It was not news this week when evolutionist Andreas Wagnerexplained that “we know very little about how they [evolutionary innovations] originate.” The origin of evolutionary innovations is largely unexplained and that gap is well known. No one would deny this. Even Wagner’s own press release begins with the same admission: “Exactly how new traits emerge is a question that has long puzzled evolutionary biologists.” But this admission, while uncontroversial, is not well advertised. It is not typically found in textbooks or popular books. Evolutionists do not often discuss this shortcoming in their class lectures or public talks. For this shortcoming is rather embarrassing. In order to be taken seriously evolution must be able to explain how life’s various and incredible innovations arose, and it hasn’t been able to do that. This raises two interesting tensions for evolutionists. Read more
20 Replies to “This New Paper on How Innovations Evolved Raises More Problems Than it Solves”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
It seems they studied the metabolism of e-coli. Here are few related notes on metabolism that don’t sit well with Darwinian just so stories:
Optimal Design of Metabolism – Dr. Fazale Rana – July 2012
Excerpt: A new study further highlights the optimality of the cell’s metabolic systems. Using the multi-dimension optimization theory, researchers evaluated the performance of the metabolic systems of several different bacteria. The data generated by monitoring the flux (movement) of compounds through metabolic pathways (like the movement of cars along the roadways) allowed researchers to assess the behavior of cellular metabolism. They determined that metabolism functions optimally for a system that seeks to accomplish multiple objectives. It looks as if the cell’s metabolism is optimized to operate under a single set of conditions. At the same time, it can perform optimally with relatively small adjustments to the metabolic operations when the cell experiences a change in condition.
http://www.reasons.org/article.....metabolism
Life Leads the Way to Invention – Feb. 2010
Excerpt: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. “In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an obvious conclusion: inventors ought to look to life for ideas.,,, Essentially, cells may be viewed as circuits that use molecules, ions, proteins and DNA instead of electrons and transistors. That analogy suggests that it should be possible to build electronic chips – what Sarpeshkar calls “cellular chemical computers” – that mimic chemical reactions very efficiently and on a very fast timescale.
http://creationsafaris.com/cre.....#20100226a
This stunning energy efficiency of a cell is found to be optimal across all life domains, thus strongly suggesting that all life on earth was Intelligently Designed for maximal efficiency in mind instead of reflecting a pattern of somewhat random distribution that would be expected if evolution occurred:
Mean mass-specific metabolic rates are strikingly similar across life’s major domains: Evidence for life’s metabolic optimum
Excerpt: Here, using the largest database to date, for 3,006 species that includes most of the range of biological diversity on the planet—from bacteria to elephants, and algae to sapling trees—we show that metabolism displays a striking degree of homeostasis across all of life.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm.....MC2572558/
Also of interest is that the integrated coding between the DNA, RNA and Proteins of the cell apparently seems to be ingeniously programmed along the very stringent guidelines laid out by Landauer’s principle, by Charles Bennett from IBM of Quantum Teleportation fame, for ‘reversible computation’ in order to help achieve such amazing energy efficiency.
Notes on Landauer’s principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell’s Demon – Charles H. Bennett
Excerpt: Of course, in practice, almost all data processing is done on macroscopic apparatus, dissipating macroscopic amounts of energy far in excess of what would be required by Landauer’s principle. Nevertheless, some stages of biomolecular information processing, such as transcription of DNA to RNA, appear to be accomplished by chemical reactions that are reversible not only in principle but in practice.,,,,
http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~.....501_03.pdf
The amazing energy efficiency possible with ‘reversible computation’ has been known about since Charles Bennett laid out the principles for such reversible programming in 1973, but as far as I know, due to the extreme level of complexity involved in achieving such ingenious ‘reversible computation’, has yet to be accomplished in any meaningful way for our computer programs even to this day:
Classic example of “Intelligent Evolution”. Just replace the designer with evolution, and tell a credible story to the world.
As has become a symbol of many IDist proponents, here C. Hunter first sells the farm, then decides he should try to persuade folks why it should have been sold in the first place.
1) The term ‘innovation’ has been hijacked by biological scientists. Are we agreed? Etymologically it involves choice, vision, invention, etc. – i.e. human beings innovation.
Yet the very same willful hijacking is committed by Dembski himself in his open acceptance of ‘technological evolution’ (cf. TRIZ). Would Hunter reproach Dembski for his acceptance of ‘technological evolutionism’ just as he does Wagner here for his views of ‘innovation’? To Dembski, ‘technology evolves.’ What about for Hunter?
