Increased Oxygen = Increased Biological Information, Which Explains the Cambrian Explosion

_{GilDodgen
February 27, 2009

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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This is the kind of reasoning we can expect from “scientists” like Hillis, in an attempt to explain away the Cambrian explosion.

For more, go here.

Is there no shame left among Darwinists who propose such absurd ideas, or do they actually believe such transparent fantasies?

Comments

For example, what non-adaptive characteristics that we have now do you think might someday fulfill some "intended purpose"? And how do you propose to empirically verify that this is, in fact, the case? Please, no airy speculation; we want observable, testable hypotheses that can be either verified or falsified by standard statistical analysis.Allen_MacNeill_{February 27, 2009
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In #18 bFast wrote:
"Therefore any evidence of foresight would be a serious blow to neo-Darwinism, and a serious coup for ID."
Agreed. And so exactly how would one determine if a particular phenotypic character qualified as "foresighted" before that character becomes adapted to it's "intended" purpose? And please, respect everyone's intelligence and don't cite things that are clearly adaptive now, and therefore must have been the result of foresight "back then". That kind of fallacy is known as "affirming the consequent" and is as logically fallacious as "argument by analogy".Allen_MacNeill_{February 27, 2009
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In #14 Green wrote:
"Just to emphasise again: It is illogical to say that a new selection pressure (i.e. more O2) = new information. It just doesn’t follow."
And, of course, no evolutionary biologist is making such an assertion. Rather, the mechanisms by which new phenotypic variation is generated operate all the time (you can read about them here: http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2007/10/rm-ns-creationist-and-id-strawman.html). What a change in selection pressure does is to preserve a different subset of this new information. Once again, the real bone of contention is not natural selection, but rather the multiplicity of biological processes by which new phenotypic variation is generated (and no, not all of these processes involve the generation of new genetic information, nor do they need to).Allen_MacNeill_{February 27, 2009
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JT:
so a single resource can lead to very rapid development of latent capabilities already there.
By what majic does darwinism create latent capabilities. Does latent capabilities not require foresight? Allen_MacNeill and I came to an agreement a while back that the key feature of neo-Darwinism is an abject lack of foresight. Therefore any evidence of foresight would be a serious blow to neo-Darwinism, and a serious coup for ID.bFast_{February 27, 2009
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Not only did the increase in calcium carbonate in seawater allow for the production of teeth, bones, exoskeletons, etc. (a process that would be impossible without the oxygen to combine with the calcium and the carbon to form calcium carbonate), the production of fossilizable "hard parts" explains the apparent "suddenness" of the Cambrian explosion. Prior to the evolution of calcium carbonate metabolism, animals had uniformly "soft" body parts, which almost never fossilize. Ergo, the Cambrian "explosion" is at least partly analogous to the "explosion" of things one might observe when you turn on the light in your bedroom at night. All that stuff you see in your bedroom was there when the lights were off, but you couldn't see it. All of the phyla that suddenly become "visible" in the fossil record of the Cambrian were there previously, but without "hard parts" made possible by the evolution of calcium carbonate metabolism (made possible by the increase in atmospheric oxygen), they aren't visible in the fossil record of the Precambrian. By the way, Darwin made essentially this same point a century and a half ago. Can't creationists come up with any new arguments?Allen_MacNeill_{February 27, 2009
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Oxygen the Molecule the Changed the World http://books.google.com/books?id=ziVk6CI82WgC&pg=PA54&...JT_{February 27, 2009
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The following is based on reading Oxygen the Molecule the Changed the World for about five minutes. But it was saying that worms at the beginning of the Cambrian were really complex, that is, had a lot of complexity latent in them already and that there was a long period of evolution of those worms before the Cambrian. And although I haven't read this yet, I'll merely venture a guess as to where they might be going: Its not hard to imagine a single resource like say oil, radically changing a society overnight transforming for example tent-dwelling bedouins into complex societies with huge cities overnight, so a single resource can lead to very rapid development of latent capabilities already there.JT_{February 27, 2009
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Just to emphasise again: It is illogical to say that a new selection pressure (i.e. more O2) = new information. It just doesn't follow.Green_{February 27, 2009
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More O = more information? Absurd.
Exactly. And the reason is; all O2 does is create a new selection pressure. But having a new selection pressure isn't going to change the mutation rate. Nor is it going to provide any new information. As Meyers said, there's no causal connection there. It's completely irrelevant to the origin of new information.Green_{February 27, 2009
