Glancing at Uncommon Descent (I still do as Denyse O’Leary often reports on interesting science articles, as here*, and the odd comment thread can still provide entertainment), I see an OP authored by gpuccio (an Italian medical doctor) entitled The Ubiquitin System: Functional Complexity and Semiosis joined together, telling the story of the ubiquitin protein and its central role in eukaryote biochemistry in some considerable detail. The subtext is that ubiquitin’s role is so widespread and diverse and conserved across all (so far known) eukaryotes, that it defies an evolutionary explanation. This appears to be yet another god-of-the-gaps argument. Who can explain ubiquitin? Take that, evolutionists! I’m not familiar with the ubiquitin system and thank gpuccio for his article (though I did note some similarities to the Wikipedia entry.
In the discussion that follows, gpuccio and others note the lack of response from ID skeptics. Gpuccio remarks:
OK, our interlocutors, as usual, are nowhere to be seen, but at least I have some true friends!
and later:
And contributions from the other side? OK, let’s me count them… Zero?
Well, I can think of a few reasons why the comment thread lacks representatives from “the other side” (presumably those who are in general agreement with mainstream evolutionary biology).
- In a sense, there’s little in gpuccio’s opening post to argue over. It’s a description of a biochemical system first elucidated in the late seventies and into the early eighties. The pioneering work was done by Aaron Ciechanover, Avram Hershko, Irwin Rose (later to win the Nobel prize for chemistry, credited with “the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation”, all mainstream scientists.
- Gpuccio hints at the complexity of the system and the “semiotic” aspects. It seems like another god-of-the-gaps argument. Wow, look at the complexity! How could this possibly have evolved! Therefore ID! What might get the attention of science is some theory or hypothesis that could be an alternative, testable explanation for the ubiquitin system. That is not to be found in gpuccio’s OP or subsequent comments.
- Uncommon Descent has an unenviable history on treatment of ID skeptics and their comments. Those who are still able to comment at UD risk the hard work involved in preparing a substantive comment being wasted as comments may never appear or are subsequently deleted and accounts arbitrarily closed.
I’m sure others can add to the list. So I’d like to suggest to gpuccio that he should bring his ideas here if he would like them challenged. If he likes, he can repost his article as an OP here. I guarantee that he (and any other UD regulars who’d like to join in) will be able to participate here without fear of material being deleted or comment privileges being arbitrarily suspended.
Come on, gpuccio. What have you got to lose?
gpuccio@UD
TRIM62 is the only protein that traverses the median portion of the graph and that happens to be the protein that shows the largest jump. Your figure 5 corroborates my interpretation, not yours.
Standard error bars, please.
Could you plot the variable in that figure against the average human conserved information of pre-vertebrates and vertebrates please?
Of course not, the average curve will be flattened towards the mean, exactly because all curves are bound by the upper and lower limit.
Not true. The protein divergence will saturate with increasing time since diverence. Not sure how that plays out in the bit score but I doubt it will look linear.
The rate of approach to the protein sequence (NOT homology, they already were homologous) of modern humans will be dependent on the rate of amino acid substitutions, right?
gpuccio: The transition happens in the window of 30 million years. We can’t say, at present, if it happened in one day, by some extreme act of design and global engineering, or in one year, or one million year, or 30 million.
But we could be able to understand it better as our techniques to get information about the past improve (and they will improve, I am sure).
So, the answer to your question is simply: the facts will tell us.
As I said, design can be slow and gradual (non coding DNA gives lots of chances to engineer new proteins), or much more sudden. Personally, I believe that it happens in both ways: some slow engineering, leading to some more dramatic global change. But it’s only an hypothesis.
Facts must tell us what is true.
Looks like I didn’t make myself clear enough. Seems to me you are without excuse: if what you propose was true, wild saltationism would be inevitable. Let me try again: you tell us there are thousands of functionally specified proteins in vertebrates, that are also functionally isolated in sequence space. That means there simply cannot be functional intermediates, because you claim the functionality to engineer those intermediates simply doesn’t exist. Therefore, thousands of vertebrate proteins, with, I presume, countless other coordinated regulatory changes must have become functional overnight. I don’t think there’s any alternative, if we accept your premises.
