The Edge of Evolution
by BilboI've just started reading my copy of Behe's latest book, The Edge of Evolution. I'm wondering if anybody else is reading it, or has finished it, and what they think of it. For those who hate it, let's keep the comments clean. For those who love it, let's try not to gush too much.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
I just ordered mine today but I am really looking forward to discussion after I have given it a read.
Comment by Jehu — June 7, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I haven't read it yet, but man, the reviews so far from ID critics are scathing. If anyone wants to extol its virtues, that would be a nice offset.
Comment by thechristiancynic — June 7, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Have they even read it yet?
Comment by Jehu — June 7, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Quite a few people have obtained review copies, so yes. At least, I assume that even PZ isn't so arrogant as to review (and quote from) a book he hasn't read.
Comment by thechristiancynic — June 7, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I have seen quite a few "reviews" where the author clearly has not read the book.
Comment by Jehu — June 7, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
And you know this how, without having read the book yourself? I guess they stated they didn't read it.
Comment by Raevmo — June 7, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Do you have links to these "reviews" (oh, how I despise the derisive use of quotation marks), and how do you know other than educated guesses, since you admitted you haven't read it yet? Just in the interest of being totally forthright. [Edit: Looks like Raevmo and I had the same thought at nearly the same time.]
Comment by thechristiancynic — June 7, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
In some cases yes. A lot of people are just log rolling the reviews of Chu-Carroll and others, hence the derisive use of quotation marks. One blogger is actually keeping track of all of the reviews of Behe's book.
http://www.sunclipse.org/?p=12...
Comment by Jehu — June 7, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Hi Bilbo,
I've read most of it and think Behe has done a fine job. A lot of it is like Darwin's Black Box but he extends his arguments to include discoveries in biology over the last 10 years. What may surprise many people is how hard Behe comes down against YEC. He fully accepts descent with modification but, as would be expected, he rejects that RM&NS can be the whole story.
The premise of the book is that there are certain things that Darwinian gradualism can accomplish, but some features in biology are just too improbable for that to be the whole story. He attempts to outline the "edge" of evolution beyond which it just isn't reasonable to expect random changes to account for some complex biotic features.
He really has a talent for using analogies in everyday life to illustrate his points. I don't know enough about the math(with the biology) he uses to evaluated it, but I know it will be and has already been a point of contention with critics.
This book is much more technical than his first and should stimulate a lot of response from critics. I expect a flood of critical blogs and essays over the next few months. It will be interesting to see if the responses are just dismissive (like Michael Ruse's) or if they have some substance.
What this book does much more than the previous one (probably because of recent research) is illustrate the mind bloggling complexity of biotic reality. Not only in the structures we see but in the coordinated instructions and processes to build them. Althought it may not be "scientific" it just reinforces this design engineer's sense that there is something intelligent going on in evolution.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 7, 2007 @ 10:07 pm
June 7th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
There are several really clear substantive errors at key points in Behe's book, and this is what us bloggers are pointing out. What would intrigue me is if any pro-ID people anywhere exhibit the capacity to find and criticize these sorts of errors themselves in a work by the mighty Behe.
I'll give you a head start: one, two.
Comment by nickmatzke — June 7, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Apparently the fear and loathing of Behe amongst the Darwinist devote has created an anti-Behe internet log rolling phenomenon.
One example is a post by Nick Matzke who reviews a post by someone called ERV, who has not read the book, but critiques the book anyway, solely on information gleaned from Chu-Carroll's review.
To get an idea of how extensive this is, the book has been out for two days and you if Google for "Chu-Carroll" and "Behe" you get well over 25,000 hits. Amazing.
Comment by Jehu — June 8, 2007 @ 12:04 am
June 8th, 2007 at 1:44 am
NickMatzke: I'm an ID supporter, but I would actually like to know if the whole thing is bunkum. But the ad hominems and condescension of so many critics causes me to doubt the doubters. I suppose that's true because the vitriol seems to indicate there's more at issue than just the facts of science.
When most people hear a merchant badmouth a competitor, they tend to trust that merchant less. I think the same is true when non-scientists observe the ID/Evolution debate. Behe may be wrong on everything, but his manner and his tone give him a huge edge over detractors who treat him as if he's an imbecile, a liar, or worse.
Comment by russ — June 8, 2007 @ 1:44 am
June 8th, 2007 at 3:57 am
Not "fear and loathing," but a genuine distaste for vacuous claims, and hand-waving wordiness attempting to hide a lack of substance.
As y'all from the ID side read Behe's book, could you do everybody a favor? How about posting any new research data he reveals in the book. It's been about eight years since he told me he had a research project on the boards for publication "next year" that would support ID. Does he reveal the project in the book? Does he reveal any new research that supports ID?
And second, please chronicle the scientific predictions he offers. In a tome of such thickness, designed to advance a scientific notion, surely he lays out two or three dozen questions that can easily be turned into research to confirm or falsify a hypothesis. What are the real science claims Behe makes? Don't rehash what Behe said, don't fuzzify what he said with claims of somebody else being wrong: List the simple prediction, and how it can be tested.
The reviews I've seen have been scathing, too. Is there any reason they shouldn't be? List the reasons, in the categories above.
We can wait a couple of weeks, at least.
Comment by edarrell — June 8, 2007 @ 3:57 am
June 8th, 2007 at 4:19 am
LOL! Over 25,000 posts in two days? That pal is not mere distaste it is fear and loathing.
I haven't read the book yet but it does sound like it relates to the paper he published with Snokes in 2004.
I have seen good responses to many of the criticisms so far, however, I haven't read the book yet so, unlike some people, I am going to wait until I have read it before I start commenting on most of those issues.
Comment by Jehu — June 8, 2007 @ 4:19 am
June 8th, 2007 at 5:20 am
Have you read the book?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 5:20 am
June 8th, 2007 at 5:27 am
That's a sharp observation. There is more at stake than mere facts of science and little inclination on the part of ID critics to own up to this. You see evidence of this not only by the vitriol but more subtly by the need to present themselves as objective defenders of science. Your instincts are spot on.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 5:27 am
June 8th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I'm on about page 70. I like it a lot so far. I'm going to do a full review once I have finished it. I haven't quite gotten to where he talks about what he thinks actually happened non-Darwinistically, but it at least seems that he is building up to a front-loaded evolutionary scenario. If that's winds up being the case, then every critic I've read so far has completely misunderstood what Behe is talking about. If it is not, then you can see what I think in my future review
It is simultaneously the best defense of Darwinian processes and the best critique of them together that I've seen. Possibly the only better defender of Darwinism is Wagner's "Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems."
The "trench warfare" analogy was good. Basically, the point is that "arms races" are actually products of design. When technology is developed it is design, implemented, and improved. But that isn't Darwinism. Darwinism is more like trench warfare, where only immediate benefits are considered. Therefore, if torching your own best bridges lead to a temporary advantage, that's what you do. You don't develop new technology while in the trenches, because that requires forethought and foreplanning.
Comment by johnnyb — June 8, 2007 @ 8:05 am
June 8th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Interesting analogy. The artillery and infantry advance technique in WWI was often disastrous. During bombardments, the defending soldiery retreated into the dirt; then no matter how bad the losses, a few survived to operate the machine guns, obliterating the enemy advance.
However, WWI trench warfare led to many innovations, including tanks, air power, snipers, gas, and flame. I suppose you could consider these meta"”developed outside the trenches. However, we also have modern infiltration and mixed assault groups (raiders). These can be seen as evolutionary products of the trench system as soldiers adapted to the local conditions. These techniques were adapted extensively to great effect in WWII.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 8:31 am
June 8th, 2007 at 8:46 am
One thing that has been missed in the criticism of Behe's new (and old) book(s) is that his position "“ now virually the "party line" for ID supporters "“ represents the almost total capitulation of the anti-evolution movement to virtually all of the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution by natural selection, as first presented by Darwin in 1859.
This is most noticeable in Behe's complete acceptance of common descent, as reflected in the phylogenetic classification systems now universally used by systematists. By completely accepting common descent, Behe has completely accepted one of Darwin's two main points in the origin: that of "descent, with modification." This means, of course, that Behe (and, by implication, anyone who adopts his view of evolution) must accept that humans are the direct genetic descendants of "woodland apes" who inhabited the thinning forests of central Africa a couple of million years ago, along with their close relatives, the chimpanzees.
Indeed, Behe also conceeds the other half of Darwin's explanation for biologicical diversity and adaptation: that of natural selection. His quibble is not with selection per se, but rather with the source of the variations upon which selection operates. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the same quibble cited by Darwin's contemporary, Asa Grey of Harvard, who remained simulataneously a "Darwinian" and a "theistic evolutionist." Darwin originally welcomed Grey's rationalization, but later rejected it as irrelevant.
Which is precisely what Behe's version of "intelligent design theory" has become…or, more precisely, what it has always been. Having accepted virtually all of classical Darwinism (i.e. common descent and natural selection), Behe looks for the tell-tale hints of intervention of his deity in the simulataneous appearance of mutations conferring antibiotic resistance in the protists that cause malaria. Quite beyond the mathematical problems of Behe's analysis (which have already been criticized elsewhere), his analysis leaves one wondering precisely why his "Intelligent Designer" is so dedicated to making the most deadly disease known to modern humanity even more deadly.
In other words, Behe and the rest of the ID crowd who accept any part of Darwinian evolututionary theory have resolutely avoided thinking about the moral and philosophical implications of their beliefs. William Dempski has promised some kind of apologetic for the problem of "theodicy" (i.e. the now universally accepted fact that, if there is an Intelligent Designer, He has an inordinate fondness for facilitating fatal bacterial infections). However, such a disquisition has not appeared, and one can only suspect that this is because it is in fact impossible to square the apparently vicious and morally blind actions of the Intelligent Designer with His alleged designs.
As Darwin himself said a century and a half ago, he couldn't bring himself to believe in the benevolence of a deity that would create the parasitoid Ichneumonidae. Apparently Behe and Co. not only can reconcile themselves to the perversity of such a deity, they use His malevolent designs as the underpinning of their worldview.
Is it therefore not far off that the IDers begin to rationalize all forms of apparent devilishness in nature by saying "the Intelligent Designer designed it that way?"
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 8:46 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:03 am
One critique of Chu-Carrol's much-linked review of Behe's book can be found here.
Comment by eric — June 8, 2007 @ 9:03 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I'd really like to get a copy of the book; I might see if I can borrow one from a library (however it's really not the sort of book that most British libraries would normally stock).
I'm interested in Behe's use of fitness-landscapes, as this is the kind of math that I use in my day job; At last we are onto a territory where I can offer some degree of expertise!
Chu's review seems pretty harsh; however if his interpretation of Behe's mathematical statements is correct then they could be entirely justified. In finance (my own field), we sometimes use evolutionary techniques to optimize financial products. An optimized product might be considered to be a point in a multidimensional fitness-space, but which point? The definition of "fitness" in finance can vary according to your client's investment strategy.
While financial instruments are much simpler than the simplest living organisms, the concept of fitness landscapes en an ecosystem has a credible analogue in financial markets, and that is why we use much of the same mathematics. Behe (allegedly) uses 2d fitness landscapes in his examples, which he correctly observes lead to all kinds of problems - by the way these are problems that have been known and understood for a very long time.
Behe (allegedly) claims that he has found a mathematical demonstration of the limits of evolution, because once you reach a local maxima in a fitness landscape, one cannot possibly evolve any better without making things incrementally worse, a notion that is contrary to the general idea of evolution.
According to Chu, Behe's mistake is to consider a very small number of dimensions in his genetic fitness "landscape" - when you consider hundreds or thousands of dimensions the number of maxima in that space does not increase proportionately to the amount of space one must search, which is why multi-dimensional optimization is so damn hard!
I'm drawing inferences from the negative reviews of Behe's latest book; however if these are to be believed it seems that Mike Behe has plunged into a field of mathematics of which he has had no practical or even theoretical experience.
Am I being fair? Like I said, I want to read the book but I really do not want to reward Behe for writing what may be a load of bunk. Does somebody want to sell me a 2nd hand copy?
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 9:07 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:15 am
The point of Behe's premise is to clarify the Edge of Evolution, i.e. the limits on what those processes can accomplish. That doesn't mean they don't operate or that everything was designed as we see it now.
I'm not quite sure what you would consider a better view. You seem to object both to accepting evolutionary processes and to the idea that everything is the result of design.
Behe clearly holds neither the extreme that evolution can do all or the alternate extreme that everything is a design choice, yet you are not satisfied with his position. So, if the extremes are wrong and his intermediate position is also wrong, what is left?
Perhaps it would be helpful and more clear if you stated in a positive manner the position you think Behe ought to be holding.
Comment by eric — June 8, 2007 @ 9:15 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Recombination is a critical component of evolutionary processes, along with a variety of other sources of novelty.
Recombination allows one to jump off any local maximum to another point in the fitness landscape. It may or may not be 'better', but the population that finds itself in the new location may still survive and reproduce. Like an animal on a bit of driftwood that washes ashore on an island, there is opportunity in an untested landscape.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 9:27 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:29 am
I wonder about the designer's dedication to providing the intelligence and resources homo sapiens use to advance medical treatment of disease and cancer into the 21st century. Or would you have preferred to live among microorganisms a thousand years ago? Some of the plagues from that era were pretty nasty.
What are the moral and philosophical implications of Darwinism?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 9:29 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Thanks to everybody who answered my previous batch of question: Once again, I'm curious about people's beliefs & attitudes to this debate. This time I want to know what people think of evolution.
Once again, I'm not so interested in a reasoned argument, I hope you just take your best shot. Of course, if you can provide a reason then all the better!
1. Assuming that you believe evolution is a genuine phenomena, do you agree with the assertion that it is purposeless, loosely speaking that it does not plan for the future.
2. Evolution has been called "dumb" and "random". While most people will agree that random mutations play an important role in evolution, do you agree that evolution is necessarily "dumb".
3. Evolution has been described as a successful scientific theory. Do you share this opinion?
—
Thanks, and feel free to suggest more questions.
Please do not shout down TT commentators who take the time to fill in this form… I know it's tempting but there will be time aplenty for debate later.
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 9:30 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Why do you bother making that statement? TT is one of the most open forums on the internet.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 9:33 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Eric asked:
"Perhaps it would be helpful and more clear if you stated in a positive manner the position you think Behe ought to be holding."
Rather than do that, perhaps it would be helpful to state in a positive manner the positions that Behe apparently already does hold. This was an exercise we did last summer in the notorious "evolution-design" seminar at Cornell. Having critically read Behe's "Darwin's Black Box," the EBers and IDers in the course agreed that Behe:
1) completely accepted Darwin's inference of "descent, with modification," which of course includes the common descent of chimpanzees and humans from a primate ancestor
2) completely accepted Darwin's mechanism of "natural selection," which is the outcome of three processes: (a) variation, (b) heredity, and (c) fecundity
3) by implication, competely accepted all of the theory of evolution by natural selection, as set forth in Darwin's "Origin of Species"
4) disagreed with the neo-Darwinist inference that the origin of the variations upon which natural selection operates is "random" (i.e. unguided)
5) asserted that the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and selected biochemical pathways (e.g. the blood clotting cascade, the origin and evolution of the vertebrate immune system, and a few others) could not be entirely explained by the neo-Darwinian model; specifically, that the probability of the spontaneous origin of the variations which were the basis for these pathways was too low to have come about without intervention by an intelligent designer
In other words, ALL of Darwin's "Origin of Species" and "Descent of Man" were fully compatible with Behe's version of "intelligent design," which is limited to an explanation of the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and a few selected biochemical pathways.
To reiterate, Behe concedes virtually of the arguments against evolution raised by creationists: an "old Earth," common descent with modification from common ancestors (including the origin and evolution of humans), purely naturalistic natural selection as the explanation for all except a very few biochemical pathways, and the necessity of any intelligent designer to intervene via naturalistic means (i.e. by altering the probabilities of otherwise entirely naturalistic events).
In other words, "intelligent design theory" is indistinguishable from Asa Grey's "theistic evolutionism" and fundamentally violates virtually all of the basic assumptions of creationism. It represents, in other words, the almost complete capitulation of scientifically trained opponents of evolutionary theory to Darwin's original theory (which, of course, did not mention either the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, nor the origin of any biochemical pathways).
By his own admission therefore, Behe's theory would be entirely compatible with the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution as taught in the major's evolution course at Cornell, with the exception of the one lecture on the origin of life (actually, part of one lecture).
Rather than spelling the overthrow of "Darwinism," intelligent design theory as promoted by Behe et al concedes virtually all of its basic premises and inferences, except for the very beginnings of life. This is, of course, indistinguishable from classical deism, which theologians have long since concluded is indistinguishable from atheism.
In sum: Behe accepts all of classical Darwinisn evolutionary theory, and supports only a slightly altered theory of the origin of life and the genetic code, a theory that is indistinguisable in virtually all of its premises to atheism.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 9:40 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am
What are the moral and philosophical implications of Darwinism?
Darwin's theories did not address ethical issues. He was primarily interested in explaining the origin of species and not offering advice on how to live a good life.
You will find very little ethical speculation in science texts (medicine is a notable exception). My own field (computer-science) is utterly amoral. That does not mean computer-scientists are bad people… just that computers do not directly teach us much about human life.
Perhaps you should be asking about "Secular Humanism" which many people believe is the ethical position most compatible with naturalism or strict materialism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 9:41 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:47 am
In sum: Behe accepts all of classical Darwinisn evolutionary theory, and supports only a slightly altered theory of the origin of life and the genetic code, a theory that is indistinguisable in virtually all of its premises to atheism.
Dont you mean "a theory that is indistinguisable in virtually all of its premises to deism."
I do not think that atheism is a theory or even a negation of a theistic theory; It's really just a lack of a theistic theory, so to equate somebody's opinion on evolution with atheism means precisely nothing!
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 9:47 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:51 am
"but rather with the source of the variations upon which selection operates."
The whole _point_ of calling it natural selection is that it is natural selection doing the work. No one in the history of the entire debate has had a problem with the idea that dead things don't reproduce or that sick things don't reproduce as much. The question is whether or not natural selection is the primary causitive force of innovation. In fact, a Creationist actually proposed natural selection as a purification mechanism decades before Darwin. What makes it Darwinism is that natural selection _is_ the generative force.
Common descent was accepted by a wide range of people before Darwin, and natural selection as a purifying mechanism has never been controversial. What Darwin proposed was that _natural selection_ was the acting agent of biological change. Behe's point (and in fact one of the main points of the whole ID movement) is that this is only true in extremely limited circumstances.
Comment by johnnyb — June 8, 2007 @ 9:51 am
June 8th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Evolutionary adaptation requires both natural selection and a source of variation. In rough Information Theory terms, variation adds information to the gene pool, natural selection culls that information for adaptable characteristics.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 9:55 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Bradford asks:
"What are the moral and philosophical implications of Darwinism?"
If by "Darwinism" you mean the scientific theory of descent with modification and the origin of adaptations by means of natural selection, it has absolutely no moral implications at all. What are the moral and philosophical implications of Newton's theory of universal gravitation or Mendeleev's theory of the elements? None, of course. A century ago, G. E. Moore conclusively showed that "ought" statements (i.e. moral and ethical prescriptions) cannot be derived from "is" statements (i.e. scientific descriptions and explanations). To do so is to commit what is known among ethicists as the "naturalistic fallacy."
History has abundantly shown that people who commit this fallacy are prone to perpetrating the most heinous of crimes against humanity. Are you commmitting yourself (and by implication IDers in general) to committing such a fallacy by assuming that ID theory has moral implications?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:01 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Johnnyb wrote:
"The question is whether or not natural selection is the primary causitive force of innovation."
As John Endler pointed out in "Natural Selection in the Wild" (1986), natural selection is NOT a causitive force of innovation at all. Rather, it is an outcome brought about by four processes: variation, inheritance, fecundity, and differential reproductive success. The problem is the word "selection," a problem that Darwin himself noted in a letter to Charles Lyell in 1860. He preferred the term "natural preservation," but used "selection" instead because of the analogy between natural selection and artificial selection.
In other words, the source of all innovation in biological evolution is NOT natural selection, but rather the "engines of variation," which include all forms of genetic mutation, recombination (including sexual recombination), and genome fusion (including symbiosis). These produce the variations, some of which natural selection preserves as adaptations.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:09 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:14 am
salimfadhley wrote:
"Dont you mean "a theory that is indistinguisable in virtually all of its premises to deism."
No; as I was careful to outline in my post, deism is indistinguisable in virtually all of its premises to atheism. In other words, Behe's "front-loaded intelligent design" = deism = atheism.
The deity of classical deism creates a universe that has sufficient natural law to produce all of what we see around us, and then lets it run without further intervention. How is this different from "front-loaded intelligent design?" And how are we to derive moral guidance from this?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:14 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Don't even try this. You were the one who introduced metaphysical side issues into the thread.
and
If there are no moral implications then what is the point of these comments?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:16 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Allen MacNeill wrote:
and
What do you think are the moral implications of ID
(if we don't know, who was/were the designer(s)?
Comment by Analyysi — June 8, 2007 @ 10:19 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Bradford's question about the moral implications of Darwinism points to what is in my opinion the greatest threat posed by "intelligent design theory." Not that it will undermine evolutionary biology (indeed, it is apparently compatible with virtually all of evolutionary theory since the early Archaean), but rather that it fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between science and ethics, a misunderstanding with the potential to produce no end of maliciousness.
The problem of ultimate foundations for ethics and morals fatally undermines the concept of a supernatural "law giver" in essentially the same way that the problem of origins undermines the concept of a supernatural creator-God. All peoples and cultures have systems of rules to govern their behavior. Such rules constitute ethical and moral codes, which are consulted whenever there are disputes or questions about the ethical or moral quality of people's behavior. All ethical and moral statements "“ phrases like "do this" or "don't do that" "“ are subject to the same qualification, which can be formulated as the simple question: "Why?" Using magical or supernatural reasoning, the answer to this question is, of course, "God (or some other deity or deities) says so." In other words, actions are right or wrong because God (or some other deity or deities) says so, and not because of some intrinsic quality of those actions themselves.
To base a system of ethics and morals on the requirements and prohibitions of a supernatural entity (or "God") is possible so long as people believe in and accept such a basis. But if peoples' belief in the existence of such a God is undermined by the adoption of science and scientific explanations, then the basis for any moral code handed down by such a God is also undermined, leaving no foundation for ethical or moral standards of behavior.
