Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Darwinism contradiction of repair systems

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

When a thing is false, is false from all points of view. In fact it cannot exist a point of view from which the thing becomes true, given it is false, rather each view point manifests a particular aspect of the falsity of the thing. As a consequence, when a thing is false, whether we suppose it is true we get contradictions, one for every point of view we consider the thing from. All that is simple logic.

When the above principles are applied to Darwinism (which according to ID theory is false) they make us conclude that Darwinism is false from all viewpoints and has internal contradictions. Of course the falsity of Darwinism is its fundamental axiom of unguided macroevolution: all biological complexity arose from a unique simple common ancestor only thank to random mutations and natural selection. RM and NS, individually taken, per se are not false, insofar they really happen. No one denies that and all appreciate Darwin who studied natural selection. The problem is in the infinitely stronger claim about the creative power of RM + NS contained in the fundamental axiom.

Here I will consider, among the Darwinism contradictions, that concerning the control-repair systems, which is particularly clear and easy to understand.

Molecular biology shows that many complex control-repair mechanisms work inside the cell to recover genetic errors. For example there are at least three major DNA repair mechanisms. Without such mechanisms life would be impossible because the internal entropy of the cell would be too high and destructive. Each of them involves the complex and coordinated action of several enzymes/proteins. See here.

In general, in its simplest form, a control-repair system B on a controlled system A is composed of two main parts: a control unit and a repair unit. See the following diagram:

rm

The control unit is able somehow to get an input scenario X from a specific point of the structure or the events-space of A. X is compared to a predefined correct scenario Y and the result is a Boolean value yes/no. This Y scenario is not a trivial thing because it implies that the control/repair system must know what should be the correct scenario in that particular point of A. If the result of the question “X match Y?” is “no” it is inputted into the repair unit. In turn the repair unit takes an action Z on A to recover partially or entirely the X situation. And here again the repair unit must have a (rich enough) correspondence table between the possible couples X,Y and the Z actions to be taken to fix the failure X. In a sense a feedback or loop must be created between the controlled system and the repair system. In another sense we could even say that in some cases between the controlled system and the control system must exist cCSI (see my previous post about “coupled complex specified information”). Repair systems of all sorts have to be designed frequently in engineering, but, despite the simplicity of the above diagram, they are often hard to implement.

At this point, before the presence of repair systems in the cells, one might asks why Darwinian processes create such systems, as evolutionary biology claims. After all what are random mutations but errors? If Darwinian processes are not based on errors are not Darwinian at all. Darwinism says us that random mutations and natural selection are a process that needs errors and in the same time this process creates mechanisms to eliminate them? Non sense, it should create mechanisms to produce errors instead, to accelerate macroevolution. Either Darwinian processes are based on DNA errors and then don’t create DNA-repair mechanisms deleting errors or Darwinian processes do create DNA and its repair systems and then Darwinian processes cannot be based on errors. You cannot have it both ways.

The bottom line is that repair mechanisms are incompatible with Darwinism in principle. Since sophisticated repair mechanisms do exist in the cell after all, then the thing to discard in the dilemma to avoid the contradiction necessarily is the Darwinist dogma.

Comments
Nakashima, Fair point. I agree that perfect replication would never appear unless you had a static environment. I believe some people are investigation what is termed 'the evolution of evolvability' which roughly speaking investigates the ways in which selection pressures have shaped the reproductive mechanisms - reducing the likelihood of catastrophic errors whilst allowing for near neutral variation. Not really my area though.BillB
September 15, 2009
September
09
Sep
15
15
2009
04:36 AM
4
04
36
AM
PDT
BillB #1 Your objection based on a balancing act between two different modalities, variation and stability, doesn’t avoid the contradiction. Repair mechanisms are not compatible with unguided evolution however because unguided implies blindness and non teleology. As you can see in my drawing of a repair system model, a repair mechanism must know (for definition) the correct Y scenario, both in the control and repair unit. This is a necessary (and not sufficient) condition for system repairing. You can fix an error only if you know the correct item, otherwise you not even detect the error (less than never you will repair it). Unguided evolution cannot know the correct items because is non teleological. As such repair systems are entirely out of its range of possibilities in principle. The selection pressures cannot act on nothingness.niwrad
September 15, 2009
September
09
Sep
15
15
2009
04:30 AM
4
04
30
AM
PDT
Mr BillB, I think you have to take the last part part of your argument and be a little more explicit about the reasoning, otherwise it looks like a teleologic argument "evolution knows it will need variation". If a replicator gets too good at copying, say 99.9999... percent correct, it will continue to churn out copies. But another less perfect replicator will produce copies that contain a low level of error, not usually fatal, simply neutral variation. One of these variants will be better adapted to a change in the environment. So a perfect replicator is only expected to evolve in a completely static environment. Another approach is that perfect replication would be something that is difficult to evolve by natural processes in the first place. We know about ideas such as checksums and error correcting codes that are not used in DNA replication, but could be used to lower error rates further. So I doubt that the actual history of the worl saw a perfect replicator that was outcompeted by one that allowed errors at a low rate. I think the current systems are the best evolution could find before getting locked in by too much infra structure being built on top of them.Nakashima
September 15, 2009
September
09
Sep
15
15
2009
04:27 AM
4
04
27
AM
PDT
Either Darwinian processes are based on DNA errors and then don’t create DNA-repair mechanisms deleting errors or Darwinian processes do create DNA and its repair systems and then Darwinian processes cannot be based on errors. You cannot have it both ways.
You can have it both ways because the two ways are not mutually exclusive. Take a toy example of a simple replicator that generates variable copies of its self. It, on average, generates copies where fifty percent of the copies are not functional enough to make copies themselves. If one of the functional copies (one that can replicate) has a better replication system, one that produces seventy five percent success by avoiding some copying errors that are always catastrophic, then it is a more successful replicator and will be more likely to dominate, and pass on this better error correcting replication system to its offspring. This drive for generating good copies is balanced by differences and changes in the environment, which drives the need for variation by providing different niches for organisms to exploit, and changing resources that require different behaviours to exploit. There is no contradiction there, it is a balancing act between two different pressures. Variation is good, but too much variation is bad, so there are selection pressures to generate functional but different copies, but to not generate non functional copies. Repair mechanisms are entirely compatible with evolution, an organism that can produce functional copies of its self most of the time is fitter than one that produces bad copies of its self most of the time. You don't need to start with a very good replicator either, as long as it produces good copies more than zero percent of the time then there is scope for some of those copies to do better.BillB
September 15, 2009
September
09
Sep
15
15
2009
03:48 AM
3
03
48
AM
PDT
1 2 3

Leave a Reply