Intelligent Design and Common Descent

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Art

@Art
I don’t know anything about T-urf13.

Linky linky …

And here is @art’s response to Behe’s response.

From my view, this is a very direct demonstration of something that should be impossible if Axe and Behe are right. Right here, confronted with the evidence, Behe appeals to God’s design (by front-loading), instead of acknowledging what the evidence is showing.

The “design” language here is confused along several dimensions:

1. In one sense, I agree that God designed T-urf13, by way of evolutionary processes. He created evolution, so the products of evolution (even by 100% natural processes) are his design. This, however, is nearly the opposite of the ID claim.

2. In another sense, I agree that God could have directly (or indirectly) intervened in to have produced T-urf13, but if that is the loop hole being used here, it will be used to object to any and all demonstrations. For that reason, asking for evidence is degenerating quickly into absurdity. This has nothing to do with evidence, but with an evidence-immune presupposition.

3. In the most important sense, Behe is conceding that complex de novo proteins are arising by apparently natural processes, which is all that science is claiming. So the ID argument, in this case, is moot. It reduces merely to fine-tuning, and is not engaged with evidence.

@Art

First is the good news is that Behe affirmed your hypothesis which gives us common ground to work with. I also agree that the 4-helix bundle is a challenge to explain through random mutation.

His last comment is speculative and I think as a minimum open for discussion. He claimed the comment as a possibility and not a conclusion.

Here is my take, very briefly:

— No Darwinian evolution of the supposedly new gene was shown. It was only discovered in that strain of maize

Maize is not subject to Darwinian evolution? This remark makes no sense at all.

— The ability of a random sequence of DNA to form a 4-helix bundle when transcribed beggars belief. It would not be expected to happen in many, many tries. That alone makes it seem very likely that the sequence was not random.

As you said, Bill, Behe grants that T-urf13 is pretty remarkable.

— The authors of the review write: “Although novel when discovered, it is now apparent that many other CMS genes have arisen by recombinational events involving other mitochondrial-encoded genes. In fact, mitochondrial DNA rearrangements are a significant force in changing the genome organization and in causing mutations in the mitochondrial genomes of higher plants (Mackenzie et al., 1994).” A distinct possibility implied by this, it seems to me, is that plant mitochondrial DNA is in fact built to provide easily accessible functional variability. In other words, intelligently provided, pre-existing information was tapped for this protein.

Doesn’t this sound sort of circular? Anyways, how would one determine this, without assuming the conclusion Behe wishes to draw?

Which gets to my point:

@Agauger

By pressing for a direct demonstration, you are appealing to God’s action having confounded all the demonstrations we have already made.

By pressing for a direct demonstration, I am saying God’s action could be responsible for what you see, not mutation and selection.

There is no conceivable experiment or demonstration I can imagine where this objection would not be an objection. The closest counter-example I’ve come up with is the evolution of cancer. Even there, someone might easily (and perversely) argue that God (or a demon?) is designing cancer.

The appeal to God’s action is available in every and all experiments and demonstrations, even if they are done in the lab. The fact that is in the lab, also will cause ID to appeal to the experimenter as having designed the protein too (sad but true: Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018 Harnessing the power of evolution). This hard to accept as coherent, let alone as valid science.

This is one reason, also, why I think MN is necessary. Appealing to God’s action (or Divine Design) just creates too many problems when doing scientific work. It is more coherent to leave God as an explanatory force out, and to let science tell us rigorously what is “apparently” true. Then, we engage in science-engaged theology to fill in the rest, and even dispute the scientific findings where it might make sense.