I thought about including this in my previous thread, but it has grown so large that I suspect it would be lost in the abyss. If Skeptical Zone readers are interested I’ll write a series of these posts, in which I’ll develop a number of themes concerning why I abandoned evolutionary orthodoxy and became convinced that an inference to design is most reasonable.
As most of you know, I am a classical musician. All great musical compositions have a theme, and the theme of this site is “think it possible that you may be mistaken.” With that theme in mind, might I suggest some skepticism concerning probabilities?
One doesn’t need precise numbers to recognize when proposed probabilities are way of whack. When I was growing up and learning mathematics my dad (a professor of chemical physics) admonished me to always check my calculations to see if they made sense on the surface (in my engineering department we call this “using the beverage out the nose” test). If I punch 87 x 53 into my calculator and get 46,481 I immediately know something is wrong (in this case I hit the 7 key twice by accident) even if I don’t know exactly what is wrong, because the result should be somewhere in the hundreds, not thousands. I don’t need to know exactly what the problem is in order to recognize that the result makes no sense.
I apply this logic to probabilities concerning evolutionary theory. We have some good empirical evidence that it took about 10^20 reproductive events for malaria to evolve chloroquine resistance. It could be that Lucy turned into Lizzie in 3.2 million years by stochastic Darwinian mechanisms filtered by natural selection, but I apply the beverage-out-the-nose test concerning the probabilities. Even given the most generous assumptions (a few hundred thousand generations with a few million individuals in each generation) the probabilistic Lucy–to-Lizzie resources don’t pass the smell test, in my view.
So, I ask Skeptical Zone readers: Is my skepticism unwarranted, and if so, why?
That’s why nobody is suspicious of any cheating if a player gets a royal flush 10 times in a row – any hand is equally unlikely, and any sequence of hands is equally unlikely. Right?
Yes, but that doesn’t make an appeal to virtually infinite chance a sound scientific explanation for anything in particular.
William J. Murray,
There is an entire thread dedicated to Abel’s article. At your request. Feel free to drop by.
Quite right.
Now if creationists and ID proponents would stop their barrage of false accusation that science does make such appeals, then maybe we could begin to have honest discussion.
William J Murray,
If we were playing euchre and you got dealt 10 royal flushes in a row that were off-suit, I would laugh at you.
I would also not accuse you of cheating.
When evolutionary theorists assert that non-ID processes are categorically up to the task of generating what they are claimed to have generated (which Darwin and many following him did), it is up to them to demonstrate them so capable. Unless they have a model by which they can demonstrate their non-ID processes categorically capable of generating what they claim they can generate, the reasonable response – IMO – is skepticism.
Claiming that ID proponents need to back up their claim that ID is necessary ignores one’s own responsibility to show that ID is not necessary if that is one’s claim.
(my bold)
I agree, William, but it is a very big “if”. Recall that the ID case depends on the non-ID case being inadequate.
The evo case does not depend on any other case being adequate or inadequate. It depends for its support on how well it fits the data.
So I would agree that there are no grounds for anyone concluding from evolutionary theory that either an Intelligent Designer was not involved, or that an Intelligent Designer need not have been involved.
And I agree that one or two prominent atheists have made this claim or similar (Provine, Dawkins).
I agree that it is unfounded. Moreover, it annoys me no end that such unsupported claims have tarnished a good theory, and given it baggage that it simply does not need to bear, any more than cosmology has baggage it needs to bear. God is as compatible with continuous creation as with Big Bang and perfectly compatible with evolution. More so, I’d say, but maybe for another time.
That is not to say that evolutionary theory is not extremely well-supported – it is. But there are lots of “we don’t knows” and always will be. Those do not allow us to infer ID, however, and that is the point. The ID inference is fallacious, whether there was/is an ID or not.
So when Flint (comment 3627 above) says that dropping that glass crystal is capable of producing that highly improbable pattern of shards, it is up to Flint to prove that capability. Otherwise, it must have been an intelligent designer who popped in and carefully arranged the shards.
