What the Discovery Institute doesn't want you to know!
by KrauzeHere at Telic Thoughts, we aren't always on the same page as the Discovery Institute, but I did like this conversation. Amanda Witt recounts a discussion she had with someone who had discovered that Amanda's husband, Jonathan Witt, works for the Discovery Institute. It's not entirely clear, but it sounds as if the person thought that the Discovery Institute should be more upfront about the fact that a design inference doesn't allow you to identify the designer.
August 9th, 2006 at 10:35 am
But the elements of design allow one to learn a lot about the identity of the designer. That's the case in all sciences that study design, like archaelolgy.
In fact, one science, criminal forensics, has as its GOAL the identification of the designers of crimes.
Comment by Smokey — August 9, 2006 @ 10:35 am
August 9th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Hi Smokey,
"But the elements of design allow one to learn a lot about the identity of the designer."
Assuming that you had sufficient evidence to infer design behind the bacterial flagellum, how would you go about investigating the identity of the designer?
Comment by Krauze — August 9, 2006 @ 12:28 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
For starters, it says that the Designer must be pathologically thrifty in Her or His design strategies, because AFAIK, all of the parts of the flagellum are related to preexisting parts of other mechanisms.
That's conclusion is hard to reconcile with the notion that the Designer is omnipotent (i.e., God), for example.
Comment by Smokey — August 9, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
"Preexisting parts." Wow! How do you know they're preexisting?
Meanwhile, Krauze and Mike Gene: Cool article in Scientific American this month, on pseudogenes. Fits in with FLE very nicely.
Comment by Bilbo — August 9, 2006 @ 7:19 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
I don't. The flagellar parts could have been the first, and the others were adapted from them.
My point about pathological thriftiness works either way.
Comment by Smokey — August 9, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Why is it "pathological"
Comment by Bilbo — August 9, 2006 @ 7:35 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
"For starters, it says that the Designer must be pathologically thrifty in Her or His design strategies, because AFAIK, all of the parts of the flagellum are related to preexisting parts of other mechanisms.
That's conclusion is hard to reconcile with the notion that the Designer is omnipotent (i.e., God), for example. "
Why would you say that ? Good designers reuse designs that work. That is a hallmark of design. Perhaps these modular components are the best way to do something and have added benifits we haven't figured out yet.
After all, something can look stupid and badly designed if you don't know why it was done a certian way. Consider built in obselescence in technology today. It looks positivly idiotic until you realise that that is what is being aimed for.
Comment by thesciphishow — August 9, 2006 @ 8:20 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
Smokey: For starters, it says that the Designer must be pathologically thrifty in Her or His design strategies, because AFAIK, all of the parts of the flagellum are related to preexisting parts of other mechanisms.
That's conclusion is hard to reconcile with the notion that the Designer is omnipotent (i.e., God), for example.
How is modular design in any way problematic?
Comment by Bradford — August 9, 2006 @ 8:21 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Modular design is something we generally engage in because of our limitations as human beings. In software, it helps us deal with complexity because our brains can only deal with so much at one time without many mistakes being made. In engineering and manufacturing, modular design helps to manage complexity, production time and costs, etc. It is difficult to conceive of why an omnipotent being would need to employ a modular strategy. Just strikes one as odd, that's all.
Comment by great_ape — August 9, 2006 @ 11:16 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
"Modular design is something we generally engage in because of our limitations as human beings. In software, it helps us deal with complexity because our brains can only deal with so much at one time without many mistakes being made. In engineering and manufacturing, modular design helps to manage complexity, production time and costs, etc. It is difficult to conceive of why an omnipotent being would need to employ a modular strategy. Just strikes one as odd, that's all."
What appears to be a necessary strategy to a limited intelligence may in fact be incidental modularity to a greater intellect.
Comment by Bradford — August 9, 2006 @ 11:26 pm
August 9th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
"What appears to be a necessary strategy to a limited intelligence may in fact be incidental modularity to a greater intellect." –Bradford
That may very well be the case. It may also be the case that what appears to be a complex design may in fact be the incidental byproduct of eons of mindless variation and environmental selection.
