Creation Myths with Dr. Michael Behe on "The Edge of Evolution"

[dsterncardinale]

Lizards with placentas: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmor.11011

Molecular evolution of: https://www.pnas.org/content/114/51/E10991

I have more fun stuff on this, but I’m on my phone and I could find those two quickly.

[Faizal_Ali]

If evolving a placenta where one did not exist is not constructive evolution and does not entail the creation of a new irreducibly complex system, then those terms are meaningless and ID’ers are talking nonsense.

[dsterncardinale]

@Faizal_Ali

If evolving a placenta where one did not exist is not constructive evolution and does not entail the creation of a new irreducibly complex system, then those terms are meaningless and ID’ers are talking nonsense.

Cosign.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Michelle

So is Behe saying that we need to accept ID instead of evolution if we cannot provide an example in which we can track every single mutation that happened throughout the history of the evolution of the organism? So for the examples that would be more complicated, falling under his definition of “edge of evolution” (e.g might include nonDarwinian mechanisms such as gene transfer), that history of molecular changes would need to have been traced back for millions of years?

Hi Michelle
I think this would become mute if through this design and evolution battle a model to how detailed novel mechanisms came into existence. At this point we need to assume the origin of complex structures that we cannot currently explain.

The fact that genes live in very large sequential space is a challenge in explaining their ultimate origin.

In the case of the placenta Behe is asking if evolution could have produced this placenta and is there a path? Perhaps to create this path initially we need to assume the origin of the genes in question.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@colewd

The fact that genes live in very large sequential space is a challenge in explaining their ultimate origin.

It is not.

How big the continent of America is(it’s big) is not an indication of how difficult it is to find an American. Merely pointing to it’s total size tells you nothing about the average density, connections, or geographic distribution. And hey, if you find an American, s/he can usually tell you where to find more.

@colewd

Perhaps to create this path initially we need to assume the origin of the genes in question.

Regardless of how you think the genes involved in development of the placenta themselves originated, given that ancestral lizards do not have placenta, if those placenta evolved by as much as a single nucleotide substitution in a specific pre-existing gene which then went on to regulate some whole host of other processes, then that placenta evolved. Trans-generational genetic and phenotypic change is evolution by definition.

[dsterncardinale]

@colewd

Perhaps to create this path initially we need to assume the origin of the genes in question.

And the word for that is “moving the goalposts”. Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from State A to State B. A cell without a flagellum to a cell with a flagellum. An animal without blood clotting to an animal with blood clotting. Etc. “But how did State A evolve, then?” is a separate argument.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Rumraket

How big the continent of America is(it’s big) is not an indication of how difficult it is to find an American. Merely pointing to it’s total size tells you nothing about the average density, connections, or geographic distribution. And hey, if you find an American, s/he can usually tell you where to find more.

This is all true until you put the person in a random spot in the Milky Way galaxy and then deriving a method of finding an American becomes a lot more challenging.

An analogy using physical spaces does not accurately represent combinatorial spaces.

The bigger the search space the more functional solutions that are needed to be identified to make a random search feasible.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@dsterncardinale

And the word for that is “moving the goalposts”. Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from State A to State B. A cell without a flagellum to a cell with a flagellum. An animal without blood clotting to an animal with blood clotting. Etc. “But how did State A evolve, then?” is a separate argument.

Hi Dan
This appears to be argument from Darwins Black Box if you change the word impossibility to difficulty . How do you see it applying to the Edge of Evolution ?

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@colewd

This is all true until you put the person in a random spot in the Milky Way galaxy and then deriving a method of finding an American becomes a lot more challenging.

An analogy using physical spaces does not accurately represent combinatorial spaces.

The analogy explains exactly what is wrong with your argument, which is that you point only to the total size of the space, without giving any indication of the fact that is relevant to how difficult it is to find what you’re looking for: The ratio of functions to nonfunctional things.

The total size of the space tells you nothing. Literally not a single thing. Whether it’s proteins in sequence space, photons in outer space, or Americans in America.

If the concentration of salt in a body of water is 0.1g/cm³ it doesn’t matter whether you have just one cm³ or a volume the size of the universe. Finding salt ions is exactly equally difficult. Blurting that there’s a lot of water is meaningless. The real question is the ratio of salt to water, not the total volume of water.

You’ve had this thing with the ratio explained to you many, many times before. I have a genuiinely difficult time convincing myself you don’t actually understand it. So why do you continue to pretend not to?

@colewd

The bigger the search space the more functional solutions that are needed to be identified to make a random search feasible.

Guess what - there’s a wealth of evidence that there are enough such functional solutions to be found by evolution:

Functions are not so rare at all, and definitely not isolated, in sequence space of biopolymers

Found this paper on arXiv: Abstract: At odds with a traditional view of molecular evolution that seeks a descent-with-modification relationship between functional sequences, new functions can emerge de novo with relative ease. At early times of molecular evolution, random polymers could have sufficed for the appearance of incipient chemical activity, while the cellular environment harbors a myriad of proto-functional molecules. The emergence of function is facilitated by several mechanisms intrinsic to molecular organization, such as redundant mapping of sequences into structures, phenotypic plasticity, modularity, or cooperative associations between genomic sequences. It is the availability of niches in the molecular ecology that filters new potentially functional proposals. New phenotypes and subsequent levels of molecular complexity could be attained through combinatorial explorations of currently available molecular variants. Natural selection does the rest. It’s hard to pi…

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@John_Harshman

This points to the confusion in ID terminology. Design is one thing and creation is another, yet ID conflates the two.

