Does ID have Hypotheses?

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Dan_Eastwood

Rare function is more likely to be harder to describe, requiring longer code, rather than be short and simple.

That’s wrong. The bacterial flagellum, which is a very complex and arguably rare molecular machine, can be simply described as follow:
bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller.
Many other complex molecular machines are similarly easy to describe, such as ion channels for example.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Chris_Falter

@swamidass

Doug Axe supposed protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space.

That is a scientific hypothesis.

It is a scientific hypothesis

Agree

@Chris_Falter

However, I do not see how this is intrinsically related to Intelligent Design.

Here is how the hypothesis relates to ID.
If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, it follows that ID is true.
However, if protein functions are not rare or not isolated in sequence space, it doesn’t follow that ID is wrong.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Giltil

That’s wrong. The bacterial flagellum, which is a very complex and arguably rare molecular machine, can be simply described as follow:
bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller .
Many other complex molecular machines are similarly easy to describe, such as ion channels for example

But that is not a description of a flagellum, but rather a more general description of a sort of “class” of machines.

It’s sort of like saying “bipedal carbon-based lifeform” is a simple description of a human being. The simpler you make the explanation, the more detail is missing about the things you’re trying to describe. An accurate explanation would be one that allows you to sort of reconstruct the described object using the description.

A bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller could be an innumerable number of things. The propeller of a helicopter, a fan, you name it.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Giltil

Here is how the hypothesis relates to ID.
If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, it follows that ID is true.
However, if protein functions are not rare or not isolated in sequence space, it doesn’t follow that ID is wrong.

Heh, that perfectly encapsulates what I noted in an earlier post in this thread. Protein functions being rare and isolated in sequence space is not actually a prediction of ID. There’s no principle of ID, nor the physics of biomolecules, that somehow entails this conclusion.

The whole thing has been invented and conceived out of a wish to try to shown there must be a designer/creator.

@Rumraket

Thank you. I’ve been posing similar questions for a long time. What is it about IDcreationism that somehow entails that functional protein sequences should be rare and isolated in sequence space? If a designer created a flagellum, or intervened in the history of life to deliberately create an animal body plan or something, why does this have to come packaged with the conviction that the evolution of new protein structures and functions is essentially impossible?

I also wonder why so many IDcreationists spend so much time trying to argue that the origin of life is impossible, as if that is somehow an essential entailment of the idea that life was intelligently designed. It can’t be only me to whom it is completely obvious that there is no necessary contradiction between these ideas? It seems to me it could both be true that life could relatively easily originate naturally, yet in some particular instance it was intelligently designed. I don’t see what supports the conviction that there has to be a mutually exclusive dichotomy at work here.

To me these strange assumptions reveals that the purpose behind these IDcreationist arguments aren’t actually based on something scientific, but instead are evangelical and apologetic. They are intended to be tools for compelling conversion to theism (or at least to keep believers believing) - rather than anything you’d “naturally expect” from an understanding of the laws of chemistry and physics.

[Chris_Falter]

@Giltil

If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, it follows that ID is true.
However, if protein functions are not rare or not isolated in sequence space, it doesn’t follow that ID is wrong.

So no matter what the nature of the evidence, you conclude that ID is right?

[CrisprCAS9]

@Giltil

If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, it follows that ID is true.

No, that doesn’t follow. Also, they aren’t rare or isolated.

@Giltil

it doesn’t follow that ID is wrong.

If ID is compatible with any possible data set, so is not a useful concept.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@CrisprCAS9

@Giltil

If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, it follows that ID is true.

No, that doesn’t follow

Let’s formulate things differently. If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, then ID best explains it.

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Chris_Falter

So no matter what the nature of the evidence, you conclude that ID is right?

No, not at all. Why do you say that?

[CrisprCAS9]

@Giltil

If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, then ID best explains it.

That still doesn’t follow.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

Recently found a couple of articles very relevant to this continued misapprehension about the relationship between biological functions and polymer sequence space:

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…

[Chris_Falter]

@Giltil

Let’s formulate things differently. If protein functions are rare and isolated in sequence space, then ID best explains it.

You have not quantified your definition of rare and isolated.

You are also apparently relying on Axe’s paper, which has been strongly discredited by (1) subsequent research, and (2) methology which never supported extrapolation to genetic processes in vivo.

You have not explained why the alleged rarity of functionality in sequence space is relevant to ID theory. Is it a God-of-the-gaps argument? (No known biological process works, therefore God?)

Regards,
Chris

[Art (Arthur Hunt)]

@T_aquaticus

I was also witness to a coworker paying his 8 year old 25 cents a box for racking tips. That was brilliant.

@T_aquaticus, I don’t remember you being in my lab.

And it was 50 cents a box my daughters got for stuffing pipette tip boxes. Needless to say, students in my lab grumbled when they did the math and figured my kids were paid a whole lot more per hour,…

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@T_aquaticus

For example, outside of high school science class, have you ever looked through a microscope?

No, but in high school I did work with scales where the balance beam would only go to one of two positions, full up or full down.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@Giltil

That’s wrong. The bacterial flagellum, which is a very complex and arguably rare molecular machine, can be simply described as follow:
bidirectional rotary motor-driven propeller .
Many other complex molecular machines are similarly easy to describe, such as ion channels for example.

No. The only language that applies here are the laws of chemistry and physics, because that’s how DNA works. IF it were coded in English then there would be proof beyond doubt of intelligent creation. Attaching a simple label to something doesn’t make the object any simpler (example: the computer in front of you).

In fairness, this is a question of how information is coded, a rather obscure topic that rarely enters these discussions. The point is that human languages have no relevance to DNA coding, and DNA does not show the kind of structure that languages hace (I might have a reference for that somewhere).

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@RonSewell

No, but in high school I did work with scales where the balance beam would only go to one of two positions, full up or full down.

I had one like that. I decided it was Schrodinger’s scale, and postulated that it only was in one of those two positions when being observed. Of course, this was not an easily testable hypothesis.

[T_aquaticus]

@Dan_Eastwood

No. The only language that applies here are the laws of chemistry and physics, because that’s how DNA works. IF it were coded in English then there would be proof beyond doubt of intelligent creation. Attaching a simple label to something doesn’t make the object any simpler (example: the computer in front of you).

Cc: @Giltil

If English is like DNA, then I would be curious what the reverse complement of “Hello” is.

I would argue that all molecules are as digital as DNA is. Water has the code H2O, as an example. You could also spell out the code of each atom and molecule using its orbitals. We could also describe the Earth as a magnetic dynamo machine if we wanted. The Sun? Obviously a fusion power plant. We can describe almost anything as a machine if we want. Doing so might impress those who are already convinced of ID, but the rest of us aren’t that impressed.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Dan_Eastwood

The point is that human languages have no relevance to DNA coding,

There’s no actual code, because there is no abstraction involved. “Code” is used metaphorically.