Since, as noted earlier, "intelligent design theory" accepts almost all of the theory of evolution (with the exception of random processes as the source of variation), the only way in which the "Intelligent Designer" (i.e. God) can alter reality is to intentionally manipulate the variations upon which evolution is based. This means that the Intelligent Designer postulated by "intelligent design theorists" must conform to almost all of the conditions for evolution by natural selection, including the "intelligent" (i.e. deliberate) creation of individuals that, according to the principles of natural selection, necessarily die or fail to reproduce. This conclusion is fundamentally antithetical to the generally recognized basis of Judeo-Christian-Muslim morality.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:25 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Following the links to this:
This is pompous rubbish. Any value system is predicated on an initial assumption that will be linked to no small amount of emotions and feelings. Reason is also not the exclusive preserve of secular humanism.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:29 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:36 am
I understand the connection between science and ethics and it is that understanding that leads me to believe there is something amiss with your alarm.
Or by the same logic a confidence in the moral values associated with God can undermine the ethical and moral influence of alternative ethical systems.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:36 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Bradford asks:
"What do you think are the moral implications of ID?"
I think I've answered this question in my previous post. However, it may be illuminating to take specific case: that of the evolution of antibiotic resistance in Plasmodium falciparum, the protist that causes malaria, the most devastating disease currently afflicting the human population worldwide.
In The Edge of Evolution, Michael Behe presents a mathematical argument that the evolution of such resistance is statistically implausible, and can only be explained by the intervention of an "intelligent designer." If, like the theory of evolution, ID theory has moral implications, what are the moral implications of Behe's observation?
To paraphrase Darwin, I would prefer to assume that there is no "intelligent designer" to assuming that there is one, and that He intends to cause the agonizing death of millions of innocent human beings. Indeed, I would go further and take Huxley's position: that rather than adopt the observable patterns exhibited by natural processes (i.e. to commit the "naturalistic fallacy"), I am forced to the conclusion that morality is, if anything, predisposed to contravening those natural processes, rather than elevating them to some form of moral justification.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:37 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Allen,
I think you've come pretty close to hitting the nail on the head. Like you say, what is missed is the extend of the retreat and it's implications. By the way, here's Dembski's theodicy. I think you will find it interesting.
http://www.designinference.com...
To say that societal transformation of belief takes time is an understatement. But, in time I do believe that the realities that you observe and mention regarding the implications of accepting the grinding, wonderful, bizarre nature of life's development will takes it's toll on traditional theologies and religions. Dembski's theodicy is an example of the contortions one must engage in to try and reconcile the two. In this matter-trying to reconcile the nature of life's development with traditional conceptions of God, I can't recommend anyone more helpful and honest than Darwin. That's why he will perservere thru the years.
Yet, the need for comfort and meaning will support the notions of benevolenece and personal relationship. And I still have to keep in play the presence of "something other" to account for religious experience.
Comment by bj — June 8, 2007 @ 10:39 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Bradford did not ask:
"What do you think are the moral implications of ID?"
That question was interposed by another commenter.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:41 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Bradford says:
"Any value system is predicated on an initial assumption that will be linked to no small amount of emotions and feelings."
This is essentially the position on ethics taken by A. J. Ayer, who asserted that moral and ethical judgements are no more that statements of personal or social preference, similar to "I like ice cream."
Are you therefore saying that moral and ethical judgements are essentially reducible to statements of personal or social preference, and can therefore be derived directly or indirectly from emotions and feelings, rather than from dispassionate reason.?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:41 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:44 am
That's an incredibly stupid position. Moral standards incorporate both reason and human emotions and feelings.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:44 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Here's what I said about this in an essay ["Natural Selection, Sparrows, and a Stochastic God"] posted at my blog:
"…[t]hose who devise and promulgate theories of "intelligent design," (ID) are believers in the same underlying idea: that an "intelligent designer"…guides the evolution of groups all living organisms via some (also unspecified) quasi-magical means. Natural selection is also integral to their ID theories, but again it is resolutely not the source of "specified complexity" - the exquisite adaptations of living organisms to the contingencies of their environments. In ID theory, as in the older (and perhaps more intellectually honest) theories of "creation science," the only genuine function of natural selection is to "fix" the various characteristics of organisms within an "adaptive landscape" whose topography is specified essentially by an intelligent designer….
But there's the rub: to believe the foregoing is perforce to believe that God "misses:" that He specifies the characteristics of organisms within an intentional boundary, but allows individuals to deviate sufficiently from that boundary that they…die (or fail to reproduce, which is effectively the same thing). This is the essence of stabilizing selection: although there are deviations from the population mean, such deviants are eliminated, thereby maintaining the population mean in perpetuity. To paraphrase Darwin, out of "suffering and death," the creationist/ID "kinds" are specified and maintained.
That would be scanned: God kills the deviants, and for that, He does the survivors maintain in perpetuity? Surely not impossible for…God, but just as surely a fundamental contradiction in terms. To operate in such a fashion, God must be a utilitarian, whose intention (yes, intentions are essential to the argument) is to specify the ideal "kind" by first creating (or at least "specifying") a range of no-so-ideal individuals, and then mercilessly (even mindlessly?) eliminating all but the few that conform to the intended ideal. True, a lot of sparrows thereby "fall," and in the creationist/ID version of this explanation…God is indeed "mindful" of them, at least insofar as He creates them in order to destroy all but a few of them.
And not just sparrows; most if not all intelligent design theorists (such as Michael Behe, William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, et al) willingly embrace the idea that natural selection operates upon humans. They just don't believe that it can possibly specify all of the complex attributes of humans. So, by the logic heretofore developed, ID theorists willingly embrace a utilitarian, stochastic deity who intentionally designs humans with sufficient genetic and developmental plasticity that some (the exact proportion is irrelevant) deviate from the population mean, and then causes them (indirectly or directly, it matters not) to suffer and die, in order to bring about and maintain that paragon of animals - ourselves.
Fundamentalists, creation scientists, intelligent design theorists, and their fellow travelers are therefore stuck. If they accept the operation of natural selection at any level, they must perforce accept that God (or the unidentified "Intelligent Designer") is a fundamentally stochastic entity, who of necessity obliterates the occasional [innocent human]…, an entity who is manifestly not omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, nor omnipresent, but is a utilitarian whose ends justify His means. Or, they must deny the operation of natural selection at any level; in other words, they must stare reality in the face and deny it. Either those individuals who deviate from the specified population mean are created in order to die, or they die by accident…and while He may be mindful, He just doesn't give a damn.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:51 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:57 am
MacNeil, is that your means of posing the age old question of why God allows suffering?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 10:57 am
June 8th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I have reluctantly and sadly come to the same conclusion.
Comment by bj — June 8, 2007 @ 10:59 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Bradford says:
"That's an incredibly stupid position. Moral standards incorporate both reason and human emotions and feelings."
Precisely my point; it's not my position, but rather than of A. J. Ayer. However, I would go further than you and state that while human emotions and feelings are undeniable, they are unreliable guides for moral and ethical behavior. Rather, reason (and the experience upon which it is predicated) is the most reliable basis for moral and ethical judgements.
Indeed, one of the most characteristic things about moral and ethical judgements is that they often require us to do what is "right" rather than what we "want" to do (i.e. what our emotions and feelings predispose us to doing). This is precisely how we inculcate moral and ethical behavior in our children; by training them to do what is "right" instead of what they "want."
The relevence of all this to evolutionary theory is clear, and was stated most eloquently by T. H. Huxley in a letter to his friend Charles Kingsley, dated 23 September 1860 (full text available at http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxle...):
"Surely it must be plain that an ingenious man could speculate without end on both sides, and find analogies for all his dreams. Nor does it help me to tell me that the aspirations of mankind"“that my own highest aspirations even"“lead me towards the doctrine of immortality. I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.
Science has taught to me the opposite lesson. She warns me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile.
My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.
Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this."
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:01 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Reason allows for the operation of logic. That does not ensure reliability. Reliability is based on human motives. The Nazis, Pol Pot and Mao's Red Guard had moral values too. They were the wrong ones.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 11:08 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Bradford asks:
"MacNeil, is that your means of posing the age old question of why God allows suffering?"
On the contrary, I am trying to point out that evolutionary theory is, as Darwin so clearly saw, entirely indifferent to suffering, as it is to happiness, freedom, joy, sorrow, and any of the other emotions and feelings that so illuminate our lives. And, since Behe accepts virtually all of evolutionary theory (except its explanation for the origin of life, the origin of the genetic code, and the origin of selected biochemical pathways, including the origin of antibiotic resistance in Plasmodium falciparum), he is accepting that same monumental indifference on the part of the "intelligent designer."
Once again, it is logically fallacious and morally and ethically pernicious to conflate science (including intelligent design theory) and ethics. The "intelligent designer" of ID theory is, in other words, an amoral and apparently occasionally vicious entity that cares not a whit for individual organisms, including individual people.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:09 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Those are major league exceptions. Your indifference view is a product of your own subjectivity, not intelligent design.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 11:12 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I have not read the book and I will withhold comments until doing so. But I noticed that Thechristiancynic wrote, "I haven't read it yet, but man, the reviews so far from ID critics are scathing." That's entirely expected, regardless of the merits of Behe's new book. Did anyone actually believe the ID critics would offer anything other than a scathing "review"?
My experience with non-fiction books is that they usually have good/strong arguments and bad/weak arguments. If the major thesis of the book depends on the bad/weak arguments, I don't go along with the major thesis. If the major thesis of the book depends on the strong/good arguments, I go along with the major thesis. If the major thesis depends on both strong/good and weak/bad arguments, it becomes a judgment call and may usually involve a more tentative agreement or disagreement. But none of this means the good/strong arguments should be brushed aside. They can be used/embraced as part of a different thesis of my own.
Comment by MikeGene — June 8, 2007 @ 11:20 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Bradford says:
"Reason allows for the operation of logic. That does not ensure reliability. Reliability is based on human motives. The Nazis, Pol Pot and Mao's Red Guard had moral values too. They were the wrong ones."
Help me to understand the point you are trying to make, here. Let's go through your sentences one at a time:
"Reason allows for the operation of logic."
By this, do you refer to induction, deduction, abduction, or some combination of the three (or to some other form of logic)?
"That does not ensure reliability."
Indeed; as I point out in my second lecture in introductory biology, none of the classical forms of logic "ensures" anything at all. Induction is only as good as the number of similar cases upon which it is based. Deduction is only as good as its major premises, which for several centuries we have generally agreed are arrived at by induction. And abduction is, like deduction, limited in its validity to the degree of confidence we have in the overarching generalization(s) to which our premises have been abducted.
I believe that the only objective standard of "reliability" is "confidence," in the same sense of that term as used by R. A. Fisher and other statisticians. "Reliability" in other words, is a stochastic, rather than an absolute quality, and depends fundamentally on experience.
"Reliability is based on human motives."
This statement is completely opaque to me. Are you saying that I must know what your motives are to reliably determine what is right or wrong vis-a-vis my behavior toward you? I thought motives were completely outside the purview of science (especially ID theory, in which the motives of the "intelligent designer" are asserted to be completely irrelevant)?
"The Nazis, Pol Pot and Mao's Red Guard had moral values too."
Godwin's law aside for the moment, what precisely are you trying to say here? That because some people have perpetrated immoral acts that morality itself is therefore invalid?
"They were the wrong ones."
Agreed, but how do you know? I would tend to lean toward experience again as the criterion by which one might judge the validity of a moral prescription. "By their actions shalt thou judge them," right? So a system of morality that results in the death of millions of innocent people is, by that criterion, manifestly immoral, right?
So how are the actions of the purported "intelligent designer," who has intentionally created trillions of "innocent" living organisms, only to destroy them mindlessly through the operation of natural selection, in any way "moral?"
Just curious…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:24 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Mike Gene,
this is probably off topic, but I need URGENT HELP
I am in the middle of a debate at Beliefnet.com where, among other thing (see the thread of "Catholicism Debate", where my screen mane is Miguel_de_Servet: "HELLO! HELLO!", post #232 "“ click for link) I have affirmed that while micro-evolution is observed, we have no evidence of instances of Macro-Evolution, neither in Nature nor in the Lab.
One of the debaters has provided a link to "The TalkOrigin Archive", 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, Part 5: Change and Mutability (click for link).
Could you please be so kind as to let me know if the arguments and examples provided at the above link of "The TalkOrigin Archive" do (or don't) provide substantive evidence for Speciation, and consequently for Macro-Evolution?
Thank you for your kind attention, and thank you in advance for your kind reply.
Comment by Servetus — June 8, 2007 @ 11:32 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Of course not. I'm pointing out the fallacy of the proposition that reason best ensures reliable moral values. Reason can be used to formulate and promote some very immoral value systems.
All organisms meet the same fate- both the fit and the unfit. It is not NS that leads to their demise but their fragile biological systems in the face of inevitable death. The unfit get there sooner. Why are mainstream evolutionists so absorbed with theological side issues?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 11:34 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Allen MacNeill wrote:
Hmm. Interesting point.
I see two possibilities:
a) superdeterminism: there are no alternatives to any actions (in our world).
b) non-determinism: there are at least some alternatives
If a) is true, then there is not any really stochastic processes. And stochastic processes are (only) illusions.
If b) is true (and if there is an omnipotent God), then God may have decided to limit his power (temporarily). If he is omnipotent, he is able to allow (some) stochastic processes (if he wants) - and yet to be omniscient (and know everything he wants to know). If it is so, they must NOT deny the operation of natural selection at any level.
Comment by Analyysi — June 8, 2007 @ 11:37 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:38 am
As for Behe's assertion that selection cannot move a population off of an adaptive optimum in an adaptive landscape, Sewall Wright realized that same point more than seventy years ago. Indeed, this was the basis for the long-running feud between Wright and R. A. Fisher. Wright realized (on the basis of the mathematics) that Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection entailed precisely this conclusion: that natural selection in a static adaptive landscape would inevitably lead to the elimination of all genetic variation and therefore bring itself crashing to a halt.
Wright proposed the "Sewall Wright effect" (now more often referred to as genetic drift) as one way of shifting a population off of an adaptive optimum. Behe has either not heard of this solution to the problem of adaptive fixation, or doesn't understand its implications.
Furthermore, Wright (who, by the way, invented the concept of adaptive landscapes in the first place) developed his "shifting balance" theory of evolution, which is based on the realization that adaptive landscapes are not static. Rather, they are constantly changing, as genetic and phenotypic variation, genetic drift, natural selection, and environmental conditions constantly change.
Behe's use of static adaptive landscapes to show that intentional intervention by an intelligent designer is necessary to shift population characteristics is therefore based on a false premise, and is therefore both mistaken and misleading…not ot mention seven decades out of date.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:38 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Bradford asks:
"Why are mainstream evolutionists so absorbed with theological side issues?"
I don't know about other "evolutionists," but in the context of this discussion, I am simply pointing out the logical inconsistencies in the moral and scientific positions of the majority of ID theorists. For my own part, I don't think that either morals or religion can be derived from science - indeed, they are completely separate logical categories. Furthermore, I am convinced by my understanding of history that conflating "is" and "ought" statements has resulted in more individual and collective human misery than any other logical fallacy.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:42 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Perhaps. I have not yet read the book. But Behe is correct in pointing out that before selection becomes an operable factor life must exist. His past critiques of life's origin are on target.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 11:43 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:45 am
You've set up a strawman. Morals are not derived from science. No IDist has made that claim.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 11:45 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Hi Allen,
You write, "Rather, reason (and the experience upon which it is predicated) is the most reliable basis for moral and ethical judgements."
From my experience, moral and ethical judgments based on applied reason tend to be examples where the end is used to justify the means. Instead of talking about abstract ideals or sensational historical examples, let's deal with a mundane, real world example (that just happens to get us close to topic of this thread) where reason-as-guide is needed.
Here is one critic in an ethical dilemma:
Another critic answers:
Leading the original critic to respond:
Yet another critic agrees:
Comment by MikeGene — June 8, 2007 @ 11:47 am
June 8th, 2007 at 11:51 am
Bradford says:
"I'm pointing out the fallacy of the proposition that reason best ensures reliable moral values. Reason can be used to formulate and promote some very immoral value systems."
And I agree, if by reason you mean logical analylsis unilluminated by experience. Indeed, reason not only can be used to formulate and promote some very immoral value systems, it has been so used, repeatedly. To be specific, deductive reasoning based on false premises (e.g. the Aryans are the master race) has resulted in immense human misery, as has inductive reasoning based on insufficient or skewed data (e.g. blacks are intellectually inferior to whites).
However, this does not entail that reasoning is necessarily fallacious as a basis for morality, only that one must ground one's reasoning in an objective analysis of experience (i.e. history, both personal and collective).
If the the proposition that reason best ensures reliable moral values is false, what alternative would you propose, and how can your alternative be validated?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:51 am
June 8th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Hi Mike Gene,
Could you please let me know how long is the average awaiting moderation time? Or if my query is so off topic (or otherwise responsa non grata) that I am not going to get any consideration at all?
Thank you
Comment by Servetus — June 8, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
"These produce the variations, some of which natural selection preserves as adaptations."
But in this case it is not evolution by natural selection, but evolution by some other process. The point of calling it "evolution by natural selection" is that the other forces are haphazard, with natural selection pulling something good out of the chaotic mess. In straight Darwinism it was happenstance happenings to a creature that were culled from a Lamarckian inheritance, and in neo-Darwinism it is happenstance changes to a genome that are culled from a Mendelian inheritance. What makes them both Darwinism is that the changes were happenstance — they didn't act according to a system or plan for an organism. That is why it is "evolution by natural selection" — without natural selection it would _just_ be chaos, and natural selection pulls the large-scale, coherent variation out of a mess of happenstance occurrences.
Instead, many ID'ers believe that broad-scale change happens based on information already present in the genome. Is natural selection active? Certainly — no one proposes that dead things are reproducing
But in this case the primary cause for coherent, large-scale variation is not natural selection but information. This is not "evolution by natural selection" because natural selection is not doing much. It's there, it may have some impact, but its relationship to the overall mutational system is secondary, not primary. What primarily makes the system coherent is the information already present.
Comment by johnnyb — June 8, 2007 @ 12:10 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
The "selection" part of natural selection has always been secondary in the theory of evolution, if by that one means "descent with modification" (Darwin's phrase for "evolution"). Natural selection wasn't intended as an explanation of novelty; rather it has always been proposed as the explanation for adaptation.
"Novelty" "“ that is, the new forms upon which selection operates "“ is produced by the "engines of variation" about which Darwin said that naturalists of his time were "entirely ignorant." That situation has changed over the past century and a half, so that today we can identify dozens (perhaps hundreds) of sources of variation in populations. Many of these variations are "invisible" to selection; that is, they do not result in any net non-random increase or decrease in reproductive success. Those that do result in the preservation of what we refer to as "adaptations" "“ that is, characteristics that are present in relatively high frequencies in populations as the result of differential survival and reproduction (i.e. selection).
Clearly, therefore, ID theory is focussed on the source(s) of variation, not on what happens once the variations are already present (i.e. selection). The difference between ID evolutionary theory and classical Darwinian evolutionary theory is the difference between "you can't get there from here" and "you can get there from here. That is, the amount of variation that is the result of natural, undirected processes is either sufficient or insufficient to produce some or all evolutionary adaptations.
By the way, it is important to note that there is no necessary difference between the rate of ID evolution and Darwinian evolution by natural selection. What controls the rate, as first shown conclusively by R. A. Fisher in his Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, is the rate of production of new variations, not the rate of selection per se.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Instead, many ID'ers believe that broad-scale change happens based on information already present in the genome.
Is this Mike Gene's front-loading idea?
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 12:32 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Allen MacNeill
I generally like what you have to say until you start extrapolating into the metaphysical.
As a child I thought my pediatrician was an "amoral and apparently occasionally vicious entity that cares not a whit for individual organisms". Of course I lacked the understanding to make the correct judgement about it.
I suggest that you have infinitely less understanding than a child at the doctor's office when you attempt to evaluate the motives of a supposed creator from such a limited perspective.
To say that a world with death and suffering automatically entails an "amoral and apparently occasionally vicious entity that cares not a whit for individual organisms", is fallacious reasoning at best, and at worst, a gross mischaracterization of the ID argument.
Comment by chunkdz — June 8, 2007 @ 12:34 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Sure it is. I was responding to your statement "The question is whether or not natural selection is the primary causitive force of innovation." I thought it important to point out that evolutionary adaptation as normally construed requires both variation and selection.
But I think what you are trying to say is that in modern evolutionary theory, the source of variation lacks foresight. It turns out that observable sources of variation such as genetic mutation coupled with selection are quite capable of bringing about adaptations. Other sources of variation, such as those that help determine development can have profound effects. It can also be shown that an adaptation can occur in one epoch (e.g. fins to limbs) that then leads to another adaptation in another epoch (limbs to wings) without any apparent foresight involved.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
To say that a world with death and suffering automatically entails an "amoral and apparently occasionally vicious entity that cares not a whit for individual organisms", is fallacious reasoning at best, and at worst, a gross mischaracterization of the ID argument.
It's not a characterization of the ID argument, rather the logical consequences of the ID argument.
I wonder, do you have any knowledge of this designer that would allow you to refute Allen_MacNeill's argument? For example, can you show that the purported designer is not amoral?
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 1:04 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Allen:
How neglectful of you to have omitted entirely the several theories (or hypotheses if you prefer) of intelligent design devised, promulgated or merely supported by contributors here at TelicThoughts. What are we… chopped liver? And if so, why are you bothering to comment here?
My goodness, Allen. You're sure obsessed with God for a non-believer. Here at TT God is not the focus of our suspicions of intelligent design. Front Loading requires only an original designer (unspecified) to program the ability to evolve. Biologists call this "evolvability," and talk about it quite frequently. EAM doesn't appeal to God/gods, but postulates that awareness, volition, and consciousness (when it arose, depending on when you attribute that quality to life) serve to respond to selective pressures by creatively altering genes and genomes in a trial-and-error methodology that may or may not prove adaptive. Since the adaptive alterations are the ones that survive and reproduce (in selective environments and according to local parameters specifying what CAN live), evolution is thus adaptive and progressively complex in life forms that do evolve. Some obviously don't, or they wouldn't still be around.
Why not address the ID presented on this forum? bj wants to contrast Behe's position as a 'retreat' from Dembski, Johnson and others who don't present here. You want to fall back on your God-centric stereotypes while entirely ignoring the ID that is presented here. What's the purpose of that?
We don't restrict God-sayers here, but that's just an openness to ideas about ID that care to place the agency in God. Aliens are as sufficient an agency for Mike Gene's or Krauze's purposes. I'd accept that too, though I'd still think life is MORE responsible for its own evolution than aliens are. OOL questions are still wide open whether you're a biologist or an IDer. Nobody knows. That's a fact, and design is as reasonable as accident, or more so in my opinion. YMMV.
I'm not "stuck" Allen. I think all of it is entirely natural, including that which we do not know ['unknown'] and that which we can never know ['unknowable']. It's all a matter of what's on the table, what's beneath the table that we could discover, and what's in the corner that we can't hope to unravel. What you call "supernatural" is just that which you cannot explain. Yet or ever, doesn't really matter. Anything that DOES happen in reality is natural. Per my point of view.