Comment by great_ape — August 9, 2006 @ 11:35 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 12:45 am
great_ape:
How are you parsing "eons," g-a? Life has existed for 2.8 billion years that we're pretty confident about, and maybe all of 3.5 billion years if we take moot evidence at face value. It didn't do much evolving at all until about 600 million years ago, just over a sixth of life's existence if we're being generous. Dinosaurs (and three quarters of all other life forms on the planet) died off in a mass culling exercise just 65 million years ago. Humans, they say, arrived around 200K years ago from some minor rodent if you go by some guesses, branching off the great ape line about 3 million years ago into… we're not really clear on this. 200K years allows for us to share the planet with Neanderthals for about 170K years per the "bred-out" scenario on their downfall. Others put us at 100K years or less, because now we know (do we ever really know?) from genetic evidence that we're NOT descended from Neanderthals. There's not another candidate current. And we don't have many fossils to guess from.
You keep wanting to tell us that the immensity of time and space factors into our equations, but it just flat-out doesn't. There are serious constraints at work here, and we simply don't see that much evolution going on. We've been looking for a few thousand years, you know.
Just a point of issue. Every multicellular complex organism on this planet evolved to where it is within the last 600 million years. That's a drop in the bucket for a universe claimed to be more than 14 billion years old.
Comment by Joy — August 10, 2006 @ 12:45 am
August 10th, 2006 at 1:04 am
One thing many people miss out — if part of the plan is for Creation to be _understood_, then it must be made in a way that is both understandable and explorable. This means that there must be a large amount of similarity between different parts, in order to aid in the discovery of their function.
Comment by johnnyb — August 10, 2006 @ 1:04 am
August 10th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Joy,
You are correct about the 600myr history of many of the forms of multicellular life we are familiar with. However, there is a far deeper history prior to the cambrian during which many of the most complex systems (in the biochemical sense) arose. (If we are to believe the protein diversity data). That deeper history is important because it is the source of the building blocks (particularly biochemical pathways, etc.) for what happened over that apparently short 600 myr period. When I speek of the eons, the titanic time/space parameters, I'm speaking of that multi-billion year era during which biochemical/protein diversity was accumulating. Those nuggets of complexity, in my view, were the truly "difficult" parts, beyond which morphological diversity and associated combinations of those initial nuggets of complexity required less time. I do no rule out that some of that initial complexity developed previously, elsewhere in space (i.e. weak panspermia).
Comment by great_ape — August 10, 2006 @ 11:36 am
August 10th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Hi Smokey,
"That's conclusion is hard to reconcile with the notion that the Designer is omnipotent (i.e., God), for example."
So if intelligent design is right, creationism must be wrong?
Comment by Krauze — August 10, 2006 @ 12:20 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Smokey:
Biblo asks a good question "“ what's the rationale for the adjective "pathological?"
Do you have any independent experience with omnipotent designers that allows you to predict what the fingerprints of omnipotence would look like?
Comment by MikeGene — August 10, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
Beethoven wrote his 5th symphony, largely using the same four musical notes, over and over, in different ways. Should we consider this "pathological"; or that he had a limited brain and could only work with four notes at a time; or that he was a musical genius who could create a masterpiece out of very limited resources?
So Krauze and Mike, have you guys read the pseudogene article in Scientific American, yet?
Comment by Bilbo — August 10, 2006 @ 5:26 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
Bradford asked:
"How is modular design in any way problematic?"
I didn't say that it was. I also didn't say anything about modular design, as what we see in life is not identical modules, but related yet slightly different ones.
Biblo asked:
"Why is it "pathological""
We'd call it pathological if we saw it in any enormous set of human designs.
Mike asked:
"Do you have any independent experience with omnipotent designers that allows you to predict what the fingerprints of omnipotence would look like?"
No, what I understand is the incredible constraints on the "designs" seen in biology, resulting in existing protein sequences occupying a laughably small part of the available sequence space. I also know that even we lowly humans can circumvent those constraints using random mutation and artificial selection, as is done with catalytic antibodies or artificial evolution of protein-protein binding starting with a random sequence.
Krause asked:
"So if intelligent design is right, creationism must be wrong?"
That's how it looks when one looks at the nature of biological complexity, yes.
Comment by Smokey — August 10, 2006 @ 6:43 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
We don't engage in modular design simply because of our limitations. The main reason is that modular design is the most perfect way to do design engineering. As a software engineer I'm still using modules that I coded in early 90s. There are many modules that I import and exchange in each new project that I create. It saves me lots of time and effort each time I deal with a new project. That's what we call reusable components and reusable codes in modern software developement strategy.
Now assume a super genius software guy is talented enough that he could rewrite everything from scratch each time he starts a new project. Most probably he would be fired from his job because his way of doing things is highly time consuming and in no way efficient. (assume he codes prefectly and he doesn't waste time with bugs and mistakes in his code)
As you said, modular design helps to manage complexity, production time and costs. But it is not only limited to these factors. I assure you that the software engineering using modular design is the most perfect and the smartest way of developing projects . No matter if you are a super genius engineer with god-like powers or not. You'd still prefer doing things using modular design.
When it comes to an omnipotent being we can still continue speculating about reason for him to prefer modular design methods or not. One good possibility lies behind what I already described above: Being the most perfect method, not only for human but also for gods!
Another speculation is the notion that the Omnipotent being is doing his work through others not directly and those others do not possess an unlimited level of intelligence. Maybe the universe is not a place where the Omnipotent being simply shakes his hands and things come to existance. If we assume that the universe is a playground for us (and other intelligent beings), the main goal is to gain awareness and experience. It can only happen in a step by step fashion. The rules of the universe must allow intelligent beings to deal with problems with their limited intelligence and learn something from them. Maybe omnipotent being desired to share his tasks with less intelligent beings so they can also learn something from it.
Comment by Farshad — August 10, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
August 10th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
great_ape:
Complicated just recently by new suggestions that eukaryotes didn't evolve by symbiosis from either prokaryotes or archaea. Perhaps Woese is right and there was a great primordial goo orgy of promiscuous gene-trading going on before these cell types settled into the more Puritan mode of vertical inheritance. But it's a fact that only eukaryotic cells can band together to build a differentiated, multi-cellular body under the control of a single plant/critter's purposive constraints. We don't see bacteria doing this. If eukaryotes came first, could we then consider them front-loaded? And if front-loaded, what triggered the "arms race" program after they'd been peacefully enjoying primordial goo orgies with their kith and kin for more than 2 billion years?
Lots of questions, not a lot of answers. I find it all quite fascinating. Panspermia is interesting too as a speculation, but until and unless we've got physical evidence of actual life in outer space it's just another Anazi tale. Over on Mike's Book Blog there's a link to a 2001 abstract (which links to the pdf) of a paper in an Italian journal proposing that all those clone-able and culturable microbes in crystals, rocks, mineral ores and meteorites suggest that life not only originated outside of earth, but was already present in the accretion material from which our solar system was made. I haven't finished reading it yet, but you might enjoy it. I figure if the question had been definitively answered we'd have heard about it by now.
In the fields of my interest it's looking more and more likely that there's more than 3+1 dimensions in the totality of reality. That's an interesting speculation too, because if there are further dimensions, we'd have no reason to rule out a priori the existence of life (or maybe just consciousness) in any or all of them, and if that were so it could be existing all around us all the time - no great feats of intergalactic propulsion required.
But for now it's the stuff of sci-fi novels and bad TV shows. I find it a little odd that the monolith 'Science' Neodarwinists so often claim to speak for doesn't spend much time, energy and money attempting to slap these sort of fanciful ideas down as heresy (and destroy the reputations and careers of advocates). Don't you?
Comment by Joy — August 10, 2006 @ 11:49 pm
August 11th, 2006 at 1:55 am
That may well be true. But, being human, the only concrete/tangible reasons I can think of for why we might judge modular design "the most perfect," have to do with how it helps mitigate our own limitations. Nothing in your post, other than assuring me it is "the most perfect," provides any additional reasons for this. You're right, however, that this is all just speculation and we have no way of knowing what an omniscient/omnipotent being would be inclined to do. Perhaps He does allow imperfect/limited to engage in design for educational purposes, but wouldn't it really be terrible if our slice of the cosmos was designed by the slow kid in class? Just something to think about.
I am an adherrent of the "there are more things in heaven and earth…" mantra. I try to keep an open mind, particularly since the smattering of biology we do understand rests on scaffolding of physics that no human truly does. Who knows what the true nature of reality is. I suspect from some more ultimate cosmic perspective, evolution will seem a naive explanatory narrative for life; yet from that perspective, we will also be able to see why it was so alluring as a scientific explanation to limited beings such as ourselves. As an individual, I explore a great many things, many of which may well be bunk. As a scientist, I stick to the evidence at hand and the framework of exploration and explanation that has proven fruitful. There is this ongoing and rather successful empirical project to understand nature that's under way, and part of its essence concerns what one does and doesn't count as explanation, what does and doesn't count as evidence, etc. Horoscope and Tarot card readers don't exert enough political influence to threaten that scientific enterprise–although scientists do lambast these from time to time . Those that oppose evolution as a paradigm for understanding biology do wield such influence. If scientists seem to be more willing to cry heresy concerning ID and creationism, etc, it is because that is where the most danger to the enterprise comes from.
