Does cancer disprove intelligent design? Two views
| August 26, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
So thinks theistic evolutionist Joshua Swamidass at Biologos.
It turns out that evolutionary theory is indispensable to understanding cancer. The link I offered above leverages evolution for just this purpose. … From this body of work, we can see the evolution of new functions (new information!), neutral theory, and the effectiveness of obtuse metrics like Ks/Ka ratios. It would hard to imagine rejecting evolution of species without somehow forgetting everything we have learned about the evolution of cancer.
Jonathan Wells thinks otherwise:
A rough analogy would be to compare the rusting of steel with the smelting of iron ore. We see the same chemical pattern, namely, the inter-conversion of iron and iron oxide. Rusting converts iron to iron oxide, and smelting converts iron oxide to iron. The two are polar opposites. The first is explained by unguided natural processes, but the second requires intelligent design. The Iron Age would not have happened without human intelligence.
So cancer might exemplify the process of unguided evolution, but it certainly does not disprove intelligent design.
Readers? What do you think?
Jonathan Wells on Lents’s claim that the human eye is wired backwards
and
Swamidass distances himself from Christian evolution group
19 Responses to Does cancer disprove intelligent design? Two views
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This is one of the most ignorant arguments against ID I have ever read. As I told Joshua you are starting out with intelligently designed cells. Then the mutations occurred and hijacked the intelligently designed system.
So no, cancer is NOT a case of producing novel proteins via blind and mindless processes. Blind and mindless processes may have produced the cancer but that’s it.
I spent time formally researching Cancer for a professor who was also using evolution to try and explain cancer progression. It turned out that evolution actually was a misleading detour in this case as what they were calling evolution was actually explained by a regulatory system that went out of regulation.
I have looked a Joshua’s case and I believe that it could also be explained in the same way.
Here is the connection: “Evolution is the Cancer on the science of Biology”
Design implies purpose, a fixed objective to be achieved. What designer in his or her right mind would try to accomplish a design using materials with properties that meant they would inevitably mutate away, possibly unpredictably, from any intended target? Would a Boeing designer specify carbon-fiber for use in a 777’s wing if he or she knew there was a good chance it could change to rubber within the lifespan of the aircraft?
Seversky:
It’s called entropy.
What a dolt. The humans and organisms of today are not the originally designed organisms. We are the result of many generations of reproduction and exposure to carcinogens and other DNA altering affects.
The Boeing designer doesn’t want change. Living organisms have to be able to change
Wells’ response doesn’t seem to relate to Swamidass’ original acrticle. He focuses almost exclusively on the potentiating mutations (p53 and ras), not on the mutations that generate novel traits like vascularization, metastasis etc.
And swamidass post is actually a demonstration of the methods used by evolutionary biologists are powerful when applied to cancer (because cancers evolve). Wells doesn’t respond to this at all.
Oh my. No one uses blind watchmaker evolution to study cancer.
Happenstance genetic changes may be the root cause but that is about it.
There isn’t anything about cancer that threatens anything ID claims.
I mean… how would you know? What about your life behind the keyboard has given you any experience on the methods used by cancer biologists?
For folks that are generally interested, Nature has a running stream of papers using evolutionary approaches in cancer biology.
I know because it is a useless heuristic.
Oncologists. And I have followed the field quite closely seeing that several family members had it.
So a life behind a keyboard affords me the opportunity to read all about what they do and how they do it.
That said, Joshua hisself said:
Whoopsie.
And please stop with the equivocation. “Evolutionary approaches” does not equal “blind watchmaker evolution”.
Sad
<blockquoteFor folks that are generally interested, Nature has a running stream of papers using evolutionary approaches in cancer biology.
From my experience with the subject claiming evolution as a mechanism for the cause will stop your research short of the real cause.
Cancer pathways are pretty well understood at this point and explanation in not cancer it is the loss of regulation of cell division or vascular growth due to the WNT pathway losing regulation. The cause can be mutation or low blood vitamin d levels which is aWNT regulator molecule.
Maybe I am missing the connection also, but I don’t see any connection between vascularization in cancer, and evolution. From what I have read (and I admit I’m not a doctor or biologist), vascularization exclusively co-opts existing biological mechanisms. Cancer does not evolve new means of making new blood vessels.
EDTA
Thats right. The observed process is vascular growth up regulated.
ET @9
Are you quoting Swamidass?
“Um, I do not accept neo-Darwinism. No one in science does. Neo-Darwinism was falsified in the 1960s with Haldane and Kimura.”
He said so, but I see no evidence these two guys were not Darwinists.
What two guys? Joshua and Swamidass? That’s one guy. And he thinks God did it and that is anti-Darwin
Swamidass believes in neutral theory. Which means that he is basically a Darwinist who still believes in common descent but he has cast natural selection by the wayside and now relies solely on “chance” and/or “random” mutations, rather than on natural selection, to do all the heavy lifting of creating new species.
Although he claims to believe in God, his position is functionally equivalent to that of the staunch atheist Dan Graur’s position.
Dan Graur, along with Larry Moran, vigorously opposed the ENCODE findings of pervasive functionality across the entire genome since the findings falsified neutral theory, via the genetic load argument.
Dan Graur infamously stated, “If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.”
ENCODE is right, evolution is wrong. But Graur (and Swamidass) need not worry about empirical falsification of Darwin’s overall theory. Darwin’s theory is now, and always has been, a pseudoscience that is impervious to empirical falsification:
In fact, both Darwinists and these new so called “Neutralists”, since they both hold reductive materialism to be true, are now shown to not even be on the correct theoretical foundation in the first place in order to properly understand molecular biology.
But alas, no matter how much Darwinian presuppositions are directly contradicted by empirical evidence, Darwin’s theory always somehow ends up floating serenely above empirical reproach.
Darwin’s theory, neutral theory, or whatever you want to call it, is NOT a science.
As Dr. Cornelius Hunter often notes on his blog “Darwin’s God”, since its inception Darwinism has always been based primarily on faulty theological presuppositions, not on science.
ET and BA,
The question was about Haldane and Kimura, not about Swamidass. I see them as no revolutionaries against Darwin as Swamidass claims. And of course, there’s no experimental evidence confirming their theories anywhere.
OK, yes, I agree that they did not falsify Neo-Darwinism. I don’t know what Joshua was saying as he never supported that claim
Of note:
A graph featuring ‘Kimura’s Distribution’ is shown in the following video:
Here is Dr. Sanford’s main site
Of humorous note: In regards to neutral theory Berlinski once quipped, “By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian.”
Of semi-related note: