"The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe

Thanks, this certainly makes the page look a lot nicer!Artificial selection would indeed help things along, in fact we could even say that is what we do any process of experimentation. However, mutations still need to do their job before a selection can be made. Unless, we are talking about variation not due to mutation. Personally I am undecided about how far this idea can go. We know that children will be different to both their parents without any mutations taking place, perhaps even more beautiful or smarter. I remember seeing what i swear were brussel sprouts attached to the bottom of a cabbage. It had never struck me before, but they are just like little cabbages. I would have no problem in believing that a cabbage plant could evolve into a brussel sprout plant just through a process of an inbuilt variation of parameters. I could even believe this and other examples happened due to Darwinian evolution.

The even odds scenario doesn't produce 50/50 chance, its more like 40/60. (ie if each ticket in a lottery gives a 1 in 100 chance of winning, you have slightly less than 60% chance of having at least 1 winning ticket) Like i said its not the most mathematical of approaches. The program i was using for the calculations couldn't handle the precision of calculations using (10^19) - 1 (basically a heap of 9's). There are obviously many out there that will but i would have had to download them. The point of the exercise is to take calculations involving1. The probability of common evolutionary steps (highly debated in these posts).2. Number of typically available beneficial mutations.3. Population sizeProbability - Typical/average probability of a SPECIFIC beneficial mutation (such as photosensitive cells) developing by any means available (ie ANY available method of developing photosensitive cells).Number of typically available beneficial mutations - The number of available beneficial mutations available to "choose" from. For example, along with photosensitive cells might go, a specific drug resistance, the ability to hear notes of higher pitch, skin pigmentation, and so on.Population - The total number of all creatures along an evolutionary branch. (for example, all humans and some of our cousins and ancestors)I propose that this would give an idea of the number of creatures required to produce a beneficial step of a certain complexity.By varying some parameters and compensating with others, different hypotheticals can be considered.I propose that to set up an even odds situation, ie a slightly less than 60% chance of at least one of these beneficial mutations happening,Then (1/probability) = Available beneficial mutations x accumulated population.With (1/probability), i mean for example, 1 in 100 chance becomes the number 100.The point of this equation is to get the number of creatures required to produce even odds of a beneficial mutation happening once.In the example i used, i proposed a more pessimistic version of Behe's calculation for probability, and made it 1 in 10^17 instead of 1 in 10^20. I proposed one trillion creatures beginning from modern man and working backwards to some point (wherever a trillion is reached). Which left 100000 potential beneficial mutations for each creature, in order to produce a 60% chance of one of these mutations happening at least once. Note: of course this allows for it happening more than once, but the probability quickly decreases as we assume more "winners."In more direct words, my point was to show that many such mutations were unlikely, but I would "assume" necessary to vary a species in any significant way.Lastly, i must point out that these parameters can be varied, as bluegenes has already taken the liberty of doing. You may disagree with the typical number of availiable beneficial mutations within reach, or with Behe's measurements of probability. I agree with you on this. But it is a matter of simplification to try to find a figure for which we could say "approximately x number of mutations of similar complexity would be needed for the type of evolution we see around us."Edited by Colin, : error

Hi Modulus, I don't believe this is circular reasoning. If i had plugged in my numbers and was left with say a value of 10 for the number of legitimate beneficial mutations to make the equation balance, this would strike me straight away as too pessimistic, and i would need to make up the numbers by taking them from somewhere else, lets say, the population value. This however, would only cause other problems for my argument. I can rob from peter to pay paul, but i have limited scope to fudge the results. Again, I have shown where my numbers came from. They are debatable but reasonable i think. I am waiting for a potential reply from Behe about issues concerning probability, which also applies to your second comment.

Hi doctor,I still believe that reading between the lines, he would have taken the things we spoke about into account when calculating the probability. But if i get a reply from Behe I will get back to you on this.You also seem to disagree in a general sense with this line of reasoning because it involves a specific. It I want to calculate my odds of winning a lottery, I can calculate the odds of a specific line of numbers coming up, then recognize that I have any 10 lines with similar odds. I have applied one specific to a set of general but similar events.

