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rossum
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How many possible different arrangements are there to make a “minimally functional protein”? For example, there are about 2.3 x 10^93 different ways to make a functional Cytochrome C (Yockey 1992). Unless you know the size of the target, then any estimate of the chances of hitting the target is moot.
I can easily do something that is beyond the UPB: shuffle three packs of cards together. The resulting ordering is beyond the UPB. (3 x 52)! = 156! = 7.5e275
False. There are organisms which do not use DNA at all, but use RNA instead. It is probable that RNA preceded DNA, and that the DNA sequence was derived from a preceding RNA sequence. Since RNA is more chemically active than DNA, then the RNA sequence can be directly influenced by chemistry. See “ribozymes” for more details.
So you are presenting a God of the gaps argument. Be very, very careful. Thor and Zeus used to fit into the gap called, “what causes thunder?” When science closed that gap they didn’t have anywhere left to go.
Until independent evidence of the existence of a designer at the time and place of the design is shown, then any hypothesised designer ranks a very long way down the list of options. We have independent evidence that chemistry was operating back then. What independent evidence do you have of a designer operating then?
As to Meyer’s book, in general it is not impressive. See Dennis Venema’s review from BioLogos, here:
While popular-level books written by nonspecialists can be very helpful to a lay audience if they are carefully reviewed by experts and adhere to consensus science, Signature is not such a book. Like Edge of Evolution before it, Signature in the Cell represents a layman’s attempt to overturn an entire field of research based on a surface-level understanding (and, at times, significant misunderstanding or ignorance) of the relevant science, published in a form that bypasses review by qualified peers, and that is marketed directly to a nonspecialist audience. This is not good science, nor science in any meaningful sense.
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rossum
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Biology has explained the urge to survive. Do you really not understand natural selection? Organisms with any urge to survive will tend to survive better than organisms with less urge to survive. Plasticity is implicit in the DNA mechanism; as long as there are mutations then there will be variations in organisms and hence plasticity. Are all people identical clones of each other? No, because our DNA differs.
Your “inanimate molecular structures” exhibit some “urge to survive”. A water molecule, H[sub]2[/sub]O, has a greater “urge to survive” than a molecule of Hydrogen Peroxide, H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub]. It is much harder to break apart a water molecule than to break apart a molecule of Hydrogen Peroxide. Likewise plasticity: protein molecules can form different shapes with the same sequence, as with prions.
We agree that some events are random while other events are not. You have not presented any evidence to assign life to one category or the other. I think that material life is highly likely in the conditions on early earth, but not inevitable. Had the Late Heavy Bombardment continued, life could well never have arisen.
Why should I trust a book with elementary errors in it? It looks impressive to the non-specialist, but it contains obvious errors:
Although other flaws are less serious in and of themselves, they are still indicative of the level of argumentation in the book, as well as of the quality of its peer review. For example, it was in chapter three that I first arrived at what I now call a “Behe moment” when reading antievolutionary literature. In Michael Behe’s book Edge of Evolution, he makes a few obvious “rookie errors” when discussing how probabilities work in population genetics. This, for me, was the clear signal that the book was written by an amateur in the field and not adequately peer reviewed. In Signature, this moment arrived when Meyer calls Pnemonococci a bacterium and a virus in the same paragraph. This impression was confirmed anew when Meyer describes, over the course of several pages, his epiphany that DNA bases do not have bonds between them and thus cannot selforganize into specified sequences. This “epiphany” is something that biology majors learn (or at least, should learn) in their introductory courses. This theme continued apace in the figure describing translation. Signature shows tRNAs aligning to the mRNA in a 5’ to 5’ orientation, tRNAs with codon instead of anticodon sequences, and several inappropriate nucleotide pairings: all very basic mistakes. In short, Signature clearly was not written or peer reviewed by individuals with a working knowledge of molecular biology.
Now, these issues in and of themselves would not be a serious problem for Signature, if not for the fact that the strength of Meyer’s argument rests entirely on his assertion that he has made a thorough search through all proposed mechanisms for generating biological information through natural means and found them lacking. Meyer is asking his audience to trust him that his analysis is thorough and sound. However, that Meyer’s understanding of molecular biology appears to be at or below a first-year college level should give even the most pro-ID reader pause here. It means that Meyer, well intentioned though he may be, is simply not equipped to grapple with these issues beyond an introductory textbook level. Nor has Meyer sought the advice of those who are able to do so. And as we have seen, Meyer has made neither a thorough search for the origin of biological information by natural mechanisms, nor a fair assessment of current origin-of-life research.
