The Evolution of Neural Crest Cells: Teleology Raised to the Power of Serendipity

_{Cornelius Hunter

May 7, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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There is a reason why Aristotle’s ideas persisted for thousands of years—they advance fundamental themes in how we think. And no, those ideas did not become outdated with the rise of modern science, as the textbooks explain. Consider a recent paper on the flight of bats which stated that the bat’s specialized airflow sensors evolved in order “to guide motor behaviors” and that vertebrate nervous systems, in general, “have flexibly adapted to accommodate anatomical specializations for flight.” The infinitive form is the key. Evolutionary theory is supposed to have rejected teleology. Whereas Aristotle explained natural phenomena as a consequence of final causes, modern science, so the textbooks state, is free of such mysteries. After Bacon it was all about empiricism, mathematical descriptions and natural laws. There was no appeal to goals or end-directed action. Right? Wrong. Read more

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Hi shawn, Please focus on the post @ 31. No degree in biology required.Mung_{May 16, 2015
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Thanks guys. William, I've been reading that. I actually read UD every morning for an hour on my way to work (on my phone). I read UD, Why Evolution is True, WTF, Evolution (not a lot of updates, but funny as hell) and some other random science and design sites. I'm also working my way through a plethora of books which must have Amazon going hahaha (for all the money I've spent lol). some are far beyond me (and I need to step back and take some biology courses), and some are a joy to read, like Arthur/ Evolution, a Developmental Approach, and Smith/Szathmary, The Origins of Life (I have the predecessor book to that, too, but it is far beyond me), Tree of life (2 books, one by Lecointre, one by Vargas), The Rise of Animals, Cambrian Explosion, Gaining Ground, Origin and Evolution of Mammals, Phylogenetics (Lieberman?), The Tangled Bank. I have one very disappointing book called Arthropod Brains. When I bought it I was very excited (because arthropod books are very hard to find, if you are looking for phylogenies), but indeed that book should have been called Hexapod brains, as it really offers nothing in the way of Arthropod/Ecdysozoa evolution. My reason for showing you what I am reading, is to show you that all of my efforts are based on science. Not ID (which I think is actually a sister to science, or maybe not even differentiated from science), or God (which is a shot in the dark, so to speak). Let me step back, please... Growing up, I read Darwin (Origin and Descent of Man and Sex in Relation to Sex) probably 10 times each. But my background, my mental meanderings are more philosophical. When I was young, I studied pretty much all the religion I could digest, all the science and history I could, and all the philosophy I could. And therein lies the rub. When I went to University, in my second year, one of the heads of my college introduced me to some famous MIT mathematician, and he said, "I'd like to introduce you to our brightest star". A year later, he called me a dilettante. And he was right, I am incapable of focusing. I am also not particularly bright. But I have more resolve to find answers, answers to questions I have had my entire life, than anyone I know; call me stubbornly optimistic that in my ignorance I can still learn and die with that knowledge. It is probably an insurmountable error I made, long ago, to try and rectify this world I live in, in a singular manner, to see how everything is related, to believe that everything is part of a whole, and to try and find the particulars involved in that whole, from the smallest to the largest phenomena, to the most accessible (objective reality) and the least accessible (the self and that which lies beyond numbers). It is only recently that I took Evolution up again, and I seem to have failed in many ways: 1) I don't have a biology background. 2) I don't separate design (and yes, emphatically I see design in the universe - and in my ignorance I think that evo-devo might start to unravel random mutation as NOT BEING the sole mechanism of change) nor do I (as of yet) even know its arguments, as opposed to random mutation 3) I inject god in an effort to remove god. In my youth, I studied most religions in order to be a 'good person'; but of course, now, I do not need a god to make my decisions; my decisions come from within (right or wrong). I remove god with the caveat that such a god may exist OUTSIDE our universe's boundaries, and may be responsible for our Laws. I scratch my head and say, every day, "I have absolutely no idea about god". So you see, I still live, unfortunately, in my own head, and I apologize to all of you for having nothing objective to add. And of course, for offending, if I have. I've never meant to offend. Shawnshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 16, 2015
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If you are really interested in understanding ID, I suggest you make use of the "Resources" tab at the top of the page and read through the information found there.William J Murray_{May 14, 2015
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Shawn
You must forgive me for taking a few posts to remove religion and gods from my concept of design. It’s new to me.
