Re: ID and the Difference Between Spheres and Cubes


nightlight wrote:
Natural selection can't explain the origin of life. It can explain
the evolution of living beings ...

The random mutation (RM) + natural selection (NS) do not explain even
the microevolution, much less the macroevolution. The key missing piece
is a proof that RM can yield the observed rates of adaptation.

That is easy, if, of course, you accept standard timeframes. Humans
and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor some 5 million years
ago. Random mutation and *neutral drift* to fixation, unlike the much
faster random mutation plus positive selection, occurs at a relatively
constant (it does not need to be absolutely constant to make the point)
rate for selectively neutral sites. That rate of fixation is simply
the rate of mutation and it is roughly 1% per million years for amino
acid coding sites. The percent difference between chimps and humans is
known and is actually *less* than would be expected if all sites were
selectively neutral. This merely points out that most of the time
natural selection is a conservative force.

But it does mean that there is more than enough random mutation to
account for the difference between humans and chimps *even if* all the
difference between these species were merely random neutral fixation.
Again, given that most of the human genome is roughly selectively
neutral in sequence (most of it is non-coding and has little sequence
specificity requirements; even coding sequence is, at minimum, roughly
1/3 sequence neutral due to the degeneracy of the code), we would
expect the % difference between humans and chimps to be close to that
expected for neutral fixation with the effect of *selection* being
largely conservative.

If you look at the level of specific genes, or look for specific large
sequence differences in some coding seqeunce between humans and chimps,
you won't find much. Humans are missing one coding sequence due to a
90+ bp deletion. There are some transpositions and rearrangements.
But nothing that demands novel mutational mechanisms or rates of
mutation in the span of time available.

In order
to prove that, one would first need to solve a combinatorial problem of
estimating how many possible configurations of DNA can arise by
applying RM to DNA, obtain an integer M, then estimate how many are
"favorable" (e.g. regarding some enviromental challenge) DNA
combinations, call it an integer F, then obtain probability of
favorable random mutation e.g. via P=F/M. Then one would need to
estimate the number of possible tries T (the number of offspring) in a
given time interval, and compare the expected number of favorable
solutions P*T vs the observed number of favorable solutions O in that
same time interval.

The smaller the P*T number is compared to the O number, the smaller
the chance that a random mutation is a good model for the observed
adaptation. Neo-Darwinians have yet to prove even in a single example
that a _random_ mutation would reproduce the observed favorable figures
O. Merely showing that, say bacteria adapts to antibiotics only
establishes numbers O and T, but not F, M and P. Without the latter
figures, they have no way of knowing whether the mutations which
provided the resistance were random or a result of some intelligent
agency/process.

Note that even within a purely mechanistic/materialistic perspective
(the "hidden variable" interpretation of Quantum Theory), there are
enough orders of magnitude below our current "elementary" particles
(10^-16cm) to accomodate complexity comparable to our own (built upon
some Planckian scale objects of 10^-33 cm) as there are between our
current elementary particles and ourselves. For all we know, the
"random" choices predicted by the present Quantum Theory may be
purposeful choices and solutions from some vast technological
civilization running 10^16 times faster than our own and living at the
scales between 10^-16 cm and 10^-33 cm (this region is considered an
'empty desert' by the present physics). For such sub-micro beings our
atomic laws (with their fine tuning seemingly optimized for life) might
be their advanced 'galactic' scale technology. And if you allow for
non-mechanistic models, which have been outdated by Quantum Theory (QT)
since 1920s anyway (hence, besides the laws of matter-energy, you might
also model the mind-stuff which appears necessary in some
interpretations of QT), there are many other possibilities to model
more accurately the observed adaptation fugures O.

In my book of science, actual observation of organisms trumps your
hypothetical mathematics. That your math can demonstrate the
impossibility of bumblebee's flying is countered by the demonstrable
fact that they do. The fact is that you do not need any unusual
mechanism to generate the rate of change in genomes seen in actual
organisms in the time available. That the organisms in question (human
and chimp and their common ancestor) are/were *phenotypically*
different is unquestioned. That the organisms are *genotypically*
different and that some (small) fraction of this genotypic difference
accounts for the phenotypic difference because of selection for those
genotypic changes is also undoubtedly true. But the amount of such
change (which would be rapid relative to drift and fixation) is so
small relative to the amount of simple random fixation (not to mention
the amount of conservative selection) that it cannot even be observed
in the crude differences in % sequence change or in the differences in
specific genes. You can account for the totality of the sequence
difference between these organisms by mutation plus drift and fixation
alone.

Of course, we already know that the intelligent solutions (e.g. the
molecular biology) and the intelligent agency (e.g. a brain of a
molecular biologist) do occur in nature at our scales, whatever the
mechanism of their emergence might be. There is no reason (let alone a
natural law) why would the brain of a molecular biologist be the sole
arrangement of atoms and fields in nature that can perform such
function. (After all, computers might do it all by themselves in the
near future, as well.)

In any case, neo-Darwinian (ND) theory is not even close to proving
that RM+NS are a sufficiently likely mechanism of evolution for a given
number of tries (in a given time-space) at any level, from "simple"
adaptations to speciation and beyond. And if it turns out that random
mutations cannot predict the observed figures O, then the next nearest
possibility remaining is the non-random (i.e. "intelligent") mutations
aka the ID theory of evolution (which in turns opens the further
scientific questions about the nature of the intelligent agency).

The criteria which distinguish ND from ID (the computations of M, F, P,
T and measurement of O and comparison T*P with O) are quantitative and
perfectly scientific, the handwaving and yelling from the ND
neo-Lysenkoists notwithstanding.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Blog: The Scars of Evolution.
    ... manner as you can exactly why any two species related by lineal ... under environmental selection, with which no one is arguing. ... *All* the sequence ... collectively, called *mutation*. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Blog: The Scars of Evolution.
    ... under environmental selection, with which no one is arguing. ... are two different species, is due to the *difference* in their genome ... sequence affect phenotype. ... collectively, called *mutation*. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Blog: The Scars of Evolution.
    ... under environmental selection, with which no one is arguing. ... are two different species, is due to the *difference* in their genome ... sequence affect phenotype. ... collectively, called *mutation*. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution: Survival of the Miss-est
    ... Each miscopy or new code (random mutation) that became ... Madman seems to think that natural selection doesn't exist, ... Cladogenesis is the process of a new species ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Ultraconserved Elements in the Genome: Are They Indispensable?
    ... conserved sequence whose function is not apparent. ... frequencies in these samples argues against strong, ongoing selection ... as the force maintaining the conservation of these sequences. ... For example, mutation to ...
    (talk.origins)
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