See slide 16 of his talk:
Graur did not say that the sole evidence for evolution is that design is false.
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T. aqua said that evolutionary biologists make no references to ID, whereas ID people can’t survive, like a fish out of water, unless they can swim around in claims about what evolution can’t explain.
At the age of 19, falling in love with biology (having dropped out of art school), I attended a long series of lectures on evolution at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. The first lecture in the series was given by Leonard Krishtalka, a vertebrate paleontologist on the museum staff, and adjunct professor at Pitt, where I was an undergrad. Krishtalka opened his lecture by pointing to the preserved form of a peccary (pig-like mammal) on the dais. He had borrowed the specimen from the Carnegie collection.
How do we know evolution is true? he asked the audience. Because of the peccary’s dew claws – apparently vestigial structures at the rear of the foot, which seem to touch only the “dewy” surface of the ground. Why would God have done that? he asked rhetorically.
Well, not rhetorically, actually. It’s the logical pivot of his argument. God didn’t design the peccary, he said. Natural selection did, and natural selection only makes organisms good enough to get by, not perfect.
That was my introduction to evolutionary theory, and today, one can still track the role of theology in evolutionary reasoning. As I said, it’s a longstanding addiction, and hard to break.
So is it your opinion that he’s wrong, and that ID is completely okay with any amount of junk DNA?
Then be my guest and explain that to @Jesse_England up above who seems to be arguing that the Discovery Institute should start focusing more on debunking the idea of junk DNA. If you write a series of posts on this forum arguing that ID and creationism is okay with any amount of junk DNA (and you work to make sure this message is desseminated widely in pro-ID and creationist circles), then I will make sure rebut statements such as the one you find Graur to have made here above and explain that design is actually okay with any amount of junk. And I’ll definitely be happy to contact Dan Graur to let him know.
Deal?
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Are you forgetting that the hypothesis that all evolution is Darwinian, with no neutral evolution, also predicts no junk DNA?
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What I said is that scientists don’t give a presentation solely showing how design can’t explain something, and then conclude at the very end that evolution must be true because the design explanation failed. That doesn’t happen. I have been in presentations where the evolution of bacterial antibiotic resistance and evolution of virulence factors is discussed, and there is absolutely no mention of ID/creationism. None. Instead, they discuss the evolutionary pathways.
Where can we see an ID/creationist presentation where they solely present the steps and mechanisms of design (as performed by the designer of ID/creationism) that went into the production of a biological feature? I can’t find one. Instead, they try to claim that evolution can’t do it . . . therefore, God of the Gaps.
The positive evidence for evolution is that dew claws are a vestigial structure of what is found in the common ancestor. Vestigial structures follow a nested hierarchy, as predicted by the theory of evolution. An intelligent designer is removed through parsimony.
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This sort of thing isn’t common, and when it’s used it’s generally a rhetorical device, not a serious claim about two hypotheses. If you want to make a serious claim, you need to make that design hypothesis operational. Are dewclaws expected from design? Are they contrary to design? Where is the operational design hypothesis?
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You know, the title of this thread isn’t intended as a challenge.
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Yeah I agree that the “bad design” argument isn’t sound. But isn’t that a different issue?
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Isn’t the argument against junk DNA within ID circles based the notion that it’s not good design? That creating junk DNA would be bad design, therefore all DNA must be functional/ have purpose?
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One world presume that large amounts of junk DNA runs counter to design based on the number of ID proponents arguing against it but try to find a positive or definitive explanation for that hypothesis… I think it’s more about how they believe God should do things and anti-evolution leanings. Perhaps there is a positive creationist set of hypotheses out there but so many seem dead set against the thought of putting their beliefs about God to the test. Young Earthers proposed a strong, positive set of criteria about what one should expect to find if they were correct. The opposite turned out to be the case and today, there is longer any scientific YEC case to be taken seriously… but at least they did lay down their markers at one point. The research world has since moved on.
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Why are ID proponents so hell-bent on rebutting references to things like the recurrent lanryngeal nerve, the backwards wiring of the retina and associated blind-spot, and existence of large amounts of junk-DNA? Why do ID-creationists argue these aren’t actually bad designs but insist that they are actually good designs, or in the case of junk DNA, that it doesn’t even exist, if they do not tacitly agree that they really would be bad designs if they function the way evolutionary biologists describe them?