That, for the emptienth time, means that prevertebrates must have given birth to vertebrates. Wild saltationism is inescapable if we follow your premises.
I don’t think this is a trivial question one can just sweep under the rug, dont you think?
me: What’s your problem with that? if every step in the way was a microevolutionary one, why would you question the adequacy of darwinism as a mechanism?
gpuccio: No problem at all.
I have only said that you assume the premises that make your theory reasonable.
I have no problems with that: but it is not certainly an argument. It is circular.
No, I’m saying that there’s a plausible scenario according to which evolution makes sense of the darwinian mechanism, and, in case you didn’t notice, it was meant to debunk your “probabilistic resources barrier” let me remind you my original statement:
“If it happened gradually, then only sequences very close to each other were produced at each step, making every step trivially attainable and naturally selectable. ”
you can’t assume equiprobability of all sequences as you do, to show that a mechanism where only sequences very close to each other were produced at each step, can’t do the job. Your formulation is addressing an absurd straw man, certainly nothing to do with any darwinian mechanism.
I know you claim that only neutrally evolving sequences can find new functions, but that’s not even darwinian evolution, and it still doesn’t mean that all sequences would be equiprobable for obvious reasons.
Your justification for the above is that there’s no functional pathway to evolve sequences because islands of function, or simply by postulating that natural selection can only preserve the existing function (how many of the proteins in the vertebrate transition have a “new” function),
so actually it’s you who is fabricating premises to arrive to your preferred conclusion, and getting it all wrong in the process.
You are (re)defining darwinism as impossible to produce new protein functions, and of course you are concluding the very same thing. Every intermediate step in your argument is pure obfuscation.
Can’t you see the irony of it all? As I’ve tried to show, it’s actually your position that involves non-gradualism, necessarily, while darwinism requires gradualism, yet you assume non-gradualism in darwinism to debunk darwinism
gpuccio: I think the answer is simple enough. Because there is no way to go from one existing functional structure to another, unrelated, functional structure by single AA steps, ans still retain the function of the previous structure during all the transition.
Even neo-darwinists usually accept that a transition needs, at least, duplication and inactivation. Or, better still, working on some non coding sequence.
The problem is simply that not only there are no naturally selectable ladders from one protein to some unrelated one. There are not even ladders that simply retain a function.
What do you mean by unrelated? How many of the thousands of proteins involved in the vertebrate transition are “unrelated” to the ones in the closest extant invertebrate relatives? Genuine question there, I have no idea
It is related to TIAJY in that it argues that it is implausibly unlikely for us to get this good a result if one (say) types letters A,C,G,T randomly.
The refutation of that is to point out that assembly of the genome by natural selection is not analogized by monkeys typing on 4-key typewriters.
The CSI part is the scale of goodness. The scale is straightforward but the calculation of probabilities, the famous P[T|H], is for the monkeys/tornado and does not reflect how improbable the adaptation is given the availability of natural selection,
Entropy,
No, there is just duplication between you and DNA jock and on this conversation there are more posts then time to answer.
No, the multi protein complex tells us that there are more binding requirements. The sequences are also longer which increases sequence space. This puts evolution of proteins in severe doubt.
I am not speculating that it could not have evolved (RM + NS) the facts are telling us that.
-multi protein sequences
-long sequences
-preserved sequence between species
-large information jumps (vertebrates)
-irreducibly complex structures (ubiquitin, spliceosome,ATP synthase
-structures that require up front optimization for animals to function (ubiquitin,spliceosome,ATP synthase)
Design is the best explanation for the appearance of lots of new functional information over time, irreducibly complex structures and structures the require up front optimization.
Not from ignorance but from observations and evidence.
I understand this is your philosophical argument and it is interesting but not strong enough in my opinion to over come the evidence.
