Questions: Are the cold-synthesis chemicals stable at warmer temperatures? Are the hot-synthesis chemicals stable at cooler temperatures?
Since they coexist within cellular solutions, presumably the answer is ‘yes’.
It’s not difficult to imagine ways in which some chemicals which form in heat might mix with chemicals that form in cold. For example, oceanic hot springs. You can have both kinds of extremes in remarkably close proximity.
Your argument is inherently flawed. It’s not that the four elements cannot exist at the same place at the same time – they simply cannot be generated at the same place at the same time. (Presuming, of course, that this is true in the first place.)
An excellent book that (IMHO) demolishes Behe’s “irreducible complexity” is Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable.
In particular, Dawkins covered the evolution of eyes in great detail. This was one of Behe’s main examples - that eyes are so dependent on their component parts that it’s impossible to see how they could have evolved purely by chance. Basically, Behe’s case is pure BS. He couldn’t be more wrong. Eyes have evolved independently numerous times in the animal kingdom (IIRC, over 30 times). To someone who understands the biology, it’s no at all difficult to understand how eyes could have evolved.
I haven’t read Behe’s book, even though I own it. I purchased it a couple of years ago, but then read Dawkins’ book soon after. So I never felt the need to actually read Behe’s.
At the talk I attended, Behe made it very clear that he only believes in microevolution. Although his book deals only with biochemical systems, in the talk he presented an argument claiming that even the evolution of a single protein is impossible. (In fact, he actually presented an argument to the effect that even a single disulfide bond is fantastically unlikely to have evolved.) Behe thus believes in pretty much constant intervention throughout history, in every detail of the genome, because he believes that macroevolution is impossible.
It’s unclear whether he believes in common descent, because he gives different answers to different audiences. Apparently he’s claimed to believe that humans and apes have a common ancestor, but when writing for creationists he trots out the old arguments about the lack of transitional forms.
Again, let me stress that the scientists in the audience had absolutely zero problem with admitting that science can’t yet explain certain things about the evolution of complex biochemical systems. But let’s face it- evolutionists were doing research into those systems long before Behe appeared on the scene. Behe told them nothing that they didn’t already know. The only complaint I heard from the scientists was that Behe is using the argument from ignorance, when if he were serious about the issue he would roll up his sleeves and do research like everyone else.
This is simply too vague for anyone to even know what you’re talking about, much less refute it. What are these four elements? A, G, C, and U? Sugar, phosphate, nucleotide, and shemp?
BTW, provide links to back your assertions, before you ask us to provide links to refute them.
I am getting a PhD in the molecular evolution of eyes. The molecular genetics of the system clearly shows simple paradigms in simple eyes were often expanded and duplicated to form more complex eyes. The oft-repeated saying that eyes may have evolved 30 times independently is a little misleading. All creatures with eyes looked at to date have a gene called Pax6 expressed in their eyes. This argues that the original eye precursor, whether in planaria, fruit flies, squids, or humans, evolved once.
This is not the only thing we see commonly in eye development. The retina, on a general level with photoreceptors and their retinotopic projections into the brain, is pretty common. This is reflected molecularly – similar families of genes are involved in fruit flies and mice, including the Six and Eya genes, forkhead genes, and inductive signaling through the hedgehog and wingless/Wnt family members.
What is pretty clear is that retina development is an ancient process. Everything on top of that is fluff (sorry lens and cornea people) – things which primarily protect the retina and have later developed as mechanisms for improving acuity by focusing, cutting down reflective noise with pigmentation, light metering by pupillary response, and so forth.
One can easily imagine a scenario. Start with a naked retina, like a Nautilus. The organism gets a strong selective advantage, and comes to depend on its primitive eyes. Two things can happen to increase selective advantage: better function of the primitive eyes and better protection of the sensitive organs. So both of these things happen. A thin membrane like a cornea grows over the naked pit. This can happen in stages. Perhaps a nearly occluded membrane could bring focus into the eye by forming an image like a pinhole camera, hence a primitive pupil. Perhaps a layer of skin grew over the entire eye, forming a cornea. Perhaps thickening of this cornea led to increased focusing power. Eventually, it invaginated away and became a lens. It really isn’t that complicated, and we see similar processes in nearly every organ system.
