…and this is a 
The silence of the sheep
Category: Creationism
Posted on: June 14, 2007 1:00 AM, by PZ Myers
I mentioned before that there has been a peculiar silence on the ID blogs about Michael Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution. Behe was the one marginally credible biologist on the Discovery Institute team, the guy who got everything rolling with Darwin's Black Box and their old magic mantra of "irreducible complexity," and it's been like an information blackout from Dembski and Luskin and West and Meyer on his latest effort.
Now John Lynch has cataloged the responses. There are some complaints about the critics, but almost no one is trying to defend any of Behe's conclusions.
So far, this is nothing like the circus we got when Darwin's Black Box was released—we were constantly slapping down little creationists who were enthused to pieces that they had this serious book that they were sure completely refuted all of evolution. I suspect there are two general responses from ID-leaning readers out there:
- "Wut? I din't come from no monkey!"
- "How am I going to use his criticisms of random mutation and natural selection without endorsing common descent and this scary idea that god is intentionally creating every parasite and disease?"
That is, they're torn between the clueless rejection of the parts of evolutionary biology Behe has accepted (which is probably the majority view) and the realization that Behe has said too much about the nature of their designer—so much, in fact, that it's going to turn off their backers who want evidence that they are the creations of a loving god.
There may also be some reluctance for a proponent to do a thorough review because they'd feel compelled to criticize major parts of his claims…and doing that would be fomenting a schism.
We'll have to wait and see if ever any of the fellow travelers in the ID movement ever get around to articulating their views.
Comments
Will the creationists try to stuff school boards with tools who will promote a book they are not enthusiastic about?
Posted by: llewelly | June 14, 2007 1:09 AM
I don't see why there would be a problem... they could just pick the blurbs that support their view and ignore all of the ones that don't or that are contradictory. It's what they do, after all.
If they can do it with their bible, they can do it with this book.
Posted by: craig | June 14, 2007 1:11 AM
A little offtopic, but THIS seems like big news:
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/findings-challenge-basic-views-human-genome-13465.html
It's a major find, and one sure to be misrepresented by creationists, since the blaring headlines will be "junk DNA debunked: DNA contains far more complex coding than previosuly thought, etc."
Worth a look and a pre-emptive discussion of its implications.
Posted by: plunge | June 14, 2007 1:45 AM
On the Discover Institutes's podcast they are currently running a series of interviews with Paul Nelson where he attacks the idea of common descent. He is (apparently) writing a paper on this topic which is taking so long to come out (it was mentioned in the Wedge document!) that I'm beginning to suspect its going to be published in the liner notes for Chinese Democracy.
He mentions Behe's acceptance of common descent and the point that 'Intelligent Design theory' can include both common descent and multiple descent but never really explains how these are profoundly differing world views - I guess his audience don't really get that point or particularly care so long as it sounds like something vaguely scientific that they can use to convince themselves that evolutionary theory must be wrong.
Posted by: MartinC | June 14, 2007 1:48 AM
Maybe they are starting to realize that when they use ID to stuff God Into the Gaps, God gets smaller and smaller as discoveries are made which squeeze the Watchmaker into oblivion and they don't like the implications.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich | June 14, 2007 1:49 AM
With reference to the scienceblog story:
Slashdot picked up that article. Imagine a group of fifteen to twenty-five year old geeks conflating computer skills with insight, each trying to outbabble the other. *shiver*
IDers would not even have to quote mine that thread. Quote scooping would do. I am sure some folks over there even have computer science degrees and are thus respected scientists. Perhaps even named Steve.
Posted by: Sean | June 14, 2007 1:58 AM
Behe sure is distancing himself from most of the IDists - except in one respect. Miserable scholarship.
But I applaude his honesty and consistency with regard to diseases. Designed to Kill. Efficiently. I wonder, considering the political stripes involved in the antievolution movement, if they realize that making biological weapons of mass destruction makes the designer a terrorist?
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | June 14, 2007 2:14 AM
Isn't there a parody of "All things bright an beautiful", listing all the horrible parasites, diseases and predators?
And can someone post it up, please?
Posted by: G. Tingey | June 14, 2007 3:08 AM
The wonderful Monty Python:
Posted by: John Lynch | June 14, 2007 3:17 AM
You may have just pissed PZ off...
Posted by: Wes | June 14, 2007 3:28 AM
Creationists must surely be cringing at the thought that if ID were now to succeed at prying open the science class doors, Behe's suggestion of an evil or at least capricious designer creating these terrible diseases will get presented as ID to students...
