I’ve read The Blind Watchmaker some days after it appeared. I’ve read what he wrote about this program, e.g. p 50.
The program could be modified. One possibilty were his Biomorph-programs. But the relevant issues (‘ultra-darwinism’) were the same.
What I wrote concerns these issues, maybe not what Dawkins intended.
My issue, many, many years after reading the book for the first time, was the usefulness of that program to show the problem IC poses for that mechanism. This problem doesn’t go away in the Biomorph program.
Of course I know about the standing of Dawkins in evolutionary biology. Just look in the bibliography of any textbook of evolutionary biology. So don’t think I take his toy-program as an important issue in evolutionary biology. But it was very important in other domains.
I started to read your posting you told me before . Maybe we should wait until I’ve done this.
Just want to make sure we’re all on the same page with this. ID is a PR campaign, nothing more. Anyone claiming otherwise is either in on the con or one of the marks.
Who in their right mind has proposed that a system remains nonfunctional through it’s evolutionary history until it’s “final” form? Why ask this, to be blunt, rather stupid question?
If it could be shown that in fact the intermediates would have to be nonfunctional then sure, the system couldn’t evolve. There’s just zero reason to think this of any known biological system.
I’m sorry but that’s just wrong. If selection is involved in improving fitness along the way, it’s Darwinian evolution.
An organism adapting to a novel environment will accumulate mutations to many different genes, for example. Each of those genes might be involved in different molecular functions, but as each mutates, if those mutations slightly improve organismal fitness, it’s a Darwinian process of adaptation.
The mutations don’t necessarily have to improve each of those functions, nor do they have to contribute to fitness by affecting the same phenotypic function such as camouflage, to pick an example.
Yes that’s not necessarily an IC system, but the point is just to explain that you can still have Darwinian evolution with mutations that improve organismal fitness, even if each mutation individually affects different sub-functions of the organism as a whole. This idea that selection has to act on a single function of the structure as a whole all throughout it’s evolution, otherwise it’s non-Darwinian, is just wrong. You’re just wrong when you say that.
A bacterium adapting to a novel antibiotic might accumulate mutations to several different genes, each with different molecular functions (one could be a mutation in a membrane transporter, another a mutation to an enzyme, and so on), and each mutation can improve fitness. That would make it a case of Darwinian evolution. In fact it would be called positive selection.
Sure, function-changing mutations for individual genes are definitely more rare than mutations that slightly alter existing functions (to pick an example, mutations that increase or decrease enzyme activity are comparatively more rare than those that result in gains of the ability to access entirely new substrates). In that way evolution is contingent on a supply of new mutations and the frequency with which they alter functions, if that is required for a novel adaptation.
So in cases where you have to wait for those, that would slow down evolution of a system that involves many such mutations, compared to a case where you can just slightly fiddle with individual functions up and down.
But so what?
Who cares? I can’t show him the world history of every atom in the Mt. Everest either, his demand is ridiculous.
Yes everyone here is aware this is Behe’s ultimate fallback. In cases where we have good reason to think some system or structure evolved, Behe still wants us to create models with population sizes, fitness effects of mutations in long gone environments, etc. etc. and then he wants to do some sort of post-hoc probability calculation to show that, oh my, this particular history looks very unlikely.
This is all some version of either the Lottery fallacy, or the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. Any particular long series of accumulated mutations will look extremely unlikely after the fact. Therefore history didn’t happen. Convince me otherwise with detailed models!
You’re right, that is his ultimate fallback. And it’s absurd.
His psychological (more like theatrical) need for detailed scenarios doesn’t require refutation. I can’t refute an incredulous stare.
I notice that you evade the question again. However the program was not in any way intended to be a simulation of biological evolution which differs in ways which make the production of some IC systems all but certain. As Müller showed.
It obviously matters that Dawkins wrote a program that presents a greatly simplified model to address a particular point. Extrapolating it beyond that point is unwarranted.