Nope, I can’t come up with single example that falsifies evolution. Of course, that’s probably because evolution theory is unfalsifiable.
Example? Sure:
I submit (provisionally) that Darwin’s response here is simply a means of immunizing evolutionary theory against a possible falsifier. To be honest, Darwin, your response is a little unfair against the Prof: he was challenged to present a “sound” reason for challenging evolution, and provided one. Unless you can debunk the specific example above, of course.
By the way, Prof, would you mind, for the sake of the peanut gallery, being a bit more specific? What, exactly, are these four elements to which you refer?
Interestingly, by contrast, ID theory is imminently falsifiable. Nature is resplendent with stupid designs; I saw a list once on the boards at talk origins. (By the way, please don’t misconstrue this post as argument in favor of Behe. To be honest, I’m hijacking this discussion shamelessly.)
Hmmm, I don’t think the existence of stupid designs falsifies ID. I see stupid designs regularly in things that I know were designed.
For example, that miserable, unprotected magnetic strip on credit cards. Mine gets worn easily because I carry it in my wallet and I have to get maybe two new cards during the valid period. The strip should be better protected against mechanical damage.
Piffle. Darwin made many predictions and even posited that his theory would fail if they were demonstrated to be false. So far, none have been proven false–but it is certainly falsifiable.
The earliest criticism was that of Lord Kelvin. Darwin had proposd that the erosion of the Weald would have taken 300,000,000 years, providing time for evolution to have occurred. Lord Kelvin, basing his calculations on the assumption that the sun’s heat was a result of the pressure of gravity that could only be replenished by falling meteors, calculated a maximum age of the sun (and, hence, life) at 20,000,000 years. The eventual understanding of nuclear reactions demonstrated that the sun was much more ancient than Kelvin’s figure and that Darwin’s falsifiable prediction had been validated.
Darwin proposed that successive animal types would never be discovered mixed together or in the wrong order in the fossil record. None have been so found.
Neo-Darwinian publications note that creatures that appear to be closely related will have similar genetic components. Indeed, related species (as identified by evolutionary biologists prior to genetic analysis) do have closely matching DNA.
I’m not sure what you intend to claim, but it is simply wrong to claim that evolutionary theory is not falsifiable. (It is true that Spencer’s phrase, “survival of the fittest,” which Darwin included in later editions of his Origin of Species, appears to be tautology, but it was only included as a shorthand manner of engaging the audience and was never a hallmark of Darwin’s efforts to elucidate his theory. It certainly does not make the overall theory unfalsifiable.)
Evolutionary theory is fully falsifiable. It hasn’t been falsified yet, of course…
A few predictions, all trivially falsifiable:
We will not find any modern human fossils in Jurassic strata
Bacteria kept in an antiobiotic-rich medium will evolve resistance
Closely related species will have more similar DNA than distantly related species - (even if you define relatedness by old-fashioned taxonomies that do not depend on DNA similarity.)
Similarly, members of the same species will have DNA more similar to each other than to the DNA of members of another species.
Amazing how often the same things come up again and again. Behe is an irresponsible scientist, the way he spreads ignorance and bias masqueraded as science. Should you need more than the excellent material already provided here, I wrote a refutation of Behe’s claptrap in this thread:
The refutation is the second post I made to that thread, but it’s a post that is too lengthy and full of citations to quote here again without formatting work, so I’ll just let you read it.
Intelligent Design is nicely debunked in that thread. On the second page a poster claims that a Scientific American article titled 15 Answers to creationist Nonsense is “one of the lamest”. It’s not actually that bad, though it could have been better.
