Falsifiability
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From: Scott Vigil
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:39 PM
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: Transitional Forms and Falsifiability
Hello Casey,
Thank-you for the information on transitional forms. It was more than I imagined. The short answer is that your idea of a transitional form appears reasonable. What you do with it… well, that’s something that I’m trying to evaluate and assess.
I think I understand why you make people like Kidder so crazy, ha ha! And it’s really hard to “dial down” when conversations become intense.
I recall a professor on Bible as Literature complaining about a god who would be willing to burn him in hell because he just couldn’t “see it”. Perhaps Kidder [could] similarly be more empathetic if he understood your brain architecture was bringing you to certain understandings. Then he might refrain from burning you so :^) I’ve studied some neuro-science from Prof. Robert Sapolsky. So, this idea of brain architecture is quite crucial in understanding what a mind might or might not be capable of.
The idea that evolution predicts gaps would understandably be frustrating and inconvenient for IDers and creationists. The impossibility of directly observing black holes was a pretty good analogy. Another that comes to mind is the claims of string theory. For a long time, string theorists received criticism for espousing “religion” almost. The falsifiability of the theory seemed to make it a bad theory.
There are two approaches toward evolution. One would be to detect evidence that would falsify the theory. A single poodle fossil found in the middle of the Cambrian Explosion would go a long way to achieving that [Scott 5/16/14: See Poodles In the Cambrian for more on this.] Apparently, such finds have not appeared. The second is to perform a giant and lengthy holding action. That would be to try to undermine every bit of evidence that would serve to confirm or more accurately, support the theory. So, it appears you folks are pursuing the latter approach. I think that approach is not going to succeed.
As a non-specialist, it’s overwhelming to wade into detailed battles you are having with people at Kidder’s level. I imagine myself wading into battles that would have occurred between Einstein and the quantum mechanics crowd. Though Einstein would have snowed and confused me, he ended up being on the losing side. The technology we use to communicate is based on the science he abhorred. I’m sure you heard his epithet, “God does not play dice!”
Scott
1/30/14: Somewhere, Casey fumed at being treated harshly by Biologist James
Kidder. I’ve lost the reference, however Kidder’s work is discussed on the Discovery
Institute web site. After corresponding with Casey intensely, I have found that
he produces arguments defeated or addressed years ago as if they are fresh and
new. ‘makes me crazy too!
Examples
relate to the Wedge Document and use of Behe as a
source of knowledge and authority. The Wedge document was shown in court to
outline a non-scientific strategy to separate people from evolutionary theory
through non-scientific means. See Dover Trial. In Behe, I show that
champion has no standing at his university or in the community at large for his
views. Also, Behe’s testimony was found to be
religious in nature and not scientific at the Dover trial.
In short
Casey, you destroy your credibility providing prodigious amounts of balderdash.
Motivations play a large factor in this debate for most. Demotion of God to mere god status is abhorrent to many. And it could conceivably destroy many income making careers. So, I understand the reluctance of many to jump onto the evolution bandwagon. Similar arguments could also be made regarding evolution theorists. See GodAndEvolution for more of my thoughts on this.
I have come to a place of acceptance of evolution and am dealing with the theological fallout of that. But I don’t have a stake in the debate so much. If evolution turned out to be true, I would be able to say I didn’t raise my kids to believe a lie. I don’t have too many sins that I would have to give up if ID (that is, creation) turned out to be true. I might have to marry my girl-friend is all. But that could happen anyways.
So, I feel myself quite free to consider the alternatives in a relatively unbiased fashion.
How about you? Do you have this freedom do you think? My friend Bryan simply was incapable of evaluating evidence I provided him in a fair way. So he, in a matter like my son, who just turned 30 today, created rationalizations for what he desired to be true.
Do you feel ID is falsifiable? If so, how? I am told a theory is not so good unless it is falsifiable. Subthread moved to Falsifiability-LuskinResponse.
Back to transitional forms, I am taken to the design of the Boeing 777. It was a design based on the 7J7 which was based on the 767. In addition the 777 inherited the C*U control laws from the B2 bomber (probably an American subsidy bye the way). So I very much understand the idea of design inheritance and reuse.
It appears you want to see a complete and unbroken chain of transitional forms with no gaps ad infinitim before you would concede that humans evolved from simpler species. Thread moved to Quest For the Unbroken Chain.
“Do you feel ID is falsifiable? If so, how? I am told a theory is not so good unless it is falsifiable.” Thread moved to Falsifiability-Luskin Response.
One hilarious prediction evolution makes is that men would be more threatened by sexual infidelity and women would be more threatened by emotional infidelity. This has been demonstrated! (I think it’s funny now. But when my Christian wife was having her affair, it wasn’t so funny, I assure you, ha ha ha!)” Subthread moved to Predictions On Infidelity.
So, evolution seems to me to be latched in as strongly as Newton’s theory of gravitation. As with gravitation, it will continue to be adjusted as we learn more. But it being overturned seems unlikely.
That’s where I sit right now.
