Larry Moran is desperate. He said I do not understand Darwinism. I called him out and challenged him to demonstrate his claim. He has now put up two posts in response, and they both fail miserably.
In the first post he flails about over the term “Darwinism” and says I mistakenly equate that term with “Neo-Darwinism” and the “Modern Synthesis.” As evidence of my confusion he points to the UD glossary. But that very glossary entry states that on this site we use the term “Darwinism” as shorthand for Neo-Darwinism or the modern synthesis, and then goes on to define those terms.
Note that Larry does not say UD’s definition of Neo-Darwinism or the modern synthesis is wrong.* He says that when I use the word “Darwinism” as shorthand for Neo-Darwinism, it proves I don’t understand the difference between those two terms. Astoundingly, the very glossary entry he points to proves him wrong.
In the second post he jumps on his favorite hobby horse, junk DNA:
He [i.e., Arrington] said that “Darwinists” predicted junk DNA and he states clearly that junk DNA is supposed to be “practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis.” But, as most Sandwalk readers know, nobody predicted junk DNA, certainly not Darwinists.
(Emphasis added)
No Darwinist ever said the theory predicts junk DNA? What about world famous Darwinist Francis Collins:
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.
Francis Collins, The Language of God, 2006
How about world famous Darwinist Jerry A. Coyne:
Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. Imperfect design is the mark of evolution; in fact, it’s precisely what we expect from evolution. . . .when a trait is no longer used or becomes reduced, the genes that make it don’t instantly disappear from the genome: Evolution strops their action by inactivating them, not snipping them out of the DNA. 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. In other words, there should be vestigial genes. . . . the evolutionary prediction that we’ll find pseudogenes has been fulfilled – amply. Virtually ever species harbors dead genes, many of them still active in its relatives. This implies that some of those genes were also active in a common ancestor, and were killed off in some descendants but not in others. Out of about thirty thousand genes, for example, we humans carry more than two thousand pseudogenes. Our genome, – and that of other species – are truly well populated graveyards of dead genes
Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 2009
Examples could be multiplied, but you get the picture.
How embarrassing that biologist Larry has to be schooled on this subject by a lawyer. Ouch. That’s gotta smart.
Finally, notice how Larry lies about what I said just a few short paragraphs after he quotes me. First he quotes me:
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.
Yes, I did write that.
Now notice Larry’s distortion later in the post:
Barry Arrington says that Darwinism predicted junk DNA and that junk DNA is strong evidence of the Darwinian hypothesis
No, I did not say that Darwinism predicted junk DNA. I said Darwinists said the theory predicted junk DNA, and as I demonstrated above, they did. And no, I did not say that junk DNA is strong evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. Those same Darwinists made that claim. I said exactly the opposite, i.e., that ID proponents disagreed.
Larry, I have a question for you. Why do you think making obviously false statements helps your case? I’m not one of your poor captive students whom you can bully and give failing marks if I don’t toe your line. This is not your classroom. You can’t just make up facts to suit you as you go.
Things are not looking good for you Larry. Two blog posts in and you have yet to provide a smidgen of evidence for your claim.
_________________
*To be sure, as is his wont, he engages is some genetic fallacy smears, but he never says a single word of the UD definition is wrong.
Barry
To hop onto the Junk DNA Band Wagon here is high priest Dawkins….
Barry,
What you aren’t getting is that, in the way the term ‘Darwinists’ was traditionally used, typically ‘DARWINISTS’ ASSUMED THAT MOST DNA WAS FUNCTIONAL. Basically they thought natural selection regulated everything, and if something wasn’t performing a useful function, it would be eliminated by natural selection. This described a common position up until the 1960s.
“Junk DNA” only started to become a popular idea because of reasons like (a) data started coming in indicating that genomes were way bigger than they had to be to specify genes and regulation, (b) genome sizes were ridiculously variable between similar organisms, and (c) the development of neutral theory, which explained how “junk” could accumulate without causing major harm to organisms. NEUTRAL THEORY IS NON-DARWINIAN. NEUTRAL THEORY IS ALSO NOW EXTREMELY WELL ACCEPTED IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY. SO ITS BIZARRE FOR YOU TO GO AROUND SAYING “DARWINISTS” PREDICTED JUNK DNA.
You, like most ID/creationists, have your own special definition of “Darwinist”, which is, basically, anyone you don’t like, or anyone who is against ID. Your misunderstanding of the definition of “Darwinist”, and the epic mistakes this leads to (you getting the position of “Darwinists” on Junk DNA exactly backwards) is what Larry is complaining about. Why is it so hard for you to get it?
Nick_Matzke
Lets test your claim
Is Richard Dawkins a Darwinist? Based on the article I linked he most certainly is.
http://www.theguardian.com/sci.....n.dawkins1
So if he is a Darwinist and he said;
Then your opening statmenet is obviously false
Why? Because that comment was made by Dawkins in 2009. So clearly you are confused.
NM_UD, “NEUTRAL THEORY IS NON-DARWINIAN”
Wrong! How many times to I have to explain to yous guys that neutral theory answers the question of what happens to mutations that are selectively neutral (or near neutral in the case of near neutral theory). Now it is true that most mutations are selectively neutral, but all mutations must submit to the test of Darwinian selection, therefore neutral theory is a subset of neo-Darwinian theory. To pretend otherwise is just semantics.
We do understand, you and yours try to pretend that we don’t.
NM_UD, ““Junk DNA” only started to become a popular idea because of reasons like …” You are correct, and this is known by me, and surely by BA. However, when the junk theory became known, it began to sail rather quickly. It did so because it was a natural prediction of neo-Darwinan theory. The fact that it was not predicted by the theorists earlier only shows that their understanding of the theory lacked richness, not that the theory didn’t predict “junk”. Ie, the theory properly predicted “junk” prior to the theorists figuring out that it did so.
