Behe's encounter with Denton's book
david ford
Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
On 157:
Behe's motivations were therefore complex. They were deeply
rooted at the level of a strong moral indignation-- a simmering,
settled outrage-- about the pervasive deception and
misinformation he saw in all of the textbooks' discussions of
macroevolution. Behe had come to view as highly deceptive those
books and media programming that seek to win over the public, and
especially high school and college students, to belief in
Darwinian evolution as fact. This sense of profound contempt is
critical to the subtle underlying passion-- the key to the
rhetorical pathos-- of Behe's writing and speaking, which will be
discussed below.
As stated earlier, these feelings can be traced back to the
dramatic change in his biological viewpoint as a professor at
Lehigh in 1987. Previous to his biological conversion, Behe had
an attitude of relaxed acceptance of Darwinian explanations of
the origin of biological complexity. His Darwinian point of view
was absorbed in high school biology and further reinforced
through undergraduate studies and graduate studies of
biochemistry. In his mind there was no conflict with his
religious views as a Catholic. God simply had created slowly and
gradually using the Darwinian mechanisms that he had authored.
One day in 1987 [Michael] Denton's book [_Evolution: A Theory in
Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
advertisement. He ordered a copy and upon its arrival read the
book in one sitting, starting earlier in the day and staying up
well past midnight. He describes it as the greatest intellectual
shock of his life. It was an intensely intellectual experience,
and yet it immediately generated anger that he had been so
greatly misled for so long. A theory that he assumed had rested
securely upon compelling biological evidence was intellectually
shattered in one day. He immediately began to rethink his own
area, especially the origin of biochemical systems such as blood
clotting, the cilium, and intracellular transport systems.
quibbler
100...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>, dfo...@gl.umbc.edu says...
> One day in 1987 [Michael] Denton's book [_Evolution: A Theory in
> Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
> advertisement. He ordered a copy and upon its arrival read the
> book in one sitting, starting earlier in the day and staying up
> well past midnight. He describes it as the greatest intellectual
> shock of his life.
Acutally it was the opposite. The moron had no real training in
critical thinking. He was nothing but a chemistry flunkie. He had no
education in evolution and no grounding in philosophy. He allowed
himself to be manipulated by unscholarly pap, proving that he himself
was a worthless simpleton who did not deserve any of his academic
credentials. On that day behe decided that writing pop garbage was
easier than honestly working for a living. Since Behe's career as an
actual academic was a pathetic failure, he probably figured that he had
little to lose and much to gain. In fact he was right. He was more
successful as a purveyor of the junk theology known as IDT or idiotic
design theory. His own fallacious and virtually plagiarized
contribution, "Irreducable complexity", was truly something that only a
biological ignoramus would be capable of seriously proposing. Behe has
proven himself to be that. His work has been consistently refuted on
every level. Behe has barely mustered a response and certainly has not
actually dealt with the serious flaws in his own method. It is only by
refusing to think that behe even manages to fool himself.
--
_____________________________________________________
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins
Lilith
And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
See this link and others on that page:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
The Theory of evolution is based on real evidence. Behe's failure to
go back and re-examine the evidence he "took for granted", with a bit
more skill and a lot less religious bias, is his failure, not the
failure of the theory.
Behe, Dembski, or any Creationists who try to dress up Creationism
with science have been covered, usually in depth, in the talk.origin
archives and FAQs. I suggest you go there and read before trying to
use any of those refuted arguments for your own position.
pz
lil...@umich.edu (Lilith) wrote:
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
> news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
Also, the text above is a bit misleading. Behe's 'area' was not
"blood clotting, the cilium, and intracellular transport systems".
He published on histone sequences and nucleosomes.
It says something about Behe that he could experience an
intellectual shock from Denton's book. Something that isn't good.
--
pz
Brian E. Clark
> Since Behe's career as an actual academic was a pathetic failure,
What makes you say that?
--
-----------
Brian E. Clark
quibbler
re...@newsgroup.only.please says...
> quibbler <quibb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Since Behe's career as an actual academic was a pathetic failure,
>
> What makes you say that?
What scholarly work has he done since he started raving about
"irreducible complexity". None. What scholarly work had he done
before? Very little. Certainly nothing notable. In almost 30 years
as a professor he only claims about 40 technical papers. Real
professors might be working on dozens of papers and grant projects per
year, especially is a hard science area like biochemistry. Frankly
it's staggering that the guy hasn't done more research. He must be
largely devoid of intellectual curiosity. Perhaps that's because he
thinks his god has all the answers and sees no point in trying to
figure out anything for himself.
Lenny Flank
That would be the book that Denton himself later repudiated in his next book, right?
If Behe reads THAT book, will he "see the light" yet again?
===============================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Creation "Science" Debunked:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank
DebunkCreation Email list:
http://www.groups.yahoo/group/DebunkCreation
Lenny Flank
> Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
> On 157:
>
> Behe's motivations were therefore complex. They were deeply
> rooted at the level of a strong moral indignation-- a simmering,
> settled outrage-- about the pervasive deception and
> misinformation he saw in all of the textbooks' discussions of
> macroevolution. Behe had come to view as highly deceptive those
> books and media programming that seek to win over the public, and
> especially high school and college students, to belief in
> Darwinian evolution as fact.
Uh, this is the same Behe (a Roman Catholic, by the way) who thinks
that the earth is billions of years old, that humans are evolved from
apelike primates, and that young-earth creationists are kooks and nut
cases, right . . . . . ?
Dale
news:Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu...
I put the following review of Woodward's book into Amazon.com.
It's hard to imagine how anyone could view this book as an objective history
of the Intelligent Design movement. Thomas Woodward has taken men who have
had no effect on the practice of science and uncritically lionized them as
martyrs to a revolution that isn't happening.
Aside from that, the writing style is overbearingly florid and
grandiloquent. It's clear Woodward is enamoured of the men of whom he is
writing, and has written this book with the intent of being the first to
write a history of a movement he is convinced will have great influence in
the future. Unfortunately for Woodward and his friends, one hundred years
from now the ID movement will be little more than a footnote in history,
along with phrenology, cold fusion, crystal power, and other ideas which
have no basis in evidence or logic.
Ron Okimoto
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > Woodward, Thomas. 2003. _Doubts about Darwin: A History of
> > Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
> > On 157:
> >
> > One day in 1987 [Michael] Denton's book [_Evolution: A Theory in
> > Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
> > advertisement.
>
>
>
>
> That would be the book that Denton himself later repudiated in his next book, right?
>
>
> If Behe reads THAT book, will he "see the light" yet again?
>
Behe has read the book and doesn't like it. Someone posted a review
discussion of the book sometime ago here. Dembski, Behe and Wells
commented on the book. The comments were generally negative. Denton
is no longer a fellow of the Discovery Institute. I've never seen an
explanation for this departure. The DI doesn't seem to maintain its
fellows list very well REMINE was supposed to be a fellow, but he
never showed up on any of the fellows lists even the ones that dropped
Denton, as far as I know.
Ron Okimoto
Von Smith
> Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
> On 157:
>
>
> One day in 1987 [Michael] Denton's book [_Evolution: A Theory in
> Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
> advertisement. He ordered a copy and upon its arrival read the
> book in one sitting, starting earlier in the day and staying up
> well past midnight. He describes it as the greatest intellectual
> shock of his life. It was an intensely intellectual experience,
> and yet it immediately generated anger that he had been so
> greatly misled for so long. A theory that he assumed had rested
> securely upon compelling biological evidence was intellectually
> shattered in one day. He immediately began to rethink his own
> area, especially the origin of biochemical systems such as blood
> clotting, the cilium, and intracellular transport systems.
Anyone who would base a serious assessment of the evidentiary basis
for evolution on a single reading of an acknowledgedly biased and
flawed popular book should be ashamed to call himself a scientist or
academic. I am amazed that Behe would even allow the story of his
conversion to be told in such stupid and melodramatic fashion.
Von Smith
Fortuna nimis dat multis, satis nulli.
Lenny Flank
> lfl...@ij.net (Lenny Flank) wrote in message news:<238b53a4.03100...@posting.google.com>...
> > david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > > Woodward, Thomas. 2003. _Doubts about Darwin: A History of
> > > Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
> > > On 157:
> > >
> SNIP:
> > > One day in 1987 [Michael] Denton's book [_Evolution: A Theory in
> > > Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
> > > advertisement.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > That would be the book that Denton himself later repudiated in his next book, right?
> >
> >
> > If Behe reads THAT book, will he "see the light" yet again?
> >
>
> Behe has read the book and doesn't like it. Someone posted a review
> discussion of the book sometime ago here. Dembski, Behe and Wells
> commented on the book. The comments were generally negative. Denton
> is no longer a fellow of the Discovery Institute. I've never seen an
> explanation for this departure.
So now he is "unperson".
