Are Some of Our Opponents in the Grip of a “Domineering Parasitical Ideology”?

_{Barry Arrington

November 11, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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[It] is now obvious that the root is we are dealing with a domineering parasitical ideology in the course of destroying its host; through its inherent undermining of responsible rational freedom, the foundation of a sound life of the mind. Immediately, science, science education, the media and policy are being eaten out from within.

Indeed. The immediate context of KF’s observation is the seeming inability of the Darwinists to understand plain English over the past few days. Allow me to establish some context. In a post over at his Sandwalk blog Larry Moran quoted me when I wrote:

For years Darwinists touted “junk DNA” as not just any evidence but powerful, practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. ID proponents disagreed and argued that the evidence would ultimately demonstrate function. Not only did both hypotheses make testable predictions, the Darwinist prediction turned out to be false and the ID prediction turned out to be confirmed.

He then wrote:

But, as most Sandwalk readers know, nobody predicted junk DNA, certainly not Darwinists.

I then provided quotations from two famous Darwinists (Collins and Coyne) using the very word “prediction”:

Darwin’s theory predicts that mutations that do not affect function, (namely, those located in “junk DNA” ) will accumulate steadily over time. Mutations in the coding region of genes, however, are expected to be observed less frequently, and only a rare such event will provide a selective advantage and be retained during the evolutionary process. That is exactly what is observed.

From this we can make a prediction. We expect to find, in the genomes of many species, silenced, or ‘dead,’ genes: genes that once were useful but re no longer intact or expressed.

I also linked to Casey Luskin’s excellent article an ENV showing several more such statements. There cannot be the slightest doubt that many famous Darwinists said the theory predicts junk DNA.

“But those statements cannot possibly be predictions, because they came after junk DNA was discovered,” the Darwinists shout. One in particular (lutesuite) has started beating a drum calling for a retraction of my claim. We have two choices here:

Agree with Moran and lutesuite. But this would require us to believe Collins and Coyne are too stupid to understand what the word “prediction” means.

Disagree with Moran and lutesuite. This would require us to believe that Collins and Coyne were using the word “prediction” in a different sense than “to forecast in advance.”

I vote for (2). Is there a sense of the word “prediction” that means something other than “to forecast in advance”? It turns out there is. Collins and Coyne are not stupid. Instead, they are engaging in the commonplace act of using the term “prediction” in the sense of “retrodiction” or “postdiction”. What is that? Wikipedia explains:

Retrodiction (or postdiction . . .) is the act of making a “prediction” about the past.

My dictionary agrees.

There you have it. The mystery is solved. Collins and Coyne are not so stupid that they don’t know the meaning of the word “prediction.” Moran and lutesuite are simply wrong when they suggest they are. A prediction does not have to be temporally prior to that which is predicted if the word is used in the sense of a retrodiction.

What does all of this have to do with KF’s observation? Everything. Sadly, both Moran and lutesuite are hosting a domineering parasitical ideology that is undermining their responsible rational freedom and destroying their capacity to think clearly.

Consider this. It really is the case that for Moran and lutesuite to be correct, it must also be the case that two of the most famous scientists in the world are so staggeringly stupid that they don’t know what the word “predict” means. I do not always agree with Collins and Coyne, but it really is a little much for Moran and lutesuite to imply they are imbeciles.

The only rational conclusion is that Moran and lutesuite are wrong, and not only are they wrong, they are wrong about a very simple matter that would take only two seconds of rational thought to sort out.

But two seconds is a long time, and rational thought is hard when one is in the grip of a domineering parasitical ideology.

