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Topic: can some aspect of Darwinism be falsified?
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 22. March 2006 19:31
The molecular equidistance phenomenon really puzzles me, where, eg, human, rat, chicken, frogs are all equally related in many genes to fish. It has since the 1960s been historically explained by assuming a constant neutral clock or the same mutation rate in vastly different species. But now that assumption has been proven false as many species show different mutation rates. F. Ayala has called the clock a mirage, see his paper 'molecular clock mirages' (BioEssays 21:71-75). Now if the assumption of the same constant clock is untenable, I can no longer understand or explain the molecular equidistance phenomenon. I dont know if anyone else can. Would you like to enlighten me on this one? Please provide an explanation for the phenomenon given the fact that different species differ vastly in mutation rates or clocks.
I have recently started a thread at the Panda's Thumb. That thread shows to me 1)most believers of the present evolution theory who often disagree strongly with ID know very little about their theory; 2) no body on the PT board who followed my thread could refute my claim that the molecular equidistance phenomenon is contradictory to the present theory.
I wonder if anyone here at ID has any insight in explaining the molecular equidistance phenomenon. Also, I am new to the concepts of ID and have some general questions. Is the supernatural designer supposed to know the end product of his design in all the details ? Did he designed the universe all in one go? What is his goal in designing the universe and life any way?
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Christopher D. Beling
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posted 24. March 2006 01:01
Hi Shi,
At risk of showing my ignorance could you enlighten me on the meaning of the "molecular equidistance phenomenon". The way I understand the variation in the molecular clock is that one can only really talk about a molecular clock - with regard to pseudo-genes - i.e. genes that have long since lost their original function - genes that don't actually do anything. In this case the gene would only modify by neutral mutations. On any other gene - i.e. genes that are functional (to a greater of lesser extent) then mutation is never totally random, because each mutation will produce a different selective advantage. This will produce a conservative force on functional genes. The more specified a gene - and the more important as regards survivability - the more conservation (i.e. slowing down of the clock). Do you agree?
With regard to your other questions - please excuse me if I give my own views - as perhaps there is no single ID view. Your first question:
quote:
Is the supernatural designer supposed to know the end product of his design in all the details ?
I get the impression that not all ID scientists think that the designer has to even be supernatural. I am one who does and this is based on other evidences that cannot perhaps be extracted from ID arguments alone. The question of free-will and predestination is one that has bugged great intellects and still seems to be raging in theological circles today. There are two important related questions to be considered
(i) Does God have the freedom to change His mind?
(ii) Does Man have the freedom to change his mind?
Note I talk only here within the context of Man and not within the context of the remainder of nature (inanimate and animate) - since in my understanding is that Man alone has true freedom - freedom to create and moral freedom - freedom in commitment to others including God). This type of freedom is special - it is embued in Man from its Source and its very nature (i.e. creative freedom) is that of the Source (see the chapter on "The Image" in Bonhoeffer's Creation and Fall). It is my view (and Bonhoeffer's - see chapters "The fixed" and "the living" that the remainder of nature is pre-programmed with Man in view. The animal and plant kingdoms are not free beings in the way we are - see Professor John Davison's thread on Prescibed Evolution. A good book to read with regard to (i) is The God who Risks by John Sanders. In my view both (i) and (ii) can be answered in the affirmative. Thus the Designer has rather complete knowledge of the end product but in the affairs of Man perhaps the knowledge is only partial.
Chris
[ 24. March 2006, 02:59: Message edited by: Christopher D. Beling ]
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 24. March 2006 11:53
you can read the Mike Denton's book on the molecular equidistance, evolution, a theory in crisis. you can also read two internet articles by pro-evolution biologists who offered rebutal to Denton and explantion for the equidistance. I believe their explanation has now been proven false becuase few genes show constant clock and yet all genes show equidistance.
I believe that both the designer and man have free will but neither knows the exact outcome of the future. The designer's future plan could be foiled by man and vice versa. The designer operate just like human mind. She designs based on what she knows from previous events and her knowledge increases as time evovles.
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Bruce Fast
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Member # 924
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posted 24. March 2006 12:08
Shi, I like this topic, thanks.
Christopher, from my understanding of the molecular clock hypothesis, gleaned from sources such as this, is that any gene that is not undergoing active evolution will drift from the genes of other species at a fixed rate. It is proposed that the rate of the drift is diffrerent for each gene, but relatively constant per gene.
