Molecular biology and evolution

[lsa]

and no pix

 

[edirp]

From my years as an undergrad in college, I found out that Darwin is a fraud. Do not listen to him. You'll thank me later.

 

[Mike]

Debunked? If anything, his concept of irreducible complexity has been proven right. If you're not satisfied you can run the simulations yourself: https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/papers/ev/

IC is very obvious on a molecular level. How can mutations+natural selection occur if there is no life to begin with? Know any rocks that have mutated recently and are competing against sand? Mutation requires life, life requires some mechanism to replicate, said mechanism requires a system involving many parts and removing one kills any chances of reproducing. Thus Behe's argument that the first life had to come together is pretty sound.

Say what? All IC adds is "we don't know the origin of life, so fuck it god did it" Very scientific.

 

[Codger]

Say what? All IC adds is "we don't know the origin of life, so fuck it god did it" Very scientific.

Are you guys sure you're arguing about IC? Because IC as argued by Behe is not about the start of life but about him not believing that complex structures, like the eye, cannot have evolved because if you remove any part, you ruin its function
Therefore it cannot have evolved one part at a time. It's an arguement from incredulity and shown to be.wrong.

Maybe he has tried.to apply it to abiogenesis too but that's not the usual discussion.

 

[ScriptReadsMe]

Are you guys sure you're arguing about IC? Because IC as argued by Behe is not about the start of life but about him not believing that complex structures, like the eye, cannot have evolved because if you remove any part, you ruin its function
Therefore it cannot have evolved one part at a time. It's an arguement from incredulity and shown to be.wrong.

Maybe he has tried.to apply it to abiogenesis too but that's not the usual discussion.

It looks like a common trend to misrepresent Behe and this may be the second time that you claim Behe communicated information that is not really his. I was under the impression that his IC argument is based on his own research with the blood clotting system and bacterial flagellum. I don't recall and can't find any mention of the eye. Care to back this one up? I'll admit, Behe says some dubious stuff, among them his comparison of the human evolution and E.Coli, or rather how some mutations that have occurred in humans should have taken longer before they show up because E.Coli evolved at a slower pace, or something like that. Maybe you don't like the conclusions he takes based on his research, but you may take your own. However the results of his lab research are still sound and it would be a shame to discard them. No need to bulldoze the entire house down because the toilet is leaking.

 

[Codger]

I was using the eye as a classic example of IC to make it clear what i think it is, and is not, in my question to @Mike. I wasn't saying Behe uses it. Although he does in his earlier book but at a level lower than the gross structures other creationists tend to use it. It's all the same reasoning mind.

I

 

[ScriptReadsMe]

Poor example again, as drug-resistance can be transferred between different species of bacteria by a process known as horizontal gene transfer. DNA from one bacteria is transferred to another and this incorporated into the bacteria's genome to add cellular functions that it did not possess before. This is the processes of how S aureus became methicillin-resistant S aureus (MSRA).

Found an interesting paper on HGT. It appears that transgenic DNA uses this mechanism to propagate. Thus if a living organism has been genetically modified in laboratory, you would never know because HGT hides it. Artificial engineering is a form of horizontal gene transfer.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...r_-_The_Hidden_Hazards_of_Genetic_Engineering

 

[Lonesome Crow]

What false equivalency? Isn't the general consensus that life evolved from bacterial cells?

Nope.

Nobody knows for sure what the first life forms were. Hell, you can have a spirited debate as to whether or not a virus is a life form. And there are those who still aren't convinced that prions are actual infectious agents.

And regardless of whatever the first life forms were, at some point in history multi-cellular organisms appeared. Their evolutionary path diverged from that of single-celled organisms. Therefore, their evolutionary experience is different and non-comparable. Bacteria and simple eukaryotes like Plasmodium don't have X-Chromosomes and never have. They never had to develop X-chromosome inactivation. There are calico cats, but there are no calico bacteria or calico amoebas. You can't study bacteria or Plasmodiums or any other simple life form if you want to develop a cure for Turner Syndrome. Antibiotics and hydroxychloroquine will fuck up E. Coli and Plasmodium but probably just make you a little itchy. So why would you study their evolutionary history to elucidate the path that complex organsims took? Would you study the behavior of bees in a hive and draw conclusions about how humans behave? There may be some similarities, but overall, a bee will never go on a bender in Vegas blowing stacks of cash on hookers and cocaine.

