Self-Defence Mechanisms in Nature.

[ReapReason]

The survival of biological organisms is not a “purpose”, it is a cause. Biological organisms that failed to survive are no longer around,

That an organism fails to survive is irrelevant to the fact that it is an integrated system of biological parts directed to the end of keeping the holistic whole we understand to be the organism alive. At most, all you have demonstrated is that some organisms are better suited to a particular environment, not that the organism itself has no goal direction intrinsic to its holistic nature.

Trilobites for example.

rossum

Explain why the trilobites failure to survive disproves goal direction in its nature?

You keep bringing it back to random mutations and natural selection, but I have shown in previous posts that these factors are irrelevant. If an integrated system of different parts and information meaningfully work together in order to express a particular functionality that is intrinsic to the end activity of the whole unit which the parts comprise, then that is an example of goal direction (eg, blood pumps blood, intestines digest, ect; and they all work in union with each-other in support of the whole biological system). This is true regardless of natural selection or random mutation.

Every organism that has ever existed is a system of integrated parts and information directed to a particular end or functionality that is meaningful to the life of the whole organism, regardless of whether evolution is true or not.

 

[ReapReason]

I don’t find it tough at all.

Life is just one big accident from my point of view.

That’s what makes it so precious and special and valuable, when you think there is no good reason at all why we should be here.

Gould said it very well, when he said if we rewound the tape of life and let it play again, there is absolutely no reason what so ever to think we would be an outcome the second time around.

The fact we’re here is just one big accident to me, and I relish and treasure and savor every minute of life, for that very reason.

It so easily could have been a very different story.

Sarah x

The scientific notion of accident or chance is different from the metaphysical concept of accident or chance. Science does not measure purpose, and thus in no sense can a scientist legitimately intend by the word “chance” that the universe and its functionality has no purpose behind it. When it comes to measuring the properties of biological organisms they either mean that its coming into existence was not inevitable or determined, or they could mean that it is not an artefact in the sense of direct intelligent manipulation.

That some quality might emerge by chance, has no relevance to whether or not there is a purpose.or goal direction in the functionality of a system. I could create a system where emergent properties occur according to chance and still have the intention that those things emerge according to specific laws.

Chance does not exclude purpose.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

That some quality might emerge by chance, has no relevance to whether or not there is a purpose.or goal direction in the functionality of a system. I could create a system where emergent properties occur according to chance and still have the intention that those things emerge according to specific laws.

Chance does not exclude purpose.

This is an interesting observation. But I think the definition of pure accident or chance implies that there is an infinite possibility in which each possibility has an equal distribution of probability between 0 and 1 to occur.

The existence of natural laws in itself on the other hand limits the number of possibility and skews the distribution of probability.

For example along a polypeptide chain, it is more likely that certain amino acid A is followed by amino acid B then amino acid C due to the inherent stereo constraint of each molecules.

Example no. 2, some genetic sequences are conserved and very resistant to mutation, where as other parts along the sequences are highly mutable.

When building model to stimulate what a system can do, we introduce parameters and range of probability which limits what the system can do. Indeed, multiple iteration will produce a range of outcomes but there is an upper limit and lower limit that the system operates.

What seems random and spontaneous to our observation does not imply pure accident or chance. Every thing has a pattern governed by its laws and tends to certain direction.

 

[rossum]

That an organism fails to survive is irrelevant to the fact that it is an integrated system of biological parts directed to the end of keeping the holistic whole we understand to be the organism alive.

Any organism whose parts did not integrate is no longer with us. Remember that it is possible to be alive without a great many of the parts that a human has. Jellyfish have neither brain nor heart. Jellyfish are alive.

At most, all you have demonstrated is that some organisms are better suited to a particular environment, not that the organism itself has no goal direction intrinsic to its holistic nature.

Can a jellyfish have a goal? It doesn’t even possess a brain. “Goal direction” is not required. Simple population growth maths shows that. Better suited organisms produce more offspring; there is no need for anything more. Occam’s razor eliminates inessential complication.