I resent being splattered by your mile-wide whitewash brush. It has no place in legitimate discussion or debate here with people who aren't Michael Behe or William Dembski or Philip Johnson (whoever). Deal with US, or deal with Behe's new book. Stop painting imaginary fences, please.
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
Allen_MacNeill would first need to show that amorality exists.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 8, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Salimfadhley
What's logical about it?
There is no logical reason to make an assumption that the designer must be amoral or vicious, any more than a child can logically conclude that a pediatrician is amoral or vicious. Death and suffering does not logically entail an amoral, vicious God.
That being the case, it is a mischaracterization to say that the ID argument logically entails an amoral designer. There's nothing logical about it.
Especially preposterous since MacNeill himself says
yet at the same time he tries to derive a moral assumption about the designer based on what? Science.
Isn't it a common criticism of ID to say that "just because things appear designed doesn't mean they are"
How does this rule not apply to Allen MacNeill when he uses scientific observation to say that the designer is
Comment by chunkdz — June 8, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Allen MacNeill,
That was a disappointing post from you in so many ways. Mostly because I know you are capable of much better.
Please.
You take an incredibly anthrocentric position of what God should be, and then claim that any vision of God that does not elevate humanity to the central stage of reality and fails to coddle him is unacceptable. Perhaps to you the world ought to be a Scharaffenland?
All you have established is that an uttery self-centered theodicy is logically inconsistent with the reality that Darwinian selection occurs.
A more spiritually rich understanding of God and the nature of the world as an exploration of unfolding within consciousness — a fabulous divine story — with every apparently separate being actually being divinity expressing itself and experiencing itself — that kind of understanding, as stated by mystics from every religious tradition — and no religion — is utterly imperviable to the "universal acid" you deem so potent.
As Einstein wrote:
Comment by mcromer — June 8, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Setting aside the fact that intelligent design theorists are not creationists, I think your statement is completely wrong. I have always understood that nature is brutish and amoral and that God is moral but allows nature to run its course with certain important exceptions. Why agreeing that natural selection happens on certain levels would change this is not obvious to me.
Comment by Jehu — June 8, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
mcromer
You give MacNeill too much credit. He hasn't even established this much.
Comment by chunkdz — June 8, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Nor to me. After MacNeil indicated the link between NS eliminating the unfit and his God does not care argument I pointed out to him that NS does nothing more than hasten death for the unfit. Death is the end of the road for all organisms of any fitness level.
MacNeil was also being disingenuous in claiming a descent process has nothing to do with morality and then using NS (a core biological tenet related to the descent process) to argue a theological point against theistic moral systems. I do believe the deception is self-deception (rather than premeditated) but inconsistency and duplicity are earmarks of the critics.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Hi Servetus,
Mike has probably not even seen that your comment awaited moderation. We only screen comments for spam, not for relevancy, and I've just approved yours.
You ask for an urgent reply, so until Mike drops in, I hope you'll consider my answer. Yes, the evidence for speciation is pretty good, and both Mike and myself accept common descent (i.e. macroevolution). Don't fight a losing battle.
Comment by Krauze — June 8, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
I am sure that Allen can defend his own statements, but I think he was merely pointing out an inconsistency in some ID theorists.
Many (not all) ID advocates point to Darwinism as being somehow morally defective. Allen is pointing out that ID isn't necessarily more moral in this regard.
I would agree with the general assertion that scientific statements are amoral. However, it does appear that the majority of ID advocates are religiously motivated to find scientific justification for their beliefs.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 2:44 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
That being the case, it is a mischaracterization to say that the ID argument logically entails an amoral designer. There's nothing logical about it. Especially preposterous since MacNeill himself says: "I don't think that either morals or religion can be derived from science"
The only reason you can infer moral arguments from ID is because it is NOT science!
Comment by salimfadhley — June 8, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Hold on. You're the same person who pointed me to secular humanism as a moral system most compatible with science. How weird to have a moral system so identified and presumably consistent with the above statement. Is secular humanism inferred from a non-scientific basis and if so then why is it more compatible with a scientific position?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 2:54 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
If that is so then MacNeil is merely trying to join the crowd. His whole approach was grounded in religious motivations. If x is a religious propostion its negation is an inherently religious statement.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Good one, chunkdz.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I didn't say I was surprised. However, bad reviews are largely what I've seen, which is why I asked for those who had good things to say about the book to do so in order to establish some modicum of balance.
I would especially like to hear what someone has to say in regards to Behe's focus on malaria as having been designed. That is quite a curiosity to me, so I'd like to see if Behe says anything about that focus in his own defense.
Comment by thechristiancynic — June 8, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
OK here's some criticism. Although I don't have the biology background to critique Behe's claims, I do think his theology is muddled. On the one hand he distances himself from interventionists (rightly in my view) and supports the idea that the universe is fine tuned to create intelligent life. Then on the other hand he criticizes theistic evolutionists for supporting Darwinian theory:
First of all, I don't think this is an accurate characterization of Darwinism as a whole. Secondly if there is no ongoing intelligence involved in evolution then chance and necessity are the sole driving agents. It's like Behe would claim that because someone intentionally built a random number generator, the resulting numbers are not really random.
I now don't really see much difference between Behe's position and the theistic evolutionists, except for perhaps some quibbling on terminology.
The problem Behe has, in my view, is that he is stuck in the ontology of a classic theism (a strong distinction between God and the world). With this ontology there are really only three options: ongoing interventionism, special interventionsim, or deism. There are, however, other ontologies that are not limited to these choices. Forms of panentheism and monistic theism just to mention a couple.
I think Behe should be commended for rejecting interventionism but it doesn't appear he has thoroughly thought out the consequences of that step.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 8, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Zach:
Hmmm… On the front page, contributors to TelicThoughts are listed as:
Afon - Participated in MacNeill's course last summer, hasn't been seen or heard of around here in months.
bipod - Occasional posts and comments, don't recall any theological arguments.
Bradford - Probably theologically inclined, does not support ID with specific God-arguments but will argue God-stuff.
Deuce - Occasional posts and comments, don't recall any theological arguments.
Guts - Occasional posts and comments, don't recall any theological arguments.
Joy - Occasional posts and frequent comments, theological arguments in defense of freedom to believe, not ID specifics.
Krauze - Frequent posts and comments, non-theological.
Macht - Occasional posts and comments, philosophical bent.
MikeGene - Frequent posts and comments, non-theological.
Steve Petermann - Occasional posts and comments, theological bent (non-fundamentalist Christian).
That's it. Steve is a theologian. Don't know if Macht is or not, but he is up on philosophy. Sometimes topics or discussions lead in theological directions, and I know I have defended the right to believe often, though I myself am not a practicing anything theological/religious. Just a defender of rights, which I will not apologize to anyone for.
Since this is TT and not UD or some other blog/message board, why make such a sweeping generalization about the theological motivations of ID advocates that doesn't apply here? Have you forgotten where you are and who you're talking to?
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Krauze,
thank you for your kind and prompt reply.
If it is not too much to ask as an aside of this thread, and if you can sum it up in few words, how would you describe the interplay of ID and ME?
To be more specific, is "front loading" (embedded design) the only explanation you envisage, or is "steering in the domain of time" (the "interactive" model) also a reasonable option?
Thank you
Comment by Servetus — June 8, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hi Joy,
Just a correction for the record. Although I admire and draw from them all, I don't align myself with any of the traditions, including Christianity. In fact, I'm sure most Christians would not consider me one of them. The labels that probably most closely fit my positions are panentheist or monistic theist.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 8, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Steve:
Sorry for any confusion, Steve. I just wanted to indicate that you're not 'their' stereotype of a theologian, but didn't want to try and pin you down as a panentheist - which, btw, the originator of EAM happens to be. Meanwhile, I'm still not sure of what the heck I am, other than just me. §;o)
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Servetus:
Hi, Servetus. "Steering in the domain of time" is kind of ambiguous, since of course evolution unfolds in the domain of time and front-loaded mechanisms used by individual life forms striving to obey the Prime Directive could account for the adaptivity and apparent direction of evolution. One of our critics has proposed a specific "retrocausal" model, but I personally think he's placing way too much foresight on quantum processes that are time-independent (possibly retrocausal in the reduction realm but not reasonably retrocausal across eons).
Have you something specific in mind?
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
a Dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid
It's not a sweeping generalization. A majority doesn't imply all, nor does it imply any particular individual. And there are reasons to believe it to be true.
I thought part of the charm of this forum was that it was a bit of an anomaly.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 3:57 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Joy,
thank you for joining in. Please believe that I am not being disingenuous, but your terminology ("Prime Directive", "retrocausal model") is way to esoteric for me. I am an amateur, a "dilettante" in the domain of biology. But with very good philosophical-epistemological competence, and iron logic.
Yes: quite simply, an Intelligent Agent operating (occasionally, hence my "steering" image) in the "domain of time".
Comment by Servetus — June 8, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Zach:
So if I were to say that a "majority" of NDS sympathizers were rabid haters and neo-genocidalists like Harris or Pinker, et al., you'd be okay with it? …somehow I doubt that, but I could be wrong.
Well, I've only ever participated in a couple of ID forums, this one and ARN - which is a DI project. I haven't found them to be particularly anomalous, and non-theistic ID is and has long been prevalent on both. I prefer TT because it tolerates fewer wannabe mind-tyrants than ARN does, but that's just a personal thing. If you've got some actual statistics, I'd give 'em a fair shake. Thanks.
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Servetus:
Then double-welcome! We can always use some competence and logic around here…
What I mean by "Prime Directive" (borrowing from Star Trek terminology) is just the impetus to survive, thrive and reproduce. All life is mortal, so ultimately survival is a zero-sum game no matter how you splice it. Evolution depends on reproduction, so that's the factor most pertinent. On a simple life-scale (ignoring evolution), life still wants to survive as long as it can and thrive. It isn't always successful at that, but that doesn't diminish the fact and act of living - or its value to the living - one bit IMO. Just my opinion.
This is of course entirely possible, and science as-we-know-it doesn't rule it out (unless you happen to be a die-hard reductionist biologist of some ideological sort). We have no objective evidence of this, but there is some subjective and historical (interpretive) evidence. We may not be the only intelligent life in the universe, and our universe in 3+1 dimensions may not be the only universe that counts. As I always say, it all boils down to the true nature of time. We do not have a good handle on that.
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
The first example in talkorigin mentioned by Servertus is:
This may be evidence for speciation among similar species (like different crows or Darwin's finches) but not for macro-evolution if by that we mean differences that account for the origin of intricate organs such as wings, the eye and the mammalian brain. There is no evidence to my knowledge for any mechanism that does account for macro-evolution via naturalistic/chance processes.
Comment by Pinolp — June 8, 2007 @ 5:03 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
So when you get Behe's book you can tell us what he says about variatiion on pages 10-11.
Comment by Mung — June 8, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
No. "Evolution" is not a theory.
Comment by Mung — June 8, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Yet ID is anti-evolution. I bet we can even find people calling Behe and his books anti-evolution.
Comment by Mung — June 8, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Ah, the good old tu quoque fallacy.
Comment by Mung — June 8, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
No, because it would not be an accurate statement and obvious hyperbole.
With regards to my own qualified statement, you might have challenged its factual basis. I would have probably been happy to modify my stance as required. It does appear that
the majority ofmany ID advocates are religiously motivated to find scientific justification for their beliefs.My statement was clearly aimed at magnan's characterization of evolutionary theory. The statement remains true regardless of the content of Behe's book.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Mung
Maybe even in this very thread.:smile:
Comment by chunkdz — June 8, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Not really. Tu quoque is a fallacy of diversion. If you are intent on evaluating theories by their moral implications, then it wouldn't be diversionary.
The actual fallacy occurs by improperly assigning moral values to scientific theories. One of the first uses of Galileo's newfound understanding of ballistics was knocking down castle walls. That doesn't make Galileo's theories of ballistics any more immoral than older theories"”just more accurate.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 6:21 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Allen MacNeill wrote:
[emphasis added]
I find this a very strange argument. Bizarre, even.
It seems to suggest that not creating living organisms would have been morally or otherwise preferable, since creating them, either via a purely deterministic or via a somewhat indeterministic algorithm set, means that their lifespans will be finite.
But it is quite plausible that a lifeless world is necessarily less valuable than any world containing life; for it is quite plausible that all value necessarily supervenes on the existence of life. St Francis of Assisi probably thought so, as did the author of Psalm 150. Certainly it seems that pleasure of any sort depends on the existence of sentient life; and the same is probably a fortiori true of value of any other kind.
But if life is necessary for value, it is incumbent on a proponent of the argument to demonstrate that there is a logically and physically possible alternative way to have created and ordered life that would have been preferable, all things considered. I'm not aware of this ever having been done. Not even remotely.
The 'all things considered' clause is important, because it may be the case that the actual universe is teeming with untold trillions of deliriously happy organisms on faraway planets we don't know about, and that any change to the actual laws of physics would have the effect of making life much rarer, less complex, etc, resulting in a colossal loss of value in net terms compared to the results of the actual physics.
Also, animals with infinite natural lifespans and who experience pain only infrequently would still have pain sensations an infinite number of times. And animals incapable of pain would probably die out much sooner, given pain's obvious biological functions, thus reducing the time available to them for experiencing satisfying sensations (such as they plausibly get from eating, having sex, etc).
The argument also seems to presuppose that mainstream Christian doctrines concerning suffering, death, and the purposes and final destiny of the entirety of creation are simply false. But what if they're not? Christians have always known that living organisms suffer and die, and don't seem to draw the conclusion of the argument. It may be worth pondering why they do not. Are they just stupid?
A final point to make is that the argument claims that God would not know the outcome of fundamentally indeterministic processes. But a standard version of theism denies that God is a spatiotemporally limited being. Let's say a human being makes a measurement on an indeterministic quantum system, such as Schrodinger's Pussy. We say that the wave function 'collapses'. But that collapse is consistent with an earlier superposition. For any being taking a measurment with respect to an indeterministic quantum system at a given location of spacetime, the wavefunction collapses apparently everywhere and everywhen. (I'm aware there are also 'no-collapse' interpretations.) So indeterministic processes appear to be compatible with knowledge of the actual outcome of those processes. And a spatiotemporally unlimited being such as God would presumably have access to all the outcomes of measurements performed at any location in spacetime.
The argument may just be a re-statement of the argument from evil. If so, this discussion may be of interest, since it concerns animal suffering and theistic evolutionism.
Comment by stunney — June 8, 2007 @ 6:40 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Zach:
So… you now qualify your statement as hyperbole? Fine. Some of us are rather prone to that, myself included. It's true that some do find ID to be appealing as a justification of their beliefs, but those people are generally NOT Creationists (of the 'usual' YEC variety). Because Creationists need no scientific justification for their beliefs. Never did.
It's perfectly understandable for individuals in this modern science-worshipping age to want a scientific basis for their beliefs. No matter how pointless or foolish you and I might think that desire is. For me, it's enough to have discovered after going very seriously seeking for scientific answers that there were none at all. They weren't even trying, still arguing over 'interpretations' of what's evidently real, ignoring the anomalies altogether.
I also earned zero confidence that definitive answers would ever be found. We humans apparently enjoy fighting about it more than we enjoy the benefits of real knowledge. What I did find was a sense of calm in my own experience and my own understandings. It's unnecessary for me to find scientific validation for them. If I were a Creationist, I'd have confirmed the original position. Since I'm not, I'm okay with the position I have. Even God - should God exist and care - will understand that about me.
It honestly doesn't matter to me WHY people seek better and more sufficient answers to who and what they are than RM-NS can offer. Nor do I care if they choose to accept or reject anybody's theory of who and what they are. I participate in these debates because the hyperbole and rhetoric are so often out of line, going against everything HUMAN and AMERICAN that I know and love, have defended with my very life more than a few times.
Science, in the form of wannabe-totalitarian Neodarwinian Orthodoxy is in truth anti-science, anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-human. I don't like it a bit. You can always find fault with my position, or perhaps with details of my arguments. But you'll never turn me into a zombie by spouting platitudes or luke-warm porridge. It's way too late for me, as I know too much and have seen too much - I'm old. Stick with the children - they might be impressionable enough to believe in fairy tales.
Comment by Joy — June 8, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Front-loaded design of living organisms would see the design taking place with the origin of life (or perhaps at other critical junctures, e.g. the origin of a phylum). This might mean building into the living organism abilities and mechanisms that are prepared for future change.
This is a design activity, which is distinct from the notion of having it built into the natural law of the universe from the start. We infer intelligent design in cases that would not be covered by combinations of natural laws or chance.
Why do you suppose that we should derive moral guidance from an inference to intelligent causation/design?
If you are saying that all mutations are designed, that would not be correct on any version of ID. Mutations happen, including for human offspring. Some of them, even without mutations, do not live to reproduce. ID doesn't create this state of affairs. This is a fact of life that any full viewpoint has to deal with.
More specifically just to be sure this is clear, front-loading forms of design do not necessarily imply individual design of the results that you seem to have in mind. It does not imply direct intervention at each step, which is why it is distinguished as having the design front-loaded.
We all might prefer one thing or another, but I don't think science is subject to preferences in that sense. Either undirected/unguided natural processes can achieve a given effect, or they cannot. If they cannot, that necessarily implies a contribution (whether direct or indirect) from a directed/guided cause, i.e. from intelligent agency. That is reality, whether preferred or not.
Regarding God, any understanding of God will need to include the fact that billions of people have died, some of them in agonizing ways. Again, this is not an issue that ID created, and it wouldn't disappear if we closed our eyes to the need to recognize intelligent causes.
I hope you are not in favor of placing preferences over reality and would instead say we should "stare reality in the face". If then intelligent agency is causally required, that too is part of reality.
I have no objection, except to ask whether you are somehow supposing that ID leads one to "adopt the observable patterns exhibited by natural processes" or to "elevating [natural processes] to some form of moral justification". You seem to be raising a concern where no concern is evident.
About Behe, your description of his position does not seem to me to be an accurate portrayal. You emphasize distinctions such as the origin of life and the origin of the genetic code, even though those distinctions are not his focus. On the other hand, you minimize any differences in the areas that are his primary focus.
You do acknowledge just a few pathways. However, the examples he gave in his book are illustrative without intending to be exhaustive.
I will give you high marks for two points you make clearly and well. Both are spot on. They are
- your clarification that one cannot derive "ought" from "is" statements, and
- your post about natural selection. I do not often see such a clear and accurate portrayal.
That said, I wonder if you have noticed all the implications.
And yet, you are forming this ethical assessment of the intelligent designer from the science of inferring intelligent causes from certain effects. I would say, you have fallen into the pit you warned about. To make an accurate assessment, one would need to consider more than just the "is" statements we can glean from science. There is much more to the story than we see through that keyhole.
I wonder if you notice that the core of your question does not in any way depend on whether Darwinistic evolution ever even happened. Even if every kind of life were created in the form that it now has, it would still be the case that natural selection would be operating, i.e. that some die without having offspring. Any moral issue of death before reproduction in no way depends on evolution.
Thus, evolution does not create the issue of death before reproduction. Nor does recognition of mutations or other variations depend on any conclusions about evolution. If there is a moral issue to be raised, it is here before us regardless of scientific questions about the limits of unguided natural processes.
Comment by eric — June 8, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Hi stunney,
I employ a similar and very simple theodicy. It goes like this. Life is a wonderful thing. The structure of life is such that all the wonderful things we love so much about life is also responsible for the horrors. As such, life is as Leibnitz proclaimed "the best of all possible worlds". Take away the elements of life that create the potential to produce what we call evil and all the wonderful things disappear as well. Those who fault God for creating such a world should then by consistency, hate the life they have. If, in fact, they love life then the only recourse they would have is to claim that God could have created a life that is somewhat better. It would be, however, their responsibility to describe the structure that would offer that. Otherwise, it's just sentimental ramblings similar to those who see heaven as a place where no suffering can occur. Suffering is caused by the very same structure that is responsible for the ecstasy that is available. This is not to diminish the seriousness of people suffering but instead of longing for some boring perfect existence it should be a call to action.
Comment by Steve Petermann — June 8, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
edarrell: The reviews I've seen have been scathing, too. Is there any reason they shouldn't be?
One and a half chapters. It's easily as bad as Myers describes it, to my untrained eye.
Is there any reason the reviews shouldn't be scathing, Bradford? Can you answer any of my questions from the book? Any new research? Any new hypothesis?
Comment by edarrell — June 8, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
Jehu said:
Ah, well, by all means, list the new research data, and show us the new research questions. You can pull them out of the Snokes paper if you like
Other than that, you're not making that case. The two things the book needs to provide redeeming scientific value are, as far as I can tell from what I've read and from what you can list, wholly absent.
More than 100 comments, not one listing of data or prediction. Excuse me for being skeptical, but where is the beef? Show me the money, eh?
Comment by edarrell — June 8, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Have you read the book?
I agree with Mike. Until I finish the book I'll make no comment about it. Reading a chapter and a half and reacting as you do also backs up Mike's other point which is what else do you expect from critics?
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 8:41 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Most of the commenters (including edarrell) did not read the book and comments from some who had focused on morality.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
MacNeil:
also from MacNeil:
Critics like MacNeil could be discussing areas of differences like OOL, the origin of the genetic code or biochemical pathways. I'd welcome that. But that would entail a discussion of scientific data. Instead he chose to use Behe's book as a pretext for launching a theological offensive. Anti-IDism is built around protecting and promoting atheism. There are theists who are critical of ID but from Huxley to the present science is not the primary motivator despite protests to the contrary.
Comment by Bradford — June 8, 2007 @ 9:04 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
No hyperbole there.
Comment by Zachriel — June 8, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
stunney wrote:
"But if life is necessary for value, it is incumbent on a proponent of the argument to demonstrate that there is a logically and physically possible alternative way to have created and ordered life that would have been preferable, all things considered. I'm not aware of this ever having been done."
An interesting challenge. I have discussed this very point with my students, in the context of the origin of life and the origin of reproduction. Most of my students assume that reproduction is simply a "given" property of life, but clearly it is a complex adaptation requiring multiple anatomical and physiological adaptations.
Therefore, it must have evolved after the origin of living cells…probably long after. In other words, it is quite possible to imagine (and even to "design") organisms that are alive, but totally incapable of reproduction.
Along the same lines, it is also possible to imagine (and again to "design") living organisms that do not have a built-in genetic program that kills them after a pre-set period of time. Indeed, only animals and some annual plants seem to have such endogenous "kill-by dates." All other organisms "“ bacteria, fungi, protists, and most plants "“ are effectively immortal in the sense that if something does not kill them, they do not die.
Finally, all living organisms are capable of dying/being killed, of course. However, only animals (and some annual plants) do this to themselves upon reaching a particular developmental stage.
