That answer contradicts your other claims, none of which seem to be a function of the evidence.
But that is irrelevant the fact that you misrepresented the objective data about chloroquine resistance.
You’re predictably not addressing the data in the paper. Have you examined those data?
That completely contradicts:
Most proteins have multiple functions, too, in a single environment. How do you deal with that?
There is no “resistance in malaria,” as malaria is a disease, not an organism.
You’re eliding the other aspect of the paper that contradicts your claim–that Fig. 1C shows the gradient of function that you were claiming did not exist.
Yes, and there’s a gradient of function, so you and Behe are simply wrong.
If there is only one global solution, why would that matter?
I’d say very impressive, but that’s based on evidence, not parroting someone else’s rhetoric.
I think part of the argument that many of the ID guys make is the information required to build these machines needs a designer.
If we have a flagellum with 40 proteins which require 100k nucleotides that’s 4^100 power possible arrangements. How many arrangements can build a flagellum which provides a bacteria with mobility?
Yes they are metaphors and analogies intended to help convey understanding and to grasp principles. I think there’s only so much you can do to try to stave off potential misunderstanding, particularly when there are people among us who will act to deliberately exploit linguistic ambiguities. As such I wouldn’t worry too much about whether or not you should use a specific metaphor or analogy to explain some concept, I would just make sure to emphasize (over and over again) that it IS just an analogy and that the point of the analogy is to help understanding of a principle or concept, not to constrain or steer our thinking.
You might even make a point of showing a counterexample where the metaphor breaks down. In particular I’d do something to dispel intuitions we have about macroscopic machines made by humans. Think of something like a combustion engine with pistons, gears, and so on. Imagine disassembling all the parts of the engine of a car, then tossing them all together into a pile on the floor. Will ANY parts spontaneously assemble correctly into even a PART of the original assembly of the engine? Nope, probably not.
But many molecules do exactly that. Hemoglobin subunits will naturally assemble into the quaternary structure, amphililic molecules will naturally and spontaneously adopt the micelle or bilayer vesicle structure. Antiparallel strands of complementary DNA will adopt the double strand and double helix form etc. Weak electrostatic forces dominate at the molecular level. Etc. etc.
Thanks for admitting functional gradients exist. Their existence would allow natural or artificial selection to produce exquisitely optimized systems. You are catching up.
Its CQ, not QC. QC stands for quinacrine, another antimalarial agent.
Whether there exists one or more global strategies to dealing with CQ is irrelevant. What matters is the presence of functional gradients for any given solution. Mutations are the primary innovators, while natural selection optimizes whatever solutions are created by mutations as long as they increase fitness.
Incorrect. The ability of pfcrt to facilitate the efflux of CQ is a new function because wild-type pfcrt has no CQ-transport activity. Did you even read Summers et al.?
The natural substrates for pfcrt are peptides derived from hemoglobin degradation in parasitic food vacuoles. Pfcrt variants that acquire CQ-efflux activity tend to experience diminished affinity for their natural peptide substrates. In general, the more optimized a pfcrt variant is for CQ efflux, the more suboptimized it is for peptide export to the the parasites cytoplasm.
Its pretty obvious this is untrue. Point amino acid substitutions generating new phenotypes is super impressive and interesting.
Not when the hallmarks of molecular evolution are there.
I am sorry Bill but the components of the flagella didn’t just pop into existence following a blind search in a sequence space. This is one big misconception you ID proponents can never seem to do away with.
Yes, they really do. I spent much of my research career studying sequence specific DNA binding proteins. Chemistry is key to binding activity and binding activity is key to the function of the proteins I studied. If I had done better in my Biophysical Chemistry class, I could tell you how all of Chemistry comes down to Physics, but I was lost in that class. Maybe someone here can help.
Awww… thanks so much for the compliment. And I appreciate your thoughts. It’s a lot for me to chew on and I’m going to have to go through it carefully. There is a lot of good advice in there. I really like your example of the mustard seed and I happen to use it in my classes in a different way. Jesus says the mustard seed is “the smallest seed,” but we know it isn’t. I ask my students if Jesus was wrong and they say “no, he was using it to make a point.” That leads to a discussion of not reading the Bible like a science textbook.
I also really like your explanation of analogy vs identity. It’s the kind of thing I understand intuitively, but never articulated. This is very helpful.
Good, I can work with that. You seem to be OK with the concept of Relative information.
Do you really mean to say that the functional information cannot change at all? (increase or decrease). You must know that is wrong.
The Helder article did not evaluate sponges for optimal form, they evaluated them for load bearing capacity (and mechanical stability).
Load bearing capacity is a function we can evaluate for functional information as defined by Hazen. I ( Ex ) = −log2[ F ( E x)], where F() is a measure of load bearing capacity. Optimal Functional Information is then the configuration Ex that maximizes F().
I propose there are many configurations of silica that would provide greater structural strength, with the simplest being a solid lump of silica. Therefore the Glass sponge does not exhibit optimal functional information in this respect.
I’m using the definitions you provided, and it’s pretty clear the FI has not been maximized. If you have a way apply Hazen’s FI to demonstrate optimal function information, I would be curious to see your math.
it doesn’t seem anathema to me to say that an optimal phenotype (here the sponge architecture) involves an optimal genotype representing optimal functional information
Now you are saying (I think) that the Glass sponge is optimal for the function of being a Glass sponge, and there is no better way of being a Glass sponge by this definition. Here I will agree with you - but it’s trivial. ALL things are optimal at being what they are.
Again correct, by virtue of having defined the question so that you must be correct. You may be aware of the ID claim that design does not need to be optimal. Summing up, if it’s optimal it’s designed, and if it’s not optimal that is designed too.
@stlyankeefan students are quite lucky. Back in high school and university, some of my teachers would outrightly declare that God specially designed or created everything. When I first formally learned about biological evolution in high school, my biology teacher told us it was a lie immediately after presenting some of the evidence for it. At the time, I did not understand the evidence quite well and was pretty much biased against it by my YEC/OEC background. I am pretty sure I would have a been a Behe fan back then if I got exposed to him somehow.