The DI doesn't seem to maintain its
> fellows list very well REMINE was supposed to be a fellow, but he
> never showed up on any of the fellows lists even the ones that dropped
> Denton, as far as I know.
>
So much for the "big tent" idea, huh.
Sean Pitman
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
<snip>
> And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
> point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
> named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
Actually, they are. In fact, all functional systems are irreducibly
complex. Some are more complex than others, but they are all
irreducible - dependent upon a certain number and orientation of parts
for their particular function to take place. Very simple functions,
such as antibiotic resistance, are easy to evolve since very few
mutations are needed to achieve such functions. However, more complex
functions, such as bacterial motility, have never been shown to
evolve, even in theory. The reason for this is the same reason why it
is much easier to change one three-letter word into another meaningful
or "functional" three-letter word with random letter changes. But, it
is much much much harder to change a 6 or 7 letter word into another
meaningful word at such a "level of complexity". The problem only
gets exponentially worse as one moves up the ladder of complexity to
short phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. The same thing happens with
the information coded in DNA. Functions that require relatively short
codes in DNA are fairly easy to evolve with simple random walk through
the meaningless sequences that nature cannot recognize or select
between. However, those functions that require longer stretches of
DNA to code for them, such as bacterial motility functions or any
other multi-protein function where all the proteins are needed to work
together at the same time in a specific orientation with each other,
seem to be at a level of functional complexity that is beyond the
power of any mindless evolutionary process to achieve. No such
examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner. The
potential space of junk sequences simply overwhelms the tiny fraction
of potentially beneficial sequences at such a level of multi-protein
functional complexity. The blind random walk of random mutation
simply cannot sort through this pile of junk sequences in what anyone
would consider to be a reasonable amount of time (even given trillions
upon trillions upon trillions of years).
> See this link and others on that page:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
These links are misdirected in that they say nothing about the above
stated problem, which is Behe's main point anyway...
> The Theory of evolution is based on real evidence. Behe's failure to
> go back and re-examine the evidence he "took for granted", with a bit
> more skill and a lot less religious bias, is his failure, not the
> failure of the theory.
Actually, the theory of evolution is based largely on wishful thinking
and fanciful speculation, not on any sort of real understanding or
demonstration. Behe is not crazy or irrational in his inability to
understand how the theory of evolution is supposed to work. The
proposed mechanism for evolution, as it currently stands, is powerless
to explain the extremely high levels of complexity that we find in all
living things.
> Behe, Dembski, or any Creationists who try to dress up Creationism
> with science have been covered, usually in depth, in the talk.origin
> archives and FAQs. I suggest you go there and read before trying to
> use any of those refuted arguments for your own position.
Oh, I have read a lot from talk.origins archives and FAQs and I have
found nothing there or here (to include discussions with you
personally) that provides any sort of reasonable explanation to the
mechanistic problems for evolution. The main problem here is the
issue of neutral gaps that do seem to exist and grow exponentially
between functions of higher and higher levels of complexity.
Sean Pitman
littleblondgirl
I'll bet you've never read Denton's book. As a matter of fact,
I'll bet you never read Behe's either. I too had the same experience
after reading Denton's book for the first time. My copy is now almost
unreadable due to notes and thoughts in the margins and between the
lines of text. But there is one difference between me and Michael
Behe: I'm a religious agnostic. As often happens, there is a failure
to differentiate between people who trash darwinism and support the
notion of intelligent design because the theory sucks, and people who
trash darwinism and support the notion of intelligent design as a
stealth tactic to promote their own religious agendas.
Behe erred in promoting the notion of irreducible complexity
because he should have seen that complexity has little to do with
evolution. The structures that Behe describes as unevolvable because
they are irreducibly complex are in fact unevolvable for quite a
different reason. That reason is that the organization of systems made
up of elements with varied functions that contribute to the whole and
to collective functions do not and cannot arise by themselves by
random, undirected or accidental processes, but can come into
existence only through the benefit of insight, which requires
intelligence. So, attacking "irreducible complexity" as proposed by
Behe, or "specified complexity" as used by Dembski is just a red
herring, diverting attention from the real dilemma, which is to
explain increasing levels of organization throughout the biological
world.
The theory of evolution that you promote has no empirical
evidencial support. No link has ever been established between the
trivial processes of mutation and selection and the appearance of new,
highly organized structures, processes and adaptations. The modern ToE
fails to demonstrate that darwinism has the power to do what science
says it can do. It's basically a children's story, somewhat on the
same level as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin,
and frankly, as a scientist, I would be embarrassed to admit that I
still believed in it.
LBG
John Harshman
littleblondgirl wrote:
> lil...@umich.edu (Lilith) wrote in message news:<75200cbc.03100...@posting.google.com>...
>
>>david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
[snip]
Why is this not surprising to me?
> My copy is now almost
> unreadable due to notes and thoughts in the margins and between the
> lines of text. But there is one difference between me and Michael
> Behe: I'm a religious agnostic. As often happens, there is a failure
> to differentiate between people who trash darwinism and support the
> notion of intelligent design because the theory sucks, and people who
> trash darwinism and support the notion of intelligent design as a
> stealth tactic to promote their own religious agendas.
There are no people of the first sort, so there's no need to
differentiate. You are a person of the second sort. Not all religions
are theistic. It's obvious that your position is religious because it's
based on revelation, not reason. (It also seems to be gnostic, because
it's based on your personal revelation, not on anything revealed to
everyone.) You have often admitted that you "know" things for which you
also admit you have no evidence.
[snip repetition, as if saying it over and over makes an assertion true]
> The modern ToE
> fails to demonstrate that darwinism has the power to do what science
> says it can do. It's basically a children's story, somewhat on the
> same level as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin,
> and frankly, as a scientist, I would be embarrassed to admit that I
> still believed in it.
Are you claiming here to be a scientist, or is that a contrafactual
hypothetical? If you are claiming to be a scientist, in what sense are
you one?
Ann
thanks for the illuminating link to the evolutionary "Emperor has no
clothes" (www.naturalselection.0catch.com), great work! To be honest, I
was surprised by the tolerant tone adopted in the 'mindful'
introduction to the site. Basically, tolerance has become a rare
commodity in the Holy Evolution camp, which is kind of strange and runs
contrary to what one should expect from 'objective' scientists.
Read a couple of hyperlinks, especially liked the one about
"radiometric dating" methods. I had my suspicions but it was nice to
see the in-built assumptions spelled out explicitly, i.e. geological
and paleontological dating consists of theories based also on theories.
However, they are not openly put to question (or even discussed) in the
public domain (mass media, exteprts' interviews, colourful movies,
fossil museums) and as a result we may forget about them. Often we tend
to think of the rounded off millions and billions (shot at us from the
news-media, the textbooks, and actually, from everywhere) as facts, as
if someone counted the years precisely. Whereas, they were simply
inferred, i.e. there is no 100% certainty in those numbers.
And who knows, they might as well be a product of someone's wild
imagination or passionate love (converging to infinity:) for the
awesome Number (of the Beast:). I mean, the only sure thing about those
numbers seem to be that they grow bigger and bigger (and more difficult
for the gullible public to count them:) with each 'update' of the
textbook, a kind of greedy tendency :). As if they are constantly on
the run hiding behind a bigger number, "Catch them if you can" :)
Best,
Ann
Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr.
>
>
>littleblondgirl wrote:
[SNIP]
>
>> The modern ToE
>> fails to demonstrate that darwinism has the power to do what science
>> says it can do. It's basically a children's story, somewhat on the
>> same level as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin,
>> and frankly, as a scientist, I would be embarrassed to admit that I
>> still believed in it.
>
>
>Are you claiming here to be a scientist, or is that a contrafactual
>hypothetical? If you are claiming to be a scientist, in what sense are
>you one?
>
It wouldn't surprise me a bit to think that Charlie probably considers
himself a scientist. You'd probably go 'round and 'round with him
only to eventually find out that he has some private definition of
"scientist." This same sort of thing happend in another thread some
months (maybe years) ago when he claimed there were no precambrian
metazoans. We then found out that Charlie has a private definition of
"Cambrian" that pretty much makes his statement a tautology.
--
Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr.
SIUE Dept. of Biological Sciences
who...@siue.edu
PGP Key ID 138BCEE1
Brent Howatt
> lil...@umich.edu (Lilith) wrote in message news:<75200cbc.03100...@posting.google.com>...
>> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
>
> <snip>
>> And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
>> point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
>> named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
>
> Actually, they are. In fact, all functional systems are irreducibly
> complex. Some are more complex than others, but they are all
> irreducible - dependent upon a certain number and orientation of parts
> for their particular function to take place.
It is trivial to demonstrate that this statement is false.