Even odds is neither good or bad for my argument. It is just a reference point. It neither supports nor contradicts my argument. The support or otherwise of my argument comes from the distribution of values within the equation. I could decrease probability, and choose to extend the population value, but i could not have it both ways. Edited by Colin, : No reason given.

My apologies, I had thought it would simplify my argument but it has only complicated it. I will try to clear it up.If i was analyzing a lottery, i could ask, how many tickets would i need to buy to give myself a 10% chance of winning the jackpot? Or, if i bought 2 tickets each week, in what period of time would I expect a 0.1% chance of winning twice. Or, if i plan to buy 100 tickets and i expect a probability of 0.001 of getting at least one winning ticket, what would the general chances of any 1 ticket winning need to be?And there are many more like them. All of these questions are equally valid for gaining insight into entering the lottery. Some would be better suited to answering our questions, but in the end, they all give different perspectives of the same picture, and all would be equally correct.So to answer your question about whether even odds is or is not important, it is only important in that I chose it as a point of reference, like the other lottery questions above.You interpreted my quote correctly. But again "even odds" as a point of reference is just one of an endless number of views of the same picture. It is important in my argument because i chose it as my reference in order to greatly simplify calculations, but the point of view does not change the thing i am looking at (unless its an electron).So what am i trying to look at? The relationship between the probability of steps, steps available, population and expected number of steps taken. But like i said, judging from your last post, you understood my argument, just not the role that the "even odds" were playing.If i remember rightly, you said i was fixing the results by choosing the even odds scenario.PS. Even odds in the lottery example might be, how long would i need to live to get even odds of winning at least once, if i buy 2 tickets every week in a lottery where each ticket had a 1 in 5 million? The answer is 2.5 million weeks. Again, we can play with numbers, 4 tickets a week would give half the time for example.Edited by Colin, : No reason given.Edited by Colin, : No reason given.

Hi Modulus, although my numbers are only estimates, i believe they are reasonably grounded in reality, I will try to outline why. Absolutely, this equation has many solutions. Let me give an example to explain why i used this equation anyway. Say i want to build a performance car. I know that the equation f=ma will apply to the exercise, and that the equation itself is the first thing that grounds the exercise in reality, though i still have no specific values. I begin to plug in estimated values such as a value for desired acceleration, and estimated mass. I find that with these values, the force required is greater than any affordable production engine could supply, so i consider my chassis and materials, and shed some mass. I do similar adjustments until i believe i have some realistic values on which to base my car. I left the value of possible beneficial mutations until last, because it is the hardest value to estimate. Your right, I do not know what this value is, I can only guestimate at best. When i plugged in my other two values, and was left with 100000, and I thought this sounded reasonably generous. To elaborate on why, in life we see many common features that seem to be produced, or at least retained among many species. If we take the basic structure of DNA for example, which if i remember rightly is common to all life on Earth (maybe 1 or 2 exceptions?). Could we conclude from this that developing a new biological language is either too difficult or not really beneficial, at least in the short term. Considering the number of creatures that have been produced through the millenia, we should be justified in saying that such a mutation, or group of mutations, should not really be considered one of the typically available mutations, even if it is technically possible. Other features such as the eye, which is shared among a great deal of organisms and may have evolved independently several times, we could say is both reasonably within the grasp of evolution and also provides a significant and lasting benefit. Therefore we could say that evolutionary pathways that lead to the development of the eye are among the typically available mutations. Just to remind you of the point i was making, evolution as a process seems to be picky, and gravitates toward the same type of features many times over, suggesting that although the available likely evolutionary pathways are numerous, they are maybe not as incredibly numerous as they are often made out to be. Also, in this discussion the burden of proof is on me, since i used the calculation. But it is worth noting that in general, any lack of knowledge about this number also applies to evolution, so that in insisting evolution to be true is to do so without actually knowing the probability of the events occurring.My number for the probability of one such mutation occurring - Behe calls a single chloroquine type event a CCC, or Chloroquine Complexity Cluster. Some discussion has gone into the question of whether this was accurately calculated, which is why i reduced Behe's number by a factor of a thousand. To put it another way, Behe says it took a few years for the very first cases of chloroquine resistance to appear. My number allows for 200 cases of spontaneous resistance in the first year, followed by 200 every single year for the next fifty years. I think this is more than generous. On whether or not the chloroquine type resistance is typically necessary on evolutionary pathways. If we consider that this change slightly alters an already existing protein pump, and requires up to 12 changes in the protein sequence, surely we are not being unreasonable is assuming that this is not an incredibly big step to take if we consider, looking around us, what else evolution has accomplished.Onto the number I used for population. This brings some perspective to the amount of change we might expect over the course of time. I find it hard to believe that man evolved from an ape like creature, without using a mutation as complex as malaria altering a protein pump. I think it is reasonable to expect many equally complex mutations would be required, in addition to some more complex and many less complex. Had i been completely unreasonable and chose 1, as my poulation, you could rightly ask me why i would expect any change at all in just 1 new creature.To bring my wider argument into focus, I see an inconsistency in comparing the amount of change we see in rapidly reproducing smaller organisms, to the amount of change that is assumed to have happened in much larger, slowly reproducing organisms such as ourselves.Edited by Colin, : No reason given.Edited by Colin, : No reason given.