I am just paraphrasing your argument. The absurdity of that argument should be obvious.
Ido,
Ido Pen, thank you for informing of your article published in Nature Magazine. I have trouble getting professional Darwinists and materialistic philosophers to discuss their ideas so it is especially pleasant when the Darwinists come to me. I look forward to a respectful and polite debate. First, let’s get a few things straight: Darwinism is four theses bundled into one: first, change over time, two, common descent, three, natural selection, four, all DNA mutations are random, unintentional or not the result of purposeful intelligence. The first thesis is true. As for the second thesis, I mostly lean toward the idea that members of phyla are related, but the phyla are not linked by common descent. All phyla appear for the first time in the fossil record 520 mya. As for the common descent of the most successful phylum, vertebrates, I’m willing to change my mind that members of that phylum are not linked by common descent, but for the moment, I think it is easier to build a new species by an intelligence changing an existing species rather than building up a new species from scratch from a single cell. The third thesis is a useless tautology. It merely says those that are effective at reproducing will reproduce. Natural Selection explains nothing about how the Giraffe got its neck. Take for example the free market, specifically the Apple computer. Imagine if we were asked how the Apple came to be the way it is and someone said: because most of the competing computer companies went out of business and the Apple survived. That explanation would explain nothing as to why the Apple is shaped the way it is. The standard Darwinian tactic is to use thesis three to prove thesis four which is a non-sequitur. You cannot say: those are who effective at reproducing will reproduce, therefore ALL mutations are random. Finally, the fourth thesis is the most controversial and it is the one that the Darwinists almost never present evidence for. Your article of course did not even address the issue as to whether all mutations are random, which is unsurprising since Darwinists rarely try. Remember a Darwinist must believe that ALL mutations are random, to suggest that even one mutation is not the result of chance is to assert that it is the result of purposeful intelligent behavior. It is important to keep in mind that there is not a third mechanism available: mutations are either random or not, if not then the name we give to non-random movement is intelligent. Some Darwinists want to claim that natural law is capable of mutation but law is another form of random movement. Laws do not plan and hence are unintelligent.
Now as for your article. It seems that you were using a sample population of 10,000 males and female lizards to determine whether or not temperature affects sex determination: “we show that divergent natural selection on sex determination across altitudes is caused by climatic effects on lizard life history and variation in the magnitude of between-year temperature fluctuations. … Sex differences in the fitness consequences of timing of birth could therefore favour integration of temperature-dependent developmental processes and gonad differentiation to ensure a match between offspring sex and birth date. As a result, spatial or temporal variation in the strength of sex-specific selection on birth date, and therefore on TSD, [temperature sex determination] may explain rapid evolutionary divergence in sex determination between populations or species.” In the first sentence you referred to natural selection. Natural selection does not explain how the genes that determine sex were built. You made no effort to prove that and I’ve never seen a Darwinist attempt to do so, aside from maybe Ryan Liu, who even Nick Matzke admitted failed. In your next sentence you referred to “rapid evolutionary divergence in sex determination.” You’re using evolution in the sense of the first thesis, change over time. We both agree that species change, we disagree on the mechanism. My own hunch as to the flip-flop between TSD and GSD (genotypic sex determinism) is that the genes that were already built by intelligence are turned off and on by the environment. You said yourself in the paper that the: “The evolutionary causes of this diversity remain unknown. … The causes of repeated evolutionary shifts between GSD and TSD and the origin and maintenance of mixed systems are two of the greatest unsolved problems in sex determination research.” I see no reason to disbelieve your thesis that temperature is a cause. What we disagree on is whether or not the genes that are turned off and on by temperature were built by intelligence. To date no Darwinist has ever given a detailed account of how randomness could build a gene given the probabilistic resources available in our universe. Thus, the following sentence is probably entirely correct: “Sex differences in the fitness consequences of timing of birth could therefore favour integration of temperature-dependent developmental processes and gonad differentiation to ensure a match between offspring sex and birth date. As a result, spatial or temporal variation in the strength of sex-specific selection on birth date, and therefore on TSD, may explain rapid evolutionary divergence in sex determination between populations or species.”