Posted by: Zombie | June 14, 2007 4:08 AM
That was always going to be the danger when writing books about their disguised religion(s) though. More so perhaps when those were from any ID Creationist (or even general religionist) who knew anything at all about reality because they might be tempted to mention some of it. The only way that any religious people can pretend they believe in the same thing is to avoid comparing notes and be as vague as possible whenever they do say anything (like cold reading).
While, up until now, the ID Creationists have been very good at writing a lot about nothing in a vacuous yet obscure way (eg Dembski's pretend mathematics), every single publication carries a risk of exposing differences of belief in a way even the followers can see. Thus ripping the big tent in which all these varied creationists are hiding to gain the benefit of superficial unity.
Actually, I rather like that they have a big tent of creationism. I'm quite sure a lot of them are clowns and the ones who have to publish things are also tightrope walkers and contortionists. Even the rest of them who have no observable skills are wearing multi-coloured clashing belief systems.
Posted by: SEF | June 14, 2007 4:37 AM
You know the IDers are gonna quote you now right?
"Behe [is] the . . . credible biologist on the Discovery Institute team, the guy who got everything rolling with Darwin's Black Box . . . ."
P.Z. Myers on Michael Behe.
Your praises will be sung because they will never look into who you actually are. haha.
Posted by: Will | June 14, 2007 5:21 AM
Posted by: Ex-drone | June 14, 2007 6:29 AM
I doubt Behe's book will cause IDers any furrowed brows.
ID has never been about promulgating a *coherent* counter-theory to evolution, it's always been about bringing up isolated bits of evolutionary theory and shouting "Wrong! Can't happen!" As Judge Jones (ably assisted by plaintiffs' lawyers) found in Kitzmiller, this ain't science.
Behe's new book does exactly this (using the same kind of vague handwaving past those pesky little factual details as in Black Box). The fact that it doesn't hang together on its own or as compared to other ID material is no different than you'll find in any typical post and comments over on Uncommon Descent.
Posted by: Jud | June 14, 2007 7:01 AM
Of course God is a loving god. He loves parasites and diseases. It's just that we all need to learn how to get along. Welfare reform would work well here. Instead of letting them sponge off us and pollute the environment that is us, we could find something for them to do and teach them good hygiene. Happy, healthy, productive parasites and diseases for a better tomorrow!
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 14, 2007 7:05 AM
The internet is destroying the YEC movement and the ID movement as well (and all the overlap).
Theists who used to quote Behe and starting to realize quickly that Behe accepts an ancient earth and evolution.
They have been losing a lot of their flock the more they open their mouths on the internet.
I'm actually having a civil discussion with one over here.
I actually think there is hope with this person, but I could be wrong.
Posted by: The Atheist Jew | June 14, 2007 7:47 AM
Robert Frost figured out the ID people a couple of generations ago:
A whole book on parasites and predators might be a good Xmas gift for ID types. At the moment I'm personally a bit unhappy with the way God designed woodticks and their related viruses, though it's all in theory and I'm apparently not sick with anything.
Posted by: John Emerson | June 14, 2007 7:52 AM
both common descent and multiple descent but never really explains how these are profoundly differing world views
That's as nonsensical as claiming that physical theories that entail magnetic monopoles and physical theories that exclude them are "profoundly differing world views". Common descent and multiple descent aren't "world views" at all, nor are they profoundly differing. All the empirical evidence to date points to common descent, but if, say, we found some gas vent critters that appeared to be the result of a separate abiogenesis, it would be an exciting find but wouldn't upset any scientists' "world view". In fact, anyone who thinks that there's life elsewhere in the universe (and doesn't subscribe to some sort of universal panspermia) already entertains the notion of multiple descent.
The profoundly differing world views have nothing to do with the number of lines of descent, but rather with whether they were brought about by natural cranes or divine skyhooks.
Posted by: truth machine | June 14, 2007 7:59 AM
if, say, we found some gas vent critters that appeared to be the result of a separate abiogenesis, it would be an exciting find but wouldn't upset any scientists' "world view".
************************************
It would upset the scientific community if the original life form had more than one cell.
Posted by: The Atheist Jew | June 14, 2007 8:59 AM
On Amazon he writes:
My new book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, presents evidence disproving random mutation as a major part of evolution and shows that life developed non-randomly from cells to animals.
So... what's the evidence?
And if it's true that he has achieved this major leap, why aren't the message boards and blogs lighting up with excited discussion?