Comments

Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – Elisabeth Rieper – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information 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
The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought, i.e. DNA makes RNA makes Proteins makes You, is simply not the be all/end all that Darwinists imagine it to be in regards to explaining how an organism achieves its final shape:
Body Plans Are Not Mapped-Out by the DNA - Jonathan Wells - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meR8Hk5q_EM 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
In fact, in direct contradiction to the 'central dogma' of Darwinism, heritable changes can be passed on to daughter cells independent of DNA
“Additional evidence of this kind comes from ciliates, large single-celled eukaryotic organisms. Biologists have shown that microsurgery on the cell membranes of ciliates can produce heritable changes in membrane patterns without altering the DNA.34 This suggests that membrane patterns (as opposed to membrane constituents) are impressed directly on daughter cells. In both cases—in membrane patterns and centrosomes—form is transmitted from parent three-dimensional structures to daughter three-dimensional structures directly. It is not entirely contained in DNA sequences or the proteins for which these sequences code.35 Instead, in each new generation, the form and structure of the cell arises as the result of both gene products and the preexisting three-dimensional structure and organization inherent in cells, cell membranes, and cyto-skeletons. Many cellular structures are built from proteins, but proteins find their way to correct locations in part because of preexisting three-dimensional patterns and organization inherent in cellular structures. Neither structural proteins nor the genes that code for them can alone determine the three-dimensional shape and structure of the entities they build. Gene products provide necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the development of three-dimensional structure within cells, organs, and body plans.36 If this is so, then natural selection acting on genetic variation and mutations alone cannot produce the new forms that arise in the history of life.” Stephen Meyer [Darwin’s Doubt, ch.14] Membrane Patterns Carry Ontogenetic Information That Is Specified Independently of DNA - Jonathan Wells - 2014 http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.2/BIO-C.2014.2 “Live memory” of the cell, the other hereditary memory of living systems - 2005 Excerpt: To understand this notion of “live memory”, its role and interactions with DNA must be resituated; indeed, operational information belongs as much to the cell body and to its cytoplasmic regulatory protein components and other endogenous or exogenous ligands as it does to the DNA database. We will see in Section 2, using examples from recent experiments in biology, the principal roles of “live memory” in relation to the four aspects of cellular identity, memory of form, hereditary transmission and also working memory. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15888340
And although Darwinists have yet to demonstrate the origin of a single gene and/or protein by unguided material processes, even if Darwinists could demonstrate the origin of a single gene and/or protein by unguided material processes that still would not go one inch towards explaining how the approximately billion-trillion proteins in the human body 'know' how to form a human body. Talbott puts that ‘elephant in the living room’ problem that Darwinists never honestly address like this:
HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE – Stephen L. Talbott – May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”. And further: “It’s almost as if every mRNA [an intermediate between a gene and a corresponding protein] coming out of the nucleus knows where it’s going” (Travis 2011),,, Further, the billion protein molecules in a cell are virtually all capable of interacting with each other to one degree or another; they are subject to getting misfolded or “all balled up with one another”; they are critically modified through the attachment or detachment of molecular subunits, often in rapid order and with immediate implications for changing function; they can wind up inside large-capacity “transport vehicles” headed in any number of directions; they can be sidetracked by diverse processes of degradation and recycling… and so on without end. Yet the coherence of the whole is maintained. The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. Two systems biologists, one from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and one from Harvard Medical School, frame one part of the problem this way: “The human body is formed by trillions of individual cells. These cells work together with remarkable precision, first forming an adult organism out of a single fertilized egg, and then keeping the organism alive and functional for decades. To achieve this precision, one would assume that each individual cell reacts in a reliable, reproducible way to a given input, faithfully executing the required task. However, a growing number of studies investigating cellular processes on the level of single cells revealed large heterogeneity even among genetically identical cells of the same cell type. (Loewer and Lahav 2011)”,,, And then we hear that all this meaningful activity is, somehow, meaningless or a product of meaninglessness. This, I believe, is the real issue troubling the majority of the American populace when they are asked about their belief in evolution. They see one thing and then are told, more or less directly, that they are really seeing its denial. Yet no one has ever explained to them how you get meaning from meaninglessness — a difficult enough task once you realize that we cannot articulate any knowledge of the world at all except in the language of meaning.,,, http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2
Talbott also asks this very profound, yet simple, question
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings picture - What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? http://cdn-4.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/harvardd-2.jpg
The non-local quantum information that was briefly discussed above, (i.e. shown to be in both DNA and proteins), gives us a solid clue as to what that power may be that 'holds that moment off — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer'. In quantum mechanics, it is information that is 'conserved' not matter and energy:
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
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Larry Moran @176, regardless of how enamored you are with Lynch, or any other 'expert' who holds to the 'bottom up' DNA centered view of life, the fact of the matter is that biological form is not reducible to DNA. i.e. Body plans, contrary to neo-Darwinian presuppositions, simply are not reducible to DNA, period! That finding pretty much renders any Darwinian argument based on DNA alone moot and void: First off, Darwinists assume that mutations to DNA will produce fundamentally new body plans. They simply have no experimental basis whatsoever for assuming that changes to DNA will generate new types of body plans.
Response to John Wise – October 2010 Excerpt: 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–because none of the observed developmental mutations benefit the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html
In the following experiments, the ‘form’ of a body plan is clearly shown to not be reducible to any conceivable mechanism of genetic reductionism, i.e. reductive materialism, as is falsely presupposed in Darwinian thought:
What Do Organisms Mean? Stephen L. Talbott – Winter 2011 Excerpt: Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern. Lewontin went on to remark: “Unlike a machine whose totality is created by the juxtaposition of bits and pieces with different functions and properties, the bits and pieces of a developing organism seem to come into existence as a consequence of their spatial position at critical moments in the embryo’s development. Such an object is less like a machine than it is like a language whose elements… take unique meaning from their context.[3]”,,, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean “Last year I had a fair chunk of my nose removed in skin cancer surgery (Mohs). The surgeon took flesh from a nearby area to fill in the large hole he’d made. The pictures of it were scary. But in the healing process the replanted cells somehow ‘knew’ how to take a different shape appropriate for the new location so that the nose now looks remarkably natural. The doctor said he could take only half the credit because the cells somehow know how to change form for a different location (though they presumably still follow the same DNA code) . — I’m getting the feeling that we’ve been nearly as reductionist in the 20-21st century as Darwin and his peers were when they viewed cells as little blobs of jelly.” leodp – UD blogger Epigenetics and neuroplasticity: The case of the rewired ferrets – April 3, 2014 Excerpt: Like inventive electricians rewiring a house, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have reconfigured newborn ferret brains so that the animals’ eyes are hooked up to brain regions where hearing normally develops. The surprising result is that the ferrets develop fully functioning visual pathways in the auditory portions of their brains. In other words, they see the world with brain tissue that was only thought capable of hearing sounds. – per UD If DNA really rules (morphology), why did THIS happen? – April 2014 Excerpt: Researchers implanted human embryonic neuronal cells into a mouse embryo. Mouse and human neurons have distinct morphologies (shapes). Because the human neurons feature human DNA, they should be easy to identify. Which raises a question: Would the human neurons implanted in developing mouse brain have a mouse or a human morphology? Well, the answer is, the human neurons had a mouse morphology. They could be distinguished from the mouse ones only by their human genetic markers. If DNA really ruled, we would expect a human morphology.” – per UD DNA doesn’t even tell teeth what they should look like – April 3, 2014 Excerpt: A friend writes to mention a mouse experiment where developing tooth buds were moved so that the incisors and the molars were switched. The tooth buds became the tooth appropriate to the switched location, not the original one, in direct contrast to what we would expect from a gene’centric view. – per UD
Moreover, many proteins have no dedicated shape, (IDPs, Intrinsically Disordered Proteins), but have varying shapes depending on what particular molecular 'context' they are in:
“It was long believed that a protein molecule’s three-dimensional shape, on which its function depends, is uniquely determined by its amino acid sequence. But we now know that this is not always true – the rate at which a protein is synthesized, which depends on factors internal and external to the cell, affects the order in which its different portions fold. So even with the same sequence a given protein can have different shapes and functions. Furthermore, many proteins have no intrinsic shape, (intrinsically disordered proteins), taking on different roles in different molecular contexts. So even though genes specify protein sequences they have only a tenuous (very weak or slight) influence over their functions. ,,,,So, to reiterate, the genes do not uniquely determine what is in the cell, but what is in the cell determines how the genes get used. Only if the pie were to rise up, take hold of the recipe book and rewrite the instructions for its own production, would this popular analogy for the role of genes be pertinent. Stuart A. Newman, Ph.D. – Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Biology's Quiet Revolution - Jonathan Wells - September 8, 2014 Excerpt: In 1996, biologists discovered a protein that does not fold into a unique shape but can assume different shapes when it interacts with other molecules. Since then, many such proteins have been found; they are called "intrinsically disordered proteins," or IDPs. IDPs are surprisingly common, and their disordered regions play important functional roles.,,, So it is not true that biologists know all the basic features of living cells and are merely filling in the details. Nor is it true that Darwinian evolution is a settled scientific "fact," as its defenders claim. Huge unanswered questions remain, and they will only be answered by going beyond the discredited myth that "DNA makes RNA makes protein makes us." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/biologys_quiet_089651.html Unfolded 'junk' Proteins have function - April 2014 Excerpt: In 2013 functions were identified for many of these (unfolded) “intrinsically disordered proteins” (IDPs), as they are sometimes called. Functions such as crucial roles in regulating ion channels and molecular hubs in intracellular signaling networks. A friend points us to: [1] Bozoky Z, Krzeminski M, Chong PA, Forman-Kay JD (2013) Structural changes of CFTR R region upon phosphorylation: A plastic platform for intramolecular and intermolecular interactions. FEBS J 280:4407-4416. doi:10.1111/febs.12422 [2] Ferreon ACM, Ferreon JC, Wright PE, Deniz AA (2013) Modulation of allostery by protein intrinsic disorder. Nature 498:390-394. doi:10.1038/nature12294 [3] Cumberworth A, Lamour G, Babu MM, Gsponer J (2013) Promiscuity as a functional trait: Intrinsically disordered regions as central players of interactomes. Biochem J 454:361-369. doi:10.1042/BJ20130545
Also of note: Protein folding itself is dependent on 'non-local' quantum information, thus the reductive materialism of neo-Darwinian evolution cannot, in principle, explain how ANY protein achieves its final shape. i.e. The failure of Darwinian explanations for how proteins find their final folded shapes is not just for intrinsically disordered proteins but is for ALL proteins.
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: 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.,,, 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/
The same is found for the genome, i.e. DNA, like many proteins, assumes different shapes depending on what particular molecular context it is in:
Tissue-specific spatial organization of genomes - 2004 Excerpt: Using two-dimensional and three-dimensional fluorescence in situ hybridization we have carried out a systematic analysis of the spatial positioning of a subset of mouse chromosomes in several tissues. We show that chromosomes exhibit tissue-specific organization. Chromosomes are distributed tissue-specifically with respect to their position relative to the center of the nucleus and also relative to each other. Subsets of chromosomes form distinct types of spatial clusters in different tissues and the relative distance between chromosome pairs varies among tissues. Consistent with the notion that nonrandom spatial proximity is functionally relevant in determining the outcome of chromosome translocation events, we find a correlation between tissue-specific spatial proximity and tissue-specific translocation prevalence. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues. http://genomebiology.com/content/5/7/R44
That DNA does not, as is held by Darwinists, determine body plans is also clearly demonstrated by the following experiments,
Extreme Genome Repair - 2009 Excerpt: If its naming had followed, rather than preceded, molecular analyses of its DNA, the extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans might have been called Lazarus. After shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces by desiccation or a high dose of ionizing radiation, D. radiodurans miraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal.,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3319128/ In the lab, scientists coax E. coli to resist radiation damage - March 17, 2014 Excerpt: ,,, John R. Battista, a professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University, showed that E. coli could evolve to resist ionizing radiation by exposing cultures of the bacterium to the highly radioactive isotope cobalt-60. "We blasted the cultures until 99 percent of the bacteria were dead. Then we'd grow up the survivors and blast them again. We did that twenty times," explains Cox. The result were E. coli capable of enduring as much as four orders of magnitude more ionizing radiation, making them similar to Deinococcus radiodurans, a desert-dwelling bacterium found in the 1950s to be remarkably resistant to radiation. That bacterium is capable of surviving more than one thousand times the radiation dose that would kill a human. http://www.news.wisc.edu/22641 Pond scum smashes genome into over 225k parts, then rebuilds it - Sept. 9, 2014 Excerpt: The pond-dwelling, single-celled organism Oxytricha trifallax has the remarkable ability to break its own DNA into nearly a quarter-million pieces and rapidly reassemble those pieces when it’s time to mate, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/pond-scum-smashes-genome-into-over-225k-parts-then-rebuilds-it/
