I already wrote about some internal contradictions of evolutionism here here here here and here.
Today I deal with another logical inconsistency of Darwinism that is directly related to its foundations.
Darwinian evolution, which is supposed to have created purposelessly all the biological complexity on Earth, would work according to genetic variations and natural selection. Organisms with traits that give them a reproductive advantage over their competitors pass these advantageous traits on, while traits that do not confer an advantage are not passed on to the next generation. Natural selection is the process in populations by which advantageous traits that enhance reproduction are selected for and are passed on to the next generation. These traits would arise because of many small genetic variations. These conditions produce competition between organisms about reproduction.
Unfortunately these processes cause no creation of systems. They have engineering power equal zero.
In fact, such Darwinian processes are incapable in principle to create a new complex biological function. First, I explain why they are unable to create functions different from reproduction. Organisms are giant hierarchies of functions, each function performed by one or more systems. Among these functions only some have to do specifically with reproduction. The functions that are not involved directly with reproduction cannot be created by evolution, indeed given its very definition. Conceptually, if a process selects only for a single function cannot create entire sets of many functions, as organisms are. Therefore evolution, which selects for the reproductive function only, cannot create different functions from nothing.
As a simple analogy, if a car factory builds and selects devices to get the movement of the car only, it will never produce the car systems that are not directly related to movement (e.g. the steering system, the brake system, the air conditioned, the seats, the rear-view mirror, etc.).
Now let’s see why also the function of reproduction is an insurmountable problem for evolution. Here I explained why just reproduction in a single cell is unreachable by chance and necessity. To greater reason, reproduction in organisms, which is far more complex than in unicellulars, is unreachable. Evolution works by many small steps, not few giant leaps. So it takes a long series of genotypic variations before the phenotype eventually makes a difference in terms of reproduction. But, before such reproductive advantage is reached, the small useless variations in the genotypes are discarded in the population, then evolution can not even begin.
In the car analogy, if the factory, when developing by small variations the engine (that is directly related to movement), discards these variations because they don’t yet cause movement, the factory will produce not even the smallest part of the engine.
The car analogy explains because the car factories (and by the way any industry) are based on intelligent design, not Darwinian evolution.
The bottom line is that if evolution neither creates the function of reproduction nor the functions unrelated to reproduction, then it produces no biological complex function at all. After all, how could evolution create functions when function is purpose and evolution is purposeless?
Very good point to bring up! On Darwinian evolution all that matters is reproductive success. All other functions are highly superfluous to the ‘survival of the fittest’ dictum of Darwinism!
Notes:
Dr. Stephen Meyer makes a very interesting comment here about ‘simple’ self-replicating molecules which got simpler very quickly by neo-Darwinian processes;
This following link, to a book, has a nice short overview of the classic self-replicating experiment in 1967 by Spiegelman, which Dr. Meyer just talked about, in which the self-replicating molecule got stripped down to its bare essentials in a test tube,(i.e. Spiegelman’s monster), instead of evolving any new complexity that might lead to self sustaining capability;
In the following article, Dr. Michael Behe defends the one ‘overlooked’ protein/protein binding site generated by the HIV virus, that Darwinists Abbie Smith and Ian Musgrave had found, by pointing out it is well within the 2 binding site limit he set in “The Edge Of Evolution”:
In fact, I followed this debate very closely and it turns out the trivial gain of just one protein-protein binding site being generated for the non-living HIV virus, that the evolutionists were ‘crowing’ about, came at a staggering loss of complexity for the living host it invaded (People) with just that one trivial gain of a ‘leaky cell membrane’ in binding site complexity. Thus the ‘evolution’ of the virus clearly stayed within the principle of Genetic Entropy since far more functional complexity was lost by the living human cells it invaded than was ever gained by the non-living HIV virus. A non-living virus which depends on those human cells to replicate in the first place. Moreover, while learning HIV is a ‘mutational powerhouse’ which greatly outclasses the ‘mutational firepower’ of the entire spectrum of higher life-forms combined for millions of years, and about the devastating effect HIV has on humans with just that one trivial binding site being generated, I quickly realized that if evolution were actually the truth about how life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most ‘mutational firepower’, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the ‘fittest’ are allowed to survive. The logic of all this is nicely summed up here:
Music and verse:
Queue materialist chorus: “But, given enough time, basic materials, chemical interactions and chance, everything that can happen will happen.”
Eventually. In some universe, somewhere, somewhen.
Niwrad, I see your point. Is it possible to name functions which are not in anyway connected to reproduction – directly or indirectly?
For instance one could argue that being smarter, stronger etc. indirectly enhances reproduction capabilities, hence the filter of natural selection can get a grip on those.