Denton, in chapter 12 of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis" reports how the Cytocrome C gene produces a near perfect taxonomical tree of life. All animals (fly to human) differ from all plants by the same percentage. All mammals (mouse to man) differ from all fish by the same percentage etc. The only way to account for this tree is to assume that the genetic drift in Cytocrome C is constant by time, and is independant of all other factors such as the complexity of the organism, the organism's lifespan, the varacity of an organism's reproduction etc. The chart works for all living organisms.
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Bruce Fast
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Member # 924
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posted 24. March 2006 12:48
Shi,
Your first link, ncseweb.org is not working.
As to your second link, as I am sure you know, this guy doesn't understand Denton or he would not have published the illustration titled "Eronious View of Sequence Data". Denton says, approximately, that genetic drift is measured in mutations/generation. Further, he points out that the more "advanced" organisms theoretically have lower mutation rates per generation than the less advanced. This is the the non-molecular-clock view of genetic drift.
Consider the following: bacteria separated from the eukaryotes a long time ago, and the fruit-fly separated from the chain leading to man some time after that.
The fruit-fly and all of it's ancestry presumeably had very short generations compared to the lineage leading to man. They are also presumeably less genetically "advanced" than the lineage leading to man. So fruit-fly DNA should have drifted farther from the bacteria (more generations + less reproductive accuracy) than that of man. The graph, then, should place man closer to the bacteria than it places the fruit-fly. This is hardly what the "Eronious View of Sequence Data" shows. It is also not at all what the "Appropriate View of Sequence Data" graph shows.
The later is taken from the data, but is not the natural result of non-molecular-clock based genetic drift theory.
Therefore, if Cytocrome C, then the molelcular clock hypothesis is correct for the Cytocrome C. However, the molecular clock hypothesis has never been elevated by science to the standard of theory, and for good reasons. Many of these reasons are carefully discussed by Denton.
Denton, in my opinion, points out a very good catch 22 challenging the neo-Darwinian paradyme.
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John A. Davison
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posted 24. March 2006 15:31
The question is not whether some aspect fo Darwinism can be falsified or not. The question is - Can any aspect of Darwinism survive the scrutiny of the experimental laboratory or the testimony of the fossil record? The answer is a resounding NO. I have never had much sympathy for Popper's fasification dogma. Science has always proceeded solely on the basis of what can be demonstrated. All that has ever been demonstrated througn Darwinian means is the generation of varieties and that only in selected organisms. It has yet to be shown that any sexually reproducing form can be experimentally demonstrated to exceed the species barrier. The only proper conclusion is that it is quite impossible.
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Bruce Fast
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Member # 924
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posted 24. March 2006 16:45
John, I pulled this of of the ARN forum:
quote:
From Wikipedia: The best-documented creation of new species in the laboratory was performed by W.R. Rice and G.W. Salt in the 1980s and described in their paper, "Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence," in The American Naturalist, vol. 131 (1988) pp. 911-917. Rice and Salt bred fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, using a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry. Each generation was placed into the maze, and the groups of flies which came out of two of the eight exits were set apart to breed with each other in their respective groups. After 35 generations, the two groups and their offspring would not breed with each other even when doing so was their only opportunity to reproduce.
Please comment.
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John A. Davison
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posted 25. March 2006 07:12
First, I don't believe it. Even if true, it is meaningless because the acid test of speciation is not whether two forms "choose" to successfully mate or not but rather, "can" they breed together or not. Furthermore, if they can, will the progeny be sterile? Since neither of these criteria has been examined, the experiments are meaningless. The Darwinians regard any modification, even of behavior, as of evolutionary significance. I do not. This is just on more example of the lengths to which the Darwinians must go to sustain their mythology. In my opinion it is laughable.