Posted by: CalGeorge | June 14, 2007 9:02 AM
Muslims make this easier upon themselves. They claim that while allah is omni-benevolent, he did intentionally create the parasites and diseases-as part of his trials to test us or else, there is some kind of hidden benefit to us in the existence of malaria(!)that we can't understand yet.
Posted by: mndarwinist | June 14, 2007 9:10 AM
It would upset the scientific community if the original life form had more than one cell.
That would be the equivalent of finding a rabbit in the Cambrian, as we have a long fossil record of single-celled organisms before the first multi-celled organisms.
The scientists will wait for something resembling evidence before getting upset, I'm sure.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 9:30 AM
Muslims make this easier upon themselves. They claim that while allah is omni-benevolent, he did intentionally create the parasites and diseases-as part of his trials to test us or else, there is some kind of hidden benefit to us in the existence of malaria(!)that we can't understand yet.
That's the usual Xian take as well, plus a side order of "the fall". The Parsi/Zarathustran solution is much more elegant, it posits an inferior creator trying to keep up with the competent creator. Which is why their prefered method of diposal for the dead is letting vultures eat them.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 10:29 AM
Y'know, this whole Behe thing makes me realize that it'd be ridiculously easy to do a psyops campaign on the faithful, by offering them PLENTY of enthusiastic experts who would proffer subtly ridiculous arguments in favor of "creation science" then - after the creationists are fully invested in supporting them - publish a paper saying "oops, sorry, I was wrong." A buddy of mine used to refer to this as an "attention-wasting attack" you simply bombard your target with enough stuff that they start to go crazy from fear that something important is slipping through the cracks.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | June 14, 2007 10:44 AM
I'm a fundie Christian, I don't have any problem with Behe's book. He seems to be working within Darwinism, and pointing out that something very, very damning: populations in the trillion trillions of malaria might be the _perfect_ place for natural selection, but try doing that with elephants or horses, and the statistics become unworkable.
Extend the needed populations to every living thing, and the picture becomes idiotic.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 10:51 AM
try doing that with elephants or horses, and the statistics become unworkable.
I'd like to see your math.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 10:55 AM
Before the Fall, parasites and viruses dined on vegetables. The ensuing blights, rusts, and rotten plants caused such a scarcity of food (for all creatures were vegetarians, including "carnivorous" plants) that many creatures began to eat flesh, and at this time what we now know as "ecosystems" came into existence.
Posted by: mark | June 14, 2007 10:58 AM
Behe works out the populations of malaria (and mosquitos vs. DDT), and yes, with those sorts of populations, you can see the mutation/adaptation at work. Rapid reproduction, huge populations, you can see the progress. Although it's for just a couple of changes, and those are destructive, but helpful to survival.
But to do that with a mammal with a two-year gestation period? Could you fit a trillion elephants in Africa? Then do the same with all animals -- everywhere?
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 11:04 AM
But to do that with a mammal with a two-year gestation period? Could you fit a trillion elephants in Africa? Then do the same with all animals -- everywhere?
Organisms don't mutate, genes do.
Now try the math again.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 11:07 AM
"Organisms don't mutate, genes do."
Oh goody -- a truism!
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 11:12 AM
If you're just looking to kill brain cells, Graculus, there are much more entertaining ways than that.
Posted by: RavenT | June 14, 2007 11:16 AM
Oh goody -- a truism!
Just like your statement about animal vs bacterial life-spans.
Show your work.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 11:16 AM
If you're just looking to kill brain cells, Graculus, there are much more entertaining ways than that.
It's too early here to break into the Lagavullin.
The flaws in the argument are waaay deeper than just raw numbers, of course. But wnelson can't even handle the raw numbers.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 11:18 AM
Graculus:
It might be faster to just explain my 'error' rather than beat about the bush with open-ended questions.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 11:23 AM
wnelson, are you aware that Behe's premises and math are both completely wrong?
Malaria resistance can evolve stepwise, by small increments that are easily achieved in a short time.
Read Sean Carroll. Read Jerry Coyne. Read me. We've been all over his molecular genetics and math, and he gets it wrong every step of the way.
Posted by: PZ Myers | June 14, 2007 11:33 AM
I understand that -- Behe says the same in his book: Malaria _is_ an example of evolution. (And a good one.) They _are_ evolving. His point, I think tangentially, is that Malaria and other rapidly-reproducing organisms, that can exist simultaneously in the trillions, _do_ have the ability to make these changes.
But when you scale this to organisms that can't exist in the trillion trillions simultaneously, and cycle their populations rapidly it's problematic. Those sorts of organisms just aren't going to have the time needed to catch the appropriate mutations.