NM_UD, “You, like most ID/creationists, have your own special definition of “Darwinist”, which is, basically, anyone you don’t like, or anyone who is against ID.”
No! No! We use the term Darwinist, or neo-Darwinist to indicate all those whose theory falls within the scope of RM+NS. (Where Random is read as random with respect to fitness, or as Dr. MacNeill said, “non-foresighted”.) The term properly extends to any mechanism which ostensibly developed via RM+NS.
Then in why evolution is True, Professor Emeritus Jerry Coyne says
Is Jerry Coyne a darwinist?
In Biology online he said
BA,
It seems that the rhetorical, dismissive talking points go and come in a cycle of waves.
Just now, I noted to DK as follows:
_______
>> . . . do you seriously expect us to believe something as close to hand as a Wiki article is not understood as to fundamental claims from Darwin forward?
In effect:
Or,
CV + DRS + OF –> XLSV –> IDWM –> BTE –> TOL
So summed up it is soon evident that the vaunted natural selection is in fact only an after the fact description of the LOSS of varieties and associated information. It is therefore not a SOURCE of information, it is a lossy filter.
The only actually posited source is chance variation, which is simply not up to the job of accounting for the FSCO/I required to give dozens of main body plans requirinf 10 – 100+ mn bits of information here on earth in a window of 600 MY or less. In the case of humans vs chimps, on the 98% similarity claim, one needs to account for 60 mn bases or 120 mn bits of crucially diverse information in 6 – 10 mn years with pop bases probably of order 10,000 and generation times 5 – 20 years.
Worse, this does not address the FSCO/I in the root of the tree, in which context existing reproduction is not to be assumed. Indeed, the von Neumann kinematic self replicator coded info using complex system has to be accounted for.
VC is right to highlight that an actual, empirically warranted comprehensive macro level theory of body plan origin by evolution that — without imposition of ideological a priori evolutionary materialism — is testable and tested, does not exist.
Johnson’s remark is apt:
It is time for a serious re-think.>>
_________
KF
as to Moran’s claim,
Dawkins, 2009: on “junkDNA”
Dawkins, 2012: on non-junkDNA (after ENCODE)…
Further notes:
A Short History Of The Junk DNA Argument Of Darwinists
(i.e. neutral theory is actually the result of a theoretical failure of Darwinism within mathematics!)
A graph featuring ‘Kimura’s Distribution’ being ‘properly used’ is shown in the following video:
At the 2:45 minute mark of the following video, the mathematical roots of the junk DNA argument, that is still used by many Darwinists today, can be traced through Haldane, Kimura, and Ohno’s work in the late 1950’s, 60’s through the early 70’s:
Susumu Ohno, a leader in the field of genetics and evolutionary biology, explained in 1972 in an early study of non-coding DNA that, “they are the remains of nature’s experiments which failed. The earth is strewn with fossil remains of extinct species; is it a wonder that our genome too is filled with the remains of extinct genes?”
Sternberg traces how the junk DNA argument developed through the mid 1970’s to the early 80’s and beyond in the following article:
Dr. Wells also gives some historical background:
In 1994, the authoritative textbook, Molecular Biology of the Cell, co-authored by National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts, suggested (incorrectly!) that introns are “largely genetic ‘junk'”: Unlike the sequence of an exon, the exact nucleotide sequence of an intron seems to be unimportant. Thus introns have accumulated mutations rapidly during evolution, and it is often possible to alter most of an intron’s nucleotide sequence without greatly affecting gene function. This has led to the suggestion that intron sequences have no function at all and are largely genetic “junk”.
Soon thereafter, the 1995 edition of Voet & Voet’s Biochemistry textbook explained that “a possibility that must be seriously entertained is that much repetitive DNA serves no useful purpose whatever for its host. Rather, it is selfish or junk DNA, a molecular parasite that, over many generations, has disseminated itself throughout the genome…”
Another leading biologist, Sydney Brenner argued in a biology journal in 1998 that:
A decade before ENCODE, John Mattick said the junk DNA argument “may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.”
Earth to NickMatzke, Both you and larry Moran constantly and consistently misrepresent ID. You also both oversell evolutionism. You have steadfastly refused to say how it was determined that gene duplications are genetic accidents, errors and mistakes.
Also in what way is neutral theory non-Darwinian seeing that darwin talked about drift in “On the Origins of Species…”? Darwin just didn’t see it as a creative force and rightly so.
NickMatzke_UD: “typically ‘DARWINISTS’ ASSUMED THAT MOST DNA WAS FUNCTIONAL.”
What a liar. Darwinists have always, since Darwin, predicted that randomness and evolution would produce a lot of dysfunctional crap. And Darwinists still continuously gleefully point out crappy inefficiency, vestigal uselessness, and junk dna.
Point out any influential Darwinist who says that “most DNA is functional.” Even in the present day, you cannot point to a single one, otherwise you would have quoted them saying it.
Nick @ 2:
For your statements to be true, Jerry Coyne would have to not be a Darwinist. Jerry Coyne is a Darwinist. Therefore, your statements is false.
It really is as simple as that.
Richard Dawkins on junk DNA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bjKH43pRB0
At 0:44, discussing the ENCODE results, he declares:
Later (at 1:43) Dawkins says that this result “is exactly what a Darwinist would hope for.” But the video clips show him referring to genes that are “vestigial relics,” during talks he gave only two years earlier (in 2011). How many genes are we talking about? A lot, it seems: he refers to “massive, massive, massive quantities of evidence,” in the genomes of “every species of creature that’s ever been looked at.” Finally, Dawkins exults that the vestigial genes belonging to various kinds of creatures yield the same family tree as the functional genes.
