Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Yet another marvelous, intricate and probably irreducibly complex molecular and cellular machine; new research is described in an article at https://phys.org/news/2019-11-marvelous-...chine.html. Was that the noise of the wind in the trees or was it the ghost of Darwin complaining?

"....the California market squid ...have evolved the ability to finely and continuously tune their color and sheen to a degree unrivaled in other creatures. This enables them to communicate, as well as hide in plain sight in the bright and often featureless upper ocean.

...Tiny muscles manipulate the skin texture while pigments and iridescent cells affect its appearance. One group of cells controls their color by expanding and contracting cells in their skin that contain sacks of pigment.

Behind these pigment cells are a layer of iridescent cells—those iridocytes—that reflect light and contribute to the animals' color across the entire visible spectrum. The squids also have leucophores, which control the reflectance of white light. Together, these layers of pigment-containing and light-reflecting cells give the squids the ability to control the brightness, color and hue of their skin over a remarkably broad palette.

...the highly dynamic hues of the opalescent inshore squid result from changing the iridocyte's structure itself. Light bounces between nanometer-sized features about the same size as wavelengths in the visible part of the spectrum, producing colors. As these structures change their dimensions, the colors change. Reflectin proteins are behind these features' ability to shapeshift.

In previous work, the researchers uncovered that specialized proteins, called reflectins, control reflective pigment cells—iridocytes—which in turn contribute to changing the overall visibility and appearance of the creature. But still a mystery was how the reflectins actually worked.

“We had no idea that the mechanism we would discover would turn out to be so remarkably complex yet contained and so elegantly integrated in one multifunctional molecule—the block-copolymeric reflectin—with opposing domains so delicately poised that they act like a metastable machine, continually sensing and responding to neuronal signaling by precisely adjusting the osmotic pressure of an intracellular nanostructure to precisely fine-tune the color and brightness of its reflected light,” Morse said.

What’s more, the researchers found, the whole process is reversible and cyclable, enabling the squid to continually fine-tune whatever optical properties its situation calls for.

“Our findings reveal a fundamental link between the properties of biomolecular materials produced in living systems and the highly engineered synthetic polymers that are now being developed at the frontiers of industry and technology,”

Yikes... this looks like an issue that will affect the medical sector... I mean, we've talked on here about anomalous cases where it's claimed organ transplant recipients inherent some type of quite specific behavioral characteristic of the deceased organ donor... but it's pretty fringe stuff... and then in a few short years... 

FROM THE QUANTA ARTICLE:


It actually seems even stronger in Mansuy's paper...

I don't think there is much connection between this research and reports of personality changes following organ (especially heart) transplant surgeries apparently transferred from the organ donor. If this phenomenon is real, likes, dislikes, skills, and other personality characteristics and behaviors are somehow being transmitted from the donor to the recipient. "Signalling molecules" targeting particular genes can hardly can be the mechanism of action, unless it is imagined that there are genes determining things such as a liking for hamburgers or Chopin piano music, for instance. In these transplant cases something paranormal appears to be going on.

From https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/...ities.html:

There are claimed to be more than 70 documented cases of transplant patients taking on aspects of their donors...

Examples: An Australian heart transplant patient David Waters, then 24, developed an insatiable appetite for a particular type of crisp following his heart transplant operation. After tracking his donor’s family down, he was told the 18-year-old donor had consumed the interestingly-named “Burger Rings” on a daily basis prior to his death.

Then there is Cheryl Johnson, a mother-of-one from Preston, UK. After undergoing a kidney transplant in 2007, she ditched the trashy books she once preferred and instead started reading Jane Austen and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The then 37-year-old said she believed she developed her highbrow taste for literature from her unknown donor.

A good summary by Douglas Axe of the failures and flaws of Darwinism that still exist at the 160th anniversary of the Origin of Species, from an interview at https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/the-state-...of-species.

"....the only thing that keeps Darwinism going is the culture of intimidation that makes so many of us (academics) afraid to question it. In other words, as an answer to the big question of our origin, Darwinism has succeeded only socially, not scientifically. It is living proof of the power of herdthink.