It seems to me that life began, pretty much, with the worlds best, most prolific, and hardiest replicator – a bacteria-like cell. Many bacteria are very hardy life-forms, able to survive in all kinds of conditions and able to reproduce faster that just about anything else.
In evolutionary terms – the capacity for ongoing reproductive success – nothing beats bacteria. Everything evolution has produced since then is less viable than the original The more systems and complexity you add, the more chance for problems and catastrophic system failure.
What has evolution produced that is more progeny-successful than bacteria? The more complex the life form, the less progeny, the more frail in terms of environmental adaption. Why did evolution create so many strains of organisms that are less hardy, and less progeny-successful than the original?
Why don’t humans live longer, reproduce more often, why aren’t they naturally viable in more environments? By evolutionary standards, humans are not the “height” of evolution, but rather just that which fell through the cracks of natural selection. complex life isn’t the result of unguided evolution, it’s that which exists in spite of it.
IMO evolution, on its own, wouldn’t produce humans or elephants or sharks; it would just produce really tough, competing bacteria that lived and reproduced forever, feeding on sunlight, chemicals and perhaps each other.
BA77 @1:
Thanks for pointing us to this book. Couple of thoughts:
1- We should be careful to not refer to a “self-replicating” molecule. It didn’t self-replicate; an enzyme was used to replicate the viral RNA. I don’t mean to be pedantic, but this is something I watch for pretty closely. The alleged “self-replicating molecule” is a critical component of the materialist creation myth. And yet, I have never been able to find an example of such an entity, although I ask at every turn. Every story I have seen so far about self replicating molecules turns out, on further inspection, to include at least some kind of replicating enzyme or agent in addition to the molecule being replicated.
2. It is not clear that what occurred in the Spiegelman experiment even qualifies as an example of Darwinian evolution, as stated in the book. Yes, being able to reproduce more quickly is one of the things that Darwinian evolution touts as an advantage, but here we have a single molecule being replicated by an enzyme in a test tube. We don’t have a situation where a self-replicating organism is taking in energy and utilizing that energy for its work, including reproduction. In Spiegelman’s case, we have a simple situation with two molecules, one of which interacts with the free monomers in the solution, binds them in sequence as fast as it can, without necessarily trying to reproduce the original strand (although that template was initially used). As the process continued and, it sounds like, sped up, the monomers were eventually exhausted by the enzymes as they quickly grabbed all the monomers in sight and bound them in chains.
As a result, I’m not sure this process counts as “evolution” any more than having two molecules interact chemically in a test tube, say, an epoxy resin exposed to a hardener. Yes, the resulting reacted molecules quickly displace the original epoxy resin, and the process indeed speeds up as the remaining epoxy resin reacts with the hardener and gets used up. But we could hardly say that the resultant molecule that eventually took over the entire solution did so because of the “Darwinian struggle for existence,” to use the book’s term.
WJM @4:
Indeed. There is no rational reason to think that evolution would or should ever create anything beyond, say, aggressive bacteria. And evolution doesn’t really have any goal or direction. Gould said that if we were to replay evolution on the Earth things could turn out completely differently the next time around.
In other words, what is the evolutionary explanation for why we have whales and dolphins and tigers and humans? The evolutionary answer is quite simple:
Stuff Happens.
A few notes:
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically ‘selected’ for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would slow down successful reproduction.
Natural Selection Reduces Genetic Information – Dr. Georgia Purdom – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4036808
“A Dutch zoologist, J.J. Duyvene de Wit, clearly demonstrated that the process of speciation (such as the appearance of many varieties of dogs and cats) is inevitably bound up with genetic depletion as a result of natural selection. When this scientifically established fact is applied to the question of whether man could have evolved from ape-like animals,’.. the transformist concept of progressive evolution is pierced in its very vitals.’ The reason for this, J.J. Duyvene de Wit went on to explain, is that the whole process of evolution from animal to man ” ‘ . . would have to run against the gradient of genetic depletion. That is to say, . . man )should possess] a smaller gene-potential than his animal ancestors! [I] Here, the impressive absurdity becomes clear in which the transformist doctrine [the theory of evolution] entangles itself when, in flat contradiction to the factual scientific evidence, it dogmatically asserts that man has evolved from the animal kingdom!” —Op. cit., pp. 129-130. [Italics his; quotations from *J.J. Duyvene de Wit, A New Critique of the Transformist Principle in Evolutionary Biology (1965), p. 56,57.]
http://www.godrules.net/evolut.....vlch15.htm
The Frailty of the Darwinian Hypothesis
“The net effect of genetic drift in such (vertebrate) populations is “to encourage the fixation of mildly deleterious mutations and discourage the promotion of beneficial mutations,”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....ian_h.html
Natural Selection Reduces Genetic Information – No Beneficial Mutations – Spetner – Denton – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4036816
EXPELLED – Natural Selection And Genetic Mutations – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4036840
“…but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have…”
Maciej Marian Giertych – Population Geneticist – member of the European Parliament – EXPELLED
To point out part of the problem with the natural selection mechanism, one skeptic of evolutionary theory once asked this question to a Darwinist:
“How did natural selection ever ‘get purchase on a pimple’ to turn it into wing?”