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I believe that the I.D. movement is being completely hamstrung by they’re emphasis on intelligence, (which is going to be difficult to remedy given that the term is part of their name.) If you can't dispense with "intelligent" then dispense with "design". And if the media questions if you're backpedalling you could say you were only following the lead of the evo-theorist who already said the term "design" should be abandoned (discussed at U.D. a few days ago). "Intelligent design" is redundant anyway, as "design" is something people tend to directly associate with "intelligence" already. Then "intelligent design" could becomes "intelligent necessity" or "intelligent law". You could also negatively characterize evolution as "intelligent randomness".JT_{February 27, 2009
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Having listened to the entire 35+ minutes of meyers comments -my thoughts: [The following becomes somewhat verbose, but I'm telling you, it is the crux of the whole issue for I.D. and I'm not the first one to point it out, by any means.] Meyers talks at one point about the origin of RNA being the biggest problem for biology. But in what sense is Intelligent Design the solution? [Actually though, It seems possible Meyers may be asking himself the same question, as he is quite emphatic that he does not have an agenda for I.D. to be taught in textbooks, but rather for only the problems with evolution to be presented.] An assumption of materialists I guess is that there would be some physical mechanism to account for RNA, regardless of the fact that we know very little about what that mechanism is at present. So intelligent design apparently comes in and says, "We have the answer for what created RNA and it was not a physical process. Rather, it was Intelligence. That would imply to me they're saying that RNA just came into existence instantaneously. If there were some mechanism that explained the origin of RNA, some causal physical process detailing how RNA emerged for the first time, we would not have to appeal to intelligence, just as we don't have to use intelligence to explain how you get a fully formed human from an embryonic cell. If you're going claim that Intelligence is an explanation, you have to start by defining what is you're talking about, and "What humans have" is not an answer. I believe that the I.D. movement is being completely hamstrung by they're emphasis on intelligence, (which is going to be difficult to remedy given that the term is part of their name.) This was clear even from the audiocast from yesterday of the Dembski, et. al. interview. Dembksi has not moved away in the slightest from his presumption regarding the nature of intelligence as a metaphysical causal force outside of nature. This detracts from what I've come to realize again in the last few days is the substantial significance to his arguments regarding the limitations of randomness. The quite relevant points about randomness are not in any way connected to metaphysical assumptions regarding intelligence, and I.D. should absolutely dispense with the latter. That seems unlikely to happen though. I.D. (after changing its name) should focus on demonstrating to what extent various mechanisms proposed by evo-theorists actually equate to randomness. If someone had proposed "mutations" as an explantion for life, that would be easy. There should be a formal method developed for nailing down what percentage of the functionality is being explained by randomness. So evo-theorists would have to say for example, "Although we are not saying pure randomness accounts for all of the functionality of life, we are saying it accounts for 90% of it." As things stand now they can be vague on this point. But to go back to RNA, it seems clear there would have to have been some causal physical process that resulted in RNA appearing for the first time. Obviously we know that process wouldn't be "atoms moving randomly about." Someone could propose a mechanism that largely equates to "atoms moving randomly about." without it being clearly evident it equates to that. There needs to be a method to formally show to what extent a proposed mechanism equates to randomness. However, a caveat: If someone just says "a physical mechanism did it." that seemingly equates to randomness only in the sense that no details are provided. However, it does not equate to randomness unless that is what someone intends. OK here is the way to state it - Usually a physical cause for something is partioned into two components: F) an active physical process (that is treated as if it were immutable and eternal) and X) Some contingent state of affairs that arises at a point in time or over a discrete interval of time. IOW, X is just some state of affairs encountered by F by chance and influencing how F functions. So with evolution F is the natural laws, X is the set of mutations encountered by the natural laws, and F(X) would be one specification for the biological life that resulted. if F equated to "If a mutation gets me closer to something that's brown, then accept else reject.", then obviously 99+% of the functionality of life is coming by way of pure randomness (that is, the mutations).JT_{February 27, 2009
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So where did the information come from? By this theory, literally out of thin air. Meyer would have scored some major points with that if he had thought of it - seriously. Especially with the lady on the panel who talked really really slow and asked if there was any laboratory evidence that oxygen doesn't explain the Cambrian explosion. Rhetoric has a huge impact in a venue like this.JT_{February 27, 2009
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More O = more information? Absurd. O, by itself, doesn't contain any information other than what it is in itself. O is not an information rich molecule. So where did the information come from? By this theory, literally out of thin air.Borne_{February 27, 2009
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Of course people who lack oxygen and therefore die cannot win the lottery, but your odds are not very good even when you're alive. Suggesting that the genetic information within DNA increased within pre-Cambrian creatures, completely on accident, once it got the chance, is stretching it a bit (or rather, a lot), but this seems to be the logic behind Hillis' idea. :P It was fun listening to Stephen Meyer speak. He's got to be one of my favorite ID proponents. :)Domoman_{February 27, 2009
