Swamidass et al’s hit review at Science on Behe’s forthcoming Darwin Devolves “borders on fraud”

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 11, 2019

Books of interest, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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According to John West of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture,

Ironically, in this same review where the main point seems to be that Behe doesn’t engage with evidence counter to his views, the authors state (without appreciating the irony) that Behe devotes much of one chapter to discussing Richard Lenski’s bacterial evolution experiments. Since Lenski is listed as a co-author of this book review, I was looking forward to reading a robust critique of what Behe had to say about his experiments. Get ready to be underwhelmed. Here’s the critique: “[Behe] dedicates the better part of chapter 7 to discussing a 65,000-generation Escherichia coli experiment, emphasizing the many mutations that arose that degraded function — an expected mode of adaptation to a simple laboratory environment, by the way — while dismissing improved functions and deriding one new one as a ‘sideshow.’” That’s it? Yes, that’s it. On the one topic where the authors surely might have provided a devastating critique of Behe — if they had one — they effectively offer nothing.

If scientists like Swamidass, Lenski, and Lents want to continue to offer these faux critiques of Behe, that is certainly their right. But they are damaging their own credibility, not Behe’s. Such critiques will no doubt continue to convince true believers like atheist Darwinist Jerry Coyne. But they won’t impress scientists who are open-minded enough to read Behe or other ID proponents for themselves. How do I know this? Because I’ve met such scientists. Scientists like German paleontologist Günter Bechly, who thought intelligent design was bosh… until he actually read Behe and discovered that the caricature of intelligent design he had been offered wasn’t true.John G. West, “Darwinists Devolve: Review by Swamidass, Lenski, and Lents Borders on Fraud” at Evolution News and Science Today:

Well, somebody out there must think Behe worth hearing. Have a look at this string of Amazon numbers 8:00 pm EST February 11, 2019:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#1 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Biology > Developmental Biology
#1 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism
#4 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Science & Religion

#1 in Developmental Biology. The book ships on February 26.

See also: Science Mag’s hit on Michael Behe’s Darwin Devolves avoids his main point In these times, are you better off knowing the problems or innocently citing approved sources of misinformation as your reason for making decisions? You decide.

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Moreover, molecular machines are found to greatly outclass man-made machines in terms of efficiency, and this efficiency is found to be accomplished via quantum principles, for instance,,
What's quantum physics got to do with biology? - June 2012 Excerpt: certain bacteria can capture 95% of the light that hits them and turn it into useful energy. Solar panels also convert light from the Sun into energy—but they aren't nearly as good at it. The very best solar panels ever tested in a lab (i.e., not the ones actually available for sale and installation on your house) were able to convert about 34% of the light that hit them into electricity.,, Why can't we use the Sun's energy as effectively as bacteria can? The secret may be that the bacteria are using quantum physics to transmit energy. http://boingboing.net/2012/06/01/quantum-biology.html Unlocking nature's quantum engineering for efficient solar energy - January 7, 2013 Excerpt: Certain biological systems living in low light environments have unique protein structures for photosynthesis that use quantum dynamics to convert 100% of absorbed light into electrical charge,,, "Some of the key issues in current solar cell technologies appear to have been elegantly and rigorously solved by the molecular architecture of these PPCs – namely the rapid, lossless transfer of excitons to reaction centres.",,, These biological systems can direct a quantum process, in this case energy transport, in astoundingly subtle and controlled ways – showing remarkable resistance to the aggressive, random background noise of biology and extreme environments. "This new understanding of how to maintain coherence in excitons, and even regenerate it through molecular vibrations, provides a fascinating glimpse into the intricate design solutions – seemingly including quantum engineering – ,,, and which could provide the inspiration for new types of room temperature quantum devices." http://phys.org/news/2013-01-nature-quantum-efficient-solar-energy.html
Thus since “in information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.” and since the virtual 100% efficiency of molecular machines is now shown to accomplished via quantum principles, the question now becomes, "Exactly "Who" is the observer describing the systems of 100% efficient molecular machines in molecular biology?" It certainly isn't a human observer that has "knowledge of the particle's position"! As a Christian, I have an answer for this profound enigma of "Who" the observer could possibly be to achieve virtually 100% thermodynamic efficiency in molecular machines, but I am sure that it is an answer that Darwinian atheists will not like one bit:
Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
bornagain77_{February 13, 2019
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To provide further evidence for information coming into the developing embryo from ‘outside space-time itself’, it is also important to note that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,,,
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
And these quantum correlations which somehow arise from outside spacetime, are now found in molecular biology on a massive scale. In every DNA and Protein molecule,,,
"What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain - Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija - 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural - amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy - classical and quantum state, and (3) information - classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491 Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
Moreover, the following article points out that the unresolved enigma of protein folding, that is to say, the unresolved enigma for exactly how a protein might achieve its basic 3-dimensional form, can be easily explained if the process of folding is held to be a quantum affair.
Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Today, Luo and Lo say these curves can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair. By conventional thinking, a chain of amino acids can only change from one shape to another by mechanically passing through various shapes in between. But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
Moreover, in the following experiment, via 'knowledge of a particle's position', the researchers were able to turn information into energy.
Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html
In other words, information is now empirically shown to be a physically real entity that is separate from matter and energy. A physical real entity that has, of all things, a quote unquote ‘thermodynamic content’
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
These experiments demonstrating the physical reality of immaterial information have now been further refined to the point of building an 'information engine':
Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency - Lisa Zyga - January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine's efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, The generalized second law of thermodynamics states that the work extracted from an information engine is limited by the sum of two components: the first is the free energy difference between the final and initial states (this is the sole limit placed on conventional engines by the conventional second law), and the other is the amount of available information (this part sets an upper bound on the extra work that can be extracted from information). To achieve the maximum efficiency set by the generalized second law, the researchers in the new study designed and implemented an information engine made of a particle trapped by light at room temperature. Random thermal fluctuations cause the tiny particle to move slightly due to Brownian motion, and a photodiode tracks the particle's changing position with a spatial accuracy of 1 nanometer. If the particle moves more than a certain distance away from its starting point in a certain direction, the light trap quickly shifts in the direction of the particle. This process repeats, so that over time the engine transports the particle in a desired direction simply by extracting work from the information it obtains from the system's random thermal fluctuations (the free energy component here is zero, so it does not contribute to the work extracted). One of the most important features of this system is its nearly instantaneous feedback response: the trap shifts in just a fraction of a millisecond, giving the particle no time to move further and dissipate energy. As a result, almost none of the energy gained by the shift is lost to heat, but rather nearly all of it is converted into work. By avoiding practically any information loss, the information-to-energy conversion of this process reaches approximately 98.5% of the bound set by the generalized second law. The results lend support for this bound, and illustrate the possibility of extracting the maximum amount of work possible from information. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html
But what is most striking about this engine that is powered by immaterial information is that it is the 'knowledge of the particle's position', aka Maxwell's demon, that enables information to have an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. As Professor Renato Renner states, “Now in information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/
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The primary argument between Darwinists and ID proponents revolves around the origination of functional information. ID proponents have empirically demonstrated that the functional sequences of information found in proteins and genes are exceeding rare to find. Whereas Darwinists basically play a 'whack a mole' game of pointing to a complex adaptation within an organism and claim that it is proof that Darwinian evolution can produce functional sequences of information. ID proponents subsequently get into the molecular details, i.e. whacking the mole, showing why the many adaptations that Darwinists point to is not proof that Darwinian evolution can produce functional sequences of information. I fully expect that much of Dr. Behe's forthcoming book will involve 'whacking the moles' that Darwinists have pointed to as supposed proof for Darwinian evolution and showing that those adaptations actually run directly counter to the claims of Darwinists. In other words, as the title of his book, 'Darwin Devolves' and as Behe's 2010 paper, ("First Rule of Adaptive Evolution: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain"), directly imply, the vast majority of 'moles' that Darwinists have pointed to as supposed proof for Darwinian evolution, are actually proof that Darwinian processes are excellent at breaking preexisting functional sequences in order to gain a short term adaptive advantage. In other words, Darwinian processes are excellent at "De"volution. Like Dr. Behe, Dr. John Sanford has also done excellent work showing that Darwinian processes are excellent at breaking preexisting functional sequences in order to gain a short term adaptive advantage. Here is a fairly recent lecture that Dr. Sanford delivered at the National Institute of Health
NIH Presentation – Mutation Accumulation: Is it a Serious Health Risk? - John Sanford - Nov. 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqIjnol9uh8
And here is Dr. Sanford's main site that lists most of his papers establishing what he has termed to be the principle of "Genetic Entropy":
Genetic Entropy - Sanford and Company https://www.geneticentropy.org/latest-development
Many times, what gets lost in the seemingly endless 'whack a mole' game between Darwinists and ID proponents is the question of the exact nature of information. As was mentioned previously in post 11, the biological form of any particular organism is simply not reducible to the sequential information on DNA. To repeat what Stephen Meyer said, " you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan." Simply put, the positional information that is somehow telling all the particles of any particular organism where to be simply is not reducible to the sequential information on DNA. As Dr. Doug Axe states in the following video at the 1 hour 16 minute mark,