And how did apples become elephants? Here's the problem with that crazy notion: it assumes that there was only one, original, life form from which all life then evolved. How do you or anyone else on this planet know for sure what was going on in that prehistoric primordial goo? Maybe multiple life forms emerged simultaneously and from those parent organisms all life today emerged. And their evolutionary paths would be different, and to compare them would be stupid. A false equivalency.

 

[panzer723]

Chips and Chin

Moon evolved into human.

 

[panzer723]

Chips and Chin

Moon evolved into human.

 

[panzer723]

Chips and Chin

Moon evolved into human

 

[Mike]

Are you guys sure you're arguing about IC? Because IC as argued by Behe is not about the start of life but about him not believing that complex structures, like the eye, cannot have evolved because if you remove any part, you ruin its function
Therefore it cannot have evolved one part at a time. It's an arguement from incredulity and shown to be.wrong.

Maybe he has tried.to apply it to abiogenesis too but that's not the usual discussion.

I haven't read all of Behe's "work", but the op seems to be arguing IC = a creator, because random mutations couldn't produce such advanced organisms, and because we don't know the origin of life.

Which isn't a reasonable argument imo, because nobody knows the origin of life and evolution doesn't make any claims about the origin of life. Evolution operates on the theory of a common ancestor, but doesn't claim to know the origin of that ancestor.

 

[Codger]

I haven't read all of Behe's "work", but the op seems to be arguing IC = a creator, because random mutations couldn't pr Jooduce such advanced organisms, and because we don't know the origin of life.

Which isn't a reasonable argument imo, because nobody knows the origin of life and evolution doesn't make any claims about the origin of life. Evolution operates on the theory of a common ancestor, but doesn't claim to know the origin of that ancestor.

It's the taking IC back to abiogenesis bit that's throwing me. I don't remember Behe arguing that. As you say it would be silly anyway because we don't know how life started so it's pointless to say what barriers due to complexity did or didn't exist.

Behe really had a hard on for the flagellum which is very complex and does require all its parts to function. But the mistake he makes is to assume it's always been a flagellum, that all the parts that make it up have always had the same function and that there are no other parts that previously existed to confer a function providing benefit. 3 unfounded assumptions.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html has a lovely example of this false thinking in the Stone Bridge - well worth a look.

 

[Pwent]

i still havent seen science disprove the law of biogenesis

life may evolve, but it is impossible to come from abiotic material, even when we try to put the same pressures and temperatures as the "primordial soup" model

 

[DoomPatrol]

Well I have a science PhD as well, so going off this logic you're gonna have to listen to me too.

Right? The anti-evolution crowd blows my mind. They act like everything is so black and white. So what that guy got a PhD in something at the start of his career. That doesn't mean everything else he's put out since is legitimate. A PhD is nice to have, but it doesn't mean everything you ever say from then on has to be taken as fact. That goes against the very idea of scientific exploration and having the peer review process.

Evolution is the very foundation of biology. Everything I've seen in science points back to evolution being the correct theory for how we got here. Scientists have even shown that basic building blocks for life can likely be created out of a chemical "soup" given enough time and the right circumstances. If there was real evidence against the theory of evolution, the scientific community would be more than happy to look at it. The simple fact is, evolution matches everything we know about biology, and creationists haven't produced a single viable alternate theory. They don't have to believe me, go ask any biologist. The American Society for Cellular Biology accepts evolution, and so does every other professional organization related to biology.

Even on a common sense theme, evolution makes perfect sense. If you're more adapted to survive, you're more likely to pass on your genes. Those genes are then likely to get mixed and passed on with something equally adapted to survive. Over hundreds of millions of years, those small generational changes result in large drastic changes. How that sounds like bullshit to someone is beyond me. These guys will scoff at something logical and then say that even though their creationist model requires a giant sky wizard that nobody's ever seen, it's totally how it happened.