Selective video editing, you say? Think again. The following quotes from Dawkins are taken from an ENV post (September 20, 2012) by David Klinghoffer, titled, “In Debate, Britain’s Chief Rabbi Tweaks Richard Dawkins with the Myth of “Junk DNA.” Here’s Richard Dawkins in 2009:
And here he is in 2012, after ENCODE announced its results:
It seems to me that Darwinism is a highly malleable theory.
BA77 provides overwhelming evidence @ 8. Thank you sir.
Larry Moran is pathetic. He deletes comments of the opposition that show him up but allows his minions who contribute nothing to the discussion, to attack people for not accepting Moran’s claims as pearls of wisdom that must remain unchallenged.
Sorry, but Larry is right on this one.
The theory did not predict junk DNA, but when junk DNA was discovered, it was exactly what the theory would have predicted.
The “theory” doesn’t predict anything beyond change when change is good and stasis when staying the same is good.
bornagain: Dawkins, 2009: on “junkDNA” “Junk DNA is just what a Darwinist would expect,”
Do you have a primary citation for this quote?
Virgil said “The “theory” doesn’t predict anything beyond change when change is good and stasis when staying the same is good.”
Evolution is more of a philosophy that accommodates everything. It is philosophical dogma.
Zachriel, I found the source of this quote:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....64521.html reporting on BBC debate between Dawkins and Jonathan Sacks.
The evolutionnews.org article states:
Dawkins goes on:
Leaving pseudogenes aside, it is a remarkable fact that the greater part (95 percent in the case of humans) of the genome might as well not be there, for all the difference it makes.
…
evolutionnews.org then editorializes:
Junk DNA is just what a Darwinist would expect, in other words.
While your challenge is correct, Dawkins didn’t appear to say what was attributed to him, the dent you make in the argument is miniscule.
Sorry Zach, I quoted Klinghoffer paraphrasing Dawkins. My mistake. Here is the cite.
Lest anyone think Dawkins, the author of ‘The Selfish Gene”, did not actually expect junk DNA in that quote, here a few more quotes from Dawkins which people can look up for themselves’
and again the 2009 reference
i.e. Dawkins was wrong!
bFast: While your challenge is correct, Dawkins didn’t appear to say what was attributed to him, the dent you make in the argument is miniscule.
The reason it’s relevant is because the view was ascribed to a “Darwinist”, which is not in the original quote.
bornagain: Junk DNA is just what a Darwinist would expect, in other words.
No, not in other words. Darwinism is a word with several related meanings, but most often refers to someone who thinks that evolution proceeds primarily by natural selection. A Darwinist would generally accept some vestigialism in the genome, but many would probably think that it gets weeded out over time, rather than accumulating.
So now, apparently to draw attention away from the elephant in the living room, Zach claims Dawkins is not a Darwinist?
Incredible!
Yes folks, this is absurdity dealt with day in and day out from Darwinists.
Matthew 23:24
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
bornagain: Zach claims Dawkins is not a Darwinist?
Didn’t say that. Dawkins takes a gene-centric view of Darwinism.
Zachriel
Watch the debate and hear with your own ears
Zachriel, whatever splitting hairs view you want to adopt on Darwinism, it is still wrong.
Primarily the reason Darwinism, and all its current many headed snake versions, are wrong is because the reductive materialism upon which Darwinism rests is now empirically shown to be wrong.
The empirical falsification of Darwinism is as such. Darwinian presuppositions hold that all the information, (and even consciousness), in life is merely an ‘emergent’ property of a material basis, but it is now found that beyond space and time, non-local, ‘quantum information’, which is not reducible to a material basis, is in molecular biology.
First, it is important to learn that ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement (A. Aspect, A. Zeilinger, etc..) can be used as a ‘quantum information channel’,,,
And this non-local quantum information is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale, in every DNA and Protein molecule
Of related note, like entanglement, quantum coherence is a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, effect:
And although Naturalists have proposed various, far fetched, naturalistic scenarios to try to get around the Theistic implications of quantum non-locality, none of the ‘far fetched’ naturalistic solutions, in themselves, are compatible with the reductive materialism that undergirds neo-Darwinian thought.
Thus, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, Neo-Darwinism is falsified in its claim that the information in molecular biology is ‘emergent’ from a reductive material basis.
If Darwinism were a real science, instead of a religion for atheists, this finding, (as well as many other findings in the past), should have relegated Darwinism to the dustbin of disproven scientific theories
Barry,
The irony….
Jack Jones:
Zachriel, “Darwinism … often refers to someone who thinks that evolution proceeds primarily by natural selection.”
Zachriel, “Darwinism is a word with several related meanings.”
Yes, Zachriel, the latter is correct. Darwinism is a word with several related meanings. You know right well which meaning is used by the supporters of this site. For you to disrespect that position is just equivocation, obfuscation.
From dictionary of bfast:
Darwinism:
a: Those who propose that non-foresighted variation + natural selection, along with its products, can explain all of life.
b: Someone who thinks that evolution proceeds primarily by natural selection.
For the purposes of productive dialog, please use definition a above for all general discussion purposes on this blog. Then productivity may happen, rather than a bunch of equivocation.
Darwin only said that the appearance of design was to be attributed to natural selection. He wrote about random drift but he knew it isn’t a creative mechanism. So yes, drift is part of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism and has been since 1859.
Zachriel:
A Darwinist can accept as much junk DNA as is allowed, ie isn’t fatal.
bFast: Darwinism:
a: Those who propose that non-foresighted variation + natural selection, along with its products, can explain all of life.