I wasn’t going to throw any questions at you. I wasn’t happy about the “Of Pandas and People” thing where creationist references were replaced by ID references as demonstrated at the Dover trial.
But, I had formulated some thinking and thought I would see what kind of reaction I might receive from you folks. Bryan had strongly urged me to do so.
I must say that you have been very nice to me. You haven’t been smug. And you have spent quite a bit of time with me thus far. I appreciate that. And the rigor of your work has been at an exceedingly high level. I see some flaws, I think. But, your diligence is impressive.
Any further response from you would be appreciated. My son won’t talk to me and neither will Bryan, ha ha ha!
Best regards,
Scott
From: Scott Vigil
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 1:38 PM
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: RE: Transitional Forms and Falsifiability
Hello Casey,
Here are a few more thoughts.
To me, ID would not predict transitional forms.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM: Why not? After all, creative designers love diversity. In
fact, many have compared life to music, where you see variations on a theme,
just as the greate composers would compose symphonies
full of variations on a scene. So if a greate
creative intelligence is responsible for life, then lots of variants fits just
fine.
It also would not predict many different variants. And, it wouldn’t predict the kind of design reuse you seem to be suggesting. It wouldn’t preclude it.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM: Designers regularly re-use parts that work in different
designs. And they aren't constrained to re-use those parts in a manner that
fits a nested hiearchy. And since the tree of life
has fallen apart and thre is no longer a nested
hierarchy in life, this fits ID quite well.
http://www.discovery.org/a/10651
However, if the god Yahweh is as powerful as the bible and as the Hubble telescope would suggest, the efficiencies derived from such pathological design reuse would be entirely unnecessary. In fact, if Yahweh wanted to demonstrate his power, then lack of reuse would be a more imaginative and interesting way to do so.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM: OK, now you're really getting to some "God wouldn't
have done it that way argument." Who are you to tell God he can't re-use
parts? I'm not trying to make a theological argument, but a scientific one. We
regularly observe through experience that designers re-use parts, so it's very
fair to say that if life was deisgned we'd find
re-usage of parts, which is what we find.
One airline customer asked one of the Boeing autopilot engineers in the 747-400 program why our device worked the way it did. He wanted to say, “Cause it’s fucked up!” But obviously, he couldn’t. He wanted to redesign the autopilot from ground up. Incrementally adding functionality over two decades had resulted in a mish-mash hodge podge and there seemed no way out of it!
[This] is reminiscent of features of our eye. We have a blind spot. And other imperfections have been shown.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM Sorry but that's not an imperfection. It's actually quite a
compelling design optimization. Here's a discussion:
Some
materialists attack design arguments not by alleging that biological systems
lack high levels of specified complexity, but by alleging that they are full of
"flaws." Yet anyone who has used Microsoft Windows is painfully aware
that flawed designs are still designed. But theistic evolutionist biologist
Kenneth Miller argues that evolution would naturally lead us to expect the
biological world to be full of "cobbled together" kluges that reflect
the clumsy, undirected Darwinian process.[1]
For example,
Miller maintains that the vertebrate eye was not intelligently designed because
the optic nerve extends over the retina instead of going out the back of the
eye -- an alleged design flaw. According to Miller, "visual quality is
degraded because light scatters as it passes through several layers of cellular
wiring before reaching the retina."
Similarly,
Richard Dawkins contends that the retina is "wired in backwards"
because light-sensitive cells face away from the incoming light, which is
partly blocked by the optic nerve. In Dawkins's ever-humble opinion, the
vertebrate eye is "the design of a complete idiot."[2]
A closer
examination shows that the design of the vertebrate eye works far better than
Dawkins and Miller lets on.
Dawkins
concedes that the optic nerve's impact on vision is "probably not
much," but the negative effect is even less than he admits. Only if you
cover one eye and stare directly at a fixed point does a tiny "blind
spot" appear in your peripheral vision as a result of the optic nerve
covering the retina. When both eyes are functional, the brain compensates for
the blind spot by meshing the visual fields of both eyes. Under normal
circumstances, the nerves' wiring does nothing to hinder vision.
Nonetheless,
Dawkins argues that even if the design works, it would "offend any tidy-minded
engineer." But the overall design of the eye actually optimizes visual
acuity.
Scott
2/7/14:
No! Dawkins
is wrong! I am not just offended. While I was Software Safety Officer on the
program, without my signature, the FireScout could
not fly.
I AM
LIVID!
As an
engineer and as a designer, I agree with Dawkins on an aesthetic level. There
should be no blind spot if you want to sell your solution who’s
going to pay good money. If you’re selling to a kid or a mom, the old X-15 was
just great. But that would never have been acceptable if selling to a
journalist or an artist.
The
discussion on this is rather unscientific. It does not discuss a percent loss
of vision. There are blind spots in some of our most advanced multi-element
reflectors. Surely, they have a precise idea is of what the percent field loss
is. That compared to their requirement of minimum field loss would readily show
whether or not the design was acceptable.