What’s amusing is that the poster then links to a refutation of the Sci-Am article from the Answers In Genesis web site. This second article employs verbose and wrongheaded reasoning to try twist scientific fact into support of Creationism, at the same time accusing the Scientific American article of fallacy after fallacy. But the joke is on Answers In Genesis, because while they prattle on without betraying the least bit of comprehension, they are committing much worse logical offences than those of the Sci-Am article! Just plain embarrassing.
I engaged in a point-by point refutation of the Answers in Genesis article, but the subject matter is so incoherent that no refutation is really needed, and in fact I gave up after demolishing the first few cretinisms that it pleases Answers In Genesis to call “points”.
Yep, glad to see you are too. On to business – Mr. Svinlesha, I charge that you wrote the following simply to summon me in a vicious fit of cranial depilation:
Noooo! How could you forget about the huge amount of work our brains sweated to achieve in this thread ?!??!! Thumbless apes! Slimy dinoflagellates! Cold-adapted crocodiles! Philosophy! Surely you remember?
Anyway, to prop up what has already been mentioned, a link:
The problem is (I think) that the irreducible complexity argument assumes that all components of a system can only ever have functioned as components of that specific system and that the only kind of modification that could occur would be removal or addition of a component - this doesn’t appear to be the case in reality - previously existing systems (that perform a different function) can be modified and end up enabling a completely novel function.
On the talk.origins message board I have read a long list of “natural designs” that appear so random and self-defeating that one can hardly deny that they falsify the theory of ID. They go far beyond a poorly-designed magnetic strip. I’m talking about examples of “natural engineering” that appear so stupefyingly idiotic and counter-productive as to give ID a right good jolly rogering (scientifically speaking, of course). Unfortunately, I found the list long ago, and I doubt I would be able to locate it again.
At any rate, as I understand Behe’s argument, the evidence of intelligent design in the natural world is employed to support the supposition of some sort of supra-intelligent, transcendent “divine creator;” such a supposition is seriously weakened, in my opinion, by the evidence of stupid designs. Why would a creator design these marvelous examples of irreducible complexity, on the one hand, and then stick them into these idiotically designed creatures, on the other? The one would seem to contradict the other.
At any rate, mark well that the list was the product of several professional biologists who were intent on disproving the ID thesis. These biologists assert, consequently, that their evidence contradicts Behe’s thesis – but they simultaneously argue that ID is unscientific because it is unfalsifiable. Clearly, these two arguments contradict each other.
Here is a passage from Behe’s own response to the criticism his “theory” has provoked:
As a non-specialist, I suppose Behe is arguing here that since complex systems have never been produced in a lab, his theory, though falsifiable, has not yet been falsified. Behe goes on to demonstrate that by the same standards, evolutionary theory is unfalsifiable. (You can read his entire defense here.)
Please, for the love of God now, don’t think I agree with Behe’s theories. I don’t. On the other hand, although I think Behe’s “thought experiment” is pretty useless as an example, I nevertheless agree with the basic thrust of his particular argument in this case: intelligent design can be falsified, by simply providing examples of such designs that are nevertheless the result of random evolutionary forces. (In fact, I suspect that ID has been falsified, and that Behe is gratuitously ignoring the counter-evidence.) tomndebb:
Who would deny that a theory, if proven false, would “fail?” My question runs, “Is it possible to falsify evolutionary theory?” I may have stated the point rather glibly, but your argument doesn’t convince me I’m wrong, fully.
Let’s inspect this argument more closely. To be honest, I’ve never heard of it before, but just judging from what you’ve written, may I ask: was Darwin’s prediction of the time of erosion for the “Weald” (what’s a “weald,” by the way?) directly derived from his theory? Or was it an assessment of how long he thought evolution would require, as a best guess? Had Lord Kelvin turned out to be correct, would this have falsified Darwin’s theory of evolution?
How long has it taken, now, for the weald to erode? Was it exactly 300,000,000 years – or longer? Or shorter?
Yes, well – naturally, we assume that the animal types were successive, at least in part because they are found in a particular order in the fossil record. Isn’t that a bit of a tautology?