Explain why the trilobites failure to survive disproves goal direction in its nature?

It does not “disprove” it. It merely shows that it is an unnecessary complication. Trilobites were less suited to a changed environment, and went extinct. Organisms that were more suited did not go extinct. There is no overall direction, any more than there is any overall direction in a pure capitalist system. Companies can prosper or go extinct/bankrupt. There is no overall direction telling which companies to grow and which to go bust. Competition between companies and the marketplace do that. Companies compete for profits; organisms compete for resources.

You keep bringing it back to random mutations and natural selection, but I have shown in previous posts that these factors are irrelevant.

You have not done that. Those factors are crucial. Random mutation introduces variation into the system. Natural selection differentially amplifies advantageous mutations so they spread through the system.

If an integrated system of different parts and information meaningfully work together in order to express a particular functionality that is intrinsic to the end activity of the whole unit which the parts comprise, then that is an example of goal direction (eg, blood pumps blood, intestines digest, ect; and they all work in union with each-other in support of the whole biological system). This is true regardless of natural selection or random mutation.

And such a system can evolve. Think of a jellyfish, which does not have a heart. Add a non-integrated very primitive heart and there is no advantage, so that variant dies out. Add a slightly integrated very primitive heart and there is a slight advantage. Later generations can improve both the heart and the integration. All that is needed at the start is to be that slight 1% better than the other jellyfish with no heart, or with a non-integrated heart.

We know that IC systems can evolve because we have seen them evolve, mutation by mutation. See Line of Descent for a complete listing. Even Professor Behe himself agrees that simple IC systems can evolve. See Behe and Snoke, (2004).

rossum

 

[ReapReason]

Any organism whose parts did not integrate is no longer with us. .

I don’t understand what you are saying here.

If the essential parts of what defines an organism is not integrated or united, then you don’t have an organism in the first place. Like I said, every organism that has ever existed is an integrated system of parts acting for a particular end.

Remember that it is possible to be alive without a great many of the parts that a human has. .

So what?

Jellyfish have neither brain nor heart. Jellyfish are alive. .

You are making a straw-man of my argument.

My argument is not that all organisms require a brain or a heart to be alive, but rather I used those as examples of organs working for the survival of an organism; goal-direction. Jellyfish have a type of central nervous system and internal biological processes that work toward the functional end of keeping a jellyfish alive.

Everything you say after this is based on a straw-man of my argument, and so I am not going to address it until you acknowledge what it is that I am in fact saying.

 

[ReapReason]

What seems random and spontaneous to our observation does not imply pure accident or chance. Every thing has a pattern governed by its laws and tends to certain direction.

I think I agree. At least I agree that there is a tendency towards certain outcomes.

 

[johnnyjones]

I am talking about random mutations. And also our ancestry goes back a long way before pregnancy evolved. Bacteria do not get pregnant.

rossum

Your talking about diversion now. Your prior post was concerned with human descendents. They either are, or are not, a big accident with no purpose.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

Bacteria do not get pregnant.

My friend, what happen after Bacteria + sticks his disco stick into Bacteria -?

Bacterial conjugation is their version of sexual copulation in which daddy bacteria transfers his plasmid to mommy bacteria to create recombination of genes. In fact, during my undergrad years in the lab, I often inseminated mommy bacteria with plasmid I constructed, hoping that some mommy bacteria could get pregnant with the recombined plasmid and then gave rise to new characteristics. I used electroporation instead of employing disco stick though. Just because they are prokaryote does not mean that you can condescend that mommy bacteria receiving daddy plasmid to form recombined plasmid is not equivalent to pregnancy.

Birds and bees make me blush!

 

[rossum]

If the essential parts of what defines an organism is not integrated or united, then you don’t have an organism in the first place.