> Very simple functions,
> such as antibiotic resistance, are easy to evolve since very few
> mutations are needed to achieve such functions. However, more complex
> functions, such as bacterial motility, have never been shown to
> evolve, even in theory. The reason for this is the same reason why it
> is much easier to change one three-letter word into another meaningful
> or "functional" three-letter word with random letter changes. But, it
> is much much much harder to change a 6 or 7 letter word into another
> meaningful word at such a "level of complexity". The problem only
> gets exponentially worse as one moves up the ladder of complexity to
> short phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. The same thing happens with
> the information coded in DNA. Functions that require relatively short
> codes in DNA are fairly easy to evolve with simple random walk through
> the meaningless sequences that nature cannot recognize or select
> between.
So, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Why do you assume
that such sequences are meaningless? You seem to be deifying "Nature" and
its ability to "recognize" whatever that means.
> However, those functions that require longer stretches of
> DNA to code for them, such as bacterial motility functions or any
> other multi-protein function where all the proteins are needed to work
> together at the same time in a specific orientation with each other,
> seem to be at a level of functional complexity that is beyond the
> power of any mindless evolutionary process to achieve.
"Seem" to be? It appears that you are simply making the argument from
personal incredulity here.
> No such
> examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
> documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner.
Actually, such examples abound. Where do you do your reading?
> The
> potential space of junk sequences simply overwhelms the tiny fraction
> of potentially beneficial sequences at such a level of multi-protein
> functional complexity. The blind random walk of random mutation
> simply cannot sort through this pile of junk sequences in what anyone
> would consider to be a reasonable amount of time (even given trillions
> upon trillions upon trillions of years).
Again, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Please tell us why
that is so, in your opinion. You state above that "nature cannot
recognize or select between" different sequences. What mechanism prevents
that?
>
>> See this link and others on that page:
>> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>
> These links are misdirected in that they say nothing about the above
> stated problem, which is Behe's main point anyway...
Actually, they do. There is a huge bibliography of papers that address
this point. You state that no examples have ever been given of functional
evolution. Presumably you mean at a sub-cellular level, since even Behe
recognizes evolution at the level of organisms. In that you are wrong.
Hundreds of examples and papers are given.
>
>> The Theory of evolution is based on real evidence. Behe's failure to
>> go back and re-examine the evidence he "took for granted", with a bit
>> more skill and a lot less religious bias, is his failure, not the
>> failure of the theory.
>
> Actually, the theory of evolution is based largely on wishful thinking
> and fanciful speculation, not on any sort of real understanding or
> demonstration. Behe is not crazy or irrational in his inability to
> understand how the theory of evolution is supposed to work. The
> proposed mechanism for evolution, as it currently stands, is powerless
> to explain the extremely high levels of complexity that we find in all
> living things.
Evolution is based on observation and evidence. The creation of new
species has actually been accomplished in the lab. you have utterly
failed to demonstrate *why* you say evolutionary biology lacks explanatory
powewr. All you have done is post unsupported assertions, arguments from
personal incredulity, and wishful thinking.
>> Behe, Dembski, or any Creationists who try to dress up Creationism
>> with science have been covered, usually in depth, in the talk.origin
>> archives and FAQs. I suggest you go there and read before trying to
>> use any of those refuted arguments for your own position.
>
> Oh, I have read a lot from talk.origins archives and FAQs and I have
> found nothing there or here (to include discussions with you
> personally) that provides any sort of reasonable explanation to the
> mechanistic problems for evolution. The main problem here is the
> issue of neutral gaps that do seem to exist and grow exponentially
> between functions of higher and higher levels of complexity.
What the heck are "neutral gaps?" The "God of the Gaps" argument is just
a variation on the argument from parsonal incredulity. God of the gaps
keeps getting squeezed into smaller spaces with every science journal's
publication.
--
H. Brent Howatt | The deluded are always filled with absolutes
hey...@die.spammers.rootshell.be| The rest of us have to live with ambiguity
PGP keys by email or keyserver | _Aristoi_ Walter Jon Williams
Wayne D. Hoxsie Jr.
Which according to other threads you've posted on this topic, seems
to be your main thesis. It goes something like this: there is
functionality easily evolvable within human history and functionality
evolvable only in gazillions of years. It seems that it is a
mathematical certainty that there is some threshold of "evolvability"
somewhere between "human history" and the "gazillions of years."
Asserting that some evolutionary process is beyond this threshold is
meaningless unless you have some sort of evidence that it is so. Where
do you draw this line and why?
[SNIP]
Dale
news:d6fcd136.03100...@posting.google.com...
> The modern ToE
> fails to demonstrate that darwinism has the power to do what science
> says it can do. It's basically a children's story, somewhat on the
> same level as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin,
> and frankly, as a scientist, I would be embarrassed to admit that I
> still believed in it.
Argumentum ad I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I.
Jon Fleming
>Hi Sean,
>
>thanks for the illuminating link to the evolutionary "Emperor has no
>clothes" (www.naturalselection.0catch.com), great work! To be honest, I
>was surprised by the tolerant tone adopted in the 'mindful'
>introduction to the site. Basically, tolerance has become a rare
>commodity in the Holy Evolution camp, which is kind of strange and runs
>contrary to what one should expect from 'objective' scientists.
>
>Read a couple of hyperlinks, especially liked the one about
>"radiometric dating" methods. I had my suspicions but it was nice to
>see the in-built assumptions spelled out explicitly, i.e. geological
>and paleontological dating consists of theories based also on theories.
>However, they are not openly put to question (or even discussed) in the
>public domain (mass media, exteprts' interviews, colourful movies,
>fossil museums) and as a result we may forget about them. Often we tend
>to think of the rounded off millions and billions (shot at us from the
>news-media, the textbooks, and actually, from everywhere) as facts, as
>if someone counted the years precisely. Whereas, they were simply
>inferred, i.e. there is no 100% certainty in those numbers.
Yup. They're only 99.999% certain.
Sean and his links are not trustworthy sources.
>And who knows, they might as well be a product of someone's wild
>imagination or passionate love (converging to infinity:) for the
>awesome Number (of the Beast:). I mean, the only sure thing about those
>numbers seem to be that they grow bigger and bigger (and more difficult
>for the gullible public to count them:) with each 'update' of the
>textbook, a kind of greedy tendency :). As if they are constantly on
>the run hiding behind a bigger number, "Catch them if you can" :)
Ah, a testable claim. Pease present a table of the changes in the
ages derived from radiometric dating, and demonstrate that they only
changed upward over time.
Of course, you have no idea how those numbers have changed over time.
<snip>
John Harshman
Right. As I recall, Charlie defined the beginning of the Cambrian as
coincident with the earliest metazoan fossil. If we found an older
metazoan, then the Cambrian just got older. Of course, this was
incompatible with his simultaneous belief that the Cambrian explosion
was only 5 million years long, but consistency has never been one of
Charlie's concerns.
Lenny Flank
>
,snip>
> I'll bet you've never read Denton's book. As a matter of fact,
> I'll bet you never read Behe's either.
Read them both. Corresponded an awful lot with Behe, too.
I too had the same experience
> after reading Denton's book for the first time. My copy is now almost
> unreadable due to notes and thoughts in the margins and between the
> lines of text.
That's nice. Did you read Denton's second book, which concludes that
his first book was full of shit?
But there is one difference between me and Michael
> Behe: I'm a religious agnostic. As often happens, there is a failure
> to differentiate between people who trash darwinism and support the
> notion of intelligent design because the theory sucks, and people who
> trash darwinism and support the notion of intelligent design as a
> stealth tactic to promote their own religious agendas.
Glad to hear it (although I firmly think you are lying straight
through your teeth to all of us).
What again did you say your scientific theory of intelligent design
was? What again did you say the Intelligent designer is? What again
did you say this Intelligent Designer does, specifically? What
mechanisms, again, did you say the Intelligent designer uses to do
whatever it is that you think it does? Where, again, did you say we
can see some part of this design process in action today?
<sound of crickets chirping>
Chris Krolczyk
Just out of curiosity, has anybody proved that lbg is a
'nym or morph of Charlie Wagner's?
If so, the charade has gone on for a bit too long.
-Chris Krolczyk
John Harshman
Chris Krolczyk wrote:
Charlie, I would be slightly interested in knowing your reasons for
assuming the name LBG. Would you care to explain? But I have no
complaints about you using the name; different strokes, and all that.
Sean Pitman
> In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
> >> And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
> >> point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
> >> named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
> >
> > Actually, they are. In fact, all functional systems are irreducibly
> > complex. Some are more complex than others, but they are all
> > irreducible - dependent upon a certain number and orientation of parts
> > for their particular function to take place.
>
> It is trivial to demonstrate that this statement is false.