As evolutionary theory only concerns the diversification of life and not its origin, that would not be a suitable definition.
Why do IDers insist up on the term Darwinism, which only leads to confusion?
Zachriel, “As evolutionary theory only concerns the diversification of life and not its origin, that would not be a suitable definition.”
RRRRR, Error!
While it is true that OOL is the purview of a different branch of science, those who hold to the Darwinian model hold to the assumption that RV+NS explains the origin of life as well as its development.
Zachriel, “Why do IDers insist up on the term Darwinism, which only leads to confusion?”
A term is needed. I have asked frequently for another term. Your side has offered such loaded responses as “evolutionary scientists”. A bit wordy, but mostly a very loaded term.
When we write Darwinist, you know exactly what we mean. Therefore the confusion is in your determination to declare it confusing, not with our term.
Lastly: ” “Darwinism” is a compact, four-syllable term for “modern evolutionary theory,” Jerry Coyne. If its good enough for the great guru Coyne, it is good enough for me.
bFast: While it is true that OOL is the purview of a different branch of science, those who hold to the Darwinian model hold to the assumption that RV+NS explains the origin of life as well as its development.
That’s not necessarily the case. Someone can support evolutionary theory without making such a claim about the origin of life.
bFast: A term is needed.
Philosophical naturalists may be what you are looking for.
bFast: “Darwinism” is a compact, four-syllable term for “modern evolutionary theory,” Jerry Coyne.
Unfortunately, it leads to confusion. Furthermore, it is not the same as the definition you just provided.
bFast: When we write Darwinist, you know exactly what we mean.
No. It varies too much between people. Moran reserves it for those who think most of evolution is explained by natural selection, which is how it is mostly used in biology. Bornagain uses it to refer to “reductive materialism”. You claim it refers to all aspects of life including its origin. Coyne argues it should refer to modern evolutionary theory.
The quotation from Francis Collins is irrelevant. What he’s saying is that IF there is junk DNA THEN mutations will accumulate in that stretch of DNA.
The reason they will occur and become fixed is because they are neutral with respect to selection so they will be fixed by random genetic drift.
Collins says that this is predicted by Darwin’s theory but this is clearly false since Darwin never described such a situation. It’s also false according to the glossary entry on “Darwinism” since there’s no mention there of neutral alleles or random genetic drift.
Besides, Francis Collins reverted to the traditional “Darwinist” view of complex genomes over a decade ago. He now believes that most of the human genome is functional and that we shouldn’t use the term “junk DNA.”
Classical pseudogenes are a minor exception. They are junk but they make up less than 1% of the genome if you only count exons. They just don’t count for very much in the junk DNA debate. Even encode acknowledges them.
“Moran reserves … ”
I don’t include Moran in the camp of “we”. Moran’s position is infantile.
Bornagain uses it to refer to “reductive materialism”
How does “reductive materialism” differ from my definition?
“Coyne argues it should refer to modern evolutionary theory.” And how does that differ to my definition with the exception of scope? (One could argue that by including OOL, I have stepped beyond the scope of MET.) Oh, and, is there any evidence anywhere that Coyne holds any view of OOL other than the definition I use when referring to Darwinism?
The quotation from Jerry Coyne is about pseudogenes. Again, this is a minor part of the junk DNA debate. Jerry is saying that when a gene is rendered inactive by mutation it is not immediately purged from the genome. This seems pretty obvious—I don’t know anyone who thinks otherwise.
I think we can all understand why new pseudogenes don’t disappear right away but the question is why do they persist for millions of years?
That’s a problem for Darwinists because carrying that extra DNA is costly and should be selected against by natural selection. They persist because they are effectively neutral in populations with a small population size like mammals. They are invisible to natural selection and will only be eliminated by random genetic drift—a low probability event. They are purged from bacterial genomes because bacterial species have huge population sizes.
This concept is not covered in the glossary entry on “Darwinism” so I assume that it’s something the ID version of Darwinism can’t explain.
Of course, this has nothing to do with the real debate over junk DNA because pseudogenes are a minor player in that debate.
One thing puzzles me, though. Barry Arrington said …
If the discussion is going to focus on pseudogenes then what is Barry’s stance?
Does he believe that there’s no such thing as pseudogenes and all of them has been shown to be functional according to ID predictions? That’s the implication from what he said to Elizabeth Liddle and the fact that he concentrates on pseudogenes in this post.
So, is it fair to say that ID proponents reject the idea of pseudogenes and claim that they all have a function? Is that in conflict with the kind of Darwinism described in the glossary or is it compatible with a strong emphasis on the role of natural selection?
If pseudogenes are really pseudogenes, do ID proponents admit that at least some parts of the genome are junk? What part of the glossary entry on “Darwinism” predicts such a thing?
Zachriel:
How? If the OoL was designed then organisms were designed to evolve. Only if the OoL was due to physicochemical processes would we say that is how evolution proceeds.
Pseudogenes- if evolution proceeds by breaking things and keeping them around then I am sure everyone can understand the problem.
Barry Arrington says,
This seems like unnecessary quibbling to me. True, you said that “Darwinists” predicted junk DNA not that “Darwinism” predicted junk DNA.
Presumably you have in mind some sort of Venn diagram where there’s an incomplete overlap between “Darwinists” and proponents of “Darwinism.”
When I said …
I did not mean to imply that YOU predicted junk DNA and YOU think that junk DNA is strong evidence of Darwinism.
Nor did I mean to imply that anyone but “Darwinists” make such a claim, according to YOUR view of the field. I’m not sure what your problem is. Do you think that Darwinists are wrong and Darwinism DOESN’T predict the existence of junk DNA? Do you think that the “Darwinists” are wrong and junk DNA is NOT strong evidence of Darwinism?