Hunter has a choice: a) reject the term ‘innovation’ in biology as an inappropriate naturalistic concept-transfer, or b) accept the language of ‘innovation’ in biology and then sell IDT as an improperly packaged attempt to speak about agency, purpose and teleology, which are already long discussed and ripe in non-natural sciences.
2) Hunter has chosen to part with the farm, freely giving ‘innovation’ to biological science, then faults his target of choice ‘evolution’ as the guilty objective (impersonal) ‘theory.’ It is a similar move to how many IDists reify the concept-duo ‘I+D’ conveniently forgetting that it is a ‘theory’ (IDT) only.
Yet since he is stuck on the ‘fact/theory’ notion of American PoS wrt creationism and evolutionism, for Hunter there seems to be no possibility of moving forward. Just dig in one’s feet and pull backpeddling against ideology.
Nevertheless, I’m glad Hunter speaks of ‘tension.’ Indeed, it is like a relatively young flock of IDists (i.e. IDM) willfully tugs on their (culture warring) cord of IDT against ‘Darwinism’. A simple finger pull against them (by a non-Darwinist) would topple the lot and, more importantly, release the tension.
Here is a small glimpse of the staggering complexity inherent within the cell that they are trying to explain by a ‘it just happened’, oops I mean by a ‘exaptation’, story:
The first problem for Darwinism in explaining such staggering complexity is that Darwinists cannot even explain how a single ‘simple’ novel protein arises,,
As if, the probability of finding a novel protein by neo-Darwinian processes were not already overwhelmingly difficult, it is now found that amino acid positions in a protein are interdependent to other amino acid positions in a protein (context dependency), thus exponentially exasperating the ‘rarity’ problem for neo-Darwinists:
Moreover many times different protein domains must be combined in order to even get a fully functional protein in the first place. What is the ease with which different protein domains are randomly recombined?
What does the hard evidence say about novel protein-protein binding site generation?
Dr. Behe’s empirical research agrees with what is found if researchers try to purposely design a protein-protein binding site:
So, how many protein-protein binding sites are conservatively found in life? Dr. Behe, on the important Table 7.1 on page 143 of his book ‘Edge Of Evolution’, finds that a typical cell might have some 10,000 protein-binding sites. Whereas a conservative estimate for protein-protein binding sites in a multicellular creature is,,,
So taking into account that they only covered 2%, of the full protein-protein “interactome”, then that gives us a number, for different protein-protein interactions, of 310,000. Thus, from my very rough ‘back of the envelope’ calculations, we find that this is at least 30 times higher than Dr. Behe’s estimate of 10,000 different protein-protein binding sites for a typical single cell (Page 143; Edge of Evolution; Behe). Therefore, at least at first glance from my rough calculations, it certainly seems to be a gargantuan step that evolution must somehow make, by purely unguided processes, to go from a single cell to a multi-cellular creature.
Moreover as if all that was not bad enough for Darwinists, there is, ‘surprisingly’, found to be ‘rather low’ conservation of Domain-Domain Interactions occurring in Protein-Protein interactions:
Thus, despite whatever Darwinists may condescendingly say to the contrary, I can find no basis for such false bravado in the power of Darwinian processes in the empirical evidence itself.
bornagain77,
OT: I read the review by Bill Fortenberry you referred me to re: Greg Frazer, and I read Fortenberry’s booklet, “The Founders and the Myth of Theistic Rationalism“. After listening to Frazer’s presentation on Sunday, I find that Frazer has much more credibility. To be clear, Greg is an old friend of mine and I know where he stands as a Christian and his motivation.
Greg encouraged those there to be careful of anyone that would say “the founders believed…” because they were a diverse group of individuals that had personal views on any number of things. His book is a study on 8 of the founders. He spent the first hour sharing quotes from Adams, Franklin and Jefferson (he didn’t have time to cover everyone), regarding key points of Christianity (trinity, deity of Christ, virgin birth, resurrection, salvation by grace). The quotes from the founders mentioned painted the picture of individuals that were not Christian but that respected Christian morality; that saw it necessary for freedom, but not necessarily true in all its claims. And not the only way to God.
Fortenberry’s booklet is poorly argued. He repeatedly takes a snippet of what Frazer wrote, tells the reader what Frazer meant then takes the reader down a rabbit trail to knock down the straw man constructed.
