Intelligent Design - theory, examples, implications

[Buffy]

Yes, but Dembski is just fiddling with probability. Its is a situation where he's assuming that you put all the ingredients in a bucket and *randomly* try all combinations. He makes no allowance for subcombinations that occur and build on eachother nor for feedback mechanisms that cause selection (which by the way does not have to be biological!). Even if we were debating pure mathematical probabilities, he does not use Bayes theorem to adjust for prior probabilities. Thus, before we even get to talking about evolution, his computations are garbage simply based on the fact that his math is all wrong.

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Biochemist]

Yes, but Dembski is just fiddling with probability.

Sure, but the only point Lolic was maiking iw that 1 in 10^150 is the outlide limit of probablility. I don't have a problem with that boundary. It is the calculation of the odds of any particular state of nature that are a little dicey.

[Buffy]

...the only point Lolic was maiking iw that 1 in 10^150 is the outlide limit of probablility.

Whoops, you're right. I read 10^50 which is Dembski's favorite number for the probability of anything complex happening....

 

Nonetheless, this computation is wrong too. The 10^80 number (actually its between 4x10^9 and 6x10^79 or about 10^80) is the number of *atoms* in the *observable* universe (who knows how much more there is beyond that!), and those are built up from lots of smaller elements that still seem complex, thus you could easily multiply this by another 10,100, or 1000, and thats assuming the branes or whatever they are have simple state descriptions, which they may not. Moreover, this number also *completely* skips the dark matter, dark energy, effects of "quantum foam" and other things we can't observe directly. As you read this blathering post, many billions of neutrinos have passed through your body, and those aren't counted in this figure either. 10^80 is way low for the number of things you'd have to keep track of the state for in the universe....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Biochemist]

Whoops, you're right. I read 10^50 which is Dembski's favorite number for the probability of anything complex happening....

I am not sure any of this really matters. Statisticians often use 1 in 10^50 to equal "0" by convention. 1 in 10^150 seems pretty darn uncommon to me.

 

I am looking forward to your response to my last post in the Punk Eek thread.

[Buffy]

I am nto sure any of this really matters. Statisticians often use 1 in 10^50 to equal "0" by convention. 1 in 10^150 seems pretty darn uncommon to me.

Sure, but its not really relevant to anything, so it doesn't really matter. Its just a number that's mostly useful in arguing about the number of possible universes there are which gets really big!

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[lindagarrette]

This would suggest that the majority of animal and plant kingdom information content was reflected in the first prokaryote. Go figure. But I think this model better reflects our current state of biochemical understanding and our current state of paleontological knowledge than any mutation-based model. Mutations actually might occur, but they have nearly nothing to do with speciation.

 

Doesn't stike me as a whole lot more difficult to swallow that the entire mass of the universe being squashed into a space the size of a Planck length.

 

Feel free to name my theory. I think I like "Biological Big Bang". Do keep in mind that if my heretical theory is true, then the IDers would have to prove an incredible level of CSI in the first prokaryote. Everyting after that would be a natural consequence of that information load, and a fundamentally "natural" process.

Your BBB theory seems plausible to me. I looked on the web for the DNA structure of the prokaryote but there wasn't any specific information. There is only one fundamental structure. And the coded segments can be used in a variet of ways to construct different traits. The eye gene is the same, for example no matter what the species .

[Biochemist]

Your BBB theory seems plausible to me. I looked on the web for the DNA structure of the prokaryote but there wasn't any specific information. There is only one fundamental structure. And the coded segments can be used in a variet of ways to construct different traits. The eye gene is the same, for example no matter what the species .

I think that is true, LG. The intriging part of the idea (to me) is that all DNA packages would essentially have to code for additional DNA. This means that early life forms (actually, all life forms) have both DNA and meta-DNA in the same package. The meta-DNA specifies features that have never been expressed, and may not be expressed for multiple species generations. Seems pretty ugly complicated.

 

I have always thought that DNA coding is so complex that it is fundamentally inexplicable. Once you accept that notion, making it an order of magnitude more inexplicable doesn't seem so odd.

 

It is a little like the thought path we went through from Newton to Einstein to Quantum Physics to String theory. It gets progressively more arcane, and fundamentally "'unreasonable" to a novice, but if you are there for every step, its seems sort of inescapable.

[Fishteacher73]

Bio asked me to jump in on some points. I am late in the thread, and am making some points that were brought up by bio and buffy in posts around 215.

 

I think it is a bit erroneous to assume an either/or statement about PE vs. gradualism. They are not mutually exclusive of each other if you examine timr frames and don't really hold to a true equilibria (ie nothing, then something.) Both systems can be at work. Genetic drift is good support for some of the tennets of gradualism. Yet I think it can be pretty well demonstarted by sudden shifts in fossil records after times of relative calm to support PE.

