Mushroom Physiologist Attacks ID

_{William Dembski

June 20, 2005

Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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Gary Novak (mushroom physiologist) says he has evolved yeast into morel mushrooms in the lab, mocks ID, and joins the fray (go here). What Novak has actually shown, so one of my close ID biologist colleagues informs me, is that when he tries to grow wild morel mushrooms on artificial nutrient media in laboratory Petri dishes, they don’t develop beyond the single-cell stage — like yeast (a single-celled fungus). No evolution. Not even devolution. Just stunted growth. Say it isn’t so.

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hoodia gordonii Please take a look at some information about online prescription lisinopril hoodia gordonii_{July 11, 2005
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Dave Scot, I am soliciting informed comments/ critiques of some of my ideas on an opinion blog I've started. I haven't the time nor inclination for a literature-bluffing and reference-citing debate, so I am not publicising it (I'm also not sure I know yet how to delete comments). It is a collection of my (a complete layman's ) thoughts and not something I want to be drawn into a fight with the pugnacious defenders of the status-quo over. If you would care to give me your opinions I would appreciate them, and probably steal some - entirely uncredited, of course. You can email me at charlieaaronscott@yahoo.com for the url if you would care to indulge me. Thanks. CharlieCharlie_{June 22, 2005
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Here's a couple good primer articles on fungi and mushrooms. If DukeYork is lurking, fungi represent a distinct type of "body plan". http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/Lect03_b.htm http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/Bot201/Basidiomycota/Mushroom_Lifecycle.htm Mushrooms (morel mushrooms included) are the fruiting bodies of colonial fungi. Yeast are not colonial. The colony is underground in what's called a mycelial network. The mushroom is a collaborative effort amongst individual fungi in the colony. Individuals in the colony have DNA that isn't identical thus the spores formed each represent a (potentially) different strain. Trivia: the largest single organism ever observed is a mycelial colony that spans many acres. Interestingly, there's a protist that exists as a solitary single cell most of its life making a living by eating bacteria and it normally reproduces asexually but in times of stress (lack of food to be precise) a chemical call to arms is issued and millions of them come together to form a sexual fruiting body that produces spores much like a mushroom. The organism is called the "social ameoba" or Dictyostelium discoideum. It's model organism and is classically held out by evolutionists as a possible transitional species (the colonial hypothesis) from protozoan to metazoan. Which brings us handily back around to morels. What triggers mushroom formation in morels is lack of food. Morels remain in the vegetative stage (underground colony) as long as there's plenty of food available. They build up large nodules rich in nutrients while in this stage. The environmental triggers building up to mushroom formation are not easily reproduced. But hey, speaking of nutrient rich nodules in colonial fungi, morels aren't nearly as fickle about it as truffles. No one has truffles growing in a lab yet as far as I know. The first person to discover and patent a procedure for that is going to be an instant multi-millionaire - oink oink. DaveScot_{June 21, 2005
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Novak:
I show a single celled yeast evolving into a multi celled mushroom. If it isn't macro evolution, nothing is.
Unfortunately for Novak he hasn't verified that the genotype changes in his protozoan to metazoan observation. That's a downside of doing "research" in a barn instead of a university lab. I suspect the genotype is identical and what he's observing is called ontogenesis. Omne vivo ex ovum. Everything comes from an egg. My latin's a little rusty (it's been 30 years since I studied latin in school). How do you say "Everything comes from a single cell" in Latin? omne vivo ex singulum arca ??? LOL DaveScot_{June 21, 2005
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Morels are the holy grail for mushroom cultivation. There are few claims of success growing them in an indoor setting. There's a company in Georgia (I think it's Georgia) that has a patent on a process claimed to work. That's just a bit of trivia. I've cultivated mushrooms in laboratory settings before and investigated what it would take for morels once. Novak is a crank of the first order. Just a glance at his other ravings is confirmation. I'm surprised he hasn't invented a perpetual motion machine too (or has he and I missed it on his web page?). There's no such thing as a mushroom physiologist. Novak invented that too. The real ones are called mycologists. I suspect Novak got a little too enthusiastic in sampling his p.cubensis crops which are always the first species us budding (pun intended, budding is how yeast reproduce) mycologists become interested in as college freshmen. DaveScot_{June 21, 2005
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From "Evolution and Intelligent Design": "At some point, the highly certain points are called knowledge and fact, but this doesn't exclude knew evidence in the standards of rational and honest persons." "To argue that natural selection can function, or must function, without intelligence is not a relevant argument, because intelligence does not enter at that point; it enters before that point." "Beyond the realm of present scientific measurements, it appears that random mutations alone are not adequate to produce the amount of biological diversity which exists. It isn't just waiting for the right mutation in the right place, nor for five or ten or a hundred. It's a question of not destroying what already exists in the process, because there are thousands of destructive mutations for every one that is constructive. Genes are linked on large chromosomes. To separate a favorable mutation from the thousands or millions of unfavorable ones requires a mutation rate so low that the bad mutations do not exist on the same chromosome at the same time." "When adding all of the complexities of evolution together, my impression is that if intelligent influences were suddenly turned off, no forward evolution would exist, and all life forms would rapidly deteriorate. Some intelligence needs to know hat mutations to add where and when to get forward evolution." From another one of his articles ("Creationism Disproved") he writes: "Intelligent design is not in conflict with evolution". He goes on to say "...there are statistical probabilities indicating intelligent design." --- The quotes above indicate that Novak is a "directed evolutionist" and a cosmological IDist. [Novak even makes design inferences whilst attempting to refute ID!] He believes X (RM/NS) is not capable of creating all complexity but says that ~X (a non-random process such as a designer) is not science. Yet again, we see "The Magical Powers of the Tilde".The_Intellectual_Ape_{June 20, 2005
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