"The success of Darwin's theory…stems from the manner in which Darwin's theory has been successfully used to guide research and generate insights into biology. Such research and insights have, in turn, generated much circumstancial evidence that supports the Darwinian thesis." (Mike Gene in his book, The Design Matrix; a Consilience of Clues, p.26). Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Gene doesn't post here any more, for family reasons. So I thought I would post the latest from his blog, The Design Matrix:

Recent research concerning tyrosine kinases continues to strengthen the case for front-loading evolution:

When it comes to cellular communication networks, a primitive single-celled microbe that answers to the name of Monosiga brevicollis has a leg up on animals composed of billions of cells. It commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism higher up on the evolutionary tree, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered. Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry, Joy. I'm not very good at this managing stuff. I didn't see a "close thread" tag. So I just deleted the whole thing. I didn't mean to be disrespectful to you or anyone else. Just incompetency on my part.

I've been reading Kirschner and Gerhart's The Plausibility of Life, which so far is a fascinating read. I'm not done, but it appears that their view is that there have been sudden appearances throughout natural history of "core processes" in living organisms, which then allow the organisms to evolve by relatively small, simple steps. But what they haven't done, so far, is explain where these core processes come from. Perhaps they will offer an explanation later in the book.
But you think they would offer at least a passing mention of Lynn Margulis's ideas of endosymbiosis and symbiogenesis. She knew about the sudden appearances of core processes, and suggested that they came about by acquiring the genomes of other organisms. This happened, according to her view, by either bacteria or protists engulfing other bacteria (endosymbiosis), or more recently, by multi-cellular organisms being infected by bacteria or viruses (symbiogenesis). Read the rest of this entry »

One of our recent, frequent participants here at Telicthoughts — aiguy — had what I consider to be a fascinating, intriguing comment here:

http://telicthoughts.com/are-dem-bunny-prints/#comment-193453, which I quote below:

Indeed - I can learn!

And so can my computer. Using genetic and other machine learning algorithms, it has learned to design complex machines that I didn't even understand until I saw them work. Not only that, but it decides all by itself what it is that it wants to design!

It really is so counter-intuitive to see how simple laws and a deterministic machine operating according to blind, natural processes gives rise to amazingly intelligent results without any intervention from me. I suppose it could be said to demonstrate "foresight" (it produces designs all at once without visible intermediate trial-and-error), but of course everything it does really is completely determined by its innate structure and its interactions with its environment. I have no reason to think it is aware of anything, so if it has beliefs and desires it doesn't know it. I really don't think it knows what it is doing - or why.

Yup, a completely unconscious, blind, unaware, deterministic physical mechanism operating according to nothing but fixed law and chance, incapable of doing anything but what it does, and there it is grinding out artifacts of complex form and function. Intelligence is so cool!

Read the rest of this entry »

Metaphors typically break down when we begin to take them literally. Any investigator who tried to use the literal interpretation of a metaphor as a research guide would quickly find themselves with a rather useless guide. For example, if the sky really is angry, this implies the sky contains some type of nervous system given that emotions, from a scientific viewpoint, are attached to nervous systems. However, since the sky has no brain, the understanding of meteorology is not at all advanced by seeking brains and neurotransmitters among the clouds. Neither will we find brains and neurotransmitters among the molecules that are hydrophobic. But all this changes when we turn to the use of metaphors in molecular biology.
The design terminology that is used in the language of molecular biology does not break down when interpreted literally. Consider the process of protein synthesis as an example. To make a protein, a specific sequence of twenty different building blocks, known as amino acids, must be linked together. Yet how does the cell know what sequence to put them in? That information comes from the DNA molecule, where a specific sequence of building blocks, known as nucleotides, encodes the amino acid sequence. The cell employs machinery that translates the nucleotide sequence of the DNA into the amino acid sequence of the protein. We can thus legitimately think of the DNA as literally encoding the amino acid sequence, just as it is valid to think of the process of protein synthesis as an event that literally translates the DNA code-script into an amino acid sequence. While the sky does not actually possess emotions, the cell does actually encode and translate things. (p.45)

I don't know if it's appropriate for me to post a thread like this, but my conscience has been bothering me for a while now, and I need to apologize. And since what I did wrong was on this blog, I thought I better make my apology public.

I want to aplogize to Jack T. I lost my temper, and accused you of things that I had no right to accuse you of. There was no excuse for it. If you still read this blog, I offer my sincere apologies for doing so, and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me.

I'm almost done reading The Design Matrix for the second time. I'll probably read it a third time. I thought I would just post some of the passages that I especially enjoy. Feel free to comment on them, or post your own favorite passages from Mike's book.

It is my belief that there are people in the world like me — people who are tired of the heated debates, name-calling, innuendo, and political fights. Such people might find themselves in the middle ground and would rather focus on the hypotheses, the arguments, and the evidence. We might not be completely convinced that life was designed, yet we find the hypothesis to be tremendously intriguing. Rather than belaboring the concern as to whether the study of Intelligent Design should be labeled science, metaphysics, or religion, it is my belief that there are people who would rather just ponder the issues that are raised by design and evolution.

(Introduction, p.xi) Read the rest of this entry »

I imagine that in one of his two upcoming volumes, Mike Gene will discuss whether DNA and RNA were optimal design materials. When I read Robert Shapiro's comments that Mike linked to here:

http://www.edge.org/documents/life/Life.pdf

I found this:

There's famous set of experiments from about ten years ago when Albert Eschenmoser, a brilliant Swiss synthetic chemist, set out to prove why
nature had a select DNA. With enormous Swiss skill and manpower he set
students out to make DNA-like molecules using different sugars, one after the
other, expecting that in every instance he would fail. But in fact he succeeded and
he found that different sugars in many cases was superior to DNA. They had
greater stability; they had fewer complications in replication.
I thought that he would arrange to have the Swiss government declare that from
now on every Swiss life form would adapt his symbiosis and dispense with DNA
as quickly as possible. There's PAN, and someone else came up with TNA "”
there's endless ones "” and so to me DNA is probably what evolution stumbled
upon through accident, and it's the easiest thing that could be come upon by slow
trial and error that would make a molecule that could be replicated by proteins
and that's how it came into being.

Read the rest of this entry »

Awhile back I offered what I considered to be an inductive argument for ID here:

http://telicthoughts.com/inductive-argument-for-id/#more-1609

Even though it wasn't an argument from ignorance, it was criticised as being such. Recently, MiKe Gene has brought up the topic of proteins here:

http://telicthoughts.com/an-amazing-design-material/

What I consider to be interesting is that we can make an inductive argument for ID in regards to proteins. First, let's review the form of an inductive argument:

(1) All known Bs are Cs.
(2) X is B.
(3) Therefore X is probably C.

There is an inherent weakness in any inductive argument: How do we know our sample of Bs is large enough to allow a valid inference to C? And the answer is: We never know. That doesn't stop us from using inductive arguments in order to draw probabilistic conclusions. What it means is that we should realize the weakness, and be cautious about our conclusions. With that in mind, here is the following argument: Read the rest of this entry »