This Didn’t Evolve a Few Mutations At a Time
| February 19, 2018 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Are there long, gradual, pathways of functional intermediate structures, separated by only one or perhaps a few mutations, leading to every single species, and every single design and structure in all of biology? As we saw last time, this has been a fundamental claim and expectation of evolutionary theory which is at odds with the science.* If one mutation is rare, a lot of mutations are astronomically rare. For instance, if a particular mutation has a one-in-a-hundred million (one in 10^8) chance of occurring in a new individual, then a hundred such particular mutations have a one in 10^800 chance of occurring. It’s not going to happen. Let’s have a look at an example: nerve cells and their action potential signals.
[* Note: Some evolutionists have attempted to get around this problem with the neutral theory, but that just makes matters worse].
Nerve cells have a long tail which carries an electronic impulse. The tail can be several feet long and its signal might stimulate a muscle to action, control a gland, or report a sensation to the brain.
Like a cable containing thousands of different telephone wires, nerve cells are often bundled together to form a nerve. Early researchers considered that perhaps the electronic impulse traveled along the nerve cell tail like electricity in a wire. But they soon realized that the signal in nerve cells is too weak to travel very far. The nerve cell would need to boost the signal along the way for it to travel along the tail.
After years of research it was discovered that the signal is boosted by membrane proteins. First, there is a membrane protein that simultaneously pumps two potassium ions into the cell and three sodium ions out of the cell. This sets up a chemical gradient across the membrane. There is more potassium inside the cell than outside, and there is more sodium outside than inside. Also, there are more negatively charged ions inside the cell so there is a voltage drop (50-100 millivolt) across the membrane. (read more …)
20 Responses to This Didn’t Evolve a Few Mutations At a Time
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as to:
The fact that Darwinists themselves have to constantly invoke ‘design’ language to try to explain away design is one of the best evidences that life is actually designed.
Darwinists are always invoking agent causality where they have no right to invoke it.
First off, Darwinsts invoke natural selection as the supposed designer substitute
And yet, although Darwinists often speak of natural selection as a creative agent, natural selection is mathematically shown to be grossly inadequate as a ‘designer substitute’,,,
Secondly, the improper invoking of agent causality, where it ought not be invoked, does not stop with natural selection. Darwinists, although they hold life to be driven by, and the result of, undirected randomness are, none-the-less, forced to constantly invoke the language of agent causality when describing the molecular complexities of life.
But Darwinists are not the only ones guilty of improperly invoking agent causality where it ought not be invoked. Physicists are also guilty of improperly invoking agent causality where it ought not be invoked.
And although Darwinists, and physicists, have no problem whatsoever invoking agent causality, or teleology, where it ought not be invoked, Darwinists seem completely blind to their own agency which they witness first hand. In fact, they hold their own agency to be an ‘illusion’.
Thus, the foundational insanity within the atheist’s worldview is this, ‘Everything in reality is given agent causality within atheistic naturalism save for causal agents themselves.’
Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
Indeed. And I don’t know of anyone who has seriously claimed that this is how evolution occurs.
Bob O’H:
I think you may have read my old challenge, presented many times and never answered by anyone here.
I post it again here, in case someone cares to give it a try!
If you believe in evolution by small gradual selectable mutations, I would appreciate your take on the above.
On the other hand, and just to understand better what you think, if evolution did not occur by gradual selectable mutations, then how did it occur?
Bob O’H @ 2: “Indeed. And I don’t know of anyone who has seriously claimed that this is how evolution occurs.”
Well then. Why don’t you tell us exactly how Darwinian evolution works. You can start by answering Gpuccio @ 3.
This should be interesting.
There isn’t any way in this universe that blind and mindless processes could produce functioning nerves. Well heck, there isn’t any way in this universe that said processes could produce a living organism.