I'll echo Cross' words of welcome. I can only wonder why it seemed you were attacked by people here before you explained your view - (wow, I mean give the guy a break?). You seem open-minded. Ok, you admit that you oppose 'religion' but you can accept that some kind of god or gods could have existed to create/design things. You're well on the path to seeing a broader view of life and origins than you will get with materialism alone. With that, I encourage you to keep researching and keeping an open mind. Your instincts seem good. You may not have had much religious teaching in your past - that's not necessary to understand the ID inference. But for religious believers, I'll ask that you not judge them as merely clinging to a superstition. You might want to look at testimonial evidence from religious believers which indicates their understanding that God (or a spiritual agent) has had a real effect on their lives. I'd just suggest, in fairness, it's best to conclude that you don't really know if God is active in the world. One way of learning more about God, is not only through education but by learning the spiritual practices - prayer mainly. That's what many people do - they ask God for wisdom and understanding and knowledge. Anyway - as said already, ID is not a religious proposition at all. It's a scientific project. I hope you'll find the discussions here beneficial in your search.Silver Asiatic_{May 14, 2015
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Shawn "I’m an agnostic personally, and have no view of god, to be honest." Have you read your own posts Shawn, much of them is your view of God. Nothing wrong with having views about God, just don't mix your views and facts. "I love, and believe in, evolution, because it makes sense to me" Careful Shawn, one definition of religion is "a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.", maybe evolution IS your God and you are following it with "religious zeal", something you accuse creationists of. Cheers and welcomeCross_{May 13, 2015
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ok Shawn. ID is based on inference. It is not a way to tell us whether God or gods were involved. ID stands in opposition to two claims: 1) neo-Darwinian evolution can produce the appearance of design without the need for any designer 2) Science has demonstrated that there is no place for design. The origin of the universe, of matter, energy, physics, chemistry, life, biology, consciousness, etc, can all be explained without reference to design or designers.Mung_{May 13, 2015
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Mung and BP, That's not true. As I've said a couple of times, this is my first time at an ID blog, and I have come from a place where MOST of the people who are not Darwinian are religious creationists. I'm an agnostic personally, and have no view of god, to be honest. You must forgive me for taking a few posts to remove religion and gods from my concept of design. It's new to me. Shawnshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 13, 2015
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Thank You.Upright BiPed_{May 11, 2015
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Shawn wants to talk about God or gods. Why do the rest of you insist on talking about ID instead?Mung_{May 11, 2015
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Joe: >>Yes. “Lokiarchaeota” – the organisms they found- are just as evolved as eukaryotes. They need the “Lokiarchaeota” of today to be vey similar to the “Lokiarchaeota” of hundreds of millions of years ago to have a case. And even then there is a huge hole to be filled to get to eukaryotes. You're asking for science to step back in time while at the same time you say "there is a huge hole to be filled" but do you recognize that hole yourself? Let's step back to possible "pre-lokiarchaeota" and compare that to your argument. You, too, must admit that none of us are more than 100 years old, and that all we read or believe has no ontological proof. I'm reminded of Hume who said, we believe the sun will rise tomorrow because...that's our experience...shawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 11, 2015
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>>Do you think, a few billion years ago, which is a short time in the history of the universe, that something ‘miraculous’ happened…and suddenly life came about on Earth…by way of a god’s order? No, not possible. The universe, as we experience it, is not capable of such an outside intervener, not unless we could see him/her/it today WITHIN our world. What I meant by this is that no god entered the world a few billion years ago. I stand by that because we have zero empirical evidence of that (though we may be so small-brained as to not see it in front of our own eyes). The universe is apparently much older than the preambles of life on earth, or even our solar system, and so any laws created by a designer must have been in place long before life arose on earth. The point I'm failing so badly to make is, whatever order a designer brought to the universe, such order was brought long before life was sparked on earth. Shawnshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 11, 2015
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Upright BiPed, give me some time to give your words the respect they deserve. William, I apologize, my wording was terrible. Of course it is possible that life came about by a god's (or gods') order, but that god either exists within, or not within, the universe that we live in. I have no problem with such a god existing outside of our universe, and I have no problem with such a god (i.e. a designer/designers) creating the order of the universe, from physics to biology to spacetime itself. A very practical example there (proof of a designer) would be convergence. When I hear about examples of convergence, I think "Why not another option, why not a completely different adaptation to deal with the demands of your life?". That's the basis of random mutation, is it not? How is it that a few basic patterns keep reappearing? However I do not see the point in trying to prove that this god/designer has spent even a moment within the universe, once it was created. Maybe you don't either, I don't know. Shawnshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 11, 2015
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Shawn said:
Do you think, a few billion years ago, which is a short time in the history of the universe, that something ‘miraculous’ happened…and suddenly life came about on Earth…by way of a god’s order? No, not possible. The universe, as we experience it, is not capable of such an outside intervener, not unless we could see him/her/it today WITHIN our world.