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Bruce Fast
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posted 26. March 2006 18:30
Additionally, what I see in this experiment is a validation of the method -- isolate an animal for specific traits, you should get new species. However, with dogs, and cows and sheep and pigeons and all of the other domesticated animals, "pure-bread" breading has done exactly that, never producing a new species. I don't know from bugs, but for mammals and birds, isolating based on trait clearly does not produce new species, not in a thousand years.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 11. April 2006 16:18
Facts that will never be explained by Darwinism:
Nature evolves, from the big bang to human mind. If there is a universal evolution law, it should by definition apply to all phenomena of nature, from the past to the future and from the unconscious to the conscious. Can Darwinism qualify to be such a law? Below is a list of facts that cannot be properly explained by Darwinism and will never be. You are welcome to add to the list. Most of these facts are explained by Darwinism by invoking infinite amount of time and accidents, which is practically equivalent to explaining nothing. Given the smooth flow and astonishing coherence of the universe, there could only be one single universal law of evolution. If an evolution hypothesis can be shown to be only applicable in some situations but not all, one can be pretty certain that the hypothesis is at best partially correct. So, here is one of best arguments to refute Darwinism as the ultimate or the only best scientific law of nature that science can offer. Even Darwinists will admit that Darwinism does not apply to human culture or evolution of future life on Earth dominated by the human mind. Social Darwinism is notoriously appalling and has long been dumped into the trashcan where it rightly belongs as proven by history. Survival of the fittest cannot explain the phenomenon of a creative and immortal human being such as a Van Gogh or a Mendel, who were outcasts in their lifetime and lived their lives not trying to fit but to be creative or unique or different. The most fundamental phenomenon of nature and human life is creation. To create is by definition to be unique and to be unique is not to fit. All sane persons strive to be a unity of to fit (the social rules) and to be unique (to be known as somebody but not just a nobody or a fitting clone of somebody). That Darwinism does not apply in human mind evolution or the future evolution of life dominated by humans is sufficient evidence of itself to refute Darwinism as the best scientific law of evolution. This is plain clear to most laymen with a sound common sense as evidenced by their rejection of Darwinism. To them, Darwinism just does not feel right and lacks the beauty and simplicity of truth. The idea of infinite amount of time and accidents will create anything is simply inconsistent with common sense and is an ugly and awkward idea that defies reason and beauty. The challenge now is to discover the single most comprehensive evolution law that will not only explain everything that can be explained by Darwinism but will also explain things as listed below that cannot be explained by Darwinism.
1. The fine-tuning of the physical constants. The cosmos is uniquely and ideally fit for life. If the unique is one out of a large number of less unique possibilities, how could chance consistently and repeatedly select the unique rather than one of the non-unique?
2. The stability of a pattern, like the day and night cycle or the body plan of animals. If such pattern is created by random chance, how does it subsequently avoid the disruptive power of random chance. As far as human can discern, random chance is largely a disruptive force rather than a creative force and a stabilizing force.
3. The Cambrian explosion. Dearth of species but abundance of phyla.
4. Body plan appears first. Evolution at the species or individual level cannot cross the phylum or higher taxonomic levels.
5. About 70 body plans in a short time period. How can the same environment selects vastly different forms and creates such a high number of novelties?
6. Top-down direction of change in phyla. The fossil record suggests that the major pulse of diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, orders before that of families.
7. The rise and fall of lineages.
8. The finality of a pattern.
9. The era of phyla is followed by the era of species that is followed by the era of minds. The creation of phyla was long finished. The creation of species was largely finished since the creation of the human mind. The creation phenomenon of nature is now largely confined to the domain of the human mind. An evolution law that claims to explain past creation phenomena at the level of phyla and species but cannot explain today's creation phenomena at the mind level simply must be false.
10. The prevalence and persistence of the 5 finger pattern in major terrestrial vertebrates.
11. The evolution of human mind/culture and the future evolution on Earth dominated by the human mind.
12. The prevalence and persistence of the 5 petal design in flowers most relevant to humans. The fascination of human culture with the number 5 and the 5-pointed star.
13. The prevalence and persistence of the golden ratio and the Fibonacci numbers in nature.
14. The molecular clock phenomenon that is uncoupled from mutation rate.
15. The diversity pattern of genes such as ND6 (NADH dehydrogenase subunit 6) that shows no clock pattern in some lineages but shows clock pattern in some other lineages.
16. The slower substitution rate of mitochondrial genes in the fish lineage relative to the tetrapod lineage.
17. Major evolution jumps occur only once and never repeat. Fish evolved into amphibians only once in history. A random process predicts that today's fish should have the possibility of evolving into an amphibian, and that some kinds of major evolution jump should be going on today for as least some organisms. But the fact is that they are not occurring today in any organisms except in the domain of human mind.