In the case
of the human eye, the vision clearly met minimum requirements in order to
assure the flourishing of our species. But to me, if the designer is a deity,
then it’s a rather shoddy design. If the deity is a rather dumb deity or if
it’s a teenager in his garage from a super advanced alien species, I accept it
gladly.
However, for
me, a lay person but an engineer, nevertheless, the design reminds me of what I
discussed two days ago with a company in Boston who wants me to come up and
verify software for their FMS. They described their device as consisting of
code, some of which is 30 years old. When I described that as “amebaware”, they both laughed and we all readily agreed.
The code over thirty years was shabbily designed, and if we had a chance to design
it from ground up and if we were deities, we all would have designed it
differently. However, because of costs and our own human frailties, that does
not happen.
And let me
add, we hate amebaware. It’s ugly. It’s hard to test.
It’s hard to document. And worse, it’s hard to assure that it’s safe. Let me be
very clear. Amebaware is not safe and it is not good.
It is hardly evidence of any kind of deity that you would want designing your
body. It is evidence of some moderately competent or perhaps even incompetent
designers, rattling around and futzing until they came up with something that kinda sorta works.
Anyone who
needs more convincing should google the Therac 25 or Arianne V disasters and see how many people
can be killed and how much damage can be caused due to this kind of shit. You
can also learn how heartbreaking these designs can be by studying the DC-10
catastrophe. That machine is a lesson in design by committee and expediency.
The entire plane was brought down by a bad cargo door. Again, you should be
able to get all you want from google. Alternatively,
look at the case studies found in Nancy
Leveson’s book, Safeware.
To me, the
human eye is very much like “amebaware”. It appears
the result of successive changes, layer upon layer over time. It does not
appear well thought out. Rather, it appears that changes were made haphazard
and ad hoc as expediency dictated. It sure sounds like evolution to me.
All this is
tells me, Casey, you know nothing about design.
To achieve
the high-quality vision that vertebrates need, retinal cells require a large
blood supply. By facing the photoreceptor cells toward the back of the retina,
and extending the optic nerve out over them, the cells are able to plug
directly into the blood vessels that feed the eye, maximizing access to blood.
Scott
2/7/14: This is a kluge. What a design, to put the light sensors going backward
with the wiring between the sensor and the subject. It’s amazing we can see at
all. At Universal Avionics, we used to talk about “the tail wagging the dog”.
… Hermann von Helmholtz, the great
nineteenth-century German scientist (you could call him a physicist, but his
contributions to biology and psychology were greater), said, of the eye: ‘If an
optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I should
think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest
terms, and giving him back his instrument.’ TGSOE, pp. 353
Once again, send it back, it’s not just bad
design, it’s the design of a complete idiot.
Or is it? If it were, the eye would be terrible
at seeing, and it is not. It is actually very good. It is good because natural
selection, working as a sweeper-up of countless little details, came along
after the big original error of installing the retina backwards, and restored
it to a high-quality precision instrument. TGSOE, pp. 354
I refuse
to respond to every jot and tittle that you, Casey, write. Anyone who thinks you
are good designer, Casey, should go take a ride on a DC-10 sometime or have a
mole taken off their face with a Therac 25, if he or
she can find one. (Actually no, please don’t do this.)
But,
probably no functioning models are around anyway. McDonnell Douglas sold to
Boeing because of their loss of credibility even though the design was changed
and the door was fixed on all American carriers. I think the Therac 25 had to be cancelled. Every time they thought
they’d fixed the design, they provided another release. Six months later, the
machine would kill another patient.
And
honestly, that’s what evolution does. It doesn’t think things through, perform
a safety analysis and then produce a design with the safety flaws removed apriori. It makes
the changes and “sees” what works.
Natural selection promptly penalizes the bad
mutations. Individuals possessing them are more likely to die and less likely
to reproduce, and this automatically removes the mutations from the gene pool. TGSOE, pp. 352
Over
breakfast, I'm reading about how the Vagus nerve goes
from the brain down near the heart and then all the way back to the throat near
the jaw. In a giraffe, this is a huge detour. I estimate as much as twelve
feet! TGSOE, pp.
360
But
Dawkins shows another drawing of a shark, where there is no detour at all.
So, a
"design" that originally made sense with the fish, made less and less
sense as evolution led to the mammals. So really, anyone who is trying to say
that each species is individually created by a deity and is unrelated has not
done their homework in comparative biology. The route the Vagus
nerve takes is ludicrous and makes no sense until one considers the history of
the species.
Dawkins
says this detour can be up to fifteen feet in an adult giraffe. And of course,
the Vagus nerve has the same detour in us. According
to Dawkins, the giraffe is only capable of low moans or bleats due to this
feature. To redesign this feature one could reroute this nerve and have it
travelling only centimeters. However, this would require major upheaval in the
embryonic stage of the species that would be unlikely to occur without severe
side effects. But all this makes sense when one considers the history of
the species. There is no way this could have come from an intelligent designer.
For
anyone reading this, I highly suggest reading this section of Dawkins’, TGSOE. The
whole book is wonderful, but this section is absolutely awesome!
Oops,
I just found another improbable design in the male. I'll let you look up the
"vas deferens". I feel so... non-optimal!
I agree with Neil Tyson his clip, Stupid Design.
Evolution is a terrible designer. It is cruel and wanton. These are not the
designs of any kind of deity or “Intelligent Agent”.
I supply the link for others as you are too full of yourself
to watch a world renowned astrophysicist—the one who demoted Pluto from
planetary status… and you won’t watch him speak on a video. You sir, should be
ashamed of yourself.
Pro-ID
biologist George Ayoub suggests a thought experiment where the optic nerve goes
out the back of the retina, the way Miller and Dawkins claim it ought to be wired.
Ayoub finds that this design would interfere with blood supply, as the nerve
would crowd out blood vessels. In this case, the only means of restoring blood
supply would be to place capillaries over the retina -- but this change would
block even more light than the optic nerve does under the actual design.
Ayoub
concludes: "In trying to eliminate the blind spot, we have generated a
host of new and more severe functional problems to solve."[3]
In 2010, two
eye specialists made a remarkable discovery that showed the elegant mechanism
found in vertebrate eyes to solve the problem of any blockage of light due to
the position of the optic nerve. Special "glial cells" sit over the
retina and act like fiber-optic cables to channel light through the optic nerve
wires directly onto the photoreceptor cells. According to New Scientist, these
funnel-shaped cells prevent scattering of light and "act as light filters,
keeping images clear."[4]
Ken Miller
acknowledges that an intelligent designer "would choose the orientation
that produces the highest degree of visual quality." Yet that seems to be
exactly what we find in the vertebrate eye. In fact, the team of scientists who
determined the function of glial cells concluded that the "retina is
revealed as an optimal structure designed for improving the sharpness of
images."
ID-theorist
William Dembski has observed that "no one has demonstrated how the eye's
function might be improved without diminishing its visual speed, sensitivity,
and resolution."[5]
It's
therefore unsurprising that optics engineers study the eye to improve camera
technology. According to another tech article:
Borrowing
one of nature's best designs, U.S. scientists have built an eye-shaped camera
using standard sensor materials and say it could improve the performance of
digital cameras and enhance imaging of the human body.
The article
reported that the "digital camera has the size, shape and layout of a
human eye" because "the curved shape greatly improves the field of
vision, bringing the whole picture into focus."[6]
It seems
that human eyes are so poorly designed that engineers regularly mimic them.
Sapolsky has complained of long distances between communicating brain centers that were totally unnecessary.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM I don't know--brains seem to work quite well. And how does
Sapolsky not know that there aren't legitimate functioanal constraints for why
this is optimized design?
Scott
2/7/14: If that’s the case, why do I not have the intellect to convince you
that ID is false? And why was I too stupid to make my marriage work? And why
can’t I get the IRS off my back? Oh, I don’t need to insult you, Casey. All I
have to do is analyze my own brain to show how wrong you are. Bye the way, that
brain of yours just misspelled “functional” above and “the” below.
But I will
say it’s rather pompous of you to shrug off Sapolsky’s observation. Who are
you? How many years have you been studying the brain, Sir?
One could take the design reuse idea to the extreme. How do we know my son is actually my progeny? It’s quite possible that an omnipotent “agent” could have simply taken my design and Mary’s (his mother’s) design and created an independent species named Scott the second! And I’m not sure that hypothesis could be falsifiable.
But this illustrates my personal frustration with the requirement from the ID community for finer and finer transitions to the nth degree to show an absolutely complete mosaic from human all the way to the first semi-life-form made of amino acids.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM If we had transitional forms then that would certainly help
the case for neo-Darwinism a lot.
Scott
2/8/14: See Transitional
Forms.
If you want to go with the design analogy then I have a lot to bring to the table. One thing we have found in the aircraft aviation software community is that testing to absolute certainty is so expensive that no aircraft could ever get off the ground if it was required. So, to come to some compromise, we have shown that if you test a template, then for low criticality applications (maybe the inflight entertainment system), you don’t have to test every single instantiation of the template. Once the template is validated then it is considered valid and may be used liberally throughout the design in applications allowed by the safety assessment.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM If I read you right then we're talking about the fact that
no design is ever "perfect" in every respect but rather designs are
optimized, which means you have to balance performance tradeoffs from different
components. A lot of ID proponents see this same kind kind of optimization in
life. If this is what you're saying, then a lot of ID proponents think teh same
way.
2/8/14
Scott: A deity is concerned with tradeoffs…
I’m sorry, a
deity—being a god—is going to have sufficient resources to arrive at an optimal
design. That’s what omnipotent is all about, right? This diety is not going to
have to reuse design components.
There are
significant issues associated with reuse as I’ve written elsewhere. Here’s what
an international working group has to say about reuse in object oriented
designs. Just get into the following reference and search on “reuse”, “Handbook
for Object Oriented Technology in Aviation (OOTiA) Volume 2 vPC.0”.
I have
recommended reuse in organizations, and it is done all the time. But we do it
because we are fallible. If we were infallible, we would do it a different way!
Based on this logic, if we find one single transitional form, then not only can we say that evolution is supported, we may also be able to say that ID is severely damaged as a working theory for our origins.
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM One single transitional form would mean that ID isn't the
best explanation in that case. That's why I think the horse series is best
explained by neo-Darwinism, not design. We have to learn to stop thinking in
grand, sweeping terms and test questions scientifically, one case at a time. ID
doesn't say neo-Darwinian mechanisms don't do anythign. We aren't trying
to force science into such an inappropriate position where you have to thinkin
grand sweeping terms all the time. We allow multiple mechanisms to operate.
This is not a proof in either case. But, we’re not dealing with mathematics. We do not “prove” our airplane is perfect before we place ourselves, our children and our grandmothers into the tin can, fly it eight miles high at nearly the speed of sound. (Note, I left out the wives. We might want to let them go ahead.)
So there has to be some thought regarding the necessary rigor we use to come to a place where we say a theory is supported or refuted.
Has the ID community settled on some bar or some objective metric whereby it could concede that evolution has been shown to be true? Or, is this an endless battle based on minutia?
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM A lot of ID research is converging on the conclusion that if
one mutation is necessary to produce a feature, then neo-Darwinian mecahnisms
can produce it. If multilpe mutations are necessary, then it's a problem for
Darwinian mechanisms.
Most
everyone agrees that Darwinian evolution tends to work well when each small
step along an evolutionary pathway provides some survival advantage.
Darwin-critic Michael Behe notes that “if only one mutation is needed to confer
some ability then Darwinian evolution has little problem finding it.”[7]
However, when multiple mutations must be present simultaneously to gain a
functional advantage, Darwinian evolution gets stuck. As Behe explains, “If
more than one [mutation] is needed, the probability of getting all the right
ones grows exponentially worse.”[8]
Behe, a
professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, coined the term “irreducible
complexity” to describe systems which require many parts—and thus many
mutations—to be present—all at once—before providing any survival advantage to
the organism. According to Behe, such systems cannot evolve in the step-by-step
fashion required by Darwinian evolution. As a result, he maintains that random
mutation and unguided natural selection cannot generate the genetic information
required to produce irreducibly complex structures. Too many simultaneous
mutations would be required—an event which is highly unlikely to occur.
See Behe
for my research on your favorite professor.
Observation
of this problem is not limited to Darwin-critics. A paper by a prominent
evolutionary biologist in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the U.S.
National Academy of Science acknowledges that “simultaneous emergence of all
components of a system is implausible.”[9] Likewise, University of Chicago
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne—a staunch defender of Darwinism—admits that
“natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not
confer a net benefit on the organism.”[10] Even Darwin intuitively recognized
this problem, as he wrote in Origin of Species:
"If it
could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly
have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would
absolutely break down."[11]
Evolutionary
scientists like Darwin and Coyne claim they know of no real-world case where
Darwinian selection gets blocked in this manner. But they would agree, at least
in principle, that there are theoretical limits to what Darwinian evolution can
accomplish: If a feature cannot be built by “numerous, successive, slight
modifications,” and if “intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the
organism,” then Darwinian evolution will “absolutely break down.”
In his book
Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe discusses molecular machines which require
multiple parts to be present before they could function and confer any
advantage on the organism. Behe’s most famous example is the bacterial
flagellum—a micromolecular rotary-engine, functioning like an outboard motor on
bacteria to propel it through liquid medium to find food. In this regard,
flagella have a basic design that is highly similar to some motors made by
humans containing many parts that are familiar to engineers, including a rotor,
a stator, a u-joint, a propeller, a brake, and a clutch. As one molecular
biologist writes in the journal Cell, “[m]ore so than other motors, the
flagellum resembles a machine designed by a human.”[12] However the energetic
efficiency of these machines outperforms anything produced by humans: the same
paper found that the efficiency of the bacterial flagellum “could be
~100%.”[13]
There are
various types of flagella, but all use certain basic components. As one paper
in Nature Reviews Microbiology acknowledges, “all (bacterial) flagella share a
conserved core set of proteins” since “Three modular molecular devices are at
the heart of the bacterial flagellum: the rotor-stator that powers flagellar
rotation, the chemotaxis apparatus that mediates changes in the direction of
motion and the T3SS that mediates export of the axial components of the
flagellum.”[14] As this might suggest, the flagellum is irreducibly complex.
Genetic knockout experiments have shown that it fails to assemble or function
properly if any one of its approximately 35 genes are missing.[15] In this
all-or-nothing game, mutations cannot produce the complexity needed to provide
a functional flagellar rotary engine one incremental step at a time, and the
odds are too daunting for it to assemble in one great leap. Indeed, the
aforementioned Nature Reviews Microbiology paper admitted that “the flagellar
research community has scarcely begun to consider how these systems have
evolved.”[16]
Yet the
flagellum is just one example of thousands of known molecular machines in
biology. One individual research project reported the discovery of over 250 new
molecular machines in yeast alone.[17] The former president of the U.S.
National Academy of Sciences, Bruce Alberts, wrote an article in the journal
Cell praising the “speed,” “elegance,” “sophistication,” and “highly organized
activity” of these “remarkable” and “marvelous” molecular machines. He
explained what inspired those words: “Why do we call the large protein
assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because,
like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic
world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”[18]
Biochemists like Behe and others believe that with all of their coordinated
interacting parts, many of these machines could not have evolved in a
step-by-step Darwinian fashion.
But it’s not
just multi-part machines which are beyond reach of Darwinian evolution. The
protein-parts themselves which build these machines would also require multiple
simultaneous mutations in order to arise.
In 2000 and
2004, protein scientist Douglas Axe published experimental research in the
Journal of Molecular Biology on mutational sensitivity tests he performed on
enzymes in bacteria.[19] Enzymes are long chains of amino acids which
fold into a specific, stable, three-dimensional shape in order to function.
Mutational sensitivity experiments begin by mutating the amino acid sequences
of those proteins, and then testing the mutant proteins to determine whether
they can still fold into a stable shape, and function properly. Axe’s research
found that amino acid sequences which yield stable, functional protein folds
may be as rare as 1 in 10^74 sequences, suggesting that the vast majority of
amino acid sequences will not produce stable proteins, and thus could not
function in living organisms.[20]
Because of
this extreme rarity of functional protein sequences, it would be very difficult
for random mutations to take a protein with one type of fold, and evolve it
into another, without going through some non-functional stage. Rather than
evolving by “numerous, successive, slight modifications,” many changes would
need to occur simultaneously to “find” the rare and unlikely amino acid
sequences that yield functional proteins. To put the matter in perspective,
Axe’s results suggest that the odds of blind and unguided Darwinian processes
producing a functional protein fold are less than the odds of someone closing
his eyes and firing an arrow into the Milky Way galaxy, and hitting one
pre-selected atom.
Proteins
commonly interact with other molecules through a “hand-in-glove” fit, but these
interactions often require multiple amino acids to be ‘just right’ before they
occur. In 2004, Behe, along with University of Pittsburgh physicist David
Snoke, simulated the Darwinian evolution of such protein-protein interactions.
Behe and Snoke’s calculations found that for multicellular organisms, evolving
a simple protein-protein interaction which required two or more mutations in
order to function would probably require more organisms and generations than
would be available over the entire history of the Earth. They concluded that “the
mechanism of gene duplication and point mutation alone would be
ineffective…because few multicellular species reach the required population
sizes.”[21]
Scott
1/3014: As a young avionics engineer at Universal Avionics, where I worked on
one of the first GPS based landing systems, I had an opportunity to work with a
Quality Assurance Manager named Kevin Kendryna. He later went on to Raytheon,
but he was trained at Carnagie Melon on the latest techniques for ensuring
quality in sophisticated knowledge based systems. Kevin did not have time to
verify the correctness of absolutely all of our knowledge base products. So, he
performed what he called a Thread Analysis. This is a big word for evaluating a
sample of work and following it through the development process to make sure it
is handled properly and that the process is generating quality work.
In a similar
way, I will not be evaluating and responding to each and everything you write.
At this point, you reference an old study that is superceded by a newer laboratory
based study that you already know about. In Darwin/Wallace
Prediction and Designing
Deities, I touch on the Lenski experiment. These demonstrate a
successful two mutation function and do not “require more organisms and
generations than would be available over the entire history of the Earth”.
Further, you refer to Behe as an authority. However, elsewhere in Behe,
he is documented to have no standing in his university and his works are not
referenced by other studies of significance.
This
finding, Casey, is reflective of your quality control throughout our
conversations.
Four years
later during an attempt to refute Behe’s arguments, Cornell biologists Rick
Durrett and Deena Schmidt ended up begrudgingly confirming he was basically
correct. After calculating the likelihood of two simultaneous mutations arising
via Darwinian evolution in a population of humans, they found that such an
event “would take > 100 million years.” Given that humans diverged from
their supposed common ancestor with chimpanzees only 6 million years ago, they
granted that such mutational events are “very unlikely to occur on a reasonable
timescale.”[22]
Now a
defender of Darwinism might reply that these calculations measured the power of
the Darwinian mechanism only within multicellular organisms where it is less
efficient because these more complex organisms have smaller population sizes
and longer generation times than single-celled prokaryotic organisms like
bacteria. Darwinian evolution, the Darwinian notes, might have a better shot
when operating in organisms like bacteria, which reproduce more rapidly and
have much larger population sizes. Scientists skeptical of Darwinian evolution
are aware of this objection, and have found that even within more-quickly
evolving organisms like bacteria, Darwinian evolution faces great limits.
In 2010,
Douglas Axe published evidence indicating that despite high mutation rates and
generous assumptions favoring a Darwinian process, molecular adaptations
requiring more than six mutations before yielding any advantage would be
extremely unlikely to arise in the history of the Earth.