I deliberately came here to see someone point out, if there is one, Behe's false path in _The Edge of Evolution_. If the statistics don't work, if somehow Elephants get mutations by the dozen, or they don't need large populations to generate the needed mutations, or something else -- lay it on me.
In front, or behind the woodshed is fine with me.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 11:43 AM
wnelson said: "Lay it on me."
PZ just did, in the comment preceding yours. Those links he's got in the comment? They show how Behe screws up both the premises behind the math, and the math itself. Evolution *does* scale. The material PZ has linked (among many other critiques of Behe's book) helps explain how.
(Obi-Wan voice) Click the links, Luke! (/Obi-Wan voice)
Posted by: Jud | June 14, 2007 11:51 AM
wnelson, of course the picture is idiotic-to you. By your own admission, you are a fundamentalist, which means you probably think the Earth is less than 6000 years old.
Except that it is not.It is over 4 billion years old. And think this: over about seven million years, quite minor in geological time, we have evolved from other apes by DNA changes that amount to less than two percent.
As Sean Carroll points out, the speed of change of DNA in theory could be a lot more than in the natural world. And think this: all kinds of grains that make the bulk of our food were selected artificially from wild plants in less than 20,000 years. Wheat, rice and barley didn't exist until we became farmers.
Posted by: mndarwinist | June 14, 2007 11:52 AM
Jud:
I wouldn't have posted that, but PZ seems to think that Behe is throwing stones at the case of malaria -- he's not -- I don't know were he's going there. Behe says that malaria is a very good example of stepwise mutation. (But it just takes some serious trail-and-error.)
???
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 11:59 AM
It might be faster to just explain my 'error' rather than beat about the bush with open-ended questions.
Well, you were making some assertions without support. I much prefer this mode of communication. :-)
First of all, each gene interacts (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the gene) with other genes. So the effect on the system of each added gene is not linear. In addition there are genes responsible for critical stages in development, and changes in them "ripple" through the organism to produce vast changes in the organism. Malaria parasites don't have the developmental genes of elephants, they don't need them. (PZ has a lot of good posts about Hox genes on this blog, if you want to read up). So just crunching numbers isn't going to work very well unless you can accurately account for every single variable.
However the main problem is that the evidence is against it. You see, those elephants have evolved significantly in the last 70 years. In the 1930s an elephant without tusks was a rarity, less than 1% of savannah elephants were tuskless. The rate is now 30%. In twenty years cod have gone from reaching sexual maturity at 65cm and over 6 years of age, to reaching sexual maturity at 32cm and less than 3 years of age, a change of over 50%.
Rapid changes in populations with long generational times and low populations is something that already hapens, we don't need to speculate or runch numbers to show that it is possible, because it has happened literally in front of us.
I hope that helps.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 12:12 PM
wnelson: Scott Hatfield here. Let me preface my remarks by noting that like you, I'm a believer, albeit not a 'fundy'. So I have no ax to grind against Christendom.
You wrote: "....populations in the trillion trillions of malaria might be the _perfect_ place for natural selection, but try doing that with elephants or horses, and the statistics become unworkable.
Extend the needed populations to every living thing, and the picture becomes idiotic."
The first thing I would note is that there is a detailed fossil record of horses (the classic Simpson sequence), which you can read here in Kathleen Hunt's excellent article:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
Less well-known, but also surprisingly detailed, is the Elephantidae sequence:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2b.html
Ken Miller discusses the elephant sequence at length in his book 'Finding Darwin's God'. Many people on this site dispute some of Miller's conclusions in that book, but his discussion of the elephant fossil record is excellent. As a Christian, you owe it to yourself to read Miller's book and learn reasons why thoughtful, well-informed Christians often reject creationism. (He's also Behe's best-known critic)
These detailed fossil records are evidence which requires an explanation. In some cases, as Kathleen Hunt demonstrates in the above link, there are species-to-species transitions known in the fossil record for the two lineages you mention. Wow! That's a lot of detail, and it clearly requires a more detailed explanation than 'God did it'.
*
So much for the background material. Now for a little bare-knuckles advocacy for evolutionary biology as a discipline!
wnelson, you've got questions about the details as to *how* evolution occurred in different individual cases? Fine. Join the club! Evolutionary biologists do *not* claim that they have a complete description of events in such cases. How could they? Rather, they claim that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the fact of evolution, and that the theory of evolution through natural selection is the best scientific model we have for evolutionary change, including the production of new species.