Consider, therefore, a population of effectively immortal organisms that do not have the ability to reproduce. Such organisms would, of course, occasionally die as the result of accident, predation, disease, etc. As time passes in such a population, the number of organisms necessarily decreases until it reaches either zero or the rate of spontaneous creation of such organisms (clearly, this argument makes the most sense if one imagines that we are discussing unicellular protobionts, such as those proposed by Haldane or Oparin).
Furthermore, if we assume that the origin of life from non-living "stuff" is a highly unlikely event, this means that the most likely outcome of the trend described above would be the ultimate disappearance of any living organisms, without their replacement by new ones.
Now consider that a single individual in such a population acquires the ability to reproduce itself. This need not be sexual, nor need it be anything like the processes that cells now use, involving DNA replication, cytokinesis, etc. Indeed, it need not involve genetic coding at all; the protobionts could simply fission upon reaching some physically limiting size, rather like soap bubbles do. If the membranes of such protobionts were selective, they might allow the incorporation of materials in such a way as to "grow" to such sizes, thereby making reproduction via simple fission inevitable.
Such organisms would, in the fullness of time, completely replace organisms that could not grow or reproduce (by whatever mechanism). This is natural selection in a nutshell: reproduction is, in other words, an evolutionary adaptation.
Therefore, one can imagine at least four possible arrangements for life:
1) immortal (i.e. no "kill-by" age) organisms that do not reproduce
2) immortal (i.e. no "kill-by" age) organisms that do reproduce
3) mortal (i.e.; built-in "kill-by" age) organisms that do not reproduce
4) mortal (i.e.; built-in "kill-by" age) organisms that do reproduce
Let us assume for the sake of argument that all four types exist at time t=0. At time t=1, there is a finite probability that any one of the four types will be killed, even if they have not reached their "kill-by" age. given sufficient time, two things will have eventually happened:
"¢ Type 1 organisms will have completely disappeared, having died by accident or misadventure.
"¢ Type 3 organisms will also have completely disappeared, having either died from outside causes or from reaching their "kill-by" age.
Furthermore, Type 2 organisms would almost certainly have evetually outstripped their available resources, and therefore suffered an extremely high death rate, one that essentially balances their reproductive rate. This is essentially what bacteria, fungi, protists, and most plants do. If nothing kills them, they do not die, but they can reproduce. Given a planet with finite resources, therefore, their death rate due to outside forces must equal their reproductive rate, or they will soon cover the entire surface of the planet many meters deep.
Finally, Type 4 organisms are what we and other animals are; if nothing kills us "from outside," we still eventually die. It seems likely to me that having a built-in "kill-by" age is therefore an evolutionary adaptation, a hypothesis that has a great deal of evidence in its favor.
Now, an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Intelligent Designer could easily have populated the Earth entirely with Type I living organisms. However, if His intent was to maintain them in perpetuity, He would perforce be required to either prevent them from dying by accident or misadventure, or create new ones to replace those that have died in such ways.
However, an Intelligent Designer who was limited by the physical laws of our particular universe (i.e. finite planet size, finite resources, spontaneous mutations, etc.) would almost certainly have come up with a planet in which only Type 2 and Type 4 living organisms exist. That's the planet we live on, and it's indistinguishable in any observable way from a planet on which no such Designer has done any such thing. That is, if reality is constrained in the way it appears from all indications that it is, then the actions of an Intelligent Designer would have produced a biosphere utterly indistinguishable in every respect from a biosphere that had evolved by natural selection alone.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 10:45 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Allen MacNeill wrote:
Your post contains no demonstration and much speculation. (I said the former is what's needed to argue convincingly that there is a logically and physically possible alternative way to have created and ordered life that would have been preferable, all things considered. We have a surfeit of the latter.)
However, unless I'm missing something I think what you have argued, in effect, is that:
If there is an Intelligent Designer who is at least as intelligent as Allen MacNeill, that Designer would have created a) by means of evolutionary algorithms; and b) those life-forms would be of the types we actually observe.
So your argument seems to support an Intelligent Design hypothesis.
Well done. You must be thrilled to bits.
My only worry is that your sample regarding life is one planet from the entire universe, which seems a bit on the inadequate side.
Comment by stunney — June 8, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Eric wrote:
"Front-loaded design of living organisms would see the design taking place with the origin of life (or perhaps at other critical junctures, e.g. the origin of a phylum). This might mean building into the living organism abilities and mechanisms that are prepared for future change."
Another way of doing this would be to create a large number of different organisms with different attributes and capabilities, and let them run. Those whose attributes and capabilities allow them to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune pass on those attributes and capabilities to their offspring (assuming that they are heritable).
This would, of course, require a very effective "engine of variation" to produce the various different organisms with their various different attributes and capabilities. But this is precisely what evolutionary theory proposes, and what empirical observation and experiment have found.
Notice that there are at least two immediately obvious and testable predictions that flow from this view:
1) That diversity would be highest at the inception of a new phylogenetic line, and would decrease thereafter
2) That once selection had eliminated all of the non-adaptive variants, it would be limited to stabilizing selection until a new adaptive regime begins
Both of these predictions have been amply verified by the evidence.
Now consider the second half of your statement:
"This might mean building into the living organism abilities and mechanisms that are prepared for future change.""
This is precisely what the "engine(s) of variation" do prior to selection; they load organisms with a plethora of attributes and capabilities, some of which may result in their successful survival and reproduction later on. The difference between this process and the one described by some ID supporters is simply that the attributes and capabilities that may or may not result in differential reproductive success later on do not require foresight or design, especially if there is enough variation to include at least one attribute or capability that, in the fullness of time, is successful.
Notice that this means that guided ID and non-guided natural selection take the same amount of time and require the appearance of the same attributes and capabilities. The only difference between them is that the former can get by with fewer variations, while the latter generally requires more variations (otherwise extinction overwhelms the process…which, BTW, is what the fossil record abundantly indicates it has done in the vast majority of cases).
Now, more to the point: given the foregoing, it seems to me problematic in the extreme to identify "front-loaded" attributes and capabilities that may eventually be adaptive, until such adaptiveness in fact has taken place. Therefore, it seems to me that there is no empirical or logical way to distinguish a priori between "front-loaded" attributes and capabilities that have not yet become adaptive and attributes and capabilities that are simply the product of the "engine(s) of variation" posited by evolutionary theory.
Of course, one can distinguish after the fact whether an attribute and capability is adaptive (by simply counting up the numbers of individuals with particular attributes and capabilities and comparing their relative frequency). However, at this point it is absolutely impossible to determine if such attributes and capabilities arose by design or by accident.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:11 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
If the Intelligent Designer "created a) by means of evolutionary algorithms; and b) those life-forms would be of the types we actually observe" then how in the world could one distinguish between this and a world that is entirely the result of pure Darwinian evolution?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
And, while we're on the subject of the origin of life, take a look at this:
http://www.physorg.com/news100...
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 8, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
The theological/moral objections raised in this thread seem to boil down to pots telling the potter what the potter can and cannot do. There is a big difference between the rights of a potter and the rights of a pot.
With that distinction, moral inconsistencies raised aren't that interesting and have to be discussed in different philosophical or theological frameworks. Different people will answer them differently.
Comment by geoffrobinson — June 8, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
June 8th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Allen MacNeill wrote:
One could as easily ask:
If Unintentional Darwinian Processes created life a) by means of evolutionary algorithms; and b) the resulting life-forms would be of the types we actually observe, then how in the world could one distinguish between this and a world that is entirely the result of Intelligent Design?
I conclude that explaining the observed biological data as being the result of Unintentional Darwinian Processes is an empirically unfalsifiable, and hence unscientific hypothesis.
To illustrate the point, I've used in the past the example of the Empire State building. Given that it came to be by means of natural physical processes, one could, if one wished, claim that one could give, in principle, a complete physical explanation of how it came to be and make no mention of any intelligent designers. The maker of such a claim, to be sure, might be in need of urgent psychiatric attention due to a severe case of solipsism. But no scientific error need be involved in the claim. And of course, even one living cell is more complex than the Empire State building.
And this brings me to a more direct response to your query: one distinguishes between evolutionary naturalism and at least theistic forms of ID by using arguments in the philosophy of mind, particularly concerning the Mind-Body Problem and the Problem of Other Minds; and more general metaphysical and ethical arguments to the effect that reason and value cannot be naturalized. I provide an example of one type of argument in a couple of comments I make in this discussion.
By the way, I noticed you relied at one point on a notion of physical laws (aka laws of nature). But why not do what Ockham of Billy the Razor Kid fame himself did, and simply dispense with hypothesizing these 'laws', and make do with Divine Agency alone?
Comment by stunney — June 8, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Allen MacNeill wrote:
[Emphasis added]
I'm intrigued by the phrase, "engine(s) of variation" posited by evolutionary theory.
I'd have thought that these "engine(s) of variation" are posited by much more general physical theories having to do with everything from the Big Bang to the initial conditions of life's appearance on Earth to the general physical environment in which it subsequently developed. Mutations are, after all, physical events presumably governed by physical laws. And from what I understand of the relevant sciences, all of this was 'fine-tuned' to an astounding degree, and was quite independent of life itself.
This extensive fine-tuning data seems to me to be far more suggestive of intelligent design than of chance or impersonal Cosmic Laws that somehow just happen to be such as to control the behavior of gazillions of physical particles and field strengths in such regular, ordered, mathematically elegant and intelligible ways, and also just happen to produce complex, intelligent life.
Indeed, the non-intelligent naturalistic hypothesis strikes me as rather ludicrous by comparison to the ID one, and thus irrationally motivated.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 12:58 am
June 9th, 2007 at 1:17 am
geoffrobinson wrote:
Geoff,
Pots aren't capable of suffering, but people and animals are, which makes all the difference in the world.
If God chose to torture innocent babies, simply for the fun of it, would it be moral?
If we ever succeed in creating conscious creatures, capable of suffering, are we entitled to torment them simply by virtue of being the "potter"
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 1:17 am
June 9th, 2007 at 1:44 am
stunney wrote:
The nested hierarchy is a dead giveaway. There are millions of ways an intelligent designer (especially an omnipotent one) could create life, only a tiny fraction of which would exhibit the nested hierarchy pattern. The fact that we see this pattern throughout nature shows that either 1) there is no intelligent designer, or 2) the intelligent designer has chosen to cover his tracks by making life appear as if it were the result of a Darwinian process. Since you believe that there is an intelligent designer, perhaps you could explain to us why he is at pains to make his hand invisible.
You conclude wrongly.
This is a false dichotomy. There is no conflict between a completely physical explanation of the Empire State Building versus an explanation invoking human designers, unless you assume that human intelligence cannot be based on physical processes.
For the obvious reason that the Divine Agent is more complicated than the laws he replaces.
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 1:44 am
June 9th, 2007 at 2:31 am
Then why do objects designed by humans form nested hierarchies? Is it because humans are trying to make it look as if their creations evolved?
Comment by Jehu — June 9, 2007 @ 2:31 am
June 9th, 2007 at 2:40 am
A nested hierarchy in general is an obvious indicator of intelligent design, for the equally obvious reason that it's a collection (or set) of ordered sets, and sets are paradigm examples of mental ordering, corresponding as they do to the contents of classificatory thought.
The implicit idea in the evolutionary naturalist's claim seems to be that an intelligent designer would have created each species or at least each phylum separately, and wouldn't have created them by means of a common descent evolutionary process.
But why suppose such a thing? Is there any scientific evidence that if some intelligent agent wishes to design something, such as a computer program capable of performing various valuable tasks, it won't do so by writing the most parsimonious program, but will necessarily or at least more probably write lots of completely discrete programs instead? My strong intuition would be to say the exact opposite is true. By contrast, if a) life is likely to occur and b) occur only by undesigned processes, we would likely not find evidence of common descent, but rather evidence that today's observed species were descended from uncommon ancestors, since there ought to have been a number of different and separate 'life-creation' events at different locations at different times. Which is not what the evidence shows. So score another one for ID.
Alternatively, if, to block the previous argument, the Darwinian says life is astronomically unlikely but not impossible to have occurred by unintentional processes, then, er, score another one for ID.
So when people prattle on about nested hierarchy, or talk about how all newly discovered species can be fitted into an evolutionary paradigm, I'm tempted to say, "So frickin what as regards ID?" And, "So you're saying ID is more likely than chance as an explanation of the origin of species?"
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 2:40 am
June 9th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Jehu asks:
They don't, in general. It's amazing how many ID proponents and creationists misunderstand this basic point.
As Douglas Theobald puts it:
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 3:06 am
June 9th, 2007 at 3:19 am
A matryoshka doll is a) designed and b) constitutes a nested hierarchy in virtue of a unique set of objective characteristics. It's amazing how many ID opponents and atheists misunderstand this basic point.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 3:19 am
June 9th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Salim,
1. Assuming that you believe evolution is a genuine phenomenon, do you agree with the assertion that it is purposeless, loosely speaking that it does not plan for the future.
The question is, genuine in what way? I don't think it is purposeless or unable to plan for the future, and so that is a different sort of evolution altogether. It is the utter blindness of neoDarwinian theory which inspires awe in its worshipers.
2. Evolution has been called "dumb" and "random". While most people will agree that random mutations play an important role in evolution, do you agree that evolution is necessarily "dumb".
I'd like to see Behe's arguments for random mutation contributing much to evolution. I tend to doubt it. However, that aspect of evolution which is truly random, would also be dumb.
3. Evolution has been described as a successful scientific theory. Do you share this opinion?
No, at first glance, but then again, controversy does perhaps generate a lot of energy toward discovery. Kind of a cloud with a silver lining. But it has become a science stopper in some ways. I believe progress in several branches of knowledge are significantly slowed by closed minds, turf protection and so forth.
**************
Allen Macneill,
How can you even equate a deistic God who creates a universe and endows it with amazing frontloading programs, with atheism?
Only to a shallow thinker. Obviously, the God would say so because the actions are intrinsically good. And the main reason that the moral implications of atheistic Darwinism are negative, is that without God life has no real meaning, and while being good might be nice and I'm all for it, it doesn't really matter at all.
My take on it is that there is an impartial support for all life, and all have been endowed with a similar complexity and innate capacities to adapt (such as antibiotic resistance). There is a complex web of life and when things are in balance it works well. It is a stretch to say that God "intended to cause" agonizing death to people. In my opinion, the game here is not to have Daddy take care of every human and show preference to our life form. The game is for us to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves. The vast majority of ills and sufferings and disease are caused by stupidity and greed. Also, according to religion, our lives cannot be snuffed out, it only appears that way. Even if there were no disease, you would say that God was mean because people die. But it isn't bodily cessation that's the problem, it's belief in death that's the problem. You make the childish assumption that death and suffering are bad, but they could easily serve a higher purpose, such as our development into real beings, and all the while we were safe the whole time.
Well, it is an example of trying to reconcile it with Biblical literalism.
Comment by onething — June 9, 2007 @ 3:21 am
June 9th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Keiths
That is of course nonsense. Setting aside the simplistic analysis about putting cars into heirarchies by color or putting Portugese with Germen, human designed things form nested heirarchies every bit as well as biology. While some groupings of human designs may be subjective, this is also true of biology. The perfect phylogenetic tree does not exist in nature. For example, amongst prokaryotes there is generally no evidence of a phylogenetic tree.
At the larger organism scale, we find that phylogenetic trees are subjective and unresolved.
Meanwhile, we can do a much better job putting human designed objects into nested hierarchies than Theobald lets on.
Comment by Jehu — June 9, 2007 @ 3:50 am
June 9th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Jehu,
Your statement suggests that you still haven't grasped the issue, which is that with designed objects, a nested hierarchy based on one character bears no necessary similarity to a hierarchy based on another character.
Imagine taking a dozen personal computer models from some manufacturer and classifying them into hierarchies according to 1) processor type, then according to 2) frequency, then 3) hard disk speed, 4) power supply, 5) video chip, and 6) case. Nothing requires that these hierarchies bear any resemblance to each other. The designers, after all, can mix and match these features in a zillion different ways. They are not constrained to conform to a single nested hierarchy. To fit these computers into a single nested hierarchy, you must arbitrarily and subjectively weigh certain features above others.
On the other hand, nested hierarchies based on the traits of living organisms — both morphological and biomolecular — match each other to an astonishing
degree. No subjective and arbitrary weighting is required.
You mention the prokaryotes and certain bushy clades as cases where the local structure of the phylogenetic tree is hard to discern. True enough, but don't let that confuse you. The concern here is only over the precise shape of certain portions of the phylogenetic tree. Looking at life as a whole (see this figure from Theobald), the agreement between trees based on different molecular and morphological characters is better than 1 part in 10 to the 38th power.
I realize that common descent is uncomfortable for you as a creationist, but the statistical evidence for it really is stupendous.
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 6:39 am
June 9th, 2007 at 7:02 am
stunney wrote:
stunney,
First, I did not claim that it was impossible for designed objects to fit a single nested hierarchy. It is, and that is exactly why I mentioned the possibility of a designer who "covers his tracks" by making life appear to match a nested hierarchical pattern. The point is that there are many, many other options open to a designer. When you see a nested hierarchy, you know that either the designer doesn't exist, or else he's not interested in advertising his presence.
Second, how the nested matryoshka dolls are painted is up to the dollmaker. Besides the physical nesting itself, what characteristics point to the unique nested hierarchy that you claim such a doll possesses?
Third, as I pointed out to Jehu with my PC example, there is in general no single, objective hierarchy for a set of designed objects, because designers are not restricted that way when they are putting their designs together.
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 7:02 am
June 9th, 2007 at 7:31 am
stunney wrote:
You've assumed your conclusion: that order can only come about via intelligence. That sort of argument is unlikely to persuade anyone.
No. As I said in a previous comment, the designer might have decided to cover his tracks, in which case he would have chosen a common descent evolutionary process. But if so, it's up to you to tell us why a designer who pretends to be absent is more likely than no designer at all.
Secondly, the nested hierarchy pattern is not inherent to all "common descent evolutionary processes" — just those that proceed gradually. An intelligent designer could employ an evolutionary process without limiting himself to gradual changes.
You seem to be assuming, with no evidence, that the nested hierarchy we see is the most parsimonious possible. It's not. For example, a parsimonious designer would reuse "code" for homoplastic features. We don't see this.
Intuition is notoriously unreliable in these matters.
It depends on how likely life is to occur again given that it already exists. Life has radically changed the environment. Nobody, for example, would expect life to arise anew in the presence of our highly oxygenated atmosphere.
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 7:31 am
June 9th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Jehu:
Then why do objects designed by humans form nested hierarchies? Is it because humans are trying to make it look as if their creations evolved?
Just try it - show me a taxonomy of human created artefacts that works as well as a tree of life. Creating taxonomies of artificial things is a very difficult thing because since made things do not have common descent.
For example, the newest Apple iPhone is not the descendant of any older kind of phone or mp3 player. It's a totally new design. You could make a tree of just apple products, but even then it would be difficult because not all products are derived from just one previous type of product. The graph you would end up with would not be a nested heirarchy like the tree of life.
Stunney:
If Unintentional Darwinian Processes created life a) by means of evolutionary algorithms; and b) the resulting life-forms would be of the types we actually observe, then how in the world could one distinguish between this and a world that is entirely the result of Intelligent Design?
I conclude that explaining the observed biological data as being the result of Unintentional Darwinian Processes is an empirically unfalsifiable, and hence unscientific hypothesis.
One way we could test for purpose in evolution would be if we knew what that purpose was, we could see which (if any) aspects of evolution are consistent with that stated intent.
Why is it that we do not know what the purpose or intent of the purported designer was? How in the absence of that knowledge do you propose to test which aspects of nature are consistent with an unknown purpose or intent?
How can you claim purpose when you do not know who the designer was, and do not know what it was purportedly thinking as it was purportedly designing?
Comment by salimfadhley — June 9, 2007 @ 7:44 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Who is doing the tormenting? So if you create such creatures you are then obligated to preprogram them like robots to ensure predetermined interaction outcomes.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 10:01 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:03 am
The best way to consider nested hierarchies before tackling taxonomy is with set theory. The nested (or containment) hierarchy is an ordered set such that each subset is strictly contained within its superset.
The twigs on a tree or bush constitute such a nested hierarchy. Each twig has one-and-only one path to the trunk, but each limb may have more than one branch or twig. The male descendants on a paternal family tree form a nested hierarchy. Each son has one-and-only-one father, but each father can have more than one son.
A nested hierarchy is the inevitable consequence of hereditary descent along uncrossed lines (even in the absence of selection). This may be reflected in the taxonomy"”if the traits change slowly over time. If they change too slowly, then the resolution will be poor. If they change too rapidly, then historical depth will be limited.
A clear nested hierarchy is seen in nearly all biological taxa, independently supported by morphology, genomics, embryonics, fossil succession, individual structures, microbiology, biogeography. Even the exceptions, such as endogenous retroviruses, are instructive. It conceivably didn't have to be this way. But that's the way it is.
The nested hierarchy allows for strong predictions of related features. For instance, the existence of mammary glands implies having three ear bones in each of two ears, regardless of whether the organism walks, climbs, swims or flies. It also predicts that any new organisms or traits or genomes observed will also fit this nested hierarchy. Griffins, centaurs and minotaurs are not vaguely remembered realities. These violations of the well-established nested hierarchy is a hallmark of design, not descent.
Darwin points to this tree-like structure in the only diagram in Origin of Species. And today, there is an entire field of study dedicated to resolving the branching issues associated with this pattern of descent. Nearly all scientific research and hypothesis testing is done within the paradigm of Common Descent.
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 10:03 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:08 am
It can also be the inevitable consequence of a deterministic, preplanned cause.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 10:08 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Your statement is a bit vague. Do you mean organisms are related by Common Descent, or that they were created ex nihilo to form a nested hierarchy? We don't need to suppose anything other than descent with variation along uncrossed lines to form a taxonomic nested hierarchy. It takes no intelligent intervention whatsoever (or selection) to form this pattern.
Zachriel's Nest of Letters
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 10:15 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Follow this line of reasoning back in time. Biological features are manifestations of underlying genetic sequence patterns. The patterns are specific with respect to particular features. A nested hierarchy can be viewed in terms of molecular patterns. Functional patterns cease to exist at some point in history. The transition from randomly organized molecular patterns to patterns that are specified with respect to features marks the establishment of a baseline for a nested hierarchy and is a hallmark of design.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 10:23 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:25 am
See the previous comment.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 10:25 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:32 am
You seem to be saying that the nested hierarchy of descent is rooted in a primitive life form. Most scientists agree that life is related by Common Descent, certainly Eukaryotes and probably to a primitive cell. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 10:32 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Oh, except for its trivially easy to reproduce the functionality of an iPhone on existing hardware:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/0...
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — June 9, 2007 @ 10:35 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Excellent example of how designers consistently violate the nested hierarchy.