Bob O’H:
And of course , as usual, you are invited to have a look at my recent OP about the Ubiquitin System, here:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-ubiquitin-system-functional-complexity-and-semiosis-joined-together/
It’s always good to keep in mind what evolution is supposed to have done, when discussing how it could have done it! 🙂
Bob @2:
Please read my previous post here:
https://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2018/02/here-is-how-evolutionists-respond-to.html
Where it explains:
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Second, another common answer is to cast the problem as a strawman argument against evolution, and appeal to gradualism. Evolutionists going back to Darwin have never described the process as “poof.” They do not, and never have, understood the process as the simultaneous origin of tens or hundreds, or more mutations. Instead, it is a long, slow, gradual process, as Darwin explained:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case […] Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection.”
The Sage of Kent could find “no such case”? That’s strange, because they are ubiquitous. And with the inexorable march of science, it is just getting worse. Error correcting mechanisms are just one example of many. Gradualism is not indicated.
What if computer manufacturers were required to have a useful, functional electronic device at each step in the manufacturing process? With each new wire or solder, what must emerge is a “long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor.”
That, of course, is absurd (as Darwin freely confessed). From clothing to jet aircraft, the manufacturing process is one of parts, tools, and raw materials strewn about in a useless array, until everything comes together at the end.
The idea that every single biological structure and design can be constructed by one or two mutations at a time, not only has not been demonstrated, it has no correspondence to the real world. It is just silly.
What evolution requires is that biology is different, but there is no reason to believe such a heroic claim. The response that multiple mutations is a “strawman” argument does not reckon with the reality of the science.
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It’s much simpler – gradualism fails: http://nonlin.org/gradualism/
Gregor Mendel observed the discrete nature of biology as early as 1865 in the inheritance of dominant and recessive alleles. Darwin might have learned that from Mendel’s papers sent to him, had he read and correctly interpreted the results. To be fair, Darwin’s gradualism was in line with the incorrect view of his times that considered matter a continuum. Only in the late 1800s the true discrete nature of matter started to become common knowledge. However, more than a hundred years later everyone knows, yet the gradualism hypothesis remains central to evolution despite being utterly baseless.
This is one of the few cases where a nice direct mechanical analogy is available. Long telephone or broadband cables have amplifiers every mile or so. The need for relays and amplifiers was realized soon after telegraph wires went beyond a mile.
Why didn’t relays evolve? After all, wires stretch and break just like membranes. Why didn’t the relay evolve on its own to splice those broken wires, and then evolve further into vacuum-tube amplifiers when the wires started to carry alternating current for telephones, and then evolve again into digital boosters when the wires started to carry digital signals? If it worked that way in nerves, why not in copper and silicon?
of supplemental note to Darwinists invoking agent causality where they have no right to invoke it.,, i.e. post 1
When writing software, you try to make the steps between functioning forms as small as you can manage. The reasoning being, of course, that things reliably go wrong even with intention and direction, and they go wronger the thinner you spread your attention, and finding them goes from hard to impossible real fast with the exponential bloom in potential failures.
So a lot of the actual designing is spent planning steps, and breaking them down into smaller steps. Actively looking for that next simplest step. Also, building parallel systems that replicate functionality to scaffold simpler steps into the main circuit from. Guided co-option, truely.
The process steps themselves offer no advantage over the original function; in fact, you’ll often get bottlenecked, forced to drop some functionality or even drop all but the most minimal demonstrative functionality and restore the rest somewhere on the other side.
The beef is that the transition itself is a complex system with complex components, often more complex than the target modification; that even a purposeful, focused designer can get lost in mapping; and offers no selective advantage at pretty much any stage. Also, it’s this way in every direction that offers improvement. The more functionality intrinsic to the system, the deeper the well you have to climb out of to add more. If simple, useful, functional modifications were everywhere…well, the difficulty curve in writing increasingly complex software would be pretty linear, or even logarithmic! Software-writing-software would be buckets easier to design, to!
And our programs are toys in comparison with the self 3D printing, self tuning, fully integrated hardware/software suites that are biological systems. That accidentally wrote themselves from early DOS to strong general AI.
