That would be the Sharpshooter fallacy. A stochastic process without design will necessarily produce extremely improbable outcomes.
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I highly recommend you read this discussion of Beheās argument and why it fails. If there is anything you do not understand, or with which you disagree, feel free to bring it up here.
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No, Behe is observing the rate at which resistance develops to atovaquone, to chloroquine, researchers need this information to evaluate how effective a treatment is. Evaluating outcomes of evolution is not a fallacy.
āThe [Sharpshooter] fallacy is characterized by a lack of a specific hypothesis prior to the gathering of data, or the formulation of a hypothesis only after data have already been gathered and examined.ā (Wikipedia)
But this has nothing to do with the observation of the rate of an event, there is no hypothesis involved.
Yes, I even responded back in December of 2020:
So then the edge of evolution moves to 8 mutations? Or four new protein-protein interactions? This would seem not to solve the problem, that evolution is limited.
ā¦ lots of spurious protein-protein interactions are already present inside the cell.
Well, thatās fine, but Behe is interested in new interactions, as in ones not based on already-existing mutations.
That indicates to me you did not really understand Beheās argument, nor the responses made to it. No one denies there exists an āedgeā to evolution. For instance, it would not be plausible that the human species could evolve a new trait or function requiring ten novel mutations to a gene by next year.
But Behe claims to have identified that some of the features found in humans and other more complex organisms with longer reproduction cycles could not have evolved in a reasonable time span without the intervention of a Designer.
Could we walk me thru how he tries to make this argument? Here is how I understand it.
Behe starts from what he claims to be an empirical observation that cholorquine resistance in malaria required 1020 reproduction cycles. Now, that figure is based on a very rough estimate casually mentioned in a paper, and nothing more. But letās say it is reasonbly accurate.
How does Behe explain the low frequency with which this trait evolved?
How does he establish that this establishes an āedgeā that applies to all other traits in all other organisms?
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Basing probabilities on one outcome of a stochastic process is a fallacy. It is the Sharpshooter fallacy.
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What evidence do you have that evolution as weāve observed it requires 8 mutations at once?
Behe agrees there is no evidence this is needed, for example, in human evolution from common ancestors with chimps.
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That is an interesting observation. Are you aware of Behe ever explicitly stating that the constraints to evolution he claims to have demonstrated in The Edge of Evolution do not apply to any of the traits found in human beings? This is, admittedly, a quote I have found second hand in an article by Ken Miller:
On average, for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would need
to wait a hundred million times ten million years. Since that is many times the age of
the universe, itās reasonable to conclude the following: No mutation that is of the same
complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years.
Of course, if you parse that carefully, Behe is not actually claiming that there are any traits that have arisen in human over the past ten million years that could not have done so thru what he calls āDarwinian evolution.ā But it is easy to see how the reader could come away with the impression that Behe believes he has demonstrated just that. So is the position the Behe takes i his book not adequately captured by that quote? Or is this a misimpression that is likely to remain even after someone has read the entire book?
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In our debates, Behe has acknowledged several times that he hasnāt been able to find any biochemical evidence of design in human evolution.
Thatās significant.
As for the quote. Strictly speaking, what he is saying is likely true. But what he is saying is consistent with his affirmation that there isnāt any biochemical evidence in human evolution supporting design, because he has no evidence that a CCC is required for human evolution.
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Are there any real world examples that Behe points to where we know the starting and ending sequence? If not, that would seem to be a problem for Beheās claims.
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Yes, I understand that is what those words mean. But I am also wondering about how they are likely to be (mis)interpreted by someone sympathetic to creationism. Like I said, I think it could be easily understood as Behe saying that there are biochemical aspects of human beings that could not have arisen thru evolution and can only have been designed. And, TBH, I donāt think Behe would be particularly unhappy if they understood it that way, but there I am just speculating.
He certainly does not go to any lengths at all to try persuade his ID colleagues about common descent, does he?
Iād be interested to hear @lee_merrill weigh in, since I believe he is representative of Beheās intended target audience. Did he understand Beheās book to not be claiming that there are any CCCās in human beings?
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Itās not a problem. It is clearly limited, unlike divine design. Itās just that Beheās misrepresentations of the evidence produces errors of many orders of magnitude.
This is why I keep pointing out that Behe ignores existing variation. Those interactions are starting points, and they vary.
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Iām sure the words in the quote were chosen carefully so as to be correct, but also so as to leave unsaid the fact he has no evidence of CCC in human evolution.
The best response is not to speculate about motives and intent, but just juxtapose the quote with the additional clarifying information with which Behe himself agrees.
At the very minimum, we quickly find that most of Beheās proponents donāt really understand Behe.
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If evolution is limited to 8 mutations, and if Behe is right about new protein-protein interactions requiring two non-selectable mutations, then most of the 10,000 protein-protein interactions in humans are out the window, as far as evolution being able to produce them.
Behe mentions that most proteins act in groups of half a dozen or more, if each new protein-protein interaction requires 2 non-selectable mutations, then 5 new interactions would require 10 mutations before the function was ready.
I havenāt noticed any such claim. I was aware that Behe believes in common descent, I happen to disagree with him there.
True, but heās also phrased it in a way that appears to leave open the possibility that there are biochemical traits of such a complexity that they could not have emerged by āDarwinian evolutionā in the lineage leading to humans. So heās saying that if there are traits of such a complexity, then they didnāt evolve.
He is extremely good at writing in this mealy-mouthed way that simultaneously leaves things enough open, and couched in enough hypothetical difficulties, that his adoring fans always come away with the impression that Behe has undermined evolution, while he can always say he never said that.
In this way heās like James Tour who seems to be extremely good at saying the origin of life is impossible without ever explicitly saying that, nor anything that even entails it. Yet for some reason all Tours fans come away from hearing his talks thinking Tour has shown lifeās origin to be impossible.
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But you can compute the probability of drawing a full house, and that is not a fallacy.
He explains the low frequency of this evolving as being due to it requiring two (singly non-selectable) mutations. He then argues that a new protein-protein binding site would also require two (probably singly deleterious) mutations. He then places the edge at the production of two new protein-protein binding sites.
I can draw 5 cards and then calculate the odds of drawing those 5 specific cards which would be 1 in 2.6 million. You would then claim that drawing the hand that did occur is too improbable.
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Letās test out that hypothesis:
You need to explain what you mean by this, and on what you are basing it.
Thanks for confirming my suspicion. Do you understand this statement, quoted earlier, as saying that there are CCCās in humans that could only have arisen thru design?
On average, for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would need
to wait a hundred million times ten million years. Since that is many times the age of
the universe, itās reasonable to conclude the following: No mutation that is of the same
complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years.
Not quite. He claimed that it needed two mutations, both of which would be selected against if they occurred individually, so both mutations would have to occur simultaneously in the same individual, or nearly so.
Next question: Behe later claimed the study below vindicated his claim. Is this true? Can you show where this paper shows that the evolution of chloroquine resistance required two simultaneous (or nearly so) mutations?
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1322965111
A more general question: Even it is true that that the evolution of chloroquine resistance required 1020 generations, and for the reasons Behe claimed, on what basis does Behe assert that any other trait requiring the same number of mutations would require the same number of generations?
OK, so you might have misspoken with the earlier remark, because this is closer to the correct answer.
How does he justify his claim that every protein-protein interaction would require two mutations in each protein (total of four), each of which would be deleterious if it occurred singly?
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