Source: Seeking a Signature: A Review of “Signature in the Cell”
A book whose author confuses a virus with a bacterium is unlikely to convince many biologists. It is certainly highly unlikely to convince me.
When and where did your proposed designer operate? What independent evidence do you have of the existence of your proposed designer at those times and places?
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nmgauss
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There is also the development of the spinal chord. I suppose that, since only bony or chitinous animals have left fossils, there is no way to study the changes in animal life during the Paleozoic. Intelligent Design is an unprovable hypothesis. To advocate it and then try to show evidence of its process is obviously biased and not the scientific method, which is based on inference from study of multiple bodies of evidence.
Although having an undergraduate degree in physics, Meyer did not pursue this in graduate school, having decided to pursue philosophy. So basically he is a philosopher with an axe to grind. This is hardly science.
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Peter_Plato
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Every resulting ordering would be, in a sense, beyond the UPB. The question does not concern every ordering but a predetermined one - the chance of getting a desired one beforehand. Your error regarding chance outcome is that you are succumbing to retrospective determinism. You cannot disregard the enormous unlikelihood of a result and therefore the unlikelihood that it could not have been merely a chance outcome just because it happened. The enormity of the unlikelihood argues that because it happened, it was likely not the result of chance but of some other factor - design being a possible explanation.
And you are presenting a “science of the gaps” argument. Until the gap is definitively closed there is no reason to make a final conclusion either way.
rossum;10847527Until independent evidence of the existence of a designer at the time and place of the design is shown said:
:
While popular-level books written by nonspecialists can be very helpful to a lay audience if they are carefully reviewed by experts and adhere to consensus science, Signature is not such a book. Like Edge of Evolution before it, Signature in the Cell represents a layman’s attempt to overturn an entire field of research based on a surface-level understanding (and, at times, significant misunderstanding or ignorance) of the relevant science, published in a form that bypasses review by qualified peers, and that is marketed directly to a nonspecialist audience. This is not good science, nor science in any meaningful sense.
rossum
This is a red herring. An attempt to sidetrack the real question by pointing out a personal flaw. So Meyer made an error. That, in itself, does not argue against his points but attempts to skirt them. If scientists are clearly capable of answering these issues thenthey should do so and not get caught up in name calling. If the questions are legitimate then they should be answered, no matter where they come from. To argue that the questioner is in some way flawed and therefore the question must also be, is to succumb to the genetic fallacy or is merely an ad hominem. Surely science, if it is superlatively competent, can do better than that!
No one said his concern had to be the result good science. Meyer is presenting a logical argument, which is his area of expertise, against a claim that science has or can completely explain a specific reality. The challenge is for science to explain and defend what it proposes to be a truth claim. As yet, it hasn’t.
You may have every reason to think it will. Fine. However, until it actually does, the question remains an open one, There is no reason to claim it is anti-science for a layman to do due diligence and require that science live up to a standard of truth and not back down from challenges from other quarters. To remain credible science must provide sufficiently reasonable and plausible explanations, there is nothing wrong with pointing out where it has failed to do so.
To attempt to sidetrack the issue by claiming it isn’t science, is fraudulent at best. When science answers the issue, it will have proved its metal, until then the issue is an open one.
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Peter_Plato
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Dismissing him as having an axe to grind is hardly philosophy, nor is it science. His specialty is philosophy of science which gives his some expertise in terms of analyzing scientific arguments. Scientists, too, are subject to logic when making claims about where evidence leads.
They are not immune from having to logically justify claims where there is insufficient evidence or where the evidence could be plausibly interpreted in several ways. Scientists are not infallible. I see it as a good thing to subject every scientific “conclusion” to rigorous analysis. Don’t you? Why should science claim immunity from challenges? Just 'cause?
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nmgauss
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To throw some clarification on this issue, if probabilities are assigned to the likelihood of ID vs. random processes, I think you will find that ID has a very low likelihood among scientists, whereas random processes have an overwhelming highest likelihood. There is very little evidence that has been presented in support of ID, but of the studies that have been done by scientists in the last 100 years the conclusions are consistent with the theory of randomness.
I hope you note that science has no final conclusions on this issue. Therefore it is open to anything that throws cold water on this theory. Again, nothing is final.