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It has been suggested that increased oxygen content triggered front-loaded events. If Hillis is right that increased oxygen played a role in the Cambrian explosion, he has provided an argument for design and against Darwinism, since Darwinian mechanisms don’t plan ahead for triggers.GilDodgen_{February 27, 2009
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Well, we didn't get to here the arguments for oxygen. Anyway, the following could be considered in the category of informal query or observation. First as a preface, (and the point of this should make sense in a minute) if we were to consider all the novel attributes that a human being possesses, the ones which ID advocates would ascribe to Intelligent Design, these novel attributes would exist whether or not we happened to to be talking about them or considering them, or even whether or not we personally who happened to be talking about them even existed ourselves. In thinking about oxygen for example, and also about the "simple repetitive patterns" of nature, think about all the wildly divergent properties of the various elements, based soley on the number of protons and neutrons they possess. Think about some arbitrary metal for example, and all the unique capabilities it has. So you might have an educational film like "Our Friend Magnesium", that goes one for half an hour describing all the marvelous uses which that particular metal for example is uniquely suited for. And just think about the wildly divergent forms matter can take in nature, and also the divergent and complex behaviors it exhibits, as for example in the organized complexity of the weather, with clouds, tornadoes, rain, snow, hail, not to mention the unending array of cosmological phenomenona, from planets to stars and blackholes and on and on, and then undoubtedly an unending array of complex phenonenona occurring on a micro scale. And I.D. would say that not an ounce of intelligence is required to produce any of the above. And all of the above would exist whether humans were around to "observe" them or not (thus the relevance of my initial comment in this post.) But even without us, nature most assuredly observes itself as well. To "observe" means to distinguish. So to say we can observe gold or its various properties implies that we can distinguish gold and its properties from iron for example and its properties. But nature can and does disinguish these elements to the minutest degree possible, to a degree much greater than any human for example is capable of. Nature indicates its ability to distinguish these two metals (for example) because the behavior of things in nature differ in the presence of these two metals to a degree that precisely reflects the actual objective difference between these two metals.JT_{February 27, 2009
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It has been suggested that increased oxygen content triggered front-loaded events. So Hillis might be half right, no?WeaselSpotting_{February 27, 2009
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Here are a couple of more links concerning David Hillis and Texas science education standards: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/01/strengths_and_weaknesses_in_da.html http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/darwinist_texas_science_standa.html The depressing thing is that Hillis and his ilk would have students swallow this ridiculous oxygen hypothesis completely uncritically, in the name of defending "science education."GilDodgen_{February 27, 2009
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Geez Gil, Oxygen is a carrier wave for information. As proof of that concept try to not breath in any O2. It is only through the information riding on O2 that allows you to live. It's not the O2 itself. Hopefully that clears it up for you... :)Joseph_{February 27, 2009
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Maybe they watched too much power puff girls(with oxygen being element x).critiacrof_{February 27, 2009
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Are you talking about what Meyers says at about 6:11? I copied this: "Dr. Hillis, just to show that there's no problem with the Cambrian explosion, it's not a problem, he threw out a real half-baked idea. The idea that increases in oxygen in the pre-cambrian somehow explained the origin of the cambrian explosion. At best, the change in environment is a weak and necessary condition of a major radiation. But to explain the origin of new animal forms, you need genetic information. So please explain to me how a little more atomospheric oxygen is going to sequence nucleotide bases and produce all the specific sequences that are necessary to build new animals, new animal forms. That doesn't follow. That's a half baked idea. but things like that because of a gentleman's authority and prestige with a big school are used to trump very reasoned considerations from people who are in dissent for good reason." Do you have a url for what Hillis said? I'm not familiar with him, but one of the usual facts used to explain the Cambrian Explosion is that after billions of years of photosynthesis, oxygen levels in the ocean finally reached the point where calcium carbonate could precipitate out of sea water. This allows organisms to build bones and teeth which opens up a huge range of new environmental niches. It also sets off an "arms race" as creatures with brand new teeth start to attack and eat creatures without, giving a tremendous advantage to any creatures that managed to secrete a shell or other protection. That doesn't sound like a "half-baked idea" to me. Please point us to Dr. Hillis's testimony so we can see what he said about oxygen and the Cambrian Explosion.djmullen_{February 27, 2009
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