Unrelated to his argument against Frazier, in looking at Fortenberry’s website, IncreasingLearning.com, I found a few articles where he describes modern Christian music as using a “voodoo” beat. He concludes that this music can’t possibly glorify God because the beat is “Satanic” in origin. Does this mean he can’t truthfully argue? No. But it does paint a picture of one whose “research” is undermined by confirmation bias.
bb, though you are a personal friend of Frazer, and have brought doubt on Fortenberry’s scholarship, I’m certainly am not persuaded that Frazer is operating without bias of his own. One thing I am certain of though, and I would think Frazer would agree, is that the secular revisionists who are trying to portray the founders as secularists are also operating from a severe bias of their own.,, Myself, I’m convinced that the founding fathers are far more Christian than the secular revisionists are comfortable with, yet not as fundamental as the extreme right wing would be comfortable with. I envision a ‘common sense’ Christianity of many farmers in America as the overall spirit,, Perhaps if grace allows us, we will be able to talk to a few of the founders when and if we get to heaven to find out the nuts and bolts of the situation.
OT: Matzke’s hatchet job on ‘Darwin’s Doubt’ gets regurgitated in New Yorker:
How “Sudden” Was the Cambrian Explosion? Nick Matzke Misreads Stephen Meyer and the Paleontological Literature; New Yorker Recycles Misrepresentation – Casey Luskin July 16, 2013
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....74511.html
bornagain77,
Gregg did say that. His point was the 8 founders covered in his book, while not Christian, were not secularists either. Like I might describe a Mormon or Unitarian. He also disagreed with the Deist label with a demonstration that each expressed a belief that God acted in the affairs of men where a Deist would say that God created the universe then went on vacation or retired, never to intercede. He said Paine, though not covered in his book, was the only one that matched the definition of Deist.
Gregg’s presentation was one of two. He has one for Christian groups and one for leftist/liberal groups; each to discourage the group from trying to force “the founders” into their manufactured/preconceived mold. He gave us the Christian version.
Gregg seemed to have some problems with David Barton and demonstrated a few instances where Barton force-fit some quotes, with some selective editing, to fit his claim that a founder, that wasn’t Christian, was one indeed. The end result in those instances was he made some founders say things they didn’t say. Does Barton do this routinely? I don’t know.
I agree and I believe Frazer does too. That is what he indicated. Like I said already, according to Frazer, they held Christian morality in high regard and endeavored to live it out. But he didn’t find where they recognized Christ for who he was, didn’t put faith in his sacrifice and God’s grace for salvation, at least in their writing. Who knows what happened on their death beds. I hope it isn’t as it appears.
bb, though you took a swipe at Barton, I want to show you one very important and sobering place where his scholarship has held up:
The following video shows that the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores for public school students showed a steady decline, for seventeen years from near the top spot in the world, after the removal of prayer from the public classroom by the Supreme Court, not by public decree, in 1963. Whereas the SAT scores for private Christian schools have consistently remained near the top spot in the world:
You can see the dramatic difference, of the SAT scores for private Christian schools where they have remained high compared to public schools, at this following site;
Atheists have fought me on this saying that private Christian schools have the advantage of affluence, which is I hold to be a bogus claim, but instead of boring you with financial comparisons, where this SAT statistic gains traction is in looking at the correlating crime trends in America from 1960 onward:
Perhaps most telling and sad, in the following podcast William Lane Craig, unaware of the strong correlation of the removal prayer from school with other negative statistics, expresses shock at studies which have found the altruism of young people to have declined steadily since the early 1960’s
Here is another piece evidence,,
As well, as if that was not sobering enough, I remind you that Christian cultures uniquely provided the conditions necessary for the rise of modern science:
and even though Christianity has this incredible track record of being very conducive for scientific progress, and also being very helpful to the education of our children in America, Christianity is, in spite of this unmatched track record in education and scientific progress, treated with severe prejudice and hostility in higher education.