How can bacteria reconstruct fragmented DNA if the Genetic/Molecular reductionism model of neo-Darwinism were actually true? i.e. How can bacteria possibly ‘know’ the correct sequence of DNA so as to put it back together properly? Moreover, like proteins, DNA is also dependent on 'non-local' quantum information so as to explain its shape. Thus, the the reductive materialism that Darwinian evolution is based upon cannot even explain how DNA achieves its own shape, much less can it explain how an entire organism achieves its shape
Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours. “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/
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GD, With all due respect, I must differ. To begin with, you full well know that it is a COMMON resort by Darwinists to appeal to the assertion that the Darwinist macro picture is fact, Fact, FACT; with implication that only fools dispute facts. A simple glance back above will show that I spoke to that generality. As one advocating Darwinism and/or objecting to design you can hardly properly object to my highlighting that common-run behaviour and other linked behaviours that show the pattern of ideological indoctrination and imposition I am addressing. Where, BTW, this particular issue popped up in and around UD in recent days [i.e. AC] so it is a live issue. In fact, in your onward remarks you show that you too commit much the same error of conflating highly inferential and ideologically loaded macroevolutionary explanation with direct observation of actual empirical fact:
There are some parts of evolutionary theory that are so well supported that they can be considered facts. Widespread (if not necessarily universal) common ancestry. Mutation, selection, and drift all happen; we see ’em in the lab, we see ’em in the wild, and we see their effects in genomes.
Do you not see the error of conflation and halo of factual character by close rhetorical association you just fell into? What we see in the lab is small changes in populations, often by loss of prior function or in Lenski's case apparent recovery of ability to use an existing mechanism under aerobic conditions. What we have definitely not actually seen is observation of common ancestry of body plans by blind watchmaker chance and/or necessity via chance non foresighted variations of the 47 or whatever kinds, followed by differential reproductive success and descent with modification leading to the rise of divergent major body plans from a common unicellular ancestor. We have not even seen the rise of humans diverse from chimps or whatever from a common population what 6 - 10 MYA. Nor, have you or anyone else shown that blind chance and mechanical necessity can account for the required FSCO/I, at OOL in the first instance (to include origin of the von Neumann, code using kinematic self replication integrated with gated encapsulation of a metabolic automaton), or for origin of body plans or adaptations at macro level requiring 10 - 100+ mn bases worth of new genetic info. In the chimp vs human case, in 6 - 10 MY we need to account for ~ 60 mb bases, per the 2% difference scenario that is commonly put forth. With populations of order 10^4, pop gen times of order 5 - 20 or so years, and more. What we have seen is that FSCO/I has but one observed and needle in haystack blind search analysis plausible cause. Intelligently directed configuration. Which obtains whether or not we do in fact have common ancestry as is commonly inferred or believed in educated circles. But there is more, as you go on to assert something that is highly misleading but widely believed concerning why it is that an inference to design is commonly excluded in circles dominated by evolutionary materialist scientism and/or its fellow travellers:
Methodological naturalism is part of science, but philosophical naturalism is not.
Actually, methodological naturalism is demonstrably often a stalking horse that allows the ideology of evolutionary materialist scientism to be imposed on both science and science education. I have already cited Rational Wiki as a particularly blatant case:
"Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific "dead ends" and God of the gaps-type hypotheses."
if you think that is merely idiosyncratic, consider here the formal position of the US NSTA Board (of Science Teachers) in July 2000 after commissioning a major study, in a context where they went on to partner with the NAS in imposing this, e.g. in Kansas c 2005:
Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work . . . . Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> notice the strawman tactic, ever since Plato in The Laws bk X 2350 years ago, the proper alernative is natural [= blind chance and/or mechanical necessity] vs the ART-ificial] in the production of scientific knowledge.
Likewise, the NAS in its 2008 form of a long running pamphlet on teaching evolution, p. 10, more subtly declared:
In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature, scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations.
Notice, the same caricatured contrast and the implication, that blind forces only can be appealed to in science, i.e. there is an implicit evolutionary materialism at work, it is not just oh we cannot appeal to God of the gaps. besides, the deep past of origins is precisely a non-reproducible set of events, and if the above were taken at literal force would be ruled unscientific. But of course, the knife is only to used on sheep, not goats. I could go on, but it is enough here to cite the well known case of Lewontin in his NYRB article on Sagan's last book, as that spells all out ever so clearly and undeniably, and that by a major member of the elite scientific circles concerned:
. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . . It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
Pace a typical dismissive talking point, patently this is not "quote-mined" etc etc, and it lays our exactly why we are deeply concerned about ideological imposition of what has to be called evolutionary materialist scentism in science, in education, in policy, in law, in the media and in the wider culture. But, we have one main talking point to go, your:
Everyone here is falling all over themselves accusing those of us on the science side of being hopelessly biased, irrational, etc. All I can really say is, have you looked in a mirror lately? The level of irrational bias on the ID side is completely ridiculous. Do you have all have any self-awareness at all?
This is of course a clear case of turnabout accusation, and of linked personalising and polarising, in reply to a concern on the incoherence of a philosophical view. That itself speaks volumes, saddening volumes.(Inadvertently, that sort of resort tells us also, the point hits close to home, provoking an attempt to lash out and shoot at the messenger bearing unwelcome tidings.) Let me first note in brief from Haldane on the substantial matter, of the incoherence of evolutionary materialism -- as has been commonly pointed out since the 1930's; this concern is nothing new and it is as cogent today as it was at the turn of the 1930's:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]
That is of course a major evolutionary theorist speaking and voicing a significant concern. When I cited Pearcey on the point in 34 above, I was citing an elaboration, not a novel point. And she highlights several cases where the issue is increasingly recognised as a significant one. But instead of addressing the substance, you tried to indulge a personality laced ad hominem that in effect appeals to the contempt laced notion that those who disagree with the evolutionary materialist establishment are ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked. Which, post Umpqua, your side needs to seriously walk back to help dial back the voltage polarising and poisoning the atmosphere. Let me elaborate the substantial issue just a tad, by way of Reppert, building on Lewis, who in turn made reference to Haldane:
. . . let us suppose that brain state A, which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.