Exactly. If the fault is a bad one, then the organisms fails to develop correctly and dies before maturity. In humans this can be indicated by stillbirths or spontaneous abortions. If the fault is less severe, then the organism may survive but either fail to reproduce, or produce less than the average number of offspring. Hence any genes from that faulty organism will tend not to be found in later generations.

Like I said, every organism that has ever existed is an integrated system of parts acting for a particular end.

The end is, “have more grandchildren”. This is the basis of natural selection. Those faulty organisms do not have as many grandchildren, so their genes are eliminated by natural selection.

So what?

Jellyfish have no brains. Hence, if a jellyfish happens to have a mutation for a slight enlargement on one point in its simple nervous system, then it might have a very slight advantage over other jellyfish that do not have that enlargement. Many generations down the road, that slight advantage has been extended into a very primitive proto-brain, such as is found in Planaria worms: here.

Fully developed brains do not just appear. They start as very simple almost-brains and develop slowly over time. Any small genetic improvement is incorporated as it appears. Any genetic disadvantage is weeded out.

The appearance of design is just an appearance. There was once an interesting discussion on an ID website, where Dr Dembski defined design as “selection between alternative possible solutions”. One of the other posters, Dr Liddle, pointed out that natural selection does exactly that; it selects between the alternative solutions presented to it by random mutations in the population. Using that definition of design, then the process of random mutation and natural selection is design. Dr Dembski did not agree, because intelligence was not involved, so it was non-intelligent design, rather than intelligent design.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Your talking about diversion now. Your prior post was concerned with human descendents. They either are, or are not, a big accident with no purpose.

Of course you are an accident. Even limiting it to just humans, how many sperm did your father ejaculate? What were the chances that the one particular sperm would succeed? There is a 50% chance you could have been of the opposite sex, since half of all sperm carry an X chromosome and half a Y chromosome.

There is a great deal of chance in the process.

rossum

 

[rossum]

My friend, what happen after Bacteria + sticks his disco stick into Bacteria -?

Bacterial conjugation is their version of sexual copulation in which daddy bacteria transfers his plasmid to mommy bacteria to create recombination of genes. In fact, during my undergrad years in the lab, I often inseminated mommy bacteria with plasmid I constructed, hoping that some mommy bacteria could get pregnant with the recombined plasmid and then gave rise to new characteristics. I used electroporation instead of employing disco stick though. Just because they are prokaryote does not mean that you can condescend that mommy bacteria receiving daddy plasmid to form recombined plasmid is not equivalent to pregnancy.

Birds and bees make me blush!

Horizontal Gene Transfer is not pregnancy. It is probable that sexual reproduction in Eukaryotes evolved from something very like HGT, but pregnancy, as found in mammals, is a very long way removed from there. As the Platypus shows, our ancestors laid eggs before they got pregnant.

rossum

 

[Sair]

I have a big problem with “purpose”. What is the purpose of a hammer? Is it to drive in nails? Is it to keep my paperwork from blowing away? Is it to kill someone? Is it to use as a plumb-bob?

I can use the same hammer for many different purposes. The purpose of the hammer is not fixed. I can assign different purposes to the same hammer at different times. Other people can assign yet more purposes to the same hammer.

Purpose is not intrinsic, it is extrinsic, and is assigned by something external. Is the purpose of humans to open tins of cat-food? A pet cat might see us that way. Does that purpose justify belief in the existence of Her Theofelinity?

Purpose is temporary, changeable and dependent on external conditions. To reify it into some over-arching, capitalised, “Purpose”, it to make a mistake. It is certainly not the kind of thing to hang a justification for God on – it cannot bear the weight.

rossum

Sorry to be jumping in here, especially if this has already been said…

(by the way, great post, rossum! )

…but we see this kind of “repurposing” throughout the evolutionary progression of life, where organs that originally served one purpose end up serving quite a different purpose for the organisms that possess them. It’s very likely that feathers, for example, originally evolved as a means of insulation, much like fur. Given many generations of evolution, the structure of feathers changed to the point where they became aerodynamically shaped and thus allowed their possessors to glide efficiently, then eventually to fly. Our human hands were front paws for our distant ancestors.