"There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don't think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that's vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there's got to be something else going on that makes us what we are." Doug Axe - Intelligent Design 3.0 - Stephen C. Meyer - video https://youtu.be/lgs6J4LqeqI?t=4575
And indeed the difference between the amounts of positional information and sequential information in an organism is staggering. While the sequential information in human DNA is estimated to be around 8 billion bits of information, the positional information in a human is estimated to be around 10^32 gigabytes,,,
Will Teleportation Ever Be Possible? - video - 2013 https://youtu.be/yfePpMTbFYY?t=76 Quote from video: "There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe." If we forget about recognizing atoms and measuring their velocities and just scale that to a resolution of one-atomic length in each direction that's about 10^32 bits (a one followed by thirty two zeros). This is so much information that even with the best optical fibers conceivable it would take over one hundred million centuries to transmit all that information!,,, (A fun talk on teleportation - Professor Samuel Braunstein - http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~schmuel/tport.html
A more 'conservative' estimate of the positional information found in a human body is, "enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000."
In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) - November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/
Moreover, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, the positional information in even a one cell bacterium is found to be enormous, i.e. 10 to the 12 bits,
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm
,,, Which is equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. 'In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong
Moreover, we have fairly strong evidence indicating that this enormous amount of positional information, that is telling all the atoms of the developing embryo exactly where to be, is not contained within the material particles of the developing embryo itself, as is held in the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution, but that this enormous amount of positional information, that is telling all these atoms of the developing embryo exactly where to be, is somehow coming into the developing embryo from outside the material realm. For instance, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484
The following article adds weight to Dr Wells assessment and states: "the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself”
Intelligent Design and the Advancement of Science - Brian Miller - December 11, 2017 Excerpt: DNA was expected to be the primary source of causality behind the operation and development of life. Such beliefs have previously raised concerns from leading scientists and mathematicians. For instance, physicist Walter Elsasser argued that the unfathomable complexity of the chemical and physically processes in life was “transcomputational” — beyond the realm of any theoretical means of computation. Moreover, the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles. As a result, life cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. An unbridgeable gap separates life from non-life. Similarly, mathematician René Thom argued that the 3D patterns of tissues in an organism’s development from egg to birth and their continuous transformation cannot be understood in terms of isolating the individual proteins generated by DNA and other molecules produced in cells. The problem is that the individual “parts” composing tissues and organs only take on the right form and function in the environment of those tissues and organs. More recent work by Denis Noble further has elucidated how every level of the biological hierarchy affects every other level, from DNA to tissues to the entire organism. Based partly on these insights, Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes. He observed that life is fundamentally different from simple physics and chemistry. It embodies the Aristotelian category of final causation, which is closely related to the idea of purpose. The conclusions of these scholars challenge materialistic philosophy at its core. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/12/intelligent-design-and-the-advancement-of-science/
bornagain77_{February 13, 2019
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Its funny that PS claims non teleological evolution is dead, *but* we cannot test for this scientifically. How do they know it is dead?!? My theory about PS is proclaiming contradictions is good for their pageviews, because it's "paradoxical" and "edgey".EricMH_{February 12, 2019
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The important thing about Minnich's critique is that it was publishedlantog_{February 12, 2019
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Lantog- Intelligent Design is OK with evolution by design. Dr. Behe's argument pertains to evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.ET_{February 12, 2019
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BA77, Did Lantog miss the important memo @10? :)PeterA_{February 12, 2019
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Lantog states: "The authors say Lenski found improved function and a new function during the experiment. If thats true it demolish’s Behe’s point." Perhaps Lantog should have read post 10 before he spoke? i.e. "in an experiment that Lenski did not take kindly to, Scott Minnich came along and falsified Lenski’s claim that it was a ‘new’ Darwinian event by showing that the adaptation was a predictable repeatable event and that it was therefore not a random, i.e. Darwinian, event," (as Lenski had falsely presupposed)bornagain77_{February 12, 2019
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That’s it? Yes, that’s it. On the one topic where the authors surely might have provided a devastating critique of Behe — if they had one — they effectively offer nothing.