Historically arguments were made against the existence of atoms because we could not observe them. Inductive reasoning works.
dazz,
He would cut and paste the right sequence change however long the sequence to be changed is. How do you make software mods? One letter at a time?
colewd,
You’re not reading carefully enough. There’s no evidence for design, only ignorance on your part, of the evolutionary processes and of what the amount of data allow us to infer and/or to reject. I’d suggest you read my comments, for example this one, and then think about it. After that check what DNA_jock wrote. What you wrote seems to have missed what DJ said as well as what I’ve said.
I’m still answering your points, noting that they were already answered before:
You’re not reading carefully enough. The multi-protein complex only tells your today’s state of affairs, and today’s “binding requirements,” within a few organisms. It doesn’t tell you anything about how it originated, or about the more relaxed requirements at the beginning of the evolution of such interactions.
No, because the facts don’t show you the history of the complex, only that there’s some specific complex doing the work today within some organisms. See above.
Easily evolvable.
Which shows, at most, that once evolved the system became very successful and, perhaps, important for the evolution of vertebrates.
Pure speculation based on misapplied blast scores, and an assumption that makes the “jumps,” not just possible, but inevitable (see the comment I linked).
Which might be true about the systems as they exist today in vertebrates, but not in the life forms where the system evolved. You keep forgetting that of all vertebrates have such systems, then it evolved in life forms predating vertebrates, therefore not vertebrates (obviously), and thus the system was much more plastic back then.
As I just explained, no it isn’t.
From unforgivable ignorance and failure to read carefully enough.
1. Ignorance about evolutionary paths is not evidence for design, is poor thinking.
2. Misapplied concepts are not evidence for design either.
3. The enormous philosophical and scientific problems of the “design” inference demand extraordinary evidence, not mere ignorance.
Tell that to those who thought there had to be an aether in space so that waves could propagate. Nobody could see it, and, in the end, it was a wrong inference, which at least followed the rules.
Another huge problem is that atoms are simpler, and there’s a good justification why we could not observe them. Designers are pretty complicated beings, and the only ones you can point to are made of the very same stuff you’re trying to explain. That makes the design inference both a philosophical and a scientific disaster.
Please think about these things and what I commented before. Don’t rush it.
What are the enormous problems?
Generally speaking, finding some operational way to identify who the designer is, what tools it uses, when it designs, how to distinguish design from non-design, etc.
gpuccio@UD
What’s the problem indeed.
Apropos of nothing: Do you agree that your results show that the Designer hardly added any complex functional information to the human lineage since the human-chimpanzee split?
gpuccio@UD
Entropy’s example of lactate dehydrogenase demonstrating enzyme promiscuity is here. You dismissed it, but it is quite relevant to substrate specificity of E3 ubiquitin-protein ligases as well.
Haha, that’s rich. So you have yourself shown how the human form of PRICKLE1 has evolved by an already functional protein acquiring an additional function? And this is not a rung of the ladder why exactly?
That’s not a counterargument, but moving the goal posts. Protein evolution will involve a certain amount of swapping, duplicating, adding and deleting functional domains. Mutations of this type do not require a designer and are valid steps on your ladder to increased functional complexity.
gpuccio@UD
No need to get paranoid. I am not suggesting that. Nor am I denying that there might be sudden increases in conserved sequences during certain evolutionary episodes. What I am saying is that, until you show me how a protein behaves that does NOT have such jumps, I do not trust your plots to show me which proteins DO have them.
I will try and have a look at your results. Thanks for those.
Thanks
gpuccio@UD (here, replying to my defense of specified information):
Dembski’s definition of “complex”specified information is 500 bits of it. gpuccio, earlier in that UD thread, invoked the 500 bit limit:
(repeated by gpuccio from earlier where it was “the foundation itself of ID”).
gpuccio has presented no argument as to why that 500-bit limit cannot be exceeded simply by natural selection.
So gpuccio must have some other definition of “complex”. Some definition that is different from “the fundamental idea in ID”. Is gpuccio’s definition that information is complex if the adaptation impresses gpuccio enough? Or is there some other definition of “complex”?