Your posts are littered with apparently unexamined and unfounded assertions. It's "not possible" that life came abut by "god's order"? The universe is "not capable" of an outside intervener unless we see it today"? None of that is even remotely rationally coherent. It seems to me that you are here merely to offer some prose reflective of your personal views than attempt any logically rigorous examination of those views. What UB offers is conclusive, unambiguous proof (as much as anything is "conclusive proof" in the world of science) that intelligence must be responsible for the origination of self-replicating life. There is no other way to rationally interpret the physical facts of biosemiosis we find at the root of life in biology without appealing to an appallingly irrational, logic-destroying, science-destroying reservoir of infinite-multiverse chance.William J Murray_{May 10, 2015
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Shawn said:
William, you assume too much.
I didn't assume anything. I pointed out that the willingness to make unsupportable, blanket negative claims as assertions of fact ("there is no proof of X) indicates the belief that X doesn't exist, and so there can be no proof of X. Otherwise, one would say merely that they are not currently aware of any convincing evidence for X - a much more modest claim.William J Murray_{May 10, 2015
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Mung, you can email me. As far as the site, it'll be done when it's done is the best I can say. :)Upright BiPed_{May 10, 2015
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Heya UPB, Consider adding a form allowing people to request access? Or is it invitation only? ;)Mung_{May 10, 2015
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Shawn, You say you want to understand my take on ID? Okay, I’ll give you the once over. Please take a quick look at these two images. It’s a dramatization that is intended to be illustrative of a key point in ID. You’ll notice something distinctly special about the image on the right. There is a heterogeneous structure there, which upon thorough inspection, is not wholly derivable from the dynamic properties of matter. Instead, it is in a class of things that can only be derived from an organization -- a very specific type of system. The structure on the right is brought into existence by the translation of an informational medium. Translation is a physical process. It has very specific and well-defined physical requirements. First, it requires an arrangement of matter to serve as a medium; a representation of form within the system. Second, in order for a thing to serve as a representation, the system requires a separate arrangement of matter to physically establish what is being represented. And third, the organization of the system must preserve the natural discontinuity that exists between the representation and the thing it represents (upon translation). In short, this irreducible architecture creates relationships that otherwise wouldn’t exist. In the example given here, those relationships are what we now call the genetic code. However, the heterogeneous structure depicted in the image is an autonomous self-replicator, capable of Darwinian evolution. This places significant additional demands on the organization of the system described above. It requires physically-unrestricted memory, with the capacity to be copied among mediums. These additional demands are obtained only by using representations that are independent of the minimum total potential energy principle, which otherwise applies to all physical objects. In other words, the representations in the system are spatially-oriented patterns, which are inert to local thermodynamics. To accommodate the use of these patterns, the system requires a critical second layer of organization on top of what has already been described. This additional organization is itself undetermined by physical dynamics, yet without it, the system could not function. This is to say, without the arrival of this specific system, simultaneously encoded in the very information that it makes possible, an autonomous self-replicator capable of open-ended evolution would not exist on earth. So there you have it in three short paragraphs. And here’s the deal -- this system, with its well-documented physical features, is exclusively identifiable among all other physical systems. It has been thus objectively identified. It can only be found in three instances anywhere in the cosmos. It is found in written language, mathematics…and in the genetic code. Can you think of a phenomenon more indicative of an act of intelligence than written language and mathematics? I can’t. - - - - - - - - - - - By the way, it is not necessary to position people as uneducated troglodytes in order to confront their arguments. You might keep that in mind as you peruse the "hatred" your "scientific folks" have for ID proponents. The offense is not to the chimps; it's to science itself.Upright BiPed_{May 10, 2015
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Is it possible to believe in ID without believing in any god that has an influence on day-to-day human affairs?
Yes, it is possible to believe that.
As I have said, I already admit that there may have been a designer, way back when.