To me, this seems like the major flaw in Natural Law ethics - the idea that any aspect of an organism has only one “proper” function and that any other possible usage constitutes abuse and “sin”.

Natural selection doesn’t have the luxury of going back to the drawing board, so to speak. Evolution works with what it has, producing small modifications from generation to generation in a population of organisms, gradually reshaping species over time. Genuine “freaks” don’t usually last long enough to pass on their genes.

 

[johnnyjones]

Of course you are an accident. Even limiting it to just humans, how many sperm did your father ejaculate? What were the chances that the one particular sperm would succeed? There is a 50% chance you could have been of the opposite sex, since half of all sperm carry an X chromosome and half a Y chromosome.

There is a great deal of chance in the process.

rossum

This is where your Buddhism differs greatly from my Catholicism. We protect and preserve life not because it was an accident, but because God had a reason for that life to come into existence, a purpose. But man destroyed it, using his will through abortion. When you start applying " accident" to the creation of a human, then a human has become devoid of all purpose.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

There is a 50% chance you could have been of the opposite sex, since half of all sperm carry an X chromosome and half a Y chromosome.

Nope. Granted male produces equal ratio of x and y sperm, the sex ratio of sperm population changes once they enter the female reproductive tract which trigger preferential binding.

 

[DeepBlueSea]

Of course you are an accident. Even limiting it to just humans, how many sperm did your father ejaculate? What were the chances that the one particular sperm would succeed? There is a 50% chance you could have been of the opposite sex, since half of all sperm carry an X chromosome and half a Y chromosome.

There is a great deal of chance in the process.

For human, cross check your data here, here.

Effect of mother’s diet, cross check here, here,

For animal, cross check your data here.

Progenitive sex ratio among functioning sperm cells is not 1:1.

Who was your biology teacher by the way?

 

[rossum]

This is where your Buddhism differs greatly from my Catholicism. We protect and preserve life not because it was an accident, but because God had a reason for that life to come into existence, a purpose. But man destroyed it, using his will through abortion. When you start applying " accident" to the creation of a human, then a human has become devoid of all purpose.

In Buddhism, all life also has a reason for being reincarnated. It failed to attain nirvana last time round. That is a small, local, individual reason; not the large all-encompassing God-sized reason that is being discussed here.

The interaction of the material world and karma is extremely complex, but from the Buddhist point of view, there are three components that go into making a ‘new’ human being: the mother, the father and the gandhabba – the remaining karmic load from the previous life. Science can only deal with the first two.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Nope. Granted male produces equal ratio of x and y sperm, the sex ratio of sperm population changes once they enter the female reproductive tract which trigger preferential binding.

You are of course correct. The ration at birth slightly favours males, and the proportion of males steadily declines with age. The proportion reaches 50% at about the age of sexual maturity.

rossum

 

[DeepBlueSea]

The ration at birth slightly favours males, and the proportion of males steadily declines with age. The proportion reaches 50% at about the age of sexual maturity.

Nope. There is no correlation between sperm sex ratio and the age of man. Here & here.

Please comment responsibly.

 

[rossum]

Nope. There is no correlation between sperm sex ratio and the age of man.

My apologies for not making myself clearer. I was talking about the ratio in the population. More male babies are born, but they have a higher death rate than female babies. I was not talking about X/Y sperm ration, but male/female ratios in the population.

My apologies for the confusion.

rossum

 

[Hokomai]

Natural selection is about genetic preservation. It explains only that a feature is preserved due to its effectiveness. It doesn’t in and of itself explain the existence of self-defence mechanisms in nature. The point is, something exists in nature that acts specifically for the preservation of an organism. That is goal-direction.

If there is such a thing, it is certainly not an omnipotent god(s), as nearly all specie we are aware of are extinct. The self-defence mechanisms do not seem to work very well.