At Why Evolution Is True, the Chewbacca Defense – David Klinghoffer – December 13, 2012
Excerpt: “There is no compelling empirical or theoretical evidence that complexity, modularity, redundancy or other features of genetic pathways are promoted by natural selection….Many aspects of complexity at the genomic, molecular and cellular levels in multicellular species are likely to owe their origins to these non-adaptive forces, representing little more than passive outcomes.”
(Lynch, “The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes,” Nature Rev. Gen., 8:803-13, (October, 2007))
So if the “complexity, modularity, redundancy or other features of genetic pathways” and “many aspects of complexity at the genomic, molecular and cellular levels in multicellular species” aren’t easily explained by natural selection, that’s a lot.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....67451.html
Darwin proven wrong, again! Experimental Evolution Reveals Resistance to Change
Excerpt: Our work provides a new perspective on the genetic basis of adaptation. Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....to-change/
I got a new copy of ReMine’s The Biotic Message and re-read his chapters on Natural Selection and I get to see it all in action. (UD Blogger – Mung)
Summary
Inventive natural selection is the distinctive evolutionary mechanism – essential to Darwinian theory. Evolutionists presume it creates new adaptations by somehow traversing the hills and valleys of the fitness terrain. But they do not attempt to defend it as testable science. Rather, for the defense they shift back to the naive version – survival of the fittest. Then they might offer some tautology to help expunge all doubt.
When challenged, they shift between various formulations They use naive natural selection to convince the public that evolution is simple, testable, and virtually inevitable.
When opponents point out that such continually uphill evolution is refuted by the data, evolutionists effortlessly shift away from naive natural selection. Then they charge that the opponent has a poor understanding of evolutionary theory.
In short, evolutionists merely shifted away from criticism, then focused their arguments (and your attention) in a direction that seemed to overcome the criticism. This phenomenon occurs at several levels.
Biological adaptation by natural selection is not inevitable, nor is the theory scientific. It had merely lent support to the philosophy of naturalism.
Genetic diversity and selection in the maize starch pathway:
The tremendous diversity of maize and teosinte has been the raw genetic material for the radical transformation of maize into the world’s highest yielding grain crop.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g.....tid=130568
the entire spectrum of dog sub-species has been found to have less genetic diversity than the parent wolf species:
,,the mean sequence divergence in dogs, 2.06, was almost identical to the 2.10 (sequence divergence) found within wolves. (please note the sequence divergence is slightly smaller for the entire spectrum of dogs than for wolves)
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.o.....0/1/71.pdf
podcast – On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with geneticist Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig about his recent article on the evolution of dogs. Casey and Dr. Lönnig evaluate the claim that dogs somehow demonstrate macroevolution.
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....1_14-08_00
Part 2: Dog Breeds: Proof of Macroevolution?
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....7_07-08_00
Single male and female sheep maintain genetic diversity.
A mouflon population (considered an ancient “parent” lineage of sheep), bred over dozens of generations from a single male and female pair transplanted to Haute Island from a Parisian zoo, has maintained the genetic diversity of its founding parents.This finding challenges the widely accepted theory of genetic drift, which states the genetic diversity of an inbred population will decrease over time. “What is amazing is that models of genetic drift predict the genetic diversity of these animals should have been lost over time, but we’ve found that it has been maintained,”
Dr. David Coltman, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Alberta
Allozyme evidence for crane systematics and polymorphisms within populations of sandhill, sarus, Siberian and whooping cranes.
“This is contrary to expectations of genetic loss due to a population bottleneck of some 15 individuals in the 1940s. The possibility should be explored that some mechanism exists for rapidly restoring genetic variability after population bottlenecks.”
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 1:279-288- Dessauer, H. C., G. F. Gee, and J. S. Rogers. 1992.