And - of course - the biomorphs program will allow indirect routes.
Dawkins intention is obviously relevant to the question of how far the “weasel” can be taken to represent biological reality. Your intent has no relevance at all.
A very old PR campaign then, for the underlying idea of ID—that the universe or life reflects intentional design—has clear antecedents across multiple cultures and intellectual traditions. Do you think that Platon, Aristotle, Thomas Aquina or William Paley were engaged in PR campaign?
I perhaps misspoke here. I do not deny that systems that meet Behe’s definition of IC (i.e. in which absence of any single component renders it non-functional) exist. The flagellum, however, is not one of these, as the Type III secretion system demonstrates.
However, neither Behe nor anyone else (including you) has demonstrated that a single IC system or structure exists, in the sense that it cannot have been formed thru gradual modification of previously existing systems/structures via unguided evolutionary processes.
Exactly.
Yes, an interesting question to which we know the answer. (By “we”, I mean people who actually pay attention to and understand the findings of evolutionary biology.)
Only if his responses are informed, intelligent, and honest. Since they are none of the above, no, they are not relevant. Except as examples of the utter intellectual and moral vacuity of the ID movement.
“Extended Synthesis.” Gee, didn’t see that coming.
OK, now we’re getting somewhere. You’re quite right. Many evolutionary outcomes cannot be accounted for by the strictly Darwinian process of selection acting on variation. This is old news for most, but not for the advocates of ID, who are still stuck on an outdated strawman version of evolutionary theory. That seems to be your problem, as well. Perhaps catch up on what has been going on over the last 50 years or so.
No, the easiest way to refute him is to ask him to actually support his grandiose claims with at least a modicum of evidence, as opposed to the obfuscatory bafflegab that he so prolifically spews out. A deafening silence would then ensue.
I also continue to wait for you to actually specify the problem you believe exists here. If you think typing reams of irrelevant verbosity while ignoring direct questions makes you look intelligent, let me inform you that it does just the opposite.
My experience in reading both Behe and Dembski is that their arguments boil down to, “X is too complex (improbable) have evolved, therefore designer-did-it”.
The tell that they are assuming design as a default is they also never propose a mechanism or process by which a designer would go about effecting that design in the first place. It’s just assumed that a designer did something, somehow, somewhere.
This is one of my biggest peeves with ID in general. Even if you grant that life is too improbable to exist without a designer… then what? There doesn’t seem to be anything of substance to ID beyond trying to convince people of the former as a gateway into conservative religious propaganda. Definitely nothing of scientific merit.
Well, it has happened again. Since the last time was recent, I won’t repeat myself about my own efforts with evolutionary simulations and irreducible complexity. I’ll refer the interested reader to an earlier post.
And if my own work seems to amateurish, I recommend the work of Richard Watson on simulations which produce irreducible complexity.
The book has been discussed in some detail previously:
I’ve lost track of the comment I wanted to reply to, so I’ll just drop this here …
Evolving IC by Darwinian steps isn’t difficult; it just needs the Mullerian Two-Step: Add a part to create new function, remove an older part to make the new part essential.
Oh please, you know exactly what I mean. You know very well I’m referring to the US-centered ID movement that arose due to and specifically to circumvent the Edwards decision.
I respectfully ask you not treat everyone here like we’re stupid.
Restating the title for a point I didn’t mention earlier.
Has Intelligent Design some merit to get new theories?
One measure of a “merit” for scientific theory is that it should open up new area of research and discovery. Evolution is a good example of this because it has opened many areas of research; genetics, epigenetics, evo-devo, to name a few. Each of these has opened new research questions for further discovery.
ID has not done that, and seemingly cannot do that. ID states that it does not address questions about the form of Design or the Designer, only that the Designer exists. This is arguably not even a new discovery since many people (not necessarily within ID) presuppose that the Designer exists.
There might be some merit in people learning more about evolution as a result of discussions about ID. I have certainly benefited from this, and others here as well. There could be some disagreement about whether or not this qualifies as “merit”.