Thus just for the sake that I love my country and want the people and children of America to be blessed, I support a more Christian America than the hostile one we are faced with today, especially in the education system but also with society at large. Does this mean I favor ‘doctoring’ the founding fathers beliefs to make them appear as more Christian than they were? No of course not, but it does mean that I severely oppose the secularists attempt to whitewash the Christianity of our founding fathers, especially in regards to the false doctrine of separation of church and state:
Of related note, the following video is very interesting as to revealing materialism inability to explain ‘knowledge acquisition’:
Verse and Music:
corrected link:
Alison Krauss – Down in the River to Pray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK5okMlZoXQ
bornagain @ 12
I am not American so I have no dog in this fight. However, recent, thorough, published sociological research has compared more-religious to more-secular nations, and more-Christian to less-Christian states within the USA, with the following results:
– Secularism is correlated with higher levels of education
– Secular nations donate more to poor nations on a per capita basis
– In the USA the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious (Louisiana, Alabama), and those with the lowest murder rates tend to be the least religious (Vermont, Oregon)
– Rates of all violent crime are higher in religious states in the USA
– Murder rates are lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations
– Nearly all of the top 50 safest cities in the world are in relatively non-religious countries
– Atheists are under-represented in the USA prison population (approx 0.2%)
– In America agnostics and atheists have lower divorce rates than the religious
– Conservative Christian women in Canada suffer higher rates of domestic violence
– In the USA teens who undertake religion-inspired virginity pledges are actually more likely to have premarital sex and unprotected sex
– The more secular a nation is the higher its reported level of happiness
– Religious people are more likely to support the use of torture by governments
– Two Holocaust studies found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews.
I don’t personally believe secularists are more moral etc. than religious people. However this research does show that pointing the finger at secularism as the cause of social ills is probably not justified.
Hmmm competing studies??
America’s Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists – Rodney Stark – book
Excerpt: Stark devotes whole chapters to unpacking the latest research on how religion affects different facets of modern American life, including crime, family life, sexuality, mental and physical health, sophistication, charity, and overall prosperity. The cumulative effect is that when translated into comparisons with western European nations, the United States comes out on top again and again. Thanks in no small part to America’s rich religious culture, the nation has far lower crime rates, much higher levels of charitable giving, better health, stronger marriages, and less suicide, to note only a few of the benefits.
http://www.amazon.com/Americas.....1599474123
Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You’ve Been Told – book
excerpt: The conclusions drawn here–no surprise–are that the most committed Christians practice what they preach, performing better than the rest of the population on a host of social measures including divorce, domestic violence, sexual misconduct, crime, substance abuse, and everyday honesty.
http://www.amazon.com/Christia.....0764207466
Atheism and health
A meta-analysis of all studies, both published and unpublished, relating to religious involvement and longevity was carried out in 2000. Forty-two studies were included, involving some 126,000 subjects. Active religious involvement increased the chance of living longer by some 29%, and participation in public religious practices, such as church attendance, increased the chance of living longer by 43%.[4][5]
http://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_health
Gallup Poll of 676,000 shows the most religious Americans have highest well-being – February 2012
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ell-being/
Look Who’s Irrational Now – 2008
Excerpt: “What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.
http://online.wsj.com/article/.....54585.html
There are actually studies that show that people who do not believe in a soul are a little bit more anti-social (psychopathic) than the majority of people who do believe in a soul:
Anthony Jack, Why Don’t Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?l.....zOk#t=862s
Hmm who to believe?? Well seeing that internet atheist have lied to me more times than I can count, I think I’ll stick with my studies:
As to those elite professors who have more hostility towards their Christian students than other students, even their Muslim students, it might be well for them to remember:
The History of Christian Education in America
Excerpt: The first colleges in America were founded by Christians and approximately 106 out of the first 108 colleges were Christian colleges. In fact, Harvard University, which is considered today as one of the leading universities in America and the world was founded by Christians. One of the original precepts of the then Harvard College stated that students should be instructed in knowing God and that Christ is the only foundation of all “sound knowledge and learning.” http://www.ehow.com/about_6544.....erica.html
Of related note: It is interesting to note that materialism/atheism leads to the epistemological failure of of man’s noetic experience:
The Atheist’s Guide to Intellectual Suicide – video
https://vimeo.com/60437420
Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? – Joe Carter
Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties.
http://www.firstthings.com/ont.....onkey-mind
Scientific Peer Review is in Trouble: From Medical Science to Darwinism – Mike Keas – October 10, 2012
Excerpt: Survival is all that matters on evolutionary naturalism. Our evolving brains are more likely to give us useful fictions that promote survival rather than the truth about reality. Thus evolutionary naturalism undermines all rationality (including confidence in science itself). Renown philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued against naturalism in this way (summary of that argument is linked on the site:).