Because if that’s what you think then we agree. Junk DNA refutes Darwinism.
Problem is, no true “Darwinist” will disagree.
It’s all very confusing. Can you answer my questions?
Larry Moran doesn’t understand darwinism:
What is that cost, Larry? Please show your work.
Thanks to the ever efficient intelligent design of ATP synthase my bet is the cost is low and unnoticed. But that is because the alleged junk is actually used for something and the cost accounted for.
Whatever is good enough gets to survive and reproduce, Larry. Natural selection isn’t an anal-retentive perfectionist. It doesn’t optimize. It eliminates and due to cooperation what gets eliminated is often those that have no chance at all.
Natural selection is just the only mechanism posited to explain the appearance of design in living organisms. Drift boils down to luck and there is only so much luck science can accept in an explanation.
Zachriel:
Why do evos insist up on the term evolutionary theory, which only leads to confusion (because there isn’t any such thing)?
“Why do evos insist up on the term evolutionary theory, which only leads to confusion (because there isn’t any such thing)?”
Spot on Mr Cain.
When Evolutionists can’t agree on what the theory is, then it is ridiculous for evolutionists to use the term “evolutionary theory”
Virgil Cain asks,
The cost of a new gene
Lynch and Marinov show that the cost is significant in bacterial populations but insignificant in the populations of large multicellular species.
It’s perfectly understandable according to modern evolutionary theory that includes population genetics, Neutral Theory, and random genetic drift.
How do you account for the purging of short non-functional DNA sequences in bacteria but not in mammals? Can you show me where that fits into your understanding of Darwinism as outlined in the glossary?
Please try hard to answer the question.
Larry Moran:
So it isn’t costly.
Can you please reference this modern evolutionary theory so we can read what it says?
Bacteria don’t need extra DNA to fill for the DNA coils. They don’t need extra memory for the added programming required to run eukaryotes. They are streamlined for fast reproduction. Spiegelman’s monster applies.
Mammals have introns and exons. This is for alternative splicing. They have their DNA wrapped into coils and the extra DNA is used for spacing along those coils.
My apologies to John Lennon:
Imagine all mutations
It’s easy if you try
With no limitations
They gave us you & I
Imagine all mutations occurring every day
Imagine there’s no mutant
It isn’t hard to do
Exact clones to kill or die for
And equilibrium too
Imagine all that stasis clogging up the tree
You may say it’s evolution
When it is all said and done
Natural selection is just impotent
And drift gets nothing done
(work in progress)
It is interesting to note that Darwinists have been postulating, theorizing, and hypothesizing, galore for years as to how information just might arise by unguided material processes, but in all this postulating, theorizing, and hypothesizing galore, by Darwinists you will never find an empirical demonstration of unguided material processes ever actually creating any information.
In other words, all the postulating, theorizing, and hypothesizing, galore by Darwinists is all smoke and mirrors to cover up the embarrassing fact that material processes cannot create information.
Just one observed instance of unguided material processes creating non-trivial functional information would falsify ID.
Whereas ID can easily be falsified by experimental observation, Darwinists, on the other hand, have no such falsification criteria:
Without such a rigid falsification criteria, Darwinian evolution, sans Popper, does not even really qualify as a science:
Also of note, despite all the mathematical theorizing that Moran prides himself in, the fact of the matter is that Darwinian evolution has no rigid mathematical basis to test against:
Chaitin is quoted at 10:00 minute mark of following video in regards to Darwinism lack of a mathematical proof – Dr. Marks also comments on the honesty of Chaitin in personally admitting that his long sought after mathematical proof for Darwinian evolution failed to deliver the goods.
ID suffers no such embarrassment as Darwinian evolution suffers for having no rigid mathematical basis within science
You made that up.
Prove it.
Darwin, 1859
Virgil Cain says,
How do you know this? Did some “Darwinists” tell you about alternative splicing? Why do you believe them when you don’t believe anything else they say?
What if it turns out that only a small percentage of mammalian genes are alternatively spliced, do you have another theory?
Alternative Splicing and Why IDiots Don’t Understand How Science Works
How much intron sequence is needed for alternative splicing? I have estimated that it’s no more than 80 bp. That only accounts for a tiny percentage of the human genome.
Why Do the IDiots Have So Much Trouble Understanding Introns?
Virgil Cain says,
If it’s important, maybe you should ask Barry Arrington to put it into the glossary entry on “Darwinism” so everyone will know that this is what Darwin said?
As for drift being creative, have you read …
Constructive Neutral Evolution (CNE)
Do you understand it? Is it part of your “Darwinism” theory?
I’m not asking to to accept or believe in something like constructive neutral evolution but you should at least know about it before you say what you think evolutionary biologists believe. It’s simply not true to say that natural selection is the only possible, unguided, way to create the appearance of design and complexity.
constructive neutral evolution
Alternative splicing is another evidence that falsifies Darwinian evolution.
First off, codes must be implemented top down. It is physically impossible to evolve a code from the bottom up. All of our empirical evidence confirms this fact. In fact, so solid is this scientific fact that Perry Marshall has organized a 3 million dollar prize for the first person who can prove to the contrary that codes can possibly evolve in a bottom up Darwinian fashion without a mind.
In other words, it ain’t going to happen. A technical way of understanding this fact is ‘Shannon channel capacity’
But an easier way of understanding why a code will never evolve in a gradual bottom up Darwinian fashion is elucidated by Dawkins himself:
The bottom line is that if any code is ‘randomly changed’ in part, it throws a huge monkey wrench into the code and will be ‘instantly catastrophic’, to use Richard Dawkins most appropriate term, to the species thus rendering gradual change to the code impossible.
In other words, the entire code must be implemented ‘top down’!