Got the key point? Namely, It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [[But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [[so] we do not have a case of rational inference. That is, computation is inherently a blind mechanical process of cause and effect, just as the flowing water that energises a mill's wheels is about the blind force not the functionally specific information rich organisation that mills the corn. That is GIGO obtains for computation precisely because it is blindly mechanical. One cog cares not that it is part of a mill, it is only blindly acting under imposed force. The effectiveness of the programming depends on intelligently directed configuration, not on the mere possibility of mechanism. The contrivance behind mechanism has to be adequately accounted for. But, as we will readily experience in ourselves, our self-aware, rational contemplation is utterly unlike that. There is a categorical difference to be accounted for, and it is pivotal as without responsibly free, rational contemplation, reason, warrant, knowledge and logically driven discussion collapse in a sea of blind, GIGO-limited mechanical cause-effect driven mill wheel grinding computation and accidents of programming. The effects of this sort of thinking, influenced by precisely the sort of evolutionary materialistic scientism that is so dominant in power centres and is spreading though our civilisation, are evident all around us. And, not for the good. Now, let me outline my own chain of thought on the matter . . . rooted in reflections and findings that are now some 25 - 30 years past:
a: Evolutionary materialism argues that the cosmos is the product of chance interactions of matter and energy, within the constraint of the laws of nature; from hydrogen to humans by undirected chance and necessity. b: Therefore, all phenomena in the universe, without residue, are determined by the working of purposeless laws of chance and/or mechanical necessity acting on material objects, under the direct or indirect control of happenstance initial circumstances. (This is physicalism. This view covers both the forms where (a) the mind and the brain are seen as one and the same thing, and those where (b) somehow mind emerges from and/or "supervenes" on brain, perhaps as a result of sophisticated and complex software looping. The key point, though is as already noted: physical causal closure -- the phenomena that play out across time, without residue, are in principle deducible or at least explainable up to various random statistical distributions and/or mechanical laws, from prior physical states. Such physical causal closure, clearly, implicitly discounts or even dismisses the causal effect of concept formation and reasoning then responsibly deciding, in favour of specifically physical interactions in the brain-body control loop; indeed, some mock the idea of -- in their view -- an "obviously" imaginary "ghost" in the meat-machine. [[There is also some evidence from simulation exercises, that accuracy of even sensory perceptions may lose out to utilitarian but inaccurate ones in an evolutionary competition. "It works" does not warrant the inference to "it is true."] ) c: But human thought, clearly a phenomenon in the universe, must now fit into this meat-machine picture. So, we rapidly arrive at Crick's claim in his The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994): what we subjectively experience as "thoughts," "reasoning" and "conclusions" can only be understood materialistically as the unintended by-products of the blind natural forces which cause and control the electro-chemical events going on in neural networks in our brains that (as the Smith Model illustrates) serve as cybernetic controllers for our bodies. d: These underlying driving forces are viewed as being ultimately physical, but are taken to be partly mediated through a complex pattern of genetic inheritance shaped by forces of selection [["nature"] and psycho-social conditioning [["nurture"], within the framework of human culture [[i.e. socio-cultural conditioning and resulting/associated relativism]. And, remember, the focal issue to such minds -- notice, this is a conceptual analysis made and believed by the materialists! -- is the physical causal chains in a control loop, not the internalised "mouth-noises" that may somehow sit on them and come along for the ride. (Save, insofar as such "mouth noises" somehow associate with or become embedded as physically instantiated signals or maybe codes in such a loop. [[How signals, languages and codes originate and function in systems in our observation of such origin -- i.e by design -- tends to be pushed to the back-burner and conveniently forgotten. So does the point that a signal or code takes its significance precisely from being an intelligently focused on, observed or chosen and significant alternative from a range of possibilities that then can guide decisive action.]) e: For instance, Marxists commonly derided opponents for their “bourgeois class conditioning” — but what of the effect of their own class origins? Freudians frequently dismissed qualms about their loosening of moral restraints by alluding to the impact of strict potty training on their “up-tight” critics — but doesn’t this cut both ways? Should we not ask a Behaviourist whether s/he is little more than yet another operantly conditioned rat trapped in the cosmic maze? And -- as we saw above -- would the writings of a Crick be any more than the firing of neurons in networks in his own brain? f: For further instance, we may take the favourite whipping-boy of materialists: religion. Notoriously, they often hold that belief in God is not merely cognitive, conceptual error, but delusion. Borderline lunacy, in short. But, if such a patent "delusion" is so utterly widespread, even among the highly educated, then it "must" -- by the principles of evolution -- somehow be adaptive to survival, whether in nature or in society. And so, this would be a major illustration of the unreliability of our conceptual reasoning ability, on the assumption of evolutionary materialism. g: Turning the materialist dismissal of theism around, evolutionary materialism itself would be in the same leaky boat. For, the sauce for the goose is notoriously just as good a sauce for the gander, too . . . . j: Therefore, though materialists will often try to pointedly ignore or angrily brush aside the issue, we may freely argue: if such evolutionary materialism is true, then (i) our consciousness, (ii) the "thoughts" we have, (iii) the conceptualised beliefs we hold, (iv) the reasonings we attempt based on such and (v) the "conclusions" and "choices" (a.k.a. "decisions") we reach -- without residue -- must be produced and controlled by blind forces of chance happenstance and mechanical necessity that are irrelevant to "mere" ill-defined abstractions such as: purpose or truth, or even logical validity. (NB: The conclusions of such "arguments" may still happen to be true, by astonishingly lucky coincidence — but we have no rational grounds for relying on the “reasoning” that has led us to feel that we have “proved” or "warranted" them. It seems that rationality itself has thus been undermined fatally on evolutionary materialistic premises. Including that of Crick et al. Through, self-reference leading to incoherence and utter inability to provide a cogent explanation of our commonplace, first-person experience of reasoning and rational warrant for beliefs, conclusions and chosen paths of action. Reduction to absurdity and explanatory failure in short.) k: And, if materialists then object: “But, we can always apply scientific tests, through observation, experiment and measurement,” then we must immediately note that -- as the fate of Newtonian Dynamics between 1880 and 1930 shows -- empirical support is not equivalent to establishing the truth of a scientific theory. For, at any time, one newly discovered countering fact can in principle overturn the hitherto most reliable of theories. (And as well, we must not lose sight of this: in science, one is relying on the legitimacy of the reasoning process to make the case that scientific evidence provides reasonable albeit provisional warrant for one's beliefs etc. Scientific reasoning is not independent of reasoning.) l: Worse, in the case of origins science theories, we simply were not there to directly observe the facts of the remote past, so origins sciences are even more strongly controlled by assumptions and inferences than are operational scientific theories. So, we contrast the way that direct observations of falling apples and orbiting planets allow us to test our theories of gravity . . . . o: More important, to demonstrate that empirical tests provide empirical support to the materialists' theories would require the use of the very process of reasoning and inference which they have discredited. p: Thus, evolutionary materialism arguably reduces reason itself to the status of illusion. But, as we have seen: immediately, that must include “Materialism.” q: In the end, it is thus quite hard to escape the conclusion that materialism is based on self-defeating, question-begging logic. r: So, while materialists -- just like the rest of us -- in practice routinely rely on the credibility of reasoning and despite all the confidence they may project, they at best struggle to warrant such a tacitly accepted credibility of mind and of concepts and reasoned out conclusions relative to the core claims of their worldview. (And, sadly: too often, they tend to pointedly ignore or rhetorically brush aside the issue.)