Of course thats it! The authors say Lenski found improved function and a new function during the experiment. If thats true it demolish's Behe's point. Are you saying you wish they had explained more and elaborated? Well, yes, that would be nice but this was a short review. And of course Behe will have something to say about that claim. These are just the opening shots in the debate.lantog_{February 12, 2019
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This refusal of Darwinists to accept any empirical evidence that falsifies the base assumptions undergirding Darwinian thought is nothing new. Their are many lines of empirical evidence that undercut the foundational assumptions of Darwinian thought,,,
Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ
,, yet Darwinists continually refuse to accept falsification of their theory. This refusal to accept falsification of their theory by empirical evidence has, in reality, the effect of rendering their theory a unfalsifiable pseudoscience rather than a testable science. As Popper himself stated,
"In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality." Karl Popper - The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge (2014 edition), Routledge
To continue on, contrary to what Darwinists constantly claim about the power of 'random' mutations to DNA to be the driving force of Darwinian evolution, the fact of the matter is that the basic form of any organism simply is not reducible to mutations to DNA. As Jonathan Wells states in the following article, Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly.
Jonathan Wells: Far from being all-powerful, DNA does not wholly determine biological form - March 31, 2014 Excerpt: Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. - per Uncommondescent Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: But there are solid empirical grounds for arguing that changes in DNA alone cannot produce new organs or body plans. A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,, (As Jonathan Wells states),,, We can modify the DNA of a fruit fly embryo in any way we want, and there are only three possible outcomes: A normal fruit fly; A defective fruit fly; or A dead fruit fly. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html
In the following video, at the 5:55 minute mark, Stephen Meyer states that 'you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan.'
‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body-plan. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ - Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans – video – 5:55 minute mark https://youtu.be/hs4y4XLGQ-Y?t=354
And here is a excellent powerpoint presentation by Dr. Jonathan Wells, starting around the 15:00 minute mark, showing that the central dogma of Darwinian evolution, which simply stated is “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us”, is incorrect at every step.
Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (14:36 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=876 Dr. Jonathan Wells: Biology’s Quiet Revolution - podcast - April 15, 2016 On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Jonathan Wells discusses a popular claim, which he describes as “DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us”—or, every organism contains a program for itself in its DNA. Though this view fits neatly with the perspective of Darwinian evolution, it has been shown to be incorrect at every step. Listen in as Dr. Wells explains. https://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/idtf/2016/04/dr-jonathan-wells-biologys-quiet-revolution/
Moreover, the failure of reductive materialism, which undergirds Darwinian thought, to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself. In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
Thus, the entire reductive materialistic foundation which undergirds Darwinian thought is now shown to be false. Needless to say, this is NOT a minor falsification of the Darwinian theoretical framework This following video goes over many more lines of evidence that clearly show that 'biological form' is forever beyond the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution:
Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
Thus in conclusion, the ‘bottom up’ reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution is found to be grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form. Moreover, to state what should be glaringly obvious, since neo-Darwinian explanations are grossly inadequate for explaining how any particular organism might achieve its basic form, then neo-Darwinian speculations for how one type of organism might transform into another type of organism are based on pure fantasy and have no discernible experimental basis in reality. Whereas, on the other hand, Theism, especially with recent breakthroughs in 'non-local', i.e. beyond space and time, quantum biology,,,
Darwinian Materialism vs Quantum Biology - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHdD2Am1g5Y
,,,is found to be very well supported in its claim that God, Who is held to be beyond space and time*, has formed each of us in our mother’s womb. *Of note: both the Old and New Testaments, uniquely among pre-modern texts, refer to God’s activities ‘before the beginning of time’ (see for example Proverbs 8:22-23; John 1:1-3; 1 Corinthians 2:7; and 2 Timothy 1:9) … Verses:
Psalm 139:13-14 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Supplemental note and verse:
(February 2019) the physical reality of immaterial information https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/coffee-politicians-and-the-origin-of-life/#comment-672465 John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
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As to, "deriding one new one as a ‘sideshow.’ Let me add to Behe's derision of Lenski's 'one new one'. Richard Lenski, in his Long Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE), held that the infamous citrate adaptation he observed was a 'new' non-repeatable contingent event and that it was therefore undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution. Yet, the ability to utilize citrate by e-coli is not something 'new', as Lenski and his Darwinian cheerleaders try to insinuate, in that E. coli already has the capability of utilizing citrate for anaerobic growth,,,