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rossum
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And there is where a great many ID probability calculations come unstuck: the word “one”. In biology there is almost never “one” target. There are many targets, each of which fulfils the desired function. In order to know the probability of getting a simple working protein, you have to know how many different ways there are to make a simple working protein. I have yet to see an ID calculation which takes that into account.
What is the chance that the grains of sand on a beach are arranged in precisely the positions they are? Obviously the odds are astronomical, and hence direct proof for the existence of the Sand Man. Sometimes things that are very improbable do happen in the real world.
Chance is a perfectly good explanation for the sand on a beach because of the issue I noted above. There are a great many ways to arrange sand to make a “beach”; it is a very large target, so the chances of hitting it by chance are good. You cannot draw any conclusions without knowing the size of the target.
Correct. The default answer in science is, “We don’t know.”
And anyone who reviewed his book before publication also missed the error. This shows poor quality control. The fact that the error is, in biological terms, elementary also indicates that the author and reviewers lack the depth of biological knowledge to tackle this subject correctly. Would you trust a mathematics textbook which said, “7 x 7 = 48”? At the very least you would suspect the other contents of the book.
Did you read Venema’s review?
Meyer’s denial of [random mutation and natural selection] as an information generator notwithstanding, in a discussion about evolutionary computer simulations, Meyer makes the following claim:
“If computer simulations demonstrate anything, they subtly demonstrate the need for an intelligent agent to elect some options and exclude others—that is, to create information.”
Employing this argument, Meyer claims that any mechanism that prefers one variant over another creates information. As such, the ample experimental evidence for natural selection as a mechanism to favor certain variants over others certainly qualifies as such a generator. Meyer, however, makes no mention of evidence for natural selection in the book.
Employing this argument, Meyer claims that any mechanism that prefers one variant over another creates information. As such, the ample experimental evidence for natural selection as a mechanism to favor certain variants over others certainly qualifies as such a generator. Meyer, however, makes no mention of evidence for natural selection in the book.
A biology book that makes no mention of natural selection as a selection mechanism! How can he discuss a computer choosing between options without pointing out that natural selection also selects between options. His failure to deal with the impact of natural selection invalidates Dr. Meyer’s point here. Random mutation and natural selection have been shown to increase information content.
Here is a logically correct argument:
- P1: Washington DC is the capital of the USA.
- P2: Washington DC is in Germany.
- C3: The capital of the USA is in Germany.
One of the things science does is to make testable predictions. According to Meyer, ID does make a testable prediction: that natural processes cannot add biological information to DNA. This prediction has been falsified; natural processes can add information to DNA. Since the prediction has been falsified, any attempt to continue to assert the original statement places ID outside science.
The correct reaction to a falsified prediction is to change the underlying theory. Professor Behe gave a good example of correct science with his concept of Irreducible Complexity. His original version was “Irreducible Complexity cannot evolve.” That was shown to be false. Behe then did the right thing and amended his theory to produce a modified version: “Irreducible Complexity cannot evolve by direct routes and is unlikely to evolve by indirect routes.”
Current work on IC is looking at just how “unlikely” those indirect routes are. See Behe and Snoke (2004) for some work on the subject.
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Peter_Plato
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The odds are astronomical because the possible iterations of sand particles on the beach are astronomical. The problem with this scenario as a comparable one to life origins is that, as far as we can tell there aren’t an astronomical number of possible origins of life - there is only one. The necessary ingredients for life to begin arranged, despite astronomical odds against it happening, into an iteration that spawned life.
That isn’t the same as any arrangement of sand on the beach, it is more like sand arranging itself into a highly complex and functional “sand city” with millions of little sand machines capable of innovating and building more complex and functional new machines. That is not the same as just “another” arrangement of sand.
The size of the target is reduced when functional complexity is considered. It isn’t just another way that sand could be arranged, it is a very unique form, much more complex than, say, having the body of the Declaration of Independence written out by the arrangement of sand particles along a length of beach. You wouldn’t claim that was just another “iteration” would you?
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prodigalson2011
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This is what William Dembski has termed “specified complexity,” without consideration of which the UPB is meaningless. An inference to design can be made only upon both conditions being satisfied, namely: a) the improbability of the event exceeds the UPB, and b) the event is specifically complex, i.e. it corresponds to some form of coded language.
To go back to a cliched example, rossum, while any random arrangement of sand is astronomically improbable, it is not specifically complex. However, for the sand to be arranged so as to spell out the words, “Hello, rossum,” would be both astrononically improbable and specifically complex.