Oh really . . . well go ahead and demonstrate then. Take a particular
function and then show the system that gives rise to that particular
function has no limits in its reduction or composition where the
function in question is completely lost. You see, all *functions* are
in fact irreducibly complex. All functions require a certain number
of parts working together in a fairly specific orientation with each
other. Also, note that without parts there are no functions.
> > Very simple functions,
> > such as antibiotic resistance, are easy to evolve since very few
> > mutations are needed to achieve such functions. However, more complex
> > functions, such as bacterial motility, have never been shown to
> > evolve, even in theory. The reason for this is the same reason why it
> > is much easier to change one three-letter word into another meaningful
> > or "functional" three-letter word with random letter changes. But, it
> > is much much much harder to change a 6 or 7 letter word into another
> > meaningful word at such a "level of complexity". The problem only
> > gets exponentially worse as one moves up the ladder of complexity to
> > short phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. The same thing happens with
> > the information coded in DNA. Functions that require relatively short
> > codes in DNA are fairly easy to evolve with simple random walk through
> > the meaningless sequences that nature cannot recognize or select
> > between.
>
> So, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Why do you assume
> that such sequences are meaningless? You seem to be deifying "Nature" and
> its ability to "recognize" whatever that means.
You, evidently, do not understand how natural selection works or why
the concept of irreducible complexity is such a problem for evolution.
Nature can only select between *functional* differences. This would
not be a problem if all differences were functional, but they are not.
For example, much of the DNA in humans does not code for anything and
has no other known function. If a mutation occurs in such a region of
non-functional DNA, no change in the function of the human will occur.
This means that nature is blind to this mutation since it does not
result in a change in the function of the creature. Such a mutation
is referred to as a "neutral" mutation. There is even a "neutral
theory of evolution". If you don't believe me, look it up. Nature
does in fact "recognize" or "detect" functional changes and selects
between differences in function. That is what "survival of the
fittest" is based on. However, neutral mutations are beyond the
detection of natural selection. This is a big problem since nature
cannot select or guide mutations that do not result in any functional
change to the information expressed by the DNA of a given creature.
It all works much like the English language system or any other
language system. For example, it is easy to evolve between 3-letter
word because the odds that a given mutation will result in new word
with a recognized difference in meaning or function is pretty good
(odds = 1:18). Odds are that within 18 random mutations a new
meaningful 3-letter word will be found. Therefore, 3-letter evolution
is not only statistically likely, it is statistically rapid. However,
what if you want to evolve between words at a higher level of
complexity - like 7 letter words? In the English language system
there are around 23,109 meaningful 7-letter words. This seems like a
lot until one realizes that there are 8,031,810,176 potential 7-letter
words out there in 7-letter sequence space. This ratio of meaningful
vs. potential 7-letter words gives us 1 meaningful 7-letter word for
every 347,561 meaningless 7-letter words. What this means is that on
average each meaningful 7-letter word is surrounded like an island by
well over 300,000 meaningless words. If I want to evolve a new
7-letter word starting with meaningful 7-letter word, I will have to
swim through this ocean of meaningless words. How will I do this in a
reasonable amount of time? Will a selection process based on
functional changes be able to help me? No. Such a selection process
will not be able to help me since a change from one meaningless
sequence to another meaningless sequence results in the same
meaningless function. There is no selectable difference between any
of the meaningless words in the ocean that surrounds the scattered
islands of meaningful 7-letter words. Therefore any change or
"evolution" between these meaningless words will be purely random. So,
all that I am left with to get across this ocean of meaningless words
is a blind "random walk". With a population of 1, this random walk
will take, on average, over 300,000 mutations to arrive at a new
meaningful word at the level of 7-letters.
This is a real problem. Perhaps expanding the population will help?
Yes, it will help. If, instead of only 1 individual in each
generation evolving, how about a steady state population of 347,561
individuals? With such a population undergoing random walk at the
same time, a new meaningful 7-letter word would be evolved in short
order since equilibrium across all the possibilities would be reached
by this population in only around 60,000 mutations per individual.
The problem here is that each doubling of the series of letters
expands the total number of sequence options by a factor of two. For
example, the potential space of 7-letter words is over 8 billion, but
the potential space of a 14-letter word or phrase is over
109,418,989,131,512,359,209 (over 100 million trillion). The problem
here is two-fold. First off the number of meaningful, not to mention
beneficial, 14-letter words/phrases did not expand in an equivalent
manner, just as going from 3-letter words to 7-letter words did not
result in the same ratio of meaningful vs. meaningless. What happens
is that with each doubling of character length, the potential ocean
surrounding each meaningful sequence expands exponentially. This
means that in order for evolution to evolve at the same rate as
before, the population must also expand exponentially. Very quickly
the exponential expansion of the meaningless ocean outpaces the
ability of any population on this earth to keep up - and the evolution
of new functions at this level of complexity simply stalls out.
<snip>
> > No such
> > examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
> > documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner.
>
> Actually, such examples abound. Where do you do your reading?
I do much of my reading from evolutionary journals and even
talk.origins. What examples can you show me?
> > The
> > potential space of junk sequences simply overwhelms the tiny fraction
> > of potentially beneficial sequences at such a level of multi-protein
> > functional complexity. The blind random walk of random mutation
> > simply cannot sort through this pile of junk sequences in what anyone
> > would consider to be a reasonable amount of time (even given trillions
> > upon trillions upon trillions of years).
>
> Again, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Please tell us why
> that is so, in your opinion. You state above that "nature cannot
> recognize or select between" different sequences. What mechanism prevents
> that?
Again, the mechanism that prevents nature from sorting through
meaningless sequences is the fact that nature cannot recognize or
select between sequence differences (i.e., "spelling" differences in
DNA and/or proteins) that have the same non-functional function.
Nature simply cannot tell the difference between two different "junk"
sequences. Have you ever heard of "junk DNA"?
> >> See this link and others on that page:
> >> http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
> >
> > These links are misdirected in that they say nothing about the above
> > stated problem, which is Behe's main point anyway...
>
> Actually, they do. There is a huge bibliography of papers that address
> this point. You state that no examples have ever been given of functional
> evolution. Presumably you mean at a sub-cellular level, since even Behe
> recognizes evolution at the level of organisms. In that you are wrong.
> Hundreds of examples and papers are given.
Actually, I never said that there are no examples of functional
evolution. There are lots of examples of functional evolution but
they are all at a very low level of functional complexity (i.e.,
antibiotic resistance, single protein enzymes, etc.) The vast
majority of these examples require only one point mutation to achieve
the new function. This is like the evolution between short 3-letter
words where the neutral ocean is relatively small. A few examples go
beyond the single point mutation and require 2, 3 or even as many as 6
or 7 neutral mutations as in the case of chloroquine resistance.
However, this is nothing compared to what would be needed to evolve a
multi-protein function. So, what I said is that there are no examples
of multi-protein functions evolving where each protein is required to
work at the same time in a specific orientation with the other
proteins to perform a given function - such as is required for
bacterial motility. For example, no historically non-motile bacterium
or bacterial colony, group or species has ever or will ever evolve the
motility function in observable time because, at this level of
functional complexity, the neutral ocean between what even a very
large bacterial colony has available and what is needed is simply too
large to cross - even given trillions upon trillions of years.
> >> The Theory of evolution is based on real evidence. Behe's failure to
> >> go back and re-examine the evidence he "took for granted", with a bit
> >> more skill and a lot less religious bias, is his failure, not the
> >> failure of the theory.
> >
> > Actually, the theory of evolution is based largely on wishful thinking
> > and fanciful speculation, not on any sort of real understanding or
> > demonstration. Behe is not crazy or irrational in his inability to
> > understand how the theory of evolution is supposed to work. The
> > proposed mechanism for evolution, as it currently stands, is powerless
> > to explain the extremely high levels of complexity that we find in all
> > living things.
>
> Evolution is based on observation and evidence. The creation of new
> species has actually been accomplished in the lab. you have utterly
> failed to demonstrate *why* you say evolutionary biology lacks explanatory
> powewr. All you have done is post unsupported assertions, arguments from
> personal incredulity, and wishful thinking.
The definition of "species" is rather subjective. The definition of
new functions is a bit easier to deal with. Please, provide examples
of new functions that have evolved in real time in the laboratory that
go beyond the level of single protein enzymes.
> >> Behe, Dembski, or any Creationists who try to dress up Creationism
> >> with science have been covered, usually in depth, in the talk.origin
> >> archives and FAQs. I suggest you go there and read before trying to
> >> use any of those refuted arguments for your own position.
> >
> > Oh, I have read a lot from talk.origins archives and FAQs and I have
> > found nothing there or here (to include discussions with you
> > personally) that provides any sort of reasonable explanation to the
> > mechanistic problems for evolution. The main problem here is the
> > issue of neutral gaps that do seem to exist and grow exponentially
> > between functions of higher and higher levels of complexity.