Quite the opposite has also occurred: species once believed to be closely related, due to observable morphological similarities, have been found to possess quite different genetic components. I was under the impression that the evolutionary tree was being radically rewritten on the basis of these studies.
If correct, would you consider the above a falsification of evolution theory?
I’m just taking yet another swipe at the falsification criterion, my favorite windmill. I’ve no doubt that evolutionary theory is scientific, I just don’t think that falsification is a useful demarcation for making such a determination. That’s why this is such a shameless hijack, by the way.
Well, my response to that would constitute a long and complex digression, but surely you agree that natural selection does imply survival of the fittest, no? Speaking as a layman, I always thought natural selection was pretty fundamental to the theory.
cajela:
Don’t sell yourself short. I find your examples more compelling than tomndebb’s.
Hmmm…those are some pretty good examples. I’ll have to think about them for a while. Let’s reverse them and ask:[ul][li]If we were to unearth a human fossil in Jurrasic strata, would you consider evolution to be falsified?[/li]
[li]If bacteria kept in antibiotic-rich medium fail to evolve resistance, would that falsify the theory?[/li]
[li]So, if it turns out that species once considered to be closely related by “old-fashioned” taxonomies don’t have similar DNA, would evolution then be falsified?[/li]
[li]And now, the kicker: how do you define “species,” exactly? (No dictionary definitions please; I require a scientifically precise answer to this question.)[/ul]Still, your counter examples do deserve consideration – especially the first one.[/li]Abe!
Who loves ya, baby!
Guilty as charged. I was pretty sure this would flush you out of the woodwork. (Have I become that transparent in my dotage?)
I didn’t mean that there are not bad “designs” in nature, only that their existence doesn’t rule out a designer. Sure there are numerous “design failures.” For example, too many mutations in too short a time would probably be anti survival because many of them are bad. And, as I understand it, rather elaborate “editing” mechanisms are in place to try to assure that the genetic code is copied correctly in replication. But those mechanisms don’t work all the time and mutations still happen. You would think that an “intelligent designer” wouldn’t have designed an imperfect mechanism in the first place and then wouldn’t have backed it up by a corrective system that doesn’t work all the time either.
I don’t, and I don’t think anyone else does either.
What do you mean by “such designs?” What would be an example of an presumptive “intelligent design” which could be falsified by showing “random evolutionary forces.” It seems to me that IDers could always argue that either that particular example doesn’t count as ID or they could find or assert some gap in the process as ID. I don’t see how ID is falsifiable in this way. ID is God of the gaps and God of the gaps is not falsifiable.
Evolution, on the other hand, is easily falsifiable. All you have to do is find a presumptive descendant species which predates a presumptive antecedant species. Find a homo sapiens which is older than an australopithecene. Find a precambrian housecat. Find a jurassic penguin. Any of these things would falsify evolution.
Okay. I’m not really committed to the argument one way or another. I kinda of thought that Behe is trying to support the idea of an infallible creator with his ID stuff. It would seem to me that design failures would falsify that idea. But I suppose this divine creator might be fallible, and prone to mistakes, thus immunizing ID from that particular falsification.
Yeah, I agree: but that doesn’t that argument, in and of itself, constitute a falsification of Behe’s ID thesis? Diogenes:
Well, I don’t know, really, since I’m not a specialist; but how about the eye, or say, blood clotting cascades?
Indeed they could. But as Popper points out, their assertion would have no bearing on whether or not the theory, in itself, was falsifiable. Many scientists throughout history have clung desperately to theories long after they were proven wrong, for various reasons.
I am, in fact, not convinced that such a find would falsify evolution. It might be a spectacular development, and it might lead to the transformation of a Specific Model (as Abe and I discussed previously, in the thread he linked to above), but I’m not sure it would falsify the theory in its totality.
But perhaps I should flesh out my argument a bit more clearly in this discussion. Will do so as soon as I have another spare minute or two.