There are countries that ban the teaching of evolution altogether. I can't think of anything similar in physics, chemistry, math, etc. As nearly every biologist considers evolution the underlying framework for our understanding of biology, the prospect of evolution being threatened in our educational system represents a grave threat requiring a strong response. That said, I can not condone the vitriol and mean-spiritedness that spews forth in that name of defending science. But, then again, evolutionists don't hold a monopoly in the mean-spiritedness arena.
p.s. thanks for the ref to the italian article
Comment by great_ape — August 11, 2006 @ 1:55 am
August 11th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
great_ape:
Please stop misrepresenting. The opposition presented by ID is not to "evolution," it's to the Neodarwinian synthesis. Which is in a good many ways known to be non-explanatory and insufficient to even investigate many of the details biologists are now learning through better technological tools of observation. Its arbitrary "random" wall around causation is a problem for the entire enterprise of explaining effects, and lots of biological researchers ignore the simplistic pablum of Neodarwinian theoretics when working on details. Even though they usually pay lip service to the "orthodoxy" or "dogma" in their intros as a means to deflect the kind of Inquisition-like harm they know will come if they challenge the dogmas.
Perhaps if you were to let go of the propaganda conflating ID with Creationism you would recognize that ID may have something to offer biology in the way of explanatory power Neodarwinism does not have. If ID has nothing to offer it'll go away soon enough to join its pseudoscience brethren in the tabloid world. Science isn't threatened. It's just emotionally-invested scientists with metaphysical issues who feel threatened.
The educational system isn't threatened by ID either. That issue has been resolved, so it's no longer a useful rallying flag. Education in general is dismal in this country, though bright kids can still manage to gain some value from it if they try. I see the 40-something percent of the public who believes God created humans in their present form 10,000 or less years ago bandied about a lot as if it were a total horror. Well more than half of high school graduates (many with college degrees) can't find California on a map and don't know a noun from a verb.
In view of general ignorance of things people didn't care to learn in the first place and will never use in their whole lives, the number of American citizens who believe in religious creationism is not a scientific concern. American citizens have the right to believe in religious creationism without interference from the state (and public schools are the state). 'Eradication' of religion and religious beliefs is an evangelical atheist agenda, not a democratic one. Mean-spirited barkers on both sides just make the agenda(s) more public.
The more public the agendas, the firmer people's opinions and beliefs become entrenched. In face of perceived threat, that is a normal human reaction. Even scientists should be smart enough to figure that out.
Comment by Joy — August 11, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
August 11th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Farshad wrote:
"As you said, modular design helps to manage complexity, production time and costs. But it is not only limited to these factors. I assure you that the software engineering using modular design is the most perfect and the smartest way of developing projects . No matter if you are a super genius engineer with god-like powers or not. You'd still prefer doing things using modular design."
That sounds nice, but your analogy is faulty. At the levels of protein domains and whole proteins, the modules aren't identical–they are different, with those differences filling a wide spectrum from functionally silent (Why?), to somewhat different, through to barely recognizable.
I'm sorry, but making functional changes in your programming module isn't the smartest way to go. You want to leave the module intact. Living systems don't do that.
Comment by Smokey — August 11, 2006 @ 5:49 pm
August 11th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Neodarwinism, "the modern synthesis," however you want to parse it, is inextricable from the mature theory of evolution. As for its being "known to be non-explanatory and insufficient" I would ask according to whom and on what grounds. I have not come across that particular article in science, nature, etc. Also, what are these revealed biological details for which ND is known to be inadequate? I don't mean to spew propaganda; in my mind, evolution and ND are inseparable, as ND is the best framework we have come up with to understand evolution. Without the "the synthesis," evolution would almost necessarily be teleological and, in my view, requires an outside explanation for that teleology. (The possible exception to this is the many-worlds scenario, which ID appears to dismiss out of hand).
Comment by great_ape — August 11, 2006 @ 9:12 pm
August 12th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Smokey wrote:
Yes, my Beethoven analogy applies very well to this. As to the functionally silent, you should read the article on pseudogenes in the latest Scientific American.