Also, I would like to have a broad philosophical discussion with you through skype. I think you’re located in Australia, that’s not a problem. Let me know if you’re interested.
Is this really the case? I understood Darwin to say that there is variation among individuals, that some variations improve the chances of reproducing, and that as a result those variations become more prevalent within a reproducing population.
Now, if this is the case, change over time is unavoidable. It’s not a thesis, it’s an implication. Common descent is not a requirement if this mechanism is true, and Darwin himself pointed this out. And Darwin did not know the source of variation, he simply observed that it existed. It was subsequently established that mutations do not correlate with survivability. NOBODY says mutations are or are not guided by purposeful intelligence, since there is no way to establish the truth or falsehood of such a claim.
Is this really the case? I understood Darwin to say that there is variation among individuals, that some variations improve the chances of reproducing, and that as a result those variations become more prevalent within a reproducing population.
Now, if this is the case, change over time is unavoidable. It’s not a thesis, it’s an implication. Common descent is not a requirement if this mechanism is true, and Darwin himself pointed this out. And Darwin did not know the source of variation, he simply observed that it existed. It was subsequently established that mutations do not correlate with survivability. NOBODY says mutations are or are not guided by purposeful intelligence, since there is no way to establish the truth or falsehood of such a claim.
Flint,
If he’s going to claim that ID is not necessary, he must support his assertion. Nothing absurd about that whatsoever.
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy.
Flint,
Flint,
Flint,
AACK, I don’t seem able to comment. The first time I hit the submit button, nothing happens. The second time, it says it’s a duplicate post. If I keep trying again too frequently, it’s always a duplicate post. If I wait long enough and try again, nothing happens.
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy. Now to try to get this to post…
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy. Post attempt number 12…
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy. Post attempt 14…
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy. Attempt 15.
So many posts and so little time.
Mr. Dodgen, if you do not believe in natural selection, do you believe in common descent?
I not only believe in natural selection, it is an established fact. What I don’t believe is that it has any creative capability, since all it does is throw stuff out. I tend to agree with Behe concerning common descent, although I’m skeptical about universal common descent. I certainly don’t believe that new species popped out of the ground with no ancestry. (However, that’s basically the abiogenesis thesis concerning the origin of life, which is in a complete state of disarray and mired in evermore speculative propositions for which there is no evidence.) Chemical abiogenesis speculation, in my view, is a reincarnation of spontaneous generation theory, which is long discredited.
Show us the simple math that exposes the absurdity of Darwinism, or drop that claim from your shtick.
Dear Keith,
I thought I made my point clear that one does not need to know exact numbers to know when something is obviously way out of whack probabilistically. You might like to review the following:
I would like to request that you start another thread describing the ID arguments that you found most persuasive and why. I hope you are so inclined and have the time.
Dear Patrick,
I would be happy to do so. This is Liz’s site and it is her prerogative concerning who can post.
As a final note I must apologize for, and repent from some of my previous comments that have been inappropriate and hostile concerning my detractors.
Well, let’s see, I asserted that the shard pattern will be different every time, that there is essentially an infinite number of possible shard patterns, and that the probability of any one of then is infinitesimal, but the probability of ONE of them is unity. That’s a lot of assertions. Which one(s) do you find objectionable? Are you arguing that one must repeat this experiment an infinite number of times to support these assertions? But how would that help? The Designer’s imagination may be without limit!
I think what we’re talking about is what I call the “every bridge hand is so unlikely it’s a miracle” fallacy. Post attempt 16…
Flint,
What part of my assertion do you not accept?
Your objection sounds like the “every bridge deal is so improbable that I won’t be satisfied each one wasn’t Designed unless you actually perform hundreds of billions of deals – and even THEN they might have been designed.” What sort of support do you have in mind, then?
Ah, of course. Take RM+NS, ignore the RM part and pretend it doesn’t exist, and then complain that the NS part all by itself is insufficient. Why didn’t I think of that?