>
> What the heck are "neutral gaps?" The "God of the Gaps" argument is just
> a variation on the argument from parsonal incredulity. God of the gaps
> keeps getting squeezed into smaller spaces with every science journal's
> publication.
Not so. The neutral gaps argument is actually becoming more and more
powerful with each new scientific discovery.
Sean
Jon Fleming
seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote:
>Brent Howatt <hey...@phenix.rootshell.be> wrote in message news:<bm45i1$ihge4$1...@ID-140796.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>> In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>
>> >> And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
>> >> point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
>> >> named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
>> >
>> > Actually, they are. In fact, all functional systems are irreducibly
>> > complex. Some are more complex than others, but they are all
>> > irreducible - dependent upon a certain number and orientation of parts
>> > for their particular function to take place.
>>
>> It is trivial to demonstrate that this statement is false.
>
>Oh really . . . well go ahead and demonstrate then. Take a particular
>function and then show the system that gives rise to that particular
>function has no limits in its reduction or composition where the
>function in question is completely lost. You see, all *functions* are
>in fact irreducibly complex. All functions require a certain number
>of parts working together in a fairly specific orientation with each
>other. Also, note that without parts there are no functions.
This is called "moving the goalposts". No-one has claimed "no limits
in its reduction or composition where the function in question is
completely lost". You've come up with another re-definition of
irreducibly complex ... and it's even more ludicrous than your
previous re-definition.
"By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several
well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function,
wherein the removal of *ANY* *ONE* [emphasis added - JRF] of the parts
causes the system to effectively *CEASE* *FUNCTIONING* [emphasis added
- JRF]."
Michael Behe, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution", page 39.
Sarah Berel-Harrop
"Ron Okimoto" <roki...@mail.uark.edu> wrote in message
news:63afe69c.03100...@posting.google.com...
>The DI doesn't seem to maintain its
> fellows list very well REMINE was supposed to be a fellow, but he
> never showed up on any of the fellows lists even the ones that dropped
> Denton, as far as I know.
Well, gosh, they are a lot of things but they are not
stupid. Would *you* want to be associated with
Walter Remine (I mean, pretend for a moment you
are a creationist)?
>
> Ron Okimoto
>
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
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Brent Howatt
> Brent Howatt <hey...@phenix.rootshell.be> wrote in message news:<bm45i1$ihge4$1...@ID-140796.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>> In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>
>> >> And he failed to notice what other unbiased people had to patiently
>> >> point out to him in rebuttals to his own position: the systems he
>> >> named as "irreducibly complex" are not.
>> >
>> > Actually, they are. In fact, all functional systems are irreducibly
>> > complex. Some are more complex than others, but they are all
>> > irreducible - dependent upon a certain number and orientation of parts
>> > for their particular function to take place.
>>
>> It is trivial to demonstrate that this statement is false.
>
> Oh really . . . well go ahead and demonstrate then. Take a particular
> function and then show the system that gives rise to that particular
> function has no limits in its reduction or composition where the
> function in question is completely lost. You see, all *functions* are
> in fact irreducibly complex. All functions require a certain number
> of parts working together in a fairly specific orientation with each
> other. Also, note that without parts there are no functions.
Not even the most ardent IRC desciple claims that *all* systems are
irrducibly comples. Even Behe states that only some systems may be IRC.
I didn't say that systems had "no limits in its reduction." That is your
language trying to weasel out of your statement. There may be a limit to
reduction of a system, but that simply shows how an "irreducibly complex
system" can be arrived at by reduction of a "reducibly complex system".
This, of course, shows that it is not necessary to postulate a "designer"
or a "creator" to arrive at such a system.
As to an example, imagine a bucket brigade of firefighters standing six
inches apart passing buckets from a pond to a fire. There are 40 passing
the buckets toward the fire and 40 passing them back. This is a system
with a function. This system can be reduced by replacing every other
firefighter with a post supporting a hook where the buckets are hung
temporarily. The complexity of the system is reduced and the function
remains. Q.E.D.
[snip]
>> So, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Why do you assume
>> that such sequences are meaningless? You seem to be deifying "Nature" and
>> its ability to "recognize" whatever that means.
>
> You, evidently, do not understand how natural selection works or why
> the concept of irreducible complexity is such a problem for evolution.
I understand natural selection very well, thank you. I have not yet seen
a convincing demonstration that something is IRC.
> Nature can only select between *functional* differences. This would
> not be a problem if all differences were functional, but they are not.
No one said that they were. However, don't be too quick to claim that
something is non-functional, when what you really mean is that you don't
know what its function is.
> For example, much of the DNA in humans does not code for anything and
> has no other known function.
"No other known function" does not equal "no function".
> If a mutation occurs in such a region of
> non-functional DNA, no change in the function of the human will occur.
> This means that nature is blind to this mutation since it does not
> result in a change in the function of the creature. Such a mutation
> is referred to as a "neutral" mutation. There is even a "neutral
> theory of evolution". If you don't believe me, look it up.
Yes, but Kimura is not postulating anything that is seen today as
revolutionary. He makes good points about the role of randomness in
evolution, especially at the molecular level. That was a novel concept in
the late 70's and early 80's, but is mainstream now. Kimura's Neutral
Theory has several key differences from Behe's ideas. First, Kimura
proposed something testable. Second, he provided evidence in support of
his theory. Third, he started with accepted concepts and extended them
(e.g. genetic drift). Behe has done none of that.
> Nature
> does in fact "recognize" or "detect" functional changes and selects
> between differences in function. That is what "survival of the
> fittest" is based on. However, neutral mutations are beyond the
> detection of natural selection. This is a big problem since nature
> cannot select or guide mutations that do not result in any functional
> change to the information expressed by the DNA of a given creature.
Genetic drift has been recognized in population genetics since the 60's.
I fail to see why you regard it as such a "big problem" for evolutionary
biology. I was doing mathematical modeling problems in genetics that
incorporated such neutral mutations when I was in college in the late
60's. It was interesting, but it was certainly not a "big problem". It
was simply upper division, undergraduate genetics. Without personal
computers... that was the big problem. We had a programmable, mechanical
calculator the size of a refrigerator. It had quite a number of built-in
functions such as standard deviation and chi-square. For those of us who
considered our log-log slide rules the ne plus ultra of computing
technology, it was heavenly.
[snip oft repeated but still bad language analogy]
> This is a real problem.
No, it is not a problem. It is something that genetics has recognized and
accounted for for many years.
[snip]
> <snip>
>> > No such
>> > examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
>> > documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner.
>>
>> Actually, such examples abound. Where do you do your reading?
>
> I do much of my reading from evolutionary journals and even
> talk.origins. What examples can you show me?
Try these:
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
[snip rest]
howard hershey
Sean Pitman wrote:
> Brent Howatt <hey...@phenix.rootshell.be> wrote in message news:<bm45i1$ihge4$1...@ID-140796.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>
>>In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> You, evidently, do not understand how natural selection works or why
> the concept of irreducible complexity is such a problem for evolution.
> Nature can only select between *functional* differences. This would
> not be a problem if all differences were functional, but they are not.
> For example, much of the DNA in humans does not code for anything and
> has no other known function. If a mutation occurs in such a region of
> non-functional DNA, no change in the function of the human will occur.
> This means that nature is blind to this mutation since it does not
> result in a change in the function of the creature. Such a mutation
> is referred to as a "neutral" mutation. There is even a "neutral
> theory of evolution". If you don't believe me, look it up. Nature
> does in fact "recognize" or "detect" functional changes and selects
> between differences in function. That is what "survival of the
> fittest" is based on. However, neutral mutations are beyond the
> detection of natural selection. This is a big problem since nature
> cannot select or guide mutations that do not result in any functional
> change to the information expressed by the DNA of a given creature.
You seem to have a strange definition of "neutral". You state that you
must go through seven independent steps which are not "selectively
neutral" steps but steps "without any function". Steps that have no
function are not typically "selectively neutral" steps. They are steps
that are selected against because you have gone from "useful function"
to "no useful function". These steps would only be neutral if every
change went from "without function" to "without function".
>
> It all works much like the English language system or any other
> language system. For example, it is easy to evolve between 3-letter
> word because the odds that a given mutation will result in new word
> with a recognized difference in meaning or function is pretty good
> (odds = 1:18). Odds are that within 18 random mutations a new
> meaningful 3-letter word will be found. Therefore, 3-letter evolution
> is not only statistically likely, it is statistically rapid. However,
> what if you want to evolve between words at a higher level of
> complexity - like 7 letter words? In the English language system
> there are around 23,109 meaningful 7-letter words. This seems like a
> lot until one realizes that there are 8,031,810,176 potential 7-letter
> words out there in 7-letter sequence space. This ratio of meaningful
> vs. potential 7-letter words gives us 1 meaningful 7-letter word for
> every 347,561 meaningless 7-letter words. What this means is that on
> average each meaningful 7-letter word is surrounded like an island by
> well over 300,000 meaningless words. If I want to evolve a new
> 7-letter word starting with meaningful 7-letter word, I will have to
> swim through this ocean of meaningless words.