They have to. If they said “creation” when they meant “creation”, that’d give their game away.

[Roy (30-year veteran)]

@Michelle

So is Behe saying that we need to accept ID instead of evolution if we cannot provide an example in which we can track every single mutation that happened throughout the history of the evolution of the organism? So for the examples that would be more complicated, falling under his definition of “edge of evolution” (e.g might include nonDarwinian mechanisms such as gene transfer), that history of molecular changes would need to have been traced back for millions of years?

He testified that he would accept ID instead of evolution even if we had a multimillion year history of mutations an molecular changes:

… I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.

[Faizal_Ali]

@colewd

This is all true until you put the person in a random spot in the Milky Way galaxy and then deriving a method of finding an American becomes a lot more challenging.

You inadvertently illustrate perfectly the problem with the ID argument. The search thru sequence space is not at all analogous to that.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@dsterncardinale

Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from State A to State B. A cell without a flagellum to a cell with a flagellum. An animal without blood clotting to an animal with blood clotting

No, not at all. How could it be so given that Behe affirms common descent? You should have said instead that Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from state A to state B by a blind unguided natural process when the transition involves the implementation of some IC systems, placentas in lizards being most probably a case in point.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Giltil

You should have said instead that Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from state A to state B by a blind unguided natural process when the transition involves the implementation of some IC systems, placentas in lizards being most probably a case in point.

And since it now an observed fact that plancentas arose in lizards thru blind, unguided, natural processes… Well, you should be able to figure out the rest.

[dsterncardinale]

@colewd

Hi Dan
This appears to be argument from Darwins Black Box if you change the word impossibility to difficulty . How do you see it applying to the Edge of Evolution ?

I used the examples from Black Box, but whether it’s IC or the rate of changes required, the structure of the argument is the same, and the “but how did State A evolve” is still a different argument that’s immaterial to the one that Behe makes.

 

@Giltil

How could it be so given that Behe affirms common descent? You should have said instead that Behe’s arguments are all about the impossibility of going from state A to state B by a blind unguided natural process

Yes, the “via evolutionary mechanisms” was implied.

[Faizal_Ali]

@dsterncardinale

Yes, the “via evolutionary mechanisms” was implied.

It was hard to know exactly what he was talking about in the video, but it seemed to me that even if a system that he considers to be IC evolved under directly observed conditions, say in Lenski’s lab, and if this also met his criteria for “gain of function”, he still would not admit that it was not designed, because he defines “design” as “purposeful arrangement of parts.” I guess he would have to say, then, that the designer was causing the mutations to arise and become fixed by some remote, non-physical process. Or something else, I really don’t know.

In any event, it would appear that his version of “design” cannot be falsified, and would be applicable to anything that did arise thru unguided evolutionary processes. It’s all very odd, and difficult to take seriously.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Faizal_Ali

And since it now an observed fact that plancentas arose in lizards thru blind, unguided, natural processes… Well, you should be able to figure out the rest.

That some lizards have a placenta is an observed fact, but that these placentas arose thru blind, unguided, natural processes is an unproven conjecture.

[John_Harshman]

@Giltil

That some lizards have a placenta is an observed fact, but that these placentas arose thru blind, unguided, natural processes is an unproven conjecture.

There can never be any proof of that conjecture as long as we allow the possibility of divine intervention. God could be behind anything, in nature or in a lab. There’s no way to tell by observation whether any event is natural or supernatural. This is why ID is the death of science.

[dsterncardinale]

@Faizal_Ali

It was hard to know exactly what he was talking about in the video, but it seemed to me that even if a system that he considers to be IC evolved under directly observed conditions, say in Lenski’s lab, and if this also met his criteria for “gain of function”, he still would not admit that it was not designed, because he defines “design” as “purposeful arrangement of parts.” I guess he would have to say, then, that the designer was causing the mutations to arise and become fixed by some remote, non-physical process. Or something else, I really don’t know.

Yes, exactly. That’s why I asked about ongoing design in the present. My understanding is that the criteria are, to Behe, rock solid, so that if we observe something violating them, then that event/structure was designed in real time as its evolution was observed.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@Rumraket

The total size of the space tells you nothing. Literally not a single thing. Whether it’s proteins in sequence space, photons in outer space, or Americans in America.

It tells us how many functional solutions you need to make a random search viable. The claim in The edge of evolution is that more than two coordinated mutations is difficult. How would you perform a search given this constraint?

@Rumraket

Guess what - there’s a wealth of evidence that there are enough such functional solutions to be found by evolution:

Then a mathematical model of how this works should be soon forthcoming? Any function and a novel function in a new living organism are very different things.