Looking back up that UD thread, I see gpuccio defining it:
Dembski’s 500-bit limit again … (and earlier here).
As Flint said. Also, by way of example, gpuccio is talking about ubiquitin systems. We humans, the very designers used as “models” to “infer” design, would not survive without ubiquitin systems. So, they’re proposing that the systems that make a designer were designed. That’s a profound problem with the design “inference” (I prefer to call it the multifaceted fallacy).
That’s but one example. Once we start checking what makes designers and their designs possible, well, the design “inference” is shown to be an spectacular failure.
In a video from ‘Nature’ we hear,
Stephen L. Talbott discusses this here. He writes:
I would suggest reading the whole article, it’s not very long.
This all points to a conclusion which is IMO is inescapable: it is more accurate to say that, by the use of its genome, the organism forms itself; rather than saying that the organism is formed by the genome. The genome is the means by which the organism achieves its intention. And to take it to a higher level, it is my belief that evolution is the means by which physical life achieves its intention.
Entropy, you ‘designed’ the above paragraph using the English alphabet. Are you saying that the meaning you give to the words above, what you intend by them, have their source in the alphabet, that it was ‘designed’ from the bottom up?
gpuccio:
I think it’s a very important result for a number of reasons.
It highlights the unscientific nature of your reasoning: it may not be important for you because all you care about is to conclude “design” and stop there, you’re not really trying to explain stuff, explore the entailments of your claims and their potential falsifications. What scientist wouldn’t be dying to witness first hand one of these macro-design events that would give strong support to his theory? How come it had to be a lowly evolutionist who figured out this crucial (and all too obvious) entailment of ID “theory”?
Also, even though you still don’t seem to want to admit it, if you can have some of the “functionally specified complexes” found in extant vertebrates, added one a time to pre-vertebrates and still have a viable organism (what ever happened to that pesky IC notion anyway), those wouldn’t really be functionally specified complexes for vertebrates, so really, if we go by your definitions, all vertebrate systems must be poofed into existence at once.
So what you actually have is special creation + common descent. How ironic, after all this time putting up the that old creationist tripe “evolution fails cuz cats don’t give birth to dogs” now we learn that’s pretty much how ID works.
That was always the point: you may not want to see it or admit it, but you were set to “prove” creationism and creationism followed from your carefully crafted premises
gpuccio:
Unfortunately that looks nothing like the kind of macro-design events that your theory requires
All I see there is micro evolution
gpuccio:
I suspect we will only see gradual development if we look at what goes on inside that cocoon, should we check?
gpuccio:
interesting, a minor subset.
The many ones with homologies couldn’t have possibly evolved while still functional, right? Any evidence left of the design of those?
Oh, and of course, gpuccio, the saltationist result also implies that transitional fossils in vertebrate evolution would falsify your theory, don’t you think?
I would think honest ID scientists will be working shifts to find evidence to either support or falsify their theory. Let us know about your findings please. This could be a huge paradigm shift
CharlieM,
I suspect that you didn’t understand the problem. Can you state what you think I meant? Just to understand where the explanation might have gone wrong.
The brilliant ET aka JoeG graces us with one of his pearls of wisdom again:
We know, Joe, we know.
Corneel,
Yep, we know, and that’s precisely the reason why they don’t see the fundamental problems with their bullsh … I mean, their “inference.”
You have to read ET’s first sentence!
I never imagined that designers had nothing at all to do with the designs they produce.
ID doesn’t actually have anything to do with design.
It just exists to try to define life as having been designed.
Glen Davidson
Joe Felsenstein,
Joe
gpuccio
He did make an argument and you did not defend your position. His argument is that based on empirical evidence 500 bits is a very conservative limit for natural selection.
Entropy,
For the sake of argument I will grant you the philosophical high ground.
For the last 2 years I have watched gpuccio present evidence and argument. I find the last piece of evidence he delivered on the ubiquitin system extraordinary positive evidence for design.