I think Dembski has a perfectly good argument in the design inference, however I would have to concede that it is philosophical and not scientific in nature.
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tonyrey
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tonyrey
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From sheer prejudice!
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buffalo
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I cannot believe you are still using the card trick. Calculate the odds of 4 aces turning up. Or ordered by suit.
You know full well specified complex information is the issue.
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tonyrey
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There’s no way of wriggling out of that hole!
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tonyrey
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Aren’t you presenting a science of the gaps argument? If not why not?
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Peter_Plato
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I think Meyer’s point is not dependent upon whether natural processes can change or alter existing biological information, but on whether natural processes can originate novel biological information upon which subsequent change depends.
The reason he focuses on abiogenesis is because his claim is that natural selection or other factors cannot act on biological information until there is biological information available to be acted upon. Even more pertinent is the point that natural processes presuppose replication in order for those processes to effect change, so they could not be a factor in actually producing changes in the initial biological information until after the information existed in some replicable and, therefore, alterable form. So natural processes could not be factors in creating the replicable information if they could not effect change until after replication, and therefore replicable information, already existed.
It is the question of how replicable biological information arose that is the contentious issue and natural processes could not have been a factor before replication was possible.
An electrical malfunction might mutate the code (and thus “generate,” in some manner of speaking, a modified binary code) that makes up my computer’s OS, but that is a far cry from claiming that an electrical malfunction will actually generate the initial functional code required to allow a computer system to operate.
Surely, this is all you mean by natural processes “generating” biological code: that they have only been shown to modify existing code in some novel way? Or are you claiming something more substantial?
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rossum
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You are almost certainly incorrect. In every example studied to date there are large numbers of biological chemicals that will perform a given function. To assert that there is only “one” is almost certainly an error. While some variants will be more effective than other variants, that is not of much importance as long as the variant is somewhat effective. Once life has started evolution can improve the effectiveness of the enzyme/ribozyme.
You are assuming the size of the target again. How do you know that the target is not the size of the target for a beach? How many variants are there of any given enzyme/ribozyme? There are 2.3e93 working variants of Cytochrome C. That is not a small target.
Again, you are asserting something without evidence. How do you know exactly what that initial proto-cell looked like? How many possible working variants on that cell could there have been? Unless you can estimate the size of the target then you do not have a case.
Agreed. But you haven’t actually considered it. You have waved your hands without actually doing any experiments or calculations. Where are the experiments from the design side, looking at the functional complexity of potential early organisms? Without these experiments, then ID is doing philosophy rather than science.
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rossum
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I am aware of CSI. I am also aware that the ID people have not actually calculated the CSI for any living organism, and have not calculated the likely CSI of any proposed proto-cell arisen from abiogenesis.
I am also aware that Dr Dembski’s CSI has never been tested to see if it actually works as a detector of design. While Dembski has proposed it as a test, no paper doing a blind test of CSI as a design indicator has been published to my knowledge. Until it has been tested, then CSI cannot be completely relied on.
I agree. ID seems to be more philosophy than science. It is very lacking on the experimental side. In science there are a lot of wonderful arguments that are rejected because experiments show that they are wrong.
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rossum
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You have been misinformed. Natural selection is based solely on the number of grandchildren: how many of your offspring are capable of reproducing themselves. The male spider who allows himself to be eaten by the female has a low urge to survive, but as long as he fertilizes the female, he will have grandchildren. There are many plants that flower once and then die. They also have grandchildren.
Of course it is not random. Chemistry is not random. Natural selection is not random. Please stop accusing me of believing something that I reject.
Do you want me to list the prominent scientists that have endorsed Darwin’s work? Shall I point you at the list of Steves? The Steve-o-Meter is currently at Steve #1274.
Yeah, but neither of them are called Steve.
Reference please.
Which is why I asked you when and where your proposed biological designer operated. If you assert design, then that design must have been implemented at some time and place in the material universe. What time and what place?
rossum
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rossum
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Exactly. The chances of hitting a target depend on the size of the target. Unless you can demonstrate the size of the target you are trying to hit, then you cannot make any meaningful probability calculations for the chance to hit it.
How many possible arrangements of chemicals will form a proto-cell? I can guarantee that the answer is more than one.
Is it? Dr Dembski has proposed is as a measure, but I am not aware of any tests to determine that his proposal is correct. Professor Hoyle proposed the Steady State hypothesis, but his proposal was incorrect. Where are the tests of Dembski’s proposal? I am reluctant to accept an untested method.
rossum
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