Comment by Bilbo — August 12, 2006 @ 2:41 pm
August 12th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Bilbo, your Beethoven analogy doesn't work, because a symphony aims for esthetics, while biology is about function.
As for functionally silent, I wasn't referring to pseudogenes at all. I was referring to nucleotide substitutions that don't change the encoded amino acid, as well as amino acid substitutions (like IL) that have little-to-no functional effect. Can YOU explain why a designer would build those functionally silent changes into the genome? MET predicts them perfectly, and a failure to find them would falsify MET.
I read the primary literature in biology. I only read SA articles on subjects outside of biology.
Comment by Smokey — August 12, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
August 12th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
great_ape:
But in my mind, ND is simplistic pablum that makes gratuitous metaphysical assertions and attempts to explain life by appeal to what goes wrong with life, not what goes right. Bad approach, IMO. "Random error" is non-predictive, while redundant error correction, strong conservation, hierarchial operating codes, modular code/translation modifiers, and built-in functional adaptability (state-switching from sub-atomic to protein levels) suggest that a different approach could be predictive. Predictive models are of more practical use than non-predictive models.
All the "synthesis" does is blend the Mendelian notion of reliable particulate inheritance with Darwin's natural selection. Because the synthesizers thought as you do that reliable particulate inheritance would "almost necessarily be teleological," they dropped the reliable part and substituted "random." Charles Darwin was not the first human to intuit that classes of animals look to be related to each other, or that there is variation in these classes (even in the same populations), or that sometimes things go wrong, or that individual life forms have varying degrees of luck in the reproduction game. He's not even the first human to suspect that life evolves over time from form to form.
Teleology is perfectly natural, or we would not see life displaying telic tendencies. So I'm not convinced that science can't handle the idea that life displays telic tendencies, or that such tendencies may factor into the evolutionary directions evidenced in the rocks. While we both must recognize that it DOES take an "outside explanation" to account for the birth of any new individual life form (life does not spontaneously generate), there's no need to call on an outside explanation to account for reproduction. Reproduction of life is also perfectly natural - it's how life meets a telic goal: the perpetuation of life.
I don't see how a Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics could get around the problem of teleology. Maybe because I don't see teleology as a problem, and maybe because MW doesn't qualify as science and can't explain our world (or anything in our world). It has no application in science either, since for science to proceed the scientist must make the working assumption that what s/he is working with is real. FAPP.
We don't know anything about what particles of matter/energy are doing when we're not looking at them, but when we do look at them they've got specified properties we can measure. If it makes you feel better about our essential uncertainty to believe that entire universes of counterfactuals are generated whenever you take a measurement, I've got no problem with it. Believe whatever floats your boat. If another scientist feels better by believing God knows it all even though we're uncertain, I've got no problem with that either. So long as counterfactual universes and gods don't turn up in the conclusions of the research paper, what's the big deal?
Comment by Joy — August 12, 2006 @ 7:05 pm
August 13th, 2006 at 12:10 am
This all sounds rather impressive, but once again, there's simply no evidence for nonrandom "predictive" and/or purposeful mutational changes. So while the modern synthesis may appear mind-numbingly simplistic to you, to go above and beyond it requires empirical support that you simply don't have, nor does anyone else. In the meantime, we know that despite redundant error correction, etc, a great deal does go "wrong" with life, particularly at the genetic level (e.g. cancer). Sometimes it's not so much wrong as different. And it is the nature of things that, in replicating systems, eventually these differences accumulate and manifest themselves. We may argue about the magnitude of this effect and how much it could account for, but at least we must admit that these genetic changes do occur and appear to do so in a haphazard fashion as far as we can tell. On the other hand, your notion of puposeful evolution is, at this point, unsubstantiated. There are a vast array of complex systems in biology, none of which thus far appear to be directing evolution in the purposeful way you suggest.
I agree that teleology is natural. Yet you fail to accept that organisms can develop teleological behavior from a non-teleological evolutionary process. This aspect of your position I simply don't understand. Instead, you seem to want to jump from the fact that organisms display teleological behavior to the unsubstantiated and, IMO, completely unnecessary claim that evolution itself is teleological.