We both agree that there variations, we do not agree that the variations are due to chance or design. Any atheistic Darwinist is compelled to believe that the variations are not due to intelligence. That movement which is not due to intelligence, by definition, is random. You have stated that you are an agnostic on the issue, so we don’t have much of a debate. In any case, you have stated that there is not enough evidence to prove it one way or the other and this is false. If you’re agnostic about whether or not mutations are random then you’re not a Darwinist.
It is quite easy to determine if movement is due to chance or intelligence. You do it all the time. By what principle do you establish the fact that the movements of Richard Dawkin’s mouth are not due to chance? It is quite possible that Dawkins doesn’t know a thing about English, he’s just getting lucky. What principle do we use to rule this out? Probability. The probability that Dawkins is just getting lucky is absurd. William Dembski has put the universal probability bound at 1 in 10^150. Any event whose odds are less than 1 in 10^150 it is irrational to suppose that it will happen. Intelligence is a much better explanation for events that frequently occur but would occur by chance less than 1 in 10^150. Now let’s take DNA mutations. The number of possible genomes out there is 4^150,000,000,000 (the largest genome has 150 billion base pairs. It’s some Japanese flower) and yet the number of functioning genomes is far less. Given that the cell has divided around 10^40 times in our Planet’s history and given that there have only been about 10^12 different species, it is safe to say that the odds of hitting one of those functioning genomes in the huge sea of dysfunctional genomes is wildly improbable, greater than 1 in 10^150. According to Stephen Meyer the odds of a cell arising spontaneously are around 1 in 10^41,000, well beyond the probability bound of 1 in 10^150. It is irrational to suggest that chance can surmount these odds.
Noam,
I would not agree. We can observe that variations do not correlate with benefit, but whether mutations are designed is impossible to determine. Evolutionary biologists, as I undersdtand it, are not “compelled to believe” anything. They only build models that match observations and make correct predictions. Design can never be ruled out.
I don’t understand this sentence. Plenty of non-random things happen without any apparent intelligence. Like gravity. Water doesn’t invariably flow downhill at random.
I think you have some misconceptions here. Or perhaps I have not met any Darwinists meeting your definition. What I’ve read indicates lack of correlation between mutations and benefit. This is an observation, not an ideology.
I would disagree. Why couldn’t an intelligence use random factors in creating a design? Indeed, many human artists do exactly that.
Are you serious? Is this the only yardstick in your arsenal? Really?
I gave an example of the positioning of the shards of broken glass. If those positions are measured with sufficient precision, the probability of EACH occurrance is less than Dembski’s probability bound. So are you seriously arguing that the Designer intelligently positioned every shard, every time? This is a silly argument.
If we assume that we start from scratch, and must reach a complex goal in a single swell foop, you’d be right. But wouldn’t it be more reasonable to apply your calculations to how biology actually works? Do you understand iterative feedback processes?
So clearly you are looking at a process that is not a matter of pure chance. Nobody has ever said it is, except creationists. But I think the key idea here is, those who understand how biology works set out to understand how biology works. Those who set out to “prove”, even inappropriately, that biology does NOT work, will have a lot of trouble understanding how it does.
So, once again, “a” cell did not form POOF all at once and nothing first. Indeed, the earliest self-replicating systems couldn’t have borne much resemblance to any cells, which gradually emerged from chemical and physical processes over hundreds of millions of years. During which an iterative feedback process was in operation. Meyer has calculated the odds against an event no rational biologist would ever even consider. His argument reminds me of the argument that you can’t possibly exist, since the odds against each sperm are so enormous, and those odds must be multiplied by the total number of ancestors you have who generated sperm. Clearly, the odds against you are impossible, you must have occurred by magic. Or maybe you don’t exist at all. That seems MUCH more likely than that such enormous odds would have been overcome “by chance”.