On right of fair comment, I think I can safely say there is a serious case to be answered, that evolutionary materialist scientism is inherently self-referential, incoherent and self falsifying. A case that of right needs to be addressed substantially, not by polarising, denigratory personalities and dismissive talking points. KFkairosfocus_{November 13, 2015
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Larry Moran: We know that Michael Lynch is one of the world’s leading experts on population genetics and molecular evolution.
Yes, we all know that. But let’s suppose, arguendo, that a naturalistic “blind watchmaker” evolution never occurred, simply because naturalism fails to accommodate life and is self-referentially incoherent and therefore self-refuting.* In that context, would Michael Lynch be one of the world’s leading experts on bunk — drivel, flim-flam, hokum, phooey, marlarkey? --- *KairosfocusBox_{November 13, 2015
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I wonder has Prof Moran actually read Darwin's doubt yet? Cover to cover?Andre_{November 13, 2015
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Mr. Arrington. I have seen this phrase 'genetic fallacy' a couple times. Could you please explain what it means, or direct me to a link that will explain it. Thank you.brian douglas_{November 12, 2015
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Larry:
Is Stephen Meyer an expert on population genetics and molecular evolution?
Commit the genetic fallacy much?Barry Arrington_{November 12, 2015
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Box says,
In chapter 16 of ‘Darwin’s Doubt’ Meyer offers several arguments against Lynch’s (and Moran’s) neutral theory. Let me quote one.
We know that Michael Lynch is one of the world's leading experts on population genetics and molecular evolution. It would be foolish to dispute that. We know that I am not, although I do try and keep up with the experts. Is Stephen Meyer an expert on population genetics and molecular evolution?Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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Gordon:
So, we don’t have a solid case that life did originate, or even could’ve originated, naturally. Does that mean we can infer some sort of ID must’ve been involved?
If that was all we had, not really. But given what we do have, then absolutely.Virgil Cain_{November 12, 2015
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In chapter 16 of 'Darwin's Doubt' Meyer offers several arguments against Lynch's (and Moran's) neutral theory. Let me quote one.
Lynch assumes a false gene-centric view of the origin of biological form. As he writes: “Most of the phenotypic diversity that we perceive in the natural world is directly attributable to the peculiar structure of the eukaryotic gene.”42 His view overlooks the crucial role of epigenetic information and structure in the origin of animal form discussed in Chapter 14 and, therefore, does nothing to explain its origin.
Box_{November 12, 2015
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kairosfocus @170:
GD, pardon, but if the Darwinism proponents had the goods as they often project (fact, Fact, FACT) that essay would be all over the Internet in many forms as survey feature articles. The ABSENCE is what is so telling. Later. KF
Did you bother to read what I wrote? Did you see me say "fact, Fact, FACT," or anything vaguely like it? There are some parts of evolutionary theory that are so well supported that they can be considered facts. Widespread (if not necessarily universal) common ancestry. Mutation, selection, and drift all happen; we see 'em in the lab, we see 'em in the wild, and we see their effects in genomes. Other things are not well established. The one you're particularly concerned with, materialism, is neither well-established nor part of evolutionary theory. I'm not going to say anything at all like "fact, Fact, FACT" about it, because I don't consider it one. I think it (or some variant, like physicalism) is the best available guess at the nature of reality, but I consider that a (semi-educated) guess, not fact. Also, not part of evolution, nor of science in general. Methodological naturalism is part of science, but philosophical naturalism is not. Everyone here is falling all over themselves accusing those of us on the science side of being hopelessly biased, irrational, etc. All I can really say is, have you looked in a mirror lately? The level of irrational bias on the ID side is completely ridiculous. Do you have all have any self-awareness at all? I certainly won't claim to be unbiased myself, but I do try to be aware of my own biases, and keep them some vague sort of under control. What about those of you on the ID side? Do you really think bias is only something that happens to other people, or are you aware of your own biases? In particular, how can you be sure that it's the evolutionists, not yourselves, that are hopelessly blinded by their metaphysical biases?Gordon Davisson_{November 12, 2015
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Dr. Moran @158, you seem to suffer from the severely misguided belief that if you point to what you imagine to be non-functionality in the genome then you have somehow proven how unguided material processes can produce the astonishing functionality we see in the genome. To quote Pauli, your reasoning in this matter is "Not Even Wrong!" In order to explain functionality, 'scientifically', you must in fact experimentally demonstrate that the mechanisms you propose, namely unguided material processes, can indeed do what you claim they can. In that basic experimental requirement, your preferred atheistic/materialistic explanation fails miserably. Indeed, your preferred atheistic/materialistic explanation is not even in the right ballpark of being the correct explanation!
Michael Behe - Observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution - video - Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines 25:56 minute quote - "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svV8wNUqvA
relevant Feynman quote:
The Scientific Method – Richard Feynman – video Quote: ‘If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY
A few more notes:
Information Enigma (Where did the information come from?) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-FcnLsF1g Complex grammar of the genomic language – November 9, 2015 Excerpt: The ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world. The findings explain why the human genome is so difficult to decipher –,,, ,,, in their recent study in Nature, the Taipale team examines the binding preferences of pairs of transcription factors, and systematically maps the compound DNA words they bind to. Their analysis reveals that the grammar of the genetic code is much more complex than that of even the most complex human languages. Instead of simply joining two words together by deleting a space, the individual words that are joined together in compound DNA words are altered, leading to a large number of completely new words. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151109140252.htm
I'll give you a hint where the information comes from Dr. Moran: Verse:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Here is a song for you Dr. Moran
Creed - My Own Prison - music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBBqjGd3fHQ
bornagain_{November 12, 2015
