How would you calculate the probabilities of guided evolution?
Suppose we’re dealing with the evolution of increased antibiotic resistance in some experiment. What do we gain by positing there’s an invisible guiding force at work? How does that change the probabilities?
It’s not that it isn’t allowed, it’s that the assumption of an invisible guider seems unnecessary. Like in weather. Do we need to posit the small invisible angels making water molecules jitter? How does the probabilities change if we add a guider to the picture?
Tell me, I’d love to know. And you absolutely are allowed to state your models with guiding designers in them and improve any science you want. Why stop at evolution?
Is there a better theory of thermodynamics with a secret guiding force that better explains the transfer of heat enery through some medium, whether solid, gas, liquid or whatever, than one where the molecules just randomly jitter around and bounce into each other and transfer their kinetic energy around?
In the absence of evidence of guidance then obviously the default should be that there is no guidance. Undetectable guidance is indistinguishable from a lack of guidance - and for pragmatic purposes no different. This is not dogma - it is simple parsimony
The problem with “guidance” is that it is in itself too vague to be useful. Are, for instance, mass extinctions a crude form of guidance or disasters that interfere with accomplishing the objective of the supposed guidance? Either view is possible. Developing specific ideas about guidance that lead to predictive hypotheses that are then confirmed would be a good start.
Attempts at probabilistic arguments are not a good idea since useful probabilities cannot be practically calculated. The probability-based arguments that have been produced are merely deceptive (intentionally or not) apologetics.
It’s not a question of “no gods allowed” being an assumption. Rather, it’s simply a matter of fact that observations in biology can be fully accounted for by natural ( i.e. unguided) processes, so there is no evidence to support guidance by an intelligent agent. ID proponents claim to be have found such evidence, but they are wrong and/or lying.
Look at it this way: Suppose you evaluated the results of a million throws of a pair of dice, and found the outcome was exactly what would be predicted by chance. Is there a reason you would conclude that some supernatural being was guiding which numbers came up?
With respect to the model of the weather with little angels pushing on the water molecules, as opposed to the warmth radiating off the sun, no I don’t think we can tell the difference.
When it comes to human designed objects they typically have hallmarks of manufacturing on them. They have tool marks, mold lines, have shapes, sizes, weights that facilitate ease of use, grabbing and holding in human hands, facilitate transportation, packaging etc. They’re also typically made of some alloy, ceramics, plastic, or wood. It’s usually polished or painted. And so on and so forth.
In the vast majority of cases we don’t even need probabilities at all. We can just see by it’s shape and the material of which it is constructed that it was something that was desgined and manufactured by some method that required tool use.
It has been explored at great length Or maybe it would be better to say this is the key failing of Intelligent Design; there is no hypothesis for design or a Designer which would allow any distinction between evolution and design. I think it was Dembski who famously said, “ID is not that kind of science.”
Two possible exceptions:
Winton Ewert Dependency Graph hypothesis, which even the ID proponents aren’t too excited about.
Several examples in mainstream science demonstrating how phylogenetic data can be used to test Common Descent versus specific design alternatives. These examples are (Theobald 2003?) and White (2012) if memory serves. In both cases the Common Descent hypothesis is a clear winner against separate origins hypotheses. The main point of both publications is not to test Common Descent, but to demonstrate how Design hypotheses can be tested using mainstream methods. Other Design hypotheses should also be testable, but to date no one in ID has taken up these methods.
This sort of probability approach can be used to show that humans are/were very likely the authors of the posts in this thread. The critical point is that we already know that humans exist - we infer that humans wrote these posts very easily, but we are not inferring the existence of humans because that is a starting assumption.
The same of not true of an Intelligent Designer that is not previously known to exist. We have nothing to show A Priori that a Designer exists in the way we know humans exist. If we look at probabilities in the same way as posts in this thread to infer Design, that is also a (tacit) starting assumption.
I should note that if we were to simply pose a hypothesis for the existence of God, this would be a non-starter. If we are agreed that God is supernatural, then is simply should not be possible to have scientific proof of God, because that’s just not how science works. This is not a point of disagreement anywhere.
The dichotomy would appear to be between the existence of evidence of guidance (ID), and a lack of such evidence.
The “lack of such evidence” viewpoint comes in two forms. Theistic Evolution (and similar viewpoints) holds that the guidance is sufficiently subtle that it cannot be distinguished from randomness. Atheistic evolution holds that the ‘guide’ simply does not exist.
Reframed, you distinguish between them by whether that evidence exists.
Might I suggest Young, M., and Edis, T. (eds). 2006. Why intelligent design fails: A scientific critique of the new creationism. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.
Several of the chapters discuss the various probability arguments in detail, notably Demski’s and Behe’s.
Aside from the question of whether the calculation was good that isn’t really a relevant probability. Your argument appears to be that since the chance of a random protein having a β-lactamase fold is low we should jump to the conclusion that there is an intelligent agent causing antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
But, of course, it isn’t a random protein. Is it? It’s a modification of a protein that the bacterium already produced. We don’t have a single shot at producing a β-lactamase fold from scratch - we have very, very many attempts at producing a β-lactamase fold by modifying one of the many proteins already produced. And we certainly can’t restrict ourselves just to the bacterial species that actually succeeded in doing so, either.
If you think you can calculate that probability then go ahead - but Axe came nowhere close to doing so.
By “normal conditions” you mean in objects known to be built by humans. That is already a very significant difference. Given that we have no manufacture - the various flagella grow naturally - nor do we have a known entity capable of creating or implementing the design, the inference is not so clear. (I should note that I am not insisting that a “known entity” needs to be any more known than “a human”). Certainly not clear enough to justify inventing an ad hoc designer.
Now evolutionary theory is a viable theory that explains a great deal. If the self-styled “design theorists” actually came up with a design theory that could replace or even augment evolutionary theory they would have something. But so far they don’t seem to be even trying.
Calculating the probability of that particular single protein forming all at once through random polymerization. A probability which has no relevance for protein evolution.
It’s been…7 years, I think? Since that first piece, and there was a followup, and neither engages with the actual data we use for phylogenetics, so I’m not expecting much at this point.
Just reading this, I still have no idea how ID proponents expect to ever figure anything out about so-called ID. How can you possibly expect to come up with an explanation if you can’t answer what, where, when, how, etc?
Remember, intelligent design is the view that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process. The issue for ID is not how it was done, when it was done, to what extent it was done, or even who did it.
Comments related to James Tour’s claims NOT related to Douglas Axe’s 2004 paper are being moved to a new thread. Please make separate replies on that topic to facilitate the split.
Which in turn betrays the fact that ID’s function is little more than a gateway to conservative Christianity and the associated politics that comes with it.
This is deeply confused. We are discussing the evolutionary origin of the beta-lactamase protein (the enzyme), not the origin of life.
Nobody claims that novel protein enzymes somehow arose de novo at the origin of life.
So let’s get back to Axe’s paper, whether his methods can actually support his conclusion (they can’t), and whether his results represent a problem for the origin of enzymes in biological evolution (not to be confused with what might have occurred at the origin of life).
So do you have any interest in discussing the methods Axe used in his 2004 paper, and whether they support his conclusion that new enzymes—or any other functional proteins—can’t evolve?
Or maybe it would be better to say this is the key failing of Intelligent Design; there is no hypothesis for design or a Designer which would allow any distinction between evolution and design. I think it was Dembski who famously said, “ID is not that kind of science.”