Gil,
Who said anything about exact numbers? Here’s what I wrote:
Simple math doesn’t require exact numbers. If I tell you that a and b are positive integers with a>b, you know immediately that a^2 > b^2. That’s simple math, it’s true, and it doesn’t require us to specify the exact values of a and b.
You tell us that simple math demonstrates the absurdity of “Darwinism”. Since it’s simple, it will be easy for you to show us, and it won’t take much time or space. You’ve been doubted and even mocked for years, Gil. Show us that your naysayers are wrong. Show that you can deliver on your promise. Show us, right here in this thread, the simple math that defeats Darwinism.
(And don’t link us to a thread at UD. If you have an argument, be courteous and make it here. After all, it’s simple, right?)
keiths,
I think Noam Ghish already satisfied your demand. He points to Dembski’s calculation (and Meyer’s calculation) that the probability of a living cell as we know it happening by pure chance, all at once, is so tiny that design MUST be concluded. So much for the math.
The conclusion you’re sure to reach if you get an answer, is pretty straightforward. You’ll be presented with an absurd caricature of evolution amenable to a straightforward calculation that the caricature is impossible. NOW you will need to explain evolutionary theory to someone whose mental model simply does not and cannot allow for it. He believes that caricature IS evolution – it’s the closest approximation that fits his understanding of how things work.
Hi Flint,
Maybe Gil can do better than Noam. I don’t know anything about Noam, but Gil claims to be a scientist and a rigorous thinker. Let’s see if he lives up to his self-description.
You merely beg the question that it is impossible to distinguish between chance and design. A much more interesting question is whether or not a certain chance hypothesis is plausible. Humans can never know anything absolutely, that’s not what we’re debating. We’re debating whether ID is a more plausible explanation for ALL the diversity of life than NS + RM. We humans rule out chance as an explanation for causation all the time. Just look at intellectual property law, forensic analysis and the search for intelligent life.
Biologists rule out design all the time. In fact they hate the idea. Just look at how they kicked out Richard Sternberg from the Smithsonian after he published Meyer’s article on ID.
This is like saying plenty of non-random things happen without being non-random. Intelligence, by definition, is non-random. You mentioned gravity. Movement happens within the bounds of law, but no movement is completely due to law, there is always at least some random element added to it. The things that gravity is acting on are either random or intelligent. Even intelligent movement has an element on randomness in it. The key is whether the movement is ENTIRELY due to chance or whether or not merely SOME of it is due to chance. To be a true Darwinist, you must believe that all DNA movement is due to chance within the bounds of law.
This is because what you’ve read sticks within the bounds of the Darwinian paradigm. Anyone challenging the Darwinian paradigm will be outcast from their university department if they have tenure and cut off from all future funding and fired if they don’t have tenure. What the Darwinists have never given an explanation, in fact, they never even try, is what causes the appearance of these 168 human specific genes.
http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sigtrans;2/89/pe59
Was it due to chance or intelligence? If it’s due to chance than give a plausible explanation with some mathematics, keeping in mind the probabilistic resources of the universe and how each mutation conferred a distinct selective benefit on the organism. We can exclude this possibility from consideration.
If you’re planning to use randomness in your design, then that movement has an element of intelligence in it. For movement to be truly random, it must be ENTIRELY random. The moment the Darwinist admits intelligence into his ontology as a means of explanation then he ceases to be a Darwinist and becomes an ID proponent.
You have just refused to give a logical explanation as to what principle you use to distinguish chance from design. You have made a non-argument. I was hoping I was dealing with someone who understands what an argument is.
This is one of the most common mistakes that Darwinists and Atheists make. You’re confusing specified in advance with specified in hindsight. Every arrangement of matter in hindsight is highly improbable. But to specify an arrangement in advance, a highly complicated one, then ask chance to reproduce that arrangement and it will never happen. The arrangement of the shards are improbable after the fact, but try having chance reproduce that exact arrangement of shards (that is to say, you specify the arrangement in advance) and chance will never reproduce it.