Without guestimates, we would still be staring blankly out of our caves wondering what to do next. Not having an exact answer for something is a part of life. At least for those of us who don't know everything.And "All the evidence" as you put it is another story.

If there was a crime committed, and a fiber that matched a piece of my clothing was found at the scene, it is evidence that I committed the crime, even though I may not have. So many pieces of circumstantial evidence may be taken into account in building a case. Now let me ask you, is there any evidence that you consider unfavorable to evolution?

This is a legitimate method to calculate probability, and its accuracy becomes more precise as the number of trials increases. Just as recording the outcome of coin tosses shows an increasing accuracy towards a probability of 0.5 for either side.I do understand Thornton's comment, Kennith Miller has made the same point. You are correct in saying that insanely improbable events are occurring all the time, but what implication do these events have? If my parents did not have me as one of their children, chances are they would have someone else. Behe was not measuring the chances of a specific mutation taking place, he was measuring the chances of any mutation taking place that would result in a necessary adaptation to malarias environment. The problem is very specific and unique, as are all the others, but the solutions are open to all possible means. The smoke screen is that this is one specific example and does not speak on behalf of evolution in general, but the book goes further. It shows that there is a direct correlation between the speed at which malaria develops resistance to a drug, and the complexity of the solutions found. The process of calculating the probability in light of population numbers is used as a matter of course in planning maria treatment programs. This is a REAL LIFE observation of evolution in action. We present malaria with a problem, we observe its ability to find solutions by Darwinian evolution, then the solutions are studied.Also, as it turns out, the probability was not actually calculated by Behe, but by Professor Nicholas White of Mahidol University, who is receiving the 2009 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) sanofi-aventis ICAAC Award for his "outstanding accomplishment in antimicrobial chemotherapy, development of new agents, investigation of antimicrobial action or resistance to antimicrobial agents, and/or the pharmacology, toxicology or clinical use of those agents since 1982." See the complete article here Error Page.This evidence cannot honestly be ignored.

I'm pointing out that this not some wild assertion by Behe. This number came from a man highly qualified in his field. There has been a lot of debate surrounding the legitimacy of the value Behe used.

I understand your argument, but you are talking about the chances of an individual person being born. Behe was not talking about an individual creature or even an individual mutation. The only target set was adaptation to the drug, by any means.In reality, species have a range of options by which to gain a advantage, and this would make the true set of targets for that species. And then there are numerous species each with their own complete set of options, which would constitute the complete set of all targets for evolution.I use the word 'targets' purposely, because we are told that evolution is the mechanism responsible for causing great diversification in life on Earth by adaptation to environments. To test this, I need to give evolution the target of causing a species to adapt and change. If you say that evolution doesn't have a trend towards adaptation, then what exactly is the theory saying? Is the adaptation required for resistance so uniquely difficult and complex, that it should be considered a statistical anomaly within evolution?Whether or not a mutation is essential at the time is beside the point. Changes still need to be made, and those changes need to be significant enough to appear on natural selections radar. All life on Earth originated from a single species correct? If so, this is an incredible claim. Massive changes (or countless little ones), need to have taken place. Behe is showing that at least in this case, even modest adaptation is alarmingly slow considering the sheer numbers of reproduction.