The intelligent-design movement is, by design, a big tent accommodating almost everyone who has something to say against “Darwinism.” How kooky is too kooky for admission? Well, the Raelian movement’s Message from the Designers may be out, but the Unification Church’s message from Moon is definitely in.
Evolution News and Views (ENV), ID’s blog of record, is consequently a wellspring of incoherence. It recently posted a lame argument by geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig that survival is “too random” for natural selection to “work.” Geneticist (of high renown) Joe Felsenstein has just responded at The Panda’s Thumb. He mentions that the Discovery Institute also released a podcast interview of Lönnig. Checking it out, I find this teaser by David Klinghoffer, the editor of ENV:
The question of whether evolution is “random” is a perennial. Darwinists respond to the challenge, often delivered casually, by exasperatedly pointing out that the natural-selection component of evolution is hardly a matter of chance. Actually, though, as geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig explains in an ID the Future podcast interview with Discovery Institute’s Paul Nelson, this is not quite true…
But we also have, at the moment, this from one of ENV‘s “Top Articles” in the “Scientific Research” category:
Yes, of course, natural selection is a “nonrandom” process as Dawkins correctly insists. Rates of reproductive success correlate to the traits that organisms possess. Those with fitness advantages will, all other things being equal, out-reproduce those lacking those advantages. Got it. Understood.
In short, natural selection “works as advertised” in mainstream evolutionary theory. The author? Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture.
What’s the function?
otangelo,
Oh, fer chrissakes!
Do you really need me to answer this for you? Isn’t it obvious that evolution is essentially based on serendipity?
Ah sweet chance. Why does the anti-ID crowd hate you so?
Your claim was, and I quote “…natural selection sorts things out in a highy directional way, such as making a bird fly faster rather than slower.”
If you want to back off that claim I won’t stop you.
Natural selection does not make birds fly faster, or slower. A faster flying bird may in fact be “less fit” than a slower flying bird. Some birds, as you well know, don’t fly at all. So what “direction” is speed of flight headed, exactly?
Well, it is Sunday.
Allan Miller,
I agree the complexity is the same but much of that complexity is being discovered over time. Trying to figure out the evolutionary path and mechanisms beyond finding some precursors is exceedingly difficult. The Nobel prize for DNA repair was in 2015. How much of the eukaryotic cell do you think we understand at this point?
That is fantasticly stupid. It was a simple example of natural selection causing accumulating change in a phenotype, it was not supposed to constitute a claim that natural selection will always be working to make birds fly faster. It’s like you’re trying not to get it.
Scratch that. You are trying to not get it, and making yourself look stupid in the process. But why? You aren’t stupid, so why work so hard to appear it?
What sort of designer do you think would have had the capability to create such a cell? Would we be equivalent to them in, say, 1000 years more technological advancement? What’s your estimate?
Mung,
No, of course not, it was a rhetorical question [as of course was yours]. The fact that only a couple of gametes survive from the millions/billions (according to gender) that are produced has never been a problem for evolutionary theory. What’s perhaps disappointing is that people on the ‘con ‘ side think biologists are so fucking stupid as to not have realised that there is a random contest for representation in the next generation (as well as a biased one).
Yes and no.
Ah, sweet Designer Whim. What a vastly preferable paradigm.
Mung,
I’ll say it again tomorrow.
colewd,
What does it matter? The pertinent question is, how much of the understanding of the eukaryotic cell (or, for that matter, the prokaryotic cell) has posed a probem for evolutionary theory, as it has been uncovered? I’m not seeing anything from anywhere other than the Creationist community, who were always a bit lukewarm on the matter.
OMagain,
I honestly am too ignorant to even start with a swag here 🙂 My estimate based on consensus of several research scientists is we understand less than 1% at this point so having an opinion how to design one is down the road. Just to give you a feel for this, in 2012 a researcher from Cornell had identified 5 proteins involved in the RAS transcriptional pathway by 2013 he had identified 9 additional proteins. He had been studying this pathway exclusively for 20 years. I also think we need substantial advancement in the understanding of atoms and subatomic particle behavior because there is no way to create a protein sequence from trial and error even if you use monte carlo techniques.
colewd,
Really? Subatomic particles?