Or, if your short on time and patience to grasp Plantinga’s nuanced argument, see if you can digest this thought from evolutionary cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, who baldly states:
“Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth; sometimes the truth is adaptive, sometimes it is not.”
Steven Pinker, evolutionary cognitive psychologist, How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 305.
http://blogs.christianpost.com.....ism-12421/
Materialism/Atheism simply dissolves into absurdity when pushed to extremes and certainly offers no guarantee to us for believing that our perceptions and reasoning within science are trustworthy in the first place:
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010
Excerpt: What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse – where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause – produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science.
http://www.washingtontimes.com.....arguments/
I strongly suggest watching Dr. Craig’s presentation, that I have linked, to get a full feel for just how insane the metaphysical naturalist’s position actually is.
Is Metaphysical Naturalism Viable? – William Lane Craig – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ
But perhaps the most direct proof that atheism/materialism is false is that atheists themselves don’t live as if their worldview was true:
The Heretic – Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? – March 25, 2013
Excerpt:,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....tml?page=3
further note:
Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Be Able To Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer – video – (Notes in description)
http://vimeo.com/32145998
I am sure a lot of the statistics that were quoted in the study you referenced are true but they may be cherry picked in such a way that does not present a true picture of the dynamics of the last 50 years. What the statistics may not be revealing is that the secular ones are children of religious people but also the inheritors of an incredible economic expansion that has affected certain groups much more positively than others.
The United States has a large underclass that is extremely dysfunctional and this underclass is most probably the creation of a secular/elites mindset. Charles Murray wrote what I believe is the most important book of the last ten years and it will be ignored by the elites because it does not paint a pretty picture in the US for a large sub population which is where most of the problems lie that Zuckerman almost proudly points out. The book is
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-A.....030745343X
The United States is separating in to social classes that did not exist before and it has been a gradual process since the early 1960’s. Other countries are seeing similar things but the United States has probably one of the most heterogenous populations in the world. These social classes are based on education, intelligence and income which all tend to highly correlate. The underclasses are getting bigger and it is within some large sections of these underclasses that the identity of religion is probably highest. Not all the underclasses are religious because in the white underclass that is quickly growing has almost completely abandoned religion.
There is no cause between the identity with religion and the poverty they find themselves in. I say that because the so called seculars are children of religious people and when they inherited the intelligence, income and education opportunities from their religious parents, a lot of them abandoned the religious tendencies of their parents. So a lack of religion is not the cause of their circumstances and a lot of their attitudes. And it is too early to tell what the lack of religion will do to the secularists or elites. Such a process will take decades to play out especially as the underclass grows and the secularists dwindle in size.
I won’t go on with this topic because it is not really the purview of this site. But if one is trying to associate atheism with positive attitudes on certain topics it is misplaced for a couple reasons. One is that the good fortune of the atheism can be attributed to a society that was built by religious people and secondly, the attitudes of the elites can be directly associated with the problems of the underclasses. Myron Magnet wrote a book about this showing that the so called tolerance of the elites is a cause of the lack of self discipline in the less intelligent and less educated.
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Ni.....038;sr=1-2
Thanks Jerry very informative.
OT: Berlinski is back on Darwin’s Doubt
A One Man Clade – David Berlinski July 18, 2013
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....74601.html
Actually the research points a very direct finger at secularism, the sexual revolution, the Great Society and the rise of the atheistic left and their culture of tolerance as responsible for the underclass. Charles Murray’s book, Losing Ground, was responsible for Welfare Reform. His research showed not only did the government programs not help but they actually harmed.
Along with this came an attitude that the underclass had no responsibility to work their way out of poverty. They were owed by the rest of society and this witches brew created a learned helplessness in a large section of our society where they became unable to do anything to help themselves. Over the years this change in attitude to not work oneself out of problems has migrated to other groups. All fed by a culture of tolerance as new self destructive cultures were created and tolerated.
Below is the link for Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980. Murray is hated by the secular left because he has exposed just what harm they have done. It is amazing that the Zuckerman article links atheism directly with these policies that caused all this harm. Zuckerman is very proud of his article but he fails to tell the whole story. Maybe he doesn’t realize the connections but they are there to easily see.
http://www.amazon.com/Losing-G.....038;sr=1-8
Interesting is that Amazon doesn’t list the Kindle edition. I have a Kindle copy.