Evolutionary biologist Larry Moran tries calculating with big numbers re evolution

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 13, 2014

Evolution, News}

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Here in Canada we love Moran. He’s endearing!

Okay, okay, Moran is at the University of Toronto.

You’d be amazed at the people who have been part of that institution.

He seems to have been trying to calculate with orders of magnitude.

Fellow biologist and ID proponent Mike Behe comments on his math.

It is an orders of magnitude issue.

Doesn’t mean he isn’t fun.

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Comments

Mark: The point is simple. The malaria parasite under the extremely strong selection of chloroquine is a model extremely favourable to the neo darwinian algorithm: huge populations, very high reproduction rate, very strong and precise selective pressure, and a rather simple advantageous variation thta can be attained (just two AA variation to confer resistance to a lethal drug). We can say that this the perfect scenario for the neo darwinian model, and a good way to measure its powers. Now, in such a favourable scenario, how does the model work? It works (in the end, chloroquine resistance arises), but it definitely requires a lot of time and huge population numbers. IOWs, it happens with some difficulty. That's all. That difficulty is exactly what is needed to infer how much more "difficult" (indeed, impossible) it would be for the same neo darwinian model to explain the emergence of a new complex protein when the necessary transition is, say, of 300 AAs, and the population number, reproduction rate and selective pressure are much less favourable to the model. For example, to evolve just one new useful protein in vertebrates or mammals. That is, and always has been, Behe's point. And the point of ID. Can you really say "so what" to that argument?gpuccio_{August 14, 2014
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Behe's arguments are, as always, impeccable.gpuccio_{August 14, 2014
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I must be missing something important. As far as I can see everyone seems to agree that the mutations required for chloroquine resistance are extremely improbable and this is born out by the rarity of such resistance in the wild. So what?Mark Frank_{August 14, 2014
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No living organism can survive without a gene repair mechanism that fixes genetic mutations when they appear. How did such a mechanism evolve since the organism cannot survive without it? Compute that, Moran.Mapou_{August 13, 2014
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How do you do that box thing that you're apparently supposed to put sited work in???Ragnar_{August 13, 2014
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Calculate this Moran: the total probability of the horse coming about by chance, not in an instant but according to the blind, undirected, blind mechanisms of natural selection and random mutation is 1,000 X 10 to the 1 millionth power! For God's sakes, that number is so inconceivable it's not even funny. (Though probably the same probability is true if a horse suddenly came about by a tornado going through a warehouse with all the elements to build a horse). Here's that part of the article where I found it from: ---Actually, the chances are so dim that even avowed evolutionists acknowledge it is all but impossible to believe. Says Julian Huxley: “A little calculation demonstrates how incredibly improbable the results of natural selection can be when enough time is available.” He asks, What are the odds that a horse could be produced by chance alone? In his answer Huxley refers to “the fantastic odds against getting a number of favorable mutations in one strain through pure chance alone,” and then he adds: “A thousand to the millionth power [1,0001,000,000], when written out, becomes the figure 1 with three million noughts after it; and that would take three large volumes of about five hundred pages each, just to print! Actually this is a meaninglessly large figure, but it shows what a degree of improbability natural selection has to surmount . . . One with three million noughts after it is the measure of the unlikeliness of a horse—the odds against it happening at all. No one would bet on anything so improbable happening.” Nevertheless, Huxley turns around and incredulously says: “Yet is has happened.” How consistent does that seem to you? If anyone wishes to believe odds of that nature, that is his foolish decision. But he cannot honestly say that the burden of evidence—the odds—rests with his case.--- It's from the 3/22 1975 Awake! magazine published by Jehovah's Witnesses. The article is called: "How Much Chance in 'Chance'?" I'll post the whole thing if you guys wantRagnar_{August 13, 2014
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It is interesting to note that Chloroquine Resistance, as hard as it is for Darwinian processes to account for, (whether in the 1 in 10^14 calculation or in the 1 in 10^20 observation), it is not even a gain in functional complexity for the malaria parasite in the first place but is a loss of functional complexity for the parasite.
Metabolic QTL Analysis Links Chloroquine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to Impaired Hemoglobin Catabolism - January, 2014 Summary: Chloroquine was formerly a front line drug in the treatment of malaria. However, drug resistant strains of the malaria parasite have made this drug ineffective in many malaria endemic regions. Surprisingly, the discontinuation of chloroquine therapy has led to the reappearance of drug-sensitive parasites. In this study, we use metabolite quantitative trait locus analysis, parasite genetics, and peptidomics to demonstrate that chloroquine resistance is inherently linked to a defect in the parasite's ability to digest hemoglobin, which is an essential metabolic activity for malaria parasites. This metabolic impairment makes it harder for the drug-resistant parasites to reproduce than genetically-equivalent drug-sensitive parasites, and thus favors selection for drug-sensitive lines when parasites are in direct competition. Given these results, we attribute the re-emergence of chloroquine sensitive parasites in the wild to more efficient hemoglobin digestion. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004085
Thus the resistance, as crushing as it is, number-wise, for Darwinists to explain the origin of, is doubly crushing for Darwinists, since the adaptation, as hard as it was for Darwinian processes to acquire, was still 'downhill' evolution anyway and adds nothing as to explaining microbes to man evolution is remotely possible in a Darwinian scenario! Another place where these big numbers play out is, as Dr. Behe points out, in the comparative reproduction rates:
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations - Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model.,,, http://www.discovery.org/a/9461
As well, these comparative reproduction rates play out like this, if evolution were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only 'life' that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the 'fittest' are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
Richard Dawkins interview with a 'Darwinian' physician goes off track - video Excerpt: "I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly -- a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves -- that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we're stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically 'selected' for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction. Moreover it is interesting to note, since the debate between Moran and Behe is centered on mathematics, that there is the little problem that mathematics cannot even be rationally grounded in the materialistic/Darwinian worldview in the first place. Not a minor problem for Darwinists!bornagain77_{August 13, 2014
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Repeat after me: "Evolution doesn't need any steekin' numbers. Evolution doesn't need any steekin' probabilities. We are comforted by the fact that universal common descent via evolution by descent with modification has occurred. Whether or not we ever fill in the numerous blanks is besides the point." Yeah baby...Joe_{August 13, 2014
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