Mike Behe: A Blind Man Carrying a Legless Man Can Safely Cross the Street

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 11, 2012

Irreducible Complexity, News}

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(11 January 2012) Here

The work of Finnegan et al (2012) strikes me as quite thorough and elegant. I have no reason to doubt that events could have unfolded that way. However, the implications of the work for unguided evolution appear very different to me then they’ve been spun in media reports. ( http://tinyurl.com/7lawgpl ) The most glaringly obvious point is that, like the results of Lenski’s work, this is evolution by degradation. All of the functional parts of the system were already in place before random mutation began to degrade them. Thus it is of no help to Darwinists, who require a mechanism that will construct new, functional systems. What’s more, unlike Lenski’s results, the mutated system of Thornton and colleagues is not even advantageous; it is neutral, according to the authors. Perhaps sensing the disappointment for Darwinism in the results, the title of the paper and news reports emphasize that the “complexity” of the system has increased. But increased complexity by itself is no help to life — rather, life requires functional complexity. One can say, if one wishes, that a congenitally blind man teaming up with a congenitally legless man to safely move around the environment is an increase in “complexity” over a sighted, ambulatory person. But it certainly is no improvement, nor does it give the slightest clue how vision and locomotion arose.

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It's really amazing how the history of god of the gaps argument repeats itself. First there were no transitional fossils, then as transitional fossils were found there were gaps, then as gaps were filled we had punctuation, then as punctuation was explained the whole argument starts over with genomes. Which is why Thornton et al is the current enemy. How dare he actually test whether cousin sequences can be linked by a common ancestor sequence.Petrushka_{January 12, 2012
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And all possible histories to all possible flagella? And all possible histories to all possible motility systems?Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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its minimal length need 310 amino acid. no less.
And you know this exactly how? You have a link to research that has explored all possible histories?Petrushka_{January 12, 2012
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Yes, he is wrong. These are not degrading, just changing. Mutations can result in improvement in the probability of reproducing, reduce the probability, or have no effect. If the change improves the probability of reproducing it is more likely to become prevalent than the original form, but not guaranteed. Similarly, drift can result in even a neutral change to become prevalent in the population. But it is very unlikely, but not impossible, for a negative change to become prevalent. All DNA does is code for the arrangement of amino acids, no more, no less.Ken_M_{January 12, 2012
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I've been itching to say that all day, but I knew you'd say it better :)Elizabeth Liddle_{January 12, 2012
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Behe, and all you ID guys, rely on an arbitrary and continuously-changing definition of "degradation". When parts are lost, that's "degradation". When parts are gained (as here), *that's* degradation. When binding site specificity increases, that's called degradation, since the generality and versatility of the ancestral binding site has been reduced. But when binding site specificity *decreases*, that's *also* called degradation, since loss of specificity must be degradation. When bacteria adapt to resist antibiotics, that's "evolution by degradation", since typically antibiotic-resistant mutants have a fitness cost compared to nonresistant bacteria in an antibiotic-free environment. But if a bacterium loses some genes and grows faster as a result, that's *also* degradation, since genes were lost. Ditto for "information", "specified complexity", etc. It's all just a word game used to avoid the evidence for evolution. But practically every adaptation in biology involves the "degradation" of something else. Bird wings have a "fitness cost" just like antibiotic resistance mutations, and flying ability is often lost in predator-free environments on islands. The evolution of the tetrapod jaw involved the loss of the functionality of gills. Etc. Word games like this are just cheap excuses for not dealing with the actual evidence, they are not serious responses to the data.NickMatzke_UD_{January 12, 2012
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7^10 =10^7
Hmm, no, those are not equal. Okay, you were probably saying that there was a mistake in the prior comment, and what was written as 7^10 should have been written as 10^7. I'm just commenting that, taken literally, your equation is false.Neil Rickert_{January 12, 2012
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7^10 =10^7mk_{January 12, 2012
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nick if we need to go from ttss to flagellum, we need a new protein. look at this paper : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm…..PMC211289/ in this case is the flagellin protein(part of the flagellum tail). its minimal length need 310 amino acid. no less. the sequance space for 310 aa is minimum 2^310! the protein cannt evolve from a simpler protein because its the minimum and the researcher get a invalid protein after they cut out near 190 amino acid so how can we get to flagellum from ttss? secondly, if you need only a 2 mutation to get a new function, and the first one is neutral, you need somthing like 7^10 fixation event, we need more of the age of the earth.mk_{January 12, 2012
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NickMatzke is still confused as ID is not anti-evolution and using duplicated and modified parts is engaging in question-begging. Keep humping that strawman Nick, it must make you feel important. Unfortunately it makes you look impotent...Joe_{January 12, 2012
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If producing new required parts is “no big deal”, then the whole “lots of proteins are required, gradual evolution can’t produce this” argument is a lot less convincing. One simple question. Behe has this to say about Thornton's work, with emphasis added: "The most glaringly obvious point is that, like the results of Lenski’s work, this is evolution by degradation. All of the functional parts of the system were already in place before random mutation began to degrade them." Are you saying Behe is incorrect in the statement quoted above? And I want to stress: I'm not asking "Do you think Behe is wrong about anything else." I mean, specifically, is he wrong about the portion I quoted above? Thank you.nullasalus_{January 12, 2012