With that in mind, your comment about 'statistics becoming idiotic' is a bit insulting to those of us who have actually studied evolutionary dynamics. The math that supports the inference of evolution by natural selection was worked out EIGHT decades ago (!) by guys like Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright. This is old news! The math shows that, given a stochastic process in which both random and non-random elements are involved, that evolution is not only probable, but inevitable.
Perhaps you labor under the misapprehension that evolution by natural selection is a theory of pure chance? If so, be advised that isn't the case. It's not a matter of pure chance whom the bear eats, or (conversely) who avoids becoming the bear's dinner.
Nor is it purely chance that you, a believer, are asking questions on this thread! As an enthusiastic Darwinian, let me suggest that your presence here potentially represents untold generations of selection for intelligence, for questioning, for honest engagement. I'm hoping that you won't drop the ball, so to speak!
Further correspondence can be sent to: epigene13@hotmail.com
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | June 14, 2007 12:34 PM
Some of these ID arguments remind me of Zeno's Paradoxes--superficially they might seem vaguely persuasive, because the solution is not always readily apparent. But for Baal's sake, we've SEEN the equivalent of a rabbit passing a turtle, so we KNOW motion has to work somehow. Now we just need to parse out that initial misperception.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | June 14, 2007 12:42 PM
wnelson,
Humans on average have about 100 new mutations per person per generation. There are 6.7 billion humans on earth at the moment. That means in the living humans today, completely ignoring all prior diversity, have 670 billion new mutations. The human genome is around 3 billion base pairs in length. That means it's likely that every single possible one-step mutation is extant in multiple people alive today.
If you have two independent beneficial mutations, that happen to work together even better than apart, you'll see both mutations working towards fixation independently and eventually you end up with "irreducibly complex" features. Keep doing this out to 5 or 10 steps and you get flagellum and bombardier beetles.
Take a look at current human evolution. Cattle domestication took place 10-12 thousand years ago, but humans have been steadily evolving towards adult lactose tolerance. In Africa today we are starting to see genetic AIDS resistance popping up, how long do you think that will take to grow in a population were 7% of the adult population is already infected? These are changes over periods of 1,000's of years, which is the blink of an eye on the geologic time scale.
Posted by: Diogenes | June 14, 2007 12:44 PM
Graculus:
That's helps some. Although, elephants and cod have been under terrific pressure this century (and last). I read Carrol's critique -- so multiple jumps _are_ possible -- but when are we going to _see_ something that is brand new to a genome, malaria, snakes or otherwise, caused by this mechanism? The adjustments malaria has made, and Carroll's other examples _are_ valid example of mutation/selection, but still only rearranging existing material, and they still have needed large populations to do it.
When you step back and look at something like an elephant, you basically have to 'build' one in 30-60 million years. That's what, 5,000,000 generations? How many mutations in 5,000,000 generations would it take to build an elephant? Even if it's 10,000,000 generations, with large populations in each, you are asking for an incredible knight's tour of _creative_ activity in the genome, let alone the reshuffling of what is there. Expand that picture to every living thing, everywhere, and it's an insane amount of creative activity, that would have to be constantly producing new material into the genome.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 12:46 PM
Have you even read Behe's book? Maybe you haven't gotten to the end yet. Here's a direct quote:
Behe specifically says malaria was not produced by step-by-step mutations. His earlier false claims nearer the beginning of the book say that two amino acid changes are the limits of what evolution by mutation and natural selection can accomplish.
Posted by: PZ Myers | June 14, 2007 12:50 PM
The elephant is not "built" from SCRATCH, you know. That's sort of the point.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | June 14, 2007 12:53 PM
Sure, but you have to do the heavy lifting in 5,000,000 generations. Thats could easily require advances in new material in every generation.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 1:04 PM
I understand that -- Behe says the same in his book: Malaria _is_ an example of evolution. (And a good one.) They _are_ evolving. His point, I think tangentially, is that Malaria and other rapidly-reproducing organisms, that can exist simultaneously in the trillions, _do_ have the ability to make these changes.
But when you scale this to organisms that can't exist in the trillion trillions simultaneously, and cycle their populations rapidly it's problematic. Those sorts of organisms just aren't going to have the time needed to catch the appropriate mutations.
I just had to jump in here. There was a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA which I summarize here. It appears that incredibly large population sizes are disadvantageous when it comes to accruing mutations that add genetic material (insertions and duplications) because neutral and near neutral mutations have a much harder time becoming fixed in the population since the pace of genetic drift is greatly slowed. This greater difficulty in adding genetic material can actually slow innovation by removing the raw material for future evolution.
