“The featured illustration in Darwin Devolves was the polar bear, which has accumulated a number of beneficial mutations since it branched off from the brown bear a few hundred thousand years ago. Yet the large majority of those beneficial mutations were degradative — they broke or damaged pre-existing genes.”
I assumed that Behe or his colleagues follow this forum, and would know that the implication of this statement - that the degradative mutations mentioned in his book are fixed in the polar bear genome, so that they are found in the reference genome - is not correct. For all intents and purposes, it seems as if Behe is doubling down on a plainly incorrect statement.
Which should give him pause, and compel him to be a bit more circumspect and tentative when it comes to the wooly mammoth paper. For example, I am very skeptical that the mammoth could actually have a DROSHA deletion that is in essence a null. Behe should be similarly skeptical, rather than possibly digging another embarrassing hole.
So, once again, you are implying that an ID theorist, here Behe, is being dishonest and that his purpose is simply to swindle and deceive ignorant people. But the accusation may suits you better for it is a gross mischaracterization to suggest that the whole book written by Behe is simply about the fact that beneficial losses are ordinary things in evolution. Indeed, Behe’s point is not that helpful degradative mutations are ordinary things, it is that « they are more plentiful than helpful constructive ones and thus arrive more quickly for natural selection to multiply », the consequence being that « Darwin’s mechanism is powerfully devolutionary ».
Now, returning to your ad-hominen attack on Behe, would you say that he was dishonest when in 2010 he submitted for publication in Quarterly Review of Biology his article titled «Experimental evolution, loss-of-function mutations, and “the first rule of adaptive evolution” » upon which his book DD is based ?
And would you say that the editors and reviewers that accepted to publish his article were ignorant people who were deceived and swindled by the evil Behe? Really, all this is pure nonsense.
I would point out that there are no ID theorists, as there is no ID “theory”, in the scientific meaning of the word:
a structured explanation to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world that often incorporates a scientific hypothesis and scientific laws.
ID offers no such explanation for its ‘designer’, merely a set of (debunked) arguments against evolution (including the totality of Behe’s output on the subject). As such it may be viewed as Creationist apologetics.
I would point out that in accusations of libel, truth is generally a rock-solid line of defense.
I have already pointed out that Behe’s claimed ‘vindication’ does not such thing.
What originally brought me to this forum were reviews from senior members of it of Behe’s book, Darwin Devolves (the very book under discussion here), that demonstrated that Behe was misrepresenting the evidence including, I seem to remember, carefully culling from a quoted table, all the cells in that table that contained evidence contradicting his thesis.
Beyond this, the substantiated accusations against Behe of misrepresenting others’ scientific research (Behe never seems to base his claims on his own research) seem to be fairly pervasive.
Firstly, I would suggest that you are downplaying Behe’s heroic claim, which is not merely that loss-of-function beneficial mutations “more plentiful than helpful constructive ones”, but that they are ubiquitous – that helpful constructive ones “never” happen and “cannot” happen, and that adaption is “always” by loss of function.
Secondly, I would ask what evidence you can cite that “they are more plentiful than helpful constructive ones”? The articles that Behe cites in the above-linked ENV post do not do so, they only show that such mutations can happen. Likewise, when you clear away his culling and other misrepresentation in Darwin Devolves, I can remember no evidence of even this, weaker, claim.
I would point out that in that article’s section on “how frequently are loss-of-fct and gain-of-fct mutations adaptive?”, Behe explicitly states that:
These are empirical questions that are difficult to answer conclusively.
… and that the only evidence he cites in favour of loss-of-function predominating is Lenski’s own LTEE, which (i) is hardly representative (and is in no way intended to be) of all evolution of all organisms in all environments, & (ii) is problematical as Lents was one of the prominent scientists dissecting the claims in Behe’s book here.
That Behe’s weaker claims in that article passed peer-review are no justification for claiming that his far stronger claims in his book are justified.
As far as I know, Behe is the first to have reviewed in such a systematic way the typology of molecular changes underlying adaptations observed in 4 decades of evolutionary experiments with microbes. But even if it is was not the case, Behe is certainly to be credited to have both shown with such clarity that « by far the most common adaptive changes seen in those examples are due to the loss or modification of a pre-existing molecular function», and, from this observation, to propose a new rule he coined « The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution », leading him to conclude that « natural selection itself acts as a powerful de -volutionary force, increasing helpful broken and degraded genes in the population. ».