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PS: The actual thread focus is the grip of evolutionary materialist ideology, from the title on.kairosfocus_{November 12, 2015
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GD, pardon, but if the Darwinism proponents had the goods as they often project (fact, Fact, FACT) that essay would be all over the Internet in many forms as survey feature articles. The ABSENCE is what is so telling. Later. KFkairosfocus_{November 12, 2015
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Moranite@168 says "Agreed. This argument is all about Barry defending his ego, which has no significance at all to the larger debate" Erm No, it was about Professor Moran shooting his mouth off and moranites like you, defending the failures of Moran instead of recommending that Moran apologize to Mr Arrington. Go and read the posts objectively and stop talking BS.Jack Jones_{November 12, 2015
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kairosfocus @110:
GD, actually, all of this is distractive.
Agreed. This argument is all about Barry defending his ego, which has no significance at all to the larger debate. So, to distract from the current distraction, let me take a quick look at the rest of what you said:
Last month marks three years since I decided it was time to focus the main issue in its pure form, by issuing a challenge to darwinism advocates to address warranting their case starting with OOL and continuing through on blind watchmaker body plan evolution; a 6,000 word essay — feature length article — was the suggested approach, you can link elsewhere but should make your case in a nutshell that satisfactorily addresses the warrant for the grand narrative from roots to twigs on the tree of life. The offer is still open, no truly satisfactory essay has ever been put forward. OOL of course focusses the origin of FSCO/I without intelligent configuration issue in a context where the dodge by way of oh natural selection is magic is not on the table. For such reproduction is part of what has to be accounted for. The three years long want of solid answer speaks volumes on the issue on the merits, however much some may wish to preen themselves on their mastery of the latest epicycles and on dismissing those who don’t chase along on the rabbit trail. Sorry, the scheme is rotten from its root, OOL. KF
I'm certainly not going to be able to give you the essay you want, and I don't think anyone else can either. Let me take a look at why this is, and what inferences can (and cannot) be drawn from this. (And I should start with a caveat: I'm not particularly knowledgable about the state of OOL research, so take everything I say with a large grain of salt.) Nobody knows how life got started. Actually, there are two related questions: how life could have started, and how it actually did start. People have come up with a number of hypotheses about how the various critical properties of living organisms (reproduction, metabolism, encapsulation, etc) originated, but I don't know of any that fully explain the origin of all of these properties in the same proto-organism. Also, even if someone comes up with a fully-worked-out process that could've produced a proto-organism abiotically, it'd still just be a hypothesis about what actually happened. Before it could be taken particularly seriously as the actual process, it'd have to be tested; and with the limited evidence available from that long ago, testing such a hypothesis is going to be difficult. Not impossible, mind you; you can do things like using phylogenetic methods to infer the properties of early organisms (at least as far back as LUCA, the last universal common ancestor), and compare them with what the OOL hypothesis predicts about the properties of the first organisms. It's difficult, but not impossible. Just the sort of thing that makes science interesting. So, we don't have a solid case that life did originate, or even could've originated, naturally. Does that mean we can infer some sort of ID must've been involved? Of course not, that would be an argument from ignorance (specifically, an ID-of-the-gaps argument). In order to do that you need to make a positive case that life could not have originated naturally. Which is where things like information-theoretic arguments (CSI and FSCO/I and such) come in. My take on these arguments is that ... well, they're actually a little like the situation with hypotheses about naturalistic OOL; there are two requirements a definition of information (call it "X") must meet to make an argument against the naturalistic origin of something ("Y"): it must be possible to show that Y has X, and it must be possible to show that X cannot originate without ID. As with OOL hypotheses, there are definitions of information that meet the first requirement (e.g. the earlier versions of Dembski's CSI) and maybe some that meet the second (e.g. the 2005 version of Dembski's CSI comes at least very close), but I don't know of any that meet both requirements at once. For the probability-based definitions (such as Dembski's CSI and your FSCO/I), the biggest problem is the question of what probability distribution you base your calculation on. Consider a simple scenario: I find an object (something fairly inert, like a rock), and discover that it's a bit warmer on one side than the other. After checking out the object and its surroundings a bit, I can't find any explanation for this temperature difference. Now, the probability of a macroscopic temperature difference arising at random (i.e. by the random motions of the atoms that make up the object) is astronomically tiny -- so far beyond any probability bound you might name that it's not even funny. If I take the temperature gradient as my specification (technically, I'd treat the thermodynamic macrostate as the specification), and use the probability of that gradient arising at random to calculate the information content, I'm going to get a ridiculously huge number. If you use a definition of information that assumes a uniform random distribution, you're going to find that this object has a huge CSI (or FSCO/I, or whatever) content, and therefore must've been intelligently produced. And you'll probably be wrong; I'd argue that in the case described, an unknown but natural process is an entirely plausible explanation. So if you assume a uniform distribution for unknown natural processes, unknown natural processes can produce information. On the other hand, if you take the approach of Dembski's 2005 version of CSI, you need to calculate the probability based on a hypothesis about the origin of the event in question. I don't have a hypothesis, therefore can't do the calculation, therefore can't infer information (CSI/whatever). And the same thing'll happen with the origin of life: no good hypothesis, no way to calculate probability, no way to infer information. So where does that leave us? As far as I can see, basically nowhere. There's no way to out ID and no way to rule out naturalism. So I don't think OOL provides a useful argument in either direction.Gordon Davisson_{November 12, 2015
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Ladies and Gentlemen. Larry Moran apparently has turned into a turtle and gone into his shell. Did this really occur? Is that an example of evolution or devolution? Does that mean that evolution is not irreversible and that he evolved into a creature that was meant to be much earlier?, If it was evolution it wasn't even in offspring over generations but happened to Moran himself. Does that mean that Richard Goldschmit was nearly right? Will evolutionists have to plot new evolutionary relationships and claim they knew this all along? Is this an example of convergent evolution, Did Professor Moran evolve into a turtle to hide in his shell independent of how other turtles evolved, because he does not know a simple question to this mythical "modern evolutionary theory" he keeps mentioning? Even Eldredge and Gould wouldn't have come up with that type of leap, to explain the discontinuity away. It's interesting folks.Jack Jones_{November 12, 2015
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Ladies and Gentlemen. Professor Moran carries on as if he knows what the theory of evolution is, But he does not even know the answer to this question. Do you believe that evolution occurs according to need or happens irregardless of need? Hey Larry, Why don't you know?, seeing as you keep going on about people not understanding "modern evolutionary theory"? hahahahahaJack Jones_{November 12, 2015
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Mung asks, What about the book by Avise? It's not bad but it's a bit too religious (accommodationist) for my liking.
I have three main goals in this book: to help to educate a broad audience about the inner workings of the human genome, to challenge proponents of Intelligent Design to address, more critically, the ancient theodicy challenge as it applies at the biomolecular level; and in general to promote the evolutionary sciences as a preferred means to comprehend biological phenomena. Specifically, I hope to nurture the sentiment that objective science—in this case from the field of molecular evolutionary genetics—can inform humanity's attempts to understand the etiologies of complex biotic traits and processes.
Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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I actually had both those books bookmarked. Guess now I'll have to take the plunge on at least one of them. :) What about the book by Avise? Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent DesignMung_{November 12, 2015
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Professor Moran. Do you believe that evolution occurs according to need or happens irregardless of need?Jack Jones_{November 12, 2015
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Mung asks, On the against side we have The Myth of Junk DNA. Are you aware of any single book that makes the best case for the for side? If I don’t already have it I’ll get it. I'm working on it. It will be called "What's in Your Genome?" If you're nice to me from now on, I'll send you a copy. :-) Other "against' books are: Nessa Carey's book "Junk DNA: A Journey Through the Dark Matter of the Genome." and, John Parrington's book "The Deeper Genome."Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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Barry Arrington asks, Was there ever a time when you believed more than 90% of the human genome was junk (such as the 97% number quoted in the ENV post)? No, never. I moved from mostly functional (1969-74)—like most "Darwinians" at the time—to 90% junk (after 1972). I switched when I learned more about modern evolutionary theory. Many ID proponents think that it was common to attribute all noncoding DNA to the junk DNA category but that's not correct ... at least it's not correct for any knowledgeable biochemists and molecular biologists or molecular evolution experts. Back in the time when junk DNA first became widely known (about 1970) we all knew about functions for lots of noncoding DNA. There were ribosomal RNA genes, tRNA genes, origins of replication, centromeres. telomeres (a bit later), and, above all, regulatory sequences (known since about 1962). Starting about the mid 1970s we learned about introns (noncoding, functional) and scaffold attachment regions (SCRs). We also started to add lots of noncoding genes for functional RNAs other than ribosomal RNAs and tRNAs. I don't know why so many people pretend that at one point all noncoding DNA was considered junk. You won't find any widespread support among experts for such a claim in the scientific literature It's another example of false history.Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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Larry Moran:
I’d like to believe that you really want to know the answer even though your past history suggests otherwise.
Some people think I have at least two different identities. I'm looking for arguments FOR junk DNA. I see the ENCODE paper you refer me to has some references. On the against side we have The Myth of Junk DNA. Are you aware of any single book that makes the best case for the for side? If I don't already have it I'll get it. Frankly I don't much care about the whole 'Junk DNA' debate so I can come down on either side. I have no reason to not consider the arguments (other than there's perhaps a better way to spend my time). Having some exposure to software development, I don't see the "junk" argument as particularly damaging to intelligent design. Even if organisms themselves were designed to carry out natural engineering experiments I think you'd still expect to find some of the detritus of failed experiments.Mung_{November 12, 2015
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Dr. Moran, Was there ever a time when you believed more than 90% of the human genome was junk (such as the 97% number quoted in the ENV post)?Barry Arrington_{November 12, 2015
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Mung, Is this belief based upon observation? Theory? I’d like to understand the reasoning. I'd like to believe that you really want to know the answer even though your past history suggests otherwise. There are five main arguments in favor of junk DNA. You can follow links and a discussion form this post ... John Parrington discusses genome sequence conservation The five arguments are .... 1. Genetic load 2. Implications of the C-Value "Paradox" 3. Modern evolutionary theory 4. Pseudogenes and broken genes are junk 5. Most of the genome is not conserved Arguments 1, 4, and 5 are very powerful arguments for junk DNA. There are several anti-junk (function) arguments based on ... 1. Pervasive transcription 2. Lots of genes for small RNAs 3. Complex regulatory sites 4. Functional transposon and pseudogene sequences 5. various bulk DNA hypotheses Many of them can be easily dismissed and others don't make sense. The debate over the amount of junk DNA in our genome is still a legitimate scientific debate but among knowledgeable experts the junk DNA side is winning. Proponents of function among this group are definitely in a minority. In the broader scientific community (i.e. people who don't know about all of the arguments) the majority think that most of our genome has a function. Almost every scientific journalist (except the very best ones) think that junk DNA has been refuted. This is the view of most ID proponents and they can find a rich source of quotations from these non-experts and journalists. If you really want to understand the science you should read the paper published by the ENCODE Consortium leaders a year-and-a-half after their initial well-hyped publicity campaign. You'll see that they back off their initial claim that 80% of the genome is functional. That's because they were severely criticized by experts in molecular evolution. Kellis, M., Wold, B., Snyder, M.P., Bernstein, B.E., Kundaje, A., Marinov, G.K., Ward, L.D., Birney, E., Crawford, G.E., and Dekker, J. (2014) Defining functional DNA elements in the human genome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 111:6131-6138. [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1318948111]Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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"Mung said "Is this belief based upon observation? Theory? I’d like to understand the reasoning." It doesn't appear that Professor Moran is going to give you more than an appeal to vote. Have Professor Moran's Parents proven Psychic ability? He was named Larry after all.Jack Jones_{November 12, 2015
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Barry Arrington says,
Your desperation is really showing. You think the entire topic of the conversation has pivoted on a slip of my pen, even though I reverted to the correct word in the very next line.
Sorry. I don't want to lower myself to your level but you leave me no choice since you are constantly parsing words instead of dealing with content and ideas. If you would stop being so nit-picky and stop with the gotcha traps then I'd give you the benefit of the doubt. You won't do the same with me.Larry Moran_{November 12, 2015
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Larry:
Now you are changing the question to whether or not you understand “evolution.”
Your desperation is really showing. You think the entire topic of the conversation has pivoted on a slip of my pen, even though I reverted to the correct word in the very next line.Barry Arrington_{November 12, 2015
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Larry Moran:
With respect to junk DNA, I think that about 90% of the human genome is junk. It has no function. I disagree with Francis Collins on this issue, as do most evolutionary biologists who are knowledgeable about molecular evolution.
Is this belief based upon observation? Theory? I'd like to understand the reasoning.Mung_{November 12, 2015
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