You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
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Well, the no-Junk-DNA-disproves-evolution argument is like the twin sister to the bad design argument. I don’t think it’s sound either.
You might be right that they are applying the evidential standards in inconsistent ways across these two arguments. The same might be true of those arguing against ID though…
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I disagree somewhat. It is sound against certain factions of creationism like YEC. That’s why people like Jeffrey Tomkins do bad science trying to overturn examples of evolutionarily defunct genes. Against your own brand of creationism, the argument from bad design is a strawman.
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I also agree that the bad design argument isn’t sound. Vestigial structures aren’t evidence for evolution because they are bad designs. Vestigial structures are evidence for evolution because they fit into the expected phylogeny. A mammal with vestigial feathers or a bird with vestigial teats would be problems for evolution.
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Why are they twins? It is simply false that evolution requires the existence of junk DNA, and it is almost certainly false that there is no junk DNA. It is not false that at least some ID proponents talk about design in ways that suggest an expectation optimal design.
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There’s a bit of “human exceptionalism” mixed in there as well. This can also be seen in their attempts to dispute the genetic similarities between humans and chimps. Humans are supposed to be special to God, so surely He would take his time to make our genome special in some way (according to their logic, not the logic of many Christians).
Both arguments rely on, usually, tacit or questionable theological assumptions that are required for the argument to work.
Both arguments end up, in practice, straw-manning the opposing view.
Both arguments rely on very poorly specified notions of both “design” and evolution, and what we expect from each model(s).
Both neglect that there multiple models of design and multiple models of evolution, and at most they are only ruling out one variant, not the whole class.
The data is not cooperative with either argument, at least in the way the argument demands. You know the problems with the no-Junk-DNA argument, but claiming that particular biological features (e.g. the eye) are “poorly designed” also isn’t rigorous or consistent with the evidence. At best you could argue that biology does not look how humans would design it (and I certainly agree with this), or that biological systems are not perfect, but that doesn’t mean “bad design.”
Those are the sort of reasons I say they are twinned arguments. Though of course there are differences too.
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The bad design argument is not so much about supporting evolution, but is more about teleology. It is a sound argument against “good design”.
The classical problem is that an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent God would be expected to create the best of all possible worlds. In the domain of special creation of life, surely as good a job as could be imagined by an advanced civilization should be the standard. But what we find appears to include many instances of botches and kludges. As @T_aquaticus posts, this observation is to be expected given phylogeny, which does not begin with a blank sheet and a teleological objective in mind.
Bad design, however, does not sit easily with direct divine creation, given that design is the central mantra. This is why YEC in particular expends so much effort in disputing that the design is sub-par, or not essential, or suggesting that the original intent was compromised in the fall.
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Perhaps, but: nobody thinks that the crappiness of design is a very good argument against design, do they? My experience is that this issue ONLY comes up after the creationist first argues that the construction of things in nature is so rip-roarin’, rootin’-tootin’ amazing, so filled with intelligence and wisdom (Halleluia, and sis-boom-bah!) that its sheer brilliance attests to the fact that it can only have come from Baal or one of his mates down at the pub. That’s the context. This silly argument is made, and then the response is sometimes given that the design is not so rootin’, and not so tootin’, as it is being said to be.
As a primary philosophical or evidentiary argument for evolutionary theory, this would fail in every possible way. But nobody thinks it succeeds in that role anyhow. It is simply a retort to a bad creationist argument; it arises in dialogue, by the processes of argumentation themselves, by the conventions of turn-taking in conversation. Creationist says “the character of living things is that they reflect the transcendent brilliance of Baal’s wisdom,” and the response is that if that’s so, Baal needs to take a few classes in how to design living things, because frankly, he’s crap at it.
So who is the source of the crappy theology in this argument? Not the biologist; it’s the creationist, supplying it on both sides. He supplies the crappy theology that says that nature reflects the masterful design of the creator, and is answered by the consequences of evaluating “designs” against this crappy theological standard.
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