These following studies and video, on Cichlid fishes, are evidence of the ‘limited and rapid variation from a parent kind’ predicted by the Genetic Entropy model:
African cichlid fish: a model system in adaptive radiation research:
“The African cichlid fish radiations are the most diverse extant animal radiations and provide a unique system to test predictions of speciation and adaptive radiation theory(of evolution).—-(surprising implication of the study?)—- the propensity to radiate was significantly higher in lineages whose precursors emerged from more ancient adaptive radiations than in other lineages”
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.g.....d=16846905
“We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations,” Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. “Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians.” Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University “La Sapienza,” Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.-
If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? – January 20, 2011
Excerpt: John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.”
“Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man thing.,,,
He rattles off some dismaying numbers: Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.”
http://discovermagazine.com/20.....-shrinking
A. L. Hughes’s New Non-Darwinian Mechanism of Adaption Was Discovered and Published in Detail by an ID Geneticist 25 Years Ago – Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig – December 2011
Excerpt: The original species had a greater genetic potential to adapt to all possible environments. In the course of time this broad capacity for adaptation has been steadily reduced in the respective habitats by the accumulation of slightly deleterious alleles (as well as total losses of genetic functions redundant for a habitat), with the exception, of course, of that part which was necessary for coping with a species’ particular environment….By mutative reduction of the genetic potential, modifications became “heritable”. — As strange as it may at first sound, however, this has nothing to do with the inheritance of acquired characteristics. For the characteristics were not acquired evolutionarily, but existed from the very beginning due to the greater adaptability. In many species only the genetic functions necessary for coping with the corresponding environment have been preserved from this adaptability potential. The “remainder” has been lost by mutations (accumulation of slightly disadvantageous alleles) — in the formation of secondary species.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....53881.html
The Cambrian’s Many Forms
Excerpt: “It appears that organisms displayed “rampant” within-species variation “in the ‘warm afterglow’ of the Cambrian explosion,” Hughes said, but not later. “No one has shown this convincingly before, and that’s why this is so important.””From an evolutionary perspective, the more variable a species is, the more raw material natural selection has to operate on,”….(Yet Surprisingly)….”There’s hardly any variation in the post-Cambrian,” he said. “Even the presence or absence or the kind of ornamentation on the head shield varies within these Cambrian trilobites and doesn’t vary in the post-Cambrian trilobites.” University of Chicago paleontologist Mark Webster; article on the “surprising and unexplained” loss of variation and diversity for trilobites over the 270 million year time span that trilobites were found in the fossil record, prior to their total extinction from the fossil record about 250 million years ago.
http://www.terradaily.com/repo.....s_999.html
For argument sake on seeing the point regarding reproductive selection advantage: Why would selecting for something else (bigger teeth to eat your with for example) NOT be ALSO selecting for reproduction due to a gained survival advantage?
In my opinion, Darwinian evolution is a religion of cretins, created by cretins for cretins. The logical fallacies of the theory of evolution are many and glaring. That such a cretinous and mediocre theory has lasted for so long does not reflect well on humanity. Something is wrong with us collectively, as a species.
Alan, but that’s assuming you have teeth in the first place to select from, why should teeth (or the ‘pathway’ thereof) ever be selected for in the first place when reproduction, ‘survival of the fittest’, would favor getting energy as efficiently as possible,,,
notes to that effect:
Doug Axe: Lignin & the Coherent Design of the Ecosystem – podcast
Excerpt: Lignin provides a paradoxical case for the Darwinian method of evolution, but fits perfectly into a design oriented scientific paradigm. Thirty percent of non-fossil organic carbon on the planet is lignin, so in a Darwinian world, something should have developed the ability to consume lignin–but it hasn’t. Lignin binds together and protects plant cellulose, which is vital to all types of large plant life; “The peculiar properties of lignin therefore make perfect sense when seen as part of a coherent design for the entire ecosystem of our planet.”
http://www.idthefuture.com/201.....ent_d.html
The Lignin Enigma By Ann Gauger – July 2012
Excerpt: How can one mechanism [Darwinism] have been at the same time so effective and so ineffective? That tension vanishes completely when the design perspective is adopted. Terrestrial animal life is crucially dependent on terrestrial plant life, which is crucially dependent on soil, which is crucially dependent on the gradual photo- and biodegradation of lignin. Fungi accomplish the biodegradation, and the surprising fact that it costs them energy to do so keeps the process gradual. The peculiar properties of lignin therefore make perfect sense when seen as part of a coherent design for the entire ecosystem.
http://www.biologicinstitute.o.....nin-enigma
Darwinists tried, and failed, to overturn the Lignin egnigma:
Lignin: The Enigma Remains – Ann Gauger – July 2012
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....61821.html
Box #3 & alan #10
Most apparatuses in higher organisms are not related to reproduction: e.g. cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, urinary, immune, muscular, skeletal, nervous, respiratory systems.