Ah, Giltil. Well, if we’re going to talk about honesty, I think it’s probably necessary to revisit what your standard for honesty is. You may recall the thread where I raised this astonishing quote by Douglas Axe, describing the consensus of current evolutionary biologists in these terms:
“The current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve, making the whole process even further removed from the category of observable phenomena.”
You regarded that as an honest statement by Axe of the state of the views of biologists. You continued to regard it as such while biologist after biologist informed you that this was barking mad. It is, in fact, barking mad, but, in the grossest abuse of the patience and tolerance of others, you went on for some time, insisting that this was a perfectly honest and, indeed, unremarkable observation by Axe.
Okay. Well, if that’s representative of your standard of honesty, then Behe’s book was deeply, profoundly honest. Honest as all get-out. Honester than an honest honesty with the most honest of honest intentions. The difficulty, under this standard, is that there’s almost nothing in this world which isn’t honest. If you’re willing to swallow that statement by Axe, then swallowing, say, Chariots of the Gods with a chaser of Mormon new-world archaeology should be a mere doddle. It was exactly the variety of honesty one would expect from someone who put his shoulder to the wheel in the cause of forcing pseudoscience down the throats of high-school kids.
Now, the question, I guess, is whether I want to convince you to abandon this somewhat lax standard of honesty, and use something else more akin to the way the word “honest” is used by ordinary people. But your cavalier attitude toward wasting the time and patience of others, amply evidenced in that other thread, does weigh rather heavily upon my calculation. I suspect that if Sisyphus had realized what the task was going to be, he wouldn’t have applied for the job, and neither shall I.
Since Behe accepts common ancestry, how far back does he think this devolution has been happening? Since the first vertebrate common ancestor? The common ancestor of eukaryotes? Are all eukaryotes just devolved versions of that first eukaryote?
That is possible; the paper has a respectable number of citations. However, I would not make that judgement without a strong knowledge of the relevant literature. Others here are better qualified in that area.
« Devolution » may be a neologism, but it is false to say that it isn’t a thing. Devolution as used by Behe refers to degradative or destructive evolution (at the molecular level), as opposed to constructive evolution (at the molecular level).
No, you don’t understand. Devolution is what happens naturally. Evolution is what happens through divine intervention. All the various lost or deactivated genes are grist for the Darwinian mill. New genes, on the other hand, are created by Jesus. Thus every gain or loss is evidence for ID.
Much of the what the ID’ers write seems to imply that, if evolution was true, we should see entirely new functional genes popping into existence out of thin air in the space of a generation. I honestly cannot see how what Behe is suggesting is any different than what evolutionary biologists have been saying for decades. He just adds the Devo-esque perjorative “devolution” to make it seem like genetic entropy would be occurring if God wasn’t personally fixing up the genomes every now and then.
Do you think the differences between humans and other apes is all due to destructive evolution? If not, then wouldn’t the constructive differences be counter-examples to Behe’s claims?
You make it sound like a bad thing that results in deterioration of the genome, a form of genetic entropy. That’s inherent in the word. Why invent a term with false implications?
I think I can usefully comment on this because there is a strong overlap to Information Theory. Information is not gained or lost so much as it is changed relative to some starting point. gains or losses in capacity to carry information, do not necessarily imply a change to the original information of interest. Relevant to this discussion a deletion “breaking” a gene does not delete information if that same information is duplicated elsewhere in the genome. If breaking that same gene enable some new function then there could even be a gain in information relative to the original function.
TL;DR: “Devolution” implies a one-dimensional understanding of how genomes change. In simple terms, one function’s loss can be another function’s gain.
Degradative mutations, indeed a form of genetic entropy, are not necessarily a bad thing in the short term for the evidence are piling up that they are the cause of most adaptations. But in the long run, these helpful degradative mutations are certainly a bad thing for they « will make a species evolutionary brittle and more prone to extinction».
Why pretend that Behe pretends that it’s the only thing we see?