Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Religious nut seems to be the go-to accusation around here but, no, of course there is no reason to suppose that Crick, right or wrong, had religious motives. I wish that some of the Darwin doubters were given similar latitude.

Some would be if they didn't have a history of being religiously motivated and also bad at math. The problem is that there is no research program in Intelligent Design. Look at the sparsity of papers:

https://www.discovery.org/id/peer-review/

Here is the 2017 volume of BIO-complexity, the ID journal:

http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/...ue/current

The rest of you post is not very convincing as, I think, you concede.

I do; how could I know? Eventually we might reproduce the start of life in the lab. It's also possible that there are places where it is starting up again, but how would we know? We certainly aren't going to see a parallel ecosystem develop.

~~ Paul

If the odd 'useful' molecule is generated, there isn't any way to select it (unless perhaps there is an intelligent observer   ) this is the real core of the problem.

Why isn't there any way to select it? Is the environment out to lunch? Perhaps you mean there isn't any way to create a gene for it.

If you have digested this paper, or the other one that derives rate equations, you could do everyone a favour by summarising the steps that are being proposed to get to the genetic code, or anything else that is revealed in them.

I read through page 10 last night. It's a long, slow read and the authors are murky writers. The idea centers around an ancestral gene that codes for one end of the tRNA synthetase when translated in one direction and the other end when translated in the opposite direction. The system starts out with only two amino acids, one in synthetase class I and the other in class II. It bifurcates from there. The evidence includes much highly technical chemistry. It does rely on an ancestral gene translation system.

I'll report back when I get through the paper.

Your idea of a 2-base reader that conveniently always skips the third base is ingenious, but I must say that would be an extraordinarily lucky accident (an act of God perhaps) for such a system to arise. Note also that if the third base was irrelevant, suddenly giving it meaning would still do enormous damage to an existing genome.

It's not my idea.

One problem I have with this, is that there is an unfortunate tendency to assume that any intelligence is omniscient - basically because people think of God. That doesn't need to be true, and if the intelligence is finite there are more interesting possibilities.  A finite intelligence may need to experiment to produce some desired result.

I'm willing to listen to all sorts of squirming about how the ID did the job. Then problem is that there is no research program to discover this and I very much doubt there ever will be.

They say that some of that knowledge is acquired from dreams and visions (maybe rather as Ramanujan acquired some of his mathematical ideas). The trouble is in these discussions, that one side sees an acceptance of ID as being total defeat, so they use none of their ingenuity in exploring exactly what finite intelligence might be doing.

As far as I can tell, it is a total defeat. Saying that an ID did it is like saying "I don't know and I dont care." Nevertheless, it's the job of the folks making the ID hypothesis to do the research program. There is no research program, because there is no concrete evidence with which to get started. There is no way to bootstrap. So it's not much more than an appeal to probability by people who aren't particularly good at math.

~~ Paul

Why isn't there any way to select it? Is the environment out to lunch? Perhaps you mean there isn't any way to create a gene for it.

Let's focus for a bit on this idea that a molecule would be selected for out of random chemistry.

Can you elaborate on what that would consist of, in the absence of any living cells.

If I had a test tube of residual 'tar' after running an organic chemistry reaction, how would such a molecule become apparent?

David

Let's focus for a bit on this idea that a molecule would be selected for out of random chemistry.

Can you elaborate on what that would consist of, in the absence of any living cells.

If I had a test tube of residual 'tar' after running an organic chemistry reaction, how would such a molecule become apparent?

David

I'd like to know why you phrase the question in such as way as to imply intelligence of any sort is at work?

Some would be if they didn't have a history of being religiously motivated and also bad at math. The problem is that there is no research program in Intelligent Design. Look at the sparsity of papers:

https://www.discovery.org/id/peer-review/

Here is the 2017 volume of BIO-complexity, the ID journal:

http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/...ue/current

I do; how could I know? Eventually we might reproduce the start of life in the lab. It's also possible that there are places where it is starting up again, but how would we know? We certainly aren't going to see a parallel ecosystem develop.

~~ Paul

There are some prominent doubters of Darwinism who are not religious and there are probably many more who would rather keep their jobs than voice their doubt.

As for research and peer review, it seems to me that for peer review to work, there should be peers with an unbiased approach. This is an old complaint about peer review when it comes to anything outside - or at the fringes - of orthodoxy. Peer review is effectively cut off at the outset because ID is deemed to be not scientific, therefore not eligible for scientific review. Not scientific because most scientists adhere to methodological naturalism, as defined here by Keith Augustine:

Methodological naturalism, by contrast, is the principle that science and history should presume that all causes are natural causes solely for the purpose of promoting successful investigation. The idea behind this principle is that natural causes can be investigated directly through scientific method, whereas supernatural causes cannot, and hence presuming that an event has a supernatural cause for methodological purposes halts further investigation.