And, of course, the above has no relationship to anything that
biologists propose. Evolution, as understood by biologists, does not
proceed by going from one functionally useful 7-letter word to another
7-letter word where *every single letter* has to be changed for the new
word to have any useful function. It goes from one 7-letter word to
another meaningful (useful) 7-letter word in which a *single* letter has
changed producing something with a function that is related to but
somewhat different from the original function. Moreover, as you point
out, the 7 functionally relevant letters are typically embedded in 100
oher *selectively neutral* letters, where letter changes are
functionally irrelevant. So at the end you will have one change that
was functionally relevant (in the 7-letter sequence where such changes
are not selectively neutral) and maybe 10 times that in the unimportant
functionally irrelevant sequences. Where is the "ocean of
[functionally] meaningless words" one must swim through in such a process?
> How will I do this in a
> reasonable amount of time? Will a selection process based on
> functional changes be able to help me? No. Such a selection process
> will not be able to help me since a change from one meaningless
> sequence to another meaningless sequence results in the same
> meaningless function.
As soon as you go from the original useful sequence to a sequence that
is meaningless (meaning inutile), you are proposing a process that is
not 'neutral'.
> There is no selectable difference between any
> of the meaningless words in the ocean that surrounds the scattered
> islands of meaningful 7-letter words. Therefore any change or
> "evolution" between these meaningless words will be purely random. So,
> all that I am left with to get across this ocean of meaningless words
> is a blind "random walk". With a population of 1, this random walk
> will take, on average, over 300,000 mutations to arrive at a new
> meaningful word at the level of 7-letters.
Specifically, you are requiring 7 stepwise changes to go first from a
functionally useful sequence to a sequence which has no utility and then
require seven *specific and necessary, not neutral and irrelevant*
additional steps, all equally unuseful, until you restore utility at the
last point. That is not the usual understanding of evolutionary
pathways, which require intermediate utility. What you present is a
strawman of your own invention.
>
> This is a real problem. Perhaps expanding the population will help?
> Yes, it will help. If, instead of only 1 individual in each
> generation evolving, how about a steady state population of 347,561
> individuals? With such a population undergoing random walk at the
> same time, a new meaningful 7-letter word would be evolved in short
> order since equilibrium across all the possibilities would be reached
> by this population in only around 60,000 mutations per individual.
> The problem here is that each doubling of the series of letters
> expands the total number of sequence options by a factor of two. For
> example, the potential space of 7-letter words is over 8 billion, but
> the potential space of a 14-letter word or phrase is over
> 109,418,989,131,512,359,209 (over 100 million trillion). The problem
> here is two-fold. First off the number of meaningful, not to mention
> beneficial, 14-letter words/phrases did not expand in an equivalent
> manner, just as going from 3-letter words to 7-letter words did not
> result in the same ratio of meaningful vs. meaningless. What happens
> is that with each doubling of character length, the potential ocean
> surrounding each meaningful sequence expands exponentially. This
> means that in order for evolution to evolve at the same rate as
> before, the population must also expand exponentially. Very quickly
> the exponential expansion of the meaningless ocean outpaces the
> ability of any population on this earth to keep up - and the evolution
> of new functions at this level of complexity simply stalls out.
But only if you assume that all intermediates are utterly without
utility. No one else assumes that.
>
> <snip>
>
>>>No such
>>>examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
>>>documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner.
>>
>>Actually, such examples abound. Where do you do your reading?
>
>
> I do much of my reading from evolutionary journals and even
> talk.origins. What examples can you show me?
>
>
>>>The
>>>potential space of junk sequences simply overwhelms the tiny fraction
>>>of potentially beneficial sequences at such a level of multi-protein
>>>functional complexity. The blind random walk of random mutation
>>>simply cannot sort through this pile of junk sequences in what anyone
>>>would consider to be a reasonable amount of time (even given trillions
>>>upon trillions upon trillions of years).
What idiot thinks that evolution works by random mutations working on
random sequences without any utility? I know only one person like that.
>>
>>Again, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Please tell us why
>>that is so, in your opinion. You state above that "nature cannot
>>recognize or select between" different sequences. What mechanism prevents
>>that?
>
>
> Again, the mechanism that prevents nature from sorting through
> meaningless sequences is the fact that nature cannot recognize or
> select between sequence differences (i.e., "spelling" differences in
> DNA and/or proteins) that have the same non-functional function.
> Nature simply cannot tell the difference between two different "junk"
> sequences. Have you ever heard of "junk DNA"?
>
Yes. But I don't know anyone who thinks that evolution works (at least
most of the time) by a series of selectively neutral changes on random
sequences.
>
>>>>See this link and others on that page:
>>>>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
>>>
>>>These links are misdirected in that they say nothing about the above
>>>stated problem, which is Behe's main point anyway...
>>
>>Actually, they do. There is a huge bibliography of papers that address
>>this point. You state that no examples have ever been given of functional
>>evolution. Presumably you mean at a sub-cellular level, since even Behe
>>recognizes evolution at the level of organisms. In that you are wrong.
>>Hundreds of examples and papers are given.
>
>
> Actually, I never said that there are no examples of functional
> evolution. There are lots of examples of functional evolution but
> they are all at a very low level of functional complexity (i.e.,
> antibiotic resistance, single protein enzymes, etc.) The vast
> majority of these examples require only one point mutation to achieve
> the new function. This is like the evolution between short 3-letter
> words where the neutral ocean is relatively small. A few examples go
> beyond the single point mutation and require 2, 3 or even as many as 6
> or 7 neutral mutations as in the case of chloroquine resistance.
And, interestingly enough, is able to do so within human lifetimes. But
not by starting with some random sequence and producing random changes
with no function. Rather it occurred by modification of a sequence
which had *some* utility each step of the way (but not chloroquine
resistance at a particular level until the end step).
> However, this is nothing compared to what would be needed to evolve a
> multi-protein function. So, what I said is that there are no examples
> of multi-protein functions evolving where each protein is required to
> work at the same time in a specific orientation with the other
> proteins to perform a given function - such as is required for
> bacterial motility. For example, no historically non-motile bacterium
> or bacterial colony, group or species has ever or will ever evolve the
> motility function in observable time because, at this level of
> functional complexity, the neutral ocean between what even a very
> large bacterial colony has available and what is needed is simply too
> large to cross - even given trillions upon trillions of years.
Which is why no proposes that evolution occurs by crossing large
*functionless* gaps. Rather the proposed explanations in evolution
explicitly involve functional utility at each intermediate state.
>
>
>>>>The Theory of evolution is based on real evidence. Behe's failure to
>>>>go back and re-examine the evidence he "took for granted", with a bit
>>>>more skill and a lot less religious bias, is his failure, not the
>>>>failure of the theory.
>>>
>>>Actually, the theory of evolution is based largely on wishful thinking
>>>and fanciful speculation, not on any sort of real understanding or
>>>demonstration. Behe is not crazy or irrational in his inability to
>>>understand how the theory of evolution is supposed to work. The
>>>proposed mechanism for evolution, as it currently stands, is powerless
>>>to explain the extremely high levels of complexity that we find in all
>>>living things.
>>
>>Evolution is based on observation and evidence. The creation of new
>>species has actually been accomplished in the lab. you have utterly
>>failed to demonstrate *why* you say evolutionary biology lacks explanatory
>>powewr. All you have done is post unsupported assertions, arguments from
>>personal incredulity, and wishful thinking.
>
>
> The definition of "species" is rather subjective. The definition of
> new functions is a bit easier to deal with. Please, provide examples
> of new functions that have evolved in real time in the laboratory that
> go beyond the level of single protein enzymes.
Actually, some definitions of "species" are quite objective. The
definition of "new" function, OTOH, is entirely unclear, since you seem
to be making the false assumption that something can only have a single
"function" and that there can be no 'intermediacy' in function.
>
>
>>>>Behe, Dembski, or any Creationists who try to dress up Creationism
>>>>with science have been covered, usually in depth, in the talk.origin
>>>>archives and FAQs. I suggest you go there and read before trying to
>>>>use any of those refuted arguments for your own position.
>>>
>>>Oh, I have read a lot from talk.origins archives and FAQs and I have
>>>found nothing there or here (to include discussions with you
>>>personally) that provides any sort of reasonable explanation to the
>>>mechanistic problems for evolution. The main problem here is the
>>>issue of neutral gaps that do seem to exist and grow exponentially
>>>between functions of higher and higher levels of complexity.
