We asked physicist Rob Sheldon: “Front-loading” is something I picture as an elaborate “Rube Goldberg” machine. Here’s a sampling of real-life front-loading by brilliant engineers with too much time on their hands. Okay, if engineers could do that, couldn’t God make the flagellum out of spare parts by a properly front-loaded machine? I think the answer here is “yes”. But of course that begs the question, “doesn’t the machine show much more design than the thing it makes?” Of course. But our goal wasn’t to minimize design effort, our goal was to create a “front-loaded” machine, which is what was asked. Now we have another problem. Isn’t the “front-loading machine” a lot more fragile than the thing it made, the Read More ›

At PhysOrg.com, here’s something hot off the press. Here are some delicious quotes from the PO blurb: Researchers, led by Dr David Ferrier of The Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews, found that some modern-day animals like sponges, comb jellies and placozoans (a flat, splodge of an animal with no head, tail, gut or limbs) may have actually evolved by losing some genes and perhaps became simplified from a more complex ancestor, from which the entire animal kingdom evolved. Dr Ferrier and his team studied key genes, known as Hox and ParaHox, which are renowned for building the bodies of nearly all modern-day animals. They control where ribs develop in humans or where wings develop in flies, Read More ›

Once one overcomes their prejudice and admits intelligent design as a live option for science to consider then you start to look at “evolution” as an engineering project instead of a big accident. Everything in macroevolution makes sense from this perspective. One of the predictions of front loading is that we may find genomic building blocks for things like complex organs and body plans in organisms lacking those things and whose ancestors never had those things. Those things are there for the future. Chance & necessity can’t build things for future use. Intelligent design is a proactive mechanism which can implement contingency plans for future circumstance. Chance & necessity is a reactive mechanism that cannot plan for the future – it can only react to the present circumstance.

Note that in this case an intelligent designer needn’t be “God”, although it could be. The intelligent designer only requires rather advanced (beyond current human level) expertise in biochemistry and genetic engineering. Intelligent design can be considered without regard or resort to anything from revealed religious scriptures. The meme Intelligent Design is really Scientific or Biblical Creationism is a red herring designed to thwart the introduction of ID into the public school setting through legal chicanery.

Add the following to the growing mountain of scientific evidence pointing to design in the history of life:

Science 22 August 2008:
Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1028 – 1029
DOI: 10.1126/science.321.5892.1028b

GENOMICS: ‘Simple’ Animal’s Genome Proves Unexpectedly Complex

Elizabeth Pennisi

Aptly named “sticky hairy plate,” Trichoplax adhaerens barely qualifies as an animal. About 1 millimeter long and covered with cilia, this flat marine organism lacks a stomach, muscles, nerves, and gonads, even a head. It glides along like an amoeba, its lower layer of cells releasing enzymes that digest algae beneath its ever-changing body, and it reproduces by splitting or budding off progeny. Yet this animal’s genome looks surprisingly like ours, says Daniel Rokhsar, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California. Its 98 million DNA base pairs include many of the genes responsible for guiding the development of other animals’ complex shapes and organs, he and his colleagues report in the 21 August issue of Nature.

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1: Cell Cycle. 2007 Jun;6(15):1873-7. Epub 2007 Jun 6. Links Universal genome in the origin of metazoa: thoughts about evolution. Sherman M. Department of Biochemistry; Boston University Medical School, 715 Albany St., Boston, Massachusetts 02118, USA. sherma1@bu.edu Recent advances in paleontology, genome analysis, genetics and embryology raise a number of questions about the origin of Animal Kingdom. These questions include:(1) seemingly simultaneous appearance of diverse Metazoan phyla in Cambrian period, (2) similarities of genomes among Metazoan phyla of diverse complexity, (3) seemingly excessive complexity of genomes of lower taxons and (4) similar genetic switches of functionally similar but non-homologous developmental programs. Here I propose an experimentally testable hypothesis of Universal Genome that addresses these questions. According to this model, (a) Read More ›

Scientists have now found that the Hox genes necessary for tetrapod development is present in a primitive fish (a paddlefish). Here’s part of what they write: “Tetrapods have a second phase of Hox gene expression that happens later in development. During this second phase, hands and feet develop. Although this second phase is not known in zebrafish, the scientists found that it is present in paddlefish, which reveals that a pattern of gene activity long thought to be unique to vertebrates with hands and feet is in fact much more primitive. This is the first molecular support for the theory that the genes to help make fingers and toes have been around for a long time—well before the 375-million-year-old Tiktaalik Read More ›

On a listserve which shall remain nameless a botanist yesterday was casting about for a good representative of a colonial protozoan. Having read up on the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum (common name “social amoeba”) a couple years ago and blogging on it then I immediately suggested it and described why it is a model for protozoan to metazoan evolution and also described its interesting display of altruism:

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From blogger at Wintery Knight: Is belief in a creator/designer compatible with belief in Darwinian evolution? One of the ways that theistic evolutionists try to affirm design is by insisting that the design is “front-loaded”. The design for all the information and body plans is somehow embedded in matter. … I attended a Wheaton College philosophy conference where Dr. Michael Murray read a paper advocating for this front-loaded view of design. I raised my hand to ask him a question, “hey, philosophy guy, did God front-load the information in that paper you’re reading, or did you write it yourself?” But the philosophy moderators must have known that I was an engineer, and would talk sense into him, because they never Read More ›

Here’s this snippet from a Phys.Org entry. The most remarkable part of it is that they link “cell-type” evolution to the repression of genes, making one wonder if all the necessary genes needed for all of life was somehow present in an original genome. Obviously there are problems with this thesis in terms of genome length and type, bacterial genomes being ciruclar, while animals generally have discrete chromosomes, but, it’s entirely possible that multi-cellular life represents a complete break with bacteria, and that what we’re seeing here is the ultimate in “front-loading,” where everything is in place, yet, per Behe’s first law of adaptation, we see “loss of function” leading to novelties. And, it should be a little troubling, if Read More ›

Onlookers, Geno concludes for the moment with FAQ’s: ____________________ Geno: >> A Testable ID Hypothesis: Front-loading, part C In the last two articles on front-loading, I explained what the front-loading hypothesis is all about and some research questions we can ask from a front-loading perspective. This article will be an FAQ about the front-loading hypothesis. So, without further introduction, let’s begin (note: some of the content of this FAQ can be found in the previous two articles). What is front-loading? “Front-loading is the investment of a significant amount of information at the initial stage of evolution (the first life forms) whereby this information shapes and constrains subsequent evolution through its dissipation. This is not to say that every aspect of Read More ›

Genomicus continues his presentation of the front-loading hypothesis: ___________ Geno: >>In my previous article on the subject of front-loading, I described the front-loading hypothesis and what it proposes. I outlined three testable predictions generated by the front-loading hypothesis. In this article, we’ll see how the front-loading hypothesis can lead us to numerous research questions, and this, in turn, will allow us to establish a better picture about the history of the origin and development of biological complexity. There are probably dozens of research questions that we can ask as a result of the front-loading hypothesis, so I’ll only cover some of them here. How could molecular machines and systems be front-loaded? An interesting question from a front-loading perspective is how Read More ›

Since frontloading is becoming a hotter topic in ID circles, I thought I would repost a video covering, in just 5 minutes, a short explanation of what is being proposed, and some of the evidences for it. There are minimalist and maximalist views of frontloading, but I think all of them share a fascination with what we are finding out about mutations today.
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(Series on Front-loading continues, here) As we continue the ID Foundations series, it will be necessary to reflect on a fairly wide range of topics, more than any one person can cover. So, when the opportunity came up to put Front-Loading on the table from a knowledgeable advocate of it, Genomicus, I asked him if he would be so kind as to submit  such a post. He graciously agreed, and so, please find the below for our initial reflections; with parts B and C (and maybe, more? please, please, sir . . . 😆 ) to follow shortly, DV: ____________________ >> Critics of intelligent design (ID) often argue that ID does not offer any testable biological hypotheses. Indeed, often times Read More ›

In a recent UD thread, several UD members have taken issue with the ID concept of frontloading. Frontloading is a question which certainly merits more discussion than it usually gets, and here I want to clear up a few things regarding frontloading that are usually missed.

I am a big fan of frontloading even though I don’t believe it is entirely true. The reason for this is that, first of all, I think that there are many theoretical systems which are good in a limited scope, but bad in a larger scope. However, it takes the people dedicated to fleshing out the widest scope of their theories in order for the rest of us to see where exactly the theory succeeds and fails, and what its limitations are. I take the approach to watch the frontloaders cook up their most grand of theories, and for myself to take the practical step of eating the meat and spitting out the bone. And, because I find value in their work, I am also willing to help them a little in the kitchen.
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I’ve toyed with the idea of front-loading, but it seems to me that there are major problems with it. The front-loading of the universe with the laws of physics to eventually make a life-hospitable planet seems like a reasonable hypothesis and logical conclusion. But the front-loading of living systems presents major problems. There is no evidence that the front-loading of the information in living systems can in any way be compared to the front-loading of the laws of physics in the universe for the eventual creation of a life-permitting planet. This seems to me to be an unwarranted extrapolation, comparing apples to oranges. Of course, this raises the question of interventionism. It seems logical that the laws of physics that Read More ›

For us here at UD, this article doesn’t need much explanation. It certainly fits into the “Genetic Entropy” scheme, and what Michael Behe has demonstrated of late. This is just for your information. Enjoy! How’s this for a quote: The finding mirrors accumulating evidence from other species that changes to regulatory regions of DNA – rather than to the genes themselves – underlie many of the new features that organisms acquire through evolution. And think of all those who say over and over: “Evolution is a change in gene frequency.” Well, I guess it isn’t. It’s a change in gene regulation. It appears to be the end of “gene-centrism” (and, with it, classical population genetics as we’ve known it).