To get from a single cell to a multi-cellular organism is even more improbable. The jump from one cell to multi-cell occurred during the Cambrian Explosion where numerous organisms all made the jump from one cell to a creature with about 50 different cell types. So what are the odds of 50 different cell types working in concert? That’s 10^41,000^50 and even worse number. There’s a huge gulf between no cell and a cell and then an even bigger gulf between one cell and a multi-cellular organism. By feedback processes you are extremely vague. You can’t just say the word feedback and expect that to explain anything.
Now you’re relying on imaginary evidence to buttress your worldview. This is a classic argument from ignorance. What you’re saying is the following:
1. I don’t know what the first cell looked like
2. therefore I know that it must have been simple
3. therefore spontaneous generation is possible
You can’t do that. You have to base your worldview on what you know, not on what you don’t know. Once imaginary evidence is used in arguments then argument breaks down, since anyone can imagine just about anything.
Once again, you’re confusing specified in hindsight with specified in advance. You can’t just throw matter to together in any fashion you want and expect a cell to exist. There are only a few finite ways to arrange matter such that a cell is possible. All the ways are specified in advance. The only thing that can hit an enormously improbable prespecified target is intelligence.
Flint,
I’ve decided that you’re not worth debating with on paper. I’m willing to debate with you through Skype by voice, but I have more important things to do than correct your misunderstanding. You can contact me at noam.gish76, that’s my skype name. We’ll see if you’re open-minded enough to the point where you’re willing to discuss with those who disagree with you.
“I agree that it is unfounded. Moreover, it annoys me no end that such unsupported claims have tarnished a good theory, and given it baggage that it simply does not need to bear, any more than cosmology has baggage it needs to bear. God is as compatible with continuous creation as with Big Bang and perfectly compatible with evolution. More so, I’d say, but maybe for another time.” – Elizabeth
Just thought this was worth repeating. I agree that ‘evolution’ is a good theory, with the normal caveat, *in its proper place and not beyond that*. For me the question is: what is the ‘beyond that’ where evolutionary theory does not apply or belong. Probably this means I am looking for the ‘unfounded’ that Elizabeth mentions, just in different areas of the Academy than she is.
Second, a small jostling with terms. Cosmology is a field of study; evolution is a theory. We don’t write ‘evolutionology.’ Yes, one could say ‘evolutionary biology’ is a field of study.
But once one claims that ‘evolutionary economics’ is a field of study, there is perhaps more ‘baggage’ involved with people like K. Marx, T. Veblen (who coined the ‘pseudo-field’), J. Schumpeter, Nelson and Winter, K. Boulding, G. Hodgson, U. Witt, H. Hanappi, et al. than is advisable to accept in calling it a legitimate ‘scientific’ field. ‘Evolutionary economics’ imo is a classic case of pseudo-science, which is highly dependent on probabilism in a properly teleological realm (of human choice and action).
We are agreed, Elizabeth, that “God is as compatible with continuous creation as with Big Bang and perfectly compatible with evolution,” though it depends on what one means by speaking of a Divine being and His/Her/Its involvement in the evolutionary process of natural history. Be welcome to say more when the time is right. You’ve got me curious…
p.s. Noam, I’ll take you up on your Skype offer, if you agree to confidentiality.
Gregory. sure, I’ll talk with you on Skype. just send me a friend request and we’ll get started. and of course everything we say will be confidential. my skype name is noam.gish76
Noam Ghish,
Neither you, nor anyone else, knows what functionality may exist in any unknown protein. Talk of “huge seas of dysfunctionality” is idle speculation. Mind you, there has been some effort to examine the functionality of random protein sequences. It hardly bears out your speculation.