If I’m right about this, then there should be no shortage of scientific refutations of the theory. This is indeed the case. Take your pick. Those who like math may prefer the various refutations based on probability—all boiling down to the plain fact that blind causes are stupendously unlikely to stumble upon any of the ingenious contrivances that characterize life (and, again, natural selection is completely irrelevant until these things are stumbled upon). Those intrigued by the problem of consciousness might prefer refutations based on the incoherence of physical explanations of mind. Or, if common-sense reasoning is your thing, I’ve developed a refutation based on the unacceptability of appeals to scary coincidences (which Darwinism ends up being).

Then again, if you simply value scientific honesty, you ought to be moved by the fact that thousands of professional Darwinists laboring for 160 years have not explained the origin of a single complex functional feature of life with the degree of rigor expected in all serious sciences. Lots of imaginative storytelling and vigorous handwaving, but nothing at all that rises to the level of a demonstration. Not even close."

The Hidden City                  

Ann Gauger

An excellent overview of the incredibly complicated, intricate and interdependent system of very many subsystems, many irreducibly complex, that constitutes the living cell. Darwinists would have us believe that all this came about by random changes combined with selection. This requires a great act of faith, an almost religious faith that is a prerequisite for admission into that consensus Academy. 

"Picture a hidden city, that though it cannot be seen, is everywhere. Sound crazy? It’s real. And it is the most antic, madcap, crowded yet fantastically efficient city you could ever picture. It’s like Hong Kong sped up to an almost unimaginably manic pace, with all kinds of independent, apparently purposeful activities going on — fast, fast, fast! — conducted by a huge cast of actors (enzymes and other intricately sophisticated molecular machines made of proteins) that go about their business as if it were their business. There, I gave it away. This mysterious city I write about is a microscopic cell, made of DNA, RNA, proteins, and membrane. No doubt you were taught to think of a cell more or less statically, but it is a highly dynamic ever changing entity. How is all this activity coordinated and directed? The answer remains largely mysterious, and the more we find out the more the mystery grows."

Very many complex systems and entities that in order to output their products or tasks need the very entities that they are apparently designed to produce. An origins conundrum of massive proportions. Just a bit of the problem for Darwinism:

"These proteins are all specified by the DNA — as we have seen, DNA is copied into RNA, then RNA is translated into protein. Consequently, proteins cannot exist without DNA. However, if you think about it, DNA cannot exist without proteins either. For example, to replicate DNA, one protein unwinds the DNA, creating a fork with two strands; another protein duplicates the strand to the right, while another casts off loops from the strand to the left so it can be copied backward (!); then another stitches the left-hand strand together. Meanwhile, thirty or so other proteins keep watch over the DNA, proof-reading, correcting, and ensuring very few errors — about 1 mistake per billion nucleotides copied. It’s a chicken and egg problem — which came first, proteins or DNA?

Even if that problem could be solved, another puzzle would remain — how the link between DNA, RNA and protein came about..."

And so on.

Is the theory of natural selection a tautology?

Tam Hunt

Developing natural selection as a theory will require developing a detailed set of filter theories for particular circumstances. These sub-theories will, after testing in numerous experiments, eventually allow development of what may be labeled “principles of evolution.” The good news is that increasingly sophisticated computer models are being developed that should, with good empirical data, allow for the development of the suggested principles more readily than without these powerful new tools. It may be the case, however, that many aspects of evolution in actual populations will remain forever unknowable due to the inherent complexity in such populations. Once we are able to develop models for accurately predicting the course of evolution in actual populations (if not all), natural selection may fairly be described as a general theory of evolution.

While the details of the proposed principles of evolution are beyond the scope of this paper, and certainly beyond my current knowledge, it does seem clear that a new synthesis of evolutionary theory will be far more pluralist than today’s focus on adaptation and natural selection would suggest. I have proposed the outlines of a Generalized Agentic Selection theory as a complement to natural selection in Hunt (2011).[20] An in-progress paper fleshes out these ideas. The present critique refers only to natural selection and doesn’t delve into the issues surrounding the origin of variation. The Modern Synthesis posits that variation is random, but it seems that an increasing number of non-random sources of variation, such as Shapiro’s[21] natural genetic engineering, or Kirschner and Gerhart’s “facilitated variation,”[22] must also be considered if we are to create a more predictive theory of evolution.