[Lolic]

Point iii above, which claims to be an experiment, also brings in the idea that irreducible complexity is a fact. There are however enough examples provided in this thread already to show that the given examples if IC are not accepted as such.

 

On that point we disagree.

 

Type III Secretory System & Flagellar Motor

 

Below is a portion of this PDF file. The entire article is located:

 

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2181

 

5. Philosophical implications.

To paraphrase the original rendition of the Department of Energy’s Genomes to

Life web site, ‘the molecular machines present in the simplest cells, produced by

evolution, dwarf the engineering feats of the 20th century’. The dissection of the

complexity and sophistication of simple machines like the bacterial flagellum are

indeed a testimony to the power of modern molecular biological techniques. Yet, the

elegant structural properties, efficiency, and the highly controlled genetic

programming to produce these machines was neither anticipated nor predicted. The

potential applications of this knowledge are legion and have spawned a new discipline

focused on nanotechnology.

 

In light of this new information, some scientists have questioned whether the

mechanism of mutation, natural selection, and time are sufficient to account for the

origin of such machines. Behe [17] has proffered the concept of irreducible

complexity using the flagellum as a paradigmatic example. It is this very concept that

has been the bread and butter of molecular geneticists allowing them to identify genes

in any given system by loss of function. Behe argues that natural selection and

random mutation cannot produce the irreducibly complex bacterial flagellar motor

with its ca. forty separate protein parts, since the motor confers no functional

advantage on the cell unless all the parts are present. Natural select can preserve the

motor once it has been assembled, but it cannot detect anything to preserve until the

motor has been assembled and performs a function. If there is no function, there is

nothing to select. Given that the flagellum requires ca. 50 genes to function, how did

these arise? Contrary to popular belief, we have no detailed account for the evolution

of any molecular machine. The data from Y. pestis presented here seems to indicate

that loss of one constituent in the system leads to the gradual loss of others. For

progression to work, each gene product must maintain some function as it is adapted

to another.

 

To counter this argument, particularly as it applies to the flagellum, others

have used the TTSS. Since the secretory system that forms part of the flagellar

mechanism can also function separately, Miller [18, 19] has argued that natural

selection could have “co-opted” the functional parts from the TTTS and other earlier

simple systems to produce the flagellar motor. And, indeed, the TTSS contains eightten

proteins that are also found in the forty protein bacterial flagellar motor. Miller

thus regards the virulence secretory pump of the Yersinia Yop system as a Darwinian

intermediate, case closed.

 

This argument seems only superficially plausible in light of some of the

findings presented in this paper. First, if anything, TTSSs generate more

complications than solutions to this question. As shown here, possessing multiple

TTSSs causes interference. If not segregated one or both systems are lost.

Additionally, the other thirty proteins in the flagellar motor (that are not present in the

TTSS) are unique to the motor and are not found in any other living system. From

whence, then, were these protein parts co-opted? Also, even if all the protein parts

were somehow available to make a flagellar motor during the evolution of life, the

parts would need to be assembled in the correct temporal sequence similar to the way

an automobile is assembled in factory. Yet, to choreograph the assembly of the parts

of the flagellar motor, present-day bacteria need an elaborate system of genetic

instructions as well as many other protein machines to time the expression of those

assembly instructions. Arguably, this system is itself irreducibly complex. In any

case, the co-option argument tacitly presupposes the need for the very thing it seeks to

explain—a functionally interdependent system of proteins. Finally, phylogenetic

analyses of the gene sequences [20] suggest that flagellar motor proteins arose first

and those of the pump came later. In other words, if anything, the pump evolved from

the motor, not the motor from the pump.

 

Molecular machines display a key signature or hallmark of design, namely,

irreducible complexity. In all irreducibly complex systems in which the cause of the

system is known by experience or observation, intelligent design or engineering

played a role the origin of the system. Given that neither standard neo-Darwinism, nor

co-option has adequately accounted for the origin of these machines, or the

appearance of design that they manifest, one might now consider the design

hypothesis as the best explanation for the origin of irreducibly complex systems in

living organisms. That we have encountered systems that tax our own capacities as

design engineers, justifiably lead us to question whether these systems are the product

of undirected, un-purposed, chance and necessity. Indeed, in any other context we

would immediately recognize such systems as the product of very intelligent

engineering. Although some may argue this is a merely an argument from ignorance,

we regard it as an inference to the best explanation [21, 22], given what we know

about the powers of intelligent as opposed to strictly natural or material causes.

We know that intelligent designers can and do produce irreducibly complex

systems. We find such systems within living organisms. We have good reason to

think that these systems defy the creative capacity of the selection/mutation

mechanism. The real problem may not be determining the best explanation of the

origin of the flagellum. Rather it may be amending the methodological strictures that

prevent consideration of the most natural and rational conclusion—albeit one with

discomfiting philosophical implications.