Or designers.Mung_{May 10, 2015
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Unraveling Descent is currently down for maintenance. We'll be back soon.Mung_{May 10, 2015
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Thanks Collin. I've learned a lot today. I always thought ID meant "religious creationist who thinks the world is 6000 years old". I can't tell you how pleasantly surprised I am to be so wrong. When you say 'ongoing', what do you mean by that? If you look at the perfection of a crystal lattice, or a galaxy, or an organism, there is obviously an amount of complexity there, an amount of order, and in the bigger scheme, an amount of similarity with everything else (look at how gametes work, there many be variations, but when you consider how few 'body plans' there are, you must marvel at how succinct the blueprint of all life is, and indeed, how succinct the entire universe seems to be). There are PATTERNS in the universe, and these patterns traverse physics, biology, ecology, chemistry, and even mathematics...not that I am an expert in any of these realms. I do, however, see the patterns. I refuse, however, to think about WHY this is. It's pointless. I honestly see no fracture between ID and the work that biologists and other life-science individuals do every day. The model of evolution seems correct, for example that monophyletic relations imply actual (if hypothetical) nature-modelling, and paraphyletic relations imply a lack of knowledge (we're missing something here, oops), and that polyphyletic relations imply something that could not exist in nature unless there was some sort of spontaneous generation. But let's get back to the core. Something as beautifully simple, yet exceedingly complex, as the difference between a Deuterostome and a Protostome, how can you not question the inherent order there? Yes, an ancestor split off and created two ways of being here, and yes that was natural, but did it occur according only to random chance, or is there some sort of order UNDERNEATH biological change? I have no answers, only questions. Shawnshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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Thanks for commenting Shawn. I look forward to your further comments. I'm wondering what you would consider evidence of ongoing design in nature.Collin_{May 9, 2015
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OK I will, kairosfocus. Thanks:)shawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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SG, I suggest you scroll up to the top of this or any UD page, where you will see a Reources tab. Kindly, click on it and read, especially the definition of ID and the weak argument correctives. Those will help a lot. KFkairosfocus_{May 9, 2015
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Upright Biped - what is the position of ID, in your opinion? I have admitted I come here for the first time, and would be very happy if I could understand you. shawshawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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I have no attack on ID. Religion, yes, ID, no. But let's be clear: I have no problem with a higher being seeding the universe with all of the physical and chemical properties that could lead to biological diversity. However, I don't think such an entity would create a closed system, i.e. ID and evolution in the popular sense. BOTH imply design. With ID, it's obvious, but with darwin, maybe not so much. I think if, in the Ediacaran, for example, plans came together, it was very quick, and there is something to me which says, at the level of phyla, or even bigger, there are instructions to build parts. But those instructions DO NOT infer a god, or Darwin, for that matter. Do you think, a few billion years ago, which is a short time in the history of the universe, that something 'miraculous' happened...and suddenly life came about on Earth...by way of a god's order? No, not possible. The universe, as we experience it, is not capable of such an outside intervener, not unless we could see him/her/it today WITHIN our world. On the other hand, we could merely be fleas to such a god, and I admit that; we would have no understanding, such as a cockroach does not see my impending foot. But that god would not be running our lives and saying do this or die; follow me or die, or we would see him/her/it.shawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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Shawn, If ID isn't anti-evolution, and isn't about religion, where does that leave your attack on ID?Upright BiPed_{May 9, 2015
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Shawn, were you looking for "middle ground" in your post? Your implicit position is that those who don't agree with your chosen perspective are small uneducated people clinging to dusty books to comfort themselves in times of despair. You've showed up on an ID blog and in the space of one post equated ID with the belief in Big Foot, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and goblins. You sell yourself with the shamelessly rhetorical admission that "nobody knows" then position any concepts outside your own as absolutely worthless. All this, while it is perfectly clear that you have no idea what ID is even about, much less any clear understanding of what the evidence is. Have you looked up confirmation bias yet?Upright BiPed_{May 9, 2015
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ID is not anti-evolution.Joe_{May 9, 2015
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>>Yes. “Lokiarchaeota” – the organisms they found- are just as evolved as eukaryotes. They need the “Lokiarchaeota” of today to be vey similar to the “Lokiarchaeota” of hundreds of millions of years ago to have a case. And even then there is a huge hole to be filled to get to eukaryotes. I guess this was a case of scientific hyperbole. In an age when everything is get-it-out-first, I'm not surprised. I love, and believe in, evolution, because it makes sense to me, but even on a popular level, for example, we can not create, by dna, a monophyletic phylogeny between an extant ceolacanth and an extinct one because we have to rely only on morphology. If we could get the dna from a 250m old sarcoptergian, I'd be happy! And morphology is nothing more than "indirect evidence". The fossilized coelocanth remains we have, appear to be similar to the 2 extant species, but we have no real way to really know. It 'looks' like it, ie morphology, is not going to cut it at the end.shawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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I think your argument comes down to the old adage, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I agree (if I'm correct in my assumption?), and would never say that the universe was not created by a god of whatever fashion. But in 2015, such a thought is absolutely worthless to us, seeing as we can't even put people on Mars yet. Such thoughts are for future generations, IMHO.shawngibson@unravelingdescent.com_{May 9, 2015
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