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His post on UD is not, however, open for comments.Grunty_{January 12, 2012
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I posted the following on the comments section of Behe's DI blogpost, we'll see if they are brave enough to post it. Dr. Behe concludes,
Finally, Thornton and colleagues latest work points to strong limits on the sort of neutral evolution that their own work envisions. The steps needed for the scenario proposed by Finnegan et al. (2012) are few and simple: 1) a gene duplication; 2) a point mutation; 3) a second point mutation. No event is deleterious. Each event spreads in the population by neutral drift. Notice that the two point mutations do not have to happen together. They are independent, and can happen in either order. Nonetheless, this scenario is apparently exceedingly rare. It seems to have happened a total of one (that is, 1) time in the billion years since the divergence of fungi from other eukaryotes. It happened only once in the fungi, and a total of zero times in the other eukaryotic branches of life. If the scenario were in fact as easy to achieve in nature as it is to describe in writing, we should expect it to have happened many times independently in fungi and also to have happened in all other branches of eukaryotes.
These are pretty baffling statements. Duplications in the membrane-ring part of the V-ATPase and its relatives (A-ATPase, F1Fo-ATPase) are, I believe, fairly well-known. It's been awhile since I looked at it, but google things like "duplication proteolipid", chloroplast c-subunit Fo-ATPase, etc. It's not exactly rare, certainly not the only known event. Furthermore, cases of what are obviously duplicated-and-modified parts in "molecular machines" are absolutely ubiquitous. Fully half of the core flagellum proteins (those of the rod, hook, and filament) can be accounted for this way. Various cilia have various duplicated tubulins, dyneins, etc. Similarly for blood-clotting and the adaptive immune system. Duplication-and-divergence doesn't explain everything that we want to know about the origin of the large number of "required" protein parts that make up "molecular machines", but it successfully explains a large part of it. Basically, it ain't no fair for ID advocates to go around shouting from the rooftops that "Darwinism can't explain how system X has Y different required proteins, nyah nyah nyah!" and then pretend like it's no big deal at all when it looks like something like Y/2 "required" parts of your average "molecular machine" can be accounted for by the "no big deal" duplication-and-divergence mechanism. If producing new required parts is "no big deal", then the whole "lots of proteins are required, gradual evolution can't produce this" argument is a lot less convincing. (The duplication-and-divergence mechanism, by the way, long well-accepted within science by anyone who knew anything; the Thornton lab's recent work just reconstructs a particular instance in amazing detail.) But, by all means, the more ID advocates keep moving goalposts, the better. It didn't work in Dover and it won't work in science.NickMatzke_UD_{January 11, 2012
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In Chapter 10 of The Edge of Evolution, "All the World's a Stage", there is a section titled, "No Interference" (which begins on p. 229 in my edition) in which Behe gives us a kind of parable that explains his idea of how common descent and design could both be true.Bruce David_{January 11, 2012
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vh: Common descent can have happened if all those molecular machines were there from the "beginning" (whatever that is, but corresponding to the Cambrian explosion). Anything occuring after that is rearrangement and degradation of pre-existing materials and possibilities. In that case Common Descent is independent of the method of origin. Front-loading.SCheesman_{January 11, 2012
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vh, you may be able to ask Dr. Behe personally at ENV. His post is there and, though monitored, the comments are open.bornagain77_{January 11, 2012
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I'd like to ask Dr. Behe how he figures common descent happened if mutations don't add new molecular machines (which he admitted to in his book) and/or new anatomical features...(or even parts of them.)vh_{January 11, 2012
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I wonder what GCU will have to say about Behe's findings? After all it was GCU who brought it to the table first.PeterJ_{January 11, 2012
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One thing I really appreciate about Dr. Behe very much is that where the Darwinists tried to hide their failure to empirically validate their pet theory with actual evidence by using the art of obfuscation to obscure the results, Dr, Behe, on the other hand, has a gift for making complicated ideas readily accessible for the general public to understand in clear no nonsense terms:
A Blind Man Carrying a Legless Man Can Safely Cross the Street - Michael J. Behe - January 2012 Excerpt: Finnegan et al’s (2012) work intersects with several other concepts. First, their work is a perfect example of Michael Lynch’s idea of “subfunctionalization”, where a gene with several functions duplicates, and each duplicate loses a separate function of the original. (Force et al, 1999) Again, however, the question of how the multiple functions arose in the first place is begged. Second, it intersects somewhat with the recent paper by Austin Hughes (2011) in which he proposes a non-selective mechanism of evolution abbreviated “PRM” (plasticity-relaxation-mutation), where a “plastic” organism able to survive in many environments settles down in one and loses by degradative mutation and drift the primordial plasticity. But again, where did those primordial functions come from? It seems like some notable workers are converging on the idea that the information for life was all present at the beginning, and life diversifies by losing pieces of that information. That concept is quite compatible with intelligent design. Not so much with Darwinism.,, Finally, Thornton and colleagues latest work points to strong limits on the sort of neutral evolution that their own work envisions.,,, http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2012/01/a-blind-man-carrying-a-legless-man-can-safely-cross-the-street/
bornagain77_{January 11, 2012
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