It’s curious how, despite there being ‘no way’ to create a protein sequence from trial and error, protein sequences are created in exactly that way, in the lab.
An idle Monday morning thought: if I were a Designer, I wouldn’t waste too much time making an impressively-engineered Creation in order to make myself known. I’d create an ordinary world, and make people who were easily impressed.
Yet: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6829/full/410715a0.html
I’m going to guess that’s more than 6072.
lol, yes, 6 x 10 to the twelfth power.
colewd, is it possible to create a protein sequence of length 1 by trial and error? 😛
Without going into latex, that can be written as 6×10^12 and posted anywhere..
Requires modification to copy and paste quotes.
Yep. Totally agree. The old, “buuuut…buuut…if it’s all just random, then I’m not a special snowflake and there’s no purpose!!” *Le sigh*…
Natural selection is non-random in a very trivial sense-> not all variations have the same chance of survival. NS is a result of 3 inputs-> mutation/ variation; heritability and fecundity- each is either entirely up to chance or has a chance component. Inputs drive the outputs.
Natural selection is impotent.
How does Intelligent Design change that?
Allan Miller,
Yes as OMagain said, a protein sequence of one works just fine:-) The sub atomic particle discussion is based on the relationship of quantum mechanics and protein interaction.
One is fine?
What number is not fine? 2? 10? 200? 300?
And noted you simply ignore the refutation of your point that they cannot be created randomly.
Reality contradicts you: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6829/full/410715a0.html
Who will change, you or reality?
Frankie,
Great – that’s the only sense that matters.
colewd,
Whatever that might be, it appears to be irrelevant to the combinatorial issue.
And it is the one that proves natural selection is not the creative force evolutionists are selling it as. It is the one that says natural selection is as non-random as the pattern formed by rolling 1000 colored balls on the floor.
Natural selection is nothing more than contingent serendipity. In order for natural selection to produce the diversity today we would have had to have started with a greater diversity.
Demonstrate this mathematically and I will donate $10 to the charity of your choice.
Frankie,
If natural selection tends to concentrate one variant and eliminate alternatives, to the point of fixation/extinction, and so on iteratively for all alleles, that is not nothing, much though you dearly wish it to be.
Frankie,
Diversity is conditioned by cladogenesis/extinction rates, not NS. So, wide of the mark comme toujours
Same logic tells us “no-one can make money with casinos”.
Frankie ignores the observed fact that every individual carries a number of unique mutations.
In humans, it is about a hundred mutations, about 10 percent of which are in parts of the genome known to be functional.
That means that in the human population, there are around 80 billion mutant alleles (counting just the ones known to be in functional areas of the genome, by Larry Moran’s strict definition). If we take the creationist definition of functional, that’s 800 billion.
That’s 800 billion variants per 70 years or so for the human population.
That’s 80 trillion in the YEC span of human existence.
Way to move the goalposts. I am saying that NS reduces diversity.
petrushka,
No, I do not and there isn’t anything I said that would lead you to that. Obviously you are just making shit up because you don’t have anything of substance to say.
And humans evolving into humans helps you how?
Why are there still bacteria?
If. In reality it isn’t like that. And merely having an allele reach fixation is very trivial when we are discussing what can build complex adaptations.
That is the kind of evolution that fits baraminology
Because variation continues at a steady pace in all populations. Darwinian selection is a rather minor actor.
Lots of good math to learn in studying gambling games and playing with advantage. Rather than first going to a casino however, suggest the book by MIT professor turned gambler turned billionaire hedge Fund Manager, E. O. Thorp:
The Mathematics of Gambling
Usually biased in favor of the house, but not always, Thorp figured out when, and there have been a few others like Don Johnson
PS
I was effectively banned from playing at the Borgata — sore losers.