I think your anthropomorphic usage (“natural selection…does”) had misled you here, Gil. Natural selection “does” nothing, as I’m sure you agree, but my point goes beyond pedantry. Natural selection is an effect, not an agent – and, specifically, it is the biasing effect that the environment has on the sampling of genetic material in each generation of a population. So if the environment is full of keen-eyed predators, its effect on the sampling of a population, of, say, peppered moths, is that more tree-coloured peppered moths will survive predation in the next generation than non-tree-coloured ones. Now, you might call that “throwing stuff out” (the non-tree-coloured moths), but equally, it seems to me, you could call it “keeping stuff in”. Where you are correct, of course, is that “natural selection” isn’t “variance generation”. But variance generation alone won’t result in adaptation of a population to its environment, nor will natural selection. But nor, I would argue, are they separate processes. “Natural selection” is merely a bias on heritable differential reproduction, which is (partly) a result of genetic variance. It is this whole package that has “creative capability”, not any one part.
“Spontaneous generation” theory was the theory that maggots, for example, were spontaneously generated in dead animals. This is indeed discredited. Current OOL theories bear no resemblance to this, except in name. There is a great deal of promising research. I agree we do not have a complete theory yet, but we have parts of one, and these have already generated successfully tested hypotheses.
In other words we do not have any basis on which to rule it out 🙂
That’s interesting, Gil. I’d appreciate it if you’d post a version of that UD post here – I certainly have some comments!
Yes, indeed, Gill. That would be great, especially if you could spare the time to respond to comments.
I would be interested if anyone here claims that “ID is not necessary”. I claim that the claim that “An ID inference is warranted” is unwarranted! But I don’t think that’s the same thing.
IDists claim that the evidence renders an ID inference warranted. I don’t.
Do you?
Noam Ghish,
THIS is why real biologists ignore ID types. Because you can’t be bothered to look up even the simplest of facts.
Organisms didn’t jump from single cellular to massively multicellular in the “Cambrian Explosion”. There was at minimum 70 million years of development before the beginning of the Cambrian (in the Ediacaran), where the first multicellular organisms developed from extremely simple forms with very few cell types to modestly complex forms with a handful of cell types, before the “Explosion” (if you call 15 million years of developing exoskeletons an explosion). Use Google Scholar to get some facts about the Ediacaran and get back to us.
All in all it took between 85 to 100 million years (depending on how you view the Doushanto embryos) to go from single cellular life to life of modest multicellularity, going through intermediate stages of low complexity.
Also, we have experimentally evolved muticelular organisms a few times, the latest experimental results are here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/10/1115323109
Your probability “calculation” is completely bogus (and the rest of your statements are riddled with error too, please do some fact checking next time.
Elizabeth, what I’m missing in your representation of this ‘biased, feedback system etc etc’ , and we all get it, it’s quite simple – is the ‘generation’ part, the ‘creation’ part. In a population, an entire population, there is a certain amount of genetic material – and there is a finite amount of permutations of that material. So every combination, if transmitted with perfect fidelity, belongs to a set number, and these would be exhausted. The evolution is not here correct? This is where mutations (mistakes) come in?
Noam Ghish,
If you actually read the literature you would see there is a lot of work that goes into explaining these genes. Take the human specific TBC1D3 referenced in the paper you cite. It’s a variant of the RabGTPase family TBC that appears to have evolved along the hominoid-lineage 35 million years ago by segmental duplication.
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/5/2507.short
Gene duplication, that’s how these things arise.
Ian Musgrave,
Are these some of the confirmed ‘predictions’, the cambrian whatever, how long an exoskeleton should take to evolve? All this sneering at everyone elses’ math – where were you people (I kid) when you should have been doing real science? How about doing your own numbers, that would have been a chance for prediction and confirmation of the putative mechanism? But really odds weren’t in the game until a look at the inner workings of the cell and the unimaginably large space of proteins. That look should have been the end of evolution.
Butifnot,
Ah, your comment makes no sense. I’ve been doing real science (and math, and probabilities) for over 26 years, in places as diverse as Melbourne and Berlin.
Pointing out people have the very basics wrong is not sneering at them.
I work with proteins and protein sequences, there is noting in protein space that spells the end of evolution.
Machine language (x86) can output “Hello World” in 20 bytes, including the message of 11 bytes. As we have previously shown that the message can evolve, that means we need 9 bytes for the program, and 1 byte for the simple word, “O”. There are 256 possible bytes, so the chance of random assembly would be 256^-10, requiring about a couple moles of digital soup. There’s probably even simpler demonstrations.