ID proposes an intelligent agent which, as David suggested above, might be considered to be beyond what scientists deem to be natural (part of the physical world). If science must be restricted to materialism (as Lewontin and others maintain) then ID will never be accepted as science, therefore never accepted for peer review. The people at the DI might put forward a few papers that challenge neo-darwinism but don't directly violate naturalism but any inference to an intelligent agent would have to be avoided. 

I can't see a way around this impasse. It is a matter of base assumptions and it seems to me that the scientific community has, for the most part, decided a philosophical question and ordained that materialism is absolute and incontestable.

Let's focus for a bit on this idea that a molecule would be selected for out of random chemistry.

Can you elaborate on what that would consist of, in the absence of any living cells.

If I had a test tube of residual 'tar' after running an organic chemistry reaction, how would such a molecule become apparent?

David

There would be some sort of proto-organism. Perhaps a bag of chemicals with a simple membrane. Perhaps a group of tightly bound molecules that were difficult to separate. If these organisms could replicate, then some kind of rudimentary selection would occur. Note that no genes are required in the conventional sense.

But, again, I make no claim to understand how things started. If I did, I'd be a famous biologist.

~~ Paul

There are some prominent doubters of Darwinism who are not religious and there are probably many more who would rather keep their jobs than voice their doubt.

I'm sure that's true.

As for research and peer review, it seems to me that for peer review to work, there should be peers with an unbiased approach. This is an old complaint about peer review when it comes to anything outside - or at the fringes - of orthodoxy. Peer review is effectively cut off at the outset because ID is deemed to be not scientific, therefore not eligible for scientific review. Not scientific because most scientists adhere to methodological naturalism, as defined here by Keith Augustine:

Then the IDers will have to peer review their own stuff, perhaps asking some of those doubters to do it anonymously.

ID proposes an intelligent agent which, as David suggested above, might be considered to be beyond what scientists deem to be natural (part of the physical world). If science must be restricted to materialism (as Lewontin and others maintain) then ID will never be accepted as science, therefore never accepted for peer review. The people at the DI might put forward a few papers that challenge neo-darwinism but don't directly violate naturalism but any inference to an intelligent agent would have to be avoided.

Here's the thing, though. If the designer really is outside of the reach of methodological naturalism, how would you expect there to be any research program? There is no reach, no search, no research. There is nothing to study.

If, on the other hand, there is something about the designer that affects the natural world, then we should be able to get a foot in the door, to bootstrap some kind of research program. And since IDers are making the claim that the designer did, in fact, affect the natural world, there ought to be something.

I can't see a way around this impasse. It is a matter of base assumptions and it seems to me that the scientific community has, for the most part, decided a philosophical question and ordained that materialism is absolute and incontestable.

The way around this impasse is to point to something science can study.

~~ Paul

I'm sure that's true.

Then the IDers will have to peer review their own stuff, perhaps asking some of those doubters to do it anonymously.

From the link you provided above, here's the link to a more comprehensive list. I don't know which are ID friendly publications, however.

Here's the thing, though. If the designer really is outside of the reach of methodological naturalism, how would you expect there to be any research program? There is no reach, no search, no research. There is nothing to study.

If, on the other hand, there is something about the designer that affects the natural world, then we should be able to get a foot in the door, to bootstrap some kind of research program. And since IDers are making the claim that the designer did, in fact, affect the natural world, there ought to be something.

Again, that link I just provided above is entitled "Research" so your claim that they don't do research seems to be your opinion, not theirs. My opinion is that the claims they make point to evidence of design which is precisely what you are asking for when you say "something about the designer that affects the natural world". Just because you disagree with them doesn't make them wrong or you right. That's what this whole debate is about, isn't it?

The way around this impasse is to point to something science can study.

~~ Paul

Again you are repeating your opinion. They do organise debates on the science and, occasionally, darwinist scientists take part but generally they revert to the claim that ID is not science and use the forum to attack religion rather than discuss the science. Those debates are there on YouTube if you need confirmation.

From the link you provided above, here's the link to a more comprehensive list. I don't know which are ID friendly publications, however.

Good to see some papers after 2011.

Again, that link I just provided above is entitled "Research" so your claim that they don't do research seems to be your opinion, not theirs. My opinion is that the claims they make point to evidence of design which is precisely what you are asking for when you say "something about the designer that affects the natural world". Just because you disagree with them doesn't make them wrong or you right. That's what this whole debate is about, isn't it?

The papers that are actually about ID are based on probability calculations. Those calculations are suspect, as has been shown by various mathematicians over the years. In particular, if you look at the list of publications I don't think you will find any calculations of CSI for a biological mechanism. But if they have a foot in the door, great. I'm just not sure where it can go.

Edited to add: The ID folks now agree that to evaluate the CSI of a biological mechanism, you also need to calculate the probability of it coming about by evolution. This is, unfortunately, impossible.

Edited again to add: Here is a reasonable summary of the state of CSI:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/20...-part-one/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/20...-part-two/

~~ Paul

Good to see some papers after 2011.

One of the papers is on the algorithmic specified complexity of the Game of Life. I thought I'd give it a read, but so far I'm not having any luck finding it outside a paywall.

~~ Paul