Posted by: Placozoan | June 14, 2007 1:05 PM
"Have you even read Behe's book?"
No, to be fair, I'm only half way through. My point was that Behe's point is that malaria is evolving now, and that it's a great example. Carroll points out he leaves out an example of several mutations, is interesting -- but I thought Behe had said in the case of C-Harlem, and Sickle, that that was an example of mutations building on each other.
(I do appreciate Carroll's critique.)
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 1:12 PM
What exactly do you mean by "build" an elephant? You don't need to build its skeleton, since its ancestor 30-60 mya had a skeleton that was basically the same. You don't need to build its skin or muscles, since its ancestors already had those. They eye was already present, as was the heart, the lungs, the central nervous system, etc.
Posted by: jpf | June 14, 2007 1:12 PM
Is it really "heavy lifting" to elongate a nose and some teeth, enlarge the ears, and increase the overall size? Can't these all be done with small developmental changes?
I think the answer to "How many mutations in 5,000,000 generations would it take to build an elephant?" would be: "less than wnelson thinks".
Posted by: jpf | June 14, 2007 1:21 PM
Yes, but you would have to do it piecewise within the 5,000,000 steps on a knight's tour of changes. I don't mean probabilities, just that you could trace a survivor all the way back in the 5,000,000 generations.
That would be interesting to see modeled -- if we can model nuclear fusion, we ought to be able to reverse engineer these steps, exactly. If not in an elephant, then in something simple.
There _is_ a path back in every species, we should be able to find all of them.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 1:25 PM
Still haven't bothered to click those links, eh, wnelson?
Think of one of your hobbies, something that takes a little time to learn to do well. Now think of someone you're trying to teach this hobby to, and they're just not bothering to put forth the effort, though they keep telling you they want to participate in the hobby. Would be aggravating, no?
So you keep indicating you want to discuss evolution, but you're not willing even to click a mouse to learn more about it. It's beginning to reach the aggravating stage....
Read the linked articles, man. The material isn't difficult at all. Then if you still have questions, come on back and ask on the basis of a little more information.
Posted by: Jud | June 14, 2007 1:26 PM
wnelson,
The probability Behe derives is wrong--exponentially wrong. Even worse, which should upset you if you are any sort of a Christian, is he knows that it is wrong, as he contradicts it within the same book.
Go to the links provided above.
Here's something to think about--how long does it take for genetic variation (random wrt fitness) and selection to evolve tight, functional protein-protein binding?
Can we observe this in real time?
Is the mechanism of genetic variation in this case one that is considered by Behe, or one that he conveniently excludes from his phony analysis?
Posted by: John | June 14, 2007 1:36 PM
'vat are you talking about? I said I read Carroll's critique.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 1:38 PM
when are we going to _see_ something that is brand new to a genome, malaria, snakes or otherwise, caused by this mechanism?
It depends on what you mean by "brand new". I can think of a number of new features developed by various populations in the recent past (including in humans), evolutionary theory does not posit that a cat will give birth to a kitten with functional wings, so we have to clarify what we are asking and make sure that it isn't a strawman.
still only rearranging existing material
That "rearrangement" includes duplications of base pairs, codons, genes, chromosomes and entire chromosome sets. So there is a constant addition (and deletion) of genetic material to work with.
When you step back and look at something like an elephant, you basically have to 'build' one in 30-60 million years. That's what, 5,000,000 generations? How many mutations in 5,000,000 generations would it take to build an elephant?
It depends what you are starting with, it's not like you are building it from the ground up. The ancestral populations already had most of the features that occur in modern elephants. It also depends on the selection pressure, and there were periods of very intense selection in that time frame.
I think the problem is that it seems counter-intuitive that large differences in visible features (like size) can easily be very small differences in other regards.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 1:50 PM
You seem to be assuming that an elephant is an ultimate goal, and that it is highly unlikely to reach that specific goal from any starting point. But if we lived in an alternate universe where, what in our universe are the ancestors of elephants, instead of giving rise to elephants gave rise to thaneleps (a hypothetical non-elephantine creature) then your counterpart in that universe would make the same argument about the unlikeliness of the steps in thanelep evolution, and in another alternate universe, your counterpart would do the same for lanteeph evolution, etc, etc.
But, given that evolution is occurring, it must produce some end result. That result isn't because of a "knight's tour" of predetermined stopping points that make an elephant (the "legal knight moves" in the chess metaphor), but rather the history of the environmental niches the lineage went through, which shaped its evolution.