18. The coexistence of continuity and discontinuity. Evolution jump or revolutionary advance such as a Van Gogh or Mendel or Einstein is a phenomenon of discontinuity. While Darwinism may qualify as a law of continuity, a law for the phenomenon of discontinuity or creative jump is presently lacking.
19. Sex as the dominant way of reproduction.
20. Why diversity of organisms rather than a uniformity of a single most successful or adapted life form such as bacteria? Why variation rather than uniformity? The number of varieties of life forms vastly outnumbers that of environment.
21. The phenomenon of specified and irreducible complexity.
22. The un-predictability and randomness of basic building blocks of the micro-world giving rise to a macro-world following the rule of cause and effect.
23. Why beauty/goodness dominates ugliness/evil rather than the reverse in the long run?
24. The purpose of existence and life. The existence of justice and morality. What is life for?
25. Simultaneous creation of genetically diverged life forms. There are no discernible phylogenetic or antecedent relationships among metazoan phyla or between bacteria, archea, and eukaryotes.
26. Why so many stars, 1022 of them?
27. Why nature follows mathematical patterns?
28. The absence of ill-adapted or transitional life forms in fossil records.
29. How can there be a sharp transition from non-intelligent evolution in the past to the intelligent evolution of today and future? How can the common sense of human mind (e.g., intelligence must be behind design and complexity) so perfectly suited to comprehending nature must be violated in order to comprehend the past evolution as is required by Darwinism?
30. Mathematics is the foundation of physics, in turn chemistry, and in turn biology, and all of science. Mathematics is the most reliable form of human knowledge. Mathematics is in turn based on numbers. Numbers are in turn based on prime numbers. What are then the prime numbers based on? The prime numbers are presently defined by mathematical calculations, which is a circular definition or a tautology. A true definition of prime numbers must be based on knowledge that must be more fundamental than mathematical calculations and must be independent of number concept. Until we uncover that knowledge or the true definition of primes, we will not have a solid foundation for the whole enterprise of science or comprehending nature. We are far away from a scientific description of nature since we have not understood or established the foundation. The ultimate understanding of nature could be reduced to the most simple and yet most mysterious problem of finding a non-circular definition of primes. The scientific search for the ultimate will inevitably rely on mathematics and may rest on the problem of primes. It is no coincidental that the holy grail of mathematics is a problem (the Riemann conjecture) about the primes. It is unfortunate, however, that the most fundamental problem about primes, i.e., its definition, has been overlooked for more than 2000 years.
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John A. Davison
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posted 12. April 2006 01:04
shi
I think you will find that every aspect you have listed remains in accord with the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.
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Shi
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posted 12. April 2006 14:36
John,
I did read your papers and see valuable things in them. But I cannot claim to have understood all that you have in mind since your theory is presented in very broad terms. So I dont see how your theory can explain, just take one example, the prevelence of the 5 finger pattern. It seems that you do not like to invoke the supernatural. The 5-finger pattern is either an accident or an intended design. I dont see how anyone can come up with an explanation that does not invoke either accident or intention.
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John A. Davison
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posted 12. April 2006 23:08
Shi
I have indeed invoked the supernatural. What I have denied is the present existence of the supernatural. I see no evidence for a personal God and neither did Einstein. As a matter of fact it is the insistence on such that is the heart of the problem we now face. How can there be design without a designer? I have even suggested there me have been more than one designer. I also never denied the present existence of God and neither did any of my sources. It is atheists like Dawkins, Gould and Provine that deny a God. It is just that when there is no evidence for a supernatural at prsent it is unjustified to assume one still exists. I don't know of a single great scientist that invoked a living God. Even devout Christians like Pasteur and Mendel never implied intervention at any point in their science.
I am afraid I am very definitely a creationist but not of the sectarian variety. I am surprised you cannot see that from the nature of what I have said in my published papers. I agree entirely with Albert Einstein:
"The main source iof the preent-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God."
I am also, like Einstein, a convinced determinist. Indeed the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis is entirely deterministic just as is the ontogeny of the individual which is its model.
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
ibid
The entire Darwinian paradigm is based on an illusion. That illusion has been that there was an external cause for evolution. That cause has never been identified because that cause never existed. Evolution, which is no longer in progress, was entirely emergent, driven from within by forces yet to be understood.
I hope this clarifies my position.
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