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 10:38 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Joy said: Science, in the form of wannabe-totalitarian Neodarwinian Orthodoxy is in truth anti-science, anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-human.
Zach replied:
Well, I did say I was as prone to hyperbole as anyone else. I call the 'Orthodoxy' anti-science because it *is* anti-science. Science progresses when the young bucks take on the old bulls with a fresh approach to issues and phenomena, and win the ensuing brawl. And while there is a tendency in most branches for the old bulls to operate academic protection rackets (Harlow Shapely was notorious for ruining people who questioned his steady state, single galaxy universe), but they eventually die off and the paradigm changes anyway. Science is supposed to follow the evidence wherever it leads. It is not designed to force new knowledge into antiquated enclosures.
Science is about the data and the best interpretations, not the acquired power of any individual's ideas. No other theoretic in any branch of science forbids philosophical examination of its baseline assumptions, re-interpretation of data in light of new evidence, etc. No other theoretic systematically persecutes dissent or attempts to impose ideological litmus tests on students, and no other branch of science seeks to politically and legally prevent teachers from mentioning holes, contradictions or inconsistencies in the theory (or answering questions about them).
No other branch of science so often insists that humanity must submit its freedom, politics, philosophy, sociology, economics and humanities to a single theoretic. No other branch of science fosters or encourages a 'new' eugenics that devalues the lives, liberty, beliefs and choices of individuals. Some notable loudmouths go way beyond designer babies for the rich and famous, all the way to advocating euthanasia of the old, the deformed, the sick, the less-than-perfect.
No other branch of science encourages or justifies practitioners to claim for themselves the power and the right to decide what people must believe about who and what they are, what they can teach their children about such things, and who/what they may (or may not) worship as lord over their own lives.
Science used to consider itself above the totalitarian tactics of religion. Or, it did until a century and a half ago. If my opinion about this grotesque corruption of science is hyperbole, what do you call the claims and assertions of the 'New Atheists' and 'Neo-Eugenecists" so loudly calling for the 'eradication' of all who will not renounce their faith and their moral convictions about the gift of life?
Comment by Joy — June 9, 2007 @ 10:40 am
June 9th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I would say you have a special talent.
Yeah, that must explain why science stopped progressing in 1859.
–
Addendum: Scientists are just as hard-headed and set in their ways, as biased, as defensive as any human being. But science entails a methodology that allows the scientific culture to minimize these biases. That's the whole point! If we had to rely upon the objectivity of individuals, science would never advance. Science progresses when people propose testable hypotheses. That's how new ideas become adopted.
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 10:57 am
June 9th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Bradford: The transition from randomly organized molecular patterns to patterns that are specified with respect to features marks the establishment of a baseline for a nested hierarchy and is a hallmark of design.
Your comment has nothing to do with my point. Descent refers to a process. You pointed out anomalies in the process that would indicate design. There is a huge anomaly at the outset- a transition from biologically meaningless molecular patterns to patterns that characterize a base for a nested hierarchy. That's the evidence for design.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 11:33 am
June 9th, 2007 at 11:49 am
You yourself have given one answer. If we observe features that do "require foresight or design" that would be an indication of the participation of intelligent agency. An entirely unguided process would acquire a different set of features that, as you have said, "do not require foresight or design".
The more frequently we find systems that indicate a need for foresight, the stronger the indication that we are not observing the fruits of an entirely unguided process. Among others, one category of possible candidates would be complex mechanisms that are irreducibly complex in how they provide their function.
I know you have read Behe, but you don't seem to write as though you have digested what he is saying (e.g. your descriptions emphasize points he does not emphasize and minimize his major themes).
Behe might be right or he might be wrong, but if we at least recognize what he is proposing, certainly it is at least possible as a hypothesis that irreducibly complex systems may signal features we would not expect to see from a completely unguided process.
I'm surprised that you don't seem to engage his main themes (whether you agree with them or not).
Comment by eric — June 9, 2007 @ 11:49 am
June 9th, 2007 at 11:53 am
onething wrote:
"Obviously, the God would say so because the actions are intrinsically good."
Indeed; so something besides God makes such actions "intrinsically good," right? So God is unnecessary when considering whether actions are good or bad, right? So God's declarations of right and wrong do not depend upon God at all, but rather upon the intrinsic goodness or badness of those actions. So why postulate the existence of God at all, if He is unnecessary for the determination of good and bad, right and wrong?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 11:53 am
June 9th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Onething also wrote:
"the main reason that the moral implications of atheistic Darwinism are negative, is that without God life has no real meaning"
Says who? I find all the meaning I need or want in a universe entirely describable by evolutionary theory and other scientific theories in the same way that I find Christmas enjoyable without any longer believing in Santa Claus. Are you saying that my enjoyment in life is somehow incomplete? And if so, how is that not the epitome of arrogance?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 11:56 am
June 9th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Of course. An observed process.
I did? I pointed out that a nested hierarchy is the inevitable result of descent along uncrossed lineages, and that variation will lead to a taxonomic hierarchy. This happens even if the variation is random and in the absence of selection.
In any case, you didn't answer my question. Do you believe that most taxa are related by common descent? Do birds and toads share an ancestor? I really can't discern your position from your comments.
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 11:57 am
June 9th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
chunkdz wrote:
"As a child I thought my pediatrician was an "amoral and apparently occasionally vicious entity that cares not a whit for individual organisms". Of course I lacked the understanding to make the correct judgement about it."
Do you still think so? And if not, why not?
As children, we operate on extremely limited information, and rely for the most part on judgements passed on to us by individuals that we perceive to be more experienced "higher" authorities. As we gain in experience, we modify our judgements, both about pediatrians and the "authorities" whose judgements we adopted as our own.
We do this by the process of logical induction, based on experience, which are of course exactly the same logical processes by which scientific theories are formulated and validated. This should not be surprising, as scientific reasoning is essentially the same as "common sense," with the caveat that more weight is generally given to repeated experience and less to unsupported deduction.
I would say the same thing about my interpretation of how the world came to be, including all of the living things in it. When I was very young, I was told stories about these processes by people whose opinions I took on faith, the same way a child takes her parent's assertions that their pediatrician has their best interests in mind.
As I gained in experience, and especially as I became trained in the methods, logic, and worldview of the natural sciences, I came to disbelieve the stories told to me when I was a young child "“ the ones about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the all-powerful bearded entity in the sky who created everything in six days, then destroyed nearly all of it in a fit of jealous rage, and whose statements about morality are backed up by "because I said so!" rather than "because it's right, whether I say so or not."
And Bradford, by agreeing with chunkdz, are you asserting that we should not use our minds to figure out how the world works, but should simply take someone else's word on it?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
stunny wrote:
"Your post contains no demonstration and much speculation."
Nor was it supposed to. It was an exercise in logic "“ a "gedankenexperiment", if you will "“ intended to point out that, regardless of whether one is an EBer or an IDer, if one accepts that the universe has the properties that anyone can see that it has, only Type 2 and Type 4 organisms will persist for any appreciable length of time. Do you disagree that this is the case?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Evolutionary processes are more than capable of creating irreducible structures, and through a variety of mechanisms; e.g., duplication, specialization, co-option, migration, reduction.
We have a functional structure A, which is duplicated; AA. Each A can now evolve slightly, perhaps A1 works better in salty water, A2 in fresh, resulting in a net gain for an organism that needs both capabilities. Or perhaps A1 evolves to be a bit better at one part of the process and A2 a bit better in another, with the result that A1A2 is somewhat more capable than AA. At some point, perhaps they are so specialized that the structure is now irreducible. Repeating this process, we eventually build an irreducible cascade, A1A2A3A4… Meanwhile, B which is used in another process happens to slightly enhance the function of the cascade and is co-opted, optimized, and perhaps becoming essential.
A fish has gills for respiration and an air bladder for buoyancy. Gulping air into the air bladder may aid the fish move near shallow shorelines. Lobed fins may help with locomotion. Eventually, the air bladder may become lungs; the fins, limbs; and finally the gills reduced and no longer capable of respiration (perhaps co-opted for yet other purposes). Each of these steps can happen gradually, yet the result is an irreducibly complex breathing apparatus.
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Joy:
That's right: since 150 years scientists are eugenicists, ethnic cleansers and baby killers, when they are not grotesquely corrupting science and tyrannizing the minds of innocent children. And they love it as much as they hate God. Let me tell you: there is nothing like the smell of eugenicised, ethnically cleansed baby blood in the morning. Especially of a Christian baby. Or maybe a Psi baby. Aaah, just writing this makes me hungry.
Comment by Raevmo — June 9, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
It seems the discussion has drifted away from Behe's book, but I thought I'd let everyone know Sean Carroll has a review of The Edge of Evolution in the latest issue of Science.
Check it out:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...
Comment by Chris Harrison — June 9, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Zachriel: Griffins, centaurs and minotaurs are not vaguely remembered realities. These violations of the well-established nested hierarchy is a hallmark of design, not descent.
I agree with that statement but would point out that to assess natural processes you need to trace them to their starting point. That point does not begin with eukaryotes, prokaryotes or even archea. The process would be continuous and would commence at a point where there are no molecular patterns characteristic of nested hierarchies. That's a molecular griffin, centaur or minotaur. In fact it is an even worse departure from a hierachical pattern for at least the griffin, centaur or minotaur had features consistent with the tree. But as you correctly observe these are indicators of design.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Raevmo, even though we disagree just as much (if not more) as we agree, that last comment made me laugh so hard. Thanks for that.
Comment by thechristiancynic — June 9, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Allen
First of all, I postulate the existence of God because existence requires a source. A lot of your assumptions seem to arise out of an arbitrary, anthropomorphised, potter and clay god and universe. Goodness as I see it would be synonymous with the intrinsic nature of God, and the truth of reality iself. The nature of God is the unity, the focal point from which all things coherently flow. It isn't arbitrary. Your argument, and it is really an important one, is whether morality relies on rules which are deeper than God. But no, morality arises directly out of the depths of what God is, what existence is and how it works. Morality is simply how things really work.
You are thinking in terms of separateness. God is a separate being from his creation, and we are separate from both. God makes arbitrary decisions and informs the people in words in a book. I think both are an illusion and no such thing is possible.
To the extent anyone can write inspired things, it comes from inner, subjective knowingness, and this will obviously vary person to person. All spiritual understanding is only revealed inwardly. It's absurd to take all items labelled as scripture and treat them as of equal worth. The problem of religion is taking people who have a weak inner connection and impressing them with someone else's authority, rendering them even weaker. All belief is ultimately subjective. All anyone can do is measure whether their experience makes sense in light of what another person tells them of theirs. The lazy (normal) person relies on others; the true seekers are all mystics.
Because we are not truly separate from God, knowing what is good is synonymous with self knowledge and with knowing God. Goodness is a description, not a prescription.
There's something you're forgetting. We are unsure whether there's a God or not, so we imagine this and that, but if you think about it, there is only one possibility. If, somehow, we could know for sure that there's a God, we'd quickly see that the alternative was, of course, impossible. Contrariwise, should we prove there isn't one, then of course the God notion was a silly fantasy.
So if we say, for the sake of argument, that there is a God and we are all partakers in indestructible and invulnerable consciousness, and that knowledge of same is accessbile subjectively (although at this time our human plight seems to involve a very limited perception of it) then we can see that of course your life is meaningful, and that you are not cut off from living a meaningful life because you happen not to believe intellectually in a God or soul. Belief does make an important difference, however, in that lack of belief cuts a person off a little bit more from accessing and communing with one's own source.
Nonetheless, because life itself, existence itself, is the most inherently meaningful thing, which is to say, it is the definition of meaning and the depth of meaning with no further comparison, you are therefore quite welcome to find your life meaningful and satisfying.
But to say your enjoyment of life is complete - I highly doubt that. I question whether the human frame is capable of experiencing the full possible satisfaction.
And, arrogant or not, I'm pretty sure that those living outside the bridal chamber can't be experiencing as much satisfaction. Which of course includes many religious.
Suppose you met a group of monks living in a remote cave who raised a boy from infancy who never saw a woman, had no idea of sex, was not exposed to female animals or told the truth about birth. Sure, he has vague sensations of longing and some wet dreams, but he is very happy overall. You're not allowed to tell him about sex and women, but you try to assure him that there really is something very profoundly enjoyable that he is missing out on. He remains unconvinced.
Comment by onething — June 9, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Speaking of using your mind could you practice what you preach? The bearded entity in the sky cliche? Destroying the world in a jealous rage? If that's a flood reference the motives are not even accurate. Chunkdz does have an approximate analogy in referencing an adult/child situation. Figure out how the world works and when you do, inform us of the Darwinian pathway to life.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 2:22 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Well, I did say I was as prone to hyperbole as anyone else. I call the 'Orthodoxy' anti-science because it *is* anti-science. Science progresses when the young bucks take on the old bulls with a fresh approach to issues and phenomena, and win the ensuing brawl.
Joy, I think both you and some of our pals at the Discovery Institute are confusing science with politics. Revolutions in science are few and far between. Most of science is hard-graft, confirming and refining existing theories.
Bradford:
That's a molecular griffin, centaur or minotaur. In fact it is an even worse departure from a hierachical pattern for at least the griffin, centaur or minotaur had features consistent with the tree. But as you correctly observe these are indicators of design.
So can you prove that the 'molecular griffin' ever existed? The would of science would be astoundind if you could point to a living organism which definitely volated our understanding of common descent.
Comment by salimfadhley — June 9, 2007 @ 2:32 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Mmmm, that sounds good. We're having kitten hearts with doe eyes at my place. You wanna get together after lunch for some mind tyranny?
Comment by keiths — June 9, 2007 @ 2:39 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
They're indicators of design because the vast majority of the evidence points to a natural descent along uncrossed lines. But not every non-nested hierarchy implies design, e.g. sexual reproduction does not form a nested hierarchy. The lines are continually being crossed within an interbreeding population, such as flowering plants.
But again, let's start with what we do know. Do you agree that most taxa are related by common descent? Do birds and toads share an ancestor?
Comment by Zachriel — June 9, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Dang! My lunchtime is already spoken for - me and a couple of the members of my department are planning on torturing some puppies to death, and then doing some tyranny down at the preschool. Maybe next week?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Here's another interesting consideration to toss into the mix: during our evolution-design seminar last summer, we considered the possibility that it may be literally impossible to determine how life on Earth originated, or to trace the phylogenetic lines of the prokaryotes and archaea back to some kind of protobiont. The rocks in which the remains of the first living organisms are quite literally gone - subducted under the continents, melted, and belched back out of volcanoes. And tracing the phylogenies of the prokaryotes and archaea back to a common ancestor using their genetic material assumes that DNA was the original genetic material; an assumption that many people question.
So, if there is no observable evidence from which we can infer the origin of life on Earth, is this fatal to the theory of evolution by natural selection? Careful, it is quite likely that the same is true for the origin of the universe as a whole - does that mean that modern astrophysics and cosmology is therefore meaningless? And careful "“ nowhere in any of his published works did Darwin talk about the origin of life or the determination of the common ancestry of the prokaryote and archaean phylogenies.
In other words, are the only truly valid scientific theories those which are absolutely comprehensive, including an incontrovertable explanation of the origins of the objects and processes under investigation?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 3:01 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Hi, Allen-MacNeill,
If the theory is about the origin of the object, then yes (minus the adjectives absolutely and incontrovertable).
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 9, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
AnaxagorasRules wrote:
"If the theory is about the origin of the object, then yes (minus the adjectives absolutely and incontrovertable)."
Ah, so Mendeleev's theory of the periodic table of the elements is not valid because it did not include an explanation of the origin of the elements, and Newton's theory of universal gravitation is not valid because it did not include an explanation of the origin of the force of gravity?
Remember, Darwin's original theory was published in a book entitled "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," not "On the Origin of Life from Non-Living Matter." "Species" do not equal "life," and the book was mostly about natural selection anyway. As I have already pointed out in this thread, Darwin never published anything on the origin of life, and only mentioned it once or twice in private letters, and then only in a very speculative vein.
Furthermore, when we teach evolution at Cornell, we present 28 lectures, only one of which touches on the subject of the origin of life, and not even for the whole lecture. Would skipping that lecture invalidate all of the material presented in the other 27.5 lectures? What if, in the fullness of time, it turns out to be the case that there is no direct or indirect evidence for the origin of life one way or the other? Does that necessarily entail the conclusion that the whole of evolutionary theory and the whole of ID theory are necessarily invalid, since both address this issue?
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — June 9, 2007 @ 3:38 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Keiths:
Yes, thank you. Let's spend the tax dollars intended for lab equipment. With no equipment we'll just have to make up some results. This morning alone I fabricated 12 new missing links. Not bad, eh? My atheist priest assured me that anything goes to cover up the overwhelming evidence of design.
Comment by Raevmo — June 9, 2007 @ 4:12 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
AnaxagorasRules, you need to apply your standards equally to ID and more mainstream theories; If you did, I think you would find ID fares even worse than the theories you criticize.
If the theory is about the origin of the object, then yes (minus the adjectives absolutely and incontrovertable).
Then this criticism must also apply to intelligent design? ID is purportedly an origin theory, right? It tries to explain how certain features of the natural universe came about, what we might call their origin. I'm not aware of any pro-ID texts (with the exception of those that also support creationsm) that are spesific about the origin of life, other than to offer a criticism of some more established origins theories.
ID proponents claim they have no knowledge of the designer, nor the process that designer used to conceptualize and build the first living organisms, or the manner in which that designer directed evolution to form today's species. The claim that life's origin is purposeful but decline to state the purpose.
It's pretty clear that ID is not even slightly comprehensive and doees not include "an incontrovertable explanation of the origins of the objects and processes under investigation", because it does not explain these things in any detail at all?
Comment by salimfadhley — June 9, 2007 @ 4:25 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Hi, Allen_MacNeill,
The periodic table of the elements does not theorize about the origins of the atoms' constituent parts. It is an ordering of the atoms into periods and groups. Strictly speaking, I don't think it is possible to have a valid scientific theory about the origin of an object, as it will always reduce to particles of which we do not know the origin. Theories about the behavior of objects is another thing altogether, and valid scientific theories about the behavior of obects can be made without knowing the origins of the objects under investigation.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 9, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
If ID was strictly about the origin of matter, then sure. I'm not sure that it is, however. I'm probably not a good spokesperson for it.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 9, 2007 @ 4:36 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Hi, Allen_MacNeill,
me:
In fact, the periodic table of elements is a great example of a well established valid scientific theory that comes about from the behavior of objects. In this case, the behavior is the movement of subatomic particles, brought about by electronegativity and the attraction that exists between oppositely charged particles.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 9, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Given that I have a one hour time limit at the library, and given that I am a slow reader, so far I have not been able to read all the comments before my time expires. This is getting frustrating.
Comment by Bilbo — June 9, 2007 @ 5:08 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
That seems wrong to me; ID (at least as formulated by the Discovery Institute) is clearly intended to be an origins theory, rather than a theory about an ongoing process.
however it's a funny kind of theory because none of it's variants (other than creationism) provide any detail at all about the designer, his process or purpose.
AnaxagorasRules, surely by your criteria above, ID is invalid because it says so little about the most important thing in an origns theory… how it all originated.
Comment by salimfadhley — June 9, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
An intelligently designed outcome is not a process governed solely by natural forces. There are always options and choices. Any assessment implicating ID as a cause would indicate non-deterministic natural causes and options consistent with design. The candidate for that role is the genetic code.
Comment by Bradford — June 9, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Hi Bilbo,
You wrote…
I agree. However, I am frustrated by an apparent overwhelming desire to argue opinions instead of substance. And to make matters worse, the arguing extends into rendering opinions of other people's opinionated arguments. Which I am now doing.
This thread has over 170 comments with almost no discussions about substance of Behe's scientific arguments or the arguments against them. Meanwhile, Mike's science-based thread, Rat neurons learn how to fly a plane, is so controversial it is being questioned as a possible April Fools joke (it isn't), but it only has eleven comments.
Thinking for yourself is hard, babbling opinions is not.
Now that I am out from under my fifteen-hours-a-day work schedule, I will be trying to provide comments with more substance than this one.
Anyone care to join me?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 9, 2007 @ 5:54 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
It's the weekend. It's sunny.
There are many, many more logically possible ways unintentional processes could 'design' something than there are logically possible ways a perfectly rational intentional designer would design something. Infinitely many more ways, in fact.
They include all the ways a perfectly rational intentional designer would design something, plus all the other ways—the ways that a perfectly rational designer would (probably) not choose. (I add 'probably' only to highlight our epistemic situation: if we knew for certain what a perfectly rational creator would do, we'd enjoy perfect rationality ourselves. And we don't. By 'perfect' I mean complete and unlimited. Our rational powers are, in that sense, imperfect. Which is not to say insignificant. However, I assume that there are, regardless of what we think, some ways to design something that a perfectly rational designer would not in fact choose.)
The concept of Nature as designer is thus far less logically constrained than is the concept of even an intelligent, imperfect rational designer, never mind the concept of a perfectly rational designer, in terms of expectable possible effects . Which is one reason why a naturalistic multiverse logically can contain an infinite number of chaotic, lifeless universes, and an infinite number of sentient beings which experience nothing but pain, but a theistic creation logically cannot (since theism's God is perfectly rational and moral.)
This is why naturalists have to posit either a multiverse and rely on an anthropic selection effect, or else forego a multiverse but rely on there being a set of impersonally necessitated Laws of Nature which operate to rule out all the extra universes a pure Linde/Susskind-style multiverse posits (with its upwards of 10^500 and counting additional universes), and which determine the existence and constrain the character of the actual universe.
But it's practically impossible to conceive of abstract entities being causes of anything physical—-indeed that is how abstract entities are defined: they can't have causal relations to anything concrete; that's what 'abstract' means. And it's certainly more difficult to conceive of laws being causes than to conceive of minds being causes, given our familiarity with our own minds and agency. Laws are thoughts contained in minds. This is also why we need cops and judges, etc. Laws don't go around forcing compliance with themselves. You need intelligent agency for that.
In addition, there are good reasons, which Jaki identified and Hawking now accepts, for thinking that there cannot be, as Hawking puts it , "an ultimate [physical] theory, that can be formulated as a finite number of principles. I used to belong to that camp, but I have changed my mind."
And it's very hard to see how an actually existing infinite set would differ intelligibly from an actually existing infinite mind. Keep in mind that the language of set theory is fundamental to mathematical reasoning:
And, just as a reminder, theory is a mental thing generated by a mind, as is language, the medium in which theory is thought. Or, if you prefer, 'thunked'. And nested hierarchy is a set-theoretic concept. There is no reason that impersonal Nature should favor instantiating life, let alone instantiating life arrayed in a nested hierarchy, since Nature neither knows nor cares about life or set theory. It's more probable, not less, that an intelligent rational agent intimately familiar with all of set theory and its beauties would choose such an arrangement.
