How do you think this helps explain the origin of the Krebs cycle?
I think you should be able to figure this one out yourself to be completely honest.
2 Likes
I cannot see a viable bridge myself.
To initiate life you need to be able to sustain it. Life not only requires reactions but rapid reactions. Thats why enzymes in their current structure are required in every life form we have observed.
I think something coming from a tenured scientist would be more effective. 
Okay. 
3 Likes
Thatâs not a design inference, thatâs a response to a claim. Same goes for the rest.
You said that people here have been fighting design inferences tooth and nail, and Iâm asking what the specific design inferences are that they have been fighting tooth and nail. I assume you mean one of those âinferencesâ where somebody claims that there is evidence that design was required for X.
AndâŚ? Theyâre either wrong or right about that, and weâd have to look at specific examples where you or someone else might think there is evidence that design is required.
Yeah thatâs the proper response when design is superfluous. Thereâs no reason to multiply entities beyond what is required to explain what we see. Thatâs why we donât explain where raindrops land by gravity, wind, and aim-fairies.
Often times yes. Like finding gears on an insect and then thinking this is good grounds for thinking they had to be designed. Sounds like the people youâve been arguing with were quite reasonable.
Thatâs a good response to the people who insist thereâs good reason to think design occurs by the subtle guidance of an invisible, inscrutable, immaterial cognition with free will that nobody knows what wants.
Some of them are, like the above one. Last Thursdayism-like conjectures really are bad science. They are ad-hoc speculations that explain nothing. Thing is discovered, dude says âthatâs totally what the designer would designâ isnât a proper scientific hypothesis. Itâs not even an inference to the best explanation.
Some of them have, yes. Like when Jonathan Wells thought centrioles were little turbines. Turned out to be false.
No Eddie. You are mixing up different responses to different design arguments. You canât mix all the different responses to different arguments together and say they are âincongruousâ, as the individual design arguments clearly donât all suffer from the same flaws, they donât merit the same responses.
Jonathan Wells inference though simplistic, was actually a testable scientific hypothesis. It was false, but it was testable. As such it would not suffer from the same issues that plague issues with an undetectable guider of evolution.
So while it is certainly true that the sorts of pro-ID arguments weâve seen around here have been met with fierce resistance, thereâs been perfectly good reasons for that. It is not merely that those inferences might be âculturally controversialâ, itâs that they, depending on the particular inference or argument, really have suffered from fundamental problems with reasoning, or failed to abide by fairly standard scientific methodology.
2 Likes
On a somewhat related note, it should be said that the âirreducible complexityâ-type argument invoked by Jorn Dyerberg against the gradual evolution of the Krebs cycle has been a fairly standard argument in the origin of life literature for a long time. It just wasnât cast as an argument for intelligent design, but âmerelyâ as an argument against itâs gradual evolution. Itâs been part of a debate between two âcampsâ in the origin of life community, the metabolism-first vs genetics-first camps.
So basically (highly simplified history of this debate) metabolism-first proponents have been saying it would be difficult to see how the cycle could gradually evolve, as it doesnât appear like it could have served any usual function in an incomplete state, and the protein enzymes that catalyze the reactions are themselves derivatives of the cycle. And genetics-first proponents were saying it would basically amount to an appeal to magic to think the cycle could run without enzymes, and citing a lack of experimental evidence for the individual steps in the reaction occurring without evolved catalysts.
But then someone discovered that inorganic metals and mineral compounds that would have been abundant in the Hadean and Archaean eons, catalyze the reactions.
4 Likes
Canât be arsed to listen to a podcast recommended by @Eddie On the contrary, his recommendation is good reason to avoid it.
But if further reason were needed, this what the DIâs blurb quotes Dyerberg as saying: "It wasnât until (Dyerberg) encountered ID researchers like Michael Behe that he gave it that name â but he saw how many enzymes and co-enzymes it took working together to make metabolism work in every living cell. And if neo-Darwinism is true, and these enzymes showed up one at a time, âAnd over these eons, the other enzymes would just be sitting there waiting for the next one to come.ââ
The answer to the problem that is vexing him is found in an undergraduate level biochemistry textbook. One doesnât even need to read the articles @Rumraket listed. (No doubt all from geeky technical journals that no one reads, anyway.)
Maybe this Dyerberg guy should brush up on his undergrad biochemistry.
2 Likes
Not all psychiatrists do research. So what point are you trying to make by that statement?
Of course not. I wouldnât presume provide such instruction⌠However, it is clear that he is ignorant of some facts regarding the evolution of the citric acid cycle that sufficiently basic to be included in an undergrad textbook. I found that in a matter of a few seconds on Google, BTW. I have to wonder why a âworld class researcherâ could not manage to do that.
He seems to think it is relevant to whether the citation I provided to a biochemistry textbook excerpt is pertinent to the biochemistry question we are discussing. Beats me why, especially since he seems to think that we should pay attention to a podcast from a religious apologetics organization that has been recommended by someone of no known academic qualifications or accomplishments whatsoever, other than calling himself a ânatural theologianâ on the internet while posting under an assumed name.
