cry and kick and yell as much as you want. It just won’t work.
That’s peachy. Both of those are Intelligent Designs and neither is “evolution”, much less “directed evolution”. So where’s the confusion? Seems like Corneel is the one confused for some reason.
Also, while anyone can more or less do breeding, genetic engineering is tough. So an even better example of Intelligent Design.
No breakthrough. There is not a one-to-one match of DNA to phenotype. Corneel for instance admitted this much when he abandoned his search for the wing gene.
I like how you point out that Lenski (Farmer John) only did some breeding and in fact there was never any “evolution” there.
Good question.
Flint: In other words, how much intelligence must be removed from the exact same process before it’s no longer intelligent?
Nonlin: Let me put it this way: AI is not Intelligence. And it will never be. It is a “hammer” in the hands of its creators.
The point is that you can remove the intelligence as much as you want and the process still remains intelligent. Same with AI. No matter how sophisticated it becomes, it is never independent intelligence, but the intelligence of its creator. See? You ask, I answer. Cool?
The whole freaking experiment is a giant setup. DESIGNED by Lenski. Szostak is going cuckoo.
If there was any “natural selection” as such. There isn’t. Discussed.
Translation: Claimed
Well, sure. No escaping the fact it is an ongoing experiment in natural selection.
Where’s Gregory when we need him? It’s all about the capitalization.
Because all you need is to declare it so?!? And no “evolution” there.
Meanwhile, even if his IQ is not great, Lenski, aka Farmer John, is at work designing and selecting.
Yes, thank you.
Now, please consider the final sentence of Flint’s comment:
When the show can run by itself, without intervention of the Intelligent Designer, then there is no incompatibility between evolution and what you call “Intelligent Design”. That would constitute what is known as theistic evolution.
It seems that phoodoo stopped caring about people conflating distinct concepts.
Were the aerobic citrate-utilizing bacteria designed by Richard Lenski? Were the mutations that enabled this phenotype designed by Richard Lenski? Did breeders of the past design the genomes of their stocks?
It’s all yours. Because you fail to distinguish between designing organisms and modifying a breeding environment.
If his IQ is not great, and as a published scientist that is a recognised name in the field that must mean you, who have never published and who is hiding their real name must therefore logically have a lower IQ then the low IQ of Lenski.
Otherwise, if you were in fact smarter then he, you’d be the one who is published and well known and he’d be arguing on a blog.
Apologies to readers, Richard Lenski, and Jack Szostak for mixing them up.
Apologies. I have edited my comment. I should have said Lenski. Yes Lenski designed the experiment. And he designed carefully to ensure there was unbiased sampling of populations. There’s no artificial selection here.
Right right. It’s all the same thing in fact. That’s why I said the gassing of Jews was natural selection, right? That phenotype ( I mean am ethnicity with genetic components of course) was less fit in its niche. The niche being World Wars we know.
It’s all about the niche. That’s all fitness is.
You’re finally getting it! 😉
Enter genetic algorithms and computer models of evolution. Not that they are actually intelligently designed, mind you.
Not World Wars. Gas Chambers. Specifically, gas chambers where Jews far outnumbered Nazis. Not a good analogy at all.
Initially the Jew’s probably outnumbered the guards at the prison camps. But their numbers were in swift decline. You see, it’s not the actual numbers that matter for fitness, it’s the expected value! This is what a lot of people get wrong about fitness. It’s not data, it’s expectation. In Germany the expected value for Jew’s was zero ( well perhaps not zero, if there were some Jew’s who could make counterfeit money or perhaps Hitler, who apparently had ‘jewnish’ in his genome, the expected value could be slightly higher, but close enough to zero).
Thus the fitness of Jews in that niche, very very unfit.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/04/us-is-deeply-disturbed-by-reports-of-systematic-in-chinas-uighurxinjiang-camps
It’s all happening over again and this time you are a supporter. You are one of the guards at the concentration camps.
The world is waking up. People like you will be on trial eventually. i.e collaborators.
Yawn. Don’t you ever get bored?