Basta cosi. Devo mangiare—e bevere.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
stunney babbles the usual nonsense, including this new variant:
I don't know what you think "an actually existing infinite set" could be. Sets are mathematical objects so are not "actually existing" in the manner of chairs or people. And the universe appears to be finite, so there are no "actually existing" sets of objects with infinite measure.
Even if there were, I can't for the life of me what it would mean for a set to be the same as a mind. Minds may be understood as machines, or programs, or even divine essences, but sets? Sets are not very mindlike — they don't do anything. The set of positive integers is infinite, and about as real as they get, but I'm not going to have any conversations with it.
Also, your philosophy of mathematics is out of date, nowadays it is more common to pick category theory as the foundations for the rest of mathematics, rather than set theory.
The rest of your post seems to be of the form I outlined before, roughly — "minds exist, therefore goddidit". See the last infinite thread for details.
Comment by mtraven — June 9, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Hi Stunney,
Thank you for the link to Stephen Hawking's talk. Here is another link to the same talk. It was given on 8 March 2003.
It looks like things have been moving very fast in the field of Quantum Mechanics. Hawking and Penrose had a debate in 1994. Apparently, Hawking has modified his position since then (based on this talk you linked to).
You wrote…
I agree that a belief in the multiverse is just as metaphysical as a belief in God. Either claim would violate NOMA since it looks like the answer is unknown and unknowable, IMO.
I doubt even Penrose thinks he can know the unknowable. In fact, his model is based on the concept that unknowable (non-algorithmic) things exist.
Penrose proposes that waveform collapse is real and is explainable by quantum gravity.
Penrose-Hameroff proposes that non-algorithmic consciousness is an artifact of quantum level effects in living things.
While this comes close to being metaphysical, I suggest it is still on this side of the NOMA wall. It may even define the NOMA wall since, according to Penrose, waveform collapse is non-deterministic, non-algorithmic, non-local and non-random.
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 9, 2007 @ 7:45 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
But it's not, you see. (Or perhaps you don't see, but that doesn't change the nature of reality.)
We have rational grounds for belief in God, yet we have no rational ground for any belief in multiverses.
Comment by Mung — June 9, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I will say that there are things about this book which I do not care for. One being some of the analogies (including claims that some of the analogies employed are in fact not analogies at all but rather the way things really are in themselves) and the other being repetition, is if there is some need to hammer certain points home.
Comment by Mung — June 9, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I earlier wrote about the set-theoretic notion of nested hierarchy:
A nested hierarchy in general is an obvious indicator of intelligent design, for the equally obvious reason that it's a collection (or set) of ordered sets, and sets are paradigm examples of mental ordering, corresponding as they do to the contents of classificatory thought.
Thus, the obvious question is how inanimate, unintentional material processes can collect anything into a set. The material world per se, consists of lots of things: one thing, another thing, another thing…., then another thing, and so on. It doesn't by itself collect things. Only minds collect things.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
That's a shame. for evolutionary theory depends a great deal upon the how and when life originated. Is life monophyletic or polyphyletic?
Probably. Not knowing what they contain, it's hard to be certain.
This makes no sense to me and is unnecessarily verbose.
What you apparently meant to write was:
What if it turns out to be the case that there is no evidence for the origin of life?
So, it could turn out that, in the fulness of time, we could discover that there is evidence that life always existed (had no origin), or that life never existed (had no origin).
Given our current state of knowledge, which one should we go with?
Yes and no. ID has no problem with a "life has always existed" scenario.
Comment by Mung — June 9, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
mtraven wrote:
Ha. You are boringly full of utter crap.:smile: You're an embarrassment to 'brightism'.
An infinite mind. Get over it.
Well duh. But they are actually existing as mental contents.
Says who, dopey? The visible universe is believed by most cosmologists to be not = to the actual universe. You are obviously unfamiliar with actual cosmological science.
Talk about begging the fuck out of a question!
Oh well then, that settles it.
Folks, if mtraven can't do something for the life of mtraven, that determines reality. Pass it on.
Yup. They are mental content. Minds do things.
Thank God no mathematician pays you an iota of attention.
How full of gratuitous garbage can one person get?
You make fun of yourself.
Magicmatter governed by magiclaws did it instead, I presume. What a crock of anti-intellectual horseshit.
You are a) hilarious and b) hopeless.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 8:47 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Hi, salimfadhley,
One thing that I've gleaned about ID is that the proponents and critics seem predominantly concerned with OOL issues, whether it was designed or not. I'm not very interested in the OOL issue. If someone wants to believe that the first organic life form sprang into existence from a chance combination of atoms that started a new type of molecular movement which led to life as we know it today, then fine. It is the fact that there is a universe at all that mystyfies me. If someone wants to believe that God created the universe, I'm not going to raise a stink about it because this is an ID blog, and I consider it bad form to insult the host and its "family". So when I do take issue with anything here, it is usually something that an ID critic said. According to my little set of values, the critics are fair game. There are ID proponents that do not postulate a creator God. The members of this blog are a pretty eclectic group, if you ask me.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — June 9, 2007 @ 8:49 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
What bit of matter determines whether another bit of matter is a good argument, including, for example, Penrose's argument?
I think Hawking now grasps (at some, perhaps less than fully explicit, level) the force of this question—it would require a spatiotemporally infinite amount of matter. Which = an infinite set which = an infinite mind.
Given that science indicates that the universe has a finite past, then there isn't an infinite amount of matter. IOW, all of matter's temporal parts are finite (at least from a scientific point of view).
Hence an infinite set cannot = scientifically actual matter. Hence, if Godel and Jaki and Hawking are right, an ultimate physical theory implies an infinite mind.
Comment by stunney — June 9, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Hi Mung,
You wrote…
Are you are claiming to know the single, OMA Truth for us all?
MikeGene, took Dawkin's to task for suggesting that God was scientifically investigatable. If you are suggesting we can start a scientific search for god, I am willing to consider it, but I doubt MikeGene would approve. However, we have had a couple of posts on NOMA were it became evident that people on both sides of the debate have varying opinions on this.
I suspect it is likely that your use of "rational grounds" is more along the lines of a philosophical debate. My favorite philosopher was Socrates (he provoked thought without writing anything). The Oracle of Delphi proclaimed that no man was wiser than he. I suggest that was as prophetic as it was accurate. No man has ever been, or ever will be, wiser than Socrates.
I disagree with your assessment that it is irrational to believe in multiverses. Likewise, I don't think it is irrational to believe in God. While technically I am an agnostic, most consider me an atheist since I am agnostic about a belief in God the same way I am agnostic about a belief in Last Thursdayism.
You accused me of posting the "Let's do science" request to avoid subjects I don't want to talk about. That may be partially true. I don't mind a philosophical discussion but most people have trouble with the concept of accepting the existence of multiple Truths (capital "T"). Therefore, I tend to avoid detailed philosophical arguments in lieu of more general discussions about NOMA and the general basis of philosophical thought.
However, if you are suggesting that you have specific, scientific evidence that supports God's existence, I am sure everyone here would like to hear it. Including me.
Let's do science!
Provoking Thoughts
P.S. To Bilbo, feel free to delete this off topic comment. I did not even mention Behe's book, My only excuse is that I think we should be talking about Behe's science, not our personal opinions.
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 9, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
June 9th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Hi Stunney,
You wrote…
I have no problem accepting this metaphysical argument since I grew up reciting…
There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all… link
When it comes to metaphysical arguments like that suggested by Godel, Jaki and Hawking, I respond with…
"I don't know the Truth, do you?"
As for questioning pillow talk about hearing the sound of the rain on leaves, I would respond with something like "Yes dear, I think it is raining, I love the smell of a summer shower, don't you?"
Even though we don't know the Truth about the existence of all matter, including rain, we can make statements based on our physical senses. For all we know even our senses don't exist, but as long as they continue the habit of providing us consistent information, we pretend they do and even use them to perform scientific experiments.
If you want to talk philosophy, then we can do philosophy. If you want to talk science, then…
Let's do science!
Provoking Thought
P.S. To Bilbo, feel free to delete this off topic comment. I did not even mention Behe's book. My only excuse is that I think we should be talking about Behe's science, not our personal opinions.
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 9, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Hi Servetus,
"To be more specific, is 'front loading' (embedded design) the only explanation you envisage, or is 'steering in the domain of time' (the 'interactive' model) also a reasonable option?"
Certainly. It's possible that the designer directly guided evolution, say, through inducing the right mutations. I'm not sure what kind of evidence could be amassed for it, but it's not logically impossible.
Comment by Krauze — June 10, 2007 @ 12:47 am
June 10th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Krauze wrote:
Certainly. It's possible that Unintelligent Impersonal Nature directly guided evolution, say, through inducing the right mutations. I'm not sure what kind of evidence could be amassed for it, but it's not logically impossible.
Comment by stunney — June 10, 2007 @ 1:26 am
June 10th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Thought Provoker wrote:
Alrighty!
What bit of matter determines whether another bit of matter is a good argument, including, for example, Penrose's argument?
Or are you saying that answering such a question is a non-scientific activity? If so, where does that leave Penrose's argument in your OMA/NOMA grand scheme of things?
Comment by stunney — June 10, 2007 @ 1:33 am
June 10th, 2007 at 1:49 am
I do not find this argument compelling. Our sojourn here is brief, and "is but a suburb of the life elysian." (Well, for the righteous, anyway.)
Comment by obrienr — June 10, 2007 @ 1:49 am
June 10th, 2007 at 2:05 am
Allen MacNeill wrote:
There's no stable element of mass 5. If there were, we almost certainly wouldn't exist. So it's a rather naturalistically astounding fact that there isn't. It appears you're not familiar with the relevant science.
And you certainly wouldn't be able justifiably to claim, upon finding 100 billion identical spheres of half a centimeter diameter, that you knew they were undesigned just because you didn't know their origin. So I'm wondering why you imagine there's a plausible non-design explanation for the properties of atomic elements (or for those of subatomic particles).
Comment by stunney — June 10, 2007 @ 2:05 am
June 10th, 2007 at 2:09 am
But Anaxagoras, Existence is God, God is Existence.
Comment by onething — June 10, 2007 @ 2:09 am
June 10th, 2007 at 2:41 am
I seem to have reduced stunney to even more incoherent ranting than usual. He's not even bothering to try to argue any more. Pity. BTW, you never responded to this rather good demonstration of your fundamental hypocrisy regarding the relationship between popular and intellectual versions of religion.
In the interests of contributing something besides sniping — for those interested in category theory, see here
Does it have anything to do with ID? Don't know, but it does have quite a bit to do with physics, see here for example.
Comment by mtraven — June 10, 2007 @ 2:41 am
June 10th, 2007 at 2:47 am
If our senses didn't exist — or if they did not accurately convey "objective reality" — then science would not be possible.
So we make the philosophical assumptions that objective reality actually exists and our senses do in fact reliably communicate to us information about that objective reality.
Without these and other philosophical assumptions, and conclusions based on philosophical reasoning, science would not be possible.
So let's do philosophy so that we can do science!
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — June 10, 2007 @ 2:47 am
June 10th, 2007 at 3:02 am
The Crapmeister wrote:
That's crazy. Academic theology has had a far greater impact on people's lives than evolutionary theory. If you were a practising Catholic, you'd know this.
You're fabricating again, Crapmeister. I never said academic theology had 'more in common' with the crude beliefs of Joe Sixpack. Relevance and commonality are non-synonymous concepts, dopey.
I suppose you fabricate so often because your arguments are so incredibly crappy.
Both, dopey.
Comment by stunney — June 10, 2007 @ 3:02 am
June 10th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Keiths,
Actually you are the one who has failed to grasp the issue. You have completely ignored the relevant and recent research I cited and instead responded with shoddy outdated propaganda from TalkOrigins.
You are confusing phylogenetic trees with nested hierarchies. Remember, the creationist that first described nested hierarchies, Carolus Linnaeus, did not believe in common descent and was not attempting to describe phylogenetic trees. Furthermore, while nested hierarchies are real, phylogenetic trees are not. Nobody has any problem understanding that all computers are more similar to each other than say bicycles or cotton pants, so nested hierarchies of human designed objects are easy to describe. It is true that at some level you see a mosaic of features that defy a perfect nested hierarchy but don't be deceived into thing thinking that it is any different in nature. Nested hierarchies cannot be resolved into perfect phylogenetic trees because different genes give different trees.
I have no idea how you derive that number but you image and data are outdated. In real life trees are unresolved do to conflicting genes at every level. For example the Antonis Rokas and Sean B. Carroll article states the following,
" Many recent studies have reported support for many alternative conflicting phylogenies "¦ in all studies, a large fraction of characters"”genes, PICs or RGCs"”disagree with the optimal phylogeny, indicating the existence of serious conflict in the DNA record "¦ the conflict among these and other studies in metazoan phylogenetics is occurring at very "high" taxonomic levels"”above or at the phylum level."
"The problems illustrated by these four clades are representative of those encountered at a variety of time depths across the TOL. What is exceptional about these clades is that they have received the greatest data collection efforts and analysis. The persistent resolution of problems in the face of (a) increasing amounts and different kinds of data and (b) state-of-the-art analytical methodology suggest that other less"“well analyzed, absolutely or relatively short stems in the TOL may pose similar challenges and be refractory to resolution with comparable datasets."
Really? Here is what Doolittle has to say about recent molecular phyologenetics.
"It is as if we have failed at the task that Darwin set for us: delineating the unique structure of the tree of life. But in fact, our science is working just as it should. An attractive hypothesis or model (the single tree) suggested experiments, in this case the collection of gene sequences and their analysis with the methods of molecular phylogeny. The data show the model to be too simple. Now new hypotheses, having final forms we cannot yet guess, are called for.
Comment by Jehu — June 10, 2007 @ 5:26 am
June 10th, 2007 at 8:14 am
A methodological definition of science can be based solely on the assumption of the reliability of making a record. Objectivity is the consistency of these records across different observers.
We observe some aspect of the natural world. We form a generalization concerning those observations. We then deduce from that generalization an empirical test. We then verify this prediction with new observations. We modify or discard our generalization as necessary, all the while shaving off extraneous assumptions. We communicate our results so that other observers can replicate and extend our findings. We continue this process and eventually build confidence in our model.
The Scientific Method
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 8:14 am
June 10th, 2007 at 8:56 am
No, I don't believe keiths has. With artifacts, there is no consistent way to arrange them into a taxonomy. With organisms, there is only one unique taxonomy for the vast majority of taxonomic traits.
Unless the computer is built into a car or cell phone.
You clearly do not understand how an objective taxonomy is constructed. You take a variety of traits and categorize the objects. With artifacts, the taxonomy strongly depends on the traits being considered. With organisms, there is a unique taxonomy for the vast majority of taxonomic traits. We can determine the reliability of such taxonomies by making predictions across clades, predictions which represent strongly supported objective correlations. E.g., mammals never have feathers, but always have lungs, whether they walk, climb, swim or fly.
The vast majority of genes support only a single overall taxonomy. Only the very root of the tree doesn't provide us a clear nested hierarchy where horizontal evolution appears to have been the most important mechanism. And there are always problems with resolution at rapidly diversifying nodes.
Rokas and Carroll are not contesting the overall phylogeny, but point to rapid radiations at various points in evolutionary history that are hard to discern. What do you think would happen if we asked Rokas and Carroll what they actually mean? Perhaps, something like, "phylogenetic resolution at the base of the tetrapod/lungfish/coelacanth clade has not hampered in the least evolutionary research on the anatomical changes that occurred early on in the evolution of the tetrapod lineage." In other word, their 'microscope' does not provide enough resolution to discern the exact branching order at that node, but is more than sufficient to discern that tetrapods did evolve from some aquatic predecessor.
Hey, life is complicated.
Russell Doolittle, a major critic of Behe and Intelligent Design, is referring to the root of the tree. Doolittle recently wrote stating the scientific question at issue, "Woese refers to the transition point at which vertically transmitted genes began to weigh more heavily than horizontally transferred ones as the Darwinian Threshold." In other words, Woese's theory doesn't dispute that Darwinian processes prevail over nearly all the history of life once the basic cells evolved.
But Doolittle has since found, "The discovery that there are 49 superfamily folds common to all 174 genomes seems to us to argue that there was a last common ancestor for all three superkingdoms… The detailed distribution of folds among the Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya is further revealing about the evolutionary history of life on Earth and may ultimately prove useful for detailing the routes of their diversification."
In any case, none of this changes the fact that Common Descent applies to nearly all biological taxa"”according to your own cited authorities.
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 8:56 am
June 10th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Hi endoplasmicMessenger,
You wrote…
Bravo! Well done!
Of course we need to have a philosophy of science before we can do science. Just like we need rules in order to play a game of chess.
However, most of the time I would rather play chess instead of arguing about the nuances of its rules.
We have spent over 2000 years arguing philosophical rules and we keep coming back to the same conclusion, no one knows the rules and no one every will. So let's pretend that matter and our senses are "objective reality" and play the game of figuring out the details of this interesting puzzle which may or may not exist.
Let's do Science!
Does anyone have an opinion on Behe's scientific arguments?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 10, 2007 @ 8:58 am
June 10th, 2007 at 9:09 am
1. It is not clear that you understand the concept irreducible complexity, and may be operating with some other notion. For starters, you use examples that are not clearly irreducibly complex. Why do you think a lung is irreducibly complex? (It might be, but you haven't given any reason to think that it is.) Do you really mean to say that you couldn't knock out any piece at all from the lung you describe without completely losing lung function? What about the state of the lung prior to the last gradual step in creating it? It has zero lung function at that step? What kind of last step is that, I wonder.
2. If one were to consider your analysis seriously, all the key parts are lost in hand waving. The issue is not about such things as gene duplication or specialization. But then you say "At some point, perhaps they are so specialized that the structure is now irreducible." That is vague hand waving to the point of question begging.
Why don't you take a proposed case where a complex mechanism is truly irreducibly complex such as the flagellum and show how your hand waving statements explain its construction. (As a bonus, you get to become famous.)
Comment by eric — June 10, 2007 @ 9:09 am
June 10th, 2007 at 9:10 am
But why?
Conceivably, life didn't have to comport with a taxonomic nested hierarchy. If cows and fish and sunflowers could mate, then we wouldn't see this pattern. But they don't. A nested hierarchy is the inevitable consequence of hereditary divergence along uncrossed lines (even in the absence of selection). This will be reflected in the taxonomy"”if the traits change slowly over time. Descent with modification.
Buy why do artifacts not form a consistent taxonomy?
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 9:10 am
June 10th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Hi Stunney,
You asked…
Penrose's model is on the scientific side of the NOMA wall. Sobottka's suggestion that Penrose's model suggests the existence of an infinite consciousness crosses the NOMA wall, IMO.
I am still interested in your opinion of Sobottka's use of Penrose's model as a philosophical discussion point.
See my previous comment to endoplasmicMessenger for an explanation of how and why I treat philosophical arguments differently from scientific arguments.
Behe obviously accepts the objective reality of matter, therefore to stay on topic in this thread I say…
Let's do science!
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 10, 2007 @ 9:17 am
June 10th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Are you claiming a lung is not irreducibly complex? Are you claiming a lunged organism is not irreducibly complex?
You may want to provide a definition of irreducible. There are a couple conflated definitions floating around the ID-community.
The example of A1 and A2 is an abstraction. It shows that there is no barrier to the evolution of irreducible structures. It then depends on the actual facts.
My goal is not to convince the inconvincible.
Notice how you point to a structure that evolved in the most distant of historical epochs that left no fossils and scant evidence. We don't have to know everything in order to know something. Birds and toads evolved from a common ancestor that didn't have lungs or limbs.
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 9:22 am
June 10th, 2007 at 10:04 am
While I don't expect that a lung would be irreducibly complex, it might be that some mechanism needed by the lung is. As an analogy, while an eye may not qualify, the mechanism of a light sensitive cell is one of the irreducibly complex systems that Behe does examine in Darwin's Black Box. You might want to read that book carefully before making claims to fulfill its challenge.
No, it doesn't show it even in the abstract. For instance, he statement I quoted is a question begging hand waving declaration that assumes exactly what needs to be shown.
Notice that if front loaded design took place, we should expect to find the irreducibly complex systems front loaded, i.e. in those earliest historical epochs for a given body plan (or earlier).
Interesting that you should pick that as an example of what we "know", since all birds have a lung system — the avian lung — that works fundamentally different from non-avian lungs. Avian lungs don't work like a bellows, as do the non-avian lungs. One of the particular things we do not know is how a bird's lung could ever evolve from a bellows lung. (Or are you claiming that birds descend directly from ancestors without lungs? I expect not.)
BTW, this issue was pointed out by agnostic biochemist Michael Denton in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. His book lead to public awareness and actually influence multiple individuals who later became prominent design proponents.
Comment by eric — June 10, 2007 @ 10:04 am
June 10th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Let's see. Pleural cavity, air sacs, trachea, bronchial tubes, alveoli in close integration with circulatory system, blood supply, diaphram. Remove anyone of these and the lungs cease to work. More than that, the organism dies.
I noticed you didn't answer the second part of the question. If we define the function of an organism to reproduce, then removal of any of a number of parts, including the lungs, prevents such reproduction.
Sure it does. A1A2 is irreducible, and we showed how it can evolve by stepwise changes from a simple duplication and polar migration of function. Such a process can also lead to the evolution of a cascade or co-option. This refutes the bald notion of a barrier to the evolution of an irreducible system.
Are you claiming that birds and toads do not have a common ancestor? I keep asking this question and for some reason can't seem to get a straight answer. Are you claiming that primitive lungs did not evolve from air bladders?
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 10:30 am
June 10th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Eric writes:
Actually, there is good evidence that non-avian therapod dinosaurs had the same lung system :
O'Connor PM and LPAM Claessens (2005). Basic avian pulmonary design and flow-through ventilation in non-avian theropod dinosaurs. Nature 436: 253-256.
From the abstract:
Comment by KC — June 10, 2007 @ 11:11 am
June 10th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
stunney:
For someone who worships pure transcendental reason, you sure argue like a five-year-old having a meltdown. I'm looking for something substantive to reply to…
Um, evolutionary theory is at the core of biology, and we're in the midst of a revolution in bioscience. We've sequenced the human genome, we've created therapies using recombinant DNA. Evolution is starting to take a more direct role in medicine (shamefully late, but med schools are conservative). We're starting to sequence more organisms, understand how they work and how they relate to humans. We understand our place in the universe better, thanks to Darwin and post-Darwinian science. Science increases human knowledge.
What has academic theology do that can compare with that? As you yourself pointed out, people who go to church and pray don't even care about what academic theologians might think. In the pre-Enlightenment era, church doctrine mostly contributed ruinous wars over stupid issues. Since then, thankfully, the influence of theologians has been negligible.