Innovation or Renovation? By Ann Gauger - Sept. 24, 2012 Excerpt: But how significant was this innovation (citrate; Lenski)? In his paper in Quarterly Review of Biology, Dr. Michael Behe pointed out that E. coli was already capable of using citrate for anaerobic growth (when no oxygen was available). He postulated that a change in gene regulation could turn on citrate transport and permit growth on citrate under aerobic conditions. After an enormous amount of work, having sequenced the genomes of many clones along the lineages that led to the ability to use citrate, as well as lineages that never did, and testing the phenotypes of identified mutations, Blount et al. have now reported that Behe was largely right. The key innovation was a shift in regulation of the citrate operon, caused by a rearrangement that brought it close to a new promoter. http://www.biologicinstitute.org/post/32246480851/innovation-or-renovation?og=1
Moreover, in an experiment that Lenski did not take kindly to, Scott Minnich came along and falsified Lenski’s claim that it was a 'new' Darwinian event by showing that the adaptation was a predictable repeatable event and that it was therefore not a random, i.e. Darwinian, event,
Rapid Evolution of Citrate Utilization by Escherichia coli by Direct Selection Requires citT and dctA. – Minnich – Feb. 2016 The isolation of aerobic citrate-utilizing Escherichia coli (Cit(+)) in long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) has been termed a rare, innovative, presumptive speciation event. We hypothesized that direct selection would rapidly yield the same class of E. coli Cit(+) mutants and follow the same genetic trajectory: potentiation, actualization, and refinement. This hypothesis was tested,,, Potentiation/actualization mutations occurred within as few as 12 generations, and refinement mutations occurred within 100 generations.,,, E. coli cannot use citrate aerobically. Long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) performed by Blount et al. (Z. D. Blount, J. E. Barrick, C. J. Davidson, and R. E. Lenski, Nature 489:513-518, 2012) found a single aerobic, citrate-utilizing E. coli strain after 33,000 generations (15 years). This was interpreted as a speciation event. Here we show why it probably was not a speciation event. Using similar media, 46 independent citrate-utilizing mutants were isolated in as few as 12 to 100 generations. Genomic DNA sequencing revealed an amplification of the citT and dctA loci and DNA rearrangements to capture a promoter to express CitT, aerobically. These are members of the same class of mutations identified by the LTEE. We conclude that the rarity of the LTEE mutant was an artifact of the experimental conditions and not a unique evolutionary event. No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26833416 Re-interpreting Long-Term Evolution Experiments: A Conversation with Dr. Scott Minnich - March 2017 - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rpNPzQAMck
Thus Lenski's claim that the citrate adaption was something 'new' that provided undeniable proof for 'random' Darwinian evolution was in fact found to be a false claim. In fact, the repeatable nature of the citrate adaptation undercut the entire foundational base assumption of 'randomness' that undergirds Darwinian thought. In other words, the base assumption of fully random mutations, which is a central foundational assumption undergirding Darwinian thought, is now known to be false.
Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology - Denis Noble - 17 MAY 2013 Excerpt: The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection.,,, We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual.,,, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134/abstract How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. – 2013 Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611 WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Fully Random Mutations – Kevin Kelly – 2014 Excerpt: What is commonly called “random mutation” does not in fact occur in a mathematically random pattern. The process of genetic mutation is extremely complex, with multiple pathways, involving more than one system. Current research suggests most spontaneous mutations occur as errors in the repair process for damaged DNA. Neither the damage nor the errors in repair have been shown to be random in where they occur, how they occur, or when they occur. Rather, the idea that mutations are random is simply a widely held assumption by non-specialists and even many teachers of biology. There is no direct evidence for it. On the contrary, there’s much evidence that genetic mutation vary in patterns. For instance it is pretty much accepted that mutation rates increase or decrease as stress on the cells increases or decreases. These variable rates of mutation include mutations induced by stress from an organism’s predators and competition, and as well as increased mutations brought on by environmental and epigenetic factors. Mutations have also been shown to have a higher chance of occurring near a place in DNA where mutations have already occurred, creating mutation hotspot clusters—a non-random pattern. http://edge.org/response-detail/25264 Duality in the human genome – November 28, 2014 Excerpt: The results show that most genes can occur in many different forms within a population: On average, about 250 different forms of each gene exist. The researchers found around four million different gene forms just in the 400 or so genomes they analysed. This figure is certain to increase as more human genomes are examined. More than 85 percent of all genes have no predominant form which occurs in more than half of all individuals. This enormous diversity means that over half of all genes in an individual, around 9,000 of 17,500, occur uniquely in that one person – and are therefore individual in the truest sense of the word. The gene, as we imagined it, exists only in exceptional cases. “We need to fundamentally rethink the view of genes that every schoolchild has learned since Gregor Mendel’s time.,,, According to the researchers, mutations of genes are not randomly distributed between the parental chromosomes. They found that 60 percent of mutations affect the same chromosome set and 40 percent both sets. Scientists refer to these as cis and trans mutations, respectively. Evidently, an organism must have more cis mutations, where the second gene form remains intact. “It’s amazing how precisely the 60:40 ratio is maintained. It occurs in the genome of every individual – almost like a magic formula,” says Hoehe. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html
As Denis Noble stated, “The genome is an ‘organ of the cell’, not its dictator”
“The genome is an ‘organ of the cell’, not its dictator” - Denis Noble – President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences http://musicoflife.co.uk/
And as Jonathan Wells stated, "It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism."