Consider how much stuff is working when an organism simply lives without being in the act of reproducing. Moreover there are a lot of things in living beings that are merely aesthetic.
Any single generic unspecified selection is not enough to account for such abundance of specified functionalities.
This is a truly bizarre post. Even if you believe natural selection doesnt happen, talking about “Any single unspecified selection” is a contradiction in terms. A “selection” is “specified” by its definition: the action of environmental factors in selecting a specific genetic alleles that cause a specific physical trait.
And where did you get the peculiar idea that natural selection only acts on reproductive systems?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As is so often the case, the discussion has quickly gotten side tracked. The commenting is focused on whether there are any such things as biological subsystems which do not have any influence whatsoever on an organism’s reproductive success. That is entirely beside the point, in my opinion. The principal point that Niwrad has, I think, ably articulated is:
The processes in question being:
Does anyone have any rational refutation of Niwrad’s just quoted declaration? Or, lest some onlooker be left with the impression that the declaration is unassailable, do some feel we should proceed to “talk amongst ourselves” to divert the focus away from the true topic at hand.
As for my part, I totally agree with Niwrad. Disabuse us, if you can.
Stephen
timothya
It is standard definition of evolutionary theory that natural selection is what allows species to have more offspring, and it is the job of reproductive systems to create offspring, what else.
I speak of “unspecified selection” (about Darwinian natural selection) because I mean “specification” in the technical sense of ID theory, where it is always coupled with “complexity” and “information”.
If survive -> random change -> if survive -> random change -> if survive -> random change -> …
That is apparently (at its base) all that is needed to account for biological function.
computerist
Survival (no death = no destruction) is not a sufficiently specified and focused goal to create new complex specified functional information in the systems.
Please, apply your method to the car analogy and see it doesn’t work. In car industry, if engineers adopted uniquely “no destruction” as their goal no car would arise.
Hi niwrad,
You said:
I completely agree.
How can we prove something that is obviously false (what is obviously true for Darwinists) to be false?
There are many ways. Here are some:
To show that evolution disagrees with fundamental principles.
To show its internal contradictions, since a false thing necessarily produces contradictions.
To show that the evidences of evolution are illusions.
To calculate the probabilities of evolution and show that it is implausible.
To simulate evolution on computer and show that it cannot produce the marvels it pretends.
Mapou, I do believe you are insulting cretins. I once witnessed evidence of this, during a Mass, when a young man so severely brain-damaged at birth that he was crippled and could not speak, just make noises.
At the elevation of the Sacred Host, he kind of rose up, excitedly crying out in what seemed like a kind of ecstasy. The heart has its reason, about which the poor old bonce knows next to nothing.
Niwrad:
Not necessarily. There are single point mutations that can and do make a difference in humans. For example sickle-cell anemia is just one point mutation and in areas in which malaria is rampant, having sickle-celled trait is a plus.
Also it isn’t the useless that gets tossed. It is the detrimental- and it has to be very or extremely detrimental. Whatever works usually gets to survive and have a chance to reproduce.
IOW it doesn’t have to be the best, it just has to be good enough, according to Mayr (“What Evolution Is”).
All that said, it is still very obvious that natural selection doesn’t do anything- well it can undo what artificial selection has wrought. But it definitely is NOT the designer mimic Darwin thought it was. Perhaps he should have listened to Blythe instead of trying to make something out of nothing.
The apparatuses you mention have at least an indirect relation to reproduction. They enhance life expectancy so there is more time for reproduction.
The smartest, strongest, and healthiest bacteria will live longer and will produce more offspring.
There is no such thing as selecting only for reproduction, because reproduction is influenced by many other functions; health, strength, smartness, the ability to find food, life expectancy etc.
And yet, the history of evolution is one of an arrow that leads towards less reproduction and more chance of biological system failure, instead of towards greater reproduction and less chance of biological system failure.
Odd, isn’t it?
niwrad,
I suspect that computerist was being satirical.
Be that as it may, I believe that some here misunderstand what natural selection really is doing. It is not selecting for anything. It is selecting against the unfortunate.
See if everyone else here can follow. An individual antelope does not have to be faster than the cheetah. He does not even have to be the the fastest in the herd. He just has to be faster than the poor sap that is running along side of him. You see, natural selection doesn’t select the upper tail of the bell curve. It discards the lower tail of the curve. Everyone else gets to make babies irrespective of how fast each of them can run relative to his cousins.
So, you see, natural selection doesn’t really operate on the (very specific) fastest antelope since being the fastest has no impact on how many babies he has relative to other members of the general population. Hence, Niwrad’s reasoning that natural selection has no significant purchase on characteristics that do not directly affect reproduction.