Onward Christian Soldiers,
Onward Buddhist Priests
Onward Knights of Islam,
Fight 'til you're deceased
Join in holy conflict
Join in righteous fray
For the greater glory
of Dis-cord-i-ay!
Comment by mtraven — June 10, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Zachriel
What rubbish. There is alpha taxonomy and phylogenetic taxonomy, as well as numeric taxonomy. Even within phylogenetic taxonomy there are disagreements and contradictions at every level, as I demonstrated from the literature.
Again to quote Rokas and Carroll from 2006,
" Many recent studies have reported support for many alternative conflicting phylogenies "¦ in all studies, a large fraction of characters"”genes, PICs or RGCs"”disagree with the optimal phylogeny, indicating the existence of serious conflict in the DNA record "¦ at a variety of time depths across the TOL. "¦ The persistent resolution of problems in the face of (a) increasing amounts and different kinds of data and (b) state-of-the-art analytical methodology suggest that other less"“well analyzed, absolutely or relatively short stems in the TOL may pose similar challenges and be refractory to resolution with comparable datasets."
Of course not, what they are saying is that there are "many alternative conflicting phylogenies."
Doolittle is referring to the root, Rokas and Carroll are addressing the rest. Both of your Doolittle quotes pre-date the quotes I have given. Since Doolittel made the statements you reference he has said this,
It is as if we have failed at the task that Darwin set for us: delineating the unique structure of the tree of life "¦ In other words we have "many alternative conflicting phylogenies."
Comment by Jehu — June 10, 2007 @ 4:28 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
TP:
Why? What is the rational basis for the belief that science somehow leads to truth or that science is the only rational basis for rational belief? I'd like to do science, but I can't get past your very real practice of philosophy under the pretense of doing science..
Me:
You never really addressed this.
What is the scientific evidence, since you so wish to "do science," which gives us rational grounds for a belief in multiverses? If you have trouble coming up with any, feel free to give any non-scientific evidence or rationale for a belief in multiverses.
Comment by Mung — June 10, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Hi Mung,
Earlier you wrote…
Then you followed it up with…
Thus pretending you didn't understand what I said yet realizing that you were asking me to provide scientific evidence about something I said was unknowable, so you provided an out.
Sorry, you don't get to shift the burden that easily. You go first…
What "rational grounds" do "we" have for a belief in God?
Please explain it to us.
I hope you aren't planning on pointing to some dusty old book or suggesting "we" listen to a few Billion people participating in Group Think. "We" are independent thinkers. "We" need to understand what "we" believe in. "We" think for ourselves.
"We" don't know the Truth, do you?
Provoking Thought
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 10, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
mtraven wrote:
That's a strange way to interpret your being ridiculed by a highly amused interlocutor.
Interesting, given that you had to fall back on your faith in magically self-instantiating equations, which is probably the most egregiously immaterial, unscientific and unphysical kind of causation ever dreamed up and resorted to. Nor have you dealt with the argument that a ToE has to form an infinite set while the only physical world observable by finite observers must be a finite set. Nor have you dealt with materialism's inability to account for sets or collections. Nor have you rebutted the obvious fact that nested hierarchy comes nowhere near entailing an unintentional origin of species and is, if anthing, evidence for ID. Nor that the logical space for unintentional effects is infinitely larger than the logical space for effects of a perfectly rational agent. So when it comes to substance, it looks like you don't have much.
Comment by stunney — June 10, 2007 @ 7:50 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Sigh. It doesn't seem to matter that so many ID advocates say they have no issues with Common Descent, and it doesn't seem to matter the forum. Oh well.
Of course there's disagreements. Scientists are trying to unravel events that happened millions and even billions of years ago. That's why they publish so much new research for the benefit of their peers to evaluate.
But let's start with mammary glands. If you show me an organism with mammary glands, I predict it will have a complex eukaryote cell structure with organelles, ingest other organisms for nourishment, bilateral symmetry, alimentary canal, have a bony head at one end with an array of sense organs, vertebrae protecting a nerve cord, integument, jaw, ribs, four limbs during at least at some stage of life, neck, neocortex, endothermic, internal fertilization, four-chambered heart, lungs with alveoli and a muscular diaphragm, two eyes, three ear bones in each of two ears, hair or at least hair follicles at some stage of life, sebaceous glands, most will have heterodont dentition, etc. Am I close?
All that from tits.
Rokas and Carroll are addressing rapidly diverging nodes and the difficultly of determining which branched first when the events happened a short period of time. You even quote the material but don't apparently understand it. Do you understand what they mean by a "short stem" and what this means in terms of phylogeny?
Do you really think that Rokas and Carroll are actually claiming, based on their research, that these organisms are not related by common descent?
Comment by Zachriel — June 10, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I don't have "faith" in that or any other physical theory, you are making stuff up. It is advanced by a good many physicists, which doesn't mean I have "faith" in it or that it's true, it means it's not ridiculous on its face as you seem to think.
That is meaningless gibberish, I'm afraid, so I'm incapable of responding to it. What does "a ToE has to form an infinite set" mean?
Stupid. Materialism has perfectly fine theories for sets — they are mental constructs, and work like any other mental construct. I know you believe materialism can't support any form of mental representation, but that's your problem, not mine.
Here's one of your statements on this matter
But, this is the same ridiculous argument you always offer — that any structure whatsoever has to be mental, and that the only way things can be mental is goddiddit. Repeating it over and over doesn't make it any more convincing.
This is true, but so what?
Comment by mtraven — June 10, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
No it isn't. You can delete Darwinism and its 18th-century Malthusian dog-eat-dog philosophy entirely, and nothing would change except the rubber sciences (Darwinism, ev psych, sociobiology, eugenics, etc.)
This advance was accomplished in spite of Darwinism. The science of genetics began with Mendel, and if you recall, Darwinians resisted the findings of Mendel for decades. Fischer and Pearson's response to Mendel was to 'out' him as a fraud. The genetic material of Darwinism is not DNA, but a magical substance that accommodates any characteristic you can fancy, from bird-songs to the progress of America (Descent of Man ch.5). This is still the view Darwinians have today, despite the sequencing of the genome and other results of real science.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — June 10, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
June 10th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I agree that if that holds up, it would at least remove that obstacle regarding a transition from therapod dinosaurs to birds. (Clearly, that is not the only question that has been raised about such a transition.) However, it would do so only at the cost of moving the same issue further back in time. So my original point is essentially unaffected, i.e.
So, if therapods share an avian-style aspiration pump and "flow-through ventilation of the lung is not restricted to birds but is probably a general theropod characteristic.", that would still leave the question of how such a lung could ever evolve from a bellows lung.
I would not claim that this is impossible, but I am not alone in regarding it skeptically. I cannot simply take it on faith and disregard the obvious difficulties.
Comment by eric — June 10, 2007 @ 11:10 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 12:45 am
Vladimir — that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen here, and you face stiff competition. Do you have a citation for your claim that Darwinists resisted Mendel? In any case, it doesn't matter a bit, since both Darwin's and Mendel's theories have been fully subsumed into the mainstream of science. You are obviously completely ignorant of the state of biology if you think that geneticists and evolutionists are in some kind of hostile relationship with each other.
Comment by mtraven — June 11, 2007 @ 12:45 am
June 11th, 2007 at 2:20 am
mtraven wrote:
Equations with magical powers are still magic.
It's far from gibberish. Jaki and Hawking each argue that for Godelian reasons a complete ToE can't be stated in a finite number of principles. Since, as Hawking points out, physically realized statements cost energy, it would follow that no finite subset, and hence no observable part, of the universe could comprise a statement of a complete ToE. Such a statement would have to be a set with an infinite number of elements, and need an infinite amount of energy.
As the wiki link on Jaki puts it: Godel's theorem states that any non-trivial mathematical theory will be either incomplete or inconsistent. Since any 'theory of everything' will certainly be a non-trivial mathematical theory, it must be either incomplete or inconsistent, thus dooming searches for a deterministic theory of everything in which all the parameters are defined internally and consistently. This position was later supported by Stephen Hawking in his lecture "Gödel and the end of physics"[1]
No, it's actually your problem since you're the materialist and what's stupid is to pretend that materialism has a 'perfectly fine' theory of mental states, or a 'perfectly fine' theory of abstract objects. It has neither. I've referred you previously to the question of realism about sets.
As for material processes being capable of collecting anything into a set, one has to face the fact that the physical world doesn't contain sets. It contains individual physical objects. A machine can bring, say, various apples into greater proximity. But what makes that a set of apples as against a set of electrons, or a set of nuclei, or a set of photons and neutrinos and pips, or a set of locations in spacetime, or a set of fruits weighing less than 1 ton, or a set of these apples plus every particle in the unobservable portion of the universe, is intentionality. Mentally collecting items into sets is unproblematic, given irreducible intentionality. But irreducible intentionality is just what materialism denies exists.
The material world per se, consists of lots of individual things: one thing, another thing, another thing"¦., then another thing, and so on. It doesn't by itself collect things into sets. Only minds collect things into sets, and they do so by intentional acts. And it's simply rubbish to claim that materialism has a 'perfectly fine' theory of minds in general or their intentional acts or states in particular. It most certainly does not. See Philosophy of Mind 101.
I've never in my life thought or said that every structure has to be mental. So you can pack up that straw man and take it back to the funny farm with you.
I can think of few things more pitifully unconvincing than the way you use your catchphrase as a substitute for cogent thinking.
It's bizarre yet also revealing that you feel the need to pretend that as regards whether mind or matter is ontologically ultimate, I've not offered arguments for why I think the hypothesis that mind is ultimate is the better option. Even you've been wavering in your materialist faith what with your recent flirtation with equations or Platonic Reason endowed with strange powers. It seems you are doggedly determined to believe in just about anything as long as it's not God. Your dogmatic irrationalism in this regard would put even some YECers to shame.
So what? So what? Hahahahahahahahaha!:mrgreen:
So, you've forgotten all the times you and your fellow 'brights' claimed that the hypothesis of theism is more logically unconstrained in its range of expectable effects than the hypothesis that unintentional processes are at the heart of it all? And now you say, as I've been arguing all along, that the opposite is true and you ask, so what if it is?
As a comedy act, you guys are a treat. And I mean that most sincerely.:smile:
Comment by stunney — June 11, 2007 @ 2:20 am
June 11th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Let's take a look at the Journal Genetics. Hmm, more than 6000 articles that make reference to "natural selection". Only nine articles that make reference to "intelligent design", none supportive of the idea.
The idea that reproduction is exponential and will tend to fill whatever environmental niche an organism is in is hardly without merit. (Interestingly, the idea was first proposed by Ben Franklin. Franklin had a way of getting others to adopt his ideas as their own. Have you ever heard of the Declaration of Independence of 1775?)
That's because the theories appeared contradictory. However, as science acquired an understanding of population dynamics, the theories were reconciled and integrated. That happened generations ago.
Actually, there were legitimate questions as to whether Mendel fudged his data, which seemed a little too close to perfect. It is only in modern times that a thorough analysis of Mendel's methods demonstrated that "Mendel did not fabricate his data, his description of his experiments is literal, he articulated the laws of inheritance attributed to him insofar as was possible given the information he had, he did not detect linkage, and he neither strongly supported nor opposed Darwin. "
R.A. Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection was instrumental in reconciling Mendelian genetics with evolutionary theory. Genetics has been integral to the Theory of Evolution ever since.
Comment by Zachriel — June 11, 2007 @ 8:32 am
June 11th, 2007 at 8:44 am
When simultaneously dropping two different mass stones from the Tower at Pisae, we can predict they will impact the ground at the same time. This can be represented by an equation, T1=T2. There is nothing magical about invoking this equivalence. It represents what is observed and the equation is used to communicate the idea to others.
Comment by Zachriel — June 11, 2007 @ 8:44 am
June 11th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Divergence along uncrossed lines will result in a nested hierarchy. If traits change slowly, it results in a natural taxonomy. The logical space is severely restricted. A designer, on the other hand, can mix and match across otherwise unrelated structures. Descent with modification will never result in a Centaur (a six-limbed cross between a horse and a human), but a designer, rational or not, is not so restricted.
It is because the nested hierarchy is such a constrained structure that it leads to strong correlations of otherwise unrelated traits. And because it is so constrained, it is strongly counterindicative of design.
Comment by Zachriel — June 11, 2007 @ 10:07 am
June 11th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Zachriel wrote:
And if things change extremely rapidly, one gets a different set of traits contained in a 100 trillion universes every billionth of a second.
Bollocks. The logical space is anything but severely restricted. You are assuming that physical laws remain stable and endure, which is precisely what you're not allowed to assume, silly, since it's logically possible for them not to. Even mtraven managed to grasp that, which is why he conceded the point.
I know it's hard for you to think outside your miserably confined mental box, but you need to read and think about Hume on induction and causation and Descartes on evil demons (maybe even Linde and Susskind on the cosmic landscape), er, probably for the rest of your life. There is, as they famously pointed out, no logical necessity (i.e., assuming there is no perfectly rational, moral, and almighty creator/superintendent), that the world will not change drastically from one minute to the next. (Another way to put it is that there are infinitely many logically possible worlds.) You repeatedly failed to grasp this truth the first time around. So try again. Physical necessity does not = logical necessity. Physical possibility does not = logical possibility. (And remind yourself of the mother's milk of empiricism: one cannot observe necessity.)
The stability of nature—in other words, that there are any physical necessities, never mind enduring ones—-is precisely what naturalism cannot account for. It is amazing, given the infinite number of ways in which things logically could have been less regular, and more random and unpredictable. But given a perfectly rational and moral creator/superintendent, things are different, as I've already explained.:roll:
Comment by stunney — June 11, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
The statement included conditions and those conditions limit the logical space. You are free to reject those conditions, but they are reasonable scientific assertions.
You are more than welcome to reject that dropping two stones from the Tower of Pisae today will have something to do with dropping two stones tomorrow. I won't argue with you. But for everyone else, we can predict (with reasonable scientific confidence) they will still hit the ground at the same time.
Comment by Zachriel — June 11, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Philosophical Naturalism is a, well, philosophical stance. Many Naturalists presumably point to the evident consistency of scientific laws. Of course, Gabriel could show up this evening with a flaming sword, but most Naturalists would be rather surprised.
Comment by Zachriel — June 11, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Way back in the quaternary of this thread I challenged ID advocates to produce from Behe's book any hint of original research or any hint of a theory-producing hypothesis.
Bradford said he'd not respond on the concepts until he finished the book. Recently, Bradford is back. Book finished, no doubt!
So, Bradford, where are the answers?
Comment by edarrell — June 11, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
stunney:
Nature by definition is not magical. Something outside of nature is magical or supernatural. If nature happens to exhibit regularities that can be described with equations, it isn't magic, it's just the way it is. But a Big Person sitting outside of the universe and meddling with it is magical.
That is an argument for limitations on our ability to form a complete theory of the universe. It doesn't say anything about God or designers or the supernatural, so what's your point?
Well, opinions differ, and we aren't going to settle it here. My point is that there's nothing special about sets as opposed to any other concept.
Well, technically it doesn't contain physical objects either. Objects, like sets, are conceptual impositions on whatever the underlying reality is — a big wave equation, or mathematical field, or whatever it is. All the objects on my desk are networks of interacting particles, and they are all interacting via uniform laws. An "object" is just a collection of particles that appear more stuck-together than the rest of them.
As usual, you are assuming what you are trying to prove. It's extremely tedious, as is your pretense that "Philosophy 101" has settled the argument your way, which of course is not the case.
me:
But, this is the same ridiculous argument you always offer: that any structure whatsoever has to be mental.
You have just been claiming that sets and nested hierarchies can't exist except by virtue of being thought of by some mind. So, I guess some structures can exist on their own, according to you. So, which ones?
I'm not about belief and don't have a "materialist faith". I'm prepared to consider a variety of ideas about the nature of reality, but Some Dude pulling the strings of the universe isn't high on my list, given it's sorry history and manifest absurdities.
Now, you can boil religion down to where there isn't anything resembling a personal God, which you seem to be doing half the time, and arrive at something that's acceptable to reasonable people. But then, why call the result by a name that suggests it's a person, and open up the door to all kinds of childish anthropomorphism, wish-fulfillment, and worse forms of idiocy?
Comment by mtraven — June 11, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
mtraven, three quick points and then I'm done with this thread.
1. Materialism, as a thesis in philosophy of mind or as a thesis in philosophy of mathematics, is extremely controverted and contentious. Hence, even if it turns out to be true in both cases, it's at best misleading to characterize it at present as having prefectly fine theories of mental states or sets.
2. The idea that universe-governing equations are natural objects is tendentious in the extreme, and many naturalists would say exactly the same thing about that notion. Platonic abstracta are generally viewed as non-natural entities precisely because there is no clear way to see how they could possibly have causal relations or otherwise interact with material entities (including humans if humans are material entities). By contrast, we know that mental states have causal relations and interact with states of matter. For example, pain states. For example, states of deciding to have vanilla ice cream. Etc.
3. Neither you nor I believe that there is anything in reality answering to your conception of God. And that's because your conception sucks, as even a passing familiarity with the philosophical literature on theism would reveal.
Comment by stunney — June 11, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Look, stunney and I are having a civil conversation! Maybe there is a God.
True enough, but it's equally misleading to assume prima facie that materialism is inadequate to support minds, which you do on a regular basis.
I don't even know what it means to say that equations are natural objects. Equations are (representation of) one of many patterns found in nature.
Part of the problem may be that you think that naturalism requires that the world be made out of physical objects. It doesn't.
The philosophical literature on theism, from what I've read, attempts to have it both ways — first, posit God as some ethereal abstraction, and then link that to our everyday conceptions of agency and personhood. It's a scam.
Here's the good old Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
There's your trouble right there. Let's say there is something we can call "the divine reality". Most theists (even the sophisticated ones) can't help wedging this concept into the humdrum frame of human relations, and God inevitably becomes the alpha-male of the baboon band. Mystics have a better approach, by systematically refusing to conceptualize whatever-it-is. I find works in the mystical and apophatic traditions much more congenial. The problem (for you, not me) is that if God is beyond reach of conceptualization he's not very useful for winning scientific arguments. That's as it should be.
Comment by mtraven — June 11, 2007 @ 8:11 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
I'm thinking mystic and theist are not mutually exclusive.
BTW, is alpha male baboon behavior bad? Careful, trick question.
Comment by WedgeHead — June 11, 2007 @ 9:00 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
From these links, select an abstract which you think best exemplifies mctraven's assertion that "evolutionary theory is at the core of biology".
Fischer and Pearson claimed that Mendelism fundamentally wrong, because it contradicted something called Galton's "Law of Ancestral Heredity". While other biologists were investigating Mendelism, the Fischer-Pearson school was busy formulating statistical explanations as to why the poor in England are more fit than the upper classes, in that they leave more offspring.
That book was published in 1930. Mendel published his work in 1866. Sure took some time.
In practice it is mostly ignored by Darwinians. Julian Huxley, for example, ignored it, though he was one of the architects of the modern synthesis.
Comment by Vladimir Krondan — June 11, 2007 @ 10:35 pm
June 11th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Well, neither is very precisely defined and if you take the terms loosely there is overlap, but in the context I was using them, a theist is someone who thinks of God as a person, and mystic is someone who thinks God is fundamentally unknowable — so, pretty different.
I wasn't criticizing the behavior of alpha male baboons, rather, my target was the humans who seem to have a deep desire to have an alpha male primate in charge of the universe. That's bad for numerous reasons (although, like most human behavior, deeply conditioned by evolution which I suppose is the trick you have up your sleeve).
Comment by mtraven — June 11, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
June 12th, 2007 at 7:47 am
No one was aware of Mendel's work until it was rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century. He was given priority, but even Mendel didn't realize the universal applicability of his pea experiments, thinking it may have been a special case. He was promoted in his day job and moved on to other pursuits.
So? There was a dispute in science. That's part of the process.
Galton was missing a particulate theory of genetics. With the rediscovery of Mendelism and the rise of biometrics, the evidence led to the modern evolutionary synthesis which combined aspects of Darwin's evolutionary theory, population dynamics and modern genetic theory. Many scientists made contributions to this result. And the theory continues to be modified and improved to reflect new understandings of these processes.
Your claim was that you could "delete Darwinism". The sheer volume of peer articles published every year in biological journals indicates that Natural Selection and genetics are still important issues in evolutionary biology. There are more than twenty thousand articles in the Journal Genetics concerning "evolution".
But we can find similar articles in other relevant peer journals. Genetics and evolution are strongly intertwined in modern biology, and subject to considerable and specific hypothesis testing.
Comment by Zachriel — June 12, 2007 @ 7:47 am
June 12th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Allen, would you happen to have the references to Darwin's use or preference for "natural preservation" I think those are worth sharing. I know I'd be interested in them. Thanks in advance.
[As mentioned before, thanks for an excellent post on distinguishing what selection is from what it is not (despite common misperceptions).]
Comment by eric — June 12, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Hi Bilbo,
I have a surprise for you. This comment will be on topic.
In your understanding of Behe and your reading of The Edge of Evolution would you agree with the following assessment of Behe's general position?
link
Having read several things from Behe, this seems consistent with his view.
What piqued my interest was what followed in Jerry Coyne's analysis…
Now it may be an oversimplification, but I am realizing the possibility that Behe's basic position may be consistent with mine. What if there is no such thing as "natural" randomness? What if everything was interconnected via quantum mechanics which includes retrocausality? That would be consistent with both Behe's and my hypotheses.
Provoking Thought (even my own)
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 13, 2007 @ 11:44 am
June 13th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Hi All,
I noticed this bit from ID Critic, John Lynch where he was summarizing the various ID blogs reactions to Behe's book by comparing posts talking about the book to those talking about Gonzalez's tenure denial. Here is what he had to say about Telic Thoughts…
Considering how much grief I have given MikeGene in the past about the tenor of TT, I thought it appropriate to point out how much TT is respected, even by its critics.
Regards,
TP
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 13, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
To show irreducible complexity, you would need to show that you could not knock out even one protein part from the lung without it completely losing function. Every part, down to every single protein part, would need to be essential to the function.
When Behe refers to "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts" this is not vaguely referring to large portions or subsystems an organ that are vital to life.
Consider the context. The point is to evaluate what can and cannot be expected from a step-wise Darwinian process. In that context, a single step might add or remove a part. No one expects Darwinian processes to add or remove the kind of "parts" you refer to in single steps.
Typically the parts that Behe examines are protein parts. One could consider whether Darwinian processes could construct a molecular machine where removal of any protein part eliminates the function. That is the issue Behe has raised.
Sorry, not even close. Consider what you "showed" by this key statement.
1. At some point,
2. perhaps
3. they are so specialized (emphasis added)
4. that (implying a vague implication)
5. the structure is now irreducible.
Which declares the conclusion that needs to be shown. It is not only hopelessly vague, it is also question begging.