Please note, this is not randomly changing sequences within the code that we are talking about, this is talking about making changes to a code itself.
The reason I bring this non-evolvability of codes up is because of alternative splicing codes.
Namely, alternative splicing codes are found to be ‘species-specific’.
First off, there is an alternative splicing code:
Secondly, alternative splicing is astonishing:
Thirdly, the alternative splicing code is ‘species-specific’
And yet these supposed ‘junk intron sequences’, that Darwinists use to ignore (as Moran is desperately trying to do now), that were used to decipher the splicing code of different tissue types in an organism, are found to be exceptionally different between chimpanzees and Humans:
Jonathan Wells comments on the fallacious ‘Darwinian Logic’, within the preceding paper, that falsely tried to attribute the major differences that were found in INDEL variation to unguided Darwinian processes:
This following, more recent, paper also found that Alternative Splicing patterns are ‘species specific’:
Of related interest: The position and organization of genes on the chromosome is not arbitrary
Larry Moran:
Sorry but I only accept what there is evidence for.
All I know is natural selection can’t account for it. Drift can’t account for it. Neutral theory can’t account for it and creative neutral theory can’t account for it.
Did you read your own article on creative neutral theory? It is all contingent serendipity! Is that really your idea of science?
But I digress, I don’t know the number of different proteins in the human body. The number of genes is 20,000(ish) but I have read varying numbers on the protein side. And not knowing enough about the design of the genome I couldn’t say why only a small fraction would utilize alternative splicing.
But if you think that natural selection and drift- creative or not- can produce a spliceosome it is up to you to come up with some way to test that claim.
Thank you for telling me that there are scientists who actually think that contingent serendipity/constructive neutral evolution, is a viable mechanism for creating adaptations. Please let Futuyma know as all his textbooks proudly proclaim that NS is the only known mechanism to produce adaptations. Unfortunately we don’t even have evidence that it can. It is all done by proclamation- “Natural selection is the only mechanism capable of producing adaptations. Here are some adaptations produced by natural selection.”
Now he has to add contingent serendipity.
Daniel pufferfish @ 47-
Ha! So genetic drift is Darwinian. Larry Moran is a Darwinist and that is a fact. Does the avarage Darwinist know what facts are?
What does that even mean? How are you defining “Darwinian”? Do you equate Darwinian with “evolutionary”? If not, is there any evolutionary change that you wouldn’t say is Darwinian?
Goodusername
Non-Darwinian evolution;
Lamarckism
Orthogenesis
Deterministic Evolution
There are examples of non-Darwinian evolution, I personally agree with Lamarckism or better known today as Epigenetics.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....141448.htm
Andre, Lamarican evolution surely has some validity. However, it is a mechanism that is presumably developed via the magic of RM+NS. I know of nobody who seriously sees lamaricanism to be the fundamental driving force of evolution.
Orthogenesis and Deterministic Evolution are bosom buddies. The are variants of the front loading hypothesis. They are telic, presumed to be “designed to evolve”.
goodusername, “Do you equate Darwinian with “evolutionary”?” No. Evolution is change over time. As such we all have evolutionary views. Darwinian is “via purely natural processes”, specifically the processes of random (non-foresighted) variation + natural selection. RM+NS are presumed to be capable of developing sub-processes including human genetic engineering. (All of human engineering actually.)
Andre,
Well, that answer makes your comment #56 even more puzzling.
Darwin wrote quite a bit defending the inheritance of acquired characteristics and “use and disuse inheritance”.
And he even developed the pangenesis hypothesis as a mechanism for how such inheritance could work.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any reference to drift in Origin, but there is a statement in Descent that I believe could be interpreted as backing the idea of drift, although I think most see the idea of drift as originating in the 1930s.
But somehow drift is Darwinian and Lamarckism isn’t?
Darwin believed that he came up with a mechanism for evolution (selection), but also believed there were many other mechanisms, including inheritance of acquired characteristics, and possibly drift, but didn’t see the former as part of his mechanism, and almost certainly wouldn’t see the latter as part of his mechanism (after all, it’s the opposite of selection!)
@bornagain wrote: “It is physically impossible to evolve a code from the bottom up.”
Coding is simply a form of mathematics, and mathematics is ordered by the zero. Fundamentally mathematics is universal, and code is also universal.
In mathematical theory the 1 is derived by rewriting the 0. So then you have 2 different symbols, which have the same information content, which means they have a boolean relationship. Then you can do the binary 0101010111110 computercode.
Variations in codes, it doesn’t apply to the basic structure of the code. In every code 5-2=3
So to say the structure of the code follows from the ordering by 0, which is a law of the universe. The basic structure is neither evolved, nor chosen top down. One cannot intelligently decide the rules in 5-2 = 3 nor evolve the rules in 5-2=3 by selection.
bFast: I don’t include Moran in the camp of “we”. Moran’s position is infantile.
Moran’s position is conventional. In biology, darwinian evolution generally refers to evolution by natural selection.
bFast: Bornagain uses it to refer to “reductive materialism” How does “reductive materialism” differ from my definition?
Because reductive materialism is a philosophical position, that everything can be reduced to material mechanisms, while your definition only refers to life. So someone might believe the Big Bang is beyond natural explanation, but “propose that non-foresighted variation + natural selection, along with its products, can explain all of life.”
When talking about evolutionary theory, while implicitly using a definition of darwinism that means {to you} “reductive materialism”, is just asking for confusion.
bFast: “Coyne argues it should refer to modern evolutionary theory.” And how does that differ to my definition with the exception of scope?
The exception of scope IS a difference in definition.