Even more disgusting is the continual use of the "god of the gaps" argument used by ID proponents. Of course science doesn't have all the answers yet. It just happens to have most all of the important parts. As the years go on, they'll continue to fill the answers for the questions we still have.

 

[andnowweknow]

You can't have a discussion about Behes writings without accepting he's a Christian creationist, working for a Christian university pushing intelligent design bullshit which has been debunked and is not accepted by mainstream science, for good reason. He's not intellectually honest. His goal is not to find the truth but rather to push his Christian motivated ideas.

The vast majority of scientists regard Behe's positions on intelligent design as pseudoscience. Even his Christian University Department of Biological has seen fit to prominently dissociate itself from Behe's ID writings.

Let me ask you: do you believe that Intelligent Design is true? That an intelligent being is guiding evolution or something to that effect (which is what Behe thinks)

I've spent way too much time on forums debating Creationism and it is an exercise in futility. I'm not doing it here.

Once you figure out the gaps left open in science that allow for the Christian nonsense to be pervasive, they will go away. Until then you shouldn't be surprised that they are around. I get just as irritated by the general arrogance of society and laypeople like yourself who act as if an IDEA about gaps left open by science is somehow "dumb" when science admitedly must still do work to solve these open issues.

People want answers and "God", in the human image sense, is a simplistic self serving means to the end of helping some feel better about the uncertainty of everything.

So get the fuck to work science, pick up your fucking game and stop leaving the door open to the religophiles.

 

[ClubFoot]

I thought the flavor of the day was that we are living in a multilayered matrix with the potential of various time lines and alternative universes or some bollocks.

 

[no fat chicks]

i still havent seen science disprove the law of biogenesis

life may evolve, but it is impossible to come from abiotic material, even when we try to put the same pressures and temperatures as the "primordial soup" model

What are you going to say when scientists are able to disprove it?

 

[Cygnus A]

I've been reading a book by Michael Behe and he notes some incongruencies between molecular biology and darwinian evolution. While i haven't finished the book (Edge of Evolution), some of the incongruencies are very salient.

We cannot observe evolution unless we take a look at smaller organisms which reproduce drastically fast, like e.coli for example, whose cell division rate is said to be once every 30 minutes.

Observation of these micro organisms seems to indicate two things. One, evolution is a destructive process rather than constructing on something there already is. For example, resistances to malaria that developed over time in humans are actually setbacks, some being potentially fatal (HPFH, sickle cell disease, thalassemia, etc.) Basically every measure of adaptation is akin to blowing up your own bridge before the enemy nears. Even when there is a perceived gain, it's really a loss or rather a beneficial loss. A new strand of e.coli is said to use citrate aerobically as a second food source. However the big picture tells a different story. E.coli could already use citrate, but in absence of oxygen. After many generations passed, when e.coli replicated itself, the new copy lost an operon whose function was to detect oxygen.

Second salient incongruency with darwinian evolution is... it's just not possible statistically. Malaria for example is treated with a drug called chloroquine, among others. Not long ago, malaria developed resistance to chloroquine and the change occured in two amino acids, nothing to scoff at. This seemingly small change took 10^20 copies to occur. There were less humans (including descendants since they branched off from apes) on Earth, yet the mutations we endured are beyond imagination.

Behe got wrecked on the stand in several court cases trying to push ID in public schools. The fossil record proves more than his ramblings about molecular biology ever could.

 

[Bob Gray]

Behe's bullshit has been thoroughly debunked over and over.

There is a reason his nonsense isn't accepted by science, and it's not a conspiracy

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html

He hasnt really been debunked so much as had plenty of counter arguments. Since his position is more philosophical, there isn't much in the way of any objective testing methods to either prove or disprove what he says. Like a lot of issues, just because he's a scientist doesn't make what he's saying science and Behe is biased as all fuck, much like many other scientists that write pop science books. It works on both sides of the aisle, too. There are people that will say he's a joke but at the same time prop up Lawrence Krause and his "Universe from Nothing" ideas (Richard Dawkins among them) despite the fact that both stand on rather shaky ground as far as any real falsifiable evidence.