An outstanding 24-minute documentary reviewing and summarizing the findings and history of the scientific ID movement against Darwinism for the last 140 years, starting with the amazingly prescient Joseph Le Conte in the late 1880s. He correctly identified the pervasive punctuated equilibrium pattern in the fossil record of some sort of non-Darwinistic evolutionary process, later investigated in detail by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in the 1980s. Le Conte put it baldly that totally contrary to Darwinism the actual fossil data shows that the general pattern of evolution is of immutability of species for long periods of time punctuated by sudden innovation of apparently supernatural origin. He also correctly identified the fundamental inability of natural selection plus random variation to produce major innovation.

Also included are many others including Michael Behe in the 1990s to the present. One of the best I've seen. Furnished by Granville Sewell, who also figures in the research. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJua-0FpmnI

"Reason, if there is such a thing, can serve as a court of appeal not only against the received opinions and habits of our community but also against the peculiarities of our personal perspective. It is something each individual can find within himself, but at the same time it has universal authority. Reason provides, mysteriously, a way of distancing oneself from common opinion and received practices that is not a mere elevation of individuality--not a determination to express one's idiosyncratic self rather than go along with everyone else. Whoever appeals to reason purports to discover a source of authority within himself that is not merely personal, or societal, but universal--and that should also persuade others who are willing to listen to it.

If this description sounds Cartesian or even Platonic, that is no accident: The topic may be ancient and well-worn, but it is fully alive today, partly because of the prevalence of various forms of what I (but not, usually, its proponents) would call skepticism about reason, either in general or in some of its instances. A vulgar version of this skepticism is epidemic in the weaker regions of our culture, but it receives some serious philosophical support as well. I am prompted to this inquiry partly by the ambient climate of irrationalism but also by not really knowing what more to say after irrationalism has been rejected as incoherent--for there is a real problem about how such a thing as reason is possible.

How is it possible that creatures like ourselves, supplied with the contingent capacities of a biological species whose very existence appears to be radically accidental, should have access to universally valid methods of objective thought?"

-Nagel, The Last Word

...................................

How is it possible that creatures like ourselves, supplied with the contingent capacities of a biological species whose very existence appears to be radically accidental, should have access to universally valid methods of objective thought?"

-Nagel, The Last Word

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the accumulating overwhelming scientific and philosophical and societal case against Darwinism. 

The implications of Darwinism, and the scientistic thoroughly materialist worldview that naturally results, rob people of any true meaning, value, and purpose for their lives and thus rob them of any real hope that they may have for their futures. Of course, a belief system with such a universal all encompassing scope naturally has resulted in a sort of secular religion, with its own clergy, organization, and means of persecuting heresy.

An eloquent statement of the inevitable implications of Darwinism is furnished by this quote by one well-known spokesman for Darwinism and scientism, evolutionary biologist and philosopher William Provine:

"Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.”

 
As an example of the toxic societal consequences of Darwinism, there was a Finnish high school tragedy in which 8 kids were shot and killed. This may not be typical (I don't know of any studies on this), but it is still an example.
 
Of course, this sort of negative societal outworking of the belief system doesn't logically invalidate Darwinism, but it still adds fuel to the very large body of  evidence against Darwinism.

"Overwhelmingly, the shooter Auvinen’s statements in his YouTube contribution (and other blogs on the internet) reveal his belief  (system)...
 
‘I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial social darwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist.’‘Life is just a coincidence … result of long process of evolution and many several factors, causes and effects.’‘There are no other universal laws than the laws of nature and the laws of physics.’‘Evolution is both a theory and a fact, creationism is neither one.’‘Religious people, your gods are nothing and exists only in your heads. Your slave morals means nothing to me. I’m the god & devil of my own life.’‘What is the best thing in life? It ends."