2 Likes
You are so lacking in logic that you donât even recognize when you are assuming what is to be proven! He is questioning whether the citric acid cycle did evolve by chance, and if he is right that it did not evolve by chance, then the âfactsâ about the evolution of the cycle asserted in some textbooks arenât facts, but airy speculations. Were you not capable of picking that up?
Oh, wait â didnât you say you refused to listen to what he said? If you refused to listen to what he said, how can you know what he was or was not ignorant of?
What you and others here canât seem to grasp is that all kinds of well-qualified researchers (in this case, one with 271 publications and over 13,000 citations) have doubts about the power of unguided mechanisms to produce a number of features of living organisms and systems. And many of them have come to these conclusions entirely independent of Discovery. Dyerberg spent his career doing research in Europe, not in Seattle. James Tour reached his conclusions about the origin of life on his own, without being coached by Discovery. Lyle Jensen, one of the founders of x-ray crystallography and contributor to the Manhattan project, arrived at his doubts independently as well, and I think that is true of the late Phil Skell, chemist and NAS member. There are plenty of superbly well-trained, well-published scientists who have doubts about the power of unguided causes to produce integrated, complex, living systems. I know that this fact irks you and others here; it would fit your narrative better if the only people who were skeptical of unguided causes were Bible-thumping fundamentalists. Then you could just dismiss them all as hicks and religiously motivated. But the reality is not so simple.
1 Like
His claim is that it did not evolve by âchanceâ, I understand that. The particular piece of evidence he cited in the statement I quoted in support of this claim was that the citric acid cycle is âirreducibly complexâ, and so if it was not created all at once the enzymes that comprise it âover these eons⌠would just be sitting there waiting for the next one to come.â This would be incompatible with unguided evolution, because a non-functional protein would more likely simply be lost to drift over that period of time.
However, the passage I cited shows that the other functions these enzymes performed prior to the evolution of the full citric acid cycle was already well-known enough to be included in an undergrad textbook (not just in the primary literature) that was already in print at least a year before Dyerberg made his podcast. (As you may or may not be aware, there is usually a delay of several years between the time that a finding is published in the primary literature and its appearance in an undergrad level text book, so this information was available to Dyerberg well before the recording of the podcast.)
This is clear, concrete evidence that this claim of Dyerberg is nothing more than an expression of his ignorance on the issue.
Does that help?
And since it has now been shown beyond doubt that his position is based on his ignorance, as opposed to any expertise, regarding this particular issue, his expertise on other unrelated issues is of no relevance whatsoever.
3 Likes
That likely remains the case. It just so happens that some of these Bible-thumping fundamentalists also happen to have science degrees.
The two categories are not mutually exclusive. Another free lesson in elementary logic for you, âEddieâ. No need to thank me.
2 Likes
And every last one bases their personal incredulity on their religious beliefs of God being a direct creator, not for any scientific reasons.
2 Likes
Are you claiming that this observation rules out irreducible complexity?
Since you didnât look at his own words, but only on the paraphrase of his word given by someone at Discovery, you canât be sure what he said or didnât say, what he is or isnât ignorant of. In any case, disagreeing with a speculative narrative improperly treated as historical fact in undergrad textbooks is not a sign of ignorance, but of critical thinking, something in short supply in a lot of the comments made here.
My point was that many very excellent scientists with doubts arenât Bible-thumpers, but I guess you missed it.
Duhh⌠David Berlinski, who has taught mathematics at the university level, is a secular, agnostic Jew, and he is skeptical of the unguided causes narrative. Fred Hoyle was an atheist, but admitted that the universe appeared to be fine-tuned by a superintelligence, not the product of sheer chance. Several of the world-class science and math profs at the Wistar Symposium expressed doubts as well, and none of them were known for evangelical piety. Richard Sternberg sits very loosely to religious orthodoxy, and is no Bible-thumper but more like a neo-Platonist philosopher. Biologists tend to have a love affair with the notion of unguided causes, but not all well-trained scientists do. Not even all biologists, as the case of Sternberg shows.
Irreducible complexity is not particularly relevant to evolution, since its relevance is based on considering only one possible pathway of evolution, the one-by-one assembly of a system with unchanging function from unchanging parts with no other or previous function. The definition of IC is not relevant to the claim that IC systems canât evolve.
1 Like
I do enjoy Eddieâs credentialism, in particular his sprinkling of âworld classâ throughout. Reminds me of Sal Cordovaâs need to put âprestigiousâ all over his posts. Meanwhile, those Eddie doesnât like are publishing boring papers in journals nobody reads.
8 Likes
You canât âadmitâ to something you donât actually know. Of course, if all youâre saying is that Fred Hoyle said the clouds looked like faces to him, Iâm not going to claim he didnât have that experience. How things âappearâ to other people in the privacy of their own heads is neither here nor there.
1 Like
We know irreducibly complex things exist Bill. We also know they can evolve through purely natural though indirect means like co-option of function and scaffolding. So whatâs the problem?
1 Like