To be of real interest, you would need to have sufficient specificity that your claims to have pulled the irreducible rabbit out of the hat could actually be evaluated. Just saying it happens doesn't "show" that it can happen.
Comment by eric — June 13, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I take that to mean you do not think a lung is an irreducible structure, or any part of the lung, or that a lunged organism is an irreducible structure. Whatever you want to call it, lungs evolved from air bladders that were coopted from another function, and because intermediate organisms had both systems of respiration, it allowed a gradual evolution of function in the lung. Then the gills were reduced and coopted for other functions. That left a lung that you can't live without.
That's because ID-of-the-Gaps arguments have been pushed back into the deep recesses of time when many of these functions originally evolved, and to arguments that play well with a laypublic who understandably has little knowledge of microbiology. In any case, we know that irreducible structures can evolve by various mechanisms, including duplication, specialization, cooption, migration and reduction.
Sorry, eric. This is a very typical abstraction to test the most general case.
There is no inherent barrier to irreducible structures. There's just not. The abstraction shows that a stepwise path is possible. That is all that is required to show that there is no inherent barrier. There may be specific technical barriers, but not inherent ones.
Comment by Zachriel — June 13, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Carroll makes a stupid mistake and Behe ought to clean Carroll's clock for it. This is an embarrassment Carroll will have to apologize for.
Carroll does not realize Behe did refer to pyrimethamine, but Carroll was too dense to see it.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — June 13, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
And Behe is not even correct on his most important example, blood clotting. The Hageman factor which he includes as essential doesn't exist in dolphins. Hence, according to Behe, dolphins should not exist.
But that's just Behe's ignorance.
An irreducible system can be constructed in theory, the same way an arch is constructed. You have a scaffold, which could just be a pile of stones. You put the arch in place, then remove the scaffold. In biology, you might have some elaborated structure that has some minimum function, but by slowly removing and jostling parts, optimize and eventually reduce it to its bare minimum. This bare minimum may be irreducible.
Comment by Zachriel — June 13, 2007 @ 10:36 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
It would depend on whether Behe includes it as an example of "cumulative selection". You might want to post the context.
Comment by Zachriel — June 13, 2007 @ 10:43 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
So, if natural processes can create a non-optimized bacterial flagellum that includes extra stuff, the idea would be that it can whittle it down over time to the irreducible essentials.
I have no trouble understanding the idea, and no objection to your trying to actually make it work in practice. Someone might succeed or they might find it harder than they expected to
a) make more than what they needed, and then
b) whittle that down into a finely tuned irreducible system while sustaining function.
But sure, go ahead and give it a try.
I don't accept hand waving claims to having "shown" it in a biological context, especially when the key points are merely asserted.
The fact that one cannot live without a lung is so completely beside the point that I'm left wondering if you yet understand the issue to be solved.
Take a system X that is "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function". Try to knock out each of the protein parts in turn. If you can knock out any protein part from that system and still have some amount of the original function in that system, then that system is not irreducibly complex.
Whether you can get the same function with some other system that has fewer parts does not change the definition. However, you are free to pose that other system as a possible precursor and show how the simpler system could be modified into the more complex irreducible system.
Or rather, to avoid question begging, "when many of these functions originally appeared" — exactly at the time where one would expect them to appear in the case of front loaded design, e.g. at the origin of each fundamentally distinct body plan that appears abruptly in the fossil record.
Comment by eric — June 13, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Zach, Eric, or anyone
Now here's a question of a reverse engineering sort. Let us suppose that the flagellum evolved in a stepwise fashion. It would surely take at least 5 or 10 steps. And each step must have been functional enough that it was selected for and became part of the genome, part of the working toolbox of the specie.
And, if I understand aright, gene duplication is often supposed to provide the raw materials because, after all, whatever proteins get coopted to make up the flagellum were also already needed for other, older parts of the orgamism.
Now, if we are going to build a flagellum in steps and in which each step builds a good, functional organ, then we have two choices:
1)each organ is a protoflagellum
2)the steps have also created other, nonflagellar organs.
If the parts were coopted from other functional organs, then since the organism went to all the trouble of selecting each improved organ into its genome, we should assume that these new organs were really pretty vital. And if they were really pretty vital, they should still be around, and they should provide and excellent trail of the steps that went into making the flagellum.
I'm just trying to picture how it might work.
That's a little funny, too. It means that extra parts were added, and selected for, and then dropped.
Comment by onething — June 13, 2007 @ 11:21 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Hi Onething,
Didn't you get the memo? ID has moved the target from flagellum to cilium.
The cilium is smaller, yet more complex. This will force Nick Matzke to start over in trying to come up with a plausible explanation for a more difficult evolutionary puzzle.
Provoking
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 13, 2007 @ 11:52 pm
June 13th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
TP:
He'll just get irritated and BLAST it.
Comment by Bradford — June 13, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 12:12 am
I didn't get the memo, but the question stands.
Comment by onething — June 14, 2007 @ 12:12 am
June 14th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Actually the cilium (=eukaryotic flagellum) is bigger and more complex.
Lots of stuff on how the euk. flagellum/cilium evolved in that PT post I linked to way up at the top of this thread which shows Behe made a big mistake, although no one here has even attempted to refute it…
http://www.pandasthumb.org/arc...
Comment by Nick Matzke — June 14, 2007 @ 12:53 am
June 14th, 2007 at 12:57 am
Hi Nick,
You wrote…
Did anyone notice my size 12 shoe stuck in my mouth. I hate it when that happens.
Thanks Nick.
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 14, 2007 @ 12:57 am
June 14th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Don't feel bad, I have a list of senior established biologists who can't seem to remember the difference between eukaryotic flagella/cilia and bacterial flagella…
Comment by Nick Matzke — June 14, 2007 @ 1:11 am
June 14th, 2007 at 2:06 am
Behe in EoE:
pages 75-76
As for Behe's acceptance a 4.5 BYO Earth, common descent, RM and NS, etc.
This has always been his position.
Behe was a Darwin-believing biologist before coming to ID. Miller, in his review of DBB, admitted that Behe accepted such evolutionary pillars over a decade ago.
http://www.millerandlevine.com...
Comment by Pez — June 14, 2007 @ 2:06 am
June 14th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Thank you. There is no inherent barrier to the evolution of irreducible structures. Behe is wrong on this basic principle. There may be specific, technical reasons why it never happens in biological systems, but that is an entirely different question.
Pleural cavity, air sacs, trachea, bronchial tubes, alveoli in close integration with circulatory system, blood supply, diaphragm. Remove anyone of these and the lungs cease to work. More than that, the organism dies. It certainly seems the parts are well-matched and all essential. We can even see how the use of dual-respiratory system (primitive lungs and gills) acts as a bridge (scaffold) to enable the lungs to develop.
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 7:37 am
June 14th, 2007 at 7:46 am
No one knows exactly how the flagellum evolved. It was very early in the history of life on Earth and left scant evidence. However, if it evolved, then we would expect to see homologs to components of the flagellar system"”and we do.
Keep in mind the actual claim. ID is not claiming we don't know how the flagellum evolved, therefore ID. That would be an obvious fallacy. Rather, ID is making the much stronger claim that there is no conceivable stepwise path. But without knowing every conceivable pathway, or unless a formal proof is available, then the argument fails. There is no formal proof, and we can't know every conceivable pathway. Hence the argument falls flat.
But the argument does have rhetorical advantages. We can add any manner of detail and handwaving to pad out the discussion. But it comes down to "see how complicated it is. I can't imagine how it could have evolved".
Scientists point out that the flagellum appears to combine aspects of a rotating pore and a motor, an example of cooption. It doesn't take much function to move a bacterium, so any function might be an advantage to an organism, no matter how primitive. But no one knows for sure at this time. I suppose that leaves you free to argue in the Gaps. Planets move by gravity, except when we're not looking, then the crystals spheres start humming Hallelujahs.
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 7:46 am
June 14th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Or rather you can read it for yourself rather than you and other critics teeing off on something you all may not have read or have ready access to. I believe the point of this thread was for people who have the book to have their say, not for naysayers who will offer comments on something they haven't read or have no intention of reading.
Thanks to Pez anyway for pointing out Behe mentions the substance in question.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — June 14, 2007 @ 9:13 am
June 14th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Heh. Of all my comments on this thread, you pick on the one that is most clearly on-topic and relevant. I note that Pez provided the context.
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 10:01 am
June 14th, 2007 at 11:22 am
If by "vital" you mean necessary for survival, absolutely not!
The innovation would only need to provide a selective advantage, and the selective advantage in this case is clearly distancing from competitors, which can be advantageous in multiple ways. For example, random motility, however lame, could be a start, with chemotaxis toward a food source a later adaptation.
Comment by JAM — June 14, 2007 @ 11:22 am
June 14th, 2007 at 11:35 am
An organism doesn't go to any trouble at all, because we're not talking about a change in an individual organism. We're talking about a population of variants, some of which may have been created with functions–no matter how haphazardly constructed–that in certain environments may give them a slight advantage over their competitors.
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 11:35 am
June 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Allen, ""Intelligent Designer" is so dedicated to making the most deadly disease known to modern humanity even more deadly."
Maybe Satan made it.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 14, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Allen, "Is it therefore not far off that the IDers begin to rationalize all forms of apparent devilishness in nature by saying "the Intelligent Designer designed it that way?""
The major world religions posit a conflict between opposing interests in the affairs of men by super cosmic entities. Some take the Genesis account as a metaphor that points to decision made by man (at some level, perhaps in a preexisting state) to allow the "snake's" influence into this domain.
Translated: the original intent was "very good" with no disease for the original humans. Rebellion against the ruling cosmic goverment brought in corruption, death, and disease, by another power that seeks humanity's destruction according to some murky agenda on both sides.
You've heard it before, I'm sure.
But it's one explanation.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 14, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Allen, "If the Intelligent Designer "created a) by means of evolutionary algorithms; and b) those life-forms would be of the types we actually observe" then how in the world could one distinguish between this and a world that is entirely the result of pure Darwinian evolution?"
At the risk of stating the obvious, in order to answer that question one needs to know exactly what can occur in a universe like this, and what did occur on this globe and why. One would have to know the evolutionary algorithms used and determine if the algorithms themselves are capable of self-creation. An intelligent designer would undoubtably use algorithms that exhibited insight and intent from the start. "Blind watchmaker" produced algorithms would be expected not to have such.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 14, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Allen,
To continue:
Standing back, looking at the universe wholistically, one also has to determine if the universe itself possesses genuinely random, contra merely apparent to us, properties. Which is another way of asking if the universe is deterministic right down to it's most basic rusty button, or not. Another way to ask the question is, could the universe and it's objects have been any different that it actually was, and if so, what is the source of the potential differentiation?
Both possible answers have implications on the ID versus non-intelligent/blind-watchmaker causation debate, well hashed over and over again by philosophers and other thinkers. But this view of things is nearly always absent from discussions like the present one.
Comment by kornbelt888 — June 14, 2007 @ 4:06 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Cooption would not be an option to explaining genomic repair mechanisms and the retention of information they make possible. Assuming they evolve in the absence of genomic maintanece mechanisms necessarily assumes the outcome of an underlying question namely, would adaptive information accumulate faster than it is lost until such mechanisms are in place. There is nothing asserted into this gap other than an awaitied answer to an empirical question.
Comment by Bradford — June 14, 2007 @ 4:52 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Zach and JAM,
I'm not sure I articulated my question very well. There are supposed to be two possibilities in a stepwise design of the flagellum. In one, each step improves upon some sort of motility device that ends up being the flagellum. There are problems with that.
Another, and I thought more prominent supposition, is that the steps could involve components that were not necessarily about motility. (Such as the now discredited TTS) And I am saying that if the organism arrived at some of these organs on its way to the flagellum, then those organs should have been pretty important. At least, they were important enough to have been selected for so strongly that they overtook the genome.
In the latter case, wouldn't those other organs, containing parts of the complete flagellum, still be left within the bacteria, still doing their jobs? If not, why not? And if they were still there, they would provide an easy answer to the steps involved in creating the flagellum.
Comment by onething — June 14, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Let me just add this related question which I asked on another thread that no one is visiting:
Someone said: "Evolution can take these "˜off the shelf' components and put them together in new and interesting ways."
And I asked:
So they say. But it's my understanding, and just from a layperson's reading around on blogs and ID books, that you need both the components and the instructions for putting them together. This is the part of the cooption argument that I never get. Sure, the parts may be lying around, maybe there's some gene duplication, but what about all those complex instructions that tell how to put the parts together and do something novel?
Comment by onething — June 14, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Hi onething,
While I doubt you are going to generate much interest in your questions, it might help if you identify what you don't have problems with. A topical activity in this thread is to point out Behe's position.
link
Would you agree with this characterization as Behe's and/or your position on these issues?
If so, that focuses the discussion to what additional mechanisms are needed to explain the items you wish to address.
Nick Matzke is working on gathering data to improve our understanding of the evolution of process of the bacterial flagella. This may help support one or more potential hypotheses that describe the mechanism(s) involved.
There is a default hypothesis that comes from current, mainstream evolutionary biology thinking.
I could propose a retrocausual process that might possibility augment that hypothesis (it involves interconnecting quantum effects).
Do you have any mechanisms to propose?
Or are you just frustrated that no one has an explanation that you are comfortable with?
Provoking
Comment by Thought Provoker — June 14, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
How about giving him an explanation before you assume he does not like it. Would the relevant genes still be encoding proteins related to separate functions? The answer you will likely get is a conditional yes. Explanations like cooption are not always clear in their historic details. A possible explanation entails gene duplications of homologous genes and their subsequent mutation and modification while "offline."
You are asking reasonable questions. Some of what might fit the description of instructions are regulatory genes. Post translational modifications also would fit this description. Curious minds want to know. If you see resistance rather than answers to reasonable questions that could be a sign that an ideological attitude lies behind the resistance.
Comment by Bradford — June 14, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
The precursor steps might have had nothing to do with motility. The components might have evolved for some completely unrelated purpose, so do not make the same mistake that Michael Behe did which was to assume that there was no beneficial simpler evolutionary precursor.
Overtook is the wrong word; We do not know that the precursor structure was "very important", only that it must have provided an evolutionary advantage. What is this TTS that you say has been discredited?
Because those original structures would have adapted too. Somewhere lost in distant time there was a single structure that underwent at least two different streams of adaptation, resultng in the modern version of that structure (which may be very different from the precursor), and the bacterial flagellum.
Yep, they are still there - or at least the modern versions of the precursor structures are still there.
By the way, I'm not sure of your line of reasoning here; There is nothing at all in the proposition of Intelligent Design that claims that simple structures such as bacterial flagellum cannot evolve. Perhaps you should read Mike Gene's book rather than Mike Behe's. Mike Behe has creationist leanings, and this somewhat clouds his judgement.
Comment by salimfadhley — June 14, 2007 @ 6:30 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Cooption would not be an option to explaining genomic repair mechanisms and the retention of information they make possible. Assuming they evolve in the absence of genomic maintanece mechanisms necessarily assumes the outcome of an underlying question namely, would adaptive information accumulate faster than it is lost until such mechanisms are in place. There is nothing asserted into this gap other than an awaitied answer to an empirical question.
I'm pretty sure that this is not the case; A genomic repair mechanism is not required for the simplest possible cellular life. A high mutation rate would not be a particularly bad thing for an organism with a very high rate of reproduction.
An organism which did use DNA but which did not have a functional DNA repair mechanism might be more prone to harmful mutations than a modern organism, and as a result a great many negative mutations might occur… a great many positive mutations might also occur and these would be strongly preserved.
If you accept Dembski's model for how an intelligent design process might interact with a primitive cell, the lack of repair mechanism presents no problem, if anything this creates even greater potential for the model he proposes, in that the cell presents greater opportunity for an intelligent design process to impart information.
This really is not a point of contention between ID and evolutionary theory; in fact it's one of the points that everybody should be able to agree on because it's precisely what both propositions would predict.
To put this into context, a genetic repair mechanism is only one of many kinds defensive adaptations. A modern single-cell organism faces many other threats (e.g. being eaten, poisoned, squashed, torn-apart, over-heated, frozen, starved) beside mutation.
Even without a genetic repair mechanism, the cell has a sure-fire defence against any kind of threat (including genome damage), and that is REPRODUCTION!
Comment by salimfadhley — June 14, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Cite a unicellular species that does not have such mechanisms. It's not a matter of your opinion but of fact.
Comment by Bradford — June 14, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
They may not be there still, but quite possibly their descendants will be. We might look for homologies with other cellular components.
Have you ever noticed that ID arguments nearly always concern processes and events at the very edge of empirical capabilities; flagellum, cambrian explosion, abiogenesis? The flagellum evolved eons ago and what little evidence exists is filtered through billions of years of intervening events. A Gap.
I've already provided an example of how an air bladder originally used for controlling buoyancy is coopted for respiration. Because intermediate organisms had both systems of respiration, it allowed a gradual evolution of function in the lung. Eventually, that left a lung that you can't live without. Here are other simple examples of adaptation for a new function:
And when you examine these transitions closely, you will find that each can easily occur in a stepwise and selectable process.
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Any rate beyond a life sustaining range is lethal.
Comment by Bradford — June 14, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Not all mutations are lethal (few are beneficial, most are neutral). Any rate of lethal mutations below the population's rate of reproduction will cause no problem at all. An organism with a very low mutation rate might be at an evolutionary disadvantage compared with an equally quickly reproducing organism that can evolve faster.
The same is universally true for just about any threat an organism faces; As long as the population reproduces at a rate which is at least as fast as the population's death-rate then all will be fine.
Like I said, this is not usually a contentious issue between ID and evolution proponents. Both sides accept that evolution can produce simple adaptive defensive mechanisms. Neither side has proposed that genetic repair is a special case.
Comment by salimfadhley — June 14, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
TP,
I don't see how this is relevant at all. I don't really have a strong position on some of these things, but I tend to be doubtful. I give a little less credence to standard evolutionary mechanisms than Behe or Mike Gene.
The item I'm talking about is one that Behe is known for. Although Denton thought of it first.
Of course I am frustrated that no one has a mechanism I am comfortable with. I find all this pretty fascinating, and I can't really imagine how it happened. I am stumped.
Bradford,
I am not a him.
OK, but how are we going to keep several important, interlocking steps if the whole thing is offline? What's to select? I can see perhaps the first mutation or two happening offline, but that's it.
Salim,
Yes, initially Behe was considering the whole thing as a developing motility device. And that, after all, is just what Darwinists have from the beginning proposed. And it isn't that he never considered a simpler device, it was that he didn't see how the flagellum could be built that way. That's what his whole argument is about.
But later, he and Dembski answered to both possibilities, and still found the evolution of the flagellum improbable. And my point is that if the components evolved for unrelated tasks, then those tasks and components ought to be around. Maybe not all of them, but there are several steps needed to build a flagellum.
If it provided enough of an evolutionary advantage to be conserved into the genome then it was a strong advantage. The probabilities have been calculated by others, but just because a slightly favorable mutation comes along is not reason enough for it to have the power to take over the genome. It would most likely be erased. This is a whole topic that I presume everyone is aware of. The TTSS a type 3 secretory system. It was propopsed by Miller as a solution to the IC of the flagellum, because it has about 9 analogs of the necessary 40 or so proteins for the flagellum. Not much of a solution but it got a lot of praise. Unfortunately it turns out the TTSS is no longer considered a precursor, but a later and probably degenerated organ.
So completely that we don't see the analogs in structure? All that trouble to evolve something that strikes ID folk as difficult to come up with in the first place, and then it morphs so much that we can't even see the steps that led to the flagellum?
I'm specifically talking about more than two streams. the first structure that gets duplicated, we can leave that alone. But suppose that there were, say, three or four distinct functions for the developing flagellum. Each a neat new capability for the organism. Did they all get lost?
Really? Where have I been? I thought IC and CSI were the cornerstones.
That's funny. Mike Gene has taken a pretty strong interest in the flagellum. He wrote a five part essay on it. It's at Teleologic, but for some reason I can't seem to get it to come up. Behe does have creationist leanings, whatever that means to you, but yet he is pretty mainstream according to TP's prior post. Besides if that clouds his judgement, then he is no different than a materialst who insists on purposeless materialism. It's really a nonstatement.
Zach,
No, I hadn't. I think ID arguments are all over the board. At any rate, if it is so hard to bring it into focus, then why are we supposed to take Darwinism seriously? I mean, c'mon. What kind of answer is that to the Meyer paper, which was partially about the Cambrian explosion? It was too long ago? Doesn't it seem odd to you that evolution is mostly in the past? It seems to be over. Have their been any major new genera in the last million years?
It's a start, but a supposition like that really doesn't go into the detail needed to show that it can actually occur like that.
Pretty much, that's what this whole debate is about.
Comment by onething — June 14, 2007 @ 9:21 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
In science, we build with what we can reasonably determine. Newton may not have known how the Solar System began, but he could unite the intricate movements of the planets with the fall of an apple.
It's just futile to try and understand the evolution of the flagellum, or any structure, when the board is all over the place on Common Descent as it applies to most taxa.
Only then might we try to examine the mechanisms that apply to the simplest cases of divergence. You need to assure yourself of the validity of these strongly supported scientific conclusions before tackling the evolution of a microscopic structure that happened billions of years ago, with whatever evidence it left shrouded in eons of intervening history.
Any reasonable discussion of the Theory of Evolution must start with Common Descent. Do you accept Common Descent (as it applies to most taxa, say land vertebrates)? If so, do you accept that natural evolutionary processes can reasonably explain the divergence of birds and toads? Mice and men? Wolves and dogs?
Comment by Zachriel — June 14, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Bradford: Any rate beyond a life sustaining range is lethal.
Where are you getting this from? Mutations eliminate useful genetic function in the vast majority of instances. A minute percentage have neutral effects and a very tiny percentage can be classified as beneficial. When maintanence mechanisms are eliminated mortality exceeds reproduction very quickly.
Most people are woefully ignorant of mechanisms like those involved in maintaining genomic integrity. It is not a main issue for those whose allegiance lies with traditional concepts because it is viewed as a no win problem by them. Unfortunately, ignorance extends to most IDists as well. Genetic repair is a special case because it enables us to examine the plausibility of a key Darwinian concept- natural selection. Selection is biologically meaningless when genetic information losses exceed gains.
That occurs in unprotected cellular genomes.
Comment by Bradford — June 14, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
June 14th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
salimfadhley:
I was in a hurry and did not have time for this before but it illustrates a conceptual problem. A large percentage of the genes in unicelluar genomes are involved in encoding proteins related to reproductive functions. When the sequential order of nucleotides within such genes are disrupted by damage to DNA and when this occurs without the benefit of repair mechnisms, cellular reproduction is compromised. Reproduction is not a solution. It itself is a target along with all other functions. We do not witness genetic meltdowns only because there are intricate and interrelated cellular mechanisms that neutralize genetic problems before they spiral out of control. They e