The
following year, Axe published research with developmental biologist Ann
Gauger regarding experiments to convert one bacterial enzyme into another
closely related enzyme—the kind of conversion that evolutionists claim can
easily happen. For this case they found that the conversion would require a
minimum of at least seven simultaneous changes,[23] exceeding the
six-mutation-limit which Axe had previously established as a boundary of what
Darwinian evolution is likely to accomplish in bacteria. Because this
conversion is thought to be relatively simple, it suggests that more complex
biological features would require more than six simultaneous mutations to give
some new functional advantage.
In other
experiments led by Gauger and biologist Ralph Seelke of the University of
Wisconsin, Superior, their research team broke a gene in the bacterium E. coli
required for synthesizing the amino acid tryptophan. When the bacteria's genome
was broken in just one place, random mutations were capable of “fixing” the
gene. But even when only two mutations were required to restore function,
Darwinian evolution seemed to get stuck, with an inability to regain full
function.[24]
These kind
of results consistently suggest that the information required for proteins and
enzymes to function is too great to be generated by Darwinian processes on any
reasonable evolutionary timescale.
Drs. Axe,
Gauger, and Seelke are by no means the only scientists to observe the rarity of
amino acid sequences that yield functional proteins. A leading college-level
biology textbook states that “even a slight change in primary structure can
affect a protein's conformation and ability to function.”[25] Likewise,
evolutionary biologist David S. Goodsell writes:
"[O]nly
a small fraction of the possible combinations of amino acids will fold
spontaneously into a stable structure. If you make a protein with a random
sequence of amino acids, chances are that it will only form a gooey tangle when
placed in water."[26]
Goodsell
goes on to assert that “cells have perfected the sequences of amino acids over
many years of evolutionary selection.” But if functional protein sequences are
rare, then it is likely that natural selection will be unable to take proteins
from one functional genetic sequence to another without getting stuck in some
maladaptive or non-beneficial intermediate stage.
The late
biologist Lynn Margulis, a well-respected member of the National Academy of
Sciences until her death in 2011, once said “new mutations don't create new
species; they create offspring that are impaired.”[27] She further explained in
a 2011 interview:
"[N]eo-Darwinists
say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was
taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to
evolutionary change-led to new species. I believed it until I looked for
evidence."[28]
Similarly,
past president of the French Academy of Sciences, Pierre-Paul Grasse, contended
that "[m]utations have a very limited ‘constructive capacity’” because
“[n]o matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of
evolution.”[29]
Also, do you see ID as a theory that is falsifiable? What predictions does it make that can be tested? If it turns out to be true, perhaps we would want to just throw ourselves to the ground and worship the most high God! I mean, if we find a full poodle specimen during the Cambrian Explosion, I’m going to hit the dirt, yelling “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me! God is great! I magnify his name above every name! Yada yada yada!”
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM I think we covered this in the last e-mail. But for the
record, a poodle in teh Cambrian wouldn't bring many atheistic evolutionists to
become religious. Darwinian theory is far too plastic.
Scott
1/30/14: This is factually incorrect. Dawkins has written that even one fossil
shown out of order could decimate Evolutionary Theory. The idea that atheistic
evolutionists not becoming religious is pure speculation. If a god manifested
himself, many would have to follow the evidence due to their internal codes!
Has the ID community also settled on objective and specific criteria it would use to determine that ID has been falsified? At what point does it ditch the theory because it doesn’t work?
Casey Wed
10/30/2013 1:37 AM Many ID proponents would agree that if we found (a) low
information-content in life, (b) gradual evolution of species, (c) no function
for junk DNA that this would strongly count against ID theory. So yes, ID
theory is widely regarded as falsifiable. But it just so happens that we find
(a) high CSI in life, (b) explosions throughout the history of life, (c)
function for junk DNA. So I think ID’s predictions are being confirmed.
Scott
1/30/14: First of all by definition, Junk DNA has no function. Second, Dawkins
has a section on The Molecular Clock that is wholly dependent upon neutral
mutations. So, Casey is incorrect on this point.
The FAA spells out specific and measurable characteristics for our design. And when we meet those objectives, baby we can go out, make some money and fly!
So I would be interested in seeing such measurables from the ID community. You might ask for the same thing from the evolution community. I would refer you to the example I sent you regarding sexual and emotional infidelity and an absolute avalanche of other tests that are available in psychology as well as other disciplines in science.
Personally, this idea of chicken teeth still seems to have legs (if you will). Ok, so the example shown didn’t produce enamel. Well, as you suggested, if there is random mutation going on, then we would not expect the teeth produced under experimentation to be perfect. In fact, perfection would be unexpected and would cause severe problems based upon our expectations.
And I realize that any one of these skirmishes has more or less weaknesses and strengths for one side or the other. But this was also the case when the definition for the Boeing 787 was a triple decker that would carry 450 people. We studied it and studied it and at some point, we had to throw the plane out. We just couldn’t get the passengers out of the plane in an emergency no matter how hard we tried!
Best regards,
Scott
Casey
References Cited:
[1.] Kenneth R. Miller, "Life's Grand
Design," Technology Review (February/March 1994), pp. 25-32.
[2.] Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The
Evidence for Evolution (Free Press, 2009), p. 354.