The simple to complex model appears to be failing and ultimately this dooms Darwin’s mechanism as a complete explanation.
You apparently take “evolutionary biologists” to mean those biologists who believe in evolution. This would make it a pseudoscience. I take “evolutionary biologists” to mean those biologists who do evolutionary biology as per theory of evolution. Just like in any other science, for example, cognitive scientists are not scientists who believe in cognition, but rather scientists who do cognitive science as per their respective theories.
A major (and irreducible) part of evolutionary biology is common descent. When there are unrelated species (no common descent), then whatever biologists do with those species, it’s not evolutionary biology, but it’s still biology. All biology is not necessarily evolutionary. Biology pre-dates Darwin. Particulary, hereditary theories and respective experiments pre-date Darwin (e.g. Mendel).
Microevolution has always (centuries, even millennia, before Darwin) been common knowledge and accepted by everyone. Nobody quibbles about microevolution (this may exclude those over at UD, they are a universe of their own). Theists have no dispute with microevolution, because for example Genesis 30 describes selective breeding, a form of microevolution.
This is why there’s no reason to debate microevolution. When you prove microevolution, you are proving something that is not in dispute. Macroevolution is the problem, not microevolution.
You can distinguish natural selection and common descent from each other and you insist on the distinction. Similarly it is a good idea to distinguish microevolution and macroevolution from each other, so that the area of contention would be properly delineated.
colewd,
But you did not read what I wrote. There’s a profound contradiction in gpuccio’s arguments that you haven’t checked. Also, suppose that his arguments really “doomed” “Darwin’s mechanism.” Then we would be left with nothing but a gap in knowledge, making the “design” “argument,” a god-of-the-gaps argument.
Also, gpuccio might have been putting together his spectacle of smoke and mirrors for two or more years. That amount of time doesn’t make any of it into extraordinary evidence, just the smoke and mirrors that it’s intended to be. It doesn’t make the job of confusing me about the issues with ID, or about what gpuccio ignores about information theory and evolutionary biology though.
Please read those comments I made before. Don’t evade them.
gpuccio:
Well, that’s appalling. The way I see it you’re disagreeing with yourself since I’m drawing conclusions from your claims
gpuccio:
Okay
gpuccio:
Unfortunately, no new, original functionally specified complexity of a gazillion bits of information was generated in that microevolutionary event as far as I can tell. You’re obsessed with neo-darwinism, but evolutionary changes don’t need to be selectable at every single step. Neutral theory and all that, no “design” in sight
gpuccio:
We seem to be in disagreement as to what gradual means. It may develop in a month, but there is a continuum of small gradual changes, with lots of IC generation and apparently no issues with lack of protein functionality due to islands of function. Maybe most of those transitions you consider problematic are essentially developmental and you’re grossly overstating the importance of “new” protein function?
gpuccio:
You’re the one who’s confused. If, as I argue follows from your premises and claims, saltation is inevitable, the existence of intermediates would readily falsify your claims. It’s not rocket science
Entropy,
Perhaps, however I am granting you the philosophical high ground that design requires extraordinary evidence. The evidence does not hinge on the purity of gpuccio’s arguments but on the observation of the ubiquitin system and how it enables multicellular life.
No, this is your straw-man. We are discussing design as a cause vs RM + NS as an alternative hypothesis for the origin of the ubiquitin system.
What is extraordinary is the ubiquitin system and the overwhelming evidence that its origin is the result of a designed system and not built by the simple to complex model of evolution.
colewd,
I’ve been asking you to actually read the comments. After much insistence on my part, you repeat things that you would not even try if you had read them. Maybe what I wrote is hard to understand for you. If that’s the case, then you’re accepting gpuccio’s arguments only because they align with your preferred conclusion, since if you were able to understand gpuccio’s stuff, you’d be able to understand the problems I described.
Disappointing.
I cannot guess what of it all might be obscure for you. I cannot but guess why you repeat things that I already dealt with. Either way, I don’t feel like going through the same things today, again, so I’ll leave it for another conversation.