Ask an Embryologist: Genomic Mosaicism - Jonathan Wells - February 23, 2015 Excerpt: humans have a "few thousand" different cell types. Here is my simple question: Does the DNA sequence in one cell type differ from the sequence in another cell type in the same person?,,, The simple answer is: We now know that there is considerable variation in DNA sequences among tissues, and even among cells in the same tissue. It's called genomic mosaicism. In the early days of developmental genetics, some people thought that parts of the embryo became different from each other because they acquired different pieces of the DNA from the fertilized egg. That theory was abandoned,,, ,,,(then) "genomic equivalence" -- the idea that all the cells of an organism (with a few exceptions, such as cells of the immune system) contain the same DNA -- became the accepted view. I taught genomic equivalence for many years. A few years ago, however, everything changed. With the development of more sophisticated techniques and the sampling of more tissues and cells, it became clear that genetic mosaicism is common. I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/ask_an_embryolo093851.html
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PeterA- Over on Peaceful Science Swamidass has said both Darwinism an Neo-Darwinism are dead. TEs do not accept blind watchmaker evolution.ET_{February 12, 2019
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Is saying that something “borders of fraud” the same as saying that something is fraud? Could we call fraud something that is not what it seems or is represented to be? “The UFO picture was proved to be a fraud.”PeterA_{February 12, 2019
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Bob O'H- They attack a straw man and present "evidence" that has nothing to do with what Dr. Behe is talking about. They are clueless hacks an nothing more.ET_{February 12, 2019
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jawa, Your comment seems totally irrelevant. Who cares about those issues you mentioned? Get serious buddy.PeterA_{February 12, 2019
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Why is Peaceful Science so poorly ranked by Alexa compared to UD? Is it because they are new in the market? Or maybe their portal background picture is not too attractive? BTW, their website seems to have topics that aren’t exactly science related. Is that what Peaceful Science means? That anything counts as “science”, as long as they like it? I noticed they didn’t like a topic that was purely boring science but it’s hard to figure out why.jawa_{February 12, 2019
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So Swarmidass & co don't devote a lot of space in a short review (less than 700 words) to one topic, and this is bordering on fraud? I think the cold weather in Seattle must have stopped Mr. West's supply of smelling salts.Bob O'H_{February 12, 2019
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ET: “Swamidass has already declared that Darwinism is dead ” Where did you get that information from? I thought TE folks were in Darwin’s fans club? Did I miss a memo lately? :)PeterA_{February 12, 2019
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They argue against a straw man. They seem to think Dr. Behe accepts the fixity of species when all he is doing is arguing against the proposed mechanisms of evolution, namely natural selection. Natural selection is still the only proposed mechanism allegedly capable of producing the appearance of design. And natural selection has specific entailments, one of which the mutations are random, as in chance occurrences. They don't understand that evolution by design is A) still evolution but B) just not blind and mindless. Swamidass has already declared that Darwinism is dead and yet he is railing against someone arguing against Darwinism! Is he that confused? Not one of them understands what ID claims nor what Dr. Behe is sayingET_{February 11, 2019
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I’m not a lawyer (even though I play one on TV), but is it possible to charge someone with fraud over a book review? A review, by definition, is someone’s opinion.Brother Brian_{February 11, 2019
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