Stephen
PS. Seems there is no way to avoid getting side tracked. Oh well.
Box you state:
But reproduction IS the ONLY thing that matters in the final accounting. If being unhealthy and weaker, instead of healthier and stronger, as in Behe’s first rule of adaptive evolution,,,
Then unhealthy and weaker individuals are favored in reproductive success. ,,, I would classify ‘ability to find food’ as another limiting factor in that those organism which found their food more efficiently and reproduced more rapidly as a result would be a success evolutionarily speaking, thus as niwrad pointed out, why all the excess functionality past reproductive success???
Consider the following paradox of photosynthesis,,, Plants perform photosynthesis. Plants use massively complex machinery within their cells to capture the light from the Sun and produce sugars (food). The benefit of this is, of course, that they eventually provide food for animals and humans.
But plants also then break down the very food that they make by using another set of extremely complex machinery to get ATP (the ‘energy currency’ molecule of the cell) from the sugars that they initially built.
Yet, this makes no sense from an evolutionary perspective because the plants should have only formed the complex machinery (if evolution had any power to create complex machinery in the first place) to take the power of light and convert it directly to ATP so that they could use it themselves instead of producing more ‘food’ than is necessary…that would be more energetically feasible. But, lo, that’s not what happens,,,
Moreover photosynthesis is found to be widespread among different bacteria phyla with no clear evolutionary relationships between them:
Yet on a design perspective all this excess makes perfect sense:
Sex really drive’s niwrad’s point home. Exactly why should single cell bacterial organisms which, as far as evolution is concerned, are by far the all time reigning champions of ‘survival of the fittest’, care to severely curtail their unmatched reproductive success with such a ‘cumbersome’ thing as sex?
And then there is the sloth:
,,and myriad more examples,,, None of this makes any sense on evolution!
Music:
@Bornagain77
Yes, but my point is that reproduction does not operate in isolation from other factors.
So you are saying that under certain circumstances ‘loss of function mutations’ (equates being unhealthy and weak) can result in a longer life and so more reproduction.
I do not want to get into semantics here. It was not my intention to define ‘health’ or ‘weak’ irrespective from environment – a whale is pretty helpless on a mountain. I prefer not to use the term ‘fitness’, but maybe there is no choice.
My point is that bacteria with a good capability to find food reproduce better than the ones who are struggling. So the ‘ability to find food’ is indirectly selected upon.
Excellent point. W J Murray(4 & 26), Eric Anderson(6) are making a similar strong argument.
However it is obvious that bacterial reproduction is being influenced by a number of factors. And Niwrad does not make a convincing case stating that natural selection cannot reach those.
Well Box, for now I agree to disagree for I think the logic niwrad laid out is pretty clear cut. Perhaps something will come up in a bit to help clarify it more clearly for you. Maybe something along the lines of thermodynamics???
I’m an ID advocate, but I have to agree with the ID skeptics here…I’m not understanding this post. Or maybe I am and it is simply wrong. A properly functioning heart does not “directly” affect reproduction, but I’d say an organism with a strong heart has a lot better chance at reproductive success with one that is missing a couple heart valves…?
I will reiterate:
“If survive -> random change -> if survive -> random change -> if survive -> random change -> …”
According to the Darwinists and apparently the entire “scientific community”, this is what is supposed to account for all biological function.
Darwinists should put their money where their mouth is and prove it.
Bacteria remain bacteria, don’t become Mozart because of natural selection rewarding the “smartest, strongest, and healthiest” (see Lenski’s experiment).
If “there is no such thing as selecting only for reproduction”, tell me what natural selection selects for. You cannot say that “it selects for all”, because selection for all is no selection.
Now consider the apparatuses, necessary to all higher organisms. They say evolution creates them by a series of small variations. But these series is necessarily so long that in countless steps no selection is possible because the function is yet not working. Also if selection selects for that specific function, it cannot decide if it works better for the simple fact that it doesn’t yet work at all. Moreover, since the small variations in the genotypes are useless, they are discarded in the population.
Evolution is a thing that can not even begin. Natural selection can work only when organisms are already alive and well, perfectly constructed, when the job is already done by intelligent design.
For clarity, I’m not a member of the naturalistic faith. I do not believe that unguided material processes can account for life.
Can a car be fast without suspension when the terrain is rough? If the road is long and curly doesn’t a car need a gas tank and steering capabilities?
Isn’t it obvious that reproduction is connected to many things depending on environment?
Very strong argument. It’s a different argument though.