Cornelius @ 7 – thanks, but I think that rather backs up my point: not even you are able to point to anyone who seriously suggests that that is how evolution occurs. So your calculations are pointless. The rest is just an argument from incredulity. You could try actually doing the hard work of showing that evolutionary pathways are actually impossible, rather than just declaring it so.
Nonlin.org @8 – your argument was demolished almost exactly 100 years ago by R.A. Fisher (before he did that it was taken as a serious criticism of Darwinism). Basically, with several or lots of genes acting on a trait, it can look like ti is continuous.
Cornelius, I used the link to read your entire article and obtained this message:
Is your blog actually restricted access, or is it just my computer?
Bob O’H (to Cornelius Hunter):
“You could try actually doing the hard work of showing that evolutionary pathways are actually impossible, rather than just declaring it so.”
Strange, I thought that science should work the other way round: you propose an explanation, and it’s you who have to show that it is not only possible, but probable, maybe even real.
I must be too attached to old ways of thinking! 🙂
However, I have tried to argue about why evolutionary pathways are, if not impossible, certainly not a credible scientific explanation.
For example here:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-are-the-limits-of-natural-selection-an-interesting-open-discussion-with-gordon-davisson/
and here:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-are-the-limits-of-random-variation-a-simple-evaluation-of-the-probabilistic-resources-of-our-biological-world/
and here:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-spliceosome-a-molecular-machine-that-defies-any-non-design-explanation/
and, most recently, here:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-ubiquitin-system-functional-complexity-and-semiosis-joined-together/
Well, maybe those OPs are not good at all, but believe me, they have been “hard work”, each one of them.
OK, to say that there has not been a lot of debate from the other side would be a true euphemism! Especially from those who are often complaining that there is not enough scientific discussion here at UD. 🙂
I have also repeatedly proposed a very clear and explicit challenge, even to you (see comment #3 here), without anyone ever trying to answer it.
Is this the way scientific debate should be? Just to know.
as to this claim from Bob (and weave) O’Hara:
And this helps establish Darwinian evolution as scientific, instead of pseudo-science, how exactly? It is impossible to mathematically model ‘lots of genes’, much less test such a scenario in the lab.
Perhaps Bob O’Hara should concentrate on scientifically proving that DNA controls morphology, (i.e. that DNA reductionism is true) in the first place, before he tries to work out that intractable math? It might just save him years of chasing his tail in a circle mathematically. But alas, Darwinian evolution was never about the science was it Bob O’Hara?
Bob O’H @ 12: Please answer gpuccio @ 3 and 14.
gpuccio @ 14 – the way science works is that the person making the claim is meant to supply the evidence. Cornelius is making a claim, therefore he should provide the evidence.
Bob O’H:
“the way science works is that the person making the claim is meant to supply the evidence. Cornelius is making a claim, therefore he should provide the evidence.”
That’s may be the way a blog works! 🙂
OK, let’s forget Cornelius Hunter for a moment. Let’s say that you are saying, if I understand well your #2, that evolution does not work creating 100 specific mutations at a time.
But the fact remains that it seems to create hundreds of specific mutations.
So, I suppose that you are sponsoring the idea of gradualism and, if I guess right, of natural selection of gradual steps.
So, here it’s you who are making a claim, even if very indirectly and with some apparent reluctance.
So, I would ask you if my intepretation of your thought is right, or, if you prefer, just what your thought is, and then if possible to provide your evidence for that idea.
So, if your idea is gradualism thorugh NS, I think a good start would be to answer my “challenge”. Which I copy here again, for your convenience.
And, of course, you are always invited to comment in my threads, about the Ubiquitin system or any other recent topic. I would be honoured! 🙂
A Darwinists asking for evidence,,, that takes the cake.
I’ve been asking Darwinists for evidence to back up their claims for years. Not only do they not provide evidence, they ignore any and all evidence that falsifies their claims,,, for instance:
Given that Darwinian evolution, at least how Darwinists treat it, is impervious to empirical falsification, then Darwinian evolution does not even qualify as a real science but is, by all rights, more realistically classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience:
Bob O’H:
Except for evolutionists, right? They never support their claims.