Posted by: jpf | June 14, 2007 1:51 PM
But how much advance in new material? Since we're visual primates, we tend to key into the flashy superficial differences and give them too much weight, while at the same time we underweight the similarities whic constitute the vast majority of structure.
A troll on the other thread got me reading some dermatology yesterday, and here's a perfect example: mammals didn't have to "invent" the process of developing mammal skin. The reptiles already did that, which they in turn had gotten from the amphibians, and so forth.
The difference between mammal skin and reptile skin is minor--a couple of different proteins here and there, dry versus moist, rougher versus smoother--but the similarities in the developmental process are huge, and skin is, basically, skin.
You're keying into a small phenotypic aspect of a huge whole, like dry versus moist, and confusing that small tip of the iceberg for the entirety of the process of developing skin.
Posted by: RavenT | June 14, 2007 1:55 PM
John:
If I understand you correctly, your contention is Carroll's, that multiple jumps are not a difficult, or improbable.
What I'm saying, is that, even granting that, you still need an incidence which is too high. In the case of humans to chimps, we are separated by 4,000,000 years or 100,000 generations. You would have to trace back me, you, everybody, though 100,000 changes. Again, I'll set aside the populations and just assume it was enough to do this by mutations, etc.
100,000 genetic changes from you and I to a chimpanzee? That path should be easy enough to find recursively.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 1:58 PM
Yes, but you would have to do it piecewise within the 5,000,000 steps
There are two things to keep in mind.
1) You are not limited to one mutation per individual per generation.
2) a mutation in developmental genes will usually affect more than one feature at a time.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 1:59 PM
wnelson,
Of course all the evidence in the world is not going to convince you. "Fundamentalist" means the fundamental cannot be questioned.
Can you mention even one example that shows, empirically, mutations that are beneficial to an organism are more likely to happen spontaneously than other mutations? Apparently the Great Mutator cannot be called at will to show himself in the lab-just as he cannot be called to show some evidence of himself in double blind studies of prayer.
And yes, differences between our genome and chimp genome are less than what you think-they are less than the differences between chimp and gorilla DNA.
By the way, if you think available time for natural selection has been inadequate, you better read my first post-artificial selection happens much faster than that.
Posted by: mndarwinist | June 14, 2007 2:31 PM
What I'm saying, is that, even granting that, you still need an incidence which is too high. In the case of humans to chimps, we are separated by 4,000,000 years or 100,000 generations. You would have to trace back me, you, everybody, though 100,000 changes. Again, I'll set aside the populations and just assume it was enough to do this by mutations, etc.
Actually it's not even that. In terms of raw numbers it's half of that, because we aren't going from human to chimpanzee, we are going from human to last common ancestor between human and chimpanzee, and the chimpanzee has also evolved since then.
At this point your argument is getting a bit iffy in other regards, for instance, how many genetic differences between human clines? The argument could also be used to "demonstrate" that modern Africans and modern Europeans cannot have common ancestry. (Note that I am NOT saying that this is your argument, just that the less than ethical could use it so).
If you wich to carry on this conversation in private after if falls off the front page, provide me with an email address... I promise not sign you up for any atheist spam ;-)
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 2:31 PM
PZ, are you saying that creationists are rejecting Behe's (purportedly) scientific claims because of their philosophical implications? I'm curious because of your comment at my blog that "Philosophical implications" are not even on the radar in this argument." Is this a definitional disagreement?
Posted by: Josh Rosenau | June 14, 2007 2:33 PM
I do not beleive that wnelson is a troll, even if he's digging his heels in, nor is he/she necessarily a fundamentalist.
The primary hurdle isn't even the evidence... it's the fact that many people have been convinced that to accept evolution is to be an atheist. This is obviously not true to those who have studied evolution, as science says nothing about the existance of a diety, only about that deity poking whatever it uses for digits into the process. Evolution is no more "atheist" than physics, math or baking.
Posted by: Graculus | June 14, 2007 2:44 PM
No, I'm saying that there are rejecting the argument because of a prior emotional commitment to the idea of a loving sky daddy. It has nothing to do with either an objective evaluation of scientific evidence or a rational, logical consideration of philosophy.
Posted by: PZ Myers | June 14, 2007 2:49 PM
wnelson, you seem to think that DNA has some sort of diff function, like a wiki. While that would be awesome, we don't have the genome of every generation to calculate the diff. (Now contemplating genomwiki, where you could edit a genome on the 'edit' tab and a new species would be generated in the 'article' tab. The awesomeness would be staggering. Tweak a development gene and see what you get, in one easy edit. And reverts would be available when you accidentally introduce Very Bad Things.)