Sure, the modern ID movement uses PR, but it’s not only that. As I said, it has very ancien roots and it’s got arguments, like irreducible complexity or CSI, even if you disagree with them. Meanwhile, Darwinism’s had its own PR—Huxley’s debates, Scopes, NCSE lobbying, etc… Both sides have substance and spin.
You are wrong that either of those simple illustrations (two simple little programs) can show us anything about IC. My hope for you is that you will quickly learn how badly mistaken you are about the relevance of the programs, so you can start to earn some credibility on the forum.
I doubt that, but even if it’s true that people were using it decades ago to do something (not sure what; you haven’t actually told us anything about that), your claim that Weasel is related to IC has discredited you here on the forum.
So far, I can’t tell what you want to do here on the forum. Your posts contain numerous glaring falsehoods that have led me to conclude (tentatively) that you know little about the science. It seems that your main goal is to discuss the history of responses to modern ID, and I could be mistaken but it seems you are interested in IC. Both of those topics could lead to interesting discussion, but I’m concerned that you have damaged your credibility by typing (and apparently believing) tired old BS. Maybe you can build credibility by becoming a bit better informed.
This book is written in the conviction that our own existence once presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved. Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet. (ix, first sentence of the Preface, the most important position in a book)
The solution Dawkins mentioned was cumulative selection. With his weasel-program as an analogy (in these times it was an equivalent of the mousetrap Behe used in 1996, ten years later) he showed that it works fine (provided some conditions). Behe called that direct darwinian pathway (in different wordings) and conceded that it works fine.
It wouldn’t work with an IC-System.
I showed that with changing some lines of source code. It would be an equivalent constructing a darwinian pathway to a mousetrap.
That doesn’t mean that there are no other mechanisms generating such systems (indirect routes as Behe called them). In the history of evolutionary biology it’s quite an issue what mechanisms are ‘darwinian’ or not. That’s without any relevance for active researchers, like rules of linguists for writing of native speakers. But if you talk about these issues in that context, it’s relevant. You don’t have to do this.
These mechanisms are quite a lot more than footnotes (you know the difference between auxiliary and alternative theories?). Of course most recent evlutionary biologists don’t call themselves ‘Darwinists’, for good reasons.
(Just in parantheses: If you take Ernst Mayr, the ‘Darwin of the 20th century’, by his word, there would be good reasons to do so, especially the definition of ‘Darwinism’ used in the first Darwinian Revolution, but not so much in that of the second).
I’m writing from the viewpoint of history of evolutionary biology, not trying to have an argument discussing the position of ID-ists (I did this also, publishing some articles about YEC and ID, in German of course). Just taking an argument as an argument.
Maybe that’s too much to take for people only thinking in dimensions of warfare with anti-evolutionists.
I’m living in Germany where these questions aren’t of too much relevance fighting against anyone. In our schools you’re free to mention religion. Sometimes it was obligatory to mind philosophical and religions issues in lessons about evolution. The greatest organization of anti-evolutionists doesn’t (have to) try to bring creationism in school. It’s already there in form of obligatory religion lessons (or choosing ethics, by the way I worked as Ethics-teacher).
BTW, I’m an ignostic naturalist, never ever in my life after childhood I believed in any supernature.
Hello, Thomas. I am a retired biologist in the US.
I would appreciate it if you would elaborate more on what you are trying to say by answering some questions:
What did you teach your students about hypothesis testing as the essence of science?
I don’t. I don’t see how one checks any hypothesis without testing its empirical predictions.
Why do you appear to value rhetoric over empiricism?
And finally, your title:
Has intelligent design some merit to get to new theories?
Can you name a single case from any other scientific field in which a group of people who have no hypotheses of their own worth testing, and who do nothing empirically, help those doing the science to “get to new theories,” whatever that means? How can anything be a “new theory” unless it starts as a hypothesis?