Ok, Joe, a single point mutation can avoid an illness. But the problem with evolutionists is the creation of complex systems. A complex system cannot be created by a single point mutation.
Box you state:
“Very strong argument. It’s a different argument though.”
I see the confusion. It is not a different argument because niwrad’s argument in the OP is as thus:
Your objection, Box, is that the enhancement, (or diminishment), of a already existent function, on top of the reproductive function, has an effect on reproductive success. Yet niwrad is not denying that an already existent function built on top of reproduction can have an effect on reproduction. He’s denying that reproductive success can lead to any of the myriad of functions that are not DIRECTLY related to reproductive success.
My argument is that car suspension, gas tank and steering capabilities don’t arise if the engineers are focused on (select for) the engine only. Analogously, complex biological apparatuses (also if indirectly related to reproduction) don’t arise if natural selection is focused on (selects for) reproduction only (or whatever generic goal).
Any organism is a hierarchy of functions. Any function, indeed because implies a complex system, must be tuned individually if it must work. E.g. you don’t obtain the echometer of bats by generically selecting for reproduction only. Why only bats (and some other species) have echometer and not all organisms? Why most organisms reproduce well without echometer?
You say, echometer helps bats to survive and then to reproduce. Ok, but this happens when the echometer is finished and working. When the echometer is developing is useless, its genotypic data are detrimental and, as such, are discarded.
uoflcard #29
Please, for my answer,
goto #31
goto #33
goto #35
Box, as ill-equipped as I am to discuss this, let’s try to take a closer look at this from the thermodynamic perspective. The most successful ‘reproducer’ in the Darwinian scheme of things (survival of the fittest and all) is the lowly bacterium. And yet if you had an imaginary microscope that could register just how far out of thermodynamic equilibrium things were, you would be bored to tears noting just a few bits of information out of thermodynamic equilibrium from the surrounding environment here and there,, UNTIL your imaginary microscope scanned across the 0.2-2 microns in width and 1-10 microns in length of a nonspherical bacterium. There, as Michael Denton put it:
To put this into a thermodynamic perspective:
of note: The 10^12 bits of information number for a bacterium is derived from entropic considerations, which is, due to the tightly integrated relationship between information and entropy, considered the most accurate measure of the transcendent quantum information/entanglement constraining a ‘simple’ life form to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
For calculations for information, from the thermodynamic perspective, please see the following site:
Now Box, if one were to have an imaginary microscope that could register how far out of thermodynamic equilibration things were from the surrounding environment. An imaginary microscope that noted, for the vast majority of times, just a few bits of information out of thermodynamic equilibrium here and there, and then suddenly you scanned across 100 million pages of information that were out of thermodynamic equilibrium, you would rightly be amazed that such a thing even existed, and also be highly suspect of any claims that information could be added onto that mountain of information by the surrounding environment (instead of the surrounding environment eroding that mountain of information away!!)
The following article shows just how gargantuan of a step it was for scientists to ‘intelligently’ add just a single bit of information to overcome thermodynamic considerations here:
Moreover, Darwinists developed the ‘neutral’ theory of evolution to try to deal with the unbridgeable steps towards ‘higher functionality’. Yet from a thermodynamic, and reproduction (survival of the fittest), perspective, this is, to put it mildly, a extremely problematic conjecture on their part:
A graph featuring ‘Kimura’s Distribution’ being properly used is shown in the following video:
There is no, as far as I am aware, any evidence that these acute thermodynamic considerations have been overcome by Darwinian processes. (Behe; First Rule of Adaptive Evolution)
I agree, but the engineers are not just focused on the engine. The focus is on speed. The car is selected when it is fast. But in order to be fast there are more things involved than just the engine; how about wheels? The focus is on ‘everything that contributes to speed’ in formula 1 racing.
Analogously, the focus is on offspring. In order to have a lot of offspring there are more things involved than just reproduction capability. Like Uoflcard (29) notes ‘an organism with a strong heart has a lot better chance at reproductive success with one that is missing a couple heart valves’.
Box,
you by-pass my “echometer” counter-objection, then I repeat it with the uoflcard’s heart:
Heart helps organisms to survive and then – indirectly – to reproduce, but when the heart is finished and working.
When the heart is developing by trial & error, but yet not functioning (**), natural selection doesn’t consider it an help to have offspring, then doesn’t promote it. If natural selection doesn’t promote the heart, it cannot arise by evolution. Analogously, all apparatuses cannot arise by evolution.
(**) You admit that an apparatus complex like the cardiovascular one doesn’t arise instantaneously, in a “whooop”, I hope.
Science proceeds by assigning causes to effects.
“It just happened, that’s all” is not a cause of anything.