Also, as to how many-worlds might yield the illusion of teleology at the evolutionary level. Imagine it comes to pass that we're completely certain and agreed about three things 1) mutations occur randomly and there are no higher-order biological processes directing them 2) life as we know it, under random mutation, simply could not have occurred in the timescale it did occur 3) life did, nevertheless, evolve via common descent with modification by mutation.
At this point we can entertain two reasonable possibilities. One, an outside force intervened and directed evolution towards its own purpose (provided an outside source of evolution's telos or two) a multitude of possible universes existed, ours being only one of many but one that happened to be conducive to us existing as we do know, asking the questions we do now. I agree with you that multi-verse isn't ideal as a scientific explanation. I only offer it as one way do deal with the above quandary, and it is a quandary which my intuition tells me we may ultimately have to face. But for now, the verdict is still out on the "it can't have happened via random mutation" claim, as there's simply too much we don't know to make any such claim about life's impossibility.
Comment by great_ape — August 13, 2006 @ 12:10 am
August 14th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
Smokey wrote:
Smokey, your original contention is that a designer who used just a few proteins over and over again would be pathological. You never explained why this is pathological. I gave a counter-example, where a designer uses a simple musical theme over and over again, yet we don't conclude that he was pathological. We conclude that he was a musical genius. I suggest that a designer of biological systems, who can use a few proteins over and over again may likewise be a genius, not pathological. Now is your expertise in psychology or biology? If you're going to insist that the designer(s) in biology must have been pathological, you're going to have to back that up with more than a bald-faced assertion.
Smokey also wrote:
But this topic isn't about whether or not MET is true. It's about what we can conclude about the designer. Your conclusion — that the designer is pathological and not omnipotent — hasn't been demonstrated.
Comment by Bilbo — August 14, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
August 14th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Bilbo wrote:
"Smokey, your original contention is that a designer who used just a few proteins over and over again would be pathological."
Yes, especially coupled with the observation that those reused proteins are not identical. I note that you ignored that. How come?
"You never explained why this is pathological."
I explained that it was pathologically THRIFTY. Why are you misrepresenting my position?
Are you really going to claim that a human who attempted to design an airplane that contained a host of functionally-unrelated parts converted from beer cans wouldn't be viewed as pathologically thrifty?
"I gave a counter-example,…"
No, you gave an analogy, not an example. That's a pretty important distinction.
"… where a designer uses a simple musical theme over and over again, yet we don't conclude that he was pathological."
Indeed, because we find repetition in music to be esthetically pleasing. If you thought at all about improvisation (composition on the fly), you'd realize that the artistry is in striking the right balance between suspension and resolution.
In a far better analogy, an artist could modify beer cans in many different ways to build airplanes as art, and we might find those esthetically pleasing. But we would never ask that same artist to design a functional airplane made from modified beer cans, because function trumps esthetics.
"We conclude that he was a musical genius. I suggest that a designer of biological systems, who can use a few proteins over and over again…"
You left out the important part about the changes in those proteins. I wonder why?
"… may likewise be a genius, not pathological. Now is your expertise in psychology or biology?"
Biology.
I wrote:
"As for functionally silent, I wasn't referring to pseudogenes at all. I was referring to nucleotide substitutions that don't change the encoded amino acid, as well as amino acid substitutions (like IL) that have little-to-no functional effect. Can YOU explain why a designer would build those functionally silent changes into the genome? MET predicts them perfectly, and a failure to find them would falsify MET.
Bilbo wrote:
"But this topic isn't about whether or not MET is true. It's about what we can conclude about the designer."
Yes it is; that's why I asked you, "Can YOU explain why a designer would build those functionally silent changes into the genome?"
What is your answer? Your claim that a paragraph containing such a question is off-topic seems pathological.
I am pointing out that the ubiquitous presence of these silent changes must tell us something about the designer; therefore, it is completely on topic.
Or can you explain why the existence of these functionally-silent differences necessarily tells us absolutely nothing about the identity/tendencies/methods of the alleged Designer, and is unworthy of study?
That's what Mike is claiming, and you haven't offered any evidence to support him/her.
Comment by Smokey — August 14, 2006 @ 5:28 pm
August 14th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
Smokey wrote:
Depends: Are the beer cans an inferior material for making airplanes? Is that all the designer had to work with?
Likewise, are proteins an inferior material for making living organisms?
Smokey also wrote:
For the sake of brevity. I made the point in my original post on Beethoven. He takes one musical theme, then changes it slightly througout the symphony. Likewise, a designer of living organisms could be doing the same thing.