Posted by: MyaR | June 14, 2007 2:50 PM
wnelson, I think you are overestimating the level of differences between humans and chimps. There are 10 times as many genetic differences between a rat and a mouse than their are between a human and a chimp. If you compare human and chimp proteins 29% of them are identical, and on average the remaining 71% have a single changed amino acid. If you look at dogs, they are 99.85% similar across the entire species. Great Danes, Huskies, Chihuahuas, and Bloodhounds area all genetically within 0.15% difference. Small changes can make for big visual effects that we as humans attribute way to much significance to.
Furthermore, why would 100,000 genetic changes be difficult to evolve when we are dealing with hundreds of billions of mutations per generation? Mutations create the raw resources of evolution, and anything with heavy selective pressure will act upon that and drive new alleles to fixation. Also remember that chimps have been evolving as well over this period, so only roughly half the mutations arose in our line of descent (and recent evidence suggest chimps have been evolving faster than us since the split).
Posted by: Diogenes | June 14, 2007 2:57 PM
Wnelson: Five million generations is enough time for a lot to happen. Gould points this out somewhere in "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory". Suppose that an organism or a structure (say a tooth) is one inch long. Suppose that there is genetic variation and a selective advantage for increased size, such that on average it is 0.0001% bigger in each generation than the generation before. This is such a tiny change that we could not possibly hope to detect it by measuring over a few generations. How big do you think it would be after 5,000,000 generations? I'll let you do the math. Don't forget it's compound interest.
Posted by: Alec | June 14, 2007 2:58 PM
Good points, but here's my problem - 2% of our DNA is roughly 60 million base pairs -- let's say only 30 million for argument's sake. You've somehow got to manipulate that over 100,000 generations.
It's just too much to ask.
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 3:32 PM
You still haven't answered the points I raised, wnelson.
Posted by: mndarwinist | June 14, 2007 3:44 PM
I hope you're not holding your breath, mndarwinist.
Posted by: RavenT | June 14, 2007 3:46 PM
There's an article at:
http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/156/1/297
which estimates the mutation rate required to produce the observed differences between human and chimp pseudogenes (not subject to selection, so should reflect the random mutation rate.) For a wide variety of estimates of the divergence time and initial population size, they estimate a mutation rate on the order of 10^-8 per nucleotide per generation, which is consistent with other estimates from disease genes. For a genome of ~7*10^9 base pairs that's a hundred or two hundred mutations per individual.
So, not too much to ask after all.
Posted by: Stephen Wells | June 14, 2007 3:52 PM
OK, I'll do the math for you. It would be over 12 feet long. If we go wild and suppose that it could be a dizzying 0.01% bigger in each generation (still too slight to detect), we could get the same result in a mere 50,000 generations - a blink of an eye geologically.
Posted by: Alec | June 14, 2007 3:58 PM
Stephen:
I looked at that link. If I'm reading that right, it is calling for ~172 changes per person on the genetic knight's tour back to when humans separated from chimps -- yes? (The 172 all being 'good' changes?)
Posted by: wnelson | June 14, 2007 4:13 PM
I asked wnelson a series of questions:
Here's something to think about--how long does it take for genetic variation (random wrt fitness) and selection to evolve tight, functional protein-protein binding? Can we observe this in real time? Is the mechanism of genetic variation in this case one that is considered by Behe, or one that he conveniently excludes from his phony analysis?
wnelson didn't bother trying to answer them, and instead wrote:
"John:
If I understand you correctly, your contention is Carroll's, that multiple jumps are not a difficult, or improbable."
I'm simply asking you to look at observable evolution and its capabilities. Instead of assuming, why not attempt to answer my questions?
"What I'm saying, is that, even granting that, you still need an incidence which is too high."
Not at all. This is why Behe lied about his probabilities. He is exponentially wrong.
"100,000 genetic changes from you and I to a chimpanzee? That path should be easy enough to find recursively."
Only if you think that Behe's failure to consider mutational mechanisms other than simple substitutions was anything but a cheap parlor trick. If you answer my questions above, you'll begin to see.
"Good points, but here's my problem - 2% of our DNA is roughly 60 million base pairs -- let's say only 30 million for argument's sake. You've somehow got to manipulate that over 100,000 generations."
Why does it have to be manipulated? Do you not realize that there are many, many types of mutations other than single-base substitutions?
Try and answer my initial three questions. If you don't know, say so and guess. I promise you'll learn something.
Posted by: John | June 14, 2007 4:22 PM