Therefore, Darwinism is not science.
In my book you are an expert on this subject – and many others. The thermodynamic argument (second law) is indeed a very strong argument against all attempts of a naturalistic explanation of life.
– – – –
So you do agree that evolution promotes the echometer – once it is in place and functional. I was under the wrong impression that you disputed this. I apologize for my misunderstanding. My confusion started when you wrote that evolution ‘only’ selects for the reproductive function and went on (post 13) listing functions which were ‘not related’.
So your point is really about the impossibility of the step-by-step formation of complex systems; a problem related to Behe’s irreducible complexity. This is indeed a strong argument against unguided evolution.
Box,
yes, systems help survival and reproduction when they are in place and functional. After all, natural selection is an engine of elimination of individuals not good to survive and reproduce. It works as a post-processor, so to speak. As such, natural selection cannot account for the initial elaboration of the systems.
As a metaphor, natural selection is a “teacher” who tests the “students”. But the students must be created in the first place by their parents, father “intelligent design – essence/quality” and mother “matter – substance/quantity”.
In a sense, the error of biological evolutionism is to think that testing has creative power. In engineering no one confuses the roles of design and testing.
Micro-evolutiona could potentially optimize existing function if changes are constrained while maintaining functional integrity.
Micro-evolution*
computerist,
yes, microevolution is the fine tuning and limited variation of bio-systems that are just from the beginning equipped, by intelligent design, of the complex potentiality of being fine tuned and slightly changed.
Related notes to ‘slightly changed’:
Scientists Discover What Makes The Same Type Of Cells Different – Oct. 2009
Excerpt: Until now, cell variability was simply called “noise”, implying statistical random distribution. However, the results of the study now show that the different reactions are not random, but that certain causes (environmental clues) lead to predictable distribution patterns,,,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....204217.htm
Bacteria ‘Invest’ (Designed) Wisely to Survive Uncertain Times, Scientists Report – Dec. 2009
Excerpt: Essentially, variability of bacterial cells appears to match the variability in the environment, thereby increasing the chances of bacterial survival,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....112102.htm
De Novo Genes: – Cornelius Hunter – Nov. 2009
Excerpt: Cells have remarkable adaptation capabilities. They can precisely adjust which segments of the genome are copied for use in the cell. They can edit and regulate those DNA copies according to their needs. And they can even modify the DNA itself, such as with adaptive mutations,,,,One apparent de novo gene is T-urf13 which was found in certain varieties of corn.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.co.....ation.html
The secrets of intelligence lie within a single cell – April 2010
Excerpt: Yet something amazing is happening here: because the damage to the Antithamnion filament is unforeseeable, the organism faces a situation for which it has not been able to adapt, and is therefore unable to call upon inbuilt responses. It has to use some sort of problem-solving ingenuity instead.
http://www.newscientist.com/ar.....-cell.html
New Research Elucidates Directed Mutation Mechanisms – Cornelius Hunter – January 7, 2013
Excerpt: mutations don’t occur randomly in the genome, but rather in the genes where they can help to address the challenge. But there is more. The gene’s single stranded DNA has certain coils and loops which expose only some of the gene’s nucleotides to mutation. So not only are certain genes targeted for mutation, but certain nucleotides within those genes are targeted in what is referred to as directed mutations.,,,
These findings contradict evolution’s prediction that mutations are random with respect to need and sometimes just happen to occur in the right place at the right time.,,,
http://darwins-god.blogspot.co.....ected.html
How Predictable Is Evolution? – Feb. 19, 2013
Excerpt: “In all three populations it seems to be more or less the same core set of genes that are causing the two phenotypes that we see,” Herron said. “In a few cases, it’s even the exact same genetic change.”,,,
“There are about 4.5 million nucleotides in the E. coli genome,” he said. “Finding in four cases that the exact same change had happened independently in different populations was intriguing.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/re.....172155.htm
Learning from Bacteria about Social Networking (Information Processing) – video
Excerpt: I will show illuminating movies of swarming intelligence of live bacteria in which they solve optimization problems for collective decision making that are beyond what we, human beings, can solve with our most powerful computers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJpi8SnFXHs
Darwin was a johnny come lately and it’s a mystery why he chose special creation as his foil.
Aristotle:
On the Generation of Animals
On the Parts of Animals
The History of Animals
Excellent! It’s so clear that even I can understand how flawed Darwins theory is. I can see the end of Darwins theory. Or many be it should be named Flawed Darwins Theory?
Are there any theories that were destroyed by new generation apart from Darwins Theory? What will happen to Darwins Theory when it is confirmed it’s flawed? Just asking.