Per your definition, this paper is incoherent; King & Jukes, Non-Darwinian Evolution, Science 1969: “Most evolutionary change in proteins may be due to neutral mutations and genetic drift. Darwinism is so well established that it is difficult to think of evolution except in terms of selection …”
Funny, a person on the street has no problem whatsoever knowing what someone means when they say Darwinian evolution. Namely, that all life arose via undirected material processes via common descent. But ironically highly educated Darwinists find it necessary to separate Darwinian evolution into different camps so as to protect it from falsification by junk DNA.
Interestingly, the squabble now degenerates into how much junk DNA and natural selection makes you a true Darwinist and how much does not.
I’m sure hard numbers for distinguishing true Darwinists from untrue Darwinists will be forthcoming in another 100 years or so. 🙂
Darwin refutes Zachriel:
Dr. Moran,
If you could. Please offer the 3 best pieces of evidence that you feel demonstrate, beyond any doubt, that evolution occurs strictly through random mutation and natural selection. Simply list the reason and briefly describe why you feel it supports neo-darwinism. Please provide brief discussion points here rather than referring to some other forum. If you need to reference some recent research paper, that’s fine. But explain why it supports your point.
Thanks, regards.
Goodusername
It is well known that Darwin borrowed that from Lamarck.
Andre: It is well known that Darwin borrowed that from Lamarck.
It is well known that Darwin marshaled evidence from many different scientists in many different fields of study.
Zachriel
And that is why the charge that he plagiarised others still haunts his legacy.
Andre: And that is why the charge that he plagiarised others still haunts his legacy.
The work of other scientists are regularly cited in his published papers.
MN #61,
I don’t think you are right in saying that code is reducible to mere ordering or sorting. Code (=rules, function) is inherently richer than the law-like necessity producing ordering/sorting. The laws of nature can produce only redundant regularity, randomness and transitions between the two. Functional sequences are always an artifact.
See “Relationship between Random Sequence Complexity, Ordered Sequence Complexity and Functional Sequence Complexity”, chapter in “The First Gene”, D. Abel et. al. 2011.
Zachriel
And allot of others he did not cite….
Andre: And allot of others he did not cite….
Did you want to be specific?
nkendall asks,
Why in the world would I do that?
I don’t believe that “evolution occurs strictly through random mutation and natural selection.”
Do you not understand anything I’ve been saying?
Larry Moran, “I don’t believe that “evolution occurs strictly through random mutation and natural selection.””
Of course you do. You believe that natural selection plays no role in most random mutations, so you believe approximately, “most evolution occurs strictly through random mutation.” Isn’t that your theory?
Your view differs from that of mainstream neo-Darwinism in that you place significantly more weight on random mutation, and significantly (even hugely) less weight on natural selection. However, from everything I have read from you, there remain only these two mechanisms.
Fair enough Mr. Moran…It seems you have embraced the neutral theory and perhaps this “Constructive neutral theory of evolution” (CNE)? I have looked at that a bit. But even the neutral theory requires selection at some point, right? I don’t think you could do a standing vertical jump up the steep side of Mr. Improbable. The proposal (it really isn’t a theory) strikes me as something someone dreamed up during a DMT trip.
I was not able to find any substance to it in my admittedly quick look. Do you have anything more specific to look at? Any evidence? It appears to be a collection of stories and a whole less plausible than the “just so” stories.
I did see Michael Behe’s critique of it.
http://behe.uncommondescent.co.....omplexity/.
Have you commented on that?
In addition to the problems he cites, it strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely, given the ubiquity of convergent and parallel evolution, that you could have the same collection of innumerable series of serendipitous neutral changes occurring which just happen to be pulled together–somehow–into a very useful complex function and in fact along with several novel functions at the same time and do so over and over again. Simon Conway Morris seems to rely on the power of small changes and especially natural selection to explain how the same sets of complex features could evolve time and time again. For example the transition of the reptile to mammals which he says occurred a few times and perhaps several times.
Larry, I am afraid that by embracing this neutral drift theory, you have cast aside your good sense and that you, yourself will be adrift in the marketplace of ideas, isolated on an island of thought, just like one of your a nascent genes…forlorned on a small island in the vast fitness landscape.
nkendall, “the transition of the reptile to mammals which he [Simon Conway Morris] says occurred a few times and perhaps several times.” What is your source on this. I couldn’t find it by googling “morris reptile mammal”. I’d like to see what he has to say exactly.
bfast:
I don’t know if we can say that. Larry seems to be no great fan of Mutation-Driven Evolution. What else is there? Intelligent Design?
bFast,
Sorry for the delay I had a bit of trouble with the math problem Barry challenged me with in order to start typing here. Anyway…
You may not find such a statement from Morris. This was something he shared with me in an email exchange shortly after I bought his book “Life’s Solutions”. I asked him about it because I read somewhere that this transition had occurred at least twice. I think it was a response to Ken Miller’s book “Finding Darwin’s God” which mentions that transition as a knock down proof of neo-darwinism. (I found it quite lacking…still a lot of gaps and lots of new features meaning new cell types and new proteins; a few sketches doesn’t cut it for me.) Morris was very responsive and after thanking me for buying his book, offered his regrets for not including any discussion on this transition. He said he had to consult with a colleague to say for sure how many times the transition occurred. I could probably dig around and find the email but it would be a lot of effort. In conveying what he said above, I used the word “perhaps” I think Morris actually used the word “probably” [the transition occurred several times]. I was being cautious.
In any case I don’t know how you can square convergence with a neutral theory. Wouldn’t it be the case that these mutations that some day will become a valuable part of a new complex feature would have to occur multiple times given that they would be more likely to be lost (more likely compared to mutation / selection)? Actually I don’t know how you can square convergence with good old fashion mutation / selection but that is what Morris and others seem to be suggesting.