>>
>>What the heck are "neutral gaps?" The "God of the Gaps" argument is just
>>a variation on the argument from parsonal incredulity. God of the gaps
>>keeps getting squeezed into smaller spaces with every science journal's
>>publication.
>
>
> Not so. The neutral gaps argument is actually becoming more and more
> powerful with each new scientific discovery.
>
Well, only if someone were uninformed enough to think that evolution is
proposed to work by starting with random functionless sequence (or going
from a functional to a functionless sequence in the first step) and then
being completely without *any* function through 6-7 *specific* necessary
steps which would also be utterly functionless until the keystone change
produced the "new" function would one be able to make that case. Ain't
but one person here that meets that level of ignorance or the hope that
his strawman will be accepted as a true.
>
> Sean
>
> www.naturalselection.0catch.com
>
James Acker
: "Ron Okimoto" <roki...@mail.uark.edu> wrote in message
: news:63afe69c.03100...@posting.google.com...
:>The DI doesn't seem to maintain its
:> fellows list very well REMINE was supposed to be a fellow, but he
:> never showed up on any of the fellows lists even the ones that dropped
:> Denton, as far as I know.
: Well, gosh, they are a lot of things but they are not
: stupid. Would *you* want to be associated with
: Walter Remine (I mean, pretend for a moment you
: are a creationist)?
I emailed DISC and determined that he was indeed a Fellow.
Why they never updated their Web list, I don't know.
Jim Acker
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Jim Acker
jac...@gl.umbc.edu
"Since we are assured that an all-wise Creator has observed the
most exact proportions, of number, weight, and measure, in the
make of all things, the most likely way therefore, to get any
insight into the nature of those parts of the creation, which
come within our observation, must in all reason be to number,
weigh, and measure." - Stephen Hales
Sarah Berel-Harrop
"James Acker" <jac...@linux3.gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:bmn5i6$fri$1...@news.umbc.edu...
> In talk.origins Sarah Berel-Harrop <s...@hal-pc.org> wrote:
> : Well, gosh, they are a lot of things but they are not
> : stupid. Would *you* want to be associated with
> : Walter Remine (I mean, pretend for a moment you
> : are a creationist)?
>
> I emailed DISC and determined that he was indeed a Fellow.
> Why they never updated their Web list, I don't know.
Embarrassment, I suspect. The moderator shut a
thread down on the brainstorms (is it ISCID's website)
when he got all horsey over von Baer's (sic?) law.
We'll just have to put him on a shadow list on the
evowiki page pertaining to DI. :-)
>
> Jim Acker
>
> *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
> Jim Acker
> jac...@gl.umbc.edu
> "Since we are assured that an all-wise Creator has observed the
> most exact proportions, of number, weight, and measure, in the
> make of all things, the most likely way therefore, to get any
> insight into the nature of those parts of the creation, which
> come within our observation, must in all reason be to number,
> weigh, and measure." - Stephen Hales
>
>
>
>
>
---
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charlie wagner
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > Intelligent Design_ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerBooks), 303pp.
> > On 157:
> >
> > Behe's motivations were therefore complex. They were deeply
> > rooted at the level of a strong moral indignation-- a simmering,
> > settled outrage-- about the pervasive deception and
> > misinformation he saw in all of the textbooks' discussions of
> > macroevolution. Behe had come to view as highly deceptive those
> > books and media programming that seek to win over the public, and
> > especially high school and college students, to belief in
> > Darwinian evolution as fact. This sense of profound contempt is
> > critical to the subtle underlying passion-- the key to the
> > rhetorical pathos-- of Behe's writing and speaking, which will be
> > discussed below.
> >
> > As stated earlier, these feelings can be traced back to the
> > dramatic change in his biological viewpoint as a professor at
> > Lehigh in 1987. Previous to his biological conversion, Behe had
> > an attitude of relaxed acceptance of Darwinian explanations of
> > the origin of biological complexity. His Darwinian point of view
> > was absorbed in high school biology and further reinforced
> > through undergraduate studies and graduate studies of
> > biochemistry. In his mind there was no conflict with his
> > religious views as a Catholic. God simply had created slowly and
> > gradually using the Darwinian mechanisms that he had authored.
> >
> > Crisis_ (1985)] came to Behe's attention through a book club
> > advertisement.
>
>
>
>
I read both books and I never got the sense that Denton ever
repudiated anything from the first book. Perhaps you can cite the
chapters and pages where he does this. If you want, I'll send you a
copy of the book.
Regards, Charlie Wagner
http://www.charliewagner.com
>
>
> If Behe reads THAT book, will he "see the light" yet again?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Sean Pitman
> In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
> > Brent Howatt <hey...@phenix.rootshell.be> wrote in message news:<bm45i1$ihge4$1...@ID-140796.news.uni-berlin.de>...
> >> In talk.origins Sean Pitman <seanpi...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote:
>
> Not even the most ardent IRC desciple claims that *all* systems are
> irrducibly comples. Even Behe states that only some systems may be IRC.
> I didn't say that systems had "no limits in its reduction." That is your
> language trying to weasel out of your statement. There may be a limit to
> reduction of a system, but that simply shows how an "irreducibly complex
> system" can be arrived at by reduction of a "reducibly complex system".
> This, of course, shows that it is not necessary to postulate a "designer"
> or a "creator" to arrive at such a system.
>
> As to an example, imagine a bucket brigade of firefighters standing six
> inches apart passing buckets from a pond to a fire. There are 40 passing
> the buckets toward the fire and 40 passing them back. This is a system
> with a function. This system can be reduced by replacing every other
> firefighter with a post supporting a hook where the buckets are hung
> temporarily. The complexity of the system is reduced and the function
> remains. Q.E.D.
Clearly though, at some point, this bucket passing function cannot be
reduced further and becomes irreducible. There is in fact an
irreducible minimum part requirement for all functional systems. I'm
not saying that there is no flexibility to various systems of
function. What I am saying is that all functional systems require a
minimum number of parts and a particular orientation of these parts in
order for that particular function to be realized. In this sense
then, all functions are irreducibly complex at some point or another.
Beyond this point, the particular function in question ceases
instantly - and this is true for all functions.
What happens now is that at increasing levels of functional complexity
(requiring longer and longer DNA codes), the density of beneficial
functions as compared to the total number of potential sequences in
sequence space, becomes less and less in an exponential manner. It is
this exponential decline in the density of beneficial sequences that
quickly isolates beneficial functions in a vast ocean of nonfunctional
sequences that is simply too great for the mindless nondirected random
walk of random mutations (without the help of natural selection -
since nature cannot select between equally nonfunctional functions) to
wander through in any sort of reasonable time frame (i.e., trillions
upon trillions of years). In fact, there are no examples of evolution
producing a function at the multi-protein level of complexity where
all the proteins work together at the same time in a specific
orientation with each other. It seems that at such a level of
complexity, the beneficial density of functions is so miniscule and
the isolation of multi-protein functions so great that the mindless
natural processes of evolution are simply helpless to evolve anything
at such levels of complexity.
> >> So, you are denying that natural selection occurs? Why do you assume
> >> that such sequences are meaningless? You seem to be deifying "Nature" and
> >> its ability to "recognize" whatever that means.
> >
> > You, evidently, do not understand how natural selection works or why
> > the concept of irreducible complexity is such a problem for evolution.
>
> I understand natural selection very well, thank you. I have not yet seen
> a convincing demonstration that something is IRC.
Oh really? Take the lactase function, for example. It seems like the
minimum part requirement for the lactase function in living things is
around 480 amino acids in a flexible, but fairly specified
arrangement. Some scientists, like Ian Musgrave, suggest that the
total number of lactase enzymes in sequence space may be as high as
10e90. Considering that there are only somewhere around 10e80 atoms
in the visible universe, 10e90 seems like an extraordinarily huge
number. That is, until you compare this number with 10e600 - the
total number of sequences in sequence space at this level of
complexity. What does a ratio like 1 in 10e500 mean? It means that
on average, a given amino acid sequence with the lactase function is
extremely isolated from another 400aa sequence chosen at random. Such
isolation means that most life forms and their respective population
gene pool will not have anything close enough to even one of these
10e90 potential lactase sequences to evolve the lactase function.
Experiments and observations have been done that verify this
hypothesis. Many species of bacteria have been observed for hundreds
of thousands if not millions of generations and have never evolved
this relatively simple single protein lactase function during that
entire time - even though it would be of significant benefit to them
if they ever did evolve this function. Experiments like those done by
Barry Hall are extremely interesting in this regard since even
bacteria that historically hydrolyze lactose quite well are incapable
of evolving this function back again if their lacZ genes and their one
"spare tire" ebg gene are deleted - even over the course of tens of
thousands of generations in a strongly selective environment. Hall
himself said that these bacteria had, "limited evolutionary
potential."