[3.] George Ayoub, "On the Design of the
Vertebrate Retina," Origins & Design, vol. 17:1 (Winter 1996).
[4.] Kate McAlpine, "Evolution gave flawed eye
better vision," New Scientist (May 6, 2010).
[5.] William Dembski & Sean McDowell,
Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language
(Harvest House, 2008), p. 53.
[6.] Julie Steenhuysen, "Eye spy: U.S. scientists
develop eye-shaped camera," Reuters (August 6, 2008).
[7] See Michael Behe, “Is There an ‘Edge’ to
Evolution?” at http://www.faithandevolution.org/debates/is-there-an-edge-to-evolution.php.
[8] Ibid
[9] Michael Lynch, “Evolutionary layering and the
limits to cellular perfection,” Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences, www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1216130109
(2012).
[10] Jerry Coyne, “The Great Mutator (Review of The
Edge of Evolution, by Michael J. Behe),” The New Republic, pp. 38-44, 39 (June
18, 2007).
[11] Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859), Chapter
6, available at http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/chapter-06.html.
[12] David J. DeRosier, “The turn of the screw: The
bacterial flagellar motor,” Cell, 93: 17-20 (1998).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Mark Pallen and Nicholas Matzke, “From The Origin
of Species to the Origin of Bacterial Flagella,” Nature Reviews Microbiology,
4:788 (2006).
[15] These experiments have been done on flagella in E.
coli and S. typhimurium. See Transcript of Testimony of Scott Minnich, pp.
103–112, Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School Board, No. 4:04-CV-2688 (M.D.
Pa., Nov. 3, 2005). Other experimental studies have identified over 30 proteins
necessary to form flagella. See Table 1. in Robert M. Macnab, “Flagella,” in
Escheria Coli and Salmonella Typhimurium: Cellular and Molecular Biology Vol 1,
pp. 73-74, Frederick C. Neidhart, John L. Ingraham, K. Brooks Low, Boris
Magasanik, Moselio Schaechter, and H. Edwin Umbarger, eds., (Washington D.C.:
American Society for Microbiology, 1987).
[16] Mark Pallen and Nicholas Matzke, “From The Origin
of Species to the Origin of Bacterial Flagella,” Nature Reviews Microbiology,
4:788 (2006).
[17] See "The Closest Look Ever at the Cell's
Machines," ScienceDaily.com (January 24, 2006), at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060123121832.htm
[18] Bruce Alberts, "The Cell as a Collection of
Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists,"
Cell, 92:291 (February 6, 1998).
[19] Douglas A. Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of
Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular
Biology, 341: 1295-1315 (2004); Douglas A. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity
to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular
Biology, 301: 585-595 (2000).
[20] See Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA
and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, p. 211 (Harper One, 2009).
[21] Michael Behe and David Snoke, “Simulating
Evolution by Gene Duplication of Protein Features That Require Multiple Amino
Acid Residues,” Protein Science, 13: 2651-2664 (2004).
[22] Rick Durrett and Deena Schmidt, “Waiting
for Two Mutations: With Applications to Regulatory Sequence Evolution and the
Limits of Darwinian Evolution,” Genetics, 180:1501-1509 (2008). For a more
detailed discussion of this argument, see Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe, Casey
Luskin, Science and Human Origins (Discovery Institute Press, 2012).
[23] Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe, “The Evolutionary
Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,”
BIO-Complexity, 2011 (1): 1-17.
[24] Ann Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, and
Ralph Seelke, “Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple
Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,” BIO-Complexity, 2010 (2): 1-9.
[25] Neil A. Campbell and Jane B. Reece, Biology, p.
84 (7th ed., 2005).
[26] David S. Goodsell, The Machinery of Life, pp. 17,
19 (2nd ed., Springer, 2009).
[27] Lynn Margulis, quoted in Darry Madden, UMass
Scientist to Lead Debate on Evolutionary Theory, Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer
(February 3, 2006).
[28] Lynn Margulis quoted in “Lynn Margulis: Q + A,”
Discover Magazine, p. 68 (April, 2011).
[29] Pierre-Paul Grassé, Evolution of Living
Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation (Academic Press: New
York NY, 1977).
From: Scott Vigil
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2013 11:25 AM
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: RE: Transitional Forms and Falsifiability
Hi Casey,
I’ve been sharing conversations with my son in this area. I’m sure he’ll be hoping you have something to say. As I mentioned, I am personally ambivalent and just want to get to the truth.
Scott
From: Casey Luskin
Sent: Monday, October 14, 2013 10:41 PM
To: Scott Vigil
Subject: RE: Transitional Forms and Falsifiability
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the note. FYI, I work
80 hour weeks and get over 100 e-mails per day. You are one of dozens of people
I am e-mailing with right now. I don’t always have time to respond “day of” –
sometimes it takes a few days to respond. You wrote me a couple lengthy
e-mails. I’ll respond as soon as I get a few minutes.
Thanks for your understanding—I
appreciate it.
Casey
From: Scott Vigil
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2013 8:06 AM
To: Casey Luskin
Subject: RE: Transitional Forms and Falsifiability
Certainly.
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