Stop right there. Dawkins DOES discuss ID at the end of his book. What he says is quite simple: it’s a possible explanation, but a) so far no one’s been able to argue properly for its necessity: it’s just something that gets tacked on without any real evidence b) it doesn’t “explain” anything: it assumes the very thing we are trying to explain, making the whole proceedure of understanding the existence of complexity via explanation pointless.
So Dawkins does not assert that it’s impossible. He doesn’t think it there is any reason to support the hypothesis, which is not the same thing at all. And even if he were to think that, that wouldn’t make the theory of evolution assert such a thing.
Yes, this is VERY key. This is what Dennet calls “exaptions,” and there are numerous examples of them. Simple sight is, for instance, very likely an exaption of simple radiation detection: light/heat sensitive spots become recessed, giving them a directional sense. Remove the recess or the sensitivity to light and you no longer have directional sense, but that doesn’t mean that the progression from simple sensitivity to directional sensitivity isn’t plausible. Just because the system falls apart with the removal of one element doesn’t mean that it could never have developed progressively, any more than the fact that a skyscraper will fall down if you remove a key support proves that it never could have gone up in the first place (what you are missing is the original support scaffolding which was later removed).
Nope. We can look at the development (and loss) of specific bone structures in the fossil record. No bone structure found at one level in a undeveloped state will be found in an earlier level at a fully developed state.
It is not a matter of saying that Hyracotherium is older than Merychippus and saying that they are in different strata. Among the horse fossils, for example, the Hyracotherium had low, generalized (brachydont) molars. The somewhat later Orohippus had low molars that were beginning to develop the higher lophodont ridge. Later members of the horse family continued to develop the lophodont characteristic until the teeth became hypsodont, or high crowned. At the same time, there was a general development of the foot to fuse the three toes into a single hoof, initially with the toes simply “bundled” together with separate joints, later fused into a “fluted column” with the first joint fused, later with the first and third toes “retreating” and finally completely disappearing.
At no time do we find strata in which the brachydont molars occur after the hypsodont molars have developed. At no time do we find a three-toed horse after the complete fusion of the equine foot to a single hoof. Occasionally, an animal will “re-invent” a structure that had been lost, but as with the notorious panda’s thumb, the original thumb does not simply spring up–a completely new structure developed to assume the function.
This is not a matter of saying “here is their order” but of being able to predict that certain structures are developing (and being lost) through time. This is a clear prediction.
From your quoting of Behe, an example of his disingenuous use of the language:
He mixes the use of “evidence against” and “falsifiability.” There is evidence against his claim that a particular process had to have been inserted into the evolutionary record when researchers have discovered alternative methods for a process to have occurred that contradict his claims. However, he has not provided a falsifiable statement, because he made no prediction to be refuted. Evidence of poor science is not falsification.
His work is noted to be unfalsifiable because it cannot be used to predict an event or a process. It is a god of the gaps, in which he declares “this has to have been placed here by a designer because there is no path from A to Z.” Then a practicing scientist has to go out and demonstrate point M that occurs between points A and Z and he simply changes his claim to “this has to have been placed here by a designer because there is no path from A to M.” If anyone has created a “theory” that cannot be disproven (or tested), it is Behe.
The Weald (note the capitalization) is the section of high, forrested land rising between the Thames Valley and the English Channel in counties Kent, Sussex, and Surrey where many of the earliest paleontological digs in Britain were carried out. Darwin was not a geologist and was not trying to set an actual date for the earliest section of the Weald. He was doing a rough calculation to determine whether the erosion of the Weald would have allowed it to have been old enough to support the long chain of evolution that he proposed. His intention was to set a terminus ad quem. In fact, there are sections of the Weald that have been dated to the Cambrian period, nearly twice as old as Darwin’s rough guess.
Darwin’s prediction was that the land was at least old enough to support his theory and Lord Kelvin’s claim was that Darwin was too short by a factor of 15. Darwin’s prediction was falsifiable and the setting of the age of the sun to be several orders of magnitude older than Lord Kelvin’s calculations, along with the discovery that Darwin’s terminus ad quem was very conservative bolstered Darwin’s theory rather than harming it.