Now, what is it, I ask you, that "limits" the evolutionary potential
of a life form if not for the neutral gaps that are created by a
relatively low density of beneficial sequences in sequence space? You
say that an "'irreducibly complex system' can be arrived at by
reduction of a 'reducibly complex system'". This is certainly true,
but how did you get the reducibly complex system without first having
the irreducibly complex system with that particular function to begin
with? At the lowest levels of functional complexity, such as
antibiotic resistance and certain single protein based functions, this
is not much of a problem. However, when you start talking about more
complex functions requiring longer amino acid sequence of large single
proteins and especially multi-protein functions, the problems for
evolution become extremely difficult to overcome, even theoretically,
much less experimentally.
> > Nature can only select between *functional* differences. This would
> > not be a problem if all differences were functional, but they are not.
>
> No one said that they were. However, don't be too quick to claim that
> something is non-functional, when what you really mean is that you don't
> know what its function is.
Hmmmm - this isn't even a good cop-out argument. Even evolutionary
scientists refer to many DNA sequences as non-functional and mutations
that occur in these sequences as "neutral". In fact, most mutations
that affect the DNA of "higher" organisms, such as humans, are
referred to as "neutral" mutations - in that natural selection cannot
recognize these mutations in a selectable way. For example, out of
the 100 to 300 mutations that change human DNA in each generation,
only 3 or 4 of them are felt to be functionally selectable. All the
rest are thought to be completely neutral with regards to natural
selection. Of the 3 or 4 that are selectable, there is thought to be
a ratio of around 1000 to 1 in favor of a negative selection due to a
"detrimental" mutation.
Obviously then, neutral sequences are not only a reality, they are
obviously extremely common in the sequence space at just about all
levels of functional complexity. The question is not if they exist or
if they are common, but if they really do expand in an exponential
fashion with increasing levels of functional complexity - as I have
proposed.
> > For example, much of the DNA in humans does not code for anything and
> > has no other known function.
>
> "No other known function" does not equal "no function".
The fact is that the weight of evidence, as we currently understand
it, is strongly in favor of the existence of rather large stretches of
DNA in humans where mutations are selectably neutral. You can
hypothesize otherwise as much as you want, but what evidence do you
have to support your position?
> > If a mutation occurs in such a region of
> > non-functional DNA, no change in the function of the human will occur.
> > This means that nature is blind to this mutation since it does not
> > result in a change in the function of the creature. Such a mutation
> > is referred to as a "neutral" mutation. There is even a "neutral
> > theory of evolution". If you don't believe me, look it up.
>
> Yes, but Kimura is not postulating anything that is seen today as
> revolutionary. He makes good points about the role of randomness in
> evolution, especially at the molecular level. That was a novel concept in
> the late 70's and early 80's, but is mainstream now. Kimura's Neutral
> Theory has several key differences from Behe's ideas. First, Kimura
> proposed something testable. Second, he provided evidence in support of
> his theory. Third, he started with accepted concepts and extended them
> (e.g. genetic drift). Behe has done none of that.
LOL - you are too funny. First you argue against the idea of neutral
mutations, and then you try to come across as actually believing in
and supporting Kimura's work? Please! In any case, Behe's ideas are
very much in line with Kimura's Neutral Theory of Evolution. My
ideas, though a bit different from Behe's, are actually dependent upon
the existence of non-functional or "neutral" sequences/mutations.
My hypotheses are also testable in a falsifiable way and have a high
predictive power. What genetic test/prediction can you make that would
falsify evolution if you were wrong? Really, if this or that function
or level of complexity fails to evolve, you will not give up on the
idea of evolution since you can always say, "Well, perhaps the
organism wasn't right, or maybe the environment wasn't ideal." Really
then, evolution becomes a non-testable and therefore a non-falsifiable
position. It is actually the Intelligent Design Theory that is the
most scientifically supported position since it can actually be tested
in a falsifiable manner.
> > Nature
> > does in fact "recognize" or "detect" functional changes and selects
> > between differences in function. That is what "survival of the
> > fittest" is based on. However, neutral mutations are beyond the
> > detection of natural selection. This is a big problem since nature
> > cannot select or guide mutations that do not result in any functional
> > change to the information expressed by the DNA of a given creature.
>
> Genetic drift has been recognized in population genetics since the 60's.
> I fail to see why you regard it as such a "big problem" for evolutionary
> biology. I was doing mathematical modeling problems in genetics that
> incorporated such neutral mutations when I was in college in the late
> 60's. It was interesting, but it was certainly not a "big problem". It
> was simply upper division, undergraduate genetics. Without personal
> computers... that was the big problem. We had a programmable, mechanical
> calculator the size of a refrigerator. It had quite a number of built-in
> functions such as standard deviation and chi-square. For those of us who
> considered our log-log slide rules the ne plus ultra of computing
> technology, it was heavenly.
>
> [snip oft repeated but still bad language analogy]
You snipped the language analogy so there is nothing more to say since
the information coded in DNA and even protein systems of functions are
not just language analogies, they are actually real
language/information systems. If you don't understand that language
analogy, you cannot understand the problems for genetic evolution of
new functions - which are separated from each other like tiny islands
on vast oceans of non-functional sequence arrangements.
> > This is a real problem.
>
> No, it is not a problem. It is something that genetics has recognized and
> accounted for for many years.
Oh really - then perhaps you can explain to me how a multi-protein
function can evolve one mutation at a time?
> >> > No such
> >> > examples of functional evolution have ever been observed and
> >> > documented or even theorized on paper in a reasonable manner.
> >>
> >> Actually, such examples abound. Where do you do your reading?
> >
> > I do much of my reading from evolutionary journals and even
> > talk.origins. What examples can you show me?
>
> Try these:
>
> http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
Did you actually read these references and abstracts yourself? If you
had you would quickly recognize that all of these examples of
evolution in humans are based on one or two point mutations to single
protein functions. This is not the issue. Such examples are very
common. They are actually less difficult to evolve than to evolve a
single protein function "de novo" - as occurred with the evolution of
the nylonase function in bacteria. The success of such examples of
evolution is based on the fact, that starting with a particular
function, variations in the *level* of that function are easy to
achieve with one or two point mutations - like your line of firemen
passing buckets of water. A mutation may remove a few firemen from
the line and make the water delivery slower than before. This change
in the level of function may actually be beneficial in certain
circumstances. However, the statistical random walk required to
achieve this change in level of function is extremely short since a
very high ratio of mutations could achieve this change in the level of
a pre-established function. However, problems arise when you want to
move from one type of function to another type of function. How are
you going to evolve a brand new function "de novo"? That is the
question. For functions at the lowest levels of complexity, this is
not too much of a problem due to the relatively high ratio of
beneficial vs. non-beneficial sequences. However, for functions at
higher and higher levels of functional complexity, this beneficial
density drops off in an exponential manner until evolution quickly
becomes hopelessly lost on an almost endless sea of meaningless
sequences.
Again, no examples of multi-protein functions where all the proteins
are working together at the same time in a specific orientation with
each other, have ever been observed and documented or even theorized
on paper in a reasonable manner. If you know of such an example,
please do share it with me - but do your reading first. Don't just
send me a bunch of references that do not show what you think their
titles say.
Sean
Daniel Harper
As I recall, Charlie admitted to being LBG after a relatively few number
of posts.
--
...and it is my belief that no greater good has ever befallen you in this city
than my service to my God. [...] Wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness
brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and that state.
Plato, quoting Socrates, from The _Apology_
--Daniel Harper
Daniel Harper
> On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 00:28:13 +0000, Chris Krolczyk wrote:
>
>> "Dale" <dmg...@nspm.airmail.net> wrote in message
>> news:<bm4a7i$b...@library2.airnews.net>...
>>> "littleblondgirl" <littleb...@optonline.net> wrote in message
>>> news:d6fcd136.03100...@posting.google.com...
>>>
>>> > The modern ToE
>>> > fails to demonstrate that darwinism has the power to do what science
>>> > says it can do. It's basically a children's story, somewhat on the
>>> > same level as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Great Pumpkin,
>>> > and frankly, as a scientist, I would be embarrassed to admit that I
>>> > still believed in it.
>>>
>>> Argumentum ad I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity, has anybody proved that lbg is a 'nym or morph of
>> Charlie Wagner's?
>>
>> If so, the charade has gone on for a bit too long.
>>
>> -Chris Krolczyk
>
> As I recall, Charlie admitted to being LBG after a relatively few number
> of posts.
I posted this _weeks_ ago; it just now showed up.
And I have been corrected on the message since I posted this message
originally. Please ignore.
John Wilkins
...
> I posted this _weeks_ ago; it just now showed up.
>
> And I have been corrected on the message since I posted this message
> originally. Please ignore.
A couple of mine just got released from a week or so ago...
--
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly,
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be