Convergence for me is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence for intelligent design especially when you hear of things like the eye of the octopus and the ocelloid of the warnowiids.
bFast says,
You’ve been reading my comments and blog posts for years and you still think that?
No wonder I call some of you IDiots. You deserve it.
Larry, other than mutation-driven evolution, what is left?
The right amount of mutations at just the right time?
Spit it out, Larry Moran, what other mechanism is there? (Please understand, of course, that when I refer to mutation, I don’t simply mean “point mutation”, I mean any change to DNA that was the result of happenstance.)
I’m an even worse IDiot. In my understanding of any Darwinian theory the one and only source for novelty is (happenstance) mutation. After effects like natural selection and drift are anti-creative; they remove information.
Larry Moran,
“Why in the world would I do that?”
Indeed, why in the world?
That one was my personal marker, professor Moran, from which I decided I would make my opinion. Of course, it’s not important to you, but just so you know your credibility has plummeted to zero.
EugeneS: Indeed, why in the world?
He was asked a question loaded with a premise with which he disagreed.
nkendall: Convergence for me is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence for intelligent design especially when you hear of things like the eye of the octopus and the ocelloid of the warnowiids.
Biologists, from Darwin on, have considered it evidence of natural selection, and there is independent evidence to support the contention.
Zachriel @84,
Why then did he not use the opportunity to type a couple of sentences explaining the gist of his argument? A true scientist, in my opinion, has a different attitude to educating the audience. If this is the passion of their life and profession, they should welcome every opportunity to promote knowledge.
Credibility zero.
In contrast, how many people just here at this blog patiently repeated themselves over and over again laying out their arguments!
Zachriel at 84
“Biologists, from Darwin on, have considered it evidence of natural selection, and there is independent evidence to support the contention.”
What is the independent evidence?
Convergent and parallel evolution are evidence for intelligent design. The same complex things happening over and over again is a pattern, a pattern of complexity. Recurring patterns of complexity sounds like the result of intelligent planning; it evokes foresight in my mind. Only through tortured logic could a neo-darwinist claim they are evidence of selection.
Convergent and parallel evolution are an embarrassment to neo-darwinism. That’s why Gould went to such trouble to deny it. And that’s why darwinists seldom mention that the eye evolved so many times and why I had to dig so hard to find out that the reptile to mammal transition occurred multiple times. Convergent evolution is a label for their ignorance. But I do agree that of the two mechanisms offered by neo-darwinism–mutation and selection–selection has the best hope of explaining convergent evolution. But its a faint hope at that.
nkendall: What is the independent evidence?
While no single thread can be separated completely from the tapestry of evolutionary history, consider the case of the convergence of prestin, a mammalian motor-protein involved in high-frequency hearing. When we plot its phylogeny, the phylogeny seems to place bats and whales together, contrary to their overall morphological phylogeny; but when we plot the phylogeny of non-synonymous substitutions, the standard phylogeny is revealed.
nkendall: Convergent and parallel evolution are evidence for intelligent design.
Intelligent design does not explain why the phylogeny of non-synonymous substitutions matches the morphological phylogeny, but it follows naturally from branching descent, and evolution by natural selection.
nkendall: Convergent and parallel evolution are an embarrassment to neo-darwinism. That’s why Gould went to such trouble to deny it.
Gould accepted convergence, but argued that convergence does not imply that evolution always follows predictable paths.
Zachriel at 87
Your comment is general. How many clades are you talking about? How many sample species within each clade? How many genes within those clades? And how many amino acid differences within each “gene?” I guess I would have to see the data. But my understanding is that there are stark differences between the phylogenies derived from morphology vs those derived from genetics, right?
In any case, the point you are making, if true, only applies to Intelligent Design adherents who deny common descent. But Intelligent Design is agnostic, generally, on common descent, as am I. If you had asked by 5 years ago, I would have said common descent was a slam dunk. But now after the torrent of research coming out of ENCODE, I am not so sure and I am not even sure it matters…orphan genes, de novo genes, microRNAs, repeats all of which differ markedly between species (or families). I suspect that these things are more difficult to explain for evolutionists than your point about phylogeny matching between the genotype and the phenotype (in specific cases) is for those who don’t accept common descent.
Regarding your comment about Gould and convergent evolution…of course many more examples of convergence are known now than 15-20 years ago when the Gould-Morris debate over convergence was raging. I think Gould might be a bit more circumspect about contingency were he alive today. What do you think? Isn’t it clear that many very complex things seem to occur over and over again…doesn’t that strike you as the result of a plan with a goal?
nkendall: Your comment is general.
Prestin is specific, not general.
nkendall: How many clades are you talking about? How many sample species within each clade? How many genes within those clades? And how many amino acid differences within each “gene?” I guess I would have to see the data.
See Li et al., The hearing gene Prestin unites echolocating bats and whales, Current Biology 2010.
http://www.cell.com/cms/attach.....5/mmc1.pdf
(Figure S1)
nkendall: But my understanding is that there are stark differences between the phylogenies derived from morphology vs those derived from genetics, right?
Overall morphology, as well as overall genetics, places bats and whales on distant branches of the mammalian tree, but prestin stands out against this pattern, with the bat and whale prestin proteins closely resembling one another.
nkendall: In any case, the point you are making, if true, only applies to Intelligent Design adherents who deny common descent.
Intelligent Design doesn’t explain the pattern of synonymous substitutions, that is, unless Intelligent Design is empirically indistinguishable from old-fashioned evolution.
nkendall: I think Gould might be a bit more circumspect about contingency were he alive today.
Contingency is directly observed. See Blount et al., Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli, PNAS 2008. The scientific question concerns the relative importance of necessity and contingency in the history of evolution.