Smokey also wrote:
No, it isn't about whether or not MET is true. It's about what we can conclude about the designer, if ID is true. You're assuming that MET rules out ID, which it doesn't.
Comment by Bilbo — August 14, 2006 @ 5:48 pm
August 14th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Bilbo, I was agreeing with your second sentence.
So, can YOU explain why a designer would build those functionally silent changes into the genome?
"Likewise, are proteins an inferior material for making living organisms?"
Inferior to what? Your question has no traction, because we are talking about using the same protein structures again and again.
This thriftiness also occurs at the cellular level. Can you explain why an intelligent designer would adapt sensory cells (hair cells) to work as an amplifier in the cochlea? Why not build an amplifier, particularly since hair cells are incredibly fragile?
Comment by Smokey — August 14, 2006 @ 6:04 pm
August 15th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Smokey:
No, but since ID doesn't claim that the designer must design every detail of every living organism, this isn't a problem for me. However, this doesn't support your original contention that the designer must be pathologically thrifty and not omnipotent.
Smokey:
I was referring to your example of a man building an airplane out of beer cans. If beer cans are an inferior material for building airplanes, and if the purpose was to build a good airplane, and if the man had a choice of better materials, then, yes, we could conclude that there was something wrong with the man's thinking.
Now back to proteins: They are used over and over again, though they change over time. I think we agree on this. Now if proteins are an inferior material, and a better material could have been used, we could conclude that the designer was pathologically thrifty. Or if entirely different proteins would have worked better, than we might conclude that. However, if the proteins that have actually been used are optimal, then we can't conclude pathology. Which leads us to your last point:
Yes, here you might be making a good point. If a better material exists than hair cells, why not use it? And if that is a case, then I think we can conclude that either hair cells in cochlea were not intelligently designed, or the designer was pathologically thrifty.
Comment by Bilbo — August 15, 2006 @ 8:43 pm
August 16th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Bilbo wrote:
"No, but since ID doesn't claim that the designer must design every detail of every living organism, this isn't a problem for me."
Bilbo, ID doesn't claim anything. People make claims. If your designer didn't design every detail, which ones did she design? How can you tell? If you can detect design, shouldn't it be relatively easy for you to discriminate?
"However, this doesn't support your original contention that the designer must be pathologically thrifty and not omnipotent."
It was a hypothesis, and I didn't claim that being pathologically thrifty excluded omnipotence. I pointed out that it doesn't exactly suggest omnipotence.
"I was referring to your example of a man building an airplane out of beer cans."
That was an analogy, not an example.
"If beer cans are an inferior material for building airplanes, and if the purpose was to build a good airplane, and if the man had a choice of better materials, then, yes, we could conclude that there was something wrong with the man's thinking."
Beer cans aren't a material. They are a particular form of the material aluminum, just as the reused structural modules found in proteins are a particular form of amino-acid polymers.
"Now if proteins are an inferior material, and a better material could have been used, we could conclude that the designer was pathologically thrifty. Or if entirely different proteins would have worked better, than we might conclude that."
Exactly. There are huge numbers of such cases in pharmacology, because large numbers of plasma-membrane receptors act through an ridiculously small number of second-messenger pathways in the cytoplasm and nucleus. Cross-talk is rampant.
This cross-talk is very consistent with MET, but very inconsistent with intelligent design. Or, if you want to limit ID to some point in the past, wouldn't following the evolution of second-messenger pathways be a good way to infer the time(s) of design?
"Yes, here you might be making a good point."
Thanks!
"If a better material exists than hair cells, why not use it?"
Not so much material as mechanism. Machines, even!
"And if that is a case, then I think we can conclude that either hair cells in cochlea were not intelligently designed, or the designer was pathologically thrifty."
Why couldn't the designer have designed hair cells, but evolution added three more rows of them as amplifiers? They are amazingly complex mechanisms, but that mean that design happened at around the time of the emergence of vertebrates.
Comment by Smokey — August 16, 2006 @ 5:41 pm
August 16th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Bilbo, ID doesn't claim anything. People make claims. If your designer didn't design every detail, which ones did she design? How can you tell? If you can detect design, shouldn't it be relatively easy for you to discriminate?
This is a silly argument given the nature of cells. If the first cell was the product of design, including, of course, its genome, and evolution is a given, then every living organism is the result of common descent by design.
Comment by Bradford — August 16, 2006 @ 5:52 pm