ET playing the victim:
Corneel linked your comment so we could see it in all its “glory.” Also, Corneel was too kind to you by not mentioning that you said that designers have nothing at all to do with the designs they produce. Curious that you missed my comment about that, thus doing exactly what you are saying that Corneel did. I insist, what was that about “the beam in thy own eye, you hypocrite”?
gpuccio: “I am disagreeing with how you draw conclusions from my claims.”
I’ll check again in case I missed something, but I never saw anything there that suggests you’ve even tried to question my line of reasoning.
gpuccio: “If you appeal to neutral theory, the probabilistic barriers remain the same. You have to accept the limitations of RV.
If you appeal to NS, you have to accept the limitations of NS.
If you put both together, you have the limitations of the combined algorithm: only simple evolutionary events are allowed.”
Your barriers are predicated on false premises, as already addressed
Entropy,
I think I understand your arguments which primarily emphasize that the evidence we have does not tell us how something may have looked in the past. I acknowledge this argument as valid.
The design argument, however, does not rely on speculation about the past. The arguments are based on current evidence.
The evidence we see is lots of well matched interdependent parts, lots of genetic information and hierarchal systems like ubiquitin and cell division. Time cannot help the simple to complex model solve this without unrealistic assumptions. Design does not rely on historical speculation as RM + NS does.
This argument stands without gpuccio’s information jump hypothesis which I find interesting and valuable but not flawless.
Again, your criticisms are duly noted.
That’s but one of the many things. It doesn’t tell you the amount of sequence variants within the family that could still do the job. It doesn’t tell you if other protein families could have done the job.
False. In this regard, the design “inference” is based on speculation about the past. Namely, that the past doesn’t include an evolutionary pathway towards the current state of affairs. The speculation is based on lack of understanding that the evolution of a system includes simpler organisms, which make the IC part of the argument meaningless.
Of course time alone doesn’t solve the problem. It’s an intricate history involving lots of life forms, with differences in individual complexity, but whose involvement adds to the potential complexity of some “wholes,” which, combined with historical happenstances allowed for “individual” complexities to build up.
Besides the speculation that no evolutionary history exists, it has a huge historical speculation that you acknowledge. Namely, that A Designer (let’s not forget the singular and those capitals), who doesn’t depend on the very systems claimed to be designed, existed (and still exist) for eons, and has interfered with the history of life for billions of years.
Sorry, but an argument built on faulty and contradictory assumptions cannot be interesting and valuable, except as an example of complex ways in which some person can make a fool out of himself.
Finally, well, your argument has thus morphed into: “woa! this is very complex, since I don’t care about history or evolutionary theory, therefore design!” Doesn’t this bother you a little bit?
Thanks for giving it a better, if insufficient, try.
A few curious things,
1. The ubiquitin system, and the sequence of ubiquitins themselves, are described as very conserved.
2. The existence of distant homologs for all of the proteins involved in the ubiquitin systems is acknowledged, thus contradicting 1.
3. The distant homologs are claimed to “add to the complexity of the system”
4. But gpuccio insists that gene copies do not add functional information/complexity. Thus contradicting 3.
5. This guy rejects enzyme promiscuity as a “conceptual reason” for the existence of “ladders” towards “complex protein function” on the basis of the similarity of the substrates recognized by those enzymes.
6. Yet he’s impressed by the way the ubiquitin system works, even though it involves proteins belonging to larger protein families, similar substrates, similar reactions, and similar actions.
…
SCREECH!! [Goalposts moving]
1. The 500 bits criterion, which originated with Dembski, was gpuccio’s criterion for “complex”, as I demonstrated in clear quotes from gpuccio in my previous comment.
2. That counts up changes anywhere in the genome, as long as they contribute to the fitness, and it counts up whatever successive changes occur.
3. Now, in both gpuccio’s and your comments, the requirement is added that all this occur in one protein, in one change, and that it be “new and original function”.
