Developing College-Level ID/Creation Courses

Conversation Side Conversation
151

Hi @stcordova -

Thanks for sharing your 2 slide decks. Here’s my feedback:

  1. The Law of Large Numbers is not violated by zinc finger proteins as far as I can tell, and I have no idea how you arrived at the conclusion they violate the law. Without some mathematical explanation on your part, I don’t know how to provide a counterpoint.
  2. The article representing the supposedly inactive research area ("Evolution of protein domain promiscuity in eukaryotes - Basu, et al., 2008) has been cited 161 times in the past decade according to Google Scholar.
  3. Contrary to your assertion, promiscuous protein domains are not a problem for evolution. Basu’s abstract explains why:

The set of promiscuous domains is enriched for domains mediating protein–protein interactions that are involved in various forms of signal transduction, especially in the ubiquitin system and in chromatin. Thus, a limited repertoire of promiscuous domains makes a major contribution to the diversity and evolvability of eukaryotic proteomes and signaling networks.

  1. My analogy from chess positions applies quite directly to your assertions on slides 37-40 of part 2. I.e., disparate functional architectures could still have a common ancestor. Of course, Art Hunt’s argument is also a strong refutation and has the imprimatur of a biology Ph.D, to boot.
  2. You cite Ewert’s ideas on modularity as if they have withstood critical examination. They have not. See Winston Ewert: The Dependency Graph of Life - #29 for an extended examination of why not. Several contributions explain the problems in Ewert’s analysis. I found the contributions by @glipsnort to be especially incisive.
  3. Likewise with Doug Axe’s 2004 paper. See the contributions from biologists on this thread: How Does Tokuriki 2009 Affect Conclusions from Axe 2004? - #28 by Mercer
  4. I’m not sure what publication by Behe in 2008 you are referring to. Perhaps I overlooked something in your slides. Can you point me to what I missed? Or, alternatively, tell me what reference could be added?
  5. The notion that zinc finger proteins cast suspicion on MLE or parsimony methods for finding most probable trees does not begin to make sense to me. Those methods aim to minimize a loss function measured by homoplasy, and you have not provided any rationale for why analyses of zinc finger proteins cannot proceed along these lines. I don’t know how to provide a rebuttal because I don’t understand how you reached the conclusion. I certainly don’t see the math in the slides.
  6. Unless you can show that LUCA’s biology used only a single protein, there is no reason to think that the lack of PUCA somehow refutes LUCA.
  7. Contrary to your assertion, CTVT does not contain a canine genome. It contains a tiny portion of a canid genome. Moreover, it has nothing to say about ERVs, whose provenance is well-established.
  8. The idea that much of the genome has the “function” of adding length to a DNA strand to make transcription work effectively does not imply that the theory of evolution is wrong. This argument against evolution is furthered weakened by the fact that the sequence of the “lengthening” sequences often matters not–they are not under selection.
  9. I don’t know enough about racemization to offer a critique of that specific argument for life being no more than 10k years old. However, you do students no favors if you deliberately omit discussion of the dozens of methods and tens of thousands of confirming observations that reach a different conclusion. It is millions of times easier to believe that Cordova’s understanding of racemization is incorrect than to believe that the standard scientific understanding is incorrect for
    A. Geologic dating methods of the layers surrounding fossils
    B. The patterns of fossils with respect to dates and locations
    C. C14 dating of archeological finds.
    D. Lenski’s LTEE
    E. ERV-derived trees of primate ancestry
    F. etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

As a general critique, I would offer that by omitting any mention of major classes of data that support the theory of evolution, you have built one of the feeblest straw-man versions of evolutionary theory I have ever read. You owe it to your students to give them the complete picture, and I have no doubt that your desire to give them the complete picture is genuine. However, your slides that you linked to above show that you are far, far from achieving that desire, and give no evidence that you have a plan to achieve it.

I hope you find these observations useful.

Best,
Chris Falter

7 Likes