If that post at UD is meant to be an example of a “simple probability calculation” that Gil announced when he waltzed in, color me very unimpressed. It’s a badly made straw man. Most single-point mutations are fatal for a C program: it simply won’t compile. In biology, most single-point mutations are neutral.
Your probability calculations are not simple, Gil. They are simplistic.
Zachriel,
Hi Zachriel! long time no see!
Ian Musgrave,
Ian,
Unfortunately no one knows if any amount of genetic change can produce a human from an ape-like organism. There isn’t any way to test the premise as we can’t even take a bunch of fish embryos, perform some targeted mutagenesis and get a fishapod to develop.
It’s not my job to do your work for you. Either you can support your claim, or you cannot. If you cannot, the proper thing to do is rescind your claim, not attempt to shift the burden to someone else to prove your assertion incorrect.
Flint are you claiming all arrangements of matter can be reasonably described as the result of non-intelligent forces and interacting materials, including the Encyclopedia Britannica and a fully functional aircraft carrier?
If not, then we have established that some arrangements of matter require ID to reasonably explain their arrangement, and that there is, at least in some cases, some intelligible difference between the two.
If you are going to point at an arrangement of matter and make the assertion that ID was not necessary to generate that arrangement, then it is you that is required to provide a metric of some sort that demonstrates non-ID processes capable (at least categorically) of producing the arrangement in question. Otherwise, don’t make the assertion.
But you wrote:
It is absurd to demand proof for the assertion that ID is vacuous as a concept. It is a plain fact that there is no coherent theory of ID. If I am wrong and such a theory exists, one that makes any kind of meaningful prediction that could be tested, please elaborate and I shall of course retract.
Hi, butifnot! Welcome to TSZ! It’s good to see people from UD here.
Well, variance generation is certainly crucial. Without heritable variance generation there can be no heritable variance reproductive success. So I’m more than happy to focus on that.
But not necessarily a finite number of variations 🙂 The genome is not of finite length. Plus, of course, even the number of permutations is extraordinarily large.
I’m not sure if I’m quite understanding your question. Let’s imagine we start with a population with 100 individuals, with 10 different genotypes (10 of each). And let’s say all are transmitted to the next generation perfectly, but that some of these genotypes tend to result in more successfully reproduction than others. Very soon, instead of the population consisting of equal numbers of each genotype, there will be more of the most successful genotypes than of the least successful. Eventually, as you say, only bearers of he most successful genotype will exist, so the amount of variation in the population has been exhausted. However, if reproduction is not quite faithful – if new variants creep in, then the pool of variation will be constantly replenished. And if these variants also now, or in the future, tend to promote reproductive success, then they will become more prevalence. So the adaptation of a population to a changing environment depends on a constant drip-feed of near-neutral variants into the population. And there are a number of molecular mechanisms that result in this supply of variants.
I think it’s misleading to think of the variants as “mistakes” – they are only “mistakes” in the sense that they are not faithful copies of the parent. They may not be “mistakes” in any other sense. And with sexual reproduction, when a child has two parents, who are not themselves identical, clearly the idea of a “perfect” copy of the parents is meaningless. Each child has contributions from each parent, and so their genome is unique.
Does that answer your question? If not, could you rephrase?
William J. Murray,
Why the false dichotomy? Just because some phenomenon is currently unexplainable does not mean the involvement of some imaginary being by default. .
Ian Musgrave,
Strange that our position cannot account for the origin of proteins…
William J. Murray,
But this is as absurd as saying “unless you can demonstrate that invisible pink unicorns are unnecessary to account for an arrangement of matter, don’t make the assertion that invisible pink unicorns don’t exist!”
William J. Murray,
William J. Murray,
But this is as absurd as saying “unless you can demonstrate that invisible pink unicorns are unnecessary to account for an arrangement of matter, don’t make the assertion that invisible pink unicorns don’t exist!”