4. That was not a part of the 500-bit criterion that gpuccio firmly declares to be the foundation of ID.
5. There was supposed to be some reason why a 500 bit increase in functional information was not attainable by natural selection. Without any requirement that it involve “new and original function”.
So what is the “foundational” requirement? A 500-bit increase in functional information, taken over multiple changes, possibly throughout the genome? Or attainment of a “new and original function”? In the latter case who judges newness and originality of function?
Joe Felsenstein,
The recent post by Joe at UD claims that this was not part of Demski’s criteria. I personally don’t know what the criteria of the 500 bit limit is.
Gpuccio’s criteria for information is measured against function not fitness to the best of my understanding.
Gpuccio will probably respond in the morning.
Entropy,
The problem is that many proteins have to work together. Whether or not other proteins could do the job does not materially help evolvability unless your claim is almost any group of proteins will perform this function. This is a testable claim.
I have not made this claim. The key is whether current observations of the cell can allow for a design inference.
This is not my claim. Large amounts of genetic information, a large number of interdependent proteins and dependent functional systems ( ubiquitin and cell division) is positive evidence of design as a causal factor. It’s not complexity in itself but characteristics that point directly to design as a cause. We can reserve a more detailed discussion later.
What bothers me is that for most my life I believed in a theory with extraordinarily contradictory evidence. The simple to complex claim, to use your terms, is most likely a fairy tale.
So what is the irreducible core of cognitive science? The central theory whose falsification will collapse the entire field of cognitive science? And why are cognitive scientists allowed to have multiple “respective theories” and must evolutionary biologists commit to THE theory of evolution?
Wow, this is the most shameless piece of historical revisionism I have seen on display in a long time. No sir, transmutation of species was not accepted until the late 19th century, and the intellectual predeccessors of Charles Darwin, like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin, met fierce opposition whenever they dared question the immutability of species. Needless to say that that opposition often came from the church, because it contravened the sacred truth from the bible.
You can change the topic, if you want. I won’t.
Yes, macroevolution met opposition. But nobody ever questioned that e.g. dogs have all sorts of shapes and sizes.
hee hee .. which makes it even more funny. He really seems incapable of seeing the delicious irony of him proudly proclaiming that they establish their “scientific methodology” AFTER they have decided that organisms are designed.
Very well. Here is your OT comment: you were looking for the achilles’ heel of the whole of evolutionary biology, and now you are disappointed to learn that such a thing does not exist. Tough beans.
Heritable change within a lineage is microevolution, not macroevolution. For example, an important microevolutionary topic is the origin of adaptations. Let me assure you that transformist explanations were not warmly greeted pre-Darwin.
gpuccio@UD
Heh, you are not trying to sneak weasel words past me, are you?
So why would the protein coding genes not be representative of all evolutionary transmitted information? I trust that you have a scientific and empirical argument for doubting this.
gpuccio@UD
The scientific literature says no:
So those naughty E3 ligases are promiscuous as well, and they may acquire novel targets simply by having their expression changed to another cellular compartment or different timing. Regulation which may be changed by single nucleotide changes in the regulatory domain of those genes. Of course, ensuing evolution towards greater affinity can occur in small evolutionary steps.
You did not offer protein domains as an example, gpuccio. You offered proteins. The function of a protein relies for a great deal on the specific combination of domains it has. Did you read Joe Felsensteins criticism in the beginning of the thread?
Can you not see that this is exactly the game you are playing?
@gpuccio
To end on a more constructive note: I have briefly looked at the data you have used for your plots. As I suspected, the data are heteroscedastic (see below). The variation in your variable gets reduced as you approach the upper or lower limit. That in itself is good reason to doubt that you would get linear plots, even if you are considering constant processes. Just a warning.
Not the achilles’ heel of evolutionary biology, but your assumption that you still have evolutionary biology when you remove common descent.
Those topics were noted and covered ever since Aristotle at least. Not sure how warmly greeted you want it to be.
gpuccio:
Here we go again with the caricature of a straw man, sprinkled with tons of texas sharp shooting
I don’t care anymore